by John Masters
She muttered, ‘Here … the man with the bowler hat and the big woman …’
Wilfred stopped, his hand out, ‘I’m Wilfred Bentley, sir, madam. I am the Labour candidate for this constituency. I hope you’ll both vote for me.’
The man had stopped, hands on hips, his wife beside him, stiffly upright, one arm looped through one of his. He said, ‘I’m a Conservative, young man. ’Ave been all my life.’
The woman said suddenly to Rachel – ‘Aren’t you Miss Cowan … the lady who was with the No Conscription lot?’
Rachel said, ‘Yes madam. We were trying to save some young men’s lives.’
The woman began to cry. ‘Wish you’d succeeded … We lost our Billy, just two months ago.’
Wilfred said, ‘We think the war could have been ended sooner. And we intend to see that there is never another war.’
The woman said, ‘I’ll vote for you, Mr Bentley … Promise you’ll vote for him, too, George.’
‘We’ll talk about that later,’ the man said. ‘Good day.’
He strode on. Rachel said, ‘We’ll get him … Rowland’s played into our hands. I really think you stand a chance now.’
‘We’ll see,’ Wilfred said.
A couple approached, the woman limping, the man in uniform, one arm in a sling, the wrist and hand heavily bandaged. Wilfred made to pass on, for the woman was well-dressed and had an air of wealth and breeding, while the man was an officer of the Weald Light Infantry, a 2nd Lieutenant, though by no means young. But Rachel exclaimed, ‘Dave Cowell! And Miss Rowland!’ She turned to Wilfred, ‘You remember Dave, he let us use his classroom for a pacifist meeting once …’
‘And got sacked for it,’ Dave said, laughing. ‘We heard you were making speeches in town and have been looking for you. I want to help. I’ve always been a Socialist, and pro-Labour, so … what can I do?’
‘Get us some money,’ Rachel said. ‘Help us persuade the National headquarters of the USE to give the HE 16 branch money so we can pay the HAC strikers. This is a turning point …’
‘I understand that,’ Cowell said. ‘But why didn’t you – and the rest of the party – join the Coalition? You’d have got more concessions from Lloyd George, you’d certainly win more seats, and you wouldn’t be having this sort of money problem.’
Bentley said, ‘Bernard Shaw harangued the party bigwigs and candidates the other day and said on no account must we join the Coalition. He impressed everyone, so we agreed to stand on our own merits, free to do what we think right after the election …’
Rachel, walking beside Alice, said, ‘Won’t it make trouble for you with your brother, Miss Alice, if you work for us?’
Alice said, smiling, ‘I’m not going to do any electioneering in public, but I’ll work behind the scenes to help Dave.’
Bentley said, ‘But you’re not a Socialist, are you, Miss Rowland?’
‘Dear me, no,’ Alice said. ‘I am not a political animal, at all. But it is my place to help Dave in whatever he wants to do.’
Rachel said, ‘Well, that is wonderful’ – thinking, that is as public an admission of love as I’ve ever heard.
They all stopped while Wilfred shook more hands, this time two elderly women, walking together, with shopping bags. To the side, Alice said to Rachel – ‘The one thing I hear everywhere I go is that there will be trouble if we don’t get the soldiers home soon, and by a fair priority system.’
‘There’s trouble already,’ Rachel said, ‘and it’s helping us, because everyone knows we’re not responsible for it.’
‘’E said he’d call you at ten o’clock and he wanted me to make sure you’d be in your office then.’
Richard Rowland looked at the clock on the wall facing him. It was a quarter to ten. He said, ‘I’ll be here. What’s it about?’
‘I don’t know, Richard,’ Lord Walstone said, ‘but if I was you I’d do what he says, toot sweet. He sounded shirty. Ta ta, and call me back when he’s done with you. I want to know, seeing as I’m supplying a lot of the spondulicks for your campaign.’
