Gills had just finished tidying the hall. Meggie joined him by sliding down the banisters.
“You’ll break your neck, Miss Meggie.”
Meggie straightened her skirt.
“I’m just working off the gauche bits of me. I’m going to be a young lady to-night. You won’t know me, Gills.”
Gills pushed a packing-case flush with the wall.
“I hope there isn’t an air raid. It makes me nervous when the family are out.”
“I rather hope there is, not a bad one with people being hurt, but a lot of guns so that I find out if I’m frightened. Are you frightened?”
“Not for myself. It’s the responsibility. I’ve got the maids to see down, and that Gerda gets in such a state. I can’t get Mrs. Framley to leave her room, nor does Miss Smithson.”
“I don’t see why they should if they don’t want to.”
“I like everybody all in one place, then if anything happens I know where I can lay hands on them.”
“How’s Lily?”
“I haven’t heard just lately, but they were all splendid when she last wrote. Letters are slow now, which is only natural, Australia being such way.”
“Is the son in the army coming here?”
“No. That’s the last thing I heard. He’s arrived wherever he’s gone. She didn’t say where it was, but I suppose she couldn’t.”
“What a shame! Poor Gills! How dreadfully disappointed you must be. I do think it’s sickening. Fancy having all those grandchildren and never having seen one of them!”
Gills threw a final look round the hall.
“I’d like to have seen the young fellow, but you know, Miss Meggie, Australians are different to us. Of course, I’m sure Lily has brought her children up well. She wouldn’t do otherwise. Her mother was a wonderful manager, and Lily took after her. But I don’t suppose I’d have felt quite easy with Alfred, even though he is my own grandson. Lily never knew it, but I never did with his father. He was very Australian, and acted what seemed to me queerly. He had a laughing way with him, made you feel awkward, if you understand me.”
“But you were glad Lily married him, and has been so happy.”
“Yes, indeed, Miss Meggie, and she’s very well placed in life, quite different from anything she could have hoped for here.”
Meggie beamed.
“I like hearing about Lily. It’s like the end bit of a fairy story, ‘and they lived happily ever after.’ Oh, Gills, I tell you what I came down about; talking about Lily I almost forgot. Mummy says I may ask you to mix me something that looks like a cocktail, so I look grown-up this evening. Could you make me something that’s exactly like everybody else’s to look at, only has two cherries in it?”
Gills smiled.
“White Ladies they’re having. Easy to give you a glass that looks like that. Why, water would almost do.”
Meggie’s face fell.
“That would be terribly dull. Couldn’t you put something in to make it gay?”
Gerda came down the stairs.
“Could you come now, Meggie, and let me dress you? It’s early, but I want to be free for your mother.”
“Gosh, it isn’t six yet.” Meggie saw Gerda’s anxious face. “All right, I’ll come. Though goodness knows what I’m going to do between the time I’m dressed and the people come. I hope I don’t get untidy again.” She turned to Gills. “Make it as nice as you can. Come on, Gerda. I’ll race you to my room.”
Bathed, and in her dressing-gown, Meggie sat at the dressing-table where Gerda combed and rearranged her hair.
“One of the worst parts of growing up is going to be all this fuss about dressing,” said Meggie. “Look at me now. I’ve had a bath, although I’ve already had one this morning. I’ve got on another set of underclothes, very grand ones, I know, still the ones I had on were clean this morning and would have done. I’ve been an hour and a half this afternoon at the hairdresser’s, and now you are fussing with my hair again, all to go to a party. Now, at the vicarage, when we go to anything, we just change our top clothes and that’s all. I think it’s a much better way.” She looked at Gerda in the glass and saw the sadness in her face. Her voice was stern. “Gerda, you’re remembering in a sad way, and you absolutely promised you’d try not to. Tell me something gay. Let’s do Sunday. A summer Sunday, when the Danube is nearly as blue as the sky.”
Gerda shook her head.
“I’ve told you so often.”
“Not nearly often enough. Come on, I’ll start. It’s a lovely morning, and you’ve got up very early. Go on.”
Gerda ran the comb through Meggie’s hair, and let her memories flow over her.
“I have got up and gone to the terminus or to the stadtbahn, and there I have met my friends.”
