by Phillip Rock
“All done, Rilke?”
“Yes. Put to bed.”
“That’s where I should be.”
The reviewer yawned and drew a cigarette from a silver case.
“You could have been there for the past two hours.”
“I know, but I feel restless. I rather miss Jacob. He’s the only one I know who might conceivably understand what’s going on. The other chaps around here are no bloody use at all.” He smiled thinly. “They know only what they read in the papers. I tell you, Rilke, I’m most apprehensive about the Balkan situation. I can’t see how it can possibly ease off or where it will end. Oh, well, worrying about it won’t make it change, will it? Can I buy you a drink at Romano’s?”
“No, thanks, I think I’ll go straight home.”
“I’ll share your taxi, if you don’t mind. I have this absolute horror of being alone lately. Can’t explain it. Damnedest feeling.”
It seemed to be a feeling that many people shared. It appeared to Martin that the streets of the city never emptied. The cafés in Soho weren’t open twenty-four hours a day, but if they had been they would have done good business. Perhaps it was no more than the unusually hot weather that drove people, mainly young men, from their rooms and set them to wandering in restless bands through the West End. The groups were orderly—excessively polite, as a matter of fact—and the police were not concerned. It was almost Bank Holiday time and a certain anticipatory excitement was normal. And yet, somehow, this behavior could not be explained that easily. One of the Post editors had just returned from Berlin and had observed the same thing occurring in Germany but on a vaster scale—masses of young men hiking across the country to the Black Forest or to the mountains of Bavaria, singing Brüderschaft songs, drawn by some deep urge that no one could adequately express. It had struck the editor as being quite odd, but then the Germans had always been a mystical people. An atmosphere of impending climax seemed to hang in the air like heat haze. Lord Crewe, stalking through the city room on his daily tour of inspection, had remarked that what Europe needed right at this moment was a bloody good thunderstorm with plenty of rain to cool the blood. But there was no rain. The skies were a savage blue. Jacob wrote from Belgrade: “One can see the Austrian gunboats prowling the Danube, which has never looked more beautiful, more conducive to song.”
The flat in Soho smelled of furniture polish and ammonia. The cleaning woman had been in during the day; not that she could have found much to do since her last visit. With Jacob away, the spacious apartment in Beak Street remained clean and orderly—and empty. The girls who used to taxi over to the place from their theaters on Shaftesbury Avenue between performances, many of them still in costume, for champagne and cold lobster stayed away when Jacob was gone. Martin wasn’t sure whether Jacob had told everyone that he was leaving London or if they simply knew he was gone. Some sort of seventh sense. The theatrical grapevine, more likely. He missed the ribald gaiety, the perfume, feather boas, and expansive flesh of the chorus girls. He also missed Jacob’s untidy presence, the litter of papers and books on floors and furniture, the blue haze of his strong Turkish cigarettes, the torrent of his conversation, which was mordant, exasperating, seditious, and profane—but always worth listening to.
There was nothing much to eat in the kitchen except for canned Strasbourg pâté, water biscuits, thick glass jars of Russian caviar, and a closet stacked with champagne. More substantial meals were eaten out or brought up on trays from the Hungarian restaurant below, Jacob doing the ordering by shouting out the back window into the alley, where the cooks and waiters lounged during their breaks, playing cards on an upturned milk crate. The restaurant closed at eleven, and so he was stuck with appetizers. He put a bottle of champagne in the ice chest to cool, then got into his pajamas and carried his attaché case into Jacob’s study, the only room in the flat that had decent lighting.
The notebooks had lain untouched since June. He hadn’t had the time, not with five articles a week to turn out for the paper and the traveling involved in getting material for them. Also, he just hadn’t felt like writing down his thoughts. He had hoped that his novel would take shape out of those random jottings—current observations drifting into thoughts of the past. That hadn’t happened. His perspective of Chicago and the Rilkes had not been freshened in any way whatsoever. And Jacob had cast a pall of doubt over the project.
