The Secret Knowledge

1919. Scotland

John Quinn waits at the gate of Russell Engineering on a dark January evening as the workers emerge, caps pulled low, coats buttoned against the frigid air. “Advance, one penny!” Quinn shouts, brandishing a bundle of printed pages in his upheld hand. “Support the campaign for a forty-hour week.” Most ignore him as they pass, too tired to comment. A few tell him to be off; their union, like most in Scotland, has already voted against — why should they heed this lad or his newspaper? But one man stops.

“I’ll buy a copy.” The accent is foreign.

“A penny.”

He searches his pocket. “Merde. Only three farthings.”

“Have it for two.”

“You should come on Friday when we have our pay packets.” He takes the paper, pays his coins and reads the masthead. “Advance. I like that. I’m a believer in progress.”

Quinn barely notices the last of the men trudging indolently behind the stranger, his features strikingly shadowed in the lamplight. “You’re French?”

“I was.”

“How do you come to be here?”

“Events occurred.” The newspaper consists of a single spread the Frenchman opens and quickly peruses. “You have written this?”

“There’s a group of us.”

“Communists?”

“Socialists.”

He nods pensively. “I should like to meet your group.”

Quinn is delighted. “You’re most welcome…”

“But I think your newspaper is very bad,” he says, dismissively folding it. “And you wasted your time trying to sell it here. You don’t mind my being blunt, do you?”

“Of course not,” Quinn says, humbled.

“In France we have had a little more experience of revolution. You could say that along with women and wine it is a national speciality.” The stranger laughs, nudges his new friend, and Quinn is bathed by the warmth of exotic lands. “My name is Pierre Klauer.” Their introductory handshake is like a pact.

“Come for tea,” Quinn says abruptly, almost surprising himself with his own hospitality.

“I should like that, whenever is convenient for you.”

“Come now. Unless you need be somewhere else.”

Pierre shrugs affably. “I have no prior engagement.”

The factory gate is quiet, the winter evening cold; there is no further cause for formality. “Let’s go then,” says Quinn. He’s parked his bike against a nearby wall; he pushes it while Pierre carries the satchel of unsold newspapers. Quinn asks how long the Frenchman has been in Scotland.

“I arrived before the war, unfortunately.”

“You’d have preferred to be with your own people?”

“I was imprisoned by yours. My father was born in Germany; the one thing I have from him is his surname.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“What was prison like for you?”

“It gave me time to think.”

Leaning on the handlebars of the bike he wheels, Quinn agrees earnestly. “Plenty of time, certainly.” They take the path beside the river, poorly lit and muddy in parts. “Where do you live?”

“At a lodging house near Logie Colliery. And you?”

“Not far, in Mossmount.”

“Ah, the respectable part of town. Then you’re what they call ‘posh’?”

Quinn laughs, unsure if Pierre is being naive or ironic. “My father’s a doctor, a very good one and a brilliant man, though highly traditional in his politics. Like you, I’ve inherited nothing but a name. He says I’ve brought shame to it.”

“He lets you remain beneath his roof, that shows how much he loves you.”

“He needs me and my sister to look after him since mother fell ill.” Quinn catches himself. “How vain of me to expound on my own circumstances. I fear I may bore you.” He feels a comforting hand on his arm.

“It makes me happy that you speak freely.”

They walk in darkness; beyond the river’s murmur the town is alive only with the distant sound of workers retreating to home or pub.

Pierre asks, “Are you employed?”

“I’m a student.”

“I thought you might be.”

“Started in medicine, failed my exams, simply couldn’t take it in. Father suggested law but that was no better. Then the war…”

“You fought?”

“No,” says Quinn, slowing to a halt. “You told me honestly about your misfortune — it’s one I shared.”

“Prison?”

“I was called up but declared myself a pacifist. Father got me out, the lawyers argued that as a medical student I should never have been conscripted. So it was back to anatomy, and now it’s all over I can change subject again. Or to hell with it.”

“It was brave of you, refusing to enlist. For me there was no choice.”

“It wasn’t hard, telling the board I wouldn’t fight for capitalism. It was when I heard of so many friends dying that

I felt ashamed.”

“We must put the past behind us,” Pierre says soothingly. “For everyone this is the start of a new life. I began at the factory only two weeks ago.”

“And in France? What did you do there?”

