House of Gold

by Natasha Solomons

  Greta sighed and closed the curtain, turning to face her brother.

  ‘You have to go to America, Otto, but does it have to be right away?’

  Otto looked at her, but said nothing.

  ‘Surely setting up a bank in America takes a good deal of preparation?’ she added, pleading a little. ‘Can’t I have a little time to get used to the idea? Tell Lord Goldbaum that yes, you’ll go, but not until next year?’

  Otto was silent, considering.

  ‘It sounds like a sensible plan to me,’ said Albert, joining them and sitting beside his wife in the window seat.

  Otto rose and placed another log on the fire.

  Albert cleared his throat and continued. ‘You could return to Vienna in the New Year, and plan on leaving for America in autumn. That way, you would have some months to make arrangements. The capital required is going to be considerable, and the other Houses will be glad to have more time to raise such a sum.’

  ‘I suppose I could delay for a few months,’ said Otto, reluctantly.

  ‘Vienna already in January?’ said Greta, only partly mollified.

  ‘Yes, but why don’t we visit?’ said Albert, placing a hand on her shoulder. ‘We could go in June and spend the summer in Austria?’

  Husband and wife turned to Otto, faces bright with expectation.

  He sighed, defeated by their united opposition. ‘All right.’

  Greta kissed him on the cheek and rang for champagne.

  1914

  Does anyone seriously suppose that a great war could be undertaken by any European State… if the house of [Goldbaum] and its connections set their face against it?

  J.A. Hobson, historian, 1905

  LAKE GENEVA, SWITZERLAND, JUNE

  Lord Goldbaum could not understand why Albert and Greta needed to be away for quite so long. Surely a month was more than sufficient to visit her family? Albert was adamant. He had promised his wife. They would, of course, return before the baby was born. And, he told his father, she needed a holiday. So long as Greta was near her garden, she was pulling out the aquilegia that had seeded rampantly along the path. The doctor told her to rest, but Greta, while intending to obey his instructions, was seemingly incapable of doing so. One afternoon Albert found her curled up asleep in a wheelbarrow of compost, parked in a sunlit corner. Not wishing to wake her, he trundled it back to the house and placed a blanket over her. He did not mention the wheelbarrow to his father, but he expressed in no uncertain terms that the only way he could ensure that his wife did not exhaust herself in the garden was to take her away from it.

  Greta kept busy so that she didn’t need to think. This time she had not planted bulbs to flower in time with the baby’s arrival, and she would not discuss possible names with Albert. She could not name the small being inside her because that would make it real, and if it was real she couldn’t bear to lose it. She gave no orders for the nurseries to be repainted or for furniture to be delivered. Albert spoke quietly to his mother, who made the necessary arrangements. A crib, rocker, baby chair and nursery table were all commissioned in English oak, the paints for the walls chosen, but nothing would be placed in the rooms until after the baby’s arrival. In any case, Lady Goldbaum told her son, this was the old way of things. A pregnancy was not mentioned in the ghetto until after the child was born and seen to be healthy. Until then, no one could be sure of God’s will, and His wrath ought not be incurred by making assumptions about the gift of life.

  Greta’s regret at being away from the garden was assuaged by her pleasure at the prospect of reuniting with her family. She and Albert did not travel straight to Vienna, meeting them instead at Lake Geneva. The family villa was undergoing a great refurbishment, but Greta and Albert persuaded the Baroness to endure the Grand Hotel Elizabeth Excelsior. They rented the entire first floor, and the owner was thrilled to have the Goldbaums as his guests and accepted reverentially their every request. They brought their own maids and footmen to work alongside the hotel staff; the suites were rehung with artworks from the family’s villa, the wine at dinner was from their cellars. The pianist who played at breakfast on the first morning was unobtrusively replaced on the second with a gentleman from the conservatoire in Vienna.

