The Longest Winter (5 page)

‘I’m really quite proud of ours,’ said Sophie.

‘Thank you, darling,’ said her mother.

‘That’s not to say we aren’t impressed by yours,’ said Anne to James.

‘I’m more than impressed,’ said Carl. ‘What luck that my sisters found you. Usually they find only the most ghastly people.’

‘That’s not true,’ said Anne.

‘I take it, old chap,’ said Carl, ‘that you know more than a thing or two about roadsters like these?’ He put his hand on the Benz.

‘Herr Fraser,’ said Sophie before James could answer, ‘are you a teacher or not?’

‘I am, temporarily,’ said James, ‘at the Ecole Internationale.’

‘A teacher?’ said the baroness. It was becoming confusing. And more confusing than anything were Herr Fraser’s clothes. They looked as if he had borrowed them from a ruffian.

‘Yes,’ said James. ‘The principal is Maude Harrison, I met her in the Tyrol. She was short of a teacher, so I offered to help out for a while.’

‘Maude Harrison?’ said the baron. ‘I know Frau Harrison, I knew her husband. Very unfortunate. But a remarkably resourceful woman,
she runs a most useful establishment. Excellent is the word, I believe.’

‘Papa,’ smiled Anne, ‘now that we know what an exceptionally versatile gentleman Herr Fraser is, I’m sure we can be guided by his opinion on the Benz.’

She too knew that her father only needed a little push, and he was a man who knew when a push came from the right quarter. The salesman only knew he had to be patient as he stood first on one foot, then the other. This would go on for hours, they would all talk their heads off and then suddenly someone would toss a categorical yes or no into the melting pot and that would be it.

‘Do please give us your opinion, Herr Fraser,’ said the baroness, hoping he would be sensitive enough to take hers into account.

‘Let me see,’ said James and decided he might as well show off a little. He began to talk in highly technical terms of the Benz and its motive power. The baron excused himself for a moment. He went into the house and telephoned Maude Harrison. She was touched to hear from him, he had been kind and helpful during her late husband’s tour of duty in Vienna. She told him now all he felt he wanted to know. He returned to the forecourt. James, with the salesman gawping, was expounding in his own mixture of French, English and German on transmission, intake valves, pistons, cylinders, carburation and manifolds. When he emphasized that the ideal manifold should, among other properties,
have a low resistance in order to maintain high volumetric efficiency, the salesman quivered and the family looked numbed. Except Carl. Keenly he followed as much of it as he could, although he was left behind on some points. Nobody else understood a word. Only Sophie had the courage to catch James’s eye and to beg for mercy with an expressively rueful look. James, answering her silent appeal, said, ‘That, I feel, is as much as I need say about the technical merits of a motor car such as this.’

The baron, no wiser than before, decided to shift the responsibility of comment on to his wife.

‘Well, my dear,’ he said, ‘now what do you think?’

The baroness was not completely unequal to it.

‘Quite frankly, Ernst,’ she said, ‘I think if any motor car were only half as complicated as Herr Fraser describes, then we should all be mad to even sit in one, let alone ride in it.’

‘No, no,’ said Carl, who had enjoyed every moment of dialogue and discussion, ‘that isn’t quite the way to look at it, my sweet. Our friend James, in describing the essential desirabilities of a sound engine, was relating these to the virtues of the Benz engine.’

Our friend James? Oh, thought Sophie, has that devilish-looking brigand suddenly become a family friend? She laughed to herself, she glanced at James. He was looking very innocent.

Anne said, ‘I must say, Mama, it all sounded terribly impressive.’

‘And nothing like anything he said about Ludwig’s Bugatti,’ observed Sophie. With her veil tipped back over the brim of her hat, her chestnut hair swept upwards, her creamy skin accepted the warm touch of the afternoon sun. Anne’s complexion was fair, the light liquidly reflected in her eyes. Amusement glimmered in Sophie’s eyes, her glance another challenge to James.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but you must remember that when I came up against—’

‘Don’t you dare,’ whispered Sophie.

‘Herr Fraser,’ said the baron, ‘we should like to be guided by you, since you’re the son of the redoubtable Sir William. Will you help us to conclude this matter? Would you tell us whether the Benz is a perfectly safe and reliable automobile?’

‘Safe?’ said James. Anne sensed a compulsive urge for candour quivering on his tongue. ‘Will you please excuse me for a moment?’ he said and went and sat on the step of the two-wheeler.

