Moonlight

by Fergus O'Connell

  In a distant, blurred, groggy voice Henry asks, ‘Everything alright, darling?’ She makes no reply and he says nothing else. She can tell that he is deeply asleep. Then, just as her laughter disappeared with no clear reason why, unexpected tears sting her eyes and start to make their hot way down her cheeks, wetting the pillow beneath the side of her face.

  And this is how she falls sleep.

  Chapter 2

  Sunday 28 June 1914

  A tree grows in Clara and Henry’s back garden not far from where they lie sleeping in their separate post-coital states of bliss. It is a tall tree, well over fifty years old and reaching up past their window. What kind of tree is it? It doesn’t actually matter but since you ask, it’s a beech tree planted there by Clara’s father, George. A countryman by upbringing but forced, like so many, to find work in the city, he brought the tree with him as a sapling from the countryside where he grew up. He planted it here in his back garden as a reminder of all that he loved from his childhood.

  They say that women always marry their fathers and, in many ways, this was what Clara did. Maybe this is why she worries so much about Henry because from when Clara could first remember, relations between her parents ranged from anywhere between bad and poisonous. Her mother eventually gave up and perhaps this is what Clara really fears – that she will too and become like her mother.

  A bird sits singing happily in the tree. It has been doing so for several hours now ever since dawn broke. What kind of bird? Well, if you must know, it’s a blue tit and it is appropriate that it should be a bird that we will follow to make the acquaintance of the next major character in our story. You have already met two major characters so far – Clara and Henry. But now we will travel about seven miles as the blue tit flies to our next port of call. Of course this blue tit isn’t going to fly that seven miles. Why would it? It’s the summer and there’s plenty of food in the immediate neighbourhood. So we shall leave the blue tit to its singing and we will travel the seven miles to Grosvenor Road ourselves where, even though it is just after five o’clock in the morning, people are astir.

  (You’re probably wondering why I mentioned the blue tit in the first place since we didn’t follow it and it played – and will play – no further part in the story. But that should become apparent, my delightfully curious reader, before this present chapter is out and you have met our next character.)

  The alarm clock went off half an hour ago in the house on Grosvenor Road but already Sir Edward Grey is washed, dressed and ready to face the day. Why is he up so early, taking the light breakfast of tea and toast that his single servant has prepared for him at this ungodly hour on a Sunday morning? Why is he not asleep like all people who have laboured hard all week and would welcome an extra couple of hours in bed? And let’s face it, the general slothfulness of the Edwardian upper classes is somewhat legendary. Why then is he on the move?

  We had better follow him as he leaves the house, dressed in a light summer suit the same colour as his name. He carries no bags or luggage – everything he needs is where he is going – everything that is, except for a parcel of sandwiches and a bottle of lemonade in a canvas bag that his housekeeper has prepared for him. Now that he is gone, she will probably go back to bed herself for an hour or two. In the meantime, the car that his office arranged is already waiting for him at the kerbside, its engine running. With a brisk ‘good morning’ to the driver, Sir Edward gets in and soon they are on the road out of London, heading south west.

  Sitting silently in the back, Sir Edward reflects, as he so often does, on the course his life has taken. For a man who has reached the heights he has, he would have to agree it did not start out promisingly. At university he was not noted for his application to his studies. The Master of Balliol College wrote of him, ‘Sir Edward Grey, having been repeatedly admonished for idleness and having shown himself entirely ignorant of the work set him in vacation as a condition of residence, was sent down, but allowed to come up to pass his examination in June.’

  Proving however, that everybody’s good at something, Grey became university tennis champion. And proving that, while democracy may be the best system we have, it still has its flaws, he was elected as Member of Parliament for Berwick-upon-Tweed, becoming the youngest member of the House. Further surprises awaited him. Gladstone made him Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Then, in 1895, when the government collapsed, Grey was out of a job. He could not have been described as having been devastated by this turn of events. ‘I shall never be in office again,’ he wrote. ‘And the days of my stay in the House of Commons are probably numbered. We are both very glad and relieved,’ he said, referring to his wife. Twelve years later he became Foreign Secretary. It is a post he still holds.

  But today matters of foreign policy are not on Grey’s mind. They are in fact the furthest thing from his mind. Because today Sir Edward Grey is going fishing.

  He dozes but wakes with a jolt as the car slows to turn into the drive. It is as though his body somehow knows that he is in this place, this almost sacred place. There is no road, scarcely a path – and an ancient avenue of lime trees which leads up to the cottage. The dusty ground under the trees is overgrown with long grass and nettles and burdock. The trees are alive with long-tailed tits. Then the cottage comes into sight and beyond that the ground slopes abruptly down to a water-meadow. This is where the River Itchen flows, swift and silent through great masses of flowering reeds and yellow flags, marsh agrimonies and purple loosestrife.

