Fall of Giants

by Follett, Ken

  Maud caught Gus’s eye. They shared the same unspoken thought, she knew. With Asquith in Downing Street, the peace initiative had a chance. If the belligerent Lloyd George won this contest, everything would be different.

  The gong rang in the hall, telling guests it was time to change into evening dress. The tea party broke up. Maud went to her room.

  Her clothes had been laid out ready. The dress was one she had got in Paris for the London season of 1914. She had bought few clothes since. She took off her tea gown and slipped on a silk wrap. She would not ring for her maid yet: she had a few minutes to herself. She sat at the dressing table and looked at her face in the mirror. She was twenty-six, and it showed. She had never been pretty, but people had called her handsome. With wartime austerity she had lost what little she had of girlish softness, and the angles of her face had become more pronounced. What would Walter think when he saw her—if they ever met again? She touched her breasts. They were still firm, at least. He would be pleased about that. Thinking about him made her nipples stiffen. She wondered if she had time to—

  There was a tap at the door, and she guiltily dropped her hands. “Who is it?” she called.

  The door opened, and Gus Dewar stepped in.

  Maud stood up, pulling the wrap tightly around her, and said in her most forbidding voice: “Mr. Dewar, please leave at once!”

  “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “I have to see you in private.”

  “I can’t imagine what possible reason—”

  “I saw Walter in Berlin.”

  Maud fell silent, shocked. She stared at Gus. How could he know about her and Walter?

  Gus said: “He gave me a letter for you.” He reached inside his tweed jacket and drew out an envelope.

  Maud took it with a trembling hand.

  Gus said: “He told me he had not used your name or his, for fear the letter might be read at the border, but in fact no one searched my baggage.”

  Maud held the letter uneasily. She had longed to hear from him, but now she feared bad news. Walter might have taken a lover, and the letter might beg her understanding. Perhaps he had married a German girl, and wrote to ask her to keep the earlier marriage secret forever. Worst of all, perhaps he had started divorce proceedings.

  She tore open the envelope.

  She read:My dearest darling,

  It is winter in Germany and in my heart. I cannot tell you how much I love you and how badly I miss you.

  Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh!” she said. “Oh, Mr. Dewar, thank you for bringing this!”

  He took a tentative step closer to her. “There, there,” he said. He patted her arm.

  She tried to read the rest of the letter but she could not see the words on the paper. “I’m so happy,” she wept.

  She dropped her head to Gus’s shoulder, and he put his arms around her. “It’s all right,” he said.

  Maud gave in to her feelings and began to sob.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  December 1916

  Fitz was working at the Admiralty in Whitehall. It was not the job he wanted. He longed to return to the Welsh Rifles in France. Much as he hated the dirt and discomfort of the trenches, he could not feel good about being safe in London while others were risking their lives. He had a horror of being thought a coward. However, the doctors insisted that his leg was not yet strong enough, and the army would not let him return.

  Because Fitz spoke German, Smith-Cumming of the Secret Service Bureau—the man who called himself “C”—had recommended him to naval intelligence, and he had been temporarily posted to a department known as Room 40. The last thing he wanted was a desk job, but to his surprise, he found that the work was highly important to the war effort.

  On the first day of the war a post office ship called the CS Alert had gone out into the North Sea, dredged up the Germans’ heavy-duty seabed telecommunications cables, and severed them all. With that sly stroke the British had forced the enemy to use wireless for most messages. Wireless signals could be intercepted. The Germans were not stupid, and they sent all their messages in code. Room 40 was where the British tried to break the codes.

  Fitz worked with an assortment of people—some of them quite odd, most not very military—who struggled to decipher the gibberish picked up by listening stations on the coast. Fitz was no good at the crossword-puzzle challenge of decoding—he could never even work out the murderer in a Sherlock Holmes mystery—but he was able to translate the decrypts into English and, more importantly, his battlefield experience enabled him to judge which were significant.

