Iris

The shrill sting of the telephone raises Katherine from an otherwise deep and perfect slumber. She sits up, her hands clutching her lower limbs. There is only one receiver in the house, cemented to the kitchen wall. The iced tiles will burn her and the phone is sure to ring off as she arrives, her whole night's rest ruined.

While he sleeps peacefully on.

They had chosen against a bedroom connection so as to avoid being awakened at night but it always gets through to her. He, annoyingly, never stirs, pretending not to hear.

Katherine decides against the ice, fumbling under the bed for her slippers. They are not there and she does not want to risk the abruptness of the light. The phone goes on singing. Short, staccato buzzes at regular three second intervals.

Alexander's novelty rhino slippers are more accessible. She feels her way into their oversized comfort and makes her way downstairs. Usually she would slam the door to the bedroom in pointed protest against Alexander's dormant failure to stir; but Katherine knows that he would refuse or overreact, striking up a hateful confrontation for which she feels she no longer carries the strength.

Katherine hopes never to have a child with this man. When it wakes, screaming unrelentingly, she pictures the same scene. He will leave it, sleeping on. He will say that the baby should be left to cry and that by running to the child you concede. You weaken yourself and draw the child into your weakness. Leave until it tires itself back to sleep and you have done the child a favour. Made it strong and built yourself up too. Convenient black and white rules of simplicity to suit his ends.

Katherine burns for a child and senses that her time is near. But not with this man.

She has stumbled her way to the kitchen, tracing her steps from custom, her eyes, squinting, unaccustomed to the light. She picks up the receiver and reading 2.36 am on the fridge's digital clock, responds curtly.

'Hello ?'

The voice at the other end is female. This annoys her instantly. Katherine knows it is not for her. None of her friends would call at this time of the morning bar death or lost-love-type emergencies. The voice is also foreign. It must be for him.

'Hi, it's Iris from Austria. You must be Katherine, Alex's girlfriend.'

'I guess so.' She is cold. At the very least she expects a fake apology for the lateness of the call.

'He has told me all about you. It is so cool to speak to you! We must meet.'

'Not tonight. I have an important meeting first thing in the morning'.

Iris laughs loudly, and, to Katherine's mind, rather vulgarly.

'Oh you English ! No, of course not tonight. You misunderstand me. I am in Linz. Shit, it is late. Is it this late where you are too?'

'Almost. Look, just wait a moment and I'll fetch Alexander', she says, her irritation escalating.

Katherine lets the receiver drop into mid-air, the tangled coil unwinding. It falls within an inch of the floor, knocking the cupboard in its descent and remaining in a state of aerial suspension.

Katherine crawls up the stairs determined to prolong her journey. Alexander can wait for his after-hours phone call. And so can she. Who is she anyway? Lover? Ex-lover? He will say she is a friend. This means nothing to her. Not anymore. What if they were men calling in the dark of the night. How would he like it?

She stands over him for a moment. She leans over and begins to whisper gently in his ear. Alexander is sleeping on his side, his head marginally propped up by the pillow. Katherine folds his long, straight hair back from his front.

'It's for you.' Alexander does not budge. Her voice rises mildly but with definition.

'Honey, it's for you. It's your lover from Austria'.

Alexander maintains his stillness. Katherine looks at him in utter disbelief, removing her hand from his hair, taking up its previous post on the mantel of Alexander's skull. Katherine cannot believe that a man can be as insensitive in sleep as when awake.

She prods him slightly in the ribs with the tips of her long, slender fingers. His body appears to acknowledge the gesture but, still, he remains unmoved.

'I'll get rid of his whore,' she thinks as she finds her way once again to the cold horror of the kitchen.

Katherine begins to recall a school ski trip to an Austrian resort- near Innsbruck but cheaper, Gosau perhaps- and it hits her that Austria is actually one hour ahead in time so there really is no justification at all for these late night antics. This Iris knew how late it was when she called. Katherine concludes that Iris does not know early nights nor steady, gainful employment, nor a man of her own whom she has not stolen from some hapless innocent.

'Where did he meet her anyhow?' she asks herself in annoyance. Alexander will respond immediately, in shocked defence, horrified that Katherine even feels that she needs to know, saying she is a dear friend from his eternal travels through Europe of years before. In that soul- searching, girl-chasing, so called explorative year away, year of introspection, year that Katherine had never taken and had always resented him for.

