The English Girl

by Margaret Leroy

  Then he takes out the French letter. The sharp smell of rubber unnerves me. He moves on top of me, penetrates me. The pleasure is utterly gone now; pain yanks me back from that sweet, lost place. I feel how I bleed; he will surely tear me in two. I grit my teeth and will it to be over.

  It shocks me a little, how abandoned he seems when he comes. How in a moment of such intimacy, he seems so very far away from me.

  I lie with my head on his chest. He kisses my hair. We stay like that for a long time. I feel his heart beating against me, as though it is in my own body.

  He moves up onto one elbow. He looks into my face, traces me out with one finger; his hand smells of me. He kisses my mouth lightly. I can tell he’s happy, and I love that. I made him happy.

  ‘Did it hurt a lot?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Next time will be better.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It always seems so wrong to me – that it has to be such a violent process,’ he says.

  Always seems so wrong? How often has he done this?

  Then I try to forget that I thought that.

  He turns on the lamp; I find I don’t mind him seeing me clearly now. He reaches out for his cigarettes, takes two, lights them. We lie on our backs, smoking, looking up at the stars.

  ‘So, Stella. Today’s lesson,’ he says.

  Today’s lesson?

  ‘Did I do it all wrong?’ I ask him.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart.’ He kisses me again, and I know he doesn’t think that. ‘You were perfect,’ he says. ‘Though I still think we should practise a lot … No, I was going to teach you about Dr Freud, remember? If you’d like me to…’ His deprecating smile. ‘I mean, you can absolutely back out now if you want.’

  ‘No. Teach me something. I’d like that.’

  He thinks for a moment.

  ‘Well, then. I shall tell you a shocking secret that lies at the heart of his thought.’

  I expect something appalling and thrilling – something sexual, perhaps. Like in the passage I read from The Interpretation of Dreams – where an innocuous arrangement of violets and pinks represented a woman’s intimate parts. I remember when I read that – it seems an age ago. If he tells me something sexual, I could understand it better now: tonight, I have been initiated into the sexual world. Thinking this, I feel a surge of triumph.

  ‘For me,’ says Harri, ‘Dr Freud’s most revolutionary teaching – it’s about the process he calls transference. Have you heard of this, Stella?’

  ‘No.’

  I shake my head, feel a vague disappointment. This all sounds rather technical.

  He blows out smoke, thoughtful.

  ‘He teaches that the emotions of infancy stay with us. Above all, the feelings we have for our parents. That we then transfer those feelings to all those we love through our lives.’

  ‘Right.’

  I try to nod intelligently.

  ‘So, Stella – when you’re with me, or any lover or boyfriend…’

  But there won’t be any others. I want only you. Don’t talk about others.

  ‘When you’re with any man you love, a part of what you feel will come from your past,’ he tells me. ‘From the way you have felt towards other men you have known. Above all, your father…’

  I think of my father. Going for walks in the woods. Pottering in the garden. Dying. His terrible stillness where he lay on the road. The dirt on him. The couple in the car who didn’t look back. A shudder goes through me.

  It’s as though he knows what I’m thinking. He draws me closer to him, and the warmth of his body consoles me.

  ‘You were so young when your father died,’ he says. ‘The loss of him will always be there in your mind, in the love you feel for any man. And you may be seeking to replace him – trying to find him again.’

  I think about this. But it doesn’t make any sense – this notion of seeking to replace him. I’ve never fallen for older men; I never used to have crushes on teachers at school. Unlike my friend Kitty Carpenter, who was madly in love with our English master; he was romantically named Mr Heartgrove, and smoked the most delicious cigars that had a scent like burnt caramel.

  ‘I really don’t think I’m looking for a substitute father,’ I say, rather defiantly.

  At once I picture Rainer, when we performed Schubert in the Rose Room. Remembering that strange little jolt of something like desire, that so troubled me. I couldn’t possibly tell Harri this. I push the thought away.

  ‘So – how else might it affect me – what happened with my father?’ I ask him. Wanting to move on from this.

