The Star of Kazan

18 Annika Breaks a Promise

Annika had been frightened on the evening they returned from the spa. The dark figures moving about trying to force doors to the house, shouting, had been menacing — but what had really upset her was her mother’s rage and fear. In Vienna she had not seen adults afraid in this way. Professor Gertrude was nervous before concerts, Professor Julius was cross when they did not publish his letters to the newspaper, and no one spoke to Ellie when she was preparing quails’ eggs in aspic. But this was different. Whoever those men had been, they had made her proud and beautiful mother lose control.

Nothing had been damaged or taken when they returned to Spittal. Annika and Hermann had been sent straight to bed, but it was a long time before Annika slept. She would have gone through fire to protect her mother from whatever it was that troubled her… but the next day nothing was said. There was the usual rain in the morning, the sound of Uncle Oswald’s gun, the little pieces of stonework falling into the moat… and then a long day because Zed was taking the carriage horses to be shod and there was no one at the farm.

But on the following morning she slipped down to see him. He was taking water to the pigs, but when Annika went to help him she found that there were only two pigs left in the sty.

‘What’s happened to Dora?’ she asked.

Dora was a huge and bristly saddleback and Annika had been fond of her.

‘Sold,’ said Zed. ‘We’re down to two pigs, three cows, half a dozen sheep and a handful of chickens. God knows what the Master would have said.’

He was in a bad mood, but Annika couldn’t bear not knowing what was wrong any longer.

‘Zed, who were those men the night before last? Why did we have to turn round and go back? What does it all mean?’

He shrugged. ‘Why don’t you ask your mother?’

‘I can’t,’ said Annika in a low voice. ‘I don’t want to upset her.’

‘It’s not my business to tell you what’s wrong with your home.’

Annika turned away so that he wouldn’t see her face. But Zed had sensed her misery.

‘What’s wrong with Spittal isn’t your mother’s fault,’ he said. ‘Come on, we’ll take Hector to the lake; he’s in a good mood this morning.’

That afternoon the lawyer whose wife had had fits came to Spittal and Annika signed an important-looking document, which took up several pages and was not at all easy to understand.

And a few days later, Annika was called into her mother’s boudoir to hear the explanation she had been hoping for.

‘I know you must have been puzzled, my poor child, by those dreadful men the other night, and I can tell you now that they were bailiffs.’

‘Bailiffs? Those men who take the furniture away when people can’t pay their bills?’

‘That’s right. You can imagine how I felt — someone from a family like mine classed with common poor people who can’t pay their bills.’

Annika was silent, remembering the Bodeks, to whom the bailiffs had always been a dread — yet somehow they had always managed to pay their debts in time. Frau Bodek had taken in extra washing, the boys had run errands round the clock…

‘You see, I have not told you anything about my husband; I didn’t want to upset you, but the truth is, he was no good.’

‘A louse, like my father?’

She gave a wintry smile. ‘Yes, dear. I’m afraid I’m not very good at choosing men. He’s gone abroad, but before that… Well, he was a gambler. A frightful gambler. He didn’t know how to stop and when he lost all his money he borrowed more and more. He gambled away my money and my sister’s and then he started selling off the family paintings and jewels. My father had had a stroke by then; he couldn’t do anything to stop him. Everything went… We became poor… Even buying food became difficult and we had to turn the servants away because there was no money to pay their wages. You can imagine how Hermann felt when we told him that he couldn’t go to St Xavier’s because we simply couldn’t pay the fees. The army is his life.’

She put her arm round Annika and drew her close.

‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought you here when I had so little to offer you,’ she went on. ‘Perhaps you would rather not have come, but once I found you I couldn’t bear not to have you by my side. Are you sorry that you came, Annika?’

‘Oh no, no, no! I love being with you. Only I wish you’d let me help — I really can do things.’ Annika’s face was alight as she saw herself being of use. ‘I can cook and sew and clean. We could save so much money if—’

Frau Edeltraut laid a finger on Annika’s lips.

