The Novel in the Viola

by Natasha Solomons

  ‘I’m sure your aunt is wanting you,’ I said, my Austrian accent growing stronger with my rage.

  Diana dismissed my feigned concern with a wave. ‘Oh, she’s quite all right. She’ll be simply fascinated. As I said, people love to talk – especially about love. The more scandalous the better.’

  ‘Please leave,’ I said, abandoning any pretence of civility.

  Clapping her hands with pleasure and laughing happily, Diana stood. ‘It’s too delicious. Obscene. But delicious.’

  She leant forward and planted a cool kiss on my cheek, ignoring my distaste. ‘Goodbye. Thank you for a charming afternoon.’

  When she had gone I sat on the step, resting my chin in my hands. I didn’t care what people said. Perhaps it was obscene. Did such things even matter anymore? What I’d said was true: I had to stay. Mr Rivers needed me.

  That night as I lay awake listening to the sea rush in the dark, I did not think about Kit but Mr Rivers. Was Diana right? I climbed out of bed and rummaged through the drawer in my dressing table until I found the Liberty-patterned notepaper Mr Rivers had purchased for me on his last trip to London. Tucking one leg beneath me, I wrote to my sister.

  Do you think my staying here shocking? I hope you don’t. I think it would be very unfair if you did. You were always kissing Robert in public even after you were married (and no one likes to see married people kiss their own spouses) so I don’t believe that you’re entitled to disapprove.

  I can’t help wondering what Anna and Julian would think. The great-aunts would never approve of my staying in the house unchaperoned, but then the aunts rarely do, disapproval being one of their chief pleasures in life, along with a whiff of scandal and toasted marzipan squares. Anna probably has an opinion on such matters – she has one on most things. I know she is against a woman removing her hairpins and shaking out her hair in front of a man with whom she does not intend to fall in love, and she is decidedly for rosewater being sprinkled on underthings. You know how I listen to Anna (always looking over my shoulder before adjusting a single hairpin), but this is not like those things.

  Do you remember Herr Aldermann when his wife died? We watched him shrivel. He went from being a fat man who wobbled with laughter as he wiped the chicken schmaltz from his jowls, to a husk. He shuffled into our apartment for supper, drank his schnapps and shuffled back to his empty house. I don’t want Mr Rivers to shuffle. At the moment, he is angry. He rages at the world, but his fury will cool to despair and I must be here. I don’t want him to turn into an old man who doesn’t care to pick up his feet as he walks or lets the grease stay on his chin.

  You understand why I cannot leave, whatever they say, don’t you, Margot?

  The wind huffed through the leaves outside my window, making them patter against the glass like raindrops. I was restless and sticky with unease. In the night I listened to the creak of floorboards in the library below, and knew that it was the sound of Mr Rivers pacing up and down. When later I fell asleep, I heard him in my dreams, walking restlessly, footsteps echoing in the dark.

  Will’s leave ended and it fell to Poppy and me to finish the fence. The small boys who had helped were summoned back to school to practise reading and arithmetic, and so Poppy and I were alone on the hillside. August was fading into September. We had that melancholy feeling that accompanies the last days of summer; the sunshine had lost its ferocity and I wished I could catch handfuls of it in my fists to preserve until next year. The fields, stripped during haymaking, looked bald and yellow, and only snatches of ragged robin and frog orchids were left at the edges. We worked in shirtsleeves – me in an old pair of shorts that I’d discovered at the back of Kit’s cupboard. I’d taken to wearing his old clothes. It irked Mrs Ellsworth, who fretted that my appearing in Kit’s blue school shorts would strike a blow to Mr Rivers’ heart. I’d remonstrated with her – ‘His heart is broken whether I stain my only good dress mending fences or wear Kit’s old things.’ In truth I didn’t care about ruining my clothes; I liked wearing Kit’s belongings – they smelt of him. Anything taken from his wardrobe was infused with that scent of sandalwood and cigarettes. I’d almost smoked the last of Kit’s Turkish blend and had decided to order some more from his place in Jermyn Street, when silently the store in his room was replenished; the slim silver case refilled. Of course it was Wrexham. The butler had recognised the paraphernalia of my grief, and quietly seen that it was taken care of.

