The Longest Winter (23 page)

‘I think he means to accuse the Serbian government of being the instigators of the plot,’ she said, ‘I think he means to denounce Serbia and break her. Serbia, you see, has ambitions concerning Bosnia and Herzegovina, which are provinces of the Austrian empire. That makes Serbia a thorn in the flesh of Austria. Count Berchtold wants to remove that thorn, to destroy it. If he convinces the emperor that this can only be done by making war on Serbia, the consequences might be far more serious than he seems to think.’

‘Why?’ asked James.

‘Why? My dear James,’ said Maude, ‘aren’t you aware that the Russians consider themselves the protectors of all Slav peoples? If Austria does go to war with Serbia, Russia will go to war with Austria. The Germans won’t stand aside from
that. Their Kaiser has made that quite clear. They’ll declare war on Russia. Russia has a pact with France. James, the whole thing could escalate in the most frightful way.’

‘Austria at war?’ James felt appalled. He saw Carl going off to fight and Sophie as a Red Cross nurse. ‘That’s madness. Madness can happen among lunatics, but not among nations. Can it? Not in this day and age, surely.’

But he knew one of the reasons why Baron von Korvacs had left Ilidze so abruptly was because he had been urgently needed back at his desk in the Foreign Ministry, which was in a state of outraged determination to bring Serbia to the whipping post. Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany had stoked the fires by assuring the Austrians he would support whatever actions they took against the anarchistic regime in Belgrade. Wilhelm had a particularly hostile eye for people who did not regard royal beings as sacred as divine ones.

‘Well, it may not come to that,’ said Maude, ‘it will depend on what reparations Serbia agrees to make.’

The telephone rang in her office. She went to answer it. She returned to say that a lady, who would not give her name, wished to speak to James. James took the call.

‘Hello?’

‘I am speaking to James?’ The voice was cool and unmistakable.

‘Why, Sophie, how nice. How are you, how is everyone?’

‘We are all alive, thank you.’ Little vibrations
murmured through the coolness. ‘May I ask what has happened to you? It’s five days since you returned with us.’

‘I’ve been quietly sitting things out. I thought your parents needed some quietness too, I know they were in a state of shock—’

‘We all were. But we are still existing. You are very kind to think of us as being sensitively withdrawn from life, but you are also very cruel. I too have been sitting quietly, very quietly, wondering what was happening and what I had done. You have not called once, not once. Or telephoned or sent a single note. Major Moeller has called and so has Ludwig. He and Anne are beginning to hold hands. I am not asking for my hand to be held, only wondering why I feel so alone.’

‘Sophie, I had to do some serious thinking, but I was intending—’

‘Please don’t interrupt.’ The vibrations were uppermost now. ‘I wish to tell you I’m not given to chasing after elusive or reluctant gentlemen and that I am only making this telephone enquiry because I thought the reason for your silence and absence was that you were either dying or at least desperately ill.’

‘My very sweet Sophie—’

‘As you are obviously perfectly well,’ continued the vibrations, ‘I presume you will suffer no painful physical distress in summoning a cab and getting yourself into it. And instructing the driver to bring you to this house. I will allow you one hour. Even the slowest cab should bring the most reluctant gentleman here in that time.’

‘I assure you, Sophie, I shall—’

‘You are to call on me. Now. At once. Immediately. You are a perfidious wretch and I am very unhappy.’

The line went dead. James looked at the silent receiver, smiled and placed it back on the hook. Sophie. Nature fashioned many women in irresistible moulds, much to man’s confusion. It did not fashion too many quite as irresistible as Sophie. He had perhaps overdone things in staying away as long as this. But he had not wanted to seek a highly personal interview with the baron at a time when the assassination was still so fresh in that worried mind.

Well, he must go and see his unhappy Sophie immediately.

The telephone rang again as he was leaving the office. He returned to the desk.

‘Hello?’

The voice came to his ear with a little desperate rush this time.

‘James? Oh, thank goodness you are still there. What must you think of me? I was so ungracious and have hastened madly to call you back so that you should not have too much time to think about what a dreadful person I am. Please forgive me. Only I’ve been in such a dismal state. It seemed as if you had completely disappeared from our lives, and I began to think you had forgotten all about me or that I was an ungovernable embarrassment to you.’

