Heart of War (15 page)

She said, ‘It's what was to be expected … even to the British doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. These executions will turn the people to us … Things would have been different if Sir. Roger Casement had not been caught … if we'd had men to unload the
Aud
when it arrived in Tralee, as we were supposed to … if MacNeill hadn't cancelled the Sunday rising … if they'd done what I wanted them to do – attack everywhere, in small groups, instead of barricading themselves into buildings, in large groups.'

‘They're saying there were only two thousand British soldiers in Dublin over Easter.'

‘It's probably true … The executions are sad, but what we three saw, you and I and Bridget, in that house, was worse.'

The girl said nothing, hanging her head. The house they had taken Margaret to, after working through the British cordon, stood on the route by which the prisoners had been taken to gaol after the formal surrender of Saturday morning, the 29th of April. Half hidden by curtains, from a little room on the upper floor of the brick house, one in a poor row, they had watched the Volunteers being marched down the street, Plunkett dragging one foot after the other, while the crowd gathered ever thicker, and the filth flew ever faster – tomatoes, eggs, potatoes, dirty water, mud from the gutter, spit spewed in their faces – the air full of furious screams, ‘Filthy, murthering shiteheads! Scum, now ye'll get what ye deserve! … Ye'll all be hanged! … hanged! … hanged!' Only the escort of British soliders prevented the Volunteers from being lynched.

The girls beside her, without her sad experience of age, had broken down completely, wailing and crying uncontrollable tears, turning away, covering their ears with their hands. But Margaret, in grim agony, had watched and listened until the last of the procession had passed.

Now, looking out over the gleaming Shannon, she said quietly, ‘So in the end, only one of all those men in the Post Office was killed in action – the O'Rahilly – and he not there, but outside trying to fight up the street.'

The girl said, ‘But Lady, would you be wanting
more
of the poor boys dead?'

Margaret said with force, ‘Next time, it won't be an affair of a week, with flags flying, but of two, three years, with secret signs, private signals, hidden weapons, burning cottages, men found dead at cross roads and no one knowing how … War, not defiance.'

Cate read on gloomily. A British force had suffered a stunning setback in a part of the world where ‘face' was so important – and at the hands of the Turks, whom everyone had so heartily sneered at, when they came into the war on Germany's side. There would be repercussions in Egypt, Afghanistan, Persia perhaps – even in India, where a large Muslim population had been unhappy from the start that the Commander of the Faithful, the Turkish Khalifa, was on the other side. Such Muslim leaders as the Grand Sherif of Mecca and the Aga Khan had done their best to support the Allies by belittling the position of the Khalifa as the spiritual leader of all Muslims, in modern times; but the danger was always there.

This disaster in Mesopotamia, coming on top of the failure at the Dardanelles – also at the hands of the despised Turks – made one appreciate more fully that the war was not confined to France and Russia. The main battlegrounds were indeed along the Russo-German border, where Poland used to exist, and the Franco-German border; and it
seemed
obvious that that must be so. Such huge forces were engaged there, such furious conflicts being fought there – look at the struggle for Verdun, which was bidding fair to become the most important battle of the war so far! Yet, was it really so, that the war had to be won on these two borders? Was it inevitable? Did some law of nature demand that the combatants must grapple there, two crazed elephants facing each other in a narrow pit? Was there no way round? What did sea power mean, in the end – beyond the ability to import food and munitions for survival – if it did not give the Allies the power to choose their point of attack … and vary it, at will?

He put down the paper, longing unreasonably for movement … the war would seem different if one could read of, and imagine, brigades of cavalry sweeping across great plains … dusty columns of infantry marching day and night to strike the enemy in flank … horsed artillery galloping down long green valleys. It had been like that, for a few weeks in 1914, and he, like everyone else, had felt the excitement of war … the maps, the flags, the pictures of the guns rolling through shattered villages. Not now. Now, only the casualty lists.

Betty Merrit gazed unseeing through the window at the scattered huts. Their corrugated-iron roofs, camouflage-painted, half blocked her view of the big hangars by the control shed and its little raised platform. Scents of spring flowers wafted in through the window, which was open, and the distant roar of an aircraft engine running at half throttle on a test bench was almost drowned by the nearer chortling of two blackbirds; but Betty was not aware of any of this. She had been working as Ginger Keble-Palmer's assistant in the design office of Hedlington Aircraft for nearly three months now. At first she had found the work very difficult, and the formulae she had to use, all new to her, almost impossible to understand; yet she had felt that she was standing here not only as herself, but as a representative of all educated women; and, with Ginger's patient guidance, gradually, it had become less difficult.

Her left hand rested on the squared drawing paper, pinned down on the sloping draughtsman's table. Her slide rule lay on the edge of the paper … the wings could be longer, narrower, giving a higher aspect ratio and better range and handling, while keeping the same wing loading. But that would give wing stress problems, and nobody really knew enough about the design of wing main spars … supposing she put the aspect ratio up by 15 percent, that would increase the span by … she picked up the slide rule and began calculating, jotting the figures down on the edge of the paper. Now a new spar length of 16 feet 7 inches from root to tip would produce new stresses and bending moments, requiring a newly calculated cross-section throughout its length. It was going to be a long job; all design was compromise … she decided to work it out roughly, and check the stresses with Ginger later.

