The Silver Castle

by Nancy Buckingham

  He shot me a glance as I went past, so I greeted him politely in my best German.

  “Guten Morgen.”

  He didn’t trouble to reply, merely giving me a sullen, contemptuous stare before turning away to drag a heavy sack from the rear of the truck through a doorway. Behind me I heard footsteps and waited for Raimund to catch up.

  “Who was that?” I asked him.

  “You mean Josef? He’s the gardener. A surly type, is our Josef.”

  “He gave me a killing look.”

  “You must not mind, he is like that to everyone. It is Josef’s stock in trade to be unpleasant. I think he enjoys upsetting people.”

  “He sounds a charming type to have around.”

  “It is necessary, if we want the gardens kept in order. And surprisingly, for all his faults, the man is a damned good worker.” Raimund reached for my hand and hurried me towards the door. “Come on, Gail, I’m starving and I want my breakfast.”

  * * * *

  The Schloss had been adapted to give Sigrid Kreuder the greatest possible mobility, with ramps in place of steps and a small modern lift that had been neatly fitted into an alcove in the main hall to avoid spoiling the architectural lines.

  Mid-morning, Sigrid and I used the lift to go up to the attic where my father’s paintings were stored. I’d been wondering, in fact, why there were none hanging in any of the rooms I’d seen so far, but I hadn’t liked to enquire.

  It was a large, bare room, with ceilings sloping to a dormer window; the floor boards left uncovered, the plasterwork roughly whitewashed. The canvases—a hundred or more, I guessed—were stacked around the walls, a few of them in gilt frames, and a large wooden rack in the centre of the room held other canvases, all turned inward.

  Now that the moment had come I felt suddenly nervous, excited, yet oddly reluctant to face this first viewing of my father’s work. Stalling for time while I took a grip on my uncertain emotions, I said with a little laugh, “It’s all so beautifully neat and tidy that my father might have arranged them here himself. Did he?”

  “Good gracious no, it is Karl’s doing.” A little pause. “Whatever gave you the impression that Benedict was a tidy man?”

  “Wasn’t he, then?”

  “Quite the reverse, I fear. He lived always in a state of indescribable muddle. It was impossible to change him.”

  “So it was you who had the chalet put straight, I suppose? Everything there is in such perfect order.”

  She seemed surprised. “I gave no such instructions. After Benedict’s death, I sent Karl to collect the few remaining paintings, but otherwise the chalet should have been left untouched. No one has any reason to go there, you see.”

  “There was a boy in the chalet when I went there yesterday,” I told her. “He ran away when he saw me.”

  “A boy?”

  “Yes, about twelve or thirteen. Rather thin-looking.’’

  “Willi,” she said, her vexation showing. Then she shrugged and put two fingers lightly to her forehead. “He is a little ... weak in the head, but harmless enough. His mother died when he was a baby, and he was brought up by her sister—she and her husband own The White Cow inn in the village. Willi had no business to be in the chalet.” She became brisk. “Well, Gail, I shall leave you to browse in peace. And when you’ve done, come downstairs and we will work out an itinerary for you. We would never forgive ourselves if you returned to England without seeing something of this corner of Switzerland.”

  There it was again, that reference to my departure. Mother and son in their different ways were consideration itself to me, yet neither would be sorry to see me gone.

  “You are very kind,” I murmured.

  She brushed aside my thanks with a deprecating little shake of her head and wheeled herself from the room. I heard the click of the lift gates closing, the faint hum as the cage descended. Alone, I turned my attention to the paintings, my excitement almost devouring me now.

  Disappointment came as a sick, stabbing pain. Taking up one of the unframed canvases, I carried it to the window to see the colours in clear daylight, then fetched another, and another. But I could find no escape from this irrational sense of letdown. And it was irrational, I acknowledged bleakly to myself.

