School for Love (7 page)

Now, if Maria were going to do all these jobs, Felix could not help feeling, in a slightly guilty way that life would be much pleasanter. He had never been able to make his bed properly himself and when he awoke in the middle of the night to find the bedclothes on the floor and Faro crouching against him for warmth, he had felt a genuine hatred of the Lesznos while his sympathy with Miss Bohun became intense.

Although Miss Bohun had kindly said: ‘Don’t forget,
Felix, the sitting-room is as much yours as mine,’ Felix usually stayed in his own room when indoors. The sitting-room had a desolate air of shabby discomfort and, with the stairs leading into it and doors leading directly to garden and courtyard, it was very draughty. The single-bar electric fire was switched on, if at all, by Miss Bohun herself just before dinner began. Felix had been worried each evening by the sight of Mr Jewel’s very cold, old hands, until at last, he had run down one evening and switched the fire on at about six o’clock. It was no good; before he got back to the top of the stairs he heard Miss Bohun’s entry, her exasperated exclamation and then the ping of the fire being switched off.

When Felix came down to dinner that evening he found Mr Jewel and Frau Wagner already seated at the table. The fly-blown, solitary bulb in its age-yellowed shade threw down a circle of light; the rim of this cut across their faces. Their shoulders were hunched forward with cold, but they communicated to Felix less a physical than a mental discomfort. Mr Jewel introduced Frau Wagner, who pursed up her mouth to smile and nodded her head in a grand way. ‘How do you do?’ she said. A very refined English accent – almost, Felix thought, a joke accent, a ‘plum-in-the-mouth’ accent – lay over her Austrian accent like jam spread on butter. Mr Jewel sat grinning at Felix, but at the same time, somehow, he looked guilty and unhappy. Felix also felt guilty and unhappy because he felt bound to disapprove as much as Miss Bohun did of Mr Jewel’s bringing in Frau Wagner. That made it impossible for him to appear as friendly as politeness demanded.

Mr Jewel, usually silent, had suddenly become talkative and joking.

‘You ought to sit next to the lady,’ he said when Felix took the chair opposite her.

Felix blushed miserably, but stayed where he was.

‘He’s shy,’ said Mr Jewel.

Frau Wagner smiled.

‘He is so nice a boy,’ she said, ‘I like such fair hair.’

Frau Wagner sat stiffly upright and seemed very high above the table. She wore a dark green velvet frock trimmed with gold. The sleeves were wide and fell back when she raised her hands to show her gaunt pink arms. She had large aquiline features covered with a skin so thin it had the high mauve-pink tint of an albino. Felix could see she had tried to hide it beneath a coating of white powder. She was quite old, of course – fifty or more, but her long-bob hair, lint-white, made her look ancient.

Mr Jewel rubbed his hands together and said: ‘Do you think we could light the fire, eh? Do you think we dare?’ Felix, who could hear the dry, old skin crackling with cold, got up and switched on the fire.

‘You’re a brave boy!’ said Mr Jewel.

‘Ah, Alfred, it is not kind. Perhaps the boy will be blamed.’

‘No, I won’t,’ said Felix, his voice high with embarrassment. ‘I can put the fire on if I like.’

‘That’s right,’ said Mr Jewel, ‘the boy pays enough for what he gets.’

‘It’s not that,’ said Felix miserably.

Frau Wagner, smiling, her manners more elegant than before, cut across something Mr Jewel was about to say and asked: ‘And how do you like Jerusalem, Felix?’

‘It’s all right,’ said Felix, staring over to one side of the room.

‘Not much fun here, eh? No English boys, no football, no cricket. What do you do all day?’

‘Nothing much. I’m studying for matric’.’

‘Perhaps soon they will send you home?’

‘There’s a long waiting list.’

‘They should send such a boy home first, I think.’

‘Oh, no. First there are ladies with babies, and troops.’

Mr Jewel and Frau Wagner laughed together as though Felix had said something funny. They stopped abruptly. The door from the courtyard opened, then they gave another laugh when it was only Nikky who entered. He carried in the soup when it was too heavy for his mother. Now, holding the battered metal tureen in his hands, he kicked the door closed behind him and trailed across the room in his black coat with the astrakhan collar. Frau Wagner fixed on him and followed him with eyes of brilliant, inhuman blue. When he had put down the tureen, he glanced round the table with a look of insolent amusement and went.

‘But what a handsome butler!’

‘That’s Nikky,’ said Felix.

‘So? I have seen him, of course, at the King David and the Innsbrück Café. They tell me he is a Polish Count.’

