She watched him going along the corridor, pause at the end, raise the bottle high above his head in a salute, and disappear down the creaking staircase. She closed the door, leant against it, and found that she was crying. She wiped her cheek briskly. To cry so easily! Sentimentality. Such a romantic creature. Of course, I don’t cry for myself but for his courage; courage is always wonderfully moving in the face of adversity. And he faces that all right. And that heavy Isobel, God what a dumpy bore she is. Kind, sure, but a bore. A child-breeder. But that’s just what he wanted for his tribe.

She pulled off her too-tight shoes, and dropped them in the hearth of the blue-tiled stove, traced her finger round the cool tiles. A swan, a mill house, a well, a leaping stag. I remember you. Lying here in bed on cold winter nights, Frau Schmoller creeping in to see if I was asleep, a bundle of clothing in her arms. ‘Not asleep yet! Here are your things for tomorrow, we’ll put them round the stove to air, to take off the chill. There, like that and that and that. All warm for the morning.’ And hid you with woollen vests and stockings. So long ago. So far away and yet, tonight suddenly, terrifyingly near. Mamma at one end of the table, Horst at the other; candles, Frieda with the soup tureen, the house-wine in tall glass jugs, sweet peas, the high-boned face of Agnes Gollrad from Kitzbühel: ‘I long for the snow, I am not a summer-woman.’ And by God she was not. Dr Langerdorf smiling through thick glasses. ‘And where in England are you studying? In London or perhaps in the country? It is so gentle, the English countryside, very much like this … of course we are also very much like the English here, don’t you find? We are, after all, not Bavarians!’ A great laugh of windy pleasure, he had wiped his lips. ‘I know very well that English people think of all Germans as fat and beery and wearing hats with feathers and badger brushes! But we are not like that up here … I am sure you make that very clear where you are? A good ambassadress, for this State, eh?’ He talked so much about his bloody State that I had no chance to answer, which was a relief to Mamma, I could see.

And the Toast to Horst. Touching, idiotic, solemn, as it should be: with the searchlight sweeping beyond the hill. And after, on the terrace, coffee and cognac, midges spiralling upwards, the air soft, bats swooping, soft rustle of silk, Agnes, Isobel and Annie laughing together, the wavering blue flame under the coffee pot. Mamma’s strong arm, pouring. The scent of cigars from the men still talking in the saloon, the rumble of their conversation blurring the wist fulness of ‘Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss,’ from the record-player as Horst started the ‘Concert’. Sentimentality, nostalgia, sticky sweetness seeping out into the stillness of the evening. Time coming in like a tide, and I trapped in their cave of harmony. The searchlight flicking rhythmically across the far skyline, the diffused beam of a lighthouse, the water of hated-familiarity lapping at my feet, swirling about my ankles, mounting to my shins, higher and higher, colder and colder, to my waist, my chest. Panic growing. I would suffocate there, I would drown.