The Longest Winter (45 page)

But there was a minor miracle one day. The telephone in the von Korvacs’ residence rang and when Sophie answered it, it worked. There was a girl on the other end of the line, a girl who announced herself as Pia Amaraldi and was desperate for something to be done about Carl. They were in a little Alpine town. Heiligenblut. Carl was resting there, with his company. He had a bad chest wound. But he was going to march his company all the way back to Vienna. It was madness. There were no trains, so little food. Someone, please, must come and take Carl home. He would not listen to her. He laughed at her. Could his father not do something? Please, please.

Sophie communicated the message and its urgency to her father. And the baron, who had served the empire faithfully and with distinction, went immediately to one of the ministers of the new government. The minister listened to him and stared at him. Had the baron taken leave of his senses? What could be done for any individual soldier when conditions were as they were and there were thousands stranded in those dead theatres of war? The baron should remember there were only people now, there were no privileged persons.

Sophie, in despair for Carl, in despair for
Austria and the grey years ahead, felt she had been emptied of all life.

In December the door of the house in the Salesianergasse was opened by one of the few servants still employed there. The evening was bitterly cold, the caller a British officer in cap and greatcoat of RAF blue. It was James. The servant looked hard at him, recognized him and courteously invited him to step in and wait.

The baron and his wife were in the drawing room when the servant announced the name of the visitor.

‘What?’ The baroness looked up in shock and embarrassment. ‘Who has called, who did you say, Heinrich?’

Heinrich repeated it was Herr Fraser, except that he was in uniform now. The baroness turned to her husband. She and Ernst, terribly worried about Carl, had been racking their brains. They had also been trying to compile a list of assets and liabilities, of servants who would have to go and the one or two who might be kept on. In addition they had been consulting a list of small properties for sale. They would not be able to afford to stay here. But who would buy their house these days?

‘Fraser? Did you really say Fraser?’ The baron, a tired, exhausted man and very grey of hair, looked up over his glasses.

‘Yes, Excellency. He wishes to know if you’ll receive him.’

‘Show him in,’ said the baron after a moment’s hesitation.

‘Ernst?’ The baroness was in doubt.

‘We must receive him, my dear.’

James, divested of his greatcoat and cap, was ushered in. The spacious room was cold, the fire tiny, meagre. The baron and baroness were on their feet, receiving him formally. He was older, harder, but very recognizable, his dark hair falling familiarly across his forehead. But his squadron leader’s uniform was a reminder of a war lost and an empire gone. The regime they had loved, honoured and served had been catapulted into oblivion. James had had a share in that.

‘Thank you for seeing me,’ he said.

The baron inclined his head but did not offer his hand. Nor did the baroness extend hers. Whatever liking the baron had had for James had been worn away. Not by defeat alone. The baron could understand defeat, could accept an honourable one. But Austria faced unimaginable humiliation. He found that unforgivable in the Allies. The fate of what remained of the once great Habsburg empire was to be decided by political opportunists like Clemenceau and Lloyd George. Neither the baron nor his wife could forget the part Britain and James himself had played in Austria’s destruction and their own ruin, and they could not advance their greeting beyond polite stiffness.

‘You are well?’ said the baroness with a civility that was painful.

James knew that the restraint of similar civility on his part would get him nowhere. He had not come merely to exchange awkward courtesies.

‘Well? No, I’m not,’ he said, ‘I’ve been in Vienna three days and I’m sick, devastated. It’s taken me all those three days to find the courage to call on you. I’ve been talking to people and I know you’ve had an unbearable war. But I haven’t had the happiest of times thinking about you.’

‘We have grown older more quickly, perhaps,’ said the baron, ‘but at least we aren’t lying dead in some mountain crevasse or some muddy trench. We have survived, but I’m not sure whether survival is going to be endurable. There is so much talk about recrimination when already so many lives have been lost and so much destroyed that might have been spared.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said James, who had had four years he would rather forget.

