Now, grain from the prairies west of the Mississippi had rendered the famines of Bengal, Rajasthan and the Punjab things of a past, dark era. And huge, sprawling frontier cities had sprung up along the shores of the Great Lakes, their never-ending hunger for labour drawing people from every corner of the Empire. It was hardly surprising that Philip De L’Isle sometimes grew so exasperated with the insularity and the westward ‘blindness’ of the ‘great men’ of the East Coast who were still so wedded to the old country, that they refused to glance over their shoulders at the ‘new’ New England conquering the fastnesses of their unimaginably bountiful continent...
“Um,” Eleanor declared philosophically, giving her husband a wry gaze, “you’ve got that faraway look in your eye, again, mein Liebe.”
The King grimaced sheepishly.
“Forgive me, my love, I was thinking about everything we saw when we were in New England a couple of years ago,” he confessed. “I don’t mean our time in the East. I was thinking more about those great factories, the steel mills, the row upon row of huge grain silos at Buffalo, and all those big ships plying their trade on the Great Lakes. And,” he shrugged, “travelling on that train across the prairies, sometimes rattling through endless fields of ripening wheat and corn from morning to dusk. And thinking, as inevitably one must, how little the people at home, or in the wider Empire, or in the First Thirteen, truth be known, and certainly not here, in the heart of Europe, understand that in New England there lies a sleeping giant…”
“I’ve invited Ranji to join us for luncheon,” Eleanor said, changing the subject in an attempt to raise her husband’s spirits. “Hopefully, you two can cheer each other up talking about cricket!”
The news instantly broke her husband’s preoccupation.
Major General His Highness Jam Saheb Ranjitsinhji Vibhaji III Jadeja of Nawanagar, was the flamboyant, raconteur grandson of the most remarkable cricketer ever to come out of the sub-continent.
‘Ranji’, like her husband – strangely, given that he had been a gunnery specialist, a thing requiring the finest imaginable exactitude – notwithstanding his unquenchable love of the summer game was a man almost completely lacking in hand-eye co-ordination when it came to holding a cricket bat or attempting to take a catch in the field.
Nevertheless, the Chairman of the All India Cricket Board of Control and the Honorary Life President of the Marylebone Cricket and Lawn Tennis Club, the arbiter of the laws and standards of both sports at Thomas Lord’s Field next to Regent’s Park, and the King were old friends from their school days at Harrow. Regardless of whatever else was happening in the Empire, they always fell straight into an animated debate about the state of their national summer games (Cricket and Tennis) and the perennial problem of what on earth their respective Cricketing elevens were going to do about the blasted all-conquering Philadelphians!
On that particularly sore topic, while now and then the Australians or the South Africans put up a gallant but doomed fight against the terrifying New Englanders – whose bowlers bowled like the wind and whose batsmen seemed to be wielding mighty tree trunks, not the matchstick forty to forty-five ounce bats of their foes – who time and again mercilessly reduced their foes to dispirited, often gibbering shells of the men they had once been…
Eleanor giggled.
Her husband had already brightened, shaken off his broodiness.
“And after luncheon I plan to take a stroll in the grounds…” Her voice trailed off because she very nearly had to bite her tongue to stop herself saying: “Because we probably won’t be welcomed back again when we make our shameful confession about the Submarine Treaty to whoever turns out to be the new German Emperor!”
She was relieved her husband was not reading her mind, or if he was, he hid it well.
“Yes, Ranji and I do tend to jabber on a bit about bat and ball, and the politics of the International Cricket Council,” the King conceded apologetically.
Cricket and Association Football – respectively the national summer and winter national games – were alike to Eleanor; once, early in her marriage she had suggested, in all earnestness, to Bertie that both games would be much improved as a spectacle if each side had their own balls…
Their marriage had, fortuitously, survived that first crisis and flourished; which only went to show what could be achieved if there was a little bit of good will and plenty of give and take on both sides.
When they were first married, they had holidayed and travelled in the German Empire, a thing impossible since the late 1950s although visitors from Germany often quietly called on the family in London or at one or other of its country retreats. But discreetly, for discretion had been the key word in all ‘higher-level’ Anglo-German contacts in recent times.
However, the next visitor to the royal couple’s rooms was not the cheery Jam Saheb of Nawanagar, it was a very grim-faced Sir Hector Hamilton, who thus far in Berlin had cut a sorry, somewhat diminished figure. He had kept the ‘great secret’ from his King for what he had determined were the best possible of reasons, his motives had been good, patriotic but he had wilted under the white heat of his monarch’s anger, and hardened political operator that he was, he was not about to recover his equilibrium any time soon.
“Hector, what is it?” Eleanor asked anxiously. “You look as white as a sheet?”
The Prime Minister bowed.
“George Walpole stayed behind at the Embassy,” the newcomer explained. “Telegrams are coming in all the time. We have received reports that the redoubt defence lines around San Antonio in Texas have been breached, and that our reserve forces of last resort, are in full retreat.”
The King’s face darkened, his scowl deepened.
“I regret that I must report that there are no substantial forces between the invaders and the Mississippi River, sir,” Sir Hector Hamilton went on. “But,” he added, holding up a hand. “That is not the worst of it, forces of the Triple Alliance supported by many warships are reported to have seized the port of Pensacola. If this is true, then it is likely that the Delta and the city of New Orleans may soon be cut off and in due course, besieged; or worse, the enemy may strike east and isolate Florida from the rest of New England.”
The King compelled himself to take several long breaths.
It did not help.
“And?” He asked tersely, knowing that there must be more very bad news.
“And an enemy squadron is reported to be bombarding English Harbour on Antigua, our main garrison in the Leeward Islands…”
Eleanor was bewildered.
She looked to her husband.
“I don’t understand,” she confessed. “What on earth is the Navy doing about all this, Bertie?”
Chapter 13
Friday 28th April
HMS Surprise, 35 nautical miles SW of Bermuda
Surgeon Lieutenant Abraham Lincoln, RNAS, had adjusted to the sameness and clockwork routine of life on board HMS Surprise faster and with a lot less angst, than his friend. Ted Forest, notwithstanding he was still recovering, rather than rehabilitating from what had been life-threatening wounds, freely confessed he was getting ‘cabin fever’, shut up in their claustrophobic new world.
‘I joined the Air Service because I hate confined spaces and I actually like the wind in my face!’
For Abe, this surreal entrapment below the waves, was a priceless opportunity to regain his mental and physical equilibrium, and to allow his battered body and perturbed psyche to heal itself. Of course, he worried about Kate, and what she must be going through, probably thinking in her heart that he was dead but there was nothing he could do about that and, hopefully, all his wife’s grief and hurt would, in time, be repairable, if and when he eventually got home. If he had died on the Achilles, or on Little Inagua, Kate would never have known where his bones lay. As it was, although his and Ted’s sojourn on the Surprise seemed interminable – this was actually only their fifteenth day aboard – it would surely end one day. In the meantime, he had been devouring the submarine’s medical library like a starving man suddenly presented with a banquet fit for a king!