by John Masters
John Merritt walked down Scarrow bank at Probyn Gorse’s side in the late morning. The rain of the past two days had stopped, a cold east wind blew, hoarfrost rimmed the bare boughs and icicles made little chandeliers along the overhanging banks of the stream. This was the part of the river I saw from the train window, John thought, this was where I walked with Stella …
Probyn, old and stooped, sharp of eye and ear, his gait a fast shuffle, descended from eighty generations of poachers, said, ‘My Woman and I was sorry to hear about Miss Stella, Mr John. But she ha’nt done away with herself.’
‘I don’t think so,’ John said.
‘No more does my Woman,’ Probyn said. ‘She’s in London, mark my words. And soon she’ll get sick of it, the noise, and the people and the stink and the motor cars everywhere … she was brought up here, in Walstone … Would you like me to go up to London, look for her, like? I’d have to have some money.’
John smiled down at the old man, ‘Thanks, Probyn, but I don’t think London’s the place for you … Do you need any money?’
‘No, no, just if I was to go up to London and look for Miss Stella … We’re doing right well. Eating like earls … better.’ He chuckled meaningly – ‘Lord Swanwick’s got a little place in London, a flat, like, and soon they’ll all be living up there and eating London food, which ain’t like ours, stands to reason – because he’s sold the Park to Hoggin, Lord Walstone that is … and when I said all, Lady Helen won’t be with them. But she’ll be in London. She is now, but don’t ask me no questions about her. My lips are sealed.’
‘Lord Swanwick’s sold the Park?’ John said, wondering.
‘’Course, you being in America and France the papers didn’t say what was important. He’s sold it, and the furniture, or most of it. Any flat’s going to be small after Walstone Park, no place for all them paintings and sofas and wardrobes and tables, stands to reason …’
‘And Mr Hoggin’s a lord?’
Probyn stopped and slapped his thigh, crying, ‘William Hoggin, 1st Baron Walstone in the County of Kent! For political services. You didn’t see the Birthday Honours List?’
John shook his head and Probyn said, ‘No more did I. Why should I care who becomes Sir George Ballprick or Viscount Fartarse, begging your pardon, sir … but I heard, in the Arms, same day … Lord Walstone, Lady Walstone – that’s Ruth Stratton that was – and the Honourable Launcelot Hoggin, them’s who own Walstone Park now. And it’s their pheasants my Woman and I eat whenever we want to, and right good eating they are too.’
John said, ‘Still poaching then?’
Probyn said, ‘’Course I am! What else is there for a man my age to do these days? Though, mind you, ’tis a shame poaching from the Park with the keepers His Lordship has … and I told him so to his face, Christmas Eve, not fifty yards from here, I did, His real Lordship, that is, not Bill Hoggin, His New Lordship.’
‘Well, be careful,’ John said. ‘I’ve had some dealings with Mr Hoggin, and maybe he doesn’t have any blue blood, but he’s a tough customer, and as sharp as a weasel.’
They stopped at a gap in the untidy mass of bushes by the footpath and Probyn said, ‘My granddaughter’s down, Mr John, visiting. She’d like to see you, I know. Told me so, when I told her, this morning, that you were at the Manor.’
John hesitated. What did he have to say to Florinda Gorse? But there she was in the door of the thatched-roof cottage, walking out towards them, an open sable coat half-hiding her thin wool dress, her piled auburn hair glowing in the sunlight, one hand out – ‘Mr Merritt!’ Her hand was warm and firm in his and he said, ‘Lady Jarrow …’
She looked straight at him, her green eyes fixed on his, ‘I feel I am to blame, Mr Merritt … I saw your wife in hospital one day last year. I was visiting Miss Alice, her aunt, after she had had her leg blown off. And I saw her one other time, in Hedlington when I came down to see Fletcher on a short leave … A good many theatre people take drugs, and I know the symptoms. I ought to have seen them. I did, I think, but dismissed the idea as impossible.’
John said, ‘What could you have done?’
‘Given her a hand,’ Florinda said simply. ‘No one understood her … perhaps I could have, a little.’
