The Versailles Legacy
(Work in Progress)
Read the First Chapter
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PROLOGUE
Easter, 1912
His father was ranting again. Back and forth he paced behind the desk, one hand clutching that letter like a baton. Lean pointed face, clipped Edwardian beard, gunmetal-blue eyes like bullets ready to fire. He was already dressed for church. The desk clock said eleven minutes after ten. They would be late for Easter services.
Eric stood before the desk, barefoot in his nightshirt. The walls seemed to be closing down about his ears. Summoned out of a deep sleep, half awake even now, he waited out his father’s noise, letting it blast over his head. There was no point in answering. Or even in listening. He glimpsed a King’s College crest on the letter in his father’s hand. The world was about to end, and suddenly he could not think past that lion and fleur-de-lis and the three white roses. “Truth and usefulness”, the college motto was ingrained into the brain of every King’s student. Truth and usefulness. His father’s implacable creed and Eric’s undoing. The room went abruptly quiet. His father sat down in his captain’s chair and drummed blunt fingernails on the desk and turned the paper over, as if something extra might be found on its blank side. In the long, frozen silence he did not look up. He was always most dangerous when quiet.
Then…
“Where were you last night?”
The question came from a distant place and startled Eric rigid. Where was he last night? What had last night to do with the paper from King’s…?
“Well?”
“We went to the dance over at the St James Pavilion…”
“We? Who are ‘we’?”
“Gordon and Ruth and…”
“And Jenny Henshaw?”
“Yes sir.” He did not know why the question was quicksand, or why he was drowning in it.
“Jenny Henshaw’s mother rang me up early this morning, said she was up all night, said she was desperate that Jenny hadn’t come home after the dance. Trusted the chaperones, she said. Trusted you! So in return, you and this silly girl decided to compromise yourselves and to destroy both her reputation and your own. And mine as well, by the way. Is that it?”
“Nothing like that happened, sir.” Too quick, too emphatic.
“But it’s the appearance that counts, damn it. Can you not get that through your head?”
“But nothing happened, sir.” Now he was mumbling. He took in a breath. “I borrowed Gordon’s motorbike and took her for a ride out along…”
“And this ride lasted six or seven hours?”
“No sir, no sir, um… Yes sir, a few hours. But I mean, not the ride itself…”
“Ah, so you stopped, did you! Ran out of petrol? In a public place, I do hope?”
Swift image of skidding in the darkness on gravel into a country ditch, landing together in a heap in the dew-drenched grass, soft silk in his hands and giggles in the warm spring night…
“Well?” his father pressed.
“We had a bit of an accident with the bike, sir. We had to walk home.”
“Do I believe you?”
“You could ask Gordon, sir. The handlebars were bent off line, I couldn’t drive it that way, I had to push it all the way from…”
“Oh, no doubt your friend Gordon will back up all this. That’s what friends are for, are they not?” He studied the paper, intent and frowning, “What am I to do with you? I’m a judge, Eric. Do you understand? Reputation! London is a country village when it comes to gossip. And there you go, not once, but every weekend, never a thought for your family, never a moment for study, gadding about with girls and pals, horses-and-hounds, motorbikes and yachts, and who knows what other falderal? The Henshaw woman, it won’t stop there, mark my words. I have enemies eager enough to make use of this sort of rubbish.” He crumpled the paper in his fist. His voice crumpled with the paper. “And now this.” He paused, as if unable to go on.
Eric’s feet were cold on the bare floor. A draught wafted relentlessly through the house in all seasons, never quite sealed out by closing the doors and windows. This was Easter holiday. A time for escaping the endless books, the papers, every week another paper, another quiz. Ten days for simple fun. A break in the drudgery.
And now this.
He knew what was on that paper. It represented tomes and tomes of history, of common law, of dates and legal decisions and famous jurors’ biographies, mindless memorisation that he had not trapped inside his skull long enough to spew back in the orals.
It was as if his father read his mind. “You came tripping home for the holiday knowing full well you’re being sent down, and you did not trouble yourself to tell me so.” Those bullet eyes.
“Sorry sir.”
