Heart of War (31 page)

It would be good to talk to Campbell again. That fellow had led an interesting life. He was a bit of a radical in some
ways, but you could learn a lot, listening to him … he could draw marvellously, too. His sketches of the men – in the line, on fatigue duty, limping back wounded, wiring at dusk – they really
were
the men …

‘A new form of a heavy armoured car,' Cate thought. That sounded interesting. From everything he had heard and
read, the problem in attack was the number of bullets that could be fired by machine guns these days. The more men you massed to attack, in the hope of overwhelming the enemy by sheer weight of numbers, the more men you put up as targets for their machine guns. Each gun fired 600 rounds a minute, Quentin had told him; and their range was 2,000 yards, or over a mile. Suppose you had forty such guns in a mile of front – and the Germans seemed to have at least that number, in places – why, they could fire 24,000 rounds a
minute
. In that minute the attacking soldiers could move forward perhaps fifty yards, weighted down as they were with so much equipment, tools and arms … If the German trenches were two hundred yards away they'd have to face 96,000 bullets …So, if it were possible to mass 96,000 men on a single mile of front … you'd lose them all in two minutes. These new cars, armoured to protect the men inside from bullets, could presumably advance over that two hundred yards in half a minute … but he had read a great deal about mud, even in the chalk of the Somme area. The heavy cars would get their wheels stuck in the mud, and the heavier they were, the thicker their armour, the more guns they carried, the deeper they'd sink in …

Well, better brains than his must have been thinking of answers to these problems for months, and one of Johnny Merritt's aeroplanes from Hedlington was buzzing overhead like a giant bumblebee, and a hen had escaped from the chicken run to lay an egg in the hedge beyond the lawn, a fact which she was now proudly cackling to the world. He turned the pages – ah, the Page for Women, which the
Telegraph
published every Saturday. One had to get away from the war sometimes or one would go mad … six drawings of autumnal coats and dresses … the skirts were about ten or twelve inches off the ground, he noticed … a long article about ‘Equal pay for equal work – Is this pure justice?' The writer seemed to conclude it wasn't … Butter and eggs going up in price … Fish dear all week, oysters very reasonable … hares not likely to be below 4s to 4s 6d … after harvest, ducks at their best, but a high price compared to normal times must be paid … Some recipes – Novelty suet pudding; Short paste or bread dough pudding; Yorkshire pudding with fruit; a potato cake; Stale Bread Sweet; Bread and apple pudding; Nursery pudding – ah,
was this what Nanny used to force on him, as a boy, sometimes? … ‘Dredge slices of stale bread with sugar and toast on both sides. Then place the slices in a dish, and cover with stewed fruit of any kind or a mixture of cooked fruit.' Sounded like it, indeed … the only sweet he'd hated worse than trifle, and …

He heard Garrod come in and said, without looking up, ‘Some more coffee, please, Garrod … and tell Mrs Abell the kedgeree is excellent.'

‘Yes, sir.' She brought the pot to him and poured coffee. ‘Sir …' Her voice was low but firm. He looked up, quailing. He knew that expression. No escape, not for a minute.

‘Who is it?'

‘The Englands, sir. Young Harry's been killed. A week ago … They got the telegram this morning, and a letter from Colonel Quentin half an hour later. Killed instantly by machine-gun fire near High Wood, the colonel said. He said he died doing his duty as a brave man and a good soldier and

‘… all ranks of the battalion join Mr and Mrs England in their bereavement,' Cate finished. ‘I'll go down right away. He was nineteen …'

Stella Merritt sat in the cottage's small drawing room, staring at the lawn, and, beyond the hedge, the roofs of Beighton below. A bottle of Bristol Milk sherry was on the table at her side, and a tulip glass, half empty, beside the bottle. From the other reception room across the entrance hall she heard Laura the maid humming as she flapped a duster over the furniture in there. Mummy would have been on her like a ton of bricks for the way she cleaned – or didn't. It was the same with Mrs Hackler, the cook. She wasn't a good cook, and Mummy would have sacked her long since … but then who'd cook for her, and for Johnny when he came home? Except that so often he didn't come home till after ten o'clock. She rolled the sweet wine round her mouth, and swallowed. That made her feel better, the warm glow spreading from her throat to her chest, her stomach and eventually to the tips of her toes.

She felt restless, dissatisfied, unhappy. She was betraying Johnny with Charles Deerfield, which was wrong. She should stop that, but … Johnny didn't make love to her very often, considering. Captain Irwin had done it three times in the one night in that pub, and he was thirty-six then. Charles always did it twice, after lunch, when they met. Johnny was only twenty-four but he came home so tired, and got up so early to study papers and designs that often she couldn't tempt him, morning or evening …

She jumped up, poured out a full glass of sherry and downed it in one gulp, then went to the corner, picked up the telephone, wound the handle, and called a number in Hedlington. The voice at the far end said, ‘Dr Deerfield.'

‘Charles? I must see you. Right away!'

A pause: then – ‘Come to my office at eleven-thirty.'

‘All right.'

She went to the door and called, ‘Mrs Hackler, I have to go into Hedlington.'

Mrs Hackler came out of the kitchen drying her hands on her apron – ‘What shall I do with the partridge, then?'

‘Keep it for dinner, I'll be back for tea.'

Mrs Hackler retired sulkily to the kitchen. Stella put on hat, veil, gloves, and long, warm winter driving coat and went out to the little shed they had had built to house their car, a Rowland Sapphire. It was there in the shed because today she had driven Johnny to Walstone station for a day's work in London, and was to meet him at seven in the evening – unless work delayed him till the last train, or overnight.