'Before you,' he will say.

The line is very much alive and she knows the Austrian is still at the other end. Katherine retrieves the horn. Drawing in the icy kitchen air, which has fused with the smells of the evening's cooking for which Alexander was late, Katherine resolves to be stern.

She tries anger. 'Look, he's sleeping right now and I can't seem to wake him. I don't mean to appear rude but it's extremely late and I think you had better call back another time. What was your name again ?'

Iris is unabashed, even more excited and chirpy than before, oblivious to Katherine's wrath. Katherine summises that the British temper does not translate well. The Austrian's English is faultless but Katherine imagines her desperately translating every word far too literally, back into her native German or Austrian dialect; resulting in a lack of all nuance, tone, irony or mood with Iris following only a robotic, stilted interpretation of what Katherine has said.

As Iris spits out her harsh Teutonic tones, Katherine's one-time Gosau ski instructor appears before her, fully kitted and ready for slalom. After all these years he is as handsome as ever, while she is, despite her friends' reassurances (never Alexander's), exhausted, weather-beaten and sour. What is he doing here in her kitchen in the early morning at the dawn of spring with a futile and floppy grin decorating his perfectly skinned mug ?

She rubs her eyes with force, causing them to sting, telling herself this is not happening and returning to the receiver which she has held pressed to her ear during this brief respite. Iris has continued the discourse single-handedly, not in the slightest bit perturbed by Katherine's pervading silence.

'My name is Iris of course. I cannot believe Alex has never spoken of me'.

Katherine was fourteen at the time. Otto could not have been more than nineteen or twenty but he seemed so very adult, so very much a part of that distant, romantic world she desperately wished to penetrate.

Otto was amiable with all the girls in his ski class, telling appropriate jokes, pulling them up when they fell, encouraging their skiing talents, pushing them gently to improve their techniques and feeding them full with delightfully stodgy dumplings when they rested, unable to go on.

Otto was not a full-time instructor. He was a devoted student of the University of Vienna, enrolled in the faculty of Economics much to the disappointment of his enlightened family that could trace its roots back to the Habsburgs. Previously they had reared children only of artistic or creative inkling, whereas Otto had decided to become a man of commerce. To allay his family's suspicions of the world of business, to which they had never been party or comprehended, regarding the pursuit of money as the ultimate corruptor, more inhumane than the mere possession of wealth that could be better excused by way of an accidental birth, Otto's family warning their offspring with severe sincerity that money should be incidental to the work one chooses, never the fuel, Otto reassured his loving kin:

'That I will be different, I will be fair'.

Katherine told herself things could have worked out eventually with Otto were it not for obvious barriers such as age and circumstance. She never spoke of love, neither to Otto nor her friends. Katherine would never have risked the humiliation. Around boys she was timid, around men awkward, especially real men, like Otto.

Katherine had been kissed just the once by a presuming wretch at a Christmas family gathering. She was supposed to be playing a game with Leon, the two of them hiding from the tedium of the adults and their silly repetitive questions in a cupboard under the stairs where the clutter of broken-stringed tennis rackets and generally discarded objects were deposited, when he squeezed her cheeks with his left hand, prised her mouth open involuntarily and probed inside her mouth with his unwanted, vile tongue. Katherine had stomped on the creature's foot, making him wince and pull off, before running to a childhood hiding spot that only she knew about and where she could not be found.

'Why did he have to do that?' she thought, in disgust. 'We had been having fun before that'.

Why do they always have to do that? Nothing has changed with men.

Whereas Otto had been different.

Otto was generous with all the girls but to Katherine he was extra-courteous, his smile shining more radiantly when turned it on her. She considered that he was at pains to be polite to the others yet they bored and irritated him. As with all unrequited teenage loves Katherine knew Otto better than he knew himself, understood him better than his unsupportive family or frivolous girlfriends who used him because he was athletic and blonde, and good to be seen with. None of them knew of the depth to the person, of the great sadness behind that inviting, carefree smile. Katherine wrote to Otto in her diary. Endless pages of love proclamations, advice about how to overcome the impossibilities of their love. She nurtured the idea that Otto was silent with her for he also feared the force of his love, the reaction of their families or, worse still, that he would not be loved back.

When the vacation came to an end Katherine was not despondent. She knew they were not ready. They would return to their former lives and prepare themselves for the greatest, all-consuming love the world had ever known. They would meet again, years from then, by the touch of a wand, by predestined chance.

