She resented that. ‘Oh, like you never were?’
‘I never left him alone.’
‘It’s very difficult on my own!’
‘It’s your damn fault you’re on your own.’
Jacky said: ‘George, you’re in the wrong here.’
‘Stay out of this, Mom.’
‘No. It’s my house and my grandson, and I won’t stay out of anything.’
‘I can’t overlook this, Mom! She did wrong.’
‘If I’d never done anything wrong, I wouldn’t have you.’
‘That’s nothing to do with it.’
‘I’m just saying we all make mistakes, and sometimes things turn out all right anyway. So stop beating Verena up. It won’t do any good.’
Reluctantly, George saw that she was right. ‘But what are we going to do?’
Verena said: ‘I’m sorry, George, but I just can’t cope.’ She started to cry.
Jacky said: ‘Well, now that we’ve stopped yelling, maybe we can start thinking. This nanny of yours is no good.’
Verena said: ‘You don’t know how difficult it is to get a nanny! And it’s worse for us than for most people. Everyone else hires illegal immigrants and pays them cash, but politicians have to have someone with a green card who pays tax, so no one wants the job!’
‘All right, calm down, I’m not blaming you,’ Jacky said to Verena. ‘Maybe I can help.’
George and Verena stared at Jacky.
Jacky said: ‘I’m sixty-four, I’m about to retire, and I need something to do. I’ll be your back-up. If your nanny lets you down, just bring Jack here. Leave him here overnight when you need to.’
‘Boy,’ said George, ‘that sounds like a solution to me.’
Verena said: ‘Jacky, that would be wonderful!’
‘Don’t thank me, honey, I’m being selfish. I’ll get to see my grandson more.’
George said: ‘Are you sure it won’t be too much work, Mom?’
Jacky made a contemptuous noise. ‘When was the last time something was too much work for me?’
George smiled. ‘Never, I guess.’
And that settled it.
56
Rebecca’s tears were cold on her cheeks.
It was October, and a biting wind from the North Sea was blowing across Ohlsdorf Cemetery in Hamburg. This graveyard was one of the largest in the world, a thousand acres of sadness and mourning. It had a monument to victims of Nazi persecution, a walled grove for Resistance fighters, and a mass grave for the 38,000 Hamburg men, women and children killed in ten days by Operation Gomorrah, the Allied bombing campaign of summer 1943.
There was no special area for victims of the Wall.
Rebecca knelt down and picked up the dead leaves scattered over her husband’s grave. Then she placed a single red rose on the earth.
She stood still, looking at the tombstone, remembering him.
Bernd had been dead a year. He had lived to sixty-two, which was good for a man with spinal cord injury. In the end his kidneys had failed, a common cause of death in such cases.
Rebecca thought about his life. It had been blighted by the Wall, and by the injury he had received escaping from East Germany, but despite that he had lived well. He had been a good schoolteacher, perhaps a great one. He had defied the tyranny of East German Communism and escaped to freedom. His first marriage had ended in divorce, but he and Rebecca had loved each other passionately for twenty years.
She did not need to come here to remember him. She thought about him every day. His death was an amputation: she was constantly surprised to find he was not there. Alone in the flat they had shared for so long, she often talked to him, telling him about her day, commenting on the news, saying how she felt, hungry or tired or restless. She had not altered the place, and it still had the ropes and handles that had enabled him to move himself around. His wheelchair stood at the side of the bed as if ready for him to sit upright and haul himself into it. When she masturbated, she imagined him lying beside her, one arm around her, the warmth of his body, his lips on hers.
Fortunately, her work was constantly absorbing and challenging. She was now a junior minister in the foreign affairs department of the West German government. Because she spoke Russian and had lived in East Germany she specialized in Eastern Europe. She had little free time.
Tragically, the reunification of Germany seemed ever farther away. Diehard East German leader Erich Honecker appeared unassailable. People were still being killed trying to escape across the Wall. And in the Soviet Union the death of Andropov had only brought in yet another ailing septuagenarian leader, Konstantin Chernenko. From Berlin to Vladivostock, the Soviet empire was a bog in which its citizens struggled and often sank but never made progress.
Rebecca realized her mind had wandered from Bernd. It was time to go. ‘Goodbye, my love,’ she said softly, and she walked slowly away from the grave.
She pulled her heavy coat around her and folded her arms as she crossed the cold cemetery. She gratefully got into her vehicle and turned on the engine. She was still driving the van with the wheelchair hoist. It was time she traded it in for a normal car.
She drove to her apartment. Outside her building was a shiny black Mercedes S500, with a chauffeur in a cap standing beside it. Her spirits lifted. As she expected, she found that Walli had let himself into the apartment with his own key. He was sitting at the kitchen table with the radio on, tapping his foot to a pop song. On the table was a copy of Plum Nellie’s latest album, The Interpretation of Dreams. ‘I’m glad I caught you,’ he said. ‘I’m on my way to the airport. I’m flying to San Francisco.’ He stood up to kiss her.
He would be forty in a couple of years, and he looked great. He still smoked, but he never took drugs or alcohol. He was wearing a tan leather jacket over a blue denim shirt. Some girl ought to snap him up, Rebecca thought; but although he had girlfriends he seemed in no hurry to settle down.
When she kissed him she touched his arm and noticed that the leather of his jacket was as soft as silk. It had probably cost a fortune. She said: ‘But you’ve only just finished your album.’
‘We’re doing a tour of the States. I’m going to Daisy Farm for three weeks of rehearsal. We open in Philadelphia in a month.’
‘Give the boys my love.’
‘Sure will.’
‘It’s a while since you toured.’
‘Three years. Hence the long rehearsal. But stadium gigs are where it’s at now. It’s not like the All-Star Touring Beat Review, with twelve bands playing two or three songs each to a couple of thousand people in a theatre or gymnasium. It’s just fifty thousand people and us.’
‘Will you do some European dates?’
‘Yes, but they haven’t been fixed yet.’
‘Any in Germany?’
‘Almost certainly.’
‘Let me know.’
‘Of course. I may be able to get you a free ticket.’
Rebecca laughed. As Walli’s sister, she was treated like royalty whenever she went backstage at a Plum Nellie gig. The band had often talked in interviews about the old days in Hamburg, and how Walli’s big sister used to give them their only good meal of the week. For that she was famous in the world of rock and roll.
‘Have a great tour,’ she said.
‘You’re about to fly to Budapest, aren’t you?’
‘For a trade conference, yes.’
‘Will there be some East Germans there?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘Do you think one of them might be able to get an album to Alice?’
Rebecca grimaced. ‘I don’t know. My relations with East German politicians are not warm. They think I’m a lackey of the capitalist imperialists, and I think they are unelected thugs who rule by terror and keep their people imprisoned.’
Walli smiled. ‘So, not much common ground, then.’
‘No. But I’ll try.’
‘Thanks.’ He handed her the disc.
Rebecca looked at the photograph on the sleeve, of four middle-aged men with long hair and blue jeans. Buzz, the randy bass player, was overweight. The gay drummer, Lew, was losing his hair. Dave, the leader of the band, had a touch of grey in his hair. They were established, successful, and rich. She remembered the hungry kids who had come here to this apartment: thin, scruffy, witty, charming, and full of hopes and dreams. ‘You’ve done well,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ said Walli. ‘We have.’