Mr. American

by George MacDonald Fraser

  'Well, their push can't last indefinitely,' protested the other. 'They're bound to run out of steam. What d'you say, Jock?' He addressed the small soldier. 'By Christmas, eh?'

  The small soldier shrugged and made one of his curious guttural noises. 'Aye, I daresay. Eh, big yin?'

  'Well, we all very much hope so,' said the optimistic man heartily. 'And then you fellows can all get back to your wives and families and ... and that sort of thing. And if it is all over by then, it will be because ordinary chaps like you have been so extraordinary, and - and have done your stuff, so ... so gallantly.' He evidently realised that he was sounding pompous, for he looked round the compartment as though challenging contradiction. 'I'm sure we're all very proud of you,' he added. 'Very proud indeed.'

  There was a murmur of agreement, and the optimistic passenger, taking encouragement from this, rushed impulsively to destruction. 'And grateful,' he announced, looking meaningly at his companions and producing his wallet.

  'I'm sure you'll understand the ... ah, spirit in which we would all like to express our appreciation,' he went on, burrowing into his wallet's interior while the round-faced man glared and Mr Franklin felt his toes begin to curl. 'I'm sure there must be some comforts which you would like to procure, and I'm equally sure that ... ah, a shilling a day, if that's what it is, doesn't go very far, I mean to say.' He looked up beaming, with notes in his hand. 'I - that is, we - would be honoured if you would. ..'

  His voice trailed off as he saw the expressions of the others. The round-faced man was looking thunderous, the third passenger was reaching uncertainly towards his pocket, Mr Franklin was studying the luggage rack, and the little Glasgow man was grinning uneasily. The big Highlander glanced at the hand holding out the bank-notes, and then at the passenger himself.

  'I'm thinking,' he said gravely, 'that you would be better giving it to the Belgians.'

  The passenger gulped, and went red, and obviously wished that the floor would swallow him and his kind, pathetically misguided, intentions. Then he muttered, 'Of course, of course,' restored his money to his wallet, picked up his newspaper, glanced at it, glanced at the others, and finally stared miserably out of the window. Mr Franklin felt sorry for him, and deeply embarrassed and apologetic towards the big Highlander. He wasn't so sure about the Glasgow man, who was looking distinctly doleful, and probably thirsty. But it was the big man who was attracting Mr Franklin's interest; to cover the uneasy silence, but also because there was something in the other's quiet, patient attitude that demanded a question, he spoke for the first time.

  'Do you think you'll be going back to France?'

  The Highlander turned placid eyes on him, considering. Then: 'Aye,' he said. 'Like enough.'

  The passenger who had offered the money turned suddenly. `Look here,' he began, 'I didn't - And then fell silent.

  Mr Franklin was still watching the Highlander.

  'You don't think it'll be over by Christmas, do you?' he said, and it was more of a statement than a question.

  'I don't know,' said the Highlander carefully. `It'll be over for some.'

  There was a troop train preparing to leave from an adjoining platform when Mr Franklin descended at Lime Street. A large crowd had assembled to see it off, pressing forward dangerously close to the carriages; every window was down, with khaki figures leaning out to embrace or shake hands with friends and relatives; handkerchiefs were fluttering, hats waving, eyes being dried, and frantic guards and porters vainly trying to clear a space down the edge of the platform as the whistles blew. The troops themselves were singing lustily, drowning out the last goodbyes.

  And I can no longer stay!

  Hark! I hear the bugles calling,

  Goodbye, Dolly Grey!

  The two wounded soldiers were getting off; Mr Franklin helped the Glasgow man, who was still inexpert in the use of his crutch. A pretty nurse came forward to take charge of them: 'Private McGuigan? Private Gunn? Here you are, then!' The Glaswegian promptly attached himself to her arm, beaming gallantly, while the large Highlander nodded shyly, and then they set off up the platform, with the nurse laughing and talking between them, as the troop train drew away.

