Magic Flutes

15

On a particularly hot and stuffy day towards the end of July, Guy, leaving the Treasury early for once and strolling down the Schubertring, was halted by the sight of a large photograph in a house agent’s window.

He passed this way frequently and was familiar with the picture of Malk, towering dramatically over the Danube and bearing, underneath, a wholly imaginary account of its amenities prepared by Countess Waal-traut’s mother. He had noticed the yellowing portrait of the Archduchess Frederica’s leaning palace at Potzerhofen, and registered that no purchaser had yet been found for Schloss Landsberg, near Graz, which was as well since the Archduke Sava was holed up in its coachhouse with his bear.

But the castle which now had pride of place in the agent’s window was new to him: a long, low, stuccoed edifice, apparently afloat on a reedy lake, one of its towers obscured by a large and moulting swan.

he read, and cast his eyes down the notice informing him of the salubrious situation, historical associations and excellent facilities for water sports which awaited the fortunate purchaser.

Guy stared at the window, frowning. What the devil? Surely it was to save his decaying Wasserburg that the prince had become engaged to Tessa?

He had begun to turn away, still puzzling, when a figure shot out of the agent’s door and bounced up to him.

‘Thought it was you!’ said the Prince of Spittau with satisfaction. ‘Saw you from the inside.’

Nothing had been able to erase from Maxi’s mind the conviction that Guy was deeply devoted to him. Beaming, pumping the Englishman’s hand, he said, ‘Have to come up to Vienna a lot these days on business. Pretty hopeless, though.’ He turned to survey the portrait of his ancestral home. ‘It’s been up for sale for a fortnight and they haven’t even had a nibble.’

Guy commiserated but said, ‘Why on earth are you selling? I thought Tessa was bringing you enough to do it up. Doesn’t she care for the place?’

‘Oh, she cares for it all right. Tessa’s very fond of Spittau, always was. Likes the frogs and all those things. Fond of the people, too. And the dogs, of course. She offered me some money to do the roof, but of course I couldn’t take it. If she’d been going to marry me it would have been different, but a man’s got his pride.’

Guy stared at him. ‘What on earth do you mean? Surely you and Tessa are engaged to be married?’

‘No, we aren’t.’

‘But everybody—’

‘Everybody,’ said Maxi, with unaccustomed asperity, ‘seems to have been watching out of some telescope or other and saw Tessa give me a kiss. But it was just her way of saying she was sorry. I’m absolutely sick of people coming up and congratulating me.’

‘Yes, I can see that.’ An image of Tessa leaning against the lorry, white and silent, while he upbraided her, rose up before him. He dismissed it and said, ‘What’s she doing, then?’

‘Well, that’s just it. She’s financing that blasted Hungarian, and if I’d known—’

‘You mean she’s living with Klasky?’ said Guy, and at his voice Maxi looked up, his forehead wrinkled. What was the matter with the chap? He was supposed to be so cool and clever.

The prince shook his head. ‘She’s back with Witzler’s company and she’s supporting this opera about…’ But at the thought of what Fricassée was about, he gave up. ‘You’ve never heard such stuff. Railway porters and engine-greasers with fits, and music like a lot of cats with a throat disease. Got poor Little Heidi in a boiler suit—’ But here the prince broke off, for as a matter of fact Heidi in dungarees with a spanner had looked quite peculiarly ravishing. ‘And Tessa’s paying for it all. Does nothing but sign cheques all day long and looks as peaked as a starved rat, and if you tell her she’s a fool, she just bites off your head and says it’s a privilege to serve art and people like us ought to do it.’

‘Oh, my God!’ said Guy.

‘That’s exactly it,’ agreed Maxi. ‘My uncle ruined himself with a ballet company, and opera’s a damn sight worse. They say Witzler’s in all sorts of trouble. Borrowed like mad because he thought you were going to set him up at Pfaffenstein and now they’re closing in on him. Shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t all end up in jail, and Tessa along with them, and what Mother will say then…’

Guy was standing perfectly still, staring down at the contours of the paving stones.

‘Fortunately, she’s left half her money in trust for her aunts,’ Maxi continued, ‘so she’ll get that when they die. But if I’d known what she was going to do, I’ll be damned if I wouldn’t have let her repair the roof. At least she would have had somewhere to come to if she was in trouble.’

Guy lifted his head. ‘Would you still marry her, even now? Even if she loses all her share of the money?’

Maxi flushed. ‘Certainly I would. I’d marry Putzerl any time. I’m dashed fond of her. If you’ve got Putzerl in a boat you don’t need a—’

But Guy, unequal to hearing about Putzerl’s ability to imitate a call duck, now interrupted him to say, ‘You owned a number of other properties, didn’t you? Places that were confiscated by the Allies. Where were they?’

