and Whisky took to Einstein, and Einstein, still perplexed by my mother’s sudden disappearance, was grateful for the company. The three of them did everything together. They also took my father for long rambles across the wolds, which Will also loved. Although he had been born in Warwickshire, all his memories were of London, and the beech woods and streams of the Cotswolds were a new world. I think my father needed those rambles as well.
He and Will would come back with birds’ eggs, shards of terracotta—the remains of pots found near a Roman villa in the vicinity— and stories of monks they had seen in the nearby monastery. One day Will came back and announced proudly, “I had beer.”
“What?” gasped Sam.
Dad chortled. “Don’t worry. He had one sip. So did Einstein.”
Over Christmas lunch Dad made an announcement. He said that he had decided to give up the house. Some years previously, he said, he had bought a cottage elsewhere in the village. It had been intended for my mother, assuming that Dad would go first.
He looked at me, at us, really. “Do you want the house? It’s yours, if you do. Otherwise, I’ll sell it. You’ll get the money, of course, in time.”
Neither Sam nor I knew what to say, but Will did.
“You mean we can live here always? With Whisky and Einstein?” His eyes were rounder than ever.
I could see that Sam, although she didn’t say anything, was taken with the idea, but I didn’t push it.
“You’ll need weeks—months—to dispose of all your junk, Dad. We’ll try the idea on for size.”
“I’ve already got rid of most of your mother’s things,” he said sadly. “I’d have done more, but this official history of the war is taking up quite a bit of my time just now. I’m just about to start on Izzy’s belongings—will you help me with the books, at least, while you’re here?”
I nodded, but in the event I didn’t. My leave was cut short by a telegram and, two days after Christmas, I was ordered to Paris, where I was to form part of the team preparing for the peace conference. I couldn’t say no: after my brief stint at the Front and my rescue from the Stratford backwaters by Colonel Pritchard, the peace conference would be the crowning achievement of my wartime career.
FOR SIX MONTHS AT THE BEGINNING OF 1919, Paris was the center of the world. More than eight million soldiers had been killed in the war and now hundreds of politicians, diplomats, bankers, professors, economists, lawyers, and journalists came to Paris to try to fashion a lasting peace.
There were statesmen from many nations—more than thirty countries sent delegations—but the real work was done by what came to be called the Big Four: France, Britain, Italy, and the United States. The British staff alone consisted of four hundred people. It was an extraordinary time: new borders were drawn throughout central Europe and the Middle East, and there was, to begin with, a sense that all was now possible. By the second week of January, all delegations were in Paris.
Paris: beautiful and sad at the same time. There had been a lot of rain and the Seine was in flood. People were mournful for the sons and lovers they had lost; half the people wore black, while the other half, mainly the women, did their best to look elegant, chic. There was a gaping crater in the Tuileries rose garden and a captured German cannon on display in the Place de la Concorde. Along the grand boulevards there were gaps in the rows of chestnut trees, where some had been cut down for firewood. Coal, milk, and bread were in short supply.
We had very little time off in the early weeks but we did have a spring break for a month while President Wilson went back to America to try to persuade Congress to be more accommodating to his idea for a League of Nations. During this break I—like everyone else on the delegation—was allowed to bring my family, Sam and Will, to Paris for a few days before the conference restarted.
Our delegation occupied five hotels in Paris, all near the Arc de Triomphe, and centered on the Majestic, where I was billeted. However, security was tight; our own Scotland Yard people were on the doors and our own kitchen staff cooked the food. Wives and girlfriends weren’t allowed to stay in the official hotels, so while Sam and Will were in town (Whisky