The English Girl

by Margaret Leroy

  Perhaps he won’t come, I tell myself. Perhaps he’s changed his mind. Perhaps he’s got something far more important that he’s decided to do. I allow myself a little rush of hope – that I won’t have to go through with this.

  Slow footsteps coming along the aisle. Frank slides into the pew beside me, puts down his briefcase. My heart pounds.

  He peels off his gloves and places them on the prayer-ledge; shakes my hand.

  ‘Stella, good to see you. How is Harri?’

  ‘He’s better, thank you. Well, he’s got some nasty scars on his face. But he’s fine really…’ We speak in hushed voices. ‘Thank you so much for your help.’

  ‘It was the least I could do,’ he says.

  ‘I’m incredibly grateful to you. We all are. Me and Harri and Eva…’

  He makes a slight gesture, acknowledging this.

  ‘So, Stella. You must understand better now. After what happened to Harri. You’ve seen the vein of ugliness in this beautiful city,’ he says.

  Placing the words like little stones before me, one by one.

  He waits for my agreement. I don’t say anything.

  ‘You need to think how it will be here – if the worst does happen.’ He’s sitting too close to me. As he turns towards me, I feel his words on my skin. ‘If Hitler comes, he will find fertile soil in this place. There is something in Vienna that will rise up to meet him.’

  I tell myself this is melodramatic.

  ‘They were just thugs – the men who attacked Harri. There are always thugs. In every city, everywhere.’ My voice is thin and shrill. ‘It was just a horrible random attack.’

  ‘Stella—’

  I speak over him.

  ‘There’s no significance to it,’ I say emphatically. ‘There’s always that lawless element in society. It’s important not to generalise from a single incident. It doesn’t prove anything about what could happen in Vienna.’

  He doesn’t respond for a moment. My words hang in the air between us – balloon-like, hollow and bright.

  ‘Stella, I don’t think for a moment that you really believe that,’ he says. ‘Though, I have to say, that’s how they would see it in England, most of them. That it’s without significance.’ He shakes his head, a shadow moving over his face. ‘Nothing has significance – if there’s any risk at all that it might disturb their comfortable lives.’

  There’s a trace of bitterness in his voice. I suddenly sense all the frustration in him: his feeling that they don’t understand, in England. That they won’t listen to him – the government, the people he reports to. I have only the haziest sense of who those people might be – imagining big mahogany desks and oak-panelled rooms, brandy, a sense of entitlement, a certainty about England’s place in the world. I think of what I once said to Janika: how people in England think bad things won’t happen and everything will be fine, as long as you are reasonable, as long as you are sensible.

  ‘There are those who don’t close their eyes to the threat – Winston Churchill for one,’ he says. ‘But they don’t get a hearing. When Churchill stands up in the Chamber, nobody listens. They think it’s just Winston having a rant as usual. Yesterday’s man.’

  I hear all the anger in him. It’s something I hadn’t realised – that Frank is full of such rage.

  We sit silently for a moment. It’s cold in the church; the raw air from outside has got in. The choir is singing again, the voices piercingly sweet, the music throwing its shimmering nets over everything. ‘Cor contritum et humiliatum, Deus, non despicies.’ You will not scorn this crushed and broken heart.

  Frank clears his throat.

  ‘I wondered if you might have changed your position. About the things we discussed when we met at the Klagenfurt Hotel…’

  The anger all contained now: a casual, conversational tone.

  I know exactly what I am going to say. It’s carefully planned in my mind: I worked it all out, coming here. But there’s the tiniest pause, just a heartbeat, before I can get out the words.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Not really.’

  He’s noticed my moment of hesitation: I can tell from the change in his breathing. I’m so cross with myself that I hesitated like that.

  I expect him to go on urging me. But to my surprise, he puts on his gloves and picks his briefcase up.

  ‘All right, then, Stella. It’s your choice. Thank you for coming.’

