Eventually I heard the stocky woman calling me and became aware that they were waiting to leave. I came into the hallway to find Sophie and Boris, each carrying a cardboard box, already going out into the corridor. They began to argue about something as they set off down the staircase.
The stocky woman was holding open the front door for me. ‘Sophie’s determined it goes well tonight,’ she said, her voice lowered. ‘So don’t let her down again, Ryder.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll make sure everything goes well.’
She gave me a hard look, then turned and went down the staircase jingling her keys.
I followed after her. We were on the second flight down when I saw a woman coming up the stairs with a tired gait. The figure squeezed past the stocky woman with a muttered ‘excuse me’ and we had already passed each other before I realised that it was Fiona Roberts, still in her ticket inspector’s uniform. She too did not seem to recognise me until the last moment – the light was poor on the stairs – but she turned wearily, a hand on the metal banister, and said:
‘Oh, here you are. It’s good of you to be so punctual. I’m sorry I was a little longer than I said. There was a re-routing, a tram on the eastern circuit, so my shift went on much longer. I hope you haven’t been waiting here long.’
‘No, no.’ I drifted back up a step or two. ‘Not long at all. But unfortunately, my schedule has got very tight …’
‘It’s all right, I won’t take any more of your time than necessary. Actually, I have to tell you, I phoned round the girls, just as we said, I phoned from the depot canteen during my break. I told them to expect me with a friend, but I didn’t actually tell them it was you. I was going to at first, just as we’d agreed, but I started by phoning Trude and as soon as I heard that voice, the way she said: “Oh yes, it’s you, dear,” I could hear so much in that voice, so much patronising bile. I could tell how all day she’d been talking about me, one phone call after another, with Inge and all the rest of them, discussing last night, all of them pretending to feel pity for me, saying how they’d have to treat me with sympathy, after all I was like an ill person, it was their duty to be kind. But of course they couldn’t keep me, how could someone like me be part of the Foundation? Oh, they’ll have enjoyed themselves today, I could hear it all, just in the way she said it as soon as I phoned. “Oh yes, it’s you, dear.” And I thought, all right then, let’s not give you any warning. Let’s see where you get by not believing me. That’s what I thought to myself. I thought, let’s hope you’re completely thrown when you open the door and see who’s standing there next to me. Let’s hope you’ve got your worst clothes on, perhaps your sportswear, and all your make-up’s off so that mound next to your nose is completely visible, and that your hair’s pinned back the way you do sometimes that makes you look at least fifteen years older. And let’s hope your apartment’s looking a mess, with all those stupid magazines, those scandal sheets and romantic novelettes you read littering the furniture, and you’ll be so thrown you won’t know what to say, you’ll be so embarrassed about everything, and you’ll make it worse by saying one completely inane thing after another. And you’ll offer refreshments then find you’re short of everything, and you’ll feel so foolish for never having believed me. Let’s do that, I thought. So I never told her, I didn’t tell any of them. I just said I’d be coming round with a friend.’ She stopped and calmed herself a little. Then she said: ‘I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t sound vindictive. But I’ve been longing for this all day. It kept me going, doing all those tickets, it kept me going. The passengers must have wondered why I was going around like that, you know, with a gleam in my eye. Well, if you’ve got a tight schedule, I suppose we ought to start straight away. We can start at Trude’s. Inge should be with her, she usually is at this time of the day, so we can deal with them both first off. I hardly care about the others. I just want to see the looks on the faces of those two. Well, let’s go.’
She started up the stairs, all her former weariness gone. The stairs seemed to go on endlessly, one flight after another, until I was struggling for breath. Fiona, however, did not appear to be exerting herself at all. As we climbed she continued to talk, her voice lowered as though people might be listening all around us.
‘You don’t have to say too much to them,’ I heard her saying at one point. ‘Just let them fawn over you for a few minutes. But of course you might want to discuss your parents with them.’
When we finally came off the staircase I was so out of breath – my chest was actually wheezing – I was unable to attend much to the surroundings. I was aware of being led down a dim corridor past rows of doors and that Fiona, oblivious of my difficulties, was marching on ahead. Then suddenly she stopped and knocked at a door. Catching up with her, I was obliged to lean a hand on the door frame, my head bowed, in an effort to recover my breath. When the door opened, I must have presented a somewhat crumpled figure beside the triumphant Fiona.
