The English Girl

by Margaret Leroy

  We make love on the mattress, in the light that pours through the glass from the blue shining sky. I’m very aware of my nakedness in the clarity of the light – of the banality of my body, my blotchy skin, pale nipples, the goosebumps on my thighs. I feel a thread of embarrassment. When we make love, I’m usually too lost to be very aware of being naked, but today I feel it – feel somehow too open, exposed. He rises above me, entering me, our faces moving apart. His face is darkly shadowed; behind him, the dazzle of the sky, so bright it makes my eyes hurt. I look in his face, that I love so much, and see the damage in him. His scars have a raw, broken look, as though he’s still bleeding, not properly healed.

  I prefer this room at night, in the light of the moon and the stars, when you can’t see things so clearly.

  62

  Friday morning. I practise in the Rose Room, but it’s hard to concentrate on the music. I can hear lorries going down Lange Gasse, their loudspeakers blaring out slogans, and, above, an aeroplane flying low over the roofs. In the street below my window, people have painted slogans and crosses, and many flags are flying. Even inside the apartment, there’s a tense, expectant mood.

  When I go to the bathroom, I can hear music from the kitchen. Janika must have the wireless on. I’m curious.

  She’s at the table, preparing a chicken for the oven, pulling out the innards. The liver is on a plate beside her; it’s a glossy purple colour, and lies in a small pool of blood. She looks up, gives me a guarded smile. She doesn’t turn off the wireless.

  I stand close to the range, enjoying its warmth. On the wireless, there are none of the usual programmes; instead, there’s martial music – some familiar, vibrant march. Outside, through the window, another pellucid blue day.

  ‘Well, you’re certainly looking better. That’s good to see,’ she says.

  ‘Yes, I am. Thank you.’

  But there’s a hesitancy in her.

  ‘Fräulein Stella.’ There’s a catch in her voice. She sounds too solemn. ‘There’s something I ought to tell you. Something rather worrying that I heard at the market,’ she says.

  ‘Was there? What did you hear?’

  ‘Some news that’s rather depressing. People were saying the referendum is going to be postponed.’

  I don’t believe this. I’m too happy to believe it.

  ‘No, it can’t be,’ I say at once. ‘I’m sure they wouldn’t do that. Not after all this build-up.’ I think of all the fervour on the streets – yesterday, when Harri came to find me, when we went back to his room. The sense of thrill, all the strangers talking together. All the campaigning, that we can still hear faintly from outside. ‘I mean, everyone’s so excited. Everyone wants a chance to vote.’

  ‘Well, this is what some people were saying. This is what I’ve heard.’

  ‘What people were saying this, Janika?’

  ‘They were saying it at the Naschmarkt. People had heard things. Rumours.’

  She carries on with her work. She puts her hand in the carcase, and pulls out the two pale lobes of the crop. I listen to the wireless for a moment. It’s the celebrated Radetzky March, which always quickens your pulse and makes you want to step in time.

  ‘Well, I expect they’re just that – rumours. Stories can get passed around without any basis at all…’

  ‘Let’s hope that’s it, then,’ she says.

  ‘It can’t be postponed. It can’t be. I mean, not when everyone wants it so much.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Janika. She fingers the crucifix at her throat. ‘I don’t know, Fräulein Stella.’

  I hear the doubt in her voice. It comes to me that she’s still an outsider in Vienna, even though she’s lived and worked here all these years. She’s left part of herself in her village in the Zemplén Hills, with the storks, the vineyards, the forests. She doesn’t feel Viennese. She’s not caught up in the drama of what’s happening.

  We listen to the music for a moment.

  ‘Anyway – if that was true,’ I tell her, ‘they’d say so on the wireless. And it all sounds very cheerful.’

  ‘Well, I hope you’re right, Fräulein Stella.’ A slight frown creases her forehead. ‘To be honest, I don’t quite understand it anyway. Why everyone’s so excited. Why do they all imagine this referendum will change things?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it will.’ My voice is bright and assured. ‘I mean, everyone says there will be an overwhelming Yes vote. It’s rather thrilling, don’t you think? The whole country voting together. All speaking with a single voice.’

