Now, God be Thanked

by John Masters

  The Dalmellie Hotel was built directly opposite the sixteenth green of the famous course. Guests in any of the front rooms could look straight down on the green and in addition had a good view of the approach from the 16th tee, the 17th tee, and the fairway to the 17th green.

  Looking down, Archie thought there was something strange about the 16th green – a large green tilted slightly to the south, and kidney-shaped – a brute to putt on when the ground was hard. He stared down, his eyes puckering. Then he said aloud, ‘My God! You’d better come and look at what your sisters have been doing in the night.’

  ‘What is it?’ Fiona cried. ‘What’s the matter?’

  She got out of bed, naked, and hurried to him. He pointed, wordless.

  She stared down – ‘I don’t see …’ Then she saw, and read aloud what had been carved in the holy turf of the 16th green at Dalmellie, each letter six inches wide and three feet high – VOTES FOR WOMEN above the hole: and, below it, NO VOTES, NO GOLF.

  ‘They’ve gone mad!’ she said. ‘The suffragists have gone mad!’

  She stood at Archie’s side in the floor-length window, he in pyjama coat only, she altogether naked, her arm round his waist. An elderly gentleman in ulster and deerstalker stood in the driveway, staring up at them, jaw dropped. Fiona did not notice because Archie was at her side; nothing else mattered, except, to a lesser extent, the sacrilege that had been committed below. Archie did not notice because the certainty struck him that, like those suffragist women, Fiona was, in one respect, mad. They would stop at nothing to get their votes, and nothing could stop them. With Fiona it was not votes, but him, Archie Campbell. He headed back for the bed, feeling suddenly glad that his train left for Kilmarnock and London in three hours.

  Daily Telegraph, Friday, July 17, 1914

  ACTRESS’S MARRIAGE

  BARRISTER’S PETITION

  STORIES OF SUPPER PARTIES

  In opening the case for Mr Whelan, Mr Campbell said there was here not only the tragedy of a child wife but the fate and future of Mr Whelan. Personally he (counsel) has never had the pleasure of hearing the co-respondent, but he was well known on the stage and had a rate of remuneration which even Mr Marshall Hall might envy. (Laughter). Did they expect that Mrs Hussey would have taken Mr Whelan home and introduced him to her husband if she had been engaged in a guilty intrigue with him? They knew the amount of freedom which was allowed to young married women and girls today was much greater than it used to be. He was old enough to remember when the favourite motto was, ‘There’s no place like home’. Now it was, ‘There’s no place like the supper-room’. Things had changed. The world had gone ahead, and the jury and himself were getting old-fashioned. The theatrical profession claimed and enjoyed a far greater amount of freedom than ordinary people and it was inevitable owing to their calling. Were they going to sit in judgement on the respondent because she was young and fond of life and society?

  Mr Marshall Hall called the witness who earlier in the day had been taken ill. He said that during the week in August when both respondent and co-respondent were staying at the hotel, they breakfasted together at least three times. When he was getting ready the breakfast the corespondent would be playing the piano and the respondent singing. They breakfasted alone. Mr Campbell suggested to the witness that his visit to the hospital that morning had interfered with his memory.

  Witness: Oh, no; it was only my leg. (Laughter).

  Mr Campbell: I suppose someone has been pulling it. (Laughter).

  Cate read the whole long piece with interest. It was not quite as sordid a tale as most such proceedings were; and the fact that the petitioner was a barrister and the other two were in the theatre added a spice to the whole. George Robey had been mentioned several times, besides other well-known names.

  Mrs Hussey had acted rather imprudently, but how were women supposed to act, in these times? Were they not usually helpless victims of their place in society? A couple of months ago, when he was in Hedlington late in the evening, a woman had offered him her body and, when he shook his head, had offered him her daughter, ‘Only twelve, sir …’ She’d been better dressed and better spoken than most women of the street, face painted, but sad. What had brought her to that pass? He remembered, in the ’90s, you could buy an hour with a guaranteed virgin for under five guineas in London; and you didn’t have to search, either – they were thrust at you. But the fault was the men’s, surely, for demanding such services?

