I have read the Bishop of Stepney’s book, as you recommended, and I did find great comfort in it.
I look forward to meeting you in person one of these days.
Yours most sincerely,
Rosemary McCosh (Miss)
39
An Interruptor
Sophie came into the drawing room and flopped down on the sofa next to Christabel. ‘Look!’ she said. ‘My fiftieth hospital bag!’
‘Fifty!’ exclaimed Christabel. ‘Why, Sophickles, you’ve turned into a positive factory. I don’t know how you do it. And every one with a cheerful little elephant embroidered on it.’
‘It’s my last one,’ said Sophie. ‘I really can’t face making any more.’
‘What are you going to do now?’
‘I’ve hatched a plot, a very ingenuous plot.’
‘Ingenious?’
‘Ingenuous and ingenious. I’ve joined the Women’s Legion Auxiliary! I’m going to be a driver for the Royal Flying Corps, I hope. And I’ll learn how to mend engines and things. It’ll be topping. Ain’t I a kink?’
‘Sophie, you’re priceless! What will Daddy say?’
‘Oh, I spoke to Daddy, and he said, “Gracious me, Sophie bairn, what will your mother say?” ’
‘Is that all?’
‘Daddy likes spunky girls,’ said Sophie happily. ‘He said, “What if they send you to France?” and I said, “I’m starting at Suttons Farm,” and he said, “But you have no idea how to drive tenders and mend engines,” and I said, “Daddy, you didn’t know anything about gas masks and artificial limbs until you started manufacturing them.” ’
‘Well, you know what Mama will say. She’ll say, “Oh, you can’t possibly! I absolutely forbid it!’
‘I won’t tell her until after I’ve gone. I shall write and tell her that I am living in a compound with high walls, and any man attempting to enter will be shot dead by one of our fearsome lady guards. Mama doesn’t really care about anything but telling us to keep our legs crossed.’
‘Sophie!’
‘Well, it’s true, you know it is. She wouldn’t mind at all if we were footpads and murderers. Anyway, I’ve no intention of having babies until I’m married, and then I’m going to have dozens and dozens. Positive plenitudes of them.’
‘Where are you actually going to live?’
‘In a nice little farmhouse. They’re going to build us some special huts later on, I think. Won’t it be fun? I’m terribly braced. No more balaclavas and hospital bags. Hooray! And if I get sent to France I shan’t mind at all.’
‘You’ll have to cut off your fingernails.’
Sophie held up her hands. ‘Already have! I have been most prescient and not at all nescient, if not omniscient. And I was frightfully good at French at school. I got the prize for dictée and conversation. I could be an interrupter. I shall wax Molièresque.’
‘Interrupter?’
‘You know, French into English and English into French, that kind of thing.’
‘Oh, you mean an interpreter!’
‘Do I? Silly me.’
‘With your love for messing about with words, and scrambling them up, I think you’d better stick to driving. Just think, you might fall in love with a pilot! Wouldn’t that be romantic!’
‘Frantically. But they do get killed an awful lot. Better not, really.’
‘The trouble with love,’ observed Christabel, ‘is that one really has no choice as to who one falls in love with.’
40
Now that April’s Here
‘Rupert Brooke’s died,’ said Ottilie.
‘Oh,’ said Rosie, ‘he hasn’t, has he? Why? I mean, how?’ They were sitting in the tea room of a hotel on North Street, Chichester, having met halfway between Brighton and Southampton on an afternoon off. They were waiting for Christabel, who was coming down by train. Outside, a light rain pattered on windows that overlooked a garden that was coming to life as if there wasn’t a war on.
‘He wasn’t shot or anything. It was an infected mosquito bite, somewhere near the Dardanelles. I think he got bitten in Egypt.’
‘What a thing to die of! You’d think that God would’ve been kind enough to let him die of something else. Something more glorious.’
‘I don’t know how you’ve clung to your faith,’ said Ottilie.
‘Why?’ said Rosie. ‘Haven’t you?’
Ottilie looked straight ahead and said, ‘It doesn’t come naturally any more.’
‘I couldn’t live without it,’ said Rosie. ‘I would die of the horror and loneliness.’