‘Trude,’ Fiona said. ‘I’ve brought a friend with me.’
With an effort I straightened myself and smiled pleasantly.
16
The woman who had opened the door was around fifty, plump with short white hair. She was wearing a loose pink jumper and baggy striped trousers. Trude glanced towards me briefly, then, noticing nothing out of the ordinary, turned to Fiona and said: ‘Oh, yes. Well, I suppose you ought to come in.’
The condescension was obvious, but appeared only to heighten Fiona’s anticipation, and she gave me a conspiratorial smile as we followed Trude inside.
‘Is Inge here with you?’ Fiona asked as we came into a tiny entrance hall.
‘Yes, we’ve just come back,’ Trude said. ‘As it happens, we’ve got a lot to report. And since you just happened to call, you’ll be the first to hear our news. That’s lucky for you.’
This last remark seemed to be made entirely without irony. Trude then disappeared through a door, leaving us standing in the tiny hall, and we could hear her voice from within saying: ‘Inge, it’s Fiona. And some friend of hers. I suppose we ought to tell her what happened to us this afternoon.’
‘Fiona?’ Inge’s voice sounded mildly outraged. Then with an effort, she said: ‘Well, I suppose she ought to come in.’
Hearing this exchange, Fiona once again smiled excitedly at me. Then Trude’s head peered round the door and we were shown into the lounge.
The room was not unlike the stocky woman’s in size and shape, though the furniture was fussier and dominated by floral patterns. Perhaps it was simply that this apartment faced a different direction, or perhaps the sky outside had cleared a little. In any case, the afternoon sun was drifting in through the large window and as I stepped into the light I fully expected the two women to start with recognition. Fiona obviously did so too for I noticed how she carefully stood to one side in case her presence lessened the impact. Neither Trude nor Inge, however, appeared to register anything. They each cast a quick uninterested glance at me and then Trude invited us, rather coldly, to sit down. We did so side by side on a narrow couch. Fiona, though initially bewildered, seemed to conclude that this unexpected turn of events could serve only to intensify the moment of revelation once it came, and gave me another gleeful little grin.
‘Shall I tell her or do you want to?’ Inge was saying.
Trude, who clearly deferred to the younger woman, said: ‘No, you tell it, Inge. You deserve to. But Fiona’ – she turned to us – ‘you’re not to go around telling people yet. We want to keep it a surprise for the meeting tonight, that’s only fair. Oh, didn’t we tell you about tonight’s meeting? Well, there, we’ve just told you. Do come if you’ve got time. Though since you’ve got your friend staying with you’ – she nodded towards me – ‘we’ll understand perfectly if you’re not able to come. But Inge, you tell it, you deserve to, really.’
‘Well, Fiona, I’m sure you’ll be interested in this, we’ve had a most exciting day. As you know, Mr von Braun had invited us to his o
ffice today to discuss with him personally our plans for looking after Mr Ryder’s parents. Oh, you didn’t know? I thought you all knew. Well, we’ll be reporting in detail tonight just how the meeting went, I’ll just tell you for now it went very nicely indeed, even if it had to be cut a little short. Oh, Mr von Braun was so apologetic about that, he couldn’t have been more so, could he, Trude? He was so apologetic about having to get away early, but when we learnt the reason, well, then we understood perfectly. You see, there’d been this very important trip arranged to the zoo. Ah, you might laugh, Fiona dear, but this was no ordinary trip to the zoo. An official party, including naturally Mr von Braun himself, was going to take Mr Brodsky there. Do you know, Mr Brodsky had never been to the zoo? But the point was, Miss Collins had been persuaded to be there. Yes, at the zoo! Can you imagine that? After all these years! And no more than Mr Brodsky deserves, that’s what we both said immediately. Yes, Miss Collins was going to be there when they arrived, she’d be waiting at an agreed place, and the official party would encounter her, and she would exchcinge conversation with Mr Brodsky. It had all been arranged. Can you imagine it? They were going to meet and actually talk after all this time! We said we could understand perfectly why our meeting had to be cut short, but Mr von Braun, he was so kind to us, he obviously felt badly about it, he said to us: “Why don’t you ladies also come along to the zoo? I can’t very well ask you to join the official party, but you could perhaps look on from a little distance.” We said we’d be absolutely thrilled. And that’s when he said to us: “Of course, if you do as I suggest, you’ll not only get a glimpse of Mr Brodsky’s first encounter with his wife after all this time, you’ll” – and he paused, didn’t he, Trude? he paused, then he said, cool as you like – “you’ll also be able to see at close quarters Mr Ryder, who has most kindly agreed to be part of the official party. And if an opportune moment arises, though I can’t guarantee this, I’ll signal to you ladies and I could introduce you both to him.” We were absolutely stunned! But of course, when we thought about it afterwards on the way home, we were just saying so to each other just now, when you think more carefully about it, it wasn’t so surprising really. After all, we’ve come a long way in the last few years, what with the bunting for the Peking people, and all the effort we put into the sandwiches for the Henri Ledoux lunch …’
‘The Peking Ballet, that was the real turning point,’ Trude put in.
