Mafeking’s siege was nearing its end. Victory or capitulation, one of them must come soon. Its story was played out.
‘Come,’ said Carradine, beginning to walk rapidly down the road, ‘let us see what we can do to help.’
THE SEARCH FOR OTTO WAGNER
‘Wagner?’ she said. ‘I thought he was a composer.’
‘Otto, not Richard, my ignorant little love. Architect, not composer. Austrian, not German.’
‘Oh, well, go if you must. But count me out. I shall go to Tenerife.’ A pause. ‘With Angela.’ There was a world of meaning in that pause.
So, here he was, six weeks later, no Sylvie, and himself halfway through the first day of his first visit to Vienna. Distinctly underwhelmed by it at the moment, if we’re being honest. A beautiful, cultured city, which for some reason had less to say to him than almost any other major city he’d ever visited, a circumstance that had put him out more than a little. Orlando expected the reality to come up to the expectation, and was always annoyed when it didn’t.
As a tourist, which he was for this morning only, he was in the sort of mood which made the city seem overcrowded and schmaltzy: he hadn’t cared to visit the Spanish Riding School, and disdained to view the sights vulgarly from a horse-drawn landau. St Stephen’s Cathedral seemed to him like the monkey house at the zoo, its glories obscured by too many people milling around. Tacky Mozart souvenirs met his eyes everywhere he turned—and the sachertorte with which he was now indulging himself was not wickedly rich, gooey and intensely chocolatey as he’d been told it would be by everyone who knew he was coming here, but a tired, dry and crumbly affair, edible only by reason of the excellent coffee that washed it down. His interest in the Prater and its Ferris wheel was minimal, he was already fed up with references to Harry Lime. And the smell of horse was overpowering.
As a professional . . . well. He’d known before he came that the city’s architecture would contain too much grandiose imperialism for his taste; he had yet to encounter the art nouveau buildings which were the ostensible purpose of his visit. The florid, wedding cake public edifices imitating the past on the Ringstrasse filled him with dismay, though that could have been partly due to a restless night in an unfamiliar bed after having driven twice around the Ring in order to find the turning to the small family hotel Anton had booked for him—the woeful end of a lamentable journey, eleven hours at the wheel, most of it on the ruler-straight autobahn through mind-numbing, disciplined Germany, being hooted at by manic German drivers.
Plus time for that shattering interlude at Melk, with the abbey shining in golden baroque splendour on its cliff above the sluggish river, while he heaved into the water the thing which had lain like an unexploded bomb in the boot until then. Where now, he hoped, it still lay, on the river bed. But possibly floating downstream towards the Danube, if the rocks he’d sought to weight it down with had torn through the plastic refuse sack he’d wrapped it in. Who could tell? All in all, it had been a nerve-racking experience. He still felt unhinged.
But there was no going back, not now.
Orlando had some time ago decided he disliked flying—or rather, that he disliked airports, and the loss of individuality they brought, all that humanity being herded together like sheep. Also, he had known he was going to need his car at some point or other on the journey . . . a point which, in the event, had turned out to be Melk, a purely fortuitous stop, when he had seized his chance . . . But, half-way through Germany, stalled in an accident tailback for an hour, he’d have given much for a steadying glass of scotch and a comfortable seat with British Airways, rather than the sausages and stodge which was all the next services had to offer. His breakfast here in Vienna had been cold ham and sausage, too.
He endeavoured to pull himself together. He couldn’t spend the rest of his life looking at the world through jaundiced eyes, missing Sylvie. He would have to accustom himself to being without her. What was done was done. Perhaps tomorrow he’d feel different, when he’d had a good night’s sleep and he’d seen the Karlsplatz and the Steinhof church for himself and not merely in photographs.
It was unforgivable of Anton to be so late—if he’d ever had any intention of turning up, that is, of keeping his promise to show Orlando the delights of his wonderful native city.
