by Eva Ibbotson
Oh, why can’t I? Why not for this baby who surely will have enough to bear? My daughter is eighteen years old: if I had ever ‘had’ her I would now be learning to let her go. And yet I still can’t, even in this formal and ritualized way, be a mother to anybody else.
‘What is she to be called?’ I asked. ‘Have you decided?’
Helene smiled as at an excellent joke she was about to share. Then she called to her girls: ‘Mitzi! Franzi! Steffi! Resi! Come here!’
The four eldest came at once.
‘Tell Frau Susanna what names Papa likes for the baby.’ Her plainly named Viennese daughters began to giggle.
‘Donatella,’ said Mitzi.
‘Galatea,’ said Franzi.
‘Leonarda,’ whispered the shy and ravishing Steffi.
‘Graziella,’ said Resi.
‘But which?’ I asked. ‘Which one is she to have?’
‘All of them!’ cried the children in chorus. ‘Every single one!’
‘He went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum with a notebook,’ said Frau Schumacher, shaking her head. ‘He spent all Sunday there looking for inspiration.’
‘Well, he certainly seems to have found it,’ I said.
Later I took Frau Schumacher to the shop to choose material for a summer dress. Mitzi had gone to play with Maia who was spending Sunday with her grandfather, and it wasn’t long before we heard Maia’s bossy voice coming over the courtyard wall.
‘We’re going to make a yurt. We’re in the middle of the Gobi desert on our camels and we’ve missed the oasis so we have to camp here.’
‘Can we make a fire and cook something nice?’ begged Mitzi.
‘No, of course we can’t! We have to crouch inside and chew raw yak meat. There’s going to be a terrible sandstorm — a fire would blow out straight away.’
‘That Maia!’ snorted Helene. ‘Last week she wanted Mitzi to be an Inca and sacrifice a llama. She’s a real bully, that girl.’
A bully, yes, but a visionary too. At Mitzi’s age I too would have made yurts.
I have just had the most extraordinary interview with Frau Egger, the wife of the Minister of Planning.
Her cloak is almost finished. She came this afternoon for a final fitting and it looked very nice, but she still wanted the military buttons with the owl’s head, the lance and the motto saying Aggredi. I can see that in the sight of God it really cannot matter if one of my clients parades down the Ringstrasse labelled Charge, but it matters to me, and I was about to argue when, to my horror, she clutched my arm and her eyes filled with tears.
‘Please, Frau Susanna. . . could I speak to you for a moment? In private?’
I tried to refuse. Nini was out at the lacemaker’s, but I was in no doubt that it was Lily from the post office that was on Frau Egger’s mind.
‘I know you’re busy,’ she went on, ‘but I won’t keep you and I’m desperate. I’m simply desperate!’
With considerable reluctance I took her up to my sitting room and fetched the bottle of eau de vie I keep for special customers.
‘I shouldn’t, I know,’ she said, draining her glass at a gulp. ‘I don’t usually drink spirits, but I’m so unhappy and I thought if I can’t speak to the Anarchist girl myself perhaps you’d ask her to give a message to Lily?’
‘Frau Egger, I honestly don’t think you have anything to worry about. I’m sure that —’
‘Oh, but I do, I do. You don’t understand, I have everything to worry about.’
She held out her glass with a trembling hand and I filled it again, but with misgivings. My eau de vie is made by Gretl’s uncle who owns an orchard in Bregenz, and consists of almost neat spirit through which an apricot or two has briefly passed.
Frau Egger was really crying now, grinding her handkerchief into her eyes.
‘It’s dreadful, quite dreadful. I’m in despair.’
I made another attempt to console her. ‘Nini assures me that Lily is no longer interested in your husband. She has given him up.’
‘I know! I know she’s given him up, that’s what’s so terrible! My cook’s sister-in-law works as a chambermaid in the Hotel Post where my husband used to take Lily. The walls are very thin and she heard Lily tell my husband that she didn’t want to see him any more because I was a good woman. “Your wife is a good woman,” she heard Lily say, “she takes soup to the poor and I don’t want to hurt her any more.” But I’m not a good woman, Frau Susanna. I only take soup to the poor because the cook always makes too much and really there’s not a lot you can do with soup. If your girl told Lily that, would she take my husband back, do you think?’
