House of Gold

by Natasha Solomons

  LAKE GENEVA, MARCH

  On the slopes edging the lake the snow receded, revealing hoards of golden primulas like thousands of scattered coins hidden amongst the browning grass.

  Clement stood on the loggia of the villa in his rabbit-fur slippers and stared, unable to take all of it in at once. He knew that on the other side of the mountain range men fought and froze, and died of frostbite and starvation, but from the terrace of the Villa Gold the mountains were a white backdrop, a stageset to better show off the concert of primulas and the first pots of sentinel tulips in grenadier red.

  At parties, the hosts were careful not to invite German and Austrians to dine on the same night as the English, French and Russians, although sometimes at the grand hotels or boating clubs they glimpsed one another, greeting with a cool nod. It was a different kind of war on this side of the mountains, one where the difficulties lay in tactful seating arrangements and invitational etiquette. Yet Clement knew that if he left Switzerland he might not be able to return, and sometimes he felt as if the entire country was a prison, however gilded. Mostly he endured a pleasant exile, admiring the varying effect of light on the lake while drinking French brandy and eating German ham.

  One evening he was obliged to attend a champagne reception at the American Embassy in Geneva. It was the night for the Allies. They knew perfectly well that the German ministers holidaying beside the lake had been invited the night before. Clement found himself collared by a bright-eyed young diplomat, full of his position and oozing optimism. He pressed a glass into Clement’s hand and asked him in confidential tones what could be done to persuade the British government to agree to peace talks.

  ‘The Germans consider Chancellor von Bethmann to be such a drip that if he enters into negotiations with the British, the folks at home would consider themselves lucky to hang on to Berlin,’ said the young American.

  He smiled, flashing his white teeth like a debutante her legs, but watched Clement closely. Clement understood that this was an anecdote supposed to find its way back to Britain, to hint of favourable terms in any deal. The American was well fed and had sumptuous hair, and Clement felt conscious of his own thinning locks. He said with a sigh, ‘I’m afraid that however much President Wilson might wish the Europeans to behave and see sense, Wilson is not in fact a headmaster, and nations – like children – won’t do what they are told, even if it is for the best.’

  Privately Clement knew that the British couldn’t consider peace. Their position was far too poor to negotiate, and now there was even talk that the Russians were seeking a separate peace. All hope remained pinned on America entering the war.

  The young diplomat frowned, his effervescence momentarily flattened.

  ‘You fellows are all the same: “The stalemate’s irrevocable. Nothing’s ever gonna change.”’

  ‘Except the weather,’ corrected Clement. ‘The snow is coming off the mountains. I heard the first boom today of a spring avalanche.’

  ‘And Zimmermann!’ exclaimed the diplomat, pressing on regardless. ‘The German Foreign Minister. He’s new. He’s not one of the old guard. He’s a self-made man, and not a von or a count.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Clement, wishing he could return to discussing the weather. ‘But sometimes those who have fought their way upstream then have to show that they belong. I fear that Herr Zimmermann isn’t quite the radical you’re hoping for in Washington.’

  ‘All you Europeans are as cynical as each other. It’s one thing you and the Germans share.’

  ‘We share many things. Borders. People. Ambition. I’m afraid that is the problem.’

  ‘Well, I like Zimmermann,’ insisted the young man.

  ‘So do I,’ replied Clement. ‘I hear he always drinks at least two quarts of Moselle with luncheon every day, and that is a quality to be admired in any man, regardless of his politics.’

  The following morning Zimmermann interrupted Clement’s breakfast. Clement sat down to Kaiser rolls (a delicacy that he relished, while worrying that his enjoyment was unpatriotic) with unsalted butter and apricot jam, marmalade being impossible to procure – a rare and irritating failure of the Goldbaums’ capabilities under trying circumstances. He unfolded his newspaper. Zimmermann greeted him in the headlines of the New York Times, The Times and The World:

  GERMANY SEEKS ALLIANCE AGAINST U.S., ASKS MEXICO TO JOIN. SECRETARY ZIMMERMANN EMBROILED IN PLOT TO GIVE AWAY TEXAS, ARIZONA AND NEW MEXICO.

