Time and Time Again

26

TRUE TO HER word Bernadette sat apart from Stanton in the waiting room at Zagreb and found a different carriage to him on the Vienna train. Even when they both sat for supper in the dining car she merely raised a glass to him from across the carriage.

Stanton was impressed.

She was right really. It had been obvious from almost the first moment of their conversation that there was a strong mutual attraction and this had been reinforced over a very long lunch. There had been a palpable electricity between them, an excitement that might perhaps have been difficult to maintain over a further eleven hours of close proximity. It would probably have been all right, but then again it could easily not have been. By arranging things as she had, Bernadette had certainly ensured that there would be a new and highly charged frisson to their encounter when they met in Vienna. She was, as his old army mates would have put it, a classy chick.

Eventually, as night fell across Europe, he drifted off to sleep in his seat and didn’t wake up until the train was approaching Vienna.

When he got off the train he found that Bernadette, who had been in a more forward carriage, had already secured a porter and was waiting for him beyond the barrier.

‘Share a taxi?’ she said brightly. ‘You can shove your stuff on top of mine if you like. Although you’d probably better handle the emotional baggage yourself. Wouldn’t want anyone prying into that, would we?’

‘Thanks. I’ll hang on to my actual bags as well, in fact,’ Stanton replied. ‘Old habit.’

‘Suit yourself. Had you thought about where you’re staying?’

‘Well, I’d heard the Hotel Sacher was very good. It’s next to the Opera House, which sounds pretty grand, but when in Vienna, eh?’

‘How extraordinary! That’s where I’m staying myself.’

There wasn’t much of a queue for cabs and soon they were on their way through the deserted streets.

‘Not a soul about. Never is after dark,’ Bernadette remarked. ‘Lovely town in the day but dull as paint at night. The Viennese have to go to bed at ten, did you know? Or they get fined.’

‘Come on, really? Fined?’ Stanton replied. ‘Can’t quite believe that.’

‘Well, as good as. They all live in apartment blocks, you see, and they have to pay a fee to the doorman if they’re late so they all scurry home. Ridiculous, rushing their dinners for which they’ll have paid twenty krone in order to save a handful of heller on the night doorman. Stupid, isn’t it?’

‘You seem to know a bit about the place, Bernie.’

‘I spent a month here as companion to an aunt when I was eighteen. She loved her opera, which I don’t much, but I loved Vienna and I still do. I was also here three years ago for a conference on Women’s Health. It’s the most relaxed capital I’ve ever been in. They go to bed early and rise late, and when they do get up, most of them seem to just sit in coffee houses and talk about theatre. You’ve no idea how many different ways of making coffee they have, one for nearly every hour of the day. I think the fact that it’s such an old old capital and it used to be important but isn’t much any more has made it more relaxed. I mean, if you go to London or Berlin everybody’s so busy, what with us trying to stay ahead and the Germans trying to catch up. From what I’ve heard New York’s more frantic still. Even Paris tries to look important in a superior kind of way. But Vienna, well, it’s sort of given up, hasn’t it? They know they’ve got a motley sort of half-baked empire and an ancient emperor who’s more concerned with court etiquette than international politics. So they’ve stopped bothering, which gives the place a nice easy feel. Have you heard of Karl Kraus?’

Amazingly, he had. He’d studied the Austro-Hungarian Empire at university, under McCluskey in fact, and was aware of Vienna’s famous satirist.

‘Publishes a magazine, doesn’t he? The Torch?’

‘Well done. You really are the best informed soldier I’ve ever met. Anyway, he said, “In Berlin things are serious but not hopeless. In Vienna they’re hopeless but not serious” – good one, don’t you think?’

Bernadette continued to chat slightly frantically, pointing out buildings and parks as the Daimler taxi cab roared through the beautiful town, until quite suddenly they arrived at the Hotel Sacher.

‘I suppose you think I’ve prattled on a bit,’ she said, as Stanton settled the fare.

