The English Girl (32 page)

I look at the books on his shelves. I’m always curious about what people read, what this reveals about them. There are books I’d expect – by Goethe, Schiller, Thomas Mann – and a few old children’s books, that perhaps were Rainer’s when he was a child. But there are many books whose authors I don’t recognise.

I pull out one at random.
Michael: A German Fate
by Joseph Goebbels. I flick through. It seems to be some kind of introspective novel. I read sentences at random.

‘Every evening I read the Sermon on the Mount. I find no consolation in it, only despair and shame. Something is wrong about it…’

I turn on a few pages.

‘Money rules the world! If true, this is a horrible statement. But today we die because it is a reality. Money and the Jew – they belong together…’

I snap the book shut.

I pull out another.
Dietrich Eckart
by Alfred Rosenberg. I open it up, flick through the pages.

‘From all this it follows that Judaism is part of the organism of mankind just as, let us say, certain bacteria are part of man’s body, and indeed the Jews are as necessary as bacteria…’

I slide the book hastily back in its place.

There’s a copy of Hitler’s
Mein Kampf
. I remember what Frank once told me – how Hitler’s plans for Austria were there on the very first page. I open the book.

‘In my earliest youth I came to the basic insight, which never left me, but only became more profound – that Germanism could be safeguarded only by the destruction of Austria. Even then I had drawn the consequences from this realisation: ardent love for my German-Austrian homeland, deep hatred for the Austrian state…’

I put the book back on the shelf. I shall go now. I’ve already learned rather more than I wanted to know. I reach out my hand to turn off the lamp on the desk.

My eye falls on a silver key that lies in a black lacquered tray, along with a paper knife and a pair of small scissors for trimming cigars. It’s just outside the circle of light from the lamp; that must be why I didn’t see it before. I pick up the key, ease it into the keyhole in the top drawer, turn it. The drawer opens almost silently, with a slight exhaled breath.

I work through the contents of the drawer with quick, careful fingers. There are invoices, household accounts – nothing of any interest. I think of Kitty Carpenter and the copy of
Men Only
she filched from her father’s bureau. But I don’t imagine there’s anything of that sort in here.

I lock it up, open the second drawer. On the top, there’s a black leather case. I open the catch, and gasp, seeing the pistol inside. I’ve never seen a gun so close. I shut the case quickly. I wonder what it means that he keeps this pistol in his drawer; why he thinks he could possibly have need of it here, in the seclusion of his study.

I close and lock the second drawer safely, and unlock the bottom drawer. There’s a heap of papers lying in it, with a calfskin diary on top. I feel a brief surge of triumph, seeing the diary.

Frank had said that Rainer might conceal the meetings, even in his diary. I have worked out and memorised the dates of the previous meetings: one was a few weeks after I first met Harri; one a Monday in December, just after the first snow. I find the first date in the diary. The page is blank – there’s no list of people attending, no agenda, no time for the meeting; but just below the date, he’s written an X. I turn to the second date: that too is marked with an X. I turn on, find an X against a date the week after next – 17 March. I have a feeling almost of let-down – that this is so straightforward. I’d expected something more challenging – a complex code, something I’d have to work out.

I have the date now. That’s all the information Frank asked for. I could go now –
should
go. Someone could find me here – Rainer or Marthe could come home earlier than they’d intended. Every instant I stay in this room I am in danger. I shouldn’t linger a second more than I must.

But I stand there a moment longer, with the diary in my hand. I’m afraid – but there’s something stronger. A curiosity, that burns in me like a fever. As though there is something else to be found here. An answer to a question that I am too frightened to ask.

I hear footsteps in the hall, and the sound of a broom. Janika sweeping. I rapidly turn off the lamp. I’m glad I thought to put the key back on the rack, so nothing will look amiss to her. Her steps draw nearer. What if she comes in? She doesn’t clean in here, but she might need to light the stove. I look around desperately for a hiding place, but there’s nowhere. She’s just outside the door now. For a long chill moment, I see her shadow falling under the door, swaying with the rhythm of her sweeping. But then at last she moves on down the hallway.

