by Helen Grant
‘I can do better,’ I said, trying not to sound as though I were pleading. ‘I really want to try.’
My father put a large hand across the table and touched my clasped hands. ‘Steffi, it’s a good thing to want to improve yourself. But have you thought how you would manage your bakery studies and the hours in the kitchen if you were trying to study at night too?’
I took a deep breath. ‘I wouldn’t go on with the bakery course.’
‘I know you said that,’ said my father patiently. ‘But have you really thought about it?’
‘Of course I –’
‘Suppose you give up the course and go to night school to do your exams – what if you don’t get the grades you need? What then?’ He shook his head. ‘Even if you manage it, there’s no guarantee of a place to study anywhere.’
‘I still want to try,’ I said.
My father sighed. ‘Steffi, I don’t want to order you to go on with the course.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t order you, in fact. You’re practically grown up. But there are other considerations. You’re halfway through training. We can’t afford to take on another trainee in your place and support you while you study something else. The bakery isn’t making enough to do that. I’m sorry, because I don’t want to tell you no for reasons like that, but unfortunately that’s the way it is.’
I didn’t reply. I felt as though I were choking on the emotions which warred within me: disappointment, frustration and guilt. I could see perfectly well what my father was saying; if the money wasn’t there, it was completely impossible. I had upset my parents and I was no better off than before. In fact, I was worse off, because before I had had hope.
‘Look,’ said my father kindly, ‘your sister, Magdalena, wanted to be an actress, did I ever tell you that?’
I looked up in astonishment. My parents mentioned Magdalena so rarely that it was a shock to hear her name on my father’s lips.
‘No,’ I said.
‘She did,’ said my father. ‘But careers like that – if you can call them careers – singing, acting – they’re very uncertain. You probably think it’s easy –’ if my father saw me open my mouth to protest at that he gave no sign, but simply swept on – ‘but for every person who actually makes a living out of being a singer or an actress there are thousands who don’t.’
‘I don’t want to be rich,’ I said desperately.
‘You may not think you do,’ said my father. ‘But you have to live on something.’ He patted my hands. ‘You could continue with your bakery course and, if you still think you want to sing, why not join a choir?’
This was both undeniably sensible and deeply dispiriting. But I could not bring myself to assent to it. As soon as possible, I escaped to my room to think.
If I thought that was the end of the discussion, I had thought too soon, however. After supper my father went straight to bed. Within ten minutes the sound of his snoring was droning around the flat. I was sitting on my bed with the little bundle of euro notes in my hands, wondering if it would have made any difference if I had asked for five thousand euros instead of five hundred, or even fifty thousand. Suddenly the door opened and my mother entered the room, so precipitately that I barely had time to stuff the money under my pillow. I saw at one glance that she was livid with fury. She was still clad in the green dirndl and her blonde curls bounced smartly as she burst in, with somewhat the effect of snakes bristling around a Gorgon’s head. In spite of her anger she managed to remember to shut the door quietly so as not to wake my father.
‘Well, miss,’ she hissed. ‘I hope you’re pleased with yourself.’
I looked at her in astonishment.
‘You’re breaking your father’s heart.’
I could hear the snoring which floated around the flat, vibrating like a bass note. Thankfully it seemed he was not too heartbroken to sleep, though I dared not point this out. In fact, I realized as I looked at my mother’s furious face that it would probably be unwise to say anything at all. I had better let her scold me until she ran out of steam.
‘Do you know how long he’s worked in this bakery?’ my mother demanded. ‘Thirty years. Thirty years, since he took it over from old Kastenholz.’ She paused, her bosom heaving alarmingly in her white frilly blouse. ‘Does that mean anything to you?’ She didn’t wait for a reply. ‘Well, I’ll tell you this, young lady. Don’t think you’re living off us if you throw it all away to do some ridiculous music course. You can pay your own way.’ She snorted. ‘I don’t think you’ll find it so easy then. You can’t live off musical notes. You might think about that.’
