2

Two old former models sat at the fresh-squeezed carrot-juice and yogurt kiosk in Munich Airport. They both had married well and just now bundled their husbands off to Zurich on the everybody-gray-suit, early-breakfast flight. The ladies’ legs were knotted around themselves, and each bottom foot tapped out an agitated ditty.

“Wasn’t that Claire Breslinsky, the photographer?” the one said to the other.

“You know, I think it was.”

“My God, she looks forty!”

“She is forty,” the other one said. “Why shouldn’t she look it?”

I solde thwacked Claire’s light luggage into the spotless trunk of her silver 850 CSI BMW. Claire was very smug about her light luggage.

“Directly to the Mill?” Isolde raised an eyebrow at her. “Or shall we take a coffee on the Leopoldstrasse first?”

“Oh, the Mill, please.” Claire displayed her exhausted face. Isolde on the Leopoldstrasse would find innumerable unworthy subjects to talk to, “tchotchkes” to buy, lunch to linger over.

“All right,” Isolde agreed, surprising Claire. Everything was a fight with Isolde, and when it wasn’t, you tended to be wary. But Claire’s vision was both sharpened and softened by time and distance. She leaned her head back on the sheepskin headrest and let go, let the green fields of Raps, the onion domes and pretty farms, turn to a blur of chartreuse cushion on each side of the silvery autobahn. It was loaded with massive, well-kept trucks and spotless Teutonic vehicles. They wouldn’t slow Isolde down. On the contrary, she drove at breakneck speed, her only speed, behind designer-black-and-golden glasses, weaving determinedly onward, never hesitating, shifting instinctively down, then up, prowling momentarily behind two giant riggers, then plunging suicidally forward between them, her pretty, slippered foot flat down and slicing through the steely middle.

I will not be afraid, Claire instructed herself, clutching the weary hand luggage on her lap. She reminded herself of the sink inevitably full of dishes back home. There were fates worse than death. What amazed her was that this all had happened so easily, had fallen into place the way things will when they are meant to be.

Her children were well stashed away; Anthony with his grandparents on a long-awaited, often-postponed and now finally realized trip to Disney World; Dharma was with her Aunt Carmela, Claire’s sister. Carmela was slowpoking her way through an opulent grant from a feminist group and, Claire suspected, all this was right up Dharma’s liberated little alley. Her heart tugged for a moment at the thought of the children’s missing her, but she wouldn’t be gone that long and then it would all start in again, wouldn’t it. The dog was safely with her other sister, Zinnie, a New York City detective. That left only Johnny to worry about, and you know something, she told herself, remembering the suspiciously still-fragrant bottle of Chivas she’d stumbled over accidentally while rummaging around the cellar looking for her stuff, the hell with him. Well, maybe not the hell, but a little limbo wouldn’t hurt either of them. And if it did, perhaps it was meant to. She took a deep, cleansing, deliberately young and defiantly free breath. “It’s awfully nice of you to pick me up like this,” she said.

“Blacky insisted.” She shrugged. “Not like the old days, is it? With the cozy little Humphrey Bogart airport just outside Bogenhausen. This new airport is a hike. Twenty kilometers.”

“Tch,” Claire commiserated.

“And the benzene! You can’t imagine what I spend a week on benzene. Of course you know everything is through the roof. These are terrible times in Germany.”

Claire eyed Isolde’s 22-karat Rolex. One of them, at least, had hit pay dirt. So it was Claire’s abandoned pay dirt—at least one of them still had it. Claire glanced sideways at Isolde’s been-around thighs. Still good, those thighs, brown and lithe from tennis. She was prettier than most women, taller than most men, and thinner than most human beings. Her shrewd brown eyes flashed with restless energy and life. Isolde was perfumed, important, and, Claire had not quite forgotten, impossible.

It hadn’t been in the least difficult to get her to marry at the Mill, though. All she’d had to mention was where she’d read Kristina von Ekelsdorf was having her fund-raiser there this summer for the Bosnian orphans. Kristina was, after all, the hostess to outdo in Munich. Isolde, despite her efforts, never could hope to keep up. Now, with Blacky’s money, well sir, there was no end to the possibilities. The fact that Claire had never really read that Kristina von Ekelsdorf was having the fund-raiser at the Mill didn’t matter. Maybe when she’d read about Isolde’s posh wedding there, she would. Claire felt quite like Brer Rabbit. She turned and gazed fondly at Isolde’s beautiful profile glittering in the light. Isolde might be a professional beauty, but she was a beauty nonetheless. She was a priceless friend to have. There was no one, nor would there ever be, anyone like Isolde.

She wondered if she would do well to tell her about Iris and the diamonds. Isolde was so good at that sort of thing—what sort of thing that was, Claire was not exactly sure—but Isolde would doubtless be good at it. Claire might find herself lost without her prowess.

Reading just enough of her mind to misunderstand, Isolde said, “I hope you don’t mind staying at the Mill?”

“Of course not.” Claire smiled. How like Isolde not to remember the Mill had been her idea in the first place. Better that way.

“The Gästehaus at the English Garden was all filled up,” Isolde continued. (That meant she’d booked it up with her more prestigious friends.)

“I prefer the Mill. Really. It’s so romantic.”

“Well, they’re not always good with guests. They’re so … independent. And they’re so out of the way for you without a rent-a-car.”

“Oh, I won’t be wanting a car.”

