by Sarah Rayne
Whatever else I may do in the future, vowed Alice during those days in Vienna, outside of illness or old age I will never again wait on another human, and I will never expect another human being to wait on me!
In the small room she had rented in the Old Quarter, just off a cobbled alley, rather sinisterly named the Blutgasse – Blood Alley – she considered how difficult it would be to throw off the quiet lady’s maid and replace her with a completely new person. It was exciting and terrifying, but if she did it, it might mean she would no longer have to submit to the prodding hands and insistent bodies of all those nameless men in anonymous hotel rooms.
I could be anything and anyone I wanted, thought Alice with a little thrill of excitement.
What she had not been prepared for was how much fun it was to plan a whole new identity. All it needed was a little money, and a little resolve. Not much more.
Alice Wilson, that nice, well-behaved girl, had always looked exactly what she was. An English girl of the servant class, respectable, quietly dressed, her complexion as God had made it, save for a light dusting of rice powder on her nose when it was her day off, because only females of a certain type – which meant tarts and actresses – painted their faces. Well, all right, and bright young things who danced to jazz, and painted their mouths and showed their ankles.
Alice considered her appearance. She had unremarkable eyes, somewhere between grey and green, and slightly fluffy mid-brown hair. Pretty hair, people had sometimes said, indulgently. A pretty girl. Yes, but I don’t want to be pretty any longer. Prettiness is for good girls. For nicely brought-up girls who would not dream of going to men’s rooms, and doing with them the thing that should not be done until after marriage…(No man will ever respect you if you don’t remain pure, Alice’s mother had said. No man will ever want to marry you.)
There were other things that nicely brought-up girls did not do, as well. They would not, for instance, dream of dyeing their hair. But Alice dyed hers that day, buying the preparation from a tiny shop, trying not to feel guilty. The process of darkening her hair to a shiny raven-black was complex and messy, but after it was done and her hair had dried in the warm afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows of the little room, she brushed it smooth so that it fell in glossy wings on each side of her cheeks. And then she stared at herself in the small oblong of mirror which hung over the weatherbeaten dressing-table.
The transformation was startling. It was beyond her wildest hopes. She was almost a different person. But was ‘almost’ enough? She must be unrecognizable to everyone who had ever known her. All right, what else could she do? How about cosmetics? Greatly daring, she tried the effects of outlining her eyes with kohl and of darkening her lashes with mascara. At once the nothing-coloured eyes became mysterious and slanting. Good. Now for the lips. She applied a dark, mulberry-hued lipstick, getting it crooked the first couple of times, and having to wipe it off and start again. It felt dreadfully sinful but it also felt exciting, and at the third or fourth attempt she got it right. This time, when she considered her reflection in the mirror, she was aware of a little thrill of delight, tinged with fear. Is that really me? And dare I go into the streets looking like this? Yes, said the rebellious little voice in her mind, yes, you dare, and yes you will.
So now, what about clothes? As Miss Nina’s maid she had worn a neat black frock with a crisp apron – plain for daytime, frilled muslin for evening. On her day off she had worn her good navy serge in winter, with a cloche hat, and for summer there was a brown linen costume, with a straw boater. When she had tied an orange ribbon around the boater’s brim the master’s butler had said, My word, Alice, that looks very dashing, but the housekeeper who oversaw the female servants had tutted and thought it a bit fast, and said Alice was not to wear it to church this Sunday.
But the person Alice intended to become would not wear brown linen (even with the orange ribbon on her bonnet), and she certainly would not wear navy serge either. She counted her money out again, nodded to herself, and bundling her hair under the navy hat so that no one would see the halfway stage of her transformation, went out to one of the little backstreet clothes shops.
She knew about these shops that existed in any city and that bought and sold the cast-offs given to maids by the rich, bored ladies they served. She had, in fact, entered one or two of them herself after Miss Nina had rather pettishly given her gowns. ‘I’m bored with this thing, Alice, and the colour is ugly. You might as well have it.’ Never once wondering where a maid would have the opportunity to wear a silk dance frock or a velvet tea-gown. In England Alice had done what most maids did; she had accepted the cast-offs politely, and then sold them. Now she would enter the second-hand shops in Vienna, but this time she would be buying, not selling.
She spent her dwindling store of money carefully, but she was fortunate in her purchases. A damson silk gown that clung to her thighs when she walked and swished across the ground with careless elegance, and an evening frock in jade green that made you think of unprincipled temptresses reclining on satin-sheeted beds. The labels – Schiaparelli and Madeleine Viennet – were pristine. ‘Neither garment has been worn more than twice,’ insisted the proprietress of the little shop, and then, having surveyed Alice’s appearance with a professionally critical eye for a moment, she darted into the back of the shop once more and brought out a black velvet cloak, ruched and lined with sable. The fräulein should buy this as well, she said. So great a pity not to have it; it might have been made to go with both gowns. A very modest price was all she asked – almost she would be making a loss. But it would add the finishing touch. Cunningly she draped it around Alice’s shoulders and led Alice to the mirror again.
