The Star of Kazan

20 The Godfather

The next day, Annika was back at work, cooking, contriving, cleaning. She had been sure that when the grown-ups returned she would have time to take off her apron and become again the girl her mother wanted her to be.

But she was working in the drawing room on the other side of the house, standing on a stepladder cleaning the windows, when the carriage returned, and the first she knew of it was hearing her mother’s voice.

‘Annika! What on earth are you doing?’

Annika started and nearly lost her balance. Then she came slowly down; there was no point in even trying to pull off her apron. She had been caught red-handed. Behind her mother, Annika saw Hermann, smirking. He had obviously led her into the drawing room on purpose, wanting to make trouble.

‘She was doing something like that all the time you were away, Mother. Scrubbing and sweeping and cooking — and she had all her meals in the kitchen. She’s just a servant through and through!’

Annika waited for her mother’s anger, but something had happened to Edeltraut. She was elegantly dressed in a new velvet coat and skirt and her hair was swept up in a different style which made her look younger and very beautiful.

‘Oh, Annika, my darling,’ she said with a rueful laugh. ‘What are we going to do with you?’

And she bent down and swept Annika into her arms and hugged her.

Everything had changed, Annika saw that at once. Her mother was no longer stiff and anxious. Mathilde had stopped looking like an unhappy camel. Uncle Oswald had trimmed his beard. Whatever the business was that had taken them to Switzerland, it must have gone well.

It was decided that the family from the hunting lodge would stay the night. Uncle Oswald had bought a hamper full of good things in Zurich: tins of pâté, truffles, hothouse grapes, a smoked leg of lamb, a bottle of champagne.

‘We’ll have a party,’ said Edeltraut. ‘But first I must tell you what has happened, because we shall need to pay our respects and say a prayer.’

So the children gathered round her and Edeltraut told them why they had gone away.

‘I told you there might be news which would help us here at Spittal,’ she said. ‘And there has been such news. Our money troubles are over. Everything won’t be settled at once, but I was able to raise enough money on my expectations to start on the things that need to be done.’

‘What are expectations, Aunt Edeltraut?’ asked Gudrun.

‘Well, in this case they are money, which has been left to me in a will. Quite a lot of money. And this, my dears, is where the sad part comes in, because my godfather, Herr von Grotius, has died. He was a widower and we went to Zurich to make sure he had a fitting funeral. I can’t tell you what a wonderful man he was and I was his favourite goddaughter.’

Edeltraut’s handkerchief came out and she dabbed her eyes. It was a new one, edged with finest lace; there had been no time yet to embroider it with the von Tannenberg initials.

‘Death is always sad,’ she went on, ‘but he was very, very old. Often in the last years he told me how tired he was; how he longed to be at rest.’

‘And now he is, God bless him,’ put in Mathilde.

Edeltraut raised her eyebrows at her sister. She never liked being interrupted and both the godfather and his legacy belonged to her. ‘You can be certain,’ she told the children, ‘that we gave him a wonderful funeral. A dozen black horses bedecked with plumes, three carriages packed with important mourners… a service in the cathedral presided over by the archbishop… Everybody who mattered in the city was there. The Prince of Essen sent his equerry.’ She dabbed her eyes once more, then put the handkerchief away. ‘So tonight when you go to bed I want you to promise to kneel and say a prayer for Herr von Grotius. I know you never met him, but he was a good man.’

‘A very good man,’ said Mathilde, who felt that she was not being allowed a fair share of the story.

‘Because he begged us not to go into mourning we shall wear our ordinary clothes,’ Edeltraut went on, ‘except when we go out, when we shall have black armbands. There will be armbands for you also so that people know we care and I shall wear a black ribbon on my petticoat, as my mother would have done, because he was my godfather.’

But to Annika it seemed that the clothes the grown-ups were wearing were not very ordinary. The muff Edeltraut had thrown down was made of sable, Mathilde wore a jacket embroidered in gold thread and Uncle Oswald’s shining new boots were made of finest kid.

Hermann had done his best to listen patiently, but now he got to his feet and moved to his mother’s side.

‘Does that mean I can go to St Xavier’s?’ he asked excitedly. ‘Does it? Does it?’

Edeltraut smiled at him.