For two years Otto and Katherine planned their precarious future together within the pages of her journal, tucked deep within her growing breast. She worried about her father's reaction. He had never really got over the war despite being too young to remember it.

Katherine's father hated Austria even more than Germany. Bernard thought History had let her off too easily. The world had become rightly accustomed to despising the Germans for the commencement of ' and conduct during- the Second World War. People rarely mentioned the neighbour. Bernard put this down to their respective sizes. Austria was populated with roughly ten percent of the German total. For many, the geographical and population smallness of twentieth century Austria meant she was the poor, unwilling relative dragged into the Anschluss marriage. Austria was the Tyrol and its white mountain sheets. Austria was rich food and gluwein, knee- stretched socks and feathered hats.

Bernard was an enthusiast of figures, of overwhelming statistics. Not that he was any kind of a mathematician. Bernard had made his money building up a company that laid tarmac more cheaply than any of its competitors. Yet history and numbers held a latent fascination for him. The impressive numbers, the ones that astound, forcing the recipient of the data back into the chair, astounded and gasping. Bernard read somewhere that despite Austria's seeming insignificance half of the Holocaust's victims could be attributed to Austrian controlled territories, to Austrian SS Officers. For Bernard, there was no Austro/German distinction, it was just an annex to the Fatherland. Their fusion at the end of the Great War had been denied despite their pleas and realised in 1938 to their utter joy.

Austria gave birth to the leader of the Third Reich. Austria's Chancellor of the day may have needed chasing around the table by Hitler before giving in to the union but its people required little convincing.

When Katherine approached her parents with news of the school's trip Bernard reacted furiously. Katherine found her father's bigotry intolerable. She suffered all categories of race in her class on a daily basis. Katherine could not see why he took it so personally. Bernard was not Jewish himself nor did he have any Jewish friends. Katherine was an alert, sensitive girl and fully appreciated the historical period about which her father raged, although she failed to understand how the modern generation could be held responsible for the actions of its forefathers.

Bernard explained :

'Some nations, like some individuals, are intrinsically evil. I will not allow a child of mine to pump money into an economy that has prospered from the millions of deaths it has caused.'

Katherine protested : 'I am not investing in the country. It's a ski trip. Shouldn't I judge for myself ? Aren't you doing what the fathers of the thirties did when they told their children to accept what their parents and the authorities said?'

Bernard did not wish to enter into a classroom debate with his shrewd daughter concerning egalitarian principles of freedom of choice. NO meant NO and he felt sure of his stance. He had always given in to the whims of his only daughter, often against the more cautious notions of his wife. On this occasion, however, his wife stepped into the arena to lend a touch of much-needed, ready- to-turn-combative, support.

Some days later when Katherine was absent and all seemed lost Myriam spoke to her husband. Bernard noticed a resigned solemnity to her features ' speaking then of a matter that was of concern to her ' that had, hitherto, during fifteen years of marriage, escaped his eye.

'Bernard, my love, it is wrong to teach the child to hate. If she is weak, she will learn to despise another nation, another person, without ever fully understanding why. If she is strong, she will turn the strength of her anger upon you. She will feign capitulation, as only a woman can, to your half- baked, antique ideas and resent you with all her heart for the rest of your sorry days. If you persist in this course of action I regret that I shall feel compelled to take my daughter away from you and apply to the Court for a dissolution of what could never again be a happy marriage.'

Katherine was never made privy to what motivated her father's sudden change of mind but she suspected her mother's intervention. This she found odd as it was unprecedented. Upon her father's announcement that she would be permitted to join the rest of the ski party to Austria she threw her thin arms around Bernard's bushy-haired neck, thinking to herself how wonderfully big a man her dear father was, that he was able to rethink his decisions and admit when he was wrong.

Between her parents, however, Katherine perceived a slight strain in their relations which she could not quite put her finger on but which she noted on a great many occasions during the coming years until her mother declared, on the morning of Katherine's eighteenth birthday, without explanation nor tears, her intention to separate from Katherine's father.

The apparition fades as Katherine's thoughts return to a stream of constancy.

Iris has not gone away and Katherine catches her up in mid-sentence.

'We became friends almost at once. You know how it is. This was about seven years ago. We had both enrolled on a language course in Italy.

