Which was easier said than done.
George was also aware that he had personally failed that test. He had punched Jasper Murray. Jasper was no wimp, but he had sensibly resisted the temptation to fight back. As a result the damage had been limited – no credit to George.
George was living with his mother again – at the age of forty-eight! Verena was still in the family home with little Jack. George presumed that Jasper spent nights there, but he did not know for sure. He was struggling to find a way to live with divorce – just like millions of other men and women.
It was Friday night, and he turned his mind to the weekend. He was on his way to Verena’s house. They had settled into a routine. George picked up Jack on Friday evening and took him to Grandma Jacky’s house for the weekend, then brought him back home on Monday morning. It was not how George had wanted to raise his child, but it was the best he could manage.
He thought about what they would do. Tomorrow maybe they would go to the public library together and get some bedtime story books. Church on Sunday, of course.
He arrived at the ranch-style house that used to be his home. Verena’s car was not on the driveway: she was not home yet. George parked and went to the front door. From politeness he rang the bell, then let himself in with his key.
The house was quiet. ‘It’s only me,’ he called out. There was no one in the kitchen. He found Jack sitting in front of the TV, alone. ‘Hi, buddy,’ he said. He sat down and put his arm around Jack’s shoulders. ‘Where’s Nanny Tiffany?’
‘She had to go home,’ Jack said. ‘Mommy’s late.’
George controlled his anger. ‘So you’re on your own here?’
‘Tiffany said it’s a mergency.’
‘How long ago was that?’
‘I don’t know.’ Jack still could not reckon time.
George was furious. His son had been left alone in the house at the age of four. What was Verena thinking of?
He got up and looked around. Jack’s weekend case stood in the hall. George checked inside and saw everything necessary: pyjamas, clean clothes, teddy bear. Nanny Tiffany had done that before she left to deal with what Jack called her mergency.
He went into the kitchen and wrote a note: ‘I found Jack alone in the house. Call me.’
Then he got Jack and went out to the car.
Jacky’s house was less than a mile away. When they arrived, Jacky gave Jack a glass of milk and a home-made cookie. He told her all about the cat next door, which came to visit and got a saucer of milk. Then Jacky looked at George and said: ‘All right, what’s eating you?’
‘Step into the parlour and I’ll tell you.’ They moved to the next room, and George said: ‘Jack was on his own in the house.’
‘Oh, that should not happen.’
‘Damn right.’
She overlooked the bad language for once. ‘Any idea why?’
‘Verena didn’t come home at the appointed time, and the nanny had to leave.’
At that moment they heard a squeal of tyres outside. They both looked out of the window and saw Verena getting out of her red Jaguar and running up the path to the door.
George said: ‘I’m going to kill her.’
Jacky let her in. She ran to the kitchen and kissed Jack. ‘Oh baby, are you okay?’ she said tearfully.
‘Yeah,’ said Jack nonchalantly. ‘I had a cookie.’
‘Grandma’s cookies are great, aren’t they?’
‘You bet.’
George said: ‘Verena, you’d better come in here and explain yourself.’
She was panting and perspiring. For once she did not appear arrogantly in control. ‘I was only a few minutes late!’ she cried. ‘I don’t know why that goddamn nanny ran out on me!’
‘You can’t be late when you’re looking after Jack,’ George said severely.
She resented that. ‘Oh, like you never were?’
‘I never left him alone.’
‘It’s very difficult on my own!’
‘It’s your damn fault you’re on your own.’
Jacky said: ‘George, you’re in the wrong here.’
‘Stay out of this, Mom.’
‘No. It’s my house and my grandson, and I won’t stay out of anything.’
‘I can’t overlook this, Mom! She did wrong.’
‘If I’d never done anything wrong, I wouldn’t have you.’
‘That’s nothing to do with it.’
‘I’m just saying we all make mistakes, and sometimes things turn out all right anyway. So stop beating Verena up. It won’t do any good.’
Reluctantly, George saw that she was right. ‘But what are we going to do?’
Verena said: ‘I’m sorry, George, but I just can’t cope.’ She started to cry.
Jacky said: ‘Well, now that we’ve stopped yelling, maybe we can start thinking. This nanny of yours is no good.’
