by Eva Ibbotson
All morning people came. Frau Schumacher hurried across and took me in her arms and cried.
‘I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it if you go! Albert says he won’t stay, not in what will be left of the place. And poor Father Anselm — when you think how he struggled to make a garden in spite of the boys. He’s gone to see the Church Commissioners, but they’ll never find a place like this.’
Then my clients began to arrive. Egger’s plans had been published in the morning papers. There was no way of keeping the news from them.
Frau Hutte-Klopstock tried to hearten me. ‘You’ll find somewhere else, Frau Susanna. You won’t be beaten.’
I don’t know. I don’t think I can do it again; not what I made here.
Leah Cohen arrived without an appointment and with a hamper which she unpacked on my yellow table, urging me to keep up my strength and eat.
‘When I think that Egger came to Heini only last month about his insomnia . . . I could so easily have told Heini to kill him with a little morphia — not that he ever listens to me!’
In the afternoon an extraordinary thing happened. The English Miss halted, tied the setter to the lamp post — and came in to the shop. Close to, the long-legged, high-breasted Amazon was a shy woman with gentle eyes the colour of her blue-green misty tweeds.
‘I wished to say how sorry I am,’ she said in excellent German. ‘It has been such a pleasure walking past here each day . . . it was like a garden — always something interesting and right for the season.’
She is not the daughter of a lord with horses in Rotten Row as I’d imagined. Her name is Norah Potts and she’s a paid companion.
Professor Starsky called with a bunch of roses. I was alone when he came and stupidly inattentive, for when I came out of my thoughts I found that he was again offering me, in my homeless state, his hand and heart. Well, who knows, perhaps I shall come to it. There may be worse things than being a Frau Professorin with access to herpetology conferences in Reykjavik.
Old Anna’s visit was almost the hardest to bear. She came with her basket as she’d come that spring morning when I decided to keep this journal, and there were tears in her eyes. ‘They want to take away everything that’s good, don’t they? They want to destroy everything that’s quiet and belongs to the past. Thirty years I’ve sat under those trees . . .’
‘Oh, Anna, you’ll find somewhere else. We can’t do without you.’
‘No, I’m through. I’ll have to go down and stay with my son. He doesn’t want me — no one wants an old woman — but he’ll have to put up with me. It doesn’t matter; my life is past. But it’s you. Such a lovely place you’ve made; it’s like a fairy story in here, the light and the prettiness of it all! And the way you’ve taken that wild Hungarian girl and given her a home. Oh, I could spit!’
I went to bed at the usual time, but of course I couldn’t sleep. Hour after hour the anxieties ran round in my head. How could I get my stock cleared and my orders fulfilled in so short a time? What was to become of Nini? Where could I go?
I got up and stood for a while looking down at the moonlit square. Each of those five chestnut trees were like people to me; entirely distinct. General Madensky had been cleaned only a few weeks before; his domed head was devoid of pigeon droppings and we had all admired him.
How could one man with a few pieces of paper destroy all this? Presently I put on my cloak and let myself out through the workroom and into the courtyard. It was very cold but my pear tree stood proudly in the light of the full moon. This time next year it would be gone, its roots covered in asphalt.
‘Whom the gods love die young,’ I said to the little tree, and touched its bark.
Then I looked more closely. The light was very bright; I could see the branches clearly.
My pear had gone. Only two days ago I had seen it hanging securely from its bough. I’d made a resolution to pick it on Sunday, it was already absurdly late.
I bent down and searched the paving stones. There was no sign of it. I fetched a lantern to look more thoroughly, and now I noticed that the stem holding the pear had been cut. There was no doubt about it; it was severed cleanly in a way that could only have been done by scissors or a knife.
And this suddenly was too much: this shoddy and pointless theft. I had lost Gernot, I had lost my livelihood and still kept some measure of control. Yet now, standing there in my nightclothes, I sobbed like a child because of a tiny, unripe and probably uneatable pear.
If only people weren’t so kind it would be easier.
