Return to Silbersee

by Jane Arbor

  Sunday. The warmth of the sun already peeling the mist from the mountain-tops and from the lake surface. The gay tunes of the church bells' weekday Glockenspiel sobered to a single chime for Sundays. Everyone gathered on the Square or on the church steps, waiting for the dying of the last peal which would signal the concerted trooping into church. A typical Rutgen Sunday ritual, centuries old. Greeting and being greeted by her neighbours as they came out again at noon, Juliet felt she could be completely content with their little world which she had made her own, if it were not for the dull ache of the heart-hunger which never fully lifted from her spirit.

  From the dim light of the church to the glare outside was a contrast which called for sunglasses. Taking hers from her bag and adjusting them, she lingered on the steps for a few minutes, watching the boys and girls scuttling to their machines, mounting them and curvetting round the Square and away towards the heights, exhausts snorting and engines on full power. That left the Square's parking empty except for one or two cars of uncertain age and—one other, the sight and recognition of which sent Juliet's pulses racing.

  Karl's car! And that was Karl alighting from it. Karl, walking tall, and except for the stick on which he hardly seemed to rely, walking over to her with much the same confidence as he had done all those months ago on the Innsgort road. The few people still gossiping at the foot of the church steps recognised him too, and he saluted them with his stick. But. he came straight on to face Juliet. 'Magda told me I should find you here,' he said.

  She took off her glasses and fingered them nervously. 'Yes. I usually come You—wanted to see me about something?' she hesitated.

  'Wanted to see you,' he said, making it sound so like a correction that she sent a puzzled glance at the blue eyes made level with her own by his stance on the step lower than hers. 'To see you,' his emphasis answered the glance, and then with an irrelevance which startled her, 'are you hungry?' he asked.

  'Hungry? Why, no '

  'Good. For we aren't picnicking this time. Later, perhaps.' His hand invited her down the steps, and she went with him and across the Square, dumb with wonder that he should want to take her anywhere, if he only meant to drive her back to the School. She let him put her into the car. Discarding his stick, he took his own seat. 'Where are we going?' she asked.

  'Up. You'll see.' Driving with the consummate ease he had always done, Karl swung round the Square and out on to the forest road in the wake of the mopeds and motor-cycles now far ahead of them. As if they had taken an agreed vow of silence neither Juliet nor he spoke again while the car climbed the winding road— not to the Schloss, she realised, but higher. Where then? To the Fichte Platte? To the thought which had asked the question a sudden gleam of intuition was able to answer Yes. But why? What could he want of her there? Neither thought nor intuition had an answer to that.

  The branching cart-track up to the little plateau was broader now, smooth as a private drive. The car purred up it, instead of rocking from one rut to the next, and Karl drew up on a scene which wasn't a total surprise to Juliet.

  She had heard that the house he had planned for himself had been a-building in his absence, but she: had never been tempted to go again to watch the progress of the home he was probably building for Ilse Krantz to share. Yet here it was, its form and area roughly defined, though only by its metre-high walls as yet. The springy sward all round it was a mess of builders' rubble, and lorries were parked under the trees where she had lunched with Karl's architect, when Karl had been as caustic with him as he had been with her—as .usual. But there had been no unnecessary butchery of the surrounding trees, and she noticed with jealous gratification that the house was going to face the way her imagination had planned it should. Again she asked herself why he had brought her to see it. Could be it was his idea of revenge— showing her that for as long as she stayed on the Lake, he would be an ever-present threat to her peace of mind when he lived here? But surely even he couldn't be as cruel as that? And somehow the look which had met hers on the church steps hadn't glinted with its usual warning of trouble to come. It had been frank and bland enough to flood her with the wild hope that he did want to see her because—well, because he wanted to, that was all.

  In order to look across at the house she had turned sideways. Karl had turned slightly too, one arm crooked on the steering wheel, the other across the back of her seat, the fingers of that hand playing an idle tattoo within an inch or two of her shoulder. 'Well,' he said, 'what do you think of it?'

  What was there to 'think' of a skeleton, except of its promise when it was clothed? Juliet said, 'It's a lovely site, and you're going to have a breathtaking view. When do you expect it to be finished?'

  'In about eight or nine months—about the best time for getting a sale, the early summer.'

  'A sale?' She looked sharply back at him. 'But Herr —I forget his name—told me you were building it for yourself!'

  'That was the original idea, but I've had reason and time enough to doubt my hopes of it since. It may be that I've wantonly destroyed them myself. But if I have, I want out from the place, and the first bidder for it can have it.'

  Was he telling her that his engagement to Ilse had fallen through? But why bring her here, only to be so cryptic about it? And did he consciously realise, Juliet wondered, that the mute tune made by his fingers on the leather of her seat was now being played as lightly on her upper arm? Though not caring, of course, if he did know he was doing it, how her imagination longed to turn even so idle a contact into a caress.

  She was at a loss for a reply to his bitterness. If he did mean he had broken with Isle, or she with him, she couldn't in honesty tell him she was sorry. For she wouldn't be. She managed instead, 'I hope you won't abandon the plans you had for the house. Or have you decided against them already?'

