The path to the restaurant runs as straight as a Fenlands lane, the pale gravel walkway lined with horse chestnut trees with leaves as bright as tigers. June walks slowly through the Stadtpark, listening to the rattle of crows lighting on the iron fence, their wings mahogany in the setting sun. An elderly couple crosses not far in front of her, a fat white dog pulling them along through the gloaming. The woman’s left elbow loops through the man’s right; his own left arm is just a sleeve pinned tidily up to the shoulder. June pauses to let them pass, wondering about the old man’s war.
She gazes around her, shaking off the momentary disquiet before she continues on her way. There are people everywhere, but it’s not noisy; Vienna is a staid old city, a dowager on the banks of an ancient river. Although quiet is relative, isn’t it? There is the crunch of her footsteps on the gravel, the wind in the branches of a linden tree where a squirrel runs headlong down the trunk to chatter her away, the trill of a sparrow somewhere off in the distance.
And, at the end of the walk, a meowing gray cat who arches against June’s calf and presses its forehead to her palm when she stoops to pet it. She makes a note to tell Penny about the small cat later, and the relief catches at her again that Penny is well, that the fever that raged through her over the summer has gone away, that her daughter is healing and gaining back her strength. It had been terrifying, to say the least. Alec had aged visibly through the course of the illness, and June has no illusions that she is any more unscathed than he. Even once Penny had turned the corner and started to recover, it had been a hard road, and for a while it had seemed that June would be unable to accept the invitation to the mathematics symposium that’s brought her to Vienna.
She forces herself back to the present and straightens up to regard the restaurant. Tucked between two old stone edifices, it might have been a stable once. Or perhaps this place with the low yellow walls and the guttering gaslit lantern over the doorway has been serving Vienna since the Turks were here, or the Romans. Café Leo looks like something out of an old story, the kind of place where travelers might have stopped and exchanged tales on a stormy night. But truly, everything on this visit has felt like a fairy tale, all castles and swans and light dappling through trees.
But fairy tales never come to good ends, do they? The cost is always too high, the dragons too strong, the obstacles too mighty. Her time with the Foreign Office had been like a fairy tale as well, and she the heroine counting seeds or spinning straw to defeat the enemy. And she had been damn good at it, too. But the cost . . . The cost had been calamitous; she had almost lost Alec, and although, in the end, he had stayed, and their life had evened out, he had never looked at her quite the same again.
June steps inside and pauses, letting her eyes adjust to the way the fading light appears in pockets through the deep-cut windows. Most of the oaken tables are full, old men, mostly, sitting in clusters with heavy jugs of wine. Smoke from cigarettes and heavy pipes curls through the air, the fug of it thick and autumnal. The men glance up curiously at her and then away again. For just an instant, June shivers—some of these men may have served in the first war, but what of the others? Are there former soldiers or sailors here whose fates she held in her hand? Are there pilots here who confronted Alec in the midnight skies over the Channel? She can’t help but think of that awful moment, years ago now, when Alec bridled against the idea of living in a German-speaking world. She had understood enough, then, to change her own trajectory forever. But now, standing here on the thick wooden planks of the café’s old floor, listening to a young waitress chat in German with one of the patrons, she understands the long reach of Alec’s war differently.
Across the room, Wendy Fairchild rises from her seat by the fireplace and raises a hand to catch June’s eye. “Over here,” she says, her voice carrying through the hubbub. June smiles and makes her way to the table, and Wendy comes around and embraces her. “God, it’s good to see you. You had me worried, Attwell.” She steps back and eyes June critically. “You look good. Better than last time.”
June smiles. “Thank you.” The last time she’d seen Wendy had been, what, two years ago? Wendy had been on her way to Vienna in some capacity, nominally connected to the embassy, and had come through Edinburgh as part of her leave. “You as well, though. Vienna agrees with you.”
Wendy gives her a toothy grin. “Grand old city, really.” She gestures at the table. “Here, I’ll get us some wine.”
They sit, the fireplace beside them raked clean and cold of the prior night’s ashes. A sleek black-and-tan Doberman lying in the shadows beneath the table looks up and regards June with mild interest before lowering his head back to his paws. Wendy drops a hand to his head. “That’s a good boy, Jaeger.” The dog pushes his face against Wendy’s palm. There had been Dobermans at Anderson near the end, when the Americans joined them with their solid, clever war dogs. Wendy had wanted one then; it was no surprise when she’d got a puppy soon after her transfer to Washington.
