by John Masters
‘Why?’ she managed to gasp. ‘What’s … it … to do … with … you?’
He was sweating, the skin of his face livid and gleaming damp, as he grated, ‘Because I love you … I need you … I want you … You belong to me … You always have, and always will. Do you understand?’
She waited, holding her tongue, until he had shaken her for another half-minute, all the time repeating, ‘You’re mine! Do you understand?’
At last she said, ‘That’s better … Now, let me go …’ His hands slowly released their grip on her shoulders. Cor, she’d have deep purple bruises there soon – no décolleté dresses for a month. She stood up and said, ‘So, I’m going to marry you, am I?’
He said, ‘Yes.’ He was breathing deeply, and wiping the sweat off his forehead with his handkerchief.
She said, ‘Good. That’s what I came to tell you. I never mentioned Billy Bidford. I only said I was going to get married, and I loved the man, and he was handsome and brave, and good in bed … Guy Rowland. Now …’ She held out her arms, and Guy slowly came to her, and held her loosely, laying his head on her shoulder, where so recently his iron fingers had dug into her flesh. She felt his tears on her neck, and patted his shoulder, but said nothing.
At last he stood away, but still held both her hands in his. ‘Flo, I don’t know what prevented me from saying it months ago … a year ago, really, except that killing Werner … leaving Maria a widow … the awfulness of what the war had done to the world, even after it was over … I was paralysed.’
She said, ‘I realised that, and it took me long enough to understand that if you couldn’t act, it was up to me. So I did. Now, let’s sit down, Guy … you there, me here … We’ve settled one thing – we love each other, and no one else. You’ll have to tell Maria.’
‘Yes.’
‘We’re going to spend the rest of our lives together.’
‘Yes.’
‘Doing what?’
‘You have a career, on the stage. I don’t want to stand in the way of that.’
She gestured impatiently – ‘Career, my foot! Or rather, my legs. I can wave my legs in the air, in silk stockings, and men will pay to see me doing it. But I’m not and never will be a great actress. My career is going to be, being your wife. Cor, I’ll still have a title! What fun! … So, what are you going to do?’
He said, ‘I’ve learned what I don’t want to be … a banker … a politician … not even an officer of the RAF.’
‘But you’re still in it. You’re due out to Mesopotamia soon.’
He nodded, saying, ‘But that’s not what I want. I’m accepting it because it’s been pressed on me. It didn’t require any decision. I already was an RAF officer.’
She said, ‘Well, decide now that you’re going to resign your commission. So, what’s it to be?’
He said slowly, ‘All I’ve been seeing, for a long time, is the misery caused by the war … separation, mutilation, death, loss, cruelty, deprivation. And I’ve felt that I am responsible, because I survived, and did well out of it – all those jobs offered to me, all those women, all that money – I have wished I could do something to atone.’
‘Not atone,’ she said quickly. ‘You may feel guilty, but you’re not guilty.’
‘To make things better, then,’ he said. ‘To help people … I could help people as a politician, or a banker, in a way, but I mean in a more personal way, face to face, hand to hand.’
She sighed, ‘Aaaah … now we’re getting to it. You want to help my Dad, sitting in that bloody little cart, begging, and men who can’t see any more … and men who can’t sleep, for their dreams …’
‘Yes,’ he said eagerly. ‘All that, and more.’
She said, ‘We can do it, Guy. Let’s work it out together first, boil the idea down into something solid, that we can go out to the world and say, this is what we’re going to do – come and help.’
‘Right!’ he cried enthusiastically.
She held up her hand. ‘We start on that tomorrow. First, you telephone your general and tell him you’re resigning from the RAF. Then we go out and buy an engagement ring – not too expensive, mind, we’ll need all your money, and mine, soon. Then we stop off at my car, which is just round the corner, and pick up a little case there’s in it, with my nightie and toothbrush and a change of clothes for tomorrow. Then – bed, and don’t set the alarm. Tomorrow can wait, on love … Your eyes are dry. You look different. Have I got my man back, my strong, hard man, that always looked after me, and told me what to do, and held me tight, and kissed me gently?’