‘Right ho,’ Richard said, and hung up. A Buffalo was warming up outside one of the hangars, and he went to the window to look out. A mechanic standing on the lower wing was tinkering with the port pusher engine; the other three engines were running quietly, propellers whirling slowly. The plane had squadron markings and a number three painted on it. That was the machine Guy had flown to Germany to bring back some big Hun politician. He’d reported that the engines ran sweetly enough, but that they used about twelve per cent more fuel than the specifications allowed for. As he’d been at low altitude both ways, on orders, that might be the cause – the Buffalo’s service ceiling was 18,000 feet and it was designed to cruise at 15,000 feet – but … The telephone rang.
He went back to his desk, sat down, and picked it up. The voice was a man’s. ‘Rowland? This is Dimmock, the Prime Minister’s political secretary. We have reports that you have locked a lot of workers out of your factory because of some union activity.’
Richard said, ‘I haven’t locked anyone out. I told the union that they could not collect union dues, or voluntary political contributions, inside the factory, or on our property. Over the next few days, most of the workers went on strike. We don’t have any new orders on hand, so it’s not important yet. And they’ll all be back soon. The union can’t give them any strike pay.’
The voice was hard. ‘The Prime Minister does not want a candidate he is supporting to appear as a union breaker. We are sympathetic to the aspirations of the unions. Let the union men do what they want in your factory.’
‘But …’
The voice was even colder – ‘You don’t appear to understand, Rowland, that your political and business lives can not now be separated. What you do as a businessman will affect what you do and are as a politician. There is a chance that you may be beaten by the Socialist candidate … a chance that will become greater the longer you hold out against the union. Your workers are going to get strike pay from the National headquarters, I happen to know … Get them back before that is announced. Do you understand?’
‘But … I can’t just give in, cave in!’
‘That’s just what you’ll do. If you’d had any political or common sense, you wouldn’t have got yourself into this position in the first place, just before an election.’
‘Oh!’ Richard said, angry at last. ‘Then it’ll be all right to fight the union again after I’ve been elected?’
‘If you’re elected.’
Daily Telegraph, Monday, December 30, 1918
BRITISH NATION’S ANSWER TO THE
PRIME MINISTER’S APPEAL
SWEEPING TRIUMPH OF THE COALITION
ONE WOMAN MEMBER – A SINN FEINER
THE NEW HOUSE OF COMMONS
The tale of triumph and disaster continued: Asquith had lost his seat, so had McKenna, Money, Runciman, Samuel, Simon, Trevelyan, and a dozen other ex-Cabinet Ministers. Lloyd George was back, of course, with Bonar Law, Balfour, Churchill, Austen Chamberlain, and many other famous names. And Cate’s brother-in-law, Richard Rowland, had been defeated for Mid Scarrow, narrowly but definitely, by Wilfred Bentley. The Labour Party, with 62 members, would pull quite a bit of weight in the new House, especially as the Sinn Feiners had sworn not to take their seats, so reducing the total House from 776 to 704 members.
Practically all the pacifists had been swept away; Bentley had been saved from that debacle by his MC, his war record, and by the fact that he had mostly fought on the issues of the future peace, not of the past war. Cate himself was a classical liberal, and was sorry to see Asquith go; but Bentley was a good man, a Wykehamist, like himself … strange to think of Winchester spawning Socialists and Labourites – what was the difference between those two, anyway?
Stella was giving the baby its bottle at the far end of the table. The child’s skin was dark brown, but, as he’d written to John, one could see Stella’s features in the face … the shape
of the nose and mouth, the width of the forehead, the setting of the eyes – greenish eyes, strangely piercing for a baby – when he glanced up from the bottle, momentarily catching his grandfather’s eye.
When would John come back?
He said, ‘Why don’t we take baby for a walk in the pram? I’ll help push it. It’s a lovely day.’
Stella said, ‘Not today, Daddy. Tomorrow, perhaps.’
Cate picked up the paper again, hiding behind it. What were they going to call the child? John would have to give it a name, when he came.
