It was actually in Zimmerwald, a village eight miles to the south. Arriving there by horse cab on what she thought was the opening day, Caitlin learned from locals that the only group holding a meeting was an ornithological society, which had hired half the rooms at the Beau Séjour Rest Home. She took directions and sought out the building in question. As she’d anticipated, the topics under discussion on the colonnaded terrace were police informers and print runs, not the Lesser-Spotted Whatever.
It took her the best part of an hour to gain admittance to the conference. Journalists were not welcome, and Kollontai’s promised letter had not arrived. It was only when one of the female delegates—a kindly Russian named Angelica Balabanova—took her to see Kollontai’s “Uncle Lenin” that things turned in her favor. This short, bald, bearded man seemed, at first sight, a lot more ordinary than Kollontai had led Caitlin to believe, but he was good at arguing a case and, once convinced of her sympathies, managed to win her a watching brief and one of the no-shows’ rooms. He was, she thought, excited by the prospect of American publicity.
Over the next few days, she sometimes wondered why she’d bothered. Discussions and formal meetings took place in a bewildering variety of languages, and it was only the help of another woman, an English-speaking Dutch socialist named Henriette Roland-Holst, that kept her more or less in touch with what was going on. They all seemed to accept the old Second International line that class loyalties had precedence over national allegiances, but they definitely differed over how much abuse should be heaped on those who had decided otherwise during that fateful August. Lenin and his friends wanted no truck with the moderate socialists, now or ever, but a majority of those present were still hoping to induce a change of mind and insisted on a manifesto that simply put the case for peace.
Caitlin had her doubts about it all. They seemed like a very exclusive group, there didn’t seem much evidence for the widespread support they claimed, and the picture-postcard village outside lent the whole proceeding an unreal air. And then there were the delegates. Sometimes she wondered whether these men and women, who were all so concerned about the world and its problems, weren’t just a tad unworldly; they seemed to believe that anything obvious to them must be obvious to everyone else.
But they were trying to deal with the big issues and the terrible mess that the world was in. No one else seemed to be. She could see why Kollontai had thrown in her lot with this bunch, and when they all rose to sing “The Internationale” at the end of the conference, she felt almost like a believer. On the way back to Berne, she remembered something her father had once said, that a stirring tune could make a sucker out of anyone.
On her last evening in Switzerland, she wrote a long letter to Kollontai giving her impressions of the Zimmerwald gathering and a short piece for her American employers describing the secret conference and its rationale. As she’d promised Lenin, no names, dates, or places were included in the latter lest the Swiss authorities decide that their hospitality was being abused. Then, with one on the wire and the other in the post, she took yet another train, this one to the French frontier, where an equally rigorous inspection was conducted with rather more soothing shrugs and smiles.
She reached Paris on September 12, booked into a cheap hotel in Montmartre, and spent the next few days exploring the city and finding her professional feet. This was what her fellow journalists considered “the real world,” the one in which most people thought that the war was worth fighting and that winning was what really mattered. Over the next few weeks, as the so-called Autumn Offensives got under way, the cafés were full of men poring over their papers and maps of the relevant parts of the front. The headlines dubbed them the Second Battle of Champagne and the Third Battle of Loos, which gave the impression that “try and try again” had become the French army’s official motto. Both rumbled on with little apparent success, leaving all the café strategists frowning at their unchanged maps. At Loos the British had the decency to lose all the ground they had gained in three short days and then call the whole thing off.
But as far as Caitlin could tell, there was still no significant opposition to the war among the general public, and the only sign of it among the so-called intelligentsia was a new satirical magazine named Le Canard Enchaîné—“The Fettered Duck”—which was due to publish its first edition in a few weeks’ time.
Paris itself seemed little changed from her only previous visit, several years before the war. There was rationing, but you could still get an excellent meal, and most of the theaters and cinema houses were open for business. After a brief pause to check the public mood, the fashion houses had reasserted themselves, and pale rose was in vogue that autumn, along with slightly lifted waistlines and sleeves that flared at the wrist. The couturiers gave no sign of having noticed that more and more women were wearing black.
Caitlin wrote a couple of pieces in this vein—her German ones had been well received by all but rabid Anglophiles—and wondered how she could get permission to visit the Allied front line. She wasn’t optimistic but felt she had to try.
The British sector seemed a better bet—there would be no language problem, for one thing—but she soon learned from other journalists that the British authorities in France were unlikely to be sympathetic. She would have to pull strings in London and hope that those her friends and contacts approached would not know that her brother had recently died in the Tower. This was not unlikely—the sentences and executions had been much more widely publicized than had the names of those involved.
She contacted anyone who might be able to help—friends she made in the London embassy during Colm’s incarceration, more recent acquaintances in Fleet Street, others she had met through Sylvia—and worked on their needs and prejudices—the Allies’ desire to keep the American public on their side, the journalists’ dislike of forbidden access, progressive women’s hatred of unequal treatment.
