This short story was placed 3^rd in the Ormskirk Writers & Literary Club contest in October 2004, and was also published in the small literary magazine, Ouse Valley Poetry, sadly no longer around. Enjoy!

Manners and the Man

Tall, sensual, blonde she prowled beside the man along Walsroder Strasse. Her equal in height, his breadth made him seem shorter. He might have been Mediterranean except that when she snarled at him, in fluent French, he growled back in solid English tinged with northern vowels.

The clean streets of Fallingbostel blazed with heat and light in the summer noon. Sunlight struck every smooth surface, ricocheting into neat deep shadows and etching sharp rhomboids over baking pavements. As the pair passed through Kirchplatz, heat shook the air, melting shops and houses opposite into shimmering patches of bright colour, light and shade.

They reached the ice-cream parlour and found the door closed against the heat. The man opened it. The woman hesitated until her desire for cool refreshment persuaded her to lead him to the cool interior, though she had wanted him to enter first and order. Knowing he was aware of this, she resented his superficial show of good manners.

Their tension had started on arrival at Hanover Airport. The girl in the car hire office had initiated it. The man, as agreed, had used his faltering German to organise the car. The girl had allowed just five imperfect words when, smiling efficiently, she had helped him by interrupting in perfect English. This one curtailed attempt had been enough to stop him even trying with Anneliese on arrival at her house in Fallingbostel.

‘Her English,’ the woman had told him before they left, ‘has almost entirely gone now, you know. You’ll have to at least try some German.’

‘I’ll try. Promise.’

In the ice-cream parlour the woman chose a place by the window. She sat with her back to the light so he had to face her, staring out at harsh sunlight or in at her. Only two days earlier she had been all his eyes desired. He had cherished her presence, her continued being with him, as a treasure. But that was before she grew angry over his refusal to speak the language of their hostess, as a matter of courtesy, simple good manners.

Now he glared perversely into sunlight, the brilliance forcing his face into a squint that hardened his eyes into slits of dark truculence.

She ordered for them; and that might have been a concession, if she had not spoken with the Italian waiter in his own lingo to underline her criticism of the man’s reluctance to try another tongue. Far too friendly for the man, the waiter gazed with undisguised admiration at the woman. He barely glanced at the man and that suited them both. Once the waiter had gone, the man looked at the woman.

‘We can’t all be linguists, you know.’

Her stare was cooler than the ice cream the Italian brought with a warm smile.

In her slender hand the long spoon was elegant as she shaved soft curls of flavour from the creation before her. At the counter the waiter lolled, transfixed, as each spoonful passed into the dark cavern of her mouth, her tongue sensuous, lips parted in deliberate provocation as she drew fruit and cream from the gleaming shallow bowl.

The man dug in: shovelled great spoons full of light confection into his jaws, hardly tasting the flavours, barely noticing the succulent fresh fruit as he gulped each mouthful down and shoved in the next. She glanced at him with distaste, understanding this boorish display was punishment for her continued coolness. Before her spoon reached the top of her tall glass, he was finishing, his spoon clattering against the sides of the glass as he scoured out final traces.

With no more to consume, his eyes made tired by the glare outside, he was drawn back to the woman. Though he tried to stare elsewhere, to his chagrin he found her soft giving mouth irresistible: the mouth that spoke so many tongues with ease; the mouth that had kissed his long before he would have found the courage to brush it uninvited with his lips. The memory softened him and quelled his feelings of annoyance at his own inadequacy; she had shown she could be forgiving of his weakness. Yet gender and the game demanded he remain aloof and distant for as long as she was cool toward him.

Growing impatient at her provocative dawdling, and torn between his wish to capitulate and his juvenile desire to make her give in first, he began tapping the table with his fingertips; drumming irritatingly in irritation.

She bore the taunt and inconsideration for some moments, her cold treat slowly vanishing with her patience. At last, she would stand it no more: she cleaned her spoon between moist, voluptuous lips and rapped it on his knuckles.

‘Enough.’

His surprise and brief annoyance at her assault was quickly replaced by triumph: she had, at last, reverted to their native tongue. It was a sort of submission, a tacit signal of truce, perhaps. He was magnanimous in victory.

‘Pardon, ma Cherie.’

No match for her mastery, his schoolboy French was nevertheless also a sign of truce. Two days at loggerheads were more than enough for both of them. She assessed him for sincerity and found it lurking behind his public face of gentle mockery. Her free hand softly enclosed the one she had attacked, acknowledging the pardon. He made to cover hers with his other, but she withdrew, not yet ready for complete surrender.

‘I don’t expect you to be a linguist,’ she told him, as if this were self-evident. ‘I simply hoped you’d make the effort.’

Neither of them needed other words and she finished her ice-cream in silence but with her eyes and his engaged. He paid the Italian, using his faltering German for the transaction but allowing his face to tell the waiter that the woman was not available. She, delighted at his effort and the unspoken acceptance of responsibility it carried, smiled for him and pacified the waiter with a small moue of simulated regret.