  Not that it made much difference. At the end of 1916 the western front had hardly moved from its position at the beginning of the year, despite huge efforts by both sides—the relentless German assault at Verdun and the even more costly British attack at the Somme. The Allies desperately needed a boost. If the United States joined in they could tip the balance—but so far there was no sign of that.

  Commanders in all armies issued their orders late at night or first thing in the morning, so Fitz started early and worked intensely until midday. On the Wednesday after the shooting party he left the admiralty at half past twelve and took a taxi home. The uphill walk from Whitehall to Mayfair, though short, was too much for him.

  The three women he lived with—Bea, Maud, and Aunt Herm—were just sitting down to lunch. He handed his walking stick and uniform cap to Grout and joined the ladies. After the utilitarian environment of his office, he took a warm pleasure in his home: the rich furnishings, the soft-footed servants, the French china on the snowy tablecloth.

  He asked Maud what the political news was. A battle was raging between Asquith and Lloyd George. Yesterday Asquith had dramatically resigned as prime minister. Fitz was worried: he was no admirer of the Liberal Asquith, but what if the new man was seduced by facile talk of peace?

  “The king has seen Bonar Law,” Maud said. Andrew Bonar Law was the leader of the Conservatives. The last remnant of royal power in British politics was the monarch’s right to appoint a prime minister— although his chosen candidate still had to win the support of Parliament.

  Fitz said: “What happened?”

  “Bonar Law declined to be prime minister.”

  Fitz bridled. “How could he refuse the king?” A man should obey his monarch, Fitz believed, especially a Conservative.

  “He thinks it has to be Lloyd George. But the king doesn’t want Lloyd George.”

  Bea put in: “I should hope not. The man is not much better than a socialist.”

  “Indeed,” said Fitz. “But he’s got more aggression than the rest of them put together. At least he would inject some energy into the war effort.”

  Maud said: “I fear he won’t make the most of any chance of peace.”

  “Peace?” said Fitz. “I don’t think you need to worry too much about that.” He tried not to sound heated, but defeatist talk of peace made him think of all the lives that had been lost: poor young Lieutenant Carlton-Smith, so many Aberowen Pals, even the wretched Owen Bevin, shot by a firing squad. Was their sacrifice to have been for nothing? The thought seemed blasphemous to him. Forcing himself to speak in a conversational tone, he said: “There won’t be peace until one side or the other has won.”

  Anger flashed in Maud’s eyes but she, too, controlled herself. “We might get the best of both worlds: energetic leadership of the war by Lloyd George as chairman of the War Council, and a statesmanlike prime minister such as Arthur Balfour to negotiate peace if we decide that’s what we want.”

  “Hm.” Fitz did not like that idea at all, but Maud had a way of putting things that made it hard to disagree. Fitz changed the subject. “What are you planning to do this afternoon?”

  “Aunt Herm and I are going to the East End. We host a soldiers’ wives club. We give them tea and cake—paid for by you, Fitz, for which we thank you—and try to help them with their problems.”

  “Such as?”

  Aunt Herm answered. “Getting a cl
ean place to live and finding a reliable child minder are the usual ones.”

  Fitz was amused. “You surprise me, Aunt. You used to disapprove of Maud’s adventures in the East End.”

  “It’s wartime,” Lady Hermia said defiantly. “We must all do what we can.”

  On impulse Fitz said: “Perhaps I’ll come with you. It’s good for them to see that earls get shot just as easily as stevedores.”

  Maud looked taken aback, but she said: “Well, of course, yes, if you’d like to.”

  He could tell she was not keen. No doubt there was a certain amount of left-wing rubbish talked at her club—votes for women and suchlike tosh. However, she could not refuse him, as he paid for the whole thing.

  Lunch ended and they went off to get ready. Fitz went to his wife’s dressing room. Bea’s gray-haired maid, Nina, was helping her off with the dress she had worn at lunch. Bea murmured something in Russian, and Nina replied in the same language, which irritated Fitz as it seemed intended to exclude him. He spoke in Russian, hoping they would think he understood everything, and said to the maid: “Leave us alone, please.” She curtsied and went out.

