Fall of Giants (The Century Trilogy)

by Ken Follett

  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 clean 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?"

  "His section captured a German trench, then had to abandon it when they ran out of ammunition."

  Fitz had missed all the debriefing, being in hospital. "Did he get a medal?"

  "No. The colonel told him he should have defended his position to the death. Billy said: 'What, like you did?' and he was put on a charge."

  Fitz was not surprised. Williams was trouble. "So what are you doing here?"

  "I work with your sister."

  "She didn't tell me."

  Ethel gave him a level look. "She wouldn't think you'd be interested in news of your former servants."

  It was a jibe, but he ignored it. "What do you do?"

  "I'm managing editor of The Soldier's Wife. I arrange printing and distribution, and edit the letters page. And I take care of the money."

  He was impressed. It was a big step up from housekeeper. But she had always been an extraordinarily capable organizer. "My money, I suppose?"

  "I don't think so. Maud is careful. She knows you don't mind paying for tea and cake, and doctoring for soldiers' children, but she wouldn't use your money for antiwar propaganda."

  He kept the conversation going just for the pleasure of watching her face as she talked. "Is that what is in the newspaper?" he asked. "Antiwar propaganda?"

  "We discuss publicly what you speak of only in secret: the possibility of peace."

  She was right. Fitz knew that senior politicians in both major parties had been talking about peace, and it angered him. But he did not want to have a row with Ethel. "Your hero, Lloyd George, is in favor of fighting harder."

  "Will he become prime minister, do you think?"

  "The king doesn't want him. But he may be the only candidate who can unite Parliament."

  "I fear he may prolong the war."

  Maud came out of her office. The tea party was breaking up, the women clearing up the cups and saucers and marshaling their children. Fitz marveled to see Aunt Herm carrying a stack of dirty plates. How the war had changed people!

  He looked again at Ethel. She was still the most attractive woman he had ever met. He yielded to an impulse. Speaking in a lowered voice he said: "Will you meet me tomorrow?"

  She looked shocked. "What for?" she said quietly.

  "Yes or no?"

  "Where?"

  "Victoria Station. One o'clock. At the entrance to platform three."

  Before she could reply the man in thick glasses came over, and Ethel introduced him. "Earl Fitzherbert, may I present Mr. Bernie Leckwith, chairman of the Aldgate branch of the Independent Labour Party."

  Fitz shook hands. Leckwith was in his twenties. Fitz guessed that poor eyesight had kept him out of the armed forces.

  "I'm sorry to see you wounded, Lord Fitzherbert," Leckwith said in a cockney accent.

  "I was one of thousands, and lucky to be alive."

  "With hindsight, is there anything we could have done differently at the Somme, that would have greatly altered the outcome?"

  Fitz thought for a moment. It was a damned good question.

  While he considered, Leckwith said: "Did we need more men and ammunition, as the generals claim? Or more flexible tactics and better communications, as the politicians say?"

  Fitz said thoughtfully: "All those things would have helped
but, frankly, I don't think they would have brought us victory. The assault was doomed from the start. But we could not possibly have known that in advance. We had to try."

  Leckwith nodded, as if his own view had been confirmed. "I appreciate your candor," he said, almost as if Fitz had made a confession.

  They left the chapel. Fitz handed Aunt Herm and Maud into the waiting car, then got in himself, and the chauffeur drove away.

  Fitz found himself breathing hard. He had suffered a small shock. Three years ago Ethel had been counting pillowcases at Ty Gwyn. Today she was the managing editor of a newspaper that, although small, was considered by senior ministers to be a thorn in the flesh of the government.

  What was her relationship with the surprisingly intelligent Bernie Leckwith? "Who was that chap Leckwith?" he asked Maud.

  "An important local politician."

  "Is he Williams's husband?"

  Maud laughed. "No, though everyone thinks he should be. He's a clever man who shares her ideals, and he's devoted to her son. I don't know why Ethel didn't marry him years ago."

  "Perhaps he doesn't make her heart beat faster."

  Maud raised her eyebrows, and Fitz realized he had been dangerously candid.

  He added hastily: "Girls of that type want romance, don't they? She'll marry a war hero, not a librarian."

  "She's not a girl of that type or any other type," Maud said rather frostily. "She's nothing if not exceptional. You don't meet two like her in a lifetime."

  Fitz looked away. He knew that was true.

  He wondered what the child was like. It must have been one of the dirty-faced toddlers playing on the floor of the chapel. He had probably seen his own son this afternoon. He was strangely moved by the thought. For some reason it made him want to cry.

  The car was passing through Trafalgar Square. He told the driver to stop. "I'd better drop in at the office," he explained to Maud.

  He limped into the Old Admiralty Building and up the stairs. His desk was in the diplomatic section, which inhabited Room 45. Sublieutenant Carver, a student of Latin and Greek who had come down from Cambridge to help decode German signals, told him that not many intercepts had come in during the afternoon, as usual, and there was nothing he needed to deal with. However, there was some political news. "Have you heard?" said Carver. "The king has summoned Lloyd George."