Читать книгу Golden Boy - Paula Astridge - Страница 11

CHAPTER FOUR

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ said Albert Speer Senior. ‘Can you imagine yourself teaching in some backwater university? You’d end up cramming a pack of snotty-nosed little morons. Is that the kind of life you want?’

Well yes, it was! But his father’s dismissive reaction to Albert’s plan to study mathematics at university put paid to that. So where else could he fall but back to Plan B, which had him follow in his father’s footsteps and pursue a degree in architecture? Albert’s father was tickled pink and that was enough for Albert. It was worth every bit of the sacrifice he had just made to get this stamp of approval and to hear the sound of his Papa’s voice singing his praises.

However, this noble renunciation came at the cost of the thing Albert loved best: mathematics. Odd as it was that he should feel this way about such an austere ambition in life, he had to admit that it was his only true passion. The prospect of becoming a professor of mathematics was all he had ever dreamed of, providing him with something that nothing else on earth could — pure, unadulterated joy.

Using mathematics to test himself and play at problems was his way of tasting triumph at no one else’s expense or envy. And that was a most satisfying feeling, with a thrill factor second to none.

He had experienced this joy only the other day when sitting for his final school examination. It was a comprehensive paper that he finished very quickly. Very quickly. So fast that he had plenty of time to loll back in his chair and look around at the furrowed foreheads of the students who were still hard at it. However, not wanting to show off and draw attention to himself and his genius, he decided to put his head down and do the whole paper over again, three times in fact, coming at the problems from a different angle to arrive at the same solution.

This, he considered to be the ultimate stimulus, which didn’t say much for his love life at the time. But that was something which, by mutual agreement, had been put on hold while Albert turned his energies to university, a deprivation which both he and Margret found easy to bear given that both of them had more pragmatic passions to embrace.

In between his drafting and engineering basics, however, Albert did actually manage to scribble a letter or two to Margret expressing his views on university life:

‘I hate it! The professors are boring, the curriculum inane. There’s no-one here to teach me how to draw. It’s nothing but a ghastly provincial nest.’

At this point he stopped short and jerked his pen away from the paper. He’d given himself a shock. He sounded just like his mother.

Well, so what? He couldn’t help himself. He did hate it, not only the university to which he had been sent, but the fact that he had no faith in himself as a prospective architect. Although he had a talent for facts, figures and measurement, he had no talent whatsoever for drawing. This had been established earlier in his childhood when he had failed to impress his father with his sketching ability. Without such a skill, one so imperative to his chosen field of endeavour, how on earth was he supposed to be successful?

Not that this lack of natural ability broke his heart. As far as architecture was concerned he could take it or leave it. It was just that he loathed and resented being involved with anything of an academic nature in which he was not outstanding, anything that might suggest some deficiency in his character or capacity.

He began to feel a little less belligerent about his studies after he transferred to the Institute of Technology in Munich. He put up with his studies by spending as little time as possible on campus and investing only enough energy in study to make sure that he dredged up a pass on his examinations. His academic policy for the duration: scrape through and go skiing.

He did so with his friends as often as possible, living for nothing else but his holidays when he could hike and row and ski to his heart’s content. Margret usually went with him, bringing along the strict time restraints her job at the Municipal Library imposed. Those nine-to-five, four weeks’ annual leave stipulations, which to Margret, always took precedence because she was not and would never be one to neglect her duty.

This only gave them two heady weeks of her annual leave to camp out under the stars. Not exchanging many words, but watching each other across the campfire and wondering whether they could hold out until marriage. Doing everything they could to suppress their smouldering sexual desires until Albert built up the guts to put a gold ring on her finger.

‘Better sooner than later,’ he sighed as he rolled over in his sleeping bag and turned his back to her.

He had to marry her if he were to be saved from the temptation of making love to her on the spot. A temptation that had taken on biblical proportions now that his pretty, indomitable Margret had reached her prime. At the age of 18 Margret possessed a taut, tanned body, cascading blonde hair and a come-hither expression that urged him to forget convention, give in to the inevitable and abandon all thoughts of propriety. Those cool blue, supposedly innocent eyes of hers were throwing more heat on the situation than the redhot flames of their campfireand telling him that he had better organise their wedding and fast.

