The Passing Bells (52 page)

“You do enjoy baiting people, don't you?”

“I enjoy foretelling futures. You would enjoy yourself immensely. And it would be a charming spot . . . Bermuda, perhaps, or Malta.” He rolled the towel into a ball and tossed it through the open lavatory door. “I have spent all morning foretelling futures . . . none as pleasant as yours. The French are being bled white at Verdun and are demanding that we begin our offensive on the Somme immediately. The PM is quite upset at the demand, and Kitchener is in a dither. Sir Douglas Haig claims that he won't be ready to jump off before the end of August, but the French might cave in before then. We will attack by the end of June, a compromise that will please neither Haig nor the French. I sent a strong letter to Poincaré suggesting that the best way for them to cut their losses would be to withdraw across the Meuse and let the Germans have Verdun. It has no strategic importance whatever. Why treat it as a holy shrine? But of course it isn't up to poor Poincaré. After all, he's only the president. Joffre and the generals don't give a damn about losses. Men are mere digits to them. Eighty-nine thousand dead poilus so far, and God knows how many maimed for totally useless ground. A mere bagatelle when weighed against the glory of France.
Ils ne passeront pas! Vive la gloire! La voie sacrée!
Schoolboy rhetoric.”

He stood facing her, hands on hips, his slim body taut as a bent bow. A fiery little man, his dark eyes burning.

“How spellbinding you are, Mr. Langham. I would hate to be a Frenchman debating you.”

He waved a finger under her nose. “War is far too complex a matter for the military mind to grasp . . . but then you've heard that speech before, haven't you? Why must I always make speeches when you come here? Such a terrible waste of time.” He sat beside her on the couch and cupped her chin in one hand, turning her face toward him. “You're much too beautiful, Mrs. Greville. If I had married a woman with your face, I would still be a Liverpool solicitor.”

“Is that why successful politicians have plain wives?”

“It's vital on the hustings. Men will never vote for someone with a beautiful wife. They feel he has achieved enough. Why grace him with further rewards!”

“I could ask the same question.”

He let his hand drop to the top of her dress and began to undo the buttons with nimble ease.

“One wonders who is being rewarded the most by these brief encounters. Your appetites for the pleasures of the flesh match my own, stroke for stroke.” His hand was inside her chemise, pressed firmly against a naked breast. “You see? Your heart races . . . the breath catches in your throat.”

“Please hurry.”

“We shall make haste slowly, if you don't mind. Savor it as always.”

“Hurry . . .”

“My, my . . . what a passionate little whore we are today.”

“Please . . .”

It had been raining steadily in Yorkshire, and the factory on the outskirts of Huddersfield was surrounded by a lake of mud and standing water. A tall chain link fence topped with barbed wire enclosed the place, and there was no signboard to say what kind of factory it was or to whom it belonged. Only when the army car which had brought them from Leeds pulled up in front of the main building did Charles see a small sign on one of the doors:
ROLLS-ROYCE MOTOR WORKS—EXPERIMENTAL.

A gangly young man wearing a blue work smock stepped outside to meet them.

“Major Greville? Mr. Bigsby?”

“Aye,” Bigsby grunted. He spat a stream of brown saliva into a puddle. “Bloody 'orrible bit o' country, Yorkshire.”

“Dampish,” the young man said. He directed his attention to Charles. “My name's Wilson. I'm plant manager here. Our Mr. Ross is over in shed number four . . . next to the railway siding.”

“The package arrived, I hope,” Charles said.

“Oh, yes. It was delivered early this morning. Ugly-looking thing, isn't it? We pulled the engine out already.” He pointed off into the swirling drizzle. “Just keep to the duckboards. No point in driving there—your motor would only sink below the wheels.”

Big Willie was inside the large corrugated iron building, electric lights shining off its steel-plated sides. It was a great rhomboid-shaped monster, with six-pounder naval cannons jutting from the sponsons on the sides. Men in coveralls were crawling all over it, and there was the dull boom of heavy hammers from inside the hull. Charles and Bigsby climbed onto the back of the tank and peered into the open engine hatch.

“Is Mr. Ross there?” Charles yelled.

The hammering ceased. An oily-faced workman looked up at them.

