Heart of War (97 page)

She met him at the door, in the dark of late afternoon, and kissed him. ‘Dicky all right?' he asked.

‘Quite all right,' she said. She lowered her voice – ‘You must remember to ask after Sally and Tim, too. They can hear.'

‘Of course,' he muttered; then, louder – ‘Sally and Tim?'

‘They're fine,' she said. ‘We're playing snap in the drawing room. They've had their supper.'

He hung up his hat and coat and went into the drawing room. The children jumped to their feet and ran toward him – ‘Good evening, Daddy … good evening, Daddy.' He stooped and kissed them in turn.

‘Play snap with us,' Tim wheedled.

Oh dear, he wanted a long whisky and a short soda … and a bath … but they'd be sent up to bed soon. He ought to read to them. His father had never read to him – nor had his mother – the one too preoccupied with the bicycle factory, and then the cars … and the other – remote, just remote; brave, and just, but remote, her thoughts perhaps lost in the mists of Ireland.

‘All right,' he said, sitting down, while they screamed, ‘Hooray!' and clapped their hands.

They began to play. The cards were flung down with great
force, or crept out sneakily, giving the player time to see the face a fraction of a second before the others did …
Snap!
…
Snap!
… The hands of the clock crept round. The fire crackled in the grate.

‘Snappool!' Tim screamed, grabbing the pool.

A smell of burning filled the room with acrid smoke. Sally leaped up, ‘Crikey! We were roasting chestnuts on the shovel … they've got burned.'

‘Never mind,' Richard said. ‘Throw them in the fire and put some more on.'

Susan came down, baby Dicky in her arms. He blinked in the light, not sure whether to cry or coo. ‘He was awake,' she said, ‘and needed potting.'

‘Daddy,' Dicky said.

Richard felt warm and loved, and fulfilled. Good heavens, he felt better even than when he was in the factory watching a lorry or an aeroplane take form before his eyes … Home now was more than its component parts of shelter, food, service, sex, affection, rest. It was more valuable to him than his work – it never had been before.

He shook his head, feeling guilty. How could he feel so happy, when his brother had lost his only son? And Quentin apparently lost a close friend, severely wounded … well, that must happen often enough in this war – except that Quentin had never had any close friends.

He could not feel guilty. The sun would rise tomorrow and his sons would grow up in a world at peace, English ladies and gentlemen.

‘Start again,' he said; and, soon – ‘Snap!'

Captain David Toledano, Royal Horse Artillery, stood rigidly at the salute as General Sir Edmund Allenby, Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in Palestine and Egypt, strode past, his head high, gold braid gleaming on the peak of his cap, his demeanour somehow radiating a massive humility; for this ancient arch that he walked through, a conqueror, on foot, was the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem.

Toledano thought he would cry, but contained himself, though a strange fierce joy was coursing through him. ‘Next year at Jerusalem,' he had heard his father say a score of times, at Passover. The Sephardic rabbis at the synagogue in East London where his father used to take him, spoke
passionately, in Ladino, of the Holy City, long lost; but he had never been there, and had never thought he would. Turf at Wellington, Big Side, Chapel (which he attended, with his father's permission, for there was no synagogue closer than Reading), the Iffley Road field of the Oxford Rugby Union, gay evenings at Claridge's with beautiful young women – very few of them Jewish – Colonel Billy Williams' ‘cabbage patch' at Twickenham and a hard game in the second row against the driving Harlequins; or out to Old Deer Park, to maul in the mud against Richmond … these had been the memories of his life, and the substance of his dreams. Now, as he watched the Commander-in-Chief march on, alone, unescorted without pomp of lancers or hussars, or the tramp of marching infantry, the words of Balfour's recent declaration echoed in his mind and heart:

His Majesty's government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best efforts to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine …

He and his father would take the forefront in that work, with money, advice, and planning for the oppressed Jews who'd come here from Russia and Germany, after Germany was beaten. The Toledanos – the English branch at least – would not themselves move here. England was their home and they were not oppressed. But they could help others.

Bugles blew, flags fluttered in the winter air. The watchers returned to their places, David Toledano to the tented camp of QQ Battery. He went quickly to his own tent, and, seeing that he had an hour before he was due to inspect the horse lines, sat down to write a letter:

Outside Jerusalem, December 11, 1917:

Father – An hour ago I watched General Allenby enter Jerusalem on foot. It is ours, as Englishmen. Soon it will be ours, as Jews. I have never felt very strongly Jewish, and you have never tried to force it on me. But I felt it today, and will always do so now. Thank you for giving me this foundation for my life, without my even knowing it.

