The Novel in the Viola

by Natasha Solomons

  Dear Mr Editor,

  I am the daughter of the famous Viennese novelist Julian Landau, described in the Vienna Times as ‘certainly the city’s strangest writer’ which I am sure you will agree is very a big compliment. By a stroke of magic fortune I have with me in England his latest manuscript. If you are interested, I can send it to you. It might take me a week or two, as it is presently hidden inside a viola for very safekeeping. I am most willing to take onboard his translation.

  Yours etc.

  Climbing back into bed, I was warm with hope, confident that Julian had sent with me the means to procure his own escape. As I slept, the song of the viola mingled with the rush of the tide.

  If February was cold, March was quiet. I missed Poppy’s chatter and I took my walks alone. I pounded across the hills or along the rain-lashed beaches with my sister’s letters in my coat pocket, reading and re-reading until I was word perfect. I hated corresponding via letter – the conversation was too slow. I felt Margot and I were two old ladies, stuttering out our thoughts, with pauses the size of the Atlantic between each idea. I told her about the sale of the gold chains, but not about the novel in the viola. Perhaps I ought to have told her, but we are all wise with hindsight. It was my secret and unless the publisher summoned me to remove the pages from the viola, I chose to remain silent. She wrote eager letters guessing the value of the gold, and I replied, speculating on the number of weeks it would take for the visa to arrive. Sometimes I liked to sit at the pinnacle of Tyneford cap, the hardy hillside sheep grazing the slope below – the bells around their necks tinkling in the wind – and gaze at the blue clouds rushing across the sky, their shadows trawling the hill like great outstretched nets.

  I perched on the low stone wall beside Flower’s Barrow and read with growing disappointment the reply from the London publisher:

  Dear Miss Landau,

  Thank you for the invitation to read Herr Landau’s latest novel. While I am most intrigued by the notion of a novel smuggled inside a viola, I’m afraid there is simply little demand for German novels in England at the present time – even in translation. I am sure you understand.

  Thank you for considering us.

  Yours etc.

  March brought gales that hurled tiles off the stable roof, and sent Art up rocking ladders to nail them back into place. Snowdrops sprang up beneath the hedgerows and brown banks, and yellow and purple crocuses studded the lawns before Tyneford House, opening and closing in the sun like the mouths of hungry chicks. Spring arrived, causing the tulips to sprout in the terracotta pots on the terrace and blonde primroses to unfurl on the sunny banks. The fishermen took to their boats in droves – happy as the cackling coots that milder weather had returned. I watched the boats and birds from the cliffs or from my high roost on Tyneford cap. One afternoon, a month or so after Poppy’s departure, I sprawled in my usual spot on the cap, watching with Art’s binoculars as a rough-legged buzzard soared and then hovered, wings pulsing. I lay on my back, transfixed by the bird’s black belly and vast outstretched wings, and lost all track of time. Then the church bells chimed three, and I shot up with a start. I was late. Binoculars slapping against my coat, I raced down to the house, skidding on stones and mud, scattering the bleating sheep as I ran. I arrived at the back of the house in twenty minutes, face bright red and glistening, shoes caked in muck. I paused in the driveway to catch my breath, bending over to stretch out the stitch in my side. As I straightened, I noticed a silver Wolseley gleaming beside the front door. Kit lolled beside it, smoking a cigarette. Without a thought, I bounded up to him and threw my arms around his neck.

  ‘You’re back. Thank goodness you’re back.’

  He chuckled and allowed me to embrace him, making no effort to disentangle himself. ‘So you did miss me?’

  I stood back. ‘Well. It’s been awfully quiet without you. Especially now Poppy’s gone.’

  Before he could reply, a slight figure in a tan-coloured Burberry raincoat came out into the driveway, putting up a small, gloved hand to shield her eyes from the sharp spring sunshine.

  ‘Oh, that’s still here,’ said Diana, with a scornful glance in my direction. ‘I thought it was fired.’

  I balled my hands into fists and said nothing. I needed Mr Rivers to help me, not dismiss me for impertinence.

  ‘Stop it, Di,’ said Kit. ‘Her name is Elise, as you jolly well know. Play nice.’

  He leant forward and whispered in my ear, ‘Sorry. Part of my penance. Being charming to Diana Hamilton. Taking her out to lunch and being gentlemanly. Tough act. But she’s all right really.’

