by John Masters
‘I didn’t believe it, when you told me. Are you sure you’re not pulling my leg, because I’m American? You really mean to tell me that the trout lets you tickle it, then it goes silly?’
‘Yes, like some girls do,’ Fletcher said. ‘The trout doesn’t know what your hand is, I reckon.’
‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’
‘You will,’ Fletcher said. ‘We’ll stop here, behind the hazel and blackthorn … but if a motor car passes, on the road out there, it’ll throw light through the bushes, so when one comes, lie down and don’t move, see?’
‘I see … It sounds as though you’ve been here before, in the twilight.’
‘Never in winter,’ Fletcher said. ‘In summer there’s leaves on the bushes, and the trees. And it’s warm. And the water bailiffs are about … Here, look, see the bank over there?’ He pointed across the river, where the grass verge overhung six inches, making a hollow below, like a shallow-backed cave – ‘That’s the sort of place trout like to stay … or under the roots, there.’ He pointed again, at where the roots of an oak made a tangled knot above the water. ‘Or there –’ She saw a rock, pressed up to the bank, water lipping over it. ‘There’s an eddy behind that rock, where the fish don’t have to swim, ’cos the back eddy’ll keep him in the same place. Now, there’s places just like those on this bank … here … there … there.’
He knelt on the grass, then lay down. Betty knelt beside him, eager to see what would happen next, still unwilling to believe what Fletcher had told her, even though Mr Cate had confirmed it. Fletcher eased himself forward, his right sleeve pulled up as far as it would go, baring his arm to above the elbow. He slid the hand into the water, and moved it gently, firmly, back, a few inches away from the hidden bank, under water. Almost at once the edge of his hand touched something that moved … but moved so sluggishly that for a moment he thought he had hit a twig or small bough, which was pressing back against him; then he knew it was a trout, and whispered, ‘There’s one here.’ The trout moved an inch or two back. He moved his hand after it, slightly cupped … back, back … slowly he raised it, and at once felt the barrel of the trout’s body inside the cup. The fish moved forward, torpid from the winter cold, but beginning to be nervous … Fletcher moved his hand after it, found the barrel again, tickled gently along its belly, moving forward … when the front edge of his hand was under the gills he raised it, tickling the trout’s flanks now, until he felt the edge of the gills, fluttering with the trout’s breathing. Just as he made ready to jam his hand into the gills and jerk the fish out of the water, it moved forward. Slowly, carefully, he found it again … again soothed it, again made ready … again the trout slid away.
At length he muttered, ‘Can’t get him out … Better use the toasting fork.’
‘Oh no, let me try!’
He muttered, ‘Lie down beside me, then.’
Betty slipped out of her tweed jacket and rolled up the sleeve of the white flannel blouse she was wearing under it. Then she lay down beside Fletcher, and cautiously lowered her arm into the water.
‘Forward,’ Fletcher said, ‘that way … there, can you feel him?’
‘No … nothing … oh, oh, I do!’ She was breathless with excitement – ‘Where do I grab?’
‘Not grab – firm, careful, in the gills.’
‘Oh! … Oh! He keeps moving.’
The river was becoming flecked with white spots, that disappeared at once; more on the ground, that did not disappear. ‘’Tis snowing hard,’ Fletcher whispered. ‘Is he still there?’
‘No,’ she muttered, ‘he must have gone farther out.’
She hitched her body forward to reach farther out into the river, and with a sudden panic realized she was going. ‘Ahhh!’ she cried, ‘I’m …’ but never finished the sentence, as she slid head first into the Scarrow, there three feet deep. The current caught her and swirled her round. As she struggled to right herself she felt strong hands seize her arms, hold them, pull her upright. She stood at last, gasping and coughing in Fletcher Gorse’s arms, locked, body to body, he holding her against the force of the current, their faces close. At length he spoke softly, ‘Can you stand now?’
‘Yes,’ she muttered. He stood clear, but still held her hand in one of his, and slowly led her to the bank. He climbed out first and then, reaching down, pulled her out and up in one motion. The snow and the darkness almost hid him from her, though he was less than two feet away. Her heart was pounding, and now the cold began to penetrate through her soaked clothes to her skin, and deeper, to her heart and the marrow of her bones.
