Fall of Giants

by Follett, Ken

  “Because of the alternative.”

  “Which is?”

  “The president will send an army battalion to the foundry to take it over, secure it, release all finished products to customers, and continue to run it with army engineers. After the war, he might give it back.” He turned to Hall. “And your men can probably have their jobs back then, too.” Gus wished he had run this past Woodrow Wilson first, but it was too late now.

  Lev said with amazement: “Does he have the right to do that?”

  “Under wartime legislation, yes,” said Gus.

  “So you say,” said Vyalov skeptically.

  “Challenge us in court,” said Gus. “Do you think there’s a judge in this country who will side with you—and our country’s enemies?” He sat back and stared at them with an arrogance he did not feel. Would this work? Would they believe him? Or would they call his bluff, laugh at him, and walk out?

  There was a long silence. Hall’s face was expressionless. Vyalov was thoughtful. Lev looked sick.

  At last Vyalov turned to Hall. “Are you willing to settle for fifty cents?”

  Hall just said: “Yes.”

  Vyalov looked back at Gus. “Then we accept, too.”

  “Thank you, gentlemen.” Gus closed his folder, trying to still the shaking of his hands. “I’ll tell the president.”

  { V }

  Saturday was sunny and warm. Lev told Olga he was needed at the foundry, then he drove to Marga’s place. She lived in a small room in Lovejoy. They embraced, but when Lev started to unbutton her blouse she said: “Let’s go to Humboldt Park.”

  “I’d rather screw.”

  “Later. Take me to the park, and I’ll show you something special when we come back. Something we haven’t done before.”

  Lev’s throat went dry. “Why do I have to wait?”

  “It’s such a beautiful day.”

  “What if we’re seen?”

  “There’ll be a million people there.”

  “Even so . . . ”

  “I suppose you’re afraid of your father-in-law?”

  “Hell, no,” Lev said. “Listen, I’m the father of his grandchild. What’s he going to do, shoot me?”

  “Let me change my dress.”

  “I’ll wait in the car. If I watch you undress I might lose control.”

  He had a new Cadillac three-passenger coupe, not the swankiest car in town but a good place to start. He sat at the wheel and lit a cigarette. He was afraid of Vyalov, of course. But all his life he had taken risks. He was not Grigori, after all. And things had worked out pretty well for him so far, he thought, sitting in his car, wearing a summer-weight blue suit, about to take a pretty girl to the park. Life was good.

  Before he had finished his smoke, Marga came out of the building and got into the car beside him. She was wearing a daring sleeveless dress and had her hair coiled over her ears in the latest fashion.

  He drove to Humboldt Park, on the East Side. They sat together on a slatted wooden park seat, enjoying the sunshine and watching the children playing in the pond. Lev could not stop touching Marga’s bare arms. He loved the envious looks he got from other men. She’s the prettiest girl in the park, he thought, and she’s with me. How about that?

  “I’m sorry about your lip,” he said. Her lower lip was still swollen where Vyalov had punched her. It looked quite sexy.

  “Not your fault,” Marga said. “Your father-in-law is a pig.”

  “That’s the truth.”

  “The Hot Spot offered me a job right away. I’ll start there as soon as I can sing again.”

  “How does it feel?”

  She tried a few bars.

  I run my fingers through my hair

  Play a little solitaire

  Waiting for my millionaire

  To come.

  She touched her mouth gingerly. “Still hurts,” she said.

  He leaned toward her. “Let me kiss it better.” She turned her face up to his and he kissed her gently, hardly touching.

  She said: “You can be a little firmer than that.”

  He grinned. “Okay, how about this?” He kissed her again, and this time he let the tip of his tongue caress the inside of her lips.

  After a minute she said: “That’s okay, too,” and she giggled.

  “In that case . . . ” This time he put his tongue all the way inside her mouth. She responded eagerly—she always did. Her tongue and his met, then she put her hand behind his head and stroked his neck. He heard someone say: “Disgusting.” He wondered whether people walking by could see his erection.

