The Edge of the Fall (16 page)

‘Celia, dear,' said Lotte. ‘Are you listening?'

Celia turned and all three of them were staring at her. ‘Sorry, Aunt. I was looking at the mountains.'

‘Better to look at the mountains than talk,' said Johann, under his breath, next to her.

‘What was that, dear?'

Johann shook his head, bent to his matchsticks.

Lotte turned to Celia. ‘What do you think of Baden, dear?'

Celia shrugged. ‘It's beautiful, of course. Lots of people.'

‘That's right. Lots of people. Lots of eligible people.'

There was a cough and the bang of a chair. Celia turned and Hilde was on her feet, hands on her hips, eyes blazing. ‘What are you talking about?' The other families looked up.

‘Hilde!' Heinrich's voice was too loud. Celia saw out of the corner of her eye the mothers telling the children not to stare, starting up purposeful conversations.

Hilde waved him away. ‘Listen to yourselves! Can't you see? No one wants us here. They laugh at us. They can see we're poor.'

Heinrich held out his hand. ‘Hilde.'

She stepped away. ‘Father, you're ridiculous! We're out of place here. Like some servants in borrowed clothes. We're spending all our money – and for nothing.'

‘She's right, you know.'Johann spoke. ‘No one wants us here.' He picked up another matchstick for the roof.

‘Now, now,' said Heinrich. ‘It takes time to be part of things.' He was soothing, smiling, the way you would speak to an angry animal. It seemed wrong to Celia. Hilde wanted someone to understand, someone to say,
yes, you are quite right
. A waiter passed by with drinks for the next table.

Hilde jumped forward. ‘Time! No, not time. We have nothing that they want, we need different clothes, money, hats, voices – everything. What we have is nothing. Nothing!'

She rushed towards the door into the dining room, her skirts flurrying around her feet.

Heinrich stood, straight-backed, gazing after her.

‘She's not coming back,' said Johann. ‘Why should she?'

‘Stop talking!' Lotte was hissing. ‘You two are the most ungrateful children imaginable. We bring you on a holiday that hundreds of children would give their teeth for and you complain!' She waved her hand. ‘You should be more like your cousin. At least she says thank you.'

Johann looked over at Celia. He raised his eyebrow. ‘Her? Well, who knows what she really thinks? We're just a holiday for her. We'll be a story she can talk about in England. Some kind of quaint adventure.'

Celia had never heard him speak so many words before, not since they were children. She wanted to take his hand, but before she could, he started wheeling himself away. ‘I'm going too. Will you open the door, Mother?'

Lotte sat there, still, as if she had been carved from stone.

‘Mother?'

‘I will.' Celia leapt to her feet, pulled the door open. She manoeuvred him round, pushed him through the door. He didn't look at her as he propelled himself forward. She closed it softly behind him.

Next morning, Hilde, red-eyed, refused to come down to breakfast, insisted she did not feel well enough to leave their room. Over toast and tea, Lotte said Celia could do as she liked. So she was free. She wandered down the stairs, out of the lobby, past a flurry of people with bags – and out into Baden.

But what then, she thought? Where was she to go? She would have to walk somewhere – but she had no idea where. As she walked forward, her mind rambled. Why had she come here,
really
? How naïve she had been to think she could escape everything and the Black Forest would be just as it had been. She was a coward, running away from everything at home, leaving them to weep over Louisa, wait for Arthur.

She should find a job when she got back, she thought. Something in an office. Either that or she should stay full time at home and help Verena. Her hip bumped into an older woman, she apologised.

If she'd been alive, Louisa might have come here with her, they could have wandered to get ice creams together, laughing. If Celia had been kinder to her from the start, if things had gone better, she wouldn't have turned to Arthur. She'd be laughing, talking, not dead at the bottom of a cliff.

A hand touched her arm. ‘Celia. Is that you?'

She turned and it was Tom, standing there on the route to the racecourse, holding out his hand, smiling.

TEN

Baden Baden, August 1921

Celia

‘But what are you doing here?' she said, gripping Tom's hand. ‘Why are you in Germany?' Then she couldn't speak, her mouth opening and closing like a lost fish. He looked so smart, taller somehow, in a neat black suit and hat, a silver-tipped cane in his hand, the scars on his face faded further. ‘I don't understand!' She held tight to him, as the crowds thronged around them.

He smiled and shook his arm to loosen her grip. ‘I came over here on business. I told you, remember. Captain Dalton is doing a lot of export business.'

She blushed, wanting to seize his arm again. ‘Captain Dalton is exporting to
Germany
?'

‘Lots of businesses are. But, actually, I went to see you again. When I got to Stoneythorpe your mother told me you'd gone to Baden. She said your uncle sent a telegram about it. I had to visit here anyway for business – so I thought, why not? I was hoping I might come across you. Otherwise I'd have to start asking at the hotels.'

‘You came to find me?' She didn't understand him. He'd said she should find new people, not write to him any more. Now he was following her to Germany.

‘But don't you mind being here? All these people who – men who . . .'

‘Fought too? Of course. The only reason I'm here is that plenty of chaps wouldn't come out. They hear all that stuff about
kill the
German
at home. But the way I see it is that it wasn't their war, or mine. Anyway, you're half German.'

‘Not that type of German. Not the type who could throw gas, strangle Belgian refugees, burn babies.'

He frowned, looked around. ‘Celia, don't speak so loudly.' He seized her arm. ‘Come along, let's walk. No more politics.'

She nodded, letting him take her arm. They strolled forward to the racecourse. It seemed so strange to be walking with him, not real. Women, she noticed, were looking at him; he stood out, handsome despite his scars. They looked at her differently as well, she could see from the corner of her eye. Their gaze was curious now, even perhaps, she thought, a little envious. ‘What exactly are you exporting?' she asked tentatively.

