The English Girl (23 page)

As I sit in the taxi, it’s all still so vivid in my mind: the searing heat, the smell of burning; the nightmare vision of flames reflecting in Lotte’s wide eyes.

It’s roast pork knuckle for dinner. I know it will be delicious. But I look at my plate, and then put my cutlery down.

‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave it…’

Rainer and Marthe both glance towards me, concerned.

‘Stella, my dear, what’s the matter? Don’t you feel well?’ asks Marthe.

‘No, not really…’

My voice is hoarse.

‘Do you have a sore throat?’ she asks me.

‘No, it’s nothing like that … It’s because of something that happened, when I was out,’ I tell them.

It’s hard to speak, as though the words are solid things in my mouth.

Marthe leans towards me, solicitous.

‘Tell us what happened, Stella.’

So I tell them.

‘I have a friend, and his mother has a toy shop, and tonight someone threw a petrol-bomb in the shop…’

I’m trembling again, remembering. I can smell the petrol, taste it: the fumes are still in my throat. It’s a taste of fear, of damage.

I glance up at them. They’re staring at me; they both look utterly shocked. I’ve alarmed them: I shouldn’t have been so abrupt, I should have prepared them somehow.

‘
What
, Stella? Threw a
petrol
-
bomb
? Where was this?’ Marthe asks me.

‘At Reznik’s toyshop, on Mariahilferstrasse,’ I say.

I see the look that passes between them. It’s only then that I realise what I have said, what I’ve given away. They know nothing about Harri.

Rainer’s eyes are searching my face. He has an expression I don’t recognise, can’t read.

‘You’re friendly with
Frau Reznik’s son
?’ His voice like the edge of a knife.

‘Yes. Yes, I am. He’s a doctor. He’s very nice,’ I say limply.

‘
How
friendly are you exactly?’ he says.

‘Very friendly, really.’ A feeling of foreboding closes in on me. The timing’s all wrong: it shouldn’t have come out in this way. ‘I’m sorry – I should have told you before. I should have introduced you. I was waiting for the right occasion…’

I look across at Rainer, expecting the understanding I am used to. But his eyebrows are raised, his mouth is drawn. He gives a curt, disbelieving shake of his head.

‘And how did you meet Dr Reznik?’ Marthe asks me.

Perhaps I should say I’ve only just met him – rather than revealing I’ve kept it from them all this time, letting them think I’m out with Anneliese, when really I’ve been with Harri. But I’ve hidden enough. I decide to be truthful; I feel too tired to pretend.

‘Well – we just sort of bumped into one another.’ I smile slightly, hoping to charm them with my story. ‘At the Kunsthistorisches Museum.’

Marthe is horrified.

‘Stella. You
didn’t
,’ she says.

I try to justify myself.

‘It’s true that we weren’t properly introduced or anything. But people don’t always bother with that nowadays, do they? And he’s a good person…’

Rainer’s face is white, his lips bloodless. I wonder briefly what makes him so pale, and see that it is rage. His pupils are tiny black pinpricks.

‘Stella. I can’t believe this.’

I hear all the cold fury in his voice.

‘It was really frightening,’ I tell him. ‘Somebody could have been killed.’

But it’s as though I haven’t spoken.

‘This should never have happened. None of it. You’ve made a terrible error of judgement, Stella,’ he says.

I don’t say anything.

‘For God’s sake. Can’t you be the least bit careful about the company you keep? Show some
discrimination
?’ he says.

Marthe winces; she doesn’t like God’s name being invoked. But Rainer doesn’t seem to care that he’s distressing her.

‘These things matter. Now more than ever. For Chrissake, Stella, why can’t you see that?’ he says.

He’s angry that I hadn’t told them before about Harri. Or maybe even that I have a boyfriend at all. Perhaps I was right when I felt he was in some way too possessive of me – that he wouldn’t want me to have a boyfriend. I think, briefly, defiantly:
It’s 1937. He has
no right to interfere in my life…

Yet I can’t let myself be too angry with Rainer and Marthe – when they have been so kind to me, and taken me into their home.

‘He’s called Harri,’ I tell them, trying to sound emollient. I have to make them see what a good man he is. ‘He’s very clever. He’s a psychiatrist.’ There’s a trace of pride in my voice. ‘He’s studied psychoanalysis with Dr Freud,’ I say.