I tell myself I’ll be only half a moment. I open the diary again, flick back to 8 September, the date when I came, to see what it says. He’s just written
Stella.

I put the diary down on the desk; I turn my attention to the remaining contents of the third drawer. I’m fastidious, very aware of how the things are arranged, so I’ll be able to put them back exactly in their right positions. It’s hard to see in here, but I don’t dare put the lamp back on, in case Janika should see the thread of light from under the door. I push at my hair impatiently where it falls in front of my face, so I can see what I’m doing. It’s as though my beating heart has moved up into my throat.

Outside, the bell tolls on, slow, measured. It has a funereal sound. Somebody’s done for.

There’s not much else in the drawer. Expensive notepaper. Envelopes, ready for use, arranged according to size. An unused notebook, bound in ivory silk. Everything orderly.

Some letters. A whole bundle of letters tied up with red ribbon.

I pick them up, heart pounding, peer at the handwriting on the envelopes. But then I see, with a surge of relief, that it looks like Marthe’s writing. The letters have Rainer’s name on, and a Salzburg address. These must be love letters from Marthe, from when she and Rainer were courting. They’re of no interest to me. I put the letters aside.

Beneath the letters, at the bottom of the drawer, the shiny white back of a photograph. Face down, as you’d place a playing card. So no one can see what it means or tell how the game will play out.

I take it in my hand and turn it over.

The room lurches around me. I hear the hard, dull thumps of my heart.

The picture is of my mother at Gillingham Manor – the same picture I found in her bureau, that she’d hidden and never got framed. That she too had secreted away, but couldn’t quite bear to discard. The picture in which she’s standing in a rose garden, smiling, so happy, the summer wind blowing on her. And I understand her smile now, in a way that I couldn’t when first I saw this photograph – before I met Harri, before I learned about love. Seeing how she’s gazing at the one who holds the camera, her face, her eyes, all luminous. Smiling at this man, the one who makes her feel so alive; the one who completes her.

I put everything back very carefully, place the desk key back in the tray. No one would guess I had been here. I open the door an inch, and listen. Janika is back in the kitchen; I can hear her singing one of her songs of lost love and sad young women buried beneath willow trees. I leave the room as quiet as a ghost or shadow. I fetch the key, lock the door, replace the key on its hook.

And go to my room and lie on my bed and bury my face in the pillow. I want to weep – for myself, because of what I have learned; I would weep as well for the gentle, kindly man who brought me up, who loved me as his own daughter. But no tears come.

Images move across my closed eyelids – moments with Rainer. All the times I’ve felt that shivery sense of connection. The moment when we spoke together, saying the same words. The time just before Marthe’s party, when he started to reach out to me. The unnerving way he looks at me. I picture our faces together in the mirror, his and mine – our eyes meeting, the likeness between us. And I realise that others must have been aware of this likeness. The man I met in the hall, who said I’d obviously inherited my father’s musical ability. Frank, when he said,
You may notice things that you’d rather you hadn’t found out
…

And I think about my mother, with a hot surge of rage. I remember how she behaved, when it was arranged for me to come here. How uncertain she seemed, the faltering in her. I have such a feeling of betrayal. Why didn’t she tell me? She must have known – as women always do. I had a right to know this; I had a right to be told. Was she ever going to tell me? Would I have lived my entire life not knowing this about myself?

I think:
No one can be relied on. Everyone has secrets, everybody lies – even the ones you love the most. Even your own mother
.

And then I start to wonder what on earth I should do. I know I have to talk to Rainer – some time, somehow. But I can’t envisage it – can’t begin to imagine what I could say. I can’t tell him how I found out – that I was spying on him. I try to think of a way to start the conversation; try to imagine how he might react. What if he turned from me, rather shocked, and said I was making it up? Would it be better to say nothing?

But I know that isn’t possible. I can’t be silent – not for ever. I can’t undo what I’ve done here this morning. I can’t unsee what I saw.

At last I get up. I wash my face in the bathroom; then I put on my coat and my hat. There’s only one person who can help me. Only Harri will understand these thoughts that rage and war in me. Harri, who holds the hidden things up to the light; who knows about the hosts of absent others who come between us.

