Ernst flicked water from his hair and beard. “Hello! What are you doing away from the silk mill on a working afternoon? It’s not like you.”
“I was passing, and I thought I’d drop in to see Helga.” Anton held up a small package he was carrying. “I’ve brought her a little gift to add to her collection. I saw it when I was in New York, and thought she’d like it.”
I felt too self-conscious to stay in the pool with Anton looking on. Muttering that I’d had enough now, I climbed the steps and fled into the changing pavilion. As I towelled myself dry, I reflected about the gift he’d bought for Helga. I found it difficult to keep in mind that he was her half-brother. It looked as though he might be Helga’s one true friend in the family.
When I rejoined the others, Helga was still exclaiming in delight over her present ... a Red Indian squaw in a bead-embroidered leather tunic, with a baby on her back. Helga threw her arms around Anton’s neck and kissed him. The doll was lovely, the workmanship exquisite, but there was something rather pathetic about a grown woman so excited over what most people would regard as a child’s plaything.
“Come,” she said eagerly, “let us go and introduce her to the rest of my family. I know exactly where I’ll put her.”
We all trooped into the house, Anton pushing Sigrid’s wheelchair. Helga led the way to a bright L-shaped room with windows on two sides, which had been set out like a small museum. Hundreds of exhibits were arranged around, many in glass cases ... dolls of all sizes and types. Victorian dolls with pink china faces, dolls in colourful peasant costumes from every imaginable part of the world, clockwork walking dolls, and leather dolls and wax dolls and talking dolls and jointed wooden dolls. Some of the clothes were quite beautiful, and I learned that Helga did a lot of the delicate restoration work on the dolls herself. I began to feel a new respect for her.
My eye was caught by a carved wooden figure lying on a side table. Misshapen, ill proportioned, crude in workmanship and lacking any touch of charm, it somehow compelled attention.
“I like this,” I said to Helga. “Where did you get it?”
The sunny mood brought on by Anton’s arrival embraced even me.
“It is interesting,
nicht? I
bought it at a market stall for just a few francs. I must think of some way to dress it that will suit the curious style.”
I studied the figure more carefully, turning it in my hand.
“I have a strong feeling that it’s the work of that deaf and dumb boy, Willi.”
The sudden silence in the room was deafening. Then Helga said in a choked voice, “Are you sure of this?”
“Well, I’m pretty certain. Wood-carving seems to be his one means of expression.”
Helga looked affronted. She snatched the figure from me and thrust it away in a drawer which she slammed shut. Then she brushed her palms against her slacks as if wiping them clean of contamination.
“I do not think it suits my collection,” she said. “It is too badly carved. I will not keep it.”
I faced her challengingly. “Why should it displease you that the carving might be Willi’s work? You obviously liked it until I mentioned his name.”
She shrugged petulantly, not answering. “Anyway, how do you come to know the boy? He cannot speak or hear.”
“There are other ways of communicating with someone as gifted as Willi. I know that he’s supposed to be simple-minded, but it seems a pity not to try and make contact with him.”
“Why should you be so interested?”
‘It’s obvious that he hero-worshipped my father, and misses him dreadfully,” I said. “I suppose I feel a sort of responsibility to do what I can.”
Anton said quietly, “The lad is well cared for, Gail. He lives with his aunt and uncle at an inn in the village.”
“Yes, so your stepmother told me.”
“He receives all the education he’s capable of absorbing,” Anton added. “There’s really nothing more to be done for him.”
The rubber-tyred wheels of Sigrid’s invalid chair gave a squeal as she spun it around on the polished wood-block floor.
“Goodness me, what a morbid conversation this is,” she protested. “Let’s go out into the sunshine again. We must make the most of what we get at this time of year.”
But I made no move, staring back at them defiantly. They all seemed so thoroughly disapproving of my attempt at friendship with Willi, but I felt strongly about the boy, and I refused to be shut up.
“I don’t think Willi is happy,” I said. “He seems timid, almost frightened. Maybe I’ll go and have a chat with his aunt and uncle, to see if there’s anything I can do for him.”
“Perhaps they will tell you about his father,” Helga retorted, her plump face quivering with spite.
