by John Masters
The Woman, who had been standing aside, her face inscrutable, said, ‘We’d best go upstairs so I can have a look at you now, milady.’
‘Of course,’ Helen said. ‘Oh, I’m so glad you could come.’
‘Most of the women who visit me want me to get rid of a baby,’ the Woman said. ‘This is better. Come on now … slowly, there’s no hurry.’
They went out and the stairs creaked as they climbed up to the bedroom above. Lady Swanwick said, ‘Well … what has Helen been doing all this time?’
‘Sewing … crocheting things we can sell … helping me. She’s a good Italian cook now. I had to learn for Niccolo, and I’ve taught her. She could always get a job at the restaurant next door.’
‘Not at the house next to that, I hope,’ the countess said grimly.
‘Oh milady, we know what that is, but it can’t be helped here in Soho. They don’t do us no harm … One of the girls is knitting a cap for the baby …’
Louise said, ‘What are you going to do when the baby’s come? We’d love to have them back at High Staining. Helen can work on the farm, or not, as she chooses. I’ll look after the baby, as much as I can. You can come, too, of course.’
The countess said, ‘We have room in the flat for them. The servants will talk, but they’d do that at High Staining. It can’t be helped.’
Ethel said, ‘Milady, m’m, begging your pardon, I have to stay here. My Niccolo wants me to … Lady Helen’s talked about it a lot, and she says we’re going to start a boutique, she called it, in the West End. She’ll do most of the buying and selling and I’ll help, and do accounts. I always was good at arithmetic.’
‘Buying and selling, what?’ her ladyship asked.
‘Hats, I think, milady, gloves, scarves, blouses, perfume, handbags, umbrellas, parasols … fashionable things. We’ll live here and take the baby to the shop with us. He can sleep in the back … and one of us will always be there to look after him.’
‘What will happen when your husband comes home?’ Louise asked.
Ethel’s face fell, and she said, ‘Well, if it’s only for a leave, it won’t make any difference, I mean Lady Helen won’t want me to work while Niccolo’s at home. If the war’s over … we’ll have to wait and see, won’t we? Perhaps Lady Helen will marry … she calls herself Mrs Rowland, m’m.’
‘Of course.’
‘I mean she’s had her name changed to that, m’m, officially like … so the baby will be called Rowland.’
The Woman came back silently into the room. The stairs had not creaked under her. She said, ‘It feels like the second week of April … everything quite right, head down. She’ll probably tear a bit, but that’s all.’
The countess said, ‘I really think there ought to be a doctor, too, Mrs Gorse, and …’
Helen came in, buttoning the top buttons of her thick blouse. She said, ‘I trust Mrs Gorse, Mummy. I really don’t want a doctor … Well, now we’re in touch again, I feel so much better … but I couldn’t bring myself to let you all know until I was absolutely sure that I was really going to have the baby, and wouldn’t lose it through a miscarriage.’
‘Too late for that now,’ the Woman said. ‘You won’t lose it, less you jump off the roof.’
Helen said, ‘I won’t do that … Do give Barbara my love, Mummy, and ask her to come down and see us. We’re in all the time. Does Daddy know?’
The countess said, ‘Yes. He can’t face it, yet. He will.’
‘I wish it could have been otherwise,’ Helen said, ‘but … I’m not sorry. Better this by far than not having anything of Boy’s to love, in his place. Tell me when Daddy’s ready for me to go and see him … Now, let’s go and have lunch next door. Signor Bertinelli’s a very nice man, and his wife’s a marvellous cook. And we might see Russell Wharton, the actor, there. He lives just across the street.’
Ethel Fagioletti said quickly, ‘Give me five minutes, milady. I have a few things to finish in the kitchen.’ She turned to the Woman – ‘Perhaps you’d give me a hand, Mrs Gorse?’
The Woman followed her out of the room without a word. Ethel led to the back of the little house, and closed the kitchen door – ‘I don’t really have anything to do,’ she said, ‘but I thought we’d best leave the ladies alone … And I wanted to ask you if you can help me get a baby, next time my husband comes home.’
The Woman surveyed the little woman with a half-smile on her severe face, ‘You want one, and can’t get it, and your sister-in-law’s got one, and doesn’t want it.’
