by John Masters
He pulled the curtains to and switched on the light, for he had been standing in the dark. There, by the fireplace, his nephew, Guy’s school friend, Dick Yeoman, had made a sexual advance to him, and, if the telephone call from the Admiralty had not broken the tension, he would have responded to the boy’s invitation and, then and there, acknowledged that he was … what he was. It had come soon enough: he remembered Charlie Bennett’s eyelashes, the black eye, the first touching of hands, the tears in his eyes, the sense that they two were alone amongst a host of hostile, indifferent strangers, that only they understood each other, or could comfort.
He opened the drawer of his little roll-top desk in the corner and took out the service revolver, a heavy blued Webley .455. Six cartridges, lead-balled, lay in a little box beside the revolver in the drawer. He knew where to aim for, his hand was firm … firm as an iceberg, since that day. The light glittered for a moment on the gold of his cufflinks as he turned the revolver over in his hand … gold links with the naval crown embossed on them in enamel, a gift from his mother when he became a midshipman … there was the Hoppner Nelson, a gift from his father when he got his first ship, a destroyer, ten years ago … The revolver was heavy, serviceable, of the Service … The Service: proud, implacable, unforgiving as the seas it ruled: uncompromising master and mistress … This, or that, the Service said – the revolver, or me, and all that I demand, of your life, your love, your heart.
He raised the revolver to his temple, placed the cold ring of the muzzle precisely in the correct place to blow out his brains, and pressed the trigger. It took a heavy pressure on the trigger, but the muzzle had not moved, nor the direction of the barrel. He could do it. He lowered the revolver from his face and stared down the empty barrel, into blackness.
He returned the revolver to its drawer, put on his greatcoat and went out. At the corner he glanced round to see whether anyone was following him. There was no one. He walked on toward Piccadilly.
They sat in the same Italian restaurant in Soho where they had been with Charlie Bennett and Ivor Novello. There were a dozen other people in the small room, men and women; but nearly all the men were sitting together in pairs, as were most of the women. Tom and Russell Wharton were eating spaghetti a la vongole and drinking Chianti. Wharton had not fully removed his theatrical eye make-up – perhaps deliberately, Tom thought.
Tom said, ‘They found out about me and Charlie.’
‘The beautiful Geordie boy? That’s a shame.’
‘And now I’m going to be observed, from time to time. I suppose they think I’m susceptible to blackmail.’
Russell Wharton said, ‘That’s only true if you care, laddie. Look at me. Everyone in the theatre knows what I am and I don’t pretend to be anything else. Of course, I’ll never be knighted … can’t have Sir Russell caught offering young soldiers a quid a night in the pissoir at Waterloo, can we? But on the other hand no one can blackmail me. I’d quote the Iron Duke at them – publish and be damned.’
Tom drank deeply of the wine, thinking. He said, ‘So I can really only be blackmailed as long as I try to be a naval officer?’
‘Or want to be,’ Wharton said. ‘That’s the heart of the matter.’
Tom said, ‘I thought of committing suicide, earlier this evening. Then I decided not to … and came to your theatre.’
‘Ghastly show, isn’t it? … I guessed something of the sort, when you came to the dressing room. You looked pretty grim. So now you don’t care what they say, or do?’
‘I’m trying not to care,’ Tom said. ‘I tell myself I don’t. But I do … What does your father think?’
Wharton laughed bitterly – ‘He doesn’t speak to me … hasn’t for twenty years. But what would we have to talk about if he did, eh? Listen, I’ll help you, we’ll all help. You have to step out of your skin and into another – ours. Meet people – people like us … Ivor, young Coward, Owen, dozens of others in the theatre alone, many more who decorate the big houses and flats, antique dealers, designers, gallery owners … You’ll find a different atmosphere … different, and in my opinion, much more Christian, than you’ve been used to. A bit catty at times, both sexes … bitchy, to tell the truth … but on the whole, everyone does his best to understand the other fellow, and not hurt him where it matters. I’m having a party next Sunday, six o’clock – it’ll go on till all hours. Come along … 47 Dean Street.’
‘Thanks,’ Tom said. ‘I’d love to.’
‘There’s an entrance fee,’ Wharton said nonchalantly. He put down the fork with which he had been expertly twirling spaghetti against his plate, and looked up at Tom – ‘More like an initiation. Pick up a soldier.’
‘What?’ Tom gasped. ‘It was only Charlie I was …’
‘Are you sure?’ Wharton said intently. ‘Think! Never been tempted by anyone else? I bet you have … You go and do it, tonight, and then we’ll know you’re really one of us. And,’ he added, picking up his wine glass and looking at Tom over the rim, ‘it’ll help you break the umbilical cord to your dearly beloved mother, the Service!’