  In amazement, Clement read the details of the telegram. He wondered if it was true and, if it were, whether the Americans would believe it. He trotted upstairs to where Irena and Lara were breakfasting in bed, and showed Irena the newspaper. She read it in silence, then handed it back to him with a frown.

  ‘Do you think it’s true?’ he asked softly, sitting on the edge of the bed.

  Irena shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. The American people won’t believe it. They don’t want it to be true. Whether he sent it or not, all Zimmermann has to do is deny it.’

  Clement dined out. He rarely lunched at his club, but he wanted to hear the chatter. The Americans were evenly spread between the Colony Club and the Mansion House. They preferred the bar at the Colony, but the steaks were better at the Mansion. He sat at the bar and ordered port and oysters for every American who came in. It was a forgery, said a prosperous gentleman with a monocle and a sense of entitlement. A preposterous document, obviously faked and planted by British agents. No such thing, refuted another, sucking on his cigar. Of course it’s real! The whole country will demand war, and at last Mr Wilson is in a position where he will have to give it to them. Pondering it all, Clement thanked them for their company, paid the bill and took a cab back to the villa.

  In the evening, after Lara was tucked up into the double bed, Clement and Irena sipped brandies by the library fire.

  ‘I think you’re right,’ he said at last. He usually deferred to her in matters concerning human nature. As a superlative chess player, Irena had an instinct for motive. ‘The telegram is not the simple touchpaper to make the Americans declare war, however much we might wish it so.’ He swirled his brandy so that it caught in the firelight, and for a moment it looked as if he held a glass of swooshing rubies. He continued, ‘In the modern world, the public is cynical. Convinced that everything is a conspiracy and that their government is out to dupe and manipulate its own people. They must be convinced it is authentic. No easy task.’

  Irena shrugged. ‘And, again, I tell you that all Zimmermann need do is say it isn’t true.’

  And yet the following morning, when Zimmermann once more greeted Clement at breakfast, it was not with a denial but an admission.

  ‘I cannot deny it. It is true,’ declared Zimmermann from the front pages of half a dozen newspapers.

  Clement read The New York Times twice and, folding it carefully under his arm, retrieved a bottle of Krug ’89 Private Cuvée, then carried them both upstairs to where Irena and Lara still slept. He kissed Irena awake, passed her the newspaper and opened the champagne, rousing Lara with a start. Irena poured a few drops into her milk.

  ‘Three is a good age to learn to drink champagne,’ she said. ‘And this is the day to start.’

  Every pot, urn, vase and border brimmed with tulips – yellow, scarlet, hoary white and dipped in pink. In the afternoon, Lara padded through the gardens with Irena, picking up blooms battered by the wind, spearing bruised petals with a stick and gathering the fallen heads into a basket like dozens of smooth, oval eggs in every colour. Behind the banks of tulips and the vivid expanse of green lawn, Lake Geneva glinted cold and blue, while behind it loomed the Alps, still spread with snow and piercing white. Clement watched as Lara squatted on plump haunches to inspect a bristled caterpillar.

  A car glided up the driveway. Clement strolled over to intercept, sweating slightly, aware that he had put on weight. He must be thinner again for summer or the heat would be intolerable. He hesitated on the steps of the villa as the driver slid out and raced r
ound to open the passenger door. He wondered briefly whether he ought to hurry inside to hide, and deny he was home – he had a profound dislike of visitors disturbing his little idyll.

  He watched as Monsieur Abelard, the manager of the Swiss branch of the Goldbaum Bank, climbed out and stood, blinking, on the gravel. Clement considered him with dissatisfaction. He stepped forward and offered the older man his hand.

  ‘Monsieur, what a delight. What can it be that lures you away from the bank? The pleasures of a bright afternoon, perhaps?’

  Monsieur Abelard reached into his pocket and drew out a crumpled piece of paper and passed it to Clement, who looked at it, uncomprehending.

  ‘What is it, Monsieur?’

  ‘A cheque, Mr Goldbaum. From Russia.’