He took her in his arms, smiling, whispering, ‘Yes.’
Daily Telegraph, Monday, September 15, 1919
DRAMATIC COUP BY ITALIAN ARMY
D’ANNUNZIO’S RAID
Rome, Saturday.
The following semi-official Note has been issued here:
‘According to news received yesterday afternoon, some detachments of Grenadiers and bands of Arditi (storm troops), with machine-guns and armoured cars, which started from Ronchi – on the old Italian frontier – arrived at Fiume at noon. Gabriele d’Annunzio was amongst them. No disorder has been reported from Fiume up to midnight tonight. The Government will take the most energetic steps in order that the movement may be checked at once, and that those who were responsible for an act which is as rash as it is harmful may be discovered.’
Cate read on. The Italian Prime Minister, Signor Nitti, was disclaiming all responsibility, and denouncing the raid. But Italy, one of the Allies in the late war, had now set itself in conflict with the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, another Ally. The wartime alliances were already beginning to break up, as was Lloyd George’s Coalition, the heavy chains of the war now loosed.
From across the table his wife said, ‘When is the war memorial being dedicated, Christopher?’
‘On the anniversary of the Armistice – November 11,’ he said. ‘Old Kirby’s doing it, with the assistance of Father Caffin. He’s the Irish priest who served with Quentin’s battalion, and the man who told me Margaret had been killed. He wrote to me the other day asking if he could help to officiate. Why do you ask?’
‘There’s going to be a memorial service at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, in February next, for our American war dead. I’d like to go. Walter’s buried there.’
‘Of course.’
‘I’d like you to come with me. After the service, it can be our honeymoon. Let’s leave in mid-January.’
He hesitated, thinking, can I be away for so long? Something always crops up … emergencies, trouble, floods, feuds, tenants’ roofs falling in … Then he thought again – but this is a new England, a new Walstone. I am the squire, but I’m no longer the bountiful and all-seeing lord of the Manor. They do not depend on me … rather, I depend on them; and really it has always been like that.
She interrupted his chain of thought – ‘And there’s another reason, Christopher, why I think you ought to come … For a long time your England has been a tight little island, secure against infection and the hand of war … especially infectious foreign notions. You have ruled your own destinies – you have sent out men and ideas all over the world, and have by that greatly affected the way other people live. You have imported goods, but not many ideas. The time is coming when you will, willy nilly. And in the nature of the present circumstances, many of those ideas are going to come from America … for better or for worse. America’s going into the export business. Come with me. Travel over my country. I think that when you come back, you’ll understand better what is happening to your country … and what is going to happen … and why.’
‘We will be coming back, won’t we?’ he asked anxiously.
She blew him a kiss across the table – ‘Of course! Englishmen like you don’t transplant at all, my dear. Besides, I want to live with you, and I know that you can only live here.’
Chapter 28
Fort Defiance, Arizona: Thursday, September 25
, 1919
Stella Merritt wiped her dirty hand across her forehead and returned to her work, of scrubbing the floor of the little one-storeyed house on the outskirts of Fort Defiance. Mary Begay, the Navajo girl who usually came every day to clean, had not come today; and the house was filthy from the dust and sand that had been blowing in all week from the north-west, out of the stark landscape of the Navajo Reservation. John was due home this evening … but nothing was certain out here. They had arrived at the beginning of summer, too late to experience the spring mud which everyone talked about, when the few roads, none macadamised, would turn into quagmires that even the high-wheeled Navajo wagons could not negotiate; and the little settlements of hogans scattered through the reservation, which was as big as Ireland or West Virginia, were as cut off as though they had been islands in the middle of the ocean. The summer was better than she had expected … many days of wind, many vivid thunderstorms, and always the pink, orange, and blue-grey colours of the rock, the sense of shimmering light on far horizons, and at night the cold breath in the air that reminded her she was at 7000 feet above sea level. Now fall was upon them, and in the woods west of the Fort some of the few deciduous trees were turning to gold and yellow. She knew what to expect, for she had been told many times – a month of perfect weather, and then, any day, the white flakes swirling out of the sky; the women wrapped in bright blankets, sitting high on their horses, bringing the flocks in towards the settlements, the dogs running behind, often a sick sheep across the saddle …
She scrubbed carefully. When this was done she’d carry coal in from the yard and stack it close to the stove. She would have preferred wood, for the wonderful tangy scent that piñon gave out; but there was plenty of cheap coal at Gallup; and the Indian Service had it brought in by the wagonload for its employees. The water came from a tank on the hill behind the Fort, after being pumped up there by a gasoline engine from a nearby spring … which often froze in winter, the Agent’s wife had warned her.
