Time and Time Again (24 page)

‘True enough.’

‘Funny how the other man disappeared like that,’ she mused. ‘They got all the rest. Rounded up five of them besides the dead chap. What did it say in the papers? Big fellow. Over six feet? Moustache and sideburns. In his thirties. You’d have thought he’d stand out like a sore thumb. All the others were skinny pastyfaced kids. That Princip boy who got shot was only nineteen. You’d have thought a six-foot Serbian would be easy enough to spot.’

‘Well, of course, he’s only a Serbian when he opens his mouth. Otherwise he could be any big chap with whiskers. Could be me.’

‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘Why not?’

‘Something tells me you wouldn’t have missed.’

The miles had rolled away as they chatted and quite soon their train was pulling into Zagreb station.

‘Now then,’ Bernadette said, getting up, ‘we must both change trains for the Vienna Express but I don’t want you to help me.’

‘Really?’

‘No. What’s more I don’t think we should travel together from now on.’

‘Oh,’ Stanton said and he didn’t try to disguise his disappointment. ‘I’d rather hoped we might.’

‘You see, the thing is,’ Bernadette went on, ‘I don’t want you to get bored with me. People do sometimes. I’m quite
intense
.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘We also have to consider the possibility that I might get bored of you.’

‘Well, that’s blunt.’

‘Look, Hugh. We’ve just spent nearly five rather lovely hours together. There’s ninety minutes to be spent in the waiting room at Zagreb then a further half a day on the train to Vienna, into which we get rather late. That would make almost twenty hours together, which is quite a lot for new acquaintances, and you see, I want us to have something left to talk about because …’

‘Because what?’

She was blushing again, more deeply than ever. Her milk-white cheeks were crimson. She took a deep breath.

‘All right. Here we go. It’ll be past ten in the evening in Vienna and we’ll both have to find a hotel and it seems to me that it would
cosier
and certainly more
economical
if we roomed together. There. I’ve said it. What do you think?’

Stanton didn’t even reply. He was too taken aback. He’d known that things
might
drift that way. A man and a woman getting a little tipsy together over lunch always
might
end up in bed together. It was the bluntness that took him aback. It would have been bold even in 2024.

‘To be frank,’ Bernadette went on quickly, ‘I’ve been thinking about it ever since you said that thing about women holding up half the sky. I have never in my whole life heard anyone say anything remotely so lovely or so true. Quite honestly, I think I’d want to sleep with any man who came up with it. Even if he
wasn’t
such a dish.’

Stanton had never before had cause to be grateful to the memory of Chairman Mao Tse Tung. But he was now.

TRUE TO HER
word Bernadette sat apart from Stanton in the waiting room at Zagreb and found a different carriage to him on the Vienna train. Even when they both sat for supper in the dining car she merely raised a glass to him from across the carriage.

Stanton was impressed.

She was right really. It had been obvious from almost the first moment of their conversation that there was a strong mutual attraction and this had been reinforced over a very long lunch. There had been a palpable electricity between them, an excitement that might perhaps have been difficult to maintain over a further eleven hours of close proximity. It would probably have been all right, but then again it could easily not have been. By arranging things as she had, Bernadette had certainly ensured that there would be a new and highly charged frisson to their encounter when they met in Vienna. She was, as his old army mates would have put it, a classy chick.

Eventually, as night fell across Europe, he drifted off to sleep in his seat and didn’t wake up until the train was approaching Vienna.

When he got off the train he found that Bernadette, who had been in a more forward carriage, had already secured a porter and was waiting for him beyond the barrier.

‘Share a taxi?’ she said brightly. ‘You can shove your stuff on top of mine if you like. Although you’d probably better handle the
emotional baggage
yourself. Wouldn’t want anyone prying into that, would we?’

‘Thanks. I’ll hang on to my actual bags as well, in fact,’ Stanton replied. ‘Old habit.’

‘Suit yourself. Had you thought about where you’re staying?’

‘Well, I’d heard the Hotel Sacher was very good. It’s next to the Opera House, which sounds pretty grand, but when in Vienna, eh?’

‘How extraordinary! That’s where I’m staying myself.’

There wasn’t much of a queue for cabs and soon they were on their way through the deserted streets.

