Tuesday

Tuesday began with a telephone call from Konrad. Anna was still in bed, when she was wakened by the knocking at her door, and she had to run down to the telephone in the hall with her coat thrown over her nightdress, the crumbly lino chilling her bare feet as she said, “Hello? Hello, Konrad?”

“My dear,” Konrad’s voice sounded much more positive, “I’m sorry I woke you. But I thought you’d like to know straightaway that I’ve just spoken to the doctor, and he says your mother is going to be all right.”

“Oh, I’m so glad.” Even though she had been sure of it, she was surprised by the wave of relief which flooded over her. “I’m so glad!”

“Yes – well – so am I.” He gave a little laugh. “As you can imagine.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I just thought I’d tell you. So you could have your breakfast in peace. I’ll meet you at the hospital at nine-thirty.”

“All right.” It felt like an outing, a party, a celebration. “And thanks, Konrad. Thanks for letting me know.”

She hurried back to her room to put on her clothes, and had hardly got them on before she was called to the telephone again. This time it was Max, from the airport.

“Max,” she cried, “it’s all right. Mama is going to be all right.”

“I know.” He sounded in control of the situation, as always. “I’ve just spoken to the hospital.”

“Did they tell you—?”

“The overdose. Yes.” There was a pause. “It’s funny,” he said. “I’ve been sitting in planes and at airports for two days with nothing to do but think about Mama, but that possibility never occurred to me. I just kept wondering whether she’d be alive when I got here.”

“I know.” She could hear his breathing through the telephone – fast, shallow breaths. He must be dead tired.

“Do you know why she did it?”

“Konrad,” she said. “He had an affair.”

“Konrad? Good God.” He was as amazed as she had been. “I thought it was something to do with us. I hadn’t written for a bit.”

“I know. I hadn’t either.”

“Good God,” he said again, and then became very practical. “Look, I don’t know what sort of transport I can get from here, but I’ll get to the hospital as soon as I can. You meet me there.”

“All right.” The odd feeling of it being a celebration returned to her as she said, “See you then.”

“See you then,” he said and rang off.

She rushed through her breakfast with only the briefest replies to the proprietress who was determined to continue the conversation of the previous night. Even so, when she arrived at the hospital, Max was already there. He was talking to the nurse behind the desk and she recognized not only his back, but also the expression on the nurse’s face – that special smile, denoting pleasure and eagerness to help, which he had been able to induce in almost everyone he met since he had been about seventeen.

“Max,” she said.

He turned and came towards her, looking tired but unrumpled in his formal suit, and most of the visitors and patients looked up to watch him.

“Hello, little man,” he said, and in answer to the old endearment, left from their joint childhood, she felt a glow spread through her, and smiled back at him much as the nurse had done. “What a lot of trouble,” he said as he kissed her, “Bringing up our poor Mama.”

She nodded and smiled. “Have you spoken to Konrad?”

“Just for a moment. He gave me your number. He said something about taking full responsibility. I couldn’t think what he meant.”

“He feels very badly about it.”

“Well, so he should. Though perhaps… Mama isn’t easy.” Max sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. Has he said anything about what he’s going to do?”

“Not exactly. But he said the affair meant nothing to him – that it’s all finished.”

“I suppose that’s something.”

“Yes.”

There was a pause. She was conscious of the other people and the nurse behind the desk watching them. “He’s coming here at nine-thirty,” he said. “Do you want to wait for him or go and see Mama first?”

“Let’s go and see Mama,” he said, and she thought how much easier it would be to face going up to the landing now that Mama was better, and with Max beside her.

As they started along the corridor which smelt of disinfectant and polish as usual, she did not feel the least bit sick. “I’m all right today,” she said. “Always when I’ve come here before I’ve felt sick.”

He smiled. “You should have put a clean hankie on your stomach,” and she was surprised and touched because he did not usually remember much about the past.

“I think it only worked if you got it out of the drawer,” she said.

They had reached the stairs and she was about to go up, but he steered her past them, towards another passage.

“Room 17,” he said. “The nurse told me.”

“Room 17?” Then she realized. “They must have moved her now that she’s out of danger. They must really be sure.”

He nodded. “The nurse said she’d be very sleepy. She said only to stay a minute.”

“She’s been on a kind of landing till now.” For some reason it seemed important to explain. “Where everyone could see her. And of course she’d throw herself about and groan and I was shouting and trying to get through to her. It was rather horrible.”

But they had come to the door of Mama’s room and he was not really listening. “All right?” he said with his fingers on the handle, and they went in.

The first thing that struck her was how pretty the room was. It was full of light, with pastel-coloured walls and a big window which overlooked the park. There were flowered curtains, an armchair and a furry rug on the floor. Mama was lying in a neat white bed, untethered, without tubes, one hand tucked under the pillow, the other relaxed on the covers, as Anna had so often seen her in the Putney boarding house, and seemed to be peacefully asleep.

Max was already by the bed.

“Mama,” he said.

Mama’s eyelids fluttered, sank down again, and finally opened quite normally. For a moment she stared in confusion and then she recognized him.

“Max,” she whispered. “Oh, Max.” Her blue eyes, the same colour as his, smiled, half-closed, and then opened again full of tears. “I’m so sorry, Max,” she whispered. “Your holiday… I didn’t mean…” Her voice, too, was just as usual.

