Little Grey Mice (35 page)

‘Incredible.' He was impatient to get it over but accepted it would be a mistake to hurry. From the light coming fully through the curtains he guessed it was another bright day. Cologne, he determined: he liked Cologne. He tried to remember the restaurant near the cathedral but couldn't: he was sure he could find it though.

‘What are you thinking about?' Her voice was thick, distant.

‘You. Just you. What we're doing. How marvellous it is.' He was sure the name had a number in it: the Three Bishops, maybe. Or was it four? The selection of sausage had been excellent. Definitely Cologne. He brought his mouth from her breasts and Elke squirmed and made small gasping sounds. Three Bishops: he was practically sure it was the Three Bishops. He could probably get a number from telephone information.

‘Do it now! Please now!'

Reimann moved over her, permitting her a second's control. Leberkase, he decided: his favourite sausage. But no eggs: certainly no eggs. He was always surprised more restaurants didn't serve it, disdaining it as tavern food.

‘Oh, my darling! My darling!' moaned Elke. The soreness hurt, but it was an exciting, sensational pain, a love pain.

‘Darling! Darling!' he said. Sauerkraut! That's what he'd have: Leberkäse and sauerkraut. Beer would be best, to go with it, but wine would be better for his weight. He had to stay fit: in shape.

Elke shuddered beneath him and Reimann shuddered in unison.

‘Did you?'

‘Yes.' She hadn't been as lubricated as the previous night: he shouldn't let that happen again.

‘Good!' she said, still nervous of failing. ‘Good! Good! Good!' She had her head into the curve of his neck now, arms tight around him, crushing herself into him with urgent hugging movements as she repeated each word.

Five minutes, Reimann estimated. She'd come down sufficiently in five minutes for him to see how anxious she was to hold on to what she believed she had found. He held her just as tightly with one arm, with the other hand smoothing her hair and her face and her back. The wet-smelling dog would need to be taken for a walk, he supposed. He'd let her do it this morning. If he created some excuse to avoid going with her there might be a chance to look through the apartment. She was becoming quiet in his arms, calmer, breathing more evenly.

‘I …'

‘… don't.'

Elke stopped, obediently. He was right: they didn't need talk until he wanted to. She'd wait for him: always defer to him.

Reimann wondered, although indifferently, what she had been about to say. Whatever, it would have been fatuous and unimportant. There was only one subject he was interested in hearing Elke Meyer discuss. Starting with last week's Cabinet meeting. She shifted, although not against his weight upon her: he moved away, using the excuse, wanting to get off her. He wedged himself up on one arm, so he remained above her. Pushing the ebullience into his voice he said: ‘It's Sunday: we've got all day! We'll drive to Cologne! It's less than an hour away, and it's a pretty city.'

Sunday! Ursula! The awareness – the unbelievable fact that she had forgotten – literally took Elke's breath away, so that her lungs were tight, empty. How could she! How could she have let herself go so completely – abandoned herself so utterly – as to forget what day it was and the schedule that always rigidly dictated it?

From how he'd positioned himself to look down upon her –
why
he'd positioned himself – Reimann detected the realization surging through her. He heard the grunt when it became difficult for her to breathe and noticed the confused, frowning eye flicker, and was extremely satisfied. At his most optimistic he had not expected quite such an effect.

‘I'm sorry … I don't… I mean …' Elke began to splutter, nothing clear in her mind, the words falling from her.

‘What is it?' he said, pretending his own feigned confusion.

‘It's just that …'

Reimann tightened his face, visibly. ‘I understand!' he said curtly. ‘You've other arrangements? I understand.'

‘Yes … no … there's something, but …' He'd think there was someone else! That it hadn't been perfect and wonderful and special and that she had not truly felt happier than she ever had before in her entire life!

‘I said I understood.' Reimann was content that the tone was exactly right, offended yet politely trying to avoid her getting that impression.

‘No, please!' said Elke, recovering and determined that he really should properly understand. ‘There
is
something else: a long-standing family commitment.'

‘I shouldn't have assumed …' he said. Now he was playing the clumsy new lover, embarrassed at having tried to move too fast.

‘I would like to spend the day with you: really I would,' said Elke, hopeful of both placating and reassuring him.

Another of her perfect openings. Seizing it Reimann said: ‘Why don't you? Couldn't you rearrange the family commitment?'

