by John Masters
Louise Rowland looked round expectantly. She had heard something, or someone … surely? Wasn’t it the front door opening … so now she would hear John’s heavy step … but there was nothing. She closed her eyes and bent her head. He was dead. She had loved him once, and now that he was dead, the love seemed to be returning. In the middle and later years, she had not felt it, only a tolerant affection … recently, less than that – exasperation, even.
Carol Adams came into the room and said, ‘Good night, Mrs Rowland. I’m going up to bed now.’
Louise said, ‘Good night, Carol … Wait.’ The young woman looked worn, bone weary. Louise remembered seeing her spreadeagled under Fred Stratton, in 1914. Did Carol remember? She had been very susceptible. Had she had any other lovers since then? The young woman was waiting, wondering. Louise said, ‘I was going to ask you to take up some warm milk for Addie, but I’ll do it. You’ve done enough today.’
Carol said, ‘I could do it, but … it isn’t here we need the help, Mrs Rowland, it’s outside, on the farm. With Mr Rowland gone, we just can’t handle it, even when none of us has the flu … and I think Frances is going to come down with it next, tomorrow perhaps.’
Louise said, ‘I don’t know what we can do. Girls don’t want to work on the land. There’s a feeling that the war’s all but over and they want to be home when the men come back, to get one, to have fun, get married. It’s been a long time.’
Carol said, ‘It’s natural, Mrs Rowland.’ She hesitated, then said, with eyes averted, ‘I’ve become engaged, to Horace Woodruff. But I won’t be leaving until he can come home,’ she added hastily.
‘Horace Woodruff,’ Louise repeated, thinking, the garage man’s third child. What would Carol’s father, the Vicar of Beighton, think? She said, ‘How nice … What’s he in?’
‘Corporal, Tank Corps,’ she said. ‘He was home on leave last month and we saw a lot of each other.’ She looked up defiantly, ‘I think I’m going to have his baby.’
Louise opened her mouth to say something, but closed it again and instead put out both hands. After a moment of hesitation the young woman came to her, and began to weep on her shoulder.
Louise patted her – ‘Don’t worry, dear. It’ll all come out all right. He’ll come back … the war’s nearly over. We … I’ll help you.’
‘Bear down,’ the doctor said. He was an old man, grey-haired. Every doctor left in England now seemed to be old, Virginia thought – the young ones gone to the war. Pain gripped her in the lower part of the belly, contracting the muscles in a strong, steady spasm. She gasped, gritted her teeth, and pulled hard on the knotted towel fastened to the foot of the bed. A cool sponge was wiped across her forehead and she whispered, ‘Thank you, Stella.’ Stella was a strange girl … hadn’t been so strange when they were younger … but she’d insisted on coming up from Walstone to the flat in Hedlington as soon as she’d heard that Virginia’s pains had started – and she was about eight and a half months pregnant herself. Perhaps that was why she wanted to come … To one side Probyn’s Woman watched impassively. She had been with Virginia for twenty-four hours without a break now.
‘Bear down,’ the doctor said again. The pains were at less than three-minute intervals now. Her mother was standing beside her, one hand on her shoulder. But Virginia hardly acknowledged her presence. None of these people were really here, in their spirits. The only spirits present were those of herself, her husband Stanley, and even now growing out of her like a flower, their child.
The doctor said, ‘Very close now.’ The pains became continuous and with a slow firm movement she felt herself delivered of the living weight that had been in her for nine months, the child. She fell back, her hair spread dank on the pillow. She let go of the towel, as Stella’s sponge came down again, to wipe off the sweat streaming down her forehead on to the pillow.
‘It’s a girl,’ the doctor said.
‘Kate Robinson,’ Virginia gasped feebly. ‘It was Stanley’s grandmother’s name. He loved her.’
They were all silent in the big bedroom. Suddenly the baby filled its lungs and yelled. Virginia smiled wider and wider – ‘Give her to me,’ she said.
‘In a minute … she has to be cleaned up a little. You, too. More hot water, please, Mrs Gorse.’ They were wiping and cleaning and wrapping her up. Stella was whispering, from miles away, ‘She’s beautiful, Virginia. Lots of hair. It seems dark now but perhaps it’ll change … She looks just like you.’
