Dirty Bertie by Stephen Clarke

Author:Stephen Clarke [Stephen Clarke]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2014-05-21T16:00:00+00:00

III

Bertie’s convalescence had brought him closer to Alexandra, who enjoyed having her husband at home for once. She gave him wifely rubdowns to ease his aches and pains, one thing led to another, and for a while she was afraid that she was pregnant again – Bertie clearly wasn’t the kind to abstain from sex on doctor’s orders.

For some time after he was off the danger list, he suffered from painful swelling in his left leg, as well as the occasional bout of fever. But soon he was feeling strong enough to go to France again – albeit with his wife. The idea was to spend the spring cruising on the Mediterranean, which, as always, was an excuse for a stopover in Paris on the way there and back. As his train pulled into the city, Bertie must have felt a mixture of nostalgia and fear. His beloved mistress had taken a beating. Would she have lost all her charms? Would she remember him? Or even recognize him after his rapid bout of ageing?

Bertie’s first impressions of post-Commune Paris can be gauged from an account given by Robert Lytton, the Secretary of the British Embassy, who arrived there in 1872 to find that the city was suddenly full of ‘petits bourgeois’, that the ‘cupids of the Second Empire have disappeared’ and that Paris had become ‘dowdy and almost respectable . . . like a battered and tired dandy in reduced circumstances’ – which could have described Bertie himself.

Having little energy to go out on the town, Bertie took the opportunity to do some politicking, no doubt wanting to see whether the Third Republic would welcome the occasional visit from an English royal. He must have been reassured that the President was still Adolphe Thiers, the man who had suppressed the Commune, and who was seen by royalists as a convenient stopgap until a king returned to reign over France.

However, Bertie didn’t want to wait until the next French monarch emerged. Much better to go along to the Palais de l’Élysée, just a couple of doors down from the British Embassy, and declare his enduring empathy with France, whoever was leading it. His meeting with Thiers had to be secret – Bertie was still under orders not to show any public support for France – and it apparently went well, despite the fact that according to one English observer, the President’s wife sat there all the while looking like a ‘dragon watching over the new republic’.

Bertie also hooked up with his old friends at the Jockey Club, and although he wasn’t yet fit enough to join any of their escapades, he was pleased to see that their premises had been refurbished, and to hear their reassurances that the good life was just around the corner. After all, whatever change came would come peacefully, seeing that all the revolutionary troublemakers had been either shot or sent to the tropics.

In short, Bertie’s personal espionage mission would have been a complete success if he

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