Authors: Karen Swan
‘Lilian?’ she asked again, turning slowly on the spot, her eyes scanning the walkway on the upper levels. But she was alone.
She was about to leave when her eyes fell to an old cardboard box beside the sofa.
Vienna / Paris
had been written on the side in black marker pen and the taped seal sliced open, a silver
letter opener still on one of the cardboard leaves, an orange suede album, it seemed, set on its side and peeping out of the top. Flora walked over and picked it up. Was this what she thought it
was? She remembered how Lilian had told her there were no old family photographs from before the war: no wedding photographs, no photographs of Jacques’ father. But that had simply been
Magda’s lies as she tried to keep their shameful past a secret. Only a few days ago, Jacques had stood in the flower room and confided his bittersweet optimism that he would finally see an
image of his father’s face.
The edges of the album were grubby, the peached skin flattened from use, and as she flicked it open quickly, she saw it was filled with old black-and-white photographs that were gently
yellowing. The first one was a wedding photo – the bride in a long-sleeved, rather unflattering satin dress and limp full-length veil, an extravagant bouquet of dark flowers in her hands that
tapered to a point around her knees. The groom was smartly dressed in a dark suit and tie, his shoes so brightly polished they shone. Their heads were inclined towards each other; neither one of
them was tall and they both looked middle-aged in the picture, even though Flora knew they were nothing of the sort – for the bride was clearly Magda, her raisin-dark eyes unchanged, although
here they glittered with love and not resentment.
Flora sank into the sofa, her weight perched on the front as she brought the album onto her lap for a closer look. So then, this was Franz Von Taschelt. She stared at the man’s face,
looking for traces of the monster: his hair was thick – unusually so – and very dark but with salt-and-pepper sprinkles at the temples already. He had what her mother would call a
‘strong’ nose and, if she was being mean, a slightly receding chin.
She looked harder. There was little in his appearance or demeanour to indicate his greed, his callous disregard for humanity. Maybe the intense shine of his shoes betrayed his ambition? Perhaps
that wasn’t love for Magda she saw in his eyes, his hands doubly clasping hers, but a love of money, of power? Or maybe he really was just a plain man, looking proud and happy on his wedding
day.
She sighed, not knowing anything any more, her instincts shot to hell as she remembered Xavier’s words all too clearly:
‘Monsters are masters of disguise.’
She glanced at the cover. ‘Vienna and Paris’ had been blind-embossed on the orange suede cover. She turned the page after the wedding picture. Another photo showed Magda sitting on a
picnic blanket, a small hamper by her knees as she squinted up at the camera, her hand shading her eyes; a tiny blur at the side of the shot indicated that the photographer (Franz?) had left his
finger over the aperture. In the photo beside it, the two of them were leaning against a wall, both wearing hand-knitted cardigans, the wind catching their hair.
She turned the page: Magda sitting in a small white sports car – Freddie would recognize it in a flash, he was such a petrol head – her hair covered with a silk scarf; Another at a
castle or chateau with Magda in a coat leaning against a crenelated wall, an ancient forest in the background. In all the photos, she appeared somehow slightly dissatisfied, a hint of a frown on
her brow, impatience in her smile.
Flora kept turning the pages. Magda sitting outdoors at a café with two women – Flora peered closer, picking up a resemblance between Magda and one of them. Her sister? The other
woman caught her attention too, though she couldn’t make out why; she didn’t think she could have seen her before.
One of Franz standing outside a shop with another man, his hands folded behind his back, his chest puffed out proudly. Flora’s eyes picked out the bottoms of the words, framed in an oval,
just visible in the top of the frame. If she hadn’t known what to look for, she couldn’t have deciphered it, but she did know; she had seen it replicated in the old stickers on the
backs of the paintings and heading the ledgers still kept in the gallery in Saint-Paul: Blumka Von Taschelt, the gallery Franz had run in Vienna before the Anschluss, dating this photograph between
1934 and 1938. So then, was the other man in the photo Blumka?
She turned the pages more quickly, noticing how their circumstances began to change: Franz filled out, his cheeks became rounder, the weight adding strength to his features. Something in his
demeanour changed too, his chin pushed up, his eyes stared back at the camera with, if not quite superiority, then something like it. Was it pride? That first taste of success? Power suited
him.
