19
They leave the debris of that conversation at the bistro table and walk into the Place Kléber where, amongst the tourists and beside an antique carousel, they examine their map and the possibilities. Another coin. Heads to Germany, Austria and the Brenner Pass, or tails to Switzerland, the St Gotthard and Milan. Ellie laughs. The spinning coin delights her, like a child placated with a new toy. It rattles on the paving stones and lies head up, glinting in the sunshine – ‘heads’ in this case being a wistful woman striding across the obverse, casting seeds in her wake.
So they sling their backpacks and set off towards the river, towards another approximate border control, with Ellie apparently purged of her nightmares for the moment, talking and laughing and being once more the girl with the acute mind that he worshipped from afar and now cherishes from close to. On the German side of the river they get a lift in a van going south towards Freiburg, and from there they take the road into the Schwarzwald, the Black Forest, the home of cuckoo clocks and cherry cakes and, Ellie points out, the Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger. Afternoon turns into a gentle sunlit evening. Dark, foreboding hillsides are mitigated by the warm valley. They walk along an immaculate verge past meadows of trimmed velvet where perfectly groomed cows ruminate on a benign future of grass and cud and milk. Little traffic passes and there is scant prospect of a lift, but James doesn’t mind. This is a kind of heaven in which the word transport takes on a different meaning. Not buses and trains and soot and oil, but a transport of delight, in Ellie’s company. Yet the dark forests are still there, on either side of the valley.
‘So what’s it going to be this evening?’ she asks as they pause to consult the map. Ahead, in the depths of the forest, there’s a place called Titisee beside a lake. A green delta symbolises a campsite. ‘Your bloody tent again?’
‘Unless we can afford another luxury hotel.’
It’s strange that they should be back to their old relationship. Almost as though the events in Strasbourg have not taken place. But they have. He sees her in a different light now, the soft light of the Black Forest evening and the harsh light of her vulnerability. She is scarred; possibly scared. And yet she is still Eleanor, with her assumed self-confidence and her caustic tongue. And she has let him make love to her. The very thought of what has been and might be again almost brings his heart to a halt. Or makes it beat twice as fast. He can’t tell which.
She hoists her rucksack onto her back and walks on ahead of him. ‘About what I was saying at lunch,’ she calls back.
‘What about it?’
‘Forget it, just forget it, okay? I was babbling on. Just forget it and it’ll be like it was before.’
‘But it’s not like before, is it?’
She looks round, sharply. ‘Of course it is.’
‘No, it’s not. For Christ’s sake, Ellie—’
She stops, her face tight with anger. ‘Look, I don’t want sympathy. Still less do I want pity. I’m not a head case, so don’t try and treat me like one. Just take me on my own terms and we’ll see what happens, OK?’
He hesitates, not knowing whether to argue back. And that is the moment when the car – a Volkswagen Beetle – clatters past them and slows to a halt.
Whatever the circumstances there is a small thrill of apprehension about a successful hitch. The vehicle – car, van, lorry – waits, anonymous and indifferent but pregnant with possibility. Where will it take you? Whom does it conceal? What secrets does it hide? It puts your own momentary circumstances into perspective.
They hurry to find out.
Inside the car there’s a disparate couple, a young man driving and a middle-aged woman in the passenger seat. The man appears tall, folded awkwardly into the seat behind the steering wheel. He’s good-looking in the rather daunting way of blond, blue-eyed Germans, while the woman is smaller, with grey hair scraped back into a bun and inquisitive, beetle-bright eyes. Perhaps she writes detective stories. Perhaps she is actually an amateur detective, a Miss Marple of Germany.
The man climbs out and asks, in English, ‘Are you looking for a lift?’
They are, of course they are. He holds the door open for them to climb in. ‘Is there room? It is a small car and there is not much room.’
But they manage, squeezing Ellie’s pack into the exiguous space behind the rear seat while James sits with his own on his lap. Ellie crowds against him, thigh against thigh in smiling complicity.
‘I hope you are not too uncomfortable,’ the driver says as they set off. ‘Where are you going? I am afraid we are not going far.’
James takes charge of their side of the conversation, happy that, amongst other things, Ellie no longer has the language advantage. ‘We’re heading towards Austria. Lake Constance, somewhere like that. But we need somewhere for the night. We’ve got a tent.’
‘Ah, you are looking for a camping site. There are camping sites where we are going. Titisee, you know Titisee?’
‘We’ve seen it on the map.’
‘It is very pretty there. A lake. There is boating. There are water sports.’ It sounds as though he has learned phrases from a guidebook and polished them into a simulacrum of fluent language. His passenger half-turns to see what species of beast they have caught. Her face is serious, as though they may have committed some kind of transgression. ‘It says GB on your pack. Does that mean you are British?’
James wonders. Thoughts of the war come to mind. Resentment, rancour, enmities festering beneath a superficial gloss of liberal progress. His tone is almost apologetic. ‘Yes, it does.’
‘Are you students?’
‘Yes, we are.’
‘Are you at university?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which one?’
‘Oxford.’
‘Which college?’
The question is a surprise. James names his, with the faint feeling that he is handing over some kind of secret code.
‘Ah,’ the woman says. ‘Do you know Professor Hubert?’
Professor Hubert. A tall, stooped figure who paces the quad with his gown billowing and his hair awry. Professor Hubert who smiles benignly on one and all. ‘Yes, I do. I mean, not personally. But I know who he is. Maybe I’ve said good morning to him a couple of times.’
‘Professor Hubert is a great friend of mine,’ she announces. ‘He is a fine musicologist.’
Memories of the war – folk memories, mediated by films and War Picture Library comics – fade. James nudges Ellie. ‘I just thought Hubert was an old codger who dispensed sherry at his tutorials.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I heard someone say.’
‘Actually, he’s a leading authority on Monteverdi.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I went to a talk he gave at the Bach Festival.’
The woman looks round sharply, as though they have been caught talking in class. She has a kind of haggard beauty, like a cliff face eroded by weathering but still full of grandeur. ‘You mention the Bach Festival,’ she says in her measured, clipped English. ‘It is there that I know Professor Hubert. I am playing there many years now.’
‘Playing?’
‘I am a cellist. I am Birgit Eckstein and this is my nephew, Horst von Eberhafen.’ There is a rapid exchange of words with her nephew. She turns round again. ‘We are thinking that maybe you can erect your tent in our garden, if you would like. We are having a big garden. And you may use our facilities – for shower and wash – so that will be like a campsite, no?’