The English Girl

by Margaret Leroy

  The man glances over at me. He shrugs slightly – as though to say he’s sorry, but he really can’t get involved. He walks on.

  He will ask someone for help, I think. Just round the corner, he will get a doctor or the police. He will send someone to help us.

  The man rounds the corner. Nobody comes.

  I kneel beside Harri, pointlessly wipe at his bloody mouth with my sleeve. His skin is so cold. He must be in shock: I remember this much from First Aid lessons at school. I know that this is dangerous. I take off my coat and put it over him. His eyes flicker open but don’t seem to focus. I don’t think he can see me.

  ‘Harri. My dearest. I’m here. It’s Stella. I’m here with you.’

  ‘Stella,’ he says, in the smallest voice – hoarse, broken.

  His eyes close. He’s drifting into unconsciousness.

  Terror sears through me.

  ‘Harri. Don’t leave me…’

  I’m shaking, with cold, with terror.

  I hear another car approaching. I feel despair – I don’t turn, don’t even look up. These people, too, will glance at us, then turn and pass on by; no one will help us.

  The car stops with a shriek of brakes. There are brisk footsteps.

  ‘Stella? What’s going on here?’

  An English voice. Brisk, familiar, solicitous – the most welcome sound in the world.

  I turn, look up.

  Frank Reece kneels beside me, puts a hand on my arm.

  ‘It’s Frank, Stella.’

  Spelling out who he is; as though he sees the confusion in my face, understands that I’m dazed, that I might not recognise him.

  I take in a great gulp of air, like someone half-drowned, dragged from the sea.

  ‘They beat him up. He’s hurt,’ I say, in a little shred of a voice.

  Frank puts his fingers to Harri’s throat.

  ‘His pulse is weak, he’s losing too much blood. We’ll get him straight to the hospital – it’s just moments away in the car.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you…’

  He beckons to his chauffeur. I pick up my coat, which I’ve wrapped over Harri. Frank and the chauffeur lift Harri into the back of the car.

  ‘Get in the front, Stella,’ says Frank.

  I do as he says.

  Frank climbs in the back seat next to Harri. The car is a big Mercedes. Harri is bleeding all over the car, from the slash the knife made in his arm: his blood is spilling out fast, too fast. Frank pulls off his white silk scarf and ties it round Harri’s upper arm, then holds the arm up vertically. The chauffeur is bald and silent, and drives the car very fast.

  I keep saying, Thank you, thank you. But Frank is utterly focused on Harri and doesn’t speak to me.

  The car screams to a halt outside the hospital doors.

  ‘Stay here. Hold his arm like this,’ says Frank.

  I do as he says.

  Frank runs in through the doors – he can move surprisingly fast. I picture him there in the hospital – how he will be giving instructions, taking control.

  Two orderlies rush up with a trolley and lift Harri out of the car. Frank takes my arm. We follow the trolley.

  The brilliant lights of the hospital dazzle, after so much time in the dark, and the smell of antiseptic makes my throat ache. They wheel the trolley ahead of us, towards some heavy doors.

  A nurse steps forward. Starched, immaculate, stern.

  ‘And you are…?’

  ‘I’m his girlfriend,’ I say.

  ‘You have to wait here. You can’t come through,’ she says.

  But I can’t leave him. I put my hand on him. His eyes are shut, but I feel the slight pressure of his hand on my hand. His lips move, he’s trying to say something. I bend low over him. I can’t let him go, I have to hear what he says.

  ‘You have to let us through, fräulein,’ the nurse says briskly.

  Frank reaches out and peels my fingers away from Harri’s hand. I watch them push the trolley through the heavy doors. He’s gone. A sudden choking fear assails me, seeing the doors closing on him.

  Frank puts his arm around me. His touch and his tweedy smell comfort me, and the fear begins to recede.

  ‘He’s safe now, Stella. They’ll look after him. They know what they’re doing. You don’t have to worry,’ he says.

  The room is spinning around me. He steers me to a chair. He sits beside me, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. His freckled hands are together, his fingers touching in mock-prayer. He’s silent for a moment.