‘Poor Anne,’ Ethel said, ‘Frank’s written to Mother saying he doesn’t want to see her again, or even his own kids … And she’s not getting any allotment, so I don’t know what’s going to happen to her.’
‘Lady Walstone’s given her a job in the laundry room at the Park,’ the Woman said. ‘Did it yesterday. And given them two rooms in the top of the house to live in, so she won’t have to pay rent for the house in Hedlington.’
‘That’s good of Ruth,’ Ethel said. ‘She might have taken Frank’s side and cut Anne off. We are Frank’s sisters, after all. He’ll be angry at Ruth when he knows she’s helping Anne.’
‘P’raps,’ the Woman said. ‘Can’t be helped, can it? These things will happen, if you send men off from their women, and blow them up … Look, I’ve a lot of work to do these days, and it’s not much use trying to help you have a baby till your husband comes home. So, when you think that won’t be long, come down to our cottage. I’m always there.’
‘Oh thank you, thank you!’
‘Don’t thank me till you miss the curse … and then give some of the thanks to your husband.’
Guy Rowland sat at a half-hidden table in the Savoy grill room, opposite a beautiful young woman with shining auburn hair piled high on her head and held with a large diamond and emerald pin. She was Florinda, Marchioness of Jarrow, née Florinda Gorse. The meal was nearly over and the waiter was bringing them another of the bottles of champagne which Florinda had insisted on ordering. It was the last day of his forty-eight-hour leave – most of which had been spent in conferences at the Air Ministry.
‘Can’t you stay another day?’ Florinda asked.
‘Not a chance, I’m afraid.’ The light gleamed on the long scar on his right cheekbone and the permanent slight droop to the right side of his mouth.
She made a moue. ‘Other men would disobey orders if I asked them to.’
‘I’m sure they would,’ he said, putting a hand over hers. ‘But Boom Trenchard isn’t their boss. He told me this afternoon, when we’d finished our conference – it was about how to teach air tactics to pilots before they went out to France – he said, “The Germans are going to attack very soon now. Make sure you don’t hang around in London, whatever the temptation” and he looked at me very hard from under those beetling eyebrows, as if he knew the temptation would be a gorgeous girl with red hair and green eyes …’
She lifted up his hand and laid it momentarily against her cheek. Then she said, ‘You were talking about von Rackow, earlier. Do you think you’ll get together with him, after the war?’
‘We will,’ Guy said slowly. ‘Just what we’ll do then isn’t quite clear in either of our minds yet … it’ll depend in part on what state the world’s in, where the help is most needed. I think that’s going to be the key – love, some way to use the power of love, as we’ve been using and creating the power of hate … Perhaps it’ll be something practical … form a new political party … I don’t know. I really can’t get to grips with it till Werner and I meet. The first thing we’ll do when the war’s over is go on a walking tour together. His wife’ll have to come too, I suppose, if she likes walking.’
‘And your wife, eh?’
‘Ah.’
‘Here, let’s have another bottle of fizz.’
He said, ‘I’ve had enough … and so have you, my darling Florinda.’
‘You always was a bleeding schoolmaster,’ she said in cockney. ‘Ordering me abah
t, tell me when to sit up, when to lie down, when to pee …’
‘You don’t seem happy,’ he said. Her beauty gripped him by the loins and he yearned for her, remembering the nights he had spent in her arms fifteen months ago. And how he loved her, too.
She said, ‘Who says I’m not happy? What are you doing to make me happy, anyway?’
He said simply, ‘You don’t seem happy to me. I know you.’
She muttered, ‘Too bloody well!’
After a time he removed his hand from hers, where he had been gently holding it, leaned back, and said, ‘Are you going to come back to the flat with me? Or may I come to yours?’
She snapped, ‘No … Oh God, I’d love to, Guy, but I promised another man I’d be his mistress as long as I wanted to, and I haven’t told him different yet.’
His heart sank, though he kept his face calm and, he hoped, unmoved. He said, ‘Is that why you are unhappy?’
‘I don’t know,’ she snapped. ‘I’m … He’s Billy Bidford, the racing driver.’
