Woman in the Shadows

by Jane Thynne

  “Who usually sits back here?”

  “It’s the camera bay.”

  He flicked a switch, gunned up the engines, and the plane began to make a deafening high-pitched squeal that sent a shudder through the fuselage. Below them, Clara saw a man run out to remove the chocks beneath the wheels. The plane crept forwards, taxiing awkwardly down the runway, which stretched, seemingly endlessly, ahead of them, lit by a narrow avenue of lights. Then it gathered speed. She felt her intestines sink within her as the plane rose with a loud thump into the air.

  As the force of acceleration pressed her body back into the bucket seat, Clara thought how uncomfortable it must be for a grown man to cram himself into this tiny steel space. The dashboard had come alive now, a bank of wavering needles and glowing lights, and she saw the set of Strauss’s jaw, the flinty eyes narrowed as he pulled the stick towards him and they hurtled upwards into the dense air.

  Below them the city was dwindling to a quilt of red roofs and chimneys. Just outside Tempelhof, she could see a patchwork of gardens, little grids of cabbage and leeks, like a bar chart in a child’s schoolbook. Around the green spaces the crossword puzzle of streets and blocks extended, and on the outskirts of the city braids of smoke from factory towers twisted into the sky.

  As she thought of herself and Strauss suspended so perilously high above them, Clara’s heart caught in her throat. Why had she agreed to his invitation? she asked herself. Yet she knew the answer already. Some instinct within her, ingrained too deeply to eradicate, made her unable to refuse a challenge. Their father had instilled it in childhood, setting sister against brother, making every game of chess a competition, every outing an opportunity to test their resources. On holidays in the Scottish Highlands, where the children would follow his austere, forbidding figure as they labored with knapsacks through the drizzle, he would set each of them a task. They would be left then in a distant location equipped with only a ball of string, a compass, and a shilling. That was all they required, he would say, to hike their way home. Somehow, Clara had always managed it. From an early age she had learned never to show fear and never to reveal reluctance.

  As the plane climbed higher, the map below them turned into a tapestry. Dark green forests, thick as fur, seemed wedged between the patchwork pieces of fields. A flash of river, like mercury. They flew through a fleece of clouds, moisture beading the outside of the glass, and out again into the empty sky. As Clara breathed in the air, sharp and cold as a knife, she felt a rush of exhilaration. Suddenly she understood the addiction of flight. How wonderful it must be to have this heart-stopping excitement in your life! To feel that in an instant you could soar above the city and leave your earthbound life behind you.

  “That’s the rate of climb indicator.” Strauss jabbed a finger at the instrument panel. “The boost pressure indicator, the speed indicator, the altimeter. The maximum speed of this plane is 356 kilometers an hour.”

  None of the dials meant anything to her. Crouched behind Strauss, Clara felt like Sinbad on the back of the eagle, though her every sensation was governed by the penetrating cold. Her attempt at dressing warmly had been hopelessly inadequate. The cold burned her face. Even with Strauss’s jacket she felt as if she might freeze to the steel seat. She wondered how he was managing without it, though she could see he was wearing fur-lined boots and a thick sweater swaddled over several layers.

  They were much higher now, unimaginable thousands of feet. Below them, Brandenburg spread out to the faint line of the horizon, purple with the wrinkle of the hills.

  “Hold on!” shouted Strauss.

  From its great height, the plane flipped in a graceful somersault, tumbling through the cloud cover before swooping downwards. Banking and turning, it rolled over and over so Clara could no longer tell whether they were up or down. To her horror, it seemed that the propeller had cut out. Was the engine dead? As they hurtled relentlessly towards the earth, trees and grass and buildings came into view. Clara could scarcely breathe from terror. A searing pain drilled in her ears, and the air was knocked from her lungs as she gripped the sides of the seat, wanting to scream but unable to make a sound. The propeller was still not functioning. She squeezed her eyes shut. For an eternity they continued downwards. Then, at the last possible moment, when they had dipped so low they almost touched the grass with one wing, the plane swung violently to one side, Strauss opened the throttle, and the ground leapt away from them as they ascended steeply into the air.

