by Nancy Carson
‘End of September. Ooh, I’m that pleased. But I’m that frit as well. I just hope to God as nothing goes wrong this time.’
‘I’ll pray for you, May … Oh, wait till Mother knows. Have you told our Joe yet?’
‘He knows all right. He’s proud as Punch. That’s why he’s playing like Paderewski tonight, bless him. Hark at him.’
Lizzie laughed. She was heavily pregnant herself, yet again, expecting her third child in little over a month. They had not intended this one and, at first, she was not pleased about it. Herbert would be barely a year old when this next child was born. Her body was getting no respite; bearing children and giving succour to them was wearing. Ben was more enthusiastic, though, and said he hoped they’d have ten; somebody to look after them in their old age. Yes, she’d replied, it was all right for him; he didn’t have to carry them for nine months; he didn’t have to get up in the middle of the night to feed them; he didn’t have to wash their dirty napkins. Yet soon enough Lizzie accepted it willingly, and quite fancied the idea of another son.
Now she was happy for May. She knew just how much her sister-in-law had longed for a child, and how anxious Joe was that they’d met with no success. They must be ecstatic.
‘D’you want to keep it secret, May?’
‘Keep it secret? Why, I’m like a dog with two bones. I want to bawl it from the top of Cawney Hill.’
‘Well there’s no need. Phyllis Fat’s over there. She’s got a mouth bigger than a parish oven. Tell her tonight and the world’ll know tomorrow. But let me tell everybody in here, eh?’ She took a sip of her beer. ‘Here’s to you, May.’
When Joe finished playing and was ready for his next tune, Lizzie stood up and called to him. Joe turned round.
‘Everybody, there’s something you should all know.’ She gained attention straight away. ‘Our Joe’s going to be a father in September, and it’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time.’ She took up her glass again, raising it into the air. ‘Here’s to you both – to the three of you.’
Everybody cheered, raised their glasses, and drank. May blushed vividly as she received everybody’s congratulations.
‘How about a round of drinks, Joe?’ called Colonel Bradley, who was really a woman. She wore men’s clothes, had a military bearing, but drank and swore like a collier.
Ben got up from his stool and went to the bar. He placed a half sovereign on the counter and asked Jack to fill everybody’s glass.
‘It’ll be worth it, just so’s I don’t have to hear ’em going on all the time about how they wish they could have a child,’ Ben remarked to Jack Clayton. ‘Jesus, I only have to throw me trousers over the bed rail and our Lizzie’s caught again.’
Chapter 12
In June 1914 two million people, including Ben Kite, were laid off work as a result of strikes by railwaymen, miners and building workers. Ben was incensed that his earnings should be cut for causes with which he had utterly no sympathy. It affected him the more since Lizzie presented him with their third child, born on the 21st; another daughter, to be christened Alice.
So besides a wife and a mother-in-law to support he was now father to three young children. His only source of income while he was laid off work was from produce he could sell from his allotment. It didn’t amount to much, but the allotment also yielded some free food for their table. Meat of course, was not free, and they had to do without, until Beccy Crump donated one of her hens, which Lizzie plucked and drew and roasted one Sunday.
Besides all the industrial strife that seemed never ending, the suffragettes had been misbehaving again, setting fire to churches this time. Ben swore he would set fire to that damned Mrs Pankhurst and oblige the rest of civilised society, if ever he came across her.
When she could finally sit down in an evening, Lizzie read the newspapers Ben brought home; and what she read did not reassure her about the future. It had become clear that war in Europe was inevitable. She didn’t understand the issues as Ben did, but she was afraid that Great Britain could never stay out of it. She feared for other women; women like herself who might lose husbands or sons. She recalled the heartache she felt when her own father was killed so needlessly by Jack Clancey’s runaway horse and cart, and tried to imagine how she would feel if she lost Ben, just as needlessly, on the battlefield. The thought sent a shudder down her spine. How would her children turn out, deprived of a father? How would she and her mother cope having three children to feed? Would she ever get over the heartbreak? It was a monstrously depressing thought.