So exercising that latent talent of his as a master of organisation, he did so at all speed. He wiped from the program all baby’s-breath-bound-bouquets, white frilly dresses and wedding marches so that he could whisk her off to the local registry office and seal the deal. There was simply no time for anything else. Not even time enough to let his parents know he was doing it. Not that it mattered when they had already made their feelings quite clear as far as his possible marriage to Margret was concerned.

‘We will never recognise the marriage,’ was his father’s ultimatum when Albert first ran the idea by them, three weeks after the deed was done.

‘Your feelings on the matter are now immaterial,’ Albert replied. ‘At the very least you should be grateful to me for having married in secret and spared you the humiliation of having to attend the ceremony.’

With this his parents had to agree, because even if they had managed to recover from their blind fury over their son’s defiance, they would never have lowered themselves to mingle with the masses; to stand back and watch their son sign the papers that legalised their lifetime link to the lower-middle class. What Albert had done to them was appalling. They would never forgive him.

‘And furthermore,’ Albert’s father added in a final, feeble argument, ‘your mother and I will never accept that woman’s presence in our home.’

Easily fixed: they never went there. Instead, the young married couple set up camp in a dingy little flat near the University of Berlin, to which Albert had transferred. It was a one-bedroom shoe-box that set the seedy student scene. With peeling, nicotine-stained wallpaper, rising damp and rampant cockroaches, it had a chic all its own. Packed to the rafters with atmosphere, it was bulging at its century-old seams with university friends who were less fortunate than Albert and his wife in that they did not have an income to see them through their tertiary years.

Alienated or not, Albert’s parents insisted he have a monthly allowance so that he wouldn’t further shame them by living in poverty. It was a case of keeping up appearances rather than forgiveness and love. No one bearing the Speer name was permitted to run the risk of discrediting it.

Albert Speer Senior had another vested interest in providing his son with cold, hard cash. Incensed or not by Albert’s behaviour, he had to accept the fact that this stubborn, difficult son of his was the only one of the three at his disposal who had grown up to show the slightest promise of making something of himself and living up to the Speer name, of securing a success in business that mirrored his own. Unfortunately, this meant that it was only into this second son’s hands that he could drop the keys of his architectural kingdom.

Despite his promise in youth, Hermann had fizzled out somewhat in adulthood and Ernst, although still the apple of his father’s eye, was showing the signs of early dissipation as a direct result of his excessive spoiling. It appeared that only Albert had ended up with a good head on his shoulders. An extremely clever one, that to everyone’s surprise and mild bewilderment, had also become handsome. Certainly no one had expected that! Yet there he was, six foot two, eyes of blue. He had it all: not only a pretty wife but also a faithful following of friends and admirers.

In a complete reversal of fortune, Albert had become extremely popular with his fellow students. His swarm of scholastic chums were living on the breadline and hungrily accepted the invitations from Albert and Margret to join them for spaghetti and soup dinners several times each week.

‘I’ve never been happier in my life,’ Margret confessed, as she stirred yet another huge pot of pasta, making for the fourth batch on this cold winter evening. For hours she had been leaning over the bubbling brew with beads of sweat forming on her brow, but she didn’t care. She was in her element, working hard and providing for the people who needed her.

Albert was one of them. He never stopped congratulating himself on how clever he had been in choosing her for his wife. She was a good, sensible woman who looked after him. Whatever limitations he had noticed in her understanding and intellect were amply compensated for by her strong, charitable heart – the very essence of her that he so valued because it made him feel safe. Just watching her capable hands and the look of contented dedication on her face had him reach out to stroke his hand gently down her cheek.

‘I’m glad,’ he replied, stopping short of expressing the same deliriously happy sentiment himself.

Pleased as he was with the status quo, he did not feel the same intense fulfilment as she. Certainly these quasi-halcyon days he was living through did not come close to his concept of all-encompassing joy. So what else could he assume other than, as yet, he had not experienced it — that elusive emotion which had been entirely absent in his past and barely tampered with in his present. A sublime state of being that surely had nowhere else to lie but in his future?

