Heart of War (41 page)

‘How exciting! Do you know my niece here, Naomi Rowland?'

‘We've met once or twice,' the other girl said briefly.

Then they went on in, separately.

The dances for soldiers and sailors from Minden Barracks, from Chatham, from the camps and hutments dotted round the countryside, or home on leave from France and ships at sea, were now regular affairs, one Saturday a month. The women of Hedlington, of all classes, were urged to attend, to dance with the men, talk with them, share the (nonalcoholic) beverages and simple food supplied, and enjoy the music of the band – all free, since all costs were borne by various charitable organizations many of which liberally benefitted from the generosity of Mr Bill Hoggin. Mr Hoggin had recently been the subject of a long laudatory editorial in Horatio Bottomley's
John Bull
magazine, and that, together with the bland report of the Parliamentary
Joint Select Committee on the food industry, had effectively blown away the bad odour which had hung around him since the beginning of the war; already a multimillionaire he was now well on his way to becoming a national hero as well – except to the men in the trenches: there, ‘Hoggin's' was still a term of contempt and anger.

Alice came to the dances regularly, because she met women whom she had known from her Tipperary Room and House Parties. Often they were sad reunions, for some of the women, who had once talked together of what they would do when their husbands came home, now had no husband.

Alice danced two dances, then sat out along the wall. Many younger women had come – so pretty, so flushed and excited: older women, such as herself, would not be in much demand. She was glad of it: the work at the Shell Filling Factory was tiring, and, as her father and brother had warned her, it gave her an almost week-long headache.

The woman sitting next to her was swept away by a dashing seaman of the Royal Navy, and she glanced past the empty chair at her new neighbour and cried, ‘Ethel Fagioletti … Stratton … Fagioletti …'

The woman rose, half curtsying – ‘Miss Alice … I saw you coming in.'

‘I haven't seen you for ages. My father told me you had been divorced.'

Ethel blushed and lowered her eyes and whispered, ‘Niccolo wanted it. I didn't do anything wrong. I love Niccolo, and now … now … he's in France … He's not a soldier, miss … he's not even English, really. He had another woman, and … I didn't have any babies.'

‘What a shame,' Alice said, thinking, well, that ‘other woman,' to another wife, was Naomi. What was happening to the decent women of England?

‘I love him … and he'll be killed …' Ethel fumbled in her bag, pulled out a large handkerchief and sobbed quietly into it.

‘There, there, don't cry,' Alice said. ‘If he's out there, he can't be with the other woman, at least, can he?'

Ethel mumbled, ‘I never thought of that … He's too delicate for the trenches. He'll catch his death, in all that mud and water, and no roof over his head.'

Alice said confidently, ‘He'll come home.'

Ethel said, ‘My mother makes me come to these dances,
so I can meet other men. There was a Mr Willibanks wanted to marry me, after I was divorced … still does … but I don't want any other man. So what's the use of coming?'

I'm not surprised, Alice thought; Ethel looked woebegone and mournful, tears staining her face, her blue eyes watery and little colour in her face. She wasn't young or naturally beautiful enough to carry that off, in spite of her fine bosom.

A soldier approached and Alice said cheerfully, ‘Well, here's someone come to dance with you. You don't have to think of marrying him. Just enjoy the dance.' The man, a middle-aged corporal of Royal Engineers, took Ethel away, as if performing an arduous duty. Alice looked round her again.

A young private of the Wealds, with a luxuriant, sweeping reddish moustache, came up to her and said, ‘Would you like to dance, miss?'

She said, ‘You don't have to take pity on me. Look at all those pretty girls your own age, along that wall. Why don't you ask one of them?'

‘I'd like to dance with you, Miss Alice.'

She peered more closely, rising to her feet – ‘You know me? Have we met?'

He said, ‘I seen you often, when you come down to stay at High Staining or the Manor. I'm Fletcher Gorse, miss, only I'm Fletcher Whitman now.'

‘I remember! You deserted … but you've re-enlisted under another name?'

He smiled and nodded, moving her gracefully and easily out onto the floor in a slow waltz. ‘One of the sergeants guessed, but he's keeping his mouth shut. And Mr Laurence knows, of course.'

‘Laurence Cate?'