'Look I really am tired. Are you sure you can't call back another time?

'Hey ? ' squeals Iris with mock force. 'Alex has been boring me for years about you.'

Katherine awakes and her exhaustion evaporates at once.

'He has?' she queries , her voice revealing both hope and doubt.

'Sure, since he met you he hasn't stopped saying how bright and funny and sweet you are and how much he adores you. Never thought it would happen.'

'Adores me?' Katherine's tone is at once subdued. 'Well, I'm afraid he's never mentioned you. Where did you meet again?'

'L'Università Per Stranieri in Perugia. Foreigners' University. We were on a course there together for about five months.'

'I know something of Perugia' says Katherine. 'Most happy, carefree time of his life'. Katherine decides to learn more about that man in her bed. She has heard all the stories but never really listened. What lover does want to hear about how happy her partner used to be? In another world, another time, when I was doing this, when I was here, when I was with¦

Jealousy introduces its foul head. The tales of times past become personal affronts to the security of the present, a struggle of two or more comparative lives, the one chosen with the stable companion of the Here-and-Now inevitably coming off worse, pitted against the romantic and hectic, yet free past.

Katherine continues: 'He mentions so many names but until I have any kind of direct contact they never seem to stick.'

'No mind, but I do very much wish to get to know you a little. I know how precious you are to Alex and Alex has always been very special to me.

Katherine feels the return of hardness to her voice but is determined to hear the Austrian out. If this woman does turn out to be a lover, former or current, then with subtle, probing malice she can question Alexander in order to extract a confession after his predictable first denial.

'You see, Alex is part of my past and tonight I'm chasing my past. This is not the only call I've made tonight but you are my last. Earlier this evening, over a bottle of heavy red wine, Franz, my boyfriend and I, decided to get married. It's happening on Saturday, here in Linz. We're going to one of those twenty- four hour wedding shops. It has to be quick as Franz is a soldier. Well, not really, he's doing his National Service. He doesn't like it at all. To survive and command a little respect they are forced to play barbaric tricks on each other. After that he wants to return to Linz and finish his engineering studies. We think it's a really cool idea !'

'Congratulations. All the best and all that. Alexander will be sorry he can't come.'

'Well that's why I'm calling. You have to come. I'm making six calls tonight to the six most important people in my life. Alex is one of them. We're only inviting six people each to the ceremony. Franz is outside in a booth making his calls. For Franz and I it will be a night of groundbreaking honesty. We are eliminating all the superficial friends and colleagues we have amassed over the years, there is no turning back. Our future life will be devoid of negative elements in so much as we can help it. Like family. Franz and I are breaking with our respective kin and will have no further contact. They offer us nothing of worth, just disappointed faces, critical words. They say they are heartbroken but I know they'll get over it. They said the same thing when I stopped going to church. When the neighbours and Priest forgot about it, they did too. Austrian families have powerful reserves of resilience.'

'Isn't that a little extreme ? They're still your parents.'

'Not at all. You spend all your life trying to make these people happy, make them proud. You never succeed. Eventually, you realize that you know nothing about each other. All I want is Franz and 12 friends to call on from time to time. I hope you will come though, we're not excluding partners.'

'I am definitely unable to come, I'm so tied up with work at the moment but it's very sweet of you to ask. I can't speak for Alexander but knowing his schedule I think it unlikely.'

'Excuse me Katherine but fuck his schedule. I know Alex, and he'll come. I'm as important to him as he is to me'.

Katherine is taken aback by the sudden urgency in Iris's tone and feels a renewed failing in her nerves.

'Exactly what is or has been the nature of your relationship with Alexander?

Iris laughs heartily.

'Oh, nothing like you're thinking. We were never each other's type. But we did become friends. Good friends. We met at a time crucial to our development as individuals. We were living abroad and alone for the first time. Alex had just turned twenty one and I was still nineteen. He had completed his first degree and Business School awaited him. He was just taking time off. I had enrolled on a Russian and Italian degree at the University of Vienna just to get government funding to get me to Italy. Has Alex ever taken you to Perugia, Katherine ?'

'No, but I'll make him one day'.

'Well, when you go there's a seedy little wine bar called M-8 off the main corso, on via del something, that you had to roll down on account of its crazy slope. If it wasn't for the bar you would just keep on rolling. All the foreigners descended on this hovel in the early hours and the odd adventurous Italian. It was run by a suspicious Bosnian called Tarik. He had a Finnish girl at his side who thought she was on to a good thing. She corked open the bottles but never deigned to wait tables.