The details of the Battle of Cambrai at the end of last month are slowly filtering out here. It was a notable victory and apparently could have been much more decisive if there had been fresh troops available to exploit the initial success of the tanks. What a sight it must have been, 450 tanks crunching forward together! At last a way seems to have been found to escape from the wrestling match in the mud that the Western Front has been for so long. We could use massed tanks almost anywhere out here, of course – but of course we shall not get any. They'll be kept in France.

I have officially got my Jacket, and am now Battery Captain of an R.H.A. Battery in an Indian Cavalry Division. I am well, and fit. After all, I am home again!!

With affectionate best wishes, your respectful son,

David Toledano

P. S. To get your Jacket is to be accepted into the Royal Horse Artillery from the Field or Garrison artillery. No one is posted direct to the R.H.A. When on parade with our guns we march at the right of the line, ahead of any other troops. I'm looking forward to trotting the 13-pounders past a regiment of Dragoon Guards who had been thinking they would go before us!

The man in rough Irish peasant clothes sat on the right side of the jaunting cart, the whip in his hand; the woman, hands work hardened, shawl round her grey hair, head bowed to the winter wind, heavy skirt bedraggled with mud, boots holed and worn, sat on the left side, back to back with the man. The shaggy little brown pony trotted out manfully along the wet yellow road, bending its head a little away from the rain sweeping off the sea to the left, the east, two hundred feet below the end of swelling green fields.

The man threw over his shoulder – ‘There's three of them coming in now, Peg.' Margaret Cate shielded her eyes against the rain and could just make out three low dark shapes, miles out to sea yet, steaming in line ahead for the narrow entrance to Cork Harbour, below them.

‘American?' she asked.

‘Aye … come in from a convoy. Another few hundred thousand tons of ammunition reached the British… or wheat … or airyplane engines.'

Margaret eyed the distant vessels, streamers of black smoke trailing behind them across the ocean, with venomous hatred. America's entry into the war had obviously much reduced the chances of a German victory, and so of Ireland's early release from British bondage. But it had also cut away much support for the Sinn Fein movement in America, among ordinary Americans. The stream of dollars that used to arm the revolutionaries had become a trickle.

The jaunting cart approached two members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, leaning on their bicycles beside the road, looking out over the harbour toward Queenstown in the distance. Margaret burrowed deeper into her shawl. Doyle raised his whip in salute as he passed. One of the constables nodded in acknowledgement. The jaunting cart clipped on.

The driver said, ‘Wonder what they'd do if we told them 'twas Margaret Cate in the jaunty.'

‘Why don't we go back and kill them,' Margaret said. ‘I have my pistol.'

‘Me, too, Peg … but I'm not here to kill the Royal Irish. Time enough for that when the war ends – if they don't let us free. I'm here to watch the ships, so's our friends can know where to find 'em.'

Margaret said, ‘You're right, Doyle.' Doyle, local crofter, and two other men living near Crosshaven and in Queenstown itself, kept tally of all comings and goings of ships into the great harbour – American, British, warships, merchantmen. The information was passed to German U-boat captains on lonely beaches in Kerry and Mayo, or from fishing boats rocking in the Atlantic swells off Aran. Increasingly, she knew, the submarines never appeared at the rendezvous – sunk by such as those destroyers sliding in now from the Atlantic, the Stars and Stripes streaming from their sterns.

Doyle had met her at Cork railway station, and was taking her back to his croft. Margaret, her hair dyed grey from its true dense shining black, bore the identity papers of Janet Doyle, his aunt, come to visit him from Limerick. Next week she would carry other papers, and she would be back at the movement's headquarters, in Dublin. The British might catch her at any moment – she was stopped on an average of once every month, and her papers inspected, as she went about her business – but there was no definite identification
mark, that they knew about. The scar on her right breast, where the bullets had passed through when she and Dermot killed the policemen two years ago; the entry wound in her shoulder blade and the exit above her collarbone, when she was wounded in the Easter Rising – these were clear and inerasable, but they were all hidden by her clothing; and the British did not know about them in detail – only that she had been wounded.

Doyle said, ‘There's no hope now, is there really, Peg?'

