Heart of War

by John Masters

  From interviews with the Americans it is clear beyond question that their ship was torpedoed without warning at 3.45 o’clock on Saturday afternoon. The torpedo struck amidships on the starboard side, causing a tremendous explosion. Then the submarine went round and fired a second torpedo into the port side amidships. The vessel broke in two, and sank in fifteen minutes after the first explosion. About a dozen of the crew were in bed, but they got into the boats. The men in the stokehold, however, were drowned. Out of the fifty-two Americans on board seven were drowned. Captain Brown waited to save the ship’s papers, and in the confusion, when he jumped for a small boat, he missed it and was drowned.

  The survivors were tossed about for 17½ hours, and in the third and last boat they were adrift in a huge swell, for 31½ hours. They were in extreme peril when they were picked up, as the storm was increasing.

  PRESIDENT’S INQUIRY

  Long Branch (New Jersey), Tuesday President Wilson, on being informed by Press messages that seven Americans had lost their lives by the sinking of the Marina, telegraphed to Mr Lansing, Secretary of State, at Washington, to expedite the securing the facts of the case. Mr Lansing replied that, in addition to asking Mr Page, the American Ambassador in London, for information, he was having informal inquiries made in Germany, REUTERS.

  The train rattled through a station and Cate looked out for the station sign board. He did not travel to and from London often enough to know them by heart, or sense just where he was by the passage of time … Otford, a row of oast houses looking like cowled monks in the slanting rain, and the engine whistling for a level crossing … only three or four stations to go, and he’d be home; well, at least in Hedlington, and someone would be there to meet him.

  He returned to the paper: this sinking of the Marina would play some part in the election over there. The Germans seemed bent on antagonizing America, but … he’d talked about the whole American situation with Isabel, and she’d advised him to read the English newspapers with a grain of salt, if that was a viable metaphor. She said that they – the English papers – following the policy of the British Government, were doing everything possible to bring the United States into the war on the Allied side. Every accident or mishap to an American, or to American property, provided it was caused by the Germans, was played up to the hilt, and often actually exaggerated. The same news might not be published at all in American newspapers, or, if it were, might be played down because – as he must appreciate – a large part of the American public did not at all wish their country to become a combatant …

  A station passed in a rocking blur – Borough Green: very close now. He closed his eyes briefly and saw her as they had parted at Euston, in a dark corner of the great bustling station, her lips warm on his, her eyes closed. The train slowed, steam hissing from the engine’s safety valve and steam chest.

  16

  Hedlington: Saturday, November 4, 1916

  Alice thought Naomi looked so pretty in her evening uniform, with six inches of khaki silk stocking showing under her skirt, the mid-heel shoes instead of the boots and gaiters, her hair piled high instead of hidden under the felt hat. Her face, always a little stern, had seemed vulnerable since she had arrived, half an hour ago from High Staining, where she was spending her weekend’s leave with her parents. During that half hour, while Alice finished dressing for the dance, she had thought the girl was unusually silent. She had tried to bring her out – asked questions about the other girls – the officers – her quarters – the work – was she enjoying herself, did she feel it was worthwhile? But Naomi’s answers had been brief, and as though relayed through a telephone from a long way off; Naomi herself, the young woman, was somewhere else.

  Now, as Naomi engaged gear in the big, old Rowland Ruby, she said abruptly – ‘I have fallen in love, Aunt Alice.’

  Alice felt the throb in the girl’s voice: tension, emotion … the Town Hall was barely ten minutes’ drive; not nearly enough for her to get out what she obviously needed to. Alice said quietly, ‘Drive out on the London road for a bit, dear. We’re in no hurry.’

  Naomi turned the car at the next cross street and headed for the main London road. After a while, as the headlamps threw a faint light forward and onto the boles of trees marching alongside, Alice said, ‘Tell me about it. You must feel so … good.’

  Naomi said, ‘I wake up every morning full of a feeling … I can’t tell you … the sun seems to be inside me, not outside, even if it’s pouring cats and dogs. I can see his face, smiling, in the air … I can feel his arms round me …’

  Oh dear, Alice thought. This war …!

  Naomi went on – ‘At night I go to bed, hating myself, despising myself … feeling like a traitress to everything I believe in.’