  Greta did not notice any such trifling details. She liked the hotel. The splendid gardens belonged to someone else, and she could walk through them with pleasure without seeing everything that needed to be done. The air was fragranced with honeyed mimosa and pink waterfalls of magnolia blossom. In the morning as she sipped coffee in her suite, she gazed across the waters of the lake to Mont Blanc through a haze of scarlet geraniums. She ate rolls thickly spread with butter and runny Swiss cheese, and poured smooth hot chocolate from a silver kettle. Her own happiness on seeing Otto again was increased on realising the genuine pleasure with which he and Albert greeted one another. In the afternoons while she slept, Otto, Albert and her father drove out into the countryside to shoot or walk or fish.

  The Baroness offered Greta no advice on motherhood or her confinement, only sympathy, for which Greta was grateful. She nagged her daughter to eat and, realising how Greta hankered for her childhood foods, recalled the chef from his holiday in the Tyrol and summoned him to the hotel to cook. Greta was unaware of these manoeuvrings; she only knew that she sipped beef broth with horseradish dumplings and spread chopped liver and pickles on slivers of rye bread – dishes that were precisely as she remembered them, and ones that she could not replicate in England however often she ordered the cook to try. As she ate her second helping of Tête de Moine cheese with figs and honey, she noticed that she was finally growing fat, her belly swelling comfortably beneath her dress. She relaxed and allowed herself to luxuriate in her mother’s fuss and concern. They sat on the expansive terrace of the Baroness’s suite. The Baroness ventured downstairs to the gardens and main hotel only in the evenings, concerned that she might otherwise be forced to converse with other hotel guests, some of whom she had never even heard of. She lay back in her chair, shading her eyes from the sun.

  ‘Will you come to England afterwards?’ Greta asked uncertainly, knowing how her mother detested all forms of travel.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Baroness, who had just been waiting to be asked.

  She poured tea, a special blend of second-flush Darjeeling with bergamot and scented with lemon. She passed a cup to Greta, who sipped, closing her eyes in contentment.

  ‘Let us do this every summer, Mama. Otto will simply have to come back from New York and join us. He’ll have to, if we both tell him.’

  ‘Before he leaves, he must marry an Austrian girl. Or an English one, I suppose,’ said the Baroness. ‘Then he’ll be tied to Europe. His wife will want to come home from time to time. We mustn’t let him marry an American.’

  ‘Heavens, no,’ agreed Greta.

  Days drifted past, then weeks, as easily as the clouds sliding past the mountain tops. Sometimes Otto and Baron Peter disappeared to Geneva or Vienna for a few days, returning with news and fresh gossip. Otto’s departure for America remained sufficiently far off that Greta could think of it without alarm. He would sail from Liverpool and would come to Hampshire to meet his niece before he left. Albert was certain that the baby was a girl, and declared himself delighted at the prospect. Greta wished she could hold onto this time with her fingertips, bottle it as they had the fireflies they caught on the lake shores as children. Although, she recalled with disquiet, the fireflies never lasted. In the morning they were always dead and dry at the bottom of the glass, their fire extinguished.

  Albert had the suite of rooms beside hers, but he used them only to work, knocking on her door every night and slipping into her bed so regularly that Anna brought his tea and newspaper on a tray each morning. Released from the perpetual scrutiny of his father, Albert appeared more at ease. The couple breakfasted on their terrace in their dressing gowns. Having read the previous day’s copy of the Times sent from London, he turned next to the German and French editions.

>   ‘Your Crown Prince has been shot by some Serbian rebel group,’ he said, appalled.

  ‘Let me see,’ said Greta, taking the paper from him in dismay.

  She read, shaking her head. ‘How absolutely horrid.’

  ‘The Austrian government is outraged,’ said Albert. ‘Understandably so.’

  Greta handed him back the paper, unwilling to read any more. ‘The Emperor has never liked him. I think he will probably be relieved he is dead. The poor man. And his poor wife. They married for love, you know.’

  Albert poured himself another cup of tea. ‘I should speak to your father. He’ll have a good idea whether there will be any consequences from this.’

  Greta closed her eyes. She didn’t want anything to intrude upon these halcyon days. She would not consider death, while amongst the tangled honeysuckle and vines of scarlet bougainvillea.

  ‘Talk to him later. I want to swim after breakfast.’

  She caught the collar of his dressing gown and tugged him close, kissing him. Albert set his paper aside. ‘All right.’

