The Novel in the Viola (21 page)

‘No. I don’t want to leave this place.’

Burt smiled and paused fiddling with his lobster pot.

‘What time is it?’ asked Poppy.

Burt studied the sun above the sea. ‘Bout quarter ter one or thereabouts.’

‘You can tell that by looking?’ I asked, awed.

‘Nope. Jist heard them church bells.’

Saying our goodbyes to Burt, we hurried towards Tyneford House. I put on my shoes and socks and Poppy neatened my hair. I felt waves of trepidation as we walked through the stable yard, now empty of cars. All the guests had gone, and I saw Henry winding up the string of lanterns. He pretended not to see me.

‘I hope . . . you know,’ said Poppy, giving up on trying to say the right thing and hugging me instead.

‘Thanks,’ I said and headed to the back door. Now that I realised how much I wanted to stay, my heart rattled in my chest like a penny in a beggar man’s cup. The servants’ corridor was empty and freshly washed. I surveyed the panelled hall, the scene of last night’s events. All signs of the party had been wiped away, and yet beneath the soap-scented cleanness, I detected a note of sadness. The house sighed and shrugged and like the partygoers themselves, placed her tinsel back into the drawers with the good china, and felt the sag and dullness of everyday life. The tiny holes in the oak panelling, made by generations of woodworms, suddenly seemed worn and drab in the afternoon glare. In the heavy beams overhead, I heard the ominous tick-tick of the death-watch beetle.

My shoes echoing in the wooden hall, I crossed back to the servants’ corridor, feeling the censure of the Rivers ancestors as they peered down at me from their gilt frames. Even the spaniels poised at their sides watched me with haughty disdain. Save for the portraits, the house was empty. Twelve hours ago it had brimmed with dancing couples and legions of white-suited waiters and now the silence unnerved me. Much as I disliked Diana and Juno, they had filled the house with life and motion. When Margot and I visited the great-aunts in Vienna, we used to explode into their dainty apartment, careering around the lacework tables and porcelain displays with our stories of school and fresh air. We perched on overstuffed sofas, nibbling ginger wafers and chattering without pause, as the three aunts, Gretta, Gerda and Gabrielle, beamed at us through pince-nez spectacles and spoilt us with chocolate, or let us rifle through the jewellery box and use great-grandmother’s diamonds and golden bangles as dressing-up trinkets. When Anna decided it was time to leave, Margot and I were buttoned into our coats and bundled back onto the street, but when I glanced up at the aunts’ apartment, I always spied them in the window, waving. Always waving. Always sad. That is how the big house felt that afternoon – a maiden aunt in the window, waving as the children rush away.

My feet heavy, I walked over to the butler’s door and knocked.

‘Come in.’

Mr Wrexham and Mrs Ellsworth waited for me in the butler’s pantry. They sat side by side on the two high-backed chairs, while I stood before them, a repentant schoolgirl. I studied the floor, noticing the flagstones were spick and polished. I waited for the scolding, expecting an outpouring of wrath and fully prepared to cry. I was used to men with tempers – Julian could rage like a drunken circus bear (usually when his writing was not going too well or Anna ventured a cautious criticism of his latest draft). But what Mr Wrexham said next, I was not prepared for. He did not shout. He did not appear angry, only sad.

‘So,’ he said. ‘You are to be the end of us all.’

Mrs Ellsworth clicked her tongue against her teeth in tacit agreement. Mr Wrexham shifted in his chair and then stood to address me, words pouring forth from his very soul.

‘This never would have happened in my father’s time. Girl like you, sacked and gone. Good riddance. But the problem is, you’re not one of us. You’re not one of them either. You don’t fit. In a house like this everyone has his place. And he needs to know it for the thing to work. We each have our roles to play and we’ve managed just fine for a thousand years. But you . . . you and your kind. Mr Rivers and Mr Kit they don’t treat you like a maid. Any other girl would have been dismissed in an instant and not by the master – he wouldn’t have interfered! This is my world. But he’s interfering with the running of the household because of you.’

Tears trickled wetly down my cheeks unbidden and I wiped my nose with the back of my hand. Mr Wrexham passed me a crisp white handkerchief, but he could not stop. He gazed at me, unhappy.