Certainly his suits fitted better, his shoes shone brighter, Magda had her hair cut fashionably short, started wearing showy jewellery. Flora stopped towards the back of the album at a photo
taken of both Franz and Magda at a formal event. They were standing on the steps of somewhere grand – an opera house perhaps? – Franz in tails and a hat, Magda in a pale satin dress
with pleats, a fox fur over one shoulder and a feather in her hair.
There was no doubt they had moved up in the world, but their body language had changed too. Where Magda had dominated the early snaps with her beady eyes and passive-aggressive agitation, now
Franz had eclipsed her – laughing easily in the frames, his hands more often louchely stuffed in his pockets than holding his wife’s. They stood together but apart.
Flora stared at him, willing herself to see his monstrousness now. He was well on his way – making money, hitting the big time. But at worst that only made him a vain, selfish man.
Then she turned the page and saw it: proof in the boldest terms of what he was capable of. They were sitting in a formal drawing room with another couple – Flora recognized the other woman
from the café snap.
It was clear they were all great friends, well matched in their lifestyles – all were in evening dress, low-ball drinks in their hands, jewel-coloured Tiffany glass lamps on the tables and
fringed silk shawls draped over the sofas. Magda stared straight to camera, somehow dissonant from the little group, but Franz was centrally positioned, one hand on the other man’s shoulder
as the two of them stood behind their seated wives, the other woman half-turned in Franz’s direction and laughing at something he must have said.
Which made his betrayal all the greater, his monstrosity laid as bare, with hindsight, as if he’d been standing there with two heads. Flora couldn’t take her eyes off the paintings
on the back wall – the Renoirs, that portrait; even in black and white, she could detect the richness of tone in the peacock-blue dress, the ruby a rich drop of blood red on the woman’s
hand.
Suddenly she knew why the woman seemed familiar to her. She had seen her before, in another photo still kept in Vienna, in a portrait that had been found in Paris. She even knew her name:
Natalya Spiegel. And her husband, Noah had told her, was Juls. They had been friends!
Flora stared at their faces, all of them having a good time, full of vitality and high spirits, no sense yet of the horrors that were to come their way; no sense yet that the camaraderie was a
sham, the friendship an illusion. That only the paintings, ergo the money, mattered.
Flora stared at Franz, drinking his friend’s Scotch and no doubt flirting with his wife, the man who would one day soon turn them over to the Nazis and pocket his commission. The traitor
in their midst.
When had they realized, she wondered, that he had betrayed them? When they’d signed the contract he pushed before them? When they’d answered the door to those SS soldiers? As
they’d been hustled onto the train, still thinking they were heading for the border? Or maybe they had never known his role in it. Perhaps he had got away with it and they had gone to their
deaths thinking him the good friend he’d always been. Had that thought sustained him? Reputation was all to men of power, was it not? Hadn’t the Nazis – Hitler and Göring
themselves – even as they plundered Europe of its greatest cultural treasures, tried to present themselves to the world as aesthetes and not thieves? Art was the only currency with any value
for them. They had wanted to be remembered as men of taste, of supreme civilization. The master race.
The thought stopped her. Reputation is legacy . . .
An idea came to her. She punched the number in her phone and dialled.
‘It’s me,’ she said quickly, before he could reply. ‘If I mean anything to you at all, then you’ll do exactly as I ask.
‘Oh, Flora, there you are!’ The voice broke through Flora’s immersion in the pictures and she looked up in surprise to see Lilian coming into the library.
‘Natascha said you were looking for me.’
Hurriedly, Flora snapped the album shut but it was pointless trying to pretend she hadn’t been snooping. ‘I’m sorry, I—’
‘Fascinating, isn’t it? You know Jacques had never even seen a picture of his father until two days ago?’ she said quietly, coming to sit beside Flora on the sofa and opening
up the Vienna album again. ‘Of course, he hasn’t looked at any of these other photos. He took one long look at his father in the wedding picture and then walked out . . . He’s
devastated.’ She shook her head mournfully and Flora had to resist the urge to clasp her hand. Lilian was her client, that was all – not the mother of the man who’d shared her bed
last night, not the wife of a good man paying for the sins of his father; not the mother of a daughter broken against the wheel of social politics.
