On the top shelf, a large bowl of creamy custard rested under a glass dome, and beside it lay a tray of herb potatoes. I decided that these would do very well, and unfolding the creaking steps, climbed up to retrieve my prize. I carried them back to the kitchen table and settled down with a large spoon. I was less than halfway through the custard and hadn’t even begun upon the potatoes, when the door creaked open and Hildegard appeared in her flannel nightie and cap. She drew up a chair and sat with me as I licked the back of the spoon. She did not chide me for my nocturnal raid (I’d had my ears boxed for less) and instead seemed to consider that this was the last time she needed to worry about her pigtailed thief.
She surveyed me from under hooded lids. ‘I’ve some marzipan. You want it on toast?’
I nodded and pushed the custard bowl aside. She heaved herself to her feet, unwrapped a loaf of bread, sawed off a thin slice and lit the grill.
‘You’re to take Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management with you,’ she said, with her back to me. ‘I’ve circled my favourite passages.’
‘But it’s huge.’
‘The English are different from us. Mrs Beeton will help you.’
I knew that this was not an argument I could win. I may refuse to take the book. I might refuse to pack it. I may even padlock my trunk. But I knew, with the same certainty I had that it would take two bowls of creamy custard before I was sick, that when I opened my trunk in London, the red-bound Mrs Beeton would be nestled among my knickers.
‘Fine. I’ll take it.’
There was a thud and the book landed on the table next to the bowl. I toyed with the idea of dropping yellow cream on it, but the truth was I knew it would take more than this to defeat Hildegard. I was too tired to read, but as I turned the pages a musty stench seeped into the kitchen. I suspected this was also the smell of old English houses. Sandwiched between two leaves was a thin piece of worn paper. I pulled it out and read the English inscription: ‘To Mrs Roberts and her Sweetheart and House-band from a sincere and hearty well-wisher, May there be just sufficient clouds in one’s life to make a spectacular sunset.’
I closed the book in disgust, hiding the paper. Hildegard was right: the English were different. On the occasion of a wedding, they wished one another unhappiness. And to talk about sunsets at the beginning of a marriage – it was all very distasteful. I was certain that such behaviour broke all sorts of rules of etiquette. Hildegard slapped in front of me a plate of toast with melting butter, thin slivers of marzipan sliced on top. I took a large bite and closed my eyes in contentment. Anna and Julian were asleep across the hall; the water pipes whined and groaned. I wanted to stay here forever, eating toast while my parents slept.
I have thought about that last night a hundred, no a thousand times since, but I have never written it down before. And I find I like the permanence of the words upon the page. Julian and Anna are cradled safely in my words, caught up in paper dreams. I could leave memory aside and slide into fiction. There is nothing to prevent me from writing them a whole other story, the one I wished for them. But I don’t and I steal away, returning to the clamour of the present, the gardener asking about the geraniums, the postman arriving with a package, and I leave my parents asleep on a cool spring morning in Dorotheegasse long ago.
CHAPTER FIVE
The wrong door
London was cold. I’d left Vienna as spring was creeping into the city parks – pools of fallen blossom lay on the grass, while tulips and forget-me-nots filled the flowerbeds, shining under the cool morning sun. A rancid layer of coal fog encased the whole of London and the city was bathed in yellow dark; a perpetual half-light, neither dawn nor dusk. The sun lost its heat and London lingered in a false winter. To my eyes, the people were grey and covered in a film of smog. They hurried everywhere, eyes downcast in the streets, never pausing to take in the beauty of a morning like they did in Vienna, but scurrying about their business, eager to escape into their houses.
I don’t recall much about the hostel where I spent my first night in England, except that it was in Great Portland Street, beside the synagogue, and filled with frightened girls from Vienna, Berlin, Frankfurt and Cologne. We’d all been terrified into speaking only English, but since we could not, we were silent. The mute girls watched me as I darted from the hallway to the shared toilet, eyes following me like Anna’s portrait at home. The hostel was funded by some Jewish philanthropists and provided free bed and board to girls newly arrived from Europe. We were permitted to take no valuables or money with us as we left, and arrived on the doorstep of the hostel with nothing but our clothes and bags stuffed with books and letters and stockings – a lifetime of mementos of things left behind. The landlady insisted that my trunk be locked in a store on the ground floor, complaining that it was far too heavy to lug up to the top of the house. At least, that was what I’d understood when she’d surveyed my battered trunk and suitcases, and hissed words at me in a torrent as harsh and baffling as the squawk of an angry goose. I didn’t have the English to argue, so I clasped my satchel and the viola case and shuffled up the stairs to bed.
