by Eva Ibbotson
Should he hail them? But no. The dogs seemed to be wet and there were a great many of them. Extracting a leberwurst sandwich from his pocket, Klasky prepared to wait.
Whether it was the uplifting effect of Mozart’s masterpiece or just a flash of arbitrary inspiration from above, Maxi had woken on the last day of the house party knowing exactly where to propose to Tessa.
For just as Mexicans prefer to eat, sleep and make love in the place they have been accustomed to from birth, namely a hammock, so Prince Maximilian was happiest performing life’s functions on the water. It was in a boat, therefore, that the prince decided to put his happiness to the test – and this time he would brook no opposition. Putzerl should, and would, hear him out.
But Tessa had in any case given up the fight. The opera was over and tomorrow she would leave Pfaffenstein for good. She could not avoid a tête à tête with Maxi for ever.
Four o’clock, therefore, saw Maxi rowing strongly towards the centre of the lake, the Princess of Pfaffenstein captive in the stern. Not only did he have Tessa, and in a most romantic setting – for the castle rearing up behind him looked, in the slanting, golden light, more like something out of a fairy tale than ever – but he had the dogs. To get five dogs into a small rowing-boat is not easy, but he had managed it and though the animals were a little bit on edge owing to the unfortunate proximity of a brace of mallard and a swan, they were behaving well. The red setter had her head in Tessa’s lap and was dribbling affectionately on her dress, while the water spaniel lay across her feet. To emphasize even more that his business was love and not sport, Maxi had left behind not only his gun but also his rod, and this despite the fact that the lake, cruelly underfished since the decline of the Pfaffenstein fortunes, was teeming with trout.
If Maxi supposed, however, that by taking to the water he would be unobserved, he was mistaken. The news that the prince was about to put his fortunes to the test had spread like wildfire round the castle. In the West Tower his mother, the Swan Princess, was stationed behind the late Prince of Pfaffenstein’s telescope, which she had securely trained on her son. Putzerl’s aunts, though they would not have stooped to such tactics, stood on either side of her, more than ready to receive details at second hand. The Archduke Sava, aware of the importance of the occasion, had abandoned his watch on the sunbathing soprano and carried his telescope into Monteforelli’s bedroom which faced the lake. Maxi’s valet, exceptionally keen-sighted, had climbed on to the balustrade outside the servants’ attics and was relaying information back to the castle maids.
And down on the terrace overhanging the lake, Nerine picked up the field-glasses Guy had left when he went for his interview with Witzler. This was better than looking at some red-legged hawk as Guy had wanted her to do!
‘He’s doing it!’ cried the Swan Princess. ‘He’s proposing, I’m sure! He’s stopped rowing!’
And indeed the Prince of Spittau had, at that moment, shipped his oars.
‘Putzerl,’ he began. ‘Tessa . . .’
The Princess of Pfaffenstein, who had been sitting quietly in the stern with her hands on the tiller lines, raised her head. Maxi’s eyes were deeply poached, his duelling scar throbbed like a wound. It was coming, then. Steeling herself, feeling the familiar guilt creep over her, Tessa said, ‘Yes, Maxi?’
‘Putzerl, you know how fond of you I’ve always been,’ said Maxi, and indeed he spoke the truth. No one had played ‘Cowboys and Indians’ as willingly and as often as she had done.
‘I’m very fond of you, too,’ said Tessa, repressing a sigh.
A trout, a five-pounder by the sound of it, rose very close to them. Maxi resolutely ignored it, as did the older dogs who were perfectly trained. Not so the young setter, who raised her head from Tessa’s lap and moaned with agitation, setting off the swan who approached hissing in fury, causing the labrador who was of a heroic turn of mind to rush to the stern and emit a fusillade of barks. A period of considerable confusion followed as they beat off the swan, restrained the wolfhound who had scrambled over the oars to aid his friend, and shipped a considerable amount of water.
For a moment Maxi wondered whether, after all, it had been such a good idea to bring the dogs. Tessa now seemed more worried about the wolfhound, who had scratched his nose on a rowlock, than she was about him. She was also, as he was himself, extremely wet.
