“Aspirin would be better. I’m sure your mother has some.”
“Undoubtedly, if she didn’t pop them all on the train. OK. Let’s look in on the old folks.”
When Mickey knocked on the door of his parents’ room a moment later, there was no answer. He waited, and was about to knock again, when his father opened the door just enough to let himself out, and then quietly locked it behind him.
“Your mother’s asleep. Probably better to let her rest while we have some lunch. What do you think?”
The question was rhetorical, although Mickey had no objection to raise. He would have been quite happy to let his mother sleep for the week.
He decided to adopt the gin option to relieve his headache, and secured a large one before he sat down again. The hotel restaurant seemed disappointingly familiar in its decor and menu; the Austrian influence could have been the work of any enterprising London manager pursuing a novel theme. That wasn’t all. He noticed, not for the first time, that he had automatically taken the right-hand seat of a pair, Elspeth the one on his left. Every meal was like getting married all over again, especially these occasional meals with only his father facing them, smiling, expectant and benignly in command, and so much more like an elderly vicar than the soldier he was supposed to be.
“I see they have Chablis. Elspeth I know you’re not very keen on wine. Mickey, will you have some, if I order it?”
“l will.”
Dimly he remembered learning that marriage was a sacrament. It was not only the Last Supper, then, that could be commemorated in food and drink, though this was probably some sort of heresy. Certainly his father would know.
“Do you two have anything planned for this afternoon?”
“Well. . .”
“Your mother mentioned something about having a general conference over the maps and guide books.”
“Actually, Elspeth’s found an exhibition she wants to see. It might be a good idea to get it out of the way today, with so much else to do.”
Elspeth turned to him, and beamed.
“Oh, you feeling better?”
“Quite restored, thank you.”
“Oh that’s great. Herbert it would be really good if you could come too. It’s the fiftieth anniversary of the time when you were here.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I mean. . .”
“Oh, the uprising? I’m sorry, I see what you mean now. Really? Well that would be interesting, certainly. It’s on for a while, is it?”
She nodded, with her mouth full of bread.
“Until May 1st.”
“Ha! Of course, it would be. Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t think I’m really up to it today. I must try and get there, though, before we leave. Ah. Have we decided?”
Mickey looked up at the waiter, and flinched. The man’s expression of supercilious contempt was probably misleading, but it was enough to cow an enfeebled tourist.
“Dad I’ll have whatever you’re having. I can’t make up my mind.”
“I only really want an omelette.”
“Fine.”
“Very well. . . Elspeth?”
“Do you have Wiener Schnitzel?”
Mickey closed his eyes, but strangely the waiter didn’t whistle up the entire hotel staff to jeer and take photographs, but merely thanked them and went away. Elspeth said;
“Can you tell us some more about it? I mean I know that was when your uncle died. . .”
“Oh yes, but that was nothing to do with it, really. I don’t know, Elspeth, the exhibition will tell you more than I could, I’m sure. Funnily enough, you see, although I was there. . . here, I didn’t have a clue what was going on. It seemed like the end of the world, that’s all I know.”
“Sure, but just, like, in general terms. . .”
“Oh. . . well there was the Left, and the Right, and a lot of paramilitary groups, some of them armed to the teeth. Austria was a real mess in all sorts of ways after the first war. When I was here the government was more or less a dictatorship, and it was having to lean pretty heavily on an outfit called the Heimwehr. Home Army. Austrian Nationalist. They really wore the trousers in the country, although Vienna was pretty solidly socialist. This was four years before the Nazis took over, remember. They wanted to keep Austria independent of Germany, and they hated the Italians like sin because of the pasting they took in the war . . . some of them wanted the Emperor back. Quite hopeless, of course.” He paused to smile his thanks at the waiter pouring the bottle of Chablis, then stared at his glass in silence. Eventually Mickey said;
“So what happened?”
“Well. . . the socialist lot, the Schutzbund, were getting to be too much of a nuisance, and there was some sort of raid in Linz, when they had all their guns taken away. There was a lot of commotion here, as well, demonstrations, people leaving parcel bombs. Anyway, they organised a general strike here, and the government decided to clobber them once and for all. There was some street fighting, artillery fire, bit of house-to-house. It was a foregone conclusion, I’m afraid. A few people were shot, a lot more were jugged, and it was all over. After that it was the Nazis who caused all the trouble. But I was out of it by then.”
He started to work on the omelette that had just arrived, then looked up, towards Elspeth, unmistakeably on the point of asking her about her Wiener Schnitzel to change the subject. Quickly Mickey said;
“But Dad, where were you when this was going on?”
“Me? Uh, I was . . . I was here and there, you know. Not now, please, there’s a good chap. How’s your lunch, Elspeth?”
Mickey sat back with a jolt, shocked dumb. His father had always had a way of making good stories uninteresting, but it wasn’t like him to clam up altogether. This was a puzzle. Mickey looked past his wife, out of the wide window at her side, to the grey roofs and the traffic, and the soft outline of distant trees beyond. The same city . . . Could a man who had talked freely of the butchery of war really be silenced by something that had happened in this gentle, tiny place? There would have to be more to it than that.
“Dad? What was that phone call about this morning?”
“Oh. That was the lawyer bloke, Gruber. Apparently we are to have a distinguished guest tomorrow morning. Bit of extra colour for you, Elspeth.”
“Oh really? You mean someone else is going to be there, when they open up your uncle’s stuff?”
“That’s right. Some chap who’s fairly high up in the government service, something to do with the U.N., asked if he could come along.”
“That’s a bit thick, isn’t it?” said Mickey.
“Do
