The English Girl

by Margaret Leroy

  Rainer turns to take his seat at the head of the table. He settles himself, pours wine.

  ‘So, Stella, you’re studying at the Academy, I believe?’ he says.

  ‘Yes. I’m very fortunate.’

  ‘And very talented, surely.’

  I make a slight, self-deprecating gesture. Embarrassed.

  ‘Now, Stella, I know you must be. I very much look forward to hearing you play … And when do you have your first lesson?’ he asks.

  ‘Tomorrow morning.’

  Thinking of this, I feel a flicker of nervousness move through me.

  Janika brings in the meal – duck with pickled red cabbage. As we eat, Marthe talks about Vienna, and all the sights I should see: the Kunsthistorisches Museum, where there are many fine paintings; the marvellous Schönbrunn Palace.

  Rainer puts his cutlery down and leans a little towards me. He has his hands clasped together – graceful hands with long fingers, knuckles with the white, polished look of river stones.

  ‘Vienna is still beautiful. You’ll see that, Stella. Very beautiful. But of course she isn’t as once she was, in the days of empire,’ he says.

  ‘No, it must all be very different…’

  I read a little before I came here. I know that the Habsburg Empire crumbled at the end of the Great War. That, where once Vienna had ruled an empire of fifty-two million people, now she ruled a little country of only six million. That officials came home to find that the imperial ministries to which they’d sent their meticulous reports no longer existed. That war heroes with many medals were begging for bread in the streets.

  ‘We seem to have lost our way, in the years since the Great War. We’ve become too soft and complacent. We have weak government – no sense of purpose,’ he says.

  His face is stern when he says this.

  ‘Darling, maybe we shouldn’t burden Stella with these troubling matters at dinner,’ says Marthe.

  ‘Really, don’t worry, it’s all so interesting,’ I say.

  For dessert, there’s a chocolate-covered tart, which looks delectable. My mouth waters.

  ‘I like sachertorte,’ says Lukas, in a fat, happy voice.

  ‘I’m sure I’ll love it as well,’ I say. ‘But I’ve never had it before.’

  ‘You’ve never ever had sachertorte?’ He can’t believe this. He’s suddenly intrigued by me, as though I come from some far-off galaxy. ‘Don’t you have pudding in England, Fräulein Stella?’ he asks.

  ‘We do eat pudding – but it’s never like this. My mother makes bread-and-butter pudding sometimes. When there’s some bread and butter left over from tea.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound very nice.’ A little disapproving frown.

  ‘Well, it fills you up if you’re hungry,’ I tell him. ‘But it’s not as nice as this.’

  I smile at him, and he smiles back shyly. I’m pleased I’ve managed to have some conversation with him. I hope that he will like me.

  The chocolate tart is just as delicious as I’d imagined, but so sweet it sets my teeth a little on edge.

  Afterwards, Janika takes Lukas to the nursery, and we have coffee amid the hushed comfort of the drawing room.

  ‘Well, Stella,’ says Rainer, expansively, lighting a cigar. ‘We’re so glad you were able to come and solve our problem for us.’

  I sink back into the sofa, against the plump satin cushions.

  ‘It’s wonderful for me that you could have me,’ I say. ‘Though it must have been so awkward for you, that Verity had to leave.’

  Marthe puts down her coffee cup rather suddenly. It sounds too loud in the saucer – as though at the last moment it had somehow slipped from her grasp. A little coffee spills.

  ‘Oh, I’m so stupid,’ she says.

  She seems disproportionately upset. She mops up the drips with her handkerchief; her lips are pursed, as though she is cross with herself.

  ‘Yes, it was all rather difficult,’ Rainer says smoothly. ‘So imagine how happy we were that you could help us out like this…’

  But the air has a shimmery, rarefied feel. I feel I’ve spoken out of turn. That it might have been better not to mention Verity Miller at all.

  Marthe passes round the Newberry Fruits I gave her. Though after the lavish meal we’ve had, they don’t seem to taste of anything. I don’t understand why I used to like them so much.

  I push my curtains aside for a moment, look out at the dark, silent city. There’s a scattering of white stars, and a moon as yellow as a wolf’s eye. The curtains and blinds are drawn in the opposite windows; as I watch, a woman’s shape glides across a square of apricot light.

