Airs Above The Ground Part 3

"That's all right," said Timothy, putting down the receiver. "Number 216, one floor up. That's me settled.

Now, what about you? Are you going to stay in and do your telephoning now, or go out and get something to eat first? I don't know about you, but I can't wait till eleven. I'm starving."

I glanced up. "You're being very tactful. Does it hurt? You must be wondering like mad what I'm playing at."

He grinned. "Well, I don't just feel I'm in a position to criticize."

I shut the wardrobe door and sat down in one of the armchairs. "If you can hold off from food for five minutes I'll tell you."

"Only if you want to."

"Fair's fair. Besides, I'd like to tell somebody. It's very simple and rather depressing and probably a bit sordid. And I dare say it happens every day. Only I thought it wouldn't ever happen to me. We were going away on holiday, Lewis and I, and it was the first really long break since we were married just over two years ago. I told you he works for P.E.C., and they slave-drive him, only they pay pretty well, and he's always enjoyed the travelling. He never knew whether he'd be sent to Hong Kong or to Oslo next, and it suited him. Then we got married. And he said he'd change his job, only it would take time to train his successor, so we decided we'd just take it as it came for a couple of years. It was Lewis who suggested giving it up, not me. I know I've not behaved particularly well, but it was his idea in the first place. You see, we both want a family, and, the way things are now, it wouldn't be fair on them . . . the children."

He didn't say anything. He was back at the window again, and appeared to be tracing out with his eye, stone by stone, the ma.s.sive facade of St. Stephen's.

"Well"-I tried hard to stop sounding defensive-"he told me finally he was leaving the department in mid-August this year, and we were going to have a holiday, a whole month, and go just where I wanted-he didn't care, he'd seen it all, he said he just wanted to be with me. It was, you know, another honeymoon. The first was only ten days. Then, just before we were due to go, they asked him to take on one more a.s.signment. A week, two weeks, they couldn't be sure how long it would take. Just when we were getting ready to go; we'd got the tickets, I was packing, and everything."

"What a rotten thing," said Timothy to St. Stephen's.

"That's what I thought. And said. The thing was, they couldn't order him, they made it a request, but he said he couldn't turn it down, he'd have to go himself, there was no one else. So I said what about the man they'd been training, but Lewis said this was something that had come out of his last job and he'd have to do it himself. And of course I was so disappointed that I went all feminine and unreasonable and threw a scene, one of those cla.s.sic scenes, 'you think more of your rotten job than of me,' and that sort of thing. And I've always despised women who did that. A man's job is his life, and you've got to take it as it comes and try to be as loyal to it as he is. ... But I wasn't."

"Well," said Timothy, "I don't blame you. Anybody would have been upset."

"The trouble was, of course, that Lewis was furious, too, with having to change his plans. He said couldn't I see that he didn't want to go at all, and that it wasn't anything to do with not wanting to be with me, but that there was no alternative. So I said well, why couldn't he just take me with him this time for a change, and when he said he couldn't, surely I knew that by this time, I really blew up. Then he got furious, and we had the most dreadful row. I said the most awful things, Tim, I still think about them."

He looked at me with a gravity that somehow seemed enormously youthful. "And now you're just torturing yourself all the time because you've hurt his feelings?"

"Lewis," I said, rather too carefully, and forgetting momentarily who I was talking to, "is selfish, obstinate, and arrogant, and has no feelings of any kind whatsoever."

"Yes," said Timothy, "I mean no. But if you know he doesn't want you to join him, why did you come, especially if you're still so furious with him?"

I looked down at my hands, which were clasped together rather too tightly on my knee. "That's more sordid still, I'm afraid. I think he's with a woman, and that's something I can't quite laugh off the way we did with your father."

"Vanessa-"

"I'm sorry, Tim, I'm not behaving well. I'm certainly not a fit and proper person to chaperone you, let alone preach to you, with the d.a.m.ned nerve I had, but I'm so unhappy I've got to do something. That's why I came."

"Please don't be unhappy." He was as awkward with his comfort as any man is at any age, but touchingly kind with it. "I'm sure you must be wrong. Whatever anyone's been telling you, you'll find there's nothing in it."