‘Hope not,’ Virginia mumbled. She was very tired. The labour had lasted a long, long time, all hard work. She wanted to sleep … but not yet. The doctor was giving her the baby. ‘There,’ she said, ‘there, there.’ The baby yelled more loudly. ‘There, there … beautiful Katie.’
Stella said, ‘I’ll call your husband. I have the number.’
She floated out of the room; or did it only seem like that to Virginia? To her everything was floating – her mother, by the window, the doctor, the baby floating in golden light in the crook of her arm – Stella, pale, thin, dark-eyed, huge-bellied, so tired too.
‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ Lady Jarrow said to Probyn’s Woman. They were in the large old-fashioned kitchen, the window looking across to South Spinney. ‘Two bedrooms and the parlour – one bath, isn’t it?’
‘And another room we can use as a bedroom, if we were to have more than four children,’ the Woman said, ‘like plenty of them old head keepers did.’
Florinda took a gold cigarette case out of her handbag, found a cigarette and lighted it. The aroma of Russian tobacco filled the kitchen, competing with the smell of frying onions. She said, ‘Why did Granddad take the job?’
‘Because his mother told him to stop poaching,’ the Woman said shortly.
‘His mother?’
‘She haunted him … two, three times … near dark it was, every time.’
Florinda said softly, ‘Wait a minute … her ghost appeared and told Probyn to become a gamekeeper?’
‘Told him to give up poaching.’
Florinda puffed slowly on her cigarette, staring first at the ceiling, then out of the window. She said, ‘Who would benefit from that?’
‘All the landowners … Lord Walstone most, ’cos he’s got the most land, the most pheasants, trout, hares, rabbits, everything.’
‘And the most money. And he likes his own way. And he’s clever … and unscrupulous … Wasn’t it lucky that the roof burned off your cottage, so he could show Probyn how kind he was … and how much more comfortably he could live?’
‘Yes,’ the Woman said, her expression unaltered.
Florinda said, ‘You wanted him to give up poaching, too, didn’t you?’
‘It was time,’ she said. ‘He’s getting on.’
Florinda said at last, ‘Well, I think it’s time, too. Hoggin will want him to do his job properly.’
‘Which he can,’ the Woman said. ‘At least for a few more years.’
‘And he’ll get a pension?’
‘I saw to that.’
‘So we can thank Lord Walstone all the way round, I reckon.’
The Woman smiled, for almost the first time in Florinda’s memory, and said, ‘I reckon so, Florinda … and one day I’d like to thank Probyn’s mother, too, if I ever met her to recognise her, so to speak. Probyn might have had a gun ready, any time. She took a risk, doing that.’
Florinda said, ‘I suppose she was some out-of-work old actress, happy to get the money. And I don’t suppose Lord Walstone told her Probyn might have a gun … Any news of Fletcher?’
The Woman said, ‘A letter, a month ago. He was still killing Germans but said it wouldn’t go on much longer. He’s written enough new poems so they’re going to publish a second book of them. It’s going to be called The Blood of Poppies.’
‘I’ll tell Hatchard’s to send me a copy as soon as it’s out.’
‘Your Guy’s got a VC, we saw in the paper.’
Florinda stubbed out her cigarette on the lid of the stove, lif
ted the lid with the little iron hook, and dropped the butt in. Still with her back to the Woman she said, ‘Yes. But he’s not mine, particularly. I expect he has lots of girls after him, out there.’
‘You were lovers when you were little,’ the Woman said.
Florinda nodded – ‘We were … Guy and Florinda.’
‘But you have another man now.’ The Woman said it as a statement, not a question.
Florinda said, ‘Yes. Billy Bidford … also a VC. You’d think they were competing for me by acts of heroism, wouldn’t you? And I take the winner.’
The Woman said, ‘’Tain’t as easy as that, is it?’
After a long time Florinda said in a small unhappy voice, ‘No, it isn’t … I love Guy, but now I’m afraid of him, too. Billy …’ She shrugged helplessly.
