Ken Follett - Fall of Giants

“Perhaps you would like to come with me?”

His father had taken the bait. “Even better.”

Walter had an ulterior motive, but his father was all unsuspecting.

The bus took them past the theaters of the Strand, the newspaper offices of Fleet Street, and the banks of the financial district. Then the streets became narrower and dirtier. Top hats and bowlers were replaced by cloth caps. Horse-drawn vehicles predominated, and motorcars were few. This was the East End.

They got off at Aldgate. Otto looked around disdainfully. “I didn’t know you were taking me to the slums,” he said.

“We’re going to a clinic for the poor,” Walter replied. “Where would you expect it to be?”

“Does Earl Fitzherbert himself come here?”

“I suspect he just pays for it.” Walter knew perfectly well that Fitz had never been there in his life. “But he will of course hear about our visit.”

They zigzagged through backstreets to a nonconformist chapel. A hand-painted wooden sign read: “Calvary Gospel Hall.” Pinned to the board was a sheet of paper with the words:

Baby Clinic

Free of Charge

Today and

every Wednesday

Walter opened the door and they went in.

Otto made a disgusted noise, then took out a handkerchief and held it to his nose. Walter had been there before, so he had been expecting the smell, but even so it was startlingly unpleasant. The hall was full of ragged women and half-naked children, all filthy dirty. The women sat on benches and the children played on the floor. At the far end of the room were two doors, each with a temporary label, one saying “Doctor” and the other “Patroness.”

Near the door sat Fitz’s aunt Herm, listing names in a book. Walter introduced his father. “Lady Hermia Fitzherbert, my father, Herr Otto von Ulrich.”

At the other end of the room, the door marked “Doctor” opened and a ragged woman came out carrying a tiny baby and a medicine bottle. A nurse looked out and said: “Next, please.”

Lady Hermia consulted her list and called: “Mrs. Blatsky and Rosie!”

An older woman and a girl went into the doctor’s surgery.

Walter said: “Wait here a moment, please, Father, and I’ll fetch the boss.”

He hurried to the far end, stepping around the toddlers on the floor. He tapped on the door marked “Patroness,” and walked in.

The room was little more than a cupboard, and indeed there was a mop and bucket in a corner. Lady Maud Fitzherbert sat at a small table writing in a ledger. She wore a simple dove-gray dress and a broad-brimmed hat. She looked up, and the smile that lit up her face when she saw Walter was bright enough to bring tears to his eyes. She leaped out of her chair and threw her arms around him.

He had been looking forward to this all day. He kissed her mouth, which opened to him immediately. He had kissed several women, but she was the only one he had ever known to press her body against him this way. He felt embarrassed, fearing that she would feel his erection, and he arched his body away; but she only pressed more closely, as if she really wanted to feel it, so he gave in to the pleasure.

Maud was passionate about everything: poverty, women’s rights, music-and Walter. He felt amazed and privileged that she had fallen in love with him.

She broke the kiss, panting. “Aunt Herm will become suspicious,” she said.

Walter nodded. “My father is outside.”

Maud patted her hair and smoothed her dress. “All right.”

Walter opened the door and they went back into the hall. Otto was chatting amiably to Hermia: he liked respectable old ladies.

“Lady Maud Fitzherbert, may I present my father, Herr Otto von Ulrich.”

Otto bowed over her hand. He had learned not to click his heels: the English thought it comical.

Walter watched them size one another up. Maud smiled as if amused, and Walter guessed she was wondering if this was what he would look like in years to come. Otto took in Maud’s expensive cashmere dress and the fashionable hat with approval. So far, so good.

Otto did not know that they were in love. Walter’s plan was that his father would get to know Maud first. Otto approved of wealthy women doing charitable work, and insisted that Walter’s mother and his sister visit poor families at Zumwald, their country estate in East Prussia. He would find out what a wonderful and exceptional woman Maud was, then his defenses would be down by the time he learned that Walter wanted to marry her.

It was a little foolish, Walter knew, to be so nervous. He was twenty-eight years old: he had a right to choose the woman he loved. But eight years ago he had fallen in love with another woman. Tilde had been passionate and intelligent, like Maud, but she was seventeen and a Catholic. The von Ulrichs were Protestants. Both sets of parents had been angrily hostile to the romance, and Tilde had been unable to defy her father. Now Walter had fallen in love with an unsuitable woman for the second time. It was going to be difficult for his father to accept a feminist and a foreigner. But Walter was older and craftier now, and Maud was stronger and more independent than Tilde had been.

All the same, he was terrified. He had never felt like this about a woman, not even Tilde. He wanted to marry Maud and spend his life with her; in fact he could not imagine being without her. And he did not want his father to make trouble about it.

Maud was on her best behavior. “It is very kind of you to visit us, Herr von Ulrich,” she said. “You must be tremendously busy. For a trusted confidant of a monarch, as you are to your kaiser, I imagine work has no end.”

Otto was flattered, as she had intended. “I’m afraid this is true,” he said. “However your brother, the earl, is such a long-standing friend of Walter’s that I was very keen to come.”

“Let me introduce you to our doctor.” Maud led the way across the room and knocked at the surgery door. Walter was curious: he had never met the doctor. “May we come in?” she called.

They stepped into what must normally have been the pastor’s office, furnished with a small desk and a shelf of ledgers and hymnbooks. The doctor, a handsome young man with black eyebrows and a sensual mouth, was examining Rosie Blatsky’s hand. Walter felt a twinge of jealousy: Maud spent whole days with this attractive fellow.

Maud said: “Dr. Greenward, we have a most distinguished visitor. May I present Herr von Ulrich?”

Otto said stiffly: “How do you do?”

“The doctor works here for no fee,” Maud said. “We’re most grateful to him.”

Greenward nodded curtly. Walter wondered what was causing the evident tension between his father and the doctor.

The doctor returned his attention to his patient. There was an angry-looking cut across her palm, and the hand and wrist were swollen. He looked at the mother and said: “How did she do this?”

The child answered. “My mother doesn’t speak English,” she said. “I cut my hand at work.”

“And your father?”

“My father’s dead.”

Maud said quietly: “The clinic is for fatherless families, though in practise we never turn anyone away.”

Greenward said to Rosie: “How old are you?”

“Eleven.”

Walter murmured: “I thought children were not allowed to work under thirteen.”

“There are loopholes in the law,” Maud replied.

Greenward said: “What work do you do?”

“I clean up at Mannie Litov’s garment factory. There was a blade in the sweepings.”

“Whenever you cut yourself, you must wash the wound and put on a clean bandage. Then you have to change the bandage every day so that it doesn’t get too dirty.” Greenward’s manner was brisk, but not unkind.