Woman in the Shadows

by Jane Thynne

  Clara parked the red Opel next to a Mercedes-Benz cabriolet with beige leather seats, checked her lipstick in the rearview mirror, and smoothed her hair beneath her hat. She sat for a second, waiting for her trepidation, like a surge of stage fright, to come under control. Then she stepped out of the car. As she made her way to the front door, a pear, like a tiny, unexploded bomb, dropped beside her into the grass.

  The maid showed her into the drawing room, whose French windows at one end led to a flag terrace circled by a balustrade, beyond which was a magnificent view of the lake, edged by the gloomy, impenetrable Grunewald. Now, at five in the afternoon, the sun was a molten orb in a streaked caramel sky, turning the waters of the Wannsee into a sheet of hammered gold. At the end of the garden, Clara could see a private beach and a jetty, where Goebbels kept his motor yacht, Baldur. Seagulls squawked and wheeled in the sky, and farther out in the lake, a couple of fishermen drifted in their boats, hunched over their tranquil lines waiting for pike, like figures from a nineteenth-century painting.

  Clara crossed her arms and waited, pretending a nonchalance she did not feel, as she tried, yet again, to work out what Magda Goebbels could possibly want with her.

  The message had come that morning out of the blue. A messenger had brought the note to Clara directly onto the set at the Ufa film studios in Babelsberg, where she was filming a romantic comedy called A Girl for Everything. He had shouldered his way through the makeup girls and the script man, right into the dazzle of the arc lights, to deliver it. The boy’s face was a picture of urgency and intense curiosity, as befitted a summons from Magda Goebbels, wife of Hitler’s right-hand man and the woman informally known as the First Lady of the Reich. The other actors had looked on avidly as Clara quickly scanned the message, then folded the note and slipped it in a pocket. Her face, she knew, gave nothing away.

  Now Clara walked around the drawing room, assessing the pictures and furniture on display. Last year Goebbels had claimed he was embarrassed to have moved into such a large villa because he hated luxury, yet for the sake of the Reich he could not be expected to receive distinguished guests in his old apartment. One look at this room, however, revealed that his aversion to luxury did not run very deep. The place was furnished in solid bourgeois taste: rich Persian rugs and fat sofas upholstered in satin and watered silk, side tables in restrained nineteenth-century style on a parquet floor polished to a high shine. A Gobelin tapestry hung on the wall, and a Bechstein piano stood in the front window. The standard portrait of the Führer, de rigueur in any Party home, hung above a mantelpiece crowded with family photographs, most of which Clara had already seen in the newspapers. There was Goebbels in open-necked shirt and sunglasses, at the wheel of his motorboat. The four Goebbels children, Helga, Hilde, Helmut, and Holde, the girls in matching white dresses and ribbons, and Helmut in a sailor suit, sitting in their miniature pony carriage. Goebbels, it was said, insisted on one baby a year. Four children may be enough for a string quartet, he joked, but not enough for a National Socialist. He had publicly promised another five babies for the Reich.

  Catching sight of herself in a gold Rococo mirror, Clara scrutinized the picture she presented with a critical eye. She was wearing a buttoned ivory blouse beneath a fitted serge navy suit with a fur collar, her chestnut hair freshly cut in a neat bob. A new, fashionably tilted navy velvet hat. Red Coral lipstick by Max Factor. Lizard-skin clutch bag. Every inch the screen actress whose career was on the rise, though not so successful that she would be recognized on the street. And all of it a façade. Clara was used to a life of deception now. Sometimes deception seemed like an extension of her own being, moving bodily with her as she walked the streets of Berlin or sat with friends in bars or crossed the sets of the Ufa film studios. The Clara Vine she saw in the mirror was both herself and not herself. What the real Clara Vine might look like, she could no longer say.

  Though she couldn’t fault the image, still Clara felt uneasy. The near miss with the peacock had done nothing to improve her nerves. Behind her she heard the creak of the door and the heavy tread of her hostess.