“They are expensive.” Isolde’s penny-pinching detector was always up.

Claire wasn’t going to tell her Jupiter Dodd was footing the bill. She didn’t like to admit to having sunk to shooting accessories. Isolde would think she was washed up. Well, she was washed up. And at the moment, she rather liked the feeling. It was the same as starting fresh.

Isolde eyed her shrewdly. “You’re not going to go trying to seduce my fiancé, I hope.”

“Wha—?”

“Because if I see even the slightest signs of flirtation—”

“Oh, Isolde, really!”

“Don’t ‘Oh, Isolde, really!’ me! I know your sweet little two-goody-shoes routine.”

Claire laughed. “It’s Goody Two-shoes. And I’m flattered that you would even consider me a threat.”

“I don’t. I just don’t like Blacky to think he’s one up on me. He’s a little—uh—piqued just now about all my admirers, as ridiculous as that is!”

Claire pursed her lips. “How little you must think of me—to imagine I would come all this way to your wedding and then turn around and—”

“Oh, shut up! Everyone knows what a tease you imagine yourself.”

Offended, stony Irish indignation fumed through the car. To think she’d almost been fool enough to share her secret about the diamonds with her! And—she snorted a firm burst of air through pinched and righteous nostrils—that would be the end of Isolde’s getting her hands on the heavy bottle of Jack Daniels she’d lugged just for her all the way from the Duty-Free at Kennedy.

Isolde, realizing she had gone too far, or at least too soon, reapproached.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get you a better room at the Mill.”

“What do you mean—can’t I have a front room?” She imagined cooking smells and late-night noise.

“I’m afraid not. There’s a crew staying there. You know how they’re always putting artists up. This lot are film people.”

“No, I didn’t know,” Claire said, happy again. Claire loved the movies. She would always be a fan. “What sort of film people? Hollywood?”

“Heavens, no! British. Temple Fortune and his entourage. They wouldn’t like regular hacks to stay here. They fancy themselves the only aristocratic patrons of the arts in Bavaria.”

“Temple Fortune … Temple Fortune … I know I’ve heard the name …”

“You remember”—Isolde swept a dismissive, heavily braceleted arm past Claire’s face—“he made that award-winning film in Marrakech, all Italian colors and Episcopalian dialogue, the one where the girl commits suicide at the end.”

“Vaguely…”

“Oh, you know. He finds all these well-written pieces of literature where the grandson of the dead author’s estate just lost a million-something in Monte Carlo and he offers him a piece of the profits. At least that’s what he did on this one he’s making now. I don’t know. Funny you haven’t heard of him. To hear him talk, you’d think he had this enormous following in the States.”

“Who told you that?” Claire smiled. “Him?”

Isolde glanced at her out of the corner of her eye. “Yes.”

“Oh, don’t go by me.” Claire yawned outright. “The only films I get to see lately are PG-rated or two years old, late at night on cable.”

“Well, I wouldn’t brag about it.”

“No,” Claire said, “you’re right.” This trip wasn’t going to be about how ordinary her life had become. They were nearing the town. Bright, furiously awake Bavarians marched to their bicycles and trams and U-Bahns and cars. At the traffic light on Prinzregentenplatz, the fragrant aromas of coffee and warm sweet rolls wafted enticingly through open windows trimmed with white lace and red geraniums. Well-scrubbed, red-cheeked workers stood good and still at the red light despite the fact that no traffic passed. You wouldn’t find jaywalkers lurking in this town.

Claire took a sharp breath in. “I do remember. There was an article about him in the Trib. It was a while ago, though. No. It was in the gossip column, and it was about his new star. I remarked on it because I tried to book her once. She was very short but very good. I wasn’t surprised that she’d made the transition from model to actress, she had something interesting about her—intense. Anyway, I never got her because she was all booked up with Günther Sachs in Gstaad. Jesus. That was years ago. Mara, that was her name. Mara Morgen. So she’s still with him, this Temple Fortune?”

Isolde shrugged, pretending she didn’t know or care. She was as impressed with films and film people as Claire was, but she wouldn’t have them outshadowing her own performance. Enhance, yes. Outshadow, no. “That’s what I mean about you.” She frowned. “You always get involved.”

“Involved? Oh, really, Isolde! All I said was—”

“Yes. Where you don’t belong.”

“What are you talking about? Now you sound just like my husband.”

“Ugh! Let’s not bring him into this.”

“On that we agree.” Claire sniffed but said no more. She wasn’t going to share her fears and jealousies about her husband with Isolde. Wistfully, she smoothed her skirt. One of Isolde’s long black hairs had settled there. Claire shuddered. She pulled it furtively to the window and let it out.

“Rupert is in Switzerland, by the way,” Isolde said. Rupert was the younger of Isolde’s two sons. The older boy, Dirk, was at the American school. At least he was nearby. “He’s up at Klosters,” Isold added. Claire wanted to ask if Rupert still stuttered but decided against it. It made her too unhappy to think of Isolde’s boys so isolated and far from home.

“Oh, and listen,” Isolde warned, “don’t mention the wedding to Hans von Grünwald, the keeper of the Mill.”

“Why not?”

“Or to anyone else who works there, for that matter.”

“How come?”

“Just do as I ask you, all right? He’ll charge me double if he thinks the party I’ve booked is for a wedding.”

