Love for a Soldier

by Mary Jane Staples

  ‘I’m sorry to have missed her,’ he said. ‘Will you be so good as to give her my regards?’

  ‘With pleasure, but from whom?’

  ‘Tell her Major Kirsten called to enquire after her welfare, having had occasion to be in Munich today.’

  Mr Meister,’ said Elissa in anguish, ‘you didn’t ask him to wait or come back?’

  ‘Ah – no.’ Mr Meister looked penitent.

  ‘He didn’t offer to wait?’

  ‘I said you’d be back at one-thirty with your young man –’

  ‘Oh, no, you didn’t tell him that,’ protested Elissa, ‘how could you? Franz is not my young man.’

  ‘But every day you go to the park with him and –’

  ‘He’s a friend, an ex-soldier,’ said Elissa, ‘and all ex-soldiers are special to me.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Meister, peering at his charming assistant, who had gone off in 1917 in a state of nerves to join the Women’s Army Corps and returned at the end of the war a far more self-assured young lady. Elissa, in a pale brown frock, polished shoes and shining rayon stockings, her braided hair immaculate, looked sorrowfully at her employer.

  ‘Mr Meister, didn’t Major Kirsten speak of coming back?’

  ‘Coming back, coming back?’ Mr Meister sounded as if her question had been plucked out of a tome of obscure Chinese riddles.

  Elissa turned away to gaze at the street through the shop’s bow window. The people passing by did not seem quick and vigorous with life. The peace had not improved things. Germany was broken and suffering, the Weimar Republic at desperate odds with the Allies over the huge reparations demanded, and 1920 was one more bitter and humiliating year for the Fatherland. Major Kirsten had never written. He had come to Munich without letting her know, and he had dropped into the bookshop and gone away. He had been told she had a young man. Her disappointment at missing him was unbearable.

  ‘Mr Meister, how did he look?’

  ‘An upright man. Ah, a war casualty, of course. A sad smile.’

  ‘What do you mean, a sad smile?’

  ‘When I told him of your young man, he seemed –’

  ‘Mr Meister,’ said Elissa, the light of decision in her eyes, ‘I wish to give notice.’

  ‘Notice, notice?’ Mr Meister was querulous. Miss Landsberg was invaluable. She knew precisely where every book in the place was. ‘But –’

  ‘You’ve been the kindest man, but please accept my notice. I have to go to Saxony. I’ve something desperately important to do.’

  Mr Meister muttered, but said she could take a week off. She need not give notice.

  Major Kirsten, walking stick in his hand, swished off the head of a pernicious weed as he strode briskly along the path between shrubberies. To the left lay the sweep of meadows, lush and green under the bright sky of Saxony. There were two cows, a heifer and a bullock, and he had the greatest difficulty in retaining possession of even those few animals. Germany was full of people who, finding the Weimar government was not providing milk and honey in plenty, were ferociously helping themselves to what did not belong to them. Moral attitudes were in deplorable decline. He could only suppose that the people who made off with livestock at night had families with empty bellies.

  Germany had all the portents of a country heading for civil strife. Anyone who had known the best of Germany, bursting with energy, enterprise and prosperity, and with colour and pride, could only contemplate its present state with sadness. A philosophical outlook was difficult to sustain.

  June, however, was always a month of warm, bright hope. He walked up to his house. His housekeeper, Mrs Wessler, a war widow as comely as a full-bosomed opera star, addressed him as he wandered in through her kitchen. She was also his cook.

  ‘Major, you have a visitor, a young lady.’

  ‘A young lady?’ Major Kirsten smiled. Young ladies blossomed in June. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘She’s charming, but has given no name. She only said she wishes to see you and won’t leave until she does.’

  ‘Ah, so. We have a charming young lady visitor who is also mysterious.’

  The housekeeper preceded him to the sitting room, square, comfortable and full of light from the open windows. Major Kirsten, discarding his hat and stick, walked in. The housekeeper closed the door and left him to the mercies of the visitor. The young lady, her back to the door, was gazing at a small framed photograph on a little wall shelf. She turned.

  Major Kirsten pulled up and stared.