'This bar pretended to be a private member's club. You had to bang on an ancient oak-panelled door to gain entry. You would wait a few moments, which seemed like forever in the winter, before a hole in the door appeared and a keen eye observed and approved in the same instant. After a few visits Tarik would hand out the membership cards. Just a ruse to draw us in.'

Iris chuckles a little, enjoying the vivid recollection, her voice hoarse with excitement.

"They always let you in whoever you were. Anyway, it was the first Friday of October, the start of term and a huge group of foreigners had arrived in Perugia at various times during the week. The Perugini, we observed, did not appear overly friendly but they knew we were good for the town's economy and they didn't treat us too badly.

'We were from all over. Mostly English, Austrians, Germans, Dutch and Swedes. And of course there were always Australians. Not often in class but always about. They bonded easily with the few South Africans and were the best-informed about what parties were happening. The Americans were unpopular with everybody but most of all with Canadians because the rest of us would confuse the two. To the Canadians the differences were immense. There was humour for one thing.

'We all had lousy accents but the effort the Americans made was shameful. Often they were religious ' a few were Mormons- or charity-bound. One Texan couple brought stray Bosnians to class whom they had resolved to save and feed (always in that order) for the day in exchange for their attendance at Manzoni seminars.'

With genuine interest Katherine chips in : 'It sounds fascinating, Alexander has never spoken about it to me in this way.'

'Well it was fascinating. Extremely. And because of the different nationalities, a real melting pot for all kinds of oddballs and social outcasts, we used to say. Everybody had their own reasons for being there, eighteen-year-old kids having convinced their parents to finance a rewarding year of self-discovery replete of language learning and art appreciation in the splendid comfort of the Umbrian hills. Greeks that were too dumb to secure places at their own Universities, knowing they could find a way in to the Italian equivalent, so long as they suffered a foundation year in the Palazzo Gallenga language faculty.'

'Tell me how you met Alexander.'

'As I said, it was in M-8. I'd been drinking some cheap red rubbish all night, to cope with my strange new schoolmates. God, when I think of them. Till, the desperate-for-friends, group-searching anti-Nazi. English Peter, the middle-aged, quality-test controller from a turkey factory. Desperate for lost youth. Neville, the South African, introduced Alex to us, then leaving him to fend for himself. I had seen Alex about, always with different people. He had not melted into any defined group and never did. I think I knew before I ever spoke to him that we would be friends.'

'And you weren't attracted to him ?'

'Of course I was, but believe me it wasn't physical. I was so sick of men'.

With a casualness to her tone that makes Katherine shudder Iris says :-

'I'd been through most of my schoolmates by the end of that first week. I can't imagine what I might have given them or received. I was after friends. It is possible Katherine. I liked Alex because I saw something of myself in him. He didn't want any groups. He wasn't looking to attach himself, to be known by anyone. Like me, he didn't know where he was going to be a year from then, only what his parents expected of him.

'There were a thousand conversations going on at once and little was being said. They all felt like conquerors, proud of themselves for stumbling upon Perugia, little-known outside of select circles; but there wasn't one authentic Italian at our table. They droned on about the marvels of the Umbrian kitchen, the glorious splendour of Renaissance Art. I watched Alex for ages before we spoke and I knew what he was thinking. He wasn't discourteous to anybody. He was enjoying himself but there was a subtle cynicism to his voice; not the usual staid and bored tone that cynicism conveys but a non-acceptance of his surroundings, of these people. Alex knew how to impress and remain unimpressed. Peter from Leeds, Till the Pacifist. This wasn't Italy to him and it wasn't for me either.

'Where was the real Italy?'

'Away from that bar, those self-congratulating wastrels who thought themselves romantic.'

'You said how fascinating it all was before.'

'It was fascinating, the whole scene, the groups, the atmosphere, but not the individuals; and even those that were of interest because of their oddness, well they could still repulse. Anyway, I'm drifting, my wedding's making me nostalgic.'

A brief silence ensued before Iris came back to Katherine.

