Restitution (23 page)

The image of those two together haunted her. She pulled it out of her memory to examine all the details and what she saw made her cheeks burn.

Marie kept to her room, pleading a headache. If Eva hadn’t also been nursing some vague malaise it would have been awkward. As it was, only Lena seemed to notice Marie’s depression
when she visited each evening to tidy the bedroom and coax her outside for a walk in the Burggarten.

Anton, staying with one of his brothers in Vienna and still seeking work, called once or twice for Marie and she sent Lena out with messages saying she was indisposed. She couldn’t face
him. And yet, if she was honest, she could almost imagine her body and Anton’s performing those
movements
Viktor and Eva carried out. The thought made her nerves almost fizz with
electricity. Anton was a tall man with conventional Germanic good looks. In summer his eyes were intensely blue in his tanned face. His limbs were muscled from all those years skiing, hiking and
climbing. She’d seen him throw a ball or vault a gate and admired his easy movements. She still found him desirable and this recognition was even more shocking than the recollection of Eva
and Viktor together; it was like lusting after a brother. If only she could go to bed with Anton, just once, and learn how to do
it.
He’d always been kind and gentle with her. If only
he would show her without demands for love, or, God forbid, proposals of marriage. But such a proposition would be anathema to him. Her lips curled imagining how he’d respond to the
suggestion. He’d think she was mad. Or that she’d become what he feared: a debauched actress, a near-prostitute.

She must be suffering from some disorder even to consider such a thing. Although that doctor everyone talked about in Vienna, the one who looked deep into your psyche and told you what he saw,
said that
everything
in life came down to sex. Perhaps someone like him could decipher her conflicting thoughts. But imagine confessing such farmyard yearnings.

Viktor came to the apartment late one night when Marie was almost asleep. She heard him mutter to Eva in the hallway, ‘. . . a month or two . . . can’t take you
with me, Eva . . . keep in touch.’

There was a deeper edge to his voice than usual. ‘I promise I’ll come for you when I can. I promise.’ His voice shook slightly. Eva was sobbing now.

The front door clicked shut.

In the morning Eva didn’t appear for breakfast. Marie found her sitting in her room that evening, staring at nothing. ‘Viktor’s gone away.’

‘Where?’ Marie sat beside her on the bed.

‘Hungary, he said. But he’s planning on going to Romania afterwards. God knows what he’s doing, he was so vague, Marie. Even to me.’ She twisted her hands in her lap.

All that summer rumours reached them of Viktor. Someone said he’d been spotted in a yacht owned by an Englishman in Nice. Someone else swore they’d seen him sitting
outside a café in Bucharest. But that was unlikely when Fredi Brandt knew for a fact that Viktor Vargá had been spotted at the opera in Warsaw. And all the time Eva grew quieter and
quieter. Marie thought of the ecstasy on Viktor’s face the afternoon she’d come across them entwined. It seemed impossible he could feel that for Eva and leave her. She could still
close her eyes and hear his muttered endearments. Viktor loved Eva. Not her; Eva. If only she could stop being in love with him.

Eva started to go out in the afternoons, saying she was growing claustrophobic. Often the young German, Matthias Fischer, would escort her round the shops or coffeehouses. Once or twice Alix
heard the front door open in the early hours as someone left the apartment. Eva would sleep late and say nothing when the two girls ate their lunch.

Life grew dull. Even Anton was unable to offer Marie companionship. He’d gone to Innsbruck for another job interview. Marie stood at the window looking down at the street below with its
respectable middle-class women out exercising their dogs and men buying newspapers from the stand. Vienna had once enchanted her. Now it felt oppressive. She thought of going home to Meran for a
few weeks, but the heaviness that seemed to have claimed her prevented her from walking to the railway station to book the tickets.

Towards the end of the summer Eva arrived back in the apartment one afternoon, smartly dressed and flushed.

‘It’s done,’ she said, looking relieved. ‘Bit of a rush to get it all sorted out but here I am, Frau Fischer.’

‘Wie bitte
?’ Marie stared at her.

‘I’ve just married Matthias Fischer. Remember him?’

‘You’ve done what!’ Marie stood.

‘You must have noticed how much time we’ve been spending together.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Ridiculous making myself ill over a man who left me like that.’ She flopped in a chair. ‘For God’s sake, sit down, Marie. You remind me of my mother, standing there
looking disapproving.’

