Chapter 39

Sunday 27 July 1914

The notice in the Times seems innocent enough. It runs:

British Naval Measures
Orders to First and Second Fleets
No Manoeuvre Leave

We received the following statement from the Secretary of the Admiralty at an early hour this morning:

Orders have been given to the First Fleet, which is concentrated at Portland, not to disperse for manoeuvre leave for the present. All vessels of the Second Fleet are remaining at their home ports in proximity to their balance crews.

Early on Monday, Henry asks Mary to come to lunch with him today. Her demeanour is glacial and she refuses. However, later in the morning she comes by his office and says brusquely that she has changed her mind. She will come after all, but only to hear what he has to say. He says he will meet her at the ABC at one o’clock.

He arrives on time and takes a table. While he waits he rehearses the speech he intends to make to her. She is going to listen while he speaks. He’s going to admonish her for writing the letter. He’s going to tell her that the ball is in her court. There are plenty more fish in the sea, he keeps telling himself.

He gets plenty of time for his rehearsals because it is nearly half past one and Henry is on the point of leaving when she arrives. She apologises for being late but gives no reason why.

‘Well,’ she says. ‘What is it you want to say to me?’

Henry’s intention had been to be firm and businesslike with her, exactly as though he were dealing with a supplier who had made a mess of things. Instead he finds himself apologising for the way he behaved towards her on Friday. Mary’s eyes are cold and this throws Henry off his stride. But he manages to get back on track and hears himself saying, ‘You need to make your mind up. Do you want to be with me or not?’

‘I want to be your wife and not your whore,’ she says, her eyes drilling into him. ‘If that’s not what you want, then you can go and fuck yourself.’

Henry looks around in alarm to see if anybody at any of the neighbouring tables heard what Mary said. And now she pushes her chair back and begins to get up. Henry is afraid she will say something else even more loudly.

‘Do you have anything else to say to me?’ she demands, her voice rising a fraction.

She is standing now. Henry is terrified she will make a scene.

‘Please. Sit down,’ he says.

She stands over him, her eyes flaming.

‘I’m going.’

‘Please,’ he says again, almost in a whisper.

Out of the corner of his eye, Henry is conscious that somebody is indeed looking at them. Mary hesitates.

‘Please sit down,’ he says, and this time it is a whisper. Henry indicates the chair. Slowly, Mary resumes her seat.

Henry says, ‘I will go and speak with a solicitor to find out about a divorce. Will that satisfy you?’

‘When?’ she demands.

‘As quickly as I can make an appointment.’

‘And once you’re divorced, we’ll be married?’

‘Yes.’

And now it is as though Mary has been transformed. Her eyes fill with warmth and she reaches a hand across to place it on top of Henry’s.

‘Say it,’ she says.

‘Say what? That once we’re divorced we’ll be married?’

‘Ask me to marry you,’ says Mary softly, correcting him.

Her lips, with their very red lipstick, are parted fractionally. He thinks she looks quite beautiful. She takes her hand away from his but leaves it on the table. Henry assumes he is meant to take it but he is too annoyed to give her the satisfaction of doing that.

‘Please Mary, will you … when … once I’m divorced … will you marry me?’

‘Do you really want me to?’

Henry is about to snap at her that of course he bloody well wants to, but instead he just says, ‘Yes, I’d like that very much.’

Now Mary places both her hands on his and says, ‘Yes, I will, Henry. I will.’

In London, Herbert Samuel, one of the younger members of the government, finds Grey alone in the Cabinet Room that looks out over the garden in Downing Street.

‘There’s some devilry going on in Berlin,’ Grey says passionately.

Later the Cabinet is split over whether or not to become involved should a European-wide war break out. The only decision that’s made is for Winston Churchill to put the British fleet on alert. His order reads: ‘Secret. European political situation makes war … by no means impossible. This is not the Warning Telegram, but be prepared to shadow possible hostile men of war … Measure is purely precautionary.’

Der Kaiser arrives at the Wildpark Station at Potsdam looking fit, sunburnt and confident after his three-week cruise.

Isn’t it funny, dear reader, how sometimes a person’s name reflects some aspect of their character? So it is with Sir Edward Grey. We’ve all heard the expression, ‘It’s not black and white,’ and some things in life aren’t – they don’t have one definitive answer. But many things do. And then there is the related expression, ‘It’s a grey area.’ Maybe Sir Edward has spent too long dealing in diplomacy, because, right now, when plain talking – black and white language – is required, Grey lapses into the grey language of diplomacy.

Sir Edward summons the ambassadors of three countries – Russia, Austria and Germany – to the Foreign Office. The Russian Ambassador says that the time has come for Britain to declare itself. Grey’s reply is grey. He says that ‘Churchill’s orders to the First Fleet will surely be plain enough to Germany.’ To the Austrian he offers an almost contradictory view. ‘There is no menace in what we are doing,’ he says. ‘But owing to the possibility of a conflagration, we cannot disperse our forces.’ And finally he asks the German Ambassador to use his country’s influence with Austria to take the Serbian reply as a basis for discussion. The Ambassador passes this on, even beefing up Sir Edward’s words. ‘The British government,’ he says, ‘is convinced that it lies entirely with us whether Austria shall jeopardise European peace by stubbornly pursuing a policy of prestige.’

