The Words I Never Wrote

by Jane Thynne

  As a photographer, Juno had always been fond of saying that a single snapshot could tell an entire story. But this particular snapshot felt incomplete. It was more like a photograph ripped in half, whose true tale would emerge only when the missing fragment was restored.

  Restless and dissatisfied, she made a cup of mint tea, ran a hot bath, and rubbed her wrists with lavender oil, all methods her mother had taught her for inducing sleep. Yet none of these normally fail-safe techniques quietened the questions racing through her mind. It was not until she was lying in bed, staring at the luminous hands of the clock warning that dawn was near, that a solution came to her.

  Just because Cordelia chose not to write it, did not mean the story of the two sisters had ended. So Juno herself would complete it as a piece of photojournalism. A tribute to one of newsprint’s old school. The heroine of a vanishing trade.

  Doing that would mean finding every fact she could, and given that she had no pressing projects to consider, she would start the next day.

  The frustration dissipated, and as she drifted to sleep it occurred to Juno that this was the first night in ages that she had not lain in bed tortured by thoughts of Dan and their relationship. Analyzing the explanations and pleas and justifications that he had issued. Watching the most painful aspects of their separation play like a terrible movie on a loop in her head. For an entire evening she had focused on something outside of herself. It was another past that preoccupied her now.

  * * *

  —

  THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, a vast, porticoed building of Vermont marble, was as solid as if the leaves of the books it contained had fossilized, compressed, and calcified to dazzling stone. Yet as Juno discovered when she settled down in the reading room the following morning, no matter how much information existed in this vaulted, beaux arts mausoleum of knowledge, it helped if someone wanted you to find it.

  And everything about Cordelia Capel suggested she did not.

  The veteran journalist had been frustratingly, if not obsessively protective of her privacy. A Google search returned only archived reportage, three interviews about the trade of journalism, and references to scholarly articles where Cordelia’s work was cited. Accustomed to instant access to any kind of information, Juno was astonished that Cordelia had managed to keep so much of her life hidden. The personal section of her Wikipedia entry was as short as her life was long. Born in Surrey, England, on April 8, 1916. Died May 2, 2013. One son. The obituaries were just as skimpy on anything that happened before Cordelia’s arrival in America in 1946. She had a period in Paris as a trainee journalist on The Courier. Then a stint in wartime British Intelligence before joining the staff of Life magazine. Further files yielded only brief glimpses of the older Cordelia Capel. How, long after her time as a foreign correspondent in the 1950s, she sometimes slept on the floor to remind herself that she still could. How she learned to fly a plane. That she was capable of identifying different types of bullets, that she would spend hours polishing her stories, eliminating adjectives as she went. A quote. Write what you mean even when other people don’t want you to. Everything else is propaganda.

  At one point, in an interview Cordelia gave on the occasion of her seventieth birthday—a birthday she had spent covering the aftermath of the space shuttle disaster—the interviewer asked if she had ever tried her hand at fiction.

  “Novels, you mean! Never!” Cordelia Capel laughs as though I’d suggested she take up quilting or barn dancing. “I realized very early that, for me, journalism is the greatest way of telling the truth about the world. Why look inward when you could look outward?”

  Juno had better luck finding pictures. Deep in the microfiche of Life magazine she unearthed several photographs of Cordelia. Bent over her Underwood typewriter, squinting at the page, pencil tucked behind one ear, a hand poised, biting her lower lip. Covering the Kennedy assassination in Dallas in 1963. Staring stonily out of a lineup of the White House press corps. Reporting on the defection of the Cambridge Spies—Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, and Donald Maclean—to Moscow, with an accompanying piece on the links between the Kremlin and figures in the British establishment of the 1930s and the left-wing cultural groups of Paris. Byline shots that were regularly updated.

  Juno came to know the cool, astringent gaze, the face becoming more weather-beaten, the skin growing papery, the hair ashy. The indentations of age deepening, like lines on a much-used map, as sepia age spots splotched the skin and color leached from the eyes as though from an old Polaroid. Cordelia’s half smile, guarded, with her lips pressed together, as if repressing secrets.

