Airs Above the Ground (21 page)

Timothy, laden with the saddle, stood staring after her. Elemer said something to Rudi, who, smiling, went off down the stable. The dwarf came across.

‘I have sent him to get a bridle. How will you take the horse?’

‘We’re staying up at the castle,’ I said. ‘Tim’s going to lead him up there, and I’ve made arrangements for him to be stabled. I can take the saddle up myself in the car.’

‘I’m afraid you will have a lot of work to make it plain again.’

‘Think nothing of it, I’ll do it tonight. Look, are you sure she won’t want the trimmings back? Some of them are awfully pretty . . . Look at this one. You know, that would look lovely on a dress – stage jewellery, of course, but it’s really very pretty, with the gold filigree and tremblers, and anyway, it wouldn’t matter if it didn’t look real: who’d wear a sapphire that size, apart from Grand Duchesses?’ I fingered the jewel; it was a big brooch, loosely stitched to the pommel, and flashed in the light as I touched it.

‘Why don’t you wear it, then? It will suit you. It’s loose anyway.’ And before I could protest, the dwarf had produced a knife from somewhere, and had cut the ‘jewel’ from the pommel, and handed it to me with a
little bow that was unspeakably grotesque, and yet not comic at all.

‘Wear it and remember us all,
gnädige Frau
. It is a pretty thing, but your eyes make it look dim. I wish it could be real. Here is your bridle. Let Rudi put the saddle in the car for you.
Auf Wiedersehen, mein Herr
,’ this to Timothy, and then, taking my hand and kissing it: ‘
Küss die Hand, gnädige Frau
.’

The ungainly little figure shambled out with its comic red costume flapping round the tiny legs.

As far as I could see, from an examination of Piebald’s leg, there was nothing to stop Timothy leading the horse the couple of miles uphill to the castle. As I told him cheerfully, the exercise would do them both nothing but good. ‘I’ll go straight up there myself now, and I’ll expect you when I see you. Are you going to stay to see the high school act again?’

‘I don’t think so. I – I feel this is a good moment to leave on, somehow,’ said Timothy, very creditably. For a first kiss it had been a pretty good one, and public, at that.

‘For both of us,’ I said. ‘Then
auf Wiedersehen
yourself, Tim, and take care of our horse.’

I had left the car, unlocked, just outside the field gate. By the time I reached it Rudi had already left the saddle on the back seat, and gone back to his job. I could hear the bursts of applause for the clowns’
entrée
Soon the trumpets would sound, and the white stallion would be making for the ring – tonight with only half his jewels.

I got into the car, and was reaching for my handbag to get out my key, when I realised that I had left the bag in Annalisa’s wagon. Annoyed with myself for the delay – for I was anxious to find out if Lewis had arrived yet – I got out of the car and ran back to the wagon.

The bag was just where I had left it, on the seat under the bird cage. The parrot, which was sulkily eating a tomato, cocked its head to one side, and made some remark in German which sounded extremely rude.

I said: ‘Get stuffed, mate,’ picked up the bag, and ran down the wagon steps.

I collided with Sandor Balog. Whether he had just been passing, or whether he had been intending to go up into the wagon, I didn’t know, but we were both moving fast, and I almost fell. His hands shot out and steadied me. They were remarkably strong, and, startled as he was, he must have gripped me harder than he had meant to; I remember that I cried out, not only with the start he had given me, but with the pain of his grip.

He muttered something, and let me go.

In my turn I had started some sort of breathless apology when his voice broke curtly across mine. ‘Where have you been?’

I stared at him in some surprise. ‘What do you mean?’

He jerked his head towards the wagon door. ‘She’s not in there. She’s in the ring, or will be in a moment. What were you doing?’ His eye had even flicked down to the handbag which I held.

I said, coldly: ‘What do you think I was doing? Stealing something?’

‘You were talking to someone.’

‘Yes, I was. Him.’ It was my turn to jerk my head towards the wagon door.

He gave me a queer look from those narrow black eyes, then took a swift step past me, peering up into the lighted doorway. He was dressed ready for his act in the striking black costume that I had seen poised so spectacularly in the lights and shadows of the big top, and he had wrapped a long cloak round himself, in which he looked rather splendid and satanic – and as if he would be the first to think so.

