Lady of Fortune (40 page)

Alisdair had a magic for her. He was a skinny boy, with mousy curls which no amount of brushing and tap-water could flatten, and the straight short nose of all the Watsons. But he had a gentleness about him which he must have inherited from Prudence, and many days he was quite content to sit in Princes Street gardens with Effie, feeding the birds; or walking around the Royal Scottish Museum, peering into the cases of exhibits, his boots squeaking on the polished boards, his hands politely clasped behind his kilt.

He once asked Effie, ‘Do you happen to know what slut means, please?'

‘Slut?' she had said, surprised. ‘Are you sure you don't mean slate, or slat, or slit?'

He had pursed his lips, and shaken his head. ‘I heard father say it.'

‘Well …' she said hesitantly, ‘it's not a particularly nice word. It means a woman who is careless.'

‘Is mother careless.'

‘That's no question to ask.'

‘I'm sorry. But I heard father say it to her, that's all.'

Effie had taken his hand, and drawn him close to her. She had kissed him lightly on the forehead. He smelled so biscuity and boyish, she could have squeezed him tight and never let him go. She said, ‘Sometimes people say things that they don't mean, or that they don't understand, or that they wish they had never uttered. I think perhaps that what your father said was one of those things.'

He had touched her hair, very gently, and then said, ‘All right.' And then, ‘I do love you, you know, Auntie Effie.'

Franz Golzcow was waiting for them in the customs shed when they disembarked from the
Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse
at Hamburg. It was a freezing, bad-tempered day, with squalls of snow blowing across the docks, and twirling the smoke from the ocean liner's four funnels. Effie had dressed in a long charcoal-grey suit trimmed at the collar with blue fox fur, and she was warmly wrapped in a blue fox stole. Tessie, her maid, carried her portmanteau; and Mr Niblets, who had been appointed by Malcolm Cockburn to accompany her, was dressed in a brown tweed overcoat that looked at least two sizes too large for him.

Franz Golzcow rapped his heels together, and bowed. He said, ‘Miss Watson, I am pleased to say that the Count von Ahlbeck is waiting for you, and is anticipating your arrival with bated breath.'

He said they should call him not Franz, but ‘Franzi'. He was short, built as broad and tense as a gymnasium instructor, with blond short-cropped hair and the flat spadelike Slavic face of Germans born close to the Polish border. He wore an immaculate grey chauffeur's uniform with riding-britches and gleaming black leather boots, and he nodded and bowed and rapped his heels again at every possible opportunity. ‘The steamer you have come on, is the best express liner in the world!' he exclaimed, as he led them across the marble-floored concourse to the main entrance. ‘Did you enjoy the voyage?'

‘I was sick, I'm afraid,' said Effie. Mr Niblets frowned at her, and mouthed the word ‘diplomacy', but Effie simply grinned at him.

‘Well, something you ate before you left Scotland, perhaps,' said Franzi, confident that no German liner could induce nausea, especially the liner which was named for the Kaiser.

Outside the customs building, with its grey slate roof and its idly-flapping German flag, a shiny American Pierce-Arrow motor-car was waiting for them, with huge headlamps of polished brass, and a passenger-compartment the size of a small living-room. Franzi opened the door for them, and helped them to mount the step, and then said, ‘If there is
anything you require, madam and sir, you simply have to request it.'

They settled themselves down in the dark-blue hide seats, as deep and as comfortable as domestic sofas. Before he took his place at the wheel, Franzi pulled down a brass handle for them, and revealed a full liquor cabinet of veneered rosewood, with cystal decanters of claret, whiskey, gin, and Polish vodka. ‘You should make free.'

They drove across the grey cobbles of Hamburg through a pelting snow storm. They drank small tots of vodka to warm themselves up; and on a huge-trumpeted Columbia Grapho-phone, mounted on gimbals to keep it level, they played a stern vocal rendition of
Ich
Weiss
Nicht, Was Soil Es Bedeuten
. The words meant: ‘I don't know why I should so be so sad.' They sounded as if they had been sung by a portly green-grocer in a half-empty amateur concert-hall.

At last, the Pierce-Arrow sped through the gates of a
Schloss
, on the outskirts of Hamburg, and drew to a halt beside a row of wind-blown poplars. The
Schloss
itself was grey, sombre, and majestic, a North German castle built in the style of Hermann and Siegfried. Franzi opened the door of the motor-car for them, and they alighted on to a gravelled drive.

