Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It has been twenty-five years since I was last in London. I should not be surprised that it has changed, but I am.

The railings in front of the houses have gone, leaving behind little stumps of cast iron sticking out of the stonework. Dusty-faced boys laugh and shout as they play among the wreckage of bombed-out houses. A West Indian family is making the most of the late summer, early evening sunshine, grilling fish on a patch of brownish grass outside their tenement.

Some part of my psyche believes that places never change: that my Pittsburgh childhood bedroom is still there, with the mauve wallpaper and pine bookshelves, despite the fact my parents moved when I was ten.

And of course, Berlin. I know the Kit Kat Klub and all it stood for is gone. Or rather, my head knows it, but my heart is certain that they are still dancing: still drinking and flirting in their tawdry finery; still fucking on dirty satin sheets; still transmuting the squalor into something rich and strange.

Age has not withered them, nor the events of the last two decades staled their infinite variety.

Ah. I am nervous. I always wallow in quotation when I am nervous.

Here are the facts. Someone named Sally Bowles is registered to vote in an apartment above a wine bar in Wardour Street, Soho, London. More than likely, it isn’t even her. I don’t suppose it’s an uncommon name, and besides, she wanted to go onward to America, not back to London. She was always wise, in her own way. One should never go back.

I throw some coins into a busker’s hat. He is playing the mouth organ, rather well. He wiggles his eyebrow in acknowledgement and thanks. I smile back at him, hoping that my little act of magnanimity will bring good fortune.

The girl who answers the doorbell is a bit younger than Sally was when I knew her.  Her hair is cut in the same untidy bob that Sally used to wear, but it is dark brown, not blonde. She wears trousers and a waistcoat made of something cheap and shiny and green. In her left hand she holds a piece of buttered toast.

‘Hallo,’ she says, in Sally’s accent. ‘Have you come about the parrot?’

The way she is standing, hips askew, reminds me of Sally.

‘Forgive me,' I say, 'but does someone called Sally Bowles live here?'

‘Sally,’ says the girl. ‘Right. And you’ve come about the parrot?’ I look over her shoulder into the hallway, impatient to see if Sally's there. Somewhere upstairs there is a squawk. The parrot, I assume.

The girl stares at me. I stare back. The silence is too long. ‘I think you have the wrong house,’ she says.

‘Sally Bowles,’ I repeat. ‘I’m an old friend of hers.’ She is shaking her head, so more firmly, I add: ‘you said “right”. You recognised the name. My name’s Cliff. I …’

The girl’s mouth drops open. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Cliff. Of course. I’m sorry. We’ve been expecting you. My name is Faye. Sally was my mother.’

She stands aside and lets me in.

There is a big sitting room, big enough that the grand piano in one corner does not dominate it. None of the furniture matches. I’m sitting in a wing chair made of threadbare purple velvet, and Faye – who sprawls on a brown Chesterfield – is answering none of my questions until we both have a drink.

‘Gin,’ she says, ‘or tea? Or both? When my uncle first came to London, he heard my mother say "Gee and tee", and thought it was "gee and tea". So of course we had to try it out, and it's surprisingly good.'

‘Either,’ I say. ‘Both. Look, I don’t care. Please. Can you just tell me–’

But she is striding through one of the three doors leading out of the sitting room and then I hear her singing to herself as she clatters the kettle onto the stove.

Was. Was my mother. But also, was my mother. I count back on my fingers. It was eighteen years ago that I last saw Sally. And she could have been lying about what she did. Faye could be eighteen, it’s hard to tell. What if she is? What if I have a daughter? I try the names on for size. Father. Papa. Daddy. Dad. Yes, that could be me. But ‘was’ again. That was. What’s the use of anything if Sally is dead?

Faye comes back in with a tray, but ignores me, instead carrying it up the wrought iron spiral staircase in the corner. I hear a door open and shut. The parrot screeches something that may or may not be words, and Faye says something too quiet to hear.

She comes downstairs without the tray, then scampers back into the kitchen and returns with another one. ‘There.’ She sets it down on a coffee table topped with smeary glass. She pours her tea into a tin mug, mine into a dainty teacup, and adds clear liquid from a milk jug to both.

Was my mother. Was. My mother.

Faye looks at my face and misunderstands. ‘Do try it,’ she says. ‘It’s really very nice. But you can just have normal tea – or normal gin – if you don’t like it.’

‘Sally,’ I say again. ‘Your mother. Is she … Where is she?’

Faye stares at the teacup in my hand, and gives an encouraging nod. It is too hot to take more than a tiny sip. I don't notice how it tastes.

'The truth of the matter,' says Faye, without emotion, 'is that I don't know where my mother is. Or indeed whether she is.' She hunches over the mug, cradling it in her hands as though for warmth, though there is a decent fire going in the grate.

I have no patience for these games. 'You mean she might be dead?'

Faye gestures expansively. 'Anyone might be dead,' she says. 'You or I or anyone. How can we tell? What does it even mean to be alive?' She giggles. 'Sorry,' she says. 'I had a rather peculiar and nihilistic education.'

I try not to show my anger. 'Did she abandon you?' I say.

The look of rage that crosses Faye's face reminds me so much of Sally that it hurts. 'Never!' But the anger is gone as quickly as it came. 'Look,' she says. 'Sally has done some bad things in her time, but the worst of them she did for me, and now she's making amends, and that's for me as well, at least partly.' She glances up at the stately carriage clock which shares the mantelpiece with a couple of dirty glasses, a photograph of Sally, and some ugly Victorian dog ornaments. 'I'm sorry Cliff,' she says. 'This is an awkward time. I need to go to work. But feel free to come back in the morning and we can talk some more.'

'Making amends?' I prompt.

'I'm sorry, Clifford.' She gets up and goes to the big mirror above the clock, putting on some make-up. 'I can't tell you. Maybe she'll come back and tell you herself. Maybe she won't and we can tell you later. But for now ...' She trails off. 'Look, can we start again, maybe? She told me so much about you. I've always wanted to meet you, ever since I was a little girl. And she said you'd come looking for her and I was to make you welcome.' She pauses, as though considering something. 'You can stay here tonight if you want.'

I try to take in this unexpected turn. 'Sure,' I say. 'I guess.' With her lips and cheeks painted, Faye somehow looks both older and younger. 'How old are you?' I ask.

'Eighteen,' she says. 'At least as far Espinosa's is concerned – that's where I work. Do help yourself to anything in the kitchen, and the toilet's at the back of it. There are blankets in the ottoman.'

'Are you my daughter?' I ask.

'I said I had to go,' she says, then stands still and looks at me pityingly for a moment. 'Maybe in a way I am, but mostly not. Family's always such a difficult thing, isn't it? Speaking of which, please don't go upstairs. The parrot bites and my uncle's a bit reclusive.

I stare as she slings on a fur coat – which looks remarkably like the one Sally sold – and strides out of the door.

A moment of silence. Some people in the street outside are laughing. A train rumbles past. I hear my own heartbeats.

Then, from up the spiral staircase, a horrible avian parody of Sally’s voice rings out: ‘Life is a cabaret, old chum. Life is a cabaret.’

It is all too much. Irrationally, I feel as though I am being mocked. I clench my fists and run up the spiral staircase, stubbing my toe as I emerge into a big attic space. I curse as I limp toward the perch where the white-faced green monstrosity is quietly whistling to itself and nibbling its own foot. I honestly think I would have wrung its neck were it not for a quiet voice saying ‘Please don’t do that' in a familiar German accent.

As the pain from my stubbed toe recedes, my eyes refocus to take in my surroundings. There is a huge bed, and theatrical style dressing table with lights around the mirror. There is a fire, and a big towel on a rack in front of it. Half hidden behind a screen, there is a bathtub, and the face sticking out from amidst the lavish foam is unmistakably that of the former Master of Ceremonies.

