Airs Above the Ground (9 page)

‘I’m sorry. It must have been very distressing.’

‘It was a bad time for my father.’ The blue eyes lifted to mine. ‘The wagon belonged to Franz Wagner, his cousin . . . my Uncle Franzl. I always called him that, though really he was my second cousin . . . I suppose he always seemed old to me. He joined us when I was a little girl.’

I forgot all my preconceived feelings about her in a genuine rush of sympathy. ‘My dear Fräulein . . . my dear Annalisa, I’m sorry. I hadn’t realised it was a relative . . . that’s awful. You must have had a terrible time.’

She shrugged again, not uncaringly, but dismissively. ‘It is over.’

‘And the other man? There was another, you said?’

‘He was nothing to do with the circus. He must have met my Uncle Franzl somewhere, and gone back to his wagon for a drink – a talk, who knows? We did not know there was anyone else there with him. They pulled my Uncle Franzl out . . . He lived for a little, only a few minutes. But it was only when the wagon was nearly all burned that they found the . . . the other one.’

‘I see.’ I was silent for a moment. Perhaps I ought not to press her, but though she had spoken sombrely, the subject didn’t appear to distress her unduly now. She must have repeated all this a hundred times during the past week. ‘But they did find out who the second man was?’

She nodded. ‘He was an Englishman. His name was Paul Denver, and he belonged to some British firm which had a branch in Vienna . . . I didn’t understand what sort of work, but I think it was something to do with farming. My father had not heard of him, and we don’t know how Uncle Franzl met him – we had only arrived that day in Oberhausen, you understand. We don’t usually give a performance on a Sunday, so they think that Uncle Franzl went out that evening drinking somewhere, and met this man, and got talking to him, and then they came back together and . . . perhaps they talked late, and drank a little more . . . You can picture to yourself how it might be . . .’

She paused, and I said: ‘Yes.’ I could picture it only
too well. The wagon would burn like a torch. And beside it the stables, the plunging, panic-stricken horses, the screaming from the menagerie, the chaos of shouting.

‘It was the lamp that fell,’ she said. ‘Afterwards they found the hook had broken that held it. It was the noise from the horses that gave the alarm. Then people began shouting that there was someone else in the wagon, but it was burning hard by that time; and then the other Englishman came running out of the dark and helped to pull him out. It turned out that he knew him; he had come to Oberhausen to meet him.’

It was Timothy who said: ‘“The other Englishman”?’

‘Yes. He works for the same firm and he had just arrived in Oberhausen, driving from Vienna, and he saw the fire, and came to help.’

It was still Timothy who asked: ‘And when did he leave?’

‘Leave?’ said Annalisa. ‘He is still here. He—’ Then she stopped and smiled, and with the smile the strained look lifted and the sparkle came back. She was looking beyond me, to where someone had come in from the street. ‘Why, here he is,’ she said.

A man had just turned in from the street under the dappled shade of the chestnut trees. He paused there, looking towards our table. I believe I was already half out of my chair, regardless of what Annalisa might think. I heard Timothy say something, some question. And then the newcomer moved forward from the patch of shadow into the sunlight, and I met, full
on, his indifferent, unrecognising eyes, and slight look of surprise.

I think I said: ‘No, no it’s not,’ to Timothy, as I sank back into my chair.

Across me Annalisa was calling out: ‘Lee! Come and join us!’

Then the newcomer was standing over us, and introductions were being made.

‘Lee,’ said Annalisa, ‘this is Vanessa March. Vanessa, Mr Elliott . . . And this is Tim.’

I murmured something, heaven knows what, and the two men greeted one another. Mr Elliott pulled up a chair next to mine.

‘I take it you must just have arrived here, or we’d have heard all about you long ago. In a place this size every movement is reported.’

I managed to pull myself out of the turmoil into which the appearance of the ‘other Englishman’ had plunged me, and answered him civilly, if slightly at random. ‘Oh, I can believe that. Yes, we’ve only been here an hour or so. We came from Vienna today by car.’

‘And what brings you to Oberhausen?’

‘Oh, just . . . touring around.’ I caught Timothy’s eye on me, worried and speculative even while he replied to some remark of Annalisa’s, and made another effort. ‘Actually, we – I was expecting to meet my husband down here . . . that is, in Graz . . . but after we got there we heard that he couldn’t make it after all. So we thought we might as well take a run out to see the countryside while we were here . . . It’s very lovely, isn’t it?’

