Return to Silbersee Page 11

  He broke off at Juliet's startled echo of 'Here? You have a client who wants to build here? But this is part of the Baron von Boden's estate!'

  He nodded. 'Exacdy. But my client has reason to think he may be able to buy, if I approve the site.' He looked about him. 'Which, on a very cursory survey, I think I may.'

  Since he was so free with his business, she decided to learn more. 'For a house?' she asked.

  'A country house, yes,' he said, and when she laughed, 'You find that amusing, Fraulein?'

  'Not amusing. Only—odd.' She explained, 'You see, I'd just been planning the ideal house here—how it would face, and the view it would have. And then you—— Well, that was why I laughed—at the coincidence of it all.'

  'And you laugh charmingly, Fraulein.' He glanced at his watch. 'I over judged the time it would take me to drive out from Munich, and I am far too early for my client. But please don't interrupt your meal, Fraulein. I shall go and wait in my car.'

  All this earnest punctilio! thought Juliet. Besides, she had more questions to ask. 'Please don't,' she invited. 'Won't you join me? It's only a picnic snack, but '

  'Charmed, Fraulein.' More invisible heel-clicking and he sat down cross-legged, and accepted a crisp- bread and a plastic cup—the only one—of juice. Never mind, she had a drinking straw.

  'About this house '

  'You are of the von Boden family, Fraulein ?'

  Their voices had clashed, and it was she who answered his question. 'Oh no,' she said. 'My name is Juliet Harmon. I am English. Couldn't you tell from my accent?'

  'Yes. There was something about it,' he admitted. 'But you live around here? On the Lake perhaps?'

  She told him where and what she was doing, then returned to her own curiosity. Hermann Brenti's 'my client' couldn't be allowed to build her house without owning up to his name! She said again, 'This house— would you be breaking a confidence if you told me for whom you'll be designing it, if you do? I'm a friend of the Baronin's, and I may know him, you see.'

  'Nothing more likely, I'd say, and it's no secret.

  Thank you ' Her companion accepted another

  crispbread. 'He is Karl Adler of Adler Classics, and through Baronin von Boden, you would know him, of course?'

  'Herr Adler?' But her echo held little surprise. By some quirk of intuition she had known what the answer to her question might be. 'Yes, I know him,' she said. 'He has the felling rights of the estate, and he is building chalets for his workers. But I hadn't heard he was planning to build here. For himself?'

  'Yes, as a second house to his apartment in Munich. As a leisure place for weekends, or perhaps with a view to his marrying.-And you wouldn't have heard anything, as he will only buy on my approval of the site and a satisfactory land-survey report. It is all still at the discussion stage.'

  Which explained to Juliet why Magda had told her nothing about the proposed sale. Meanwhile her immediate need was to pack up and get away before Karl arrived to keep his date with Hermann Brentl, who hadn't said just how early he himself had been for it, and who was working a steady, leisured way through the food.

  The crispbread and the pate were finished; he had made a separate course of his salad and was about ready to start on the Stollen cake. Juliet watched him in a fever of urgency. Since she had invited him to eat with her, she could hardly begin collecting cutlery and folding cloths until he was ready. Heavens!—after an arch, 'No really, Fraulein ' he was now embarked on a third buttered slice, and there was the unmistakable sound of a second car coming up the gradient of the road.

  Her guest heard it too, but he finished his cake, brushed himself down and stood. 'You have been too kind, Fraulein!' He bowed to her and went to meet Karl, hand outstretched.

  Juliet was kneeling, busy with the picnic debris, and though she did not look up, she felt Karl's critical surprise coming over to her in waves.

  Hermann Brentl was explaining, 'I arrived too early for you, my friend. But Fraulein Harmon, whom I found picnicking here, asked me to join her, and I accepted '

  To which Karl drawled, 'Indeed? And I'd meant to take you back with me to lunch at the Schloss,' and then with direct irony to Juliet, 'You know, I have to wonder just what our friend here has got that I haven't?' Taking it for granted that she would know what he meant, she thought. As she did.

