The English Girl

by Margaret Leroy

  ‘That’s quite enough of your backchat. You do what I tell you, or else you’ll feel the back of my hand.’

  Eva, coming in to clear the table, smiles ruefully.

  Lotte holds up the sign that says Scene II. The princess is in the forest and happily picking flowers, but a wolf is waiting, lurking under the trees at the side of the stage. I recognise the wolf puppet – he’s the one Eva sells in the shop. He’s magnificent, with dangerous claws and a vicious, slavering mouth.

  ‘Look behind you!’ I call to the princess. ‘He’s there! Look behind you!’

  But she’s obtuse; she doesn’t see him.

  I remember the Christmas pantomimes of childhood. How there was always a scene like this one: how the girl never saw what was creeping up behind her. People would yell their warnings at her, but she always looked the wrong way.

  The wolf chases the princess around, with a lot of bumping and squealing.

  ‘The wolf has caught her,’ says Lotte. ‘He’s tying her to a tree…’

  ‘Poor princess.’

  ‘But she’s clever, she’s escaping. Look, she’s running away…’

  Lotte seats the princess up on the proscenium arch. Her wooden legs dangle and clatter.

  ‘She’s up in her tower,’ Lotte tells me. ‘She’s going to drop a really big stone on the wolf.’

  ‘Good for her,’ I say.

  The wolf finally dies, after some very vocal death-throes.

  ‘That’s the end,’ says Lotte.

  I applaud the feisty princess vigorously.

  Lotte puts down the puppets and grins. She’s flushed, and pleased with herself.

  ‘It’s time for the music now,’ she says. ‘There’s always music at a play. You can do the music, Stella.’ She’s imperious.

  ‘Oh. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Sing me an English song,’ she tells me.

  So I sing her my favourite nursery rhyme.

  I had a little nut-tree, nothing would it bear

  But a silver nutmeg and a golden pear.

  The King of Spain’s daughter came to visit me

  And all for the sake of my little nut-tree.

  Harri stands in the kitchen doorway, listening.

  I skipped over water, I danced over sea,

  And all the birds in the air couldn’t catch me.

  ‘The girl in the song – she’s like your princess,’ I say to Lotte. ‘Nothing could catch her.’

  Later, when Harri and I leave the flat, we step out into thick fog. The whole city is drowned in it. It makes me think of the lost city of Atlantis, or one of those villages in Suffolk, in the flat lands of East Anglia, where the sea long ago swept in and covered the land, and they say at low tide you can hear the desolate ringing of church bells. My hair against my face is lank and drenched, like drowned hair.

  We talk about Lotte’s puppet play.

  ‘Why are fairytales the way they are – so many kings and queens? I’ve often wondered.’ I think for a moment. ‘I bet Dr Freud has some kind of explanation for that.’

  Harri smiles. The fog has dampened his hair and beaded the sleeves of his coat.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asks me.

  ‘Well … Lotte’s queen sounded just like her mother.’ I smile at the memory. ‘So the fairytale king and queen could mean the child’s parents,’ I say.

  In a doorway, he stops to kiss me. The fog makes us secret. I can feel the wet on our skin as we press our faces together. Then he slips his arm around my shoulders, and we walk on through the drowned city.

  ‘So – was I right?’ I ask him.

  He nods.

  ‘I think it’s as you say. The parents appear as rulers in the child’s internal drama. When you’re a child, your parents are all-powerful. Sometimes they rule justly; sometimes they’re tyrants,’ he says.

  I glance up at him. He’s frowning slightly. Suddenly serious.

  ‘You know – this interests me: that it never quite leaves us, that sense of the rightness of being ruled,’ he tells me. ‘There’s such a longing in us for a strong father. For a king, if you like.’

  Sometimes he says things, and I don’t know where he’s going, don’t quite understand him.

  We’re nearly back at the flat now. The clock of the Piaristenkirche is chiming ten; it has a muffled, unreal sound, a ghost chime in a ghost city.

  Harri goes on, thoughtful. ‘Here’s the thing, Stella. If you ask people what they want in life, they’ll probably say they want freedom. But so much about the way we live suggests the very opposite – suggests that most of the time we like to be told what to do. What to think, even.’