‘I do know what you mean.’
‘There’s a VAD at Netley,’ said Rosie. ‘She can see the souls of the dead as they leave their bodies. She discovered it by accident, and she says that after the war she’s going to be a medium.’
Ottilie looked at her sister sceptically.
‘She isn’t mad,’ said Rosie. ‘She’s quite normal. She says that when you die there are people who come to fetch you away, sometimes one, or two, or three. And there was a soldier who told me that on the battlefield there are hundreds of angels collecting the souls of the dead. He said that lots of people see them.’
‘I’ve heard soldiers say all sorts of things,’ said Ottilie.
‘I’ve watched a lot of men die,’ said Rosie. ‘You have too. You know what it’s like. The moment they go, they don’t even look like themselves any more. You can tell the body’s uninhabited, that’s someone’s left it behind. It’s just discarded.’
‘I’ve noticed that too, but, Rosie, it doesn’t tell you anything about God, does it? They could be leaving to go on to something else, but it doesn’t mean there’s a God at all. If there’s an afterlife, it might be like going to stay in Hastings or something.’
‘How can you have an afterlife without God?’
‘Well, why can’t you?’
Rosie was stuck. This possibility had never occurred to her before. ‘All I know,’ she said at length, ‘is that God looks after me and answers me.’
They looked out over the lawn again. It all seemed too peaceful. ‘I am worried about Mama and Papa when the Zeppelins and Gothas come over,’ said Ottilie. ‘Mind you, they seem to be bombing anything and anywhere, don’t they? It could just as easily be us.’ She looked sideways and saw that her sister was crying silently. ‘Oh, Rosie, whatever is the matter? Is it Ash?’
Rosie hung her head and wept, her thin shoulders heaving. ‘I’m just so tired,’ she said. ‘I’m so exhausted. I could sleep for a year. I only wish I could.’
‘I know what it’s like,’ said Ottilie, ‘I really do.’
‘They work us so hard,’ said Rosie. ‘We get up so early and we aren’t allowed to sit down all day, and we work so late, and I’m still in a tent because there’s no accommodation, and one of the other women snores, and it’s so cold that when you undress all you actually do is take your shoes off, and I never seem to get a decent wash, and the trained nurses are so horrible to us and call us amateurs and pretend nurses, and say that we’re undermining their profession, and the doctors treat us like vermin, and I’m spending all my time polishing brasses and sweeping floors when I want to be helping properly. Ottilie, it’s just too awful, and you see all those beautiful boys mutilated and dying or going mad, and they’ve got a whole ward for men with syphilis and everyone calls it “Hell” because it really is hell. And I got into big trouble because I said to the matron that officers and men shouldn’t be treated separately, but they shouldn’t, should they?’
‘The Pavilion is quite nice,’ said Ottilie, ‘but everything’s governed by caste and religion. It drives you mad. We have to have lots of separate kitchens – we’ve got nine of them – and separate water for Hindus and Mahommedans, and different loos, and the notices have to be in Hindi and Urdu and Gurmukhi, and all the laundry’s done by untouchables who have to live in a tent on the lawn. If it worries you separating the officers and men at Netley, you can’t possibly imagine
what it’s like for us in the Pavilion. One has to have the expertise of an anthropologist. Do you know what the worst thing is?’
‘No.’
‘It’s the Mahommedans. They think that they can’t get to Paradise if they’re missing a limb. If you have to do an amputation the grief and hysterics are quite dreadful to cope with.’
‘How very silly,’ said Rosie, ‘to think that God would care about a missing leg.’
‘They get over it,’ said Ottilie. ‘In the end they’re grateful to have a bit more life.’ She paused, and added, ‘And the Hindus think they can’t go to Heaven until they’ve had a son, so if they haven’t got one yet, they positively refuse to die, even when it’s absolutely inevitable. They die in a kind of spiritual agony. It’s dreadful.’
‘We’ve got ghats at Netley, for burning the Hindus. You know what the best thing is?’ said Rosie. ‘Do you know why I couldn’t give it up, no matter how awful it is? It’s the gratitude of the men. It makes me want to cry every time I think of it. When they leave they write messages in my scrapbook, and poems, and then they write me letters.’