'Elsie is often my only company,' he continues, making a little chirrup that sends Elsie fluttering from her perch to sit on his shoulder and nibble his neck. 'And she does so remind me of Sally … in her better days, I mean.'

My mind works to readjust itself to this new reality where – wonderfully – my old friend is alive. How many times had I fought off my imagination's lurid speculation about his fate? All words are inadequate, so I take refuge in the banal. 'I'm sorry for disturbing your bath,' I say.

He raises an eyebrow. 'I can barely think of anything more delightful than to be disturbed in my bath by you, Clifford Bradshaw.'

'I'm delighted to see you as well,' I say. 'I've thought of you often over the years.'

'Oh?' His half smile is sad and sexy and mocking. For an uncomfortable moment it is as though he can read my mind.

'I'm glad you're–' Alive. 'All right.'

He laughs, and there is something of cruelty in it. A joke he won't share.

Then he quotes me quietly, as though to himself: 'There was a cabaret, and there was a master of ceremonies ... And there was a city called Berlin, in a country called Germany, and it was the end of the world.'

I have always been proud of that line, but now it feels crass and melodramatic.

'And yet you barely refer to me after that first line,' he continues. 'Why is that?'

'Oh, I tried. But you're far too strange and wonderful to pin down on paper. I couldn't write anything that did you justice.'

He dips his shoulders under the water, wriggling to get comfortable. 'Liar,' he says, casually.

'It's not a lie!' And mostly, it isn't. 'I can show you the drafts.'

He nods. 'I should like that. But it isn't why you didn't write me.'

I try again. 'You never told me your name. Have you any idea how difficult it is to write a character without a name?'

'Liar!' He picks up pace. 'You could have called me anything you wanted. Heinrich. Betty. Adolf. It's all the same. Names are nothing.'

'Then tell me yours.' Ha! A hit. A very palpable hit.

He laughs again, 'Oh, you're far too shrewd, Clifford Bradshaw. Cultivating an air of mystique is one of the few pleasures I have left in life. If you want to take that away, at least give something in return. Tell me why you didn't write me.'

Suddenly, the strangeness of the situation is overwhelming. I am standing, fully clothed, in an attic, being cross-examined about my novel by a naked man in a bath. The air smells damply of faux-rose-scented soap, there are discarded clothes all over the floor, and a parrot is glaring at me.

I take a deep breath. 'Because I couldn't write you without thinking about what I assumed had happened to you, and I was too cowardly for that. I should have had more faith in your ingenuity. I should have known you'd find a way to get out before–'

His smile is dangerous. 'Before what, Clifford?'

I begin to understand the climax toward which this conversation is heading. It cannot be averted. 'You tell me.'

But already he is speaking over me.' You want to know my name? Here’s my name.’ He sits up and reaches out to me, extending from the shoulder from the tips of his fingers, except there are no fingertips: every one of his fingers has been cut off around the second or third knuckle. With the smallest twitch he beckons me, and oh God as I'm drawn forward I remember how an audience of a hundred would draw forward  ...

He gives a little self-deprecating smirk, and lowers his eyes. 'I suppose the dramatic reveal would have worked better if I wasn't covered in bubble bath.'

He wipes the bubbles off and I see it: the delicate web of blue veins beneath the translucent skin of his inner wrist crudely overwritten with six digits tattooed in dark ink distorted but not erased by a livid scar.

'Now. Where were we? Hang on.' He closes his eyes. An actor straining to recall his lines. 'That's my name, Clifford,' he hisses. 'That's the only name left to me.'

My mind is racing. Nothing makes sense. Yet our hands are clasping, our eyes meeting. He is standing up, the water and foam spilling around him. He takes my other hand, leaning heavily, and he steps out of the bath. His toes too are gone, and the fingers on both hands.

I pull the towel from the rack in front of the fire and wrap him in it. He melts into my embrace, all artifice, all hostility gone, and then we're sitting on the bed, and I'm staring down at his left hand and he cups my cheek in his right and he gently turns my face so I'm look at him. 'Tell me,' he says. 'Do you find me grotesque?'

Despite everything, I smile. 'Always,' I say.

Chapter Text

The show was over and the patrons gone home, but the party wasn't done yet. Rosie and Lulu were kissing in the corner, and the other girls were playing some game that involved drawing on a piece of paper and folding it over and handing it round and laughing uproariously. Bobby and Victor were having a heated discussion that involved a lot of gesticulation. The Master of Ceremonies was on his own, glowering at a little pocketbook and occasionally scribbling something down. Sally and I were sharing our third bottle of wine or maybe the fourth, and she was kissing my neck, her legs draped over mine. This was just before it all went south with her.

'What's he doing?' I nodded at the Master of Ceremonies.

'The creative process, darling.' She enunciated each syllable of 'creative process' carefully, as though it were a separate word, but still managed to get tangled up in her own tongue. 'It always makes him grumpy.' She wriggled down so she was lying in my lap, staring up at me.

He hadn't yet taken his make-up off, but there was a place on his neck where it was dried and flaking, and suddenly – all right, not so suddenly – I wanted to kiss that place.

'You should seduce him,' said Sally.

I looked down at her. Sometimes it was like that with Sally, like she could read my mind, which makes me wonder if it was a pretence, all those times she was so damn oblivious to everything. 'You wouldn't mind?' I said.

She shook her head vehemently. 'Not at all. I've got to go and talk to Max about something. She swayed unsteadily to her feet, kissed me full on the lips, then staggered off.

I got up and went to piss first, then stared at my face in the bathroom mirror. I wetted my hands and finger-combed my hair. I don't know if that made me look better or worse.

'Bonsoir.' My drunk brain had concluded that it was best to speak French, because neither of us were as good at it as we were at English or German. I hovered awkwardly. My drunk brain was still calculating whether it would be better to sit opposite him or beside him. But he patted the worn velvet of the pew by his side, so I collapsed next to him. He put his arm around me at once, and I leaned my head on his shoulder.

'Clifford Bradshaw,' he said. 'Well, isn't this nice?' He closed the pocketbook with a snap.

Since he had spoken English, I did the same. 'It is nice!' I exclaimed. 'It is very nice. Do you want a drunk? I mean a drink.'

'Both,' he said at once. 'Let me get you a very special cocktail.'

He squeezed past me, and came back with a large glass containing some clear liquid for me, and a smaller glass of what looked like the same for him.

'It's called a Vodka Surprise,' he said. I was a third of the way down before I realised it was water. I didn't complain: I had been very thirsty.

'What were you doing?' I gestured to the pocketbook on the table. 'I hope I didn't disturb you.'

'I was failing to finish the new song I'm writing for Sally,' he said. 'And I was very glad to be disturbed, especially by you.' He looked intently at me, the smudged liner only making his eyes look bigger and more beautiful.

'I ... I ... yes.' I said emphatically. He was naked from the waist up, except for a bowtie. His sweat was musky and enticing.

'Ah, Clifford,' he said. 'What a privilege it is to talk with a writer. Such a way with words you have.'

And, oh – I was laughing and angry and turned on, and so I kissed him hard on his brilliant cherry lips. 'The way you make me feel is beyond words,' I said. 'In your presence, my intellect withers away, and I am all desire, all fire.' I wished we had been speaking German so it didn't rhyme. 'Maybe Shakespeare could do it though, or Byron. "He walks in beauty like the night of cloudy climes and starry skies and all that's best of dark and light meet in his aspect and his eyes."'

You have to understand it was a different world. We had to do things quickly because we all knew at some level that we were running out of time. Or maybe it was just that I was young and drunk and I had never before met anyone like him.

'I like you very much also, Clifford Bradshaw. But it is late and you are drunk and I think the very best thing would be for me to escort you home.'

