Fall of Giants

She forced herself to think calmly and worked it out again. The king’s visit had taken place in January. Ethel had been made housekeeper immediately afterward, but Mrs. Jevons had been too ill to move then. Fitz had gone to Russia in February, and had come back in March, which was when they had first made love properly. In April Mrs. Jevons had rallied, and Fitz’s man of business, Albert Solman, had come down from London to explain her pension to her. She had left at the beginning of May, and that was when Ethel had moved into this room and put that frightening little pile of white cotton strips into the drawer. It was ten weeks ago. Ethel could not make the arithmetic come out any differently.

How many times had they met in the Gardenia Suite? At least eight. Each time, Fitz withdrew before the end, but sometimes he left it a bit late, and she felt the first of his spasms while he was still inside her. She had been deliriously happy to be with him that way, and in her ecstasy she had closed her eyes to the risk. Now she had been caught.

“Oh, God forgive me,” she said aloud.

Her friend Dilys Pugh had fallen for a baby. Dilys was the same age as Ethel. She had been working as a housemaid for Perceval Jones’s wife and walking out with Johnny Bevan. Ethel recalled how Dilys’s breasts had got larger around the time she realized that you could, in fact, get pregnant from doing it standing up. They were married now.

What was going to happen to Ethel? She could not marry the father of her child. Apart from anything else, he was already married.

It was time to go and meet him. There would be no rolling on the bed today. They would have to talk about the future. She put on her housekeeper’s black silk dress.

What would he say? He had no children: would he be pleased, or horrified? Would he cherish his love child, or be embarrassed by it? Would he love Ethel more for conceiving, or would he hate her?

She left her attic room and went along the narrow corridor and down the back stairs to the west wing. The familiar wallpaper with its pattern of gardenias quickened her desire, in the same way that the sight of her knickers aroused Fitz.

He was already there, standing by the window, looking over the sunlit garden, smoking a cigar; and when she saw him she was struck again by how beautiful he was. She threw her arms around his neck. His brown tweed suit was soft to the touch because, she had discovered, it was made of cashmere. “Oh, Teddy, my lovely, I’m so happy to see you,” she said. She liked being the only person who called him Teddy.

“And I to see you,” he said, but he did not immediately stroke her breasts.

She kissed his ear. “I got something to say to you,” she said solemnly.

“And I have something to tell you! May I go first?”

She was about to say no, but he detached himself from her embrace and took a step back, and suddenly her heart filled with foreboding. “What?” she said. “What is it?”

“Bea is expecting a baby.” He drew on his cigar and blew out smoke like a sigh.

At first she could make no sense of his words. “What?” she said in a bewildered tone.

“The princess Bea, my wife, is pregnant. She is going to have a baby.”

“You mean you’ve been at it with her at the same time as with me?” Ethel said angrily.

He looked startled. It seemed he had not expected her to resent that. “I must!” he protested. “I need an heir.”

“But you said you loved me!”

“I do, and in a way I always will.”

“No, Teddy!” she cried. “Don’t say it like that-please don’t!”

“Keep your voice down!”

“Keep my voice down? You’re throwing me over! What is it to me now if people know?”

“It’s everything to me.”

Ethel was distraught. “Teddy, please, I love you.”

“But it’s over now. I have to be a good husband and a father to my child. You must understand.”

“Understand, hell!” she raged. “How can you say it so easily? I’ve seen you show more emotion over a dog that had to be shot!”

“It’s not true,” he said, and there was a catch in his voice.

“I gave myself to you, in this room, on that bed by there.”

“And I shan’t-” He stopped. His face, frozen until now in an expression of rigid self-control, suddenly showed anguish. He turned away, hiding from her gaze. “I shan’t ever forget that,” he whispered.

She moved closer to him, and saw tears on his cheeks, and her anger evaporated. “Oh, Teddy, I’m so sorry,” she said.

He tried to pull himself together. “I care for you very much, but I must do my duty,” he said. The words were cold, but his voice was tormented.

“Oh, God.” She tried to stop crying. She had not told him her news yet. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve, sniffed, and swallowed. “Duty?” she said. “You don’t know the half.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m pregnant, too.”

“Oh, my good God.” He put his cigar to his lips, mechanically, then lowered it again without puffing on it. “But I always withdrew!”

“Not soon enough, then.”

“How long have you known?”