Return to Silbersee

by Jane Arbor

  'Yes. Yes, I'm sure it will be. I'll tell them,' Juliet said, and then, with her heart beating hammer-strokes in her chest, she risked a snub.

  'And Herr Adler? In—in the same accident. Could you tell me ? How he is too?'

  There was a pause which made her think shie was to be refused. Then the Sister asked, 'You are the lady who rang earlier? I didn't answer the phone myself, but—his fiancee, I think she—that is, you—said?'

  His fiancee? Ilse? Claiming him? Juliet swallowed hard on her sick dismay. 'No, that would be someone else. A Frau Krantz, I think,' she said. 'I employ Helmut Jager, but I'm only an—acquaintance of Herr Adler's. He '

  'Yes. And he" came off the worse, I'm afraid. As I understand it, he flung himself on top of the boy as the tree came down, and he has spinal injuries, it is feared. But he is also under heavy sedation for the time being, and we have him here too, in a single room.' The Sister paused. 'He can't have any visitors yet, but neither of them is in immediate danger, Fraulein, you will be glad to know.'

  'Oh, thank you, I am,' Juliet said fervently. 'And Helmut's parents will be too. They know, you see, that Herr Adler almost certainly saved his life. And could he be visited yet, Sister? May I tell them when?'

  'Any time after tomorrow, I think. Perhaps you will ring the ward and ask?'

  Juliet replaced the receiver with mixed feelings of gratitude, guarded relief and a sense of desolation which would last longer than either. Helmut was not too seriously hurt, and Karl was not on a danger list. But he was there, drugged, helpless, and possibly only through the most skilled surgery might he walk again. Ski again. Drive a car. Climb the mountain paths of the Silbersee slopes, as he had had to do on the night he-

  Remembering the savagery with which he had punished her that night and then, quixotically, had taken pains to protect her, she realised that that was partly what she loved in him. It was the enigma of him, his dynamism in anger, his effortless charm in repose. His arrogant sureness of success; his 'common touch' with lesser folk, which she had jealously glimpsed on the day he had come down to the School and had talked with her workers. His callous destruction of her livelihood, compared with his rare, small kindnesses to her Yes, he was as he was and would

  always be, and that's how she would have taken him, troubled by him, challenged by him, enchanted in turn, if he had ever given her the chance, as he never had and wouldn't now. For now she mightn't ever see him again. Probably she couldn't even visit him in hospital, except at Use's indulgence, and before the autumn she would have had to close the School and go home.

  Drearily she pulled herself together and went back to the Jagers with the moderately good news. Nowadays, she could tell them, cracked ribs were often left to heal themselves and an ankle in plaster meant only a few weeks on a crutch. A broken spine was something else again—but she must tone down the menace of that for their sake. They mustn't feel guilt but only the pride which she herself knew, at what Karl had done for their son.

  Chapter Nine

  Two days later Juliet drove Helmut's parents to Munich to see him. They were allowed only a quarter of an hour's visit, so she did not go with them to the ward. But they promised to bring such news of Karl as they could get, and when they rejoined her they said he couldn't be seen. He was being prepared for exploratory surgery and the bulletin on him was the non-committal 'As well as can be expected.'

  Juliet supposed that Ilse might have been given more details, and though pride forbade her begging anything of Ilse, she felt that she did owe the other woman some condolence, and rang up the Schloss.

  Ilse thanked her coolly, but was discouraging of her interest.

  'I hope you haven't bothered the Prinz Franz with enquiries,' she said.

  'Only on the day of the accident, when I had to ask about Helmut Jager for his people, and naturally I asked after Herr Adler too.'

  'And they told you? Usually they restrict information on serious cases to relatives and—well, someone as close to the patient as I am.'

  Juliet said patiently, 'Yes, so I was told, and at first the Ward Sister did mistake me for you.'

  'Mistook you for me?’ Isle's shocked echo implied that this was impossible. 'How could she?'