Her true mother’s face was dim in Sally Rowland’s memory, but she remembered how Mum would sit on the sofa, after she had brought the men to the house, and take off her dress, usually pulling it over her head, then step out of her petticoat, then sit smoking a cigarette and drinking some port and lemon, or a gin and water, just in her slip and the little satin liners she wore, that showed hair peeping out round the sides. The men got bulges in their trousers then, and kept telling her they were in a hurry and wanted to get to the bedroom; but her mother didn’t let them hurry her. So, though the four boys were muttering, take ’em off Sally, take ’em off, she remained standing, in the middle of Bittern’s Copse at the edge of Farmer Handle’s land, to the north of Beighton, her dress hung over a bough, her bloomers on and the liners under them, her top bare. Mummy used to do that sometimes, sit with the men with nothing on above the waist. Of course, she had great big titties, with big dark points, while Sally’s were as yet not much more than half-lemons stuck on to her chest.
‘Take off those bloomers,’ Freddie Collins said. His voice was trembling and he had his hand on his trousers. She pirouetted slowly, arms raised and fingers intertwined. All four of them were breathing like the railway engines did when they were getting away from Walstone up the little hill towards Taversham. One of the boys was eleven, her own age, the others twelve and thirteen, farmers’ boys, the greengrocer’s son. They had eyes for nothing but her. They would do anything she commanded; they were her slaves. ‘Undo your buttons,’ she said, turning more slowly.
‘You take those bloomers off first,’ Willie Wheeler choked.
‘No, you first … all of you.’
One by one they undid their buttons with trembling fingers. Two pricks sprang out, hard erect, big … not as big as Mummy’s men’s were, but big. The other two flopped out, little pink slugs, soft … She looked into those two boys’ eyes, her lips curled in an understanding smile, and they could not meet her eyes.
She stopped gyrating, slowly pulled down her heavy blue-flannel bloomers, and, moving with arms hieratically outstretched, like a priestess in a Druid grove, hung them over the bough with her dress.
‘Please, Sally, now!’ Their eyes were as big as saucers. She had a lot of hair down there now, that had come quickly and suddenly and plentifully, much more than her titties, and curls of it were escaping at the sides of the liner, just as Mum’s used to.
‘Sixpence each,’ she said, holding out one hand as she continued to gyrate.
Two of the boys felt in their pockets and handed over their sixpences at once. One muttered, ‘I only got a bob.’
‘That’ll do,’ she said. ‘I’ll pay you back tomorrow … or it’ll do for next time.’
The last boy, the youngest, one of the two with a limp prick, suddenly stuffed it back, did up his flies, and ran off. Poor little fellow, Sally thought, he’s not excited, he’s just frightened. There had been grown men like that with Mum, too, which was strange, when you came to think about it, them being grown and knowing what they’d come for, but it was true, she’d seen it herself, and not only what Mum used to call whisky cock.
Freddie Collins had begun to caress his swollen prick, muttering in an agonised groan, ‘Show us yer cunnie, Sally, or …’
A gruff man’s voice said, ‘So this is what you’re all doing in the wood! Do up your trousers, Willie Wheeler … you, too! You get dressed, Sally, and go home. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, leading on these boys.’
It was Farmer Handle. He had never been a friend of Sally or Tim; and since they had set fire to his hayrick two years ago, he had detested them. Though Richard and Susan Rowland had adopted them, Handle was always on the lookout for proofs of their shameful heredity.
Now he said, ‘Your dad and mum will hear more of this.’
Sally, alone in the wood, dressed quickly. Her dad and mum were going to be told? What about the boys? And how had she led them astray when they were always pestering her to show them her cunnie? It wasn’t fair.
‘She’s got to be sent away to school,’ Richard said firmly that evening, the lamps lit against the early autumn dark, the children in bed, the fire not yet lit in the grate. ‘She’s very advanced for her age, and she’s much too experienced. Heaven knows how much she saw before her mother was killed.’
‘She’ll be homesick,’ Susan said unhappily.
‘Tim isn’t, and he’s only just ten. Sally’s eleven and a half.’
Susan said, ‘I think Tim is homesick. He doesn’t come right out and say so in his letters, but it’s what he doesn’t say that is important. They are not cheerful, happy letters.’
