Читать книгу Golden Boy - Paula Astridge - Страница 10

CHAPTER THREE

‘He likes you more than me.’

Margret Weber did not need this verbal confirmation from her friend, Rachel, but it did her good to hear it anyway. It could hardly have escaped her notice that 17 year old Albert Speer was keen on her. After all, he had been going out of his way to wait for her each day at the corner to carry her books to school.

Yes, her friend Rachel was there to spice up the guessing game as to which of them he preferred, but there was absolutely no doubt in Margret’s mind that it was her. How could she have missed the look in his eye or the tell-tale signs of shyness in his manner whenever he spoke to her? In fact, she was so smugly triumphant in this knowledge that she decided to enhance the thrill of her kill by humouring her friend with the false hope that it might be otherwise. Cruelly letting pretty, dark-haired Rachel toy with the notion that it might be she and not beautiful, blonde-haired Margret he was after.

Yet beyond her bulletproof conceit, Margret thought it odd that he should settle on her when for a boy of his background Rachel was the much more obvious choice. With her thoughtful brown eyes and ladylike disposition, she not only came from a well-to-do family, but was in possession of an intelligence that came close to matching his.

It seemed to Margret, however, that for all Rachel’s intelligence she wasn’t very bright. With her strong grasp of science and physics, she should have known that opposites attract, and that Margret could not have been more opposite to Albert if she tried.

Margret put down her tennis racquet, flicked her hair back from her face and gathered up its fair strands in her capable hands, deftly stretching, twisting and snapping shut the rubber band around her ponytail. She did not bother to check her appearance in the mirror. She didn’t need to when it would only reflect what she already knew.

She looked good. She always did with that natural beauty of hers — straight, white-blonde hair, with eyebrows to match. Those two soft, white wings that almost melted into nothing against her tanned complexion, leaving just a suggestion of a defining line above her lovely light blue eyes. It was a wholesome, make-up-free look that was most attractive in a run-of-the-mill, sporty way that was in total contrast to Rachel’s. That ‘trying-so-very-hard-not-to-be-jealous’ friend of hers, who happened to be mad about Albert and had just lowered her guard and pride to confide as much to her friend.

Rachel had to gulp down hard when Margret set her straight.

‘For your own sake, of course,’ Margret explained, with a reassuring pat. ‘It would be wrong of me to string you along when you’re bound to get hurt and much too serious.’

The irony was that Margret wasn’t serious about Albert at all. While she enjoyed the flattery of his attention, she welcomed it more out of a sense of curiosity than romance. Whereas she wholly understood her own power of attraction and revelled in the ego boost of having her 15 year old friends whisper and throw wistful glances in her direction, she couldn’t quite fathom why this well-to-do boy from ‘up on the hill’ had targeted her when his options were so wide open.

In truth, it was not so much Margret, but her family with whom Albert had fallen in love. That salt-of-the-earth, comfortable clan of hers who had welcomed him with open arms from the very first time he had poked his head through their door. They came from strong, straight-laced stock that, through the centuries, had stuck to the land and the faith. They knew their place in the world with seemingly no desire to venture beyond it.

Theirs seemed to be a true, untainted outlook on life that provided great security for the likes of the Speers whose very prosperity relied on pure people of the like and their determination to maintain their obliging subservience.

Perversely, Albert was not so keen to uphold his own family status and had eagerly strayed from his ruling class fold, never happier for having had the experience. He revelled in the warm simplicity of sitting at the Weber’s kitchen table, with cup of tea in hand, watching the family go about their business: Father, out the door and off to work, giving his plump, rosy-cheeked wife a hug and a kiss before setting off, with sprightly dedication, to his dreary blue-collar job; Margret, in her pink, dirndl dress with white apron tied in a crisp bow at her waist, placing a tray of freshly baked biscuits on the table to cool; and at that same kitchen table, her mother capably kneading more dough. At their feet, Margret’s twin brothers lying flat on the stomachs on the floor playing marbles, while her baby sister sat propped up in a high-chair with a bib about her neck and a circle of cold porridge around her mouth. The perfect picture of domestic bliss. No pretence, no sibling rivalry, no hidden agendas. In short, all was well in the Weber’s world and Albert was perfectly content to abandon his own to be a part of it.

