She compared this entourage with her recollection of her one visit to an oculist in Harley Street. His stately house, the exquisite freshness of his appointments and his person stood out now. The English she assured herself were more refined than the Germans. Even the local doctor at Barnes whose effect upon her mother’s perpetual ill-health, upon Eve’s nerves and Sarah’s mysterious indigestion was so impermanent that the very sound of his name exasperated her, had something about him that she failed entirely to find in this German—something she could respect. She wondered whether the professional classes in Germany were all like this specialist and living in this way. Minna’s parents she knew were paying large fees.
10
These dreaded expeditions brought a compensation.
Her liking for Minna grew with each visit. She wondered at her. Here she was with her nose and her ear—she was subject to rheumatism too—it would always, Miriam reflected, be doctor’s treatment for her. She wondered at her perpetual cheerfulness. She saw her with a pang of pity, going through life with her illnesses, capped in defiance of all the care she bestowed on her person, with her disconcerting nose, a nose she reflected, that would do splendidly for charades.
11
On several occasions a little contingent selected from the pianos and kitchen had appeared in the schoolroom and settled down to read German with Fräulein. Miriam had been despatched to a piano. After these readings the mid-morning lunching-plates of sweet custard-like soup or chocolate soup or perhaps glasses of sweet syrup and biscuits—were, if Fräulein were safely out of earshot, voluble indignation meetings. If she were known to be in the room beyond the little schoolroom, lunch was taken in silence except for Gertrude’s sallies, cheerful generalisations from Minna or Jimmie, and grudging murmurs of response.
On the mornings of Fräulein’s German readings the school never went to Kreipe’s. Going to Kreipe’s Miriam perceived was a sign of fair weather.
They had been twice since her coming. Sitting at a little marble-topped table with the Bergmanns near the window and overlooking the full flood of the Georgstrasse Miriam felt a keen renewal of the sense of being abroad. Here she sat, in the little enclosure of this upper room above a shopful of strange Delikatessen, securely adrift. Behind her she felt, not home but the German school where she belonged. Here they all sat, free. Germany was all around them. They were in the midst of it. Fräulein Pfaff seemed far away.... How strange of her to send them there.... She glanced towards the two tables of English girls in the centre of the room wondering whether they felt as she did.... They had come to Germany. They were sharing it with her. It must be changing them. They must be different for having come. They would all go back she supposed. But they would not be the same as those who had never come. She was sure they felt something of this. They were sitting about in easy attitudes. How English they all looked ... for a moment she wanted to go and sit with them—just sit with them, rejoice in being abroad; in having got away. She imagined all their people looking in and seeing them so thoroughly at home in this little German restaurant free from home influences, in a little world of their own. She felt a pang of response as she heard their confidently raised voices. She could see they were all, even Judy, a little excited. They chaffed each other.
Gertrude had taken everyone’s choice between coffee and chocolate and given an order.
Orders for schocolade were heard from all over the room. There were only women there—wonderful German women in twos and threes—ladies out shopping, Miriam supposed. She managed intermittently to watch three or four of them and wondered what kind of conversation made them so emphatic—whether it was because they held themselves so well and “spoke out” that everything they said seemed so important. She had never seen women with so much decision in their bearing. She found herself drawing herself up.