‘Intriguing chap,’ said Carl.

‘Oh, indeed,’ said Sophie. She looked at Anne. Together they walked across the forecourt to confront James.

‘Herr Fraser,’ said Sophie, ‘I don’t feel we are quite strangers to each other now. Therefore, may I presume on our short but illuminating acquaintanceship to beg that for the moment you abandon your crusade?’

‘We should both like to presume, for Carl’s sake,’ smiled Anne.

‘I’m composing myself,’ said James.

‘We are all quite in love with the Benz,’ said Sophie.

‘Except Mama,’ said Anne. ‘It’s for her that my father asked the question.’

‘And he only asked if the car would be safe,’ said Sophie.

‘Having composed myself,’ said James, rising, ‘let me say that if I were offered the best car there is I’d lock it away to keep it very safe and very quiet. But as far as your brother is concerned, the Benz is a masterpiece of engineering perfection and as reliable as you could wish. If it’s driven with due respect. If I were Carl and not myself, I’d have it, drive it and take great care of it.’

‘Then if you’d care to tell my father that,’ smiled Sophie, ‘you’ll be Carl’s friend for life.’

‘Very well,’ said James.

‘Oh, you are really most agreeable,’ said Anne warmly.

James delivered his opinion. That settled the matter. The salesman looked sleekly happy and the baroness looked resigned. The baron began to discuss details of the purchase.

‘I must be on my way,’ said James.

‘Indeed you must not,’ said Anne, ‘we should not dream of letting you go without giving you the promised refreshment. Should we, Mama?’

‘Of course not,’ said the baroness, conceding defeat with a gracious smile.

James plucked at his shirt to indicate his sartorial unsuitability.

‘Goodness,’ said Anne, ‘we aren’t as stuffy as that.’

‘You’ll find,’ said Sophie, ‘that we are all very nice and ordinary. At least, I am.’

‘Come inside,’ said Carl, delighted by the outcome, and he linked arms with James and took him into the house.

‘When I first saw him,’ murmured Sophie to Anne as they followed on, ‘I thought he was going to murder us all.’

‘It’s all that poetry you write,’ said Anne, ‘it makes you imaginative.’

Occasionally James went out with Kirsti, Maude’s housemaid. Maude was not sure she approved, Kirsti being a scatterbrained servant and a notoriously fickle coquette. And she did not think James’s parents would approve at all. They would not consider a flighty servant girl a suitable social companion for their son. But James liked Kirsti. She was an engaging minx with an aptitude for goodnight kisses that came like a soft, warm bombardment. They were her way of thanking a man for taking her out, but any man who asked for more received what she called a punch in the pinny.

Kirsti was not looking for a husband, only for fun. She and James enjoyed each other’s company, and she showed him how the ordinary people of Vienna made as much of its gaiety as the upper classes. The ordinary people, in fact, enjoyed a more combustible engagement with revelry.

Wednesday was a half-day at the school. Kirsti had free time. James took her out. They crossed the Schwarzenbergplatz and entered the wide
boulevard of the Ringstrasse. James immersed himself in the atmosphere of old Vienna, bounded by the Ring and the magnificent lines of trees. It was a cloudy day, the light softening the ancient buildings, and the tall spire of St Stephen’s Cathedral looked almost delicate in its Gothic tracery. Carriages in stately unhurriedness impeded the progress of impatient automobiles, much to James’s delight. People were strolling the leafy thoroughfares, leisure an art, not a time-killer. Bicycle bells rang, cabbies whistled as they ran their fiacres at a lazy trot, while here and there a two-wheeler in the hands of youth bowled by in rakish exuberance.

Kirsti tripped along, James ambled. She wanted to look at the shops in the Graben. She had looked at them a thousand times before. Then she would want raisin coffee and cakes, and later they would go to one of the dance halls that abounded in Vienna. Kirsti had a store of nervous energy and a capacity to dance all night. James, fortunately, had the stamina to absorb whatever punishment her vivacious quest for fun put upon a man.

Vienna was a city as much for the young as the old, and Kirsti was nineteen and very young. She was appalled by the interest James showed in monuments and museums. People would think he was one of the old. Who on earth except fusty old professors could waste time wandering around marble and masonry?

‘Oh, come on,’ she said.