Actually I’m lying; everyone hasn’t been kind. I met Chez Jaquetta in the Kartnerstrasse, all dyed lovelocks and battleship poitrine, and there’s no doubt about it — she smirked.
But everyone else . . .
Herr Huber called in his motor and said he’d heard of a shop in the Graben three doors down from him which was becoming vacant. I went with him to inquire, but the rent was way above anything I could reasonably afford.
I’ve just managed to stop Nini from going to Ungerer to ask for her old job back (Only in the evening, just to help out a bit with money,’) and Gretl is threatening to postpone her wedding yet again. She’s told her fiancé that she must stay and help me pack, as though seeing her safely settled isn’t the thing I need most.
Peter Konrad has offered me the job of running the dress department in his store. This is a serious possibility and I must think it over carefully. The salary is good, I’d have a chance to travel — he even said he’d take Nini. It’s not what I want: I want to make dresses not buy them for other people, and I’d find it hard to work for someone else after being on my own for so long — I’m really very opinionated. But I don’t think things will ever come together again for me the way they’ve done here: the shop, the square, the people.
And Alice . . .
I’d left a note for her and as soon as she was back from Switzerland she hurried round. She wore the kind of pretty, silly hat she hadn’t worn since Rudi died and she was almost her old self, but her first concern was for me.
‘Your lovely, lovely shop — it’s insufferable. Only listen, Sanna, you know there’s room in my flat for both of us, don’t you? Lots and lots of room now that Rudi doesn’t come any more. You could stay as long as you like — for ever if you wanted to. And there’s nothing to pay — it doesn’t cost me any more to have you there.’
I hugged her and thanked her, but it wouldn’t work. We’re not girls any more; those times are past.
Then she told me why they’d asked her to come to Zurich. ‘It was because of Rudi, Sanna. He’s left me same money. Quite a lot of money!’
‘Oh, Alice, I’m so glad!’
‘It isn’t just the money,’ said Alice. ‘Well, it’s that too, of course — but mainly it’s knowing that he thought of me. And all that time! Ever since we were first together he’s put some away each month into the bank in Zurich. It’s so like him — thinking it out so that it wouldn’t upset his family, doing it so quietly. And do you know what was so marvellous? Being there in the National Bank talking to the manager and . . . being known as belonging to him. Being able to admit to a total stranger how much I loved him and everyone treating me like . . . his wife.’ She broke off and dabbed her eyes. ‘It was so lovely, Sanna, being able to hold up my head and . . . sort of declare myself. All those pieces of paper to sign, linking me with Rudi.’
Then last night I had supper at the Schumachers.
I didn’t want to go, I wasn’t in the mood, but Mitzi told me the occasion was special, there was to be a surprise, and at the last minute — I don’t know why — I put on the rich cream dress with the self-coloured rose. It wasn’t easy to take it out of the cupboard and it was slightly too grand for the occasion, but some instinct prompted me and I was right for the little girls clustered round me full of compliments — and still with this sl
ight air of mystery. Maia was there too, spending the night with Mitzi, and Gustav growing even fatter and more vacant-looking. The saga of his disasters at the timber works is becoming quite Homeric.
It was necessary, of course, to admire Donatella, holding court in her cot, and Kati and Gisi who were too young to be allowed to stay up for supper, and then we sat down to one of Helene’s excellent meals: mushroom soup, roast goose . . .
Then Lisl came in with the desert.
I have never been particularly fond of knödels: it seems sad to me that fresh fruit should be covered in potato dough, rolled in breadcrumbs, fried . . . But it was clear that the knödel that was to be served to me was special. Mitzi and Maia took it from Lisl, it was on a Meissen plate all on its own, liberally doused in vanilla sugar — and a slightly unexpected shape.
‘It’s for you,’ said Mitzi, beaming. ‘It’s a surprise.’
‘We both thought of it,’ said Maia firmly. ‘Both of us had the idea, but Mitzi cooked it.’
I picked up my fork, hoping to rise to the occasion, whatever it might be.
‘Shall I cut it right through?’
