All My Sins Remembered (57 page)

Clio gazed at everything. She felt hazy with happiness. From the familiar patterns of gossip circulating around her they might all have been in the Fitzroy, but it was the Fitzroy set free from the malign chill of Miles’s influence. In London everything had been constrained, fixed in rigid grooves of hopelessness. Here there was nothing at all, an empty space, still to be defined.

Clio thought of Miles and his pick-up, reclining in her own bed. She saw the black-rimmed fingernails once again. But for the first time, she felt no repeating shock of nausea.

Good luck to them, she found herself murmuring.

Clio realized that she must be very slightly drunk. It was an attractive idea, a very
good
idea, and someone had kindly, thoughtfully, refilled her glass. She couldn’t remember when she had last felt so ready to enjoy herself.

She caught Julius’s eye, and lifted the glass to him. ‘I’m glad I came,’ she said.

‘Wait a little,’ he answered.

Pilgrim leant over and asked her to dance. Clio gave him her hand. They edged out on to the floor together. It was wonderful to dance. The rhythm of it swept through her. Pilgrim was grinning like a pirate as he spun her around. Julius had led Grace out too. His face wore the expression of unbelieving gratitude it always had when he was close enough to her to touch. His hand spanned her back, where the white skin was left exposed by the deep V of her dress.

Across at their table a man in a striped jersey had slid into the chair next to Isolde.

Over Pilgrim’s shoulder, Clio noticed that more people were arriving. There were lights slowly revolving above the dancers and the beams raked over the heads of the newcomers. A flicker of brightness lit one head, momentarily turning the fair hair butter-yellow.

She saw that it was Rafael. He was still wearing the same shepherd’s coat, but Grete beside him had changed into a low-necked blouse of some shiny greeny-black stuff with her hair worn loose over her shoulders. They were peering into the dense crowd, looking for someone. Then they came down the steps and vanished into the mass.

Clio lost the rhythm and stumbled, and Pilgrim trampled on her feet. ‘Let’s have another drink,’ he bawled.

When they came in sight of their table Rafael and Grete were already there, sitting with Julius and Grace.

‘Here she is,’ Clio heard Julius say.

She knew with complete conviction that he was answering Rafael’s question. For an instant the din in the restaurant became silence. All the noise and confusion surrounding her fell away. She moved along a channel, through the wonderful stillness, with no fear about which direction to take. She felt warm, and light, and although her expression was solemn there was happiness radiating through her bones and lighting her face. She had forgotten how it felt to smile from inside herself, with no forcing of the inarticulate muscles and frozen mouth. She was gliding towards the table, drawn by a thread of certainty that was as simple and as beautiful as pure gold.

Rafael stood up again and held out his hand. ‘I was asking where you were,’ he said.

‘I know.’ It was wonderful to Clio, but she felt no surprise. She had been sure since she had first seen him that he would change everything, but she had been too superstitious to admit it to herself. All day she had been nudging and shaking the idea, as if it was a present wrapped up and not yet to be opened.

‘I wanted to see you again.’

‘I’m glad,’ Clio said simply.

He held out a chair for her and she sat down beside him. It was as if she were unfolding the tissue paper wrapping of her present, but the outline of whatever lay inside was not yet discernible.

At the same time, and slowly, rather jerkily, the restaurant began to come to life once more.

Clio became aware of Isolde performing some complicated dance-step with the stripy man, of a waiter arriving with another ice-bucket, Grete putting her hand over Julius’s to reassure him of something. Introductions were being performed: Pilgrim to Grete, Pilgrim to Rafael. No one had noticed anything unusual. The extraordinary rhythm of her own heartbeat was inaudible. She sat back in her chair, turning her head, hiding her hands under the folds of the tablecloth because she was suddenly aware that they were shaking.

Clio was not aware of it, but Grace had seen.

Grace thought, I never knew what it meant, to say that someone looks radiant. Clio does. She is beautiful. Why have I never, ever noticed that before?

Grace’s eyes and lips were perfectly made up, and her skin was creamed and powdered to peachy smoothness, but her mouth hardened now and she looked older, no longer Clio’s twin.

Pilgrim stumbled into the place next to her. ‘Why so gloomy, goddess?’

She looked at him from beneath her eyelids,
rapprochement
forgotten, drawing back by the smallest fraction of an inch as if to suggest that he might contaminate her.

