Selected Stories

Those who remained left in a bunch then, the Germans telling about Wasservexierungsport, a practical joke involving jets of water. You put your ten pfennigs into a slot machine to bring the lights on in a grotto and found yourself drenched instead. ‘Water-vexing,’ the outboard-motors man translated.

‘You could stay here, you know,’ Tony said when he and Liese had collected the glasses and the ashtrays, when everything had been washed and dried, the cushions plumped up, a window opened to let in a stream of cold night air.

‘But I have yet to finish packing up my things. The morning will be busy.’

They walked about the flat that soon would be their home, going from room to room, although they knew the rooms well. Softly, the music still played, and they danced a little in the small hall, happy to be alone now. The day they’d met there had been an office party in the busy lunchtime restaurant, a lot of noise, and a woman in a spotted red dress quarrelling with her friend at the table next to theirs. How cautious Liese had been that day was afterwards remembered; and how cautious she’d been – much later – when Tony said he loved her. Remembered, too, with that same fondness was how both of them had wanted marriage, not some substitute, how they had wanted the binding of its demands and vows and rigours. London was the city of their romance and it was in London – to the discomfort and annoyance of her parents, defying all convention – that Liese had insisted the marriage should take place.

While they danced, Tony noticed that his telephone receiver was still lying beside the directories. More than half an hour ago he had forgotten about it. He reached to pick it up, bringing their dance to an end. He said:

‘She hasn’t put hers back.’

Liese took the receiver from him. She listened, too, and heard the empty sound of a connected line. ‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘Hullo.’

‘She forgot. She went to bed.’

‘Would she forget, Tony?’

‘Well, something like it.’

‘She give a name? You have the number still?’

Tony shook his head. ‘She didn’t give a name.’ He had forgotten the number; he’d probably never even been aware of it, he said.

‘What did she say, Tony?’

‘Only that she was without a husband.’

‘Her husband was out? At this time?’

They had drawn away from one another. Tony turned the music off. He said:

‘She meant she was widowed. She wasn’t young. Seventy-three or something like that.’

‘This old woman goes to her loft -’

‘Well, I mean, she said she would. More likely, she didn’t believe a word I said.’

‘She went to look for a stepladder and a flashlight. You told us.’

‘I think she said she was cold in her nightdress. More likely, she just went back to bed. I don’t blame her.’

Listening again, Liese said:

‘I can hear the cat.’

But when she passed the receiver over, Tony said he couldn’t hear anything. Nothing whatsoever, he said.

‘Very far away. The cat was mewing, and suddenly it stopped. Don’t put it back!’ Liese cried when Tony was about to return the receiver to its cradle. ‘She is there in her loft, Tony.’

‘Oh, honestly, I don’t think so. Why should she be? It doesn’t take long to turn a stop-cock off.’

‘What is a stop-cock?’

‘Just a way of controlling the water.’

The mewing of the cat came faintly to him, a single mew and then another. Not knowing why he did so, Tony shook his head again, silently denying this sound. Liese said:

‘She could have fallen down. It would be hard to see with her flashlight and she could have fallen down.’

‘No, I don’t think so.’ For the first time in the year and a half she had known him Liese heard a testiness in Tony’s voice. There was no point in not replacing the receiver, he said. ‘Look, let’s forget it, Liese.’

Solemnly, but in distress, Liese gazed into the features of the man she was to marry in just over twelve hours’ time. He smiled a familiar, easy smile. No point, he said again, more softly. No point of any kind in going on about this.

‘Honestly, Liese.’

They had walked about, that first afternoon. He had taken her through Green Park, then down to the river. She was in London to perfect her English; that afternoon she should have been at another class. And it was a quarter past five before Tony explained, untruthfully, his absence from his desk. The next day they met again.

‘Nothing has happened, Liese.’

‘She could be dead.’

‘Oh, Liese, don’t be silly.’

At once, having said that, Tony apologized. Of course she wasn’t silly. That game was silly. He was sorry they’d played it tonight.

‘But, Tony -’

‘Of course she isn’t dead.’

‘Why do you think you can be sure?’