The Longest Winter

by Mary Jane Staples

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ smiled the baron. He listened, together with his wife and Anne, as Sophie recited.

  ‘Oh, fragrant Prater’s tree-lined courses

  Are daily thronged by trotting horses,

  Horses large and horses small

  Horses fat and horses tall.

  Some trot proudly, four wheels running,

  Some trot idly, using cunning,

  Saving wind and limb and grace

  For tomorrow’s same old race.

  Whips flick whistling, hats are dancing,

  Single horses run on prancing

  Leaving those who came on later

  To the windfalls of the Prater.’

  ‘That is as far as I’ve got with it,’ said Sophie, ‘but it’s my declared intention to have it trip merrily to a finish. Please express your feelings about its possibilities.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the baron.

  ‘Ah,’ said Anne.

  ‘Ah?’ said Sophie. ‘Ah what? Isn’t it just a little bit delicious?’

  ‘It’s delightful, darling,’ said the baroness.

  ‘Piquant,’ said the baron, smiling. Both his daughters were an entertainment to him.

  Chapter Two

  At the Ecole Internationale in Vienna the pupils bent their heads over watercolours. James William Fraser bent his head over the essays he had set them the day before. Marie Corbière looked at him from under her lashes. His thick black hair, inclined to escape all too easily from the frictional prison imposed by the brush, hung over his forehead. She would bet a sou, even a franc, that he was asleep. It was warm in the classroom. She put out a hand to nudge her neighbour.

  ‘Marie?’ It was a cautionary murmur from her teacher.

  He had not lifted his head, his hair was still in his eyes, but he was not asleep. Eleven-year-old Marie blushed. That Monsieur Fraser, he was a martinet by instinct. He could see even when he wasn’t looking. However, he was a quite nice martinet on the whole, a change from Fräulein Coutts who was so fussy with one.

  James was a temporary replacement for Fräulein Coutts who, in fright at a persistent cough, was spending some months in a Swiss sanatorium. The principal of the school was Maude Harrison, widow of a British diplomat who had been drowned when his yacht capsized in the Adriatic. Maude, an active and resourceful person, did not want to become a distressed gentlewoman. Using what money she had been left she bought a suitable house in Vienna and turned it into a school for the children of foreigners, particularly the children of diplomats.

  She had met James in the middle of nowhere, in a wild valley at the foot of the Austrian Alps last September. She liked to tramp around the mountain valleys, and was inclined to laugh at friends who thought it inadvisable. In her fifties, Maude considered she was long past the stage where she might meet a fate worse than death.

  James, an Anglo-Scot, shared sandwiches and fruit with her that day. And conversation. He was an automobile engineer and designer. So was his father, Sir William Fraser, who had been knighted for his services to industry. James had some of his father’s talents and some of his own. He painted moderately in colour, expressively in black and white, he took honours at Edinburgh in French and scraped home with his German. His father thought German would be useful, for as engineers the Germans were as good as any nation and one ought to be able to talk with them.

  James accepted the job his father wanted him to have in the Midland works. He told Maude he felt he owed the old boy the gesture of going into the family business. But after a couple of years he decided that although they had their fascination, internal combustion machines constituted the most antisocial device man had ever inflicted on his fellows. He spoke frankly to his father, confessing his growing aversion to the motor car and voicing his doubt about whether it would prove to be the blessing people expected.

  ‘And to cap it all,’ he finished, ‘I can’t stand the racket.’

  ‘Good God, Jamie, what are you saying?’ Sir William Fraser, a vigorous and leonine Scot, was warm-hearted but single-minded. He lived and breathed automobiles. ‘That racket,’ he pointed out, listening to the vibrations of a new engine in its test bed, ‘is the most beautiful sound man in his puniness has ever created.’

  ‘I must be honest, guv’nor,’ said James, ‘it’s just a noise to me.’ He was as tall as his father, but sparer and darker. He lived with a five o’clock shadow.

  ‘With the greatest of respect to her,’ said Sir William, ‘that comes from your Sassenach mother. She puts her fingers in her ears if a teacup rattles.’

  ‘Not quite,’ said James, ‘but God bless her for her sensitivity.’