  Grey’s cottage is a simple building. Dorothy, his late wife – for he is a widower – used to call it ‘a tin cottage.’ Its roof is painted red, its walls are covered with trellis so that it appears almost buried in clematis, Virginia creeper, climbing roses and honeysuckle. Amongst all this foliage blackbirds, thrushes, chaffinches, robins and wagtails build their nests. It was meant to provide only basic shelter. Their idea when they built it was that most of their life down here would be lived out of doors. But despite its utilitarian beginnings, Dorothy gave it a dainty charm of its own. There is a little sitting room with a large window opening to the ground. The walls are hung with blue linen and there is a soft blue carpet on the floor. The comfortable chairs and sofa are covered with blue and white chintz and on the wall a bookshelf carries two long rows of books.

  Though it has been over eight years since Dorothy died, Grey is most conscious of her absence here. They married in 1885, nearly twenty years ago. She died in 1906. The cottage was something they created together – not just the physical building and its setting but what it meant to them. They spent every weekend during the early spring and summer here, refusing invitations which might have stopped them coming down from London.

  Sir Edward remembers back twenty years ago, when they first lived in Grosvenor Road. Because the Liberals were in office, government business would keep him in London until late on Friday night. But on Saturday mornings, he and Dorothy would wake with an alarm clock and then, after hurriedly getting themselves ready, they would walk the mile and a half from their home across Lambeth Bridge up to Waterloo Station. Here, they would catch the six o’clock train to Itchen Abbas, a tiny station just before Winchester. They were familiar figures to the station staff and then it was just a short walk from there up the avenue of lime trees to the cottage. ‘It was something special and sacred,’ Grey would write, ‘outside the ordinary stream of life.’

  No outsider was allowed to disturb their peace. Dorothy always felt very keenly the strain of social life. She needed complete rest and felt that the only way she could do her duties in the world was by having a refuge where she could be sure of perfect peace. She made no friends in Itchen Abbas or its surroundings. Instead, communing with nature did for her what religion did for others. It lifted her out of herself, it made her move among big thoughts, a lonely soul and yet in touch with the harmonies of nature till she found her place in it and became part of it.

  On Sundays when she was alive, there was no fishing.
Instead they took turns reading aloud from Wordsworth’s The Prelude. The best part of their happiness seemed bound up with the cottage. Dorothy said that there was a great feeling of security everywhere about the cottage. There she could most easily be herself. She once said that she felt she wasn’t at all ‘a good London wife, but that she was a good cottage wife.’

  I feel I have to interject here, reader. You’ll forgive me, I hope, for this intrusion. I suspect you are feeling a little sad. A little sorry for Sir Edward, a fifty-two-year-old widower, by himself in his isolated country cottage. Admittedly he has chosen this isolation for himself. And, granted, he has a very prestigious job which I’m sure has its pressures from which it is good to escape. But perhaps, despite all this, you are feeling sad for him. He clearly loved his wife very much and she him, and he misses her greatly. Perhaps you are thinking that people shouldn’t be alone. And after all, it’s been eight years now since Dorothy passed on. It’s a more than respectable time. Perhaps now it’s time for Sir Edward to move on and find somebody new, to love again, to marry again. It shouldn’t be too difficult, what with his exalted position. I’m sure there are dozens of eligible women who would be only too happy to become the wife of the Foreign Secretary. Sir Edward shouldn’t be lonely, you are thinking. He seems like a good and gentle man.

  And now I fear I am going to make you even sadder because there are two other pieces of information about Sir Edward that I need to give you. And the first one is certainly going to make you a little bit sadder and pity him even more.

  Sir Edward’s marriage to Dorothy was what the French tactfully refer to as un marriage blanc – as opposed, one assumes, to un marriage rouge, rouge being the colour of blood. When they returned from their honeymoon, Dorothy told Sir Edward that she had a strong aversion to the physical side of marriage. She didn’t like children and had no desire to have any. This aspect of their relationship seems to have been reasonably well known. It was also considered interesting enough that it was the subject of a report sent back to the German government by its Ambassador in London.

  After they had been married a number of years, Dorothy suddenly suggested to Grey that they should now begin to lead a normal married life. Contrary to everything you might have expected, he declined, saying that they were both happy with the life they had agreed on. And so that was the way their married life continued up to her death.

  Sad, I think you’ll agree. And also a little bit curious, don’t you think?

  Well, you know it’s the job of the novelist to toy with the emotions of their readers, so now let me tell you the other piece of information you need to know. It explains Sir Edward’s rather curious response to Dorothy’s suggestion for full married relations.

  The other thing you need to know is that, while married to Dorothy, Grey was conducting what turned out to be a long love affair with Pamela, Lady Glenconnor. (After Dorothy’s death and the death of Pamela’s husband, she and Grey would marry.) So now I hope your veil of sadness has lifted a little, my reader. Rather than being sad about Grey or pitying him, perhaps there is much to envy on this sunny day long ago. He has an exalted job. He has no money worries, being highly born and independently wealthy. He will spend a day that I think most men would certainly probably enjoy. He will be alone, in nature, and have time to think. Then, assuming he catches some trout in the Itchen, he will take them back to London where a woman will cook them for him and – quite possibly – he will spend the night in the arms of a woman who loves him. I think you’ll agree there is much to be envied there.

