Last Nocturne (14 page)

But he had watchful eyes, and she soon discovered he was shrewd and careful, too. Running a bony, manicured finger down the figures of her accounts, he warned that the sort of property she had in mind was expensive in Vienna; on the other hand, he informed her, looking over his spectacles, that should pose no problem. He had inspected the current state of her affairs prior to their meeting and gravely confirmed what she was already aware of: that what money Ralph had left her, if invested properly, should keep her comfortably for the rest of her life.

‘Well, that’s excellent,’ she answered, smiling, ‘because as I have said, I hope to find a suitable home here, where I can live permanently. Though I don’t suppose I shall come across one easily, since I want to make certain it’s the right one.’

‘It’s a big decision.’

‘One I haven’t come to lightly. I believe I shall be very happy here. Vienna is the most agreeable city I know.’

‘You’re not the first to feel its charm, Mrs Amberley. But don’t be deceived. It’s not all waltzing and summer sunshine.’

This was true, she thought, recalling the day of their arrival. Still… ‘I
have
lived here in the winter,’ she reminded him, deliberately misunderstanding. She didn’t think it would cut much ice with this pragmatic man if she told him she was still in thrall to the beautiful city, to its parks, its gay music, the chestnut blossom and the hum of bees in the avenues of lindens, to the glitter of uniforms and the familiar jingle of harness and spurs, to the whole of its cosmopolitan sophistication. ‘Meanwhile, until I see the right house, I should like to find somewhere for myself and my maid to stay other than the hotel where we are at present.’

‘I believe, then, I may know of an apartment which might serve you pretty well for the time being,’ he answered after a moment’s thought. ‘But there are drawbacks. For one thing it’s unfurnished – and what’s more, it’s on several floors.’

Remembering the flat she and her mother had shared previously in Vienna, she hesitated. However, watching the fastidious man in front of her pouring coffee from a silver pot into delicate Meissen cups, and offering tiny almond and honey pastries, she felt there would be little to fear. He didn’t appear to be at all the sort of man to recommend poky rooms over a baker’s shop to one of his well-to-do clients. As for the apartment being unfurnished, so much the better. She intended to sell everything with the Fontainebleau house in order to be free of any encumbrances and memories, retaining nothing in the world except personal possessions, and it would suit her very well to buy what furniture she needed for the present, and then either take it with her or sell it when she found a permanent home. The interview appeared to have reached a satisfactory conclusion, and she was almost inclined to tell him to go ahead with the arrangements for taking this temporary apartment, sight unseen.

But as she drew on her gloves, smoothing the fine kid down her fingers, and gathered up her bag preparatory to leaving, caution took hold. “For one thing,’ you said, Mr Carrington. What is the other?’

‘I think perhaps you had better see the apartment and decide that for yourself. Perhaps I spoke too hastily. It might not be at all suitable.’ He added after a slight hesitation, ‘I could take you to see it – now, if you wish. I have the keys.’

‘Very well. If you would be so kind.’

The Carringtons had been bankers for several generations, and Julian had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth and an inherited grasp of money matters. For several years now, he’d been in charge of the Vienna branch of his family’s bank, which task he accomplished without too much intrusion into his spare time, leaving him free to pursue his own restrained interests. He’d discovered a liking for oriental carpets and objets d’art, a positive passion for Chinese porcelain, and a sharp nose for a bargain. He had also begun a modest collection of some of the New Art which was sweeping through Europe and had reached Vienna; not necessarily because he admired the experimental forms being used but because he was a Carrington and therefore had an eye on their future worth.

As a younger man, he had been assigned to Vienna by the bank without much regard for his own wishes, but he’d made no protest; it was not in his nature to stir up trouble that might backfire on him at a later date. He’d come without any objections to this great city on the Danube when the need for expansion and consolidation of the Vienna branch of the bank was put to him, intending to bide his time, waiting for his uncle’s retirement, which would enable him to return gracefully to England and the senior position which would await him there – having meanwhile gained the time to amass a considerable personal fortune, acquired by careful financial investment and acquisition. In the event, he had already stayed for twenty years.

