Roots of Evil (16 page)

She spent her dwindling store of money carefully, but she was fortunate in her purchases. A damson silk gown that clung to her thighs when she walked and swished across the ground with careless elegance, and an evening frock in jade green that made you think of unprincipled temptresses reclining on satin-sheeted beds. The labels – Schiaparelli and Madeleine Viennet – were pristine. ‘Neither garment has been worn more than twice,’
insisted the proprietress of the little shop, and then, having surveyed Alice’s appearance with a professionally critical eye for a moment, she darted into the back of the shop once more and brought out a black velvet cloak, ruched and lined with sable. The fräulein should buy this as well, she said. So great a pity not to have it; it might have been made to go with both gowns. A very modest price was all she asked – almost she would be making a loss. But it would add the finishing touch. Cunningly she draped it around Alice’s shoulders and led Alice to the mirror again.

Alice stared longingly at her reflection. The velvet was soft and sensuous, and the black fur was like a lover’s caress against her neck. If ever there was a Cinderella-setting-off-for-the-ball cloak…

No. She could not afford it. But even after she had laid it back on the counter she went on looking at it, making a swift mental inventory of her resources. Could she perhaps manage it after all? If she bought it, she would have just enough money to pay for her room until the end of the week. What about food? She could buy rye bread and slivers of cheese to eat, that was cheap enough. She might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, and she might as well end up destitute for three costly outfits as for two. She bought the cloak.

Alice Wilson, that well brought-up girl, had never in her life gambled on anything, but now she gambled everything on one single night. She chose the famous Vienna Opera House for the birth of her new self, buying the ticket from a small booth, doing so humbly and politely, letting it be thought she was buying the seat for
her mistress. She had never been in the Opera House in her life, but Miss Nina’s family – no!
Nina’s
family! – had often made up parties for a concert or an opera. Supposing some of them were present tonight? Would they recognize her? What about the brother who had fumbled under her skirts and been pushed away, and had later caused her to be thrown out of the house? Might he be there?

As she carried her parcels and the ticket back to the lodging house her mind was working furiously, planning and calculating. What if this huge gamble failed? If she did not attract people’s attention at the Opera House – if she was not approached by men and women who might open up a different life for her – then she would have wasted all her sordidly acquired money and she would end up back on the streets. But she must not fail.

That night she outlined her lips with the sinful dark red lipstick and her eyes with the black kohl. She brushed her hair into its new smooth shape, and then put on the damson gown. It was completely backless, as was the fashion, and above it her skin was creamy white. It felt depraved to be exposing so much of her body, but it also felt exciting.

There were long silken gloves to wear with the gown; Alice drew them on over her bare arms. They reached to above her elbows, and if the gown had been striking before, the contrast between the rich magenta silk and her bare alabaster shoulders and upper arms made it seem quite immodest. It also, thought Alice, caught between delight and panic, made her look extremely sexy. She contemplated this last word, and the crimson lips
curved into a smile in the mirror. She had never thought of herself as sexy before. But she was, she was. If only the man with golden-brown eyes could see her like this—No. Don’t think about him.

She pushed down the ache of loss, swirled the sable-lined cloak around her shoulders, and went out into the badly lit streets. It was a long walk and it was probably quite dangerous to walk through these streets dressed so richly, but she could not afford to do anything else. Once in the prosperous part of the city, where carriages rumbled along the wide streets, and where there were brightly lit windows of restaurants and coffee houses she felt safer, although her mind and her stomach were turning over and over. I’m clad in extravagant striking clothes, and I’m wearing paint on my face and I have dyed my hair. I look absolutely nothing like I have looked for the last eighteen years, and I think this is a night when anything –
anything
! – might happen to me.

As she walked up the steps and entered the Opera House she had the feeling that she was crossing over some kind of line. This is it, she thought. This is the moment when I’m going to step out of one world and into another. Rubicons and Rivers of Jordan, and valleys of decision and destiny…

She took a deep breath and went inside.

At first the sheer vastness of the Opera House, and the heat and the brilliance, were bewildering, and she felt as if she was walking into a solid wall of light and noise and movement. But she forced herself to appear cool and detached, and after a moment she was aware that
several heads had turned to look at her. With curiosity? With disapproval? I don’t mind about the disapproval, thought Alice. I’d mind more if they didn’t notice me.

But they were noticing her. There was a look in the men’s eyes that suggested they were intrigued, and in the women’s that suggested they were annoyed at this stranger for stealing the attention. Alice felt a spurt of delighted triumph. I’m across that invisible threshold and I’m into this new world, and there’s no turning back.