“And everybody is gay,” Meggie prompted.
“Very gay. Were you to get up late on a Sunday morning in Vienna it would seem a town of the old, for all the young have gone. We will go to one of the villages on the edge of the woods, perhaps it will be Sievering, or perhaps Grinzing.”
“And you’ll walk in the woods, and you’ll sing.”
“That’s right. We walk through the woods, singing as we go many songs, but always, ‘Wien, Wien nur du allein,’ all day somebody is singing that; and we climb as we sing to the heights of the Kahlenberg, and from there to Leopoldsberg.”
“Go on. Tell me how it looked.”
Gerda crossed to the bed and fetched Meggie’s stockings and turned one ready for her to put on.
“One side is just undulating hills, all woods, and one looks to Vienna, bathed always in a purple haze, and through that haze the windows flash in the sun.” She handed Meggie her stocking. “In front of us is almost a precipice, and at its foot the Danube.”
Meggie looked up from her stocking.
“Very blue.”
“Very blue if it is a beautiful day; and where it leads into Vienna one will see how it is winding through the city until it disappears in the haze.” Automatically she had turned the other stocking. “And across the city one sees the last lines of the hills until they are losing themselves in the plain.”
Meggie held out her hand for the other stocking.
“Now you go down to the river.”
“That is so. It is very steep, and one’s rucksack goes bump, bump against one’s back. At the bottom it is very pleasant. One perhaps lies first in the sun to sun-bathe, and then there is very fine bathing.”
“Tell me about what was in your rucksack.” Gerda fetched Meggie’s shoes and knelt to put them on, but Meggie snatched them from her. “Don’t, Gerda. I’ll put them on myself. Go on telling me.”
“In my rucksack there will be cheese, and brown bread, and eggs, and we will buy sour milk to drink from one of the little stalls. And as we were eating we will watch the boats go by, steamers, tugs, paddles, all sorts of boats.”
“And when you’ve finished you could dance in your bathing-dress, or do exercises in the gymnasium.”
Gerda fetched Meggie’s frock.
“That is so. Then we, with many, many more, walk to Nussdorf, and as we go we will sing ‘Hinaus in die Ferne’ and ‘Wer hat dich du schöner wald,’ and yet again ‘Wein, Wien nur du allein.’” Meggie was standing and Gerda slipped her frock over her head. “In Nussdorf are many inns, and we will sit at a table under the chestnuts. If the time is right the flowers will be like candles; and thousands are there, and everybody will be laughing, and singing, and the men will be looking at the girls, and all drink Heurigen.” She gently turned Meggie so that she might fasten her frock down the back. “And there will be one good singer, and he will have a zither or a mandoline, or a . . .” She paused and Meggie laughed.
“You always forget that. I tell you every time—a concertina.”
“A concertina, and he sings songs piqua
ntes and love songs, and all will join in, and the men will drink to the prettiest girl.” She guided Meggie back to the dressing-table, and picked up the hair ribbon.
Meggie made a face.
“Go on quickly, so I don’t think about that ribbon. Tell me the bit about your rucksack.”
“It will now be full of flowers, which will be sticking out from the top—marguerites, forget-me-nots, butter cups—but one plunges one’s hands under the flowers, and there in paper is a big piece of chicken, or perhaps goose, and one unpacks it and eats it in the fingers, and all the while drinking Heurigen.” The ribbon was tied. Gerda stood away from the glass to admire the effect. Meggie’s eyes shone back at her.
“Finish, Gerda. The last bit is the loveliest of all.”
“Then late, very late, we go home, and the tram will be full of flowers and we will be laughing, and at the terminus we say good-bye.”
“And when you got home your mother was waiting, and she’d kept you the midday meal, and it began with a bowl of good soup.”
Gerda nodded.
“Very good soup.”
“And she said: ‘Well, Gerda, how has it gone to-day?’”
Gerda laughed out loud, a sound which no one else in the house had ever heard.
“That’s very bad English, but that is how it was. There, Meggie, you are dressed.” Meggie stood up, and Gerda held her by both arms. Her voice throbbed. “You look very charming. When we have come back from our Sunday we are so pleased with the world we see it, as you say in England, through pink spectacles, but for us we say: ‘The sky is full of fiddles.’ That is how I hope it is for you, Meggie, not only to-night, but always.”
