Give Us This Day (82 page)

He thought, watching the surge up and down the pavements,
They’re with Grey, every last one of ‘em. You’ve only got to look at their faces to see that, and it’s curious, really, when the very lives of some of ‘em are at stake.
But then it occurred to him that it was not so curious after all, for the country, apart from that South African business and a string of tinpot colonial wars fought by professionals, had been at peace for ninety-nine years. Too long, maybe, for anyone but old stagers like himself to understand what there was to war beyond cheering and bugle calls and an escape from office drudgery.

3

The news reached them all in driblets. Via the shrill cries of newsboys, via the clatter of the telegraph, via the measured predictability of the post, or the timeless wag of tongues.

Alexander Swann, far away on the Indian plains, heard it with relief, for he had been sure the Liberals would rat at the last minute.

Edward Swann learned it from the banner headlines of his evening newspaper, carelessly scanned while he was awaiting his turn in the bathroom at a Bristol hotel, where he and Betsy had stopped off for the night on the final evening of their West Country jaunt. He called through the open door where, a moment ago, he had heard her splashing and singing, “Change your tune, Betsy! There’s going to be a war after all,” and her tousled red head appeared round the door-frame.

“Will you be going for a soldier, Edward?”

“Not so long as you’re available,” he said, and she came in, pink and naked, and went to drying her hair as he read her Sir Edward Grey’s speech, adding a few random comments of his own.

She did not seem interested and neither, for that matter, was he. With a woman of Betsy’s proportions standing there without a stitch to cover her, it was difficult to get excited about the tread of armed hosts. She said, “It could make a difference to us, couldn’t it? I mean, nobody will bother much with divorces if there’s a war to write about. Not that I care, mind. They could say what they liked about me, so long as I was sure about you in here,” and she lowered the towel and touched her breast.

He thought about that a moment and then decided that she was laughing at him, so that instead of assurances he gave her a smart slap on the behind and spun her round, saying, “Get dressed, woman, while I have my scrub. I reserved a table for seven and the head waiter said he couldn’t promise to hold it. It seems everybody’s celebrating as well as us.”

* * *

“England’s peril is Ireland’s opportunity,” Rory had told Helen more than once, but she had thought of it as a sentiment that belonged to Napoleonic times and the abortive rising of ‘98. Until the Bachelor’s Wall affair that is, for that, more than any tribulation out of the past, impinged upon patriots in a way that penetrated the haze of ballad and legend. Rory and his friends were now facing a straight choice: submission, and a compromise with Ulster, or militancy of the kind British troops had showed when they tried to capture the arms landed at Howth in the last week of July. Three civilians killed and thirty-eight wounded, half of them seriously. Surely an outrage deserving of a dozen ballads, justifying an equal ruthlessness on the part of the Volunteers.

They got most of the guns away in the mêlée. Over a hundred of them lay snug in her own cellar at this moment, but then, it seemed, an appeal to arms suddenly became the currency of politicians all over Europe and the Bachelor’s Wall massacre was forgotten by the British. She said, when confirmation came that England considered herself at war with Germany and Austria, “Will the Irish fight, too, Rory? Will your people put away their private quarrel until there’s an end to it in France, or wherever they fight?”

“Here’s one who won’t, by God! I hope the Kaiser gives them a drubbing and then, maybe, we can make terms with the Germans.”

She said nothing to this. Away in the back of her mind issues that had once been stark and clear were getting blurred. It was not easy for anyone growing up in Victoria’s England to visualise the English at the mercy of a conqueror, any more than it was credible to contemplate a man like Rory taking a pot shot with one of those contraband rifles at, say, Alex, over here to keep the peace. And apart from that, having lived among the Irish for so long, she could not bring herself to believe that a fight of that magnitude would not encourage them to think of Ulster and Ulster’s Volunteers as small beer. All the same, the news increased her sense of isolation over here and sometimes she yearned, more than anything in the world, to slip into town and make her peace with Joanna, to sit down in her drawing-room and have a good old family gossip.