  ‘Stella, my dear. Tell me what happened,’ he says then.

  I tell him. He listens quietly, now and then pushing his hand abstractedly through his shaggy grey hair. His vigilant eyes are on me.

  ‘What will they do to him?’ I ask.

  ‘They’ll obviously need to stitch up his arm, and he may have a bit of concussion. He was semi-conscious – I think he could hear what we said – and that’s a very good sign. He’ll have a pretty bad headache, but I’m sure he’ll be all right.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘Yes, I really do.’

  I feel a little stronger.

  ‘Now. I could give you a lift home, Stella, but I’m guessing you’ll want to stay for a while.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me – is there anything else at all I can do for you?’ he asks me.

  I think of Eva.

  ‘Could you take a note to his mother? She’ll be so worried.’

  ‘Of course.’

  I have the theatre programme in my handbag. I tear off a blank page and write her a note: We’re at the hospital. Harri was attacked in the street, but he’s all right … It’s what you say when you mean, He’s alive. I add, I’m afraid his glasses got broken. Could you bring his spare pair? I give Frank Eva’s address.

  ‘Well, the best of luck,’ he says.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Thank you so much for everything. How can I ever thank you?’

  He doesn’t answer. The words are there between us, drenched and heavy with meaning. In spite of all my vast gratitude towards him, I feel a slight stirring of fear.

  ‘Stella, my dear – while you’re waiting,’ he tells me, ‘I think you should clean yourself up.’

  I look at my hands – they are covered in blood. I hadn’t noticed. And there’s blood all down the front of my coat, where I laid it over Harri. I stare at it helplessly.

  ‘My coat…’

  ‘It’s a bit of a mess. The blood won’t come out. I’m afraid you’ll need to throw it away. Why don’t I lend you mine for the time being…’

  He stands, starts to take off his overcoat.

  If I borrow his coat, then I’ll have to return it, I’ll have to see him again.

  ‘I’ll be all right. Really,’ I tell him.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure. Goodbye for now, Stella,’ he says. ‘I think you’ve coped quite admirably. You’ve been extremely brave.’

  But I know that’s not true. I couldn’t protect Harri. I love him so much, but my love was useless, I couldn’t keep him safe, couldn’t stop it happening.

  In the Ladies’ Room, I fold up my coat and put it in the waste-bin. I peer at my wild reflection. There are bloody smudges on my face, where I pushed back my hair with my hands. I wash my face with carbolic soap, welcoming its stinging scent, wanting to wash all the smells of the night from me, the rank stench of urine, the blood.

  Then I wait in the antiseptic gloom of the corridor, playing games with myself, games of intense seriousness, like the ones that Marthe plays. If these things happen in this way, then Harri will be all right … If there’s an even number of tiles between the floor and the ceiling … If I can see three red things without turning my head … If that door swings back before I can count to twenty …

  The door bangs as the nurse comes through. I jump up.

  ‘How is he? Tell me.’

  ‘He’s conscious, but he has concussion,’ she says. ‘No internal injuries, we think
. We’re keeping him in for the night.’

  ‘Will he be all right?’

  ‘He should be fine,’ she says. ‘He was lucky.’

  That’s one word for it.

  ‘Can I see him?’

  ‘Not yet. You’ll have to wait till we’ve finished stitching him up.’

  I sit down abruptly. I’m suddenly weak as a ragdoll. And it’s only now, knowing that he will live, that I cry; and having started, can’t stop, the tears leaking between my fingers and falling onto my skirt.

  I keep thinking how nearly it could have been different, how easily I could have lost him – the blade half an inch to the right, slicing through an artery; the car passing a few seconds later; Frank going a different way home. I feel undone by the unbearable randomness of being.

  I’m still weeping when Eva comes – her hair flying, her coat unbuttoned; running down the corridor.

  ‘Stella, my dear. How awful for you.’

  The lines are deep in her face. She looks older.

  I feel so guilty. This was my fault, because Harri and I went out together. She must be so angry with me – for putting her son in such danger.

  ‘He’s going to be all right. The nurse just told me,’ I say.