  That I rather doubted. I excused myself, and disappeared into the house to prepare tea.

  Now, in front of Kit, Diana was polite to me. She’d clearly decided that to insult and ridicule the housemaid was not the way to endear herself (even if said housemaid was jumped up and frightful). During that first tea I decided, irrevocably, that Diana was not all right. She had not improved, whatever steel wool she had pulled over Kit’s eyes. As I poured Earl Grey into china cups, Diana giggled. Not at me, but at some remark of Kit’s. In fact, she never ceased giggling – she was like one of those rattling birds out on the marshes. Everything he said was a scream. She simpered and pouted, while I scowled and huffed and tried not to drop the biscuits. Kit could be quite amusing, but Diana was making herself ridiculous. Or at least, I hoped she was. I scrutinised him for his response, but Kit was staring lazily across the lawns to the sea.

  ‘I’m glad to be home. I’ve missed you,’ he murmured.

  I wasn’t sure if he spoke to the house itself, to Tyneford or to me.

  As it had last summer, Kit’s arrival woke up the household. We’d all become dreary and reconciled to our shabbiness over the dull winter, but Kit’s presence rushed warmth into every corner. As well as Diana, he’d brought Juno and a couple of chaps from college. While she helped me wash up the tea things, Mrs Ellsworth complained that young Mr Kit couldn’t go nowhere without a crowd. I said nothing, and dunked a floral teacup in the soapsuds, but I suspected that he was eager to avoid those long hours alone with his father. It was always better when there was an Eddie or a Teddy or a George to prevent those awkward tête-à-têtes of mutual disappointment.

  On his first evening at home, Kit lumbered into the great hall with Art and Burt, lugging half a tree among the three of them. Ignoring Mrs Ellsworth’s cries of concern for the polished floor, or Mr Wrexham’s fears that the chimney had not been swept these forty years, he stoked up a roaring bonfire in the massive stone grate. The chimney drew just fine, and the crackling hulk of oak sent tongues of heat rushing through the house. At Kit’s insistence, we all gathered in front of the blaze, staff as well as ladies and gentlemen. Kit doled out glasses of pink gin to everyone and, as we sipped, the damp limestone plaster and spotted wallpaper was transfigured into snug magnificence. Even Mr Wrexham smiled and patted my arm. Mr Rivers and Kit brought out the old gramophone from the drawing room into the hall, and everybody, servants and society girls, danced to Cole Porter as the fire roared. The ladies and gentlemen danced on one side of the panelled hall and the staff on the other. I hesitated in the darkness beneath a portrait of a sallow-skinned chap in a frock-coat. I couldn’t dance. Not here, not after last time. Kit bobbed with Juno, while Diana danced with Mr Rivers. I smiled at the spectacle and sniffed at my pink gin.

  ‘Will you do me the honour?’ said Mr Wrexham, with a kind smile.

  I was so grateful, I could have wept. We moved to where Mrs Ellsworth stood up with Burt, and Henry bopped with May. It all felt rather jolly and twelfth-nightish. The telephone in Mr Rivers’ library began to ring, and Mr Wrexham excused himself to answer it. He returned a few minutes later and confided something to Mr Rivers. Mr Rivers listened gravely, spoke a few words to the butler, who then glided over to the gramophone and lifted off the needle, so that the music stuttered into silence. There were disgruntled objections from the ladies and gentlemen, who continued dancing for a beat
or two, until Mr Rivers held up his hand for quiet.

  ‘My estate manager has telephoned. He has just heard on the wireless that Hitler has invaded Czechoslovakia.’

  There was a pause, an intake of breath, and then an explosion of chatter. Diana hung onto Kit’s arm while Mrs Ellsworth clasped May’s pudgy hand, her face quite white. Mr Rivers slipped away to the library, and I followed him. He stood with his back to me, fiddling with the tuning on the wireless.

  ‘Mr Rivers? Were you able to help us?’

  He jumped as he heard my voice.

  ‘Christ. Don’t creep up on a man like that. It’s uncanny.’

  I shrugged. ‘Mr Wrexham usually complains I’m a galumpher.’

  He gave a tight smile and sat down in his battered chair, pouring the pink gin into a pot plant beside the window and helping himself to whisky from the decanter.

