Heart of War (94 page)

The R.A.M.C. private came stumbling to her, peering at the numbers on the canvas sides of the big Napier ambulances, and cried, ‘Evening, miss … lovely evening for a ride in the moonlight, I don't think.'

She hurried back to the dashboard, switched on, and swung the starting handle. Two swings and the engine coughed and caught. She waited … blue headlights on. The lieutenant was by the gate, waving a torch slowly from side to side. The ambulances were moving out onto the pave … turning right at the gate, groping cautiously through the blizzard to pick up the wounded soldiers at the wharf, men so seriously wounded that they could not have stood the long drive back from the rear areas of the battle zone to the base hospitals on the bumpy and shell-pocked roads. The canals were smooth – but now they'd have to suffer six miles of road travel as No. 12 Convoy of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry took them to Abbeville Base Hospital No. 4.

Naomi peered through her goggles into the driving snow. Under the steel helmet her hair was jammed into a khaki woolen Balaclava, its chin piece down and only her mouth showing, breathing plumed steam into the night. ‘Do you have a handkerchief?' she shouted to the orderly, sitting beside her.

‘Yes, miss.' She felt him stirring, dredging in the pockets of his greatcoat.

‘Keep wiping my goggles, please, when you see the snow caking on them … but don't let your hand block my view for long.'

‘All right, miss.'

He edged closer, handkerchief at the ready. The headlights were no more than blue phosphorescence on the
snow, and a dim reddish glow from under the tail of the ambulance in front. Naomi drove concentrated, all her being in her hands, her wrists, the touch of her booted feet on the pedals, her eyes, watching … the red light … slow now, she touched the brake in a series of light taps, daren't press hard, or suddenly, or she'd be in the ditch. The orderly's hand passed across her goggles … better … She took a deep breath. Was it this body, this person, who had fallen into Rodney Venable's arms in the Norfolk rain, barely a year ago? Unsure about her place in life, her identity as a person, above all as a woman? There was a letter from Rodney in her locker now – discreet, cautious, but reading between the lines he was still desperate. It was sad, but she would not see him again. She was Naomi Rowland, working now at the top of her capacity. She was doing her own job, by herself, responsible for the ambulance and the orderly and, soon, for six torn men … and no one could do it better. After this, she would never be afraid again, never doubt, just face, decide, and do …

The orderly's hand swept over her goggles again. ‘Well done, miss,' he said softly. ‘Gawd, I'm glad it's you, not me, driving this thing tonight.'

Wilfred Bentley walked at Rachel's side down the slushy street. Sleet had fallen during the day, but had soon melted under the wheels and the boots, and from the heat of the close-packed houses. It had not been a bad meeting, as meetings of the No-Conscription Fellowship went the usual abuse, some hurled vegetables … but people were becoming chary of that; food cost money these days, if you could find it … a pair of policemen watching in bored silence, the usual drunken soldiers on leave. One of them swung a punch at Wilfred. The blow had bruised his cheek below the right eye, grazing the skin.

‘How much money did we get?' Rachel asked.

He said, ‘Five and tuppence … the tuppence was from a man who told me to use it to take a tram up to the barracks and enlist.' He laughed — ‘But there were several thoughtful faces. Almost as many as angry ones. The proportion changes every time.'

She said, ‘The fighting at Ypres seems to have died down, at last … Haig ought to be shot, if you ask me. He's responsible for all that slaughter.'

‘It was pretty bad, by all accounts. I've heard every figure between a quarter of a million and four hundred thousand, for the casualties … but Haig will have his reasons. Everyone has his reasons, which seem incontrovertible to him.'

She looked at him in the twilight – it was four o'clock in the afternoon, chinks of light showing from the curtained pubs. ‘That beastly drunken soldier broke the skin of your cheek.'

Bentley said, ‘Yes … poor chap. He was 60th … my regiment. I said to him, “What do you want to hit another Greenjacket for?” and he stared at me and said, “You, a rifleman? Then what the hell are you doing up there with that woman?” and I said, “Trying to save you, and the Regiment, from useless sacrifice.”'

