Richard had looked past the woman into the bare, poorly furnished room. A man laid his newspaper aside and watched them keenly from where he sat. He said nothing, just sat and looked. Richard spoke, slurring his words as he had heard the Bavarians do. The man still sat; his eyes were impassive. He picked up his newspaper again.
“But my name is not Schulz,” he said, as Richard paused to look about him.
Richard’s eyes met those staring down at him from the large flag-draped photograph on the wall. For a moment, doubt halted the beat of his heart. He felt the sweat break in his palms… And then he was aware that he was still clutching on to the piece of paper in his jacket pocket. He pulled it out, and handed it to the man, still watching inscrutably.
The man glanced at it and threw it on the table.
“Who gave you this?”
“A man from Pertisau.”
“Was his name Gerold?”
“No. Mespelbrunn.”
“Where do you come from?”
“From over the mountains,” Richard said.
The man looked at him again, and then at Frances who had slumped into a chair. He nodded to the woman. She closed the door, and stood there, leaning against it.
“Sit down,” the man said to Richard. His voice was warm, almost friendly. His eyes were now alive, kindly. “Relax. Relax. No need to look so cold. Are you hungry?”
Richard nodded. The woman moved from the door where she had been standing and went into another room. It was probably the kitchen. Richard heard the sound of a pot being placed on a stove.
“Relax,” the man said again. “And how is our friend from Pertisau?”
“He is now well.”
“So, he was—ill? We thought so…we have not heard from him for a long time. Well, that’s good news. Good news. What about you? You said you wanted a room. Is there anything else?”
“The usual.”
“You are leaving our happy Fatherland?” The man’s voice was filled with heavy sarcasm as he looked up at the picture on the wall. “Well, it can be arranged. How are you travelling?”
“To Italy. Probably by train. And as quickly as we can.”
“Of course; that is understood,” Schulz said, and smiled. “You might go as Americans or English. You look very like them. Do you know the language at all?”
Richard shook his head—it certainly wouldn’t be safe to go as English.
“You’ll have to go as Germans, then. How would an engineer do? Or a schoolteacher? I’ll get you the right clothes. That will cost you extra, of course, but you’ll find it worth every pfennig. Every pfennig.”
“How much will it cost?”
“How much have you?”
Richard restrained a smile. After all, Schulz had been right that his help would be worth every pfennig.
“Only three hundred marks,” said Richard. “We can get extra tomorrow to cover the railway fares.”
Schulz seemed pleased with the directness of the answer. “Good,” he said. “Good. Three hundred marks will do.”
He rose from his chair and went over to Frances. He walked with a marked limp, but he held himself erect. Richard judged his age to be about forty. He was almost bald. His face and body had thickened with middle age. Frances, white and silent, looked up and saw the shrewd eyes behind the thick glasses, the kindly smile on the broad mouth.
His voice was gentler. “You look afraid of me. You must lose that afraid look. Sometimes people stay here for almost a week, until they lose it. You must look very happy and proud when you cross the frontier. You are the wife of an engineer, who is taking you for a holiday to Florence. But we must change your hair; it is too pretty. Lisa!”
The woman came back from the kitchen. She carried two bowls of steaming soup.
“Lisa, what colour would you make this hair? Black?”
“Not with these blue eyes. Brown is less noticeable.”
“Good. Make it brown, mouse-brown. We can begin tonight. That and the photographs. Then tomorrow we can get the clothes, and the papers. And you will be all ready to leave tomorrow night. Is that quick enough for you? Now, eat up. Eat up.”
The warm bowl of soup brought life back to Frances’ hands. She held her fingers round it, and felt the warmth steal into them. It was almost as good as eating. She felt warm, warm and safe. She looked at the clock on the table. It was almost midnight. She felt warm and safe, safe for the first time in six hours.
The man was watching her curiously. “Eat up,” he said gently. “That’s good, isn’t it?” It was the most wonderful soup she had ever tasted.
The man was speaking to Richard. “You’ve had a difficult time; you’ve come far, today?”
“Yes, we’ve come far.”
“You will be able to travel tomorrow?” Schulz was looking doubtful.
Richard, remembering Frances’ resilience, smiled. “Oh, yes, we shall be all right. We recover quickly. We can keep going until we reach Italy. And then…well, it won’t matter then anyway.”
“When you first spoke of Italy, I thought I might advise you to try the mountains. They would be safer. But I think now that you should stick to your plan about the train. We shall do our best to make the train safe for you. Ready, Lisa? Good. Good.”
Richard had finished eating, and the man began to cut his hair. On the table the woman had arranged basins and some bottles and a saucer. Frances felt her eyes begin to close. Schulz waved his scissors towards her.
“If we can get her into that chair at the table before she falls asleep, Lisa can manage,” he said. “We’ll soon have her upstairs in bed.”
Frances was helped into the other chair. I’m being very silly, she thought, but the trouble is that my eyelids are too heavy. She stretched her head back against the neck rest on the chair. It was hideously uncomfortable, but the eyelids won the struggle. She had dim sensations of the woman’s fingers working with her hair, of water trickling across her face.
