'Detta? Detta!' His calls became more urgent. She thought of Tom Glaser. Would he have worried about her? 'So there you are. 'A pair of strong arms came around her. For a second she felt his firm body. 'Oh, I thought…. Awkwardly, he let go of her. 'You were just leading me on!'
'Me? How do you mean?' she said, feigning innocence, and pulled herself up on board. She lay on deck in the sunlight, dozing and dreaming of Thomas Glaser. He was holding her hand, and she returned its gentle pressure. But it was David's hand: he quickly withdrew it from hers when she opened her eyes. How shy he is, she thought, captivated.
Thomas Glaser's wedding was very much an aeronautical affair. After the service, the bridal couple walked out under a triumphal arch of crossed propellers, and a colleague of the newly appointed Flight Captain Glaser flew his biplane low over the tower of Pastor Niemoller's Old Dahlem parish church. The director of Lufthansa had generously paid in advance the fine that this stunt would incur. The bride, now Ulrike Glaser, was a friendly brunette of twenty-five. 'What a good choice, Tom,' said Detta in deliberately tomboyish tones.
'Glad you think so,' Glaser thanked her.
'Here's to friendship,' Ulli declared at the wedding breakfast, raising a glass to her.
'To friendship.' Detta pulled herself together. No one else guessed what was going on inside her, except for Hans-Georg, who simply knew her too well. You may not think so, but the right man for you will come along, you just have to believe it,' he consoled her. That was exactly the trigger for the tears she could have done without. 'Make my excuses to everyone,' she managed to tell him.
She started the BMW, engaged first gear with a crunch, and jerkily drove off. She swerved in front of a bus as she turned into the Kurfiirstendamm and almost knocked a cyclist down at Halensee S-Bahn station. She noticed none of it. She wasn't sitting at the wheel of her roadster but in Tom Glaser's plane. The slipstream tugged at her hair as he took the Klemm up to loop the loop. Her stomach heaved. A horrible need to retch overcame her. She braked with a screech and threw up on the pavement. Luckily there was no one nearby, and traffic was thin at this time of the evening.
There was a small family bar opposite. She ordered a coffee and quickly went to the Ladies. Vigorous gargling rid her mouth of the sour taste of stomach acid. She plunged her face in cold water, and was glad to find a clean hand towel by the basin. 'Contenance, ma petite.' she could hear her mother saying. That had been when Detta, aged twelve, bungled a dressage trial at the local gymkhana and was taking Henry back to the stables, in floods of tears. She smoothed her hair and her dress; she had lost her hat on the way here. As she entered the cafe again she was very much the cool Prussian aristocrat again on the outside, friendly but reserved, perfectly poised. Inside, she was telling herself dryly: so much for your aversion therapy, my dear. You need stronger medicine.
Making up her mind, she got behind the wheel and stepped on the gas. Twilight was falling as she ran down the countless steps from the Stossensee bridge to the landing stages. The warm light of an oil lamp shone in Bertie's cabin. David Floyd-Orr was lying full-length, reading, old-fashioned halfmoon glasses on his nose. He looked up. 'Oh, hello,' he said, showing no surprise.
'Hello to you too.' Detta was frantically wondering how, when you were a completely inexperienced girl, you went about seducing a man for therapeutic reasons without making a fool of yourself.
She was woken by the cry of a coot. The diffuse light of early morning came in through the portholes. The sleeper beside her was lying on his side, hands folded under his cheek, snoring quietly. So this was the man she would never in her life have imagined as a lover, a lanky Englishman of twenty-eight with red hair and freckles. But as everyone knows and as Bensing used to say, things never turn out just as you expect, and all things considered it had really been very good.
They had laughed a lot, particularly when David confessed that he had enjoyed this kind of experience only once before, with his nanny Ruth when he was sixteen. Nannies, Detta learned, were an English institution, and though they officially cared for children only up to school age they generally remained in the family, quite often provided adolescents with practical enlightenment, and later looked after their former charges' progeny too. Even a repeat performance of that practical instruction wasn't out of the question.
She suppressed a smile as she thought of the earnest, focused expression which he had worn as he set about the natural but difficult task of penetration — difficult because he was guided less by passion than by his anxiety not to hurt her. In the end it was she who braced herself against his body and took him right into her, so that the pain was kept within bounds and soon gave way to a promising tingling sensation. It did not lead to orgasm, but gave some idea of the pleasures of which her mother had once spoken, and which the kitchen-maid Lina, giggling, had so rapturously described.
She softly rose to her feet and climbed the few steps to the deck. Morning mist lay over the sleeping boats around them. Without a sound, she slipped into the cool water which washed around her naked body. She swam far out, dived down on returning the last few metres to the boat, and hauled herself up by the side. David, looking the other way, was holding a towel ready for her. She wrapped herself in it. 'Good morning, darling.' She gave him a wet kiss.
He was reserve itself. 'I hope you slept well? Breakfast's almost ready.' He climbed down. There was an aroma of fresh coffee and fried eggs. 'The bacon's from Hefter. I'm afraid they didn't have any Danish,' he stiffly apologized. And afterwards I thought we could take a little round trip to the Tegeler See. Before Nigel Hawksworth went away he told me the Lake Pavilion there serves a good lunch. Poor fellow, he's having to eat Chinese food now. Although there are supposed to be a number of outstanding European restaurants in Shanghai.' He spoke with his face turned to the spirit stove, and in a great hurry, as if afraid she might interrupt him. 'Would you like an orange juice first?'
She let the towel drop. 'David, look at me.' He turned round. 'You talk too much, darling,' she said, in a deep, cooing undertone that was new even to herself. His Adam's apple, bobbing up and down, betrayed the fact that he was swallowing hard. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. As she did so, she took his hand down to her sex.
It was an unforgettable encounter for them both. Amazed as children, they explored their bodies, giving themselves up to this wonderful game. Ever afterwards, the smell of burnt bacon would always bring back the memory of her first delicious orgasm.
You must forgive my silly behaviour,' he said, apologizing for his awkwardness. 'We English are permanently embarrassed.' It was a concept that she found difficult to translate into German.
When they reached the dessert course in the Lake Pavilion, his face assumed his expression of grave concentration again. 'Would you marry me?' he asked over red summer fruit puree with vanilla sauce.
'I don't know,' she said truthfully. 'But I'll think about it.'
Frau von Aichborn had come to Berlin for the Olympic Games. A year earlier, she had offered to look after the wives of the Spanish team. But there was no Spanish team. The Civil War was raging on the Iberian peninsula.