“That’s all right, Mama,” said Max. “Everything is all right now.”

Her hand moved across the bedclothes into his, and he held it.

“Max,” she murmured. “Dear Max…” Her eyelids sank down and she went back to sleep.

For a moment, Anna did not know what to do. Then she joined Max at the bed.

“Hello, Mama,” she said softly, her lips close to the pillow.

Mama, very sleepy now, hardly reacted. “Anna…” Her voice was barely audible. “Are you here too?”

“I’ve been here since Saturday,” said Anna, but Mama was too sleepy to hear her. Her eyes remained closed, and after a while Max disengaged his hand and they went out.

“Is she all right?” he asked. “Is this very different from the way she’s been?”

“She’s been in a coma for three days,” said Anna. “She only came out of it while I was with her last night.” She knew it was childish, but she felt put out by the fact that Mama seemed to remember nothing about it. “They told me to keep calling her, so I did, and finally she answered.”

“I’m sorry,” said Max. “Was it awful?”

“Yes, it was. Like one of those dreadful, corny films.”

He laughed a little. “I didn’t know they still did that – making you call her. I thought these days it was all done with pills. You may have saved her life.”

She was careful not to say so, but secretly she was sure that she had. “It was probably just the German instinct for drama,” she said. “I can’t imagine them doing it in England, can you? I mean, you wouldn’t be allowed into the ward for a start.”

They were walking back along the corridor and near the stairs they met the sour-faced nurse of the first day, carrying a bedpan. At the sight of them – or more probably of Max, thought Anna – her mouth relaxed into a smile.

“Na,” she said in satisfied tones, “die Frau Mutter ist von den Schatten zurückgekehrt.”

In English this meant, “So your lady mother has returned from the shadows,” and Anna, who had had time to get used to German phraseology, managed to keep a straight face, but, combined with the bedpan, it was too much for Max. He spluttered some kind of agreement and dived round the next corner, Anna following and hoping that the nurse would think he had been overcome with emotion.

“They all talk like that,” she giggled when she caught up with him. “Had you forgotten?”

He could only shake his head. “Aus den Schatten zurückgekehrt… How does Mama stand it?”

She looked at him and began to laugh as well. “Die Frau Mutter…” she gasped, and even though she knew it was not as funny as all that, it was difficult to stop. She leaned against the wall, clutching his arm for support, and when the nurse came back, without the bedpan this time, they were still laughing so much that they had to pretend to search for something in Anna’s bag until she had passed, only to explode again immediately afterwards.

“Oh, Max,” cried Anna at last without knowing exactly what she meant, “oh, Max, you’re the only one.”

It was something to do with their childhood, with having grown up speaking three different languages, with having had to worry so much about Mama and Papa and to cheer themselves up with trilingual jokes which nobody else could understand.

“There, there, little man,” said Max, patting her arm. “So are you.”

They were still laughing a little when they emerged into the entrance hall, even more crowded now. Konrad and the doctor were already talking together in a corner, and the nurse behind the desk smiled and pointed them out to Max, in case he had not seen them. But Konrad who must have been watching for them, came to meet them and clasped Max warmly by the hand.

“It’s good to see you, Max,” he said. “I’m sorry we had to drag you away from Greece, but right until this morning it’s been touch and go with your mother.”

“Of course,” said Max. “Thank you for coping with it all.”

“Nu,” said Konrad in tones reminiscent of the Goldblatts, “at my age you learn to cope with everything.”

There was an awkwardness between them, and he turned to Anna with evident relief. “That’s quite a change of expression you’ve got there.”

“I told you Mama would be all right,” she said happily, and by this time they had reached the doctor, and Konrad introduced him to Max, and Max thanked him for all he had done for Mama.

“I believe you’ve had a long journey,” said the doctor, and Max told him a little about it, but quickly brought the conversation back to Mama.

“We were lucky,” said the doctor. “I told your sister—” he spread his fingers as he had done the previous day. “Fifty-fifty, didn’t I tell you?”

Anna nodded. It seemed a long time ago.

“Yes,” said the doctor. “Fifty-fifty. Of course in such a case one does not always know what a patient’s wishes would have been. But one has to assume… to hope…” He discovered his fingers, still in midair, and lowered them to his sides.

Behind him, Anna could see a very old lady walking carefully with a stick, and a small boy with his arm in a sling. She was aware of a woolly smell from Konrad’s coat, the warmth of a nearby radiator and the babble of German voices all around her, and she felt suddenly tired and remote. Mama is going to be all right, she thought, nothing else matters. For some reason, she remembered again how Mama had looked that time when she had cried in her blue hat with the veil. The veil had been quite wet and had got more and more wrinkled as Mama rubbed her eyes with her hand. When on earth was that? she wondered.

Konrad coughed and shifted his feet. “… can’t thank you enough…” said Max in his very good German, and Konrad nodded and said, “… deeply grateful…” “After a few days in the clinic to recover…” The doctor waved his hands and there seemed to be a question hanging in the air. Then Konrad said loudly and firmly, “Of course I shall be responsible for her.” She glanced at him quickly to see if he meant it. His face looked quite set.

