Jasmyn

by Alex Bell

  ‘It’s food poisoning,’ he said, dragging himself up to lean against the bonnet of the car.

  ‘Food poisoning?’ I repeated.

  ‘Yes. I went to a sausage house last night and . . . I noticed one of the bratwursts they brought was slightly undercooked but I ate it anyway.’

  ‘Why the hell did you do that?’

  He shrugged. ‘I was hungry.’

  ‘That was unbelievably stupid of you,’ I said.

  For some reason I felt unaccountably annoyed with him. Perhaps it was for making me worry, perhaps it was for losing us time or perhaps I couldn’t help slightly resenting the fact that he had been out feasting in some sausage house last night whilst I’d been eating crisps in my hotel room. But that had been hours ago now . . . I frowned and said, ‘Surely you’d have felt the effects of food poisoning earlier than this?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know!’ he said irritably. ‘Maybe it’s a virus. I really don’t care what caused it!’

  ‘All right, all right! No need to bite my head off! Do you think you’re okay to get back in the car without throwing up all over the place?’

  ‘Yes,’ he muttered, flashing me a dark look. ‘But be ready to stop again if I ask you to.’

  That hardly filled me with confidence and I kept my eyes peeled for a guest house as we drove on. Ben was no use at all, sitting hunched in the passenger seat with his elbow resting against the window and his head in his hand as if the sun was hurting his eyes. Fortunately, we soon came across a guest house with a painted exterior and immaculately tended flower boxes full of heather at the windows. We went inside, booked two rooms and then went upstairs. Before Ben could disappear into his room I said, ‘I’m going to go and visit Hohenschwangau.’

  I fully expected him to protest that I must wait until he was better so that we could go together but instead he just shrugged and said, ‘All right.’

  ‘Are you going to be okay here? Do you want me to bring you anything?’

  ‘No thanks,’ he replied.

  Then he disappeared into his room, shutting the door firmly behind him. His reaction puzzled me. He had seemed very keen to get here - as if he expected to find something at one of the castles or at the lake behind them - but now he didn’t seem bothered at all about me going on my own, almost as if he knew the visits would be pointless. But then, perhaps he simply felt too ill to care. Either way I wanted to see these castles - and the lake in particular - for myself. I wouldn’t have time to visit both in what remained of the day but I could certainly take a look at one of them. I was about to turn away when I heard the sound of something being knocked over and breaking in Ben’s room. I frowned and called through the door, ‘Are you all right in there?’

  For a moment there was silence, then Ben’s muffled voice replied, ‘I already told you I’m fine. Just leave me alone.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, throwing up my hands and wondering why I even bothered as I walked away down the corridor.

  10

  Hohenshwangau

  I parked the car in the car park and then walked up the hill towards the castle. From a distance, Hohenschwangau was very much outdone by Neuschwanstein, for its squat, yellow structure could hardly compete with the latter’s tall, elegant white spires. But, up close, Hohenschwangau too was a lovely building, in an absolutely breathtaking setting.

  The tour guide explained that Ludwig had lived here whilst Neuschwanstein was being built - watching it progress from the other side of the mountain and looking forward to the day when he could finally move in. People said he was bankrupting the country with these castles but the truth was that he paid for them out of his own pocket. And the irony of it was that they drew more tourist dollars between them now than any other attraction in Bavaria.

  The building work started on Neuschwanstein when Ludwig was twenty-four, but it was fifteen years before he was able to move into his dream castle, although it was still unfinished even then. He was thirty-nine by that time and had very much withdrawn from politics and Munich, disenchanted with the sordidness of it, to spend most of his remaining two years in the mountains instead, staying inside his fairy-tale castles where the walls were covered with paintings of German myths and legends and things he considered to be noble and majestic. As his political problems increased, so did his shyness and he took to travelling only under cover of night in his sleigh across the mountains. It was eccentric behaviour like that which made it so easy for the Bavarian government to have him proclaimed insane when they decided to get rid of him. A medical commission was set up and they forced their way into Neuschwanstein one night and took him away to Schloss Berg. Ludwig never saw the castle again, for he was found dead in Lake Starnberg with his doctor the following evening.

