Free Dark Harvest by Amy Myers Page A

poisonous gas fumes that left men choking for breath and blinded. It had been the Canadians who suffered most, he wrote, but the Germans would have a taste of what it was like because now they had Kitchener’s permission to use gas. It would be the Germans whose lungs slowly, inexorably drowned in water. Once again, the insidious thought nagged at her: Reggie may have survived Ypres, but what about the next battle? This afternoon she must hoe twice as hard, she decided, as the Rectory gate clicked home behind her.
    She found her father alone and pacing around the dining room. That meant Mother was out, she realised guiltily, remembering this morning’s panic about finding extra labour for planting cabbage at Robin’s farm.
    ‘Ah, there you are, Caroline. I thought I was doomed to lunch alone.’
    She relaxed. He didn’t seem to be blaming her, and all had been progressing normally in the kitchen. Still no sign of the baby, Mrs Dibble informed her.
    ‘I’ll go to change. Mother will be here any moment, I’m sure.’
    ‘Perhaps. She went to comfort Mrs Swinford-Browne.’
    ‘What?’ Caroline almost laughed, so unexpected was the image conjured up. Then with sudden alarm: ‘Not bad news of Robert or Patricia?’
    ‘No. Her brother was on the Lusitania. You read the newspapers?’
    ‘I didn’t have time. What’s happened?’
    ‘A German submarine has sunk a civilian liner in the Atlantic with terrible loss of life. Over eleven hundred dead. It’s no accident, this is a new and terrible policy. They’ve even boasted of it in the New York press. Any vessel flying the British or Allied flag is at risk, no matter who sails in it. There were over a hundred American citizens lost in the Lusitania. Coming so hard on the heels of the American merchant ship sunk a week ago it must surely persuade President Wilson he cannot remain neutral any longer.’
    Eleven hundred lost. Caroline remembered that awful day in 1912 when the Titanic went down, and the loss of the Empress of Ireland last year. But they were accidents, and this new catastrophe was not. Only last month they had sunk a Dutch tanker, violating her neutrality. That could have been no accident either. ‘Now the Kaiser acknowledges no rules of war, America must enter; that would help bring peace.’
    ‘But at what cost? More and more lives to be lost while the fighting goes on.’
    ‘Don’t you believe in the struggle. Father?’
    In April there had been an international women’s peace congress at the Hague in neutral Holland to seek peace. Her father had welcomed it, and she had been puzzled that not only the Government but the Women’s Social and Political Union, Mrs Pankhurst’s organisation, had been against sending delegates in case,presumably, it diminished Britain’s fighting spirit. The other suffrage societies wanted to send delegates, but were unable to travel because, so she’d heard, the Government deliberately suspended the ferry service to Holland.
    ‘I believe we must stand firm against the forces of evil. How to reconcile this with man’s inhumanity to man in the form of shells, gas and Zeppelin bombs is a matter that one could argue for ever. But now this war means death to civilians as well as soldiers. I just don’t know.’
    So far the much-feared Zeppelin raids had been fewer than anticipated. April had seen four, however, although they wreaked little harm. But who could tell what would happen now? Caroline felt alarmed. Seldom had she seen her father so distressed. Perhaps the Misses Norville had been right to fortify their house, useless though barbed wire would be to keep out German bombs. Mentally though, everyone should fortify themselves.
    ‘God is our strength, Caroline.’ Her father’s quiet comment came as a relief.
     
    Mrs Dibble plonked down a plate of stew and new potatoes in front of Agnes. ‘You work your way through that, my girl. You’re eating for two, remember. There’s a nice pond pudding to