‘Well, there was one at Hammerfelden, that’s near Kiel; and there was Pstattin, on the Oder, in Pomerania. The palace here in the Himmelgasse was sold by my father before the war, unfortunately.’

Guy shook his head. ‘We won’t get any change out of Berlin. Wasn’t there anything in the Affiliated Zones? Alsace-Lorraine? Trieste? Somewhere outside the direct military areas?’

‘There was a chateau in Alsace,’ Maxi admitted. The Chateau d’Arboras. Quite a small place — not more than eighty rooms, I’d say, but the land was good. About twenty thousand hectares, mostly vineyards. We used to make a very decent sort of wine.’

‘And you’ve never claimed compensation from the Land Redistribution Trust in Strasbourg?’

Maxi shook his head. ‘I asked our lawyers if anything could be done, but they said it was hopeless.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Schweinhofer and Brillerman, in the Kohlmarkt. They’re a very old firm.’

‘Old, idle and useless,’ said Guy tersely. He had taken out his notebook and begun to write. ‘You’ve got a chance, I’d say quite a good one. You’ll have to plead loss of livelihood but the vineyards will come in handy there. Take this to Hermann Rattinger at Number 12, Borseplatz, and tell him to look particularly at paragraph 8 in section 15. Don’t let anyone except Rattinger touch it.’ He looked up and saw Maxi’s face contorted by the effort of taking in so much information. ‘I’ll give him a ring myself, tomorrow. You won’t get much, but if you can do the necessary repairs you ought to get by and when your mother dies I dare say you’ll find something to do with the place — run it as a hotel or something. None of us can look too far ahead with the hens’ breakfast they’ve made of the Peace Treaty.’

He tore the leaf out of his notebook, handed it to Maxi and ruthlessly cutting down the prince’s fulsome expressions of gratitude, strode away down the Ring.

Maxi, left behind on the pavement, was a happy man. The possibility of a little bit of cash, coupled with Guy’s casual assumption that the Swan Princess would not live for ever, produced a feeling of light-headedness in the prince. First thing tomorrow, he would present himself at the address that Guy had written down for him. Now, however, he strolled at a leisurely pace to a quiet street near the Danube canal, where presently he knocked at the door of a modest Biedemayer house and was taken through into a courtyard and up some wooden steps to a little apartment which, in the past few weeks, had become home to him.

And there, among the plump cushions and teddy-bears and ornamental feathers in shell-encrusted jars which Heidi Schlumberger had lovingly collected, lulled by the hooting of the tugboats which came to them through the closed green shutters, the prince and his little dancer gave way to their unquenchable compatibility.

The heat of August defeated even Nerine’s passion for shopping. She returned to Pfaffenstein and Guy, though he kept his suite at Sachers, came with her.

They found the West Tower empty except for Tessa’s old nurse, for the Duchess and the Margravine, leaving a letter of gratitude for Guy, had moved to Vienna to make a home for their niece. Nerine was delighted at their departure and Guy, though he missed the old ladies, shared her relief, for he wanted Tessa back at Pfaffenstein no more than his fiancée did.

He was, in any case, still fiendishly busy. Though the Austrian Parliament was in recess, officials continued to come from the Treasury, some remaining as house guests, and there were long sessions in the library preparing the final drafts of the immensely complicated documents they would present in Geneva. When Guy did emerge from the interminable, stuffy meetings, he took exercise, a point on which Morgan happened to comment when he met David Tremayne returning from the squash court before dinner.

‘Been playin’ ’im again, ’ave you?’ Morgan enquired, anointing the Hispano-Suiza with a polish he mixed to a secret recipe of his own.

David nodded. ‘Got thoroughly beaten, of course. He’s doing a work-out in the gym now.’

Morgan, still polishing, nodded. ‘Taking a lot of exercise, is Mr Farne. Yes, a lot of exercise. Mind you, he’s a man who’s always kept himself fit.’

‘But not as fit as this?’ prompted David. Morgan had been Guy’s batman in the war and knew him as well as any man.

‘Oh, I dunno. ’e ’as patches. I remember after Passchendaele… Young Whittaker got ’is chips then and Mr Farne thought ’e should ’ave got ’im out. Well, ’e did; ’e went over the line and brought ’im back but there wasn’t much to bring back. We went on leave after that and Mr Farne took a lot of exercise then. Squash, tennis, work with the dumb-bells oh, yes, he was very fit that summer. And, of course, when we went up to Newcastle because Mrs Hodge was in ’ospital. Peritonitis, it was, and they got to ’er late because she was looking after a neighbour’s little girl and didn’t like to say she felt poorly. Touch and go it was, for a week, and Mr Farne got ’imself very fit then. Oh, yes. Five ’undred lengths in the swimming baths and beat ’is old fencing master with the sabres. And went up those bloomin’ Cheviots like a bat in hell — covered in snow they were, too. It’s nothing unusual for Mr Farne to take a lot of exercise.’