Fletcher nodded – ‘He's an officer recruit. The sergeant majors drill them on the square, same time as us, and call 'em names, too, only they have to say Mister at the beginning and ‘sir' at the end, when they've called them everything bar a darling in between.'

‘Mr Cate said you write very good poetry.'

Fletcher said simply, ‘I do, and it's getting better. … That's Colonel Quentin's wife, isn't it?' He jerked his chin toward a plain chair near the door. Alice glanced over and recognized her sister- in-law Fiona, sitting upright, her face
remote, long, aristocratic, cold. Not many young soldiers would want to tackle
that
, Alice thought.

She answered Fletcher, ‘Yes, that's my brother's wife. Would you like to dance with her?'

Fletcher said, ‘No, miss. She's not here. She's with the Colonel and the lads in France, perhaps … And I have a lady coming I promised to dance with. Here she is.'

A lithe young woman in a simple afternoon dress, without hat, swept in through the door close to where Fiona sat. Alice recognized Betty Merritt as Fletcher eased her to the side of the room, released her, and said, ‘Thank you, Miss Alice.'

She sat down, a little breathless, and watched with interest as Fletcher walked across the floor with a peculiar challenging glide, to stop in front of Betty Merritt. For a moment she held her head up, meeting his gaze face to face; then she lowered her eyes and seemed to melt, and in a moment they were out on the dance floor, curving gracefully in and out among the others, their heads close, lips curved in smiles, bodies moving in the perfect synchronization of inner harmony.

Naomi stood beside Miss Seddon, drinking coffee … Lance Corporal Seddon, she corrected herself. The F.A.N.Y. used military ranks instead of shying away from them, as the other women's organizations did. And they, alone of all of them, were in France; and, as Miss Seddon had been making quite clear to her in a crisp, cool, detached way, they were not at all interested in forwarding women's causes, such as the suffrage, or seats in Parliament; they were interested in winning the war.

‘We're in Lamarck at the moment,' Miss Seddon said, ‘but we're moving into Calais itself any moment. I didn't want to take leave but Captain MacDougall said I was run down from a 'flu and I had to take ten days at home … And I wouldn't be at this dance if my aunts hadn't insisted. How it helps win the war for me to have my toes trodden on and my bosom breathed heavily down by sex-starved private soldiers, I don't know.'

Naomi wished Lance Corporal Seddon would ask her about the Women's Volunteer Motor Drivers, so that she could tell her what was wrong with it. But the Lance Corporal was supremely uninterested in the W.V.M.D., and when a sailor came up, cap in hand, and asked her for a dance, she
went with him, nodding briefly at Naomi, left alone at the coffee table.

A shadow fell across Alice's lap and she looked up. Her heart missed a beat and the smile faded slowly from her face, as she saw David Cowell looking down at her. He said softly, ‘Male civilians are not encouraged to dance at these affairs, but the circumstances are exceptional. I've brought two daughters, so … will you dance with me, Miss Rowland?'

She put up a hand, and let him help her to her feet, not quite sure she could do it alone. The dance was a foxtrot, and neither of them knew it well, but … He drew her slowly closer. Their bodies touching, she could feel his movements: it was easier thus to follow the steps of the dance. He said, ‘That's my Josephine … in the blue dress, she's nineteen … I don't see Esther, she's twenty-two … she has a fiancé at Hedlington Aircraft Company, but he doesn't mind her coming to these affairs. My wife's not feeling well, so …'

‘You came … You dance very well, Mr Cowell.'

His speech was not as precise as normal, and his face was a little flushed. Had he had a drink or two before coming to the dance? He said, ‘You dance very well, too, Miss Rowland … May I call you Alice?'

She said, ‘Why not?' feeling a little faint, and warm all over. His Midland accent was more noticeable now that he was, well, a little tiddly. So why was she encouraging him to familiarity, and letting him press his body steadily against hers in this indecent new dance, that was making her breathing come unevenly and causing a tingling in her nipples and between her thighs?

He said, ‘Do you know about birds, Alice? Will you call me David?'

‘David … A little. My nephew, Laurence Cate, has tried to teach all of us in the family something about birds.'

‘I go out most Sundays, on my bike … to Sheppey, or the Downs … sometimes a long way, beyond Canterbury.'

‘How nice,' she said. ‘It must be wonderful to know all the birds and their calls.'

He said, ‘Would you like to come with me, Alice?'

