Moonlight

by Fergus O'Connell

  Clara buys Henry’s things and drops them off at the reception desk of his office. As she wends her way home, she feels like there is a little flame burning inside her. There is something new in her life. Part of her wants this little flame to flare into life, whatever that might mean or consist of. But she thinks it’s more likely it will go out. Maybe when the fine weather ends that will happen. But for today she is much happier than she has been in a long time.

  The Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office tells Sir Edward Grey, ‘I have my doubts as to whether Austria will take any action of a serious character and I expect the storm will blow over.’

  Sir Edward is like almost all politicians that one comes across – today every bit as much as a century ago. It is very difficult to get a straight answer from him. The situation that has begun to develop now will eventually become known as ‘The July Crisis.’ What it needs at this stage, early in July is to be nipped in the bud. And Sir Edward is perhaps the only man in Europe capable of doing exactly that.

  What’s needed now is for Sir Edward to say to the German Ambassador that, if Germany were to make any threatening moves or menaces towards either France or Russia, Britain’s allies, Britain would come crashing down on Germany like a ton of bricks. Just that. Unequivocal. No shilly shallying or carefully worded phrases or diplomatic language. And for the Ambassador to pass that on verbatim to his masters.

  But not for nothing is he referred to as a diplomat, his trade as diplomacy. At a meeting he tells the German Ambassador that England wishes ‘to preserve an absolutely free hand so that in the event of continental complications she might be able to act according to her judgement.’ He explains that various naval and military conversations have taken place between Britain and her allies since 1906 but these do not constitute agreements which impose any binding obligations whatsoever.

  Maybe this is the first time, dear reader, that you’ve heard World War I described as a ‘continental complication.’ If it helps at all, in Ireland, World War II is known as ‘The Emergency.’

  In Paris, the French are also looking at their kit and considering a change. In the Chamber, the Minister of War states that it was the English in the Transvaal who first realised the danger of bright uniforms and had substituted khaki. In the Balkan War, the Bulgarians and Serbs did the same. The French have been carrying out experiments with different kinds of clothing. At 1,500 yards, the old cloth is as visible as the new is at 550 yards. A change will have to be authorised at once. This is because it will take four and a half to five years for sufficient amounts of cloth to be made available for the whole army. (This is the time it has taken the Germans to make a similar change.) It is stated that aesthetic considerations should not matter. What matters is giving the soldiers a uniform which strengthens their morale and augments their confidence and fighting capacity.

  The measure is approved.

  Chapter 22

  Friday 10 July 1914

  Henry wakes. He is in an unfamiliar bed. He is also naked and it takes him a few moments to remember where he is. The hotel room. He is lying on his side with his back to Mary, who is also naked. He hears her snoring softly. He rolls over and looks at her. She tends to sleep with her head pushed back exposing her throat, but even with that and her mouth open and the snoring, he thinks she looks beautiful. He remembers that he no longer feels this way about Clara whenever he sees her asleep – even though he once did.

  He recalls his lovemaking with Mary last night. It was every bit as exciting as the first time. In fact, if anything, even more so. It took him longer to climax, which extended the pleasure. She told him again what a marvellous lover he was. He checks his watch. He still has half an hour before he needs to get up, so he begins to tease her nipples with his mouth. He lays his finger along the line of her vulva and he feels her respond, moving her thighs slightly apart. He is about to ease his finger into her when, still with her eyes closed, she says sleepily, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we could wake up like this every day?’

  Henry has become extra alert to any statements like this. He continues what he is doing and responds with, ‘Maybe then the excitement would go out of it. It would just become like all the other miserable marriages we know.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Mary says, opening her legs even wider. ‘Not with you, Henry.’

  And really, there’s nothing he can say in response to that.

  Clara wakes feeling desperately unhappy. That little flame of joy which burned inside her up to the time she went to bed last night has well and truly gone out. Whatever she may have wanted it to flare into – and she has been deliberately vague about that – she knows that it will actually lead to nothing. In a year’s time she will be surprised if she remembers the details of it or even that it happened at all.

