Wolf would sort him out, they decided. Funny old Wolf, whom no one had seen since the Great War, a shady character, a black sheep by marriage, was nonetheless undoubtedly learned, and lived far away, in a city famed as a centre of ideas. The sickly mind was packed off to a warmer mental climate.
Elspeth looked up, wide-eyed.
“And this was the uncle who died, and left the pile of stuff, and said, what was it. . .?”
“Left instructions that the parcel should be opened fifty years after his death. Yes. It’s going to be two months late, but I don’t suppose it matters. The lawyers were quite right, I think, to wait for me. I am the only relative, apart from Mickey, of course.”
“Two months. . . Oh, were you there when he died?”
“Oh yes.”
“Oh my, how awful!”
“Yes. Yes it was, quite. I was very young, you see, and a long way from home. And I couldn’t stay, really, with the. . . well, it was almost civil war. It was, really, but it didn’t last long, as it happened.”
“So did your uncle die in the war?”
“Yes . . . no . . . that is he wasn’t shot, or anything. He died of a heart attack. He was well over eighty, he’d had a rough time of it here and there. It could have happened at any moment. But, as it was . . .”
Elspeth stared in silence, humbled by grief. He wished she would say something, now, anything, rather than leave him there, looking down at the rigid face of the old man, with the sobs and the screaming all around. The red wine on his uncle’s shirt looked like a splash of blood, but there was real blood on his own hands as the windows shattered in. There was firing outside, and a girl near him screaming at a pitch too high for her voice, a dry, silent scream, with both hands held to one side of her face. She was the pretty one, the one he never got to know because she didn’t speak English. Then the blood started running from her arms onto the dead man, dripping from her elbows onto the stiff white shirt, bloody tears shed for the death of beauty.
The door slid open, and Mickey said;
“What’s the matter with you two? Somebody died?”
“Oh honey, your father was just telling me about his uncle.”
“The mysterious Uncle Wolf? Good Lord, it sounds as if you’ve only just started.”
“We’ve been kind of filling in the background. Like I told you.”
“I see. Well, Mother was wondering when you were planning to turn in. If at all.”
“Give us a few more minutes, OK? A half hour, maybe.”
“OK. See you later.”
The door closed again, and she leaned forward to look at him, solicitous, apologetic.
“You OK?”
“Oh yes, I’m quite all right, thank you. I just couldn’t help thinking . . . It’s a long time ago, of course, but it made a very profound impression on me, for one reason and another.”
“Right, right.”
“I was there, you see.”
“Right.”
“I was with him when he died, as he died.”
“Right, OK. You want to talk about something else?”
“No, no, that’s all right. I don’t mind.”
“Because there was something else I wanted to ask you, aside from Vienna and everything.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. . . It’s kind of personal?”
Herbert allowed himself a small smile, which he hoped would appear as one of encouragement. How much more personal was she going to get?
“Ask away, Elspeth. I don’t mind, I assure you.”
“OK. I just wanted to ask you, are you a really committed Christian?”
“Well, yes . . . as I told you, I was thinking of entering the church . . . I have always been a believer, I think, in some way.”
“Right. Only, you know, Mickey’s name is really Miles? Miles Christie, doesn’t that mean Christian soldier?”
“Christian soldier, soldier of Christ. Without the final E it would, yes.”
“Right. Was that deliberate? I mean, was that why you named your son Miles?”
“Christened him, you mean. Yes, oh yes. I thought it was . . . appropriate, perhaps, or rather, shall we say, suitable. No different, really, from an ordinary saint’s name, like yours, in that way.”
“Hey, I didn’t mean to embarrass you, I’m sorry. I just think that was a really beautiful thing to do. l want to tell you that.”
“Ah . . . yes. Yes, thank you. I don’t know if Mickey would agree. I intended it really as a gift of sorts.”
“A gift of God. Right.”
“Actually, I’m afraid, a gift from me. A gift from the past. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“I had no title, you see, no coat of arms. Money, of course, but he could make that for himself.”
“But you’re English. That would be enough.”
“Ha! How nice of you to think so.”
“I do. Really.”
“We used to think so, too, we English. But never mind about that. I wanted to give him something he could carry with him, something, as I say, from the past, a thread of continuity, of something precious.”
She was letting him ramble, he realised, while she sat there with her lips parted and her pretty eyes huge and blank. He could run on and on, making a fool of himself, not that it mattered. But making his faith appear foolish, that was something else. That would never do. He added;
“Of course I could have laid down a case of claret, but 1956 was such a terrible year.”
She nodded in glum agreement.
“Right. I did a course in college, big years in history. Suez, Hungary. . . oh sure.”
“Ah, actually I was referring to the wine production. But you’re right, of course. An interesting theory, that the vines could respond to international events. I wonder what ’38 was like. Can’t remember.”
“You mean ’39?”
“No, no, Czechoslovakia, and the Anschluss, that was really the beginning. Yes, the Anschluss. I thought so, anyway.”
She hid her eyes in the notebook, clearly confused. Could he really see the words ‘wine production’ appearing there?
“Well, Elspeth, I think we ought to be settling down for the night. I’m sure we’ll have ample opportunity to talk further in Vienna.”
“Oh sure. OK. You want to go back?”
“I think we’d better.”
“I don’t know if I can sleep. I’m too excited! Do you ever have trouble sleeping?”
“From time to time, like everybody else. Some people count sheep. I count soldiers.”
He knew she wouldn’t understand, but she thought she did and wrote it down anyway.
In the other compartment Frances and Mickey were already stretched out in their seats. Frances was almost wholly concealed by her blanket, although the train was warm. Herbert pulled out the seat next to her, and took her hand. She squeezed his fingers, and smiled briefly with her eyes still closed.
“Mickey dear, would you turn out the