  ‘Major?’ Elissa, in a delicate summer dress of cornflower blue, with a blue and white hat, and white gloves, came to his eyes like the spirit of Germany’s bright yesterday.

  ‘Elissa, my dear young lady, I’m delighted to see you,’ he said. He took her hand and brought it lightly to his lips. For all her determination, Elissa’s colour rose and a pulse beat in her throat. How well he looked, fit and lean and vigorous, though his damaged eye seemed very blank. It was blind.

  ‘Major, you are a picture,’ she said.

  ‘A picture?’

  ‘Of health.’

  He laughed. Elissa, faithful to the love she had always had for him, felt a surge of pleasure in his masculinity.

  ‘True, I’m fit enough, but I doubt I’m a picture. I see only a rusticating old soldier in my mirror. But you look splendidly young and very delightful. Do sit down. Let me order you some refreshment. What shall it be? The coffee can’t be fully recommended. Dare I offer you tea?’

  ‘I wish no refreshment at the moment, Major.’ Elissa, nerves taut, orientated herself for immediate attack. ‘I’d like to settle things first.’

  ‘Settle things? Do you have some business to see to in Dresden, perhaps?’ His modest estate was not far from Dresden.

  ‘Not in Dresden, no,’ said Elissa. ‘Here. In your house. Why did you not wait for me when you called at the bookshop?’

  ‘I had an appointment,’ said Major Kirsten, ‘and was already a little late for it.’

  ‘Why did you not call back?’ asked Elissa, desperation overriding palpitation.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Major Kirsten, and cast his eye at her summery hat.

  ‘That is not an answer,’ she said.

  ‘Elissa, do sit down.’

  ‘Very well,’ she said, and seated herself. Her dress – her best – flowed silkily around her trim figure and firm breasts. The hemline, shorter than the wartime styles, revealed her shimmering calves. Elissa, at the crossroads, was not disposed to be coy. Major Kirsten sat down opposite her. She smiled at the distinct glimmer in his sound eye.

  ‘You’re sure you’ll take no refreshment?’ he said.

  ‘Not yet, thank you,’ said Elissa. ‘Major, you haven’t given me an answer to my question.’

  ‘I’m at a loss to find one.’

  ‘I can’t believe you could come to Munich and make no real attempt to see me.’

  ‘You mustn’t think that,’ he said. ‘I had every intention of doing so, and went straight to your bookshop from the station. Not finding you there, I was disappointed, of course, but did not want to become a nuisance.’

  ‘A nuisance? I’m expected to believe that?’

  ‘One does what one thinks best.’

  ‘Best for whom?’ said Elissa.

  ‘I thought your work, your friends –’

  ‘Major, I’ve always thought you incapable of dissembling.’

  ‘Dissembling?’ Major Kirsten seemed out of his depth.

  ‘You have, of course, always been discouraging.’

  ‘Good God,’ he said.

  ‘You’re afraid I’ll get too close,’ said Elissa, blood up in her determination. ‘Well, you must prepare yourself for shocks, because I mean to get very close. Why did you not write as you promised?’

  Major Kirsten, feeling outgunned, said, ‘Ah, yes. Yes.’

  ‘Yes? What kind of answer is that?’

  ‘I mean things haven’t been precisely promising. Money is losing its value, chickens becoming
priceless and an estate a liability. I’ve a housekeeper and two gardeners, that’s all, and if I weren’t able to let them live in and feed them, they’d not stay on the wages I’m able to pay. There was no position I could offer you, Elissa.’

  Elissa eyed him coolly and without any sign that her heart was thumping.

  ‘I should not, of course, have wanted to be your housekeeper or one of your gardeners,’ she said.

  ‘One of my gardeners?’ Major Kirsten came to and regarded her with something approaching delight. Ex-Lieutenant Landsberg had become a joy. ‘One of my gardeners?’ he said again.

  ‘I’ve something quite different in mind,’ she said.

  ‘Name it,’ he said. ‘I’m sure it’s going to surprise me.’

  ‘It is.’ Elissa summoned up the last remnants of her courage. ‘I have in mind a far higher position – as your wife.’

  ‘Dear God in heaven,’ said Major Kirsten.

