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By Root 269 0

of Reading, of Nottingham, of Ohio State, of Kingston, had little to offer two such accomplished Viennese flirts, with their strategies, their tactics, their moods, and their endless desire for victory. When the sisters found each other again, many years later, together with their cousin Resi, it was to outbid each other with stories of horrific boredom, of husbands become too puny to interest them, of pointless days which it seemed beneath them to try to fill. Annoyance and frustration blazed from their every pore; in their mother’s dark drawing room the air was filled with dissension, with ugliness. They were now heavy women, punishingly corseted, with badly pencilled eyebrows, and large, hard bosoms. They whipped themselves into a blaze of retrospective fury, voices raised, coffee spilling from their cups. ‘Schrecklich! Schrecklich!’ they shouted. ‘Ach, du Schreck!’

Seven-year-old Edith, hiding behind Grossmama Edith’s chair, heard with relief her father’s key in the door and ran to him, crying. The brutal sound of the words, which she did not understand, hurt her. Her father, guessing, smiled palely, and suggested that they go for a walk. He took her to the Kunsthistorisches Museum and tried to explain the pictures to her, but she pressed her wet red face against his hand and would not listen. And when he stopped longingly before a picture of men lying splayed in a cornfield under a hot sun she burst into further tears, and he bent down and smoothed her hair back from her forehead. Now, Edith, he had said, wiping her eyes with his handkerchief, this is when character tells.

And he had died quite young, in his early fifties, her poor little professor, and scornful Rosa had collapsed without him. Not a day passed as, dirtier and more irascible, she heaped insults upon his memory. But when she in her turn died, not long after, Edith had found among her papers a faded scrap of a letter in her father’s careful student German, an invitation of some kind, its purpose now lost, and only its opening sentence hinting at earlier, happier times. In a gentle sloping hand were written the words, ‘Gracious lady, would you do me the honour …’ before the torn paper obliterated the rest of the message.

Edith rubbed her eyes, and picked up her pen again.

‘My dear darling, you cannot know how much I think of you and long for you and wait until I can see you again.’

This she blotted carefully and laid aside. Then, taking up the folder containing Beneath the Visiting Moon, she pulled out her papers, re-read her last paragraph, and bent her head obediently to her daily task of fantasy and obfuscation.

4

‘I think you have an admirer,’ said Mrs Pusey with a light laugh.

Edith made no reply, nor, it seemed, was she required to do so, for Mrs Pusey, in an almond green linen coat and skirt, and wearing her daytime pearls, had turned away from her to summon Maryvonne: more hot water was needed.

Edith, emerging dazed and haggard from her room after several hours with Beneath the Visiting Moon, had found the salon deserted with the exception of Mme de Bonneuil, who was reading very small portions of the Gazette de Lausanne through a magnifying glass. The dense, warm silence of the place indicated that she was too late for lunch and too early for tea. She crossed the foyer, still mildly anaesthetized by her labours, and stepped again through the revolving door into an afternoon of such mature beauty that she wondered how she could possibly have missed it. An autumn sun, soft as honey, gilded the lake; tiny waves whispered onto the shore; a white steamer passed noiselessly off in the direction of Ouchy; and at her feet, on the sandy path, she saw the green hedgehog shape of a chestnut, split open to reveal the brown gleam of its fruit.

The café with the clouded windows, now transparent and bathed in afternoon light, was almost empty. Seated at a silent table, Edith closed her eyes momentarily in a shaft of sunlight and tasted pure pleasure. Time dissolved; sensations expanded. She drank coffee, still too highly charged with vicarious