Felix was rather puzzled. ‘He is Polish,’ he said, ‘but I don’t think he can be a Count. His father was
Herr
Leszno.’ But Felix’s doubts were lost to the world because as he spoke them the door opened again and Miss Bohun entered. She had on her lamb-skin coat, a scarf bound in a turban round her head. ‘So sorry,’ she said. ‘One of my flock needed advice. I hope you’re not waiting for me.’

‘But of course,’ cried Frau Wagner. ‘We must await our hostess.’

Miss Bohun hung up her coat and hurriedly unwound the scarf from her head so that her hair stood out in wisps. She came to the table holding knitted gloves and kept them on her knees during the meal.

She took no notice of Frau Wagner’s polite remark, but feeling the fire on her legs she jerked round and looked at it: ‘So glad you did not fail to light the fire,’ she said, ‘I am fortunate in never feeling the cold myself, but they
say
the winters here are chilly. Well, let us have some nice hot soup.’

She served the soup in a rapid, businesslike way, keeping her eyes off Frau Wagner. It was pale soup and no longer hot.

‘I see,’ Frau Wagner leant smiling towards Miss Bohun, ‘you have a Count for a butler! But how chic!’

Miss Bohun, surprised now into looking at her, frowned, as bewildered as Felix had been: ‘We haven’t got a butler,’ she said.

‘Frau Wagner means Nikky,’ said Felix. ‘He brought in the soup.’

‘Oh!’ Miss Bohun made no other comment, but said: ‘Excuse me if I eat quickly; I’ve got to go out.’

‘But how extraordinary to find a Polish Count who will work, I have never known it.’ Frau Wagner laughed and gave Miss Bohun a sidelong glance. ‘He must do it for love, I think.’

Miss Bohun put down her spoon and compressed her lips. She rang the bell.

Frau Wagner gave an exaggerated sigh, saying: ‘Ah-ha,’ as she did so. ‘I, too, must work. In Vienna how different! My husband had a great factory. We had such a house, such a park – the Nazis took all, they took my
husband, too, and now I must work. I am a cook. To think! Once I could not make water, now I make all.’

Mr Jewel guffawed and Felix began to giggle in spite of himself. Frau Wagner cocked an eye at them with the humorous sternness of a pantomime dame, revealing that she had had success before with that one. Miss Bohun, looking from one to the other of them, seemed bewildered, but when no one explained the joke, she became irritated and gave the bell a second ring. The others subsided under the noise. There was silence.

‘Really!’ Miss Bohun burst out. ‘What has happened to Frau Leszno?’ She was about to get up when Maria, wraith-thin, bent, her face dark and wrinkled as a prune, came in. Miss Bohun asked sharply: ‘Where is Frau Leszno?’

‘She sick.’

‘Sick!’ Miss Bohun spoke less with concern than with disgust. Maria picked up the empty tureen and as she went out with it Miss Bohun called after her: ‘Tell Frau Leszno to come here.’

Everyone was silenced by Miss Bohun’s annoyance. They scarcely breathed until Maria returned with the second course.

‘Frau Leszno in bed,’ she said.

‘What’s the matter with her?’

‘She got headache.’

‘But she
can’t
have a headache.’ Miss Bohun spoke with such decision that, looking round at the others, she felt forced to explain. ‘Frau Leszno is a member of the “Ever-Readies”. We don’t believe in illness.’

‘So?’ Frau Wagner made an elegant move of interest.

‘Frau Leszno say light in kitchen very bad and give her a headache.’ Maria left the room.

Miss Bohun clicked her tongue.

Frau Wagner asked in a tone high with interest: ‘Please to tell me, what is this “Ever-Readies”? It is like a trade name, is it not?’

‘“The Ever-Ready Group of Wise Virgins” existed long before trade names.’

‘How interesting, but please to tell me about it. I am greatly curious.’

Miss Bohun stood up to carve the meat. ‘I have no time now, I fear, to satisfy anyone’s curiosity.’

‘What a pity! But another time, yes?’

‘I cannot promise, Frau Wagner. We make a point of revealing our creed only to a select few. Please pass this to Frau Wagner.’ Miss Bohun gave to Felix on her left a plate which she might as easily have placed before Frau Wagner on her right. It held a sliver of meat so small that Felix felt compelled to say as he handed it over the table:

‘Are you sure you won’t have more than that?’

‘Oh no, oh no,’ said Frau Wagner, ‘I could not possibly eat more.’

Miss Bohun made no comment on this exchange. She cut off a meat sliver for each of the three remaining plates, then rang the bell and told Maria to take the joint away.

‘We have meat only once a week,’ she said to the table as the plates were passed, ‘so we must make it stretch. And we must think of the servants. Both the Lesznos and Maria are allowed their share. It pays to treat one’s servants well.’