‘So don’t you think . . . Tessa . . . please? I know I’ve asked you before, but now Pfaffenstein’s sold . . . I mean, you can’t go on working for the opera company for ever, and—’ He broke off. ‘Sit!’ he ordered furiously.
The pointer, who had leapt to her feet and was gazing with an air of quivering attention at the wooded island, turned a reproachful head. She had, she wished to make this clear, heard something.
‘So Tessa, do please marry me. I would be so happy. Everyone would be so pleased. And we get on so well.’
Tessa had picked up the bailer and was trying to reduce the pool of water in which they sat and Maxi, determined to pursue his advantage – for she had not yet said ‘No’ – plunged into the delights of Spittau. ‘We would have such great times together. You could breed water spaniels, you know how you love them. Of course, I know Mother’s a bit difficult but . . . And I mean it isn’t as though you’re liable to rheumatism. You’re healthy, Putzerl, although you’re so little. That’s one of the things I like about you.’
The mallards now returned and foolishly approached the boat, quacking and fussing, while the dogs turned with desperate appeal to their master. Was nothing going to happen? How long were they expected to endure it?
Not for ever, it seemed. A long, high-pitched whistle sounded from the wooded island and without a second’s hesitation the pointer, the labrador and the spaniel leapt into the water.
‘Idiot! Half-wit! Moron!’ yelled Maxi, shaking his fist in the direction of the island, with its little temple, from which the sound had come.
Yet no one was to blame. That the noise, a piercing A flat, emitted by one of Klasky’s characters (the engine-greaser who has a fit in the second act) was the same as the whistle to which Maxi had trained his dogs, was a coincidence no one could have foreseen.
‘They’re having a little bit of trouble,’ reported the Swan Princess as the puzzled faces of the dogs, hauled back into the boat by an irate Maxi, swam into focus, followed by a dangerous rocking as the animals shook themselves. ‘But it’s all right now. Tessa’s got hold of the dogs and Maxi’s rowing again.’
And indeed Maxi was now in a state of desperation when nothing could stop him. Bracing his feet against the wolfhound and rowing strongly away from the island, he said, ‘And after all, we’re both descended from—’ But here he veered off again, because it was no good talking to Putzerl about lineage and breeding and all that. The fact that he could trace his descent straight back to Barbarossa cut absolutely no ice with Tessa, who was apt to go off at half-cock when he mentioned anything like that. He returned to the subject of Spittau. ‘Maybe we could put in some central heating . . .’
He flushed, on delicate ground, and Tessa, on whose lap the soaking and frustrated water spaniel had settled, felt the familiar guilt intensify.
Guy had paid generously for Pfaffenstein. The cheque she had been handed, signed by the Associated Investment Company, in these inflationary times ran into millions of kroner. Half of this would go in trust for the aunts, and there were debts to be paid, but even so it left her with enough money to shore up Maxi’s imperilled Wasserburg and put heating into the mouldering rooms.
‘Maxi, I haven’t got quite as much money as your mother thinks, perhaps. My father left a lot of debts and they have to be paid. But I’ve enough all the same to—’ She tried again. ‘Would you let me help a little with Spittau? Do the roof at least, so that it can be preserved? I mean, we’re almost relatives, aren’t we?’
Maxi’s eyes became vibrantly convex; his duelling scar turned livid. His manhood had been outraged, his honour impugned. ‘How can you
suggest such a thing, Putzerl?’
‘I’m sorry, Maxi. I didn’t mean any harm. Only, I don’t know any other way to marry except for love. A particular kind of love. And that isn’t . . . how I love you,’ said Tessa, her voice very low.
‘But Tessa, we aren’t like that. Like ordinary people. I mean, being in love.’
‘I’m an ordinary person.’
He sighed. Her republicanism again.
‘I don’t think I am going to marry at all, Maxi. I think I’m going to live for art and bring music and theatre into people’s lives.’
A slight tightening of the jaw – the beginning of a yawn, which always attacked him at the mention of art – now troubled the prince. Bending to conceal it, he incited the wolfhound who caught Maxi rather painfully under the chin as he reared up in hope of land.
‘Are you sure, Putzerl? Are you absolutely sure?’ said Maxi when he had quietened the animal. ‘Couldn’t you please, please say yes?’
