Ken Follett - Fall of Giants

By morning the translation had been printed and copies had been dispatched by special messenger to Berlin-a classic exercise in German efficiency, Walter thought, seeing his country’s virtues more clearly when it was being denigrated. Too exhausted to sleep, he decided to walk until he felt relaxed enough to go to bed.

He left the hotel and went into the park. The rhododendrons were in bud. It was a fine morning for France, a grim one for Germany. What effect would the proposals have on Germany’s struggling social-democratic government? Would the people despair and turn to Bolshevism?

He was alone in the great park except for a young woman in a light spring coat sitting on a bench beneath a chestnut tree. Deep in thought, he touched the brim of his trilby hat politely as he passed her.

“Walter,” she said.

His heart stopped. He knew the voice, but it could not be her. He turned and stared.

She stood up. “Oh, Walter,” she said. “Did you not know me?”

It was Maud.

His blood sang in his veins. He took two steps toward her and she threw herself into his arms. He hugged her hard. He buried his face in her neck and inhaled her fragrance, still familiar despite the years. He kissed her forehead and her cheek and then her mouth. He was speaking and kissing at the same time, but neither words nor kisses could say all that was in his heart.

At last she spoke. “Do you still love me?” she said.

“More than ever,” he answered, and he kissed her again.

Maud ran her hands over Walter’s bare chest as they lay on the bed after making love. “You’re so thin,” she said. His belly was concave, and the bones of his hips jutted out. She wanted to fatten him on buttered croissants and foie gras.

They were in a bedroom at an auberge a few miles outside Paris. The window was open, and a mild spring breeze fluttered the primrose-yellow curtains. Maud had found out about this place many years ago when Fitz had been using it for assignations with a married woman, the Comtesse de Cagnes. The establishment, little more than a large house in a small village, did not even have a name. Men made a reservation for lunch and took a room for the afternoon. Perhaps there were such places on the outskirts of London but, somehow, the arrangement seemed very French.

They called themselves Mr. and Mrs. Wooldridge, and Maud wore the wedding ring that had been hidden away for almost five years. No doubt the discreet proprietress assumed they were only pretending to be married. That was all right, as long as she did not suspect Walter was German, which would have caused trouble.

Maud could not keep her hands off him. She was so grateful that he had come back to her with his body intact. She touched the long scar on his shin with her fingertips.

“I got that at Château-Thierry,” he said.

“Gus Dewar was in that battle. I hope it wasn’t he who shot you.”

“I was lucky that it healed well. A lot of men died of gangrene.”

It was three weeks since they had been reunited. During that time Walter had been working around the clock on the German response to the draft treaty, only getting away for half an hour or so each day to walk with her in the park or sit in the back of Fitz’s blue Cadillac while the chauffeur drove them around.

Maud had been as shocked as Walter by the harsh terms offered to the Germans. The object of the Paris conference was to create a just and peaceful new world-not to enable the winners to take revenge on the losers. The new Germany should be democratic and prosperous. She wanted to have children with Walter, and their children would be German. She often thought of the passage in the Book of Ruth that began “Whither thou goest, I will go.” Sooner or later she would have to say that to Walter.

However, she had been comforted to learn that she was not the only person who disapproved of the treaty proposals. Others on the Allied side thought peace was more important than revenge. Twelve members of the American delegation had resigned in protest. In a British by-election, the candidate advocating a nonvengeful peace had won. The archbishop of Canterbury had said publicly that he was “very uncomfortable” and claimed to speak for a silent body of opinion that was not represented in the Hun-hating newspapers.

Yesterday the Germans had submitted their counterproposal-more than a hundred closely argued pages based on Wilson’s Fourteen Points. This morning the French press was apoplectic. Bursting with indignation, they called the document a monument of impudence and an odious piece of buffoonery. “They accuse us of arrogance-the French!” said Walter. “What is that phrase about a saucepan?”

“The pot calling the kettle black,” said Maud.

He rolled onto his side and toyed with her pubic hair. It was dark and curly and luxuriant. She had offered to trim it, but he said he liked it the way it was. “What are we going to do?” he said. “It’s romantic to meet in a hotel and go to bed in the afternoon, like illicit lovers, but we cannot do this forever. We have to tell the world we are man and wife.”

Maud agreed. She was also impatient for the time when she could sleep with him every night, though she did not say so: she was a bit embarrassed by how much she liked sex with him. “We could just set up home, and let them draw their own conclusions.”

“I’m not comfortable with that,” he said. “It makes us look ashamed.”

She felt the same. She wanted to trumpet her happiness, not hide it away. She was proud of Walter: he was handsome and brave and extraordinarily clever. “We could have another wedding,” she said. “Get engaged, announce it, have a ceremony, and never tell anyone we’ve been married almost five years. It’s not illegal to marry the same person twice.”

He looked thoughtful. “My father and your brother would fight us. They could not stop us, but they could make things unpleasant-which would spoil the happiness of the event.”

“You’re right,” she said reluctantly. “Fitz would say that some Germans may be jolly good chaps, but all the same you don’t want your sister to marry one.”

“So we must present them with a fait accompli.”

“Let’s tell them, then announce the news in the press,” she said. “We’ll say it’s a symbol of the new world order. An Anglo-German marriage, at the same time as the peace treaty.”

He looked dubious. “How would we manage that?”

“I’ll speak to the editor of the Tatler magazine. They like me-I’ve provided them with lots of material.”

Walter smiled and said: “Lady Maud Fitzherbert is always dressed in the latest fashion.”

“What are you talking about?”

He reached for his billfold on the bedside table and extracted a magazine clipping. “My only picture of you,” he said.

She took it from him. It was soft with age and faded to the color of sand. She studied the photo. “This was taken before the war.”

“And it has been with me ever since. Like me, it survived.”

Tears came to her eyes, blurring the faded image even more.

“Don’t cry,” he said, hugging her.

She pressed her face to his bare chest and wept. Some women cried at the drop of a hat, but she had never been that sort. Now she sobbed helplessly. She was crying for the lost years, and the millions of boys lying dead, and the pointless, stupid waste of it all. She was shedding all the tears stored up in five years of self-control.

When it was over, and her tears were dry, she kissed him hungrily, and they made love again.

Fitz’s blue Cadillac picked Walter up at the hotel on June 16 and drove him into Paris. Maud had decided that the Tatler magazine would want a photograph of the two of them. Walter wore a tweed suit made in London before the war. It was too wide at the waist, but every German was walking around in clothes too big for him.