  She said with pointed emphasis, 'I invited Herr - Brend to share my lunch.'

  'That's the comparison I'm making. We both cast a covetous eye on you—I mean, of course, on your picnic hamper—and he gets favoured, where I didn't.' Karl explained to the other man's puzzled glance, 'Miss Harmon and I are recalling a certain occasion when I tried to gatecrash her picnic and didn't merit an invitation. So what hidden attraction or influence have you? I ask myself. Or'—he turned again to Juliet —'is it that the lady very, very occasionally allows herself a melting mood?'

  She did not reply, but went on collecting and stowing into her rush basket. Hermann Brend chuckled, 'To hear you, one could well accuse you of jealousy, Adler!'

  'In the circumstances, haven't I every right to be jealous?'

  'Of having missed an excellent picnic? Or of my obvious success with Fraulein Harmon?'

  Still looking straight at Juliet, Karl said, 'In front of her, you'd hardly expect me to be churl enough to say "Just the lunch", would you?' Then he added abruptly, 'Well, to business. What do you think of the prospects?'

  'Of the site? With reservations, excellent for your purpose, I'd say,' Brentl said.

  'What reservations?'

  'Among them, that you aren't going to be asked an exorbitant price to get it.'

  'For anything I want badly enough, I'm willing to pay whatever price is asked,' Karl snapped.

  'Tenacious man,' was the architect's dry comment.

  'Single-mindedness is all. It gets one there in the end. What else?'

  'The land must stand up to an exhaustive survey.'

  'You'll lay that on?'

  'As soon as you can give the green light to go ahead.'

  'And when I've passed your designs, how long before building can begin?'

  'Within a few weeks.'

  " 'And completion—when?'

  The architect shrugged. 'Nine months, a year. It could depend on the winter we get. Had you any particular target date in mind?'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Only asking whether you're a free agent, or whether there may be a "little woman" in your background, egging you on to build her a nest!'

  'Not funny. I'm unencumbered,' Karl scowled.

  'All right, keep your cool. Just one of the hoarier jokes the profession trots out for clients,' Hermann Brend soothed good-naturedly.

  'Well, if that's a sample, spare me the rest,' snapped Karl. 'And now can we discuss a few details? That damned cart-track, for instance. Where would you bring in a proper approach?'

  The architect produced his clip-board and they moved away talking, giving Juliet her chance to escape. But as she was ready to leave Karl called back to her from where they were standing, 'May either of us give you a lift back?'

  'Thank you, but I'm not going back just yet. I'm walking on,' she said.

  'A pity. I was hoping to get your reaction to my building myself a house on this site. How would you view the idea?'

  'I think it's an ideal spot,' she said carefully.

  'You wouldn't consider I was desecrating the landscape?'

  He couldn't really want her opinion. He had deliberately trapped her with her own words. 'That was in reference to your plan to put a sawmill on the very lake- shore,' she retorted. 'A house in this seclusion would be quite different.'

  Karl said, 'Good. I breathe again,' and as if he sensed a tension he didn't understand Hermann Brend attempted mediation.

  'You could do worse, Adler,' he said, 'than to consult Fraulein Harmon on your plans. Before you arrived she confessed to me she had forestalled me. She had already designed the house!'

  Juliet flushed with annoyance.
Now they were both making fun of her! 'That's rank exaggeration,' she told Brentl. 'I couldn't design a house if I tried. I only said I had been thinking of how best to use the site if I were going to build, that was all.'

  He shook his head at her in mock reproof. 'A woman, Fraulein—and with no ideas of her own on house design. Oh, come!'

  'Meaning?' Karl asked.

  'That we architect boffins say we may build to a man's orders, but we design to his woman's whim. There's a difference, you understand?'

