House of Gold

by Natasha Solomons

  When he wanted peace, he disappeared from the synagogue and slipped down one of the many entrances to the tunnels. Unlike Karl the Jew, Karl the Kanalrat was perfectly at ease. He slid into the shadow streets beneath the Ringstrasse and sat in the dark, listening. It stank of rot and death in the heat – Karl noticed the reek, now that he was clean. Yet it was strangely comforting here. He was alone, unwatched.

  Somewhere in the streets above, people were making decisions about war. Karl couldn’t understand what the murder of a prince had to do with him. If he died, the Prince would not avenge him. Perhaps he ought to feel frightened, but to Karl, sitting in the hot dark, listening to the rush and chug of the underground river, war was too distant to contemplate. War and noise and the hurry of men belonged to that other world above.

  LONDON, 27TH JULY

  Lord Goldbaum read the markets like a soothsayer interpreted coffee-grounds, and the markets themselves reassured him. The Vienna Stock Exchange had slid in the middle of the month, but in London any turbulence remained undetectable. The headlines roared catastrophe and dread, but the markets revealed men’s true expectations. In his experience, a man was more honest with his broker than with his rabbi, taking more care with his cash than with his soul.

  Then, on 27th July, his head clerk knocked on the door to the partners’ room to inform him that there was a great deal of movement on the Stock Exchange. Within an hour, Lord Goldbaum detected that all the continental banks, most particularly the German and Austrian ones, were taking out a very large amount of money from the Stock Exchange and that the German government had stopped paying interest on its loans to British banks, including those owing to the House of Goldbaum. Those firms that conducted large amounts of their business with the continent would soon be in dire straits. He estimated that there were already three hundred million pounds’ worth of bills of exchange currently outstanding. If war broke out, they would never be honoured. He wired a warning to Paris. Jacques replied with a coded telegram requesting a vast sale of gold for the French government. When it arrived, Lord Goldbaum drew down the blind in the partners’ room and ate chicken-and-leek pie without tasting a mouthful. His French cousins clearly believed that war was imminent and wanted to stock their government’s war chest.

  He found himself caught in a ghastly moral quandary. It was taken as a matter of faith that communications between the partners of the different Houses of Gold were utterly confidential. But he realised with creeping dread that he must now put nation before family. Always before, there had been a way to serve his country and the interests of the Goldbaums. He felt something inside him snap, like a tendon. He was unmoored and unhappy. He took a sip of milk to soothe his stomach and sighed. Jacques had been his friend and confidant for many years. Edgar he admired and respected. These men were his cousins as well as his partners, and while he worked in the London office, frustrated by the demands of industry or government, he took solace in the fact that his kin in Vienna and Paris and Berlin toiled in near-identical rooms, feeling much the same.

  He pictured the various European Houses of Goldbaum as pearls strung upon a necklace, and he saw war as the anvil-strike to smash that chain apart. With a sense of sadness rising in his throat, he understood that in the end it would be his younger son who must navigate the British family through this new and unfortunate age. This was not the legacy he had wished to leave Albert.

  Forcing his hand not to shake, Lord Goldbaum composed a reply to Jacques: ‘Regret no. Treachery to send British gold to Europe with war on knife edge.’

  He then sent two further telegrams. The first to the Prime Minister, breaking the unspoken oath to his family, and warning Asquith that the markets clearly sensed imminent war. The second telegram he sent was to Albert. It said: ‘Return Home Immediately.’

  ZIRL, 28TH JULY

  Albert and Greta had left the hotel for a picnic when the telegram arrived. The postmaster placed the message into Anna’s hand himself and, on reading it, she was torn between putting on her hat and venturing out to look for her mistress herself or starting to pack what things she could. She spoke to the innkeeper, seized her hat and started to run.

  Exuberantly, Greta had discovered a large clump of edelweiss and, with Albert’s help, was spending a cheerful morning digging up a large specimen and packing it into a hat box, lined with a mackintosh. She sprinkled it meticulously with water from Albert’s flask.

  ‘Are you sure it wouldn’t like a drop of whisky from my other flask?’ he asked.

  Greta was distracted from answering, on seeing a slight figure in a blue dress hurrying towards them.

