Heart of War (96 page)

Tom stared a long time at Wharton. His lips tightened. At last he said, ‘ All right. I've got a job to finish that'll take me a few weeks, then I'll see the 2nd Sea Lord and ask for a command at sea. If he doesn't give it to me, I'll ask permission to reign my commission.'

‘Good man!' Wharton said. ‘And I'll have to warn Tommy to find some suitable protected “job” for you, while you're really working with Ronald. His confidential secretary, perhaps? Can't conscript an M.P.'s confidential secretary can they?'

Mary Gorse called, ‘I'm going out to the shops to get the late sweepings, Willum. Violet's coming with me, so listen for the baby…' Willum, sitting in the bedroom he shared with Mary and the two smallest children, did not answer – ‘Do you hear me?' she called again up the stairs.

‘I hear,' he said at last; and a moment later the front door banged, the latch dropped. The baby was quiet. The other kids were playing on the floor in the kitchen. Willum sat on the bed, staring at the oblong piece of newspaper in his hand. His stubby forefinger traced the words, which he spoke aloud under his breath as the finger moved, though he was often a word or two ahead, or behind the one the finger touched – for he could not read. A friend had shown him the piece a few days ago, and read it to him; and it had so horrified Willum that he had made the man read it again and again, until he knew it by heart.

The piece was cut out of the
Daily Telegraph
for Friday November 16, 1917. It read:

Willum's finger dropped. He couldn't remember any more. It hurt too much behind his eyes. Blythe dead! Four, five days now he'd been looking at this piece of paper, saying aloud what was written on it. They'd kill Frank Woolley next! How could anyone do it?

He had been grappling with the news all those days, nearly every hour, trying first to understand what had happened – no more Blythe, no more days in the sun at the County Ground, watching him bowl out Surrey, or Gloucestershire … seeing even Jack Hobbs tied in knots … what glee, what clapping and crowing where he stood on the boundary line!
At last, yesterday morning, he had understood; the Germans had murdered Colin Blythe, a Man of Kent, Kent's greatest bowler, and with Woolley, its greatest cricketer. Next he had tried to know what to do. He had thought of asking people about it. He had asked the new manager at the shell factory, reopened a few weeks earlier, saying, ‘They killed Blythe, Mr Earl. What should we do?'

The foreman had looked at him as though he were mad, and said, ‘Do about it, Willum? Why, join the Army, of course, and go and kill the buggers that done it, eh!'

That was it. He'd be a soldier, go to the war, find the German who'd fired the shell at Colin Blythe and then … He stopped, puzzled. Then what?

Well, the other soldiers would know. They'd tell him.

He looked at himself in the mirror, combed his hair, and went downstairs and out of the house, heedless of the baby asleep in its makeshift crib, and the children playing round the kitchen table.

An hour later he had been enlisted, and become Private William Gorse, Weald Light Infantry, with a long regimental number. An hour after that he was lined up with others at the Quartermaster's Stores at Minden Barracks, being issued with his kit.

A flat rate advance of ten shillings a week, Cate thought, why, a private in the infantry was now getting half a crown a day, or seventeen shillings and sixpence a week, so the Liverpool railwaymen were demanding an
increase
which would amount to over half a soldier's
total
pay. A railwayman was usually a skilled man, and some held in their hands considerable responsibility for the lives of the travelling public; but when you compared their sacrifice – even their essentialness – to those who were daily, hourly risking, and giving their lives … it was obvious that equality of sacrifice and universality of effort, were very far from being realities in England yet, in spite of the politicians' platitudes. Yet, what right did such as he, or Hoggin, or Lord Swanwick, or Richard, or the Governor, have to complain – though they all would? What had any of them suffered, when compared with the soldiers' sufferings?

He turned to another headline:

Perhaps not, Cate thought, but it so happens that the interests of the railway companies, in this situation, coincide
with the interests of the Government – and of the country, at war. He glanced down an adjoining column:

Idiocy, Cate thought – worse, treason.

The pub where Anne Stratton met Mr Chambers was the Lord Nelson, up the hill near the gaol. Mr Chambers chose it because he never went there with his wife or his male cronies. He was a portly man of medium height, with a tobacco-stained walrus moustache – a well-to-do plumber who wore a bowler hat almost as universally as Bob Stratton had, at least in part to hide his bald patch and the thin greying tonsure round it.

They were sitting in the saloon bar, with four other couples, each couple an island of its own, linked only by the men's trips to the little counter to refill their own or their women's glasses.

Anne was saying, ‘I had another letter from him yesterday. He says the big fighting's finished till spring now, because it's winter …'

‘The war will be over by spring,' Mr Chambers said confidently. ‘Then you'll have him back.'

He had learned never to say anything derogatory about Frank Stratton. It didn't take much effort to get Anne into bed but she still loved her husband, and you had to watch your step – listen when she talked about Frank, and say the right things, to make it clear that you, too, thought he was a wonderful fellow. Well, that he was, really. Frank was no chicken, and there he was, badly wounded with the infantry and no sooner mended than gone back to France with the R.F.C. He was the sort of man that was protecting the rest of them, so they could have a pint in a pub, raise a family, eat decently, and get a little slap and tickle on the side now and then.

