A Plague on Both Your Houses Read online

  A Plague on Both

  Your Houses

  Ian Porter

  Copyright © 2018 Ian Porter

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Matador

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  Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp,

  Leicestershire. LE8 0RX

  Tel: 0116 279 2299

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador

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  ISBN 978 1789010 862

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

  To the memory of all the women and men of Britain and Germany, sacrificed on their respective Home Fronts in the Great War.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Author’s Notes

  Prologue:

  In April 1917 the United States declare war on Germany.

  There had been German air-raids on Britain by Zepplin earlier in the war but now the first bombing by Gotha planes takes place.

  By October US troops have arrived in France and are involved in their first action.

  The following February British women aged over 30, with some added provisos, gain the vote. Lower working class men also gain the vote.

  In March Russia signs a peace-treaty with Germany, allowing millions of German troops to be transferred from the Eastern to the Western Front. Within two months they have broken through at Arras, then Ypres and are now advancing on Rheims. The Germans are winning the war, militarily at least.

  But their Home Front is struggling badly. The Allied blockade of imported foodstuffs, poor government organisation of their remaining food resources and a potato blight has left the German people hungry.

  The Allied Home Front is also struggling, with shortages and huge queues for food, but the introduction of rationing, with its fairer system of distribution, proves a great boon for morale.

  And it’s much needed because the US troops have brought with them something from America which is far more deadly than their own fire power. It threatens the Home Fronts of both sides and may be about to bring the war to its conclusion…

  Chapter 1

  “The home front is always underrated by generals in the field. And yet that is where the Great War was won and lost. The Russian, Bulgarian, Austrian and German home fronts fell to pieces before their armies collapsed.”

  British Prime Minister David Lloyd-George,

  War Memoirs

  East End of London, May 1918

  The Votes for Women campaign had been so all encompassing, taking over entire lives, Suffragette Ruby Nash had often wondered how her situation would change once the vote had been won. Would she use the skills that she had learned during the campaign? Public speaking; the ability to plot, manage, organise, motivate, subvert, deceive, and when all else failed strike out or hitch up her skirts and make a run for it.

  Her previous life as a cashier on an ocean liner, followed by a brief spell working in a biscuit factory, seemed a world away. And, frankly, a waste of her newly acquired talents.

  But now the vote had indeed been won, there had been no great earth shattering change in her life. That had happened four years earlier with the outbreak of war. She now simply continued with what she had been doing these past four years, working for Sylvia Pankhurst in London’s poverty stricken East End.

  Sylvia and her East London Federation of Suffragette colleagues had continued to fight for the vote for women throughout the war, but such action had taken a backseat to the more pressing matters of helping the starving, widowed, gassed, blinded and injured whom the government had cast aside like so much useless flotsam and jetsam.

  Ruby had multiple jobs which included managing the Mother’s Arms, a cleverly renamed ex-pub which had been converted into a nursery and Montessori playschool. It enabled local women to take on decently paid work in nearby factories while their infants were well looked after in clean, cheap, professionally run surroundings.

  She also kept an eye on Sylvia’s Cost Price restaurant and oversaw her toy factory, and assisted her employer in badgering officialdom about everything from the paltry level of child allowances to high rents and their resulting evictions, to the need to nationalise food supply. Luckily all of these jobs were sited only a few hundred yards from each other, a stone’s throw from where Ruby lived with her husband, in Bow. But her duties involved long days, seven days a week. Exhaustion had set in.

  She had just left the restaurant hoping that a bit of fresh air, or at least as fresh as the Bow slaughterhouse, soap-works and tannery infused miasma ever got, would freshen her up. It hadn’t. A decision was made to abandon going to check up on the toy factory and head for home.

  Ruby was walking slowly along Roman Road, eyes down, feeling sorry for herself, when she heard an explosion. Since the huge munitions factory explosion the previous year, just down the road in Silvertown, which had laid waste the surrounding area, and could have killed thousands had it gone up during working hours, any explosion had Ruby fearing the worst. She processed the information the noise had given her. It was the harrumph of a distant explosion. But was it a big one miles away or somewhat smaller but closer? Then came another blast sound. Nearer this time. Then another, closer still. It was no munitions factory being blown to smithereens. Bombs were landing. The sounds had initially raised her head to the horizon; now she looked higher, up to the sky. There they were. Little bi-winged affa
irs. German Gotha IV planes with three men aboard, close enough for each of their heads to be seen from the ground. It was an air-raid, and the bombers were about to fly over her nursery, full of children. She started running towards the nursery, eyes fixed skywards. Not watching where she was going, she soon collided with someone running in the opposite direction and was knocked to the ground. As she started to pick herself up, she made a speedy return trip to the cobbles courtesy of another collision. A wave of people, like an escaping relief-filled crowd at the end of a shift flowing through factory gates, were heading in the opposite direction to her.

