'Mutti, what are these?'

He'd kept them. Charcoal sketches in a box. Helga expertly tugged away several curious hands, trying not to strain her back. She hoped that this pregnancy would be her last.

'Come away from there, leave his desk. It's important work.'

'Children, what are you doing?'

Gruber stood in the doorway indulgently smiling at his brood. He hadn't the heart to be annoyed. Helga appreciated that he never shouted at the children, always so gentle and steady, even in reproach, so unlike other men.

'They're snooping around' said his wife mock indignantly.

'Ah, those sketches are delicate, please be careful' he fluted. Helga gently wrestled the postcard size sketches away and held them in front of them so they could all see. Some of Gruber's earliest sketches, tender and earnest, as though he had poured his heart and demeanour into every stroke of the charcoal. Little scenes from his hometown in Baden Baden. The river, a fisherman, a jam jar of simple meadow flowers on the windowsill. A calloused hand cutting an apple. A cow in a field. The outline of a café, a little spitz dog curled up under a chair. A rough portrait here and there. Scraps of life carefully hoarded like treasure. Her husband was a sentimental man.

'So schön' announced their little Liselotte, barely three years old, extending a chubby little finger towards it. She could be most precocious.

'No touching, it is very delicate' Helga reminded her. So much like her husband, so much more than she ever could be. She had a spine of steel like her Bavarian strudel chopper mother. It had stood her in good stead.

'Your father drew these, a long time ago.'

'Is that you?'

Helga smiled at the first of many of her outlines. Simple in its refinement, he'd captured her expression very well. That was when they'd met in Nouvion. There were a few haphazard scribbles of René, the café owner, caught in a hurry. Her husband had always harboured a very soft spot for René. More scenes of their wartime experience unfolded. Still life with garlic, a glass of wine and one of those French waitress's brassieres. The children started giggling. There was even a hasty draft of that resistance woman, half hidden behind a wall. She had been a familiar face back then. Someone's hands at the piano. Whose were they? Gruber couldn't remember.

'Where is this?' asked Gunnar. He looked so much like his father.

'In a village in France. Your mother and I were there a long time ago.'

'Will you take us there?'

Helga and her husband exchanged glances.

'Maybe.'

They said nothing else. What else could they say?

'It's time for lunch. Come on.' Helga shooed them out of the door and came back to help him put them back in the box. She queried why he kept them there.

'I take them out and look at them every so often.'

He smiled fondly at the scribble of Helga's lipstick print she'd left on a tissue.

'Why don't you pin them up somewhere?'

He raised his eyebrows.

'Well, some of them are not for the public eye.'

He lifted up the stack of postcards to show her some highly risqué sketches. Ooooh she'd forgotten about those. She'd been an art class model once in a while and he had diligently drawn her. Sometimes she'd pose privately for him. He sold them under the table for a little extra income and split the proceeds with her. He'd kept a few of them as a reminder. Helga goggled at herself, so young and mostly fearless. Coming from nothing, she had nothing to lose so she had thrown herself into everything she ever did. It was an approach that had made the hesitant Gruber admire her, slightly fear her and their children to be peaceable little monsters. He relied on his wife so much more than he could admit.

Sounds of a scuffle from the dining table stopped them from reminiscing. Helga hurtled out and within seconds, her voice was heard reverberating like a gong. Footsteps of the older children came traipsing in, voices so familiar and dear. Gruber closed the box and slid it to the back of his desk again. Oh sweet happy sounds of his family. He knew he was the luckiest man alive.