‘Very. You’re staying in the village, then?’

‘Only for the night. We’re here, at the Edelweiss. We’ll go back . . . that is, we’ll go in the morning. Tim’s got plans to visit Piber, you know, the Lipizzaner stud, so we’ll probably go back that way. I can put in the time till I get a message from my husband.’

Some fragment of what I was feeling must have shown through the carefully social mask I had put on. He said, in a tone which seemed meant to sound comforting: ‘I’m sure that will be soon.’

I managed a creditably bright smile. ‘I hope so! But meanwhile Tim and I intend to enjoy ourselves, starting with the circus tonight.’

‘Tim is your brother?’ This was from Annalisa. ‘He didn’t tell me his other name. Not March?’

‘No. Anyway, that’d have made me a brother-in-law,’ said Timothy. ‘My name’s Lacy. No relation. Just companion, chauffeur and general dogsbody.’

‘Dog’s body?’ She made two words of it, puzzled. ‘Why do you call yourself that? To me, it sounds not at all polite.’

‘It isn’t.’ I said. ‘He’s trying to make out that he gets all the work to do organising our trip. I must say I wouldn’t have got far without his German. All right, dogsbody, organise a drink for Mr Elliot, will you?’

‘If you can do that in under twenty minutes,’ said Mr Eliott, ‘you’re worth your weight in platinum. Good God!’ This as the waitress, obedient still to Timothy’s lightest gesture, paused by our table. The three of them plunged into a discussion, Mr Elliott in what sounded like, and probably was, flawless German.

As she sped away, I turned to him, composed now.

He had taken a pipe out of his pocket and was lighting it. It made him look very English. Apart from this, in his nondescript and rather shabby clothes, he might have been anything, anybody, from anywhere. He was tallish, and toughly built, and when he moved it was with a kind of springy precision that indicated strength and muscular control. But his voice and personality, while pleasant enough, struck me then as being singularly colourless. His hair was brown, his eyes of an indeterminate shade somewhere between blue and grey. His hands were good, but I could see a broken nail, and dirt ingrained in them as if he had been working hard at some dirty job. Since I had gathered from Annalisa that he was here as a representative of his firm, this hardly seemed in character, but perhaps he had been lending a kindly hand around the circus. His clothes bore this out; they looked like cheap holiday clothes which had recently had rough and even dirty wear.

I said: ‘And you? I understand from Fräulein Wagner that you’re down here on business. I was very sorry to hear about the accident.’

‘She told you about that, did she? Yes, one of the men who died was a colleague of mine. He’d come down here on a project investigating farming methods and use of fertilisers, and I was actually on my way to meet him when it happened.’

‘I’m sorry.’ We exchanged a few commiserating phrases, then I asked: ‘What is your firm, Mr Elliott?’

‘Our Vienna connection is Kalkenbrunner Fertilisers.’

‘Oh? Perhaps you know my husband’s firm, Pan-European Chemicals?’

‘Of course, though I can’t for the moment recall any of the people. Stewart, did he work for them? Craig? I may have met your husband, but I don’t remember, I’m afraid. Is he in Vienna often?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ I said, with perfect truth, though not perhaps with perfect civility. I was feeling the strain of this polite conversation about nothing. ‘Here’s your drink. Have you been here ever since the accident happened?’

‘Yes. The police inquiries went on rather a long time, and since my firm was willing to give me leave till things were cleared up, I stayed and gave a hand where it was needed.’ He smiled. ‘Not with the police, with the circus. There’s your definition of a dogsbody, Annalisa . . . what I’ve been doing for the past week.’

‘You? You have been marvellous!’ The look she gave him was almost as glowing as the one Timothy had given her. ‘Mrs March, you’ve no idea . . . I told you we were a small circus, and this means that everybody has to work hard. And after Uncle Franzl’s death . . . I think that we had not realised how much he did. Perhaps this is always the way when someone dies? He was not a performer, you understand. He was a wonderful rider, but he would do no circus work – I mean, he would not work an act . . . But he was in charge of the
horses, and I told you, he trained Maestoso Leda, and taught me my act . . .’

It seemed to be some kind of release to her to talk, and we all listened quietly. Beside me, Mr Elliott sat very still and relaxed, his eyes never leaving the girl.

