A House on the Rhine Page 5

  V

  WHEN the tram started Anna said to Krista, “He’s in love with you all right. What about you?”

  Krista said miserably, “What’s the good? Pa will never hear of it.”

  “What’s it got to do with Pa? It’s your life—yours and Paul’s.”

  “I can’t go against Pa’s wishes,” Krista said positively and flatly.

  “Then you’re a fool!” Anna’s voice was contemptuous. “Make the most of your chances. No one is going to help you if you won’t help yourself. I tell you, Krista, something will have to be done about Moe. The children are beginning to notice. She’s quite shameless. I’m not standing for the little ones knowing what’s going on. They know far too much as it is.”

  “But what can we do?” Krista asked unhappily.

  “Speak to Pa. He seems to be blind. Everyone knows except him.”

  “No! no! Please don’t, Anna. He’s so unhappy lately. There’s something on his mind.”

  “Maybe it’s Moe. Maybe he does know. It’s time he took notice.”

  “I don’t think it’s that. It’s much deeper. He seems to be so terribly depressed and apathetic about everything. Have you noticed how he doesn’t bother about grumbling at the boys any more—he never makes them clear up everything as he used to? He never teaches us new songs or trains us in part-singing any more.”

  “Pa doesn’t like me.” Anna said it as a matter of fact without the slightest resentment. “He’s never really got over Gabrielle.”

  Krista said nothing, but she pressed Anna’s hand. Anna had been in love with a young Englishman. There had been a baby, but Gabrielle had died.

  “Anna,” asked Krista, after a few minutes’ silence. “Did you love him?”

  “Yes,” said Anna quietly. Her dark eyes misted over. “I loved him, and he’d have married me if Pa hadn’t made such a fuss.”

  “Did he, George, I mean, know about Gabrielle?”

  Anna shook her head. “I never told him. There wasn’t much chance. Pa sent him about his business too quickly.”

  “But why did Pa dislike him so much? I liked him—we all did.”

  “Because he was one of the Occupation, but chiefly because he was a soldier, I think.”

  “Then don’t you see how hopeless it is for me and Paul?”

  “Don’t tell him. That’s my advice. Look where it landed me.”

  Krista looked even more miserable. Anna was impatient.

  “Haven’t you got any will of your own?” she asked sharply. “Don’t you want to get out of this mess here? D’you want to live for ever in such a way? You’re pretty—more than pretty—you must know that. Take your chance while you’ve got it. That American’s a fine man. He’ll marry you if you play your cards properly. Don’t be a fool like I was.”

  Anna’s words, although meant kindly, threw Krista into greater confusion. Did Paul really want to marry her? He had never said so. True, there hadn’t been much time for talking seriously. There was always this awful rush to get home before Pa got back. She was longing to talk to Anna. There were a lot of things she wanted to ask, but she was too shy, and Anna was already getting up to leave the tram.

  “Well, bye-bye then. . . .” Anna was gone, waving gaily to her. Krista could see Eric waiting for her. He was fat—not tall and handsome like Paul—but he was a good steady man. Anna was taking no chances this time. She meant to be married.

  Robert and Franz Joseph were hanging over the level-crossing barrier as Krista stepped out of the tram. Their chins were resting on the wood. She called anxiously to them to get off before the gate swung back. The fascination which trains and trams had for them was so strong that the man who worked the crossing was sick of chasing them off. Robert, usually a very obedient child, was deaf where trains and trams were concerned.

  “You’re late, very late,” he said reproachfully as Franz Joseph seized Krista’s hand and began dragging her up the road. “Franz Joseph and me met three trains and two trams—you weren’t on any of them.”