The doctor was clearly relieved. So was Max who, she noticed, now looked rather pale and suddenly said, “I’ve eaten nothing since yesterday lunch time. D’you think I could possibly get breakfast anywhere?”

At this the group broke up.

They all thanked the doctor again, and then she and Max were following Konrad down the steps to his car and Konrad was saying, “You must remember to shake hands with the Germans, otherwise they think you despise them for having lost the War,” which seemed so eccentric that she thought she must have misheard until she caught Max’s eye and quickly looked away for fear of getting the giggles again.

She stared out of the window while Konrad drove and made various arrangements with Max – it was cold, but quite a nice day, she discovered – and did not really come to until she found herself sitting at a café table, with the smell of sausages and coffee all round her and Max saying, evidently for the second or third time, “Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?”

He himself was polishing off a large plateful of frankfurters and fried potatoes, and there was a cup of coffee in front of her, so she drank some of that and smiled and shook her head.

“Konrad is going to ring the theatre from his office,” said Max, “so that they’ll be expecting us.”

“The theatre?”

“Where they’ve got the exhibition about Papa.”

“Of course.” She had forgotten all about it.

“It’s really over. Konrad thought they might even have begun to dismantle it. But the stuff should still be there, and Konrad it going to ring the caretaker to make sure he lets us in.”

He looked his normal self again, and she asked, “Are you feeling better now?”

He nodded, his mouth full of frankfurters. “Just reaction,” he said. “No food and not enough sleep.”

She felt very glad that they were going to see the exhibition together. Suddenly it seemed exactly the right thing to do. “It’ll be good to see something to do with Papa,” she said.

They had to travel on the U-Bahn to get there, but Konrad had explained the route to Max, and he had also given him a map. If you stayed on the train too long, it took you right out of the Western Sector into the Russian Zone and Anna, who considered this a very real danger, watched the stations anxiously and was standing by the doors, ready to get off, when they reached the one they wanted.

“They warn you before you ever get near the Russian Zone,” said Max as they climbed up the stairs to the street. “They have big notices at the previous station and announcers and loudspeakers. You couldn’t possibly go across by mistake.”

She nodded, but did not really believe him. Once, a few months after escaping from Germany, they had changed trains in Basle on their way to Paris with Papa, and they had discovered only at the very last minute that it was the wrong train.

“Do you remember in Basle,” she said, “when we nearly got a train that was going to Germany? We didn’t even have time to get the luggage off, and you shouted until someone threw it out to us.”

“Did I?” said Max, pleased with his past activity, but, as usual, he had forgotten it.

The theatre was in a busy, unfamiliar street, but then all the streets except the few round her old home and school were unfamiliar to her, thought Anna. There was some heavy bomb damage nearby, but the building itself had either escaped or had been carefully repaired.

They went up some stone steps to the entrance, knocked and waited. For a long time nothing happened. Then, through a glass panel in the door, they could see an old man coming slowly towards them across the gloom of the foyer. A key ground in the lock, the door opened, and he became clearly visible in the light from the street – very old, very bent, and with a long, grey face that did not look as though it ever went out.

“Kommen Sie rein, kommen Sie rein,” he said impatiently, rather like the witch, thought Anna, beckoning Hansel and Gretel into the gingerbread house, and he led them slowly across the thick red carpet of the foyer towards a curving staircase.

As he tottered ahead of them, he talked unceasingly. “Can’t put the lights on,” he said in his heavy Berlin accent. “Not in the morning. Regulations don’t allow it.” He stopped suddenly and pointed to a chandelier above their heads. “Well, look at it. Set you back a bit to have that shining away, wouldn’t it? Real gold, that is.”

He tottered off again, muttering about the regulations which seemed to present a major problem, but resolved it to his satisfaction as, with infinite slowness, he climbed the stairs one step at a time. “Put the lights on upstairs,” he said. “Nothing in the regulations against that.”

On a small landing halfway up, he stopped again to get his breath. Anna caught Max’s eye, but there was nothing to be done and they had to wait alongside him.

“Used to check the tickets,” said the old man. “In the old days. Before it was all took over by them in brown.” He flashed a look at Max. “You know who I mean, don’t you?”

Max said, yes, he knew whom he meant.

The old man nodded, satisfied. “Used to stand down there at the entrance of the stalls, and see them all go in,” he said. “All the gentlemen in their dinner suits and the ladies in their dresses. Quite grand, they was.”

He sighed and started again on his slow climb, muttering to himself. A poster with Papa’s name and “Exhibition” appeared in the half-darkness. “The great writer and critic”, it said underneath.

“Used to see him,” said the old man, jabbing a finger in its direction. “Come quite often, he did.”

They looked at each other. “Did you?” said Anna.

He seemed to think that she was doubting him. “Well, of course I did,” he said. “Used to check his ticket. Middle of the third row, he used to sit, never nowhere else, so he could write his little piece in the paper next day. And the others, they used to be real frightened of what he’d put. Once I fetch him a taxi to go home in after the show, and the manager, he come out of the theatre just as he drives off and says to me, ‘Herr Klaube,’ he said, ‘that man can make or break the play.’ A real nice gentleman, I always thought, always thanked me and give me a tip.”

Anna saw Max’s face in the half-darkness. They both wanted the old man to go on talking about Papa at that time which they were too young to remember. She searched her mind for something to ask him.