"Yes. Yes, I'm sure you're right." I sat up straighter in the chair, as if by doing so I could shake off my thoughts. "And it wasn't anything anyone told me, it was just an impression I got, and I'm sure it was wrong; all that's the matter with me is that I do feel guilty about the things I said. It would have been all right if he hadn't had to go straight away. When you get married, Timothy"-I managed a smile at him- "never part on a quarrel. It's h.e.l.l. When I think about it now . . . He just went storming out of the flat, and then, when he got to the door, he stopped, as if he'd suddenly thought of something, and came back to me. I wasn't even looking at him. He kissed me good-bye, and went."

I looked up at him somberly. It was a relief to put it at last into words. "It only came to me afterwards, but it was the way a man would act if he knew he was going to do something dangerous, and he didn't want to part like that. And now I know that's true. That's why I came."

He was staring at me. "What do you mean? 'Dangerous'? What sort of danger could he be in? How can you know?"

"I don't know. Let me tell you the rest; I'll be as quick as I can." And I told him all about the newsreel and the chain of events which had made me decide to come out to Austria and see for myself what was going on.

He listened in silence, perched now on the arm of the other chair.

When I had finished, he was quiet for a minute or two. Then he pushed the hair back from his forehead with a gesture that I was beginning to recognize as a signal of decision.

"Well, as far as locating the circus is concerned, that'll be dead easy. There are hardly any tenting circuses-that's travelling circuses-left these days, and everyone in Austria will probably know where this one was. We can ask the hall porter and go on from there. Shall we go and do it now?"

I stood up. "No, we'll eat first. We'll go out and find a real Viennese restaurant and do ourselves proud, shall we? Then when we feel a bit stronger I'll tackle the Case of the Vanishing Husband, and you can take on the Father and the Fraulein."

"We'll both tackle them both." He uncoiled his length from the arm of the chair and stood up. He was half a head taller than I was. He looked down at me, suddenly shy. "I was an awful a.s.s this morning. I-I'm terribly glad we came together after all."

"That makes two of us," I said, reaching in the wardrobe for my coat. "For heaven's sake, let's go and eat."

Not only did Tim's German prove more than equal to the occasion, but the hall porter was every bit as helpful as the telephone directory had been. He identified the circus immediately as the Circus Wagner, and the village where the accident had taken place as the village of Oberhausen, situated some way beyond Bruck, in the Gleinalpe, the hilly region that lies to the west of the main road from Vienna to Graz and the Yugoslav border.

"Really, there's nothing to this detective business," said Timothy, relaying this information to me. My own German is of the sketchy variety which allows me to understand public notices and to follow simple remarks reasonably accurately if they are made slowly enough, and preferably with gestures; but Tim's schoolboy German, though certainly slow and liberally laced with pantomime, seemed fairly fluent, and it got results.

"Ask him about the fire," I said. "It may have been a serious one if they know so much about it up here in Vienna."

But no, this was not the case. The hall porter's very gestures were rea.s.suring. The only reason he knew so much was because he himself came from the village near Innsbruck where the Circus Wagner had its winter quarters, and not only did he know the owner and some of the performers, but he seemed to have a fair idea of their summer route through the country. The fire? Ah, that had been a terrible thing; yes, indeed, two men had been killed, a fearful affair it was, a living-wagon burned in the night, and the men with it. Who were they? Why, one of them was the horsekeeper. The hall porter, it appeared, had known him, too, a good man, good with the horses, but he drank, you understand. . . . No doubt he had been drunk when the accident happened, knocked over a lamp, been careless with the bottled gas . . .

these things were too easy to do in such cramped quarters, and something of the sort had happened once before. . . . The only reason they kept him on, poor old Franzl, was because he was some sort of relation of Herr Wagner himself, and then he was such a very good man with the horses. . . .

"And the other man?"

But here the hall porter's information ran out abruptly. I didn't need German to understand the lifted shoulders and spread hands. This he did not know. It was no one belonging to the circus or the village.

Herr Wagner himself had not known him; he had not known, even, that there had been a second man in old Franzl's wagon that night. There were even rumours-he himself had heard them-that it had not been an accident, that Franzl had been involved in some crime, and that he and the other man had been murdered as a result; but then there were always such rumours when the police would not close a case straight away; whereas anyone who had known old Franzl would realize that such an idea was absurd, quite out of the question.... As for the other man, he believed that he had been identified, but to tell you the truth, he had not read about this in the papers, or had forgotten it if he had. . . .

