How they cheer, these sailors – especially those boys for whom it is their first time in foreign waters. What tales they will have to tell when they return home of the places they have been, the sights and exalted personages they have seen. How they will boast to wives or girlfriends or girls they hope will become girlfriends, of how they have seen the Tsar of Russia and his daughters. And how many of them will go to the bottom of the North Sea when Beatty’s battle cruisers meet the ships of the German High Seas Fleet, in one of the many matches of the Group of Death.
I’m sorry. I digress again. The Tsar’s party return to the Peterhof, but there all is in a frenzy. Nine-year-old Alexei, the Tsarevich, Nicholas’s son has fallen while jumping from a ladder and twisted his ankle. No big deal, you might have thought – except that Alexei has inherited haemophilia from his mother Alexandra, a condition that she can trace back to her maternal grandmother Queen Victoria. Haemophilia means that blood has difficulty coagulating. The result of this can be that even small wounds are potentially fatal. Alexei is bleeding now and crying with pain. His mother Alexandra is white with worry and terrified because the monk Rasputin, the only man she believes can help her son, is not in the palace. Not only is he not in the palace, he has been visiting his family in Siberia where, for reasons unknown, he has been stabbed by a woman. When the news comes in of the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand, it hardly registers with a distraught Nicholas.
Nine hundred and fifty miles as the blue tit flies, to the south west in Kiel Bay, all silvery light in the Baltic afternoon, the German manager is at the helm of his racing yacht Meteor, competing in the Kiel regatta. Frederick William Victor Albert of Prussia, also known as Kaiser Wilhelm II – Emperor of Germany – ‘Der Kaiser’ (not to be confused with Franz Beckenbauer) is such a keen sailor that he doesn’t just have his own boat. He’s had his own navy built – a navy that’s intended to rival the British Royal Navy. (He once confided to his uncle, Edward VII, that his dream was to have a fleet of his own some day. And now he does.)
Der Kaiser has a stern face and the kind of moustache that the rest of us – well, men at least – can only dream about: bristling and turning up spectacularly at the ends. He is immensely fond of uniforms, of (dare one say it about so exalted a personage) dressing up. But this afternoon he is dressed relatively simply. Immaculate white laced shoes, trousers and jacket with just a little bit of gold braid on the epaulettes; white shirt with wing collar and tiny, fashionable bow tie and a white and blue sailor’s cap with some ‘scrambled eggs,’ as it’s known in the navy, above the peak of the cap.
Der Kaiser is heading on a northerly course towards the Danish islands when an aide draws his attention to a steam launch astern which appears to be trying to catch up with them. As the steam launch gets closer, Der Kaiser recognises that it is the steam launch Hulda with Admiral Muller waving a signal to heave-to. The Admiral shouts into the wind, ‘I bring grave news.’ By now the Admiral’s boat has pulled alongside the Kaiser’s yacht and the two boats are travelling together no more than ten yards apart. The Admiral puts a decoded telegram from the German Consul-General in Sarajevo into his cigarette case and is preparing to throw it across to the Kaiser’s yacht. But the Kaiser wants to hear whatever this news is directly from the Admiral’s lips. The two boats pull closer together and the Admiral manages to execute a transfer to the Kaiser’s yacht, the strong, safe hands of two seamen ensuring that there is no mishap.
‘Everything has to be started over again,’ remarks Der Kaiser to a saluting Admiral Muller. Admiral Muller is mystified. He thinks that Der Kaiser is referring to his recent efforts to win over the late Archduke to his way of thinking and how these have all been rendered useless by the Archduke’s death. This must mean that Der Kaiser has already heard about the assassination. How could that be, since it is the Admiral himself who has come bearing this news?
But then he understands. Der Kaiser means that the race will have to be started over again. The Admiral tells Der Kaiser what has occurred in Sarajevo. In recent years Franz Ferdinand and Der Kaiser had become close friends. They had been hunting together only the week before. It’s perhaps important to explain exactly what Der Kaiser means when he says that they are ‘close friends’ From Der Kaiser’s point of view, it means that he feels or felt that he had the heir to the Austrian throne in his pocket. At all events, Der Kaiser is very upset. Perhaps there is a feeling of ‘there but for the grace of God go I.’ If a member of a royal family in one country can be assassinated…
Later, Der Kaiser cables the German Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg saying that ‘this cowardly, detestable crime has shaken me to the depths of my soul.’