There was a lot more in the same vein. I sat on the bed with my cheeks burning and an uncomfortable consciousness of the roll of euro notes stuffed hastily under the pillow, a mere millimetre out of sight. I did my best to keep my face composed, sensing that if I cried or shouted back it would just make things worse. There was an unstable edge to my mother’s fury, as though it were feeding on some inner poison, but eventually her ranting wound down, like the batteries of an alarm clock someone has left to ring and ring.
‘Thirty years, all for nothing,’ she finished, and in a paroxysm of rage she lifted her right hand as though to slap me. A spasm passed over her face and I realized that she was holding herself back with the utmost difficulty. Then she actually stamped her foot, like an angry child, turned on her heel and stalked out of the room.
After a moment I got up and went to the open door. I looked out, but there was no sign of my mother. Either she had gone into my father’s room or she had shut herself up in the kitchen. Carefully I closed the door.
I sat down on the bed again, drawing out the hidden money from under the pillow. Five hundred euros. A lot of money, but not enough to live on. I held the notes in my hands, feeling their wrinkled texture, the tiny crumples in the paper. It was like touching skin. It worked for five hundred euros, I said to myself. Would it work if I asked for more?
CHAPTER TWENTY
Friday morning dawned bright and sunny, but by then I had been up for some hours, helping my father. Sometimes he let me get up later than he did, but that morning he woke me very early with a loud knock on my bedroom door. I suspected that the knocking, like the rapping at a spiritualist meeting, had a message in it. This one was: It’s business as usual.
I shrugged on the white jacket with my sister’s name on the pocket and went downstairs. The memory of the previous night’s discussion was still raw, but I consoled myself with the thought of the evening to come. One thing in my life had changed, at any rate: I was no longer doomed to yearn for Kai from afar.
Never had the working day dragged by so slowly. I would look up from my work in the kitchen, where I would be glazing a batch of buns or sprinkling poppy seeds on to a tray of rolls, and gaze hopelessly at the clock. Sometimes it seemed as though the hands were not moving at all; once I went to check that they had not stopped altogether. When at last I was able to go back up to the flat and take off the baker’s whites, I was worn out with the anticipation. I decided I’d better take a nap, otherwise I risked spending the entire evening yawning at Kai.
By seven twenty I was downstairs in the cafe, peering out of the front window, hoping to catch a glimpse of him coming down the street. I still didn’t know whether he would be bringing the dashing red sports car or not. At seven twenty-five, suffering a crisis of confidence, I dashed to the ladies’ room at the back of the cafe to check my appearance in the big mirror. Were jeans too casual? The ones I had on were my newest, and I had teamed them with a jacket and a slightly bohemian-looking shirt which had seemed perfect when I put it on, chic but not trying too hard; now, however, I began to have extravagant imaginings about the type of place a person like Kai von Jülich might frequent. He might take me somewhere really smart, where jeans would look hopelessly scruffy. Get a grip, I thought. It’ll probably be the bowling alley in Schönau. But still my mind ran on, conjuring up images of us in some expensive restaurant, maybe that fancy one on the
edge of Euskirchen, with waiters offering to bring me a glass of Sekt. I wondered whether I should run upstairs and change.
Outside the bakery, a car horn sounded. As I hurtled out of the ladies’ room, breathless and probably pink in the face, I heard it again, loud and impatient. I ran for the door. Through the bakery’s front window I could already catch a glimpse of gleaming red. Kai had brought the sports car. The bakery door banged shut behind me as I clattered down the few steps into the street.
Kai was sitting at the wheel, looking as usual as though he had just stepped out of the pages of a magazine, blond, bronzed and beautiful. Suddenly I felt almost afraid. He was so good-looking that it was intimidating. Someone like him didn’t belong with someone like me. Surely the whole thing was a joke? I almost expected him to lower the window and say, Get out of my way, can’t you? I’m waiting for someone important.
But he didn’t. He leaned over and opened the passenger door.
‘Steffi, get in.’