  She goes downstairs in her dressing gown. It is early. Now that it is the school holidays, both the girls are in bed. She will leave them there until they wake. She is glad that Henry is not here. She goes out into the sunny pool of the garden. It gives her no joy. She doesn’t want today. She doesn’t want to live through another day that is part of an endless rosary of empty days. She doesn’t want the succession of dozens of pointless activities that will make up today and tomorrow and the next day.

  What is she doing here anyway in this house in London? Was it God that put her here? And if so, for what? She isn’t sure she believes in God. Instead it seems to her that this is all an accident. There is that enormous family tree of people who came before her – she has photographs of some of them in a box in the sitting room – parents and grandparents and so on before that. All of them – from what she has seen anyway or been told – seem to have lived lives of greater or lesser unhappiness or hardship. And now, here she is doing the same. There is no grand plan, no God, no heaven. There are just accidents of birth and lives lived in loneliness.

  Later she lies in the bath and sponges herself all over. She thinks she has a nice body. She is not tall, has blonde hair and small breasts. The fact that she has had two children is obvious but not unpleasantly or disgustingly so. She takes care of her body, eats well and just uses very small amounts of makeup.

  When she was younger she dreamed of marrying some man who would worship her. He would wake up every day and tell her how much he loved her. She would be excited at the prospect of his coming home in the evening. Their lives would be blissful.

  As a girl, she had wanted a man who would adore her body, like she thought Anthony must have adored Cleopatra’s or Romeo, Juliet’s. She has never spoken of this, of course. Not to anybody, not to Henry, not even when they were courting. She hasn’t written it in the series of diaries she has kept since she was a girl – in case somebody should find it. But it hasn’t stopped her thinking of it, fantasising about it. She dreams of a man who would kneel before her and bury his face in her belly and tell her how beautiful she is.

  How stupid and girlish that seems now. She doesn’t even know why she takes care of her body any more. Henry just sees it as something to empty himself into. She wonders if he will notice as it gets older and starts to sag or look worn. She thinks not. At some stage she assumes he will no longer look for sex from her. What he will do then, she prefers not to think about.

  Der Kaiser receives a dispatch from the German Ambassador in Vienna. In it he explains what the Austrians are trying to do, putting their unacceptable demands to Serbia so as to make it look that Serbia is responsible for an outbreak of war. Der Kaiser is becoming impatient. In the margins of the Ambassador’s dispatch, he scribbles angrily, ‘They’ve had enough time for this.’

  Chapter 23

  Saturday 11 July 1914

  The German Foreign Office cables Der Kaiser asking if they should – as is usual – send a telegram to King Peter of Serbia congratulating him on his birthday. ‘Blasted fools,’ Der Kaiser thinks irritably. Patiently, he replies, ‘As Vienna has so far inaugurated no action of any sort against Belgrade, the omission of the cu
stomary telegram would be too noticeable and might be the cause of premature uneasiness. It should be sent.’

  In the afternoon, Sir Edward makes for Hampshire and arrives towards evening. On arrival, he clips some of the roses and puts them in a vase in the living room of the cottage. Then he walks down to the river. Everywhere flowers are heavy with honey. He hears the distinct and clear song of a nightingale. He feels the peace of the place soaking into him.

  Chapter 24

  Sunday 12 July 1914

  Clara wakes from another dream. It is a dream so vivid that she feels she must get up straight away and write it down before it is lost. She hurries downstairs and takes her diary from her handbag. This is what she writes.

  I had a dream about a statue in a park. It was a very beautiful statue. A woman, naked like a Greek goddess. She was leaning her right elbow on the horizontal branch of a tree with the result that she leaned back slightly, pushing her tummy and groin forward. Her hair was tied up and the statue was smooth, giving the impression that her skin was perfect. In her left hand, which hung by her side, she held a large flower and a bunch of grapes. The woman was perfectly proportioned. But it was the expression on her face that was the most enigmatic. Despite the fact that she was naked she had a look on her face as though she was somewhere else.