  ‘But, my dear, why?’

  Naomi turned her head a moment to look her aunt in the eye. ‘He’s married.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ Alice said aloud. ‘My poor darling … How dreadful for you.’

  She wondered whether they had … well, the word was adultery, since he was married: had they committed adultery? The thought stirred her. She knew she would have done whatever the petty officer needed, last October, if there had been a place, the opportunity. She was feeling something of the same sense of acquiescence now, wondering whether David Cowell would be at the dance.

  She said gently, ‘Who is he?’

  Naomi said, ‘A colonel … full colonel, in Intelligence at the War Office. I didn’t like him at first … self-protection, I suppose. Then …’ she drew a deep breath. ‘We spent the night together last month, for the first time.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Alice said.

  ‘I’ve been falling deeper and deeper every day … and feeling lower and lower. Our Deputy Superintendent likes to have her girls be seen with officers – the more senior the better. I’ve had opportunities to meet him. He can get a hotel room anywhere without trouble, just pretends he’s on Intelligence work … but he has to lie to his wife. I’ve met her when I’ve picked him up at his house, on duty. She seems so nice …’

  Alice said, ‘He may have done this sort of thing before. Some men do, you know.’

  ‘I suppose so … Yes, I think he has. But I don’t care. I don’t care, as long as he loves me, and wants me … Oh, Auntie, what am I to do?’

  Alice said, ‘We’ve come far enough out now, Naomi. Let’s turn back.’

  As Naomi backed the car into a lane, and then headed back toward Hedlington, Alice tried to think clearly. Should she make Naomi promise never to see the man again? The man must be rather a cad, as the Governor would say, and probably wouldn’t release his hold on her … She herself could write to him … at the War Office? To his home, once she had found out where it was? No, that would hurt the wife. She’d have to go and see him in person. What if she were pregnant?

  She said, ‘You should go away, Naomi. Or you could ask to be posted to another Group, in Scotland.’

  Naomi said, ‘It wouldn’t be enough. I’d still see him. It couldn’t be so often, but I’d get there somehow, and he to me, or we’d meet halfway … Don’t you see, Auntie, I have no shame!’

  Alice thought, it isn’t just a question of distance, but of interest. Naomi had to have her spirit engaged as this man had engaged it.

  ‘The war!’ she exclaimed. ‘You must join the F.A.N.Y.s.’

  ‘The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry!’ Naomi said. ‘Would they take me?’

  ‘If you’re a good enough driver and mechanic … and a lady, which you are.’

  ‘Not now,’ Naomi muttered.

  Alice said firmly, ‘My dear, I fear that ladies, real ladies, commit adultery at least as often as other women … in certain circles, such as those round the old King, a great deal more often … I know a senior lady of the F.A.N.Y. and your grandfather knows her husband even better. Before you leave High Staining tomorrow evening to return to your Group, you must write a letter to the address I shall give you, and bring it to me at Laburnum Lodge before you catch t
he train. Then I shall telephone the lady and tell her that you passionately wish to join the F.A.N.Y. and go to one of their units in France.’

  They were passing down the dim streets now, pedestrians still dense on the pavements, many soldiers walking toward the Town Hall for the Soldiers and Sailors Dance. Naomi said, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You must,’ Alice said firmly. ‘You’ll kill yourself with worry if you don’t.’

  ‘I can’t do it,’ Naomi said. ‘I’ll die if I don’t see him again.’

  Alice paused, then returned to the attack – ‘Are you afraid of going to France?’ she snapped. ‘You think it won’t be as comfortable as the nice, big house in London you have been telling me about? That you might get shelled … wounded … killed?’

  Naomi said with some heat, ‘Of course I’m not afraid, Aunt Alice!’

  ‘You are! You’re afraid you can’t control yourself! Do what I say, join the F.A.N.Y. and go to France! … Are you pregnant?’

  Naomi said, ‘No … I knew yesterday … I wished, I prayed that my period would not come … I know you’re right, Auntie, but don’t you see, I’m in love, for the first time, totally. I can’t cut myself away from him. I just had to tell someone how … awful it is, as well as wonderful. But you don’t understand.’

  Perhaps I do, or soon will, Alice thought unhappily but said nothing.

