The Exiles Return (12 page)

Valery had almost laughed at Miss Bates, but fortunately had been able to control herself in time, for the poor woman would have been mortally offended, she was so serious. However, when she told Peter about it, he didn’t laugh but became very angry. She had never seen him so angry, he had marched up and down the room and stormed at her, as he did now and again when he had to let off steam. Of course she knew that he was not raving at her but at whoever it was who had given him cause for anger, in this case Miss Bates, and she was only acting as a lightning conductor who happened to be present to take the charge. But when the storm had settled and she and Peter had talked the matter over quietly, they had decided that when Marie-Theres left school at the end of term she should not go to college, where there might again be threats of psychiatrists, but should have a complete change of surroundings. Therefore – and the letter reverted to the opening request – would they have Marie-Theres at Wald?

Nine

Wald, Upper Austria

20
th
June 195–

My dear Valery,

Your girl has now been with us for three weeks and I’m sure you will be anxious to hear how she is settling down and what our impressions are of her, now that we have got to know her a little better. So far I’ve only dashed off those few lines to you the day after she arrived, telling you that we were all rather taken aback by her appearance. We were not prepared for anyone quite so lovely and quite so smart. As I said, it gave me and the girls rather a fright, we wondered whether we should be able to cope with her, whether she was not going to be even more discontented here than you say she was at home, seeing what a simple life we lead. I must go back to those first impressions in order to explain how mistaken we were in our conclusions and how very different Resi is from what she at first appeared. By the way, we call her Resi, though she asked at first to be called Marie-Theres, but we find that too much of a mouthful so I suggested Resi which is what, as you know, most Thereses are called in Austria, and she accepted this with perfectly good grace.

Well, you know, my girls are really very good-looking, though Helen, since her tragic loss, is not quite as fresh as she used to be, and that grieves me a lot. But our family have always been blessed with strong, healthy figures and pleasant faces, bright eyes, clear complexions and thick hair. Hanni has them all. But it must be your Peter who gave her her elongated figure, so straight and narrow, almost too tall for a girl, that delicate nose and mouth, and those extraordinary pencilled eyebrows, which give her, more than anything else I think, such a look of a Florentine Madonna. Naturally her clothes, too, distinguished her from anybody we had seen in this part of the world for many years; the girls had never seen anything like them, what with the war and, worse still, these post-war years, when there wasn’t a stitch to be had and not much money to buy anything anyway. And those sheer nylons, and those long slender legs to show them off! Next to such elegance, the girls looked like country bumpkins and felt like it too on the station platform. I saw it all at a glance. There was a dreadful moment of silence, Resi standing there very stiffly and superior-looking and in reality terribly shy, and then Hanni, who is the most good-natured and spontaneous girl in the world, laughed and embraced her cousin, then Helen did so too, and I kissed her and we all drove away. But Poldo – you should have seen Poldo, how his eyes popped out the moment he caught sight of her, he simply gobbled her up, old sinner that he is. And I can’t help chuckling to myself when I see how he still melts each time she comes into the room. But does Resi notice? Not she, she doesn’t even treat him like a grandfather (he wouldn’t mind that if she put a little playful tenderness into it) but like a grandfather clock, like a venerable piece of furniture, something that isn’t really alive. Poor Poldo, and he’s so delighted to have such a pretty niece about the house.

And Resi herself? As far as I can judge she is perfectly happy. I can’t quite make her out yet for she is very reserved, but she makes herself pleasant and is no trouble to anybody. Hanni really likes her and intends to draw her out, little by little, to find out what goes on inside her head. I have urged her to write you a little more than the occasional postcard she has been sending, and she has promised to do so.

So at last, after several gentle promptings, Marie-Theres delivered herself of the following:

Upper Austria

Schloss Wald

Dear Mama and Papa,

I have written to you twice already to say I had a good trip and that the country is very beautiful and that the family are nice to me. But you say I should tell you more, particularly how I find the place and the people. Well, Mama, you know what it’s like, though you were here a long time ago, so I shall describe it as best I can for Papa’s sake, and for you in case you’ve forgotten some of it.

