Gifts of War (52 page)

We had very little time off in the early weeks but we did have a spring break for a month while President Wilson went back to America to try to persuade Congress to be more accommodating to his idea
for a League of Nations. During this break I—like everyone else on the delegation—was allowed to bring my family, Sam and Will, to Paris for a few days before the conference restarted.

Our delegation occupied five hotels in Paris, all near the Arc de Triomphe, and centered on the Majestic, where I was billeted. However, security was tight; our own Scotland Yard people were on the doors and our own kitchen staff cooked the food. Wives and girlfriends weren’t allowed to stay in the official hotels, so while Sam and Will were in town (Whisky was living with Einstein now) I moved out, to the Hôtel de Sèvres, near the Invalides, so we could all be together. The German delegation had not been allowed at the peace conference proper, but was expected in town any day now, to be presented with the Allies’ demands.

By then, Paris was humming. There was more in the shops, the weather had turned cold but the races at Saint-Cloud had got going again,
La Bohème
was playing at the Opéra, and Sarah Bernhardt appeared for a charity gala. In the bars the new American cocktails were becoming all the rage, and the Majestic Hotel even held poetry readings. The dances at the Majestic also became notorious, featuring the tango and the brand-new fox-trot. Tours were organized to the battlefields, where German helmets and empty shell cases could still be found, as souvenirs.

The visit by Sam and Will should have been a golden few days, and in many ways it was. Sam was traveling at last, at long last. We tired ourselves out—at the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the ruins of the Tuileries, Sacré-Coeur, Les Halles. We boated on the Seine, tried exotic French foods, gave a sip of French beer to Will (he made a face but pretended to like it), and even risked a fun fair, though I kept a firm hold of him at all times. We found a babysitter one night and I took Sam to Larue’s, a rather risqué nightclub.

Toward the end of their stay, we also had a day out at Versailles.
By now I knew my way around the palace, its great gardens and lakes. Sam seemed to enjoy it but it was all a bit much for Will. After a couple of hours, we went in search of a café, to have lunch, and on the way we came across a large crowd of people just standing in the road. They all seemed to be staring at one building, which I knew as the Hôtel des Réservoirs. When I asked what was happening, we were told that the people were hoping to catch a glimpse of the enemy. The Hôtel des Réservoirs was where the German delegation was staying— it had arrived the day before.

I hoisted Will onto my shoulders for a better view but neither he nor I saw anything. Inside the hotel the Germans could see out, but we couldn’t see in.

We didn’t stay long. Will was wilting (he liked that word; he thought it had been coined with him in mind) and we found somewhere for lunch.

I have to say, though, that I sensed a change in Sam during those days in Paris. It was difficult to put my finger on. It crossed my mind that, after all her
talk
of travel, the real thing, the real Paris, was a disappointment. But I dismissed that. She wasn’t cold exactly, or distant, nothing so specific. But, undoubtedly, some of the intimacy had gone out of our relationship. She now preferred to read to Will herself rather than have me do it. She never once mentioned her new interest in psychology. Maybe I was being touchy—I
had
been away in Paris for a couple of months, after all. But still…

She did, however, bring me a precious—an intimate—gift. It was a notebook, a journal, the journal written by Izzy.

“Your father found this, in the box of things the Medical Corps returned after… after she was killed. He says it’s quite well written and, if suitably edited—by you, perhaps—could be offered to the old family firm. He thinks there’ll be quite a market for this sort of thing, now that the war is over.”

I accepted it gratefully. Remembering Izzy’s letters, I looked forward to reading it. Her memoirs would be vivid, funny, compassionate. She shouldn’t have kept it, of course—there were rules about that sort of thing—but then that was Izzy all over.

The day after the trip to Versailles, I saw Sam and Will off, back to England, from the Gare du Nord. One of the privileges of my position meant that they had good seats in a first-c lass compartment. I helped Will up into the carriage and kissed his forehead. I turned and leaned forward to kiss Sam. In a movement that was the complete reverse of an earlier moment, she turned her head at the last second so that, instead of kissing her lips, I kissed her cheek.

