House of Gold Read online

  ‘Leaving Vienna feels a little like death,’ Greta declared to Otto when she joined him at the breakfast table a few minutes later. He glanced at her over his newspaper and, seeing that she was perfectly serious, laughed.

  ‘What do you know about death?’ he asked, setting the paper aside.

  ‘As much or as little as anyone,’ she answered primly while buttering her toast.

  Newspapers in four languages were laid out on the sideboard in the breakfast room. Only those in German and French were today’s. The Italian and English editions were sent from Milan and Paris, but this always took a day, so they bore yesterday’s date, as though those nations were always racing to catch up with the present. Greta supposed that in England this would be reversed and she’d be forever reading the news from home a day late.

  A bowl of oranges rested on the table like glossy midday suns. They’d been plucked from the greenhouse early that morning. The fruit was cosseted like a dowager duchess, the glasshouses heated and moistened by solicitous gardeners. Greta liked to disappear into the greenhouses with a novel, pick oranges herself and peel them with her fingers, slurping them untidily, wiping the juice on her blouse. Once she’d been caught, and the offence reported to the Baroness. Her punishment had been to sit in the morning room for several hours, while learning to peel an orange with a knife and fork, without soiling her white cotton gloves with a single drop of juice. While she was practising, the Baroness instructed her to sit with an orange between her shoulder blades. She needed to become more like a proper lady, with suitable deportment and decorum, the Baroness insisted. Apparently, it started with oranges, the most civilising of fruits.

  ‘Would you like me to peel you one?’ she asked Otto.

  ‘Yes, all right.’

  He sat back, smiling while she skilfully dispatched the orange with a tiny silver knife and matching fork.

  ‘Now who will do that for you next week?’

  ‘Who indeed?’

  He ate in silence as she watched, both of them aware of this awful list of last times – last breakfast, last day at home, the last orange. Otto realised that Greta was right and that her leaving, if not quite a death, certainly marked the end of something.

  Under the Goldbaum Palace, Karl was sieving for bones in the dark. He reached into the black water with his net and, raising it, poked amongst the debris for the sharp point of a bird’s wishbone, the round nub of a larger animal’s shin. He rested his lamp on the ground, relit it and replaced his matches in his backpack, trying not to breathe in the oily fumes. Some of the other Kanaltrotters had nicknamed Karl ‘Kanalrat’, since he was as at ease in the tunnels and pipes as the fat black rats that scuttled about them, their feet scratching in the dark, rivals in their hunt for bones.

  Karl squatted barefoot on the edge of an underground canal and rapidly sifted, again and again. An hour passed, or perhaps four or five. He had no clock and it was always midnight down here. When he was asked where he lived, by the condescending but well-meaning secretaries of the children’s shelters he periodically visited, he always liked to say, ‘The Goldbaum Palace. Just beneath.’

  It was a fair spot. Porters from the Goldbaum kitchens distributed leftovers every night at the entrances leading to the sewer tunnels, and there was usually something, if you were quick about it. Mostly Karl preferred to sieve in the dark. He’d found all sorts of treasures over the years, the most precious of which he hoarded in his backpack. There was a blue glass button, round and smooth as a washed pebble, a twisted metal spoon engraved with five tiny birds. Every so often he found a coin. Those were silver days, when he stopped fishing at once, packed his belongings neatly away and bought his own supper of stew, bread and beer; and once, when he found a whole ten kronen, a fat roll of apple strudel sprinkled with almonds. He hadn’t known what almonds were until he licked them, and at first he’d thought them little slivers of bone.

  Mud. Mud. A twig. A dead sparrow, its bones too light to be worthwhile. He raked and sieved. Ribs from a pig-roast. Some of the others preferred to sieve beneath the restaurants where the pickings were richer, but the competition was fierce. There was a hierarchy even down here. At the top came those who hunted for scrap metal, while the bone-seekers were at the very bottom. The bigger men took the best spots near the abattoirs or the beer halls, while the boys like Karl were left to sieve wherever they could. He didn’t mind. He preferred the quiet of the deeper, narrow channels, where even seasoned Kanaltrotters were seized with choking panic. He measured time only by the filling of his bucket. A piece of leather. Sludge. Teeth. Animal or human, he didn’t know. Half a sheep’s skull with the jaw still attached. The bucket was full.