Across the room, behind her, she heard Ginger exclaim, ‘Vinton's cut off one engine … or it's died on him.' He raised his voice and called, ‘Betty, listen! … Come on!' They ran out of the hut together. The aircraft, one of the first two test models of the Hedlington Leopard, was making a sweeping turn beyond the downward east end of the field. It was about a mile away and five or six hundred feet up. It came on lurching as the idle port propeller imparted unexpected yaw at the slower landing speed … landed heavily on three points, bounced ten feet in the air, landed again and rolled to a stop nearly opposite them.

Ground crews ran out with ladders to help the pilot and his passenger down. Vinton, the company's test pilot, threw back his goggles, and said, ‘That's what they call a series of landings, I believe … Port engine was overheating, Ginger. Needle off the clock.'

The passenger was Johnny Merritt, now taking off his helmet and goggles. ‘She was doing fine until that engine went,' he said, ‘but a bit sluggish on the controls.'

Betty said, ‘I'm working on something that should improve that … increase the aspect ratio, lengthen the wings a bit. I think she'd be much handier.'

Ginger said, ‘I didn't know you were on that. I've been looking for light materials for the airframe, and asking Rolls Royce either to give the Eagle II an extra thirty or forty horsepower … for the same weight, by higher compression perhaps … or hurry up with the Eagle III.'

A Rowland Sapphire drove up to them and Richard Rowland stepped out, preceded by his chauffeur, a young woman in immaculate green uniform, with breeches, gaiters, jacket and a man's peaked cap with a patent leather brim. ‘Thank you, Kathleen,' Richard said, ‘I won't be long.'

Johnny said, ‘I'll see if Frank has the deputation ready.'

‘He'd better,' Richard said grimly, ‘I have to go to Farnborough right after the meeting, to talk to them about planning for the Lion … Is Frank Stratton all right?'

Johnny hesitated, ‘He's fit enough, Richard … better than I would have believed possible, knowing how badly he was wounded … and he's a wonderful floor man – knows everything, and what he doesn't, he picks up. But he's, well, listless, as though his heart isn't in it. But he does his job.'

Richard nodded, noting with approval that Johnny had at
last taken to calling him Richard instead of Mr Rowland. He led into the main hangar, where the wings of a Leopard, nearly complete, spread from wall to wall; another, its wings on, but the fuselage only half completed, the engines not mounted, stood behind it, staggered diagonally, and a third, no more than a skeleton, behind that. In one corner, by the table and chair which were the factory foreman's floor office, three men waited, while Frank Stratton sat in the chair.

He got up as Richard and Johnny approached, and Richard took his place. He looked up, ‘Who's the leader of the deputation?'

‘I am,' a man in a cloth cap said. ‘Griffin, frame shop … We got to have more money, Mr Richard. We told Mr Johnny two months ago.'

‘And he told me. The company couldn't afford it.'

‘Prices is going up,' the man said. ‘Why, bread costs …'

‘I know,' Richard cut in – ‘Our company … which as you know owns the J.M.C. as well as this, already pays more than any other employer in Hedlington. And our production is slow. We can't pay more money until we get increased production.'

Griffin said, ‘That ain't all our fault, Mr Richard. 'Course, you can't expect the sort of men you get now, and women, to work as well and as fast as men that's been on machines twenty years … but the machines ain't what they ought to be, either. For one thing, in my work, the steam rooms for shaping the wood ain't hot enough.'

‘We
keep running out of lacquer, when the wings are ready for doping,' another man said.

Frank said, ‘It doesn't come on time from the manufacturer, Mr Richard.'

Richard frowned, then turned to Frank – ‘We've got to increase production, if we hope to win the war … and if you men hope to get a raise … Frank, look into these complaints, and any others the men bring up – any man. Bring Mr Johnny here a list of them. Then get together with the shop foremen and see what can be done to make the work go faster. When you're ready, tell us, and we'll have another meeting with you men – and I want a representative of the women here, too. Then, if you'll accept a plan to increase production we'll agree to raise wages. Not before. Now, I
have to go … to try to keep the jobs you have now.'

He got up and, nodding to the others, walked swiftly out.

Rachel Cowan looked at the huge pile of laundry stacked on Mary Gorse's kitchen floor, and at Mary herself, bent over a zinc tub set on the table, up to her elbows in soapsuds. This was what ‘we' must rescue women from, she thought, remembering the exact tone of Naomi Rowland's indignant voice as they had walked on the lawns of Girton in the spring sunshine, the scent of flowers about them, the distant bells of Cambridge chiming for church: women must be free to realize their potential, women must be educated much as men, women must, women shall, women are … And here was Mary Gorse, half-witted Willum's wife, taking in washing to feed the too-many kids … particularly the eldest, pregnant but barely twelve … and herself, living with Willum's half-brother Bert … why? Because she loved him? Because they were both Socialists? Or because, she, as a woman, couldn't face living without a man? And Naomi was in uniform, doing her bit for this bloody capitalists' war … but they had not seen each other for months and then only briefly. The bells of Cambridge seemed as far away as her childhood, the ugly brilliant, little daughter of Jacob Cohen, peddler, of Whitechapel.

Sweat filled the creases on Mary's worn, calm face. Sheets and pillow cases occupied every inch of the line strung crisscross over the tiny back yard. How could she look so placid, Rachel thought angrily, when she's being so exploited? She said, ‘I've moved in with Bert, Mary.'

Mary did not raise her head from her work. ‘So I heard.'