The Tin Princess, Page 25

  "But only for an hour," she said. "You must not move. You must not become agitated. You must rest."

  Adelaide frowned, but they'd been good to her here, and in any case she hadn't got the energy to argue. The nurse helped her sit up and arranged the nightgown around her shoulders before leaving quietly.

  The bed faced long windows that could open in fine weather on to a balcony overlooking the lake. Adelaide wasn't susceptible to the beauty of scenery, or she hadn't been, but in the three days she'd been lying in front of that view she had come to find the changes in the light and the weather almost as fascinating as diplomacy, and to reflect that there were compensations for stillness. A distant low hoot told her to look leftwards, and she saw the lights of the last steamer leaving the pier to ply its course across the darkened water.

  "Adelaide?"

  It could only be Jim. She felt her heart quickening, and turned her head to see him. His Malacca cane, his silk cravat, his tender, green, ironical eyes...

  "My word," she said. "Neat, but not gaudy -"

  "As the monkey said when he painted his bottom pink -"

  "And tied up his tail with pea-green. Oh, Jim, I love you!"

  "I'm glad to hear it. I've come for a kiss."

  He leant over; she reached up. They were both too sore for the kiss to last long, but there'd be plenty of time for more; and each of them had the same impression, as if they were sharing thoughts for a moment: that a prison wall had melted away to reveal an open landscape, that fetters had fallen from them, that there would be no pursuit. They were free.

  "Come and sit beside me," she said.

  "I don't think I could swing me legs up. We've got a fair bit of mending to do, both of us."

  He pulled a chair to the bedside, with some effort, and sat holding her hand.

  "I've got no money, Jim. I can't afford to pay for this. I don't know what's going to happen when--"

  "I have. Stop fussing."

  "How'd you get it? Are you rich?"

  "Gambling, mainly. And a bit of writing, and the detective lark brings in a few quid. You'd be surprised. There's enough to pay for as long as it takes us to get well, anyway. Then I can earn some more. I'll need to if we're going to get married."

  "Are we? When did we decide that?"

  "In the railway carriage. You're not going to change your mind, it's not allowed."

  "All right."

  She sat placidly, with happiness pulsing along her veins. The steamer's lights moved slowly away towards Friedrichshafen on the German shore.

  "Jim," she said, "I need you to tell me this, now. Tell me honestly. I'd ask Becky as well. And in fact I will ask her. I have been a queen, haven't I? It was true?"

  "Yes."

  "And I did it well?"

  "You were the best ruler, king or queen, that they could ever've found. You were magnificent."

  "Right. I thought I was, but... Now then, d'you think I ought to go back and fight? Or be a queen in exile? Or have I finished now?"

  "D'you remember anything about the fight at Wendelstein?"

  "I remember the cold. And I had snow in me boots. And fixing the flag up in that pile of stones... And the Corporal's plum brandy, bless him. And the poor old Count... And Otto turning up out of the blizzard. I thought he was a ghost. He called me cousin, didn't he?"

  "That's right. D'you remember being shot?"

  "No. Just a huge bang, and everything vanished."

  "Well, you fell one way, and I caught you, and the flag fell the other way. You were holding it up. When you let go of it, Otto caught it. By God, he's a giant, that man. He was waving it around his head like a handkerchief, the last thing I saw."

  "So he's the Adlertrager!"

  "Looks like it."

  "And I'm not any more... I'm free. I'm free. Oh, thank God for that!"

  "Didn't you like being Queen, then?"

  "I loved being able to make things happen... Getting all those diplomats to agree about the treaty. Oh, I adored that, Jim. It was the best job in the world. But... All that ceremony. Stifling. I don't think I could've stuck that for long."

  She smiled.

  "What's the grin for?"

  "When I was a little girl, at Burton Street with Miss Lockhart and you and Mr Garland, I remember the day Mrs Holland came and snatched me. I'd been for a walk with old Trembler Molloy and he took me to see Buckingham Palace. He said we was going to call on the Queen and have a cup of tea, and I believed him. But when we got there the flag, you know, the Royal Standard, it wasn't flying. He said, 'Gorblimey, she must be away for the weekend. Just like her.' And when I was Queen, I thought it'd be a real lark one day to go and call at Buckingham Palace. Only properly this time. Red carpet, guard of honour, the whole boiling. But now I don't suppose I ever will."