He turned back, looking a little at a loss. I got the impression that he had started something he hadn’t meant to – that some other urgent preoccupation had jerked him into speaking as he had done, and that now he was out of his reckoning.

‘Do you mean that damned bird?’

‘Who else?’

‘Get stuffed, mate,’ said the parrot, and threw a piece of tomato accurately at the door-jamb. It ran soggily down the wood.

The Hungarian opened his mouth, thought better of what he was going to say, and shut it again. He moved out of the parrot’s range, trying to keep it casual. For my part, I was trying not to laugh. If the circus hadn’t been crossing the border next morning I would have sent the parrot a crate of tomatoes with my compliments.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Sandor Balog at length. The apology sat even more badly on him than the aggressive inquiries had done. ‘I did not for a moment realise who it was. You . . . are differently dressed. We get many strangers who come round, and . . .’ He shrugged his wide shoulders, not finishing the sentence. ‘Is the boy here?’

‘Yes, he’s down in the stable.’ I left it at that. I could see no reason why I should offer any further explanation to Sandor Balog. I wondered why, if he had not at first recognised me, he had seen fit to address me in English; but this was another question which I did not particularly wish to explore.

Behind him the music of
Der Rosenkavalier
swayed and swung in the shadows. Fleetingly, I wondered if old Piebald was doing his
pas seul
down in the crowded stable. I rather thought not. It was something kept for solitude.

I said, pleasantly enough: ‘There’s Annalisa’s music now. It’ll be you next. I shan’t be seeing you again, so I’ll say good night, and good luck.’

But he didn’t move. ‘Where did you get that?’ He was looking at the jewel on my frock.

‘Now, look,’ I said, ‘I told you I hadn’t been stealing. That was a present, a parting gift if you like to call it that, a souvenir. But don’t worry, it isn’t real, it’s off the Lipizzan’s saddle. I’ve had quite a bit of loot tonight, one way and another. Good night.’

I turned away abruptly and headed for the gate. I thought for a moment that he was going to say something more, but the applause from the big top warned
him and held him back. He turned with a swirl of his black cloak and went rapidly the other way.

The parrot started, in an unpleasant, wavering falsetto, to sing ‘O for the wings of a dove’.

He found a stable for his steed,
And welcome for himself, and dinner
.

W. M. Praed:
The Vicar

It was the Count himself who greeted me on my return to the castle.

It was dusk now, and here and there in the castle lights pricked out yellow in the gloom. A lamp over the arched gateway cast a small pool of light on to the bridge: there was another over the main door, and others, here and there in the narrow windows, threw a pattern of light and shadow over the cobbled court. High up in a turret a solitary lighted window made one think of fairy tales again; Curdie’s grandmother might sit spinning there, or Rapunzel of the long hair, or Elsa watching for the seven swans.

As I parked the car prosaically at one side of the court, and mounted the steps, the Count came out of the great door.

‘Ah, Mrs March,’ he greeted me, then stopped, looking past me at the car almost as if he had never seen such a thing before. I remembered our theory that his guests normally came in a coach and six. ‘Did I not
understand that you proposed to stable a horse for the night?’

‘Oh, yes, please, I do, but he’ll be brought up later. Timothy – that’s the young man I was with – he’ll be bringing him.’

‘Ah, your man will bring him. I see.’ Now his eye fell on the saddle lodged in the back seat of the car. If he noticed the vulgarity of its jewelled and tinselled trappings he made no sign. ‘I see you have brought your saddle up yourself. Josef will carry it in for you, but meantime I am sure you will want to see for yourself where we shall house your horse.’

‘I think—’ I began, but he had already turned away to cross the courtyard towards the west side, the side nearest the mountain, where the entrance archway divided into two what must be the store-rooms and outbuildings of the castle. From the gate to the northwest corner I could see a line of smaller arches; one or two of these were shut by heavy studded doors, but the three nearest the corner were open. I saw something which could have been the bonnet of a car, gleaming in the darkness behind the centre one of these, and in the bay to the left of it the glint of some brightly spoked vehicle which I couldn’t see properly, but which from its height I guessed might even be the coach and six.

