say, as an insect has legs. Some minutes later that may have been interrupted by a brief doze, we began the companionable love-making that is the privilege and compromise of married life.
We were just waking to the urgency of our pleasure, and stirring more vigorously on each other’s behalf, whenthe phone on the bedside table rang. We should have remembered to unplug it. We exchanged a look. In silence we agreed that it was still early enough for a phone call to be unusual, perhaps an emergency.
Sally was the most likely caller. She had come to live with us twice, and the strain on family life had been too great for us to keep her. Several years before, at the age of twenty-one, she had married a man who had beaten her and left her with a child. Two years later, Sally had been found unfit, too violent, to care for her little boy who was now with foster parents. She had beaten the alcoholism after years, only to make a second disastrous marriage. She now lived in a hostel in Manchester. Her mother, Jean, was dead, and Sally counted on us for affection and support. She never asked for money. I could never rid myself of the idea that her unhappy life was my responsibility.
Jenny was on her back, so I was the one who leaned across. But it was not Sally, it was Bernard, already half way through a sentence. He was not talking, he was jabbering. I could hear excited commentary behind him which gave way to a police siren. I tried to interrupt, calling out his name. The first intelligible thing I heard him say was ‘Jeremy, are you listening? Are you still there?’
I felt myself shrinking inside his daughter. I kept a sensible tone. ‘Bernard, I didn’t catch a word of that. Start again, slowly.’
Jenny was making signs, offering to take the receiver from me. But Bernard had started again. I shook my head and turned my gaze into the pillow.
‘Turn your radio on, dear boy. Or the television, even better. They’re streaming through. You won’t believe it ...’
‘Bernard, who is streaming through what?’
‘I just told you. They’re taking down the Wall! It’s hard to believe, but I’m watching it now, East Berliners coming through ...’
My first, selfish thought was that nothing was immediately required of me. I did not have to leave my bed and go out and do something useful. I promised Bernard I would call him back, put the phone down and told Jenny the news.
‘Amazing.’
‘Incredible.’
We were doing our best to keep its full importance at arm’s length, for we did not yet belong to the world, to the striving community of fully dressed people. An important principle was at stake, that we maintain the primacy of the private life. And so we resumed. But the spell had been broken. Cheering crowds were surging through the early morning gloom of our bedroom. We were both elsewhere.
Finally it was Jenny who said, ‘Let’s go downstairs and look.’
We stood in the living room in our dressing-gowns with mugs of tea, staring at the set. It did not seem right to sit. East Berliners in nylon anoraks and bleached-out jeans jackets, pushing buggies or holding their children’s hands, were filing past Checkpoint Charlie, unchecked. The camera bobbed and weaved intrusively into wide-armed embraces. A tearful woman, her complexion rendered ghoulish by a single TV spotlight, spread her hands, went to speak and was too choked up to utter the words. Crowds of West Berliners cheered and thumped good-naturedly on the roof of each brave ludicrous Trabant nosing into freedom. Two sisters clung to each other and wouldn’t be parted for an interview. Jenny andI were in tears, and when the children came running in to greet her, the little drama of reunion, the hugs and cuddles on the living-room carpet, drew poignancy from the joyful events in Berlin – and made Jenny cry outright.
An hour later Bernard phoned again. It was four years now since he had started to call me ‘dear boy’, ever since, I suspected, he had
We were just waking to the urgency of our pleasure, and stirring more vigorously on each other’s behalf, whenthe phone on the bedside table rang. We should have remembered to unplug it. We exchanged a look. In silence we agreed that it was still early enough for a phone call to be unusual, perhaps an emergency.
Sally was the most likely caller. She had come to live with us twice, and the strain on family life had been too great for us to keep her. Several years before, at the age of twenty-one, she had married a man who had beaten her and left her with a child. Two years later, Sally had been found unfit, too violent, to care for her little boy who was now with foster parents. She had beaten the alcoholism after years, only to make a second disastrous marriage. She now lived in a hostel in Manchester. Her mother, Jean, was dead, and Sally counted on us for affection and support. She never asked for money. I could never rid myself of the idea that her unhappy life was my responsibility.
Jenny was on her back, so I was the one who leaned across. But it was not Sally, it was Bernard, already half way through a sentence. He was not talking, he was jabbering. I could hear excited commentary behind him which gave way to a police siren. I tried to interrupt, calling out his name. The first intelligible thing I heard him say was ‘Jeremy, are you listening? Are you still there?’
I felt myself shrinking inside his daughter. I kept a sensible tone. ‘Bernard, I didn’t catch a word of that. Start again, slowly.’
Jenny was making signs, offering to take the receiver from me. But Bernard had started again. I shook my head and turned my gaze into the pillow.
‘Turn your radio on, dear boy. Or the television, even better. They’re streaming through. You won’t believe it ...’
‘Bernard, who is streaming through what?’
‘I just told you. They’re taking down the Wall! It’s hard to believe, but I’m watching it now, East Berliners coming through ...’
My first, selfish thought was that nothing was immediately required of me. I did not have to leave my bed and go out and do something useful. I promised Bernard I would call him back, put the phone down and told Jenny the news.
‘Amazing.’
‘Incredible.’
We were doing our best to keep its full importance at arm’s length, for we did not yet belong to the world, to the striving community of fully dressed people. An important principle was at stake, that we maintain the primacy of the private life. And so we resumed. But the spell had been broken. Cheering crowds were surging through the early morning gloom of our bedroom. We were both elsewhere.
Finally it was Jenny who said, ‘Let’s go downstairs and look.’
We stood in the living room in our dressing-gowns with mugs of tea, staring at the set. It did not seem right to sit. East Berliners in nylon anoraks and bleached-out jeans jackets, pushing buggies or holding their children’s hands, were filing past Checkpoint Charlie, unchecked. The camera bobbed and weaved intrusively into wide-armed embraces. A tearful woman, her complexion rendered ghoulish by a single TV spotlight, spread her hands, went to speak and was too choked up to utter the words. Crowds of West Berliners cheered and thumped good-naturedly on the roof of each brave ludicrous Trabant nosing into freedom. Two sisters clung to each other and wouldn’t be parted for an interview. Jenny andI were in tears, and when the children came running in to greet her, the little drama of reunion, the hugs and cuddles on the living-room carpet, drew poignancy from the joyful events in Berlin – and made Jenny cry outright.
An hour later Bernard phoned again. It was four years now since he had started to call me ‘dear boy’, ever since, I suspected, he had
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