Thea’s complexion reddened. Kezia said nothing as she stood by her side. She had discovered, lately, that it was sometimes better to say nothing around Thea.
“I think this is just disgraceful. Putting bricks through the windows of innocent shopkeepers,” said Thea.
Kezia thought her comment was a bit rich, seeing as Thea’s suffragette friends had lobbed many a brick through the windows of innocent shopkeepers. She wondered if Thea had narrowly escaped arrest for such a crime. It would not surprise her. Nothing surprised her about Thea anymore.
Thea held out her hand towards the man, then his son. “I wish you both well. And give my best regards to Mrs. Van Althuis. You know where I live—in Queen Charlotte’s Chambers, the ladies’ boarding house—so let me know if there’s anything I can do. My brother has a farm in Kent—this is his wife.” Thea nodded towards Kezia. “I daresay you could stay in one of the cottages. In any case, I am sure they would help—wouldn’t you, Kezzie?”
Kezia felt herself flush, and stammered a reply. “I could talk to Tom about it . . . yes, I could do that.”
Mr. Van Althuis smiled at Kezia. It was a half smile, and as he looked at her, Kezia thought that if there were two photographs, one of each side of his face, you would see different men—one sad and angry, and the other pleased and relieved. The duality unsettled her.
“Much obliged, but to be honest, the wife don’t like the country much. All that earth, and them trees and animals. She likes it here, so for all my talk about going to Rotterdam, we’ll find a way to stay. Truth be told, I couldn’t see us even getting out as far as Tilbury Docks. Never mind, it’ll all come out in the wash. Always does.” He turned to go back to his work. His son had looked on, silent, throughout the whole exchange. “But I know one thing,” he added, turning back to Thea. “We’d better get on with the job and put a stop to that bleedin’ kaiser before we’ve got them Germans marching all over London, and that’s the truth. My boy’s going down to enlist as soon as he can, aren’t you, son?”
The young man’s blushes were a match for Kezia’s earlier flush of embarrassment. His Adam’s apple moved up and down as he swallowed, as if words were caught in his throat. Kezia saw the fluff of adolescent hair on his chin and around his jaw, and a cut where he had tried to shave. She felt a catch in her throat, seeing this youth trying to assume the beard of manhood.
“You don’t have to go, you know, Tim,” said Thea. “You can wait. It’s voluntary enlistment, and there’s plenty of others lining up to sign their lives away.”
“It’ll all be over in a few months, Miss Brissenden, just you watch,” said the boy’s father. “But Tim should show willing, after all, we have to look after our country, don’t we?”
Thea sighed, then wished the man and his son well. Kezia smiled at them both as they continued on their way.
“Look at that. Just look at that for a fine example of this war talk. That man and his family work their fingers to the bone, all hours, going across London delivering meat, with Mrs. Van Althuis on her feet all day, putting food on tick for those who haven’t got two ha’pennies to rub together. They get their windows broken by stupid idiots under the influence of a crowd and whatever they’ve read in the newspapers. Those papers have a lot to answer for, mark my words.” Thea picked up speed as she walked, her temper rising as she all but spat out her opinion. “And there they are, encouraging their only son to enlist. Sending him to his death.”
“Thea—surely it will not happen. Surely this is all bluster. I mean, it’s not like this in Kent, not in the villages.” Kezia felt as if she were running to keep up the pace set by her friend.
“Not yet it isn’t. But it will be.” Thea marched ahead and, waving back to Kezia, picked up her skirt and ran towards the omnibus stop, calling to her to hurry. Kezia went after her, and they both leapt on the vehicle’s running board, then upstairs. The conductor rang a bell, and the horses moved off again.
“Where are we going?” asked Kezia.
“Buckingham Palace,” replied Thea. “People have to gather somewhere to wait for news, so that’s where they’ll go.”
“But news won’t come from there. It’s not as if the king is going to stand on the balcony and shout the news if war is declared.”
Thea turned to look at Kezia, her voice peppered with exasperation. “But Kezzie, the people will gather behind a figurehead, won’t they? The king stands for Britain, far more than Lloyd George.”