You said the house was a castle, and it’s called Schloss, but I don’t think it’s at all like a castle. I thought a castle had towers, and a moat and drawbridge, and a great big hall. Wald is simply a house. It’s true it’s very big and full of long corridors, but it’s not high, only one storey, except for the attics, and there is just one tower, a square stumpy one with nothing but a clock in it just under the roof. The house is built round two courtyards, where there are big flat stones with grass growing between them; some of the upstairs rooms look out onto it and have balconies. The downstairs rooms are on three sides, and on the fourth there are large doors with storerooms behind them. Aunt Franzi says they used to be stables for horses, and a place for harnesses and horse-carriages, but now there are no horses and only two broken-down carriages. I like to go and explore there because there are all kinds of things, such as stone figures with no heads or with heads and no arms. The living rooms downstairs are rather dark because the walls are terribly thick and because of the trees outside. The windowsills are so deep you can sit in them with your legs drawn up, like on a table. I sit there sometimes – they are like hiding places, you can see and not be seen. From upstairs there’s a lovely view, especially from Aunt Franzi’s bedroom. You can look over the treetops down the hill and there’s the lake and the steep rocky mountains over on the other side of it. You can’t see the road along the lake, or the village under the hill, but you
can
see a loop of the road going up to the house, so you can see if anyone is coming.

My room is very nice though it doesn’t have a view. At first I was sorry but now I think I like it better that way. It’s upstairs along a stone passage and it looks out onto the small courtyard which has a tree in it and the stone basin of a fountain that doesn’t work. The sun shines in at the window in the morning and I can hear the birds singing. There isn’t a shower in the house, but there’s a bathroom along the passage with a tin bath painted white, although the water for it has to be heated in a kind of stove by lighting a wood fire underneath, so it’s quite a job to have a bath and we have to take it in turns. Uncle Poldo says that when the new electricity plant is built in the mountains he will have some real bathrooms put in, but then he also says he won’t have enough money for them anyhow and Aunt Franzi says she doesn’t mind, she’s so used to this and they may as well go on as they are.

I like Aunt Franzi best of all the people here. She’s easy and kind and, well – I suppose I should say motherly. Her hair is quite white, she doesn’t look at all like you and I think she must be a lot older, not just a few years like you said. Helen is rather prim and old-maidish, well of course she’s thirty, but Hanni is very jolly. She talks to me a lot and treats me like a real friend, though she’s twenty-two already. We go swimming together in the lake. Helen has a job in a sawmill a few miles away where, I think, she keeps accounts and writes letters, so she’s out most of the day and when she’s at home she does all Uncle Poldo’s letters for him. Uncle Poldo doesn’t seem to do
anything.
Hanni had a job in Vienna but she’s given it up and is spending the summer here. Then in the fall she’s going back there and will look for another job. In Vienna she lives with our Aunt Josephine, or Fini as she calls her. I’m to go there for the winter too. Aunt Franzi’s son, Franzl, hasn’t come yet, so I don’t know him. I don’t like Uncle Poldo much. He makes silly jokes and laughs at them himself but I don’t think they’re funny at all.

Lots of love to you both and Carl and Anna. I hope you think I’ve written enough now but I’ll finish by saying that I’m very glad I’ve come here, and you needn’t worry about me, ever, any more. What’s so nice here is that people are not in a hurry. Love again,

Marie-Theres.

Valery read both these letters with immense relief, and as for Peter they also gave him a good deal of satisfaction. Valery felt that a burden had been lifted off her shoulders: her sister had accepted Marie-Theres and found her ‘no trouble’, and Marie-Theres seemed to like her aunt very much. Altogether she seemed to like a great deal there, while at home she had never liked anything at all. For a few minutes Valery thought over that strange last sentence at the end of the girl’s letter, about people not being in a hurry. It gave her an inkling that Marie-Theres had been temperamentally out of tune with the busy atmosphere she herself found so exhilarating. To her mind, the girl had been simply and offensively lazy, but at Wald nobody was finding fault with her on that account and possibly they did not even notice it. Therefore, mercifully, all was well and, as Marie-Theres wrote, her mother need not worry about her any more. She overlooked the insignificant little word ‘ever’. Peter said that both letters were delightful and where was Miss Bates and her psychiatrist now, he would like to know! But he told Valery not to show her Marie-Theres’s letter.

Ten

That year there was a wonderful June in the lake and mountain country around Schloss Wald. Day after day the sun shone in a cloudless sky, night after night stars trembled clearly in the dark depths of the sky. Except for that one sustained effort of writing her long letter to her parents, Marie-Theres, or Resi as she was called at Wald, lived semi-unconsciously in a smooth alternating rhythm of waking and sleeping. She had never been so happy before. Like an insubstantial bubble, weightless and shimmering, she floated on the broad unruffled stream of life as it was lived at Wald.

