Springtime in Paris

Chapter 1

The constant murmur of a dozen languages vied with the scratchy, slightly off-key French vocals of Mistinguett’s signature song, ‘Mon Homme’, on the gramophone. The dining room of the Hotel de Trianon Palais was too small to allow discrete space between the white draped tables, and so the numerous guests of the hotel simply spoke louder and glared reproachfully at their neighbours through the haze of cigarette smoke and from behind the liberally spaced potted palms.

A rigorous hierarchy had been established over the previous days and weeks, surmounted by the Poles and the Hungarians. Only if someone French happened to take one of the few rooms not reserved for the duration of the negotiations, did it waver. Of the two, black-bearded Korsas’s Hungarians were the louder. They sat first, choosing their customary tables near the window, loudly debating what was probably politics, although since no one else seemed to speak Hungarian, who could say? Whatever they spoke about they did so loudly and with passionate gesticulation. Not a breakfast or dinner would pass without one of more waving their arms or beating their breast to emphasise some keenly felt point. Whether their day’s endeavours had prospered or failed, no one in the dining room could mistake it.

In contrast, the Poles—the thoughtful and rather academic Jancewicz and his faithful and watchful entourage of fierce young patriots—were near silent in the far corner of the room. They spoke in whispers, shielding their mouths as if, even over the noise, someone might overhear them or read their lips. Only thin, cautious smiles, swiftly smothered, betrayed their feelings. To any who approached they were generally polite, erudite, and dismissive, speaking French and German excellently, and swiftly taking their leave in either.

Next came the Czechs, dark-eyed and bitter, five of them. The tall, ascetically thin one called Szader was nominally in charge, but it was the woman, Madame Makara, with her grey-shot black hair, who looked and acted as if she were a long-suffering mother responsible for reckless and headstrong sons. She mediated their frequent arguments, reigned in their fury against perceived slights and dealt with the hotel staff in adequate, if imperfect and accented, French.

Then there were the devout Greeks, led by a chain-smoking, grey-bearded Orthodox cleric, bestowing all with glares of pious disapproval. The Croats in their boots, leather jackets and waistcoats and embroidered sashes, reminded one rather of bandits or pirates visiting town to spend their loot. Their every glance seemed to assess the value of furniture, crockery, silverware, even the young women serving at table. There were Slovenes who spoke no French, only poor Italian and comically bad German, other than their own incomprehensible tongue, a couple of perpetually angry Serbs, a band of four Irishmen and one woman with fiery red hair, who rose late and stayed up at the bar drinking almost every night, until their songs roused complaints. A dour group of Finns, all pale in hair, eyes and complexion, seemed to be perpetually on the verge of vendetta with the erudite Monsieur Laizan’s Estonians, whilst both parties seemed to despise the somewhat poor and threadbare assemblage of Ukrainians, who anxiously reminded everyone they spoke to that they were neither Russian, nor Bolsheviks, and hated both passionately.

Yet all, regardless of their race, nationality, language or religion, could find agreeable accord in their antagonism and disdain for the single, solitary German.

Louis Randolf Beck observed them over the headline in Le Figaro, trumpeting Viviani’s speech on women’s suffrage. He was, as he told anyone there who would listen, only half German. The other half was of good French stock. Few believed him, no matter how much he spoke the language, or how good his knowledge of wines—the business that had brought him to Paris in this busiest of times. To be fair to them, his own attachment to the land and culture of his mother was somewhat superficial at best. He enjoyed a more flamboyant and Gallic sense of fashion than the average German, sprinkled his speech with phrases of French and had the traditional taste for good food, wine, luxury, and women, but in all else he was German.

He had been born and raised on an Alsatian vineyard by a stern, patrician father and a French mother who had left when Louis was five. He’d joined the army as little more than a boy, somehow survived the war with only a crippled leg, and now found himself the executive manager of one of Berlin’s great hotels, now sadly diminished. He was seeking a way to restore its appeal, and a fully stocked wine-cellar was something none of his competitors, not the Kaiserhof, the Continental, or even the Adlon, could boast. So, he had made his way, with difficulty, to Paris.

Everything in Paris was overpriced that spring. Since mid-January, every room, down to the smallest, dingiest, draughtiest cupboard in a damp, left-bank pension, had been available only at a premium, and those at the best hotels cost a fortune where they were available at all. It was only to be expected. The world was in Paris—the world was Paris!

The heads of the great Allied governments had come to the city as victors and lords of the earth to decide the future of the world, not least the fate of the defeated. The leaders of France were hosting the great event and to their city came their counterparts from the United States and Britain. The representatives of their lesser, though still important, allies came too: Italy and Japan, and the increasingly independent-minded colonial dominions, such as Canada and Australia, and even distant Indochina, along with minor powers seeking their share of the spoils, Portugal, Roumania, and Greece amongst them. So too came those with a country only just sprung into being from the ashes of fallen Empires: Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, Finns, Lithuanians, and their Baltic neighbours, and those hoping that the American President’s talk of ‘National self-determination’ might mean a land for them, be they Croats, Ukrainians, Arabs, Jews, Kurds or Irish. Only the defeated were not invited, the Germans, the Austrians, Turks and Bulgarians. There had been talk of bringing them to the conference, like the congresses of an earlier age, but those ideas had faded months ago. Now everyone realised that the decisions would be made and presented, without the participation of the beaten.