In the meantime, he was loping along the road to that future under the insipid-coloured banner ofcontent, which to an untried young man equated to a slightly lesser and infinitely more boring way to go. His inexperience in the ways and woes of the world and his living of a life that had not yet come under siege from fate and fear, made him bold and ripe to be battered by their upcoming brutalities.

In such a state of blithe confidence, he was in the perfect position to sustain his wife, himself and his friends, providing them not only with his lively company but satisfying their more pressing need for nourishment. Day after day he filled them full of all the good things: fun, food and philosophical argument, quietly slipping the occasional few dollars into their threadbare pockets. He took great pains to do it when they weren’t looking so as not to patronise and put them under any form of obligation to him.

Anonymous as he wanted to remain, however, they all knew who was responsible for providing those welcome wads of cash that meant their survival. Each and every one of them would have bent over backwards to thank him if they hadn’t known it was bad form. That such humble gratitude would make ‘their man’, this demi-god of theirs, wince with embarrassment.

There was no doubt that Albert was the most popular man on campus, a far cry from the lad who had been labelled ‘the boy most likely to be beaten up and badmouthed at school’. Perhaps it was Margret who was responsible for this amazing metamorphosis in her husband. She had given this shy, introverted boy the confidence he needed to burst free from his stiff, grey and brown cocoon and emerge as a high flying, colourful young man. More popular than his bully-boy brothers had ever been, due not only to his impressive physical presence and magnetic personality, but also to his innate courtesy and kindness to all that came his way.

The truth was that he was generous to a fault, which was a commendable character trait that certainly was not a result of his childhood training. It had grown all of its own accord to secure him the high regard of students and teachers alike. All of whom seemed to hang onto his every word and take his lead.

Right at the moment this rather exceptional young man who hailed from the ranks of the elite was setting the trend by enlarging his social circle to include all manner of people. What had always been his genuine democratic bent had matured into a full blown dedication, because he was always happier putting his time, talent and two-cents-worth in with those who were considered socially beneath him. And for this liberal-minded gesture, those newly embraced members of the working class all loved and admired him.

No-one more so than Rudolf Wolters, or good ol’ carrot-top as they called him. It was a nickname to which he would have objected had it not been initiated by Albert, the only man who could confer it without causing offence to his tall, lanky friend. This red-haired, freckle-faced fellow student of architecture had been quick to ensconce himself as Albert’s closest colleague, content to nestle in the power and protection of what was to become Albert’s very broad wingspan, never dreaming that one day the tables would turn and that he, Rudolf Wolters, would take up the reins and become Albert’s guardian angel.

But for the time being, Wolters was just grateful to be sitting in the background. Or more specifically, in the shabby, old armchair which was shoved in the dark corner of the Speers’ crowded lounge room. There, Wolters was perfectly happy to sit in the shadows and simply watch and listen to Albert talk.

‘More spaghetti Rudy?’ Wolters jerked to attention as he always did when Albert singled him out.

‘Not for me thanks, I’m full.’ He patted his stomach to illustrate his point, which was a fairly unconvincing argument given that his concave stomach had more the look of a man on the brink of emaciation. It was a lean and hungry look that, along with Wolter’s natural pallor, often worried Albert. That was until he grew accustomed to it and came to realise that it had nothing whatsoever to do with him being weak in any sense.

Whether Wolters’ remarkable constitution was a result of sheer will power or his having become inured to poverty was anyone’s guess, but the man was as strong and stubborn as an ox. Stubborn first and foremost about his radical political beliefs and devotion to those he loved. It just so happened that he loved Albert best. In fact, he was having trouble diverting his attention to anyone or anything else. His fixation was focused, just as his eyes were on Albert, monitoring his every move, his every gesture, his every word.

Albert, of course, was wholly unaware that he had become the object of his friend’s intense interest; an interest which had turned quickly from hobby to habit and was now teetering on the verge of obsession. In the last few weeks Wolters had thought of little else and was almost at the point of giving Albert’s welfare precedence over his own. Not only was Wolters happy to live each moment of his life in his friend’s dynamic presence, but was now letting thoughts of him encroach on his privacy when he was alone and studying in his room.

