by Jane Arbor
When they reached the School he helped her out and handed her the anorak she had discarded in the" warmth of the car.
'We shall be meeting later,' he said. 'The Baronin is expecting you to dinner.'
'She hadn't invited me. How do you know?'
'She asked me to invite you, to meet Ilse Krantz before we drive back to Munich tonight. Eight o'clock. I'll come down for you at a quarter to.'
'Please don't,' she urged quickly. 'I'll drive up myself.'
He didn't insist. 'As you please.' He turned as he was about to get into the car. 'Whether or not you achieved your object in joining me today, at least I outdid you in the matter of picnic courtesy, wouldn't you say?' he invited.
Belatedly she remembered that she hadn't thanked him. 'But of course,' she grudged. 'I've enjoyed the day.'
He sketched an ironic bow. 'Thank you. As for what the day did for me '
So it was flippancy now in place of armed combat, was it? Matching the raillery in his tone, 'Yes, do tell me, what did it do for you?' she broke in, feigning a bright, spurious interest.
He shrugged. 'Offered me a breathing-space. An opportunity, as the French put it, reculer pour trtieux sauter. Which means '
'Thank you, I know what it means. Literally, to hold back in order to make a better jump,' she translated coldly.
'Exactly. A confidential spying on the enemy in readiness for the battle ahead. To which I'm sure you are spoiling to warn me, "Watch your step, Herr Adler, watch your step!"'
'How right you could be, at that,' she agreed. 'As far as I'm concerned, you should.'
'And believe me, Miss Harmon, I shall!' The audacious, goading confirmation of their continuing feud had the sting of a gadfly for her as she watched him drive away.
Chapter Four
After that dinner-party Juliet was left in no doubt that in Karl Adler plus Use Krantz she had indeed acquired a two-deep enemy. For it was obvious that the other woman had heard all that he knew of her himself, with the consequence that her hostility to Juliet was barely veiled.
She was tall, with a matt-cream skin, tawny eyes and a wealth of russet hair which she wore in a heavy swathe at the nape of her neck. She was dressed in a trouser suit of thick white silk, and contrived to make Juliet feel overdressed in her floor-length, long-sleeved gown of brown velvet, with the laughing apology, 'You must think me terrible for not dressing. But I've been here all day, working with the Baronin, and I didn't know I'd be meeting guests for dinner.'
The Baronin, overhearing, put in, 'Just one guest only, Frau Krantz—Julie, who is a dear young friend. No one else.' To which Use Krantz murmured, 'Of course—Julie. You've told me how fond you are of her!' And then, head tilted, coaxing slightly, 'But mayn't I hope to be "Use" from now on, Baronin?' Magda von Boden's paper-delicate cheeks flushed.
'But of course, if you wish it,' she said with well-bred politeness, though Juliet felt that she found the suggestion a little premature.
With the help of her own maid, the Baronin had prepared dinner herself in her tower apartment. As always, she was the ideal hostess, guiding the talk rather than dominating it, contributing little herself, drawing her guests out.
Ilse Krantz, clearly on no mere one-day Christian name terms with Karl Adler, was eager to claim to him the success of her survey of the hotel's possibilities under her management. She proposed to do this; she had advised the Baronin of the wisdom of that; Karl must get busy, laying on the new publicity; as soon as she could arrange her own affairs, she would be coming back to take, up her quarters in the Schloss, and there seemed no reason why the first of the summer clients shouldn't be accommodated by the end of the month.
She threw Juliet a patronising smile. 'You see how busy we've had to be, while you've been keeping Karl out of mischief on the ski-slopes! Planning staffing, redecorating, catering—the lot. Fun for some, while we others work!' And the Baronin interposed mildly,
'Of course it all needs more discussion. But as Frau' —she checked at the playful frown the younger woman sent her—'as Ilse says, we have achieved a certain agreement.' She added to Ilse, 'Do you plan to give up your Munich apartment when you move in here?'
