The Kaiser's Last Kiss

by Alan Judd

  COPYRIGHT

  Harper Perennial

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  This edition published by Harper Perennial 2004

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2003

  Copyright © Alan Judd 2003

  PS Section © Josh Lacey 2004

  Alan Judd asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

  Source ISBN: 9780007124473

  Ebook Edition © MAY 2016 ISBN: 9780008193195

  Version: 2016-04-28

  PRAISE

  From the reviews of The Kaiser’s Last Kiss:

  ‘Fascinating … if one of the hallmarks of a good novel is that the characters do not remain static but are subtly transformed by events, then this is a very good novel indeed.’

  Sunday Telegraph

  ‘A haunting tribute to a near-forgotten figure – the German Kaiser who spent his last years in Dutch exile. Judd has complete command of the subtleties of character, ambition and emotional ambiguity in extreme circumstances – an unusual and intelligent treatment of the Third Reich.’

  ANNE MCELVOY

  ‘Alan Judd’s new novel is extremely appetising. It’s like seeing a waiter bringing a beautifully arranged dish towards you. Judd has written scenes that perfectly combine fear and embarrassment … this is a story that shows us how the nastiest of regimes are composed of real people. Brilliant.’

  Daily Telegraph

  ‘A fascinating and imaginative exploration of a seminal episode of 20th-century history.’

  Irish Examiner

  DEDICATION

  To Katie

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Praise

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Postscript

  P.S. Ideas, Interviews & Features …

  About the Author

  About the Book

  Read on

  Also by the Author

  About the Publisher

  ONE

  The Kaiser was chopping logs. In the summer air his strokes echoed through the trees, across the park and gardens and into Huis Doorn itself, where those of the household would be listening. So long as they could hear him, they would know that all was well with their Kaiser that morning. They could relax, he thought, and be happy, or busy about their work, which was to his mind the same thing.

  His strokes were regular but the pauses were longer now. At eighty, it was an achievement to split a log at all – to see it, even – let alone do it daily. Nearly every day since his exile in 1918 he had chopped or sawn. At first he had imagined the logs his enemies, the poltroons who had betrayed him and urged him to flee so that they could grab power for themselves. Gradually, he had ceased to care about that bunch of pigs but had continued felling because it made him feel better, restoring his sense of achievement. Twenty thousand trees felled in the first eleven years of exile; that was something. Since then another twelve years during which he had not kept such meticulous records; not quite another twenty thousand, perhaps, but still a good number. His best was 2,590 in one week – Christmas week – after he had moved here to Doorn after Amerongen, the other Dutch place. What would the Englishman, Gladstone, another elderly tree-feller, have said to that? It might have silenced him, and his tribe. Tree-feller, tree-fella, it punned in English. He would entertain people with it.

  Bismarck would have had something to say to it, of course. He was a tree-lover who used to try to plant a tree for every one that Gladstone felled and then write to him about it, to boast. Well now, he, Wilhelm II, had bested them both, because he had felled more and planted more than either.

  Bismarck had something to say to everything, that was his trouble. That was why it was right to get rid of him all those years ago, to drop the pilot, as someone put it. It was right then, anyway. Perhaps he might not have made the same decision now. But that was then, when everything was different. When you are young you do not understand how different then and now are because you have lived only in now and it feels as if that is where you will always live. You do not realise that your now – and you – are becoming then. And when you realise how completely now has become then, how different it is, it is like the fall of the axe. It splits you off from all these younger people who, however much they think they know or understand, cannot feel life as it was then. The pulse of it, that was the thing, always, with everything, and that is what cannot be conveyed.

  The Kaiser swung the axe again but this time it bounced violently, jarring his arm as if the log – oak, it looked like – were stone. It was a knotted old log, cross-grained, compacted, irreducible. He blamed Bismarck because he had been thinking of him. Even from his grave that cross-grained old man with the soul of a Pomeranian tenant-farmer still had the power to interpose himself wherever you looked, to make everything awkward, to turn things into problems which only he could solve. They were barely more than peasants, those Bismarcks, all of them. Their servants pulled wine corks with the bottles between their knees in front of you and there were always dogs around the table. The old man fed the dogs from his dinner plate, holding it while they licked it. Perhaps it was the very plate that he himself, the Kaiser, might have eaten from next time. That was a metaphor: Bismarck really cared more for his dog than for his Kaiser.

  The Kaiser lowered his axe to the ground and, using the shaft as a prop, carefully lifted one foot. With the hard toe of his boot he nudged the knotted log off the chopping block, a massive section of beech trunk. Then he let go of the axe and stooped to pick up another log. It was hard with one hand because the log was too wide to grip and he had to roll it up the side of the beech trunk. When he was younger he might have exercised his left arm by trying to ease the log into a central position on the block, but he didn’t bother much with that arm now. A withered, blighted thing, from birth three inches shorter than its mate, he could hold with it but not lift or push much. God and he alone knew the youthful effort it cost him to learn to ride and to shoot, to learn above all not to be handicapped by this handicap. God had given it to him to make him tough, he had long ago decided. Years of solitary practice, holding oars out straight, had made his good right arm stronger than most men’s two arms, with a grip that had been compared to that of John Sullivan, the boxing champion. But even John Sullivan was then. Who spoke of him now?

