House of Gold

by Natasha Solomons

  To Albert’s weary resignation, Greta had transformed Fontmell Abbey into a lying-in and convalescent home for some of London’s most unfortunate souls. To her dismay, she’d learned that now that the London labour wards were given over to the wounded from the front, women were starting to die in childbirth with horrible frequency. Since unmarried mothers were unable to gain admittance to a general hospital, and were forbidden from collecting the thirty-shillings maternity benefit given to married women, they could not afford a midwife’s fee.

  Greta had the barns converted into a ward, rebuilt with corrugated iron and panelled with reused wood from old packing crates. There were eighteen beds – nine for those still confined, and nine for those who had already delivered.

  Several local handywomen offered their services, but Greta was insistent: only qualified midwives with good character who had registered with the Central Midwives Board would be engaged. She wanted even the poorest women to be tended to using the best of modern medicine and science, not soothed with folk remedies. She had used all her influence to try to procure a resident doctor, but even with his lordship’s assistance, she had failed. All the doctors were required at military hospitals. The best they could manage was to send a car to Southampton for a surgeon during emergencies. Mostly it was sufficient, but sometimes it was not. The first mother to have her baby stillborn asked to have it buried at Fontmell. The ground at the abbey chapel was still consecrated, so Greta asked the vicar to commit the tiny coffin into the earth. The vicar apologised: the baby had not drawn breath; it had not been baptised. Greta experienced an anger in her veins that fizzed like electricity. They buried the baby outside the walls of the abbey churchyard. During the night, Greta instructed that the wall be moved and rebuilt around the tiny grave. In that first winter, two more small headstones bloomed amongst the grass.

  Only one mother died. It had happened on Christmas Eve. Helen had been working in a munitions factory right up until her nine months, but after she began to bleed, she’d been put on a train to Hampshire to rest. Helen was bright yellow, from her daffodil hair to her lemon-peel skin and flaking nails. To their relief, her delivery had been quick and easy enough, although the baby girl was born as yellow as a canary. Greta had called a few hours afterwards to present the new mother with a blanket stitched with pink and a few hothouse roses in a jam jar. Then, suddenly, Helen had started to bleed. Greta had watched in horror as a waterfall of red soaked through the bedcovers and poured onto the floor, drenching the frantic nurses’ shoes. The wet noise of their feet. The poor woman’s face drew back tightly over her skull, as though she was ageing decades in a few minutes; her hands became the thin, bony hands of an old woman. And then she was dead. Greta had stared at the hothouse roses on the bedside, their petals flecked with blood. At the yellow baby wailing in its crib.

  The doctor assured Greta that a single maternal death was a triumph. It did not feel like one. Greta made herself watch as an old woman appeared to collect her infant granddaughter bundled up in blankets, five pounds slipped in an envelope along with useless expressions of regret. The mother’s coffin was sent up to London on the milk train, the body unstitched, for there was not suture thread to waste.

  Greta found herself thinking: what if Helen had lived? Then, like scores of other mothers who had left Fontmell, she would have been forced to return to the factory and nurse her baby with yellow, glowing milk. Greta wanted the women to have a way of supporting their children without risking their own health. She observed how much the women seemed to enjoy walking amongst the allotments, admiring the vegetables and, when they were sufficiently recovered, helping the gardeners bring inside the cabbages and parsnips.

  Greta and Withers took tea with Miss Winifred Hathaway and Miss Ursula Ogden in the glasshouse beside the kitchen garden. As they nibbled seedcake and biscuits from Fortnum’s, they watched a pair of heavily pregnant women walk uncomfortably amongst the rows of glossy chard. Despite the vast protrusions of their bellies, the women looked thin and pinched. Miss Hathaway and Miss Ogden complimented Greta and Withers on the beauty and profusion of their parsnips and the luxuriance of the snowdrops, but made no remark about the women. Greta waved to them, and the women nodded in acknowledgement.

  ‘The women who have had their babies stay here for a week or two, but then we send them back. What happens to them then?’ said Greta.