  The three paintings I had chosen at random were landscapes of lakes and mountains. They had been sensitively executed with a fine command of colour, the work of a highly competent craftsman. In one, the elusive quality of swift-flowing water was nicely caught ... that crystal clarity yet faintly opaque texture as it swirls over a rocky bed. A feathered cirrus sky was good, too, and the wool-pack appearance of gathering cumulus clouds; and good again, a starkly subtle effect of blue and violet evening shadows cast across snow, and a ragged sunset coming as the aftermath of a storm.

  But for all this skill, there was nothing in them to suggest—and I glanced rapidly at more and more paintings in a feverish attempt to prove myself wrong—the creative inspiration of a genius. Benedict Sherbrooke might become quite a vogue with collectors now that the snowball had been set rolling by that first reasonable sale in London. But Sigrid’s long affection for my father, her loyalty, her passionate enthusiasm, had misled her into believing him a genius.

  Standing alone in the silent attic room I began to experience what I had sought and failed to find at the chalet—a sensation of contact with my father. It was as if, now that I had seen some examples of his painting, I could reach through to a tenuous understanding of Benedict Sherbrooke. This disillusion I was feeling, this crushing disappointment, was a phantom echo of the emotion he himself had carried in his heart. My father’s resentment, his sense of frustration, had sprung from a bitter awareness of his own inadequacy.

  Lost in these swirling wraiths of thought, I was scarcely aware of the lift ascending again, the slither of rubber-tyred wheels in the corridor outside. The attic door was thrown open, and Sigrid sat there in her chair.

  “Gail, my dear, you have been up here for two whole hours. It is nearly time for Mittagessen ... for luncheon.”

  “I ... I’m sorry, Frau Kreuder. I was miles away.”

  She smiled, her head tilted a little to one side.

  “Understandably. You must be proud of your father.”

  I hung back from answering, wishing with all my heart that I could say an enthusiastic yes. My failure to do so caused her brow to crease in an unhappy frown.

  “An artist of his stature, Gail, a true master, is above ordinary judgements of human behaviour. He must not be blamed, but always forgiven. Do you not agree?”

  “Perhaps,” I said unwillingly. Then, her obvious distress making me feel churlish, I added with as much conviction as I could lend my voice, “Yes, of course I’m proud of him.”

  She smiled serenely and spun her wheelchair before me to the lift.

  * * * *

  In my bedroom I washed off the grime I’d picked up from the dusty canvases and changed my slacks for a dress, but my mind still felt cobwebbed and confused. Opening one of the windows, I leant with my hands on the sill to inhale the pure sweet air, which smelled of distant snow and tasted of spring.

  A conversation in the room below drifted up to me in snatches. Hearing my name I listened carefully, translating what few phrases I could.

  “You told her,” Sigrid protested. “You fool! I said she was not to know.”

  Raimund’s voice was lower and I couldn’t make out his reply. Then he added clearly, a defiant shrug in his voice, “Es macht nichts.”

  What was it, I wondered, that Raimund claimed did not matter? Something he had told me. About my father’s death? About the woman who had shared his fate?

  Sigrid spoke again in a sibilant, penetrating whisper.

  “She will be gone, Gott sei Dank, before ...”

  I strained my ears but heard no more. Before what? Before I discovered something they wanted concealed from me? And if I did, what then? Was it some harm to me they feared, or to themselves?

  It
was time I joined them for lunch. Leaving my room, I was just reaching the head of the staircase when a crosscurrent of thought halted me. Could Sigrid have meant that I would be gone from here before her stepson returned home from his business trip to America?

  The dining salon was a spacious apartment panelled in natural pinewood, dominated by a fireplace of honey-coloured stone carved with heraldic emblems. Sigrid and her son were waiting for me by the fire, she in her wheelchair, he standing beside her, each holding a drink. Accepting my glass of sherry from Raimund, it struck me that their welcoming smiles were a little strained, a trifle forced.

  Raimund said, “When I return to the silk mill this afternoon, Gail, I thought you might like to come with me. You must see it before you leave us.”

  She will be gone, before ...

  “Thank you, I’d like that. I’m sure I shall find it most interesting.”