  He makes no more effort to persuade me. I hear his quiet steps retreating down the aisle. I almost say: No. Wait a moment …

  He’s left me here with my thoughts, with all my uncertainty.

  I think about Rainer. I remember the men who came to his meeting, who gave the Hitler salute; and sitting here in the scent of the lilies, beside the carved plaque of the damned, I suddenly see him quite differently. It’s like when you wipe a dirty windowpane – everything coming so clear. Quite suddenly, in this moment, I know who he is, what he wants; and realise I have known this for a long time – and yet chosen not to know it, keeping the knowledge hidden in a corner of my mind. Turning away; refusing to look at it. It’s just as Harri once said. That so often we close our eyes to things we don’t want to see. That we can know things and not know them, both at the same time.

  And, thinking of Harri, I think of the men who attacked him. I remember the ugly things they said, remember my utter helplessness, relive it all, too vividly. I hear again the sound of their fists on his head; I see the thin man putting his hand to his belt, the perilous flash of the blade, see the terrible moment when Harri fell, hear the crack of his head on the ground.

  I leave slowly. I have an odd empty feeling. Of something unfinished.

  As I pass the bank of votive candles, a woman steps briskly into the church, and a rush of raw air through the open door blows half the candles out. A little grey smoke spirals up from the sooty wicks of the blown-out candles. A tremor goes through me. So many guttering candles; so many longings and wishes and prayers. It was just the cold air from the street, but I still feel a faltering in me.

  It’s your choice.

  He hasn’t gone far. He’s walking slowly down Weihburggasse. He’s unmistakable – his lanky body, long stride, the way his head juts forward. A little cold sunlight shines on him from the high pewter sky.

  I have to walk fast to catch up with him. My feet slip and slide on the icy pavement, on the compacted snow.

  ‘Frank – could you wait for me…’

  He turns to face me, his expression entirely unsurprised.

  I catch up with him.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind.’ I’m breathless, from rushing in the cold.

  ‘Good girl,’ he says. ‘I knew you would.’

  The thought sneaks into me – that this is why he left the church so abruptly. That he was leaving me alone with my thoughts, to make the decision he knew I was going to make; leaving me to come to him. That he has done this kind of thing often before: he could read me so exactly, he knows how people behave. He knows me better than I know myself. I shiver.

  He turns back towards the church, but before we reach it he ushers me off the street and through a high, arched doorway. We go up some wide steps into a cloister. There are worn red flagstones underfoot and, through the windows, tall trees. It’s full of light, and utterly silent. We can’t be seen from the square.

  Immediately, he opens his briefcase and slides a folder out. This all happens so quickly. He was completely prepared for this moment, as though all along he knew exactly how I would decide. This is why he left on foot, why he didn’t tell his chauffeur to wait: he knew I would come after him.

  All these thoughts racing through my mind. But I’m in too deep now.

  He puts down his briefcase, opens the folder. There are photos inside.

  ‘Stella. Have you seen any of these men before?’

  I look at the photographs as he turns them over one at a time. Some are clear; others are indistinct, photographed in the street, covertly – the men unaware,
talking to others, going about their business. There are three men that I recognise, one I’m uncertain about. I point to them. It’s so easy: too easy. Like an otter sliding off a rock; like stepping off a high place.

  ‘Did these men come to the apartment on Maria-Treu-Gasse?’ he says.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When was this, Stella?’

  ‘It was a meeting, in the evening.’

  ‘Can you remember the date of the meeting?’

  ‘The first meeting was in October.’

  ‘Can you be more specific?’

  ‘Maybe six weeks after I got here – mid-October, I think.’

  All the time, a little voice protesting in my mind. They’ve been good to me, they’ve helped me, they’ve taken me into their home. Without Rainer and Marthe I wouldn’t be in Vienna at all …

  ‘Where in the house did you see them?’

  His voice so easy and even; as you’d talk to a skittery animal you’re worried you’ll frighten away.

  ‘It was in the drawing room. I went into the room where they were meeting – there were ten men there, I think. Janika – she’s the housekeeper – Janika didn’t serve them. Marthe gave her the evening off, and took the cake in herself, and I helped her.’