  “That’s called a dead-stick landing,” he shouted, pulling the plane into a rapid climb. “Our friend Ernst has the patent on that.”

  For a moment she did not grasp what he was saying. Then Clara understood that the terrifying plunge was intentional, that Strauss had performed a dangerous stunt without warning her. When she understood, fury and fear mingled in her as the plane thrust upwards, every inch shuddering as the propeller blades, working again, sliced through the cold, white air. She was going to be sick, she knew it.

  Above the cloud bank the plane dropped speed a little, leveled out, and they drifted high through the sparkling morning. The ground beneath was obscured by vapor, so they were entirely alone, suspended between earth and heaven. Spokes of sunlight streamed through gaps in the clouds.

  Strauss brought the plane around in a vast, lazy loop as though it was performing its own graceful ballet in the air. Then he seized the throttle and brought it down forcibly so that the sky reared up towards them and the plane was almost at ninety degrees. Clara wanted to beg him not to perform another stunt, but the breath was knocked out of her, as though she had been punched, and the rushing air pressed against her lips. She formed the word “Please!” but it did not emerge from her mouth. When she felt the plane level and then tilt nose-down, she knew it was already too late.

  The scream of the engine was too high for her to speak, and she was again consumed by a panicky vertigo. The ground was rushing towards them crazily fast. Nine thousand feet, eight thousand, seven thousand. The airspeed indicators on the dashboard wheeled excitedly in their glass cases. Wind whipped through the fuselage, and red lights glowed on the dashboard. What was he thinking of, trying a stunt like this? Strauss’s face revealed nothing, but his jaw was clenched as he grappled with the controls. The fuselage was juddering so violently Clara was certain the plane was about to come apart. They were hurtling towards the ground in a steel coffin, about to sink like a stone into the hard earth. Strauss seemed to be wrenching the throttle while they continued to accelerate steeply down. She felt the nausea rising in her and looked for something to vomit in. How awful to be plunging to your death and looking for a sick bag.

  Just as they seemed certain to die, Strauss made a sharp movement with his foot, jerked the throttle lever towards him. The plane tilted ninety degrees, throwing them both bodily to the left as they soared once again. Through her jangled brain, Goebbels’s comment came to her:

  Perhaps you have a taste for danger, Fräulein.

  Goebbels was wrong. She had no taste for danger. But danger had a way of seeking her out.

  It took a few minutes for the plane to bank and turn again and make a slow descent towards the Tempelhof runway. Strauss taxied to a halt, and the engine grunted and stuttered before it died and the propeller blades flapped to a halt. Taking off his hat, he sat motionless for a moment, his lips compressed into a mirthless grin. Beads of sweat glistened on his brow. His eyes were dark and unfathomable, like pools of oil.

  “Were you frightened?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Okay, I was terrified.”

  He laughed. A short, joyless bark. “So was I. I lost control there, you realize? I thought we were done for. The throttle locked at high altitude. I almost gave up. Luckily I managed to kick the stick with my foot in the nick of time.”

  He helped her climb out of the plane, and they walked back across the tarmac. They had spent no more than fourteen minutes in the air, yet she felt li
ke a lifetime had passed. Her legs were shaking as though she had just gotten off a ship, and her thoughts were a maelstrom of confusion. Had Strauss deliberately risked her life, as well as his own? Was he telling the truth when he said he lost control?

  “How do you feel?”

  Instinctively, as ever, she suppressed the anger and confusion churning inside her.

  “I feel like a cocktail that’s just been shaken,” she answered lightly.

  He looked at her in astonishment, but even as she said it, her mood changed. It was true. She was euphoric that she had not died. She had cheated death and was about to continue an ordinary Berlin morning, going about her ordinary, earthbound life. Did every pilot have this intense, searing sensation of being alive every time he returned to land? If so, it was almost worth the fear you went through to achieve it.