  “And this evening,” he went on, “I shall take you to Zurich, for dinner and a show. Which would you prefer, Kino or Theater? Or perhaps an orchestral concert?”

  Anything, I realised, so long as I was kept too busy to think up any more awkward questions.

  “Can you really spare the time, Raimund? I’d be perfectly happy pottering around on my own.”

  “Not at all. I shall look forward to escorting you.”

  When we were sitting at the table, I was given the next installment of the plans they’d made for me. From Sigrid, this time.

  “Tomorrow morning, Gail, I thought you and I would go for a drive to show you some of our beautiful Swiss countryside. And in the evening, I have invited my daughter Helga and her husband for dinner. Ernst is a lawyer. You met him, if you remember, at the cafe yesterday.”

  “Yes, of course,” I murmured. “How nice.”

  Ernst was the one who had rushed to the phone the instant I’d left the cafe—to inform (to warn?) Frau Kreuder of my arrival. Were he and his wife being brought in now as reinforcements to help keep me occupied? To prevent me from getting the chance to question people who might give me some straight answers?

  Though I’d believed I had no appetite, my palate was seduced by the aroma of veal braised in a rich wine sauce. First, however, I was determined to make one thing clear.

  I said, lightly but with a stubborn undertone, “You really are spoiling me, you know, with such consideration. But I can’t possibly inflict myself on you every minute of my time here. Since I have my own transport I propose getting acquainted with this part of the world—where my father lived for so long. And also getting to know some of the other people he knew. I wouldn’t want to return to England without doing that.”

  Watching their faces, I saw nothing but polite interest. Frau Kreuder’s hand, as she passed me my plate, was perfectly steady. But when Raimund poured wine for me, I heard the chink of bottle against glass.

  Chapter Four

  The silk mill both fascinated and bewildered me. I wished I could have taken a more intelligent interest in the various processes, but mechanical things had always been a mystery to me.

  I learned from Raimund that the silk in its raw, cocoon state was imported from northern Italy, and I watched the gossamer threads being drawn off and reeled onto large bobbins faster than the eye could follow, then twisted into yarn. Under the general heading of Veredelung (“It means, literally, ennoblement,” Raimund explained. “How’s that for a poetic description?”) came dyeing, weighting, printing, and finishing. In the weaving shed itself the chattering racket of the automatic looms seemed to stun my eardrums. I’d have thought speech was impossible here, but the girl operators, clad in white overalls with their hair bound in turbans, managed to gossip cheerfully as they worked.

  In contrast, the showroom across the courtyard was sheer delight. A modern airy building, it had been designed to display the silk mill’s products to best advantage, and was softly and subtly lit by angled spotlights. Glorious silken fabrics, half unravelled from their bolts, spilled to the floor in cascades of colour. Lustrous satins in pale shades of ivory and pink were set against rich velvets in magenta, emerald green, and midnight blue. There were brocades in crimson and gold, a rising bank of brocatelles, a transom bar of self-toned damasks. And simpler materials too, no less beautiful—taffetas and chiffons, a tumbled rainbow of crepe Georgette. At one corner were the prints. Crepe de Chine in a brilliant Oriental motif of peacocks and pagodas, and paisley patterns, glowing with subdued colour.

  “This one is lovely,” I exclaimed for the twentieth time, trailing my fingertips across green and blue arabesques on a carmine ground.

  Raimund nodded. ‘It’s a hand-blocked foulard, mostly used for men’s dressing gowns. That particular pattern is one we have been using for many years. It sells very well. Actually, I believe it was one of your father’s designs.”

  It came as a shock, being so totally unexpected. “I had no idea he did any designing for you here, Raimund.”

  “Now and then, in the early days. Did you not know he was trained in the textile business in England?”

  “Yes, I did know that. My parents were living in Macclesfield when I was born, and he worked in a silk mill there. But I thought he must have finished with textile designing when he ... when he left home to take up painting.”