We didn't get as far as my room. I could hardly walk, and besides I needed to piss. He took me up to the studio flat with a bathroom and a tiny bedroom leading off from the main room in which he cooked, ate and lived. It was cold and the air tasted damp and stale. His costumes were everywhere, red and white and black, silk and leather and lace.

'You had better sleep here,' he said when I had finished in the bathroom.

'Yes!' I said, laying my hands on his buttocks and pulling him towards me.

'Not like that,' he said. 'You are far too drunk–'

'I am not!' I pulled his hand towards my groin to demonstrate that I was still perfectly capable of performing. His fingers were long and white, very strong as he pulled away, and very gentle as he curled them around my neck.

'That's not what I meant,' he said crisply. 'I meant, you are too drunk to know what you want.'

'Nonsense! I–' But the room was swaying and I was swaying, and he was holding me upright and half carrying me toward the bed, and I had to agree that I really wasn't in the best of states. 'Then we shall fuck in the morning!' I proclaimed with great joy, before falling backwards onto the sheets and straight asleep.

I woke once during the night, and we were coiled together so I hardly knew when my body stopped and his began. Asleep, and without make-up, he looked younger and smaller. He no longer smelled of sweat but of some floral soap. His black hair was clean and fluffy. I was keenly aware that I myself did not smell so good. When I got up to piss again, I washed too, scrubbing myself as best I could in front of the washbasin, and splashing the tatty brown linoleum with water.

'What are you doing?' I hadn't notice him get up and stand at the bathroom threshold.

'Washing,' I said, and grinned, turning to him, fully naked.

He took in my body with obvious appreciation. 'Very nice,' he said. 'But it's the middle of the night and the pipes make a noise and the neighbours will complain. Come back to bed.'

I could feel the beginning of my hangover coming on. 'More Vodka Surprise first,' I said.

He poured me a big glass of water and we sat up in bed together as I drank it. He was reading by the light a little gas lamp.

I glanced at the book. For a moment I panicked, thinking I'd got so drunk that I'd somehow forgotten how to read. Then I realised it was in Hebrew.

'How many languages do you speak?' I said. Then: 'Are you Jewish?'

He shrugged. 'Hitler would say so. So would my mother, though she would add that I'm very, very bad at it indeed.'

Odd. I had never considered that he would have a mother. 'What do you think?'

'Why should it matter what I think?'

'I would have thought yours was the only opinion that mattered.'

'Oh Clifford,' he said, and kissed me on the forehead, as though I were a child. 'I fear that Hitler's opinions will begin to matter very much indeed.'

'Yes,' I said. 'I'm sorry.'

He laughed. 'Then again, I suppose it's only Hashem's opinion that really matters. In the long run, so to speak.'

Hashem. A Jewish name for God, I remembered. No, not 'a name', a word that meant 'the name'.

'What's your name?' I asked, suddenly realising I had no idea.

He shut the book and turned to me, his face very close to mine. 'I am the Master of Ceremonies,' he said.

'Yes, I know, but –'

'Informally,' he said, 'you may shorten it to "Master"'.

I slept late into the morning. When I awoke, I could smell sausages and eggs cooking. A few notes banged out on the piano.

'No,' he was saying. 'Like this: "Life is a Cabaret, old chum, Come to the Cabaret!" He said 'old chum' in a wonderfully plummy English accent.

Sally's voice, copying him. 'Life is a Cabaret, old chum, Come to the Cabaret!'

'Better,' he said. 'But you still need more expression. Now. Should we wake your Clifford for breakfast, do you think?'

She laughed. 'You must have really tired him out last night.'

'He was far too drunk for anything like that,' he said. 'You of all people should know that I don't take advantage of drunk people, even when they are extremely beautiful.'

I could hear the pout in her voice. 'That's very mean,' she said. 'It's always when I'm drunk that I want you most.'

'Of course,' he said in a naughty whisper. 'What happened when he woke up later, more or less sober, is a completely different matter.'

My loins warmed at the thought of what we had done, and at the idea of Sally hearing about it.

'Oh?' she said. (Meanwhile, there was sound of cups and plates and silverware being set down on a table.) 'Do tell.'

'I did with him many of the wonderful things he cannot do with you, and you cannot do with me.'

'Tell me more. And is there any gin? It's not too early for gin, is it?'

'Of course not.' (The sound of something pouring.) 'We talked about politics. And religion.'

She laughed. 'Oh, you swine,' she said.

'And then we fucked. Clifford!' He shouted through to me. 'Clifford, I know you're awake and listening. Come and eat sausage with us.'

Chapter Text

And now, almost two decades later, we shared a bed again. There was no conversation about it, but he didn't ask me to go, so I stayed. When we were sleepy we got under the covers and he pulled me toward him and stroked the back of my neck. By the time I worked out he wanted to fuck, the moment had passed, and we were holding hands, side by side. I realised that I was very, very tired.

The first time I woke during the night, it was because he kicked me. For a moment I was disorientated, no idea where I was or who I was with, but then I saw he was asleep, thrashing in the throes of some nightmare. When I drew him to me he relaxed, curling up, his head nestled into the crook of my shoulder. Perhaps his face was wet with tears, perhaps just sweat.

The second time I woke, the door was open and Faye was standing on the threshold, silhouetted by the landing light. ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ she hissed to herself. 'Men!' She quietly shut the door behind her.

The third time, it was the uncomfortable press of my bladder that woke me. I put on his dressing gown, having no nightclothes of my own with me, and padded down to the bathroom. Faye was awake in the sitting room, and when she heard me she turned and darted out, pushing me back against the wall and hissing right into my face. ‘If you hurt him, we’ll kill you.' Her breath smelled sour. She had been drinking. ‘It’s what we do. We kill people who hurt him.’

In the morning, she was all smiles again. The two of us ate breakfast in the kitchen, after she let me take up the tray she prepared for her 'uncle'.

'Tell me about yourself,' I said. Asking about Sally hadn’t worked, so I would seek information by oblique means.

She shrugged. 'What do you want to know?'

'Oh everything,' I said. 'Your life story. How did the two of you ended up living in London?'

For a moment I didn't think she was going to answer, but then she poured herself some tea and shrugged. 'I was born. I was a baby. At that point I didn't do much except cry and shit. I went to school. It was a Nazi school. I hated it. Then, when I was fourteen, the war ended and my mother and I went to rescue my uncle.'

'Rescue?' I said. 'But wasn't–'

'Yes. After the war we hired a motor car and tracked him down.' She took the last piece of toast and started spreading it with margarine. She looked up at me. 'Do you want more?'

I didn't know if she meant toast or information. 'Yes,' I said.

She put more bread under the broiler and sat back down. 'Thankfully the Nazis were good at keeping records, so it wasn’t too hard to find the correct camp. The Soviets said he was dead, so my mother yelled at them, because obviously that would bring him back to life. Except it kind of did: they admitted that in fact the list said ‘dead or dying’, but I didn’t hear any more, because I had seen where the ‘hospital’ was, so I snuck in and … well, this bit wasn’t so easy. But I found him and picked him up and carried him out.’

I stared at her. 'Was one single word of that true?' I asked

She licked some marmalade off her thumb. 'Every single one.'

'I don't believe you.'

She shrugged. 'Fine.' She poured herself some more tea.

'You were ... what? Fourteen? How could you carry a fully-grown man?'

And then he was there, leaning against the kitchen doorframe. 'For some reason or other,' he said. 'I had lost quite a bit of weight.'

'Uncle!' She stood up, a big grin on her face. 'But you never come downstairs. You said–'

He gave her a sickly lopsided grin. 'How do you know I never come downstairs, child? Maybe when you are out I come down and lick all the biscuits then put them back in the tin, and turn the milk sour and dance about with the mice.'