She closed her eyes for a moment, knowing now how right she was in leaving here. She’d been getting too close, blurring the boundaries. This family, this troubled, beleaguered, powerful
family, was not her concern.
‘Are you OK, Flora? Genevieve said you really don’t look well and I have to say I agree with her.’
‘Oh, no, really, I’m fine. Just tired.’ She thought Lilian looked little better than she did, to be honest. What on earth had happened to the two of them, she wondered,
remembering their poise and polish in the early meetings. Not even a month later and they were shadows of their former selves.
‘Is it the cottage? Is the air conditioning OK? It can play up a bit sometimes and I know that can be just havoc on
my
sleep.’
‘Oh,’ Flora tried to smile. ‘No, it’s not . . . no.’ She stared at her hands, summoning her courage. ‘Uh, Lilian, I’m sorry to have to say I’m
going to be returning to London tonight.’
‘London?’ Lilian gasped, as though she’d said the North Pole.
‘Yes. But don’t worry. Angus is sending over an expert in provenance research. Her name’s Bridget Plaidstow. She’s like a modern-day Miss Marple – honestly, she can
uncover anything.’
‘I thought
you’d
done rather well at that, to be honest.’
Flora glanced at Lilian to find she was smiling. ‘Well, it’s not my strength. Things will move a lot more quickly with Bridget. The project is so huge you’ll really be better
off with a specialist.’
There was a brief pause, Lilian watching her intensely, taking in her dishevelled appearance. Flora hoped she hadn’t noticed that her son looked almost exactly the same. ‘Is that
really the reason?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Well, the past few weeks haven’t been without event,’ she said with characteristic understatement. ‘And I’m under no illusions as to how prickly my family can be.
Plus I heard about what happened last night . . .’
Flora felt the world rock. What? Had Xavier announced he was leaving? Had he told . . . ?
‘What you did for Natascha.’
Oh. ‘But I really didn’t—’
‘Yes, she said you’d say that.’ Lilian hesitated, taking a deep breath. ‘I don’t know if you know anything about Natascha’s past—’
‘I do,’ Flora said quickly, not wanting to make her say the words, not wanting to face the hypocrisy of sitting here sympathetically, even as she led the rally cries for her brother
in the other camp. That what he was accused of was lies, scarcely seemed to matter. Was it any wonder Xavier couldn’t bear to look at her? ‘I do. And I’m so sorry. For what
it’s worth, I think she’s a lovely young woman. I hope she’ll believe that one day too.’
At her words, Lilian’s face crumpled suddenly, all her elegant composure gone in a flash, and she covered her face with her hands as her shoulders began to heave.
‘Oh, Lilian,’ Flora gasped, horrified to have made her cry, to have made things worse yet again, when all she’d wanted was to make them better. She shuffled closer to her and
put an arm hesitantly around her. To her astonishment, Lilian reached back with both arms, grasping her and holding on to her firmly as she sobbed, as though she was a life-raft in storm
waters.
They sat there like that for several minutes, were still sitting like that when the library door suddenly opened and Xavier walked in. He stopped in his tracks at the sight of Flora holding his
weeping mother. Had she been doing a life-drawing of her in the nude, he couldn’t have looked more shocked, and Flora half-wondered whether he’d ever actually seen his mother cry
before.
‘What have you done?’ he asked her coldly, striding over.
Lilian looked up at the sound of his voice, instantly remembering herself as she inhaled sharply and patted her cheeks dry, pushing her index fingers against her lower lashes and removing the
mascara stains. ‘Killing me with kindness, darling,’ Lilian said, managing a smile and, looking over at Flora, patting her knee. ‘Thank you. Please don’t leave without
saying goodbye, will you?’
‘Of course not.’ She didn’t dare meet Xavier’s eyes.
‘What is it, darling?’ Lilian asked her son as she rose to her feet, her voice shaky but perfectly in control again.
‘Father’s looking for you. He wants to talk to you before the meeting.’
Lilian looked back at Flora. ‘Oh, you will still come to that, won’t you, Flora? We will need your help. I’m afraid we wouldn’t know the first thing about how to prove if
this claim is genuine or not and I suppose this advert is going to attract a number of hoaxers.’