  ‘Praise the Lord,’ said Sir William fervently. ‘Jamie, are you going to be a disappointment to me?’

  ‘Knowing you,’ said James, ‘I’m sure you’d rather I was a disappointment to you than to myself. The fact is, guv’nor, you’re a modern and progressive person, and I’m afraid I’m an old-fashioned one.’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ said Sir William with mild sarcasm. ‘Man, will you throw the Lord’s gifts away? Your eye for design is almost as good as mine. You earn your salary. How can that be a disappointment to you? What is the principle of life? You put something into God’s world, you take something out. That’s more than a principle, that’s as near to happiness as any man or woman can get.’

  ‘I agree,’ said James, ‘but all the same I thought I’d take the Lord’s other gifts around Europe for a while. My paints and my sketchbook and my eyes.’

  ‘It doesn’t make too much sense to me,’ said Sir William, ‘and I’m not sure whether it will to your mother, either. I think she’d prefer you to show up with an estimable young lady rather than with ideas about going off to paint the Eiffel Tower. It’s a small point, no doubt, but what d’you expect to live on?’

  ‘I’ve some money of my own, but if I do run short I thought I could benefit from a generous arrangement with you,’ said James affably. ‘I’m not proud and you’ve never been parsimonious.’

  ‘D’you know what I was doing at your age?’ said Sir William.

  ‘Yes, building infernal machines,’ said James, ‘and bringing it all into the house.’

  Sir William, in grey waistcoat, black trousers, stiff wing collar and grey tie, looked, as he always did when he was down to his shirtsleeves, as if he were ready for industrial battle on a high but practical plane.

  ‘Jamie,’ he said crisply, ‘I don’t believe in forcing any young man, especially my own son, to work at something that’s gone sour on him. But I’ll bargain. You take a year off and I’ll no’ argue. I’ll give you that, a year. But if you don’t come back after a year I’ll sue you.’

  ‘Sue me?’

  ‘You’re under contract,’ said Sir William.

  ‘Am I, by God.’

  ‘You are, by God.’

  ‘Damn me,’ said James, mildly thunderstruck by the uncompromising nature of parental astuteness.

  Maude liked the young man with the dark, almost gypsy look. The Alps soared above them, freezing the sky. Birds floated on still wings and the grandeur of space was beyond imagination. When she told him about her school and that she was starting the forthcoming winter term short of a teacher, James gave it only a second’s thought before offering himself as a temporary replacement. Maude, happy about his French, the language of the school, and his Edinburgh University background, never dilly-dallied herself.

  ‘I’ll call your bluff,’ she said, ‘I’ll accept you.’

  ‘No bluff,’ said James, ‘I want to see Vienna, live it, not wander through it.’

  He proved a find. He exercised a firm but benevolent masculine authority and the more impressionable girls sometimes brought him flowers and a blush. His salary was not very much. But he lived in a room at the top of the house and enjoyed free and very good board. He explored Vienna during his spare time and carried his sketchbook about.

  ‘Marie?’

  Marie Corbière pinked again. James smiled an
d beckoned her. She went to his desk. He had her essay in front of him. He had asked them to write three hundred words on a day in their life.

  ‘M’sieu?’

  ‘I like your essay, Marie. It’s very natural. A day in your life is a day with your family, yes?’

  ‘Yes, m’sieu.’ His dark eyes made her shy.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘why did you end with this line?’ He turned the work towards her and pointed. She bent to look and blushed again.

  The last line of her essay read, ‘A good archduke is a dead one.’

  It intrigued James. It had no connection with the essay proper, which was all about her family and her home. It had made its climactic arrival like a thunderclap at the end of a sunny day. He had felt astonishment. Its inclusion must have a meaning. To Marie at least. But Marie, having observed it and blushed, straightened up and blushed yet again. Perhaps she was aware of other girls watching her reactions to the enquiring smile of the darkly masculine Monsieur Fraser. At any rate, she said nothing.

  ‘Marie?’ said James questioningly.

  ‘Yes, m’sieu?’

  ‘It makes a rather irrelevant ending to a nice day, doesn’t it?’ he smiled.

