After the War Is Over: A Novel

by Jennifer Robson

“I should love to see it. While we’re walking, I thought we might discuss Linnaeus’s botanical classifications. Have you studied them before? No? Then we might as well begin.”

  Chapter 11

  Cumbria, England

  June 1919

  Rather to Charlotte’s surprise, the remainder of the wedding reception passed in a pleasant blur, and when it came time to bid farewell to the bride and groom, she, and all the remaining guests save Lady Cumberland and her coterie, stood on the front steps and shouted their good-byes.

  Edward was surrounded by other wedding guests, so she wasn’t able to say good-bye properly, but she did wave at him and smile encouragingly. Perhaps she would write to him in a week or two, just to see how he was feeling. It was the sort of thing she, as his friend, ought to do.

  As soon as she and the other guests arrived back at the Haverthwaite Arms, Charlotte went in search of its proprietor, Mr. Poole. She found him behind the long bar in the dining room, his usual haunt during opening hours. Not only was the Arms the village’s only inn, but it was also its sole public house.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Brown. How was the wedding breakfast?”

  “It was lovely. I wonder if I might ask a favor of you.”

  “Ask away.”

  “I’m hoping to catch a train to Preston this afternoon. Might one of your sons be available to drive me to the station?”

  “Of course, Miss Brown. No trouble at all. Give me a quarter hour to have David hitch up old Barney and you’ll be set.”

  At this time of day the trains to Preston were infrequent, but there would be one within the hour, at the very least. She changed out of her linen gown and put on her dark brown skirt and coat, packed away her things, checked her handbag for her purse and return ticket, and went downstairs.

  It was a good forty minutes, via bumpy back lanes and byways, to the station in Penrith, and when she arrived it was only to discover that the express train had left a quarter hour before. There was a local run set to arrive in a half hour, however, which would arrive in Preston at nine o’clock. According to the stationmaster, that would leave her with ample time to catch one of the evening services to Liverpool’s Central station.

  All that afternoon and evening, first on the train to Preston, then on the shorter run down to Liverpool, Charlotte wrote. Her conversation with Edward had been full of revelations, not least of them his admitted ignorance of the true face of poverty in Britain. If a man as educated as Edward had no notion of the extent and depth of poverty across the land, it stood to reason that many others had no idea of how badly their fellow citizens—their neighbors—were suffering.

  She had two sheets of notepaper in her valise, and when she’d covered them front and back with her small, fine script, she scrabbled through her bag and found a crumpled bookshop receipt, as well as the minutes from the February meeting of the Pensions Committee. When these were exhausted she set down her pencil, folded her notes away, and committed the remainder of her thoughts to memory.

  Her train rolled into Liverpool at a quarter past eleven, so late that the trams were finished for the evening and a sensible young woman would not even consider walking home alone. So she resigned herself to the expense of a motor taxi and was back at the Misses Macleods’ within the half hour.

  Everyone was asleep, even Janie, but Charlotte would not sleep until she was finished. There was too much to say, to explain.

  “Enlighten me,” Edward had said. And so she would. Not him, not directly, but as many people as she could reach. She took out her notes, copied them out afresh, and worked until dawn was breaking. Until she was satisfied with the arguments she had made and the story she had told.

  She would sleep for a few hours, go to church, have Sunday lunch with her friends and the Misses Macleod, and tell them about the wedding. It looked to be a fine day, so she might even walk over to Princes Park and buy a lemon ice from one of the Italians with their pushcarts.

  In such a fashion she would muddle through what was left of Sunday and then, on Monday morning, on the way to work, she would stop by the offices of the Liverpool Herald on Victoria Street and leave an envelope for the newspaper’s editor in chief, John Ellis. He might choose not to hear her. He might simply toss her letter in the rubbish. But for now, for this morning, it was the best she could do.

  ON MONDAY AFTERNOON a local letter, postmarked that morning, arrived at Charlotte’s desk.

