Last Nocturne (32 page)

Eliot had an insatiably curious nature, an immense vitality and a gift for finding pleasure in small things: a little hidden church with a magnificent altarpiece, wild gypsy music and dancing in an out of the way Magyar restaurant, sunlight on the glittering snow-slopes outside the city. As winter progressed into the heartbreakingly lovely Austrian spring and the hot summer, he and Isobel freely, joyously discovered Vienna as they discovered each other, exploring corners of the old city she never knew existed. They took excursions into the mountains and ate hearty country food at small inns, and with their mutual love of music they regularly attended the city’s concerts. But equally precious were the quiet calm evenings spent together over a bottle of wine, looking out over the lighted Volksprater under the paler luminescence of the starlight.

The shared days and nights of intimacy they had were all the more precious because they were necessarily circumscribed by the time Eliot could realistically spend away from London. He was finding it increasingly difficult to make excuses to leave his business and his family in order to spend even so much time in Vienna. Excuses? Isobel discovered it wasn’t a word she liked. She would not allow herself to feel guilty at what she knew to be so right.

For a long time, she had blanked off her mind to the thought of Eliot’s marriage, assuming he was as glad to keep her as separate from his other life as she was to live here in Vienna, in a bubble, insulated from everyone else. But at times he grew very quiet and withdrawn and she saw how hard it was becoming for him; he wasn’t a man who could easily set aside his obligations and duties to his family and she tried to understand the agony of being torn in two as he was, though she knew she could never truly share it.

His marriage had been one of convenience on both sides. He had admired his wife’s handsome looks, her vitality and energy, her social brilliance, and she’d married him if not solely, then mainly for his money. There was no reason why it shouldn’t have been as much of a success as other, similar marriages were. But it had turned out to be a disappointment: his social aspirations could never match hers, she shared none of his interests, and they had grown further and further apart. He knew there was a man who danced attendance on her, but she was deluding herself if she thought he would ever marry her, he said. ‘And I very much doubt that they are lovers.’

Undoubtedly, Eliot and his wife had grown very cool towards each other, but that made him all the more determined to treat her fairly. He had no wish to humiliate her, drag her through the divorce courts. And no intentions, either, of simply leaving her in order to be with Isobel, which would be equally unjust, leaving Edwina high and dry, not free to remarry if such an opportunity did arise. It was an unhappy, unresolved situation.

‘It won’t do,’ he said, one evening, after they’d returned from a Musikverein concert of the modern music he so enjoyed. He stood up and went to replenish his glass from the bottle of kümmel which stood on a small table.

Isobel’s head was still full of the haunting plangent sounds of the music they’d been listening to, the last notes still seeming to vibrate on the very air. Music always moved her, but what she’d heard that night, unlike any sound she’d ever heard before, its depth, its strange atonal intervals, its resonances, stirred something sleeping within her. It reduced to little more than a catchy tune the lilting gay ‘Blue Danube’ that newsboys all over the city whistled, that shopkeepers hummed, young ladies tinkled out on the piano and all the world waltzed to. A pensive melancholy settled on her as they sat in front of her window with their coffee, gazing over the glittering spread below, the lighted Ferris wheel slowly circling in the dark. How many times had the great wheel turned since she came here? How many times had she sat watching its ceaseless revolutions, alone, while the world turned around her? Sometimes she had thought it was measuring out her life: turning, turning, turning.

She watched Eliot as he put the bottle down on the table and saw him glance casually at some papers she’d tossed down there. His brows drew together. ‘What’s this?’

‘Nothing much. I’ve been putting some of Bruno’s poems into English for him. He hopes to sell some of his work over there.’

‘You shouldn’t do this,’ he said, flipping through the pages. ‘It’s dangerous.’

‘Dangerous? Bruno’s poems?’ She laughed. They were bad poems, she knew that now, full of bombast with not much to support it, but she’d agreed to translate them as well as she could. ‘They’re harmless, just something to keep me occupied.’

‘If they fell into the wrong hands they would be anything but harmless. They could do a great deal of harm. Give them back to that foolish man and promise you won’t do it again. I can’t stress too highly how dangerous this is for you.’

