LITMIR.BIZ

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had a formal letter from my father-in-law. He wants regular access to the children.’

      He took his pipe from his mouth. ‘And you think he’s in touch with Fiona?’

      ‘I’m not going to rule it out; he’s a two-faced old bastard.’

      ‘Don’t meet trouble halfway, Bernard. What does Gloria think?’

      ‘I haven’t told her yet.’

      ‘Bernard, you are an ass. You must stop treating her as if she’s half-witted. A woman’s point of view, Bernard.’

      ‘You’re right,’ I said.

      ‘Yes, I am. Stop brooding. Talk to her. She must know the children by now.’

      ‘I’d better get going, Frank,’ I said. ‘It’s been like old times.’

      ‘I’m glad you stayed to dinner. I wish I’d known you were coming, I could have laid on some decent grub for you.’

      ‘It was just like home,’ I said.

      ‘Have you got a car?’ he asked.

      ‘Yes, thanks.’

      ‘I wish you wouldn’t rent cars at the airport. It’s not good security.’

      ‘I suppose you’re right,’ I admitted.

      His pipe was burning fiercely now, its smoke so dense that Frank’s eyes were half-closed against it. ‘Staying with Frau Hennig?’ He always called her Frau Hennig. I don’t think he liked her very much but he hid his emotions about her as he did about a lot of other things.

      ‘Yes,’ I said. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Tarrant glide in, scowling. Frank’s longtime valet always materialized like the ghost of Hamlet’s father. I swear he listened at the door. How else could he appear at the exact right – or sometimes no less exact wrong – moment?

      When Frank turned to him, Tarrant said, ‘Colonel Hampshire phoned to say Headquarters won the tournament.’

      I looked at Frank, who took the pipe from his mouth, smiled at me and said, ‘Bridge.’

      So I’d dragged Frank from some damned Officers’ Mess bridge final. No doubt the meal we’d eaten was Tarrant’s supper. But appearances could be deceptive; Tarrant’s big eyebrows were always lowered menacingly, like a bull about to charge. Perhaps he wasn’t hungry and resentful: maybe he was drunk.

      ‘Thank you, Tarrant. You can go to bed. I’ll see Mr Samson out.’

      ‘Very good, sir.’

      ‘Don’t go,’ said Frank to me. ‘Let’s open a bottle of tawny and make a night of it.’

      Frank’s choice in vintage port was always a temptation but I declined. ‘I must put my head round the door before Lisl goes to sleep,’ I said, looking at my watch.

      ‘And what time is that?’

      ‘Pretty damned late,’ I admitted.

      ‘You heard she’s closing down?’

      ‘The hotel? No more than that. Werner wrote me one of his cryptic notes but that’s all he said.’

      ‘It’s too much for her,’ said Frank, ‘and those bloody people who work for her turn up only when they feel like it.’

      ‘You don’t mean Klara?’ Klara was Lisl Hennig’s maid and had been for countless ages.

      ‘No, not Klara, of course not. But Klara is very old now. They’re a couple of very old ladies. They should both be in a nursing home, not trying to cope with all the problems of a broken-down hotel.’

      ‘What will Lisl do?’

      ‘If she takes the advice everyone is giving her, she’ll sell the place.’

      ‘She’s borrowed on it,’ I said.

      He prodded the pipe. ‘If I know anything about the mentality of bank managers, the bank won’t have loaned her more than half of what it will fetch on the market.’

      ‘I suppose you’re right.’

      ‘She’d have enough cash to live her last few years in comfort.’

      ‘But the house means such a lot to her.’

      ‘She can’t have it both ways,’ said Frank.

      ‘I can’t imagine coming to Berlin and not being able to go to Lisl’s,’ I said selfishly. My father had been billeted in that house, and eventually my mother took me there to join him. We lived there all through my schooldays and my youth. Every room, every stick of furniture, every bit of frayed carpet held memories for me. I suppose that was why I was pleased that so little was done to bring it up to date. It was my private museum of nostalgia, and the thought of being deprived of it filled me with dread. It was tantamount to someone wrenching from me memories of my father.

      ‘Just one?’ said Frank. He laid his pipe on the ashtray with reverential care, and went to the drinks trolley. ‘I’m opening the bottle anyway.’

      ‘Yes, thanks,’ I said changing my mind and sitting down again while Frank poured a glass of his tawny port for me. I said, ‘The last time I was at Lisl’s, only three rooms were occupied.’

      ‘That’s only half of the trouble,’ said Frank. ‘The doctor said running that place is too much for her. He told Werner that he wouldn’t give her more than six months if she doesn’t rest completely.’

      ‘Poor Lisl.’

      ‘Yes, poor Lisl,’ said Frank handing me a brimming glass of port wine. There was a sardonic note in his voice: he usually called her Frau Hennig.

      ‘I know you never liked her,’ I said.

      ‘Come, Bernard. That’s not true.’ He picked up his pipe and got it going again.

      ‘Isn’t it?’

      ‘I said she was a Nazi,’ he said in a measured way and smiled to acknowledge his dissembling.

      ‘That’s nonsense.’ She was like a second mother to me. Even if Frank was like a second father I wasn’t going to let him get away with such damaging generalizations about her.

      ‘The Hennigs were social climbers in Hitler’s time,’ said Frank. ‘Her husband was a member of the Party, and a lot of the people she mixed with were damned shady.’

      ‘For instance?’

      ‘Don’t get so defensive, Bernard. Lisl and her friends were enthusiastic Hitler supporters right up to the time when the Red Army started waving a flag from the Brandenburger Tor.’ He sipped. ‘And even after that she only learned to keep her political opinions to herself.’

      ‘Maybe,’ I said grudgingly. It was true that Lisl had always had a quick eye for any failings of socialism.

      ‘And that Lothar Koch … Well, we’ve been through all that before.’

      Frank was convinced that Lothar Koch, an old friend of Lisl’s, had some sort of Nazi past. One of Frank’s German pals said Koch was a Gestapo man but there were always stories about people being Gestapo men, and Frank had said the same thing about many other people. Sometimes I thought Frank spent more time worrying about the Nazis than he did about the Russians. But that was something common to a lot of the old-timers.

      ‘Lothar Koch was just a clerk,’ I said. I emptied my glass and got to my feet. ‘And you’re just a romantic, Frank, that’s your problem. You’re still hoping that Martin Bormann will be discovered helping Hitler to type his memoirs in a tin hut in the rain forest.’

      Still puffing his pipe Frank got to his feet and gave me one of his ‘we’ll-see-one-day’ smiles. When we got to the door he said, ‘I’ll acknowledge Dicky’s memo on the teleprinter, and we’ll

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