With theatrically excellent timing, a tall man burst out of the front doors of the
Schloss
and came cantering down the semi-circular steps. His descent was wildly accelerated by five beige-coloured hounds whose leashes he was gripping in one white-gloved hand. Although Effie didn't know this until later, he was dressed in the uniform of a captain of the
Liebhusaren
of 1815, the 1st Regiment of Prussian Hussars who had fought for Blücher at Waterloo – a dark blue frogged jacket with a red and yellow belt, a fur-collared pelisse slung over his left shoulder, and high black boots with silver spurs.

The dogs panted and snuffled and strained madly at their leads, their feet sliding sideways in the gravel. But the man managed to tug them around to the motor-car, ‘Hier, Albrecht! Hier, Wagner!' and to shout to Effie and her party at the top of his voice ‘Welcome to Castle Ahlbeck! Welcome!'

Effie said, ‘Thank you,' in a slightly amused voice. Franzi said, ‘Give me the dogs, sir,' and made a considerable business
of gathering up all the leashes. Then he loyally allowed himself to be tugged off by the five enthusiastic hounds to the far side of the Schloss, where there was a breezy grove of lindens, and an orchard, and long wet grass where, presumably, chaseable hares might be hiding.

The tall man stepped forward now, bowed briskly, took Effie's hand, and kissed it. ‘I am Karl van Ahlbeck! I am so delighted that you could come. You must consider my home to be yours.'

In spite of his archaic fairytale uniform, or perhaps because of it, the Count von Ahlbeck looked both good-humoured and sensitive. He had a thin, long, intelligent face, with eyes that were as concentratedly brown as the head-feathers of a jaegar. His dark brown hair was cropped very short, but even when it was short it was attractively wayward, and he had a habit of pushing his hand through his hair to try to tidy it. He must have been thirty-five or thirty-six, Effie calculated, mostly by taking a mean between his boyish looks and energy, and the seriousness and formality of his behaviour.

The dogs always want to greet anybody new,' said the count. They have to have their little burst of hysteria, and chase the rabbits around, and drag poor Franzi through the mud. But after that, they will settle down.'

They're most unusual,' said Effie. ‘And what a beautiful sandy colour they are.'

‘Ah, we call them pink,' smiled the count. He offered her the crook of his arm, and led her towards the steps of the
Schloss
. They are Weimaraners, one of the most intelligent and loyal of breeds. Courageous, too. They have heart, and I always like my dogs to have heart.'

He guided Effie through the massive oak doors into a galleried hallway with walls that were lined with hugh oil paintings of hunting scenes on the North German heathlands, and thicketed, right to the ceiling, with the horns of deer. There were dozens of pikes and swords and muskets hung up everywhere, and even the chandelier that was suspended on chains from the ceiling was made out of the wheel of a gun-carriage. There was a strong smell of dust, and dead hides, and wood-smoke.

‘I hope you don't find this castle too gloomy,' smiled Karl von Ahlbeck, his voice echoing around the hall. ‘It was built
by my great-great-grandfather, as a place to display his hunting trophies, and to entertain his hunting and gambling friends. I don't think he even allowed my great-great-grandmother through the front gates. That is why the place lacks the feminine touch. Well, it did, until you arrived, Miss Watson. I can see that the premises are considerably enhanced already.'

‘Thank you,' said Effie, a little unsurely.

There was an echoing slam, and a hefty German woman appeared from a doorway at the far end of the hall, a massive-busted Valkyrie with her blonde hair tightly plaited into loops and rings, she was dressed in a voluminous black gown and a white lace apron, with a complicated white lace bonnet to match. Karl von Ahlbeck nodded, and said, This is Cecilie. Cecilie, you must come and greet Miss Watson! Cecilie will take care of you, and your servants, and provide you with anything you desire.'

Cecilie curtseyed, as Mr Niblets was later to remark, like an elephant falling through the roof of a black circus tent. Karl von Ahlbeck said, ‘Cecilie speaks no English, I regret, but if you have any difficulty Franzi will help with translation.'

Cecilie said, ‘
Ihr Zimmer ist fertig, Fräulein Watson
,' and beamed with such Teutonic good-heartedness that Effie could do nothing but say, ‘Oh. Good.'