Turning back was the last thing she intended. She remained where she was, looking about her, listening and watching and surreptitiously absorbing it all. This is the time when you must appear very sure of yourself, said her mind, and when you must seem rather disdainful, because you are used to all this, remember. You are used to glittering crowds of people – you even find them a little boring, and perhaps also slightly absurd – and you are used to opulent rooms lit by hundreds of candles. Most of all you are used to the soft perfumed aura of wealth, because you are extremely wealthy yourself. So far so good.

But don’t do anything yet, said this little voice, and above all, don’t go looking for your seat or peering anxiously at your ticket. Wait for someone to approach you to conduct you there. Someone will definitely do so – if you believe that strongly enough it will happen, because if you believe anything strongly enough it will happen.

And above all, pray to that God whom you used to know in the English churches that no one will recognize you and that no one will challenge you and demand that you are thrown out…

‘But no one did recognize you, did they? No one did demand that you were thrown out?’

The fire had burned low in the hearth, and the shadows had stolen across the English garden outside, but somehow the two people in the room had been transported to another country and another time. They had gone back to a long-ago night when a dark-haired female in a silk gown and sable-lined cloak had walked into the glittering Vienna Opera House and surveyed the assembly with cool indifference.

The smile that was so incongruous on the ageing English lady came again.

‘No. No one recognized me. Three of the Opera House staff came up to me and two of them escorted me to my seat. There were stairs to descend – I had no idea where we were going, of course – but I went down that staircase so extremely slowly that it caused a hold-up for everyone else. People murmured in annoyance at that, but I pretended not to hear. I looked neither to right nor left as I walked, but I could feel them all watching me.’ Her eyes narrowed with remembered amusement. ‘But you know all this. You know a little of what comes next in the story as well.’

‘Yes, but tell the story anyway.’ Because it was like the pronouncing of a spell to hear her say it; it was like an incantation that would set a particular magic working – a magic that would unlock the doors of that long-ago enchanted world and bring the people and the adventures all tumbling out. It was a spell that would conjure up that other person that Alice had been all those years ago – the mysterious beautiful lady.

With an air of entering into the game, and of pronouncing the spell, Alice said, ‘On that night, late in 1928, a young English lady’s maid called Alice Vera Wilson left a sparse lodging in the Old Quarter of Vienna…

‘And the Baroness Lucretia von Wolff walked into the famous Opera House and took the seat that had cost her her last few schillings in all the world.’

Alice had not paid much attention to the poster displaying the evening’s concert, or to the printed ticket she had bought. She had been concentrating her whole mind on being Lucretia: on being this imperious, disdainful baroness she had so carefully created; this lady whose nationality might be anything at all, who spoke with a sultry accent, and who was sexily beautiful and expensively garbed. She had supposed vaguely that there would be a programme of Mozart or Schubert – it was nearly always Mozart or Schubert, or perhaps Strauss – and she had assumed she would listen to it with about a tenth of her mind, because she would be waiting for the intervals so that she could mingle with the people.

But the programme was not Mozart or Schubert. It was a concert by a man called Conrad Kline. And the instant he stepped on to the stage and took his seat at the great gleaming concert grand, Alice recognized him
and from then on she heard almost nothing of the marvellous music he poured into the brightly lit auditorium.

Conrad Kline. The man with golden-brown eyes.

He had recognized her almost straight away, and when the concert ended he had swept her back to the tall old house that she had thought never to see again. ‘You ruined the slow movement of the Tchaikovsky,’ he had said with a kind of loving severity. ‘For that was when I looked up and saw you. After that I was aware of no one else.’

The slow movement of the Tchaikovsky had not been ruined at all, of course, and he had certainly been aware of every other person there. His performance had been greeted with deafening applause and cheering, and he had responded to the shouts of ‘Encore’ by promptly sitting down again to play something that Alice had not recognized, but that was exciting and intense and full of rippling cascades of beautiful sound. ‘The Appassionata,’ he said, lying next to her on the silken-sheeted bed. ‘Beethoven. And I play it entirely for you, because although you are a small English sparrow, also you are passionate and beautiful.’

Even then, dizzy with delight and love, caught in the sheer sexual glamour that he seemed almost to wear like a cloak, Alice had known perfectly well that he had not played the Beethoven piece entirely for her; he had played it because the audience had wanted him to, and because he loved all his audiences with an intensity that transcended everything else. She suspected he had
planned beforehand what he would play for the encore; a long time afterwards she found that she had been right. Conrad unfailingly planned his encores and spent hours practising them.

When he said, ‘I think I am in love with you,’ Alice had regarded him thoughtfully, and said, ‘What about Nina?’

‘Oh, pouf, Nina.’ He made a gesture as if to sweep aside some small inconvenience. ‘It was a matter of business. An arrangement her father wanted to make, and that I agreed to in a moment of absent-mindedness. Also,’ said Conrad with one of his disconcerting bursts of candour, ‘I had not, then, met you.’