“Every first novelist feels that the story of his life and his family is a world-shaking event that simply screams for print. I went through that stage myself, Martin. I was twelve at the time, and I suddenly noticed something that perhaps you have noticed yourself—that I simply do not look at all like my father. Well, I began to ponder on that and reached the febrile conclusion that I was the result of a liaison between my mother and the King of Spain. Then, filled with plans for an epic saga of my first twelve years on earth, about the little English Jew who was in reality bastard claimant to a Catholic throne, I went browsing in the attic and found a trunk. In that trunk were tintypes of my father and his long-dead sister, Rose. I was exactly like her, a carbon copy of the poor departed dear. Not a royal bastard at all, simply a throwback to certain Whitechapel physical types, the influx of Sephardim into London in the eighteen century. Ah, well, the world lost a great popular novelist and gained an unpopular newspaperman. My dear fellow, the times spin on at a dizzy pace. Do your utmost to at least keep abreast of them. You have a talent for keen observation of the pathetic, sometimes endearing, sometimes mundane foibles of mankind. Put it to use. Bang out copy with the fury of the anchorites shrieking their predictions to the stones. Hone your pen to a knife. Cut . . . cut . . . cut! And save your memoirs for venerable old age.”
The champagne cork made a satisfactory pop and flew over the leather sofa. Jacob was as easy to live with as a mad wasp, but he made a certain amount of sense sometimes. The epic novel of the Rilkes would join his saga of the striking Chicago motormen in oblivion.
He poured a glass of champagne, spread a thick layer of pâté on a water biscuit, and then leafed through the stack of mail which the cleaning woman had placed on the desk. Dunning letters for Jacob mostly, but one envelope addressed to him. It was on Marlborough Club stationery.
Dear Rilke:
I have the unfortunate honor to be assigned Captain of the Guard over Bank Holiday. Promised you a look at the inner workings of Buck duty. Might make an item for the penny press. If you are not otherwise engaged, I look forward to your joining me and a few friends for dinner in Guards quarters, St. James’s, Tuesday evening, August 4th, 7 P.M. Black tie. RSVP if possible.
Sincerely,
Fenton Wood-Lacy
He made a mental note to reply in the morning. It should be interesting. He could probably squeeze two articles out of it.
The notebooks lay piled in the attaché case. The last entry had been at Abingdon Pryory before he had left on the tour. He had a hundred comments and reflections to write down, but he could do no more than enter the date and time on the top of a blank page: July 24th, 1914. Early morning. He toyed with the pen and sipped champagne. He felt too weary to write and too keyed up to sleep. One singular event stuck in his mind, lingering with a peculiar poignancy. Why should that be so? It had only been a couple of weeks before—a picnic beside the Thames at Henley with the Grevilles and a party of their guests—and yet the scene seemed to belong to another age, suspended in time and misted by a golden light. The Royal Regatta held on the smooth green water of the river; gleaming, highly varnished rowboats gliding as noiselessly as the royal swans, great bowers of willow trailing leafy tendrils in the stream, women in white dresses and large hats strolling along the banks, a band playing in a gingerbread pavilion.
Jacob’s dispatch from Serbia had triggered the remembrance of that day. “One can see Austrian gunboats prowling the Danube. . . .” The squat iron hulls became superimposed on the delicate pageant on the Thames. There had been no talk of crisis that day as they sat on the grass and ate strawberries
and cream. The archduke was two weeks in his grave and long forgotten. Now Austria-Hungary prepared for war as Serbia held firm. What would Russia do? France? England? Treaties and alliances bound country to country like bands of steel. Now lights burned all night in the chancellories of Europe.
With the strawberries and cream they’d had a white wine, the wine served by the Greville butler (for, of course, there were servants even at a picnic in a meadow) from a silver bucket filled with ice. He met Lydia Foxe that day. What had they talked about? He couldn’t remember. Nothing of any consequence. A stunningly beautiful woman. Easy to understand Charles’s infatuation, but he had detected a shrewd toughness behind the lovely face and the gracious manners. Charles leaped at her every request, clung to her every word. She was bright, charming—and yet, once he had happened to glance at her while she was watching the earl and Hanna eat their strawberries. The woman’s eyes had been pure steel.
