Roots of Evil(34)

After that she renewed her search. But by late afternoon the shadows were creeping back over Vienna, and the dark underside of the old city was stirring. The lamps were lit in the streets, and when she passed a tavern or a wine cellar laughter and voices and food-scents gusted out. Alice, dizzy with exhaustion, began to have the feeling that she had somehow stumbled into an entirely different city without realizing it. For the first time she began to feel frightened, and for the first time she faced the possibility that she would not find the tall old house.





CHAPTER TEN




Once Lucy had reached her teens she almost forgot about Alraune. There were far more interesting things in life than all that gothic romance stuff about a slightly sinister ghost-child, and in any case who cared about things that had happened all those years ago? demanded Lucy’s rebellious fourteen-year-old self. Alraune had never existed. And yet…

And yet she never quite shook off the feeling that Alraune was much closer than any of them guessed. She occasionally woke from disturbing dreams – dreams that were half sad but that were also half terrifying, and that had always left her with the feeling that Alraune was not someone she would ever want to meet.

And now Trixie Smith had stirred those dreams up, so that back at her desk after Deb’s funeral, determinedly concentrating on Quondam’s horror-film presentation, Lucy caught herself thinking about Alraune, and thinking as well that these days all kinds of information was accessible at the flick of a computer key. Births and deaths, and marriages and divorces. Electoral rolls and property tax accounts and census records. Yes, but would Alraune figure in those kind of lists? And if so, under what name, because presumably you would not go through life with a name like that if you could help it. Mandragora officinarum. Imagine having that called out in a school register. Imagine giving it as your name if you were applying for a driving licence or making a dentist’s appointment or collecting your dry-cleaning. And even if Lucy did find the right name and was inclined to make a search for Alraune, where would she begin? And if Deb had not died so abruptly, could she have talked to her about Alraune? Would she have opened up a bit more? Lucy had sometimes had the feeling that Deb would like to have talked to Lucy about the family, but it had never happened. Was that because Edmund had always been around?

In the house where Lucy had spent her early childhood there had been boxes of stuff about Lucretia and her life; corded trunks and tea-chests full of newspaper articles and photographs and posters, all stored away in attics. Lucy’s mother had once said that when Lucretia died, her entire life had been packed into those boxes and those tea-chests. ‘After her death no one could face any of it,’ she had said. ‘Some pasts should die, never forget that.’

‘Rot, Mariana, you’re simply being melodramatic again,’ Aunt Deb had said tartly. ‘You love all that stuff about Lucretia, in fact you dine out on it – I’ve heard you telling your friends all the stories,’ she added, and Lucy, who had been hoping for a story about the mysterious Lucretia, had seen something flicker on her mother’s face that made her look so unlike her normal self that she had felt suddenly nervous.

‘Oh, yes, of course I do,’ Mariana had said at once. ‘It’s all the greatest fun. Dear Lucretia and all the lovers and the scandals. What else is there to do but make capital out of it? But there were other things, weren’t there?’ She gave an exaggerated shiver, like a child deliberately trying to frighten itself. ‘That suggestion that she spied for the Nazis in the war…’

Aunt Deb had said, ‘Mariana—’ but Lucy’s mother had not paused, almost as if, Lucy thought, she wanted to stop Aunt Deb from going on.

‘…but of course the war was over years ago, and we’ve all forgotten it, and in any case Lucy’s too young to understand any of this, aren’t you, my lamb?’

But Lucy had understood quite a lot because when she was small people had still talked about Lucretia. Sometimes they called her ‘that woman’, and used words like ‘disgrace’ and ‘immoral’. Once, in Lucy’s hearing, a woman with a pinched-up mouth like Lucy’s drawstring gym-bag had said Lucretia had been lucky not to be executed for treason, and she did not care who heard her say so. Lucy thought treason had something to do with people being shut away in the Tower of London, and then being burned alive or having all their insides cut out, which would be pretty gross either way and not something you would want done to your grandmother.

The boxes and the tea-chests had ended up in the attics, which was where Mariana said you put such fusty old things: she did not want them littering up her nice rooms! Oh, nonsense, the attic stairs were not all that narrow; it was simply a matter of manoeuvring the boxes around the little twisty part to the second floor. Perfectly accessible, and also splendid for make-believe games – for Lucy and for Edmund when he came to stay in the holidays. Poorest Edmund, stuck in that house with that dreary old father. The two of them must make a search for old costumes next time; they might organize some games of charades this Christmas, said Mariana.

After Lucy’s parents died she had made a private vow never to forget them; to always remember what they looked like and how their voices sounded. But the memories had grown dim and vague with the years – she could remember a lot of laughter, sometimes a bit too shrill, and a lot of vividly dressed people sipping drinks in the evenings and at weekends – but at this distance it all seemed rather unreal and two-dimensional: like watching figures on a stage. It was ironic that the attic memories – the fragments of Lucretia’s life – had stayed with her far more vividly than the memories of her parents.