He was entranced by what he called Alice’s masquerade, and wove dozens of stories about the fictional baroness. Most of his stories were wildly improbable and quite a lot of them were scandalous, and one or two were just about credible.

The Baroness von Wolff should be Hungarian, said Conrad, weighing the possibilities with serious eyes. Or perhaps Russian would be better. Yes – Russian. Revolutions and
russalkas
and hypnotic Siberian monks. And she should be mysterious and exotic, just as Alice had already made her, but also there could be a hint of something shocking in her ancestry – that was a good idea, yes? An idea to develop, although it would be necessary to be subtle over the details. Subtlety was a fine thing, declared Conrad, who was flamboyant and extravagant and adored grand gestures, and who had never been subtle in his life.

Vienna in the twenties and thirties might have been created solely as a frame for a beautiful baroness with an intriguingly mysterious past. Alice sometimes thought that Lucretia could not have existed in any other time or in any other city. It was the time of
la belle époque
, the beautiful era, and life had been filled with excitement and beckoning promise, and with gaiety and music.

Music. Until now it had been something for other people. In London you might occasionally have an outing to a music-hall, and in the servants’ hall some of the other maids might sing the songs of the day while polishing the silver. The war songs were still much enjoyed – ‘Tipperary’ and ‘The Only Girl in the World’, but American jazz and what was called blues were starting to be popular. ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ and ‘Tea for Two’, which everyone agreed was wonderful for learning the cha-cha, although the housekeeper had been very shocked to catch Alice and one of the parlourmaids trying out the steps in the scullery one night.

Now, under Conrad’s aegis, Alice listened to, and learned to appreciate the music of, Stravinsky and Hindemith and Schönberg, and danced to the melodies of Ivor Novello and Irving Berlin and Franz Lehár. On New Year’s Eve she and Conrad attended the famous Vienna Opera House Ball, and danced together beneath the glittering chandeliers. Whirling around the ballroom in Conrad’s arms, Alice thought: if only I could take hold of this moment and keep it – lay it away in lavender and tissue paper, so that in years to come I can unwrap it and relive it, and think: yes, of course! That was the night when I was happier than at any other time in my life.

The exotic baroness was invited everywhere – often with Conrad, but frequently on her own. The damson gown alternated with the jade green, but after wearing the jade one a couple of times Alice managed to sell it back to the second-hand shop and bought in its place a very plain, much cheaper, black two-piece. To this she added several velvet and beaded scarves and stoles: rich reds and glowing ambers and one in sapphire blue silk, shot with kingfisher green. It was remarkable how a different scarf changed a plain black outfit.

Conrad wanted to take her to the great fashion houses, so that she could be robed in silks and velvets and furs. She must always wear black or dark red gowns, he said: the colours of wine and heliotrope and wood-violets. Perhaps jade green was also acceptable at a pinch. As to the cost, oh, that was of no matter; no one ever paid a dressmaker’s bill, in fact most people considered it slightly vulgar even to consider doing so. Alice was starting to feel extremely close to Lucretia as a person and she was starting to know her very well indeed, but she did not think she could be close to someone who did not pay bills, purely because some people considered it vulgar.

As well as that, she was starting to be aware of a strong vein of independence. I’ve survived by my own wits and without help this far, and I’d like to keep it that way! So she said, coolly, that she could buy her own gowns, thank you, although she might at times ask Conrad’s opinion of a colour or a style.

At this he called her stubborn, and said she was a cold, too-proud English spinster and a sexless feminist, but
Alice saw at once that he had expected her to accept his offer and display suitable gratitude – despite his unconventional ways he was rather old-fashioned in many things. She also saw that her refusal had intrigued him, and that so far from finding it sexless, he found it very sexually alluring indeed. Very well then, if this kind of feminism intrigued him, he should go on being intrigued and he should certainly go on being sexually allured.

The hair dye lasted for about six weeks and then it was necessary to shut herself away and go through the complicated procedure all over again. The powder and lipstick lasted a lot longer because she only wore them in public.

At first she only wore Lucretia’s identity in public as well, but gradually Lucretia became stronger and more clearly defined. It was not precisely that she began to gain the upper hand; it was more that Alice, like the polite obedient girl she was, gave way to the more dominant personality. Oh, do you want the limelight? she seemed to be saying to Lucretia with a touch of ladylike surprise that anyone should actually want such a thing. Then of course you may have it: it would not become either of us to quarrel over such a thing.

But once or twice she had the uneasy suspicion that there might be things Lucretia would want to do that Alice would flinch from. It was already clear that the baroness could be very self-willed.