‘I didn’t,’ John said. ‘It’s been nice seeing you again, and – you are very kind. But I must go. I have to go up to London this afternoon, to see the Commissioner of Police.’
‘Wait …’ Her hand was outstretched, holding his sleeve. ‘Did you see Guy Rowland out there – in France? He’s in …’
‘The RFC … I know. No, I didn’t have time. I’ll be going back in a few days, and as we’re still training, back in Brittany, there’s a chance that I’ll be able to get up to see him … or persuade him to fly down to visit us. What message shall I give him?’
Her eyes were large, her lips parted, colour coming and going in her cheeks. She whispered at last, ‘Tell him I … tell him that … tell him to come home quickly.’
John walked slowly along the gravelled path leading from the workmen’s bicycle racks to the Hedlington Aircraft Company’s factory buildings, on the down east of Hedlington, Richard Rowland at one side of him and his sister Betty at the other. Richard was Harry Rowland’s eldest son, and managing director of HAC and the Jupiter Motor Company. In both firms the major financial interest was held by Fairfax, Gottlieb, a New York investment bank, of which John’s father, Stephen Merritt, was currently chairman of the board. They had been talking about Stella and her disappearance; but no one had had anything new to say and after a few minutes John had changed the subject – to the present situation of the two companies. He had been managing Hedlington Aircraft until he left England to enlist, in April 1917, when America entered the war. For the last two years Betty had been, and still was, assistant to the firm’s chief designer, Ginger Keble-Palmer.
Richard, answering John’s question, said, ‘We have some difficulty, now and then, in getting materials … that’s natural, considering that the U-boats are still a terrible menace. We have a permanent shortage of working capital because – like everything else – it’s needed for the war …’
‘Where it all gets blown into thin air,’ Betty murmured.
‘… but our real problem is labour. We are at last getting firm, big orders for the Hedlington Buffalo here, and for the new Mark II standard 3-ton lorry at JMC. We have just about reached the limit with the employment of women …’
‘Until more tools and so on can be worked by power, electric or hydraulic,’ Betty said.
‘… so the men we do have are in a stronger position every day. And there are plenty of people ready to keep reminding them of it – people like Bert Gorse and those other swine down at HE 16 – that’s the local branch of the Union of Skilled Engineers. I tell you, as soon as the war’s over, and the wartime rules are lifted, there’ll be trouble here.’
‘Just here, or at JMC, too?’
‘Both.’
John said, ‘Might it not be better to come to terms with the USE now, when their hands are tied by wartime regulations? They’ll be grateful … not many employers are trying to co-operate with them, I gather.’
Richard said shortly, ‘No. And I’m not going to be one of them.’
John did not hesitate this time, but said, ‘I think you’re making a mistake, Richard. There’s more than the contractual terms involved – there’s the atmosphere of the factories, the temperature of the relationship between management and labour.’
Richard stopped and faced him belligerently, ‘Are you hoping to come back to work here with us, John, when the war’s over?’
John and Betty stopped, too. John said evenly, ‘I can’t say yet. I can decide nothing till Stella’s found – and the war’s over.’
Richard said, ‘Well, if you do, I’ll be glad to have you back … if you don’t take the union’s side in disputes. That’s not the way Americans are supposed to think. Mr Ford doesn’t.’
John said, ‘If I
come back, I’ll have to be free to give you my opinion, Richard. Times have changed. What’s happening over there – ’ he gestured to the south, to France ‘ – is changing everything.’
‘For the worse,’ Richard growled. ‘Look, I’ve got to go down to Hedlington to see Overfeld and Morgan about a modification the American army wants in the three-tonners they’ve ordered. But we have a Buffalo going up on final pre-acceptance trials at three this afternoon … like to go up with her?’
‘I’d love to,’ John said. ‘I’ll come back at about a quarter of three, then.’
Richard raised a hand in acknowledgment as he turned and walked briskly back towards the offices and his car. John turned to his sister, ‘How are Overfeld and Morgan doing?’
Overfeld was the American production expert who’d come over late in 1914 to help set up the Jupiter Motor Company; and Morgan was an American of Welsh lineage who’d been imported from Detroit as works foreman at JMC when the plant was ready to operate.
