by Medora Sale
“I’ll think about it.” Her tone was lively and amiable now. “It sounds as if it might be a good idea. We’ll talk about it tomorrow, shall we? Be prepared to come up with some figures, and if it seems possible, we can go to the bank in the afternoon.” There was a thoughtful smile on her face as she waved him out of the room.
She settled herself comfortably in the chaise longue and once more picked up the text she had been studying. When she heard the doorbell and familiar footsteps in the hall, she let it drop on the floor with a sigh and called, “Come in, come in,” almost before the discreet knock sounded on the conservatory door. “Hello, Frank, darling. I do wish you would stop creeping about that way. It’s very unnerving.”
Frank Whitelaw smiled and bent over to kiss her on the shoulder. “I was afraid you might have dozed off and didn’t want to wake you. How are you, my dear? You look absolutely ravishing.” He stepped back critically a pace. “Although you do appear a trifle tired. Shouldn’t you be resting this afternoon? You don’t want to look like that this evening, do you?”
“What do you mean, ‘look like that’? Really, Frank, you are a most tactless person. Besides, I won’t look ‘like that,’ as you so gracefully put it, this evening. I shall look stunning as always. How do you like what Rudi has done to my hair?”
“Not a trifle too belle époque? I should have thought something simpler might appeal more to the natives. It is, nonetheless, charming.” He bent down to pick up the folder. “But you really should be in bed, not going over your texts,” he repeated in reproachful tones. “You’ll only get stale.”
Clara regarded him without emotion. “I was merely passing the time waiting for you, Frank. Sit down, please. Over here so I don’t have to peer sideways at you. I have business we must discuss.” As he opened his mouth to object, she raised her hand in a silencing gesture. “Next week I must re-evaluate my financial position. Both the girls seem to be at crisis points in their lives, and before I tell them what I am prepared to do, or not to do, I must know where I stand.” Her manager nodded briefly. He did not care for his employer when she was in one of these competent moods. He preferred the fiction that she was an emotional, fragile artist, not to be tormented by sordid details about money and contracts. “I don’t like what is happening to Theresa and Milan at all,” Clara continued. “He has gone through a great deal of money and will probably go through even more if he can get his hands on it. I am tempted to let him fail and suffer the consequences, but I must think about my grandchildren, who should not be paupers because their father is a fool, or perhaps a thief. Did you find out anything significant?”
Frank Whitelaw shook his head. “Not very much. But the rumour is that the project, and Milan, are in deep trouble.”
“Just what does that mean?”
“Fraud. He could end up in jail.”
“I see. Well, I have no desire to be there while you and the accountant are going over the company position with Milan, but this is what I want you to keep in mind: If the project can be rescued without bankrupting me, I might do it, but I want effective control. He must be removed. The company could go into Theresa’s name, but I would insist on fifty-one percent in the restructured organization. Otherwise, we will have to see what can be done for Theresa. I have no intention of giving her a substantial amount of money; she is too silly. I have considered setting up a trust fund which would go eventually to the children.” Frank Whitelaw had taken a small notebook from his pocket and was rapidly jotting down the points as she made them. “The other thing is setting Klaus up in business. It might be a good thing, but I want to consider the state of my finances before I make a commitment. Now I think I will go to bed. I am terribly tired.”
“Would you like me to massage your shoulders?” he murmured, leaning closer to her as he tucked his notebook away. “You seem tense.”
“Thank you, Frank, but I doubt if that would help. Perhaps instead you could check my exact position in the European and North American markets and we’ll go on from there tomorrow.” She slid gracefully to her feet, moved over to her desk, picked up the novel she had been reading, and quickly left the room. Frank Whitelaw sat where he was for a long time, his eyes fixed on the point at which he had last seen her.
Chapter 3
Klaus stood in front of the bedroom door, bouncing back and forth indecisively on his toes; finally, he tapped lightly. Putting his mouth close to the edge of the door, he whispered, “Nikki, are you in there?”
There was a soft scuffle on the other side, and the door eased open. She dragged him in, holding up one hand for silence, and shut it again. “For God’s sake,” she said, “don’t wake up Mamma. You know what she’s like before a performance.” She padded back to the rumpled side of the big double bed, settled herself comfortably up against the pillows, and picked up a nail file from the table. “And to what,” she said, concentrating on her fingernails, “do I owe the honour of this visit?” She patted the other side of the bed. “You might as well sit down, too.”
He kicked off his running shoes and sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed. “Do I have to have a reason to come and talk to you?”
She glanced up for a moment. “Of course not. But you’re obviously up to something, and you must have been down there spilling it all to Mamma. Do I get to find out what’s going on, too?” Then she jabbed the file at him for emphasis. “And if you’re thinking of marrying some girl you met over here, I claim the right to inspect her first. You have no taste or judgment in these matters at all.”
“Marrying someone?” He straightened up in surprise. “Good God, no!” Then he laughed. “In fact, you were the only woman we were discussing.”
She looked up sharply and went back to her nails. “And just what were you discussing about me, may I ask?” she said in the direction of a now perfectly formed little fingernail.