  “Well I need a smoke.” Strauss stopped, reached over to the pocket of the jacket she was wearing, freed a packet of cigarettes, and lit one for her and one for himself. His fingers, she noticed, were trembling.

  “Sorry to frighten you, Fräulein.”

  “I thought you said the conditions were perfect.”

  “The conditions were fine. It was the throttle that misbehaved.”

  “I hope you mention that throttle in your report.”

  “I certainly will.”

  “There is one thing I wanted to ask. You said you almost gave up. So why didn’t you?”

  His face glazed over again with the absent, thin-lipped expression that she had seen before. “It was too early for me to die. Especially with you on board.”

  She laughed, as though he was joking, though he gave no appearance of it.

  “You know,” he said, unexpectedly. “There’s a poem I like. It’s Irish. You might know it.”

  “Try me.”

  I know that I shall meet my fate

  Somewhere among the clouds above;

  Those that I fight I do not hate,

  Those that I guard I do not love.

  “That’s Yeats. ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.’ ”

  A spark of interest flared in his eyes. “You know it?”

  “I love it.”

  “Me too. That idea has roots in our German mythology too. The old Teutonic heroes would go on a journey from which they would never return. It was called the Totenritt. The death ride.”

  “The death ride? Well, thank God we avoided one of those.”

  He ignored her flippancy. “We studied Yeats at school. That same teacher, the one who taught us our mythology, he loved poetry. Most German schoolchildren concentrate on Schiller, Heine, Goethe, and so on. Or at least they used to. But our teacher focused on other poets too. Foreigners. Though he did point out that the Irish were Germany’s allies, of course.”

  As they neared the terminal, they talked a little about the forthcoming film. Strauss never bothered watching Ernst’s movies. Those film people always got the technical details wrong, and besides, he preferred Ernst when he wasn’t pretending to be some pompous Nazi hero humming “The Horst Wessel Song.” Ernst didn’t need to pretend to be anything other than what he was. He already had a chestful of decorations, and you could make a whole airplane out of the medals he’d won in real life. As they talked, the vibration resounding in Clara’s bones gradually left her and she felt entirely calm.

  When they reached the entrance to the main hall, Strauss stopped and said, “I shall be meeting some compatriots of yours soon, as it happens. I’ve had an invitation to meet your former king. The Reichsmarschall’s holding a reception for him at Carinhall.”

  “That will be fascinating,” Clara said neutrally.

  “Do you think so? For an actress, perhaps. As a pilot I can’t think of anything worse. I’m not suited to standing around making polite conversations with duchesses.” He looked at her thoughtfully, then gave a stiff, ironic bow.

  “Now, Fräulein, I must go and fill out my test report.”

  She felt a surge of regret that he was leaving so soon, but shrugged off his jacket and held it out to him.

  “I hope you got what you needed. For your film, that is.”

  “More than enough.”

  “Then I’m glad to have helped.”

  Strauss tipped his cap and strode away into the airport building.

  CHAPTER

  11

  When Mary Harker first arrived back in Berlin, she had looked forward to revisiting all her old haunts. The Verona Lounge on Kleiststrasse near Nollendorfplatz, which after hours turned from a chic evening club to an outrageously bohemian bar. La Garçonne on Kalckreuthstrasse, owned by Susi Wanowski, the former wife of a Berlin police chief who in a drastic life change had become the lover of the erotic dancer Anita Berber. Mali and Ingel’s on Lutherstrasse, where if you ignored the sign reading CLOSED FOR PRIVATE PARTY, you would find all types of artists, intellectuals, singers, and actresses. Even in the first days of the Reich, there had been lingering traces of Weimar decadence. Every night you could pass a cellar door and look down to see a dancer adjusting her bustier or a man with a saxophone in a sweaty bar. Now all these places were gone. The sly, smoky rhythms of jazz that leaked out of nightclub cellars had been replaced with light operetta, marching music, and brass bands. Instructions had gone out from the Reich Chamber of Culture that saxophones should be replaced where possible with the viola, improvisation was banned, and any song’s lyrics must be lighthearted rather than the “gloomy, Jewish” kind. In particular, the Reich liked drums, to keep German hearts banging in rhythm. Strident music in a major key.