‘Not a soul about. Never is after dark,’ Bernadette remarked. ‘Lovely town in the day but dull as paint at night. The Viennese have to go to bed at ten, did you know? Or they get fined.’

‘Come on, really? Fined?’ Stanton replied. ‘Can’t quite believe that.’

‘Well, as good as. They all live in apartment blocks, you see, and they have to pay a fee to the doorman if they’re late so they all scurry home. Ridiculous, rushing their dinners for which they’ll have paid twenty krone in order to save a handful of heller on the night doorman. Stupid, isn’t it?’

‘You seem to know a bit about the place, Bernie.’

‘I spent a month here as companion to an aunt when I was eighteen. She loved her opera, which I don’t much, but I loved Vienna and I still do. I was also here three years ago for a conference on Women’s Health. It’s the most relaxed capital I’ve ever been in. They go to bed early and rise late, and when they do get up, most of them seem to just sit in coffee houses and talk about theatre. You’ve no idea how many different ways of making coffee they have, one for nearly every hour of the day. I think the fact that it’s such an old
old
capital and it used to be important but isn’t much any more has made it more relaxed. I mean, if you go to London or Berlin everybody’s so
busy
, what with us trying to stay ahead and the Germans trying to catch up. From what I’ve heard New York’s more frantic still. Even Paris tries to look important in a superior kind of way. But Vienna, well, it’s sort of
given up
, hasn’t it? They know they’ve got a motley sort of half-baked empire and an ancient emperor who’s more concerned with court etiquette than international politics. So they’ve stopped bothering, which gives the place a nice easy feel. Have you heard of Karl Kraus?’

Amazingly, he had. He’d studied the Austro-Hungarian Empire at university, under McCluskey in fact, and was aware of Vienna’s famous satirist.

‘Publishes a magazine, doesn’t he?
The Torch
?’

‘Well
done
. You really are the best informed soldier I’ve ever met. Anyway, he said, “In Berlin things are serious but not hopeless. In Vienna they’re hopeless but not serious” – good one, don’t you think?’

Bernadette continued to chat slightly frantically, pointing out buildings and parks as the Daimler taxi cab roared through the beautiful town, until quite suddenly they arrived at the Hotel Sacher.

‘I suppose you think I’ve prattled on a bit,’ she said, as Stanton settled the fare.

‘Well, yes,’ he conceded, ‘but it’s been interesting.’

‘To tell you the truth, I’m a bit nervous. I expect you think I’m pretty fast but I don’t normally do this sort of thing at all.’

‘No, nor me.’

‘It was the wine that started it. And that Manhattan. Still. We’re in it now, eh?’

They went into the foyer of the hotel and approached reception.

‘Can you do it?’ Bernadette said. ‘I know I’ll go bright red.’

‘Of course … you’re sure you want to do this? I mean, just book one room?’

‘Yes. I’ve crept along the occasional corridor in my time and I don’t like it. You feel like a thief.’

‘OK.’

‘O-K?’

‘American expression. I meant, fine.’

‘Right. Well, off you go then.’

Stanton was surprised to discover as he approached reception that he felt quite nervous too, even a little embarrassed. It was a strange sensation. He was after all a mature man, a soldier. He had carried out clandestine operations in numerous countries and, even more impressively, in two separate dimensions of space and time. He was heavily armed, extremely wealthy and an impressive and commanding figure by any standards. James Bond himself would have been hard put to notch up any more cool points. So why was it that walking towards that reception desk he felt seventeen years old again?

Perhaps it was the man behind it. Tall, thin, grey-haired with a neat goatee beard. Like one of those old cartoons of Uncle Sam but without the benign twinkle. He looked like a schoolmaster who was about to tell Stanton off for having dirty pictures in his bag.

And it
was
a slightly sensitive situation, after all. Stanton knew enough about the period to be aware that no respectable hotel would allow an unmarried couple to share a room, and also that for foreign guests they would probably require some form of official identification on check-in. On the other hand, people must have had affairs in those days, as they have always done, and they must have had them somewhere.

‘Good evening,’ Stanton said loudly. ‘Do you speak English? If not, perhaps you’d be kind enough to find me someone who does.’