“For heaven’s sake! He’ll know soon enough.”

“I’ll just pretend it was a last-minute decision and will fit nicely into the family gathering I’ve planned.”

This wouldn’t do at all. Claire needed the wedding as an excuse while she poked around. “But I’m supposed to be your photographer! What am I supposed to be doing, hanging around an old mill on my own for a couple of weeks?”

“Pretend you’re recovering from a nervous breakdown. You might as well be.” Her critical, snappy eye swept over Claire’s jet-lagged state. “And since when do you owe Reception a raison d’etre, anyway?”

“Hang on a second.” Claire laughed. “I smell a rat. There’s something else you’re not telling me.”

“No. Oh, all right, yes. If you must know, Hans von Grünwald has been desperately in love with me for years. I didn’t want to actually tell him about Blacky until—well, the thing is, Blacky and Hans despise each other. If Hans knew I was marrying him, he’d never let me have Saint Hildegard’s Mill.”

“I think you’re exaggerating. Who isn’t in love with you and hasn’t been that way for years? As I know men and their all-important businesses, it would hardly stop any of them from making a profit on the competition.”

Isolde answered with a scornful face as if to say, “A lot you would know about men being desperately in love with you.”

“I think—” Claire started to say.

“Never mind what you think. Just don’t mention it.”

There. That was better. They were both more comfortable with Isolde at the top. So had their relationship begun and thrived, and so must it remain if it was to go on. Claire didn’t mind. She’d grown up under her sister Carmela’s thumb and felt comfy there. However would she come off so virtuous without a meanie bitch around to make her look good? She was no longer the thoroughly arbitrary girl Blacky had always summed her up as, but she had developed a finer sense of self in recent years, sparring with her feisty husband and the same belligerent sister who’d originally held her down. So she would sit still like a good little girl, but only as long as it pleased her. People did change, she noted smugly. “People do change,” she said.

“They do not.”

“You’re wrong. They do. I have.”

“No, you haven’t. The people around you have, that’s all.” She reached over suddenly and took Claire’s hand. “Why don’t you forget about everybody in New York, Claire? Why not just forget them while you’re here?”

Claire digested this idea and watched the busy, crisp part of town become the easy green streets and alleys of Schwabing and the English Garden. It was going to be a glorious day. Students lolled in outdoor cafes, and uninhibited young people stripped off their clothes along the lazy banks of the Isar. “Well,” she said finally, “perhaps both. The people around me have changed, and that’s changed me.”

“There’s a sophomoric observation.”

“And these are different times.” Claire ignored her. “For example, I grew up not knowing I didn’t have to defer to men. The world has changed.”

“Ach! The world never changes.”

“Yes, it does.”

“No, it doesn’t. It just goes round in circles.”

“We certainly do.”

This seemed to satisfy them both and they traveled pluggedly on, the snow-capped Alps in the distance, the buildings growing sparse and the pines above and around them growing dense. They drove onto a small lane, and the sudden quiet was broken by a bird’s call, warning, welcoming. They turned the corner then. Isolde stopped the car. The old Mill stood on a faraway hill, patient and once apricot, brocaded with ivy and bougainvillea creepers. There was the Isar below, spangling in a sinuous curve across the meadow. You could just make out the edge of the Roman Bridge behind the vast lawn stretched before them, green and cockeyed as a full-moon sea. One great chestnut alone on a tilted slope just before them shaded a winsome chapel.

“Saint Hildegard’s Mill,” Isolde said.

The air was wild and heavy with the distinctive scent of black currant blossoms, and Claire thought of Iris, remembered for her. Here it was that she must have rested. She could almost see her lying in her bedraggled party dress, those many years ago. Here was where it had begun.

Confused, she looked again. That was a woman lying there beneath that tree. A beautiful woman from long ago. A shiver ran up her spine. She reached, instinctively, for her camera bag.

“All right,” came an irritated voice from the thicket, “now you’ve had your thorough look-see, would you very much mind getting on?”

Startled, Claire and Isolde scanned the foliage for the source of the voice.

“Or,” it went on, and they saw him then, in his film director’s khaki, many-pocketed camouflage vest, “we could write you both into the scene. Shall we do that then, Puff?” he said to the smallish, red-nosed fellow at his elbow. “Shall we write them in?”

“Pretty enough,” the other one said, “clothes are all wrong, though. Wrong season.”

“Wrong decade, I should think.” Isolde took it all in and came right back.

“World War Two,” the one referred to as “Puff” clarified for them, “so we’re all right.” He stepped forward, extending a hand. “Puffin Hedges is my name. And this is Temple Fortune.”

“We’ve met,” Isolde said. She nodded curtly to the notorious Temple Fortune, and the two of them took off, chatting each other provocatively up and down, doing their obligatory predator’s dance. They’d recognized each other as worthy adversaries, neither admitting to being overly impressed with the other but insisting each admire the traits that made the other famous.

“Tell you what,” Puffin Hedges interrupted finally, with his busy headwaiter/homeroom-teacher authority. “You two run along, and we’ll get back to work, and we’ll all meet up later for tea.” He waved to their slowly-becoming-annoyed film star still out there under the tree. She was being powdered by the makeup person on one side while a young man was reading her face with a light meter on the other. Gamely, she waved back.

Isolde roared off down the road with an appropriate cloud of dust. Boy, her squared-off shoulders seemed to shimmy and brag, did they get a load of me!

