The English Girl (6 page)

‘So – you come from Hungary, Marthe said?’

Janika nods. ‘From a village in the Zemplén Hills. A quiet place. It’s not so far from Tokaj, where the golden wines come from,’ she says.

I’ve never heard of the Zemplén Hills, or the golden wines of Tokaj. This all sounds so exotic.

‘Oh. Tell me about it.’

She thinks for a moment.

‘Well – it was just a little village,’ she says. ‘There were vineyards, and forests beyond. And everyone had a garden, and you’d see the peppers on wooden frames, hung out to dry in the sun.’

‘It sounds beautiful.’

She stirs the chocolate into the warm milk. She spoons in sugar, pours the liquid into a cup, hands it to me. I breathe in the scented steam that rises from the cup. I sip. It’s delicious.

I notice how she talks about her village in the past tense.

‘Do you ever go back there?’ I ask her.

‘Yes, every summer. I go for a fortnight. Frau Krause is very good to me,’ she says.

There’s a note of yearning in her voice. I wonder how old she is – perhaps in her early fifties, well past childbearing age. I wonder what she’s had to give up, in living here, in working for the Krauses.

She goes back to kneading the dough. I watch her. Her sleeves are rolled up, so you can see her generous arms, white as milk, and roped with muscle. As she leans across the table, the crucifix that she wears at her neck swings forward and catches the light and glitters.

I want to ask about Verity Miller. I hesitate, sipping the chocolate. Maybe I’m too new here to enquire about delicate things. But there’s something so comfortable about Janika.

‘I was talking to Lukas,’ I tell her. ‘He seemed very upset that Fräulein Verity had to leave so suddenly.’

I see her throat move as she swallows.

‘Yes, poor little Lukas was very unhappy,’ she says.

‘I was wondering what happened,’ I say carefully.

For a moment she doesn’t answer. I’m very aware of the small sounds of the kitchen – the slap of the dough as she works it, the shift and sigh of burning coals in the range.

I hear the slight click as she clears her throat.

‘The thing is, Fräulein Stella, the Krauses asked her to leave.’

‘Oh.’ I’m startled. I don’t know what I’d expected, but it certainly wasn’t this. ‘But why? If Lukas was so fond of her?’

‘It was one of those things. They had their reasons,’ she says.

Her face is shuttered, and I can’t read her expression.

‘It seems rather surprising – when Verity had been with them all that time,’ I say carefully.

‘You mustn’t blame Frau Krause,’ she says. ‘It was very upsetting for her.’

This just perplexes me more. If it was partly Marthe’s decision, why did it upset her so much?

Janika sees my confusion.

‘Poor Frau Krause has had her share of troubles,’ she says. ‘She hasn’t had an easy life.’

I wonder what she means by this. I think of the sadness that seems to hang about Marthe, like the decayed sweetness of dying flowers.

There’s a shadow in Janika’s face. I know that I mustn’t ask anything more – however much I might want to. I feel bad that I’ve talked about things that make her so uneasy. I thank her for the hot chocolate, and go along to my room.

I stand at my window, looking out at the street.

It’s that intimate moment just before dark, when people have lit the lamps in their rooms, but before they draw their curtains. I can see the dark-haired woman in the opposite flat. She’s standing at the window, putting carnations into a vase. When she comes to the very last flower, she holds it up to her face, presses it to her, breathes it in. I imagine the scent of the flowers – powdery, a little spicy, evanescent.

I’m unnerved by what Janika told me – and by what she didn’t say. That she wouldn’t explain why the Krauses had told Verity to leave. My mind spools out fantastical stories. Did Rainer have an affair with Verity Miller, and then spurn her? I’ve learned of such things from the novels I’ve read; I know just how vulnerable a young woman who moves into a household can be. But then I tell myself I’m being fanciful. I can’t imagine Rainer behaving so badly. There’s something controlled and disciplined in him; something very correct. But what else can have happened?

The woman in the opposite window places the vase on the sill. Then she turns and switches on her lamp, the one with the amber glass shade that stands by the nine-branched candelabra. The light spills like fallen petals, and its brightness deepens the shadows – just this one small pool of radiance, and, all around, night edging in.