‘Yes, my dear, it does. That will be our first task — to get you ready for the Easter term. The time for you to serve your Fatherland has come!’

Hermann’s face flushed with joy. He pulled back his shoulders and gave a perfect military salute.

‘I am ready,’ he said.

For a moment no one could think of anything except the noble way that Hermann was behaving. Then Edeltraut broke the silence.

‘And now you will want to see your presents.’

The boxes were piled up on the low table. Gudrun opened hers to find, in nests of tissue paper, a blue velvet cloak and hood with a matching muff — and a pair of white lace gloves.

‘Oh, Mama,’ she said — and her long pale face lit up. She slipped on the cloak and the hood, and wouldn’t take them off the whole evening.

Hermann’s present took a long time to unwrap; inside the embossed paper was a leather box with the monogram Zwingli and Hammerman, goldsmiths to the president of Switzerland, stamped on the side. Inside the box were several layers of green felt, and inside that was a statuette, in pure silver, of General von Moltke on his horse.

‘Be careful of it, Hermann,’ said his mother. ‘It’s really valuable.’

‘Thank you, Mother.’ Hermann was delighted. ‘I’ll be able to take it to St Xavier’s and show the others.’

‘And now you, Annika. This is what you wanted, isn’t it?’

She handed her a box wrapped in brown paper. Annika took the first present from her mother with eager hands. Inside was a pair of rubber galoshes. Annika thanked her warmly, but she had seen at once that they were a size too small.

The next two weeks were spent in getting Hermann ready for St Xavier’s. This was not a simple matter. Hermann had a list of the things he had to have and they were many.

‘I shall need two dress uniforms and a new pair of riding boots and a hard hat with a badge and my own pistol… and a double-breasted greatcoat with wide lapels… and six pairs of white kid gloves…’

It was now that a new figure entered the lives of the family at Spittal: Hermann’s friend Karl-Gottlieb von Dammerfeld. Karl-Gottlieb had gone to St Xavier’s at the beginning of the year and now he sent little notes to Hermann telling him about the things that were not on the official list but everybody had to have if they were not to become a laughing stock, like slippers made of deerskin and silver tooth-mugs inscribed with the family crest.

Because the roof of the hunting lodge was being treated for woodworm, Gudrun and her parents were staying at Spittal until the repairs were done. But even Gudrun, who worshipped Hermann, sighed when the post brought another letter from Karl-Gottlieb.

Annika had not been allowed to help the servants, but she was definitely allowed to help Hermann. She was allowed to polish his badges and clean his buttons and iron his shirts because she did it so much better than old Bertha, who had returned from the funeral, and better even than the new maid who had been engaged.

‘I don’t want you to think you’ve been forgotten, Annika,’ said her mother. ‘I have a lovely surprise planned for you later, but just at the moment I know you will like to see Hermann off safely. He’s waited for this so long.’

Annika didn’t mind helping Hermann, but she was amazed at how much he longed to go to a place which sounded to her like a kind of prison. The boys slept forty to a dormitory on iron beds, they marched everywhere to military commands and the punishments were awesome.

‘Sometimes they handcuff a boy’s hand to his foot or give him ten lashes.’

‘But wouldn’t you be terrified?’

‘No, because I won’t be disobedient. I’m going to win the Sword of Honour, you’ll see. And when I come out I’ll be an officer in a cavalry regiment with two horses of my own, and if there’s a war I’ll defend the Fatherland and win the Iron Cross.’

Because Hermann had to be measured for new clothes and boots, they had to drive to Bad Haxenfeld, and since Annika had a good eye and Hermann liked having people to show off to, both she and Gudrun went with him on these shopping trips.

And it was there that Annika met the last person in the world she expected to see.

With the weather growing warmer, more and more visitors had come to the spa. There was a Lithuanian nobleman who was mad, but nicely so, and who stood on the steps of the casino handing out red roses to anybody he liked the look of, and a famous actress with an inflamed liver and a tiger cub on a lead. A band played in the park now as well as in the pump room. Men in white flannels brayed on the tennis courts, and brightly painted boats, ready for hire, appeared on the lake.

Zed had driven them in. He’d been offhand and grumpy since he took Annika to hear the gypsies, and didn’t seem interested in the good fortune that had come to Spittal.

