Little Grey Mice (29 page)

As if aware of her thoughts about her workload, Werle said: ‘If there's a need for additional staff, to take over some of your existing functions, just say so. I'm thinking of a personal assistant of your own.'

Elke was cautious. ‘I don't think we should consider an early decision on that: let's see how the job evolves, shall we?' It was flattering to be offered a personal assistant – would be an indication to everyone throughout the Chancellery and beyond of her elevated stature – but her immediate thought was to integrate this new responsibility with her present function.

‘As you wish,' Werle accepted at once. ‘But I don't want you to be overwhelmed.'

This meant he did not want the proven efficiency of his office to suffer by her trying to handle too much, to the detriment of the established standards. Elke said: ‘I'll be extremely careful to see that doesn't arise. Before there is a risk of it happening.'

Werle gave another of his shy, reassuring smiles. ‘I know you will, Elke.'

Elke,
she recognized, uncomfortably. She said: ‘I'm extremely honoured. I won't disappoint you.'

‘I know that, too,' said Werle. He remained looking slightly away from her. ‘I have read that the Vienna Boys' Choir are coming on tour. Bonn is one of the cities to be visited.'

‘I haven't seen that,' said Elke, knowing what was to follow.

‘I was wondering if you would care to attend a performance? I understand they are quite unique.'

She didn't want to, Elke decided, firmly. It wasn't in any way connected with Otto Reimann: she assured herself she was equally determined not to inflate that situation. It was Günther Werle. It did not matter – did not affect any consideration – that his marriage might be an unhappy or unfulfilled one. He
was
married. With a son. It would be quite wrong, particularly in view of her new promotion, to invite any confusion or difficulty between them by allowing their private lives to overlap even slightly on to their working relationship. On the other hand he might be offended by an outright refusal. She anxiously sought an avoidance but couldn't, not one that gave them both an escape from embarrassment. ‘Is Frau Werle still at the health spa?' she asked, knowing well enough that the woman had been due to return weeks before. That surely indicated how – and what – she felt?

‘No,' admitted Werle. ‘She is not much interested in the music I enjoy.'

It wasn't the retreat for which she'd hoped. What else could she do? The working relationship, the amount of time they were going to spend together,
was
going to increase. So that relationship had to be correctly established on complete and honest understanding, from the outset. Still striving to be diplomatic (wasn't professional, practical diplomacy what she was going to encounter in the future?), she said: ‘I appreciate the offer but I am not sure I will be able to accept.' That wasn't diplomatic: it was clumsy. Why didn't she simply chance any temporary offence and refuse outright?

‘We'll talk about it again, nearer the time,' Werle persisted.

Say no, Elke told herself: say you don't want to get involved and complicate things. Instead she said: ‘Why don't we do that?' In the interim she'd be able to think of a gentle refusal, she tried to convince herself.

Jutta entered the Bonner Cafe curiously, not knowing the precise table, guessed and took one near the back. It wasn't, in fact, where Elke normally sat. Jutta ordered coffee and cake and surveyed the cafe, dismayed that it wasn't a dowdy place of dried-up, pet-worshipping, behatted spinsters, which was the category into which she had put Elke.

‘Is everything satisfactory?' asked the waitress.

‘Quite satisfactory,' lied Jutta. The coffee had been disappointing, too.

Chapter Twenty-One

Elke felt the same jangle of excitement as before at the recognition of his voice, smiling to herself as she assured him he was not calling at an inconvenient moment (how could any moment be inconvenient?) and went through the ritual of saying she was well and was glad he was well, in return.

‘I enjoyed the …' Reimann paused. ‘… anthology,' he picked up. ‘That's the right word, isn't it?'

She'd
known
the correction had been a mistake. Pretend not to notice. She said: ‘He's a brilliant writer, isn't he?'

Reimann refused a literary discussion. He said: ‘And now I'd like to return it.'

‘Whenever you like,' Elke agreed. Soon, she thought: please soon.

‘I hope you won't think me presumptuous …' opened Reimann, grimacing at his end of the telephone at his own feigned uncertainty. ‘… I have accepted a great deal of your hospitality: drunk all your whisky. I was wondering if I could reciprocate?'

‘Reciprocate?' She felt her body tighten.