Betty said, ‘Richard’s becoming rabid about unions in general and the USE in particular … Overfeld’s getting homesick. Richard offered to send him home for a month’s leave last year, but his wife called that he wasn’t to come – too dangerous on the seas, she said. Morgan’s quite happy … but he agrees with Richard – there’ll be trouble as soon as the war’s over.’
‘There will be, if Richard doesn’t bend.’
Betty said, ‘I agree, but Richard won’t hear of it. He’s introducing more efficient methods, new machines, stiffer work rules, tighter schedules – all the time. To him the union, any union, is Satan.’
‘Sounds like a good Republican,’ John said. ‘Oh, I know we’re Republicans – Dad certainly is – but that sort of politics seems a little, well, petty nowadays – when you look at the war.’
‘Oh, the war, the war!’ Betty groaned. ‘But you’re right … I just pray for it to end, but O, Lord, how long, how long? … I thought that Mr Wilson’s Fourteen Points might bring everyone to reason – but not a hope.’
John said nothing for a few moments, pacing slowly at her side; then they turned and started back, and he said, ‘How’s Fletcher Whitman – who used to be Fletcher Gorse – Probyn’s grandson?’
She said, ‘Alive … as of a week ago. He writes regularly, and he writes well. I’m keeping all his letters, of course. What he sees, notices, is amazing. He doesn’t always have enough words to describe his insight fully, but when he does … he’s a genius, John, a great, great poet.’
‘I know … What’s going to happen – between you and him?’
It was Betty’s turn to be silent, no sound now but the regular crunch of their shoes on the gravel. At last she said, ‘He must aim to be what he is – a poet. Poet Laureate of England, perhaps, unless he finds he must rebel against all that – old England, lords and ladies and pageantry and butts of Malmsey wine … If he is to reach the limits of his own potential, he must have more education. Not necessarily at school or university – but among people, books … talking with other poets, with statesmen, professors, turret lathe operators, herring fishermen …’ Her voice trailed off.
John waited a moment then said, ‘And you? Where do you fit in?’
She said, ‘I think I want to be his wife, John.’
‘And give up your career?’
She said, ‘I’d like to continue my career, even after all the men come back, though I know there’ll be plenty of pressure on Richard to fire me and put an ex-service man in my place. A lot of women are going to be forced back into the kitchen who don’t want to go there at all … Look, unless Fletcher can make enough money for us both to live on, just by his poetry, it looks as though I’ll have to work, too.’
‘Dad would settle a good income on you, if he approved of Fletcher.’
‘Probably,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know whether we should marry, until he comes home for good. But he’s going to become a great poet, whatever else happens.’
A few moments later Betty walked into the crowded little office of the firm’s accountant, three doors down the hutment passage from the managing director’s. Alice Rowland, who had been the accountant since the first week of the year, looked up from a ledger where she was checking that the parts department was using the proper double-entry system of bookkeeping.
Betty said, ‘Mind if I sit down for a moment?’ Her eye caught the crutches propped in a corner. Alice saw the glance and said, ‘They go on the bonfire February 11th. I get my artificial leg on the 10th …. I love this work but I shall really have to get a pair of glasses. My eyes aren’t what they were. Whose are, at thirty-seven?’
Betty said, ‘John was here just now.’
‘I know. I saw you through the window. He looks so stern these days, especially in that uniform. We all met him at the Governor’s the day before yesterday. I felt so helpless, and I know the others did, too.’
‘So do I. But it’s when Stella’s found that the real problems will arise. John will be back in France. We’re the ones who must rescue her from whatever dreadful place she’ll still be in.’
Alice said, ‘It won’t be easy.’ She added matter-of-factly – ‘I was a drug addict myself, for a time.’
‘You!’ Betty gasped. Stella’s Aunt Alice was such a cheery, unassuming, nice person, not pretty, but, well, nice-looking, that the words she had just spoken didn’t make sense.
Alice said gently, ‘Yes, dear. And I have had a lover. The war has changed our women’s world far more than this suffrage we’ve just been presented with … They gave me morphine for quite a time after I had my leg blown off. I became addicted, and suddenly found that I couldn’t live without it. But of course I was in hospital, and the doctors could treat me, whether I liked it or not. And they did. They eased the withdrawal pains as much as they could, but it was still quite dreadful. We must remember that, when Stella comes back. Did you know that I am also a post office? An illegal and treasonable post office?’
