The Storms of War (4 page)

‘The news from Europe is shocking,’ said Sir Hugh, putting down his knife. He did not wait for a reply. ‘The Kaiser continues his aggression. First his man shoots the Archduke and now he threatens Belgium.’

‘The shooting had nothing to do with Germany,’ said Michael. ‘You know it’s at Serbia’s door.’

‘I read that the Archduke was actually sympathetic to the desire of the Bosnian Serbs to rule themselves. Rather ironic,’ said Jonathan, smiling, as if he had put an excellent point in a tutorial, Celia thought.

‘Poor Emperor Franz Joseph,’ Rudolf was shaking his head. ‘As if losing a son and a wife was not enough, now his heir.’

Sir Hugh laughed. ‘The Austrians deserve no pity. They and the Kaiser go hand in hand to war. Our idiot politicians speak to them in a kindly fashion as if they were babies, while all the while they plan to kill us.’

‘You’re wrong.’ Michael had a heavy scar on his forehead from when he had fallen off a wall as a child. It grew redder and stood out when he was angry. Celia watched it pulse under the skin.

‘They are all Bismarck’s heirs. Such people will stop at nothing before the entire world is part of Germany.’

‘And what qualifies you to state this, sir?’

Verena was staring at Michael, trying to quiet him, but he was looking only at Sir Hugh, his eyes bright with anger.

‘Everybody knows it. The Germans shot him, I am certain of it. They will not be content until they have started a war. It’s time Mr Asquith stopped dallying and showed them how to behave. Europe is really in a shocking mess. We need to sort it out.’

‘We have left the wars behind, thank God,’ interrupted Rudolf. ‘That was last century. Now what is important is the Irish question. It is uppermost in the mind of Mr Asquith, I am sure.’ He spoke with certainty, in the same way he might recite a speech from
Henry V.

Sir Hugh dropped his face to smirk. Celia blushed at herself for being ashamed of how her father pronounced God as Gott.

Rudolf picked up his fork and set about the meat. ‘My dear, remind me that I must write to the managers of my factories in Berlin tomorrow.’

Verena nodded stiffly. Sir Hugh failed to hide another smile. ‘It would be so convenient for the Germans who live in England if there was no war,’ he said. ‘After all, in a conflict, who would they choose?’

Michael thumped his fist on the table. ‘We are English, sir.’

Sir Hugh raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, of course.’

‘There will be no war,’ repeated Rudolf. ‘No more. The Queen waged too many.’

‘I think a war might be rather exciting,’ said Emmeline. ‘Shake things up a bit.’

‘Everybody was very afraid of British power,’ said Celia, remembering Miss Jacques’s history lessons at school. She thought of poor Sophie again, her husband, the Archduke, begging her not to die. Why wouldn’t Sir Hugh stop? Why was Rudolf letting him continue like this? She wanted to stand up and cry out,
My sister could marry anyone she liked, so we don’t need you!

‘Quite so, Miss de Witt. The Germans were particularly afraid of British power. Intimidated, rather. I expect the same is true now,’ said Sir Hugh, curling his lip. Michael was almost standing, his face angry. Jonathan watched, his demeanour calm. Celia almost
wanted to throw her bread roll at him, as he sat there saving up stories to laugh about with people in New York.

‘Now, Michael, let us discuss another subject,’ Verena began.

‘No, Mother. I shall say it. Our loyalties are to the King. If there was a war, I would join the army. I would sign up to fight as soon as I could.’

Verena’s hand was on her mouth. ‘You would not. You would not.’

Sir Hugh curled his lip. ‘I would like to see that. Anyway, one doubts that the British army would require any further assistance. In this country we do not need men from foreign countries to fight. We have professionals. That is why we win.’

Michael was clasping his knife. Then Jonathan gripped his hand and stood. ‘I think us Americans have much to learn from you Europeans,’ he said, his voice smooth. ‘We have a lot to consider about diplomacy. I am sure the future is one of Europe united.’

‘Under Germany, if they get their way,’ replied Sir Hugh.

Verena signalled to the footmen and they bent to clear the plates. ‘Dessert?’ she said, brightly. ‘We have jellies. Then let me tell you about our latest plans for the summer party, Sir Hugh. I’m sure it will be our best yet. The village needs a little treat.’