‘Millionaire sportsman, polo player, flyer, etcetera etcetera … RNVR, isn’t he?’
‘Yes. I told him I might be in love with someone else.’
‘Well, are you?’ He looked full at her, the hard blue right eye and the soft brown left eye. At last her own green eyes fell. She said, ‘I don’t know. If I did, what would I do? I’m frightened of you, Guy. You’re not twenty-one yet …’
‘Next month, the 23rd.’
‘But you’ve killed, how many men?’
‘And liked it,’ he said in a low voice. ‘That’s one of the things I have to talk to Werner about. To find out if he is the same … what are people like us going to do when the killing stops?’
‘Would you kill me, if I seemed to be your enemy?’
‘I don’t know … I don’t know.’
‘Nor do I … I’m only giving a bit of myself to Billy – my cunt. As a matter of fact I’m just lending it to him. But with you, I’d have to give everything, and never expect it back … and I don’t know yet whether I am strong enough for that, so … forgive me, dear Guy. Can I get another woman for you for tonight? I know half a dozen who’d be round in their nighties in a flash, for you, if I called.’
He smiled then. ‘No thanks, darling. For the moment, you or no one …’
‘Not even Poitrine?’
‘Good heavens, no! … Billy Bidford’s in CMBs, I believe?’
She nodded, and said, ‘He was at Dover but he’s been moved to Chatham for some hush-hush job.’
‘So’s my uncle, the man whose flat I’m using. I wonder if they’ve met. Uncle Tom’s a commander … and a pansy.’
She looked up sharply, ‘Plenty of them in the theatre. They’re not bad, mostly.’
‘Uncle Tom isn’t in the theatre,’ Guy said grimly. ‘He’s in the Royal Navy. Straight stripes.’
‘How do you know, about him?’
‘He has a servant, who lives in the flat, an ex-sailor called Charlie Bennett. He’s a young Geordie, very handsome, even pretty, except that he’s strongly built. Uncle Tom has a picture of him, nude, in his bedroom, and I imagine, vice versa.’
Florinda whistled, ‘So he doesn’t care who knows?’
‘Apparently not. I hope it comes out all right for Uncle Tom. He was always very nice to me, when I was a kid … but the navy doesn’t look kindly on homosexuals, any more than the army does … or the Royal Air Force will. General Trenchard confirmed what we’ve all known for weeks, that the air services are going to be united in a single new force – the Royal Air Force – on April 1st … two weeks’ time. I must get home and to bed, darling. Can I get a taxi for you?’
‘No, let’s walk as far as Piccadilly Circus at least. We can look at the devastated French village they’ve set up in Trafalgar Square, and the Strand will be dark and empty and I can hold your arm and tell myself it’s just for protection … can’t I?’
Fiona Rowland started as the door bell rang. He’d telephoned ten minutes ago, so she shouldn’t have been surprised, but she was. Thank God the cook and the maid had the afternoon off. She ran down to the front door and opened it breathlessly, one hand to her throat. Archie was standing outside in a thin rain, wearing a trench coat over his uniform, a swagger stick in one hand with the crest of the regiment embossed on the silver knob. His chinstrap shone brilliant ox-blood red, but the cap badge of the prancing horse and bugle horn were in bronze, and gleamed only dully under the leaden sky. She held the door open without a word and he walked in. ‘Up the stairs?’ he threw over his shoulder.
‘Yes,’ she said, following him. ‘Right at the top.’
Upstairs, she closed the living-room door behind her and opened her arms. He moved slowly to her, took her arms, and held them against her sides – ‘You’re looking peaked,’ he said.
‘What else do you expect? I called the convalescent depot on Monday and they told me you’d been released. Where have you been?’
‘Suppose I tell you I’ve been poking some of my old models, in Chelsea? There was one with a bonny ginger bush who could never get enough.’
‘Where have you been, Archie?’
He sighed, ‘Visiting my mother in Glasgow.’ He sat down. She sat opposite, close, and said, ‘Archie, you have just recovered from a very serious wound and you are not fit for service in the trenches. And you have so much to teach the recruit officers at the Depot here. Stay here, and let us be lovers, as we were before the war, for ten years … ten years, Archie!’
