After the Fine Weather (3 page)

“If there are more Germans, why don’t they let them join Austria? I expect that’s what they want to do, isn’t it?”

“It isn’t as simple as that.”

“I bet it isn’t,” said Laura. “Politics never is. Tell me what’s actually happening.”

“The Germans are blowing up pylons and railways. The Italian federal police are trying to stop them. There’s been quite a lot of shooting. Not many people have been killed yet, but there are one or two atrocity stories filtering out. Pretty ugly ones, lately.”

“Atrocities by whom?”

“By the Italian police – on suspected terrorists or on innocent peasants, according to your point of view.”

“What is this?”

“It’s Chablis. A sort of white burgundy, only a bit more so. Do you like it?”

“Yes. I do. How does Lienz come into it?”

“If you’d look at a map,” said Joe, “you’d see the answer to that. See if I can explain.” He laid knives and forks out on the table. “If you’re coming south from Innsbruck, you come through North Tyrol as far as the Brenner. That’s the gap between those two spoons. After that you’re in South Tyrol – the Brenner’s the Austrian-Italian border.”

“And that’s where all the trouble is?”

“Right. But if you go east from the Brenner – which you can’t, because there are too many mountains in the way – but come a bit farther south, to Brixen – which the Italians call Bressanone–” he shifted a pepper pot – “and then go east, you’d get back into Austria. Austria sticks down a lot farther there. That’s the new district of Lienz. OK?”

“OK,” said Laura, “but what’s special about it? Lots of countries jut out into other countries.”

“What’s special about it is this: Lienz is pretty well cut off from the rest of Austria. There are two ways in. One’s up the Drava from Villach – that’s not much of a road, and it doesn’t really lead into the main part of Austria. The main road’s from the north. That’s over the Grossglockner, one of the highest main roads in Europe. And it needs only one good fall of snow to block that. So most of the year an Innsbrucker who wants to get to Lienz goes over the Brenner – which is always open – and through Italy.”

“And now he can’t?”

“He can, but it’s very much more difficult. When the trouble started, Italy imposed special visas and a lot of new restrictions, tightened up the customs formalities, and so on. If the situation gets worse, they may close the Brenner altogether. Then Lienz is out on a limb. That’s why a few months back they handed them over a bit of autonomy. They control their own Landes police and security now, and have got a separate department for communications and another for light and power. Separate from Innsbruck, that is.”

“It sounds as if they expect the Italians to start blowing up their pylons.”

“I wouldn’t know about that, but I can tell you this, Miss Hart. It needs only one real incident, on either side of the frontier, and the situation could go up in smoke.”

“Does your instinct suggest to you what’s going to happen?” asked Laura. “Had you any particular sort of incident in mind?”

“Well,” said Joe thoughtfully, “if they stopped blowing up pylons and blew up a trainful of passengers, now I’d call that an incident. Let me fill your glass.”

“Thank you,” said Laura.

When she got back to her carriage she found that the Chablis was combining against her with lack of sleep. She sank back into the corner. Outside, the autumn sunlight slanted across the Lombardy plain. Ahead, full in view now, stood the mountains. She was asleep before her chin had touched her chest.

The Austrian customs official who boarded the train at Cortina was a kind-hearted man. He looked at the girl sleeping in the corner, looked at the labels on her luggage, and said to his Italian colleague, “She is British.”

“Evidently,” said the Italian.

“Then she will have a British passport.”

“Inevitably.”

They let her sleep on.

It was evening before she stirred, remembered where she was, stretched, and looked out of the window.

They were running down a long, narrow valley, a cleft in the mountains holding railway, road, and river. Where they were the sun had set, but it was still crimsoning the high tops and casting a reflected glow into the valley. From the stream an evening mist was billowing up, creeping over the meadows, blanketing the road.

A man was standing beside the track, just inside the boundary wire. She had the illusion that he was looking straight at her.