  'Only over the telephone,' Juliet corrected. 'Apparently you had rung up earlier—Herr Adler's fiancee, the Sister said, and she supposed that I was you, ringing again.'

  'Oh, I see,' Ilse accepted the explanation, confirming Juliet's fears. 'Meanwhile, I suppose you know that Karl isn't to be visited? Even by me—for the moment?

  'I hadn't thought of asking to do so,' Juliet assured her. 'Though I know Helmut Jager's mother and father will want to thank him as soon as they are allowed.'

  'Yes, well—that's different,' Ilse conceded. 'And I was only preparing you for a possible snub from his surgeons. For you have no claim on any right to see him, have you?'

  'None whatsoever,' Juliet agreed. (Only love, and a charity I'd hope I'd be willing to offer you, if I were his fiancee and you were in my place, was her unspoken thought.)

  'Well, that's how it is at the moment,' said Ilse, apparently mollified. 'I just wanted to warn you against presuming on any attentions Karl has paid you from time to time—even while you've been obstructing him all you can. Though who, after all, can blame you— totally on your own, without a man to fight your battles for you? And I promise to let you know myself how Karl progresses, when he does,' she concluded graciously.

  'Thank you so much,'' returned Juliet, hoping the irony of her emphasis found its target, but doubting it.

  She was longing for Magda to come home from Bonn, but before she did, there were some inexplicable results from the expiry of the notices Juliet's workers had given her.

  Usually any gossip or news reached her through Wilhelm, but this time it was his wife who reported the non-happenings which had followed the men's departure. She and Juliet were preparing the midday snacks at the lunch counter when she said, 'Heidi Boltz and Berthe Mayer and one or two of the others were saying they would like to help again here, if you could see your way to paying them a little for it.'

  Juliet's smile at that was rueful. 'As if you and I couldn't manage it between us, now that we have less than half the number to cater for! But what's the idea? Aren't Heidi and Berthe and the rest still earning at the

  Wirtshaus and the cafes, doing for the Adler timber- men and the builders? And they are, I know, for I was j talking to Renate Mxiller only the other day. Anyway, I couldn't afford to pay them now for what they used to do for love.'

  Frau Konstat sighed. 'No, of course not—as I told them. But it's their men, you see, Fraulein. Berthe and the others only work part-time in the village, and if they could earn the little bit more here '

  'But why should they need to? And what do you mean about "their men"? They've all left us to better themselves with Adler; their wives can't possibly need to come back here to boost the kind of money their men are going to earn! If they're not getting it already, that is.'

  Frau Konstat shook her head. 'Which they are not, and are not going to, it seems. The pay-foreman is refusing to take them on.'

  Juliet stopped slicing cheese, and stared. 'Not? But —Adler are still advertising for men, and ours '

  'Orders, the foreman tells them. He has his orders. Nobody to be taken on who has worked at the School during the last twelve months. He asks them, and they tell him—Boltz and Mayer and Miiller and all of them, and then he says, "Sorry, man—nothing doing for you,"' Frau Konstat said.

  'But they are skilled!' Juliet protested. 'And when they left us, they must have known they had every chance of being taken on by Adler.'

  'They thought they had, and they are all fine, strapping fellows who could fell a tree as well as any who are working over there. But the foreman wouldn't say' why he was turning them down; just that he had orders not to take on any skilled men from here.'

  'Orders—from whom?' Juliet demanded.

  'From his boss in the main Munich pa
y-office, one supposes.'

  'And he, no doubt, from the Adler directors.' Juliet thought for a moment, then asked, 'Look, where is this pay-clerk to be found? In that chalet they call the estate office?'

  'There, yes. Or in the Wirtshaus at Mittagessen time.'

  'Right,' said Juliet. 'It might be easier to talk to him there, over a drink.'

  'Talk to him, Fraulein?' the old woman hesitated.

