Fall of Giants

by Follett, Ken

  Then Ethel would turn the thumbscrews.

  { III }

  Fitz watched the miners’ children queuing up for their lunch—or “dinner,” as they called it. Their faces were dirty, their hair was unkempt, and their clothes were ragged, but they looked happy. Children were amazing. These were among the poorest in the land, and their fathers were locked in a bitter dispute, but the children showed no sign of it.

  Every since marrying Bea he had longed for a child. She had miscarried once, and he was terrified she might do so again. Last time she had thrown a tantrum simply because he had canceled their trip to Russia. If she found out that he had made their housekeeper pregnant, her rage would be uncontrollable.

  And the dreadful secret was in the hands of a servant girl.

  He was tortured by worry. It was a terrible punishment for his sin. In other circumstances he might have taken some joy in having a child with Ethel. He could have put mother and baby into a little house in Chelsea and visited them once a week. He felt another stab of regret and longing at the poignancy of that daydream. He did not want to treat Ethel harshly. Her love had been sweet to him: her yearning kisses, her eager touch, the heat of her young passion. Even while he was telling her the bad news, he had wished he could run his hands over her lithe body and feel her kissing his neck in that hungry way that he found so exhilarating. But he had to harden his heart.

  As well as being the most exciting woman he had ever kissed, she was intelligent and well-informed and funny. Her father always talked about current affairs, she had told him. And the housekeeper at Tŷ Gwyn was entitled to read the earl’s newspapers after the butler had finished with them—a below-stairs rule that he had not known about. Ethel asked him unexpected questions that he could not always answer, such as “Who ruled Hungary before the Austrians?” He was going to miss that, he thought sadly.

  But she would not behave the way a discarded mistress was supposed to. Solman had been shaken by his conversation with her. Fitz had asked him: “What does she want?” but Solman did not know. Fitz harbored a dreadful suspicion that Ethel might tell Bea the whole story, just out of some twisted moral desire to let the truth come out. God help me keep her away from my wife, he prayed.

  He was surprised to see the small round form of Perceval Jones, strutting across the lawn in green plus fours and walking boots. “Good morning, my lord,” said the mayor, doffing his brown felt hat.

  “Morning, Jones.” As chairman of Celtic Minerals Jones was the source of a great deal of Fitz’s wealth, but all the same he did not like the man.

  “The news is not good,” Jones said.

  “You mean from Vienna? I understand the Austrian emperor is still working on the wording of his ultimatum to Serbia.”

  “No, I mean from Ireland. The Ulstermen won’t accept home rule, you know. It will make them a minority under a Roman Catholic government. The army is already mutinous.”

  Fitz frowned. He did not like to hear talk of mutiny in the British army. He said stiffly: “No matter what the newspapers may say, I don’t believe that British officers will disobey the orders of their sovereign government.”

  “They already have!” said Jones. “What about the Curragh Mutiny?”

  “No one disobeyed orders.”

  “Fifty-seven officers resigned when ordered to march on the Ulster Volunteers. You may not call that mutiny, my lord, but everyone else does.”

  Fitz grunted. Jones was unfortunately right. The truth was that English officers would not attack their fellow men in the defense of a mob of Irish Catholics. “Ireland should never have been promised independence,” he said.

  “I agree with you there,” said Jones. “But I really came to talk to you about this.” He indicated the children, seated on benches at trestle tables, eating boiled cod with cabbage. “I wish you’d put an end to it.”

  Fitz did not like to be told what to do by his social inferiors. “I don’t care to let the children of Aberowen starve, even if it’s the fault of their fathers.”

  “You’re just prolonging the strike.”

  The fact that Fitz received a royalty on every ton of coal did not mean, in his view, that he was obliged to take the side of the mine owners against the men. Offended, he said: “The strike is your concern, not mine.”

  “You take the money quick enough.”

  Fitz was outraged. “I have no more to say to you.” He turned away.

  Jones was instantly contrite. “I beg your pardon, my lord, do forgive me—an overhasty remark, most ill-judged, but the matter is extremely tiresome.”

