AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"I'm glad to see you fit and well," Fitz said. "Though I probably shouldn't be. "
"Likewise!"
"What are we going to do about this?" Fitz waved a hand at the fraternizing soldiers. "I find it worrying. "
"I agree. When tomorrow comes they may not wish to shoot at their new friends. "
"And then what would we do?"
"We must have a battle soon to get them back to normal. If both sides start shelling in the morning, they'll soon start to hate each other again. "
"I hope you're right. "
"And how are you, my old friend?"
Fitz remembered his good news, and brightened. "I've become a father," he said. "Bea has given birth to a boy. Have a cigar. "
They lit up. Walter had been on the eastern front, he revealed. "The Russians are corrupt," he said with disgust. "The officers sell supplies on the black market and let the infantry go hungry and cold. Half the population of East Prussia are wearing Russian army boots they bought cheap, while the Russian soldiers are barefoot. "
Fitz said he had been in Paris. "Your favorite restaurant, Voisin's, is still open," he said.
The men started a football match, Britain versus Germany, piling up their uniform caps for goalposts. "I've got to report this," said Fitz.
"I, too," said Walter. "But first tell me, how is Lady Maud?"
"Fine, I think. "
"I would most particularly like to be remembered to her. "
Fi
tz was struck by the emphasis with which Walter uttered this otherwise routine remark. "Of course," he said. "Any special reason?"
Walter looked away. "Just before I left London. . . I danced with her at Lady Westhampton's ball. It was the last civilized thing I did before this verdammten war. "
Walter seemed to be in the grip of emotion. There was a tremor in his voice, and it was highly unusual for him to mix German with English. Perhaps the Christmas atmosphere had got to him too.
Walter went on: "I should very much like her to know that I was thinking of her on Christmas Day. " He looked at Fitz with moist eyes. "Would you be sure to tell her, old friend?"
"I will," said Fitz. "I'm sure she'll be very pleased. "
Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - February 1915
"I went to the doctor," said the woman next to Ethel. "I said to him, 'I've got an itchy twat. '"
A ripple of laughter ran around the room. It was on the top floor of a small house in East London, near Aldgate. Twenty women sat at sewing machines in close-packed rows either side of a long workbench. There was no fire, and the one window was closed tight against the February cold. The floorboards were bare. The whitewashed plaster on the walls was crumbling with age, and the laths beneath showed through in places. With twenty women breathing the same air the room became stuffy, but it never seemed to warm up, and the women all wore hats and coats.
They had just stopped for a break, and the treadles under their feet were briefly silent. Ethel's neighbor was Mildred Perkins, a cockney of her own age. Mildred was also Ethel's lodger. She would have been beautiful but for protruding front teeth. Dirty jokes were her specialty. She went on: "The doctor says to me, he goes, 'You shouldn't say that, it's a rude word. '"
Ethel grinned. Mildred managed to create moments of cheer in the grim twelve-hour working day. Ethel had never known such talk before. At Ty Gwyn the staff had been genteel. These London women would say anything. They were all ages and several nationalities, and some barely spoke English, including two refugees from German-occupied Belgium. The only thing they all had in common was that they were desperate enough to want the job.
"I says to him, 'What should I say, then, doctor?' He says to me, 'Say you've got an itchy finger. '"
They were sewing British army uniforms, thousands of them, tunics and trousers. Day after day the pieces of thick khaki cloth came in from a cutting factory in the next street, big cardboard boxes full of sleeves and backs and legs, and the women here sewed them together and sent them to another small factory to have the buttons and buttonholes added. They were paid according to how many they finished.
"He says to me, 'Do your finger itch you all the time, Mrs. Perkins, or just now and again?'"