  The nightlife wasn’t the only thing that had changed. All the journalists in the world had converged on Berlin. It was competitive as hell. The crisis in Europe attracted foreign correspondents like bees to a honeypot, except there was nothing sweet about the content of the twice-daily press briefings handed out at the Propaganda Ministry. The Nazis kept things as controlled as they could. Every morning and afternoon the journalists sat and imbibed whatever lies the government chose, delivered either by the press chief, Otto Dietrich, or by Goebbels himself. At the moment it all had to do with the perfidious Bolsheviks and the need for Germany to arm itself to protect the world from Communism.

  The only good thing Goebbels had done was to build a fancy new press center on Leipziger Platz, to which many of the foreign correspondents had moved en masse from the Adlon bar. It had newspapers and plush leather armchairs and mahogany desks, as well as telegraph facilities, if anyone was insane enough to trust their copy to the in-house censors. It was, of course, staffed by Nazi informers, and there was a rumor that the seats were wired for sound, but the correspondents had evolved a complex method of semaphore if they had anything important to convey. That was where Mary sat in the dining room on the first floor, thinking about Clara Vine.

  Clara had revealed, in their long talk the other night, that she missed the presence of a man in her life. There had been a couple of men, yet sometimes she feared she had lost the chance of a serious relationship altogether. As ever she was full of lively gossip, but now there was a somber tone beneath it, and a suspicion of private heartache. She was estranged from her family and had ended the relationship that seemed most likely to lead to marriage.

  But then, Mary had written the book on heartache. The man she had wanted didn’t want her. The only person who had ever proposed to her was a lawyer back in New Jersey named Derek Phillips, who had pressed his case in such desiccated tones he might as well have been cribbing from the marriage service itself. That dreary bit about marriage being ordained for the procreation of children and as a remedy against sin. As Mary didn’t want any children and she didn’t mind sin, she had no problem in turning Derek’s proposal down.

  The arrival of a waiter bearing two martinis and a bowl of olives returned Mary’s thoughts to Clara. The truth was, whatever the state of her love life, Clara’s life seemed enviable. She had that adorable apartment on Winterfeldtstrasse—thanks to Mary—a car, even if it was on loa
n from a friend at the studio, and a closet full of stylish clothes. Her career was blossoming. She looked, if anything, prettier than she had four years ago, her cheekbones more sharply defined and her beauty modulated by the grave shadows behind her eyes. Mary had always admired Clara’s deep brown hair, with its hints of chestnut and honey. Mary’s hair, by contrast, seemed defined by what it was not, neither brunette nor blond, but a washed-out shade that seemed to take on color only in the sun. She had nice eyes, but if she wanted a man to see them properly, she had to take off her glasses, which meant, conversely, that she could not see him. And whereas Mary had a constant battle with the bulge, the food shortages in Germany had left Clara lean and willowy, but not so slender that men did not stare at her. Just like they were doing now, as she made her way through the club to the table. Mary sprang up and kissed her.

  “Thanks for putting me on to the Bride School. What a story! Let’s hope no one at home gets any ideas.”

  Clara gave a wry smile.

  “Frank Nussbaum loves the whole concept. When I told him they have lessons on how to obey a husband, he was practically ready to move here.”

  Clara guessed, though she had never asked, that Mary had given up the idea of marriage some years ago. Presumably she thought it was incompatible with her work. But then, she told herself, Mary probably assumed the same thing of her, and how accurate was that?

  “How can those girls stand it?”

  “You mean the prospect of marriage? Or the pig trotter stew they serve? Yuck! Even I couldn’t face the lunch.”

  “So did you find out what happened?” Clara leaned forward intently.

  “A little. A girl named Ilse Henning filled me in. To start with they were blaming it on the gardener. According to Ilse, the guy was soft in the head. But when I called up the Criminal Police, they said he had been released without charge. Rock-solid alibi, apparently. So they’re combing through all the violent criminals on their books…”