“He’s your third, is that right?”
Wendy nods. “I’d just lost Blaze before I transferred here, and then there was a chap we worked with at the, ah, embassy, whose bitch had a litter, and it seemed like the time.”
“He looks so intelligent,” June says.
“Rather,” Wendy says, regarding her dog proudly. She pats him again and turns to the waitress hovering nearby. “Ein Flasche rot, Greta, bitte sehr.” The waitress nods, her coiled blond braids bobbing, and vanishes through the doorway into the next room.
“Really, though,” Wendy says to June, “you’re well now?”
“More or less,” June says. “It wasn’t as bad as all that, honestly, after the beginning. And I got used to it.” She shrugs, and lays her hand flat on the table, the fingers quivering lightly. Alec said once that it reminded him of a hibernating dormouse, and now she can’t think of it otherwise, although it has also seemed a softer, less brutal echo of Alec’s injuries. The tremor never really stops these days, the dormouse’s lungs forcing motion like a bellows, but she’s found ways to work around it, especially since there has been no further deterioration, nor a clear diagnosis beyond the suspected consequences of that long-ago head injury. The endless therapy has helped as well. And Alec. Always Alec.
“I’m glad, June. Gosh,” Wendy says with a shudder. “I thought you were done for that day. Always admired the way you came back to the work at Anderson. You and Lucy Kent both. A lot of people would have copped a Blighty and gone home, but not our Attwell.”
June glances down at the table, pleased and a bit embarrassed. “It was a long time ago,” she says. “Things were different then. But you’re right, I couldn’t wait to get out of hospital and get back to the wireless.”
“I’m sorry you had to give it up in the end.” Wendy shakes her head with an affectionate smile. “Never thought you’d turn out one of those family girls, like old Pamela.”
June forces a smile. She would never in a million years have compared herself to someone like Pamela Glynn, so determined to leave the Foreign Office and marry her officer fiancé at the first possible opportunity, but here she is, isn’t she? Not Pamela, but something else, without so clear a category.
Wendy’s smile fades as she seems to realize what she’s said. “Oh, gosh, June, don’t look like that. It’s just . . . you were always the best of us. That’s all.”
Whatever she is, June’s not here working with Floss and Wendy in Vienna. She knows Wendy meant no harm, but the other woman’s words leave a hollow spot nonetheless.
Wendy goes on in a rush. “And Alec’s a good man, isn’t he? A good father?”
June sighs. “A splendid father, yes. He makes everything work as well as can be expected.”
A silence falls between them. June doesn’t want to talk about the schism between her and Alec, which has never quite healed, and doesn’t know what she would say even if she did. It was a long while before Alec came back to their shared bedroom, and even then they were awkward together until they each learned to negotiate the new landscape. And, while June hates to admit it, Penny’s illness had brought them closer as well. But even so, they are still not the same as they were before she had told Alec about Ceylon. Three years now, and it still creates ripples in their lives like a stone skipping across a pond.
The waitress returns with a carafe of dark red wine, and there’s a moment of spirited conversation between her and Wendy. June’s German is more technical, less . . . Well, less like this. Less like the German of someone who lives and works and orders food in Austria. And like everything else, it’s a bit discomfiting, another echo of the life June might have had. Finally Wendy thanks the girl, who vanishes again. Wendy pours wine for June and then for herself.
June lifts her glass and watches the wine move in the light. It glints purple, the liquid clinging to the sides of the glass, and she pauses to breathe in the dark fruity scent before taking a sip. “This is marvelous.”
Wendy grins at her. “The drink is not the worst part of being posted here.” June nods, regarding her friend more closely. For decades Wendy has seemed practically ageless, but suddenly now when she smiles there are new lines around her eyes, and her coppery hair is heavily threaded with silver, as if this new war is somehow harder than the last one, despite its lack of obvious battlefields. June falters, viscerally aware in a way she can usually quash that this war is not hers to fight. Whatever those challenges are . . . She is free to speculate all she likes about what it is to work against the Russians from this strange old city just at the border between East and West, how the scares in Cuba and other places might have affected what Wendy does here. June would love to know more, but she cannot ask. She doesn’t even know where Wendy works, or if she rattles its corridors with her deck of playing cards like she always had in Scarborough and Ceylon.