  Janika shakes her head a little.

  ‘It doesn’t really make sense to me,’ she tells me, rather quietly. ‘How can a vote protect us? How can a vote make us safe?’

  ‘Oh, it can, I’m sure of it. It’s important. It’s people saying what they want. Not to be dictated to about the way they’re governed. Still to be Austrian. Not to become part of the German Reich…’ I’m confident. In England a vote can change everything. ‘I suppose it’s like making a statement – this is what we believe in, this is what we want.’

  Janika pulls the heart from the chicken cavity; it’s small and pink and lumpy, and layered with milky-white fat. Her forehead is shiny with sweat, and there’s blood on her wrists and her hands. She looks old to me in the vivid light through the window, her face rather leathery and hard. She’s frowning. She looks almost ugly, in that moment.

  ‘What I think is – if there’s a bully in the playground, you don’t get anywhere by making a statement,’ she says.

  At once, that little cold drip of doubt in my mind.

  ‘When that happens, sooner or later, someone will have to get out his fists. Like it or not, that’s how the world works, Fräulein Stella,’ she tells me. ‘We might prefer it not to be so, but that’s the world we live in.’

  I don’t say anything.

  She looks up at me then. Her face is suddenly flushed. Perhaps she misreads my silence. She’s embarrassed because she’s been rather forward and disagreed with me.

  ‘But what do I know? Don’t you go listening to me. It’s all too big for me, Fräulein Stella,’ she says.

  63

  I can still hear music playing in the kitchen when I give Lukas his lesson.

  We sit at the dining table and read from the Rupert annual. But it’s not a very good lesson. Lukas is restless, unsettled. As though, young as he is, he’s been somehow infected by all the suspense of the day.

  He has the magnifying glass from the detective kit in his hand. I rather regret my gift to him now: he won’t be parted from it. He holds it over the illustrations in the Rupert book.

  ‘Lukas, that really isn’t helping. Why don’t you just put it away?’

  I’m fractious; I don’t seem to have my usual patience with him.

  ‘But I’m a detective. You know that,’ he says.

  ‘Well, at least put it down for a bit.’

  He does as I tell him, then reaches out and picks it up again. He wriggles around in the chair, as children will when they’re trying to concentrate. His tongue is sticking a little way out of his mouth.

  There are pigeons on the window sill. They huddle together, their bodies soft and swollen, ruffled up against the cold, their small eyes pink and furtive. You can hear their velvety murmurings. Lukas gets up from his chair.

  I’m impatient.

  ‘Lukas – sit down at once. We’re in the middle of a lesson,’ I say.

  ‘But I want to look at the birds,’ he says.

  ‘You can look at them after the lesson.’

  ‘I want to look at them now.’

  ‘Well, just a very quick look, then.’ I know when I’m beaten.

  He goes to the window, presses his face to the glass. The pigeons take off in a flurry and rush of pale wings.

  ‘See what they do, Fräulein Stella? I only wanted to look at them, and now they’ve flown away. They’re stupid.’

  We read the story together, but he isn’t paying attention. We’re bo
th relieved when the lesson is over.

  Afterwards, I read for a while in my room.

  At seven I go to the dining room for dinner. Marthe and Rainer aren’t there yet. I sit at the table and wait.

  Then Marthe comes in, looking flustered. There are livid red spots in her face.

  ‘Stella, there’s some important news you need to hear. It’s just been announced on the wireless. It seems that the referendum is being postponed.’

  I feel as though someone’s punched me – even though Janika warned me of this.

  ‘Oh no. Surely not, Marthe.’ But I cling to that word – postponed. ‘But if it’s been postponed, then they’ll choose another date, won’t they?’

  She doesn’t answer.

  ‘But it will still happen, won’t it? I mean, they can’t just cancel it.’ There’s a pleading note in my voice.

  ‘I don’t know, Stella. No one knows quite what will happen now,’ she says carefully.

  I think of Harri. I try to reassure myself that everything is happening as it is meant to happen; that everything is playing out as it is meant to do. That Harri and I are meant to be together.

