by John Masters
‘Aye,’ MacDonald said thoughtfully. ‘Lloyd George is going to win the war, but he’ll lose the peace, in this country, sooner or later. Right now all that the people can see is the Gairrmans, and victory. Afterwards, they’ll see what they’ve lost, what might have been, if we’d not got into the war, or had negotiated peace earlier … then they’ll remember what we have been saying all along … All right, I approve, and I’m sure the central committee will do so, too. Start as soon as you can … concentrate on those who’ve suffered from the war. Whoever is responsible for it, it’s certainly not us – that’s our strongest point. All the factory workers, especially the union men … everyone who’s lost sons or brothers or fathers … everyone who’s been badly hit by taxes, at the bottom end of the scale … the House of Lords has been hard hit by taxes, but we aren’t going to cry for them … Go after the women. They’ve got the vote, they also affect the way their men vote, and in her heart of hearts there isn’t a woman in the country who doesn’t think this is a useless, terrible slaughter … Make everyone understand that we’re not Bolsheviks, with murder in our hearts, but decent hard-working men, educated too, even though we dinna talk with plums in our throats … Sorry, Mr Bentley, ah dinna mean to be pairrsonal.’
Wilfred laughed, ‘It’s quite all right, Mr MacDonald. Winchester, Balliol, and the 60th Rifles leave their mark on a man, and I’m afraid it’s indelible.’
‘Ah!’ MacDonald said. ‘I saw in the wee biography you sent up that you were gassed and invalided out. And you have the Military Cross?’
‘That’s correct.’
‘Stress all those things. Opposition to the war coming from an officer of a crack regiment, with that record, is taken very differently from the cries of such as I and Russell and the rest.’ He turned to Rachel, ‘You are a Jewess, Miss Cowan?’
She said, ‘Yes. My real name is Cohen. My father runs a stall in Whitechapel. I won a scholarship to Girton. My best friend there was Naomi Rowland, the MPs granddaughter. I’ve stayed with them, and I know the whole family quite well, partly from being arrested trying to stop people going to work in their shell factory, and helping Bert Gorse to organise the union at Hedlington Aircraft and the Jupiter Motor Company – both of which are majority-owned by a New York bank. The son of the chairman of the board of that bank is John Merritt, who’s married to another granddaughter of the MP.’
Snowden said, ‘Work hard on those factories that are American owned, Miss Cowan. The Americans despise unions and labour. They bring their troops out against strikers. Our government would like to do the same.’
Wilfred said, ‘You suggest that we should imply to the workers in our constituency that troops will be brought out against them if they don’t bring a Socialist government to power? I’m afraid I don’t agree. I think that would be incitement, and demagoguery.’
Snowden accentuated his Yorkshire accent, ‘Politics is a dirty business, Mr Bentley. Tha’ can’t keep the kid gloves on, tha’ knows.’
MacDonald interrupted, ‘It’s their constituency and they must woo it their own way. There’s only one question left, which hasn’t been made clear yet. Which of you is going to be the candidate?’
Rachel said, ‘I would very much like to be the first woman Member of Parliament, but we have discussed this at great length and we have agreed that Wilfred should be the candidate and I the organiser.’
‘The eminence grise,’ Snowden said, the French words sounding very strange under their Yorkshire overlay.
MacDonald said, ‘I would prefer to say, right hand, left hand, and who is to say which is which? They are both indispensable in politics. Well, let us hope that your chance comes soon, but not too soon. You need at least four months to get the constituency thoroughly mapped out and prepared … softened up, the artillery people say … horrible idea, but apt …’
Christopher Cate, titular squire of Walstone in the County of Kent, walked on Beighton Down with a smaller, limping woman, both in tweeds and sensible caps, carrying blackthorn sticks to help their steps over the uneven turf. It was not raining and the pale sunshine and pastel shadows of an English spring chased each other across the chequer board of the fields of the Weald below. The wind tugged at the short grass, the bare boughs of a distant copse waved above the skyline to the north, larks rose, soaring, pouring out their wild lyric song to the windy sky. It was two days before the spring equinox.