Five years ago, on the drive to Hampshire, Celia had drawn pictures of what Stoneythorpe Hall might look like: castles with turrets, long, flat white houses with no chimneys, big square pale brown boxes with pretty doors, a cottage but ten times larger, one great tower. When they arrived at the top of the long drive, the house looked nothing like her drawings. It was huge and heavy, red ornamental stone flanking the great pale doorway and carved porch. The two front wings were set forward from the door, the windows drew up to three triangular gables on the roof, the chimneys over it all. The windows were cracked, trees straggly. The place looked old and untidy – and, to her, beautiful.

‘This is a manor?’ said Emmeline beside her. ‘And we left London for this? Where am I supposed to wear my gowns?’ Arthur was laughing behind his hand.

‘It was built in the seventeenth century for the earl at the time,’ said their father. ‘It was a great house in the local area. The land even features in the Domesday Book. You will be impressed when you enter, my dear.’ The Lenley family had been the wealthy associates of royals from the thirteenth century, Rudolf said, but they became most powerful under Elizabeth I, and bought this great estate to celebrate. The Queen had visited once for hunting. ‘Imagine, Emmeline,’ he said. ‘Elizabeth I came here on a progress.’ Emmeline kicked her heels on the floor of the car.

Rudolf often told them that he had come over to London from Berlin as a young man to make his fortune – and because he had read so many English books. In his twenties, he said, he could recite every word of Shakespeare’s most famous works. He called his first son after a king, his youngest daughter after a heroine in Shakespeare. Verena chose the names of the middle two to be modern. From the beginning, Rudolf told his family, he knew that he had to fit in by pretending he had forgotten everything about Germany: the flecks on the alphabet, trams in Berlin, freezing snow at Christmas, slow boats on the Rhine. People were unforgiving of such things, and if you let the memory of past places remain, you could never escape. He threw his precious copy of Goethe from the boat on the way over. Verena had instructed the children from very young that they must not tell him that his accent retained Germanic inflections and always betrayed him: the quick endings of words and the tripping around ‘t’ and ‘d’.

‘I am more English than the English,’ he was fond of saying in Hampstead, as he stepped out to his club in his neat suit, hat and silver-tipped walking stick, returning in the evening to his fireside surrounded by prints of the countryside. They lived on the same road as that great English poet, John Keats, after all. Rudolf was always proud of the fact that he never grew fat, like some meat dealers did. ‘The Englishman keeps his figure.’ He said that if you kept yourself quick and upright, life would not catch you.

After the first journey there, Emmeline’s lip quivered as she gazed at the front of Stoneythorpe Hall. ‘I won’t go in.’

Celia did. In those days, Emmeline and their mother complained almost daily about poor plumbing, holes between the bricks, cracks in the floorboards, the birds in the roof. Celia saw Stoneythorpe for what it really was: the grand house she had read of in her books about princesses. She loved everything about it: the unkempt grounds, the stone drive. She begged her father not to change it.

On the day of their arrival, Celia had hurtled ahead of the others so that she could enter Stoneythorpe first. She stood in the hall and then began running down the corridor to the side, into the two large rooms to the left, and up the stairs. She wanted to see and touch all the rooms before anybody else did. She hurried into every bedroom, sped back down the stairs, and pushed past her mother to run into the kitchen.

‘Have you found the library yet, Celia?’ said her father as she ran breathless to the top of the stairs. ‘Turn right, then left and it’s at the end of the corridor.’ She dashed off again, following his directions, and reached a heavy dark door. She turned the stiff key and pushed it open. Inside were more books than she had ever seen in her life. Red, brown, blue spines were everywhere, across the walls, in piles up to the ceiling, stacked on the desks. She could not credit that Lady Lenley might not have wanted some of them. She walked up to the shelves and touched the leather. She moved her hand over the desk in the corner, too in awe to seat herself in the chair. Her father had been right. Stoneythorpe was perfect. She threw out her arms and twirled in front of the leaded window, catching the last light of the sun.

The party had been Rudolf’s idea. They had been living at Stoneythorpe for about two months, not successfully. The villagers shuffled past them without bowing or smiling, they were ignored at church, addressed peremptorily even by the vicar, unable to find servants without paying nearly one and a half times the given wage, distrusted. ‘They hate us because we’re German,’ sniffed Emmeline, often. ‘Why can’t we go back to London?’ Michael stayed in his room, reading, and Arthur shot birds in the garden,
even when Rudolf told him not to. Verena began to cry in the mornings once more.