We have to be careful here but I feel I need to point out, valued reader, that it is possible that Der Kaiser is barking mad. He had a difficult birth. He was in the breech position and no one realised it until too late. To make matters worse, an urgent summons to Berlin’s most eminent obstetrician got lost. After ten or eleven hours with his mother in excruciating pain, the attending doctors had pretty much given up on her and the baby. Finally, the famous obstetrician got the message and arrived. With liberal doses of chloroform he managed to manipulate the baby out. The child emerged pale, limp, one arm around his neck, badly bruised and not breathing. The attending nurse had to rub him and slap him repeatedly before he cried. Everyone wept with relief.
It cannot be proved, of course, but Der Kaiser, who grew up to be hyperactive and emotionally unstable, may have been brain damaged at birth.
This brings us immediately to a difficulty. Perhaps it is the central difficulty of this book. We expect the people who are (or whom we put) in positions of authority to be sane. We expect a lot more of them than that obviously but, at the very least, we would like them to be sane. By this we mean we would hope they would make sensible decisions. Ideally, we would like wise decisions – profoundly wise decisions – but at the very least we ask for sensible. And what is sensible? Well, obviously everything is relative but a possible definition of sensible might be – well, ‘not mad.’ It’s not an unreasonable expectation, I think you’d agree. Yet repeatedly throughout history we see decisions that could in no way be described as not mad.
Anyway, let us leave Der Kaiser, mad or otherwise, for now as his yacht cuts through the chilly waters of the Baltic, we must travel again, weary reader. This time to Paris. Or, to be more precise, to the Bois de Boulogne on the banks of the Seine. Here at the Longchamps racecourse, with its famous hill that will test any thoroughbred, Parisian society has gathered because it is the peak of the Grande Semaine. Many Parisians have come to the track down the river on steamboats and various other vessels, the trip taking around an hour to the Pont de Suresnes. Strolling around the paddock, men admire the horses and judge the women – or is it the other way round? Women admire the horses and judge each other.
The man we have come to see has come not in a boat but rather in a carriage. He is accompanied by his wife. The band plays. Grey top-hats are raised. White-gloved hands are brought to the brims of kepis. For the man in the carriage is none other than Raymond Poincaré, the tenth Président de la République and manager of the French team.
With his bald pate, fringe of hair round the sides and back, moustache and goatee beard, Poincaré looks like someone who should be singing Alfredo in Verdi’s La Traviata on the stage of the Théâtre National de l’Opéra. This afternoon he sits in the Presidential box. He looks grey, serious as though he disapproves of the frivolity going on around him.
Like many of the people he represents, Poincaré is, at best, very suspicious of Germany, at worst, anti-German. The reason for this lies in his childhood. In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War and when little Raymond was only ten, the Germans overran his native Lorraine, forcing his family to flee from their home in Barle-Duc. For two and a half months, he, his mother and brother lived in a series of hotels in Dieppe and then in Belgium while his father stayed at the family home. Bar-le-Duc was occupi
ed by the Germans for the next three years and, following the war, Germany annexed the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine.
But it would be wrong to think that Monsieur Poincaré has a visceral, irrational hatred of the Germans. His patriotism and desire, like all Frenchmen, to regain ‘the lost provinces’ is coupled with moderation, rationality, a need for order. Some think him cold. One commentator described him as having ‘a stone for a heart.’ Poincaré trained as a lawyer and so is accustomed to sifting evidence and drawing conclusions. Thus, shortly after becoming Premier and Foreign Minister in 1912, he studied the files related to foreign policy with Germany. His assessment was that ‘whenever we have adopted a conciliatory approach to Germany, she has abused it; on the other hand, on each occasion when we have shown firmness, she has yielded.’ From this, he drew the conclusion that Germany understood ‘only the language of force.’