  He’s wary. Something crosses his face. He’s worried he’s upset me.

  ‘That’s more than enough for today,’ he tells me. ‘Maybe this conversation wasn’t such a bright idea after all.’ He pushes my hair from my face, traces one warm finger down my hair-line. ‘It’s just so sweet to have you here, in my bed,’ he goes on. ‘We don’t have to talk about such difficult things.’

  ‘Tell me. Please.’

  ‘Well … After what happened with your father, you may have a fear that men will leave you,’ he says.

  Even as he tells me that, I have such a strong urge to say, to plead, Don’t leave me, you mustn’t ever leave me. I swallow hard.

  ‘But it wasn’t my father’s fault that he died. It wasn’t something he chose.’

  ‘No. Of course not. But that’s how it seems to a child. For a child, the actions of others are all deliberate – all chosen. Somewhere deep inside yourself, you would feel that it was his choice – that he chose to leave you … So you may fear it will happen again. You may have a very deep fear of being abandoned,’ he says.

  I feel a tremor, when he says that.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Maybe I do.’

  He glances at me, then away.

  ‘You see, Stella – this idea is revolutionary.’ He’s looking up at the night sky now. Talking more generally. Not wanting to talk about me any more, not wanting to upset me. ‘That we see one another always through this filter of past experience. That when we reach for one another, we grope through a thicket of absent others. That we cannot ever see each other as we are…’

  I’m still thinking about my fear that men will leave me. Is this why I’m so jealous? Because I fear loss more than another girl might, because my father has died? But I can’t ask Harri about this. I don’t want him to know how jealous I get – don’t want to show him that ugly side of myself.

  ‘Anyway – how has Dr Freud learned all these things?’ I say.

  My voice sounds petulant. I’m unnerved. Wanting to find a reason not to believe in any of this. Feeling rather cross with Dr Freud – who’s reminded me of a part of myself that I’d prefer to forget.

  ‘He listens,’ says Harri.

  I take a last drag on my cigarette.

  ‘This idea of transference – it’s rather depressing,’ I tell him.

  He smiles his slight, crooked smile.

  ‘Dr Freud’s ideas aren’t all that cheerful,’ he says.

  There are noises from downstairs – a tap turned on; music on the wireless.

  ‘My mother must have come home,’ he says.

  ‘Oh my God, Harri.’

  Panic surges through me. What on earth will she think – to see us coming down from Harri’s room, me with my hair all messed up?

  ‘Are you sure she won’t be angry about my being here?’

  ‘She’ll be so happy to meet you. Don’t worry.’

  We pull on our clothes. I powder my face and smooth my hair and try to make myself look respectable. We go downstairs.

  There’s a smell of onions frying. An old man is hunched in the chair in the corner, a newspaper spread on his lap. He’s drowsy, his eyelids flickering. A woman is working in the kitchen. She rushes out to greet us, wiping her hands on her apron. She has a vivid, expressive face and restless hands, like Harri’s. There’s a delicate network of worry lines around her mouth and her eyes.

&
nbsp; ‘Mother – this is Stella, my friend.’

  Her smile is warm and generous and softens the lines in her face.

  ‘Stella, I’m Eva. He’s told me all about you.’ She takes my hand; her skin is a little damp from cooking. ‘Well, how lovely you are – exactly as Harri told us. Just see he treats you right, my dear,’ she says.

  ‘I’ll try,’ I say lightly.

  She goes to the elderly man in the corner, puts a hand on his arm. He opens his eyes; looks up at her, confused.

  ‘Father, this is Harri’s lovely new friend. She’s English. Stella, this is Benjamin, Harri’s grandfather.’

  When I put my hand on his hand, his flesh feels cool and flat, like fabric.

  ‘Stella.’ His voice rustles like winter leaves. ‘I can’t see you very well, my dear…’

  Then he uses a German word I don’t know. He moves his hand to his eyes, which have a misted, opaque look. I think he must mean cataracts.

  ‘That must be hard for you,’ I say.

  He nods. ‘Especially at the moment. I’d give anything to see you better,’ he says.

