Fall of Giants (The Century Trilogy) Page 5

  Williams went on: "Obviously Their Majesties will be in the Egyptian Apartment."

  Fitz nodded. This was the largest suite of rooms. Its wallpaper had decorative motifs from Egyptian temples.

  "Mrs. Jevons suggested which other rooms should be opened up, and I've wrote it down by here."

  The phrase "by here" was a local expression, pronounced like the Bayeux Tapestry. It was a redundancy, meaning exactly the same as "here." Fitz said: "Show me."

  She came around the desk and placed her open book in front of him. House servants were obliged to bathe once a week, so she did not smell as bad as the working class generally did. In fact her warm body had a flowery fragrance. Perhaps she had been stealing Bea's scented soap. He read her list. "Fine," he said. "The princess can allocate guests to rooms--she may have strong opinions."

  Williams turned the page. "This is a list of extra staff needed: six girls in the kitchen, for peeling vegetables and washing up; two men with clean hands to help serve at table; three extra chambermaids; and three boys for boots and candles."

  "Do you know where we're going to get them?"

  "Oh, yes, my lord, I've got a list of local people who've worked here before, and if that's not sufficient we'll ask them to recommend others."

  "No socialists, mind," Fitz said anxiously. "They might try to talk to the king about the evils of capitalism." You never knew with the Welsh.

  "Of course, my lord."

  "What about supplies?"

  She turned another page. "This is what we need, based on previous house parties."

  Fitz looked at the list: a hundred loaves of bread, twenty dozen eggs, ten gallons of cream, a hundred pounds of bacon, fifty stone of potatoes . . . He began to feel bored. "Shouldn't we leave this until the princess has decided the menus?"

  "It's all got to come up from Cardiff," Williams replied. "The shops in Aberowen can't cope with orders of this size. And even the Cardiff suppliers need notice, to be sure they have sufficient quantities on the day."

  She was right. He was glad she was in charge. She had the ability to plan ahead--a rare quality, he found. "I could do with someone like you in my regiment," he said.

  "I can't wear khaki, it doesn't suit my complexion," she replied saucily.

  The butler looked indignant. "Now, now, Williams, none of your cheek."

  "I beg your pardon, Mr. Peel."

  Fitz felt it was his own fault for speaking facetiously to her. Anyway, he did not mind her impudence. In fact he rather liked her.

  Peel said: "Cook have come up with some suggestions for the menus, my lord." He handed Fitz a slightly grubby sheet of paper covered with the cook's careful, childish handwriting. "Unfortunately we're too early for spring lamb, but we can get plenty of fresh fish sent up from Cardiff on ice."

  "This looks very like what we had at our shooting party in November," Fitz said. "On the other hand, we don't want to attempt anything new on this occasion--better to stick with tried and tested dishes."

  "Exactly, my lord."

  "Now, the wines." He stood up. "Let's go down to the cellar."

  Peel looked surprised. The earl did not often descend to the basement.

  There was a thought at the back of Fitz's mind that he did not want to acknowledge. He hesitated, then said: "Williams, you come as well, to take notes."

  The butler held the door, and Fitz left the library and went down the back stairs. The kitchen and servants' hall were in a semibasement. Etiquette was different here, and the skivvies and boot boys curtsied or touched their forelocks as he passed.

  The wine cellar was in a subbasement. Peel opened the door and said: "With your permission, I'll lead the way." Fitz nodded. Peel struck a match and lit a candle lamp on the wall, then went down the steps. At the bottom he lit another lamp.

  Fitz had a modest cellar, about twelve thousand bottles, much of it laid down by his father and grandfather. Champagne, port, and hock predominated, with lesser quantities of claret and white burgundy. Fitz was not an aficionado of wine, but he loved the cellar because it reminded him of his father. "A wine cellar requires order, forethought, and good taste," the old man used to say. "These are the virtues that made Britain great."

  Fitz would serve the very best to the king, of course, but that required a judgment. The champagne would be Perrier-Jouet, the most expensive, but which vintage? Mature champagne, twenty or thirty years old, was less fizzy and had more flavor, but there was something cheerfully delicious about younger vintages. He took a bottle from a rack at random. It was filthy with dust and cobwebs. He used the white linen handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket to wipe the label. He still could not see the date in the dim candlelight. He showed the bottle to Peel, who had put on a pair of glasses.