Undressing, I discovered every part of my skin that had been exposed to the air was coated in a slick of grime. I stood at the washbasin in the narrow room, scrubbing at my hands, face and neck with a bar of marble soap until my flesh was red raw. The bedroom curtains were stained and the windows nailed shut, but through the tiny gap in the casement the fog snuck in like wisps of smoke, and when I coughed, it was black in my linen handkerchief. Anna had urged me to visit the sights, to walk along the Mall, explore Trafalgar Square and peek at the great opera house in Covent Garden, but I did not want to leave my tiny room, fearing that outside I would choke. Once, in a science class, my teacher had sliced open the lungs of a pig. They glistened pink and I’d imagined the pig living happily in the countryside breathing in lungfuls of grass-laced air, until its unfortunate end. My first night in London, I perched on the edge of the wooden bunk, and thought of my own lungs, no longer pig pink but slowly turning black, like a bruised fingernail.
I had only a small leather satchel with my wash things and a change of underwear, but when I opened it, I found Margot had stuffed chocolate bars and a romance novel at the bottom. I knew it was she; Hildegard never approved of shop-bought sweets, and the book smelt of Margot’s violet perfume. As I breathed in the familiar scent, I experienced a pang of homesickness so intense that it made me retch. I did the only thing I could to make myself feel better – I ate the chocolate bars. Not one, but all of them. I curled up on the hard bunk, too afraid to remove my clothes, having heard the tales of lice and gruesome bed bugs, and crammed the chocolate into my mouth, two bars at once. I knew Margot or Anna would have saved them, nibbled a corner, careful to preserve for as long as possible this little relic of home. At this thought of my more sensible mother and sister I began to cry, but my mouth was still full of chocolate and I wept with dribbles of brown trickling down my chin, and felt the indignity of my fate. I determined not to leave the room until it was time to go to the Mayfair Private Service Agency and lay on the bed reading, eating chocolate and craving home so badly that I thought I might die.
After breakfast (weak tea, stale bread, orange-coloured jam) I walked to Mayfair. I clutched the letter from Mrs Ellsworth in my hand; I had read and re-read it a dozen times, but could glean nothing about the writer. Her instructions were quite clear: I must go to Audley Street. I did not know how far it was and I did not know how to ask for a ticket for one of the trams or omnibuses that clanked up and down the streets. I had visions of either being ejected from a moving vehicle for having paid the wrong fare and landing on the ground in a crack of broken bones, or being whisked away to another part of the city, where I would be lost forever, unable to find my way back to Great Portland Street. I buttoned up my coat and adjusted my favourite emerald silk scarf (the one that Anna told me brought out the colour in my brown-green eyes) and made sure that I had on a clean pair of gloves.
> I lingered outside the black door on Audley Street. It was freshly painted and a brass knocker gleamed, the front steps still wet from having been newly scrubbed. I closed my eyes and thought of how Anna had to play all different kinds of women, and resolved that I would do the same. Yes, I should be Violetta, the courtesan/whore adored by men, indifferent to the undignified flurries of public opinion – and also my favourite heroine of all time. Thus, imagining myself to be a debonair nineteenth-century harlot, I entered the Mayfair Private Service Agency.
I found myself in a room decorated in white and gilt, red velvet sofas piled high with tasselled cushions and a thick, plush pile carpet. There was a delicious aroma of coffee and freshly baked pastries, and my mouth watered. I stood there, as I considered Violetta would have stood, haughty, impervious, and I must have been quite good as a smart woman in a staunch black frock sailed towards me across the carpet, her face fixed with a practised smile – polite, professional, with a twist of subservience.
‘Madam, may I take your coat?’
