Last Nocturne (7 page)

He didn’t usually permit himself such thoughts. Events had made him a little agitated of late. More control, he admonished himself. ‘I can recommend the
truite amandine
,’ said he. ‘Not quite as they did it at the Sacher, but excellent nonetheless.’

‘As you wish.’ Food had never been a priority with Isobel. She still looked as though she were not eating enough.

While he ordered and consulted with the waiter about the wine, she glanced around at the elegant surroundings, the like of which had once been a daily part of the full, rich and cultured life she had known. Then, she had lived for the moment, that present which had been filled with love and trust and shared laughter. She had taught herself not to dwell on that, however.

Since then, life had turned its back on her, or so it seemed, though it had handed out unexpected compensations which she accepted with gratitude, and any tears and regrets she might still have were reserved for when she was alone.

Halfway through the first course, she raised the slender glass of topaz wine and said unexpectedly, ‘You’re something rather special in the way of a friend, Julian.’

A slight touch of colour appeared on his pale cheeks. ‘To what do I owe such praise?’

‘You know well what I mean.’

‘Come, I don’t deserve it.’ But a gleam of pleasure lit his wary eyes. The thought of what might have been lay between them and for a moment he looked as though he might say more. The moment passed; he laid his long, white-fingered hand over hers for a brief space, and the words he might have said remained unuttered. He went back to dissecting his fish precisely, removing the flesh cleanly from the backbone.

He had begun to age a little, Isobel saw with a pang, though he was still a vigorous, attractive man. Sometimes she thought it might be possible to give him something of what he had wanted – but not to give the whole of herself would be to demean his affection for her, an emotion it would be unkind to underestimate. It was better to let him remain her familiar, trusted friend. Watching him as she sipped her wine, she resolved to speak to him. Nevertheless, she waited to do so until they had nearly finished the fish.

‘I’m glad you asked me here today – quite apart from the pleasure of seeing you. I would like…’ She paused for a moment. ‘May I look to you for some advice, Julian?’

‘My dear, need you ask? Please, go on.’

She took a deep breath and then a sip of wine. ‘I saw Viktor the other day.’

The sunshine flooding into the room through the discreet net curtains caught in its rays the sparkle of crystal and the gleam of silver against the white starched cloths; the waiters moved soft-footed on the thick carpets; a hum of polite conversation and laughter surrounded them, and for an unreal moment left them alone in a bubble of silence.

Then he laid his fish knife and fork precisely across his plate, touched his lips with his napkin. ‘Viktor. The deuce you did. When?’

‘Two days ago.’

The waiter hovered, then refilled their glasses at a signal from Carrington. He went on in his normal, measured tones, yet she received the impression that he was as profoundly shocked as she. ‘You’ve spoken to him?’

She shook her head and was silent. Eventually she began to tell him how it had happened.

She rarely slept late, but that day she had wakened even earlier than usual, her heart thudding, with the bad dream, almost a nightmare, already sliding serpent-like back into the mysterious depths of sleep before she could capture and hold it.

Vienna…Viktor…Bruno. Oh, Bruno!

No, she mustn’t try to remember. She would not. Let the past stay buried. She’d contrived a life of sorts for herself here in London, and memories such as that were destructive. She lay still, letting the warmth of the sun stroke her face with its buttery light, listening to the joyous outpourings of the little albino blackbird in the climbing rose outside the window. Marked out as different from his kind, it never seemed to prevent him from getting on with the business of life, a lesson in microcosm, and presently her heart resumed its normal beat. The dark night had gone, and almost as if by the strength of her own will a stirring, a glimmer of something once taken for granted had taken its place. Could it be – a returned sense of purpose?

Continuing to live in London had been a hard, almost insurmountable step towards rebuilding her life. She’d managed that, but so far failed to take another. After Vienna, she’d lost her appetite for society. She lived quietly, went out very little, seeing few people other than Sophie and Susan. Nevertheless, for some time she’d been dimly aware that she was going to have to make an effort to remedy the situation, to rouse herself and begin again with the ordinary business of living, to widen her horizons, if only for Sophie’s sake. A pretence that everything was normal went a long way towards making it so, she knew that. But how to start?

It came to her with something of a shock how very few people she really knew here in London, other than her friend, Julian Carrington – and his form of carefully maintained neutral concern was rather more than she could bear at that particular moment. Then she felt herself smiling, hearing her mother’s voice when they had been faced with yet another crisis:
‘Alors, mignonne
, we will take our minds off it with a little shopping,
hein?
And the problem –
voilà!
It will resolve itself. A new hat, some scent! Oh, very well, handkerchiefs, since you say that’s all we can afford, my little – how did your father say? – my little skinflint!’ As if no more was needed to right the troubles of the world – as indeed it usually was not, for Vèronique. Sometimes, that same approach had worked for Isobel, too…though it wasn’t shopping she’d needed, so much as mixing with other people, those who lived nice, ordinary lives. Being anonymous among the crowds, pretending their own life was ordinary, too.

Today, the renewed sense of energy she felt seemed like a gift it would be ungracious to ignore. She would make herself take that second step, make a little excursion into the world again – it didn’t matter where, anywhere – leaving word that she’d gone shopping: stockings, new hair-ribbons for Sophie, anything.

Susan wouldn’t believe it, of course. She knew Isobel had no need of stockings, or gloves, or anything of the kind, but never mind that. She would be only too pleased to see her at last making some effort to rouse herself from the mental lethargy which had consumed her for far too long. Having made the decision, she sprang out of bed immediately, knowing all too well that her new-found determination might dissipate if she waited mundanely for breakfast, and the newspapersy – and certainly not for the post.