  ‘As long as the Serbians apologise, I can’t see that it will come to much,’ agreed the Baron over luncheon. ‘Greta is right. The Emperor always felt his heir was foisted upon him. But it is an outrage against the Empire, and the apology must be abject.’

  ‘It is a tragedy for Austria,’ said Otto with a sigh. ‘The Prince was a modernist and a reformer, not like the Emperor. Oughtn’t we to return to Vienna?’ he added with considerable reluctance.

  They were dining under a scented canopy of jasmine and vines shading them from the midday sun. The lake shimmered jewel-like in the heat, and here and there small boats swayed on the surface. A distant paddlesteamer made slow progress, as brightly coloured as a child’s toy. An ant marched along a butter knife to reach Otto’s bread roll. The Baron was quiet for a moment, considering before he spoke.

  ‘Not yet, I think. Greta and Albert leave in a few days for their trip to the mountains, and I would be unhappy to have our time together cut short.’ The Baron smiled at his daughter.

  Otto signalled to the footman to pour them more wine. Above the waters of the lake, a mute-swan came in to land, the sunlight catching the white of its wing so that it shone iridescent, brushing the surface of the lake like earthed lightning.

  HAMPSHIRE, LATE JUNE

  Lady Goldbaum was immensely cross. A freak hailstorm had wreaked havoc on the tender plants in the shrubbery. The Magnolia grandiflora was just coming into bud, and they were badly damaged, turning brown and rotting on the tree. The hailstones looked arresting at first, coating the earth in white glass beads for half an hour or so, and she had dispatched Clement with the camera to take photographs. An hour later they had melted, leaving only sludge and chaos. A team of twenty gardeners had replaced the ruined bedding plants in the parterre within a few hours, but the damage sustained to the fruit trees was irreparable. The surviving apples and pears would be pockmarked and spoiled.

  To his wife’s chagrin, Lord Goldbaum was working too hard again. She was almost relieved when a summer cold forced him to return to Temple Court, where she could keep a closer eye upon him. He sat in the library under a cashmere blanket, sneezing and complaining equally of headaches and the idiocy of government. For years Lord Goldbaum had been trying to persuade the Bank of England of the wisdom of building up their gold reserves. Now, alarmed at the size of the German war chest, it had requested that all the banks pooled their gold, to make up for the paucity of their own reserves. Lord Goldbaum was doubly outraged: at the way his advice had been ignored, and at the means with which the government was now attempting to make up for its lack of foresight.

  ‘And the Foreign Secretary wants us to remind the German and Austrian government of the British commitment to our entente with France. Should they attack France, Britain will come to her defence.’ Lord Goldbaum sat back in his chair. ‘He prefers us to talk to our German cousins than go through the official channels.’

  ‘I suppose it seems less of a threat and more a polite reminder,’ replied his wife. She paused for a moment. ‘Ought we to tell Albert and Greta to come home?’ she added quietly.

  Lord Goldbaum was unable to answer, due to a sneezing fit. He reached for his wife’s hand.

  ‘Not yet, Adelheid. Don’t worry. I won’t let them take any chances. If I’m brought any news to cause me the slightest concern, I’ll wire them at once.’

  Outside there was the grind of hooves on gravel. The Goldbaum couriers were busier than usual, bringing constant news from France, Austria, Germany and Ireland. Even at weekends there was no escape, and Lady Goldbaum had learned to dread the sound of the horsemen. They never brought anything good. She coughed in annoyance.

  ‘Stop it, Adelheid,’ said her husband. ‘The arrival of the couriers from the continent is good news in itself. If the horsemen don’t come, that’s when you need to worry.’

  ZIRL, INNSBRUCK DISTRICT, EARLY JULY

  It was a pity the whole sorry business had not already been resolved, but they all agreed that there was no need for Greta and Albert to postpone their holiday in the Alps. After a few weeks’ holidaying, they would travel on to Vienna before finally returning to England.

