The Wooden Shepherdess (46 page)

She was moved by a strong presentiment worse was to come; that these last few days were just the beginning of wickedness.

That presentiment turned her thoughts towards Franz, and their hopes of a shining country reborn from the chaos after the War. What would Franz? ... But then she recalled her brother was now a staid married man of thirty or more. He had long ceased writing her letters. No doubt he was changed.

But then another presentiment filled her mind, that a time would come when she had to meet and withstand that roaring lion herself. For Carmel was “in” the world where he walked about seeking to tear such children of God as Himmler limb from limb: that much she knew, though admitting it still was something she didn't quite understand and glad to recall her Reverend Mother's words about tea-cups having no need to understand tea.

She tried to compose herself for sleep. But the chimes of the distant Minister clock had prefaced the sonorous single stroke of One and still she was lying awake, oppressed by the thought of Satan loose in the country she'd grown up to love. She was wakeful still, with the same presentiment strong within her and praying for steadfastness in her faith whenever her time of testing should come and however it came, when she grew aware of an overwhelming advent of God; and a God this time so stark she could barely endure His Company.

Carmel had neither a rag nor remnant of solitude left to pull over her, not in
this
immanent presence of God! The wall beside her was stone: when she thrust Him away with her hand He wouldn't be thrust. When she pulled the blanket over her head it was Him she pulled up and hid under—and shut Him in with her. Naked to God no apron could hide her: each word of her mouth, each thought of her mind, each lifting of a finger—God knew its meaning even if she didn't. God was an Eye; and the Eye never slept and the Eye was inside her. God was an Ear which never slept, and the Ear was inside; and the Eye never blinked nor the Ear mis-heard.

No man can see his own soul clearly and live: he must hood his eyes which look inwards as if against a dazzling by light when the light is too much—though this is a dazzling by darkness, his soul is too dark to bear looking at. Yet God can look: as the eagle can stare at the brightness of the sun, so God stared at even the blackness within without blinking; and under the burning eye of that burning relentless Love she was molten metal that heaved in a crucible under its scum—this girl Augustine had thought must prove so easy to teach his simple, unshakable, childlike faith that God doesn't exist.

“
The Historical characters and events are as accurately historical as I can make them.... In no case have I falsified the record once I could worry it out.
”

This undertaking prefaced
The Fox in the Attic
, and I am reasonably confident that my narrative there of Hitler's 1923 Munich Putsch was accurate at every point. But the Nazis destroyed all official records bearing on the Blood-Purge of 1934: thus surviving contemporary sources tend to be the work of known liars on both sides, so that disproof of one version cannot be taken as establishing any other. This reduces “belief” at certain points in the narrative of the Night of the Long Knives to a matter of choice.

Hanfstängl credits Röhm's doctor with an eye-witness account of Röhm's last night before his arrest. The knowledgeable will notice that I treat this account as authentic, and likewise von Salomon's description of Ludin's arrest and release. He will also see that I tend to credit Otto Strasser's story of Banquo's Ghost on the stairs, a story historians tend to ignore with the rest of Strasser's hearsay about the Purge—but after all Strasser names his “Banquo” as Ernst Udet, who lived till 1941 and could therefore easily have given Strasser the lie; and the story seems to me strange enough to be true. It fits.

—
R.H.

COVENTRY IN THE Year 1934: Number 17 Court off Godsell Street, better known as Slaughterhouse Yard.... Pitch-darkness, warm and smelling of jam-packed sleeping bodies: the only glimmer a small square of window, a dim blob wavering vaguely outside it and clumsily bumping against the glass....

The two “boys” (now in their twenties) stir at the sound of the knocker-up's long unwieldy wand but lapse back again into slumber, having no jobs to get up for. Only a single candle-end bursts into light, turning the flimsy curtains screening one bed into a giant Chinese lantern; and that is their sister's—Norah's.

Dad is still snoring; but Mum has long lain awake, and now raises herself on an elbow to watch the gigantic leaping shadows thrown by the girl inside there dressing herself in bed: for this is the very last time, now even Norah has got herself the sack.

