The Star of Kazan

23 Beachcoming

Although Annika had been very upset by Loremarie’s accusations, what she felt most when she returned to Spittal was gratitude to her new family. Hermann had defended her, Gudrun had soothed her — and her mother had attacked the Eggharts like a tigress. It was time to put the past behind her and become a proper von Tannenberg — and this meant not writing so many letters to Vienna and constantly asking for writing paper and stamps, and it meant not making up recipes inside her head. She would send the instructions for making Norrland Nussel to Ellie and then she would put away her pinafores once and for all and really learn to love Spittal.

Not just the farm and Rocco and the frogs — anyone could love horses and frogs — but the house itself and the estate and all the people in it.

It was easier because it had at last stopped raining; patches of dry ground appeared, and the lake now sometimes showed glimmers of blue.

Workmen had been called in — plasterers and carpenters and roofers to repair the leaks, and new servants had been engaged — but what occupied everyone in the house was getting Hermann ready for St Xavier’s. The day when he would go was getting very close, but Hermann did not seem to be nervous in the least. It was rather Gudrun who became sadder and sniffier by the hour.

‘It will be like a tomb without him,’ she said again and again.

It had been decided that both Edeltraut and Uncle Oswald would take Hermann to St Xavier’s, which was some 200 kilometres away, in the direction of Berlin.

‘But of course I shan’t take him into the actual building,’ said Edeltraut. ‘It would shame him to be accompanied by a woman. I will wave goodbye at the gate and Oswald will take him inside.’ She gave a brave smile. ‘A s the mother of a soldier of the Fatherland I must not allow myself the luxury of tears.’

‘But he’ll come home for the holidays, won’t he?’ asked Annika.

‘Only for a few days in the year. To train a youth to become a worthy servant of the emperor takes every minute of every day.’

Annika was silent. If Hermann did not come home he would not ride Rocco. She wanted to ask what would happen to the horse, but she didn’t. If Rocco was to be sent away or sold, she did not know how Zed would bear it.

A few days after the visit to the spa, Annika went down to the stork house to say goodbye to Bertha. As Zed had hoped, her brother had asked her to come and live with him; he was lonely without his wife and he thought they would get along well enough.

She was sitting in the carved chair and stroking Hector, who had managed to climb on to her lap and was hanging down on either side of it.

‘My brother would have him, he likes dogs and he’s got a big enough place, a proper farm,’ she told Annika. ‘He’d have Zed too, he knows he’s a good worker, but Zed’s in a funny mood. I can’t get any sense out of him at the minute. Best to leave things as they are.’

‘I’ll miss you, Bertha,’ said Annika.

Bertha nodded. ‘And I’ll miss you.’

But Annika knew whom Bertha would really miss. She and Zed had been together for four years now. They had nursed the Freiherr; Zed was almost like a son.

Annika had thought of the north Germans as dour and uncommunicative, but Bertha left sobbing. She clung to Wenzel’s hand and when the time came to embrace Zed it seemed as if after all she would refuse to go with her brother.

‘I’ve been here for more than sixty years,’ she said.

But Zed helped her up into the cart, and promised to come on a visit, and, accompanied by howls from Hector, she was driven away down the lane.

‘It’s not far away, my brother’s farm at Rachegg,’ she had said to Annika before she left. ‘You can drive it in a day. You’ll remind Zed that there’s always a place for him when I’ve gone, won’t you?’

‘Yes, I will. But would there be a place for Rocco?’

‘Rocco belongs to Hermann, my dear, never forget that.’

The following week Hermann left for St Xavier’s. Gudrun was so affected by the sight of her cousin in his travelling clothes — the military cape, the peaked cap with the brass insignia of the college, the little swagger stick that cadets were supposed to carry so as to get used to handling them when they were commissioned — that she gave an anguished gulp and disappeared off to her room.

Hermann had asked that the staff could be assembled in the courtyard so that he could make a proper farewell speech. He knew that this was what the master of the house was supposed to do, but the ceremony fell rather flat. Bertha had gone, Zed did not turn up, Wenzel was too deaf to hear a word that Hermann said, and the new maids hadn’t been there long enough to understand what an important occasion it was.

