The Wooden Shepherdess (28 page)

“Good God!” groaned Augustine, “As if your first one I didn't find trying enough!”

Then Mary's eyes grew suddenly very round, and out at last came the truth: “The thing is,” she told them, “You're both getting much too dependent on
me
.” Augustine gasped. “You two have got your own lives to live, and I will not be made the excuse for you not getting on with them!”

Both the Strassers were Radicals: that was their reason for serving the Nazi Party at all. But if anyone tried to pin him down about “Party Policy” Hitler would wriggle away like an eel: for only that way could the Nazi appeal cut clean across class and religious beliefs and indeed across tastes and beliefs of every kind, attracting both rich and poor. This maddened the radical policy-minded Strassers, and late that autumn they managed to focus the Party spotlight on policy—just for once.

The particular issue was whether the numerous former Royal Houses ought still to enjoy their former landed estates, the kind of divisive issue which Hitler would never have touched with a barge-pole if only the Strassers hadn't compelled him to come off the fence. For they summoned a Northern “Leaders' Meeting”; and there, in a Hanover flat with tobacco-smoke almost hiding the dingy curtains and aspidistras, a motion demanding expropriation was just about to be carried when Feder, sent there by Hitler, rose to object: Herr Hitler (whom God preserve!) had dubbed expropriation a Jewish racket the Party must have no truck with.... Whereon a man called Rust banged his fist: “Then I move we chuck Herr Hitler out of the Party—the measly little bourgeois!”

Sensation and wild applause, so that Gregor himself had to intervene from the Chair pointing out that Hitler's expulsion was somewhat beyond the present meeting's competence: Hanover must content itself with the milder “Hitler can say what he likes but so can we: he's no infallible Pope!” There-upon the original anti-Royalty motion was carried, and also a great deal more of the Strasser program which Hitler would never conceivably stomach.

This was open rebellion, the Strasser tail announcing its firm determination to wag the dog; and yet the dog being wagged never even let out a yap. When Hitler failed to come down on revolt like a ton of bricks, “He knows he's beaten: it's only a matter of time before Strasser takes over the leadership....” So crowed the Count. But Reinhold remained unconvinced: “I wonder what Hitler has up his sleeve? I bet you it's something which takes us all by surprise.”

What Hitler had up his sleeve was a further meeting at Bamberg down in the South which turned down everything Hanover stood for; and ended with Hitler's affectionate arms round dear old Strasser's neck.

The “dog which had failed to let out a yap” reminded Reinhold—a faithful student of Conan Doyle—of the “dog which did nothing in the night-time” and thus provided Sherlock Holmes with his vital clue. “With the greatest respect, you don't understand the chap one bit! You thought that Hitler must either cave in or react like a man in a fight for his life; but instead he does nothing.... Didn't I warn you that Hitler sees five moves ahead of everyone else?”

“Holding his meeting where only Strasser himself and that little pip-squeak Göbbels were likely to come from the North was hardly outstanding cunning,” Lepowski dryly replied: “I'm only surprised that Strasser fell in the trap.”

“My dear Watson,” (the Count looked mildly surprised at this curious form of address) “You've missed the whole point: he saw this was never a real rebellion at all in the sense of a rival bid for the leadership, merely a clumsy attempt to make him adopt more Left-wing ideas.”

“But....”

“Strasser just hasn't the spunk. He's like Röhm, who resigned his command and vanished abroad instead of sending his thugs to take the man for a ride and be done with him. That's what all those Nazi ‘leaders' are like: they'll fight each other like cats for the second place, but only Hitler wants to be first. I once knew a racehorse like that: it would run almost neck-and-neck with the winner but never would stick its nose out in front.”

“That horse must have lost you a packet,” Lepowski murmured.

“It would—if I hadn't backed it both ways.... But come back to Hitler. The policy-rumpus had no importance: what mattered was Gregor—that champion Fisher of Men whom Hitler himself had sent forth to fish—reporting nets now so heavy with fish that they threatened to break: it was high time to haul them in.”

“Yet I'm told that at Bamberg they argued their rival policies out ding-dong and right round the clock before the Strasser Line was outvoted.”

