Heart of War (72 page)

‘There, none of us can help that,' Mrs Baker said comfortably. ‘If God don't give the milk, there's no call for us women to feel we done something wrong … Lunch today is cold mutton, but I haven't bought anything for dinner yet.'

Susan said, ‘There was a good recipe in the
Daily Telegraph
Page for Women, a few days ago … risotto – here, I cut it out. Shall we try that?'

Mrs Baker held the slip of newsprint as though it were a snake and read aloud suspiciously – ‘Take one ounce chopped onion, half a pint of rice, one ounce fat, half a pint or more of stock …' She read on and then looked up – ‘Is this Eyetalian, m'm?'

‘I suppose so, originally, but it sounds good. Let's try it.'

‘All right, m'm,' Mrs Baker said grudgingly and stuffed the slip of paper into the pocket of her apron. ‘For lunch tomorrow I thought a bit of braised tongue with madeira sauce and spring greens.'

Susan thought, oh dear, that sounds rather rich but Mrs B. had given in over the risotto, with an effort, so she'd better agree. She said enthusiastically, ‘That sounds excellent, Mrs Baker.'

They talked on another ten minutes, then Mrs Baker said, ‘It's getting a lot of work down there now, m'm, since that flibbertigibbet Peggy went to the shell factory in Hedlington. Don't know what girls are coming to these days – living by twos and threes in flats in Hedlington and working in a factory instead of living at home, or going into service, and learning something that's useful when they marry and have kids of their own.'

Susan said, ‘I'll try to get another maid, but it really isn't easy. They just don't want to live in the country.'

‘You could pay 'em more,' Mrs Baker said.

Susan spread her hands unhappily – ‘Mr Rowland won't let me offer more than the standard rate. He says that would be inflation.'

Mrs Baker said, ‘I don't know about that, m'm, but I do need help in the kitchen, what with the baby, and Tim and Sally. Joan's got all she can do upstairs, I know that.'

The mention of Sally and Tim struck a nerve in Susan's brain and she said, ‘I wonder what they're doing.'

‘Well, if there's nothing more, m'm …'

‘Yes, yes,' she said. ‘Thank you. That's all for now.'

Susan hurried out of the room, down the hall, and out of the front door. The lawn was empty, no sign of the children. Had they sneaked down to Handle's farm again? Kathleen was polishing the car outside the garage. She called – ‘Kathleen, have you seen the children recently?'

‘No, madam,' the chauffeur called back. ‘They came out about half an hour ago, and watched me for a few minutes – then they went away. I didn't notice where to.'

Susan walked back into the house and stood in the hall a moment, thinking. She felt uneasy, as though something terrible was about to happen. She heard a faint sound from above and at once hurled herself at the stairs, her fears concentrated into a central knot – Dicky, Dicky, something wrong with Dicky, the fruit of her womb. As she neared the top of the stairs she saw Sally and Tim sneak out of the nursery and across the passage. They saw her and broke into a run, diving into the day nursery. She burst into the night nursery, screaming as she saw the cradle, the five-week-old baby in it hidden under a heavy pillow. She wrenched the pillow away and threw herself to her knees. The baby's face was blue, his eyes starting out of his head. She plucked him up, held him to her, and breathed slowly into his mouth, then squeezed his chest, breathed again. Oh God save him, save him! The little body hung limp in her arms. Again, again … he moved, gasped, coughed, sucked air into his lungs … After he had breathed normally for ten minutes and the colour had returned to his fat cheeks, she carefully laid him down in his cot and walked across the landing to the day nursery.

They were in there, sitting side by side on the sofa, their faces taut. She walked over to them and hit each of them as hard as she could on the cheek with the flat of her hand. Sally rocked, gasped, and came back upright. The force of her blow
knocked the smaller Tim clear off the sofa to the floor. He moaned once, then climbed quickly back up beside his sister. She said, ‘You know why I did that?'

Sally said coldly, ‘Yes, Mummy.'

‘Why did you do it? Why? Tell me. When you hear the words you may understand what a terrible thing you tried to do.'

‘We tried to kill 'im,' Tim said. ‘Wish we 'ad.' It was the first time in months that he had dropped an aitch, Susan noted.

‘Why do you want to kill him?'

‘You love 'im more'n you do us,' he said in the same small hard voice.

Sally said, ‘When he grows up, you'll get rid of us. We know.'

Susan stood back, staring down at them. Tears sprang to her eyes and she knelt in front of them, crying, ‘You're wrong! You'll always be our children. This will always be your home. But it's got to be Dicky's, too.'

They stared at her. She could not know whether they understood, or believed. Only time, and deeds, would show. She said, ‘Now go outside, and stay outside until you're called for lunch.'