She rolled her eyes. 'The biscuits aren't soggy,' she said. 'And the milk isn't sour, and there aren't any mice.'

'You,' he said, jabbing the stump of a finger toward her, 'have a prosaic soul.' His voice sounded more German than usual, and the last word is drawn out a fraction. 'Besides,' he added. 'It turns out that being a recluse is quite dull. Also, your toast is burning.'

As she rescued it, he came over and sat on the bench next to me. He walked a bit strangely, but I couldn’t tell whether it was because he didn’t have any toes, or whether it was because he was a dancer.

'And then you all come to London?'

'After a while,' Faye said. 'Mother needed to get us visas.’

He took up the story. 'So Sally dragged us all around Europe on a hideous grand tour, taking me to doctors and dentists and psychiatrists and immigration officials. At that point I also didn't do much except cry and shit.’

I stared at him, then her. ‘You were only a child,’ I said. I tried to remember myself at fourteen, tried to comprehend how it had been for her. (I did not try to comprehend how it had been for him.) ‘How much school did you miss?’

She laughed, then stopped herself by sticking her wrist in her mouth. 'Oh Clifford,' she said. 'Is that really the first thing you thought of? But you are marvellous. Just like mother said you were.' She offered me the least burnt bit of toast and put the rest in the rack. 'To tell you the truth, I never much got on with school. My uncle educated me. I took care of him, and he educated me. It was horrible, but it was also beautiful.’

He rolled his eyes. 'Very beautiful,' he said. 'I lay there and gibbered about books I half remembered while you mopped up the stinking pus that seeped from the ulcers that covered my body.'

She rolled her eyes too. 'Yes, that's exactly how it was. Gibber gibber gibber; mop mop mop, for three months straight.'

‘None of that is the point.’ I spoke sharply, angry with Sally, with the world. ‘Even hearing about it, even reading the newspapers … it’s unspeakeable. Your mother should have–‘

He interrupted me. ‘Do you know what my very favourite thing about unspeakable suffering is? It’s that one doesn’t have to speak about it. Is there really only margarine? I thought we had some black market butter?’

It was a companionable, domestic morning. I sprawled on the coach, sketching out a few scenes for my new novel; the two of them sat at the piano, talking quietly and playing. I half listened to their conversation. He was teaching her to play a song he had written for someone called Henrietta to sing. Faye said the name 'Henrietta' more often than she needed to, sometimes with a wistful sigh.

After lunch, she decided to paint her nails, getting together far more apparatus than I realised would be necessary for the process, including three different bottles of polish, a jar of cold cream and a bowl of water. I noted with approval the dark red she chose, but still remembered with fondness Sally's hideous green.

When I next looked up from my notebook, the two of them were sitting cross-legged on either side of the bowl of water, and she was massaging cold cream into his hands. They gazed intently at each other without speaking, and there was something of the ritual about it. She dried his hands with a white towel, and started to paint the one fingernail he had left. I felt like a voyeur of something far more intimate than sex.

Later. She was gone to play the piano at Espinosa's, and he to his room to read. I stared at a blank page in my notebook for a while, then put it away, and looked instead about the room. I would be a detective, I decided.

The bookshelves were half full, with books in half a dozen languages. My eye fell first on the most familiar. The Berlin Stories, by Clifford Bradshaw. He had clearly read it, but had Sally? I reached up and took it down. Something fell out. A letter. In Sally's hand. Addressed to me.

Dearest Clifford

Oh dear, I haven't written anyone a letter since I was at school and we had to sit down every Wednesday afternoon and scribble nonsense to our parents. There was never much to say then, and now there's everything. But I still can't find any words. That's the same.

I think I might have made a terrible mistake, Cliff. Or two. Or many. So I guess what I want to say is I'm sorry. No-one else will listen to me when I say sorry. Not even the Master of Ceremonies, who was always such a good friend. I think he might rather hate me, Cliff. Isn't that a horrible thing? But maybe you'll listen. I just need someone to listen, Cliff. You don't even have to forgive me if you don't want to.

All right, so let’s get this over with. I got married.

Please don’t be cross, Clifford. I know I should have got married to you if I was going to get married to anyone, but I didn't and now everything's all messed up. I wish me and Faye were with you in America, Cliff. Oh dear, and now I remember you don't even know about Faye. Let me start with that.

So I was a bit sad and messed up after I did what I did with the baby. I've always been the type to make decisions too quickly. I think you told me that once. Well you were right. You're right about a lot of things. More than 'a bit' messed up really. I just cried and cried and cried, and I couldn't get out of bed or anything. I was staying with the Emcee and he was really the only person I ever saw. He would make me eat and drink, and hold me when I cried. Well, you know for yourself how kind he is, and if he really does hate me now I think I will just have to die.

Anyway. After some weeks of all this he goes away for a few days and when he comes back he's got my fur coat. You know, the one I sold to get the money for the doctor. And I had to laugh because of course it wasn't the coat I was crying over but it was still so sweet that he bought it back for me. But he's holding it funny, and then I see that there's this tiny newborn baby nestling in it, and he says she's mine.

I called her Faye.

It's not often you get a second chance like that, is it Cliff? It's the most magical and wonderful thing that's ever happened to me. And I swore that I would love Faye and protect her and do anything for her. Anything.

It wasn't so bad at first. There wasn't enough space in that horrible basement flat of his, of course, and sometimes we yelled, but he was so good with the baby, and looked after her when I was singing, and it was really like we were a little family.

But then everything started getting awful. The Nazis were sticking their noses into everything, and Texas went home to America and Helga got arrested, and the Emcee kept going away and once when he came back he was beaten so badly that he couldn't do anything around the flat, or work or anything. And I took care of him as best I could, but Faye was always crying, and he yelled at me for not caring more about politics and I'm afraid I yelled back at him, which wasn't fair, because I knew he was right, but that's why I was yelling, I think. We couldn't make the rent that month or next month. And ... well, what I'm saying is that I was desperate.

There was this man. Reinhardt. He was young and pretty and he loved me so much and he cared about Faye too. I thought I was in love. He wanted to give us a better life. Wants to. Is giving us a better life. Oh Clifford, you'd laugh if you could see me now. I've stopped dyeing my hair, and I've let it grow out so I can wear it in plaits. I'm the proper little Nazi hausfrau all over.

For a while it was good. I felt ... rebellious, you know? You wanted me to care about politics? Look how much I'm caring about politics now. I sang patriotic songs at party meetings and when the war started I knitted socks for soldiers.

But everything has got so ghastly. They closed the Kit Kat Klub, and poor Bobby was shot dead in the street. And they've started taking people away – Max, and Herr Shultz, and no-one even knows where Rosie and Lulu are. The last time I saw the Emcee was two weeks ago, and he turned away in the street and wouldn't even look at me. I'm so frightened for everyone Cliff. I feel so awfully bad and so frightened.

Reinhardt says I shouldn't talk about it, shouldn't think about it, and not to worry because me and Faye are safe, and it's like having a baby, you have to go through something really unpleasant but Germany will be reborn and it will be more wonderful than I can even imagine. (Of course, I can't tell him that I didn't give birth to Faye.) I think I sort of hate him. He's going away with the army next week and I honestly hope he dies. Is that awful of me?

So anyway, what I wanted to say is-

But she must have got distracted.

Despite everything, my first thought was how very her it was. The next thought was darker. Was she telling the truth about Faye, or was it some kind of ... what? Lie? Metaphor? I thought of changeling myths. Of sensational newspaper stories adapted from psychological journals about girls falling into fugue states and remembering nothing of childbirth. I thought of whispered rumours about gypsies and Jews and stolen babies.

All at once I was unbearably restless. I found my key and walked until I found the river Thames, turning all these things over in my mind.

