by John Masters
‘Very well, padre. We’ll pay you the same as you get at your parish. And for a start I’ll leave you to find out what exactly you should do.’
‘One thing he can do better than anyone,’ Kellaway said, ‘is tell you what the men are feeling … really feeling.’
‘When can you come back?’ Guy asked.
‘I can stay,’ the priest said, smiling. ‘I told my bishop I had had a Call … I had a young curate, who was painfully eager for me to die or be made a bishop, so that he could take over the parish. My belongings are in the Captain’s flat. Whatever I am in Von Rackow-Rowland, I’m at work now, Guy.’
The telephone on the table rang and Guy picked it up – ‘Von Rackow-Rowland.’
A woman’s voice said, ‘Guy? I’m Dorothy Norvell – Arthur Durand-Beaulieu’s widow.’
Guy exclaimed, ‘Good heavens, Dorothy, it’s ages since we heard of you. You remarried, didn’t you?’
The voice was soft but firm – ‘Yes. Jim Norvell, in ’17. He was killed, too, a month before the armistice. He left me a baby … a girl. She’s a year old now … I was a qualified nurse before I married Arthur, and am now a matron. Since March ’17 I’ve been working with shellshock victims and learning psychoanalysis. I have no money beyond a little pension. I want to help you, and I want my little girl to grow up helping. Will you take me as head nurse, or matron, at your Foundation?’
Guy didn’t hesitate, but said, ‘Yes. Give me your address and I’ll write or call when we have a place for you.’
He jotted down what she told him, replaced the receiver, and turned to the two waiting men – ‘Let’s find the kitchen and make ourselves a sandwich or two, eh?’
The two men in the corner of the saloon bar of the White Horse were drinking beer out of pint tankards, bitter for the taller and younger of the two, old and mild for the other.
Guy, the taller, said, ‘I’d give anything to have you with us, Frank, but we can’t pay you anything like what you deserve because we don’t have a big enough job. We need someone in charge of machinery of all kinds … the boilers for the central heating, and for the laundry, the laundry machines, the mechanism of the lifts … the cars and lorries, and I suppose we’ll have to have an ambulance … perhaps a fire engine of our own … I suppose things are about the same at HAC?’
Frank nodded – ‘Winding down, sir, that’s it. They can’t get orders. Civil flying’s not coming along as fast as it should, not in this country anyway, and the Americans and French have their own machines. No one wants to even think about new bombers, let alone actually order them … I’ve been offered the works foreman’s job at Bristol. They are doing well – much better than us.’
‘Are you going to take it?’
‘No, sir. Unless you really won’t have me.’
Guy drank and put the tankard down. He rubbed his wounded ear and stared at Frank across the little table – ‘Damn it, Frank,’ he began. Then he remembered Kellaway and said, ‘What could you teach crippled men, that would be profitable?’
Frank scratched his chin and at length said, ‘If you could put in a power saw or two … some lathes, turning machines, we could make furniture. I don’t know as much about woodworking as I do steel and metals, but I know enough. We could do the whole thing … from design to varnish, painting, and selling. That’d pay my salary.’
Guy said, ‘Anne has always made her own and the children’s clothes, hasn’t she? And she’s an expert at working from patterns, using the sewing machine? And even making patterns?’
Frank nodded – ‘That she is. And she loves doing it, too.’
Guy said, ‘Bring her along then. She can teach the men. Find a house nearer the Hall than your old place.’
Frank said, anxiously, ‘Can I bring my bike – Dad’s bike?’
‘Victoria?’ Guy said. ‘Of course.’
‘There’ll have to be a workshop where I can fix things and make things … and I could work on Victoria there. They’re going to open Brooklands again next year, and then …’
‘Of course,’ Guy said.