  Smiling at Marga, he said: “We’re shocking the townspeople.” He glanced up to see whether anyone was watching, and met the eyes of his wife, Olga.

  She was staring at him in shock, her mouth forming a silent O.

  Beside her stood her father, in a suit with a vest and a straw boater. He was carrying Daisy. Lev’s daughter had a white bonnet to shade her face from the sun. The nurse, Polina, was behind them.

  Olga said: “Lev! What . . . Who is she?”

  Lev felt he might have talked himself out of even this situation if Vyalov had not been there.

  He got up. “Olga . . . I don’t know what to say.”

  Vyalov said harshly: “Don’t say a damn thing.”

  Olga began to cry.

  Vyalov handed Daisy to the nurse. “Take my granddaughter to the car right away.”

  “Yes, Mr. Vyalov.”

  Vyalov grasped Olga’s arm and moved her away. “Go with Polina, honey.”

  Olga put her hand over her eyes to hide her tears and followed the nurse.

  “You piece of shit,” Vyalov said to Lev.

  Lev clenched his fists. If Vyalov struck him he would fight back. Vyalov was built like a bull, but he was twenty years older. Lev was taller, and had learned to fight in the slums of Petrograd. He was not going to take a beating.

  Vyalov read his mind. “I’m not going to fight you,” he said. “It’s beyond that.”

  Lev wanted to say: So what are you going to do? He kept his mouth clamped shut.

  Vyalov looked at Marga. “I should have hit you harder,” he said.

  Marga picked up her bag, opened it, put her hand inside, and left it there. “If you move one inch toward me, so help me God, I’ll shoot you in the gut, you pig-faced Russian peasant,” she said.

  Lev could not help admiring her nerve. Few people had the balls to threaten Josef Vyalov.

  Vyalov’s face darkened in anger, but he turned away from Marga and spoke to Lev. “You know what you’re going to do?”

  What the hell was coming now?

  Lev said nothing.

  Vyalov said: “You’re going in the goddamn army.”

  Lev went cold. “You don’t mean it.”

  “When was the last time you heard me say something I didn’t mean?”

  “I’m not going in the army. How can you make me?”

  “Either you’ll volunteer, or you’ll get conscripted.”

  Marga burst out: “You can’t do that!”

  “Yes, he can,” Lev said in desolation. “He can fix anything in this town.”

  “And you know what?” said Vyalov. “You might be my son-in-law, but I hope to God you get killed.”

  { VI }

  Chuck and Doris Dixon gave an afternoon party in their garden at the end of June. Gus went with his parents. All the men wore suits, but the women dressed in summer outfits and extravagant hats, and the crowd looked colorful. There were sandwiches and beer, lemonade and cake. A clown gave out candy and a schoolteacher in shorts organized the children to run jokey races: a sack race, an egg-and-spoon race, a three-legged race.

  Doris wanted to talk to Gus about the war, again. “There are rumors of mutiny in the French army,” she said.

  Gus knew that the truth was worse than the rumors: there had been mutinies in fifty-four French divisions, and twenty thousand men had deserted. “I assume that’s why they’ve switched their
tactics from offense to defense,” he said neutrally.

  “Apparently the French officers treat their men badly.” Doris relished bad news about the war because it gave support to her opposition. “And the Nivelle Offensive has been a disaster.”

  “The arrival of American troops will buck them up.” The first Americans had boarded ships to sail to France.

  “But so far we have sent only a token force. I hope that means we’re going to play only a small part in the fighting.”

  “No, it does not mean that. We have to recruit, train, and arm at least a million men. We can’t do that instantly. But next year we will send them in their hundreds of thousands.”

  Doris looked over Gus’s shoulder and said: “Goodness, here comes one of our new recruits.”

  Gus turned and saw the Vyalov family: Josef and Lena with Olga, Lev, and a little girl. Lev was wearing an army uniform. He looked dashing, but his handsome face was sulky.

