approve of some of my Berlin acquaintances. ‘I thought you might,’ he said.
It was about one-thirty when I got back to Lisl Hennig’s little hotel. I’d arranged that Klara should leave the door unlatched for me. I crept up the grand front staircase under crippled cherubs that were yellowing and cobwebbed. A tiny shaded table lamp in the bar spilled its meagre light across the parquet floor of the salon, where the enormous baroque mirrors – stained and speckled – dimly reflected the tables set ready for breakfast.
The pantry near the back stairs had been converted to a bedroom for Lisl Hennig when her arthritis made the stairs a torment to her. There was a wedge of yellow light under her door and a curious intermittent buzzing noise. I tapped lightly.
‘Come in, Bernd,’ she called, with no hint in her voice of the frailty I’d been led to expect. She was sitting up in bed, looking as perky as ever: cushions and pillows behind her and newspapers all over the red and green quilt. Reading newspapers was Lisl’s obsession.
Parchment lampshades made the light rich and golden and made a halo of her disarranged hair. She had a small plastic box in her hands and she was pushing and pulling at it. ‘Look at this, Bernd! Just look at it!’
She fiddled with the little box again. A loud buzz with a metallic rattle came from behind me. I was visibly startled and Lisl laughed.
‘Look at it, Bernd. Careful now! Isn’t that wonderful!’ She chuckled with delight. I jumped aside as a small olive-coloured jeep came rattling across the carpet, but it swerved aside and rushed headlong at the fireplace, hitting the brass fender with a loud clang before reversing and swinging round – antenna wobbling – to race across the room again.
Lisl, who was wrestling with the controls of this little radio-controlled toy, was almost hysterical with joy. ‘Have you ever seen anything like it, Bernd?’
‘No,’ I said. Not wanting to tell her that every toy shop in the Western world was awash with such amusements.
‘It’s for Klara’s nephew’s son,’ she said, although why Lisl should be playing with it in the small hours was left unexplained. She put the control box alongside a glass of wine on the bedside table where the wind-up gramophone, and a pile of old 78 records, were at her elbow. ‘Give me a kiss, Bernd!’ she ordered.
I rescued the little toy jeep from where it had come to a halt on the rumpled carpet and gave her an affectionate hug and kiss. She smelled of snuff, a heavy spicy mixture that she’d spilled down the front of her bed jacket. The idea of losing this crazy old woman was a terrible prospect. She was no less dear to me than my mother.
‘How did you get in?’ she said and glared at me. I moved back from her, trying to think of a suitable answer. She put on her glasses so that she could see better. ‘How did you get in?’
‘I …’
‘Did that wretched girl leave the door on the latch?’ she said angrily. ‘The times I’ve told her. We could all be murdered in our beds.’ She hit the newspaper with her loose fingers so that it made a loud smack. ‘Doesn’t she read the papers? People are murdered for ten marks in this town nowadays … muggers! heroin addicts! perverts! violent criminals of all kinds. You only have to go a hundred metres to the Ku-Damm to see them parading up and down! How can she leave the door wide open? I told her to wait up until you arrived. Stupid girl!’
The ‘stupid girl’ was almost Lisl’s age and would be up at the crack of dawn collecting the breakfast rolls, making coffee, slicing the sausage and the cheese, and boiling the eggs that are the essential constituents of a German breakfast. Klara deserved her sleep but I didn’t point this out to Lisl. It was better to let her simmer down.
‘Where have you been?’
‘I had dinner with Frank.’
‘Frank Harrington: that snake in the grass!’
‘What has Frank done?’
‘Oh, yes, he’s an Englishman. You’d have to defend him.’
‘I’m not defending him. I don’t know what he’s done to upset you,’ I said.
‘He’s all schmaltz when he wants something but he thinks only of himself. He’s a pig.’
‘What did Frank do?’ I asked.
‘Do you want a drink?’
‘No thanks, Lisl.’
Thus reassured she drank some of her sherry, or whatever it was, and said, ‘My double suite on the first floor had a new bathroom only a year or two ago. It’s beautiful. It’s as good as anywhere in any hotel in Berlin.’
‘But Frank’s got this big house, Lisl.’
She waved her hand to tell me I’d got it wrong. ‘For Sir Clevemore. He stayed here long ago when your father was here. That’s before he became a “sir” and he’d be happy to stay here now. I know he would.’
‘Sir Henry?’
‘Clevemore.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Frank got him a suite at the Kempi. Think of the expense. He would have been happier here. I know he would.’
‘When are we talking about?’
‘A month … two months ago. Not more.’
‘You must have made a mistake. Sir Henry has been sick for nearly six months. And he hasn’t been in Berlin for about five years.’
‘Klara saw him in the lobby of the Kempi. She has a friend who works there.’
‘It wasn’t Sir Henry. I told you: he’s sick.’
‘Don’t be so obstinate, Bernd. Klara spoke with him. He recognized her. I was so angry. I was going to ring Frank Harrington but Klara persuaded me not to.’
‘Klara got it wrong,’ I said. I didn’t like to say that it was the sort of story that Klara had been known to invent just to needle her autocratic and exasperating employer.
‘It’s a beautiful suite,’ said Lisl. ‘You haven’t seen that bathroom since it was done. Bidet, thermostatic control for the taps, mirrored walls. Beautiful!’
‘Well, it wasn’t Sir Henry,’ I said. ‘So you can sleep easy on that one. I would know if Sir Henry came to Berlin.’
‘Why would you know?’ she said. She grinned from ear to ear, delighted to catch me out in a self-contradiction, for I’d always kept up the pretence that I worked for a pharmaceutical company.
‘I get to hear these things,’ I said unconvincingly.
‘Good night, Bernd,’ she said still smiling. I kissed her again and went upstairs to bed.
As my foot touched the first stair there came a sudden blast of sound. A Dixieland band, with too much brass, giving ‘I’m for ever blowing bubbles’ a cruel battering. The volume was ear-splitting. No wonder Lisl’s hotel wasn’t overcrowded.
I had my usual garret room at the top of the house. It was a room I’d had as a child, a cramped room, overlooking the back of the house and the courtyard. It was chilly at this time of year. The effects of the hot-water pump didn’t seem to reach up to the top of the house nowadays, so the massive radiator was no more than tepid. But the indomitable Klara had put a hot-water bottle between the crisp linen of my bed and I climbed into it content.
Perhaps I should have been more restrained when drinking my way through Frank’s big pot of strong coffee, for I remained awake for hours thinking about Fiona who would by now be tucked up in bed somewhere just a few blocks away. In my mind’s eye I saw her so clearly. Would she be alone or were there two people in that bed? A deluge of memories came flooding into my mind. But I forced myself to think of other matters. Lisl and what would become of the old house after she sold it. It was a valuable site: so near the Ku-Damm. Any speculator