He ordered another coffee while he gave Anton the benefit of a further half hour, closing his eyes against the procession of plodding, weary old horses pulling open carriages filled with tourists, feeling the sun warm on his face as he sat at the small table outside the very café where the Secessionists were reputed to have met.
Otto Wagner . . . Orlando Williams . . . He had been entertained by the charming coincidence of them bearing the same initials, having already found so many other things to admire in the oeuvre of the Jugendstil architect who seemed to have much to say to him. To have created a work of art out of a railway terminus, to have designed those twin pavilions of the Karlsplatz to have built them in white marble, moreover, embellishing them in green and gold, as unlike a London Underground station as it was possible to imagine, seemed to Orlando nothing short of a marvel. He could barely wait to see them, and the church at Steinhof.
Anton, likewise, had professed to admire Wagner’s work, though Orlando knew now that this was expediency rather than true admiration.
Orlando himself had originally thought of qualifying as an architect, but the long training had defeated his half-formed good intentions. Instead, he had found a niche in writing and lecturing about late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century architecture, a period which had a special appeal for him. A book and several articles on the art nouveau period had put him on the lecture circuit up and down the country, where he was very popular on account of his cherubic good looks and the throwaway humour he brought to his talks, and had proved reasonably profitable, so far. He wasn’t sure how long this could go on. For one thing, he had begun, if the truth were told, to weary of the sinuous decadence, the lilies and languors of the art nouveau period proper; it was one of the reasons he’d warmed to the work of Otto Wagner, who was, so to speak, the last fling of the movement, and was less flamboyant and excessive than, say, Victor Horta, the Belgian, less outrageous than the exuberant Spaniard, Gaudi, but also less severely ascetic than Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Indeed, he seemed to Orlando to exemplify the concept of restrained and decorative elegance, while embracing the doctrine of new artistic freedom equally as successfully as his friend, Gustav Klimt.
It was a Klimt design, an original but hitherto unknown mosaic panel in a copper frame, which had brought Orlando and Anton together, in London.
They had come across each other quite accidentally, or so it seemed at the time, a chance meeting at the Q Gallery, where Sylvie worked—if work was the right word—one of life’s little serendipities of the sort that was wont to lift Orlando’s spirits inordinately.
A remark from a stranger, both of them standing in admiration before the extremely valuable and recently acquired Klimt.
‘But Otto Wagner, all the same,’ had murmured Orlando, almost to himself, ‘could never have been influenced by him.’
His overheard remark had an electric effect on the man standing next to him. ‘Otto Wagner? You know his work?’
The man was foreign, that much was apparent. Given away not only by his accent and his long belted mackintosh, but also by the fact of his speaking to a stranger.
‘Not to say know,’ replied Orlando. ‘Only from drawings, photographs . . . his reputation, you understand.’
‘Ah, but the real thing! Nothing can compensate for that.’
This was true, Orlando knew, and he immediately began addressing himself to the question of why he’d never before visited Vienna in pursuit of architecture, and resolving to bestir himself and make good the omission.
‘So,’ said his new acquaintance. ‘I am Anton Drucker, from Vienna. An associate of Mr Quarmby.’ He held out a manicured hand. A tall, handsome man with a fit, athletic body and a
narrow face, knowing eyes regarding him assessingly, a careless smile. ‘You should see the real thing,’ he repeated. ‘As no doubt the charming Miss Sylvie here would advise.’
‘Sylvie?’
He should have known, even then. At the time he was too preoccupied with trying not to laugh. Sylvie, who had only the vaguest smattering of knowledge about art and artists, and cared not at all. She was employed at the Q Gallery only to be decorative, to hover in the background and pass interested customers on to its owner, Jonathan Quarmby-Crump.
Everyone, even the customers, recognized she was featherbrained, but when Sylvie smiled, no one minded. She and Orlando had lived together for nearly twelve months, which was a long time for both of them, especially in view of their differences.