Diplomacy. Fluffy words and phrases. It would have been perhaps asking too much, for Grey to have stood up, banged the table and said that if Austria continued with its present course, Britain would absolutely go to war.

The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs begins to call back its troops from its overseas colonies. One man who receives this summons is General Louis Lyautey, the man who runs Morocco. At the moment when the cable arrives, he is presiding over a meeting in Casablanca which is to do with promoting agriculture in Morocco.

The cable reads, ‘In the event of a continental war all your efforts should be directed to keeping in Morocco only the minimum of indispensable forces. The fate of Morocco will be decided in Lorraine.’ Lyautey is instructed to reduce the French occupation of Morocco to merely holding the principal sea ports.

‘They are completely mad!’ is Lyautey’s response. ‘A war among Europeans is a civil war. It is the most monumental folly the world has ever committed.’

There is a phenomenon known as ‘groupthink.’ It was first coined by a man called Irving Janis in 1972. Groupthink occurs when a group makes faulty decisions because pressures within the group lead to a reduction in ‘mental efficiency, reality testing and moral judgement.’ Janis found that groups affected by groupthink tended to take irrational actions that dehumanise other groups. A group is especially vulnerable to groupthink when its members are similar in background, when the group is insulated from outside opinion and when there are no clear rules for decision making.

What a pity Janis wasn’t around in 1914. On the other hand, maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference – look at the invasion of Iraq.

In Paris, the French Foreign Minister tells the German Ambassador that France is anxious to find a peaceful solution. It will do its utmost to influence the Russians if the Germans will urge moderation on the Austrians.

Austria continues its preparations for war against Serbia. In Vienna, the British Ambassador reports that the ‘country has gone wild with joy at prospect of war with Serbia.’ He concludes that Austria wanted war all along.

In Berlin, the German Foreign Minister explains to the Austrian Ambassador that he is only pretending to consider the British offer of mediation, and that in reality he has no intention of stopping the war against Serbia. The Germans are anxious to keep the British from getting involved and so are treating them with the utmost deference. If Germany were to explicitly tell Sir Edward Grey that it wasn’t pushing his mediation proposal with the Austrians, then world opinion would see Germany as being responsible for the war. In addition, German public opinion needs to see the war as having been forced on their country. The Germans wire Grey that they ‘have immediately initiated mediation in Vienna in the sense desired by Sir Edward Grey.’ And they do indeed pass on Grey’s offer of mediation to their Ambassador in Vienna. However, they order him not to show it to anyone in the Austrian government for fear that it might be accepted.

The French President, Poincaré, is still at sea. (Just how much at sea he will find out when he eventually arrives in France.) On board the France, Captain Grandclement keeps her at a steady eighteen to nineteen knots, south westerly through the Skagerrak towards Dunkirk. The seas are heavy, the ship rolls and President Poincaré’s saloon ships a lot of salt water. During the day, a German torpedo boat operating out of Cuxhaven or Emden passes the France and fires a salute.

So at this stage, dear and maybe slightly perplexed reader, we can probably summarise the Group of Death like this. Austria wants to play a quick match against the Serbs and give them a jolly good hiding. The Austrians are only in the game because the Germans are backing them.

The Germans believe the Austria-Serbia war can be localised and will be over and done with before any of the rest of the big guns gets involved. Anyway, Russia isn’t ready for a war – or so the Germans believe – the British aren’t prepared to fight and the French – well, Poincaré is still at sea.

And Sir Edward Grey believes the Germans really don’t want war and are clear that Britain would fight if it came to it. He could hardly be more wrong on both counts.

Far away from all this, Clara is missing James. She has become tired of goading Henry and now just wants it to be Thursday. Up to the morning she received the letter, Clara had envisioned the rest of her life as being a weary journey down to death, accompanied by Henry. Now all that has changed. She sees the chance of something new and bright and beautiful – like a rainbow glimpsed in the distance. Where she stands there are still purple, angry clouds and it is raining. But she now sees a little bit of brightness, a glimpse of sunlight, a ray of hope.

In her Atkinson Grimshaw fantasy, James has now become the man in the room. Those nights that Clara used to lie awake worrying, she now spends imagining what it would be like to be with him. And not just in that fantasy, but in real life. But she stays focussed on life with him, trying not to think about the terrible journey she will have to make before that can ever come about.

Clara has another night of broken sleep. She goes to bed about 11:30, sleeps soundly until three and then is wide awake after that until she hears the girls. (Today she lets Henry get up first and get his own breakfast.) ‘It’s such a long time until Thursday,’ she writes later in her diary.