“What –” she said, “what did he look like?”

He clearly thought it a stupid question. “Well,” he said, “he look like they all look in them days, didn’t he. He had one of them cloaks and a stick and a silk hat.” Perhaps he sensed her disappointment, for he added, “Anyway, there’s plenty of pictures of him in there.”

They had arrived at a door with another, bigger, poster on it, and he unlocked it and switched on the lights, while Max pressed a coin into his hand.

“Thank you, sir. I’ll drink to you with that,” he said as, perhaps, he had said to Papa thirty-odd years before, and tottered back into the semi-darkness of the stairs.

The room he had opened for them was the circle bar, and now that the lights were on, she saw that the walls, not only in the bar but also in the passage outside it, were hung with photographs and reproductions. There was Papa with Einstein, Papa with Bernard Shaw, Papa making a speech, Papa and Mama in America with skyscrapers behind them, Papa and Mama on the deck of an ocean liner. Mama looked like herself, only younger and happier, but Papa seemed unfamiliar because of his habit, which Anna now remembered, of putting on a special expression for photographers.

There were framed newspaper cuttings with explanations beneath them. “The article which caused such controversy in 1927”, “The last article to be published before he left Germany in 1933”. There were drawings and cartoons, a magazine Papa had edited (“I didn’t know he’d done that,” said Anna), framed pages of manuscript with his familiar, spidery writing, endlessly corrected.

She looked at it all, touched and bewildered. “It’s so strange, isn’t it,” she said. “All the time he was doing this, we hardly knew him.”

“I remember people asking about him at school,” said Max.

“And visitors coming to the house. There was a man who brought us some marzipan pigs. I remember Mama saying that he was very famous. I suppose it might have been Einstein.”

“I think I would have remembered Einstein,” said Max who had forgotten even the marzipan pigs.

Already half dismantled against the wall was a glass case with a complete set of Papa’s books. They looked clean and almost unused – very different from his own shabby collection in the Putney boarding house. He had had to acquire the volumes piecemeal from friends who had managed somehow to smuggle them out of Germany.

“He never did get a full set together for himself, did he?” said Max.

“No.” She touched the glass case gently with her hand. “No, he never did.”

From the far end of the bar, steps led to another passage, and here, too, exhibits had already been taken down and were leaning in a corner, face to the wall. She picked one up at random. It was an enlarged reproduction of a recent article assessing Papa’s work. She read, “… one of the most brilliant minds of his generation. The books, classics of their kind, are in every university library.” In another case nearby were the two thick modern volumes with his collected writings which Mama had worked so hard to get republished the previous year.

“Look at this,” said Max. He had found a photograph of the four of them in the garden in Berlin, Papa posing like an author as usual, Mama smiling radiantly, and herself and Max in matching striped woollies, Max with a Christopher Robin haircut on a scooter, herself on a tricycle.

“I remember that being taken,” she said. “I remember I’d just got the tricycle, and I was trying to look like someone who could ride a tricycle round corners.”

Max considered it. “It doesn’t really come across,” he said, and added, “actually, you look exactly like Papa.”

Suddenly there were no more exhibits, and it seemed they had come to the end of the show.

“That’s it,” said Max. “It’s not really very big, is it?”

They went to the end of the passage, through a door, and found themselves at the back of the circle, a curve of empty red seats sloping down on each side of them. In the vast dimness under the roof hung the usual theatre smell of glue and plaster, and from the well of the stalls came the hum of a vacuum cleaner. Peering down, Anna could see a foreshortened figure Hoovering along the aisle. She looked at the middle of the third row and tried to imagine Papa sitting there, but she couldn’t bring him to life.

“It’s really just something for people to look at in the interval,” said Max, beside her. “But I think it must have been quite effective before they took half of it down.”

She nodded and turned to go back the way they had come – and there, between two exits, like a saint in a niche, almost life-size and smiling, was Papa. He was wearing his old grey hat and the shabby winter coat which he had had as long as Anna could remember, and he seemed to be in the middle of saying something. His eyes were focused with interest on something or someone just to one side of the camera, and he looked stimulated and full of life.

She knew the picture, of course, though she had never seen it so enlarged. It had been taken by a press photographer as Papa stepped off the plane in Hamburg on that day long ago – the last picture taken of him before his death. Papa had not known that the photographer was there, so he had not had time to put on his special expression and looked exactly as Anna remembered him.

“Papa,” she said.

Max, following her glance, stopped halfway up the steps, and they stood looking at it together.

“It’s a perfect place to put it,” she said at last. “Looking out over the theatre.”

There was a pause. The whine of the Hoover continued to rise from the stalls.

“You know,” said Max, “this is the one thing here that really means anything to me. Of course the rest is very interesting, but this, to me, is Papa. What I find so strange is that to everyone else he was someone quite different.”

She nodded. “I haven’t even read everything he wrote.”

“Nor have I.”

“The point about Papa—” For a moment she lost track of what the point was. Something to do with having loved Papa when he was old and unsuccessful and yet more interesting than anyone else she knew. “He never felt sorry for himself,” she said, but it was not what she meant.

“The point about Papa,” said Max, “was not just his work but the sort of person he was.”