  Women were in a strange position these days. Millions of them worked in sweat shops and cotton mills and no one worried about them there; but with machines replacing manual physical strength in so many occupations, why shouldn’t women drive lorries, steam rollers, make cars, pour steel? There were many nurses, but few women doctors, veterinary surgeons, professors; or directors of companies – and no judges, bishops, barristers, or Members of Parliament, although in these latter cases there was nothing inherently unfeminine about the work. Were women then temperamentally unfit to hold such positions – which many of them surely aspired to – or was it merely traditional male prejudice? And, stemming from that, lack of facilities for women to learn the skills that would fit them for the positions?

  He could not believe that women were congenitally unfit. He could think of a dozen girls, hardly released from day nurseries and the care of governesses, married off after one season and at eighteen or twenty suddenly chatelaines of eighty-room palaces and mistresses of fifty servants, and expected to house, feed, and entertain cabinet ministers, archdukes, international bankers and their wives – or mistresses. And they’d all done it, with aplomb. No one was going to tell him such women could not learn anything, manage anything, if given the chance, and proper training. Nor could he believe it was only the upper-class women who were so gifted – again, it was a matter of education, and opportunity.

  He picked up the paper, but slowly laid it down again. It was a matter of waste, really – not justice or anything else so abstract. Lady Barbara and Lady Helen were being wasted, so was Alice Rowland, so was Carol Adams in Beighton … a dozen other names and faces sprang to mind, including his own daughter Stella; and if he could think of a dozen in a minute, how much waste of women must there be in the whole Kingdom? And was it only sexual? Were men and women not being wasted in great houses doing menial work which was sometimes unnecessary, and sometimes was or soon would be replaceable by machine?

  England could afford such waste now, apparently – but what if there were an economic revolution, and national production had to be greatly increased? Then, he thought, there would also be a social revolution, and a sexual revolution …

  Waste … would a woman be wasted if she were to marry his brother-in-law Tom Rowland? Tom was a bachelor, and dedicated to his Service, but Cate did not recall his name ever being linked with that of any woman. Nor did he seem to need them … as he himself did, he thought ruefully.

  Good heavens, things had come to a pretty pass if for a woman to become a wife could be regarded as a waste … but he knew that he wasn’t thinking of the woman – he was thinking of Tom.

  7 London: Saturday, July 25, 1914

  They sat in the front row of the dress circle, all three in white tie and tails. It was only a music hall in the Strand, but Tom had taken the two boys to an early dinner in the Savoy dining-room, and there evening dress was, of course, compulsory. Besides, Commander Tom Rowland, RN, did not like to go to the theatre – any theatre – in a smoking jacket, still less in a daytime suit. It was not done, certainly not by a naval officer, though increasingly large numbers of people who one would have thought knew better were in fact doing it.

  He sat in the centre, his nephew Guy on his right and Guy’s friend Dick Yeoman on his left. On stage George Robey and an unknown actress were acting out a skit of scatological and sexual innuendo so raw that he was amazed that the Lord Chamberlain had not long since closed the theatre. He glanced surreptitiously at the boys, wondering whether they understood all the allusions,
and what their mothers would say when they heard he had taken them to such a performance. Guy was laughing frankly and unashamedly, and certainly seemed to be aware of all that was being said or hinted at. Dick was a little flushed, often looking down at his hands, not at ease.

  The woman said, ‘When I feels I needs to be alone, I squats among the cabbages and peas.’

  The audience guffawed and slapped its collective thigh. Smoke from two hundred pipes and cigars and a few of the new-fangled cigarettes rose in a blue haze, filling the high theatre, and smarting in the eyes and nostrils. From the dress circle bar behind them there was the crash of broken glass and voices raised in drunken song.

  Guy leaned over to him and whispered, ‘When this show opened, that line was “When I feels the need to be alone, I squats among the artichokes and leeks.” The Lord Chamberlain’s office said she had to change it so she did!’