Fletcher said, ‘You’ll get a trout, another day … We’d best take you home now, miss. Running. ’Twill help keep off a cold.’
They walked through the wood to the road and there broke into a run, running easily side by side, and ten minutes later came to the front door of Walstone Manor, breathing deeply, glowing with exercise and inner excitement, snow half an inch deep on all their skin and garments. Betty knew already that she was in love; Fletcher thought he might be.
The Daily Telegraph, Monday, March 27, 1916
SUSSEX OUTRAGE
FATE OF AMERICANS
From Our Own Correspondent. Paris, Sunday. Captain Mouffet, skipper of the Sussex, saw the track of the torpedo at exactly five minutes to three on the port bow, and by quick seamanship escaped being struck amidships, whither the torpedo was aimed. The torpedo threw a column of water and wreckage to an enormous height …
Miss Edna Hale, of Tuxedo, New York, who is in a hotel here, suffering from severe bruises, tells the New York Herald today: ‘Professor Baldwin and his daughter, named, I think, Elizabeth, of Bryn Mawr, were both killed outright and lay side by side; she received a terrible blow. An American, badly wounded, was a young man from Massachusetts, now in Boulogne Hospital. Another American badly wounded was a young physician on his way to France to take up hospital work … My belief is that over fifty persons were killed or drowned … I only wish there had been a few pro-German Senators and Congressmen on the Sussex …’
Mr Samuel Bemis, a Harvard University man, was saved and is in Paris. He says ‘I solemnly declare that the torpedo was fired without the slightest warning.’
The Paris New York Herald aptly reprints today its cartoon of February 24, in which the Kaiser is nailing to the mast a black flag with the death’s head and cross-bones. This cartoon caused the suppression of the New York Herald in Switzerland. The paper asks to-day whether the Berne censors will again suppress the cartoon.
Cate thought, we are obviously hoping that stressing these outrages will force America into the war on our side. But Mr Wilson was not a warmonger or sabre rattler, and every day that passed gave a sensible man more cause to take very serious thought before committing his country to the war. He wasn’t going to be cajoled or led in; he was going to be forced in, by sheer German stupidity, or overriding American necessity, if it was to happen at all.
He glanced at the opened letter from his son, that lay beside his plate. Laurence was ecstatic because Guy Rowland had flown an aeroplane up from Shoreham, and landed it on the Charterhouse football pitch a week ago. Guy said the plane was an Armstrong Whitworth F.K.3, and was easy to fly and good for instruction, but didn’t have enough power. Guy had given the school a brief demonstration of simple aerobatics over Godalming, and then flown back to Shoreham. He was in a bad temper, Laurence reported, because he was being kept on at the Shoreham Flying School as an instructor, instead of being sent to an operational squadron of the Royal Flying Corps in France. A pair of robins were nesting in a hollow tree at the edge of the town, and …
Garrod came in and lifted the domed silver lid over the serving table. ‘Anything more, sir?’
‘No, thank you … well, some more coffee.’
The parlour maid poured the coffee for him. Cate said, ‘Mr Rowland’s going to Ireland in April, with a parliamentary committee, you know. I mean Mr Harry, of course.’
Garrod waited,
standing beside his chair; a strand of grey hair escaped from under her starched black cap and ribbon.
Cate said, ‘The Prime Minister wants them to find out what the Irish really think, about Home Rule … about conscription … what can be done to work out a compromise acceptable to all but the most rabid Catholics and Orangemen.’
‘Quite so, sir,’ Garrod said. She waited, the silver coffee pot in hand.
Cate said, ‘Mr Rowland is going to try to establish contact with Mrs Cate. I don’t know whether he’ll have any success.’
‘I hope so, sir,’ Garrod answered. ‘Mr Rowland would want to tell Madam about the wedding, wouldn’t he? And Madam would want to hear it. And have news of Master Laurence.’