Ilse shook her head. 'Oh, I think not. I have so many friends, and I entertain so much. I shall have to spend some of my time there still. Say at least my "half-days off". Besides, Karl tends to regard my place as his home-from-home, dropping in whenever he is free, or needs feminine company or relaxation, or both. Come now, Karl, admit that it's so?' she challenged him.
'As much as you are equally welcome at my place,' he said urbanely.
'Though, being a woman, I have to wait to be asked there?’ she flashed. She turned to Juliet. 'Too bad, isn't it, that we can't stake a claim to our fancy, as the men can? Or perhaps you've found that it sometimes pays off to be a little more come-hither and willing than convention advises? I mean—though you Englishwomen are supposed to be so cold and correct, isn't it possible that you are just as predatory under your skin as any Latin or Celt—or German for that matter?'
It was a deliberate taunt, but before Juliet could frame a retort, Karl Adler was chiding, 'Ilse, mein Liebling, aren't you assuming too much on too short an acquaintance? Now I, on a very slightly longer one with Miss Harmon, can assure you she is correct to a degree!'
Ilse pulled a face at him. 'She must be, if she has kept you at the arm's length of "Miss Harmon" until now. Do you really mean that you've been addressing each other as "Herr Adler" and "Miss Harmon" all day, even at apres-ski?'
Not looking at her, but straight at Juliet with a glint of mischief in his eyes, he said, 'At Miss Harmon's wish, we didn't indulge in any apres-ski. We came straight back.'
Ilse nodded mock-sagely at Juliet. 'Very prudent of you to realise how little this character is to be trusted.
An hour of apres-ski in a bar, and !' With a shrug and an oblique smile she left the rest to the imagination, as the Baronin asked Karl if he didn't think Juliet a good skier.
When he didn't answer for a moment Juliet held her breath. Was he going to shame her in front of this supercilious girl-friend of his? But, again his glance as much on her as on his questioner, he said carefully, 'I'd say she has a flair amounting almost to extravagance,' which, though he couldn't have intended it as praise, had enough double-meaning to cause the Baronin to beam her approval.
'I knew you would find her an exciting partner,' she said, while Juliet, meeting his continued fixed gaze, wondered what quirk of gallantry had kept him from betraying her inept antics on that last slope.
He could have made a good story of it; have implied to the Baronin, 'A good skier? You must be joking!' But he had let her off. Why? Momentarily she allowed her own glance to signal thanks to him, and was rewarded with the faintest of conspiratorial smiles. However trivially, for the first time in their stormy relationship they were on the same side.
He and Ilse left for Munich soon after they had taken coffee. The Baronin detained Juliet for a while. She wasn't as sanguine for the hotel's future as Juliet had hoped to find her, and as Ilse had claimed they both were. But being incapable of judging anyone pr anything without cause, for all her misgivings she seemed prepared to go ahead.
'I only fear,' she ventured, 'lest Frau Krantz should be trying for too much modernism. She criticises our furnishings as old-fashioned; says people expect up-to-date fitments in their rooms, such as built-in cupboards, rather than our antique Kleiderschranke—so roomy and, like all the rest of our furniture, so much in character with the age of the Schloss, I've always thought'
'And so it is,' Juliet claimed. 'Every piece you have is in keeping. Didn't you tell her that people who choose a German castle for a holiday don't expect to find it decked out New York penthouse style? They want huge oak wardrobes, fourposters—the lot!'
The Baronin smiled wryly. 'I wasn't quite so direct as that,' she admitted.
'But Magda, you should have been!'
'Not at this stage, dear. After all, Frau Krantz
plans to attract some guests quite soon. But as most of these new-broom changes will take time, I can afford-to wait a little to let matters develop before I give in. As you say, Frau Krantz'—Magda's pretty nose wrinkled— 'oh dear, I'm to call her Ilse, aren't I? Well, though she may be wrong, I must try to be fair about this and give her her chance, don't you think?'