  The fortress was lavishly decorated inside although some of the rooms were smaller and more intimate than I had expected, with family photos of Ludwig as well as his parents and brother. The many wall paintings were full of myths, legends and Germanic fairy tales - especially in the Hall of the Swan Knight and the Hall of Heroes. Add to that the extraordinary scenery that could be glimpsed out of every window - snow-covered pines and white-capped mountains rising against a blue sky - and I could easily imagine living here to be a surreal, fairy-tale-like sort of existence in its own right.

  Even the air felt different. It was the cleanest, freshest, sweetest air I’d ever breathed in my life. I had always preferred the countryside to cities and I could fully sympathise with Ludwig and his desire to stay here in this place of incredible, silent, peaceful beauty rather than remain in the Royal Court at Munich. As someone who had also craved solitude on occasions, I could appreciate why this lonely place would hold such appeal to a young king said to be a shy dreamer who intensely disliked the insincere fawning and petty political bickering that went on in the city. Indeed, I defy anyone to go to Bavaria, to look at Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein in all their Alpine finery, and not be moved by their beauty. It seems to me that it would have been madness for the king to wish to remain in Munich when he had these castles in the mountains, not the other way round.

  By the time the tour of the castle was over it was getting dark, so I decided to leave the lake for another day. The path leading down to it was not very well lit and . . . I felt uneasy about going there at night without Ben. The place had been too built-up in my mind what with everything Adrian said had happened there. So I returned to the guest house.

  I ate in the restaurant that evening on my own for Ben still wasn’t feeling well and stayed put upstairs. It was relatively early when I got back to my room - only just gone ten o’clock - so I plugged the earphones into my Violectra and played for a couple of hours. I soon got hot doing this - playing fast music warms you up more than you might think - and had to keep opening the window to let some wintry air blow into the room. Really I would have liked to go and play outside but that would have looked very odd if someone were to happen to see me, so I reluctantly stayed in my room.

  Finally I put the violin away in its case and went to bed. I hadn’t agreed a time to meet Ben in the morning but I set the alarm for eight o’clock, assuming that if he got up any earlier he would knock on my door before going downstairs. I lay down at midnight and woke up about three hours later because I was cold. I liked to have fresh air whilst I slept but it was too icy outside to leave the window open, so I clambered out of bed to close it. The room looked out onto the car park and I noticed that it was snowing. It must have started some time ago for at least a couple of inches lay upon the bonnets and roofs of the cars below.

  I turned away, eager to get back to the warmth of the comfortable bed, but then I froze - the image of the car park still fresh in my mind. I returned to the window and looked again, frowning down at the snow-covered scene. In the light from the lamp post I could see five cars. None of them was the car Ben and I had arrived in.

  I distinctly remembered parking it next to the lamp post when I got back from Hohenschwangau that evening but now there
was no trace of it. It was gone and must have been for some time for the snow completely covered the ground where it had stood. I stared down, hardly able to believe that our car had been stolen. I wracked my brain, wondering if I had locked it but I couldn’t remember. I briefly considered waking Ben but then thought better of it. The car would be just as stolen in the morning so there seemed little point in disturbing him. He might as well be pissed off tomorrow rather than tonight. It was lucky that we had taken our luggage out otherwise we would have been in serious trouble, for our passports and money were in our bags.

  I sighed and was about to turn away and try to get back to sleep when a car pulled up to the guest house. I was surprised to see it arriving so late - for it was now past three o’clock in the morning. Then I realised that it looked very much like the car we had rented and for a wild moment I thought the thief must be returning it. But then it parked under the lamp post, right where I had left it. The engine and lights were turned off, the door opened and the driver got out of the car. It was Ben.

