Little Grey Mice (3 page)

The wine at lunch was worse than the aperitif: Elke only drank half the first glass. Ida drank less. Kissel finished the first bottle and consumed half of a second and immediately after the meal announced he was going to bed for an afternoon siesta, as all true gentlemen were supposed to do. It was a customary conclusion to a Saturday lunch.

The garden at the rear of the house was not quite so overgrown as the front, so there was enough room for two lounging chairs and the women could relax, read newspapers or magazines or doze. Doris played with Poppi, tiring him out, and Georg disappeared again to his bedroom and his tape deck. Throughout the afternoon Elke was continuously aware of the dull throb of pop guitars and drums and synthesized keyboards. She thought it all sounded like the heartbeat of some huge animal: maybe something prehistoric, on the point of death.

Kissel was still in bed when Elke was ready to leave. She asked her sister to say goodbye and thanks and Ida promised she would.

‘I think I'm happy with Horst,' declared Ida, unexpectedly. ‘He's full of bullshit and I don't listen to a lot of what he says, most of the time, but I do love him, which I guess might be difficult for a lot of people to understand. Not blind, fucking-every-night kind of love: more like a contented, satisfied feeling. Knowing all the time where he'll be, if I want him. So you mustn't worry.'

‘I hope I don't have to,' said Elke. She was uncomfortable at her sister's swearing.

The Volkswagen was untouched in its safe car-park and the traffic back along Adenauerallee was comparatively light, so there was no delay in Elke getting back to her apartment. She did not want to eat again. She settled Poppi and decided there was nothing to watch on television. She had four new books, two in original English. She tried one of the German novels, a Günter Grass reprint, but she was not in the mood, so she abandoned it. For an hour before she went to bed she listened to a radio recital by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, although Bach was usually too strident for her. Her final act, before going to bed, was to enter her diary. She did not, of course, record her sister's confession. Elke wrote:
Lunch with Ida and family. A pleasant day.

She'd made the identical entry the previous week. And the week before that.

The two men who had followed Elke Meyer throughout the day were part of the initial surveillance squad, in place for more than three months. The weak joke between them was that by now they knew more about Elke Meyer than she knew about herself. It was an exaggeration, of course. But only just.

As the light went out in the identified flat, the driver of the car said: ‘I never thought at the beginning we'd have to keep the observation up as long as this.'

‘Moscow's certainly taking a lot of trouble over this one,' agreed the observer, from the passenger seat. ‘It's understandable, I suppose.'

‘It's difficult to believe that professionally she holds down the job she does,' said the first man. ‘Have you ever known anyone lead such a boring private life?'

‘Yes,' said the second man at once. ‘All the other
grauen Mäuse
in Bonn.'

Grauen Mäuse
is the slang term in the West German capital – and in every espionage service – for lonely, unattached women employed in government service.

It means grey mice.

Chapter Two

It was Elke's unalterable practice to set out early to make allowances for the Sunday traffic, deciding as she drove south along the valley road that the precaution would be increasingly necessary in the coming weeks, now that the better weather was coming. It wasn't always possible to see the Rhine looping and curling to her left but when it was the water glittered silver in the pale, early sunshine: several times she saw holiday ferries fussily churning to the pick-up points for the first excursions of the day, down to Remagen or Linz or Neuwied or even as far as Koblenz. Elke had gone on river outings in the past, but not for a long time, and she resolved to do it again soon. If she went all the way to Koblenz and back it would occupy a whole day: activities that occupied a whole day were important.

The home was just short of Marienfels, set high in the mountain foothills in its own park. Because of her early start Elke approached long before the scheduled visiting hours, which she invariably did, climbing part of the way towards the higher ground before pulling into her accustomed layby, to wait. She urged Poppi from the back seat, to sniff and leave his mark, able on the little used road to let him wander without a lead. She leaned against the side of the car, waiting for him to return, gazing down upon the waterway she could see completely now. She was just able to pick out people moving around on Nonnenwerth island and squinted further, fully across the river towards the Drachenfels and the wine slopes from which Kissel claimed to get his sour wine. Elke doubted it had come from Drachenfels at all.

