A Kiss for the Enemy (23 page)

‘Anna! Anna!'

‘
No
!' said Anna, loudly, struggling ferociously. She managed to get halfway to her feet. The contortion involved
in freeing herself from Schwede's powerful, questing hands overturned the light table which crashed to the ground with two cups upon it. Table cloth, broken china and coffee dregs were strewn upon the flagstones, together with the small gift box. Schwede stood up with some difficulty. He tried to maintain the momentum of what had been, by any reckoning, a difficult assault to launch.

‘Anna!' he said again. He extended his arms wide and took a step towards her. Anna had by now put several yards between them and was looking with what appeared nervousness towards the house. Schwede supposed she feared that the crash of broken china could have been heard within and might provoke the appearance of some third party, embarrassing to them both. His guess was right. Marthe, the old cook, was in the kitchen and Anna had no wish for an already deplorable situation to be complicated by the arrival of unbidden reinforcements, by subsequent explanations. In fact, Marthe was stone deaf and heard nothing. Franzi was sleeping soundly in his cot near an open window but appeared to have been undisturbed by the hub-bub.

‘Anna!'

Anna said, ‘Herr Schwede, please help me pick up this china.' Before he knew what he was doing he found himself on hands and knees, collecting pieces. When it was done he found it hard to recreate the excitement, the glory of that moment when he had, for however short and unsatisfying a moment, held her in his arms.

‘Now, Herr Schwede, I think it best if you leave at once. I will try to forget your surprising behaviour.'

Schwede extended a hand. Anna ignored it.

‘If you go round the corner of the house you will reach your car.' Her voice was icy.

He looked at her. One should never take ‘no' for an answer. She was resisting but it surely only meant that he must push harder at the door. He bowed. It wasn't altogether unexpected. He had even rehearsed his closing speech.

‘I am afraid my feelings got the better of me. Please believe that those feelings are of the strongest, the most sincere kind.'

Anna said nothing. Schwede smiled with melancholy fondness. He extended his hand again. What would happen, he
wondered, if he grabbed her again, really went for her this time? Was there much to lose? He eyed her and swallowed. Better not.

‘One moment,' said Anna.

She darted to where she had been sitting and returned with the little box. Put it into his outstretched hand.

‘Goodbye, Herr Schwede.'

‘We shall meet shortly,' said Schwede, short of breath and confused in mind. ‘I shall call again soon, when you return, at Langenbach. You have misunderstood me.'

Anna shrugged her shoulders.

‘I see no point in your calling at Langenbach, Herr Schwede and I don't think I have misunderstood anything. It seems to be you who have suffered from misunderstanding of the position. Of your position.'

‘I understand my position perfectly,' said Schwede, his voice shaking again but now made unsteady by a number of emotions of which lust was only one and by no means the predominant. ‘I understand my position perfectly. I am
Kreisleiter
of Langenbach.'

‘I did not mean that. I mean that you appear to think I might welcome – attention from you. That is far from being so. It is the exact reverse of the truth. I find your presence distasteful. And, as I have said, I see no point in your calling again.'

‘I am
Kreisleiter
of Langenbach,' Schwede heard himself saying, as from a great distance. ‘As such, many things are my concern. We shall be seeing each other, I promise you, Frau Langenbach. I promise you that!' He did not afterwards remember how he left the terrace.

Anna heard, with relief, the sound of Schwede's car driving away. She supposed she had been immensely foolish. It had been unnecessary to tell him so bluntly that his physical presence repelled her. She could have been more gracious while still keeping him at a distance. She could, she supposed, have brushed off his oafish attack without so ruthlessly wounding his pride. Instead she had acted as she felt. She found Schwede disgusting and the fact that he was in a position to do harm – or good – to her and hers had counted with her too little.

Anna sat for some time with her head ‘on her hands. I was selfish,' she thought, ‘self-indulgent. What does it matter that the beast paws me? By being so sensitive I might endanger other people whom I love.' For she had few illusions about what Schwede could – and would be prepared to – do. ‘I wish I could talk – talk to anybody,' she thought. But to confide was itself somehow repellent. A child like Marcia, despite a year in the Reich at war, could not possibly understand the menace, the dangers of being branded as hostile to the Party. The sheer spite which could wreck lives.

