The Star of Kazan

It was usually Pauline who found the stories in the books she read, and once they had decided on a story they were off, doubling roles, being now soldiers, now the people that the soldiers shot. It was half playing, half acting and while they were doing it they were lost to the world.

Today Pauline told them about the Medusa – a slave ship run by a corrupt and incompetent captain who ran her aground on a reef off the coast of Africa.

‘All the rich people saved themselves in lifeboats and left the slaves to look after themselves. So the slaves made a huge raft and kept it afloat for days and days, but gradually they began to die of thirst or get washed overboard or go mad. They even ate the flesh of the people who had died – and when a rescue ship found them, only fifteen people out of more than a hundred were still alive.’

Annika nodded. ‘The hut can be the Medusa and we’ll put the blanket in the middle of the lawn; that’ll be the raft, and the grass all around is the sea. Stefan can be eaten and his remains thrown overboard – and then he can be the captain of the rescue ship.’

She frequently altered the story so as to make it more dramatic and fairer, giving each of them a chance to drown or be shot or run into the hut under a hail of arrows.

For a couple of hours they suffered shipwreck, thirst, terror and cannibalism. Then suddenly it was over. They ate their sandwiches – Pauline and Annika sharing theirs with Stefan, whose mother never had any extra food to give him. When the clock struck six, they came out of their private world, tidied the hut, padlocked the door and crawled back through the hole in the wall.

In the square they separated and became their ordinary selves again.

Later that evening, when Annika was sitting in the kitchen dunking strips of bread into her eggs-in-a-glass, there was a knock at the back door and Stefan came in.

‘It’s come,’ he said. ‘The baby.’

Everybody waited.

‘It’s a boy,’ said Stefan.

Annika pushed back her glass. ‘Will she give it away then?’

Stefan grinned. ‘Not her. She’s holding it and petting it and telling us what a lovely baby it is. She even thinks it’s got hair.’

Ellie got up and fetched a shawl she had been knitting for the baby and a bonnet Sigrid had crocheted.

‘Are you sure she won’t give it away?’ asked Annika a little anxiously after Stefan had gone.

‘Not her,’ said Ellie. ‘Mothers don’t give away their babies,’ she began – and broke off, seeing Annika’s face. She laid her hand over Annika’s. ‘Your mother would have kept you if she could, you know that, don’t you?’

And Annika did know. When she was in bed in her attic and had put out her lamp, she told herself the story she told herself night after night.

It began with the ringing of the door bell – the front door bell – and a woman stepped out of a carriage. She had thick auburn hair under her velvet hat; her eyes were almost the same colour as her hair, a rich warm brown; and she was tall and beautifully dressed, like the woman in the painting Professor Emil had in his room, which was called The Lady of Shalott. She swept into the house, saying, ‘Where is she? Where is my long-lost daughter? Oh, take me to her,’ and then she gathered Annika into her arms.

‘My darling, my beloved child,’ she said, and she explained why she’d had to leave Annika in the church. The explanation was complicated and it varied as Annika told herself the story, but tonight she was very tired so she skipped that part and went on to where her mother turned back to the carriage and a dog leaped out – a golden retriever with soft moist eyes . . .

‘I brought him for you,’ her mother said. ‘I was sure you’d like a dog.’

And Annika was asleep.

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There was only one child in the square whom Annika couldn’t stand. Her name was Loremarie Egghart and she lived in a big house opposite the house of the professors.

The Eggharts were extremely rich because Loremarie’s grandfather had been a manufacturer of soft furnishings and in particular of duvets and pillows. These were stuffed with goose down from the plains of Hungary, where the poor birds were rounded up and plucked naked, but the Eggharts did not worry about the geese, only about the money.

Loremarie’s father still took money from the factory, but he had become an important councillor and went each day, with a flower in his buttonhole, to sit at a large desk overlooking the Parliament Building, where he helped to make boring laws and shouted at the people who worked for him in his foghorn of a voice.

What he wanted more than anything was to become a statue. Not a statue on horseback, he knew that was unlikely, but a proper statue on a plinth just the same. There were many such statues in Vienna: statues of aldermen and councillors and politicians, and Herr Egghart thought that if he could become one too, his life would have been worthwhile.