When they started back down the curved staircase, there were signs of activity in the foyer. The doors to the street were open, someone had taken over the glass-fronted ticket office, and an elderly man was trying to make a booking. They had reached the foot of the stairs, when a gaunt young woman appeared from nowhere, said something about Kulturbeziehungen and shook them warmly by the hand.

“Did you enjoy it?” she cried. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here to meet you. I do hope the janitor – he remembers your father, you know. Your mother came when it opened, of course, and seemed quite pleased, but one always wonders. There is so little room, so one had to select.”

“I thought it was excellent,” said Max, and she lit up, as people always did when he smiled at them, and straightaway looked less gaunt.

“Did you?” she said. “Did you really? One hopes so much always to have got it right.”

“I wish he could have seen it himself,” said Anna.

Later, over lunch in a small bar, they talked about Mama.

“It rather hits one,” said Max, “when one’s seen this exhibition – the sort of person Papa was and the sort of life she used to lead with him. And now she tries to kill herself over someone like Konrad.”

“He made her feel safe,” said Anna.

“Oh I know, I know.”

“I like Konrad,” said Anna. “What I find so amazing is the way Mama talks about the things they do together. You know – ‘we won three dollars at bridge and the car did eighty miles in an hour and a half – it’s all so boring and ordinary.”

Max sighed. “I suppose that’s why she likes it. She’s never had a chance to do it before.”

“I suppose so.”

Max sighed again. “Papa was a great man. He took quite a bit of living up to. Being married to him and being a refugee – it would make anyone long for some ordinariness. I think in a way we all did.”

Anna remembered a time at her English boarding school when she had wished for nothing so much as to be called Pam and to be good at lacrosse. It had been a short-lived phase.

“Not you so much, perhaps,” said Max. “If one wants to paint or write, perhaps being different matters less. But me—”

“Nonsense,” said Anna. “You’ve always been different.”

He shook his head. “Only in quality. Best student, scholarship winner, brilliant young barrister tipped to be the youngest QC—”

“Are you?”

He grinned. “Maybe. But it’s all conforming, isn’t it? What I’m really doing is making damned sure that in the end I shall be indistinguishable from the very best ordinary people in the country. I’ve sometimes wondered, if we hadn’t been refugees—”

“You’d always have done law. You’ve got a huge talent for it.”

“Probably. But I might have done it for slightly different reasons.” He made a face. “No, I can understand exactly why Mama wants to be ordinary.”

They sat in silence for a while. At last Anna said, “What do you think will happen now?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Konrad keeps saying he’ll assume complete responsibility for her. I don’t know whether that means he wants to pick up where they left off, as though nothing at all had happened. I suppose he may say something when we have dinner tonight.”

“Yes.” She suddenly saw Mama very clearly, with her vulnerable blue eyes, the determined mouth, the childish snub nose. “She’ll be desperate if he doesn’t.”

“Well, I think he might. I think he means to. What I’m frightened of is that he might feel we’re just taking him for granted, and that he’ll be put off. I think he’ll want some support.”

“We could give him that, surely?”

He said nothing for a moment. Then he looked at her. “I left Wendy and the baby on a remote Greek island. I can’t stay long.”

“I see.” It hadn’t occurred to her, and she felt suddenly depressed. “Perhaps –” she said, “I suppose I could stay on a few days on my own—” But she hated even the thought of it.

“If you could, it would make all the difference.”

“I’d have just to think about it. I’ve got this new job, you see. It’s quite important.” The new job and Mama were jumbled up in confusion. Back to Mama, thought part of her mind with the usual sense of panic, and another part thought of Richard, but he seemed far away. “I’d want first to talk to Richard about it.”

“Well, of course,” he said.

He looked white again when the waitress brought the bill, and said, “Do you mind if we go back to the hotel? I’ve had practically no sleep for two nights and I suddenly feel rather tired. Konrad said he’d fixed up a room for me.”

While he slept, she lay on her bed and stared at the patterned curtains as they moved very gently in the draught. She wished that she had not mentioned staying on. Now it would be difficult not to do it, she thought, feeling mean. And yet, she thought, why should it always be me? Still, she hadn’t actually committed herself, and at the worst it would only be a few days. I simply wouldn’t stay longer than that, she told herself. For a moment she considered trying to ring Richard. But it would be best to talk to Konrad first. After all, now that Mama was out of danger, he might not even want anyone to stay.

The patterned curtains moved and flowed. She felt suddenly sharply aware of herself, of the shabby German house around her and of Max resting in the next room. There was Konrad in his office and his secretary watching him, and Mama waking up properly at last from her long anaesthesia and Richard trying to write his script and waiting for her in London, and in the past, behind them all, was Papa.

This, she thought, is what it’s like. She felt that she could see it all, every bit of it in relation to the rest, and she knew everybody’s thoughts and all their feelings, and could set them off against each other with hair-trigger precision. I could write about it all, she thought. But the thought was so cold-blooded that she shocked herself and tried to pretend that she had not had it.

They went to the hospital in the late afternoon, and when they opened the door of Mama’s room, they found Konrad already there. He was sitting on the bed, and Mama, who looked tense and on the edge of tears, was holding his hand. Her blue eyes were fixed on his and she had put on some lipstick, which looked strangely bright in her exhausted face.