‘If you wish.’ Perhaps there was more to his poetry than she’d given Bruno credit for, or something in them she hadn’t wanted to see, she thought, recalling with a sudden coldness that night the police had come looking for Samuel Kohen, what she had thought of then as Bruno’s irrational fear of the police, but she was willing enough to promise what Eliot wanted, if it meant so much to him. ‘You said, a few minutes ago, ‘it won’t do’,’ she reminded him. ‘What is it that won’t do?’

He stood for several minutes with his glass in his hand, looking out of the window, his back to the room. Turning to face her, he said abruptly, ‘I want you to leave Vienna, Isobel, and come to London.’

She was too taken aback to say a word. London.

It was easy enough to be discreet here, though discretion was not something they sought, or even cared about very much. But London, where his wife, his family, his business and his friends were? What sort of existence could they lead there – herself, presumably tucked away out of sight, hidden in some discreet, out of the way love-nest – and he, afraid of meeting anyone he knew, his friends, acquaintances, when they were together? How indeed could they ever go about together?
Do you plan to acknowledge me openly as your mistress, then? I’ve never thought of myself as a mistress before
. She thought she’d said this aloud but she hadn’t.

‘Isobel,’ he said, ‘Isobel. I know what you’re thinking. But there’s rather more to it – there’s going to be a war, you know. A European war we shall all be plunged into, and it won’t be safe for you here, alone.’

This sort of talk was hardly new. She’d heard it all before, from more than Bruno. It was common knowledge that the Emperor’s cavalry generals were spoiling for a war, that their ally, the Kaiser, was making warlike noises and amassing a huge, modern, mechanised fighting force. ‘If it does come—’

‘When, my dearest, not if. Sooner or later it will, and my guess is sooner. And it won’t be just another Habsburg dispute with disgruntled nationals – this time it’ll be a serious war that will split Europe – Russia and France already have their entente with Britain and all of them have their own axes to grind, their determination to defend their rights against the Empire and Germany.’

For the first time, it came home to her, the real possibility of such a conflict. She thought of herself, here in a war-torn Austria. Eliot in England. Separated, not just for weeks, or sometimes months at a time, but for the duration, for however long it might last. Maybe for ever. But join him in England?

He looked as though she’d given him the answer he was expecting. He held her hands tight and said after a moment or two, ‘Then, if the mountain won’t come to Mohammed…’

‘What?’ She blinked, not understanding.

‘I mean if you won’t come to me, I will come to you. I’ve been thinking about it for some time and in the end, that’s the only solution. Yes,’ he finished, the thought seeming to take on solidity and certainty even as he spoke.

‘To live here?’

‘Here? My dear, have you not heard what I’ve been saying? War, Isobel, war. A conflagration, a bitter, bloody war – not in some distant part of the Empire, but here – and you in the midst of it. The idea is impossible.’ He tipped her chin and looked deep into her eyes. ‘There are whole new worlds out there – the colonies: Canada, Australia, New Zealand…

But no, they wouldn’t do. I still have a living to make, a business that can’t be conducted in a cultural wilderness. America, then. I already have contacts there.’

It took her breath away. America! The New World. A new life.

‘Well?’

They could leave in a few months, he went on. First, he would have to make arrangements for selling the gallery, and so on.
And so on
. Meaning the setting up of a painful divorce, not to mention leaving his beloved daughter and the son whom he had soon hoped to see when he had tired of his exotic adventures in foreign lands. Divorce – at last the word had been spoken…

‘There is something else,’ Isobel said slowly. ‘What about Sophie? How can I leave her?’

It wasn’t a token protest. There was nothing token in the plunge of dismay she felt at the very idea. What would Sophie do if Isobel, the only stable being in her life, abandoned her? For who knew when, if ever, her mother would come back?

Unlike Julian, Eliot saw and sympathised with her dilemma, which he’d evidently been prepared for. ‘Why shouldn’t she come, too? If her mother ever does return,’ he added drily, ‘I imagine she wouldn’t be averse to allowing her to stay with you – for a consideration.’

Isobel said slowly, ‘It’s not Sophie, or even Miriam I’m worried about. It’s Viktor.’

It had happened a couple of months ago, before Miriam left.