All she wanted was what the Germans had already given her, a visit to a hospital just behind the front. A comparison piece should be good, and as far as she knew, no one else had done one. And if she got that close, then a visit to one of the towns where off-duty soldiers went to indulge their vices could also prove productive. She might even find one willing to smuggle her farther forward. The authorities’ blanket refusal to allow women anywhere near the trenches irked her enormously, and their claim that it was for the women’s own protection angered her even more.
As she lay awake in bed one night, two things occurred to her. One was that someone she already knew would find it harder to spin her a line. The other was that Jack’s brother, Jed, and their mutual friend Mac were the only young men she knew who might be serving at the front. Jack had mentioned more than once how much he feared another war, because he guessed that the others would join the rush to enlist.
Had they? If so, were they still alive? How could she find out?
It took a week of messages pinging to and fro between London and Paris before she finally reached someone with a sympathetic ear and access to the current service records. As of September 1, Jed McColl had been with the Royal Scots Fusiliers, and that regiment, she discovered without much difficulty, had recently been involved in the fighting around Loos, in which several thousand men had perished. Had he been one of them?
The news of his survival reached her three days later, on the same day as permission was granted to visit a field hospital just outside Arras. Hoping the British army’s mail service was as quick and efficient as everyone said it was, she wrote to Jed, suggesting a meeting. She knew that the troops were rotated on a more-or-less weekly basis, a week in the forward trenches, a week in the support trenches, then a week behind the lines resting up, so she told him she would be in Arras for the first three weeks of October and hoped that he could manage to get there during that time. She told him she’d be staying at the Hôtel du Lac, hoping it would still be there. Two of the Paris-based British war correspondents
had assured her it was the town’s only decent hotel, but neither had been there for several months.
The Hôtel du Lac was still standing, unlike much of the town, which had clearly taken quite a battering in recent weeks. It was still subject to the occasional attentions of the German air force, but there always seemed plenty of warning, and the hotel had a large cellar. The off-duty troops who thronged the streets and bars seemed oblivious to any threat, but after what they’d all been through, a place like this was bound to feel like a haven of safety.
Caitlin visited the nearby British hospital on her second day there. It was messier than the German one, but in every other respect—the wounds and the smell, the cries and moans, the opinions of the doctors, nurses, and patients—there was little to tell them apart. Which would have been almost comical if it hadn’t been so tragic. Over the next few days, she wrote half a dozen drafts of the resulting piece, each one a little less angry than its predecessor, until she was satisfied that she wouldn’t just put people’s backs up.
And then she waited, without much optimism, for Jed to turn up. Part of her almost hoped he wouldn’t, and she had plenty of time to assess her own motives for reestablishing contact with Jack’s brother. Was she being professional and going after a story in the way that seemed best? Or was she using professionalism as an excuse to reopen the past? A bit of both, perhaps. Kollontai’s “unfinished business” still seemed annoyingly close to the mark.
She’d been in Arras for over a week when Jed walked in through the hotel entrance. She was sitting in the lobby and recognized only the familiar walk—the short hair, mustache, and uniform were all new.
He sat down beside her, shaking his head. “I didn’t really believe you’d be here,” was the first thing he said. “How are you?”
The smile was the same, the eyes more watchful. “I’m fine,” she said, trying to ignore the sudden quickening of her heart. Seeing him sitting there, she was back in the dining room on board the Manchuria, swapping jokes with her lover’s brother. “Look,” she said, “why don’t I get us a cup of tea?”
“A beer would be better.” As she walked across to reception to request a couple of glasses, she found herself taking deep breaths. She had told herself this might be difficult, and boy, had she been right.
She asked the clerk at reception for two glasses of beer. At least Jed didn’t look like Jack, she thought as she walked back toward him.
“What are you doing here?” he asked once she was seated again.
“I’m here as a journalist. I’ve just visited a hospital near here, and I did the same on the other side.”
“The German side?!”
“We Americans are still officially neutral. I spent most of August in Berlin.”
He shook his head again. “How are they doing over there?” he asked wryly.
“Much the same as you are over here.”
He smiled. “Poor buggers.”
“Is that how you feel about the Germans, that they’re fellow victims?”
“No, not really. We try not to feel anything about them.”
The beer arrived. “Cheers,” he said, and took a swig. “Mmm, not bad.”
“Didn’t you and the Germans play football together last Christmas?”
His eyes lit up. “We did.”
“In a friendly spirit?”
“More or less. The odd tackle over the top, but pretty friendly.”
“What’s a tackle over the top?”
“Going for the leg rather than the ball.”
“Do you think there’ll be another match this Christmas?”
“I doubt it. The top brass weren’t too pleased about the last one.”
“Why not?”