It was an addiction, perplexing in the extreme, which disturbed Wolters in many ways. Why even now he was listening to and analysing the very inflection in Albert’s voice as he spoke and joked with the other students in the room.

‘Which is damned annoying!’ Wolters thought with contempt. Firstly, because he found himself doing it, and secondly because all those other people in the room, those parasites who were so unimportant in the scheme of things, were monopolising Albert’s time. He only wished he could get rid of them for good, so that he, and only he, could get closer to Albert on a full-time basis, to somehow inveigle his way into his friend’s life and make himself an integral part of it forever.

But Wolters had an uphill battle ahead of him if he were to get beyond Albert’s cool detachment. That implacable ‘look but don’t touch’ quality that gave Albert the capacity to cut off at will and without warning. Albert kept the very essence of himself (his soul, Wolters guessed) apart and selfishly denied anyone access to it. Particularly those whose love for him threatened to expose his vulnerability and demand that he return the emotion in kind. Once a relationship reached point ‘X’ Albert found it easier to slam the door. So determined was he to keep others at an arm’s length that one could almost see his extended arm and upturned hand saying: ‘Stop! From here on in you run up against a brick wall that bars entry.’

It was a frustrating impediment for a passionate man like Wolters who so desperately wanted ‘in’. However, he was undeterred and hadn’t the slightest intention of giving up. In his heart of hearts he suspected that he would make it his life’s work.

It never occurred to Wolters to explore the possibility that what he construed as mere hero-worship had started to creep over the line. But why would it when he knew himself to be a healthy, heterosexual man and had just married the girl of his dreams? The honeymoon, however, was over and for Wolters it was back to business. The business of Albert and of pinning him down for good, because, as far as he was concerned, Albert was the best. The very best. A man born under a lucky star who could not put a foot wrong … although, he had just done that very thing.

Picking his way through the throng of students sitting on his lounge room floor, Albert suddenly tripped and came close to falling flat on his face, which he would have done had that multitude of helpful hands not reached up in unison to stop him. Forsaking their spaghetti-wound forks in favour of their friend with such selfless efficiency that it cruelled Wolter’s pitch. Wolters had instinctively leapt from his chair to go to Albert’s rescue the very instant he saw him stumble.

It seemed as though Albert did not need him and perhaps never would. At least not now when his mind was on other things, most of which revolved around the fact that he was still in rebellion against his parents. This time, he was doing it at post-graduate level and with considerable style, or more correctly with a complete lack of it. For the last few years he had been going all out to dissociate himself from them and what they represented by portraying himself as the laziest man alive, with his devil-may-care attitude and deliberate, slovenly manner of dressing.

In fact, one may have said that Albert was a man who worked very hard at his appearance to maintain its studied sloppiness. His trousers, as far back as Wolters could remember, had never seen a crease, whereas his shirts had seen nothing else but. Shirts that forever hung out of his pants, because he made a point of never tucking them in, while on the rare occasions he was forced to wear a tie, he made sure that it always sat askew in a careless knot an inch or two shy of his throat. He capped the dishevelled image with his crop of short, dark hair that rarely saw the stroke of a brush and had completely lost sight of a dignified parting.

All in all, it was a very impressive display of university-style dissidence and commendably Trotsky of him. In this he took great pride, enjoying every minute of the freedom it afforded him before the demands of society and adulthood set in and insisted that he fall back on old habits. Those habits that would have him revert to form and become the clean cut, impeccably groomed man-about-town he was brought up to be.

In the meantime he had made his point to friends and family and most particularly to his disdainful parents who, through sheer frustration, finally chose to withdraw themselves politely from his scene for the meantime. Depriving him of their reaction was the best way, they believed, to get it out of his system once and for all.

‘God, it feels good to hold the winning hand!’ Albert thought when his parents finally backed down and accepted him for what he was pretending to be.

But winning streak or not he hadn’t managed to impress everyone, which came as a real shock and a bitter disappointment.