The English Girl (9 page)

I stand, and turn to leave.

I feel a touch on my shoulder.

‘Oh.’ A sudden light happiness rushes through me, even before I turn; smelling his faint cedar scent.

And there he is, standing in front of me.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ I say, stupidly.

And I think:
Of course, of course he would come. How could I ever have doubted it?

‘Stella.’

He looks at me as though he can’t quite believe what he sees. As though he is an illusionist, and I am a flower, a flame, a white bird – something he has conjured up and holds in the palm of his hand. Something he has achieved, that astounds him.

I can’t live up to this look of his: I feel my face blazing red. I’ve so hungered for this moment – I was going to glitter, to enchant him. But now the moment has come, and my mind is empty of words.

‘So, Stella…’

I nod. I can’t speak. He must think I’m so foolish.

‘I wonder if I could buy you a coffee,’ he says. ‘We could go to the Frauenhuber. It isn’t far from here. Would you like that?’

But of course he knows what I will say. My presence here answers his question.

‘Yes, please…’

And we both laugh a little, looking at one another.

It’s hard to talk on the tram. It’s crowded, we have to stand very close, and I feel a thrill at his closeness – a thrill that is almost fear. Once, he reaches out and pushes a strand of hair from my face, as he did in the moment when we first met, and a thin heat moves through me.

The Café Frauenhuber is on Himmelpfortgasse. He ushers me inside.

‘This is my café,’ he says, a note of satisfaction in his voice.

The Frauenhuber is smaller and more intimate than the Landtmann. It’s dim and shadowy after the glare of the street, and very quiet – no sound but the chink of silver and glass, and people talking softly in easy weekend voices. I love everything about the place – the soft sepia light, the hushed stillness, the burgundy velvet armchairs.

We sit in a booth at the back. Harri orders coffee.

‘Would you like a cake?’ he asks me. ‘An apricot strudel, perhaps?’

But my mouth is dry.

‘No, thank you.’ Then I worry I’ve been ungracious. ‘I mean, that would be lovely, but I really don’t think I could eat.’

I’ve given too much away again. But he has a slight, secret smile; my nervousness seems to please him.

We are silent for a moment. The narrow table-top seems vast: there’s such a great space between us, a stretch of uncharted ground.

He leans towards me.

‘So, Stella. Tell me about yourself.’

But my mind is blank. I don’t know how to begin.

His hands are loosely clasped together in front of him on the table, and I see that his nails, like mine, are bitten. Maybe he isn’t always as confident as he seems. This reassures me. I start to talk – just the simple things. About the Academy, about Rainer and Marthe, and teaching little Lukas.

The coffee comes – wonderful Viennese coffee. I sip; it makes me feel brave.

‘And what about you?’ I ask him.

‘I live on Mariahilferstrasse,’ he tells me. ‘My mother has a shop there. I live with my mother and grandfather and Lotte, my sister. She’s seven.’

I hear all the tenderness in him, how he wraps his voice round her name.

‘Children are so lovely at seven,’ I say.

‘You like children?’

The thought is there at once in my mind, like a bale of bright silk spooling out – a delectable dream, of him and me and the child we could have. I look down into my coffee, afraid he will read my thought in my face.

‘I
love
children,’ I tell him.

‘I know I must seem a bit ancient to have a sister so young. My mother was in her late forties when Lotte arrived,’ he says.

‘I’m sure Lotte’s ever so sweet.’

He considers this.

‘Well, she’s a pretty thing,’ he says. ‘But there’s nothing
flimsy
about Lotte.’ He has a rather rueful expression. ‘She’s a very definite person. Very strong-willed.’

I’m charmed by the thought of this child – a small, female Harri.

‘And your family, Stella?’ he asks me.

I tell him about Brockenhurst: about my mother and father, and that my father is dead.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ he says.

I’m aware how he suddenly slows – his voice darkening, deepening. I feel at once comforted and understood. I think how he must soothe his most troubled patients just with the tone of his voice.

‘It feels quite a long time ago now,’ I say, as I said to Rainer. ‘But I still miss him.’

‘How could you not?’ he says.