* * *

For the rest, in the enduring blaze of sunshine, the news touched them but lightly. Joanna in Dublin, Margaret in the valleys, Deborah in London, and Lady Sybil in her elegant house overlooking Southampton Water, may have reflected, with a certain amount of relief, that their husbands were too old, and their sons too young, to be eligible for service in the field, and in any case it seemed unlikely to last more than a month or two. Or so all the experts were saying. They were not the kind of women to take war-fever seriously. Joanna was too placid, and Margaret, with Huw for a husband and Giles for a brother, too indoctrinated with antimilitarist theories to wave Union Jacks, or buy wool for soldiers’ socks. Deborah, who for years now had suffered physical affront at the hands of men, was inclined to regard the entire male sex as too pig-headed to deserve sympathy and even said so on a postcard to Henrietta from Folkestone, where she heard the news during their annual holiday. “Let them discover what it’s like to be hounded,” she wrote. “Maybe it will teach them something.” And as for Lady Sybil, busy, as usual, organising garden parties and theatricals for Hugo’s patients, she had reservations on the subject of patriotic displays, remembering, possibly, a tented hospital in South Africa and a young man on a bed with bandages over his eyes.

* * *

It was otherwise with Adam. For a day or so after that spell of dizziness in the House towards the end of Sir Edward Grey’s speech, he rested, saying very little and responding hardly at all to Hetty’s flow of speculations about the likely involvement of her tribe of descendants, now totalling some thirty-odd. Alex would be home earlier than expected, no doubt, and some of the grandchildren might be silly enough to offer Lord Kitchener their services, but it would be over by Christmas, wouldn’t it? He said, briefly, that he hoped so and bestirred himself, going out on to the terrace and taking the winding path up to the summit of the spur where the old Colonel’s summerhouse, constructed of half an up-ended whaler, still stood. The path was steep and taxed him severely, but he managed it somehow and sat gratefully on the plank seat, wheezing slightly and resting his mottled hands on his knees as he surveyed the northwestern segment of the Weald basking in its sixth week of unbroken sunshine.

It was cooler up here. A faint and welcome breeze rustled the leaves of the beeches and oaks behind him and jostled the pink and white bells of the tall foxglove spires. Blackbirds sang and finches quarrelled in the thickets left and right of the shelter, and away across the full expanse of his estate, beyond the larch coppice where his third son had been sired, beyond the white blur of the old mill house, where, years ago, his second son had lived with his Austrian wife, he could just glimpse, through the shimmer of heat, the grey-brown blob that was the capital of the world, now feverishly involved with the concerns of lesser capitals across the water.

For a while his imagination conjured with those far-off places, so that he saw, in his mind’s eye, endless columns of encumbered men marching, marching, marching towards points of collision with one another. As a man of war, he could identify with them at all levels. With the braided generals, with sweating privates, wondering when the next ten-minute halt would be called and they could ease the dragging weight of the equipment from their shoulders; with cannoneers riding their limbers and light horsemen freeing their feet from stirrups and flexing their thigh muscles; with toiling teamsters half-asleep on the box-seats of their waggons and even with the clamorous children lining the dusty roads to witness the passage of the cavalcades.

It was so old a pageant and so poor a cause. Poorer than ever in this day and age, when men should have learned the art of governing themselves without resorting to chaos. And yet… there was the kernel of that chap Grey’s speech: “If France is beaten to her knees, if Belgium fell under the same dominating influence, then Holland and Denmark, I do not believe we should be able to undo what had happened to prevent the whole of the west of Europe falling under the domination of a single power… We should, I believe, sacrifice our respect and good name and reputation before the world and should not escape the most serious and grave economic consequences…”

He was right, of course, particularly his reference to economics, for that was what it amounted to in the end. Economics. In other words, to pounds, shillings, and pence, to marks, roubles, dollars, francs, and kroner, by which men lived and died and without which, with a world population running into hundreds of millions, everything would come to a halt.