  16 June 1919

  Dear Miss Brown,

  Thank you for your letter and submission, which I read with some interest. While the piece you enclosed is not suitable for publication in its present form, I should like to discuss it with you further, perhaps after you have finished work for the day. I keep late hours, so you are welcome to come whenever you like. No need to ring ahead.

  Yours faithfully,

  John Ellis

  He hadn’t said no. He had said he would speak to her. All things considered, it was an excellent start.

  At half past six, long after everyone else had gone home, even Miss Rathbone, she judged that the hour had arrived for her visit to Mr. Ellis. Her arguments were fresh in her mind as well as his, and his office would probably be quiet at this time of day.

  She knew little of John Ellis, apart from the fact that Miss Rathbone approved of his politics and thought highly of him. He’d been at his post for less than a year, having taken over from the newspaper’s longtime editor in chief just before the Armistice, and in that time had made few changes to the Herald. It was one of two evening papers in the city, both of them poor cousins compared to the Daily Post, and its editorial content was not particularly engaging. Not yet, at any rate.

  The Herald was housed in a large but ramshackle building on Victoria Street. A row of delivery lorries was parked outside, already returned for the night, and placards with the evening’s headlines were affixed to the brick-and-limestone façade.

  Although the reception desk inside the front doors was empty, the ground floor was far from deserted. A young man brushed past Charlotte, a stack of reference books in his arms, and began to climb a set of stairs at the far end of the entrance hall.

  “Excuse me,” she called to him. “I’m here to see Mr. Ellis. Where might I find him?”

  “Up the stairs, third floor, straight down the hall,” he answered, not missing a beat as he bounded up the steps. “His office is dead ahead. If he’s not there you’ll find him out on the floor.”

  Mr. Ellis’s office, a rather small affair given his position, was indeed empty. She turned about and retraced her steps, wishing she had asked the boy what he meant by “the floor.” A few yards along was a set of wide double doors; peering through, she spied a high-ceilinged room, made bright by the setting sun, its space punctuated by large communal desks. At a round table in the center of the room a group of men was gathered, their heads bent over a newspaper that lay open for their inspection.

  Charlotte approached cautiously, not wishing to disturb them. One of the men, younger than the rest, was talking, and as he spoke he wrote on the newspaper, underlining and circling, until there was more red than ink upon the pages. He had thick spectacles, pushed high into his sandy hair, and wore an expression of quiet intensity. If he was not John Ellis she would be most surprised.

  She took another few steps forward, waiting for an opportune pause, until she was only a few yards away. The man she took to be Mr. Ellis looked up, frowning at the interruption, and then realization dawned.

  “Miss Brown?”

  “It is.”

  “John Ellis. I’m almost done here. Would you mind waiting for me in my office? I’ll be along as quick as I can.”

  “Of course.”

  “Shall I bring you a cup of tea?” he offered, smiling broadly.

  “Yes, thank you,” she answered, although she’d have preferred a glass of sherry.

  She had time to look around his office, which was indeed quite small, and furthermore was exceedingly untidy. She could
scarcely see the top of his desk, piled as it was with editions of nearly every newspaper she’d ever read, and a good many whose titles were unfamiliar: the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post, the Chicago Tribune. On the floor were stacks and stacks of magazines, academic journals, and yet more newspapers, many of them yellow and curling at the edges.

  In little more than five minutes he joined her, shouldering his way through the door, a pair of mugs in his hands.

  “Sorry about that. I’d have been here sooner, but I was set on finding us some biscuits. Usually there’s a tin of them hanging about, but tonight our larders are bare.”

  “That’s quite all right.”

  “My colleagues here are like vultures. Will strip a carcass bare in seconds.” He handed her one of the mugs. “I didn’t think to ask how you like it, so I added milk and sugar.”

  “Perfect,” she fibbed, although she detested sweet tea.

  “So. Your article.”

  “Yes. You said you didn’t think it suitable at present—”

  “I thought it was magnificent. Exactly the sort of thing I should like to see in this newspaper. The difficulty is space.”

