The Ways of the World Read Online Free PDF Page A

to the hotel Sir Henry had booked for him, the Mazarin, in Rue Coligny. There was a note waiting for him there on Hotel Majestic writing paper.
    5.iii.19
    Dear boy,
    Welcome to Paris. I am so sorry about this, but I have to cancel our luncheon engagement for tomorrow. I am not my own master during this damned conference. But dine with me instead. The Ritz at eight. It will be a grand evening.
    Affectionately,
    Your father
    There they were again, Max, supposed: those famous exigencies of the service. The peace conference was important. No one who had fought in the war could doubt that. It was a re-ordering of the world map – the creation of new countries and boundaries intended to heal the old divisions. It was the shaping of a future that would be safe for all to live in.
    Still, his father’s postponement of their reunion seemed odd, not to say unfeeling. As he unpacked, Max decided he would not simply wait for their dinner date at the Ritz. The Majestic was only a shortish walk away. Armed with directions from the concierge, he set off into the Paris evening. His hopes for a touch of spring were misplaced.
    A fellow looking remarkably unlike a Parisian hotel doorman was guarding the entrance to the Majestic. He was, in fact, as heswiftly revealed, a Scotland Yard detective. No chances were being taken with security at the headquarters of the British delegation. Without a pass, or someone to vouch for him, Max was not going to gain admittance.
    He was escorted as far as the reception desk, however. But Sir Henry Maxted was out. ‘He generally leaves very early and returns very late,’ the clerk informed him, discouragingly. The clerk, like the policeman, was English. ‘I’ve been imported from the Grand in Birmingham, sir,’ he explained, noting Max’s puzzlement. ‘The gentlemen from the Foreign Office wouldn’t be happy with French staff. They want people they can rely on. So, here we all are.’
    ‘Would you tell Sir Henry when he gets in that his son called to see him?’
    ‘Certainly, but I wouldn’t like to say when that might be, if you know what I mean.’
    Max was far from sure he did know what the man meant, but he left it at that. He felt a sudden desire for life, colour and entertainment. He hopped into a cab and named the Folies Bergères as his destination.
    Max rose late the following morning and treated himself to a gentle day. He walked down to the Seine and crossed to the Quai d’Orsay, briefly joining the small band of onlookers outside the French Foreign Ministry, hoping for a glimpse of someone notable – Lloyd George, perhaps, or President Wilson – coming or going. But those who came and went were anonymous functionaries to a man. He returned to the Right Bank and wandered east, noting the captured German cannons in the Place de la Concorde and the enormous bomb crater in the Tuileries rose garden. There were refugees everywhere from the war zones and disabled ex-servicemen begging at street corners. He rewarded them with cigarettes, which he suspected were more valuable than the sous and centimes in his pockets. The war was over. But in Paris it could not be said to have ended. It was settling around him: the dust of a vast upheaval falling slowly to earth.
    The Ritz was as glittering an oasis of opulence as Max had hoped. There were no doorkeepers from Scotland Yard to be braved. It was open house for those with money and fine clothes, many of whom were laughing and flirting over cocktails in the bar. It was there that Max waited for his father, after leaving word for him with the maître d’ of the restaurant. To Max’s no very great surprise, Sir Henry was late.
    ‘Dear boy,’ were Sir Henry’s first words to his son, before astonishing him with a hug. Stiff handshakes had been their usual greeting, but Sir Henry was in an expansive, expressive mood. He looked older than when they had last met because he was. His dress and appearance were those of a senior civil servant of a