‘My dear, don’t be foolish. Don’t you see, it’s more important than ever that people should see you’re one of us — a proper von Tannenberg. I only told you about the bailiffs because I think we may be over the worst. I had some news today which may — it just may — make everything better. I have to go to Bad Haxenfeld and look into it, and then possibly on a journey to Switzerland, and I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything yet because it might all come to nothing. But if things go as I hope, the bad times will be over. And then, my darling daughter, you shall have whatever you want. You did ask me for something, didn’t you?’

Annika smiled. ‘Galoshes.’

‘You shall have them. If matters turn out as I hope, you shall have as many pairs of galoshes as you like.’

‘I was such an idiot,’ said Annika. She had learned to clean out Rocco’s hoofs and Zed was watching her critically. ‘I mean, I never thought that we were just poor. I thought aristocrats were never poor like that. I knew they were always toughening themselves up to go on crusades and battles, and I suppose I thought they went on doing it. And I didn’t guess, because my mother stayed at the Bristol in Vienna and that was unbelievably expensive.’

Zed was inspecting the hoof she had cleaned.

‘Did she? I never knew that.’

‘I keep thinking how nice it was of her to fetch me when they were so hard up. I mean, I eat quite a lot. Perhaps I could try to eat a bit less in case the business in Switzerland doesn’t work out.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

But Annika was touched that her mother had come to fetch her even when things were so bad at Spittal. She must have wanted to find her daughter very much.

Sometimes now, Zed would throw Annika on to Rocco’s back and lead her through fields invisible from the house. ‘You’re not riding,’ he would say. ‘You’re just exercising the horse.’

‘I wish I knew what it was about horses,’ she would say as she slithered off again. ‘Why does one like them so much?’

‘It’s been like that since there were men and horses in the same world. But make no mistake about it; it’s the men who need the horses, not the other way round. Horses did fine on their own.’

The next morning Uncle Oswald came over early, but he was not dressed for shooting. He wore a dark suit and there were no feathers in his beard or any blood round his fingernails. Even his duelling scar looked as though it had been freshly scrubbed. Frau Edeltraut too was very elegant, wearing the fur cloak and feathered hat she had worn when she went to fetch Annika. They breakfasted before the children, and left for Bad Haxenfeld in the carriage, taking neither Wenzel nor Zed. Uncle Oswald took the reins and they clattered away over both the bridges almost before it got light.

It was well past midnight when they returned. Everyone in the house was fast asleep, but in the kennel behind the stork house, the three-legged dog heard a splash in the lake, stirred, and slept again.

Whatever they had found out in Bad Haxenfeld was clearly encouraging because the following week Annika’s mother, her Uncle Oswald and her Aunt Mathilde all set off for Switzerland.

‘We’ll only be away for a few days,’ Edeltraut had explained. ‘Gudrun will come and stay here, and Bertha will come and sleep in the house at night, so there’s nothing to worry about at all.’

But she gave some orders to Hermann. ‘I don’t want you to go riding till I get back — if there was an accident I would never forgive myself. And don’t do your shooting practice either. Everything else you can do as usual.’

So Gudrun arrived with her suitcase and moved into the bedroom next to Annika’s, and the hunting lodge was left to its antlers, and to the woodworms chomping in the rafters.

The adults drove away before dawn, to catch the first of the trains which would take them south on their long journey to Switzerland. An hour later Annika came down to breakfast in the dining room, followed by Gudrun and Hermann. Bertha brought in the dark bread and weak coffee, but she seemed flustered and preoccupied and hurried back down to the farm as soon as she had cleared away.

After breakfast Gudrun followed Annika to her room and asked if she could see her clothes. Fortunately she was too tall to wear Annika’s skirts and dresses, but she sighed over two more scarves and a velvet hair ribbon, which Annika presented to her.

After that she wanted to play cards.

It was a long morning. At lunchtime there came the first sign that the domestic arrangements were not going to go smoothly. Hanne, the sulky maid who came from the village on the far side of the lake, told the children that she wasn’t coming back the next day. She’d got a proper job somewhere else, she said, slapping down the platter of cold breast of teal, and the musty potatoes; the kind of job where you got paid on time.

