The Dust That Falls from Dreams (4 page)

I
can’t tell you, old laddie, how completely dismaying this all is. First of all the bank rate went up. It was the 31st of July 1914. I’ll always remember that date. To tell the truth I was quite delighted initially. I’ve got tidy sums deposited here and there. It went from 4 per cent to 8 per cent, and then to 10 per cent, and just when I was rubbing my hands with glee, the blighters closed the Stock Exchange. I didn’t get invited to the conference with the Chancellor. If I had there would have been sparks flying, let me tell you. You couldn’t get credit anywhere.

How was I supposed to earn a living? I have four charming daughters and a truculent wife. You’re a man of the world, old boy, you know how these things happen, and I’m sure you’re no different to me when it comes down to it, but I’ve got two mistresses current, and one retired, and they’ve each got a house and children to look after. The anxiety almost kills me. I got a note only last week – ‘Dear Ham, please send money, the children int got no shoes.’

It was all very well, wasn’t it, sitting around and saying, ‘Well, what’s Serbia got to do with us?’ Now we know. It means less money supply, unemployment, unsaleable securities, a dearth of necessities. That’s what it’s got to do with us, damn it!

What on earth are the Huns up to? What on earth was the point?

Then there’s the moratorium on debts, you know, the Postponement of Payments Bill. God help us. A lot of people owe me a lot of money. When am I going to get it? I don’t owe anybody anything, so what use is it to me? How am I supposed to pay the tradesmen? Let’s hope it never gets implemented.

Still, it was a bright day when the state insurance of merchant vessels came in. Did wonders for confidence. Actually it saved
the bacon of my future son-in-law’s father. What will he be then? A cousin-in-law? I never did understand how one is related to people. If I found out I was your second cousin three times removed, I wouldn’t have a clue what it meant. He’s in shipping, you know. The father. You might know him. The name’s Pendennis. Anyway, thank God for that. It made everything possible again. Have you seen any of the new ten-shilling and one-pound notes yet? I just hope it doesn’t undermine the currency. Coins inspire more confidence, don’t you think?

The bank rate’s back down to 5 per cent again now, more’s the pity, but it shows what happens when the government promises to prop up the banks. I’m a businessman, it galls me, I must say, but the banks prop the rest of us up, so someone’s got to prop up the banks, eh?

Have you heard what’s happened in Germany? The whole damned system’s collapsed. People are hoarding their small change. Runs on the savings banks. A hundred million lost overnight on the Berlin Exchange. Banks closing and refusing to hand over gold. Norddeutsche Handelsbank shut down. Can you imagine? Who would have thought it? Did you ever meet August Saal? No? A fine fellow, exceedingly clever. Went to his bank in Weimar and shot himself. What’s that? Eugen Bieber? Yes, I knew him quite well. Met him in Potsdam, something to do with railways in Patagonia. We were in talks about the stocks. What? Killed his wife? And himself? Potassium cyanide? Lost thirteen thousand in two days? Oh good Lord. I hadn’t heard about that.

Just goes to show, doesn’t it? All you need is someone in charge who wants an empire and doesn’t understand money, and the whole damn country goes to Hell in a handcart. And you can’t make a mess in one country without messing up the rest. God save us from emperors, that’s what I say. Makes you feel grateful for Asquith, eh? Never thought I’d hear myself say that.

Still…think what happened back at the end of July. Consols fell 4 per cent, Canadian Pacific fell 6½ per cent, Shell Oil fell 10 per cent, Malacca Rubber fell 17 per cent, De Beers fell 6½ per cent, and Russo-Asiatic fell 23 per cent.

I think there might be some opportunities here. I don’t think I’d go for Russo-Asiatic at a time like this, and let’s face it, no
one needs diamonds in wartime. But think of all the vehicles they’ll need for ferrying the troops around, and they say there are going to be huge numbers of aeroplanes involved, and war being war, a lot of these will inevitably be destroyed, and furthermore I hear they’re beginning to build oil-fired battleships.

I’m going to buy into Malacca Rubber and Shell Oil, and I’d advise you to do the same. One should turn catastrophe to advantage. Another dram? If there’s not a shortage already, of course. Canadian Pacific’s an excellent bet too. The right time to buy, definitely.

Did I tell you, I’ve had an idea for a new kind of golf ball? I’m hoping it won’t go rock hard after a few months, like the ones we have at present.

I
am Millicent, if you’ll excuse me, and I came to the McCoshes when I was a little mite of fourteen. It was expected that I’d go into service and I always knew that I would, so I’m not complaining. It weren’t no good with me mum and dad anyhow, and Mum never got over coming down one day and catching the rats eating my baby brother’s face. You couldn’t leave a kid for a second where we was, on account of them rats. The baby died thank God and I don’t remember him much, but me mum went half barmy and she never recovered, and now she’s always ill anyway. Dad was on the docks and he was a big strong fellow. He didn’t ’alf drink, but he wasn’t barmy like me mum. I can read and write a little bit and had some education from the little charity dame school, and I know I left when I was only ten, but I think I done pretty well, considerin’.