He put the pen down and closed the notebook. There was no point in even trying to write. He felt a sense of waiting, as though the entire world was holding its breath. Outside in the street he could hear the sound of footsteps ringing on the cobblestones. A group of young men heading up Carnaby Street toward Oxford Circus. He didn’t even have to get up and look to know that there would be a dozen or more of them, arms linked, cloth caps perched on the back of their heads, cigarettes dangling from their mouths. Out on the town on a hot July night. Several of them were singing a popular music hall song, their voices loud and beery, but the sound faded rapidly as they moved up the short, narrow street: “It’s a long way ’ome, so don’t wait up for me. . . . I’ll give you a kiss an’ a thrup’ny bit, but don’t wait up for me. . . .”
They all seemed to be watching the clock, although Roger Wood-Lacy tried to keep the conversation going by telling a few jokes. Uniformed mess attendants removed the dinner plates. There was, Martin noted, a good deal of uneaten food. But not on his plate. The rack of lamb with Cumberland sauce had been delicious.
“You have good cooking in the army,” he said.
Fenton sat at the head of the long table in his scarlet jacket, brass buttons reflecting the candlelight.
“The palace chefs actually, but our own chaps don’t do too badly in the mess. Do you know who provides this dinner, Martin?”
Martin raised his wineglass. “You, I suppose, so I offer a toast to the host.”
Roger clapped his hands, the sound echoing in the vast room, with its black-oak Tudor beams and dark brick walls.
“ ‘A toast to the host!’ I say, we’re all rhymesters tonight.”
“I suppose we’ll be telling puns or reciting limericks next,” Charles said gloomily.
A pink-faced lieutenant looked blank. “Rhyme? What rhyme?”
“Never mind, Ashcroft,” Fenton said. “Getting back to what I was saying, the answer is no, I don’t provide the dinner. The meal comes from the generosity of King George the Fourth, the great Prinny, better known to history as Beau Brummel’s friend. Anyway, he was a lover of fine food and blowsy women. Unfortunately, he only willed the captain of King’s Guards provision for the former. The meal is his legacy, for which generations of hungry captains and their guests have been truly thankful.”
“Hear, hear,” Lieutenant Ashcroft murmured.
Charles checked the time again. “Ten-thirty.”
“That makes it two minutes later than when you last looked,” Fenton remarked dryly.
One of Fenton’s mountaineering friends, a ruddy-faced barrister named Galesby, frowned and shook his head slowly.
“You’re taking all this very lightly, I must say. After all, what happens or does not happen in the next hour and a half concerns you a good deal more than it concerns any of us—Lieutenant Ashcroft excepted, of course.”
“Of course,” Ashcroft said stiffly.
One of the messmen brought around a box of cigars. Fenton selected one and passed it slowly under his nose.
“We have a rule in the Guards quarters against talking shop. War, my dear Galesby, is shop.”
“To you. I never took the king’s shilling, so I’m legally entitled to speak my mind. I ask you straight out, Fenton. Do you believe Germany will back down by midnight and refrain from marching into Belgium?”
Fenton lit his cigar. It was so silent in the room that they could all hear the hissing of the match. The messmen walked as though treading on clouds.
“We are long past the moment when anyone can back down. The Germans are in front of Liège, and God himself couldn’t turn their troop trains around. The politicians, the statesmen, the kings and emperors have done their jobs, and now the soldiers take over. It’s simply come down to that. If we could whisk old Golden back from Serbia, he could probably explain it better than I can—although, on second thought, I doubt it. It’s rather like explaining the color blue to a blind man.”
The barrister accepted the port decanter as it made the rounds of the table.
“Lord, what a bloody awful week this has turned out to be.”