Lienz, that evening, was looking charming. There is a moment in late autumn when a strong magic grips the Tyrol. The countryside is waiting, swept and garnished, for the arrival of winter. Day after day the winds blow gently from the south, the skies are blue, the sun is benevolently warm. On the high tops the first snow has fallen and lies remote and unmenacing, the warmth that rises from the valleys distilling a fringe of mist along its lower edge. The Austrians enjoy it, but warily. They know that one morning, suddenly, they will wake to find the skies dull grey. The wind will have swung to the north and will be piloting in a convoy of clouds, drab as dirty cotton wool. Bald Kommt der Schnee.

It was the last of a week of such days, the ultimate fling of autumn. Laura left her brother’s flat after tea. After a good night’s rest, breakfast in bed, and a leisurely morning of shopping and sightseeing, she felt ready for anything life might offer.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have rather a crowded programme,” her brother had said before departing for the consulate. “We’ve got the Hofrat coming to dinner. He accepted the invitation some time ago, though I fancy he’d like to get out of it now. He’s got a lot on his hands. Bundesminister Franz Miller – roughly the equivalent of our Home Secretary – is coming here from Vienna tomorrow, bringing a cardinal bishop with him – he’s a local boy from the Tyrol. The militia’s turning out in force – the Bishop is going to bless a new set of colours that Miller will present to them. It’ll be the biggest show they’ve had in Lienz for years. Several awkward questions of protocol, though.”

Absurd, thought Laura, to hear Charles talking about awkward questions of protocol, when it seemed only yesterday that he was trying to slink into meals without washing, a tactic doomed to failure with their sharp-eyed mother.

No. Not yesterday. The day before yesterday. There had been an interval when all contact had been lost. She at school, and then in Lausanne. Charles at Oxford, and in Athens. Now, half kin, half strangers, they were meeting again.

“Is it the sort of dinner one dresses for?”

“I shall wear a dinner jacket.”

“Would a cocktail dress do?”

“It sounds most appropriate. Frau Rosa will look after you. She doesn’t speak much English, but if you take it slowly she’ll understand you. I shan’t be back until after tea. You’re sure you’ll be all right?”

“I shall be fine,” said Laura. “Don’t you worry about me. I’m going for a walk this afternoon.”

“Don’t go wandering off into the mountains.”

“I wasn’t intending to wander any farther than the nearest shopping centre,” said Laura. “What’s wrong with the mountains, anyway?”

“I’ve never really found out, but a regular succession of people, mostly English, go out for walks on the mountains here and don’t come back.”

“What happens to them?”

“They are usually found,” said her brother, “at the bottom of precipices.”

Frau Rosa, in slow and careful German, had delivered a similar warning. The upper slopes of the mountains, below the snowline, were places of danger.

“What sort of danger?” asked Laura. But Frau Rosa either misunderstood the question or decided to evade it. “The mountains are very beautiful,” she said, “when one views them from below.”

Laura spent a fascinating afternoon. She wandered through ancient courts and alleyways. She ventured into the incense-smelling gloom of the Hofkirche and peered at the finest monumental sarcophagus in Western Europe. She penetrated a huge, barnlike shop which had uncut hides hanging from wooden racks and was presided over by the largest woman she had ever seen outside a circus, who smoked and coughed alternately and sold her a beautiful leather handbag. She had tea in the Hofgarten, and sat for a long time listening to the band. There were three men, in bottle-green uniforms with orange facings, playing identical brass instruments, complex affairs of tube, cylinder, and slide. Two looked mournful and one cheerful. All of them had beards.

The sun touched the mountain top, the shadows lengthened, and Laura discovered, to her surprise, that the afternoon had gone. It was nearly seven o’clock.

She attracted the attention of a scurrying waiter, paid her bill, and started to make her way back. She had no fear of losing herself. Her brother’s flat was near the main railway station, on the other side of the town. All she had to do was to keep the railway on her right and the river on her left and she could not go wrong.

As a strategic plan it was sound. Like many strategic plans, it fell down on small points of tactics. Faced with a choice of two streets, neither of which really led in the right direction, she selected one at random, and soon got the impression that it was bearing too far to the left; much too far.