‘Well, yes,’ he conceded, ‘but it’s been interesting.’

‘To tell you the truth, I’m a bit nervous. I expect you think I’m pretty fast but I don’t normally do this sort of thing at all.’

‘No, nor me.’

‘It was the wine that started it. And that Manhattan. Still. We’re in it now, eh?’

They went into the foyer of the hotel and approached reception.

‘Can you do it?’ Bernadette said. ‘I know I’ll go bright red.’

‘Of course … you’re sure you want to do this? I mean, just book one room?’

‘Yes. I’ve crept along the occasional corridor in my time and I don’t like it. You feel like a thief.’

‘OK.’

‘O-K?’

‘American expression. I meant, fine.’

‘Right. Well, off you go then.’

Stanton was surprised to discover as he approached reception that he felt quite nervous too, even a little embarrassed. It was a strange sensation. He was after all a mature man, a soldier. He had carried out clandestine operations in numerous countries and, even more impressively, in two separate dimensions of space and time. He was heavily armed, extremely wealthy and an impressive and commanding figure by any standards. James Bond himself would have been hard put to notch up any more cool points. So why was it that walking towards that reception desk he felt seventeen years old again?

Perhaps it was the man behind it. Tall, thin, grey-haired with a neat goatee beard. Like one of those old cartoons of Uncle Sam but without the benign twinkle. He looked like a schoolmaster who was about to tell Stanton off for having dirty pictures in his bag.

And it was a slightly sensitive situation, after all. Stanton knew enough about the period to be aware that no respectable hotel would allow an unmarried couple to share a room, and also that for foreign guests they would probably require some form of official identification on check-in. On the other hand, people must have had affairs in those days, as they have always done, and they must have had them somewhere.

‘Good evening,’ Stanton said loudly. ‘Do you speak English? If not, perhaps you’d be kind enough to find me someone who does.’

He’d decided not to admit that he spoke German. If they wanted to try and argue with him, he’d make it as difficult for them as possible.

‘I speak English, sir, of course,’ Uncle Sam replied. ‘Do you wish to secure a room?’

‘Yes, my wife and I are just off the Zagreb train. Would have wired ahead but nobody at the Zagreb station telegraph office spoke English, if you can credit it. We want your best room, a bottle of hock, make sure it’s good and chilled and something to eat. Cheese and cold cuts will be fine.’

‘Of course, sir. If I might just see your papers.’

‘Here’s mine but my wife’s are right at the bottom of her bag. I’m sure one will be sufficient …’ He laid his Foreign Office letter down on the reception desk with its GR lion and unicorn stamp uppermost, placing underneath it a ten-krone note for good measure. ‘Look here, somebody has left this money. You take it. Perhaps it won’t be claimed.’

The receptionist took the money and Stanton took the key.

As he and Bernadette were escorted to the lift by the bellboy she whispered, ‘I feel like I’m seventeen.’

‘I was just thinking the same thing,’ Stanton replied.

‘Did you really bribe him?’

‘Yes, and if that hadn’t worked I was going to shoot him.’

Their room had a balcony and while the porter set out their bags they went and stood on it and looked out over the city, just as Stanton had done in Istanbul. Except that this time he was no longer alone. There was a near full moon and the whole of the venerable town was washed with silver.

Bernadette leant her shoulder against his.

‘Is this the first time you’ve been alone with a woman,’ she said, ‘I mean, since …’ She didn’t finish her sentence.

‘Yes, as a matter of fact it is,’ Stanton admitted. ‘If you mean, as in alone alone. I did spend a lot of this year as the guest of my old professor at Cambridge but she was very large and old and we only talked about history.’

‘You had a female professor? At Cambridge? How did you manage that?’

‘His wife, I mean. An old professor’s wife. Took pity on me because … well, because I was on my own.’

Bernadette moved a little closer still.

‘Well, it’s very nice. For me, I mean – flattering. In a way. Or does that sound wrong?’

‘No, it sounds fine.’

