by Ken Follett
His father was waiting for him in the next room.
"That was quick!" Walter said.
"On the contrary, it took longer than normal," said Otto. "Usually the king says: 'I'm glad to see you in London,' and that's the end of the conversation."
They left the palace together. "Admirable people, the British, in many ways, but soft," said Otto as they walked up St. James's Street to Piccadilly. "The king is ruled by his ministers, the ministers are subject to Parliament, and members of Parliament are chosen by the ordinary men. What sort of way is that to run a country?"
Walter did not rise to that provocation. He believed that Germany's political system was out of date, with its weak parliament that could not stand up to the kaiser or the generals; but he had had that argument with his father many times, and besides, he was still worried by the conversation with the Mexican envoy. "What you said to Diaz was risky," he said. "President Wilson won't like us selling rifles to Huerta."
"What does it matter what Wilson thinks?"
"The danger is that we will make a friend of a weak nation, Mexico, by making an enemy of a strong nation, the United States."
"There's not going to be a war in America."
Walter supposed that was true, but all the same he was uneasy. He did not like the idea of his country being at odds with the United States.
In his apartment they took off their antiquated costumes and dressed in tweed suits with soft-collared shirts and brown trilby hats. Back in Piccadilly they boarded a motorized omnibus heading east.
Otto had been impressed by Walter's invitation to meet the king at Ty Gwyn in January. "Earl Fitzherbert is a good connection," he had said. "If the Conservative Party comes to power he may be a minister, perhaps foreign secretary one day. You must keep up the friendship."
Walter had been inspired. "I should visit his charity clinic, and make a small donation."
"Excellent idea."
"Perhaps you would like to come with me?"
His father had taken the bait. "Even better."
Walter had an ulterior motive, but his father was all unsuspecting.
The bus took them past the theaters of the Strand, the newspaper offices of Fleet Street, and the banks of the financial district. Then the streets became narrower and dirtier. Top hats and bowlers were replaced by cloth caps. Horse-drawn vehicles predominated, and motorcars were few. This was the East End.
They got off at Aldgate. Otto looked around disdainfully. "I didn't know you were taking me to the slums," he said.
"We're going to a clinic for the poor," Walter replied. "Where would you expect it to be?"
"Does Earl Fitzherbert himself come here?"
"I suspect he just pays for it." Walter knew perfectly well that Fitz had never been there in his life. "But he will of course hear about our visit."
They zigzagged through backstreets to a nonconformist chapel. A hand-painted wooden sign read: "Calvary Gospel Hall." Pinned to the board was a sheet of paper with the words:
Baby Clinic
Free of Charge
Today and
every Wednesday
Walter opened the door and they went in.
Otto made a disgusted noise, then took out a handkerchief and held it to his nose. Walter had been there before, so he had been expecting the smell, but even so it was startlingly unpleasant. The hall was full of ragged women and half-naked children, all filthy dirty. The women sat on benches and the children played on the floor. At the far end of the room were two doors, each with a temporary label, one saying "Doctor" and the other "Patroness."
Near the door sat Fitz's aunt Herm, listing names in a book. Walter introduced his father. "Lady Hermia Fitzherbert, my father, Herr Otto von Ulrich."
At the other end of the room, the door marked "Doctor" opened and a ragged woman came out carrying a tiny baby and a medicine bottle. A nurse looked out and said: "Next, please."
Lady Hermia consulted her list and called: "Mrs. Blatsky and Rosie!"
An older woman and a girl went into the doctor's surgery.
Walter said: "Wait here a moment, please, Father, and I'll fetch the boss."
He hurried to the far end, stepping around the toddlers on the floor. He tapped on the door marked "Patroness," and walked in.
The room was little more than a cupboard, and indeed there was a mop and bucket in a corner. Lady Maud Fitzherbert sat at a small table writing in a ledger. She wore a simple dove-gray dress and a broad-brimmed hat. She looked up, and the smile that lit up her face when she saw Walter was bright enough to bring tears to his eyes. She leaped out of her chair and threw her arms around him.
