with four different vegetables, involved a more serious
problem.
'This plate is too small. You see - it will be everything on
top of each other.'
'I'm sorry, madame. I'm afraid that is the largest plate
we have."
'Then please bring me a fresh plate, very hot, put the
Wiener Schnitzel on it and leave the vegetable dishes here
on the table.'
I can imagine the snub I would have got if I'd made such
a request. The head waiter supervised his minions in doing
as she wished and a few minutes later returned to ask
whether all was now to her liking. With her mouth full, she
said it was wunderbar, at which he appeared much gratified.
I myself found it difficult to eat. There was a kind of
surging excitement in my stomach. I could not take my
eyes off her. I watched her every movement, gesture and
facial expression as one might watch a rainbow or a weir
of leaping salmon. It will fade, they will be gone and you
are left to walk home in the rain. Once she looked at my
plate, still half-full of steak, sausage, bacon and kidney, and
shook her head.
'Alan - a man should eat.'
'I'm quite happy, honestly. I'm enjoying the champagne.
Are you?'
She drained her glass and instantly a waiter refilled it.
80
'}a sehr. But it will make me drunk. No, not drunk. What
should I say? - tipsy - can you say that?'
'You can. No, don't frown. It's a perfectly good word.
Let's both be tipsy.'
When the pudding trolley came she asked for Apfelstrudel.
The waiter cut her a very large slice and she took the
cream jug from him and covered it thickly. Then she said,
'Have you got any fresh grapes?'
'I will go and ask, madame. I am sure we have.'
'Kathe, do you always eat grapes with Apfelstrudel? Is it a
local custom or something?'
'It's for the pips, Alan.'
'The pips? Well, I know Dr Johnson collected orange peel,
but this is ridiculous. What do you do with the pips?'
'Please will you fill up my champagne - right to near the
top?'
I did as she asked while the waiter brought a bunch of
grapes and cut her a dozen. She put two into her mouth,
chewed the pips clean and took them out. Then she dropped
two pips into her champagne, waited about ten seconds and
dropped in two more. Within half a minute the first two,
covered with bubbles, rose to the surface. As each minute
bubble burst it turned over and over and finally sank again.
By this time the second tv/o were on the way up.
'You know this game?' They were going up and down now
like lift-cars.
'No, I didn't. Wherever did you learn it?'
'Oh - in the land of Cockaigne. Always with Sekt, this
game. I have great fun of it.'
When the coffee came she lolled back against the banquette
like an empress gorged almost into a stupor. The
stephanotis fell out of her hair and she laid it on the cloth.
Leaning forward, I could smell it, the scent mingling with the
faint, sharp fume of her yellow chartreuse as she raised and
sipped it.
She made a little face. 'Herb!'
'It's meant to be.'
'/a, gut. And I am tipsy. How nice!'
'Kathe, can I meet you tomorrow?'
81
II
She paused. 'Vielleicht.' Then, laughing, she shook her
head.
'No, seriously, Kathe - can I? When? Will you drive out to
Helsing0r with me and have lunch?'
'Vielleicht.'
'Nein, kein vielleicht! Bitte Quickly,
she cut me short. 'I will telephone you. I can do
that?'
'Jarl? Jytte?fMy non-existent ceramics friend?) 'Yes, you
can. What time?'
'Oh, about half an hour after I wake up. Write down the
number.'
On the way out we encountered another all-male group of
distinctly merry Danes. One of them, carrying, for some
reason, a dark-red carnation, detached himself and spoke
to me - heaven knows why - in English.
'Mister, pardon me, your beautiful lady has no flower, sir.
Please you are allowing me to give her this one.'
There seemed no reason to object. He handed it to her with
a bow and complete propriety - his hand did not even touch
hers. She thanked him with a nod and a smile, at one and
the same time warm and gracious, yet distant enough to
keep them at bay; then searched for nothing in her bag until
they had departed.
'Shall I pin it on for you?'
'No, don't break the stalk, Alan. I will carry it. It's nice
so.'
