by P. G. Glynn
“Yes, we are,” Lenka told them, “but on the outskirts. And don’t worry about your sister. I’ll take good care of her.”
“Promise?” asked Robert.
Aunt Lenka had promised and then she and Suzy had parted from the rest of the family. Any apprehension Suzy felt soon went when her aunt took her to the Sacher Hotel for a Melange mit Schlag, which was a large cup of coffee with whipped cream on top, and a huge slice of Sachertorte. This was a little like being with Nama and being treated as a very special somebody. In fact, Aunt Lenka was a bit like Nama to look at except that her skin was much browner. They must both have been very beautiful in their youth because even as old ladies they had a striking beauty. “Why are you staring at me?”
“Sorry!” said Suzy. “I didn’t know I was.”
“Perhaps you were wondering where the brown stops.”
“No, I wasn’t … although I am now!”
Lenka smiled as she said: “It doesn’t. You see, I’m a sun-worshipper. Before lying in the sun I take all my clothes off.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, every stitch of clothing.”
Did Aunt Lenka mean even her knickers? Surely she didn’t! “Where do you … do it?”
“I used to do it in the castle grounds, which were vast with plenty of privacy. Now I sunbathe in the Donau Bad, on a bank of the Danube.”
“Do people see you?”
“Only like-minded people, who need to feel the sun on their skin.”
“Need to?”
“Yes, it’s the word I meant to use. We don’t just worship the sun, you see, but also the body - which natuerlich is the temple of the soul. You knew that?” Suzy had to admit she didn’t. “Your body is a wondrous thing, Schatzilein, which you will discover in time. Be proud of yours, as I am now proud of mine, and you’ll be surprised how it will repay your pride. If you use it well, you will reap dividends. One word of warning: use men. Never let yourself be used by them.”
“I don’t know many men,” Suzy said, bewildered both by her aunt’s words and by her intense expression, “and even if I did, I wouldn’t know how to … ”
“I could teach you,” Lenka butted in eagerly. “I could teach you how to avoid making the mistakes I made … how to capitalise on your assets. But,” she finished abruptly, “you’re too young yet for such lessons.”
She had spoken almost as if Suzy were somehow at fault for being only ten. Suzy asked uncertainly: “How old would I need to be?”
“Sixteen, at least. Jesus Maria, just listen to me! I am rambling when I should be showing you Schoenbrunn. Forget what I said, my darling, and let’s start our journey.”
But Suzy couldn’t forget and nor could she help wondering what Lenka had meant about using men. That sounded a strange thing to do – and not very pleasant. She was beginning to wish she had gone with the twins to the Prater.
Suzy changed her mind again when they were seated in their fiacre, which was a black carriage drawn by two white horses. A man in a black suit, wearing a black bowler hat and holding a whip in his hand, sat on a high seat in front of them and once they were underway Aunt Lenka linked arms with Suzy, saying: “This is how we used to travel in Bohemia when I first went to live in Schloss Berger.” She smiled and the sun caught the gold tooth at the side of her mouth, making it flash brightly. There was gold, too, round her neck and on her wrists and fingers as well as hanging from her ears. Amazing how much gold Aunt Lenka had, both in and on her! “It isn’t as fast, of course, as a car but one sees so much more from behind a horse than an engine. It’s a pity that Bohemia is rather too far for us to visit. I’d have liked to be the one to show you the Giant Mountains – and the castle, natuerlich. But your father’s heritage has been lost forever, thanks to the Communists.”
“Would the castle have been his?”
“It would … although it should have been Ludwig’s.”
“Who is he?”
“Was, Suzy. He was my husband … and your great-grandmother’s eldest son.” She grimaced. “Don’t be told otherwise. Never listen to lies.”
Alarmed by her aunt’s grim expression, Suzy asked: “Is Ludwig dead?” When Lenka nodded, she said: “Then it makes no difference whose the castle would have been, especially if the Communists got everything.”