He sat up in bed, propped up by half a dozen pillows, reading something with a very austere cover. He put it aside. 'Clifford,' he said. Not 'you're late' or 'where did you go?' Just my name.

I wished I could reciprocate in kind. 'Good evening,' I said. 'What are you reading?'

He lowered his head and batted his eyelashes, then flung out his hand in one of those theatrical gestures. 'Words,' he said. 'Words, words, words.'

'Oh come,' I said, as I took off my trousers and shirt. 'If you insist on being Hamlet, at least let me be your Horatio. Not Polonius.'

I slid into bed beside him, and he draped his arm around my shoulder. 'Tell me,' he said. 'Do you think they were fucking, Hamlet and Horatio?'

I considered the question. 'Horatio wanted to,' I said. 'Hamlet had other things on his mind.'

'He was too wrapped up in his own self-indulgent misery, you mean?'

'Yes,' I said. Then: 'No. Or, at least, he was, but you have somewhat more cause for melancholy.'

He laughed, only a little nastily. 'What a delicate way to put it,' he said.

There was a brief, awkward silence. I tried to read the cover of the book, without being too obvious about it.

I was too obvious about it. 'I'm reading philosophy,' he said. 'All those ultimate questions. To be or not to be? Does absolute power corrupt absolutely? If poetry is barbarism nowadays, is barbarism poetry? How many angels would dance on the head of a decapitated Nazi?' He paused and smiled. 'Why haven't we fucked yet, Clifford?'

I looked at him.

'I should clarify,' he clarified, 'that the last is not an example of an ultimate question, merely one that feels very pertinent to our current situation. Perhaps I should also clarify that it's only my fingers and toes that froze off. My cock is in perfect working order, as are many other fine parts of my anatomy.'

'Froze off?' I say. Somehow that was more horrific than my lurid imaginings of Nazi torturers with cleavers and knives.

'Yes,' he said. 'But that was not the point I was trying to make. If you find me less than adequately desirable I understand that. You only need say so, and there will be no more awkwardness. But since you have arrived, everything about you has said you want me, and yet you have not taken me.'

'I want you,' I said, grasping on to something simple and true.

Chapter Text

Somehow, three weeks passed. I filled my notebook with mediocre prose. Faye went out early most evenings and came back late. He read books and composed songs. Elsie squawked and sang and nuzzled his neck. Sometimes she stared at me disapprovingly.

Whenever I was left to my own devices I tried to continue my detective work. Once, I guiltily tried the third door that led from the sitting room, which I surmised must have been Sally's bedroom, the others leading to Faye's bedroom and the kitchen. But it was locked.

So I contended myself with hunting around the clutter in the sitting room. About half the books were densely-written philosophical tomes, many of which had words like 'dialectic' in the title. The others were a motley selection, including cheap paperback novels, a rather handsome set of Dickens, and reference books on everything from firearms to the birds of South America.

Following my first success, I diligently searched each of them for anything that might be tucked beneath the pages. There was nothing except for a cardboard bookmark in 'Birds of South America'. From the photo on the marked page I surmised that Elsie was a Quaker Parakeet, native to Argentina, and could live up to 30 years.

And of course, I continued trying to find the right question to ask, or the right time to ask it, or whatever key it was that would let me in on their secret.

For example, one afternoon, Faye was baking a cake in one of her occasional fits of domesticity. He and I sat at the kitchen table, stealing from the bowl of raisins (obtained that day on the black market) when she wasn't looking.  Half of those he stole, he fed to Elsie, who sat on his shoulder, head cocked, occasionally interjecting with gentle chirrups.

'Henrietta thinks you're imaginary,' Faye said, quite suddenly.

He laughed. 'I expect she's right. I'm not exactly probable, am I?'

'What's that supposed to mean?' She took away the bowl of raisins and didn't let him answer. 'She thinks I write the songs and I've made you up because I'm modest about it. It bothers me.'

'Invite her over then.'

She glowered. 'So you can scare her off?'

'Are you ashamed of me?'

'Of course not.' She threw a handful of raisins into the batter, then gave us back the rest of them. 'It's just ... you are a bit strange, aren't you? And if you decided she was no good for me, you'd keep being strange at her until she went away.'

'Or fell in love with me instead.'

'Of course she'll fall in love with you.' She stirred the mixture, her elbow stuck out as though it took a lot of strength. 'Everyone falls in love with you. Just look at Clifford. He comes over here seeking his lady love and the two of us are perfectly beastly towards him about it, and yet he falls into your bed within hours.'

I held out my arms to take a turn at stirring, and she handed me the bowl. 'You could always stop being perfectly beastly,' I said, 'and just tell me what you know about Sally.'

They stared at me as though surprised I was there.

'I've told you,' she said to him. 'If you want to meet Henrietta, all you need to do is come to Espinosa's.'

Another time it was late and we were all drunk, so I asked them plainly. ‘Where is Sally?’

‘On a quest,’ said Faye.

‘She is our errant damsel,’ he added.

‘Slaying dragons.’

He laughed. ‘Catching rats, more like it.’                                               

Faye was laughing too. ‘My mother is the Pied Piper of–’ She hesitated.

‘Of the world,’ he said, throwing wide his arms. ‘Destroying vermin and stealing children everywhere.’

‘When will her quest be finished?’ I asked.

He sighed. ‘When there a no more rats left to kill.’

Faye gave him a meaningful look. She seemed upset.

‘When she has atoned for her sins,’ he said.

‘My mother,’ said Faye, ‘was not single-handedly responsible for the entire Third Reich.’

He gave her one of his half smiles. ‘Oh, I can forgive her easily enough for killing me,’ he said. ‘But could she not at least have let me die?’

About a month into my stay, something horrible happened. An argument.  Until then, the bond between my two hosts had seemed a tender, unbreakable thing, borne of mutual suffering and mutual support. At times it was almost unsettling, the way identical twins can be sometimes.

Then, one Sunday, as he was writing a letter, sitting at the bureau in the corner of the sitting room, and she and I read the newspaper on the sofa, she looked up and asked who he was writing to.

He turned his chair around. 'It's funny you should ask that,' he said. 'I'm corresponding on a matter of philosophy with the Principal of Newnham College Cambridge.'

'The meaning of death?' she asked.

'The meaningless of suffering. But that's not why it's funny you should ask. Newnham is one of the women's colleges.'

'That's nice.' She set her jaw and firmly returned to staring at the newspaper. Her eyes were not moving. She was not reading it.

'I've told her about you,' he said. 'She would very much like to meet you. She thinks there would be a place for you as an undergraduate.'

'That's a shame,' she said. 'Given I already have a home and a job in London which I like very much.'

'Espinosa's is all very well for now,' he said. 'But one day you'll have to find something proper to do.'

'It's perfectly proper,' she said. 'Besides, once I'm eighteen I'm going to–' She stopped abruptly. Both of them were staring at me. 'Well, anyway,' she went on. 'I'm very happy at Espinosa's.'

'What was that about?' I said. 'What are you going to do once you're eighteen, Faye?'

They ignored me, which I took to mean it was something to do with Sally. Interesting.

'You're not good enough to make it in show business you know,' he said.

'I'm better than my mother was.'

He laughed. 'That's not saying much, morally or artistically. You don't dance well, you barely sing. Even I'm a better pianist than you are, and I don't have any fingers.'

She rolled her eyes. 'That's an exaggeration,' she said.

He laughed again, and this time it was brittle and nasty. 'Oh, an exaggeration,' he said. 'Well, pardon me for not having suffered enough.'

'You know what I mean,' she said. 'You're an excellent pianist, and I'm a good one, and getting better. Henni says–'

'Henni!' he scoffed.

'Yes, Henni. She's the most talented musician I know.'

'You know very little.'