“Helga,
in Gottes Namen!”
Anton was frowning angrily at her. To me he said, as though reluctantly, “Willi’s father is Josef, our gardener. When his wife died he couldn’t look after the boy, so he handed him over to his sister-in-law. You don’t need to concern yourself about Willi. He’s in perfectly good hands.”
With a sense of dismay I pictured the boorish, sullen figure of the gardener at the Schloss. Willi’s father. At least it was something, I thought, that Willi was no longer in that man’s charge.
Sigrid had paused in the doorway. Now she propelled her chair forward again, through into the hall.
“Do come on out,” she called. “Perhaps Helga will make tea. I expect Gail would like some.”
Anton stayed only a few minutes longer, but there was still a while to go before Karl was due to collect Sigrid and me. Helga, rebuked by her adored half-brother, was behaving rather like a small child caught out in some naughtiness—subdued, yet oddly pleased with herself. Neither she nor I said much, leaving the conversational effort to Ernst and Sigrid.
When Karl arrived with the car, Sigrid turned to her son-in-law. “I almost forgot, Ernst ... concerning the sale of those securities of mine that we were leaving in abeyance. I’d like you to go ahead now.”
His brow ridged with sharp displeasure.
“But, Sigrid, I thought we agreed ...”
“Circumstances have changed.” Her tone was crisp, final. “Well, Gail, we must say our good-byes.”
As Karl came forward to push her chair, Ernst said quickly, “Before you go, Sigrid, there are one or two documents needing your signature. I have them in my study, and it will save me a trip to the Schloss.”
She hesitated, then shrugged. “Very well.”
They were away for fifteen minutes, fifteen uncomfortable minutes for me. My resolve to be nice to Helga was quite gone now. She had made it very plain that she didn’t want my friendship.
After a long, prickly silence, she remarked, “You will be returning to London soon, I expect.”
“I really can’t say. I’ve made no definite plans yet.”
“There is nothing to keep you here, surely?”
I gave her a wintry smile which reflected her own malice.
“I’ll be sure to let you know when I decide to leave.”
When the other two returned, Ernst was full of false joviality. “My apologies for allowing business to intrude on a social occasion. I hope you didn’t mind, Gail?”
“Not at all,” I said politely.
The Schillers saw us off, standing together at their front door while the Citroen turned on the paved forecourt. Ernst, smiling, raised his hand in a cheerful wave, Helga, looking sullen, stood watching with arms hanging limply. What an ill-matched couple they were.
Sigrid was unusually silent on the drive home, locked in her own thoughts. I myself felt no urge to talk. I was trying to recall, to analyse, every word and look and gesture that had passed between the four people I had been with that afternoon. Why did I have this irrational feeling that the more I was told, the less I truly understood? It wasn’t just that I needed my questions answered. First, I needed to decide the right questions to ask.
Afterwards, I couldn’t pinpoint whose idea it had been originally.
The suggestion of a Sunday outing grew from a conversation over the dinner table. And by the time we moved through to the salon for coffee it was all arranged --- a trip to a mountain viewpoint somewhere in the Lucerne region. “Not Pilatus,” Anton stipulated. “That’s too much on the tourist track.”
“And it must be somewhere possible for this wretched chair of mine,” added Sigrid, who was determined to join in. She gave me a waggish smile. “It’s quite an achievement, Gail, to get these two boys of mine to take me out.”
The expedition today, though, was entirely for my benefit—I knew that.
It was a day of mixed weather. The sun shone bright and clear as we set out in Anton’s car, but clouds had gathered by the time we parked near the base station of the mountain railway. There was a slight fuss about getting Sigrid aboard in her folding wheelchair, but Anton and Raimund managed somehow.
With a jolt, the quaint little tip-tilted train started to move, grinding steeply up the narrow track that rose like a stitched seam across the broad shoulder of the mountain. On either side of us dun-coloured cows placidly grazed the sloping meadows, ignoring the clatter of the train. As it climbed higher we pierced the cloud drifts and all we could see were the tall ghosts of pine trees, looming and vanishing in an endless succession.