Not deigning to speak, I allowed her to remove my jacket from my shoulders and usher me to one of the sumptuous sofas.
‘Some coffee? A little cake perhaps?’ she asked, as soon as I was comfortably settled.
I felt a little puff of relief. These were questions I had answered many times in my English lessons with Anna.
‘Yes, if you please. I would very much like some café.’
She froze. Her tight smile, no longer quite so polite, contracted even tighter.
‘You are from Germany?’
‘Austria. Vienna.’
‘And you are looking for a maid?’
I smiled at her pleasantly, practising indifference and fished out the crumpled letter from my skirt pocket.
‘I am Fraulein . . . excusing me . . . Miss Elise Landau, and I am to Tyneford House.’
The woman’s smile disappeared altogether and she reached out and hauled me up from the sofa with a strong hand, as I realise now, clearly furious at her mistake. How could she have been tricked into treating a refugee, a servant, with the grovelling respect due to an English lady? It was outrageous.
‘You came through the wrong door. This entrance is for ladies only.’
She thrust my coat at me. ‘Go outside and enter through the other door.’
I stared at her, rooted to my spot on the carpet, left arm in the right sleeve of my coat, and tried to remember that I was not Elise but Violetta. I remembered that envious women were always trying to humiliate Violetta (as well as steal her boyfriends, all while she was dying of consumption) and felt a little better. My coat trailing across the ground behind me, I performed my best flounce, and left.
Standing outside on the pavement, I leant against the railings and looked about for another entrance. A flight of steps led down into a basement, and at the bottom, set into a flaking wall, was another black door. It had no brass knocker, only a sign saying PLEASE WALK IN. I descended the stairs, taking care not to slip on the rotting leaves caught in the treads.
There were no sofas, plush carpets or gilt mirrors in this room. Peeling brown linoleum covered the floor and low wooden benches were set against each wall. Girls sat on one side and a few men on the opposite. Glancing along the row, I realised that all the girls looked like me: pale-faced refugees, anxious and yet remembering mother’s command to sit up straight, expensive gloves clasped between damp fingers. An older couple, he in a well-cut suit and she in a fur stole, sat together on the women’s bench, hand in hand. They looked like they were about to go out for lunch, rather than serve it. I wondered what he had been before: a banker? A violinist? Would she set down her fur on the counter before setting to peeling carrots?
At the end of the room a grey-haired woman in half-moon spectacles sat conducting interviews behind a plain wooden desk. As I wondered if I ought to stride over, slide my letter onto the desk and demand the promised assistance, a pimply faced boy of about fourteen winked at me and, catching my eye, slid his tongue across his teeth in a slow curve. In Vienna I would have slapped him or, more likely, he would not have dared make such a lascivious gesture to a girl like me. But I was not in Vienna and I shrank against the wall, suddenly exhausted. I was no Violetta. I was only Elise, and defeated I took my place at the end of the bench beside the other girls.
I must have sat there for several hours, watching a moth bash its paper wings against the dangling electric light fitting. Every twenty minutes, the woman behind the desk would call out ‘Next maid!’ or ‘Next manservant!’, taking care to alternate between the sexes. I watched the couple go up to the desk together and managed to eavesdrop the odd word: ‘a situation together . . . butler . . . housekeeper . . . yes, I suppose, gardener and cook would do . . .’ When the pimple-faced boy walked past me to take his turn at the desk, I glared at him, doing my utmost to radiate cool disapproval. Hildegard was an expert in this, especially when Julian left cigar butts beside the bathtub; afterwards she’d leave them in a soggy heap in an ashtray outside his study – she couldn’t scold him but she let her disgust be felt. But I clearly lacked Hildegard’s genius, because when the boy sauntered by me on his way back to the door, he blew me a kiss. I was outraged at his cheek. Frustrated by my inability to issue the tirade of chastisement that he deserved, I stuck out my tongue. Our eyes met for a moment, and I saw in his a light of triumph.
‘Next maid . . . You. To the desk.’
It took me a moment to realise that the woman with the half-moon spectacles and the ramrod back was calling to me. My cheeks burning, I hurried to the desk and sat down. She peered at me with small blue eyes.