She followed them downstairs, watched them go out in unusual silence, and turned into the drawing room. She went to the telephone and picked up the receiver – ‘Give me the
Hedlington Courier
, please … classified advertisements, please … I want to advertise for a children's Nanny at thirty shillings a week and all found … Yes, I said thirty shillings a week. Ready?' She began to dictate the wording of the advertisement.

Bob Stratton surveyed Victoria on her platform. He'd run her up to ninety-five yesterday, on the Canterbury road, and she'd hardly seemed to be trying, running smooth as a bird, quiet, too – all the improvements he'd made this past four years and more come to their best, and working together – that was important, for sometimes you made one thing better but it didn't fit with something else, which got worse. The Thompson Bennett magneto was great, and the new sparking plugs of compressed mica worked fine: he'd mistrusted them – but they were lighter, no doubt of that, and every ounce counted; and if the aeroplanes could use them, at their higher speeds and all kinds of temperatures, they should be better for motors on the ground; and, so far, they'd proved so …
wish he could find a way to use aircraft cylinders … but there were too many problems … it was like attacking a nest of rats, soon's you got one killed, two more popped up.

He climbed astride the machine, started it, and sat there, the engine ticking slowly as it warmed up, his fingers automatically moving the choke and air levers … The reason Victoria had run so good yesterday was that he'd made up his mind not to go to that Dr Deerfield any more, and that was the truth of it. Near eighteen months he'd been going, five times a week, regular as clockwork, and what good had it done? It wasn't right, trying to cut into a man's mind like it was a bit of wood, or an old book you'd picked up … as though you could see what was in there … and not just what
was
there, but what
had
been there, forty, fifty, years ago. Had he ever seen his mother naked? Why should a man remember a thing like that, sixty years on? She'd been in her shift, stooped over the bed, and the shift rode up and there was a tuft of hair sticking out between her legs at the back, high up, and like thick lips, hanging open. It had frightened the wits out of him. What had she got there? A rabbit, cut open? What was she doing with it? 'Course he was only two then, maybe three … and he'd learned soon enough what it was, but that wasn't the same. It never gripped him again, in the belly, so that he broke out sweating, wanting to be sick, like that time, with Mother, God rest her soul … Had he ever thought of his mother sexually? What a question to ask a man, his mother long since in her grave? Never, never never … Cuddled up in her titties, yes, that was it, he'd thought of that, often and often, as a boy … a young man even. Did he fear women, grown women? Had he ever had a sexual relation with another man, a boy? Did he like boys, prefer looking at them to girls?

It was a sin, really, trying to see into a man's mind, that only God could make, or know.

He opened the throttle and the engine growled louder, the rear wheel spun faster on the sunken counterwheel … Dr Deerfield was a Hun, that was the truth of it. Couldn't make a man an Englishman by giving him a piece of paper and changing his name. Just a dirty Hun, asking dirty questions … and costing a lot of money, too.

He closed his eyes, the engine roaring. There it was, plain as a pikestaff in front of him, a little girl's cunny, smooth, fat,
the lips folding in, big … twice as big as a grown woman's, that was the God's truth. His breathing came unevenly, gasping, the engine throbbed more heavily to the touch of his hand. He felt an erection growing inside his trousers and cried out, with no blasphemy – ‘Oh, Jesus Christ! Oh, God Almighty!'

Shaking, he throttled the engine back until it stopped, then climbed down, covered Victoria with her dust sheet, and went out of the shed and the garden, by the little door beside the shed. The lane was empty, but it was a fine summer evening. There'd be some girls playing hopscotch at the corner, and there were always two or three looking for rags and bones and tins in the refuse dump by the Scarrow. He made sure that he had two shillings in his pocket and walked faster. One way or another, the ache in his groin, the bursting lust in his heart for that fat slit would kill him anyway. A man could only go so far against what God had made him.

They were mad, Cate thought, not mad like a village idiot, but snarling, hating mad, like cornered wolves. Were these the people John had to associate with because of his sincere feeling that an end to the war must be negotiated? How could Russell's intelligence stomach that howl about British shipowners being more dangerous to their crews than German U-boat captains? Or was it not belief or intelligence that motivated them, but only what the Russian doctor had won a Nobel prize for discovering – conditioned reflexes? They heard the word ‘owner' or ‘lord' or ‘capitalist' and started slavering at the mouth – in this case foaming would be the right word.

He felt unhappy. Relations between the classes in England had not been perfect, especially in the northern and midland cities, but they had been better than in almost any other country; now the war, conscription, the slaughter, the manifest profiteering, and food shortages, had combined to make some Englishmen as bad as continental anarchists shouting for blood, upheaval, overturn, ruin, above all – hate.

He returned to the paper. Unpleasant reading though it made, he'd better learn about it, if only to know what was in store for the country when the war ended, and these new hatreds instead of the old national antagonisms, occupied the stage. He had a sad, heavy feeling, that it would be less bloody, but far more unpleasant.

The telephone rang and a moment later Garrod came in ‘Mr John on the telephone for you, sir.'