  “Benedict had to eat, like everyone else. So when he was without money, he would work on a design for us. The trouble was, the more absorbed he became in his painting, the more he seemed to lose his flair. So in recent years he sent in very little we could use.”

  I turned back and stroked the lovely silk fabric again. “How was it that my father came to settle here?”

  “From what I’ve been told,” Raimund said, “he was wandering around Europe, drifting from place to place and getting more and more despondent. Then Mama happened to hear of him through one of our overseers whom he had been talking to at an inn. As we were looking for new paisley designs at the time, she invited him to do something for Kreuder’s, and at once she realised that Benedict was good.”

  I looked at him. “Does that mean your mother was actively involved in the firm, too?”

  “Indeed yes, she was a designer herself. She still is, though nowadays she only works when the mood takes her. Just to retain her skill, she says.”

  ‘Is that how she met your father—through working at the silk mill?”

  “No, it goes back further than that. Her family, the Schwarzkopfs, had been on friendly terms with the Kreuders for many years because we buy looms and other machinery from them ... their factory is over at Winterthur. When Mama was a young woman she wanted to take up textile designing, and arrangements were made for her to come to our mill. At that time my father’s first wife was still alive, of course, but they married a couple of years after she died.”

  “I see.” I gestured towards the paisley design. “And your father—did he agree with her opinion of Benedict Sherbrooke?”

  “Certainly he did. Benedict’s talent was undeniable. But I doubt if Papa would have put up with his difficult temperament except for Mama’s sake.”

  “My father must have owed her a great deal,” I said thoughtfully.

  “A damn sight more than he ever acknowledged.” But Raimund’s quick frown didn’t linger. “I suppose you could say that he repaid her, in a way. Being interested in Benedict Sherbrooke’s paintings gave Mama something to occupy her mind after she was confined to that wheelchair.”

  “I was wondering about that, but I haven’t wanted to ask. Did she have an accident?”

  He nodded sombrely. “She used to be a great skiing enthusiast, and she had a bad fall on Gotschnawang, which shattered both her legs. The doctors patched her up as best they could, but she has never walked since.”

  “How very sad. When did this happen?”

  “About nine years ago, and my father died eighteen months later. He had a heart attack, which wasn’t altogether surprising because he drove himself too hard.” Raimund gave an ironic laugh. “That seems to be a Kreuder family
tradition. My grandfather died of a heart attack when he was still in his prime, and it looks as if my brother is heading for the same fate. Anton makes the silk mill his god.”

  “You and he are partners, I suppose?”

  “That is the general idea, but it is a fact I have to remind him of from time to time. He treats me more like a junior manager. When he left for America the other day, he had the nerve to leave me a list of the tasks to be done while he was away.”

  For some reason I was amused by this, and said teasingly, “I hope you’re getting on with them, then. I wouldn’t want Anton to discover you’d been wasting your time showing me around.”

  “Is that what you call it?” he countered. “A waste of time?”

  “Well, from what you’ve told me about him, your brother believes that business comes before pleasure.”

  Raimund grinned. “Don’t worry, you can leave me to deal with Anton. Anyway, you will be gone before he returns, Gail.”

  You will be gone before Anton returns. It was getting to sound like a refrain, sung by mother and son alternately.

  * * * *

  It had rained again while we were in the concert hall listening to Chopin preludes and Mendelssohn’s “Songs Without Words.” Now Zurich sparkled, head lamps and street lights and advertising signs all mirrored in the wet black tarmac like oil colours splashed from an artist’s brush.

  For dinner, Raimund took me to a restaurant in a narrow stepped street of the city’s Old Quarter. On every wall hung reproductions of those modern artists my father would never have appreciated, Picasso in his cubist period, Braque at his most provocative, and Switzerland’s own Paul Klee. We ate baby pork cutlets and a salad flavoured with unfamiliar herbs, a soufflé as airy and insubstantial as the bales of silk floss I had seen at the mill that morning. And to accompany our meal, a bottle of a dry German Riesling.