  “I see,” she said, though in truth she didn’t. Was it not in his purview to decide what would appear in his paper?

  “I have four pages a day, six days a week. Between advertisements, classifieds, sporting news, and all the trivia my publisher expects me to include, I have only one or two columns a day to work with. When you stop to consider everything that has been going on this year, you can imagine how difficult it is for me to find room for everything. Remember the rioting that took place last month here and in most of the other port cities? I only had room for forty inches of coverage, which barely scratched the surface. Were racial prejudices the main reason that the riots broke out? Did the rioters think of their actions as political? Or was it disaffection, plain and simple, with a dose of vandalism thrown in for good measure? With only forty inches to spare a day, I fear I was unable to do justice to the subject.”

  “I hadn’t realized—”

  “I only wish I could run your article in its entirety, but you must agree that it is long.”

  “It is, but—”

  “May I propose, instead, that we run a series of short pieces in the Herald? Would once a week be too much trouble? You’ve enough material here to keep you going for several months.”

  “Are you offering me a position as a columnist in your paper, Mr. Ellis?”

  “I suppose I am, after a fashion. But I can only give you twenty-five inches. Thirty at the most.”

  “I’ve no idea what that means.”

  “I beg your pardon. Column inches. I suppose about six hundred words or so. Seven hundred and fifty at the outside. Can you manage with that?”

  “I don’t know what to say. To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t expected that you would be interested.”

  “I receive no end of rubbish in the post, Miss Brown, but what you’ve written is an exception. Only a fool would ignore what you have to say.”

  She wasn’t certain how to respond to this surprisingly pleasant man. How on earth had he risen to such a position while remaining in possession of such a congenial temperament? He might be a brute away from the office, though. He might browbeat his wife and kick his dog and treat the men and women who worked for him as little more than galley slaves. Possible, though unlikely.

  “I’ve made some notes on the pages you sent me. I’d like to see you start with the Jones family. You’ll tell their story in your first article, and in your second you will propose a solution to their troubles. You have, if you’ll forgive me, a tendency toward language that is a trifle too florid.”

  “A lamentable failing of mine,” she said, smiling in spite of his criticism.

  “You’ll see from my notes that I have a particular aversion to adverbs. Never use five words when one will do, Miss Brown. And never let fanciful language get in the way of the story you want to tell. Plain and simple is best.”

  “I understand. When should I return this to you?”

  “Shall we say Monday? With a view to getting it into the paper for Tuesday?”

  “Monday it is, then.”

  “You haven’t asked how much I’ll pay you.”

  “But I don’t wish to be paid. That wasn’t my intent at all.”

  “I’ll stop you there. Always insist on being paid. Know your own worth, Miss Brown. People won’t respect you if you don’t. Give it to charity if you like, though if I were you I’d put it aside for a darker day. We both know what happens to people who’ve nothing to cushion them when disaster strikes.”

  “You do have a point,” she agreed.

  “Of course I do. As you get to know me, Miss Brown, you’ll discover I’m almost always right. I will pay you fifteen shillings a week, payable upon my acceptance of each article. Now shake my hand, and off home you go. Shall I ring for a taxi?”

  “No need, Mr. Ellis. It’s light still, and I’ve only a mile to go.”

  “Very well. Good night, Miss Brown. And thank you. With your help I may yet turn this newspaper into something worth the paper it’s printed on.”

  Chapter 12

  A Land Fit for Heroes

  In my work as a constituency assistant to one of Liverpool’s most respected politicians, I daily encounter families in desperate need of assistance. They are good, decent, and honest people. They have done nothing to deserve the hardships they suffer. They are our neighbors in this great city. It is my conviction that they deserve better.

  Recently I was introduced to a husband and wife whom I shall call, for the purposes of this article, Mr. and Mrs. Jones. They have four children, the eldest of whom is thirteen. A fifth child is expected shortly. Mr. Jones served in the infantry, in a local regiment, for the entirety of the war. He was discharged from further service in January of this year with a spotless service record.

