The Longest Winter Read online

  ‘Sophie?’ James was suddenly there, offering her his arm.

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ said Sophie in a rush of gratitude, and her entrance was buoyant and floating then.

  ‘You have an admirer,’ said James.

  ‘Oh, I have a hundred,’ she said, ‘but they come and they go. My poetry frightens them off.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t been frightened off,’ said James, escorting her to an arranged pattern of silver and gold chairs, ‘but then I still haven’t seen any of your poems.’

  ‘Are you an admirer, then?’ asked Sophie, her warm blood quickening to the sound of the music.

  ‘Just one of the hundred,’ said James. ‘May I mark your card?’

  Anne was dancing with Carl. Sophie engaged with James. He took her into the exhilaration of the dance. She melted into it. She felt warmly, sweetly alive. James was adept, easy to follow, sure in his guiding, but quite without the cloying familiarities of gallants like Captain Fabrovic. James, she thought, was really a pleasantly masculine man, with an even, engaging manner. He did not have up and down moods. He would suit someone like Anne very well indeed. Anne, she thought, had begun to look at him as if she realized this.

  ‘Sophie, aren’t you enjoying this?’ James’s voice came to her out of the clouds and the music.

  ‘Oh, yes, excessively.’ A little pink tinted her. ‘I was thinking, you see. I’m inclined to think very deeply when I’m dancing, I go off on sailing clouds and get swept through the skies. I take wing, but only when my partner is very accomplished. You are quite the most accomplished.’

  ‘Ride your clouds again, then,’ smiled James.

  She watched him dance the polka later with Anne. They flew as they captured the infectious rhythm of the Bohemian-inspired steps, Anne’s face alight with the joy of living, James in laughter.

  ‘Come on, Sophie,’ said Carl, ‘you’re hiding from me.’ He was always willing to dance with his sisters. He was extremely attached to both of them. Sophie he talked to, Anne he teased.

  ‘Look at Anne and James,’ said Sophie.

  Carl picked them out from the lines of adventurous dancers.

  ‘My word, that’s a dash they’re cutting,’ he said.

  ‘Carl,’ said Sophie, smiling very brightly, ‘do you think that Anne is—’

  ‘Falling for James? I don’t know. If she hasn’t confided in you, it can’t be on. Except that she’s in love with everybody, isn’t she? Come on, let’s polka, we can cut a dash as fresh as theirs.’

  Sophie granted a waltz to Captain Fabrovic later. He told her he would not be denied. He was as flamboyant a dancer as a gallant. She found him overpowering. She realized she liked cool-bodied men, modest men. There were some, she supposed. James was very cool. In every way. Pleasantly cool, but cool. Pressingly ardent at the end of the dance, holding her hand to his colourful chest, Captain Fabrovic implored her to view the night from the adjacent conservatory.

  ‘Naturally, I would love to,’ said Sophie, ‘but all those potted plants, I find them quite eerie at night. They close in on one. I am, in fact, allergic to potted-plant jungles when the sun goes down.’

  ‘My heavenly baroness, my allergic Sophie,’ he said, ‘there’s a door that leads to nothing but pure night air, then. Allow me to breathe it with you.’

  ‘Will you please give me back my hand?’ said Sophie. She was not embarrassed, although people were looking and smiling at Captain Fabrovic’s extravagant possession of her gloved hand. She held her ground.

  ‘Into the night, shall we?’ he said, his white teeth brilliant beneath his neat black moustache.

  ‘Captain Fabrovic—’

  ‘Sophie, may I claim you? You’ll forgive me, Herr Captain?’ It was James, and Sophie experienced a little sensation of simple pleasure at his second timely arrival of the evening. It occurred to her that it meant he was keeping an eye on her. Did it also mean that perhaps he was a little jealous? He did not look so. He was smiling. Captain Fabrovic released her.

  ‘Thank you, James,’ she said as he took her away, ‘I don’t mind him too much, and one doesn’t like to kick one’s admirers, even if there are a hundred of them, but he suffers from the effects of his exotic way of life and is inclined to treat one as a bloom to be worn in his buttonhole. He is quite beautiful, you see, and when he’s in company with a lady he regards her as an adornment of his beauty. Where are you taking me?’

