by William Boyd
Meekly, she turned and headed down the corridor to Herr Barth’s room, removing the bunch of house keys from her apron pocket, and unlocked the door.
‘Don’t tell anyone I was here, Traudl. Understand? I’ll explain everything to Herr Barth later – but you mustn’t say a word to anyone else.’
‘Frau Kriwanek will know, Herr Rief. She knows everything.’
‘She doesn’t know everything. She doesn’t know about you and Lieutenant Rozman . . .’
Traudl hung her head.
‘I would hate to have to tell Frau Kriwanek what you and the lieutenant got up to.’
‘Thank you, Herr Rief. I would be most grateful for your silence on this matter.’
‘And remember you owe me twenty crowns, Traudl.’
‘I’ll tell no one. Not a soul. I swear.’
Lysander gestured for Traudl to enter Herr Barth’s little room. ‘After you,’ he said, and followed her in.
25. Trieste
Lysander sat looking out of the window of the Graz express, watching the early morning sunlight glance and shimmer off the Golfo di Trieste as he caught glimpses of the sea in between the numerous tunnels the train barrelled through on its descent to the coast and the city. These vistas of the Adriatic and its rocky coastline were symbolic of his salvation, he told himself; he should store them away in his memory-archive. Here he was, arriving at the very edge of Austria-Hungary and he would be leaving it for ever in a matter of hours. He was hungry – he hadn’t eaten since his abandoned lunch the day before and he promised himself a decent breakfast at the station restaurant as soon as they arrived. He had just over 100 crowns left, more than enough to book passage on a steamer to Ancona – no need to go as far south as Bari. Once in Ancona he would go to Florence and have money wired to him there, then he would make his way home through France. Now he was almost in Trieste all these plans seemed entirely feasible and logical.
With complaining groans of braking metal the Graz express slowed to a halt at Trieste’s Stazione Meridionale and Lysander stepped out on to the platform. Seeing signs in Italian was already enough for him. He had made it, he was free –
‘Rief?’
He turned very slowly to see Jack Fyfe-Miller stepping down from the first-class carriage with a small leather grip in his hand.
Lysander felt his bowels ease with this small deliverance.
‘Bravo,’ Fyfe-Miller said, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘Bet you’re hungry. Let me buy you breakfast.’
They went to the Café Orientale in the Lloyds building on the Piazza Grande where Lysander ordered and ate a six-egg omelette with a ham steak and consumed many small sweet bread rolls. Fyfe-Miller drank a spritzer and smoked a cigarette.
‘We were very impressed,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Munro and I were there at the Südbahnhof looking out for you. We thought you were never coming, I must say – thought you’d left it too late. They had the police there very quickly. We were beginning to get worried – then along you came, swearing in Italian, carrying a double bass.’
‘I was using my ingenuity, as instructed.’
Lysander had stuffed a pillow from Herr Barth’s bed under his shirt and buttoned his overcoat around this new pot-belly. He had taken Herr Barth’s ancient hard-felt top hat and punched a dent in it. The big double bass in its leather container was surprisingly light, though bulky. He had locked Traudl in Herr Barth’s room and had hailed a cab on Mariahilfer Strasse for the station. Once there, he bought his ticket for Trieste (third class) and with many a ‘Mi scusi’, ‘Attenzione’ and ‘Lasciami passare’ had made his way noisily to the platform. People looked round, he saw children smiling and pointing, policemen glanced at him. A station porter helped him heave the double bass on board. No one was looking for a plump Italian double-bass player in a greasy topper. He found a seat by the window and waited, as calmly as he could, for the whistle-blast announcing their departure.
‘Sometimes being ostentatious is the best disguise,’ Lysander said.
‘So we saw . . . What happened to the double bass?’
‘I left it on the train when we changed at Gratz. Feel a bit guilty about that.’
‘We were very impressed, Munro and I. We had a good laugh before I jumped on the train after you.’
‘Did you report me missing?’
‘Of course. After an hour – but they already knew. The informers in the embassy were miles ahead of us. However, we were suitably outraged and very apologetic. Very shamefaced.’
