‘Oh, Adele,’ he said, setting the fork down, and looking at her with his hands spread wide. ‘I will never, ever leave you and the baby. I love you so much.’
Adele looked at him with amusement and surprise. ‘Well, that is good to know,’ she said. ‘But I do not think I was in any doubt on the subject. When Elsa has calmed down a little, I shall go and start to cook some supper. It is only noodles and liver with onions, but I think I would like some supper. It is so bad! I was so looking forward to my evening out, hearing about what might be done to improve matters in Germany. I have so few pleasures now, with my belly the way it is. Baby was restless again today, Christian. Baby was so hot,’ she said, caressing her stomach and smiling down at it as if the thing she was growing inside could hear and see and understand her. ‘Baby was so hot and restless and tiresome today, I did not know what to do with Baby to give Mamma some nice rest. And now this.’ Adele gestured towards the noise coming from the other room, the wailing.
Somewhere in the street where the stolen goods were received and the worst meats were despatched, in a back room sat Elsa’s silver teapot, wrapped in newspaper as if it were nothing so very much. It waited for its purchaser, a gentleman of special interests and few scruples, to take it away and see what could be made of it. Christian expected that in the end it would be melted down and become something else entirely.
5.4
It was a good day. As sometimes happened, a letter from Dolphus arrived a day after a delayed one, the postal services, whether in England or in Germany, making up for their confusion by a prompt delivery of the next. It was propped up on their bed, like the one before, unannounced by Adele. Dolphus wrote weekly, and did not know about the irregular deliveries; he brought his brother up to date with what had been happening in his life. Christian skipped through the first page and a half, the better to have the pleasure of reading them properly later, on his second or third read.
A man called Norway, an engineer with Vickers, came to give a talk to a small supper club that a few of the fellows have here – an engineers’ supper club. We are such jolly fellows, and build such bridges in the sky when we talk! Norway was a pugnacious fellow, who came straight to the point. He is working on a project of airships; he has been the calculator of stresses. But he says he is not excited by the project. There are too many problems with airships, too many things that the commercial requirements have asked him to overlook and neglect. He said that the future lies with the aeroplane, which will take such forms that we know not what they will become in our lifetimes, capable of hundreds of kilometres an hour, capable of flying at thousands of feet in the air. That is the issue, Norway said: how to pressurize the cabin, how to make it secure against the low air pressure outside, which will enable a plane to fly at many times the speed it is now capable of. The airship? It will be quite forgotten.
We were so excited to hear the views of the future expounded by one who truly understands. But after this exciting evening, I found myself disconsolate. In Germany, there is so much belief in the airship. And it seems to me that the future is here. Here is where the great ideas will spring from, and where change will happen. Nothing will happen in Germany, just an attempt to sit on the future and not allow it to happen. There will be nothing left in Germany from which to make anything new, just vast wobbling airships in the air, and in five years the Kaiser, or somebody like him, passing decrees in Berlin. Here is where the future is, Christian. I wish that you and Adele would see that, and come here. But I do not expect that Adele’s mind can be changed in any respect. That makes me so sad. I have decided that after my degree I will go to work in aeronautics. It is where the future will be decided.
You will be interested to hear that I have finally met a woman of the opposite sex! However, you must not be excessively interested. The woman in question is merely a neighbour of my landlady’s, here in Tregunter Road. She lives in a tall, thin house painted white, like all the other houses in Tregunter Road, and a house, like all the houses in Tregunter Road, that could benefit from being painted white again. I saw her standing outside the house remonstrating with a delivery man, a handsome old mahogany commode on the pavement. It was starting to rain. There was a small child by her side, holding her hand. The problem seemed to be that the delivery man and his mate would not carry the commode upstairs into the first-floor drawing room. Stairs, he said, would have been extra. The poor woman was beside herself. I think it did not occur to her that the men were merely asking for some extra payment, unofficially. I intervened and suggested that if she could manage to carry one side of the commode, I would very happily carry the other. She accepted with great alacrity and pleasure. ‘You see,’ she said, dismissing the delivery men, ‘even a passing foreigner has more thought and consideration than you. I shall certainly be speaking to Mr Carrington about this. I have done a good deal of business with him over the years, but no longer. Come along, young man.’