  They drew up in front of the Town Hall, where Naomi found a space at the pavement to leave the car. They got out, Naomi helping her aunt. A girl of medium height, in uniform, carrying herself well, walked past them, turning at the big main doors to glance round, then exclaiming, ‘Miss Rowland! Don’t you remember me? Elizabeth Seddon.’

  ‘Of course! Niece of the Misses Frameley.’

  ‘I’m on leave from the F.A.N.Y. – Number Four Convoy. We run a Field Ambulance for the Belgians just outside Calais. The British Army wouldn’t touch us in the beginning, but now there are rumours that an English Convoy will be formed soon, to serve with our own Army … about time, too!’

  ‘How exciting! Do you know my niece here, Naomi Rowland?’

  ‘We’ve met once or twice,’ the other girl said briefly.

  Then they went on in, separately.

  The dances for soldiers and sailors from Minden Barracks, from Chatham, from the camps and hutments dotted round the countryside, or home on leave from France and ships at sea, were now regular affairs, one Saturday a month. The women of Hedlington, of all classes, were urged to attend, to dance with the men, talk with them, share the (nonalcoholic) beverages and simple food supplied, and enjoy the music of the band – all free, since all costs were borne by various charitable organizations many of which liberally benefitted from the generosity of Mr Bill Hoggin. Mr Hoggin had recently been the subject of a long laudatory editorial in Horatio Bottomley’s John Bull magazine, and that, together with the bland report of the Parliamentary Joint Select Committee on the food industry, had effectively blown away the bad odour which had hung around him since the beginning of the war; already a multimillionaire he was now well on his way to becoming a national hero as well – except to the men in the trenches: there, ‘Hoggin’s’ was still a term of contempt and anger.

  Alice came to the dances regularly, because she met women whom she had known from her Tipperary Room and House Parties. Often they were sad reunions, for some of the women, who had once talked together of what they would do when their husbands came home, now had no husband.

  Alice danced two dances, then sat out along the wall. Many younger women had come – so pretty, so flushed and excited: older women, such as herself, would not be in much demand. She was glad of it: the work at the Shell Filling Factory was tiring, and, as her father and brother had warned her, it gave her an almost week-long headache.

  The woman sitting next to her was swept away by a dashing seaman of the Royal Navy, and she glanced past the empty chair at her new neighbour and cried, ‘Ethel Fagioletti … Stratton … Fagioletti …’

  The woman rose, half curtsying – ‘Miss Alice … I saw you coming in.’

  ‘I haven’t seen you for ages. My father told me you had been divorced.’

  Ethel blushed and lowered her eyes and whispered, ‘Niccolo wanted it. I didn’t do anything wrong. I love Niccolo, and now … now … he’s in France … He’s not a soldier, miss … he’s not even English, really. He had another woman, and … I didn’t have any babies.’

  ‘What a shame,’ Alice said, thinking, well, that ‘other woman,’ to another wife, was Naomi. What was happening to the decent women of England?

  ‘I love him … and he’ll be killed …’ Ethel fumbled in her bag, pulled out a large handkerchief and sobbed quietly into it.

  ‘There, there, don’t cry,’ Alice said. ‘If he’s out there, he can’t be with the other woman, at least, can he?’

  Ethel mumbled, ‘I never thought of that … He’s too delicate for the trenches. He’ll catch his death, in all that mud and water, and no roof over his head.’

  Alice said confidently, ‘He’ll come home.’

  Ethel said, ‘My mother makes me come to these dances, so I can meet other men. There was a Mr Willibanks wanted to marry me, after I was divorced … still does … but I don’t want any other man. So what’s the use of coming?’

  I’m not surprised, Alice thought; Ethel looked woebegone and mournful, tears staining her face, her blue eyes watery and little colour in her face. She wasn’t young or naturally beautiful enough to carry that off, in spite of her fine bosom.

  A soldier approached and Alice said cheerfully, ‘Well, here’s someone come to dance with you. You don’t have to think of marrying him. Just enjoy the dance.’ The man, a middle-aged corporal of Royal Engineers, took Ethel away, as if performing an arduous duty. Alice looked round her again.

  A young private of the Wealds, with a luxuriant, sweeping reddish moustache, came up to her and said, ‘Would you like to dance, miss?’