“Answer me then.”
“Was it a question, sir?”
“Damn it you young whelp, do not presume to be impudent with me.”
“Sorry, sir.” He felt his face flush red. This time it might be pretty awful. He stood immobile and awaited judgment.
“This is quite the end, Eric.” His father folded his hands on the desk. “I’ve been up since that woman called, five o’clock this morning, been up with your mother talking it over. This must change. She agrees. For once, concerning you, she agrees.”
He stood mute, staring at his father’s Winchester tie.
“Your don told me that you’re not likely to go on next term without reviewing the very stuff I sent you up to do. He said you’ve made no effort. Pity is, you can be so bloody brilliant. If you try. When it pleases you. So here’s the thing. You’ll leave King’s and hie yourself over to your mother’s Alma Mater at Heidelberg, my God, the thought of it.”
“I hardly think…”
“That’s right! Please do not presume to think at this late hour. We must get you right out of the country, out of reach of this… this… bourgeois woman and her ambitious daughter.” He leaned a little forward, his image reflected in the gleaming dark wood of the desk. “Do you realise the Henshaw woman wants a wedding? To cover your bloody nonsense?”
“Father, it wasn’t in the least like that…”
“You’re eighteen years old! My God! I was thirty, settled in my profession, a partner in The Firm before I married your mother. No boy at eighteen knows what in God’s name he’s fit for, never mind with whom he’ll marry and in what circumstances!”
“It isn’t that way!”
The room went silent with the shock of Eric shouting.
His father stared at him.
“It was just a ride on a motorbike.” His voice trailed off. No use, no use…
“In any case, it’s all decided. You may thank your mother for this. She’s convinced me that Heidelberg may provide the incentive you need to apply yourself. I agree that removing you from your current circle of pals may be half the battle. I’ll arrange your admission and reserve your courses, starting at once. There you’ll prepare for The Law once again. I’ll give you a year, my boy. If by then you have not pulled yourself together, we shall consider a different path.”
Different path? What was that about…?
“I only hope your German is adequate, God help us if it’s not.”
“I can probably…”
“I’m selling Spats, you’ll not need a horse whilst you’re at Heidelberg. Put your nose in your books my boy, and do not look round until next spring. Are we quite clear?”
“Yes sir.” He wondered numbly what Spats had to do with it. The punishment, he supposed, for walking Jennie Henshaw safely home.
*
A precious time of day, mid-evening, the house quiet, the sounds of the city distant. His father was down in the study poring over papers for some court case. Out of sight, out of mind, out of trouble.
He lay sprawled across his mother’s bed while she lounged in her chaise by the open window. The glass curtains fluttered with the breeze. This was their special time. Ever since he could remember they had spent many a late hour in her bedroom, talking over his day.
“But I don’t understand,” he said again, “why it must be Law. Is there nothing else in life?” He spoke in German. When they were alone it was always German, their secret language.
“Ah, you understand well enough, Eric. Don’t be stubborn about this.”
“But Heidelberg! So far away. I can’t come home on weekends.”
“Heidelberg is a wonderful university, Schätzel. I was there only for a few months, a history course, but enough to love it. I wanted to go to the Sorbonne, you know, where women study for a baccalaureate…” Her voice drifted off into the dream. She gazed past the billowing curtains.
In the lamplight he studied her face made smooth with perfect powder. Emphatic chin, long nose. Chestnut curls framed the faraway eyes. Always this edge of sadness when she spoke of Heidelberg, as if her dreams were behind her.
“Why don’t you go back to it?” he said. “Study at Cambridge. They’d take you, wouldn’t they?” He sat upright with this new idea. “Wouldn’t that be a joke? Mother and son in the same college?”
“With my terrible English?” She smiled. “You’re so young. Life is so hopeful. While you’re at Heidelberg you’ll be a good boy, na? Do as your father wishes. Keep the peace. Please? You promise me?”
“Why Heidelberg? If your family’s in Stettin.”
“Because I loved Heidelberg while I was there. And Stettin is too far, Heidelberg is only two days away.”
He mused on it.
