Now, God be Thanked

by John Masters

  She stood behind Naomi, took the brush, and began long sweeping strokes. Naomi closed her eyes. The room felt warm and comfortable. Rachel talked in a low tone as she brushed – ‘Goodness, how black the water is! You must have been filthy!’

  Naomi mumbled, ‘The roofs of Cambridge are picturesque, and also very dirty.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘Trinity. Great Gate, Hall … and the Lantern.’

  ‘You shouldn’t, you really shouldn’t. It makes me sick just to think of it.’

  ‘Harry’s going to France in a fortnight.’

  ‘Poor man.’

  ‘He’s nice. So’s Stan, in a quieter way.’

  ‘You’re not in love with either of them, are you?’

  Naomi opened her eyes – ‘Good gracious, no! They seem – very young. As though they were still undergraduates … much younger than me, anyway.’

  ‘Men always seem younger than women, I think. They are childish. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t go to war.’

  ‘But, Rachel, we couldn’t help it. There was the treaty we’d signed, guaranteeing Belgium’s neutrality.’

  Rachel said, ‘I know about that – but the war could have been avoided, if men had really wanted to. Now, it’s so much worse than anyone imagined. It would stop soon enough if the men refused to go – all men, Germans, Austrians, Russians, French, British …’

  ‘But Rachel, you were in favour of conscription. You said it was the only fair way.’

  ‘I was … but I was wrong. The only fair way is to stop the war. No one should go, especially working men. The aristocrats and capitalists can go, if they want to. We’ll be better off without them.’

  ‘Do you count my father as an aristocrat? Or Uncle Christopher?’

  ‘I know them, and like them … but, yes, they’re aristocrats, parasites, really, if you look at it from the socialist point of view.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know … I only know that if Lord Kitchener’s right, and the war goes on for another two years, there won’t be any men left.’

  ‘Would that be so terrible? If there are no men, women will have to take over everything – banks, industry, commerce, insurance, teaching, government … You ought to read Das Kapital’

  ‘I can’t read German.’

  ‘It’s been translated, of course. I think women will make our society socialist more easily and completely than men could ever bring themselves to.’

  Naomi yawned, ‘That’s enough, Rachel. Thank you … I’m going to bed.’ The rhythmical brushing went on, becoming more slow. Rachel’s voice was lower, hoarser, close to her ear, uncertain. ‘Naomi, you are beautiful … beautiful …’ Hands were under her armpits, helping her up, now round her waist, guiding her. She fell back on the bed, on top of the bedclothes, warm in the May night. In the new silence she heard the nightingale again, muffled by the curtains, but plain and strong and lovely. The light went out … a body slid down beside her on the bed. She felt no horror or aversion but waited, lying relaxed, to know what would follow, to learn who and what she was.

  Naomi lay awake in her bed, the room bathed in morning light. When Rachel left her she thought she would not be able to go to sleep for hours, wondering, working out … but no, she had fallen sound asleep within five minutes, remembering only Rachel’s last words, ‘I love you, more than any man could.’ And the last kiss, planted on her lips, to which she had tried to respond; but had not.

  She had enjoyed the act, she could not deny it. It might happen again – probably would. Was she then, like Sappho, a lesbian, sapphic? She had heard it whispered that two of the other girls here were … and two of the dons as well. When she had first fully understood what such a relationship implied, she had thought it unnatural, and unclean. Now she was experiencing it herself, and it didn’t seem unclean at all, but rather warm and lovely … a new sort of trust and something shared, that she had not thought could be shared by women. Yet, try as she would, she could not see her relationship with Rachel growing. It was the first shared sexual act of her life, and it ought to be important, as the loss of her virginity would be: but it wasn’t. There was no place here for expansion of love – only the needs of the moment, when her body would demand it and it would take place.

  Rachel had told her, as they lay there together in each other’s arms, that she had always had crushes on other girls, though she had never before brought them to consummation. Naomi had wondered whether that was because she was afraid of being rebuffed by boys. Was Rachel, then, truly sapphic? She had asked her. Rachel had not replied for a time, then whispered, ‘I don’t know. If I could fall in love with a man, perhaps I’d find out, but men are so … such … bullies. They’re like the worst sort of stupid aristocrat. They think everything belongs to them, including us, just because they’re men.’

