`How about the Herr Graf?' Gregory asked. `Is he still living here; or anyone else?'
She shook her head. 'Nein, mein Herr. For a long time past we have been living here alone.'
`That's good. But what's this about the gniidige Baronin having gone to the doctor? I trust it's not for anything serious.'
'Nein, mein Herr. Just a slight indisposition from which she has been suffering for the past few weeks.'
Reassured, Gregory entered the house and followed Trudi through to the sitting room. Several large sections of plaster had come down from the ceiling and there were damp stains on the walls, but otherwise it was clean and tidy. Trudi told him then about the house being hit. It had happened in September, but fortunately the bomb had not been a large one; so only the top storey had been wrecked and no-one injured: Gregory was still talking to her when, ten minutes later, he heard the slam of the front door, and as he got up from the sofa Sabine came into the room.
She did not appear ill and was as lovely as ever, but he noted a look of strain on her face. The instant she saw him it disappeared and with a cry of joy she ran to embrace him. After their first greetings were over she stroked his smart uniform and asked how he had come by it.
`That's a long story,' he smiled, `and I'll tell you it later. The essential points are that after six months in a prison camp I succeeded in getting to Goering, and he has given me a job sticking pins in maps at the Air Ministry.'
'Darling Gregory,' she laughed. `Far audacity you are unbeatable.'
He shrugged. `Oh, once I succeeded in getting an interview with him it wasn't difficult. He is an old friend of mine.'
`What! Do you mean that he actually knows you to be an Englishman?'
Gregory nodded. `Yes; but he also knows that I was always pro-Fascist. I told him that I had been put in prison in my own country and that having escaped I felt so bitter about the way I'd been treated that I decided to offer my services to Germany; and that having managed to reach Germany I had had the ill luck to be arrested and again put into prison.'
This mendacious account of himself corresponded sufficiently closely with that he had given Sabine in July for her to accept it without comment; but. she asked, `How is your wound?'
He had been ready for that and, as he was no longer in a situation where expediency demanded that he should give the impression that he longed to make love to her, he replied with a laugh, `Healed perfectly; but don't let that give you any naughty ideas. I've come only as an old friend, to find out if you were still here and had escaped injury in the air-raids.'
She made a rueful face. `That's not very complimentary, but perhaps it's just as well. For the past few weeks I haven't been at all fit; so for the moment I'm rather off being made love to.' Before he could ask her what was wrong with her she added quickly, `I see that silly Trudi didn't provide you with a drink while you were waiting for me. I'll go down to the cellar and fetch a bottle of wine.'
When, a few minutes later, she returned with the bottle of champagne, he saw that she had brought only one glass and he asked in surprise, `Aren't you going to join me?'
As she filled the glass for him, she shook her head. `No; for the time being I'm not allowed alcohol.'
'Really!' He raised his eyebrows. Then a possible connection between her surprising abandonment of her favourite pastime and her no longer drinking suddenly struck him and he added, `Surely you don't mean…?'
Tears came into her lovely eyes and she nodded. `Yes. I wouldn't tell anyone else, but I can tell you. I've been an awful fool. I hate and despise myself. Of course, from fear they'll never live through another night practically every woman in Berlin has become promiscuous, and I suppose at least half of them are in the same state as I'm in. But that's no consolation. I feel so horribly unclean-like a leper. When I realized what had happened I had half a mind to kill myself.'
They were sitting side by side on the sofa. Flopping over towards him, she buried her face in his chest and burst into a fit of uncontrollable sobbing.
Stroking her hair, he tried to soothe her and gradually, as her sobs eased, she told him how she had come by her misfortune.
`It was just a month ago. I went in the afternoon for Kaffee trinken with a friend. She was not in her apartment, but her son was. He told me that his mother had been suddenly called away because her sister had been injured in an air-raid, and that she would not be back that night; but he insisted on making coffee for me. He was only a boy; a child almost, barely fifteen. But he was in uniform. He had been called up to join a Hitler Youth Battalion that in two days' time was being sent to fight the Russians. I've never cared much for young men; particularly inexperienced ones. You know that. And when he started to make love to me I hadn't the least intention of having anything to do with him. But he pleaded with me desperately. All the usual things about my being the loveliest person he'd ever seen and the rest of it. That wouldn't have moved me, but what did was his saying that in a week or two he would almost certainly be dead; that it would be terrible to die never having had the experience, and if I'd let him he'd have something wonderful to think of when he lay gasping out his life. What could I do, darling? What could any woman with any decent feelings do but let him have her?'
After another bout of sobbing, Sabine went on. `Having reluctantly decided to let him, I felt it would be mean not to give him as good a time as I could; so I let him undress me, then he stripped and we got into his mother's bed. I'd expected it to be all over quickly, but he recovered in no time and begged for more. After that, I confess, I rather enjoyed it, so we stayed there for more than two hours. By that time it was dark and an early air-raid started; so I was afraid to leave the building and, as the apartment was on the ground floor of a big block, we were fairly safe there. If only I had gone home I should have taken the usual precautions. But I stayed on and slept with him all night. Then… then ten days later I found that the little swine had lied to me. I hadn't been his first experience at all. He'd had some little bitch, or perhaps several, and must have been riddled with it.'
`You poor darling,' Gregory murmured. `It's a horrid business, but nothing to be really worried about. The same thing is happening to thousands of men and women all over Europe every day now that this accursed war has separated so many people from their wives, husbands and sweethearts. And don't regret having given yourself so generously to that wretched boy. If you are receiving proper treatment you'll be as right as rain again in a few weeks.'
Sabine sat up, took a little embroidered handkerchief from her bag and mopped her eyes with it. `Yes. That's what my doctor says. But in the meantime it's simply ghastly. As I mustn't drink anything I have to refuse all invitations to lunch or parties, in case people suspect what is wrong with me; and God knows if I'll ever be able to look at a man in future without being scared that the same thing will happen again.'
`Talking of men,' Gregory said, `I heard a rumour that van Osterberg is still alive. Is it true?
'Yes. Kurt had the luck to make a mess of things. When he shot himself the bullet only fractured his skull. He was in hospital for three months; then, as there was no real evidence that he had been involved in the plot, Speer got him a clearance so that he could go back to his job making explosives for the Secret Weapons.'
`Have you seen him lately?
'No. It seems, though, the old boy had developed a really serious passion for me. As soon as he was out of hospital he came here several times and implored me to let him come back and live here. But the purge after the conspiracy was so thorough that there was not the least likelihood of its starting up again, so Ribb said there was no point in my keeping tabs on Kurt any longer. That let me out, and I politely but firmly refused to play. He had gone back to his quarters in the underground laboratory near Potsdam and, as far as I know, he's still there.'