Tessa’s heart smote her. She knew only too well what Maxi would have to endure if his suit did not prosper. ‘I’m so sorry, Maxi.’ She put down the tiller lines, pushed the spaniel gently from her lap and, overwhelmed by pity, leaned forward to kiss him on the forehead. She too could perform life’s most varied actions in a boat.
The kiss was seen by Nerine on the terrace, by the Swan Princess and thus the aunts in the West Tower, by Monteforelli and Maxi’s valet and many others in the castle – and misinterpreted by all of them.
Witzler sat in the small room in the East Tower, adjoining the theatre, which he had used as an office since he came to Pfaffenstein. Out in the courtyard the men were loading scenery. The stage crew would leave at dawn for Vienna, with the principals and orchestra following by train.
But only for a while, Jacob was sure of that. His eyes closed in a moment of blissful remembrance. If he lived to be a hundred, nothing could dim the triumph of the previous night: old Monteforelli, that reprobate who knew every Mozart score by heart, hobbling backstage to throw his arms round him . . . the Comte d’Antibes throwing his diamond tie-pin on to the stage . . . But it was not only that, or the half-hour of applause, or the quick emotional handshake of Mendelov before that acid-penned critic went back to Vienna. It was the justification of a life spent in pursuit of an ideal. The journey that had begun with the visit of that tatty touring company playing Carmen had been justified last night.
What a week it had been altogether! Bubi was sunburnt and well, the Rhinemaiden’s nerves were such that she could probably sustain an entire performance of The Ring. And this morning Klasky had stolen off with his brief-case and a look in his eyes that Jacob, who had nursed many talents, had recognized with excitement. If this glorious week should also see the completion of Klasky’s opera!
Should he suggest to Farne that he install the company permanently at Pfaffenstein, or would it be best to keep a base in Vienna? Suppose he bought a little house in the village? They could keep a cow; Bubi would go to bed in time and wear lederhosen, mused Jacob, as the sound of Boris practising his yodelling floated in at the window. Everyone was out there waiting for the result of his interview. He glanced at his watch, but punctual to the minute Farne knocked and entered.
Guy, too, was sunburnt and fit. Since the previous night’s conversation with Nerine, he had taken a satisfactory amount of exercise: a pre-breakfast game of squash, tennis with one of his guests, then a ride in a neighbouring valley. Nevertheless, it was not the picture of a sporting gentleman relaxing on his estate that Guy suggested to Jacob, who felt rather that he was about to be interviewed by some beast of prey.
He rallied, however, and said, ‘Well, Herr Farne, you are satisfied, I think, eh?’
‘Yes. The performance was outstanding! I told you so last night. The interpretation was right, the balance, the detail too. I’ve never seen a better Magic Flute and I never will.’
He had got out his cheque book but even this object, so beautiful in Jacob’s eyes, did not deflect the impresario into hasty or impatient greed.
‘Of course, in this theatre, Figaro would be perfect. The Marriage of Figaro for your marriage.’ He waxed eloquent on the scoring, the ensemble writing of this most human and moving of operas. ‘Though of course it would be unwise to concentrate too much on Mozart because of competition with Salzburg. And in any case you may prefer something very light. Rossini, say . . . The Barber . . .
Once again he elaborated and only noticed after a while that Guy was silent. He had unscrewed his fountain-pen and was writing a cheque. ‘This is the balance of what I owe you. Will you see that it is correct?’
‘Yes,’ said Jacob, looking down. ‘It’s perfectly correct. Thank you.’
But for once money, so deeply a part of Jacob’s life, was not what he wanted to discuss. Indeed, Farne’s pragmatic and almost mercenary attitude shocked him a little. Genuinely, vociferously, Jacob was gripped by the vision of the music he and the Englishman would make here at Pfaffenstein.
‘Of course it would be possible, for the actual wedding, to stage a performance out of doors. On the lake, even, on a raft as in Boden. I don’t usually care for this because of standards and it will be difficult to persuade Klasky: the acoustics . . . the mosquitos . . . and he cannot swim. But if you wished—’
Guy had screwed up his pen, returned it to his pocket and straightened up. His voice when it came was harsh, his appearance more Mephistophelean than ever.