“And because,” she added, “you know my family wants nothing of… wants nothing of me.” She smiled quickly. “We don’t need them.”
He sank back down on her pillow. He wanted to bury his face into the faint scent of rosewater. The impulse made him vaguely uncomfortable. He sat abruptly upright again and shifted back against the high headboard.
“I’m serious,” she said. “You must also be serious. Is it so terrible that he wants you in The Firm? To carry on the tradition? You know as a judge he’s not permitted to manage his own law firm. He needs you, Eric. Do you see that?”
“Why can’t he prepare Colin for it?”
“Ach, Colin!” She threw up her hands as if argument were pointless.
“Why do you and Father treat us differently?”
“We don’t do that…”
“Yes. You put all the responsibility on me, and Colin can drift along and do anything he pleases. Which is bugger all that I can see.”
“You’re the elder.”
“Why does that matter? Colin would die for attention, he’d dig a hole in the moon for half the attention Father puts on me…”
“Colin is not a very bright boy, Eric. He has no capacity. Be realistic.”
He subsided.
“This girl, Jenny…?”
He shrugged. “She’s a nice girl, Mutti. She’s a pal. A Kameradin. Nothing happened.”
“Yes, good.”
*
Steam hissed and baggage carts rattled, footsteps shuffled on the platform and carriage doors banged as streams of passengers moved to board, all echoing off the high metal girders of the railway terminal. The engine chuffed quietly on the track.
They stood in a knot on the Victoria Station platform beside the Continental Express. His mother was crying again. “Hear me, darling,” she said to him now in German. “Be a good boy and make the best use of your time exactly as your father wishes. And when it’s over, you’ll have a fine education, and then you’re a man, my darling, and you’re free to make your own decisions, perhaps not specifically in the Law. Only a few more years…”
“Come now!” said his father. “Speak English, you two, you’re in public here.”
Amidst the pressing throng of travellers Colin and James and Gordon stood aside waiting to say goodbye. Gordon had forgiven him the bent handlebars, easily fixed with the proper wrench. But nobody believed that Eric had merely walked Jenny home. Among her friends at school she was said to enjoy sudden distinction as a femme fatale, before her family had spirited her off to Switzerland.
“Now do get on,” said his father brusquely. “Where’s your passport?”
He patted his breast pocket.
“Letter of credit?”
Same pocket.
“Don’t trust foreigners, guard your papers, keep a sharp eye out for thieves. Work hard, son. Don’t let your mother down, this is all her plan, you know.” As if to persuade him.
He nodded. He turned to Colin, who stood staring down at his shoes. , Poor helpless little brother who never seemed to know what time the bell rang, or if it had rung at all. Eric went to him and reached out to shake his hand.
“Don’t go,” Colin wouldn’t look up. “I shan’t get on without you.”
“No choice, old man. You know Father when the wind is up.”
“Promise you’ll come home for the holidays. Promise.”
“Not many holidays, I’ll be working through. No promises.” He grasped Colin’s hand and shook it, and clapped him roughly on the arm.
Colin didn’t look up. He turned away.
His mother gathered Eric into a tearful, rose-scented embrace. She brushed fingers through his stiff, sandy hair, as if he were still a child. “Be cautious,” she said in English, “to know vell who are the true friends.” After twenty years in England her w’s still came out as v’s and her r’s still stuck in the back of her throat. She released him, and he crossed to his two best chums and awkwardly shook hands with them, and they promised they would exchange letters and get together over the holidays, aware that his father disapproved of them. Especially Gordon with his motorbike spelled freedom.
The train hooted. Down the platform the guard swung his lantern. “Close the doors please!” Eric climbed into the first-class compartment where a porter had tucked his bags. His trunk was in the baggage car somewhere ahead. He lowered the window to lean out. Doors slammed and the guard’s whistle shrilled. A blast of steam burst under the wheels, and the train jolted gently forward with a gliding, swaying, accelerating click… click… click… He waved out the window and they all waved back and smiled after him, Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye…
One year. No sailing, no fox-hunting, no polo.
No Jenny, no Gordon…
No Father.
A whole year.
* * *