  'I see. Another of the bewhiskered platitudes to which you treat your clients?'

  Karl's tone had .been acid, but Hermann Brentl was not be roused. 'Not very witty, I agree,' he said affably. 'But that's the odd thing about platitudes—the duller they are, the more often they are used. And the more they are used, the truer they become by sheer repetition. It's the law of '

  But Juliet decided she had had enough, both of Karl's asperity and the other man's bland humour. Between them they had contrived to make her a kind of sounding-board for their arguments, and while she stayed there as their butt, they would never get down to the business in hand. She sketched a wave to them behind her head as she walked away into the trees, and she did not look back.

  That evening the Baronin telephoned. She needed a short rest; she had found the changeover in management rather wearing, and she was going to visit her sister and brother-in-law, newly retired from Government service, in Bonn.

  'I shall be away for about a fortnight,' she said, and then, 'Karl Adler tells me he surprised you and his architect picnicking together on the Fichte Platte this afternoon!'

  'Making it sound as if we were on a clandestine date?' queried Juliet tartly.

  The Baronin laughed. 'How thorny you are, dear, wherever Herr Adler is concerned,' she scolded. 'He only said '

  'Yes, well—I was picnicking. This Brend man arrived. I couldn't very well sit there munching in front of him, so I asked him to join me, and I may say he ate most of what there was.'

  'And came back here with Karl to another four courses,' Magda chuckled. 'But I feel guilty, dear, that I hadn't told you about Karl's offer for the Fichte Platte for a house for himself. It's just that I meant to tell you when it was settled, which it isn't yet, though I think it will be. I'm forgiven?'

  'Of course,' Juliet assured her. 'Though I was rather surprised to hear you were selling any of the estate.'

  'Just a very small slice, and Karl was so pressing and so indifferent to the cost, that I gave in. But I confess I'm a little puzzled. I thought he planned a kind of pied-a-terre for himself, as he is so often over here at weekends. But from what Herr Brend told me today, Karl wants him to design something much more extensive—almost a family house, in fact. Far too big for a bachelor's needs, in Herr Brentl's opinion. But he did hint too that Karl could be thinking ahead—to marriage.'

  'He said as much to me too.' With an effort that hurt,

  Juliet added, 'It's more than likely, I suppose.'

  'As you say,' Magda agreed. 'Karl Adler is far too positive and virile a character to want to ride alone all his life. And I've more than a passing idea—though I wish I hadn't—that Ilse means that he shan't.'

  Juliet, listening, caught at a phrase and echoed it. 'You "wish that you hadn't" to think so? Why not?' she asked.

  There was a long pause. Then Magda said quickly, 'Forget it, please. You didn't hear me say that, did you?'

  Puzzled and disturbed by her friend's urgency, Juliet agreed, 'All right, I didn't hear it,' and resisted the temptation to ask 'Why not?'

  Magda said, 'Thank you, dear. I had no right——' She broke off. 'I'll be in touch after Bonn,' she promised, and rang off.

  Juliet was to remember well that week of Magda's absence and its aftermath. It began for her with Wilhelm's two students' announcement that their parents were withdrawing them from the School; taken aback, she was sharp with them.

  'So soon after your joining it? Why do your parents want to take you away?' she demanded.

  Both were weedy, callow youths of seventeen, with scarcely an opinion of their own between them. They muttered that they didn't know.

  Juliet pressed, 'You must know. Have they plans to send you to another school? Are they dissatisfied with Herr Krastat's teaching? Or what?'

  But either they really didn't know, or they weren't telling, and though she dismissed them with the warning that she must have proper notice of their going, she realised what an empty threat this was. They had not joined the School as bound apprentices, and they were free to leave at the end of any given month.

  She took her annoyance to Wilhelm who, after his usual 'Hmm!' suggested that it might be as she had feared. The boys had been as dumb with him as with her, but from another quarter he had heard that they might be going to Adler Classics or elsewhere as trainee furniture-makers.