‘Ungovernable?’ Her command of his language was delicious.

‘Yes. I could not endure that. But I did not mean to be so dreadfully superior—’

‘My sweet girl, you were superb,’ said James. ‘I’ve stayed away longer than I should, I know that now, but you weren’t ungracious, no, not a bit. I’d say illuminating, rather. I was spellbound. I can listen to you for hours. I’m coming over now. Immediately. I’ve missed you. No one is quite like you. Believe me.’

‘James, oh, that is so good to hear. Yes, please come at once. I am like a starved woman. And you have things to say, haven’t you?’

‘Yes. If you don’t confuse me.’

Sophie bumped into Carl on her way upstairs to change.

‘Sophie?’ he said and felt distinctly relieved to see her glad smile. Sophie was a bright challenge to life and he hated seeing her down in the dumps.

‘I must change, James is coming,’ she said and hitched her skirts and flew.

‘My dear girl—’

‘My dear boy—’ Her voice floated and sang.

James, thought Carl, would get a stunner, a shining light. Somewhere, perhaps, there was a stunner like Sophie belonging to another family. If so, he would like to meet her. She might take his mind off the Benz. His mother had recently made the observation that a man who was married to a motor car would not get very much out of life except fresh coats of oil.

‘I’ll look around,’ he had said amiably,
‘I might find a girl who’d make me a good mechanic.’

But a stunner, with something of Sophie’s style about her, would please his mother far more and might just be more exciting than a mechanic.

‘James is coming, Mama.’

‘He’s sent a note?’

‘No, he spoke to me a little while ago on the telephone.’

‘I didn’t hear it ring.’

‘Well, as the call wasn’t for you its ring was not significant, and none of us can expect to hear everything when there’s always so much other listening to do, and I think you were in the garden at the time. However, it was James I spoke to—’

‘Darling, I haven’t been in the garden.’

‘– and it seems he’s only been staying away because he felt you would not want too many people coming and going at the moment. That was kind and thoughtful of him, wasn’t it?’

‘You didn’t think so yesterday.’

‘I hadn’t quite recovered from my ordeal.’

‘Which ordeal, darling?’

‘Oh, I’m better now, Mama, and am ready to receive James. Do I look suitably outfitted?’

‘You look very nice and fresh.’

‘I’d like to receive James in the library, then we shouldn’t interfere with any other comings and goings.’

‘I don’t think we’re quite like a railway station
at any time, and you’re welcome to receive him in the morning room, if you wish.’

‘The library would suit James better. It has a rather attractive masculine atmosphere. He’ll be more at home there.’

‘More at home? Sophie, I am hopelessly mystified. Do you have an understanding with James or not?’

‘I have an understanding with him, I’m praying he has one with me. If you are hopelessly mystified, Mama, I am hopelessly committed. My pulse rate is alarming. And it’s no good expecting anything to develop between Ludwig and me, is it? He’s in love with Anne, you know.’

The library, with its walls of books and its brown leather chairs, had an air of cultured quiet. Sophie in a simple white blouse and dark green skirt was very much in keeping. As James was ushered in she turned, a book in her hands, the smile on her face masking the state of her jumping nerves. James in a brown jacket and cream ducks looked splendidly casual, she thought. She hoped he would see her, in the setting of the library, as a young woman of highly desirable grace and modesty whom he would feel quite able to afford as a wife. James actually saw her in a new style of elegance but in a quieter frame.

‘James, you are really here?’ Her poise was one of admirable calm, considering the pulse rate. ‘I am aglow with relief.’ She put the book back on its shelf and with a sweet smile extended her hand.

James saw through that at once. The ploy was one that dared him to take her hand and kiss it. Ludwig frequently kissed her fingertips. So did most of her admirers. Sophie was challenging him to declare himself a mere admirer or her faithful lover.

‘My dear Sophie,’ he said, and took her hand and kissed it. A little spark of fire flashed. ‘And my very sweet Sophie.’ He drew her into his arms, smiled into her wide-open eyes and kissed her lingeringly on the lips. That put out one fire but ignited another. Her pulse rate soared and she found it difficult to get her breath. Her anxieties and uncertainties flew. James was kissing her and in such a fashion that modesty flew too. She clung in abandoned response. Discovering her mouth he investigated it, pursued it and claimed it. Sophie closed her eyes and quite lost all breath. Was this a kiss? No, it was a sweet, imaginative communication between lovers, a beautiful meeting of long-lost lips. Five days, a whole five days. And, suddenly, all was poetry.

