Heart of War (75 page)

He said, ‘I suppose I ought to feel an awful cad for taking advantage of you … but I don't.'

‘I asked, and you gave.'

Boy hitched himself closer to her, and whispered in her ear – ‘Will you marry me?'

‘Of course. When the war's over.'

He muttered, ‘It may never be. It's … immortal. We aren't. Father can't kill the war any more than the Kaiser can.'

She said, ‘I couldn't bear to marry you, and think of you as my husband, and then lose you. Until it's over, and you're
safe, you must be my lover, and I your mistress.'

He said, troubled, ‘I'll be thinking of you all the time … What if you have a baby? And I'm … killed, or made prisoner?'

‘Don't worry about that,' she said. ‘It might have been better if we could have got married at the beginning of your leave, but … I didn't know how I felt then. Not till the race.'

‘Me, too.'

‘Then … I couldn't let you go back to France without giving myself to you … hateful phrase … I mean, I had to complete, in my body, what I was feeling in my mind – a locking with you, now and forever.'

‘Promise to write? Tell me everything. And if you get pregnant …' She put her hand on his mouth and said, ‘Don't think about it … And you write to me, and tell me what you are doing and how you feel … really, not just what you're supposed to feel.'

‘I'll try,' he said, ‘though the censors won't pass it. They want us all to be three cheers for the war, but we aren't … we're just bloody well going to stick it through.'

She began to search his body with her tongue, looking up once to whisper, ‘See how quickly we women learn?' She slipped her lips over his penis and slid them down and up, then off and up, to kiss his little nipples, and whisper, ‘It comes naturally … And there was a dirty-minded Italian princess at the finishing school I went to in Paris, who had a collection of postcards. We all thought they were terribly depraved … but we looked … and remembered …' She took his erect penis in her hand, and, slipping under him, guided him into her. She murmured, ‘Am I as good as the French harlots?'

‘I don't know,' Boy said. ‘You're the only woman I've ever made love to, and the only one I ever will.'

Cate read on with increasing gloom. The headlines and sub-heads were not encouraging – VENGEANCE ON TRAITORS … PRACTICAL DICTATORSHIP. Mr. Kerenski – or Kerensky, the newspaper didn't seem sure how to spell his name – would need all that ‘sheer force of character' hoped for, and more. For this news today was only the latest in a series of disastrous reports that had been pouring out for over a week, of mutiny, revolts, defeats, and intrigues. Russia was too big and too Russian to understand, and those Russian names didn't help. The news of the U-boat campaign was almost equally gloomy, and much closer to home. But it was a lovely summer
day, and he'd go and talk to John and Louise and try to cheer up them and the girls, over Boy's return to the front at the end of his leave. It had been wonderful for all of them to see him, even though he had been thin and pale and a little nervous but he had had a good time, played some cricket, drank a lot of beer … and not said a word about the trenches.

He picked up the letter arrived today from Johnny Merritt, to re-read it – for it was interesting, and illuminating:

We landed at (deleted by censor) a few days ago, after a smooth passage – but our ship was attacked by a German submarine, whose torpedo missed. We'd hardly got ourselves settled into our tents at (deleted by censor) when our battalion was ordered to (deleted by censor) for a 4th of July parade, and to show the French that the Americans had really arrived. There we paraded opposite a French battalion – their men were much smaller than ours, but they looked tough – and war hardened. There was a ceremony – I saw Marshal Joffre – then we marched from the Invalides to the cemetery where Lafayette is buried. (Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, in case you Englishmen aren't taught, was a French general who fought for us in our American Revolution against a country whose name escapes me; he is an American national hero.) I never heard the name of the cemetery but the march to it none of us will ever forget. Seen from above we must have looked like a long moving flower bed, entirely surrounded by other brighter flowers, also moving … women – they in turn flanked by darker, denser crowds of men and children. Our band was playing all the time, but no one heard a note. The only sound I heard was, ‘Vivent les Teddies' (that's what the French call us) shrieked in my ear by a dozen ladies at different times.

Then we reached the cemetery and formed up, and there were more speeches, mostly in French. My Navajo friend Chee kept muttering to me, what are they saying? I understood, when I could hear, but none of it was worth translating to him, until General Pershing spoke a few words by the tomb, then motioned a Quartermaster Corps colonel forward. I don't know who he was, or why the general wanted him to say something; but what he said was the most eloquent speech any of us had ever heard or are likely to. He said, ‘Lafayette, nous voilà.' That, I did translate for Chee …

Bob Stratton surveyed the vast filling shop with morose dissastisfaction. It had once been the main assembly shop of the Rowland Motor Car Company; now it was broken up into smaller rooms, and the overhead lineshafting had been replaced by lagged steam pipes … and everywhere there was the blue of women's mob caps, their hair piled up invisible inside them. As usual some of the mob caps were green, or grey, or brown. It was against regulations, but what could you do with women? You could see a man's cloth cap now and then, usually seen moving while the mob caps stayed in one place, for six of the ten men now employed in the factory, not counting himself, were supervisors or foremen.

He moved down the steps, his bowler hat set square and imposing on the top of his head, two pencils sticking up from the breast pocket of his blue suit, the watch chain and fob stretching across his belly, coat pockets bulging with a notebook, tape measure, rubber eraser, spectacle case with spectacles, handkerchief, some greased twine, pocket knife … Needn't be carrying that lot now that he was manager, instead of plant foreman; but he wasn't going to change his life's habits now.