She looked me in the eye but I couldn’t fathom her expression. “Will you write to your father about Isobel’s manuscript?” she said.

“I will, but it may take some time. Now that the German delegation is in town the hard bargaining begins and I’ll be pretty tied up.”

She nodded.

Whistles blew, steam hissed, a hooter sounded down the platform, and the train eased forward. Sam held Will as he leaned out of the window, waving. I waved back, waiting till the train had quite disappeared from sight.

That afternoon I moved back into the Majestic. For the next forty-eight hours I was frantically busy, helping finalize our position papers for the resumption of the last phase of the conference.

Lloyd George was in buoyant mood, despite having to cope with labor unrest at home even as great events were under way in Paris. He disdained the Foreign Office staff and preferred the use of his own people, which meant there was always plenty for us to do. I remember that one of our main problems just then was to curb the jingoistic
mood among the French. We found that our allies had wired the rooms at the Hôtel des Réservoirs and always knew what the Germans were thinking. Some among the British delegation thought this was unsporting and bad form, but the full peace terms hadn’t been agreed yet, only the Armistice, so who were we to complain? In a sense the war was still on.

There was also a big disagreement between us and the French about how much reparation the Germans were to be forced to pay. The French had their own war-audit unit, similar to ours, though they had concentrated on the naked financial costs of the fighting, rather than the moral costs. Their calculations of loss were much, much higher than ours and, privately, I didn’t think that the Germans, much as I had come to loathe them, had a hope in hell of ever repaying what the French wanted.

No amount of money would bring Isobel back.

Normally, we broke for lunch each day around twelve-thirty, a compromise between the American and French desire to stop at twelve and the British and Italian wish to eat later. I usually had a quick sandwich, a glass of water, and a smoke and then, because we were sitting all day long during the negotiations, took a brisk walk in the Versailles gardens. There was more peace among the chestnut trees and rhododendron bushes than in the palace itself.

At the lunch break on the second day of the German session, I was walking back from the Jardin de France, admiring the façade of the Petit Trianon, when I scuffed my shoes on the gravel. There was a fountain nearby, surrounded by a circular pond with a stone rim. I stepped across to the pond, taking a handkerchief from my pocket as I did so. I rested my shoe on the stone rim and bent to wipe my toe cap. As I was doing this, the bottom half of two gray trousers appeared in my line of sight and a voice said softly, “Hal? Is that you?”

I looked up.

It was a German officer, an
Oberstleutnant
, or lieutenant colonel, the same rank as me. I recognized these things now.

I straightened up, uncomprehending at first. We’d had nothing to do with German officers yet, or at least I hadn’t. They had only just arrived. How did he know my name?

Who am I fooling? Whatever my head said, my body told me straightaway. A bolt of recognition shivered down my spine.

Despite the lines on his face, the tired, liver-colored patches under his eyes, the exhausted expression, the longer but better-cut hair, the different uniform, my skin burned, my heart seemed to swell, my throat turned dry and it hurt to swallow.

Wilhelm had survived the war.

His cheeks were sunk; he didn’t fill his uniform properly. He was still handsome but he had lost his dash and swagger.

But Wilhelm had survived the war.

I had read that day in Northumberland Avenue that the Saxon Regiment, his regiment, had won a drill contest. Not with Wilhelm they hadn’t. He was a shadow of what he had been.

Did I salute? We had shaken hands in no-man’s-land and, as he took off his cap, we did the same again.

For a moment, neither of us said anything. My blood was pulsing through my ears. The back of my neck was damp with sweat. I felt my chest would explode.

“What happened to you?” I managed to breathe in German.

He smiled and, speaking in English, said he had eventually made it to major in his regiment, then been taken up by General Ludendorff as an adjutant on his general staff, where he had shown a talent for propaganda. In 1917, he had been seconded to the army propaganda outfit and was here, in Versailles, as liaison officer with the German press.

“And you, Hal? Did I see you limping?”

“Yes, I was shot, here—” I pointed. “It happened about a week after … after the truce. Hospital, convalescence, military intelligence at the war ministry, economic intelligence in Switzerland. I’m here as an expert on reparation—what the war has cost us.” I made a face. “I delivered your photograph,” I lied.