Silence fell.

‘It will be this loan,’ said David. ‘It must be a great anxiety to him.’

‘That’s what it must be,’ agreed Morgan. ‘Though ’e didn’t seem to notice much that time he took on the Argentinians over the Olinda oil deal. Or the time he grabbed the Uruguay zinc right off Kripper…’

If Guy had hoped that Nerine would now begin to get to know her parishioners, his hopes remained unfulfilled. She had heard of a case of measles in the village which made it quite impossible. ‘Mama always kept me away from infection, you see,’ she explained to Guy, ‘so I have absolutely no immunity.’

But though Guy was so preoccupied, Nerine was far from bored. Owing to the tardiness of the League, Austria’s case was not coming up until October. The wedding, therefore, was now scheduled for mid-November, but Nerine made no complaint at the delay. She had put her wedding dress out to tender among three of Vienna’s leading couturiers and was busy examining the samples of brocade and fashion sketches which came by every post. Meanwhile, she had discovered a new and absorbing activity: she sunbathed.

It was a step not undertaken lightly, for her white skin had always been one of her greatest assets. But while she had kept entirely aloof from the opera company, and would have been hard put to recognize a single one of its members, she had observed the excitement with which the Archduke and Monteforelli discussed the sunbathing soprano. If her eyes had not been so blue, she would have hesitated, but a bronze tan against the azure of her eyes…

So, now, Pooley was sent to find a secluded embrasure on the battlements. Mattresses were conveyed thither, an alarm clock, towels and bottles of ointment. And carefully, increasing the dosage each day, scrupulously turning herself so that nothing got overdone or underdone, Nerine gave herself to the sun.

The results, she could not help feeling, were spectacular. Wandering through the great rooms of the south facade, she saw reflected in the glass-fronted display cabinets, the suits of armour and the silver trays, a golden glowing nymph.

This happy and innocent existence was blighted in a few agonizing moments when one bright morning in early September, she opened the letter from her brother, Arthur, which was propped on her breakfast tray.

Arthur had gone home, not only to escort his relatives back to Pfaffenstein, but also to collect the documents required for Nerine’s remarriage. It was while in pursuit of these, in Whitehall, that he had met an old friend, now in the diplomatic corps, who had told him that Guy Farne had been offered a knighthood — and had turned it down! ‘Apparently he just got that Tremayne fellow to say, no thank you, by return of post! It’s hard to believe, but the chap swore it was true. Mama has taken the news hard, as you can imagine…’

Never had Nerine dressed so quickly. A scant quarter of an hour later, she entered the library. ‘Guy, I must speak to you. I have just had an extraordinary letter from Arthur. He swore that you had been offered a knighthood and had turned it down!’

‘Yes, that’s correct,’ said Guy, putting down the papers he had been studying. ‘A knighthood often goes with this kind of diplomatic stuff. It’s almost routine.’

‘But… you mean, it’s really true? You could have been Sir Guy… I could have been Lady Farne — and you refused!

‘That’s right,’ said Guy cheerfully.

Fury enveloped Nerine. ‘But you had no right! You had no right to do it without consulting me. I’m going to be your wife. You’ve deprived me of status, of a decent position. Why didn’t you ask me what I wanted?’

‘Because I wouldn’t have been influenced, in this case, by your wishes. I bought Pfaffenstein for you, I have entertained and befriended a large number of titled people to whom, candidly, I wouldn’t give the time of day, because I felt — and I do feel — that it is your right to be accepted by society. But I myself will go out of the world as I came into it. The name the Matron chose for me all those years ago is the name I will bear until I die.’

‘But why, why?’

Guy shrugged. ‘Call it pride, if you like. We foundlings are a funny lot. Yes, I suppose it’s a kind of pride. I’ve always made my own name, lived without handles. Even Martha couldn’t have made me change my mind. Not that she would have tried.’

‘Even Martha! You mean that… that washerwoman would have had more influence on you than I?’

Guy’s face had tautened, but almost at once he relaxed again and said quietly, ‘No, Nerine. Just that Martha is unsophisticated — to her these things mean a great deal. Whereas you yourself must know how little all this means in the end.’

‘Well, I don’t know. You realize I could have had Lord Frith with a title that goes back to Domesday. You might have made it up to me.’ She felt the beginning of tears and, with a great effort, suppressed them. Tears had worked well at seventeen, but of late she found that they made her blotchy. ‘I suppose you’re a republican like that ridiculous princess of yours,’ she sneered.

Guy looked at her. ‘Nerine, if you are not satisfied we can break our engagement. If you’re unhappy, you have only to say so and I will release you instantly and without reproach. But I will not accept a knighthood. Not now. Not ever. Do you still want to marry me?’

Nerine glanced down at the enormous diamond winking on her finger, then at the towers of Pfaffenstein rearing outside the window, and the undeniably attractive man now holding her gaze.