He’d decided not to admit that he spoke German. If they wanted to try and argue with him, he’d make it as difficult for them as possible.

‘I speak English, sir, of course,’ Uncle Sam replied. ‘Do you wish to secure a room?’

‘Yes, my wife and I are just off the Zagreb train. Would have wired ahead but nobody at the Zagreb station telegraph office spoke English, if you can credit it. We want your best room, a bottle of hock, make sure it’s good and chilled and something to eat. Cheese and cold cuts will be fine.’

‘Of course, sir. If I might just see your papers.’

‘Here’s mine but my wife’s are right at the bottom of her bag. I’m sure one will be sufficient …’ He laid his Foreign Office letter down on the reception desk with its GR lion and unicorn stamp uppermost, placing underneath it a ten-krone note for good measure. ‘Look here, somebody has left this money. You take it. Perhaps it won’t be claimed.’

The receptionist took the money and Stanton took the key.

As he and Bernadette were escorted to the lift by the bellboy she whispered, ‘I feel like I’m seventeen.’

‘I was just thinking the same thing,’ Stanton replied.

‘Did you
really
bribe him?’

‘Yes, and if that hadn’t worked I was going to shoot him.’

Their room had a balcony and while the porter set out their bags they went and stood on it and looked out over the city, just as Stanton had done in Istanbul. Except that this time he was no longer alone. There was a near full moon and the whole of the venerable town was washed with silver.

Bernadette leant her shoulder against his.

‘Is this the first time you’ve been alone with a woman,’ she said, ‘I mean, since …’ She didn’t finish her sentence.

‘Yes, as a matter of fact it is,’ Stanton admitted. ‘If you mean, as in
alone
alone. I did spend a lot of this year as the guest of my old professor at Cambridge but she was very large and old and we only talked about history.’

‘You had a
female
professor? At Cambridge? How did you manage that?’

‘His wife, I mean. An old professor’s wife. Took pity on me because … well, because I was on my own.’

Bernadette moved a little closer still.

‘Well, it’s very nice. For me, I mean – flattering. In a way. Or does that sound wrong?’

‘No, it sounds fine.’

There was a knock at the door and their supper arrived. The waiter wanted to make a fuss of laying out the table with crisp cloth and silver service, but Stanton stuck a tip in his pocket and ushered him out of the room.

‘Shall we have it on the balcony?’ he said picking up the tray. ‘It’s a warm night.’

They settled themselves in the chairs and Bernadette smoked a cheroot.

‘I took them up because my father said he couldn’t bear to see a woman smoke. Now I can’t do without them. Care for one?’

‘No. I gave them up.’

‘Goodness gracious. Why ever did you do that? I love it!’

‘You should give up too,’ he said. ‘They’re carcinogenic.’

‘What?’

‘They cause cancer, of the lungs.’

‘Oh, that’s all rot. My doctor says smoking actually wards
off
some infections. As does a nice glass of wine by the way.’

Stanton realized that he’d neglected to pour the wine and now found that in his eagerness to get rid of the waiter he hadn’t allowed him to draw the cork.

‘Be prepared’s my motto,’ he said, getting a multi-tool knife from his bag. ‘Once a boy scout always a boy scout, eh?’

‘Boy scout? What? Did you join when you were thirty? They only started six or seven years ago. My youngest brother was one of the first.’

‘I just meant … oh, I don’t know what I meant.’

‘Useful bit of kit,’ Bernadette remarked, eyeing his multi-tool.

‘Yes … Australian. Cheers.’

He handed her a glass and they drank their wine in silence for a moment.

‘Good hock,’ Stanton said.

‘Yes. I love German wine. Always sweeter than French.’

Stanton breathed in her smoke. It smelt delicious.

‘And you?’ he enquired. ‘Any adventures since Budapest? I rather got the impression that you had a … thing in Budapest.’

‘Yes, I did. I had a … a thing. And no. I haven’t had a “thing” since. But then it has only been three months.’

‘Did he break your heart?’

She looked thoughtful for a moment.

‘Well, shall we say I got my heart broken …’

‘Thought so.’

‘But …’

‘But?’

‘All right,’ she said, looking him in the eye. ‘How about this?
She
wasn’t a
he
.’

‘Oh … right. So it was a woman who broke your heart.’