‘I’m coming on,’ said James. It was always
‘come on’ with Kirsti. Each new pursuit was only a forerunner to the next. He pulled her back as she stepped blithely off the pavement. The driver of the approaching cab hollered ‘Lunatic!’ Kirsti put her nose up. They reached the Graben. She feasted on shop windows while James looked at people. The women, he thought, were more interesting than those of Paris. They were taller, their colouring diverse. But then Vienna had always been the confluence into which Germans, Slavs and Magyars had poured during centuries, the fair had mingled with the dark and produced all shades. In Paris it was nearly all Gallic darkness.

After an hour of window-worship Kirsti manhandled him to a coffee house. There she drank raisin-flavoured coffee and ate her way through a huge slice of layer cake.

‘You’ll get fat,’ he said.

‘Some like them fat,’ said Kirsti creamily.

‘Some like who fat?’

‘Oh, go on.’ She giggled, then waved to a young man drinking coffee at another table. He blew her a kiss. ‘That’s Frederic,’ she said.

‘Notorious or otherwise?’

‘He hires out cabs,’ said Kirsti, licking a finger, ‘he says he’ll be rich one day. One day. But what good will it do him? He’ll only put it in the bank and call on Fridays to count it. Do you know, when he kisses a girl I think he’s still counting schillings.’

‘A very good way,’ said James, ‘of mixing pleasure with business.’

‘It’s not flattering,’ she said, all buttoned up in pillar-box red, ‘being kissed by a man who’s thinking of money.’

‘Well, we can’t all afford to forget about it,’ said James, lankily draped in a suit of light grey, ‘and aren’t there the loveliest young things who don’t think about anything else?’

‘They’re thinking about your money,’ said Kirsti, ‘which is not at all the same as thinking about their own. Come on, it’s time to go and meet Rosa and Boris.’

‘Rosa and Boris? They sound familiar,’ said James.

‘But of course,’ said Kirsti, rising and brushing herself down, ‘Rosa works for the Corbière family. Marie Corbière, she attends the school. Boris is Rosa’s young man. He is very earnest.’

‘Is he, by God,’ said James, remembering the young man in the bohemian hat.

They met up in a dance hall popular with the young people. The atmosphere was informal, and the orchestra played the music of Lehar, Lanner, the Strausses and others for whom there were no substitutes as far as the Viennese were concerned.

They shared a table and James ordered champagne, which delighted Kirsti and broke the ice with Rosa and Boris. Rosa was from Galicia, her plump curves accentuated by a small waist. Boris Ferenac was a Bosnian, a dark Slav who smiled as if amusement was a secretive business. A violinist, he thought little of those in this orchestra. It was one thing to tuck a violin
under your chin, he said, it was another thing altogether to clasp it to your soul. Only Slavs could do that.

He smiled as he made the observation. Secretively.

Rosa gossiped with Kirsti. Both in service, they were addicted to topical titbits concerning their employers and the employers of others. Rosa said her own employers were returning to France soon and had asked her to go with them.

‘But, of course, I’m not sure if Boris would like that,’ she said and looked at Ferenac. He smiled again but said nothing. ‘You’d not care for me to go, would you?’

‘We both have our destinies,’ he said, ‘and who can say whether they will intertwine or diverge?’

Pretentious ass, thought James. He danced with Kirsti. Ferenac remained at the table with Rosa. He could not, he said, dance to an orchestra as inferior as this. Everyone else managed it and the dance floor was a whirl of couples all evening. James took Rosa round a couple of times. He found her dull.

Towards the end of the evening the orchestra played ‘Tales from the Vienna Woods’. It sent the patrons into raptures. And when it finished with the Emperor Waltz ecstatic revellers rose to their feet to sing and to drink the health of Franz Josef and the Habsburgs.

Ferenac, his meaningless smile now beginning to irritate James, lifted his glass, looked at Rosa and said, ‘Health!’

‘Health,’ said Rosa.

‘The dear old emperor,’ cried Kirsti.

‘And the good archdukes,’ smiled Ferenac, looking into his glass.

The good? Strange, thought James, and wondered if Ferenac’s smile was so meaningless, after all. The good? What was it Marie had written?

A good archduke is a dead one
.

In between goodnight kisses which, probably because of the champagne, she turned into a more prolonged bombardment than usual, Kirsti said, ‘It was very nice tonight. Did you like Rosa? She asked me why you weren’t married.’

‘If she asks again,’ said James, ‘you can tell her that it’s only now that I’ve begun to think seriously about it.’