  The July heat had become unpleasant for Greta, and she was relieved to retreat to the cool of the mountains. They rose late and walked after lunch in the easy warmth of the afternoons. She had always loved the Alps. Even in high summer there was a freshness in the air, and the cows ambled among lush slopes scattered with yellow flowers as liberally as a sky full of stars. The low echo of the cow-bells reminded her of her own bell at Fontmell, and each time she heard one, she half-expected to see Withers hurrying out from behind an alpine chalet. Greta was determined to find gentians and edelweiss to dig up and bring back to the garden, and she walked with a trowel and pots in a canvas knapsack. Albert was hunting for native butterflies and brought his net and killing jar. A mule-cart carried them high up a dirt road into the folds of an alpine track, and they ambled down together, sharing a bottle of mild, sweet wine and scouring the slopes.

  ‘I wish we could stay until the middle of August,’ said Greta. ‘The whole of Austria–Hungary celebrates the Emperor’s birthday. Even the smallest villages put on a show. You’ve never seen anything like it.’

  She paused to investigate a bank of springy moss scattered with violets.

  ‘Have you ever met him?’

  ‘Only once, when he presented my father with a ceremonial glove. He looked old even then, but with remarkably blue eyes. He was surrounded by so many people. Guards in imperial uniforms, dragoons and footmen. I don’t think he is ever alone, not even for a minute.’

  ‘Hold this.’ Albert handed her the killing jar as he smoothly scooped a butterfly from the grass beside Greta. He slid it into the jar, which she shoved back into his hands.

  ‘I’m not holding the jar while it dies. I hate feeling them thud against the glass,’ said Greta.

  ‘It doesn’t feel pain,’ said Albert.

  ‘How do you know – you’re not a butterfly?’

  ‘They don’t have pain receptors like people. They can tell when they’ve been touched, but that’s all. A butterfly will fly and eat and try to mate, even if it’s missing its abdomen.’

  Greta studied the dying butterfly. It was white with a mist of grey around the apex of its wings, but on its hindwing it had several scarlet spots, like drops of blood squeezed from a finger onto a handkerchief.

  ‘I’m tired. Let’s go back,’ she said.

  Albert packed away his equipment, and they returned slowly down the mountain path.

  Later that night Greta dreamed she stood in the Schönbrunn Palace, watching Emperor Franz Joseph playing cards with Death. The Emperor wore his imperial uniform and sported his mutton-chop whiskers, while Death had the wings of a vast Apollo butterfly, white with a spray of deep red. They played in companionable silence, two old, old friends.

  VIENNA, 23RD JULY

  Th
e House of Goldbaum set itself against war. In the partners’ rooms in the banking houses across Europe, the Goldbaum men wrote letters and paid visits to other men who mattered, working to soothe the international crisis. Otto and his father sat in the darkly panelled partners’ room in Vienna, listening to the rattle of typewriters below and waiting for couriers to bring news from London, Paris and Berlin.

  ‘So much confusion and posturing,’ objected the Baron. ‘Everybody speaks and nobody listens.’ He sat down at his desk and started to draft a telegram to his cousins in Berlin and London. ‘We must inform the cousinhood that our government is to issue a six-point ultimatum to the Serbians.’

  ‘The ultimatum is clearly intended to be inflammatory. I can’t understand it. Cousin Edgar was absolutely confident that the German government would rein in ours,’ complained Otto.

  ‘He was wrong. Besides, who rules in Berlin? The Kaiser? The generals? No one seems able to tell us for certain.’

  ‘The Serbians might accede to all the conditions,’ said Otto, still hopeful.

  His father pursed his lips. ‘The Serbians do what the Russians tell them to. If the Russians tell them to concede, then they shall concede; if they tell them to reject the ultimatum, it is because the Russians want a war.’

  Otto took out his pen. ‘France is Russia’s greatest creditor. Perhaps the French can pressurise them to avoid war. I shall write to Henri.’

  The courier waited just outside the door to receive the letter. Down below the groom prepared a fresh horse.

  Further below, beneath the street itself, Karl sat in the dark. Despite the comfort of the synagogue, he always felt like a visitor. He was often alone, but people were constantly dropping by and he found himself on edge, waiting. He liked to be discovered doing something useful – sweeping, studying his Torah portion. On learning that Karl had never had his bar mitzvah, the rabbi declared he must have one, and that he himself would prepare him. Karl murmured prayers as he worked, out of boredom rather than diligence, feeling that he was acting a part.