Claire didn’t say a word. She let her cotton sweater tumble from her warm arms.

Temple Fortune had been a shock. Although he’d spent the entire episode flirting outrageously with Isolde, Claire hadn’t missed the moment’s hesitation when he’d laid eyes on and over her. He might have been speaking with Isolde, but Claire recognized the pained sucking in of breath as his eyes swept Claire’s generous breasts and hips. She almost felt his eyelids lower with desire. A warm, rosy flush had crept recklessly up her married cheeks. Her body, she realized shamefully, was not as committed to family life as she was.

Not only that, but she had seen Temple Fortune before. It was so long ago, she’d been a different person; a little girl, really, just starting out on her own from her parents’ house with a bright mess of pimply girlfriends to the Keith’s Movie Theater, not to miss the arrival of the British Invasion rock group. They weren’t the rock group, but they were popular enough to draw the prerequisite mob of screeching teenagers, and Claire had wriggled through the crowd to the front by the police barricade just as they were disembarking the huge airport bus.

They were adorable, all of them, but there had been one who’d looked directly into Claire’s gaga blue eyes, held her glance, swept her brazenly with hooded, merry eyes, made a face as if to say, “If only …,” winked philosophically and was bustled off with the rest of them to the stage inside.

Claire had stayed warm and pink for weeks. She’d bought every album and learned every song. When he’d sung lead, she’d lain reverently down on her bed and relived that magical moment they’d shared, only she’d take it farther—sometimes she’d pretend they held each other longingly, hopelessly, backstage. Sometimes he found out magically who she was (from a theater manager who doubled as a CIA agent, she supposed), and sent for her from England, where she would suddenly appear in a cashmere suit on a steamship gangplank, to be swept off to his parents’ estate (on the moors?).

Claire laughed out loud.

“What?” Isolde said.

“No, nothing.” Claire shook her head. So the famous Temple Fortune was not Temple Fortune after all. Or if he was, he was someone else as well. At least his name was not so fancy. Still, she would never forget it. He was, or had been at one time, the adorable, guitar-playing Douglas Dougherty.

You don’t fantasize adolescent love to one man’s collage of fan-magazine photos for more than two years and not recognize him—what? Twenty-something years later? Claire shuddered to think how many years had gone by. She flipped the sun visor down and peered into the makeup mirror. Yuck. She snapped it humbly back up, and the car swerved into the white pebble drive. They got out of the car and she had a good stretch. There was a bunch of freshly painted white chairs and round tables by the door. A sort of runty collie-mutt lifted its sleepy head, yawned and went back to sleep.

“Always reassuring to know you’ve got a good guard dog to keep you safe,” Claire remarked to the decrepit old woman sitting at one of the tables wrapping knives and forks into paper napkins.

“Oh. He’ll let you in, all right. Just don’t try to leave. He won’t let anyone leave.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“Keep that crazy dog away from me!” Isolde froze behind Claire. “He almost bit my arm off last week!”

“Were you leaving?” Claire unclasped Isolde’s hand.

“Yes.”

“That was your first mistake. Never”—she winked at the old hag at the table—“try to leave.” But the woman had forgotten any communication between them and gone back to her work.

Claire inhaled the fragrant air. The Mill was edged in billowy pink rhododendron and white lilac. The tulips were done and poppies beginning to bud. Rounded paths were riddled with chamomile and lily of the valley.

Whoever the gardener was, he or she was passionate. It was wonderful.

From the upstairs window trickled the sound of somebody playing the piano. The music stopped abruptly, and there was the muffled garble of argument. A door slammed. There was, Claire was delighted to see, a maypole glinting jauntily in the sunshine. A man with an intricately wood-carved cane came to the open front door. A sporty-looking, beefy, absolutely-in-charge fellow with not much of his fine blond hair left. He was no longer young, but not old either. Adam von Grünwald’s son? Claire wondered. She watched him carefully. Was this the son of the man Iris had loved so much? He was so fair. He’d been wearing a white apron over his spanking blue-and-white-checkered shirt. He threw it off and strode over with a trace of a limp. He was huge. His cane, Claire noticed, sported a hand-carved bird’s head at the top. He swirled it with a drum majorette’s flourish. He had bright-blue, shrewd peasant’s eyes that went almost stupidly besotted the minute he turned them on Isolde.

“Oh, Hans,” she said offhandedly, “here is Claire Breslinsky. She’ll be staying with you. From New York.”

“Ah! Direkt aus New York? Manhattan?” He gave her hand a hearty shake.

“Actually, no. We come from Queens. We—”

But Hans had already turned his attention back to Isolde. Every backwoods Bavarian knows you only have to cross the Queensboro Bridge from dazzling Manhattan and you’ve entered the mud puddle of cultural oblivion. Hardly a German hasn’t already been to New York on a charter, stayed at the Plaza, shopped at Bloomingdale’s, eaten vinegar dumplings in Chinatown, marched up Madison, jogged through Central Park, and gone home, job done, one more must-see city under their belts, meine Liebe.

Hans swung Claire’s suitcase over one strong shoulder and linked the other arm with Isolde. “Evangelika,” he snapped at the old woman, “Mach mal schnell! Hurry up!” And he and Isolde disappeared into the cool darkness of the Mill.

