The English Girl (4 page)

Missing her, feeling her absence, I think too of my father – the sadness welling up in me, as it still does, even now.

I was ten when he died. It was a Saturday morning – an innocent-looking morning, a day of light mist with a high pale sun like a pearl. We’d hired horses from Mr Foster’s farm in Beaulieu, as we often did on Saturdays. We were riding along the stretch of lane that leads to Hatchet Pond, a twisty lane with high hedges. Just ambling along, chatting about nothing in particular. As though it were just a perfectly ordinary day.

I remember the sudden surge of sound – a car engine roaring behind us, something rarely heard in those lanes. I turned; saw an open-top car, coming fast. A young man driving, a woman beside him in the passenger seat. I can see every detail, it’s all far too clear, imprinted on my mind for ever. The woman young and lovely, her shiny dark hair flying back. They were laughing: in my memory, I can see their wide-open mouths. I remember it all so vividly: the woman’s blown hair, her red mouth, laughter.

As the car overtook us, I felt my horse’s twitchiness, the panic passing through her at the unfamiliar sound. I patted her neck, spoke softly to her. ‘Hey, little one, hush there…’ She quietened. But my father’s horse reared up and threw him onto the road. I remember how he fell, his body awkwardly sprawled, his arms and legs at strange angles, as though they were fixed on all wrong; his terrible stillness as he lay there. His stillness as I bent over him and listened for his breath, my tears falling on him. His face was so dirty – I tried to brush the dirt from his skin. Crying, helpless. I remember how the man and the woman drove on. How they didn’t look back.

I cry about all of it – my father’s death, my mother’s absence, being so far from home.

I hear the mournful sound of the clock at the Piaristenkirche striking two.

At last sleep comes.

Marthe has told me how to get to the Academy. I take the tram to Schottentor, and then Tram 2 round the Ring – the magnificent thoroughfare that encircles the centre of Vienna.

I peer through the tram window, wide-eyed. There are great baroque palaces, ornate with cherubs, laurel wreaths, flowers; statues of rearing horses and muscular men; fountains. It’s a fast, fresh day, and the spray from the fountains is flung exuberantly high. The sky is a deep, tender blue, the tramlines glisten like silver, the leaves of the lindens along the Ring are touched with amber and gold. In the lavish autumn sunlight, Vienna seems to flaunt herself, like a beautiful woman who knows she holds everyone’s gaze.
Look at me! Look at me! See how lovely I am!

I get off the tram at Lothringerstrasse.

The Academy is on the corner; it’s a whitewashed, red-tiled building. I climb the steps to the doors, where artfully dishevelled students are coming and going. I feel a sudden reluctance, an urge to turn back. Almost too afraid to go through with this – the thing I have so longed for. The receptionist directs me to Dr Zaslavsky’s room.

I climb the stone staircase; students mill around, chatting, laughing. On the first floor, I turn down a corridor. I can hear fragments of music from the practising rooms as I pass – a bright flurry of notes from a flute, a soprano singing a scale in the lightest silvery voice: bits of music snatched away, like pieces of paper torn off. My mouth is dry with nervousness.

Through a pane of glass in a door, I glimpse a ballet studio. One wall is lined with mirrors, and there’s a group of girls at the barre, their feet precise and perfect in satin dancing shoes. I’ve always loved ballet. I had pictures of ballerinas on my bedroom wall at home – Anna Pavlova, Alicia Markova. I’m early for my lesson, and I stay and watch for a moment.

One of the girls in the ballet class catches my eye. She has chestnut-brown hair in a stylish bob; her lips are a bold, lipsticked red. I would so love to look like her. As I watch she performs an arabesque, her face gleaming with sweat, her movements immaculate, raising her leg impossibly high.

I find the room where Dr Zaslavsky teaches. He is waiting for me, sitting by the piano. He stands, and kisses my hand.

‘So, Fräulein Whittaker. You have settled in Vienna?’

‘Yes. I’m staying with some friends of my mother’s,’ I say.

‘Excellent.’

He’s just as I remembered – hunched and creased and shrunken. But in the seamed, shrivelled face, the ardent, youthful eyes.

‘Well, it’s time to start working, Fräulein Whittaker. Are you ready for that?’

‘Yes. Absolutely.’

‘So what will you play me today?’

I’ve brought the pieces I played when he came to Mrs Slater’s house; when he said I had the potential to be extremely expressive. Chopin, John Ireland. I open up the Chopin, start to play.