‘Yes, that was the turning point. But I suppose we’d never really stopped to think about it, we’d just been getting on with things, going hard at it, we probably never realised how much we were going up all the time in everyone’s esteem. The truth is, quite honestly, we’ve now become a very important part of life in this city. It’s high time we realised that. Let’s face it, that’s why Mr von Braun invites us personally to his office, why he ends up suggesting the sorts of things he suggested today. “If an opportune moment arises, I’ll introduce you to him.” That’s what he said, wasn’t it, Trude? “I know Mr Ryder would be delighted to meet you both, especially since you’ll be looking after his parents, a matter of the utmost concern for him.” Of course, we’d always said, hadn’t we, that once we’d been given this assignment, we had a good chance of being introduced to Mr Ryder. But we hadn’t expected it to happen quite so soon and so we were very excited. Fiona, what’s wrong, dear?’
Beside me, Fiona had been shifting impatiently, trying to interrupt the flow of Inge’s words. Now that Inge had paused, Fiona nudged my arm and gave me a look as though to say: ‘Now! This is the moment!’ Unfortunately I was still a little out of breath from the climb up the stairs and this perhaps caused me to hesitate. In any case there was an awkward moment when all three women were staring at me. Then, when I said nothing, Inge went on:
‘Well, if you don’t mind, Fiona, I’ll just finish what I was saying. I’m sure you have plenty of very interesting stories to tell us, dear, and we’re very keen to hear them. No doubt you’ve had another very interesting day on your trams while we were in the city centre doing all this I’m now telling you about, but if you’d like to wait just a minute, you might hear something of passing interest to you. After all’ – and here the sarcasm in her voice struck me as crossing the boundary of civilised behaviour – ‘this does involve your old friend, your old friend Mr Ryder …’
‘Inge, really!’ Trude put in, but a smile was hovering around her lips and the two of them exchanged a quick smirk.
Fiona was nudging me again. Glancing at her, I could see her patience had run out and that she was wanting her tormentors to get their comeuppance without further delay. Leaning forward, I cleared my throat, but before I could actually say anything, Inge had started to talk again.
‘Well, what I was saying was that when you think about it, it’s no more than we deserve now, this level of treatment. Clearly Mr von Braun believes so anyway. He was very kind and courteous to us the whole time, wasn’t he? He was so apologetic when he had to go off to the city hall to join the official party. “We’ll be arriving at the zoo in about thirty minutes,” he kept saying. “I do hope you ladies will be there.” It would be perfectly all right, he told us, if we came as close as five or six metres from the official party. After all, it wasn’t as though we were just members of the public! Oh, I’m sorry, Fiona, we hadn’t forgotten, we were going to mention to Mr von Braun how one of our group, that’s to say you, dear, how one of us was a very dear friend of Mr Ryder, a very dear friend of many years’ standing. We had every intention of mentioning it, but somehow we just never got round to it, did we, Trude?’