“I told you,” says Pierre, “let’s not dwell on the past.”

They take the lane leading to Mossmount and come eventually to a street of dignified stone houses with neat gardens. Quinn’s front door opens before they reach it; a pretty red-haired young woman stands waiting.

“Hello, Jessie,” Quinn says, stooping to kiss her cheek, then looks over his shoulder. “Pierre, this is my wee sister.”

“Enchanté, mademoiselle.”

She smiles nervously, pleasurably, looking to her brother for further explanation, her face like that of a child seeing Santa Claus, but Quinn only asks, “Is father here?”

“In the front room.” Jessie offers to take the men’s coats for them as they step inside.

“Pierre’s having his tea here, can you manage that?”

“I expect so.”

A gravelly voice calls. “Is that you, Johnny?”

“Yes, father. We have a guest I’d like you to meet.”

“Come here, then.”

Dr Quinn sits in an armchair near the curtained window, a book open on his lap. Freckled, bald, eyebrows grey and shaggy, his old face is ruddy in the firelight. “I won’t stand, if you don’t mind.”

“Pierre Klauer, sir, at your service.”

“Is that a Belgian name you’ve got?”

“French, sir.”

“Then what would you prefer, whisky or brandy?”

“I like whisky very much.”

“See to it, Johnny, will you? Only a wee drop of water for me, mind. Have a seat, Pierre. I’ve been chuckling at this book, very droll. The Man Who Was Thursday. You know Chesterton?”

“No, sir.”

“I suppose not.” The doctor quickly finds another topic. “Most appalling what the Hun’s done to your country.”

“A tragedy.”

“How did the land of Beethoven ever go so wrong, can you tell me that? Do you like music, Pierre?”

“In fact I do.”

“I used to sing often when I was younger. Handel’s Messiah, they have it in France I expect.” He takes the glass his son offers and stares at it disapprovingly. “Are we running short? What’s your profession, Pierre?”

“He just started at Russell, father.”

The son’s interruption makes Dr Quinn stare from one man to the other as though wondering where the next voice might come from. “An engineer? That’s very fine. The world needs engineers. Was that your father’s profession too?”

“My father built his fortune from arms factories in Germany.”

A stunned blinking of Dr Quinn’s grey eyes. All he can manage after a moment is, “I see.”

“But you’ve broken with your father, haven’t you?” John asks uncertainly.

Pierre nods. “You could say I broke with everything.” He looks straight at Dr Quinn. “Would you prefer me to leave, sir?”

“Of course not.”

“I can’t help the way my father became rich. I’ve disowned him.”

The doctor pensively rubs the indentations of his crystal glass. “Very sad. Though under the circumstances, clearly appropriate.” He again looks from one man to the other. “Johnny, how did you two meet? How long have you been acquainted?”

“A while,” Pierre answers quickly. There is a palpable air of something unstated; John does nothing to contradict a lie he finds strangely pleasant.

“Pierre was interned as an alien.”

The doctor’s eyebrows sink with sorrowful understanding. So that’s it: prison-mates. Best not discuss further. “You’re having tea with us?”

“If I may.”

“Jessie should have sorted it by now, let’s go through.”

In the dining room the table is set, the meal is ready.

“This looks wonderful,” Pierre says approvingly, making Jessie blush as she comes from the kitchen with a serving ladle.

“If I’d known we’d have a guest…” She sits down without completing her sentence, toying instead with her hair.

“Will you write a wee note for mother tonight?” Dr Quinn asks, and she nods. He explains to Pierre, “My wife’s in a sanatorium. Her lungs, you understand. My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be so Jessie takes care of letters.”

“I wish your wife good health, sir.”

“We pray for her.”

Jessie crosses herself; no one else cares to repeat the gesture. Pierre is invited to serve himself the stew steaming in a casserole whose size emphasises the frugality of the contents. He takes a spoonful.

“Go on, lad,” the doctor urges. Slices of buttered bread lie on a plate beside a pot of tea. John Quinn looks at his sister and sees how she stares at the stranger, as much in awe as John himself. Taking a piece of bread, Pierre appears perfectly at ease.

“Are you Parisian?” Jessie asks.

“I was.”

“It must be so beautiful. Will you go back?”

“I think not.”

