The English Girl

by Margaret Leroy

  ‘Of course, Stella. But will you try to get that information for me?’

  I open my mouth to say no, to tell him this is all over now. I’ve looked at the photographs, I’ve done what he asked me: this is where it ends.

  But even as I think that, there’s a flicker of something inside me, hot and intense as fever – an urgent curiosity, to learn what is hidden in Rainer’s study, what he keeps in his desk. What answers I might find there.

  Frank is watching my face.

  ‘I’m relying on you, Stella.’

  It’s my moment to be clear – to say I won’t do what he’s asking of me.

  But I stub out my cigarette and wrap my scarf closely over my mouth; and say nothing.

  55

  I’m going to tell Harri everything. All about Frank, and what he’s asking. Harri will help me understand how I feel, and what I should do.

  He’s waiting for me in the Frauenhuber, at our usual table. But when I see him, I’m not so sure that this is the time for such a difficult conversation. His appearance worries me – his skin is too pale; there are smudges of dark round his eyes. I wonder if he’s entirely recovered from his injuries.

  ‘You don’t look well,’ I tell him.

  A slight rueful smile.

  ‘Don’t worry, my dearest. I’m just a bit tired,’ he tells me.

  ‘Is it work? You always work so terribly hard. You ought to take things a bit easily, after what happened,’ I say.

  But somehow I know it isn’t his work that has put these shadows in his face. There’s a tremor somewhere inside me.

  ‘No, it’s not work. I can’t sleep, Stella,’ he says.

  I’m suddenly very still. If I sit here as still as a stone, as still as some small cowering creature, then perhaps the dark-winged thing will pass me by. Perhaps the thing I dread won’t happen.

  He’s looking down into his coffee, not looking at me. He takes off his glasses and rubs his hand over his face; he has a slightly dazed air, as though his face feels unfamiliar to him.

  ‘There’s something we have to talk about,’ he tells me. Then is quiet for a moment, as though this something is too hard for him to say.

  My favourite waiter brings my coffee. I’m so happy to see him; I’d like to engage him in bright, inconsequential conversation, to keep him here, postpone the moment. He puts down my coffee and goes.

  Harri reaches out and puts his hand lightly on mine. I feel how cold his skin is. I hear the click as he clears his throat, as if the words are solid things in his mouth.

  ‘Stella, my darling … I don’t know quite how to tell you this – but I’m thinking of leaving,’ he says.

  It’s happening. I can’t stop it. However still and perfect I make myself.

  ‘I’ve been offered a post at Johns Hopkins,’ he says. Speaking so gently, his eyes on my face. ‘It’s not such a good job as I have here. But it’s a prestigious hospital. I’m really very fortunate that they’ve offered me a post.’

  Johns Hopkins? I feel confused. It’s not a name I recognise, though it has an English sound.

  ‘The professor of psychiatry there is Dr Adolf Meyer. He has a wonderful reputation. He’s a follower of Dr Freud. Perhaps you’ll have heard of him?’ he asks me.

  But I haven’t.

  ‘Where is it – this hospital?’ I say, in a small, ragged voice.

  ‘It’s in Baltimore. In America, Stella.’

  My breath is snatched away.

  ‘I’m so fortunate really that I can leave,’ he tells me. ‘Most people are stuck here. I don’t think my mother will try to leave – she doesn’t see how she can. It would be just too difficult – starting all over again somewhere else, and with my grandfather so frail…’

  When did he apply for the post? When did he make this decision? I think of him doing all this; not sharing any of it with me. Making love to me in the broken winter palace in the snow, with this knowledge heavy in him. I feel in a way betrayed – though I know I’m not being fair to him.

  ‘Why didn’t you…?’ I can’t finish the sentence.

  ‘Why didn’t I tell you before?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I didn’t want to tell you till I’d decided,’ he says. ‘Until I was certain. So we could go on as we were, be happy for a while. Just snatch a little more happiness in Vienna.’ He sounds defeated. He stares down into his coffee cup. ‘Maybe it was wrong of me.’

  ‘We love one another. You ought to have told me,’ I say.