  “You haven’t changed a bit!”

  It sounded like more of an accusation than a welcome. As Magda Goebbels entered the room, permitting a transitory smile to twitch across her crimson lips, Clara tried to conceal her surprise at the change in her hostess. Even if she had wanted to return Magda’s compliment, it was impossible. Four children in five years had done Magda no favors. Clara had seen her often enough in the newspapers, of course, decked out in satin and pearls, hosting grand Party occasions at Hitler’s side, presiding at the Mothers’ Union and the Winter Relief charity, partying with foreign dignitaries at last year’s Olympic games. But, close up, it was a very different picture. Magda was still elegantly turned out in the height of fashion; she wore a Chanel dress in peach silk, and her platinum hair was scalloped tightly against her cheeks. But beneath the rouge, her skin was putty-colored; her mouth was lined, and the dress bulged at the belt. Her body was waging a war between elegance and middle-aged spread, and it seemed the spread was winning.

  They sat on low chairs looking out onto the garden while a maid shuffled in, straining under the weight of a tea tray laden with brown bread spread thickly with butter, sponge cake, and Lebkuchen. Magda aligned the handles of the cups precisely and gestured to the girl to pour, wincing as her trembling hand spilled tea into the saucer. Impatiently Magda waved her away.

  “I’m sorry about that. She’s training. There’s a Bride School on the island, and we like to help out by giving their girls a little practice with serving. But I have to say I feel sorry for those poor husbands-to-be.”

  She waited until the girl had left and closed the door behind her. Then she said: “So, Fräulein Vine. Your career is blossoming, I hear. My husband tells me you are quite the rising star at Ufa now.”

  “Thank you. And how are you, Frau Doktor?”

  “Not too good. I’ve been at the clinic in Dresden again.”

  Like most women in Berlin, Magda Goebbels was obsessed with her health. She was always visiting spas and clinics to receive injections purported to calm her nerves.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t kept up with your films.” Magda gestured at the family photographs. “My life is rather busy.”

  So this was how it was to be. From the first line of the script, Clara could judge the expected dialogue, and she was relieved. Their conversation would be confined to pleasantries. Magda was icy as ever. There would be no reference to what had gone before.

  “I’ve been busy too, fortunately.”

  “Indeed. You have a new film out now, I see.” In her lap, Magda’s hands were a tight fist of nerves. “I’m trying to remember what it’s called?”

  “Madame Bovary. It’s directed by Gerhard Lamprecht. I’m just finishing another, called A Girl for Everything, and in a few weeks I’ll begin a new film with Ernst Udet. The Pilot’s Wife. He plays a Luftwaffe pilot who is shot down, and I’m his wife.”

  At the mention of Ernst Udet, Magda Goebbels responded the way everyone, from small boys to middle-aged women, tended to respond. Her eyes brightened and her attention was captured. The subject of aviation in general, and Ernst Udet in particular, was an exciting one at the moment. The handsome fighter ace, with his strikingly blue eyes, deeply cleft chin, and jovial smile, was not just a war hero but a national celebrity. He had been the best friend of Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron, and after the war he became a film star, moving to Hollywood and taking up stunt flying for the movies. Now back in Germany, in his forties and unmarried, he was something of a playboy. His lean frame had rounded out, but it suited him, and besides, German women liked their men with some flesh on them. His autobiography had sold millions. Lessing and Co, the cigarette company, had even produced a special Ernst Udet brand, which came in a pretty cobalt tin, bisected by a soaring scarlet biplane.

  In the past year, however, Udet had been dragooned into the service of the Reich. At Goering’s in
sistence he had been appointed head of the Technical Division of the Luftwaffe. He was supposed to be too busy overseeing aircraft manufacture and development to waste his time stunt flying, but still he couldn’t resist it. He was coming into the studio later that week to discuss filming The Pilot’s Wife.

  “Generaloberst Udet! What fun for you! We saw him flying at the Olympics. Such a clever man. Will he be performing any of his stunts?”