  ‘It’s not as easy as you might think, Elise. They really don’t like your father’s books in Austria, or in Berlin for that matter. The bribe is heftier than I could ever have imagined.’

  I felt oddly calm. The world grew quiet around me, while at the same time I could hear the rhythmic tick-tick of the grandfather clock in the hall, a deep echo of the smaller one in our Viennese apartment. I smelt Hildegard’s cooking: roasting lamb fat and celery salt as her meatballs wrapped in white cabbage leaves sizzled in the oven. I listened to the twin clocks beating two sets of time, and heard my voice ask, ‘But Mr Freud? They hated his books and they let him go.’

  Mr Rivers sighed. ‘Yes. But Mr Freud is very famous outside of Austria. Your father has fewer friends.’

  I remembered Anna’s pearls. ‘I still have a necklace. I can sell it.’

  Mr Rivers took a gulp of whisky. ‘It won’t do any good. I’m talking thousands of Reichsmarks.’

  Before I could speak, the gentlemen surged into the library, Diana and Juno following in their wake, filling the room with bustle and noise.

  ‘Shall we listen then, my good fellow?’ said Eddie, though it may have been George. Kit thumped the wireless and the bells of Big Ben came over the airwaves.

  ‘I feel quite sick,’ declared Juno. ‘I suppose there’ll have to be a war now. One does think that they could sort it out between them without bringing us into it all.’

  ‘Does anyone have a cigarette?’ asked Diana, sinking onto the window seat.

  I looked back at Mr Rivers and, seeing him swarmed with people, realised our conversation was finished. I didn’t need to hear the news on the wireless. I slid out of the room and into the now empty hall. Mr Wrexham was clearing the empty glasses. He stopped when he saw me.

  ‘It’s past midnight. You may retire if you wish.’

  I had not been asked to act as lady’s maid to Diana and Juno on this visit. To our mutual relief – I suspected.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Wrexham.’

  I hastened along the servants’ corridor and up the back stairs to my attic room. I lay in the darkness listening to the constant rush of the sea. Thousands of Reichsmarks. Thousands. I whispered the words aloud again and again, as though I could conjure such a sum out of the night. The house was still and full of sleepers. I padded through the silent hall and into the library. I scanned the bookshelves and, finding what I wanted, reached up and drew down The Spinsters’ Dowry by Julian Landau, before creeping into the drawing room. The curtains were open and the moon filled the room with cold light, bright enough to read by. I sat cross-legged on the floor, the book open on my lap. It was not my favourite of Julian’s novels and Anna actively disliked it, complaining it was unkind. That was why I wanted it with me tonight. With this book in my hands, I could hear my parents row. The three virgin spinsters were the great-aunts. Julian described them in cruel detail, down to the single hair sprouting from the round mole on Gretta’s chin. Only in the book she was called Gertrude. Julian insisted that the aunts were transformed by fiction and Gretta, Gerda and Gabrielle (real life) had nothing to do with Gertrude, Grunhilda and Griselda (novel). Anna and the aunts remained unconvinced. When Julian attempted to justify himself over coffee and sachertorte, Gretta grumbled that she did not wish for her wart to be immortalised for eternity. After the aunts withdrew, dignity wounded, a fight echoed through the apartment. To Margot’s and my tremendous delight, Anna threw a series of Meissen plates at Julian. We cheered her on from round the nursery door, wondering if she’d succeed in hitting and killing him – ‘Do you think we shall be orphans? Will Mama wear lipstick in prison?’ It was terribly thrilling.

  I had understood Anna and the aunts’ fury – they were not angered by Julian’s lies but by his honesty. He ought not to have stolen from life, but tonight I was grateful he had. As I shivered on the floor in the drawing room of an English country house a thousand miles from Vienna, I could see my aunts in the pages of the book. They smiled up at me, offering me sugar biscuits and grumbling over the supercilious waiters at Café Sperl. I have no photographs of the aunts, and so they seem almost characters from a children’s story – a clutch of creased fairy godmothers, fond of linzertorte and nieces – not quite belonging to the modern world. Yet they are preserved between the pages of Julian’s novel like the crushed wings of a butterfly.

  That night I read for hours, pretending I was among my family. Julian and Anna lazed on the sofa, Anna resting her blonde head in his lap.

