Heart of War (28 page)

Poor Ireland! No wonder the song called it the ‘most distressful country,' and such it would remain if its leaders were to continue to be murderous fanatics and ignorant Roman Catholic bog priests. Definitely Casement should have been spared, to counter-balance the forces of superstition and ignorance.

Chill at heart, he wondered whether Margaret would meet her fate on an English gallows? Or whether by a burst of machine gun fire in some sordid Irish ambush or counter-ambush; and whether the finger on the trigger might not be their son's, or her brother's. Again, as so often now, he turned the pages of the newspaper, looking for something that was not tainted by the universal brutishness of the war. At last he found it, and read with spirits rising. Here was the old determination, the old true heart of England! Here was faith, and fellowship, high chivalry, and untarnished courage:

The coffin lay at the foot of the altar, covered in wreaths of autumn wildflowers and hothouse lilies. Harry Rowland bowed his head and let the slow tears flow. Through the blur in his mind he could see Rose in her coffin – though it was all of oak, fastened down – as she had been when they first met in the beauty of her youth.

I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:

Richard stood next to his father, his wife Susan on his other side. It was raining outside, and he could see the streams of water running down the stained glass in the rose east window of the church. Susan heard the service, but did not listen. She was almost certain now that she was pregnant. She'd wait for one more missed period, then she'd have to tell Richard; but how?

We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord
.

Susan's adopted children, Tim and Sally, stood next to her, then John and Louise Rowland, Louise with her handkerchief to her eyes. Louise had been a little afraid of her mother-in-law all her married life, and had found her hard to approach, but there had never been any wavering in her respect for her. Louise heard a rustling and snickering and glanced down, frowning, at Tim and Sally. Susan had heard
too, and was looking down. Tim was tearing corners out of the hymn book in front of him and rolling them in his mouth to make spitballs. Sally was trying to choke down her giggles. She caught Louise's stern eye and gagged. Tim swallowed his spitballs, turned red in the face and began to cough.

John Rowland heard the commotion the children were making, but his mind was far away. The battle in France, which had started early in July, was still raging. The casualties were beyond all reason. It had to be stopped, somehow, and every right-thinking man and woman must do all he or she could to see that it was. Louise would not agree. She, like many others, would think that he had turned pro-German, a traitor. So would his own son, Boy.

I will take heed to my ways: that I offend not in my tongue.
I will keep my mouth as it were with a bridle: while the ungodly is in my sight
.

Quentin and Fiona stood in the pew behind. Quentin was in uniform, and tomorrow would return to France, to his battalion. He had been ready to go four days ago – the day his mother died. The War Office had extended his leave at once – because his father was an M.P., he supposed. England made him feel uneasy. He wanted to get back, and the sooner the better, for the battle was still raging by the Somme. His wound was healed for, as Sholto had predicted, the bullet had gone through without damaging any vital organ.

Fiona, at her husband's side, stared at the coffin. Like Louise, she had been a little afraid of her mother-in-law, but had also loved her, for they were both Celts – and they had understood each other. And now her attempts to make her very English family understand how the Scots and Welsh and Irish felt were ended. The persuasion was now in the hands, and arms, of others – many with violence, not reason, in their hearts. She turned her head slowly, while listening to the curate assisting the canon read the Psalm. When she came into the church she had noticed an odd-looking man by the door, dressed in blue serge, wearing a bowler hat, a man with a heavy face and sharp, little eyes – a policeman in plain clothes, she could swear. Scotland Yard
would be thinking that perhaps Margaret would take the risk of coming over, in some sort of disguise, to pay her last respects.

The worst pain she suffered now was hearing Quentin talk of his new adjutant, Archie Campbell. It wrenched her bowels that Archie should prefer life in the trenches with Quentin, to what she had offered him. She was a woman and she had offered Archie her whole self – her body, her love, her life; instead he had gone into the mud with the soldiers, at Quentin's side. Quentin couldn't understand him, of course. ‘Drinks too much,' he'd said, ‘but his heart's in the right place. And he's learning … It isn't as though we were having ceremonial parades every week, or providing full dress guards of honour for the Viceroy … this isn't soldiering, in France … it's a dirty, filthy street fight.' He had not said a word to her about why she was still in the flat, and not gone to join her lover in London, as she had told him nearly a year ago that she would. And he had not once asked who the lover had been.

Lord, thou hast been our refuge: from one generation to another. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made: thou art God from everlasting, and world without end
.

In the second row pew the other side of the aisle, behind the domestic staff of Laburnum Lodge, Bill and Ruth Hoggin stood beside the Earl and Countess of Swanwick. Hoggin had not known Rose Rowland well, but this was an important funeral in Hedlington and everyone who was anyone was here; so he had to be; and, by hick and good management, he had wriggled in next to the Swanwicks. Lady S had all but ignored their existence when they entered the pew, Ruth bobbing and curtseying as though she was greeting Queen Mary, but that didn't matter. The earl had got himself onto the Joint Select Committee looking into the food business – in return for promising to vote for something Asquith wanted, probably; and – here Hoggin pretended to blow his nose to smother a chuckle – the Committee had invited him, Bill Hoggin, to act as one of their technical advisers. So Bill Hoggin, expert, would be advising them about the doings of Bill Hoggin, food
purveyor and manufacturer. And Horatio Bottomley, editor of the influential
John Bull
, was ready to eat out of his hand, for a consideration, of course. And the H.U.S.L. shops were coming along famously. It was enough to make a cat laugh.