  His lamp had stuttered out, but he could find his way in the dark. He raced back through the channel, splashing through the freezing water, his feet numb. He tried to guess the weight of his bucket: two kilos, three? Five kronen perhaps, if he was lucky. The bones were sopping wet, and he must dry them carefully before he could take them to Atzgersdorf to sell to the soap-boilers.

  The evening of the ball Greta soaked in the bath. She unwrapped a fresh bar of mimosa soap from its scarlet-and-gold paper and washed her hands and face. She did not consider who had made the soap or where it had come from. Once she had dried herself, she sat in her new white dress, in a chair beside the fire, tucked her knees beneath her chin and surveyed her girlhood bedroom. It was already devoid of many of her most precious things. Anna had packed a dozen crates to be sent ahead to England and her new home. Most of them had been filled, at the Baroness’s direction, with wedding jewellery, dresses from Paris, an eighteenth-century Persian rug, a porcelain dish for earrings that once belonged to the Empress Josephine. Greta had little interest in these objects. They were merely to remind her soon-to-be in-laws that the new bride might not have quite the wealth of the London family, but she was still a Goldbaum. With Anna’s assistance, Greta had stowed her own valuables, which were of a different order to her mother’s selection. There was a painted book on hummingbirds that Otto had given her on her eighteenth birthday. The illustrations were hand-tipped, but to her shame there was a fat fingerprint of chocolate on the cover. The pictures had gone from her bedroom walls. Already it wasn’t hers, she decided. It was bereft of those things that had made it home.

  ‘Sit,’ commanded Anna, bustling into the room and pointing to the chair before the dressing table. ‘I’ve brought Helga to try again with your hair.’

  Greta sighed and moved over to sit before the mirror, and fiddled with a box of hairpins as the two maids squabbled and pulled at her hair, trying to cajole it into obedience.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re bothering. It won’t work.’

  ‘The Baroness insisted. She’s asking for you.’

  ‘Leave my hair then. I’ll go and see her now. I’ll tell her you fought valiantly. The enemy could not be defeated.’

  Greta stood and allowed the two girls to smooth and pat the folds of white silk and adjust the beadwork around her shoulders.

  ‘It’s a shame Mr Albert Goldbaum can’t see you. You’re a picture,’ said Anna, admiring her handiwork.

  ‘Yes, poor Albert,’ agreed Greta without conviction. He had caught a bad cold in London and was unable to travel. Tonight’s wedding party lacked a groom, which Greta acknowledged was inauspicious. Who knew what Albert would make of her? She was taller than was considered fashionable, her hair thick and untidy, her hands large or ‘expensive’, according to the jeweller who measured her fingers for the engagement and wedding bands. Her mouth, however, was perfectly shaped. Not that people were ever given much of a chance to notice because, as the Baroness complained, it was usually talking.

  Greta’s photograph had already been dispatched to England, no doubt to reassure Albert that his mysterious bride had sufficient charms. No one had thought to send her a picture of him. He was young. He was a Goldbaum. What possible objection could she have?

  She turned to leave, but Anna cried out, ‘Your shoes!
You’re wearing the wrong shoes. You can’t wear the green ones. The white silk are for tonight.’

  ‘They’re a half-size too small. I swear Mother does it on purpose.’

  Anna nodded sympathetically. ‘All the same. The Baroness—’

  ‘For goodness’ sake.’

  Resignedly Greta wedged her feet into a new pair of low-heeled dancing shoes.

  She walked along to the east wing to her mother’s suite of rooms, a fleet of Gretas dressed in identical white flanking her in the vast mirrors. From below she could hear the strains of the orchestra, strands of Strauss drifting up, warm and sweet as patisserie baking in the cafés along Herrengasse. Footmen in their finest livery stood regimentally on either side, their sideburns groomed and waxed. To the consternation of the recruiting sergeants, her father always hired the tallest, most handsome men lining up outside the recruitment offices of the cavalry of His Apostolic Majesty. Baron Goldbaum sent along representatives of the household staff, who always offered generously more than a soldier’s pay. The livery, in splendid blue and gold, was a uniform of sorts for those who hankered after military tailoring; but, the under-butler liked to joke, unlike joining the army, in the Goldbaums’ service there was no risk of death. The recruits smiled at this little joke: apart from an all-too-brief skirmish with Serbia, there hadn’t been a decent war for years. What use is a soldier in peacetime?

