MORNING SERIAL

CEASING to sift the papers, he calmed himself by looking directly over at his chief, who glanced up, forehead furrowed. Why did he keep donning and doffing his cap? Quantz was aware of the smallness of the man, the dwarfing largeness of the dark halo.

***

BACK at Ruhleben, Quantz presided over final scupperings, the bird-obsessed Lieutenant accompanying him.

Two of their men had waded in after the broadcast, in full battle kit, wearing the Knight’s Cross, rifles above their heads. Their pockets must have been full of stones, to militate against any last-minute inclinations to swim. It must have taken them an age to get far enough out. Nobody bothered to retrieve the bodies. They killed themselves tidily, beside the jetty of the swimming area, drunk down into the glossy shadow of its struts.

He asked Heini about his family. Heini murmured that he had had no news about his mum and dad since leaving Berlin.

A qualm of agitated memory beset Michael. Effi, meagre and homely in a wrap-around green dress, with her rather hooded, guarded eyes, querying, So you no longer care at all? Effi in Lubeck with the toddling lad, always hanging on to Mama for dear life, a handful of skirt in his chubby grip, his thumb threaded through her buttonhole.

You’ll make a milksop of him, Michael had warned, but not in an unkind tone. He had chucked Wolfi under the chin, and the boy had squirmed away.

He’s all I’ve got, Effi had snarled back, bonded to the boy with fierce tenacity. You’ve got your women.

Michael had cared, but failed to care enough. Now he shook, at the lakeside, with grief over Wolfi and a need to cherish Effi, for whom he had made so little effort and to whom he had always told, with unforgivable casualness, the truth.

> The Element of Water by Stevie Davies is published by Parthian in the Library of Wales series www.parthianbooks.com