“The opera belongs to the Principality of Lissenberg,” Carl told him. “Having been found here. I think, judging by the dress rehearsal, that it should help to solve your financial problem. I’ve had some interesting approaches about recordings.” He smiled at Anne. “You’re going to be a very busy Princess.”
Smile and pretend. This was their happy evening. She smiled at Carl. “I never did have a chance to tell you how well I thought it went. I’d give anything to sing in it again.” My life? “But, Carl, you and Alix?” They were sitting hand in hand, and she had suddenly understood Carl’s baffling behaviour to herself.
“Time we came to that. Thanks, Anne.” Carl raised Alix’s hand to his lips, then turned to Michael. “We’ve been engaged for a year. I wanted to tell you, but Alix wouldn’t let me.”
“Quite right, too,” Michael told him. “I didn’t exist, remember, and Father had thought up some quite nasty punishments for people who insisted on pretending that I did. The funny thing was, it rebounded on him in a way. Since he had announced that I didn’t exist, there wasn’t much he could do when I came back with my United Nations passport as plain Michael Liss, except pretend I wasn’t there and insist everyone else do so too. I must say, I found it remarkably liberating.” He turned to Anne. “I hated not telling you, my darling, but it really was much safer for you.”
“Yes,” she agreed reluctantly. “I suppose I can see that.” And she could understand, too, how he had found his strange state of non-existence liberating, as she had her sentence of death. She shivered. Smile and pretend …
Michael was grinning wickedly at his sister. “So all that flirting with Adolf Stern and James Frensham was just camouflage? I did think they weren’t quite your line. To hell with Frensham, but hard on Stern, maybe?”
“Stern!” Carl interrupted explosively. “Nothing’s too bad for him. If Alix was pretending, so was he. He and Lotte Moser are married. Kept it quiet because they thought it better for their careers. There was going to be a dramatic announcement when they had got rid of Anne, and Lotte took over the part of Marcus. Stern broke down and told me all about it after the explosion; when we thought you two dead. They hadn’t meant it to go as far as that. That’s what they say now. That they hired Fritz just to give you a fright, Anne, and leave you shut in the opera house all night. Quite a fright they must have been planning, since they obviously didn’t expect you to be able to sing on Monday night. Stern insists he left it all to Fritz.”
“Who was undoubtedly in Frensham’s pay already,” put in Michael, “and told him all about it. Frensham just took over control. It was Fritz who telephoned and told me you were locked in the opera house, Anne. A nasty trick by Stern, he said. Idiotic to have believed him and gone alone. Of course Frensham’s men were waiting for me.”
“Well, you’d heard Stern telling me Anne had gone on ahead to the hotel,” said Meyer. “And then, when we got there, she wasn’t there. It all fitted together … God, that was a terrible evening. I’ll never forget that pretence at a party. And the next twenty-four hours, with no sign of you, Anne, or Michael. Alix’s sore throat worse and Lotte Moser turning up, all smiles, ready to take over Marcus and ‘save’ us. I’m not sure the explosion wasn’t a relief, in a way.” He turned to Anne. “Don’t look so sad, Annchen. It will be even better next time.” And, back to Alix: “How’s your throat now?”
“Better again. Good God!” She put her hand to it.
“Yes?”
“I’ve just realised. When it first started bothering me, Adolf Stern said he had the very thing for it … throat pastilles. He gave me his. I finished them the other day, and it began to get better. Then, just the other day, he offered me one, ‘to be on the safe side.’ And I took it to be polite. And it got worse again.”
“I should imagine so,” said Carl dryly. “So, with you and Anne both unable to sing, Lotte could step gallantly forward and take over. She got herself thrown out of the job at the hotel on purpose. Didn’t think night-club singing was just the right image. But she’s been waiting her time just across the border. Came in with the first of the crowds, according to Adolf Stern, so he and she and Fritz were able to play their little trick on you in the opera house, Anne. What exactly did they do?”
Anne shuddered. “I’d rather not talk about it,” she said. “Fritz hated me … thought he had reason to. He was a little mad, I think. What’s happened to him?” she asked.