  The skit went on. George Robey was a darling of the people, especially of Londoners, and the crowd in the gods loved him. He had only to raise those great dense eyebrows for a storm of laughter to rock the old building; the actress, lifted to his level by their partnership, had only to throw away a quite innocent remark for the people to see in it all the caustic innuendo, usually sexual, of Cockaigne. Dick Yeoman was loosening up, and laughing with Guy, albeit not as freely, as though ashamed to be enjoying such filth. Tom saw the humour that made the crowd laugh, but himself felt no sense of fun. He did not want to laugh, but he made himself do it, as he had taught himself to do many things, since childhood, that were done.

  The skit ended, the curtain dropped, and a juggler entertained the audience for ten minutes, not very well. They shifted restively in their seats and from the gods, almost as invisible in the tobacco smoke as the ancient Greek gods in their Olympic clouds, some began to boo. A raucous voice yelled, ‘Pack it up, myte, and go ’ome to yer trouble and strife!’ The juggler gallantly finished his act and vanished, bowing and visibly sweating. The management wasted no time in getting on the next act. The curtain dropped and, while a performing dog danced on its hind legs, caught sticks and balls, and turned somersaults in front of it, thuds and scraping sounds from behind it showed that scenery was being moved into place.

  Guy looked at his programme. ‘“Erin go bragh: Russell Wharton and Edith Fanshawe.”’

  Erin go bragh: Tom thought – Ireland forever. Ireland was a touchy subject these days, with the Ulstermen threatening open rebellion against Home Rule, the government unwilling to enforce it, the army dangerously near mutiny on the subject, and the ordinary Englishman getting very hot under the collar on one side or other of the argument. He was surprised that the theatre management had put the skit or whatever it was into the programme in the first place, and more surprised that fights and riots in the audience had not caused it to be taken out since then. But the crowd was clapping as the curtain rose, to reveal two figures on stage, separated by twenty feet, each isolated in the glare of a separate spotlight, against the backdrop of a city street. The man, on the prompt side, was wearing a labourer’s costume and a battered billycock hat, complete with inverted pipe stuck through the band, of the sort shown in cartoons of Irishmen, and carrying a big shillelagh – none of which served to disguise his sharp good looks and neat citified movements. Waving the shillelagh jauntily he began to sing –

  Up to mighty London came an Irishman one day,

  As the streets are paved with gold, sure everyone was gay

  Singing songs of Piccadilly, Strand, and Leicester Square

  Till Paddy got excited, then he shouted to them there:

  As he sang, figures moved out of the wings on both sides, and walked to and fro, upstage from the principals, pretending to talk, new lights showing them up.

  The singer swung into the chorus, joined at once by the woman and most of the audience:

  It’s a long way to Tipperary, it’s a long way to go.

  It’s a long way to Tipperary, and the sweetest girl I know.

  Goodbye Piccadilly, farewell Leicester Square,

  It’s a long, long way to Tipperary, and my heart’s right there!

  The lights went off the walkers behind, though they could still be dimly seen, and Wharton began the second verse:

  Paddy wrote a letter to his Irish Molly O’

  Say should you not receive it, write and let me know.

  Guy whispered to his uncle, ‘Do you know this song?’

  Tom said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard it.’

  ‘It’s very popular. We have it on our dormitory gramophone.’ The chorus was being sung again, and now Guy and Dick were both humming, while the rest of the audience sang. Tom stared at Wharton. He was not tall, slightly built with blond hair which showed when he waved his billycock – and which Tom thought must be dyed.

  The woman sang alone, in a palpably false Irish accent:

  Molly wrote a neat reply to Irish Paddy O’

  Saying Mike Maloney wants to marry me

  And so leave the Strand and Piccadilly or you’ll be to blame

  For love has fairly drove me silly, hoping you’re the same.

  Everyone was singing, Guy and Dick, too – It’s a long way to Tipperary, it’s a long way to go. Tom hummed with them, having by now got a vague idea of the tune. He marvelled again at the extraordinary solidarity and comradeship of the lower classes. Like their representatives in the navy, the lower deck matloes whom he commanded, they were always ready to quarrel, sing, fight, drink, weep over some sentimental trash, or blow dagoes, wops, froggies, and niggers out of the water … always all together, spiritually linked, as was every man and woman in the theatre.