Isabel Kramer said, ‘I’m sorry about that letter, but I had to tell you … I’m miserable, and frustrated, and I don’t know how much longer I can bear it.’
Cate said nothing. As long as his wife Margaret remained underground in Ireland there was nothing he could do to get a divorce. He desperately wanted to marry Isabel; she knew that; but he understood, too, her need to let off steam, to scream against fate.
They walked another ten minutes, and she said, ‘I can’t be torpedoed twice, can I?’
Cate still said nothing. The U-boats were being beaten, but they were still doing their ghastly work. Some merchant sailors had been torpedoed two and three times.
Ten minutes later again Isabel said, ‘Walter hasn’t been sent overseas yet, but it’s only a matter of time.’
‘Where is he now?’ Cate asked. Walter was her son by her first, and only marriage, which had ended nine years ago in widowhood. He was now a private in the American National Army.
She said, ‘In Camp Davidson, California.’
He said, the words wrung out of him, but, he hoped, showing none of that pain – ‘You must go to him, my dear. I hate to think of you risking your life at sea, but … you are right – you should see Walter before he goes to France.’
He wished that she was a more fearful person, so that the prospect of the U-boats would deter her – after all, if you have nearly drowned, spent thirty-six hours in an open boat in a winter storm, suffered frostbite, lost a toe and nearly your life … you are entitled to some anxiety over the prospect of a repeat of those experiences. But the fact was that he could not face the continued misery of the hunt for Stella without her support. In this matter he was alone … Laurence was away in France; Richard absorbed with his businesses and Susan with the adopted children; Quentin in France and Fiona here but not here, withdrawn into some private world since Quentin went overseas; yet she and Quentin had not been close, he was sure; Alice … ah, Alice had been wonderful, a real tower of strength, but she had so little spare time … Betty Merritt had been a strength, too; but Cate could tell that she had preoccupations of her own. Isabel had told him that she was in love with Fletcher Gorse … a most unsuitable match, on the face of it, but with this war changing everything, who could tell? And you had to remember that she was American, raised away from England’s ancient prejudices and class distinctions.
Isabel said, ‘I told you I’d stay till Stella was found, but now I think I must go. It’s my duty to see Walter … and I want to.’
‘Of course,’ he said.
They turned south and walking now into the wind, Isabel’s hair tugging at its restraining pins, tendrils escaping out from under the tweed cap, they came down to Beighton and walked through it, respectfully greeted by the many who knew the Squire of Walstone by sight; and so on down winding lanes, between pleached hedges, to Walstone Manor.
As they walked in through the front door Garrod came hurrying down the passage to them. She stopped, controlled her rapid breathing, and said, ‘The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has been on the telephone for you. About an hour ago, it was, sir. He asked that you call back as soon as you came in. The number is on the pad by the machine, sir.’
Cate looked quickly at Isabel, then hurried down the hall to the telephone in its little niche under the stairs. He cranked quickly, trying, like Garrod, to control his breathing – ‘I wish to make a trunk call to London, please, operator,’ he said. ‘Whitehall 7000.’
He waited, Isabel standing beside him, her hand on his shoulder as he sat at the little table on which the telephone re
sted. ‘Scotland Yard? This is Christopher Cate, calling from Walstone, Kent. The Commissioner left a message for me to call him back … Yes, of course.’ He looked up at Isabel and whispered, ‘I’m through to his secretary. She says it will be a minute, as he has someone with him …’ He waited. Then started and gripped the earphone harder. ‘Yes, Sir Richard, Cate speaking …’ He listened for three minutes, while Isabel stroked his shoulder and neck. Then he said, ‘Thank you, Sir Richard. I’ll be up on the next train.’ He hung up, his head sank for a moment, then he looked up – ‘They’ve found her. She’s alive. Heavily drug-addicted but otherwise … not sick. The Commissioner said I’d better get the rest of the story from the people at the hospital where she is … the Limehouse … and Inspector Turnbull, who found her. He’ll come to the hospital as soon as we get there and phone the Yard.’