“Yes, I know.”

“What? What do you mean? How do you know? Have you been to England already? I know you said you would, as soon as the war was over, but… have you seen Sam?”

He shook his head. “No, of course I haven’t been to England. Like you, I’m part of our official delegation. This is my first time out of Germany for more than a year. But I have seen Sam, yes.”

“You
have?
Where? When?”

“Three days ago, when all three of you stood outside the Hôtel des Réservoirs, where our delegation is staying. I was inside. You didn’t see me but I saw you, and I saw Sam.”

I was flustered. Did this explain Sam’s behavior while she was in Paris? It couldn’t—she had been… changed ever since her arrival, since before she could have seen Wilhelm. “Why didn’t you … why didn’t you come out?”

He shrugged. “Be realistic. In the first place, if I had come out, I’d probably have been lynched—the crowd you were with was quite aggressive. They stood outside the hotel for the first three days, shouting at us all day long.” He played with his cap; he was more nervous than he looked. “More personally, don’t forget that I used to be very much in love with Sam.” He swept a hand through his hair. “And, to tell you the truth, I still am, seeing her here, in beautiful Paris of all places. I had always promised to bring her here and… well, it was hard to bear.”

Carefully, I said nothing.

“But the main reason is that you looked so complete, as a family. Your young son looked tired, sitting on your shoulders, but he looked content; so did you—and so did Sam. I couldn’t… I couldn’t interfere. It wouldn’t have been right.” He ran his tongue over his lips. “We are all four years older—it’s nearly five since I last saw Sam. If I’d… if I’d introduced myself, who knows what ghosts would have been let loose?”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Had he not recognized the likeness between Will and himself—the eyes, the jawline? Perhaps we had been too far away.

“You don’t feel… you don’t feel I’ve stolen Sam from you?”

I had said it.

“Did you? Maybe you did, in a sense. But it was I who asked you to give her my message. It was a risk—you would see how beautiful she was. But it was a risk anyway—if she didn’t hear from me for years, didn’t know whether I was alive or dead. And she was in love— I hope she was in love; anyway, she told me she was—with someone who was now the enemy. There was a war, I could have been killed, you were there … life has to go on. You met her through me, you told her about me, and if she preferred the certainty you offered, the Englishness, how can I complain?”

He smiled ruefully.

“I spent a lot of the war in propaganda, devising ways to make people hate the English more and more. And I can tell you, it worked. So, perhaps, by now, Sam hates the Germans, and hates the one German she once loved, or said that she did. It would be natural.”

He swallowed. This wasn’t easy for him.

“I survived but at one point our unit was heavily shelled and my quarters caught fire. My tunic was burned, with Sam’s photograph in it. I thought I had begun to forget what she looked like—but now I’ve seen her again and no, my memory was good. She was just as beautiful
the other day as she was in Stratford all those years ago. And you’ve made her happy—I could see that. You’ve made a family together, and your side won.” Another effort at a thin smile. “My country is ravaged by strikes, violence, revolution. That’s not Sam’s world at all. If I’d introduced myself the other day, if I’d risked those crowds outside the hotel, how many wounds would I have reopened, including the one in here?” He pointed to his heart. “And what would it do to that boy’s life? What’s his name, by the way?”

I could barely get the word out. “Will.”

“After Shakespeare, naturally.” He nodded, smiling again, congratulating himself on working it out. “I’ve often wondered whether we would meet again, and how it would be.” He took a cigar from his pocket and offered it to me.

I shook my head. “I’ve still got one left over from the three you gave me before.”

“It was something, that truce, eh?”

“Sometimes I think it’s the only sane moment in the past four years. I lost my sister. Gassed.”

He shook his head. “We didn’t like firing those shells, you know.” He paused. “But we did. My brother made it. But still, the war was better for you than for me, I think. My country is devastated—and all for nothing.” He put his cigar away. “And at this conference the French will humiliate us. Already they make everything difficult. No staff in the hotel, bad food. Perhaps it is what we deserve.”