The Russians too were missing, caught in the midst of a brutal civil war, with the Allies unsure what to do and who to back. They instead ignored them all and acted as if the world’s largest nation simply did not exist; better that than inviting one of the various White Russian warlords, who would certainly demand military aid they could not afford, or else acknowledging the government of Bolsheviks. Better by far to ignore it all. Still, even without the diplomats there were Russians there, begging for support for one side or another, or simply fleeing the chaos.

Citizens of the defeated powers too, amongst the journalists, observers, businessmen, and the inevitable spies. Everyone had come to Paris, and she had welcomed them all, for a price.

Louis had found that even his generous allowance would not stretch to the finest of hotels, or even those at their heels. He had eventually ended up on the left-bank, at the head of the Rue de Vaugiraud, close to where it joined the Boulevard St-Michel, and not far from the Odeon and the Jardin de Luxembourg. The Hotel de Trianon Palais had an impressive Haussmannian façade, a hundred and twenty rooms, although only ten bathrooms shared between them, and most importantly, had space. His room lacked a front view or one of the elegant little Juliet balconies the best rooms had to offer. It was at the back, staring at the blank wall of a block of government offices, and had only a narrow single bed. For this he had paid the absurd sum of twenty francs a night, almost double the rate on the carte, but the alternatives were worse and equally expensive.

At least dinner was good. The Trianon had benefitted enormously from British paranoia. The British had taken the whole of the great Majestic Hotel for their delegation and then, for reasons of security, had dismissed the entirety of the French staff including those in the kitchens, replacing them with cooks from England who would undoubtedly boil everything until it was grey. The owner of the Trianon had been able to make an offer to the second sous-chef of the Majestic and so improved the offered cuisine immeasurably.

That at least was one compensation for the frustrations and financial drain Louis was enduring. The other was the rather lovely lady, also seated alone, at another table across the dining room. She was ignoring him with studied practice as she daintily sliced the escallops of veal. He was not expected to be so decorous and so watched her with open admiration, he was not alone in doing so. Her striking looks, her pale oval face framed with dark hair tinged with red, like ripe cherries, attracted many admirers. She was well-dressed, slim, and alluringly married, her ring prominent on her hand, yet she was alone. Her name was Madame Morell, that much was easy to discover, her husband a French official in the ministry of foreign affairs, and evidently too busy to spend any time with his wife, or even to share a hotel with her. Closer engagement was difficult: dashing Hungarians, suave Poles, passionate Serbs, and even drunkenly poetic Irishmen, had failed to assail her defences—now they merely looked and wondered what her weakness was.

Louis did not wonder; he had discovered it unerringly. She was furious with the husband who had dragged her to Paris and then abandoned her in a second-rate hotel, and so if she were to have an affair of revenge, then only a hated German would do. She was proving both enthusiastic and imaginative in her vengeance, and Louis was duly smitten. He knew it would pass, it always did, but as he drank his coffee, real coffee, not the ghastly ersatz-coffee substitute they were still drinking in Germany, he looked forward to yet another night in the arms of the charming lady.

Madame Morell, Antoinette, as she was known to him in the privacy of her room, left the dining room before him. He didn’t rush to follow. Not only would it be indiscrete, but a lady needed time to prepare. He opened his cigarette case and took out a smoke. Like the coffee it too was the real thing, not the cheap and poor imitation available in Germany. He placed it carefully between his lips and lit it with a gold lighter that had been a gift from another married lady. The case had been a gift too. He inhaled luxuriously and massaged his aching knee, the Russian shrapnel had meant he’d never run or dance well again, but it had kept him out of the last awful year of the war, he was grateful for that at least.

Across the room the Czechs and Hungarians had begun to argue again. A chair scraped, a glass toppled, tinkling. Both sides spoke their own language amongst themselves, but threw insults in German, a legacy of their previous part in the Empire of Austro-Hungary. Madame Makara was once again trying to calm the antagonists. Sometimes she succeeded, other times they’d goad each other to the point of storming out to the alley, between the hotel and the government offices, where they’d happily beat each other senseless. Back at home they’d undoubtedly have called for swords or pistols to settle the matter, this at least was less bloody. Tonight, the redoubtable lady was successful, and the voluble cries subsided into grumbles and glares, and the rest of the room, starved of the entertainment, returned to their linguistically unique conversations.

Louis finished his cigarette, stubbed it out in the glass ashtray, lifted his leg from the chair where it had rested, and rose stiffly to his feet. The silver-capped malacca cane was more than an affectation and he leant upon it heavily as he waited for the pain in his knee to subside. He caught the Irish redhead watching him and offered her a smile. She glared her hatred and curled a disdainful lip, but there was a slight flush of colour in her cheeks. He could have worked with that if he hadn’t had a more promising rendezvous already arranged. He glanced at his watch, confirming that he still time for his customary after dinner walk, and made his way to the foyer. He retrieved his coat from the clerk at reception for a small tip and stepped out into the cool evening.