Meggie went to find Letty. Letty’s hair had been rather over-set, and she was having a final struggle with a wet comb. She was feeling disappointed with herself. The dress was undeniably good, but somehow, now she was in it, her appearance fell short of her hopes. Meggie bounded over to her, and pulled her away from her dressing-table, and led her to the rather dimly lit long mirror. Her voice was awed.
“Goodness, don’t we look nice.”
Letty examined the two reflections. Meggie, in her blue and white frock, seemed taller than usual, and curiously unsubstantial. The lighting took the colour from her face, but it could not obscure its vividness; framed in her hair her skin seemed translucent, and her eyes blazed. Against her Letty saw with distaste her squat self, which no elegant dress, however cleverly altered, could make appear slim.
“You look lovely. I look suitable.”
Meggie was enchanted and roared with laughter.
“What a heavenly expression, Letty darling. Suitable for what?”
“For helping to hand round cocktails, and for a secretary, and probably for eating supper by myself when you’ve all gone.”
Meggie’s face changed.
“Oh, don’t, Letty. I can’t bear to think of that. I don’t want to go to the party if you aren’t coming.”
“That’s foolishness. Why, you know you’re fond of Mrs. Hill.”
“Or course I am. Oh goodness, isn’t it awful when you want two things to happen! I want Claire to come and I want you to come. Oh, why can’t you both? You want to come terrifically, don’t you, Letty?”
Letty could not see Meggie’s happiness dimmed even for a moment.
“If I tell you a secret, will you promise to keep it to yourself?”
Meggie flamed with interest, almost it seemed that the very hairs of her head stood out questioningly.
“Of course. I absolutely swear. Go on, tell me.” Letty flushed. Meggie bounced with excitement. “Oh Letty, you’re blushing. It’s about a man. Are you going to get married?”
“Not yet. His name’s Jim. He’s a part-time warden round here. That’s how we met. But he’s giving that up and going into the navy.”
“The navy!” For a moment Meggie could not keep Tom Wetherby to that place at the back of her mind where she had laid him, nor could she keep the depression which she had deliberately staved off from falling like a shadow across her.
Letty saw her eyes.
“What’s the matter?”
Meggie would have liked to have told her, she would have liked to have had a moment in which to bring out poor, drowned Tom, and mourn over him, but even as she opened her lips to speak she thought of Letty. If her Jim was going into the navy she must not hear stories of drowned sailors.
“Nothing’s the matter. Go on about Jim. Do you see him every day?”
“No. Tuesdays and Thursdays and every other Saturday, and, of course, Sundays.”
“Where do you meet? Does he come here? Could I see him?”
Letty flushed again.
“I don’t know what your mother would say if she knew, but we meet at The King’s Head. It’s not as bad as it sounds. There’s a nice what they call ‘saloon bar.’ We meet there because it’s so close. It’s only round the corner.”
“An inn! What fun! Do you drink wine, and does everybody laugh and sing, and do all the men look at the girls and the men drink to the prettiest girl, and, of course, Jim drinks to you?”
Letty was scandalized.
“It’s not that kind of place at all. Have you been reading about a bottle party or something of that sort? The King’s Head is a nice, quiet place. I’ve never seen a sign of rowdiness. If there was, Jim wouldn’t take me there. I only drink a glass of shandy and he has beer. Shandy’s hardly intoxicating at all. I almost think you would be allowed to drink it.”
“I’m sure it’s a lovely place, but I never was in an inn, and the ones I know about are in Austria. Gerda tells me about them.”
Letty’s eyes opened. She tried to imagine flabby, dull-eyed Gerda in a place where such things went on as Meggie had described.
“I hope Gerda’s careful what she says to you. Foreigners do a lot of things we wouldn’t think nice.”
“Gerda didn’t. They just had a lovely time. She tries not to think about it now, because it makes her sad. I feel terribly sorry for her; but I do think it’s as nice for her here as anywhere, for I’m sure Mummy does everything she can to make her not miss Vienna too much; I’m sure you do, too, but, of course, Mummy sees her more.”
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