by Jane Thynne
‘Klaus Müller?’ she said, but Albert’s face was rigid and he jumped to his feet. He was staring behind her at the door.
‘Did I hear my name?’
‘Herr Doktor,’ stammered Albert.
Clara turned to see the figure of Müller, wearing a dove grey herringbone suit, navy tie and the habitual slight smirk on his face. He was carrying an armload of files and a couple of aides hovered behind him. Müller, she realized in a flash, was here to dismiss people.
‘What good luck, Fräulein. I was hoping I might run into you. Perhaps you’d like a lift back to town later?’
Gerhard Lamprecht had been a matinée idol once, and his good looks, well-cut three-piece suits and status as Ufa’s star director meant his face featured in the film magazines as much as any leading man. But the events of the past few days had aged him ten years. Ashen, chain-smoking and raking his hands constantly through lanky hair, he ushered Clara to a corner of his cluttered office, cracked open a fresh packet of cigarettes and proceeded to interview her as though the idea of his next movie was about as pressing as a trip to darkest Africa. Every time someone passed he jumped, and didn’t relax until he had escorted Clara down to the Great Hall and they were standing in the deep shadow of the set.
He confirmed what Albert had told her. The part he had in mind for Clara was the English version of Alicia, the role played by Karin Hardt, an exquisite blonde.
‘Won’t there be a problem? I mean, we look nothing like each other. I’m much darker than Karin.’
Lamprecht waved his hand. ‘This is cinema, my dear. Illusion is our business. In fact illusion, you might say, is all we have to offer right now. Given that we are able to persuade people that black is white, we ought to have no difficulty persuading people that blonde is brunette.’ He gave a phlegmy laugh, which turned into a cough, then recovered himself.
‘All the same, we should be able to furnish you with a wig.’
Clara was given a script and asked to learn the first few pages, which she would rehearse with Hans Albers, the actor scheduled to play the lead. She had seen Albers’ face beaming out of a hundred posters, and knew he was one of the studio’s biggest stars, but it wasn’t that which proved the problem.
The film was set in Italy, so an entire reproduction of Venice had been built with lavishly painted flats depicting canals and gondolas and the gilded interior of the Danieli Hotel. Standing on set, surrounded by the rigs and cranes and cameras, Clara swiftly discovered that acting for the camera was an entirely different art from that she had learned in the theatre. When she projected her voice, Lamprecht assumed a pained expression as though she was hurting his ears.
‘You’re declaiming, my dear. Try talking.’
She started again, but he interrupted almost immediately.
‘Less is more, remember.’
After her third attempt, he took her by the arm.
‘Don’t talk too loudly. Remember, no one needs to hear you at the back of the circle. There is no circle. On film, everyone’s in the front row of the stalls.’
The scene required Clara to walk across the marble floor towards Hans Albers, and confront him. She was supposed to sway seductively but each time she attempted it, Lamprecht would spring out from behind the camera and ask her to repeat it. She found it impossible to ignore the black-hooded eye of the camera inches from her face. Nerves made her moves heavy and deliberate. Her gait became more exaggerated, her limbs turned to lead, and although Hans Albers squeezed as much encouragement as he could into his few lines, she was not so much swaying seductively as stumbling across the stage like a pantomime horse.
Eventually the director drew her aside.
‘I’m sorry, Herr Lamprecht. I’ve never acted in front of a camera, you see.’
‘Take your time. It’s a question of adaptation. When you do your first film you have to learn a whole new way of acting. I’ve seen hundreds of theatre actresses who have this problem. They all learn to overcome it.’
‘But how exactly?’ Her voice trembled with frustration.