Three young people stood together behind the elder Rowlands – Naomi, a driver of the Women's Volunteer Motor Drivers; Guy Rowland, a Lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps; and his sister Virginia, a worker in the Women's Legion. The embroidered wings on Guy's tunic were beginning to fade, but now the white-purple-white ribbon of the Military Cross shone below them, bright and new. He watched the rain running down the rose window and thought, hope it clears a bit before four, as he was due to fly a new Hedlington Leopard twin-engined bomber to France, leaving at that hour. They had sent his squadron a telegram about the death of his grandmother, but he had not expected to be able to attend the funeral – the Somme battle was still raging, and the R.F.C. stretched to its utmost to maintain air superiority over the battlefield; but Major Sugden had called him in last night, and said curtly – ‘General Trenchard heard about your grandmother. He wants you to attend the funeral. In uniform. And don't forget to mention to your grandfather that we cannot carry the fight to the enemy unless we have aircraft at least as good as his. And we now know what we're going to be up against – the D. 1.'

Guy thought, we do; or at least we can make an informed projection, on the basis of what Intelligence had learned from neutral sources, and what the few German pilot prisoners have hinted at, usually in their cups, while being wined and dined in the mess of the squadron that shot them down: a Fokker biplane, with two synchronized machine guns, a top speed of about 110 m.p.h. and a ceiling of near 17,000 feet – the Albatros D. 1. Jasta 16 would get them any moment now, then von-Rackow would be sending over more challenges for the Butcher to come out and fight. He bit his lip, tightening his jaw muscles. He'd got to find some way that the C.O. would allow, to identify himself so that they could have it out.

Naomi kept her eyes on the coffin as she listened to the curate's strong, young voice and rather exaggerated Oxford
accent reciting the Psalm. She would have to be on her guard with Colonel Rodney Venable. His long face was so intelligent, and so were the brown eyes under the thatch of his eyebrows … widely read, widely travelled, grandson of a viscount … had been in the 17th Lancers, used to play polo with Uncle Christopher's brother Oswald … but … but there was something in his look whenever she drove for him that made her flesh creep; and she could not say whether the frisson was of disgust, or expectation. She shook her head. He had not yet said or done anything improper, as between a colonel in the Intelligence section of the General Staff at the War Office and a female Volunteer. If he did, he must be told that she was in uniform to do her part in winning the war, not to be near men.

Guy's sister, Virginia, on the other side of him, furtively wiped her eyes, keeping her handkerchief rolled up in her hand. She had loved her grandmother, loved her father, did not understand her mother, adored her brother; and now, at seventeen and a half years of age, she was happy for the first time in her life. The girls in her detachment outside Aldershot were nearly all from the lower classes – mill girls, factory hands, girls escaped from service in big houses in the depths of the country. They were open, direct, crude, and she loved being with them. She still had much of her puppy fat, and had sworn, the day before she got the telegram about Granny, to start dieting. For Battery Sergeant Major Stanley Robinson, D.C.M., ex-Royal Field Artillery, had taken her out to the cinema, and said she was pretty; and, apologetically, that he would like to take her out again, if she wouldn't mind, him being only an O.R. and her father a colonel, and all. She, too, felt a frisson – Stanley Robinson, only one arm, his left gone … old, of course, must be twenty-seven, twenty-eight … but so kind to her.

Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive …

Bob and Jane Stratton stood behind the Swanwicks and Hoggins. Like many other women in the crowded church Jane dabbed frequently at her eyes. Rose Rowland had been
a great lady, and a source of strength to her and her family from the earliest days, when it had been a matter of having babies and finding doctors for colic, to these latter times, when there had come other, darker troubles. Her sciatica ached badly today, and now the knuckles of her right hand, long swollen with arthritis, began to stab with pain. She winced and tried to compose herself. She must not allow any physical pain to take her mind off the loss she had suffered with Mrs Harry's death. Without her, Bob would be in prison now, instead of doing his job, and, perhaps – she prayed – escaping from the sinful and unnatural lusts that had held him.

Bob kept his head bent. Mrs Harry had frightened him as, he knew, she had frightened many others. Still, without her, Mr Harry wouldn't have been the man he was and, though she never came to the factory, he and the shop foremen knew that her presence was there, in the influence she had on her husband. And she had saved him from gaol … at a price. Seeing Dr Deerfield five times a week was worse than having a wisdom tooth pulled every time, without gas. The things the doctor wanted him to remember, and say out loud, were downright filthy!

In the back of the church a baby set up a long wail, and Bob winced. Why did Mary Gorse have to bring the child to church? It must be about two months old, a girl, and they'd christened it Henrietta. Well, if it had to be brought, better Mary bring it than Violet. Having the baby had turned her into a real woman. Mary's next girl, Betty, was ten now. She'd be smooth and hairless and thin. He felt an erection growing in his trousers and prayed, No, no, God help me, no!

And so it is written, the first Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit, that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural: and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth; the second man is the Lord from heaven
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