How the hours passed she hardly knew. In the mornings she would lie in the grass where an angle of the castle wall made a square of shade for her head and her long bare legs were stretched out to the warm caress of the sun; lying with her eyes half-closed, she would watch the butterflies fluttering between the tall grasses, settling and spreading their wings on a patch of pink clover or balancing on the purple flower-head of a wild scabious. She loved this corner, but she had not mentioned it in her letter. Returning there again and again, it had begun to feel like her own, a safe and secret possession and refuge, hidden not by any visible fence or shelter but only by her own secret happiness.

Her Aunt Francisca was the only one who knew where she was, and seemed to understand what she felt about it without ever saying so. Then, later in the morning, ‘Resi my child, where are you?’ she would call, emerging from the wide shady archway in a faded blue linen dress with enormous pockets bulging with two pairs of secateurs, hanks of twine and other garden paraphernalia. ‘Come out of your hiding place, lazybones, and help me cut the flowers for the house.’

‘Yes, Aunt Franzi, I’m coming.’ Resi would scramble to her feet, slip on her sandals and follow her aunt down the path towards the little wooden gate into the kitchen garden. The path ran through a meadow of long grasses and wild flowers, which only when it had been scythed looked, in colour at least if not in texture, like a lawn. Her aunt walked slowly, remarking as Resi caught up with her, that she must really persuade Amberger that it was time to cut this hayfield. Her voice was gentle with a warm, intimate inflexion in it.

Resi took the Countess’s wicker basket from her arm and they went first to the flower garden. The flowers were not grown in borders for display and decoration around the house, but in a glorious jumble of shape and colour without plan or pattern, for cutting only. Here the Countess stood critically surveying her field of operation. There were the huge sunflowers and tall hollyhocks that would stand in the dark corners of the library; brilliant multi-coloured zinnias to fill a copper bowl on the hall table where the westering sun would catch them; and the more delicate petunias and stocks for the bedrooms. Sweet peas in pastel shades the Countess kept for her own boudoir, ‘you see how selfish I am’ she laughed, ‘I keep the best for myself – what would you like for your room today, Resi? The marigolds you had last time must be faded by now. It’s so nice to have flowers to look at while you’re dressing, I always think. We’ll give these pinks to Hanni, they’re her favourites. Where
is
she, by the way? Have you seen her this morning?’

‘Oh yes. I think she’s driven out with Uncle Poldo. But she said she would go swimming with me this afternoon.’

‘I hope you do go. The lake ought to be quite warm after the sun’s been on it all morning.’ And she added, ‘I’m afraid it’s very boring for you, poor child, with just us. But next month it will be different – more young people around.’

‘Oh no, Aunt Franzi, I’m not bored, and I don’t want anything to be different.’ The Countess straightened up from her flower cutting and gave her niece a long questioning look. No, the child was not being polite, she was simply and sincerely stating a fact. ‘I’m very happy,’ she murmured, and, unaccountably, her eyes filled with tears.

The Countess felt moved, she patted the girl’s arm, and bent again to finish cutting the flowers. Resi gathered them up and laid them carefully, stem by stem, in the wicker basket. But her enthusiasm for busying herself in the garden – her aunt’s main interest and occupation – never lasted very long. When the Countess went over to the vegetables, where the lettuces, beans, peas, carrots and cabbages were laid out in orderly rectangles, Resi drifted off to inspect the strawberry beds and the currant bushes, all carefully netted and inaccessible to the casual pilferer. She knew her aunt would now spend a long time conferring with Amberger, the old gardener, who would be hoeing between the bean rows, or talking to one of the women stooped over their weeding, and she found the local dialect difficult to understand. She also had no inclination to exert herself and would pretend to be out of earshot if her aunt called her, teasingly, to suggest that she help with the spinach for lunch or do some other useful task. Instead she would seem intent on examining the little green plums on the plum trees, as hard as stones and as green as olives, which would take many more weeks to ripen into deep blue, luscious fruit. And the Countess would turn with a tolerant little laugh to the village woman she happened to be speaking to and say, ‘the girl’s not used to our kind of life. But give her time and she’ll come round to it by and by.’