I said, ‘What is it?’
‘Do you remember what I told you about Adolf a few weeks back?’
‘Yes. I wasn’t sure that I believed you then.’
‘You’d better, because the old bogeyman died a fortnight ago; peacefully and in his bed. Uncle Joe doesn’t want it announced until the Red Flag is flying over Berlin. The war stops when he stops: not before.’
‘And we agreed?’
‘. . . At Tehran. Sorry.’
‘Does James know this?’
‘Of course.’
‘And how many others?’
‘Maybe twenty Brits. No more. I don’t know how many Yanks. We won’t have told any of our other Allies.’
‘But you’ve just told me. Why?’
‘I don’t know, old boy. I have a feeling about you. I just wanted to break the rules for once. Not very scientific, is it?’
I said, ‘No,’ just as Ingrid came back to us. She held out a mug of ersatz to me. It was identical to Cliff’s: even cracked in the same place. That made me smile.
I said, ‘You haven’t brought one for yourself.’
‘No.’ I wondered if she would smile more frequently as I got to know her better.
‘You will share mine,’ I told her.
She said, ‘I thought that too.’
Cliff said, ‘You’d better watch that one, Charlie. She’ll checkmate the lot of us.’
She did smile for that. She recognized a compliment when she heard one. She insisted I take the first sip. The acorn coffee was bitter, and clung to the back of my palate. That’s exactly when I fell in love with her.
Ingrid and I sat on the bottom step. Every time I turned to look up at the doors I could see motes of dust dancing in the light. There was just a slight tang of wood smoke from the brazier. Our shoulders were touching. I filled and smoked my pipe. An old man propped himself on an elbow to watch me. Ingrid coughed, but not because of the tobacco smoke: it was one of those coughs that clear your throat when you are about to say something dangerous.
‘There is an old Russian lady. She is here with her two grandchildren. She is determined not to be taken by the Russians. Isn’t that strange?’ She pronounced the words as Roossian and Roossians.
‘Sounds like a good idea to me. Would you stand around and wait for the SS if the boot was on the other foot?’
‘Please?’
‘. . . if you were in the same position as her?’
‘I see. No. She told me something.’
‘What was that?’
‘She said to be careful. That it is too easy to become involved with someone who has been of great service to you. Someone who has perhaps saved you.’
I let that hang in the air for half a minute.
‘She sounds like a wise old lady.’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘I think that it is possibly too easy for a man to become involved with a girl he has never even seen. Just a voice on a telephone.’
She let that hang in the air for half a minute; then, ‘Why are you going to the hospital: is that as a result of a promise also?’
‘Yes it is. Several promises.’
‘A woman, also?’
‘Yes, an English woman. She was in an air raid in England, became unwell and ran away to hide. First she ran to France, and then in Holland and now in Germany. She saw many dead children, you see, and was pregnant herself . . .’
‘Your child?’
‘No.’
‘I have seen dead children.’
‘I thought that: sometimes you have sad eyes.’
She took my hand, and drew invisible signs on its palm with her forefinger.
‘You promised to marry her, this woman?’
‘I once asked her to marry me, and she laughed. Then she said Yes, but only after the war, and only if I could find her. It feels like a promise.’
‘So you will find her, and marry her, this woman?’
‘No. I will find her, and ask her to release me from my promise.’
‘That is because you stopped loving her when you met me?’
She could have been mocking me. Was she laughing at me for being insincere?
‘No. I think I stopped loving her even before I spoke to you. Loving her enough to marry her, anyway. It is like having a memory of having loved her.’
Big pause. I racked my brains to work out if anything had been lost in translation. Then she asked, ‘She had a child?’
‘Yes, I believe so. I have heard reports that there is a baby travelling with her.’
I watched the dust again, dancing in the shaft of daylight.
‘If you no longer love her, why are you going to meet her?’
‘A promise is a promise. I also promised Mr Clifford that I would find her, and ask her to take the baby back to England.’
‘His baby then?’
‘No. He made a promise to her parents.’
‘So many promises.’
‘Yes. So many promises.’
Her finger on my palm stopped moving.
‘Will you make me a promise?’
‘No.’ She looked away from me, but I hadn’t finished. ‘I do not have to. I am here.’
I couldn’t bear the way the old man stared at me. I knocked out my pipe, refilled it with tobacco, and offered it to him with a box of matches. He sat up eagerly, and shared the smoke with a man alongside him. He was even older, if anything. While I watched them smoke I told her, ‘Would you believe that I might already have a child; a German child?’
‘You had a German lover; already?’
‘No. Not already. I found a little boy – with a lot of dead German soldiers. One was his brother.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I gave him to an innkeeper’s wife. I promised her that if she could not find his people, that she could send the child to me.’
‘You told me that you don’t make many promises, Charlie Bassett. I think perhaps you make too many.’
‘Did your wise woman tell you that?’
‘She did not have to. I am here.’ It was a soft voice, and full of promise.
The men finished my tobacco, and handed the pipe and matches back. The older of the two spoke in rapid