The afternoon dragged like the morning. Hermann went to his room to ‘present arms’ and Gudrun wanted to stay indoors and talk about boyfriends. Since she didn’t have any boyfriends and Annika only had friends who happened to be boys, conversation was slow and after a while Annika, looking longingly out of the window, agreed to play a paper-and-pencil game.

Bertha usually came up to serve supper, but today there was no sign of her — only more cold meat and bread laid out in the dining room.

‘What happens if she doesn’t come and spend the night here? We’ll be all alone,’ said Gudrun.

‘Well, it wouldn’t matter; there are three of us.’

‘I think the way servants behave these days is disgusting,’ said Hermann.

‘I’ll go and see what’s happened to her,’ said Annika.

She hurried down to the farm, gratefully drinking in the fresh air, and knocked at the door of the hut. Bertha was sitting in the rocking chair with Hector at her feet. Dozing on the bench by the stove sat an old man whom Bertha introduced as her brother.

‘He’s driven over from Rachegg,’ she said, ‘to tell me that his wife has died. My sister-in-law. He wants me to come to the funeral.’

‘And will you?’ Annika asked.

‘I’d like to,’ she said. ‘It would be proper. But I promised the mistress I’d come and sleep at the house.’

At this moment the door to the outhouse opened and Zed appeared with a grey blanket slung over his shoulder.

‘It’s all right,’ he said to Annika. ‘I’ll come up and sleep — there’s a bed in the room behind the kitchen. Bertha needs to go.’

Zed was as good as his word. When Annika got up next morning she found Zed in the kitchen, filling the stove.

‘It should burn now till lunchtime. But Bertha’s gone off with her brother. She’ll be away for a few days. Can you manage? I’ve got to go and see to the animals, but I’ll be back later.’

‘Of course I can manage. Thank you for doing the stove.’

Annika looked round, wondering what to do. She had promised her mother not to go into the kitchen and not to work as a servant… not on any account.

She had promised.

She put on the kettle and went upstairs to make her bed. Then she reached for the notebook Pauline had given her and untied the ribbon. All the people whom Pauline turned to when in trouble were there. The man with the back-to-front foot, the girl with the measles… the boy who had been stung a hundred times by bees and gone on to school to get top marks in his maths exam before he fainted… the cow sinking under the ice…

Disobeying one’s mother was difficult. It was almost as difficult as holding up a sinking cow by the horns or swimming the Danube with measles. But what if it had to be done? Would her mother want Hermann to go hungry?

She closed the book and went back downstairs.

There was some bread in the bin — half a loaf — and some butter out in the dairy. The strange yellow jam had been finished the day before and there didn’t seem to be any more. She put out three cups and plates on the kitchen table and made coffee.

Then she went upstairs again to wake Gudrun and Hermann.

‘There’s no one to help in the house today, so I’ve laid breakfast in the kitchen.’

‘I can’t eat in the kitchen,’ said Hermann, ‘I never have.’

‘Well, that’s all right, you can fetch your food and take it into the dining room.’

Gudrun too did not think she could eat in the kitchen, so she and Hermann took their slices of bread and cups of coffee through into the dining room, where they sat shivering and looking out at the grey lake.

Annika, meanwhile, took stock. It wasn’t quite true that there was nothing to eat, but there was amazingly little. Hanne usually did the shopping in the village, but Hanne had gone and Annika didn’t have any money to go shopping herself. She found some flour in a jar and half a jug of milk. In the vegetable rack there were a few potatoes and a turnip. In Uncle Oswald’s cold larder two unplucked moorhens with blood on their beaks were hanging on hooks. She shut the door on them and went to the broom cupboard.

She would think about lunch later, but now it was necessary to start on the cleaning, for she could not cook in anything except a clean kitchen, and a clean kitchen meant a clean house. Only where to start? For a moment, as she looked at the tins of polish, the cloths and dusters and brooms, she felt overwhelmed by the task she had set herself. Then she heard Sigrid’s voice as clearly as if she were standing beside her.

She picked up the buckets, the floorcloths, the brooms and feather dusters and made her way to the dining room. Hermann and Gudrun, who had just finished their breakfast, looked at her in amazement.

‘What are you doing?’ said Gudrun as Annika began to sweep the floor. ‘You’ll get your clothes dirty.’