  On reaching them, Anna doubled over, a stitch burning her side. ‘We must leave at once. Lord Goldbaum wired.’

  Greta stared at her, aghast.

  Albert took the telegram from Anna, read it and then handed it wordlessly to Greta.

  ‘There’s a trap waiting at the hotel to take us to the station at Innsbruck,’ said Anna, impatient to be gone.

  ‘Well done – good girl,’ said Albert, already gathering up their things.

  They hastened down the mountain path in silence and, on reaching the hotel, climbed into the pony and trap. They arrived at the railway station in Innsbruck with no luggage, only the little money that Albert had on his person, and an edelweiss lovingly wrapped up in brown paper.

  LONDON, AUGUST

  Lord Goldbaum’s cold did not improve, instead it strayed into his chest. He retired to his bedroom at Number One, Park Lane, and Lady Goldbaum quit Hampshire to be by her husband’s side. She did her best to repel all visitors. Every day, as they opened the papers, they expected to find that war had been declared. It appeared inevitable. The only question was when.

  To Lord Goldbaum’s utter dismay, it was also looking increasingly likely that war could end the banking houses. For years European finances had been woven across borders, all the economies braided together, intricately and firmly. German companies borrowed in London, and London banks raised funds in Paris and Naples and Berlin. Now, after decades of cooperation, nations were attempting to separate in an instant. The ties were being yanked apart in the capitals, and the financial markets of Europe looked suddenly flimsy and bare. Stockbrokers, bankers and politicians scrambled to salvage funds, but money and gold poured out of the Stock Exchange, rushing like water into a drain during a storm. From his bed, propped up amongst a multitude of pillows, Lord Goldbaum dictated a letter to the Chancellor, urging him to close the Stock Exchange until the crisis had eased, and to suspend the law insisting upon the convertibility of money into gold. If the law was not relaxed, then banks would start to fail, he warned.

  As she sat in her husband’s room after supper, it occurred to Lady Goldbaum that she had not been disturbed by a single courier all day.

  Lord Goldbaum was asleep when the Chancellor of the Exchequer was shown into his bedroom and was somewhat startled to find, on wakening, an embarrassed Lloyd George sitting in the armchair. He stretched out his hand and Lloyd George took it, starting to say, ‘Lord Goldbaum, we have had some political unpleasantness in the past—’

  ‘Mr Lloyd George, this is no time to remember such things. What can I do to help?’

  A loan of one million pounds was agreed upon, in the event of the war that, although undeclared, now appeared a certainty. Yet the Chancellor hesitated, still not taking his leave.

  ‘Is there anything else I can help you with, Mr Lloyd George?’ inquired Lord Goldbaum.

  ‘There is a steamer that has started for South America and, although it is supposedly neutral, we have reason to suspect she contains supplies for the Germans, most probably bullion.’

  ‘You wish me to stop the ship?’

  ‘I do.’

  Lord Goldbaum rang the bell and his valet brought him pen and paper. With some difficulty, he scribbled a note, realising that his hand did not want to grasp the pen properly. When he glanced down at his own handwriting, he saw that it was the shaky inscription of an old ma
n. He passed the note to the valet.

  ‘It is done. An easy thing,’ he said to Lloyd George.

  After he had gone, Lord Goldbaum lay back on his pillow, exhausted from the effort of conversation. He closed his eyes; he wanted to sleep and he wanted his son.

  AUSTRIAN / SWISS BORDER, AUGUST

  They only had enough money to travel third-class. The shared compartment was cramped and hot. Anna vanished to try and find coffee with a little of what was left of Albert’s cash. Greta and Albert sat opposite one another, quiet and tense, squeezed in beside a family with their three young boys, who picnicked constantly from an apparently bottomless hamper, the mother offering pâté and biscuits and little smoked fish to Greta and Albert, who accepted out of politeness, too anxious to eat.