‘Eva, I don’t think Viktor had any choice, I think—’

‘He left me! I haven’t had a word.’

Marie sat.

‘It’s been over two months now. Why should I have waited any longer?’ Eva played with the ring on her finger. ‘Shame Matthias couldn’t come back for tea. He had to
rush back to Berlin – some union problem at the printing press. Rather amusing for a socialist to have bolshy workers, isn’t it!’

‘I don’t understand, Eva.’ Marie examined her. Eva’s eyes were cleverly made up but the lids drooped slightly and the skin was puffy. ‘It feels so
rushed.’

‘Matthias Fischer is very amusing and he’s got friends in interesting places. I’d like to try something a little more modern for the next stage of my career. Berlin’s the
place for that.’ The words sounded as though they’d been composed earlier, rehearsed, perhaps.

Marie closed her eyes and saw Viktor’s face while Eva writhed on top of him, blind and rapturous. ‘Don’t do this, Eva. Viktor adored you.’ If Eva and Viktor had had
that
together, it was obscene that Eva could bear to marry someone else.

‘Too late.’ Eva put out a hand to show her the diamond ring. ‘God my head hurts. I hope this stage doesn’t last long . . .’

‘What stage?’ Marie asked. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Nothing. Be a sweetheart and make us both a
tisane.’
She grinned. ‘I’m the bride, remember? It’s my day for ordering everyone around.’

And Marie had the sense that all this was happening in some underwater dream, in which reaction or protest was impossible.

Alix

Rhineland, Western Germany, April 1946

Alix’s trug was full. As she turned for the house she noticed how each movement she made felt as though it were happening leagues beneath the ocean. Must be the weight of
the potatoes and carrots. Everyone was tired these days, Cousin Ulla said. The Whites had fed Alix well, but she’d been away from their well-stocked larder for some months. Ulla was generous
with the few vegetables still growing in the garden and sometimes they managed to exchange potatoes for flour, but hunger seemed a constant presence.

She reached the top of the terrace and sat for a moment to take a breath.

‘Bonjour.’
Two Moroccan soldiers leered at her. The French occupying force in this valley had recruited far and wide. She wished she’d worn her coat and not this
tight-fitting jumper of Ulla’s.

They said something about the vegetables in her trug.

The first scaled the wall.
‘Tu donnes.’
He held out his hand.

She pulled the trug towards her.

His companion hissed a word she couldn’t understand and spat.

‘It’s all we’ve got.’ Alix heard the pleading note in her voice and hated herself.

‘Tu donnes.’
They stood in front of her. Alix stood up to run, found herself sinking down again, head spinning, the world dark around her.

‘What the hell’s going on here?’ The soldiers spun round, as surprised as she at the British accent.

Their hands shot to their heads in salute.
‘Monsieur.
We check.’

‘Then go and check something else or I’ll report you for harassing civilians.’ The British officer rested his bicycle against the wall and scowled at the soldiers until
they’d retreated up the road. ‘Did they hurt you,
Fräulein?’
His German was slow and accented. ‘Those French officers need to teach their soldiers some
discipline.’

‘No, I’m fine, thank you.’

‘Your English is better than my German.’

‘I once had an English governess.’ A lady from Norwich who’d insisted on a bowl of prunes each breakfast and quoted cricket results from a book specially imported from England.
Alix laughed.

‘What is it?’

‘I’m sorry, it’s just been so long since I spoke to anyone from England.’ She stood.

‘We don’t often get down to the French sector. I’m only here because I’m using my leave to do some cycling. I came here before the war and loved it then, the river and
the castles, it’s so beautiful . . .’

Alix had sunk down again. When the darkness passed, her rescuer was sitting beside her, holding her hand. ‘From the look of your nails and the pallor of your skin, I’d say you
desperately needed iron.’ He let go of her hand. ‘I’m a doctor. Before I came out here I was working in a London hospital.’

Dr Robin Macdonald visited every day of his week-long leave, bringing concentrated orange juice and iron tablets he’d wangled from God knew where. By the time he returned
to Hanover Alix could walk without feeling faint, though he warned her it would take at least a month for her to feel fully recovered. ‘Keep taking these.’ He pushed another bottle of
iron tablets into her hand. They were sitting in Cousin Ulla’s tapestry-lined drawing room.