‘Mrs Ellsworth can’t even school you like a proper housemaid. It’s not about laying the fires just right, or pouring the tea, or keeping quiet during dinner. You’ve changed everything. Don’t you see? You are neither one nor the other. This is the end of Tyneford, I promise you. And it’s not your fault but you brought it with you.’

I sobbed into the old butler’s linen handkerchief, not knowing what I could say, what defence I could offer. His accusation was not personal and was not intended to be cruel. I was merely part of something larger that threatened his world, and the world of his father and grandfathers. But I loved this place, and I had not meant to bring about its demise. I could not believe it was true. He was mistaken. He had to be.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Maybe tomorrow

I heard nothing from my parents except for a six-word telegram at the end of November: ALL WELL STOP DON’T FRET STOP LOVE ANNA STOP. I sent them weekly letters from the post office in the village, filled with chirping gossip and nonsense or scraps of stories told me by Poppy or Burt. They never replied, and I had no idea whether the letters actually arrived at their destination, but I sent them just the same. I liked to think of Anna and Julian toasting brioche in front of the fire and reading my letters, even if it wasn’t true. The English winter was not as bitter as the Austrian one, no snow padded the rooftops or coated the hillside, but I was cold, colder than I had ever been in my life. I went to bed in my clothes, with my overcoat draped over the covers and a filched hot-water bottle to warm my frozen toes, and I was still cold. I longed for my feathered eiderdown – the English blankets were all too thin. I dreamt about the possible stories that the viola contained. I conjured musicians playing wild tunes on the rocks above Worbarrow Tout, while Julian and Anna danced upon the sea (Julian in his canary-yellow socks). The rosewood held an infinite possibility of stories, and in the darkness Viennese pedlars jostled with goose-stepping soldiers who emerged from apartment buildings with broken windows.

My fingers swelled with chilblains and I struggled to strike the match to light the living room fires. I had almost forgotten what it was like to be warm; I shivered before the kitchen range, my hands wrapped around a mug of tea, reluctant to venture out into the arctic house. And there was no Kit. I hoped he would be back home for Christmas, but Mrs Ellsworth gave no instructions for his room to be prepared. I crossed my fingers for New Year. December 30th came and went. New Year’s Eve arrived, but not Kit.

1938 slipped into 1939 while I was sleeping. Mr Wrexham politely invited me to join the servants for a glass of sherry at five past midnight (when Mr Rivers’ solitary glass of champagne had been tidied away) but I declined with equal politeness. I was a shadow in the big house. Mr Rivers barely acknowledged my presence, while the other servants studiously ignored me. Only Art tolerated me, giving me handfuls of hay to feed to Mr Bobbin, the only member of the household who took pleasure in my company.

On the third of January, a letter arrived from Margot. In the cool morning light, I crouched before the fire in the drawing room and tore it open.

Anna won’t ask you to help so I decided that I must. The American visa never comes. Julian never writes, not a single word (you would have thought writers would be better correspondents) and Anna’s letters are full of happy lies. I’d like to say that I didn’t believe a word, but I wanted to, oh, little Bean, I wanted to. And then, Hildegard wrote to me:

‘It is no good here for your parents. Every week it is more difficult. They go and they wait and they are told, “Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week.” But the visa never comes.
’

‘Herr Finkelstein was taken away the night of November 9th. He came back but without his teeth. And they were good strong teeth. I sent Herr and Frau Landau to a hotel that night. They were safe there. But the crazies came here and took Herr Landau’s books and made a bonfire of them in the street. Then they threw his desk out of the window and they burnt that too. Now all his manuscripts are gone and he thanks the God he doesn’t believe in that it was nothing worse.’

Elise, they cannot wait any longer. Can your Mr Rivers help get them to Britain?

I lowered the letter, and blew gently on the coals, causing orange flames to flare for a second. I tried not to feel a nudge of jealousy that Anna wrote more often to Margot than to me – it was not important. I must speak to Mr Rivers today, even though he hardly tolerated my presence in the house. I was the reason his son was exiled from Tyneford and the source of the servants’ mutterings, but I would beg him, if I must.