Tom waved his hand. ‘Oh, you know. All types of things. Wood. Metal. Supplies.'

‘Wood? But there's the Black Forest.'

He shrugged. ‘Wood products. You know. Anyway, how are you?'

‘Things aren't so good at home. There's still no word on Arthur. Louisa's death was an accident but he's run off in a panic. I don't even know if he's heard the police verdict.'

‘I'm sure he'll come back. Once things have died down.'

‘I know he will. I know he's grieving too, that's the thing. I just wish he could come to talk to us. Mama needs him.'

‘It must have been terrible for him to see her fall.'

She nodded and allowed herself to lean on him, just a little. Ladies did it all the time, she told herself. Tom wouldn't mind. He wouldn't even notice. She leant even closer, feeling a little of his body through the thick material of his coat.

Tom was still talking. ‘Anyway, your relations must be pretty confident of Baden to let you wander around by yourself. Aren't they worried?'

‘I'm to say I'm Austrian.' She was annoyed by his look of amusement. ‘I can speak German. You can't!'

‘Oh, I'm learning. I picked up enough Boche talk in the trenches, hearing them singing and shouting all night.'

She didn't want to think of him in the trenches so she pushed the thought from her mind. ‘Are these men who are buying your wood from you now?'

‘I was meant to be with them today. But one of them wanted to be with his family, so I have to wait. Fill my time.' He paused. Perhaps he might say,
would you like to walk with me?
He didn't.

‘Do you think you'll be coming here a lot, then?'

‘Looks like.' He stared straight ahead, as if gazing at a bird, but the sky was a long, flat expanse of blue. ‘ The way to get on is to do the job no one else wants. I can make it a success, Celia. I know I can.'

‘I'm sure.' She squeezed his arm tentatively.

‘I have to,' he shrugged. ‘More men are arriving in London all the time, finally demobbed. Cleverer than me, university degrees, better at making general conversation. I was lucky, got my position before the rush. If Dalton advertised it tomorrow, he'd get fifty thousand letters, really he would.'

She looked around, but there was no one listening. ‘Even if it meant coming to Germany?'

‘That's where I'm different. I'll do it, shake the hands of fat men who sent boys to war, men who are richer than they ever were. I'll compliment them in German, say that really it was all our fault and Asquith was a dolt.' He still stared straight ahead. ‘I'll make it mine.'

He moved forwards and she skipped one jump, not ladylike but the only way to catch up with him. The pleasure lake glittered up in front of them, people on the shores and sitting around the cafe to the side. A few ducks flew lazily through the warm, slow air.

‘Actually, we're supposed to be finding Hilde a husband,' she offered.

‘Really? Is she pretty?'

Celia blushed, stumbled. ‘
I
think so.'

He tapped his cane. ‘No, then. Hard when you're surrounded by all these flocks of girls.' He gestured out to a group of them, accompanied by four men, all giggling near the boats, teasing each other to get in first. ‘Up close, they probably wouldn't be so
beautiful, you know, bad teeth, flaws in the skin. But you can't see it this way. Well covered with expensive creams and make-up and the like.'

Celia looked at her feet, the dirt on her hem. She didn't like it, the bitter metal in his voice, the way he looked over at the women as if they were horrid animals locked at a distance in a zoo. ‘Hilde can't help it,' she said, stoutly. ‘She used to be pretty. The war took it all.'

‘In London, they'd probably make a film about her for that. Serves her right, they'd say.'

‘Mr Janus says the films and the government are all one, just trying to trick us into obeying them and doing their business again.'

‘Sometimes, Mr Janus might be right. Anyway, didn't Hilde have a brother? Did he die?'

‘No, he's still alive. But he's lost his legs now. He's not the same.'Johann wheeled through her head, assembling matchsticks, singing to himself on the train.

‘Poor man. Is he drinking?'

‘No!' But perhaps he was, perhaps that was why he was always bumping around next to them, late at night, why he never would take water, even though Lotte tried to make him.

They were nearly at the lake now. The girls and the men were still laughing by the shore. Two sets had got in the boats, the others were waving. One girl was splashing them from the boat. ‘Get in, you cowards!' she was calling. A red-haired girl still on the shore was squealing.

‘I think you're sad, Tom,' Celia said. ‘You seem angry.' Only a few months ago, he'd been marching her along in Covent Garden, telling her to do something with her time.

He shrugged. ‘It's all wrong.'

‘What? That you fought the Germans and now you're here?'

‘Something like that.'
Except you were German
, she thought,
you wanted to be German! You wanted to be Rudolf's son. You think you are
.

The red-haired girl was scrambling into the boat, her skirt
catching over the side, her friend trying to steady her from his seat. ‘They fixed everything in Paris, at the conference. After that, it will all be over. We'll be Europe again.'

‘With thousands and thousands dead.'

She gazed over at the couples on boats, pushing out over the water. ‘You wouldn't think it though, would you? Not when you're here in Baden.'

‘That means nothing. Did you know you can go on tours to the war zones now? Cars and hotels included, an officer guide. The guidebook to the Somme is a bestseller, did you know?'

‘I've seen the advertisements in
The Times
.' She had, words billowing out about the beautiful panoramas of the towns near to the places of great battles, making it sound as enticing as a trip to the seaside.

‘Who are those people? Picking over souvenirs, making it entertainment.'

‘Oh, quite.' She had to agree with him, she thought, or with anyone saying the same, think it ghoulish, even if really, in her secret heart, she thought she might want to go. She wanted to see those places that she never saw, except in her mind, the stretches of the Front where men felt horror and pain, now turned into benign spots for tourists, weeds growing over the abandoned guns.