‘Then everyone in Hedlington would know that Colonel Quentin Rowland was being cuckolded on his own doorstep.’
‘Go somewhere else – there are army jobs everywhere. I’ll follow you. There’s nothing to keep me here, with Guy in France and Virginia married.’
‘No,’ Archie said slowly. ‘There isn’t I suppose.’ He looked round the room, unbuttoning his trench coat. ‘They look good’ – he nodded at the pen and ink sketches and occasional oils on the walls, all of war scenes and all signed ‘Campbell.’ He had done them and given them to his commanding officer, Fiona’s husband, some as gifts, some on loan until he could collect them after the war.
She stood by his side, looking at a head-and-shoulders portrait of her husband. She said, ‘You make him look more spiritual than he is.’
‘It’s there, all right,’ Archie said. ‘He just doesn’t have any way of expressing it. You have to know him very well to see it.’
‘I’ve known him for God knows how many years and I haven’t seen it. He doesn’t have any soul. It’s in you, and you’re just transferring it to Quentin.’
Archie said, ‘No, lass, he has it.’ The trench coat was off now, and folded over the back of a chair. He said, ‘Quentin has made me a great artist, or near great, because there is something in him that brings out what greatness you have, of any sort … That’s why the men love him, in their way – he brings out courage in them that they didn’t know they possessed, endurance beyond their endurance, sacrifice beyond sacrifice … He loves you. He knows you don’t love him, and asked me whether I proposed to marry you. I said that I didn’t …’ He held up a hand to suppress Fiona’s moan of anguish ‘… and he said that’s not the way to treat a woman whom you’ve seduced and betrayed … but inside he was glad, because he knows that if I take you back, he’ll never have a chance. But Fiona, I could no more be your lover again now, after what Quentin has become to me, than I could fly to the moon.
‘You’ve become like him,’ she cried. ‘You don’t understand me now, any more than he does.’
‘I think I do,’ Archie said. ‘And I’ve come to say goodbye. I’m going back to the battalion tomorrow. It’s all been arranged – medical boards, orders to get me out of the reinforcement depot, everything. You must learn to love him, Fiona. He’s your husband, and he’s a good man.’
She said, ‘I have only loved one man in my life, Archie.’
‘You said just now that I had grown like him, that you see him
in me … But from now on you must see me in him. Goodbye.’
We Socialists have the noblest heads, Rachel Cowan thought, looking at the profile Ramsay MacDonald was offering her in the little North London house where the meeting was being held. Well, Snowden, beyond MacDonald, hardly had a noble profile, just sharp and determined, thin-lipped, hard-jawed. But MacDonald was as imposing as Bertrand Russell, though without Russell’s electric sense of energy.
MacDonald, who had been leader of the Labour Party in the House of Commons until he was discredited by his pacifist attitude, was speaking to Wilfred Bentley, Rachel’s husband – though they used their own names for all matters, as had been agreed before they married early in the year. Bentley, his long aristocratic face contrasting strongly with MacDonald’s craggy outline and mane of greying hair, was listening attentively as MacDonald said, ‘We hear the same thing – that Harry Rowland will not contest the next election … even if he’s not opposed.’
Wilfred said, ‘I believe it’s true. He’s tired, I think.’
MacDonald said, ‘He’s an honest man, though no friend of Labour. The Prime Minister will miss him.’
Rachel cut in, ‘But Mr Lloyd George may not be Prime Minister after the next election.’
Snowden said, ‘He will, assuming he’s won the war … And you want to start nursing the constituency? It may be months before there’s a general election … though I suppose it’s possible that Harry Rowland will apply for the Chiltern Hundreds before then.’
MacDonald said, ‘The question is, can you afford it? The chances of your winning Mid Scarrow for Labour are very small, and the central committee can’t afford to spend a lot of money in a doubtful cause, so you’ll have to find most of it yourselves. Can you do it?’
Rachel said, ‘I think so. The party’s growing by leaps and bounds in Hedlington and the countryside, as the war shows no sign of ending and more and more men get sent off to the Western Front to be killed. We didn’t have a hundred members when I joined, right after I left Girton. Now we have nearly two thousand. We can do a lot with their subscriptions.’