“Nu,” said Konrad, “here are your children who have come from all the corners of the earth to see you, so I’ll leave you.”

“Don’t go.” Mama’s voice was still a little faint. “Must you?”

“Yes, ma’am, I must,” said Konrad. He heaved his bulk off the bed and smiled his asymmetrical smile. “I shall go for a walk, which is good for me, which is why I so rarely do it, and then I shall come back and buy your children some dinner. In the meantime, you behave yourself.”

“Don’t walk too far.”

“No, ma’am,” he said, and Anna saw Mama’s mouth quiver as he went out of the room.

“He always calls me ma’am,” she said tremulously, as though it explained everything.

They had brought some flowers, and Anna inserted them into a vase which already contained some rather more splendid ones from Konrad, while Max took Konrad’s place on the bed.

“Well, Mama,” he said with his warm smile. “I’m very glad you’re better.”

“Yes,” said Anna from behind the vase. They were both afraid that Mama would begin to cry.

She still seemed rather dazed. “Are you?” she said, and then added with more of her normal vigour, “I’m not. I wish they’d just left me alone. It would have been much simpler for everyone.”

“Nonsense, Mama,” said Max, and at this her eyes filled with tears.

“The only thing I’m sorry about,” she said, “is that I dragged you away from your holiday. I didn’t want to – I really didn’t. But it was so awful—” She sniffed through her little snub nose and searched for a handkerchief under her pillow. “I tried not to,” she cried. “I tried to wait at least until you’d be back in London, but each day – I just couldn’t bear it any longer.” She had found the handkerchief and blew into it, hard. “If only they’d just let me die,” she said, “then you needn’t have come until the funeral, and perhaps you could have finished your holiday first.”

“Yes, Mama,” said Max. “But I might not have enjoyed it very much.”

“Wouldn’t you?” She saw his face, and her voice warmed to something almost like a giggle. “After all, what’s an old mother?”

“True, Mama. But I just happen to be attached to mine, and so is Anna.”

“Yes,” said Anna, through the flowers.

“Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know.”

She lay back on the pillow and closed her eyes, and tears damped her cheeks from under the closed lids.

“I’m so tired,” she said.

Max patted her hand. “You’ll feel better soon.”

But she seemed not to hear him. “Did he tell you what he’d done?” she said. “He got another girl.”

“But it didn’t mean anything,” said Anna. She had squatted down near the bed, and at the sight of Mama’s tear-stained face on a level with her own, as she had so often seen it from her bed in the Putney boarding house, the familiar feeling rose up inside her that she could not bear Mama to be so unhappy, that it must somehow be stopped.

Mama looked at her. “She was younger than me.”

“Yes, but Mama—”

“You don’t know what it’s like,” cried Mama. “You’re young yourself, you’ve got your Richard.” She turned her face away and cried, to the wall, “Why couldn’t they have let me die? They let Papa die in peace – I arranged that. Why couldn’t they have let me?”

Anna and Max exchanged glances.

“Mama—” said Max.

Anna discovered that she had pins and needles and stood up. She did not like to rub her leg, in case it looked callous, so she went over to the window and stood there miserably, flexing and unflexing her knee.

“Look, Mama, I know you’ve had a bad time, but I think everything is going to be all right. After all, you and Konrad have been together a long time.” Max was talking in his reasonable lawyer’s voice.

“Seven years,” said Mama.

“There you are. And this affair, whatever it was, meant nothing to him. He’s said so. And when people have had as good and as long a relationship as you two, you can survive a lot more troubles than that.”

“We did have a good relationship,” said Mama. “We made a good team. Everybody said so.”

“There you are, then.”

“Did you know that we were runners-up in the bridge tournament? With lots of American and English couples competing, all very practised players. And we should really have tied with the couple who won, only there was a stupid rule—”

“You’ve always been terribly good together.”

“Yes,” said Mama. “For seven years.” She looked at Max. “How could he smash it all up? How could he?”

“I think it was something that just happened.”

But she was not listening. “The holidays we had together,” she said. “When we first got the car and went to Italy. He drove and I map read. And we found this lovely little place by the sea – I sent you photographs, didn’t I? We were so happy. And it wasn’t just me, it was him, at least as much. He told me so. He said, ‘Never in all my life have I been as happy as I am now.’ His wife was very dull, you see. They never did anything or went anywhere. All she ever wanted to do was to buy more furniture.”

Max nodded, and Mama’s blue eyes, fixed on some distant memory, suddenly returned to him.

“This girl,” she said. “The one he had an affair with. Did you know she was German?”

“No,” said Max.

“Well, she is. A little German secretary. Very little education, speaks very bad English, and she’s not even pretty. Only—” Mama’s eyes became wet again – “only younger.”

“Oh, Mama, I’m sure that’s nothing to do with it.”

“Well, what else is it to do with, then? It must have been something. You don’t smash up seven years of happiness just for no reason!”

Max took her hand. “Look, Mama, there was no reason. It was just something that happened. It was never important to him, except for the way you reacted. Anyway, he’s been here. Didn’t he tell you so himself?”

“Yes,” said Mama in a small voice. “But how do I know it’s true?”

“I think it’s true,” said Anna. “I’ve been with him for two days, and I think it’s true.”

Mama glanced at her briefly and then looked back at Max.

