Fall of Giants

by Follett, Ken

  “How dare you!”

  Maud said: “Your indignation is understandable—but perhaps now you will appreciate why Mrs. McCulley reacted as she did to your questioning.”

  Mrs. Hargreaves raised her voice. “That’s ridiculous—there’s no comparison!”

  “No comparison?” Maud said angrily. “Her husband, like yours, is risking his life for his country. Both you and she claim the separation allowance. But you have the right to judge her behavior and refuse her the money—while no one judges you. Why not? Officers’ wives sometimes drink too much.”

  Ethel said: “They commit adultery, too.”

  “That’s it!” shouted Mrs. Hargreaves. “I refuse to be insulted.”

  “So does Jayne McCulley,” said Ethel.

  Maud said: “The man you saw with Mrs. McCulley was her brother. He was home on leave from France. He had only two days, and she wanted him to enjoy himself before going back to the trenches. That was why she took him to the pub and the music hall.”

  Mrs. Hargreaves looked abashed, but she put on a defiant air. “She should have explained that when I questioned her. And now I must ask you please to leave the premises.”

  “Now that you know the truth, I trust you will approve Mrs. McCulley’s application.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “I insist that you do it here and now.”

  “Impossible.”

  “We’re not leaving until you do.”

  “Then I shall call the police.”

  “Very well.”

  Mrs. Hargreaves retreated.

  Ethel turned to the admiring reporter. “Where is your photographer?”

  “Waiting outside.”

  A few minutes later, a burly middle-aged police constable came in. “Now, now, ladies,” he said. “No trouble, please. Just leave quietly.”

  Maud stepped forward. “I am refusing to leave,” she said. “Never mind about the others.”

  “And who would you be, madam?”

  “I am Lady Maud Fitzherbert, and if you want me to go you’ll have to carry me out.”

  “If you insist,” said the policeman, and he picked her up.

  As they left the building, the photographer took a picture.

  { IV }

  “Aren’t you scared?” Mildred said.

  “Aye,” Billy admitted. “I am, a bit.”

  He could talk to Mildred. She seemed to know all about him anyway. She had been living with his sister for a couple of years, and women always told each other everything. However, there was something else about Mildred that made him feel comfortable. Aberowen girls were always trying to impress boys, saying things for effect and checking their appearance in mirrors, but Mildred was just herself. She said outrageous things sometimes, and made Billy laugh. He felt he could tell her anything.

  He was almost overwhelmed by how attractive she was. It was not her fair curly hair or her blue eyes, but her devil-may-care attitude that mesmerized him. Then there was the age difference. She was twenty-three, and he was still not quite eighteen. She seemed very worldly-wise, yet she was frankly interested in him, and that was highly flattering. He looked longingly at her across the room, hoping he would get a chance to talk to her alone, wondering if he would dare to touch her hand, put his arm around her, and kiss her.

  They were sitting around the square table in Ethel’s kitchen: Billy, Tommy, Ethel, and Mildred. It was a warm evening, and the door was open to the backyard. On the flagstone floor Mildred’s two little girls were playing with Lloyd. Enid and Lillian were three and four years old, but Billy had not yet worked out which was which. Because of the children, the women had not wanted to go out, so Billy and Tommy had fetched some bottles of beer from the pub.

  “You’ll be all right,” Mildred said to Billy. “You’ve been trained.”

  “Aye.” The training had not done much for Billy’s confidence. There had been a lot of marching up and down, saluting, and doing bayonet drills. He did not feel he had been taught how to survive.

  Tommy said: “If the Germans all turn out to be stuffed dummies tied to posts, we’ll know how to stick our bayonets in them.”

  Mildred said: “You can shoot your guns, can’t you?”

