white apron with lacy edges on the bib. Lisl invariably referred to her as das Dienstmädchen, as if she was some newly employed teenage serving-girl, but Klara was amazingly old. She was thin and wiry, a birdlike creature with bright little eyes and grey hair drawn back into a tight bun at the nape of her neck, a style in vogue when she was young. She was bent from a lifetime of hard work, having toiled for Lisl since long before the house became a hotel.
‘And this time,’ Lisl told Klara emphatically, ‘put less coffee in the pot.’
‘Some people like strong coffee,’ I told Lisl but Lisl waved a hand to tell Klara to pay no heed to me.
When Klara was out of earshot, Lisl explained in a loud and earnest voice, ‘She wastes coffee. It’s so expensive. Do you know how much I pay for that coffee?’
From the corner of my eye I saw Klara turn her head to hear better what Lisl was saying. I was about to reply that it was time that Lisl stopped thinking about such things, and left the account books to Werner and Ingrid. But the last time I’d said something like that it unleashed upon me an indignant tirade forcefully assuring me that she was not too old to know how the hotel should be run. I suppose Werner and Ingrid had found some way of handling Lisl, for she gave no sign of resenting any of the changes they’d made.
This dining room for instance had been totally refurbished. All the panelling had been stripped back to the natural wood and the nondescript prints had been junked in favour of some contemporary watercolours: Berlin street scenes by a local artist. They went well with a cruel George Grosz drawing which was the only item retained from the former decoration. The picture had always hung beside this table – which was near a window that gave on to the courtyard – and this was where Lisl liked to sit for lunch. One of Lisl’s more spiteful critics once said she was like a George Grosz drawing: black and white, a person of extremes, a jagged caricature of Berlin in the Thirties. And today this obese woman, with her long-sleeved black dress and darkly mascaraed penetrating eyes, did look the part.
The coffee came and Klara poured some into my cup. It was a thin brew with neither aroma nor colour. I didn’t remark on it and Lisl pretended not to notice that it had come at all. Lisl sipped some milk – she wasn’t drinking coffee these days. She was very slowly working her way through a red apple with a piece of Swiss Emmenthal and a slice of black rye bread. Her arthritic old hand – pale and spotted and heavy with diamond rings – held a sharp kitchen knife and cut from the apple a very small piece. She took it between finger and thumb and ate carefully, making sure that she didn’t smudge her bright red lipstick.
‘Werner has his own ideas,’ said Lisl suddenly. She said it as if we’d both been talking about him, as if she was replying to a question. ‘Werner has his own ideas and he is determined.’
‘What ideas?’
‘He has been back through the records, and is using that word process machine to write letters to all the people who have stayed here over the last five years or more. Also he keeps a record of all the guests, their names, their wives’ names and what they liked to eat and any problems we have had with them.’
‘Excellent,’ I said. She pulled a face, so I said, ‘You don’t think that’s the way to do it?’
‘For years I have run the hotel without such things,’ said Lisl. She didn’t say it wasn’t the way to do it. Lisl would sit on the fence until Werner’s new ideas were tested. That was Lisl’s way. She didn’t like to be proved wrong.
‘Werner is very clever at business affairs,’ I said.
‘And the bridge evenings,’ said Lisl. ‘Frank Harrington’s people come for the bridge evenings. The British like bridge, don’t they?’
‘Some of them,’ I said.
Lisl laughed grimly. She could usually thrash me at bridge. When she laughed her huge frame wobbled and the glossy satin dress rippled. She reached up and touched the corner of her eye with her little finger. It was a delicate gesture with which she tested the adhesion of her large false eyelashes. ‘Werner is like a son to me.’
‘He’s very fond of you, Lisl,’ I said. I suppose I should have told her that Werner loved her, for the sort of sacrifices Werner was making to run this place left no doubt of that.
‘And loves the house,’ said Lisl. She picked up another little piece of apple and crunched it noisily, looking down at her plate again as if not interested in my response.
‘Yes,’ I said. I’d never thought of that before but Werner had been born here during the war. It was the home in which he grew up as a tiny child. The house must have even more sentimental associations for him than it did for me, and yet in all our conversations he’d never expressed any feelings about the place. But how selfish of me not to see what was now so obvious. ‘And you have your niece here too,’ I said.
‘Ingrid.’ Lisl cleared her throat and nodded. ‘She is my niece.’
‘Yes,’ I said. Since Lisl had repeatedly told anyone who would listen that Ingrid was her sister’s illegitimate daughter, and therefore was not her niece, I interpreted this admission as substantial progress for Ingrid.
‘Are you going somewhere?’ she asked truculently. ‘You keep looking at your watch.’
‘I’m going to the bank. There should be money waiting for me and I owe money to Frank.’
‘Frank has plenty of money,’ said Lisl. She shifted about in her chair. It was her way of dismissing both Frank’s generosity as a lender and my integrity in reimbursing him. As I got up to go she said, ‘And I must get you to sort out all that stuff of your father’s some time.’
‘What stuff?’
‘There’s a gun and a uniform full of moth holes – he never wore it except when they ordered him to wear it – and there’s the cot your mother lent to Frau Grieben across the street, and books in English – Dickens, I think – the footstool and a mattress. Then there’s a big bundle of papers: bills and that sort of thing. I would have thrown it all away but I thought you might want to sort through it.’
‘What sort of papers?’
‘They were in that old desk your father used. He forgot to empty it. He left in a hurry. He said he’d be back and collect it but he forgot. You know how absent-minded he could be sometimes. Then I started using that room as storage space and I forgot too.’
‘Where is it all now?’
‘And account books and bundles of correspondence. Nothing important or he would have written and asked me for it. If you don’t want it I’ll just throw it all out, but Werner wants me to clear everything out of the storeroom. It’s going to be made into a bathroom.’
‘I’d like to sort through it.’
‘That’s all he thinks about; bathrooms. You can’t rent a bathroom.’
‘Yes, I’d like to sort through it, Lisl.’
‘He’ll end up with fewer bedrooms. So how will that earn more money?’
‘When can I look at it?’
‘Now don’t be a nuisance, Bernd. It’s locked up and quite safe. That room is crammed full of all sorts of junk and there’s