  Naomi got out of bed and stood in the window, looking out. Girton was a sanctuary … from men … from the university even, being two miles out of Cambridge, and isolated from all contacts with the rest of the university’s life … from the world. She knew she was in a state of betwixt and between … not girl, not woman: not lesbian, not wife nor lover: not suffragist, not meek traditional woman … waiting, waiting …

  She was wrong, in thinking just now that she was not a woman. She was. If there were no war, perhaps she would still be a girl, but the war was changing everything, for all women, especially her. Spring was gone, summer upon her. Girton was not the place to wait, in a woman’s early summer, in wartime. Nor were Hedlington or High Staining, arguing with her parents over her future, making petty gestures of dissent, getting locked up for the night, being bound over for committing a breach of the peace – events which would once have seemed of enormous consequence, but now – nothing. What, then, was the place for her?

  There were women in France – nurses. But she was not a nurse and the war would be over before she could learn. What skills did she have? And she didn’t mean book learning or things that were done in offices with paper and typewriters. She needed to go out into the world … She could drive a car, and she knew more than a little about the mechanics of motor cars – learned while growing up as a Rowland, even as a girl. There’d be places for women to drive cars perhaps in France, and working with men, she hoped, not in isolated groups of women, such as Girton … She must go out into the world to find the true Naomi Rowland – not a student moulded by the discipline of the cloister, but a woman moulded by the discipline of her work, and self respect.

  She put on her dressing gown and went along to the earth closet. By the time she’d finished the gyps would have brought up hot water, and a jug. Then she’d have to tell Rachel.

  After an early breakfast she knocked on Rachel’s door. Rachel called, ‘Come in … Oh, Naomi, you look so serious.’ She shut the door and held out both hands. Naomi took them, and said, ‘I’m leaving Girton. At once.’

  Rachel’s hands dropped, her jaw dropped, her protruding eyes swelled. ‘What? You can’t mean it! … You mean it? Before the Tripos exam next week?’

  Naomi said, ‘I must go out and be myself, not a member of the college, the university, even my family.’

  Rachel sat down heavily. ‘What are you going to do?’ she muttered.

  ‘Find out more about the women’s services,’ Naomi said, ‘then join the one that offers the most opportunities for me.’ She saw that Rachel was crying, tears slowly filling her eyes and trickling down her cheeks on to her blouse. ‘Don’t cry,’ she said, sitting down on the arm of the chair and stroking Rachel’s hair. ‘We’re not going to lose each other.’

  ‘Is this … because of … what happened last night?’ Rachel asked in a choked voice.

  Naomi searched carefully for words, because she had to tell the truth, but she did not want to hurt her friend. She said, ‘In a way … that was a sort of symptom of what I’m suffering from, not the thing itself. It’s frustration, I suppose … and I’m not the only one. Johnny Merritt told me his sister feels just the same
at that women’s university she’s at in America … Smith, I think it’s called. I’ve tried being a suffragette … protesting against injustice, for conscription … forgetting about politics and enjoying being what my family would like me to be, a fox hunter, a county girl … roof climbing, that’s silly, really, what we did last night … You said you loved me. I love you, too, but not in the way you do, and I don’t see how I ever will. I mean, I’ll fall in love with a man one day, I suppose, and it won’t make any difference to the way I love you … I’m frustrated, Rachel, and I’ve got to get out, and … be what I ought to be.’

  Rachel continued to cry, whispering, ‘I can’t stay on without you. I told you, no one here likes me, except you.’

  ‘You must get your degree,’ Naomi said.

  Rachel said, ‘They want me to be a teacher, and finish up as headmistress of a girls’ school, and I used to want that, too, but every day it seems more useless … Secretly, I’ve been thinking the same as you, finding the university more childish, more remote from the reality of the world … something I ought to be free of, to do what I want to do.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Politics,’ Rachel said. ‘I want to go into the socialist movement, in politics.’

  ‘Then why don’t you? You don’t need a degree for that.’

