Roots of Evil(74)

And really, thought Alice, for a jumped-up parlourmaid with a false name, I’m doing rather well.

Conrad, who adored his small daughter, had written the promised music for her, but it was not until an early summer night in 1938, with Deborah three years old, that the first public performance took place. It would be a glittering occasion, said Conrad happily. People from several continents would flock to hear his music, and he would have a spectacular success, and it would all be because of his enchanting daughter. Lucretia would occupy the stage-box for the occasion, and she would be wearing something dazzlingly beautiful.

‘I shall be dazzlingly bankrupt at this rate,’ said Alice, but made expeditions to the couture houses of Lanvin and Worth.

On the night of the concert it felt wrong to leave the sturdy, bright-eyed toddler in the care of the nurse. Alice, who had returned to filming when Deborah was six months old, and who was perfectly accustomed to long absences from the baby and had not considered herself particularly maternal anyway, found herself snatching the child up in her arms and covering the small flower-like face with kisses.

‘This ought to be your night, Deborah,’ said Alice to the child. ‘It’s your very own piece of music that’s going to be played, and you should be there, listening to it, dressed up in a silk frock with ribbons in your hair. One day your papa will play for you in a concert hall, though, I promise you he will.’

‘She’ll be perfectly all right with me, madame,’ said the nurse, a rather stolid Dutchwoman.

‘Yes, I know she will.’

Alice had commissioned a backless evening gown of jade green for the concert, and over it she draped a huge black-and-jade-striped silk shawl, which enveloped her almost to the ankles. Her hair was threaded with strands of jet studded with tiny glowing emeralds, and on her feet were green satin shoes with delicate four-inch heels. They were impossibly impractical, but she would not need to walk far in them. Cab to theatre foyer, foyer to stage-box, perhaps a sip or two of champagne in the crush bar at the interval, supper somewhere afterwards with Conrad and a dozen or so guests. And then a cab home. It did not, therefore, much matter if she was wearing four-inch heels, or five-inch heels, or shoes made of paper, or if she was wearing no shoes at all. She had enamelled her toenails silver to match her fingernails, and fastened a silk chain around one ankle.

At a time when most women were starting to wear their hair in rolls and elaborate swirls, and gilt hairnets for the evening, Alice had retained her smooth sleek blackbird-wing style. It was cut for her by a glossily fashionable French hairdresser on the Ringstrasse, but she dealt with the colouring of it by herself and in private – imagine if a story got out that Lucretia von Wolff, the infamous sable-haired temptress, actually dyed her hair! And it was rather amusing to don a drab disguise – to become a ladies’ maid again – and go into the small anonymous shops on Vienna’s outskirts to buy the hair-dye.

The concert hall was filled with glitteringly dressed people, and there was a pleasant buzz of expectation in the air. The baroness was escorted to the stage-box, which was sufficiently near to the platform for most of the audience to see her, and which faced the gleaming Bechstein. (‘I shall not look up at you during the performance,’ Conrad had explained seriously. ‘Because once I begin to play, I shall not know about my surroundings at all.’)

But he blew her a kiss when he came on to the platform, and Lucretia gave him the now-famous cat-smile and watched him sit down at the piano, flinging the tails of his evening coat impatiently behind him. He removed the heavy gold cufflinks he wore and the onyx signet ring, and laid them on the side of the keyboard. He looked handsome and patrician, and the sharp formality of the white tie and tails suited him.

The audience were silent now, waiting. Some of them would be here purely because it was an Occasion and one must be seen at such things, but a good number would have come because they were genuinely interested in music and because they admired Conrad Kline and wanted to hear his new piano concerto.

Conrad was allowing the anticipation to stretch out, adjusting the music stand which did not need adjusting, flexing his fingers which were more supple than saplings anyway, frowning at an imagined speck of dust on the Bechstein’s gleaming surface. He would judge the moment absolutely precisely, of course, because he would know the exact second to signal to the conductor that he was ready, and then he would bring his hands down on the keys, and his marvellous music would flood the auditorium. Alice, who had shared a very small part of Conrad’s agonies throughout the composing of Deborah’s Song, and who found it beautiful and moving, prayed that the audience would find it so. Conrad would be like a hurt child if they were less than wildly enthusiastic.

He lifted his eyes from the keyboard, and met the waiting eyes of the conductor. And then into the charged silence, into the thrumming expectant atmosphere, explosively and frighteningly came the sounds of the outer doors being flung open, and of booted feet marching across the foyer.

Impassive-faced men, wearing the sharply efficient uniform of G?ering’s Staatspolizei, erupted into the auditorium and ranged themselves along the walls. As the audience rose bewilderedly to its feet, and as women began to cry out in fear and clutch their escorts’ arms, four of the men mounted the platform and surrounded Conrad. He leapt to his feet at once, and Alice heard him say, ‘This is an outrage! How dare you—’ and then one of the uniformed men who seemed to be the leader said, in machine-gun German, ‘We dare anything we wish, Herr Kline. The soldiers of the Schutzstaffeln have today marched into your city. Vienna is no longer a congress, and from today, you are all part of Germany.’ A gasp stirred the audience, and Alice felt, as if it was a solid thing, the fear start to fill up the auditorium.