She, too, catches the seductive aroma of secrecy. Surely a woman, she guesses. “Do you like Scotland?”

“Certainly.”

“What in particular?”

Pierre smiles. “Not the weather, of course. But the landscape, the colours.”

“The people?”

“Yes, very friendly and welcoming. And the history.”

“I love history,” she says quickly. “When I was at school it was always my favourite subject.”

“But we learned so little of it,” John interrupts. “Real history, I mean. It was only kings and queens and battles and treaties.”

His sister’s mystified. “What else could it have been?”

“The lives of ordinary working folk.”

She laughs. “We know enough about that already.”

“I don’t know that you do.”

Dr Quinn intervenes. “Stop bickering, you two.”

“It’s just a discussion,” John says. “Pierre, you agree with me, don’t you? The history books are written by the ruling class and only tell their side of the story.”

All look to Pierre for an answer. He pouts thoughtfully as he considers the question. “There is always another side to everything.”

“Exactly!” says John.

“Even in the stories of the ruling class there may be something worth hearing.” He looks at Jessie while he speaks, and John begins to wonder if his new friend is really a socialist after all.

There is a loud knock at the front door; Jessie goes to answer.

“History is a science,” John says in a low voice that is almost belligerent. “They don’t teach the laws of history at school…”

But before he can elaborate further, Jessie comes back. “Father, there’s been an accident at the foundry.”

Dr Quinn shoots to his feet with sudden youthfulness. “Well then, I’d better see what some poor fool’s gone and done to himself.”

He goes to the hallway followed by his daughter, leaving John to pick up a theme he is unable to relinquish. “You agree, I suppose?”

“About the laws of history?”

“Otherwise I can’t understand why you might want to help with Advance. Why you stopped at the gate to talk to me, why you came here.”

Pierre considers the matter and in the gaslight looks almost beautiful. “Why?” he says. “Because history demands it. Yes, there are laws, John, as powerful as gravity, but they’re not for everyone to learn.”

“You don’t believe in educating the proletariat?”

“I’m not a Marxist.”

“Then what the devil are you? How can I know you’re not some management spy?”

“I suppose you can’t. I should leave.”

“No. But I don’t know if I should trust you.”

“You don’t have to. I wish to help, that’s all. Give me some of your newspapers and I’ll sell them at the works.”

“You could be sacked.”

“I’m not afraid. I’ll write for you, speak at your meetings, whatever you require. And if you like, you can always assume that I’m a spy. That way you’ll never tell me anything you wouldn’t want the enemy to hear.”

Jessie is closing the front door on her father, soon to come back. “I can’t work you out at all,” John says to Pierre.

“Then don’t try. Let’s simply be friends.”

As Jessie enters she sees their handshake, feels the eerie solemnity of the alliance. That night, writing to her ailing mother, she makes no mention of it.

The newspaper is produced at Maclean’s printing works, whose usual output is headed stationery or calling cards for inhabitants of the town able to afford such tokens of prestige, though lately it has been matter of another kind that has rolled from the presses, the printing shop serving as editorial office for as long as the Advance committee can keep up regular payments and avoid prosecution. Ten days after first meeting Pierre, John Quinn is there amid the rhythmic clatter of the machinery, looking at the freshly produced sheet being held up for his perusal.

“You’ve misspelled committee.”

“Eh?” Angus Blackhorn, sleeves rolled dirtily up his ink-blackened arms, peers where Quinn indicates, and discovers the misprint. “Damnation!”

“We can’t let it go like that.”

“What, re-do the whole bloody run?”

“Or correct them by hand.”

“Stay all night, then,” Blackhorn bawls irritatedly above the mechanical din. “You and that damn idiot Harry Orr.”

“We have to do something about it.”

“Smash his bloody teeth’s what I’ll do when he gets here. Calls himself a proof reader and can’t spell committee.”

At the far end of the room, typesetter Malcolm Baine is going about his work, glad to be beyond range of Blackhorn’s verbal shrapnel, though not for long.

“Aye, you as well, Baine, at least Orr’s got a bloody mouth. How did you not see it? 24-point headline!”

Quinn attempts diplomacy. “It’s nobody’s fault, Angus.” This only lights another fuse.

“It’s everybody’s fucking fault! Orr and Baine and you too. All the decent men got blown to buggery, that’s the problem.”