“I don’t know where you get all this from, really I don’t. We’d do better to go to Downing Street, or even St. Paul’s—the church always knows what’s going on.”
“No. Buckingham Palace. Lloyd George will have to go to the king first, if there’s to be an announcement. Then we’ll know. Yes, then we’ll know.”
Chapter 4
It has been said that the essence of all good breeding is tact. A tactful woman is essentially a woman who knows how to adapt herself to varying circumstances, who has that keen perception which enables her to see and do what is best upon occasions when discrimination between the wrong and right methods of action is necessary.
—THE WOMAN’S BOOK
Kezia lay awake, uncomfortable, tossing and turning in the armchair. Despite her exhaustion, sleep did not come easily. She felt tormented, as if her thoughts were conspiring with the coiled springs of upholstery. She felt prodded and poked in body, mind, and soul. The crowds at Buckingham Palace had overwhelmed her; she had put her arm through Thea’s as her friend shouldered her way into the mass. She saw a man with his wife and sons, a length of string joining them lest they became separated among the surrounding bodies pressing together. This was not many people, this was one, a massive being buoyed on by the promise of a fight. The boys’ capped heads reached their mother’s narrow shoulders, with the youngest—perhaps an inch shorter than his brother—tiptoeing to see over the heads of men. There was yelling and shouting, a sound that from a distance was like the wheeze of a kettle left on the stove at night. But as they’d drawn closer, the crescendo seemed to reach down into the ground, only to ricochet up through Kezia’s body. She’d felt assaulted; if this were civilization, what had happened to civility? And now, as the grainy light of morning fingered the curtains, the noise was growing again, with newspaper vendors calling out once more, baying like wolves in the night. It was later, when she bought two newspapers at Charing Cross Station, that she wondered if she’d been caught up in a play, a school pantomime. The front pages of both papers said little of the still-new declaration of war. There were small columns of advertisements and square private announcements to temper the grand pronouncements of patriotism; that the nation would be filled with fresh courage in the face of a fight.
But for now she waited, wondering when Thea might wake, so that they could have tea together before she departed for Kent and the farm. If she could, she would have left earlier, would have crept around the room gathering her things. She would have penned a quick note, words chosen with care to pour oil on the troubled waters of their friendship. Perhaps she had not understood Thea. Perhaps she could have been more accommodating, more . . . what? While they were moving through the crowds, Thea had searched among the faces, on occasion jumping up to gain a better view. It was in front of the palace gates that she had found what she was looking for—a gathering of pacifists shouting their message. Thea stepped forward, nodded to her friends—Kezia could tell at once that they were all known to each other—and took a banner from a woman struggling to grasp a megaphone at the same time. Having relinquished the additional burden, she began to shout her message.
Peace is the only worthy fight!
Be a soldier of peace, now!
March into the battle for peace!
Kezia had never seen Thea so filled with passion, her eyes alive in the madness of the moment, calling out her message, raising her fist as if to fight. Kezia wanted to pull her back, wanted to feel the muscle of her arm through her jacket, wanted to drag her away, out
of the crowd. She wanted peace and quiet. She wanted to be back in her father’s study with only the grandfather clock’s tick-tock, tick-tock punctuating their conversation. She wanted to hear his smooth voice, never raised to counter a point; softened, even, when he felt she was wrong. She wanted to hear the farm, the cows coming in for the milking, a deep lowing as they moved at a deliberate pace, full udders swinging from side to side. Kezia wanted to know the dinner was in the oven, and that Tom would be home soon. She was tired of London, done with this madness. War had not even begun, and she felt the weight of worry bearing down upon her.
“Thea. Thea! Thea, let’s go home. Let’s go home now! You could be killed here,” she’d pleaded.
Thea shook her head and continued calling for peace, for men to lay down their arms, for Lloyd George to navigate the ship of political crisis back from the brink.
Mounted police had broken through the crowd then, fanning out as if to tear through the fabric of the mob, scattering people back away from the gates. They did not raise their truncheons, did not strike a soul, just pushed the horses forward slowly, giving people a chance to move, to be a person again, to be individual and not part of this behemoth waiting for news of war.
