Vienna
A Novel
by Nick Thomas
Vienna
A Novel
Copyright © 2019 Nick Thomas. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Resource Publications
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
paperback isbn: 978-1-7252-5639-2
hardcover isbn: 978-1-7252-5640-8
ebook isbn: 978-1-7252-5641-5
Manufactured in the U.S.A. 01/28/20
For my family
In memory of Tim Collard
Part One
1
The journey took a day and a night by rail and ferry, a waste of time unless it were a ritual preparation that could only begin once home had been left behind. Some travellers know this, that the leisure to think through the space makes arrival a beginning, not an end. Others just want to get there, and then get back again.
When the train pulled into Frankfurt at midnight, Frances Christie was less startled by the sudden brightness outside than by her son leaping from his seat again to snap off the light-switch by the door. Then he fell back in his seat, holding the handkerchief in front of his face. Doors banged, haggard travellers lugged their luggage along the platform, and Frances waited. Now he didn’t move. She sighed and looked down at her book, but it was too dark to read. The platform glare didn’t penetrate, and the blinds on the internal windows had been closed since Ostend. Minutes passed, and he lowered his handkerchief, seeming to relax a little.
“Mickey?”
He stirred, but said nothing.
“Mickey, dear, do you think we might have the light back on now?”
“Quiet, Mother. We don’t want people coming in here.”
“But what if the train’s full?”
“Then we’ll have to let them in. But it won’t be. Certainly not first class. Just keep quiet until they’re settled.”
She gave up with another sigh, and let her eyes wander over the long, alien words on the signs outside. The sound of new passengers soon dwindled to nothing, and with it the chance of having someone to talk to.
It was true that there were not many first class passengers. Herbert and Elspeth had gone in search of an empty compartment for their talk, and hadn’t come back. Her husband, her daughter-in-law. Her son. The words were hollow, when strangers offered the only hope of company. How she wished they had taken the plane.
“Mickey dear, why do you keep pulling out that handkerchief?”
“It’s so that people outside will think I’ve got something wrong with me.”
“Oh how ridiculous.”
“Not at all. I do it a lot on the run into Victoria. I need the elbow-room.”
“Mickey it’s too bad. I do think you might talk to me.”
With a smoothness unknown at Victoria the train began to move again, and Mickey backed from the light-switch to his seat, head down, the spiral-bound pages of work already in his hand.
“I’m sorry, Mother. I’ve got to read this thing, and know what it’s all about, before I go back to the office. I’m not going to have the chance once we get to Vienna, am I?”
Frances fidgeted by way of answer, and glanced unhappily at her book.
“We might have met someone interesting,” she said. Mickey snorted, a response that had always offended his mother, and didn’t look up.
“I doubt that. I’ve never met anyone interesting on a train. And all you’ll get here are a lot of people who don’t speak English anyway. People who can’t afford to fly. Oh, and dotty old generals sick with nostalgia, of course.”
“Your father is not dotty, Mickey, don’t say that. Although I must say I don’t see why we have to put up with this. Twenty-four hours. It’s a long journey at his age. But he would have it, so there we are. I must say I think it’s very silly. Positively childish . . .”
She stopped, aware that he was no longer listening. Why couldn’t he just talk? The sadness of the question silenced her. She turned again to the window, but Frankfurt was long gone, and she found herself staring at darkness through the ghost of her own weary face.
A few feet away, his eyes fixed on the rows of numbers in his lap, Mickey Christie was also wishing they had taken the plane. In essence he agreed with his mother; this was a daft way to travel. But for him the train journey was a political defeat, and he had to make the best of it. His father could easily have made this trip by himself, might well have wanted to. But then Elspeth, greedy for glossy fame and sensing a story, had invited herself along with that charmless innocence that was so perfectly American. A mysterious legacy awaiting a celebrated Englishman in an old imperial capital would make great copy in New York. So Mickey, faced with a week of unaided domestic management, or of keeping his mother company, or both, had decided to take a holiday in a city of which he knew little and cared nothing. Then his father had announced that they would cross the continent by rail.
Mickey and Frances had objected, but Elspeth had again betrayed them. The ride from Ostend would give her the opportunity to interview a captive subject; for the general himself, much decorated for the forgotten virtue of gallantry, and a Knight Commander of the world’s last and greatest empire, was as much a creature of the flagged and turreted European past as the city he was to visit. New York would love it.
Here Mickey had made his stand. Assuming responsibility for the arrangements, he had booked four first class tickets, but no beds. When challenged, he would say that couchettes were uncomfortable and a waste of money, his mother would rebel in disgust, damn the expense, and fly alone. And she would have done just that, had not Elspeth begged her to join them, gushing about the plush, adjustable seats she’d seen in the brochure, and invoking, with genuine respect, the magic phrase ‘Army wife’.
Mickey knew this much of his mother’s history, that the colonel’s daughter had longed only to be an officer’s wife, and had achieved a sort of bliss when her husband had exceeded her father’s retiring rank. He also knew that regarding her position as some kind of job gave the service wife a special self-respect, and that her comforts and her arrogance could always be justified by tales of mucking in, of muddling through and roughing it. So Frances had stirred up her pride, and determined to muck and muddle and rough it half way across Europe, pioneer and martyr, trouper and English lady, mother and pain in the neck.
Mickey looked at her with sudden, silent fury. But then he remembered that lately—over five years? Ten?—the arrogance had mutated into something more complex and harder to dismiss, a plaintive clinging, a petulant self-pity. Elspeth had struck a chord with the ethic of the officer’s wife; but the greater truth was that Frances Christie would cheerfully have walked to Siberia if someone, anyone, had specifically requested her company. Now she stared in silence at the window, helpless, miserable, and yet still obtrusive and crying out to be bullied.
“Mother, do you want to try and get some sleep? It’s past midnight.”
“Oh, I hardly think I shall be able to sleep like this. Never mind. I can catch up once we’re there. You