Ottilie nodded, and they looked out over the lawn again. Christabel came in, throwing her bag down and collapsing theatrically on one of the chairs. She closed her eyes and said, ‘My darlings, I’m absolutely fagged.’
‘Too much snapping?’ asked Rosie.
‘In the last few days I’ve been all over London and to Guildford and Petworth and Reading and every town and village known to man. I can’t tell you how many buses and trams I must have got in and out of. Why can’t they come up with lighter cameras? What about papier mâché? I swear my shoulders are getting a permanent sag.’
‘But you must meet lots of nice people,’ said Ottilie.
‘Everyone’s nice,’ replied Christabel. ‘They’re always so grateful.’
‘We were just saying that,’ said Rosie. ‘It keeps you going, doesn’t it?’
‘The sad thing is that by the time the photographs get to the front line, a lot of the recipients are probably dead already.’
‘Oh, don’t say that!’
‘It’s true, though.’
‘The soldiers at Netley love their snaps more than practically anything else,’ said Rosie. ‘And another thing, even the ones who aren’t Catholics have rosaries and pictures of saints.’
‘Do your Indian soldiers have photographs?’ asked Christabel.
‘No, they don’t. I can’t think of any.’
‘Shall I come along to Brighton and take some snaps for them to send home?’
Ottilie put her hands together eagerly. ‘Oh, wouldn’t that be wonderful? We’d have to ask the matron, or someone.’ She paused. ‘You’d absolutely love Brighton. The Pavilion’s a hoot. They put all the Indian soldiers in it because they thought the architecture would make them feel more at home! Can you believe it? Most of them grew up in villages, in huts! When they come to the Pavilion they think they’ve all become maharajas.’
‘I wonder how one would light them,’ said Christabel. ‘I’ve only ever done pallid folk like us before. Any news of Sophie?’
‘Just a cheery message from somewhere near Amiens, saying that she got shelled and had to change a tyre, and suddenly crowds of men emerged from nowhere and changed it for her. She says she’s driving French officers around on liaison missions and has become quite the interrupter.’
‘Good old Sophie. Have you heard her latest Sophieism?’
‘No,’ said Rosie. ‘Do tell.’
‘She wrote and said that the number of women working in France was expanding excrementally!’
The sisters laughed, and Ottilie remarked, ‘I never really know if she does it on purpose.’
‘Well, of course she does,’ replied Christabel. ‘And did you know that Papa’s gone to Leeds?’
‘Leeds? What on earth for?’
‘He heard about a certain Honorary Colonel Professor Smithells at the university who’s come up with some new ideas for an anti-gas respirator, so he got in touch and off he went. Apparently Professor Smithells is the government’s chief adviser on chemical warfare.’
‘Papa’s fabulous, isn’t he?’ said Rosie. ‘He helps mankind by helping himself. It’s quite a knack. He’s making parts for Sopwith’s now.’
‘Guess what!’ said Christabel.
‘What?’ echoed the sisters.
‘Millicent got another letter from Hutch. I had to read some of it for her. Hutch has got terrible writing, and Millicent isn’t as good at reading and writing as she thinks she is. I helped her a little with replying.’
‘How sweet,’ said Ottilie. ‘I just hope that he gets through, that’s all.’
‘Send him a snap of Millicent,’ suggested Rosie.
Christabel started laughing to herself, and Ottilie said, ‘Do tell us!’
‘Oh, it was something that happened yesterday. It was too funny. I needed a few pennies to pay the cats’ meat man, and I thought Cookie might have some, so I shouted down the stairs, ‘Have you got any coppers down there?’ and Millicent’s little voice came back up: ‘There’s three, Miss Christabel, but it’s all right ’cause they’re all my cousins except the one what’s my brother.’ It turns out that we are quite the little staging post for weary peelers on the beat. No wonder we’re always running out of tea and sugar.’
‘It’s been going on for ages,’ said Rosie. ‘I’ve been dreading Mama finding out.’
‘It couldn’t have happened when we had a footman,’ observed Ottilie.
‘Yes, it could,’ said Christabel. ‘Servants just adore getting into conspiracies and seeing what they can get away with.’