  ‘You said, the first meeting. Have there been other meetings while you’ve been living there?’

  ‘There was another one in December – just after the first snow. But I didn’t go into the room that time. I offered to help, but Marthe told me she could manage on her own.’

  ‘So you didn’t see into the room at all?’

  ‘No, I didn’t see into the room. But I do know something about one person who came. Marthe told me that there would be a visitor from Berlin.’

  All these things that had sounded so innocent. Marthe gave her the evening off … A visitor from Berlin…

  ‘Did you see anyone at all that time? The second time? Going to the house, or leaving?’

  ‘There’s one man I remember. His picture isn’t here. I met him in the hallway. He had horn-rimmed glasses…’

  Frank’s eyes spark. I have a feeling of foreboding.

  ‘Hair colour?’

  ‘Ordinary-looking. Grey, I suppose.’

  ‘A rather high forehead?’

  ‘Yes. You could say that.’

  ‘Clean-shaven?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, he was…’

  ‘Can you tell me anything more about this man?’ says Frank. ‘Just anything else that you noticed?’

  I wish he wouldn’t press me like this. It’s hard to say there’s nothing else. You feel obliged to come up with something.

  ‘Well – there was one thing. Just a little thing. I told him who I was, but he didn’t tell me his name. Which was a little bit odd, I thought.’

  ‘Did he arrive with anyone?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I want this to be over. I want to make a clean breast of it, and go. I want to be out in the street, with the icy air on my face; to breathe in the cold, feel it cleanse me.

  I take a deep breath.

  ‘But I saw him leave, the man I told you about. I was looking out of my window. He gave the Hitler salute.’ The words tumbling out of me.

  Something hardens in Frank’s face.

  ‘Who was he with?’ he asks me.

  ‘Just another man who’d been at the meeting. Then they both got into their cars.’

  Frank closes the folder, puts it back in his briefcase.

  It’s done, I think. I’ve told him. There’s nothing more to say.

  ‘That’s incredibly helpful, Stella. Thank you so much. That’s all for now,’ he tells me.

  That’s all for now?

  ‘If I need to see you in future,’ he says, ‘I was wondering where we could meet. Ideally not in the middle of town.’

  But I’m not going to see you in the future.

  ‘Perhaps there’s some place you’ve been with Harri?’ he goes on, smoothly. ‘Somewhere really quiet?’

  I think of the Zentral Friedhof – the long still avenues, the musicians’ corner. How silent and empty it was, the quietest place in the world.

  I hear myself suggesting this.

  52

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ says Harri.

  We walk down Schaumburgergasse. It’s an ordinary, quiet street – it doesn’t look very promising. It’s only four o’clock, but it’s dusk, and there aren’t many people about. Two men pass on the opposite pavement; when they speak, their voices are clear yet remote, like voices heard over water. Our feet crunch in the frosted snow, where the pavement hasn’t been cleared.

  There’s a high stone wall along the pavement, all hung with frosted ivy. A little way along the wall, we come to a low arched door.

  I want to tell Harri what happened – about Frank, and what I told him, in the cloister. I want Harri to make me feel different – less compromised, less unsure. To explain why, though I did what was right, I feel somehow contaminated. I hadn’t known this – that you could do a good thing and feel shamed. Dirty, even. This seems so strange to me. And is the opposite also possible? Could you do a bad thing, and feel pure?

  ‘Harri – there’s something I need to talk about…’

  ‘Me too. But first here’s something I’m going to show you,’ he says.

  He pushes at the door in the wall. It isn’t bolted, it opens. Though he has to push quite hard and it only moves a little way: snow must have drifted against it. We edge through the half-open door.

  Inside, there’s a neglected garden, all covered over with snow. Such a secret place to find in the heart of the city. The ground feels rough through the snow, as though it’s never tended or mown. We stumble on things that are buried – bushes, stone steps, dead flower-stalks. The surface of the snow is untouched, except for the delicate stitchery of the footprints of birds. A few flakes of snow are falling in a soft, thin silence.

