The Novel in the Viola by Natasha Solomons

on his left trouser leg knew nothing of my city.
    ‘ Vienna is a city where you can see the sky. There are a thousand cafés lining the pavements, where we sit and drink coffee and chatter and the old men argue over chess and cards. In spring there are balls, and we dance till three in the morning, the ladies a swirl of white dresses like apple blossoms spiralling to earth in the night. We eat ice creams in the summer by the Danube watching boats hung with lanterns drift along the water. Even the wind waltzes. It is a city of music and light. ’
    ‘Beg your pardon?’
    I blinked at him again, realising that I’d been speaking in German. ‘Please excusing me. My English language is not so good. Vienna is best city in all world.’
    He gave me an odd look. ‘Why you here then?’
    I had neither the words nor the inclination to answer. I racked my brains for a suitable phrase. ‘I am explorer. In-tepid.’
    I raised the paper, and he did not speak to me again for a full half hour. I studied the stories closely, trying to understand the nuance. I suspected that one or two of them were intended to be mildly humorous but the detail was beyond me.
    ‘May I fetch you something from the buffet?’ asked Andy, interrupting my lesson.
    I was dreadfully hungry, and thought guiltily of the envelope of cash in my pocket. Anna insisted that one should never accept offers of refreshment from unknown gentlemen. On reflection, I decided I must be cautious.
    ‘No, thank you.’
    He tipped his hat and ambled along the carriage, bouncing against the benches on either side of the aisle as the train clattered and rocked. A few minutes later he returned with two bottles of milk and two paper bags filled with chocolate biscuits. He pushed one of each into my hands.
    ‘Sorry, miss. Felt awful uncomfortable munching across from you,’ he said, holding up his own bag of biscuits. ‘Scuse the impertinence.’
    ‘Thank you,’ I said and sipped at the milk. It was slightly sour, just on the turn, but I didn’t care. I drank greedily in gulps and tried not to cram the biscuits into my mouth. It was the first time in two days that someone had been kind to me.
    ‘You was hungry,’ he observed.
    I swallowed my mouthful of crumbs, suddenly self-conscious. I folded up the newspaper and returned it to him. ‘I thank you, Mr Turnbull. Most kindly.’
    He grinned. ‘You’re funny, you are . ’
    I turned back to the window – perhaps in England I was funny. I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure when, but we had left London and rushed through a verdant land. It began to rain and drops hammered against the windows. We hurtled past cows sheltering beneath clumps of trees and wool-soaked sheep and brimming rivers slopping against their banks. The stations became smaller and the time between them lengthened. The metalled roads winding beside the railway were replaced by dirt tracks, turning to muddy soup in the deluge. I wished I had not packed my raincoat at the bottom of my trunk. The carriage began to empty; Andy clambered out at Salisbury, tipping his hat.
    The train travelled more slowly. I could see vast country houses, each the size of an entire apartment building, marooned in swathes of meadow like ocean liners. After the drab squalor of the city, I felt I was not gazing upon reality but a stage set daubed in make-believe colours. The grass was too green, and the banks of primroses beside the tracks bright as fresh butter. The rain vanished as suddenly as it had arrived, and the sun slunk out from behind a cloud, so that the sky was streaked with blue and the green ground glistened. I listened to the strange place names called by the guard: ‘ Next stop Brockenhurst . . . Change here for Blandford Forum and the slow train to Sturminster Newton . . . Next stop Christchurch . . .’
    I felt drowsy, and my limbs were stiff, while my temples pulsed with the rhythm of the train. It was stuffy inside the carriage and I wrenched open the window and