Winter, page 7
‘That’s the Kaiser,’ whispered Winter to his sons. ‘He’s wearing that long cloak or you’d see all his medals. Next to him is Prince Fürstenberg and then Admiral Müller and General von Plessen. The thin one is the Crown Prince.’
‘Why isn’t Count Zeppelin with them?’ Peter asked. The boys were wearing grey flannel suits, specially tailored for the occasion, and large cloth caps that their mother thought were ‘too grown-up-looking’ for them.
‘He is,’ said Winter. He was wearing a tight-fitting chesterfield and top hat, a formal outfit suited to someone who would be presented to the Kaiser. ‘He’s facing His Majesty, but he’s not wearing his old white cap today; he’s dressed up for the occasion.’
They watched the airship come out on the surface of the lake, and then there was an interminable delay while the royal party inspected the airship, and another while it was given the final adjustments for the flight. After the Prince and Princess of Fürstenberg were safely aboard, the ballast was offloaded piece by piece, until the moment came when the great silver machine shuddered and floated free.
The roar of the engines echoed across the cold still water of the Bodensee, and then the nose tilted up and the airship climbed slowly into the grey sky and, rolling slightly as it went, headed down the lake. The airship’s silver fabric was shining in the pale sunlight as it came steadily back to where the shore was black with onlookers. There were more loud, uncoordinated cheers as it passed over the boat from which the Kaiser and his entourage watched.
But it was after the landing of LZ3 that the boys were proudest of their father. For Harald Winter was invited to take his two sons out to the floating shed to watch Kaiser Wilhelm making his speech.
Every available inch of space was used. Illustrious generals, spiked helmets on their heads and chests crammed with medals, and admirals with high, stiff collars and arms garlanded with gold, were all crowded shoulder to shoulder. Standing behind von Zeppelin – the seventy-one-year-old ex-cavalry officer whose single-minded endeavour was today celebrated – they saw Dr Hugo Eckener, whose conversion to the zeppelin cause had made him even more zealous than his master. Next came Dürr, the engineer, Winter with the two children, and then senior design staff and an official from the engine factory.
‘In my name,’ began the Kaiser suddenly, his voice unexpectedly shrill, ‘and in the name of our entire German people, I heartily congratulate Your Excellency on this magnificent work which you have so wonderfully displayed before me today. Our Fatherland can be proud to possess such a son – the greatest German of the twentieth century – who through his invention has brought us to a new point in the development of the human race.’ At this, one or two of the generals and admirals nodded. One of the design staff edged aside to give little Pauli a better view.
The Kaiser looked round his audience, drew himself up into an even more erect posture, and continued: ‘It is not too much to say that we have today lived through one of the greatest moments in the evolution of human culture. I thank God, with all Germans, that He has considered our people worthy to name you as one of us. Might it be permitted to us all, as it has been to you, to be able to say with pride in the evening of our life, that we had been successful in serving our dear Fatherland so fruitfully. As a token of my admiring recognition, which certainly all your guests gathered here share with the entire German people, I bestow upon you herewith my high Order of the Black Eagle.’
Count Zeppelin stepped one pace forward. Over his head the Kaiser put the sash, and then embraced him three times and called, ‘His Excellency Count Zeppelin, the conqueror of the air – hurrah!’
From the crowd in the distance, cheers could be heard. For Winter and his two sons it was a day they would never forget.
It was already getting dark by the time Winter and the boys got back to the hotel in Friedrichshafen. Nanny was sent to have dinner alone in the restaurant so that the boys could have theirs served in the sitting room of their suite. Harald Winter was excited by the events of the day, and at times like this he liked to have a few extra moments with his sons.
A solicitous waiter in a white jacket brought the meal and served it to the children course by course. There was turtle soup and breaded schnitzels with rösti potatoes, which the Swiss, across the lake, did so perfectly. When no one was looking, Peter took forkfuls of Pauli’s cabbage – Pauli hated cabbage – so that he wouldn’t get into trouble for leaving it on his plate. And after that the waiter flamed crêpes for them. It was the first time that their father had permitted them to have a dish containing alcohol and, despite the strong flavour, the boys devoured their pancakes with great joy, slowing their eating to prolong this happy day forever.
