Page 70 of The Gathering Storm (Morland Dynasty #36)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Basil was on sick leave from the Messenger .
His bosses were sympathetic for now, but it was obvious that sooner or later he was going to have to show that the paper had got value for money in sending him to Spain.
Miranda sent him a letter, sympathising but asking when he thought he might be able to come back to work.
Though his right hand was out of action, she said, someone could be made available to take down his account in shorthand and transcribe it.
But the reckoning was delayed. His parents were not happy with the Spanish doctor’s diagnosis that he would never get back full function of his hand, and insisted on paying for him to see a specialist, with the result that Basil was whipped off to a nursing home in Devonshire Street for an operation.
While he was there recovering, he received a visit from Oliver, alerted by Emma, who had heard from Molly, who had heard from Helen. ‘You should have come to me straight away,’ Oliver said, holding the X-ray photograph up to the light.
Basil was embarrassed. ‘I didn’t realise it was your area,’ he said.
‘Hands and faces. I’ve put more back together than you’ve had hot dinners, my lad.
’ Basil tried to smile at the joke, and Oliver gave him a sympathetic look.
‘In a lot of pain? They hand out morphine with an eye-dropper in these places. They don’t seem to realise that pain delays healing.
I’ll get them to increase your dose – no reason for you to suffer. ’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Basil said.
‘And the good news is that Tompkins seems to have done a good job – almost as good as I would have done myself. I see no reason why you shouldn’t regain full function.
There’s no significant nerve damage, and though tendons take a long time to heal, heal they will.
Then,’ he put on a mock stern face, ‘you must come to me for cosmetic reconstruction – we don’t want you to go about with a mangled hand, putting off the ladies.
No need to thank me,’ he added quickly, holding up his hand.
‘Family is family, after all. Tell your parents, no charge for a war hero.’
Basil felt close to tears. ‘I’m not a war hero. I didn’t achieve anything. It was a complete waste of time.’
Oliver patted his unwounded hand. ‘ War is a waste of time – believe me, I’ve been through one.
But when somebody starts one, you have to finish it.
All any of us can do is our best. You lost a friend, I understand?
That’s something you never get over. But you learn to live with it.
And you’re in a better position than many – you can write about your experiences, and you’ve a platform ready and waiting to publish.
All old fogeys like me can do is bore our colleagues at the club with our reminiscences. ’
‘But I think what my paper wants is a political analysis,’ Basil said. ‘They’ll want me to say why the Fascists are wrong and the Communists right.’
‘You were there and they weren’t,’ Oliver said.
‘Write what you saw. If they don’t want to publish it, someone else will.
’ He looked serious. ‘Words have power, and that confers a responsibility on you. The worst thing you can do is to write a lie. Lies kill more people than guns.’ He stood up.
‘I can see I’ve exhausted you. I’ll go and have a word with the house surgeon, get you some more morphine.
’ He patted Basil’s hand, and went away, a glamorous figure in his beautifully tailored suit, with a gardenia in the buttonhole, every inch the great consultant.
Basil soon got his extra dose. ‘Uncle’ Oliver was famous for many reasons, not least for being London’s leading plastic surgeon and head of the Winchmore Hospital, but Basil thought it was probably just his charm that always got him his way.
Charlie and Fern had gone to the chateau, leaving James to hold the fort in Paris. He stayed in the flat above the office, which was good and central, and convenient for obeying the Windsors’ frequent summonses to the Meurice.
All attention was now on the American trip.
They were to sail on the Bremen on the 6th of November, arriving on Armistice Day in New York, and taking a train immediately to Washington DC to lay a wreath at Arlington Cemetery on the Unknown Soldier’s tomb.
A visit to the White House was hoped for, followed by a broadcast on NBC about world peace.
Then there would be the tour of factories, for the Duke to study working-class conditions and industrial practices: Charlie was in touch with a number of major companies such as General Electric in Schenectady, Eastman-Kodak in Rochester, Standard Oil in Bayonne, and Du Pont in Wilmington.