“I think so too,” said Max. “And I’ll be seeing him tonight. I’ll talk to him and find out what he really thinks, and I promise I’ll tell you exactly what he said. But I’m sure it’ll be all right.”

Mama, her eyes finally brimming over, sank back into the pillows.

“Oh, Max,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

Later, in the car, Anna stared out at the rubble and the half-made new buildings flying past in the light of the street lamps and wondered how it was all going to end. Konrad was driving, carefully and efficiently as usual, and she suddenly felt she had no idea what he was thinking. He seemed to be taking them on a tour of the city and, with Max on the front seat beside him, was pointing out various landmarks.

“Kurfürsten Damm… Leibnitz Strasse… Gedächtnis Kirche… Potsdamer Platz…”

She could see soldiers, some kind of a barrier and above it, carefully lit, a sign saying, “You are now leaving the American Sector”. It looked cold and dark. Some young people, gathered in a group, were flapping their arms and stamping their feet. Most of them were carrying placards and, as she watched, they suddenly moved closer to the barrier and all shouted together, “Russen raus! Russen raus! Russen raus!”

Konrad caught her eyes in the driving mirror. “Supporters for Hungary,” he said. “I can’t see it having much effect, but it’s nice to see them try.”

She nodded. “There are a lot of them in London, too.”

The Potsdamer Platz faded behind them.

“Do the Russians ever retaliate?” asked Max.

“Not by shouting slogans. There are more effective ways, such as doubling the checks on the road in and out of Berlin. That means everything takes twice as long to get through.”

The shouts of “Russen raus!” could still be faintly heard in the distance. A group of American soldiers marching in step, steel-helmeted and armed, flickered momentarily into vision, to disappear again into the darkness.

“Doesn’t it ever bother you, being surrounded like this? I mean,” said Anna, “suppose the Russians attacked?” She tried to sound detached, without success.

Max grinned at her over his shoulder. “Don’t worry, little man. I promise they won’t get you.”

“If the Russians attacked,” said Konrad, “they could take Berlin in ten minutes. Everyone who lives here knows this. The reason they don’t attack is because they know that if they did, they would find themselves at war with the Americans.”

“I see.”

“And even to get you, little man,” said Max, “they won’t risk starting a third world war.”

She laughed half-heartedly. It was cold in the back of the car and as Konrad turned a corner, she suddenly felt queasy. Not again! she thought.

Konrad was watching her in the driving mirror.

“Supper,” he said. “About three streets from here. I’ve booked at a restaurant you’ve been to before – I hope you don’t mind, but you enjoyed it last time.”

It turned out to be the place where they had celebrated her and Richard’s decision to get married, and as soon as she recognized it – the warm, smoky atmosphere, the tables covered with red cloths and separated from each other by high-backed wooden benches – she felt better.

“Etwas zu trinken?” asked the fat proprietress.

(Last time, Mama having proudly told her what was being celebrated, she had given them schnapps on the house.)

Konrad ordered whisky, and when she brought it she smiled and said in German, “A family reunion?”

“You could call it that,” said Konrad and, ridiculous though it was, that was exactly what it felt like.

Konrad sat between them and, like a fond and generous uncle, helped them choose their food from the menu, consulted Max about the wine, worried about their comfort and refilled their glasses. Meanwhile he talked about impersonal subjects – the dubious Russian promise to leave Hungary if the Hungarians laid down their arms, the trouble in Suez, where the Israelis had finally attacked Egypt. (“I hope Wendy won’t be too worried,” said Max. “After all, Greece isn’t very far away.”) Then, when they had finished the main course, Konrad sat back as far as it was possible for such a large man to sit back on a narrow wooden bench, and turned to Max.

“Your sister will have given you some idea of what has been happening,” he said. “But I expect you’d like to know exactly.”

“Yes,” said Max. “I would.”

“Of course.” He placed his knife and fork neatly side by side on his plate. “I don’t know if your mother happened to mention it in her letters, but she recently went to Hanover for a few days. It was a special assignment and rather a compliment to her. While she was away I – became involved with someone else.”

They both looked at him. There seemed nothing suitable to say.

“This – temporary involvement was not serious. It is now over and done with. I told your mother about it, so that she should not hear about it from anyone else. I thought she would be mature enough to see it in its proper perspective…”

(Hold on, thought Anna. Up to now she had been with him, but if he really believed that… How could he possibly believe that Mama would take it calmly?)

“… After all, we’re neither of us children.”

She looked at him. His kind, middle-aged face had a curious closed expression. Like a small boy, she thought, insisting that taking the watch to pieces could not possibly have damaged it.

“But, Konrad—”

He lost some of his detachment. “Well, she should have understood. It was nothing. I told her it was nothing. Look, your mother is an intelligent, vital woman. She has an enormous enjoyment of life, and that’s something she’s taught me, too, during the past years. All the things we’ve done together – the friendships, the holidays, even some of the jobs I’ve held – I would never have done without her. Whereas this other girl – she’s a little secretary. She’s never been anywhere, never done anything, lives at home with her mother, does the cooking and the mending, hardly speaks…”

“Then – why?” asked Max.

“I don’t know.” He frowned, puzzling it out. “I suppose,” he said at last, “I suppose it made a little rest.”