Evangelika, nonplussed, snorted and spat onto the gravel before she followed him in. The yard was still. Only the film crew in the near distance tinkered with their long lenses. A quite big bird pecked away and breakfasted happily on a long line of freshly buried sunflower seeds.

Then a beautiful girl, about eighteen, slipped from the back of the inn to the side where only Claire could see her and, imagining herself unobserved, dropped her small head of heavy, Gretel-like braids into her hands and wept.

She was so young and so fair that Claire’s first impulse was to call out to her, or run over and comfort her, the way you would run to a brokenhearted child. But the moment passed. Claire knew well enough that people didn’t like to be caught suffering. She turned and took her camera bag and went inside.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Rough beams supported the low-ceilinged room in restless patterns. The floor was so old it tilted. Claire felt strangely dizzy. It was like finding yourself below on a pirate ship.

Hand-painted tiles and plates and steins lined a shelf stretching around the top of the room. Exquisitely simple pottery pieces graced the shelves just above eye level. There were clocks of all sizes, each from years ago, all ticking at a different speed and blending into a delicious busy hum. Each table had creamy-white linen and a cut-glass vase of forget-me-nots. Oils and watercolors in museum-quality frames filled every available space.

“Hello,” Claire called, but there was no one there. She walked down the hallway to Reception. This was a great dark room with a huge polished desk. They really didn’t cater to guests here, did they, Claire thought as she was standing there. She walked through to the kitchen. Two women sat beneath gleaming copper pots and plaited straw flowers. Behind them in the chimney, last night’s fire had been swept and the tiles scrubbed. The old one, the one Claire had seen outside, Evangelika, slovenly but sitting erectly at the long pine table, continued, mantra-like, to wrap her cutlery and stack it into perfect piles. She scarcely looked up.

Herbs grew in every window, with the other green of the backyard looking in. Up the hill from there was the path to the Roman Bridge. It really was from Roman times and, Claire knew, had played a great part in many battles. Hilde-gardians were quite partial to their romantic, crumbling bridge.

The other woman was hand-writing menus and arranging them on spindle wires on a wicker dessert trolley. She was a bristling woman, the sort who never could stand Claire. Claire never knew why, but she always sensed it right away. The woman wore a tailored gray suit and a string of good pearls. She had that rosy, creamy complexion, marless and seamless, that almost requires pearls.

“Kann ich Ihnen helfen?” the woman asked, and then, summing Claire’s nationality up with a quick, irreverent sweep of her shrewd, brown, smallish eyes, “May I help you?”

The way she said it, with tight-lipped disapproval, led Claire to feel she ought not to be in there at all, this was entirely off limits. Claire couldn’t resist putting one antagonistic foot into the forbidden kitchen. “I’d like to check in,” she said.

The prim and properly corseted one stood up to her full height, which was not a lot taller than when she was sitting down.

They confronted each other. The soft, flowing lines of Claire’s wardrobe were admittedly “designed” by Evar, the kindly Indian man on Jamaica Avenue, but she always started out clean and well ironed. And if not ironed, then hung scrupulously and swiftly from dryer to hanger.

This woman’s taste in clothing bordered on the compulsively dry-cleaned. She even wafted a sort of right-angle myrrh as she bustled past in her shantung suit, indicating with a rude flick of her hand that Claire should follow. She was a bit well endowed, but you’d better not notice, dared the haughty, ramrod posture, the raised fluffy eyebrows and the pursed pink lips. Her sensibly heeled shoes clicked past Claire. Claire’s eyes met those of the scrawny, elderly woman in the slovenly house dress. Her eyes said nothing. Neither, Claire decided, would hers. She turned and followed the woman to the front desk. The woman snapped open the leather-bound guest book. “Passport,” she demanded and was not pleased when she realized Claire had put it in front of her.

When she was finished, she stood up and marched away. “You will follow me,” she ordered.

“Jawohl,” Claire said, grinning, then frowned appropriately when the woman turned back to glower.

There was a certain sort of German, Claire knew, who didn’t care much for Ausländer, or foreigners, even if they did earn their livelihood from them, so Claire didn’t take the woman’s disdain personally. This one, Claire realized, was younger than herself. It was always a bit of a rude awakening to identify bossy, authoritative figures as younger than oneself, but there you were; the world flies by and you find yourself who you used to want to be.

“Will you be taking your breakfast in your room?”

“May I have it out of doors?”

“I will notify the kitchen. Weather permitting, naturally.” She scribbled doggedly. “Otherwise, you will find your breakfast in the East Room.” Distracted, she pulled one earring off, then the other, and caressed each downy lobe. Her ears, uncovered—Claire tried not to be seen noticing—were trumpet-like and ugly and, ultimately, compelling. “My name is Fräulein Wintner. If you have any problems, you will come please with them to me.” She regarded Claire with a lifted face, her unfortunate ears once again safely parked away. “And not disturb the family.”

“Okay.” Claire followed Fräulein Wintner’s bobbing head of crisply bouffanted, honey-colored hair. They made their way up the polished wood stairway and down the wide, old-fashioned corridor to the last room.

“Who’s that playing piano?” Claire asked.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Fräulein Wintner lied. “Here you are, Fräulein.” she handed Claire the lacy iron key. “We trust your stay with us will be enjoyable.” She smiled without warmth.

“And I hope,” Claire couldn’t resist saying, “you’ll enjoy having me.”