'More bottles arrived, the empties removed and most of the group went off home. They were off on an excursion to Assisi the following morning. We began to talk and a certain intimacy was immediately struck up. It seemed as if we both had so much to get off our chests. I had been right about Alex, he was more alive than any of them. We spoke about the Italy we were looking for and have not stopped since. Our love of art, music and of course food, his relations in the village Republic of Cospaia on the Tuscan border that he later took me to; and I believed him and in him whereas I could not take any of the others seriously. They spoke only academically, there was nothing simple about them, anything they appreciated reeked of calculation. Everything they knew or thought they knew came from books. They knew what to like by reading about what they should like. It was too easy to fall in love with Italy. Every love requires qualification. The year before ,they'd all been in Provence. Alex only ever wanted to be in Italy.'

Iris's voice tails off. To Katherine, she sounds exhausted.

'When Alex spoke about Bruschetta or penne alla norcina, Etruscan arches, Piero della Francesca, D'Annunzio or a bottle of Rubesco he spoke with compassion. The Italian word "simpatico is more appropriate than nice for your Alex, less bland; he was also and remains very "comprensivo.'

'What's that?'

'Understanding. And that's why I love him, and that's why he must come to my wedding and introduce me to the girl he's madly in love with. I haven't seen him for over four years, since he visited Linz for that long mad weekend.'

'What long weekend? I didn't know about that', says Katherine, startled.

'I think it must have been just before you arrived on the scene. It was February, he hasn't been back since.'

'Oh yes. Sorry. I didn't meet Alexander until the summer. Please go on.' Katherine lets out a nervous giggle, embarrassed by her overreaction.

'For Alex's first night in Austria I took him to a party at my University in Vienna. My faculty had organised a cultural evening in the name of Dante. It helped us reacquaint ourselves; it was reassuring that we still liked and disliked the same things about other people and that we could speak a more impeccable Italian than my fellow students who remained in Vienna when I was in Perugia.

'Otherwise, only one thing stands out in my mind about his trip, as it was so brief and bathed in drink. It never seemed to be part of the present, it was a reflection on Italy from a distance. We were still there, we always are when we speak. That's what defines our relationship and its parameters. We've only seen each other that one time since Italy, the rest is all letters and phone. I wonder if we would we be friends if we met regularly. I'm not sure. Sad isn't it?'

'No, not at all. I'm not just saying this but I do understand. There are people special to me who I would never want to be part of my everyday life as it is now. I need them to remain in my memory. They're more useful there, I can remember them being perfect. If they become confused with my present, then I'll lose what I have of them. That would destroy me. So I keep them locked away.'

'I knew Alex had chosen well.'

'Look Iris, I'm sorry for my initial aggression, I get so jealous when I think about the possibility of other women.'

Iris laughs out loud. To Katherine's surprise she is not angry but, instead, finds Iris's deep, bellowing laugh rather soothing, like curling up into a ball against a familiar cushion.

'Don't we all ? You have every right to, you hold on to him.'

'You're very sweet Iris.'

'If you don't mind me asking, are you having problems with Alex at the moment?'

Katherine pauses. 'Well, yes. Kind of.'

'Do you still love him?'

'Yes I do. I'm certain that I do. But I'm not sure that he loves me anymore.'

'Alex said exactly the same thing about you the last time we spoke. He's worried he's losing you.'

Katherine knows she should be concerned that Alexander has spoken in such intimate terms about their relationship to someone unknown to her, and furious with Iris for presuming to understand. But she is not furious with Iris. He is entitled to speak with others. As she does. She has not been betrayed. Iris can help them. She can help Katherine.

'Really ?'

'Yes.'

'We need to communicate. There's never any time for anything, we're overworked and too tired to bring up anything of importance. Then we complain about feeling underappreciated and unloved.

'You know, you're right Iris. Fuck his schedule! I'd love to come to your wedding. I'll book flights in the morning. I'll surprise Alexander. I won't even say you called, I'll just arrange time off for the both of us. He'll love it.'

'You mean it? Cool! Hey, that's great. Call me again when your details are confirmed and I'll tell you how to find us. You'll get my number from that little black book of his. I can't wait. That's fantastic. You're really coming. Franz will be so excited. He's always wanted to meet Alex.'

'So, see you Saturday. It's just what we need. Oh, by the way, what was that other remarkable thing that stood out in your mind during Alexander's trip?'

