Heart of War (88 page)

Harry considered. Lloyd George had a private fund, he knew, for which he was not accountable to anyone. It was large, it came from many sources and none of it went into the official coffers of the Liberal Party or of His Majesty's Government. He said, ‘May I ask how much you are considering donating this time – in strict confidence, of course.'

‘Three quarters of a million spondulicks,' Hoggin said.

Harry whistled silently. Lloyd George would certainly see Hoggin personally for that. He looked at Hoggin, thinking – he doesn't do anything without getting something in return. Now, what on earth was his asking price for this huge sum? Suddenly he guessed, and knew his guess was correct. He said, ‘I'll speak to the Prime Minister myself, tomorrow. I expect you will receive a summons from him soon after.'

‘You're going back to London tomorrow?'

Harry nodded, and Hoggin said, ‘So I'll hear from Mr Lloyd George Tuesday or Wednesday. Good … Well, thanks, Mr Rowland. Sorry you won't join us. Any time you change your mind, just call me on the telephone.'

Harry, Craddock and Mackenzie sat in the Savoy Grill, eating roast pheasant with Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, Viscount Northcliffe, owner of
The Times
and the
Daily Mail
. Northcliffe was laying down the law – ‘The man you must see is Charteris, Haig's Chief of Intelligence. He knows all the intrigues that are going on against Haig. He can warn you of specious arguments … whom to listen to, whom to take with a pinch of salt.' He said suddenly – ‘Winston Churchill has been getting at you, has he?'

‘He's spoken to me,' said all three members of Parliament, simultaneously.

‘Ah!' Northcliffe said, almost snarling. ‘He's an example, on this side of the Channel, of what I mean … always trying to find a way round, instead of facing the music and beating the Huns. He'd have that Jew Monash in if he had the power. Thank God he doesn't, not even now that he's back in the Cabinet. I gave Lloyd George a piece of my mind over that, I can assure you. I told him …'

Harry stifled a yawn in his glass of champagne. There might be suffering in the trenches, but not here. He saw several officers in uniform in the room, both Navy and Army, but mostly it was full of civilians – and mostly they were middle-aged, sleek, fat, gold watch chains stretched across the smoothly curving paunches. The air reeked with the savoury odours of roast meats and game, the tang of wine. Glasses clinked, silver glittered, white damask napery shone.

‘…You must impress on Charteris that newspaper correspondents – even those of other papers – must be allowed to see Haig regularly. I intend making him a national hero, and it doesn't matter whether he wishes it or not – it has to be, so that the people here at home will trust him.'

‘He hates publicity,' Mackenzie said.

Northcliffe said, ‘He's going to get it.'

Harry said, ‘Are you not afraid, Lord Northcliffe, that if you make Haig too large a hero figure, that the Prime Minister will take instant measures to replace him?'

Northcliffe looked sharply at him – ‘So you've seen through our little Welshman's native character, have you? … Yes, it's possible. But I think I can make him understand that if he does, we'll raise such a row – my brother and I – that his own head will roll the day after … I … I … I…'

He awoke in the middle of the night to the insistent shrilling of the telephone in his son Tom's flat in Half Moon Street, where he was staying. He got up, pulled on his dressing gown and went to the instrument.

‘Hullo? Harry Rowland here.'

‘Harry, Leonard Kimball here … Sorry to wake you up. Stella had a girl, five pounds and an ounce, about four hours ago.'

‘Wonderful!' Harry exclaimed. ‘Is Stella all right?'

‘Not as well as I would like, but nothing serious, as far as I can make out. But the baby's in a bad way… it's having quite severe shaking tremors and apnea – stoppages of breathing … that's fairly normal at this stage, but I must confess I don't like it. I'm having the baby taken to Hedlington Hospital at once. Stella will stay here … Sorry not to give you better news.'

‘It's all right, Leonard,' Harry said. ‘Do all you can.'

‘Of course.'