Obviously his wife didn't go on these bird-watching expeditions with him; or the daughters. He went alone. She would be alone, all day, in the country, with a married man.

She was thirty-seven, and there was a war on. Look at what the young women were doing, here and in France. Why should she be passed by?

She said, ‘I'd love to, David.'

‘Sunday after next. You have a bike?'

‘Yes.'

‘Meet me a mile out on the road to the airfield … that corner where young Guy Rowland, your nephew, killed the Hedlington Ripper … ten o'clock … We'll have lunch in a pub somewhere – just bread and cheese and ale, it'll be.'

‘I shall love it.'

‘Oh, and binoculars, and a little notebook … I'll bring a book I have on birds, for you to keep.'

‘That'll be very kind of you.'

Goodness, how stilted and proper she sounded, with her nipples now openly throbbing and hard as stones in her bodice. His eyes met hers, and they were very soft as he said, ‘I haven't known you for very long, Alice, but … you are one of the nicest women I've ever met … kind, gentle, sympathetic … and very nice looking.'

‘Not that,' she said, bridling in spite of herself. Men felt they had to pay that sort of compliment; what she needed, they didn't understand, was a sense of personal affection, which might even become love.

‘Truly,' he said, ‘I want to be with you as much as I can. It can never be enough.'

She flushed with pleasure. It was a mercy that he was over forty, and had not enlisted of his own accord. Besides, surely they wouldn't take him if he had to wear those big glasses, nearly as thick as Richard's?

‘I—' she began, when a commotion in the hall made her pause and look round. A dozen men and women were coming in through the big doors, flung wide, the cold breath from the autumn street pouring in with them. A little man at their head ran, limping, through the dancers to the bandstand and yelled at the musicians, ‘Shut your noise!' The band wheezed and groaned to a halt. She recognized Bert Gorse, and now, beside him on the bandstand, the girl who had been Naomi's friend at Girton, Rachel Cowan. The soldiers and sailors all stopped dancing, holding their partners. She saw anxiety in all their faces. Was there some terrible crisis in the war, and they all called back to their duty at once, in the middle of the night?

‘Soldiers! … sailors!' Bert Gorse shouted. ‘Don't go back to your regiments, your ships, your barracks! We've got to stop the war! Who's keeping it going? The rich men, the owners, Hoggin and the likes of him! We could end it tomorrow and be no worse off than we were in August 1914 … except that we'll never get back the men they've killed – husbands, sons, fathers … the sixty thousand they did for the first day of the Somme!'

The crowd on the floor began to growl, becoming not a collection of individuals, men and women linked in separate pairs by arm and hand – but a slowly fusing, welding entity, fuming, snarling …
Bloody conchies!
…
shirkers
…
traitors
…

Rachel had taken over from Bert. She was addressing the women, in a high-pitched desperate cry, almost a scream – ‘Women … don't let your men go back! Join us in the struggle to stop the war, stop the profiteering, stop the useless slaughter! Don't do any war work … don't …'

Alice felt a pamphlet pushed into her hand, and turned to stare into the face of her brother, John Rowland. She looked down at the paper, and saw the huge black headline STOP THE WAR!; and, below, in smaller, smudged
print: Join the Hedlington No-Conscription Fellowship & Anti-War League
– with an address, and a telephone number.

She gasped, ‘John! Have you joined these people?'

The crowd sound was increasing fast, a roaring bellow of male bass and female treble, so that John had to raise his voice, though he was only a foot away – ‘Yes, Alice. The war must be stopped, before it destroys all our sons, and England itself.'

Some men were beginning to break for the platform now, others herding their women out of the melee toward the door, where a police constable had appeared, looking majestic but puzzled. Two sailors and a soldier grabbed Bert by the arms and threw him bodily off the platform. Two women seized Rachel's hair and pulled in different directions, while hairpins flew. Another woman, hurrying up, took out the long hairpin that had held up her bun and began to jab three inches of it in and out of Rachel's buttock's, screaming, ‘That's for my 'usband, Regimental Sergeant Major Nelson, dead for the likes of you!' Everyone was shouting, ‘Take that, you nasty little fucker!' ‘Bitch, bitch!' ‘Traitor!' ‘Owww! Oh! Ah!' On the floor
men were kicking Bert in the ribs with heavy boots.