“Is there a worst thing?” She smiles with an effort. “Everything I’ve seen of Vienna so far has been lovely, and I imagine there are all sorts of benefits to working at the embassy.”
Wendy’s gaze roves around the restaurant, looking anywhere but at June. “Yes,” she says, “but everything is a mixed bag, isn’t it? In any event,” she says too brightly, finally meeting June’s eyes, “academic life seems to be treating you all right these days. I read your piece on linear inequalities. Hardly understood a bit of it.”
With a shock, June recognizes the tactics she’s used herself for years to steer conversations away from secrets. Disoriented and trying to recover, June smiles an acknowledgment of Wendy’s comments and raises her glass in a toast. “To old friends,” she says, “in new places.”
“Old friends,” Wendy echoes, and they clink their glasses. The waitress comes back, laden with plates she sets down on the table between June and Wendy. Jaeger raises his head again, scenting the air with interest. June leans forward, breathing in the rich scents of onion and paprika steaming up from the dishes.
Wendy regards the plates happily. “Thing I like about Café Leo, though, is one of the cooks—Greta’s aunt, I think,” and she pauses, gesturing at the waitress, “she came across from Budapest right after the first war. So you’ve got your schnitzel and whatnot, can’t very well come to Vienna without getting that, but also a grand goulash.” She points at the deep bowl full of thick, bricky soup with its chunks of beef and potato.
“It looks delicious,” June says, taking another deep breath of its earthy aroma.
Wendy beams, as proud as if she’d cooked it all herself. “I figured you’d like some real food after two days of conference, and I know there are a thousand places we could have gone that would have been more posh, but . . . This seemed more our speed.” Her face lights up. “Remember that pub we used to haunt in Scarborough, by the harbor?”
“The Scarlet Hen.” June laughs, relieved to be able to talk about their mutual past, and as they tuck into the food, she and Wendy drift into memory. It’s so much easier to talk about days long past than about the present, and June, caught as she is in a life where so much of the past is encoded and locked away, is glad to find her footing here. The absence of the present is a different issue, a pinprick that won’t let up, but she’s known Wendy a very long time now. There are enough old stories to fill some of the glaring empty spaces left behind by topics that are suddenly, jarringly taboo.
After a while, as the plates and the carafe of wine empty, the stories taper out as well. Wendy slips a last bite of schnitzel to Jaeger, who takes it more gently than June would have expected from such a large dog.
“Penny’s dog is gentle like that, too,” she says. “Of course, she makes him do tricks for his treats.”
“Fair enough. They certainly seemed well-matched when I last saw them, though. Pair of cleverboots.” She finishes the last sip of her wine. “I expect she’s not looking forward to not having Lucky about when she goes off to school, eh?”
“Ah,” June says. The happy mood feels dampened suddenly, her real life too real. “After last summer . . . Well, it’s a lot of things, really. But we’re going to keep her at home a bit longer. She’s got a lovely grammar school in Edinburgh, and Alec never thought she should go away even before she took ill.”
Wendy frowns. “But don’t you think she needs those opportunities? Those connections?”
June looks down at her own empty glass. “I had thought so, yes. But she was so ill, Wendy.” She shakes her head, unsure how to explain the fear in which she and Alec had dwelled for those weeks this past summer with Penny in the relentless grip of a hepatic fever. “I didn’t go until I was fourteen, Alec either, and while I had hoped to start Penny earlier . . . It’s hard to consider letting her that far out of my sight, if I’m honest. I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to be here, and it was only after Alec swore they would be all right, and Floss promised he would get a plane to fly me back at a moment’s notice if I had to go . . .”
Wendy’s mouth twists sadly. “I’m so sorry,” she says, reaching over and laying her hand over June’s, just for a moment. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”
“She’s only ten years old,” June says, her voice breaking. “And I was so afraid.” She turns away, watching the other diners. Café Leo has filled with people since she arrived; every table is full now, and a cluster of men stands at the bar, heavy steins of beer and plates of sausages and mustard in front of them. It’s been a long time since she found herself somewhere that feels so full of camaraderie. All these men and women talking and laughing with one another . . . It’s comfortable here in ways June had not anticipated, and it steadies her even as it makes her miss her family more. She glances at Wendy and away again, wondering if Wendy, with no family at all, is lonely here.