When she was awakened, she saw Lisa looking at her with almost a smile. It was enough to warn Frances of what she might see in the hand mirror which was held out to her. That look which only one woman can give another, that look of pity and amusement combined, roused Frances as no dash of cold water could have done. She took the mirror. Her hair was as bad as she had suspected; dull brown, lifeless, with the thickness at the back pinned tightly into a mean little knot. Frances stared in a kind of horrid fascination. Of course it would have had to be her hair, she thought, just because it had been her secret pride.
Richard was grinning at her. Then she saw that he was including himself in that grin. His hair had been clipped until it bristled. There was a funny look at the back of his neck. She began to laugh. She had the pleasure of seeing the half smile on Lisa’s face give way to a look of surprise.
The man looked up from arranging a large box camera on some books on the table. He smiled encouragingly.
“That’s better,” he said. “Pretty ones find it harder to escape. Now, if you’ll sit over here, we’ll soon be finished, and you can go to a real bed.”
The woman was clearing the table of its litter of basins and towels and hand dryer. She seemed to accept all this madness as a natural way of spending one’s night.
Richard was being photographed now. He bulged his eyes, tilted his chin truculently, and looked on the point of uttering a loud “Heil!”
“Good,” said Schulz, “good.”
It was Frances’ turn. She remembered to stare stolidly in front of her and part her lips slightly. We are all quite mad, she thought, or perhaps I am really asleep and dreaming. Sleep. sleep…it had a pleasant sound.
Schulz nodded approvingly. “That’s what we want,” he said. “That’s what we want.”
They followed the woman up a dark staircase to a room which was cold and shadowy in the meagre candle-light Frances felt Richard draw off her clothes: she awakened slightly as she heard him swear when his fingers stuck on some fastening on the strange dress. Then the
cool rough sheets slid round her.
She could not have risen if six storm troopers had come thundering up the stairs.
18
FRANCES IS FRANCES
Frances awoke with a feeling of compulsion. She had something to do. She lay in the strange bed and looked round the room for the first time. Slowly she began to remember what had happened last night. Her hand went to her hair; it felt dry and coarse. So it hadn’t been a dream… And there was Richard, with his hair cropped like that of a child who has had fever. He was still asleep; his arms were thrown above his head; his face was relaxed: She looked at the cracked ceiling, at the limp curtains drawn over the window. Why had she awakened, what was it that had to be done?
Frances felt herself slipping into sleep again, and caught herself just in time. There was something she had to do. Her eyes fell on her handbag which Richard must have brought upstairs last night and thrown on to the rickety little table under the fly-spotted mirror. That was it, of course. The money. A sudden fear that she was already too late to meet Bob Thornley urged her quickly from the warmth of her bed. After the first dizziness—she had probably moved too quickly—she felt all right. Her body had recovered surprisingly from yesterday’s punishment; even the shoulder was healing nicely.
Richard’s watch told her she had ample time. She washed and dressed quietly. She searched in her handbag, and powdered her face and lips so that her natural colour was hidden. Then she removed all traces of powder with her handkerchief. With the dull-brown hair and the subdued face there was quite a difference. She could do nothing about her eyes, though. They were larger and bluer than ever. However, unless she met someone who really knew her there was little chance of her being identified with the fair-haired English girl whose description was no doubt being circulated. She combed her hair with a centre parting, pinning the ends tightly into a knot at the back as the woman had done last night. Before she left the room she found Richard’s Baedeker in his jacket pocket and verified from its Innsbruck map the best way to reach the Franciscan Church. At the door of the room, she stopped. Some small change might be useful. With a suspicion of a smile she searched Richard’s pockets, and took half of what was left. It would be just enough to pay for a ride in a tramcar and the admission to the church, if there was one. She kissed Richard lightly. He didn’t even stir. She closed the door gently and went quietly downstairs.
Lisa was in the sitting-room. She seemed surprised.
“I thought you would sleep all morning.”
“I must go out.”
The woman shook her head disapprovingly.
“I must get money for the journey.”
The woman accepted that. “You had better have some coffee, first,” she said. “I’ve just had a cup. I’ll get one for you.” She went into the kitchen.
Frances waited, and looked at the little room, and the corner of the badly kept garden at the back of the house which she could just see from her seat at the table. Lisa was not unkind, but there was a certain business-like attitude which paralysed any conversation. Frances was glad of that; she was somewhat self-conscious about her Bavarian accent. She drank the coffee, and looked at the patch of garden. She felt a kind of excitement inside her. She would have liked to have given a war whoop— but Lisa was there. Her matter-of-fact kind of sanity smothered Frances’ impulse, and she contented herself with looking at the garden and having another cup of coffee. She rose to leave.
“Not that way,” said the woman. “Go out by this door: across the yard. Keep near the wall, under the trellis, and it will shelter you. Enter the door at the other end of the path. Walk through that house, and you’ll find yourself in a shoemaker’s shop. Just say as you pass that Lisa sent you. You’ll be all right.”