The pacifists were scattered too, and it was then that Kezia saw her chance, taking Thea’s arm, the arm she had focused upon, the limb she would pull until her friend was with her again, and they were away from this place. They’d exchanged hardly a word on the way back to the boarding house. Thea’s eyes seemed aflame, and though Kezia was afraid to speak, she could not stop herself.
“Everyone’s gone mad, Thea. I feel as if I’ve escaped a lunatic asylum.”
Thea stopped walking and looked at Kezia under the strained lamplight. “You think you’ve seen madness tonight. That was only the beginning, Kezia. There will be more lunacy to come unless there’s a refusal to fight.”
“But the army won’t refuse to fight,” replied Kezia, now walking with a quick step to catch up with Thea, who had already turned away.
“No, they won’t, which means they’ll need more men. Then see where you are, Kezia. When Tom’s called to war, let’s see what you think of the pacifists then.”
“Oh, but it won’t come to that,” said Kezia. She could feel the childish smile on her face, formed not in joy but in response to fear.
“Won’t it? Well, we’ll just have to wait and see. Won’t we?”
They had gone to bed without another word, and now Kezia was ready to leave. London held nothing for her. She doubted she would ever again feel the familiar excitement as the train pulled in, steam filling the air when the loco reached the buffers at Charing Cross. She could not imagine the anticipation of window-shopping, of going into Liberty’s and fingering fine cloth she could not afford. And there was no fulfillment in her friendship with Thea. It had vanished, like sodden autumn leaves washed down a drain. She would not wait a moment longer. She would make ready to leave, and if Thea did not rise from her deep sleep in the meantime, Kezia would write a note and depart. She would say that she had to get back to the farm, that it had all been very exciting, and that she wanted Thea to visit them soon. She would remind her that her room had not been disturbed, and that a sojourn in the country would do her the world of good. Kezia wrote all of these things, with a pen dipped in ink and the message scratched back and forth on cheap vellum found in Thea’s desk. She set the envelope against an unwashed cup on the bedside table, and without a sound gathered her clothing into her bag and left the room, turning the handle slowly so there was no creaking to signal her departure. It was a false message she’d penned, and Kezia tried to brush away the feeling that Thea would think her light, that she would see right through the words, written as if from one polite matron to another.
Thea opened her eyes as the door closed, raising her head from the pillow to listen as Kezia’s steps receded down the stairs, where she opened the front door, closed it, and walked away, down the street and into the distance. She sighed, relieved that her sister-in-law had left, relieved that she would not have to feel the sharp prickle of annoyance, the intense jabbing of envy, even. She knew when Kezia had left the chair where she’d spent the night. She had heard her brushing her hair, splashing water on her face. With her eyes closed she’d followed the sounds of Kezia dressing, finally lacing up shoes as she was ready to leave. Thea had not opened her eyes, not changed her breathing. She had just listened, knowing that, while part of her wanted to embrace Kezia, wanted to cling to her because everything might change—because she herself was changing and couldn’t stop now she’d begun—another part just wanted Kezia to leave, to go back to the farm and be whatever she planned to be if she really wanted to waste her mind. More than anything, Thea felt—as did Kezia, descending into the depths of the Underground, sitting on the train as it rattled from side to side, then making her way up onto the street and into Charing Cross Station—that perhaps they were, in fact, in a similar state of mind. They were both afraid.
For Tom Brissenden there had been little in the way of a hiatus in his responsibilities over the bank holiday. The farm had been quiet, with the men enjoying an extra day off. Tom didn’t think that joining the village charabanc outing down to Hastings for the day represented much of a rest, but quite a crowd had gone—the children with buckets and spades, the men ready to roll up trouser legs and dip into the sea as far as their calves, and the women laden with baskets filled with sandwiches, pork pies, sausage rolls, and lemon barley water. Of the farm’s workers, only Bert Grace remained at home, allowing himself an extra hour in bed before leaving his tied cottage to walk across the fields to Marshals Farm with his dog, Whisky, at his side. The dog’s name revealed everything a person needed to know about Bert’s favorite tipple, in which he indulged just once a week on Saturday night at the Queen’s Head. Bert had been working on the farm since boyhood. His wife, Mary, had died in childbirth, and on that night he swore he would never marry again, for she was the love of his life. Now, bent forward, his trousers tied in place with a length of baling twine and his jacket oily with the years and bearing the smell of many a harvest, Bert could not imagine a better day than one spent on the farm.