Young Sam, the gardener – gardener's boy, he would have been before the war – was there raking leaves and piling them on the bonfire in the corner of the little garden. He worshipped Stella, the Sapphire only a degree less, and at sixteen was strong and growing fast into manhood.

She called, ‘Sam!' He looked up, ‘Yes, m'm?' She smiled – ‘Would you start the car for me, please?'

‘'Course, m'm.' He dropped the rake and came over, striding fast. The doors of the shed were already open and she climbed up into the driver's seat. When the car was started she said, ‘Thank you, Sam,' and drove out, and away.

Dr Deerfield's white-painted door bore a brass plate, reading
Dr Charles S. Deerfield, M.D
. and, below that,
Alienist
. It was closed but not locked, and she let herself in. He was working at his desk in the corner behind the couch where, he had told her, his patients lay, while he tried to find the roots of their problems; or rather, as he had often explained, tried to get them to identify those roots for themselves.

He stood up and came toward her with arms outstretched. She held him off, bending her back – ‘Charles, we've got to end this.'

He paused then, eyeing her quizzically – ‘You've said that before.'

‘I know … but I mean it … it doesn't make me happy, the way it used to. Nothing does.'

Gently he lifted her veil, saying, ‘Not even the sherry?'

She shook her head, ‘No …' It was no use. She just would
not come here again. She closed her eyes. But this time, this last time … Her lips parted softly as his pressed down on hers, and she felt his body firm against her, hardening more at the groin, the male staff pressing against the material of her skirt, ready to pierce her. She groaned involuntarily, and tried to say something; but his mouth was insistent, and she was leaning back in his arms, stumbling. The edge of the couch was behind her knees and she half fell, half lay back on it. She opened her eyes … this was the moment she liked to see for herself … him bending over, pulling up her skirt till it was bunched round her waist, taking off her drawers, pulling them down. She raised her buttocks, breathing fast …

Five minutes later he rose, wiped his genitals with his handkerchief and sat down beside her, stroking her hair – ‘That was good, yes?' She nodded. His hand wandered to her pubis and stroked the tight blonde curls there – ‘So, nothing works any more?'

She said wearily, ‘No. And I won't come here again, Charles.' She got up, pulled on her drawers and let her skirt fall. ‘That was the last time.' Her head swam momentarily and she stumbled and almost fell. Charles said, ‘Ah, you had a few little drinks before you came?'

She said, ‘Yes … Why did I let you seduce me?'

He was about to answer flippantly when he paused, and considered, and said slowly, ‘Because I represented danger. Which I no longer do. I have become like Johnny to you … safe, boring. But I think I have something for you that will be more exciting than sherry ever was … more exciting even than making love, the first time.'

She listened, eager in spite of herself. What on earth could he mean?

He said, ‘Next time Johnny goes away for the day, warn me and come here early.'

But what … ?'

‘Release from all your worries – not as sure as death, but much more pleasant … a trip to the Moon. You'll love it … Heroin.'

It was hard work. The sweat formed steadily under Alice's mob cap and dripped into her eyes and down her cheeks. Mustn't think of it as sweat, she told herself, half smiling – horses sweat, gentlemen perspire, ladies merely glow. But
this wasn't ladies' work, standing at a long table filling 18-pounder shells with amatol from buckets. It was a messy business and all the time cleaners were swabbing the cement floor to lay the dust that formed when spilled amatol – trinitrotoluene stabilized with ammonium nitrate – dried off back to its natural powdered state. On the table at which she and a score of other women worked were boxes of transit plugs, wooden hammers, and little cotton exploder bags already filled with powdered TNT. As she filled each projectile with its high explosive amatol, Alice, and every other woman working at that table, tucked in its exploder bag and screwed in its transit plug, which would be replaced at the actual firing site by the proper nose fuse … Barrows and trolleys, rubber-wheeled, passed, loaded with completed shells and pulled by sweating men. Outside the plant doors armoured lorries waited to take the shells to ammunition trains, loading at Hedlington railway goods yard, which would take them to Ordnance Depots scattered round the south of England, or direct to the Channel ports, for loading in ships and onward transit to the Western Front, where they would be destroyed … and destroy.

All the women working in the plant had to wear rubber-soled shoes; no jewellery was allowed, of any kind, not even a ring or one of the new lady's wristwatches; no other metal object could be worn or carried. When the women reached the plant for work they went first to a dressing room where they took off their outer clothing and put on, instead, over their underwear, khaki-trousered overalls, buttoning to the neck, a blue mob cap entirely containing their hair, and thin rubber gloves. There was only one naked light in the plant – in the canteen, where the workers could buy one cigarette at a time, to be smoked in the canteen itself. The amatol was melted purely by steam brought in by pipes to the various loading chambers through hundreds of feet of lagged piping from the boiler room, in a separate building. The loading chambers had strong walls and flimsy roofs, so that any blast would be funnelled upward, not outward.

Alice had only been working a week, but still, toward the end of each day she not only felt tired, but had the beginnings of a headache. It was so today, and she found herself wondering how long to six o'clock and the end of her shift. There was no clock in any of the loading chambers, to
give the workers no temptation to look up from their tasks, and so perhaps allow a shell case to go unfilled. Around her she heard the muttered gossiping of the women: that was forbidden, since there was supposed to be no talking except such as was called for by the work. But Bob Stratton didn't seem to care, so the various shop foremen and forewomen didn't enforce the rule, either … ‘proper scragger that Agnes Chittle is' … ‘So I told her she wasn't
my
forewoman, strite I did, the old miaow!' … ‘Where's Bessie today? 'Aven't seen 'er since the dinner whistle. Is she sick?' – ‘Nah, aht on the pigtrot, if yer arsk me.'