LITMIR.BIZ

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five I must be in my office,’ said Niels. ‘I’ve left lots of work there.’ He watched her take off her stockings and suspender belt. She knew he was watching her and she moved in a deliberately provocative way, knowing that his impatience would put an edge on his appetite.

      Niels breathed heavily. ‘My God,’ he thought, ‘I’m going to miss all this next week.’

      After August Bach had driven away, Anna-Luisa busied herself in the house and garden. She scrubbed the kitchen floor, boiled down oddments of soap and cleaned out the chicken house. At four o’clock she met Hansl at the Volkschule and walked him past the fire station. Both of the Magirus fire engines were outside and he watched intently as the equipment and paintwork was shined to a high gloss. The firemen were accustomed to the Volkschule boys and Johannes Ilfa, the Gruppenführer on the number one engine, recognized Hansl and lifted him up to see the driver’s seat. For months he had seen Anna-Luisa meeting the child from school. One of his friends had teased him about concealing a secret passion for the girl. He would be teased even more if seen speaking to her.

      ‘My name is Johannes Ilfa,’ said the fireman, offering Anna-Luisa a cigarette.

      ‘My name is Johannes too,’ said Hansl.

      Anna-Luisa waved the cigarette aside. ‘We call him Hansl,’ she explained.

      ‘We? …’ said the fireman. ‘He is your son? I thought you were the nurse.’

      Anna-Luisa enjoyed his obvious discomfort. ‘You mustn’t jump to conclusions.’

      ‘Do you never smoke?’ he asked, the packet still open in his hand.

      ‘Not in the street. Have one yourself.’

      ‘It’s forbidden.’ He brushed his fine moustache with the back of his hand.

      ‘Lift me up again,’ called Hansl, and Johannes Ilfa did so. The little boy fingered the shiny steering-wheel and then looked at his hero in wonder.

      ‘We mustn’t be a nuisance.’ said Anna-Luisa.

      ‘You couldn’t be a nuisance.’ He looked at her for a long time trying to find something to say. Something that would make her delay and make her smile at him again.

      ‘We must go.’ She smiled at the fireman.

      ‘Make Mutti bring you again, Hansl,’ called the fireman.

      ‘Yes,’ said Hansl, and he gripped Anna-Luisa’s fingers in his warm hand as though he was part of a conspiracy.

      ‘Say goodbye to Herr Ilfa and thank you,’ she told the child.

      They both waved when they reached the corner. At Mauerstrasse they turned right. This was the main road that joined Kleve to Krefeld and followed the ancient walls that marked the edge of Altgarten. On the other side of Mauerstrasse a wide stream moved sluggishly southwards. Hansl liked to throw pieces of paper into the green water and run to each of the wooden bridges to see them move underneath.

      Much of the wall still remained and Frau Birr’s tea-room was built into the massive stones. From the second floor there was a view as far as the high ground upon which stood the Burgomaster’s glasshouses near the waterworks. In the other direction there was a view of the Wald Hotel, now taken over by the SS and garlanded with tall barbed-wire fences and endlessly patrolled by guard dogs.

      Smart Hausfrauen of Altgarten gathered in Frau Birr’s tea-room each afternoon accompanied by their daughters in neat dark dresses and well-kept shoes. That’s why TENO officers, Army doctors and administration officials from the Amputee Centre liked to have tea here. Sometimes cavalry officers and veterinary surgeons, complete with spurs and riding-crops, came all the way from their depot near Kempen and set the ladies’ hearts aflutter.

      Hansl and Anna-Luisa shared a slice of Apfelstrudel. The coffee wasn’t too bad and Frau Birr could usually find a small glass of milk for the boy. The people in the big cities didn’t live as well as this, thought Anna-Luisa. Life seemed unbelievably sweet. Soon she would be Frau Bach, and the ladies in the tea-shop with their fruit-filled hats would have to nod in a way different from the condescending smiles they gave to the RAD girl.

      Frau Hinkelburg, the architect’s wife, was just as condescending as any of them but at least she was affable. This day she sat with Anna-Luisa and Hansl and told them all her news.

      There were always stories about the Russian prisoners of war in the disused factory beyond the brewery. The citizens of Altgarten were fascinated and a little afraid of these strange Bolshevik men from the far side of the world where so many young Germans were being sent.

      ‘They put two fierce guard dogs to keep the Russians inside the fence at night. Even the dog-handlers were wearing thick protective gloves. By the next morning the dogs had been cooked and eaten. Only the bones remained, they say. And those they carved into crucifixes.’

      Frau Hinkelburg paused long enough to cut a piece of cake and hurry it into her mouth. Anna-Luisa felt that she was expected to add something, but she kept her own wonderful news to herself to be gloated over and devoured slowly. Even before she’d swallowed her cake Frau Hinkelburg smiled at Anna-Luisa and began again.

      ‘Frau Kersten is going to put apple trees in the field behind the cemetery and she’s bought the land she leased from Richter. The money she must make from the potatoes.’ Frau Hinkelburg opened her fine new patent-leather handbag so that Anna-Luisa could clearly see its Paris label. From it she took a small lace handkerchief and brushed a cake-crumb from the corner of her mouth. ‘I heard that Frau Kersten has a leather box full of money hidden in her bedroom. She can’t bank it, they say, for fear of the tax department.’

      ‘Her farmhouse is being replastered.’

      ‘By the French prisoners of war,’ added Frau Hinkelburg. ‘Have you noticed the tall one with the tiny moustache?’

      ‘The one giving orders?’

      ‘He’s giving more than that, my girl, if the stories about him and Frau Kersten are true.’

      ‘But Frau Kersten is nearly fifty.’

      ‘Many a fine tune is played upon an old violin.’ Frau Hinkelburg laughed loudly and clamped her hand over her mouth in a gesture she believed refined. The diamonds on her hand caught the light. ‘Before the Frenchman, they say she was casting her eyes farther afield.’

      ‘What do you mean?’ said Anna-Luisa.

      ‘Your employer, my dear.’

      Anna-Luisa laughed good-naturedly.

      ‘You think that’s funny?’

      ‘But Herr Bach and that fat old Frau Kersten …’

      ‘Yes, Frau Kersten would be a lucky woman to have Herr Bach as a husband,’ admitted Frau Hinkelburg as she thought about it.

      ‘Any woman would be a lucky woman.’

      Frau Hinkelburg looked up sharply. Her ears were attuned to chance remarks and she never missed an innuendo. ‘Ach so!’ was all she said, but Anna-Luisa knew that one part of her secret was a secret no longer. Frau Hinkelburg put a freckled bejewelled hand upon Anna-Luisa’s thin white arm and smiled at her.

      ‘You were not here when the Wald Hotel was really a hotel. What a wonderful place! The chef was French, from Monte Carlo. People came from all corners of Europe – and from America too – to dine there and stay in the suites that face on to the gardens and the forest. There were floodlit fountains and an orchestra outside in the summer. They used to dance until two or three o’clock in the morning and the sound of the music could be heard right across the town on a still summer’s night. When I was a young girl I would open my bedroom windows and listen to the music and the voices of the fine people who left their motor-cars and chauffeurs waiting down there in Mauerstrasse. It will never be the same again.’

      ‘When the war is ended, perhaps …’

      ‘No,

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