‘By inviting you to eat with me …' Reimann introduced the false pause, to continue the impression of shyness. ‘Dinner, I mean …' Another pause, carefully timed. ‘… At a restaurant… not here at my apartment. I didn't mean that.' Reimann decided he'd perfectly portrayed the hopeful suitor afraid of rejection.

It was happening! Elke didn't want to appear too eager but equally didn't want to sound uninterested, which was the last thing she intended to convey. Too important, then, to play the blushing reluctant, although she
was
blushing. But certainly not reluctant. She said: ‘I'd like that, very much.'

‘I'm delighted!' gushed Reimann, in apparent relief. ‘I was thinking about tomorrow evening. But I suppose that would be too soon. So whenever is convenient to you.' Jump Elke, jump.

‘Tomorrow would be fine,' Elke jumped.

‘I'm so glad.' It was the first sincere thing Reimann had said since the conversation began. He'd be spared too much contact with that fucking dog, as well.

‘How…?'

‘Seven,' Reimann interrupted, tilting the pendulum from uncertainty to demand. ‘I'll collect you at seven. The Otto Reimann Mystery Tour.'

Elke laughed, searching for a response. ‘Decorations and decorum? Or jeans and jollity?'

Not a bad effort, he conceded: she was trying. Which was what Elke Meyer had constantly to do, always try to please him. His mind focused on decorum: later he would deny her any decorum. He said: ‘I've never seen you dressed any other way but perfectly.' Sometimes it was difficult not to be openly embarrassed at saying the idiotic necessary things.

Elke blushed afresh in the emptiness of the Kaufmannstrasse apartment at the compliment but not at the innuendo, which she missed. ‘Just a hint?' she pleaded.

She had to stew – continue to marinate, he thought, remembering his earlier analogy – in doubt, about everything: those psychological seduction lectures had been invaluable. ‘A mystery tour,' he reminded. ‘No help given. You'll have to live with whatever mistake you make!'

‘No!' she protested. She was laughing, enjoying an intimacy that didn't exist.

‘Yes!'

‘Beast!' Too
much
non-existent intimacy, she feared at once, apprehensive of his response. Fool! she thought: fool! fool! fool!

‘Except that I know you won't make any mistake,' flattered Reimann. Don't have an orgasm too readily, he thought: I'm not there yet.

Again he was on time, to the minute. He wore a sports jacket and a tie under a button-down shirt: the trousers were immaculately pressed, just as the shoes were immaculately shone. Elke, after three telephone calls to Ida – one immediately after his call the previous evening, two during the day – wore a black, knitted woollen dress with an ornamental belt she could take off if she felt over-dressed on arrival at wherever they were going. On her left shoulder there was a small costume-jewellery brooch of imitation diamonds. She didn't intend a pose, for approval, as she admitted him, but she later supposed that was how it had appeared, from his reaction.

He said, very seriously: ‘You look superb. I am going to enjoy it.'

‘Enjoy what?' she frowned.

‘Being the object of so much envy from so many men who are going to see me with you tonight.'

‘You're embarrassing me!' she said, in weak protest. Without any obvious direction or cause – without even thinking! – their association had become very different. She searched but couldn't find the word to describe it. She didn't want a word to describe it. She was happy, whatever it was.

‘I'll never do that,' Reimann said, serious still. He would have liked the Kaufmannstrasse apartment to have been bugged, so Moscow could have savoured that remark.

Elke was utterly confused. She gestured further in towards the apartment and the whimpering scratching of the demanding dog and said: ‘Do you want … I mean shall we … what…?'

Reimann took the control he wanted soon to exercise over everything. He cupped her arm, leading her back into the living-room. She realized as he did so that he had a bag in his other hand. From it Reimann produced her book, and said it was returned with grateful thanks, and then immediately a bottle of champagne. ‘I shall take no more of the whisky,' he announced. ‘Fetch two glasses!'

Elke was glad the banter was back. She got the glasses without releasing Poppi and waited for the cork to explode. It didn't: he withdrew it expertly, with the faintest of sighs, so that the wine was not bruised. ‘Your toast,' he ordered, in further demand.

‘I don't …'

‘… I insist.'

She'd never had to propose a toast, never in her entire life! Didn't know one: couldn't remember one, from any of the books she had read. ‘I really don't …'

‘Make one up!'