‘Frau Egger, I don’t honestly think Nini could tell her that.’
‘Oh, but she must! She must! She must implore Lily not to give him up. And if she could tell Lily that he expects all sorts of advancements after the November elections. Ennoblement is not out of the question.’
She gulped down her second glass of spirits and, fumbling about in her reticule, pulled out a very pretty gold-link chain.
‘My husband is not very generous,’ she said. ‘Men don’t often think of these things but if the bomb-throwing girl could give this to Lily . . . just to show her that I really don’t mind. That all I desire is my husband’s happiness. There’s a bracelet that goes with it if she wanted it.’
I was by now extremely harrowed, but it seemed necessary to bring the poor woman down to earth.
‘I really don’t think it would work.’
‘Oh, but it must work. It must!’ Before I could stop her she had reached for the bottle and poured out a third glass of brandy and tipped it down her throat. ‘Of course if it’s not that . . . if it’s not me being good, and the soup . . . I mean, if it’s my husband’s Little Habit, then she must tell Lily that one gets used to it. Really. Well, almost.’
I removed the bottle and put it away in the cupboard, but it was too late. Frau Egger was now definitely drunk and the marital despair of a lifetime poured from her.
‘You see, it’s all right for you, Frau Susanna. You’re beautiful and I don’t suppose you’ve ever had to . . . not year in, year out, with someone you don’t like. And of course my parents said I was lucky when Egger asked me. He appeared from nowhere and Father helped him get a job as a clerk in the Ministry — and I was on the shelf. But I didn’t realize how it would go on and on . . . Every Tuesday and Friday after lunch it has to be. His doctor told him twice a week is the right amount and everything Willibald does is as regular as clockwork. While I thought there might be children I could bear it but now I don’t know what to do. If I say “Let’s do it in the dark,” he says, “Come, Adelheid, you’re not as ugly as that —” but of course that’s not what I mean. It used to be easier because we had such an excellent organ grinder down in the street. A real musician. I used to pay him to come and play under the window in the afternoons when Willibald was home. Strauss waltzes mostly. I could manage while he played Strauss. Johann, of course . . . and Josef too. Not Eduard so much; Eduard’s waltzes are too sad. But of course the neighbours didn’t like it and then the organ grinder went away.’
Frau Egger blew her nose and looked round for more brandy, but in vain.
‘Then he took up with Lily . . . Oh, it was wonderful; you can’t believe it, Frau Susanna! For months he didn’t come near me and he was almost good-tempered. It was like being born again. I started embroidering a footstool cover in petit point. I used to love embroidery when I was a girl, but after my marriage I couldn’t seem to settle down to it. And now it’s all over and there he is again with his white stomach and his Habit. I should have known,’ she wailed, beginning to cry again, ‘I should have known that nothing good could ever happen to me.’
As a result of this conversation I have decided to be noble. Frau Egger shall have her buttons. Let no one
say that I put my professional reputation before compassion to a deeply stricken soul.
July
Last Sunday Herr Huber took us on an outing to Linz to show us the villa he is buying for Magdalena, and to introduce his fiancée to his two sisters, maiden ladies who have an apartment on the ground floor of his old house beside the Danube.
I have always been fond of Linz: a splendidly solid town where the walls always seem thicker than anywhere else, the beds more solid, the pretzels on the café tables larger. It seemed to me absolutely right that Herr Huber’s empire should have its centre there.
‘I would be most grateful for your company,’ Herr Huber had said to me. ‘You have such excellent taste and Fraulein Winter is so young. There are decisions to be made about the furnishings and I don’t want to burden her.’
Alice too had been invited, but a mentally defective producer had decided to put four live Lipizzaners into Wienerblut, which meant extra rehearsals, and it was Magdalena, Edith and myself who set off at daybreak in the butcher’s car.
