Free Heart of War by John Masters Page A

girl watched him indifferently.
    Richard Rowland, Harry Rowland’s eldest son, sat in his office at the Rowland Motor Car Company, waiting. It was nearly four o’clock and Bob Stratton would be along any moment from his office down the corridor, just past the point where the linoleum ended and the bare concretebegan. Richard leaned back in the swivel chair which his father had installed – what, twenty years ago? – eyeing the pictures on the wall … a sepia photograph, much enlarged, of the first motor car turned out after Rowland’s had changed from motor bicycles; the visit by the Duke of Connaught in ’88; a 1912 impression of the plant as a whole, with smoke belching from chimneys and a line of barges loaded with motor cars sliding away down the Scarrow … a lot of artist’s licence in that one; and a good photo of himself, when young, with his father and Bob Stratton … they were both clean shaven in those days, and now both bearded. It was all old fashioned, faintly grimy, redolent of the age of coal and mud and clogs; but modern factories ought to be clean, dust free, run by electricity. You ought to be able to eat a meal off the floor, or off the block of one of your own engines. Instead of old photographs there ought to be diagrams on the walls here, production graphs, output and manpower charts; but he hadn’t the heart to change anything when his father handed over control of the firm to him after the election last November. And now perhaps it was too late.
    He sat straighter and swung the chair round slowly as he heard the knock on the door. Bob Stratton entered without more ado, as was the custom at Rowland’s. He stopped the other side of the desk, his bowler hat set firm on his head, his strong craftsman’s hands folded across his belly, over his Albert, the gold watch chain with half sovereign seals that looped from one waistcoat pocket to the other. His square-cut beard and thinning hair were both pepper and salt, and he wore rimless glasses. A snub nose sat in the middle of his lined, square face.
    He said, ‘If they haven’t telephoned, we’ll have to do something, Mr Richard. The men are on their last jobs … and half of them aren’t needed on those now. They’re sitting around, at the benches, talking, waiting.’
    Richard said, ‘I’ve heard nothing.’ They both knew that in fact he had heard something – last Tuesday: that the War Office was not interested in ordering the mobile machine-gun platform on a Rowland chassis, which Richard had designed for use in defence of airfields and large headquarters against saboteurs or enemy raiders. Nor was the Admiralty.
    Stratton said, ‘I suppose Mr Harry couldn’t do anything.’
    Richard took off his thick glasses and shook his head. His father had been an M.P. since last November; and had done what he could to get the War Office to order the mobile machine-gun vehicle; but there was a limit to what he could, or ought, to do, as an interested party.
    â€˜â€™Tis a good idea,’ Bob said. ‘They should have taken it.’
    Richard said, ‘They should. But there aren’t many people with imagination in Whitehall, I’m afraid. And everyone’s so busy staring at the trees – the problems under their noses – that they can’t look up and see the wood … new ideas, new ways to overcome them – get through the trees if you like … We’ll convert to munitions, Bob. I’ve seen this coming for some time, and have been making inquiries in the proper quarters. We have a definite government offer of financing to convert, and of course, a guarantee that all the shells we make or fill will be bought. We’ll be privately owned, but otherwise we’ll be just the same as a National Shell Filling Factory. There’s an Assistant Superintendent at Woolwich Arsenal who’s an expert on conversion.