House of Gold

by Natasha Solomons

  Beyond the kitchen garden was a large area of uncleared land, too wet and steep to be sown with crops and not needed for the garden. Greta reached around her waist to where a polished cow-bell hung on a leather strap and rang it vigorously, the sound echoing throughout the garden, travelling all the way down to the river and back up towards the house. The cow-bell had been a gift from Otto. Greta complained that when she rang a regular silver service-bell in the garden, no one could hear its delicate tinkle and she was reduced to sending a boy to hunt for Withers, or else was forced to tramp, exasperated, through the gardens to look herself. Otto had sourced the cow-bell from the Alps. The sound could echo gamely from Matterhorn slope to grassed valley, and could easily be heard throughout every acre of the Fontmell gardens. Otto suggested it was not even out of place – after all, the cloisters would have chimed hourly with the pealing of the abbey bell.

  A few minutes later Withers appeared.

  ‘You rang, madam.’

  ‘Yes. Have you seen those pamphlets that Lord Goldbaum and Mr Goldbaum have been getting frightfully upset about?’

  ‘The Rowntree ones? Some were dropped in the village.’

  ‘I know. The fury over dinner was palpable. “A Landlord is no more necessary to agriculture than a gold chain to a watch,”’ said Greta, doing her best to sound like an outraged Lord Goldbaum. ‘The pamphlets are full of brimstone and revolution. But the point is, they demand allotments for all who want them. Is there any reason we couldn’t give over the land from here to the river?’

  ‘I’m not sure there is a straight line between the lack of allotments and revolution, madam.’

  ‘No, of course not, Withers. Don’t be facetious. But an allotment might make things a little easier for the working man. And woman,’ she added, with a pointed look at her companion.

  ‘I think it’s an excellent suggestion, madam.’

  Lord Goldbaum agreed, providing that the allotments were properly screened from the estate, and the garden walks did not skirt so close that family or guest would be forced to converse with those working on the allotments. The family sat in the dining room at Temple Court, enduring an uneasy dinner. It was Clement’s first night home since his exile in Switzerland and everyone was on edge. Albert and Otto tried to distract Lord Goldbaum by reminding him of the success with the Kaiser, who was, for the present at least, apparently listening to the advice of his counsellors. Lord Goldbaum remained irritable, declaring the burgundy improperly decanted, the fish not sufficiently boned and the smell of the lilies on the table too strong.

  ‘They overpower the fish, Adelheid. I’m eating flowers, not trout.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t eating the trout in any case.’

  Scowling, Lord Goldbaum turned to look upon his eldest son with displeasure. Clement had returned several stone lighter and with a smooth tan, like a perfectly browned cake taken out of the oven at the ideal moment. Exile had agreed with him. While he did his best to appear chastened and meek, he exuded good health and contentment, which exasperated his father. Clement basked in the private knowledge that he was loved by a good woman who asked for nothing except the freedom to play chess with whomsoever she liked and, most importantly, he was freed from the ghastliness of his destiny. His father had taken away from him everything he could: money, responsibility, the possibility of power; but it had not been the punishment Lord Goldbaum had intended. Instead, Clement realised it had freed him. He still felt the rebuke, his father’s deep and ringing disappointment – now, sitting across the table from him, Lord Goldbaum could barely look at him – but he also experienced a lightness and freedom of possibilities. He had promised Irena that he would not place a single bet, not even a pretend one with a button, and so far his promise had held. His conscience had cleared, with the emptying of the laundry baskets. His only regret was what he had done to his brother. Everything he had been relieved of was now inflicted upon Albert.

  The evening was cool and a fire had been lit in the grate. Lord Goldbaum was pink with anger. Greta’s garden scheme had reminded him again of the outrage of Rowntree’s blasted pamphlet.

  ‘Have you seen the thing?’ he asked Clement.

  ‘I have not, sir. It did not reach Switzerland.’

  ‘That’s something, I suppose. Lloyd George himself wrote the bloody introduction. Where is it, Adelheid?’

  ‘I really have no idea, Robert. I think the best place for it is in the wastepaper basket.’

  Lord Goldbaum, not to be so easily put off, commanded Stanton the butler to produce it. Stanton reappeared a few minutes later with both the pamphlet and his lordship’s reading glasses.