  Greta passed two footmen, poised on stepladders, starting to light the five hundred candles on the Montgolfier chandelier at the head of the great staircase. The Baron had declined to convert it to electricity, preferring the effect of candlelight as it diffracted through the soda-glass. It was not he who had to balance on a ladder at the top of the staircase with a burning taper. After one of the footmen had set fire to his hat while lighting the candles, permission was granted to remove hat and wig in order to light the chandelier – a progression towards informality that was considered by the Baroness almost as dangerous as the risk of immolation. Otto, however, more sympathetic and intrigued by mathematical problems, had spent an afternoon devising a system that denoted the order in which the candles ought to be lit, with the least risk. The Baron stipulated that this regimen must be followed, and Greta noticed a third footman carefully holding Otto’s diagram out of reach of the flames.

  She knocked and was admitted to her mother’s dressing room. The Baroness reclined on a day-bed, sipping black tea and lemon, her usual ritual before a party. The cream walls had turned yellow in the gloom, while the red roses on the dresser appeared black. A pair of fat cherubs played shuttlecock with a dove on the frescoed ceiling. The curtains were tightly shut, a coal fire flickered and Greta grimaced at the stuffiness. She turned on a light and asked the maid to open a window, then she leaned out and breathed in damp spring air. Oil lamps were being lit across the gardens, and through the darkness she could just discern steam rising from the greenhouses. She glanced back to her mother, sitting stiffly in grey lace, a cobweb of diamonds around her throat.

  ‘Did you love Father?’

  The Baroness looked up at Greta in surprise. They did not have these kinds of conversations.

  ‘Well, not at first of course. I knew him a little before we were married. I didn’t dislike him.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I’ve grown very fond of your father.’

  Fond as a pond, thought Greta. It was a soggy, limp sort of affection. At that moment she was overcome with pity for her mother and, to the astonishment of both of them, she sat down on the couch beside the Baroness and threw her arms around her. She wanted to cry, but did not, knowing that the Baroness wouldn’t like that at all.

  ‘I shall miss you. Really I will,’ said Greta.

  ‘Then I hope you will write. You’re usually a dreadful correspondent,’ said the Baroness.

  Greta sat back and looked at her mother, at the familiar blue eyes, not sapphire-bright, but a watery, over-washed sort of blue. In this light she couldn’t see a single line or crease on her skin. When she smiled, the Baroness was beautiful, only she didn’t smile very often. Greta noticed that on the tray beside the glass of tea was another glass, empty, which smelled rather strongly of schnapps.

  The Baroness took Greta’s hand in her gloved one.

  ‘My dear girl, do you know everything you need to about the “unfortunate side of marriage”?’

  ‘You mean coitus?’ asked Greta.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Baroness Emmeline, rolling her eyes. ‘Always such language from you.’ Clearly one glass of schnapps had been insufficient.

  Greta toyed for a moment with asking her mother to furnish her with spectacular detail, and then she relented.

  ‘Oh, I know all about it. Otto is a scientist after all. He never could keep a discovery from me. Years ago at the Lake House he found a fascinating book on cattle husbandry—’

  ‘Enough!’ said Baroness Emmeline, mostly in relief. ‘Just remember that, regrettable as it is, that unfortunate part of the business is your duty. Never refuse Albert more than one time in three. But,’ she warmed to her topic, a little flush of schnapps in her cheek, ‘do not accept him every time. A man must be kept on his toes, uncertain as to whether he shall succeed.’

  ‘One time in three? Not one in four, now and then? Because if every third time I refuse him, then he’ll know I’m about to say no, and he won’t be on his toes at all.’

  The Baroness fixed her with a cool glare.

  ‘One in three. No more, no less.’

  They sat in silence for a few moments, Greta’s bravado dissipating like popping champagne bubbles as she tried not to think about going to bed with a stranger, in less than a week. She was tired, her feet chafed in her too-small shoes and she felt anger with her mother, pooling in the pit of her stomach like undigested food from a too-rich dinner. She glanced up to meet her mother’s eye and spoke slowly.

  ‘When I’m a mother, I shan’t be like you. I shall see my children every day. And I shall kiss them and hug them and let them leave little traces of snot on my shoulder like the trail of a snail. And they will know that I love them.’

  Greta kissed her mother on the forehead and left her alone in the darkening room. Baroness Emmeline reached for her glass of schnapps, to find it already empty.