“We think he must have lost his nerve,” Josef told her. “Heard something, perhaps. Realised he was out of his depth. He tried to get in touch with Winkler on Sunday, but couldn’t, finally he telephoned Hans at the Wild Man, told him he was afraid for Michael; thought he was in danger; behind the opera house somewhere. He was scared rigid; wouldn’t stop to say more. Didn’t seem to care about you, I’m afraid, Anne. But it was thanks to him that Hans and his friends were looking for you two on Sunday night.”
“Poor man,” said Michael. “Yes. It must have been for him Frensham’s men were checking cars that night, Anne. Inconvenient for us; worse for him.”
“They found him?”
“Must have. His body washed up in the river this morning.”
“Another death for Frensham to answer for,” said Josef.
It was odd, Anne thought, to see how naturally he had retaken his place as head of the family. Perhaps she would tell him first. But that was the coward’s way … Michael had the right to know. Tomorrow she would tell him.
“It’s been a long day,” said Josef. “And tomorrow Herr Winkler wants statements from everyone concerned. Time for bed, I think. Gloria, my dear, did you arrange about a room for Anne?”
“Room for Anne?” At some point in the evening, Princess Gloria must have been reunited with her champagne cocktails. By now her speech was slurred. “Moving in already, is she? Better have my room, I suppose. Hereditary Princess’s.” She made an awkward mouthful of the phrase.
“Mother!” Alix began a protest, but Michael intervened. “I believe Anne would rather go back to the hostel, wouldn’t you?” He turned to her. “Winkler’s put a man there, just to be on the safe side, but Stern and Lotte left this morning. No problems now, and I expect you’ll be glad to get back into your own things.”
“I certainly will.” Here, suddenly, was the chance she had both wanted and feared. The chance to be alone with Michael. She must take it, get it over with, finished. Then she must call Dr Hirsch, ask for stronger pills; something that would keep her going for the duration of James Frensham’s trial. And oddly, it was now, thinking this, that she realised for the first time that she had lost the last batch of pills, days ago, when her purse was stolen, and simply been too busy, too frightened, too exhausted to worry about them. Extraordinary.
Goodnights were being said. Josef, too, was returning to the hostel and for a moment she thought she would be spared the task of telling Michael tonight. But Josef had his own car. A cold finger from Princess Gloria, a warm kiss from Alix and another from Carl. These ought to be her family. Well—she braced herself—Princess Gloria would not mourn her for long.
One of Michael’s trade union members was waiting with the little green car in which he had driven her before. “You’ve been very quiet.” Michael held the door for her. “Tired? You’ve a right to be. You were tremendous, there at the Diet. I was—proud of you. I always am.” He climbed in beside her. “Forgiven me yet for what I’ve bounced you into?”
“Forgiven! Oh, Michael.” She turned in her seat to face him. “It’s not that. It’s what you have to forgive me.”
He let in the clutch and they slid gently downhill. “Married already? Ten starving children at home? Who cares? I love you. You love me. There’s no arguing about that. We know; you and I. We’re lucky.”
Lucky! They were at the fork in the road already. She could not do it to him here in the car, with the hostel so close. “Michael, can’t we go up to the Wild Man? I’m hungry.” Extraordinary, but it was true.
“L
ovely girl. I’d hesitated to suggest it after all you’ve been through. But yes, indeed we’ll go and see old Hans. I could just do with a hunter’s breakfast.”
As on the first time they had gone there, the Wild Man was in darkness. Michael played a tune on the car horn. Haydn? The Lissenberg national anthem. “Michael!” She was shocked and sounded it.
“Proving a point,” he told her. “We love our country; we don’t worship it. After what you’ve done for us, no one’s going to care if you have five ex-husbands and a whole hostel full of illegits. Though, frankly, my darling, I find it hard to believe.”
“If it was only that.” As the lights went on along the front of the Wild Man, she let him help her out of the car. His arm was warm under hers. An electric charge shook through them. He bent and kissed her, lightly, gently, as if they had all the time in the world for passion. “No matter what,” he said, “Lissenberg and I are yours till death us do part.” And then, feeling the shock of it go through her. “What is it, Anne?”