  “Because I was on this one,” she said laughing. She saw from them that something was wrong. Robert had a sensitive little face. He was quite unlike Moe’s other sons. He was the only one with blue eyes. The only one who was what his brothers called “soft.” He had been born after the end of the war, and was now nine years old. Joseph loved this rather frail-looking son better than all his other strapping ones. But Robert was not one of Moe’s favourites. She had no use for weakness, or for book-learning as she called it. A man should do a man’s job, she said, not sit about with clean hands. Her sons had all been sent out to work at thirteen when they left school. The old schoolmaster had pleaded for Hank and the twins to stay on. They were intelligent, he said. But Moe was adamant and overruled Joseph. Robert, at nine, was showing such unusual promise that Joseph had resolved to enlist the aid of Father Lange in the matter. He wanted at least one of his sons to have a chance to better himself.

  As the boys tugged her up the dusty road Krista heard scraps of what had taken place earlier in the evening. It had only just happened, according to Robert about an hour ago. But one never knew with children—time was nothing to them. It was only just beginning to mean something to Krista. Since she had met Paul. She questioned Robert sharply, and he looked aggrieved at her tone. Krista was never cross, never impatient. That she was in an agony of apprehension he couldn’t know. Apparently Pa had come home very early. Moe had been with Rudi.

  “In the little room, with the door locked,” Franz Joseph had added. Pa had broken in the door, which was loose anyhow, Robert had said with the detail which children love, and there was no lock on the door now, it had fallen off and the door was splintered. Moe was very angry and was raging round the house in a terrible temper. She had struck Robert and Franz Joseph. They were upset at the injustice of it. They hadn’t done anything wrong at all. Moe had hit them as she passed, just for nothing.

  Where was Pa? Krista asked this as she began to hasten her steps. She must get home quickly.

  “He’s gone out. First he was furious—shouting—then he said nothing—not even good-bye,” said Robert, and began to cry. Robert adored his father.

  “It’s very bad of Pa to break the door,” said Franz Joseph. “If I break something he’s very angry. He was angry because Peppi and I were playing mud pies in the wallflower-bed, but when I tidied it all up and put the plants back in the soil he didn’t even look! He just went out of the gate!”

  “And Moe was furious with Katie,” sobbed Robert. “She said it was all her fault. That she should have been ‘on guard.’ Oh, Krista, why didn’t you come home? It would have been all right if you’d been here.”

  And she had been with Paul. She was late because she had stayed talking to Paul. Being kissed by Paul. She was overwhelmed now with remorse, just as an hour ago she had been overwhelmed with a terrifying feeling that she was walking on air—that there was no reality in the world, in familiar objects, that there were only she and Paul and the wonder of just that. Just as her feeling for him was a sweet terror because she wanted to run away at the same moment as she wanted his kisses, so now the knowledge that she must get home and find out the worst conflicted with the temptation to turn round and escape it all. She tried to calm and comfort the two little boys, and soon they were chattering of something else.

  She was thinking of Pa. It was for him that she feared. She loved him with complete devotion. Was it because of him that she felt this terrible guilt every time she met Paul? Or was it just that Pa didn’t approve of the friendship? For she did feel guilty. Was it the feeling itself which made her guilty? Was this sweet terrifying weakness which Paul caused in her wrong? She had wanted to ask Anna, but she had been too shy. They were always talking and giggling and telling smutty stories at the factory. And at home Moe and Katie did the same. Anna was not interested. She just said nothing. They never talked like that when Pa was home. He had always been strict about such things. The boys had had to mind and obey h
im. When he had come home and found the yard untidy and littered with potato-peelings and their toys all over the place he was mad. They’d had to clean everything up. The yard had been swept and tidied, the steps washed down, and the toys and bicycles put away. Pa was very particular. Every boy had to scrub his hands and his face before meals. Pa had inspected the row of hands held out to him, had looked at the neck and ears of each boy, pulling up his hair and raising his chin to see that nothing had been scamped. He had insisted that every member of the family sit down at table for meals, whether it was round the kitchen one, or out in the garden under the acacia. How good and orderly he had been. He had tried to keep these great boys under control. Had. But lately it had been different. Hank had control. Pa had lost it somehow, had lost his strength and energy. He didn’t seem to care any more. And now this. This was something which Krista knew had been thrust away at the back of her mind for some time now. But it had been in the forefront of Anna’s. She had spoken of it tonight. “We shall have to do something about Moe,” she had said. Something about Moe! Well, it was done now. It was too late.

