Heart of War (16 page)

‘We're not married.'

‘I know.' She raised her head, dashed some sweat out of her eyes with the back of a soapy hand, and bent again. A shaft of sunlight glowed in her grey-streaked fair hair. Rachel said, ‘It saves money … we think alike … we have a lot in common.'

‘I'm surprised,' Mary said, ‘you having been at Cambridge, and all.'

‘I wish I'd never taken that scholarship. I should have stayed with my own people and joined the working class struggle –
our
struggle.'

Mary said nothing for a time, then – ‘If you get on so well
with Bert, why don't you marry him? Is it that you don't hold with marriage and the church then, like Willum's dad, Probyn?'

Rachel hesitated, ‘Not exactly … I'm a Jewess, and I can't become a Christian any more than Bert can become a Jew. Who'd marry us? And we don't need it. Why should we do what the capitalist church tells us we must?'

Mary changed the subject, ‘Bert's walking well, considering.'

Rachel said, ‘Yes, but his toe hurts, and he only gets odd jobs now. The bosses won't employ him after what he did.'

‘Well, that was to be expected, wasn't it?' Mary lifted a load of washing out of the tub, transferred it to the sink, and ran cold water over it from the tap.

Rachel, stung by the last remark, said, ‘Bert doesn't understand why you don't have the law on Bob Stratton. There's Violet six months gone, and she only twelve last month.'

Mary said, ‘I don't want to have the law on Mr Stratton.'

Rachel said heatedly, ‘You should! He's going scot free because he's what he is, because Mrs Harry stood behind him and you didn't want to offend her.'

Mary said, ‘I'm sure Mr Stratton has enough troubles of his own without you or me making it more difficult for him. Now, if you'll help me wring out these sheets …'

They sat close in the saloon bar of the White Horse in North Hedlington, tankards of old and mild at their sides, heads close. Milner, a government food inspector, was speaking in a low voice – ‘The superintendent heard it first. He didn't say anything to anyone till he'd found out more about it … then he warned three of us, on the Q.T., to keep our noses clean.'

‘Why?' Bill Hoggin, food merchant, husband of Bob Stratton's daughter Ruth, demanded.

‘He said, the high-ups are asking questions … and the sort of questions they ask point to our department – food inspection.'

‘No idea of who's behind it, or at the top of it?' Hoggin said. Six months of elocution lessons had done wonders for him; his accent was still clearly of East End London, but much modified. He seldom dropped his aitches, though
occasionally putting them in where they had no business to be; his intonation was plummier, and had less of the cockney bite, except when he was much excited or interested.

Milner said, ‘There's only two possibilities. A departmental inquiry, inside the Ministry …'

‘Wouldn't worry too much about that,' Hoggin growled.

‘… or a parliamentary inquiry … Complaints have been made to M.P.s and they've been asking the Minister to look into it. The superintendent says there'll probably be a Joint Select Committee of both Houses of Parliament … especially since Bottomley's been on about it in
John Bull
since last year.'

Hoggin quaffed his beer, wiped his mouth and sat a while sucking his teeth. His red face shone with colour and his neck bulged out over his stiff white collar. Beer spots and food stains marked his expensive worsted suit. ‘Comes at a bad time for me,' he said. ‘We don't have much to do with the food people any more –
you
know that … and we haven't used any unfit consignments for two, three months. So they won't pin anything on us now, unless they search all the grocers' shelves. Another month and it would have been off them, too, and out of the warehouses … but I need capital, because – know what I'm going to do? – I'm going to start a chain of retail shops, groceries like, but selling bread, too, and fruit and veg, and meat, and everything cheaper than the little grocers and bakers and butchers can … Grocers and butchers and all them are trying to provide
good
stuff everywhere, which is fine for the gentry and rich blokes, but there aren't many of them, and what the rest of the people wants is
cheap
stuff … so's they'll have more money in their pockets for motor cars, holidays, send their kids to better schools … An' we'll get the women in 'cos everything they want'll be in the one shop – mine. … Well, that's what I'm going to do, but I can't buy and build and all the rest all by myself, so I'm going to have to raise a lot of money … go to the banks, a few millionaires … and I need a big name in front … An' I won't get the money nor the big name if there's a stink going on … so, listen, Milner, me boy …' he bent closer yet, ‘… there's three things to be done, to save our skins. First is to get rid of any evidence. Second, at the same time, is to shut up the ones making the row, like
Burnley. Third, if this Committee is appointed in spite of all that, nobble it!'