  ‘This is the bit that really gets my goat: “We are afraid of curtailing our luxuries: it is the curtailment of our ideals we should fear. We are afraid of Germany, we should be afraid of England. We talk about the ‘yellow peril’ – the real yellow peril is nearer home, it is the greed of gold.”’ He paused and surveyed his family over the top of his spectacles. ‘That’s us. How dare he single us out? Who is more dedicated to the service of England than us? Surely the business with the Kaiser ought to have shown him that.’

  Lady Goldbaum sighed. ‘It’s a turn of phrase, Robert. The Chancellor of the Exchequer does not waste nearly as much thought on you as you do on him.’

  She rang for coffee. Lord Goldbaum spilled his, in annoyance, and a terrified maid hurried over with a clean saucer.

  Suspecting that he was the true source of his father’s irascibility, Clement ate half a dozen petits fours out of anxiety. Faced with his family, his promise to Irena not to eat too much was proving difficult to keep. He assured himself that this was a mere temporary lapse. He would absolutely resume his diet in the morning.

  When the morning came, all thoughts of diets or anything else were forgotten. In the early hours, Lord Goldbaum suffered a small stroke. Lady Goldbaum, whatever her private thoughts, reassured her stricken eldest son that it had nothing to do with his homecoming. His father had been pushing himself too hard for months. The finest doctors were rushed in from London, their advice unanimous: total rest and then, in time, he could expect to recover.

  Albert was summoned to see his father. He lay propped up in bed on several pillows, his face waxy and pale. Lady Goldbaum sat beside him, while a nurse busied herself in the corner. When he spoke, it was as if he was drunk and he slurred very slightly.

  ‘You must go directly to London. Release a statement. Say—’

  ‘He knows what it should say, Robert. Leave him to it and rest,’ interrupted Lady Goldbaum, exasperated.

  ‘Say I’ll be back on my feet in a jiffy,’ insisted Lord Goldbaum, his voice indistinct.

  ‘I know what to say, Father. And—’

  ‘Make sure you are seen at the Stock Exchange.’

  ‘To calm the markets. I know, Papa, I know.’

  Lord Goldbaum appeared briefly to fall asleep. Albert leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. He embraced his mother and caught the train to London.

  Albert telephoned his mother each morning to enquire after his father’s night, and called Greta every evening. Any immediate danger appeared to have passed and mostly he slept. Lady Goldbaum woke him so that he could eat and drink. Yet an odd pall spread over the house. The maids spoke in whispers – even where they could not possibly be overheard – and Greta found herself trying to reassure Clement of the coincidence of the timing, while also persuading him not to visit his father more than necessary. She instructed Stanton to refrain from putting out the newspapers in the morning room, so that Lady Goldbaum would not read the reports on her husband or see the corresponding wobbles on the stock market. Greta did not have time to venture out in the garden for more than a quick taking of the air before dusk, not wishing to miss Albert’s telephone call. One evening it was Otto who telephoned rather than Albert.

  ‘He wants me to talk to you,’ he said. ‘Thinks I’ll be better able to tell if you’re putting a brave face on it. How is his lordship?’


  ‘Put Albert on this instant.’

  Albert came on the line.

  ‘Don’t be absurd, Albert. There is nothing about your father I would tell Otto that I wouldn’t tell you.’

  ‘I’m sorry. How is he?’

  ‘Same as yesterday. Try not to worry.’

  ‘Thank you. And, Greta, I shall be glad to see you on Friday.’

  When Friday came, Albert found her in the garden as was his wont, and they walked around together discussing his father, and with Greta pointing out the new happenings in the flower beds – the polished heads of the tightly furled peonies, round and smooth as cricket balls, exploding here and there into a tutu of petals.

  ‘What can I do to help?’ she asked. ‘I mean, I’m doing what I can at Temple Court so that your mother can be with him, but I should so like to feel useful.’

  She ran her fingers through the lavender and rosemary as they passed, inhaling the scent they left on her skin. Albert stopped beside a pool of yellow lilies. Then he turned to Greta, visibly uncomfortable.

  ‘You really want to help?’