‘Oh,’ she gasped when he finally released her.

‘Oh?’ said James quizzically.

‘I am quite faint.’ But she was gloriously, breathlessly alive, her blood racing.

‘If you fall,’ he said, ‘I shall fall with you.’

She could not unwind her arms but she felt herself capable of delivering a characteristic little homily. It helped her to recover herself somewhat.

‘James,’ she said, ‘love can be very painful, you know, when one is at the mercy of a man who
doesn’t cross one’s threshold for a year. Five days is almost a year. Well, long enough at least to have made me grow sufferingly thin.’

‘Thin? It’s not apparent,’ said James, speaking from a position of telling proximity.

She would have liked to ask him to enlarge on that remark but they were not married yet, they were not even engaged, and certain avenues of conversation were closed to them by convention. She chose a path of penitence instead.

‘James, I’m sorry I was so cross with you on the telephone, but I have had a bad time not seeing you, not knowing about you. I thought such depressing things, I thought perhaps I’d only imagined we had kissed and spoken together, that it was Anne you really love. You have always been so attentive to her. But you would not kiss me like that if you loved her, would you?’

‘I’m very fond of Anne, but I think Ludwig is her man.’

‘Oh, it’s a sweet relief to know you aren’t.’ She put her hands on his jacket and began twisting a button. ‘You will forgive me being so difficult and demanding, won’t you?’

‘Difficult?’ said James, who thought her the captivating symbol of Vienna’s enchantment.

‘Yes. But five days really did seem an eternity and I began to think I’d been too forward, had flung myself at you.’ She searched the button intently for possible faults, her face flushed, her lashes hiding her eyes. ‘But you see, when you made me go with Major Moeller’s servants while you stayed to wait for Ferenac and his men, I was
frantic with worry and despair. I thought it was so dangerous and unnecessary after all you had done, and when you got back to us at last and I saw you – James, I couldn’t help flinging myself at you, I was so terribly happy, but if you feel—’

‘Sophie, you make even the little things sound monumentally striking. Will you marry me?’

‘—I mean, I’ve been thinking, you see, that if you don’t really feel—’ She stopped her rush of words. ‘James, what did you say?’

‘Will you marry me?’

‘Oh.’ Sophie came out of breathless agitation and emerged from hiding. Her eyes swam in the warm waters of summer lakes. ‘James?’ she said, which meant she was asking for confirmation yet again, which was no less than any woman was entitled to or would want on such an occasion.

‘Will you, Sophie sweet?’ James in his insistence was compulsively obliging.

She flung herself back into his arms. She hid herself again. Sophie, for all her ability to meet ups and downs with composure, felt emotions that were devastatingly weakening.

‘Sophie, am I to have no answer?’

‘You are proposing to me, you are really proposing?’ She came faintly from the depths.

‘I think I’ve just proposed twice at least,’ said James, wondering if he would ever have known what light and beauty and laughter meant had he not taken a year’s sabbatical.

‘Oh, you have saved me from an existence of gloom and misery,’ said Sophie, and lifted her face to show him glowing light and laughter. ‘Is
it in order for me not to worry any more? Not to think about entering a convent? We are firmly engaged? We will marry?’

‘When I’ve spoken to your father and informed my parents, we’ll arrange a date. Will that do, Sophie?’

‘Oh, it will do beautifully,’ said Sophie, ‘and it isn’t painful at all now.’

‘What isn’t?’

‘Loving you,’ said Sophie.

Anne and Carl were delighted. Anne said that to have in the family the man who had upended Avriarches was quite the most historic thing the family had done. Carl said the Benz would profit too. Carl felt keenly appreciative of the match, for he was sure Sophie had committed herself heart and soul. That, unless James was fully alive to it, could be almost tormenting to someone as intelligent and independent as Sophie.

Carl wondered what it was about the demon of love that it had such an unpredictable effect on people. Sophie had surveyed the arena of life and made James her champion. On James that mantle now rested and Sophie would expect him to wear it bravely, proudly and unequivocally on her behalf.