by John Masters
A man said, ‘That’s all right, mister, but I know three or four blokes what’s back already, what only went off six months or a year ago, and others, what volunteered in August ’14, are still out.’
‘That’s right,’ a murmur arose. ‘I’ve seen ’em … how did they get home so quick?’
‘The Government is doing its best,’ Richard repeated, more loudly, ‘and if I am elected you may count on me to see that the process is speeded up, and that demobilisation proceeds fairly as well as speedily.’
The agent muttered, ‘Better move on, Mr Rowland. You’re supposed to be in Beighton in five minutes.’
Rowland waved his bowler hat in the air and cried, ‘Vote for me on the 14th – Rowland, Coalition Conservative!’
Then he climbed into the car, the agent took the wheel, and the car drove slowly off, Richard waving to the few passers-by, who either looked blankly after him, seeing the message VOTE FOR ROWLAND on the sign on the back of the car, or did not notice at all.
Among the dispersing ‘crowd’ Probyn Gorse turned to his companion and said, ‘I’d best be getting back to work.’
The companion was Skagg, ex-head gamekeeper at Walstone Park. He said, ‘I feel like a Guinness, Probyn. It’s a right nasty morning, except it isn’t raining.’
‘I don’t mind if I do,’ Probyn said, and followed Skagg into the public bar. Parsley, the ancient barmaid, looked up from polishing the bar and said, ‘Why, Mr Skagg, you haven’t changed a bit.’
‘Two pints of Guinness, Miss Parsley,’ Skagg said. ‘I’ve put on a bit of weight, as a matter of fact. Don’t get as much exercise as I used to.’
‘That’s right,’ Probyn said, lifting the tankard of stout and drinking deep.
Skagg drank, put down the tankard and said, ‘Can’t get over seeing you in them clothes, and head gamekeeper. But, everything’s changed.’ He shook his head and drank again.
Parsley said, ‘It’ll be better when the men come home.’
‘They won’t all come back,’ Probyn said. ‘Only them as can still breathe … Mr Richard’ll lose the election if he ain’t careful. That Bentley was down yesterday, and he came right out and said it was a disgrace that some blokes could swing their way out, while others had to stay in and do the dirty work.’
‘That’s it,’ Skagg said. ‘It’s the jobs. The war jobs is getting less and less, the civvie jobs haven’t started up proper yet, so there are ten men trying to grab anything that turns up, and those fellows who wangled themselves home are getting them … How’s Cate?’
‘Mr Cate’s all right,’ Probyn said shortly. He stood up and away from the bar, ‘I’d best be back to work. Thanks for the Guinness.’ He went out.
Skagg said, ‘Another of the same, please, Miss Parsley … Is that right what Probyn said about Mr Cate? I heard that the daughter, Stella, had run away and had a black baby, though her husband’s white, and that Laurence had been …’
Parsley, polishing a glass, said, ‘I’ve heard nothing about that, Mr Skagg.’
Skagg continued, leaning forward confidentially – ‘And that Probyn married his Woman at last, after thirty years. That’s enough to make a cat laugh.’
Parsley said, ‘Mr Gorse married Miss Hyde six weeks ago, in the church here. Lord Walstone gave the bride away, and Mr Cate was best man. It was a very pretty wedding.’ She moved up to the bar to a new arrival, saying, ‘The usual, Mr B?’
Richard Rowland, walking past the main assembly shed at Hedlington Aircraft, paused, seeing a crowd of men and women gathered at the far end; and to one side, more, in single line. Ah, of course, pay day. He was about to move on, heading for the place where his car and chauffeur would be waiting, when he noticed a man beyond the pay table where Pratt was handing out the pay envelopes, a man standing with a big placard, facing the workers as they left the table. Richard could not read the placard, so walked forward to see. When he got close enough, and in the right position, he read – PART OF UNION DUES WILL GO TO BENTLEY ELECTION CAMPAIGN. OTHER GIFTS WELCOME.
