Читать книгу Vienna - Nick S. Thomas - Страница 10

Before Frances was fully awake, before she had established where she was, either in the world or in the course of her life, she knew that Herbert was not with her. Was he fighting in the Far East? Would she open the door to a strange officer, and hear the news she dreaded? She opened her eyes and forgot her dreams.

It was seldom, these days, that she slept without him, but on the rare occasions when some trivial circumstance separated them, waking always took her back to the early years of their marriage. It had been bad enough during the war against Hitler, but thrilling, too, as the man she had loved as a schoolgirl became a hero not only to her, but to his country as well. Sleeping alone, then, would have been the natural condition of engagement, war or no war. She had been able only to guess at its piquancy. She had thought that their wedding, late in Victory year, would unite them for life; but then Malaya and Korea had brought years of solitary waking, and loneliness in foreign countries. Where was he now?

She looked at her watch, and found that she had been asleep for two hours. Presumably, then, he had gone off to get some lunch and left her to rest. He would be back soon. She picked up the pocket-sized guide book she had bought in London, and turned to the map of the city. The centre of Vienna appeared as a wavy cartwheel with a cathedral at its hub, the sort of place that would be quite easy to walk around without getting lost; but she could not work out where the hotel stood in relation to everything else, so the plan conveyed very little. There was not a great deal of point, in any case, in getting her bearings, for the days when she could comfortably walk all afternoon were long gone.

She turned the pages of the book, and found a picture of an open horse-drawn carriage in which a driver quaintly dressed in an ornamental waistcoat and bowler hat would conduct private guided tours around the sights, albeit for a price. That was for her. It was the sort of excursion, she knew, that would appeal little to the others of her family. She would have it all to herself, a private luxury, riding around the city like a princess with a bag of those famous chocolates in her lap. Bliss.

Frances got up and washed her face, being careful to avoid looking at it in the mirror. She knew that her face grew lazy in sleep, every muscle and wrinkle smeared downward to a bottom-heavy mask. She must smile and yawn and talk a while before she would look fully alive again. She wondered how long Herbert was going to be. It was probable that one day she would have to begin another stretch of years of waking up without him, when it would be a matter not of waiting for him to return, but of waiting for the end of waiting. She never wondered how she would cope with that time. Already so much of the joy in her life was in her memory, the pleasures of the present largely to be found in old, familiar things that didn’t change. She would simply go on trouping.

She opened the doors of the balcony, became a little more awake as the fresh air blew gently in, and heard the bells of the city faintly tolling, with the resonance of many centuries, tolling three. She yawned, and felt better. He would be back soon.