After Nanny had taken the boys off to bed, Harald had a chance to express his happiness to his wife. They were in the bedroom; Veronica’s maid had gone. Harry was fully dressed in his evening clothes and his wife was making a final selection of jewellery. She had already put three different diamond brooches on her low-cut ballgown and rejected each. She was wearing a wonderful new Poiret dress from Paris, a simple tubular design with a high waist. She knew the new Paris look would create a sensation at the ball tonight. But on such a neoclassical design the jewellery would be all-important. She didn’t want to get it wrong. ‘What do you think, Harry?’ She turned away from the mirror enough for him to see her hold the diamond-studded gold rose against her.
‘You’re very beautiful, my darling,’ he told her.
‘I’m thirty-four, Harry, and I feel every year of it. My shoes hurt already, and the evening has not even started.’
‘Change them,’ said Harry.
‘The pink silk shoes would look absurd,’ she said.
He smiled. That was the way women were: the pink shoes looked absurd, the white ones hurt; there was really no answer. Perhaps women liked always to have some problem or other: perhaps it was the way they accounted for their disappointments. ‘Did you see His Majesty?’
‘I got so cold, Harry. I just waited until the airship lifted away. Then I came back for a hot bath.’
‘The boys saw him. He looked magnificent. He’s a great man.’
‘I’ll just have to slip them off at dinner.’
‘The LZ3 is to be delivered to the army right away. And as soon as the LZ5 is completed – and has done a twenty-four-hour endurance flight – they want that, too.’
‘I know. You told me. It’s wonderful.’
‘You realize what it means, don’t you?’
‘No,’ she said vaguely. She’d heard it all before. She wasn’t listening to him; she was looking at her shoes.
‘It means we’ll be rich, darling.’
‘We’re already rich, Harry.’
‘I mean really rich: tens of millions …perhaps a hundred million before I’m finished.’ He sat down, reaching behind him to flip his coat tails high in the air like a blackbird alighting. You could tell a lot about a man by the way he sat down, she decided. Her father always lifted his coat tails aside carefully, making sure they’d not be creased.
‘We’re happy, Harry. That’s the important thing.’
‘Dollars, I’m talking about, not Reichsmarks.’
‘What does it matter, Harry? We’re happy, aren’t we?’ She looked up at him. Somewhere deep inside her there arose a desperate hope that he would embrace her and tell her that he would give up his other women. But she knew he would not do that. He needed the women, the way he needed the money. He had to be reassured, just as little Pauli needed so much reassurance all the time.
‘It doesn’t matter to you,’ he said, and she was surprised at the bitterness in his voice. He was like that; his mood could change suddenly for no accountable reason. ‘You were born into wealth. You have your own bank account and your father’s allowance every year. But now I’ll have as much money as he’s got. I won’t have to kowtow to him all the time.’
‘I haven’t noticed you displaying servile deference to Papa,’ she said. She gave him all her attention.
He ignored her remark. ‘The army will buy more and more airships, and the navy will buy them, too. I had a word with the admiral today. They’re already planning where the bases should be. Nordholz in Schleswig-Holstein will be the biggest one; then others nearby. Revolving sheds built on turntables – the North Sea is too rough for floating the hangars.’
‘Schleswig-Holstein? Why would they want them so far north? The weather there is not suited to airships. You said they’d need calm weather today.’
‘Use your brains, Veronica. Germany has the only practical flying machine in the world. The experimental little contraptions that the Wright brothers have made can scarcely lift the weight of a man. What use would those things be for bombing?’
‘Bombing? Bombing England?’
‘This has been Count Zeppelin’s idea right from the start. I thought everyone knew that. He conceived these huge rigid airships as a war-winning weapon.’
‘How ghastly!’