  For a while they had trained with rusted and broken rifles stamped “D.P.” for “drill purposes,” which meant they were not on any account to be fired. But eventually each of them had been given a bolt-action Lee Enfield rifle with a detachable magazine holding ten rounds of .303 ammunition. It turned out that Billy could shoot well, being able to empty the magazine in under a minute and still hit a man-size target at three hundred yards. The Lee Enfield was renowned for its rapid rate of fire, the trainees had been told: the world record was thirty-eight rounds a minute.

  “The equipment is all right,” Billy said to Mildred. “It’s the officers that worry me. So far I haven’t met one I’d trust in an emergency down the pit.”

  “The good ones are all out in France, I expect,” Mildred said optimistically. “They let the wankers stay home and do the training.”

  Billy laughed at her choice of words. She had no inhibitions. “I hope you’re right.”

  What he was really afraid of was that when the Germans started shooting at him he might turn and run away. That scared him most of all. The humiliation would be worse than a wound, he thought. Sometimes he felt so wrought up about it that he longed for the terrible moment to come, so that he would know, one way or the other.

  “Anyway, I’m glad you’re going to shoot those wicked Germans,” Mildred said. “They’re all rapists.”

  Tommy said: “If I were you, I wouldn’t believe everything you read in the Daily Mail. They’d have you think all trade unionists are disloyal. I know that’s not true—most of the members of my union branch have volunteered. So the Germans may not be as bad as the Mail paints them.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.” Mildred turned back to Billy. “Have you seen The Tramp?”

  “Aye, I love Charlie Chaplin.”

  Ethel picked up her son. “Say good night to Uncle Billy.” The toddler wriggled in her arms, not wanting to go to bed.

  Billy remembered him newborn, and the way he had opened his mouth and wailed. How big and strong he seemed now. “Good night, Lloyd,” he said.

  Ethel had named him after Lloyd George. Billy was the only person who knew that he also had a middle name: Fitzherbert. It was on his birth certificate, but Ethel had not told anyone else.

  Billy would have liked to get Earl Fitzherbert in the sights of his Lee Enfield.

  Ethel said: “He looks like Gramper, doesn’t he?”

  Billy could not see the resemblance. “I’ll let you know when he grows a mustache.”

  Mildred put her two to bed at the same time. Then the women announced that they wanted supper. Ethel and Tommy went to buy oysters, leaving Billy and Mildred alone.

  As soon as they had gone, Billy said: “I really like you, Mildred.”

  “I like you, too,” she said; so he moved his chair next to hers and kissed her.

  She kissed him back with enthusiasm.

  He had done this before. He had kissed several girls in the back row of the Majestic cinema in Cwm Street. They always opened their mouths straightaway, and he did the same now.

  Mildred pushed him away gently. “Not so fast,” she said. “Do this.” And she kissed him with her mouth closed, her lips brushing his cheek and his eyelids and his neck, and then his lips. It was strange but he liked it. She said: “Do the same to me.” He followed her instructions. “Now do this,” she said, and he felt the tip of her tongue on his lips, touching them as lightly as possible. Once again he copied her. Then she showed him yet another way to kiss, nibbling his neck and his earlobes. He felt he could do this forever.

  When they paused for breath she stroked his cheek and said: “You’re a quick learner.”

  “You’re lovely,” he said.

  He kissed her again and squeezed her breast. She let him
do it for a while, but when he started to breathe heavily she took his hand away. “Don’t get too worked up,” she said. “They’ll be back any minute.”

  A moment later he heard the front door. “Oh, dammo,” he said.

  “Be patient,” she whispered.

  “Patient?” he said. “I’m going to France tomorrow.”

  “Well, it ain’t tomorrow yet, is it?”

  Billy was still wondering what she meant when Ethel and Tommy came into the room.

  They ate their supper and finished the beer. Ethel told them the story of Jayne McCulley, and how Lady Maud had been carried out of the charity office by a policeman. She made it sound like a comedy, but Billy was bursting with pride for his sister and the way she stood up for the rights of poor women. And she was the manager of a newspaper and the friend of Lady Maud! He was determined that one day he, too, would be a champion for ordinary people. It was what he admired about his father. Da was narrow-minded and stubborn, but all his life he had fought for the workingman.

