Heart of War (55 page)

Rachel thought, a hundred and forty shillings for us then, with our seventy members – seven pounds. Couldn't get much done with that.

Russell was speaking again – ‘Make collections at your meetings. Our people in the North have been surprised to find how much is slipped to them, even when a crowd has apparently been hostile.' He paused – ‘That's all, comrades.'

Rachel began to struggle to her feet. A hand reached down to help her and she looked up into the eyes of a delegate from Sussex called Wilfred Bentley. He was tall and thin, and Russell had mentioned that he had been gassed earlier in the
war. She said, ‘I'm so sorry. I hope it doesn't hurt too much your lung.'

He laughed – ‘Russell shouldn't have mentioned that.'

She said, ‘It must have been awful for someone like you… I don't mean just the gassing, but everything – the violence, the killing, the brutishness, men acting like animals – worse the debasement of human character.'

He said earnestly, ‘The war is a debasement, Miss Cowan, but the men have not been debased. It's a privilege to have served out there, with them.'

She was puzzled, and was making ready to ask him a question when Bert, at her side, said, ‘Come on. We got a bus and a train to catch, and the 'ell of a lot to do when we get 'ome.'

Bentley wandered off, a hand raised in goodbye.

She said, to Bert, ‘That was rude of you, to interrupt. I was talking to Mr Bentley.'

Bert said, ‘We got to go. Are you coming with us, Mr Rowland?'

John Rowland, standing close by, started. He'd been miles away in his mind, Rachel thought. ‘Thank you, no,' he said. ‘I'm staying in town overnight. My daughter Naomi has obtained a weekend's leave and I am taking her to the theatre and giving her a few good meals.'

‘Give her my – regards,' Rachel said, feeling awkward. She would have said ‘love' instead of ‘regards,' a year ago. Perhaps love was what she still felt for Naomi … but much water had flowed under the bridges since those Girton days.

John Rowland walked beside the Serpentine with his daughter, Naomi, in a cold east wind that blew flurries of snow across the surface of the water and eddied the dead leaves under the chestnut trees. His collar was turned up, and his scarf wrapped as high round his neck as he could get it, but the wind bit at his exposed ears and threatened to blow the bowler hat off his head, even the rolled umbrella out of his gloved hands. Naomi, beside him, walked as tall as he, her back straighter in the long khaki greatcoat, under it the swinging khaki skirt, and the black boots of her Corps, on her windblown hair the wide-brimmed felt hat, its badge, and a long hatpin stuck through to keep it on her head. She too was wearing gloves, but no scarf; that was not regulation.

John was talking about farming – ‘It never was easy, Naomi, now it's really difficult. And it's becoming too expensive. I think Shearer's very foolish to have insisted on buying his farm from your Uncle Christopher. One bad crop and he'll lose it to the banks. Before, Christopher stood between him and that kind of disaster.'

‘I thought Uncle Christopher had to raise some money somehow, to meet taxes and expenses.'

John said, ‘He did, but he could have sold some of his securities and that was what he really wanted to do, but Shearer kept pressing him to sell him the farm.'

Naomi said, ‘Tenant farming like that won't last long, after the war, Daddy. The relation that there used to be between the landowner and the tenants depended on things that are going, being blown up, over there in France … What happened at your meeting last night?'

John said, ‘It's been decided to start a national campaign of non-cooperation … passive resistance, is what I think they are going to call it officially.'

Naomi said after a time, ‘Violence will be forced on you, I'm afraid, Daddy. And I don't think you will achieve anything. There aren't enough people who think as you do to affect the war … not even Mummy agrees with you.' She laid a hand on her father's arm – ‘That's true, isn't it?'

John said, heavily, ‘Yes … Your mother can not see how good – how
Christian
– our cause is. She can only see that Boy must get all that he needs to fight the Germans. I – we – can only see that as long as the shells and guns and barbed wire and men – are provided, the war will continue. And without a cause.'

His daughter said, ‘I know a colonel in the War Office … drive him about quite a bit … He talks to me on the long trips. He says that the Germans are like sheep – sheep with wolves' teeth – and that unless they are crushed now, they will come back again at us in ten or twenty years' time. And next time they'll make sure that we don't have France or Russia as allies … or America.'