  "Eighteen fifty-seven," said the butler.

  "My goodness, I remember this," Fitz said. "The first vintage I ever tasted, and probably the greatest." He felt conscious of the maid's presence, leaning close to him and peering at the bottle that was many years older than she. To his consternation, her nearness made him slightly out of breath.

  "I'm afraid the fifty-seven may be past its best," said Peel. "May I suggest the eighteen ninety-two?"

  Fitz looked at another bottle, hesitated, and made a decision. "I can't read in this light," he said. "Fetch me a magnifying glass, Peel, would you?"

  Peel went up the stone steps.

  Fitz looked at Williams. He was about to do something foolish, but he could not stop. "What a pretty girl you are," he said.

  "Thank you, my lord."

  She had dark curls escaping from under the maid's cap. He touched her hair. He knew he would regret this. "Have you ever heard of droit du seigneur?" He heard the throaty tone in his own voice.

  "I'm Welsh, not French," she said, with the impudent lift of her chin that he was already seeing as characteristic.

  He moved his hand from her hair to the back of her neck, and looked into her eyes. She returned his gaze with bold confidence. But did her expression mean that she wanted him to go farther--or that she was ready to make a humiliating scene?

  He heard heavy footsteps on the cellar stairs. Peel was back. Fitz stepped away from the maid.

  She surprised Fitz by giggling. "You look so guilty!" she said. "Like a schoolboy."

  Peel appeared in the dim candlelight, proffering a silver tray on which there was an ivory-handled magnifying glass.

  Fitz tried to breathe normally. He took the glass and returned to his examination of the wine bottles. He was careful not to meet Williams's eye.

  My God, he thought, what an extraordinary girl.

  { II }

  Ethel Williams felt full of energy. Nothing bothered her; she could handle every problem, cope with any setback. When she looked in a mirror she could see that her skin glowed and her eyes sparkled. After chapel on Sunday her father had commented on it, with his usual sarcastic humor. "You're cheerful," he had said. "Have you come into money?"

  She found herself running, not walking, along the endless corridors of Ty Gwyn. Every day she filled more pages of her notebook with shopping lists, staff timetables, schedules for clearing tables and laying them again, and calculations: numbers of pillowcases, vases, napkins, candles, spoons . . .

  This was her big chance. Despite her youth, she was acting housekeeper, at the time of a royal visit. Mrs. Jevons showed no sign of rising from her sickbed, so Ethel bore the full responsibility of preparing Ty Gwyn for the king and queen. She had always felt she could excel, if only she were given the chance; but in the rigid hierarchy of the servants' hall there were few opportunities to show that you were better than the rest. Suddenly such an opening had appeared, and she was determined to use it. After this, perhaps the ailing Mrs. Jevons would be given a less demanding job, and Ethel would be made housekeeper, at double her present wages, with a bedroom to herself and her own sitting room in the servants' quarters.

  But she was not there yet. The earl was obviously happy with the job
she was doing, and he had decided not to summon the housekeeper from London, which Ethel took as a great compliment; but, she thought apprehensively, there was yet time for that tiny slip, that fatal error, that would spoil everything: the dirty dinner plate, the overflowing sewer, the dead mouse in the bathtub. And then the earl would be angry.

  On the morning of the Saturday when the king and queen were due to arrive, she visited every guest room, making sure the fires were lit and the pillows were plumped. Each room had at least one vase of flowers, brought that morning from the hothouse. There was Ty Gwyn-headed writing paper at every desk. Towels, soap, and water were provided for washing. The old earl had not liked modern plumbing, and Fitz had not yet got around to installing running water in all rooms. There were only three water closets, in a house with a hundred bedrooms, so most rooms also needed chamber pots. Potpourri was provided, made by Mrs. Jevons to her own recipe, to take away the smell.