  In the middle of the garden, there’s an ornate, abandoned building. Some minor prince’s winter palace, perhaps, its roof caved in and open to the sky – a mouldering remnant of the Vienna of the emperors. There are white stone figures around the edge of the roof – languorous women with breasts as full and heavy as fruit, and with drapery falling from them. They have the air of women lost in a daydream, and snow has lodged in the loops and folds of their clothes.

  The wall shuts out all the street noise. It’s so quiet.

  ‘Oh,’ I say.

  He smiles, like someone who has achieved something.

  ‘I knew you’d like it,’ he says.

  ‘But aren’t we trespassing? I mean, it must belong to someone.’

  ‘Doesn’t look like it. It’s just been abandoned,’ he says.

  ‘How did you know this place was here?’

  ‘I used to play here sometimes, when I was a kid,’ he tells me. ‘It’s always been like this. You never seem to see anyone here.’

  There are trees in the garden – sprawling, never pruned, with mistletoe clumps in their branches; the berries have a milky glimmer in the thickening light. In the shadows under the trees, the snow is the waxy blue of spring flowers.

  He takes my hand. We walk towards the small broken palace, stepping softly, as though we might awaken something.

  There’s a rotting door, pulled-to, not properly shut. He turns to me, his face a question.

  My mind is full of the things I was going to say, that I needed to tell him. But as he turns to me there, I tell myself none of this matters – Frank Reece, Rainer, the thoughts that war in me. Only this matters: this magical place, my lover turning to me, a little snow falling, dusting his hair and his coat. The way he looks at me, the hunger.

  ‘Darling – shall we?’

  I nod.

  He pushes open the door.

  We find ourselves in an empty room, with a ghost of plaster on the walls. Snow has blown in, and there’s rubbish in the corners – cigarette stubs, a broken bottle. A startled
pigeon flies out through a hole in the roof, with a sound like the ripping of cloth, alarming me. The place has a smell at once cold and stuffy, a scent of mould and secrecy.

  He moves me gently back against the wall; I feel its chill against me.

  I reach out to touch his scarred face, wanting him so much; hesitate.

  ‘Stella, what’s the matter?’ he says.

  ‘I’m frightened of hurting you,’ I say.

  ‘Don’t be,’ he says. ‘You won’t hurt me. You couldn’t.’

  He starts to unbutton my coat; he eases his hands inside my clothes. The feel of this stops my breath – his cold hands moving over me, where my skin was warm under my clothes; his fingers opening me, entering me. He moves one finger, tracing out little circles on the small bud of flesh, and I have a sensation of falling; I am utterly lost. When cries start to break from me, he seals my mouth with his mouth. He lifts me up, so I can wrap my legs around him; enters me. His warm slide into me thrills me. He moves so urgently in me; and comes quickly, with a sigh.

  Afterwards, we hold one another for a long time.

  As we leave the abandoned palace, the snow is falling more heavily, on the mistletoe berries, the languid women, the footprints we made when we came. There’s no wind at all, it’s so still, just the snow falling and falling.

  Harri is happy, playful. He takes a stick, writes with the stick in the snow. ‘Ich liebe Stella.’ I love Stella. This always delights me, his fondness for these impulsive romantic gestures. But I feel a brief, surprising sadness as well, here in the twilight, in the dreaming, buried garden. In the gathering dark, it’s so beautiful, yet also a little deathly. I remember what he told me about the death instinct – the impulse that can undermine and sabotage our lives. Our striving for oblivion. Everything returning to its original form. These ideas seem more real to me here, in the cold and the stillness. The fallen snow has a violet glow in the dusk: it’s a spectral colour, unreal.

  We walk back down Schaumburgergasse.

  ‘Darling, what was that thing you wanted to talk about?’ he asks me.

  But after such sweet sex, I don’t want to think about Frank.