  The absent drumming on her arm stopped. 'Not entirely yet. In certain circumstances I might change my mind,' he said, sending her spirits plunging at the implication that his break with Ilse wasn't final.

  He was opening both doors of the car. 'Let's get out, shall we? I'd appreciate your opinion on the layout of the rooms, so far as I understand it.'

  Side by side they walked over to the foundations. There Juliet halted and looked up at him. 'Why?' she asked bluntly. 'Why my opinion? Why should you want it?'

  'Why not?' he countered. 'Didn't architect Brend claim that you'd shown some expertise in design? If I remember, you denied me a share in your ideas at the time, but if you could see your way to being a little more generous now ?' he invited, in his tone the same taunting note which had always been a tinder for the flame of her rancour. So here they were again, looking for vulnerable spots in which to place their barbs.’

  She said, 'You were laughing at me then—you both were—and if you can't think of a better reason for asking what my opinion is now, then I'd be very grateful if you would drive me home.'

  'Before I've told you why I wanted to see you?'

  'Well, haven't you? Pretending you want my interest in a house in which, you admit you may already have lost your own!'

  'Implying that you could drum up some enthusiasm for it, only if I showed some myself?'

  'I didn't say that !'

  'No.' He paused, then added incredibly, 'Though I could wish you had.'

  'Why?'

  He sighed. 'How you overwork that word!'

  Driven to desperation, Juliet turned on him. 'Only because I don't understand anything that's going on; your reason for bringing me here; your claim just now that you care whether or not I like the house. Just as if you could!' she jeered.

  His steady eyes held hers. 'I did tell you that, given certain factors, my own faith in it might well take new heart,' he reminded her.

  'So you did. But factors—such as?'

  'That you should care about it too, want to watch it taking shape, look forward to enjoying it. Which would ' make two of us of the same mind,' he said.

  That was so bizarre that it asked to be
laughed to scorn. So she laughed without mirth or warmth. 'You and I—of one mind about anything? Ever? You hate me. You despise me—you've shown me that in more ways than one. You set out to destroy me because the School was in your way. You told Ilse Krantz that if

  I tried to see you at the Prinz Franz you would throw me out, and when I did come—by accident!—you did just that. And now you dare !' She broke off, fretted by pain.

  She had to wait for his reply. When it came, 'And nothing about my rejecting you dovetails in your mind with what I'm trying to tell you now?' he questioned. 'Mein Gott, woman'—with one hand he spun her about and so close to him that his face was out of focus to her bewitched stare—'have you no conception of what it meant to me to realise that I might be only half a man for the rest of my days? For I had Gerhard as a warning,- hadn't I? He was broken, useless, as I might be. He had loved you, as I did and do. So do you wonder that I drew parallels? That I couldn't bear to see your face or listen to your sympathy, or suffer your "kindness"? Do you?'

  Miracle or mirage—which? 'Love me?' Juliet echoed. 'Love me? How can you? Or claim that I ought to know it? You've never let me guess, nor shown me '

  'There've been occasions when I've tried,' he said quietly.

  She coloured hotly, remembering the cavalier way in which he had kissed her awake in his car, the later savagery with which he had forced the surrender of her lips in a storm of passion, but a passion of anger, not of love; avenging Gerhard, he had claimed. Both times, though he did not know it, he had had all her willingness, all her woman's answer, but each time he had ravished without giving anything of himself in return. And his spurning of her when she had knelt beside him—there again he seemed now to be asking her to believe that the reverse side of his repulse of her was a love which had been too proud to parley for hers. What was the truth? Would he have told her he loved her if he did not? Would he have dared.

  She said slowly, 'If you have wanted me to know, I've never understood '

  'Nor wanted to?' The stick slung over his wrist slipped to the ground unheeded, and his arms went round her. 'Nor wanted to?' he urged again.

  In some odd way the very rawness of the despair in his voice seemed to be the measure of a hope he hardly dared Sustain. Juliet lifted her head and leaned back against the bulwark of his arms. 'Wanted to—for a very long time,' she whispered. 'Hadn't you known either?'

  He shook his head slowly in doubt. 'If you had only ever let me guess! But you are saying it now, my sweet? Meaning it? That you love me ... want me, as I want you?'

  Her answer was to draw his face down to hers and to kiss his lips. At which, with an 'A-a-h!' of incredulous wonder, his desire seemed to catch fire, his hands and his mouth touching and exploring, his eyes alight with worship, his body seeking to mould- the soft pliancy of hers to the whole vital line of his own; quickening her blood to a wild abandon as hot and passionately-urged as his.

  This she had asked of him for far too long, and this he had always withheld until now. For this wasn't a brutal demand for her surrender. In turn this was a gentle search for her willingness, and a heady storm of rapturous ecstasy from which neither was asking nor granting shelter; they were at one with it, allowing it to toss them to the heights together and finding the calm of tenderness when it had passed. This was needing, giving, belonging—and yet, after a timelessness which wasn't to be counted by the clock, for Juliet a shadow fell. There could be no belonging to Karl until

  She forced herself to draw back from him and to his questioning look she named the shadow. 'Gerhard,' she said.