‘He may be right,' John said, ‘but we can't afford to think of what might happen in the future if we are destroying ourselves now – to such an extent that there may
be
no future for us.'

‘Colonel Venable doesn't think it's as bad as that. We are
hurting them as much as they're hurting us … he thinks Lloyd George will want to just stay on the defensive in France, but make a big attack from Italy, which would end the war.'

‘If I could believe it … ‘John said. He thought, but even if I did believe it, I shouldn't change my course; I believe in a negotiated peace so what am I doing, hoping surreptitiously for a knockout victory?

‘Rodney thinks it might be a good idea, but …'

‘Rodney? Who is he?'

‘Oh, Colonel Venable. He makes me call him Rodney when we don't have any other passengers in the car. It's quite against regulations, but he insists … He thinks that the other allies won't hear of it, especially France.'

The mallards were sheltering in little groups under the bank, and under the overhanging boughs of the willows. Dogs and children gambolled on the path, and a few stern Nannies braved the wind and the snow, wheeling young ladies and gentlemen westward toward the Albert Memorial, the Round Pond, and nursery lunch in S.W.7. John felt a momentary pang – his daughter, a tall-standing English rose, this grass, these trees, the wall of Buckingham Palace farther along there, the Iron Duke's mansion at the corner, all these men, women, and children in the Park – all English – even the dogs. Wasn't all this worth fighting for, to the end?

But all this, precisely, was what would not exist, or have no meaning, if the fabric which held it and shaped it was destroyed.

‘What does Boy think?' Naomi asked him. ‘I suppose he knows what you're doing?'

John said, ‘He says he understands, but he has to fight until the Germans are beaten. Couldn't say anything else, poor fellow, could he? But I think… I feel… that he hates it over there …'

‘I'm sure he does,' Naomi said, ‘they all do, except a few lunatics, but I don't think he'll give up.'

John said, ‘Nearly time for lunch, and then a matinee, eh?' He turned and headed across the grass toward the back of the Hyde Park Hotel, where they were staying. Naomi said hurriedly, ‘I won't be able to go to the theatre this afternoon, Daddy, I forgot to tell you last night, when you picked me up … I have to go to the barracks at two for an urgent job
they're very short-handed … I should be free again by six.'

‘Then we can go to an evening show eh?' John said. His daughter did not answer, her head and face hidden by the greatcoat's high collar, as the wind whistled past their ears, tugged at their hats and gloves, and bit through their socks and boots into their feet.

Rachel Cowan, pulling her hat well down on her head and thrusting five big hatpins though it, stared into the cracked mirror over the rickety washstand. She was getting to look like a rat – wary, mouth set, teeth bared: beware, keep clear, I bite. Well, that's what the hatpins were for – to stick into the police if they tried to push her about … or if the usual crowd of jeering soldiers, sailors, labourers, and women of all sorts, who attended their peace rallies, got out of hand, and the police gave up even their usual feeble pretence of protecting the peace group.

Bert Gorse was lying on the bed beside her, fully dressed, reading a newspaper. He glanced up. She said, ‘Nearly time to go, Bert.'

Movement on the pavement outside the front door below caught her eye and she said, ‘Someone's coming! It's a soldier …' She peered down – ‘Can't see his face …'

Bert got up, went downstairs and jerked open the door – ‘'Oo the'ell…? Why, it's Fletcher. Come on in.'

Rachel followed more slowly down the short narrow stairs. The house smelled of cabbage, and dust lay thick everywhere. She was a bad housekeeper; but when did she have the time? There were more important things in life for women to do than sweep and mop and brush and dust.

Fletcher said, ‘Thought I'd come to say goodbye, Bert … Hullo, Rachel.'

He looked beautiful, she thought, even in that horrible khaki. He somehow made the stiffness of the rolled puttees, gleaming black boots, and green-blancoed web belt look like the clothing of a forest hunter, a runner over the American plains.

‘They sending you to France?' Bert asked.

Fletcher nodded – ‘Monday. Don't know which battalion yet.'