  ‘Of course. I said so.’

  ‘Then we need to start our family. I want to stop being careful. It’s no longer about you and me, Greta. My father worries that, after me, there is no heir. The markets similarly don’t like it. The House of Goldbaum needs continuity. It is a family bank, but for that we need a family.’

  He began to walk away and, after hesitating for a moment, she followed him. He paused to pull a cleaver of goosegrass from his trousers, disposing of it in the undergrowth. He sighed and glanced at her.

  ‘I’m afraid that, with Clement cut out of the partnership, it all falls to me. And, in time, our son.’

  They reached the butterfly garden, where a horde of tortoiseshell butterflies landed on a purple cloud of verbena, an expanse of pompoms stretching down to the river in streaks of mauve and blue. Half a dozen beehives stamped with the gilded Goldbaum crest were dotted amongst the nettles and buddleia; two of them were made from blown glass, a present from Greta to Albert so that he could watch the bees inside. She could tell when Albert was troubled, as she would find him out in the butterfly garden, his shooting stick pegged beside one of the glass hives as he leaned against it in silence, hypnotised by the liquid teeming of the bees. Greta knew that many husbands would not have been as patient as Albert and would have insisted upon trying for a son immediately. She was not ungrateful.

  ‘May I think about it?’ she said at last.

  Albert nodded. She took his arm and they returned to the house.

  VIENNA, AUGUST

  Karl had not meant to leave the hostel. While the rules irked him – for years he’d answered to no one and nothing, except the needs of his own body – for the most part he considered the petty grievances a worthwhile sacrifice for the food and warmth. He blamed the summer. In the heat of a restless August night, his body could not remember the pain of a January when even the underground canals froze solid, the bones and slops and shit and carcasses of birds and rotting fish heads all suspended together in dirty ice. Instead, he hankered for a mild evening spent out in the park amongst the wayward stars and for the smell of turned earth in the darkness.

  Forty boys slept in his dormitory, and the window was small and barred to prevent them sliding in and out. In the midst of August it was too hot, and the smell and sweat from too many bodies fetid. Worse, his bunk was itchy – there was an outbreak of lice again – and his bedmate snored. Karl appreciated that he was fed and clothed, but somehow he found that he spent his days waiting: he waited for morning prayers to end so that he could eat breakfast, and after that he waited for lunch. There were odd moments of pleasure, when time sped up and rattled like the trains from the grand central Bahnhof, such as when the young Rabbi Herzel took their morning lessons and recited Moses’s feats of daring with a light in his eye and a fleck of spittle in his beard, sprayed from his chops in his enthusiasm. The rabbi didn’t come every day, and mostly Karl waited for the day to end, so that he could slide into bed for another uncomfortable and restless night of heat and scratching and other fellows’ moans while he waited for morning to come, so that he could wait for it all over again. He imagined that his life was pegged along a string, with his birth fixed at one end and his death, unknown, at the other, and he had the urge to tug the string, simply to jiggle things a bit, to make something – anything – happen.

  More out of boredom than any rage, he fought with Rudolf Johannes, blackening his eye, but declined to apologise. Rudolf snored and whimpered in his sleep and Karl was tired of company. The warden gave him until the morning to apologise. Karl left at daybreak.

  The freedom was glorious. He walked and walked, returning to his old haunts. Rosy light toasted the city and the Goldbaum Palace was finally awash with gold, its stone radiant in the dawn. He had taken his few possessions with him: his knapsack of treasures, and his blanket – lice or not, he would be grateful for it soon. He did not take any books. Those he was most sorry to leave, but to have kept them would have felt like theft. He walked on for hours, listening to the morning howls of the city dogs. It all belonged to him. He sat on a bench and closed his eyes. He did not pray.

  By twelve o’clock he was hungry. His stomach growled and he knew he ought to start to knock on doors and ask for pennies in exchange for work, but he could not bring himself to do so. His hunger irritated him. He’d softened, he realised. In the old days, he’d trained himself not to notice the demands of his belly. He could manage entire days without either eating or feeling hungry. The first he would know of it was the cramps and the unreal sensation of light-headedness. Yes, he had grown soft in his months of cosseting in the hostel. He must toughen up again before winter. Still, it was difficult to imagine such things now. The warm sun baked the pavements. Smart ladies walked with parasols, less smart ones dabbed their faces with cotton handkerchiefs or with a sleeve. The air was thick with the scent of summer, but already his euphoria at his new-found freedom had dissipated, popping like soap bubbles in the wind.