She was drinking port and lemon and she felt a pervasive anxiety, which for weeks now even alcohol could not assuage or remove. Making love to Mr Protheroe or Mr Chambers did, in a way, and for a time – just being under them,
thrusting up, weeping, crying out – make her forget. Only to remember and know all the more strongly when they had gone. She was pregnant.

‘Have another,' Mr Chambers said softly.

‘Oh, I couldn't, Mr Chambers … well, a little one, then.' He got up and went to the bar.

She thought of Frank … the heavy fighting was over, he said. Well, the men of the R.F.C. who didn't fly – the mechanics and so on, like Frank – were never in much danger, except from German airmen dropping bombs or firing at them on the airfield sometimes. So Frank would come back. How could she think for a moment that it would be best if he didn't? She'd be having the baby in May. She had not seen Frank for months when she conceived … Mr Protheroe or Mr Chambers? Who knew? How could she tell him? Suppose she smothered the baby as soon as it was born, and dropped it in the Scarrow? Suppose …?

Mr Chambers returned with her glass. ‘Here you are, my dear … You are looking pretty tonight, pretty as a picture.'

‘Thank you, Mr Chambers,' she said. She drank deeply.

She couldn't kill a baby of hers! But what would Frank
do?
She began to sob silently and Mr Chambers put a protective arm round her. ‘There, there,' he said, ‘he'll come back safe and sound, you'll see.'

As he climbed into his car, Richard Rowland paused a moment to watch a Hedlington Lion start its take-off run. It was loaded to its full take-off weight, plus a thousand pounds, for it was powered by two American Jones & Gatewood A.4 radials of 500 h.p. each, giving it 250 h.p. more than it embodied with its normal Rolls Royce Eagle VIIIs. This was one of a series of tests the company was carrying out with the J. & G radials before installing them in the newfour-engined Buffalo. A crew of four were on board, comprising the chief test pilot, a second pilot, Betty Merritt, and the American mechanic from Jones & Gatewood who had come over with the first batch of engines.

The machine was going fast now, the engines roaring at full throttle. The tail gradually lifted. For a few seconds more the Lion ran on over the heavy turf, then, without changing the angle of the fuselage relative to the ground, it rose in the air, skimming, rising steadily.

Richard sighed with pleasure, climbed into his car, and said, ‘Home, please, Kathleen.' He settled back in his seat … Things were going well. The United States Army had ordered two hundred and fifty J.M.C. lorries – they called them trucks – for delivery to them in France, with the possibility of increasing the order to a thousand before the end of January … The prototype Buffalo was almost ready for its first tests … But danger was lurking beneath the surface: Morgan, the works foreman at J.M.C., had warned him that a number of men there were secretly joining the union – the Union of Skilled Engineers – Bert Gorse's union. Morgan said he could not speak for Hedlington Aircraft but it was probably true there, too. Richard doubted it, but it would be wise to get Joe Mattingley, the Hedlington plant foreman since Frank Stratton left, to keep his eyes and ears open. Assuming he found it true – then what? Ignore it till they came out in the open and took some action? Even then, the proper response would depend on what action the union did take. As Overfeld had pointed out, a strong well-led union could be a great stabilizing influence – they'd drive a hard bargain, but they were in a position to enforce their side of it. That was all right in theory, but in practice … they were bolsheviks down there on Stalford Street. If he hired a private detective it would not be hard to find out who were in fact secret members of the U.S.E., in both plants, and simply sack them. The rest, who were not members, would not take any action, especially if the sackings were accompanied by some benefit – a small increase in wages, some improvement in working conditions … but Morgan was dead against it. He was an American, but at the same time Welsh through and through – he understood the men; and he said, ‘Don't do it, boss. It might work now, but they'll remember, and as soon as the war-time codes are ended they'll turn on you and have you down with the knife at your throat … Wait. We might be able to persuade the U.S.E. to send someone down here to take over the local branch. Someone we can deal with at J.M.C. – and at Hedlington Aircraft – would help us.' Perhaps; but it wouldn't do any harm to hire the private detective as a first step. What use was made of the information obtained would have to be decided at the time. He'd go and see the Chief Constable tomorrow and get some advice on private detective agencies in the county … Must
get that done before the weekend, when he had to look at those three prep schools that had been recommended to him for Tim. He would be nine next September, and should certainly start in the Michaelmas term. After that Tim was down for Wellington, in the Lent term of 1921, as it was going to cost less money than Eton, Richard's own school; and though he was doing very well, now, the financial future looked black with a radical like Lloyd George at the helm … a great war leader of course, but not a friend of the capitalist, or the entrepreneur, and a dangerous demagogue … And Sally was to have a governess, but Susan had insisted that she be an American. ‘You're taking Tim,' she'd said, ‘and you'll take Dicky, too, I know, and make them both English gentlemen, but I'm going to have Sally. She's going to know that she's half American … that she doesn't
have
to believe in
all
English shibboleths … just the good ones.' Privately, Richard didn't believe that there was such a thing as an American governess; a sort of companion-teacher, perhaps, but there'd be no discipline … well, that was Susan's business.