‘You'd do better to shoot your trigger finger off,' Bert said, ‘or rob a bank and knock a rozzer on the head, then you'd
spend the rest of the war in gaol instead of …'

‘I got to go,' Fletcher said.

‘'Oo says you
got
to go?' Bert said. ‘Run away, like you did before. Only this time don't come back.'

‘
I
got to go,' Fletcher said, ‘and if you write, don't forget I'm Private Fletcher Whitman … Well, cheerio.'

‘Where are you going now?'

‘Out,' Fletcher said, ‘with a young lady.'

Bert said sarcastically, ‘You don't say? I thought it would be with a bleeding orangutan.'

‘Miss Merritt?' Rachel inquired. She watched Fletcher closely for any signs of gloating, the unpleasant male boastful look that says ‘I've got her, I can do what I like with her, she's in the bag.'

Fletcher said, ‘Yes. We're going to the seaside, in her car.'

‘In February?' Bert cried. ‘You're mad, Fletcher.'

‘Coming back this evening?' Rachel asked.

‘I don't have to,' Fletcher said. ‘I've forty-eight hours leave. Depends on Betty, what she wants. I love her.'

‘Good bloody Christ,' Bert murmured. ‘The Romeo of Walstone's fallen at last. I don't believe it!'

They walked slowly through the twilight, Rachel trying to keep her head up, her back straight, to look every passer-by in the eyes; but she was tired, so tired. Bert, limping beside her, muttered, ‘My big toe that isn't there hurts worse every day.'

‘You ought to see a doctor,' she said listlessly.

The peace rally had gone off as well as the others, and as badly. The same crowd had attended – a third of them members of the Fellowship, to clap and cheer, to take the pamphlets and pass through the crowd handing them out … the other two thirds the jeerers, with just a scattering of the people the Fellowship really wanted, the worried, the doubters, the appalled. Rachel had recognized some familiar faces – four or five men and as many women, whose main joy in life, and the outlet of all their fury, frustration and fear, was to attend these Hedlington rallies, scream abuse at Rachel, Bert, or other speakers, throw rotten fruit and vegetables, shove and jostle the volunteers, snatch pamphlets from them and trample them in the mud.

They reached the front door and saw a light on inside, shining through the fanlight. ‘Someone's in there,' Bert said
sharply. He hurried forward. ‘It's unlocked!' He jerked the door open and stopped suddenly. A police constable was facing him.

‘Are you Mr Albert Gorse?'

‘What of it?' Bert answered belligerently.

‘And you are Miss Rachel Cowan?'

‘Yes.'

The policeman, who wore the striped sleeve band of a constable on duty, felt in his tunic pocket and produced a sheet of paper. ‘This is our warrant to search this house. We have reason to believe it is being used to print seditious material.'

Another constable came out of the door of the front parlour and said, ‘It's not screwed to anything, George, but we'll need another man to carry it out, and a van to take it to the station.'

Bert screamed, ‘Our press! You can't take our press!'

The senior constable said, ‘We can. And you are both under arrest. The charge is publishing seditious material. We are also confiscating books, magazines, and pamphlets which appear to be in the German language.'

Rachel shouted, ‘They are documents explaining the German position, and appeals from German pacifists and Socialists to their own people, to stop the war!'

‘That's as may be, miss,' the constable said. ‘The judge will decide, won't he? Hold out your hands, please.' The handcuffs clicked locked.

Rachel said, ‘I want to call a lawyer.'

‘At the station, miss … There, you'll be given every right you 'ave, under the law.'

Rachel said, ‘Hurry up, then. Don't shout, Bert. And don't try to hit them, Bert. Our job is to get back here as soon as we can and get on with our job – stopping the war.'

Johnny Merritt sat in a large office of the United States Embassy, Grosvenor Gardens. It was evening of a raw February day and the lights were glimmering through a foggy haze. Across the big desk sat Virgil Kramer, Secretary of Embassy – forty-five, square of face and build, with a ruddy complexion and iron grey hair
en brosse
. Johnny thought of him as ‘uncle' but his actual relationship was less easily defined: he was Johnny's father's sister's dead husband's brother.

‘Glad you could drop by for a minute,' the older man said. ‘Stella well?'