Roots of Evil(52)

The sumptuous Grand Tours of the last century were no longer de rigueur for the sons of the wealthy, but enough of them still travelled around Europe as part of their education, and a great many came to Vienna. When one or two of them stopped their carriages and walked across to her to make their sly suggestions, Alice had at first shaken her head and backed away. But later, she had shrugged and had gone with them to their hotel rooms. It meant a certain amount of bravado; it meant braving the rich plush reception halls and the stony stares of the hotel staff – some of them disapproving, some smilingly knowing. But it also meant she could eat for several days, and after the first few times she acquired the trick of donning an air of disdain, and of walking arrogantly through the hotels. Accepting a few more offers of the same kind meant she could take a room in the poorest lodging-house.

Most of the men were well-off travellers from other countries, but a few were the smart, sharp German army officers who were so often to be seen in Vienna nowadays. Alice discovered that almost all the men liked to talk about themselves – about their lives and their families and their work if they had any work – but that the German officers did not. They were courteous enough and most of them were fairly considerate, but there was a rigid silence about their army duties and their regiments. Almost as if they counted themselves as part of a secret service.

But it did not matter who the men were or what they looked like, because Alice already knew that was something that would never matter again. Unless the man in bed with you had golden-brown eyes and a quick eager way of talking…Unless he could make music so beautiful it would melt your bones and make you want to cry when it stopped…

‘Somehow I survived,’ she said, staring into the fire, no longer fully aware of the comfortable English sitting-room or the listening child. ‘Somehow I lived through those bad days and I emerged from them stronger. Remember that – enduring bad times in your life, which is something everyone has to do – makes you stronger. What happened to you in Pedlar’s Yard will make you very strong indeed.’

It was not quite possible to believe this yet, but there was a vague feeling that it might one day be possible. For the moment, the important thing was Alice’s story.

‘So you got through the bad times. And then—’

The smile came again. ‘And then,’ she said in a much lighter voice so that it was almost as if a different person sat there, ‘and then, my dear, there came a day when I knew I must leave behind that poor beaten thing who had loved and lost and been hurt. I knew I must find a way of shaking off the darkness. I had a little money stored up by then: not very much, but a little.’ A pause.

‘There’s a bit there you aren’t telling, isn’t there? Is it about how you got the money?’

‘Yes, there’s a bit there I’m not telling, and yes, it is about how I got the money. But one day I will tell you. When you’re a bit older.’

‘OK. Don’t stop the story though.’

‘By that time,’ said Alice, ‘there was no one to know or care where I went or what I did. So I vowed that I would become an entirely different person.’ The slanting smile came again.

‘I also vowed,’ said Alice softly, ‘that if I could become another person, it would be someone who would make people sit up and take notice. A person who would make a stir in the world.’



A stir in the world. The idea had been exciting and frightening – can I do it? How can I do it? What could I become?

Her parents had been so pleased when Alice had gone into what they called good service, although they had been anxious when, later on, the family had asked Alice to go with them to that foreign place. They were nervous of Abroad, although Alice’s father had been in France during the Great War – Alice had only been a child at the time, of course – and once they had gone on a day trip to Ostend, which they had not much cared for.

But it would be all right for Alice to travel Abroad in this way because she would be with the family, and the family would look after her. Alice’s mother had been a parlourmaid in the house of a titled gentleman; her father had been his lordship’s valet. They had got married late in their lives, doing so timidly and unobtrusively, and Alice had been born a good many years afterwards, taking them by surprise since they had ceased to hope the good Lord would send them a child.

But altogether they had been in service for forty years, they said proudly, and they knew that the upper classes looked after their servants. Why, only look at how his lordship had given them something called an annuity when they had reached the end of their working lives. They did not rightly understand how it worked, but what it meant was that they were given a sum of money every week for as long as they lived. Oh no, it was not a large amount, but the rent of this little house was very cheap, and if necessary, Alice’s mother could always do a little plain sewing for the ladies who lived on the Park; her father could take on a bit of carpentering. They were very grateful to his lordship for taking care of them.

They were gentle and unworldly and unambitious and trusting, and Alice was torn between exasperation and love for them.

Respectable service. Honourable work. What was so honourable about one human being waiting on another? What was respectable about fetching and carrying for the aristocracy who thought themselves too grand even to dress themselves? And at the end of it all, being grateful for a few miserable shillings every week in your old age, and even then having to take in sewing? All that when you had worked for more than forty years, every day from six in the morning until midnight! For goodness’ sake, hadn’t that kind of humility and gratitude been blown away by the war, by feminism, by women gaining the vote?