  It’s hard to get to sleep. I find myself crying a little, with homesickness. I have such a longing for my mother – wanting to tell her everything that’s happened, to feel her arms around me, then to go to sleep in my bed.

  There’s a silk scarf of hers I’ve brought with me. It’s an old scarf, one she’s had for years, with a pattern of pale flowers, that have a watery look, as though they’re about to dissolve; she’s often let me borrow it. I’ve put it away in the wardrobe, with all my other clothes; but now I go to find it, and hold it to my face. It smells of her, of the Devon Violets talcum powder she uses. I remember how she said goodbye to me at Brockenhurst Railway Station. How she held me too hard, so it hurt, then pushed me onto the train. ‘Go, Stella,’ she said. ‘Get on with you.’ How her voice sounded odd. As I waved to her from the train window, I saw her lips moving; I knew she was praying for me.

  I lie on my pillow, her scarf pressed against me. I close my eyes, but can’t sleep.

  Missing her, feeling her absence, I think too of my father – the sadness welling up in me, as it still does, even now.

  I was ten when he died. It was a Saturday morning – an innocent-looking morning, a day of light mist with a high pale sun like a pearl. We’d hired horses from Mr Foster’s farm in Beaulieu, as we often did on Saturdays. We were riding along the stretch of lane that leads to Hatchet Pond, a twisty lane with high hedges. Just ambling along, chatting about nothing in particular. As though it were just a perfectly ordinary day.

  I remember the sudden surge of sound – a car engine roaring behind us, something rarely heard in those lanes. I turned; saw an open-top car, coming fast. A young man driving, a woman beside him in the passenger seat. I can see every detail, it’s all far too clear, imprinted on my mind for ever. The woman young and lovely, her shiny dark hair flying back. They were laughing: in my memory, I can see their wide-open mouths. I remember it all so vividly: the woman’s blown hair, her red mouth, laughter.

  As the car overtook us, I felt my horse’s twitchiness, the panic passing through her at the unfamiliar sound. I patted her neck, spoke softly to her. ‘Hey, little one, hush there…’ She quietened. But my father’s horse reared up and threw him onto the road. I remember how he fell, his body awkwardly sprawled, his arms and legs at strange angles, as though they were fixed on all wrong; his terrible stillness as he lay there. His stillness as I bent over him and listened for his breath, my tears falling on him. His face was so dirty – I tried to brush the dirt from his skin. Crying, helpless. I remember how the man and the woman drove on. How they didn’t look back.

  I cry about all of it – my father’s death, my mother’s absence, being so far from home.

  I hear the mournful sound of the clock at the Piaristenkirche striking two.

  At last sleep comes.

  6

  Marthe has told me how to get to the Academy. I take the tram to Schottentor, and then Tram 2 round the Ring – the magnificent thoroughfare that encircles the centre of Vienna.

  I peer through the tram window, wide-eyed. There are great baroque palaces, ornate with cherubs, laurel wreaths, flowers; statues of rearing horses and muscular men; fountains. It’s a fast, fresh day, and the spray from the fountains is flung exuberantly high. The sky is a deep, tender blue, the tramlines glisten like silver, the leaves of the lindens along the Ring are touched with
amber and gold. In the lavish autumn sunlight, Vienna seems to flaunt herself, like a beautiful woman who knows she holds everyone’s gaze. Look at me! Look at me! See how lovely I am!

  I get off the tram at Lothringerstrasse.

  The Academy is on the corner; it’s a whitewashed, red-tiled building. I climb the steps to the doors, where artfully dishevelled students are coming and going. I feel a sudden reluctance, an urge to turn back. Almost too afraid to go through with this – the thing I have so longed for. The receptionist directs me to Dr Zaslavsky’s room.

  I climb the stone staircase; students mill around, chatting, laughing. On the first floor, I turn down a corridor. I can hear fragments of music from the practising rooms as I pass – a bright flurry of notes from a flute, a soprano singing a scale in the lightest silvery voice: bits of music snatched away, like pieces of paper torn off. My mouth is dry with nervousness.