All the same, Hermann did well, asking the staff to give his mother the loyal service they would have given him if he hadn’t been going away. Then Wenzel brought the carriage round, but just before she stepped in after Hermann, Edeltraut turned round and bent down to put her mouth close to Annika’s ear.

‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten your surprise, my darling,’ she whispered tenderly. ‘I would never do that. As soon as Oswald and I get back I shall get to work on it. You deserve no less.’

After they had driven off, Mathilde took her gulping daughter to the hunting lodge to see how the repairs were getting on and Annika made her way to the farm.

She found Zed in the paddock, schooling Rocco — except that ‘schooling’ did not seem to be the right word because Rocco was so obviously enjoying himself. Zed rode with a saddle but without stirrups as he took Rocco through his paces: the extended trot, the half-turn, the square halt… When he paused, the horse turned his head as if to say, ‘Come on, what’s next?’

‘What you’re doing, that’s dressage, isn’t it?’ she asked.

‘I suppose so. It’s just making sure he understands me exactly — and I understand him.’

‘Do you make him go over jumps?’

‘No. I could do — he’d do anything you asked — but horses have talents, just like people… and his is for this… for becoming part of another person. But I don’t teach him tricks.’

‘Don’t the Lipizzaners do tricks?’

Zed shook his head. ‘Everything they do comes from their natural movements. If you watch colts loose in a field they rear up and show off to each other or fight. All those statues in which horses do the levade and the riders look as though they’re going to slide off — in the stud at Zverno I saw them do that again and again. Rearing up is easy enough, but holding the position needs a terrible lot of strength in the back and the legs, and Rocco’s only just stopped growing.’

After this came the daily grooming, which Zed never left out. Annika could have done it on her own by now. Zed trusted her to sponge Rocco’s eyes and nose, to oil his hoofs… to comb his mane and tail. She washed the brushes and the cloths; she brought fresh drinking water and plaited new wisps of straw to burnish his bright coat.

Caring for the horse did not depend, for Annika, on being allowed to ride. It was a thing in itself.

Today, when they had finished, Zed went to fetch Hector from his kennel.

‘He’s still missing Bertha,’ he said. ‘We’ll take him for a walk. There’s a bittern’s nest in the reeds near that clump of oaks.’

‘He doesn’t seem exactly heartbroken,’ said Annika as Hector panted and yelped ecstatically along the shore of the lake, disappearing into the reeds and emerging again, soaking wet and covered in mud. This time of year, when the river took its share of meltwater, more and more objects were washed ashore. Hector found egg-boxes and driftwood, torn-off trouser legs, a mouse trap…

They had reached the clump of oaks, but the bittern’s nest was empty. The shore at this point curved into a little cove, where the mud was mixed with pebbles and coarse sand. Objects that came up from the lake were stranded here; it was one of Hector’s favourite places. A headless pike interested him — he picked it up in his mouth, but rejected it in favour of a derelict handbag with a strap. The strap pleased him very much; he chewed it, growled at it, and attacked it suddenly without warning.

Now, though, came the awful moment of choice.

He was an intelligent dog. At the beginning he had tried to carry several things in his mouth and take them home, but this had ended badly. Now you could see him thinking, deciding…

‘It might be worse,’ said Zed. He had made it clear to Hector that the headless pike was not in the running, and it looked as though the handbag would be the chosen object. ‘It doesn’t smell too bad.’

But Hector had not finished. He dropped the handbag, put his head down and, with his stump vibrating, made his way once more round the edge of the bay. He found a dead freshwater crab, but he did not trust crabs, even dead ones, and a muslin nappy, which he tried out but did not care for. There was no challenge in nappies.

Then, with a yelp of fulfilment, he pounced.

‘That will be it,’ said Zed. ‘Thank goodness it’s not too big.’

They made their way to the water’s edge. Hector had found a smooth leather box about the size of a postcard. It didn’t look as though it had been in the water very long; the embossed edges could still be made out, and a few faded letters in gilt. The box was old, but it was not disgusting, and Hector now swivelled his good eye in their direction, ready to defend his treasure.

‘It’s all right,’ Zed said to the dog, ‘you can keep it. Come on, we’re going home.’

But as he set off with the dog at his heels he saw that Annika was standing absolutely still. The colour had drained from her face.