Susan had bought a hare in the market. She knew Berta had a tasty way of cooking it, with morels, but she didn’t think her limited understanding of Berta’s guttural German was up to sorting the instructions out. They would just have to have it jugged, in the good old English way, she said, preparing to skin it.

She was busy. Isobel had time on her hands. So, armed with pencil and paper, she went to seek out Berta herself. The outside door of the Francks’ establishment was open wide to any one, as it usually was. She couldn’t find Berta and wandered from the kitchen into the passage which led into the great hall. The heavy door was closed and as she pushed it open, she walked into the middle of a stormy exchange between Miriam and – not Bruno, this time, but Viktor. They didn’t see her. They were oblivious to anyone. Viktor’s pale face was livid, Miriam was laughing scornfully at something he had said. Isobel knew she ought to have left, but then she heard Sophie’s name, and stayed.

The laugh had evidently enraged Viktor and he seized Miriam by the shoulders. She wrenched herself free and brought up her hand to deliver a ringing blow to the side of his head. Despite her size there was considerable force behind it and he reeled back. Regaining his balance, he grabbed her again by the shoulders and as they struggled, a bunch of violets she had tucked into her bodice fell off and was crushed under their feet. Their sweet scent, overlying the smoky, fungoid smell of the hall was sickening.

And then his hands were round that slender white throat as if he would snap it in two and Isobel could no longer stand by. She ran forward and tried to drag Viktor away. He refused to slacken his grip, his expression murderous. Isobel kicked him, pulled at him, until suddenly, without warning, he let go and Miriam fell sideways. Isobel caught her arms and pulled her upright, then she recovered herself, threw Isobel off and staggered out of the door, retching, her hands to her throat.

Isobel made to follow her, but Viktor seized her hand and pulled her back. Dazed, he then let go of her and collapsed into a seat, with his shoulders slumped, his hands between his knees, his skinny frame all angles. But when he looked up, he was in control of himself again. ‘Another minute and I really would have strangled the life out of her this time.’

‘You nearly killed her!’

‘Maybe it’s a pity I didn’t.’

She was too shocked to speak. This was more than the momentary, immediately regretted outburst of temper which had made Bruno attempt to hit Miriam with the skillet – what was it about her that provoked such violence in men? – this was a deliberate, violent attack that had left no remorse.

‘I’m surprised nobody’s ever done it before,’ he went on, almost echoing his brother’s words. ‘She’s a devil, that woman, forever taunting me. I can’t eat, can’t sleep. I’m cursed by her. Tortured – torn between love and… Sometimes, it’s
her
I’d like to tear to pieces.’

She didn’t want to witness this ugly metamorphosis of the cold, taciturn Viktor, or listen to such savagery. ‘Taunting you? Why should she do that?’

He lifted his head and stared at her. Then he laughed harshly. ‘Is it possible you haven’t noticed? Didn’t you know the little waif is my child? Can’t you see it? The she-devil pretends that’s not so, but she knows she is.’

Sophie. ‘But—’

‘She’s mine,’ he said flatly, as if that were all that mattered, as if she were just another possession, less important than a completed canvas or a clutch of familiar paintbrushes. She mattered only insofar as she was the last desperate hope that might persuade Miriam to him.

His eye-glasses had become askew in the struggle and he was working the distorted frames with his fingers. And suddenly, Isobel saw there might be some truth in what he claimed, as she looked at his naked face, at his eyes – black, almond-shaped – doubtless inherited from his mother, who might have been a Hungarian gypsy.

Sophie’s Magyar eyes.

Sergeant Cogan, his long experience reinforcing a natural streak of pessimism, hadn’t expected any sightings of anyone named Franck to be reported at any of the points of exit he was likely to use, and wasn’t hopeful of success at likely hotels and boarding houses in the city, either, so he wasn’t disappointed on his arrival at the station the morning after they had been set in train to find none. However, Teutonic efficiency meant that a reply was already waiting from the Viennese police. He made a mug of strong tea and sent for Smithers, who came into the office just as Lamb arrived. With a little huffing and puffing, the constable soon produced a translation from the German. The results were gratifying – a full but succinct report on certain events which had occurred in the city some fifteen months ago.