‘Perhaps. But I’ll get the house clean. Some of it. You can help me if you like.’

But Gudrun hurried from the room as though what Annika was doing might be infectious.

Annika dusted the huge carved chairs, she shook out the window curtains, she polished the oak table, and slid across the parquet floor with dusters tied round her shoes.

Presently she found that she was singing; the first time she had done so since she came to her new home.

When she had finished the dining room she started on the hall, wiping the glass cases of the beady-eyed fish, mopping down the flagstones. Then she put away the cleaning things and made her way down to the farm.

‘Zed, I want some eggs. Can you spare some?’

‘There are plenty of eggs — well, there are a dozen, but they’re supposed to be taken into the village and bartered for Hermann’s ammunition.’

Annika stared at him. ‘Is that why there are never any eggs?’

‘Yes. The eggs go so that he can shoot, and the pigs get sold to pay the man who gives him his fencing lessons. It’s been like that for a while.’

‘Well, I don’t care, Zed. I want the eggs. Hermann’s not supposed to shoot anyway while his mother is away.’

Zed shrugged. ‘It’s all right by me. Come on. I’ll help you get them.’

‘There has to be something else I can use.’

He grinned. ‘Well, there are always mangel-wurzels.’

She would have liked to make soufflé omelettes, but it would have to be pancakes if there was to be enough for everyone. She had flour, eggs, milk — then right at the back of the almost empty store cupboard she found a piece of smoked ham. It was a very small piece, but chopped up to fill the pancakes it would do.

The smell brought Gudrun to the kitchen door just before lunchtime, where she hovered sadly.

‘They’ll be ready in a few minutes,’ said Annika, busy turning the pancakes over. ‘You can help me with the filling.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t. Mama never lets me go in the kitchen.’

Annika said nothing, just went on heaping the golden pancakes on to the plate.

‘Well, if you don’t tell her…’ said Gudrun presently. ‘What do you want me to do?’

Zed came back then with more wood. ‘My goodness, they smell good.’

‘They’ve come out all right,’ Annika admitted. ‘There’s plenty for all of us.’

She got out four plates and put them round the kitchen table, only to hear Gudrun give a squeak like a terrified mouse.

‘I can’t eat here with the stable boy!’

‘Well, then take your plate through into the dining room, and Hermann’s. I’ll stay here with Zed; I have to watch the stove.’

So once more Gudrun and Hermann sat at the vast oak table in the unheated dining room, while Annika and Zed ate in the warmth and comfort of the old kitchen, and he told her about Bertha.

‘She won’t be back till the end of the week; it’s a long way, and her brother needs her. I’m hoping—’ He broke off. ‘Only I don’t suppose he will…’

‘What? What are you hoping?’

‘I thought he might ask her to come and live with him. He’s got quite a big farm and he’ll be lonely.’

‘But wouldn’t you miss her?’

‘No. Because I wouldn’t be here.’

Annika stared at him.

‘I meant to go after the Master died, but I knew he worried about Bertha; she’d been his nurse since he was two weeks old, and I thought I had to stay and see she was all right.’

‘But where would you go? And what about Rocco — and Hector?’

‘Yes. There’d be a lot to think about.’

Annika had put down her fork, feeling suddenly terribly bereft. ‘I’ll miss you.’

‘I haven’t gone yet,’ he said.

But tears had come into her eyes. ‘Oh, what’s the matter with me,’ she said, brushing them away angrily. ‘I hardly ever cried in Vienna.’

‘You’re homesick.’

‘How can I be? I’m at home.’

But after lunch, carrying on with the task she had set herself, she felt cheerful again. She cleaned out the bedrooms, lugging the stepladder along the landing so that she could dust high up, and polishing the mirrors. Then Zed returned with a pot of cottage cheese.

‘Bertha hung up the sour milk before she went and it’s ready; you can have it.’

‘Good. I’ve found some big potatoes. I’ll bake them and fill them with the cheese.’

Zed nodded. ‘They’ll go well with the fish.’

‘What fish?’

‘The fish we’re going to catch this afternoon, using your Uncle Oswald’s punt.’

