Forever Yours by Daniel Glattauer, Jamie Bulloch Read Free Book Online

found a man who was right for her – meaning
her
: Mum.
    “So what do you do for a living?” Mum asked during the journey. Hannes: “I’m an architect.” Mum: “Oooh, an architect!” Hannes: “My small office specialises in refurbishing and building pharmacies.” Mum: “Pharmacies, how wonderful!” “Maybe he’ll build one for you,” Judith said acidly.
    After two and a half hours they had reached the patched-up old manor house in the wastelands of the Upper Austrian Mühlviertel, where Hedi ran a small organic farm. Ali worked as a landscape photographer, but only rarely – the landscape really had to beg to be photographed. Material things were not so important to Hedi and Ali; they could even make do without hairbrushes and beard trimmers.
    “I’m Hannes,” he said with the irrepressible euphoria he bubbled with whenever he met new people, thrusting his hand a little too keenly towards Ali. Judith’s brother flinched instinctively. “Hannes is my boyfriend,” Judith said, explaining both him and the situation. Ali stared at him as if he were the eighth wonder of the world. “He’s an architect,” Mum added, as her eyes wandered, beneath raised brows, from Ali to Hedi and back again. Hannes gave them a three-bottle box of organic wine from southern Burgenland. “The best from the region, at least I think so,” he said. Ali couldn’t stand wine. Judith wanted to turn around and go straight back home. She doubted anybody would have noticed.
    The evening passed at a snail’s pace around the farmhouse table, beneath a dusty pseudo-rustic lampshade. Judith spent most of the time playing with wax from the candles in the silver holders in front of her, which melted and then went hard again. She made beautifully round balls, squashed them with her thumb onto the table top, scooped up the resulting discs with her knife and rolled them into balls again.
    For practically the entire evening Hannes kept one hand on her knee, which gradually got warmer. He used the other to gesticulate as he held forth on architecture, love (for Judith) and the world in general. He was, by quite some stretch, the most loquacious and spirited person around the table.
    There was only the odd altercation. Hedi was set on having a home birth with a Czech midwife, whereas Mum urged her to have the baby at Vienna General Hospital. It was much better equipped and certainly more hygienic, she said, flashing her eyes at Hedi. Hannes brought the discussion to a close by producing a present for the highly pregnant birthday girl – quite separate from the obligatory gifts of cash from the family – which he had obviously bought that morning: two romper suits, one pink, one light blue. “Because we didn’t know whether it’s going to be a boy or a girl,” he said, winking at Judith. Mum laughed. Ali remained silent. “It’s a girl,” Hedi said to Hannes. And: “We’ll keep the blue one for you.” Mum’s laughter turned into an expression of bliss. Ali remained silent. Hannes beamed. Judith gently removed his hand from her knee. She was desperate for the loo.
6
    After dinner they were joined by the Winnigers. Judith had once been together with Lukas, her brother’s best friend – a nice, sensitive, clever man. He’d worked as a publisher’s sales rep in Germany, which meant he’d been exactly the opposite of Hannes: never around. But he gave up the job for Antonia, an English student from Linz, who looked as if she could be his twin sister. Then he’d accepted a post in the city library. Viktor was already eight, and Sybille six.
    Despite the rain, Ali took the children into the garden to do some archery. Or perhaps he just wanted to wash his hair. Lukas diverted Judith’s attention from her balls of wax and engaged her in an intimate conversation about old times and new, about times which may have finished too early, or started too late. The wine from southern Burgenland was a perfect accompaniment.
    At some point