The sun is already low in a clear cold sky, as I walk to Mariahilferstrasse. We hadn’t planned to meet this afternoon – he was going to spend it studying. He might be at the hospital library: I’m praying he’ll be at home.

People pass me in the street, all muffled against the chill wind. People with children, parents, lovers. A mother talks to her child as they trudge home with bags of shopping. A couple kiss and whisper, their arms inside each other’s coats. Yet what is left unsaid, in these intimate exchanges? There are words that are never spoken, that fill up our mouths like stones, that choke us.
Everybody lies
. What lies are these people telling? All the time and every day, till they become habitual. What secrets are circling beneath the placid surfaces of their lives?

‘Stella.’

I see the contradictory feelings in him. His pleasure in seeing me there; his concern at what he immediately sees in my eyes.

‘What is it, Stella? What’s wrong?’

But now I’m here, I can’t speak.

He reaches out, holds me.

‘My darling – I’m so sorry that I have to leave you like this…’

‘Yes. Me too.’ I have my mouth pressed into his shoulder; I can smell the warm smell of the wool of his sweater, of him. My voice is muffled against him. ‘I so wish you didn’t have to. But I know you have to go. You have to be safe. That’s what matters…’ I pull a little away from him. ‘But it’s not about that. It’s something else, something that’s happened,’ I say.

My throat dries up. He waits. I don’t know how to begin.

‘Is your grandfather in?’ I ask him.

‘Yes. And Lotte. And my mother’s in the shop.’

I just stand there, helplessly.

He gives me an anxious look.

‘We’ll go out,’ he says. ‘Would that help?’

‘Yes. Yes, it would.’

‘We’ll go somewhere quiet.’ He thinks for a moment. ‘We could go to Schönbrunn. Just hang on while I fetch my coat,’ he says.

We take the tram to Schönbrunn Palace. He holds my hand; we don’t speak.

Schönbrunn is beautiful in the winter light, the vast lawns smooth as white linen. Above, there’s a dazzling sky, a great wash of daffodil light. But it’s far too cold to stay out in the open: the air has an edge like a knife. We go into the Palm House, to escape from the wind.

The contrast as you go through the doors of the Palm House takes your breath away – the heat, so you feel the immediate trickle of sweat on your skin; the mingled flower pollens – azalea, lily of the valley. The nonchalant jungle whistle of the parrots sounds all wrong, when beyond the glass walls it’s winter. There’s nobody else in the place.

I remember when we were here before – how he slid his hands under my clothes, how sweet, how daring, it felt. I was a different person then – young, trusting. I want to be that person again.

By a bank of scarlet azaleas he turns me round to face him.

‘Tell me, Stella.’

I don’t know how to begin. But I know he will help me make sense of it – Harri, who understands everything.

‘There’s this man – the Englishman, the one who helped us…’

Harri is puzzled.

‘Frank Reece. Of course,’ he says. ‘I wrote to him, to thank him.’

‘I haven’t told you all about him,’ I say. ‘After I met him at Marthe’s party…’

I have to stop. My mouth is suddenly dry; my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.

Harri waits for me.

‘He asked me to meet him for a drink,’ I say.

I see the question in Harri’s face. I put my hand on his arm.

‘It’s not what you think,’ I tell him. ‘He wasn’t flirting or anything. He wanted me to tell him things – to notice who came to the flat. To identify the men who Rainer meets with.’

I hear Harri’s quick indrawn breath.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he says.

‘I thought you might hate me,’ I say. ‘I thought you might think that it was a horrible thing to do. To spy on the people who took me in.’

He puts his hands on my shoulders, holding me there. His touch is so comforting. He shakes his head a little.

‘At first I wouldn’t do it,’ I say. ‘I absolutely refused. Rainer and Marthe had been so kind to me. But then – things happened. I saw two men leave the flat one night and they gave the Hitler salute. And I realised what they believe in – these men who meet Rainer there…’

He nods slightly. I remember when we talked about this, in the café at the cemetery: his intent look. How in the light of the candles, the bones in his face seemed too clear.