  I’m touched by his chivalry.

  ‘Stella – next time you come you must meet our Lotte as well,’ Eva tells me. ‘Tonight she’s sleeping at Gabi’s house. She has this bosom friend, Gabi. I know that Lotte is dying to meet you,’ she says.

  Harri walks me home through the silent streets. My whole body hurts: the pain between my legs is sharp as I walk, and my feet have blisters from my smart new shoes. But I have such a sense of triumph. I am a woman of the world.

  Vienna at night smells of flowers and horse dung and rotting sycamore leaves. We walk between tall buildings that block out half the night sky: above us, a strip of glittery stars, like a spangled carpet rolled out.

  ‘Your mother was lovely to me,’ I say.

  He frowns slightly, thinking about his mother.

  ‘She’s always so anxious,’ he tells me. ‘She wears herself out with worry. She’s always expecting the worst to happen.’

  ‘I suppose she has a lot to do – the shop, and Lotte, and your grandfather…’

  He nods.

  ‘And my grandfather isn’t easy. She’s so patient with him – he’d drive me crazy,’ he says.

  ‘Old people can be very trying, of course.’

  He doesn’t respond for a moment. I sense a hesitancy in him.

  ‘It’s more than that, though,’ he says then. ‘Bigger things, too. She’s started to worry a lot about what’s happening in the world. What’s happening in Germany.’

  We walk on quietly. In the silence between us, the click of the heels of my shoes seems suddenly loud.

  I don’t know much about Germany. I think of the news reports I’d occasionally read in my mother’s Daily Mail. About the military parades in Berlin, and Hitler’s inflammatory speeches. But people didn’t seem to take him all that seriously, in England. They seemed to be far more worried about the terrible civil war in Spain.

  ‘Surely there’s no reason for people to worry here in Vienna?’ I say. I remember something that I read about Austria before coming here. That after Dr Dollfuss, the Austrian Chancellor, was assassinated by Nazis, the Nazi party was banned here. ‘I mean, Nazis are outlawed in Austria, aren’t they? You can’t be a Nazi in Austria.’

  ‘That’s the theory,’ he says drily.

  I choose to overlook the irony in his voice.

  ‘Well, then.’

  He clears his throat.

  ‘Things could change, that’s what worries her. She’s concerned about Hitler’s ambition. She thinks that Hitler has his eye on Austria,’ he says.

  I feel a slight chill when he says that – just the smallest thing, a drop of cold water that trickles down my spine. But I refuse to believe this.

  ‘On Austria? But – he can’t just walk in here, can he? I mean, Austria’s independent.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ he says.

  A solitary fiaker passes us. You can hear the crisp beat of the horses’ hooves, the cold rattle of the harness. Then the sound fades away in the distance, and the street is utterly still.

  ‘But people can’t really go on taking him seriously,’ I say. ‘It’s all so histrionic. The Germans will come to their senses, won’t they? They’ll get rid of him?’

  ‘That’s what my grandfather thinks,’ says Harri. ‘He and my mother are always arguing about it. He says Hitler won’t last long. That there are plenty of powerful men in the Wehrmacht who don’t like him. That the generals, the conservatives in the German army, will oust him.’

  ‘There you are, then…’

  ‘And he’s convinced that Europe has no appetite for conflict. Not after all the horrors of the Great War.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s right about that.’ My voice emphatic, cheerful.

  ‘He’s old, Stella … When you’re eighty-two, you probably feel you’ve seen it all before. That doesn’t mean you’re always right about things. It doesn’t always make you wise,’ he says.

  ‘What do you think will happen?’ I ask him.

  He doesn’t say anything for a moment, and his hesitancy surprises me, when he’s always so clear about what he thinks.

  ‘I don’t know, Stella,’ he tells me then. ‘But one thing I do know: that people can believe impossible things. And that so often we close our eyes to things we don’t want to see. People can know things and not know them – both at the same time. I see this every day, with my patients.’