  "You'd have a miserable time if you did. She's a glum old besom, from what I've heard. I'd sooner have a smoke and a yarn with the Prince of Wales."

  "Yeah! He'd like Andersbad, wouldn't he?"

  "They'd need to spruce up the Casino first."

  "All right. We'll do that... No, we won't, will we? It's all over. Jim, I saw the paper today. I made the nurse bring me one, and the crafty scheming minx brought me a German one, only I fooled her. I can read German better'n English. I saw what they're saying about me."

  "Yeah, but it's just lies. Everybody knows that."

  "Everybody who was there knows that. But to all the other people in the world, I'm just the Cockney Queen, a bleeding rorter..."

  "Doing the flimflam."

  "Working the pigeon-drop, yeah, all those things. Just a cheap con-girl. I gotta be careful, Jim, else I'll get angry. I can feel me heart beating."

  Ignoring his own injuries, Jim sat up on the bed beside her and held her in his left arm, laying his right hand on the fragile breast where that heart was beating. He could feel it, like a bird in a cage.

  "That's better," she said.

  "I've got a scheme for sorting out the truth of it," he said after a minute.

  "What?"

  "I'll write a book. Not a shocker nor a blood; a serious, proper, historical, scholarly book - about the talks and the treaty. I'll put down everything you can tell me and everything Becky can remember, and I'll go to Vienna and talk to the Austrian side, and I'll put it all down in black and white. Then I'll write how you were betrayed and exactly what happened to the flag. It'll help Otto, too. It'll back his claim to the throne - show how the succession really did pass to him."

  She rested against him silently. Her breathing became slower, more regular, and when he looked down he saw that her eyes were closed. He marvelled at the great sweep of the dark lashes, the way they lay like artist's brushes tipped with sable against the silk-pink flush of her cheeks. Her thick fragrant hair moved slightly as he breathed, and for the moment, he thought, that was enough; to sit and hold her like this was quite enough. Presently, he fell asleep too.

  Downstairs, the physicians were glancing at their notes before the evening round; the cooks were mixing their sauces and rolling out their pastries and chopping their vegetables; the musicians were beginning to arrive for the evening concert in the Trinkhalle; the pool attendants, the steam-bath nurses, the masseurs were helping out the last of their patients for the day.

  The electric lights were switched on around the ice-rink, and men with brooms were sweeping the ice for the skaters who would arrive later in the evening, gliding rhythmically up and down, leaving their breath in little puffs of steam behind them.

  The Inspector of Water Quality had just completed his routine analysis, and was closing the laboratory for the night. Below ground, in the pump-room, the engineers were turning the wheels which led the continuous flow of the water from the spring into the hygienic tanks of the Bottling Plant, which would fill overnight ready for the morning shift.

  In the ticket-office of the Steamer Company, they were about to lock up for the night, and the ticket-collector, who'd been dealing with a problem, was glad to hand
it over to the Chief Clerk.

  "She came across from Friedrichshafen and says she lost her ticket. Well, I can't take responsibility for her. I says she's got to pay, that's the regulations, but she says she's already paid over the other side. So I says--"

  "All right, all right. Where is she?"

  The ticket-collector nodded towards the waiting-room, where the problem was sitting: an intense, shabbily dressed woman in early middle age, dark-eyed, dark-complexioned, holding a basket on her lap. She might have been Italian or Spanish, perhaps.

  "See, the thing is," went on the ticket-collector confidentially, "I don't think she's got any money. I think she's trying it on. If you ask me--"

  "I don't want to ask you," said the Chief Clerk, and opened the door of the waiting-room. "Madam, we're about to close for the night. I understand you've lost your ticket."

  The woman seemed to make an effort to bring her attention away from something more interesting elsewhere. A strange expression she had, too; distracted; torn between this world and another.

  "Yes?"

  She stood up and waited for the Chief Clerk to say something else.

  "Yes, well, there's a form you could fill in..." He hesitated. The more he looked at her, the odder she seemed: almost certainly mad, now he had a close look. And time was pressing, and he was due to play the trombone that evening with the Kreuzlingen Silver Band, and... "Oh, never mind," he said. "I'm sure it won't matter. Come on, I'll see you out."

  As he held the door for her he noticed that she hadn't washed for some time, and that she was carrying on a silent, and animated, conversation with herself. There was nothing in her basket but a pair of long, sharp scissors.