It sounded so funny that she found herself laughing. She caught Max’s eye, and he was laughing too. It was not just the way Konrad had said it, but that they both knew what he meant.

There was an intensity about Mama which was exhausting. You could never for a moment forget her presence, even when she was content. “Isn’t it lovely!” she would say, daring you to disagree. “Don’t you think this is the most beautiful day?” Or place, or meal, or whatever else it was that had made her happy. She would pursue what she believed to be perfection with ruthless energy, battling for the best place on the beach, the right job, an extra day’s leave, with a determination which most people could not be bothered to resist.

“It’s not your mother’s fault,” said Konrad. “It’s the way she is.” He smiled a little. “Immer mit dem Kopf durch die Wand.”

“That’s what Papa used to say about her,” said Anna.

She had tried to translate the expression for Richard. It meant not just banging your head against brick walls, but actually bursting through them head first, as a matter of habit.

“Did he really?” said Konrad. “She never told me that. But of course she used to do it to very good purpose. Getting you both educated when there was no money. Getting a job without qualifications. I don’t suppose that, without her habit of bursting through brick walls, either of you would have come through the emigration as well as you did.”

“Well, of course.” They both knew it and felt it did not need pointing out.

There was a little pause. “But this other girl – the secretary,” said Max at last. “What does she feel about it all? Does she think it’s over?”

Konrad had his closed, little-boy expression again. “I’ve told her,” he said. “I’ve made quite sure she understands.”

Suddenly, out of the smoke and the muddle of German voices, the proprietress bore down on them with coffee and three small glasses.

“A little schnapps,” she said, “for the family reunion.”

They thanked her, and Konrad made a joke about the burdens of a family man. She burst into laughter and drifted back into the smoke. He turned again to Max.

“And now?” said Max. “What will happen now?”

“Now?” The little-boy look had disappeared and Konrad looked suddenly what he was – a rather plain, elderly Jew who had seen a lot of trouble. “Now we pick up the pieces and put them together again.” He raised the little glass and put it to his lips. “To the family reunion,” he said.

Afterwards Anna remembered the rest of the evening like a kind of party. She felt happily confused as though she were drunk, not so much with schnapps as with the knowledge that everything was going to be all right. Mama would get over her unhappiness. Konrad would see to it, as he had always seen to everything. And between them they had all – and especially Anna – saved Mama from dying stupidly, unnecessarily, and in a state of despair for which it would be difficult to forgive oneself.

Max and Konrad, too, seemed in a much more relaxed state. They swapped legal anecdotes without any of the awkwardness that normally came between them, and once, when Anna returned from the Ladies (a very functional place almost entirely filled by one large woman adjusting a hard felt hat over her iron grey hair) she found them roaring with laughter together like old friends.

The mood only began to fade while Konrad drove them home. Perhaps it was the cold, and the sight of the half-built streets with their patrolling soldiers. Or, more likely, thought Anna, it was the realisation that it was nearly midnight and too late for her to ring Richard. Whatever it was, she found herself unexpectedly homesick and depressed, and she was horrified when, at the door of the hotel, Konrad suddenly said, “I’m so glad you’ll be able to stay on for a while in Berlin. It will make all the difference.”

She was too taken aback to say anything in reply, and it was only after he had gone that she turned angrily to Max. “Did you tell Konrad that I was going to stay on?” she asked.

They were in the little breakfast room which also served as reception area, and a sleepy adolescent girl, no doubt a relation of the owner, was preparing to hand them their keys.

“I don’t know – I may have done,” said Max. “Anyway, I thought you said you were going to.”

“I only said I might.” She felt suddenly panicked. “I never said definitely. I said I wanted first to talk to Richard.”

“Well, there’s nothing to stop you explaining that to Konrad. I don’t see why you should be in such a state about it.” Max, too, was clearly suffering from reaction, and they stood glaring at each other by the desk.

“Rooms 5 and 6,” said the girl, pushing the keys and a piece of paper across to them. “And a telephone message for the lady.”

It was from Richard, of course. He had rung up and missed her. The paper contained only his name, grotesquely misspelt. He had not even been able to leave a message, because no one in the hotel spoke English.

“Oh damn, oh damn, oh damn!” she shouted.

“For God’s sake,” said Max. “He’s bound to ring again tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow night I’m going to a bloody party,” she shouted. “Konrad arranged that. Everybody here seems to decide exactly what I should be doing at any given time. Perhaps just once in a while I might be consulted. Perhaps next time you make long-term arrangements for me, you might just ask me first.”

Max looked confounded. “What party?” he said.

“Oh, what does it matter what party? Some awful British Council thing.”

“Look.” He spoke very calmly. “You’ve got this whole thing out of proportion. If you like, I’ll explain it to Konrad myself. There simply isn’t any problem.”

But of course it was not true. It would be much more difficult to tell Konrad that she was not staying, now he believed that she was.

Alone in bed, she thought of London and of Richard, and found to her horror that she could not clearly visualize his face. Her insides contracted. The familiar nausea swept over her, and for a long time she lay under the great quilt in the darkness and listened to the trains rumble along distant tracks. At last she could stand it no longer: she got up, dug in her suitcase for a clean handkerchief, climbed back into bed and spread it on her stomach.