Or take them.

Anna knew that she could not speak of Schwede to someone like Kaspar von Arzfeld, her cousin. He would be angry, but if he acted he would only make trouble for himself. He had no influential contacts in the Party. Besides, what had Schwede done? Tried to kiss an attractive woman whom he fancied – to whom he was, he apparently thought, paying honourable court! It might be socially distressing to a von Arzfeld or a Langenbach, but it was hardly a crime! And in the new Germany the lofty attitudes she and her kin represented were a great deal more reprehensible than any conduct of the
Kreisleiterl
Schwede had done nothing for which he would or could be taken to task. His only fault was to have failed. That would make of him an enemy.

Anna felt very isolated. Franzi was still asleep. Neither Kaspar nor the girls would return for another three hours. She found the companionship of Marcia half-solace, half-torment. She loved the reminders of Anthony that Marcia's presence provided, a few tricks of speech or movements of body where brother was brought to mind by sister. But she was also tortured by those reminders. Anna had never been able to find relief for her love and her pain by confidences. She had none near enough to her who could be trusted. She was, besides, a woman not given to sharing her emotions, to self-display. And how to find words, anyway, which were not utterly banal?

Anna knew by now that if she never saw Anthony again she would love him, unreasonably, unsatisfyingly, foolishly, but without the smallest doubt and for ever. She knew that he was far more to her than the young man who had moved her as no other, more than the father of her child, more than she could
ever describe to somebody else. It made no sense, and she had no desire to make sense of it. It was simply there, a cancer, irremovable. ‘Oh God!' she sometimes muttered. ‘How I long for him!' Normally Anna loved solitude. Today the memory of Schwede oppressed her and she needed another human being, anyone, to remove the taste. She lifted her head. Surprisingly, she heard the sound of a distant car on the farm road to the house.

‘My God!' she thought. ‘He's coming back.' Her first instinct was to wake Marthe. Then she would pick up Franzi, go to her own room and lock herself in. She would tell Marthe that she was feeling unwell, and would keep Franzi with her. She would say,

‘If a gentleman calls tell him you regret but I've asked not to be disturbed.'

She moved towards the house. Then she stopped, and stood frowning.

Damn Schwede! Damn the bullying brute! Why should she, Anna Langenbach, hide from the man in her own cousin's house? She would sit where he had left her! Let him try to attack her again, threaten her, try to ingratiate himself with her, do his damndest! She would see him in Hell before she fled from him. Anna heard the car stop and its door open and shut. He would probably assume she had moved from the garden. He would enter by the front door as he had when he first arrived. Let him do so. Let him find her! She would say – ‘Have you forgotten something, Herr Schwede?'

She guessed correctly – through the open windows she heard footsteps in the house. Then – she deliberately did not turn her head – she heard him hesitantly approaching. A gentle, apologetic cough. What delicacy! Then a silence. He was standing in the french window. Anna spoke over her shoulder in as indifferent tones as she could muster.

‘Have you forgotten something?'

‘Almost but not quite forgotten, Frau Langenbach, how elegant you are!' said a laughing voice, not Schwede's. ‘After all, we have only met twice! I apologize for this sudden intrusion. Toni Rudberg.'

Faithful to his letter to Marcia, Toni booked a room in an hotel not far from Arzfeld, and hired a car locally. His friend, he with the sister in Hameln, occupied himself separately, although Toni often brought him fluently into his conversation, helping to dispel the idea that he, Toni, was on a particular quest.

‘He's a nice fellow, Berckheim. He promised me I'd admire this part of the country, wanted to show it to me. He was quite right.'

Toni's manner to Kaspar von Arzfeld was considerate and charming. With grave demeanour he murmured to him how much he appreciated the opportunity to pay his respects to the family of a comrade, ‘Whom all deeply admired.' In fact, Toni had only met Werner twice, and since – with the excellent sense he had in such matters – he supposed that Marcia would have confided in the women of the family about their relationship, he was careful to say his reverend words about Werner in Kaspar's ear alone. It would not do for the others to think he was using their bereavement to mask his own pursuit of a girl. He could appear to them a heartless humbug. Instead, he wished to stand well in their eyes.

