Chapter Fourteen
The Albatross
"And, will we have the pleasure of meeting Friedrich any time soon?" asked Sybil with a laugh. At that, Edith grinned with unabashed pleasure, nodded her head enthusiastically in confirmation.
"Well, yes, as it happens, you most certainly will. Actually, he's meeting us both in Florence. We're staying at the Pensione Lucchesi, not far from the Ponte Vecchio and..."
"Nonsense darling, you must come and stay with all of us. The Ashingtons have lent us their villa up in the hills overlooking the Arno. From what they've told us and from the photographs they showed us earlier in the year, it looks absolutely divine" said Mary.
"Perhaps. Maybe. We'll have to see".
Mary's eyes narrowed. She looked quizzically at Edith.
"Well honestly darling. It really seems I can't do right for doing wrong. But of course, if you'd prefer to be cooped up in some stuffy hotel in…"
"It's not that Mary. Not that at all. Your invitation… does it extend to Friedrich as well? Because if not, then I think it would be for the best if we…"
"Of course it does. Why shouldn't it?"
"Well, even if it does, I'd have to speak to Friedrich about it. At the moment he's on his way back from Luxor where he's been working for the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo. There's an Egyptian archaeological symposium taking place in Florence. And then… then there's Max to consider. I mean how, and more importantly what, are we going to tell the children, about his health, about everything?"
"The truth" said Sybil peremptorily. "That's always the best policy. It's something Tom and I have always done".
"Well you would, wouldn't you" observed Mary drily.
"Meaning what, if you please?"
"Well…" Mary demurred.
"Well, nothing! Mary, if what you mean by that is that Edith and Friedrich aren't married and have a son, who suffers from an incurable disease, what of it? Whose business is it, except their own and, I suppose, now ours?" demanded Sybil her eyes flashing, daring Mary to challenge her practical, no-nonsense assessment of the situation as she saw it.
Suitably chastised, wisely, Mary chose to say nothing. There was, she reflected astutely, no point in antagonising Sybil, especially not when she got on her high horse about something, and, perhaps, after all, her youngest sister was right. Maybe, in the long run, whatever it cost, honesty was the best policy but before Mary could marshal her thoughts and say something, Sybil now rounded on Edith.
"And as for you, darling… Edith, surely it can't have escaped your notice, even out in the deserts of Iraq, that this is 1932, not 1900. Whether you and Friedrich are married makes not one whit of difference. At least not to me and Tom it doesn't". She looked pointedly at Mary, daring her to say otherwise.
"Well, no, I suppose it doesn't" said Mary. "Although it would be rather..."
"Would be rather what?" asked Edith.
"Well, it still might be for the best if you regularised your union".
At that, even Edith had had enough.
"Oh Mary, don't be so old-fashioned. Didn't I just try and explain to you all some of the difficulties we've encountered in that regard? But Friedrich and I, we want to "regularise our union" as you so quaintly put it. Not just for ourselves, but more importantly for Max, so there can be no problem when it comes to him inheriting Rosenberg, assuming that is that he…" Edith's voice tailed off; she fell silent.
Mary and Sybil both nodded their acquiescence. From what Edith had told them so far, there seemed very little prospect that Max would live long enough to inherit his father's estate in Austria.
"Anyway, when I found out that you were all travelling to Florence, and by the Rome Express, well, everything just seemed to fall into place. And, just so as you know in advance who you are meeting, here, this is Friedrich".
So saying Edith delved into her handbag and pulled out a sheaf of photographs. The first of which she proffered them showed an undeniably handsome man in uniform, standing by an aeroplane grimly emblazoned with a large skull on its fuselage. From the photograph, there was no mistaking that Friedrich was Max's father.
"Mein Vater. Albatros D. III" said Max proudly, pointing first to Friedrich, and then to the aircraft.
Edith nodded and smiled fondly at her son.
"He wants you to know that the aircraft in the photograph was an Albatross D. III. Not of course that it means much to me. Naturally, Max is very proud of his father".
"Naturally" echoed Mary.
Sybil also smiled encouragingly at her nephew, was sure that, with his obsession with all thing mechanical, Danny would be interested in the subject matter of the photograph. But, she remembered too that the albatross, after which the aeroplane had presumably been named, was considered by some to be a bird of ill-omen, and was also a metaphor for a burden to be carried as a penance.
"Friedrich told me it was taken almost at the end of the war. He was a pilot with the Austro-Hungarian air force" explained Edith. "And this one, this is from a little earlier, when he was being decorated by the late emperor. Friedrich was awarded the Military Merit Cross First Class with crossed swords for bravery. When he was old enough to understand what it was Friedrich gave the medal to Max".
The photograph showed Friedrich, again in uniform, but this time smartly saluting another man, also in military dress and wearing a kepi and a greatcoat with a deep fur collar, presumably the emperor of whom Edith had spoken, and who was flanked by a group of uniformed officers.
Edith said something to her son and the young boy nodded his head enthusiastically.
"Although they don't mean much to Friedrich, at least not now, what with the emperor dead and the empire having passed into history, the medal and Friedrich's pilot's badge both have pride of place in a cabinet in Max's bedroom. He's very proud indeed of his father's war record. And this… this one was taken shortly after we first met in Cairo, on a dig in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor in Egypt".