Frau Weber, with that obliging spirit of hers, was more than happy to accommodate him. Putting aside her rolling pin she looked up, sighed with wholesome exhaustion and smiled, taking time out from her baking to brush back a strand of her old-gold hair and replace it with a smudge of white flour.

‘How easy it is to warm to this woman,’ Albert thought, holding his own mother up in stark comparison. ‘What a difference there is between them.’

Utterly content in her surroundings, Frau Weber seemed to spend all hours of the day in this kitchen. Her frequent tray-laden treks from sink to stove somehow completed the journey of her life, whereas his own dear Mama went into hers but once a day at 9.00 am on the dot to intimidate the staff and indulge in her mad habit of counting the sugar cubes in the pantry. She itemised their use on her inventory and made sure she locked the lid to stop her servants stealing them.

Lavish in the extreme when it came to spending money on herself, she had a peculiar fixation about saving same when it came to her staff. Each of them were allowed one sugar cube a day and threatened with termination of employment if they exceeded their quota. She had no faith whatsoever in those glucose-starved servants of hers to keep their word and so she made it her life’s work to ensure they did. It seemed to Albert that the poorer a person was, the more inclined they were to be generous. A truth that, to his way of thinking, found its perfect example in Frau Weber.

‘Margret tells me you’ve won a scholarship to university, Albert?’ Frau Weber enquired, as she handed him a second cup of tea, vigorously stirring in three large dollops of sugar. It wasn’t that she had forgotten he took his tea without sugar; it was just that she couldn’t help herself. The surplus of sweetness in her nature was always in search of any available outlet. ‘We’re so proud of you.’

That was an understatement. She and her husband had never in their wildest dreams imagined that their daughter might snare such a catch. Despite Margret’s tepid response to this would-be wealthy husband in the making, they were not about to let him slip through their net. Contrary to Albert’s naïve belief in their guileless simplicity they were not so very different from those odious, social-climbing parents of his. Perhaps not so overt in their aspirations but with an agenda all their own nevertheless. An agenda that involved themselves, Margret and Albert Speer (with his wealth and position) until death did they part.

‘Yes, I have won a scholarship. I won’t be off for another year though,’ Albert replied, reaching over to take another warm biscuit from the tray with an ease and familiarity that suggested he was already one of the family.

Oh, he knew what they were thinking all right and was taking full advantage of it. The truth was that they had no need to worry about him making his escape from their plans for his and Margret’s future. He was as happy as a clam in that transparent net of theirs and hadn’t the slightest intention of wriggling free. The only thing he felt guilty about was that he had allowed himself to be caught up in it primarily as an act of petulance and in deliberate defiance of his mother. The very same mother who just a few days earlier, in one of her white-hot rages had turned on him savagely and said: ‘Have you been down there again to see that girl? You are not to see her again. It is entirely inappropriate.’

And so it was, from his parents’ point of view, which was precisely why Albert went calling on the Webers bright and early the next morning; a heavy streak of perversity peppering up his rebellious, rainbow-hued romance. Despite Albert’s abhorrence of his family’s affectations, however, he couldn’t stop niggling doubts creeping in. Like sitting at the Weber’s dinner table watching them run roughshod over traditional table manners, sometimes even eating without knives and forks, and talking at him across the table as they did so with a rural dialect that would have made his mother reel back in horror.

But weighing up the pros and cons, the gavel still came down heavily in their favour. The Webers had warmth and solidity, plus the added advantage of a good, sensible daughter who was working hard at rounding off her own rough edges to slot more smoothly in with his.

In fact, Margret proved astonishingly adept at emulating everything that was Albert’s; his manners, his thoughts, his ambitions, absorbing enough of his outward demeanour to make herself into a presentable future partner. Whatever remaining refinement she lacked was amply compensated for by her long blonde hair, firm figure and enthusiasm for rowing and hiking. The last of which was the jewel in her crown and the main object of his passion.

With the best wishes of Herr and Frau Weber and going expressly against those of the Speers, the two teenagers walked and rowed for days on end together in the country. They were completely content to wander hand in hand and did so without a care in the world. Whatever the basis for their attraction, it certainly did not include any form of interesting verbal communication. Margret was more preoccupied with life’s practicalities, with the highs and lows of her friends and the ins and outs of their shopping trips. The mindless humdrum of Margret’s friends seemed unimportant to Albert who was more concerned about keeping up appearances and avoiding making a fool of himself in front of her.