“Would you tell my husband that I’ll be back about twelve?”
The woman nodded, and threw a Loden cape lightly round Frances’ shoulders. “Leave this in the shop,” she said. She didn’t wait for Frances to thank her. She was already carrying the coffee cups into the kitchen. As she turned to push the door open with her hip bone, she smiled—a friendly, encouraging smile. And then the kitchen door closed behind her. Frances turned towards the door in the living-room which she had thought was a cupboard door. It led on to a narrow paved path beside a high wall, from which a coarse green climbing plant stretched greedily over the trellis above her head. In front of her were the back of the houses on the next street.
Everything happened as Lisa had said it would. The cobbler in the front shop scarcely paused in his work as Frances slid the cape on to the counter. He didn’t seem to hear her words. Outside in the street, there was the usual activity of a respectable working-class neighbourhood. Housewives carried shopping bags made of knotted string. Children were grouped round doorways. Boys cycled wildly. Some of them wore a kind of uniform, others the usual short leather breeches and white stockings. She walked with increasing confidence to the end of the street. If she followed the tramlines from there, she would reach Museum-Strasse, and then it would be easy to find the church. It was the long, but the safe, way and she had plenty of time.
The walk was not unpleasant. In the busier streets she felt still safer. She was just another girl dressed in another dirndl. At the corner of the narrow street which led to the square on which the church stood, the traffic was heavy. Frances tried to avoid two women whose breadth filled the narrow pavement. She was swept against the window of a shop. Climbing boots, sports things, she noticed, and then, with her eyes still fixed on the window, she collided with a girl coming out of the shop’s doorway. She was a tall, blonde girl, her arms filled with parcels.
Frances halted in amazement, and then stepped aside with an apology. The girl remained standing, her eyes on Frances’ face, but Frances hurried on. It was Anni, looking just as she had looked in their garden at Oxford on her last night there.
“I looked at her too directly. She half recognised my eyes, or perhaps she saw that I knew her,” Frances thought. She glanced at her reflection in another window. She couldn’t see much resemblance to herself, but she would have to watch her eyes, and her way of walking too. It was much too smooth. She would have to set her heels more firmly on the ground, in a kind of jaunty march. As she turned the corner to enter the church, she looked back over her shoulder. Anni was still there, and, as Frances looked, she made up her mind and started towards the church. Frances already regretted that afterlook. What a fool she was. She quickened her pace and hurried up the steps of the building.
Inside there was the usual crowd of Saturday-morning visitors. She paid the admission to a man with heavily pouched eyes and a drooping moustache. At least that would prevent Anni from following her inside the church: she had never spent a penny more than she could help in Oxford. Perhaps Anni was already thinking she had been mistaken.
In the nave where the Maximilian monument was she saw Thornley. He was standing, appropriately enough, in front of King Arthur’s statue, with a catalogue in his hands. It was good to see him again, looking so untroubled, so completely unconscious of everything. She wandered round the statues as the other visitors did. She didn’t look at him as she rudely passed in front of him to reach Theodoric the Terrific, King of the Ostrogoths. When she had admired sufficiently she walked slowly towards the little chapel. Thornley was seated in the shadows. As she moved slowly towards him, he rose, and they passed each other without a glance.
The catalogue had been left on a chair. She sat down beside it, her wide skirts spreading over it. She waited while the other visitors came and went. Some sat down, some tiptoed about talking in penetrating whispers, others knelt. After long minutes she dared to move her fingers under cover of her skirt and feel for the small fat envelope inside the catalogue. Slowly, without any visible movement, her hand pulled it out and folded it into her palm. It was done. It was over.
She reached the street, and slipped the scarf off her head. As she tied it round her shoulders she slipped the envelope into the bodice of her
dress. Under the fringe of scarf it wouldn’t be noticed—and it felt safe. There was no sign of Bob. But there was Anni. She had got rid of her parcels, and had been sitting in the little square of trees opposite the church. She had seen Frances; she was almost running across the street. Frances bit her lip. There were two storm troopers standing in front of the church steps. If she avoided Anni, their attention would be attracted. There wasn’t any time, anyway. The men had already noticed Anni’s haste and were watching her with casual interest.
Frances made her voice enthusiastic. “Anni! I haven’t seen you for weeks! How are you?”
Anni looked at her in amazement; she was speechless. It was the accent which had dumbfounded her. It was no longer the carefully spoken German which she had heard in Oxford. Frances was glad of the silence. She began to walk along the pavement, her hand on Anni’s arm warning her with some pressure. They were passing the two troopers, whose interest had become more anatomical.
“How are your mother and father?”
“Quite well, gnä—” The pressure on Anni’s arm stopped her politeness.
“And your brothers?”
“Also well.”
“And your sister?”
“The same.”
They had passed the two men safely. Frances relaxed.
“Cheer up, Anni. You look so worried.”
Anni suddenly led her across the street towards the garden in the square. In the quietness there, she faced Frances.
“O gnädige Frau!” She looked as if she were going to cry.
“Cheer up, Anni. It’s all right. But don’t call me that.”