  It was hard for Fitz to refuse an apology. He was not mollified, but all the same he turned back and spoke to Jones courteously. “All right, but I shall continue to give the children dinner.”

  “You see, my lord, a coal miner may be stubborn on his own account, and suffer a good deal of hardship through foolish pride; but what breaks him, in the end, is to see his children go hungry.”

  “You’re working the pit anyway.”

  “With third-rate foreign labor. Most of the men are not trained miners, and their output is small. Mainly we’re using them to maintain the tunnels and keep the horses alive. We’re not bringing up much coal.”

  “For the life of me I can’t think why you evicted those wretched widows from their homes. There were only eight of them, and after all they had lost their husbands in the damn pit.”

  “It’s a dangerous principle. The house goes with the collier. Once we depart from that, we’ll end up as nothing better than slum landlords.”

  Perhaps you should not have built slums, then, Fitz thought, but he held his tongue. He did not want to prolong the conversation with this pompous little tyrant. He looked at his watch. It was half past twelve: time for a glass of sherry. “It’s no good, Jones,” he said. “I shan’t fight your battles for you. Good day.” He walked briskly to the house.

  Jones was the least of his worries. What was he going to do about Ethel? He had to make sure Bea was not upset. Apart from the danger to the unborn baby, he felt the pregnancy might be a new start for their marriage. The child might bring them together and re-create the warmth and intimacy they had had when they were first together. But that hope would be dashed if Bea learned he had been dallying with the housekeeper. She would be incandescent.

  He was grateful for the cool of the hall, with its flagstones underfoot and hammer-beam ceiling. His father had chosen this feudal decor. The only book Papa had ever read, apart from the Bible, was Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He believed that the even greater British Empire would go the same way unless noblemen fought to preserve its institutions, especially the Royal Navy, the Church of England, and the Conservative Party.

  He was right, Fitz had no doubt.

  A glass of dry sherry was just the thing before lunch. It perked him up and sharpened his appetite. With a pleasant feeling of anticipation, he entered the morning room. There he was horrified to see Ethel talking to Bea. He stopped in the doorway and stared in consternation. What was she saying? Was he too late? “What’s going on here?” he said sharply.

  Bea looked at him in surprise and said coolly: “I am discussing pillowcases with my housekeeper. Did you expect something more dramatic?” Her Russian accent rolled the letter r in “dramatic.”

  For a moment he did not know what to say. He realized he was staring at his wife and his mistress. The thought of how intimate he had been with both these women was unsettling. “I don’t know, I’m sure,” he muttered, and he sat down at a writing desk with his back to them.

  The two women carried on with their conversation. It was indeed about pillowcases: how long they lasted, how worn ones could be patched and used by servants, and whether it was best to buy them embroidered or get plain ones and have the housemaids do the embroidery. But Fitz was still shaken. The little tableau, mistress and servant in quiet conversation, reminded him of how terrifyingly easy it would be for Ethel to tell Bea the truth. This could no
t go on. He had to take action.

  He took a sheet of blue crested writing paper from the drawer, dipped a pen in the inkwell, and wrote: “Meet me after lunch.” He blotted the note and slipped it into a matching envelope.

  After a couple of minutes, Bea dismissed Ethel. As she was leaving, Fitz spoke without turning his head. “Come here, please, Williams.”

  She came to his side. He noticed the light fragrance of scented soap—she had admitted stealing it from Bea. Despite his anger, he was uncomfortably aware of the closeness of her slim, strong thighs under the black silk of the housekeeper’s dress. Without looking at her he handed her the envelope. “Send someone to the veterinary surgery in town to get a bottle of these dog pills. They’re for kennel cough.”

  “Very good, my lord.” She went out.

  He would resolve the situation in a couple of hours’ time.

  He poured his sherry. He offered a glass to Bea but she declined. The wine warmed his stomach and eased his tension. He sat next to his wife, and she gave him a friendly smile. “How do you feel?” he said.

  “Revolting, in the mornings,” she said. “But that passes. I’m fine now.”

