Snowfall Read online

  There was a good deal more discussion, but Jon’s German was fluent and the dialogue was too fast for me to follow. I sat hunched over a radiator, stiff and sore, with coffee nearly running out of my ears, longing to get back to Jon’s apartment and have a bath and go to bed. Even the prospect of the company of the dreaded Bruno would, I thought, be tolerable after the harrowing events of the day.

  We were taken there eventually in a police car. Frau Kraus had put Bruno to bed but he had refused to go to sleep until his father returned. Jon went to say good night while Frau Kraus, sitting down wearily and rubbing her rheumaticky knees, confided to me in a voluble mixture of English and German that Bruno was of course a dear child and that she wished to do all she could to help the Herr Doktor, who had been so good to her and Fritzi, but she was now a great-grandmother and felt unable to go on looking after an eight-year-old. She patted my hand and told me how happy she was that I had decided to come in place of the English girl who had left so suddenly, and I hadn’t the heart to tell her that I would be going myself at the end of the week.

  Then she toiled ahead of me up the stairs to her own apartment, and showed me the room that Jane had used, and the bathroom; she also presented me with a pair of freshly-laundered pyjamas that Jane had left behind in her hurry. I was getting ready for my bath when I heard Jon’s voice calling up the stairs for Frau Kraus. In a few moments she knocked on my door, and gave me a large dark blue towelling robe that presumably belonged to Jon himself, an invitation from him to return to his sitting-room after I had bathed, and a look of faint disapproval. Such invitations had not, I gathered, been issued when Jane was staying with her.

  Jon laughed at me when I appeared, damp from a steaming hot bath.

  ‘I was going to suggest a brandy,’ he said, ‘but you look about sixteen-years-old in those clothes.’

  I seated myself in one of the shabby armchairs, tucking my bare feet under me out of the draught, and arranging the robe round me with dignity. ‘I’d appreciate the brandy,’ I said, spreading my hands towards the fire. ‘Bruno was glad to see you, I imagine?’

  ‘Very.’ Jon handed me a glass. ‘He’d been worried – I’d told him that I expected to be back about his tea-time, and I think he’d begun to be afraid that I’d gone for good. He can barely remember his mother, but her death must have left him with an irreparable sense of loss. And then, he loved the Austrian girl who looked after him when we first came out here, and was very unhappy when she left; and then he got used to Jane, and she left. He’s bound to have a terrible feeling of insecurity. And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, tonight.’

  I looked up quickly. ‘I’m sorry –’ I began, but he shook his head.

  ‘No, Kate, I’m not going to suggest that you take over the job of au pair girl. In fact, I don’t want you to stay in Austria at all. I think you may well be in danger as long as you’re here.’

  I coughed over the brandy. ‘But surely, now the police know – ?’

  ‘No,’ he said. He looked, in a way, more relaxed than I had ever seen him, as he leaned back against the mantel-piece; he was wearing jeans and an open-necked shirt, and presumably he had showered because his dark hair was roughly damp-dry. But the expression on his face was far from relaxed.

  ‘The police are certainly concerned about the removal of my snow chains,’ he said, ‘but they’re sceptical about the story of the man with the gun who threatened us on the chair lift. After all, I couldn’t swear that Sloan had a gun – he didn’t fire it. I’ve told them where to find him, but my guess is that he and his wife – if she is his wife, and not just a cover – will have packed up and left the Alte Post by now.’

  I thought about it. ‘We can’t even be sure that it was Phil Sloan who cut the snow chains,’ I said. ‘It could just as easily have been ‘Toni Hammerl … Oh, but I didn’t tell you! Toni locked me up –’

  ‘I know.’ Jon bent to put another log on the fire, and the flame spurted and crackled. ‘What did you think I was doing on the Kirchwalder Alm yesterday? I’d spent the day up there, trying to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘That was kind of you – but I wish you’d been able to get me out of that wretched hut. I was locked in there for at least an hour.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry about that. I had to make a quick decision, you see. You went off for a walk with the other woman, and I thought at the time that it was more important to watch Sloan than to follow you. I was afraid that he might follow you and try something, whereas in fact he simply sat in the sun and went – or pretended to go – to sleep.