The count gave Effie an hour to unpack and change before dinner. The room he had allocated her was enormous, its walls panelled in light oak and hung with tapestries, its windows overlooking the windy winter countryside towards Schwarzenbeck and Büchen. At one end of the room was a gigantic carved fireplace, bulging with oaken grapes and vine-leaves, and flanked and mounted by gilded huntresses in rippling robes. The grate was stacked with five or six hardwood logs, which crackled and burned with cheerful ferocity. At the other end of the room stood Effie's bed, pillared in mahogany and draped in folds and folds of pictorial tapestries, on a theme which Effie could only interpret as a riotous but apparently futile medieval pig-sticking expedition. By the bed, on a carved chest which could have accommodated twenty small boys in a game of sardines, the Count von Ahlbeck had left for Effie a solid-silver box of pretty scented handkerchiefs, a dish of frosted peppermints
by Horb & Ochsen of Berlin, and a slim leather-bound book of the poems of Theodor Storm. ‘
Die grave Stadt, am graven Meer
…'

Tessie came bustling through the connecting door from her own bedroom, and said, ‘I've drawn your bath, Miss Watson. It's an awful
large
bath, though! Almost as big as the ship we came on.'

In the white-tiled, Byzantine bathroom, in a Brobdignagian tub, Effie was soaped by Tessie with cologne soaps by Farina Gegenüber; and as Tessie washed steaming hot water over her neck and her shoulders, she sang mock-opera at the top of her voice. ‘
Il mio pensier … il mio pensier … ah … ah … ah … ah … aaaaAAAAAAHHHHH!
'

There was a hasty knocking a the bathroom door. It was Franzi. He said, The count said he had heard screaming. Is everything well, Miss Watson?'

Effie dried herself in front of the fire in a warm Turkish towel the size of a bedsheet. Tessie laid out her clothes, a slim evening dress by Poiret in rust and cream, with a fur-trimed collar, and a rust silk-bow under the bustline. It had arrived from Paris only two days before she had left for Hamburg, and was still wrapped in tissue in its original box.

While Tessie brushed her hair, Effie sat looking out of the windows of her room, towards the east. The snow had started again, falling pell-mell all over the sloping grounds of the
Schloss
von Ahlbeck, and blotting out the surrounding horizons of trees and heathlands. On either side of Effie's window, the spires and turrets and balconies of the castle rose through the snow like an enchanted palace out of an early nineteenth-century fantasy, the kind of building where Rapunzel might have been imprisoned, or the Sleeping Beauty might have sighed away her years in the bewitched warmth of her bed, while outside the snow tumbled on to the battlements and the thorns grew thicker still.

At seven o'clock, Franzi came to escort Effie down to dinner. Mr Niblets was already with him, stiff and uncomfortable in a grey suit that was as tight for him as his overcoat had been saggy. Tessie, of course, would be fed in the kitchen with Cecilie and the rest of the servants. Franzi said, ‘I trust you like your accommodation, Miss Watson.'

‘It's very desirable, thank you,' said Effie. ‘I feel as if I'm on the brink of the world.'

‘Well, in a manner of speaking, you are,' said Franzi. ‘To the west is Lower Saxony, and northern Holland, and then the North Sea which will take you home to Scotland. To the east, you can see Schleswig-Holstein, and the Mecklenburg, and then beyond that Pomerania, and Poland, and finally the wide freezing marshes of Russia. Yes, you are on the brink of the world!'

Dinner had been laid out in the library, on a long oak table, beside a gently slumbering log fire. There was a silver tureen of fresh chicken and artichoke soup, crackling brown pig's knuckles, smoked venison, caviare, red cabbage, and cheese. Karl von Ahlbeck had changed into a dinner-suit, with a white gates-ajar collar and a silk bow-tie. Effie thought, as he escorted her to her chair at the opposite end of the table, that he was almost too Byronesque to be true.

‘You have no idea how much pleasure your visit gives me,' he said, as his whiskery servant filled his plate with soup. ‘The banking business is very dangerous but also very dreary at the moment. I usually have to deal with ranting nationalists or oily little Jews. I am not prejudiced against either one of them but I can assure you that they are equally tedious. Your visit has come like a ray of sunshine.'

‘I'm sorry that it has to be a business meeting,' said Effie.

Karl tore at his bread, and shrugged. ‘It can't be helped. You and I are both bankers. We have to serve the world, just as much as the world serves us.'