The English Girl (18 page)

I go to find Marthe, with my present. It’s a little statuette of the Virgin and the Christ Child, which I bought in a shop of curiosities on Johannesgasse. The statuette seemed perfect for Marthe when I bought it: the Virgin so graceful, cradling the Child, such a gentle, sad look in her face. But now I feel less certain – I’m worried what Marthe will think.

She’s in the drawing room. She has her legs up on a footstool, to ease the ache of her varicose veins. She’s stitching a square of tapestry, which shows a fairytale cottage, with curly red gables, and yellow rambling roses over the door.

I give her the gift in its box.

‘To wish you Happy Birthday,’ I say.

‘Oh Stella, you shouldn’t have…’

She opens the box, takes out the Virgin and Child. She looks a little startled.

‘That’s so lovely, Stella. Thank you.’

She runs her finger gently down the folds of the Virgin’s veil. Her eyes shine, too brightly. Suddenly, unnervingly, the tears spill down her face.

I’m horrified.

‘Marthe – what is it? What have I done? I’m so sorry…’

She shakes her head.

‘I’m being so silly,’ she says.

‘No, no…’

She scrubs her face with her handkerchief. There are red fever spots in her cheeks.

‘I think you understand people very well, don’t you, Stella? I think you see into people.’

I’m not sure how to respond.

‘I don’t know that I do,’ I say.

‘Oh, I think you do,’ she tells me. She holds the statuette close, cradling it to her. ‘The thing is…’ The words seem to catch in her throat. She tries again. ‘The thing is – I lost a child, Stella.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’

I feel terrible that I’ve given her something that upsets her like this.

‘I’m perfectly fine, now,’ she tells me. ‘We have Lukas now, of course, and he was such a precious gift. This all happened quite a while ago, before we had Lukas,’ she says.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say again.

I put my hand lightly on her shoulder. She stiffens slightly, but then she rests her hand on my hand for a moment. A patina of sadness seems to spread out over the room.

‘She was a little girl, stillborn,’ she says. ‘She was lovely – I thought she was lovely. Her tiny fingers and toes, and a little shock of black hair. But she was just a little – deformed…’

‘Oh.’

My heart is beating too fast.

‘She was Mongoloid, Stella.’

She’s speaking so softly now. But I can tell that the word has a bitter taste in her mouth.

I’m startled she’d talk so openly about such a terrible thing. People usually keep such things hidden.

‘It must have been so very sad for both of you,’ I say.

But I’m not sure that she hears me. She puts the statuette down.

‘We had waited such a long time, Stella,’ she says. ‘So many long years of waiting.’

‘Yes. That must have been hard.’

‘I wanted to call her Christa. Even though she was stillborn, I wanted to give her a name. But Rainer told me I shouldn’t name her. Rainer said…’ I see her throat ripple as she swallows. ‘He said that the child was better off dead.’ She’s moving her hands together, as though she is wringing out cloth – as people will wring their hands when they grieve. ‘He was right, of course. But it hurt, at the time. It did hurt. When he said that.’

‘Yes, of course it would.’

‘He’d get so cross with me, if I talked about her, and called her by her name.’

I feel so helpless. I don’t know the right words to say, to comfort her.

‘Men are different about these things, Stella,’ she says. ‘They aren’t like us. They don’t have tender hearts, like women … It’s different if you’ve carried that child inside you all those months.’

‘Yes, of course, it must be.’

She takes out her handkerchief again, blows her nose vigorously.

‘Rainer says things sometimes, and I’m sure he doesn’t mean them … Men do say things without thinking,’ she says.

‘Yes, they can do.’

‘I was so angry with him. I shouldn’t have been, but I was. Now I think that perhaps he was right. When he said we wouldn’t have wanted to raise a child with a deformity. An imperfect child…’ She turns a little away from me. ‘But to me…’ Her voice just a whisper. ‘The thing is, Stella, to me she looked perfect,’ she says.

She folds up her handkerchief and puts it away. When she speaks again, her voice is hoarse, as though saying all this has made her throat sore.

‘I shouldn’t really be telling you these things, my dear,’ she says.

‘It’s all right. Really,’ I tell her.

‘Do you mind not telling Rainer that I told you this?’ she says.

‘Of course. I won’t say anything.’