Richard felt the blood first draining from his face and neck, then rushing back. He hurried forward and confronted the works foreman across the desk, shouldering the foremost workers in the payline out of the way – ‘What is the meaning of this, Mr Pratt?’ he snapped.
Pratt stood up, ‘What, sir? Oh, that. The USE have been collecting their dues from their members at pay day for weeks now.’
‘Why wasn’t I asked? They have no right to collect their damned dues on our property! They can wait outside the gates and collect them there.’
Pratt said, ‘It makes it easier, sir, for …’
‘Why should we make it easier? And what about this? They’re advertising that the dues are going to be spent in a political campaign … against me! And the non-union workers are being asked to subscribe, too. It’s outrageous!’ He turned on the man with the placard – ‘You’re Fuller, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ the man said shortly. ‘Wing Rigger.’
‘Have you had your pay?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, take that sign off this company’s property. And don’t come back to work on Monday. You’re dismissed.’
The man said nothing, but turned and walked out, the placard still hanging round his neck, his leather collection satchel over his shoulder.
Richard turned on the foreman – ‘Get on with paying out.’ He stalked out of the huge shed into the open air. Damned insolence! Illegal, too, certainly, to compel the union members to support one particular political party. He’d get the lawyers on to that. It might be possible to take the USE to court over it … it would certainly deprive Bentley of funds, and bring the voters’ attention to what was going on. This bloody war was responsible. If all the men hadn’t been conscripted, and there hadn’t been so many damned government regulations, he’d never have allowed the union to get a foot hold in his factories. One member was like a rotten apple in a barrel …
A wind was blowing off the sea up towards the Moor, shaking the bare boughs with its damp, rough energy, bending the lush grass in the meadows where the Shorthorn cows grazed, riffling the feathers of the robin perched on the edge of the birdbath outside the leaded panes of the cottage’s living-room. Harry Rowland, sitting in that room reading the The Times, could hear Mrs Lowndes working upstairs in his bedroom, which was directly overhead. She would leave before noon, to go back to her own cottage at the other end of King’s Tracy, and he’d be alone again. He had thought that he would feel lonely; but though he had only been here a few days, he was already used to it, and did not feel any unhappiness, or wish for other permanent company. He thought, it takes time to accept this state … one is lonely when young, when you first leave home and parents and go out into the world; then more and more relationships pile up … you acquire a wife … children one after the other, the years pass and the house is always full, of people, of noise, of bustle, energy, sound, movement; gradually it all drains away, the children grow up, leave, marry … you are alone with your wife … she goes … you are alone.
He readjusted his spectacles and returned to the paper. The election campaign was in full swing all over the country. Lloyd George would sweep the polls and return with a large majority, large enough for him to ram any legislation he wanted through the House; but he had no real power base, except his prestige. The Liberal Party, as such, was still controlled by Asquith. This present schism would split it. The Conservatives would never accept Lloyd George as their leader, after what he had done to them with his pre-war finance bills. The Conservatives and Socialists would survive; the Liberals would not. The war and that little Welsh cad had destroyed them.
He got up. Time to take a little exercise … walk down to the Post Office and send off his letters to Richard and Alice … Look inside the church, if it was open; go to the churchyard and say a prayer by the twin headstones where his father and mother lay. That was his father’s own Bible on the table beside him now, inscribed by the man who
had given it, his father’s friend Edward White Benson, first Master of Wellington, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury.
He was struggling into his overcoat now, the woollen scarf wrapped round his neck, the tweed hat pulled well down on his thin white hairs, woollen gloves on his blue-veined hands … now the stick … Mrs Lowndes knew he’d be going out, no need to call up to her … make sure he had his key … strange not to have someone open the door for him when he rang … and out into the wind.