The photograph showed a group of people, all seated on chairs outside a flat roofed building of mud brick, with Friedrich and Edith smiling and sitting next to each other. Edith was sporting a safari helmet, shirt, riding breeches and long boots similar to those worn by Friedrich. Seeing that her attire had not gone unnoticed by Mary, at least to judge by the raise of her ever expressive eyebrows, Edith apparently felt some explanation was now called for.
"The breeches are much more practical when we're digging" she said quietly, her eyes downcast.
Mary nodded her acquiescence.
"I'm sure they are". Mary's ever expressive eyebrows twitched once again.
"And this… this is of the three of us, on the terrace at Rosenberg. Those are the Alps there in the background".
The picture once again showed Edith and Friedrich, this time with Max between them, all smiling, sitting on a low stone wall, and behind them, rising spectacularly in the distance, could be seen a range of mountains. Friedrich was smartly attired in an evening suit, Edith in a stunning dark coloured full length gown, wearing a magnificent diamond tiara, necklace, and matching ear rings, while young Max was dressed very much as he was now.
Mary eyed the tiara, necklace and ear rings with undisguised interest. Edith's tiara was truly splendid; both in its size and in the obvious quality of the stones of which it was composed, it quite eclipsed the one left to Mary by her late grandmother in her will and which, in comparison, would have looked both positively cheap and tawdry.
"The gown is by Mayer of Vienna. It's of midnight blue velvet on chiffon. The tiara… has been in Friedrich's family for years. As for the necklace and ear rings, well he gave me those when Max was born" said Edith modestly.
"How kind of him" observed Mary deprecatingly, remembering that Matthew, ever practical, had chosen to mark Robert's birth rather less personally, at least as far as she was concerned, with a scheme of extensive improvements to the buildings down at Home Farm, and which he said were long overdue: Robert's initials and the year being duly marked by a carved stone set in the west gable of the long barn.
"I've a whole album of photographs packed away in my suitcase. Perhaps you'd like to see those later, maybe after dinner, when we're on the train?" suggested Edith cautiously.
"Of course. That would be wonderful" said Sybil enthusiastically, but at the same time thinking just how easy it was for a picture to mask reality.
Taken at face value, the black and white photograph of Friedrich, Edith and Max was all that it purported to be: a father, mother and their handsome young son posing happily for the photographer, a snap of a contented, smiling, and, let it be said, undeniably wealthy, family, with no hint of the personal tragedy that had befallen them all, with the discovery that Max had haemophilia: their very own albatross.
But, if an albatross was a metaphor for a burden carried as a penance, then just what was it that Edith was expected to do penance for? A child borne out of wedlock? Perhaps, although in the divine scheme of things, that hardly seemed fair; but then neither did visiting the so-called sin of the parents upon the child.
Sybil had never had very much time for religion and some of the things she had experienced and witnessed in the comparatively recent bloody and violent birth pangs of Ireland had made her question the very existence of God. That young Max should suffer so now made her question even more the blind faith that some had in the existence of an omnipotent and omniscient deity. If there truly was a God, then Sybil found herself wondering how it was He could let young Max suffer so. And then, if Mama was truly a carrier of this dreadful disease would that explain... No don't even think about the possibility that...
"Sybil?" asked Edith gently and breaking into her sister's distant reverie.
"What? Oh, sorry, don't mind me, I was miles away!" Sybil looked up to find that Mary was still regarding intently the photograph of Friedrich, Edith and Max.
"Really? A whole album?" Mary said evenly a moment later, wondering if any of those other photographs would also bear mute witness to yet further examples of Friedrich's lavish generosity; forgetting momentarily that there were some things which money could not buy.
"Now, apart from still having to decide what we tell the children, there's something else too, which is somewhat delicate, but it's something I need to ask you both all the same. Have either of you ever had…"
But before Edith could even finish whatever it was she was about to say, from outside on the platform there came an audible shriek from Saiorse, followed by the sound of prolonged barking, at which young Max scrambled hastily to his feet.
"Frittie!" he yelled and, before Edith could make to stop him, shrugging off his mother's restraining hand, scattering her photographs, Max was shambling for the door just as fast as his injured knee would permit. Reaching the door, grabbing the handle, Max wrenched it open, and, limped out onto the platform, with his mother in hot pursuit, both her handbag and her photographs forgotten in her haste to catch up with her son.
Mary and Sybil exchanged mutually surprised glances.
"And just who the hell is Frittie?" asked Mary, as simultaneously both she and Sybil rose swiftly to their feet, gathered up Edith's discarded handbag along with the scattered photographs, and likewise hurriedly made for the now open door of the salle d'attente.
Author's Note:
Overlooking the River Arno, at the time of the story, the Pensione Lucchesi was one of the finest hotels in Florence, equipped with every modern comfort, including electricity, a lift, central heating and garaging! D. H. Lawrence stayed there in 1926 while writing "Lady Chatterley's Lover". And if you want to stay there, well, you can: the hotel is still in existence and is now called the Plaza Hotel Lucchesi.
The German Archaeological Institute in Cairo was founded in 1907.
The Albatros D. III was a highly successful bi-plane fighter aircraft used both by the Imperial German Army Air Service and the Austro-Hungarian Air Service during the Great War.
The Military Merit Cross was a decoration awarded in the territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. First awarded in 1849, following the collapse of the empire, it was rendered obsolete in 1918.
Established in 1927, Atelier-Mayer was an important Vienna fashion house whose clientele included members of Austrian, Liechtenstein and Swiss society.