  ‘To the buffet,’ said James, ‘for champagne and smoked salmon. You were saying?’

  ‘I was saying how glad I was to be rescued.’

  At the buffet Anne, who usually enjoyed the colour which officers’ uniforms brought to a ballroom, declared on this occasion that the brightly plumaged Captain Fabrovic was the first headless peacock she had ever seen. Carl roared with laughter. Sophie shook her finger at Anne. And Anne, in her turquoise gown, her enjoyment of life rich and uninhibited, was like summer coming to harvest in blue and gold.

  I saw a man upon a horse, one summer afternoon,

  He whistled as he rode his nag, a melancholy tune,

  He went along clip-clop clip-clop, I envied him his seat,

  A gentle joggle up and down, and slowly swinging feet.

  Down the winding lane he rode, the sun so warm and fine,

  And up above one heard a lark, and from the church a chime.

  I wondered why on such a day, with beauty all around,

  He did not whistle in a way to make a gayer sound,

  For in this age of melody one may pluck with ease

  Many sweet refrains of joy, and many songs that please.

  I spoke to him, he smiled at me, his face a cheerful brown,

  For though he whistled mournfully he did not wear a frown.

  ‘What a lovely day,’ I said, to make a friendly start,

  ‘So it is indeed,’ he said, ‘and one to cheer my heart.’

  So then I said if that was so, how strange it was to hear

  A tune that spoke of mournfulness, instead of joy and cheer.

  At which he laughed and smote his thigh, and said in kind reply

  That if it were a sorry tune he really knew not why,

  Only that he liked to hum or whistle on his way,

  It helped his horse and he himself to pass the time of day.

  ‘But why not whistle other songs, songs to make one glad,

  Why whistle only this, Mein Herr, so woeful and so sad?’

  He laughed again, quite full of mirth, then chuckled deep and low,

  ‘Because, my friend, quite truthfully, it’s the only song I know.’

  James smiled. He read the poem again. It tripped silently off his tongue. Sophie had given him several of her compositions to read, after all, handing them to him with a little dissertation in praise of the light fantasia of life, which may have sounded irrelevant but was designed, James felt, to take his mind off any suggestion that he needed to regard her work seriously.

  ‘James, what is so amusing?’ Baroness von Korvacs, venturing into the garden to write some letters, found him laughing. She liked the Anglo-Scot, she liked his agreeable way of letting life happen and his lack of fuss.

  ‘Baroness, this is far more than amusing,’ he said from his relaxed position on the grass. He held up a sheet of notepaper. ‘This is Sophie,’ he smiled, ‘this is a man on a horse.’

  The baroness, seeing a folder on the grass beside him, said, ‘You mean it’s one of Sophie’s poems.’

  ‘Have you seen it?’ he asked and passed it to her. She read it. She smiled.

  ‘What do you think of it?’ she said.

  ‘Tripping?’ suggested James.

  ‘Tripping?’ enquired the baroness, youthful in white silk.

  ‘The metre. In any event, it’s a poem, isn’t it? A summer poem.’

  ‘And what do you think of the others?’

  ‘They’re all poems,’ said James.

  ‘But good or very good? Sophie,’ said the baroness, ‘rarely shows her poetry
to anybody, she’s quite sensitive about it. Since she considers you an artist of talent she’ll want you to consider her at least a good poet.’

  ‘Listen,’ said James and read from another sheet.

  ‘I stood on the bridge and watched the river

  Which passed by

  As life does

  For life is never still. Is it?

  It is only a transient moment

  That turns tomorrow into yesterday

  Each second comes and is gone

  As soon as it arrives

  Even a year is a time that has gone

  And tomorrow is another year

  Full of many things unknown

  That a day later are forgotten.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the baroness as if in agreement with the thoughts Sophie had written down. ‘I always felt poetry had to rhyme but apparently it’s stylish today to write in split prose.’

  ‘I think it’s poetry,’ said James, ‘but I’m no expert. I only know what I like the sound of and I like the sound of these.’

  ‘James?’ Anne was calling. She came floating over the garden in a summer dress of apple green and a matching hat. She carried a closed parasol. Sophie, in cool loose-sleeved cream silk, followed on with her habitual unhurried elegance. The wide brim of her hat shaded her face. ‘James, what are you doing?’ said Anne. ‘Aren’t you ready?’