‘It’s how progress comes. Leonardo da Vinci developed his great ideas only to help his masters fight wars.’
‘But bombing England, Harry? For God’s sake. What are you saying?’
‘Don’t get excited, Veronica. I wish I hadn’t started talking about it.’
‘War? War with England? But, Harry it is no time at all since the King of England went to Berlin. The children saw them both going through Pariser Platz in the state coach. The Kaiser is King Edward’s nephew. It’s unthinkable. It’s madness!’ This came in a gabble. It was as if she thought that she had only her husband to persuade and everything would be all right.
It was not an appropriate time to remind her that Kaiser Wilhelm made no secret of his hatred for his uncle the English King. Only the previous year, Winter had been one of three hundred dinner guests to whom the Kaiser had confided that King Edward was ‘a Satan’. But his wife needed assurance, so he went to her and put his arms tightly round her. By God, she was beautiful. Even at thirty-four she outshone some of the younger ones he bedded. He hated to see her distressed. ‘There will be no war, my darling. I guarantee that. England will see sense. When the time comes, England will see sense. The English are a nation of compromisers.’
‘I pray to God you’re right.’
‘They say the mustard manufacturers get rich from the dabs of mustard people leave on their plates. And we’ll get rich in the same way, darling. From selling the soldiers weapons they’ll never use.’
1910
The end of Valhalla
Both boys liked to visit Omi. Harald Winter’s widowed mother, Effi, lived in a comfortable little house on the coast, near Travemünde. They went each summer, with Nanny, Mama and Mama’s personal maid. From Berlin they always got a sleeping compartment in the train that left from Lehrter Bahnhof late at night and arrived at Lübeck next morning. They alighted from the train and watched the porters pile the luggage onto carts. The children were taken to see the locomotive, a huge hissing brute that smelled of steam and oil and of the burned specks of coal that floated in the sunlit air. Omi always met them at the station in Lübeck. But this time she wasn’t there – only the taxi. It was a big one – a Benz sixty-horsepower Phaeton, more like a delivery van than a car – and it could seat sixteen people if they all crammed together. The driver was a white-haired old fellow named Hugo who would laboriously clamber up onto the roof. There, on its huge rack, he’d strap a dozen suitcases, Mama’s ten hat boxes, a travelling rug inside which were rolled a selection of umbrellas and walking sticks and four black tin trunks so heavy that he’d almost overbalance with the weight of them.
The house itself was a gloomy old place with lace curtains through which the northern sunlight struggled to make pale-grey shadows on the carpet. Even in the dusty conservatory that ran the length of the house, the warmth of the summer sun was hardly enough to stir the wasps from their winter torpor.
Omi always wore black, the same sort of clothes she’d worn back in 1891, when Grandfather died. She spent most of the day in the room on the first floor: she read, she sewed, and for a lot of the time she just remembered. The room was furnished with her treasures and mementoes. There were two large jade dragons and a whole elephant tusk engraved with hunting scenes. There was a big photo of her with Opa on their wedding day, and portraits of other members of the family, and there were stuffed birds in glass cases and green plants that never bore flowers. She called the little room her salon and she received her visitors there – although visitors were few – and looked out the window across the Lübeck Bight to the coast and the water that became the Baltic Sea.
Peter and Paul wouldn’t have looked forward so much to their visits had it not been for the Valhalla. The Valhalla was a small sailing boat that had once belonged to Opa. In his will Opa had bequeathed the little boat to a neighbour. But whenever the two Winter boys arrived, the Valhalla was theirs. The neighbour didn’t know his sailing boat was called the Valhalla. On its bow was painted the same name that had been there when Winter bought it from a boat builder in Travemünde: Domino. But for the boys it was always called Valhalla: the hall in which slain warriors were received by Odin.
The Valhalla gave the boys a unique chance to be away from any kind of supervision. They took little advantage of this cherished freedom except to laze and, more important, to talk and argue in that spirited and curiously intimate way that children only do when no adults are within earshot.