‘Let me make myself clear, Witzler. There will be no more opera staged here at Pfaffenstein . . . And no more music. Not for my wedding. Not ever.’
Jacob stared at him, sweat breaking out on his forehead. His ulcer, which he had hardly noticed during the last few days, bit agonizingly into his gut.
‘There was something wrong?’ he stammered. ‘Was it because Sarastro did not sing the E below stave? You see, I think what Mozart wanted there was not a trick but—’
‘I have told you,’ interrupted Guy, ‘the opera was perfect. That has nothing to do with it. My contract with your company is now terminated and it will not be renewed.’
The round little Jew sat down. He seemed suddenly to have shrunk, and one pudgy hand rubbed at his forehead as though to erase a pain.
‘Could one ask why?’ he said after a while.
‘That is my business, surely?’
Jacob nodded. ‘Yes . . .’ he said. ‘I’m sorry . . . Yes . . .’
Guy had walked to the turret window. He had dismissed hundreds of people in his time, blasted them and forgotten them. But he knew what he had bought when he bought the International Opera Company: the dedication, the ceaseless, gruelling work, the hopes . . .
He turned. ‘My fiancée doesn’t care for music,’ he said, his voice expressionless.
Jacob looked up in surprise. ‘But I thought . . . I thought it was because . . .’ He saw Guy’s face and fell silent.
‘Then you thought wrongly,’ said Guy silkily.
It was then that, seeking escape from Jacob’s arche-typally tortured-looking face, Guy turned back to stare out of the turret window. More keen-sighted even than Maxi’s valet, he saw the boat on the lake, saw the occupants surrounded by a gaggle of multi-coloured dogs . . . saw Tessa drop the tiller lines and lean over to kiss – with a tenderness undiminished by distance – the Prince of Spittau on the brow.
The news of Maxi’s engagement spread, like the good news from Aix to Ghent, with amazing speed. In the West Tower the arthritic Swan Princess, abandoning her telescope, managed to caper round the room and to embrace the aunts whose faces shone with relief and joy. They were presently joined by Monteforelli, the Archduke Sava and the Archduchess Frederica, and since the prince happened to have a bottle of champagne with him, a happy party was soon assembled and to the agitated barks of the pug, dynasties were cemented and wedding plans laid.
The Countess Waaltraut, pushing her mother across the courtyard, heard of Maxi’s successful courtship from the Uhlan captain with the wooden leg, who had he
ard it from Raisa Romola who had been sunbathing on the battlements and seen the kiss. The Comte d’An-tibes heard it from his valet, who heard it from the gardener who had been clipping the yew hedge on the terrace overhanging the lake.
The Littlest Heidi heard the news as it spread through the opera company, and managed to be glad for she was a girl with a good heart; David Tremayne, who heard it from Thisbe Purse, who heard it from the Archduchess Frederica’s maid, managed to be glad too for it appalled him to think that when she left here, Tessa would no longer have a home.
Guy Farne heard it from Nerine.
‘They’re engaged, Guy! Tessa and the Prince of Spittau! Isn’t it splendid news!’ And indeed, Nerine’s lovely face glowed with happiness. Not only was the princess leaving the castle for good but she was marrying someone else! No more dramatic entrances, no more of those friendly, intimate looks at Guy, those boring conversations about music from which Nerine had felt herself excluded.
‘Yes,’ said Guy. ‘I’d heard. Or rather seen. I’m sure they will suit each other excellently.’
He then excused himself to go to the gymnasium. His morning’s squash and tennis, the long ride, having naturally left him short of exercise, Guy now indulged in a ferocious bout of fencing with a young cavalry officer who, having taken on the Englishman out of politeness, found himself two hours later thoroughly trounced. It was as Guy was returning to his room, showered and sleek and unpleasantly vulpine looking, that he found the double doors of the theatre open and Witzler’s under wardrobe mistress carrying a wicker skip out to the waiting lorry.
The sight of her small figure in the same smock, packing up as though nothing had happened, as though she was still the unassuming child he had befriended in Vienna, made him suddenly choke with an almost blinding rage.
‘I have to congratulate you, then,’ he said, blocking her path. ‘And indeed you are most heartily to be congratulated. You certainly took me in, in a most impressive way. You know, I actually believed what you said.’
