Mary Russell's War Read online

  There follows the tale of a 17 year old nurse-girl kidnapped at point of revolver (from Baker Street, which is not far from here—shades of the “Solitary Cyclist”!) and driven to San Jose, where the man planned to force a county clerk to issue a marriage license, and a minister to perform a marriage. “Throughout the seizure of Miss Broadhurst was of the most exciting nature. Screams and shots aroused the entire neighborhood…”

  This young man does not sound like Walter Scott’s hero to me—“faithful in love and dauntless in war.” However, he does seem potentially useful, since questions about the incident could serve to loose me rapidly from the parental presence, if needs be—certainly when it comes to Papa, who turns quite endearingly pink when certain topics come before us.

  1 September

  The Germans continue their advance on Paris, despite the valiant efforts of Belgium. LOSSES ARE HEAVY ON BOTH SIDES. The French and English are lined up against the Kaiser along a vast line, digging in their toes against the push. Casualties on Both Sides are Appalling. Aeroplanes, meanwhile, pass over their heads to drop bombs on Paris, hitting near the Gare de l’Est.

  On this side of the globe, British ships have captured the German port of Apia, which will give the Nurnberg and Leipzig one fewer source of provisioning. Closer to home, however, the papers talk of the arrest of two burglars: one was caught when his snores woke the woman who had gone to sleep in the bed over his hiding place, and the other was arrested when he got stuck attempting to climb in through a transom.

  I do not think the residents of San Francisco are sufficiently concerned with the War in Europe. Could it be merely the readers of the Chronicle? Father came home early from work today, closeting himself in his library again. This time, there was no pounding of the type-writer, merely silence and the odour of his pipe. After an hour of this, Mother let herself in. I contrived to be in line of sight when she did so, and saw him sitting in his leather chair with a typed letter in his hand. I have yet to locate a duct or thin place in the walls that gives me access to library conversations.

  Why do parents persist in keeping things from their children? This is a very foolish way to run a family, and is based on the assumption that minors lack either intelligence or common sense. Until recently, I would have thought this a mistake my own parents would not make. It is disappointing to discover otherwise.

  Until I can uncover the source of all these familial mysteries, I amuse myself by collecting examples of War-time absurdities. Such as the following article:

  Rudyard Kipling Is Arrested on Suspicion.

  LONDON—Rudyard Kipling, who lives near Brighton, on the south coast, was arrested as a suspicious person while taking one of his regular constitutionals along the sea front.

  He entered into the fun of the thing: in fact he was delighted at being mistaken for a possible German spy, inasmuch as it proved to him in a most convincing manner that a vigilant watch is being kept.

  Kipling was detained for some time, during which he was searched, but eventually his identity was established, and he was set free with apologies.

  8 September

  School is now fully under way. Not that Levi and I are directly concerned with classrooms, but our tutors follow the schedule of public school, thus rendering us now as occupied with books and chalkboards as any child of the city. I have two tutors this year. In the afternoons, a nervous ex-schoolmaster with dandruff over his shoulders coaches me through the scientific side of the curriculum, while in the mornings, Miss Warren, the same teacher I have had since we returned here two years ago, is responsible for the less meaty part of my education, from American and English history to Greek philosophers. She herself is English, which is a help when it comes to my spelling, which tends to meander between the two systems unless firmly brought to heel. This year she has also taken on the duty of driving some modicum of general knowledge into Levi’s single-track mind, an uphill battle. Perhaps I should suggest that if she can find a way to present her material in some form of puzzle, a prime way to capture Levi’s attention, she would have better luck with the actual content.

  Speaking of uphill battles: several hundred thousand Frenchmen are furiously digging a complicated system of entrenchments outside of Paris. Is the idea that the Kaiser’s men will fall into it as they press forward? Trenches seem hardly more adequate than a row of sharpened stakes when it comes to foiling the advance of a modern army, or even slowing it much: every fortress in the north of France is now in German hands. I see on Mother’s face, and in the long hours at her War Work, that she dreads one morning to hear the news-boys’ shout, “Kaiser crossing the Channel!” Her ladies’ maid, Phillips, has left for home, and Mother has said she will not replace her, but instead devote Phillips’ salary to buying aeroplanes—that being her War Work (a phrase she pronounces with Capital Letters.)

  I should perhaps pause to note that Mother has decided to raise funds to buy aeroplanes for British pilots to fly over the Front. She has entered into this with as much methodical devotion as she does any other matter, with the result that her study is now the headquarters of this diminutive organisation, with thrice-weekly meetings and such a quantity of mail that the Post Office has added a delivery to this neighbourhood.

  While Parisians dig trenches, on this side of the world, one of the two German cruisers that have haunted the Pacific was finally spotted:

  CRUISER NURNBERG WILL SAIL STRIPPED TO FIGHT

  Commander of German Craft Says Vessel May Be His Coffin

  HONOLULU—The German cruiser Nurnberg, whose whereabouts have been a mystery since she left here early last month, appeared off this port early today.

  Inasmuch as the Nurnberg left this port thirty-five days ago, just before war was declared between Germany and Great Britain, she is entitled now to take on as much coal and no more as will carry her to the nearest home port and may remain in Honolulu twenty-four hours.