Elke searched her memory, not wanting to fail, knowing only a blankness, as if her mind were filled with cotton wool. She started, with the thought incomplete, ‘To …' and stopped.

‘What!' demanded Reimann, wanted to keep her on the edge.

‘You make it!' she begged. ‘Please, you!'

Reimann adopted a ruminative pose. Then he touched his glass against hers and said: ‘To ending each day in the happiness that it began.'

Elke drank, trying to think how many of her days either began or ended in complete happiness. She shouldn't wallow, in doubt or self-pity, she thought, remembering Ida's rebuke. ‘Do I learn now where we're going?'

‘No!' refused Reimann. She'd taken a great deal of trouble. Not as sophisticated and assured as Jutta: he didn't think Elke could ever achieve that. But he didn't consider that a disadvantage. Sophistication and self-assurance could act as a rebuff, and Elke certainly wasn't rebuffing him. The dress was perfect, just slightly provocative, and as always she had held back from too much make-up. She really was quite a presentable woman. Reimann was irritated at the mental reservation. Not just presentable: positively attractive.

‘I might hate it!' she said, unconvincingly.

‘You won't.'

She didn't. After the champagne, which made her feel comfortable but not drunk, they drove to the smoke-filled, jostling bar off the Münsterplatz alley in which he had met Jutta for their first rendezvous in Bonn.

‘A journalists' watering hole!' he announced, which it wasn't. He thought the cliché appalling.

The ebb-and-flow noise and the push and shove of people all around disorientated Elke. He'd been wrong to tell her that she looked superb, because she felt over-dressed and was glad Ida had advised about the belt, which she excused herself at once to take off. People did not react to her ineffectual efforts to get through to the rest-room and she was jostled further, growing hot with frustration. When she returned to their tiled podium she saw he had bought more champagne, but only a half-bottle this time.

‘You don't like it!' he challenged at once.

‘I do, really.'

‘How often do you drink in a place like this?'

‘Not often.'

‘How often?' he goaded. She had to be reminded of Dietlef – if Dietlef was in fact the father of her bastard child – so there could be a later comparison.

‘Hardly ever,' she finally admitted. ‘Certainly not for a long time.' They'd drunk beer then, she recalled, conjuring the memories Reimann wanted her to have. She didn't recollect the smoke and the noise and the walls and barriers of tightly packed people. When she and Dietlef had come to such pubs they'd known everyone, as if it were a club admitting only recognized members. They'd sung a lot, all supposedly vehemently anti-Nazi: protest songs, anti-war and anti-oppression. She couldn't believe herself doing it, not now.

‘You didn't have to do it,' said Reimann.

‘Do what?' asked Elke, further off-balanced.

‘Dress down, by taking off the belt. You were perfect as you were. I told you that.'

She enjoyed the compliment, without blushing this time. ‘You're extremely observant.'

‘I hope so,' said Reimann, a remark for his own amusement. ‘You can put it back on, later.'

‘If you'd like me to.' Elke found herself answering Reimann's direct stare without any discomfort, conscious of a tension between them, wondering if he felt it too.

Reimann did feel it, because he'd carefully created and then exacerbated it: she was responding just as she should have done. It had to be the control and power a sculptor felt, looking at a block of unformed clay from which he intended to fashion the perfect figure. Reimann broke the tension: it was something she would recall later, for which she would be grateful. ‘Another drink here?'

‘You're the tour guide: the man in charge,' said Elke. She was
enjoying
herself! She hadn't felt any uncertainty, any awkwardness, when the tension arose between them. Shouldn't she feel frightened of that, with all its implications? No cause, Elke told herself. She'd liked it. Not the complete moment, with all its unstated inferences, which hadn't been hidden from either of them but which of course would never be anything more than inferences. What she'd liked was knowing that for a few brief moments she was completely holding a man's attention, and that he was gazing at her as a woman, thinking of her as a woman. She forced the reflection on, demanding the phrase.
As a sex object.
She didn't find that offensive, either, not the way so many other women appeared to do on television or in newspaper comment. Rather, because it had happened to her so rarely, Elke was flattered. Flattered but safe: there could be no danger, no misunderstanding, from someone who had shown himself to be considerate. Impression built upon impression. It was idiotic, but she felt they were old friends: that she knew him and could trust him.