‘I don't know why you want to save that regiment, or any others,' Rachel said peevishly. Wilfred had attitudes she could not share, and never would – ‘We're against
all
militarism, aren't we?'

He said gently, ‘There
are
causes worth fighting for, Rachel. Suppose a Napoleon were to arise in Germany twenty years hence … or suppose the Russians try to impose their revolution on the world by force … the Regiments would be needed then, but not for this …'

‘Nor to keep the rich in possession of their money,' she said, knowing that Wilfred had ample private means.

He said, ‘I'll gladly pay any taxes levied on me, my dear … and one day, if I am in a position to decide what taxes
should
be levied, and for what purposes, you'll see that my own money won't be a factor in my decisions.'

Then they reached the house, and Wilfred stopped, handing over the little cloth bag in which he had collected the donations for the Fellowship. She said, ‘Come in for a minute.'

He said in a low voice, ‘Bert has been so silent, when I'm there.'

‘He's thinking,' she said. ‘And it's my house as well as his … Have a glass of beer, at least. And get warm. You've been coughing a lot.'

Wilfred smiled and followed her into the little house. Bert looked up from the table, where he was reading a Trade Union pamphlet. He said, ‘How did it go?'

‘Five and tuppence,' Rachel said briefly. She went to the kitchen, found two bottles of beer, opened them, and gave one to Wilfred. Bert had returned to his pamphlet.

Wilfred said, ‘Chin chin,' and drank from the neck of the bottle. A moment later he could not suppress a burp. Rachel laughed, Wilfred smiled, and Bert said, ‘Ah, so the gentry can actually belch.'

Rachel opened her mouth in anger, but Wilfred said easily, ‘Of course … Yesterday I went to London and talked to Ben Tillett, Keir Hardie, and Ramsay Macdonald. I told them that I intend to stand as Socialist candidate for Mid Scarrow at the next election, whenever that is.'

Bert lowered his book – ‘You, a Socialist?'

‘Yes,' Wilfred said, ‘Rachel's converted me.'

‘But you're not a working man, never will be … We don't want folks like you in the Labour movement. The committee will never pick you.'

‘Hold your tongue,' Rachel said sharply.

Wilfred said patiently, ‘The Labour movement is not the same as Socialism, though they have many of the same aims. You're a trade unionist, really. What you want is practical things for working people – better wages, better housing, education, opportunities … You believe in the class struggle, so you're a sort of Marxist … But there's a theoretical side to social structure too … the Fabian Society way, what George Bernard Shaw and the Webbs believed in – not the class struggle, but the natural evolution of socialism as the best way for the whole of society to organize itself … That's what I'm for.'

Bert said slowly, ‘A few months ago I was thinking of your sort as la-di-da arseholes … but I suppose we're going to need you as much as you're going to need us. We've got to work together, even if we don't really even like each other … and we don't … do we?' He looked challengingly at Wilfred.

Wilfred did not speak for a time then said, ‘I know you don't like me, but I have not been sure that it is because of ideological differences. I think it is because I have been falling in love with Rachel.'

‘Well!' Bert said. ‘You've come out and said it, at last.'

Rachel was looking down at her shoes. Wilfred had said it to her, and now to Bert: at last it was in the open and must be dealt with. Wilfred said, ‘I don't dislike you, but we have little in common … except concern for social justice and decency in this country. That ought to be enough to enable us to work together.'

Bert said, ‘P'raps you're right. I 'ope so … We've broken into Rowland's factories, at last … both J.M.C. and Hedlington Aircraft. We're getting new union members every week … secret members, so far, 'cos if Rowland knew, he'd sack them …'

‘If you call a strike now, the men won't follow you,' Wilfred said. ‘And if they did the government would take over the factories.'

Bert nodded – ‘Right! So we're going to go on organizing, go on signing up members, so that, when we're ready, soon's the war's over …' he snapped his fingers, ‘we'll close them down!'

‘I hope to be in Parliament by then,' Wilfred said. ‘I'm starting campaigning after Christmas, so that the voters will know me by sight, and know my name … If we ever get a Socialist government in this country, what will your attitude be – the unions'? Because, of course, a fundamental part of socialism is to nationalize the means of production and distribution.'