Harry hung up and went slowly back to bed. He'd known Leonard Kimball for, what – thirty-five years now. Perhaps Stella should have gone to a gynaecologist, as young women were beginning to do these days. But Rose never had, nor Margaret nor Fiona or Louise … Susan had, but she was American…

Harry dressed slowly after his bath. General Charteris had allotted a soldier servant to each of the three M.P.s, and his clothes had been laid out on the bed. Their rooms were spacious, the beds comfortable, and though there was no central heating in the old château, coal fires blazed in the grate in each bedroom.

Eight o'clock … he had slept from five till seven, after coming back from the Front. It was his age that had made him dog tired … and what he had seen … and what he had not seen. They had brought Boy out of the line and he had been able to speak to him for ten minutes; but Boy was obviously anxious to get back, perhaps resentful that he had had to trudge and drive so far – for what? Harry had taken him aside and asked him point blank – ‘Do you have trust in Field Marshal Haig?'; and Boy had answered, ‘Yes, Grandfather.' Then – ‘Do the men?'; and the same answer – ‘Yes, Grandfather.' So what was wrong? Why were we suffering
these huge casualties and making such small gains? ‘It's the damned staff,' Boy had said. ‘They mess everything up.' And, after a few more words, he'd saluted and started back … haggard, filthy, caked with mud, his groundsheet cape glistening in the rain, water dripping off the rim of his steel helmet.

He'd seen Guy, briefly, at an airfield, between ‘shows.' Guy's smile was frightening now, for only one side of his mouth curled up, the other staying down; and there was a long scar along the cheekbone, and a torn ear on that side. Guy thought Field Marshal Haig was doing the job as well as anyone could.

He had not seen Naomi. Nor Quentin, though the Corps commander had said he could easily be ordered back if Harry wanted to speak to him; but Boy had brought Quentin's message – ‘Uncle Quentin says he's sorry, Grandfather, but he can't leave the battalion now, even for half a day.'

But he had seen a lieutenant colonel of the Coldstream Guards, who'd told him that in his opinion the offensive must be continued, to prevent the Germans from attacking the weakened French. Harry had heard that before; he had not heard something else the colonel told him – that Captain the Viscount Cantley was dead, killed in action at Poelcapelle two days before. Poor Swanwick, he thought, he'll take it hard, and so will Barbara and Helen and the Countess.

He himself was taking it hard – harder than over the death of Stella's baby, he acknowledged. He had, after all, known Cantley since he was a child, while he'd never even seen Stella's poor mite, died of natural causes – that beastly apnea, causing tremors and convulsions, and eventually suffocation after barely forty-eight hours of life. He could feel sad for Stella, but the baby … poor Cantley, gone, doing his duty.

He wrenched his mind back to the problem which had brought him to France: the military direction of Britain's war effort. He had not seen or spoken to any general, of any rank, who believed that Haig should be replaced; or that the main British effort on the Western Front should be defensive; or that the main British war effort should be elsewhere than on the Western Front. A lieutenant colonel of Charteris' staff had been with him all the time, and a major each with Craddock and Mackenzie. They had taken him as far forward as divisions' headquarters – he'd visited six divisions in the
six days – and from there he had looked forward through binoculars. The binoculars were like a peephole on a different world – mud, ruins, cratered and destroyed earth, no human beings visible, for they were all underground or crawling through the slime. The incessant thunder of artillery had reminded him of his visit to the Somme battlefield the year before. There had been noise there, and obvious signs of slaughter in the streams of ambulances, the rows of wounded in the hospitals he had visited; but the land, though mangled and torn, was still earth, something that would bear your weight; and the skies were blue, with white clouds, and a summer sun. Here, before Ypres, there was no earth, only mud; no sun, only clouds; the dull diffused gloom of late autumn, sunless; and rain.

He finished dressing and was about to go downstairs when he heard a knock on the door. ‘Come in,' he called.

It was Craddock, with Mackenzie at his heels, Harry's allotted soldier servant hovering anxiously in the background. Craddock said, ‘We thought we'd like to have a chat before we go down to dinner, Rowland … just the three of us.'

Harry understood and said to the soldier, ‘See that we are not disturbed, Harrington. Thank you.' The M.P.s entered and Harry closed and locked the door behind them.

Mackenzie produced a flat half-bottle of whisky from his coat pocket and planked it down on the dressing table. ‘D'ye have a glass, sir?'