  Anyway, I digress. Let us return to Sir Edward, who has dismounted from his car. The driver will now drive off to Itchen Abbas, there to while away the hours and steal a surreptitious pint or two of local ale, until it is time to return to London tonight.

  Sir Edward unlocks the cottage and goes inside. He opens the windows to air the place. His jacket and tie are quickly discarded and he changes into his walking shoes. Then, gathering up his fishing poles, fishing basket, boxes of flies, folding seat and other paraphernalia, he leaves the cottage door open and heads down to the river. The Itchen is a gentle trout stream rising in the Downs and flowing southwards to the sea. A wooden footbridge with a simple handrail spans it. It is called Grey’s Bridge. Standing there, a man can fish for trout in the lucid water below and put disagreeable thoughts out of his head.

  Today though, Grey chooses a spot on the river bank. He deposits all his gear and then ties a piece of fishing line around the neck of his bottle of lemonade. Lowering it into the water, it comes to rest on the river bed; the other end he attaches to his fishing basket. The lemonade should cool nicely between now and lunch. Then he begins to prepare his first cast.

  It would be hard to imagine a place more placidly beautiful, more attuned to the spirit of the nature-loving, widowed man who had been coming here, weekend after weekend, for almost a quarter of a century. (He was there on the night of Sunday, 2 April 1911, for example, when the census was taken. Then he listed his occupation as ‘Secretary of State.’)

  Here, in March 1894, he and Dorothy began their so-called Cottage Book, a nature diary of the seasons at the cottage. In his autobiography, Grey wrote of the Cottage Book: ‘It began from a desire to leave on Monday something which would tell us what to look for on the following Saturday, and the first entries were written solely for this purpose. But it became much more than that. It was a record of our stay there and of our feelings and enjoyment. It was always left open so that either of us might write in it when we felt moved to do so. The entries made by my wife are marked with the “D”; my own similarly are marked with the letter “E”.’

  Here Grey can fish in the river below the cottage. In these surroundings he can walk, listen, see (until his sight weakened) and name the birds. For this is the other great passion of Grey’s life – and this, dear reader, was why we mentioned that little blue tit at the beginning of this chapter. Because Sir Edward Grey is an ornithologist and – it has to be said – rather a good one.

  Sir Edward will be quoted as saying that one has to be happy to write a book. He will write two of them on the two passions of his life – fly fishing and bird watching. In Falloden, his ancestral home in rural Northumberland, he started a wildlife sanctuary consisting of two ponds surrounded by a fox-proof fence. Here he bred many species of duck. At feeding times, shovellers would feed at his feet, teal from his hand and mandarin ducks and robins would land on his head.

  Grey is also a lifelong railway enthusiast. The main line on the London and North Eastern Railway passes close to Falloden.

  So here we have him – train spotter, birdwatcher, fisherman and Foreign Secretary. This is the gentle man who, apart from anything else, will be managing Britain’s fortunes in what lies ahead.

  But now we must leave Sir Edward by his placid stream. He intends to fish, bask in the sun, eat his modest lunch, go for a walk. He calls such walks ‘going a trail;’ thus, a long walk is ‘going a long trail.’ But today it will not be a long trail – just enough to make sure that everything in this little world he has created is as it should be.

  Then, this evening, he plans to return to London and to being Foreign Secretary again. And tomorrow, though of course he cannot know it yet, will begin the most important thirty seven days of his life. He should try to sleep well tonight because he will sleep far less well or perhaps not at all in the weeks to come.

  So let us leave him in the slowly intensifying light of this June morning and let us get ready to travel. For this time we must travel far. Our next journey is no blue tit’s flight. We must go east and yes, dear reader, it is a long haul – though not the longest we shall make. But it is an important one because we are going to meet our fourth major character. And lest you start to fret that it’s all becoming a bit much – the book about to become three chapters old and already four major characters – don’t worry, this character will only appear in this next chapter and then he will be gone. Although he will cast a long sha
dow – a very long shadow – for the rest of the book and well beyond that.

  But how, I hear you ask, can he be a major character if he only appears in this one chapter? Surely he would have to appear over and over again for him to count as a major character? Press on, my puzzled reader, and the mystery will be revealed.

  Chapter 3

  Sunday 28 June 1914

  You may have an idea how it starts. Maybe you once read something or they told you about it at school.

  It starts with a royal visit. A royal visit and security precautions that would have made a modern White House Secret Service detail shake their heads in disbelief. It starts in the city of Sarajevo in what was then called Bosnia, part of the Austrian Empire.

  The Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne is making a visit to Bosnia in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the Austrian Army. He intends to observe Austrian Army manoeuvres in the hills outside Sarajevo. It has been known since March that he will be in Sarajevo on this day. On the morning of this Sunday, the 28th of June, the royal train steams into Sarajevo where the Archduke is also to open the state museum’s new premises. He is greeted by the military governor of Bosnia, Oskar Potiorek. Due to a mistake, three local police officers get into the first car of the Archduke’s convoy, along with the chief officer of special security. This means that the special security officers who are supposed to protect the Archduke get left behind (wince).