'Oh that. Well, on our last day together I took Alex to visit Mathausen. I knew he'd be interested, and it's not far from where I live. The weather was awful, it had snowed without remission all day. We set off in the afternoon. It was a Sunday and most people had the sense to stay at home. The roads were empty but virtually blocked due to the snow. I suggested to Alex that we turn back but he wouldn't hear of it. A fifteen minute trip took us over an hour. To cap it all my useless VW was playing up. When we arrived we thought we'd be warmer outside once we got moving, but the sky threw more and more snow down. We shuffled forward, taking tiny steps, our visibility so poor we could not see beyond the reach of our hands.

'Nobody else was at the camp. It appeared closed but there were no gates or guards to prevent us from wandering around. Alex was mesmerised. He said he'd reacted the same way when visiting Dachau, he was unable to conceive how close that camp was to Munich's city centre, expecting to travel far into an unknown desolate spot in the forest. Instead, he just took the Metro about eight stops down the line.

'Freezing from the cold, I guided Alex to the camp's biggest attraction. To the stairs.'

'What are they?'

There's a deep quarry, where the inmates were ordered to gather huge rocks for the war effort. There were plans to rebuild Linz, Hitler called it "his town and intended to retire there. Or they broke stones, often more crucial for psychological reasons to the SS in the breaking of the human spirit. To reach the quarry, a vast and hideously steep flight of steps had to be negotiated. They brought whatever they collected back up the steps and sometimes back down again, depending on the mood of the officers. But usually they had to run back down the 186 steps. From sheer physical debilitation many died climbing up, clinging to rocks. Others collapsed while proceeding down, tumbling to the bottom, and to their deaths.

'The SS were known for their sadism. They would line up prisoners, one on each step, from the top to the bottom of the quarry. Then they kicked the prisoner at the top in the back. He would fall into the person immediately in front. The result was a domino-type effect, each prisoner on top of the next in quick succession, right until the very bottom.

'I told this story to Alex. He had been quiet since we left the car. I could hardly make him out. It was getting dark early, and it was still snowing heavily. I held him by his shirtsleeve for fear of losing him. There were no lights in the camp, no obvious paths back to the car and we were standing at the very top of the steps.

'As I was explaining how hilarious the SS found the domino trick I felt Alex break away from me. I could not see where he was going and I called out to him ' something like "What the fuck do you think you're doing? I could hear him pacing quickly down the steps. He didn't answer and I was worried he would fall. There was sure to be ice on the stairs.

I followed Alex down, the slope so sharp and icy I was petrified I would slip. I took each movement slowly. Had it been anybody but Alex I would have been livid and assumed it was some bad joke or some male ploy to charm, but with Alex I knew that he had been upset. That he had been thrown. And that his breaking down was genuine.

'I found him a few minutes later. I heard his cries before I reached him. His head was buried in his lap. When he was close I heard him continue to weep gently, muttering :

'They never knew anything? How can they say they never knew anything ?'

'My father always said the same thing.'

'It shames me to say it Katherine but your father and Alex were right. My grandfather, farmer and assured Nazi told me the stories before he died. In Linz, the locals didn't turn their heads, they weren't just indifferent, they were active. Everybody was involved. When some desperate Jews escaped from the Camp one time, it was the farmers who, so drunk on propaganda, so alarmed that murderous hook-nosed Jews were free in the vicinity, organised themselves into a farmers' militia. During the night, they hunted the prisoners out and killed them before sunrise to save the SS a job. No one will ever know the extent of the horror but they still find mass graves every so often, usually hushed up by our politicians, arguing that "what's done is done. Usually because they or their fathers had a hand in "what's done is done.

'How awful! I didn't know any of this. Thanks Iris. I appreciate you telling me that. I really do. You've made me realise there's a lot to Alexander that I have yet to discover.'

'Speak to him Katherine. Listen to his stories. Ask him about the Camp and what happened to him in there. If you don't, you'll both close up and lose each other forever.

'So, see you Saturday Katherine. Wish I could see his face when you surprise him.'

'I won't tell him until the very end but I'll take a picture just after I hit him with it. Bye-bye Iris. Good luck with the preparations. See you in Austria! I can't believe I just said that! Well, bye then!'

Katherine is laughing. She has not felt so light in a long time. She takes the receiver away from her ear but holds it in her hand for a few moments longer while fixing her sleepy gaze on the storage units opposite her.