“Policies!” Reinhold exclaimed in disgust: “There lies Strasser's perennial weakness. To Hitler a policy's merely a means of gaining ascendancy over divers assortments of men, and wholly expendable once it's no longer of use. He was just as conscious as you are that Strasser was likely to make a better impression up here than himself, which is why he sent Strasser—the beauty of all this being that these were
Strasser
's Bolshy ideas being preached which he'd never endorsed himself, so once they had served their purpose recruiting hordes of the impecunious, Hitler was perfectly free to disown them before they started alarming the rich. No, the only future I see for Gregor is more of this same perpetual plowing and sowing new fields for Hitler to reap, till the poor old work-horse has wholly exhausted his usefulness: then he'll be sent to the knacker's, like Ludendorff.”

Count Lepowski paused for thought. “This must be much what those big brown intelligent eyes of that club-footed Judas perceived: for I'm told that he uttered no word in sup-port of his master at Bamberg, and nowadays eats out of Hitler's hand.”

“Göbbels knows which side his bread is buttered. He only speaks when he's sure of applause, and would rather cut out his tongue than defend the losing side.”

Lepowski turned his face to the stove in silence, and spat.

*

By the truce patched up at Bamberg with Hitler's arms round Strasser's reluctant neck and the voluble Göbbels apparently stricken dumb, Strasser continued free to say what he liked provided it brought in votes but was forced to renounce all attempts to dictate the Party Line. In return, Hitler confirmed him as chief official voice in the North of the One Indivisible Nazi Party. In short the net hadn't broken, and Strasser's whole miraculous draught of fishes was safely landed—by Hitler.

That autumn Mary insisted on sleeping upstairs once more like everyone else: so Gilbert must have a lift installed, and one she could work herself. It took the workmen ages putting it in: it was nearly winter before they had finally got it fixed. By this time her legs had wasted a lot, but in compensation her arms and hands grew even stronger than normal. Over her bed they had fixed a kind of trapeze with which she could swing her bulk on and off the bed unaided: before very long her arms and hands seemed strong as an ape's—till there came a day when the crushable Polly flinched from her mother's hug.

Those powerful hands propelled her chair much faster than anyone traveled on foot, so perforce they had to allow her to go about mostly alone. But her growing recklessness drove Nurse nearly out of her tiny wits. By December she found she could even force her chair up the ramp and into a horse-box. This was a feat which she kept to herself; and exactly one year from the day of her fall she had herself boxed to the Tottersdown Boxing Day Meet. There the Master loudly hailed a “Brave little woman—a plucked-un!”—though privately thinking (like most of the Field) that this skull-at-the-feast was in pretty poor taste; and the nervous horses had certainly thought so too when the ramp came down and her self-propelled chair bounced out on the Tottersdown gravel.

So another year drew to its end. Jeremy wrote to say that he couldn't get Christmas leave (he was something called “Resident Clerk” at the Admiralty, something which saved him the rent of digs) but they'd give him the New Year instead. On New Year's Eve his father was taking a watchnight service, so Joan and Jeremy dined at Mellton to see the last of this Year of Disaster with Mary, Augustine—and Gilbert.

The first four did their best, but the fifth seemed determined to make it a gloomy affair. Jeremy told them his Resident Clerkship required him to be on perpetual nightcall, ready to think up and issue appropriate orders—he and the Duty Commander between them—if (say) the whole Royal Navy capsized in the dark, or if mutineers dragged a Commander-in-chief from his bed in pajamas and hanged him high from the yard-arm....

Gilbert hinted that any such orders which Jeremy issued would probably make things worse; and Jeremy proudly agreed. He then went on to describe how even his china chamber-pot carried Their Lordships' tinted foul-anchor crest, which exactly denoted his status: for Admirals had them of finest porcelain crested in gold, and so on right down the Naval Stores pecking-order to “Chamber-pots, Earthenware, Plain” (for ratings) and even “Chamber-pots, Rubber, Lunatics for the use of....”

