‘Thirty-five minutes.’ Caroline took a deep breath.
‘Let’s go up.’ Karl grabbed both their bags from the car and walked towards the entrance. As Caroline looked up at the grey pebbled facade of the block, she saw the white lace curtains on the second and third floors move. Why did everyone have the same curtains?
As they walked inside, a door on the ground floor landing opened and an elderly woman appeared.
‘Ah, Grüss Gott, Herr Dorfler,’ she said. One hand smoothed an invisible rogue hair from a white braid twisted around her head and held neatly in place with a hair net. Her large watery blue eyes took in the two suitcases and Caroline’s dishevelled hair and crushed black frock.
‘Grüss Gott, Frau Hummel,’ replied Karl and kept walking towards the stairs.
Caroline smiled at the neighbour. She wasn’t ready to say ‘Grüss Gott ’. She preferred a simple hello without God involved.
Karl stood back to let Caroline in.
‘Hungry?’ he said.
She nodded.
‘Why don’t you relax here and I’ll go to the shop and get some fresh rolls and sausage for lunch?’
‘Fine.’ Caroline walked into a large living room, lined with shelves packed closely with books and records. A wide picture window looked out on to green and yellow fields. To the right a door opened on to a small balcony offering the same view. She turned to see Karl taking a framed colour photo of a woman away from a small arrangement of black and white portraits on the wall.
‘You don’t have to censor your photos on my behalf.’ Caroline walked over to look at the picture Karl was holding. A bland-faced young blond smiled into the camera. ‘It’s nothing to do with me if you have girlfriends.’ Or if they don’t look interesting enough to be impressive, she added silently.
Karl shook his head. ‘Mother has been staying here while I’ve been away. She likes to take a break from my father, and she uses the excuse that she’ll come and clean my flat. She must have taken this picture, framed it and put it up here.’
‘That’s nice. So your mother chooses your girls as well as cleans your flat.’
‘I don’t deny that she’d like to.’ Karl slid the offending photo into a drawer. But she doesn’t. She just likes Elfrieda. And Elfrieda dropped in to see her every day when she was staying here. Mother told me that before. I phoned her when we stopped at the petrol station. I just wanted to check that she was safely home.’
Caroline laughed. ‘You mean safely out of here.’
When Karl returned Caroline was towel drying her hair. She wore a bathrobe she had found in his wardrobe.
‘No trouble finding you.’ Karl laughed, as he put three sorts of bread roll in a basket and set out five different kinds of sausage. ‘I just have to follow the trail of Dior talcum powder.’
Caroline bit into the roll that Karl had made for her. The sausage, larded with shavings of red and green capsicum, was delicious. ‘What’s this one called?’
Reaching for her handbag, she took out the small hardbound exercise book she used as a journal and wrote down Paprikalyoner, spelling it as Karl dictated. There was a German deli in Mayfair. She’d probably be able to get it there. She looked down at the battered green book with disapproval. There wasn’t as much in it. So too bad for her if the unexamined life wasn’t worth living. She’d been too busy living to examine anything.
Even on holiday, she had written little more than names of hotels and places visited. Last year’s week in Morocco with Jane had yielded just three entries, one of which included her room number in the Palais Jamail in Fez, where they had occupied the most opulent suite, complete with balcony, looking over what was said to be the garden once used exclusively by the ladies of the Caliph’s harem. La chambre deux cent onze, Caroline had written. Thirty years on we’ll be elegant ladies of uncertain age’ and we’ll reserve it in advance.
The pages referring to London indicated a life rich in outings to plays and films and parties but almost bereft of introspection.
An entry dated March 5 referred to matters of the heart. But not hers. Took day off to console Jane after David, it read. Expressed absolute sympathy but only felt it in theory. Can’t remember what it feels like to be so in love that a breakup makes me sick with grief. This makes me feel good. And free. But should it?
While they ate Karl leafed through a huge, heavily illustrated travel guide. He wanted to take her to Mad King Ludwig’s Neuschwannstein, the turreted castle that Walt Disney used as a model for the symbolic home of Disneyland. And to Rotenburg-ob-der-Tauber, one of Germany’s most famous and well-preserved medieval towns. The guidebook photo showed a row of beautifully painted half-timbered houses. To Caroline’s untrained eye, it looked just like a scene from the old part of Gellingen, but she made appreciative murmurs. There was a village festival on this very night, and there were the friends he wanted her to meet. The green eyes gleamed.
Caroline looked down at her journal with sudden affection. This week she was going to metamorphose into a conscientious diary-writer. An hour a day minimum, she would tell him. That’s what I need to write my journal. It looked like that would be the only time she’d get to herself. While Karl made coffee, she wrote August 1, Gellingen at the top of a new page, then closed the book and replaced it in her bag. She’d do her first hour that night.
At midnight, as she wearily brushed her teeth in Karl’s immaculate bathroom, she realised she’d forgotten all about it. She hadn’t had a minute to herself all day, but somehow it hadn’t mattered. Karl continued to make such an effort to give her a good time that she would have felt ungrateful for quibbling about anything.
Has any man ever put so much energy into giving her pleasure? She asked herself that question in bed that afternoon, and again later, as she perched on a stool in the kitchen sipping a glass of the fruity local red wine and watching Karl make chicken soup with Maultaschen, large pockets of meat-filled pastry like giant wontons. And again that evening as they strolled among the tents and stalls erected for a local festival, whose name she never quite caught, and he spent five minutes carefully explaining the difference between Bratwurst, Knackwurst, Weisswurst and Rodewurst – and then bought her one of each so she could tell for herself. He was also sticking to his promise to avoid pressuring her about any future plans. Instead he questioned her about her past, encouraging her own confessions by telling stories of his own, and refilling her glass to aid the conversation’s flow.
Perfect interview technique, Caroline noted. But she kept on talking, carelessly aware that her mere presence in his flat was a delight to him. If something she said were to shock him out of his obsession with her, then so much the better. So she held nothing back.
When she looked back on this short idyllic period, it seemed that they must have talked for the whole week. With time out for sex – a wonderfully huge amount. And hours spent eating meals cooked or chosen for her by Karl.
Her confidence was supreme. She took it for granted that he loved her. The only question was: would she be able to love him in return?
Chapter 5
The great warm bath of Karl’s affection seemed to be having a salutary effect on her character, Caroline noted to herself as she dressed to go out for afternoon tea with Karl’s colleague, Sabine. She felt inexplicably gracious. Tactful. Protective, almost. For once she felt like keeping her harsher observations to herself. It wasn’t that she was afraid of alienating him. She merely felt kind. So she held back her opinion of the way most of his female friends dressed. What a herd of affluent little brown mice they were in their tastefully boring skirts and trousers with suitably matching jumpers. And all of them so clean, it made her yearn for the punks on the Tube.