  Guy muttered, ‘Russell Wharton’s got a good voice, hasn’t he?’

  Tom said, ‘Yes. I don’t think much of Miss Fanshawe, though.’

  Guy said, ‘Wharton’s supposed to have the same tendencies as Oscar Wilde.’

  Tom stared at the man on the stage, his arms now out-flung to embrace the whole audience, the woman standing beside him. So he was one of those, and apparently admitted it, and had learned to live with it. He felt a chill of ice move down his spine, as Wharton seemed to catch his eye, and hold it. Wharton was smiling now, the lips parted, the blue eyes sparkling, looking straight into his own.

  It must be imagination, a trick of the stage lighting. He wrenched his head round – ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘There’s a boy in dormitory whose father writes plays. He’s full of gossip about everything in the theatre.’

  ‘That’s a pretty scandalous thing to say about anyone, isn’t it?’ Tom said.

  ‘I don’t know, Uncle. Does it matter, really?’

  Does it? Tom thought. Perhaps not, if you’re an actor. For others, it mattered greatly; so much so that for many it was quite impossible to admit the fact in the first place, let alone deal with it once one had.

  The curtain swung slowly down, to tremendous applause. The house lights went up, announcing an intermission. ‘I think I could do with a brandy and soda,’ Tom said. ‘Do you fellows want something?’

  ‘My father lets me have a glass of sherry now and then,’ Dick said.

  Guy said briefly, ‘I’m in training.’

  In the street after the performance, the Strand seemed to be one mass of humanity, all moving slowly, though in different directions, along the pavements and in the roadway itself. ‘What a lot of people,’ Dick Yeoman gasped. ‘I’m certainly glad I live in Lyme Regis, not London.’

  ‘It’s not like this always, nor everywhere,’ Tom said. ‘London’s full of lonely, quiet places, if you know where to look. But the Strand on a Saturday night, just when all the theatres are coming out, is not one of them.’

  Guy laughed and at that moment three pert girls came up from behind and, swinging into step beside them, stuck their arms through the men’s, one to each. The girls were all giggling loudly and one said, ‘Now, you’re an ’andsome set of toffs. Wot abaht buying us a little drink?’

  S
he was small and dark haired, with snapping dark eyes. Her clothes were thin and sleazy, pitifully decorated with glass baubles, and a coloured necklace dangled round her neck. Her head was bare – as were all three’s – to the glare of the street lamps. They all wore high-heeled shoes of thin patent leather.

  Tom did not know what to do or say, and he felt a flush rising in his neck. Encounters such as this were rare, thank God, but a man could not totally avoid them; for himself, they acutely embarrassed him. The boys were looking at him, Guy smiling, Dick Yeoman with an expression which he thought must be exactly matched by his own.

  ‘C’mon, guvnor,’ the spokeswoman said, ‘we don’t want no votes, we just want a drink … p’raps a little slap and tickle after, eh? We’re not ugly, are we?’ She let go Guy’s arm, and swung round shaking her behind in the mauve dress, that reached barely to her mid-calf.

  Guy said, ‘What’s your name, miss? Mine’s Guy.’

  ‘Aow, wot a luverly nime! I’m Rosie.’

  ‘Same as my grandmother,’ Guy said.

  ‘We’d better be getting on home,’ Tom said nervously. Oh God, why couldn’t he deal with women – any women – with the easy grace that Guy was showing? The girl was already less cocky: in a few minutes he’d have her eating out of his hand, and being servilely polite. As it was they were attracting amused glances and sotto voce advice from the passersby. ‘Go on home, girls,’ Tom said. He felt in his pocket, found a coin and held it out – ‘Buy a drink and leave these boys alone. They’re only schoolboys.’

  The dark girl swung on him, hands on hips, ‘And you’re a poncing nance, ain’t he, girls? Wot’s wrong wiv us? You like us, don’t you, Mister Guy?’ She seized Guy’s elbow. ‘Wouldn’t you like to come along wiv us?’