  I stared in astonishment as he walked back into the guest house. Of course I knew that he had a set of car keys as well but it had simply never occurred to me that Ben - who had been ill all day - would have gone off somewhere in the middle of the night like that.

  I thought about going upstairs to his bedroom and asking him where he’d gone but then thought better of it. There was sure to be a rational explanation. Perhaps he had just gone to get some air . . . At any rate, it was dark and cold out in the corridor and I was tired. It was late and this newest mystery could wait until the morning.

  I was up and dressed when there was a knock on my door at half-past eight the next day and Ben’s voice called, ‘Jasmyn, I’m going down for breakfast.’

  I crossed to the door within moments and opened it but he was already striding off down the corridor and I had to hurry to catch up with him.

  ‘What’s the big rush?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t get much to eat yesterday.’

  ‘You look a lot better now,’ I said.

  In fact I was taken aback by how improved he looked in sharp contrast to his sickly appearance the day before. He did not look at all tired or worn out as I would have expected of a man who had been ill all day and apparently up half the night.

  When we were sitting at a table with plates full of bread, salami and cheeses, I waited for Ben to say something about where he had gone. Instead he said, ‘How was your visit to Hohenschwangau?’

  I was taken aback by this and frowned at him for a moment before saying, ‘Well, it was interesting but not particularly useful.’

  He nodded absently, hardly seeming even to be listening to what I was saying as he stuffed slices of salami into a bread roll and then wolfed it down. After a few minutes he looked up and saw me staring at him.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, picking up my own bread roll and spreading cream cheese on it to give myself a moment to think. ‘So did you sleep okay?’

  ‘Yes. The beds here are really comfortable, aren’t they?’

  ‘They are,’ I replied, narrowing my eyes as I realised that he really wasn’t going to say anything about where he’d been last night and that instantly made me twice as suspicious. ‘It snowed during the night, didn’t it?’ I prompted, giving him one last chance to mention that he’d driven off somewhere in the early hours of the morning.

  ‘Did it?’ Ben replied, pouring out more coffee. ‘I didn’t notice.’

  And then I knew that not only was he simply avoiding telling me the truth but that he was actually lying. He knew full well that it had snowed in the night for he had been out in it himself.

  ‘All right,’ I said, pushing away my plate. ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘What?’ Ben said, not even looking up as he started making another sandwich out of the salami and bread on his plate.

  ‘I woke up in the middle of the night and got up to close the window. Our car wasn’t there.’

  ‘What do you mean, it wasn’t there?’ Ben asked, wrinkling his brow in a frown.

  ‘I mean it was gone. I thought it had been stolen.’

  ‘You probably just dreamt it,’ Ben replied dismissively. ‘It’s there now.’

  ‘I know it’s there now!’ I said sharply. ‘I saw you drive back in it!’

  Ben slowly lowered the bread roll to his plate and for a moment I thought he was going to try to deny it outright. But then he shook his head and said, ‘All right. I did go out for a drive last night.’

  ‘Where did you go?’ I demanded. The fact that he had lied about it so brazenly to me made me exceedingly nervous, for it could surely only mean that I wasn’t going to like wherever it was he’d gone.

  ‘I . . . just went to Neuschwanstein,’ Ben said reluctantly with a sullen shrug, like a naughty child caught misbehaving. ‘In case the sleigh appeared. Is that all right with you?’

  ‘Why did you sneak off in the middle of the night like that? Why didn’t you tell me you were going?’

  ‘I assumed you’d be in bed like any normal person. And I didn’t sneak anywhere.’

  ‘But why the hell did you lie about it this morning?’ I persisted.

  Ben was silent for a moment and I could practically see him wracking his brain for an explanation.

  ‘Because I knew you’d get ratty like this!’ he snapped at last.