  Of Irene Weissmuller there was unsurprisingly little trace. But as she skimmed through a 1930s copy of Town & Country magazine, Juno’s heart lurched. An article headlined “The Beauty of Europe’s Lakes” featured a photograph of a handsome, white-faced mansion, captioned “The Villa Weissmuller on the Wannsee in Berlin, stylish family home for one of Germany’s top industrialists.”

  As to what had happened between the sisters after the war, however, and whether they ever reunited or reconciled, there was—frustratingly—no hint.

  The more that her notes piled up, the more Juno sensed the ghost of the story behind—the story that had shaped everything that came afterward. Yet after several days in the library, that ghost was as elusive as ever.

  * * *

  —

  “I KNEW CORDELIA A LITTLE.”

  Sarah Barnes, a glossy, raven-haired woman in patterned Lycra that showcased her gym-honed body to perfection, was making a cappuccino for Juno in a sunny apartment in Brooklyn. The walls were covered with large canvas pictures of the Barnes teenagers—at camp, on safari, at Thanksgiving—and the shelves exhibited the familiar totems of middle-aged, professional success. A beautifully blown glass vase. A Japanese print. A pair of antique English Staffordshire dogs. Outside, the treetops of Cobble Hill Park glowed luminous in the sun, and the shouts of children carried over the period townhouses and gentrified brownstones of the surrounding streets.

  As Sarah coaxed frothed milk from the gleaming machine, Juno looked around her. She could scarcely believe her luck. Turning up at Cordelia’s last known address, in the faint hope that a neighbor might offer some useful information, had been an impetuous decision. Yet Sarah Barnes, who was just returning from a run, had invited her in without hesitation and cheerfully submitted to Juno’s interrogation.

  “We’d been living in a much smaller apartment just across from here, and I would stop and talk with Miss Capel sometimes. At least, I called her Miss Capel once but she told me straight out to call her Cordelia. Occasionally, I would help bring her groceries up and she invited me in, which is how I first saw this place. As you can imagine, I totally adored it. So when she died and it came on the market, we just snapped it up.”

  Juno stared around, trying to reimagine the war-hardened veteran correspondent amid the cream linen sofas, abstract metalwork sculpture, and artfully exposed brickwork.

  Impossible.

  “Did she leave any of her own things?”

  “Oh no. We had to redo everything. The décor was pretty tired. It was mainly books and more books.”

  Juno glanced across to the shelves. Not a book in sight.

  “And Cordelia lived here alone, you said?”

  “She had a caregiver who came in. Everton, he was called. I’m afraid I never knew if that was his first or last name. I know she had a son.”

  Juno’s research on Cordelia’s son had already drawn a blank.

  “So you met him?”

  “Oh no. He’d moved abroad a long time ago. I’m not sure where. I never asked. Is it important?”

  “Surely…” Juno struggled to maintain equilibrium in the face of this bland incuriosity. “You must have chatted about her life? Cordelia was quite well known in her time.”

  “The thing is, Juno…” Sarah
Barnes twirled a lock of perfect hair that looked barely disturbed by her morning’s run, and smiled winsomely. “Cordelia was far more interested in our life. Does that sound strange? She was full of questions about Michael’s work as a fund manager, and my charity work, and the kids. She loved kids. You have to understand, she wasn’t the kind of old lady who talked about herself. She was voraciously interested in other people’s lives. I suppose that’s what made her a great journalist.”

  “So you didn’t ask her about Europe? Or her time in the war?”

  “Not that I recall. Sugar?”

  “No thanks. Did she ever mention her sister?”

  “Ah, as a matter of fact, she did. Only once. She had a painting—a lovely picture of a garden—and when I admired it, Cordelia told me her sister had painted it.”

  “Irene?”

  “Yes, that’s the name…Irene Weissmuller. I remember because it was the same name as that actor who played Tarzan in all those old movies. She lived in Germany.”

  “And that’s all she told you?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “So…do you know when Cordelia last saw her?”

  “I don’t, I’m afraid. As I said, she only really mentioned her that one time.”