She meant by ‘young man’ her little boy, not me, but I followed her in any case. It was no real effort, and she gave me a cup of tea. I could not understand where her husband was – whether he was absent, at work or perhaps even dead. She seemed very independent, but her most passionate interest was in her son, a small boy of four or five. At first I thought his name was de Sallen, or something of that sort, exotic though it appears. Later, I understood that he was called Alan, a much more ordinary name. She had introduced him by saying, ‘Oh, he knows his antiques, he knows his stuff there, does Alan.’ As they say in English, he was her pride and joy, and she entertained me with talk, quite improbable, of his gifts and abilities. ‘Do you know,’ she said, her eyes shining, ‘even at his age, he can distinguish Wedgwood and Sheraton, at a glance? He has a real eye, he does. He knows the difference between Doric and Ionic in an old building. Oh, he knows his stuff, does Alan.’ The little boy sat, beautifully dressed, looking at me as if trying to establish what my maker or hallmark might be. The child has an extraordinary sage, learned, knowing air, and is dressed in his best clothes by his doting mother. As he looked at me, I feared that he might want to turn me over and examine the marks on my bottom. Now I think about the encounter, I realize that I know what his name was, but not hers. So if she fulfils her promise to invite me to tea, when it will be properly carried out, she will have to remind me who she is when she drops the card in. She was very amused to hear where I live, and full of tales of the misbehaviour of previous inhabitants of the boarding house. I had thought that the street was an irregular one, but evidently those who live there cling to a belief in their own gentility. It was a small adventure but, as I indicated, it is almost the first occasion I have met a woman of any sort, so I thought it worth recording. I dare say that in several months, not to mention the years to come, you will be boasting about your own little Alan and his gifts in precisely the same way as my new friend. Take heed!
Christian went on reading, absorbedly. Outside, the smell of onions frying had begun, and the clatter of knives came from the kitchen. The sound of Elsa crying had begun to diminish. In his pocket were several hundred Rentenmarks. He was happy to think of it. He would stay with Adele for ever, and do his duty, and that would be his future, not Dolphus’s in London. From somewhere in the building, the same and usual sounds of the neighbours were rising upwards: the first shouts of a row, laughter over something, the noise of a china plate being dropped on a hard floor, the front door being heavily slammed, the sound of a piano being practised, the same two or three difficult bars. It was agreeable to sit on the bed before dinner and read your brother’s letter from London with its news of the future, and what the world might become. Through the window, the lights were coming on in the flat on the other side of the courtyard, and someone was washing the dishes from their dinner; the plump woman he often saw, her waist now being encircled by her plumper husband with the heavy moustache as she plunged the dishes into the sink. There was a faint delicate spatter of noise from the courtyard. He could not think what it was. It continue
d. Out there, it was beginning to rain, the drops falling singly on stone and roof.
EPILOGUE
2014/1933
1.
The young woman with the beautiful coat had walked over to the other side of the road several times to ring the bell at the apartment block opposite. She was Yusuf’s only customer. It was a Tuesday afternoon, and the snow was starting to be quite heavy, but the café was not a success, and Yusuf doubted he would have had any other customers in any case. He was starting to believe that Steglitz was not ready for an elegant Turkish tearoom, with perfect tiny Turkish cakes. He had come here with Florian, away from all the Anatolians in Kreuzberg, and had been convinced that the ladies of the area would find the idea irresistible. They had made a lovely website, with beautiful photographs of the terracotta interior, the singing birds in the gilt cages, the elegant golden chairs and the antique photographs of Ottomans in golden frames. There were details of what cakes you could order, and smiling photographs of both blond Florian, who looked after the business, and dark Yusuf, who made the cakes. It had been a year now, and sometimes whole days passed with only one customer, or sometimes with none at all.