He smiled deprecatingly and shrugged his wide shoulders once again. "It is over, you understand, gnadige Frau, and the newspapers lose interest. Indeed, they would hardly have taken the trouble to report poor old Franzl's death, if it had not been for the elephant. ... A circus is always news, and particularly if there is an elephant. . . . You saw some of the stories, perhaps? The truth of the matter was that there was only one elephant, a very old one, kept just for the parades, and she had in fact broken her rope, but had gone only a little way into the village, and had touched no one. The little girl who was reported to be injured had fallen down while running away in terror; the elephant had not touched her at all."

"Ask him," I said, "ask him if he's ever heard of a man called Lewis March."

"Never," said the hall porter, for once mercifully brief.

I wouldn't have ventured the question but that it was obvious that the man was so delighted to have an audience for his story that it never occurred to him to wonder at our interest. A few more questions, and we had gathered all that we had wanted to know. Two days ago the circus had still been in Oberhausen, detained there by the police; its next stop was to have been Hohenwald, a village some fifty kilometers deeper into the Gleinalpe. There was a train at nine-forty next morning which would get me into Bruck before midday, and it was even possible that the local bus service might operate as far as Oberhausen, or, if necessary, Hohenwald, by the very same night. It was certainly possible to find somewhere to stay in any of these villages; there was an excellent small Gasthof in Oberhausen itself, called (inevitably, one felt) the Edelweiss, and I must, also inevitably, merely mention the hall porter's name to Frau Weber, and I would be more than welcome. . . .

"Gosh," said Timothy as we let ourselves out of the hotel again into the brilliant noisy square and turned towards the Karntnerstra.s.se, "I wish I was coming with you. I've always wanted to get inside the works of a circus, if that's what you call them. You'll promise to ring me up tomorrow night, won't you, and tell me how you got on, and what's happened?"

"I promise-that is, if I know where to get hold of you."

"There's that," he agreed. "Well, if Father and Christl won't have me I'll come with you. I really don't feel you ought to be allowed to go all that way on your own. Are you sure you wouldn't like me to come with you and buy the tickets and find out about the buses?"

"I'd love you to. I might even hold you to that. And now, if we're to get to Sacher's in time, we'd better get a move on. Can you really eat another meal? I thought you were a bit rash with that Huhnerleberrisotto at the Deutsches Haus."

"Good lord, that was hours ago!" Timothy had quite recovered his buoyancy with the meal; he charged cheerfully along the crowded pavement, examining the contents of every shop-window with such interest and enthusiasm that I began to wonder if we would ever reach our rendezvous. "What is this Sacher's anyway? It sounds a bit dull, a hotel. Will there be music?"

"I've no idea, but it certainly won't be dull. Everyone who comes to Vienna ought to go there at least once. I believe it's terribly glamorous, and it's certainly typical of Old Vienna, you know, baroque and gilt and red plush and the good old days. It was started by a Madame Sacher, ages ago, sometime in the nineteenth century, and I believe it's still fairly humming with the ghosts of archdukes and generals and all the Viennese high society at the time of the Hapsburgs. I think I even read something in a guidebook about an archduke or something who went there for a bet in absolutely nothing whatever except his sword and maybe a few Orders."

"Bang on," said Timothy, "it sounds terrific. What would my mother say?"

Sacher's Hotel was all that I had imagined, with its brilliantly lit scarlet and gold drawing rooms, the Turkey carpets, the oils in their heavy frames, the mahogany and flowers and s.p.a.cious last-century atmosphere of comfortable leisure. The Blue Bar, where we were to meet Graham Lacy and his lady, was a smallish, intimate cave lined with blue brocade and lit with such discretion that one almost needed a flashlight to find one's drink. The champagne c.o.c.ktails were about eight and sixpence a gla.s.s. Tim's father produced these for the company with very much the air of one who was producing a bribe and trying not to show it. Christl, on the other hand, did her best to pretend that this was a perfectly ordinary occasion, and that she and Graham had champagne c.o.c.ktails every evening. As, perhaps, they did.

Somewhat to my own surprise, I liked Christl. I don't quite know what I had been expecting, a predatory Nordic blonde, perhaps, on the model of the one I had seen with Lewis. She was indeed a blonde, but not in the least predatory, at least to the outward eye. She was plump and pretty, and looked as if she would be more at home in the kitchen putting together an omelette for Graham than sitting in the Blue Bar at Sacher's, taking him for a champagne c.o.c.ktail. She wore a blue dress which exactly matched the colour of her eyes, and there were no rings on her hands. Timothy's father was still recognizably the man I remembered, with the years and the weight added to the florid good looks, and the extra heartiness of manner added by the embarra.s.sment of his son's descent on his Viennese idyll with a presumably virtuous female companion.