Six years ago, turned fourteen, Norah's school sewing-prize had won her a Mender's job at the Mill; and what mother wouldn't rejoice at her girl being picked for a Mender instead of just one of those foul-mouthed Weavers, yelling their voices hoarse against that awful racket of looms? For Menders (with microscopic if not downright myopic eyes, and sensitive fingers) tend to the toffee-nosed sort mums prefer as their daughters' companions, respecting themselves and others. And look at the place where they work, a sort of quiet greenhouse right up in the roof of the Mill! Rats teem in the filth of the weaving-sheds, but would never venture up here where everything's clean and the Menders' lights are so bright....

A spanking job; and the girl could have stopped in it all her life if only she needn't go throwing her weight about! Mum sighed. This former boss-kid of Slaughterhouse Yard, used to running everyone's lives before she even left school.... Granted, her passion for seeing that weaker-minded girls than herself didn't get put-upon was the best thing about Our Norah—but now it seemed to have turned out the worst thing too, for what Foremistress twice her age would for ever stand being bossed about? It was only because her work was so good that the Manager let her finish the week.... She'd had plenty of warnings—and now, this actual sacking: a black mark against her name, as well as six years of skill and experience gone down the drain (and with them, thirty to forty shillings a week).

Mum had been chewing this bitter cud half the night; but Norah herself was almost dressed before coming awake enough to remember that this was her very last day at the Mill: the end of a long drawn out coming-to-womanhood spent just day-dreaming over a Mending Desk. The end, too, of all the friendships made in the course of those six lotus-eating years: she would miss the girls badly, not only the cash.

Perhaps if the work itself had made any calls on her brains Norah might have kept out of trouble. But hands and eyes had soon learned to do the job on their own; hands had whisked the fluff off material reaching them rough from the loom, then felt for burls too tiny to see which they marked with chalk and afterwards teased out those minute knots with delicate tweezers, spotting threads in the pattern machine-looms had missed, had guided her needle replacing them, even down the whole length of some close-woven roll of showerproof gaberdine.
This
could hardly suffice to keep a girl's brains out of mischief: not even such simple mischief as hiding mice in the Foremistresses' boots....

But now Norah must hurry: already two pairs of high heels (Jean's and Rita's: she knew every footstep in Slaughterhouse Yard) had clattered past below on the cobbles; and least of all on her Last Day must she be late!

She blew out her candles and bolted downstairs; and at first the diurnal routine took over almost as though there were nothing so special about today. But hurrying helter-skelter up Godsell Street something suddenly rose in her gorge like a cold lump of sick: the thought of that empty
tomorrow
.

“Book oop, me gel,” Norah scolded herself out loud: “Tain't End o' the Weld!”

All the same, even if this was not the End of the World new jobs wouldn't fall in her mouth: she must put on her thinking-cap.... What was it that someone had said to her two or three weeks ago, about some rich cripple who wished to learn tapestry-work (that amateur hand-loom stuff which the clumsiest Mender could do with her eyes shut)? That must have been Young Syl's mum, who had a sister working for nobs in a big house somewhere down south....

At the time Norah hadn't thought twice about it—who would? But now—well, now she had better find out.

It would mean leaving home, of course; and surely the whole wide world held no nest so snug as her natal Slaughterhouse Yard (with its mice and black-beetles and overcrowding, its single communal tap and its single row of latrines all together down the far end). Moreover it meant getting mixed up with the Rich, an alien breed she despised. All the same, a sacking against her name left her little hope of a Coventry job (and there wasn't another Coventry mill, come to that). But need her banishment be for ever? Surely her lady would soon tire of tapestry work or die; and boasting this teaching experience, might she not then come back and aspire to a Coventry Art School post?

She was still turning over the pros and cons when she got to the Mill. There those ... those silly young coots had all clubbed together to buy her a bottle of scent as a farewell gift.

Syl's Mum (that superior widow who went out to teach rich shopkeepers' kids by the hour, and only the oldest Yardsters dared to call Nellie) had both the rooms now, facing the sheds where the beasts were killed, where once the “Balloon-woman” used to live in the downstairs one till her dropsy carried her off. Nellie kept the house spotless. Eleven-year-old Sylvanus was only allowed inside in his stockinged feet; and the bicycle Nellie used for visiting pupils on was wiped every time, and lived on its special washable mat.