‘Indeed yes,’ said Frau Wagner with feeling.

‘Also I make a point of never buying on the black market.’

‘
Never?
How then do you live?’ Frau Wagner’s surprise had in it admiration.

‘One can always make up with potatoes.’ Miss Bohun pushed the dish towards her.

‘Ah, your English boiled potatoes,’ Frau Wagner exclaimed with delight. She put on her plate two potatoes that seemed to be made of soap. ‘How clever a housewife you must be! My employer, Dr Zimmerman, buys meat every day (except, of course, Friday, when we have fish). He sees to the matter himself, personally; and
always
on the black market.’

‘I’ve no doubt. Even some English Government officials are remiss enough to encourage the black market. I buy nothing; except sometimes eggs. When they’re plentiful, they are cheaper on the black market – so it’s different.’

‘That is true,’ agreed Frau Wagner enthusiastically.

‘I don’t like boiled potatoes,’ Felix suddenly announced. ‘I like chips.’

Miss Bohun looked at him sharply and said:

‘Chips take too much cooking-oil.’ She had been eating at a great pace; now, the second course finished, she rose, holding her gloves in her hand. ‘You must excuse me. Felix will act as host. Here is the bell, Felix; ring it when you are ready.’ She rebound her head in her scarf. As she put on the sheepskin coat, Frau Wagner, who had been watching her with glittering eyes, exclaimed wildly: ‘What a lovely coat!’

This seemed to Felix most blatant flattery, but for some reason it made Miss Bohun unbend. She passed a hand over the dirty skin, then turned up a corner to look at the shaggy inside hair and said complacently: ‘It’s all right. It keeps me warm. But I’m afraid these coats are very common.’

‘Oh,’ breathed Frau Wagner, ‘last year they were common, yes. But not
this
year.’

‘Well, I must be off. I’ll say “good-night” Frau Wagner, you’ll be gone before I get back.’

As the door closed after Miss Bohun, Frau Wagner covered her mouth with her hand and laughed silently, Mr Jewel seemed to be trying not to laugh. Felix looked at the plates – all empty, except for a solitary cold potato which Frau Wagner and Mr Jewel refused in turn. He rang the bell. Maria brought in small plates, three dates on each. She took from the dresser some brass finger-bowls and filled them with water.

‘Very nice,’ she announced and, smiling round at them, she went.

When Frau Wagner and Felix had each eaten their dates, Mr Jewel offered them Miss Bohun’s share, but neither wanted them.

‘It’s too late for dates,’ said Felix, ‘they’re slimy and too sweet.’

‘Ah, Felix, you are a connoisseur!’ said Frau Wagner. ‘You know what is good.’

Felix smiled uncomfortably. He did not think Frau Wagner was laughing at him; he would have felt happier if she had been.

‘Tell me,’ she said to Mr Jewel, ‘where has our hostess gone so quickly?’

‘Don’t you know? She’s gone to see the other Wise Virgins.’

Frau Wagner gave a hoot of laughter and Felix laughed too, but he flushed slightly, still discomforted, scarcely knowing why. For moments, when there was a gleam of humour about her, Felix had thought Frau Wagner ‘great
fun’, but all the time he could not help feeling in her the quality that Miss Bohun did not like. Like the lion in the puzzle picture, once seen it was difficult to see anything else.

Mr Jewel seemed to feel Felix’s discomfort. He rubbed his hands together between his knees and grinned at Felix. As though they were boys of the same age, he said: ‘I wonder if we could get some coffee?’

‘But we never have coffee at night.’

‘This is a special occasion. I bet Nikky’s making some for himself – he always does; I’ve
smelt
it. If Frau Leszno is in bed, he might make us some. You go, Felix, you can get round him.’

Felix, startled and yet flattered by this mis-statement, whispered: ‘Oh, he wouldn’t let me have any.’

‘Go on,’ said Mr Jewel. ‘He’s not a bad sort.’

Against his own judgment Felix went out to the kitchen. Before he reached the kitchen door he heard Miss Bohun’s voice coming from Frau Leszno’s room and he paused, on the point of escape. Miss Bohun was speaking sternly, ‘. . . whatever the excuse, Frau Leszno, never – I repeat,
never
– again send in and say in front of visitors you are unwell. It’s letting the side down.’

Then came Frau Leszno’s high whine, but Felix could not hear what she said. ‘As far as the attic is concerned,’ Miss Bohun replied: ‘I can’t make any promises, but I’ll think about it. I’ll
think
about it.’ The door opened. Miss Bohun hurried off without seeing Felix. He put his head in the kitchen. Only Maria was there, washing the dishes.