Magdalena, disdaining a motoring veil, sat beside her fiancé, her hair a considerable driving hazard, but there was one most encouraging sign. On her lap she held a large brown parcel securely tied with string.
‘It’s a present for the house,’ she volunteered — and at her words a look of the purest joy passed over the butcher’s face.
We stopped for the Gabelfrühstuck without which Herr Huber would not have expected to get through the morning, and by midday had reached the villa, twelve miles out of Linz, which was to be Magdalena’s home.
It stood alone in a copse of evergreens. Built by a master builder for his own use, it was adorned by no less than three pepper-pot towers, any number of gables, a porch and a conservatory. In the garden which was of the romantic kind containing nothing that is edible, we could make out, between two dark cypresses, a bird table with fretwork eaves and elaborately carved legs.
The house had just been vacated by the workmen; ladders still stood about; there was a smell of new paint.
‘Well, my dear, do you like it?’ said Herr Huber. He never touches his fiancée, but the tenderness in his voice is overwhelming.
‘Very nice,’ said Magdalena.
She thought the Bohemian chandelier he had installed in the hallway was ‘very nice’ too, and that he should do exactly as he liked about bringing the drawing room carpet from his house in Linz. Her knee-length hair in ravishing disarray after the drive, still clutching the parcel which she made no attempt to unpack, Magdalena wandered through the empty rooms, as patently uninterested in her new home as she had been in her wedding clothes.
In the dining room I took pity on Herr Huber. The notebook he had brought to write down his bride’s suggestions remained empty; the lines on his forehead increasingly resembled those of a bloodhound who has lost the scent.
‘I must say, I think a French chintz in maize or dark honey would look lovely in those windows. Swagged, and with a fan edging . . . and the material repeated in the upholstery of the chairs. With a pale grass-cloth on the walls you’d bring the sunshine right into the room.’
I babbled my way through into the study, offering wine-coloured velvet to offset the mahogany panelling, and we went upstairs, Magdalena still carrying the parcel about whose contents I became increasingly curious. A favourite vase? A clock inherited from the army officer? And what was delaying her? Surely a housewarming present should be unpacked at once?
In the first of the spare bedrooms I became quite carried away, suggesting a Dutch look to match the blue and white tiles on the stove; in the second I effortlessly conjured up an Indian bower with parrots on the wall and curtains of printed cotton from Rajasthan.
In the master bedroom, however, with its window looking out on to the lawn and the bird table framed in dark trees, my inspiration faltered. It was possible to imagine anything except the Hubers’ bridal night.
But my sudden silence didn’t matter, for it now became evident that Magdalena was nowhere to be seen.
‘She’s gone outside,’ said the Bluestocking with a nervous gulp.
‘I expect it was the smell of the paint,’ I said quickly, seeing Herr Huber’s face. ‘New paint often makes people feel unwell.’
We followed her out into the garden.
‘Look, she’s over there by the bird table,’ said Edith. ‘And she’s taken the parcel.’
Not knowing whether Magdalena wanted to be alone, we hesitated, but at that moment she turned, her hair rippling in the light, and beckoned to us with a friendly, almost welcoming gesture, and we set off across the lawn.
I should have known, of course. It wasn’t a bird table, it was a religious shrine, a crucifix hanging from the fretwork eaves. And Magdalena had unpacked her parcel.
‘Look!’ she said, and pointed to the figure she had released from its wrappings and placed between two candlesticks. Not Saint Lucy with her gouged-out eyes, not the breastless Saint Agatha . . . Quite a cheerful-looking saint and one that was new to me. The bald Saint Proscutea who had shaved off her hair to avoid marriage to a heathen, and wore on her waxen pate a slightly rakish wreath of thorns.
In her own way Magdalena had taken possession of her future home, and I was very much relieved.