The woman turned without a word and Claire stood there, alone at last. There were two windows, one in each corner, both open to the morning breeze and softly framed with white priscillas. A powder-blue wooden bed, with a high, clean white eiderdown and two Goldilocks pillows, was tucked in invitingly with a white chenille spread. On the floor was an Afghan carpet, and on the pine nightstand a white ceramic lamp, a bowl of fruit, a nosegay of wild-flowers, and a box of Swiss chocolates. There was a straight-backed pine chair and an ornately painted pastel wardrobe—alive with roosters and pomegranates—and footed with lion’s paws, their toenails lacquered a heavy-duty salmon. On top of that were even more pillows and a straw basket of freshly dried baby’s breath. Heaven—Claire smiled to herself—absolute heaven. She shut the door, kicked off her shoes, and lay down on the billowy softness of cool sheets.

Someone ran, clop, clop-clop-clop, down the length of the hall. “Aber du hast mir versprochen!” (“But you promised me!”) Claire recognized Fräulein Wintner’s plaintive voice call out before she fell, like pelting darkness, off to sleep.

The telephone jangled Claire back from a netherworld of melodic dreams. She fumbled around for the antiquated phone on the wall, the unsettling music of her dream becoming real and only down the hall. “Hello?” she said and cleared her throat.

“Good morning!” The brisk, metallic twang of Jupiter Dodd came through without the usual cross-Atlantic delay. “Oops. Is it nighttime there?”

“No. You just caught me napping. I think it’s late afternoon. What’s up?”

“Hold on to your hat, sparklin’ eyes. Matt McGee was up here yesterday—”

He didn’t have to tell her who Matt McGee was. Everyone who’d ever worked in the world of advertising knew that name. His agency had been on top for as long as Claire could remember, and he specialized in mega-accounts only.

“What was he doing up at She She?” she asked idly, getting up and peeking out the window. There was an old black Mercedes with running boards in the driveway behind the greenhouse.

“Well, I’d like to tell you he came up solely for Davey’s new campaign pitch.” He lowered his voice. “But I’d be more honest by saying I think it was the gorgeous new lawyer we’ve got—anyway, he was up here, so of course I utilized every moment, chucking slides at him from the fashion thing with Hideoki—he was looking for locations for the new Harris cigarette campaign he landed, and whose slide do you think he picked up on? That solitary old, dogeared slide you sent me of Bavaria in springtime to convince me to let you shoot the accessories there. It just happened to be in the same manila. You remember? The crowd of healthy German kids on the green hill?”

Of course she remembered. She wouldn’t have been able to afford her flight or accommodations without She She footing the bill.

“Well, Matt McGee went nuts; said this was exactly the sort of thing he was looking for—fresh without being tropical—he’s fed up to here with tropical—make a long story short—he wants you to shoot the campaign. Claire. Back in the big time. Sky’s the limit! Hire whoever and whatever you want. Jesus. Maybe I’ll come over myself, once you get things rolling. Have they got a fax where you’re staying?”

Jupiter rambled on. He was so caught up in his own excitement, he didn’t notice Claire’s lack of enthusiasm.

She held the receiver tightly and closed her eyes. “Jupiter,” she finally got a word in, “I hate to tell you this, but I don’t do cigarette campaigns.”

Silence at the other end. “What does that mean, you don’t do them?”

“Just that. I can’t—I won’t—shoot cigarettes …”

Jupiter was still. She could hear the commotion of his chaotic office around him. Then a resounding, quacking laugh jarred the line and wheezed to an amused finish. “Ahhh, dumpling. You really had me going there for a minute, you know that? You’re bad.”

“I mean it, Joop. I won’t use my”—she hesitated to use the word talent, then figured what the hell, that’s what it was she was using—“my talent to further that addiction.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

“I’ll force you.”

Claire groaned. “You can’t. I made this decision years ago. I just won’t do it.”

“But you used to shoot tons of nicotine. I remember! What about the Maldive thing with the flying fish? That was some of your best work!”

“Yes,” she admitted sadly, rubbing her eyes, “I remember. I’ll bet you used to do a lot of things you wouldn’t do anymore yourself.”

“So what?”

“So what? Jupiter, you sound just like my son!”

“You ought to think about your son. That’s just who you should be thinking about, and that steep private-school tuition you’re always complaining about.”

“You’re right. I am thinking about him. How am I supposed to justify glamorizing cigarettes and then stand there one day and tell him not to smoke?”

“Claire. Grow up.”

“I have grown up. That’s just what I have done. Why do you think no one smokes in New York anymore? Because they’ve stopped advertising gorgeous people smoking on TV, that’s why.”

“Listen, Claire. People don’t not smoke because of stopping advertising.”

“Now you listen, Jupiter. If you or I didn’t believe in the monumental force of advertising, neither of us would have gone into it.”

“If you don’t shoot the cigarette campaign, you can come right home. I won’t pay you for any of it.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I can and I will.”

Claire’s heart sank. “Thanks a lot, Jupiter.”

“You’ll shoot it, then?”

“Hell, no. I’ll just have to come home sooner than I expected and start paying off the trip myself.”

They both waited. Finally, Jupiter said, “Look. All I ask is this. Look around for a couple of locations and just think about it.”

“But I told you—”

“Don’t talk, just listen. I’ll call you back tomorrow. You can give me your answer then.”

“It will still be the same.”

“Then you still have until tomorrow to enjoy yourself on my money. Good-bye.”