His position, and his wealth, gave him access to that affluent and fashionable section of Viennese society which fell somewhere above the Bürgers but below the aristocracy; a leisured and cultured class mainly concerned with the general pursuit of pleasure (and the acquiring of enough money to support this lifestyle through discreet gambling and speculation as a sideline). He was popular within this milieu as a pleasant, mild-mannered man who dined out well and gave good financial advice, who could be relied upon to be agreeable to the ladies without causing any undignified passions to rise in their breasts. Julian Carrington was an excellent prospect in the marriage market, but he had so far managed to avoid becoming caught. Women generally found him agreeable, though he never flirted, or talked outrageously to make them laugh. Maybe he was the sort to give his heart to one woman only, they said. Or maybe he wasn’t a woman’s man at all. Very few suspected that his lack of emotional involvement hid a struggle to conceal the fires within.

As he accompanied Isobel Amberley the short distance from his office towards the labyrinth of narrow streets and alleys of the inner city where the apartment was situated, he felt slightly distracted. He had scarcely looked at a woman appreciatively for years, but he had already noted with approval this lady’s quick grasp of facts and figures, the firmness of her decision to set up house here, and now he found himself noticing other things: the upright carriage of the slight woman walking gracefully but with assurance beside him, the straight narrow back, and the way the high heels of her glacé kid boots lightly tapped the pavement. He was aware of the furled black lace parasol she carried so gracefully, the alluring tilt of her hat and the white skin showing through the dark lace at her shoulders and neck, and of a faint but delicious scent of sandalwood wafting towards him. And he felt himself strangely beguiled.

Isobel’s first glimpse of the narrow dark lane where the apartment was situated was not encouraging. Inappropriately named Silbergasse (since there was nothing silver about it that she could see) it was set among a maze of other crooked little lanes just off the Stephensplatz where lay the great cathedral with its polychrome roof tiles. The lane was uniformly grey, and its ancient, frowning houses, built around courtyards, were three-, or even four-storeyed, throwing dark shadows onto the street. Most of them, it seemed, had now been turned into flats, in imitation of all the new apartments being built, which was apparently an eminently desirable style of living to the Viennese. The conversion of number 7 had been done vertically, the house being virtually sliced into two unequal halves. The apartment they had come to see comprised the narrowest part, with an entry at the side, off a little passageway which separated the house from its neighbour on that side.

A chill seemed to come over the day when Carrington pointed the house out: its massive oaken door with iron fittings and frowning lintels over the windows, blank and black; the façade overburdened with that elaborate carving so beloved of old Vienna, now eroded by time and weather into slightly sinister shapes; so that for an instant she shivered, despite the heat, her scalp crawled and the hairs on her arms rose. The moment passed. It was only a house, she told herself, a building the sun did not reach.

All the same, it was with mounting foreboding that she followed Julian Carrington inside. But then, after having negotiated what she could already hear Susan decrying as the disadvantage of two very steep and narrow flights of time – worn stone stairs, the living room at the top when he opened the door caused an involuntary gasp of delight to escape her. In contrast to the forbidding street outside and the gloom of the staircase, here all was light and airiness: a long, narrow room stretching the whole width of the apartment from front to back, lit at both ends by windows; only a small one overlooking the dismal lane, but at the other end a huge wide window that gave extensive views over the city, towards the Prater amusement park, the great Ferris wheel and the gleam of the Donnaukanal beyond. Immediately, any initial reservations disappeared. ‘This is quite delightful, Mr Carrington! Don’t you agree?’

‘Ye-es,’ he replied cautiously, unwilling to signal approval, standing cool and reserved in front of the white-tiled porcelain stove which would keep the room warm in winter. As if in duty bound, he pointed out its inconveniences: its three floors, the lack of anywhere to sit outside, though the apartment itself was quite private, an arrangement made during the conversion of the ancient rabbit warren that was the original house. Built for what purpose no one had yet discovered, perhaps for a prosperous merchant, the house was now owned by an elderly Czech countess who was content never to put in an appearance as long as the monies from the lease of this and the other apartment were collected for her by Carrington’s Bank.