  Karl understood. 'Yes, Gerhard,' he said. And then, 'I don't think you'll ever realise how badly I wanted at first to punish you over him.'

  'You did punish me, and made very sure that I knew what the punishment was for.'

  He nodded. 'That night on the launch I'd let jealousy convince me that you were at much the same thing again with young Seiber—leading him on and holding aloof when he overstepped your Keep Out signs and claimed what he expected were his' rights. You would have let Gerhard follow the same path, I decided, before you turned him down, and I confess I meant to hurt you where I thought it would wound you most—in your frigid self-conceit.'

  Juliet flinched. 'And yet that same night you took the trouble to see me safe from Johan Seiber.'

  'Yes, and it was always like that—I've been for ever swinging between contempt of you and admiration of your courage; between hating the image which you seemed determined to defend at the cost of any regard I had for you, and softening to you and loving you to distraction. The loving won '

  'In spite of Gerhard?'

  'Rather because of him. Because when I knew I loved you, I began—though only slowly—to be grateful that your history with regard to him had been what it was; grateful that you hadn't loved him, or married him for less that the love I wanted of you. From there I could argue that you had been right, and since I've been travelling during these weeks—literally miles, and on an even longer journey in my mind towards the hope of you—-I've prayed more than once that Gerhard knows now that you would have wronged him if you had married him for pity, and that he may forgive us both.'

  Juliet said, 'This could be wishful thinking, but I believe he had always loved the School more than he loved me. I was only a late figure on his scene; the School was his life. I couldn't love him, but I felt I did owe it to him to keep it going, which is why I've fought you over it as I have.'

  Karl's mouth lifted in a half-smile. 'And how you've fought me, mein Liebchen!'

  'Foueht your threats against it!'

  'And how many of them have I carried out?'

  'You made them.'

  'And at first meant every word of them. Juliet Harmon and her Schule des Schnitzarbeits, making carved piggy-banks and fretwork fern-holders, were going to be bought out or winkled out before they realised what had hit them. But once I began to enjoy the infighting with you, I wanted to keep it going. And once I knew I loved you, my plans went out of die window, and I had to keep you there.'

  'By persuading your business friends to give me orders? Didn't you know how I should resent that?'

  'And did you expect me to watch you drop out of the rat-race for want of a bit of encouragement?'

  'I've managed without it alone since then,' she claimed proudly. 'Now, we are getting all the work the School can handle.' She moved closer again to trace the line of his jacket lapel with an idle finger as she added, 'But that's something I've never understood. How kind you could sometimes be, and how your threats and your actions didn't always add up. I thought '

  'You thought me vindictive over your gleaning rights, for instance?'

  'And then found you weren't.'

  'And that I was outpricing you in the labour market?'

  'Until your pay foreman told me he had your orders not to take on any of my people. But before I could apologise to you about that, you ' She stopped, wincing from the memory of the happenings of an afternoon which still haunted her dreams.

  Karl drew her to him again. 'Yes, all right,' he said. 'I meanly bowed out from our private battlefield, just in time to thwart your donning your sackcloth and ashes—is that it?'

  'I'd still have come to you wearing them, if you hadn't refused to see me.'

  'My heart, I've already told you why not!'

  'And I—well, I lied when I said I hadn't meant to try to see you. As soon as I was tempted, I did.'

  'And knelt by me for some dire purpose of your own—not wholly by chance?' he teased.

  'I was longing to kiss you while you were asleep, but knowing you were sure to wake, I daren't.'

  'I wasn't asleep. I'd seen you kneel. But when I kissed you—you! —you, only you, I sensed your heart wasn't in it, and later you had to admit as much— you'd been feeding my long need to make love to a woman, that was all, you implied.' i

  'I had to. You'd been so passionate, and—so had I, that I dared not delude myself that you were making love to me. There was
Ilse. You were engaged to her.'

  'That was a very long time ago. Before she married someone else.'

  'You kept her portrait on your desk. I saw it there.'

  'She expected to see it when she came to my apartment. She knew the camera had etherealised her, made her more seductive than she was, and it didn't cost much to indulge her vanity. What's more, knowing you would have seen the photograph, I argued that a little competition would do you no harm.'

  'Ilse claims to be your fiancee still.'

  'Ex only ' .

  'No. It privileged her to see you when the hospital wouldn't have let me.'

  'Then there's why she claimed it. It was a score over you. But here ' releasing Juliet, he reached into a pocket for a newspaper cutting. 'From a gossip column in a Florida paper—you see, Ilse on the arm of her second husband, a lately acquired property tycoon. Does that convince you that she and I are now not even "good friends"?'

  Juliet looked at Use's self-congratulatory face, read the caption of the picture, handed back the cutting. 'You said once that you could guess why she didn't like me. What did you mean?'"