After breakfast Fyfe-Miller bought him his ticket to Ancona and they walked along to the new port to find the mole where the mail-steamer was berthed.
Fyfe-Miller shook his hand at the foot of the gangway.
‘Goodbye, Rief. And damned well done. I’m sure you’ve made the right decision.’
‘I’m sorry to leave,’ Lysander said. ‘There’s a lot of unfinished business in Vienna.’
‘Well, you won’t be able to go back, that’s for sure,’ Fyfe-Miller said with his usual bluntness. ‘Now you’re a fugitive from Austro-Hungarian justice.’
The thought depressed him. There was a toot from the steam whistle on the smoke-stack.
‘Thanks for all your help – you and Munro,’ Lysander said. ‘I won’t forget.’
‘Neither will we,’ Fyfe-Miller said, with a broad smile. ‘You owe His Majesty’s Government a considerable sum of money.’
They shook hands, Fyfe-Miller wished him bon voyage and Lysander boarded the scruffy coastal cargo vessel. Steam was got up and the mooring ropes were cast off, thrown on board and the little ship left the busy harbour of Trieste. Lysander stood on the rear deck, leaning on the balustrade, watching the city recede, with its castle on its modest hill, admiring the splendour of the rocky Dalmatian coastline. All very beautiful in the winter sunshine, he acknowledged, feeling a melancholy peace overwhelm him and wondering if he would ever see this country again, thinking ruefully that his business with it – Hettie and their child – had every chance of remaining unfinished for ever.
PART TWO
LONDON, 1914
1. Measure for Measure
Lysander cleared his throat, blew his nose, apologized to the rest of the cast and picked up his playscript once more. The doors and windows were wide open so the room, Lysander reasoned, would have almost as much summer pollen blowing around it as the garden outside – hence his sneezing fit. He could see Gilda Butterfield at the far end of the long table fanning her moist neck with her fingertips. Flaming June, all right, he thought and his mind turned immediately to Blanche. Her prediction had been absolutely right – the play was an enduring and superlative success and she was off on an endless tour of it. Where now? Dublin, he thought, or was it Edinburgh? Yes, he really ought to try and –
‘Ready when you are, Lysander,’ Rutherford Davison said. Lysander noticed he still had his jacket on while all the other men had shed theirs because of the heat. He picked up the text.
‘You must lay down the treasures of your body
To this supposed, or else to let him suffer –
What would you do?’
Davison held up his hand.
‘Why do you imagine he says that?’
‘Because he’s frustrated. Consumed with lust. And he’s bitter,’ Lysander said, without really thinking.
‘Bitter?’
‘He’s a disappointed man.’
‘He’s an aristocrat, he’s running the whole of Vienna.’
‘Vienna’s no protection against bitterness.’
Everyone laughed, Lysander was pleased to note, even though he hadn’t intended to be humorous at all and had spoken with unconscious feeling. He had completely forgotten that Measure for Measure was set in Vienna – this strange play about lechery and purity, moral corruption and virtue – that made him think uncomfortably about the place and his recent history there. Too late to back out now, and he could hardly explain why. Davison hadn
’t even smiled at his inadvertent sally, however. He was determined to be combative and provocative, Lysander could tell, following the new lead among theatre managers. He and Greville had discussed how tiresome and unnecessary this trend was just last night.
‘We’ll call it a day,’ Davison said, as if he sensed how stifling and uncomfortable it was to be sitting here late on a Friday afternoon. ‘Have a restful weekend. We’ll make a start on Miss Julie on Monday.’
