Afterwards Matthew reproached him: ‘Mr Werther, you didn’t ask her why she was afraid.’
‘Didn’t I, my little Schubertianer?’
‘No.’
‘Ah, well. I think it is because a gentleman should not intrude too quickly on a lady. Next time we will talk about it, yes?’
Mr Werther picked them up in his car. It was small, black and blunt-nosed with cabin room for two and a dickey seat. Gran joined Mr Werther in the cabin and Matthew climbed into the dickey seat. He felt like a king driving in a carriage looking out at all the people who had to walk or ride bicycles, but he felt isolated because he passed others so quickly. A glimpse of a face in a moment became the back of a head. He felt superior because he had a servant, a car, to take effort out of movement. He had never noticed before that to walk or run needed exertion. Now the pleasantness of just looking superseded the familiar pleasure of feeling his legs jump to obey him.
It was a mild day, warmly windy, and the breeze sucked around the bonnet of the car and licked his hair off his brow and ears. His eyes smarted and watered a little and occasionally particles of dust flicked his face like small sharp fingernails.
But the little discomforts did not spoil his excitement. Today the sea did not lie in ribbons of lucid green between pale shouldered sandbars. Waves which sometimes ran thinly across wet sand now left daubs of white suds and the water had a yeasty restless look. Matthew preferred the sea when it was still and he could see clearly all the life that lived in it—like the world he knew in daylight. Today it concealed, like his feet when he paddled, as if they had been taken from him and he began at the knees. He wondered what might happen to his feet when they were out of sight, what might be going on in the water churned around with yellow sand, as opaque to his vision as the shadows of night.
Was Grandfather there, his spirit spreading out in the warm shallows on still days or tossed turbulently when the wind blew? He knew about Matthew, Gran had said. Might his grandfather catch hold of him one day, on a day like this when he could rush upon him, concealed beneath those yeasty waves?
Mr Werther and Gran sat sedately on the beach. Matthew remembered how different Edward had been. He had thrown off his coat, unbuttoned his shirt collar, rolled up his sleeves and flung his coat across his shoulder. Then he had kicked off his shoes and socks, rolled up his trousers and bounded along the edge of the sea, his feet leaving such deep holes in the sand that their sides took forever to roll into the middle and fill again.
Mr Werther looked at Gran. ‘You do not mind, eh?’ he asked, as he sat on the beach, carefully removing his shoes and tucking his socks inside. His toes were pink and stubby, like the little pink snouts of the flowers on the dolichos vine over the outhouse. Matthew wanted to giggle because when Mr Werther walked his little toes seemed to snuffle through the sand. In the water they became red, like little blushing faces. Matthew jumped up and down beside him and Mr Werther smiled.
‘Do not wet me all over, little Schubertianer. Be kind to an old man, yes?’
When Gran told Mother that Mr Werther was picking them up in his car Mother had looked amazed.
‘A German. A car? How unjust!’
‘What is unjust about it?’
‘Well, we’re fighting the Germans, aren’t we?’
‘And what has that got to do with Mr Werther?’
‘If you can’t see …’
‘No, I can’t. Not really,’ said Gran, as Margaret walked haughtily out of the room.
Later she said to Gran: ‘If that German is calling here you might at least be pleasant to Regie.’
‘Regie! Is that his name?’
‘Reginald.’
‘Margaret, there are reasons not to have Regie—Reginald—that man—here.’
‘None I can see.’ Gran had given in but she threw a small rug over the boxes in the parlour.
Now Gran said to Mr Werther: ‘How could anyone called Regie be anything but a comic opera villain? All the arguments were laughed out of me but afterwards I wondered if the name as well as the face might be a mask.’
‘Perhaps he is just interested in your daughter. It is possible, yes?’
‘I suppose so.’ Gran shrugged.
‘And you?’ asked Mr Werther. ‘Ireland is a distressed country.’
‘Very.’
‘There are informers, gunmen.’
‘We always lived in the shadow of the informer, of the gunman.’
‘Our fears live on even when situations don’t deserve them. That is so, yes?’
‘I suppose,’ said Gran. ‘But my bones won’t let me believe that he is what he seems. They ache every time he walks into the house.’
‘What harm can he do? Edward conceals nothing.’
‘Only those boxes.’
‘You have covered them?’
‘Yes, with a heavy rug.’
‘But still you worry. Maybe you should find another hiding place until Edward moves them.’
‘Yes, but I’d rather remove that … Regie.’
‘Then who will notice? And when Edward returns he can remove the boxes, yes, and you will worry no more.’
‘I would still rather remove … Regie.’ And she laughed in spite of her worries.
‘Now if he had my name, Wolfgang,’ Mr Werther beamed, ‘it would be appropriate, eh? Life is full of amusing contradictions, yes?’
‘When I was a child,’ Gran said, ‘we played a game of guessing people’s names. We’d stroll along the street pretending not to stare, then when we had passed someone we’d all shout our choices and shriek with laughter. Sometimes our victims looked back at us, puzzled, and we’d laugh again because we had a secret and they didn’t understand what was happening.’
‘We should play,’ Mr Werther said.
‘Good gracious, no. That was for children.’
‘I could play.’ Matthew walking between them caught their hands hopefully.
‘We will be quieter than