‘Gloomy? How could you imagine, on such a delightful evening? Maybe slightly fatigued by such a crush and so much noise, that’s all.’

Pilgrim twirled the
Sekt
bottle in its bucket and then snatched it out in a spangle of icy water.

‘Don’t worry, darling. We’ll finish this and we’ll all move on to a little
Stube
I know. They have a floorshow there that you will hardly believe.’

Clio was sitting quite still. She felt no compulsion to try to impose herself on the cross-currents of conversation. Grace was leaning forward, saying something to Grete, with her back elegantly but positively turned on Pilgrim. Julius was talking too, and Rafael’s head was inclined as he listened.

Clio examined his profile. Now that she was close to him she saw that there was a fine net of wrinkles at the corner of his eye, and the skin beneath the lower lid was soft and darkened, as if he were tired. His Nordic, outdoor looks were deceptive. Clio guessed that he was a few years older than she, perhaps in his late thirties. She liked the way he had casually shrugged off his coat, and the well-worn blue and grey checked shirt that emerged from underneath it. She also liked the way that he gave his whole attention to what Julius was saying. He didn’t twiddle his glass or touch his chin or gesture with a cigarette in the way that everyone else did. The movements that he did make were calm and economical.

‘You should play, I think,’ he was saying seriously to Julius. ‘What reasons can you give for not doing so, except their own reasons?’

‘Maybe you are right,’ Julius said quietly.

Isolde had fought her way back to the table with her admirer in pursuit. She wriggled and squirmed to get out of his amorous clutches. ‘Go away, there’s a darling boy. Pilgrim, tell him.’

Pilgrim yawned. ‘You tell him.’

There was some pushing and gesturing and a rapid dispute in shouted German. Grace and Clio were startled, but everyone else seemed to take the disturbance completely for granted. By the end of it, Pilgrim had clearly lost interest.

‘Oh, let’s shove off, shall we? Otherwise we’ll have Hansi here pestering us all evening. Come on, the Balalaika, what do you say?’

There was a general movement. Clearly, with Pilgrim in charge of the evening there was no thought of going home yet.

‘I quite like the Balalaika,’ Julius was saying.

‘So long as it isn’t one of the Russian nights,’ Grete laughed.

Rafael turned to Clio. His eyes were dark grey, she noticed, not blue. ‘Would you like to go?’

Clio laughed too. ‘Yes, I think I would, rather.’

‘Then we shall.’

Clio would happily have gone anywhere, the Balalaika or the Russian steppes themselves.

‘Only just the other side of the Ku’damm,’ Pilgrim told Grace, who did not look pleased. ‘I feel it’s just the spot for all of us tonight. And “goodnight to you”,’ he crooned to Isolde’s disappointed suitor as they bundled past him.

The Balalaika was, indeed, only around the corner. It was much smaller and more dimly lit than the restaurant, and what was visible of the décor was not noticeably Russian.

All of them except Grace and Clio were clearly Balalaika regulars. When they arrived and settled at a table there was a good deal of greeting and waving to people at the neighbouring tables. The clientele was an exotic mix of young and old, with every variety of dress and appearance. Some people were in evening clothes while others looked as if they had just wandered in off the streets. The visitors had a new sense of Berlin as a rambling village populated by animated and interconnected groups, in odd contrast with the oversized baroque formality of its public exterior.

‘Do you know everyone here?’ Grace asked Julius.

‘Not quite. But I’ve noticed that since the Nazis came to power, people seem to need to hold together. Not that we actually talk to one another very much, you understand. It’s more as if we are all saying, “Here we are, still. What will happen now?” There’s an air of apprehension, but there is also that rather sickened excitement that goes with uncertainty. It leads to a lot of evenings like this. Groups of people determined to enjoy tonight, in case it turns out to be the last.’

‘It reminds me a little of London in the Twenties, when we were young things,’ Grace said. ‘All those desperate parties, because none of us could think what else to do.’

‘There is more desperation here.’

‘I suppose that depends on your political outlook,’ Grace said.

There was a steady stream of visitors to the table.

