Now, God be Thanked

by John Masters

  He walked towards the marquee. Frank joined him, and they went in side by side, heads bent. Frank said, ‘How many were killed, do you think?’

  ‘Eleven, someone said, counting the scalded. And about fifteen hurt, some of ’em bad.’

  Frank shook in an uncontrollable fit of shivering. ‘I reckon we’ll never see anything worse however long we live.’

  ‘Reckon not.’

  ‘Thank God.’

  Daily Telegraph, Saturday, July 11, 1914

  Kent beat Somerset at Gravesend yesterday, with supreme ease, the victory by nine wickets being accomplished shortly before four o’clock. Some such result was made likely by the progress of the game on Thursday, when the champions, with a wicket in hand, had already secured a lead of 134 runs. Kent’s innings closed in the first few minutes after resuming for the addition of a solitary run, and then the visitors opened their second attempt so successfully that shortly before luncheon they had only two men out for 118. Then came a complete change. The home team had only 49 to make. Naturally enough, on the improved pitch this task proved an easy one.

  Cate glanced down the tabulated score. The Somerset first innings had been a disaster for them, with only Poyntz standing up to the bowling. Hubble had made a century for Kent, and Blythe had taken eleven wickets for 133, and bowled 33 overs against a total of nine wickets and 49 overs for Kent’s three other bowlers. The figures would be enough indication of Blythe’s genius as a left-hand slow spinner even if you did not know that he was frail of constitution, and suffered from epileptic seizures. Half closing his eyes Cate could see him now, as he had watched him so many times at Hedlington or Canterbury – stuttering, hesitant run to the crease, left arm curving back, the hand almost in his right trouser pocket, then the arm flying over, the ball curving lazily down towards the batsman, hitting the turf, fizzing with spin, darting like a knife clean across the wicket … unplayable!

  He put down the paper and glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. Four o’clock. What needed to be done, before tea? Last night the port had been low in the decanter, he remembered. It would be a good time to go down to the cellar and decant another bottle. He got up, found a spare decanter in the dining-room sideboard, and went to the cellar stairs. At the head he swung open the creaking old door, dating from the Manor’s fourteenth-century predecessor, and switched on the electric light. He went carefully down the uneven stairs – no one knew when they dated from – moving his head instinctively to dodge the beam, also from the fourteenth century, that stuck out of one wall half-way down. His father had wanted to have that beam taken out forty years ago, but Probyn Gorse had sworn the whole house would fall down if he did … Cate doubted that, but it was dangerous to fly against Probyn’s advice, when he chose to offer any; his sources of information were hearsay from centuries back, probably, perhaps occult – but when they could be tested (which wasn’t often) they seldom proved false.

  The port bin was in the far corner, by the piece of exposed flooring from the Roman villa which had stood on this site before the medieval manor house. It was dusty in there, and the mosaics were quite hard to see even with the electric light on. It was a pity they weren’t in the open, for the colours were still bright in the woman’s face and the edge of the man’s robe, the couple who had lived on this land so long before him.

  July 11th … it was his brother-in-law Quentin’s birthday, on the 18th – his fortieth, wasn’t it? If Quentin and Fiona had been at home in Hedlington he’d have taken them a bottle of the Cockburn ’83 to celebrate. But Quentin wasn’t; he was at the Curragh, and Fiona was at home alone … something wrong there, yet Quentin loved Fiona, he was sure of that. Perhaps Fiona wasn’t … Quentin was a good soldier, unimaginative, perhaps, but brave, utterly honest, devoted to his men, the best type of British subaltern. Only, he wasn’t a subaltern now, he was a major. As a major, he should have more – what? Ability to question? Look round corners? He wondered, frowning slightly, how many other majors and colonels his description of Quentin fitted? How many generals? Did it fit the British army as a whole? Possibly. Probably, he admitted with an inward sigh.