  ‘Then he woke up and made a great fuss about his wife not being back. I followed him then, and gathered what had happened to you. But since I wasn’t actually an eyewitness to the locking-up, and since you hadn’t been harmed, the police shrugged it off.’

  ‘But what about the explosives?’ I demanded.

  Jon had been crouching, straight-backed, to tend the fire. Now his movements stilled completely, though his face was alive with reflected movement from the flames. ‘What explosives?’

  ‘There were boxes of them, hidden under hay in the hut. At least, I’m fairly sure that was what the boxes contained. I got the impression that old Otto Hammerl wanted to show them to me – and then, later, Phil Sloan referred to the hut as Otto’s dump, and seemed to think that I’d deliberately gone there to check on it.’

  Jon straightened and kicked the log, making the sparks fly. ‘That confirms it, then,’ he said grimly. ‘You’ve managed to get yourself caught up in central European politics – or rather with the activities of people who are trying to further political ends by violent means.’ He pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and began to stride about the room, glowering. He looked unapproachable, but I couldn’t always be left in the dark.

  ‘But, Jon – what is going on?’

  He whirled round to face me. ‘Fanaticism disguised as patriotism!’ he said angrily. ‘Look, Kate, I’m a professional historian – and what one learns from history is that men never do learn anything from history. We like to call ourselves civilized people. We erect increasingly elaborate systems of government to provide for the peaceful settlement of every conceivable kind of national and international dispute. But all the time our civilization is at the mercy of fanatical minorities who are prepared to use violence to achieve their aims, and who don’t care how many innocent people get hurt in the process. That’s what’s happening here – or will happen, sooner or later.’

  ‘So you’ll tell the police about the explosives, then?’ I ventured.

  ‘What? Oh yes, of course I’ll tell them – though by the time the police have reached that hut the stuff will have been moved. The point is this, though; you’ve become involved. Because you knew Danby, the local fanatics obviously assume that you had a special reason for coming to Kirchwald. Some of them probably think that you’re an ally who has come to help them finish what he started. The ones who murdered him may well be trying to get rid of you too. Either way, you’re in even greater danger than I realized.’

  I didn’t need convincing; I’d had evidence enough. ‘But now you’re involved too, Jon,’ I pointed out. ‘Phil Sloan seems to be after you – and whoever cut the snow chains on your car tyres has it in for you as much as for me.’

  He shrugged. ‘I should be safe enough if I keep out of Kirchwald. But this gives me an added reason for asking for your help with Bruno. I don’t want either of you to stay here any longer. So will you please take him back with you, just as soon as I can book you on a flight out, and deliver him to his grandmother in Edinburgh? She won’t mind having charge of him for three months, until I return. Will you do that for me, Kate?’

  I promised, and his worried expression relaxed. He sat down in an armchair opposite mine, and poured himself another brandy.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to ask,’ he said, his eyes on his drink: ‘what happened between you and Stephen Marsh?’

  One of my feet had gone to sleep. I rearra
nged my position in my chair, and shook my head when he offered to refill my glass. ‘What makes you think that anything happened?’ I countered.

  ‘Bound to have done,’ he said lightly. ‘Marsh always creates happenings of some kind. He obviously found you attractive – and I was glad, because although we’re not on the best of terms I knew that as long as you were with him you’d be safe.’ He looked at me quickly, grinning. ‘Safe from the criminal element, that is. I wouldn’t have been prepared to answer for his own intentions, but I imagined that you’d be able to look after yourself in that respect.’

  Something about Jon Becker’s tone – a tolerant man-of-the-worldliness – angered me. ‘Because of my background, you mean?’ I asked, tight-voiced. ‘Because you knew that I once lived with Matt Danby?’ My fingers felt, instinctively, for Matt’s disc; and then I remembered that it was still lying on the dressing chest in Frau Kraus’s spare room, where I’d left it when I went for my bath. For the first time since Matt’s death, I had forgotten to wear it.

