But that night I had an idea.
First I consulted Alice. She was doubtful, she thought it would be too difficult technically. All the same, she wanted to be involved — Edith, after all, is Rudi’s daughter.
‘I’ll help behind the scenes,’ she said. ‘You might be glad of some sort of headgear.’
Nini too thought it wouldn’t work, but she can never resist a challenge and soon she was busy with calico and pins, looking out discarded materials and almost her old self as she prepared for the charade.
‘We could use the oi-yoi-yoi dresses,’ she said. ‘They’re still in the storeroom.’
The oi-yoi-yoi dresses were brought to me by a poor widow years ago to sell and I was always meaning to throw them away. (They’re called that because oi-yoi-yoi is what Leah Cohen said when she first saw them.) Then we made a list of Edith’s good points (her waist, her ankles) and her bad points (practically everything else) and settled down to our task.
Next I telephoned the Bluestocking and told her that I had some beautiful dresses which I was selling off cheap.
‘I’d like you to come and try them on; they’re just right for you.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I mean, my mother…’
‘Edith, I’m not talking about your mother, I’m talking about you. Your father left you an allowance, didn’t he? You’d be doing me a favour. I have to clear my stock.’
‘I see?… Yes… Well, in that case…’
‘Come to lunch first and be prepared to spend some time. I’m going to invite Herr Huber.’
I then contacted Herr Huber and said I needed his advice about suitable removal firms and we arranged for him to come on Wednesday when he was in town.
The luncheon party was a success. Edith had washed her hair, asked warmly after Herr Huber’s sisters in Linz, and made intelligent suggestions about the franchise for supplying charcuterie on the boats of the Danube Steamship Company.
When the meal was over, I took the butcher aside.
‘I wonder if you’d do me a favour, Herr Huber? You see, I have some clothes I want Fraulein Edith to try on and I remember what excellent taste you have. Could you possibly stay and give us the benefit of your advice? She has great confidence in your judgement and her mother isn’t quite…’
‘Really? Well, of course. Certainly. It will be a pleasure. Such a well-informed girl, such an excellent brain.’
Not a propitious beginning, but I was determined to proceed.
We put him down in the oyster velvet chair and I took Edith to the fitting room where I removed her spectacles, loosened her hair and instructed her to change into a broderie Anglaise slip I had brought down. ‘Some of the dresses are very close fitting,’ I said, firmly confiscating the Croatian petticoat which smelled faintly of camomile tea.
Poor Edith. She looked at me with such trust.
Then Nini brought the first of the dresses.
It was an oi-yoi-yoi dress of brown moiré, but we had improved it, slashing the neckline so that Edith’s salt-cellar collar bones jutted out above the zig-zag edging, and turning the puffed sleeves round to form two listing protuberances on her shoulders.
I led her out to where Herr Huber sat.
‘What do you think?’ I asked the butcher.
‘If you forgive me, Frau Susanna, I think it is not at all a good choice. That brown is quite wrong. Fraulein Edith has quite nice grey eyes.’
I shrugged. ‘I know,’ I said as Edith scuttled back into the cubicle, ‘but I have to think what would be acceptable to her mother. Frau Sultzer is not noted for her taste.’
We removed the mud-coloured moiré and substituted a half-stitched frock of emerald satin, and Nini grinned for it had been her idea to add a bustle which started half way up Edith’s back and ended disastrously on the most prominent part of her behind.
Once again we pushed her out and revolved her in front of Herr Huber who shook his great head from side to side, wondering, I suppose, if I had taken leave of my senses. An oi-yoi-yoi coat and skirt which Nini had dyed an unspeakable shade of puce came next.
‘Oh, please, Frau Susanna, please don’t make me try that one. I know it won’t suit me.’
‘Now, Edith, don’t fuss,’ I said briskly, bundling her into it. ‘You can’t tell till you’ve tried it on,’ and I jammed Alice’s contribution, a frilled lampshade of the same vile material, over one eye.
Herr Huber this time was in anguish. ‘No no! Fräulein Edith must have soft colours and gentle curves. That is all wrong!’
The last dress Nini and I had tacked together the night before and it was our masterpiece. Red and purple spotted silk left over from an order for a fancy dress party, straining over Edith’s hips, hugging every bulge on her stomach. Not only that, but the twelve hooks and eyes which fastened it at the back were almost impossible to undo. I tumbled her hair over her bodice and made sure that her spectacles were out of reach.
‘Well, if you really don’t like it,’ I said, managing to sound offended, ‘you can take it off. Nini and I’ll go upstairs and see what else we can find.’
Then we left her. But we didn’t go upstairs; we stayed behind the door in the workroom and eavesdropped.
‘Oh God!’ Edith was becoming increasingly desperate as she pulled and tugged, trying to free herself. The humiliation of being seen in those awful clothes, the disappointment, was bringing her close to tears.
‘What is it?’ we heard the butcher ask in worried tones. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I can’t get out of this horrible dress. I’m stuck, I’m completely stuck. I want to get out of here! I want to go home!’
She was really crying now as she struggled with the recalcitrant hooks. It was hard not to go to her aid, but we waited, peering through the crack in the door.
‘Oh God, why was I born!’ sobbed Edith. ‘I never wanted to be clever and give my toys to the poor; all I ever wanted was to be ordinary and now I have to be mocked and made a fool of. I’ll never get out of this dress, never!’
Herr Huber rose, took a few steps towards the fitting booth, flushed and retreated.
‘Can’t someone help me, please?’
Herr Huber rose once more, looked at the door behind which we were hiding. ‘They seem to have gone,’ he said. He approached the cubicle again, hesitated. Then: ‘If you will allow me,’ he said, and disappeared inside.
For a few moments we heard only low murmuring — then a sudden and violent tearing of cloth as Herr Huber lost patience.
‘Oh dear! It’s torn. They’ll be so angry!’
‘Nonsense! Such a dress needs to be torn. Now we’ll just take the nasty thing right off and then you’ll soon be more comfortable. There, that’s better, isn’t it? Now don’t distress yourself, my poor girl, let me wipe your pretty eyes.’
Edith was still crying, but the sobs were muffled. She was crying into something.
‘I’m spoiling your coat.’
‘No, no… not at all. I have plenty of coats. Only don’t be sad, my little one. See how pretty you look in your petticoat. And see how soft your hair is… Look how it likes to fall over my hand…’
The truth is, I’m a genius, and clairvoyant too. But when the happy pair had left arm in arm and I told my helpers about the vision I’d had of Edith bouncing on a bed beside a wide grey river, they were not impressed.
‘Obviously Herr Huber had already described his house by the Danube,’ said Alice. ‘All you did was to sense that they would make an excellent couple.’
But as I pointed out, there was nothing ‘all’ about sensing that!
January
The boys are due to move out of the presbytery in three weeks and today there was a concert in St Florian’s in aid of equipment for the new building, which as it stands would do nicely as a workhouse or penitentiary. Ernst Bischof sang two Mozart motets and ‘I know that my Redeemer Liveth’, and though Helene and I have been waiting for his voice to break for the whole year, I think that if he had cracked or faltered then, we could not have borne it.