He did not think the woman today was Turkish, but there was something foreign about her. Her coat was expensive, a white waisted coat with a huge fur collar, and when she took off her white fur hat, like a Cossack’s, her black bobbed hair was glossy and sharply cut. She had arrived out of the snow carrying a heavy parcel, saying, guten Tag, but that was the limit of her German. She must have arrived in a taxi, Yusuf thought, and rung the doorbell opposite before coming across the road to the café. She had coffee with a small cake; she ate it in tiny bites, her eyes fixed on the snowstorm. In ten minutes, she paid and left. She must have thought she had seen somebody entering the apartment block, but it was either a mistake or not the person she was looking for, because in a moment or two she came back, and asked for a glass of water. In a few minutes, she did exactly the same thing, sinking down with graceful tiredness.
Yusuf’s English was not as good as Florian’s, but he could make an effort and, after thinking for a moment, said, ‘If you wish, I can keep your parcel when you want to go over the road.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ the woman said. ‘I am waiting for a friend. He is not expecting me, however.’
‘He is not— Ah, I see,’ Yusuf said. ‘I perhaps know him.’
‘You know him?’
‘Maybe I know him, I mean, if you say me who you are waiting for.’
‘Oh, I see. It’s a surprise, really. It’s an old friend called Arthur. I think he lives there. I hope he lives there still. We heard from him five years ago and this was the address.’
‘I think maybe he must be moved – in five years that is often what happens. I do not know anyone who is called that who lives there. What was the name you said, please?’
‘Arthur. He doesn’t move unless he has to, I don’t think. He stays where he is. I thought it was worth a try. But you don’t think he lives there.’
‘No,’ Yusuf said. ‘There is only our friend Philip who lives there. He is English. He has lived there for many years now. Is it perhaps a friend of Philip’s who you are looking for I think?’
‘Perhaps,’ the girl said, reflectively. ‘I only have a number – it was flat number seven.’
‘That is Philip’s flat, I know,’ Yusuf said. ‘It seems strange, but perhaps he can help when he gets home. I can call him if you want it. He is not far from here.’
‘Oh,’ the girl said, and she broke out into a wonderful smile, the smile of a woman of thirty who has been given the gift of great kindness. ‘Oh – would you? Would that be a great trouble to him or to you?’
‘Oh, no,’ Yusuf said. ‘He works very near by. He is a waiter in a café – a big German café, a successful one, not like this one. I can call him and when he is busy then he will tell me over the phone what he knows.’
Yusuf went to the back of the shop and called Philip. When they had spoken for a while, he came back, smiling.
‘You are certainly lucky,’ he said. ‘I asked him if he knew anyone called Arthur, that there is a young lady asking for an Arthur who lives in his flat, and Philip said to me that he will come straight away, and he sounded very excited and pleased. But he asked me what your name was and I did not know what to say.’
The young lady beamed, and began talking very fast in English. It defeated Yusuf, but he went on smiling. He thought of saying, in a joking way, that he hoped his friend Philip was not one of those people who are discovered to have imprisoned a young man in his flat for many years, but he thought it through, and he could not think of how to say ‘imprisoned’ in English, and could not think of another way to say it. So he smiled and nodded, and brought another cup of coffee to the lady, saying the phrase he had learnt, which was ‘On the house.’ And presently there was the form of Philip opening the door and shaking his umbrella and stamping his feet from the snow. He had come so quickly that he was still wearing his black waiter’s apron.
The woman rose to her feet. She seemed to be scanning Philip for some sign of recognition, but was perhaps unsure.
‘It’s a long time since anyone’s called me Arthur,’ he said to Yusuf in German, looking the woman over in quite a friendly way. ‘People used to call me Arthur in London.’
‘Do you know Arthur?’ the woman said to him. She had only caught the name in what Philip had said. ‘I’ve come looking for Arthur. Do you speak English?’