  Fitz said: “I haven’t seen Boy today.” He had left the house early this morning. “I must go to the nursery before he’s taken out for his walk.”

  “He’s not going out at the moment,” Bea said anxiously. “He’s got a little cough.”

  Fitz frowned. “He needs fresh air.”

  To his surprise, she suddenly looked tearful. “I’m afraid for him,” she said. “With you and Andrei both risking your lives in the war, Boy may be all I have left.”

  Her brother, Andrei, was married but had no children. If Andrei and Fitz died, Boy would be all the family Bea had. It explained why she was overprotective of the child. “All the same, it won’t do him good to be mollycoddled.”

  “I don’t know this word,” she said sulkily.

  “I think you know what I mean.”

  Bea stepped out of her petticoats. Her figure was more voluptuous than it used to be. Fitz watched her untie the ribbons that held up her stockings. He imagined biting the soft flesh of her inner thigh.

  She caught his eye. “I’m tired,” she said. “I must sleep for an hour.”

  “I could join you.”

  “I thought you were going slumming with your sister.”

  “I don’t have to.”

  “I really need to rest.”

  He stood up to go, then changed his mind. He felt angry and rejected. “It’s been a long time since you welcomed me into your bed.”

  “I haven’t been counting the days.”

  “I have, and it’s weeks, not days.”

  “I’m sorry. I feel so worried about everything.” She was close to tears again.

  Fitz knew she was fearful for her brother, and he sympathized with her helpless anxiety, but millions of women were going through the same agonies, and the nobility had a duty to be stoical. “I hear you started attending services at the Russian embassy while I was away in France.” There was no Russian Orthodox church in London, but there was a chapel in the embassy.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Never mind who told me.” It had been Aunt Herm. “Before we married, I asked you to convert to the Church of England, and you did.”

  She would not meet his eye. “I didn’t think it would do any harm for me to go to one or two services,” she said quietly. “I’m so sorry to have displeased you.”

  Fitz was suspicious of foreign clergymen. “Does the priest there tell you it’s a sin to take pleasure in lying with your husband?”

  “Of course not! But when you’re away, and I feel so alone, so far away from everything I grew up with . . . it’s a comfort to me to hear familiar Russian hymns and prayers.”

  Fitz felt sorry for her. It must be difficult. He certainly could not contemplate going to live permanently in a foreign country. And he knew, from conversations with other married men, that it was not unusual for a wife to resist her husband’s advances after she had borne a child.

  But he hardened his heart. Everyone had to make sacrifices. Bea should be grateful she did not have to run into machine-gun fire. “I think I have done my duty by you,” he said. “When we married, I paid off your family’s debts. I called in experts, Russian and English, to plan the reorganization of the estates.” They had told Andrei to drain swamps to produce more farmland, and prospect for coal and other minerals, but he had never done anything. “It’s not my fault that Andrei wasted every opportunity.”

  “Yes, Fitz,” she said. “You did everything you promised.”

  “And I ask that you do your duty. You and I must produce heirs. If Andrei dies without fathering children, our son will inherit two huge estates. He will be one of the greatest landowners in the world. We must have more sons in case—God forbid—something should happen to Boy.”

  She kept her eyes cast down. “I know my duty.”

  Fitz felt dishonest. He talked about an heir—and everything he had said was true—but he was not telling her that he hungered to see her soft body spread-eagled for him on the bedsheets, white on white, and her fair hair spilling over the pillow. He repressed the vision. “If you know your duty, please do it. Next time I come into your room I shall expect to be welcomed like the loving husband that I am.”

  “Yes, Fitz.”

  He left. He was glad he had put his foot down, but he also felt an uneasy sense that he had done something wrong. It was ridiculous: he had pointed out to Bea the error of her ways, and she had accepted his reproof. That was how things ought to be between man and wife. But he could not feel as satisfied as he should.