  What about the navy then? Enormously powerful, dedicated, fiercely proud of their great tradition … too proud, perhaps? Somewhat narrow-minded? Undoubtedly, but beloved of the people certainly … Conscription for the army, as all the continental nations had it – enrolment of every able-bodied youth at the age of eighteen or so for two years with the Colours – was unthinkable here: apart from general dislike of the army, an all-volunteer force was best suited to its peacetime role of imperial policing … but compulsory service for the navy was quite imaginable, because it might become necessary for survival. It would just be an extension of the old press gangs, and everyone knew how essential they had been. But … he wished he could think of some great naval hero of the moment: Nelson and his captains were long gone; Lord Charles Beresford – gone; the Royal Navy headed by a German prince and that cocky political opportunist, Churchill – cocky, but brilliant, he couldn’t deny that. People talked of Admirals Jellicoe and Beatty, but they hadn’t proved their worth yet, and couldn’t, except in battle. So, just how effective was the navy whereon – how did the powerful old phrase go? – under the good Providence of God, the wealth, safety, and strength of the kingdom do chiefly depend? No one knew: they only believed.

  And now some people were talking of the need for a separate air force. Impossible to imagine! Those frail kites could hardly stay up in the air, let alone destroy anything – except themselves and their riders… but they could see, spy, like circling vultures they would be, in a war …

  But what was he doing, standing motionless in his cellar, thinking of flying machines and war, when he had come down to select and decant a bottle of port for his table? He chose a bottle, opened it with the corkscrew in the bin and, pouring very carefully, decanted it; then climbed slowly back up the stairs, switching off the light and closing the creaky old door behind him.

  4 Hedlington: Sunday, July 12, 1914

  ‘Satan lies in wait. Satan does not sleep. The hand of Satan is not seen unless we search for it in every action, by the light of God’s Holy Word, as set forth to us in the scriptures. Like the wicked wolf, Satan clothes himself in sheep’s clothing. Like the foolish sheep, man is devoured … unless he judges not by what he sees with his outward eye, but by what he sees with the inward eye that God gave him, the eye of judgement, informed by the Holy Word as set forth in the scriptures. Satan …’

  Bob Stratton’s thoughts wandered. It was a hot morning and he wished he could have left off his thick serge coat and waistcoat, but that would be unthinkable for chapel. The Reverend Mr Hunnicutt had spoken for twenty minutes already, and looked to be good for twice as much more. The text of his sermon was from Exodus 20; 9, 10: Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates. The Reverend Mr Hunnicutt was particularly hot on the subject, even more so than on the evils of drink, which was unusual in a Wesleyan minister. He gave this sermon, or one uncommon like it, at least three times a year.

  Jane’s elbow digging gently into his ribs made him raise his head. Jane must have thought he was about to doze off. He stroked his beard and kept his head up, gazing at the minister, but in fact looking through him to the bare wall and plain window behind. The Wesleyans did not go in for the pomp and paint of the Established Church, and quite right, too. Chapelgoers were plain people, honest men who mostly worked with their hands, and took an honest week’s wage for an honest week’s work.

  Frank and Anne were here, he knew – they were good chapel people, devout and regular – but neither of his daughters, nor Fred. Ethel was in London, where that Fagioletti was probably trying to turn her to the Whore of Rome … Fred was back in Walstone, at Mr John’s farm. Or was he? Jane said there wa
s talk of him being entangled with a widow here in Hedlington. Perhaps she’d come late to the Fair, and they’d danced, there on the stained grass, among splinters of wood and sharp bits of steel. And then gone to her home, and stayed all night, and he’d taken the first train back to Walstone this morning … or maybe even walked. It wasn’t more than twelve miles if you knew the short cuts.

  They should have cancelled the dancing, after what happened. But he’d heard, on the way to chapel this morning, that the dance had gone on as usual to the music of a pair of gypsy fiddlers … wilder than usual, even, as though the recent passage of violent death, so close, had heightened everyone’s lust for life. And lust was the word, by George, his informant had said – the young people going off in couples to Lovers’ Bank, holding each other tight, staggering down into darkness, coming back into the flaring lights, the reek of gin and spilled beer, faces glowing, burrs in the girls’ hair and on the backs of their dresses. Disgraceful, but women were frail cattle, and when the young men wanted them badly, they gave in.