Elke remained unsettled by Ida's account of being fondled under a dinner table, not wholly satisfied with her sister's easy assurances that it meant nothing. Ida had always been the more impulsive – another difference between them – and Elke could not lose the fear that in a certain mood on an aimless day Ida might respond to a telephone call in a way she shouldn't. It was unimportant that she would not regard it seriously: that she'd think of the entire episode as an experiment or an adventure or simply just fun. Because it wouldn't be any of those things. It would be a deceit – the way Ida had talked yesterday had been deceitful – and Elke had not known her sister be that before.

Would Elke have flirted if she were married to someone as pretentiously dull as Horst Kissel? Immediately her mind grew more unsettled. Fantasies about marriage, what sort of man her husband would be and what sort of home they'd have and how they would live and what they would do had long ago been shut out, like giggled speculation about how big some men were in certain places. And she didn't believe she knew properly how to flirt anyway, a further trait unshared with Ida: it was something she had never been able to learn or develop, as she supposed most girls did. What about…? Elke began to think but quickly stopped, positively refusing the reverie. She was no longer unsettled – no longer considering Ida – but hot with anger at herself for letting such a thought even begin to grow. She
never
allowed herself to remember that, not as she had been doing then. It was nothing to remember. Just to forget: as best she could ever forget, that is. She could not, of course, feel any annoyance or irritation at her sister, but there was regret: regret that Ida had so casually talked about a hand on her leg and of doing nothing about it. The greatest regret of all was that the conversation had eased open, just a little, doors that Elke had believed forever closed and bolted in her mind.

A Mercedes she recognized, carrying the parents of another afflicted child, swept by on its way up to the home. Elke called Poppi and lifted the obedient animal into the back of the car when he returned, hurriedly setting off to follow. Although there was no way Ursula could ever possibly know, Elke always needed to be one of the first to arrive. It was a tiny ritual but it mattered to Elke: Elke Meyer was a person of tiny rituals.

It was not a high-security institution but there was a moderately tall surrounding fence and a manned gatehouse for the patients' own safety. Quite unaware of what they were doing, some inmates, in the past, had tried to leave: the fear was for the suffering if one did wander away, particularly in the sub-zero winters, before being located by concerned searchers.

Elke was known but still checked at the entrance before being allowed to continue along the lazily curved drive towards the main building, a hugely square, stone-built mansion erected more than a hundred years earlier by a banker who made his fortune financing the Prussian royal family at exorbitant rates of interest. The extensive grounds remained as they had been originally landscaped, full-skirted firs and conifers and trees she could not name now grown to towering maturity. There were several groups of patients in those grounds, walking or sitting in chairs, always with an attendant within a few metres. Elke strained hopefully, trying to locate Ursula among them, but couldn't see her daughter. She turned familiarly into the designated area to the left of the mansion and parked alongside the Mercedes. From the social gatherings arranged from time to time – and which Elke hated for their artificiality and false happiness, as if there was something to celebrate – she knew the man who owned the car to be a wine exporter, from Cologne. Passingly she wondered what his opinion would have been of Horst Kissel's wine selection.

The system was for senior members of staff to greet visitors just inside the surviving entrance hall, a high-ceilinged, chandeliered vault only minimally converted into a functional vestibule, which consisted of a glassed-off office and a separate receptionist's desk. The desk was dominated by an elaborate display of vivid orange gladioli: Elke remembered it as the predominant colour in the flower market, the previous day.

Dr Schiller, the principal, was standing in front of the desk, white-haired and cadaverous and stooped forward, shoulders hunched, as if perpetually ready to listen considerately to everything said to him. For no obvious reason, because Elke always brought the dog – carrying him in her arms because she never felt she was drawing attention to herself here – Schiller looked curiously at Poppi before smiling a yellow-toothed smile towards Elke. ‘Ursula is in her room.'