‘It will suit me admirably. My search has ended before it’s begun.’ For a fleeting moment, the chill she’d experienced at first sight of the house did come back to her, like a person walking over her grave, but then it was gone. ‘I’m sure it’s meant to be, if only because of the piano,’ she added with a smile.

It stood inimically alone, lightly coated with dust, an upright ebony instrument with gilt candle-sconces on its front, the only piece of furniture in the whole of the big empty room, mute testimony to the difficulty of removing it. Wonderful to imagine how it could have got there in the first place – winched up through the big window, no doubt. Its presence seemed like an omen to her. Though not musically gifted in the sense that her mother had been, life without music at all wasn’t to be endured. She lifted the lid and ran her fingers over the keys in a rapid arpeggio. It needed tuning, and the pleated green silk front of the instrument was faded and fraying, but neither was anything that couldn’t be easily overcome. ‘I shall do very well indeed here, at least until I find somewhere else,’ she declared, closing the lid.

‘My dear Mrs Amberley, had you not better look around the whole place first?’ He gave her a chiding glance over his spectacles, as one who could not conceive of such rashness. ‘The kitchen and bedrooms are on the floors below, which you haven’t yet seen.’

‘No matter. I really have quite fallen in love with it. You say it’s available on a short lease?’ She was already seeing, in her mind’s eye, bookshelves, and in front of the low, wide window, a chair angled towards tree-tops, a bandstand, and in the distance the view of the amusement park and the great eye of the wheel. A silvery grey room to reflect that wonderful light, with touches of black and warm gold, and soft, sweet-pea colours.

She walked across to the big window, so big she felt it must have been altered at some time according to some special instructions, where another surprise awaited: there below lay a large cobbled courtyard, cool and shady. It stood between the side passageway and the blank stone face of an extension to the house on the other side, and was dappled with the afternoon sun filtering through a lime tree, at present a haze of pale green blossom, and a huge chestnut which shaded an old well in the centre.

Forming the back wall of the courtyard was a low building, one storey high. When questioned, Carrington informed her that it acted as a studio-cum-workshop for the painter who occupied the other half of this house with his brother. He coughed behind his hand. ‘That, I’m afraid, is the other drawback of which I spoke.’

‘Ah. I see. Artists. That must be a drawback, certainly.’

‘You must not laugh, Mrs Amberley.’ He hesitated. ‘The brothers appear to have formed a group around themselves. Painters, writers, so-called café intellectuals and such like. A radical group, I’m sorry to say, with dangerous views which have often brought them into trouble with the authorities. They also tend to lead a somewhat – unorthodox – lifestyle, if you understand me, which might offend you.’

‘I am not easily offended.’ She understood only too well what he meant, remembering the unorthodox people she and her mother had been associated with when she had been in her formative years. ‘Are you acquainted with them personally?’

‘Only in a professional capacity – as the house owner’s representative, and through occasionally buying some of the work of the older brother, Viktor Franck.’ He coughed again. ‘I’m by way of being a collector, don’t you see – in a very modest way – of modern art.’

‘How very interesting. I must acquaint myself with this
Art Nouveau
I’m hearing so much about.’

‘Dear me, I’m not sure it would appeal to a lady of your sensibilities.’ He did not elaborate, but she suspected the pictures he spoke of might be of the kind which most people considered provocative, shocking, or even downright ugly. How very surprising that he should collect such! Perhaps he was not altogether the dry stick she’d at first assumed him to be. Then his next words enlightened her. ‘Viktor Franck is not so much regarded now as he will be in the years to come. Prices for his work will escalate.’

Once a money-man, always a money-man, she thought, amused, opening the window and leaning out, sniffing the delicious honeyed scent of the linden blossom rising from the courtyard in great waves. ‘Is this the man you mean – the painter?’

Walking with a springing stride across the courtyard towards the house was a big, muscular man wearing a purple velvet smoking jacket, a flowing tie and a swashbuckling hat, from under which greying red hair escaped, wild and alive. A cigarette hung from his mouth. More than ‘unorthodox’, positively louche, a mountebank, she thought, though not without a certain frisson of interest.