A Hard Time to Be a Father

‘Rentals and so forth.’

They came to a park. An untidy slope of snow, thawing, green and brown tussock showing through the white, ran down to a partly frozen stream, tree-lined. Ducks swam in patches where the ice had melted, milling around, uncomfortably close to one another. Stella parked the BMW on the gravel verge. On the other side of the road, overlooking the park, stood turn-of-the-century apartment blocks, balconied, shabby but attractive in their deep Hanseatic colours. They had been built in an age where there was more space, fewer people; the buildings stood at a leisurely distance from one another, their proportions pleasant.

‘How attractive,’ said Lothar, who would always rather praise than blame. Good humour, he felt, made the world go round.

‘I lived here for eleven years,’ said Stella. ‘Up there on the fourth floor. The balcony with all the house plants.

I was married to a musician.’

‘What happened?’

‘He betrayed me,’ she said, and seemed disinclined to say more.

‘Did you love him?’ he pressed.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said bleakly.

She made no move to get out of the car. They sat there in silence. A duck made an aborted landing on the ice down below, and took off again directly. That made her laugh.

‘I moved out so she could move in,’ said Stella. ‘It was the sensible thing to do. So sensible, the Norwegians. She was Miss Oslo, a long time back. She had a degree in anthropology, and could play the bassoon besides.’

‘Miss Oslo?’ he was confused.

‘I’m talking the old world, not the new,’ she said. ‘I’m talking Beauty Queens. Hers was the female face and form Norway chose to present to the world. My husband served the same function, but as a musician. He would take his orchestra abroad: how everyone applauded: cut out clippings back home. They were made for each other. Though I think now there are financial problems. They are getting older: the young tread hard upon their heels. Incomes fall. You know how it is.’

A man came out of the wooden doors of the apartment block. He was in his early sixties, perhaps: thin, a little bent, gentle, elegant, a man of some dignity and authority. He carried a violin case. He did not notice the BMW or its occupants, though they should have been noticeable enough.

‘There he goes,’ said Stella. ‘There goes George. His mind on other things, as usual. Music, most likely. Miss Oslo had to all but lie on her back and wave her legs in front of him, before he so much as noticed. But such long legs, in the end he couldn’t help it. I don’t blame him, I blame her.’

‘Don’t you want to speak to him? Shouldn’t you go after him?’

‘More fun to speak to Miss Oslo, 1970,’ said Stella.

A blond boy of about twelve came out of the apartment door, and ran after George. He too had a violin case; it banged against his legs when he ran. He took George’s hand.

‘That will be Tora,’ said Stella. ‘They had a boy, later, a half-brother for Karianne.’

‘Karianne?’

‘My daughter,’ said Stella. ‘She chose to stay with her father. This is Norway: children have rights too, you know. She’s seventeen now. It seemed best to keep out of her life one way and another.’

A dark-eyed boy came out of the apartment block and stared at the car. He was Turkish, or perhaps Kurdish, with smooth plump, dusky cheeks; beautiful, rather girlish. Lothar thought he would be perfect as a model for the child in his next book. When the boy had enough of staring, he went in again.

‘He’ll have gone to fetch his friends,’ said Stella.

‘Don’t leave me alone here,’ said Lothar, suddenly nervous and a long way from things familiar. The sun had gone in: such snow which still rested on branches stopped glittering, and the white had a kind of deadness.

‘Don’t be so nervous,’ she said.

She reached across him and opened the glove box. She felt beneath papers and brought out a hand weapon, squat, dull and black, showed it briefly to Lothar, smiled, and tucked the gun back under the papers again.

‘A gun?’ he asked, incredulous. ‘A real one?’

‘Yes, and it’s loaded,’ she said. ‘So don’t be stupid with it. But guns make anyone feel safe. Just knowing they’re there.’

He remembered she’d made some kind of deal with a couple of young men in a bar the night before they left Copenhagen. A box had changed hands. She’d insisted on going to that particular bar, though there were better, smarter ones nearby, and the night was chilly. Click, click, her heels had gone down the cobbled harbour alleys.