  But I speak without conviction. Because I understand why he did what he did. I remember leaving the winter palace, in a sweet mood tinged with sadness: how I asked him what he wanted to say, and he said it could wait, and I felt a surge of relief. How I didn’t press him: choosing not to hear.

  ‘Maybe I should have said something. I didn’t know what to do for the best,’ he tells me.

  We are quiet for a moment, sitting there in a dense, sad silence. There’s a spurt of laughter from the bar, where the waiters are chatting together – sharing gossip, joking; as though this were just a perfectly ordinary day.

  And then all the pain rushes through me. I reach out, clutch at his arm.

  ‘But what will I do without you?’

  I see the sadness etched in his face.

  ‘You could come with me,’ he says. But I can tell he doesn’t believe this.

  I shake my head.

  ‘I can’t. You know I can’t. I have to finish my lessons. I have to stay here while Dr Zaslavsky can teach me. He’s old – I can’t just leave, and hope to come back when things are settled. I can’t just assume he would still be here to teach me again…’

  ‘Well, afterwards, then. You could come and join me when your lessons are over.’ He leans across the table, clasps one of my hands between his. ‘We could get married,’ he says quietly. ‘If you’d like that.’

  I’ve dreamed of him asking me to marry him – dreamed of a special, shiny moment, my happiest moment, illumined, bright and bubbly as champagne. Not like this.

  ‘Yes, I’d love that. I’d love to marry you. Of course. We’ll do that, won’t we?’

  But I can’t keep the sadness out of my voice.

  I’m trying so hard to be brave. I think of what Frank told me about Dr Schuschnigg at Berchtesgaden. Of the shift inside me, when he said that. I can’t go on pretending that everything will be fine – that people just have to be sensible. Part of me terribly wants to say: Stay with me. Wanting to clasp him to me, to hold him close for ever. I love you, you have to stay with me. But I don’t say it. I know I have to do this thing – I have to let him go. It’s just that it’s hard; it’s just that it hurts so much.

  The tears come, I can’t stop them. But even as I weep, I feel ashamed, because I’m only making it worse for him.

  He gives me his handkerchief, and I scrub at my face.

  ‘This is so stupid,’ I say, through my tears. I try to smile, but a little sob breaks from my mouth. ‘You’ve just asked me to marry you and I can’t stop crying.’

  ‘Oh, Stella.’

  ‘I love you so much,’ I tell him. ‘I can’t bear to lose you when I’ve only just found you…’

  ‘You’re not losing me, Stella. You’re not losing me. You’re not.’ Saying it over and over, as though to make it true. He reaches out and cups my wet face in his hands. His touch is so careful, so tender, as though I am infinitely breakable. ‘We can still have a life together. You can join me when your lessons are over. You have to.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes.’

  I make myself imagine it – me taking the boat to America to live with him there. I think of what I know of America; I think of Cole Porter, and glittery skyscrapers, and big bulbous limousine cars, like you see in Hollywood films. It seems so unreal, so remote, so impossibly complex. Such a long way ahead.

  ‘Yes,’ I say again. ‘Of course. Of course we will.’ My voice bright and shaky.

  We sit there silently for a moment. I fold his sodd
en handkerchief and give it back to him. And I make my mouth form the question I can scarcely bear to ask.

  ‘When, Harri?’

  ‘I’m working out the details now. I’m going to fly from the airport, from Aspern. I’ll take the train from Zurich, and then the boat from Le Havre. It’ll be in two or three weeks – perhaps the second Friday in March. Friday the eleventh,’ he tells me.

  ‘Oh.’

  I bite back the protest that forms in me, because this is so soon.

  56

  We meet less often. Harri has a lot of things to sort out. When we do meet, our time together is tinged with sadness.

  And night after night, as the time for him to leave draws nearer, I lie awake on my wet pillow. I think of the future I had imagined – the life I’d been so sure was beckoning to me, with a glorious inevitability to it.

  In that future, I would marry him, and we would live here in Vienna, in an apartment looking out over the Volksgarten, full of laughter and light. I see myself in that imagined future. I picture her so vividly, this woman I wanted to be.

