‘I wanted to order a meal for us all at the Ferry Hotel — they keep an excellent table, but I couldn’t disappoint my sisters,’ said Herr Huber.
And indeed the man who could have disappointed the Fräulein Hubers would have had to be made of steel. Much older than their brother, frail, and beautifully dressed in the bonnets and shawls of forty years ago, they welcomed us with twitters of intense friendliness. Fräulein Marianne, the elder of the two, was very deaf and carried an ivory ear trumpet; Fräulein Louisa, who was only slightly deaf, acted as her sister’s conduit to the world.
While Marianne made sure that no draughts, on this hot summer’s day, had pierced the double walls of their drawing room to trouble us, that the chairs we sat in were to our liking, Louisa ran back and forth from the kitchen to confer with the cook — and presently we were led to the table.
Sunday lunch in Linz is a serious matter. It was clear that this occasion had been the topic of conversation for weeks past. The lace tablecloth was exquisite, the gold-rimmed Meissen dinner service a family heirloom.
Grace was said and the first course passed without incident. An erbsen suppe made with fresh garden peas, in which griess knockerl floated, served with croutons of bread deep fried in butter.
Then came the entrée.
‘We did think of a roast goose — we have one just ready to be killed and beautifully plump,’ said Fräulein Louisa, ‘but then we thought coming from Vienna you’d like something that’s special to Linz.’
The cook now arrived with a gigantic, steaming platter. As it was set down the sisters looked anxiously at Herr Huber who scrutinized its contents, gave a nod of approval, and tucked his napkin more securely into his collar.
This hurdle safely over, the ladies beamed at us.
‘A Linzerschmankerl!’ said Fräulein Louisa. ‘You won’t find it anywhere else.’
I found this easy to believe. In the centre of the dish was a piled-up circle of rindfiletspitzen, the marbled flesh enveloped, but not obscured by a rich dark sauce. Then came a ring of kidneys, each embedded in its halo of perfectly roasted fat. Moving outwards one came to the rolled-up slivers of ox tongue, alternating with sawn-off segments of thigh bone filled with dollops of creamy marrowfat — and after that stretching away in concentric circles, the roast potatoes, the semmel knodel, the rings of onion fried to the colour of caramel.
Each one of us was now served. Horse radish was handed separately, as was the red currant jelly, the spinach, the crusty bread…
‘Oh, dear!’ The exclamation, quiet and desperate, came from Edith Sultzer.
I had quite forgotten; so had Herr Huber. Both of us were speechless, and it was Magdalena who lifted her head and said calmly:
‘Edith never eats meat. She is a vegetarian.’
An assassin leaping through the window with a revolver could not have caused more distress! By the doorway, the cook covered her face with a plump hand and as Fräulein Louisa yelled the dreadful information into Fräulein Marianne’s ear trumpet, the ladies fell into a litany of self reproach.
‘How foolish of us!’
‘We should have asked!’
‘We’re so out of touch here, you see.’
‘I could make an eierspeise,’ said the cook.
But at the thought of feeding a valued guest on scrambled eggs, the ladies plunged into even deeper distress. Topfen Palatschinken were mooted, a spinach roll…
I now decided to intervene.
‘Fräulein Sultzer,’ I said, laying a hand on Edith’s arm, ‘I have long been meaning to speak to you on the subject of your diet. In my view you are seriously anaemic; I’m experienced in such things and I assure you that there are signs. If you could force yourself to swallow just a few mouthfuls of meat — if you could overcome your disgust — I’m absolutely certain that you would feel the benefit.’
The butcher, who had risen to console his sisters, sat down again. ‘It is true, you know,’ he said in his deep, comfortable voice. ‘It is red meat that makes good blood.’
‘Oh, but I couldn’t… My mother…’
‘Your mother’s vegetarianism is noble,’ I said firmly. ‘We honour her for it. But sometimes a principle has to yield to expediency. After all, you have your work to think of. The Plotzenheimer prize and Beowulf. You have no right to let yourself get run down.’
‘Perhaps just a mouthful of the Filetspitz?’ suggested Herr Huber. ‘There’s nothing to distress you in a filet; it’s a very calm meat, that. You needn’t finish it.’
Edith’s anxious, myopic eyes went back and forth between us.
‘Well, perhaps… if you think… if it’s for my work.’
She took up her knife and fork, cut off a piece of filet, put it in her mouth. Herr Huber was right; there wasn’t anything to distress her, and she swallowed it, speared another piece, and swallowed that also. When the filet had gone she looked surprised and began on the kidney, and this too proved undistressing for she finished it, embedding fat and all. Her spectacles steamed up, a flush appeared on her face, and she turned her attention to the rolled-up slivers of ox tongue…
There is nothing like a narrowly averted disaster for making a party go with a swing. As Edith began to scoop the marrow from the bones, the ladies laughed and clapped their hands, enchanted to have saved a soul from the perils of inanition; Herr Huber told stories of his early days; the wine flowed…
We returned to Vienna by train. When Herr Huber, who had business to attend to in Linz, dropped us on the station platform, loaded with baskets of flowers and fruit which the sisters had insisted on picking for us, Edith thanked him with such warmth that he was quite embarrassed.
‘Na, na,’ he said. ‘Linz isn’t like Vienna. No one’s intellectual here. My sisters almost never read a book.’
‘But they were so kind,’ said Edith. ‘So terribly kind. I liked them so much.’
As the train drew away, it was the Bluestocking who leant out of the window and waved, while the lovely Magdalena sat back in her seat and closed her eyes.
Alice has great plans for her summer idyll with Rudi. She is cleaning the flat from top to toe and has made an extra-thick cover to put over her canary so that Rudi can sleep in the day if he wants to — and she is going to cook.
‘Seriously, I mean, Sanna. Proper health-giving things. Egg custard… and brawn and things like that to build him up.’
We decided to go to a new department store which stays open in the lunch hour to buy saucepans.
‘Those double ones with water underneath because I do find it difficult to remember what’s on the stove when I’m with him.’
And we did indeed set off, but unfortunately we entered the store through the lingerie department where Alice came face to face with a French slip in pale blue lace which was so obviously the thing to wear while cooking egg custard that it would have been absurd not to buy it.
‘Oh dear, I do feel guilty,’ she said as we came out. ‘But he really likes me in blue and I can always put a bowl over an ordinary saucepan, can’t I?’
I left her at the turning to the Kohlmarkt and went on down the Graben — where I ran straight into Frau Egger. She was wearing the cloak I had made for her — and the horn buttons I had originally suggested!
‘Oh that’s much better, Frau Egger. But why did you change them?’
She looked furtively about her. ‘It was my husband,’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘He was so angry, you wouldn’t believe it! It seems the buttons I found were very rare; they’re from an early British regiment before the Napoleonic wars, even. They ought to be in a museum, he said.’
‘I didn’t know he was an expert in such things.’
‘No, I didn’t either. But then, there’s not much one knows about men, is there? He particularly asked if I’d got all the buttons back from you. But I did, didn’t I?’