  ‘Don’t you know?’ she said, but Greta did not hear.

  There had been much discussion as to how to open the ball. It ought to have been Greta dancing with Albert, but Albert was not there. In the end Greta danced with her father. Baron Peter was a good dancer. It was one of the things about him that his wife was quite fond of. He looked elegant as he stepped out with Greta, the superb tailoring discreetly concealing his growing paunch (a part of her husband of which the Baroness was notably less fond). His moustache was waxed, his sideburns combed par excellence, and he looked every inch the proud papa. He steered Greta along the room in a slow and imperial waltz, with five hundred pairs of eyes watching. The room was so long, and the beat so slow, it took them two whole minutes to reach the far end. Hundreds of fans fluttered like a flotilla of tropical butterflies, concealing the whispering mouths of the watching women. The room smelled of powdered bodies and gardenias. Ten thousand stems filled the ballroom in hundreds of vases, perfuming it with an overpowering sweetness. Greta and Baron Peter spoke softly, trying to ignore the onlookers.

  ‘Just laugh at Albert’s jokes,’ said the Baron.

  ‘What if they’re not funny?’ asked Greta.

  ‘Laugh at them anyway.’

  ‘Did Mama laugh at your jokes then?’

  ‘Well, no. But I always thought it might be nice.’

  He sagged and Greta squeezed his hand. ‘Mama doesn’t laugh at anyone’s jokes. I wouldn’t take it personally.’

  ‘No, you’re quite right,’ agreed the Baron, cheering up a bit.

  ‘On the other hand, I’m not sure if I ever heard you tell one,’ said Greta slowly. Then perhaps he’d always wanted to try, and she’d been too afraid of him to listen; and
now she was leaving and it would soon be too late.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me one now, and I promise to laugh.’

  The Baron frowned and was quiet for a few moments, considering. ‘I can’t think of a single joke,’ he said at last, his voice full of such disappointment and regret that Greta couldn’t help throwing back her head and laughing with such fulsome enthusiasm that the Baron began to laugh too, a full-bodied chuckle that threatened to release the carefully concealed paunch from its restraint. The whisperers stationed around the ballroom all commented to one another how agreeable it was to see such a happy bride (despite the lack of groom), and how charmingly close the Baron was to his daughter.

  At eleven o’clock the dancers were summoned to supper by a silver swan. The automaton had been made by a jeweller and watchmaker in Paris, who was eager to demonstrate a skill so remarkable that it lingered on the boundary between mechanics and magic. A footman donned a hat with matching silver brocade and turned the handle; then, as the guests gathered to watch, the full-sized swan swam to life. The thousands of silver feathers in its plumage ruffled, the muscular neck stretched and turned to gaze at Greta with cool black eyes. A tune tinkled and the swan struck out into the mirrored water for a tiny, wriggling fish. It swallowed and was still. The music faltered and stopped. The guests laughed and applauded, the gentle thud of clapping gloved hands like distant horses on soft ground.

  The Baron and Baroness led the guests into the dining room. Most followed, but some slid into a side-chamber set up for games of baccarat, whist and tarock, being hungrier for cards than anything else. In the dining room a battalion of footmen and maids in the family shades of blue and gold flanked the walls. Glossy candles ringed with pleats of gardenias sat on long banqueting tables. There might be no pork loin or lobster or oysters or plump Austrian sausage, but there was a vast and bloody chateaubriand with a jug of Béarnaise, while a special table commissioned by Baron Peter and inlaid with a marble map of Europe was set aside for cheese. Emmenthal and a large slab of Gruyère roosted on the Swiss Alps, while a snowy wheel of Camembert rested in northern France, a cliff of Parmesan sat on Italy and a forest of smoked cheeses were sprinkled across the Austrian Empire. Only one table was set apart from the rest, where the more religious and observant members of the family and their friends gathered, a little furtively, conscious that fewer and fewer of the city’s Jews kept kosher nowadays, yet unwilling to dispense with the laws themselves. The Baron and Baroness were excellent hosts and even if, in private, the Baron may have partaken of a sample of ordinary pork schnitzel, they ensured that all their guests were meticulously cared for. At the end of the meal, if there was any chance that a kosher meat plate had been accidentally sullied with a stray slice of Roquefort, it was broken and discarded. Several dinner services were dispensed with in this manner every year.