  I see her wearing the dress of cornflower crêpe and the little bird pendant he gave. She’s in a glamorous room with gilt-framed mirrors on the walls. There’s a table laid for a dinner party, with opulent crystal – a wedding present: long-stemmed glasses and a decanter of wine, the wine glowing red as cornelian. There’s a piano where she practises, of some wonderful make – a Bösendorfer, perhaps. It’s summer. Through the tall windows you can see the leaves of the lindens outside, and the smell of summer comes into the room, and her heart is light as the linden leaves when the warm wind takes them. It’s her first dinner party as a married woman. She’s thrilled, but a little nervous. Her husband comes into the room, and he looks so beautiful to her, in his formal clothes. The doorbell rings, the first guests are arriving. He kisses her lightly, encouragingly, and they go to answer the door.

  Another scene. They’re still living in the apartment that looks out over the Volksgarten. But she’s a little older, a little more confident now. More serious, perhaps; responsible. In her arms she has a baby, who’s wrapped in a white lacy Christening gown. Her husband looks at them lovingly. We have to hurry, she tells him, or we’ll be late for the service. But he wants to capture the moment, and he takes out his Leica camera and photographs them there, in front of the tall windows, the bright southern light of a Viennese summer falling on them.

  I was so sure this future would happen – almost from when I first met him, from when I first fell in love. Believing this was all meant to be, all spooling out before me, the magic carpet of my future: the life that was waiting for me, here in Vienna. With him.

  I weep, because this is how things should be, how things were meant to be. And now all is uncertain. Something in me just goes on and on protesting, like a child. It was meant to happen, like this. It was. It was. This life was meant to be.

  But my protest doesn’t change anything.

  And one night as I lie there, raging against the people who have made this happen, the people who are driving Harri away, something comes to me. A decision – sudden and startling as the flare of a match in the dark. Clear, imperative, with no uncertainty to it. I shall act now. I see my way clear before me. I shall do the one thing I can do to oppose them. Whatever the risk, whatever the danger, I shall do what Frank asked me to do.

  57

  The keys on the rack are all neatly labelled in Marthe’s careful handwriting. I take the one that says ‘Study’, walk quietly down the hall. I listen for a moment, but the flat is almost empty. I have chosen my moment carefully. It’s Saturday morning. Rainer is at his office; Marthe and Lukas are visiting friends. I can hear Janika singing in the kitchen.

  It’s hard to fit the key in the lock – my hand is shaking. But once I get it in place, it turns smoothly. I unlock the door, then take the key back to the rack, so no one could see that I’ve used it. I go back to the room, and enter. Close the door.

  The windows look out over the courtyard. It’s quiet, no noise from the street. A single bell is ringing at the Piaristenkirche; it has a dull, mournful sound. It’s an overcast day, and it’s dim in here, the corners clotted with shadow. It takes a while for my eyes to grow accustomed to the dimness, to penetrate the thick sepia shade of the room.

  I’ve only ever had brief glimpses of this room before. I glance around, intensely curious. But at first sight, it’s all as you’d expect. An imposing mahogany desk; on the desk, a lamp with a green glass shade; a side table with brandy and glasses; ebony bookshelves with many leather-bound volumes; two tobacco-coloured leather armchairs. It could be the study of any affluent, cultured man. There’s a stove in the corner, but it hasn’t been lit.

  I catch a movement out of the corner of my eye. My pulse skitters; but it’s just my own reflection, caught in a gilt-framed mirror on the wall. I wait a moment, for my heart to quieten.

  I go to the desk and turn on the lamp.

  I scan the top of the desk, remember how Frank remarked that a diary will always be in an obvious place. But there’s nothing of any use – just a blotter, a bust of Nietzsche, a silver box of cigars. Tidy, predictable. No diary.

  There are three narrow drawers in the desk. I try to pull the top one open; it’s locked.

  That’s it, then. I’ve tried, but it isn’t possible. I feel a warm rush of relief; then a sudden, startling sag of disappointment.

  I should give up now, I tell myself: I did what Frank asked, I went as far as I could. I should leave the room, lock it up safely again, forget that I ever was here.