Katherine begins to make her way gradually back up to bed. She is thinking only of Alexander and this voice in the night. Iris was warning her. She wants to feel the same way towards him as she felt when he first pursued her, when he first dared to touch her. To regain that level of excitement for both of them. They need their respect back. She wants to look at him like Iris does. With pride. They need to be interested in each other again. In their habits, their stories. They need to become friends again. Yes, they will go to Linz, she decides. It wasn't just a moment of impulse. He'll be over the moon.

A turning point has been reached. Never prone to religious fancies or mystic meanings, she is convinced that the call is prophetic; that some being, some force, employing this odd, but ultimately amiable Austrian, as its tool, is telling her to take stock of her life, to be positive, to assess the good, to look at that man in her bed and see him as others still see him. Others are still stirred. Others still speak well of him.

Katherine discards the slippers and fumbles her way back into bed. She is smiling all over. Alexander is sleeping heavily, his back facing her. Just as she left him. "He must be shattered, she thinks.

Katherine is still cold. She moves in on him. She wraps her right arm around his waist and buries her head in the dip of his back. She presses her sex into his backside, waiting for sleep to overwhelm her, but she is too awake now, too alive, her head spinning with thoughts of the future, the endless possibilities, the life together. How lucky she is. To be so loved, so adored.

Her right hand manoeuvres itself gently over the slightly raised curves of Alexander's stomach, while her left hand moves up to stroke the long locks of his hair, resting on the pillow.

She whispers to him: 'Alexander, are you awake? I feel ready, Alexander. Please wake up! I'm excited!' Katherine's right hand now descends to the tip of his penis. He is hard.

'Just checking, Darling,' she says. He still does not move. Katherine wonders if he is pretending, thinking it will be all the more fun if he is. See how much he can resist. She is determined to show him how capable of love-by-impulse she is.

Alexander's right arm is hanging down by his side. Katherine takes the hand, putting it firmly between her legs. Still nothing. She realises that his body is cold, limp. She calls to him. Quietly. Then loudly, emphatically.

She is thinking in a hurry: 'He cannot be asleep, he never sleeps this heavily. He must be putting it on, he must have heard me.' Katherine starts to panic. She shakes him by the arm. Gently at first, then with force. No response. She continues to call to him. She is hysterical now. She turns him on his back. He is so very heavy. She thinks how many times she has scolded him for his weight. All of the death scenes from films she's ever seen flash before her at once. How can she know he is dead? She lays her head on the left side of his chest. What is she supposed to listen for? A tick? How can she know if it's his tick, or her tick beating at twice the volume for the two of them? She takes the wrist, checking for a pulse. Only, she doesn't know how to take a pulse.

She lets his hand fall to the bed and runs downstairs in her bare feet, back to the kitchen. Katherine knows she must call someone. She must collect herself and calm down. She paces around the kitchen. How is she supposed to react? She is unprepared to deal with this. Her mind is still a drunken collage of thoughts and images swimming around in her head as a result of her conversation with Iris. 'How can he be dead? He's so young and healthy. More than most anyway. He was only sleeping, more heavily than usual. He was just pretending. It was supposed to be a game. What if she had realised sooner? He still smelt alive, his beauty wasn't anything but alive. How could it happen now? Not now! Not with all the plans ahead of them, the baby she will have with him one day.' Katherine takes the phone in her hand and bangs in the emergency services number. Nothing happens. There is no tone, no chance of a connection. Realising that Iris has not replaced the receiver properly at her end, Katherine sinks to the floor, weeping, holding her head between her legs and the receiver between her palms. She brings the phone back up to her mouth. Somewhere within her pain surfaces the strength to cry 'Iris' at a volume so forceful, she begins to shake uncontrollably.

When they find her they have to saw her fingers away from the phone, having clutched to it at the moment of her death. Her mouth is wide open and appears to be mouthing something, perhaps screaming. The police had been alerted by a housebound neighbour who noticed the absence of voices, particularly the raised voices. Then they find him. It is unfathomable. Two healthy young people dying of natural causes on the same night, with no apparent suspicious circumstances. It would remain a puzzle impossible to piece together, the chain of events undetectable. The man in bed killed by a sleep-induced, painless heart attack. The girl can only have died from the shock of discovering him. Then there is the extra life. The unborn, unknown foetus, growing inside the girl, that the autopsy later reveals, whose development has been extinguished in the same time it takes a person to switch on a light or open one's eyes after a long rest.