The Exiles Return (15 page)

All this Resi noticed and was far from resenting. But it was Aunt Franzi’s behaviour to Nina that was hurtful; for it was to her that her aunt now called to come into the garden and help her choose and cut the flowers, her advice she sought in arranging them in vases, and with her she sat in the afternoon at the long table at the back of the house stripping the red currants off their stalks and picking over the raspberries for jam. They talked and talked, of people and of things Resi knew nothing about, and though they did not discourage her from joining them, they also did not actively invite her. Aunt Franzi, who had once been so concerned that she should not be lonely or bored, now did not seem to give her a thought.

So instead of drifting dreamily and happily through the summer days, Resi began to wish that something would happen. Something did and was, of course, somebody. The somebody was Lucas Anreither. He irrupted early one Sunday afternoon into the late-summer somnolence of Schloss Wald, with the energy of his youth and the irreverence of his opinions. His appearance was heralded by the roar and splutter of a motorcycle being ridden at top speed up the hill, then by its more subdued entry under the archway into the courtyard. Everyone was sitting rather drowsily in the big drawing room after luncheon, with the green shutters half-closed against the blazing sun. The Count, with the newspaper on his knees, had unashamedly gone to sleep, the Countess had taken her embroidery frame and was passing her needle very slowly through the canvas, finding it difficult in the half-light to see what she was doing. Helen and Nina had retired to their rooms. Hanni and Georg, sitting very close to each other on the sofa, were speaking in whispers, ostensibly in order not to disturb her father, while Resi had ensconced herself on one of the wide windowsills, her legs drawn up and folded under her. Through the slats of the shutters she was the first to see the young man enter the house. He neither rang nor knocked since, being familiar with the household, he knew that on a Sunday afternoon the maids would not be on duty. Hanni disentangled herself from Georg’s arm and went to the door, but before she had time to turn the handle, it was thrown open vigorously, almost in her face.

‘
Servus
, Lucas,’ she said, using a familiar form of greeting to the young man who stood on the threshold. ‘Well, come in,’ she added, laughing, ‘nobody’s going to eat you!’

The young man’s exuberance was slightly muted by the half-light. He came in hesitantly, looked round and approached the Countess. He bent over her hand and she looked up at him with a smile. ‘Well, Lucas,’ she said, ‘it’s nice to see you. How are your grandparents? And your parents, too? I hope they are all well.’

And to the Count, who had opened his eyes sleepily and let the newspaper slip to the floor, ‘Poldo,’ she said, ‘Lucas Anreither is here.’

‘So I see,’ he answered, ‘and a damn noise he made, too.’ Corvinus got up from the sofa and picked up the paper for the Count. The two young men stood looking at each other awkwardly and a current of mutual dislike passed almost tangibly from one to the other. No attempt at introduction being made, they just stared. Corvinus sat down again. Hanni took Lucas by the sleeve and said: ‘Here’s a surprise for you. Come and meet my American cousin, Resi. She speaks German, so you can talk to her.’ So saying, she planted Lucas firmly in front of Resi and with the other hand gave a vigorous push to the shutter so that the brightness of the day suddenly shone upon her. The effect, of course, was startling, as Hanni had meant it to be, and she watched with amusement the look of speechless amazement on Lucas’s face. ‘This is Lucas Anreither, Resi, a very old friend of mine. I’ll leave you to get to know each other.’

So saying she returned to the sofa. ‘Who is he?’ Georg wanted to know. ‘He came in as if the place belonged to him!’

‘You must ask Mama,’ Hanni said, ‘but actually he
is
almost one of the family.’ She felt that an explanation from the Countess would do much to dispel the antagonism which had surfaced in the tone of her fiancé’s question. The Countess, too, had noticed it.

‘He’s got a rather self-assertive manner,’ she admitted, ‘but really it’s a kind of shyness. The place does
not
belong to him, naturally, but he belongs to the place, or rather, to us. We’ve inherited him. His grandfather, old Anreither, was my father’s head-forester and gamekeeper. My father set great store by him, and we girls, my sisters and I, all loved him. His son and daughter were our playmates. The son studied agriculture and is now in the Forestry Commission in Vienna. It so happened that he married a farmer’s daughter in this district and they have a bit of land in the neighbourhood. Lucas is their only child. He spends most of his summer holidays with his mother’s family here, so he, in his turn, has been a playmate of Hanni’s and Franzl’s. Third generation, you see. But he is a student at the University and is going to be a lawyer, I understand, very clever, very ambitious, very “modern”, but still good old Anreither stock. Nothing wrong with him.’