  Darkness fell and Ethel announced it was bedtime. She used cushions to improvise beds on the kitchen floor for Billy and Tommy. They all retired.

  Billy lay awake, wondering what Mildred had meant by It ain’t tomorrow yet. Perhaps she was just promising to kiss him again in the morning, when he left to catch the train to Southampton. But she had seemed to imply more. Could it really be that she wanted to see him again tonight?

  The thought of going to her room inflamed him so much that he could not sleep. She would be wearing a nightdress, and under the sheets her body would be warm to the touch, he thought. He imagined her face on the pillow, and envied the pillowcase because it was touching her cheek.

  When Tommy’s breathing seemed regular, Billy slipped out of his sheets.

  “Where are you going?” said Tommy, not as fast asleep as Billy had thought.

  “Toilet,” Billy whispered. “All that beer.”

  Tommy grunted and turned over.

  In his underwear, Billy crept up the stairs. There were three doors off the landing. He hesitated. What if he had misinterpreted Mildred? She might scream at the sight of him. How embarrassing that would be.

  No, he thought; she’s not the screaming type.

  He opened the first door he came to. There was a faint light from the street, and he could see a narrow bed with the blond heads of two little girls on the pillow. He closed the door softly. He felt like a burglar.

  He tried the next door. In this room, a candle was burning, and it took him a moment to adjust to its unsteady light. He saw a bigger bed, with one head on the pillow. Mildred’s face was toward him, but he could not see whether her eyes were open. He waited for her protest, but no sound came.

  He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

  He whispered hesitantly: “Mildred?”

  In a clear voice she said: “About bloody time, Billy. Get into bed, quick.”

  He slipped between the sheets and put his arms around her. She was not wearing the nightdress he had expected. In fact, he realized with a thrilling shock, she was naked.

  Suddenly he felt nervous. He said: “I’ve never . . . ”

  “I know,” she said. “You’ll be my first virgin.”

  { V }

  In June of 1916, Major the Earl Fitzherbert was assigned to the Eighth Battalion of the Welsh Rifles and put in charge of B Company, one hundred twenty-eight men and four lieutenants. He had never commanded men in battle, and he was secretly racked with anxiety.

  He was in France, but the battalion was still in Britain. They were recruits who had just finished their training. They would be stiffened with a sprinkling of veterans, the brigadier explained to Fitz. The professional army that had been sent to France in 1914 no longer existed—more than half of them were dead—and this was Kitchener’s New Army. Fitz’s lot were called the Aberowen Pals. “You’ll probably know most of them,” said the brigadier, who seemed not to realize how wide was the gulf that separated earls from coal miners.

  Fitz got his orders at the same time as half a dozen other officers, and he bought a round of drinks in the mess to celebrate. The captain who had been given A Company raised his whisky glass and said: “Fitzherbert? You must be the coal owner. I’m Gwyn Evans, the shopkeeper. You probably buy all your sheets and towels from me.”

  There were a lot of these cocky businessmen in the army now. It was typical of that type to speak as if he and Fitz were equals who just happened to be in different lines of business. But Fitz also knew that the organizational skills of commercial men were valued by the army. In calling himself a shopkeeper, the captain was indulging in a little false modesty. Gwyn Evans was the name over department stores in the larger towns of South Wales. There were many more people on his payroll than in A Company. Fitz himself had never organized anything more complicated than a cricket team, and the daunting complexity of the war machine made him vividly aware of his inexperience.

  “This is the attack that was agreed upon in Chantilly, I presume,” Evans said.

  Fitz knew what he meant. Back in December Sir John French had at last been fired and Sir Douglas Haig had taken over as commander in chief of the British army in France, and a few days later Fitz—still doing liaison work—had attended an Allied conference at Chantilly. The French had proposed a massive offensive on the western front during 1916, and the Russians had agreed to a similar push in the east.