  I was aware of a horrible sinking feeling in my stomach. Yesterday I had thought Ben was warming towards me a little but now I could see - as clear as day - that Ben knew more, and yet was deliberately not telling me about it.

  ‘I thought we had agreed to be honest with each other!’ I said angrily. ‘But you’re still hiding things from me, aren’t you, you bastard?’

  The knowledge filled me with a sort of desperate anger, not to mention a keen dread. How much more bad news and unwelcome truths could there be? I found myself ridiculously envious of other widows for just being able to concentrate all their attention on mourning and grieving and healing. What a luxury that seemed now. And - for the first time - I felt angry with Liam rather than just with Ben, for he was the one who had caused this situation, he was the one who had kept secrets from me and hidden things from me and lied to me. Of course, he hadn’t known that he was going to die and so couldn’t possibly have foreseen me getting mixed up in it all, but that’s what had happened nonetheless, and being entirely reliant on Ben of all people for information and answers about my husband - the person I had thought I’d known better than anyone else in the world - was intolerable.

  Ben was clearly finding the situation equally unpleasant and obviously resented having been caught out in a lie for he said irritably, ‘I’m in an impossible situation here, Jasmyn. You were his wife - there are things that I just can’t say to you about him.’

  ‘Like what?’ I asked, startled. ‘Why should me being his wife make any difference?’

  ‘Because you saw him in a different way from everyone else! You loved him more than anybody else! And I don’t want to say anything that will . . . that will hurt you.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! Nothing you can say will make him any more dead than he already is, so how bad can it possibly be? I want you to tell me anything and everything you’ve left out and I want you to tell me right now!’

  I desperately wished that I had some bargaining chip of my own to use but the truth was that I was absolutely powerless to make Ben tell me anything and he knew it. If he didn’t want to tell me, there was nothing I could do to force him.

  ‘I don’t even know if it’s true,’ he said sullenly, raising his right arm to massage his left shoulder as if it ached. ‘It’s just something Jaxon told me about Liam.’

  ‘Well, tell me and maybe I’ll know if it’s true.’

  Ben met my gaze reluctantly. ‘I don’t think you will.’

  ‘Tell me anyway,’ I said through gritted teeth.

  ‘All right, fine,’ he
said, throwing up his hands. ‘But don’t say I didn’t try to avoid this. Jaxon told me . . . he told me that he thought Liam had another woman here somewhere around Neuschwanstein.’

  I stared at Ben in silence for a moment before laughter bubbled up in my chest and burst from my lips. It was actually something of a relief to realise that Ben did not, after all, know more about my husband than I did. I shook my head. ‘Liam didn’t have a woman here in Germany or anywhere else.’

  Ben sighed. ‘How can you possibly be sure of that?’ he asked in a quiet voice, fidgeting uncomfortably with the bread roll on his plate.

  I smiled. ‘Liam would never, ever have cheated on me and nothing you can tell me about him will ever shake my faith in that, not ever.’

  ‘But the fact is that you can’t know. You weren’t even in the same country half the time.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘if someone told you that Heidi had been unfaithful to you, would you ever believe it?’

  Ben glanced at me. ‘Probably. She’s been unfaithful before.’

  That threw me and I felt an embarrassed flush creep up my cheeks. ‘Oh. I’m sorry. But . . . in that case . . . why do you still want to marry her?’

  Ben avoided my gaze and looked out of the window. ‘I don’t blame her for doing what she did,’ he said flatly. ‘Besides, I suppose I haven’t been entirely faithful myself.’

  I sighed and said, ‘Well . . . I’m sorry. But ... Liam and I weren’t like that. I know that he loved me. And if he lied then he must have had a reason.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ Ben said. ‘But you must admit that a woman would explain some of this. It would explain why he kept sneaking off to Germany without telling you and why he lied about where he was going.’

  ‘It wouldn’t explain why he went to Paris though,’ I pointed out. ‘Unless you think he had a mistress there too?’