“Aye, he be that. Mr. Ross, sur . . . coomp'ny callin'.”

A tousle-haired man in grease-stained coveralls emerged from the inner gloom of the hull. Charles stared at him in disbelief.

“But . . . you're
our
Ross!”

Jaimie Ross grinned and pulled himself out of the hatch.

“Not exactly
your
Ross any longer, sir.” He wiped his fingers on a cloth and held out his right hand. “It's fair good to see you, Mr. Greville. Indeed it is.”

“I'm quite flabbergasted, Ross. I knew you'd gone with the Rolls-Royce company, but to find you here. . . .”

“Oh, they've moved me back and forth a bit, sir. I've been at this factory the past three months.” He folded his arms and looked Charles up and down. “Major Greville. My, my. You look right smart in the uniform, sir. You one of the chaps responsible for this clanking dragon of a thing?”

“Not really. Just sort of an overseer.”

“I talked to one of your bunch in London . . . telephoned up here the other day. He said the machine was underpowered. That's a bit of a laugh, you know. This must weigh thirty ton and its got a one-hundred-five-HP engine in it. Doubt if you'd get more'n three miles to the hour on a dead-flat hard-paved road.”

“That's about it,” Bigsby said, spitting over the right side track.

Ross stepped down to the ground and gazed reflectively at the tank's engine, which hung in chains from a pully.

“Daimler. A good engine, but not for this . . .
thing
.”

“Do you have a better one?” Charles asked, stepping off the tank and standing beside him.

“Oh, yes . . . two-hundred-and-fifty-HP inline, ready for production. A proper beauty. We also have a three-hundred-and-fifty-HP in the testing stage. Aircraft engines. But as I tried to explain to that sod in London, we don't have them on the factory line. Won't have 'em either for at least four months. Now, these hundred-five-HP Daimlers must be bulging out of the warehouses.”

“Right,” Bigsby said. “That's the bloody rub.”

“We can fit one of our prototype Falcons in this hull so you could see how it'd move with a hundred more horsepower inside, but if time's the problem I don't much see the point of it.”

“Neither do I,” Charles said. “They're prepared to build fifty hulls now and they can't wait four months for engines to go in them.”

“If we could coax more bloody power from what we've got,” Bigsby said.

Ross closed his eyes and clasped his hands behind his back. He rocked slowly on his heels for a minute and then said, “The gear ratios seem wrong to me somehow . . . and the carburation and exhaust systems are inadequate for the amount of stress the engine's going to be put to. She's goin' to be fuel-starved . . . and she'll vapor-lock sure as hell takes sinners.”

Bigsby squirted juice again. “The gear box is a bloody 'orror. I been tellin' 'em that all along. I know what it needs.”

“Yes,” Ross said, “I think I do, too. If you could give my lads three days . . . around the clock. . . .”

“Of course,” Charles said.

“Modifications with available parts. Shouldn't hold up your schedule by more than a week or two, and it would make a ruddy big difference in performance.”

“Sounds good,” Charles said.

“Fine. We'll get on with it then. Like a mug of tea?”

“Yes . . . I would at that.”

“Mr. Bigsby?”

“I'm not much for tea.” He chewed on his cigar and squinted at the dangling engine. “Bloody 'ot water's bad on the 'eart.”

It seemed odd to be walking beside Jaimie Ross, odder still to be seated across from him in the tiny engineering office. Ross poured two mugs of sweet, milky tea from a tea urn and then sat behind a battered desk.

“Funny us meeting like this, isn't it?”

“Yes,” Charles agreed. “It is rather.”

“I read about Mr. Wood-Lacy dyin' at Gallipoli. Sorry. He was a nice chap. How's his lordship and ladyship?”

“They're fine, thank you.”

“And Miss Alexandra?”

“She's training as a nurse . . . at All Souls Hospital in London . . . the army nursing service.”

Ross shook his head. “Hard to believe. She was tango-mad last time I saw her. The old world do change a bit, don't it?”

Charles stared into his tea. “Yes, it does.”