  I stand, and she puts her arms around me. I’m glad I thought to discard the coat, so she can’t see her son’s blood.

  ‘Oh Stella. Thank God you were with him. Thank God he wasn’t alone.’

  But I think: If I hadn’t been with him, if we hadn’t gone out, if I hadn’t suggested going home through the Volksgarten, if we hadn’t been on Stiftgasse at exactly that time, it wouldn’t have happened.

  ‘We went to the ballet,’ I say, disbelieving. ‘We were coming back from the ballet.’

  It was only a couple of hours ago. I can see the remote pure loveliness of it in the margin of my mind, the images floating away from me.

  ‘Thank you for sending the Englishman. I liked him. He gave me a lift, he was very thoughtful,’ she says.

  She sits down. We sit there together, smoking. I tell her what happened, and everything the nurse said.

  At last the nurse comes to take us through to Harri’s room. They’ve given him morphine; he’s sleeping. Eva is horrified, seeing his injuries, the lacerations on his face, his heavily bandaged arm that rests on top of the sheet. His skin is as white as the linen he lies on. I think how strong he feels when he holds me, how safe I feel in his arms. Then I think what I learned when he fell to the pavement – how fragile we are, how easily lost. It takes so little: one kick, one slice of a blade. I wish I didn’t know this.

  50

  In the morning I go to the hospital, to take Harri back home.

  He’s dressed, waiting to be discharged. His arm is still elaborately bandaged. The cuts on his face have scabbed over, and he has livid purple bruising. There’s still something frail about him, a translucence. But I feel a surge of happiness, seeing him up and ready to leave. Looking more like himself again.

  I put my arms very carefully round him, as though he could easily break.

  ‘My darling. So sorry to give you all this bother,’ he says.

  ‘Don’t. Just don’t,’ I tell him. I kiss his cool mouth. ‘How are you? How much does it hurt?’

  ‘I’m not too bad,’ he tells me. ‘I’ll be back at work in a day or two. Though I probably won’t look very pretty for a while … But what about you, Stella? I’ve been so worried. The nurses told me you were all right. But did anything happen to you?’

  I’m touched that he’s worried about me, after being so horribly hurt.

  ‘No, I’m fine … It was just very frightening, that’s all … I could kill them.’

  ‘I can’t remember it all,’ he says. ‘I’ve been trying to piece it together. I have a vague memory of someone bringing me here in his car.’

  ‘Yes, someone did. He’s an Englishman. He’s called Frank Reece. I knew him from before.’

  ‘Oh.’ The slightest frown creases his brow. ‘You’ve never mentioned him.’

  ‘The thing is, I don’t really know him that well. I met him at Marthe’s party. He works at the British Embassy. He was at Giselle – I noticed him in the foyer…’

  I think, Should I tell him more? About what Frank told me, about what he asked me to do? About the men I saw after Rainer’s meeting? But I don’t want to trouble Harri with this – not today, when he’s still recovering.

  ‘I’d like to thank him. I’ll write to him,’ he tells me.

  ‘What about the police?’ I ask.

  He shrugs.

  ‘They came. I gave a statement. But my guess is it’ll end there.’

  ‘No. Surely not.’ I’m shocked. ‘They have to find the people who did this.’

  ‘They don’t exactly fall over themselves to solve this kind of attack,’ he says.

  ‘But – you’re not going to accept that, surely? That man had a knife. They could have killed you.’

  ‘Well, fortunately they didn’t,’ he says, with a small, wry smile.

  ‘Perhaps I could identify them,’ I say.

  He frowns.

  ‘I’d rather keep you out of it,’ he says.

  ‘No, really. I could go and see them – tell them what I saw.’

  ‘Don’t worry. It happened, it’s over. I’m thinking that perhaps my mother was right all along. Better just to keep our heads down.’

  This seems so wrong to me.

  The doctor comes and discharges Harri. He’ll have to come back in a week to have his stitches removed. It’s so good to step out of the hospital with him, to leave behind all the hospital things – the chill antiseptic smell of the corridor, the stern, urgent nurses; the fear I felt there.