  ‘What indeed?’ said Ursula, putting down her teacup.

  ‘They need an occupation. A skill,’ said Greta. ‘And Withers and I have seen how much they enjoy helping in the garden.’

  ‘A healthful pursuit,’ agreed Miss Hathaway.

  ‘And with so many of the nation’s gardeners away at war, we thought it would be jolly useful to train up a few more,’ said Greta.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Ursula, sensing what was coming and lowering her garibaldi biscuit in discomfort.

  ‘Yes,’ said Greta, ruthlessly. ‘We wish to open a “Hathaway Gardening School” here at Fontmell for the poor and unfortunate mothers.’

  Miss Hathaway stared at Greta and Withers in shock. ‘But Miss Hathaway’s Gardening and Finishing School is for ladies.’

  Greta fixed Miss Hathaway with a look. ‘The delphiniums won’t blush.’

  ‘It’s a wonderful opportunity to spread the Hathaway natural gardening method throughout the nation, like a rich and glorious compost,’ said Withers.

  ‘Well, I suppose if you put it like that, it sounds quite nice,’ agreed Ursula softly.

  All three women turned to study Winifred Hathaway, knowing that it was her opinion that mattered.

  ‘Gardening is an elegant pursuit,’ said Miss Hathaway at last.

  ‘And so is a mother’s desire to support her family,’ said Greta with conviction.

  ‘Some have no choice but to prostitute themselves,’ said Withers, never one to flinch from simple facts.

  Greta watched as the two good lady gardeners flinched. She realised with some embarrassment that she was leaking milk through the bodice of her dress, and rearranged the lace of her shawl. After Celia’s birth, Greta had lived through the first six months in a blue haze of dislocation and melancholy, too tired to venture further than the house or garden, but never quite able to sleep. Yet from the morning after Benjamin’s arrival she’d been filled with sympathy for the other mothers – expectant or delivered – who paced the walkways. She was adamant that these mothers must not spend these precious days at Fontmell in fear of a dreadful future. The answer lay in the soil. She closed her eyes and conjured up the smell of Benjamin’s silky head, the milky dampness of his skin, the blurred blue of his eyes and the perfect rosy curve of his upturned lip. When she opened her eyes again, she realised the other women were watching her with some anxiety.

  ‘We must do this,’ said Greta. She met Miss Hathaway’s sharp gaze.

  Miss Hathaway sighed, knowing when she’d been beaten. ‘Very well.’

  CHTEAU DE BEAUREPAIRE, JANUARY

  Henri arrived late in the afternoon. He’d hoped to arrive earlier, but the checkpoints had been interminable. He wished he’d brought a novel to while away the hours. When he finally arrived at the château, tired, cross and extremely hungry, it was to discover that luncheon was over and, worse than that, Albert was nowhere to be found. The general staff had vanished to attend to their duties, and a fire burned cosily in the deserted mess. A lone orderly tidied up the newspapers and rearranged the cushions on an ottoman.

  ‘I think he’s on leave, sir,’ said a staff sergeant manning the desk. ‘He went to visit his son.’

  ‘He has a son?’ asked Henri, delighted.

  A captain with the privilege of being Albert’s tennis partner appeared and shook his head. ‘He’s not gone to visit his son. He was ordered to the front. Left this morning.’

  Henri cursed under his breath. ‘Do you know when he will return?’

  The captain shrugged. ‘Perhaps tonight. Maybe not for a week. He’s been sent to division headquarters. You
can catch up with him there. But you’ll need a permit to travel to the British section of the front line, old chap.’

  Henri smiled. ‘Do you know to whom I must speak to obtain such a thing?’

  The captain frowned, twitched his moustache. ‘I might. May I ask your name, Monsieur? And the nature of your business?’

  Henri turned and smiled charmingly at the young captain, who felt for a moment that the sun had appeared on an overcast day.

  ‘My name is Henri Louis David Goldbaum. I’m afraid I cannot state my business to anyone but Monsieur Albert Goldbaum. But if you assist me in obtaining this permit to travel, I shall be in your debt. I am a good man to have in your debt, Captain.’