He had been looking forward to this all day. He kissed her mouth, which opened to him immediately. He had kissed several women, but she was the only one he had ever known to press her body against him this way. He felt embarrassed, fearing that she would feel his erection, and he arched his body away; but she only pressed more closely, as if she really wanted to feel it, so he gave in to the pleasure.
Maud was passionate about everything: poverty, women's rights, music--and Walter. He felt amazed and privileged that she had fallen in love with him.
She broke the kiss, panting. "Aunt Herm will become suspicious," she said.
Walter nodded. "My father is outside."
Maud patted her hair and smoothed her dress. "All right."
Walter opened the door and they went back into the hall. Otto was chatting amiably to Hermia: he liked respectable old ladies.
"Lady Maud Fitzherbert, may I present my father, Herr Otto von Ulrich."
Otto bowed over her hand. He had learned not to click his heels: the English thought it comical.
Walter watched them size one another up. Maud smiled as if amused, and Walter guessed she was wondering if this was what he would look like in years to come. Otto took in Maud's expensive cashmere dress and the fashionable hat with approval. So far, so good.
Otto did not know that they were in love. Walter's plan was that his father would get to know Maud first. Otto approved of wealthy women doing charitable work, and insisted that Walter's mother and his sister visit poor families at Zumwald, their country estate in East Prussia. He would find out what a wonderful and exceptional woman Maud was, then his defenses would be down by the time he learned that Walter wanted to marry her.
It was a little foolish, Walter knew, to be so nervous. He was twenty-eight years old: he had a right to choose the woman he loved. But eight years ago he had fallen in love with another woman. Tilde had been passionate and intelligent, like Maud, but she was seventeen and a Catholic. The von Ulrichs were Protestants. Both sets of parents had been angrily hostile to the romance, and Tilde had been unable to defy her father. Now Walter had fallen in love with an unsuitable woman for the second time. It was going to be difficult for his father to accept a feminist and a foreigner. But Walter was older and craftier now, and Maud was stronger and more independent than Tilde had been.
All the same, he was terrified. He had never felt like this about a woman, not even Tilde. He wanted to marry Maud and spend his life with her; in fact he could not imagine being without her. And he did not want his father to make trouble about it.
Maud was on her best behavior. "It is very kind of you to visit us, Herr von Ulrich," she said. "You must be tremendously busy. For a trusted confidant of a monarch, as you are to your kaiser, I imagine work has no end."
Otto was flattered, as she had intended. "I'm afraid this is true," he said. "However your brother, the earl, is such a long-standing friend of Walter's that I was very keen to come."
"Let me introduce you to our doctor." Maud led the way across the room and knocked at the surgery door. Walter was curious: he had never met the doctor. "May we come in?" she called.
They stepped into what must normally have been the pastor's office, furnished with a small desk and a shelf of ledgers and hymnbooks. The doctor, a handsome young man with black eyebrows and a sensual mouth, was examining Rosie Bla
tsky's hand. Walter felt a twinge of jealousy: Maud spent whole days with this attractive fellow.
Maud said: "Dr. Greenward, we have a most distinguished visitor. May I present Herr von Ulrich?"
Otto said stiffly: "How do you do?"
"The doctor works here for no fee," Maud said. "We're most grateful to him."
Greenward nodded curtly. Walter wondered what was causing the evident tension between his father and the doctor.
The doctor returned his attention to his patient. There was an angry-looking cut across her palm, and the hand and wrist were swollen. He looked at the mother and said: "How did she do this?"
The child answered. "My mother doesn't speak English," she said. "I cut my hand at work."
"And your father?"
"My father's dead."
Maud said quietly: "The clinic is for fatherless families, though in practise we never turn anyone away."
Greenward said to Rosie: "How old are you?"
"Eleven."
Walter murmured: "I thought children were not allowed to work under thirteen."