‘I’m sure,’ Cate said, ‘but she’s wanted for murder. I expect that the most Mr Rowland will be able to get from her is some message that she is well, or of affection for the children.’
Garrod said, ‘Quite so, sir. Thank you, sir,’ and went out. Cate knew she was thanking him for telling her about the new attempt to contact his wife. It was none of her business, of course; but she had served them a long time; she had a right to know. Now, as head of the staff, she had other rights in this family and house; and she would never abuse them.
5
Dublin: Easter Sunday, 1916 (April 23)
Harry Rowland M.P. stood by the fire in the huge main drawing room of Dublin Castle, port glass in hand. Beside him stood Morgan ap Morgan M.P., holding a glass of water. Morgan represented a non-Conformist constituency in the Welsh mountains, where teetotalism and observance of the Sabbath ranked far above faith or works as the road to salvation. Facing them, his back to the fire, port glass in hand, stood Brigadier General Lowe, commanding the cavalry brigade at the Curragh.
Morgan said, ‘Is it true that the man captured on Friday near Tralee is Sir Roger Casement, then?’
Lowe nodded – ‘It is. And the steamer that scuttled itself while the Navy was escorting it into Queens town was the Aud, carrying arms from Germany for the Citizen Army and the Volunteers.’
‘So what will they do now?’ Harry asked.
‘Do what they’ve been doing all along – what they’re best at doing,’ Lowe said contemptuously, ‘make speeches. March up and down in their uniforms and swords.’
‘You think they’ll not take any action, then?’ Morgan’s voice rose in the classical Welsh singsong.
Lowe shook his head, ‘They’d be mad to do so – that’s what I meant, just now. They had a big day of manoeuvres and parades arranged for today, and some of us thought that might have been cover for a real rising … but Eon MacNeill cancelled it and forbade any of his people to attend any parade or manoeuvres. And as you have seen – nothing happened. If we hadn’t got Casement and the Aud, they might have acted differently, and that would have been unpleasant … not dangerous … just that a great many Irishmen – and Irishwomen – would have been killed – which would have done us no good in the eyes of the world – particularly to the west.’ He waved a free hand in the general direction of America.
Harry said, ‘The Viceroy’s private secretary told me at dinner that Pearse and Connolly and Plunkett are meeting now. They’re all extremists, aren’t they?’
Lowe nodded again – ‘Yes – and they have to decide what to do. What can they do, in the face of MacNeill’s cancellation? They’ll do nothing.’
Morgan said tartly, ‘They’re good for nothing, these Irish. Except begging. Begging’s the only industry that they work hard at.’
Lowe said, ‘Oh, don’t be quite so hard on the Irish, Mr Morgan. Since the beginning of the year the disaffected of every hue have been conducting vigorous recruiting campaigns for their private armies here. They’ve increased their strength by about ten percent. In the same period we’ve had a thirty percent increase in Irish enlistment in our army, in the face of everything the Sinn Feiners have done to stop men enlisting … The great majority of the country’s loyal, sir.’
Harry wandered away by himself, glass in hand, his face troubled. He and Morgan and the third member of the commission had been in Dublin a week now; and they’d learned only that there was no possible common ground between Carson the Ulsterman and Redmond the moderate Irish leader. One absolutely refused to be part of any Ireland governed by a Popish majority; the other insisted on a single Ireland, free of Britain in all respects, and ruled by the majority, which would be Catholic. The Home Rule Bill, giving the Catholics something of what they wanted, had been passed just before the war began; but, in the face of violent and organized protests, amounting to rebellion, from Carson and his followers in the North, implementation of it had been postponed till the end of the war. That was only putting off the evil day, Harry thought unhappily.
He had received one message from his daughter, Margaret Cate. Written in another hand, it had arrived yesterday in the post at his hotel, the Metropole on Sackville Street. It read, without greeting:
I am well. Tell Christopher to give Stella the diamond tiara that is in the bank safe, as a wedding present. And Laurence the portrait of Grandfather McCormack, that is hanging in the hall – or was. As to your mission, about which we have read in the papers, follow Mother’s advice, which I heard her give many times: persuade the British Government to act generously toward Ireland, that is, grant total independence, now; and get out. They will be repaid. The alternative is civil war. We do not serve king or kaiser, only Ireland, whatever you hear to the contrary.