  Marie had rather liked the impressive sound of it herself. She felt Monsieur Fraser did not. He was smiling, yes, but grown-ups often smiled just before they pounced. And some of the older girls confessed that at times his smile quite made them shiver. Marie, who had reached the age of reason, but not the age of discovery, was unacquainted in her mind with the shiver delicious.

  She was nervous, therefore, as she said, ‘It’s wrong, m’sieu?’

  ‘I don’t know. Is it?’ James was aware of her nervousness. It was creating a mental blockage. ‘Well, it’s nothing to worry about, but if you can remember why you put it in you can come and tell me.’

  ‘Yes, m’sieu,’ she said and gratefully escaped.

  He was on the steps when the pupils streamed out at midday. It was Saturday, when there were only morning lessons. Several maidservants and governesses were waiting to collect their respective charges. A girl was at the gate, a girl in the grey cape and black skirt of a nursemaid, a young man with her. Marie emerged on to the steps and smiled shyly at James.

  ‘Au ’voir, Marie,’ he said.

  ‘M’sieu,’ she dimpled, and then, ‘Oh, there’s Rosa.’

  ‘Rosa?’

  ‘She looks after my small brother and sometimes comes to meet me. And that is Boris.’ She dimpled again. ‘He is walking out with Rosa.’ She skipped away to join the grey-caped nursemaid and the young man, who wore the wide-brimmed black hat and floppy bow tie of the bohemian or musician. The three went off hand in hand.

  James buttonholed Maude a few minutes later and showed her the last line of Marie’s essay. Maude read it, then cast a quick eye over the essay itself. She returned to the last line.

  ‘How very odd,’ she said.

  ‘I think it was an American politician who was quoted as saying that the only good Red Indians were dead ones. Could Marie have seen that in some book, do you think, and used it in this way? But if so, why? It makes no sense when you try to relate it to the rest of the essay. And she’s French. Archdukes mean nothing to her.’

  ‘They mean something here,’ said Maude.

  ‘None of her family would have made such a remark?’

  ‘Never,’ said Maude. ‘Her father holds an important secretarial position on the staff of the French Embassy. Neither he nor his wife would commit such a blunder, even within the privacy of their own household. A diplomat is as much one by instinct as by training. James, whatever Marie’s reasons for using such a phrase, we mustn’t make a song and dance about it.’

  ‘I’m intrigued,’ said James, ‘but it’s tightly under my hat, Maude, and will stay there.’

  After lunch he borrowed Maude’s deep blue two-wheeler and drove out of the city with his sketchbook. The afternoon was fine, the sky a delicate blue, the Danube a gunmetal glitter. Compact villages nestled in the hills like red-roofed clusters of colour. Several miles out of Vienna he turned off the road to take a winding lane that offered a gentle descent to the bank of the river.

  ‘Ludwig,’ said Sophie, ‘I think you’d better stop.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ protested Anne, ‘drive on, Ludwig, this is whizzing adventure.’

  The young baronesses were perched in breeze-blown, sun-caught elevation on the high rear seat of Ludwig’s spanking new Bugatti as it ate up the road taking them back to Vienna. Their afternoon of motoring had been exhilarating and carefree up to now, both sisters impressed by the power Ludwig had at his command. But now, for some reason, steam was escaping, issuing in hissing little puffs from under the nobly wrought radiator cap. Sophie, always more sensitive to an atmosphere of approaching crisis than Anne, who would never worry about a leaning wall until it fell down, was sure the spasmodic puffs represented vaporous birds of ill omen. She had a presentiment. Ludwig, apparently, did not. Ludwig, in fact, was whistling cheerfully. But then Ludwig, a pleasant and easy-going young man, had the same tendency as Anne to let life happen and worry not.

  ‘I’m sure something is wrong,’ said Sophie.

  ‘What can be wrong with a little steam?’ said Anne. ‘Train engines are always doing it.’

  ‘Dearest ignoramus,’ said Sophie, ‘this isn’t a train engine. I’m as much for progress as anyone, but I do feel there’s no need for us to roar up every hill as if we were charging into battle. I’m sure we’re overdoing it and that’s why it’s steaming.’ She waited for a moment for Ludwig to make a reassuring comment. He did so.

  ‘Nothing to worry about, dear girl,’ he said, ‘and we’ve not far to go.’

