Because she’s Jewish and frightened for her life, she thought, and the sadness dawned afresh that she could never tell Stefan that; Stefan in his uniform that he was required to wear at all times; Stefan who had once kissed her. Persephone opted for a lie. ‘The man she’s been stepping out with has just finished things between them.’
‘I am sorry for her.’
‘Yes, me too.’
‘What about you?’ Stefan asked. ‘Has the man you’ve been stepping out with gone to war or … is he still on the island?’
‘I’ve not got a man,’ Persey said warily, holding his gaze, wondering why he’d ask such a thing.
‘Did you have one, before?’
She looked up at him, unsure how to reply. She felt, in this instance, that honesty was the best option. ‘No.’
‘Never?’ he asked disbelievingly.
‘Once I had one, years ago though.’
‘How many years ago?’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘Years ago, all right? Too long ago for it to be significant now.’ It was the truth. She’d once been faintly interested in, and had stepped out with, a young colleague of her father’s until she decided after a dreadful conversation about politics that he was actually rather a buffoon. After that she’d gone off the men she’d had the misfortune to encounter, but yet had never been motivated enough to pursue anyone with gusto, like Dido often did. It all looked far too exhausting. Dido said it was because Persephone couldn’t ever quite muster the energy to be what men wanted women to be. Persephone had thought about that a lot.
‘What about you?’ she asked, dreading the answer. ‘Have you got a special someone, some sort of blonde milkmaid, pining away for you back in Germany?’
‘No,’ he said with a smile and then muttered, ‘milkmaid,’ with a laugh.
‘You’ve never had a special someone?’ she asked, annoyed with herself that she was far too interested in what his answer might be.
‘Yes, I have. More than one. But not now.’
‘Why not?’ she asked.
‘Because I am here.’
‘Yes, but if you weren’t here?’ she pushed, unsure why she was pushing.
‘I have not left anyone behind in Germany,’ he said.
The pendulum clock ticked, leaving them in a quiet moment until Stefan continued. ‘Things between us are not as I expected them to be.’
She looked at him but said nothing, acutely aware of a tense feeling deep in her stomach.
‘You do not trust me,’ he said. ‘You do not like me. Because of this.’ He did as she had done and gestured at his uniform.
Persey looked down at the piano keys and absent-mindedly, slowly, pushed the same key twice, three times until Stefan’s hand rested gently on hers to stop her. She started and stared at his hand on hers, until he moved it, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away from the place it had just been.
‘I never thought I’d see you again,’ she said. ‘And on the occasions I did wonder what it would be like, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it would be like this.’
‘I know,’ he said.
‘There’s going to be so much suffering,’ Persey said, eventually bringing her gaze up to meet his. ‘Here, on this island, there’s going to be such, awful, dreadful suffering, because of … your kind,’ she eventually finished.
‘My kind?’ he said woefully before nodding his head and moving away from her. He sat on the edge of the settee and sighed. ‘There will be no suffering if everybody …’
‘If everybody …?’ Persey questioned and then finished his sentence for him, ‘Behaves? Is that what you were going to say? If everyone behaves, if we cause no trouble?’
He closed his eyes and then looked rueful. ‘The things I’ve seen as we crossed Europe,’ he said. ‘The devastation left in the wake. The trouble has mainly been caused because people put up resistance.’
‘What do you expect?’ Persey baulked. ‘You want us all to accept your arrival, your rule, here? On an island that isn’t yours?’