  He smiled again, and the captain quite forgot what he’d been busily doing before Monsieur Goldbaum required his help.

  WESTERN FRONT, FLANDERS, JANUARY

  Albert loathed journeying to the front line – he was a day-tripper to hell. All through the motor-car ride the sense of guilt and shirking hypocrisy rose in his gut like heartburn. Back from the lines, it was bitterly cold and a hoarfrost clung thickly to the trees. A robin jealously guarded its scarlet hoard of holly berries. In the distance came the constant boom of the guns, disconnected and as bodiless as thunder. They passed troops walking the other way, returning for a fortnight’s rest – a weary trudge, mud-covered and spent, their faces blank, more surprised than relieved to still be alive. They were blasted in soil and muck, the glowing ends of their cigarettes and the pinkish whites of their eyes the only notes of colour. The Sergeant yelled at the men to salute the car from GHQ, and Albert cringed as they obeyed, slack-jawed and half-asleep.

  They paused a mile back from the front line, where the support trenches began to furrow onwards, and climbed out from the motor. Every half-minute a lorry rattled up behind them and men hurried forward to unload supplies. Albert suspected his driver was lost. The roads were routinely destroyed in the bombardments and hastily rebuilt, but not necessarily in the same place. He didn’t recognise anything in the obliterated landscape. Any remaining trees were burned and twisted, while a blackened ball of mistletoe swung like the disembodied head of a gorgon. Shells shrieked, and Albert cast about in surprise that they were so close. Then he realised they were starlings returning with the troops from the thick of it, having learned the song of war.

  ‘Wait,’ Albert instructed the driver and disappeared around the side of a ruined cottage to relieve himself.

  As he fastened his fly, he observed the neat channels of the support trenches, each about the proportion of the allotments in the fields behind Fontmell. He strode a little closer, and to his surprise noted that at the rear some had been turned into little gardens. He saw tufts of winter parsnips and a vast white head of cauliflower. A company of infantrymen marched by the trench, and to his amusement they each saluted the cauliflower as they passed. In this decimated countryside, a massive cauliflower was the closest thing to a landmark. It seemed appropriate to Albert; after all, it was an army of gardeners and allotment-keepers who had been sent to war.

  A minute later they were off, the car bouncing around shell holes. They swerved to miss the corpse of a horse, too large for anyone to bury in the January ground. It had been left on the side of the track to rot, but remained preserved in the cold, its black coat grey with frost, its eyes pecked clean by crows.

  They reached Cassel hill at dusk. Cassel was a pretty French town, unspoilt and cobbled with painted houses and cafés, which, in summer, must have spilled out onto the square. The army headquarters were in a modern building that had been a large casino before the war. The car drew up and Albert hurried in, almost at a run, aware of the papers in his pocket and the fact that he was late. The sergeant-at-arms pointed him towards a glasshouse in the grounds. Albert rushed along in the semi-darkness, cursing the casino architect who had specified the slippery paving slabs. No one looked up as he entered; he drew an envelope out of his pocket and slid it across to the General, trying to listen to the conversation, but distracted by the darkening views across Flanders and the sweep to the Ypres Salient and the southern country below. The sun was sinking below the horizon, and whether it was the last rays igniting the clouds or shellfire that he could see, Albert couldn’t tell.

  Trestle tables were spread with maps, and fog began to sneak in through the cracks between the windowpanes. They were listening to a meteorologist give a gloomy prognosis of the next week’s weather – cold surrendering to rain and churning the ground into mud. As if to underscore his point, rain began to fall on the glass roof with a fearful clatter. Albert thought of the poor souls huddled below, cold and soggy, boots and toes mouldering. You plant vegetables and seedlings underground, not men, he decided.

  There was a flash of gunfire and then another, silent as lightning. He glanced along the grim faces of the generals; these were the gods, deciding the fate of the wretched mortals beneath. They shall decree the red lights in the sky, the rivers of horses and bloody men, the slick corpses in the muck, the ridges of Flanders that are to be captured. From up here the cost is great and small, spread out so far below. No wonder the drama of a single human life is the snapping of a matchstick. They are too high up to hear the bones break, to see the guts spill out, the grimy backwash of battle.