‘That’s what you always say,’ said the Count from the depths of his armchair. ‘I’ve never much relished him myself. Georg is quite right, he does behave as if he owns the place. But he doesn’t, not yet at least. And now Hanni’s getting married he won’t have so much inducement to come up here all the time.’

‘Won’t he?’ said the Countess, and turned to look at the far end of the long room, where Lucas had hitched himself up into the other corner of the window seat opposite Resi and was holding forth to her with vigour and enthusiasm.

‘I’m afraid he won’t get very far if he talks politics to Resi,’ she remarked. ‘Such a dull subject, anyway. Perhaps she’ll help him find out they are not the only things that matter in the world. It’ll do him good.’

Thirteen

The days passed. ‘Must we have that fellow here
every
day?’ the Count asked irritably, looking out of the window as the motorcycle with Lucas astride it spluttered once more into the courtyard. ‘He’s a Red, and I don’t see why I should have a Red sitting at my table day after day, looking at me with that ironical smile of his every time I express an opinion he disapproves of. And that proletarian check jacket and blue shirt he wears! His father’s a countryman and his mother’s a farmer’s daughter, so why can’t he dress properly and wear loden when he’s in the country like everyone else? Advertising his class-consciousness!’

‘Oh politics!’ said the Countess soothingly. ‘Politics are not all that important.
People
are important. And Lucas is not just “that fellow”. He’s old Lucas Anreither’s grandson and we’ve known him all his life. What would my father have thought if I refused to have his devoted Anreither’s grandson in the house? Old Anreither was practically one of the family. And the boy is a decent chap and hasn’t done anything wrong.’

‘Old Anreither was your father’s forester,’ the Count answered, ‘and he didn’t have him at his dinner table, for all the trust and mutual attachment there was between them. He wouldn’t have dreamed of it, nor would Anreither himself.’

‘Things are different now,’ said the Countess defensively. ‘Anreither’s son is a councillor in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and young Lucas is a law student. I suppose one could say the family have come up in the world.’

‘Up or down! You do have queer ideas, Franzi. I’d say down! But whichever way it is, he’s a Red – and I don’t like him.’

‘But Poldo, he behaves himself. His manners are good, he never contradicts you, even when you express quite extreme opinions which I know you don’t really mean, only to provoke him, and I can see he can hardly swallow his indignation.’

The Countess was laughing, but the Count was not in a mood to be amused.

‘I wish he
would
lose his temper and be rude to me. Then I’d have an excuse to throw him out.’

‘Well, you won’t have to endure him much longer. He’ll be going back to town in a week or two. Please don’t let’s have a scene now. You never used to object to him when he was a child and used to come and play robbers and gendarmes, or whatever they did play, with Franzl and Hanni. He’s doing no harm now and he’s being very useful.’

‘Useful! I’d like to know what you mean by useful! Because he and Hanni played together as children, he still speaks to her with the same kind of uninhibited intimacy – as if it were his right to do so. And she, being as sentimental about the Anreither family as you are, allows him to do so. And I can tell you that Corvinus doesn’t like it, and he’s right. I don’t know whether
she
thinks or whether
you
think that making Corvinus jealous or just angry is going to hasten their marriage, but
I
say it will make him break it off. And I’m pleased to have Georg Corvinus for a son-in-law, but I wouldn’t have Anreither under any circumstances. If she wanted to marry
him
, I’d never speak to her again.’

The Count made as if to leave the room, but the Countess was too quick for him. She slipped between him and the door and lifting both her hands to his shoulders and her smiling face to his sullen one, she gently made him bend towards her.

‘My beloved old Poldo, you’ve got it all wrong. There’s nothing whatsoever between Lucas and Hanni and never has been. Of course such a marriage would be unthinkable and neither he nor she have ever thought of it. Don’t you know that if there had been the slightest hint of an attachment, I should have put a stop to it? And I feel sure that Georg Corvinus will very soon ask formally for your consent to their engagement, why, they are as good as engaged already. Don’t you realise that if Lucas comes here everyday now, it’s because of a quite different attraction? He’s falling in love with Resi, oh not very seriously and she’s certainly not giving him any encouragement, poor fellow, but I do think it’s good for her to have someone to make up to her and give her some practice in being courted, so to speak. She’s far too reserved. Perhaps poor Lucas will succeed in breaking down her defences a bit. No harm will come of it because, as I said to you, he really is an awfully decent chap. That’s why I think he’s useful.’