But she knew she needn’t concern herself. Thank God, they would be safe from such traumas, because Ben was in an essential job, ladling the pig iron that the local foundries needed to produce engine blocks and pistons, gearbox casings, arms and munitions, parts for machine tools, for locomotives, and for anything that was produced from cast iron – when he was not laid off. He would never have to go and fight, and she was eternally thankful. At least he would stay at home, safe. They would remain a complete family.
*
Ben arrived home sweating and grubby from his allotment on the first Monday in August. It was a bank holiday and the weather was hot and humid. Lizzie, breast feeding Alice when he came in, noticed his worried expression. Herbert was in his high chair, his face smeared in home-made damson jam, and he was busily rubbing a crust of bread into his fair hair. Henzey sat at the table, her pretty face just peering above it, drinking a cup of milk.
‘Have you heard the news, our Lizzie?’
Lizzie’s face dropped at the gravity in his voice. ‘No. What is it, Ben?’
He took off his jacket and hung it behind the cellar door, then peered at himself in the mirror over the mantelpiece, inspecting the stubble on his chin.
‘The damned Kaiser’s declared war on France. To get there he’ll invade Belgium. You know what that means?’ He turned from the mirror and sat beside her on the brown leatherette couch. ‘We could be at war tomorrow, our Lizzie. Asquith’s already told the Germans we shall stand by the Treaty of London.’
‘What’s the Treaty of London mean?’
‘Well, it guarantees Belgian neutrality. It means we’re obliged to defend ’em.’
‘Oh, God, no. So when did you hear this?’
‘There’s a special edition of the paper tonight. I’ve just met Alf Collins in Brown Street. He let me read his. I’ve tried to buy one, but everywhere’s sold out.’
For months Ben had seen the threat growing with the massive build up of arms in the whole of Europe; Germany vying for naval supremacy with new submarines and warships, Russia quadrupling her army. The assassination of the Habsburg heir, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, at Sarajevo in Bosnia, a province that Austria had seized in 1908, had precipitated their invasion of Serbia, so drawing in the Russians, who supported Serbia. Thus, the Triple Alliance with the Austro-Hungarian Empire bound the Kaiser to declare war on the Czar. The signing of the Triple Entente in 1893, initiated by their mutual fear of invasion by Germany, meant that France was Russia’s ally. And in order to attack France, German forces would march through Belgium, embroiling the British.
‘What’s for tea, Lizzie?’
‘Rabbit pie, love. Mother’ll serve it up in a minute. She’s in the brewhouse. Why don’t you go out and have your wash, and tell her you’re back? … What are you smiling at?’
‘Well, if I go to the brewhouse for a wash she’ll see I’m back. I won’t need to tell her.’
Lizzie tutted, incredulous that at such a time he should find something that trivial so amusing. The child she was suckling momentarily lost her nipple, and she guided it back to her searching mouth.
Ben looked at his son, covered in jam, and he smiled again. He put his hand on Henzey’s head and felt her soft hair. ‘All right, my little sweetheart?’ he asked, almost in a whisper. She nodded, grinning with a mouthful of bread, and he bent down to plant a kiss on her grubby cheek. Ben prayed silently, as he stripped off his shirt and vest, that God might spare
him to see his children grow up.
Next day, August 4th, Britain declared war on Germany.
*
That month the heat was sweltering. Suddenly, the whole country was on the move. Families who could afford a holiday decided to return home early. Consequently, trains were delayed and overcrowded. In Dudley, as in every other town and village, men flocked to recruiting stations that had been hastily set up, and queued to enlist in the army. Normal daily life was suspended, and nobody knew for how long. Panic buying caused a sharp rise in prices, and some shops opened only three days a week afterwards because they had nothing left to sell. In the town several shops soon had no staff due to army recruitment and, to make matters worse, there was a critical disruption of all deliveries. Territorials left their idyllic summer camps to be equipped for active service. Army officers scoured the country to requisition horses for the cavalry, for the artillery and for general transportation, while women began assuming men’s jobs.