Wendy catches her eye, nodding as if she can read June’s mind. “It’s good here, isn’t it? The Hubers, Greta’s family . . . I know it’s complicated, what with the war and all that, but everyone here has been very welcoming.”
“I’m awfully glad,” June says. She takes a deep breath, lets it out. She feels steady enough, as long as she doesn’t try to look over the confusing wall that keeps her from asking, or Wendy offering, more information about the work here in Vienna.
Later that evening she stands at the window of her hotel, watching the streetlights come on. A horse-drawn carriage clops along the street below her window, and the evening light falls across the pale dun flanks of the horse like muslin. What must it be like closer to Christmas, when the city lights up for the holiday and the back streets fill with markets and vendors? Already the corners near the Ringstrasse are occupied by old men turning chestnuts or potato wedges in heavy black kettles, and as they’d walked from Café Leo back to June’s hotel, Wendy had stopped to buy a tiny sack of chestnuts to carry in her pockets and warm her hands. It had been a good stroll in the growing dark, much like the walks they’d taken together in Scarborough and Colombo, except for the lean, dignified dog at their side.
It has been a grand trip. She has enjoyed the conference immensely, particularly a panel on algebraic vs. analytical semigroups, led by an elderly Polish professor and one of his protégés. She’s learned so much and spoken with other researchers and professors who share her interests, and it’s only reasonable that there will be other conferences, other boons of this academic life that somehow seem to make up for the rut she’s in at the university.
And, when the bustle of the conference has proven too much, she’s had ample opportunity to explore. The day before she had had lunch with Floss at a Heurige attached to one of Vienna’s small vineyards on the northwest fringe of the city. Below them, coated in the gossamer haze of the October afternoon, Vienna had spread down across the valley like a bicycle’s broken wheel. Squinting, June had been able to see the Danube, and there had been a hard moment when she’d wondered if she were imagining it, overlaying reality with the maps she carries in her mind.
But then he had paused in front of the tavern, and she had been able to smell the hazy bite of the fir twigs hung over the doorway to tell passersby that the Heurige would be serving wine from its vineyard. It had been a bit rustic, a reminder of an older Europe that she didn’t quite understand, and knew she never would. The twigs’ scent had dug into her chest with the sharpness of a memory, but for a life she’d never had.
It transpires that she loves Vienna, not least because she has enjoyed her conference so thoroughly, and because Floss, the day before, had taken such pains to show her the old city at its best. In the time she’s been here, Floss has worked his magic as if he were Prospero and she Miranda; the Vienna he’s giving her for this short visit is glossier, more enveloping, than the Vienna she would have had if she had chosen it. But that door is closed, and has been for some time. This Vienna is mostly a gift, but increasingly it feels like an admonishment as well, a pointed reminder of a life she would have loved.
That blurry, upsetting sense of dreams unfulfilled sticks with June the next morning. With the conference at an end, her last day in Vienna holds lunch with Floss and then, in the early evening, her flight back to Edinburgh. With the rest of the day empty, she elects for a walk; her whole visit the spire of Stephansdom has called to her, and now she is finally able to take the time to explore. Standing in Stephansplatz and gazing up at the old cathedral makes her stomach hurt, and she’s not sure why—the great Gothic towers are more ornate, and more tragic, it seems to her, than those of other churches she’s known. But it’s also true that she can hardly see a cathedral without thinking of the vicarage and her parents. This church was nearly unscathed by the war, even when the Allies bombed Vienna so doggedly that nearly a quarter of the city was destroyed. But its bells share a tone with the bells of her childhood, and perhaps that is enough.
June is on her way back to her hotel when she’s brought up short by a stunning gold-and-white memorial in the middle of the Graben, where pedestrians mill about through shops in the great cathedral’s shadow. She steps closer, mesmerized by the baroque immensity. On further examination it turns out to be a memorial column set in place hundreds of years earlier, both to commemorate the victims of the last great wave of plague to scour Vienna and, if she’s reading it right, to celebrate the final expulsion of the Turks at around the same time. It’s a remarkable work, dozens of feet of marble coursing upward and telling a story through its statues. She peers closer, noting the emblems of emperors and nation-states. It’s glorious but grisly as well, especially the tragic fallen figure of a plague victim, suffering writ across his stone face and empty rib cage.