Zed wasn’t boasting. He had the punt ready in the boathouse, with Hector lying curled up as far as possible from the tackle.

‘It’s all right,’ Zed said. ‘He’ll be quiet; he knows you don’t retrieve fish.’

Soon they were in the middle of the lake, putting out their lines. It was lovely to be outside, seeing the house from the water, floating on the reflected clouds.

Zed caught two pike and she caught a small perch, and though she knew that Gudrun and Hermann were watching them out of the window, she didn’t mind.

Later, when Zed had cleaned and filleted the fish, and they were sizzling in the frying pan, Gudrun appeared once more at the door.

‘Oh, goodness, I do love fried fish,’ she said.

‘They’re nearly ready,’ said Annika. ‘Tell Hermann and you can take your helpings through.’

‘Perhaps Hermann would come and eat in here if I asked him. It’s so nice and warm.’

But at that moment the sound of the gong pealed through the house. It was Hermann making it clear that the von Tannenbergs did not slum it in kitchens, and Gudrun scuttled away to follow her hero into the dining room.

The next day Annika got up early and went on with her tasks. When she came to think about lunch she found that Zed had shot and skinned a rabbit, and in the overgrown vegetable patch she pulled up some of last year’s sprouts. ‘What is that?’ Gudrun asked later, helping herself to a thinly sliced white root which Annika had served as a salad.

‘It’s a new vegetable — I can’t remember the name,’ said Annika. ‘It’s good, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is,’ said Gudrun, and took another portion of mangel-wurzel.

On the third day Annika was hardly recognizable as the quiet girl drifting through empty rooms. She was working from dawn till dusk, and as each meal approached she and Zed pitted their wits against the empty larder. That afternoon a pedlar came to the door and she bartered Professor Gertrude’s manicure set for a box of gingerbread and a bag of rice.

And she made soup. She made soup of absolutely everything she could find and Zed teased her about it, pretending he could taste firewood and the bristles of her broom — but he ate it. No one trained by Ellie could fail to find something with which to make soup.

‘Have you ever thought of marrying a Canadian settler?’ Zed asked her when he found her chopping what seemed to be the last onion in Spittal.

She shook her head. ‘Why a Canadian?’

‘Haven’t you ever wanted to go there? To the north-west — the coast is full of islands and there’s forest for miles and miles and everybody’s equal there.’

‘No, I haven’t.’

But that night she took a lamp to the library to look for an atlas. She found one too, which had not been sent to be rebound or cleaned in Bad Haxenfeld, and looked up the coast of British Columbia. Zed was right. It looked wild and beautiful, but her mother would never leave this place. If there was one thing Annika had learned, it was that there had been von Tannenbergs at Spittal for 500 years.

Annika had put off cleaning the library. It was never used and even colder and danker than the other rooms. But there were some beautiful old pieces of furniture there — in particular a large carved desk with numerous drawers and claw-footed legs that had belonged to the Freiherr. Nobody had used it since his death; it had been completely neglected and Annika did not feel that this was right.

She mixed a fresh consignment of beeswax, decanted a jar of silver polish, and made her way to the library.

There was a bunch of keys in one of the pigeonholes, but none of the drawers were locked. One by one she pulled them out and stacked them carefully on the floor. Then she began on the desktop, the back, the legs, dusting, polishing — and polishing again.

When she had finished she turned back to the drawers. Though they were empty they still had their lining paper — paper almost as thick as vellum with a design of fleur-de-lis. It would be a pity to throw it out; she would wipe it as best she could, and replace it.

First, though, the silver handles. Whoever had crafted them had not been troubled about the people who would have to clean them. They were elaborately wrought with a design that soaked up the polish but took longer than she would have believed to produce a shine.

By the time she got to the actual drawers, Annika was tempted just to push them back in, but at this point, as so often when she tried to take short cuts, Sigrid seemed to be leaning over her shoulder, looking pained. So she removed the paper from each of the drawers, wiped it, replaced it back… When she reached the bottom drawer she found something wedged right under the lining at the back.

A letter. She took it out and held it in her hand for a minute, not sure what to do. Then she heard Gudrun calling her and she put it in her apron pocket.

It was time to get lunch.