In mid September, Ben, no longer laid off work, read the heartening news that the Allies had driven the Germans back to the Aisne. The threat to Paris had been removed and the war would soon be won. It would all be over by Christmas.
War meant that every last drop of effort was required from a work force no longer concerned with bickering over conditions of employment, wages and other such issues. Survival against an enemy who had been spoiling for a fight for years was uppermost in everyone’s mind. All at once industry was at full stretch, trying to satisfy the demands the situation imposed on it. Holcroft’s, like any other foundry, struggled to meet orders, and they worked twenty-four hours a day.
Ben Kite preferred the night shift in the summer; it was cooler. In the sweltering heat of an August daytime, working over a pig-bed – row upon row of open sand moulds filled with white-hot, molten iron, which had to remain where it was until it solidified and cooled to five or six hundred degrees – was barely tolerable. Besides having the pig-bed to contend with, when his ladle needed refilling Ben had to push it to within a few feet of the searing heat of the blast-furnace in order to ‘tap out’ from the hearth. Then the iron flowed along a channel, lined with refractories, from the tap hole, and filled his ladle. It was no wonder he was so lean.
The ladle was a device for transferring the molten iron to the open sand moulds lined up on an uneven floor, strewn with used sand and solidified slag. It hung suspended from a track akin to an overhead railway line, and its whole weight, massive when laden, had to be pushed and pulled into position manually, and swivelled when about to be poured. To help him, Ben had a workmate, Toby Bott, a small man twenty years his senior, who generally did the tapping out and some of the shoving.
‘Ready to slag off, Toby?’ Ben was barely audible above the roar of the blast furnace, but Toby, attuned to the call, acknowledged it. Ben pointed to the slag hole as he began to haul the ladle back, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of a well-worn leather gauntlet.
Toby first tapped off the slag, a mixture of molten limestone and coke ash, from the other side of the furnace into a truck that ran on rails along the floor. At the same time Ben positioned his ladle, ready to receive the relatively pure iron from the other tap hole. He never ceased to marvel at the material. It seemed to flow and splash like water at this temperature, but solidified while still glowing red. He treated it with the utmost respect; too often he had received minor burns from splashes, and they hurt. He had no wish to invite a major accident by careless handling. So he wore a ganzie – a rough protective garment akin to a heavy pullover; a leather apron, moleskin trousers, and high boots; all to protect him from burns; and all this despite the heat.
Toby plugged the slag hole and shoved the freshly filled truck along its track, where another man, Sol Bennett, shoved it away it to tip it on the slag heap beyond the charging bay. He then walked round to where Ben was waiting, and tapped off the pure iron. Conversation was limited because of the deafening noise and, while Ben watched this white hot metal flow, his head was filled with thoughts about the war; thoughts he couldn’t yet reveal to Lizzie, although they’d been crowding his mind for months. Nobody wanted war. The sooner it was over, the sooner everybody could breathe again; the sooner life could continue normally. Ben was beginning to believe that the quickest way to end this war was to deal a crushing blow to the enemy; and such a crushing blow could only be dealt if there was an army big enough, and sufficiently well trained and equipped. The strategists had to do their bit, but the army needed every man who could be spared.
‘Have you thought about volunteering for the army, Toby?’ Ben shouted.
‘Me? The army?’ Toby was yelling at the top of his voice. ‘Why the bloody ’ell should I want to join the army? This job’s bloody ’ard enough. It needs to be done by men. Do yo’ know e’er a woman as could do it? That’s why it’s a reserved occupation, mate. Kitchener can kiss my arse.’
Those words ‘reserved occupation’ were creeping into everyday language lately. All right, so they were in a reserved occupation, like miners, like policemen, like farmers; they were doing their bit for their country.
The ladle was full, and Ben turned, putting his weight against the wheel, about to pour. Toby plugged the tap hole and joined him. In the acrid, smoky atmosphere Ben could see men dragging solidified ingots away with huge steel tongues, shaking the scorched sand off them. Other men placed new moulds in the space made available, ready to be cast. Toby thrust the ladle forward.