Milner whistled lugubriously through his stained teeth, ‘Tall orders, Hoggin.'

‘They are,' Hoggin said. ‘And your part is the easiest. Make it so that
if
there's an inquiry, no one's going to find the copy of the licence you sold me to buy condemned food as a pig farmer. Or the receipts for what I did buy … but only for the condemned stuff, see? The rest, what I bought off the docks, was all above board … and that was more than three quarters, eh?'

Milner said, ‘Yes … It's a dangerous business, destroying records.'

‘More dangerous not to,' Hoggin said shortly. ‘Now, what do you know about these Joint Select Committees? Who appoints the members?'

Milner drank deep of his beer, set his tankard down and wiped his lips with his sleeve – ‘The superintendent said they could be any number up to fifteen members … equal numbers from both Houses …'

‘The fewer members the better for us,' Hoggin said. ‘Can't nobble all them buggers. 'Ave –
have
– they actually started horganizing this committee yet?'

‘The superintendent said not.'

Hoggin said energetically, ‘Then we'd better shove our oar in now. Better our friends organize it than blokes what don't like us, eh? An' I have pals, specially in the Commons – made it my business to. Meantime, I'll deal with Mr Horatio Fucking Bottomley, and find a big name. Which I think I already 'ave, in my bleeding pocket.'

Bob Stratton, lying on the couch in Dr Deerfield's office, wished he was not wearing his thick porridge-coloured woollen vest and long underdrawers; but Jane had insisted – ‘Ne 'er cast a clout till May be out.' And here it was only the first of May … but he'd heard that the jingle didn't mean May the month, but may, the hawthorn blossom … They used to have maypoles in Hedlington when he was a lad, and boys and girls danced round them, entwining each other in the coloured ribbons springing from the top of the pole.

‘Go on,' the doctor's voice, with its funny little accent, was somewhere behind his ear.

‘I saw lots of little girls' … things,' he said grudgingly. ‘In those days, girls and women didn't wear drawers, so when they bent over, you'd sometimes see … the thing. Some of 'em bent over 'a purpose, if you ask me,' he said. ‘I remember …'; he stopped, avoiding the memory.

The doctor said, ‘Go on, Mr Stratton.'

‘I can't remember now …' He'd taken Victoria out a dozen times since – since Violet told him – and he'd never got her above eighty-five, when she'd done over ninety before. It seemed like not doing what he used to do in the shed, with the girls, had changed him, so that he couldn't do the right things for Victoria any more. She was sluggish, and so was he.

‘Are you sure you can't remember? Think please.'

The thought that he had cut off returned. He saw a girl … what was her name … Helen Tubbs? … about nine, and him the same … bending over to tie her bootlaces, she saw him behind her, between her legs, and bent farther … all the way down, the dress hoisted up by the motion … he'd been four, five feet away, no more, and no one else by … It had felt good, amazing, near paralysed him, and his finger smelled funny for a long time afterward, so that he didn't want to wash it.

‘Can't remember,' he said.

Dr Deerfield sighed almost imperceptibly, and said, ‘Well, let's go back to the beginning again. Tell me just what you can remember about your very early years – when you first saw your big sister, naked, for instance …'

Dirty nonsense, Bob thought, what has that got to do with it? Why should he answer these impertinent questions from a dratted German? But he'd promised Mrs Harry, and Jane … What a price! Better if he'd gone to prison and be done with it. Then he'd always be himself, at least.

Stella Merritt looked across the table at Dr Deerfield from under her eyelashes. It was nice being a married woman and not having to worry about chaperones; better still to be married to a darling like Johnny, who had said, when an unexpected crisis arose at the Aircraft Company, that of course she must go to the lunch with Dr Deerfield without him.