  ‘Goldbaum,’ snapped General Harrison, ‘do you have something to add?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Albert longed to sit, but remained standing, half-listening and watching the cold fingers of fog reach their way inside. There was a knock at the door, and an uneasy sergeant cleared his throat.

  ‘There’s a Frenchman here to see Captain Goldbaum. Says it’s urgent war business.’

  General Harrison glanced up in displeasure. ‘Bloody better be war business. Go!’

  Albert followed the sergeant, slipping again on the wet path, feeling the raindrops slide beneath his collar. There, standing in the former gaming salon of the casino, was Henri. He lounged against a pillar, smoking a cigarette and looking as if he might be about to place a bet on blackjack or spin the roulette wheel. On seeing Albert, his face lit up with joy, and he took both his hands and embraced him.

  ‘A son! What felicity amongst such madness.’ He conjured a pair of cigars and bottle of cognac from his pocket. ‘Here, let us sit.’

  Quickly he confided to Albert all he knew about the telegram, and deftly placed it into Albert’s coat pocket.

  ‘I am not fond of the Czech nationalists. Their Bohemian Alliance makes me uneasy, but so far their information has been good.’

  Albert nodded in agreement, touching his jacket pocket absently. The war had turned him into a courier of other men’s secrets.

  ‘You have a contact in Naval Intelligence?’ asked Henri.

  ‘I do. In London.’

  Henri groaned. ‘You must be due leave? When will they allow you to see your son?’

  Albert sighed. ‘When they choose.’

  Henri sucked on his cigar, considering, while Albert drained his glass. After a moment Albert stood, resolved.

  ‘Wait here,’ he told Henri.

  Albert hurried back out to the glasshouse in the rain. The meeting had finished and he nearly collided with General Harrison.

  ‘Slow down, Goldbaum!’

  ‘My apologies, sir.’

  ‘Important war business resolved?’

  ‘It wasn’t war business, sir.’

  The General muttered an expletive. ‘You blasted Goldbaums! You use our communication lines like a mothers’ gossip circle. Next time I’ll make sure that permission to headquarters is refused for all your bloody relations.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I am sorry, sir, but my cousin came to tell me that my wife is poorly. She’s not yet recovered from the birth of my son. I should very much like to see her, sir.’

  The General studied Albert, exasperated, but not without sympathy.

  ‘I want you back here in a week or I’ll have you court-martialled – Goldbaum or not.’

  ‘Yes
, sir. I’m most grateful.’

  He pressed the remains of the brandy into the General’s hand. ‘In gratitude, sir.’

  Albert found Henri where he had left him. He seized his arm and steered him out of army headquarters.

  ‘Henri, do you have a car?’

  ‘Yes. My driver is waiting in the café on the square.’

  ‘Fetch him.’

  Ten minutes later Henri called to him from the back of a Delaunay-Belleville motor car.

  Albert climbed in beside him. ‘There’s an airfield close to the front line,’ he said, barking out instructions in French to the driver, who raced through the dark streets at nearly twenty miles an hour. ‘Slow down!’ called Albert. ‘We don’t need an accident.’

  The tyres made an awful noise against the cobbles and Albert’s head began to throb. The driver took a corner too fast, and Albert slammed into Henri. He eased himself away and tried to look out of the window. Most of the villages were huddled in darkness. Here and there lights shone in a farmhouse, mostly ones taken over by the army.

  Henri hummed and tried to make conversation. ‘How is your family? Your brother?’

  ‘At Lake Geneva, with his mistress and daughter. The arrangement suits everyone. He can pretend to us that they don’t exist, and we can pretend that we don’t know that they do.’

  ‘One day such things won’t matter,’ said Henri softly.

  ‘But until then, we are grateful for Switzerland,’ said Albert. He did not waste time on days like these imagining beyond next week.

  ‘Kiss Greta for me when you see her,’ said Henri.