At four, the most valuable race of the year is due to be run – the Grand Prix de Paris, with prize money worth, in English money, sixteen thousand pounds. Just before four o’ clock, when the jockeys are about to go under starter’s orders, an officer of the President’s entourage hands Monsieur Poincaré a telegram from the Havas Agency. The President reads it and, without any change of expression, passes it to the Austrian Ambassador, sitting nearby in the Presidential box. The Ambassador reads the message. Then, excusing himself to the President, he leaves the box and hurries from the course.
Shortly afterwards the yellow and green colours of Baron Maurice’s horse Sardanapale pass the post, winning by a neck. The horse comes in at eighteen-to-five.
The President has put no money on the victor. It’s probably not a Presidential thing to do. Still, it’s a pity. For if he had, it might have put him in better form for what lies ahead. President Poincaré is a cousin of the famous mathematician Henri Poincaré. Henri is reputed to solve a problem completely in his head before committing it to paper. As events will turn out, perhaps it would have been better if Henri had been president. Then he might have been able to use this skill to solve the problem with which his cousin will shortly be confronted.
So in this chapter you’ve met the two managers who have inherited their positions – Der Kaiser and the Tsar – and the one who’s been elected, Monsieur Poincaré. But now it is time to return to London to see how our other characters – some so-called ‘ordinary people’ – are spending this afternoon that lounges beneath a cloudless sky across all of Europe.
Chapter 6
Sunday 28 June 1914
Back in Acton Clara rises just after eight that Sunday morning, leaving Henry still sleeping. He likes to lie in on a Sunday and he always sleeps more heavily after sex.
In the bathroom Clara looks in the mirror as she pulls a brush through her blonde hair before tying it up. She thinks her face is too long. But her teeth are good and she has nice lips. Her blue eyes are bright. She has to admit she slept well herself.
While the girls are still asleep, Clara gets some chores done. She has a cleaning lady – Mrs Parsons, who also does duty as the babysitter – who comes in every weekday. But the house is so big that there always seems to be an endless list of things to be done. In some ways it is not the house Clara would have wanted – she would have preferred, and they could have managed with, a smaller one. But she inherited it after her father died. She and Henry discussed whether to sell it but, in the end, they both agreed that it was better to move into it.
They did so for different reasons. Henry thought it could ‘only increase in value’ – and presumably he knew about such things given that he worked as a manager in an insurance company. Clara chose it because it was where she had been born and brought up, a house she had loved since childhood. There are days though – like today – when the house just feels like a burden. After all, outside sunshine is calling and she finds herself cleaning and washing and dusting and polishing.
While she is the only one up, Clara tries to check on some of the things she wondered about last night. Prostitutional isn’t a real word, the dictionary tells her. In terms of gauging a person’s personality from their belly, there’s nothing she can really look up in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition) or the atlas or the dictionary. She just thinks it’s something she’ll keep in mind whenever she is out and sees or meets people. Cursory is almost the same as perfunctory. Even after flipping to and fro between the two entries several times, she still isn’t sure if she could explain the difference to somebody else or knows exactly when to use one and when to use the other. And finally, as she closes the dictionary with a soft, papery ‘plop,’ she realises with a smile that she is never really going to be able to find out about what happens to erections if one is in progress at the time of death. She imagines it would fade but she doubts if there is anyone in the world who actually knows the truth. She gets up from where she is perched on the edge of the armchair’s seat and returns the heavy book to its shelf.
After about an hour, the girls wake up and Clara can hear them chattering in their room. They quickly became so loud that she has to go upstairs and hiss at them to come down so as not to wake their father. Ursula is six, born within a year of Clara’s marriage; Virginia is fifteen months. Clara gives them some toast and milk and then takes them upstairs where she dresses Virginia. Ursula dresses herself. Later Henry surfaces and Clara makes a big breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausages and fried bread for them all. She will give them something small, just to keep them going, during the afternoon. Then, at supper time, they will have cold slices of the ham she cooked yesterday along with some cold potatoes and tomatoes and lettuce from Clara’s small vegetable plot at the end of their large back garden. Henry likes it this way in the summer, whereas in the winter they eat their main Sunday meal at lunch time. After breakfast, with the washing up all done and the rest of the day’s meals organised, Clara goes out into the garden.