‘When’s the next train?’ Isabel said. ‘Or, wait a minute! I drove down this time. We’ll go up in my car. We can leave right away … Garrod!’ The maid answered at once; Isabel knew she would not have gone far – ‘Can you ask Mrs Abell to make up a few sandwiches for us, at once? I don’t know whether Mr Cate will be spending the night in London but he may.’
‘Have they found Miss Stella?’ Garrod asked.
‘Oh, of course, I should have said so at once. Yes, that’s all we know.’
‘The Lord be thanked,’ Garrod said fervently. ‘None of us below stairs have been able to sleep a wink all these weeks, thinking of poor Miss Stella out there … heaven knew where … We were all sure she was alive, though.’
‘Well, she is,’ Cate said. ‘I just don’t know what to do … what to think … what to prepare myself for …’
‘I’ll be there,’ Isabel said. ‘Now, pour yourself a big, big whisky and pour a smaller one for me while you’re at it. I shall be driving.’
They were sitting in the large bright room of the Specialist in Venereology of the Limehouse Hospital, looking out over the Thames below Tower Bridge, near the Pool of London – Cate, Isabel, Inspector Turnbull of the Yard’s Drug Investigation Unit, and Dr Aloysius Kettering, MD, FRCP, the specialist.
Turnbull was speaking, ‘We found her by asking the hospitals to report any patient who appears to have recently been on drugs, especially by injection.’
The inspector looked rather like Bill Hoggin, Lord Walstone, burly, rolls of fat on his neck … which was to say he also looked something like the Minister of War, the Earl of Derby; but the inspector’s accent was of London, like Hoggin’s; the earl’s was not.
Turnbull continued, ‘The Limehouse told us the day before yesterday they had a patient come in for treatment of VD … sorry, sir, but that’s the facts … a young woman, obvious gonorrhoea, but they also suspected drugs. She’d got needle marks, though she’d done everything she could to avoid having to bare her arms. It took us a couple of days to check it out … we had hundreds of leads and tips to follow, sir … But this morning early we came here, and it was her, all right – Mrs Merritt, whom we were looking for. She’s lost a lot of weight, pale, hair dirty, runny nose, sore throat, eyes puffy from lack of sleep … all the symptoms of heroin. And she has a recently broken left upper arm, badly healed, so slightly deformed … I phoned the Commissioner.’
Dr Kettering said, ‘Mrs Merritt is also pregnant, Mr Cate. About two months gone. An abortion would be easy at this stage and fully justified by the circumstances.’
Cate’s mind reeled under the blows. Stella, his darling blonde girl, Johnny Merritt’s beautiful bride, the English rose … a drug fiend, injecting herself with vile drugs … pregnant by God knows who … riddled with gonorrhoea … He whispered, ‘How are we going to tell John?’
Isabel said, ‘I think I’ll have to do it, Christopher.’
‘But they won’t let you up to the front.’
‘I think they will. Newton Baker, our Secretary of War, is a close friend of Stephen’s – John’s father, my brother. Or I can fix it through the Embassy. Virgil’s very well trusted by Mr Page, the ambassador.’
Cate’s mind still raced. Stella had been living as a whore, to earn money to buy heroin. Obviously the police had tracked her down through those two channels – checking on the whores in the districts where drug traffic was heavy, particularly Limehouse and the Docks, London’s Chinatown … and on the drug patients in the hospitals.
Dr Kettering said, ‘She can be rehabilitated, sir. But she has to be cleaned first – that’s the word we use for detoxified – and weaned of her addiction. Then she has to go to a place where her past is known, where she can be helped in every way, and where she has something worthwhile to do with herself and her time. I would like to keep her here for two weeks – we have an excellent drug rehabilitation programme, as we see a lot of it … Then she should be able to go home.’
Cate said, ‘She mustn’t go back to the Cottage, alone. She must come back to the Manor, and live with us until the war’s over … We should never have left her in Beighton, alone, when John joined up …’
‘I have to have the power to keep her here for those two weeks,’ the doctor said. ‘Otherwise she can just walk out. She’s over twenty-one, I imagine?’
Cate nodded. The inspector said, ‘I can have her held pending investigation of a prostitution charge, sir. She was picking up sailors outside the Old Bull and Bush near the East India Docks, when we found her.’