  ‘Ready? Oh, calamitous moment,’ said James guiltily.

  ‘Well,’ said Sophie, arriving with a whisper of silk, ‘I suppose there had to come the time when ladies surrendered to gentlemen the prerogative of not being ready. To be quite honest, I’m not sure that this prerogative is one it would be wise to surrender. Anne, we must consider this an exception, not a precedent. James, kindly rise up. Or are we not going to Kontic?’

  It was his own idea to drive to a spot where the views were grandly and ruggedly Bosnian, where the hills were imposingly wild and the mountains like naked stone giants. Sophie knew of the right place, a little hillside village, with a tavern where they might have a simple lunch. Anne thought a picnic would be rather nice but Sophie said although picnics could leave nostalgic memories of the al fresco, they were more likely in Bosnia to leave one with memories of the flies. Bosnian flies spent the whole summer lying in wait for picnics.

  James, once immersed in Sophie’s poetry, had lost count of the time. He got up, restoring sheets to Sophie’s folder. She made no comment as he put the folder on the table and asked her mother to keep an eye on it for him. He wished, he said, to read them again.

  Sophie said then, ‘Are they so incomprehensible?’

  ‘For me,’ said James, ‘poetry in German has to be read very carefully, I need to think up an English translation that does it justice. I haven’t done too badly but I’d like another go at them.’

  ‘They are hopeless in English?’ said Sophie.

  ‘I should think,’ said James, ‘that they’re poetry in any language. I’ll get my stuff.’

  ‘Hurry, James,’ said Anne, ‘I am longing to be whizzing off.’

  ‘No whizzing, darling,’ said the baroness.

  James disappeared for a moment.

  ‘Mama,’ said Sophie, ‘did he say if he liked them?’

  ‘Liked them?’ The baroness regarded her elder daughter fondly. ‘He was captivated.’

  ‘Captivated? Are you sure?’

  ‘He was so amused by the one about the whistling man on the horse.’

  ‘Amused?’ Sophie did not seem too delighted. ‘But, Mama, that poem was a moment of summer delicacy, a wistful look at the incomprehensibility of man.’

  ‘Yes, darling, delicious,’ said the baroness.

  ‘Did he really think it was funny?’ asked Sophie.

  ‘I have never seen a man so full of appreciation.’

  ‘He laughed,’ said Sophie.

  ‘Well, in a way –’

  ‘I shall speak to him,’ said Sophie.

  ‘Oh, poor James,’ murmured Anne.

  But Sophie was laughing herself.

  They departed a few minutes later, taking the road to Jajce. They promised to be back before tea.

  In Sarajevo the palely passionate Gavrilo Princip was discussing a brave new world with the other conspirators. They had all arrived safely and sat under the noses of passing policemen as inconspicuously as the good citizens of Sarajevo. They did not look like the kind of young men who would prime bombs and load revolvers to do away with a majestic archduke.

  Meanwhile Boris Ferenac, his violin put into safe keeping, was travelling by quiet ways to meet and confer with others who belonged to the cloak-and-dagger fraternity.

  Chapter Six

  The road to Jajce was winding and pitted, crumbling in parts, but the solid Benz did not fuss. They turned off for the village of Kontic after an hour’s drive, and the road became little better than a loose-surfaced cart track. It got worse as they approached the village, so they left the car and walked the last hundred yards. There was a valley on their right, beyond which hard brown hills rose starkly, only to be dwarfed by distant mountains soaring to ravage the sky. On the hills gigantic boulders were cupped so precariously by hard ridges that it seemed a touch would topple them. In the valley a river wound its way over a rocky course, the banks and the waters strewn with fallen stone. At the foot of the hills trees had forced their way into the light and bushes had sprung from cracks. The sun poured down to give life to colours invisible at grey dawn.

