Charity

‘And when do you think?’

‘Please, darling. The children’s future is hardly something to be settled at this time of night, when both of us are worn out.’

‘You can’t keep on avoiding it, Fi.’

‘I’m not avoiding it,’ she said, her voice raised a tone or so. ‘But this is not the time or the place, surely you can see that.’

It was obviously going to cause an argument if I pursued it further. I was angry. I washed and cleaned my teeth and went to bed without speaking to her other than a brusque goodnight.

‘Goodnight, darling,’ she said happily as I switched out the light. I shut my reddened eyes and knew no more until Fiona was hammering at me and shouting something I couldn’t comprehend.

‘What?’

‘The window! Someone is trying to force their way in!’

I jumped out of bed but I knew it was nothing. I was getting used to Fiona’s disturbed sleep. I went to the window, opened it and looked out. I froze in the cold country air. ‘Nothing here.’

‘It must have been the wind,’ said Fiona. She was fully awake now. And contrite. ‘I’m sorry, darling.’ She got out of bed and came to the window with a dispirited weariness that made me feel very sorry for her.

‘There’s nothing there,’ I said, and gave her a hug.

‘I think I must have eaten something that upset me.’

‘Yes,’ I said. She always blamed such awakenings on indigestion. She always said she couldn’t remember anything of the dream itself. So now I no longer asked her about them. Instead I played along with her explanations. I said: ‘The fennel sauce on the fish, it was very creamy.’

‘That must have been it,’ she said.

‘You’ve been working too hard. You should slow down a little.’

‘I can’t.’ She sank down at the dressing-table and brushed her hair in a mood of sad introspection. ‘I’m directly involved in all the exchanges between Bonn and the DDR. Enormous sums of money are being given to them. I wonder how much of it is being pocketed by Honecker and Co, and how much gets through. Sometimes I worry about it. And they become more and more demanding.’

I watched her. The doctor had given her some tablets. She said they were no more than pep pills – ‘a tonic’. She had them on the dressing-table and now she took two pills and drank some water to swallow them. She did it automatically. She always had the tablets with her. I had a feeling that she took them whenever she felt low, and that meant frequently. I said: ‘How do you pay them?’

‘Depends. It falls into four categories: Western currency payments to the East German State, Western currency payments to private individuals, trade credits guaranteed by Bonn, and a hotchpotch of trade deals that wouldn’t be done except that we – or more frequently Bonn – push them along. I don’t have much to do with that end of it. We are only really interested in the money that goes to the Church.’

‘Is the Department involved in any of the money transfers?’

‘It’s complicated. Our contact is a man named Stoppl. He’s a founder of “the Protestant Church in Socialism”, a committee of East German churchmen who negotiate with their regime’s leaders and do deals. Some deals involve the Western Churches too – there is a Church trust which arranges the money – or sometimes Bonn. All of these deals are very secret, things are done but never revealed. Sometimes we have Honecker and Stoppl negotiating one-to-one, out at Honecker’s Berlin home on the Wandlitzsee.’