Bert admired Tom, had known him since he was born, and he’d known his father before him since boyhood. He had seen Tom grow beyond his father’s shadow and knew he would only have pulled free from the elder Brissenden upon his father’s passing, which came sooner than anyone would have thought. Bert was well versed in matters of life and death, on the inevitable cycle from first breath to last, from seed to threshing machine. He might have been surprised when Tom took Kezia for his wife, but he was not disheartened. The girl tried hard and was a worker, and he suspected she knew very well that her attempts to provide a hearty breakfast for the men were met at times with surprise and, indeed, the occasional look of incredulity. But he also knew the locals had a soft spot for Kezia. You could see her innocence, thought Bert. You could see there was still dew on her petals. Sometimes he thought that, if he were young again, he might like to catch her eye himself.
Tom and Bert worked for only as long as the farm needed on that Monday. The younger man was always respectful of his foreman and never drew back from asking his advice. Bert thought that said a lot for the lad—it took a man to admit when he wanted direction. Later they would go to the Queen’s Head together, where Tom would lift his glass of ale to touch the whisky tot that Bert held with gnarled forefinger and thumb. They spoke of what all this business of war might mean for the farm, and agreed it would be good—an army marches on its stomach, after all, and if there’s one thing the farm provided, it was a good-quality crop and the finest livestock. It never occurred to either of them, to young man or old, that the other men who came to the farm each day, who sniffed Kezia’s poached eggs with a leaf of mint on top, and who then marched out to fields thick with barley and wheat, putting their backs into nurturing the land, might themselves march away to war.
Kezia arrived at Charing Cro
ss in something of a daze and easily distracted. She felt like a butterfly caught on the wind, jostled by people waiting for announcements running towards their platforms. Already the regular army was on the move, with soldiers lining up to entrain for the coast, whereupon they would be ferried across the Channel. A swirl of khaki moved towards the same platform as Kezia, and when she pressed forward, holding out her ticket, a guard informed her that the Dover train would be delayed. Troop trains took precedence. Kezia sighed, and hoped she would not miss her connection. The branch line ran alongside the eastern perimeter of the farm, its sooty steam punching up through the trees flanking Scrooge Field. If only she could ask the driver to stop, she would leap out, run across the fields and into Tom’s arms. Kezia looked down as her eyes became wet with tears. How would she ever bear it if he had to go? But no, he wouldn’t. The farm was where he belonged. Who would look after the farm, if there was no Tom to direct everyone each day to do their work? What would happen if there was no Tom to sit at the head of the table with his men, to wipe his plate clean of golden egg yolk with a slice of fried bread, and then to pick up his mug filled with piping hot tea and say, “All right, Danny, I need the horses up on Pickwick this morning—and make sure you get that plough in the corners, all right? Check Mabel’s right front hoof before you put her in the traces, and if that shoe’s loose again, bring her over to Bert—Bert, do what you can with it, and if it won’t hold, Dan will have to walk her down to the smithy. And if it comes to that, you can ride her home, Dan, give your feet a rest—that’s if she’s in a mood to let you on her back. And if she’s gone for a few hours, we might as well let Ted have a bit of time to himself—Bert, if the old girl’s off work today, probably best to put him in the pasture for a good roll; he’ll think it’s holiday time.” And so it would go on, Tom giving orders, directing the men before they all went about their work for the day. And he trusted each one to do his bidding, and to know what the land needed and when. Bert would add his advice, and soon chairs would be pushed back and off they would go. Another day, another round, another opportunity for Kezia to be a good wife.