Again the two women exchanged smirks. Fiona stared at them in cold fury. I saw at this point things had gone too far and decided to intervene. However, two possible ways of doing so immediately presented themselves to me. One option was to draw attention to my identity in a way that elegantly entered the flow of what Inge happened to be saying. For instance, I might have interjected calmly: ‘Well, we didn’t have the pleasure of meeting at the zoo, but what does that matter when we can meet in the comfort of your own home?’ or some such thing. The alternative was simply to rise abruptly, perhaps throwing my arms out as I did so, and making the blunt declaration: ‘I am Ryder!’ I naturally wished to choose the course that would yield the maximum impact, but the resulting hesitation caused me once more to miss my opportunity, for Inge had begun to talk again.
‘We got to the zoo and we waited, oh, it was about twenty minutes, wasn’t it, Trude? We waited by the little stand-up place where you can drink a cup of coffee, and after about twenty minutes we saw these cars come driving right up to the gates, and this very distinguished party got out. About ten or eleven of them, all gentlemen, Mr von Winterstein was there, and Mr Fischer and Mr Hoffman. And Mr von Braun, of course. And in the middle of it there was Mr Brodsky, looking very distinguished indeed, wasn’t he, Trude? Nothing like the way he used to be. Of course we looked immediately for Mr Ryder but he wasn’t there. Trude and I were looking from face to face, but they were all the usual ones, the councillors, you know. For a second we thought Mr Reitmayer was Mr Ryder, just as he was getting out of the car. Anyway, he wasn’t with them, and we were saying to each other, he’s probably coming along just a little later, what with his busy schedule. And there they were, all these gentlemen coming up the path, all wearing dark overcoats, except for Mr Brodsky who was wearing a grey one, very distinguished looking, with a matching hat. They came up past the maple trees, all at a leisurely pace, up to the first of the cages. Mr von Winterstein seemed to be the host, pointing things out to Mr Brodsky, pointing out the animals in each cage. But you could see no one was paying much attention to the animals, they were so keyed up about Mr Brod-sky’s encounter with Miss Collins. And we couldn’t resist, could we, Trude? We went on ahead, we went round the corner to the central concourse and sure enough, there was Miss Collins, all by herself, standing in front of the giraffes, looking at them. There were a few other people strolling about, but of course they had no idea
, it was only when the official party came round the corner people realised something was happening and moved away respectfully, and there was Miss Collins still standing in front of the giraffes, looking more alone than ever, and you could see her glancing towards the official party as they came closer. She seemed so calm, you wouldn’t know what was going on inside. And Mr Brodsky, we could see his expression, very stiff, stealing glances towards Miss Collins, even though they were still quite a long way apart, there were all the monkey and raccoon cages still to go. Mr von Winterstein seemed to be introducing all the animals to Mr Brodsky, it was like the animals were all official guests at a banquet, wasn’t it, Trude? We didn’t know why the gentlemen couldn’t just go straight to the giraffes and Miss Collins, but obviously this was the way it had been decided. And it was so exciting, so moving, for a moment we even forgot about the possibility of Mr Ryder turning up. You could see Mr Brodsky’s breath in the air, all misty, and all the other gentlemen’s too, and then, when there was only a few cages left, Mr Brodsky seemed to lose all interest in the animals and he took off his hat. It was a very old-fashioned, respectful sort of gesture, Fiona. We felt privileged to be there to see it.’
‘You could see so much,’ Trude broke in. ‘So much in the way he did it, then just held his hat to his chest. It was like a declaration of love and apology all at the same time. It was very moving.’
‘But I was telling the story, thank you, Trude. Miss Collins, she’s so elegant, you’d never guess she was that age from a distance. Such a youthful figure. She turned to him very nonchalantly, just a cage or so separating them. Any members of the public there’d been had backed right away by this time, and Trude and I, we remembered what Mr von Braun had said, about the five metres, and we crept forward as much as we dared, but it seemed such a private moment, we didn’t dare get up too close. First they nodded to each other and exchanged some very ordinary sort of greeting. Then Mr Brodsky, he suddenly took a few steps forward and reached out, quite swiftly, it was like he’d been planning it beforehand, Trude thought …’