“It makes a difference to me – and the issue isn’t as simple as you might think, so now’s not the time to bother your head with it.” They were clopping along Vienna’s famous ‘Ring’ and passing the State Opera House, whose magnificent contours Lenka pointed out. She queried: “Do you like Wagner?”
“Not especially. His music is too heavy for me.”
“It was prophetic.”
“Was it?”
“Certainly! He died in 1883, but knew already before then that our Opera House would be hit by fire bombs in 1945.”
“How could he have known that it would be?”
“Because he was a genius, Suzy. This impressive building we’re seeing has risen from the ashes of Hitler’s Goetterdaemmerung, which Richard Wagner had forecast for him. In his opera he wrote that rules should not be broken – no, not even by the gods themselves. Then Hitler arose and believed he was God and we all suffered the terrible consequences. I cannot listen to Wagner without picturing the destruction masterminded by Adolf Hitler, whose Goetterdaemmerung marked the true end for the Habsburgs. Yes, it’s thanks to him that the sun finally set on them – but it will rise again, once the Russians have left, on a new Vienna.” Warming to her theme, Lenka said then: “And you could be the next Empress, Suzy, with me as your teacher!”
Suzy said uncertainly: “I’m going to be an actress, like Nama.”
“You’d choose to be an actress, when you could be Empress of Austria?”
Suspecting that her aunt was laughing at her, Suzy said: “I can’t imagine doing anything but acting.”
“That’s only because your imagination hasn’t yet been stirred by the endless possibilities open to a girl with your potential! You’ll mature into a beauty, Suzy, who under my tutelage could move effortlessly through European society. Don’t be restricted by plebeians. Open your mind to your Bohemian heritage and to all the advantages of having been born a Berger. With a background like yours and with looks that will blossom as you grow to be a woman, there need be no end to your opportunities … to your successes. But you’ll go nowhere without my help.” She smiled. “Fortunately for you, I’m willing to assist … when the time is right.”
Feeling strangely unsettled and yet intrigued, Suzy queried: “When will that be?”
“Come back to me once you are seventeen and I’ll introduce you to a world of which other girls can only dream. Will you do that, Suzy?”
Seventeen seemed so far away that Suzy thought it best to keep her aunt happy by agreeing. She had plenty of time in which to change her mind. So she nodded and then said: “You were going to tell me your side of the story.”
After looking perplexed for the few moments it took to recall which story Suzy was referring to, Lenka said: “So I was! Let me think where best to begin.” There was a prolonged pause before: “I’ve told you that I was married to Ludwig. The fact is, I shouldn’t have been married to him. The man I truly loved – the one I was meant to marry, right here in Vienna – abandoned me and left the country. After his departure I was very distressed and a mutual friend introduced me to Ludwig, who comforted me. He was as ugly as my former fiancé was handsome, but that didn’t matter. Nothing much matters when one’s heart is as broken as mine was then. So it was simple enough for Ludwig to persuade me to marry him. Years after our marriage I learned that Ludwig’s brother was bringing his bride home to Schloss Berger. I should have mentioned that it was this brother I was once in love with … his brother, Otto.”
“Nandad?” Suzy gasped.
“Ja – your grandfather, who then arrived with your grandmother to break my heart afresh. You see, my darling, I still loved him despite being married to Lud
wig. In some respects my husband and I resembled Kaiser Franz Josef and his Kaiserin Elizabeth, whose pictures you’ll soon be seeing in their summer palace. He was old and I was young, but he was uglier than our Emperor and crueller too, although he was never cruel to me. He and Otto loathed each other.”
“People don’t loathe their brothers.”
“Oh, sometimes they do, Suzy! And believe me, hatred between brothers can be a catastrophe. It was in their case … and Marie and I didn’t take to one another either. Or, rather, she didn’t take to me because of her jealousy.”
“Why would Nama have been jealous of you?”
“Because she knew that Otto was still irresistibly drawn to me … and also because of my beauty.”
