Work Text:
The 1916 Olympics in Berlin were proving quite a success. The fully refurbished Deutsches Stadion was held by all to be a triumph of construction, and from within it over eighteen thousand people were daily watching the speed and skill of the greatest athletes alive. The USA, as at Stockholm four years earlier, were dominant in the field, but a gold had come for the local hero Hanns Braun in the 400m, and great expctations for Hans Liesche in the high jump.
Reading this news many hundreds of miles away, on the balcony of his modest mansion in the city of Simla, in the area of British India known as the Punjab, a certain man, of dashing appearance, somewhere in his mid-fifties smiled to himself, and turned round his slightly out of date Times to show his breakfast companion, who was wearing an equally natty quilted dressing gown, and about the same age.
“Gave a good opening speech, did he?” asked the companion, pouring a little more milk into his tea from a silver jug. “I say, do remind me to ask about getting some marmalade in. It’s the only thing for the early summer at breakfast.”
“It goes on to say, ‘Kaiser Heinrich gave a touching address before declaring open these Games of the Sixth Olympiad, recalling to the public’s mind the loss of his elder brother, who would otherwise have stood in his place that day, and causing us to reflect, amongst this celebration of sporting achievement, on what is truly important in this world, and the next.’ I think that was rather a nice touch.”
“You’re looking a little pensive, Willy. Do you mind it frightfully?”
Wilhelm sighed. “It must have looked awfully smart,” he said, sadly, putting his finger to the small, black-and-white photograph accompanying the piece. “I might have had an entire uniform for it, you know, and all the guard of honour to match. Heinrich won’t have tried half of that. He never did care so much for clothes.”
“Well, you shall have a new suit here at least. I do hope the Calcutta administration lot and the Viceroy crowd don’t ever discover Mr Geevan’s little shop, it would be terrible to have him always occupied making dull morning suits and dull matron’s dresses.”
Wilhelm smiled, and reached over the table to take his companion’s hand.
“You are good to me, Eddy. You understand so much.”
Eddy held the offered hand, and then reached across to take up also Wilhelm’s left hand, which was smaller and held in a tight fist half-way up his torso.
“You’re absolutely worth it, my love,” Eddy told him.
"Do you ever think," Wilhelm said now, slowly, "of what it might have been like? After all, I was Kaiser four years before we left. I know what it was like. You never even got to be Prince of Wales."
Eddy snorted. "Much good it did my Father, and he was Prince of Wales for sixty years. No, I never wanted it. Never cut out for it. They told me in the schoolroom I was slow often enough, as I know I've told you. Kept Georgie back, wouldn't let him go off to naval college because they thought I needed him to spur me to work at all. They loved Georgie. Well, you saw, when the news went out that I had died of 'flu in '92, half of them were celebrating. 'King George' sounded well, they thought."
"At least in cousin George you had a friend in the nursery and the schoolroom," Wilhelm said, mournfully. "I was all alone. Myself and those awful doctors, prodding me and poking me. I knew before I could talk that there was something wrong with me. I couldn't bear even to look at my poor arm, developed a spasm in my neck from turning away from it; they had to operate. And that wasn't the worst of it."
"The hares," Eddy said, sympathetically, nodding.
"The dead hares," Wilhelm agreed. "Freshly killed every morning and sewn round my arm, in the belief the warmth and vitality of the beast would transmute itself. Gave me screaming nightmares, and that was all."
"Poor little arm," Eddy dropped a kiss to it. "I knew I'd been born too soon, and it had hurt my mother and probably not done me any good. When I understood that you'd been born with problems too, I decided I liked you at once. That was before I even met you."
"You had met me," Wilhelm countered. "When I came to Osborne and you were a baby and I was five, and I was allowed to push you in the cart."
"I was a baby!" Eddy protested. "I didn't know I'd met you till you came and stayed all that summer."
"Grandfather and Bismarck wanted me to go to the Prussian Foot Guards," Wilhelm grinned. "They wanted to make an angry man, a proud man of me. And I did like the idea. But mother was too quick for them, and there I was at Osborne all that summer, with my English relatives instead."
"I was supposed to be on a round the world trip with the Navy, and my awful tutor," Eddy said. "I was excited about it, but when I met you I was so glad I never got to go, it was far finer to be with you, and get to know you. You were twenty, and I fifteen. I was in awe of you, silly goose that I was."
"And why not be in awe of me, I ask?" Wilhelm, pretending outrage, clipped his cousin round the ear with the newspaper. "I had the Order of the Garter already from Grandmama, I was a man, a soldier and due to be an Emperor."
"And I was tall and pale and fish-eyed, I know," Eddy sighed.
"You were beautiful, my darling. Always beautiful. From the moment I saw you, I felt that my path in life had changed irrevocably, forever. I knew then that nothing else would ever really matter, as long as I was with you."
For a short while, the conversation paused or, at least, nothing very to the purpose was said.
"But when did you know you loved me?" Eddy asked, at length. He had reached to pour them both some more tea. It was no longer warm, but in the pleasant Simla summer climate this scarcely mattered.
"It was that Cowes week on the Isle of Wight, as well you know," Wilhelm told him. "When you were twenty-five, and you and all your ghastly family - I cannot say I ever loved Uncle Edward, do not tell me I ought to - came to meet me when I disembarked from my lovely yacht. You and George bowed so sweetly, acknowledging me and being affectionate at the same time. And although they had been telling me to marry for years, I knew then that there could only ever be one person for me, for all my life."
"Dear heart," Eddy murmured. "I will always remember that night, in the gardens at Osborne, down near the Swiss Cottage where as a child I had been allowed to play, and there, in the scent of the rhodedendrons, you took my hand and kissed me."
"And I will always remember," Wilhelm replied, "when you told me you loved me so much that being King was not important. That you would allow yourself to be declared dead, so that we could be together. You offered to come and live in Germany and hide in a small house, and let me visit you, asking nothing for yourself but my company."
"And you said you would let yourself be 'dead' with me, and that we could go away together, as we have, and live for ourselves, only for ourselves, and leave all the politics and nonsense to Heinrich and George." Eddy kissed his cousin again.
"And the uniforms, and the boots, and the command of the army," Wilhelm added, not without a little sorrow. "Sometimes I do think of it, you know, of sitting on a fine charger with a shining force of men behind me. Heinrich never did care for that. But then," he added, quickly, "I look at you my love, and am glad to be where I am."
"Everything, my dearest one," Eddy said, "has turned out for the best. Now, will you have some more toast?"
~