‘I remember it well,’ she said, ‘when he joined us. It was ten years ago, when I was eight, and my grandfather was still alive. We were near Wels, in Upper Austria, and my grandfather had just bought Maestoso Leda, and the Lipizzans themselves were staying in Wels at that time, and we went to see them. You can imagine’ – this to Timothy – ‘how excited they made me! There was also a big horse fair in Wels, and this was the lucky thing, because my Uncle Franzl happened to be there with a dealer he went with after he left the Czech circus where he had worked. I think before that he was in the Army . . . He had not been close to the family, you understand. But he came to see my grandfather, and when we went north that night, into Bavaria, he went with us.’ She smiled. ‘Now, I can hardly remember the time when he was not part of our circus. I even forgot that his name was not Wagner . . . My grandfather wished him to change it, and he did. He took charge of all the stable work, and the – what do you call the saddles and the bridles and things? Not harness . . .’

‘Tack?’ suggested Timothy.

‘Thank you, yes, that’s it. He was also the vet – the doctor for the horses. So you can imagine what it has
been like, with so many of the animals damaged with the panic on the night of the fire, and my father with so much to attend to. He had no time for the horses, and Rudi, that’s the chief groom, broke his arm getting the horses out . . . So I’ve had to do it, and Lee has helped me. Of course some of the artistes have helped also, but they have to practise for themselves every day . . . It has not been easy.’

‘I’ll say,’ said Mr Elliott with feeling. ‘Who was it said that hell was a paradise of horses?’

‘Nobody,’ I said dryly. ‘They said England was a paradise for horses and a hell for women.’

‘Is it?’ asked Annalisa, interested.

‘It has its moments. Go on, Mr Elliott. Are we to understand that you’ve been grooming twenty-seven horses for a week?’ For the life of me I couldn’t help glancing at his clothes.

He saw it and grinned. ‘I have indeed. I have ministered, you might say, to every detail of their toilet. The grooming’s the easiest part, once you’ve discovered that the hair grows from bow to stern, and you have to brush that way; from the bite to the kick, you might say. The extraordinary thing is, they like it. At least, one gathers they do most of the time. I’ve only been bitten once.’

‘You poor thing,’ I said. ‘And I believe ponies are worse.’

‘A Hungarian gentleman did them. He has the advantage of only being three feet high himself. Oh, its been a most instructive week, I shall be sorry to leave.’

Annalisa said: ‘I wish you would not leave. We shall not know what to do without you.’

‘I must say it’ll be a bit deadly to go back to the old routine,’ said Mr Elliott. He glanced at his watch. ‘Annalisa, I hate to break the party up, but I really think that we should be going. All those beautiful horses to get ready for the show.’

‘Goodness, yes!’ She got to her feet. The waitress appeared at Timothy’s elbow as we all followed suit, and there was the inevitable polite wrangle between Timothy and Lee Elliott over the bill. Timothy – I would have backed him anywhere by now – won easily.

‘Well, thanks very much.’ said Mr Elliott.

‘It’s been lovely to meet you,’ said Annalisa, ‘and shall we see you later? When the show is finished, just ask anybody, they will tell you where to come.’ She laughed unaffectedly. ‘I shall feel like a prima donna with visitors coming to ask for me after the show. I hope you enjoy it.
Kommst du
, Lee?’

They went. We sat down. I said: ‘I thought you’d have wanted to go and help.’

‘I thought I’d better stay with you,’ said Timothy. He looked at me. ‘Do you feel all right? You look awfully funny.’

‘Funny? How d’you mean?’

‘Well, when he came, you went as white as a sheet. I suppose you were expecting your husband.’

I nodded.

‘So was I. When she said “the other Englishman” was still here, I thought we were home and dry.’

I shook my head. ‘No. When she heard my name
was March, she never reacted. If a Mr March were here in the village—’

‘Dash it, how stupid can one be? I’d forgotten that!’ Then he frowned. ‘But that was at the very start . . . before the Elliott chap turned up. Why did you still think that it could be Mr March, when she said, “Here he is”?’

‘I didn’t. I thought it
was
. There’s a difference . . . Listen, Tim—’ I found I was clutching a fold of the tablecloth so tightly that my nails had gone through the thin material. I let it go, and began to smooth out the crushed fabric. ‘I – I’ve made a dreadful mistake. When I saw Mr Elliott first, I thought for a moment that it
was
Lewis. When he came nearer, into the light, I saw I was wrong. Now do you see what I’ve done?’