  The walk was uphill and the village itself climbed steeply. The stone and timber cottages looked warm but quiet, their overhanging roofs shading the upper windows. Doors stood open and interiors, defying the outside heat, seemed dim and cool. Somewhere a kid goat bleated for its mother. Two women, scarves around their heads, black hats over the scarves, emerged from a path leading up from the river. They were carrying baskets of wet washing. They cast quick, shy glances as James and the young baronesses entered the village. Anne and Sophie, parasols up, looked in their bright elegance as if they had just come from a garden party. James was bareheaded, the sun deepening his dark tan. His white cotton shirt was tucked in comfortable knickerbockers, his jacket and sketchbook under his arm.

  The little tavern, with its whitewashed front and faded awning, stood at the lower end of the village. Outside were a few round, marble-topped tables, their wrought-iron pedestals pitted with rust marks. There were no customers.

  ‘So quiet, so lovely,’ said Anne, ‘now we can have coffee.’

  They stopped. Sophie regarded the village, its hilly, rutted street, and then the harshness of the sunlit view on their right.

  ‘Is this God’s own end of the world? I always think so,’ she said.

  ‘I always think that in this part of Bosnia there must be brigands,’ said Anne.

  ‘Oh, Dragovich and his kind grow corn and keep goats now,’ said Sophie.

  James wished he had a bold, imaginative talent with oils. It was colour, rasping and brazen, which these vistas demanded. The village, built on the hillside above the river, was a dream vantage point for any artist. Here, by the tavern, one might sit and commit the primitive grandeur to memory, while sketching outlines.

  As he stood in absorbed contemplation of light and shade, Anne and Sophie delicately inspected the chairs around one of the tables. James put his sketchbook on the table, took out his handkerchief and dusted the chairs.

  ‘James, that is so nice of you,’ said Sophie, ‘and although there’s a certain masculine superiority about some men which I fail to understand, considering the invaluable contribution women make to the continuation of life, I do enjoy the little courtesies which most men accord us. I confess—’

  ‘Won’t you sit down?’ said James gravely.

  ‘Thank you, James,’ she smiled. She and Anne seated themselves. James joined them. The baronesses awaited the next move in sun-mellowed graciousness. The village seemed even quieter, as if the advent of strangers had made all life retreat behind curtains. No one came o
ut of the café to serve the arrivals. James got up to see who was dead and who was only sleeping, and the proprietor emerged. He was white-aproned, bushily moustached and fatly amiable.

  James asked for coffee in German. Croatian or Serbian was beyond him, but German was the second language in this Austrian province of Bosnia. The proprietor smiled, showing gleaming white teeth, and polished the tabletop with the hem of his apron. He beamed at the summery baronesses.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he said in German.

  ‘Yes, quite the loveliest day,’ smiled Anne.

  He chuckled and waddled back into the tavern.

  ‘I don’t think he meant the day,’ said James.

  ‘Well, everything is beautiful,’ said Anne, ‘or at least impressive.’

  ‘Striking,’ said James.

  ‘What is?’ asked Sophie, willing to simply sit for the moment and wonder about the world in summer, and why her nerves were becoming so sensitively on edge at times.

  ‘Both of you,’ said James.

  ‘James, this is very sudden,’ said Anne and laughed. Sophie thought how the summer always made her sister look radiant.

  ‘Oh, after this last month or so,’ said James, ‘I count myself an old friend of the family. Or at least of the Benz.’

  ‘You are our very good friend,’ said Sophie, ‘and I should hope you will always be.’

  If Anne was the kind the sun made radiant, Sophie in summer looked exquisitely impervious to its heat. Except that now, as James smiled at her, a faint flush invaded her coolness. Anne saw the flush. She smiled. She got up and wandered across the dusty street to stand on the dry grassy verge that dipped a little way beyond her to merge with the bracken-strewn slope leading down to the river. She stood there in the sun, the skirt of her dress fluttering.

  At the table James said, ‘Another thing. Your poetry, Sophie. Loved it, I assure you. Well, as much as I could in German. You’re far better with words than I am with paints.’

  ‘You are serious? You really liked it?’ said Sophie.

  ‘Really,’ said James.

  ‘You are very kind,’ said Sophie. ‘Of course, people are kind to one about such things and sometimes they are too kind. Sometimes it’s better not to be kind at all but frank, so that one knows, as everybody else does, that there is always room for improvement. It does not do to be flattered into thinking that everything one does is perfect. I am very imperfect—’