‘I’m sorry.’ He was embarrassed, but not really contrite: he thought she was making an unnecessary fuss.
The waiter brought menus and they both looked at them. ‘The spaghetti bolognese is great,’ said Greg.
‘I’m going to get a salad.’
Their martinis arrived. Greg raised his glass and said: ‘To forgiveness in marriage.’
Nelly did not pick up her drink. ‘I can’t marry you,’ she said.
‘Honey, come on, don’t overreact. I’ve apologized.’
She shook her head. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’
‘What don’t I get?’
‘That woman sitting on the park bench with you – she loves you.’
‘Does she?’ Greg would have denied it yesterday, but after today’s conversation he was not sure.
‘Of course she does. Why hasn’t she married? She’s pretty enough. By now she could have found a man willing to take on a stepson, if she’d really been trying. But she’s in love with you, you rotter.’
‘I’m not so sure.’
‘And the boy adores you, too.’
‘I’m his favourite uncle.’
‘Except that you’re not.’ She pushed her glass across the table. ‘You have my drink.’
‘Honey, please relax.’
‘I’m leaving.’ She stood up.
Greg was not used to girls walking out on him. He found it unnerving. Was he losing his allure?
‘I want to marry you!’ he said. He sounded desperate even to himself.
‘You can’t marry me, Greg,’ she said. She slipped the diamond ring off her finger and put it down on the red checked tablecloth. ‘You already have a family.’
She walked out of the restaurant.
The world crisis came to a head in June, and Carla and her family were at the centre of it.
The Marshall Plan had been signed into law by President Truman, and the first shipments of aid were arriving in Europe, to the fury of the Kremlin.
On Friday 18 June the Western Allies alerted Germans that they would make an important announcement at eight o’clock that evening. Carla’s family gathered around the radio in the kitchen, tuned to Radio Frankfurt, and waited anxiously. The war had been over for three years, yet still they did not know what the future held: capitalism or Communism, unity or fragmentation, freedom or subjugation, prosperity or destitution.
Werner sat beside Carla with Walli, now two and a half, on his knee. They had married quietly a year ago. Carla was working as a nurse again. She was also a Berlin city councillor for the Social Democrats. So was Frieda’s husband, Heinrich.
In East Germany the Russians had banned the Social Democratic Party, but Berlin was an oasis in the Soviet sector, ruled by a council of the four main Allies called the Kommandatura, which had vetoed the ban. As a result, the Social Democrats had won, and the Communists had come a poor third after the conservative Christian Democrats. The Russians were incensed and did everything they could to obstruct the elected council. Carla found it frustrating, but she could not give up the hope of independence from the Soviets.
Werner had managed to start a small business. He had searched through the ruins of his father’s factory and scavenged a small horde of electrical supplies and radio parts. Germans could not afford to buy new radios, but everyone wanted their old ones repaired. Werner had found some engineers formerly employed at the factory and set them to work fixing broken wireless sets. He was the manager and salesman, going to houses and apartment buildings, knocking on doors, drumming up business.
Maud, also at the kitchen table this evening, worked as an interpreter for the Americans. She was one of the best, and often translated at meetings of the Kommandatura.
Carla’s brother Erik was wearing the uniform of a policeman. Having joined the Communist Party – to the dismay of his family – he had got a job as a police officer in the new East German force organized by the Russian occupiers. Erik said the Western Allies were trying to split Germany in two. ‘You Social Democrats are secessionists,’ he said, quoting the Communist line in the same way he had parroted Nazi propaganda.
‘The Western Allies haven’t divided anything,’ Carla retorted. ‘They’ve opened the borders between their zones. Why don’t the Soviets do the same? Then we would be one country again.’ He seemed not to hear her.
Rebecca was almost seventeen. Carla and Werner had legally adopted her. She was doing well at school, and good at languages.
Carla was pregnant again, though she had not told Werner. She was thrilled. He had an adopted daughter and a stepson, but now he would have a child of his own as well. She knew he would be delighted when she told him. She was waiting a little longer to be sure.
But she yearned to know in what kind of country her three children were going to live.