  Gus was embarrassed but his father, wearing his public persona as senator, shook hands cordially with Josef and said something that made him laugh. Mother spoke graciously to Lena and cooed over the baby. Gus realized his parents had anticipated this meeting and decided to act as if they had forgotten that he and Olga had once been engaged.

  He caught Olga’s eye and nodded politely. She blushed.

  Lev was as brash as ever. “So, Gus, is the president pleased with you for settling the strike?”

  The others heard this question and went quiet, listening to hear Gus’s answer.

  “He’s pleased with you for being reasonable,” Gus said tactfully. “I see you joined the army.”

  “I volunteered,” Lev said. “I’m doing officer training.”

  “How are you finding it?”

  Suddenly Gus was aware that he and Lev had an audience around them in a ring: the Vyalovs, the Dewars, and the Dixons. Since the engagement had been broken off, the two men had not been seen together in public. Everyone was curious.

  “I’ll get accustomed to the army,” Lev said. “How about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Are you going to volunteer? After all, you and your president got us into the war.”

  Gus said nothing, but he felt ashamed. Lev was right.

  “You can always wait and see whether you get drafted,” Lev said, turning the knife. “You never know, you could get lucky. Anyway, if you go back to Washington I guess the president can get you exempted.” He laughed.

  Gus shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about this. You’re right, I’m part of the government that brought in the draft. I could hardly evade it.”

  He saw his father nod, as if he had anticipated this; but his mother said: “But, Gus, you work for the president! What better way could there be for you to help the war effort?”

  Lev said: “I guess it would seem kind of cowardly.”

  “Exactly,” said Gus. “So I won’t be going back to Washington. That part of my life is over for now.”

  He heard his mother say: “Gus, no!”

  “I’ve already spoken to General Clarence of the Buffalo Division,” he said. “I’m joining the National Army.”

  His mother began to cry.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Mid-June 1917

  Ethel had never thought about women’s rights until she stood in the library at Tŷ Gwyn, unmarried and pregnant, while the slimy lawyer Solman told her the facts of life. She was to spend her best years struggling to feed and care for Fitz’s child, but there was no obligation upon the father to help in any way. The unfairness of it had made her want to murder Solman.

  Her rage had been further inflamed by looking for work in London. A job would be open to her only if no man wanted it, and then she would be offered half a man’s wages or less.

  But her angry feminism had set as hard as concrete during years of living alongside the tough, hardworking, dirt-poor women of London’s East End. Men often told a fairy tale in which there was a division of labor in families, the man going out to earn money, the woman looking after home and children. Reality was different. Most of the women Ethel knew worked twelve hours a day and looked after home and children as well. Underfed, overworked, living in hovels, and dressed in rags, they could still sing songs and laugh and love their children. In Ethel’s view one of those women had more right to vote than any ten men.

  She had been arguing this for so long that she felt quite strange when votes for women became a real possibility in the middle of 1917. As a little girl she had asked: “What will it be like in heaven?” and had never got a satisfactory answer.

  Parliament agreed to a debate in mid-June. “It’s the result of two compromises,” Ethel said excitedly to Bernie when she read the report in The Times. “The Speaker’s Conference, which Asquith called to sidestep the issue, was desperate to avoid a row.”

  Bernie was giving Lloyd his breakfast, feeding him toast dipped in sweet tea. “I assume the government is afraid that women will start chaining themselves to railings again.”

  Ethel nodded. “And if the politicians get caught up in that kind of fuss, people will say they’re not concentrating on winning the war. So the committee recommended giving the vote only to women over thirty who are householders or the wives of householders. Which means I’m too young.”

  “That was the first compromise,” said Bernie. “And the second?”