‘What?’ Betty gasped. ‘What on earth do you mean?’ Aunt Alice – someone’s paramour; a dope fiend; and now …?
Alice said, ‘I forward letters between Guy – my nephew, the air ace, and Werner von Rackow …’
‘The German ace? But how?’
‘They each write to me, as Dear Cousin. But the contents of the letters are actually meant for the other. The letters are sent to an address in Switzerland, where some crippled old lady lives who apparently really is a cousin of von Rackow’s. She forwards them to von Rackow’s fiancée, or to me, as the case may be. Von Rackow fixed it all up last November, then dropped private messages on Guy’s aerodrome with all the details. Guy’s commanding his squadron now, and he’s a major.’
‘And he’s what? Twenty?’
‘Twenty-one next St George’s Day.’
‘What do they write about?’
‘Oh, nothing about the war. About the sort of problems there will be when it’s over. How to help the children grow up without hatred. Cure for the crippled. Retrain people who’ve only known war, and only have war skills … I see all the letters, of course, and I think that Maria Rittenhaus and whomever Guy marries are very lucky women.’
Betty hesitated then said, ‘I hope … that the man you love … is all right.’
‘So far,’ Alice said briskly, ‘but it’s over. He’s married. I hurt his wife very much. Now, my dear, I must get back to work or my brother Giglamps will be here muttering that he knew he shouldn’t have employed a woman in this job …’
John Merritt and Fiona Rowland parted at the taxi rank outside Victoria Station, Chatham side. They had found each other on the same train to London from Hedlington earlier that morning, and had shared the same first-class compartment, otherwise empty. John was going up for his second visit to Scotland Yard – this time with the Chief Detective Inspector responsible for investigating drug traffic and drug-related crimes. He didn’t know what Stella’s Aunt Fiona was going up for – she hadn’t said – but presumed it was f
or shopping. On the journey they had not spoken much; she had expressed her sympathy, and offered her help; and she had made some small talk – about her husband, Lieutenant-Colonel Quentin Rowland, commanding the 1st Battalion of the Weald Light Infantry in France; about her daughter, Virginia, recently married to a war-crippled Battery Sergeant-Major Robinson – a marriage of which she clearly did not approve; about her son Major Guy Rowland, DSO, MC, the air ace, of whom she was, as clearly, very proud … yet all the time John felt that she was not really with him in the little padded box with the richly decorated plush cushions, the South Eastern & Chatham Railway’s crest embroidered on them, rocking sedately towards London through the wintry Weald of Kent.
They found taxis, and drove away, John towards New Scotland Yard, Fiona towards the Charing Cross Hospital. There at the reception desk, she pushed up her veil and said, ‘I would like to visit Lieutenant Archie Campbell, Weald Light Infantry, please, sister. He has an abdominal wound, and had some additional surgery the day before yesterday.’
‘It is not visiting hours,’ the sister said severely. ‘Are you a relative?’
Fiona said, ‘When he was hit Mr Campbell was my husband’s adjutant. My husband commands the 1st Battalion of the Weald Light Infantry.’ Her voice was cold. As a McLeod of Skye she did not intend to take any haughtiness from nursing sisters.
The sister relented. ‘Ah well, you may go up. Second Floor, Room twenty-four. He is in with five others, all post-op cases. It makes it easier for the duty nurse to look after them.’
Fiona nodded and headed for the stairs. She had visited Archie once before, as soon as she received Quentin’s letter telling her where he was. He had told her that this last operation should make him fit again. Fit? The word made her shiver, for in it she heard the added unspoken words – ‘for general duty’: fit for the trenches.
At the door of the ward she braced herself. If he could have been alone, it would have been so much easier, but … she walked in. He was in the far bed on her right, by a big window looking towards the back of Coutts Bank. He had been lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, but at the click of her heels on the tiled floor he looked round, his head moving slowly, as though much pain had taught him to move with care. She sat down in the chair beside his bed, feeling the tears well up in her eyes.