  Juliet's heart sank. 'You think Adler Classics approached them?' she asked.

  Wilhelm, however, didn't know that, and in any case thought it unlikely. On a calmer level Juliet did too. She couldn't see Adler Classics needing to send out scouts to rope in totally unskilled employees, but the boys' defection had overtones which she didn't like at all.

  She hadn't expected the rot which Ilse Krantz had forecast to set in at that end of the School's personnel. When it began—if it had to—she thought she might risk the loss of some of the older men—those who, as Wilhelm had suggested, might be justified by their family needs to go for the temptation of higher pay. But if they warned her of it, she had resolved on last Sunday's picnic walk, she would move heaven -and earth to keep them on the better terms she would have to screw out of the exchequer somehow. She might succeed. She might not, and there was a limit to which she could go. But she meant to try.

  She hadn't, however, reckoned with defection for what looked like defection's sake, as with the two students who claimed ignorance of why they were leaving. If that kind of rout spread to the younger men she employed, some of them not long out of training themselves and not worth more than she could afford to give them, then the School was in trouble. They mightn't be skilled, but as a nucleus of workers, it couldn't do without them, any more than it could continue to function without the real craftsmen whom she must try to keep at all costs.

  Towards the end of the week she had to begin to fear the worst, when three of these younger men, entirely vague as to their reasons or their plans, handed in their notices. The proverbial rats abandoning ship in uncanny presentiment of its sinking? Fervently she hoped not, but the fear was there.

  She was looking forward to Magda's return from Bonn. Magda had promised to be in touch when she did so, and for Juliet there was something comfortingly permanent and abiding at the thought of her old friend at the Schloss, always welcoming and always to be reached by telephone.

  But on the day before Magda was due back, Juliet had an unexpected visitor. It was Sunday again and she was working in the garden. She was kneeling at an overgrown triangle of rockery, poking weeds from between the stones, when she was greeted by a Guten Tag in a voice she recognised, and she slewed round to face Karl. If he were staying at the Schloss, he must have walked down for she hadn't heard his car.

  Still kneeling,'Guten Tag.’ she replied coolly, needing to deny the quickened beat of her pulse which the sight and nearness of him always excited. 'Did you want to see me, or were you just passing by?'

  He moved a few paces forward to stand above her. 'It depends,' he said. 'To see you, if I can hope for a civilised reception. Passing by, if not. There's something I want to ask of you.'

  'Of me?'

  'Don't worry, I'm not begging hospitality this time. I've had Mittagessen and I don't take tea r'

  Juliet bent again to her forking, stabbing fiercely at a stubborn buttercup root. 'Isn't that joke rather stale by now? You seemed to think it very funny when you first coined it, but that's quite some time ago,' she said.

  He nodded agreement. 'Exactly. The promise of our first meeting mere d
im history now, with a lot of water having flowed under the bridges since then, hm?'

  'Quite a lot.'

  'And no doubt more of the same to follow.' He watched her in silence for some minutes while with studied deliberation she went on with her work. At last on a note of irritation he said, 'Look, if it's imperative that you compete for the Green Fingers Gold Award this afternoon, please say so, and I'll call again. If not, perhaps you'd honour me with your attention. Either or—you've only to choose.'

  She stirred freed soil idly with her handfork. 'Go ahead. I'm listening,' she said—and was suddenly wrenched to her feet at the compelling command of his grip upon her elbows. He turned her about, shifting his hold to her upper arms. Taken aback, unsteady, she lurched against him closely enough to feel the thud of his heart.

  Still holding her, 'Do you do it just to annoy?' he demanded.

  Purposely obtuse, 'Do what?' she enquired.

  'Most things, most times we have to meet,' he said tautly.

  She eased her arms from his grip. 'It's only rarely that we have to meet, and today it's by your choice,' she reminded him. 'You wanted to ask something of me, d'you remember?'