Lamprecht leaned against the rig, and looked down at her. ‘Well, now. Do you want to know what I tell them?’ His face melted into a slow film star smile, a legacy of his heart throb days. ‘I tell them, think of the camera as your lover.’ He sucked at his cigarette held between finger and thumb and regarded her thoughtfully. ‘You understand? The camera studies your face very closely. It sees your slightest expression. It understands each tiny nuance. Every little frown. You can break a heart with the bat of an eyelid. You can destroy a man with the merest flicker of your lovely face. When you act in the theatre, you need to be seen as well as heard at the back of the circle, but film is not like that. Film is intimate. When a thought crosses your face, it should be like the wind on the water. Just a ripple and pouf . . .’ he waved the cigarette lightly, ‘That is enough.’
‘I’ll try.’
His face creased kindly. ‘And don’t apologize, my dear. I can see you have talent, and besides, on a day like today, we’re all learning new ways to play things.’
So in the dazzling limelight of the set Clara tried to keep her expressions precise and controlled, to subdue her responses until she had complete mastery of them. She managed to ignore the huge cameras that slid in and out of the shadows around her and the microphones that hung above her head. The effort of it was so absorbing, it was simply impossible to think of anything else. After an hour, Lamprecht declared the audition a success. She was issued with a script and told she would be called for fittings and rehearsals the following week.
Müller was waiting for her in the lobby. His cheeks were shadowed with stubble, suggesting that he had been working flat out, but he seemed energised by it, and exuded an air of suppressed excitement. He was in high good humour as he ushered her into the front passenger seat of the car.
‘Is it true that you organized the part for me?’
He pulled the BMW out of the main gate and fell behind a large convoy of trucks carrying construction workers off to build the autobahn. Bands of men armed with picks on the sides of the road were an increasingly frequent sight these days. Müller gestured to them with a grin.
‘We National Socialists are committed to reducing unemployment. Unemployed construction workers first, then unemployed actresses.’
‘Then I suppose I should thank you.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m sure you’ll think of a way.’
He pulled her towards him on the seat and reached his arm round her shoulder, lightly brushing her breast. There was no longer any ambiguity in Müller’s intentions towards her, Clara realized. It seemed clear that he thought it was only a matter of time before she succumbed to his advances. She pulled away.
‘So you’re in charge of making sure that Jews leave the studios?’
‘That’s not the summit of my responsibilities, I hope. But if you want to put it like that.’
‘Don’t you realize what impression of National Socialism this will make? Don’t you think this will make enemies abroad? In England, for example?’
‘But we have many friends in England.’
‘Like who?’
He looked across to her, and she saw a flicker of bafflement in his face.
‘I would have thought it was obvious.’
‘Well, it’s not.’
‘Your father, most particularly, has been a great help to us. Surely you knew?’
‘My father?’ Her voice faltered.
‘Your father, meine Fräulein, has been instrumental in advancing the fascist cause in England. Our relationship could not be warmer.’
‘But my father doesn’t know . . .’
‘What doesn’t he know? He has known von Ribbentrop for many years. As I understand it, von Ribbentrop visited your family home. You probably met him.’
‘I . . . I don’t think so.’
Yet even as he spoke, it became as clear as day. An individual moment, entirely disconnected yet resonant, like m
usic. Frozen in her mind, but at the same time floating free of all context.
It was the smell she remembered first, of leaves and her own hot skin. Herself lying, slightly awkwardly, in the boughs of an apple tree, braced in the crook of its branches, with the reddening fruit all around her. Her plimsolls were frayed and grubby and a bee lurched drunkenly towards her, as though the air was too thick with heat to fly. There was a smell of mown grass and distantly, the scent of damp vaporizing from the recently watered rosebeds. Across the lawn Angela was sitting in the shade of the huge ilex tree. Her brother was on the swing and she could hear the bark of her sister’s laugh, falsely grown-up, like the high, imperious cry of a peacock.
Above the lawn was their house, wide and low-set in warm brick with yellow, mullioned windows. Her parents were making their way down the steps of the terrace and towards them. Her mother was wearing a white dress printed with roses, and Clara thought that her lipsticked mouth looked like a rose too, blooming in her powdered face. It was her mother’s last proper summer but no one knew it then; the shadow inside her had not yet darkened their lives.
