‘True enough.’
‘Funny how the other man disappeared like that,’ she mused. ‘They got all the rest. Rounded up five of them besides the dead chap. What did it say in the papers? Big fellow. Over six feet? Moustache and sideburns. In his thirties. You’d have thought he’d stand out like a sore thumb. All the others were skinny pastyfaced kids. That Princip boy who got shot was only nineteen. You’d have thought a six-foot Serbian would be easy enough to spot.’
‘Well, of course, he’s only a Serbian when he opens his mouth. Otherwise he could be any big chap with whiskers. Could be me.’
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘Why not?’
‘Something tells me you wouldn’t have missed.’
The miles had rolled away as they chatted and quite soon their train was pulling into Zagreb station.
‘Now then,’ Bernadette said, getting up, ‘we must both change trains for the Vienna Express but I don’t want you to help me.’
‘Really?’
‘No. What’s more I don’t think we should travel together from now on.’
‘Oh,’ Stanton said and he didn’t try to disguise his disappointment. ‘I’d rather hoped we might.’
‘You see, the thing is,’ Bernadette went on, ‘I don’t want you to get bored with me. People do sometimes. I’m quite intense.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘We also have to consider the possibility that I might get bored of you.’
‘Well, that’s blunt.’
‘Look, Hugh. We’ve just spent nearly five rather lovely hours together. There’s ninety minutes to be spent in the waiting room at Zagreb then a further half a day on the train to Vienna, into which we get rather late. That would make almost twenty hours together, which is quite a lot for new acquaintances, and you see, I want us to have something left to talk about because …’
‘Because what?’
She was blushing again, more deeply than ever. Her milk-white cheeks were crimson. She took a deep breath.
‘All right. Here we go. It’ll be past ten in the evening in Vienna and we’ll both have to find a hotel and it seems to me that it would cosier and certainly more economical if we roomed together. There. I’ve said it. What do you think?’
Stanton didn’t even reply. He was too taken aback. He’d known that things might drift that way. A man and a woman getting a little tipsy together over lunch always might end up in bed together. It was the bluntness that took him aback. It would have been bold even in 2024.
‘To be frank,’ Bernadette went on quickly, ‘I’ve been thinking about it ever since you said that thing about women holding up half the sky. I have never in my whole life heard anyone say anything remotely so lovely or so true. Quite honestly, I think I’d want to sleep with any man who came up with it. Even if he wasn’t such a dish.’
Stanton had never before had cause to be grateful to the memory of Chairman Mao Tse Tung. But he was now.
26
TRUE TO HER word Bernadette sat apart from Stanton in the waiting room at Zagreb and found a different carriage to him on the Vienna train. Even when they both sat for supper in the dining car she merely raised a glass to him from across the carriage.
Stanton was impressed.
She was right really. It had been obvious from almost the first moment of their conversation that there was a strong mutual attraction and this had been reinforced over a very long lunch. There had been a palpable electricity between them, an excitement that might perhaps have been difficult to maintain over a further eleven hours of close proximity. It would probably have been all right, but then again it could easily not have been. By arranging things as she had, Bernadette had certainly ensured that there would be a new and highly charged frisson to their encounter when they met in Vienna. She was, as his old army mates would have put it, a classy chick.
Eventually, as night fell across Europe, he drifted off to sleep in his seat and didn’t wake up until the train was approaching Vienna.
When he got off the train he found that Bernadette, who had been in a more forward carriage, had already secured a porter and was waiting for him beyond the barrier.
‘Share a taxi?’ she said brightly. ‘You can shove your stuff on top of mine if you like. Although you’d probably better handle the emotional baggage yourself. Wouldn’t want anyone prying into that, would we?’
‘Thanks. I’ll hang on to my actual bags as well, in fact,’ Stanton replied. ‘Old habit.’
‘Suit yourself. Had you thought about where you’re staying?’
‘Well, I’d heard the Hotel Sacher was very good. It’s next to the Opera House, which sounds pretty grand, but when in Vienna, eh?’
‘How extraordinary! That’s where I’m staying myself.’
There wasn’t much of a queue for cabs and soon they were on their way through the deserted streets.
‘Not a soul about. Never is after dark,’ Bernadette remarked. ‘Lovely town in the day but dull as paint at night. The Viennese have to go to bed at ten, did you know? Or they get fined.’
‘Come on, really? Fined?’ Stanton replied. ‘Can’t quite believe that.’
‘Well, as good as. They all live in apartment blocks, you see, and they have to pay a fee to the doorman if they’re late so they all scurry home. Ridiculous, rushing their dinners for which they’ll have paid twenty krone in order to save a handful of heller on the night doorman. Stupid, isn’t it?’
‘You seem to know a bit about the place, Bernie.’
‘I spent a month here as companion to an aunt when I was eighteen. She loved her opera, which I don’t much, but I loved Vienna and I still do. I was also here three years ago for a conference on Women’s Health. It’s the most relaxed capital I’ve ever been in. They go to bed early and rise late, and when they do get up, most of them seem to just sit in coffee houses and talk about theatre. You’ve no idea how many different ways of making coffee they have, one for nearly every hour of the day. I think the fact that it’s such an old old capital and it used to be important but isn’t much any more has made it more relaxed. I mean, if you go to London or Berlin everybody’s so busy, what with us trying to stay ahead and the Germans trying to catch up. From what I’ve heard New York’s more frantic still. Even Paris tries to look important in a superior kind of way. But Vienna, well, it’s sort of given up, hasn’t it? They know they’ve got a motley sort of half-baked empire and an ancient emperor who’s more concerned with court etiquette than international politics. So they’ve stopped bothering, which gives the place a nice easy feel. Have you heard of Karl Kraus?’
Amazingly, he had. He’d studied the Austro-Hungarian Empire at university, under McCluskey in fact, and was aware of Vienna’s famous satirist.
‘Publishes a magazine, doesn’t he? The Torch?’
‘Well done. You really are the best informed soldier I’ve ever met. Anyway, he said, “In Berlin things are serious but not hopeless. In Vienna they’re hopeless but not serious” – good one, don’t you think?’
Bernadette continued to chat slightly frantically, pointing out buildings and parks as the Daimler taxi cab roared through the beautiful town, until quite suddenly they arrived at the Hotel Sacher.
‘I suppose you think I’ve prattled on a bit,’ she said, as Stanton settled the fare.
‘Well, yes,’ he conceded, ‘but it’s been interesting.’
‘To tell you the truth, I’m a bit nervous. I expect you think I’m pretty fast but I don’t normally do this sort of thing at all.’
‘No, nor me.’
‘It was the wine that started it. And that Manhattan. Still. We’re in it now, eh?’