‘But the war itself, that is over, thank God,’ said the baroness. She had lost much of her lustre and well-being. She was starved of the warm flesh that had given her figure its look of handsome maturity. She looked like a woman robbed of something dear and precious. Old and golden Austria had died on her. She had never thought the day would come when she and her family and servants had to go their separate ways each morning in search of food. Coffee, on which the Viennese doted, over which they had spent so many enchanted hours, days and years, had long since disappeared. Sometimes one was
lucky enough to get a substitute, although one did not feel fortune’s blessings when one was drinking it.

James did not look as the Austrians did, she thought. He looked neither hungry nor bereft, though there was something about him which had not been there before. A hardness, a quality of implacability, as if in all his purposes he would always get that which he most wanted.

‘Carl, Sophie and Anne,’ he said with an interest he did not disguise, ‘may I ask about them?’

He was aware he had not been invited to sit down. They had received him but it was beyond them at the moment to make him comfortable. Clearly they did not wish him to prolong his call. He understood. But he would have liked them to know he was grieving for Vienna too.

‘Carl is well, Sophie and Anne are well,’ said the baron, but it was another politeness, wooden and lacking conviction. The baroness’s mouth trembled.

‘Are they well? Please tell me,’ said James.

‘Carl,’ said the baroness and swallowed. ‘Carl has a bad chest wound. He’s down there, in some mountain village. We had a telephone call about him yesterday. There’s a girl who is desperately worried about him and we’ve been trying so hard to find out if we can get him home. But it’s easier these days to move heaven and earth than bring a wounded man home from the Alps. And Anne is—’

‘A moment, Baroness.’ James was on to the
baroness’s vulnerability. He was here to campaign for Sophie. He had quickly found out that the baron’s elder daughter was still unmarried. He meant to campaign without qualms. ‘This mountain village. Where exactly is it?’

‘It’s called Heiligenblut, it’s impossibly out of the way, north of Lienz.’ The baroness knew there was a reason, other than polite enquiry, for the question. The Allies were the conquerors, the men of power, and James represented that power. A little flame of hope sprang. ‘The girl is Italian. I can’t think how Carl came to be mixed up with an Italian—’ She stopped.

James, knowing why she had stopped, said with a faintly ironic smile, ‘Yes, there were Sophie and I, we became very mixed up too. Loving one’s enemies is very painful, Baroness, I assure you. Perhaps that is what this girl has found. We’ll see. Can Carl be reached?’

He was so decisive, like a sudden clear strength in the house.

‘There is a telephone number we have tried to call back,’ said the baron, ‘but there are always breakdowns, breakdowns.’

‘Will you let me have it?’ said James. ‘I want Carl to stay where he is. I’ll not have him shunted about. I’m serving on the Allied War Relief Commission and there are some things we can get done that you probably can’t.’

Perceptibly the baroness softened. The flame of hope burned brighter.

‘Could you, James?’ His name slipped out. ‘Would it be possible? The Italian girl said he
intended to march his company home to Vienna, she said he would kill himself doing that.’

‘I rather fancy Carl might be going for what we call kill or cure,’ said James. ‘I’ll get him to stay where he is if that means we reduce the odds. Give me that telephone number. What is the girl’s name, if she’s the one who does the talking?’

‘Pia Amaraldi,’ said the baron and gave James the number.

‘James, we would dearly like to have Carl home, to look after him here,’ said the baroness in impulsive gratitude. ‘We could not thank you enough. He has fought such a good fight for us, for Austria, all these years.’

James thought. He knew he could forge his re-entry into the family. But it was not that alone. It was Carl, whom he had known and liked, one of the few who had fought all the way through.

‘Then he deserves better than a telephone call,’ he said, ‘though I’ll make that first. Then I’ll go myself. If necessary I’ll take a staff car and a couple of men. I’d like to see Carl. I presume,’ he said with the ghost of a smile, ‘that I’ll have to transfer to a horse and cart at some stage. If I can find a horse that hasn’t been eaten. Salzburg, that’s the place. Will you leave it to me?’

The baroness glanced at her husband. Ernst was still a little aloof.

‘We will be happy to leave it to you, James,’ she said, ‘and you will sit down for a moment, won’t you?’

‘I don’t think I should stay, not this time,’ said
James. ‘There must be an interval for adjustment, especially when things are so bad for you. I can’t expect you to behave as if nothing has happened. I shall be in touch. Meanwhile, Anne and Sophie? Will you tell me how they are?’