Harry found glasses and Mackenzie poured, a stiff three fingers each. The others took a little water from the china jug, Mackenzie took his neat.

The other two sat down on the bed, and Harry in the chair by the dressing table. Craddock said, ‘We're going home tomorrow. We thought we'd better discuss our impressions … decide if there's anything more we ought to do … see … other questions we should ask.'

‘General Charteris is coming to dinner tonight,' Harry said.

‘Quite … Do you have the feeling that we have been led about by the nose?'

Harry said slowly, ‘To a certain extent. I suppose they are justified in refusing to let us go forward of divisional headquarters. They are responsible for us after all.'

Mackenzie fumed – ‘How can we tell what the condition of
the battlefield really is, unless we see it?'

‘I saw quite a lot, through binoculars,' Harry said.

‘So did I,' Craddock added, ‘and it looked very bad. Which only confirms what everyone has told us. The generals have never denied that.'

‘They've been using the rain and mud as an excuse, or a reason – for their failure.'

Mackenzie growled. ‘They never use the word failure. They say “We're wearing the Germans down, and we have to go on doing it, because of the French.” Assuming that's true, the question is, is Haig using the right tactics, doing the job in the best possible way?'

All three were silent. Here were the horns of the dilemma. Where did the truth lie? The blinded young soldier appeared again before Harry's mind's eye, in his hospital blue, dark glasses hiding his seared eyes, his cane tap tap tapping: Do you know what you're doing?
Do you?

And there was this universal feeling against the staff. That – should not be – all soldiers should be working together, to win the war. But who was responsible, both for the efficiency of the staff, and for the way in which the staff and the fighting troops cooperated? Why, the commander-in-chief – Haig.

Craddock said, ‘I don't mind not being allowed up the line so much. But I think we've been steered … guided, as to what and whom we see, where we go. And with one or two hesitations … which were equivalent, in the circumstances, since the G.H.Q. major was standing right beside me, of an outright accusal of Haig … everybody backs him. They also hint that any attempt to replace him would be regarded as a loss of our will to win the war.'

‘That's what I found,' Mackenzie said. ‘And yet … yet …'

Harry said, ‘I have an uneasy feeling … I can find no logical basis for it … that the Prime Minister ought to make a change. Yet the consequences could be so serious, that I can not bring myself to recommend it, unless somewhere, somehow, I do find sound
reasons
to back it up.'

There was a knock on the door, and Harry called, ‘Who is it?'

‘Colonel Ray, sir … General Charteris has arrived.'

‘Thank you. We'll be down soon.'

He waited till the sound of footsteps had receded down the château's stone floor and then said, ‘So we are agreed? That when we return, we must tell the Prime Minister that we can
find no reason for removing Haig?'

After a minute the other two, saying nothing, nodded. Then Mackenzie said, ‘God help us, I hope we're right … and I suppose Charteris might reveal something new?'

‘Not a chance,' Craddock said emphatically. ‘He'll talk about the Americans … how great Pershing is … how they're adopting our – his – Intelligence methods … all will be well as soon as their main armies come … meanwhile, attack, attack, attack, to wear the Germans down.'

‘And after dinner he's going to take us to see Haig, Colonel Ray told me this afternoon. I suppose we might learn something from him … how he's taking the strain, at least.'

Craddock said, ‘He's taking it very well. He won't crack before the last of his men has been killed, or drowned.'

‘And that's what we want?' Mackenzie said.

‘Apparently, that's what we must have.'

David Lloyd George was not in a good temper. Though Harry was twenty years older than the Prime Minister he felt as though he were a small boy facing the wrath of Dr Wickham, Master of Wellington … worse, for Dr Wickham's ‘anger' never amounted to more than a mild disappointment that anyone should have transgressed his gentle and proper Wykehamist code: while here Harry faced a bubbling Celtic explosion – ‘The three of you were in conspiracy with the damned generals,' the Prime Minister snarled, banging the table in his office in the House.

‘We reached our conclusion quite independently, Prime Minister,' Harry said. ‘And, as I have just explained to you, it was not without serious misgivings. It is just that we can see no alternative to Field Marshal Haig.'