It was a few days after the war got goin’, and I went into Miss Rosie’s room, thinking that she weren’t there, but she was. She was crying her eyes out, poor thing, and I thought, ‘Oh gawd, someone’s been killed already,’ and I said, ‘So sorry, Miss Rosie. Shall I come back and do your room later?’ and she said, ‘I’m sorry, Millie. I didn’t mean you to catch me like this,’ and I said, ‘Are you all right, miss? I hope nothing bad has come about,’ and she said, ‘It’s the Pope. He’s just died,’ and I looked around and she had a candle all lit in front of a little statue of the Virgin Mary, and I said, ‘Have you become a Roman papist then?’ and she said, ‘No, but the Pope’s died, and he was a very good man, and I am so very upset about it. Silly of me, I know.’

I said, ‘I don’t know nothing much about it, miss.’

Miss Rosie said that this dead Pope said we was to renew all things in Christ, and that the best way was through the Virgin, and she said that once he filled up the Vatican with people what had been done in by an earthquake.

I didn’t know what this Vatican was. I didn’t like to ask, but I suppose it was quite big. Miss Rosie said, ‘Don’t tell anyone about this,’ and she pointed at the Virgin and the candle. ‘Mother and Father might be upset, because we’re Anglicans.’

I said, ‘I won’t say nothing, Miss Rosie. Why would I?’

Don’t ask me what she was on about. Our Miss Rosie always did have God pretty badly. We all went to church with the family in a big gaggle twice every Sunday, but us lot used to sit in the back, and I used to have a little sleep if I could. I was fair worn out usually.

It was better than a lot of families what made the servants go to a different church altogether, even if it meant they had to walk for bleedin’ miles, and I heard that in the posh houses they make the servants turn and face the wall when there’s family passing. Well, I wouldn’t’ve put up with that. In them days you either were a servant or you had some servants yourself, and there was big houses where the grander servants had servants themselves, and every family had its own way, and ours was all right, if you ask me.

I
had felt a kind of loneliness, in amongst all that joyful and righteous patriotism. There didn’t seem any chance of America joining in. It wasn’t our scrap. I was a Yank from Baltimore, I was twenty-five years old and I hadn’t made any mark in the world since leaving school. There I’d been brilliant, especially in athletics, but afterwards I’d never managed anything much. My father was in shipping, and I was working in his office with a view to taking over when he eventually packed it in. There was no sign of that. If he lived to be a hundred he would still be in charge. I was chaffing for some action.

My fondest memory of the outbreak of the war, however, was the reaction of Mrs McCosh. I came to The Grampians the morning after the ultimatum ran out, and she was in a considerable tizz. She was wringing her hands in the drawing room, exclaiming, ‘We can’t possibly be at war with Germany, we just can’t, it’s not possible. The Kaiser is the grandson of the Queen!’

Of course she meant Queen Victoria, not Alexandra or Mary. By ‘the Queen’ she always meant Victoria, and the other two were referred to as ‘Queen Alexandra’ and ‘the present Queen’. She had a touching faith that royal alliances must inevitably prevent wars, unless someone along the line was mad. In retrospect I wonder if she was right; you’d have to be mad to plunge the whole of Europe into war quite deliberately. And the Kaiser was the son of the Princess Royal. He can’t have had any family-feeling at all.

Like everyone else I shared in the ecstasy and euphoria when war broke out. Like everyone else, I went to Buckingham Palace and Downing Street and we cheered and sang the British national anthem until we were all hoarse. We sang ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ to the King when he appeared on the balcony. I sang my
heart out even though I’m a Yank. He was dressed as an Admiral of the Fleet, and Queen Mary and the Prince of Wales came out too. We waved our hats and jostled each other, and men who were unacquainted shook hands and clapped each other on the back. I came over in a strange sweat of enthusiasm. The ultimatum was to expire at eleven, so we made our way to Whitehall, and I had my first taste of fighting. I got into a sort of jostling match with a protester just by Nelson’s Column, who carried a placard saying ‘This Is Not Our War’.

It was though. It was all very simple. The Kaiser had invaded France without even properly declaring war, and invaded Belgium. It was said that the Germans had brought in one and a half million men by rail. There wasn’t any moral doubt in any of us. It was absolutely clear that Germany was in the wrong, and had broken a treaty it had signed up to a long time ago. We had to put a stop to them, and that was that. I don’t think we would have been as pleased about a war that wasn’t so obviously just, or against an enemy that hadn’t done anything outrageous. We’d heard about the French officer they’d torn apart with horses. We’d all been insulted too, by the Kaiser saying that our offer to mediate between the Austrians and the Serbs was just ‘British insolence’. It made us all want to go out and give him a bashing. It turned out that the Germans actually had a policy of terrorising the French speakers of Belgium; it was called ‘Schrecklichkeit’, but we didn’t find out until much later.

No one came out of Number Ten when Big Ben struck twelve, and we all knew we were at war. We sang ‘God Save the King’ with heartfelt emotion, and then we dispersed, very much in a hurry to get home and share the news.