  ‘I wouldn’t have come here, if I’d known you’d be stuck,’ I said, frowning at them.

  Anna smiled. ‘What would you have done, little Bean? Sat and fretted with us?’

  I shifted on the floor. ‘We are all supposed to be in New York. It isn’t supposed to happen this way.’

  The vision of my mother was unchanged: the same tiny crease between her eyes, same half-smile.

  ‘I hope the novel in the viola is about you and me and Margot. Only in the book we’ll be much more glamorous. I’ll be thinner and two inches taller. Margot will be just the same. Julian will sport a twirling moustache and you will wear ankle boots and smoke cigarillos. And Kit—’

  ‘But we don’t know Kit,’ said Julian.

  No, you don’t, I thought and the mirage vanished like mist in sunshine. I would have to be up in a few hours to light the fires and clean the house. I struggled to my feet, and began to pace up and down the drawing room, trying to exhaust myself so that I could sleep. Perhaps I should start to clean now – then at least some of it would be done in the morning. I fished a handkerchief out of my pyjama pocket and started to dab at the picture frames. I worked my way round the mantelpiece, wafting the cloth at the miniature portraits, frocked ladies with high collars and lace caps, men in wigs and regimentals, a wide-eyed beauty with dazzling décolletage, her powdered wig set with pearls. I moved to the Turner seascape, ready to flick dust from its gilt edges, but the painting was gone. I blinked, and rubbed my eyes. Was it always here? I ached with tiredness and my mind felt doughy and unclear. Yes. The Turner hung on this wall, far enough away from the fire that it didn’t get smoke damage, and out of the sunlight that streamed in through the southerly windows. Without a doubt, the painting had gone.

  I sat on a baize sofa and stared at the empty wall. It wasn’t like the bare walls in our Vienna apartment, when I thought of those I raged with unhappiness. This was different. Hope nudged inside me. The painting wasn’t lost or stolen or re-hung in another part of the house. Mr Rivers had sold it. He was going to help us. Anna and Julian were coming to Tyneford.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Miss Landau

  At six o’clock the following morning, I slipped into Kit’s bedroom. It was warm enough that the gentlemen no longer had fires lit in their rooms – ladies such as Diana and Juno would insist upon them in blazing June. I was quite safe, but I locked the door just to be certain. The room held a sharp scent of sweat and cigarettes. Kit sprawled in the large white bed, a foot poking out from beneath the blankets, his blond head half hidden beneath a pile of pillows. I listened for a moment to the rhythmic sounds of his breath and
tiptoed across to the window and peeked out across the striped lawn towards the hill. An early morning haar rolled down the valley, thick as smoke. The sun glowed through, a gold coin in a shroud. With a flick, I flung open the curtains wide and bright light spilt into the room, shining on the figure in the bed. I stepped back from the window, in case Mr Wrexham or anyone should happen to be walking in the gardens.

  ‘Kit.’

  He didn’t stir.

  ‘Kit.’

  Nothing.

  I sat on the bed, and reached out to touch a bare arm lightly dusted with pale hair. My fingertips brushed warm skin. ‘Kit.’ A hand clasped my wrist and drew me onto the bed.

  ‘Fancy meeting you here,’ said Kit, suddenly wide awake. He pulled me closer. ‘This isn’t very wise, you know. If I decided to be wicked, you couldn’t really object.’

  He scrutinised me for a moment and then yawned. ‘Don’t suppose you brought tea and aspirin by any chance?’

  I ignored him and tried to sit up but he kept a firm grasp on my wrist and I was forced to turn my head, so that I was lying beside him, his face only an inch from mine.

  ‘Kit. Tell me it’s true. That Mr Rivers has sold the painting. That he’s really going to help Anna and Julian.’

  He released me, and propped himself up on the pillows and stared out over the green lawns.

  ‘Well, it’s not been sold yet. He wanted to make sure I didn’t mind. My inheritance and what-not.’

  ‘And do you mind?’

  Kit didn’t answer. He bent over me and kissed me on the lips, his fingers curving around the back of my neck, pulling me into him. And suddenly I wasn’t thinking about Anna or Julian, only Kit. He bit my lip and I cried out, although it did not hurt. He smiled down at me.