‘But I’m in uniform!’
‘That’s just what I mean.’
It was morning, the sun up. The soldier had gone, pushed out early by Tom. Tom felt ashamed and soiled. Why had he allowed Wharton to challenge him with a schoolboy dare? Surely his friends did not all go round picking up soldiers as one would a tart? Surely they had more permanent relationships with each other, full of affection and shared interests besides sexuality? He and Charlie had loved each other in a way modified and shaped by their profession and the naval ties – and barriers – between them. He hadn’t loved that young soldier, didn’t know his name, didn’t want to …
So why did he do it?
Because Wharton told him the only way to be free was to toss himself off in the Navy’s face … and he’d done it. The defiance of decency, the deliberate public defilement of his uniform, had indeed freed him from something – but not yet from himself. He picked up the Observer and scanned the principal headline:
PRESIDENT WILSON CALLS SPECIAL
SESSION OF CONGRESS
EXPECTED TO DEMAND U.S.
DECLARATION OF WAR
Daily Telegraph, Monday, April 2, 1917
CONGRESS & GERMANY
TO-DAY’S MEETING
APPROACHING CONFLICT
From Our Own Correspondent,
New York, Sunday.
In a minor degree, and allowing for the fact that 3,000 miles of the Atlantic divide, if not protect the United States from Germany, one might say Americans are to-day witnessing demonstrations and phenomena recalling the days in England just preceding the British declaration of war. Mr Taft’s remark that ‘once you set the heather on fire in the United States you never know how far the flames will spread’ seems justified, for to-day patriotic support for the policy of national defence seems fairly well spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific … One thing is very obvious – that almost everything depends upon President Wilson’s leadership and the terms of his message to Congress. It doesn’t matter much whether Congress is asked to declare ware or a state of war – the probability is the latter alternative will be adopted – but it does matter whether the President submits a war programme harmonizing with the requirements of the situation … President Wilson alone knows just the form and scope of his forthcoming recommendations. The only thing certain is that he will not favour any legislation short of a proclamation that by reason of the acts of Germany, a state of war exists between that country and the United States. No move by Germany can make any change, and since Bethmann-Hollweg’s latest speech, no move is expected.
At last, Cate thought, at long, long last … poor America, after trying so hard to keep out, forced in at the bloodiest, beastliest time. The torpedoing of the American ship City of Memphis a couple of weeks ago had been another shove in that direction, after so many other sinkings and drownings before it, but the Zimmermann telegram had been the final straw. The Ameri
cans, judging by the excerpts from their newspapers, had gone mad with rage at the thought that Germany was proposing to give away bits of their country. It would be most interesting to know just how the text of the Zimmermann telegram had come into Allied hands, for surely the Germans must have taken extreme precautions to keep such an explosive communication secret.
The war, which Cate felt had been out of human control for some months or even years, was now really taking the bit between its teeth. Wherever you looked the news was not merely sanguinary – of death and destruction – but weird. The Czar had abdicated – the beloved Little Father, gone, and a republic set up in his place! But what was Russia without a Czar? Baghdad was under the rule of a British general … but where were Haroun-al-Raschid, Scheherazade, the Caliphs, the harem women of the Arabian Nights? In Ireland the out-and-out Sinn Feiners were actually winning elections: that was unheard of a year or two ago; at any time before the Easter Rising of 1916 and the subsequent executions, to be honest …
He started, spilling a little coffee out of his cup – Johnny Merritt had sworn a dozen times, in his hearing, that as soon as America declared war, he’d join the U.S. Army. That would leave Stella alone, if he meant it. But did he? He’d better ride over to Beighton and talk to Stella about it … telephone first perhaps, as Stella often wasn’t at home, these days – she liked to shop in Hedlington, and was also, she said, studying a lot in the Public Library: the poor girl was lonely, that was the truth, with Johnny working so hard. If he went off to war, she’d be much lonelier.
23
Washington, District of Columbia: Monday, April 2, 1917
The high limousine reached the Treasury building and began the final climb up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the dome of the Capitol, brilliant white against the black sky. The President sat in the back with Dr Grayson, Colonel Hartz and Mr Tumulty, the passing street lamps picking out the rain spots from the April shower that had just passed, which pearled the hats and tunics of the escorting cavalrymen. His face was set but calm, and he made no acknowledgement of the cheers, shouts, and occasional boos from the people lining the route. Police were on duty every ten yards, and the District of Columbia garbage workers were sweeping up the broken glass, thrown fruit, torn paper, and other debris from the street fights and near riots that had raged all day near the Capitol, between the nation’s pacifists, who had come to disrupt the President’s planned speech to the Congress, and the anti-pacifists, who had come from all over, some in special trains from New York, to support the President in what was already obvious must be a call to arms.