But Hans was at the door making great roaring noises of welcome. “Michael and Anne. The people in the world I most wanted to see!”
“We want to see you.” Anne reached up to brush a kiss against his cheek. “You saved our lives the other night, and I fainted before I could thank you.”
“A pleasure.” He beamed down on her. And then, mock formal, “Your Hereditary Highnesses, welcome to my poor house.”
“Hereditary,” said Anne. “It’s a funny word for it.”
“It’s a funny place, Lissenberg,” said Michael. “But I like it. Is young Hans home yet?” he asked Hans.
“Not him. Out celebrating with the rest of the union, I reckon.” His huge smile embraced Anne. “My son had the honour of sitting in front of you in the Rathaus today.”
“My shield.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I love you all.”
“And she wants a hunter’s breakfast.” Michael was shepherding her to a secluded table. “We both do. And a bottle from the back of the cellar, Hans. Seems Anne’s got a problem. We have to talk.”
“Talk away.” Hans had swiftly set their table and produced two glasses of slivovitz. “The place is yours. Even I can’t produce a hunter’s breakfast in under twenty minutes.”
Anne sipped burning liquid and faced Michael across the table. “I’m dying,” she told him flatly. “I knew it when I took the job. The doctor gave me six months to live. I’ve got five now. I thought I might as well make the most of my time. Michael”—his face was breaking her heart—“I’m sorry.”
“Dear God, so am I.” He reached across the table and took her hand. “You’re sure? You believed him? Beyond a shadow of doubt?”
“Oh, I believed him. With pain like that … I tell you, Michael, before I came here, found so much that was worth living for, six months seemed too long. Even here, once, on a bad day, I looked at my pain-killers and thought, why not take them all? Have it over with. Michael, when you look like that, I almost wish I had.”
“My darling, no!” His hands were chafing her cold one. “There are things you must never forget.” He winced at his own unlucky phrase, and she smiled at him.
“My ‘never’ is a short one. You’ll need another Marcus when you have rebuilt the opera house. Oh, Michael, forgive me. I meant it for the best.” Idiotic, hopeless words.
“Forgive!—Nonsense. Whatever happens, I wouldn’t have missed you for all the world.” His hands closed hard on hers. “We’ve a ballad, here in Lissenberg, a legend, an old one—older than the country. Called ‘The Other Road.’ It’s about a hunter and his young wife, riding through the forest. They come to a fork in the road, and choose one turning. It’s a long ballad, they meet brigands, she’s killed and he rides on alone.” He hummed it for her, quietly, now holding both her hands:
“There were two roads through the forest
And we took the one on the hill.
If we had taken the other,
Would you be with me still?
“And then the last verse:
There were two roads through the forest,
We chose one, and you are gone,
But I’d rather have had you, my darling,
And lost you, and ride alone.”
He leaned across the table and kissed her lightly, tenderly, first on one cheek and then the other. “I shall have you for five months, God willing, and then I will miss you for the rest of my life. But at least, I shall have you to miss. Forever. I knew, that first time, when you ran in front of the car; hair in rat’s tails, coat soaking, eyes huge, like something frightened in the woods. Frightened! I didn’t know you then, did I, but I loved you, that’s for sure.” They sat quiet for a moment, while she thanked him in her heart for accepting it so swiftly, so absolutely. “We’ll be married at once,” he said at last. “The Prince Bishop’s a friend of mine. He’ll see us through.”
“But Michael; your Father! We can’t.”
“I owe him nothing. Everyone in Lissenberg knows that. Less than nothing, you could say. He hated me, Anne—did his best to destroy me. It’s not funny to be declared a non-person at twenty. If I hadn’t got that Oxford scholarship, I don’t know if I’d have survived.”
“A non-person? Michael, I wish you’d explain. How could he?”