"There are loopholes in the law," Maud replied.
Greenward said: "What work do you do?"
"I clean up at Mannie Litov's garment factory. There was a blade in the sweepings."
"Whenever you cut yourself, you must wash the wound and put on a clean bandage. Then you have to change the bandage every day so that it doesn't get too dirty." Greenward's manner was brisk, but not unkind.
The mother barked a question at the daughter in heavily accented Russian. Walter could not understand her, but he got the gist of the child's reply, which was a translation of what the doctor had said.
The doctor turned to his nurse. "Clean the hand and bandage it, please." To Rosie he said: "I'm going to give you some ointment. If your arm swells more you must come back and see me next week. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"If you let the infection get worse, you may lose your hand."
Tears came to Rosie's eyes.
Greenward said: "I'm sorry to frighten you, but I want you to understand how important it is to keep your hand clean."
The nurse prepared a bowl of what was presumably antiseptic fluid. Walter said: "May I express my admiration and respect for your work here, Doctor."
"Thank you. I'm happy to give my time, but we need to buy medical supplies. Any help you can offer will be much appreciated."
Maud said: "We must leave the doctor to get on--there are at least twenty patients waiting."
The visitors left the surgery. Walter was bursting with pride. Maud had more than compassion. When told of young children working in sweatshops, many aristocratic ladies could wipe away a tear with an embroidered handkerchief; but Maud had the determination and the nerve to give real help.
And, he thought, she loves me!
Maud said: "May I offer you some refreshment, Herr von Ulrich? My office is cramped, but I do have a bottle of my brother's best sherry."
"Most kind, but we must be going."
That was a bit quick, Walter thought. Maud's charm had stopped working on Otto. He had a nasty feeling that something had gone wrong.
Otto took out his pocketbook and extracted a banknote. "Please accept a modest contribution to your excellent work here, Lady Maud."
"How generous!" she said.
Walter gave her a similar note. "Perhaps I may be allowed to donate something too."
"I appreciate anything you can offer me," she said. Walter hoped he was the only one to notice the sly look she gave him as she said it.
Otto said: "Please be sure to give my respects to Earl Fitzherbert."
They took their leave. Walter felt worried about his father's reaction. "Isn't Lady Maud wonderful?" he said breezily as they walked back toward Aldgate. "Fitz pays for everything, of course, but Maud does all the work."
"Disgraceful," Otto said. "Absolutely disgraceful."
Walter had sensed he was grumpy, but this astonished him. "What on earth do you mean? You approve of well-born ladies doing something to help the poor!"
"Visiting sick peasants with a few groceries in a basket is one thing," Otto said. "But I am appalled to see the sister of an earl in a place like that with a Jew doctor!"
"Oh, God," Walter groaned. Of course; Dr. Greenward was Jewish. His parents had probably been Germans called Grunwald. Walter had not met the doctor before today, and anyway might not have noticed or cared about his race. But Otto, like most men of his generation, thought such things important. Walter said: "Father, the man is working for nothing--Lady Maud cannot afford to refuse the help of a perfectly good doctor just because he's Jewish."
Otto was not listening. "Fatherless families--where did she get that phrase?" he said with disgust. "The spawn of prostitutes is what she means."
Walter felt heartsick. His plan had gone horribly wrong. "Don't you see how brave she is?" he said miserably.
"Certainly not," said Otto. "If she were my sister, I'd give her a good thrashing."
{ II }
There was a crisis in the White House.
In the small hours of the morning of April 21, Gus Dewar was in the West Wing. This new building provided badly needed office space, leaving the original White House free to be used as a residence. Gus was sitting in the president's study near the Oval Office, a small, drab room lit by a dim bulb. On the desk was the battered Underwood portable typewriter used by Woodrow Wilson to write his speeches and press releases.
Gus was more interested in the phone. If it rang, he had to decide whether to wake the president.