Peace was crawling about in the back room. Mary Begay loved him and spent more time with him than she did at the work she was being paid for. If Mary were here he could have played in the yard; but without her, it was too dangerous, for this was rattlesnake country. That danger would soon be over, they said, while the snakes hibernated through the winter. At two, she’d eat … beans, canned beef, canned tomatoes. Fresh vegetables were hard to find, fruit still harder. You could drive to Gallup, but the road was bone-breaking – and axle-breaking. At three Philip Nakai would come, to give her her daily Navajo lesson … And that was the end of the real work for the day … except for cooking supper, washing up, cuddling Peace, and crooning to him one of the Navajo cradle songs which Nakai was teaching her, at her request. Peace was only eleven months old, but he always listened intently, and sometimes seemed to be trying to croon along with her. These days she took her daily dose of heroin in the morning; and it lasted comfortably through the day. The physical effects wore off in a few hours, but she was too busy to notice, or feel anything more than quite minor discomfort.
John was away a great deal, and there was always so much to do, for herself and Peace. Perhaps it was for the best; she had no time to think, to worry, to miss her past. She thought, with some surprise, that it must be two months since she had consciously ‘missed’ Walstone.
She got up and went to refill the bucket with clean water. ‘Water – toh,’ she said aloud. The bucket was red, and she said, ‘Chee’…. ‘Hago!’ she added, imagining she was calling Mary to come to her – ‘Ya-ateeh!’ That was a greeting. She sighed. It was a difficult language.
She returned to the living-room, knelt, dipped the scrubbing brush in the soapy water, and continued her work on the knotty-pine planks of the floor.
John Merritt walked towards the New Yorker Bar & Grill, across the street from the Santa Fe Railroad Station in Gallup, New Mexico, frowning to himself, for he did not feel happy. He opened the front door, passed through the hall where electric fans whirled slowly to disturb the air and the dust, and pushed through the swinging half-doors to the bar. At first, he thought there was no one in there – it was just past eleven – but then, beyond the big sign set in the middle of the bar, reading NO INDIANS SERVED, he saw a shape hunched over a tall beer and a shot glass of tequila. John sat down on a stool at the near end of the bar and said to the barman, ‘A beer please … good and cold.’
The man at the far end peered round – ‘Well, if it isn’t Sir Galahad … the Straight Arrow from Harvard!’
John stared then said, ‘Mr Reinhart … I thought you’d gone back east.’
‘I did,’ Reinhart said, ‘but after a few weeks I couldn’t stand it any more … prissy New Englanders … fogs … beans … chowder and scrod … I came back.’
The bartender brought John’s beer and he drank appreciatively. It had not been a long drive down to Zuni yesterday; but it had been a very long afternoon talking to the tribal chiefs there, trying to find out why they were having such a high rate of infant mortality … trying to help, but not interfere. And he’d slept badly. And he’d had a puncture on the way back …
Reinhart had been an Indian Service assistant at Fort Defiance when John first arrived with Stella and Peace in June. A month later the Agent had fired him for drunkenness. At the time John had felt no emotion; it was obviously impossible to keep a man whose trouble was the same alcoholism that afflicted the Indians themselves. But in the ensuing months he’d learned that Reinhart knew more about the Navajo than anyone else at the Agency. People from the Agent down had kept saying, ‘Ask Reinhart … Reinhart will know … oh damn, he’s gone, hasn’t he?’