  At once, I think of the story in The Interpretation of Dreams: the man asleep in his bed, the child who pulled at his arm. Father, don’t you see that I’m burning?

  We come to Maria-Treu-Gasse. I stop, turn to him.

  ‘This is my street.’

  I feel the flicker of panic that I always feel when we part. What happens now? When will I see him again?

  ‘Next Friday,’ he tells me, ‘they’re playing Beethoven’s Ninth.’

  All the troubling things we’ve talked about slide from my mind.

  ‘Oh. That would be wonderful.’

  He kisses me. I feel all the sweetness, all the rightness of his mouth on my mouth. My body still hurts, but I feel a quick surge of desire. I want to make love to him again. Now. At once. Here in the street. To feel his skin against my skin, to have him moving inside me again.

  This is the start, I tell myself. It’s all just beginning.

  17

  ‘Well done,’ I say mechanically, when we get to the end of the page. ‘That was very good, Lukas.’

  We’re reading my Rupert annual at the dining-room table, Lukas repeating the English after me, in his solemn, shrill little voice.

  But I’m not really paying attention. Honeyed late-afternoon sunlight is filling the room, and I’m warm, rather languorous, lost in a dream of Harri, of his hands moving everywhere over me. Longing for Friday, for him.

  Lukas smiles, pleased with my praise.

  ‘I’ve had a Rupert book before. Fräulein Verity had one,’ he says.

  I’m jolted out of my dream.

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘I wish she had written that letter,’ he says. ‘A letter with my name on.’

  There’s a dark silk skein of sadness wrapped around his voice.

  ‘Oh, Lukas. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why are you sorry? It isn’t your fault.’

  He’s staring down at the book, absently tracing out the picture, which shows Rupert in his usual yellow-checked trousers and scarf, and his policeman friend, Constable Growler.

  ‘What happened to Fräulein Verity? Did somebody hurt her?’ he asks.

  The question surprises me.

  ‘No. No, I’m sure they didn’t. Why do you think that, Lukas?’

  He moves his face close to mine, to whisper. His breath has a scent of apples, and is soft on my skin.

  ‘She was crying,’ he tells me.

  ‘Crying? When was she crying?’

  His face is stained with bright colour, like Marthe�
��s face when she’s nervous.

  ‘I was playing in my cupboard…’

  I think of the cupboard in the hallway, where Janika keeps her brushes and mops. A child could easily hide in it, and no one could tell they were there.

  ‘And I heard a sound of crying,’ he says, ‘and I went to her room and peeped in. She was sitting on her bed and the tears were dripping onto her quilt.’

  ‘Lukas. You shouldn’t go looking in other people’s rooms,’ I tell him, rather severely.

  ‘Her door was a little bit open…’

  ‘But you shouldn’t spy on people.’

  ‘I never saw her again,’ he tells me. ‘A bad person must have hurt her.’

  ‘Lukas – people can cry for all sorts of reasons…’

  He ignores this.

  ‘If I’d been there, I would have stopped him,’ he says.

  ‘But I don’t think that’s what happened…’

  I push back his hair, which is flopping over his face. It’s a very pale blond, almost white. Mine was that colour, when I was his age. I know this because my mother preserved a single lock of my infant hair; it’s in the family album, in a little cellophane sleeve. I feel a quick pang of homesickness, thinking of my mother.

  Lukas runs his finger over the page, and the picture of Constable Growler.

  ‘I’d like to be a policeman, Fräulein Stella,’ he tells me.

  ‘Well, you can be, of course, when you’re big. If you work very hard at your lessons.’

  ‘I’d be a really good policeman. I’d catch all the bad people and put them in prison,’ he says.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you would.’

  He turns a page of the book. He points to the weird-looking Raggety, a little troll made out of twigs.

  ‘Look, this is a really bad person,’ he says. ‘He’s got such a horrible face.’

  ‘Well – he might be bad. The thing is, Lukas, you can’t always tell by looking.’

  ‘Of course you can,’ he assures me.

  ‘No, Lukas. Bad people can look quite ordinary. Just like you or me.’