Chapter 18
London and Kent: January, 1919
Captain John Merritt, Field Artillery, United States Army, stood outside the door, smoothing down his hair, adjusting his overseas cap at the correct angle on the right side of his head, and patting down the front of his long double-breasted greatcoat. There was some mud on the back of it, from the fields near Issay le Conte where the battery had been billeted since the armistice. He would be able to get it off when the coat dried but he had been wet, off and on, ever since leaving Issay in response to the curt order, relayed to him by General Castine in person – Report to Secretary of Embassy, London, England, by fastest means. Marshall. Colonel Marshall was on the staff of the First Army.
He knocked on the door and a voice from inside called ‘Come in’. He stepped in, halted, and saluted. His uncle Virgil Kramer was sitting behind the big desk, rising to his feet now, hand out – ‘Johnny!’ John brought his hand down, extending it to grasp his uncle’s. There was someone else in the room, standing against the window, silhouetted, a tall man, he too now stepping forward. The man said, ‘Johnny … John, don’t you recognise me?’
John stared against the light, screwing up his eyes. ‘Why … Dad!’ he muttered. ‘I didn’t expect …’ Then he stumbled forward and they were in each other’s arms, and tears were filling his eyes. He laid his head a moment on his father’s shoulder; then stood up and away, waiting.
‘Why don’t we all sit down?’ Virgil Kramer said. They sat, in the comfortable leather-backed padded chairs. John felt that his father was surveying him, trying to see what the war had done to him. Virgil said, ‘I have your discharge papers here, John. You are needed outside the army.’
‘Did you fix this?’ John said, turning to his father.
Stephen Merritt nodded – ‘Yes. And it’s true – you are needed. I didn’t tell the Secretary about Stella or anything personal … just about how much I needed you, in the bank.’
‘Did she know I was coming?’ John broke in.
His father said, ‘No. I thought we’d let you tell her … The board has sent me over to make decisions about the future of the Jupiter Motor Company and the Hedlington Aircraft Company. Running both of them is too much for Richard Rowland … There’s going to be a difficult period – it’s started already. We’re not going to get any new orders for the Buffalo aeroplane until we find a new use for it. Meanwhile, though the workers at HAC went back to work, we’ve now had to lay most of them off … At JMC we’re going to have to face competition soon enough … from Germany, among others … and we must beat it. I want you to come back to New York with me. I’ve been talking with Richard for the last week and he thinks Ginger Keble-Palmer can take over the HAC, though he’ll need a better-educated man than Pratt to assist him. We must do whatever is necessary to get Frank Stratton back, Richard said … We want you to start in where you were in August 1914 – at the headquarters of Fairfax, Gottlieb. The United States is on the threshold of the biggest explosion in its history – explosion of industrial growth, financial expansion, commercial dominance … and it is people like you who must seize control of it, and guide it … Fairfax, Gottlieb will play a big role, and its chairman of the board will be one of the most important people in the nation, and hence, in the world. We don’t have hereditary titles in the USA, but the directors want to put you on the track. But you must come over now, and start in. Study our business. Visit all the firms we own or control. Weigh the men who run them. Analyse why they are succeeding … or failing. Investment banking isn’t really to do with money, John, but with men.’
‘I’ve learned something about that, in the Field Artillery,’ John said.
His father sat back, lighting a cigar – ‘That’s what we thought. You won’t be young in ten years’ time, John, when you take over. God help us, you’re not young now.’
John shrugged – ‘The war had to be won.’ After a pause, he said, ‘I must stay here. Stella will be miserable if I drag her away from Walstone … Beighton.’
Virgil said, ‘She’d get the best and most modern treatment in the world, John, in New York.’
John said, ‘Perhaps, but …’
Stephen cut in – ‘And we – the board – think that it would be better if the HAC had a British managing director. We foresee a period of labour instability, and we think that the mere fact of your being American might make matters more difficult. We are not popular over here, in spite of having won the war for them.’
‘That’s not the way they look at it, Dad … Dad, I cannot and will not leave Stella. I think that if I take her away from her home she will be even more lost and unhappy, so she’ll take even more of that beastly stuff. If you don’t want me to manage HAC, I’ll find some other job in Kent.’