  Jon had bent to the fire again, and his face was reddened by the flames. ‘That wasn’t at all what I meant,’ he said quietly. ‘It was simply that, when we first met, I noticed the protective shell you’d built around yourself; you seemed so remote, so detached, so indifferent to everyone you met. Oh, there was a flash of spirit when you told me exactly what you thought of my lame story about needing your help with Bruno. But somehow I didn’t think that Marsh, for all his schoolboy charm, would be able to touch your emotions.’

  I fiddled with my empty glass and diverted the conversation. ‘Why do you and Stephen dislike each other?’ I asked.

  Jon hesitated before replying. ‘Oh, well – it goes back to the time when I first came out here. I needed someone to look after Bruno, and Marsh suggested his landlady’s daughter. She was with us for nearly a year, but then I had to ask her to leave. And Marsh resented it on her behalf.’

  ‘Wasn’t she satisfactory?’ I asked. ‘I thought you said that Bruno loved her.’

  ‘Yes, he did … poor Bruno, I’m afraid it nearly broke his heart when she left. Because Anna was Austrian, she must have recalled his mother to him. She was very kind and patient and understanding with him – an excellent mother-substitute. I was very sorry to lose her, but I had no choice.’

  ‘You make it sound as though she was stealing the silver,’ I said.

  He looked a little guilty. ‘Good heavens no! It was simply a matter of embarrassment. Anna had been widowed at thirty, poor girl – her husband and small daughter had been killed in an accident. That was why she was so devoted to Bruno, of course – he was a substitute for her own child. And eventually it seemed to her logical that, for Bruno’s sake, we should marry. We had a thoroughly businesslike discussion about it, and I’m afraid that I was ungentlemanly enough to disagree. Not that Anna took umbrage; she was quite prepared to stay on, but I felt I had to ask her to go – though I couldn’t, of course, tell Marsh the reason.’

  ‘And Bruno was heartbroken … Didn’t you like her enough to marry her?’

  ‘I liked her very much. But I didn’t love her, any more than she loved me. I know I need a wife, but not that badly.’

  ‘But isn’t that selfish, when you’ve Bruno to consider?’

  ‘Not at all. As it happens, I’m the product of just such a marriage. Oh, I’m grateful to my parents for bringing me into the world, of course; but I think that the knowledge that they were not happy together deprived me of far more than their individual love for me could compensate. My father was a bewildered refugee, you see, a widower with children, who obviously needed a wife; and my mother’s fiancé had been killed in the first year of the war. I think that she must have regarded her marriage as a patriotic duty, a kind of war work. They didn’t love each other, and I grew up knowing it. And I’ve no intention of inflicting that kind of background on Bruno. After all, I do know what it means to be deeply in love – just as you do. And I’m determined not to settle for anything less meaningful the second time. Isn’t that how you feel too?’

  I sat staring at the fire, disconsolate. Yes, of course, I knew what it meant to be deeply in love … but just how meaningful my relationship with Matt had been, I couldn’t be sure. I should never know.

  ‘So what happened between you and Marsh?’ Jon repeated. ‘Don’t deny that something did. I’d set Fritzi to keep an eye on you – or rather to make sure that neither Sloan nor Toni Hammerl tried to get you away from Marsh – and he reported that you’d spent the morning ski-ing, and then you’d come to Innsbruck on your own. That was when I decided that I’d have to bring you here out of harm’s way. And when I did, you were different. You’d lost that protective shell. You looked so alone, so vulnerable – what happened, Kate?’

  My other foot had gone to sleep. Suddenly I felt vulnerable, sitting alone with Jon Becker in the firelit quiet of the shabby room high above the Maria-Theresien-Strasse and trying to avoid looking at his questioning green eyes and the shape of his mouth. Yes, he was distractingly attractive – but that was a commodity he had no monopoly of.

  ‘Stephen kissed me,’ I told him matter-of-factly.

  His face was turned to the fire. ‘And – ?’

  I shrugged, and tried to wriggle some life into my foot without getting up. ‘I found him attractive, so I kissed him in return.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And … nothing. It was a brief, meaningless exchange.’