“I shouldn’t have put it that way,” he said hastily. “We J weren’t actually discussing you.” He was treading on dangerous ground. “I was really just talking about settling down here and establishing myself as a photographer. I’ve found a place where I can rent studio space on a share basis cheap, and Aunt Clara said I could have that corner of the basement as a darkroom.” He ran his hands nervously through his hair. Veronika’s attention never strayed from her nails. “All I need, then,” he said almost casually, “is a small apartment and an assistant. The trouble is, I can’t afford to pay a real salary for a little while. So I need someone whose family would continue to support her until the profits started rolling in.” He stopped, unsure of the reaction he was getting.
“I see,” she said. “So you and Mamma cooked up this scheme to give little Nikki useful employment in nice safe Canada instead of letting her go back to nasty Munich. She bankrolls you as long as you look after me. Very clever. But suppose little Nikki doesn’t want to be your assistant?”
“Come on, Veronika, you know that’s not what I meant. Aunt Clara is not bankrolling me. I need an assistant, you know your way around a lab, and you’re careful. Besides, you have a good eye. And I would rather work with someone I know and can trust.” She continued to bend over her nails. “Listen, sweetheart, if you don’t want to do it, just tell me. There are plenty of people I can hire part-time. The city’s full of art students who can use the money, and you can go to hell. I don’t need you or the rest of the goddamn family.” He leaned back on the footboard and glared at her.
“Are you seriously trying to convince me that this isn’t a scheme designed to keep me away from Munich? Because if you are, I just don’t believe you.” She put down the nail file and looked steadily at him.
“No, I won’t say that.” He ran his hands through his hair again. “Of course I was thinking of that. But it was a side issue. I thought that since I was going to stay here anyway, you might like the chance to get away from everyone. I mean, this is the easy way to do it. But if you want to go back and craw
l into bed with that sewer rat and ruin your life, that’s all right with me. You never could tell the difference between a bastard after your money and someone who cares what happens to you. Go ahead, trust all your good friends in the movement instead of your family. I’ll come and visit you in jail.” He glowered and then uncrossed his legs and planted them on the bedroom floor.
“Klaus, you are the filthiest, most narrow-minded, unenlightened—”
“Stop.” He held up a hand as he got to his feet. “We’ll just leave it at that, shall we? I had an idea; you didn’t like it. That’s all.” His posture was that of a deeply offended man as he stalked toward the door.
Veronika von Hohenkammer sat in the oversized bathtub and stared glumly at her feet. There was nothing in particular wrong with them except that they were, at the moment, conveniently in her line of sight. The bracing and mood-lifting bath compound, essence of mare’s milk or Dead Sea salt, or whatever, which she had poured with reckless extravagance into the steaming water, didn’t seem to be doing its job. Her mood was foul and plummeting lower. She picked up a pumice stone and began to attack a callus on her foot with the zeal of a preacher attacking unlicensed sex. “Damn it all, anyway,” she said, and heaved herself out of the tub, abandoning all those expensive additives. She climbed dripping wet into a terry-cloth robe and headed across her bedroom rug for the door, leaving damp footprints behind her. She tiptoed down the narrow corridor toward the back of the house and knocked very softly on the next door she came to.
“For God’s sake,” she said, once she was safely in with the door shut, “I don’t know why you had to storm off like that. I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it. Just that I resented people planning my life behind my back.” Klaus Leitner was lying on his bed, his hands behind his head, glaring furiously at her. “Anyway, when is all this supposed to start?”
“I see. Now that the poor relation has been made to feel his place, milady is prepared to help him out,” said Klaus. He looked grimly and stubbornly outraged. “I told you, no thanks. I can manage on my own.”
“Come off it, Klaus. I think I’d rather like to stay and help you become rich and famous—for a little while, at least. And you’re right that you need me, but not in the darkroom. You can do that yourself. You need someone around with some business sense, and I’m even better than Mamma at money and things like that. Which is more than anyone can say about you.” She sat down at the foot of his bed and looked speculatively at him. “You could live here, you know. It would be cheaper, and Mamma wouldn’t mind. In fact, she’d prefer to have someone living in the house. She doesn’t entirely trust the crew that look after things. Bettl would be back in Munich with her, so we wouldn’t have to put up with her. It sounds like fun. Where is the nearest decent place to ski?”
He shook his head gloomily. “Hours away, I think, and no real mountains.” Then his face brightened. “But we could go to Davos at Christmas and spend a few weeks.”
“Marvelous. I think I’ll call Theresa and tell her the happy news. Won’t she be pleased to have her very favourite relative in her hair all winter.” Grinning, she reached for the phone and picked it up. “No,” she said, putting it down again. “Let’s wait and spring it on them at dinner. That should do something for Milan’s digestion.”
