There was virtually no money in the housekeeping kitty, so Monica made an omelette and a sandwich. She had just finished eating and washing up when the phone rang. She expected her mother to answer, but gathered she had probably pulled the plug out in the bedroom. Monica hurried into the living room and took the call.
It was Benjamin.
He was in his car, outside their front door, talking on his mobile, he explained. He asked if she had anything against meeting him for a little chat. It might be a good idea to discuss a few matters, he suggested.
She hesitated for a few moments, made a quick calculation and concluded that it was now eleven days since he had slunk out of her bedroom.
Then she said yes.
Provided it didn’t take too long, she added. She had quite a few things to see to.
Benjamin accepted this, and five minutes later she was sitting in the passenger seat of his car. He was wearing the same shirt as he’d had on that first evening on the sofa, she noted.
6
‘I’ve been a bit busy,’ he said. ‘That’s why you haven’t heard from me. Please forgive me.’
She wondered how many times he had apologized or begged for forgiveness during the short time she had known him. It somehow seemed to be his built-in opening line every time he met anybody: apologize, draw a line under everything that had happened and start afresh. Raring to go and without prejudice.
But perhaps it wasn’t such a good strategy in the long run.
‘Me too,’ she said. ‘School is causing a lot of problems. I’m going to change, I think.’
‘Change what?’
‘Schools.’
‘I see.’
He didn’t sound especially interested. Perhaps he had a voice that always gave him away. She had been so taken by it to start with, but perhaps that had been mainly because that was what he wanted her to feel. Maybe he used his voice as a sort of tool.
He stroked her arm gently with the back of his hand before starting the car. She tried to assess her reaction to that gesture — to determine what she really felt about it — but she couldn’t. It was too superficial and insignificant.
‘Where would you like to go?’
She shrugged. Pointed out that he was the one who wanted to talk, not she. As far as she was concerned, it didn’t matter where they did it.
‘Have you eaten?’
She admitted that she had only had an omelette and a sandwich, as her mother was ill.
‘Ill?’ he said as he drove off in the direction of Zwille. ‘She hasn’t said anything about that to me.’
‘It started today. When did you last speak to her?’
‘Yesterday. We spoke on the phone yesterday.’
‘But you haven’t actually met her for quite a while?’
‘Not for a week. I’ve been a bit busy, as I said.’
There was only a slight hint of irritation in his voice, but she noticed it. A vague reminder that. . well, what? she wondered. That not just one person was to blame if two people were not in touch with each other? Not even when one was thirty-nine and the other sixteen.
‘But you have time to meet me?’
He turned onto the Fourth of September Bridge, turned his head and looked at her for so long that she was about to tell him to keep his eyes on the road instead. Then he cleared his throat, wound down the side window and lit a cigarette. She had never seen him smoking before, and had never noticed that he smelled or tasted of tobacco.
‘Do you smoke?’
He laughed.
‘I’ve given it up. Although I buy the odd packet now and again when work gets a bit too stressful. Would you like one?’
He held out the packet. She shook her head.
‘The important thing is that I’m in control of it. I can stop whenever I want.’
‘Do it then,’ she said. ‘Stop now, smoke inside a car makes me feel sick.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, throwing the cigarette out of the window. ‘I didn’t know that. Are you angry with me?’
‘Why do you ask that?’
‘Because I think you sound negative. Quite clearly annoyed. Can I invite you to dinner even so?’
She thought it was odd that he wanted to invite her to dinner if he thought she sounded negative and annoyed, and didn’t know what to say. She suddenly began to think she was being nasty to him: if she didn’t want to talk to him at all, she could have said so on the telephone instead. Declined to join him in the car, that would have been more honest. What she had done in fact was a half measure, as her mother usually called it. A typical, rotten half measure.
And in any case, surely he hadn’t done anything to deserve being treated in this childish way? Six of one and half a dozen of the other, after all.
Thus far, at least.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s have a bite to eat somewhere.’
He nodded.
‘I don’t want to appear negative, it’s just that I think we have to put a stop to these goings-on that we’ve embarked upon,’ she began. ‘I felt that it was wrong even before the last time, and it would be catastrophic if my mum got to hear about it.’
‘We can talk it over,’ he said. ‘How about Czerpinski’s Mill?’
She’d heard about that restaurant by the Maar out at Bossingen, but she had never been there. As far as she knew — and as the name suggested — it was a restored and revamped mill. Rather an elegant venue, in fact. White tablecloths and all that. She glanced at the clothes she was wearing — a pair of dark corduroy trousers and a wine-red tunic — and decided they would pass muster. Let’s face it, teenagers were teenagers after all.
‘That’s fine by me,’ she said. ‘As long as we don’t stay there too long — I ought to be home before ten.’
‘No problem,’ he assured her.
For a brief moment, while they were waiting for the food to be served, a mad thought flashed through her mind.
She would stand up and leave their little table hidden away in a corner. Step out into the middle of the restaurant and hold forth for the other guests sitting at tables next to the walls in the low, oblong room with its big oak tables and exposed roof beams.
‘Perhaps you think that the pair of us sitting at this table are a father and his daughter,’ she would say. ‘You no doubt assume that a generous dad is inviting his daughter to have a top-class meal in order to celebrate a birthday, or something of that sort. But that’s not the way it is at all. This man is my lover, and he’s my mum’s lover as well — just so that you know. Thank you for listening, please carry on with your meal.’
Just to see how they reacted. Him and the other guests at this sophisticated restaurant — which didn’t in fact have any white tablecloths, but whose class was clear from other subtle details, such as the weight of the cutlery, the thick hammered paper on which the menu was printed, the stiff-starched linen table napkins and the even stiffer-starched waiters.
‘I often give him a blow job,’ she might add. ‘Suck him off. Just so that you know.’
‘What are you sitting there thinking about?’ he wondered.
She could feel that she was blushing, and tried to cool things down with a drop or two of Coca-Cola.
‘Here comes the food,’ she said.
‘Does it torment you?’ he asked. ‘This affair between you and me.’
She thought for a moment.
‘I wouldn’t say it torments me,’ she said. ‘But it will have to stop now. I thought you’d grasped that.’
She noticed that he stiffened. Sat motionless for a few seconds before calmly but firmly putting his knife and fork down.
‘I had the impression that there were two of us involved,’ he said. ‘I seem to recall that those were the words you used.’
She didn’t answer, nor did she look at him.
‘If I accept you as a real woman — and isn’t that what you wanted? — you must also act like a real woman. And accept that I am a man. Do you know what I mean?’
A real woman? she thought. No, I don’t know what you mean.