Fall of Giants

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.

{III}

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.

Walter had set up a small intelligence bureau at the Hotel des Réservoirs, monitoring the French, British, American, and Italian newspapers and collating gossip picked up by the German delegation. He knew that there were bad-tempered arguments between the Allies about the German counterproposals. Lloyd George, a politician who was flexible to a fault, was willing to reconsider the draft treaty. But the French prime minister, Clemenceau, said he had already been generous and fumed with outrage at any suggestion of amendments. Surprisingly, Woodrow Wilson was also obdurate. He believed the draft was a just settlement, and whenever he had made up his mind he became deaf to criticism.