‘Manners, please. You may be appointed to one of the finest establishments in all of England. Or Scotland,’ she added, as an afterthought. ‘Do you have any experience in domestic service?’
I stared at her, slowly translating her words in my head.
‘Well,’ she demanded, impatient. ‘Cat caught your tongue?’
This was such a strange expression that I giggled in spite of myself, and then realising my mistake, slapped my hand in front of my mouth. Hastily, I pulled out Mrs Ellsworth’s crumpled epistle from my pocket and pushed it across the table. She read in silence and then looked up at me.
‘Well, you are a very lucky girl, Elise. Mr Rivers comes from a fine old family. Not titled, but ancient nonetheless. You must try to be deserving of his faith in you,’ she said in a tone that revealed she thought this most unlikely. ‘I don’t want to see you back again in a week or two because the work was hard. I had a woman in a month back who said she’d been a countess or something. Said she’d never even put on her own stockings before and if we wasn’t in the midst of such a servant shortage, I would have sent her packing. But then this morning I got a note from Mrs Forde, saying that Mrs Baronstein was the best char she’d ever had.’
She gazed at me across the table and I realised that some response was required, but once again I found myself imprisoned by my lack of language, unable to utter a word. Realising that I had nothing to say, and presumably taking me for an impertinent wretch, she stood up very straight and pushed back her chair. It squealed against the linoleum like a kicked dog. She disappeared into a side room, returning a minute later with an envelope, which she thrust at me. ‘Here. Take this. There are sufficient funds for your journey and instructions. You are to take the 8:17 train from Waterloo to Weymouth tomorrow morning. You will be met at Wareham station.’
She studied me for a moment, before adding, ‘I know exactly how much money is in that envelope so don’t go telling Mrs Ellsworth that it was not enough, or I shall find you out, so-help-me-God.’
I snatched up my letter and, stuffing it into my coat pocket along with the money, strolled past the benches of waiting refugees and former countesses.
Lying on the narrow bed that night, still wearing my now crumpled clothes, I sobbed myself to sleep. I had never really cried before coming to London. Several months ago, trying to avoid Hildegard’s wrath
after having stolen a wing off a cold chicken intended for Anna’s bridge ladies’ luncheon, I had stubbed my toe so hard on the kitchen table that it made my eyes water, but not actually cry.
After the meeting at the Mayfair Agency I had gone to the post office to send Anna a wire, like I had promised. While I waited in yet another queue (I had experienced more standing in polite, shuffle-legged lines in my first thirty-six hours in England than ever before in my life), I composed the telegram in my head:
ENGLISH FRIGHTFUL STOP COMING HOME STOP
Or perhaps:
AM ACCUSED OF THIEVERY STOP ESCAPING TO NEW YORK STOP
And yet, somehow the message I sent when I reached the counter was:
ALL WELL STOP DEPART FOR TYNEFORD TOMORROW STOP ENGLISH CHARMING STOP
At eight-nineteen the next morning, I sat in the third-class carriage of the Weymouth train as it chugged out of Waterloo. My trunk and suitcase were stashed in the luggage car, while I sat sandwiched between two matronly ladies, and to my chagrin, every time the train lurched left or right I was propelled into the bosom of one or other. Neither lady appeared to notice, but I was extremely glad when one disembarked at Croydon and I was able to slide up to the window seat. I pressed my face against the glass, and through my own reflection I watched the sprawl of London stretch on and on. I had never seen so much grey in my life; the only pinprick of colour was the odd red sweater or yellow frock, fluttering amongst the dull whites on the washing-lines. The small terraced houses backing onto the railway, with their ragged patchwork gardens and dirt-encrusted windows, reminded me of the glimpse into my old neighbours’ lives in the apartment across the street. Boys in shorts scrabbled in the dust and lobbed pebbles at the passing train as women scolded them from doorways. All the chimneypots belched smoke and the leaves on the stunted shrubs beside the tracks were black instead of green. I kept my ticket anxiously clasped in my palm, and it grew sticky with sweat, the ink starting to run.
The Novel in the Viola Page 4