He’d so far put up with her faults because she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever encountered, long-legged and slim, with her white, pearly skin and her damson-coloured hair. To possess such a wondrous being had at first seemed like winning the lottery twice over. But, by and by, inevitably, custom had begun to stale her infinite variety. His self-indulgent existence was no longer his own. He was used to demanding perfection in every area of his life, and here was one in which he patently wasn’t getting it. Her faults, he decided sorrowfully, were many. Out of bed, they had no common meeting-ground: music, of the sort he listened to, sent her into cracking yawns; to her, a book was a copy of Vogue; the pictures and works of art that surrounded her all day at the gallery might have been posters for all she knew or cared. His flat was no longer his own: bottles of dye, from whence the damson colour of her hair emerged, littered his hitherto pristine bathroom; her clothes nudged his out of the wardrobe. She was wildly untidy. He might have been prepared to put up with this, but in addition, food, a matter of the utmost importance to Orlando, who was as greedy for this as everything else in life, scarcely mattered at all to Sylvie. Her nails were so long she dared not prepare a meal, much less wash up after it, in case she broke one. As a consequence of this indifference, she was so slim she was more than half-way to being anorexic. Faced with a beautifully arranged plate of mind-bogglingly expensive food, she would nibble at a truffle or a morsel of lobster and push the rest away, untouched, whereupon waiters, who knew how mightily the chef had laboured over the dish and feared tantrums when it was returned, would bob up with anxious questions.
‘Delicious, thank you. Just not hungry,’ Her dazzling smile made them hope the chef would forgive the insult. But Orlando, thinking of his pocket, and a future with a woman with whom he could share virtually nothing, found it less easy to forgive.
‘I’ve cooked us boeuf bourguignon, darling!’ she’d announced, hoping to astonish him that last night before she was due to leave, a day before his own departure. ‘I know it’s your favourite.’
‘Thank you, my love.’ For the effort of going to Marks and Spencer and buying it, for putting it into the microwave. Even though she hadn’t got that quite right either. She could never get it into her head that nine minutes meant nine minutes, and not eight, or ten.
But for all their incompatibility, her flawed perfection, he saw now that he would miss her. He had loved her, as deeply as he was capable of loving anyone. Poor Sylvie, for whom a broken nail was the biggest tragedy life could inflict. Shallow Sylvie, flitting from one job to the next, one man to another . . .
He wished, quite desperately for him, and now too late, that she was here.
He looked at his watch and faced the fact that Anton was not going to come either, no longer pretending to himself that he had ever expected he would, accepting that he had never intended to be in Vienna. He would just have to find some other way of meeting him, some other place where he could kill him. Unless Anton killed him first when he learned what he had done. He wasn’t sure which would be more preferable.
Meanwhile, Steinhof.
* * *
A few miles’ drive took him to the City Psychiatric Clinic. There were guards at the gates, but they let his car through without any trouble when he told them he wanted to visit the church. If you hadn’t been told, you wouldn’t have known this was a hospital, a psychiatric one at that. If, that is, you hadn’t seen the bars on some of the windows of the purpose-designed buildings on the wooded hillside as the road wound upwards like a serpent, or passed groups of poor, lost souls being escorted between the trees.
At the summit, Wagner’s white cruciform church crowned the hill like the cross on Calvary. Looking a little shabby now, nearly a hundred years having passed since its erection, verdigris from the once-gilded bronze bolts streaking its white marble facing slabs, its huge copper dome turned green, but still marvellous in its simplicity and elegance.
Inside, space and light. Light everywhere. White and gold and blue. The gilded angels on the golden dome over the altar glowing in the radiance of the sanctuary lamp. Light filtering through the stained glass windows on to white walls, while a woman played the piano to a small group of people gathered round her. Slow, haunting, discordant pieces. Schoenberg, who else? What other music could be more appropriate in this place designed to calm the unquiet, disturbed mind? Music that explored an interior world of violence, madness and despair.