  Through a pane of glass in a door, I glimpse a ballet studio. One wall is lined with mirrors, and there’s a group of girls at the barre, their feet precise and perfect in satin dancing shoes. I’ve always loved ballet. I had pictures of ballerinas on my bedroom wall at home – Anna Pavlova, Alicia Markova. I’m early for my lesson, and I stay and watch for a moment.

  One of the girls in the ballet class catches my eye. She has chestnut-brown hair in a stylish bob; her lips are a bold, lipsticked red. I would so love to look like her. As I watch she performs an arabesque, her face gleaming with sweat, her movements immaculate, raising her leg impossibly high.

  I find the room where Dr Zaslavsky teaches. He is waiting for me, sitting by the piano. He stands, and kisses my hand.

  ‘So, Fräulein Whittaker. You have settled in Vienna?’

  ‘Yes. I’m staying with some friends of my mother’s,’ I say.

  ‘Excellent.’

  He’s just as I remembered – hunched and creased and shrunken. But in the seamed, shrivelled face, the ardent, youthful eyes.

  ‘Well, it’s time to start working, Fräulein Whittaker. Are you ready for that?’

  ‘Yes. Absolutely.’

  ‘So what will you play me today?’

  I’ve brought the pieces I played when he came to Mrs Slater’s house; when he said I had the potential to be extremely expressive. Chopin, John Ireland. I open up the Chopin, start to play.

  He stops me almost at once. It seems that everything about my performance is wrong – the way I hold my hands, my posture, all of it. My wrists are too high, my back too stiff, my use of the pedals all wrong.

  He frowns.

  ‘We will need to take your technique apart, Fräulein Whittaker,’ he tells me. ‘We will need to begin at the beginning again.’

  It’s what I came for. But there’s a feeling like lead in my stomach.

  ‘Then we will need to look at your phrasing,’ he tells me. ‘The expression. You still play like a talented child, not a woman … But first, your technique. Technique is the foundation of everything. Without good technique, you have nothing…’

  He doesn’t set me any music that I can enjoy – none of the Chopin or Liszt that I love. Instead, I have three ferocious Czerny studies to learn.

  I cross the road and walk towards the tram-stop, through the windy brightness of the morning. I feel unravelled. The sun still shines, but for me all the gloss is gone from the day. Tears well up, and I’m ashamed: I don’t want people to see me crying.

  I come to Beethovenplatz. It’s a dusty square planted with plane trees; their branches are hung with dried seed-cases, and their leaves are turning to bronze. There’s a statue of Beethoven, looking sullen.

  I sit on the steps in front of the statue, which are white with bird droppings. Everything’s new and different here; even the smell of the wind is different. My hair blows over my face and I can’t be bothered to push it away. Was I really right to come here? Do I belong in this city of music? Was I just deluding myself when I thought I could play?

  Students from the Academy are strolling through Beethovenplatz. They seem so vivid and certain, as though they all know exactly where they are headed. I feel utterly separate from them – so lost and far from home.

  One of the students catches my eye; she’s the girl I saw in the ballet class, the one with glossy bobbed hair. She’s wearing a hat like a man’s fedora, of a gorgeous colour midway between purple and black, like over-ripe damsons, and she has a shapely little suit and shoes with very high heels. The colours of her clothes sing out.

  A fierce gust of wind sweeps my hair from my face and swirls the leaves on the pavement. The girl’s hat blows off and comes cartwheeling across the ground to me. I don’t have to do anything; it lands like a gift in my lap. The girl comes running after it. I’m amazed she can move so fluidly in such high-heeled shoes.

  I hold the hat out to her. As she bends, I breathe in her scent: she smells like peach preserves.

  ‘Thanks,’ she says, a smile unfurling over her face. ‘I thought it had gone for good. I’d have wept buckets. I’m awfully shallow like that.’

  ‘I’m glad I could help,’ I tell her, politely. And wish that I could think of something witty to say.

  She pulls on the hat, peers down at me.

  ‘I haven’t seen you before,’ she says.

  Her eyes have the dark gleam of liquorice.

  ‘No. Well, I’m new here.’

  She purses her lips.