‘Please, Zed, can you get the box from him. Please.’

‘I’ll try. But he won’t like it.’

But Annika could only repeat the one word, ‘Please.’

‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

Zed looked at her. Then he turned to do battle with the dog.

Annika sat on the bench in the stork house, looking down at the photograph in her hand. She had known straight away, really, only it seemed so impossible. The catch was rusty and stiff, the leather case was swollen with water and the photograph, when she took it from its wrapping, was curled with damp.

But there she was, smiling out of the picture as she stood beside her artist in the doorway of her yellow house with its wisteria-covered balcony and the weathervane shaped like a crowing cockerel.

‘You look so happy,’ Annika had said when she had first seen the photograph.

And the old lady, ignoring the jewels on the bed, holding the picture close to her eyes, saying softly, ‘So happy… so very, very happy.’

Zed had put the dog back in his kennel. Getting him to give up the leather box had been difficult; not even the sock-suspender had aroused in Hector such passion and desire.

Now he sat beside Annika on the bench and waited till she was ready to explain.

‘It’s her — it’s La Rondine,’ said Annika, her voice full of bewilderment. ‘It’s the actual picture she showed me. It’s where she went to live with her artist when she gave up the stage.’ She turned to Zed. ‘I don’t understand. This picture was in her trunk. It was right at the bottom of the trunk, under the jewels.’

‘What jewels?’ said Zed sharply. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Oh, they weren’t real — she had this friend, a jeweller in Paris who copied her jewels when she had to sell them. Someone must have opened it and thrown the picture in the lake. But who… and why?’

Zed was silent.

‘Look,’ he said after a while. ‘You’d better tell me all of it. About the old lady and what was in the trunk.’

For a moment she hesitated, but Zed was her friend… so she told him about reading to the old lady and how she had got fond of her and about the hunchbacked jeweller in Paris who had been so kind — and about swaying and strewing from her swing high over the heads of the people.

‘I really loved her,’ said Annika, blowing her nose. ‘Only then she died.’

‘And this girl Loremarie said she’d left the trunk to you?’

‘Yes. But I thought she was lying — well, she was — I never heard anything about it. We thought it had got thrown out.’

She had turned away so that he couldn’t see her face. Zed gave her a few minutes. Then he put a hand on her arm.

‘Annika, it would be best to say nothing about the trunk or the photo to your mother when she comes back. I’d like to see if I can find out what happened first. You don’t want to worry her.’

Annika looked at him with amazement.

‘How can I say nothing? I can’t keep things from her… she’s my mother.’

‘He has been given to the Fatherland,’ said Frau Edeltraut. ‘Hermann’s great adventure has begun.’

She sat at the head of the table, magnificently dressed in crimson lace. The table had been laid with a damask cloth, crystal goblets and the best silver. The food was properly cooked; there were carafes of wine. Uncle Oswald sat at the far end, with Mathilde and Gudrun on one side and Annika at the other — but Hermann’s place, beside his mother, was empty.

‘He was so proud. So brave,’ Edeltraut went on. ‘There was never a backward glance as he walked up the drive, was there, Oswald?’

‘Not one. He marched to his fate like the great soldier he will be.’

Edeltraut nodded and sighed. Now, as the new maid came through with the second course, Edeltraut instructed her to refill their glasses. ‘Even the children will want to drink this toast.’

She rose to her feet. ‘To Hermann von Tannenberg — my son and the heir to Spittal.’

But when everybody had sipped their wine, Edeltraut had a second toast she wanted them to drink.

‘And I want you to lift your glass to my godfather, Herr von Grotius, whose generosity has enabled Spittal to rise from the ashes and take its true place as one of the great houses of Norrland.’

‘To Herr von Grotius — God rest his soul,’ said Uncle Oswald, and everybody sipped again.

Though the meal was grand it was not exactly cheerful. This was partly because Gudrun, whenever she looked at Hermann’s empty chair, began to sniffle and partly because of the coolness that had developed between Edeltraut and her sister about the way the money from Switzerland should be spent.

Annika did her best to enjoy the meal, but since Hector had found the photograph she was filled with an anxiety and dread she could not explain. And when the supper had been cleared, she went bravely up to her mother’s boudoir and knocked on the door.