  The royal party was due at teatime. The earl would meet them at Aberowen railway station. There would undoubtedly be a crowd there, hoping for a glimpse of royalty, but at this point the king and queen would not meet the people. Fitz would bring them to the house in his Rolls-Royce, a large closed car. The king's equerry, Sir Alan Tite, and the rest of the royal traveling staff would follow, with the luggage, in an assortment of horse-drawn vehicles. In front of Ty Gwyn a battalion from the Welsh Rifles was already assembling either side of the drive to provide a guard of honor.

  The royal couple would show themselves to their subjects on Monday morning. They planned a progress around nearby villages in an open carriage, and a stop at Aberowen town hall to meet the mayor and councilors, before going to the railway station.

  The other guests began to arrive at midday. Peel stood in the hall and assigned maids to guide them to their rooms and footmen to carry their bags. The first were Fitz's uncle and aunt, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The duke was a cousin of the king and had been invited to make the monarch feel more comfortable. The duchess was Fitz's aunt, and like most of the family she was deeply interested in politics. At their London house she held a salon that was frequented by cabinet ministers.

  The duchess informed Ethel that King George V was a bit obsessed with clocks and hated to see different clocks in the same house telling different times. Ethel cursed silently: Ty Gwyn had more than a hundred clocks. She borrowed Mrs. Jevons's pocket watch and began to go around the house setting them all.

  In the small dining room she came across the earl. He was standing at the window, looking distraught. Ethel studied him for a moment. He was the handsomest man she had ever seen. His pale face, lit by the soft winter sunlight, might have been carved in white marble. He had a square chin, high cheekbones, and a straight nose. His hair was dark but he had green eyes, an unusual combination. He had no beard or mustache or even side-whiskers. With a face like that, Ethel thought, why cover it with hair?

  He caught her eye. "I've just been told that the king likes a bowl of oranges in his room!" he said. "There's not a single orange in the damn house."

  Ethel frowned. None of the grocers in Aberowen would have oranges this early in the season--their customers could not afford such luxuries. The same would apply to every other town in the South Wales valleys. "If I might use the telephone, I could speak to one or two greengrocers in Cardiff," she said. "They might have oranges at this time of year."

  "But how will we get them here?"

  "I'll ask the shop to put a basket on the train." She looked at the clock she had been adjusting. "With luck the oranges will come at the same time as the king."

  "That's it," he said. "That's what we'll do." He gave her a direct look. "You're astonishing," he said. "I'm not sure I've ever met a girl quite like you."

  She stared back at him. Several times in the last two weeks he had spoken like this, overly familiar and a bit intense, and it gave Ethel a strange feeling, a sort of uneasy exhilaration, as if something dangerously exciting were about to happen. It was like the moment in a fairy tale when the prince enters the enchanted castle.

  The spell was broken by the sound of wheels on the drive outside, then a familiar voice. "Peel! How delightful to see you."

  Fitz looked out of the window. His expression was comical. "Oh, no," he said. "My sister!"

  "Welcome home, Lady Maud," said Peel's voice. "Though we were not expecting you."

  "The earl forgot to invite me, but I came anyway."

  Ethel smothered a smile. Fitz loved his feisty sister, but he found her difficult to deal with. Her political opinions were alarmingly liberal: she was a suffragette, a militant campaigner for votes for women. Ethel thought Maud was wonderful--just the kind of independent-minded woman she herself would have liked to be.

  Fitz strode out of the room, and Ethel followed him into the hall, an imposing room decorated in the Gothic style beloved of Victorians such as Fitz's father: dark paneling, heavily patterned wallpaper, and carved oak chairs like medieval thrones. Maud was coming through the door. "Fitz, darling, how are you?" she said.

  Maud was tall like her brother, and they looked similar, but the sculpted features that made the earl seem like the statue of a god were not so flattering on a woman, and Maud was striking rather than pretty. Contrary to the popular image of feminists as frumpy, she was fashionably dressed, wearing a hobble skirt over button boots, a navy-blue coat with an oversize belt and deep cuffs, and a hat with a tall feather pinned to its front like a regimental flag.

  She was accompanied by Aunt Herm. Lady Hermia was Fitz's other aunt. Unlike her sister, who had married a rich duke, Herm had wedded a thriftless baron who died young and broke. Ten years ago, after Fitz and Maud's parents had both died within a few months, Aunt Herm had moved in to mother the thirteen-year-old Maud. She continued to act as Maud's somewhat ineffectual chaperone.

