After the Cabaret Read Online Free PDF

having climbed the ladder. She began to ramble on about Theo, the days in Berlin when they’d shared a roomin a working-class house in a slummy area, the romance of it, the full moon over the Unter den Linden, the simple goodness of the honest working folk with whom they’d lodged. And who had been glad of the money, I thought. I knew that life.
    â€˜She was talking about the mid thirties when she had been singing in tatty little cabarets and Theo had been collecting material for the
Witness,
a weekly magazine he ran at the time. And working for
The Times
. And reporting back to … somebody. The German authorities suspected him of spying, not wrongly, I think. To many he was a hero – young, handsome, brave, a man with a cause. Well, it was dangerous enough there, at that time, God knows, but nothing was ever going to happen to Theo. He was too quick on his feet, and always had enough connections to get him out of trouble. As always, at any time, there were Theo and his kind and there were the rest of us, the natives, with cardboard in our shoes and no ticket out. He may have been a hero, Theo, but the rest of us were martyrs, and I know which I’d rather be. I said nothing like this at the time, though. Briggs, to his credit, knew how I felt. He was tough, a martinet, a disciplinarian, of himself and everyone else. Something so harsh, so cruel in his past had made him see through everything.
    â€˜Pym was different. He didn’t care what I or anyone else felt. I’ve never understood what Pym did care about. I suppose his actions were dictated by rage. He was upper class, but had no money. He was homosexual, so a criminal under the law. With care, by hard work and concealment, he could have risen high, but when he looked about himhe didn’t want to rise high in this country where wealth came by accident of birth and where the law would put him in prison.
    â€˜Of the three of us, I suppose Julia was the most sympathetic to Sally’s account of her Berlin romance with Theo Fitzpatrick. You only had to show these well-brought-up young women a good-looking young man, with a day’s stubble, a worker’s cap on his head, giving the clenched-fist salute, and common sense deserted them. Even today – I see the pop stars on TV sometimes – there’s still the same old glamour. The allure of rough trade. It’s not so exciting if you grew up in that milieu, in a cap, ill-fitting shoes, not so clean.
    â€˜But I lose the point. It was Pym who interrupted this romantic tale and got down to brass tacks. “Sally,” he said, “it’s rumoured you have a baby. Would it be tactless to ask if Theo’s the father?”
    â€˜Sally was a bit drunk – she’d confessed to some Free French cognac taken earlier in a hotel bedroom at the Bessemer while she was doing whatever she was supposed to do, turning down the bed, dusting the dressing-table. On the roof she’d had the best part of a tumbler of gin. She put on a dignified voice and told Pym, “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
    â€˜â€œCome off it, Sally,” he said.
    â€˜â€œWell, it isn’t.”
    â€˜â€œIf you want us to find Theo, don’t you think you owe us some information in return?”
    â€˜â€œYou’re a spy, of course, Loomie. That’s why you want to swap secret for secret.”
    â€˜â€œI only asked—”
    â€˜â€œAnd you got a dusty answer, Pym, so shut up,” Julia said. “If Sally doesn’t want to tell you who the baby’s father is, it’s up to her. Actually, Sally,” she said, “all I know about Theo is that he’s been at a sort of secret code-cracking place in the country, but he’s been agitating to go abroad to do liaison with the patriots in Norway and the last news indicated he’d succeeded.”
    â€˜â€œDoes he speak any Norwegian?” Briggs