‘Good morning, Miss Alice,' he said, lifting his bowler hat an inch off his head.

‘Good morning, Mr Stratton,' Alice Rowland said, without looking up from her work.

Bob strolled slowly on. It was right strange having Mr Harry's daughter working under him. Give him a funny feeling, like goose pimples, but she was a good worker, one of the best. Ought to be a section foreman, but she wouldn't accept it. He hadn't seen much of her face just now, but the last few months she'd been looking real pretty, and happy, even doing that job.

That job, he thought glumly – pour liquid amatol into shell cases, tuck in the exploder bag and nowadays the smoke bag too, and screw in the transit plug. Call that skill? He'd have a riot on his hands if he tried to make men do that sort of work. But women could do it … liked it … no skill, no need to think for yourself, just do the same thing over and over, carefully … be as careful at the end of an eight-hour shift as at the beginning.

‘Mr Stratton … May I have a word with you?'

He turned, sticking his thumbs into his lower waistcoat pockets. It was Miss Dawlish, the gawky forty-year-old spinster who was assistant foreman of the Reception Section. He said nothing. The fact that he had turned had shown that he was listening.

She said, ‘You remember that I spoke to you about some of the women wearing shoes with heels last month, Mr Stratton?'

He nodded. The whirr of trolley and barrow wheels, the tap of wooden hammers on the transit plugs, made her shout in a high squeak, though they were only four feet apart. She screeched, ‘I have warned them, two, three times since, but they ignore me. You will have to dismiss at least one of them, as an example.'

Bob looked at her with distaste. Upper class, sort of … father a bank manager, perhaps; what the working women called a miaow. Educated, of course … He said, ‘It's your job to see that orders are obeyed.' He turned again, hearing behind him her plaintive voice screech still higher, ‘But I have no authority to dismiss or fine them, Mr Stratton. I can not …'

The voice died away. Bob walked on. The place smelled foul, of amatol and women, instead of oil and hot steel … Woman there wearing a ring, two rings … that was forbidden. The foreman here should see to it … one there with short thick blonde curls sticking out from under her mob cap – forbidden, too, and it reminded him of what he'd seen as a child: looked like his mother's bush. Ugly. Terrifying … Dr Deerfield had sent him two letters, said he was not cured, and he knew he was not; must have patience; please come back and resume your treatment. Treatment, bah? Call that treatment, lying on a couch and talking dirty about what you'd seen and smelled and touched and done
when you were a kid, a baby, almost? In the second letter the doctor had even threatened to ‘report him' … Who to? Mrs Harry was dead, God rest her soul, and she was the only one who could have done anything. The only other person who knew why he was going to Dr Deerfield was his own Jane, and she'd never go to the police. Oh, and Mary Gorse, Willum's wife – she knew. And Violet, of course. But what could they do? If Mary opened her mouth, he'd sack Willum, and where else would
he
find a job these days? As for Violet … little slut, big breasts now, hair under her arms and down there, big arse, big cunt, big mouth – a woman.

The noon whistle blew, the women streamed down the aisles, took off overalls and caps in the changing rooms, picked up their lunch boxes, stepped over the CLEAN/DIRTY barrier and poured out into the factory's sunlit little yard. Bob followed. The few men usually gathered in one particular corner of the yard, if it was not raining; mostly he himself ate in his office, but today he would join them and they'd be like a little island of rock, among all this shifting sand and water of the women. Drat them, what a row they made, chattering shrill and high, sitting on the ground, on piles of planks, oil drums, leaning against the wall, eating sandwiches, drinking lemonade, gesticulating. The smell of perfume was overpowering … couldn't honestly say it really was strong, but that was the way it felt, to him.

Willum waved a large hand, ‘Come to eat with us, Mr Bob?'

Bob sat down next to him among the men and opened his box. ‘Surprised to see you turn up for work this morning, Willum,' he said. ‘With Woolley playing down at the County ground.'

‘Only against the Chatham Dockyard, Mr Bob,' Willum said disgustedly, ‘and Colin Blythe's not playing. 'Sides, I can't afford to lose a day's wages – saving up to buy little Henrietta new shoes, I am. She's a picture, she is, Mr Bob, wish you could see her.'

Bob grunted, as he opened his lunch box. Henrietta was his own daughter, by Violet Gorse, Willum's twelve-year-old, now thirteen. None of these other men knew, and nor did Willum. Another baby had appeared in the house, and he'd accepted it, never wondering where it had come from.

The women were blossoming in the sun, the sound of female chirp and chatter growing louder.

‘Can't hardly hear yerself think,' Charlie Whitworth, on his left, muttered. Charlie was thirty-eight and if a woman could be found to do his job, off he'd go to the trenches. Bob knew he was making sure that none of the women in his section were learning anything in that direction.

After a time Willum Gorse said, ‘Good news from France, eh, Mr Bob?'

Bob grunted, ‘What news?' He didn't recall seeing anything special in the morning paper.

‘About the big attack near Ypres,' Willum said, pronouncing it Eepray, as he'd learned from soldiers back on leave; although others called it Wipers.

Bob grunted again. A big attack didn't mean a big success, still less good news, just longer lists of dead soldiers in the paper. Any moment one of them might be Fred, and then heaven knew how he'd calm Jane, with her already hurting so much with the arthritis and the rheumatism.