Stephen sighed, looked across at his brother-in-law, and said, ‘I surrender … We really think it would be best for you and for Stella if you’d come home, but … of course, you can go back to the HAC. I don’t think the workers there will resent you – they know you. Now, do you want to telephone Stella?’
John paused, thinking. At length he said slowly, ‘No, thank you, Dad. I’d like to speak to Father Christopher, face to face, before I go to Stella.’
His father said, ‘Let’s call him, then. You could arrange to meet him at Richard’s place in Beighton, Hill House.’
Christopher Cate had aged since John last saw him. The lines on his face were deeper, and seemed to show sadness rather than experience and concern. His troubles are worse than mine, John thought; and they surely shared an overwhelming sense of guilt – John because he had somehow failed to hold Stella’s interest, her involvement, deeply enough to save her from the drug; and Christopher because he had not understood Laurence’s unfitness for war; or Stella’s … what? Was she naturally unstable? Dependent?
They were sitting in the drawing-room of Hill House, alone in the house, rain falling outside the windows, a robin sheltering from it, searching for crumbs. A decanter of Amontillado stood on the small table between them, and each held a tulip glass of the wine in his hand.
Cate said, ‘She’s getting a small dose regularly … every day. She administers it herself. Doctor Irwin, at Hedlington General, prescribed it when he was sure that she was an addict. For a cure she would have to be confined to an institution … but he is certain she would return to her addiction as soon as she was released, unless …’
‘Unless what?’ John asked at last.
‘Unless she finds in herself … or there is created in her … a real desire to be free of the addiction. And that will never come – the Limehouse Hospital doctor told me this – from a negative force. That is, it will not come because she hates the drug and its effects on her, but only because she loves, and wants, something else even more … to attain which she must be free of addiction.’
John drank deep. He knew that. He had felt it in his bones ever since he had learned that Stella was a drug addict. But what could the great positive force be? Could it be himself … the mere knowledge that he was her husband, that he loved her, that she could not be a good wife, mother, or lover in this state? He would now have a chance to try, at least.
Christopher Cate said, ‘I think … I hate to say this, I shall miss her so much, but I think you should consider taking her to America. Let her start again. A new world. New challenges …’
There’s the rub, John thought. What challenges? To become the best-dressed woman in
New York? To have her name in the society columns every other day? To give the most daring parties on upper Fifth Avenue?
He said, ‘That’s what my father and Uncle Virgil think I ought to do. But she won’t come. I know it.’ He stood up and Cate followed suit. There were tears in Cate’s eyes and John felt his own welling up. He put out his hand – ‘Thank you … and … and … I’m so sorry about Aunt Isabel and you … and Laurence. He was a wonderful kid.’ There, it was said. Now perhaps they could share the burden of their sorrows.
Cate said, ‘Let’s go over to Walstone now, and you can meet Stella, and see the baby.’
She looked better than he had expected, though of course not as fresh and peachlike as when they were married; there were lines under her eyes, the lids were a little puffy, and the eyes themselves were shining bright, luminous. She was floating, he thought, smiling a little, present but not present. The baby was in her arms, staring at him with those strange green eyes.
He said, ‘Let’s sit down, darling.’ She sat obediently. They were in the music room of Walstone Manor, rain beating against the french windows.
John said, ‘Father Christopher says it’ll only take a few hours to get our cottage ready for us to move back into. We could go the day after tomorrow.’
‘All right, darling,’ she said.
He said, ‘But my father – and yours – both think we should go to America … to New York. What do you think?’
She said, ‘I can’t leave this – ’ She gestured with one hand, indicating not the room or the Manor, but Kent, England, her bedroom with the little packets, and the needle. ‘I must stay here. This is my home. Everything’ll be all right here.’
He said, ‘Very well. Then we’ll move back to the Cottage and I will take over again as managing director of Hedlington Aircraft.’ He looked at the baby – ‘What do you want to call him?’
She said, ‘I don’t know … I haven’t thought …’
He said, ‘I have been thinking, a lot. He is our son. Let us name him John Peace Merritt.’