There was a knock at the door and their supper arrived. The waiter wanted to make a fuss of laying out the table with crisp cloth and silver service, but Stanton stuck a tip in his pocket and ushered him out of the room.

‘Shall we have it on the balcony?’ he said picking up the tray. ‘It’s a warm night.’

They settled themselves in the chairs and Bernadette smoked a cheroot.

‘I took them up because my father said he couldn’t bear to see a woman smoke. Now I can’t do without them. Care for one?’

‘No. I gave them up.’

‘Goodness gracious. Why ever did you do that? I love it!’

‘You should give up too,’ he said. ‘They’re carcinogenic.’

‘What?’

‘They cause cancer, of the lungs.’

‘Oh, that’s all rot. My doctor says smoking actually wards off some infections. As does a nice glass of wine by the way.’

Stanton realized that he’d neglected to pour the wine and now found that in his eagerness to get rid of the waiter he hadn’t allowed him to draw the cork.

‘Be prepared’s my motto,’ he said, getting a multi-tool knife from his bag. ‘Once a boy scout always a boy scout, eh?’

‘Boy scout? What? Did you join when you were thirty? They only started six or seven years ago. My youngest brother was one of the first.’

‘I just meant … oh, I don’t know what I meant.’

‘Useful bit of kit,’ Bernadette remarked, eyeing his multi-tool.

‘Yes … Australian. Cheers.’

He handed her a glass and they drank their wine in silence for a moment.

‘Good hock,’ Stanton said.

‘Yes. I love German wine. Always sweeter than French.’

Stanton breathed in her smoke. It smelt delicious.

‘And you?’ he enquired. ‘Any adventures since Budapest? I rather got the impression that you had a … thing in Budapest.’

‘Yes, I did. I had a … a thing. And no. I haven’t had a “thing” since. But then it has only been three months.’

‘Did he break your heart?’

She looked thoughtful for a moment.

‘Well, shall we say I got my heart broken …’

‘Thought so.’

‘But …’

‘But?’

‘All right,’ she said, looking him in the eye. ‘How about this? She wasn’t a he.’

‘Oh … right. So it was a woman who broke your heart.’

‘Are you terribly shocked and disgusted?’

‘Christ no! I mean, no. Why would I be?’

‘Why would you be?’ Bernadette was very surprised. ‘Because that sort of thing is generally thought to be pretty shocking and disgusting, I should say.’

‘Do you want me to be shocked and disgusted?’

‘No. Certainly not.’

‘Well, good. Because I’m not.’

‘Really?’

Stanton wondered where to begin.

‘Look, I know that society currently entertains a lot of prejudice when it comes to gay sex but—’

‘Gay? What’s the fact that it was gay got to do with it, and anyway it wasn’t gay. It was desperate and strange and intense and … well, it certainly wasn’t gay. In fact, it was really quite miserable, but I suppose that’s what you get for developing a crush on an extremely serious Hungarian feminist.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean “gay” obviously. Wrong word entirely. Can’t think why I said it. I was just saying that obviously I understand that same-sex love is frowned on at the moment …’

‘Frowned on! At the moment!’

‘Well, you know. I’m sure attitudes will change.’

‘Really? I admire your optimism but I can’t imagine why you’d think that. For me it was a bit of a dalliance, a surprise really, like a holiday romance. But I know quite a few people who choose to live that life exclusively and I can assure you that society makes things very hard for them indeed.’

‘I’m sure it does,’ Stanton replied. ‘But personally I don’t believe a person chooses their sexual preferences at all. To me, it’s self-evident that they were born with them. And I feel very strongly that nobody should be discriminated against on the grounds of their sexuality.’

Bernadette leant across the table and took his hand.

‘Hugh, that’s … that’s a wonderful thing to say. An amazing thing to say. Where do you come up with this stuff? Nobody should be discriminated against on the grounds of their sexuality. Hang on while I write it down.’

She went back into the room.

It seemed to take her rather a long time to write down a single sentence and when she returned she was in her underwear.