  ‘D’you really think so?’ I say. Doubtful.

  ‘I see this in my patients,’ he says. ‘There’s such a huge relief in not having to work it all out. In handing over responsibility. Not having to think for yourself…’

  ‘Oh.’

  I find myself thinking of Germany. Of newsreels of Hitler’s rallies, and all the adulation.

  Of Frank Reece at Marthe’s party.

  And with the thought of Frank Reece, I shiver, the wet air reaching cold fingers inside my clothes. I think how he said he wanted to meet me – to pick my brains a little; how he wanted to ask me something. But I haven’t heard from him. Most likely he’s forgotten all about me. I hope so.

  ‘You mean – like in Germany now?’ I say.

  Harri murmurs assent, but when I turn to him, he’s frowning, as though he doesn’t like the place that my question has taken us to.

  I’m about to say more, to tell him about my conversation with Frank. How it made me feel so uneasy. How I didn’t know what he wanted of me. But Harri interrupts me.

  ‘I liked that song,’ he tells me. ‘I want you to sing it again.’

  ‘What – here in the street?’

  ‘Yes, here…’

  So we walk on through the wet grey fog, which parts like water to let us through, then flows back in softly behind us as though we had never been there; and I sing about the nut-tree and the magic fruit it bears.

  36

  Maybe when I thought about Frank Reece, it was a kind of presentiment. Because on Thursday, when I go to the Academy, there’s an envelope in my pigeonhole, waiting for me. My heart beats a little too fast. I open it up.

  Dear Stella …

  He wants to meet me on Monday at three, in the piano bar at the Klagenfurt Hotel. If the date doesn’t suit me, I should write to him care of the British Embassy. Otherwise, he’ll look forward to seeing me there.

  I know I have to see him. At Marthe’s party, I agreed to meet him – and it would be so impolite to refuse. Yet I feel wary.

  It’s a small hotel, rather out of the way, in the Margareten district of Vienna. I wonder why he didn’t choose a place in the middle of town – perhaps the famous Sacher Hotel, which always sounds so glamorous.

  As I walk in through the hotel door, warmth settles on my shoulders like a shawl. A porter directs me to the piano bar.

  I stand on the threshold for a moment, hesitant. It’s a small but opulent room – there are ox-blood velvet curtains and elegant palms in pots. The pianist is playing a Johann Strauss medley. I see that Frank Reece has chosen the place for our meeting with care – knowing that I will like it. This realisation gives me a queasy feeling.

  The room is empty, except for Frank, who is sitting at a corner table with a wide view of the room. He stands, and shakes my hand.

  ‘Stella, how lovely to see you. Now, what would you like? A cocktail?’

  He’s wearing a Harris tweed jacket with leather patches on the sleeves. His tweedy Englishness reassures me. And there’s a kind of comfort, too, in speaking in English again.

  ‘Yes, I’d love that. Thank you.’

  The waiter arrives. Frank orders a Pink Lady for me and a Whisky Sour for himself.

  ‘Thank you so much for coming,’ he says.

  ‘Not at all,’ I say.

  He smiles a warm, disi
ngenuous smile. ‘So, Stella – are you still in love with Vienna?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Isn’t everyone?’

  ‘And your studies are going well, I hope?’

  ‘Quite well, thank you,’ I say.

  He takes out his cigarettes, offers me one. As he lights it for me, I feel the sudden brief heat of the flame on my skin. I lean back, suck in smoke, grateful.

  His gaze is on my face. I wonder what he sees.

  ‘There’s something that intrigues me, Stella,’ he says. ‘I was wondering how you came to be living with Rainer and Marthe Krause?’

  His voice so easy, casual.

  ‘Well, it all worked out so well. I was very lucky,’ I say.

  ‘So did you know the Krauses before you came to Vienna?’ he says.

  ‘Oh no, I’d never met them. But my mother knew them – a long time ago, when she was a student herself. Just after the Great War ended.’

  ‘Your mother knew Rainer and Marthe in 1919?’

  It’s just small talk. But I see a gleam of something in his eyes – that look I remember from the party. Predatory. Aware of the least frightened scuffling in the undergrowth below.