Clio couldn’t remember ever having met so many people in such a short space of time. There were students and musicians, actors and painters and professors and teachers. The preferred drink in the Balalaika was vodka, presumably in acknowledgement of the Russian theme, taken ice cold in a single gulp. After two shots Clio felt as if all her veins had melted. She gave up trying to remember names. She nodded and smiled, sitting next to Rafael but separated from him by a tiny space that seemed to hum and buzz with a current of its own.

In a little while the floorshow began. There was a lot of laughter and repartee between the performers and the audience. The high point of the show was a beautiful blonde who came on and sang sentimental German songs in a tiny, breathy, little-girl’s voice. The applause was rapturous.

Clio whispered to Rafael, ‘Is she really that good?’

‘He.’

After that the floor was cleared for dancing.

Rafael touched the back of Clio’s hand with his forefinger. ‘Would you like to dance with me?’

‘Yes.’

On the floor, he held her lightly. There was no room to do more than sway a little.

After a moment Rafael said, ‘Julius asked Grete and me to come tonight, you know. But if he hadn’t done, I would have found a way to meet you again.’

‘I know,’ Clio answered. Everything seemed very clear and shiny, but as brittle as spun glass. She was afraid that if she moved too fast or clumsily all this happiness would break. ‘If I hadn’t found you first.’

They moved closer, an infinitely small distance.

‘Does this evening seem very long?’ Rafael asked.

‘Yes. And very short too, much too short because it has to end.’

His mouth was almost touching her hair. ‘Don’t worry about the end,’ Rafael said.

Julius was dancing with Grete now. Under the lights her hair looked metallic, like threads of gold. Grace sat at the table, watching them, with Pilgrim sprawled beside her. Isolde had disappeared again.

As Grace looked on, Julius turned Grete in his arms, whispering something to her, and their eyes met. Grace sat slowly upright, leaning forward to observe more closely. She was surprised by a sudden, ugly twist of jealousy. Pilgrim, as ever, missed nothing that might be of interest to him. It was amusing to see that Lady Grace could be jealous of a Berlin fraülein in a home-sewn blouse. Nor had he failed to see that Clio and Rafael were hemmed in by the press of dancers and yet seemed to move apart, in a circle of their own creation.

‘Ah, my Janus Face,’ he drawled provocatively. ‘For ever staring in opposite directions.’

‘Shut up, Pilgrim,’ Grace almost spat at him.

‘I don’t think I will shut up,’ he mused, pretending to be equable. The spirit of mischief burnt up in him, fuelled by vodka. ‘I think I feel like a good old heart to heart. Here I am, after all, away from London and cut off from all I belong to.’

‘You don’t belong to anywhere or anything. You are an opportunist.’

Pilgrim pretended not to have heard. ‘My daughter, for instance. How is my daughter? She must be quite a beautiful creature by now. Let me see. Thirteen in August, isn’t she?’

Grace had gone white. There was an interval of two or three seconds. Then she drew back her arm. With all the strength she could find she slapped her hand against Pilgrim’s face. He grunted, and sagged back in his chair. Grace leant across to him. Her heavily made-up eyes seemed to sink into black holes in her face. Her voice came out as a hoarse whisper.

‘She is not your daughter. She is my daughter, and Anthony’s. You are never, ever to speak of her again. I don’t want her or him contaminated with your dirt. With your …’ Her politician’s ease with words had deserted her. She gasped and then managed, ‘
Filth
.’

Pilgrim began to recover himself. He tried to taunt her, ‘I think you do protest too much, my lady.’

Grace would have struck out at him again. But Julius reached the table, with Grete bewildered behind him.

‘What is it? Pilgrim, what in Christ’s name are you doing?’

‘What am I doing? I merely enquired about my daughter’s progress …’

Julius caught his wrist and twisted his arm. Two waiters put down their trays and began to edge towards them.

‘I don’t believe you have a daughter,’ he said softly. ‘And even if you did, how could Grace know anything about it? I think you should go home now, Pilgrim.’

‘I want to go,’ Grace whispered. She was still white. ‘Julius?’

‘I’ll take you,’ he said. ‘We’ll go now.’

Pilgrim was not done yet. ‘See? He’ll always come running. There’s no need for you to be jealous, darling.’

‘Shut your evil mouth,’ Julius hissed.

‘People keep telling me to shut up. But I’m only telling the truth, so why is it, I wonder? Are you all so anxious about your secrets?’