Sea Music. Sara MacDonald

nearer.

       Chapter 7

      Berlin

      He has not been to the Freie Universität for over a year. He used to lecture regularly at the Institut für Physiologie, then suddenly he tired of the young; wanted to travel.

      Ulrich Scheffell rang him out of the blue, asked him to come to the Institut to discuss a European lecture tour he was trying to organise.

      ‘Why do you ask me at my age?’ he asked.

      ‘You know very well,’ Ulrich replied. ‘You are one of the most eminent orthopaedic surgeons in Berlin.’

      ‘I am a retired orthopaedic surgeon.’

      ‘You are not too old to travel round the world. And you are not too old to lecture. Admit that you are interested.’

      ‘I will admit to nothing. But I will let you give me lunch.’

      ‘Hah!’ Ulrich rang off, delighted.

      He parks his car with difficulty, thinking: no one walks anywhere any more. Everyone has cars. This is why we are growing as fat as Americans.

      He walks into the Business and Environmental Law School. Ulrich asked to meet here, as his grandson, studying European Law, wanted Ulrich to welcome some visiting lecturer.

      There are a lot of people milling about and he feels vaguely annoyed at having to hang around with a mass of students waiting for Scheffell. He turns and suddenly sees through a doorway a tall, striking blonde woman in a black gown holding a pile of books. She holds herself a little away from the group of people talking around her.

      He stares at her. He knows he has never seen her before, yet she seems familiar to him. He goes on staring with a tight feeling growing in his chest. She has a focused beauty, a sort of detachment he recognises. It is a clever, ambitious face. Shaken, he turns abruptly away.

      Scheffell appears suddenly by his side. ‘So sorry to keep you waiting.’ He smiles. ‘She is very beautiful, is she not?’

      They push past students eager to get into the lecture hall, and go out into the fresh air. He breathes deeply.

      ‘Who is she?’ he asks.

      ‘She is an English barrister. Her name is Anna. She is married to Rudi Gerstein, a friend of my wife. Where did you leave your car?’ Ulrich guides him across the grass towards his office. ‘We will talk, then I will take you out for a good lunch. I would very much like you on my team again. At the very least, I hope you will think about it.’

      It is Saturday. He turns the pages of the newspaper slowly. A little pulse beats in his left cheek. It is raining outside, a steady downpour that splatters against the windows of his flat, making the large panes rattle and a cold draught waft through the room.

      There. There it is, where he knew it would be: a photograph of the smiling British barrister taken at the FU. He stares down at it; smoothes the creases in the paper. Her face jumps out at him. The piece tells him that she has just given a series of three-day lectures to a group of law students on corporate fraud and the differences in the British and German judicial systems.

      The paper congratulates her on her perfect German, her intellect, her beauty and the possibility that she is in line to become a British judge. He looks down at the photograph and the strange feeling returns. Her eyes stare back as if challenging him. He shivers and closes the page. Those eyes … Those eyes remind him of someone else.

      He goes to the window. The world out there is deserted. He is not a man accustomed to being lonely. There has always been someone. There has always been a woman.

      He crosses to the mirror and stares at his reflection: eyes still the lightest blue, maybe slightly faded, body lean and carefully looked after. Women always think he is a decade younger than he is. He fingers the soft skin under his eyes. Lately he has begun to sleep badly and it is beginning to show.

      Since Inga left the flat has seemed bigger, emptier. Of course he was expecting it. The age gap made it inevitable. It was not as if she even lived here permanently. She perched on the edge of his life, the few clothes and possessions she left here tidily placed in wardrobe and drawer so she did not take up too much room. Inga, patiently hovering, hoping for the more he could not give her.

      He did not expect her to stay with him as long as she did. Sometimes he took her with him when he travelled. More often he preferred to be on his own.

      ‘Are you not lonely?’ Scheffell asked him at lunch, full of red wine. ‘I have often wondered why you have never married. Even at your age, I see women look at you.’

      ‘I am rarely lonely,’ he replied. ‘Nor have I had any urge to marry. This does not mean I do not like women.’

      He returns to the window. A squirrel is running through the rain, over the bench and up the tree outside his flat. It looks in at him, waiting. He goes to the kitchen for nuts, opens the sliding doors and puts them on the table.

      Inga was still young enough to find someone to marry her and have children. He told her so.

      ‘Have you ever really loved anyone?’ she asked quietly and bitterly.

      He replied, honestly: ‘I am very fond of you, Inga, but you knew from the very beginning that with me there would be no marriage and no children. I never pretended or promised otherwise.’ It seemed as he said these words that he had used them to too many women.

      When he was young and, he hoped, as he got older, he gave the women who marched hopefully through his life a good time. But if they wanted to breed or settle or get monotonously domestic they would have to look elsewhere. That each one thought she would be different was not his fault.

      He suspects that Inga will be the last woman in his life. He is too old now even to pretend not to be selfish. At half his age, Inga is the woman he was fondest of. He has always been fascinated by the strength of the maternal pull. Inga, he is sure, despite her feelings for him, wanted a last chance of a child.

      The squirrel runs down the bird table, along the railings of his balcony and leaps away among the leaves of the tree.

      He goes back to the paper and stares down again at the photograph. The room is silent, still – so still that something stirs within him: a remembered, haunting pain that no amount of travelling can entirely banish.

      Disturbed, he picks up the phone and dials a number with fingers not entirely steady. A number he has dialled many times. For so many reasons down the years. Hans can find out anything about anybody. Living or dead.

       Chapter 8

      Fred is feeding the birds with Martha’s breakfast crusts. There is no wind and the morning is mild. Barnaby has fixed a swing bird table on a branch of the old medlar tree, away from the aged interest of Eric, who can still produce a sneaky pounce from the shelter of weeds and bluebells.

      Fred notices that the twisted branches of the medlar look as if they might be dying. The wind has caught the leaves and the back branches are too near the Monterey pine. What a pity. What were the three trees that were always planted together in his grandfather’s day? Medlar, mulberry … Damn it, he cannot remember the third.

      He moves across the lawn and looks down at the disturbed earth between the roots of the cherry. He and Martha buried Puck under the tree. Lucy and Barnaby have just buried her little tabby here. He smiles to himself. He lost count of the hamsters buried here, until Martha had the idea of placing the catatonic little bodies in the warming oven of the Rayburn as a test. It was alarming how many of the poor creatures had only been hibernating. Barnaby was stricken with remorse, sure that they must have buried most of his hamsters alive.

      Fred