Verena said: ‘You don’t know how difficult it is to get a nanny! And it’s worse for us than for most people. Everyone else hires illegal immigrants and pays them cash, but politicians have to have someone with a green card who pays tax, so no one wants the job!’
‘All right, calm down, I’m not blaming you,’ Jacky said to Verena. ‘Maybe I can help.’
George and Verena stared at Jacky.
Jacky said: ‘I’m sixty-four, I’m about to retire, and I need something to do. I’ll be your back-up. If your nanny lets you down, just bring Jack here. Leave him here overnight when you need to.’
‘Boy,’ said George, ‘that sounds like a solution to me.’
Verena said: ‘Jacky, that would be wonderful!’
‘Don’t thank me, honey, I’m being selfish. I’ll get to see my grandson more.’
George said: ‘Are you sure it won’t be too much work, Mom?’
Jacky made a contemptuous noise. ‘When was the last time something was too much work for me?’
George smiled. ‘Never, I guess.’
And that settled it.
56
Rebecca’s tears were cold on her cheeks.
It was October, and a biting wind from the North Sea was blowing across Ohlsdorf Cemetery in Hamburg. This graveyard was one of the largest in the world, a thousand acres of sadness and mourning. It had a monument to victims of Nazi persecution, a walled grove for Resistance fighters, and a mass grave for the 38,000 Hamburg men, women and children killed in ten days by Operation Gomorrah, the Allied bombing campaign of summer 1943.
There was no special area for victims of the Wall.
Rebecca knelt down and picked up the dead leaves scattered over her husband’s grave. Then she placed a single red rose on the earth.
She stood still, looking at the tombstone, remembering him.
Bernd had been dead a year. He had lived to sixty-two, which was good for a man with spinal cord injury. In the end his kidneys had failed, a common cause of death in such cases.
Rebecca thought about his life. It had been blighted by the Wall, and by the injury he had received escaping from East Germany, but despite that he had lived well. He had been a good schoolteacher, perhaps a great one. He had defied the tyranny of East German Communism and escaped to freedom. His first marriage had ended in divorce, but he and Rebecca had loved each other passionately for twenty years.
She did not need to come here to remember him. She thought about him every day. His death was an amputation: she was constantly surprised to find he was not there. Alone in the flat they had shared for so long, she often talked to him, telling him about her day, commenting on the news, saying how she felt, hungry or tired or restless. She had not altered the place, and it still had the ropes and handles that had enabled him to move himself around. His wheelchair stood at the side of the bed as if ready for him to sit upright and haul himself into it. When she masturbated, she imagined him lying beside her, one arm around her, the warmth of his body, his lips on hers.
Fortunately, her work was constantly absorbing and challenging. She was now a junior minister in the foreign affairs department of the West German government. Because she spoke Russian and had lived in East Germany she specialized in Eastern Europe. She had little free time.
Tragically, the reunification of Germany seemed ever farther away. Diehard East German leader Erich Honecker appeared unassailable. People were still being killed trying to escape across the Wall. And in the Soviet Union the death of Andropov had only brought in yet another ailing septuagenarian leader, Konstantin Chernenko. From Berlin to Vladivostock, the Soviet empire was a bog in which its citizens struggled and often sank but never made progress.
Rebecca realized her mind had wandered from Bernd. It was time to go. ‘Goodbye, my love,’ she said softly, and she walked slowly away from the grave.
She pulled her heavy coat around her and folded her arms as she crossed the cold cemetery. She gratefully got into her vehicle and turned on the engine. She was still driving the van with the wheelchair hoist. It was time she traded it in for a normal car.
She drove to her apartment. Outside her building was a shiny black Mercedes S500, with a chauffeur in a cap standing beside it. Her spirits lifted. As she expected, she found that Walli had let himself into the apartment with his own key. He was sitting at the kitchen table with the radio on, tapping his foot to a pop song. On the table was a copy of Plum Nellie’s latest album,
The Interpretation of Dreams
. ‘I’m glad I caught you,’ he said. ‘I’m on my way to the airport. I’m flying to San Francisco.’ He stood up to kiss her.
He would be forty in a couple of years, and he looked great. He still smoked, but he never took drugs or alcohol. He was wearing a tan leather jacket over a blue denim shirt. Some girl ought to snap him up, Rebecca thought; but although he had girlfriends he seemed in no hurry to settle down.