The clock was ancient, a triumph of rococo design, a small face nearly lost in a welter of ormolu. A grenadier officer had found it in the baggage of a Russian general after a battle in the Crimea. The room was filled with the souvenirs of old glories. Silver candlesticks brought back from Portugal after the Peninsular campaign, silver salvers given to the Brigade of Guards by the Duchess of Richmond a year after Waterloo. What would they add this time, Martin wondered? He looked at the clock. The minute hand made a tiny jump. He could visualize trains, hundreds upon hundreds of them, rolling west across Germany in the night, rolling east across France. Along the Danube, there had been war for six days. By all rights, it should have stayed there, toe to toe between Austria and Serbia. Jacob had written that Serbia was small but tough and the Austro-Hungarian empire rotten from the core out. The Serbs would maul the Austrian invasion, and if no one rushed to the aid of either side the war would be over in three weeks, with a treaty of mutual compromise. A grudging, bitter peace perhaps, but still a peace. Jacob had added to his dispatch: “But does the world want peace?” One of the editors had scratched the question out.
“With your permission, sir, I would like to propose a toast,” Lieutenant Ashcroft said, his face becoming pinker by the minute.
“By all means,” Fenton said, scowling at the tip of his cigar. “It’s a night for toasts.”
The lieutenant shot to his feet. “To England!”
The minute hand jumped. In the silence, after the toast had been echoed around the room, they could hear the soft whirring of the clock’s gears. The port was passed along. Glasses were refilled.
“Odd,” Galesby said. “Incredible, really, if one stops to think about it. Just last week I was making plans to go to Lanersbach and stretch my legs with some good alpine rock climbing.”
Fenton puffed a lazy plume of smoke. “Well, you can always go to Wales.”
Fenton and Lieutenant Ashcroft had to inspect the guard at Buckingham Palace at midnight, and so the guests left at eleven-thirty. The parting in the austere treeless courtyard of St. James’s had been gravely formal.
“Shall we share a taxi?” Galesby said as they walked into Cleveland Row.
Charles took a deep breath of the clean night air. “No, thanks. Can’t speak for the others, but I could do with a walk.”
The barrister hesitated. “Jolly good idea. I think I’ll join you. Heading down to Whitehall, I suppose.”
“We might as well be among the first to know,” Charles said.
They all walked in silence to the Mall. St. James’s Park was shadowed and gloomy across the wide tree-lined road. A night heron glided across the still surface of the lake.
“Yes,” Galesby said, almost to himself, “quite odd. One would have thought that intelligent men could have settled issues across a conference table.”
“That would be contrary to fate,” Roger said, his tone strangely fervid. “War is a form of rebirth. A rite as old as time.
I was talking to Rupert this morning on the telephone, and I’ve never heard him so enthusiastic, so revitalized. To go shining to war in defense of little Belgium has all the nobility and purity of Arthurian quests, Rupert said. I think it’s more Grecian myself. A sailing for Ilium.”
“I don’t know about that,” the barrister said, tossing his half-smoked cigar into the gutter. “All I know for sure is that everything is going to bloody well change.”
“That might be a blessing,” Charles said quietly.
They stopped at the end of the Mall. The Duke of York’s statue loomed up against the sky, and the lights in Admiralty House twinkled through the trees at the edge of the park. Big Ben tolled the hour: twelve hollow iron peals. They could hear distant cheering and then the sound of a rushing crowd, hundreds of feet ringing on the pavements. Shadows raced past the pools of light cast by the windows of the Foreign Office. Other shadows streamed across the wide expanse of Horse Guards Parade. The streams converged, split apart, some moving rapidly along Birdcage Walk, others coming into the Mall. Men, mostly young, running with a wild exuberance.
“War!” they were yelling. “It’s war!”
Martin and Galesby stepped back to keep from being bowled over by the frantic rush toward Buckingham Palace, which was now blazing with lights. Roger grabbed Charles excitedly by the arm.
“Come on, Charles! Come on!”
And then the crowd swallowed them. They were one with it, borne along.
A middle-aged man, red-faced and puffing, ran out of the shadows of Waterloo Place.
“Is it war?” he shouted. “Is it war?”