He waits to see if I will say more. I tell him about the car coming too fast, which made my father’s horse rear and throw him. I don’t tell him everything; don’t tell him about the man and the woman, the woman’s red open mouth, her laughter; the way they didn’t look back.

‘My father died as well,’ he says then. ‘Not long after Lotte was born.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, in my turn.

‘It was a heart attack. Very sudden. For months I couldn’t believe it. Whenever I heard the door open, I’d look up, expecting him to come in.’ He shakes his head at the strangeness of this. ‘So – you and me, Stella – that loss is something we share…’

Yes, I think; we share a sadness. Does that bind you? Maybe it does. I would share any sadness with him, if only it brought us closer together.

‘So – have they always lived there, your family? In Brockenhurst?’ he asks me.

I smile at the way he says
Brockenhurst
, in accented English. It makes my home, all the lanes and copses and streams, those green, familiar places, seem alluringly foreign and strange.

‘Yes – my mother’s family have, I think.’

But I don’t know much about the history of my family. I’ve seen photographs of my grandparents, wearing stiff, formal clothes – pictures that date from the turn of the century. Before the Great War changed everything and the modern world began. But I don’t think much about the past.

‘And your family?’ I ask him.

‘My father’s family come from Galicia,’ he tells me. ‘My mother’s from Bukovina.’

I nod; but these names mean nothing to me.

‘My mother feels completely Austrian,’ he tells me. ‘This is her homeland, she says. She always likes to say that she is Austrian first, and Jewish second.’

‘Oh.’

I feel a vague dark flutter of discomfort. I hadn’t realised he was Jewish; I don’t know what it means to be Jewish. In England, people don’t seem to be very aware of such things. Though of course I’ve seen the newspapers: I know what happened in London, in Jewish Stepney, when Mosley’s Blackshirts tried to march through. How they were stopped by thousands of East Enders – Irish dockers and bearded Jews building barricades together. The newspapers called the riot the Battle of Cable Street. But Jewishness isn’t something that people talk about much, where I come from.

I wanted to be a woman of the world, but I’m just a girl from Brockenhurst. I feel so ignorant – I don’t even know the right questions to ask.

‘I don’t know very much about being Jewish,’ I say carefully.

He smiles a small crooked smile.

‘There isn’t much you need to know. You’ve probably heard what they say: Jews are just like other people, only more so…’

I still feel a little uneasy. I remember something from childhood – my father unrolling his old school photograph, picking out himself and his friends from the lines of earnest boys; then pointing to one child and saying, ‘Look – there’s a little Jew-boy.’ Something in his tone had troubled me. I remember thinking,
How can you tell that? And why are you pointing it out?
But I didn’t ask him.

Harri takes out his cigarettes, offers me one. As he leans in to light it, I feel his warm breath on my face. A sweet, heavy languor spreads through me; all my troubling thoughts seep away.

The waiter brings more coffee, and we are quiet for a moment. There’s something I have to ask him. My heart jitters.

‘Harri. The woman you met at the gallery. Last Saturday.’ I try to keep my voice easy. ‘I was wondering who she was. Is she a good friend of yours?’

He gives a slight shrug, which reassures me a little.

‘She’s a doctor, too – a colleague. Ulrike Feldman. We trained together. She’s also studying psychoanalysis. We go to galleries sometimes – she’s passionate about art.’

This only makes her seem more glamorous to me. What man would not prefer such a woman – a doctor with lips bright as redcurrants, and passionate about art – to a very young piano student with rather sensible shoes? The weasel jealousy gnaws at me.

He reaches across the table and rests his hand lightly on mine. A vivid thread of desire moves through me.

‘We’re friends, that’s all. You don’t need to worry,’ he says. Understanding me exactly.

When he takes his hand away, I can still feel the imprint of his warmth on my skin.

I want to move the conversation on, to somewhere safer, easier.

‘Could you tell me more about your work?’ I ask. ‘Could you tell me about Dr Freud?’

A slight self-deprecating smile.

‘Stella. You shouldn’t get me onto that, or you’ll never shut me up again…’

‘But I want to know,’ I tell him. ‘I bought one of his books – the book about the interpretation of dreams.’

This is my moment of triumph. Though I can’t help blushing a bit, remembering the flowers that had such an intimate meaning.