“But she was beautiful too!”
“That’s true. She had British inhibitions, though, whereas I was uninhibited. She envied the way I lived … the free spirit I exhibited. It was envy that made her accuse me of killing her baby, when everybody else knew that the true killer was your great-grandmother’s mad half-brother, Emil Kadlec. She saw to it that I was sent away so that she didn’t have to face me day after day. She had me banished from Schloss Berger out of spite and … and ruined my life.”
Suzy could not believe that of Nama but, equally, couldn’t disbelieve the tears shining in her aunt’s eyes. There was so much to take in – so impossibly much to comprehend of the life that went on long before she was born. Just imagine old Nandad being the man that both Nama and Aunt Lenka were in love with! Or was Nama ever in love with him, since Carla was Charles’s? Suzy wondered whether Aunt Lenka knew that. She said: “So you weren’t there when Daddy was a little boy?”
Having expected sympathy, Lenka needed to adjust to the unexpected question: “I was … and I wasn’t.” She thought for a while. “I seem to remember returning after the first banishment – not after the second.”
“You were banished twice?”
“I might have been,” Lenka said vaguely as they came within sight of Schoenbrunn. “I must have been, mustn’t I, because I was there when your father was small – and saw how Marie neglected him. After Carla … died … she had no time for anyone, least of all her son. It’s no wonder that he has described her as a bad mother. It’s an apt description.”
Feeling sad for Daddy, but also for Nama who had lost her daughter, Suzy said: “Things must have been hard for both of them.”
Much to her surprise, Aunt Lenka laughed. “You’ll make a diplomat yet! Yes, you’re ideally suited, Suzy, to the future that awaits you here in Vienna.” She began singing softly: “’Ja, ja, ja, Maenner sind zum kuessen da!’” Then she said: “When you return to me I’ll demonstrate what that means. Give me one year from your store and I’ll transform you into someone with the world at her feet.”
“A whole year?”
“That is nothing, out of a lifetime … and, here in the city where your grandfather once guarded our Emperor, I shall give you the time of your life. Do you believe, like I do, that that’s your destiny, Suzy?”
“I believe,” Suzy said, uncomfortably conscious of Aunt Lenka’s penetrating scrutiny as their fiacre drew up outside the palace’s imposing entrance, “that … it might be.”
59
Guy was at his wits’ end. The situation had gone on for too long and he must put a stop to it. The question was how to stop Judith humiliating him.
She lost no opportunity to belittle him in front of their sons and also in front of their students. Running a school together made things all the more difficult, for it was their professional as well as their personal lives on the line. Guy wished for the thousandth time that he could think of a way to separate the two – indeed, to separate from Judith without jeopardising the future of his drama school. He thought of the Brodie School as his, though she ran it without him while he was in Japan. It bore his family name, after all, and by Guy’s reckoning his was the bigger commitment to its success – especially recently, when Judith’s absences had noticeably increased.
She was also being very secretive – so secretive that he was convinced she was being unfaithful to him. Naturally, he had wondered about her lover’s identity – and had been shocked to realise that he was just idly curious. He didn’t care any more who she saw, or even who she went to bed with. Any warmth they had once shared was long gone. For years now they had co-existed in a state of mutual indifference that was a killer.
Being indifferent was worse than hating her. At least with hatred there was a depth of feeling – and it was better to feel something, he had found, than to feel nothing whatsoever. Nothingness was like being half-dead. It was certainly not at all like being alive and Guy had finally decided that enough was enough. Even for his sons’ sakes he could not continue with this sham of a marriage … this endless series of days and nights working and lying beside Judith while wishing himself anywhere but there and seeing himself as less than a man. It was time to take action.
As to what action he would take, Guy was uncertain. He would, he supposed, need to begin by confronting Judith upon her return tonight. Hating confrontation, he had been delaying tackling her head-on but now, with James in Singapore on his national service and Edward having just gone compulsorily into uniform, he could no longer use the boys as an excuse. They were men now and he was about to prove that he was a man, not a mouse, too! For which he needed fortifying.