  Greta had never been on a public train before, let alone in third-class, and under different circumstances she would have been fascinated by the cacophony of people and noise, and even a stray chicken, sleeping amongst the boxes in the luggage rack above them. As it was, she hardly noticed her travelling companions and sat still and silent, staring out of the window. They needed to cross the border into Switzerland before war between Austria and England was declared, or they would be trapped. Albert spoke as little as possible and mostly in whispers, concerned that his English accent would be overheard. Greta had never thought she would feel so afraid, surrounded by her own countrymen. She remembered her last train journey through the Jura with Otto before the wedding. Otto, whom she would not see again until after the war. Otto who ought now to have been safe in New York, if it hadn’t been for her. She sat with her hand on her belly and took long, steady breaths to stop herself from crying.

  Outside, the valleys were hazy with heat, the green slopes of the mountains indistinct. Narrow rivers threaded their way beside the railway track, the long grass on the banks sprinkled with blurs of pink and purple that Greta knew to be bird-vetch and rampion. Albert brushed a stray hair from her cheek.

  ‘At Feldkirch we must change trains again. I shall take one to Bern and then, from Switzerland, travel to Paris.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Greta, not understanding why he was rehearsing the itinerary again. ‘I know. We should be safe enough, once we get to Switzerland. From Paris we shall travel quickly to London.’

  ‘That is what I shall do,’ Albert said slowly, taking her hand in his and toying absently with her fingers. Her nails were filthy from constant travel and quick sluices in station sinks. He studied her face and, realising that she did not understand what he was trying to convey, said, ‘I shall travel to Paris and back to England, but you don’t have to come with me. At Feldkirch there is an express train to Vienna. You could be with your family tomorrow night.’

  She stared at him. He released her hand as though he did not wish to try to sway her, or perhaps he was already letting her go.

  ‘I must go back to England. But whether you come with me is entirely up to you.’

  Greta was silent, considering the gift he was presenting to her. To spend a war in England, while the country was fighting her motherland, was a grim proposition. She would be regarded with suspicion by most of their acquaintances, an enemy in their midst. She must suffer constant gloating reports of Austrian casualties and defeats, and the denigration of her former nation and home. There was no knowing when she would see her parents and Otto again. The connection between the English and French Houses of Goldbaum on the one side, and the German and Austrian Houses on the opposing one, must be severed. The family was obliged to break apart and she must choose a side.

  She tried to imagine returning to Vienna. The baby would be placed in her old nursery, in her own crib. Nana would embroider little smocks once again beside the nursery fire. The thought was almost too comforting to bear. But no one could know when she and Albert would see one another again, or when he would meet his own child.

  ‘You would do this for me?’ she asked, amazed.

  ‘I would,’ he answered, but he could not look at her.

  During the time they had been married, Greta and Albert had never mentioned love. It was not a word that passed between them. Now, as she looked at him, Greta understood that his offer was an act of love. He wanted her happiness more than his own.

  She looked out of the window at the vastness of the mountains, their peaks pointing up at the brilliant blue sky. The world was ending on a glorious summer’s day of perfect sunshine and clear skies. The train pulled into a station that was baking in the dust. On the platform, all the papers on the news-stand carried a proclamation from Emperor Franz Joseph, which proclaimed: ‘To my people’.

  But I am not one of your people any more, Greta realised. She turned to Albert, her eyes bright.

  ‘I shall come with you to London,’ she declared.

  He said nothing, only squeezed her hand, and just for a moment. She rested her head against his shoulder and, exhausted, fell asleep for a while. When she woke, it was dark. The mountains were vast shadows out of the window. Too tired and frightened to talk, they sat and waited, their knees touching. Inside her, the baby rolled and fluttered, Greta’s heartbeat as steady as another train. On and on they rushed, closer and closer to Switzerland.

  1917

  War is the normal occupation of man – war and gardening.

  Winston Churchill in conversation with Siegfried Sassoon, WWI

  NEAR PINSK, EASTERN FRONT, WHITE RUSSIA, 1ST JANUARY

  One Minute Past Midnight

  Otto’s servant had discovered a bottle of champagne. Otto could hardly imagine from where, but it was cold – almost too cold – and the bubbles burst upwards like the stars of the Milky Way. At midnight there had risen a volley of fire from behind the Russian position, marking the New Year rather than another skirmish. The army lines were stretched thin, pulled taut over a thousand miles until they snapped and soldiers from one side or another trickled in, before they were cut off from their supply routes. A new front was sketched in pencil on the map, not so thick that Otto couldn’t rub it out again in a week, a month. That’s all this war was: lines on a page moving forward and back like the tide marks on the beach. A rhythmic rise and fall, but with each ebb the earth was rubbed with blood and filth.