  Where that port now is becomes a point for the international lawyers to decide. The British have seized German Samoa, and the Japanese are blockading German’s naval base in Kiso-Chow bay.

  And elsewhere:

  Nothing has been seen of the German cruiser Leipzig, the only other German warship in the Pacific not bottled up in Kido-Chow bay.

  It is difficult to locate “Kido-Chow” on the atlas of China, that being one of the many foreign cities given half a dozen completely unrelated spellings. Micah, who took a day off work from his bookstore in Chinatown to help Mother in the garden, found it for me. He tells me that the word is something closer to “Chiaow-show”. Between the typographical errors and its wilful mistakes, the Chronicle is proving less than dependable as a source of geographical knowledge.

  I scoured the papers in vain for any further arrests of English literary figures out for a stroll on the coast. Were I a famous writer, I should do my best to be captured staring out to sea, a flag-like scarf clasped in my hand. It would no doubt do wonders for one’s sales figures.

  (Later that day.)

  Today’s paper, which I read after having written the above (one’s parents, inevitably, are granted the day’s news first) contained an exciting update:

  BATTLE-SHIP PURSUING GERMAN CRUISER

  British Dreadnought Australia Reported to Be in Chase of Kaiser’s Nurnberg, Which Left Honolulu September 1st, After Taking Coal.

  It is believed here that the Australia cable to British Columbia was cut by the Nurnberg.

  My fellow Californians seem completely oblivious of any threat. Mother has her war work, Father clearly is up to something (he has yet to explain that letter to the War Office!), but what are those who are technically under age to do? Are Levi and I—objectively speaking, two of the more gifted minds in the city—to concern ourselves with nothing but mathematical problems and English poetry? After much discussion, he and I went to Father in the library this evening to put the proposition before him, and in the end, Papa did at least agree to tutor us in German, one of the languages in which he is f
luent.

  That will not be sufficient, but at least we have succeeded in planting the thought in his distracted mind.

  15 September

  Last week, Levi circled an article in the news concerning a boy of fourteen years and eleven months who was serving in the German army, leaving it prominently on the library table. Father said nothing. Then this morning, the news included mention of Mrs Vanderbilt washing dishes in the scullery of a Paris Red Cross Hospital. A full range of volunteers, except for us.

  As for deaths, the casualties roll includes Honourables, a viscount, a lord, and the brother of a duke, while Mother has received a third letter concerning the loss of English childhood friends. Closer to home, a dispatch from New Zealand now reports no fewer than five German cruisers in the Pacific! Yet a local company, playing on all these headlines of death and terror, saw fit to compose an advert saying:

  Some sales-man no doubt thinks himself most clever.

  A letter came from my grandmother in Boston, bemoaning the interruption of fashion out of France (!) and the departure of a good friend for Germany, and included a note to me (on flowered paper) asking if I was wearing my hair up yet, and if so did I wish Granny to buy me some combs for my Christmas present? It pains me to consider that I am related to this person, who has as little sense of the world as Flo’s mother. In the meantime, a woman explorer has discovered a new mountain in Canada, Father enjoyed a baseball game at Ewing field, and the Kaiser has been approached with an exchange of peace terms.

  When I complained at dinner last night (admittedly, in a voice of considerable distress) that I felt as if my brain were being torn across like a sheet of paper, Father ordered me to stop reading the news, and Mother suggested I speak with her friend Dr Ginsberg about my distress. (Dr Ginsberg, a woman, is a doctor of the mind, not the body—and although I like her well enough, and consider her the most sensible of my mother’s lady friends, I have no wish to strip myself emotionally bare before her.) I excused myself early from the table, and took to my room.

  I have not even been able to indulge in my long-anticipated escape into the world of Mr Conan Doyle’s fiction, since the two chapters that make up this month’s first episode of the serialisation of The Valley of Fear finds even his two protagonists at odds. In the course of these stories, Mr Holmes often expresses affectionate criticisms of his flat-mate’s abilities, but never have I seen him as openly rude as he is in these pages. “Your native shrewdness”, he sneers, going on to mock Watson’s “innate cunning” and “Machiavellian intellect.” It is almost as if he desires to drive Watson into moving out of Baker Street. Or hauling off and delivering a good punch to that supercilious nose. “He was undoubtedly callous from long over-stimulation,” Watson writes—hardly an excuse for a string of outright insults!

  And yet, reading the chapters a second time, I find two clues that might have been put there for me alone, valuable clues of “that highest value which anticipates and prevents rather than avenges crime,” along with a reminder that “the temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.”

  Or perhaps three clues, because the episode turns around a complex cipher.

  Ciphers are a thing Levi adores.

  First, however—“Data! I can’t make bricks without clay!” Or rather, Levi can’t figure a cipher without material.

  One: There are without a doubt German spies in San Francisco—and from certain things Father has let slip, I believe he agrees.

  Two: The city’s blithe preoccupation with baseball games and ladies’ fashion can only be making those spies confident to the point of carelessness.

  Three: The very last person a spy would suspect of watching him would be what Mr Holmes would term an “Irregular”—in this case, a girl of fourteen and her nine year-old brother.