‘You did?’

His face is like a light switched-on. He knows exactly why I did this. Because I hoped that I would see him again.

‘What did you think of it?’ he asks me.

‘Well, I haven’t read very much yet…’

I’m briefly worried that he will quiz me. But he doesn’t.

‘You know, Stella – I feel this is such a significant moment in history. I mean, I know that’s quite a statement – but everything’s going to change. Dr Freud’s ideas will change the world,’ he tells me. His voice very strong and certain.

‘Oh. Really?’

‘How I see it, Stella – he changes the way we think about what it means to be human. He teaches us to understand ourselves and our world. And to understand our world is to change it,’ he says.

But it makes me feel a little dizzy – this talk of changing the world.

‘I wish I knew more,’ I tell him.

‘You mean it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll teach you some of it one day, if you like.’ He grins. ‘Just so long as you realise what you’re letting yourself in for.’

I’ll teach you some of it one day …
I want him to teach me everything, in the most meticulous detail. I think of hours spent together at café tables, learning about Dr Freud.

But then he picks up his cigarette case and puts it in his pocket. I know that soon we must part, and I’m very afraid – that in spite of everything he’s said, he could still slip away from me. The thought is a fist that squeezes my heart.

He calls the waiter, pays the bill. ‘I have to go, Stella.’

He isn’t looking at me. The air feels thin and shimmery between us. I sense all the nervousness in him, and it’s sweet to me.

‘I was wondering … There’s a concert at the Musikverein, next Friday evening,’ he says. ‘The Vienna Philharmonic.’

‘Oh.’

I have a sensation of soaring. Like a bird in the sparkling air above the red rooftops of Vienna. Like the fountain in the museum gardens that glitters and lifts into light.

‘It’s Bruckner. Do you like Bruckner?’ he asks me.

‘I
love
him.’

In this moment, Bruckner is my very favourite composer.

‘We could go, if you’d like that,’ he tells me.

‘Yes. Please. I’d love to.’

After the hushed quiet of the Frauenhuber, the noise of the city slams into us. It’s late now: we must have been in the café for hours. The shadows are long and there’s an edge of chill to the air, and a cold smell of night coming.

We walk silently through the surge of people, back to Schottentor, to the tram.

‘You know your way from here?’ he says.

‘Yes.’

I can see the tram approaching down Alserstrasse. I will it to slow, for every light to be red. The tram keeps coming.

I stand there uncertainly. I don’t know how to leave him. Perhaps he will kiss my hand, like when he greeted the raven-haired Ulrike. I’m not sure what I should do – whether I should hold out my hand.

But he puts his hands lightly on my shoulders.

‘Stella.’ His mouth is close to me: I can feel his words on my skin. ‘You’re so beautiful.’

He pulls me towards him, bends down, kisses my mouth. Desire sears through me. He is, as I thought, an illusionist – and now he makes everything fade: the street, the people, the whole city – its solidity, its rush and turmoil, all its great weight of stone. All these things melting into air. Only this is real – his touch, the smell of his skin, his mouth pressing into my mouth.

We kiss for a long time. But when he pulls away it’s far too soon.

I think about him all the time.

At night, I lie awake for hours. Usually, I’d hate this – but now I love being awake, embracing the still of the night when there’s nothing to distract me, hearing the church clock chiming, holding him close in my mind – his eloquent hands with the bitten nails, the listening look in his face. I can’t quite believe that someone as wonderful as Harri exists. I can’t believe this gift I have been given.

The world seems more vivid to me – as though it is all illuminated for me. I stare in wonder at the gold leaves that drift past my window; at a spray of birds in the clear air; at the flare of the begonias on the window sills over the street. All the detail of these things leaps out at me, as though I am seeing them for the first time.

At a hushed, scented shop on the Graben, I buy myself some new clothes. Everything I try on, I think,
Will he like me in it?
I choose a dress of cornflower crêpe de chine, and some suede court shoes with high heels, which I have to practise walking in. I buy a daring red lipstick, like Anneliese’s. I try the lipstick on, and study myself in the mirror. The woman smiling out of the glass seems different from the usual me. A woman more sure of herself. Someone who knows what she wants.