  I lay on my stomach in the grass, feeling the blades scratching my skin, removing stray pieces of flint from the dry ground. Poppy passed me a trowel and I hacked at the earth, creating a small hole for the next fencepost. The sheep milled around us, bleating amiably, oblivious to our work and the sinister flutter of the creeping flags. Poppy hammered cross sections into place, nails pursed between her lips. A kite soared above us, its red wings flashing in the afternoon sun. From the cliffs a kittiwake called, its shrill cry piercing the steady boom of the waves. Lulcombe camp was silent, but we could see green army trucks crawling across the hill like armoured beetles, and soldiers the size of lead toys marching in steady formations in the empty fields. The ancient stone castle crouched over them, an oversized model, and I imagined that it smiled, content to watch battles played out in its shade once again.

  Poppy straightened, stretching her arms above her head, revealing a triangle of freckled midriff. She’d used the last of her hair elastics, and there were no more to be had, so she’d used a smooth stick to pin up her tumble-mane of hair. The effect was striking, and if she chose to sunbathe on the rocks I couldn’t help thinking that the fishermen would mistake her for a pale-skinned mermaid. She dug her hand into her pocket and reached out a couple of pear drops, tossing one to me. I sucked on it, satisfied for a minute to close my eyes in the sunshine and taste sugar on my tongue. This was how I lived now, savouring the pleasure of an odd moment, always trying not to think. So it took a few seconds for me to register the staccato roar of the Messerschmitt. I sat upright, almost crashing my head against the bottom rail of the fence. Poppy perched on her haunches, alert as a March hare, every part of her listening. I felt bile rise and burn my throat, sweat prickle the back of my knees. No. I willed myself to calm. I hadn’t survived his attack just to die in the meadow grass a few weeks later.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Poppy. ‘Look.’

  She pointed to a white bobtail of a cloud and I saw a Spitfire drop out from behind it. The afternoon exploded into gunfire. First from the Spitfire: the rattle and crack of bullets. A howl as the Messerschmitt engine screeched and the plane arced around. The Spitfire gave chase and I laughed out loud.

  ‘Get the bastard! Get him,’ I shouted, gleeful in my revenge.

  There was a grace and an unreality to the fight. I’d spent hours and days on the top of this hillside, watching birds of prey. I’d seen a hawk attacked by a flurry of black crows, which swarmed the larger bird in a dark storm of wings as it made desperate attempts to escape. I’d seen a peregrine swoop and snatch songbirds out of the sky, catching a lark into silence. This aerial game was no more real than the bloodied battles of birds, and I felt oddly distanced as I watched them weave among the clouds. It was hard to imagine that inside each cockpit lurked a young man, filled with sweat and terror and fighting to the death with the tenacity of any buzzard or falcon. The hill echoed with gunfire, and tracer rounds strafed the blue sky. Vaguely, I wondered that they didn’t pierce the clouds and cause a storm of pellets and rain.

  ‘He must be low on fuel,’ observed Poppy, shading her eyes as she studied the Messerschmitt with her steady green gaze.

  I stared at the yellow-nosed plane hurtling towards the bay, only to be fired upon by the Spitfire and forced to loop back inland, and tried to feel pity at the pilot’s choice: fire and death, escape and drown. I felt none. Like any cornered animal, the Messerschmitt was desperate. It would break its wing to get away, even if that meant death in any case. Escape. Nothing else mattered. The Spitfire was in no hurry; it had en
ough fuel and was on home ground, and seemed almost leisurely as it soared and rattled its guns, dodging the bullets of the other plane with casual ease, staying behind a cloud here, dancing through the sky with balletic grace. Then it came. High above us, but close enough that we saw the burst of fire, like flames from the mouth of a dragon, the Spitfire lined up in perfect position behind the enemy, and spat a stream of tracer rounds. The Messerschmitt fell from the sky, a flaming phoenix, engine stuttering into silence. The Spitfire lingered to watch for a moment and then vanished into the evening glow. Poppy and I climbed onto our half-finished fence to watch the descent of the wounded plane. Out of the wreckage floated a white parachute, as smooth and unhurried as a seed case from a dandelion; it dawdled on the breeze, wafting towards the ridge of Tyneford Barrow. Poppy jumped off the fence and grabbed my hand.

  ‘Run,’ she said.