‘Am I being awful?’ she asked. ‘It’s just that you’re so interesting I thought if we weren’t careful we might end up sitting out here talking all night and never … well, never go inside.’

Even in the moonlight he could see that once more she was blushing deeply but the funny thing was Stanton couldn’t actually see any more of her now than he had done before. Her underwear covered pretty much the same parts of her as had her ankle-length hobble skirt, apart from a slightly lower neckline and her bare arms. She was wearing a long white slip, gathered slightly at the waist and tapering in again towards the ankle. Curiously, despite the modesty of the garment Stanton found it incredibly erotic. Perhaps it was the moonlight on her bare white arms. When it came to the sensual power of glimpses of flesh, less could certainly be more. Something the lingerie designers of his century had long since forgotten.

He got up, took her hand and they went back inside the room together and turned out the lamps. Then with the moonlight streaming through the open balcony doors, he stepped towards her and lifted off her slip. The intensity of the moment was quite overpowering. Not only was it the first time he had been with anyone but Cassie in almost ten years but this woman was from another time.

1914. In the Vienna moonlight.

He stepped back from her while removing the stud from his starched collar.

She was completely naked save for her silk stockings which were secured above the knee not with suspenders but with garters.

That, however, was not what caught his attention. Nor was it her delightful bosom, larger than he expected but firm. Or the curve of her waist. Or the slight bulge of her belly. Deeply stirring though all those things were.

It was the pubic hair. There was just more of it than he’d expected. Sandy pale, full and curly. Even spreading a little beyond what would one day be known as the bikini line. He should have been expecting it. He knew about female pubic hair but he had never encountered it in its natural state. Cassie had waxed. All the girls he’d ever been with had either waxed or shaved, not necessarily the full Brazilian but certainly a major trim. He recalled the famous story of the poet Ruskin who it was said could not consummate his marriage because he was so shocked and disgusted by his wife’s pubic hair.

Stanton wasn’t shocked, he just wasn’t used to it, that was all.

In fact, he thought it looked lovely.

‘Well, are you going to take your shirt off or not?’ Bernadette enquired. ‘I’m beginning to feel a bit silly standing here.’

‘Sorry … yes,’ he said, beginning quickly to undress.

They collapsed together on the bed and began to make love.

For a few moments Stanton was consumed with a hungry passion as he gnawed and pawed at Bernadette’s squirming body. It had been well over a year since he’d had sex and this sudden cessation of the drought had brought every nerve in his being to a state of urgent arousal. She too had abandoned herself to primal instinct and wriggled and writhed against him in his embrace, plunging a hand down to grasp away at him.

‘Goodness,’ she gasped. ‘I have missed these.’

She was very different to Cassie, who had been more passive, happier to go with the flow. Like any couple who shared a bed exclusively with each other they’d fallen into habits together. Happily enough, but nonetheless he found the thrill of a new and unexplored body and a proactively different approach fiercely erotic.

And that nearly ruined the whole thing.

Thinking about Cassie.

Comparing Bernadette to her.

His wife. The undisputed love of his life and mother of his children. A surge of guilt swept over him. Almost as if Cassie were in the room and had caught him at it.

He could feel the passion dissipating even as Bernadette chewed hungrily at his mouth. That unwelcome thought. That distraction. A woman could fake it, ignore it till it went away, but with a man the evidence was on display.

In Bernadette’s hand.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘did I do something wrong?’

This was absurd. He wanted this. He needed it. And he had every right to it. And the ridiculous thing was he knew Cassie would agree. Of course she would.

Cassie. Cassie. How could he get her to leave the room? To pop next door. Retire to the balcony.

He thought about Bernadette naked. About her revealing herself as she pulled her long slip up her body. Her shapely legs clad in white silk. He thought about her pubic hair. Lush and womanly. Strawberry blonde. Beautiful and actually – appropriate.