  ‘You don’t look very happy,’ she says.

  I manage a rueful smile. I’m glad that the wind has dried the tears from my face.

  ‘I’m studying piano. I just had my first lesson,’ I tell her. ‘With Dr Zaslavsky.’

  ‘And he took you apart? Dismembered you? Ripped your guts out?’ she says.

  I can’t help laughing.

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘They all do that,’ she says. ‘It’s horrible. It’s all part of learning, or so they claim. The discipline, and everything. And they love to say that your previous teacher got absolutely all of it wrong … I never quite understand it – why they can’t be a little bit nicer about it, a little bit more polite. But don’t worry, it happens to everyone.’

  I think how she looked in the ballet class – her poise, her immaculate movements.

  ‘I can’t imagine that ever happened to you,’ I tell her.

  She pulls a face.

  ‘Don’t you believe it. When I started here, one of my tutors said that I made him think of a platypus. Everyone laughed, the mean things. I took myself home, and crawled under the blankets, and wept…’

  ‘How awful,’ I say.

  She talks a lot about weeping, but I find it hard to imagine. There’s such clarity about her. She seems so vivid and scented and strong.

  ‘Between you and me, I think they enjoy it, making us suffer. I think it excites them. I think they’re sadists,’ she says. ‘But, trust me, it gets better. You’ll get your confidence back. In a month or two, you simply won’t know yourself.’

  ‘Actually – I feel a little better already,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, good. Well, I’m Anneliese Hartmann,’ she says.

  I tell her who I am.

  ‘I guessed you were English,’ she says.

  ‘You mean – my accent?’

  I know my face falls a little. I pride myself on my accent.

  ‘Well – you’ve got the tiniest bit of an accent, but I think it’s really sweet. And you’ve got that pink and white look, that lovely fair colouring.’

  But I don’t want to be fair any more. I want to have glossy brown hair and liquorice eyes.

  ‘I think a coffee is called for,’ she says.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘We could go to the Landtmann. What do you think?’

  ‘Oh. I’d love to.’

  ‘It isn’t far. Everyone has to go to the Landtmann when they first come here. It’s a rite of passage. Have you ever been to a Viennese café before?’

  ‘No. No, I haven’t.’

  ‘Well, you’ll like i
t – you’ll see. It’s just a minute or two on the tram.’

  This is magical; my spirits are entirely restored.

  A waiter in a dinner jacket ushers us into the Café Landtmann and shows us to a table. Anneliese walks ahead of me. She has a springy dancer’s body. She moves so lightly, her back as lithe as the stalk of a flower. People watch her.

  It’s a long, opulent, beautiful room. There are mirrors, chandeliers, high arched windows. Around us, the scents of coffee and wine, the thick, hushed pattern of talk, the expensive chink of crystal and fine china. I have never been anywhere remotely like this before. I’ve only ever eaten out at Tyrrell and Green’s department store in Southampton, where we’d have the plaice with boiled potatoes because my mother thought that was ‘safe’.

  The waiter pulls out the chair for Anneliese. She eases up her tight skirt with the palms of her hands as she sits. She settles at the table, unbuttons her jacket. She’s wearing a blouse of eau de Nil silk, and you can see the swell of her breasts through the clingy fabric.

  ‘We’ll have cake. I think you need a cake,’ she tells me.

  The waiter takes our order. He’s young, blond, with pleasant features. Anneliese gives him a vivid smile, and when he leaves the table she follows him with her eyes.

  ‘Mmm – speaking of delicious things – I wouldn’t mind taking that home with me,’ she says.

  I’m slightly shocked; but I can’t help smiling.

  ‘So tell me where you come from, little Englishwoman,’ she says.

  I tell her about Brockenhurst, and Mrs Slater, my piano teacher. Talking about them, I feel a pang of homesickness. Yet Brockenhurst already seems a little remote; when I picture my home now, it’s like an old photograph, rather faded and pale.

  The coffee and cake arrive. The coffee is in a cup of bone china, so translucent that you can see the shape of your fingers through it. I sip. It’s quite unlike the bland Camp coffee my mother makes at home. It tastes so rich, and there’s a kick to it.