  Hauling me beside her, she took off along the hillside. My lungs burnt and my eyes streamed in the wind, but I didn’t slow or stop. We had to find him. I blinked and envisioned the pilot freed from his parachute, wielding his handgun and shrieking as he fired upon us. I picked up the pace, so that for once Poppy trailed behind me. I bounced from stride to stride, remembering how Kit used to run across the hills and realising how effortless it was. The sun was getting lower now, a glowing disk sinking beneath the horizon and I squinted as I scoured the bare hilltop for a sign of the parachute. Smoke. A flash of white.

  ‘There,’ I said, pointing to a wind-rushed field.

  We sprinted across the barrows, up and down the waving ridges, slowing with caution as we reached the gate leading into the field. Wreckage from the plane blazed and the air stank of burning fuel. Smoke billowed in thick plumes like a thousand chimneys and a slick of grey began to coat my skin. Poppy and I held hands by silent accord. We spoke in whispers.

  ‘Do you see him?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Let’s get closer.’

  I crept towards the gate, keeping her fingers firmly clasped in mine, and wished we had thought to bring either the mallet or hammer to use as a weapon. I hoped the airman was unconscious or dead.

  ‘They wear British uniforms in case they crash. And they speak perfect English,’ hissed Poppy. ‘You have to stamp on their feet really hard to see which language they swear in.’

  ‘Well, we know he’s a Nazi, don’t we? So there’s no need to go stamping on his foot, unless we want to.’

  A cry cut through the air. It was a note of fury and hate. Feral rage and fear pooled in my stomach. We dropped over the gate and slid through the grass, grateful for the mask of smoke as we edged across the field. A figure loomed in the murk, towering over the fallen silk of the parachute and clutching a pitchfork. With the flames from the plane licking the sky behind him, he looked like the devil himself. I felt a scream build in my throat and willed myself not to turn and run. The figure turned to look at me.

  ‘’Ullo. Caught myself a Nazi,’ said Burt. ‘Makes a nice change from cod.’

  The prisoner sat in the dining room at Tyneford House. He dabbed at a gash on his forehead and vomited into a bucket Mrs Ellsworth had placed beside his boots. His face was smoke-blackened and his eyes bloodshot and furious. He looked incongruous in the sunlit dining room, clad in his tan sheepskin jacket with the small Nazi insignia on the sleeve. The Wedgewood shepherds and shepherdesses watched him with staunch disapproval from the mantelpiece, and I wondered that the falcon and adder grappling on the dusty coat-of-arms didn’t cease their fight to leap off and savage him. Burt lingered in the doorway, still clutching the pitchfork. Poppy stood flat against the wall, her hands folded behind her back. Mr Rivers was perfectly relaxed, no more concerned than he would be with a tedious dinner guest. He sat across from the pilot on one of the upright dining room chairs, removing the cartridges from the German’s service revolver with practised ease.

  ‘Safer like this, don’t you think?’ he said pleasantly.

  The pilot looked at him with steady hate, and then leant over and retched into the bucket. Mr Rivers pulled Kit’s cigarette case from his pocket, offering it to the pilot. He took one and allowed Mr Rivers to light it, without a word of thanks.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to stay here for an hour or two, till they can send an army chap to fetch you,’ said Mr Rivers. ‘You’ll be quite comfortable. No one will hurt you. When you’re feeling better, you may have some food.’

  The man said nothing, just drew on his cigarette.

  ‘Alice?’ said Mr Rivers, without turning to look at me. ‘Will you translate? In case he’s ignorant rather than ill-mannered.’

  I stepped forward, resting my hand on the back of Mr Rivers’ chair.

  ‘Herr Pilot, someone from the army will come. Until then, you must stay here. You will be kindly treated.’

  The German sat up and stared at me, his mouth slightly agape.

  ‘You are Austrian.’

  ‘Yes. I was born there.’

  He continued to stare, as though disbelieving his own ears. He touched the wound on his forehead, as though unsure if I was a mirage caused by the blow. Swallowing, he licked dry lips and his eyes flicked around the room, meeting for a moment Mr Rivers’ cool gaze. Apparently satisfied that he was not dreaming, he focused upon me once again.

  ‘Where in Austria, Fraulein? I am from the Tyrol.’

  I smiled despite myself. In all my imaginary meetings with captured Nazis, I had not considered making small talk. I hesitated, deciding whether to answer. I gave a small sigh.