But more important to me than all this, was that I was in love with Rosie, and I will always be in love with her. I was going to marry her, and I wanted her to be married to a man she could be proud of, who was worthy of her. She was the kind of British girl who could cycle for miles without losing her wind, and would have taken on the Kaiser single-handed, given the chance. We always seemed to be surrounded by young men coming back on leave from distant parts of the Empire, like Archie, who had done wonderful things such as fighting off hordes of Pathans,
armed only with a dead horse and a revolver, and here I was in my stiff collar, sorting out bills of lading, and impaling lists on a spike, when I really wanted to be an engineer, and had in fact got all the necessary qualifications. It made me feel unworthy of her, and it was no life for a fellow like me. I was created for leaping gates, winning steeplechases and repairing irreparable machines. I decided that I was going to enlist, come Hell or high water.

It was absolute chaos outside Armoury House. All the way down Finsbury Pavement there were thousands of men of all shapes and sizes and ages, all equally determined to get in and enlist. The playing fields were covered in tents and bivouacs, there were artillery pieces and gun carriages, and quite a few horses, all beautifully groomed and shining. Small detachments of men were marching in and out, because the infantry were going back and forth to guard all the public installations that the Germans might want to destroy.

We would-be recruits were almost fighting each other for the right to fight, and it was clear from the despondent faces coming out of the gates that an awful lot of people were being turned away. One older gentleman said to me, ‘I gave thirty years of my life to the Honourable Artillery Company, and now they won’t have me.’ He was at least sixty-five years old, and he walked with a silver-topped cane. Another man came out, all ashen and haggard, and he caught my eye, and said, ‘Buggered lungs.’ In amongst the melee there were dozens of horses which had also been brought along in the hope of selling them to the HAC. A dejected Scottish vet in a flat cap was inspecting them near the gates, and arguing with some of the officers, who thought that most of the horses he was passing were fit only for the knackers, as indeed he himself was. To make things worse, there was a crush of wagons and carts that had been requisitioned, and arguments were going on as to what they might be suitable for. I watched an irascible wheeler-sergeant, tapping the wheels and axles with a hammer, and tut-tutting over the discouraging dings and clangs that resulted.

When I finally got in I was stood before a panel of officers, who shuffled my papers around and scrutinised my old school reports in turn. Colonel Treffry put his fingers together and said,
‘Of course, you are officer material.’ He looked at me very kindly.

I replied, ‘Am I, sir? Thank you, sir.’

‘A great many of the young men I have seen are officer material. But we are, as you know, a regiment of gentleman rankers. Our policy is to recruit all ranks from the officer class, and then to promote officers from the ranks. I expect you are aware of this. I am merely advising you that if you wish to become an officer in the more usual way, you should enlist elsewhere. In any case we need troops more than officers. A great many of our former officers have rejoined. So many that we have had to turn some of them away. They’ve been posted to other units.’ He paused. ‘Ideally you should be joining as a regular, and going to the RMC at Sandhurst. I have said the same thing to your brothers.’

He looked at me in the same way as before, and I said, ‘But I’ve set my heart on the HAC. I wouldn’t mind being a gunner. And I wouldn’t be ashamed of being a private. In fact I would be quite proud of it.’

‘Good man. I’m afraid that both the batteries are fully manned, though. We are hoping to set up some reserve batteries, but we’ll probably have to go and see Earl Kitchener to get it done. I expect you know that the batteries are affiliated to the Royal Horse Artillery, but the infantry battalions are with the Grenadier Guards. I expect you’ve noticed the badge with the grenade on it. Would you be prepared to join us as an infantry private rather than as a gunner?’

‘Infantry?’

‘Yes, as an infantryman.’

‘Would I get there sooner?’ I asked.

‘Very much sooner.’

‘What did my brothers say? I didn’t get time to ask them before I came in.’

‘They are happy to go out in the same unit as you, as infantrymen.’

‘There is just one thing,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid I’m an American citizen, and so are Sidney and Albert.’

The Colonel turned to the other members of the panel and
said, ‘I didn’t hear that. Did any of you gentlemen hear what Private Pendennis said? Did any of us hear the other two when they told us the same thing?’

They all shook their heads gravely, and the Colonel stood up and shook my hand. ‘Welcome to the HAC, Private Pendennis. None of us has the slightest inkling that you are an American citizen. I am certain that you will be a credit to your nation, and I am certain that the King would wish me to convey his gratitude and appreciation. You will have to pass a medical, of course.’

I rendezvoused with Sidney and Albert and we shook hands, which was wasn’t something we had ever done before. When we left Armoury House I said, ‘Race you!’ and we ran from Finsbury Square to Waterloo Bridge, just to give expression to the joy we were feeling. We ran past all the long queues for the banks, and I felt a guilty pang on behalf of my poor father. None of our ships were able to put to sea because no one would insure them any more, and the government had not yet stepped in. We faced ruin, just as Rosie’s father did because of the chaos on the Stock Exchange, but none of that seemed important. I was so elated that I could have flown like an angel. Suddenly there was a point to everything, and there wasn’t a medical in the world that would have failed me.

Running through London with my brothers beside me, I felt I had grown angel wings.