Quinn’s ears are hurting, he carries the still-wet sheet to the adjoining room where Joe Baxter, sitting peacefully and caressing warm tea in a tin mug, looks up and asks, “What’s the matter with you, then?” When Quinn shuts the door on the noise and tells him, he laughs. “Committee? You reckon there’s five people in Kenzie know how to ruddy spell?”

Quinn pulls a chair beside the old man, spreads the sheet on the table and reads the rest of it, fearing further errors. But the date and venue of the public meeting are correctly given, the arguments in favour of a forty-hour working week appear in order. From the page, words come forward for inspection: industry, grievance, solidarity, participate; stepping out of context of neatly printed lines and standing to attention looking proud, obedient, doomed.

“Discovered any more?” Joe Baxter asks after a while.

“Not yet.”

“When you’ve been in the trade as long as me you know how little it matters to anyone else, it’s only ourselves who notice.” Quinn keeps reading but Baxter, on his break, is in conversational mood. “We like to do a perfect job, that’s natural. Nothing worse than slack work, makes me irate when I see a badly set line in a newspaper, even books these days are in a poor state and not only because of the war. Young ones now have no self respect, not like when I started. Do your shift and draw your wage, that’s their way, and never mind the task in hand. It’s a sad business. I wouldn’t want to be your age now, John, not with the way the world’s going. Soon you’ll all be pushing buttons ten hours a day.”

Quinn looks up. “Not on basic pay though.”

Baxter laughs and raises his mug. “A toast to the revolution and home rule.”

The door opens before they can discuss it further and Pierre Klauer briskly enters, cheerfully depositing his canvas bag on the table. Quinn moves his page clear of the intrusion.

“I sold nearly all of mine today,” Pierre announces, opening the bag to show how few copies of Advance lie bent beside a bundle of greasy brown paper containing the remains of his dinner.

“Well done young Frenchman,” Baxter declares, having grown paternally fond of Pierre in the short time they have been acquainted.

“There’ll be more for you to sell tomorrow,” Quinn says with what both other men register as a scowl.

“He’s vexed over a misprint,” Joe Baxter explains.

“Only that? If I worried about every mistake I made in life then my hair would have turned white by now.”

“It’s in a headline,” says Quinn. “It looks foolish.”

Pierre removes his bag to see the page pushed beneath his gaze, his lips quivering as he reads. Eventually he says, “I find nothing wrong.”

Quinn points. “Committee.”

“I would never have known.”

“You see, John?” says Baxter. “Let it pass. Angus has enough on his hands out there without getting the dictionary thrown at him.”

Pierre agrees. “I can tell he’s in one of his black moods.” Angus was invalided back from Passchendaele and all who knew him agree he has never been the same since. Pierre remarks on the printed notice. “The meeting is so soon.”

“It’s the only date I could get for the hall.”

“No use advertising it here, there should be posters and leaflets.”

“That’s too much to ask of Maclean.”

“Then your meeting will be a failure, John. I should worry about that instead of a spelling mistake.”

If this is meant as a provocation it fails. “I know how to run the campaign, Pierre.”

“And I am trying to help.”

“Then sell as many of these as you can tomorrow.”

Pierre is immovable. “I cannot sell to men who gave me money today.”

“It’s a petty sum.”

“Not when doubled in a single week. I shall give copies gratis and ask my comrades to distribute them. Otherwise the meeting will be a waste of time.”

John stares at the table, bridling at this challenge to his authority while doubting his ability to exert it. He says quietly, “Do you wish to help or do you prefer to be in charge?”

“What?”

“This is a great deal of work, Pierre, I’d happily give it to someone else.”

Baxter gets up, puts his half-empty mug beside the sink, and goes back to the printing room.

Pierre asks, “Who will speak at the meeting?”

“I’ve contacted a few people.”

“You’ve left it all too late. This needs thought and planning, it takes time. If you want to persuade the workers of this town to become involved in national action then you have only one opportunity to do it, one moment when you can win their hearts. One test that you either pass or fail.”

The words sting Quinn’s heart; he looks sadly at Pierre. “I always fail.”

“That’s not true at all.”

“How my father will laugh.” He bites at his lip. “What are we to do?”

“It’s quite simple,” says Pierre. “Let me be the main speaker. I promise you that what I say will be worth hearing.”