She said fiercely, ‘There's always hope! The Germans will make a great assault in the spring … They may actually win the war. Even if they don't, the shock will be so great – they may sweep the British clean out of France – that there'll be a great outcry to make peace, at any price. And then …'

‘We'll have to take what the British choose to give us. That's the truth of it,' the man said gloomily, cracking his whip over the flagging little pony's back.

‘Freedom – or the streets, the fields,' Margaret said passionately. ‘This spying and sneaking around, without attacking, is a waste of time. We ought to be waging guerrilla war now. What's the point of waiting?'

‘There'll be hard times, whenever it comes,' Doyle said. ‘Whoa there!' The pony slowed, he turned it off into a narrow stone-walled lane, and headed it toward a sod and thatch cottage a quarter of a mile ahead, smoke curling from under the eaves – it had no chimney – and a woman leading a cow along a wall outside, on a rope.

Doyle said, ‘We heard you left a family in England for us, Peg.'

‘I did,' she said shortly.

Damn him, why did he have to bring that up now, when she had been able to pass nearly a whole twenty-four hours without thinking of Laurence, her son? Christopher should have seen that he was not cut out for a soldier, but he wouldn't have. He was probably out in France by now. What chance was there that he'd come home alive out of that? And would Ireland ever be his ‘home'? But then, what chance was there that
she'd
come out alive? … She tried to think of Stella, but that was never easy. Stella was married, and she'd had a baby, and the baby had died – her first grandchild. The news did not move her when she'd seen it in the obituary columns of the
Irish Times
, any more than when, a few days later, she'd
seen the announcement of Boy's death in action. Someone in the family was obviously putting those notices in the
Irish Times
for the benefit … She shook her head to make the thoughts fly away. She didn't want to think about Christopher feeding the robins by the window at the end of the hall, playing his violin on summer nights, the windows open, the sounds sweeping out across the velvet green, toward the yellow moon hanging over the Weald. She wondered briefly whether he had found another woman. He was a passionate man. What did it matter? That was all from another, meaningless world.

She said, ‘Make your full report as soon as we get in, and I'll give you your instructions for the next two months. And the cash you asked for.'

‘'Tis to pay Paddy,' he said apologetically, ‘the night watchman at the docks. He sees goings and comings that we don't. But he's a mite greedy.'

The cart stopped outside the croft. The woman came forward, wiping her hands on her apron. The rain hissed gently on the thatch, and Margaret stepped down into the mud, careful to move like a woman of seventy years of age.

The big room was jammed with them – the managers of the thirty-five H.U.S.L. shops now in operation, all seated on little folding chairs Hoggin had hired for the occasion; rather, that Miss Meiklejohn had hired on his behalf. Nineteen of the managers were women, sixteen men. Some of them had spent the previous night in London, and would do so again tonight, being unable to reach Hedlington and return to their bases in the single working day of the conference – which had started at 10 a.m. and was now, at 4.15 p.m., drawing to a close.

Hoggin rose to his feet. Miss Meiklejohn closed the door and click-clacked forward through the massed chairs, to sit beside his desk, her stenographic pad at the ready.

Hoggin said, ‘All right, you blokes – and ladies. You've heard from the banker. You've heard from the accountant … and don't think I ain't got my eye on you, every one of you …' He fixed a beady gaze on a man in the second row, held him for a moment, then moved to a woman, another, another – ‘Retail groceries is about the worst business there is for pilfering … until we get ways of keeping track of every tin of
beans automatically, it don't pay to try. So managers, and assistants, and every little slut who gets a job … not to mention the customers … 'elps themselves to a bit here, a bit there, a tin here, a jar here … Well, I've got fellows – and women – watching, who you don't know is doing it. And first time they catches you with your hand in the till … out! And we'll prosecute. It'll be in the papers, your name and all … You've heard from me about buying in bulk, direct from the producers … and when this war's over that'll be easier … more goods, cheaper … You've heard from that New York Yankee, about getting people inside the shops, and when they're in, selling –
making
them buy. Specials, advertisements in the local paper … regular, same day every week. Keep the shops open late, one night a week … Don't pay any extra to the assistants who stay on late those nights, just sack 'em if they complain, or say they won't do it … Mark prices plain, clear … and about a quarter of the goods on the shelves oughter be marked “Reduced from …” 'Course it hain't really reduced from anything, unless you mark it up first, then mark it down from that, see? But that only works well for 'igh priced items and we don't want many of them in H.U.S.L. shops … Keep the place clean. Everything easy to find. Everything in the same place all the time … and in the same place, as near as you can get it, in all the shops, according to the plan that bloke gave you this morning.'