The limousine rode steadily on, the hum of its engine drowned in the jingle and thump, the heavy creak of leather and the steady tattoo of the horses’ hooves of B Troop, 2nd Regiment of United States Cavalry, riding as escort to the President, drawn sabres resting on their right shoulders, rifles thumping in the boots on the horses’ off sides.
The car swung round at the foot of the great steps of the Capitol. Small deputations from Senate and House waited there to greet the President and escort him up the steps to the robing room, then into the chamber. They were flanked by the horses and men of A and F Troops of the 2nd Cavalry, which had been on duty all day keeping pacifist demonstrators out of the Capitol and examining the special passes without which, today, no one could enter.
The President climbed down, a sheaf of notes in his hand. The waiting Congressmen removed their hats, shook hands, then turned and led him up the wide steps.
Inside the House, Stephen Merritt waited, sitting in the visitor’s gallery of the House of Representatives, flanked by Andrew Mellon and Andrew Carnegie, the latter bent and hunched under the weight of his eighty-two years, but the eyes still keen. The diplomatic corps were present en masse, all in full evening dress, rank on rank near the floor of the House. In the centre of the floor directly in front of the dais where the Vice President and the Speaker of the House waited behind their tall desks, sat the members of the Supreme Court, without robes; Edward Douglas White, Chief Justice of the United States, in the centre of the front row; Oliver Wendell Holmes to his left.
In response to a signal from outside, unseen by any but himself, the Speaker tapped his gavel on his desk and called quietly, ‘The House will be in order!’
A sudden silence fell. The Doorkeeper of the House, in frock coat and doeskin gloves, walked in through the open door. When just inside the House he stopped, and boomed sternly, ‘Mr Speaker, the President of the United States!’
The President walked steadily up the aisle between the cheering representatives, the diplomatic corps, the senators – nearly all these with small American flags in their lapels – past the justices, to the dais. There, he reached up and shook hands first with his Vice President, then with the Speaker. He turned. The Speaker again banged his gavel and announced ‘Members of the Congress, I have the high privilege and distinct honour of introducing to you the President of the United States.’
Woodrow Wilson spread his notes carefully on the lectern under the reading light, adjusted his pince-nez high on his long nose, and began:
‘I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious choices to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume the responsibilities of making.
In the House the rustle of silk and shirr of broadcloth had died away. Looking round the gallery Stephen saw the faces as a generalized impression, not as individuals – grim, anxious, exulting; together with the mass on the floor it was the embodiment of the power of the United States, both in theory and in practice – down there the justices and senators, President and Vice President; up here – himself and Morgan and Mellon and Carnegie; Morgenthau, Vanderbilt, Baruch; Harriman, Taft, Rockefeller; Bell, Edison …
‘The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must …’
Stephen listened intently. Carnegie was holding a wrinkled hand to his ear, making an extempore ear trumpet. Mellon’s heavy, handsome head was up, the eyes staring fixedly at the President. Wilson was speaking more forcefully, now and then raising his head to look from side to side, not seeking applause but as though making sure the Congress was attending to him.
‘There is one choice we can not make, we are incapable of making: we will not choose the path of submission …’
A clapping and cheering broke out all over the packed House. In the centre of the floor the Chief Justice was standing, arms upflung, and so remained for a long five seconds, he and the President the only two on their feet. The cheering and shouting rose to a universal pandemonium. Everyone stood. La Follette of Wisconsin stayed seated, alone, his arms folded tight across his chest, chewing gum, a sardonic smile on his slightly working face.
Wilson waited; after five minutes the cheering died down and he repeated,
‘We will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life.
With a profound sense of the solemn, and even tragical character of the step I am taking … I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the Government and people of the United States …’
‘War,’ Stephen muttered to Carnegie. The old man nodded – ‘No doubt about it. The Germans have managed to drag Wilson to the starting post when no one else could.’
‘We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standard of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their Governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized States.
‘Now that it’s done, one wonders wh
y it couldn’t have been done sooner,’ Mellon muttered. ‘How many lives could have been saved … how much destruction averted.’
Stephen said, ‘Not many Amercian lives, or much American property. I think he was right to do all he could to save us from the war as long as it was humanly possible.’
‘The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest or domination. We ask no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind …’
‘A far cry from those speeches about “drunken brawl” … and “too proud to fight,”’ Carnegie whispered hoarsely. Stephen did not respond. As a Republican he abhorred Wilson’s domestic policies, but it was impossible to despise the man himself. It might have been Irish ward heelers and Southern despots who got him elected, but there was no doubting the depth and reality of his idealism.’
‘It is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars … But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts for democracy, for the rights of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own Governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free people as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.’