Daily Telegraph, Tuesday, October 21, 1919
BOXING DRAMA
DEFEAT OF JIM DRISCOLL
By B. Bennison
Seldom, if ever, has boxing produced a drama so thrilling and so tragic as the contest at the National Sporting Club last night between Jim Driscoll, ‘incomparable Jim’ we shall always know him as, the retired feather-weight champion of the world, and Charles Ledoux, the best bantam (albeit a heavy one, and maybe unable to do the stipulated poundage) of Europe. Here was an old man, old as boxers go, for Driscoll is in his fortieth year, who dared to get into the ring and gamble in his knowledge of ringcraft against a man twenty-seven years of age, who, by common consent, stands alone as a fighter, as distinct from a boxer. And yet for fourteen and a half rounds this Driscoll, toothless, grey-headed, wrinkle-faced, often bewildered and bamboozled his opponent. He introduced to us the straight left par excellence, a defence wonderful, and hitting done as if by measure.
But he could not survive against irrepressible youth and viciousness, as personified by Ledoux … The defeat of Driscoll was glorious, yet pathetic. He showed us the magic of boxing; he only lost because he believed that he was young when he was really old … Ledoux, as he went to his dressing-room, sought to make it known, in the best English at his command, that in Driscoll he had encountered an opponent who was marvellous in every way. Said he: ‘I was losing nearly all the time, and yet I won. Great is Driscoll.’
It must have been a sad sight, Cate thought; but at that moment Charlie Bennett, reading another newspaper, exclaimed, ‘That must ’a been a bonny fight! I wish I could ’a been there!’
Tom Rowland, across the table, said smiling, ‘Charlie was a good little boxer, in the navy. I think it’s a bloodthirsty brutal sport, myself.’
‘Haway wi’ you, Tom,’ Charlie cried. ‘It’s a science … an art …’
‘The Noble Art of self-defence,’ Isabel murmured. ‘And it may be so, but I don’t think I could bear to see men battering each other into insensibility, however scientifically or artistically it was being done.’
‘It’s not a sport for ladies,’ Charlie said.
Cate spread marmalade on a piece of toast. He had invited Tom down for a few days in the country; but before sending up the invitation, Isabel had persuaded him to make quite clear that Charlie Bennett was included, as a guest. He had had a struggle; for Charlie was, to put the best possible interpretation on it, Tom’s valet, and accordingly could certainly come down; but as such would eat in the servants’ hall with Mrs Abell, Garrod, and Tillie. But of course Bennett was actually Tom’s homosexual paramour … ‘lover’, Isabel had said, but Cate could not use the word for such a relationship. Reluctantly, he had given in; and they had been down three days – Tom was going hunting tomorrow; then they’d return to London on Thursday … and to his surprise it had gone well. Charlie was a Durham miner’s son, pure Geordie, and a most likeable young man. It was touching to see the real affection he had for Tom, and Tom for him. Isabel was teaching him a lot, and it was doing him good. What an old fogey he’d been … a blind, narrow-minded old fogey …
He turned to Isabel, ‘What are we doing this morning?’
‘Nothing is fixed, darling. But I thought it would be nice if we called on Mr Brewster. He’s an artist … young, fought in the war, but is a rebel. Quite a few people like that have come to Walstone since the war – and we ought to get to know them … what they think, how they see things. Or they’ll stay convinced that we are just old-fashioned fogeys still living in the nineteenth century.’
‘I wish I was,’ Cate said.
‘No, you don’t,’ she said, smiling. ‘And you can give them as much as they can give you. They must learn to live with and in Walstone’s past, just as much as we to live in its present and future.’
‘All right,’ he said.
‘And tomorrow we are going up to London to hear the new Si
belius Symphony at Queen’s Hall … and meet Betty and Fletcher and David Toledano and Helen for dinner.’
Cate sighed, and Tom, laughing, said, ‘Now I’ve got some news for you, Isabel. Skirts are going up … up … up … up …’
‘Good heavens!’ she exclaimed. ‘How far … and when? I don’t want to have to buy a complete new wardrobe.’
‘Above the knees, in a year or two … You can always stick with the length you wear now. Old ladies …’He smiled mischievously.
Isabel cried, ‘Tom Rowland! I am an older lady, but I am not going to be branded as one. I’ll have to go and look at my legs in the mirror. What an evil thought!’