Well, they would have to make what they could of it without his help, for it was doubtful indeed if he would live to hear a cease-fire and that, when you thought about it, was a comfort at eighty-seven. In the meantime he would seek his comfort elsewhere. In the movement of those mottled foxglove bells ringing a noiseless peal across the Weald. In the society of Hetty who, like himself, belonged to an older world. And in the contemplation, perhaps, of having done his stint as best he could, without treading the next man underfoot.

He inhaled the rich scent of summer and reminded himself that this, at all events, qualified as something eternal.

He closed his eyes.

Reading Group Guide

1. On the day of the Diamond Jubilee, each Swann family member views the weather conditions in the terms of their careers, be it military campaigning, hauling goods, or competing in sports. How do the Swanns’ various careers define their attitudes and actions throughout the story? Do you think the level at which they are invested in their careers is healthy or too high?

2. Gisela is quite tolerant of George’s behavior with Barbara Lockerbie, explaining, “Husbands are not horses… That horse she is sitting so well was a colt once but somebody took it and trained it and broke it to the bridle. You cannot do that with men like George” (p. 45). Do you agree with Gisela’s belief about what wives can and cannot do? Do you think the other wives in the story would agree or disagree with Gisela?

3. Early in the novel, Adam reflects on his children’s diverse lives and notes one consistent pattern among them: they are “children of their tribe and times” and “at all events they’re positive” (p. 120). What does Adam mean? Does this description of his children hold true to their characters?

4. Gisela suggests that the main difference between George and Adam is that Adam is a gambler, while George only wagers on that with which he is familiar and certain. Which of these tendencies do you think is more important for the president and leader of a company? Do you consider yourself more like George or Adam when making decisions?

5. Adam marvels at the pace of technological innovation during his lifetime, but Giles cautions, “All those innovations… aren’t worth a damn if all they do is to help make rich men richer” (p. 163). Do you believe technological advancement is inherently good, or does its value depend on how it affects society?

6. Both Helen and Hugo kill an enemy during a war. How are Helen and Hugo’s immediate reactions to killing similar and how are they different? What long-term effects do these acts have on their lives?

7. Sybil feels personally responsible for Hugo’s blindness. To what extent do you think she is at fault? How does she change after Hugo’s accident?

8. Alex and Giles disagree so strongly regarding politics and war that family reunions at Tryst are strained and uncomfortable when both brothers are present. Have you ever had a close relationship so adversely affected by differing beliefs? Were you able to get past your differences and restore the relationship?

9. How would you describe Henrietta’s attitudes toward her children’s spouses? Does she treat them all equally, or does she prefer certain in-laws over others? Do you find anything wrong with her behavior? Do you think her attitudes are typical of most mothers?

10. Adam imagines how his children most likely react to the women’s suffrage movement and exclaims, “Thank God I’m old enough to be objective about issues of this sort” (p. 333). What advantage does Adam’s age give him in terms of thinking about this movement? Do you think Adam is able to view the issue objectively, as he believes?

11. Do you find anything hypocritical about Edward and George’s attitudes toward Gilda abandoning Edward and pursuing her dream career in acting?

12. George reflects that while he was once a pioneer and leader of the automotive revolution in the industry, both he and Swann-on-Wheels got complacent and their competition caught up to them. Do you fault George for this, or do you think that this fall was inevitable? Can any individual or company expect to remain an innovative leader forever?

13. Both as a young boy and as an adult engineer, Martin Fawcett consistently describes automobiles as though they are living creatures with various moods and behaviors. Why do you think he and others at the turn of the twentieth century viewed automobiles this way? In what ways do we still personify automobiles today?

14. Henrietta tells Joanna, “Family is the only thing worth a row of beans in the end” (p. 501) and implores her daughter to pretend the argument with Helen never occurred. Do you agree with Henrietta’s belief that family is the only valuable thing in life? Do you approve of her advice that Joanna and Helen never mention the incident in Ireland?

15. Throughout the novel, Adam has an oddly prescient sense of Britain and international competition in the years leading up to World War I. How would you describe his general attitude toward patriotism and national character in the early twentieth century? In what ways do you feel beliefs and representations of patriotism have changed since then?