Alice stared longingly at her reflection. The velvet was soft and sensuous, and the black fur was like a lover’s caress against her neck. If ever there was a Cinderella-setting-off-for-the-ball cloak…
No. She could not afford it. But even after she had laid it back on the counter she went on looking at it, making a swift mental inventory of her resources. Could she perhaps manage it after all? If she bought it, she would have just enough money to pay for her room until the end of the week. What about food? She could buy rye bread and slivers of cheese to eat, that was cheap enough. She might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, and she might as well end up destitute for three costly outfits as for two. She bought the cloak.
Alice Wilson, that well brought-up girl, had never in her life gambled on anything, but now she gambled everything on one single night. She chose the famous Vienna Opera House for the birth of her new self, buying the ticket from a small booth, doing so humbly and politely, letting it be thought she was buying the seat for her mistress. She had never been in the Opera House in her life, but Miss Nina’s family – no! Nina’s family! – had often made up parties for a concert or an opera. Supposing some of them were present tonight? Would they recognize her? What about the brother who had fumbled under her skirts and been pushed away, and had later caused her to be thrown out of the house? Might he be there?
As she carried her parcels and the ticket back to the lodging house her mind was working furiously, planning and calculating. What if this huge gamble failed? If she did not attract people’s attention at the Opera House – if she was not approached by men and women who might open up a different life for her – then she would have wasted all her sordidly acquired money and she would end up back on the streets. But she must not fail.
That night she outlined her lips with the sinful dark red lipstick and her eyes with the black kohl. She brushed her hair into its new smooth shape, and then put on the damson gown. It was completely backless, as was the fashion, and above it her skin was creamy white. It felt depraved to be exposing so much of her body, but it also felt exciting.
There were long silken gloves to wear with the gown; Alice drew them on over her bare arms. They reached to above her elbows, and if the gown had been striking before, the contrast between the rich magenta sil
k and her bare alabaster shoulders and upper arms made it seem quite immodest. It also, thought Alice, caught between delight and panic, made her look extremely sexy. She contemplated this last word, and the crimson lips curved into a smile in the mirror. She had never thought of herself as sexy before. But she was, she was. If only the man with golden-brown eyes could see her like this—No. Don’t think about him.
She pushed down the ache of loss, swirled the sable-lined cloak around her shoulders, and went out into the badly lit streets. It was a long walk and it was probably quite dangerous to walk through these streets dressed so richly, but she could not afford to do anything else. Once in the prosperous part of the city, where carriages rumbled along the wide streets, and where there were brightly lit windows of restaurants and coffee houses she felt safer, although her mind and her stomach were turning over and over. I’m clad in extravagant striking clothes, and I’m wearing paint on my face and I have dyed my hair. I look absolutely nothing like I have looked for the last eighteen years, and I think this is a night when anything – anything! – might happen to me.
As she walked up the steps and entered the Opera House she had the feeling that she was crossing over some kind of line. This is it, she thought. This is the moment when I’m going to step out of one world and into another. Rubicons and Rivers of Jordan, and valleys of decision and destiny…
She took a deep breath and went inside.
At first the sheer vastness of the Opera House, and the heat and the brilliance, were bewildering, and she felt as if she was walking into a solid wall of light and noise and movement. But she forced herself to appear cool and detached, and after a moment she was aware that several heads had turned to look at her. With curiosity? With disapproval? I don’t mind about the disapproval, thought Alice. I’d mind more if they didn’t notice me.
But they were noticing her. There was a look in the men’s eyes that suggested they were intrigued, and in the women’s that suggested they were annoyed at this stranger for stealing the attention. Alice felt a spurt of delighted triumph. I’m across that invisible threshold and I’m into this new world, and there’s no turning back.
Turning back was the last thing she intended. She remained where she was, looking about her, listening and watching and surreptitiously absorbing it all. This is the time when you must appear very sure of yourself, said her mind, and when you must seem rather disdainful, because you are used to all this, remember. You are used to glittering crowds of people – you even find them a little boring, and perhaps also slightly absurd – and you are used to opulent rooms lit by hundreds of candles. Most of all you are used to the soft perfumed aura of wealth, because you are extremely wealthy yourself. So far so good.
But don’t do anything yet, said this little voice, and above all, don’t go looking for your seat or peering anxiously at your ticket. Wait for someone to approach you to conduct you there. Someone will definitely do so – if you believe that strongly enough it will happen, because if you believe anything strongly enough it will happen.
And above all, pray to that God whom you used to know in the English churches that no one will recognize you and that no one will challenge you and demand that you are thrown out…
‘But no one did recognize you, did they? No one did demand that you were thrown out?’
The fire had burned low in the hearth, and the shadows had stolen across the English garden outside, but somehow the two people in the room had been transported to another country and another time. They had gone back to a long-ago night when a dark-haired female in a silk gown and sable-lined cloak had walked into the glittering Vienna Opera House and surveyed the assembly with cool indifference.
The smile that was so incongruous on the ageing English lady came again.
