The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [218]
“I didn’t know … I didn’t know he had children … I didn’t know he was married…”
Wolfgang Stern was tall and gangly, with long, thin arms and legs. He wore a loose shirt and a large floppy bow tie. His brother, equally thin, was smaller and neater, in a dark buttoned-up suit that might have been a uniform. Wolfgang had unruly, long, black hair in a cloud round his head: Leon—who must have been younger than Dorothy, but not by much—had a precisely cut hairstyle and a neat tie. Both had large dark eyes, like Dorothy’s. Both were, or so Dorothy in her wrought-up state immediately felt, recognisable. They were faces she knew. She stared, and then looked down, feeling how odd their intent gaze was.
Griselda talked, with nervous warmth. She introduced Dorothy, in her schoolgirl German, and spoke a sentence or two about how much, in England, some years ago, they had admired their father’s interpretations of Hoffmann and the Grimms.
“Really?” said Wolfgang. He bowed over Griselda’s hand. “He would be enchanted to hear that. And your name?”
“I am Griselda Wellwood. We are—cousins—”
“And one of you—you I think—must be the mysterious, beautiful sister of Karl whom we see in the Café Stefanie and the Scharfrichter—Karl has been rather quiet about his sister. I think he is rather quiet about many things.”
“So I am finding out,” said Griselda.
“We shall be very happy,” said Wolfgang, “to take you to one of our father’s plays. Maybe Karl and Herr Susskind would like to come too? And your other companion—Herr Youlgreave? My father would be honoured.”
He could not stop looking at Griselda. This was not unusual. Many young men looked with excitement at Griselda’s pale and beautiful face. What was unusual, Dorothy thought, noticing as always, despite her own agitation, was that Griselda was responding. She was looking equally persistently at Wolfgang. She was looking down at the table, and up into his eyes, and her lips were parted. Toby Youlgreave came over from another table, where he had been talking to Joachim and Karl, and also noticed the alert stares of both Wolfgang and Griselda. He knew that Griselda was in love with himself—he had known it for a long time, and never said a word. Recently, however, as Griselda had grown into her beauty, and Olive Wellwood had grown stouter and angrier, he had begun to wonder if… and whether… he was not entirely pleased to see the smiling German so eager to make friends. He agreed, in a reserved way, that they would all enjoy a visit to the Spiegelgarten. He spoke about what he remembered of Anselm Stern’s work. The beautiful automaton in the Sandman was peculiarly fine. She was differently artificial, in a world where all the actors were in fact artificial. He said this in a mishmash of German and English, to which Wolfgang replied in a similar way.
“I have some pitiful in English,” said Wolfgang to Griselda. “You must teach me more.”
Leon, like Dorothy, said nothing, only looked on.
Later, in Dorothy’s bedroom, the two girls discussed the Stern brothers. Griselda was overexcited. She said it was wonderful suddenly to have two such interesting brothers. Dorothy sat stony and tears stood in her eyes.
“It is not wonderful. I wish I had never come. I wish all this had never happened. I wish I was the same as I used to be.”
Griselda was immediately sympathetic and said they need not go to the Spiegelgarten if Dorothy didn’t want to. Dorothy said grimly that they must go.
“I can’t bear mess and muddle,” she said. “I thought if I found out—about him—I should be clear in my head. But I see now, it might all be worse mess and muddle.”
Dorothy found it hard to sleep. Her feather quilt was heavy and hot. She felt a surge of homesickness for Todefright. Her mind fixed on her Todefright brother, Tom, and his golden, slightly maddening, innocence. Tom was part of an idea she had had of an English family, the children