MORNING SERIAL

LIKE monkeys, Isolde thought. She had foreseen hockey but not military drill when coming out as a teacher to the British Army Over the Rhine. Perhaps that was naive.

‘Miss Dahl! Miss Dahl! You can’t carry those on your own! Just hang on a mo. We’ll get our good Heini to help you out.’

Now the lads were shuffling sideways, now forming up, now raising the Union Jack and slamming to attention with a salute.

The man called Heini, with his owl spectacles, emerged to scoop up her cases.

‘Sorry, miss,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t be struggling with those.’

He was youngish, sweetlooking: walked with something of a limp and spoke English with a strong German accent, like Isolde’s mother’s, but without Renate’s distaste for the tongue. His air was apologetic.

‘Thanks so much,’ she said. ‘I’m all in.’

‘Unfortunately, your block is the furthest out, miss, nearest the lake.’ He spoke with hesitant deference, as though personally responsible for the long walk.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said in German. ‘I don’t know your name. We haven’t been properly introduced.’

‘Good gracious,’ he said. ‘Good gracious.’ And stopped, overwhelmed.

‘Funny name!’

‘No, miss, of course that’s not my name,’ he replied solemnly. ‘Heini Fuchs. School groundsman. It was just, well, just nobody speaks German here.’

He seemed so flustered that she returned to English. ‘How long have you been here?’

‘Years. Many years. This is your block, miss, over here. I am by vocation an ornithologist,’ he amazed her by saying.

‘Not much call for that nowadays, so I stayed put when ... when I came here. The school was kind enough to take me despite my minor war-wound. It is enough,’ he explained with earnest sincerity, ‘to be near my birds. We are just by the North Sea, you see, and the perfect environment for many species of...’

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