At half past twelve, Mr Rivers set out for his walk to the top of Flower’s Barrow. From the window in Kit’s room, I watched him trudge up the hill, the gamekeeper’s spaniel wagging at his feet. The sky was grey flint and the grass beneath a virulent green. The grass really was greener in England; on a train through France that other life ago, I had passed through endless hot brown fields. Even the undulating meadows in the Austrian Alps were dull in spring, yellowed by the snow. Mr Rivers walked fast, a tall figure, overcoat flapping in the wind, reaching the top in a few minutes. I’d never noticed before, but he had Kit’s stride, only slower, more deliberate. I settled into the leather armchair beside the window. Drizzle began to fall, spotting the glass and paving stones on the terrace below. I liked hiding in Kit’s room. It smelt of him: sandalwood, cigarettes. A silver case rested on the windowsill, and I flicked it open, lighting one of his familiar Turkish blend. I coughed and wafted the smoke. I knew I should be in trouble if I were caught, but since the incident I had made certain my work was exemplary and Mrs Ellsworth rarely checked up on me anymore. I allowed myself a few puffs and then extinguished it, sliding it back into the case, half smoked. I decided it was not that I missed him – simply the house was empty without him. Without Kit, I had no one to talk to, so it was only natural I should feel his absence. It was nothing more. I ran through the memory of his kiss. I had played it through so often in my mind that it was becoming worn around the edges, his voice scratched and thin, like an overplayed gramophone record.

I picked up the picture of his mother. It was odd to think that she was as much a stranger to Kit as to me. No wonder she looked so sad. I studied the angle of her jaw, the pale gold of her hair. I saw Kit in her face. He might have forgotten her, erased her from his childhood, but she was still there, her likeness hovering beneath his skin.

Mr Rivers reached the open grassland and strode along the ridgeway, bent against the wind. I slipped out of Kit’s bedroom and hurried down the back stairs, collecting my woollen coat from the hook at the back door, and ventured out into the yard. The cobbles were slick with rain. Pulling my collar up around my ears, I hastened up the hill path, in pursuit of Mr Rivers. I did not want to confront him in the library, the scene of my disgrace. I noticed that when he returned from his walks, blue eyes bright, he seemed almost happy. Sometimes I even glimpsed him smiling. Mr Rivers did not smile often. I frowned and tried to rub some warmth into my hands. When I first came to Tyneford, he used to smile – usually at my poor English, though he always tried to suppress it, so as not to hurt my feelings.

The rain was falling thickly now. I blinked away great droplets that landed on my eyelashes. My shoes sucked and squelched in the muddy bank. Disgruntled cattle huddled under the barren trees, fat raindrops dangling from their ears like jewels. A dappled cow watched me with sad eyes as I trudged up the hill. I was too high to hear the roar of the sea, but the green waves hurled themselves against the cliffs as gulls soared and screeched. I wished I were like one of the heroines in the orange-jacketed novels that Kit lent to me; they were always irresistible in their wet things, only occasionally catching a dash of pneumonia which inevitably served to drive them into the stammering hero’s arms. I could feel my nose turning red and dripping and my short hair cling to my face. Not that I wanted Mr Rivers to find me irresistible, just pathetic and wan, and as he gazed upon my tragic eyes (like the stern father in
La Traviata
upon the dying Violetta) he would decide that he had to help me, hang the consequences. I sneezed. It seemed a trifle unlikely.

There was yapping at my feet as the brown and white spaniel surged towards me, bouncing up with muddy paws, licking at my hands.

‘Down! Stanton. No.’

Mr Rivers grabbed at the spaniel, which slipped through his fingers, smooth as a fish, and started to chase after a squawking pheasant.

‘Elise?’ he said, startled by my presence on the rain-soaked hill.

If I were a proper heroine, I should have swooned or broken my ankle and wept as I pleaded with him to help my family. But my ankles were stout and my cheeks a healthy scarlet from exercise.

‘I came up here to find you, Mr Rivers. Please don’t tell Mr Wrexham.’

He said nothing but watched me with those blue eyes. I swallowed and felt my heart pound in my ears.

‘They burnt his books, Mr Rivers. They took them outside and burnt them.’

The wind picked up strands of my hair and whipped them against my face, stinging my skin.