Bert said, ‘Then you'll be the bosses. We'll strike against you, just the same as against Rowland, if you don't give us what we want – what we've earned.'

‘But who's to decide that, in a Socialist state?' Wilfred asked.

‘We are – the working men and women …'

Wilfred finished his beer and stood up. He said, ‘I must go. But first – I'm going to ask Rachel to marry me.' He turned to her – ‘Will you?'

Her face paled, then went red as she flushed. Tears came to her eyes. At last she found words – ‘I can't tell you now, Wilfred. I have to talk to Bert.'

He said, ‘Of course. Good night, my dear. Good night, Bert' – and went out.

John Rowland leaned on the plough handle and cried, ‘Garrover, Duke, hup, hup!' He flicked the reins and the huge Shire leaned into the trace, the shining steel share slid forward, turning the earth in a long, curving dark wave, wet in the driving rain from the north-west, that carried in it a forewarning of more sleet or snow.

This field used to be pasture for the Friesians, or fallow for hay, but the government had decreed that more pasture
should be turned to arable, and grain planted, to cut down the necessity of importing so much wheat from across the Atlantic, past the lurking U-boats; and they'd had to slaughter half the herd … selling cheep, to such as Hoggin, for the market became glutted when every dairy and beef herd in the islands was in the same boat – except the Scottish beef herds, for the land up there was mostly too poor to be put to wheat, or even rye. Now High Staining shared three Shires, bought by Christopher Cate, with Cate's tenants. Seagulls followed in John's footsteps down the furrow. They'd notice soon that he was not sowing, and fly away … not to sea, it must be rough in the estuary, worse in the Channel; they'd be back.

Boy wouldn't. His efforts to stop the war might help other fathers' sons, but not his own. Boy had gone, leaving so little … a watch, a wallet with some French francs in it … there might have been a handkerchief, other little items which Quentin had not forwarded because they were soaked in blood. John had heard that in such cases the articles were quietly disposed of, to save the parents' feelings … And there was the locket, with Werner von Rackow's name and the cameo of a handsome older woman. Von Rackow was the famous German air ace, now second only to Richtofen in fame. What contact could Boy possibly have had with him? It would be easier to understand if it was Guy who had had the locket. The airmen on both sides seemed to behave to each other with almost mediaeval chivalry … but the infantry, in the hell of the trenches?

Duke reached the end of the field, at the top of the long gradual slope. This field was under hay last summer. It was here that he and Boy had scythed the sweet grass and charlock and clover, the bees humming in the dense summer air, the girls following, sweating, raking the hay out for drying. They had all worked together in England's greenness, at high summer, in inner peace and harmony.

He turned the Shire gelding, with much clumping of great hooves in the mud, splashing of thin water, shaking of the heavy feathers at the hocks, muscles bulging at rump and haunch. ‘Garrover … hup, I say, hup!' – again a flick of the reins, off again, this time down the slope.

He could not see the end of the field, for tears. He could not see beyond this moment, this work. He had thought to live
here with Louise until they were too old to run the farm. By then Boy would have left the Army, perhaps a lieutenant colonel, to spend the rest of his days as an English gentleman – riding to hounds, attending the Sheep Fair, joining one of the old political parties, showing flowers or marrows at the Flower Show, accepting the magistracy. He'd have married long before that, of course, and High Staining would be filled with the sound of children's laughter when they were home for the holidays from prep school or public school; while Boy, until he retired, might be in Peshawar or Hong Kong, or Jamaica. By then he and Louise would have settled in a smaller house, perhaps in Walstone – or better, by the sea. If Boy was to be master of High Staining, it would be best if his father and mother were not sitting on top of him. Eastbourne wasn't far away … perhaps Rye or Winchelsea, very pretty little towns, Cinque Ports, too. And …

The tears dried, and he could see clearly enough – the high hedge at the end of the field; and the future – Boy was dead; Naomi would marry and go away; High Staining would die; there would be no children here. The future had passed, blown to bits at a shattered Flemish village near Ypres. He, too, was broken, all passion, hope, and desire gone.