I thought this would impress Rainer. But I glance at him, and see at once that I have badly misjudged this. His face is shuttered, his mouth as thin as the slash of a razor.

‘Stella –
no
.’

He brings his fist down on the table, so all the crockery rattles. Marthe flinches.

‘
Listen to me
. You want nothing to do with that deviant Jewish psychologising,’ he says.

His voice is dangerous. But I won’t give up.

‘But he’s told me a bit about it, and it’s fascinating,’ I say.

‘I don’t know what stupid lies you’ve been told. It’s degenerate. Obscene. It elevates all that is base in people,’ he says.

There’s a hard, fervent light in his eyes.

‘That’s what people think, perhaps – but that’s really not how it is. There are lots of misconceptions about it. People don’t understand it,’ I say.

I’m trying to sound sophisticated, but my voice is frail, like a girl’s.

‘People understand it well enough, this so-called science. It glorifies the instinctual life. It’s sordid. That’s all you need to know about it.’ His voice is scathing, withering.

‘No, that’s not true. Really—’

But he speaks over me.

‘I’m disappointed in you, Stella.’

‘But surely it’s good to understand what drives us?’ I remember what Harri said, in the café at the Zentral Friedhof. ‘To understand the hidden things that make us who we are?’

I’m surprised to find myself answering back in this way. It’s not how I’d normally behave. I feel so strange tonight – unravelled. It must be the horror of the petrol-bomb.

He looks appalled that I’m defying him. His pale eyes spark. But he doesn’t say anything further, just gives another curt shake of the head.

The thought comes to me:
Is he angry about something more? Not just the way I’ve been so secretive?
I remember what Frank Reece told me.
There are men who may visit Rainer Krause who are known to us as Nazis. Though they keep their sympathies well hidden.
I feel a chill, when I think that. But at once I try to push the thought away. If it wasn’t for Rainer and Marthe, I wouldn’t be here in Vienna. My whole life here depends on them. They are good people.

Marthe puts her hand on mine. Her face is blotched with colour. I know how much she must hate this. She hates people getting angry, hates any kind of scene. Especially at her dinner table.

‘I know it’s upsetting, Stella,’ she says.

But I don’t know what she means by
it
– the bomb; or the way they’ve been talking about Harri.

‘Yes, it was,’ I say.

‘As you know, we feel responsible for you, Stella, while you’re living with us. We have a responsibility to your mother. To be sure you’re meeting the right kind of people,’ she says.

‘Yes, I know…’

‘Rainer’s right, you see, Stella. He’s telling you this for your own good. It’s as well to be a bit aware of these things.’

Her turn of phrase makes me uneasy. It makes me think of Anneliese, in the Ladies’ Room at the Landtmann.

‘Now, I know you’re feeling shaken,’ she says. ‘Why don’t you go and get some rest? I’ll have Janika bring some soup along to your room.’

I’m grateful for her kindness. And at once I feel bad about everything.

I apologise, and excuse myself.

Schönbrunn Zoo is enchanting in the winter afternoon light. The railings and cages are all green or white or sherbet-coloured, and there’s an octagonal pavilion that looks just like a cake, with intricate white carvings of undulating ribbons and flowers, like sugar icing. The place is full of mothers and nannies, and children, shrieking and thrilled. You can smell the hot smells of the animals.

‘Look, Fräulein Stella!’

Lukas has spotted a baby giraffe. We watch as it tries to sit down – clumsy, its legs too long for its body, finally folding up like a deckchair, making both of us laugh. I’m happy here with Lukas. I try not to think about the scene at dinner on Saturday night.

We walk on. A golden cheetah sits serenely amid a fall of gold leaves. Some little boys shout at the lions. There’s a cage with a jaguar in, but you can’t see him. Something – perhaps the hidden jaguar – is making a guttural sound, between a grunt and a roar, repeated, getting louder, as though building up to some brutal act of predation. It’s rather sinister and wild.

‘What’s that sound?’ Lukas asks me.

‘I’m not sure, Lukas. It might be the jaguar.’

‘I don’t like it,’ he says.

‘No, I know what you mean. But there’s nothing to be worried about. The animals are all safe in their cages. The jaguar couldn’t get out.’