Richard said, ‘Well, he’ll have to get used to it. We all do. And you do. School becomes a second home, and by the time you’re getting fed up with it, you go home for the vac. When you’re bored with home – back to school … I don’t see what alternative there is to sending Sally off to school. She’s getting beyond what an ordinary governess – even if we could find one – can teach her. She’s very bright. She can’t go to the local school …’
‘Why not?’ Susan asked, knowing the answer – because it’s not done to send children of the upper class to the village school; they would pick up local accents and make undesirable friendships.
Richard said, ‘You know she can’t.’
Susan said, ‘Could we send her to America, to school in San Francisco? She could go from my parents’ house. I know they’d be delighted to have her.’
‘Until she got into trouble,’ Richard said, ‘… and how would it help, if you don’t want to send her away from her home – here – to send her 6000 miles to another country?’
Susan said, ‘I suppose you’re right.’
Richard said slowly, ‘It would be different if we all went to America. I can tell you, I’ve been thinking of emigrating. I have a damned good mind to do it, if the unions get too strong here. I like everything I read and hear about American business. I could do well there … but for now I have to stay, to help win the war … so that the damned unions can then pull down everything that millions of men have died to preserve … That’s beside the point, for the present. Sally must go to school. Preferably a school that she can go to now and stay in until she’s seventeen or eighteen. I know – Cheltenham Ladies’ College.’
‘Virginia hated it,’ Susan said.
‘Because Virginia was very plain, and very lazy. Getting married has done wonders for her, she looks quite beautiful … a little fat still … I’ll write to the Headmistress of Cheltenham Ladies’ College and see if we can get Sally in, starting next January. Meanwhile, she’s got to be much more closely supervised here.’
‘I’ll tell Nanny,’ Susan said. Poor Sally, she thought. She swore she never let the boys touch her. It was probably no different from what Guy and Florinda Gorse had done together at this age. Now – off to prison with her – the juvenile prison system of the British upper class.
Mr Overfeld pushed his bowler hat forward over his eyes, lifted his legs on to the table, and leaned back in the swivel chair. He rotated the stump of cigar in his mouth from the left side to the right and said, ‘What’s the total?’
David Morgan, the fore
man of the Jupiter Motor Company, said, ‘Thirty-seven … and going up every day. And this is worse than the spring one. Two of ours have died already, and we didn’t lose anyone then.’
‘What are we going to do about it?’
‘The government says quarantine … keep people separate so they don’t infect each other with their germs … get ’em out of the factory and away home as soon as they show any symptoms. But that’s a lot of codswallop, because, look you, they’re infectious before they show any symptoms!’ His voice rose in Welsh excitement.
Overfeld said, almost to himself, ‘Can’t separate workers in a factory, least not inside each group … maybe we can keep groups from getting close to other groups. Let’s look into that … When will we have to shut down altogether?’
‘Never,’ Morgan said. ‘Not with this plant setup. If we had a full Ford Assembly line, there’d be a critical point where it couldn’t be kept going … but we aren’t up to that stage yet. Never will be, if Bert Gorse and his USE have their way.’
Overfeld said, ‘Is there any way we can use the epidemic to weaken the union?’
Morgan said, ‘I’ve been thinking about that. So’s the boss, I know. But it’ll probably work t’other way. The union’ll pay sick benefits for fourteen days, we only pay seven days, and only then if a worker’s been with us more than a year. The union pays 100 per cent of what the man – or woman – was getting at work. We pay 60 per cent.’
Overfeld said, ‘They pay 100 per cent – until their funds run out. They don’t have much reserve cash down at Stalford Street.’
‘No, but the National does, and they’ll back HE 16, to break us … Look you, Mister Overfeld, we should tell the boss we must raise the benefits to fourteen days, and 100 per cent, same as the union. And guarantee them their jobs back.’
‘I’ll talk to him,’ Overfeld said, ‘but between you and me, Mr Richard’s got a bee in his bonnet over unions. I don’t like ’em myself, understand, but … you can’t damage a boxcar by hitting it with a crowbar … but you can derail it with the same crowbar, if you use it right.’