'Shall I get a taxi?'
'I don't need one, thank you. It's not far.'
'Well, then, shall we walk?'
'No, I will say good-night now. There is a 'bus. I call it
the Always 'bus, because always I have to take it.'
'But Kathe -'
She took my hand. 'Danke schon. It was really lovely.
I've enjoyed it very much. Everybody has garlic! Cute
Nacht.'
I stood watching as she walked away down the street in
the velvet cloak, carrying the carnation in her gloved hand
and smelling it from time to time like a pomander.
82
8
ELSINORE. The platform on the battlements. (The Cannon
Tower, actually.) A sunny afternoon in May, very warm. Not
a ghost in sight. Kathe in a rose-pink, cotton dress and
navy-blue cardigan.
'Guck 'mal; that's Halsingborg, Alan, across the water;
only five kilometres away.'
'We could swim there in two hours.'
'We'd freeze first. And the current. We'd end up on the
bottom at Kullen. Then you could walk back all the way to
England.'
'It's a nice idea, all the same - to swim across. Do you
like swimming?'
'Love it. Often, I would swim. Once I swam eight kilometres.'
'Where?'
'Oh - a long way south, where it's warm.' She paused,
looking out past the Trumpeter's Tower across the blue
Sound. 'Oh, I'd swim round the world if I could! How lovely
it would be, don't you think, to go to the tropics, and just
swim?'
'Yes; I'd come with you.' I told her about the Cherwell at
Oxford, and Iffley Lock. 'I used to love being tumbled about
in the white water.'
'Ja, natitrlich. It's nice so." She rested both hands on the
parapet and leaned forward, gazing out once more towards
Halsingborg. 'Does your china business ever take you over
there too?'
'I've been to Stockholm, but never to Halsingborg. Have
you?'
'Just across on the ferry once, for fun.'
'And was it? The town looks rather beautiful from here.'
'Oh, the town's dull, but Sofiero's nice - the gardens. I
went out there. It was lovely.'
'All by yourself?'
'Well, almost, yes.' She paused. 'Almost. Yes, by myself.'
83
I laughed. 'Kathe, how can you be almost by yourself?'
'Oh, easily.' She turned and looked at me, smiling. 'Are
you jealous, Alan?'
'Well, I almost could be -'
'Well, there you are - if you can be almost jealous, I can be
almost by myself. Do you always wear those field glasses out
of doors?'
'Almost always. You see, I - oh, all right.' She was laughing
and I laughed too. 'You tie me up in my own language,
don't you?'
'You haven't looked through them once.'
'I suppose I've been too busy looking at you. I can look at
ships and birds any time.'
'You said you wanted to look at the wood-carving in the
chapel.'
'I know I did; but it's sunny and warm up here and the
chapel's indoors. Besides, I feel lazy.'
'But that's not like you.'
'How can you tell that? You hardly know me.'
'I can tell, all the same. You're a man who always has
some object in his mind, aren't you, and goes to a place on
purpose to see something he thinks is beautiful or important?
What is it they say - "an old head on young shoulders"?
But I know what you've done to-day. You've put your
head down and forgotten to pick it up again.'
It was very near the truth. With Barbara - and with
others; not only girls - I had always planned meetings, a
day out or an evening at home, with some purpose in mind.
'What about going to see the Norman church at Avington?'
I would say; or 'I believe you said you'd never heard a Bart6k
quartet. We might try one this evening,' To me it felt
strange, this unprogrammed, selves-absorbed idling in pleasure
on the towers of Kronborg. We were not really looking
at the castle at all - not at the chapel, not at the sixteenthcentury
tapestries, not at Honthorst's ceiling paintings in the
King's Chamber - and Kathe, I felt sure, had no intention of
doing so. With her, inconsequence seemed a kind of skill and
it appeared natural to regard the Sound, the gulls, the distant
Kattegat and the tower on whose parapet we were lean84
ing in the sunshine simply as a background for herself and
the here and now taking place between us. She needed no
purpose except her awareness of my enjoyment of her cornpany;
bored and irritated me, seemed entirely suited both to the
occasion and to herself. In a word, I was enjoying wasting
time with her.