The rehearsal broke up in a chatter of exultant conversation and the sound of chairs scraping back. They were in a church hall in St John’s Wood – a good rehearsal space with a small garden at the rear when some fresh air was required. The ‘International Players’ Company’, as they were known, had been formed by Rutherford Davison himself in an attempt – as he put it – to present the best in foreign drama to the sated and complacent London audiences. It was quite a clever plan, Lysander had to admit, taking his jacket off the back of the chair. The idea was to run an established, well-respected play in a repertory double bill with a new, more challenging foreign one. Last season’s offering had been a Galsworthy, The Silver Box, alongside Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. This season they were presenting Measure for Measure with Strindberg’s Miss Julie. Or rather, Fröken Julie as Davison insisted, thinking the foreign title would hoodwink the censor. Apparently the play had been banned in 1911. Davison had acquired a new translation from an American company and thought that the Swedish title might divert attention from its salacious reputation. Lysander hadn’t read Miss Julie yet but was planning to do so this weekend, if time permitted. His role was Jean, the valet, something of a challenge because he was also Angelo in Measure. He and Gilda Butterfield were the most experienced actors in the International Players so he should be flattered, he supposed, and if the plays were well received it would advance his career and reputation significantly. All very well, he thought, but if Davison kept goading him it might not be as stimulating a job as he had imagined.
‘Any plans this weekend?’
Lysander turned to see Gilda Butterfield, Miss Julie herself – and Isabella in Measure. They were destined to spend a lot of time in each other’s company over the coming weeks. She was very fair with a mass of curly blonde hair tied back in a velvet bow – very Scandinavian, he supposed. A few freckles were visible across the bridge of her nose and cheeks, unmasked by her powder – a busty, hippy young woman. Strapping, outdoors-y. She was interested in him, he could tell, wondering if the job might deliver up a little romance as a bonus.
‘Going down to Sussex,’ he said, fishing out his cigarette case and opening it. She took a cigarette and he lit it for her. ‘My uncle’s back from two years exploring Africa. We’re welcoming him home.’ He took one himself, lit it and they wandered towards the front door.
‘Whereabouts in Sussex?’ she said, adjusting her bow at the nape of her neck with both hands, leaving the cigarette in her mouth – both hands moving behind her head caused her breasts to rise and flatten against the pleated front of her blouse. For a second, Lysander acknowledged the careless carnality of the pose then reminded himself that he wasn’t ready for another dalliance. Not after Hettie.
‘Claverleigh,’ he said. ‘Do you know it? A little way beyond Lewes. Not far from Ripe.’
‘My brother lives in Hove,’ she said, happy now with the tightness of her bow. She exhaled, pluming the smoke away from him. ‘Perhaps we might find ourselves down there at the same time, one weekend.’
‘That would be lovely.’ Really, this was almost brazen, Lysander thought, she was giving actresses a bad name. Wait until he’d told Greville. He held the door open for her and Rutherford Davison came through.
‘Ah, Lysander, can I have a quick word?’
Lysander felt sweat trickling down his spine – he should have taken a bus home, not the Tube. It was hot, of course, but he knew he was sweating more than usually because he’d allowed himself to become irritated. Davison had kept him back twenty minutes after the others had left asking a lot of damnfool questions about his character, Angelo. Was he an only child or did he have siblings? If so, how many and of what sex? What did Lysander think he’d been doing before his big speech in Act II? Was he well travelled? Did he have any health problems he might be concealing? Lysander had done his best to answer the questions seriously because he knew that Davison had gone to Russia a year before, had met Stanislavsky and had fallen under the sway of his new theories about acting and drama, and was convinced that all this extraneous material and information that one invented fleshed out the character and bolstered the text. Lysander felt like saying that if Shakespeare had wanted us to know that Angelo was well travelled or suffered from piles he would have dropped in a line or two in the play to that effect. But in the interest of good relations and a peaceful time he had nodded and said ‘good point’ or ‘intriguing idea’ and ‘let me think a bit more about that’. It was a big role, Angelo, and it would be better and easier all round to have the director on his side.
At one stage, Davison had said, ‘There’s a book you might like to read, that you might find useful for Angelo – Die Traumdeutung by Sigmund Freud. Heard of it?’
‘I’ve met the author,’ Lysander had said. That shut him up.
He smiled at the memory of that afternoon in the Café Landtmann. Davison had looked at him with new respect. Perhaps they would rub along after all.
The Tube train pulled in to Leicester Square and Lysander stepped out, jamming his boater on to his head. He thought he might drop into a pub for a cooling pint of shandy and quench his thirst – try to reduce the sweatiness and discomfort he was experiencing. He came up from the station and sniffed the air – London in June, a hot June, the smell of horseshit stewing.