‘Copenhagen’s cheap for weapons,’ she said. ‘I got it for a couple of hundred dollars. I’d have had to pay nearer eight back home.’

‘But why?’ he asked. ‘What can you possibly want a gun for?’

‘I’ll sell it to help pay for the trip,’ she said. ‘Since there’s a personal element in us coming here, I don’t like to charge it to my business. I hate being out of pocket.’

‘How do you get a weapon through customs?’

She looked at him sideways: eyes still bright and long-lashed; delinquent.

‘I have a friend in every port,’ she said. ‘It’s how I make my living.’

He supposed it to be a good living: her bracelet was solid gold; the buckle on her belt likewise. Her cases were soft leather. She’d paid cash for the car hire: she kept a wad of notes in her bag, rolled and in a rubber band. Too many for a wallet.

He could see he was of no practical use to her: she must sincerely want his company, or at least his body. He was flattered. This powerful, dangerous, effective person, with so much history, her body melting into his at night.

Now a young woman came out of the apartment block: pretty, and healthy, long-legged, black tights, short yellow skirt, leather jacket. A willowy black youth came out after her: shaven headed, well featured. They walked off hand in hand, black and white.

‘There goes the future,’ said Stella, without bitterness.

‘My daughter and what they’ve made of her. I’m going up.’

And without further ado, she left the car and vanished through the doors of the apartment block. She left the gun where it was: he was relieved. He had thought perhaps she was on some mission of vengeance. A group of boys, some nine or ten of them, had come out to stare at the BMW. They kept to their side of the road, reverential, passive and well behaved enough. They’d moved aside without protest, to let Stella by.

Lothar found his mouth was dry. He felt trapped. He realised he had no krone, only marks. He wished he could drive. Perhaps when he got back to Berlin he would give up the more extreme of his ecological principles, and take lessons. But would he be going back to Berlin? Past and future seemed to retreat. Supposing this alarming woman asked him to join her in England? What then? He might even accept. In theory, it was easy to work and earn in any European country.

He adjusted the driving mirror the better to see his face. He looked tired: the last couple of nights’ exhaustion showed. He took a compact out of his travelling bag, and opened it: dark blue eye-shadow. He applied a little to his eyelids with his fingers and smoothed it in. The action calmed him: he found people seldom noticed. Now a little mascara on the lashes. Soft, young, dark eyes looked back at him, but they weren’t his, they were out of the side mirror. The boy and his friends had crept up to the car. Now they pointed and laughed, white teeth sharp in wide mouths. He knew enough about vehicles to switch on the BMW’s ignition and close a crack of window, which he saw was open on the driver’s side. With a casual elbow, he triggered the central locking system.

He felt safer. He switched on the radio and stared fixedly ahead. The radio gave him rock music. Making as little movement as he could, he changed the station. Jerome Kern. When he allowed himself to look again the children had retreated to their own side of the street. Hostility now seemed to be mixed with curiosity. Avoid eye contact, he thought. Where were their mothers? Their fathers? Was there no one about to disperse them, send them about their business? Did the police never come down here?

On the fourth floor of the apartment block Miss Oslo opened her front door, thinking it was the dry-cleaning delivery, and saw George’s wife standing there. Most people by the time they arrived up here were panting a little. But Stella’s breath came easily.

‘I didn’t know you were in Oslo,’ said the former beauty queen. She had the sculpted face of so many Scandinavian women past their first youth: the hair scraped firmly back; handsome, all character, no nonsense.

‘I was just passing through,’ said Stella, and laughed. All kinds of things seemed to amuse her.

‘No one goes to Oslo on the way to anywhere,’ observed Miss Oslo. ‘You’ve just missed the others. What a pity! Little Tora went off with his father: they play such good music together. And Karianne’s off with her boyfriend for a couple of days. You should have given us some warning.’

‘It’s you I’ve come to see.’

‘I’m delighted,’ said Miss Oslo, backing into the layers of foliage which broke up the cold clean lines of the apartment. ‘You are always welcome here.’