The first few days he’d expected to meet a boyhood friend at every step; but they’d all gone, with the years. Joe Wood at the bakery – long dead … Warren Church, the Squire’s son, died soon after the Boer War … The vicar knew his name of course – ‘Ah, the son of the fourth vicar before me, sir!’ Bit of a windbag, young, too … ought to have been in the trenches, or at least a padre out there … Tom Palmer had recognised him. Tom had been a farm labourer, year or two older than he, a strong boy, used to throw the ball a mile in the village cricket team. Now he was in a wheelchair, living with his granddaughter … And Jane Sheldon, who’d been a church cleaner then, blind as a bat now … New houses everywhere, new faces, motor cars stinking in the street, horses bolting, motor bikes going bang bang bang outside his window where he was trying to nap …
He climbed slowly up the four steps into the combined Post Office and sweet shop run by Mr and Mrs Tilley – new people since the war began, they’d told him – and bought penny stamps for his letters.
Mrs Tilley, working at the little Post Office counter, said, ‘Windy day, isn’t it, Mr Rowland?’
‘Very,’ he said. ‘It’ll rain by dark.’
‘That it will.’ A nice Devon burr she had, at least. He turned to leave. A woman’s voice said, ‘Mr Rowland? Mr Harry Rowland?’
He stopped, peering shortsightedly. It was a tall woman, about his age – seventy-seven, eighty perhaps – grey-haired, straight-backed, better preserved than he was, the skin of her face quite smooth, and plenty of brown in the hair … blue eyes, big blue eyes, wrinkles at the corners, of course, but no spectacles.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Do I …?’
‘Susan Hammond-Chambers-Borgnis,’ she said. Her voice was light and educated; a lady. She was laughing.
He said stiffly, I’m afraid …’
‘Susan Chenevix-Trench, then. I was born with two surnames and married a man with three.’
Harry’s jaw dropped. Susan Chenevix-Trench! Why, this was the laughing girl who climbed trees like a boy, this was his first love. She was still beautiful, still laughing, still gay. You could believe that she still climbed trees. ‘Susan!’ he gasped, ‘I never expected … How long have …?’
The lady said, ‘It will take us a month of Sundays to say all we have to say to each other, Harry. I’ve been away visiting some of my children, and only came back yesterday.’ She saw the question in his eyes and said, ‘Harry – my Harry – died in 1910. The children were all gone, and I moved back here to a little house on … but we shall walk there now, so that you know where it is, and you shall call on me tomorrow. Today I have to spend the afternoon working for the Liberal candidate for this seat.’
‘The Liberal?’ Harry cried. ‘Mr Asquith’s candidate?’
‘Of course! You don’t think I would support that awful Welsh lecher, do you?’
Harry laughed aloud – ‘Come on, my dear. We do have a lot to talk about … and celebrate!’
Margaret Cate said, ‘It looks as though we’re going to get twenty-five or – six seats unopposed. It seems incredible that the Nationalists can only find candidates for two-thirds of the constituencies.’
‘It’s true, though,’ Michael Collins said.
‘Then we shall win, by a large majority. If they don’t have the will to fight, the voters will see it, and not vote for them – even people who are Nationalists at heart.’
Collins laughed, his usual short, bitter laugh – ‘Don’t forget the full name of the party is the Nationalist Home Rule Party. The Home Rule part has been a farce for years but no one recognised it until we came along and started a real fight for real Home Rule … Have you seen De Valera’s election manifesto? Issued from Lincoln Gaol?’
Margaret shook her head and Collins picked up a newspaper and began to read.
Every true son and every true daughter of Ireland is mindful of what the honour of the Motherland demands … that individual opinions and individual interests, with a nobility befitting the occasion, will all be subordinated to the necessity of proclaiming unequivocally to an attending world that it is no slave status that Ireland’s heroes have fought for, but the securing for their beloved country of her rightful place in the family of nations …
‘He’s always been a great orator,’ Margaret said, ‘but what does he really mean? What do we mean – you and I and the rest of Sinn Fein?’
‘The majority of Irishmen would say that by voting for us they were voting for Dominion Home Rule,’ Collins said, keeping his eyes on Margaret.
‘But are we? And does anyone expect the British to give us even that much without keeping Ulster out of it?’
