A Glove Shop In Vienna (16 page)

‘Gussie’s the name,’ said Gussie sadly. ‘The thing is, I
have
to go out and I share a chaperone with Miss United Kingdom and she—’

‘Oh, aye. Heard of her. A proper Tartar. She’ll win, mind. I’ve got a fiver on her.’

‘Have you?’ Gussie’s eyes lit up. ‘You wouldn’t put some money on for me, would you?’

The guard nodded and added his views on the likely order of the runners-up. Then he said, ‘Well, I suppose you won’t come to any harm. I’ll turn my back for a moment – but don’t be out long, mind.’

Gussie thanked him and set off for the shops. The raffia proved surprisingly difficult, the golfing umbrellas amazingly expensive. But in that Mecca of pipe smokers, Dunhills, she found for her father a briar pipe as strong and finely made as any Stradivarius. This done, she wandered delightedly along Piccadilly, flattening her nose with indiscriminate enthusiasm against windows displaying exotic cheeses, necklaces plucked from Egyptian mummies or gentlemen’s shirts. And found herself standing entranced by the gates of a little churchyard with an ancient, propped catalpa tree, a fountain flanked by greening cherubs, squares of lovingly framed grass…

She went in. An old woman sat on a bench, knitting. A quiet-faced statue held out an olive branch. The church, graceful and simple, was by Wren.

Suddenly she stopped, amazed. The only man she knew in England was standing with bent head, looking at a plaque set in the sooty wall.

He turned. ‘Oh!’ said Gussie. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Richard managed a smile. ‘It’s all right. It’s not private, this place.’

‘It’s so beautiful. As though… everything that makes up London is compressed into it. You know, like in that poem: “A box where sweets compacted lie”.’

‘Yes.’ There was a pause. Then he said, ‘My wife loved it. We met here. A pick-up. She was drawing the catalpa.’

Gussie looked past him at the plaque in the wall: ‘In Memory of Caroline Whittacker’. No inscription. No date.

‘I killed her,’ said Richard.

Gussie was silent, became part of the leaning tree, the sooty wall, scarcely breathed.

‘I was driving. They said it wasn’t my fault —the man who hit us was drunk. But
I
was driving. And I didn’t have a scratch. Not a single scratch.’

Gussie looked up, saw his face. Then, without really meaning to, she began to cry.

Two nights before the actual contest, Gussie went to bed early. She had swopped beds with Delma who had discovered a draught from the window by the fire escape, washed out five pairs of Miss United Kingdom’s tights and now, leaving her room-mate locked in some mysterious ritual in the bathroom, composed herself for sleep.

She was just drifting off when she heard the window slide softly open and, lifting her head, saw the curtains parted by a black-gloved hand. But even as she tried to cry out, the masked man had reached her, was pressing something down over her face… and everything went dark.

The kidnap of Miss Toto Islands from the Woodward Hotel produced a furore in the press. Pictures of what everybody hoped was the Toto Islands appeared in all the papers, along with speculations about the island’s importance as a source of uranium, oil or foreign agents. The girls who had befriended Gussie (which seemed to be almost all of them) were interviewed; Miss Trinidad and Tobago went into a decline.

‘It’s me they were after, Richard, you do realise that, don’t you?’ said Delma furiously. ‘It was
me
! I changed beds with Gussie.’

‘Yes, the police know all that,’ said Richard absently. He had neither eaten nor slept since Gussie had vanished, rushing between Scotland Yard, the Woodward and Galaxy.

‘You do seem in a state,’ said Delma. ‘Why, you hardly know the girl.’

Richard smiled crookedly. ‘Don’t I?’ he said – and was gone.

Gussie woke in a bare room with drawn blinds. She was lying on a pile of blankets and two men were standing over her looking extremely sick.

‘Oh, my Gawd!’ said the elder, poking Gussie with his shoe.

‘Well, it wasn’t my fault. She was where you said, on the bed by the window. How do you know it’s the wrong one?’

‘Look, England may be in a bad way but we ‘aven’t got so as we’re sending something like that in for Miss Galaxy. The one we wanted ‘ad boobs like melons and she’s the floozy of that guy in Galaxy who’s in charge of it all.’

‘You said—’

‘Aw, shut up, will yer?’ He stared down at Gussie again. ‘Who the hell’s going to give us a quarter of a million quid for
that
? Not Galaxy. Not anyone.’