Against the wall, there’s a little French desk with clawed feet. The wireless is kept there. She puts the statuette carefully down on the desk, in front of the wireless.

‘She’s so lovely. Thank you, Stella.’

She picks up her tapestry frame. I leave her stitching the fairytale cottage.

Later, I think about what Rainer said, about the stillborn child. How brutal his words were. It might have been what many people would think; but he shouldn’t have said it to her, not in that direct way. Not when she’d only just lost the child; not when her grief was so raw.

Yet it’s hard to imagine him being so harsh – he seems so charming, so kind. He would have been upset, of course; perhaps he didn’t know what he was saying. Perhaps Marthe exaggerated. And of course the child if she’d lived would have spent her life locked away in some bleak institution – a life scarcely worth living, shut off from the joys of the world.

But somewhere inside myself, I know I’m just making excuses for him.

Saturday. All day there are preparations. Marthe has hired some extra staff for the party, and the flat is full of strangers, whistling, calling to one another, rolling up rugs and carpets, bringing in tubs of planted flowers – freesias, carnations. The whole place smells of sweet pollens.

We have a quick meal at six o’clock – cheese and cold sausage and bread. Then I go to get ready.

I put on the flowergirl outfit, enjoying the way the skirt swings out and sighs as I move. But my face looks too pale against the bodice. I take out the lipstick I bought because it was like Anneliese’s. I smooth on the tulipy colour, not thinking; then rub it off with my hand. I don’t want to look like Anneliese.

I decide to tie my hair back with a ribbon. My hair is only just long enough to be pulled back in this way, and it looks pleasingly old-fashioned – the way women used to look years ago, before everyone had their hair bobbed.

I peer at myself in the mirror on my dressing table. There’s something harsh about the neckline. I take my mother’s flowered scarf and knot it round my throat. But I can’t see the full effect in here.

I walk along to the Rose Room. The antique rug has been taken away, the piano pushed to one side. The music stands and chairs are already set up for the band; but for the moment the room is empty. I glance at the music set out on the music stands. All the favourite waltzes – the Strausses, Franz Lehar:
A Thousand and One Nights; The Merry Widow
. The lilting rhythm that pulses in the lifeblood of Vienna. I can’t wait to be dancing.

I study myself in one of the mirrors. I’m pleased. My mother’s scarf is perfect with the costume. It’s so pretty, with its print of blurry pastel flowers, forever on the point of melting.

There’s a footstep behind me. Rainer. I can see him in the mirror, but for a moment he doesn’t see me. He’s dressed in a uniform of the old Imperial Guard, like the ones at Herr Vogel’s shop; he has a fur-trimmed cloak with gold frogging. He’s chosen well; he looks imposing. But there’s something unsteady in his walk: I wonder if he’s been drinking. I’ve never seen him the worse for drink before, and it comes to me that perhaps he doesn’t enjoy this kind of occasion. He’s a rather serious person: perhaps he finds parties too frivolous.

He walks to the piano to take a cigar from an ebony box, which has been put there for the party. He turns, his hand reaching out to take the cigar; sees me. Stops. His eyes widen. I feel a faltering in me.

I start apologising at once.

‘I’m so sorry if I startled you. I just wanted to check my costume in the big mirror here. I’m so sorry…’

The words tumbling out of me.

‘Where did you get that, Stella?’

His voice is thickened; he sounds like a stranger to me. Even from here, I can smell the brandy fumes on his breath. I was right – he must have been drinking.

‘Marthe took me to Vogel’s fancy dress shop. It’s fun, isn’t it? Dressing up? I’m meant to be a flowergirl, but I’ve left the flowers upstairs…’

Trying to make it easy between us again. But my body feels strange – too tall, too thin; unreal. Like a doll cut from paper.

‘And the scarf? Was that part of the outfit as well?’ he asks me.

His eyes are searching my face: I wonder what he is looking for. I put my fingers to the scarf uncertainly.

‘Oh no. It’s just an old thing of my mother’s. She lent it to me.’

I can’t read the emotion that deepens the lines in his face. Then he reaches out towards me – almost as though to touch me, though he’s standing too far away. The air is heavy with perfume; it feels too thick to breathe.

‘Stella…’

One of the musicians saunters in, a glass of wine in his hand, humming a snatch of
Roses from the South
. Rainer turns, and leaves the room without his cigar.