It had probably been inevitable that at that time, in that city, mingling with Conrad’s musician friends, Lucretia would attract the attention of people within the rapidly
evolving world of film-making. It was still the era of the silent film but the technicalities of sound were starting to be enthusiastically explored. One day – and that day might be soon – the movies would be known as the talkies and people would not only be able to watch an unfolding story, but would also be able to listen to it. One day it might even be possible to make films in colour – now there was a dream to aim for!

But in the meantime it was the dark-haired, pale-complexioned females who best suited the monochrome images; they were striking and vivid and memorable.

Dark-haired, pale-complexioned females…Just as the Vienna of the day might have been created as a frame for Lucretia von Wolff, so, too, might Lucretia von Wolff have been created specifically for the film-makers.

It happened because of Conrad – Alice thought that everything in her life of any real importance happened because of Conrad – who was approached by a well-known German studio to write background music for two films. Music was important for setting a mood, for creating an atmosphere, they explained, as seriously as if Conrad would not know this. Someone at the studios had attended Conrad’s last concert, and had said why should they not secure the gifts of this rising young composer. Why not indeed?

Conrad was delighted to be approached, although he would not admit it. He told Alice that he was being offered an entirely contemptible sum for his beautiful compositions: did these plebeians, these groundlings, believe him to be a machine to churn out beautiful music at a button-press?

‘Press of a switch,’ said Alice, more or less automatically. ‘Will you do it?’ she asked, and Conrad hunched a shoulder and looked at her from the corners of his eyes like a mischievous child who knows it is being clever, and said he might as well. But the money was still an insult to an artist, he said, although to Alice, still juggling the damson frock with the black, the money seemed a very large amount indeed.

He shut himself away for several weeks, but when he emerged (a little thinner from not always bothering to eat, smudgy shadows around his eyes from fatigue and concentration), he was perfectly right about the music being superb. The film-makers were delighted with it, and they were delighted, as well, with the sultry baroness who appeared to be the composer’s frequent companion – it was best, perhaps, not to inquire too deeply into the precise nature of this companionship. They were all men of the world, yes?

They beamed at Alice across a table at the Café Sacher, which was where Conrad took them to celebrate, but which Alice, managing not to blink at the menu, thought might cost him most of the film-makers’ fee. (She had worn the damson gown for the occasion, and had added a narrow black velvet throat-band which was a new idea, and already being copied.)

The film-makers studied Lucretia, at first covertly and then, since she appeared not to notice their regard, more openly. There was the dark hair that was so much admired these days, and the smooth magnolia complexion. Very alluring. And would the baroness perhaps find it entertaining to see the inside of their
studios? A very short journey – a car would of course be sent. And – perhaps while she was there, she might agree to a test for the screen? An experiment, an hour or so of amusement for her, probably nothing more.

This was unexpected. Alice thought: Do I want to do their screen-test? I don’t suppose anything will come of it, but I think I’d better agree, because those two frocks won’t last for much longer, and there’re other things to be bought. Underwear, shoes, food…And I won’t ask Conrad for money; I’ll hate it and it’ll put me under an obligation to be grateful to him, and I won’t do it.

And so Lucretia took the screen test, staring with seductive insolence into the camera lens, and the results were pronounced to be dazzling.

A film called
Alraune
– the story of a girl born in macabre circumstances, growing up with the burden of a dark legacy, growing up to be a wanton – went into production.

In the village where Alice had been a child, they had sometimes played games of Let’s Pretend. Let’s dress up and pretend to be somebody else for a while. I’ll be the queen or the empress, and you can be the servant, and for a few hours we’ll believe it’s real. Like that old poem, ‘When I was a King in Babylon, and you were a Christian slave…’

Making films was a little like a grown-up version of the game. Let’s pretend to be a girl called Alraune; a creature consumed by bitterness and surrounded by dark sexuality…

Alice knew, with the logical, sensible part of her mind,
that Alraune was not real. She knew that Alraune was a being forged from dark dreams and subterranean myths; and that she had been born out of a writer’s macabre fantasies.

‘But I don’t think,’ she said to Conrad, ‘that I should like to meet that man, that Hanns Heinz Ewers who created Alraune’s story. I suppose he’s long since dead; the original book was written years ago, wasn’t it? In 1911 or 1912.’

‘He is not dead, and I think he still writes a little,’ said Conrad. ‘Most of his work is as dark and as – as uncomfortable as
Alraune
.’ He paused, and then said, ‘I think he has campaigned quite strongly for the German cause, and I believe he is a supporter of the Nazi Party and Herr Hitler.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with that, though, is there?’

‘No,’ said Conrad slowly. ‘No, of course not.’