She dressed hurriedly, without help. She was thin enough to have no need of tight lacing, as she’d told Susan often enough, though it was really the comfort and freedom that had made her dispense with such purgatories. What, not even a bust-improver? No, not even that. Let Susan roll her eyes as she would.

The last button fastened, she chose a velvet throat band with a pearl drop, and her favourite pearl earrings to wear, not the pink pearls, but the ones her lover had given her. Their opalescent gleam against her skin flattered her face, as he’d known it would. She began to pin her hair up and the memory came, unbidden, of him holding the heavy weight of it in his hands as he used to, kissing the tender place on the back of her neck, and she felt again the tiny, exquisite shiver of the butterfly touch of his hand as he stroked her arm from wrist to shoulder against the fine hairs of her skin.

They came, these sensuous, almost unbearable moments of unexpected awareness, like little poisoned darts, sharp enough to pierce the carefully contrived carapace she’d built around her emotions. But she’d long since found action to be the best remedy against these dangerous memories, at least when they came inappropriately, at times like this. At other times, she would savour them, let the pain itself act as sympathetic magic.

She stood up, willing herself to be positive. Brave enough even to ignore the post she heard arriving on the doormat and the sinking feeling that it might have brought yet another of those letters.

The West End – shops, sunshine, crowds, delicious as only London could be in April. Walking up New Bond Street, turning a corner, she almost bumped into an effete young man, his high collar nearly choking him, his hair brilliantined either side of a central parting. Emerging from a flower shop, he pranced past her, holding a basket of spring flowers balanced on one hand, like a waiter, the lead of a ridiculous woolly poodle in the other. The flowers gave off a heavenly whiff of scent. She decided she owed herself a little indulgence, though the frail, short-lived blooms would be a fleeting pleasure, a luxury that wouldn’t last long. Jonquils. The essence of spring. He used to come with huge bunches of them, brought into the Vienna flower shops from the mountain slopes where they’d been gathered.

The memory was so sharp it actually brought her to a standstill, though only for the briefest of moments. Here, in the middle of Brook Street, was no place for reminiscences. Yet her dream of the night was not yet quite over: for the duration of that infinitesimal space of time it was as though her past life, with all its bittersweet ups and downs of pain and exquisite pleasure, that was the actuality, and the solid London pavement on which she stood, the shops and the people around her, which had no existence. She was brought sharply back to the present when an errand boy caused a small commotion by darting straight across the road between an omnibus and a horse-drawn, gilded black carriage whose driver thought that his passenger, autocratically peering through a lorgnette, had the right to order her carriage to stop right before the entrance to Claridge’s Hotel, no matter what.

The ruckus subsided and she went into the flower shop. Emerging a few minutes later, her arms full of a froth of tissue paper and the sharp yellow fragrance of spring, and feeling extraordinarily exhilarated by such a small purchase – there, almost as if her thoughts had summoned him up, she saw him across the road, on the opposite pavement. For a split second she was unable to credit the evidence of her own eyes. The world was spinning backwards. It couldn’t possibly be Viktor.

It was.

She drew back instinctively, raising the cone of flowers to her face, though it was unlikely he would see her across the traffic, and in any case he was walking rapidly, looking straight ahead in his self-absorbed way, oblivious of his surroundings. Only a glimpse, but she could have no possible doubt it was he – the stiff collar glimpsed under the long loose coat, his soft Tyrolean hat, his pince-nez. So utterly foreign in every way, right down to his patent-leather boots.

Yet in a way she wasn’t entirely surprised at the encounter. He always lurked somewhere in the back of her conscious mind, and lately he’d been very much in the forefront of it. So it wasn’t precisely the shock it might have been. Nevertheless, her whole being was plunged back into despair, her pleasure in the morning, her lovely spring flowers, was spoilt.

She had thought, and fervently hoped, never to see him again. And certainly not here. Her next coherent thought was to thank God she had left Sophie at home, with Susan.

There was silence when Isobel had finished.

‘Why do you think he has come over here?’ She tried to speak calmly, to appear composed, but she still couldn’t control the tremble in her voice.

‘I have no idea. Possibly he has come for the exhibition.’ He paused until she nodded her understanding. Of course, the Pontifex Gallery – where there was to be that showing of Modern Art – was not far from where she’d seen him. That might certainly explain Viktor’s presence in London, although in view of everything else, it was too much for her to believe that was his only reason for being here. ‘But my dear Isobel,’ Julian went on, ‘there’s no need to be afraid of Viktor. Was he not always a friend to you?’

‘He wasn’t – unkind.’ Despite unfavourable initial impressions. But that had been before…before…fear set her heart knocking. ‘He’ll try to take Sophie away.’

‘I think that most unlikely. He never acted like an uncle before. Why should he change now?’ he answered drily.

Julian, of course, knew nothing of what had passed between herself and Viktor. ‘Maybe not. But, she is still so – fragile.’

‘Yes.’

They had come as near to falling out as they were ever likely to do over the subject of Sophie. He’d never understood what Isobel felt about her, a child he considered difficult and not very attractive, unresponsive and withdrawn, given as she was to mute silences and stubborn refusals to cooperate. He never would understand, she thought, that it had been the overwhelming need to protect Sophie which had made her leave Vienna; above all, the need to remove her as far and as quickly as possible from that house on Silbergasse, and what had happened there.

Thinking of her now, Isobel drew on her gloves, anxious to be home again.

‘Leave this business of Viktor with me,’ Julian said. ‘I’ll make enquiries. If he’s still in London, I’ll have him found, discover what he is doing here.’