He came to a halt and turned around. Greta had followed him. Greta, the cold, unknowable blonde who had always treated him like dirt. What did she want? Charly’s friend was smiling at him. Had he ever seen her smile before? By God, but it suited her.
‘Mind if I join?’ she asked. ‘Bride-hunting’s one of my specialties.’
111
Grown-ups were stupid. Each in their own way, but stupid all the same. It didn’t matter if they were beggars in the Crow’s Nest, nurses in Dalldorf, or members of polite society squabbling like tinkers because some man on the radio said something stupid about politics. Grown-ups were always fighting over politics.
She had set down the bottle and cooler and taken refuge inside the kitchen. The only other person there was Lina, the fat maid, who was busy brewing another pot of coffee. Leave the rest to their squabbling.
‘What’s going on in there?’ Lina asked.
Hannah shrugged eloquently. She heard doors slamming. Once. Pause. Twice. Suddenly it was quiet.
After a second pause, the kitchen door opened and Fritze entered looking bashful. ‘Hannah… Hannelore, are you coming? I think our guests are leaving.’
She followed him into the hall. Moments ago the guests had been at each other’s throats, now it was all poisonous glances. Only the three parents were left. No sign of Charly, Gereon or their friends. She shot Fritze a questioning look.
‘My coat please, Fräulein,’ said the woman who had started all the trouble.
Hannah took the heavy coat from the stand and held it while the woman slipped it on. ‘Thank you,’ she said, leaving the apartment without another word.
‘I think we’ll be heading back to our hotel now too?’ said the man with the white moustache. ‘Any idea where the young people might have gone, lad?’
Fritze grabbed the gentleman’s overcoat. ‘No idea. Kidnapping the bride? First I’ve heard of it.’
‘Better Herr Wittkamp gets it out of his system before Saturday,’ the woman said. She turned to Hannah. ‘Please let my son know we’ll be staying at the Savoy. He can give us a ring once he’s found his bride-to-… his wife.’
Hannah curtseyed and, with that, the last of the grown-ups had gone. She looked at Fritze. He was grinning.
‘Good thing it’s over,’ he said, pulling at the collar of his elegant suit. ‘I’ll be glad to get out of these clothes. How about you? Fancy slipping into something more comfortable?’
The black dress itched under her arms and, with the frilly apron and white bonnet perched on top of her dyed-blonde hair, she felt as if she were in fancy dress. Which, in a way, she was.
Kirie wagged her tail expectantly. ‘She needs to be walked,’ said Fritze.
‘Now?’
‘A few weeks ago we were out in weather like this all the time!’
‘All right then.’
Five minutes later she was in the clothes they had given her in Freienwalde, the red-white spotted dress, red shoes, woollen stockings, warm coat and beret, while Fritze sat at the table, also in his coat, eating a piece of cake. Kirie waited on her lead, ready for action. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.
‘Right you are, Hannelore, and don’t forget your umbrella.’
She grimaced in response. Hannelore sounded so staid, but the men in Freienwalde had said it was better to choose a name similar to the old one. If need be you could mask a slip of the tongue. In her case: an identical first syllable and the same initials.
H.S. Hannah Singer. Hannelore Schneider. It might sound similar, but it was also completely different.
It wasn’t such a bad idea to bring the umbrella. It was bucketing down as they emerged onto Carmerstrasse. May at its worst. On Steinplatz they waited until Kirie had performed her business. ‘I think I know where they are,’ Fritze said.
‘Who?’
‘All of them.’ He pulled Kirie away from a puddle. ‘Aunt Charly has been talking about Hanne Sobek for days, how she hopes the wedding guests will be gone in time.’
‘Hanne who?’
‘Do you live on the moon or something? Hanne who do you think? Hanne Sobek, half-back for Hertha. German champions in ’30 and ’33.’
‘Hertha, right. Football. They’re playing today?’
‘Sobek’s playing today, but not for Hertha. For a German invitational eleven against Glasgow Rangers.’
‘Glasgow what?’
‘You really don’t know much about football, do you?’
‘Well, you know how it is. Back in Dalldorf they were always packing us off to the opera, the theatre, Lunapark… there just wasn’t time for football.’ She nudged him in the side. ‘I’ve never been to a stadium.’
‘Me neither.’
‘Would you like to?’
‘Ask a silly question.’
‘Where are they playing?’
‘The Poststadion.’
‘In Moabit, right?’ She produced a twenty-mark note from her pocket. ‘How about it? It’s on me.’
She still had to get used to the fact that she had money. Compensation for what Huckebein and the rest had done to her, Charly said.
They left Kirie with the porter in Carmerstrasse. Fritze said he enjoyed it; the man even kept a dog bowl in his lodge. On Steinplatz they waved a taxi over. The driver looked at them suspiciously, but seeing Hannah’s twenty started the meter and drove off to arrive in good time for kick-off. The stadium was gradually filling, though puddles had formed on the playing surface. Under the large advertisement for Trumpf chocolate above the back straight, Hannah spotted a white woman’s hat. The four of them, as if they had arranged to meet in advance. She gave Fritze a nudge and pointed. The boy grinned. ‘See, told you so!’
When they made their way across Charly looked surprised. ‘You two?’
‘The others have gone,’ Fritze said. ‘No way we were bringing them.’
‘I’m just glad they didn’t kill each other,’ Charly said. ‘It’s much better like this. Finally, we can celebrate getting married in our own way!’ She sent the two men off to buy sausages and mustard while the teams were warming up.
‘That’s Sobeck there,’ Fritze said, pointing to a player in black-and-white. The men returned as the referee sounded his whistle.
112
The landscape held a strange fascination for Rath. He parked the black sedan and got out, looking across a thriving green expanse towards the horizon. It was still over twenty kilometres to Cambrai, but this was where it started: a wide strip, extending further than the eye could see, on which there were no trees and scarcely any houses. Once a lowland plain and flat, undulating coastland, it was now perforated by trenches and hollows of various sizes, the lunar landscape left by German and British artillery fifteen and more years ago. Nature had, by and large, reclaimed its territory. Pea-green grass covered the pock-marked countryside like a furry down, between bushes and young birch trees stretching their slender trunks towards the skies.
He reached for Charly’s hand. She looked enchanting in the light summer dress she had bought in Paris. Following a path, they strolled across the pitted terrain like honeymooners exploring the Lüneburg Heath, coming upon the remains of an old trench, with wooden beams jutting out of the earth, moss-covered like tree stumps. Rath looked inside and spotted an abandoned spade.
‘Do you think it’s German or French?’ Charly asked.
‘German probably. It’s what we used to dig all the trenches here.’
Charly nodded pensively. ‘And to kill one another.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘They were supposed to go after each other with their bayonets, but these quickly proved useless in the context of trench warfare. A spade was easier to handle. You didn’t have to pull it back out of your enemy once you’d stabbed him, you could just keep on fighting. Striking your opponent between the shoulder and neck was most effective. A sharpened spade was more than capable of decapitating someone, and if you missed the head you caught the artery.’