Rainer is out at dinner time, and I eat with Marthe. She asks me a lot of polite questions about Brockenhurst. Verity Miller isn’t mentioned.

When I finally get to bed, I’m so tired I fall asleep at once. I have a troubling dream – of the endlessly whispering leaves of the chestnut trees in the Prater. The leaves are falling and falling on me; they bury and overwhelm me, so I lie beneath a gentle, deathly eiderdown of leaves. Soon they will suffocate me.

I wake; I can still hear leaves rustling. Then I realise the sound is rain that’s falling against my window. Briefly, I’m surprised that it ever rains in Vienna. For a moment the sensations of the dream are still with me, the deathly, suffocating softness in my mouth and my throat.

In the morning, the rain has cleared. There’s a sky like mother-of-pearl, and an edge of chill to the air. I shall spend the morning practising, while Lukas is at kindergarten.

I take my music and go along to the Rose Room. I open the door, just stand there for a moment, looking in.

It’s such a beautiful room. I love the way the light of autumn spills through the tall arched windows, reflecting in the many mirrors on the walls. I wonder how this room will look with the first fall of snow, imagining the snow-light, at once soft and dazzling.

It’s cold. The stove in the corner hasn’t been lit. I rub my hands to warm them.

There’s a heap of sheet music on the piano. I rifle through the pile. There are lots of songs – Schubert, Schumann, Debussy. I find
Winterreise
,
A Winter Journey
, Schubert’s wonderful song-cycle, which tells of a man in despair, a spurned lover; how he travels through a wintry landscape of snowfall and crows, full of hopeless yearning for what has been denied him; how he comes at last to a place beyond grief, where the world is changed and there seem to be too many suns in the sky. It’s very sad and beautiful.

I put my own music on top of the pile. I open the piano.

I ought to be working on the Czerny studies. Practice is hard work mostly – repeating short phrases, over and over; persuading your fingers to do impossible things. But first I shall treat myself: I shall play a piece right through. I shall play some Chopin, because I love Chopin the best. I choose the E flat Nocturne.

I start to play. The piano is just as I’d hoped – its tone rich, its touch opulent. I lose myself in the music. It’s dark, dreamy, languorous: I think of an overgrown garden, all shadow and silver under the moon.

There’s a footfall behind me. I stumble over the notes. I’m startled, torn from my vision.

I stop, look up. Rainer is there, reflected in the mirror on the wall above the piano. I turn to him.

He gives me a deprecating smile.

‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Stella. But I couldn’t resist coming in…’

‘Not at all,’ I say politely.

My heart is jittery: it’s the first time I’ve been alone with him. I think of what I know about him. How he keeps his study door locked. Of the sternness in his face when he talked of Vienna’s decline. Of how he looked, smoking on the balcony – how I felt he seemed to welcome the coming of night. These thoughts make me nervous.

Yet he doesn’t seem at all frightening – standing here, smiling at me. He’s even a little tentative.

‘You play very well,’ he tells me.

‘Thank you.’

I wonder why he’s at home – I’d have expected him to be at his office during the day. It’s early; perhaps he hasn’t left yet.

‘Chopin is technically very demanding,’ he says.

So he knows about music.

‘Yes, that’s true – but I adore his music.’

I sound so girlish. I long to be sophisticated – like Anneliese; like him.

‘You certainly have an empathy for his music,’ he says. ‘Your phrasing is wonderful.’

I can’t help feeling flattered.

He comes over, rests his elbows on top of the piano. He’s wearing some hair oil or cologne that reminds me of incense, of the sweet, rather claustrophobic scent of a Catholic church.

‘So how did that first lesson go?’ he asks me.

‘It was rather frightening,’ I tell him. ‘My tutor says he wants to take my technique apart.’ I’m aware that I’m telling Rainer more than I told Marthe – having some intuitive feeling that he’ll understand. ‘It’s going to be quite gruelling.’

‘Of course. But in the end it will all be well worthwhile, I’m sure. So how did it all begin – your piano-playing? Did your mother encourage you?’

‘No. Well, not to start with. She plays the piano herself, of course, but to be honest she didn’t ever really want me to play. She said the piano was a hard taskmaster. That it required such discipline.’

He raises one arched eyebrow.

