Someone on the stairs! But there was no-one in the house! Then she heard the uneven tread, climb and drag, climb and drag, and her fright changed to a different kind of tension. Things had never been right between her and Van since the accident. For a few days she’d managed to avoid any questions by always visiting him at the same time as Momma, but then there’d come a visit when she’d known at once that something was badly wrong, and he’d practically ordered Momma to go and talk to the Sister about something and as soon as she was out of earshot he’d said, ‘I’ve had a card from a chap called Andrei – friend of Otto’s. It had a lot of red roses on it. He asked me whether they were the right colour. What’s up? You sent me this.’
He held up her card with its field of yellow daisies. She’d gulped, though she’d known it was bound to happen sooner or later.
‘I’m sorry,’ she’d said. ‘I didn’t want you to worry.’
‘You lied to me.’
‘I thought I’d better.’
‘None of your business, Sis. So what happened?’
‘We went out to the garage. Your clothes and books were there OK, but there was nothing in the secret compartments.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t see it. How on earth could that have happened? I hadn’t taken my eyes off the machine. I’d slept with it, even . . .’
‘I suppose somebody could have been following you and seen the accident.’
He’d thought about it, and nodded.
‘You told Hector red, I suppose,’ he’d said. ‘I haven’t had a squeak out of him, you know . . . Well, don’t lie to me again, Sis. It’s not up to you to decide what’s good for me, see?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she’d said, miserably, feeling the new lie inside her, like vomit she had to keep down. The feeling was still there now, after a whole year. There seemed to be no way she could tell him, and she wouldn’t get rid of it until she had. She wiped her eyes, turned and waited till he put his head round the door.
‘Moving in?’ he said with a sharp smile.
‘Do you mind? Momma said it was OK. In fact, she said it was a good idea.’
He nodded and limped across to look at the half-empty book-shelves.
‘No,’ he said, harshly. ‘It’s all yours. I’m not stepping into the old boy’s shoes.’
He turned and looked at her with the same hard, angry smile.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me where I’ve been?’ he said.
She hadn’t been meaning to. When Van had simply disappeared, in the middle of a physiotherapy course for his foot, they’d all guessed that he was trying to get to Grandad’s funeral, whether the Romanians let him or not. He couldn’t have done it alone. He’d have had to ask Otto Vasa for help, and if it wasn’t for Otto Vasa Grandad might very well still be alive. While half of what used to be Yugoslavia boiled into war close by, Grandad had gone back to Varina to try to prevent the same thing happening there, but Otto Vasa kept on stirring things up. Grandad was tired, and old, and his doctors kept telling him to rest, but he hadn’t been able to. And then, twelve days ago, the man Grandad used to call his policeman had rung Momma in the evening to say that Grandad was dead. That was all he knew.
Whatever Van thought about politics, he must have known what Momma and the rest of the family would feel about his having anything to do with Otto Vasa. Now he was pretty well forcing Letta to talk about it.
‘Varina, I suppose,’ she said. ‘Or didn’t they let you in? Or did they throw you out again?’
‘Not exactly. They didn’t let me in, but I went. They didn’t throw me out, but I left. Do you want to know?’
‘Do you want to tell me?’
He lowered himself into Grandad’s chair, leaning on his stick and moving with care. She could see his foot must be quite a bit worse than it had been when he’d left.
‘Not much,’ he said, ‘but I’d better. You’re the right person. OK. When those bastards in Bucharest told us we couldn’t attend the old boy’s funeral – not even his own daughter, for God’s sake! – I said the hell with them – I’m going. I called Otto’s office in Vienna and talked to a bloke called Andrei and said they’d got to get me through to Potok, somehow. Andrei’s a slimy little turd. He’s spent the whole of the last year doing his best to see I don’t have any contact with Otto, and of course he tried to put me off, but I told him I was coming anyway, and when I got to Vienna he was all smiles and couldn’t do enough for me. He said there was no question of the Romanians giving me a visa and they’d have to smuggle me in.’
‘That sounds pretty romantic.’
‘Just what I thought, but it wasn’t, it was just uncomfortable. We went in one of Otto’s cars, a big Merc. There were four of us, the driver, Andrei, a grinning thug called Jagu, and me. When we got to a frontier we just hoicked up the back seat-cushion and I curled up in a special compartment underneath. It had an odd smell, mechanical, but not motor car mechanical. It took me a bit of time to place it, and then I remembered. Light oil and graphite. Know what that means, Sis?’
‘No.’
‘Guns . . . You don’t look surprised.’
‘Not really. Were you?’
‘No. Look, Sis – I’ve got something to explain. You remember those packages I asked you to look for in my bike after my accident, only they weren’t there?’
Letta didn’t hesitate. She looked him in the eyes and said, ‘They were there, actually. I gave them to Grandad. They were a bomb, weren’t they?’
He stared at her. The knuckles of the hand which was holding his stick went white.
‘I did it for Varina,’ she said.
‘So did we all,’ he snapped. ‘God! If I’d known . . . So you lied to me twice, Sis?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
She waited, watching him think the thing through. He shook his head and shrugged.
‘Leaves a nasty taste, doesn’t it?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, it’s turned out all right, somehow. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked you in the first place. Let’s call it quits. Where were we? Yes, it was about that. These people, Andrei and the others, they’ve got a way of cornering you. They sort of nudge you into a position where you’re doing things you’re not at all sure you want to, only there doesn’t seem any way out unless you’re going to make things worse for something you really care about. That was what happened then. I didn’t like it at all. And all the way, while we were heading south in the Merc I began to feel more and more that the same sort of thing was happening again. There was something up between Andrei and Jagu, a joke they knew about and I didn’t. And my foot was hurting – I’d had to do a lot more tramping around on my way out than it’s used to, and Jagu kept offering to carry me, as if I were a baby. Not much fun.
‘Anyway, we finished up jolting along over what weren’t much more than mule-tracks to reach Otto’s place without actually going through Potok. He’s managed to install himself in the Prince-Bishop’s summer palace. It’s up in the hills, a couple of miles south of Potok. The Communist bosses had had it as a perk, so it’s been looked after. In fact it’s pretty luxurious. Otto was there, very friendly as always, and very sympathetic about my foot. He said he was planning a big rally in honour of Grandad the evening before the funeral, and he wanted me to speak about the old boy, as a representative of the family, and I’d got to keep under cover till then in case somebody spotted me and I got thrown out. I didn’t like that at all. Two whole days. I’ve got friends in Potok I wanted to see. I wanted to know what was going on, what people really thought. I didn’t get a chance to object because at that point he was called away and sent a message back saying he wouldn’t be around till the evening.