“Your papers, please.” The condescending tone of an informer, or at any rate of a party member sporting a fancy badge. He probably lived somewhere nearby. But this was beyond the pale. Emma struggled to keep her voice under control.
“Yes indeed, I do have papers. But I am not going to show them to you. And if you don’t leave me alone immediately I shall file a complaint at my husband’s department.”
Her voice rose as her anger mounted. It was an impulsive, irrational outburst, but no less effective for that. The man stiffened, mumbled an apology and sped away on his bicycle.
Emma lapsed into nervous laughter as she stood there in a world gone insane, where people demanded to see each other’s papers.
Kate took the bus to Richmond Hospital in the morning as usual, to return in the afternoon. The Richmond was a repository of the sick and wounded from ever farther corners of the earth, a round-the-clock enterprise. She liked her job. The patients followed one another in rapid succession, and she had a knack for putting people at ease and seeing to their wants and needs with discretion. “Head of subtle affairs”, one of the doctors called her, a man who reminded her vaguely of Peter Henning, the surgeon she had worked with for over a year in Berlin, at a time when murder and manslaughter were already the order of the day. He had fallen in love with her, she not with him, but it had lightened the atmosphere in and around the operating theatre. Oscar was unaware of this, and there was no reason to worry him unduly. That was all of five years ago.
Kate saw the traffic on her bus route increase. It started to rain, and London unfurled its umbrellas. For no particular reason her mind turned to the time she had gone to the stadium with Peter. The Olympic Games had transformed the city, making it brighter and cleaner than ever before. He had invited her to accompany him to the athletics competitions taking place that afternoon. They had finished work early, no further surgery being required for the day.
They drove through a city on temporary reprieve from the grip of steel. Peter, being a doctor, had a car, enabling them to reach the Olympic stadium without difficulty. Across Tiergarten to Charlottenburg they went, where the flags would have been enough to festoon the Kurfürstendamm from end to end. Kate recalled how Peter always gave his car a pat on the bonnet before he got in: good dog. It was a Mercedes with a canvas hood, one of those wonderful sleek jobs with big headlamps and a running board, the very ones she had, in time, grown to despise. There always seemed to be men in leather coats with wide belts getting out of them. Peter was not someone who associated with those types; he was the last likeable German she had met, aside from Carl, of course.
He had put his arm around her shoulder when they entered the stadium. She had not objected. To her his warm personality was endearing, and the way he held her had nothing possessive about it, having more of boys on their way to a game of football and out to have a good time. His left hand rested near her neck, with his right he fought to keep the umbrella positioned over her head in the multitude thronging to see the games. He had brought her up to date on the various events: discus, high jump and javelin. The names of the athletes meant nothing to her, but she was carried away by his enthusiasm, wanting to know if there were any Dutch participants and which ones to look out for. She pointed up to his umbrella, saying the rain had stopped. He laughed, and removed his hand from her shoulder, which she thought a pity in a way, as it had given her a sense of togetherness, of being part of the crowd milling around them, where no-one knew her, where they were just another couple queuing up to take their seats on a stadium bench. Her pleasure had nothing to do with the man beside her, charming as he was, glancing at her and gallantly removing his coat so she could sit on it.