‘But that is good, surely? Nothing can be achieved in life without discipline,’ he says.

‘I pestered her to let me have lessons,’ I tell him. ‘I made a frightful nuisance of myself. I so terribly wanted to play.’

‘And your father? What does he think of your piano-playing?’ he asks. ‘And of your coming to study in Vienna?’

These questions unnerve me.

‘I’m afraid my father died when I was ten,’ I tell him.

A serious expression comes over his face.

‘Stella – I’m so sorry, I didn’t know that,’ he says.

I’m embarrassed. I’m surprised my mother hadn’t put this in her letter. I feel a little cross with her, that she didn’t tell the Krauses this. That by this omission she has set up this awkwardness for me.

‘Don’t worry. It was a long time ago,’ I tell him. Trying to smooth things over. ‘I don’t mind speaking about him … To be honest, Daddy was quite unmusical. He liked the countryside. Watching birds, and so on. He didn’t really understand music at all.’

This interests Rainer.

‘Was that difficult for you?’ he asks me.

I shake my head.

‘He always encouraged me to do what I wanted to do.’

I try to picture him, my gentle, kindly father – digging in the garden, or scraping the mud off his boots at the door to the house. Amid the glamour of this room, this city, these things are difficult to imagine.

‘I don’t know if you’d heard this – but I used to sing,’ says Rainer.

‘No, I didn’t know that. You said
used
to…’

He shrugs slightly.

‘Other things crowded it out. As you grow older, you have so many calls on your time.’

‘Yes, of course.’

Him saying that makes me feel so young again.

‘I wanted to ask if we could make some music together?’ he says.

‘Oh.’ I’m surprised; pleased. ‘I’d love to.’

‘No one else in the house plays,’ he says. ‘Marthe doesn’t play. Well, everyone has their own interests, of course – the things that have meaning for them. For me, it’s like with your father – not being quite understood.’

I feel a mix of things, when he says this. Privileged, singled out. Yet at the same time that he’s being too intimate with me. He shouldn’t be criticising his wife to me, even in this rather elliptical way. Especially when I am still a stranger to him.

He rifles through the pile of music on top of the piano. His closeness disconcerts me. His eyes are like a sea in winter – grey, and rather chilly, rather remote. Briefly, I feel a little jolt of desire, which I don’t want to feel, but can’t erase.

‘So which shall it be? Schubert? Debussy?’ he says.

‘Well, it’s Schubert’s city…’

‘Schubert, then. And what should we choose?’

I look at the way the cool light falls into the room – gilded, but a little thin, hinting of winter’s coming.

‘
Winterreise
,’ I say. ‘I’ve played it before – though not for a long time, I may be rather rusty.’

‘
Winterreise
would be perfect,’ he says.

He opens the book at the first song. ‘Gute Nacht.’
Good Night
. The young man is leaving the sweetheart who spurned him, first writing a simple message over her door.
Good night, my love
. Rainer spreads the music out on the piano for me.

I start to play. His tenor voice is light, pleasant, technically accomplished.

He stands behind me, reading the music over my shoulder. I breathe in the sweet, oppressive scent of his cologne.

When he leans across me to turn a page of the music, the shadow of his outstretched arm falls on me like a sword.

At the end, he turns to me and smiles.

‘Thank you, Stella. Such a sad song, but so lovely. There’s a restraint to it, which I admire very much. Perhaps one more song before I go?’

‘I’d love that.’

He leans across me, flicks to the end of the book. I see where he has opened it. ‘Die Nebensonnen.’
The Mock Suns
.

I’ve always found this song disturbing – with its strange, apocalyptic vision, where the half-crazed wanderer seems to see three suns that hang in the sky.

‘That song always frightens me a bit,’ I tell him. ‘It’s the strangest thing. It always makes me think of the end of the world…’

He gives me a keen look.

‘But is that really so frightening? The end of the world as we know it, and a new one being born?’ There’s something too ardent about him, when he says this. His pale eyes gleam. ‘A world re-made. Is that so terrible, Stella?’

‘Yes, it is, a bit. We don’t want the world as we know it to end, do we?’

He shrugs, smiles.

‘Well, maybe not that song then. I don’t want to frighten you.’