He put his hand down to touch her, it was so strange. He was used to things being smooth or stubbly depending on the level of maintenance. But this was soft. Warm and giving. Luxuriant. Fascinating. He wanted to plunge his whole being deep inside.

‘That’s better,’ Bernadette gasped. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere!’

Afterwards they lay together and finished off the wine and Bernadette smoked and snuggled in his arms.

‘That was very nice,’ she said, stretching a leg across his body.

‘Yes, yes it was,’ Stanton agreed.

‘You didn’t leave any … any seed in me, did you?’ she asked. ‘Bit late to ask really, but did you?’

‘I don’t think so. I tried to be careful,’ he replied. ‘I think it’s all over your tummy and the sheets.’

‘Good … better out than in, say I.’

Stanton thought how very strange an idea it would be if he did get a girl pregnant in this new version of the century. To have children in two separate dimensions of space and time was a mind-boggling thought. A thought which brought Tessa and Bill to mind, his children, who had been his whole life. Who were still his whole life.

Except that they were gone. And he was in bed with a woman who had died decades before they were born.

Bernadette must have sensed the progress of his thoughts.

‘You don’t feel guilty, do you?’ she asked. ‘About your wife, I mean … I’m sure she’d understand. Or is that presumptuous of me? Of course, I don’t know what she’d think, obviously. But she would understand, wouldn’t she? She wouldn’t want you to be alone all the time.’

‘Yes, I think she’d understand,’ Stanton said, ‘and no, I don’t feel guilty.’

She put her head on his shoulder and kissed his neck. He put his arm around her and they lay together for a while. By craning his chin hard against his chest he could just see her face in the moonlight. It was such a sweet, sweet face.

But now the pretty upturned nose wrinkled a little. She was puzzled.

‘Something up?’ he asked.

‘I thought your watch had stopped,’ she said twisting her head so that she could look at it, ‘but it hasn’t, see, the second hand’s spinning away. I can see the luminous hand.’

‘So what?’

‘Well, it isn’t ticking. Your wristwatch doesn’t tick,’ she said. ‘That’s very strange.’

‘Oh it does, just very quietly,’ he assured her.

‘No, it doesn’t,’ she insisted. ‘I had it right against my ear and I have very good hearing and it doesn’t tick.’

‘It’s a specialist piece. Very advanced mechanism. Swiss.’

‘Hmm. Seiko. Doesn’t sound very Swiss.’

‘They’re a very small firm. Very advanced. Years ahead of their time. I do sensitive work. I have to make sure I have the best equipment.’

‘Which brings us to the point, actually. What do you do?’ she asked, rolling on to her front, raising her head up and putting her chin on her hands. ‘You are a strange and I must say rather intriguing man. You claim to be a soldier—’

‘Claim? What do you mean, claim?’

‘But you’re also a gold-miner from the Australian wilderness. Yet you’ve not only heard of Karl Kraus but you can name his satirical magazine, which is published only in Vienna and which by the way you could read in German. You hold the most astonishingly enlightened views on women and on sex I have ever heard. And you have such a lovely turn of phrase that some of the things you say should be in a dictionary of quotations. You claim to have studied at Cambridge but didn’t seem to remember that they don’t have female students, let alone female professors. What’s more you are as physically fit as any man I’ve ever met, fitter in fact. Your muscles are like iron, which is incidentally most attractive to embrace, and so far I’ve noted two scars on your person which I think may be bullet scars. You never let those two bags of yours out of your sight and you have a watch that does not tick. Not even the tiniest bit. Who are you, Hugh Stanton, and, honestly, what do you do?’

‘Well … I could tell you,’ he said, remembering an old line from his own century, ‘but I’d have to kill you.’

She smiled.

‘I hope you’re joking. Are you a spy then?’

‘I’m just a stranger on a train, Bernie. We both are.’

‘A stranger on a train,’ she repeated slowly. ‘That does sound romantic.’

‘It is romantic. For me anyway. I can’t think of many things more romantic than bumping into a beautiful girl on the Sarajevo to Zagreb express and then spending a night with her in a moonlit hotel room in Vienna.’