  ‘… on the Sabbath thou shalt do no labour. That means no labour!’ the Reverend Mr Hunnicutt thundered, pointing down. ‘The Lord God did not say, Thou shalt not do much labour … or, thou shalt do only a little labour. He said, Thou shalt do NO labour. And yet Satan …’

  Bob wondered, for the hundredth time perhaps, whether Mr Hunnicutt would count his work on Victoria as labour. There was that word ‘work’, but it wasn’t work really, not to him. He didn’t get paid for it, the way he got paid as Works foreman at Rowland’s. He didn’t do it regularly, the way he went regularly to work at Rowland’s … but that was a lie. Regular as clockwork, he worked – he pottered with Victoria in the shed every Sunday afternoon; and every work day, after he had come home and washed his hands and eaten his dinner, he went down to the shed to look at her, and sometimes do a little more … pottering. But wasn’t that just what he did when he went to Rowland’s – look in at his office, just beyond where the linoleum ended on the passage floor, then to the machine shop, then the storage room, the fitting assembly shop, the adjustment shop, the fabrication shops for steel and wood, then back to the offices and a word with Mr Harry or Mr Richard … looking, noting, doing what had to be done? Pottering.

  He had never thought it necessary to tell Mr Hunnicutt what he did on the Sabbath and, so to speak, ask his blessing. That would be a mite popish, like confession. Besides, what if Mr Hunnicutt said working on Victoria was labour? Most people knew, because it was no secret that Bob Stratton was working on a motor cycle to go faster than any had ever done before. Botheration! Was it or wasn’t it ‘working’?

  Mr Hunnicutt was drawing to a peroration: the sermon wasn’t going to last as long as he had thought. He settled himself more comfortably in his pew. He missed Ruth. She had been his favourite daughter and a devout chapelgoer. Now she was married to that red-faced Hoggin and she never came. Hoggin was Church of England, he said; but Bob doubted that he ever actually attended. From the look of him, spending the day in pubs or at a cockfight would be more his mark; and he was dragging Ruth down into that ungodliness with him. To tell the truth, she’d gone willingly. He’d never seen anyone so happy, except Frank and Anne, and they were different. Ruthie adored Hoggin – that was the only word for it, the Lord knew; and Ethel, poor snivelling Ethel, had found something to snivel about when she married that dago, and …

  But hadn’t Fred read in a book where it said that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath? He might ask Mr Hunnicutt about that. How would that square with his sermon? Better not. Better let sleeping dogs lie. Just find another word for what he did with Victoria – potter wasn’t right. Nor was play. Hobby? He’d have to think of something. Worship?

  The sermon ended and he knelt to pray. He willed himself, as always in these final moments of the service, to see God. He was tall, English of course, and clean shaven, he was sure of that – nothing like the pictures they painted of Jesus, with a blond beard. No, He was stern, with big hands and feet – powerful, serviceable hands, not dirty in the flesh or under the nails, but marked with the signs of labour in the hardness of the skin, and with skill, in the way they moved. Not a carpenter, like His Son … a blacksmith, or a stone mason, perhaps. Women knelt round His feet. There were no other men, no Son or Holy Ghost, only the Father, and the women, silently praying, heads bowed.

  ‘Amen!’

  ‘Amen!’

  ‘And finally let us say a special prayer for the victims of yesterday’s terrible accident at the Fair, even though none were of this congregation… Oh Lord, in whose sight a sparrow does not fall unseen, take into Thy bosom the souls of those killed in yesterday’s disaster at the Fairgrounds, and grant them eternal peace. This we ask in the name of Jesus Christ, Our Lord. Amen!’

  ‘Amen!’

  Bob rose heavily to his feet, gathered up his prayer book and Bible, found his hat and stick, and walked down the aisle at Jane’s side, their son Frank and his wife close behind.

  Outside the chapel, they waited their turn to speak a word of praise to the minister. Mr Hunnicutt stood in the sunshine beside the little yew at the chapel door, the graveyard to his right. Below the tall spiked railings of the churchyard, rows of houses stretched down to the Scarrow.

  ‘An excellent sermon, if I may say so, Mr Hunnicutt,’ Bob said.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Stratton, thank you. I always value your opinion. You are looking well, Mrs Stratton.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Hunnicutt, and feeling it too, praise be.’

  Frank and Anne spoke to the minister in their turn, then the four of them started down the gravel walk towards the gate to the street.

  ‘Excuse me, sir … Mr Bob!’

