Free Madensky Square by Eva Ibbotson

it’ll come to me. God, my memory; I’m growing old!’
    This, however, was a barred area. Some six years ago the Field Marshal decided to renounce me on grounds of age and decrepitude and instructed me to get married. I was still in awe of him then and for weeks I allowed myself to be taken out by an extraordinary number of men, collecting several offers of marriage and quite a few other offers before I put my foot down.
    Gernot had propped himself up on one elbow, moved one of my curls to a different part of my forehead. It was probably my imagination but when he spoke I thought there was a trace of anxiety in his voice.
    ‘Did Frau Egger say anything about her husband? His activities?’
    I shook my head and – unwisely perhaps – launched into an account of the Minister’s entanglement with Lily from the post office and the Nasty Little Habit. ‘And I must say, Gernot, I cannot help wondering so
very
much what it might be ?’
    Gernot’s suggestions, as I had expected, were exceedingly creative, but presently he said: ‘Susanna, have you ever thought of moving on? Getting a shop in the Kartnerstrasse or the Graben?’
    I shook my head. ‘No; the square’s just right for me. I don’t want to be in a place that’s fashionable. I like to stand out. Anyway, I could never afford the Kartnerstrasse rents – not for a moment.’
    ‘My God, you obstinate, idiotic girl, how many times have I told you that I want to help you? God knows, I’m not rich but-‘
    ‘No, Gernot. You know how it is with me.’
    ‘You and your damned pride!’
    ‘Perhaps it’s pride. I don’t know. But I have to be… someone who has asked you for nothing. The only person, perhaps.’
    ‘And what of me? What of my wish to render you a service?’
    ‘The service you do me is to exist.’ I began to elaborate this theme, one of my favourites, and presently he stopped raging and decided that it was after all not necessary for him to finish his cigar.
    It is my pride to have wasted many of the Field Marshal’s best Havanas.

    I have seen the dreaded tandem!
    Frau Sultzer arrived on it this morning, bringing her daughter Edith to be measured for her bridesmaid’s dress.
    Their arrival created a certain stir. Rip entirely lost his sang-froid and danced barking round the machine as it wobbled to a halt; Joseph in the cafe stood with his mouth hanging open.
    Frau Sultzer dismounted from the front of the machine, her daughter Edith from the back. Two briefcases were unstrapped from the carrier…
    And my admiration for Rudi Sultzer leapt to new heights. He might not have ‘approached’ his wife often, but he had ‘approached’ her.
    On this wonderful May morning, Laura Sultzer wore a musty brown skirt with a swollen hem which undulated like a switchback and a knitted cardigan under which the sleeves of her blouse bulged in a way which made one wonder if she had secreted some of her rescued rats. Her nose was sharp and long, the thriving hairs which covered her chin and upper lip ranged interestingly from white to grey to dusty black and as she came towards me, I caught the musty odour one encounters when opening ancient wardrobes.
    But my business was with her daughter.
    Edith was shorter than her mother, with a bad skin and bewildered grey eyes behind the kind of spectacles that Schubert would have discarded as out of date. She looked anaemic, and beneath the bobble-fringed tablecloth she seemed to be wearing, I guessed at her father’s bandy legs.
    I asked the ladies to sit down and offered Frau Sultzer some fashion magazines which she refused with a shudder. ‘Thank you, we have brought our own reading matter,’ she said.
    The briefcases were then unpacked. Out of hers, awesomely stamped with the initials L.S., Frau Sultzer fetched a volume of Schopenhauer and a propelling pencil. Out of Edith’s – a bulging and distressed-looking object of paler hue – she took a volume of
Beowulf
.
    ‘I feel I should inform you that my