Edeltraut was at her desk, with Uncle Oswald standing beside her. They seemed to be working on some figures, but when Annika asked if she could speak to her, she turned round at once, and held out her arms.

‘Of course, my darling child,’ she said. ‘I’m never too busy to talk to you. I saw at supper that you seemed very quiet. Is it because you are missing Hermann?’

‘No… I mean I am missing Hermann,’ said Annika dutifully, ‘but it isn’t that.’

‘Well, I hope it isn’t because you think I have forgotten the surprise I promised you. I would never forget a promise to my new-found daughter. Never! Especially one that will bring you so much joy!’

‘I know,’ said Annika. ‘I know you wouldn’t.’ She had reached the desk and seen a photo of Hermann, cradling a woolly puppy in his arms. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘is that Hector?’

Edeltraut’s face had become very stern and sad. ‘Yes. That was taken just after my father gave Hermann the puppy. Hermann absolutely adored it, he couldn’t let it out of his sight. And then there was this tragic accident.’

‘With the fireworks?’

‘What? No, no — that’s one of Zed’s stories. The poor little thing was run over. It got tangled in the wheels of the hay-cart from a neighbouring farm. The man was going too fast, whipping up his horses… Bertha was there when it happened and she took him down to her hut. I was for putting the little thing down, it was in such agony and I can’t bear to see animals suffering, but she and Zed managed to nurse it back to health. Only then they wouldn’t let it go, they thought of it as their dog. Hermann was very good about it, I must say. That boy has a generous heart. Now, my dear, what was it you wanted to see me about?’And as Annika looked at Uncle Oswald, ‘I have no secrets from your uncle; you are quite safe to speak in front of him.’

So Annika took the leather box out of the pocket of her skirt and laid it on the desk.

‘What is it?’ asked Edeltraut, puzzled. ‘Something you have found?’

‘Yes. By the edge of the lake, in that little bay by the willow trees. It must have been washed up.’

She opened the leather case, and unwrapped the picture.

Edeltraut stared at the portrait of La Rondine and her painter, and showed it to Oswald, who handed it back.

‘It’s a nice picture… but…’ Edeltraut was clearly at a loss. ‘Does it have any meaning for you?’

‘Yes, it does. I saw it in Vienna. It’s a picture of the Eggharts’ great-aunt and the man she was in love with. And it was in her trunk. I put it back myself, and locked it, and the next day she died.’

‘But that’s impossible. Quite impossible. How could a picture from her trunk end up in Spittal Lake?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Annika miserably. ‘I told Loremarie I hadn’t seen it and I haven’t, but…’

Both Oswald and Edeltraut were now poring over the photo, their brows furrowed.

‘You’re absolutely certain this is the same picture?’

Annika nodded. ‘Absolutely. I looked at it for a long time and I remember the edging. I know it’s a bit smeary, but it’s the same one. I’d swear to it.’

‘So you’re saying the trunk must have got to Spittal after all. This is a very serious business. I swore to the Eggharts on my honour as a von Tannenberg that the trunk never reached us.’

‘I did too,’ said Annika, though she realized that her honour was not as important as that of her mother.

‘Do you know what was in the trunk, other than the photograph?’

‘Old clothes that she’d had from when she was on the stage… garlands… headdresses… glittery things. And some fake jewels… copies of the ones she’d had when she was famous.’

Frau Edeltraut got to her feet. ‘This must be looked into most thoroughly. Even if the contents of the trunk were worthless they are yours by right.’

Uncle Oswald nodded. ‘We’ll go along to the station first thing in the morning and make enquiries. Very thorough enquiries. Meanwhile, perhaps you had better leave the photograph with us as evidence.’ He put out his hand, but Annika slipped the case back into her pocket.

‘Please, I’d like to keep it,’ she said. ‘It’s all I’ve got to remember her by.’

Annika slept little that night. Her thoughts went round and round. Who would steal a trunk full of worthless jewels and old clothes… and why? Loremarie hated her, she knew; had she played a trick on her by throwing the picture in the lake? But the Eggharts had been nowhere near Spittal. It was absurd. Nothing made any sense.