  Juno stared down, despondent thoughts swirling into the froth of the cappuccino. Finding someone who actually knew Cordelia, who even lived in her last apartment, had seemed a stroke of extraordinary luck, yet it was pretty clear this visit was a dead end. Sarah Barnes had been far too self-absorbed to penetrate Cordelia’s protective carapace.

  One aspect of the story, however, did interest Sarah.

  “My husband said the Weissmullers were very rich,” she mused, folding up her legs on the vast sofa. “The family ran a major steelmaking business, so I imagine Irene lived in great style.”

  “Oh, she did,” replied Juno absently. “When I was researching I found a photograph of the Weissmuller villa and the place looked beautiful. Right on the edge of a lake.”

  Even as she spoke, a voice came into her head. Jake Barton, editor of American Traveler.

  We’re planning an issue on European capitals in the light of international terrorism. Do our readers still want to visit? Is it safe for them? Rome, Paris, Berlin, Prague, Venice; do they still appeal? How about it, Juno? Any of them take your fancy?

  In that instant she realized that if she was to discover anything more about the relationship between Cordelia and Irene, it would not be found here.

  Bidding a hasty goodbye to Sarah Barnes, Juno hurried out of the door, grabbed her phone, and texted.

  Hi Jake! Hope the offer is still open. I want to go to Berlin.

  * * *

  —

  THE GARDEN WAS WILD. Profuse and untamed, with tangles of ivy and roses along the walls and flowers sprinkling the lawn that led down to the Wannsee. Foxgloves and lupines poked up from the beds, and the air was fresh with the tang of pine. The lake shimmered with the aqueous blue of shot silk; beyond it, where water and woods seemed to fold into each other in a single endless curve, the quiet of the day deepened and intensified.

  The Villa Weissmuller was just as Juno remembered it from the magazine photograph. A hipped mansard roof, white walls, and green shuttered windows. The only difference was that a thick wall of creamy honeysuckle, its verdant foliage spangled with gold, wound its way across one entire side.

  She stood at the gate feeling the sharp air fill her lungs and her whole body relax. The tension of the past few months had eased, and she realized that coming here meant she could close her mind, however briefly, to the dilemma she was facing in her own life. She could resist constantly checking her phone for texts and messages. In the past she had never examined her situation closely enough to see the cracks in it, but now that those cracks were too glaring to avoid, it was a relief to focus on someone else’s life instead.

  She had arrived in Berlin the previous day and moved with dismay into the apartment she had booked online. It was a one-bedroom in Kreuzberg that she had picked for its stucco, prewar frontage, “young, vibrant neighborhood,” and affordable rent. The rapturous description had failed to mention the damp in the graffiti-lined stairwell, the currywurst stands in the street, the shouts of the Turkish family above, or the incessant yapping of the Pomeranian next door.

  “I hope you like gardening.”

  Startled, she wheeled around. A man stood ten feet away from her, alongside the honeysuckle wall, with a pair of glinting secateurs on his hand. He was thickset, in his forties, with an open-necked shirt and a warm smile. Somehow he had detected she was not German: he’d addressed her in English that held only the gentlest edge of an accent.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Forgive me. I should introduce myself. I’m Matthias Weber.”

  “Juno Lambert. Are you…Do you live here?”

  “I’m sad to say not.”

  He divested himself of the secateurs, stepped forward, and offered a hand. “It’s owned by a charity. I have an arrangement with the management company to keep the garden in check, but I’m afraid I have neglected my duties. It is quite a task. Are you considering a rental?”

  “I hadn’t exactly planned…” She stopped herself quickly. “But I’d love to have a look around.”

  “Would you like me to show you? I know the house pretty well.”

  It was the perfect opportunity. This way she could investigate every scrap of information Irene’s house might yield, taking pictures with her phone, absorbing the emotions that had imprinted themselves on the fabric of the walls.

  “Thank you. I’d love that.”

  Inside, the house smelled of warm dust. Thick gold light bathed the hall, dust motes dancing in the shafts of sun. A frail wreckage of moths lay in the bowl of the pendant lamp. Yet deep in the suffocating silence she felt a sense of something else.