Gussie closed her eyes again. So Galaxy was going to be in trouble because of her — and Galaxy meant Richard. Richard who loved Delma but had been so wonderfully kind. Surely -oh, surely — there had to be something she could do?

The show, however, had to go on. The girls were herded into the Albert Hall, paraded up and down ramps and told to smile at ‘camera one’ as though it was their mother. Bookies touted the odds, with Miss United Kingdom still hotly the favourite; technicians hammered, sound engineers with earphones called to each other like courting kittiwakes. The judges, a panel of eight celebrities, were assembled. Police were everywhere, reporters hid in the dressing-rooms. The kidnap of Miss Toto Islands had sent interest in the contest soaring sky-high and thirty million viewers were expected in Great Britain alone.

Richard, in charge, continued to look like a man on the rack. Galaxy had had a ransom note for a quarter of a million and the Old Man was moving like a snail.

In the Albert Hall, now, everything was ready. The red light went on and Miss Australia, in the fringed leather mini-skirt and plunging satin blouse so beloved of the outback, led the procession on to the stage.

Delma, in her skin-tight Union Jack, received the ovation due to the local candidate. The compere’s voice-over informed thirty million viewers that she was a fashion model, 34—24—34, with raven hair and dark blue eyes. Miss Uruguay, who followed her, tripped over her shoes.

The girls vanished to change into evening dress. A pop group played, the judges conferred, speculation spread through the audience packed tier upon tier up to the roof.

‘Still no news,’ said Richard and Miss Trinidad and Tobago, now mercifully eliminated, began to cry.

Fifteen contestants went forward in their swim-suits, then seven… Miss United Kingdom, needless to say, was one of them.

The compere moved in for the interview.

Miss Belgium said she was a pedicurist, liked snorkeling and wished to meet Prince Charles.

Miss Sweden was a ski instructress, loved animals and wished to travel.

What Miss Guam wished no one could discern, since she didn’t appear to speak anything- not even, within the meaning of the act, Guamese.

Miss United Kingdom now stepped forward, smiled at camera one as though it was her mother and prepared to tell the compere of her desire to relieve the sufferings of the poor.

Only the compere, incredibly enough, was not looking at her. No one was looking at her and the camera crew had gone beserk. So that on TV screens everywhere the viewers saw what the audience in the Albert Hall itself was seeing. Caught in the spotlight, a dishevelled, lightly-blood-stained girl come limping up the aisle towards the stage.

And the audience rose as to a man and roared.

‘You won, then?’ said Dr MacLeod, leading his incandescent daughter from the air-strip.

Gussie waved to the orphans, school-children and villagers assembled with banners to meet her and rubbed her face against her father’s sleeve. ‘Oh, yes, I won! Most fantastically and marvellously did I win! There’s no winner in the world like me!’ She glanced up shyly at her father. ‘Richard thinks I wouldn’t transplant. He’s a research chemist, a first-class one and he’s got some money saved. Could you use him for the hospital lab?’

‘Could I?’ said Dr MacLeod. ‘My God,
could
I?’ He broke off to stare at the mountainous luggage now emerging from the little plane. ‘Good heavens – that must have cost you a bit in excess baggage!’

Gussie beamed. ‘It did but Galaxy paid. They reckoned I’d saved them a quarter of a million by jumping out of the window. Not that I needed it, because I’m absolutely rolling; I cleaned up on my bets! A terribly nice security guard put some money on for me and he got them all right: Miss United Kingdom first, Miss Sweden second, Miss Guam third -just like he said. I’ve got absolute mountains of raffia!’

Dr MacLeod looked at his blissful daughter, opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. Time enough to tell Gussie that another expert had flown out from Brisbane and that the lepers, totally uninterested now in handiwork, were into creative writing… were, in fact, waiting for her to edit a magazine already entitled
Scream!
…

This is a true story, the story of a Christmas in Vienna in the years before the First World War. Not only is it a true story, it is a most dramatic one, involving love, conflict and (very nearly) death — and this despite the fact that the hero was a fish.

Not any fish, of course: a mighty and formidable fish, the Great Carp Ferdinand. And if you think the story is exaggerated and that no fish, however mighty, could so profoundly affect the lives of a whole family, then you’re wrong. Because I have the facts first-hand from one of the participants, the littlest niece’ in the story, the one whose feet, admittedly, failed to reach even the first rung of the huge leather-backed, silver-buttoned dining-room chairs, but whose eyes cleared the table by a good three inches so that, as she frequently points out, she saw it all. (She came to England, years later, this littlest niece, and became my mother, so I’ve kept tabs on the story and checked it for accuracy time and again.)