She was so late getting to sleep that she did not wake when Zed rode past the window, and when she came down to breakfast, her mother and Uncle Oswald had gone.

‘They’re off to Bad Haxenfeld on some business or other,’ said Mathilde. ‘They don’t know when they will be back. And Gudrun wants you to play cards with her. She’s in her room.’

‘All right,’ said Annika listlessly.

It was a long day. Her mother and Uncle Oswald did not return till late afternoon and then they went straight into the boudoir. It was only after dinner that Annika was called upstairs again, and from her mother’s grave face and Uncle Oswald’s frown she realized that they had unpleasant news.

‘I’m afraid you were right, Annika,’ said her mother. ‘The trunk did come to Bad Haxenfeld. It came while we were away in Switzerland and it was fetched from the station and brought here. And now I want you to be sensible and brave.’

Annika’s heart began to pound. Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps her mother wasn’t going to say what Annika thought she was. If she didn’t ask the question they were waiting for, if she said nothing…

But she moistened her lips and said, ‘Who? Who fetched it?’

‘The person who runs all the errands for Spittal, who uses the carriage, whom everybody knows and to whom they would give the trunk without question even though it was addressed to me.’

‘Wenzel?’ said Annika with a last glimmer of hope.

‘No, my dear. Not Wenzel. I think you know whom I mean.’

There was no escape then. ‘Zed?’

‘Yes, Zed. I suspected it at once, there have been other incidents, but we had to make absolutely certain. It would have been dreadful to accuse him unjustly.’

‘But… why… why would he steal my trunk? Why would he want old clothes and jewels that aren’t worth anything?’

‘Annika, Zed has not had your education. It would be natural enough for him to look inside the trunk — if only to check that the contents had arrived undamaged. And then… well, he’s a gypsy, what would he know about jewels? He would see the brightness and the sparkle… and it’s not true that imitation jewels are worth nothing. Nothing to people like us, but to a gypsy boy… You’ll probably find there are travellers all over the country now who are wearing the poor great-aunt’s pathetic treasures. And when he’d sold the rest or pawned them, what would be more natural than to throw the trunk into the lake?’

Annika had turned away, trying to deal with the sudden weight in her chest. Zed. But it made sense of course. It all made sense. He had asked her not to tell her mother. He hadn’t wanted it talked about.

Her mother had found one of her own handkerchiefs and was dabbing Annika’s eyes.

‘My poor, poor child — you’re not the first person to be betrayed by a friend, but I know how dreadfully it hurts. Now I’m going to tuck you up in bed myself and let the new maid bring you a hot drink and I’ll stay with you till you’re asleep. And whatever you do, you mustn’t go down to the farm till the police have sorted everything out. You would only shame Zed.’

Her mother was as good as her word. She took Annika to her room and sat with her, and the maid brought her a glass of hot milk and two aspirins, which her mother insisted that she swallowed. ‘For I can see you have a dreadful headache. All the von Tannenbergs get headaches when they’re upset.’

Annika had been awake most of the night before and so she did sleep. She slept deeply. But in the morning she woke early and dressed — and though she knew it was very wrong to disobey her mother she very quietly let herself out of the back door and made her way down to the farm.

She had to see Zed and talk to him. If he apologized and explained it would be all right. The trunk didn’t matter, it was that he had lied.

But perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps he could tell her something that made it all right.

There was something funny about the stork house. At first she thought the storks had gone, there was such a feeling of emptiness and desertion. But they were still there, sitting on their eggs. She pushed the door open.

‘Zed?’

But she knew already. It wasn’t the storks that had gone.

Behind her the door was opened quietly and she spun round.

It was old Wenzel. ‘Thought you’d be down. Zed’s gone.’

‘The police?’

He shook his head. ‘He didn’t wait for them. He went in the night.’

Then from the kennel behind the house, she heard Hector whining. ‘I came to fetch the dog,’ Wenzel said. ‘I’m to keep him till Bertha’s brother comes to take him away.’

‘Do you know anything… about where he’s gone?’

‘No, I don’t. And you’d better not ask too many questions — stay away from the farm, I would.’

‘But what about Rocco?’ Annika asked. ‘What will happen to Rocco?’

Old Wenzel looked down at the ground.

‘He’s taken Rocco,’ he said.