‘You’ll change your mind again before you are fourteen,’ Peter told his ten-year-old brother with all the mature authority of a fourteen-year-old. ‘I wouldn’t go to cadet school; I’d hate it. I’m going to be an explorer.’ He trailed his hand in the water. The wind had been swinging round for the last hour or more, so that Peter had had to adjust the sail constantly. Now the boat was moving fast through the choppy water of the bight. The sun was a white disc seen fitfully behind hazy clouds. There was little heat in the sun. Visitors did not come to this northern coastline to bask in the sunshine; it was a brisk climate, for active holidaymakers.
The boys were dressed in yellow oilskins and floppy hats, just like the real sailors who sailed the big ships out of Kiel, along the coast from here. The younger boy, Paul, was crouched in the stern, hugging his knees. His hair was long and had become even more blond as he got older. People had said that his hair would darken, but adults had been wrong about that as about most other vital things he’d wanted to know. He said, ‘You’re good at mathematics. You’d have to be good at mathematics for exploring, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Peter, who’d recently come top in mathematics.
‘I’m no good at anything except sport: hockey, I’m good at hockey. Papa says the cadet school will be best for me. I’ll never be any good at mathematics.’
‘No, you won’t,’ said Peter.
Paul looked at his elder brother. It was a simple statement of fact: Paul was no good at mathematics and never would be. Adults all said that he was young and that soon he’d understand such scholastic subjects. The adults perhaps believed it, but it wasn’t true, and Paul preferred to hear his brother’s more brutal answer. ‘And then after cadet school I’ll be a soldier and wear a uniform like Georg.’ Georg was a young soldier who was walking out with one of the housemaids in Berlin.
‘Not like Georg,’ said Peter. ‘You’ll be an officer and ride a horse and parade down Unter den Linden and salute the Kaiser on his birthday.’
‘Will I?’ said Pauli. It didn’t sound at all bad.
‘And go off and fight the Russians,’ said Peter.
‘I wouldn’t like that so much,’ said Paul. ‘It would mean leaving Mama and Papa.’ He loved his parents as only a ten-year-old can. His father was the person he envied, respected and admired more than anyone in the whole world; and Mama was the one he ran to when Papa scolded him.
‘There’s more wind now,’ said Peter. The sail was drumming and there were white crests on the waves. ‘Take the helm while I fix the sail.’
Big storm clouds moved across the hazy sun. It went dark quite suddenly, so that the sky was almost black, with only a shining golden rim on the most distant of the clouds, and a bright shimmer of water along the horizon. ‘Is it a storm?’ said Paul. Two years ago they’d sailed through one of the sudden summer squalls for which this coast was noted. But that was in a bigger boat and with a skilful yachtsman in charge.
‘It’s nothing,’ said Peter. But as he said it, bigger waves struck the hull with enough force to make loud thumping noises and toss the small boat from side to side.
‘Pull the rudder round,’ said Peter.
The little blond boy responded manfully, heaving on the tiller to bring the boat head on to the waves. ‘But we’re heading in the wrong direction now. We’re heading out to sea,’ said Paul. The waves were getting bigger and bigger, and when he looked back towards Omi’s house the coast was so far away that it was lost in the haze of rain. Paul was frightened. He watched his brother struggling with the sail. ‘Do you want me to help?’
‘Stay at the tiller,’ called Peter loudly. He’d heard the note of fear in his young brother’s voice. He let go a rope for long enough to wave to encourage him. It was then that one of those freak waves that the sea keeps for such moments of carelessness hit the boat. The deck was slippery and Peter’s wet shoes provided no grip upon the varnished woodwork. There was a yell and then Pauli saw the sea swaddle his brother into a dirty-green blanket of water and bundle him away into the fast-moving currents.
Peter had never been a strong swimmer and hit by half a ton of icy-cold sea water, the breath knocked out of his lungs, he opened his mouth. Instead of the air he needed, he swallowed cold salty water, and felt his stomach retch at the taste of it. Sucked down into the cold water, he somersaulted through a dim green world until he no longer knew which way was up.