  What had happened with Hank and Joseph lately? There was a terrible tension between them. Was it because Pa would insist on taking money from their wages every Friday? Hank resented that. He had protested violently. It was ridiculous to think of building this house of which their father dreamed, he said. It would cost so much money that they could never save it. It was a dream, and there was no place for dreams in the world, said Hank. Moe thought the same and backed him up. There had been some terrible arguments. But Pa always got the money out of them in the end. They must have a place of their own, he insisted.

  “Haven’t you brought us any sweets?” Franz Joseph’s voice broke in on her thoughts. She found some in her pocket. They could buy them cheaply in the factory canteen, and the little ones looked forward to them.

  “Hurry, do,” she entreated as they lagged behind to share out the toffees in the tree-lined lane. How sad the willows looked in spite of the sun, their tender green trailing down limply in the dust. The street was dirty and littered with paper from the factory at the corner where cardboard boxes were now manufactured.

  Katie stood at the broken gate, knitting. Her face was sulky, and her hard black eyes had a gleam of secret joy in them. She looked with distaste at Krista’s slim figure as she came in with the two little boys hanging heavily on her arms. They wouldn’t dare hang on her arms like that. Krista was soft and they knew it.

  “Go on in. Moe wants you,” she said, jerking her head in the direction of the sitting-room, rarely used except on Sundays. Her voice was ominous. Krista was going to get into trouble. Katie was delighted. She had had just about enough of Moe. Let Krista get some for a change.

  In the prim room with the heavy lace curtains—the only room boasting such a refinement—and the red velvet tablecloth, and the photographs of Grandma and Grandpa on the walls, Moe sat smoking. Her face was dark and set.

  “You’re late again—and on the one day you should have been home. You knew I wanted you early tonight!” she greeted the girl harshly. “You’ll have heard from the boys—your Pa came home too early and now you’re late. Where’ve you been?” She looked curiously at Krista’s flushed face and at a new quality in it.

  At the censure in the angry voice Krista began to stammer, as she sometimes did when she was frightened.

  “Paul . . . he came to the factory . . . you know . . . the American friend at the Carnival . . . I . . . I . . . I. . . .” She broke off at something in Moe’s face.

  “So that’s it! Our little saint is human after all. So you’ve got yourself a young man, have you? Katie said so. I didn’t believe her! Just wait and see what Pa’ll have to say to that. Did those brats tell you what’s just happened? Don’t look so disgusted. If you’ve got a young man you’ll soon know what it means! Oh yes, you! You, with your child’s body that’s beginning to change and your white neck with your head so high! You’re the sort that men like all right. Make no mistake about that, my pure Miss! Just you wait, you’ll know what it’s like to be tormented—and my God, you’ll get it bad when you do!” And she burst into fits of laughter in which there was hysteria, and the next minute was sobbing.

  Horror froze Krista into immobility again. She was shocked, not only that Moe was saying these things or that she was trying to excuse her own shame, but that what she said brought home to her the very thing of which she had been thinking. She wanted to comfort Moe, to put her arms round her as she did round the children when they were unhappy. She tried to bring herself to do so, but all she could do was to whisper, “Don’t Moe, please, please, please.”

  Moe’s insinuations had brought a wave of real nausea, and a new fear of this “thing” of which they were forever talking. This was the thing which had produced Peppi for Katie, which had made Lisa get married so hurriedly three years ago, which had made Anna so unhappy and which now tied Moe to a man young enough to be her son. She had tried to close her mind to its significance—deliberately not understood all those references and stories—but there was no getting away from it. It got you in the end. Paul! Was this what he wanted from her? The thought was terrifying. Was this why she felt guilty? She thought of the exquisite snatched moments by the river. The scent of the limes and the strange smell of the water would be for her forever mixed with that first agonizing happiness. No! No! She could not bear that this frail loveliness should be shattered by Moe’s horrible words. Scarcely knowing what she was doing, she turned and fled from the room, saying that she would go and look for Pa. She did not hear Moe’s strident jibe that Joseph could come back for her, Krista; that he’d always had a hankering after the saints.