The girls are already out there, sitting on a rug beneath her father’s tree. Ursula has her head sunk in a book. She has blonde hair like her mother’s, cascading in natural curls as far as her shoulder blades. Virginia’s is still growing and is dead straight reaching to just below her ears. Both girls have rosebud mouths and Clara has a sense – which she thinks is more than just mother’s pride – that both girls will be stunners when they are older. It is one of the reasons why she chose Henry. At the time he was slim, healthy, handsome, and she reckoned that he would father beautiful children. In that, at least, she was correct. Virginia especially is one of those people who has been blessed with everything – she has good looks, seems to be highly intelligent and appears to be just a nice, caring person. Virginia calls to Clara as soon as she sees her, saying ‘Mama’ and waving the rag doll she is holding by one leg.
They spend the afternoon in the garden, the girls playing, Henry reading the paper and dozing, Clara – when she isn’t with the girls or looking after feeding everybody – reading Dubliners by James Joyce. They go to bed early – Henry has work tomorrow, Ursula has school and Clara is exhausted.
Despite this, she can’t sleep. She is a light sleeper anyway. Given that Henry sleeps so heavily – even if he hasn’t had sex – there has to be somebody there in case the children wake up. And so when she sleeps, it is fitful. It is as though she drifts just below the surface, ready to float up if the need arises. Such sleep is not refreshing. She sometimes has to take a nap during the day in order to keep going. Then she will ask Mrs Parsons to mind the girls while Clara disappears up to her bedroom for an hour. Mrs Parsons is the most loyal and loving woman in the world. Her children are grown up now. Her daughter is married and living in Lewisham; her son is in the army and stationed in India. She adores the girls and they seem to fill the gap in Mrs Parson’s life left by the departure of her own children. But even so, Clara is conscious of what-if-something-happens. The result is that all the nap does is to take the edge off her tiredness.
Tonight as she lies in bed her mind, as usual, is crowded. First come the girls who are both a joy
and a sorrow. What if anything were ever to happen to them? She knows she just wouldn’t be able to survive something like that; wouldn’t want to survive. Then there’s the house and the things that have to be done tomorrow. What cleaning will she do? Where will she start? A list begins forming in her mind. Clara often thinks in lists. She wishes she didn’t but she so often does. And they are numbered lists so that as she works her way through them, she sees in her mind’s eye the number of items on the list dropping and she feels like she is making progress. She also – again in her mind’s eye – crosses things off the list as they are done. She sometimes wonders if her life has become nothing more than a succession of days with each day having a list pinned to it and every item on the list crossed off.
Sometimes – as now – the list divides into two lists – the things she will do and the things that can be left to Mrs Parsons. There are some things Clara likes to do herself. Cleaning the toilets – why should anybody else have to clean their shit, as her father might have said. Clara likes to do the cooking though she is happy for Mrs Parsons to prepare everything. And then certainly, before supper, she likes to have Mrs Parsons gone so that they can be together, just the four of them. Sometimes this can be a struggle since, especially if she has had a happy day with the children, Mrs Parsons is reluctant to return home to her solitary life and will keep finding things to do to keep herself from going. This in turn annoys Henry if he returns to find her still there. Of course, he’ll be all smiles to Mrs Parsons but Clara will hear all about it later.
What will she cook for dinner tomorrow? Are there leftovers that should be used up? What does she need to buy? Are those pears still fresh? Maybe she shouldn’t buy so many next time.
Once she has finished fretting over current things – things that happened today, things that may happen or have to happen tomorrow – Clara moves progressively on to the future. The rest of this week, this month, next month. Even though it is just early summer she thinks about the autumn, when Ursula will return to school. She’ll need a new uniform. She’s grown so much in a year, Clara can hardly believe it – and no amount of clever seamstressing will make Ursula’s present uniform go any further. Clara will have to think how best to broach it with Henry so that he doesn’t end up complaining too much about the money. It’s not that he begrudges it – she doesn’t think he does, anyway – but she never seems to be able to save enough from the weekly housekeeping money for these eventualities. The result is that she always ends up having to ask him for more. And she never knows for sure how he’s going to react. Sometimes he hands it over cheerfully – he’ll make some remark about it being ‘great to have it.’ But then other times he’ll complain or give her the silent treatment afterwards.
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