CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - December 1916
Fitz was working at the Admiralty in Whitehall. It was not the job he wanted. He longed to return to the Welsh Rifles in France. Much as he hated the dirt and discomfort of the trenches, he could not feel good about being safe in London while others were risking their lives. He had a horror of being thought a coward. However, the doctors insisted that his leg was not yet strong enough, and the army would not let him return.
Because Fitz spoke German, Smith-Cumming of the Secret Service Bureau-the man who called himself "C"-had recommended him to naval intelligence, and he had been temporarily posted to a department known as Room 40. The last thing he wanted was a desk job, but to his surprise, he found that the work was highly important to the war effort.
On the first day of the war a post office ship called the CS Alert had gone out into the North Sea, dredged up the Germans' heavy-duty seabed telecommunications cables, and severed them all. With that sly stroke the British had forced the enemy to use wireless for most messages. Wireless signals could be intercepted. The Germans were not stupid, and they sent all their messages in code. Room 40 was where the British tried to break the codes.
Fitz worked with an assortment of people-some of them quite odd, most not very military-who struggled to decipher the gibberish picked up by listening stations on the coast. Fitz was no good at the crossword-puzzle challenge of decoding-he could never even work out the murderer in a Sherlock Holmes mystery-but he was able to translate the decrypts into English and, more importantly, his battlefield experience enabled him to judge which were significant.
Not that it made much difference. At the end of 1916 the western front had hardly moved from its position at the beginning of the year, despite huge efforts by both sides-the relentless German assault at Verdun and the even more costly British attack at the Somme. The Allies desperately needed a boost. If the United States joined in they could tip the balance-but so far there was no sign of that.
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 Tŷ 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."
{II}
All the next morning, Ethel told herself she was not going to meet Fitz. How dared he suggest such a thing? For more than two years she had heard nothing from him. Then when they met he had not even asked about Lloyd-his own child! He was the same selfish, thoughtless deceiver as always.
All the same, she had been thrown into a whirl. Fitz had looked at her with his intense green eyes, and asked her questions about her life that made her feel she was important to him-contrary to all the evidence. He was no longer the perfect, godlike man he had once been: his beautiful face was marred by one half-closed eye, and he stooped over his walking stick. But his weakness only made her want to take care of him. She told herself she was a fool. He had all the care money could buy. She would not go to meet him.
At twelve noon she left the premises of The Soldier's Wife-two small rooms over a print shop, shared with the Independent Labour Party-and caught a bus. Maud was not at the office that morning, which saved Ethel the trouble of inventing an excuse.
It was a long journey by bus and underground train from Aldgate to Victoria, and Ethel arrived at the rendezvous a few minutes after one o'clock. She wondered if Fitz might have grown impatient and left, and the thought made her feel slightly ill; but he was there, wearing a tweed suit as if he were going into the country, and she immediately felt better.
He smiled. "I was afraid you weren't coming," he said.
"I don't know why I did," she replied. "Why did you ask me?"
"I want to show you something." He took her arm.
They walked out of the station. Ethel felt foolishly pleased to be arm in arm with Fitz. She wondered at his boldness. He was an easily recognizable figure. What if they ran into one of his friends? She supposed they would pretend not to see one another. In Fitz's social class, a man who had been married a few years was not expected to be faithful.
They rode a bus a few stops and got off in the raffish suburb of Chelsea, a low-rent neighborhood of artists and writers. Ethel wondered what he wanted her to see. They walked along a street of small villas. Fitz said: "Have you ever watched a debate in Parliament?"
"No," she said. "But I'd love to."
"You have to be invited by an M.P. or a peer. Shall I arrange it?"
"Yes, please!"
He looked happy that she had accepted. "I'll check when there's going to be something interesting. You might like to see Lloyd George in action."
"Yes!"
"He is putting his government together today. I should think he will kiss the king's hand as prime minister tonight."
Ethel gazed about her thoughtfully. In parts, Chelsea still looked like the country village it had been a hundred years ago. The older buildings were cottages and farmhouses, low-built with large gardens and orchards. There was not much greenery in December, but even so the neighborhood had a pleasant semirural feel. "Politics is a funny business," she said. "I've wanted Lloyd George for prime minister ever since I was old enough to read the newspaper, but now that it's happened I'm dismayed."
"Why?"
"He's the most belligerent senior figure in the government. His appointment might kill off any chance of peace. On the other hand... "
Fitz looked intrigued. "What?"
"He's the only man who could agree to peace talks without being crucified by Northcliffe's bloodthirsty newspapers."
"That's a point," Fitz said, looking worried. "If anyone else did it, the headlines would scream: 'Fire Asquith-or Balfour, or Bonar Law-and bring in Lloyd George!' But if they attack Lloyd George there's no one left."
"So maybe there is a hope of peace."
He allowed his tone of voice to become testy. "Why aren't you hoping for victory, rather than peace?"
"Because that's how we got into this mess," she said equably. "What are you going to show me?"
"This." He unlatched a gate and held it open. They entered the grounds of a detached two-story house. The garden was overgrown and the place needed painting, but it was a charming medium-size home, the kind of place that might be owned by a successful musician, Ethel imagined, or perhaps a well-known actor. Fitz took a key from his pocket and opened the door. They stepped inside, and he closed the door and kissed her.
She gave herself up to it. She had not been kissed for a long time, and she felt like a thirsty traveler in a desert. She stroked his long neck and pressed her breasts against his chest. She sensed that he was as desperate as she. Before she lost control she pushed him away. "Stop," she said breathlessly. "Stop."
"Why?"
"Last time we did this I ended up talking to your bloody lawyer." She moved away from him. "I'm not as innocent as I used to be."
"It will be different this time," he said, panting. "I was a fool to let you go. I see that now. I was young, too."
To help her calm down she looked into the rooms. They were full of dowdy old furniture. "Whose house is this?" she said.
"Yours," he replied. "If you want it."
She stared at him. What did he mean?
"You could live here with the baby," he explained. "It was occupied for years by an old lady who used to be my father's housekeeper. She died a few months ago. You could redecorate it and buy new furniture."
"Live here?" she said. "As what?"
He could not quite bring himself to say it.
"As your mistress?" she said.
"You can have a nurse, and a couple of housemaids, and a gardener. Even a motorcar with a chauffeur, if that appeals to you."
The part of it that appealed to her was him.
He misinterpreted her thoughtful look. "Is the house too small? Would you prefer Kensington? Do you want a butler and a housekeeper? I'll give you anything you want, don't you understand? My life is empty without you."
He meant it, she saw. At least, he meant it now, when he was aroused and unsatisfied. She knew from bitter experience how fast he could change.
The trouble was, she wanted him just as badly.
He must have seen that in her face, for he took her in his arms again. She turned up her face to be kissed. I want more of this, she thought.
Once again she broke the embrace before she lost control.
"Well?" he said.
She could not make a sensible decision while he was kissing her. "I've got to be alone," she said. She forced herself to walk away from him before it was too late. "I'm going home," she said. She opened the door. "I need time to think." She hesitated on the doorstep.
"Think as long as you want," he said. "I'll wait."
She closed the door and ran away.
{III}