On that first night and on several nights afterwards, she had slept in a doorway in one of those very alleyways in the cathedral’s shadow. There had been others there with her; others who were homeless and hopeless. They had not exactly welcomed her, but there had been a curious comradeship. They were the dregs and remnants of humanity, and the rejected and the unwanted, but Alice had felt oddly comfortable with them. Because I, too, am rejected and unwanted.
But even with the casual fellowship of the homeless, it had taken a good deal of fortitude to get through those days. She had continued doggedly to search for the tall narrow house, because surely he would help her, surely he would not let her become one of the lost and nameless ones – the beggars and the paupers and the street musicians who wove their own melodies into the city streets. But she had known by the end of the second day that she was not going to find it. Vienna was too big, too bewildering, too intricately threaded with mazes of streets and unexpected courtyards.
By the end of a week, when her tiny savings were used up, she had gone with some of the other homeless people to stand near to the cathedral entrance, to wait for the rich visitors who came to sight-see. Begging. Am I reduced to this? Has he reduced me to this, that man with the golden-brown eyes? But by that time she had discovered that when you are sick and dizzy from hunger, and when your stomach knots into cramp-pains with emptiness, you no longer care. You would steal if you thought you could get away with it. You would do other things, as well as steal…
The sumptuous Grand Tours of the last century were no longer de rigueur for the sons of the wealthy, but enough of them still travelled around Europe as part of their education, and a great many came to Vienna. When one or two of them stopped their carriages and walked across to her to make their sly suggestions, Alice had at first shaken her head and backed away. But later, she had shrugged and had gone with them to their hotel rooms. It meant a certain amount of bravado; it meant braving the rich plush reception halls and the stony stares of the hotel staff – some of them disapproving, some smilingly knowing. But it also meant she could eat for several days, and after the first few times she acquired the trick of donning an air of disdain, and of walking arrogantly through the hotels. Accepting a few more offers of the same kind meant she could take a room in the poorest lodging-house.
Most of the men were well-off travellers from other countries, but a few were the smart, sharp German army officers who were so often to be seen in Vienna nowadays. Alice discovered that almost all the men liked to talk about themselves – about their lives and their families and their work if they had any work – but that the German officers did not. They were courteous enough and most of them were fairly considerate, but there was a rigid silence about their army duties and their regiments. Almost as if they counted themselves as part of a secret service.
But it did not matter who the men were or what they looked like, because Alice already knew that was something that would never matter again. Unless the man in bed with you had golden-brown eyes and a quick eager way of talking…Unless he could make music so beautiful it would melt your bones and make you want to cry when it stopped…
‘Somehow I survived,’ she said, staring into the fire, no longer fully aware of the comfortable English sitting-room or the listening child. ‘Somehow I lived through those bad days and I emerged from them stronger. Remember that – enduring bad times in your life, which is something everyone has to do – makes you stronger. What happened to you in Pedlar’s Yard will make you very strong indeed.’
It was not quite possible to believe this yet, but there was a vague feeling that it might one day be possible. For the moment, the important thing was Alice’s story.
‘So you got through the bad times. And then—’