  “Of course. We’ve got a day’s filming out at Tempelhof.”

  The fact that Udet’s stunts were to be filmed at a real airport, in the real sky, was unusual. Hardly anything was shot on location now. All movies were filmed in the studio. It was as though the Nazis wanted to present their fictional world, perfect in every way, without any interference from the real world and all its complexities.

  “Then I shall make certain to see it.” Magda speared a slice of lemon and suspended it in her tea. “And I’m grateful you could spare time in your schedule to see me.”

  “It is a pleasure, Frau Doktor,” said Clara neutrally. But her mind was racing. She took a bite of sponge cake and waited for Magda to come to the point.

  “I have a little request for you. About a party I’m hosting on Saturday. I wondered if you might like to attend?”

  A party at the home of the Propaganda Minister? Clara could think of nothing she would like less. And no offer harder to refuse. “How kind of you.”

  “I have an ulterior motive, I’m afraid. There are some English guests. Their German is not quite as proficient as one would hope, and I think they find conversation quite exhausting. As you have an English father, I thought you might be able to speak to them and make them feel relaxed.”

  “I would be delighted.”

  “Excellent.” Her mission accomplished, Magda glanced around restlessly, as if in search of small talk. Her fingers hovered over a biscuit, then withdrew. “And how is your family? You have a sister, don’t you?”

  “Angela.”

  “Perhaps I will meet her one day. I imagine she is most interested in the country where your mother grew up. Your mother’s family came from…where was it again?”

  “Hamburg.”

  “Ah yes.”

  Clara wondered how long these cordialities would continue. Their words hung between them like mist drifting over deep waters. Frau Goebbels avoided her eye, tapping her fingers on the arm of her chair like a pianist trying to recapture an elusive melody.

  “I wonder…” ventured Clara. “Could I ask who these English friends are?”

  “Oh, didn’t I say? You know them, I think. Unity Mitford and her sister Diana.”

  The Mitfords. Diana and her younger sister Unity were notorious in London for their fascist sympathies. Diana had caused a scandal by leaving her husband to set up house with Oswald Mosley, the darkly handsome leader of the British Union of Fascists, whose rallies were frequently opportunities for violent clashes between his gang of black-shirted followers and their opponents. Though Clara had indeed met Diana and Unity, they were Angela’s friends really, part of a set that adored fancy dress, cliquish societies, and wildly extravagant parties. How curious that their politics should share some of the same characteristics.

  “We’ve met, yes. But it was a while ago.”

  “Diana’s a Mosley now, of course. She married her husband last year in our apartment in Hermann-Goering-Strasse.”

  Magda’s face softened as she recalled the occasion. “They wanted a quiet ceremony, you see, because Mosley’s first wife had only recently died. So they decided to marry here in Berlin, and the Führer graciously agreed to attend. Diana wore golden silk. Unity and I were her witnesses. Afterwards we drove out here for lunch, down by the lake, and my little girls presented her with posies of wildflowers. We gave them a twenty-volume set of the works of Goethe. It was so romantic.”

  At this, it was as if Magda realized she had confided something she shouldn’t have. As if she had stepped into some territory that had been declared forever out of bounds. A blush bloomed momentarily in the pallor of her complexion, and her whole body stiffened.

  “Anyhow, they’re coming over for the day. I had planned a whole day of sightseeing, only…” She hesitated momentarily, as if uncertain about imparting any further information. Clara concealed her curiosity with careful sips of scalding tea.

  “…Only I’ve had to cancel a local outing I had planned for them. I had hoped to show them around the new Bride School just down the road from here, but unfortunately there’s been an incident. Well, a bit more shocking than that, actually.” Magda flicked an eye towards the door as though the maid might be eavesdropping. She lowered her voice. “One of the brides was found murdered.”

  “Murdered?” The word rang harshly in the tranquil, teatime air.