  Sometimes I feel like that woman. I know it is probably disgraceful to say it but I sometimes feel like I would like to strip off all my clothes and stand there like that, displaying myself and not caring.

  In my dream, I was that woman. I was somehow the statue. It was like I was trapped inside it. The statue was in an out-of-the-way corner of a park. Very few people visited that corner or stopped to look at it. In the morning the sun would rise and would touch the statue’s face first before gradually working its way down the body, bathing it in red light. Then the day would go on, people would pass, some would look at it, but they were unaware that it was me. They thought it was just a statue.

  Night was the worst time. The sun would set, the sky would go deep blue, the moon would rise and the cold would settle on the park. In winter there would be frost or snow. It was so cold; so far away from the warm south where the flower and the bunch of grapes had come from. And I was all alone. In the whole world.

  And then, after a few minutes’ thought, she adds, I have so much love to give – and this is love that will never see the light of day now. Love that will go wasted.

  Henry spends most of the weekend racking his brains to come up with another reason to stay in town one night this coming week. In the end he settles for the ongoing story of the company’s poor performance in the first half of the year. He’ll tell Clara that there is going to be yet another management meeting to try to work out ways of improving sales. (In reality, of course, there is no such problem. Sales are up on last year and this business with the Archduke seems to be causing some positive ripples in the insurance market.) Henry thinks he can get one, possibly two more weeks out of this story before he has to find another one. But he is sure he’ll be able to find something else. In the meantime, this will more than do. He will tell Clara at breakfast tomorrow, saying that he’s sorry he forgot to mention it earlier.

  In Berlin, everyone in the German government wants to see Austria play Serbia, and they bridle at the continuing delay and Austria’s apparent indecisiveness. The Germans feel that there will never be a better time to play Russia, and indeed France, if they have to. They are also convinced that the British don’t want to be in the Group of Death at all.

  Finally, the Austrian demands to Serbia are ready, but then the Austrians say that they don’t want to give them to the Serbs until the French President’s visit to Russia is over. Even though Der Kaiser is annoyed that the ultimatum will now be presented so late in July, this is probably pretty sensible on the part of the Austrians. If the French and Russian managers were actually together when mighty Austria dropped its ultimatum on tiny Serbia, they would be far more likely to goad each other into some rash action, such as both declaring war on Austria. Austria just wants to play its walkover against Serbia and then go home. It really has no wish to play in the Group of Death.

  Chapter 25

  Monday 13 July 1914

  Henry tracks Mary down to the filing room. Here, between two long racks of dusty files, he tells her that he can get away again one night this week. All she has to do is name which one suits her best. Instead of the delight he expected to see on her face, Henry is dismayed when she frowns and says, ‘I’m not sure I’ll be able to meet you any night this week, Mr Kenton.’ He wasn’t expecting her to call him ‘Mr Kenton’ either.

  ‘Why not?’ Henry blurts out, and regrets it at once, since yet again he sounds like a disappointed schoolboy.

  ‘I just don’t think it’s a good idea,’ says Mary. ‘I thought you liked my company, but now it’s clear to me that you just want to be bedding me all the time.’

  ‘It’s not that, Mary. You know it isn’t. I—’

  Henry wants to say ‘care for you very much’ but he has already told Mary numerous times that he loves her. Apart from that first time, all the other times he has been inside her when he has said this, but he realises there is no going back now. ‘Love you,’ he finishes, after a pause that he knows has ruined the effect of the declaration.

  ‘I don’t just want to be your whore,’ says Mary, and Henry almost flinches at her use of the word.

  ‘You’re not,’ Henry blusters. ‘You know you’re not … you’re not … that.’

  ‘So what am I then?’

  ‘You’re a woman I love—’

  ‘A whore,’ she interrupts, saying the word even more vehemently. Then, softening her tone a little, she adds, ‘At least that’s what it feels like to me.’

