comes off the boat from the States I still think of him. Of how much he would have loved it. The silly fool. Anyway, Herr Fischer, you’ve convinced me. I’ll take the gig. I’ll sell music to your daughter.’
‘Wolf!’ Frieda admonished. ‘
‘Oh. Yes, of course. Sorry.’
‘Quite all right.’ Herr Fischer laughed. ‘It works either way.’
There was another raspberry from somewhere just beyond the living-room door, followed by chuckling and the scuffling of feet.
‘And I promise you Dagmar will have fun,’ Frieda said brightly.
And in that moment the course of the four young lives was set.
The Saturday Club
THE BOYS’ INITIAL reservations about their father’s new music student evaporated at the very first lesson when Dagmar Fischer arrived for her tuition bearing a large chocolate cake.
Paulus and Otto had certainly
But never a whole cake.
Shamelessly the boys, who had been dreading the arrival of the posh kid and seriously considering a cup of water balanced over the door, simply melted with gratitude.
Mixed with not a little awe.
After all, a girl who had access to a cake like that must be at least a princess if not a queen in her own right.
‘Can we have a bit?’ they asked tentatively.
‘We can have all of it,’ Dagmar said. ‘Papa said that in his experience most nasty little thugs could be won over with cake.’
‘Your father sounds like an astute man,’ Wolfgang said, getting plates and a knife, ‘and fearlessly honest.’
Silke (who had never been close to even a slice of so much cream and chocolate) was made of sterner stuff and refused to be impressed. She folded her arms, put her chin out and declined even to taste it.
For possibly as long as fifteen or twenty seconds.
After which the four of them plus Wolfgang demolished the entire gateau, apart from a rather small portion which they forced themselves to leave for Frieda.
‘Just because we ate your cake,’ Silke whispered angrily to Dagmar when bidden to show the new guest to the toilet, ‘doesn’t mean you’re in our gang.’
‘Just because I let you eat my cake doesn’t mean you’re in mine,’ Dagmar replied with haughty indifference.
Wolfgang had decided to include the boys and Silke on Dagmar’s lessons because he felt that getting through ninety minutes with a group of children would probably be easier than doing so with just one. He also thought it would be more fun. He was right on both counts and the lessons were a great success from the very start. Despite or perhaps because of the endless squabbling and fighting that the four young students indulged in.
Secret notes were exchanged. Solemn pacts made and broken. Alliances formed and betrayed.
And in the midst of it all some music was actually taught. Dagmar’s father had been right, his elegant little girl did show some talent at the piano. And because of that, the twins, spurred on by jealousy and the desire not to be beaten by a girl, started applying themselves to various instruments. After all, their dad was a composer, Dagmar’s just ran a shop. Otto showed more instinctive flair but Paulus was more diligent and by sheer force of concentration made himself the better player.
Only Silke was completely without any ability to play but she could keep a decent enough rhythm so Wolfgang kept her on tambourine and maracas. Then one day he overheard her regaling the other three children with dirty songs she’d been taught by her mother’s boyfriend and Wolfgang realized that in Silke he had a vocalist.
By the end of the first year the children were able to mount a small concert for Dagmar’s parents, which even had a printed programme, created using a ‘John Bull’ printing set which Frieda had brought back from a conference she had attended in England.
Edeltraud, Silke’s mother, was also invited to the performance and came accompanied by her new boyfriend Jurgen. A pleasant young man, who held his hat in his hand, twisting it nervously and thanking Frau Stengel for allowing him into her home. He was clearly totally in awe of the celebrated Herr Fischer and his wife, and stood up when either of them entered or left the room.
As the months went by Dagmar began to spend more and more of her Saturday afternoons at the Stengels’. The lessons lasted for an hour and a half but she successfully lobbied her parents not to be picked up by her nanny for as long again after that. The Fischers were happy that their daughter was gaining some experience of children from a different class to her own. This was the twentieth century after all and Germany was a proud social democracy. Besides, the music teacher’s wife was a doctor and the children’s grandfather was a police inspector so clearly this was a good solid household. And if the little blonde daughter of the housemaid was rather rough and ready with her grazed knees, scuffed sandals and a Berlin accent that could have cut glass, then it would do Dagmar no harm at all to gain some experience of such a very different sort of girl. After all, one day she would no doubt be employing them as part of her household.
The Fischers perhaps imagined that the children spent their time in improving pursuits, reading and listening to records. Or playing board games, Snakes and Ladders perhaps, or the newly arrived and hugely popular Monopoly that Herr Fischer thought wonderful and most educational. What the kids were actually doing was wandering the streets of Friedrichshain getting up to whatever mischief they felt inclined to, which was plenty. Frieda worked on Saturdays, and Wolfgang, who could not put up with the noise of four children going wild in a small apartment, simply turfed them out, allowing them to spend glorious free and easy hours ducking in and out of tenement courtyards, playing hopscotch, throwing stones, pinching fruit from stalls and occasionally inspecting each other’s private parts.
In this last activity Dagmar was a spectator only. She never ever showed, not even her knickers, although the boys got round that one by simply lifting up her skirt. Silke, on the other hand, was happy to give the boys a look any time they wanted. She couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.
Thus, as the months went by, a strong bond formed between the four youngsters, a bond separate to their school friends and their individual lives. They were the Saturday Club, a secret society of which only the four of them were aware and which none other could join. Many solemn oaths and secret vows were taken, binding each of them always to be loyal to the club and to each other. It is true that the bit about loyalty to each other was often broken by internal feuding, particularly by the girls, who made a habit of crossing their fingers behind their backs when swearing, whispering ‘except Dagmar’ or ‘not including Silke’ under their breath. But nonetheless the friendship in the Saturday Club was real. Paulus, Otto, Dagmar and Silke were a true gang of four.
Of course the boys saw far more of Silke than they did of Dagmar, and in her innocence Silke fondly imagined that this made her the insider of the two girls, that there was an elite gang within a gang. The opposite was the case. Dagmar’s absence lent her mystery, which in combination with her effortless superiority simply made her all the more fascinating. Silke could never quite understand how the meaner and more snooty and more indifferent Dagmar behaved towards the boys, the more they seemed to like her. Whereas her own eagerness to please just led to her being taken for granted or, worse still, ignored.
It was to be two years before the three Friedrichshain members of the Saturday Club bumped into their elegant Kurfurstendamm comrade on anything other than their name day. It happened at Lake Wannsee during an