I think it was from this day - so early - that there tegan
to germinate in me the concept of Kathe as entirely selfsufficient,
requiring nothing to enhance her presence and
naturally central to any scene in which she might happen to
be. Consistent in hedonism, she exercised a kind of innate
authority and in so doing became like a still centre, needing
neither direction nor purpose and only the semblance of
activity, like a tree in the wind.
'Oh, look, Alan - a beetle! Such a pretty one!'
The brilliant green beetle, its dark eyes prominent on
either side of its head, was sunning itself on a stone of the
parapet a few feet to her right. She moved across, picked it
up gently between ringer and thumb and put it on the back
of her hand, where it sat still, torpid in the sunshine. Her
fingers were most beautifully and delicately shaped, the narrow,
oval nails convex, smooth and nacreous as shells.
'You don't mind him on your hand?'
'Ach nein - Weshalb?' She seemed surprised.
'Lots of girls don't like insects.'
'Oh, f'ff.' (Waving fingers.) 'I never saw a so beautiful one,
did you?'
'Cicindela campestris', the green tiger beetle. He's quite
common in England, so I suppose he is here too. Funny they
usually fly off when you disturb them. I suppose he
likes the sunshine. I wonder how he got up here?'
The beetle opened its carapace and took off in buzzing
flight.
'That is how.' It circled, returned and alighted again on
her sleeve. 'Sunshine be - be blowed! It's me he likes.' But
then it flew again, away and down from the high platform
towards the grassy trench below. I leaned out over the
parapet, my eyes following it out of sight.
85
'Beetles o'er his base into the sea.'
'Was bedeutet das? Explain.'
' "What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o'er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
And draw you into madness?" '
I thought perhaps she might tease me for being pretentious,
but Kathe, as I was to learn, never made light of anything
which she sensed to be of value to someone else.
'It sounds wonderful! But what was it -1 mean, that might
assume a horrible form?'
'It was a ghost, come for retribution.'
'Tell me, then, while we go down.'
As we came out onto the bridge from the tunnel through
the bastion she suddenly stumbled and almost fell. I
caught her arm and in recovering her balance she pressed
against me, light and firm, her hair brushing my face.
'Are you all right, Kathe?'
'/a, danke. How silly, I turned my foot over! Oh, what
a nuisance, look - the heel has broken off the shoe.' She
took it off and, holding it up to the light, looked at the
name in the instep. 'Stupid people! I've a good mind not to
buy their shoes again.'
I took the shoe from her. It felt brittle and cheap.
'Will you be able to manage? It's quite a step to the car.'
Til take off the other one, so, and you can give me your
arm.'
I saw her once hop forty paces through the public street.
As far as the next five minutes were concerned she certainly
made defect perfection. In her stockinged feet she trod
lightly, without wincing, the length of the moat, round the
Ridderpostej to the Kronvaerksport and across the outer
bridge beyond. Now and then, however, she bore down
heavily on my arm and once she stopped, panting slightly
but affecting an interest in the swans. I doubt whether any of
those strolling past us noticed that she was not wearing
shoes.
86
Between the outer moat and the car lay a hundred yards of
loose gravel, but this too she covered with no sign of discomfort.
I opened the near-side door for her and she sat
down sideways, raising one leg towards me.
'Now here's a nice job for you, Alan. Will you please take
away all the gravel?'
She smoothed the pink skirt between her thighs as I went
down on one knee beside the car. The gravel felt unpleasantly
sharp, and I put my handkerchief between it and my knee
before taking her foot across my other leg. The thin stocking,
stretching over sole and instep, cool, soft and fleshy
under my fingers, was covered with tiny stones embedded in
the nylon. I began brushing and picking them out.
'Ow - tickling!' She wriggled her toes, then suddenly
jerked her knee, almost k
icking me in the face. I pulled my
head back just in time.
Tm so sorry, Alan! I couldn't help it! Come back, I'll
make it better!'