‘No. No one recognized me. Three of the Opera House staff came up to me and two of them escorted me to my seat. There were stairs to descend – I had no idea where we were going, of course – but I went down that staircase so extremely slowly that it caused a hold-up for everyone else. People murmured in annoyance at that, but I pretended not to hear. I looked neither to right nor left as I walked, but I could feel them all watching me.’ Her eyes narrowed with remembered amusement. ‘But you know all this. You know a little of what comes next in the story as well.’
‘Yes, but tell the story anyway.’ Because it was like the pronouncing of a spell to hear her say it; it was like an incantation that would set a particular magic working – a magic that would unlock the doors of that long-ago enchanted world and bring the people and the adventures all tumbling out. It was a spell that would conjure up that other person that Alice had been all those years ago – the mysterious beautiful lady.
With an air of entering into the game, and of pronouncing the spell, Alice said, ‘On that night, late in 1928, a young English lady’s maid called Alice Vera Wilson left a sparse lodging in the Old Quarter of Vienna…
‘And the Baroness Lucretia von Wolff walked into the famous Opera House and took the seat that had cost her her last few schillings in all the world.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Alice had not paid much attention to the poster displaying the evening’s concert, or to the printed ticket she had bought. She had been concentrating her whole mind on being Lucretia: on being this imperious, disdainful baroness she had so carefully created; this lady whose nationality might be anything at all, who spoke with a sultry accent, and who was sexily beautiful and expensively garbed. She had supposed vaguely that there would be a programme of Mozart or Schubert – it was nearly always Mozart or Schubert, or perhaps Strauss – and she had assumed she would listen to it with about a tenth of her mind, because she would be waiting for the intervals so that she could mingle with the people.
But the programme was not Mozart or Schubert. It was a concert by a man called Conrad Kline. And the instant he stepped on to the stage and took his seat at the great gleaming concert grand, Alice recognized him and from then on she heard almost nothing of the marvellous music he poured into the brightly lit auditorium.
Conrad Kline. The man with golden-brown eyes.
He had recognized her almost straight away, and when the concert ended he had swept her back to the tall old house that she had thought never to see again. ‘You ruined the slow movement of the Tchaikovsky,’ he had said with a kind of loving severity. ‘For that was when I looked up and saw you. After that I was aware of no one else.’
The slow movement of the Tchaikovsky had not been ruined at all, of course, and he had certainly been aware of every other person there. His performance had been greeted with deafening applause and cheering, and he had responded to the shouts of ‘Encore’ by promptly sitting down again to play something that Alice had not recognized, but that was exciting and intense and full of rippling cascades of beautiful sound. ‘The Appassionata,’ he said, lying next to her on the silken-sheeted bed. ‘Beethoven. And I play it entirely for you, because although you are a small English sparrow, also you are passionate and beautiful.’
Even then, dizzy with delight and love, caught in the sheer sexual glamour that he seemed almost to wear like a cloak, Alice had known perfectly well that he had not played the Beethoven piece entirely for her; he had played it because the audience had wanted him to, and because he loved all his audiences with an intensity that transcended everything else. She suspected he had planned beforehand what he would play for the encore; a long time afterwards she found that she had been right. Conrad unfailingly planned his encores and spent hours practising them.
When he said, ‘I think I am in love with you,’ Alice had regarded him thoughtfully, and said, ‘What about Nina?’
‘Oh, pouf, Nina.’ He made a gesture as if to sweep aside some small inconvenience. ‘It was a matter of business. An arrangement her father wanted to make, and that I agreed to in a moment of absent-mindedness. Also,’ said Conrad with one of his disconcerting bursts of candour, ‘I had not, then, met you.’
He was entranced by wh
at he called Alice’s masquerade, and wove dozens of stories about the fictional baroness. Most of his stories were wildly improbable and quite a lot of them were scandalous, and one or two were just about credible.
The Baroness von Wolff should be Hungarian, said Conrad, weighing the possibilities with serious eyes. Or perhaps Russian would be better. Yes – Russian. Revolutions and russalkas and hypnotic Siberian monks. And she should be mysterious and exotic, just as Alice had already made her, but also there could be a hint of something shocking in her ancestry – that was a good idea, yes? An idea to develop, although it would be necessary to be subtle over the details. Subtlety was a fine thing, declared Conrad, who was flamboyant and extravagant and adored grand gestures, and who had never been subtle in his life.
Vienna in the twenties and thirties might have been created solely as a frame for a beautiful baroness with an intriguingly mysterious past. Alice sometimes thought that Lucretia could not have existed in any other time or in any other city. It was the time of la belle époque, the beautiful era, and life had been filled with excitement and beckoning promise, and with gaiety and music.
Music. Until now it had been something for other people. In London you might occasionally have an outing to a music-hall, and in the servants’ hall some of the other maids might sing the songs of the day while polishing the silver. The war songs were still much enjoyed – ‘Tipperary’ and ‘The Only Girl in the World’, but American jazz and what was called blues were starting to be popular. ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ and ‘Tea for Two’, which everyone agreed was wonderful for learning the cha-cha, although the housekeeper had been very shocked to catch Alice and one of the parlourmaids trying out the steps in the scullery one night.