  He pushed Bea out of his mind when he met up with Maud and Aunt Herm in the hall. He put on his uniform cap and glanced in the mirror, then quickly looked away. He tried these days not to think much about his appearance. The bullet had damaged the muscles on the left side of his face, and his eyelid had a permanent droop. It was a minor disfigurement, but his vanity would never recover. He told himself to be grateful that his eyesight was unaffected.

  The blue Cadillac was still in France, but he had managed to get hold of another. His chauffeur knew the way: he had obviously driven Maud to the East End before. Half an hour later they pulled up outside the Calvary Gospel Hall, a mean little chapel with a tin roof. It might have been transplanted from Aberowen. Fitz wondered if the pastor was Welsh.

  The tea party was already under way and the place was packed with young women and their children. It smelled worse than a barracks, and Fitz had to resist the temptation to hold a handkerchief over his nose.

  Maud and Herm went to work immediately, Maud seeing women one by one in the back office and Herm marshaling them. Fitz limped from one table to the next, asking the women where their husbands were serving and what their experiences had been, while their children rolled on the floor. Young women often became giggly and tongue-tied when Fitz spoke to them, but this group was not so easily flustered. They asked him what regiment he served in and how he had got his wounds.

  It was not until he was halfway round the room that he saw Ethel.

  He had noticed that there were two offices at the back of the hall, one Maud’s, and he had vaguely wondered who was in the second. He happened to look up when the door opened and Ethel stepped out.

  He had not seen her for two years, but she had not changed much. Her dark curls bounced as she walked, and her smile was a sunbeam. Her dress was drab and worn, like the clothes of all the women except Maud and Herm, but she had the same trim figure, and he could not help thinking about the petite body he had known so well. Without even looking at him she cast her spell. It was as if no time had passed since they had rolled around, giggling and kissing, on the bed in the Gardenia Suite.

  She spoke to the only other man in the room, a stooped figure in a dark gray lounge suit of some heavy cloth, sitting at a table making notes in a ledger. He wore thick glasses, but even so Fitz could see the adoration in the man’
s eyes when he looked up at Ethel. She spoke to him with easy amiability, and Fitz wondered if they were married.

  Ethel turned around and caught Fitz’s eye. Her eyebrows went up and her mouth made an O of surprise. She took a step back, as if nervous, and bumped into a chair. The woman sitting in the chair looked up with an expression of irritation. Ethel mouthed: “Sorry!” without looking at her.

  Fitz rose from his seat, not an easy matter with his busted leg, all the time gazing steadily at Ethel. She dithered visibly, not sure whether to approach him or flee to the safety of her office. He said: “Hello, Ethel.” His words did not carry across the noisy room, but she could probably see his lips move and guess what he said.

  She made a decision and walked toward him.

  “Good afternoon, Lord Fitzherbert,” she said, and her lilting Welsh accent made the routine phrase sound like a melody. She held out her hand and they shook. Her skin was rough.

  He followed her in reverting to formality. “How are you, Mrs. Williams?”

  She pulled up a chair and sat down. As he lowered himself into his seat he realized she had deftly put them on a footing of equality without intimacy.

  “I seen you at the service in the Aberowen Reck,” she said. “I was very sorry—” Her voice caught in her throat. She looked down and started again. “I was very sorry to see you wounded. I hope you’re getting better.”

  “Slowly.” He could tell that her concern was genuine. She did not hate him, it seemed, despite everything that had happened. His heart was touched.

  “How did you get your injuries?”

  He had told the story so often that it bored him. “It was the first day of the Somme. I hardly saw any fighting. We went over the top, got past our own barbed wire, and started across no-man’s-land, and the next thing I remember is being carried on a stretcher, and hurting like hell.”

  “My brother saw you fall.”

  Fitz remembered the insubordinate Corporal William Williams. “Did he? What happened to him?”