Chapter 30
Hedlington: Wednesday, October 22, 1919
Richard Rowland was not feeling very well, and though he did get up and get dressed, he did not go to his office at the Jupiter Motor Company, but stayed at home, reading some financial statements he had brought home with him the night before. At ten o’clock the telephone rang. It was Morgan, the works foreman at JMC. Overfeld had at last left to return to America, and Morgan was now in charge, under Richard’s supervision. ‘They’re going out on strike, Mr Richard,’ Morgan said.
‘Who is?’ Richard said irritably. ‘Why?’
‘About three-quarters of the men – women, too. It’s the closed shop thing again, same’s we had a year ago. Now they’ve built up a big strike fund, and they’re ready again.’
Richard felt his anger rising like a tide in him. That bloody Bert Gorse and his union … cancers, they were, nothing less.
‘Swine,’ he grated. ‘Without any warning.’
‘Well, Mr Richard, they always said they’d strike some time, if we didn’t agree to the closed shop.’
‘I’ll never agree,’ Richard said. ‘Can we keep the place going with what we have left?’
‘Just. We’ll have to shift some men on to work that’s new to them, because in some departments practically everyone’s going out. We can work at about twenty per cent capacity.’
‘I’ll be right down,’ Richard said. He hung up. Immediately the telephone rang again. It was Ginger Keble-Palmer at the Hedlington Aircraft Company.
‘They’re going out on strike, Richard,’ he said.
‘How many?’
‘About half.’
Good, Richard thought. Not as bad as JMC. He said, ‘Can we keep going?’
‘Yes. Because we’re really not doing very much, are we?’
‘I’ll be down as soon as I’ve been to JMC. They’re out, too.’ He hung up again.
Twenty minutes later, driving through the gates of the JMC, he passed a line of men and women carrying placards, handwritten – ON STRIKE FOR A UNION. They glanced at him, sitting in the back of the big car behind Kathleen the chauffeur, but did not show any sign of recognition or anger.
In the factory Morgan was waiting for him with the five departmental foremen. He sat down at his desk, they all standing, all wearing their caps, Morgan his ceremonial bowler. He said, ‘Now let’s get one thing straight – we’re not going to have a closed shop of the Union of Skilled Engineers here, or any other union. We pay as good as the best wages in the industry, we give good holidays, we pay compensation and doctors’ bills for any injury incurred at the plant … and that’s that. Second, none of those people who’ve gone out are to be re-employed here. So start hiring men and women to replace them. But first hire half a dozen men … big men, to see that no one who wants to come in and out of this factory is prevented from doing so by the pickets.’
‘Using just their fists, Mr Richard?’ one of the foremen asked.
‘Get them rubber clubs,’ Richard said shortly. ‘And knuckle dusters … there’s a lot of unemployment everywhere. You won’t have any trouble getting the numbers we need in the factory.’
‘Not the numbers,’ Morgan said, ‘but the skills. The car business is doing pretty well.’
‘If you have real difficulty, we’ll think about offering more pay,’ Richard said. ‘The main thing is to remember that we’re in a war. They mean to bring us to our knees. But, we’re going to fight back, and force them to theirs.’
A woman rushed into the room without knocking, and screamed, ‘Fire! In the paint shop!’
‘Christ!’ Morgan said, and dashed out. Richard picked up the telephone and hurriedly wound the handle. There was no sound. The telephone was dead. The wires must have been cut! Bloody swine! He followed the foremen, and now a stream of men and women, to the paint shop.
One corner of the shop was on fire, flames licking towards the roof and dense black smoke, chokingly acrid, billowing through one window, which was half-open. Morgan and two other men were already up close to the fire with fire extinguishers, squirting streams of foam at the flames. Richard, looking round, saw that the flames were licking close to the three overhead paint tanks, which were used with sprays to paint the lorries. He shouted, ‘Smith, empty that first tank … run the hose through the door and empty it. Hurry!’ More men hurried in with extinguishers from other parts of the factory. One of the foremen came up, panting, ‘I tried to telephone the fire brigade … couldn’t get through.’
‘So did I,’ Richard said. ‘Wire’s been cut.’
‘I went out … phoned from a house down the road. They’re on their way.’