It was unsigned.
Near noon next day, Easter Monday, Margaret Cate waited on Sackville Street, nearly opposite the massive General Post Office. Her father, packing his bags to leave the Metropole Hotel, a few yards down the street, to return to London, would not have recognized her even by close examination, for she had been transformed into a typical Dublin shawlie, only more ragged and dirtier than most. She was sitting on the step of a clothing shop, her head down, watching; an observer, such as the police who passed now and then on their beat, would have thought she was suffering from a bad hangover.
The ragged column came up the street, forty or so men followed by two small lorries, a van, two motor bicycles and a touring car. A few of the men were in grey-green uniform, but most in their Sunday best, all weighed down with rifles, shotguns, pikes, shovels, crowbars, grenades, ropes and various indeterminate packages. All wore bandoliers of ammunition crisscrossed on their chests, and yellow armbands on their left arms.
Harry Rowland, coming out of the hotel with a porter carrying his bag behind, stood and stared. A young lieutenant of Connaught Rangers, standing beside him, said in a marked Irish accent, ‘Will the ijjuts never tire of marching up and down the street?’ The head porter waved majestically; a taxi cab appeared, Harry got in, and drove away.
The column came on. The man in front was short, bandylegged, square-faced, with a shaggy moustache – James Connolly, Commandant General of the Dublin forces of the Army of the Irish Republic, which latter did not exist. With him were two other Commandants General of the same nebulous force – Joseph Mary Plunkett and Patrick Pearse. They were both poets – Plunkett, no more than skin and bones, dying of consumption before their eyes; Pearse, of medium height with a serious, almost lugubrious manner and a cast in his right eye, a good lawyer, and a good leader – Commander-in-Chief of the whole Army of the Republic, and its first President. Margaret watched with tense excitement, mixed with disdain. She had thought they were mad to continue their plans for the Rising, merely postponing it by twenty-four hours, when MacNeill’s cancellation would cut the forces available from nine thousand to a few hundred, in all Ireland. But they had insisted – and insisted on keeping MacNeill, their nominal leader, in ignorance; and they had insisted that she, Margaret McCormack, known to all of them as The Lady (to distinguish her from Constance Gore-Booth, Countess Markievicz, always called The Madame) should keep out of the fight until they had seized their first and main objective, the Post Office – just because she was a woman. But, right or wro
ng, heroic or idiotic – or both – they were coming on now, acting, at last, instead of talking.
‘Halt!’ Connolly’s command rang out clear in the street. It was emptier than usual at this time, Margaret thought – Easter Monday, and racing at Fairyhouse, including the Irish Grand National. The British would find it easier to get a battalion together at the race course than in the barracks, today.
Connolly, standing almost in front of her, in the middle of the wide street, bellowed, ‘Leftturn! The G.P.O. – charge!’
‘Take the Post Office!’ another voice yelled from inside the column. Slowly, the men gathered their wits, ran up the steps under the great Ionic columns, shouting, and burst through the doors. Shots rang out at once and Margaret, abandoning her post on the step, jumped up and ran across the street. She arrived inside the Post Office just as Pearse was untangling the mass of men jammed beyond the doors, bayonets interlocking, bandoliers caught in someone else’s rifle muzzle, grenades rolling out of haversacks and across the floor. Two young Volunteers were gazing crestfallen at the ceiling, where flaking plaster showed that they had let off their rifles by mistake.
Gradually the Post Office clerks struggled out of their places behind the counter, and ran out of the building. People who had been buying stamps and posting parcels followed, one by one, looking more annoyed than alarmed. Pearse shouted an order and the Volunteers began to smash out the ornate windows with their rifle butts. Plunkett leaned on the counter, recovering his strength. Soon Margaret heard him call ‘Whitmore!’ and his assistant brought him maps. Together they spread the maps on a big table at the back of the main room.