‘Anne is here,’ said the baroness, ‘but Ludwig, her husband, we last heard of in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp. But since their revolution we’ve heard nothing, nothing at all. And Sophie—’

‘Yes?’ said James, noting her hesitancy and the baron’s stiff silence.

The baroness could have said that Anne believed Sophie had been waiting all these terrible years for him, but she herself was doubtful whether the feelings of either of them had survived. So she said only, ‘Sophie is out, James.’

‘How is it you’re a member of this Commission?’ asked the baron, breaking his silence.

Again the suggestion of a reminiscent smile from James.

‘I went into the lion’s den,’ he said. ‘That’s to say, I had an interview with my father. I wanted to get back to Vienna as soon as possible. The one way of ensuring that was to get myself appointed to the Commission. Some string-pulling was necessary. Because of what his infernal machines meant to the war effort, my father is able to corner the right people in the corridors of power. I don’t make a habit of asking him to use his influence on my behalf. Let me be frank, Baron. For once, I didn’t hesitate. There’s Sophie, you
see.’ He caught the baroness’s startled look. ‘I’m still not cured of Sophie. I’ve spent four years thinking about her. That’s ridiculous? Perhaps it is. But there’s no one else. Only Sophie.’

The baron took off his glasses and polished them. The baroness did not know whether to be helpful or discouraging. But after four years, four long and tragic years, his first thoughts had been of them, his first suggestion that of helping Carl. She could not give him discouragement. While she could not forgive his country, she could begin to forgive him. All his hopes, in any case, were entirely in Sophie’s hands. Someone must tell him where he could find her.

‘James—’

‘We are very reduced.’ Her husband’s quiet interruption seemed to convey the message that discouragement was necessary. ‘And we can expect no concessions from your side, we can only look forward to losing what little we do have left.’

‘You must know, Baron,’ said James, ‘that if it were all in my hands you would get your empire back.’

‘Ah,’ said the baron with a touch of reminiscence himself, ‘we did have a talk once, I recall—’

But Anne came into the room then. She saw James. Her eyes widened and misted, her mouth quivered. James felt a shock, a pang. Her parents were thin. Anne was thinner. Youth and beauty had been fined down by the tragic consequences of Sarajevo. If only he had been closer to that student, Princip. If only.

Anne had suffered heartache as well as hunger. Heartache for her lovely Austria and for Ludwig, who might be dead or just alive. But she could not be bitter towards James. There was the war, yes, but there were so many other memories, all drenched with the fragrance of summer. She came up to him, she smiled and put out both her hands. He took them and pressed them with unchanged affection. Theirs was a gesture of peace and reconciliation.

‘My dear Anne,’ he said.

‘It’s over at last, isn’t it?’ she said unsteadily. ‘And you are up and we are down. Oh, we are very down but we shall be up again. James, I am so glad to see you, so glad you came through it all and have come to see us.’

James thought her almost heartbreakingly courageous. The war had laid its cruellest hands on women like Anne.

‘And I am very glad to see you,’ he said.

‘You and I, we aren’t too old to do things better, are we?’ she said. ‘We will see there are no more wars, that friends don’t have to fight each other, won’t we?’

‘I shall never again fight my friends,’ said James.

‘Anne,’ said the baroness, not far from tears, ‘James is going to help us get Carl home. He’s on the War Relief Commission and means to go and find Carl himself.’

‘I’m in a position to oil wheels, you see,’ said James, ‘and I’ll bring Carl home, I promise, even if we both have to ride back in a turnip wagon.’

‘Oh, you’ll do it,’ said Anne with an overbright smile, ‘it will be nothing to the man who downed Avriarches and dropped in for schnapps with a divisional colleague of Colonel Moeller’s.’

‘Oh, he got to know about that, did he?’ said James, gratefully aware of a warmer atmosphere.

‘He wrote to Sophie about it,’ said Anne, who felt sure she knew why James was back. ‘He was only sorry you did not give him the opportunity to offer you his own schnapps.’

‘In a war,’ said James, ‘who needs friends with enemies like Colonel Moeller? Do you know if he’s all right? I’d like to think so.’