‘It's come to be expected.' By whom? she demanded of herself at once. Certainly not Ursula, who'd sat oblivious for months, unseeing, unhearing, uninterested. Dr Schiller? What did it matter whether Dr Schiller had come to expect it or not? He'd never even told her the visits had any practical purpose; that they might help. And anyway she knew the answer to that herself, didn't she? So to whom was the commitment? Just to herself, she conceded. A commitment to part fill a day, to ease a conscience she was no longer sure was disturbed or needed easing.

‘With how busy you are and how busy I am, with all that's happening, I thought this would have been the best day for both of us,' pressured Reimann. ‘When we could have spent most time together.'

It
was
the best time: a whole day. ‘It would have been,' she said, her determination torn.

He bent quickly to kiss her, smiling sadly. ‘It was not something we could have planned in advance, was it?' said Reimann, who'd planned virtually every movement in advance. ‘We didn't know this was going to happen.'

She smiled back up at him, sad too. ‘No, we didn't,' she agreed.

‘You couldn't … No … I'm being unreasonably selfish …'

Who'd genuinely miss her, at Marienfels? No one! So why … The telephone sounded, breaking the reflection, startling them both. From the kitchen the dog began to bark, surprised too. Ida: it was only ever Ida who called. Not any longer, she thought at once, enjoying the correction: but he was here with her. The telephone shrilled on.

‘Aren't you going to answer it?' He wanted her to: there was no bedside extension, so she'd have to walk naked across the room, displaying herself. It would be another chip of privacy pared away.

‘I know who it will be. I can call back later.'

‘I
am
in the way, aren't I?'

‘No!' she said, urgently. ‘It'll be my sister.' Don't let him think there's another man!

‘I see,' he said. The doubt was heavy in his voice.

On and on went the telephone.

She didn't want to parade before him: let him see her without a robe! She knew it was absurd, after what they'd done – that she had nothing to be ashamed of, about her body – but she just didn't want to: it seemed … Too soon, she decided: that's what it was, too soon. Haplessly she said: ‘Her name's Ida.'

‘And she won't go away,' said Reimann. He shifted, moving away from her, and Elke correctly interpreted it as his separating himself from her.

Hurriedly she threw back the covers, partially exposing him as well, and jerked herself up from the bed. Knowing again how foolish it must seem she kept her back to him as she snatched a wrap-around robe from her closet, just needing to half turn as she put it on. Only as she went through the door did she turn, to smile at him.

Reimann was already smiling. At her shyness, mostly, but also at the pleasurable realization of how firm-bodied she was: no sag at all to her ass, which she'd kept towards him, and there'd been very little droop to her tits, as she'd turned.

‘Were you in the bath? You've taken ages! I wanted to catch you, before you left! How was it?' gabbled Ida, as soon as Elke lifted the receiver.

‘No,' said Elke, tasting the moment, proudly. ‘I wasn't in the bath.'

‘So how was it!' demanded Ida, missing the hint.

‘Fantastic,' said Elke The precise description, she thought: absolutely and utterly fantastic.

‘I want to hear
everything!'

‘It's not really convenient, not now.'

‘Not con … WHAT?'

‘You're shouting.'

‘So should you be!'

‘I have been.'

‘I don't believe this!'

Thanks!'

‘I mean I'm pleased for you … happy. Christ, Elke!'

‘I'll speak to you later …' She hesitated, enjoying herself. ‘… I'm not sure when that will be.'

‘Don't lose him, darling!' urged Ida. ‘Just don't lose him!'

‘No,' Elke accepted. She remained by the telephone after putting it back on its rest, savouring the conversation. At once, more seriously, definite parts came back to her.
I
wanted to catch you, before you left.
And then another.
Don't lose him. Just don't lose him.

Dr Schiller came quickly to the telephone, when Elke identified herself. Something had arisen which made it difficult for her to visit today. The principal understood. She hardly thought Ursula would miss her, just this once. Schiller didn't think so, either. They agreed they would see each other the following Sunday.

Elke began to move towards the bedroom door but instead, at the last minute, went sideways, to the bathroom, sighing with dismay at the make-up debris around her eyes and the matted tangle of her hair. She quickly rinsed her face and brushed her hair, although not too neatly, as if she had been trying.
Don't lose him
echoed in her head.

