‘But you
The booze was coursing through Wolfgang’s veins now. Delivering its reckless courage to his head.
He crept his hand along the bar to where Katharina’s hand lay, a cigarette between the fingers. Nails jet black and shining.
‘We’ve met now,’ Wolfgang said quietly.
Their fingers touched.
Katharina looked down and for a moment she seemed lost in thought.
Then she took her hand away, putting the cigarette to her lips and drawing on it hard.
‘I told you. I’m an old-fashioned modern girl. Let’s keep things as they are, OK? We’re friends. We talk. You’re married.’
Wolfgang felt foolish. And angry. The whisky made him graceless.
‘Old-fashioned? What about that producer from UFA?’
‘Excuse me?’
Even drunk, Wolfgang knew he had no right to mention it. ‘Nothing.’
‘I want to know what you mean,’ Katharina asked.
Wolfgang shrugged. ‘The one you disappeared with that night.’ He mumbled, looking down at the floor to avoid her eye. ‘I don’t think he wanted to discuss film technique.’
Katharina stared at him hard. Her eyes were no longer misty but cold.
‘Oh. So you noticed, did you?’
‘Of course I did. I… I was jealous.’
‘You’re married to Mrs Trumpet, Wolfgang. What right have you to be jealous?’
‘None, I suppose, but I was.’
Katharina’s momentary burst of anger subsided. Instead she looked sad. She drew heavily once more on her cigarette, sucking the glowing end right down to the filter. She lit another from it and shrugged.
‘That was business. Stupid and completely naive. But business none the less. The casting couch, I think they call it. He made promises and I fell for it. Or at least I fell for it enough to take a calculated risk and lost. He got what he wanted and I didn’t. I turned up at the studio the following morning and he refused to see me. More fool me. It’s the first time I’ve ever made that mistake and it’ll be the last.’
Wolfgang was calm again. And ashamed.
‘I’m really sorry, Katharina. I shouldn’t have brought it up. What a bastard, I’d like to punch his—’
‘It doesn’t matter. It was over in a second and it’s done with. But while I might be prepared to fuck someone I
Wolfgang got up from his bar stool.
‘Yeah. Maybe you’re right, Katharina,’ he said. ‘Sorry for being an arsehole. And thanks for… well, thanks.’
‘Just get on stage. And make it hot hot hot, eh?’
Wolfgang made his way back towards the band room, passing Helmut who was heading for the men’s toilet leading a shaven-headed military type and a beautiful young man.
‘The party never stops, eh, Wolfgang?’ he said.
Wolfgang smiled. ‘I imagine it will have to stop in the end.’
Two weeks later, on 15 November, the new president of the Reichsbank abolished the worthless Deutschmark and introduced a new emergency currency with draconian restrictions on lending and speculation. The Rentenmark, as it was called, held its value, and almost overnight another German madness was over.
A Screaming Three-year-old
THAT SAME MONTH far away in Bavaria another, infinitely more terrible madness was growing stronger. The Nazi Party, that screaming, ranting, violent baby, born on the same day as the Stengel twins, threw a tantrum just before its third birthday. Adolf Hitler, the infant’s voice and psyche, attempted to overthrow the state by force. Kidnapping three local politicians and marching at the head of two thousand armed thugs from a beer hall to the Bavarian Defence Ministry, where he intended to demand dictatorial control not just over Bavaria but over the entire Reich.
Hitler and his gang never reached the ministry. They were instead met by one hundred police officers who blocked their path. Shots were exchanged and four policemen and sixteen Nazis were killed. Hitler fled but another Nazi leader, Hermann Goering, was seriously wounded. He was helped into a nearby bank where first aid was administered. By a Jew.
Modern Jazz
IN THE EVENING Stone could not stand the inside of his flat any longer and decided he must go out. They wouldn’t call now anyway. The Secret Service was like the Foreign Office: it kept office hours whenever possible. Overtime claims were severely frowned on.
So having made himself a solitary meal of eggs and baked beans and drunk a bottle of Guinness, Stone decided to head up to Finsbury Park to drop in at the New Downbeat, a Monday-night jazz club he’d spent quite a bit of time in over the years. He didn’t visit so much any more, not now that he had discovered the scene in Notting Hill. The illegal West Indian clubs were much wilder and hipper than the well-established London jazz circuit, which tended to be frequented by earnest middle-class students. But Stone still loved the music. Tubby Hayes had a regular gig at the New Downbeat and you didn’t hear much better tenor sax than from Tubby Hayes. Stone’s father had always loved the sax but had rarely played it professionally because he usually felt there were better exponents than him in the band. He had played it at home, though, and at jams in local bars. Stone always thought of the tenor sax as a sort of ‘family’ instrument. Dad’s hobby, not his job.
He took a taxi. The New Downbeat Club was held at the Manor House pub, which was right opposite Manor House tube station, but he didn’t like the underground at the end of the day. Even though he was a heavy smoker himself, he found the stale tobacco stench mixed with a day’s accumulation of body odour just too depressing. Settling back in his seat Stone lit up a Lucky Strike and watched the bars of light passing across the interior of the cab as the taxi drove past the streetlamps.
For a moment he had a recollection of watching similar rhythmic flashes. On the Berlin to Rotterdam sleeper. Lying in his little cabin, thundering through the clanking, rattling, shuddering darkness past the lights of some station or other.
Seeing the seconds tick by on his wristwatch.
Stone held up his arm for a moment, letting the light flash once more on that very same watch. Berlin, Rotterdam — London. In a funny way he was still on the same journey.
Stone closed his eyes. Willing himself far away. To somewhere near the start of the journey. Another time. Another place. Where he was happy.
Far away from Camden and Holloway and the Seven Sisters Road. Back in the People’s Park. Laughing and shouting in the Marchenbrunnen, with its fountains and one hundred and six sculptures of characters from fairy tales. He and his brother running in separate directions around the great circular path. Trapping Dagmar between Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood. Each holding a soft slim golden arm and begging for a kiss, while Silke sulked