But Gilbert was still not amused. Gilbert indeed—with his second honeymoon plainly gone the way of his first one—remained a picture of gloom throughout, except for a notable change of manner when talking to Joan. Mary seemed badly on edge, wheeling away from the table on any excuse or none; and when dinner was over her noiseless chair relentlessly circled her little drawing-room flock like a sheepdog shepherding sheep. Moreover, whenever she (rarely) came to rest she would talk about nothing but politics. Gilbert refused to respond: like a drunkard reformed who shies at a bottle of gin, he shied off the subject. Yet tactless Mary persisted....

It seemed as if 1926 would never arrive, nor Wantage bring in the punch.

“She wants him to go,” said Joan, as Joan and Jeremy bicycled home in the dark.

“To rejoin his fellow-Meistersingers of Westminster?—Yes, you're probably right.”

“Mary's a sensible girl. She knows what a hell in the end they'll be laying up for them both if he won't.”

“What's more, you'd better look out!” the nephew bluntly informed his aunt: “Our saintly Gilbert is after you.”

Then they pedaled in silence a bit, till Jeremy added: “Mary doesn't miss much....”

“Yes,” said Joan a little off-handedly: “Didn't you notice how very much better old Wantage is looking since Mary saw that his thyroid was bigger and had it cut?”

Mary was cautious: she never proposed out loud that Gilbert should go back to politics, merely kept talking about them and wanting the latest political inside news. But it wasn't long before she had him corresponding again with that eminent Liberal figure Sir John Simon; and two or three weeks after Easter, Mary invited the Great Man down. Busy though Simon was just then at the Bar, he accepted. Augustine was then back in Wales; and after dinner Sir John and the other two Liberal guests retired to the study with Gilbert.

The times were crucial indeed: for this was the April of 1926, and a General Strike in support of the miners was growing more and more likely. Before the War, coal had been one of Britain's principal exports and fortunes were made; but now the mines were ceasing to pay and the owners insisted on lower wages and longer hours of work. A General Strike had already been threatened last summer; but Baldwin had staved it off in the end by granting a nine-months' subsidy—ample time, he maintained, for the industry putting its own house in order; but now the nine months were running out with nothing whatever done, and Baldwin had flatly refused to renew the subsidy. Things looked ugly indeed. Nobody knew what a General Strike might bring, but most people feared the worst: for it hardly seemed possible Britain could go on escaping the virus of violent Revolution which since the War had swept the Continent—just as in 1918 the Continental infection of Spanish Flu had finally crossed the Channel. In Britain the Communist Party was small; but that seemed deliberate policy, aimed at establishing highly-trained cadres of subversives to work in secret and largely through stooges, inflaming the workers' relations with bosses wherever they got the chance. By now their leaders were mostly in prison, but nobody really knew how far the movement had got....

Thus there was plenty of pessimist talk in Gilbert's study that night; but Gilbert found Simon himself “remarkably cool and clear-headed” (or so he told Mary afterwards, tucking her up in bed) “for times like these, when Emotion so easily gets the better of Judgement.” For Simon had flatly refused to panic. Let others go white at the gills at the thought of a coming blood-bath: let Karl Marx turn in his Highgate grave and prick up his ears for the rumble of British tumbrils rolling at last—this former Attorney-General only seemed willing to talk tonight of his firmly-held view that General Strikes were illegal. Indeed it might well be his duty to rise in the House in order to point this out, for it seemed only fair to warn the poor fellows what risks they were running of civil actions against them for damages.

Gilbert asked him for chapter and verse: whereon Simon explained that a General Strike was bound to entail men downing their tools without having given whatever notice their contracts required. They surely must understand this would render them liable in the Courts if employers should choose to sue; but did the General Council inciting them realize they too risked in Law every private penny their purses contained? And further: interpreting strictly the Trades Disputes Act of 1906 not even a so-called “sympathy” strike by a single uninvolved Union could properly claim protection for Union funds—still less could a General Strike: for that couldn't be reckoned a genuine Trades Dispute, since it wasn't aimed at any employer but openly aimed at extracting a mining subsidy out of the Public Purse over Parliament's head. Sir John had no intention of using a word so emotive in any public speech, but in private agreed that the only word for coercing the Crown by non-parliamentary means—in other words, by force whether armed or not—was Rebellion.