“I got in his hair,” said Michael. “I didn’t like what he was doing here in Lissenberg, and, of course, being young, I let it show. So, he announced in full Diet that I no longer existed. Anyone who mentioned me was an enemy of the state, with penalities to match. I’d made him very angry. Oh—I was full of bright ideas.”
“Trades unions and such?”
“Exactly. Profit sharing—oh, all kinds of things. Of course”—he smiled at her—“it cut two ways in the end. When Winkler got me into the country on the United Nations passport a college friend helped me get, there wasn’t a great deal he could do. Except play along with the conspiracy of silence he had started and go right on hating me.”
“Poor man.”
“But not a nice one—even if he was my Father. It’s all over now, done with, unimportant. And it’s most certainly not going to affect our wedding. Mind you, we’ll keep it as quiet as we can. It will have to be in the cathedral, though. Do you mind?” And then, “Good God, you haven’t really got a couple of divorces round your neck? That would be a problem for the Prince Bishop.”
Extraordinary how little they knew about each other. “No,” she told him. “I had a husband, but he died—in a car smash with another woman. Pregnant. He’d been living with her on the side.” How long ago and far away it all seemed. When had she decided not to tell him about Fritz and his obscene, horrible suggestions?
“Poor fool,” said Michael. “Well, that’s all right then. Father’s funeral tomorrow and the wedding next week, just as soon as the Prince Bishop can organise it. It will make a change from bad news. I reckon that’s what Lissenberg needs right now. They’ve had a hard time, you know. Father was a disaster in more ways than I want to tell you. And Mother … well, I was meaning to apologise for Mother.”
“No need.” Her eyes were full of tears. “Oh, Michael, no need.”
“That’s settled then.” He lifted her hand and kissed it. “And here, in good time, come our hunter’s breakfasts. You won’t believe it, but I’m still hungry.”
“Oh, Michael, so am I.”
“Now,” said Michael, when Hans had put the two heaped platters in front of them and opened a cold, dusty bottle, “we are going to talk about the past. I want to know all about you. It strikes me, looking back, that I’ve told you a lot about myself, and you’ve just kept quiet and listened with those big eyes of yours wide open, and said nothing. I know you by heart, and yet I know nothing about you. So, begin. Parents, brothers and sisters, school, the lot … I believe I even want to know about that crazy husband of yours, if you feel like telling me.”
“I’ll tell you everything … Anything … No parents; no brothers or sisters. Oh, Michael, I’ve been so
lonely …” For a moment she was back in the bleak bed-sitter, looking out at spring flowers, facing—alone—the fact of death.
“You’ll never be lonely again. I may not be able to promise much, but that I can. You’ve a whole country to care for you now, and they do, you know. They did already, before you stood up in the Rathaus today and saved them from tyranny.”
“Today. Was it really only today?”
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” He refilled their glasses with the golden wine. “Eat up, my darling. It’s late, and you’re tired. We’ve”—he paused—“five months to talk. Five months are a long time.”
She smiled, and drank to him. “A lifetime, Michael.”
It seemed like a lifetime indeed since she had left the hostel. Only four days ago she had hurried up the arcade to the dress rehearsal, with the crowds seething and shouting in the valley. Now, all was quiet. Frensham’s men had cleared the last straggler out of the valley before the Diet met. They too were gone now, most of them allowed just to melt away over the border into the obscurity from which they had come. After all, as Michael had pointed out, it would have been awkward for Herr Winkler and his twenty policemen to try and hold them all in custody, in Lissenberg’s apology for a gaol.
“I love you, Michael. Always.” Still trembling from their last kiss, Anne turned back to him at the top of the hostel steps. She was tired now, almost beyond speech, beyond thought of all the things she should be saying to him.
“And I you.” He kissed her hands, one after the other. “You’re asleep on your feet, my darling. To bed with you, and dream of me.”
But in her room, Gertrud was waiting for her. “I thought you’d never come.” An ashtray loaded with stubs spoke of her long wait. “I have to talk to you, Anne.”
“Tonight? It’s very late. I thought you’d be gone by now. Can I help you, some way?” How strange suddenly to find herself in a position where she could help people.
Last Act Page 25