‘Still all gung-ho for the USIS?’ Reinhart said. Watching him, John remembered that tequila boilermakers had been his favourite drink; he was sober now, but they’d catch up with him in an hour or two.
John began, ‘The work’s important …’ What the hell? he thought. Why am I pussyfooting around to a straight question? He said, ‘But I think we’re not doing the right things, at all. And when we are, by chance, then we do them the wrong way.’
The barman had poured Reinhart another boilermaker without a word; and Reinhart now raised the shot glass and said, ‘The beginning of wisdom! You’re dead right. The USIS has no reason for its existence, as it now operates … except to perpetuate itself. It does no good to any Indian in the country. In most cases it does actual harm.’
‘What can we … I … do about it?’ John said. ‘I went to the Hopis last week and got a whole lot of ideas from them … about what could be done, in our administration, by giving Indians more responsibility, fundamentally letting them grow their own way, while offering them opportunities to learn and use the white man’s skills, and knowledge, if they want to … The Agent listened to me for half an hour; then said I was wasting my time – I knew what the Government’s policy was and I was to follow it, and he was there to see that every employee of the Indian Service did the same. I damned nearly called him a narrow-minded idiot. Then I would have been fired, and been able to do still less for the Navajo.’
Reinhart said, ‘You’re wrong, me boyo. You can’t do less than you are now, can you? … How are you coming along with the language?’
‘Pretty well. My wife, too.’
‘Ah, Stella, isn’t it? … Good. Well, if I remember right your Dad’s a banker in New York, eh? Get him to put up the money and buy Hurford’s Trading Post.’
‘Between Two Grey Hills and Sanostee, in the Chuskas?’ John exclaimed. ‘But …’
‘Hurford wants to retire. You’ll be your own boss. And you can do something for the Navajo. Look …’he leaned towards John along the polished expanse of the bar, and raised his voice to be heard above the rumble and roar and staccato exhaust thunder of an eastbound Santa Fe freight grinding out of the yards, double-headed, bound for the Continental Divide – ‘The Navajo are poor. Very poor. The reservation can hardly support them … but if they leave the reservation, they cease to be Navajo, be
cause they are bound up with their land in a way white men don’t understand … and never will,.. the Hopi even more than the Navajo. So the first thing we have to do is find ways to help the Navajo survive, in his own way, on his own land. You could discover coal … but that would mean scarring the sacred Mother. You could do something by staging dances and sings for tourists … prostitution and sacrilege! So what’s left? What do the Navajo do well now?’
‘They’re great sheepherders,’ John said, ‘though they need veterinary help here, and they should investigate whether they can’t breed a strain of sheep that’ll do better in this country and climate than what they have now … Their silver and turquoise jewellery is barbaric, but …’
‘Why call it barbaric?’ Reinhart cut in – ‘It’s different, that’s all … and it’s not very different from Tibetan and Chinese work, I can assure you. Their rugs are superb … but no Eastern carpet expert recognises the weaver and the patterns, and can say, “That’s a Two Grey Hills, that’s a Toadlena,” the way they say “That’s a Meshed, an Isfahan, a Turcoman” … The Navajos sell them at the Trading Posts for next to nothing. They get next to nothing for the priceless old jewellery at pawn. But they should not be encouraged at all to find cheaper or easier ways of making these things. They must stick to their own ways, in their own land … Buy and run Hurford’s, so that you are in touch with sources … so that you learn about all the artists, all the silversmiths, all the weavers … who’s good, who’s lazy, who copies, who’s original … get to know the metals, the stones, the wools. Then work to create a demand for this art in the East … New York, Philadelphia, Washington … Do you realise the effect if the President’s wife were to be photographed at just one big function wearing a Navajo brooch? Or suppose there was a great Navajo rug spread in the main entrance hall of the White House …’