‘How cynical you women are! You’ll have a young chap come to the house, in spite of all his damn socialist ideas, because his grandfather was your father’s servant, yes, my dear, of course he was his servant and he never thought of himself as anything else, nor did the Prince – but you’ll encourage him to court your sister’s daughter, and she half a child still, though you don’t mean her to take him seriously. That’s all too devious for my simple mind. What if she
does
take him seriously and he
does
want to marry her? What would you say to your sister then?’

‘It’s just a little childish flirtation, Poldo – no thought of marriage! Besides,’ the Countess added reflectively, ‘what would Valery have to object to? She knows who Lucas Anreither is. Not much difference between his background and Peter’s. And if they went to America, what difference would it make over there? But good gracious, Poldo, no need to speculate about it. It won’t happen.’

Resi did not, of course, overhear this conversation between her uncle and aunt, but she did hear her uncle refer to Lucas several times as a ‘Red’. She found the notion disturbing. It made Lucas, who seemed such an ordinary person, rather mysterious and sinister. Her uncle obviously disapproved of him, but her aunt, whom she trusted implicitly, treated him as one of the family, as did Hanni. It was so contradictory. She decided to ask him a direct question.

‘Lucas, are you really a communist?’ They were walking one evening along the footpath above the house, where there was a fine view of the lake between the pine trees. She stopped to face him, feeling very daring, as if she were handling an explosive charge that might go off at the slightest touch. But Lucas did not explode. Instead, he gave a little laugh and said quite calmly, ‘No, I’m not a communist. Who gave you that idea?’

‘Uncle Poldo says you are a “Red”.’

‘Well so I am, what
he
calls a Red. I’m a Socialist.’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘My dear girl, there’s a world of difference. In the first place, I’m a Democrat.’

Resi felt relieved, but puzzled. ‘A lot of people are Democrats, there’s nothing wrong with that. Our neighbours in Eden Rise are Democrats. We see quite a lot of them, though my father’s a Republican himself. I don’t know what
I
am, I haven’t thought about it much yet. But if you say being “Red” in this country doesn’t mean you’re a communist, why does Uncle Poldo object to you and yet allow you to come to the house all the time?’

‘I know he doesn’t like me and I really ought to stay away. I often tell myself that it would be more dignified if I did. But the Countess is kind to me, and she’s very fond of my parents and my grandparents, who are deeply attached to her family. Franz and Hanni and I – we played together as children and that friendship hasn’t changed since we’ve grown up and I’ve formed my own political opinions.’

‘Then your parents are not “Red” like you?’

‘Good heavens no! They’re Black.’

‘Black!’ Resi stared at him in utter bewilderment. ‘Black?’ she repeated. ‘They can’t be, Lucas, not with you being so fair-haired and white-skinned,’ she murmured.

It was Lucas’s turn to stare, then his eyes twinkled, his mouth creased and he began to shake with laughter. ‘No, no,’ he gasped at last, ‘not what
you
mean by Black. Black is what
we
call the “clerical” party, the
Christian
-socialists, on account of the clergy and their black cassocks, you know.’

But Resi was starting to grow bored. ‘No, I don’t know and I don’t want to know. You call Christians Black and yourselves Red, but not a communist, it’s all very complicated and I don’t really care about what you are.’ She found Lucas very tiring to talk to. He was always asking her things about America that she couldn’t answer, about what he called ‘social conditions’, or about the kind of work her father did, of which she could only say it had to do with chemistry. In a way Lucas was rather like Budd, not like him as a person, but behaving like him in always being
there.
If she were sitting in the garden he sat down beside her; if she were going to walk down to the village he would walk with her. He even tried to persuade her to ride behind him on his motorcycle, but this she refused, saying that she didn’t think she would care for it. It was very difficult to find a defence against his gentle persistence without being outspokenly rude to him and this she could not bring herself to do. She would have had to shut herself up in her room if she had really wished to avoid him, and then probably her aunt would have called her and she would have had to explain, which would be embarrassing, as she would have to give a reason without having one – or pretend not to feel well, and that would cause a fuss. So all she could do was smile at Lucas, inwardly regretting that the absolutely cloudless days of drifting and dreaming, of chatter with Hanni, of basking in the mellow ambiance of her aunt, and the cool, silent evening vigils in forest clearings with her friendly, undemanding cousin Franz had come to an end.