The front door is wide open; the guests begin to arrive, all entering into the glamour and heat of the hall with an air of being dazzled. They bring gifts for Marthe, and flowers. The staff hired for the evening take the women’s fur jackets and stoles – sable, black bear, Persian lamb. The women have chosen flattering costumes – queens and shepherdesses. There’s a woman dressed as Marie Antoinette, her dress flounced and very low-cut, her rounded creamy breasts served up like something sweet on a plate. The men are dressed as soldiers, or in outfits designed to amuse. One man has come as a wolf, in a costume of shaggy grey fur.

More and more guests come: the hall is filled with colour and laughter. But there are people I’d been expecting to see, yet who don’t seem to be here – the ones who attended Rainer’s meeting, when Janika made the Kaiserschmarrn. This seems surprising.

The band begins to play in the Rose Room:
Tales from the Vienna Woods
. I stand to one side, sipping champagne, not quite sure where I belong. I feel rather lonely and lost; and insecure, after that disconcerting moment with Rainer, as though there’s something amiss with me – something about my appearance; perhaps something deeper than that. I wish that Harri were here with me, feel a small, childish jag of anger with him. Though I know that isn’t fair to him: it isn’t his fault he can’t come.

I glance at Rainer – surreptitiously, not wanting to catch his eye. He appears quite normal again. He doesn’t seem drunk any more, just charming, benignly greeting his guests.

Then Marthe comes over to me, bringing a young man dressed as a pirate.

‘Stella – I know you’ll want to meet Karl. He’s my second cousin,’ she says.

Marthe evidently has a large and complicated family.

Karl kisses my hand. He’s shorter than me, and rather too muscular and sporty-looking for my taste. But I’m relieved to have someone to talk to at last.

I spend the first part of the evening dancing with Karl in the Rose Room. I’ve started to think of this room as my own, and it’s strange to see it crowded like this, humming with voices, given over to the shifting, rainbow kaleidoscope of the dance. Karl and I make stilted conversation. He’s an enthusiastic member of the German-Austrian Alpine Club; he talks at length about his adventures hiking in the Austrian Alps, and I nod and murmur politely. Mostly I try to lose myself in the sweep and lilt of the waltz.

In the sun room, it’s quieter and cooler. There are little groups of people talking, laughing, drinking, Marthe among them, resplendent in her Roman toga. I smile at Janika, who is offering canapés round. Karl leaves me here to rest for a while, while he fetches himself more champagne.

The French windows have been opened. I stand beside them, next to a tub of white freesias: the air is full of the tender, drenching scent of the flowers. Brightness falls out of the door in a fan of marigold light, reaching as far as the balcony rail. But below me, in the corners of the courtyard, night has gathered, impenetrable as deep water.

I wait there, enjoying the cool silk touch of the autumn night air on my skin. I feel as though I’m still moving, under the spell of the dance, the rhythm still pulsing through me. I feel all the elation that comes from waltzing and champagne. Life is simple, life is beautiful.

It’s as I wait at the edge of the lighted room, looking down into the dark, that I become aware of a man in the room who keeps glancing in my direction. I feel his gaze like a hand on the nape of my neck. I turn slightly to look at him. He’s angular, cerebral-looking, with a long, freckled face. He’s wearing a dinner jacket: the right decision, undoubtedly – fancy dress would seem all wrong on him. In spite of his smart evening clothes, there’s a ramshackle air about him, his greying hair dishevelled, as though he keeps messing it up with his hand. In profile, his face has a beaked look, like a predatory bird.

He moves across to speak to Marthe. I’m not at all surprised when she brings him over to me.

‘Stella, you must meet Herr Reece. He’s English, as you’ll gather. Frank – this is Fräulein Stella Whittaker.’

He doesn’t bow or kiss my hand, but shakes hands the English way. His skin is cool, in spite of the warmth of the flat.

‘Delighted to meet you,’ he says, in English.

His voice is nicotine-stained and gravelly. His words bring Brockenhurst back to me – the tangled woods, damp hedges, the scent of summer rain. I feel a quick pang of nostalgia, almost homesickness.

‘Well, I’ll leave you two to have a good talk about all things English,’ says Marthe.

He inclines his head courteously to her as she drifts away. Then turns to me.