I fumbled with my bag, cursing myself for being a clumsy idiot, then climbed into the car, thumping my head on the door frame as I did so. Having made as much of a fool of myself as possible, I was almost too abashed to look at Kai. My attempt at a cheery greeting came out as a hoarse squeak and I subsided into the low-slung seat with my face burning, doing my best to hide behind my hair.
Kai leaned towards me and for a moment I almost flinched back. I could still not quite get it into my head that we were really here together in his car, that it wasn’t some kind of mistake. Then he put out a hand and brushed the hair back from my face, twisting the fair strands in his long fingers. The next second he was kissing me.
It wasn’t as though I had never been kissed before; Timo and I had been going out for three years. All the same, the passion behind Kai’s kissing took me aback. I felt as though I were about to be eaten alive. Nor could I break away with Kai’s fingers entwined in my hair. With a distinct feeling of shock I realized that his other hand was moving purposefully across the front of my shirt.
I froze, barely able to breathe, limp in the clutches of the maelstrom inside me, like a drowning person being sucked down into the depths of a whirlpool. Anxiety that one of my parents would step out of the bakery and see me in a clinch of vampiric proportions mixed with a strange excitement. Tentatively I put up a hand and touched Kai’s hair. I closed my eyes.
Knocking. Someone was knocking. My eyes flew open as Kai broke the kiss, sitting back in his seat. He was scowling as he reached for his seat belt. I struggled to sit up, following the line of his angry gaze. Oh no.
Standing on the cobbles right beside the car was a compact figure firmly upholstered in green wool. Even if that grim and wrinkled face had not been visible from where I sat, I would have known that ugly edelweiss brooch anywhere. Frau Kessel. She was raising her knuckles to rap on the car window again. From the expression on her face I imagined she would have liked to throw a bucket of cold water over the pair of us. As pitiless as a searchlight, her gaze moved from my flustered face and dishevelled hair to the front of my shirt. Not daring to look down, I prayed that all my buttons were still done up.
Frau Kessel was gesturing for us to lower the windows. I would just as soon have signed my own death warrant, but sheer force of habit made me reach for the button. At that moment, however, Kai revved the engine and the car leapt forward, pressing me back into the padded seat and forcing Frau Kessel to step backwards rather smartly. As the car sped off down the street in frank defiance of the speed limit, I looked in the side mirror and saw Frau Kessel’s stiff and furious form diminishing behind us, like some evil genie vanishing back into its bottle. The old lady would not be so easily disposed of as that, I realized. I could only imagine what mileage she would get out of the scene she had just witnessed. It was lucky for us that the pillory outside the Rathaus was no longer in use, otherwise she would have been lobbying for the pair of us to be chained up and pelted with vegetables.
We swept around the town centre, the car rumbling on the cobblestones, and then we were driving out through the gap in the medieval walls. Kai had turned on a CD and the car was filled with the sound of a band I didn’t know, something loud and strident, grating voices fighting an insistent beat. It sounded more like the soundtrack to a violent film than the background to a romantic evening, but in a way I was relieved. The incident with Frau Kessel had rattled me and now I couldn’t think of a single thing to say to Kai.
Furtively I peeped at him through my curtain of fair hair. He wasn’t looking at me, didn’t even seem to be aware of me. His eyes were fixed on the road, his profile composed. Only a tightness around the jaw betrayed his irritation at the old lady’s interference.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked eventually as the car reached the edge of the town, but Kai didn’t hear me over the roaring and crashing of the music. It’s that place in Euskirchen, I thought, as we passed the car dealerships and the main road out of Bad Münstereifel lay before us. To my surprise, however, Kai turned left and we sped down a road I knew well. I had been here several times, very recently – only then it had been in the back of Max’s car, squashed between Timo and Hanna, and we had been heading for the Eschweiler Tal. For Rote Gertrud’s house.