The doctor said, ‘Good … though she’s so exhausted, so depressed, that I don’t think she’d try to escape. At this moment she couldn’t face the life she’s been living the last three months … There’s one other question. The husband’s permission must be obtained, for the abortion.’
They all looked at Cate. Cate said slowly, ‘You must get to him, Isabel, and tell him … tell him everything … Ask him what he wants to do, what he proposes to do, what he wants us here to do. If he washes his hands of Stella, we’ll understand. We’ll take her back. Meantime, we have to get her on her feet again. Whatever John decides, she’ll need her health.’
The doctor rose. ‘Shall we go and see the patient now, then? Very well … I warn you, sir, and madam, that she does not at all resemble the young lady who disappeared from Hedlington on Christmas Eve last year. Prepare yourselves.’
Extract from the diary of John Charteris, Field-Marshal Haig’s Chief of Intelligence:
March 15. It seems reasonably certain that the attack will begin within a week or ten days against the Fifth Army – and possibly the Third as well. D.H. has gone to London to put the whole situation before the Cabinet.
March 18. Anyhow D.H. has now warned (the Prime Minister) definitely that there will be an attack upon a very large frontage of not less than 50 miles, and has also reminded him that we are short of men; he has been told we will not get many reinforcements.
The Germans now have 185 divisions on the Western Front … so that they should have something like 60 divisions available for one great attack … We have only 57 British divisions available on the whole front, but there is an arrangement with the French that they will send early reinforcements if we are attacked, and they are not. March 19. It is certain that the attack will be launched either tomorrow or the day after. And my WAAC typist has decorated my office table with daffodils! The first of the new spring flowers and very beautiful, but such a grotesque prelude to the battle.
Daily Telegraph, Wednesday, March 20, 1918
COMING OFFENSIVE
Copenhagen, Tuesday.
The heads of the German army have invited a number of neutral correspondents to be present at the German offensive on the Western Front. These correspondents will leave for the front on Wednesday – Exchange Telegraph Company.
Liverpool Labour leaders who have just returned from a tour of inspection of the Western Front, interviewed yesterday, spoke in terms of hopefulness regarding the coming campaign. They went out with some doubts, but came home with great cheerfulness as to the outlook.
Cate thought, either the German military are putt
ing on the biggest bluff of the war, or they are so confident of victory that they don’t care who knows the exact day, place, and scale of their offensive. It was like the French 1917 offensive under Nivelle … everyone knew all the details beforehand and the result was a disaster. This time, a disaster for the Germans? But, with the Germans, one could not be so sure. They were good soldiers.
He picked up the paper and went with it to the library, meaning to finish his reading there, then rest a while. The events of yesterday had destroyed his resilience. All he could think of was that he was tired … then of Stella’s gaunt face in the bleak hospital ward … then that he wouldn’t know what to do when she came home … then that Isabel was sailing for France tomorrow, and from France directly to America … then – a tapping disturbed him and he looked up. Probyn Gorse was at the french window, tapping on the glass. Cate got up, opened the window, and stepped out. The morning was gusty and damp and fresh, the trees thrashing. He should have gone out for a walk before breakfast, and …
Probyn said, ‘I want to talk to you, squire.’
‘Certainly,’ Cate said. ‘Let’s walk up and down the lawn.’
‘Miss Stella’s found, eh?’
‘Yes, Probyn. Not in very good shape. She’s … addicted to a dangerous drug.’
‘She’ll get rid of all that soon’s she has something to do,’ Probyn said. ‘Have a hard time for a year or two, maybe … depends how soon she, or Mr John, find the right work for her … work that’s hard, mind, and dangerous maybe. Don’t worry about her … You know there’s ghosts, squire, eh?’
‘Ghosts?’ Cate said cautiously. ‘I haven’t seen one myself, but
‘There’s ghosts,’ Gorse said flatly. ‘Now I seen my mother two, three times this month … She’s in the bushes, when I come back from taking a pheasant or two from the Park. Recognise her anywhere, that old black dress she always wore, necklace of those big black beads – jet … false teeth not fitting right so they made her jaw look funny.’