  Evans went on: “What I heard then was that the French would attack with forty divisions and us with twenty-five. That’s not going to happen now.”

  Fitz did not like this negative talk—he was already apprehensive enough—but unfortunately Evans was right. “It’s because of Verdun,” Fitz said. Since the December agreement, the French had lost a quarter of a million men defending the fortress city of Verdun, and they had few to spare for the Somme.

  Evans said: “Whatever the reason, we’re virtually on our own.”

  “I’m not sure it makes any difference,” Fitz said with an air of detachment that he did not in the least feel. “We will attack along our stretch of the front, regardless of what they do.”

  “I disagree,” said Evans, with a confidence that was not quite insolent. “The French withdrawal frees up a lot of German reserves. They can all be pulled into our sector as reinforcements.”

  “I think we’ll move too fast for that.”

  “Do you, really, sir?” said Evans coolly, again remaining just the right side of disrespect. “If we get through the first line of German barbed wire, we’ve still got to fight our way through a second and third.”

  Evans was beginning to annoy Fitz. This kind of talk was bad for morale. “The barbed wire will be destroyed by our artillery,” Fitz said.

  “In my experience, artillery is not very effective against barbed wire. A shrapnel shell fires steel balls downwards and forwards—”

  “I know what shrapnel is, thank you.”

  Evans ignored that. “—so it has to explode just a few yards above and before the target, otherwise it has no effect. Our guns just aren’t that accurate. And a high-explosive shell goes off when it hits the ground, so even a direct hit sometimes just throws the wire up in the air and down again without actually damaging it.”

  “You’re underestimating the sheer scale of our barrage.” Fitz’s irritation with Evans was sharpened by a nagging suspicion that he might have a point. Worse, that suspicion fed Fitz’s nervousness. “There will be nothing left afterwards. The German trenches will be completely destroyed.”

  “I hope you’re right. If they hide in their dugouts during the barrage, then come out again afterwards with their machine guns, our men will be mown down.”

  “You don’t seem to understand,” Fitz said angrily. “There has never been a bombardment this intense in the history of warfare. We have one gun for every twenty yards of front line. We plan to fire more than a million shells! Nothing will be left alive.”

  “Well, we’re in agreement abou
t one thing, anyway,” said Captain Evans. “This has never been done before, as you say; so none of us can be sure how it will work out.”

  { VI }

  Lady Maud appeared at Aldgate Magistrates Court in a large red hat with ribbons and ostrich feathers, and was fined one guinea for disturbing the peace. “I hope Prime Minister Asquith will take notice,” she said to Ethel as they left the courtroom.

  Ethel was not optimistic. “We have no way of compelling him to act,” she said with exasperation. “This kind of thing will go on until women have the power to vote a government out of office.” The suffragettes had planned to make women’s votes the big issue of the general election of 1915, but the wartime Parliament had postponed elections. “We may have to wait until the war is over.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Maud. They stopped to pose for a photograph on the courthouse steps, then headed for the office of The Soldier’s Wife. “Asquith is struggling to hold the Liberal-Conservative coalition together. If it falls apart there will have to be an election. And that’s what gives us a chance.”

  Ethel was surprised. She had thought the issue of women’s votes was moribund. “Why?”

  “The government has a problem. Under the present system, serving soldiers can’t vote because they aren’t householders. That didn’t matter much before the war, when there were only a hundred thousand men in the army. But today there are more than a million. The government wouldn’t dare to hold an election and leave them out—these men are dying for their country. There would be a mutiny.”

  “And if they reform the system, how can they leave women out?”

  “Right now the spineless Asquith is looking for a way to do just that.”

  “But he can’t! Women are just as much part of the war effort as men: they make munitions, they take care of wounded soldiers in France, they do so many jobs that used to be done only by men.”

  “Asquith is hoping to weasel his way out of having that argument.”