‘I wouldn’t fight in this war if they was to crown me wi’ gold,’ Toby said. ‘There’ll be some blood an’ snot flyin’ yet, yo’ mark my words. The Germans have bin dyin’ to have a goo at we for donkey’s years, mate. They wo’ gi’ up that easy. They’m like we – bloody ’ardened bastards.’
They reached the first of the new moulds, and stood back from the ladle. Ben wiped his brow again, and the sweat out of his eyes with the sleeve of his ganzie. He put his hand on the wheel and began turning it. The ladle tilted and iron began to pour out, right on target.
‘They ain’t so hard as they can’t be beat, Toby,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t mind a crack at ’em.’
‘Yo’m best off ’ere, mate, tek it from me. Anyroad, what would your missis say now yo’ve got three babbies to consider?’
‘That’s exactly who I am considering, Toby. It’s their future I’m concerned about.’
*
As soon as Lizzie went downstairs next morning she knew Ben had not intended to go to work. He’d taken his bike and gone out as usual, but he seemed in no hurry. He’d said nothing, but she knew him well enough to know what was on his mind these last few weeks. He was not an adventurer, but his honest principles and his conscience drove him, and they would drive him to war just as sure as death. Her only hope now was that this same conscience would drive him to stay with his family. Oh, others equally conscientious had been quick enough and brave enough to volunteer, she knew; but not Ben. Please, God, not Ben.
All day she was preoccupied, worrying about the future; and the children had got on her nerves. Lizzie wanted them all to be together always. Nothing else really mattered. The thought of war, and losing him to it, scared her to death. She was certain that war would part them for ever.
Ben arrived home early. As soon as he walked through the door she challenged him, her face stony but her eyes filling with tears.
‘Where’ve you been, Ben? I know you haven’t been to work.’
Guiltily he looked into the fire. ‘I have, my flower, but I went to volunteer first. I’m due to report to Brummagem New Street in the morning. I got a travel warrant.’
Lizzie said nothing. She sat down on the couch and ran her fingers anxiously through her dark hair. Her thoughts turned to the reports she’d read in the newspapers of thousands dead and wounded, of the German army’s relentless advance through Europe. She imagined the destruction and the carnage, and her husband caught up in it. Anger welled up inside her that he should even contemplate such recklessness, r
isking his life when there was no need. There would be nothing but uncertainty, strife and darkness ahead; perhaps years of not knowing where or how he was; whether he was fit, or wounded; among the quick, or the dead.
At that moment little Henzey ran up the entry with Marge ’Ardmate, and Lizzie heard her chuckling in the back yard as she played, oblivious to the trials besetting her mother and father. Eve sat on her high-backed chair bouncing Herbert on her knee, sensing a crisis from the tense atmosphere.
‘I’m sorry, my flower.’ Ben sat beside Lizzie and put his arm around her. ‘I had to do it. My conscience would never let me rest if I didn’t go and do my bit. The country needs men like me to fight and, unless we do, we shall lose the war. Nobody wants to be ruled by the damned Kaiser. D’you want our kids ruled by him?’
Still she said nothing.
‘We’ve all got to stand up and be counted. We’ve got to fight for what we believe in.’
Though she tried, Lizzie could not stop her tears. They trembled for a second or two on her eyelids before rolling down her face, making her cheeks wet as if she were out in a rainstorm. But her anger was dissipating.
‘I knew you’d go and do it, Ben. I just knew.’ She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her eyes. ‘You’re too good – too decent. You’ll go and get yourself shot or something for what you believe in. How d’you think I’ll feel if that happens? How d’you think the children will grow up without a father? What shall we live on? Have you thought about that? I’ll be a widow for the rest of my life and I’m only twenty-four now. Have you thought about that?’
He hugged her tight, and Eve looked on with concern. Though she could not hear, she knew exactly what the fuss was about; she’d seen it all before.
‘But you’re talking as if I’m already dead, Lizzie. I’ve no intention of getting myself killed. We’re doing well in this war and it’ll be over in no time – by Christmas they reckon. That’s all I shall be away – a few months … Then I’ll be back, and things’ll settle down to normal, and you’ll be as proud as Punch that I went.’