  Mr Franklin made his way to the station entrance, carrying his suitcase; it was too short a distance to the Adelphi to be worth a cab, and he set off to walk in the gathering dusk. There was another crowd outside the station, and another regiment swinging down the street, bound for the trains. They were singing the inevitable "Tipperary"; he watched as they marched by, the lamplight gleaming on the brass buttons and on the rearing horse insignia in their caps - they were the darlings of Merseyside, the King's Liverpool going down to the war.

  Goodbye, Piccadilly!

  Farewell, Leicester Square!

  It's a long, long way to Tipperary,

  But my heart's right there!

  They halted with a thunderous crash of ammunition boots at the station entrance, and to the accompaniment of thunderous bellowing of orders began to file off to the platforms; the band struck up again, and the crowd began to sing the regimental march, the jaunty little jingle that the King's had learned in the North American backwoods a hundred and fifty years earlier, when the fame of "The School for Scandal" first crossed the sea.

  Here's to the maiden of bashful fifteen,

  Here's to the widow of fifty,

  Here's to the flaunting, extravagant quean,

  And here's to the housewife that's thrifty.

  Mr Franklin watched the flushed, smiling faces beneath the peaked caps as they filed past, and wondered if it would, after all, be over by Christmas. One soldier did not think so - except for some, and that "some" might well include the wounded Highlander himself. Of course, a humble private could hardly be an authority on a question which neither Kitchener nor the Kaiser could have answered - still, he had been there, and they had not, and his words carried a chilling implication. Over for some. Over for how many of the young men going by, and for how many others? Over, perhaps, for Samson and his Legion of eccentric elderly Frontiersmen; over for Tommy Marsh in his new uniform; over for the Cockney in the Fleet Street pub, the Jewish cabby, and the burly labourer; over for the Haymarket drayman and the knut with the spats and cane who had posed self-consciously to be photographed with the star of Pip, Squeak! - but then, it was quite possible that they might never be needed, any of them; it might be quickly over after all.

  And if it was not - then it might drag on for years and years, with incalculable effects. It might be 'over' not only for the men he had been thinking about, but for men who were still boys at this minute, for men who had at present no thought of war. How many more might Pip and her chorus see off for the stout recruiting sergeant? It might yet be that she would see off some man of her own - if not a husband, at least a lover; perhaps more than one. So the war might yet come to Pip in a way she almost certainly did not imagine. As he walked across to the Adelphi a thought struck him - a thought so bizarre that he stopped in his stride. Yet it was entirely possible - probable, even. Lacy might go to the war-what would that mean to Peggy? Would it mean anything at all? Yes, of course it would - if it had been himself, and not Lacy, it would have meant something - for a while, at least. Not something that she couldn't handle, being Peggy, but something just the same. And Lady Helen - there might be someone for her, too; a lover, perhaps, or if the war lasted long enough, maybe a husband.

  How would they be, if it did come to them in that way - how would they be when the crowd sang "Tipperary" and their men went away, whoever they were? Lady Helen would be calm and outwardly serene, whatever she felt; her man might guess at her feelings, but he would never see them, as she waved goodbye and went off purposefully to do whatever task she had set herself to do.

  Pip? She would give her beloved an absolute orgy of herself, burst into tears at the moment of parting, sob for a couple of hours after he had gone, and be on stage bubbling and radiant for the evening performance. And then she would cry herself to sleep.
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  Peggy? She would be vivacious and laughing, making the parting as carefree as she knew how, full of optimism and gaiety, with perhaps a few tears at the last moment, if it was someone she liked. And afterwards - she would decide that she might as well enjoy herself while the light lasted, and she would have no difficulty in doing it.