With them was a tall man with a weak chin and a jolly face. He was wearing a white linen suit, but he still looked hot. As he came nearer Clara discerned little beads of sweat forming on his forehead. She began, as was her habit, to imagine life for him. He was a toymaker with a shop full of wooden puppets. He was a baker, who crafted fat chocolate éclairs. Reluctantly, she swung her feet around and dropped out of the tree vertically, silent as an arrow, like the savage she was half-imagining herself to be. She waded through the long grass and approached her father.
‘And this is my younger daughter, Clara.’
It turned out that the man was German. One of her father’s political friends. He was visiting England, and he admired it very much. He spoke to her in German, as though he expected her to be fluent.
‘And you have never seen your mother’s homeland?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Don’t leave it too long. What do you want to do when you grow up?’
That was what all adults asked children. And that was the first moment it had ever come into her mind.
‘I want to be an actress.’
Now, she looked across at Müller and saw that he was smiling confidentially, as though about to let her into a secret.
‘In fact, your father will be pleased to know the Doktor has argued for supporting his most recent request. When he last visited, your father mentioned that his organisation was in need of funding. It looks like your father is going to get what he asked for. Only please Fräulein, keep that news to yourself for the moment.’
He paused at the traffic lights, and rested his elbow on the rolled-down window, drumming his fingers happily on the car door.
‘Oh, and I almost forgot. I have a message from the Frau Doktor. Could you please accompany her to Minister Goering’s home tomorrow morning?’
Automatically Clara said, ‘I’m working, I’m afraid,’
Müller laughed. ‘My dear Fräulein, you must understand, a visit to Herr Goering’s home is more important than any other work. Certainly more than acting. I’m sure Herr Lamprecht will understand.’
She lapsed into silence.
It made sense, of course. The travelling, the meetings, the time when she had come home from Eastbourne to find the house shut up and deserted. Daddy travelled, she knew he did, it was part of his job. His group was active in promoting international friendship, she knew that too. But forming links with the National Socialists was another thing altogether. Asking them for funding. Surely her father could not possibly understand what they were like?
And yet . . . if he had met them, then he must know. In Germany he must have seen, just as she had, the casual violence, the brutal justice handed out on the streets. Most of all the persecution of the Jews.
Her own father. Whose wife was half-Jewish.
At the same time she realized she must not betray a jot of what she was feeling. Everything Müller assumed about her was wrong, but it was essential that she did not enlighten him. Clara had told Müller she was not political, so that was how she would stay. She would maintain absolute composure. She would stick to the teasing, bantering nature of conversation that he seemed to prefer.
‘So when am I going to take you to dinner?’
He glanced across at her and she returned a coy smile.
‘You must be busy. With all those sackings to carry out, I’m surprised you can spare the time.’
‘There’s a lot to do, but it’s good to get away. Being with the Herr Doktor can be like being an audience of one at the Sportpalast.’
He gave a conspiratorial wink and from a compartment on the dashboard produced a tin of fruitdrops and offered her one. ‘Lutschbonbons’, it said on the lid. Each sweet, to her amazement, had the hard sugary imprint of the swastika etched on it. She held one up.
‘I can’t believe it.’
‘You mean the attention to detail? But we’re famous for it! The company makes them specially for the Führer.’ He smiled. ‘They know what he likes and they know what’s good for them.’
Müller took a hand off the steering wheel and placed it on her knee. He let it linger there and gave it a slight squeeze. She smiled flirtatiously at him, then gazed out of the window at a passing store, as if there was nothing else on her mind but where she might find her next evening dress. As she sucked her cherry bonbon, her tongue found the ridge of the swastika on the fruitdrop’s sugar coat, the sourness beneath the sweet, and the image of grandmother came to her, with her gentle eyes and her bagful of Gummi bears and marzipan pigs.