  The axe spl
it the new log clean, with a crack that echoed through the trees around the woodshed. Most men could not swing an axe with two arms as he still swung with one. There were plenty of trees ready for felling, more than he had days.

  ‘Your Highness! Your Royal Highness!’

  The Kaiser leant on his axe, turning slowly. The new Dutch maid was running through the rough grass bordering the park and the trees, clutching her white apron in one hand and waving with the other. When she called again he realised he had heard her before swinging at that last log but had not registered it. That happened, nowadays. He waited. He had heard and uttered many urgent summonses in life but now, robbed of their temporary urgency, it was clear that the things that would happen, happened, whether or not you buzzed about like a demented bluebottle. These days, he felt, there was nothing left to be urgent about. What would come would come soon enough, in its own time, and until then one chopped wood and shrugged one’s shoulders at the world. He would not be hurried.

  ‘– Highness!’

  She almost stumbled in the last few yards. She was called Akki, his wife had told him. Breathlessness made her prettier than ever. A wisp of dark hair had come adrift from her bun and her smooth cheeks were coloured. Such beautiful skin, almost olive; he always wanted to touch it. Her grey eyes were quiet and thoughtful, cold as a March wind. Yet it was her hands above all that he looked for, slender, white, quick, full of energy but composed and controlled. With him it had always been the hands. First his mother’s, then those of her friends and then – well, as many as he could get, in his youth. Beloved Dona, his first wife, she had good hands, but she knew what hands meant to him and throughout their marriage had ensured that all female servants had hands either like chicken claws or overgrown potatoes. She would never have permitted Akki to join the household. But Hermo, his new wife, did not know about this thing of his.

  ‘– Highness!’ The girl stood panting before him, her grey eyes widened, one hand still clutching her apron. ‘Highness, they have come. The Germans. They are here. Princess Hermine begs you to receive them. They are at the gate lodge.’

  The Kaiser nodded. So the German Army was reunited with its Kaiser. The sky was not rent asunder, no fiery angels appeared, the voice of God remained silent. No longer the Kaiser’s army, of course, but that fellow Hitler’s, a corporal’s army now. They would more likely view him as their prisoner than their king, unless – but it was useless to speculate. It had come to something when it was hard to take any interest in one’s future. He was more interested in this girl’s accent. She came from Friesland, Hermo had said, so Fries was presumably her first language, Dutch her second, German evidently her third. There was something odd about her German, not an accent – she had none – but more her speech rhythm, her way of saying things. It reminded him of his grandmother, Queen Victoria, whose German was similarly fluent and unaccented but with something of the same difference. Not that pretty little Akki, with her hypnotic hands, was in any way like Grandmama.

  ‘Where are you from?’ he asked. Her surprise was gratifying. It was always good to surprise them a little.

  ‘From Leeuwarden, your Highness.’ She went on, evidently thinking he had not understood her. ‘The Princess begs you to come to the house because German soldiers have arrived. They have invaded Holland, as your Highness knows, and now they have come to see you. There is an officer with them. They are talking to our soldiers – your Dutch guard – at the gate lodge. The officer is from Schutzstaffel – SS.’

  She used the term familiarly. Perhaps, like him, the Dutch people had studied Corporal Hitler’s armed forces.

  But he was Kaiser still, even if unrecognised in his own land. The Kaiser did not dance attendance upon people; they came to him, whether they called themselves SS or Wehrmacht or the Pink Lederhosen. ‘Tell the Empress I shall join her when I have finished here,’ he said. ‘And beg her to invite the Dutch guard commander, Major van Houten, for lunch.’ He bent slowly and scooped up another log with his right hand. The girl bobbed a curtsey, backed a few steps, then turned and walked composedly through the rough grass towards the house. The morning dew lingered in the shade of the trees and she again clutched her apron. A pretty thing, he thought. Without doubt, were he a young man again, he would have sought to know her better, servant or no servant.

  This log, too, he split with gratifying ease, plumb down the middle. It fell open like the book of life before God, a perfect symmetry. He would sign the two halves and give them to visitors or deserving Dutch locals. They seemed to appreciate signed logs as much as his books. Perhaps the logs stood for books he had never written.

  He looked up at the barking of a dog. Arno, Hermo’s bad-tempered German Shepherd, was bounding across the lawn towards the Dutch girl as if she were a stranger. She stopped and faced the dog. Her admonitions were firm, but taut and nervous. The dog had taken against her from the day of her arrival, and she obviously feared him. Mind you, Arno disliked most people, and sometimes he bit them. That could be quite funny. A green woodpecker laughed raucously in the trees. The Kaiser resumed his chopping.