He stops me almost at once. It seems that everything about my performance is wrong – the way I hold my hands, my posture, all of it. My wrists are too high, my back too stiff, my use of the pedals all wrong.

He frowns.

‘We will need to take your technique apart, Fräulein Whittaker,’ he tells me. ‘We will need to begin at the beginning again.’

It’s what I came for. But there’s a feeling like lead in my stomach.

‘Then we will need to look at your phrasing,’ he tells me. ‘The expression. You still play like a talented child, not a woman … But first, your technique. Technique is the foundation of everything. Without good technique, you have nothing…’

He doesn’t set me any music that I can enjoy – none of the Chopin or Liszt that I love. Instead, I have three ferocious Czerny studies to learn.

I cross the road and walk towards the tram-stop, through the windy brightness of the morning. I feel unravelled. The sun still shines, but for me all the gloss is gone from the day. Tears well up, and I’m ashamed: I don’t want people to see me crying.

I come to Beethovenplatz. It’s a dusty square planted with plane trees; their branches are hung with dried seed-cases, and their leaves are turning to bronze. There’s a statue of Beethoven, looking sullen.

I sit on the steps in front of the statue, which are white with bird droppings. Everything’s new and different here; even the smell of the wind is different. My hair blows over my face and I can’t be bothered to push it away. Was I really right to come here? Do I belong in this city of music? Was I just deluding myself when I thought I could play?

Students from the Academy are strolling through Beethovenplatz. They seem so vivid and certain, as though they all know exactly where they are headed. I feel utterly separate from them – so lost and far from home.

One of the students catches my eye; she’s the girl I saw in the ballet class, the one with glossy bobbed hair. She’s wearing a hat like a man’s fedora, of a gorgeous colour midway between purple and black, like over-ripe damsons, and she has a shapely little suit and shoes with very high heels. The colours of her clothes sing out.

A fierce gust of wind sweeps my hair from my face and swirls the leaves on the pavement. The girl’s hat blows off and comes cartwheeling across the ground to me. I don’t have to do anything; it lands like a gift in my lap. The girl comes running after it. I’m amazed she can move so fluidly in such high-heeled shoes.

I hold the hat out to her. As she bends, I breathe in her scent: she smells like peach preserves.

‘Thanks,’ she says, a smile unfurling over her face. ‘I thought it had gone for good. I’d have wept buckets. I’m awfully shallow like that.’

‘I’m glad I could help,’ I tell her, politely. And wish that I could think of something witty to say.

She pulls on the hat, peers down at me.

‘I haven’t seen you before,’ she says.

Her eyes have the dark gleam of liquorice.

‘No. Well, I’m new here.’

She purses her lips.

‘You don’t look very happy,’ she says.

I manage a rueful smile. I’m glad that the wind has dried the tears from my face.

‘I’m studying piano. I just had my first lesson,’ I tell her. ‘With Dr Zaslavsky.’

‘And he took you apart? Dismembered you? Ripped your guts out?’ she says.

I can’t help laughing.

‘More or less.’

‘They all do that,’ she says. ‘It’s horrible. It’s all part of learning, or so they claim. The discipline, and everything. And they love to say that your previous teacher got absolutely all of it wrong … I never quite understand it – why they can’t be a little bit
nicer
about it, a little bit more
polite
. But don’t worry, it happens to everyone.’

I think how she looked in the ballet class – her poise, her immaculate movements.

‘I can’t imagine that ever happened to you,’ I tell her.

She pulls a face.

‘Don’t you believe it. When I started here, one of my tutors said that I made him think of a platypus. Everyone laughed, the mean things. I took myself home, and crawled under the blankets, and
wept…’

‘How awful,’ I say.

She talks a lot about weeping, but I find it hard to imagine. There’s such clarity about her. She seems so vivid and scented and strong.

‘Between you and me, I think they enjoy it, making us suffer. I think it excites them. I think they’re
sadists
,’ she says. ‘But, trust me, it gets better. You’ll get your confidence back. In a month or two, you simply won’t know yourself.’

‘Actually – I feel a little better already,’ I say.

‘Oh, good. Well, I’m Anneliese Hartmann,’ she says.

I tell her who I am.

‘I guessed you were English,’ she says.

‘You mean – my accent?’

I know my face falls a little. I pride myself on my accent.

‘Well – you’ve got the
tiniest
bit of an accent, but I think it’s really sweet. And you’ve got that pink and white look, that lovely fair colouring.’