  The first person with whom she had collided, a teenage lad, had stayed on his feet and had not given her a backward glance. The second, a young woman, had fallen to join her on the street. She got back on her feet in double quick time, neither cursing Ruby for bringing her down nor the graze that was now on her knee. She simply shouted some advice to her assailant before continuing her panic stricken journey.

  “Leg it! Tube!”

  It was short speak for ‘run to the nearest underground station’.

  As Ruby slowly got on one knee to get up again, she saw two trousered tree trunk legs arrive next to her, offering protection from the on rushing crowd. She peered up and a huge belt appeared in her eye-line. She knew who was standing over her before he spoke.

  “First time I ever saw you down here in Bow, you were on the ground. Things don’t change much do they?”

  “And the first time I ever saw you dear husband, you were lost. Didn’t know where you were. So less of your lip, help me up and get me to that bloody nursery so we can get those children safe!”

  Duly put in his place, Alexander Nash, who everyone, including his wife, knew as Nashey, stuck out a huge mitt of a hand and pulled Ruby to her feet. Without a further word they started running. Nash led the way, slicing through the crowd with the wave of an arm to anyone in his way, with his wife in his slipstream.

  The brief conversation had alluded to Ruby and her husband meeting for the first time, six years earlier, in the bowels of the Titanic just as it was about to sink beneath the waves. They had saved each other’s lives that terrible night. It was quite a bond between them. They had gone their separate ways afterwards, but months later their paths had crossed again when Ruby had visited Bow for the first time. She was there on Suffragette duties and had been knocked to the ground during a typically lively, violent exchange of views with men who believed that women should know their place. And that was rather closer to the kitchen than the ballot box. Nash had been among the pro Suffragette men at the altercation, who had sent the bullies on their way, care of giving them a good hiding. And he had plucked Ruby off the pavement in much the same way as he had just done again. Though the exact manner of that meeting was happenstance, it was no coincidence that Ruby had travelled to Bow. Despite a seventeen year age gap, there had been chemistry between her and Nash from the first moment they met. She knew he lived in Bow and had been hoping to meet up with him again while she was there. And the two had remained close ever since.

  Nash dived down an alley to get away from the crowds heading past them down the main street. Ruby always marvelled at how her husband seemingly knew every alley, and where it led, in the area. It was a useful legacy from the years he spent as Sylvia Pankhurst’s bodyguard, assisting her to evade capture by the police. Several twists and turns later she was not surprised when they popped out within yards of the nursery in half the time it would have taken on the main thoroughfare. Doctor Alice Johnson and Nurses Hebbes, Burgess and Clarke were carrying babies out of the building and heading towards them. Ruby immediately took over, shouting instructions.

  “Turn round! Get in the park!”

  Nurse Hebbes queried the order.

  “Tube?!”

  “Too late for that. They must have done the docks. Now they’re trying to hit Bryant & May’s. You’d be running towards the target. Get in the park. They won’t waste dropping bombs there. Move!”

  Nurses and doctor nodded in unison. The Bryant & May match factory, of Victorian phossy jaw infamy, was the largest in the country, and like all big factories had now been converted to war work. It was only a few hundred yards away and surely a plum target. The four women, each awkwardly cradling three babies wedged together in their arms, ran across a little bridge over a canal that ran alongside the nursery, and into the vast open space of Victoria Park.

  Ruby and Nash ran into the nursery. Nash took the stairs two at a time, shouting over his shoulder.

  “I’ll have a look upstairs!”