June shudders. The stone man reminds her of the men she met at Anderson when the war ended and the Japanese camps were liberated—gaunt, damaged, hollow. God. Alec would have hated it here; it would have hurt him every day. She looks around, trying to get her bearings though she feels vaguely ill. A cluster of schoolchildren in thin gray blazers brushes past her, a woman June assumes is their teacher pointing out the different historical figures on the column. The children are Penny’s age—if June had brought the family to Vienna, perhaps the teachers at the English School would have brought their students down to the Graben to parse the city’s memory as well. Perhaps Penny would be one of these children. June looks away, hard-pressed to contain the quickening of loss.
Vienna’s memory is so long, and yet she herself will be only the tiniest blip on it, less than the fallen feather of a swan in the Danube. The realization hurts. It’s all too much, suddenly—the plague column, the children, even the sharp midday shadow of the cathedral . . . There are too many reminders, too many emotions, and she makes her escape into a toy store not far from the column. Josef Kober, Spielwaren, the sign reads. June steps inside, takes the clattering lift upstairs. It’s quieter there, and looking at the toys and stuffed animals gives June something to focus on beyond the ravages of her own confusion.
She drifts back through the store, trailing her fingers across the shapes and textures of the toys she encounters. The shop seems to have everything, but even through her delight at the idea of finding something for Penny, June is also wary of bringing back anything that will trigger another round of questions and worries from Alec. Better to keep it simple. She eyes books and a series of models, looking for exactly the right thing. Penny is almost eleven, in that odd in-between place where she is no longer a little girl, but not remotely an adolescent, either. Too, her illness last summer had resulted in more than enough stuffed animals from classmates and friends. June pauses to thumb through a set of adventure books of the kind Penny loves best, but they’re in German, and June suspects they might provide a somewhat different angle on the recent war as well. That would never do.
At last her eye is caught by a stand of soft animal puppets with the tiny brass Steiff tag in their ears. She hovers there for a moment—they’re stuffed animals, certainly, but Penny loves to tell stories, and perhaps these hand puppets would help her in that endeavor. June looks through all of them, eventually settling on a silvery wolf and a tiger with pale yellow and black stripes. She can almost hear Penny coming up with a narrative that will suit these characters, or some elaborate task for Lucky to perform with them and, satisfied, she purchases the puppets and turns her steps back to the hotel.
The man at the front desk flags her when she walks in. “Frau Doktor,” he says, “I have here a message for you.” June thanks him and takes the thin envelope he’s offering, pale cream stock with the golden sigil of the embassy, and her name on the front in Floss’s unmistakable scrawl. Her heart sinks as she slips it into her pocket to read once she gets upstairs to her room.
June, the note reads, I’m afraid I must cancel our lunch. Postpone, rather, as we can make it up when next I’m in Edinburgh. But there are great doings just now, and I’m needed here. I know you understand. More to follow. F.
She looks up and out the window at the stately opera house across the street, a bitter taste in the back of her mouth. Certainly she can lunch by herself, but . . . There’s a difference between knowing Floss has carried on without her and actually hearing it firsthand—she could not feel more aware of her own obsolescence now than if Floss had done this deliberately.
June washes her face and hands, eyeing herself sadly in the mirror before going back downstairs. If she regards the rest of the day as a list, maybe it will mitigate this gnawing feeling in her chest. Very well, she thinks. Soup, a glass of wine, perhaps a slice of Sacher torte. Then she will collect her belongings and take a taxi to the airport and the plane that will take her back to Scotland, her family, and her research, as if those glorious days at that ghastly old mansion and its outposts had never even happened.
All those years of urgency, and the endless ripples of consequence. Lives saved, to be sure, but her marriage imperiled, her health chipped away at like a flock of sheep beset by wolves. And yet. Wouldn’t she do it again, if she could, even knowing the cost? The codebreaking, that work . . . It had been home. Of course the house on Shakespeare Close is home as well, as is Alec, their family. But it’s not the same. Perhaps she is ungrateful. But sometimes she thinks back on the life her mother had planned for her, the life June had tried so hard to avoid, only to realize that she’s ended up more or less where Imogene Attwell had wanted her. And that is a bitter pill indeed.