The Count pushed open one of the doors in an arch which might have belonged to a young cathedral, and took down a lantern from its hook. This, he proceeded to light – not, to my disappointment, with a tinderbox, but with a perfectly ordinary match. Then, with a brief
apology for leading the way, he went ahead of me, holding the lantern high.

Not even the brushed and combed tidiness of Tim’s grandfather’s racing stables had prepared me for such splendour as I now saw. This was a decayed and cobwebbed splendour, it was true, but in the wavering light cast by the lantern held high above the old man’s head, the empty magnificence of the stables was impressive in a haunted Gothic way that the comforts of modern living had dispelled from the castle itself. This was the real thing, a sharply evocative glimpse of a whole vanished way of life. Almost the only thing that had survived from this corner of that way of life, I reflected, was the unbreakable rule which still held good; that you attended to your horse’s comfort before you saw to your own.

Nothing, it seemed, had been too good for the Zechstein horses. The place was vaulted like a church, the interlaced arches of the ceiling springing from pillars of some dark mottled stone which could have been serpentine. The walls were panelled up to the proper height with what could only be black oak, and the partitions between the boxes – there were no stalls – were of the same wood faced and inlaid. On the wall over each box was carved a large shield surmounted by a crest, and on the shields, dim in the shadows, I could see Gothic lettering. I couldn’t read it, but I guessed that these were still the names of the vanished horses, each above his box. It was no surprise to see that the mangers appeared to be made of marble.

The place was, of course, by no means empty. Since
the inmates had disappeared the clutter of years had gradually built up in the boxes and the fairway. Through an open door at the far end of the stable I could see – as the Count led me that way – what I had guessed to be the coach and six, standing in the arcaded coach-house beyond. It was indeed a carriage of some kind; the edge of the lantern’s glimmer caught the gold picked out on the wheels and doors. Parked beyond it, and looking less incongruous than one would have imagined, was the sleek gleam of the modern car.

The box at the end of the stable was empty, and looked swept and clean. The manger had been scoured out, and beside it was a bale of straw. As the old man held the lantern up I saw the name on the carved shield above the box: ‘Grane’. The Count said nothing, and I didn’t ask, but I had a strong feeling that the loose-box had not just been swept out and the manger scoured for old Piebald: I thought it was kept that way. The name looked freshly painted, and the metal corn bin against the wall by the coach-house door was comparatively new.

‘You will see,’ said the Count, ‘that there is a peg for your bridle here at the side of the box. Josef will show your man the saddleroom, and the feed.’

I had already decided that the horse would be better out grazing for the night, and I had noticed a pleasant little alp, just nicely sheltered by trees and less than a hundred yards from the bridge, but I certainly hadn’t the heart to say so. I thanked the Count, admired the stable, and listened for a while to his gentle reminiscences
of past days as he led me back towards the door. Here he stood back for me to pass him, and then reached up to put the lantern, still lit, back where it had hung before.

‘Your man will doubtless put it out when he has finished here.’ Then, as the light swung high, something about me seemed to catch his attention. I saw that, like Sandor a short time ago, he was looking at the ‘jewel’ on my lapel.

He was a good deal more civil than Sandor had been.

‘Forgive me, I was admiring your jewel. It is a very pretty thing.’

I laughed. ‘It’s not really a jewel at all, I’m afraid, it’s just a trinket. It was given me by someone down at the circus in the village as a souvenir. Perhaps I should have told you before – the horse I’m looking after has been with the circus for a little while, and he was hurt, so they’re leaving him in my care for a day or two.’ I touched the brooch. ‘I suppose this is a little token of gratitude for what I did; it’s only glass; I admired it and they took it off the horse’s saddle for me. It is pretty, isn’t it?’

‘Very pretty.’ He peered more closely, with a little apology. ‘Perhaps, yes, perhaps one can see that it is, after all, not real. I suppose that if it were, you would not be wearing it, but it would be safely locked away. A jewel that one can wear without fear is after all the best kind of jewel. No, what drew my attention was that it looked familiar. Come with me, and I will show you.’

He led me at a brisk pace back across the courtyard, up the steps and across the hall through the door marked ‘Private’.