I looked at the street flashing past, and at the road ahead, and I felt the strangest feeling of dislocation, as though I were in a rocket screaming into the sky and the world were dropping away behind me. The car was slowing as we reached the end of the tarmac. Of course. The track which led into the Tal was simply dirt and gravel. It would put a few scratches in that gleaming scarlet paintwork if we drove up it at high speed.
Why have we come here? I wanted to ask. My lips formed the words, but nothing came out. I wouldn’t have expected a reply even if Kai had been able to hear me. We were off the script now. My brain told me that it was completely impossible to make someone love you by writing a note to a dead witch in a filthy ruin in the woods. Kai must have wanted to ask me out anyway, that was the logical explanation. And yet here we were in the Eschweiler Tal, closing the distance between us and Rote Gertrud’s house as rapidly as Kai’s concern for his car would allow. It could not be coincidence, could it? And yet – suppose my scrawled words really had made this happen? How could a relationship born of such impossibility possibly go on?
Perhaps being here in the Tal was part of it, I thought. Perhaps Kai unknowingly felt the lure of that silent grey wreck hidden among the trees. It was not a comforting thought. Everything I knew about bargains made with things outside the rational world suggested that there would be a heavy price to pay.
The car was slowing down again. We were still some distance from the spot where Max had parked the times we visited Rote Gertrud’s house. Puzzled, I glanced at Kai. This didn’t make sense either. If the ruined house wasn’t the lure, what were we doing here? I looked at the track ahead. Although it was a fine spring evening, even warm, there was nobody in the Tal, not even a solitary dog walker or mountain biker. We were quite alone.
Kai pulled in at the side of the track and turned off the ignition, stopping the music mid-screech. As he turned to me, unclipping his seat belt, I realized that we had not really communicated since I got into the car, not unless you counted fastening on to each other’s faces like leeches. The way he was looking at me now caused little prickles of nervousness in my stomach. He didn’t look at me the way I had imagined and hoped he would, as though I were an angel descended from heaven. Instead there was a grim energy about him, as though he wanted to jump on me and sink his teeth into my neck. I had a feeling he was about to do more or less that very thing; he was going to kiss me again. Not that I had anything against that – I had wanted to go out with him for ages – but it didn’t feel right, sitting here in the car in the deserted Tal, with barely a word exchanged first.
As Kai moved towards me I found myself backing up against the window.
‘Um … Kai?’ I said.
‘Mmm?’ Kai’s face was coming closer and close
r, until it filled my vision. At such close quarters it was like looking at him through a fish-eye lens. I was unnerved.
‘Why –’ I started, and I had to turn my head to one side, otherwise his lips would have been on mine and speech would have been impossible. ‘Kai? Why did we come here?’
‘What?’
I had the distinct impression he was not listening to me. His hand was on my shoulder. I heard a click as he undid my seat belt.
‘Why did –’
‘Shhhh,’ he said, and his hand slid down to the front of my shirt.
I jumped like a startled cat. ‘What are you doing?’
‘What do you think?’
I was stunned by the casual tone of his voice. Timo and I had spent plenty of evenings fooling around when his parents were out, but it had never been like this. Kai wasn’t even trying to talk to me, to get to know me. Unbidden, Julius’s grim face flashed across my mind. He’s not a nice guy, he had said. Was this what he meant? Kai was probably used to getting everything he wanted. He was good-looking, he was rich – how many other students had a sports car? Every single girl in Bad Münstereifel wanted Kai. They’d probably do anything to be the one on his arm. Probably not one of them ever said –
‘No.’
I had surprised even myself. I put my hands up and pushed Kai as hard as I could, trying to get him off me. For a moment I thought I had succeeded, but then I saw that he was grinning, although there was no humour in his eyes.
‘Come off it, Steffi.’
He reached out for me again. I parried his hand with both of mine.
‘Stop it.’
This time I saw real anger flash across Kai’s face. It was as if I had seen through the handsome exterior to the real Kai beneath. I was shocked by what I saw, as though I had leaned forward to smell the scent of a rose and seen a fat worm come writhing out of it. The next second his expression was smoothed over, although his eyes remained hard.