  “According to Maud, the cabinet was split.” The War Cabinet consisted of four men plus the prime minister, Lloyd George. “Curzon is against us, obviously.” Earl Curzon, the leader of the House of Lords, was proudly misogynist. He was president of the League for Opposing Woman Suffrage. “So is Milner. But Henderson supports us.” Arthur Henderson was the leader of the Labour Party, whose M.P.s supported the women, even though many Labour Party men did not. “Bonar Law is with us, though lukewarm.”

  “Two in favor, two against, and Lloyd George as usual wanting to keep everyone happy.”

  “The compromise is that there will be a free vote.” That meant the government would not order its supporters to vote one way or the other.

  “So that whatever happens it won’t be the government’s fault.”

  “No one ever said Lloyd George was ingenuous.”

  “But he’s given you a chance.”

  “A chance is all it is. We’ve got some campaigning work to do.”

  “I think you’ll find attitudes have changed,” Bernie said optimistically. “The government is desperate to get women into industry to replace all the men sent to France, so they’ve put out a lot of propaganda about how great women are as bus drivers and munitions workers. That makes it more difficult for people to say that women are inferior.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Ethel said fervently.

  They had been married four months, and Ethel had no regrets. Bernie was clever, interesting, and kind. They believed in the same things and worked together to achieve them. Bernie would probably be the Labour candidate for Aldgate in the next general election—whenever that might be: like so much else, it had to wait for the end of the war. Bernie would make a good member of Parliament, hardworking and intelligent. However, Ethel did not know whether Labour could win Aldgate. The current M.P. was a Liberal, but much had changed since the last election in 1910. Even if the clause about votes for women did not pass, the other proposals of the Speaker’s Conference would give the vote to many more working-class men.

  Bernie was a good man, but to her shame Ethel still occasionally thought longingly of Fitz, who was not clever, nor interesting, nor kind, and whose beliefs were opposite to hers. When she had these thoughts she felt she was no better than the type of man that hankered after girls who danced the can-can. Such men were inflamed by stockings and petticoats and frilly knickers; she was entranced by Fitz’s soft hands and clipped accent and the clean, slightly scented smell of him.

  But she was Eth Leckwith now. Everyone spoke of Eth and Bernie the way they said horse-and-
cart or bread-and-dripping.

  She put Lloyd’s shoes on and took him to the child minder, then walked to the office of The Soldier’s Wife. The weather was fine and she felt hopeful. We can change the world, she thought. It’s not easy, but it can be done. Maud’s newspaper would whip up support for the bill among working-class women, and make sure all eyes were on M.P.s when they voted.

  Maud was at their pokey office already, having come in early, no doubt because of the news. She sat at an old stained table, wearing a lilac summer gown and a hat like a fore-and-aft cap with one dramatically long feather stuck through its peak. Most of her clothes were prewar, but she still dressed elegantly. She looked too thoroughbred for this place, like a racehorse in a farmyard.

  “We must bring out a special edition,” she said, scribbling on a pad. “I’m writing the front page.”

  Ethel felt a wave of excitement. This was what she liked: action. She sat on the other side of the table and said: “I’ll make sure the other pages are ready. How about a column on how readers can help?”

  “Yes. Come to our meeting, lobby your member of Parliament, write a letter to a newspaper, that sort of thing.”

  “I’ll draft something.” She picked up a pencil and took a pad from a drawer.

  Maud said: “We have to mobilize women against this bill.”

  Ethel froze, pencil in hand. “What?” she said. “Did you say against?”

  “Of course. The government is going to pretend to give women the vote—but still withhold it from most of us.”

  Ethel looked across the table and saw the headline Maud had written: VOTE AGAINST THIS TRICK! “Just a minute.” She did not see it as a trick. “This may not be all that we want, but it’s better than nothing.”

  Maud looked at her angrily. “It’s worse than nothing. This bill only pretends to make women equal.”

  Maud was being too theoretical. Of course it was wrong in principle to discriminate against younger women. But right now that was not important. This was about practical politics. Ethel said: “Look, sometimes reform has to go step by step. The vote has been extended to men very gradually. Even now only about half of men can vote—”