When she re-entered the bedroom through the different linking door Reimann was lying as she had left him, the covers thrown off, exposing him.

Reimann saw her look and was pleased because it was another tiny lowering of her shy reserve. Soon, he promised himself, it would be destroyed completely: she had to be virtually wanton, needing him. He saw she'd washed her face and repaired her hair, just a little. ‘Everything OK?'

Elke hesitated at her own bed, unsure what to do. She got in, but high, with her back against the headboard, keeping the robe on. She said, ‘It was Ida.' The evasion easily to hand, she added: ‘And I cancelled going to see her. I'm looking forward to Cologne.'

You have positively to confront the lie, thought Reimann, recalling the psychological instruction. He said: ‘It was your sister you'd arranged to see?

‘Yes,' confirmed Elke. ‘She said she understood.' Not the time or the place to tell him the truth: she still didn't know how to do it!
Don't lose him.
That was all she could think of at the moment.

She was relying upon him to decide whatever they were going to do, guessed Reimann. She'd had enough sex and he certainly wasn't interested any more: it had served its momentary purpose. The apartment, he reminded himself. He said: ‘Why don't you use the bathroom – get ready – first?'

‘I'll be quick,' she promised.

I won't, mused Reimann.

As soon as he heard her bath running Reimann moved, and was lucky at once, locating her diary in the second drawer of her bedside cabinet. He didn't attempt to take it out, frightened of her emerging unexpectedly. The remainder of the drawers held nothing of interest. He found the photographs of Ursula just as quickly but again merely noted where they were, not trying to take them out for a closer examination. Everything, in every drawer – underwear and scarves and tights and sweaters – was stored with incredible neatness, as if it were regulated to a pattern. Reimann stopped searching after the last of the dressing-table drawers and was back on the bed, where she'd left him, when Elke re-entered.

‘Casual?' she said.

‘I haven't got anything else and I don't want to go back to my apartment,' said Reimann. ‘I feel like soaking for a while, though. Why don't you get dressed and take Poppi out?'

‘I was going to suggest that,' agreed Elke, at once.

Reimann rinsed himself in the bath while the taps were running – the plug out so the water ran immediately away – and was already dry, waiting, when Elke called through the door that she was going. The taps were still running, as if he had not yet got in. He emerged as soon as he heard the apartment door close behind her, making directly for the diary.

The entries were stultifyingly dull. There were no intimacies, no confessions. Not even the phrasing changed. Saturday was invariably
Lunch with Ida and family. A pleasant day.
It was interesting, though, that Sundays, when she visited her daughter, were never described as pleasant days. There was only one Sunday entry that intrigued him.
A bad day.
What, he wondered, had been bad about that particular Sunday? Reimann was curious how this weekend would be recorded: he'd have to look, somewhere in the future.

After plodding through the monotonous repetition of the first two months of the year Reimann was tempted to abandon the diary as useless, but he didn't, driven on by inherent professionalism. And was glad he'd continued, when he came to an entry different from all the others.
1
.
30,000. Fool.
Reimann stared down, sure it was important. But how? And why? Questions he had to answer. Maybe there wasn't a significance: maybe it only looked interesting because it
was
different, a break in the boredom. Worth remembering, that's all. Caught by an idea, unsure why it hadn't occurred to him earlier, he flicked on to the date of the supposed accident.
Car badly damaged in a hit-and-run accident.
The man innocently involved was extremely kind. Very unhappy.
No reference to anyone called Dietlef Becker, he noted: maybe the similarity hadn't been so important after all. She wasn't unhappy any longer, he was sure. Now she was extremely happy. Grateful, too. Quickly he found Elke's entry after his visit to the apartment to borrow the book. How correct his immediate, gloating reflection had been! It was the longest entry he'd come upon. A detailed account of the visit and her every nervousness over it.
Wonderful,
she had written, in her well-formed, easily legible handwriting.
It was utterly wonderful. I mustn't use wonderful any more. I mustn't do anything to bore him.
Wonderful, thought Reimann, taking her excluded word for his own amusement. He'd been quite wrong, thinking the diary was useless. Although he'd believed it had been obvious, from the way she'd behaved, he definitely knew now how anxious she was, how afraid she was of losing him. She'd spelled it out to him! Thank you! Then, aloud, he said: ‘So don't bore me, Elke. And I'll get terribly bored if you don't tell me everything I want to hear.'