We alighted at the summit station to find snow underfoot, but here at this height the sun was seeping through and the mist was in retreat before its warmth. The levelled path to the restaurant—a circular building like a squat white tower with wide picture windows—had been cleared of snow so that Anton managed Sigrid’s wheelchair easily.
We sat together at a fretted white table, sipping drinks from tall glasses and enjoying the majestic vista of snow-clad peaks that stretched into infinity. I viewed the panorama with a painter’s eye ... a glistening pure white where the sunlight caught a snow surface, through blues and greys and smoky browns to deep lamp black in the shadowed crevasses, the whole scene rising above a drifting lake of pearly mist.
“Was it worth coming?” Raimund asked me.
“Oh yes. I could sit here for hours.”
“Let’s go outside,” Anton suggested. “There’s a path around that big crag, and on the far side you can get a wonderful bird’s-eye view of one of the valleys.”
“Yes, I remember,” said Raimund. ‘It’s pretty spectacular.”
“Off you all go, then,” Sigrid ordered us. “And when you come back we’ll be ready for some lunch. I shall spend the time studying the menu.”
Anton glanced at his half-brother. “You’d better stay here with Mama. We can’t leave her on her own.”
“But ...”
A look from Anton denied further protest. As he and I left the restaurant and went down the steps outside, I said, “There was no need to split up the party on my account. I’d have been perfectly happy to stay inside and look at the view from there.”
He grinned. “Wait till you see what I’m going to show you, Gail, and you’ll change your mind. It really is rather special.”
Most of the sight-seers seemed to be staying close to the restaurant, chatting and taking photographs of one another. Anton and I struck off at an angle, following a narrow path which was little trodden so that the snow still lingered. Exposed to the mountain storms, the only vegetation here was stunted tufts of grass that struggled for survival in cracks and crevices. Away from people, the quiet was intense. There wasn’t even the sound of bird song.
In the hushed silence I voiced the thought that had been haunting me, because I knew now that I didn’t want to leave Switzerland.
“Anton, I think I’d better return to England sometime this week. Say Wednesday or Thursday.”
He turned to look at me, and his eyes held the grave expression I had seen there so often.
“As soon as that? I thought you’d promised to stay on for a while, for Sigrid’s sake.”
“I only meant a few more days.”
“Don’t go yet,” he pleaded. “Stay at least another week before you start to think about leaving us.” He smiled at me then, but his eyes remained serious. “Come on, say you will.”
It’s so easy to be persuaded to do something you long to do. “If you really want me to....”
“We do, Gail. All of us.”
Anton stood very still, looking at me with strange intensity, and I was conscious of the blood throbbing in my veins.
“We’d better move on,” he said at length. “It’s about a ten-minute walk.”
The strengthening sun struck warm through the thickness of my sheepskin coat, but below us the mist still hung in slowly curling wraiths. The path sloped down, then steeply upward, skirting huge boulders as it headed for the giant crag that glinted steely blue in its barrenness.
And all the while Anton and I talked ... talked about small, inconsequential things. I thought up questions to ask him, about the height of this mountain we were on and how it compared with the other peaks around, about how long the rack-and-pinion railway had existed and who had been responsible for building it, about the conditions up here in winter. About anything that leapt into my mind and about nothing that mattered.
The path became a ledge cut into the nearly vertical face of the rock, wide at first, but narrowing until it was scarcely four feet across in some places. Looking outwards the mist was a vast white ocean, the mountain peaks thrusting through like stark volcanic islands.
But when Anton stopped at the viewpoint it was as if some signal had been received that we were ready now, as if an unseen hand was drawing aside layers of gauze curtains to reveal the dramatic stage set. Emerging brightly was a scene of wooded valley girdled by mountains, with a lake that was a silver wedge driven between walls of rugged rock. I could see a miniature village of red-roofed houses and a quaint little church with a pointed steeple. I watched toy cars moving snail-slow on the winding ribbon of road and, faster, a train on its ruler-straight track. Like a child’s farmyard set, tiny cows stood motionless in neat green meadows that were edged by matchstick fences. Everything seemed at the same time so very close, within reach of my outstretched finger tips, and yet a million miles away. Another world, quite separate from us.