He was on his third glass of gin and ‘it’ when he heard Judith’s key in the lock, followed by her heavy footsteps along the hall. Having no head for drink, Guy was aware of a welcome haziness that dulled the anxiety he felt about the task ahead. He could do this and would do it. His talk with Judith was long overdue.
“You’re drinking?” she queried crisply, entering the dimly lit sitting room. He was seated in his favourite armchair by the fireplace where dying embers in the grate seemed to him symbolic of his marriage. “You know what they say, don’t you, about people who drink alone?”
“No. What do they say, Judith?”
Removing her white gloves and tossing them on top of the textbook he had attempted to read earlier in preparation for the new scholastic year, she frowned at his bellicose tone before responding: “That they are sad misfits who can find no-one to drink with.”
“Thank you for that … and for the many other slights over the years. They’ve all contributed to my decision.”
“You’ve decided something?” Pouring herself a whisky from its crystal decanter on the trolley Guy had wheeled through from the dining room and placed within strategic reach of his chair, she then sat opposite him before adding: “Wonders will never cease.”
“Someone had to call a halt to the travesty of ‘us’ – so I decided it had better be me.”
Leaning back in her seat and assessing him through half-closed eyelids, she breathed: “How timely!”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll come to that in a minute. First, I must take issue with your assessment of our partnership. Is it personally or professionally that you regard us as a travesty?”
“Personally, of course. Professionally we have progressed from strength to strength. As you well know, the Brodie School is ranked up there with the best.”
“And that’s thanks to you – or to me?”
“To us both, Judith. Miraculously, given the state of our marriage, we have succeeded as a vocational team.”
“Is that a fact?”
Slightly unnerved by her tone and bold stare, Guy stammered: “It’s … it’s one few would dispute.”
“So how on earth did the School manage while you were in Japan?”
“I like to think that since my return I’ve more than compensated for that unavoidable absence.”
“There’s plenty I’d like to think, too – but unlike you I have a wholesome appreciation of the truth.”
“Which is, in your view?”
“That I run the School – and that without me at its helm you will have as big a fiasco on your hands
as your ineffective Pa had at the Tavistock.”
Guy swallowed hard, then said: “You are the most offensive woman I’ve ever met, except …”
“Yes? Who else has caused your pathetic sensibilities offence?”
“Dolly Martin,” he breathed. “It’s beyond belief that you and she are friends. It was possibly that act of betrayal that marked the beginning of the end.”
Sipping her whisky, Judith studied him. “The end of the arid desert that some see as a marriage and that we see as a sham?” she queried. “When will you wake up to the understanding that our ‘marriage’ was over before it even began? Any contract based on dishonesty is doomed.”
“Are you accusing me of dishonesty?”
She looked around exaggeratedly. “I don’t see anyone else in the room.”
“Whatever other accusations you might hurl at me, dishonest is something I’m emphatically not!”
“I beg to differ. When a man marries one woman, wanting another – that, in my view, is the height of dishonesty.”
Taken off-guard, he began: “I didn’t! I mean … ”
“You see?” Judith smiled benignly. “It’s all down to you, Guy. You blighted both our lives by marrying me. You’ve never been a true husband to me. How could you be, with your whole life spent wishing you were with bloody Marie? All along she has been the spectre in our marriage, although it took me a while to accept that. We never stood a chance and I can hardly be blamed for not being the woman you wanted. I just wish I’d woken up sooner to your true colours. It would have saved me a lot of grief and a lot of heart-searching, back in the beginning when I still loved you. As it is, you taught me how to shut off feeling – something I succeeded in doing for years. That situation has thankfully changed and I’m experiencing emotion again. But when I look at you all I see is a weakling without even the gumption to run to the woman he loves now that his father and her husband are off the scene. You’re pitiable, Guy, and I’m well rid of you and your insecurities!”