The tour was to continue to Virginia to visit Wally’s wealthy cousins the Montagues, and on to North Carolina and Georgia; then Ohio; Detroit, to visit General Motors, Dearborn, where Ford was based, and across to Washington and Oregon; then into California, to call at San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Wally’s old stamping-ground of San Diego.
The tour would finish in mid-December, with some suggestion that there might be time for a dash to Hawaii before returning to France.
On the 27th of October, Charlie and Fern sailed to New York to firm up the schedule, to try to persuade the US government to give official recognition to the tour, and especially to secure an invitation by President Roosevelt to the White House.
James was left to liaise in Paris. It was he who booked the Bedauxs’ passage on the Europa , and he was amused to note from the passenger list that, by coincidence, Ernest Simpson was also aboard, on his way at last to marry Mary Kirk Raffray. He kept that detail from the Windsors.
But there were uncomfortable reports coming in every day, about hostility to the Duke’s German visit.
References to the Jewish lobby in America, especially comments that no-one who was a friend of Germany could also be a friend of Jews, made him do some research.
He came across the Nuremberg Laws, and was disturbed by how much they restricted the civil rights of German Jews.
The vague unease he had felt after the tour increased.
The Duke believed that the Germans were the only people who could effectively counter the Bolsheviks, that England could sit it out while the Nazis and the Reds fought each other. But at what cost?
He was in the office one day when a telephone call came through from Walter Monckton, who said the King and Queen were very unhappy about the proposed USA trip.
‘The King is trying to establish himself, and win the affection of his people, but the Duke is constantly courting the limelight. They resent it, especially since the Duke abandoned his responsibilities and dropped them onto his brother’s shoulders. ’
James murmured something about factory visits.
Monckton went on, ‘I can tell you Their Majesties don’t believe this interest in working-class conditions is sincere. There’s an element in the country that supports the Duke – a pro-Fascist group – and they believe he’s intending to stage a comeback.’
‘I haven’t heard him say anything about that,’ James said cautiously.
‘It was his duty when he left the country not to embarrass the King, and now he wants to conduct a quasi-state visit to America? I can tell you, Lindsay is very uneasy.’ Sir Robert Lindsay was the British ambassador to the USA.
‘A lot of Congress is fiercely anti-Nazi. Lindsay says the State Department’s been sending out a snowstorm of memoranda about the visit, none of them positive. ’
James remembered that at that very moment the Duchess was having fittings at Main Bocher for a very extensive wardrobe. ‘It’s not my place to say anything, sir,’ he said cautiously.
‘No, of course not. Excuse me, I was letting off steam. I’ll have to try to get through to the Duke. Do you know where he is?’
‘I believe he’s playing golf this morning. And this evening there’s a reception at the US Embassy.’
‘Ironic,’ Monckton said. ‘I’ll try to catch him this afternoon, then, at the hotel.’
James did not hear the result of that phone call, but a day or two later he heard from Charlie, telephoning from the States, to say it had all gone to pieces.
The labour leaders in Baltimore, the Duchess’s home town, where a triumphant visit was planned, had sworn to boycott them and if necessary demonstrate against them in public.
‘I’m hearing it was Mrs Roosevelt who put them up to it.
Lindsay can’t get the invitation to the White House because they’re expecting a tour of the States and Canada next year by the King and Queen and it wouldn’t look tactful.
And apparently Vansittart has sent an instruction that the Duchess is not to be referred to as HRH, or curtsied to, and the US State Department has agreed to go along with it. ’
‘The Duke won’t like that,’ James said.
‘He and the Duchess have been labelled as Nazi sympathisers, and with the Jewish lobby being so strong in the States, that’s a big problem.’
The final blow came when the New York longshoremen announced that they would refuse to unload the Bremen when it came in, if the Duke and Duchess were on board. They referred to them as ‘National Socialist bedfellows’.
James was in the suite at the Meurice when the final flurry of telephone calls was taking place, and overheard enough to understand the situation.
Lindsay told of the weight of public opinion against the Windsors in America; Bullitt, the US ambassador to France, said the Duke should go ahead with the tour, but without Bedaux, who was unpopular with American unions.
And Sir Eric Phipps, the British ambassador to Germany, said he should definitely not go – the very success of their German tour would play against them in the USA.