  Expectation.

  “It was built in the eighteen nineties.” Matthias Weber gestured at the pastel cornicing and the Delft tiles with their intricate figures frozen in an endless dance. “It has all its period features.”

  The rooms were large and echoey, with waxed parquet floors and ornate ceilings. Juno passed through the vast drawing room, whose long French windows opened to a terrace with lake views, to the kitchen, where she found a full set of crystal, china, and crockery wrapped in scraps of newspaper dating from the 1970s: wineglasses, beer glasses, fruit plates, dinner plates, many of them marked with monogrammed Ws. Heavy silver cutlery and porcelain too. Upstairs she drifted in and out of bedrooms, opening cupboards and wardrobes. In one she found towels, in another a stack of white linen.

  “It is part furnished,” the gardener told her. “Though I imagine that could change to suit arrangements.”

  Was it her imagination, or did the house have an air of mystery, as if it was keeping its secrets close? As she moved about Juno could almost sense the memories it held, hovering in the still air. In the master bedroom the faintest trace of perfume was suspended, a suggestion of rose and lavender that Juno felt sure she recognized.

  Matthias Weber followed at a respectful distance, but he was plainly curious.

  “Are you here in Berlin for work?”

  “Kind of. I’m a photographer. And a writer.”

  “Ah, but if you’re a writer, you must see the library!”

  He led her down the sweeping staircase and turned at the end of the drawing room in to a smaller room. Despite the immense proportions of the rest of the house, this room was perfect; cozy and insulated, the ideal place to read or write. Quince-colored light spilled through a window onto shelves that rose from floor to ceiling, gleaming off the spines of a hundred leather books. A heavily carved desk stood to one side and roomy armchairs framed a low coffee table set before an ornately decorated fireplace.

  But it was the portrait that hung above the
fireplace that enthralled her.

  The sitter was wearing a low-cut 1930s gown and gazing out of the picture with piercing intimacy. She had limpid blue eyes and a silken twist of hair coiling away from her face; one arm resting on the back of a chair, the hand draped gracefully; the head tilted up and back. The glowing colors leaped from the canvas and the delicate artistry drew the gaze, yet it was the feeling the portrait evoked that riveted Juno. It might have been a real woman standing there, the enigmatic light in her eyes challenging any observer entirely to capture her.

  “Who’s this?”

  Even as she asked, she knew the answer.

  “That’s a former owner of this house, Frau Irene Weissmuller.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  BERLIN, JANUARY 1942

  THANKS BE TO GOD FOR OUR DEAR SON AND HUSBAND

  ERNST WEISSMULLER

  BORN IN WEIMAR, NOVEMBER 11, 1900

  FALLEN IN EASTERN UKRAINE, JANUARY 8, 1942

  HE DIED IN THE STRUGGLE FOR HIS BELOVED COUNTRY GROSSDEUTSCHLAND

  MAY THE ETERNAL LIGHT GUIDE HIM

  HEIL HITLER!

  Irene paused in her contemplation of the black-bordered card and drew back the library curtain to see the traffic on the road outside.

  All morning there had been signs of activity. Now the purr of expensive engines heralded a column of black armored Mercedes with fluttering swastika pennants that swept up the road and turned into the drive of one of the neighboring villas, the grand, white-faced Villa Minoux. Over the past two years many surrounding properties along Am Grossen Wannsee had been appropriated by the SS. The Villa Minoux, with its graceful lines and pillared portico, had been requisitioned from its owners, commandeered by the higher echelons of the SS, and renamed Wannsee House. A security barrier had been erected across the road, barring unauthorized traffic, and a guard hut built for soldiers mounting a round-the-clock vigil. Generally Wannsee House was used as a police facility and accommodation center for visiting officials, but that day’s motorcade suggested something significant was happening. A high-level conference of some kind. Irene peered into the windows of the passing cars, but could see no more than a blur of black SS caps with silver death’s heads. Then she let out an involuntary gasp as she glimpsed a visage she recognized. The profile of a savage bird of prey.