  'Yes. He has a perfect right to turn the men down. But I have a right, as their previous employer, to hear what he has against them. I'm going to claim the right, anyway. I'm going to see him.'

  'And the men—Boltz and Miiller and the others? Could you think of taking them back, Fraulein?'

  Juliet said, 'Willingly. We need them. But would they want to come? Mightn't they be too proud?'

  'And if they were, at that, you should let my Wilhelm talk to them,' Frau Konstat advised sagely. 'And if they wouldn't listen to him, then they'd have to heed their own Berthe and Heidi and Renate snapping the clasps of their empty purses at them. They'll listen, Fraulein. I've always had the test word with Wilhelm, though he hasn't always known it, and if any of those others are worth a bag of wood shavings, they'll get their men back here, you'll see.'

  So! thought Juliet, as puzzled as she was indignant. Karl had been responsible for recruiting a work-force at pay which he must have known would attract her workers, however coldly he had denied being in competition with her. And now somebody above him or below him in the authority line had stepped in and refused jobs to them. Who? And why?

  Her thoughts flew to Ilse, remembering how Ilse had presumed to speak for Karl in the matter of the School's right to glean from the estate. She had come between Karl and his estate foreman then. But surely she wouldn't dare, and had no power to interfere with Adler Classics' employment affairs? No, it couldn't have been from Ilse that the foreman had had his 'orders', and she could think of no one else who had any interest for or against the School, its workers or herself.

  She walked into Rutgen at noon, provided by Frau Konstat with a description of the man she hoped might be at the Wirtshaus. He was there, drinking a lager at the bar, and though she had expected to have to ask the innkeeper to introduce her, it appeared that he knew her.

  He was a chubby, freckled young man with fiery hair. 'Ernst Burger,' he introduced himself, offering his hand. 'Fraulein Harmon—yes? What may I offer you to drink with me?'

  Juliet told him, then said, 'I have to confess I was hoping to meet you, Herr Burger. Could we move to that table over there?'

  'Willingly, Fraulein.'

  'Thank you.'

  Almost as soon as they were seated she plunged into her subject. He listened, turning his stein between his hands, as, after saying she wouldn't expect an answer to her question if his duty forbade it, she put it to him bluntly

  'Can you tell me, Herr Burger, by whose orders you rejected all the men who told you they had been skilled wood-carvers at the Schule des Schnitzarbeits, when they applied for jobs with Adler?'

  He looked up at her frankly. 'Certainly, Fraulein. I have nothing to hide about that. The order I was given was quite clear—that in no circumstances was my office to entertain any application from any skilled worker lately employed by your School, and it came to me direct from Herr Adler himself.'

  Juliet stared, open-mouthed. 'Herr Karl Adler? But that's impossible! He would never have issued any such direction. Besides, he is in hospital, as you know.'

  'I had it from him in person,' Ernst Burger insisted. 'And before the accident on the Klinge ground, of course.'

  'When?'

  'Last week.'

  'Which day, please? Can you remember? It's—important.'

  'Tuesday. Yes—Tuesday.'

  And it was on the morning of that Tuesday that Karl had scorned the idea that he was in competition with—what had he called the School?—a 'paltry little wood-carving joint'. Later in the same exchange he had taunted her that if she insisted in believing that he had designs on her workers, she-could tell herself that he had done no more than act by the rules of the personal war between them—which she had taken as his assumption that, in competition for them or not, she was probably going to lose her workers to him anyway.

  So why, after that, had he refused to employ them? What was the truth of it all? Could she ... dared she believe, as Magda would have her think, that he had enough pity for her, and enough insight to realise that if he refused employment to her men, they would come back to her? That his move had been another of the few chivalries he had sandwiched between his contempt for and rejection of her—dared she?

  But no. There had been no kindness in him when he had flung at her that tag about all being fair in love and war. For when people used it, they were never talking about love. They were only justifying war.

  She left Ernst Burger to his second drink and his Mittagessen, no nearer to understanding Karl than she had ever been.