‘I thought she might have been outside, on a day like today.' Poppi awkwardly began to wriggle and yapped to be put down, but Elke shushed the dog into silence.

‘She was, earlier. She came back herself. We wouldn't force her to do anything she didn't want to do. We don't, ever.'

‘How is she?'

‘No change, Frau Meyer,' said the man, serious-faced. ‘There never will be, you know that.'

The principal always courteously addressed her as ‘Frau', like her superior at the Chancellery. ‘I was wondering about any deterioration, not improvement,' said Elke.

Schiller shook his head, in reassurance. ‘There's still the music: she's soothed by that. It's a very common manifestation in autism.'

‘Soothed?' queried Elke, at once. ‘Have there been many outbursts?' It was because she had no longer been physically able to restrain Ursula when the child erupted into those irrational, unexpected rages that Elke had finally been forced to commit her into the care of professionals. Elke still felt guiltily inadequate at having done it, although it had been the only possible decision.

Schiller pursed his lips. ‘No more than we expect.'

‘She hasn't caused herself any injury?'

‘We take care of our patients to ensure that doesn't happen.' said the man, stiffly.

‘I'm sorry … I didn't mean …'

‘I know you didn't.'

‘Can I take her for a walk, back out into the garden?'

‘Providing she wants to go: don't force her.'

‘I know better than that.'

More families and friends began to arrive behind her and Elke moved away, climbing the encircling stairway to Ursula's room on the first floor. The door, the third on the right along the west corridor, was closed and although she knew it would not register with the child – was as much of an affectation as those embarrassing social gatherings – Elke knocked instead of immediately entering. She did
not
regard it as a pointless affectation. Although it was a gesture – a satisfaction – for her own benefit, Elke considered it gave Ursula some dignity and some respect, even if the child was unable to appreciate the love it conveyed.

Elke actually waited a moment or two before pushing through the door, which was fitted only with a press-stud closure because locks were not permitted, on any patient's room.

Ursula was almost fully turned from the door. She was sitting on a chair but bent forward over her bed and rocking back and forth to the music coming from the enclosed and securely bolted tape machine on the wall shelf above. Elke thought it was a Mozart violin concerto, but she was not sure. Ursula's movements did not coordinate with the music. Ursula wore her newest red skirt and a beige sweater, which seemed tight. Her hair, blonde and so very much like Doris's, was neatly brushed but loose, practically to her shoulders, and Elke thought how prettily bright red slides would have held it in place.

‘Hello Ursula.'

There was no reaction at all from the bent, rocking girl.

‘Darling?'

Still nothing. Elke clicked the door shut behind her but stood just inside, unsure as she was always unsure what to do next. The heavy easy chair was in the corner of the room and Elke grated it forward, to bring herself nearer to her daughter. She reached out to the girl and said: ‘Ursula? Hello, my darling.' There was a response at last, to the physical contact. Ursula turned to her mother, without the slightest recognition, and made a sound, which was quite unintelligible. The disjointed, unconnected movement to the music lessened, just slightly.

‘Hello Ursula,' said Elke again. Still with her hand outstretched Elke moved to stroke the child's face, to push back a skein of straying hair, but Ursula pulled sharply back, not wanting to be touched, and Elke immediately dropped her hand.

‘Nice,' said Ursula, unexpectedly. The voice was harsh, coarse-sounding, not like a child's voice at all.

With no idea to what the child was referring – if she was referring to anything – Elke said: ‘Yes, darling. Nice. It's Mummy, darling. Mummy's come.'

Poppi began to agitate in Elke's arms, and the girl looked towards the dog. It had actually been bought for Ursula, the year before it had been necessary to commit her into care, a forlorn hope of Elke's that in some way it might penetrate Ursula's enclosed world, as the music did. When it had been a puppy there had occasionally been something Elke tried to believe was affection, some sort of tenuous bond, but now she knew it hadn't been, not really. ‘It's Poppi,' said Elke, to the girl. ‘Poppi's come, too.'