‘I’ve never heard of any godfather in Switzerland,’ he said. ‘And why hasn’t Bertha been paid?’

‘She will be, I’m sure,’ said Annika. ‘Only there’s so much to do. Once Hermann goes away…’

In Bad Haxenfeld, Zed went as usual to help the Baron and wheel him to the baths. The old man was starting on a new course of thalassotherapy, which meant that seaweed had to be brought from the Baltic and mixed with the spa water because it was rich in iodine. Seaweed is slippery stuff and the Baron liked to have Zed to lift him in and out of the squelchy fronds.

Meanwhile, Annika, with Gudrun and Frau Edeltraut, accompanied Hermann to the tailor, where his dress tunics were taking shape.

The fitting took a long time because Karl-Gottlieb had told him that in spite of what it said on the prospectus for the college, the cadets were now wearing their collars at least two centimetres higher than in the diagram. This annoyed the tailor, who said that such a collar would scratch the young gentleman’s chin, but Karl-Gottlieb had already written that a sore chin was regarded at St Xavier’s as a sign of manhood, and the tailor was overruled.

After that Edeltraut went to meet Mathilde in a dress shop. Her sister was spending altogether too much money on her own clothes since the visit to Switzerland and needed watching.

‘You can go to Zettelmayer’s for coffee and cakes,’ she told the children. ‘I’ll meet you at the hotel.’

Zettelmayer’s was the best pastry shop in Bad Haxenfeld; its cakes were famous all over the province. Everyone who could afford it came there; people taking the cure or people driving through the town. The shop overlooked the park; the tablecloths were rose-coloured, the chairs were pink velvet and gilt, and the smell wafting out — of coffee and cinnamon and chocolate and apricots — stopped people in their tracks.

Gudrun and Hermann ordered hot chocolate and went over to choose their cakes. There were iced eclairs, which were wheeled away like patients in a hospital to be injected with fresh whipped cream. There were wild strawberry tartlets, the fruit as red as drops of blood, and almond biscuits shaped like stars.

Hermann chose a nut-layer tart with confectioner’s custard and Gudrun, as always, followed him and chose the same — but Annika hesitated. She knew all the cakes, she could have baked all of them except one: a small squat bun, very dark in colour, but not, she thought, the darkness of chocolate. She studied it for a while and then asked the lady what it was.

‘A h — that’s a local speciality. A Norrland Nussel. It’s made of chestnuts and molasses and a touch of tansy. You won’t find it anywhere else.’

‘Can one get the recipe?’ Annika asked. ‘Or is it secret?’

‘Bless you, no. I’ll write it out for you. Are you from Vienna?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll know about patisserie then.’

Annika nodded and took her bun to the table. It was unlike anything she had eaten before — a dark and serious taste, but sumptuous too — and she looked forward to sending Ellie the recipe. But Hermann, once again, was not at all pleased with her.

‘Why do you always talk to waitresses and servants? It’s not the thing. You’re making us conspicuous.’

Their table was by the window and Annika sat watching the people outside. Children bowled hoops, nursemaids pushed prams and everywhere the patients in wheelchairs or on crutches lifted their faces to the sun.

Then suddenly she leaned forward. It couldn’t be… except that it was. No one else’s bottom stuck out like that; no one else born and bred in Vienna would wear such a violently Scottish tartan dress; no one else tugged at the hand of her exhausted governess so fiercely. It was Loremarie Egghart and she was coming up the steps, pushing open the cafe door. The governess shook her head, but Annika could have told her she was wasting her time. If Loremarie wanted to eat cakes at Zettelmayer’s, then that was exactly what she would do.

‘I want a caramel sundae with two straws and a chocolate eclair — a round one, not a long one,’ she was announcing in her loud and piercing voice, while the governess (a new one whom Annika had not seen before) tried to call her back.

‘You know your mama wishes not—’ she began in terrible German.

But Loremarie had caught sight of Annika sitting at her table. She stopped dead on her way to the counter. She filled her chest with air as if she was an opera singer about to launch into a tricky aria.

Then she pointed at Annika and in an accusing shriek she said, ‘You’re a thief! You’re a dirty, disgusting thief!’ Her voice rose even higher. Then, ‘You stole my great-aunt Egghart’s trunk!’ yelled Loremarie across the cafe floor.