  ‘You once said that in certain circumstances I might surprise myself. Well, now I think I’ve surprised both of us. But I am saying to myself “Courage, Elissa, courage, you are no longer in uniform and he cannot have you shot.” I’ve waited eighteen months to hear from you, and it’s making me thin.’

  ‘Thin?’ said Major Kirsten, beyond any other comment in his stunned conviction that what he was hearing she could not be saying. ‘Thin?’

  Elissa, trying to remain unaffected by his appraisal of her figure, said, ‘Mr Meister, my employer, has remarked at times that I’ve looked quite peaky. I must tell you I’ve no desire to spend all my life waiting.’ Wondering when her voice was going to fail her, she went quickly on. ‘I want to be loved. I need to be loved. Josef, please advise me of the significance of this.’ She rose and moved to the little shelf and pointed.

  He let his eye travel. She was pointing at a photograph in a brown leather frame. It was a photograph of three WAC officers serving at General von Feldermann’s Headquarters at Valenciennes in 1918. Elissa was in the middle of the little group.

  ‘It’s a constant reminder to me of a lovely young lady,’ he said.

  ‘I am someone lovely?’ she said.

  ‘You’re not questioning my taste?’

  ‘No. But I am questioning your courage. Josef, I want to care for you, and have you care for me. Things are going to get worse in Germany, and when they do we should face them together, because I believe that together we’ll put up a very good fight and not go under. I believe myself capable of being a good wife. I will be. But of course, you must marry me first. Josef, are you in love with me?’

  Major Kirsten coughed.

  ‘Ah –’

  ‘Josef!’ Elissa, having survived the ordeal of the confrontation, was not going to be put off.

  ‘Of course I love you, my dearest Elissa.’

  ‘Then stand up, please,’ said Elissa, swept by colour and bliss.

  He came to his feet. She put her arms around him, lifted her face and kissed him warmly on the lips.

  ‘Elissa –’

  ‘You have given me a terrible time, but I love you, you dear man, you know I love you, and yet you were afraid.’

  ‘Not afraid, my dear, merely unsure of myself. You’re not getting a very good bargain, you must see that.’

  Elissa pressed close.

  ‘I’m getting you and you’re getting me,’ she said. ‘I would rather have you than any other man. My mother says I’m a discriminating woman, and I am, I know that, because you are the best of all men. I’m proud of you, and you’re very good for reserved young ladies who need a special kind of understanding. You believed in me, and it made me love you very much. I would like to be married to you without wasting too much more time.’

  ‘Today might be a little difficult to arrange,’ said Major Kirsten, ‘there are certain formalities which have to be considered.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll wait a few days, then.’ She kissed him again, without reserve and without restraint, and melted at his warm, firm response. ‘Josef, why did you come to Munich?’

  ‘To see Sophia von Feldermann.’

  ‘Josef?’

  ‘And, with luck, to see you too, but you were out with your young man.’

  ‘He isn’t my young man, he’s an ex-soldier. Miss von Feldermann is in Munich?’

  ‘I heard from her father that she was. I telephoned her, spoke to a lady with a screaming voice –’

  ‘Screaming?’

  ‘It whistled in my ears. She went to fetch Sophia, Sophia spoke to me, said she was divinely blissed to hear from me –’

  ‘Divinely blissed?’

  ‘So she said.’

  ‘You are not trying to make me jealous, are you?’ said Elissa.

  ‘Nothing of the kind, my dearest. She was frantically busy with people, she said, and begged me to come to lunch in two days’ time. I was curious to see her, so I made the appointment.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Sit down,’ he said. She sat down with him, on a very comfortable and cosy sofa where it was easy to be close to him. ‘I wanted to find out if she had been cured of her attachment to Captain Marsh – the strangest attachment, considering the circumstances.’

  ‘Josef, you of all men to be so insensitive – I’m sure that was the worst moment of her life, one she would have been desperate to forget. Josef, an attachment to a dead man, whom she herself killed – what were you thinking of?’

  ‘It isn’t quite like that,’ said Major Kirsten. He put his strong right arm around her and Elissa cuddled up like an enchanted girl. ‘Captain Marsh was not quite dead that morning. It was thought he was. There was no resident medical officer at that place, no one who might have proved the general opinion wrong. But in the ambulance, a corporal of the Medical Corps suspected the pulse was still beating. Captain Marsh was accordingly rushed to the hospital and there he made a complete recovery. He was eventually sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.’