  Fitz said to Maud: "What are you doing here?"

  Aunt Herm murmured: "I told you he wouldn't like it, dear."

  "I couldn't be absent when the king came to stay," Maud said. "It would have been disrespectful."

  Fitz's tone was fondly exasperated. "I don't want you talking to the king about women's rights."

  Ethel did not think he needed to worry. Despite Maud's radical politics, she knew how to flatter and flirt with powerful men, and even Fitz's Conservative friends liked her.

  "Take my coat, please, Morrison," Maud said. She undid the buttons and turned to allow the footman to remove it. "Hello, Williams, how are you?" she said to Ethel.

  "Welcome home, my lady," Ethel said. "Would you like the Gardenia Suite?"

  "Thank you, I love that view."

  "Will you have some lunch while I'm getting the room ready?"

  "Yes, please, I'm starving."

  "We're serving it club style today, because guests are arriving at different times." Club style meant that guests were served whenever they came into the dining room, as in a gentlemen's club or a restaurant, instead of all at the same time. It was a modest lunch today: hot mulligatawny soup, cold meats and smoked fish, stuffed trout, lamb cutlets, and a few desserts and cheeses.

  Ethel held the door and followed Maud and Herm into the large dining room. Already at lunch were the von Ulrich cousins. Walter von Ulrich, the younger one, was handsome and charming, and seemed delighted to be at Ty Gwyn. Robert was fussy: he had straightened the painting of Cardiff Castle on his wall, asked for more pillows, and discovered that the inkwell on his writing desk was dry--an oversight that made Ethel wonder fretfully what else she might have forgotten.

  They stood up when the ladies walked in. Maud went straight up to Walter and said: "You haven't changed since you were eighteen! Do you remember me?"

  His face lit up. "I do, although you have changed since you were thirteen."

  They shook hands and then Maud kissed him on both cheeks, as if he were family. "I had the most agonizing schoolgirl passion for you at that age," she said with startling candor.

  Walter smiled. "I was rather taken with
you, too."

  "But you always acted as if I was a terrible young pest!"

  "I had to hide my feelings from Fitz, who protected you like a guard dog."

  Aunt Herm coughed, indicating her disapproval of this instant intimacy. Maud said: "Aunt, this is Herr Walter von Ulrich, an old school friend of Fitz's who used to come here in the holidays. Now he's a diplomat at the German embassy in London."

  Walter said: "May I present my cousin the graf Robert von Ulrich." Graf was German for count, Ethel knew. "He is a military attache at the Austrian embassy."

  They were actually second cousins, Peel had explained gravely to Ethel: their grandfathers had been brothers, the younger of whom had married a German heiress and left Vienna for Berlin, which was how come Walter was German whereas Robert was Austrian. Peel liked to get such things right.

  Everyone sat down. Ethel held a chair for Aunt Herm. "Would you like some mulligatawny soup, Lady Hermia?" she asked.

  "Yes, please, Williams."

  Ethel nodded to a footman, who went to the sideboard where the soup was being kept hot in an urn. Seeing that the new arrivals were comfortable, Ethel quietly left to arrange their rooms. As the door was closing behind her, she heard Walter von Ulrich say: "I remember how fond you were of music, Lady Maud. We were just discussing the Russian ballet. What do you think of Diaghilev?"

  Not many men asked a woman for her opinion. Maud would like that. As Ethel hurried down the stairs to find a couple of maids to do the rooms, she thought: That German is quite a charmer.

  { III }

  The Sculpture Hall at Ty Gwyn was an anteroom to the dining room. The guests gathered there before dinner. Fitz was not much interested in art--it had all been collected by his grandfather--but the sculptures gave people something to talk about while they were waiting for their dinner.

  As he chatted to his aunt the duchess, Fitz looked around anxiously at the men in white tie and tails and the women in low-cut gowns and tiaras. Protocol demanded that every other guest had to be in the room before the king and queen entered. Where was Maud? Surely she would not cause an incident! No, there she was, in a purple silk dress, wearing their mother's diamonds, talking animatedly to Walter von Ulrich.