  Jon turned to me. ‘That’s what I thought,’ he said, with what sounded like satisfaction. ‘From your attitude I felt sure that you didn’t – Kate! Kate, what’s the matter?’

  I knew, from the alarm and concern on his face, that I must be grimacing with pain. He took two strides towards me and seized my hands. ‘What is it, for goodness’ sake?’

  The muscles of my foot contracted and twitched agonizingly. I tried to laugh away the discomfort, but every now and then an involuntary ‘Ouch’ broke through. ‘It’s – it’s pins and needles!’

  He pulled me to my feet, or rather to one bare foot. We were both laughing, as I clung to his hands and hopped and exclaimed and tried to get my circulation going again. ‘Oh, Kate – to succumb to pins and needles after all you’ve been through,‘ he protested, grinning down at me.

  And then everything stilled.

  The twinges must have eased, but I had forgotten about them. All I was conscious of was standing, barefoot, holding hands with Jon Becker and knowing that we wanted to kiss each other, that we intended to kiss each other, and that nothing but an act of extraordinary willpower could stop us.

  I didn’t think I had the power, but I found it. I closed my eyes and turned my head away.

  His breath was warm against my cheek. ‘Kate –’ he whispered.

  But kissing is too easy. It can be, as I had found with Stephen Marsh, nothing but an acknowledgement of mutual attraction. Or it can be, as I thought it had been with Matt Danby, an expression of a deeper unity. But now that I knew how superficial my relationship with Matt had in fact been – how little I had known him – I was reluctant to risk involving my emotions with anyone else.

  ‘You’re trembling,’ Jon observed gently. ‘What are you afraid of?’

  I leaned for a moment against his shoulder. ‘Afraid that it might not mean anything,’ I confessed. ‘Or that – even if I imagine that it does – it might still not mean enough …’

  ‘I know.’ His fingertips, light but vibrant, moved across my cheek and over my lips. Then he sighed and let his hand fall to his side. I stepped back, and we faced each other. He looked much as I felt, confused and sad.

  ‘I understand your problem,’ he said. ‘Kissing prevents rational thought, doesn’t it? Because we’re both lonely we might lose our heads and start making promises, or rash plans … and then there’s Bruno to be considered, and you don’t care for children …’

  ‘No,’ I agreed dully. I moved away, desolate, stumbling for the door. I had almost reached it when I felt his h
and on my shoulder, turning me towards him.

  ‘But since we’re agreed on the risks –’ he said. He touched my cheek again and smiled down at me, his eyes a living green under their heavy lids: ‘having admitted the problems, don’t you think we’re entitled to explore the pleasures? A kiss without any commitment on either side, just to see what happens?’

  We tried it, and were dazed by its potential.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I could hear Bruno being obstreperous in the kitchen with Frau Kraus as soon as I came down next morning. Jon was in the hall, telephoning. He reached for me as I passed, curving his hand round the back of my neck, and kissed me between pauses in his conversation. Then he put down the receiver.

  ‘Right, you’re both booked on a flight from Munich at eight tomorrow morning. I had hoped to get you away today – that’s why I haven’t sent Bruno to school – but there are no seats available. Still, it occurred to me last night that Scotland’s a long way away … so I think tomorrow morning will be quite soon enough, don’t you?’

  He bent his head to improve on his first salutation, but I ducked. ‘Have you told Bruno?’ I asked.

  Jon grimaced. ‘I’m leaving that until breakfast. He won’t be best pleased, I’m afraid, and I’ll need some coffee to sustain me during the inevitable argument.’

  Bruno appeared, and greeted me with wary civility. His father looked him over critically: ‘Have you brushed your hair?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bruno.

  ‘Well, go and do it again, please. And this time use your hairbrush, not the flat of your hand.’

  We ate in the sitting-room overlooking the Maria-Theresien-Strasse, with the snow-mantled Madonna on top of St Anne’s column catching the winter sunlight just outside our window. Frau Kraus had provided orange juice and boiled eggs, besides a big pot of coffee and a basket of fresh crusty rolls, and I intended to show my appreciation by eating my full share. I felt happy. More light-hearted than I’d been for – oh, for years.