  After four more logs he lay down his axe. He had stayed long enough to show that he was in no hurry but not so long as seriously to upset Hermo, who would be excited and nervous. He strolled back along the track through the trees, contemplating his fine brick house as it came into view. It was a modest establishment compared with all his others, of course, but it was regularly and properly built, handsome in its own way. They had made many improvements so that it was now quite comfortable, even for the servants, and he had opened part of the park to the people of Doorn. From the day he arrived they had treated him with proper respect. Perhaps they had heard of his generosity to the people of Amerongen, the castle and village a few kilometres away where he had stayed when first in exile. He had built them a hospital, and signed many logs. With the Wehrmacht occupying Holland, however, it was possible that the people would turn against him, though perhaps not now that he was under the protection – presumably – of Herr Hitler. He had never met the fellow and had no idea what he planned but, for himself, he would die at Huis Doorn. Either way, they would have to carry him out.

  Neither Arno nor the girl was any longer to be seen as he approached the house but his own three dachshunds were yapping on the terrace. The gate lodge was some distance away but the sounds of army lorries and shouted orders carried across the park, exciting the dogs. His long-range vision was still good and he glimpsed the field grey of the Wehrmacht as soldiers milled around the lodge. It was an arrow in his eye, a stab of familiarity, love, resentment and bitterness. Even the sound of boots on gravel was wrenchingly familiar. He turned his head and slowly mounted the steps. He was hot in his blue serge suit, Loden cape and hunting hat with feather, but did not wish to show it by removing anything. It was important that he should appear imperturbable, unhurried, his mind upon purposes invisible to others, higher purposes that rendered all else trivial. That was how emperors should appear.

  In the cool of the house he removed cape and hat and, with more effort, his heavy leather boots, then changed into a lighter grey suit which he wore with gold tie-pin and the miniature pour le mérite in the buttonhole. Next, instead of going to Princess Hermine, he went to his study and sat for a while at his high desk with the saddle seat. It was always comforting to see his own things around him and to look upon the portrait of dear Dona. Normally he had just a sandwich and a glass of port after sawing or chopping but now that he had invited Major van Houten they would be hurrying to prepare something more elaborate, although still essentially simple. That was how he liked his food. Unless, that was, the Wehrmacht had already arrested or dismissed the Dutchman, though an invitation from the Kaiser should give them pause. It would be an early sign of their attitude towards him.

  When eventually he proceeded to the small dining-room he found lunch already laid, an informal affair of cold meats and cheeses with cherries, apples, strawberries, peaches and oranges. Hermo was waiting
, wearing a voluminous light green dress that covered her like a bell tent and filled out when she moved so that her progress through the house reminded him of those East Indiamen you used to see in the English Channel during the days of sail. It suited her; she was a stately, sometimes a superbly stately, woman. There were difficulties, of course, things she did not always understand, but it was far better to have a new empress than none. She was a handsome woman, and young, relatively speaking. Many people, he thought, must surely be jealous.

  ‘His name is SS Untersturmführer Krebbs,’ she said, with the Kaiser not yet through the door. ‘And his first name is Martin.’

  The Kaiser stared expressionlessly, as always when affronted by the unexpected.

  ‘The officer in charge of the soldiers, the one from Schutzstaffel,’ she explained impatiently. Nervousness, or anxiety, had coloured her plump cheeks.

  ‘So?’ The Kaiser spoke quietly. It often intimidated people. ‘What have I to do with an SS Untersturmführer? That is the same as a Wehrmacht leutnant. A lieutenant, in other words. I have been a commissioned officer for seventy years. I was commissioned on my tenth birthday. Probably I was a leutnant before this puppy’s grandfather was born.’ He took a glass of his favourite sparkling red wine from the tray proffered by a servant. It was Assmushausen, a good German wine that he cut with water. ‘Why should I wish to know his name, especially his first name? What is it to me? You are surely not suggesting I should run to see him?’

  The Princess smiled. ‘Of course not, my dear, that would be unthinkable. Forgive me if I gave that impression. The shock of seeing our German soldiers here, of seeing our own dear uniforms again, has unsettled me. I lack your experience.’

  The Kaiser pinched her cheek. ‘That is natural, my pet. You must not worry yourself. All in good time. Now, where is Major van Houten? It is unlike him to be unpunctual, especially for the Kaiser.’

  ‘He is on his way, he is coming. He has to negotiate something with Untersturmführer Krebbs.’ Princess Hermine slipped her hand through her husband’s docile left arm, steering him carefully towards the window. He had aged several years in the past one. ‘Such a beautiful day. Perhaps it is a good omen, perhaps Herr Hitler is right to occupy Holland.’