That night a dud bomb fell through the roof of Swan & Edgar, and the McCosh conservatory was destroyed by a small Zeppelin bomb that fell on the lawn and sucked all the glass from the windows. It remained a veranda until 1919, and in the interim Mr and Mrs Pendennis next door adopted the few surviving plants. Mr McCosh toyed with the idea of converting the crater into a fishpond, but was overruled by his daughters, who wanted the lawn to revert to being a tennis court after the war. ‘After the war’ was a phrase on everybody’s lips, especially those of lovers. Millicent and Hutch wrote letters to each other in which it seemed to be repeated in every sentence…after the war…after the war…after the war…after the war. It was a phrase that went well with ‘forever’. I’ll love you forever, after the war.
41
The Harmony of the Wires
Down below in Bailleul lie the sodden bones of Ashbridge Pendennis and his two brothers, entombed in mud and marked with wooden crosses made from the slats of ammunition boxes. High above them, oblivious, Daniel Crawford Pitt hurls his Sopwith Camel around the sky for the sheer exhilaration and joy and love of it.
Having survived many months at the front as an observer, and having brought down several enemy aircraft, he has won his ticket at the Central Flying School in Upavon, and has gone on to win the wings that are now sewn onto the breast of his tunic. He has kept the winged ‘O’, however, as he is proud of it, and no one has told him to remove it from his upper left arm, where he has sewn it without permission. He has learned to fly in a ‘Sociable’, the kind invented for Winston Churchill personally, and flown an Avro 504, and even the Flying Coffin (otherwise known as the Clockwork Mouse), and some other types too. He has flown the delightful Sopwith Pup as a pilot, and now he is mastering the Camel, which was terrifyingly unflyable at first, but has become an extension of his body and his spirit. It is August 1917, and Bloody April is receding into memory. Down below, the French are just about to break the German line at Verdun, and the British are about to gain a few hundred yards of mud at the third battle of Ypres. On this day, twelve German aircraft and twelve British ones have been lost. In Russia the new government is at war with the Bolsheviks, and the Tsar and his family are rumoured to have been sent to Siberia.
It was intimidating enough trying out a DH2, because that had a natural spin, and the Sopwith Pup was un
nervingly responsive at first, but he had got used to it. It was strange how each type of machine was so different from every other, and with each machine it was like learning to fly all over again. You could stall a Pup on purpose, but it was practically impossible with a DH2. You put the nose up, it stalled, the nose went down level. It climbed again, stalled, put its nose down level.
Nothing has prepared him for the Camel, however; he has already crashed one, and half of those training with him have been killed or injured.
The strain of flying it is appalling, because the torque of the engine means that it won’t do a left-hand spin, but puts it into a right-hand spin that is irretrievable on take-off. Most of the casualties are caused by right-hand spins. To stop it spinning you wrestle with the controls from the moment you begin to taxi, and you wrestle with them until your fuel runs out some two hours later. You are always on left rudder, but you use rudder as little as you can. The plane always wants to climb, and always wants to sideslip, to drift sideways, which turns out to be miraculously useful when there’s a Hun on your tail. He opens fire and you’re suddenly not there to be fired at. When you get home you are sometimes too weak to climb out, and all your limbs are shaking. How different is an SE5a, with its in-line engine! And how much more cosy and warm! You can set the controls for a distant destination, and arrive there without doing much else. You don’t make your kills in a dogfight, as you do with a Camel. You dive and zoom. A Camel fights like a cat, an SE5 fights like a shark.
The Camel pilots complain that the aircraft has a low ceiling, so you seldom have the advantage of height, the sine qua non of a conventional attack. It is useless above 15,000 feet, and it isn’t fast enough to chase and catch a fleeing enemy, and in any case you can’t go far over Hunland without worrying about not having sufficient fuel to batter back against the prevailing wind. God is perhaps on the Huns’ side, because the Huns have the wind to carry them home, and the Huns don’t stray over the lines anyway, so you are forced to go to them. Only at night do the Huns come over in their bombers, and then the night Camels go up, but Daniel doesn’t know who they are and doesn’t envy them either. It’s cold enough in the daytime.