'I know she owns Espinosa's. I know she came to this country with nothing, and built up a successful business, and wouldn't have been able to do that if she didn't hire talent.'

The smash of a glass on the floorboards. Red wine seeped into the beige rug and I dashed to the kitchen to get a damp cloth, and the dustpan and brush.

When I got back, she was standing over him. They were staring at each other, tense, like two cats about to fight.

'You're just like Papa,' she hissed. 'A woman says something you don't like, and you're smashing things–

'Are you calling me a Nazi?'

'... in case we're not clear that you could smash us too.'

I put the cloth on the rug, and started sweeping up the glass. 'It was an accident,' I said. 'Wasn't it?'

'Smashing things and smashing people are very different,' he said curtly.

'You of all people should know that one often leads to the other.'

'And what's that supposed to mean?' The sneer in his voice chilled me.

'There is something of the Nazi in you,' she mused. 'Control. You lost control over your own life, and instead of taking it back you try to get control over everyone else's. Papa was the same. He–'

'Faye!' I said. 'That's enough. Ow. Fuck.' I lost my balance trying to stand up, and the palm of my left hand came down heavily on a jagged piece of glass. Blood started throbbing out.

'Now look what you've done!' Her voice was raised. She seized my wrist and was starting to drag me to my feet, when he stood up and grabbed my wrist too.

'Come on Clifford,' he said. 'Let's get that seen to.'

I watched, mesmerised, as the blood plopped down in thick drops onto the rug.

For a moment I thought I was going to be the rope in a macabre tug-of-war, but she stormed off and out of the flat, slamming the door behind her.

We sat across from one another over the kitchen table, as he wrapped the last bit of bandage around my palm. He took a safety pin from his mouth and secured it. 'There,' he said.

My hand both stung and ached.

'Poor Clifford,' he said.

'Poor you,' I said. 'I don't know what got into her.' Though I sort of did. I remembered Sally, how she would lash out, how she would find whatever it was that would most hurt you and throw it in your face, then step back to see if you still loved her afterwards.

He smiled. 'You need to pay more attention,' he said. 'I smashed a glass on the floor. Her stepfather did that just before he hit her mother, or hit her. And make no mistake, he hit them hard.’

'That's awful,' I said, and heard the inadequacy of my words echoing down through the past decade. I hated myself then. I should have stayed. Should have brought Sally back to England by force, if I needed to. Should have gone back to find her. Should have–

'A lot of things are awful,' he said.

'Yes.' Another wave of pain hit me and I winced. How selfish pain makes us. Part of me wondered how my own small pain could take up so much more of my consciousness than all the worse things that had happened to these people whom I supposedly loved.

'Poor Clifford,' he said again. He gently lifted my bandaged hand to his lips and kissed it.

'Poor you,' I repeated, contemplating the shiny scars at the ends of his mutilated fingers. 'She shouldn't have reacted like she did, no matter what she went through. It wasn't your fault. It was an accident.'

'No it wasn't,' he said quietly. He still held my hand in both of his.

I stared at him and he laughed at my expression, showing his teeth. 'Oh Clifford,' he said. 'I'm perfectly capable of holding a glass, you know. I held it up and I dropped it, so she could see for certain I did it on purpose.'

I didn't ask him why, but he responded as though I did.

'To rile her, Clifford. To hurt her. I'm not the person you think I am.' He put my hand against his heart. 'There's no kindness here, Clifford, no goodness. There's nothing. And the sooner she understands that, the sooner–' He broke off, and gently put my hand down on the table. 'The sooner the better.'

He stood up and I stared at his back as he walked out of the kitchen.

I don't think I meant to sleep on the sofa. I spent a lot of time that evening just staring at the walls. I finished sweeping up the glass, and did what I could with the blood and wine. I don't know how I slept. I suppose pain is exhausting.

When I woke up, it was still dark, and I was not alone. A small lamp was on, and Faye was sitting on the rug, surrounded by pieces of paper. Bills, I saw. She was writing cheques and scribbling notes.

'Hello Clifford,' she said. She smiled briefly, then licked a stamp and put it on an envelope. 'I'm sorry about your hand.'

I sat up. My body ached from sleeping in an awkward position. 'What are you doing?' I asked.

She shrugged. 'The finances. I couldn't sleep so I thought I might as well do something useful.'

'I should be paying rent,' I said.

‘Should you?’ She licked another stamp. ‘You can if you want, but we don’t need it. What mother sends is plenty.’

‘The dragons’ treasures?’

Faye nodded. ‘Exactly. Those we can’t return to the villagers they stole them from.

She gathered the papers into a neat pile and put them on the coffee table, then came and sat on the Chesterfield next to me. 'Let me see.' She inspected my hand. 'That's really shitty bandaging,' she said.

'It's fine,' I said. It was coming undone.

'No it isn't,' she said. 'Let me redo it. There has to be some point to having all my fingers, even if it's not playing the piano.'

She started carefully to unwind his work. 'Thanks for clearing up,' she said. 'And sorry for letting you get caught in the middle of...' She hesitated.

'Of what?' I said. 'What was that? What happened?'

Her fingers moved deftly, covering the dressing with neat overlaps. 'People quarrel sometimes,' she said. 'How's that?' She was referring to my hand.

'Impressive,' I said.

'I've had lots of practice,' she said. 'When mother was dragging us round Europe I bandaged my uncle's hands every day.' She paused. 'How is he?' she asked. She sounded a little guilty.

'Not great.' I felt angry with her again, and didn't hide it.

She stared down at her own hands for a moment. 'Do you love him?' she said.

I didn't answer.

'You don't have to answer,' she said. 'Maybe it was the wrong question. If I went away, would you stay here and take care of him?'

'Went away where?'

She shrugged. 'To university, say. Like he wants.'

'Yes,' I said..

We sat together in silence for a bit.

'Do you love him?' I said.

'Yes.' She didn't hesitate. 'I would give anything to make him happy again. I would die. I would kill. I would do it a hundred times over.'

'Then why did you–'

'Because love is complicated.' She said it with confidence and finality.

More silence.

'How do you love him?' I asked.

Her mouth crinkled in amusement. 'Not like that,' she said. 'He's my uncle, and anyway, I'm only really into girls.'

I looked at her. Really looked at her. Her high cheekbones and dark brown bob. Her smudged lipstick, and the redness around her eyes. She had been crying. I saw both her strength and her vulnerability. The more I got to know her, the less she resembled Sally, except sometimes in expression and gesture. I thought about the papers still scattered on the floor, and thought about how young she was to run a household, and how well she did it.

'What are you thinking?' she said.

'If I had a daughter, I would want her to be like you.'

She laughed. 'That's sweet,' she said. 'I think you would be a good father. But I don't need you to love me, only him.'

Chapter Text

When I went to him he was still awake, reading. Not a book this time, but typed papers, which he put away as I came in, locking them in his bedside cabinet with a key on a chain around his neck.

'What do you want?' he said.

I was too tired to do anything but let my immediate response fall out of my mouth. 'I want you to hold me and tell me that everything's going to be all right again.'

'That would be a lie,' he said.

'I know.'

He rolled his eyes and pulled the blankets back. 'Come on then,' he said.

I took off my trousers and shirt and slid in beside him. I hadn't realised I was cold until I felt the warmth of his body as he pulled me to him. I was trembling with it, or with exhaustion or with something else. I didn't know.

'Everything's going to be all right again,' he said mechanically.

I couldn't help laughing. He laughed too. I felt my body slowly start to warm up.

He examined my left hand critically. ‘The child always goes overboard with bandaging,’ he said. He tutted and shook his head in reproof. ‘Well, that’s what you get for spurning my tender ministrations. Be careful she doesn’t bandage up the other one and start feeding you with a spoon.’

He put my hand down carefully on top of the bedspread. ‘How is she, anyway?’