  There is a silence. Henry doesn’t know what to say. Then Mary fills it by saying, ‘I want so much more than that. I love you, Henry.’

  The use of his first name makes Henry feel that Mary’s attitude is perhaps softening a little. But then she says something that is truly alarming.

  ‘I might want to have your child. Have you thought of that?’

  Despite his alarm, Henry dodges that last sentence.

  ‘And I love you,’ he says. ‘That’s why I want us to be together. You know it isn’t easy for me—’

  Then Henry realises that he has uttered completely the wrong thing, as Mary says, almost with a snarl, ‘Then make it easy for yourself.’

  When you’re in a hole, stop digging, the saying goes. Henry keeps digging.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he foolishly asks.

  Mary tells him.

  In Vienna, the Austrian investigation into the assassination of the Archduke has delivered bad news to the Austrian manager, Berchtold. Their report concludes (quite incorrectly): ‘There is nothing to prove or even to suppose that the Serbian government is accessory to the inducement for the crime, its preparations or the furnishing of weapons. On the contrary, there are reasons to believe that this is altogether out of the question.’

  The report depresses the Austrian manager beyond belief.

  Henry stands alone in the aisle between the two sets of files where Mary has left him. On the one hand he just wants to be done with her. It’s all become far too complicated. Leave it now. Find somebody else less demanding. But on the other hand, he can’t get certain pictures of her out of his head. (All of these pictures involve her in a state of partial or full undress.) And he can’t bear the thought of her being with some other man. He wants her. And he thinks it’s not just for her body and for sex. As far as he can tell, he wants her. He wants the happiness and laughter and fun they have when they are together. How colourless his life would be if he went back to things as they were. And he can think of no other woman in the entire company, or indeed that he can remember ever having met or seen, whom he finds as attractive as her.

  He tries to find her that afternoon, but is unable to. Eventually, when he asks in New Business (and gets an odd look f
rom the girl he asks in the process), he’s told that she’s gone home, that she wasn’t feeling very well. Henry feels bad that he seems to have been the cause of this. He wouldn’t have wanted to hurt her for anything. But he also knows where he wants this to end up – married to Clara with Mary on the side. Certainly he could never imagine not being married to Clara, or telling her that he was leaving her or having to tell the children. This means that it is inevitable that there will come a time where he has to say goodbye to Mary and let her go. Either that or she’ll have to accept that he is, and will remain, a married man. He could tell her this now and risk losing her. Or he could string her along and wait.

  Henry makes his decision.

  Chapter 26

  Tuesday 14 July 1914

  More and more of the managers are taking to the sea as the month progresses. The Tsar is no exception. Along with members of the Imperial family, he leaves for a yachting cruise in Finnish waters.

  In Vienna, Conrad, the Austrian Army commander, does something very unexpected. You’ll remember, dear reader, that up until now Conrad was the man who was most anxiously pushing for war. But now that it is almost upon him, he dithers. He points out to Berchtold that much of the army is on leave, helping to bring in the harvest. (It’s obviously important that that the Austrian players should be well fed if there were to be a Group of Death.) If these men’s leave is cancelled now, it will alert the other powers to Austria’s intentions. Most of the soldiers are scheduled to return on July 21st or 22nd and so, really, July 23rd is the earliest date that would suit the army.

  Surprising, don’t you think, coming from the man who had been so hawkish up until now. But again, we have an answer, and once again it is about a widower and a married woman.

  Conrad’s wife, Vilma, died of stomach cancer in 1905. Vilma was eight years younger than Conrad and he had always thought that he would die before her. Her passing devastated him. ‘I depended on this woman with all passion of the heart and of the mind,’ he wrote. ‘The entire harmony of my existence, all of my striving, every interest rested upon only her.’ Vilma’s death pushed Conrad into a gloominess that invaded every corner of his life. He would suffer bouts of deep depression. Shortly after her death, he even suffered severe abdominal pains which made him wonder whether he too had stomach cancer. (An army doctor would go on to give him a clean bill of health.)