Herr Huber’s old house in Linz was a very different affair. Solid, old-fashioned, with a verandah that ran the length of the first floor, it stood right on the towpath, square to the river, with a garden full of fruit trees and vegetables at the back. As he led us upstairs and out on to the balcony we could lean out and almost touch the horses as they pulled the heavy barges along, watch the tugs hoot on the wide grey river, or look across to the vineyards and gently rolling hills on the other shore.
‘Oh, but it’s beautiful, Herr Huber,’ said Edith — and proceeded to quote from Goethe. I had, of course, expected this — it was not to be hoped that the Master had failed to pen some lines on the significance of running water and its effect on memory, loss and time. But the ode was short, and when I took her out to look at the garden so as to give Herr Huber some time alone with his fiancée, I found the Bluestocking’s thoughts surprisingly similar to mine.
‘I was wondering whether Magdalena wouldn’t be happier here than in the villa,’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s so friendly here and there’s always something to look at . . . the river and the towpath, and the town all around one. So safe . . . ’
‘Yes, I wondered the same thing, especially as he can’t sell the house anyway because of his sisters. But Herr Huber thinks that Magdalena shouldn’t be so close to his factory — those are the chimneys over there. And the slaughterhouse is just across the road on the other side of the landing stage.’
‘Well, of course, slaughterhouses are wicked,’ said Laura Sultzer’s daughter dutifully. ‘But it does mean he would be able to get home in the middle of the day; she’d see him more.’
‘If that’s what she wants.’
Edith threw me a startled look. ‘Oh, surely; he’s so terribly kind.’
We returned to the house to get ready for lunch which we were to take with Herr Huber’s sisters in their apartments on the ground floor.
‘I wanted to order a meal for us all at the Ferry Hotel — they keep an excellent table, but I couldn’t disappoint my sisters,’ said Herr Huber.
And indeed the man who could have disappointed the Fräulein Hubers would have had to be made of steel. Much older than their brother, frail, and beautifully dressed in the bonnets and shawls of forty years ago, they welcomed us with twitters of intense friendliness. Fräulein Marianne, the elder of the two, was very deaf and carried an ivory ear trumpet; Fräulein Louisa, who was only slightly deaf, acted as her sister’s conduit to the world.
While Marianne made sure that no draughts, on this hot summer’s day, had pierced the double walls of their drawing room to tr
ouble us, that the chairs we sat in were to our liking, Louisa ran back and forth from the kitchen to confer with the cook — and presently we were led to the table.
Sunday lunch in Linz is a serious matter. It was clear that this occasion had been the topic of conversation for weeks past. The lace tablecloth was exquisite, the gold-rimmed Meissen dinner service a family heirloom.
Grace was said and the first course passed without incident. An erbsen suppe made with fresh garden peas, in which griess knockerl floated, served with croutons of bread deep fried in butter.
Then came the entrée.
‘We did think of a roast goose — we have one just ready to be killed and beautifully plump,’ said Fräulein Louisa, ‘but then we thought coming from Vienna you’d like something that’s special to Linz.’
The cook now arrived with a gigantic, steaming platter. As it was set down the sisters looked anxiously at Herr Huber who scrutinized its contents, gave a nod of approval, and tucked his napkin more securely into his collar.
This hurdle safely over, the ladies beamed at us.
‘A Linzerschmankerl!’ said Fräulein Louisa. ‘You won’t find it anywhere else.’
I found this easy to believe. In the centre of the dish was a piled-up circle of rindfiletspitzen, the marbled flesh enveloped, but not obscured by a rich dark sauce. Then came a ring of kidneys, each embedded in its halo of perfectly roasted fat. Moving outwards one came to the rolled-up slivers of ox tongue, alternating with sawn-off segments of thigh bone filled with dollops of creamy marrowfat — and after that stretching away in concentric circles, the roast potatoes, the semmel knodel, the rings of onion fried to the colour of caramel.
Each one of us was now served. Horse radish was handed separately, as was the red currant jelly, the spinach, the crusty bread . . .
‘Oh, dear!’ The exclamation, quiet and desperate, came from Edith Sultzer.