  ‘Yes.’

  I feel we are circling round something.

  He blows out smoke, looking at me, everything easy about him.

  ‘Stella, there’s something I have to apologise for. And I’d really like to get it out of the way…’ His voice emollient as Vaseline. Watching my reaction. ‘What I told you about my daughter – it wasn’t actually true. I do have daughters – but, bless them, they have no musical talent at all.’

  It’s as I’d suspected; yet still rather shocking. I hear my quick indrawn breath.

  ‘It’s all about horses with Mary and Ellen. Mucking out stables, that kind of thing,’ he goes on smoothly. ‘I’m afraid this was just a pretext for our meeting,’ he says.

  ‘Oh.’

  Heat surges to my face: I’m embarrassed for him, embarrassed by the entire situation. Though he doesn’t seem to be embarrassed at all.

  ‘I know you love both children and music.’ He makes an expansive gesture with his long freckled hand. ‘I knew you’d be eager to help. It was probably very wrong of me – taking advantage of your kindness…’

  I sense that he’s edging nearer to the thing he wants to say – the thing he invited me out for. And I know, with a sudden cold clarity, that it’s something I won’t want to hear.

  ‘Well…’

  ‘There was a favour I wanted to ask of you, Stella. But I couldn’t quite ask you directly – not the first time we met. So I must apologise that I misled you.’

  I glance in his face. In spite of his careful apology, I can tell he feels he’s done nothing wrong. His face is bland, inscrutable.

  Our cocktails arrive, on a silver tray. Mine is garnished with a cherry.

  ‘So what shall we drink to, Stella? Perhaps to Vienna? This beautiful city we love?’

  ‘Yes. To Vienna.’

  I sip the cocktail. The rim of the glass is encrusted with pink sugar, and the cocktail tastes delicious, of gin and grenadine. But my hand is trembling a little, and the liquid in the glass is shivering all across its surface. I know he notices this.

  ‘I can see I’m unnerving you,’ he says, with that rather innocent smile. ‘But if you could just bear with me for a moment…’

  He leans closer. His voice is low, his head a few inches from mine. Anyone watching would assume that we were intimate.

  ‘We’ve talked before about how things are moving in Germany,’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  But I’m thrown. I don’t know what I’d expected – but it was certainly nothing like this.

  ‘Hitler is constantly strengthening his position,’ Frank goes on. ‘People are being thrown in prison or sent off to forced-labour camps – Bolsheviks, Jews, gypsies.’

  I stir my drink with the cocktail cherry, staring down into the glass.

  ‘We believe that Hitler has designs on Austria,’ he tells me.

  ‘Oh.’

  I remember how Harri told me that Eva feared this too. How I refused to believe it. Still refuse.

  ‘Hitler is Austrian by birth, of course, and he spent his childhood in Linz. He has a great love for Austria. And a very great hatred for the Austrian government,’ he says.

  ‘But – he can’t do anything about that, can he?’ I ask.

  Frank smiles a tight, mirthless smile.

  ‘He announced his ambition on the very first page of his book, Mein Kampf. You’ve heard of this, Stella?’

  I nod. My Struggle: Hitler’s autobiography. I know that in Germany, every household will have this book on their shelves.

  ‘It’s there in the very first paragraph. He swears to join his native Austria to the Reich “by any means”.’ Frank rests his cigarette on the ashtray; he steeples his hands together, in a studied, priestly gesture. ‘And there are those in Austria, Stella, who long for such an outcome. There are some here who admire him. Who admire the German Reich.’

  ‘But they’re outlawed here, surely? You can’t be a Nazi here—’

  He goes on, as though I haven’t spoken.

  ‘There are Nazi cells in Vienna. Underground cells. As I say – some here have a sneaking regard for Hitler. Sometimes not so sneaking … And there are certainly those who think that Vienna has too many Jews.’

  I think of Anneliese in the Ladies’ Room at the Landtmann. I don’t say anything.

  ‘There have been incidents,’ he tells me. ‘Jewish shops daubed with slogans. Attacks on Jews in the street. These things have always happened, but they are becoming more frequent. As though what’s happening in Germany gives permission,’ he says.