  ‘Vienna. I was born in Vienna.’

  He gazed, unseeing, out of the window. ‘The most beautiful city in all of the world. Pretty enough for heaven.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, staring at him. He was a Nazi but this man who had fallen out of the sky was speaking in my mother tongue. He understood Vienna. I hated him and yet we shared something. For a moment I was crippled with homesickness. I wanted the army to take their time in coming to collect him, so I could spend the afternoon talking with him about the Café Sperl and listening to the band in the park of the Belvedere Palace, or which cake was better, the chocolate at the Sacher or the linzertorte at Hotel Bristol. In a way, he was more my countryman than Mr Rivers or Mrs Ellsworth or Poppy or Burt could ever be. But he would also burn my father’s books in the street and force me to wash faeces off the pavement and make Anna and Julian leave the beautiful apartment in Dorotheegasse and sell the grand piano and – I blinked.

  Mr Rivers glanced at me and then at the pilot, but said nothing. His German was passable, but I knew we spoke too fast for him to fully understand.

  ‘Ah, the mountains of the Tyrol. Snow in winter. Edelweiss in summer,’ said the pilot, letting the ash fall from his cigarette onto the dining room rug. ‘I don’t suppose I shall see them for a while.’

  ‘No.’

  I replied in English, uncertain if he was asking for my pity, but his face was blank and I realised that he merely thought aloud. He had sandy hair, a snub nose, and his eyes were a greenish blue. Blood congealed on his forehead from the cut and in the sunlight I thought I saw a glimpse of white bone. I felt sick and swallowed. He dabbed feebly at his gash with the compress, the cotton pad congealing brown and red. Unaware of what I did, I found myself stepping forward and reaching for the cloth. Then I stopped dead and shoved my hands into my pocket. I would not touch him. I backed away, feeling my lip curl in horror at the thought of his proximity, and retreated behind Mr Rivers’ chair.

  The pilot eyed me curiously, intrigued as to my obvious revulsion. I could sense him wondering and, as the fog of pain and shock cleared from his mind, considering why an Austrian girl would be living in an English country house. Any moment and he would know. He was a logical man and first he eliminated other possibilities. He scrutinised my left hand for a wedding ring.

  ‘Fraulein?’

  I did not reply; I would not help him.

  ‘He is your husband?’ he asked, nodding towards Mr Rivers.

  I flu
shed and shook my head.

  He gave a tiny, satisfied nod. Then there was only one reason for my presence. I heard him say the word in his mind. Jew. I heard it as loud as if he had shouted, ‘She lives here in exile because she is a Jew.’ It would have been better if he had spoken it. His silent condemnation enraged me. How dare he? He was the traitor. He was the one who had chased me through the fields like a run-rabbit as he fired upon me with his machine-gun and made the woodland floor leap with bullets and the sheep on the meadow explode with a belly full of blood. He silenced my mother’s singing and her letters, kept my sister far away across the sea, and he trapped my father inside the viola. He chased me all the way from Austria across the ridge of green English hills and now sat here in the sunlit room taunting me. I read hatred in his silence. He said nothing, so I heard everything. I crossed the room again, but this time I did not flinch from touching him. I drew my arm back and hit him across the face. I felt his jaw crack, all the way up my arm. My palm stung and I was glad. His hand went to his cheek, a streak of red on his fingertips where my thumbnail had caught his skin. No one spoke. Not Mr Rivers. Not Poppy or Burt. The pilot looked at me in surprise.

  ‘You shot at me,’ I shouted. ‘You.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, Fraulein. I did not shoot you.’

  ‘It was you. I know it was you.’

  I trembled, whether from anger or remembered fear I neither knew nor cared. Mr Rivers grabbed my wrist to steady me, but I shook him away. I was entitled to a moment of crazed fury. There was a fleck of blood under my nail. Nazi blood, the same colour as any other. In my dreams I’d imagined them to bleed black like witches. I felt the violence beneath my skin, and the hair on my arms prickled. I thought of the night fox with his hackles raised in the dark, and knew that a savage part of me wanted to kill this man. Wanted to bite and tear and claw and bleed him more than a petty thumbnail scratch. I walked out of the room and slammed the door shut, leaning for a second against it, and listened to the hammer and thud of my own heart and the hushed voices on the other side.