  His thoughts quickly returned to Ethel. She had him over a barrel. She had said nothing, but implicitly she was threatening to tell Bea everything. It was surprisingly crafty of her. He fretted impotently. He would have liked to settle the matter even sooner than this afternoon.

  They had lunch in the small dining room, sitting at a square-legged oak table that might have come from a medieval monastery. Bea told him she had discovered there were some Russians in Aberowen. “More than a hundred, Nina tells me.”

  With an effort, Fitz put Ethel from his mind. “They will be among the strikebreakers brought in by Perceval Jones.”

  “Apparently they are being ostracized. They can’t get service in the shops and cafés.”

  “I must get Reverend Jenkins to preach a sermon on loving your neighbor, even if he is a strikebreaker.”

  “Can’t you just order the shopkeepers to serve them?”

  Fitz smiled. “No, my dear, not in this country.”

  “Well, I feel sorry for them and I would like to do something for them.”

  He was pleased. “That’s a kindly impulse. What do you have in mind?”

  “I believe there is a Russian Orthodox church in Cardiff. I will get a priest up here to perform a service for them one Sunday.”

  Fitz frowned. Bea had converted to the Church of England when they married, but he knew that she hankered for the church of her childhood, and he saw it as a sign that she was unhappy in her adopted country. But he did not want to cross her. “Very well,” he said.

  “Then we could give them dinner in the servants’ hall.”

  “It’s a nice thought, my dear, but they might be a rough crowd.”

  “We’ll feed only those who come to the service. That way we will exclude the Jews and the worst of the troublemakers.”

  “Shrewd. Of course, the townspeople may not like you for it.”

  “But that is of no concern to me or you.”

  He nodded. “Very well. Jones has been complaining that I am supporting the strike by feeding the children. If you entertain the strikebreakers, at least no one can say that we’re taking sides.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  The pregnancy had already improved their relationship, Fitz thought.

  He had two glasses of hock with his lunch, but his anxiety came back when he left the dining room and made his way to the Gardenia Suite. Ethel held his fate in her hands. She had all of a woman’s soft, emotional nature, but nevertheless she would not be told what to do. He could not control her, and that scared him.

  But she was not there. He looked at his watch. It was a quarter past two. He had said “after lunch.” Ethel would have known when coffee had been served and she should have been waiting for him. He had not specified the location, but surely she could work that out.

  He began to feel apprehensive.

  After five minutes he was tempted to leave. No one kept him waiting like this. But he did not want to leave the issue unresolved for another day, or even another hour, so he stayed.

  She came in at half past two.

  He said angrily: “What are you trying to do to me?”

  She ignored the question. “What the hell were you thinking of, to make me talk to a lawyer from London?”

  “I thought it would be less emotional.”

  “Don’t be bloody daft.” Fitz was shocked. No one had talked to him like this since he was a schoolboy. She went on: “I’m having your baby. How can it be unemotional?”

  She was right, he had been foolish, and her words stung, but at the same time he could not help loving the music of her accent—the word “unemotional” having a different note for each of its five syllables, so that it sounded like a melody. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll pay you double—”

  “Don’t make it worse, Teddy,” she said, but her tone was softer. “Don’t bargain with me, as if this was a matter of the right price.”

  He pointed an accusing finger. “You are not to speak to my wife, do you hear me? I won’t have it!”

  “Don’t give me orders, Teddy. I’ve got no reason to obey you.”

  “How dare you speak to me like that?”

  “Shut up and listen, and I’ll tell you.”

  He was infuriated by her tone, but he remembered that he could not afford to antagonize her. “Go on, then,” he said.

  “You’ve behaved to me in a very unloving way.”

  He knew that was true, and he felt a stab of guilt. He was wretchedly sorry to have hurt her. But he tried not to show it.

  She went on: “I still love you too much to want to spoil your happiness.”

  He felt even worse.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. She swallowed and turned away, and he saw tears in her eyes. He began to speak, but she held up her hand to silence him. “You are asking me to leave my job and my home, so you must help me start a new life.”