She had decided to turn around and try again when a promising alleyway opened up on the right. She turned down it. It was narrow, cobbled, and dark. In one wall there showed an occasional tightly shuttered window. The other wall was blank.

If it gets much narrower, she thought, I shall have to progress sideways. This is stupid. It must come out somewhere. Irritatingly, it turned once more in the wrong direction. But as she rounded the turn she saw an arched entrance ahead, leading into what looked like an open space.

At that moment, somewhere in front of her, she heard footsteps, running. First came one set of lighter steps. Then a lot of heavier steps, in pursuit. As she reached the mouth of the alley she saw the end of the chase.

The pursuers were three young men in the local dress of wide, leather-cuffed trousers and blouse-like shirts. The quarry was a man in his middle twenties, with black hair and olive skin.

Realizing that he had run into an impasse, he was now standing with his back to the wall, staring at his pursuers. They had spread across the street and were advancing, slowly, now that they were sure of their kill.

One of them said something. His accent, had she been expert enough to realize it, did not match his Tyrolese dress. When they were nearly up to him the black-haired man made a jump for freedom, pushing past the leader of the trio. It was a futile gesture. The other two caught him by an arm each, and twisted the arm up behind the man’s back with such force that he screamed.

Up to this moment Laura had thought the whole thing might have been a joke, a piece of apprentices’ horseplay. Now she realized, with a feeling of sickness, that they meant business. The three of them were going to hurt the fourth man, deliberately, and for their own ends. It was not kindersport.

She was in the mouth of the alleyway, hidden by a buttress. The three men were not more than a few yards away, across the street. As she watched, the one who seemed to be the leader, and who looked the youngest, drew his hand back and smacked the black-haired man across the face. It was more than a smack. It was a punch, delivered with the hand open. It caught the black-haired man full across the cheek and nose, and jerked his face round. The second blow came from the left hand. Laura caught the gleam of a gold ring. As the blow landed, with great force, the black-haired man started to scream.

She found herself running forward.

“Stop it,” she said. “Stop it, at once, do you hear?”

The leader turned slowly. She could see him more clearly now. It was a striking face. Pretty, she thought, almost girlish. A thin straight nose, a generous mouth, and blond hair slicked back. Light-blue eyes. He was smiling, and seemed untroubled by the fact that he had a witness.

“You are English?” he said. He spoke reasonable English himself.

“Yes, I’m English. Let him alone.”

He looked her up and down.

“Would you like to see him dance?” He turned to the man. “Dance for the lady, Italian monkey. Dance on your barrel organ.”

Raising his boot, he stamped heavily on the Italian’s foot. The Italian screamed again.

One of the men said something. The fair-haired leader turned to Laura.

“My friend suggests that he would dance better without his trousers. Have you ever seen an Italian without his trousers? It is a formidable sight.”

All three roared with laughter, and one of the men smacked the Italian in the stomach, doubling him up.

“Even Giuseppe laughs,” said the leader. “See how he laughs? He cannot stand upright for laughter.”

“I shall fetch the police,” said Laura. She was trembling so much that the words would scarcely come out. As she turned and ran, the laughter boomed behind her down the courtyard, followed by the thud of another blow and a thin and bloodless whimpering.

She found a policeman at the corner of the next street where it turned into one of the main shopping centres. She was out of breath, and shaking. It took some minutes of her patient and limited German to tell him what she wanted. Then he swung ponderously round and moved off down the street, without waiting to see if she followed.

The court, as she had guessed it would be, was empty.

“Boys,” said the policeman.

“They were not boys,” she said. For God’s sake, why can’t I speak German properly? How can I explain, in schoolgirl sentences of elementary words without a verb, that an atrocity has been committed within fifty yards of where he was standing? A small atrocity, perhaps, but all atrocities started as bullying and bear-baiting. That was the time to stop them, before the state took over the apparatus of bully or counter-bully, with underground room and leather strap and steel hook.