'I think she might be thinking of taking your suggestion,' I said. 'About university, I mean.'

'Well, that's good, isn't it?' He said it without emotion, then started to stroke my back.

I allowed myself to enjoy the sensation. His hand crept up and started to stroke the short hairs on the back of my neck. I shivered.

'You've forgiven the child then?' he said.

'She's a good-hearted girl,' I said.

'It seems perhaps that you have fatherly feelings towards her.'

'Yes, very much.' Where was this going? ‘Is she my daughter?’ I asked. After all, Sally's letter was the only evidence that she wasn't, and Sally was hardly the most reliable witness to anything – and that's if she had even written it.

‘Clifford …’ He looked puzzled, as though sceptical that I could be so stupid. ‘Have you not noticed that I’m her uncle?’ He shifted onto his back. I did the same, and we lay side by side, our arms touching.

‘She calls you uncle. I thought it was just …’ But slowly, the truth was starting to take shape in my mind.

He shifted onto his back. I did the same, and we lay side by side, our arms touching.

‘She’s my sister’s daughter,’ he said.

I took this in. ‘What happened to your sister?’ I asked.

‘What do you think happened to my sister?’ He sighed, exasperated, then spoke more gently. ‘She was a clever, kind woman. We stayed in touch a little even when the rest of my family gave up on me. She was clever enough to understand how things were going, even in the early ‘30s, and she was already a widow by the time she knew for sure she was pregnant.

‘She wrote to me. She had a touching faith that I, being the black sheep of the family, could arrange anything illegal, including an adoption. Which strangely I could, because of course Sally …’ He turned his head and gave me a questioning look.

I nodded. ‘Yes. I found a letter to me she had started.’

He laughed. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Was it the first book you looked inside? The child and I had a little bet.’

I stared at him. They had planted it there? What did it say about me that the first book I would check out would be my own? I made myself chuckle, and once I did, I saw the humour in it myself. ‘I am sometimes a little self-absorbed,’ I said.

But suddenly, he was serious again. ‘Even so,’ he said. ‘You would continue to look after her even if I were not here?’

‘She doesn’t seem to need much looking after,’ I said.

‘She’s a remarkable child,’ he said, ‘but still a child in many ways. And so very alone.’

‘I don’t think she needs or wants anyone except you, and this Henrietta.’

‘But if I went away, you would remain her friend? A parent, if she ever needed one?’

‘Went away?’ I said. ‘Wait … Are you talking about suicide?’

'Of course not, Clifford.’ Then, so softly I wondered if I imagined it: 'How can I kill myself when I am already dead?'

I woke first, and watched him sleeping for a while. I wondered how old he was. Neither age nor hardship had affected his face as much as it should have. Nor custom staled his infinite variety. I understood something then. ‘I love you.’ I said it quietly, so as not to wake him.

He opened one eye, glaring at me with it. ‘You love a shadow,’ he said. ‘You love an empty image flickering on a wall.’ He lowered his voice. ‘You love a rotting corpse,’ he hissed into my ear, then gnashed his teeth. He sat up and stretched. ‘Pervert,’ he said matter-of-factly, and grinned.

I felt a childish urge to tell him his metaphors were stupid. Why would he seek pleasure in my arms if he truly believed himself to be nothing? Can dead men play so nicely with their names? His lungs filled with air and emptied again, his heart pumped blood around his body; he was warm and soft and so alive.

I said nothing, but leant over and kissed him, and oh, there was such hunger as he kissed me back, such desperate tenderness. Then his hands were on my hips, turning me over, and he was fucking all the fear and sorrow out of me, all the reason and thought and comprehension that there was any such thing as past or future.

Breakfast didn’t happen. At lunch, which was late, he and Faye glowered at each other, not talking. They took big aggressive bites of toast, mirroring each others’ movements until both of them started laughing.

The phone rang. Faye leapt to answer it, and as he hustled me out of the room, I heard her ask whether the caller was phoning about the parrot. Was it some kind of password? What was the countersign? He shut the kitchen door behind us and pulled me down on the settee.

‘What is this?’ I said. ‘Is it a trick you’re playing on me? Or are you spies? Or … or–’

‘Hush, Clifford.’ He stroked my hair but I pulled away.

‘No,’ I said. ‘No. I’ve had enough of this.’

‘Just because we’ve had enough of something doesn’t mean it stops, Clifford.’

When Faye opened the kitchen door she was pale and trembling. ‘It was Sergei,’ she said. ‘Sergei said … I think my mother’s dead. She was shot last month, and afterwards they pulled her into the back of a car. He’s only just found out.’

‘Shot dead?’

‘Sergei doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter.’

‘It matters.’ His voice was quiet. ‘If they’ve questioned her, if–’

‘You killed my mother.’ She got louder with each word until she was almost shouting.

He ignored her. ‘What did Sergei tell us to do?’

She opened her mouth and shut it again. I was worried she was going to faint. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Nothing for now. Await further instructions.’

‘All right.’

‘It’s not all right!’ She was shouting properly now. ‘You wanted this to happen. You said she was a Nazi whore and deserved– oh God, questioned her. What does that even mean? Fuck. Fuck.’ She sank to the floor and buried her head in her hands.

‘If Sally’s a Nazi whore, then so am I. At least she had the sense to get rich out of it. I sold myself for a crust of bread.’

‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘Stop doing that. I hate you.’

She clambered to her feet, ran to her room and slammed the door. She came out a few minutes later with a full duffel bag. Her eyes were red, but she was calmer. ‘I’m going to stay with Henni for a bit,’ she said. ‘Sorry. I don’t hate you. But I don’t … I just can’t– Sorry.’

I couldn’t read the look they exchanged before she pulled the fur coat down from the rack and left.

Elsie fluttered down from the attic and sat on his shoulder, gently exploring his earlobe with her beak. He scratched her neck, fully absorbed for a moment until he turned to me and gave me a weak half smile. ‘Do you hate me too?’ he asked.

‘A bit,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what’s happening?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘But you should probably leave too. It isn’t safe here.’

‘Will you come with me?’

‘No.’

‘Then I’ll stay too.’

He nodded, then went to the bureau and unlocked a drawer. He rummaged around and handed me a revolver. ‘Do you know how to use this?’

‘I guess.’ My father had taught me as a kid. I’d hated it.

‘If the doorbell rings, I’ll answer it. If someone shoots me, you should shoot them. If I’m not dead yet, shoot me too. You can escape through the skylight in the attic.’

His calm tone made me feel calm too – or something like calm. The repetition of the word ‘shoot’ robbed it of meaning. I found myself nodding, as though any of this made sense.

‘You will be able to find a way down from the roof. Go to Espinosa’s and find Faye. She will know what to do next.’ I doubted my ability to go clambering round rooves with my left hand wounded, but I didn’t say anything. The whole thing was so preposterous that it barely mattered.

He had gone to his attic. Numbly, I pulled my own book down from the shelf again. I didn’t read Sally’s letter, but I held it to my face, as though I might smell something of her, as though something of her essence might soak into my skin.

I did read my own words, skipping over the bits that weren’t about Sally. The writing felt stale and dull at best, mean-spirited at worst. I had more or less caught what was exasperating about her, but little of her sparkle, her charisma. Perhaps I would try again.

Perhaps I didn’t deserve to.

Perhaps I wouldn't have the chance

At around five o’clock, Elsie, who had never shown much interest in me before, fluttered down the spiral staircase and sat on the back of the settee, her head cocked, making conversational sounds that may or may not have been attempts at speech.

Suddenly, I wanted to hear it again, no matter how hideous. ‘Life is a Cabaret,’ I prompted.

‘Old chum,’ she screamed. ‘Old chum. Old chum. Old chum.’

