army hospitals? Or had she retired to the country, like Walter’s mother, and planted her flower beds with potatoes because of the food shortage?
He did not know whether the British were short of food. Germany’s navy was trapped in port by the British blockade, so there had been no imports by sea for almost two years. But the British continued to get supplies from America. German submarines attacked transatlantic ships intermittently, but the high command held back from an all-out effort-what was called USW, for “unrestricted submarine warfare”-for fear of bringing the Americans into the war. So, Walter guessed, Maud was not as hungry as he was. And he was better off than German civilians. There had been strikes and demonstrations against the food shortage in some cities.
He had not written to her, nor she to him. There was no postal service between Germany and Britain. The only chance would come if one of them traveled to a neutral country, the United States or Sweden perhaps, and posted a letter from there; but that opportunity had not yet arisen for him nor, presumably, for her.
It was torment not to know anything about her. He was tortured by the fear that she might be ill in hospital without his knowledge. He longed for the end of the war so that he could be with her. He desperately wanted Germany to win, of course, but there were times when he felt he would not care about losing as long as Maud was all right. His nightmare was that the end came, and he went to London to find her, only to be told that she was dead.
He pushed the frightening thought to the back of his mind. He lowered his sights, focused his lenses nearer, and examined the barbed-wire defenses on the German side of no-man’s-land. There were two belts of it, each fifteen feet wide. The wire was firmly fixed to the ground with iron stakes so that it could not easily be moved. It made a reassuringly formidable barrier.
He climbed down from the trench parapet and turned down a long flight of wooden steps to a deep dugout. The disadvantage of the hillside position was that the trenches were more visible to enemy artillery so, to compensate, the dugouts in this sector had been cut far into the chalky soil, deep enough to provide protection from anything but a direct hit from the largest type of shell. There was room to shelter every man in the trench garrison during a bombardment. Some dugouts were interconnected, providing an alternative way out if shelling blocked the entrance.
Walter sat on a wooden bench and took out his notebook. For a few minutes he wrote abbreviated reminders of everything he had seen. His report would confirm other intelligence sources. Secret agents had been warning of what the British called a “big push.”
He made his way through the maze of trenches to the rear. The Germans had constructed three lines of trenches two or three kilometers apart, so that if they were driven out of the front line they could fall back on another trench and, failing that, a third. Whatever happened, he thought with considerable satisfaction, there would be no quick victory for the British.
Walter found his horse and rode back to Second Army headquarters, arriving at lunchtime. In the officers’ mess he was surprised to encounter his father. The old man was a senior officer on the general staff, and now dashed from one battlefield to another just as, in peacetime, he had gone from one European capital to the next.
Otto looked older. He had lost weight-all Germans had lost weight. His monkish fringe was cut so short that he looked bald. But he seemed spry and cheerful. War suited him. He liked the excitement, the hurry, the quick decisions, and the sense of constant emergency.
He never mentioned Maud.
“What have you seen?” he asked.
“There will be a major assault in this area within the next few weeks,” Walter said.
His father shook his head skeptically. “The Somme sector is the best-defended part of our line. We hold the upper ground and we have three lines of trenches. In war you attack at your enemy’s weakest point, not his strongest-even the British know that.”
Walter related what he had just seen: the trucks, the trains, and the communications detail laying telephone lines.
“I believe it’s a ruse,” said Otto. “If this were the real site of the attack, they would be doing more to conceal their efforts. There will be a feint here, followed by the real assault farther north, in Flanders.”
Walter said: “What does von Falkenhayn believe?” Erich von Falkenhayn had been chief of staff for almost two years.
His father smiled. “He believes what I tell him.”
As coffee was served at the end of lunch, Lady Maud asked Lady Hermia: “In an emergency, Aunt, would you know how to get in touch with Fitz’s lawyer?”
Aunt Herm looked mildly shocked. “My dear, what should I have to do with lawyers?”
“You never know.” Maud turned to the butler as he put the coffeepot down on a silver trivet. “Grout, be so kind as to bring me a sheet of paper and a pencil.” Grout went out and returned with writing materials. Maud wrote down the name and address of the family lawyer.
“Why do I need this?” Aunt Herm said.
“I may get arrested this afternoon,” Maud said cheerfully. “If so, do please ask him to come and get me out of jail.”
“Oh!” said Aunt Herm. “You can’t mean it!”
“No, I’m sure it won’t happen,” Maud said. “But, you know, just in case… ” She kissed her aunt and left the room.
Aunt Herm’s attitude infuriated Maud, but most women were the same. It was unladylike even to know the name of your lawyer, let alone to understand your rights under the law. No wonder women were mercilessly exploited.
Maud put on her hat and gloves and a light summer coat, then went out and caught a bus to Aldgate.
She was alone. Chaperoning rules had relaxed since the outbreak of war. It was no longer scandalous for a single woman to go out unescorted in the daytime. Aunt Herm disapproved of the change, but she could not lock Maud up, and she could not appeal to Fitz, who was in France, so she had to accept the situation, albeit with a sour face.
Maud was editor of The Soldier’s Wife, a small-circulation newspaper that campaigned for better treatment for the dependents of servicemen. A Conservative member of Parliament had described the journal as “a pestilential nuisance to the government,” a quotation that was emblazoned on the masthead of every edition thereafter. Maud’s campaigning rage was fueled by her indignation at the subjection of women combined with her horror at the pointless slaughter of war. Maud subsidized the newspaper out of her small inheritance. She hardly needed the money anyway: Fitz always paid for everything she needed.
Ethel Williams was the paper’s manager. She had eagerly left the sweatshop for a better wage and a campaigning role. Ethel shared Maud’s rage, but had a different set of skills. Maud understood politics at the top- she met cabinet ministers socially and talked to them about the issues of the day. Ethel knew a different political world: the National Union of Garment Workers, the Independent Labour Party, strikes and lockouts and street marches.
As appointed, Maud met Ethel across the road from the Aldgate office of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Association.
Before the war this well-meaning charity had enabled well-off ladies to graciously give help and advice to the hard-up wives of servicemen. Now it had a new role. The government paid one pound and one shilling to a soldier’s wife with two children separated from her husband by the war. This was not much-about half what a coal miner earned-but it was enough to raise millions of women and children out of grinding poverty. The Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Association administered this separation allowance.
But the allowance was payable only to women of “good behavior” and the charity ladies sometimes withheld the government money from wives who rejected their advice about child rearing, household management, and the perils of visiting music halls and drinking gin.
Maud thought such women would be better off without the gin, but that did not give anyone the right to push them into penury. She was driven into a fury of outrage by comfortable middle-class people passing judgment on soldiers’ wives and depriving them of the means to feed their children. Parliament would not permit such abuse, she
