Elspeth took hold of her husband’s hand. She was concerned about him now, for she realised that she had given him a nasty shock by drawing his attention to something whose discovery had been, for her, a source of pride. Nevertheless she made a mental note to get in touch with the organisers, with a view to securing a copy of that photograph.
Herbert had been so helpful and encouraging, he would surely not want her to pass up the chance of so valuable an illustration for her book. Once he was safely home again in England, it would have lost much of its power to distress him; for she was not entirely blind to its significance. At first the picture had conveyed to her only the fact of Herbert’s attendance at a small-scale fracas in the snow. But then, as she studied it more closely, she had noticed that there was something unusual, something disturbing, that could only be suggested by the poor definition of grey and black. There was something odd in the face, but she had despaired of pinning it down until she looked away, and found that oddness reproduced point for point, with perfect clarity, in Mickey’s own face. Then it had made sense.
As they sat together on the clean, hard seats of the tram that took them back into the centre of the city, Elspeth quietly gave thanks for the keen eye that had brought them to the event, and picked out Herbert’s face in all that vagueness of old newsprint. Elspeth honey, you have the eye of a great journalist. Pulitzer here we come. She had enjoyed the afternoon anyway, even though Mickey might be upset for a while. Seeing how people lived all those years ago, the clothes, the hairstyles, all this had been thrilling as well as informative, and a wonderful aid to the imagination; while the legendary Europe of the dictators, with its fancy uniforms and chanting crowds, sang and marched vividly in her mind as never before. It was good that people could make the effort to put on a show like that. It really brought history to life.
7
Coffee had arrived and was being poured before Frances realised that she had been talking, almost without interruption, all the way through dinner. The children were definitely subdued. It was normal, of course, for Herbert to defer to her conversational powers in any company. There were husbands who dominated their wives, and there were husbands who accepted the duty of the female to entertain, and Herbert was one of the latter. Mickey could be sulky, true, but Elspeth? In the few months for which Elspeth had been part of the family she had only ever paused from being garrulous to be irritatingly reverential. There was certainly something amiss. They had probably had a row. With dampened enthusiasm brought on by the sense that her remarks about the city of Vienna had not, after all, been uppermost in everyone’s thoughts, she went on;
“So I thought we might try and get into one of the rehearsals at the Riding School, and then spend the rest of the morning in the Hofburg. In the afternoon I want to take a fiaker round the city. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
Here Mickey, who had been nodding vacantly over the sugar bowl, came to life for a moment.
“Fiaker? The pony and tourist-trap? Mother you can’t be serious. I saw it in a leaflet. They charge the earth, for what it is.”
“Well I don’t care, not this once. You don’t have to come with me. I think it will be fun.”
Mickey shrugged and looked down at his cup.
“OK,” he said.
Frances stared at him, aghast. She had gone some way towards constructing a moving defence of her tastes and rights against the snobbery of her son, and it was not usual for her to be left with a superfluity of words when they disagreed. She sat back, and surveyed the table with a quite thrilling sensation of command.
“Well. I must say, you two are hardly being the life and soul. What did you do this afternoon?”
Herbert looked up and said;
“Ah, you went to that exhibition, didn’t you? How was it? Worth seeing?”
“No,” they said, and looked at one another. Herbert and Frances, also, exchanged a glance. Mickey said;
“Not really. It was all rather amateur, in fact. All literary ephemera and fancy graphics, not terribly informative. You know the kind of thing. Miles out of the way, as well.”
“And it was all in German,” said Elspeth.
“Oh, well perhaps I should go back there with you, and take you through it. You might have missed a lot.”
“Oh Herbert . . . I mean, that’s really sweet of you and everything, but I really don’t think it’s worth your while. And there’s so much else to see, and Frances seems to have the time pretty well planned out. I think your afternoon was more useful than ours,” she added, and gave Frances her best smile.
“Well, the offer stands,” said Herbert, “just in case you don’t want to take the fiaker. Of course I haven’t used my German for ages. Probably very rusty. It’s odd. When I was here first I was in your position, hardly spoke a word. Then—Have I told you this?—when I started to learn, after I joined the regiment, they found I’d picked up this extraordinary Viennese accent. It had just stuck, somehow. That’s why I got dropped into Berlin, you know, in the middle of it all. They thought I could pass myself off as an Austrian. It worked, as well. Of course I could never have pulled it off here.”
Elspeth said;
“You must tell me some more about Berlin, when we have the time. It sounded really dangerous.”
“Oh, it was. The devil of it was, now I remember, I kept running into real Austrians. Had to pretend I had flu all the time, to cover up the voice. I was faking a bad leg, anyway, because there just weren’t any healthy young men wandering around Berlin in civvies, not by then. I must have looked as if I was at death’s door all the time I was there.”
“Dad, you’re going to keep Elspeth in good copy until she retires. I think you’re the only reason she married me.”
“Well honey, your father has had the most fascinating life. And you know, it brings you so much closer to things? To actually talk to someone who was there, it’s just amazing. That exhibit was a real waste of time.”
“Oh, yes. A complete waste of time. Definitely.”
“Well, I’m sorry it was such a disappointment for you. I’m sure something quite impressive could have been made of that business, with a little imagination. I would have been quite interested. Still. . .”
Herbert smiled again, and let his eyes rest on his son. Frances was right. They did seem rather tense. Clearly, someone had a problem. Could he help? He decided it would do no harm to try. After all, if there was anything he could do, he would be glad of the distraction, just now. “You know you two do seem to be rather down in the dumps this evening. Anything wrong?”
With visible effort, Elspeth dragged up another of those smiles, and said;
“No, Herbert, there’s nothing wrong. It’s just the journey, I guess. I wish I’d taken a nap, like you. I’m really bushed.”
“Oh dear. Well, so much for the weaker sex. Do you think your husband might be capable of coming out to drink some beer?”
As he had hoped, Mickey instantly looked up, smiling and grateful.
“I think I could manage that,” he said. “We haven’t been out together for a while, have we? Do you mind, Pet?”
“You