‘Just a night?’

He didn’t answer for a moment. Could he stay? For a little while? Have breakfast on their balcony and then stroll about the city all day and in the evening wine and dine and perhaps even dance. This was Imperial Vienna, after all. And then at the end of the evening return to this very room with Bernadette and …

But he had his mission and he had his secrets. So many secrets. And this woman was very clever and observant and inquisitive.

‘I think perhaps just one night is for the best, don’t you?’ he answered.

‘I suppose, perhaps,’ she said, but very sadly. ‘I think if we made it two I just might fall in love with you and I don’t think I’m very good at love.’

‘Anybody can be good at love. You just have to find the right person.’

‘Did you love your wife a lot?’

‘Yes. I loved her a lot.’

‘I’m sure she deserved it.’

‘She did.’

‘So I just need to find the right person then?’

‘Yes, that’s all.’

‘Not a Hungarian feminist.’

‘Not by the sound of it.’

‘Or a mysterious stranger on a train?’ Her chin was still in her hands and she was looking at him. The moon was behind her, casting her into silhouette, but he could feel her eyes. ‘Best to avoid them, too, you think?’

‘All I know is that I don’t really feel I have anything to offer anybody at the moment. And to be quite frank I rather doubt I ever will.’

‘Emotional baggage?’

‘Yes. Emotional baggage. Rather well-travelled baggage.’

‘What will you do? In the morning, I mean, when I’m tossed aside like a soiled glove and left to skulk out of the hotel alone, forlornly trying to hide my shame?’

‘I have an appointment, in Berlin.’

‘You see! Appointment in Berlin – that sounds exactly like a spy novel.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing very exciting. Not as exciting as chaining yourself to the railings outside Buckingham Palace.’

‘That’s not exciting at all. It’s embarrassing and terrifying and horribly uncomfortable. You’ve no idea the hatred we provoke. People jeer and spit, women too. And the police are horrible. It’s as if they feel threatened. How can a woman chained to a railing be threatening?’

‘You’ll win in the end, you know. One day sex discrimination will actually be illegal.’

‘Sex discrimination? Wonderful phrase. Let’s hope you’re a prophet. After all, women do hold up half the sky … Anyway, I think we should forget the future and concentrate on the present. If this is to be our only night together then I think we should make the most of it.’

And so they made love again and afterwards lay in the dark once more and Bernadette smoked another cigarette and Stanton wished he could share it with her. He didn’t, though. He was having enough trouble keeping the tryst from being a ménage à trois as it was without giving Cassie an excuse to appear by the bedside table and tell him that Tessa had brought another leaflet home from school with a rotting lung on it.

‘I envy you going to Berlin,’ she said. ‘I’d like to go one day. I want to meet Rosa Luxemburg more than anyone in the world. Have you heard of her? I doubt there’s many Englishmen who have but you seem so terribly well informed in general.’

‘I most certainly have heard of her. Marxist economist and extreme irritant to the German establishment,’ Stanton replied. He was about to add, ‘Eventually organized a German revolution and sadly ended up beaten to death in the street by a paramilitary murder squad,’ before remembering that those things wouldn’t happen for years yet. And hopefully now never would.

‘You are amazing,’ Bernadette said with delight. ‘I cannot believe you. How many British soldiers have heard of Rosa Luxemburg? Only one, I bet, in the whole world and I’ve just made love to him!’

She kissed him hard and passionately.

Stanton smiled to himself. He’d always known his history degree would come in handy for something.

‘She’s a wonderful woman, you know,’ Bernadette said thoughtfully. ‘I can’t think of anyone I admire so much. Very clever, very passionate, very brave and very important.’

Then, a little while after that, he fell asleep.

The first time in so very long that he had fallen asleep with a woman’s heart beating nearby, and as he drifted into dreams he was astonished to realize that he was happy. Happy in that moment. Happy lying naked with Bernadette Burdette.