  "Mad," he said to the ticket-collector as they watched her cross the road, check a signpost, and climb the hill towards the Clinic. "No point in wasting time arguing with a crack-brain. Come on, let's lock up."

  Becky was taking a turn up and down the colonnade with Mrs Goldberg, watching the men sweep the ice.

  "How are you mending?" Sally asked.

  "It's still painful. Apparently there's nothing they can do for broken ribs except let them mend on their own. But at least I haven't got pneumonia, which sometimes happens. I must be as strong as a horse. I just feel so ... baffled ... frustrated..."

  "I can imagine."

  "You know, before all this began I used to read the penny dreadfuls Mama illustrated, and pretend to be Deadwood Dick or Jack Harkaway, fighting robbers and capturing pirates. I wanted so much to do active things, daring things. And I have, now. I've taken part in important diplomatic negotiations and escaped from a castle and fought a battle... I've fired a pistol and I think I've even killed someone, and I ... I don't think anyone could have a more exciting six months than I've just had. And do you know what I feel?"

  "Hollow."

  "Exactly! Empty, drained, exhausted. It's all been for nothing. The betrayal... Adelaide worked so hard for so long, and she was nearly there... And all the time - there was someone working away to undermine it. Just toying with her! Toying with the whole country - even toying with Baron Godel. And we don't even know who it was."

  "It was a man called Bleichroder," Mrs Goldberg said.

  Becky stared at her. "Who's he? And how do you know?"

  "He's Prince Bismarck's banker. Dan, my husband, has been compiling a dossier for a long time now; Bleichroder's a sort of spy, a secret agent, a... What's the Yiddish word? A macher. A fixer. Apparently he's a courteous old gentleman, very nearly blind; Jewish, so he's not really accepted by German society, especially the stuffy people around the Court; but he's been looking after Bismarck's affairs for years. This is just the sort of enterprise he's good at. As soon as Dan heard about it he guessed it was Bleichroder's doing. It seems that Bismarck's engaged in a struggle with the Reichstag, the German Parliament, and overturning the treaty was part of his plan to outflank them. But we saw it too late to warn you, of course. There'd been nothing in the American papers."

  Becky dashed an angry tear from her eye. "So everything we went through was part of something else we didn't know about, organized hundreds of miles away... Oh, that's too cruel. The country had no chance!"

  "You and Adelaide and Jim gave it the best chance it could have had. You did everything that courage and wit and imagination could, but force wins. Enough force always does."

  "For ever? There's no hope for anything except force?"

  "Not for ever. For a while. Then cracks appear, and the centre loses its grip, and people remember what they once were and feel that they want to take charge of their own destiny again. Life's not static, you see, Becky. Life's dynamic. Everything changes. That's the beauty of it..."

  They stopped at the end of the colonnade. The men on the ice gave a final flourish with their brooms and stepped crabwise on to the wooden floor at the side.

  "What's Adelaide going to do?" Sally went on. "I met the ex-Queen of Sardinia once. She led a horrid life. Dwelling on the past, getting involved in hopeless plots to regain the throne, surrounded by obsessed exiles in shabby clothes, growing older and older and more bitter and never having a real life at all. I hope Adelaide doesn't do that."

  "I think I know what she might do," Becky said. "She doesn't know it yet, and I haven't mentioned it to her. But on the first morning of the talks, when she went into the Council Chamber, she looked just like an actress taking the stage. She commanded their attention, and she held them, and she's got such a quick mind... She's a star. I wouldn't be at all surprised if she went into the theatre."

  "What a good idea! And Jim can write plays for her. And you're going to university. There are so many things to be done, Becky, worthwhile things... Look, they're setting out the chairs for the orchestra. Shall we go and dress for dinner?"

  Becky felt invigorated by her talk with Mrs Goldberg. She was so much the kind of woman Becky wanted to be; she showed it was possible; she brought hope with her, and a sense of wide, continuing, bustling life. When she'd heard what Jim had done with the jersey she'd knitted, she laughed with pure happiness, as if there were no final dark, as if the whole universe were a joyful play of light.

  Becky left the colonnade and made her way slowly up to her room, where Mama was resting. Soon they'd be sitting around a table in the grill-room, and perhaps Jim would join them. In a day or two Adelaide would be able to get up. She'd be frail for a long time; no skating yet for her, or for Becky, who longed to skim over the ice - longed to try, anyway.