  ‘Oh, how relieved Miss von Feldermann must have been. And afterwards, when the war was over? Now I see why you –’

  ‘Ah, not quite,’ said Major Kirsten. ‘Sophia wasn’t told he’d recovered. Her father thought that the best way of ensuring an end to an unacceptable relationship. I understood his attitude to some extent, but it worried me. I couldn’t forget Sophia’s sense of tragedy. So, hearing she was in Munich, I couldn’t resist making that appointment to have lunch with her. I’m afraid I wasted my time. Sophia has quite got over the man and his death, or what she assumed was his death. I had no real chance to talk to her. She has a palatial apartment and it was full of young people and some ex-servicemen, all stuffing themselves at a cold buffet. Sophia has become extremely vivacious and very involved, and I had no opportunity to talk privately to her. I confess I disliked the talk and the atmosphere. The talk was political and extreme, the atmosphere rather wild. The politics seemed to mainly concern a national revolutionary party violently opposed to Communism. There was little difference as far as I could make out. I left. Sophia gaily waved me goodbye. She was the spirit of postwar loudness and political adventurism, both unappealing to me. I felt there was no point at all in referring to something she had obviously succeeded in putting behind her. So I said nothing about Captain Marsh.’

  Elissa looked doubtful.

  ‘You didn’t think she would have wanted to know she didn’t kill him?’

  ‘I felt the whole episode no longer interested her. Or Captain Marsh either. He obviously lost any urge he had to see her again. I felt, when I saw him in hospital, that he had some idea about marrying her. Time cured them both.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ said Elissa, remembering Sophia’s haunting sadness.

  ‘I think it seems so.’

  ‘She was very vivacious?’ enquired Elissa.

  ‘She was a young woman of painted lips and constant laughter. Loud laughter.’

  ‘Josef, I think you may have deceived yourself. I must go back to Munich, of course, to tell my parents about us. Will you please give me So
phia’s address? I’d like to see her myself.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Painted lips and constant laughter, loud laughter, that’s why, you dear man.’

  Chapter Twenty-two

  THE CALLER OFFERED a smile.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said.

  Sophia stared uncomprehendingly at the young woman at her door. It was not a time when she was used to receiving visitors, for it was not yet eleven o’clock and she had only been up half an hour. But Elissa, wisely, had not wanted to choose a moment when she might find the apartment full of people and politics.

  Sophia, suddenly recognizing her, flashed into a dazzling smile.

  ‘I know you, of course I do,’ she cried. ‘Miss Landsberg – yes. First the deliciously distinguished Major Kirsten, and now you. Come in, do come in. You must forgive the mess, but I gave a little party last night and it was hopelessly late before everyone left.’

  She brought Elissa into the living room. Picturesque and spacious, it was not at its best at the moment. It was, in fact, appallingly untidy, but Sophia presented its disorder to Elissa with a laugh and a wave. It looked as if a stampede had taken place. The polished floor was littered with cushions, pamphlets, glasses and cigarette ash. A large fireside rug was askew. A chair was on its side, and a table lamp, overturned, had not been righted. The odour of stale cigarette smoke permeated the room. On an elegant sideboard stood bottles, most of them empty.

  ‘This was a little party?’ said Elissa.

  ‘Oh, everything does look a trifle chaotic, doesn’t it?’ Sophia threw a window open. ‘Such dreadfully careless people, but all very sweet and earnest. We’re planning a new Germany.’ She laughed. ‘Would you like a new Germany Miss Landsberg?’

  ‘I’d like to be called Elissa.’

  ‘Then I’m Sophia.’ They shook hands. Sophia’s smile radiated a new brilliance. Her teeth were a flashing white, her lips a gash of bright red. Her dress was a rich yellow, the bodice a flamboyance in the way it outlined her abundant breasts. Her hair, a pale and lustrous gold, was a careless flowing mass, her blue eyes large amid dusty blue shadows, and her face was rouged. Her beauty, thought Elissa, was gilded, but that was what many young women did to themselves these days with their paint.