‘Of course I want to marry you, Guy,’ she said, coming to kneel beside him. ‘Of course!’

Meanwhile, in the Klostern Theatre, rehearsals for Fricassée continued to be dogged by disaster. The constructivist railway platform collapsed, precipitating five engine-greasers on to the stage below and the shock, with its memories of her own catastrophe, brought on palpitations in the Rhinemaiden, who had to be conveyed to the Rudlphino Clinic in an ambulance. The outsize Tyrolean cows turned out to have died in vain because Klasky, dissatisfied with the percussive balance, scrapped the drum and replaced it with twelve smaller ones. Herr Berger, who sang the capitalist mill-owner, developed nodules on his larynx; Frau Pollack broke a toe.

Tessa’s cheque book, under the onslaught, gave of its best. She signed a cheque for the reinforced railway platform, for the Rhinemaiden’s hospital fees, for the replacement drums. She signed a cheque for a new safety curtain (the fire people having finally caught up with Jacob), for repairs to the revolve damaged by Rayner-Meierhof’s unsentimentalized signal box, for a practical moon…

And as she crept home in the small hours to count up her mutilated cheque stubs, Tessa now faced a new hazard. For she had left her attic in the Wipplingerstrasse and waiting up for her, concerned and interested, were the aunts.

The Duchess and the Margravine had rented (from a distant and indigenous relation) a flat on the fourth floor of an apartment block overlooking the Central Cemetery. It was small, dark and inconvenient and the old ladies spent their days in an agony of homesickness for Pfaffenstein which they endeavoured to conceal, not only from Tessa, but from each other. Neither of them had ever shopped unattended, or travelled on a tram, or dealt directly with tradesmen. Now, they stood in queues at the butcher, pulled Quin-Quin in and out of the terrifying lift that led up to their floor — and economized.

The economies were ferocious and secret, for their great-niece must have no inkling of what was afoot. The aunts had been unable to prevent Tessa from putting half her money in trust for them, but they were determined that every groschen they could save should be added to the sum that would revert to her after their deaths. So while Tessa was at the theatre they ate virtually nothing, sent away the maid the hausmeisterin had found for them, and sat by the light of a single lamp. Then, when Tessa’s step was heard outside, lamps were lit, soup and topfenkuchen were fetched from the larder and Tessa learned that they had spent another most interesting and happy day.

‘And you, Putzerl? How did you get on?’

‘Oh, fine. Very well. I painted this bed shaped like a mouth…’

‘Like a mouth?’ enquired Tante Tilda.

Tessa nodded. ‘To represent decadence. It’s for the mill-owner’s apartment.’ She had picked up a letter which might well have been in Guy’s handwriting, had she known what his handwriting was like, but was actually from a choreographer who wanted her to finance his ballet. ‘Aren’t you eating anything?’ she said, looking concernedly at her aunts. ‘This soup is so good!’

‘You know we never eat at night, dear,’ said Tante Augustine repressively, and continued to ply her niece with food until Tessa went to her room — there to lie awake and reflect that Madame von Meck must have had very strong nerves or just a great many paper mills.

For it wasn’t only Fricassée, but everything, that was going wrong. Schalk, Jacob’s arch-enemy at the State Opera, cancelled a production that was doing badly and put on Bohème instead. With Jeritza singing Mimi, Raisa did not stand a chance. Jacob rushed out The Barber, but the production was old and tired and failed to draw the crowds. There were alarming rumours, too, about the lease of the theatre…

‘It’s as though there’s a jinx on us since we left Pfaff-enstein,’ said Boris.

But even he was shaken when Jacob appeared, after a matinée of Fledermaus, and asked to be fitted with a blond toupee and a moustache so as to elude the creditors who waited for him outside.

‘Very Aryan,’ he said, with satisfaction, when Boris had finished.

Then one day in the middle of September, when Tessa walked into her bank as usual for another cheque book, she was told by a respectful (not to say obsequious) young cashier that the manager would be most grateful if Her Highness could spare him a few moments.

The homily now delivered by the portly Herr Simmelmann was unctuous in tone and seemingly interminable. Her Highness’s initial deposit was now fully withdrawn and while he was aware that Her Highness still had other resources and would not, in fact, default on her commitment to the bank, he had to point out that at the present rate she would find herself in serious difficulties in a relatively short period of time. There was the further matter of Her Highness not being technically of age according to Austrian law, which meant that if it was felt that she was in unsuitable company and being victimized, her business advisors — of whom he was happy to call himself one — might feel it necessary (entirely in her own interest of course) to take certain steps…

Tessa thanked him, transferred another block of securities and said nothing to Jacob. Thus her ancestress, Hildegarde of Breganzer, who had leapt naked into the flames rather than renounce her faith. Thus Tessa now…