  She ran out of the house, past Katie still staring over the road at the Frenchman’s house and down the path to the village as if pursued by devils. Her heart was hammering again, her ears ringing—not with that last taunt, but with those other words of Moe’s. “Your child’s body that’s beginning to change . . . your child’s body that’s beginning to change . . . you are the sort that men like all right . . . you . . .” Behind her she heard running footsteps, but she did not turn. Over the level crossing and down the ugly cobbled street she ran, and across the waste land to the river. Villagers looked after her in astonishment as she ran with her hair flying in a cloud. Her whole being was in a confusion so great that she scarcely knew what she was doing or why she was running. The white misery of her face shocked them. They hurried one to another to say that there was fresh trouble in the Bunker family again, and to speculate as to what had made the usually happy and serene Krista into an almost demented fugitive.

  Behind her, stumbling to keep up with her swift feet, and breathing in great tearing gasps, ran the little boy Robert. “Krista . . . Krista . . . wait . . . wait . . .”

  Some of the villagers tried to check him and find out what was the matter. They disliked Robert less than any of the other boys in the family. But he would not stop and, brushing them off, went pounding on until his arms were caught by a strong pair of hands, and the keen eyes of Father Lange regarded him as he panted and coughed in the priest’s firm hold.

  “Steady! Steady! Why are you running after Krista like this? Don’t you see that she doesn’t want you just now? If she did she would wait for you. Now then, what’s the trouble, Robert? Come along and tell me.”

  The priest had just passed the beer garden and had seen Joseph sitting there drinking. He wasn’t drinking beer, either, but spirits, which he couldn’t take. Father Lange had allowed Krista to run past him with blind eyes. He knew where she would go—to the river. Later she would go to the church. He was not worried about Krista.

  The bunker family were a source of endless trouble to both Father Lange and the schoolmaster. No matter what was wrong, whose hens were stolen, whose windows broken, bells rung, or flowers and vegetables picked, the crime was invariably laid at the door of the bunkers. Interest in the doings and misdeeds of this large family sometimes re
ached fever heat in the village, and it was usually the priest who calmed the angered villagers.

  The family were loathed with a vicious undeserved hatred, all except the girl Krista. Her strange story was known to them all. Here she was looked on as a wonder—almost as a saint. Pitied and admired by neighbours who thought that her fate in being adopted by such a family was a tragedy, the priest himself knew that Krista was happy. She loved her family, was devoted to them. The villagers would not have believed him had he said so. How could they believe it when they had made up their minds that the whole family were bad?

  Father Lange was used to all this and more. He merely smiled. Sometimes he checked them sharply for their uncharitableness—the bunker family themselves knew far more about charity than they did, he would tell them. Now he saw that there was fresh trouble he remembered something which the schoolmaster had mentioned to him. What was it? That the boy, Robert, had something on his mind. Something which was taking his attention off his lessons. Usually his show pupil, Robert had recently been coming to school looking like a ghost, with great dark circles round his eyes and a mind which wandered all the time. Remembering this, and looking at the child’s obvious distress, the priest decided to see what comfort in the form of ice cream would produce.

  “What about sitting down and cooling off,” he said, still holding the boy’s arms. “It’s terribly hot—let’s go and see what our friend the baker can find us in his ice-machine,” and he took the still panting child into the baker’s shop.

  VI

  KATIE opened her window very cautiously—Anna slept heavily, but she had a maddening habit of waking when least wanted to—and swung herself down on to the grass. She closed the window to within an inch of the sill and crept round the silent house to the glass sun-room built on at the side, in which Hank, Karl and the twins now slept. She tapped on the glass three times. A window opened and Hank’s head appeared. He was a powerful lad of eighteen, with a coarse brutal face and his mother’s bold black eyes.