'I suppose so. Though you could be too fair,' counselled Juliet.
'But I must still try. Just as I told you I would try to appreciate your differences with Karl Adler,' her friend reminded her. And then mused, 'You know, I'm not at all sure that our new friend entirely approved of Karl Adler's invitation to you to go siding with him. In fact, if I hadn't told her during the day how matters stood between you and him, I'd have said that some of her slightly waspish remarks showed that she was jealous of you. What do you think?'
Juliet laughed shortly. 'If you really made her understand about Karl Adler and me, jealous is the very last thing she could possibly be, and she must know it.'
The Baronin stuck to her point. 'All the same, he had kept to his word to invite you. And you did accept and go with him.'
'And in consequence I'm a little suspect for going?'
'Well ' the Baronin temporised.
'Even though his reason for asking me—he admitted it—was that it would give us the chance to go on working at our quarrel? Which, however hard it is to believe, happens to be true,' Juliet challenged.
'Dear me. And I'm to take it that you accepted for the same peculiar reason?'
'More or less,' Juliet admitted. 'Anyway, certainly from no motives that could make Ilse Krantz jealous. Simply, I think, to—well, to keep my end up; not to be the first to cry Pax.'
'How very odd, dear. And surely the most bizarre reason ever for two young people's willingness to spend several hours of an open-air day together! But tell me —how, in these strange circumstances—over a picnic lunch and a jolly time on the slopes—did your quarrel progress?'
Juliet accused, 'You haven't believed a word I've told you. And of course you are right about the quarrel, just for today. We didn't pursue it actively, but that doesn't mean it has gone away, or lessened or changed. Because really, Magda, Karl Adler and I are not "two young people" in the sense you mean. He can't forgive me for what he sees as my desertion of Gerhard when he needed me, and I can't forgive him for not understanding that I was right to refuse to marry Gerhard without loving him. And on top of all that, there's his tyrannic demand for my land, and my determination that he shan't have it. So if you or Ilse Krantz or anyone can see the makings of an affair for us in that setup, then you are sadly misguided optimists, I'd say.'
The Baronin nodded. 'I see. You make it very clear that I was mistaken and Ilse Krantz has no reason to fear her own possession of Karl Adler's interest is threatened by you.'
'You think she has his interest?'
'Rightly or wrongly, I think she assumes she has— don't you?'said the Baronin.
Juliet wished she hadn't asked the question.
It seemed incredible that in the course of the next few weeks the face of the lake region could change so much. Where at first there had been the few strangers and their few cars, now there were hordes of men and musters of lorries and tractors, chugging along the forest rides and parked in the clearings. Here and there the slopes already began to look denuded of their trees, and great chain-bound loads of timber were ferried out daily.
With their housing as yet unbuilt, the timbermen commuted over from Gutbach and further afield, and as never before Rutgen village prospered on their custom for food and beer and their own and their vehicles' emergency needs. An early consequence of the influx was that, though Frau Konstat remained loyal to the School's catering rota, she was often the only helper to turn up to serve Juliet's workers and students with their midday snacks. There was too good money to be earned at part-time work in the village Wirtshaus for people to make themselves cheap by working for nothing at the School. It was understandable, but it made difficulties, and there were many noons when Juliet herself donned an apron and dispensed goulash and sausage and canned beer at the snack-bar.
It was disturbing when a couple of her skilled workers gave her notice and joined the ranks of the timbermen for better pay. Wilhelm Konstat grumbled, 'It is the thin end of the wedge; in time the Herr will have all of us working for him, not for ourselves.' But this Juliet vehemently denied. They were doing well, weren't they? Soon they would be selling again to the hotel, and her own salesmanship should bring in as many orders as they could handle. And at least their tenancies were safe. 'The Herr' could do nothing about them, could he?
At that stage she admitted to no one that there were hazards she should perhaps have foreseen and had not. She was finding that too many of her selling trips brought too few results, for the simple reason that to both the retailers and the wholesalers she visited she was offering her wares too late.