  She said, ‘You don’t have to take pity on me. Look at all those pretty girls your own age, along that wall. Why don’t you ask one of them?’

  ‘I’d like to dance with you, Miss Alice.’

  She peered more closely, rising to her feet – ‘You know me? Have we met?’

  He said, ‘I seen you often, when you come down to stay at High Staining or the Manor. I’m Fletcher Gorse, miss, only I’m Fletcher Whitman now.’

  ‘I remember! You deserted … but you’ve re-enlisted under another name?’

  He smiled and nodded, moving her gracefully and easily out onto the floor in a slow waltz. ‘One of the sergeants guessed, but he’s keeping his mouth shut. And Mr Laurence knows, of course.’

  ‘Laurence Cate?’

  Fletcher nodded – ‘He’s an officer recruit. The sergeant majors drill them on the square, same time as us, and call ’em names, too, only they have to say Mister at the beginning and ‘sir’ at the end, when they’ve called them everything bar a darling in between.’

  ‘Mr Cate said you write very good poetry.’

  Fletcher said simply, ‘I do, and it’s getting better. … That’s Colonel Quentin’s wife, isn’t it?’ He jerked his chin toward a plain chair near the door. Alice glanced over and recognized her sister- in-law Fiona, sitting upright, her face remote, long, aristocratic, cold. Not many young soldiers would want to tackle that, Alice thought.

  She answered Fletcher, ‘Yes, that’s my brother’s wife. Would you like to dance with her?’

  Fletcher said, ‘No, miss. She’s not here. She’s with the Colonel and the lads in France, perhaps … And I have a lady coming I promised to dance with. Here she is.’

  A lithe young woman in a simple afternoon dress, without hat, swept in through the door close to where Fiona sat. Alice recognized Betty Merritt as Fletcher eased her to the side of the room, released her, and said, ‘Thank you, Miss Alice.’

  She sat down, a little breathless, and watched with interest as Fletcher walked across the floor with a peculiar challengin
g glide, to stop in front of Betty Merritt. For a moment she held her head up, meeting his gaze face to face; then she lowered her eyes and seemed to melt, and in a moment they were out on the dance floor, curving gracefully in and out among the others, their heads close, lips curved in smiles, bodies moving in the perfect synchronization of inner harmony.

  Naomi stood beside Miss Seddon, drinking coffee … Lance Corporal Seddon, she corrected herself. The F.A.N.Y. used military ranks instead of shying away from them, as the other women’s organizations did. And they, alone of all of them, were in France; and, as Miss Seddon had been making quite clear to her in a crisp, cool, detached way, they were not at all interested in forwarding women’s causes, such as the suffrage, or seats in Parliament; they were interested in winning the war.

  ‘We’re in Lamarck at the moment,’ Miss Seddon said, ‘but we’re moving into Calais itself any moment. I didn’t want to take leave but Captain MacDougall said I was run down from a ’flu and I had to take ten days at home … And I wouldn’t be at this dance if my aunts hadn’t insisted. How it helps win the war for me to have my toes trodden on and my bosom breathed heavily down by sex-starved private soldiers, I don’t know.’

  Naomi wished Lance Corporal Seddon would ask her about the Women’s Volunteer Motor Drivers, so that she could tell her what was wrong with it. But the Lance Corporal was supremely uninterested in the W.V.M.D., and when a sailor came up, cap in hand, and asked her for a dance, she went with him, nodding briefly at Naomi, left alone at the coffee table.

  A shadow fell across Alice’s lap and she looked up. Her heart missed a beat and the smile faded slowly from her face, as she saw David Cowell looking down at her. He said softly, ‘Male civilians are not encouraged to dance at these affairs, but the circumstances are exceptional. I’ve brought two daughters, so … will you dance with me, Miss Rowland?’

  She put up a hand, and let him help her to her feet, not quite sure she could do it alone. The dance was a foxtrot, and neither of them knew it well, but … He drew her slowly closer. Their bodies touching, she could feel his movements: it was easier thus to follow the steps of the dance. He said, ‘That’s my Josephine … in the blue dress, she’s nineteen … I don’t see Esther, she’s twenty-two … she has a fiancé at Hedlington Aircraft Company, but he doesn’t mind her coming to these affairs. My wife’s not feeling well, so …’