The Woman at the Window by Emyr Humphreys

Swede with a ginger moustache hanging over his mouth. Hence the hangdog look. Wasn’t there some trouble about him exploiting the research of one of his students? There you are. The temptations of a man promoted above his true capacity, concentrating on career moves instead of the hard grind. Marloff, my boy, we are well out of it.’
    â€˜Annette was bright enough and extremely pretty. I could see it coming. To be honest I rather fancied her myself. That old goat Wagner used to say that nothing stimulates the appetite for research more than the daily proximity of a fuckable young female.’
    â€˜Irresponsible old sod. Amazing he never got caught.’ Marloff chuckled and winked.
    â€˜Do I detect a note of envy?’
    â€˜Nothing of the sort. As you well know all my life I’ve made a point of being responsible and reliable.’
    â€˜And respectable! And who has ever thanked you for it? Except me, I mean.’
    Once again he reached across to shake Griffiths’ arm with soothing affection.
    â€˜And here’s me thanking you again. Reliable as a rock, Ellis Griffiths.’
    â€˜What about the girl? It’s the girl presumably we shall have to deal with. Not Vennenberg’s ghost.’
    â€˜Ah.’
    Marloff raised two fingers to show that they were crossed. ‘The fact is, old boy, Vennenberg left his wife and two grown sons for the fair Annette.’
    Griffiths shook his head as if he had been given something to think deeply about. They were both silent as they contemplated the ramifications of an old male abandoning the family nest for a younger female. Griffiths sighed.
    â€˜It happens so often,’ he said.
    He was not only regretting the absence of restraint among privileged academics. There were wider implications. Surely every civilisation depended in the end on some form or other of systematic restraint? It disturbed him that even at this mature stage in his life there were deep and urgent questions to which he was unable to find a simple answer. Accumulating evidence was always more than an interim activity.
    â€˜What was her background? This Annette.’
    â€˜She was Annette von Ense. I don’t know where the “von” came from.’
    Gossip was more relaxing than the effort of distilling precepts. They could enjoy an interlude of unbuttoned frankness. Their wives were safely in bed.
    â€˜A solid Augsburg family. Only too solid. The money came from automobile spare parts. Vital I suppose to the German war effort and so on. Anyhow war guilt was the principal agent of family disintegration. You can just imagine it, can’t you? Brought up with loving care and bourgeois comfort, Annette becomes an ardent young feminist and in no time at all takes it upon herself to discover the awful truth and she accuses her grandparents and her parents of criminal complicity with Das Dritter Reich. “And as for you,” she points across the dinner table at her father whose heart is in poor condition, “You served in the criminal army”. She even points her finger at her grosspapa. “How many secrets have you got on your sleeping conscience?” ’
    â€˜How do you know all this?’
    Griffiths spoke quietly to encourage Marloff to keep his voice down.
    â€˜Vennenberg told me,’ he said.
    Griffiths raised an eyebrow to indicate he had no idea Marloff had known Vennenberg so well.
    â€˜The appalling honesty of the young,’ Marloff said. ‘Makes one quite relieved to be childless.’
    They both looked more closely at the photograph as though they were seeing Annette for the first time.
    â€˜And so her Odyssey began. As far north as Stockholm and as far south as Naples with a spell in Salzburg thrown in. But always those cheques from home never failed to catch up with her. A privileged vagabond. A perpetual student in search of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and as much truth as a pampered stomach could