  All these things might easily happen - if the war lasted, it would come to them all, whether the Germans invaded or not. It would come in a way which even the mighty Royal Navy could not prevent, reaching its dark fingers into every corner of the land - it would come to the castle and the croft, the grimy back street and the upland farm. It would come to Castle Lancing, to Oxton Hall, to Thetford High Street, to Gower Castle. Wherever an eager young man, or a thoughtful young man, or a frightened young man, or a careless young man went away, leaving an emptiness behind - the war would be there, scarring the people and the land with an invisible wound. For, if it lasted, it would not be like other wars - how many Gettysburgs and Shilohs would Europe endure? They might be fought across the Channel, but they would be fought here, too - and the casualties might well be as terrible. No shot in the civil strife of Ireland had been heard in Oxton

  Hall, but he had seen a victim there, a victim scarred and crippled for what remained of life. So it would be with the new war, and nothing that was English, or of England, could escape it.

  It was a different porter at the Adelphi desk, but he was still an Irishman, inevitably.

  `The Aquitania, sir? Yes, indeed - Mr Franklin, is it?' The porter consulted his embarkation list. 'Ah, yes - Cabin 43. I have the receipts for your baggage here, sir - the trunks themselves are in the Customs shed. Sailing at ten o'clock, sir, boarding not later than nine-thirty. Indeed, I shall have you called in good time, Mr Franklin. Eight o'clock - early morning coffee and The Times. Very good, sir. Boy - show Mr Franklin to 212.'

  It was a room identical, so far as he could remember, with the one he had occupied five years ago - five years almost to the night. He stood looking about him, remembering how it had been then, how last thing before going to bed he had checked through his trunk - the trunk that was lying, with its hinge now broken beyond repair, in some cupboard at Wilton Crescent. His new trunks, much better articles, were down at the Customs shed, and the contents of that old trunk were dispersed, among them - the hat, the boots (but without spurs), the books, Shakespeare and the rest, the slicker, the old tin cup. Everything but the saddle, which at this moment would be standing in the silent shadows of Lancing Manor. And the remaining Remington in his suitcase.

  Idly he opened the case and lifted out the top articles, until he came to the gun underneath. It sat in his hand, silver, immaculate, as it had done five years ago. He spun the cylinder, checked that it was empty, and put the revolver back carefully in the case. That was what he had done five years ago, the night he came to England, never guessing that a day would come when he would do exactly the same thing over again, only this time he would be going away.

  Strange, how he had retraced his steps, perhaps to the very room. Then, he had spent part of the evening studying maps, looking eagerly for the names of places he had yet to see - conjuring them up, imagining them. He couldn't remember his visions, because now he knew the real thing, knew it so well that he could close his eyes and see every detail of it again. And it was all behind him, and tomorrow he would say goodbye to Paradise Street, and a chapter of his life would be over. The English chapter. He could ask himself if it had been worth while - in financial terms, it certainly had not, he thought ruefully; in other terms, he had no idea. It was not a question of worth while, anyway; it had happened, and it had ended.

  He undressed slowly, like a man who is very tired, and climbed into bed. For a few moments he lay, staring up at the ceiling, the grey eyes far away, and then he was asleep in Liverpool again.

  27

  Superintendent Griffin came down to the landing-stage on that wet September Saturday to see the Aquitania sail. It was no longer part of his job; since his promotion a year ago, the business of being on hand for the berthing and leaving of the great liners had passed to his subordinates, Inspector Welland, Sergeant Murphy, and others. For them to run the expert eyes of the detective department over the arriving and departing passengers, to check the lists for any names that might have been brought to their attention by the police of Halifax or New York, to watch for the odd cases, the suspicious signs, the luggage or clothing or expression that might be out of the ordinary, to scan the faces in the queues at the Customs tables or the gangplank, but for the most part simply to be on hand, while Superintendent Griffin sat at his office desk and thanked God for the warm coal fire at his back.