He took his seat in a roomy, functionally designed pew, his eye drawn to the huge mosaic behind the altar with its elongated, haloed figures arising from convoluted curves that seemed to him to resemble the interstices of the human brain, while the atonal music dropped note by note into the hushed silence, into the concentrated listening of the people at the front of the church, and into his own consciousness. Its reverberations made him feel, for the first time, that he, too, must have been mad to do what he had done.
He was awed, and humbled, and profoundly affected by this place, one man’s finest aspiration, conceived and executed nearly a hundred years ago. In the space of ten minutes he lived again the last few days, and the weeks that had led up to them, felt horror for the first time. It made him wish that he could go back and undo all that had been done, start his life again. Even now, he could not explain wherein had lain his motives. He had not given it thought; he had simply been propelled by a compulsion to do what he had done.
It had all stemmed from that first meeting with Anton, in the Q Gallery. Contrived, he knew now: Sylvie had asked him to meet her there as she finished work—knowing Anton would be there, too. That apparently spontaneous conversation—that casual invitation from Sylvie to Anton to join them for dinner . . . Orlando hadn’t objected, had in fact welcomed the chance to talk to someone who proved to be both intelligent and charming. More than charming to the impressionable Sylvie, it became clear, as the friendship between the three of them grew, as Anton’s visits to London became more frequent. Perhaps it was even then that Orlando had felt the first stirrings of anger against them both, sensing that she had begun to find him very dull by comparison with quick-witted Anton and the slight air of recklessness, the willingness to take risks, that he projected: a spice of danger had always excited Sylvie. Perhaps Orlando’s failure had been to refuse to admit this until after the event, to having ignored his own sense of impending doom.
Until he was getting ready to leave for Vienna, in fact.
It would never have occurred to Sylvie that cleaning out the flat before going on holiday was preferable to coming home and finding it stale and in chaos. That Orlando might feel otherwise, and clean out the fridge, empty the garbage. Especially that he would hoover the carpet, and find what she had hidden under their bed, along with two pairs of laddered tights, countless used tissues and a shoe bill for two hundred pounds.
What business did Sylvie have with a parcel like that, nearly two metres long, done up in bubblewrap? Sylvie, who owned nothing in the world except clothes and make-up? Orlando had the answer to his own question immediately he saw it, without any need to undo the wrappings, but he opened it anyway. The story came back to him: the faulty burglar alarm at the Q Gallery which had gone off during the night some three weeks previously, th
e arrival of the police who had stemmed its clamour, put it out of action until it could be reset the following morning when the gallery opened. The discovery of the burglary which had subsequently taken place between the two times, without let or hindrance. The Klimt, found to have disappeared. Worth, what? A good deal, but it scarcely mattered how much. It wasn’t going to set up Anton for life, but was probably only one in a long line of such acquisitions. It had been stolen, and that was all that mattered.
Everything else fell into place, doubts Orlando had shuffled to the back of his mind for weeks were answered. He knew Anton had engineered the whole thing, and Sylvie had obviously been involved in plans for the disposal of the Klimt, though not the actual theft, since she had indubitably been in bed with himself, Orlando, at the time. He wanted to believe that she had been inveigled into the scheme unwittingly, but even Sylvie couldn’t have been so dim as to pretend not to know what it was all about.
He hadn’t thought to query his own actions when he perceived the nature of the parcel. His only thought was anger at how he had been duped, and an overwhelming need for revenge. He did not like to be thwarted, or made a fool of, and both had happened to him.
Someone slid into the pew beside him. He raised his head and saw Anton, treacherous Anton, beside him, his narrow face concerned, but concerned only because he had decided that was how it ought to look.
Orlando refused to move until the music finished, and only then stood up. Together, they went outside.
‘So, you found the place yourself without assistance? I guessed you would be here—my apologies for being late. Where is Sylvie?’ Anton asked, with a casualness that belied the urgency behind the question.
Account Rendered & Other Stories Page 4