And she drew the sole of her foot lightly down one side
of my face. I could feel the rasping of the minute bristles
along my cheek and then, as she did it the second time, this
was not all I felt. Embarrassment came upon me. I took
her foot back in my hands, but she withdrew it into the
car.
'Perhaps I'd better shave before you do that again, Kathe.
Shall I do your other foot now?'
The stocking was torn and there was blood on the sole.
'You've cut yourself!'
'Das macht nichts. It will be all right!'
'But doesn't it hurt?'
'No, I can't feel anything. Just clean it off and tell me
where the cut is.'
I looked vaguely round. 'No water.'
'Lick fingers.' I hesitated. 'Go on!'
I did as I was told. The cut looked rather deep. It was
nearly an inch long and bleeding fairly freely. Kathe did not
even trouble herself to look at it. This was her way, as I was
to find out. Anything inelegant or inconvenient was always
turned into a game or ignored as not worth bothering about.
87
n
I drove to a chemist's but since Kathe, laughing at my concern,
would not go in, I bought some disinfectant, cottonwool
and Elastoplast dressings and brought them out to the
car. The bleeding seemed to have stopped and I cleaned up
the cut and put one of the dressings on it. She watched with
amusement and a kind of pleasurable surprise, as though
this sort of attention was something out of her experience
and she had not hitherto been sure whether or not I was
serious.
'Thank you, Alan. You are kind. It's nice to be made a fuss
of! I'd never have bothered by myself.'
'I'd better drive you home, hadn't I, before we start doing
anything else?'
'No; but when we get back to K0benhavn, you can drop me
at a shop where I will get some more shoes. Then I will go
home from there.'
'Well, I'll drive you back home from the shoe-shop, of
course. That's no trouble.'
She shook her head. I felt puzzled.
'Then shall I call for you later on?'
'Not this evening, Alan, I'm afraid.'
'You mean you won't be able to have dinner with me?'
'Leider nicht. It would have been nice, but unfortunately
it's impossible.'
I drove on in silence for a little while and then said, 'Er perhaps
we might meet tomorrow?'
She smiled. 'Ich muss - oh, I have to be out of K0benhavn
tomorrow, I'm afraid. What a pity!'
'Well - it's only that I have to go back to England on Monday.'
'I know - so you said. I'm sorry, really I am.'
Well, I thought, when you come to think of it, it's likely
enough that she wouldn't want to see me again. A girl like
this must have plenty of admirers, and I've never been much
of a hand at the game anyway. In fact, I don't quite know
what I'm doing all this for; but - oh, hell, I'd very much have
liked to see her again.
And yet - and yet, if I was any judge, she had not spoken
of the forthcoming evening or, for the matter of that, the
88
following day, in a tone which suggested that she felt much
enthusiasm for either. Indeed, she now seemed a shade depressed,
whereas all the afternoon she had been in high
spirits - almost like a girl who doesn't get out much. I wondered
whether perhaps she might be looking after an invalid
parent, but didn't like to ask. No, more likely she had in fact
enjoyed the outing - and flirting - but intended to spend the
rest of the week-end, as no doubt she usually did, with some
regular friend - lover, perhaps. I found the thought distressing.
But why ever should you? I asked myself, as we drove
past Tarbsek. You're not trying to go to bed with the girl
- you never meant to. You don't know what the hell you
are doing, do you? And you're going home on Monday, to
important business that requires all your energy and attention.
If she doesn't particularly want to see you again, why
on earth should you be bothered? Yet I was. In fact, I felt
most disappointed.
When we reached K0benhavn I suggested two or three
shops where she might go for shoes and begged her to let
me buy them for her.
'No, Alan, really. It's kind of you, but I know where I
want to go. You can drop me there and I'll say good-bye.
Could you turn left at these next lights, please?'
She hasn't got much room for evasion now, I thought.
Wherever it is, she'll have to let me drive her there, for she
can't walk or even take a bus without any shoes to her feet.
She guided me on into what seemed like a rather dismal