  ‘Yes, dear man,’ said Sophie, ‘but I’d still prefer it if we stopped and you investigated the machinery.’

  The Bugatti was new. Ludwig had been its proud owner for only two days. He had a manual he could investigate, he had only a vague idea of what was entailed in an investigation of the machinery. Better, with only a few miles to go, to let well alone.

  ‘I’ll look at it when we get back,’ he said. The wind tugged at his words and tossed them away.

  ‘Ludwig?’ said Sophie as clearly as she could through her gauzy motoring veil.

  ‘Don’t worry, dear girl,’ said Ludwig.

  ‘Whizz on, Ludwig,’ said Anne. She was in stimulated rapture and Ludwig in careless bliss. He sat capped, coated and goggled and upright, dedicated to the marvel of motion. His gloved hands gripped the wheel firmly, his attitude towards the emissions of steam one of cheerful resolution. He refused to be intimidated. Powerful and beautiful though the Bugatti was, it had been built by man to be controlled by man, not to get the better of him. Of course, when they reached Vienna he might perhaps look at the manual. It was not worth stopping now. The road was their guide and companion, the vista delightful and the Danube a broad shining flow through the valley on their right.

  The steam hissed more menacingly as they began to climb another gradient.

  ‘Ludwig, why is it doing that?’ asked Sophie.

  ‘Doing what?’ called Ludwig.

  ‘Steaming,’ said Sophie, the ends of her veil fluttering.

  ‘Ah, that’s it, why?’ said Ludwig cheerfully.

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘It’s the proud spirit of internal combustion,’ said Ludwig, and the sound of that was a pleasure to his ear. He climbed on maximum revolutions.

  ‘That sounds like something to do with anarchy,’ said Sophie.

  Anne laughed, enjoying the thrill of it as Ludwig took them roaring up the hill. He reached the top with a smile of triumph. The low gear whined and he changed up. He gave the surging engine more throttle and the shining monster of black steel and brilliant brass careered towards a bend.

  ‘Oh, glorious,’ exclaimed the exhilarated Anne.

  ‘I do hope so,’ said Sophie.

  ‘Control, dear girls, that’s the secret,’ said Ludwig.

  A
nd he was in perfect control until they rounded the bend and saw a two-wheel carriage beginning to emerge on to the road from a leafy turning on the right.

  ‘Ludwig!’ Anne put her hands over her veil, hid her eyes and prayed. Admirably but disastrously Ludwig swung the wheel and roared across the road, missing the carriage horse by a whisker and running into a half-submerged boulder in the long grass of the verge. There was a sickening crunch of fender and wheel buffeting stone, a shriek from Anne, a cry from Sophie, and both of them were thrown forward in a heap. Ludwig’s chest hit the steering wheel, robbing him of breath, and the engine died of outrage and shock.

  Escaping steam hissed. Ludwig hung his mouth open to suck in air. Anne, on her knees, felt sweet relief at only being shaken and not dead. Sophie, wondering why she was on the floor of the car instead of the seat, had a vague feeling that her support of progress had taken a grievous knock and her presentiment of disaster had been justified. While Ludwig sucked in air the shocked baronesses edged shakily back on to the seat and set their hats straight. The driver of the two-wheeler, having pulled safely on to the verge and soothed his horse, climbed down. Sophie and Anne, a little pale, saw him approach. He was as dark and ferocious as the devil himself, his cursory survey of the immobilized Bugatti anything but sympathetic. His black trousers were tucked into old calf-length boots, his leather belt fastened by a battered brass buckle and his dark green shirt marked by smears of old, dried paint. He was hatless, his black hair unruly and his expression a scowl. Sophie could not conceive him to be other than an unprincipled desperado quite capable of massacring them. Ludwig was helpless, leaning over the wheel, a hand to his chest as he hoarsely tried to recover his wind. Sophie groped for the only weapon to hand, her parasol.

  The man, however, did not attack them. He bowed with what Sophie construed as sarcastic deliberation.

  ‘I trust you are not too gravely injured,’ he said in English.

  Ah, thought Sophie, an abominable Englishman. She took a firm grip of her parasol. She said with proud aloofness, ‘Würden Sie das bitte noch einmal sagen?’ Would you say that again, please?