The role the Great Carp Ferdinand was to play in the life of the Mannhaus family was simple, though crucial. He was, to put it plainly, the Christmas dinner. For in Vienna, where they celebrate on Christmas Eve and no one, on Holy Night, would dream of eating meat, they relish nothing so much as a richly-marinated, succulently roasted carp. And it is true that until
you
have tasted fresh carp with all the symphonic accompaniments (sour cream, braised celeriac, dark plum jam) you have not, gustatorily speaking, really lived.

But the accent is on the word
fresh
. So that when a grateful client with a famous sporting estate in Carinthia presented Onkel Ernst with a live twenty-pounder a week before Christmas, the Mannhaus family was delighted. Onkel Ernst, a small, bandy-legged man whose ironic sympathy enabled him to sustain a flourishing solicitor’s practice, was delighted. Tante Gerda, his plump, affectionate wife, was delighted. Graziella, their adorable and adored eighteen-year-old daughter, was delighted, as was Herr Franz von Rittersberg, Graziella’s ‘intended’, who loved his food. Delighted too, were Tante Gerda’s three little nieces, already installed with their English governess in readiness for the great Mannhaus Christmas, and delighted were the innumerable poor relations and rich godfathers whom motherly Tante Gerda collected every Christmas Eve to light the candles on the great fir tree, open their presents and eat… roast carp.

Accommodation for the fish was not too great a problem. The house in Vienna was massive and the maids, simple country girls accustomed to scrubbing down in wooden tubs, cheerfully surrendered the bathroom previously ascribed to their use.

Here, in a gargantuan mahogany-sided bath with copper taps which gushed like Niagara, the huge, grey fish swam majestically to and fro, fro and to, apparently oblivious both of the glory of his ultimate destiny and the magnificence of his setting. For the bathroom was no ordinary bathroom. French tea roses – marvellous, cabbage-sized blooms – swirled up the wallpaper, were repeated on the huge china wash-bowl and echoed yet again in the vast chamber-pot – a vessel so generously conceived that even the oldest of the little nieces could have sunk in it without a trace.

And here to visit him as the procession of days marched on towards Christmas came the various members of the Mannhaus family.

Onkel Ernst came, sucking his long, black pipe with the porcelain lid. Not a sentimental man, and one addicted to good food, he regarded the carp’s ultimate end as thoroughly fitting. And yet, as he looked into the marvellously unrevealing eye of the great, grey fish, admired the gently-undulating whiskers (so much more luxuriant than his own sparse moustache), Onkel Ernst felt a distinct sense of kinship with what was, after all, the only other male in a houseful of women. And as he sat there, drawing on his pipe, listening to the occasional splash as the carp broke water, Onkel Ernst let slip from his shoulders for a while the burden of maintaining the house in Vienna, the villa in Baden-Baden, the chalet on the Worther See, the dozen or so of Gerda’s relatives who had abandoned really rather early, the struggle to support themselves. He forgot even the juggernaut of bills which would follow the festivities. Almost, but not quite, he forgot the little niggle of worry about his daughter, Graziella.

Tante Gerda, too, paid visits to the carp – but briefly, for Christmas was something she could never trust to proceed even for a moment without her. She came hung about with lists, her forehead creased into its headache lines, deep anxieties curdling her brain. Would the tree clear the ceiling — or, worse still, would it be too short? Would Sachers send the meringue and ice-cream swan in time? Should one (really a worry, this) ‘send’ to the Pfischingers, who had not ‘sent’ last year but had the year before? Oh, that terrible year when the Steinhauses had sent a basket of crystallized fruit at the very last minute, when all the shops were shut, and she had had to re-wrap the potted azalea the Hellers had given and send it to the Steinhauses – and then spent all Christmas wondering if she had removed the label!

Bending over the fish, Tante Gerda pondered the sauce. Here, too, was anxiety. Celeriac, yes, lemon, yes, onion, yes, peppercorns, ginger, almonds, walnuts – that went without saying. Grated honeycake, of course, thyme, bay, paprika and dark plum jam. But now her sister, writing from Linz, had suggested mace… The idea was new, almost revolutionary. The Mannhaus carp, maceless, was a gastronomic talking-point in Vienna. There were the cook’s feelings to be considered. And yet… even Sacher himself was not afraid to vary a trusted recipe.