“Been changin' a bit for me, too. I got seven patents on this new engine. It's really my idea and I'm responsible for its mass production. The company's sendin' me to America at the end of the month . . . to Cleveland and Detroit. The Yanks are going to build the bulk of 'em under license for us. Lor', think of it, me, Jaimie Ross, goin' to America.” He sipped reflectively at his tea. “That Algy Bigsby's a wonder, he is. I used to read his articles all the time in
Mechanics and Journeymen.
Quite an inspiration to me when I was a nipper. I never knew you to be much interested in mechanical things.”

“No. I'm still not terribly interested.”

Ross smiled. “I get the picture. I've had to deal with the army chaps on a few occasions. They turn deaf when a man with grease on his hands speaks to 'em. I suppose old ‘spittin' ' Bigsby tells you and you tell the brass. Is that it?”

“Something like that.” His face felt hotter than the tea.

“Gor, the bloody army. They think they're fightin' in the bleedin' Crimea or in India's sunny climes. Must be a strain on you. Still, as long as the job gets done . . . that's the main thing, isn't it? Get the better equipment out to the lads. Anything to that land fort?”

“Some people seem to think so, but most of the generals are dubious. One of them called it a pretty toy. I'm sure it's more than that.”

“Looks like it could crush barbed wire and deflect bullets easily enough. That is, if it has enough power to move across no-man's-land.”

“That's your job now, isn't it?”

“Yes. And it can be done. It won't be perfect by any means. You can expect twenty percent breakdowns at least. The ratio of weight to power plant is ridiculous. It needs at least a three-hundred-horsepower engine to give it momentum. . . . Eight to ten miles per on the flat . . . five on shell-pitted ground. Tell 'em that.”

“My job,” he said hollowly.

“That's right,” Ross said, slurping tea. “Your job, and you're bloody welcome to it.”

He was too much the outsider. Bigsby and Ross, the grimy mechanics, they spoke an arcane language that set them totally apart from him. They all seemed relieved when he excused himself and went back to the car. He told the driver to take him to Flockton Moor. After a fifteen-minute drive over sodden hills, they came to a featureless moor, with rows of wooden barracks, corrugated iron huts, and bell tents. He saw a flagpole, the Union Jack whipping in the wind . . . a sentry box on the side road . . . men at drill . . . a skirmish line moving through the gorse. . . . He felt a sense of peace. His familiar element. He thought of Windsor and the Second Battalion . . . first platoon . . . D Company . . . “Right as bloody rain, sir!”

The officers' mess was in a tar-paper and wood shack that leaked in a few spots. There were no battalion trophies to be seen, simply because there were no battalion trophies to be displayed. No honors won but the honor of having been formed in the first place. Volunteers all—except for a sprinkling of regular officers and NCO's seconded to the battalion from other units. For the sake of administrative convenience, the War Office had attached this battalion of amateurs to the Princess of Wales's Own Yorkshire regiment, the Green Howards, but not one man in a hundred knew anything at all about that venerable concern.

“Nor cares less,” Fenton said, nursing a whiskey. “Mill hands for the most part—the woolen trade—but they're tough birds and eager to kill Germans.”

Fenton looked lean and fit, Charles was thinking, feeling a pang of envy.

“Are you up to strength?”

“Over strength as a matter of fact, except for officers and NCO's. I should have thirty-five officers but have only twenty-six. But it's the same everywhere, and they're eager chaps and not afraid to work hard. The senior NCO's are first-rate. Seduced a couple away from the Coldstreams, and one who had been with me during the retreat, Sergeant Major Ackroyd. I stole him from the Middlesex.”

“Bit of a pack rat, aren't you?”

“Got to be, old fellow. There are just so many experienced men to go 'round and I want my battalion to have its fair share. It's trench experience that counts. Yorkshiremen love a good fight, but I need calm and steady hands to tell the lads when to shoot and when to keep their bloody heads down.”

Charles sipped his whiskey and glanced across the room. Two pink-cheeked first lieutenants were playing darts. Their combined ages wouldn't have reached forty.

“They're getting horribly young.”

“Yes,” Fenton said. “Coming right out of public school. Make them full lieutenants if they've had any OTC.” He drained his drink. “Winnie's with me, you know. We found a roomy old house up the road at Highbury. Stay the night with us. No point in your driving back to Huddersfield.”