“You were assaulted?”

“Nobody touched me,” she said.

“You have a complaint, then?”

“I have no complaint, but I think you ought to do something about it.”

She saw, by his look of blank incomprehension, that she was getting nowhere.

“I am sorry,” she said. “They have all gone now. It is nothing.”

He smiled paternally. “You were frightened,” he said. “They are rough boys, but they mean no real harm. What hotel are you staying at?”

“No hotel. I am staying with my brother. He is British Vice-Consul in Lienz.”

This appeared to make some impression on the policeman. If the woman was not simply a tourist, if she had some official standing, it was possible – just possible – that her story would have to be investigated.

“Would you wish,” he said, “to come to the police headquarters and to make a statement?”

“No,” said Laura. Her mind was made up. “I have no statement to make.”

“You are quite sure?”

“Yes, quite sure.”

“Allow me, then, to show you your way back to the consulate.”

“You have chosen the right moment to visit the Tyrol,” said Hofrat Humbold. “In Lienz we call this Bellermanswoch. The Bellerman is the old man who goes round after the feast is over, cleaning up the tables and snuffing the candles.”

He said this in the dry tones of a schoolmaster leading his class over well-worn tracks of exposition. He had a prim mouth, gold spectacles, hair running back in a neat fan from a point in the centre of his forehead. She could picture him in some small country schoolhouse, on a somnolent afternoon, rapping with his pointer on his raised desk to keep the sleepy children attentive.

“But when the Bellerman has finished his work, when he has extinguished the last candle, the snow will come.”

“I hope I shall still be here,” said Laura. “I love the snow.”

“You are a skier?” This was from the fourth member of the dinner party. Describing him, Charles had said, “Helmut Angel. In England or America I suppose he’d be called a playboy, but on the Continent a young man seems to be allowed to live on the money his father has accumulated without attracting derogatory descriptions. He’s a good climber. He was one of the four men who went up the north face of the Wetterstein last year. He drives a French Facel Vega very fast indeed, and he has a chance of being in the Austrian team for the International Winter Sports.”

Upon which she had said, “You’re not trying to put me off him, by any chance?”

But Helmut had confounded her. He was far from good-looking. He was chunky. He looked as if the Creator had put him together in an absent-minded mood, had then rather liked the finished product, and had carefully sandpapered off the rougher pieces, without being able to disguise the fact that the basic blueprint was misconceived. His face was certainly brown but could scarcely have been described as bronzed. It was brown in the way that a very old portmanteau is brown. The nose was wide, the mouth big, but not full, and there was positively and unmistakably a dimple in the middle of the rounded chin.

“I have skied a little,” she said. “I like it, but I fall down a good deal.”

“Everyone falls down,” said Helmut. “I once fell, head downward, into a crevasse, and hung there, supported only by my skis.”

“I thought that happened only in comic papers, like getting hitched up on punt poles.”

“There was nothing comic about this, I assure you. I hung there for more than an hour.”

“How did you get out?”

“I decided, in the end, that I should either hang there until I froze, or I must fall into the crevasse. The second seemed the better alternative. I succeeded in wriggling out of the boot straps, and fell. Fortunately I landed on a ledge not too far down. Then I climbed out. It was a lesson.”

“A lesson?”

“A lesson not to go into the mountains alone. In the mountains you meet a host of enemies. Loose snow, brittle ice, strong winds, cold, vertigo. It is stupid to add loneliness to them as well. I prefer, now, to go with two or three companions.”

“You’re the third person today who has warned me against the mountains. Both my brother and his housekeeper seemed to think that I should wander off into them, and never be seen again.”

Humbold had been following this conversation closely, rotating his head toward each speaker in turn.

He said, “You should not disregard the warning, Miss Hart. There are wild men in the mountains. They live in caves and holes in the mountainside, like beasts. Occasionally we have a drive to clear them out. But it is difficult. They live close to the frontier, and have only to cross it to be safe. Many of them are Italians.”