Collins said softly, ‘No.’
‘Then?’
‘We will appeal to the Peace Conference.’
Margaret realised that he was drawing her out; and said, ‘You don’t believe that. That’s not the course you think we should follow. Is it?’
‘No.’
‘Then what is?’
‘Sovereign independence for a united Ireland. That is what we are aiming at – not Dominion Home Rule. But we know the British will give us neither the one nor the other, so …’ he made the motions of pulling an imaginary trigger followed by the cutting of an imaginary throat.
‘The people would never vote for that,’ Margaret said.
Collins said, ‘Voting is not going to get us independence. Only fighting is. Come, Lady, you’ve known that all along, haven’t you?’
Margaret said at last, ‘Yes. I did hope, when I saw that Sinn Fein was going to win so large a majority, that the other wouldn’t be necessary. Because, before it’s over, Irishmen will have killed far more other Irishmen than they’ll have killed English.’
Collins said sharply, ‘That can’t be helped. And it doesn’t matter. All that matters is an independent, united Irish republic … Let’s get back to business. We’ve got to make sure we do win the election, whatever happens afterwards, so that outsiders will recognise the legitimacy of Sinn Fein as the true government of Ireland. How many Volunteers do we have in Cork?’
‘Seven hundred and twenty-three,’ Margaret said, without looking at the paper under her hand.
‘That’s ample. What about Ulster? We’re not going to let that go by default …’
Their heads bent together, they worked on into the night, the curtain drawn tight, the gas mantle hissing on its wall bracket.
‘I’m not saying Mr Rowland’s a bad employer,’ Wilfred Bentley shouted, so that his voice would carry to the back of the crowd gathered in the little park – ‘I am saying that you have a right to join a union … that the union has a right to collect its dues in the place where the men work; and that it has the right to use those funds as it pleases, according to its own rules and procedures.’
Behind him his wife Rachel muttered, ‘Don’t use such long words, Wilfred.’
Most of the crowd below him, where he spoke from the bandshell, were men, wearing mufflers and cloth caps; and most of them were men usually employed by the Hedlington Aircraft Company, now come out on strike, union men and non-union men alike, in response to Richard Rowland’s outburst of a few days back. There were women, too, anxious-faced, most of them wives of strikers. They all knew that the Hedlington branch of the union did not have enough funds to pay out adequate strike pay.
Wilfred said, ‘We’ve appealed to the national headquarters of the USE, and though they haven’t promised anything, the secretary’s coming down this afternoon. We’ll get the money for you. Don’t yo
u worry. Just stick together. Stick it out. Stand up for your rights … for the rights of the men who’ll be coming back from France, and …’
‘When will they be coming?’ a woman called. ‘The war’s been over near a month now, and there’s none back that I know … plenty of rich men’s sons, though, from what I hear.’
Wilfred steeled himself, and shouted, ‘It’s a disgrace! It’s sheer incompetence. They’ve seen the end of the war coming for months now, and they’ve done nothing … except leave the way open for men to bribe themselves out, weasel out …
The crowd cheered. This was the most popular subject of any speech – jumping on the Government about demobilisation. Wilfred hammered on the theme, because Rachel and the local party secretary had advised him that he must; but he disliked doing it, for he knew that no government could have got a million and a half men back to their homes in a week or two, with a powerful enemy not yet even disarmed.
He shouted, ‘There’s only one way to protect your rights as working men and women … to bring the men home … to see that your children get a fair chance in life … Vote Labour! Vote for me, Bentley, on the 14th! Thank you.’
He jumped down and helped Rachel to follow. The crowd was thinning as he walked up High Street towards the middle of the town. He was wearing a big red buttonhole in the lapel of his jacket, and a muffler and tweed cap. It was cold and he’d have preferred to wear his overcoat, but Rachel had said no: the working men did not own overcoats and he had better not flaunt the fact that he did. He would have preferred to go from one meeting to the next by car; it would save time, and enable him to make more speeches; but Rachel said they must walk.