  Bob looked up. ‘Hello, Willum. What are you doing here? You’re not Wesleyan.’

  ‘Oh no, Mr Bob, Church of England we are. I come here to ask if I could have the day off, Tuesday, like.’

  ‘What for?’

  They were all gathered, watching the big man in the worn work clothes, with the big pleasant face and vacant eyes. His hands were twined together, knotted, not painfully, but as though they could not separate.

  ‘It’s my dad,’ he said, ‘down to Walstone.’ He looked embarrassed and fell silent.

  ‘Well, what about Probyn?’ Bob said. ‘Out with it.’

  Frank cut in – ‘It’s his trial, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Frank, that’s it,’ Willum burst out. ‘It’s at the magistrate’s court in Walstone, Tuesday. I’m his son.’

  ‘I know that, but what can you do?’ Bob said. ‘You’re not a lawyer. You can’t give any evidence that the magistrates will listen to. I suppose it’s poaching?’

  Willum nodded and said, ‘I ought to be there, Mr Bob, that’s it. He’s my dad.’

  ‘Sure you’re not going to sneak off to the County Ground and watch Frank Woolley and Colin Blythe now?’

  ‘Oh no, Mr Bob!’

  ‘All right then. But mind, I’ll have to nick you a day’s wage.’

  ‘All right, Mr Bob, thank you.’ He wrung Bob’s hand suddenly, touched his lock, and turned to run off.

  Jane called, ‘Wait there, Willum!’ Willum turned, looking alarmed. Jane said, ‘Tell Mary that I’d like her to make a pair of dresses for Frank’s girls. I forgot to tell her yesterday. Let her come to the house tomorrow afternoon, and we’ll talk about it.’

  ‘That I’ll do … dresses for Frank’s girls … I’ll tell her.’

  ‘Tomorrow afternoon, Willum.’

  Willum touched his forelock again, and ran off with an ungainly long stride, out of the gate and down the street towards the river.

  Jane looked after him with a sigh. ‘Mary’s far too good for him,’ she said, ‘but he’d be lost without her, so I suppose it’s all for the best.’

  ‘And they love each other,’ Anne said in a small voice, ‘even if Willum is simple.’

  Then after a few moments, Frank and Anne said goodbye to their parents, and headed for
their own house, holding hands like lovers. Bob and Jane walked sedately on, her hand resting on the serge of his navy-blue sleeve. It was past noon, and the closer they came to the river the louder grew the sounds of the town. They passed what seemed to be a solid row of public houses, sloping steeply down towards the river. Trams passed, steel brakes squealing on steel wheels, bells clanging, the front and back platforms crowded with standing men. Outside the pubs the men basked in the sun, leaning against the pub walls, laughing, quaffing great draughts of bitter. There were women, sitting on benches, pushing each other, giggling, their hair dishevelled, glasses of gin beside them; there was a boy of about nine running down the street carrying two foam-topped tankards of ale; there was a man senseless in the gutter, his head in a pool of vomit…

  Bob and Jane passed on, unswerving, heads high, galleons before a steady following breeze. Bob was aware that he knew some of these men, for they worked in Rowland’s. Some were here just for a pint, and then home. Some would be here till stoptap, their week’s wages gone, their weeping wives come to support them home. But he never spoke to any of them when they were drinking at a pub, especially on a Sunday. He would not even recognize them, or see them then, lest he be prejudiced against them at work the next day.

  Jervis Street was a row of semi-detached houses on the north side of Hedlington, on the west side of the Scarrow valley, barely ten minutes walk from Rowland’s factory. A low iron railing separated the two small front gardens – barely more than plots – belonging to the two sides of each house. All the houses were nearly similar, except where here and there minor alterations had been made. Like the rest, No. 85 had two storeys and a basement – kitchen, pantry, back parlour, which was also used as the dining-room, front parlour on the ground floor; and three bedrooms on the second, plus one bathroom and water closet. There was a small room, with another water closet, in the basement. There slept and had her being each of the endless succession of girls who had been general maids for the Strattons for the past thirty years – girls who had come at fourteen or fifteen, worked for two or three years, then moved out of the basement and the house, to marriage, or a shop – or, in at least one case, Bob and Jane knew, to the streets, as a harlot.