  But this morning he had descended from Olympus. Welland had influenza, and Murphy had gone two weeks ago to join his regiment. And, he admitted, as he paced the quay in his greatcoat, slapping his gloved hands together and keeping under the shelter of the shed, it was not unpleasant to be back in his old manor again, listening to the gulls scream as they wheeled above the dirty yellow water, watching the tugs chuffing by, turning to cast an eye at the orderly bustle of the sheds, or gazing up at the towering iron side of the great ship at the quay - she was, Griffin had to allow grudgingly, a beauty; he was something of a Mauretania loyalist, but when he had gone over the new ship in the summer, on the eve of her maiden voyage, he had had to acknowledge that the Aquitania, with her lofty lounges and spacious cabins and magnificent stairways, was the nearest thing to a floating palace he had ever seen.

  Even Murphy had admired her - Murphy, who affected to despise any means of locomotion that was not aerial. He wondered if Murphy would realise his ambition of flying in the war; he had enthused to Griffin about the lethal possibilities of aeroplanes in a way which had made the Superintendent shudder. As if flying in peacetime wasn't offence enough to providence, Murphy had waxed rhapsodic about preposterous and ghastly schemes for raining high explosives on hostile cities, and machines that would carry riflemen to pour down fire on enemy troops. Bloody horrible, Griffin had told him, and Murphy had said, never mind, he would see. Well, no doubt he would; Superintendent Griffin, as staunch a conservative as even a police officer can be, had no illusions about so-called scientific progress. The war would accelerate the production of murderous machinery, and no doubt bring forth all sorts of new devil's devices for the slaughter of mankind, and it went without saying that some of them would be airborne. He only hoped that Murphy would come through it safely - not just because he had a deep affection for the lad, although that was the main reason, but because he had shaped into a first-class police officer whom the force could ill spare. Well worth his sergeant's stripes. Make inspector one of these days, if absence at this damned war didn't cost him too much seniority.

  It was typical of fate's irony, mused the Superintendent, that a fine young fellow like Murphy, with his pretty little wife and chubby six-month-old son, an honest, hard-working pillar of the community doing a valuable job, should be off to the Army, risking his life in a senseless bicker between stupid, selfish and incompetent statesmen, while the criminal scum of Merseyside were left all that much freer by his absence to batten on the public. If Lloyd Griffin were running things, there would be a regulation positively forbidding police officers to enlist, and a conscription law to sweep into the forces every rascal who had anything above a misdemeanour on his record. Let the jail-birds fill a pit in France; let them practise their villainies on the Germans - why, the Germans might do the same thing, to everyone's advantage. A happy vision rose before Superintendent Griffin, of vast armies of criminals destroying each other on some foreign field, while the law-abiding prospered at home.

  Alas, it would never happen - but in the meantime he could at least make life as difficult as possible for the evil-doers. Griffin wandered casually past one of the lines which was forming at the foot of a gangplank, caught the eye of Constable Foster, the plainclothes man who was his colleague for the morning, and stepped into an office doorway
out of the general view. In a moment Foster joined him.

  'Clipper McCarthy's hanging about the second-class plank,' said Griffin, and the constable looked vacant.

  'Clipper who, sir?' he asked, and Griffin sighed.

  'Clipper McCarthy,' he said patiently, 'has a real bad habit of putting his grubby little hand in other people's pockets and removing their valuables, see? How long you been off the uniform beat, boy?'

  'Three months, sir.'

  'And you don't know Clipper yet? Don't you look at the sheets, then? How d'you think you're going to do a worthwhile job if you can't spot the wrong 'uns? And how you going to spot the wrong 'uns if you don't study the sheets to see what they look like?' Griffin shook his great head. 'Now, Clipper is a weedy little runt in a mole-hair jacket and cloth cap, and he's sizing up a likely mark this minute at the far gangway. So just you go and keep him under observation, wait till he makes his dip, and then try the quality of his collar, see?' And Griffin humorously rubbed forefinger and thumb together. 'Wait - boy! Take off your hat, and carry it. We don't want Clipper to think you're a policeman, do we?'