As a result of this conversation I have decided to be noble. Frau Egger shall have her buttons. Let no one say that I put my professional reputation before compassion to a deeply stricken soul.
July
Last Sunday Herr Huber took us on an outing to Linz to show us the villa he is buying for Magdalena, and to introduce his fiancée to his two sisters, maiden ladies who have an apartment on the ground floor of his old house beside the Danube.
I have always been fond of Linz: a splendidly solid town where the walls always seem thicker than anywhere else, the beds more solid, the pretzels on the café tables larger. It seemed to me absolutely right that Herr Huber’s empire should have its centre there.
‘I would be most grateful for your company,’ Herr Huber had said to me. ‘You have such excellent taste and Fraulein Winter is so young. There are decisions to be made about the furnishings and I don’t want to burden her.’
Alice too had been invited, but a mentally defective producer had decided to put four live Lipizzaners into Wienerblut, which meant extra rehearsals, and it was Magdalena, Edith and myself who set off at daybreak in the butcher’s car.
Magdalena, disdaining a motoring veil, sat beside her fiancé, her hair a considerable driving hazard, but there was one most encouraging sign. On her lap she held a large brown parcel securely tied with string.
‘It’s a present for the house,’ she volunteered — and at her words a look of the purest joy passed over the butcher’s face.
We stopped for the Gabelfrühstuck without which Herr Huber would not have expected to get through the morning, and by midday had reached the villa, twelve miles out of Linz, which was to be Magdalena’s home.
It stood alone in a copse of evergreens. Built by a master builder for his own use, it was adorned by no less than three pepper-pot towers, any number of gables, a porch and a conservatory. In the garden which was of the romantic kind containing nothing that is edible, we could make out, between two dark cypresses, a bird table with fretwork eaves and elaborately carved legs.
The house had just been vacated by the workmen; ladders still stood about; there was a smell of new paint.
‘Well, my dear, do you like it?’ said Herr Huber. He never touches his fiancée, but the tenderness in his voice is overwhelming.
‘Very nice,’ said Magdalena.
She thought the Bohemian chandelier he had installed in the hallway was ‘very nice’ too, and that he should do exactly as he liked about bringing the drawing room carpet from his house in Linz. Her knee-length hair in ravishing disarray after the drive, still clutching the parcel which she made no attempt to unpack, Magdalena wandered through the empty rooms, as patently uninterested in her new home as she had been in her wedding clothes.
In the dining room I took pity on Herr Huber. The notebook he had brought to write down his bride’s suggestions remained empty; the lines on his forehead increasingly resembled those of a bloodhound who has lost the scent.
‘I must say, I think a French chintz in maize or dark honey would look lovely in those windows. Swagged, and with a fan edging… and the material repeated in the upholstery of the chairs. With a pale grass-cloth on the walls you’d bring the sunshine right into the room.’
I babbled my way through into the study, offering wine-coloured velvet to offset the mahogany panelling, and we went upstairs, Magdalena still carrying the parcel about whose contents I became increasingly curious. A favourite vase? A clock inherited from the army officer? And what was delaying her? Surely a housewarming present should be unpacked at once?
In the first of the spare bedrooms I became quite carried away, suggesting a Dutch look to match the blue and white tiles on the stove; in the second I effortlessly conjured up an Indian bower with parrots on the wall and curtains of printed cotton from Rajasthan.
In the master bedroom, however, with its window looking out on to the lawn and the bird table framed in dark trees, my inspiration faltered. It was possible to imagine anything except the Hubers’ bridal night.
But my sudden silence didn’t matter, for it now became evident that Magdalena was nowhere to be seen.
‘She’s gone outside,’ said the Bluestocking with a nervous gulp.
‘I expect it was the smell of the paint,’ I said quickly, seeing Herr Huber’s face. ‘New paint often makes people feel unwell.’
We followed her out into the garden.
‘Look, she’s over there by the bird table,’ said Edith. ‘And she’s taken the parcel.’
Not knowing whether Magdalena wanted to be alone, we hesitated, but at that moment she turned, her hair rippling in the light, and beckoned to us with a friendly, almost welcoming gesture, and we set off across the lawn.
I should have known, of course. It wasn’t a bird table, it was a religious shrine, a crucifix hanging from the fretwork eaves. And Magdalena had unpacked her parcel.
‘Look!’ she said, and pointed to the figure she had released from its wrappings and placed between two candlesticks. Not Saint Lucy with her gouged-out eyes, not the breastless Saint Agatha… Quite a cheerful-looking saint and one that was new to me. The bald Saint Proscutea who had shaved off her hair to avoid marriage to a heathen, and wore on her waxen pate a slightly rakish wreath of thorns.
In her own way Magdalena had taken possession of her future home, and I was very much relieved.
Herr Huber’s old house in Linz was a very different affair. Solid, old-fashioned, with a verandah that ran the length of the first floor, it stood right on the towpath, square to the river, with a garden full of fruit trees and vegetables at the back. As he led us upstairs and out on to the balcony we could lean out and almost touch the horses as they pulled the heavy barges along, watch the tugs hoot on the wide grey river, or look across to the vineyards and gently rolling hills on the other shore.
‘Oh, but it’s beautiful, Herr Huber,’ said Edith — and proceeded to quote from Goethe. I had, of course, expected this — it was not to be hoped that the Master had failed to pen some lines on the significance of running water and its effect on memory, loss and time. But the ode was short, and when I took her out to look at the garden so as to give Herr Huber some time alone with his fiancée, I found the Bluestocking’s thoughts surprisingly similar to mine.
‘I was wondering whether Magdalena wouldn’t be happier here than in the villa,’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s so friendly here and there’s always something to look at… the river and the towpath, and the town all around one. So safe… ’
‘Yes, I wondered the same thing, especially as he can’t sell the house anyway because of his sisters. But Herr Huber thinks that Magdalena shouldn’t be so close to his factory — those are the chimneys over there. And the slaughterhouse is just across the road on the other side of the landing stage.’
‘Well, of course, slaughterhouses are wicked,’ said Laura Sultzer’s daughter dutifully. ‘But it does mean he would be able to get home in the middle of the day; she’d see him more.’
‘If that’s what she wants.’
Edith threw me a startled look. ‘Oh, surely; he’s so terribly kind.’
We returned to the house to get ready for lunch which we were to take with Herr Huber’s sisters in their apartments on the ground floor.