When she kissed him she touched his arm and noticed that the leather of his jacket was as soft as silk. It had probably cost a fortune. She said: ‘But you’ve only just finished your album.’
‘We’re doing a tour of the States. I’m going to Daisy Farm for three weeks of rehearsal. We open in Philadelphia in a month.’
‘Give the boys my love.’
‘Sure will.’
‘It’s a while since you toured.’
‘Three years. Hence the long rehearsal. But stadium gigs are where it’s at now. It’s not like the All-Star Touring Beat Review, with twelve bands playing two or three songs each to a couple of thousand people in a theatre or gymnasium. It’s just fifty thousand people and us.’
‘Will you do some European dates?’
‘Yes, but they haven’t been fixed yet.’
‘Any in Germany?’
‘Almost certainly.’
‘Let me know.’
‘Of course. I may be able to get you a free ticket.’
Rebecca laughed. As Walli’s sister, she was treated like royalty whenever she went backstage at a Plum Nellie gig. The band had often talked in interviews about the old days in Hamburg, and how Walli’s big sister used to give them their only good meal of the week. For that she was famous in the world of rock and roll.
‘Have a great tour,’ she said.
‘You’re about to fly to Budapest, aren’t you?’
‘For a trade conference, yes.’
‘Will there be some East Germans there?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘Do you think one of them might be able to get an album to Alice?’
Rebecca grimaced. ‘I don’t know. My relations with East German politicians are not warm. They think I’m a lackey of the capitalist imperialists, and I think they are unelected thugs who rule by terror and keep their people imprisoned.’
Walli smiled. ‘So, not much common ground, then.’
‘No. But I’ll try.’
‘Thanks.’ He handed her the disc.
Rebecca looked at the photograph on the sleeve, of four middle-aged men with long hair and blue jeans. Buzz, the randy bass player, was overweight. The gay drummer, Lew, was losing his hair. Dave, the leader of the band, had a touch of grey in his hair. They were established, successful, and rich. She remembered the hungry kids who had come here to this apartment: thin, scruffy, witty, charming, and full of hopes and dreams. ‘You’ve done well,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ said Walli. ‘We have.’
* * *
On the last evening of the Budapest conference, Rebecca and the other delegates were given a tasting of Tokaj wines. They were taken to a cellar owned by the Hungarian government bottling organization. It was in the Pest district, east of the Danube river. They were offered several different kinds of white wine: dry; strong; the lightly alcoholic nectar called eszencia; and the famous slow-fermented Aszú.
All over the world, government officials were bad at throwing parties, and Rebecca feared this would be a dull occasion. However, the old cellar with its arched ceilings and stacked cases of booze had a cosy feel, and there were spicy Hungarian snacks of dumplings, stuffed mushrooms, and sausages.
Rebecca picked out one of the East German delegates and gave him her most engaging smile. ‘Our German wines are superior, don’t you think?’ she said.
She chatted flirtatiously with him for a few minutes then asked him the question. ‘I have a niece in East Berlin, and I want to send her a pop record, but I’m afraid it might get damaged in the mail. Would you take it for me?’
‘Yes, I suppose I could,’ he said dubiously.
‘I’ll give it to you tomorrow at breakfast, if I may. You’re very kind.’
‘Okay.’ He looked troubled, and Rebecca thought there was a chance he might hand over the disc to the Stasi. But all she could do was try.
When the wine had relaxed everyone, Rebecca was approached by Frederik Bíró, a Hungarian politician of her own age whom she liked. He specialized in foreign policy, as she did. ‘What’s the truth about this country?’ she asked him. ‘How is it doing, really?’
He looked at his watch. ‘We’re about a mile from your hotel,’ he said. He spoke good German, like most educated Hungarians. ‘Would you like to walk back with me?’
They got their coats and left. Their route followed the broad, dark river. On the far bank, the lights of the medieval town of Buda rose romantically to a hilltop palace.
‘The Communists promised prosperity, and the people are disappointed,’ Bíró said as they walked. ‘Even Communist Party members complain about the Kádár government.’ Rebecca guessed that he felt freer to talk out in the open air where they could not be bugged.
She said: ‘And the solution?’