‘I have a solution,’ Rudolf had said. ‘Your mother and I will host a party for the village. Everyone will come.’ He meant Eversley as well as Bramshill and all the little clusters of houses in between. It would be a great celebration.

For the next four weeks, the house was a flurry of activity and planning. The servants brought in furniture and the new cook, Mrs Rolls, was put to work on cakes and pastries. Verena fussed over the arrangements and table settings. The day began with cloud but then the sun broke out, everyone in the village arrived and the grounds filled with children. Even Arthur played ring o’ roses with the little ones.

‘We shall do this every year,’ said Rudolf, surveying the detritus of cakes and food on the tables, hands on hips, pleased with his plan. In the village, people bowed to them, and they were greeted by the vicar, who ushered them to the front pew in the church.
Lords and ladies.

The jellies glistened green and pink in their glasses. Celia took a small bite, unconvinced by Verena’s plan of combining gooseberry and raspberry in the same glass. Rudolf ate noisily, clanking his cutlery on his glass. Verena was talking about the roof of the village church. Emmeline was stroking the top of her dessert with her spoon, not eating it. Celia looked up idly and gazed straight into Sir Hugh’s face. She started, for something seemed to change in his mouth; it twisted, opened.

‘You, sir.’ He turned his attention to Rudolf. ‘You support the Kaiser?’

Rudolf looked up from scraping the last spots of jelly from the glass. He pondered. ‘Well, Sir Hugh, I do not give much thought to politics.’

‘In other words, you do. You support the most evil man in Europe. It’s something in the German character, if you ask me. I’ve never met a German who was not motivated by greed.’

Michael was struggling to his feet again. Jonathan was pulling him down.

‘There are many good Germans,’ said Rudolf.

‘And a lot of power-hungry ones who will stop at nothing. We’ll be at war in a month. And we’ll watch the Germans die in shame.’

Michael shook free of Jonathan’s grip and darted around the table. In a second, he was standing over Sir Hugh, grasping his clothes, Jonathan shouting at him to stop. Emmeline started from her chair and stood frozen against the wall. And then Thompson stepped forward and was trying to prise Michael’s hands away when Sir Hugh sprang up and grasped Thompson’s hair. ‘You’re nothing but a servant!’ he was shouting. ‘How dare you touch me?’ Smithson leapt forward. Thompson turned.

No one could agree what happened next. Emmeline and Verena thought Thompson was about to punch Sir Hugh; Celia and Rudolf thought he put up his hand to defend himself. They were saved a fight: Jonathan ran around the table, threw Thompson aside and managed to get his arms around Sir Hugh.

‘This has got to stop!’ he said.

Sir Hugh looked at them all, his hair across his forehead, his face red and angry. ‘I am at a loss why I ever came here.’ He coughed for breath, holding his chest. ‘You are below my observation.’ He looked over at Emmeline, who was still standing against the wall. ‘I am most sorry for you, Miss de Witt. You seem like a pleasant young lady, caught in a disgraceful family. I wish you goodbye. The rest of you are no better than animals.’

He turned and left the room. Smithson hurried after him

Emmeline looked around the table and burst into tears. She swept her hand out and her jelly glass fell to the floor. ‘What have you done?’ She ran around them and out of the door. Rudolf started up.

‘Leave her,’ said Verena. ‘Leave her to weep. Sir Hugh will return. It is just a little disagreement.’

Rudolf looked over at Jonathan. ‘I apologise, Mr Corrigan.’

Jonathan shook his head, still standing over by Thompson. ‘Nothing to apologise for.’

Verena sat up very straight. ‘Thompson, I suggest you depart this instant.’ He nodded and turned to leave the room, dragging his leg so painfully that Celia could not watch.

Rudolf dropped his head into his hands.

‘I’m going to bed,’ said Celia. She left the table without asking and strode past them all, trying to walk tall when she wanted to sink into the floor. She could not bear to stay in the house a single moment longer. She crept down the corridor and out of the back door by the servants’ quarters. Emmeline’s voice echoed behind her. She hurried out into the garden.

The air was cool on her face and arms. She sat for a while, just letting it drift over her. The same air that they would have breathed a hundred, two hundred years ago. The trees were sweeping the water of the pond, gently. There was no other noise. She began to walk towards her spot under the willow.