‘I feel guilty about this.’

‘Don’t be. Your cousin told me about your father. You’re a hero’s daughter.’ His face grew grave. ‘I made inquiries about him, Alix. I hope you don’t
think it was presumptuous?’

She shook her head. ‘I’d give anything for information.’

‘I’m afraid it’s not looking good.’ He swallowed. ‘It seems likely he lost his life at Flossenbürg camp.’

‘Executed,’ she said. He nodded and she stared hard at the peony pattern on the drawing-room curtains while Cousin Ulla held her hand and muttered words of comfort. ‘I
didn’t really expect anything else by now.’

‘And my mother?’

‘No word.’

‘They say millions died on the retreat to Berlin,’ said Cousin Ulla, covering her eyes with a hand.
‘Ach,
poor Maria. How could she deserve such a thing? I went to your
parents’ wedding, you know, Alix. She looked so beautiful.’ Ulla nodded at a photograph of Mami in her wedding gown on the console table against the wall.

Mami. Papi. Lena. Michael. All gone. Only Gregor was left to her. And he couldn’t reach her. They were as far apart as they had been when he was in Russia.

Cousin Ulla had told her she could stay in the
Schloss
for as long as she wanted, but Ulla’s husband was due home. His leg wound had qualified him for early
repatriation from a POW camp in Scotland. Ulla was planning the future: revitalizing the vineyard, marketing her wine to the American soldiers . . . Kind as she was, she wouldn’t want Alix
hanging around indefinitely.

‘She seems very fond of you,’ Robin said when she told him this. ‘I’m sure she wouldn’t mind you staying on.’

‘Even so, I need to make my own plans once we’re allowed to travel again.’

Cousin Ulla came into the drawing room where they sat. ‘Robin! How nice.’ You’d hardly think that he was a member of the occupying forces. Perhaps it was fortunate that Robin
was only holidaying in this sector. Fraternizing – even with those related to Resistance heroes – was not looked on with approval.

‘I brought you this.’ Robin produced a package for Ulla. ‘To help with supplies.’

‘Ach!’
She took it with delight and bustled off into the kitchen.

‘Alix?’ He sat down beside her. ‘I really want to help you all I can, you know. No matter how great the difficulties.’

‘You’re not supposed to be friends with us.’

‘Some of those restrictions will lift in due course.’ He took her hand. ‘I have to go back to Hanover soon but I’d like to write to you, if I may?’

Ulla came in with a teapot and cups on a tray. ‘Real English tea, look, Alix!’

They sat sipping the tea. Robin said it was brewed exactly right even though they had to drink it black, without either milk or lemon. ‘I haven’t drunk Typhoo since before the
war,’ Ulla said.

‘A friend of mine was part of a liaison party that went up to Berlin to see the Russians,’ Robin told her. ‘He had tea with a Soviet officer. It was Typhoo tea looted from a
senior Nazi’s home.’

‘Those people drank English tea?’ Ulla sounded astounded.

Robin sighed. ‘Strange to imagine, isn’t it?’ His face grew more sombre. ‘This Soviet chap told my friend grim stories about the battle for Berlin.’

‘Someone told me they’d still be finding bodies in the forests next century.’

Ulla bit her lip.

The cup rattled in Alix’s hand.

Robin was taking her other hand. ‘How insensitive of us.’

She knew she could never tell him what she’d seen on her journey west.

Releasing her hands, she stood and picked up Cousin Ulla’s teapot. ‘I’ll just freshen up the tea.’ She felt their gazes, warm and sorrowful, on her back as she walked out
of the room.

Gregor’s long silence now made sense. He was dead. The fantasy she’d built up of him coming to find her, of the two of them crossing the Atlantic to reclaim Michael, perhaps settling
in America themselves, crumpled.

A hiss brought her back to the present and the water bubbling over the edge of the saucepan onto the stove. ‘Alix?’

Robin stood at the kitchen door. ‘My dear.’ He held open his arms. ‘They’ve all gone,’ she muttered, falling against him. ‘All of them. I let him go. I let
them take him.’

‘You mean your father?’ His arms were firm around her. ‘How could you have protected him from those evil men?’

She opened her mouth to correct him but closed it again.

‘You should feel proud of yourself, of your family.’ He stroked her hair.
‘I’m
proud of you.’