‘Yes,’ said the girls, clearly relieved. ‘It would be best to do that first. You don’t just want to swallow it without looking.’
So I cut it carefully into two. In the middle of a very thick ring of dough was something brownish and small and just a little decomposed.
‘Goodness!’ I said, playing for time.
‘Don’t you see what it is? Don’t you recognize it?’ Mitzi’s blonde head and Maia’s black one were bent over my plate. And then, thank heaven, recognition came.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘It isn’t . . . it can’t be . . . but it is! It’s my pear!’ ‘Yes, yes,’ cried the little girls sitting round the table, and nodded and beamed.
‘We made it for you because we thought you wouldn’t get enough to eat the way it was. So we picked it,’ said Maia. ‘We did it secretly at night so that it would be a surprise!’
So you see my mother was right. It’s all still there: sparrows and leaves, knödels and friendship. Even without Gernot, it’s all still there. Somehow I’ll manage. Somehow I’ll find a way.
Egger has wasted no time. Men appear continually in the square: those men in brown overalls with hard hats and tape measures and furtive faces. The chestnut trees are to be cut down next month: already they’ve made white crosses on the bark. There’s always one tree — the one closest to Joseph’s cafe that I worry about: its leaves fall earlier than those of the others and its buds come out later. Maybe its roots, below the pavement, have encountered some obstacle, and I have the absurd idea that the white cross will kill it even before the felling: that it is a kind of evil eye.
Herr Schnee is being businesslike about clearing his premises. He’s morose and terse and says there’s no point in shillyshallying; the sooner he’s out and in a new place the better. He has a chance of a workshop on the other side of the town and is not inclined to be sentimental about the square.
Augustin Heller’s a different matter. He’s a broken man, wandering about his shop, putting things in piles and then forgetting where he’s put them. I can’t imagine how he will ever manage to get away. His daughter in Wiener Neustadt has ‘agreed to take him in’ as he put it. This is Maia’s mother — a woman as bossy as her daughter, but without her daughter’s imagination. No wonder that Heller has aged by ten years since Egger’s letter came.
Now I had better put down what happened this afternoon.
The Countess von Metz arrived in her creaking carriage and asked me to make her an evening dress. She was as rude and decrepit as ever but I had the feeling that she was concealing some kind of triumph.
‘I’ve come to ask you to make me an evening dress.’
‘I’m afraid that’s impossible, Countess. As you may have heard, my shop is closing and I can’t take any new orders.’
‘Ah, Egger.’ She banged on the floor with her cane. ‘Yes, I’ve heard. But you won’t let a parvenu like that stop you. You’ll start up somewhere else.’
‘No, I don’t think so. I’ve been offered a job in a department store.’
I hadn’t yet decided what to do about Peter’s offer but whatever else happened, I was going to get rid of the Countess von Metz.
‘I wouldn’t approve of that,’ said the incredible old woman. ‘I would not be pleased.’
I said nothing. She’d paid me for her green broadcloth with a piece of arsenic-impregnated wallpaper sandwiched between glass. It came, she’d informed me, from Napoleon’s house on St Helena and was the undoubted cause of his demise.
‘Nevertheless, I must insist that you make me an evening gown immediately,’ she went on. ‘It is a matter of considerable importance.’ And unable any longer to conceal her triumph, she said: ‘I have been invited to a house party at Burg Uferding.’
Strange how nothing shows when one’s heart races and one’s mouth becomes dry as dust.
‘Burg Uferding?’ I managed to say. ‘Isn’t that the home of Field Marshal von Lindenberg.’
‘It is.’ But she was not at all pleased that I — a mere dressmaker — had heard of Uferding. ‘They’re having a house party next week and I have been asked to join them. The Field Marshal wrote himself at the bottom of his wife’s letter, so you see I must have something new to wear. It might be an advertisement for you; I’m quite prepared to mention your name.’