He and Greville Varley rented a flat on Chandos Place and there was a pub, the Peace and Plenty, round the corner from William IV Street, that he liked. Small and plain, with scrubbed floorboards and wainscotting, not tarted up with etched glass and velveteen wallpaper like so many in London. Greville wouldn’t be in, anyway, he had a matinée today. No, couldn’t be, it was Friday. Matinée tomorrow.
‘Afternoon, Mr Rief. Hot enough for you?’
‘Yes, thank you, Molly, but could you cool it down for tomorrow, please? – I’m off to the country.’
‘All right for some, Mr Rief.’
Molly was the barmaid and the landlord’s niece, up from Devon – or was it Somerset? A round-faced, plump girl who reminded him of Traudl.
Obliging, blushing Traudl in the Pension Kriwanek, Lysander thought, taking his pint to a seat in the corner, thinking – that was my life not so long ago, those were its familiar details and textures. Someone had left a newspaper and Lysander picked it up to read the headlines and tossed it down almost immediately. He wasn’t interested in Irish Home Rule or the threat of a coal strike. So what are you interested in, he asked himself, aggressively. Your life? Your job? Your friends? Your family?
Good questions. He sipped his beer, analysing his distractions, his pleasures . . . Since he’d come back from Vienna so precipitately he’d moved flat and found the new place with Greville – that was good. He’d won a part in a three-reeler film and earned £50 for two days’ work – no complaints. He’d been to numerous auditions and landed this plum double role with the International Players’ Company – not to be sniffed at. And, oh yes, Blanche Blondel herself had called off their engagement.
He leaned back and took his boater off. Blanche . . .
He had rather dreaded their first encounter, and with good reason, as it turned out. He had been nervous, oddly tongue-tied, moody and irritable.
‘There’s somebody else, isn’t there, in Vienna?’ Blanche had said after five minutes.
‘No. Yes, well . . . There was. It’s over. Completely.’
‘So you say – but you’re giving a very good impression of a lovelorn fool pining for his girl.’
She took his ring off and handed it to him. They were in a chop-house
on the Strand, dining after her show.
‘I’m going to stay your friend, Lysander, ’ she had said, amiably. ‘But not your fiancée.’ She reached over and squeezed his hand. ‘Sort yourself out, darling. And, if you still feel like it, propose to me again and we’ll see what I say.’
Lysander went up to the bar for another pint. Only four o’clock and here he was on his second. He watched Molly pour it – two long hauls at the lever and there it was, a sudsy head at the very rim. He pushed over a handful of coppers lifted from his pocket and she picked out the right change. The unnatural curls at Molly’s temples were damp with perspiration, sticking to her skin. He should marry Blanche, he thought, to hell with it – everything about that woman was right for him.
‘Greville? You in?’ Lysander called, closing the door to the flat behind him. No reply. He dropped his keys into a bowl on the hall table. Mrs Tozer, the housekeeper, had been in cleaning and tidying and the smell of beeswax polish hit his nostrils. She had organized the post into two distinct piles for her ‘gentlemen’ and he was vaguely annoyed to see that Greville had twice as many letters as he did. The flat was on the top floor of a mansion block no more than ten years old. From Greville’s bedroom you could just see Nelson standing on his column in Trafalgar Square. There was a sitting room, two fair-sized bedrooms, a small kitchen-scullery and a bathroom with WC. A maid’s room had been converted into a joint dressing room and walk-in wardrobe – both he and Greville had far too many clothes. All the belongings he had left in the summerhouse in Vienna had been promptly shipped back to London by Munro – it was as if he had never been there at all.
Lysander shuffled through his post – bill, bill, postcard from Dublin (‘Wish you were here. B’), a telegram from his mother (‘PLEASE COLLECT PLOVERS EGGS FORTNUMS STOP’) and – his mouth went dry – a letter with an Austrian stamp, Emperor Franz-Josef in profile, forwarded on to him from his previous flat, the postmark over two weeks old.