Page 28 of An Invitation to the Kennedys
‘I cannot imagine,’ Doris said lightly.‘Perhaps she is one of those women who loves dearly to take offence?’
Ilse laughed.‘I know them!’she said.‘Never happy unless feeling insulted.’
‘The very ones,’ Doris agreed.But what had she said?she wondered.She cast her mind back.The evening at the lakeschloss… the twinkling garden lights and the rich smell of water.The plan for the stitching of the yellow Star of David … ‘Simple,’ she heard herself say.‘And yet no child would ever have dreamed of it.’Frau Becker’s beady look.
That.
‘Well, whatever it was, you made an impression,’ the girl continued.‘Frau Becker says she thinks youdon’t have a real understanding of important matters.’
As well brand her as a subversive, Doris thought in alarm.‘I understandthisimportant matter,’ she said, holding up her glass of Sekt and making a face.
The girl laughed.‘Isn’t it foul?’she agreed.‘Come with me, I know where we can get proper Champagne.’
But Doris, who dared everything, didn’t dare.‘Perhaps later,’ she said.‘It’s not so bad.’
The girl shrugged – ‘Suit yourself’ – and walked away.
*
A few days later, again lunch at Horcher’s.‘What did you say your aunt’s name was?The German aunt?’von Arent asked her.
‘Anna.Anna Klein.’A perfectly ordinary name.‘She died.’This was what she said.Her mother’s only relative, dead some years now.No other family in Berlin.None she knew of.Only her many friends.
‘Anna Klein,’ he repeated.Was there something in the way he said it?‘And I suppose it is from her you get your dark hair and black eyes?’
‘No, my colouring is from my English father,’ Doris said lightly.‘My grandmother and mother are both as yellow-haired as Rhinemaidens.’She laughed, but something inside her squeezed.
When von Arent went to do his usual table-hopping and Doris sat with her coffee, the same young waiter came to clear.‘Where might one walk today?’she asked him quietly, head bent as she fumbled with the clasp of her handbag.
‘May I refill your coffee?’
‘Please.’He went away, then returned with a fresh silver pot.
‘I believe the Märchenbrunnen fountain will be pleasant later today.’
It was certainly noisy, she thought later as she sat on a low stone wall beneath a statue of Lucky Hans.The shallow tiered basin had nine fountains playing in it, one for each of the fairy tales told by the Brothers Grimm and commemorated here in stone statues that were, she had always thought, heavy and sentimental.Hefty children with knowing faces reaching for pigs or fawns or ducks, entirely unleavened by any delight.And perhaps that’s what it was to be a German peasant child, she thought.Everything a deal to be struck, whether with witches, robins or fate.
This time, she saw the man immediately although he had no dog with him, and instead of a neat suit he wore the weekday clothes of a labouring man.He came and sat at a slight distance from her and took out a sandwich made with dark bread.He unscrewed a tin cannister and leaned forward, almost into the froth of water that fell from one of the fountains, to fill it.
‘You’re to go back,’ he said, bent over.
‘London?’She took a book from her bag and opened it at random, inclining her head away from the sun, the better to read, and closer to him.
‘Yes.And then wherever your friends the Channons are.They have interesting guests.Prince Friedrich Hohenzollern.Ambassador Kennedy.’
‘What am I to do?’
‘The usual.Listen, watch, understand.There are many possibilities right now.Everything is of interest.’He straightened up, took a swig of water from the tin can and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.‘Go soon.’
‘For good?’
‘For now.’She left him sitting there, passing a stone girl with blank eyes and a grotesque little man in her lap.At the girl’s feet clustered more little men, staring balefully out from behind curling stone beards.Snow White.Beside her, a stone wolf licked the elbow of a different girl, its long grey tongue curling out from sharp stone teeth.Before coming to Germany, Doris had always thought these stories – Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood – were pretty tales for children.Here, in the land of their creation, they seemed different.Darker.Twisted with the creeping roots and impenetrable canopy of the Black Forest.
At her building, thehausmeisterblocked her.‘Two men came for you.’
‘What men?’
‘I don’t know.Men.No uniform.’He seemed curious at such an absence, now when uniforms were everywhere.