  The ground floor was mayhem. The nurses and doctor had managed to take all the youngest babes in arms but the nursery still had many screaming infants within its walls. One year olds lay grizzling on their afternoon nap sleeping stretchers. Toddlers were barely able to get their breath such was the depth of their panic stricken sobbing and snot-filled drooling. Some stood at the bars of their dainty little cots like demented prisoners; others tottered about on the floor, tripping and falling over a scattering of dolls, bricks and tiles, setting off yet more frenzied crying.

  Ruby found a large crate-like box full of playthings; dumped the cargo and refilled it with all the remaining children she could see, laying them down, trying the best she could to avoid having them smother each other. She then quickly grabbed as many soft toys as she could find and placed them on top of the infants. Being smothered by teddy bears caused the more claustrophobically inclined little ones to increase their decibels, but Ruby could not worry about that now.

  The crate was too big, and now too heavy, to lift, so she dragged it with some back straining effort, unceremoniously towards the open front door. Just before she reached the entrance another bomb landed nearby on the canal next to the small factory opposite. The factory took the brunt of the blast. Water, large sods of soil and shards of wood and metal thudded into the nursery’s old Victorian pub walls and windows, smashing the latter to smithereens.

  Ruby had been lucky to have been bending down low to drag the crate and therefore escaped much of the flying glass that penetrated the building. Nonetheless she felt pain and reached up with her hand to find her hair was a sticky bloody mess. But she barely registered the damage as she gazed down at the little bundles below her in the box. There were small pieces of glass and other detritus resting on top of the teddies and children, but thankfully she could see no smears of blood or any evidence that any injuries had occurred.

  Had the nursery staff headed towards the underground station as they had wanted, they would have been nowhere near the bomb. But Ruby had sent them into its path. She shifted her gaze with dread to where the bomb had landed. The factory was on fire but through the smoke she could see the nursery staff and their charges had safely reached the centre of the park, and were heading round to the far side of the impressive Burdett-Coutts Memorial Fountain, which might afford some protection should another bomb land nearby.

  Ruby took a huge gulp of air. But the momentary relief of tension didn’t last long.

  Nashey! Where the bloody hell is he?!

  The sudden realisation that her husband disappeared upstairs just before the bomb exploded, and had not since returned, resulted in a wave of adrenalin pumping through her.

  The burning factory, and the toxic blackened rectangular shards of indeterminate material that were floating down through the air with the incongruous spinning grace of a ballerina, meant it would be hazardous to drag the box outside. She took one more check of the box of infants. Still no sign of blood. What to do? Events had proved that the children were probably safer inside than out. She dragged the crate round behind the old pub’s bar, which was still in place as a nursery reception desk, and wedged it into a corner. She looked around the nursery for inspiration. The floor was covered in a confection of milk, infant health leaflets and feeding charts. There were bright coloured pictures on white walls full of marks made by
sticky little fingers. A wonderful doll’s house, donated by a wealthy supporter. A rocking horse that had seen better days. A pram. Boxes of Virol, Glaxo baby food, eggs and barley. Then she saw the staff’s coats hanging up on hooks. She grabbed them and draped them carefully on top of the seething mass of mini humanity and their soft ursine minders, careful not to replace one danger with another. That would have to do until she returned.

  Within seconds she was leaping up the bare wooden stairs just as her husband had done a few minutes earlier. She reached the top of the steps and hurtled through the open doorway. A single room took up the whole of the first floor. Seven children aged three to five years were sitting, cowering on the floor, shaking with fear, arms around knees brought up to their chins. Some had hair and faces covered in dust; some had scratches on them. Ruby gave them a rudimentary inspection for injuries but they all appeared unharmed, physically at least. The smell of urine was clear. Most, if not all, had wet themselves. There were no adults to be seen.

  Where was Miss Matters and her assistant Hildegarde? And where was Nashey? The roof!

  She started to take another flight of steps, two at a time at full pelt, not noticing the red marks on them. A few feet from her destination, she could see through the open doorway to the roof. For the briefest moment she glimpsed her husband, lying on the ground covered in blood, and then everything went black.

  ******

  Nash had arrived on the first floor to find three screaming children sat on the floor. Knowing how many children were usually in the nursery, he wondered if there should not be more of them. His wife had once told him the nursery used the old pub’s roof as a place to get some fresh air in to the lungs of the tots. Better check it.

  The audience of three continued to show their displeasure. Nash looked back at them, hesitating for a moment. He wasn’t used to dealing with tiny tots. What should he do for the best?