At six thirty, the doorbell rang. My heart leapt, and I had to dig down the back of the sofa to find the revolver. Inexcusable disregard for safety My father would have been ashamed. Even more ashamed.

I choked on something that might have been a laugh.

He ran down the spiral staircase and I thought he would fall, but he came to a stop by steadying himself on the banister. He flung the door open.

‘Have you come about the–’ he started.

But the telegram boy was staring at me wide-eyed, as I pointed the revolver in his face with trembling hands.

He – the former Master of Ceremonies – laughed. ‘It’s all right, lad,’ he said. ‘We’re actors. We were just rehearsing a scene.’

I lowered the revolver. ‘Is this a dagger I see before me?’ I said.

The boy didn’t break his stare as he said: ‘Telegram for you, sir.’

He read it, and nodded.

‘Any reply, sir?’

He shook his head, and dug in his dressing gown pocket for some coins.

‘For me?’ said the boy. ‘All for me?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Sorry for scaring you.’

He ran away, before my friend had a chance to change his mind.

He shut the door, and slumped back against it, his eyes closed.

‘What does it say?’ I asked. ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

‘It says …’ He cleared his throat. ‘It says “Do not eat the potato.”’

I blinked, wondering, not for the first time, whether this were all a dream.

‘It means,’ he continued. ‘Do not trust Sergei. Shit. We probably need to find Faye.’

And then the doorbell rang again.

I swallowed, and became aware again of the feeling of the revolver in my hand, though this time I did not point it. Would I really pull the trigger, I wondered? Such a small, easy gesture. How much better it would be to live in a world where killing took strength or skill?

On the threshold there stood a black woman in a black leather trenchcoat.

‘Have you come about the parrot?’ he asked.

She looked confused. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Does someone called Faye Bowles live here? My name is Henrietta Clarke and I … oh my Lord, you’re real.’

She was staring at his bare feet, at the pink stumps of his toes.

‘You had better come in,’ he said.

‘... I don’t suppose she thought I’d find the note until later,’ Henrietta was saying. She sat on the purple velvet wing chair; he and I on the Chesterfield. ‘I was supposed to be at Espinosa’s all day, but I laddered my stockings and needed to go home to get another pair, and there it was on the doormat.’

‘What exactly did she say?’

‘I told you,’ said Henrietta. ‘She said she wanted to follow her mother. She made it sound as though she were just travelling. But she told me weeks ago that her mother was probably dead. And given what her mother did, whatever she means it probably amounts to suicide.’

‘What does her mother do?’ I asked.

Henrietta frowned. ‘She catches Nazi war criminals, of course. Aren’t you in on all this?’

Suddenly, things began to fall in to place. Slaying dragons. Killing rats. Birds of South America.

‘She told you that?’ he said.

‘I guessed. Given her past – your past – and all the mysterious foreign visits and Argentinian parrots and gold, it was obvious. But yeah, she admitted it. And she said that one day she wanted to do the same. Which is great, obviously: I hate Nazis as much as anyone. But she’s too young, and this is too sudden. She wanted to make sure the two of you were properly together, and she had this whole elaborate plan to pick stupid fights with you so you wouldn’t miss her, which was absurd, of course, but it delayed her running off so I was all in favour.’

He had been staring at his feet throughout this whole speech. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘What if Sergei – who is not to be trusted – told her she had to go out to Argentina at once. He said to meet him, or another agent … somewhere … Shit.’

A key in the door. I leapt up, some strange chivalrous instinct making me get between them and whoever it was that had Faye’s key. I pointed the revolver. This time I knew that if it came to it I would shoot.

‘Clifford–’ he said.

But then she was there. She looked so much older, her face hard and weathered. But those eyes. I would never forget those eyes. Sally.

‘Darlings,’ she said, extending an arm. The other, I noticed was in a sling. ‘And you must be Henrietta. How splendid!’

She strode in and sunk down into the sofa. ‘I am so tired. Won’t someone get me some gin?’

Faye came in, carrying a suitcase and two bags, which she dumped on the floor. She stared at Henrietta. ‘Henni,’ she said. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

But Henrietta had dashed over to hug her. ‘Faye,’ she was saying. ‘I was so worried.’ I averted my eyes from their passionate reunion.

The former Master of Ceremonies glared at Sally. ‘Heil Hitler,’ he said, lazily making the salute.

‘Fuck off,’ she said easily, and slung her arm around his neck, drawing him to her. He snuggled in close. ‘This time I killed six Nazis,’ she continued, ‘if you include Sergei, that is – and brought another two to boring, boring justice. Have you forgiven me yet?’

‘Do you know?’ he said. ‘I think I have.’

She drew back from him, suddenly solemn. ‘Seriously?’ she said. ‘But you said … let’s see. One for Rosie, one for Lulu, one for Helga. One for Bobby, but two for Victor, given how horribly he died. One for poor Herr Shultz, and one for Frau Shultz. One for Max, even though he owed you money.’

A litany of memory and sorrow.

Still, she went on. ‘One for your mother, one for your father, and two for your sister, because of what she gave us.’ Her voice started to break. ‘One for every month you were on the run, and one for every week you were their slave.’ She was weeping. ‘You are mistaken, darling. I still have dozens to go.’

He waved his hand, the gesture casual, but his face filled with compassion. ‘I’m in a generous mood,’ he said. ‘Fucking your boyfriend has been far too good for me.’

So here is how it happened. Sergei, who was, it seemed, a traitor to the organisation that they called ‘the organisation’, had said exactly what Faye claimed he had said. Then he had told her that someone was needed in Argentina immediately to take her mother’s place. If Faye was willing, she was to meet him in St James’ Park to get her instructions and tickets.

So she did.

But Sally had been in touch with another ‘operative’ who was a traitor to the organisation they called ‘those fucking Nazi scum’. She – having recently arrived back in London – intercepted Sergei in the act of abducting Faye, slit his throat, and threw him into the duckpond.

And all of this was apparently real, and not just a third-rate plot that would make my agent look at me over her glasses and tell me to go home and try again.

Sally told me this as we snuggled on the sofa together, drinking gin. Faye played the piano, while he taught Henrietta a new song, which appeared to involve elaborate hand and hip actions.

‘What happened to your hand?’ she asked, after we had listened for a while.

‘I cut it on some glass. It’s a long story.’

‘Oh?’

‘Well, maybe not really. He wants to die, she wants to run off to South America. Each of them is worried the other will miss them, so the obvious solution was for them to yell and throw glasses until each thought the other hated them.’ I realised too late that I was speaking too frankly. Faye was her daughter after all, and he … well, whatever they were to each other, it wasn’t my place to say such things.

But Sally only laughed. ‘That’s so very like the two of them,’ she said.

The music changed to a waltz. Henrietta’s rich, luscious voice belied the lyrics I hadn’t heard for so, so long.

I don't care much
Go or stay
I don't care very much
Either way
Hearts grow hard
On a windy street
Lips grow cold
With the rent to meet …

And then we were standing up, and it was beyond the end of the world, and I was dancing with Sally Bowles.

Faye pulls Henrietta into her room. ‘Don’t forget,’ Henrietta slurs. ‘You are coming to Espinosa’s tomorrow, uncle. You will sing for us and you will dance, you promised.’

He holds his hands up in surrender, then as the door closes he turns to us and smiles. ‘And I assume you two will be retiring to Sally’s room?’ he says.

Sally pouts. ‘Has your bed shrunk?’ she says. ‘Do you think you’re too good for us? Are you bitter that we’ve both stolen your wounded hand schtick?’ She waggles the elbow of her left arm, the one in the sling.

He looks at me. ‘Clifford?’ he says. ‘What do you want?’

‘I want you to be happy.’

He gives me a mockingly severe look. ‘What would be your second choice?’

‘That we all go to bed together?’

He nods. ‘Good second choice,’ he says.