  Rachel stood up, staring at Naomi. ‘Why not? They want organizers everywhere. The party is young. I’ll go wherever they send me. But I’ll try to get to Hedlington, to be close to you.’

  Naomi said briefly, ‘That will be lovely, Rachel … but remember, I have no idea where I’ll be going, eventually. I’m going to telephone my father now, and leave by the first train, as soon as I can get packed, probably after lunch. I’ll have to tell Miss Jones or J-B first.’

  ‘I’ll stay till the end of the term,’ Rachel said, ‘and wait to hear from you, where you are. Oh Naomi, how exciting! I could never have broken out by myself.’

  She rushed into Naomi’s arms, hugging and kissing. Naomi, nearly nine inches taller, held her friend’s head to her breast and looked over her, out of the window, at the world.

  Daily Telegraph, Tuesday, May 18, 1915

  SUNDAY’S BATTLE

  Great Bombardment

  British Headquarters, FRANCE, Sunday. In the Festubert region of the La Bassée line the British troops made assaults today, in the morning, and again later in the afternoon, and reports to hand show that material progress has been made.

  From a coign of vantage only some three miles distant from the British trenches, I was enabled this afternoon to follow the operations in this sector of the line … Away to the left over Festubert hung a dark pall of smoke that seemed to grow in intensity as I watched. Shells were bursting the whole time – a dazzling flash, a cloud of smoke, and then a dull boom. The green fumes of the lyddite mingled with the black cloud produced by the ‘Jack Johnsons’, and over all screamed the shrapnel, leaving a little speck of white as it burst … The guns never ceased, and now and again a reddish glare, ascending to the sky, showed where a ‘grandmamma’, as the heavy shells have been fancifully nicknamed, had started a conflagration in some ruined building. An occasional shell was dropped into La Bassée, but our fire was concentrated on Festubert, where the Germans have organized some strong redoubts, fortified with machine-guns.

  Back in the town, only a few miles away from the firing line, everything was going on as usual. Only the passing of a few Red Cross cars laden with wounded showed that an engagement was proceeding so near.

  The sight of a convoy of a hundred German prisoners marching through the street under strong escort was a token of our successful advance … Beside the keen, well-cut faces of their bronzed guard, they showed up in very poor contrast and the picture would have convinced even the most pronounced pessimist of the immense superiority of the Tommy over the German private.

  Christopher Cate leafed through the paper again: attacks near Arras … short German withdrawal to their main positions in the Ypres sector … Allied aviators destroy an artillery park with their bombs … a Zeppelin drops bombs on the coastal town of Ramsgate and injures three people: the townsfolk are concerned lest the incident affect their summer season. The Germans and Austrians are advancing fast and far against the Russians, and it is possible that Russia will soon be knocked out of the war … but not, Cate thought, probable: there was still plenty of Russian territory to fall back on.

  Something made him glance up and look out of the window, and he saw his nephew Boy Rowland walking across the grass to the front door. Cate hurried out and was there before Boy reached it. Cate held out his hand and they shook, warmly, Cate saying, ‘I thought you were still in hospital. You look well, considering. And congratulations on your MC.’

  ‘They sent me home yesterday, Uncle. Thought I’d stroll over and tell you I was at home. I have to exercise every day, anyway.’ He took a deep breath. He was pale, with only spots of colour on his cheeks, and now coughed drily into his handkerchief. When the fit was over he said, ‘I can’t believe it … no guns … no mud… no snipers.’

  ‘Have you had breakfast, Boy?’

  ‘I’m not hungry, thanks, Uncle … just want to walk in the fresh air … in England …’

  ‘Your father and mother all right? I haven’t spoken to them or seen them in a week or more … been very busy.’

  ‘They’re fine, thanks. High Staining’s full of women, though. It feels funny … Lady Helen, Carol Adams, the girl from London, don’t know her name yet ’

  ‘Surely you don’t object to a little femininity after your bachelor life in the trenches?’

  Boy laughed, and coughed again. Then he said, ‘No, I like it. It’s just strange. I’ll get used to it … I’ll go on now, Uncle … walk up to Beighton later, perhaps.’

  ‘Wait a minute, Boy. I’ll come with you. Wait till I get my cap and stick and Jack and Jill.’

