Ibbotson, Eva - Magic Flutes

‘I like it here,’ was all Martha had found to say. ‘I just like it.’

And that was how it was. Others might grumble about the smell of the glue factory, but not Martha. Others might fret at the view of a sooty wall surmounted by barbed wire, but Martha looked above it to the tracery of the tall cranes and the red hulls of the new ships. Martha liked the children playing hopscotch on the cobbles, she liked the lean dogs. She liked Betty at No. 5 who never stopped talking and she liked Gladys next door who never talked at all.

‘And I like to be by the river,’ she had said to Guy, looking lovingly at the garbage, the rotting sheds and the mud of the Tyne.

But there was another reason. It was to this house that Jim had brought her when they were married. If his spirit wandered, it would come here to this place where he had found work and comradeship and laughter, and he should not find her gone.

So it was hard to leave, even for a few weeks, but as she moved about in her quiet, comfortable way, serving sandwiches and cake, topping up drinks, she was filled with happiness. For Guy was going to be married; he had found the girl he loved in Vienna. Everything had come right for this foster-son whom she loved more than life itself.

The following morning she dressed very carefully, for she must not disgrace Guy. A plain two-piece she had bought in Newcastle, a neat cloche hat and the fox fur Guy had given her fastened with a diamond brooch because she knew she was a bit of a disappointment to him over his presents.

‘Not that they’d take me for a lady,’ she said to the neighbours who assembled to watch her get into the taxi. ‘I’ve only got to open me mouth.’

But when the train had steamed out over the Tyne bridge, and Martha had settled herself comfortably in the corner of her first-class compartment, she pulled out the locket she wore round her neck to gaze yet again at the photograph of Guy. How handsome he was, how happy he looked! Nerine must have been with him when he had his picture taken.

Martha would have been determined, in any case, to love the girl that Guy had chosen, but there would be no need for determination. That she had suggested this most wonderful of presents already made her Martha’s friend.

‘That’s the first thing I’ll do when I see her,’ said Martha to herself, closing the locket. ‘Thank her for making Guy give me this.’

She had staunchly refused to be escorted on her journey, only permitting Guy to send one of his employees to take her across London and put her on the boat-train. And thirty hours later, having learned the life history of the lady in the next sleeper and received a proposal of marriage from an inebriated Swiss banker she had helped out of the dining-car, she arrived in Vienna.

The time of her arrival happened to coincide with an all-important meeting between the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Foreign Minister and an envoy from Geneva – all of whom were informed by a polite but clearly immovable Herr Farne that at that particular hour he would be at the Westbanhof fetching his foster-mother.

The meeting was changed and Martha now saw him come towards her, his keen eyes picking her out at once. He was looking tanned and fit and wonderfully elegant in a new dark suit.

‘Martha!’ He was hugging her, half-lifting her, substantial as she was, off her feet.

Guy was not a person who did things by halves. It was a full three minutes before she could put enough distance between herself and her foster-son to look properly at his face.

‘Oh, Lord!’ thought Martha, gripped by sudden panic. ‘Now, what’s all this?’

She had seen the colour of his eyes.

The first glimpse of Pfaffenstein, which had so amused Guy and so awed Nerine, quite simply appalled Martha Hodge. The conviction that Guy had taken leave of his senses was the main thought in her mind as she was driven round the zigzag road up the crag, across the drawbridge and into the main courtyard in which one could have comfortably housed a battalion of the Tyneside Fusiliers.

Her misgivings continued as she was marched through the state rooms and up the grand staircase. All those statues and some of them not even decent; all those carved chests collecting the dust! But when they went through an old oak door and into the West Tower, she looked about with more pleasure, liking the plain, whitewashed walls and scrubbed stone steps, and when Guy opened the door to a round room seemingly afloat in the sky, her face lit up and she said, ‘Ee, love, now that’s a real, nice room.’

‘I thought you’d like it. It used to belong to the Princess of Pfaffenstein. She preferred it to the grander rooms in the main facade and I thought you’d feel the same.’

But Martha, as she moved admiringly among the room’s simple furnishings, was suddenly alert. She knew every intonation of Guy’s voice, knew through her very skin what he was feeling. He had never been a child who lied, preferring to fight his way out of disaster, but there was a flat ‘keep out’ note in his voice when he was suppressing something.

‘One of the castle servants is still next door, an old nurse, so you won’t be alone. She’ll get you anything you want.’

‘Funny, you’d think this was just a lass’s room,’ said Martha casually. ‘But she’ll be quite old, I suppose? The princess, I mean.’

‘Twenty last birthday,’ said Guy. ‘Now, I’ll send one of the maids up to you. Nerine’s still in her bath or she would have come herself.’

Martha gave him a look. ‘You’ll do no such thing, Guy Farne. I’ll wash me own face, thank you, and I’ll find me own way down.’

Nerine was waiting in the blue salon to greet Guy’s foster-mother. It was a room she had made particularly her own. She loved the rich peacock-blue of the walls hung with Gobelin tapestries, the sumptuous embroidered sofas, the deep pile of the Aubusson carpet with its pattern of birds of Paradise. And she loved the mirrors: eighteen of them, arranged in reassuring symmetry down both sides of the room.

Though she was welcoming a woman only of the working-class, Nerine had taken no less trouble than usual with her appearance. Already dressed for dinner, she wore a softly flowing dress of moss green lace, Guy’s diamonds were at her throat and Martha, walking across the Aubusson towards her, had literally to stop and catch her breath.

No wonder, thought Martha; no wonder Guy had gone off his head when he lost her! No wonder he had waited ten years until he met up with her again!

‘Welcome to Pfaffenstein, Mrs Hodge,’ said Nerine. ‘I trust your journey was not too exhausting?’

She spoke clearly, articulating her words with care to make sure that the homely woman with the sandy hair understood what she said, and extended her hand. Martha, who had meant to kiss her, shook it.

‘Why, no, lass,’ she said comfortably, ‘the journey was nowt. And I’d a done it on me ’ands and knees to see Guy wed.’

Nerine replied suitably, but her eyes were anxious. The woman’s appearance was less dreadful than Nerine had expected. She was quietly dressed and her manner was neither obsequious nor impertinent. But the accent! A Scottish accent – especially a Highland one – could be passed off; an Irish one, too. But this . . . Here in Austria it might not matter much, but after all Pfaffenstein was a temporary measure. In the end, Guy must buy her a suitable place in England and if he then insisted on having Mrs Hodge around . . . And in less than a fortnight, her relatives were arriving. What would Mama think if she had to sit next to a woman whose speech made their lowest servants sound educated? And more important even than Mama, Aunt Dorothy!

But there was nothing to be done at the moment, with Guy standing there smiling that slightly mocking smile of his and watching her. They went in to dinner and she made no demur when Martha was seated at Guy’s left hand, nor was she surprised when young David Tremayne (though he had been at Eton) began at once to make a great fuss of the woman. Young Tremayne would do anything to get on the right side of Guy.