‘I used to be called Arthur,’ Philip said in English to the woman. ‘And you?’
‘I’m Celia,’ the woman said. ‘I’ve come to say hello.’
‘Celia,’ Philip said – Arthur said, rather – but in a warm, recognizing way. ‘Celia. My God. Look at you.’
2.
They crossed the street in the falling snow, Arthur sheltering under Celia’s umbrella, and into the apartment block. They kept casting sidelong glances at each other. Was the other what they remembered? Neither seemed sure. Arthur was stocky and muscular, his head shaved; at the cleavage of his white shirt the edge of a tattoo was apparent on his bulky chest. Celia had been a child before, but was there some essence there that had been preserved? Her colouring was dark, her face neat, her eyes big and her skin smooth and glowing. Mainly, she glowed; her face was so interesting to look at that you might forget to remark how lovely she was.
‘I don’t know how you found me,’ Arthur said, opening his third-floor door with a key he fetched from his trouser pocket. ‘I’m impressed. Excuse the mess.’
The flat was only a little chaotic, and what mess there was came from books, in piles in the hallway, on the worksurface in the kitchen, and on tables, on the dining table, on the sofa, on the floor. There were a few plates and mugs, unwashed, but no more than that. It could have done with a paint; in the hallway, there was a mark about the four-foot mark where Arthur had rested his head to take his shoes off, as he did now.
‘You sent a postcard to Uncle Duncan, five years ago,’ Celia said. She stood with her package, not taking her coat off, or her shoes; it was very cold in the room, almost as if a window were open somewhere in the flat. ‘It had your address on it. My uncle said he hadn’t known where you were until then. You just went away.’
‘I told him I’d gone to Berlin,’ Arthur said, sitting down and putting his stockinged feet up on the sofa. ‘I didn’t just disappear. I’d forgotten that – I sent him a postcard. I don’t know why I did.’
‘It was a good job you did,’ Celia said. ‘The bookshop was closing down. If you’d waited another month, your postcard would have arrived at a branch of Starbucks.’
‘Oh, aye,’ Arthur said, with the noncommittal quality that masks deep emotion. ‘Is it cold in here?’
‘Well, I do find it a little cold,’ Celia said. ‘But that’s just me, I expect.’
‘I expect it’s not,’ Arthur said. He went outside and turned a central-heating dial on. ‘I can make you a cup of coffee,
if you’d like,’ he said, coming back in, ‘or tea, even – I’m the only man in Steglitz who knows how to make a good cup of tea.’
‘Yes, foreigners,’ Celia said. ‘They think a cup of warm water, delivered with a teabag in the saucer is good enough.’
‘For you to dunk, hopefully,’ Arthur said.
Celia shot him a grateful, surprised look. ‘You used the word “hopefully” quite correctly there,’ she said. ‘It’s unusual. I must be desensitized.’
‘It’s speaking German all day long that does it,’ Arthur said. ‘I remember you. I remember you very well. You used to come into the shop with your mother, and sit and chat with me. It used to surprise the customers, seeing a seven-year-old girl there, on the till, playing shopkeepers. I know why I sent the postcard. I heard about the shop closing one day when I was in Prinz Eisenherz. That’s the gay bookshop here. They don’t have a seven-year-old girl on the till playing shopkeepers, though, so it’s obviously a bit rubbish.’
‘I was such a very girly little girl, too, I expect,’ Celia said. ‘I think I will have that cup of tea. I’ve never been to Berlin before. I just knew you were here, but I always thought … This is very respectable.’
‘It was so cheap,’ Arthur said. ‘When I came here, the rents were so low. And now I can’t move. I’m used to it here.’
‘The Birkbuschstrasse,’ Celia said. ‘I’ve been practising saying it so that the taxi driver would understand. It’s quite hard to pronounce, I must say.’
I don’t know when the last time I saw you was,’ Arthur said. ‘I went all of a sudden and I never said goodbye to anyone, not even Duncan. Was he cross?’
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