The doctor was of medium height, a little pudgy, in his late forties, with an olive skin, a high-bridged nose, huge
liquid brown eyes, and long hands and fingers. She had met him first at the Hedlington Hospital when she was staying with her grandmother at the time of Granny's cancer operation. Stella had met him once or twice since at Granny's house; and then there had come this invitation to Johnny and herself to have lunch with him. In spite of Johnny's words, Stella felt pleasantly excited to be lunching alone with the doctor, while still wishing Johnny could be there … poor Johnny, he worked so hard.

They had ordered and were waiting for the food, glasses of dry sherry beside them – Stella's second. The doctor said, ‘How did the shopping go, Mrs Merritt?'

‘Oh, badly,' Stella said. ‘The shops are so empty … and what they do have is usually of poor quality, and so expensive … but I did find a pretty afternoon dress for myself, and I bought two ties for Johnny.'

Deerfield smiled, ‘You are lucky to have an American husband. English husbands hate their wives' buying clothes for them – especially ties.'

She pouted at him – ‘I know what Johnny likes!' The doctor's smile was understanding. He was not married … or perhaps he had married badly when young, and left his wife in Austria. Anyway, he must know what it was like for a girl, the first few months of marriage. She found herself blushing, thinking of the nights of lovemaking, Johnny's strong body and male hardness in her, her own eager responses.

‘You look happy,' Deerfield said softly.

‘Oh I am, I am!' she cried.

His hand crept across the table and covered hers – ‘I am so glad for you,' he said. ‘But I am older than you, my dear Mrs Merritt … a thousand years older, I feel, when I see your radiant young beauty – so English, so perfect … and I know that marriages are not made in heaven, but on earth … and sometimes young people though very much in love, begin to feel estranged, and cannot understand why. Marriage creates its own problems, as well as its own rewards. It is my profession to solve such problems. I will always be available to you, as a friend.'

She responded to the pressure of his hand, her eyes damp. He was so kind! She said, ‘Thank you so much, Dr Deerfield.'

‘Please call me Charles,' he said. ‘Charles – an ear to listen to whatever you want to say … a safety valve, if you ever need to blow off steam … even a shoulder to weep on, though I hope it never comes to that.'

Stella found her sherry glass empty. Dr Deerfield signalled a waiter to refill it. ‘I feel I've known you so long,' she sighed. She felt warm inside and out. Dr Deerfield – Charles – was so different from Johnny, but he, too, was a man, a man who understood women, especially her. His hand pressed down, briefly enfolding hers, and briefly, oh so briefly, his finger stroked the inside of her palm, sending a sudden unexpected frisson through all her secret parts. Then the waiter came with the soup.

Volunteer Naomi Rowland, sitting high on the driver's seat of the big Humber, thought gloomily that her parents were drifting apart because of the war. Her father had lost faith in it, and now thought it must be stopped, at whatever cost; while her mother was as grimly determined as ever that Germany must be defeated, at whatever cost.

Enough of that. She was on duty, and must not let her mind wander. No one was going to call
her
just a scatterbrained woman dressed up in a uniform. She was a soldier.

A thinking soldier … and this was a waste of petrol. She seldom had more than one passenger, usually some senior officer of the War Office: a smaller car would have done the job, saved fuel, and been more handy in traffic. True, a small car might bog down in the mud of remote lanes while she was trying to find some camp or installation or country house – but that would be very rare. If officers had to visit units or installations more than fifty miles from Whitehall, they usually went by train; and the Home Counties were well equipped with roads, compared with, say, the farther reaches of Cumberland or Inverness-shire.

She changed gear, accelerated to pass a pair of lumbering horsevans, and changed back up again. The Woman's Volunteer Motor Drivers needed a uniform that would include trousers or breeches for everything except mess dress. They wore trousered overalls now, for maintenance work on the cars in barracks, but when they went out on duty they had to wear this No. 2 dress, with the khaki tunic,
skirt down to two inches above the ankle, high buttoned boots and khaki spats, which was all very well when actually driving, but what if you had to change a tyre? Change a sparking plug? Look for an oil leak? She wondered briefly where and when skirts were invented, or allotted to women, as their ‘official' garb. She knew that women wore trousers in India, and other Muslim countries … in the harem, too, so men obviously admitted them to be feminine there. Why not on … ?