  Mr. Jones was wounded twice by shrapnel, both times returning to action soon after, and was gassed in 1916. The effects of the phosgene have left him with a persistent cough, shortness of breath, and chronic eye infections. Before the war he worked on the grinding floor of a local brick factory, but since his discharge he has been unable to resume work because the brick dust inflames his damaged lungs.

  For reasons only understandable to the officials responsible, Mr. Jones has been deemed capable of a full return to work and denied a disability pension. Mrs. Jones, who once helped to make ends meet by taking in piecework, is also unwell, and consequently is unable to work.

  Having exhausted what meager savings they once had, the Jones family was recently evicted from their modest flat and are now living with Mrs. Jones’s elderly parents in their very small court dwelling of four rooms. The entire family is malnourished, Mrs. Jones most of all, as she regularly goes without in order to ensure her children are fed. I fear such malnutrition may cause her to lose the child she is expecting.

  The astonishing and disheartening truth is that the Jones family is among the more fortunate of those I see in the course of my work. They have received modest amounts of assistance from the Red Cross and local agencies, and this has preserved them from utter penury. They have a roof over their heads. They are clothed, if but poorly, and all but the youngest children have shoes. They are malnourished but they are not starving. They have children who are coming of age to work and may soon help to improve the family’s fortunes.

  If the Jones family is to be counted among the fortunate, however relative the term, allow me to pose the question: what of those with nothing? Untold hundreds, possibly even thousands, of our fellow citizens are homeless. Many more thousands go hungry every day. Many are starving.

  Last year Mr. Lloyd George promised to make “Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.” It was an admirable promise, but I believe it is one that he and his fellows have failed to keep. I fear it may never be kept.

  This is not a call to arms, but rather a call t
o action. Will the people of Liverpool, of Merseyside, and of Britain respond? Will they help the Jones family and those like them? Only by putting pressure on our government can we hope to effect meaningful change and, in so doing, build a land that is truly fit for heroes.

  I implore you now: write to your Member of Parliament. Write to the Prime Minister. Write to His Majesty the King. Tell them of your concern. Ask them how they mean to help those among us who suffer. Most importantly, share your concerns with your friends, your family, and your neighbors.

  The Great War may be over, but another war remains, here at home, and we are far from certain of victory.

  —the Liverpool Herald, 24 June 1919

  “SO, MISS BROWN. Tell me how it has been.”

  “How has what been?”

  “The reaction to your ‘call to action.’”

  Mr. Ellis had telephoned her at work yesterday, the first she had heard from him since her article had appeared in the Herald on Tuesday. He’d invited her to lunch on Saturday, when she was at her leisure and he was less pressed for time than usual.

  He’d asked her to meet him at the Herald and she’d agreed, assuming he might need to finish off some task or another and didn’t wish her to wait upon him if he were late. She had assumed they would go to Reece’s or Lyons’ or the restaurant inside Blackler’s department store.

  To that end she had worn her Sunday best, had borrowed a hat from Meg, and had pinned her gold and seed-pearl brooch, a gift from her parents last Christmas, to the lapel of her coat. The Misses Macleod had said she looked very smart.

  But he had not taken her out to lunch. Instead here she was, sitting across the desk from Mr. Ellis, and they were eating sandwiches. Not especially good sandwiches either, for the bread was rather stale and the filling, which she took to be tinned salmon, was badly in need of some salt and pepper.

  He had apologized, explaining that he was so behind in his work he couldn’t afford to leave his desk for so much as an hour. Nor did he cease working after her arrival. As they ate their sandwiches, washed down by sips of weak tea, he somehow managed to edit an article while also carrying on their conversation. Not once did he fumble for words or lose his train of thought, and whenever his eyes weren’t on the page before him he looked her in the eye, the solemn intensity of his gaze filtered by his spectacle lenses.