  HAMPSHIRE, APRIL

  It seemed to Greta that the whole of England was waiting. The nation lay parched and brown, exhausted and withered as if from endless drought, but when President Wilson at last went before Congress with a message of war, it did not bring immediate respite, like the coming of rain. America might have joined the conflict, but her soldiers must first be trained and then put onto ships to sail through the perilous Atlantic, where the monstrous U-boats lurked. The first expeditionary force was not expected in France until June.

  In the summer before the war she had planted half an acre of milk parsley on the river banks, and as she walked out one morning, Greta was gladdened by the sight of several large Swallowtail butterflies wheeling powerfully in the air, their wingtips curved like those of a real swallow, their intricate black-and-white colouring like miniature leaded church windows. Albert would have been ecstatic to witness such a display. Greta tried to put it into a letter, but then Celia cut open her head, jumping off a flowerpot onto the stone terrace, and the ward laundry had again run out of linen. The letter remained unwritten.

  Lady Goldbaum visited most afternoons to read improving works to the mothers recovering from their lying-in. From time to time she gave lectures at the gardening school on the cultivation of orchids, but she complained to Greta that her talks were not nearly as well attended as those on the propagation of radishes and the planting of potato tubers. Tactfully, Greta explained that the women sought practical knowledge, and that they had little hope of obtaining employment in the sort of households with glasshouses stocked with rare plants. She suggested that Lady Goldbaum might prefer to spend her afternoons with the children, assisting Celia with her bug-hotel.

  Lady Goldbaum took the task seriously and had one of the estate carpenters build Celia a bug-hotel that was a scale replica of the Ritz, complete with gilded fretwork and lights above the awning that flashed when Celia cranked a handle – to attract moths, or so Lady Goldbaum said. Each window of the hotel was a tiny burrow or hole for a bug, and the famous swing doors opened to reveal a box stuffed with hay. Lady Goldbaum liked to stroll through the Fontmell gardens with a walking stick, using it to point out any stray weeds and instructing Celia to pluck them out. She had a pair of small gardening gloves made for her granddaughter in the softest kid. Each week they were rubbed with beeswax to keep them supple. Celia thought her grandmother was a marvel. She admired the way that when Lady Goldbaum shouted, every gardener within earshot came running. She knew the name and history of every plant, and told of its journey to England like one of Robinson Crusoe’s adventures. Celia liked it that everyone was a tiny bit frightened of her grandmother – everyone except her.

  Greta watched her mother-in-law and daughter’s relationship with equal pleasure and anguish. She knew how much her own mother longed to see Celia. The war had cheated the Baroness of her granddaughter’s childhood – she had not held her as a baby, or kissed the round bagels on her wrists. In the terms of war, it was one of the smaller crimes, but it was a theft nonetheless, and even when the war ended, those years could not be returned. She had sent via the Red Cross a single photograph of Celia holding Benjamin, but did not know whether the Baroness had even received it. As for Otto – Greta tried not to think of him. She did not even know where to picture him – had he been sent east or west? Her only solace was that if he was dead, she must have heard.

  Greta slipped into bed, exhausted from another day supervising the garden school and hospital, but found herself, as usual, unable to sleep. The fire in the room was too hot and the moon too bright. She opened the curtains and let the cold light flood the room. The cedar trees on the lawn cast moon-shadows, the beaks of the crocuses black and grey like baby crows. She waited for sleep, trying not to think. There was a list of names to be pushed away. From the nursery above, she heard Benjamin mewing for a bottle, the soft opening of the door as one of the nursery maids hurried to him. She considered what it must be like for the mothers at the little Fontmell hospital when they returned home. They would have no maids to help with the nights, keep their houses or prepare their meals. If they had older children, they might help with the baby and the chores. Greta tried to picture Celia usefully tending to Benjamin, rather than surreptitiously pinching him in his pram. The thought was so unlikely that she laughed.

  She was newly awakened to the rare privilege of her position and yet, however selfish and ungrateful it might make her, she was not happy. She was lonely and discontented. It was different from the way she had felt in the first years of her marriage – then she had not known what happiness was possible, or the quiet satisfaction of true companionship. She and Albert had enjoyed it just long enough for Greta to understand what she had now lost. She was awake until dawn, watching as the moon retreated across the sky and then as dawn stretched rose-red fingers behind the river. She slid out of bed, tugged on her dress – buttoning it with difficulty herself – and padded downstairs, pulling on her boots, and ventured out into the garden.