That it was an idyll was not long in doubt. He was in love with the girl-she was some twenty years younger than he was -and he made it plain. He also (though to do him justice he tried not to) made it plain that Timothy's appearance in Vienna at this moment was, to say the least of it, inopportune. By the time he had shepherded us through into the dining room for supper I saw with misgiving that resentment or insecurity had brought the sullen look back to Timothy's face.

I saw that Christl was watching him, too, and saw the exact moment at which-while Graham was busy with the menu and the headwaiter-she set herself deliberately to charm him. It was beautifully done, and was not too difficult, since she was not much older than he was, was very pretty, and had in full measure that warm, easy Viennese charm which (as Vienna's friends and enemies both agree) "sings the song you want to hear." Before the wine was half down in our gla.s.ses, Timothy was looking entertained and flattered, and eating as if he had seen no food for a fortnight, while his father, also visibly relaxing, was able to devote himself to me.

He had already thanked me very pleasantly for accompanying Timothy across the Continent, and skated skilfully enough over the reason why he couldn't offer his son his own hospitality that night. He asked now with civil indifference after Carmel's health, and with equal indifference about that of my family, but it was soon obvious that he was curious to know what I was doing in Vienna and just how Carmel had managed to involve me in her affairs, so I gathered that Timothy had said nothing to him in their brief telephone conversation.

"Oh, I'm just on holiday," I said. "My husband was called away to Stockholm just as we were setting off for a holiday together, so I came on here myself, and he'll be joining me soon."

"In Vienna?"

"No, in Graz. We planned a motoring holiday in South Austria, and I'm going down there tomorrow myself. It was just luck that I happened to be heading this way at the same time as Timothy."

"Indeed," said Graham Lacy politely. "That should be delightful. Where were you planning to go?"

Since I had only that moment, so to speak, launched myself and Lewis on a motoring tour of southern Austria, I naturally hadn't the faintest idea. But I had had two years' experience of the married woman's way out of any difficulty. I said immediately: "Oh, I left all that to my husband. He's worked out a route, and to be quite honest I can't really remember exactly where he plans to go. I just sort of relax and go along with him."

"Ah, yes," said Graham Lacy, and then, to his son: "And what are your plans, Tim?" Timothy, caught off guard by the direct question, swallowed, flushed, and said nothing. He had been listening to my string of lies with no betraying gleam of surprise, even, perhaps, with amus.e.m.e.nt; but now, faced either with confessing that he had come to Vienna naturally expecting his father to take him in, or with himself inventing some spur-of-the-moment story, he was dumb. There was a painful pause.

I opened my mouth to say something, but Christl rushed into the pause, saying in her pretty, soft voice: "Well, of course, he has come to see Vienna! What else? Timmy"-she said it charmingly, Tim-mee-"I wish I could show Vienna to you myself! There is so much to see, I should love to take you everywhere-all the places the tourists visit, the Hofburg, Schonbrunn, the Prater, Kahlenberg, and then all the places that the Viennese themselves go to-but I cannot, I am going out of Vienna tomorrow. I am so very disappointed, but you see I have promised; it is so many months since I have seen my parents, and they have been pressing me, and I have promised to go."

"But-" began Graham Lacy.

She touched his hand, and he stopped obediently, but the look of surprise on his face was a dead giveaway, and it was not difficult to interpret the look she gave him. It was quite obvious that she intended to clear herself out of Graham's apartment with the greatest possible speed, so that he would be free-indeed, obliged-to do the right thing by his son.

"Well . . ." began Graham Lacy. He cleared his throat. "Tomorrow's Sunday, so I've a free day. What do you say, old man, shall I come along about eleven or so, and collect you and your stuff? Then after you've settled in we could go out and do some of the sights? I don't have a great deal of time during the week, but you'll soon find your own way about."

Timothy's glance went from one to the other. I realized that he had seen as much as I had. He was a little flushed, but he said composedly enough: "That's terribly nice of you, Daddy, but I won't descend on you just yet. I'd actually planned to go south with Vanessa tomorrow."