There’s a cage of gibbons, with blond fur and black faces. I sit on a bench to watch them, enjoying their liquid movements as they swing around the cage. Lukas sits beside me.

‘I heard something in the night,’ he tells me.

He sounds anxious. Perhaps the roar of the jaguar upset him more than I thought.

‘Did you, Lukas?’

‘I did, I heard something.’ A little defiantly. Perhaps he sensed some scepticism in my voice. ‘I was lying awake in my bed. There were footsteps.
Somebody was walking outside my room
.’

‘Lukas – I really don’t think—’

‘I went to my door, and I opened it. Just the tiniest crack. Like this.’ He shows me how tiny, with his finger and thumb. ‘There wasn’t a person. The person had gone. But I could still hear the feet…’

His eyes are wide, remembering. His voice is a little thin shred.

He probably just imagined it, or misunderstood something he heard. I try to reassure him.

‘It was probably just somebody on their way to the bathroom. Everything sounds louder in the middle of the night. When the whole flat is quiet.’

It’s cold sitting here, in spite of the sunlight. In the shadows where the sun doesn’t reach, the grass has a white crust of frost. Lukas shivers.

‘What if a bad man came into my home?’ he asks me.

I think of the apartment on Maria-Treu-Gasse: its warmth, its fat satin cushions, its familiar ordered routines. Its safety.

‘No one will come in, Lukas. No one will hurt you in your home. No one could come in the flat that your mama and papa don’t want to be there.’

I see the doubt that swims like a minnow in the pool of his eye.

‘But what if they didn’t notice? What if they let the wrong person come in?’

‘They wouldn’t do that, Lukas—’

‘But you said you can’t tell by looking.
Bad people can look quite ordinary. Just like you or me.
That’s what you said,’ he tells me.

‘Yes, I suppose I did.’

I’m cross with myself that I said that. I spoke without thinking it through. It may be true enough – but it makes the whole world seem frightening to him.

This conversation worries me – the way Lukas seems so afraid. How he doesn’t feel safe even in his own home; or maybe especially there.

On Tuesday, I’m outside the toy shop while Harri hunts for his key, when I notice something in the window – a shiny burgundy box, opened up to show its contents. There’s a silver toy pistol, a whistle, a notebook with pale calfskin covers, a very grown-up-looking magnifying glass. It’s a toy detective kit. I think how Lukas has sometimes said that he’d like to be a policeman. He can pretend to be a detective, and perhaps that will make him feel strong.

I tell Eva I want to buy the kit for Lukas; though she insists on giving it to me.

The next day, at the end of my lesson with Lukas, I take out the burgundy box.

‘This is for you, Lukas.’

His eyes widen.

He takes the lid off the box, studies all the things inside. His face is luminous. He takes out the whistle, blows it. He beams.

‘I’m a real policeman now, aren’t I, Fräulein Stella? I can catch all the people who do bad things,’ he says.

His voice is strong and confident. I feel very pleased with myself.

‘Yes, absolutely, you can.’

‘How do you do it? How do you catch them?’

I think of the books by Agatha Christie, which my mother likes to read.

‘You have to see the things that other people might not see. You’d be looking for something out of place. Something that shouldn’t be there. It might be just a little clue.’

‘I’d rather find a
big
clue,’ he says.

‘But a tiny thing can change everything. That’s what the magnifying glass is for. So you can see things so small that other people couldn’t see them. A tiny thing can show that something’s happened that shouldn’t have happened,’ I say.

There’s a frown pencilled in on his forehead.

‘What tiny thing?’ he asks me.

‘Perhaps there’s a window left open. Or a hair that shouldn’t be there. Or a fingerprint left by a burglar…’ I make my voice mysterious.

He’s excited.

‘There might be feet in the night,’ he says.

‘Yes. I suppose there might be.’

A shadow moves over his face. He’s very serious suddenly.

He pulls my head towards him. I feel his soft breath on my skin.

‘You might hear somebody crying, because somebody hurt them,’ he says.

I don’t want him to think about Verity. I need to suggest something else, to distract him. But my mind is suddenly blank.

‘The thing is – you have to notice things,’ I finish lamely.

I was feeling so pleased with myself. But maybe this detective kit wasn’t such a good idea after all.

He takes out the magnifying glass, holds it up, peers at me through it. His eye is strangely distorted, huge and bulbous, through the lens.