  In the early afternoon he found himself in a synagogue. It was unpleasantly hot outside and he told himself that he simply wanted a drink of water, a break from the sun. He helped himself to a yarmulke from a basket and slid into a chair at the back. It was empty and cool and, tired from the heat and walking, he slept.

  When he woke, he was no longer alone. A rabbi busied himself at the side of the synagogue, piling up prayer books and muttering to himself.

  ‘Good, you’re awake,’ he said, looking over towards Karl.

  Karl suspected that the banging of books had been deliberate.

  ‘Hungry?’ asked the rabbi.

  Karl nodded. The rabbi led him to a small room off the main hall. He opened a cupboard and produced a loaf of bread and a packet of cheese, carefully cutting a slice of each and putting them on a plate for Karl. He gestured to a sink in the corner of the room. Obediently, Karl washed his hands, reciting the prayer before meals under his breath, because it was expected and he half-feared that if he did not say it, the rabbi would take the bread and cheese and put them back in the cupboard. The rabbi sat and watched as Karl ate, interrupting only to offer him a drink of water and another piece of bread.

  ‘There’s a hostel for unfortunate Jewish boys. I can take you,’ said the rabbi, when Karl had finished.

  ‘I’ve tried it,’ said Karl. ‘It didn’t take.’

  The rabbi was silent, considering.

  ‘The caretaker here has left. I was about to advertise, but I think you could manage it. Some cleaning. Preparing the schul before a service. You’d sleep in the synagogue at night on a camp bed, close enough to the Ark and bimah to keep away any thieves. The Torah scrolls here are very precious. They were a gift from the Goldbaums.’

  Karl studied the face of the rabbi. He had only the merest touch of grey in his beard and wore thick spectacles. Each eye looked in a slightly different direction, so that when he smiled, Karl
couldn’t quite be certain that it was at him.

  ‘It is a very kind offer,’ he said at last.

  ‘So you accept?’ asked the rabbi.

  Karl hesitated. ‘I am not sure if I am a Jew. They say I am. But who can say for sure?’

  ‘God. Or your mother, but I take it we can’t rely on her?’

  Karl shook his head.

  ‘Then we trust in God.’ The rabbi smiled, each eye glancing out to the side. ‘What do you say? Are you a Jew?’

  Karl said nothing for a moment. A great deal depended upon his answer. It would be comfortable here and he would be freer than in the hostel. He had learned not to pass up good things. Yet perhaps it was also… what was the word they used to describe destiny? Bashert. That was it. Perhaps his coming here was bashert.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am a Jew.’

  HAMPSHIRE, SEPTEMBER

  It was a secret as small as a leaf. It belonged only to her. Greta wanted to know exactly how she felt, before telling anyone else. She did not want Albert’s dynastic joy, his satisfaction that the family would go on. This tiny thing inside her was not yet a Goldbaum, with all that entailed, it was only an ash leaf or a willow fish, flicking and twisting. The thought of it gave her great pleasure, a warming sense of possibility. She planted seeds and bulbs all through the borders, hundreds upon hundreds of alliums, the hairy bulbs stinking of onions. When they bloomed the following spring in giant lollipops of white and lilac, they would herald the arrival of her baby. She liked to think of it growing inside her like a bulb in the ground, warm and snug, nudging outwards.

  For the first time since they had moved into Fontmell, she climbed the stairs into the nursery. The rooms were chilled and smelled damply of thatch and she could hear the scuttle of mice in the rafters, but the views through the windows stretched all the way down to the river. On a clear day, from up here it might even be possible to glimpse the sea – such an outlook must be good for a child’s soul. There was no outward sign of her new state; her stomach was perfectly flat and she felt neither sick nor tired. Her breasts were sore but no larger, and Anna made no remark when she fastened Greta into her corset, nor did she comment on the lack of soiled napkins for the last weeks.