  But I find myself lingering for a moment, my curiosity not quite satisfied.

  I look at the books on his shelves. I’m always curious about what people read, what this reveals about them. There are books I’d expect – by Goethe, Schiller, Thomas Mann – and a few old children’s books, that perhaps were Rainer’s when he was a child. But there are many books whose authors I don’t recognise.

  I pull out one at random. Michael: A German Fate by Joseph Goebbels. I flick through. It seems to be some kind of introspective novel. I read sentences at random.

  ‘Every evening I read the Sermon on the Mount. I find no consolation in it, only despair and shame. Something is wrong about it…’

  I turn on a few pages.

  ‘Money rules the world! If true, this is a horrible statement. But today we die because it is a reality. Money and the Jew – they belong together…’

  I snap the book shut.

  I pull out another. Dietrich Eckart by Alfred Rosenberg. I open it up, flick through the pages.

  ‘From all this it follows that Judaism is part of the organism of mankind just as, let us say, certain bacteria are part of man’s body, and indeed the Jews are as necessary as bacteria…’

  I slide the book hastily back in its place.

  There’s a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. I remember what Frank once told me – how Hitler’s plans for Austria were there on the very first page. I open the book.

  ‘In my earliest youth I came to the basic insight, which never left me, but only became more profound – that Germanism could be safeguarded only by the destruction of Austria. Even then I had drawn the consequences from this realisation: ardent love for my German-Austrian homeland, deep hatred for the Austrian state…’

  I put the book back on the shelf. I shall go now. I’ve already learned rather more than I wanted to know. I reach out my hand to turn off the lamp on the desk.

  My eye falls on a silver key that lies in a black lacquered tray, along with a paper knife and a pair of small scissors for trimming cigars. It’s just outside the circle of light from the lamp; that must be why I didn’t see it before. I pick up the key, ease it into the keyhole in the top drawer, turn it. The drawer opens almost silently, with a slight exhaled breath.

  I work through the contents of the drawer with quick, careful fingers. There are invoices, household accounts – nothing of any interest. I think of Kitty Carpenter and
the copy of Men Only she filched from her father’s bureau. But I don’t imagine there’s anything of that sort in here.

  I lock it up, open the second drawer. On the top, there’s a black leather case. I open the catch, and gasp, seeing the pistol inside. I’ve never seen a gun so close. I shut the case quickly. I wonder what it means that he keeps this pistol in his drawer; why he thinks he could possibly have need of it here, in the seclusion of his study.

  I close and lock the second drawer safely, and unlock the bottom drawer. There’s a heap of papers lying in it, with a calfskin diary on top. I feel a brief surge of triumph, seeing the diary.

  Frank had said that Rainer might conceal the meetings, even in his diary. I have worked out and memorised the dates of the previous meetings: one was a few weeks after I first met Harri; one a Monday in December, just after the first snow. I find the first date in the diary. The page is blank – there’s no list of people attending, no agenda, no time for the meeting; but just below the date, he’s written an X. I turn to the second date: that too is marked with an X. I turn on, find an X against a date the week after next – 17 March. I have a feeling almost of let-down – that this is so straightforward. I’d expected something more challenging – a complex code, something I’d have to work out.

  I have the date now. That’s all the information Frank asked for. I could go now – should go. Someone could find me here – Rainer or Marthe could come home earlier than they’d intended. Every instant I stay in this room I am in danger. I shouldn’t linger a second more than I must.

  But I stand there a moment longer, with the diary in my hand. I’m afraid – but there’s something stronger. A curiosity, that burns in me like a fever. As though there is something else to be found here. An answer to a question that I am too frightened to ask.

  I hear footsteps in the hall, and the sound of a broom. Janika sweeping. I rapidly turn off the lamp. I’m glad I thought to put the key back on the rack, so nothing will look amiss to her. Her steps draw nearer. What if she comes in? She doesn’t clean in here, but she might need to light the stove. I look around desperately for a hiding place, but there’s nowhere. She’s just outside the door now. For a long chill moment, I see her shadow falling under the door, swaying with the rhythm of her sweeping. But then at last she moves on down the hallway.