He hung up, then so did she.

A very bad feeling overtook her. She knew it well. It was that old schemer, Temptation. It sure would be nice to have a lot of money to play with.

She went back over to the window and looked down at the old-timer Mercedes. Man, oh man. They didn’t make them like that anymore. She wondered whose it was. Above her head a floorboard creaked. Claire shivered. The afternoon had grown cooler, and she went to look for her soft gray sweater. She found her brush with it and went back to the window, tugging it through her auburn hair.

That lovely young girl who’d been crying was down there, quite recovered, it seemed. She held on to a kitten, stroking its fur, while she chatted to a fellow her own age, about twenty, in the doorway of the greenhouse. He was dressed roughly, and his big hands dropped from his pitchfork when the girl turned and walked off, the pebbles crunching under her narrow feet. He kept watching and she kept walking, swaying, knowing he still watched. This poor fellow doesn’t have a chance, Claire thought wryly, pleased not to be that treacherously vulnerable age anymore.

She must call Iris. She picked up the phone and was told by the ever-surly Fräulein Wintner that all transatlantic calls must be made from the desk. She should give her name and number, hang up the phone, and Fräulein Wintner would ring her back when she got through. Claire sat on the bed, trying not to suspect she’d have been better off staying at the modern Americanized Sheraton after all, when the call came through. “Hello?” She cupped one ear and called. “Iris?” This connection was not as clear as the first had been.

“Hallo?”

“Iris?”

“Mfphph.—ullo?”

“It’s me, dear. Claire. I’m here. I’m at Saint Hildegard’s Mill.”

“Oh. Clai-aire!”

“Can you believe it? I’m actually here. Iris, it’s beautiful! The flowers—”

“The flowers are blooming now here, too,” Iris shouted defensively.

“Yes. Yes, well, I just wanted to let you know. I have a lovely room.”

“Don’t forget to look in the clock.”

“No, I won’t. I’ll look everywhere. I won’t forget.”

“And don’t trust a soul. Now, beware of those who take the joy from what you love. Don’t forget, it all looks nicy-nice on the outside, but something festers there.”

“All right, I won’t forget.”

Iris’s voice cleared. It changed. “Claire?” She sounded young again and full of yearning. “What do you see?”

Claire went to the window. “It’s … everything green. An old man far off walks the hill. There’s a stream.”

“And the tree?”

“Yes, the tree is still here. I see the tree.” She listened kindly to Iris’s reminiscent silence.

“You won’t not call again. Claire?”

“No. I won’t. I promise I’ll call you soon. If Johnny comes over, uh, just tell him I love him.”

“All right.” Iris wasn’t going to be the one to tell Claire that that tart Portia McTavish had shown up on Johnny’s doorstep as soon as she was gone.

“I’ve got to go. There’s a wonderful smell of Schweinshaxen in the air and I’m starving.”

“Go now. And have a beer for me.”

She laughed. “All right,” and they hung up. The extension somewhere else was hung up as well. A golden Bavarian beer. Her mouth watered and she turned to go when she saw Blacky, Isolde’s intended, her dear old lover and enemy Blacky, strolling from the chapel on the hill and heading toward the Mill.

He certainly was a fine catch, she conceded, his notorious black hair having electrified to a leonine halo of pure white. He wasn’t that big, but he always seemed to be, with those great shoulders and his barreling neck. Women adored him. They always had, she remembered ruefully, watching him pick his way over the messy remains of the gardener’s compost. He had a way of rubbing his meticulously clean hands together at the start or finish of anything. They were rammed, at the moment, in the pockets of impeccable linen trousers. He looked bad-tempered. Why ever had she left him? she wondered, admiring his upsetting yellow eyes, and suddenly she did remember, she remembered exactly why she had left him.

It was in the early days when they’d both just returned from India, and he was busy setting up his practice. She’d gone with some models to see the African ballet that was in town for a week or so and afterward had gone backstage with the rest of them. Well, they’d had a grand time and gone off to the clubs to show those Africans just what a jolly town Munich was. It got very late, and Claire decided to get back home. Blacky would be returning from the hospital shortly, and she wanted to be there when he got in.

It turned out he already was home when she got there. She still remembered everything, strangely enough, right down to what he and she were wearing. She could see it all in front of her, as clear as a film. Anyway, there he was, and there she was, and she kissed him and started to tell him about what a marvelous time she’d had, and he said, “How did you get home?” and she said, not even thinking, “I hailed a cab on Maximilianstrasse, only one of the dancers wanted to go back to his hotel and asked if he could share mine, so of course I said ‘Sure,’ and I dropped him off first; that’s why you got in first, I guess.” She hadn’t noticed Blacky’s stony silence until she turned around and looked at him. “You don’t mean to say”—he’d blinked uncomprehendingly—“that you got into a taxi with an African ballet dancer on Maximilianstrasse?”

She held her blouse crumpled in her hand. “Yes. Why?”

“Where any of my patients might have seen you?”

“Oh, Christ, Blacky. Just listen to you!”

“At this hour of the night?”

She couldn’t believe he was so upset. He refused to forgive her. He wouldn’t even speak to her at breakfast the next morning. She told him he was being childish and racist and she was a grown person and would do as she wished.