  Foreseeing that the men might be embarrassed and humiliated by asking for their jobs back, Juliet approached them herself, claiming that, having heard by a side wind that they hadn't been 'suited' with Adler, she would be greatly obliged if they would consider returning to the School. Increased orders were coming in, (she hadn't got-them yet, but she would) and she was going to find herself badly in need of their services as before. They fell graciously to the ruse and to a promise of higher pay (Wilhelm's wise advice, this), and returned to their benches to a man.

  Magda wrote from Bonn to say that business matters were keeping her away longer than she had expected, and that her return was a little indefinite. News of Karl filtered through from various sources. He had had two major operations on his spine, but nerves had been damaged and there were only guarded hopes of his walking normally again. He would be at the Prinz Franz for some weeks yet, but at his insistence he was, managing to conduct some business from his bed.

  But none of this came from Ilse Krantz, who hadn't kept her promise to keep Juliet posted, until the day

  when she did ring up again to say,

  'As it occurred to me that you may have heard Karl is allowed some visitors now, and you may have considered going to see him, I thought I should tell you tactfully that you would be wasting your time. Because he has told me in private that he certainly wouldn't welcome you.'

  Juliet's breath caught in her throat before she achieved a level, 'I see. But may I ask how it was that my name came up?'

  'Quite casually. He was telling me which of his friends and colleagues had been to see him and others that he expected would. I told him the Baronin was still away, but when I mentioned that you might want to thank him for saving that blind boy's life, he said, "Then she can forget it, or save it or thank me by letter if she must. I don't want that girl here." Rather brutally frank of him, I'm afraid,' Ilse concluded blandly.

  'But honest at least.'

  'Cruel, though. Bitter.'

  'And did he ask you to pass on to me what he had said?'

  'Not directly. In fact, he may have promised himself the satisfaction of refusing to see you if you did go. No, it was I who thought you ought to be saved the humiliation of that. So I've told you—at the cost of your thinking I'm only making trouble, of course. I didn't like doing it. You do understand that?' Ilse appealed.

  'That you had to force yourself? But of course!' Juliet echoed, and was rewarded for the hollow triumph of that by Use's gasp of righteous indignation before she rang off.

  I don't want 'that girl here. Had she earned such a final rejection by Karl? Juliet wondered. It seemed she had, and she hardly doubted that he had meant it should reach her through Ilse. He had admitted knowing that Ilse disliked her, so he had probably guessed at the zeal with which Ilse Would report it. Almost, now and again, she had let herself believe that some time in some vague future she and Karl might reach a kind of accord, or at least a neutrality not too fiercely armed. But—7 don't want that girl here.' That finished it. Of his contempt for her, even as an
enemy, that said it all—in half a dozen words he had wanted her to hear. He wouldn't willingly meet her again.

  As on her earlier return from Bonn, Magda came down to see Juliet, instead of inviting her to the Schloss. She had news, she had announced over the telephone, which she wanted 'Julie' to be the first to hear.

  This time it was evident that, whatever her news was, she found it good and too exciting to keep to herself for long after she had arrived. And having prefaced it with the warning, 'Don't you dare say I can't do it!' she brought it out with an air of bravado.

  'I am, going to take over the management of the hotel again!'

  Juliet jerked back her head and frowned, pretending she couldn't believe her ears. 'Say that again,' she demanded mock-sternly. 'I'm not sure that I got it right!'

  Magda said it again, and that time Juliet laughed, 'So you did say it and I did hear you, and though it's the very last bit of news I expected, I couldn't, couldn't be more glad. You mean that Ilse Krantz ?'

  'Will go. She will want a golden handshake, of course, but I am prepared for that, to get the reins back into my own hands.'

  'Perhaps,' Juliet suggested, 'she won't expect one, if, as we guessed, she is going to marry Karl Adler when he recovers.'

  'Ah, but is she?' Maeda questioned.