 Outside, heat burned into them, baking skin with its intensity. The bright unrelenting sun was blinding, and dark glasses quickly hid their eyes from light and from each other, obscuring temporarily required signals.

In the Kirpark, he was at once aware of cleanliness and order, so that the memory of ubiquitous litter marring flowerbeds and shrubberies back home called into doubt his unquestioned faith that his homeland was naturally best. Along tree-lined paths they sauntered, hand in hand again, seeking shade wherever possible. They crossed the gentle Bohme by the wooden bridge. At the turnstile he exchanged cash for tickets without prompting and she marked his halting German and squeezed his hand in appreciation.

He released her fingers and slipped into the men’s room as she moved to the one reserved for women. When he emerged, wearing black Speedos, he was surprised to find her ready; hair tied back to expose her neck and soft shoulders with only the thin lilac lace of her halter neck interrupting the fine lines. The backless one-piece hugged her curves and emphasised the contours of her fair skin.

Briefly, their eyes connected, and their fingers joined as they walked barefoot over spotless tiles. Beneath the cold shower he was brave; icy water raining down to soak his cropped head and toned body. She was tentative; her hair untouched by the freezing needles, her skin barely moistened as she kept her distance. He grinned at her shrinking from the torment but neither teased nor dragged her squealing beneath it, too soon yet for that sort of play.

At the bigger pool, underpopulated in spite of the heat-wave, she faltered on the edge. He dived gracefully into clear blue water, causing hardly a ripple. Shamed by his daring, she crouched and sat; legs dangling before she slowly lowered herself into the pool. Cool liquid rose around her, and she gasped and moved slender arms and shapely legs from side to side as if to warm them by the motion. Only gradually did she let the water cover her and by this time he had swum a length and was returning.

His brisk crawl brought him level before her careful breaststroke had taken her five metres. She watched him pass, marvelling at muscled arms that pulled him through the water with so little effort. He turned and swam up beside her, slowed his pace to match her own and flipped onto his back to swim with her.

‘Slowcoach.’ He teased experimentally.

Her bright eyes turned to him reflecting the peerless blue sky and filling him again with memories of their first night.

‘Show-off; we can’t all be gold medallists.’ Her mild rebuke came with laughter and with love and not without some envy of his mastery and grace in water. She saw the love and humour in his dark eyes and visited the memory that shone in him.

Cool water cradled them as they were passed by the single serious swimmer and, in turn, passed through the small group of social water lovers playing tag. At each turn they changed position to keep each other in sight and present a different face to the unrelenting sun.

An hour passed and water finished what the ice-cream had begun.

This time he emerged first from the changing rooms, his short dark hair quickly dried. He hovered, eager and alert, by the door to the women’s room, disarming the frowning glances of Die Frauen und Die Fraulein who came and went around him.

At last, she was there, her long hair glossy over shoulders offering the reason for her delay. He touched her hand, pressed a kiss to her willing mouth.

The long walk to the home of their widowed hostess was a tedious trek in broiling heat. And, although the discomforting edge of their disagreement was blunted, the argument remained unresolved.

It seemed such a simple thing to ask of him. It seemed such a difficult thing she expected him to do. To speak a foreign tongue to strangers in the course of business was hard enough: to converse socially in that tongue with Anneliese, respected old friend of his new wife was almost too much to attempt.

The house was cool, empty and silent when they arrived, but the widow returned almost at once from the hidden reaches of the vegetable garden, through lines of ordered fruit bushes, bearing her proud produce. Asparagus in fine white spears larger than any he had seen and strawberries, shiny red and succulent.

He squared his shoulders, ready for the fray, and greeted her, ‘Guten Tag, Anneliese.’ In slow imperfect German, he thanked her for her hospitality and apologised for his failure to attempt her language earlier.

His wife touched him softly for his effort and smiled over his shoulder at her friend, winking.

Anneliese responded to his short speech in her rapid local dialect that lost him after the first few words. He turned to plead with his wife and discovered her grinning.

‘Think he’s earned his reward?’

The widow nodded. ‘English it is from now.’ She laughed at his surprise and turned to the woman. ‘Hollandaise sauce for the asparagus?’

His wife kissed him affectionately before replying to Anneliese. ‘And cream for the strawberries.’

The man frowned at the two women and his wife answered his raised eyebrows with a question. ‘Had you known Anneliese spoke English so well, would you have bothered at all?’

He knew she required no response but, disregarding the widow, he embraced his wife and kissed her, acknowledging that she was right whilst reminding her what mattered most.

She took his hand and turned to face their hostess. A silent message, needing no translation, passed between the women.

‘You go and… rest; no need to rush. I’ll do the dinner.’ The widow said.

His wife let him lead her to their room.

Ends