It never crossed his mind that he would later be in dire need of an intellectual companion to share his life. Such was the grass-roots requirement of his nature, over which he was willing to trample as a hot-blooded youth of 17 who had little but the prospect of sex on the agenda. Therefore it was unusual to find himself sitting and talking to Margret right now. But having just shared their first awkward and oddly passionless kiss there seemed nothing else left to do.

‘Do you want me to go with you into the city on Saturday?’ he asked as he picked up a small stick and started scratching a design in the dirt, a diversion which was going a long way to help him keep his cool under the simmering circumstances.

‘No, I’d prefer to go with my girlfriends.’

That was it. Short and not so sweet. In response he instantly backtracked, horrified that he had come on too strong. ‘Oh, of course. I didn’t mean — I mean — I understand how important your friends are to you.’

She nodded her acceptance of his apology and lay back on the grassy riverbank, cupping her hands comfortably under her head. Albert took a short moment to freeze-frame this beautiful image in his mind before turning his eyes away, half from shyness and half from a strange feeling of boredom and disillusionment. Admire Margret’s forthright manner as he did, he was shocked by it. It was hard to accustom himself to the fact that she simply had few social graces.

Margret liked to speak her mind and took great pride in the practice. Beating around the bush or exercising any form of diplomacy was not part of her program. Not when she had a goal in mind and was busy tweaking her ‘plain and to the point’ stock-in-trade manner. She was set on fulfilling a destiny that went no further than perhaps heading up the local Parents’ and Teachers’ Association or some other worthy, community-based organisation in need of her formidable, unimaginative skills.

‘You would never guess it to look at her,’ Albert thought when he gazed down at her beguiling face, which was perpetually alight with a quaint curiosity that seemed so hungry for communication’. It was a pity that it was a character analysis so far from truth. Her mind, body and soul were only equipped to absorb so much and no more. A girl with such an innate confidence in herself and the scope of her limited mind that she was determined never to venture beyond her confined parameters and flatly refused to let another person push her over them.

In his heart of hearts Albert already suspected as much and part of him thought that he should get out while the going was good. But it wasn’t that simple when he had needs of his own, goals and ideals on a grand scale that went way beyond his qualms. He admired her family for who they were: sturdy, Germanic stock. It stood to reason that their blood and strength ran through Margret’s veins. And that to Albert was his reassurance for the future. He knew that with Margret he would be safe and in good hands.

This sense of security was of supreme importance when he had been so unhappy and undermined by his own brutally indifferent clan. He loathed their social routine with its superficial elitism that excluded all but those of their own class. With a view to not only his own but also to Germany’s future, he recognised that his family’s age old practice had weakened their select ranks and risked their children becoming inbred, confining them to an endangered class all of their own.

Albert, his brothers and their kind were living on the edge. If they slipped over it, they were all in peril of not having the strength of body and character to clamber their way back up; their centuries of snobbish seclusion having winnowed out the genes that gave them the physical ability and moral fibre to do so. Albert believed the remedy lay in the infusion of quiet, stable stock like the Weber’s. He could feel it in his bones. That was the strategy for the Speer family’s survival.

Marrying Margret was a bold investment in the Speers’ Aryan future, which might have made his parents proud had they known he was making his unusual choice of a partner with his family’s welfare at heart, not its destruction. But where Albert was concerned they never even came close to touching on his altruistic reasoning and visions of the future. Neither of them dared nor cared to delve more deeply into this intrinsic part of his nature that made him more like them than anyone realised.

These visions of the future guided Albert’s decision to make a pragmatic beeline for a girl like Margret rather than one like Rachel, whose serious surplus of passion and devotion threatened to invade his space and make his cup of repressed emotions go into overflow.

Having learned to bottle up emotions, he had grown used to living in isolation and was now a little frightened of uncapping the genie. He had come to realise that emotional involvement made him vulnerable and felt it was a thing to be avoided at all costs.

He had spent many years building a wall around himself as protection against heartbreak. It was an impregnable fortress that his parents and brothers had helped him erect, their neglect to love and support him being the bricks and mortar foundation that held it together. Now, with his wall finished and standing impervious to invaders he wasn’t about to let anyone holding ‘love’ up as their cause break it down to find their way in. Not now, not when he had dedicated himself to life behind a cold, soulless façade. Albert felt safe in the knowledge that Margret had neither the instinct nor inclination to fight her way in and was, in fact, far happier to live outside it.