Richard nodded. The firemen would arrive just in time. Meanwhile they could hold the fire with what they had here. Paint was damnable stuff … the most dangerous place in the factory for a fire to start … to be started, obviously, he thought, possessed anew with an almost blind fury. This was arson. By those bloody strikers. Now he’d really start fighting. Two could play at that sort of game.
‘All ready?’ Richard said.
‘We’re ready,’ the man said. He was wearing his usual working clothes, with the addition of a steel helmet, just like the one he had worn in the trenches a year ago. But they weren’t in Flanders now, but at the works of the Jupiter Motor Company, in Hedlington, Kent, the Garden of England, preparing to deliver a dozen three-ton JMC lorries to a jam factory in Lincolnshire. The lorries were inside the main storage garage, all work done on them, including the painting of their future owner’s name, address, and advertising slogan. It was dark, the street lamps lit, and forty pickets waiting outside the main gate.
‘All right then,’ Richard said. ‘Go ahead.’
Men swung open the gate of the storage garage and the leading lorry rolled out, followed at a distance by another. At the gates of the factory a man who had been walking beside the lorry made to unlock the gates, which were of wire mesh, ten feet high. The pickets stood in dense rows outside, blocking the roadway. They began to shout in chorus, ‘Blacklegs! … Blacklegs! … Blacklegs!’
Richard, watching from inside the garage, said, ‘Ready, Manning?’
‘Aye, sir.’
‘Go, then.’ Two men waiting beside him went out of the side door of the big shed, heading in the darkness for the wire fence at the east side of the plant, hidden from the main gate and the pickets by the factory’s many buildings. They carried in their hands big, long-levered wire-cutters, a pair each, but held close to their sides in case some stray strike sympathiser should see them before they got to work, and made the right deduction.
At the fence they set to at once, cutting a gap twelve feet wide in it. As they dragged the wire aside, they heard the sound of approaching engines; and at that moment the factory lights went out, and the street lights.
Richard, in the leading lorry, drove out of the storage garage, but instead of making for the main gate 200 feet ahead, turned right, and driving between the factory buildings, headed for the newly-cut gap, seeing only by the stars but making no mistake because he and the other drivers all knew this area like the back of their hands. He smiled grimly, muttering under his breath, ‘That’ll teach you, you damned swine.’
He drove through the gap in the fence, and one by one the other lorries followed. Now the pickets were coming, running d
own the side street, shouting. A half-brick crashed through the windshield six inches from his head, shattering the safety glass. Someone was trying to climb up on the other side, screaming ‘Blackleg!’ The guard sitting beside Richard leaned out and smashed his knuckle-dustered fist into the picket’s face. The man fell off and a moment later Richard felt a heavy bump. The guard muttered, ‘Ran over his leg.’
‘Good!’ Richard said. If this was what they wanted, this was what they’d get.
‘Runover Rowland! Runover Rowland!’ they were shouting outside the gates as he drove up, some shaking fists, most making the thumbs-down sign. Richard kept his eyes straight ahead. The picket who’d tried to hit his guard that night last week had had his leg crushed; it had had to be amputated. He’d also had his nose broken by the guard’s knuckle-duster. Serve him right.
The four police standing majestically in front of the gate stood aside. The watchman inside opened it. The crowd of pickets and idle spectators – again about forty strong – booed and hissed and chanted, ‘Runover Rowland! Runover Rowland!’ One of the constables touched the peak of his helmet to him as the car passed. The others maintained their appearance of stolid indifference.
Richard got out and stalked into the plant and to his office. Morgan had been waiting for his arrival and came in at once – ‘Morning, Mr Richard … twenty-six more haven’t shown up for work today.’
‘Why?’
Morgan tipped his bowler a little farther back on his head. ‘They don’t say. But others have said they’re not happy about Freeth losing his leg.’
Richard said, ‘He was trying to punch up my guard, and he got what he deserved … Anything else?’
‘We’re due to get thirty tons of sheet steel from McGarvie’s today. It’s coming by road. And I told their foreman on the telephone to be sure that the drivers were picked, non-union men, and had guards with them. We’ll be paying for the guards’ time.’