But now I did have to turn away. She was going to Uferding, this horrible old woman. She would sit in his hall by the great log fire and his dogs would lay their heads in her lap. Perhaps Gernot himself would tuck the wolfskin rug round her knees, settling her in the sleigh the von Lindenbergs used to take their guests to church — and in the candlelit dining room she would watch his hand stretch out to the silver fruit bowl. Perhaps for this selfish, ancient creature he would select a pear and —
No. No. . . !
‘Well?’ came the irritable voice of the Countess.
But I couldn’t turn round yet. I was in agony. Yes, I, a healthy woman, not hungry, not cold, experienced agony — and only those who have never been in love will quarrel with the word.
Then I got myself under control — and what I did next I did because of the absurd and foolish notion that at least something of mine would go to Uferding. That perhaps she would keep her word and speak my name in Gernot’s presence and he would hear that I was losing my shop and —
And then, nothing. Gernot had probably known long ago what was going to happen. I could see now that he had been trying to warn me all along of Egger’s plans.
‘I can’t make you a dress in so short a time,’ I said. ‘But I have some evening dresses belonging to a trousseau that has not been claimed. I could alter one for you.’
Magdalena’s dresses were laid out in the workroom, ready to send to the nuns to sell; they would not miss one. The Countess was shorter than Magdalena but her measurements were not dissimilar.
And as always, just when I hated the old woman most, she disarmed me. She walked among Magdalena’s gowns with a kind of eagle-eyed reverence — and when she picked the dress she wanted it was not the Renaissance gown in cloth of gold, nor the burgundy velvet with a tabard, but the simplest of Magdalena’s evening dresses: a soft georgette in misty blue, high necked and gently draped, on which Nini and I had worked for countless hours — and which was, quite possibly, my masterpiece.
We hear about Sigi only from the papers. The tour of Germany and Switzerland was a success and he is bound for Paris. Helene brought me an article from the Wiener Musikant with a picture of him. The critics have been enthusiastic: only old Hasenberger, the veteran musicologist, and Busoni who heard him in Berlin, said his talent shouldn’t be forced, he should be put to a good teacher and have time to study and mature. But there doesn’t seem the slightest likelihood
of that happening now that Van der Velde has got hold of him.
The attic flat across the way is still empty. Frau Hinkler has been so morose since Rip died that I don’t suppose anyone can get past the door and now, with the dirt and noise of the demolition to come, it will probably be impossible to find a tenant.
Sometimes at night I imagine I can hear him practise.
We have had a drama: Gretl’s fiancé has become a hero and she has agreed to marry him at the end of January. There was a piece about him in the paper, three girls wrote and asked if they could meet him, and that was too much even for my dozy Gretl. Father Anselm will perform the ceremony — so she at least is taken care of.
And the goldfish slayer has been sent back to Graz! I’d better begin at the beginning.
Of late, Gustav, egged on by Ernst Bischof, has been in search of his manhood, and in pursuit of this elusive quality, he managed to smuggle a cigar and a box of matches into the timber yard.
During his lunch hour three days ago, he retired to the loft above the stables where Herr Schumacher’s dray horses are kept, and proceeded to light up.
The experience was not what Ernst Bischof had told him it would be. Gustav choked, spluttered . . . and dropped his burning cigar into the straw!
At first the boy was more terrified of his uncle’s wrath than of the flames. By the time he emerged, screaming, into the yard, the loft was ablaze, and the horses stamping with terror.
Herr Schumacher is a fool, but he behaved well. With the help of his men he led the horses to safety out in the street, but by the time the fire brigade arrived the flames had ignited a pile of sawdust and spread to the open-sided shed where the sawn planks were put to season. And beyond that were the workshop with its valuable machinery . . . the barn with the wagons . . . the offices and store of figured hardwood for the cabinet trade . . .
That all these were saved were due to the energy and foresight of Gretl’s fiancé. While the men in the first engine started to douse the stables, he drove his machine up the alleyway at the side of the yard, leapt the fence and hacked down the far wall of the blazing shed, pushing it inwards in spite of his blistered hands, so as to contain the blaze until his men could follow with their hoses.