Norah looked in that night, while the pale bespectacled boy was doing his homework and Nellie was washing up tea; but the latter couldn't say if the post would be vacant still, she would have to write to her sister and ask. So Norah gave her three-ha'pence to pay for the stamp.

*

By Tuesday the answer had come: it was Yes, and that Norah was wanted at once on trial.

The place was in far-away Dorset, which set Norah worrying how to raise cash for the fare. But Syl's Mum said not to worry: her sister wrote they'd be fetching her there by car, so could she be ready ten-o'clock Thursday morning round at the King's Head hotel?

That was better perhaps than some snooty chauffeur poking his nose in her Yard: all the same it confirmed her worst fears about Nobs. The King's Head on Broadgate was Coventry's grandest hotel; and if that was where even their chauffeurs were sent to kip for the night, how was her sort of girl to stomach the like-on-the-Pictures extravagant kind of life that such swank-pots lead? Sooner or later for certain she'd blow her top and end up out on her ear. But Nellie (the Mellton Housekeeper's sister) was able to reassure her that life at Mellton wasn't a bit like those flash millionaires on the Pictures....

“It isn't all squandering and carousing?”

“No. And poor Mrs Wadamy's ever so nice: you won't be able to help yourself liking her.”

There was no time for Mum to cut her out something new to make up, so Norah simply pressed her one decent frock and gave her hair a good curl—reminding herself that she wasn't the sort to go scaredy-cat over anyone, not even chauffeurs who stopped at King's Head Hotels. Then, the night before, they all went round to the Fish-and-Chips shop for a farewell feast.

That King's Head Hotel “on Broadgate” was not strictly-speaking on Broadgate at all: it had three ways in, but none was on Broadgate. The first, the original entrance, was right round the corner on Smithford Street. There in centuries past you rode in under a gated arch, and found yourself in the typical narrow central yard of the modest provincial inn which this used to be. But the cutting of Hertford Street as a way to the railway-station had made this a corner site, creating a new façade for a new front entrance; and new upper storeys, which did indeed have a view up Broadgate.

As for the old inn yard, they had roofed it over with glass like a shopping-arcade: one almost expected pile carpets and potted palms....

The third way in was down a modest cul-de-sac, mostly frequented by dogs in search of a quiet lamp-post. It turned off beside the Empire (the Picture Theater where Norah had learned all she knew of the ways of the rich); and it led to the hotel garage direct. It would never have entered Norah's head to storm the hotel itself and inquire at the desk: so on Thursday morning this was the way she took (giving the Empire's familiar gallery-entrance a loving farewell pat as she passed).

But arrived at the garage like this, she somehow had to divine which car. Most likely a Rolls, she thought. There were four; and she wished she understood number-plate codes to discover if one of them came from Dorset. Or was it that Daimler? The rest were names which hardly suggested their owners were genuine slap-up gentry, unless.... But of course, what a goose she was! These Wadamy moneybags surely would own a whole fleet of cars and never send one of the grand ones meant for themselves....

So which was the Wadamy chauffeur? That looked an easier question to solve since only two were in sight. One of them (all spit-and-polish, dressed in brown and green livery) stood by the doorway smoking a last cigarette. With his short but carefully-waved gray hair and his rice-powdered jowl he looked like a matinee idol going to seed. She hoped it wouldn't be him; but still, “Mister,” she asked: “You frum th'Wadamys?”

“No, Young Woman!” he boomed in the voice of a pantomime Earl: “We are Sir Frederic Thomas, if you wish to know.” And he turned on his heel.

“Keep y'r 'air on, old cock!” she muttered. “Moost be tootherun.”

This was a rather pimply young man with his chauffeur's tunic off: in shirt-sleeves, orange braces, dark blue breeches and long rubber boots he was hosing some foreign car in the yard outside. But it wasn't him either: “Wadamy, Sweet'eart? No, never 'eard on 'em”—adding under his breath: “‘Sodomy'? Coo what a monniker!” Then he laid down his hose and advanced towards her with all sorts of cheeky remarks on the tip of his tongue. But the steely look in her eye was enough; crestfallen, he started to whistle a popular tune instead and shambled back to his work.