  Janika brings in the boiled beef.

  ‘We’ll start,’ says Marthe. ‘Rainer has some very urgent phone calls he needs to make.’

  He joins us halfway through the meal. He seems preoccupied.

  After dinner, Janika brings coffee to the drawing room, as usual. I sit in an armchair in front of the little French desk. Marthe hands the coffee round. Rainer is sitting beside me; he lights a cigar. The wireless on the French desk is on, in case there are more announcements. Now, they’re playing Strauss waltzes – no more martial music. We listen to the waltzes, and talk in a desultory way, about the music I’m studying, and how much more snow there will be.

  The phone rings in the hall, and Janika calls for Marthe: it’s her cousin Elfi from Frankfurt. I know she’ll be gone for a while – Marthe and her cousin always seem to have plenty to say.

  I’m alone with him. For the first time since it happened – since I learned he was my father.

  I know I have to seize the moment. I tell myself I can do this. I’m stronger now, feeling so sure of Harri’s love for me: everything feels possible. But my hand that holds my coffee is trembling, so the liquid shivers all across its surface in the cup.

  I’ve planned what I will say: the words are laid out in my mind, like a suit of clothes for an important occasion. I’ll talk about my mother, and the country house where they met. Rainer – my mother once told me you met at Gillingham Manor … I was wondering how well you knew her? I’m a little frightened – but I have to do this. I have to know whether he knows, whether he will acknowledge me.

  I take a deep breath. I’m worried my voice will come out all squeaky and shrill.

  ‘Rainer…’

  He leans suddenly towards me, as though reaching out to me. A thrill of shock runs through me. The thought enters me, swift as a blade: He knows what I am going to say, he knows everything. He will embrace me, clasp me to him, claim me as his child. I feel a mix of fear and hope, a strange, bittersweet feeling.

  He’s reaching out to the wireless, to turn the volume up.

  I wasn’t listening to the wireless; I was utterly lost in my thoughts, I didn’t realise what was happening. I didn’t realise that the music had stopped.

  Rainer gets up, goes rapidly to the door, calls urgently for Marthe.

  Attention! Attention! An excited voice on the wireless. In a few minutes you will hear an important announcement!

  Then the ticking of a metronome, Austrian radio’s identification signal.

  Rainer sits in his chair again, but he’s leaning forward, intent. Utterly unaware of me.

  We hear Dr Schuschnigg’s voice.

  Austrian men and women!

  The Chancellor’s voice is shaking: this shocks me in someone so powerful, the leader of this whole nation. I feel a jolt of fear. In that moment, the thing I was going to say to Rainer is wiped away from my mind.

  This day has brought us face to face with a serious and decisive situation. It is my task to inform the Austrian people about the events of this day…

  Marthe comes rushing in. Rainer gestures her to sit, to be silent. She sits; but her hands in her lap flutter like little caged birds.

  Dr Schuschnigg goes on.

  The Government of the German Reich presented a time-limited ultimatum to the Federal President demanding that he appoint a candidate chosen by the Reich Government to the office of Chancellor and also follow its suggestions when selecting the ministers to serve in the cabinet. Should the Federal President not accept this ultimatum then German troops would begin to cross our frontiers this very hour.

  I gasp – at this sudden nightmare vision, of the Wehrmacht crossing the Austrian frontiers. Are we then that close to war? I can’t believe this is true; refuse to believe it.

  Rainer and Marthe glance at one another. I can’t interpret the look that passes between them. But I have a sense that they are not as shocked by this as me.

  Dr Schuschnigg’s voice is stronger now, more impassioned.

  I wish to place on record before the world, that the reports disseminated in Austria that the workers have revolted and that streams of blood have been shed, that the Government is incapable of mastering the situation and cannot ensure law and order, are fabrications from A to Z.

  Rainer and Marthe both sit there, unmoving. Rainer has his lighted cigar in his hand, a column of ash hanging from it. As I watch, the ash wavers, collapses, scatters all over the floor. Neither of them seems to notice.