  The moss-gatherers waited in the kitchen gardens. They looked surprised to see her. Half a dozen women had assembled, before Withers and Miss Hathaway joined them. Miss Hathaway glanced at Greta, making no remark on her presence.

  ‘Shall we?’

  The women took a large basket in each hand and proceeded to follow Withers and Miss Hathaway out of the gardens into the estate beyond. They walked for half an hour until they reached the salt marshes. The air thrummed with birds; Greta observed the early-morning tussle of a pair of little terns over an elver, while all around them rose the cries of black-headed gulls, cormorants, redshanks and oystercatchers. The water lay in mirrored pools, untroubled by the tide, and everywhere there was the reek of sandy mud. Worm casings lay spooled in the shallows, while the light caught sea-asters and a stray poppy wedged in the shingle. Greta licked her lips and tasted salt. The wind worked her hair free and it struck against her cheeks, knotting in her mouth and eyes. The birds fell silent for a moment as they passed by, and then started up again immediately. Across the salt marsh lay the expanse of the Solent, smooth from this distance, but there was the snap and wash of the waves. Through the early-morning haze she could just make out a smear of land that was the Isle of Wight.

  All around her the women stooped and knelt, unfastening blunt knives from their pockets, and started to roll up lines of sphagnum moss. Greta watched for a moment and then copied them. Her dress and knees were soaked in an instant and she cut her finger on the knife, but she didn’t mind. She placed the moss reverently in the basket, brushing away a furrowing insect. They were running out of cotton with the German blockade, and sphagnum moss was as absorbent as any sponge or swab. They collected more than they needed for the hospital, combing it free of insects and steaming it to clean it. The spare moss would be taken by train to the front for use as dressings. Greta thought that if she were injured, she would like to have her wounds packed with moss, earthy and green and sprayed with sea water, a scrap of England’s wild place strapped to her flesh.

  The tide licked closer and, baskets full now, the women walked slowly back to Fontmell. Mostly they were tired and busy with their own thoughts, and Greta was grateful for their silence. They reached the edge of the garden
s, and as they ambled back towards the driveway where the horse and trap waited to take the moss to the station, Greta noticed a telegraph boy waiting by the front steps. A sick feeling rose in her belly. He stepped forward.

  ‘Mrs Goldbaum?’ he asked.

  Greta nodded and took the envelope from him. The other women carefully averted their eyes as she tore it open. She read it twice and then looked up, half-dazed.

  ‘My cousin Henri,’ she said. ‘He’s escaped. The British have him. He’s safe.’

  Greta wanted to share the good news. She raced up to the nursery and swept up into her arms a bewildered Celia, still pink with sleep and barefoot in her nightdress. Greta realised that she must appear like an apparition, with her dirty and damp-stained dress and mud-smeared cheeks. Nanny busied herself with the breakfast things and pretended to ignore the disruption to the sovereign routine. Greta confided the tidings about Henri in a flood of joyful tears and kisses.

  ‘Is Cousin Henri real?’ asked Celia, who was trying to establish things that were real (God, the tooth fairy, the Kaiser) and those that were simply made up to frighten her and make her good (Old Nick, ghosts, the Kaiser). She was undecided about fairies, and angels outside of the Torah. Angels, she concluded, were only real in the olden days, having been hunted to extinction like dodos, woolly mammoths and narwhals. For a week or two, she’d half-expected to see an angel stuffed and mounted amongst the stags and tiger skins at her grandparents’ house.

  ‘Yes, Henri is real,’ said Greta, half-amused, half-disappointed.

  ‘I’ve never sawed him,’ said Celia with a shrug. ‘So I don’t know.’

  She stared at her mother, absorbing the dirty dress, the lack of hat, the snag of moss behind one ear.

  ‘You been on a picnic without me,’ she reproached.

  ‘No, darling, I went for a walk,’ said Greta, quickly.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Celia, eyeing her narrowly.