  We take a taxi back to the flat on Mariahilferstrasse, where Eva has left some chicken soup ready to heat on the stove. I make a bed for Harri on the sofa in the living room, which is so much warmer than his attic. I enjoy making a fuss of him.

  It’s all over, thank God, I say to myself. It was horrible and terrifying, but it’s over now.

  51

  Thursday. After my lesson, I walk down Johannesgasse towards the inner city, to buy a new coat. There’s a gleam of sun in the pewter sky, but the touch of the air stings my face, and the light has a sharp, raw edge. My breath makes ragged clouds.

  I turn into the Kohlmarkt.

  I become aware of a black Mercedes that’s slowing in the street, moving beside me, gliding along at my pace. I pretend that this isn’t happening, that I’ve never seen this car before. I tell myself that Vienna is full of black Mercedes cars. I keep walking.

  The car edges along beside me. I glance towards it, then away. There’s no passenger, only the driver. He pulls to a stop just ahead of me. He leans across to the passenger side and winds the window down.

  ‘Fräulein Whittaker.’

  A bald man in uniform. Frank’s chauffeur. I can’t pretend that it isn’t him any more.

  ‘Excuse me, Fräulein Whittaker.’

  I stop, turn to him. I have to.

  ‘I’m to give you a message from Herr Reece,’ he tells me. ‘Herr Reece would like you to meet him, Fräulein Whittaker. At the Franziskanerkirche. I can drop you right at the door.’

  I stand there, stupidly. As though I am weighing it up – deciding if I can fit this meeting into my busy timetable. As though there is a decision to make. But I can’t refuse – after everything Frank did for Harri, for us.

  The chauffeur gets out of the car, comes round to the passenger side and opens the door. I climb in. The leather is lustrous; the car has a smell of beeswax polish, and the spicy, luxurious scent of expensive cigars. You’d never guess that Harri had lain and bled on these seats.

  I take a cigarette out of my bag; the chauffeur turns to light it for me before he starts up the car. We drive through the narrow cobbled streets, weaving our way between the fiakers. I sit there, smoking, trying to seem nonchalant, flicking ash into the silver ashtray in the back of the seat. Trying to
still the thudding of my heart.

  We come quickly to Franziskanerplatz. The Franziskanerkirche looms up over the square: above, the sky is pale and shiny as tin. Icicles hang from the Moses fountain; they have a dangerous glitter, like broken glass, in a white glimmer of sun. In a courtyard leading off the square, I can see the bookshop where I bought Dr Freud’s book about dreams; that feels like a hundred years ago now. A hunched pigeon shuffles across the cobbles, its feathers puffed up from the cold. Apart from the pigeon, the square is empty.

  The chauffeur pulls up outside the church.

  ‘Herr Reece will meet you inside, Fräulein Whittaker.’

  I stub out my cigarette, get out of the car. He drives off.

  I stand in the doorway, looking for Frank.

  The church is dazzling, ornate – so many golden cherubs and saints, all with their faces turned heavenward – and the stonework is white as icing sugar and intricate as lace. Austrian churches are so different to the Anglican churches of England, with their hassocks embroidered by the Women’s Institute, their smell of dry rot and mildewed prayerbooks, everything fading and old. The Franziskanerkirche is full of sparkle and gilt, and has a smell of incense, and of hot-house lilies with their heavy, languorous scents. On the chancel steps, a choir is rehearsing the Allegri Miserere. Now and then the singers stop and the conductor corrects them, and there’s a ripple of laughter at something he’s said.

  I can’t see Frank.

  I pass a bank of shimmering votive candles. I drop a coin in the box. I take a candle, light it, linger there for a moment, thinking of all the other people who have lit a candle like me. All as full of desires and fears as I am – full of dreams for their lives, full of longing. Thinking this, I feel humbled. I’d like to pray – but I don’t know what to pray for.

  Up in the chancel, the choir is singing again. ‘Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam.’ Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness.

  I walk towards the altar, and sit in a pew. On the wall beside me, there’s a carved plaque showing the damned, the figures naked, raising their hands in desperate entreaty, while hungry gold flames lick at them, reaching as high as their waists.