Ken Follett - Fall of Giants

Clearly they had already argued about this. Ethel did not have the patience for theological disputes that made no difference to anything in the end. She tried to brighten the mood. “Earl Fitzherbert asked me to give you his respects, Da,” she said. “Wasn’t that nice of him?”

Da did not melt. “I was sorry to see you taking part in that farce on Monday,” he said sternly.

“Monday?” she said incredulously. “When the king visited the families?”

“I saw you whispering the names to that flunky.”

“That was Sir Alan Tite.”

“I don’t care what he calls himself, I know a lickspittle when I see one.”

Ethel was shocked. How could Da be scornful of her great moment? She felt like crying. “I thought you’d be proud of me, helping the king!”

“How dare the king offer sympathy to our folk? What does a king know of hardship and danger?”

Ethel fought back tears. “But, Da, it meant so much to people that he went to see them!”

“It distracted everyone’s attention from the dangerous and illegal actions of Celtic Minerals.”

“But they need comfort.” Why could he not see this?

“The king softened them up. Last Sunday afternoon this town was ready to revolt. By Monday evening all they could talk about was the queen giving her handkerchief to Mrs. Dai Ponies.”

Ethel went swiftly from heartbreak to anger. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said coldly.

“Nothing to be sorry for-”

“I’m sorry because you are wrong,” she said, firmly overriding him.

Da was taken aback. It was rare for him to be told he was wrong by anyone, let alone a girl.

Mam said: “Now, Eth-”

“People have feelings, Da,” she said recklessly. “That’s what you always forget.”

Da was speechless.

Mam said: “That’s enough, now!”

Ethel looked at Billy. Through a mist of tears she saw his expression of awestruck admiration. That encouraged her. She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and said: “You and your union, and your safety regulations and your Scriptures-I know they’re important, Da, but you can’t do away with people’s feelings. I hope that one day socialism will make the world a better place for working people, but in the meantime they need consolation.”

Da found his voice at last. “I think we’ve heard enough from you,” he said. “Being with the king has gone to your head. You’re a slip of a girl, and you’ve no business lecturing your elders.”

She was crying too much to argue further. “I’m sorry, Da,” she said. After a heavy silence she added: “I’d better get back to work.” The earl had told her to take all the time she liked, but she wanted to be alone. She turned away from her father’s glare and walked back to the big house. She kept her eyes downcast, hoping the crowds would not notice her tears.

She did not want to meet anyone so she slipped into the Gardenia Suite. Lady Maud had returned to London, so the room was empty and the bed was stripped. Ethel threw herself down on the mattress and cried.

She had been feeling so proud. How could Da undermine everything she had done? Did he want her to do a bad job? She worked for the nobility. So did every coal miner in Aberowen. Even though Celtic Minerals employed them, it was the earl’s coal they were digging, and he was paid the same per ton as the miner who dug it out of the earth-a fact her father never tired of pointing out. If it was all right to be a good collier, efficient and productive, what was wrong with being a good housekeeper?

She heard the door open. Quickly she jumped to her feet. It was the earl. “What on earth is the matter?” he said kindly. “I heard you from outside the door.”

“I’m very sorry, my lord, I shouldn’t have come in here.”

“That’s all right.” There was genuine concern on his impossibly handsome face. “Why are you crying?”

“I was so proud to have helped the king,” she said woefully. “But my father says it was a farce, all done just to stop people feeling angry with Celtic Minerals.” She burst into fresh tears.

“What nonsense,” he said. “Anyone could tell that the king’s concern was genuine. And the queen’s.” He took the white linen handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket. She expected him to hand it to her, but instead he wiped the tears from her cheeks with a gentle touch. “I was proud of you last Monday, even if your father wasn’t.”

“You’re so kind.”

“There, there,” he said, and he bent down and kissed her lips.

She was dumbfounded. It was the last thing in the world she had expected. When he straightened up she stared at him uncomprehendingly.

He gazed back at her. “You are absolutely enchanting,” he said in a low voice; then he kissed her again.

This time she pushed him away. “My lord, what are you doing?” she said in a shocked whisper.

“I don’t know.”

“But what can you be thinking of?”

“I’m not thinking at all.”

She stared up at his chiseled face. The green eyes studied her intently, as if trying to read her mind. She realized that she adored him. Suddenly she was flooded with excitement and desire.

“I can’t help myself,” he said.

She sighed happily. “Kiss me again, then,” she said.

At half past ten the looking glass in the hall of Earl Fitzherbert’s Mayfair house showed a tall man immaculately dressed in the daytime clothing of an upper-class Englishman. He wore an upright collar, disliking the fashion for soft collars, and his silver tie was fastened with a pearl. Some of his friends thought it was undignified to dress well. “I say, Fitz, you look like a damn tailor, about to open his shop in the morning,” the young Marquis of Lowther had said to him once. But Lowthie was a scruff, with crumbs on his waistcoat and cigar ash on the cuffs of his shirt, and he wanted everyone else to look as bad. Fitz hated to be grubby; it suited him to be spruce.

He put on a gray top hat. With his walking stick in his right hand and a new pair of gray suede gloves in his left, he went out of the house and turned south. In Berkeley Square a blond girl of about fourteen winked at him and said: “Suck you for a shilling?”

He crossed Piccadilly and entered Green Park. A few snowdrops clustered around the roots of the trees. He passed Buckingham Palace and entered an unattractive neighborhood near Victoria Station. He had to ask a policeman for directions to Ashley Gardens. The street turned out to be behind the Roman Catholic cathedral. Really, Fitz thought, if one is going to ask members of the nobility to call one should have one’s office in a respectable quarter.

He had been summoned by an old friend of his father’s named Mansfield Smith-Cumming. A retired naval officer, Smith-Cumming was now doing something vague in the War Office. He had sent Fitz a rather short note. “I should be grateful for a word on a matter of national importance. Can you call on me tomorrow morning at, say, eleven o’clock?” The note was typewritten and signed, in green ink, with the single letter “C.”

In truth Fitz was pleased that someone in the government wanted to talk to him. He had a horror of being thought of as an ornament, a wealthy aristocrat with no function other than to decorate social events. He hoped he was going to be asked for his advice, perhaps about his old regiment, the Welsh Rifles. Or there might be some task he could perform in connection with the South Wales Territorials, of which he was honorary colonel. Anyway, just being summoned to the War Office made him feel he was not completely superfluous.

If this really was the War Office. The address turned out to be a modern block of apartments. A doorman directed Fitz to an elevator. Smith-Cumming’s flat seemed to be part home, part office, but a briskly efficient young man with a military air told Fitz that “C” would see him right away.