But I don’t want to be fair any more. I want to have glossy brown hair and liquorice eyes.

‘I think a coffee is called for,’ she says.

‘Really?’

‘We could go to the Landtmann. What do you think?’

‘Oh. I’d love to.’

‘It isn’t far. Everyone has to go to the Landtmann when they first come here. It’s a rite of passage. Have you ever been to a Viennese café before?’

‘No. No, I haven’t.’

‘Well, you’ll like it – you’ll see. It’s just a minute or two on the tram.’

This is magical; my spirits are entirely restored.

A waiter in a dinner jacket ushers us into the Café Landtmann and shows us to a table. Anneliese walks ahead of me. She has a springy dancer’s body. She moves so lightly, her back as lithe as the stalk of a flower. People watch her.

It’s a long, opulent, beautiful room. There are mirrors, chandeliers, high arched windows. Around us, the scents of coffee and wine, the thick, hushed pattern of talk, the expensive chink of crystal and fine china. I have never been anywhere remotely like this before. I’ve only ever eaten out at Tyrrell and Green’s department store in Southampton, where we’d have the plaice with boiled potatoes because my mother thought that was ‘safe’.

The waiter pulls out the chair for Anneliese. She eases up her tight skirt with the palms of her hands as she sits. She settles at the table, unbuttons her jacket. She’s wearing a blouse of eau de Nil silk, and you can see the swell of her breasts through the clingy fabric.

‘We’ll have cake. I think you
need
a cake,’ she tells me.

The waiter takes our order. He’s young, blond, with pleasant features. Anneliese gives him a vivid smile, and when he leaves the table she follows him with her eyes.

‘Mmm – speaking of delicious things – I wouldn’t mind taking
that
home with me,’ she says.

I’m slightly shocked; but I can’t help smiling.

‘So tell me where you come from, little Englishwoman,’ she says.

I tell her about Brockenhurst, and Mrs Slater, my piano teacher. Talking about them, I feel a pang of homesickness. Yet Brockenhurst already seems a little remote; when I picture my home now, it’s like an old photograph, rather faded and pale.

The coffee and cake arrive. The coffee is in a cup of bone china, so translucent that you can see the shape of your fingers through it. I sip. It’s quite unlike the bland Camp coffee my mother makes at home. It tastes so rich, and there’s a kick to it.

‘Mmm…’

‘Feeling better?’

‘Yes. Much better.’

I turn my attention to the cake. Anneliese has ordered Esterházytorte; it has fondant icing on top, in an intricate chevron pattern. I pick up the silver fork and take a little bite. I can taste almonds, hazelnut buttercream, a subtle apricot glaze.

Anneliese watches my face. She grins.

‘I thought you’d like it,’ she says. ‘Vienna is the world capital of cake, no question. One day I’ll take you to Demel’s – it’s a
temple
of confectionery. They used to supply the Imperial household. The marzipan decorations for the Imperial Christmas tree. And Empress Sisi’s violet sorbet…’

This sounds like a fairytale to me – a sorbet made of flowers. I’m dazzled.

‘So – tell me all about you,’ I say.

‘Well, there isn’t that much to tell, really. I come from Bad Ischl. It’s boring. To be entirely honest, I don’t go back very much … I go to Berlin when I can. Caspar’s there – he’s my boyfriend. He’s in the army – an Untersturmführer,’ she says.

A soldier boyfriend – this sounds so glamorous.

‘Tell me about him,’ I say.

She muses for a moment.

‘He’s very patriotic.’ She smiles. ‘And he has wonderful biceps,’ she says. ‘As I told you, I’m rather shallow…’

‘He sounds very nice,’ I say politely.

‘What about you, Stella? You must have a boyfriend,’ she says.

I’m surprised by the directness of the question.

‘No, not really.’

She raises her elegantly pencilled eyebrows.

‘This can’t be true, surely. Looking like you do, you must have all the men at your feet. I give you a couple of weeks, now you’re here in Vienna. You’ll only have to bat those pretty eyelashes,’ she says.

I don’t want her to think I’ve been totally sheltered – though to be honest, that’s true.

‘There
was
someone I went out with a couple of times,’ I tell her – thinking of Alan Soames, an insurance clerk in Brockenhurst, who gave me my first and only kiss. It was rather wet and imprecise and depressing. ‘But we aren’t in touch any more.’ I sip my coffee. ‘It’s only my second day here, but England already feels so distant. It’s strange…’