The tourist season was already upon them. Did she not realise that they had stocked up with souvenirs months ago? they asked, sometimes pityingly, sometimes rudely. Yes, of course they would file the Fraulein's card, and next buying season perhaps— At the end of each of the two days a week she gave to selling, Juliet's smile became more fixed and mechanical in direct ratio to the hours she spent waiting to be seen by the buyers and the number of the stairs she had climbed to their offices.
It was when she was leaving the trade entrance of a department store on the Roder Strasse in Munich one lunchtime that she came face to face with Karl Adler. He offered his hand. 'Well, well!' he said in place of a formal greeting. There was a car park across the street, and he was going to collect his car. Could he drop her anywhere? he wanted to know.
She hesitated, tempted to- accept. She had breakfasted soon after dawn, her feet ached and the nearest restaurant she could afford was several streets away. Perhaps accepting a lift there wasn't too abject a surrender to the enemy. 'Thank you,' she said distantly. 'You are kind.'
In his car, 'Where to?' he asked.
'I was going to lunch at the Goldener Buckling on Schwan Platz. Do you know it? It's '
He nodded. 'I know it. But a bit of a dump, surely? We can do better than that, I think.'
‘I can't do better than that,' she said sharply.
'But we can. I'm hungry, and I'm lunching too. Die Silberkanne, I think. Come along.'
'I haven't said yet that I am lunching with you,' Juliet pointed out—too rudely, she knew.
'If you are letting me drive you to Die Silberkanne, you are,' he retorted with finality. 'I'm known there, and to part with an attractive guest at the door would be considered highly eccentric. Bad for my reputation.'
'As a frequent escort of—allegedly—attractive guests?'
'Naturally. I pride myself on a certain taste in such matters, and as I've told you, I prefer to eat socially, rather than alone,' he said blandly, confirming for Juliet a picture of all the women he must have escorted to the city's top restaurants, which she did not relish very much.
He must have heard from either Ilse or the Baronin of her sales drive, for when they had been seated by the head waiter and he had consulted her on the menu, he asked her how she was doing.
'For a beginning, pretty well,' she hedged.
'You aren't finding you are offering your goods to the buyers too late for this season?'
What right had he to be so shrewd? 'Perhaps for one or two,' she admitted, adding a desperate, 'But they are all showing interest, long-term.' 'Have you tried Grunwehr? Kleinmayer?' he asked, naming two department stores.
'They are on my list. I was going to Kleinmayer this afternoon.'
'We do business with them both. I'll drive you to Kleinmayer when we leave here.'
'Thank you.'
Towards the end of the meal, a little mellowed by the good food and his choice of wine, she ventured,
'I feel I Ought to thank you for keeping from the Baronin and Frau Krantz your real opinion of my skiing when the Baro
nin asked you about it.'
He laughed shortly. 'I was truthful. I told them you had flair—which you have. To the point of an extravagance which might well have put us both in hospital with a limb or two in traction—also true.'
'You didn't add that last bit.'
'I left it to their imagination.'
'But Magda, at least, thought you were praising me!'
'Was it my fault if her fond imagination led her that way? Besides, as your accepted escort that day, I couldn't let you lose face over a triviality like that.'
'You mean—considering all the face you think you can make me lose in the future?' she flared involuntarily.
'Come, come now!' His tone held derisive reproof. 'What general ever revealed to the enemy his campaign strategy?'
'For that is all your seeking of my company can possibly amount to—mere strategy, tactics?' she riposted.
'I told you why I invited you to Innsgort'
'Yes, I know—because you saw a boring day ahead, and the French bit about second jumps.- But today?'
'We met by accident today,' he reminded her.
'When you could have acknowledged me and walked on. Instead you make it difficult for me to refuse to lunch with you at a place like this and—and seem to show interest, which can't be genuine, considering all you know of me and think of me, and none of it favourable. So why?'