  ‘Oh.’

  He’s watching my face intently.

  ‘If he marched in here, there would be a welcome for him, in some quarters,’ he says. ‘We need to know how great that welcome would be.’

  I stare at him.

  ‘Surely … I mean, he wouldn’t be welcome at all. People don’t want that. They wouldn’t let it happen … They’re just a tiny minority, the louts who do those things…’ My voice trails off.

  He doesn’t respond.

  I sip my cocktail, for courage. I think of what my mother taught me – what everyone said, in Brockenhurst. Always look on the bright side. Keep your sunny side up.

  ‘Really, I think you’re being terribly downbeat,’ I say. I try to smile. ‘Terribly pessimistic.’

  He shrugs slightly.

  ‘Unfortunately, pessimism can be a good guide to action. Sometimes, a pessimistic outlook can be a faithful friend … Don’t you think?’

  I shake my head. I don’t know what to say. It’s all too big for me.

  ‘I’m just a piano student,’ I tell him.

  ‘Yes, I’m aware of that,’ he says. ‘But you have a rare combination of gifts.’ He smiles. ‘Impeccable German, and a look of absolute innocence.’

  It’s the sort of thing men say when they try to seduce you: Anneliese taught me that. And in that moment, with a quick surge of fear, I know that is what is happening. I understand what he is – this cultural attaché; and I know I am being seduced. In a manner of speaking.

  I feel the butterfly beat of panic in my chest.

  ‘To get straight to the point’ – his voice level, deliberately casual – ‘we are interested in the man whose apartment you live in, Stella. We would like to know a little bit more about Rainer Krause,’ he says.

  I clasp my hands in my lap, to stop them shaking.

  ‘How do you mean? What about him?’

  But perhaps I shouldn’t have asked. I should stop this now – get up, and thank him for the cocktail. Walk out of the Klagenfurt Hotel and never look back.

  ‘Perhaps you could tell me what you know about him,’ says Frank.

  ‘We perform music together. He’s always very polite.’ There’s a note of pleading in my voice.

  ‘It would be val
uable to know about the company he keeps. The people he talks to. The people who visit the apartment on Maria-Treu-Gasse,’ he says.

  I don’t say anything. But I think about the evening when Janika made the Kaiserschmarrn. I look down into my cocktail, with a sudden crazy fantasy that Frank will read all my thought in my face.

  ‘Stella.’ His voice is careful, almost gentle. ‘There are men who may visit Rainer Krause who are known to us as Nazis. Though they keep their sympathies well hidden.’

  My heart is pounding so hard it must be shaking the silk of my blouse. I worry he will see this.

  ‘I can’t believe that,’ I say at once. ‘Rainer wouldn’t be friendly with men like that. He’s a good person; he’s been kind to me…’

  I think of the times we have spent together – performing Winterreise, Rainer sometimes confiding a little in me. How he seemed to understand me. I admire such aspiration, Stella. To aspire to achieve something beyond the merely mundane…

  ‘Most people in Vienna who’d call themselves Nazis are thugs,’ says Frank. ‘The dispossessed, the street gangs. Disgruntled, angry men who have little to lose. But the men who interest us are different. These men have power. They keep their loyalties concealed. These groups are being funded from Germany, Stella. And these men are the ones who will take power if Hitler marches in. If Austria is absorbed into the German Reich. Or, should we say, when that happens…’ His eyes are fixed on my face. ‘If you could help us, Stella, you’d be performing a valuable service for your country,’ he says.

  I take a deep breath.

  ‘You can’t ask me to spy on him.’ My voice is too shrill.

  He makes a slight gesture, as though he would push the ugly word away.

  ‘I wouldn’t put it in quite those terms. I’m just asking you to share a little information. As you might do with a friend. To cast your eye over some photographs with me, that kind of thing…’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘No. I couldn’t. They’ve taken me into their home. They’ve been good to me…’

  I think of the Krauses – of Marthe, kindly, worried, still mourning the daughter she lost. Of little Lukas, preoccupied with bad men. Of Rainer – always so courteous to me; complimenting me on my piano-playing. They are good people, I tell myself.