Free The Song Before It Is Sung by Justin Cartwright Page A

alive. She must be ninety-two or -three at least. He tears at the ciabatta with his hands and eats it excitedly.
     The room is pleasantly farinaceous. He has spoken to someone who slept with von Gottberg. He is stuffing the bread into his
     mouth. He is easily excited. His mother used to say that he was highly strung. Von Gottberg was highly strung; his hands would
     grasp and furl and unfurl when he was excited by ideas. In the face of enormous danger, mortal danger, he would become calm
     and detached. At his trial, after being tortured for days by the Gestapo in Albrechtstrasse, with only the sure prospect of
     death, he was calm. A few months later, when Helmuth James von Moltke was sentenced to death, he welcomed Freisler's remark
     that the Church and the Nazis demanded the same thing, the whole man. He would be hanged — von Moltke rejoiced — for his thoughts.
    And this is something Mendel must have understood, that a deep belief, however irrational its origin, can be the source of
     strength and unimaginable courage. Perhaps the only source of strength.

5
    WHEN ELIZABETH PARTRIDGE calls him a few days later she asks him to come at tea-time, which he takes to mean four o'clock.
     He emerges from the underground at Knightsbridge and walks down Basil Street to her club. It is a place that accommodates
     members, mostly women, up from the country, women who don't want to be startled in any way by the new realities of London.
     So he imagines; he always, constantly, unstoppably, makes these judgements. The brass doorplate has been polished for so many
     years that the inscription, 'London and Counties Club', is as indistinct as the epitaph on an ancient tomb. He rings the bell
     and a porter in a faded dark-maroon uniform -the colour of an old apple variety - trimmed at the cuffs and lapels with gold
     thread that has lost its lustre, opens the door and, limping, leads him to the reception desk where he presses his hand down
     on the burnished brass bell which produces one exhausted ping.
    'She won't be long,' says the porter, who opens a small panelled door and passes through it. He appears, when the door shuts,
     to have vanished behind a large vase of delphiniums.
    Everything in the place is faded. Even the delphiniums are of a washed-out blue. It's an effect decorators often strive for,
     the gentle deterioration of fabric and carpet and paint, the suggestion that here at least there will be no absurd — vulgar
     — newness. Even the lift with its concertina doors and brass buttons and mahogany interior is perfect. Conrad likes it. He
     likes strange things: there is no pattern to his tastes, another aspect of his life that upsets Francine, who finds whimsy
     self-indulgent. But what he likes is the confidence demonstrated by the committee, or whoever the presiding genius of the
     place is, that in this corner of Knightsbridge at least there is only one possible style appropriate for its members. It's
     akin to the belief that God took time out to endorse the Anglican church - its rituals, its tasteful hymns, its worn-out kneelers,
     its flowers, its surplices, its holy innocence - with his special approval. We are all God's children of course, but Anglicans
     are his favourites, because of their demeanour.
    He is inspecting a thickly varnished oil painting of a horse in a landscape, when he is called.
    'Are you here to meet someone, sir?'
    He turns to see a cheerful young woman in a heavily threaded violet suit. The threads are on the outside, in a fine arachnid
     web, as if hovering above the material itself.
    'Yes, I am here to see Elizabeth Partridge.'
    'Ah, Lady Dungannon. She is expecting you. Please go through to the lounge and I will tell her ladyship that you have arrived.
     Would you like tea?'
    'Oh, yes, please.'
    'Ordinary tea, or herbal?'
    'No, no, not herbal. Ordinary tea. Builders' tea, please.'
    He imagines that 'builders' tea' is the sort of phrase that plays well here. He waits in the lounge,