  Four: The newspapers are full of suggestions, for attentive minds.

  This morning at breakfast, Father told Mother that he will be going into Chinatown to see Micah Long (which surprised me, and her, since Father has not been as friendly to Micah as he was when I was a child) and will not be at home until perhaps seven. In one of those instances of the mind outpacing one’s thoughts, I spoke up and said that Flo wanted me to help plan her birthday party, but that I too would be home by seven. Inevitably, Mother said it would have to be six, but after pretending to sulk, I agreed.

  This means that I am free to wander the city for nearly three hours this afternoon. Moreover, when the offices of the German Consulate close, the streets will be busy enough that few would take notice of a young girl on the pavements behind them.

  And with Levi’s assistance, I shall also be able to come and go freely after dark. A burglar might get caught in a transom (or sleeping beneath a bed!) but not I.

  I could only wish that the author of Raffles the Cracksman had thought to provide hints on the opening of safes in his own stories. As it is, I must hope that any spy I locate will be lacking in care, and leave his papers lying out.

  22 September

  Disaster! Calamity! Oh, how I loathe dogs!

  Who’d have expected a German spy to have a poodle? Father shouted at me—shouted!—and said that I was fortunate it hadn’t been an Alsatian, which might have taken off my leg. Mother—well, Mother went silent, and sits in her morning room, white with fury.

  It took me four afternoons of following men leaving the Consulate on Sansome Street before I located a likely suspect for being a spy, based on the relative affluence of his home, the lack of any signs of a family, and the way he left his street-side curtains shut even during the day. Only because it has been warm was the transom window over Herr Schmidt’s (another reason for suspicion: are people actually named Smith or Jones?) front door left unlatched, although as access to the house, that window would have been inadequate for even a medium-sized burglar. For someone of my girth, however, I did not anticipate any problem. With Levi’s assistance, I dressed in black trousers and dark shirt, and left the house as soon as the parents were abed.

  The poodle caught me standing at the desk of Herr “Schmidt.” The man himself seized my ankle as I pulled myself up to the transom, and had it not been for his brutish application of force and the arrival of a butler, I might have succeeded in kicking myself free. The police were called, my parents roused from their beds, and…I doubt I shall ever rid myself of those memories, so I shall not dwell on them here in this written account. Suffice to say, I am condemned to my house. My war work, for the time, is over. A recent issue of the Chronicle informed its readers that the Prince of Wales will not be permitted to fight, either, I suppose for fear of the consequences should he be taken prisoner. Never did I suspect that I should have anything in common with the next King of England.

  I may give up reading the news entirely, for it seems to alternate between joyous declarations that the Allies are pushing the Kaiser back, fearful warnings that the German army is on the point of overrunning key English and French positions, and blithe promises that the Kaiser is on the point of agreeing to talk over peace terms. And as to the regular reports of extreme behaviour on the part of the Kaiser’s soldiers, an American Writer who visited the Front says otherwise:

  ATROCITIES ARE LIES SAYS AMERICAN WRITER

  Worst Behavior of German Soldiers in Belgium Was

  Kissing of Pretty Girls

  …in less than twenty-four hours the Belgian citizens were chatting comfortably with the German invaders, and the allegation of German brutality and demonical torture dissolved into one of the myths which have accompanied all wars.

  Clearly, one cannot trust the newspapers. When, that is, one can find them. Papa has taken to burning the news once he has read it (forcing me to borrow those of old Mrs Adderley down the street, whose house is one of the few places I am permitted, following my plea for the welfare of the poor old woman—who in fact is neither poor nor lonely, having a house full of servants and more friends than I.)

  Mama, when she can bear to add
ress me directly, again urges me to discuss my behaviour with her psychological friend, Dr Ginsberg.

  But really, what is there to say to a mind-doctor? It is not I who has gone mad, but the world.

  29 September

  Catastrophe has struck. It is the end of everything. And I have no one to blame but myself.

  On Saturday afternoon, at long last, the Parents took Levi and me into their confidence. Too late.

  The letter Papa sent to the War Office concerned his intention to enlist in the American army. We are neutral, yes, but that does not mean the government wish to be unprepared. His ability with languages, his family connexions, and some ill-defined (to us, his family) ties with the world of Intelligence (my father, a spy? Surely not!) conspire to mean that he could be of considerable value, to this country and to England, hard at war. Not that they would send him to the Front—even if his limp would allow him to be sent overseas—but rather to an office in Washington, DC.

  Both he and Mother have known for some time that this was coming: this, it seems, was the cause of their protracted disagreement last month. Her immediate impulse, on War’s declaration, was to go home to England,

  but Father’s utter conviction has finally swayed her into an agreement that England is no place to take a family. Once agreement was reached, they were merely waiting for certain arrangements to be made before revealing their plans to us.

  Bitterly, I now learn that she was on the edge of convincing him that San Francisco would be the safest place for us: that she, Levi, and I would remain here, continuing with our schooling and her funds-raising for the Royal Flying Corps, rather than (as he wished) have us three retreat to my grandparents’ house in Boston. He was, as I say, on the edge of agreeing to this, when…