  Whenever they pushed on to take ground the Russians had given up, they found stricken villages overflowing with dysentery and typhoid, sloppy rivers contaminated with swollen horses and human excrement. In retreat, it was all they could do to put onto oxen carts their own wounded and sick, trouserless and shitting out of the back of the carts. Otto had instructed his junior officers to threaten the men, if they broke the directive of the medical corps to drink only boiled water and eat cooked fruit and vegetables. But then orders came from central command that they mustn’t light fires to give away their position, and next they ran out of rations. Otto hadn’t the heart to flog a man who drank in desperation from a dirty puddle, or ate raw turnips straight from the field. There was no time to dig latrines during the rush of advance or retreat. Besides, in their weakened state, the men suffering from dysentery had to be held above the latrine pit to stop them from falling in and drowning.

  Yet from somewhere Gruber had conjured a bottle of champagne. Otto sat in the dark outside his tent and swigged it out of an empty beef tin, making the vintage oddly metallic on his tongue. He realised he must be drunk. It was a melancholy, joyless kind of drunk, not the dizzy euphoria of an earlier life. To his relief, the champagne bubbles dulled the itching of the lice. He wondered vaguely whether the lice were drunk too, asleep propped up beneath a strand of armpit hair. He longed to shave or at least trim his beard, but the best he could manage was to allow Gruber to hack at it with a knife. It was odd, this slow descent from man into creature. His soft gentleman’s hands were now cracked and hard, the nails stuck with dirt, but it didn’t prevent him from eating with them. They’d lost their cutlery canteen a year ago on the scrambled retreat through the Carpathian Mountains, and after six months had stopped requesting a replacement. The cutlery c
anteen in its handsome wicker basket, along with the Hapsburg Blue officers’ picnicking rugs and their polished brass guns, belonged to another era of civilised warfare. They were abandoned with the saddles that were calculated to give a cavalry officer the perfect seat – designed, presumably, to disarm enemies with their elegance, concluded Otto – but which chafed rider and mount so severely that the horses had to be led into battle.

  Otto was almost the only officer in his battalion who remained from the start of the war. The rest had been wounded and sent home, killed or captured. When he awoke each morning, he wondered with casual interest which gun was pointed at him, the one marked ‘luck’ or the one marked ‘death’. The only fellow who had been with him since they arrived in the east was his servant. He’d grown fond of Gruber. He was a constant, the anchored spike in the spinning top of men coming and going and dying. The battalion and some entire companies within it were now filled out with Germans. Few Austrians remained, and those who did were an assortment of Hungarians, Czechs and Russian-speaking Ruthenians who tended to desert in the night, slipping across the lines towards the Russian front and disappearing. Some of the officers now needed to issue commands in seven languages before all soldiers understood.

  Otto no longer thought about the futility of war. Instead, he accepted the futility of everything else. He had longed for freedom from being a Goldbaum, and here, alone on the frozen Galician marshes despite the presence of half a million other men, Otto felt the bony hand of fate in granting his wish. He had joined up in the fervour of that first August – his father bewildered, but touched by the apparent patriotism of his son. Otto had known that his regiment would call up all reserves and preferred to choose his own moment rather than wait, restless and uneasy. His wish had been granted. Out here his name could gain him nothing, for he had strayed beyond the tether of its influence. He felt an odd sort of relief at the liberty. Despite the acute discomfort, the stink and the cold, he was at last the man he wanted to be: he was no one. He kept two vestiges of his old life: his father’s watch, as he liked it, and it kept perfect time; and, secreted beside his skin, he kept his cheque book. He was dubious that a cheque written out here would do very much. He did not use it to produce another blanket or lighter duties, for anonymity was more precious to him than warmth. And yet he did not toss the cheque book away. He tried to once or twice, standing beside the brazier or a deep snowdrift, but somehow it made its way back inside his shirt, carefully stashed beside his heart, the way other soldiers hid prayers or letters from their lovers.