1914—1917

The 1914—1917 period, designated “The Plateau,” marks the point at which the First World War reshapes both public life and the private world of Emma Harte. Its narrative moves between military mobilization, the threat of battle, wartime business decisions, and the consequences of earlier choices about love, class, and family responsibility.

A period framed by war

The book identifies this stage as Part Four, “The Plateau,” and anchors it in 1914–17. War arrives not as a distant political abstraction but as a force that reaches businesses, households, and individual futures. In the opening months, the British government mobilizes rapidly: Lord Kitchener’s first appeal raises an army of 100,000 volunteers, while the first four divisions of the British Expeditionary Force cross the Channel between August 6 and August 20. The fifth and sixth divisions follow in early September. Their crossing is described as an initial triumph, with no ship sunk and no life lost; the contrast with the slaughter that follows makes the early success precarious rather than reassuring.

The guns continue through the months of 1914 and into 1915. On the battlefields of France and Belgium, hundreds of thousands of young men are killed, and the conflict is presented as a struggle for national survival rather than simply the possession of territory. That widening scale gives the period its defining pressure: ordinary plans must now be made in the knowledge that war can redirect labor, commerce, and family life.

Emma’s choices under wartime pressure

Emma reads financial signs as closely as she reads people. A clipping in the Financial Times reports that the London Stock Exchange has closed and that the bank rate has risen from 4 to 8 percent on Friday, July 31. She understands the closure as a measure intended to steady dealers and prevent panic, and the rate increase as an effort to slow the outflow of gold. She takes the measures as warning that war is imminent. Rather than abandon a business venture she has been considering, she presses ahead, but the higher rate changes how she intends to finance it: she rejects the bank loan she had originally planned to use.

Once war is underway, Emma treats the stock in her warehouse not as a liability but as a reserve. She expects manufacturers to redirect production toward government requirements, including uniforms, making ordinary merchandise harder to obtain. If necessary, she can sell her own stock through the store. When two commercial travellers covering Scotland leave to enlist, she declines to replace them, judging that the two remaining men, working Manchester and London, will suffice. At the same time, she orders immediate pressure on customers whose accounts are overdue. Her response joins practical adaptation to financial discipline: wartime scarcity may create opportunity, but delayed payments still demand action.

The battlefield and its human cost

The account of the Somme brings the period’s military danger into sharp physical focus. The 51st Division of the Seaforth Highlanders advances behind a moving barrage toward Trônes Wood, marching through ankle-deep mud across fields torn by shelling and cut by trenches and wire. The wood is the objective at the center of a cluster of towns; its defensive lines, railway connections, and machine-gun-protected western edge make it a fortified obstacle, not merely a point on a map. The episode places the regiment’s movement within terrain organized for destruction, where artillery, trenches, and entanglements determine the conditions of advance.

War’s consequences also enter Emma’s family through Winston Harte’s injury. Faced with the possibility that he might not be able to wear an artificial limb, Emma insists that he will walk again, even if she has to design a special leg herself. Her resolve is followed by a difficult recovery: Winston moves between relief, depression, anger, and self-pity, and Emma responds with persistent encouragement and confrontation. His flesh heals quickly; within two months he is moving on crutches, and he is eventually fitted with a leg despite the shortness of his stump. Two extra stump socks cushion it against the metal. His rehabilitation requires repeated trips to Chapel Allerton Limb Fitting Centre, where he receives physical therapy. Emma’s determination matters, but the recovery is not presented as effortless: it depends on Winston’s adjustment as well as the practical work of rehabilitation.

Private histories and the period’s wider arc

The war-era narrative also carries the consequences of Emma’s earlier relationship with Edwin Fairley. When she tells him she is pregnant, his shock gives way to fear of his father’s anger, disinheritance, and the loss of his future as a barrister. Although he considers eloping with her, he does not speak. He weighs her beauty against her position as a servant and decides that the class divide between them cannot be crossed. Emma recognizes his rejection and refuses to go to a doctor; she understands his silence as a refusal to marry her. The moment turns private love into a lasting family secret and a source of pain.

That secrecy has practical as well as emotional consequences. Blackie O’Neill points out that registering the child’s birth requires the father’s name. Emma refuses to name the real father. Blackie proposes that his own name appear on the certificate instead of “father unknown,” while acknowledging that the document will still mark the child as illegitimate. He insists on accompanying Emma to the registrar, offering to take responsibility for the child, whom he calls Edwina Laura Shane. The arrangement shows how a legal requirement can force a private history into public record, and how Blackie’s loyalty gives Emma an alternative to exposing Edwin’s identity.

The period’s wider significance lies in these intersecting pressures. Public war alters markets and draws workers into service; its battles inflict losses that reach homes far from the front. At the same time, Emma’s business calculations and her family’s concealed history show how survival depends on decisions made under constraints of money, class, law, and duty. “The Plateau” thus connects the outward scale of wartime mobilization with the intimate costs that continue to shape Emma’s life.