A telephone operator could not make such a decision. On the other hand, the president's senior advisers needed their sleep. Gus was the lowliest of Wilson's advisers, or the highest of his clerks, depending on point of view. Either way, it had fallen to him to sit all night by the phone to decide whether to disturb the president's slumbers--or those of the first lady, Ellen Wilson, who was suffering from a mysterious illness. Gus was nervous that he might say or do the wrong thing. Suddenly all his expensive education seemed superfluous: even at Harvard there had never been a class in when to wake the president. He was hoping the phone would never ring.
Gus was there because of a letter he had written. He had described to his father the royal party at Ty Gwyn, and the after-dinner discussion about the danger of war in Europe. Senator Dewar had found the letter so interesting and amusing that he had shown it to his friend Woodrow Wilson, who had said: "I'd like to have that boy in my office." Gus had been taking a year off between Harvard, where he had studied international law, and his first job at a Washington law firm. He had been halfway through a world tour, but he had eagerly cut short his travels and rushed home to serve his president.
Nothing fascinated Gus so much as the relationships between nations--the friendships and hatreds, the alliances and the wars. As a teenager he had attended sessions of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations--his father was a member--and he had found it more fascinating than a play at the theater. "This is how countries create peace and prosperity--or war, devastation, and famine," his father had said. "If you want to change the world, then foreign relations is the field in which you can do the most good--or evil."
And now Gus was in the middle of his first international crisis.
An overzealous Mexican government official had arrested eight American sailors in the port of Tampico. The men had already been released, the official had apologized, and the trivial incident might have ended there. But the squadron commander, Admiral Mayo, had demanded a twenty-one-gun salute. President Huerta had refused. Piling on the pressure, Wilson had threatened to occupy Veracruz, Mexico's biggest port.
And so America was on the brink of war. Gus greatly admired the high-principled Woodrow Wilson. The president was not content with the cynical view that one Mexican bandit was pretty much like another. Huerta was a reactionary who had killed his predecessor, and Wilson was looking for a pretext to unseat him. Gus was thrilled that
a world leader would say it was not acceptable for men to achieve power through murder. Would there come a day when that principle was accepted by all nations?
The crisis had been cranked up a notch by the Germans. A German ship called the Ypiranga was approaching Veracruz with a cargo of rifles and ammunition for Huerta's government.
Tension had been high all day, but now Gus was struggling to stay awake. On the desk in front of him, illuminated by a green-shaded lamp, was a typewritten report from army intelligence on the strength of the rebels in Mexico. Intelligence was one of the army's smaller departments, with only two officers and two clerks, and the report was scrappy. Gus's mind kept wandering to Caroline Wigmore.
When he arrived in Washington he had called to see Professor Wigmore, one of his Harvard teachers who had moved to Georgetown University. Wigmore had not been at home, but his young second wife was there. Gus had met Caroline several times at campus events, and had been strongly drawn to her quietly thoughtful demeanor and her quick intelligence. "He said he needed to order new shirts," she said, but Gus could see the strain on her face, and then she added: "But I know he's gone to his mistress." Gus had wiped her tears with his handkerchief and she had kissed his lips and said: "I wish I were married to someone trustworthy."
Caroline had turned out to be surprisingly passionate. Although she would not allow sexual intercourse, they did everything else. She had shuddering orgasms when he did no more than stroke her.
Their affair had been going on for only a month, but already Gus knew that he wanted her to divorce Wigmore and marry him. But she would not hear of it, even though she had no children. She said it would ruin Gus's career, and she was probably right. It could not be done discreetly, for the scandal would be too juicy--the attractive wife leaving a well-known professor and rapidly marrying a wealthy younger man. Gus knew exactly what his mother would say about such a marriage: "It's understandable, if the professor was unfaithful, but one can't meet the woman socially, of course." The president would be embarrassed, and so would the kind of people a lawyer wanted for clients. It would certainly put paid to any hopes Gus might have had of following his father into the Senate.
