a cross section of Britain at the height of its power. On Mary Rensselaer’s right sat an Indian prince, a delicate old man with an Eton accent so pronounced that sometimes even the other English guests had trouble understanding him. Facing her there was a weatherbeaten infantry colonel who’d soldiered through the empire. In Transvaal he’d won his Queen’s newly founded Victoria Cross, and in Afghanistan he’d left an arm.
Dominating the table with his anecdotes there was a plain-speaking Yorkshireman, sole owner of a steel works from which had come enough metal to build a complete Royal Naval Battle Squadron. And listening with delight there was a Peer of the Realm: a handsome, bearded youth who’d inherited half a million acres of northern England. He was rich on coal from a couple of mines he’d never seen, and on rents from a dozen villages that he couldn’t, when asked, name.
The women were as formidable as the men, and just as surprising. The Indian princess could speak a dozen languages, and her German was faultless. The wife of the steelmaster had been painted by Degas, and the bank official’s wife had been a lady-in-waiting to the late Queen. A buxom woman with a glittering diamond collar had run a hospital in the Sudan before marrying a man who owned several thousand miles of Latin American railways.
The dining room was designed to complement such eminent company: fine paintings, carpets, linen, crystal and silver. And the food and wines were memorable.
Harald Winter was overwhelmed. Even his Berlin-tailored evening dress felt wrong, especially when he found all the other men wearing white waistcoats instead of the black ones that were still fashionable in Berlin. In Berlin he was treated as a wealthy and influential – not to say powerful – man. But he felt diffident in the presence of these people. They were relaxed and courteous, but Winter was not such a fool that he didn’t see their arrogant self-confidence. Though they complimented him on his excellent English, he knew the way they ridiculed any sort of foreign accent. Their exaggerated politeness and modest disclaimers were the veneer that overlaid their rough contempt for foreigners such as Winter, and for his banking house, of which they all told him they’d never heard.
‘I’m completely out of touch nowadays,’ one of the guests – a financial expert – told him apologetically. ‘The only bankers I remember are the really big ones…. Getting old, you see.’ He tapped his head and turned away to speak with someone else. Winter felt humiliated.
Rensselaer was just as bad. He’d spent most of the meal talking to the Indian princess. Winter wondered if his father-in-law guessed that he urgently wanted to put a financial proposition to him. He’d been trying to have a private word with his host since arriving back from a disappointing business lunch. Was he avoiding him? Surely not. Rensselaer was as keen on a profit-able deal as any other man in the financial world. It was just as well they were house guests. Perhaps he could have a word with Rensselaer after these dinner guests had gone.
‘You look pensive, darling,’ Veronica told her husband when the men joined the ladies in the drawing room. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘Everything is fine,’ said Winter. It was no good telling his wife how much he disliked these people. Veronica and her family were the same as the rest of them, so he simply told her she was looking wonderful in her long pale-green silk dress. She’d never perceive the way in which these rich and powerful guests of her father’s despised the little German banker and the nation from which he came.
‘I’m not a pork butcher,’ he peevishly responded when the woman with the diamond collar asked him what he did for a living in Berlin. It was a silly remark and simply revealed his nervous exasperation.
‘My grandfather was a butcher in Leeds,’ she cheerfully told him. ‘Even now I can remember the wonderful roast beef we always had at his house.’
Winter was embarrassed at her response. He desperately tried to make amends for his gratuitous rudeness. ‘I have a bank,’ he said and, in keeping with this English obsession for modesty, added, ‘a very small bank.’ She laughed. No matter what one did, somehow the English always knew how to make a foreigner feel a fool.
The two boys, in the nursery bedroom at the very top of the house, heard the clatter of carriages and the sounds of the guests leaving soon after midnight. Peter, lost in a dream about airships, went back to sleep almost immediately, but little Pauli was still worried about his brother’s outburst that afternoon. Paul had none of the cleverness that distinguished his elder brother but, perhaps in compensation for this, the little blond child had an instinct about what went on in other people’s minds. He knew that his grandfather was deeply hurt by what his brother had said. Peter was like that: he had the capacity for cruelty that comes so easily to the self-righteous.
Now Pauli stayed awake worrying about what would happen to Peter. Perhaps he’d be sent away. He’d heard of children being sent away. They were sent away to jobs, and to schools, and sometimes sent away to the army or the navy. Pauli had no idea of what happened to those who were ‘sent away’ but now it was dark, and the flickering nightlight made strange shadows on the ceiling and on the wall, and all sorts of frightening ideas about being sent away occurred to him.
He called to his brother, but Pauli’s voice was faint and Peter’s sleep was not interrupted. Pauli got out of bed and decided to wake up Nanny; she’d be angry, of course, but he knew she’d pick him up and cuddle him and put him back to bed with reassuring words that sometimes little boys like Pauli want to hear in the middle of the dark night.
Pauli was halfway down the top flight of the back stairs by the time he fully realized that he wasn’t in his home in Berlin. He walked up and down the line of closed bedroom doors trying to decide which one to try. It was then that he heard voices from somewhere below. He continued down the servant’s stairs until he got to the ground floor. The voices were coming from a room at the back of the house. It was Grandpa’s study – a small back room where Cyrus Rensselaer went to smoke. Here he kept a comfortable old leather chair, a desk where he could write, and a locked cabinet that contained his very finest French brandy and his favourite sourmash bourbon, which he brought with him because the London wine merchants had never heard of it.
From his position on the landing, Pauli could squeeze into a space where empty steamer trunks were stored, and from there he could look through an open fanlight and see into the room.
Grandpa was sitting in the big leather chair, alongside the coal fire that was now only red embers and grey ash. Pauli’s father was perched on the edge of the writing desk. His father looked uncomfortable. Both men had cut-glass tumblers in their hands. Grandpa was smoking a big cigar and Daddy was lighting one too. Pauli could smell the smoke as it curled up into his hiding place. Grandpa took the cigar from his mouth and said, ‘Never mind all the stories about a cure for malaria, Harry. If you are trying to raise capital for your bank, it means your bank is in trouble.’
‘It’s not in trouble,’ said Winter. He tugged at the hem of his black waistcoat and silently cursed his Berlin tailor for not knowing that in England it was passé.
‘When people start saying a bank is in trouble, it’s in trouble.’
Harald Winter said, ‘It’s a chance to expand.’
Rensselaer interrupted him. ‘Never mind the bullshit, Harry; save that for the suckers. My friends in the City tell me you’re not sound.’
Winter stiffened. ‘Of course it’s sound. Half the money still remains in German government bonds.’
‘Damnit, Harry, don’t be so naive. It’s not sound because your aluminium factory may not be a success. Suppose the aluminium market doesn’t come up to your expectations? How are you