  “Yes. In the garden, apparently. A girl named Anna Hansen. Terrible, isn’t it? It’s so sad for her fiancé.” Magda grimaced in annoyance. “And rather inconvenient for us. The visit can’t possibly go ahead. It’s obviously cast a cloud. It wouldn’t be the right atmosphere.”

  Anna Hansen. For a second, the name snagged in Clara’s mind. Then she realized she used to know a girl of that name, though it could hardly be the same one. The Anna Hansen that Clara knew was an easygoing bottle blonde from Munich who would be more at home in a negligee than an SS Hausfrau’s apron. Indeed, when Clara first met her, she hadn’t been wearing any clothes at all. Anna had been a life model for the artist Bruno Weiss, whom Clara had met through Helga Schmidt, the small-time actress who had been the first person to befriend Clara when she arrived in the city in 1933. After Helga died that year, Bruno and Clara had become good friends, and Clara would often drop in to his Pankow studio to watch him working and bring him meals he might otherwise forget to eat. Since Helga’s death, Bruno had been working with feverish intensity, his canvases becoming bloodier and more grotesque, his hatred for the regime erupting in livid clots of paint. It was on such a visit one day last year, bearing rolls and some sausage, that Clara had first met Anna. Her naked form had been arranged obligingly on Bruno’s crusty velvet sofa, her legs splayed and a cigarette dangling from a long amber holder in her hand. She had the flexible, muscular limbs that came from a dancer’s training. The idea of Bruno’s Anna Hansen marrying an SS officer was too incongruous for words.

  The inconvenient death of the Reich bride seemed to have caused a palpable chill in the room. Magda rose with unexpected haste and clacked across the parquet floor. “Anyway, Fräulein Vine, don’t let me keep you any longer.”

  She held the door open.

  “The party will be next Saturday at seven P.M. Only twenty or so people. Is there”—she hesitated—“a guest you might like to bring? A fiancé perhaps?”

  “No, there’s no one.”

  “Then we shall be most pleased to see just you.”

  With a peremptory nod Magda disappeared across the hall and up the stairs.

  Clara walked back to her car, her mind working furiously. She found herself unexpectedly trembling. An invitation, after all this time? Magda had said it was her idea, but could it be really? Clara tried to analyze the request. There was nothing especially strange about the Goebbelses entertaining English visitors. There were plenty of high-ranking Britons arriving in Berlin, even now, when Germany’s march into the Rhineland and Hitler’s backing of Franco’s faction in Spain had opened the eyes of most British people to the intentions of his regime. Last year, during the Olympics, Berlin had been full of tourists, and last month’s Nuremberg rally had attracted another wave of politicians and dignitaries. Yet much as the Nazi elite enjoyed meeting them, conversation could be strained. The truth was, the British were lazy about learning the language. Many of them had nothing more than a few phrases picked up from a Baedeker’s guide to help them. They could order a beer in a restaurant and find their way to a nightclub, but that was little use when discussing the extremely delicate matter of friendship between Germany and England in an increasingly difficult inte
rnational situation.

  As she backed the car out of the drive, Clara told herself that her role would be simply to chat with those guests and perform a little polite translation to oil the conversational wheels; she would be no more than an accessory, a party decoration, like those peacocks. Her task would last a couple of hours, at most. How difficult could that be?

  Making her way back around the single road that skirted the island, Clara craned her head to glimpse the houses she passed. Most had fences and forbidding gates, or signs announcing that they were patrolled by dogs and security guards. Others had long drives, screened with trees. Between the branches she caught glimpses of handsome, turn-of-the-century villas, with balconies and impressive porches and well-kept lawns. It hadn’t taken long for the occupants of this slice of paradise, the Rothschilds and Israels and Goldschmidts, to yield to the offers of high-ranking Nazis and pack up their belongings. One villa had been purchased by the Reich Chancellery and reserved for Hitler’s own use. Another was occupied by Hitler’s doctor, Theo Morell. Albert Speer, the Führer’s young architect, had been seen house hunting on Schwanenwerder, too. It was hard to connect such men with this idyllic place. Now murder, too, had tainted this paradise.