What would her grandmother have said?
Leo Quinn believed war was coming. What if he was right? And was there something, anything she could do to help stop it? What if she could play even the tiniest part in bedevilling this new regime? To become even the smallest of stones in the shoe that was stamping all over Germany. She would do it, wouldn’t she? Not because of Leo or the British government or Mr Churchill, or any of those things. But for her grandmother.
Chapter Twenty
The Passport Office of the British Embassy was based in a stucco-fronted hunting lodge at number 17 Tiergartenstrasse. At the beginning of the century, this road, which bordered the old hunting grounds of the Dukes of Brandenburg, had been a plush, residential area of handsome villas, but when the price of property crashed, the British Government had been able to buy up the house cheaply, to be used as a base for consular services, and other, more confidential activities. A flight of wide stone steps led from the courtyard to the first floor, and the windows looked out onto the lush greenery of the Tiergarten, giving it an almost rural aspect.
It was five o’clock in the afternoon by the time Clara arrived, but there was still a queue from the courtyard, through the door and down the corridor. They were professional men, smartly dressed, waiting patiently. She guessed they had been waiting all day. Along the queue, a woman pushed a steel urn on a trolley, dispensing cups of steaming tea.
As she passed up the steps, one man stopped her and said in perfect English, ‘Forgive me, miss, but I have an urgent message for my cousins in England. Mr and Mrs Daniel Cohen. They live in Chatham, Kent. I wonder if you could . . .’
‘Hey, wait your turn.’
The next man in the line began to berate him for his interruption and others joined in.
‘I’m sorry.’ Clara fled through the door and asked a resentful-looking blonde with plaits to show her the way to Mr Quinn’s office, where they waited outside a room until an elderly man with a briefcase emerged. He looked like a doctor who had just diagnosed a terminal illness. An illness that afflicted himself.
The blonde girl nodded and Clara went in. It was a grand room painted in pistachio green, with a fireplace and glass-fronted bookcases. It might have been a ballroom in its earlier, fin de siècle existence, a place where young couples waltzed to a string quartet on the polished parquet floor. But no
w it was cluttered with tables stacked with pile upon pile of paper files. Leo sat at an enormous desk in the centre with his head bowed over a sheaf of papers. For a split second before he looked up, Clara almost didn’t recognize him. She took in the intensity of his concentration, and the utter weariness in his frame. The look in his eyes when he glanced up her sent a shiver through her.
‘Miss Vine?’
‘I wondered if you might be free for a talk. I thought we might go and walk somewhere.’
‘As you can see, I’m busy right now. There’s rather a lot of people here and they’ve been waiting some time. But . . .’ He replaced the cap on his fountain pen and nodded at the secretary, who left reluctantly, shutting the door behind her. Standing up, he came round to the front of his desk and stuck his hands in his pockets.
‘Can I ask what this is about?’
She shivered at the chill in his voice. He might just have been tired, but he sounded unfriendly. As though she was wasting his time.
‘What do all these people want?’
‘They want to leave, of course. They’re Jews.’
‘Do they all want to go to England?’
‘Not at all, no matter what your friends in London may tell you. Most Jews are going to France and Holland. They think things will improve, you see, and they can return when this lot are kicked out. The realists are going to Palestine. Because that’s our mandate, they need visas from British Passport Control.’
‘And do they queue like this every day?’
‘Right now we’re overwhelmed with applications. They’re pleading with us to get anywhere in the British Empire. They’re mostly professional people – teachers, doctors, war heroes. We think there’ll be more than fifty thousand leaving the country this year.’
‘And have you been told to give them all passports?’
He smiled slightly. ‘We haven’t been told anything. We have no special instructions at all. But as my boss sees it, our job is to make sure as many of them get passports as need it. Anyhow,’ he glanced at the clock. ‘If this is just a social visit . . .’