  “Of course,” he said. “If that’s what you wish.” Talking in more practical terms helped them both suppress their feelings.

  “I’m going to London.”

  “Good idea.” He could not help being pleased: no one in Aberowen would know she had a baby, let alone whose it was.

  “You’re going to buy me a little house. Nothing fancy—a working-class neighborhood will suit me very well. But I want six rooms, so that I can live on the ground floor and take in a lodger. The rent will pay for repairs and maintenance. I will still have to work.”

  “You’ve thought about this carefully.”

  “You’re wondering how much it will cost, I expect, but you don’t want to ask me, because a gentleman doesn’t like to ask the price of things.”

  It was true.

  “I looked in the newspaper,” she said. “A house like that is about three hundred pounds. Probably cheaper than paying me two pounds a month for the rest of my life.”

  Three hundred pounds was nothing to Fitz. Bea could spend that much on clothes in one afternoon at the Maison Paquin in Paris. He said: “But you would promise to keep the secret?”

  “And I promise to love and care for your child, and raise her—or him—to be happy and healthy and well-educated, even though you don’t show any sign of being concerned about that.”

  He felt indignant, but she was right. He had hardly given a thought to the child. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m too worried about Bea.”

  “I know,” she said, her tone softening as it always did when he allowed his anxiety to show.

  “When will you leave?”

  “Tomorrow morning. I’m in just as much of a hurry as you. I’ll get the train to London, and start looking for a house right away. When I’ve found the right place, I’ll write to Solman.”

  “You’ll have to stay in lodgings while you look for a house.” He took his wallet from the inside po
cket of his jacket and handed her two white five-pound notes.

  She smiled. “You have no idea how much things cost, do you, Teddy?” She gave back one of the notes. “Five pounds is plenty.”

  He looked offended. “I don’t want you to feel that I’m short-changing you.”

  Her manner changed, and he caught a glimpse of underlying rage. “Oh, you are, Teddy, you are,” she said sourly. “But not in money.”

  “We both did it,” he said defensively, glancing at the bed.

  “But only one of us is going to have a baby.”

  “Well, let’s not argue. I’ll tell Solman to do what you have suggested.”

  She held out her hand. “Good-bye, Teddy. I know you’ll keep your word.” Her voice was even, but he could tell that she was struggling to maintain her composure.

  He shook hands, even though it seemed odd for two people who had made passionate love. “I will,” he said.

  “Please leave now, quickly,” she said, and she turned aside.

  He hesitated a moment longer, then left the room.

  As he walked away, he was surprised and ashamed to feel unmanly tears come to his eyes. “Good-bye, Ethel,” he whispered to the empty corridor. “May God bless and keep you.”

  { IV }

  She went to the luggage store in the attic and stole a small suitcase, old and battered. No one would ever miss it. It had belonged to Fitz’s father, and had his crest stamped in the leather: the gilding had worn off long ago, but the impression could still be made out. She packed stockings and underwear and some of the princess’s scented soap.

  Lying in bed that night, she decided she did not want to go to London after all. She was too frightened to go through this alone. She wanted to be with her family. She needed to ask her mother questions about pregnancy. She should be in a familiar place when the baby came. Her child would need its grandparents and its uncle Billy.

  In the morning she put on her own clothing, left her housekeeper’s dress hanging from its nail, and crept out of Tŷ Gwyn early. At the end of the drive she looked back at the house, its stones black with coal dust, its long rows of windows reflecting the rising sun, and she thought how much she had learned since she first came here to work as a thirteen-year-old fresh from school. Now she knew how the elite lived. They had strange food, prepared in complicated ways, and they wasted more than they ate. They all spoke with the same strangled accent, even some of the foreigners. She had handled rich women’s beautiful underwear, fine cotton and slippery silk, hand-sewn and embroidered and trimmed with lace, twelve of everything piled in their chests of drawers. She could look at a sideboard and tell at a glance in what century it had been made. Most of all, she thought bitterly, she had learned that love is not to be trusted.