  The Federal President has instructed me to inform the nation that we are giving way to brute force. Because we refuse to shed German blood even in this tragic hour, we have ordered our armed forces, should an invasion take place, to withdraw without resistance, and to await the decision of the coming hours.

  It sounds as though his voice will break, but he controls himself.

  The Federal President has asked the army’s Inspector-General, General of Infantry Schilhawski, to assume command over all troops. All further orders for the armed forces will be issued by him.

  The sadness in the Chancellor’s voice makes tears start in my eyes. I wipe my face with the back of my hand. But Rainer and Marthe aren’t crying.

  So, in this hour, I bid farewell to the people of Austria with a German word and a wish from the bottom of my heart: God save Austria!

  On the wireless, they play the national anthem. Then silence.

  Nobody moves. The room is utterly still. And I suddenly become aware that the street outside, too, is silent, the whole city is silent – no people walking along the pavements, no fiakers or cars. It comes to me that all Vienna is holding its breath. In the stillness, I can hear the fast, dull beats of my heart.

  There’s a sudden distant commotion – a far-off shouting of men. It’s very remote and indistinct. Such a small thing, just a tremor – like a cloud on the horizon that threatens a storm, no bigger than a man’s hand. My pulse skitters off.

  The voices grow rather louder, seem to be drawing nearer.

  I get up, go to the window. I pull the curtains open. Nothing. The street as I thought is deserted. I have never seen it empty like this in the early evening before. In the stillness, my senses acute, I’m aware of the tiniest things. A little ragged snow falling. A cat that crosses the road, steps delicately onto the pavement, then skulks off into shadow. A scrap of litter stirring in a slight movement of air. There’s something wrong about this stillness. I wait. I can hear the pounding of blood in my ears. Behind me in the drawing room, neither Rainer nor Marthe moves, as though they too are waiting.

  I glance at the building opposite. The Jewish family have also opened their curtains. The dark-haired woman is at the window; beside her, the elderly woman, the child. They’re standing like me, silent, staring down into the street.

  A few more moments pass. From the room behind me, I hear the slow ti
ck of the clock, and Marthe’s hurried breathing. The voices surge nearer, are suddenly, startlingly, loud. There’s a roar of engines. Then a lorry shrieks round the corner into Maria-Treu-Gasse, and the noise slams into us – a great screaming and shouting of men. They are crammed in the back of the lorry; they wave their arms in the air, they are frenzied. Most of them have swastika bands on their sleeves, and a great black swastika flag streams out above them. Some are wearing steel helmets. Some have revolvers in their hands. They have an air of absolute triumph.

  Then another lorry, and another.

  Now I can hear what they are screaming.

  ‘Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!’ The Hitler chant. Then: ‘Juden verrecken! Juden verrecken!’

  Death to the Jews.

  I feel the cold go through me.

  In the flat in the opposite building, the women are still watching. But now someone has turned the light out, so they can’t be seen from the street.

  I glance behind me. Marthe looks a little frightened; she has a small sharp frown. But Rainer is impassive. As I turn back to the street, he comes to join me at the window. He stands close to me, calmly smoking. He’s so close I can catch the incense smell of his cologne: so close we’re almost touching. Yet I know he’s scarcely aware of me.

  Lorry after lorry passes, each one of them crowded with men, exultant, delirious. Where could they possibly come from – all these people, this murderous hate? Was this vicious hatred always here – tamped down, awaiting release – in this most gracious of cities? Frank thought so. Frank warned me of this, when he spoke of Hitler coming to Vienna. I thought he was being histrionic. I didn’t listen.

  I think of Harri; and bile surges into my throat. The knowledge of what I have done burns in me.

  At last, there are no more lorries. The shouting fades away in the distance, the street is empty again.

  Rainer stubs out his cigar in the ashtray and brushes the ash from his hands. He straightens his tie, pulls out the cuffs of his shirt. These small, banal gestures chill me. He’s readying himself for action: he looks like a man who means business. He’s taller, more imposing, all the world-weariness falling from him. The thought enters my mind: He has been waiting for this. This is his hour. This is the hour he has been yearning for.