He gave her a pitying look. “It’s harder to kill people you know.”
A group of British soldiers walked into the lobby, and while the corporal talked to the desk clerk, the privates happily stared at her. When one seemed set on introducing himself, his friends called him back. “Let them be,” she thought she heard one boy say.
They all looked dreadfully young, but Jed seemed quite a bit older than she remembered. When they’d met on the Manchuria, he had still seemed a boy, albeit a nice one. He’d done a lot of growing up in the last eighteen months. So, she supposed, had most of Europe’s young men. “Is Mac with you?” she asked.
He smiled. “Yes, we’re still together. He’s a sergeant now.”
And Jed was a corporal, she noticed. “I’ve talked to a lot of soldiers,” she said. “I used to hang around the cafés near Victoria and meet them coming and going. A few refuse to talk, but most are willing. It’s probably the American accent.”
“I can think of another reason.”
She felt herself blushing, something she hadn’t done in years. “Well, maybe that, too. Anyway, I don’t get the feeling they tell me the truth. I don’t mean they lie—they just don’t tell me how they really feel about what you’re all going through. Do they think they’ll upset me, or do they just not want to think about it themselves?”
“Neither,” Jed said. “They think it’s a waste of breath. That anyone who hasn’t been through it can never understand it, so what’s the point? And they’re right. It’s like . . . oh, I don’t know—I had a friend who said it was like trying to tell someone who’s never had children what it was like to lose a child. They just wouldn’t get it.”
“But people have imaginations,” she argued. “And I think it’s only when people at home can imagine what it’s really like that they’ll do something to stop it.”
This time the look was disbelieving. “You think ordinary people could stop this? How could they?”
“Okay, but humor me. Let me tell you what I think it’s like, and you can laugh at my naïveté.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Well. First, the conditions are terrible, especially in winter. You’re cold, you’re wet, you’ve got lice—”
“I’ve just been deloused. But I wouldn’t sit too close—they never seem to get them all.”
“Just that would drive me mad,” she admitted.
“You almost get used to it.”
She shivered. “Anyway . . . the conditions are dreadful. And I presume you’re frightened most of the time. With good reason. You never know when a shell might land right next to you, and you never know when the generals are going to order you over the top. Generals who’ve shown over and over again that they haven’t a clue what they’re doing. How am I doing so far?”
“It’s all true.”
“But?”
“You can’t ignore the smells. Bodies out in no-man’s-land that can’t be carried because they fall apart in your hands. Dead horses and rats. Shit, of course—it’s like living with a really bad fart for months on end. You can smell the front trenches from a mile away.”
“What else?”
He took a sip of the beer and put the glass down with what seemed exaggerated care. There was a look in his eyes she’d never seen before. “Cruel” was the word that came to mind.
“I used to take the human body for granted,” he began conversationally. “What you saw was what you saw. Just another person. And sometimes I still see them that way. But mostly they’re bags, bags made of skin, crammed full of blood and flesh. And the bags get punctured so easily, and all that stuff falls out. Slithers out, usually. Brains, intestines. You see men who’ve suddenly realized that their bag has split, and they’re desperately trying to hold it together, but they can’t. You see someone you know well, someone you’ve seen talk and laugh and eat and smoke, and suddenly the mouth that did these things is gone and there’s nothing there under the nose but blood pumping out, and the eyes are still open, full of horror. And you think, Thank God that isn’t me.” He fell silent, eyes turned inward, as if remembering something.
Caitlin
said nothing for several moments, letting the waves of pity and anger slowly subside. “Shall I get us another beer?” she asked eventually.
“Why not? But first I must visit the gents’.”
Back at the table before him, she took in the surroundings. The threadbare carpet wouldn’t last many more weeks, and cobwebs were multiplying above the brocade curtains. A harassed-looking officer walked in from the street and scanned the chairs, his young face crumpling in disappointment when he saw that no one was there to meet him.
Grinning, Jed sank back into his seat. “Hard to believe we thought this fighting business would all be a bit of a lark.”
“One of the Germans boys I met said much the same,” she told him. Where would governments be without a ready supply of young men craving adventure? “I’ve tried to get to the front,” she told Jed, “but the authorities won’t hear of it, and no one’ll risk taking me without permission.”
“It’s not worth it,” he said. “You’d never get there unobserved, and even if you could—what for? You wouldn’t learn anything. It would be like visiting a prison—you’d see the cell, but that wouldn’t tell you how it felt to be locked up for years on end.”
“You’re probably right, but I’d still like to go.”
“Not with my help.” He smiled to take the sting out of the refusal and then changed the subject. “It’s probably none of my business, but what happened between you and Jack?”
There was that heartbeat again. “Didn’t he tell you?” she asked, though she wasn’t surprised. How could she tell Jed she didn’t want to talk about his brother? Especially when she did.
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