Well, by the time he’d come home that night, he’d pretty much cooled down (realizing, she supposed, that his practice would survive and no one of major importance had seen her getting into the cab), but she, who’d had a thoughtful, self-righteous and pretty pious afternoon behind her, was just getting started. Now it was he who couldn’t believe how upset she was. They fought all the time. In the end, surprising both of them, she’d left him.

Claire looked down at the handsome, older fellow there on the drive in his own country. It hadn’t really been the African who’d separated them, she knew. He’d only been the excuse. Blacky, feeling himself watched, looked up and into her eyes. He is kind and good, she thought, smiling. That’s what he is first. Funny she should think it last.

Old Father Metz sat in the Mill kitchen sipping his weekly allotment of coffee from Evangelika. He felt more comfortable down here, away from the intensity of the family and their exorbitant, bourgeois furniture. And that piano. You always had to sit through some exquisite piece painstakingly eked out by that maniac, Cosimo. And they watched you, watched your reactions. If you weren’t tapping your foot and outwardly enjoying yourself, one of them would prod you and inquire if you were.

He didn’t mind coming—Hans von Grünwald was Saint Hildegard’s most generous contributor and must be coddled, for who else was there?—but Father was always relieved when the strenuous hour was over and he could relax in the peace and quiet of Evangelika’s open animosity and delicious pound cake. The gaunt, empty spaces of the old kitchen never failed to remind him of his own happier origins, his strict-but-loving grandmother’s farm out in Warteweil.

Herr von Grünwald would, each week, deposit him here in the kitchen while he went to attend to the business of writing him out a check. Each was more comfortable away from the other, and so the procedure took a while. Father Metz’s back was turned to the cat. He was allergic. The cat knew this and preened herself sadistically nearby.

Fräulein Wintner bustled in. She banged the milk pitcher recriminatingly in place on the hardwood table.

Evangelika barred her way, leaning over and pouring poor Father Metz another cup of her ferocious coffee.

There was no sign of Herr von Grünwald. Ah, well. Father sighed. Anyway, he was not looking forward to trying to start up the car. It was having one of its less enlightened days. If he waited long enough, Friedel the gardener would be done with his pruning and could give him a good push. So. He would go quickly to the bathroom, have one more slice of cake and linger a while until Friedel was done. He’d told his old housekeeper he’d be back in time for the Angelus. He couldn’t wait all day for Herr von Grünwald, after all. If the keeper of the Mill would come to church on Sunday like everyone else, as his own children Cosimo and Stella Gabriella did, he wouldn’t have to drive himself out here each week like an errand boy.

Father Metz had just mopped his lovely hands dry with a soft white Turkish towel when Fräulein Wintner stood before him in the vestibule.

“Father”—her voice trembled, yet she looked him sure enough in the eye—“will you hear my confession?”

“Ach, Fräulein”—he brushed his wisps of silver hair from his haggard face—“if you can’t make regular confessional hours on Saturday, that’s four to seven, I will be happy to see you anytime up at the Rectory. As long as you call ahead.”

She opened the door to her own quarters and remained persistently there, silhouetted by the overheated pinks and beiges of her privacy. There were rugs over furry rugs and canopies on her bed and lamps. Fräulein Wintner might have sprung from the same sparse and plain beginnings as he, but her life would be as comfy and pearly as a successful housekeeper’s could be. She trotted in front of him and tumbled a bunch of downy rose pillows to the floor where, he was amused to suppose, she imagined she would kneel at his feet.

Evangelika clattered reproachful pots and pans down the hallway in the kitchen.

“You know”—he lingered at the still-open door and smiled warmly—“I can’t help feeling we would both be more comfortable in the conventional confessional.”

“I know.” She sat on the very edge of the soft hassock. The starched sides of her prim skirt stayed out, and the flesh-colored fastenings of her garter belt were almost to be seen. She lowered the top of her body enticingly forward. “But wouldn’t you want to know just how wicked I have been?”

Old Father Metz’s housekeeper looked up, jarred from arranging his tray. Was that the Angelus? Already? It couldn’t be. He ought to be back by now. She rose decrepitly and looked the long way down to the Mill. It was the Mill bell ringing, not theirs. What was that—she tried her other glasses—dangling from the rope?

Claire hesitated. She loved the sound of bells. There was just time enough to sit outdoors and feel the last push of the sun on her skin. A clock was on the sideboard outside her room. Claire touched it with tentative fingers, then picked it up and turned it upside down. It was a neat, small clock. She tried her Swiss Army knife on one of the screws, but the blade wasn’t nearly fine enough. There would be no room for a lot of diamonds in there at any rate. Iris said there had been sixty stones. Claire heard something and furtively put the clock down. She pattered down the waxed wood floor, past the shut doors, locked her moon-pale hand onto her pocket lint and jangled the new loose, exotic change. She whooshed down the stairs excitedly, savoring this clean, toilet-watered, just-ready-to-go-out rush when a swinging pendulum of dark shadow went back and forth past the window at the landing of the stairs. It looked—it was a man, upside down, his feet caught up in the bell ropes. He was swinging.

She stopped and gripped the wall. He was swinging. He looked—She waited, rapt, for the next time he would pass. She heard his skull crack against the tower wall.

His upside-down eyes, horrified, swept by.

His spotless blue-and-white-checkered shirt went back and forth with him inside it, holding him, entirely like baggage, dead.

Through the hallway raged a woman’s screams. Claire never knew they were her own until she heard them stop.