If Graham or Christl felt relief, they neither of them showed it. Graham said: "Indeed? It's very nice of Mrs. March to ask you, but if she and her husband are setting off for their tour, they'll hardly want-"

"We won't be starting for a day or two," I said quickly. "I'm still not quite sure how soon Lewis will be able to join me, so I'll have a bit of time to fill in before we set off. I'd love to have Tim with me."

"Don't worry, I shan't land myself on them," said Timothy cheerfully, and quite without irony. "In any case I've been planning to get down into Styria somehow and visit Piber, and see the Lipizzan stud there, so if Mrs. March wants company it'll be killing two birds with one stone. If you don't mind being called a bird in public, Vanessa?"

"Delighted," I said.

"Then," said young Mr. Lacy calmly, "that's settled. I'll ring you up, Daddy, when I'm coming back to Vienna." And he turned his attention to the sweet trolley, from which he presently selected a quite enormous portion of Sachertorte, a rich and very sweet chocolate cake topped with whipped cream.

I had the strong impression that the company settled down to drink their coffee with a distinct air of relaxation and relief all round. When we finally left the dining room Timothy and his father vanished in perfect amity in the direction of the cloakroom, and when they returned I thought I could see from their differing expressions of satisfaction that Graham had "come through" quite handsomely with funds, without his son's having to resort to the blackmail he had threatened.

"Well," said Graham as we bade each other good night, "I hope you enjoy yourselves. Take care of Mrs.

March, won't you, Timmy? And let me know when you're coming back to Vienna. If only you'd thought to let me know this time . . ." He added, awkwardly, "I'm afraid this has been a rather odd welcome to my long-lost son."

The cliche, would-be jocular, fell rather sadly among the shadows of Vienna's midnight pavement.

Timothy said cheerfully: "I'll remember next time. And thanks for tonight, it's been smashing."

The Peugeot drove off. Timothy and I turned to walk back to our hotel.

"Do you mind?" he asked.

"You know I don't. I told you I'd be glad to have you.

That, at least, wasn't a lie. . .. And talking of lies, we brushed through that pretty well, wouldn't you say?

She's a nice girl, Tim."

"I know that. I did mind at first. I couldn't help it. But I don't now, not a bit." We were pa.s.sing the lighted windows of Prachner's bookshop: I saw that he had a look I had not seen in him before, buoyant and clear and free. "After all," he said, "he's got a perfect right to his own life, hasn't he? You can't hang on to people forever. You've got to let them go."

"Of course," I said.

CHAPTER FOUR.

Ay, now I am in Arden; the more fool I. When I was at home I was in a better place; but travellers must be content.

Shakespeare: As You Like It

We drove into the village of Oberhausen at about five o'clock next day.

Now that Timothy was coming with me, I had abandoned my original plan of going by train to Bruck or Graz and hiring a car from there. Moreover, it was Sunday, and I was not sure if such arrangements could be made on a Sunday afternoon. But in Vienna, it seemed, anything could be arranged at more or less any time, especially with the efficient and willing help of the desk staff of the Hotel Am Stephansplatz.

So it came about that Timothy and I left Vienna in a hired Volkswagen shortly before noon next day, making our way out through the mercifully thin Sunday traffic with me at the wheel and Timothy, map on knee, guiding me with remarkable efficiency out along the Triester Stra.s.se, past the car cemetery, and on to the Wiener Neustadt Road.

It was a beautiful day. As we ran southwest from Vienna along the Autobahn the countryside, at first dull and scabbed with urban industry, began to lift itself by degrees from the flat monotony of the plain.

Beyond Wiener Neustadt we found ourselves in a rolling landscape of forested slopes, green pastures, and romantic crags girdled by silver streams and crowned with castles.

It was a scene from the idylls rather than from romance, pastoral rather than Gothic. The valley bottoms were rich with crops, and the hayfields stretched golden right up to the spurs of the hills. Even when the road-magnificently engineered-began its twisting climb to the Semmering Pa.s.s, there was still nothing in the grand manner about the scenery; the great slopes of pine forest were only a shelter and a frame for the peaceful human picture below.

We ate at Semmering-a resort which, at four thousand feet, is sunny all winter and which now, in the height of summer, had air so dizzyingly clear as to make Timothy extra ravenous even by his standards, and to restore to me something of the appet.i.te which had been taken away by the nervous tension that I hadn't yet admitted, but which increased steadily as we neared the end of the journey.