  A few minutes later they walked together down the lane towards Walstone, the cocker spaniels at heel. Cate said, ‘What is it really like out there, Boy? I can’t imagine it, and what I read in the papers doesn’t help, somehow. In fact, it seems to make it even harder for the mind to picture.’

  Boy did not answer for such a long time that Cate, stricken with guilt, cried, ‘Please don’t answer if you don’t like to think about it, Boy. How inconsiderate of me, when all you want to do is forget!’

  Boy said slowly, ‘I do want to forget, Uncle, while I’m here, yes … but I’ll never be able to … ever. And I also want to try to define what I really feel … It’s dangerous out there, most of the time. Sometimes it’s very dangerous. You don’t sleep well, or eat well, or breathe well … You see friends dying before your eyes, and cannot help. You’re afraid half the time, and bored the other half … But what’s worst, for me, is the smell. The war smells, Uncle … smells foul … not like a farmyard or a pigsty, like a huge pile of human shit … sorry, excrement … in which there are bloated and blackened corpses rotting … Before I was gassed and sent home, I used to think of what I’d do on leave … dance with a pretty girl in London … play cricket for the village on a June afternoon … drink English beer … Do you know what’s the only thing I want to do? Breathe air that doesn’t have that smell.’ His voice was trembling.

  28 Hampstead Heath: Whit Monday, May 24, 1915

  The six of them walked slowly up Heath Street from Hampstead tube station, taking their pace from the rest of the crowd surging up the steep between the old houses, the bow windows, the brass door knockers, the lace curtains – Niccolo Fagioletti, Bill Hoggin, and Frank Stratton in front, and Ethel, Ruth, and Anne behind, Ruth carrying baby Launcelot in her arms. The sun shone, the pubs were all open, and malty gusts of beer and porter wafted out as they passed under each swinging, brightly painted sign. It was Whit Monday, the cockneys’ special holiday of the year; and they were on their way to the cockneys’ favourite meeting ground for the day – Hampstead Heath.

  Bill Hoggin threw back over his should
er, ‘’Ow old’s the little ’un now, Ruth? Buggered if I can remember.’

  ‘Three months and three days ’ Ruth answered, giving Launcelot a proud little shake to which he made no response: he was a good baby, and fast asleep.

  They trudged on up, their faces darkening with the exertion and the rising strength of the sun. The distinctive lilt and thud of steam organ music came strongly down the hill and Frank said, ‘Remember that roundabout at the Sheep Fair, Bill?’

  ‘I bloody do. Fair mess, that was.’

  ‘I seen worse. We said we never would, remember?’

  Hoggin jerked his head down New End. ‘’Ere, let’s drop in on the Duke and ’ave one. This ’ill’s bloody steep.’

  ‘You had one at the Horse and Groom,’ Ruth said reproachfully, but the men pushed into the Duke of Hamilton’s crowded public bar, Bill shouting over the heads of the crowd at the bar, ‘Three pints of bitter! Anything for you ladies? Orright, you’d only ’ave to go pissing be’ind the bushes and chances are you’d find ’alf a dozen other women there already. What ho, Frank! What ho, Nick! An’ you can drink to your brave boys, eh, now that Italy’s come into the war.’

  Niccolo said, ‘They’re not my boys no more. I’m British.’

  ‘Well, you’d better not go an’ visit your ma and pa back ’ome, ’cos they’ll put you into uniform quicker’n you can say O sole Mio. You was born in Italy, wasn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Niccolo said briefly. He raised his tankard and drank. He didn’t really like beer, especially not English beer, but thought it best not to make himself act ‘foreign’, particularly with the Strattons – and this Bill Hoggin, his brother-in-law. He had not met Hoggin often, and hoped he never would, for he was afraid of him. He had known some men like that in Italy when he was very young – unpredictable, powerful brutes – and he had been afraid of them, too. Hoggin was even less predictable, because he was Anglo-Saxon.

  They finished the beer and, wiping their mouths with the backs of their hands, struggled back into the street and on up the hill. Niccolo took off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder, after Bill had done it first. ‘Go on, take your coat off,’ Hoggin said to Frank. ‘It’s ’ot as ’ell.’