Five people sat around the enormous dining-room table in Clara von Hohenkammer’s house. The men were all elegant and correct in black tie; Clara liked that sort of thing, and even Klaus Leitner had exchanged his shorts and running shoes for shirt studs and cummerbund. Theresa Milanovich was looking thin and pale, almost sickly, in a light blue silk that emphasized her fragile prettiness, and Veronika was looking boisterously healthy in red. They were all contemplating a thick and cream-filled, flavourless soup and making desultory tries at conversation. What little speech there had been gave way to uncomfortable silence as Bettl snatched the soup plates away and replaced them with dinner plates. These she covered rapidly with food, then slapped the serving dishes onto the table, clapped a bottle of wine down beside Klaus, and slammed out of the room.
“I don’t understand why your mother, with all her money, doesn’t get rid of that woman and replace her with someone who can cook and is at least minimally respectful,” said Milan, staring uneasily down at the mess of food on his plate. Bettl had interpreted the instructions from her employer on the subject of proper dinners in her own way, and on that warm September evening, after the thick soup, they were each facing fried potatoes, overcooked carrots, and a large slab of braised pork, heavily sauced with cream and paprika.
“She doesn’t want to get rid of her,” said Theresa. “Look at the way she drags her around with her everywhere she goes. Anyway, who else would she find who was willing to work seven days a week all year?” she added nastily. Theresa had problems with housekeepers.
“Besides, she can cook and be perfectly polite if she wants to,” said Klaus, pouring some wine into his glass and casually passing the bottle on around the table. “This is her revenge because she’s annoyed at Aunt Clara, and she figures it’s perfectly safe because none of us can do anything about it. No doubt Aunt Clara is dining on some light and flawlessly prepared delicacy while we suffer. One of these days, if Bettl gets mad enough at her, there’ll be a few hundred grams of rat poison in our béarnaise. She has a nasty temper, that woman does.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that at dinner, Klaus,” said Theresa, looking down at the gray meat in front of her. “Now every time I eat here I’ll be wondering if the food has been poisoned.” She speared a small piece of carrot and regarded it doubtfully.
“That’s easy,” said Veronika. “I’m sure that rat poison tastes awful. To poison us you’d have to put it into something with flavour. So, you see? You only have to worry if the food is good. This,” she said, jabbing her fork into the meat, “has no taste at all. Rat poison would be a distinct improvement.”
“Must you, Nikki?” said her sister, looking greenly at her dinner. She put her fork down and pushed her plate away slightly. Her husband leaned over her solicitously, murmuring in her ear, then reached over and refilled her wineglass. She took a hasty gulp and with an effort at friendliness turned back to her younger sister. “Have you decided when you’re going back to Munich yet, Nikki? Are you going to wait until Mamma leaves?” She turned to Frank Whitelaw, who was toying with a rubbery triangle of overcooked potato and ignoring the conversation. “Nikki really has become enamored of the New World. She’s never been here this long before. Have you, Nikki?”
Veronika von Hohenkammer, with her mother’s flawless timing, smiled agreeably and produced her bombshell. “Actually, I’m not going back—not for a couple of years, anyway. Klaus and I are staying here and setting up a family business, aren’t we, Klaus? He’s going to turn his photography into a paying affair, and I will look after the financial end of things.”
There was a profound silence as this sank in. Klaus smirked; Whitelaw gave Veronika a quick, searching glance and went back to his rubbery potato. “Does Mamma know about this?” asked Theresa sharply.
“It was partly her idea,” said Veronika maliciously. “She and Klaus came up with this marvelous scheme. We’ll be working out of the house so that expenses won’t be too high at first.” She returned to the attack on her braised pork.
“That sounds like an interesting business,” her brother-in-law said casually. “Tell me, does it involve heavy start-up expenses?”
Klaus, to whom this remark was addressed, pushed his plate away and replaced it with his glass. “That depends,” he said, “on the scale of your operations and the type of photography. I’m interested in commercial work, and that involves hefty expenses for equipment and studio space. To get completely set up could cost over fifty thousand dollars. Canadian, of course.” There was a gasp from across the table. His cousin Theresa was staring at him openmouthed. “But I won’t be working on such a scale, and I already have a
certain amount of equipment. Anyway, I’ve spent most of July and part of August making contacts and seeing people. I’m pretty optimistic about our chances. There’s a girl at one of the advertising agencies who is impressed with my work.”
“I’ll bet,” muttered Veronika.
“My camera work,” he emended with a wink, “and she hires a lot of photographers. That will be a good start.”
“I’m ashamed of you, Klaus,” said Veronika, “prostituting yourself like that.”
“Really, Nikki, I wish you wouldn’t talk that way,” said her sister automatically, and turned her attention back to Klaus. “What did you mean about working out of the house?” she asked. “Are you going to have models coming and going all the time? I’m sure Mamma won’t like that.”
“Not at all,” he said with a wave of the hand. “That’s fashion photography you’re thinking of, which is definitely not my thing. Besides, I’ll be renting studio space. No, it’s just the processing that will be here. In fact, it’s here already. I have a pretty complete darkroom down in the basement now.”
“What?” said Theresa. Alarm sprang into her face. “Do you mean the basement is full of chemicals? And the children are here all the time, playing? They could blow themselves up. I hope everything is locked up. If Mamma can keep her old junk locked away from the children,” she said resentfully, “you at least could keep that sort of thing out of reach.”