Airs Above The Ground Part 24

And so it was that Lewis, sitting on the edge of Frau Becker's kitchen table drinking Frau Becker's coffee and holding Frau Becker, her husband, and her husband's friend at the business end of the Beretta, was relieved of his vigil, not by the cold-eyed, tight-jawed professional men he must have been expecting, but by a peculiarly a.s.sorted gang of amateurs, two of whom were slightly hilarious, not to say lightheaded, and all of whom smelt quite distinctly of Herr Becker's brandy.

It was some four hours later.

The cocaine had been recovered, our prisoners had been delivered to the correctly tight-jawed, cold-eyed professionals, and the battered Mercedes had somehow brought us all home to the Schloss Zechstein where Timothy's foot had been fixed up by a doctor who had talked soothingly about sprains and a day in bed; and I had had a bath and (feeling genuinely fragile now) was floating in a happy dream of relief and reaction towards the bed, while Lewis dragged off his battered clothes and fished in his case for a razor.

Then I remembered something, and stopped short.

"Lee Elliott!" I said. "That's who they'll think you are! Did you register as Lee Elliott?"

"I didn't register as anything. There was a female in the hall who bleated something at me, but I just said 'Later' and pressed the lift b.u.t.ton." He threw his sweater into a corner and started on his shirt b.u.t.tons.

"Come to think of it, the porter did start in the other direction with my case, but I took it from him and came along here."

"Lewis-no, just a minute, darling . . . Hadn't you better go down straight away and get it cleared up?"

"I've done all the clearing up I'm doing for one day. It can wait till morning."

"It's morning now."

"Tomorrow morning, then."

"But-oh, darling, be serious, it's after ten. If anyone came in-"

"They can't. The door's locked." He grinned at me and sent the shirt flying after the sweater. "If we need to reopen communications we can do so later-by telephone. But for the present I think it can come off the hook. . . . There. First things first, my girl. I want a bath and a shave and-didn't you hear what the doctor said? A day in bed's what we all need."

"You could be right," I said.

EPILOGUE.

His neigh is like the bidding of a monarch, and his countenance enforces homage.

Shakespeare: Henry V.

The hall was white and gold, like a ballroom. The huge crystal chandeliers, fully lit, glowed as ornaments in themselves rather than as light, for the September sunshine streamed in through the great windows.

Where there should have been a polished dance floor there was a wide s.p.a.ce of sawdust and tanbark.

To begin with, it had been cleanly raked into a pattern of fine lines, but the hoofs had beaten it into surfy shapes as the white stallions paced and danced and performed their grave beautiful patterns to the music.

And now the floor was empty. The five white horses had filed out through the archway at the far end of the hall and vanished down the corridor towards their stable. The Boccherini minuet faded into a pause of silence.

The packed alcoves of people craned forward. Every seat was full, and in the gallery people were standing, trying to see past one another's shoulders, the movement and the whispering and the crackling of programmes filling the sunlit pause. Beside me Timothy leaned forward, taut with excitement, and on my other side sat Lewis, relaxed and sunburnt, reading the programme as if nothing else mattered in the world but the fact that on this Sunday morning in September the great Neapolitano Petra was back at the Spanish Riding School, and the Director himself was going to ride him, and all Vienna had come to see.

Beyond the archway the lights grew to brightness. The half door opened. A horse appeared, his rider sitting still as a statue. He paced forward slowly into the hall, ears alert, nostrils flared, his movements proud and cool and soberly controlled, and yet somehow filled with delight.

There was no hint of stiffness now. Round he came, the dancing steps made even more beautiful by their silence: the beat of the music hid even the m.u.f.fled thudding in the sand, so that the high floating movements of the hoofs seemed to take the stallion skimming as effortlessly as a swan in full sail. The light poured and splashed on the white skin where the last shadows of black had been polished and bleached away, and his mane and tail tossed in thick fine silk like a flurry of snow.

The music changed: the Director sat still: the old stallion snorted, mouthed the bit, and lifted himself, rider and all, into the first of the "airs above the ground."

Then it was over, and he came soberly forward to the salute, ears moving to the applause. The crowd was getting to its feet. The rider took off his hat in the traditional salute to the Emperor's portrait, but somehow effacing himself and his skill, and presenting only the horse.

Old Piebald bent his head. He was facing us full on, six feet away, looking (you would have thought) straight at us; but this time there was no welcoming whicker, not even a gleam in the big dark eye that one could call recognition. The eyes, like the stallion's whole bearing, were absorbed, concentrated, inward, his entire being caught up again and contained in the old disciplines that fitted him as inevitably as his own skin.

He backed, turned, and went out on the ebb tide of applause. The grey half door shut. The lights dimmed, and the white horse dwindled down the corridor beyond the arch, to where his name was still above his stall, and fresh straw waiting.

end.