He had reasons for this which went beyond Marcia and which took shape as the week went on. Each afternoon Toni visited Arzfeld, greeting the girls as they returned from work, meeting them several times at the station. On the second occasion, with great show of respect, he asked Marcia if she would dine with him, ‘to talk a little about Vienna'. His eyes were dancing. Kaspar von Arzfeld was, of course, the only member of the household unaware that Toni and Marcia would find, in all likelihood, plenty to do as well as talk about Vienna. Lise exchanged a quiet smile with Anna, whose complicity she had established after Marcia had confided in the latter.

That evening Kaspar said gently before they went to bed:

‘I think young Count Rudberg has taken quite a strong fancy to Fraülein Marvell, to our little guest Marcia. It is perfectly understandable!'

So that it was occasion for no particular comment when Toni invited Marcia to two further evening exchanges.

‘She has had a sad life for a young girl and she is anxious all the time,' said Kaspar. ‘It is good for her to be admired, to see someone other than ourselves.' He felt benevolent and reflected on his own tolerance. Once, such behaviour –! But times were different. And Werner was dead.

Toni, meanwhile, had taken to arriving at Arzfeld ever earlier in the afternoon. By these means he invariably found Anna by herself. He managed, indeed, to have an hour's conversation with her on the first occasion and nearly two hours thereafter. And Anna enjoyed it. He was excellent company, and her life, most of the time, was both solitary and dull.

Toni, as always, had formed his ideas extremely fast. On the first evening at the
Gasthof
before going to bed he had had an evening drink with his friend, Berckheim.

‘Are there a lot of them at Arzfeld beside your young lady? A large family?'

‘No, nothing like that. It's quiet, lifeless. There's the young Arzfeld girl and Marcia Marvell – they go to work in a hospital every day, by train. And the old Colonel, Kaspar von Arzfeld, has a job at the District Headquarters. He's back in uniform. So he's away all day too.'

‘Nobody else there?'

‘Well, they've got a cousin staying at present, with a baby. A widow. Frau Langenbach. She was born Arzfeld. I found her there when I first called, unannounced.'

‘A widow? Widow of Kurt Langenbach – Luftwaffe?'

‘That's correct. She's travelled a lot. I met them once or twice in Berlin. He was killed in Spain.'

Captain Christoph Berckheim, Toni's companion, was a local man and well-informed.

‘She's been left extremely well-off, you know. Her child – I suppose the one she's got here – will inherit everything from his old grandparents and people say that there are
very
generous provisions for the mother. It's a splendid property.'

Toni shrugged his shoulders with ostentatious lack of interest. He hadn't known. But the information accelerated within him a sensation he had recognized within minutes of meeting her again. He found Anna Langenbach enormously attractive. Of course Marcia was irresistible, adorable: her youth was delicious, her high spirits and her mischief, her
schelmerei
were pure intoxication. She was like a figure from a rococo fresco, an eighteenth-century nymph. Being in bed with Marcia was not a thing to tire of easily. He chuckled lasciviously at every recollection. The hotel was a pleasant place and he'd managed to wangle enough petrol to drive her home at about midnight each time. All rather rushed, but by God, it was worth it!

And yet, and yet –! Marcia was English, and in an impossible position, no doubt of it. Sooner or later – he switched his mind away from the possibilities but they refused to be banished. At present, he gathered, she was adequately, if insecurely, protected by her status as the late Captain Werner von Arzfeld's fiancée; and, no doubt, by the good words put in by both the Rudberg and von Arzfeld families – ‘for what that's worth!' Toni reflected gloomily. It couldn't last. Sooner or later, as an enemy alien, she would try the patience of ‘The Authorities' too far. It only needed one false move, one sharp word in the wrong direction by Marcia at the hospital, the malicious whim of some jack-in-office. Marcia, poor girl, could find herself in a nasty situation.