  Daydreaming, she turned into the long corridor, so quiet and clinical, at the end of which her room stood, three doors away from Adelaide's. As she passed the door to the service stairs, a nurse came out with an armful of blankets and hurried ahead of her, and perhaps it was because Becky was relaxed and calm, or perhaps it was because Jim's eye for character had brought Carmen Ruiz vividly to life when he'd described her, or perhaps it was simply luck - but some fluke of perception drew Becky's attention to the nurse now several yards in front of her: her shoes.

  They were worn down and filthy!

  And in this temple of hygiene... And surely her cap was askew, as if she'd just...

  Becky caught her breath and tried to shout: "Hilfe! Zu Hilfe!"

  But her painful ribs wouldn't let her, and only a hoarse cry came out. The nurse heard it, turned in a flash, dropped the blankets, and flew at her like an animal. Becky saw scissors - blades held high - saw a round mouth screechingly red, white teeth, and felt for the handle of the nearest door, anywhere, safety, hide -

  She fell through into a dark room full of the smell of carbolic acid. Sprawling on the shiny floor, she tried to scramble away from the woman, who, off balance herself at the sudden turn, fell across her legs and immediately brought the scissors up high and stabbed down, down, down. Becky twisted and writhed away, and felt the stabbing points pin her skirt to the floor. She grabbed the woman's hair - matted, greasy; the nurse's cap came off at once - and was flung this way and that, like a rider on a wild horse, but she clu
ng and clung until she felt the scissors come out of the floor, and then she grabbed the edge of the laboratory bench above her and pulled herself up to a silent shriek from her damaged ribs...

  But the bench wasn't bolted to the floor. It tipped, something slid, something spilled and fell and smashed, and then the heavy edge swung down and down in front of her and Becky could see it was going to break her legs, and then Carmen Ruiz lunged forward with those terrible scissors once again -

  The edge of the bench caught the woman behind the neck like a guillotine. It smashed her down in a moment. The scissors stopped an inch from Becky's throat, and then there was silence, apart from the drip of the spilled liquid.

  Becky couldn't move.

  Her legs were pinned beneath the inert weight of the woman's body. Carmen's head lay in her lap, at such a clumsy angle that Becky knew she was dead, and across the woman's neck lay the edge of the heavy oak bench. Waves of pain began to throb through Becky's chest, more powerful than ever before: she couldn't even find the breath to moan.

  Someone would come soon.

  Her left hand was pinned behind her, but her right was in her lap next to Carmen's cheek. It was wet; the woman's face was covered with tears. Automatically Becky tried to wipe them away.

  Oh, this pain! It was unreasonable... She drifted in and out of consciousness. It felt so like sleep, and she was so tired. Little dreams appeared, like the dissolving views of a magic-lantern show, pictures that brightened and faded and melted into one another... She imagined Carmen Ruiz entering the Clinic and searching for the nurses' cloakroom, finding a spare uniform, hastily disguising herself, checking the list of patients to see where to go. She saw Prince Leopold, stumbling through the empty corridors of the Palace, calling in one cold room after another for the servants who'd fled, the ghosts of his childhood. She saw the games she'd played with Adelaide, the tin princess, the dice and the counters and the chesspieces abandoned, gathering dust. She saw the shopkeepers of the Old City sweeping up the broken glass that littered the streets; and Countess Thalgau, dressed in black, her strong broad faced lined with sorrow, slowly packing away the Count's possessions; and the students of the Richterbund, gathering silently at the Cafe Florestan to wait for news of Karl and Gustav and the others who'd died. She imagined the German General - a Governor now, or Provincial Administrator, or whatever they'd call him; a shrewd, courteous, pitiless man, or so her dreaming mind pictured him - summoning officials to the Palace and apportioning responsibilities, dealing fairly with everyone under the new dispensation. She saw the station-master of the funicular railway, supervising a couple of labourers as they manipulated the great beam of wood out from the wheels of the carriage. She saw offices opening, clerks dipping their pens, waiters flicking snowy napkins at imagined crumbs, daughters lined up to kiss a fond father, coffee roasting, bread baking, beer foaming in earthen-ware mugs. She saw an empty flagpole; she saw no one look up at it; she saw new papers appearing at the news-stands, eagerly bought, cheerfully read.