Ken Follett - Fall of Giants

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 Tŷ 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 attaché 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.

The Sculpture Hall at Tŷ 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.