by Jane Thynne
‘What I mean is, I have suspicions that someone is taking advantage of my wife for disreputable ends. If I discovered that was happening . . . well, let’s just say, I would not tolerate it.’
Averting her gaze, Clara glanced out of the window. Some lights were burning in the Chancellery, where a few dedicated secretaries worked on late into the night, processing the burgeoning bureaucracy of the new Reich. Down the hall the distant peck of a typewriter could faintly be heard. But most people had packed up for the day. In the cavernous room she felt acutely alone. How much did Goebbels know? Did he know about Arlosoroff’’s deception, or about Clara herself? He was having her followed, that much was obvious by the fact that the car had been able to waylay her, so did he know she was deceiving his wife? Yet if he did, surely she would not be sitting here in his office calmly sipping a whisky and soda? Surely she would be lying crumpled on a street like Helga, or bleeding by the side of the road after a car accident, or sinking slowly beneath the foul waters of a Berlin canal.
He got up and came over, pulling up a chair to sit next to her.
‘You’re not very talkative tonight, Fräulein.’
He reached towards her. She was still wearing her coat, but at his touch Magda’s letter in her bra pressed against her skin, its sharp edges digging into her flesh. His hand moved to cup her breast and she recoiled, as if electrified. He withdrew his hand and laughed.
‘I think you dislike me.’
‘I—’
‘Don’t say anything. The fact that you dislike me makes me like you more. I’m funny that way. Perhaps I trust you more. So many of these actresses just want to sleep with an important man for advancement. I’m sure no one could accuse you of that, could they?’
She tried to take a sip of her drink, but her hand was trembling so hard she put it down again. Was that a reference to Müller? Or to himself?
‘You see,’ he continued, ‘I know a little more about you than you think.’
She didn’t answer. If he had had her followed he must know something, but how much did he know? For one dreadful moment, she wondered if he knew about Xantener Strasse. That in the dark of that one, blissful night a Gestapo shadow had lurked. Yet if Goebbels knew that, surely the smile on his face would be a far more sadistic sneer.
He sat back in his chair, as if her dismissal of his advances was a purely temporary hitch, and removed a long strand of hair from his suit sleeve. It was a woman’s hair, but not blonde like Magda’s. Clara wondered if it was another X in his diary.
‘Enough of that. We can talk more on that subject later. Let’s get down to business. My wife is in need of a good friend. Someone who has her best interests at heart, as I do. Someone who understands that she is fragile and sometimes needs protecting from herself. She’s taken to you, I can see that. So you are well placed to keep an eye out. For my sake, and her own.’
‘I suppose that’s true.’
‘So here’s what I had in mind. I’m assuming I can count on you to help me in future?’
‘I will help you in any way I can, Herr Doktor,’ she replied smoothly.
‘I hoped you would say that. So let’s stay in touch.’
He got up abruptly and returned to his desk, pulling a pile of paperwork towards him.
‘Oh, I almost forgot. I have some sad news for you. I’m afraid Herr Müller is to be temporarily transferred. I’ve decided the Propaganda Ministry needs a film of the Victory Rally at Nuremberg in August, so I’m sending him down there to make the arrangements. I’m thinking of Fräulein Riefenstahl as a director. I think she could make a skilled job of it, don’t you?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Perhaps you’d like to come to the Rally?’
‘If I’m free.’
‘Of course. Your handbag will be with the receptionist. It’s a security issue. Tiresome, I know.’
He bent his head over the paperwork and she realized she was dismissed. She thanked God that she had the letter in her bra, not in her bag where it would surely have been found by some inquisitive SA official. She had one hand on the door handle when he called after her.
‘Oh, and forgive me, but I notice a little blood on that dress. Down there on the hem. I hope you don’t mind me pointing it out. It’s a fad of mine. I have a bit of an obsession with cleanliness.’
It was Helga’s blood. And he knew.
Chapter Forty-Nine
“If you buy a packet of Kurmark cigarettes in Berlin right now, you will find inside an embossed colour card of a film star to collect. There’s Marlene Dietrich and Brigitte Helm, Lil Dagover and Renate Müller, and every one of those beautiful women has a cigarette perched delicately between her fingers. But if you’re an ordinary woman in Germany today, you light up at your peril. And if you’re standing next to an SA man beware, because you might just have the cigarette slapped from your hand. All cafés and restaurants in Berlin have been requested to place signs telling women not to smoke. Ordinary citizens have been advised that if they see a woman smoking in public, they should remind her of her duty as a German woman to preserve her health and fertility. Some shops won’t even sell you a cigarette. What’s a girl to do?”
Rupert chuckled and handed the newspaper back to Mary.
‘I can see why they like it. It makes a change from talking about the League of Nations.’
They were in a restaurant on the Gendarmenmarkt, looking out at the dome of the New Church across the busy square. The room was a sea of tables draped with crisp white linen, busy with the chink of glasses and the hum of upmarket conversation. All this Mary saw mistily, because her heavy spectacles were tucked away in her handbag and her naked eyes were primed with kohl and mascara. She was as blind as a mole as she blinked helplessly at the menu. It was Spargelzeit, asparagus season, and everywhere they went, whether it was a high-end restaurant like this or a lowly bar, the plump white stalks were on offer. The average German was said to eat asparagus once a day and the restaurants were full of it, in soup, rice dishes, mit Butter, mit Schinken, mit Holländischer Sauce. You couldn’t escape it if you wanted to. For Rupert and Mary it had become a running joke. Each time they were served it, they remarked how weird it was that an entire country could so unilaterally love the same vegetable. Asparagus was about as ubiqitous as National Socialism. The difference was, as Rupert said, they both liked asparagus.
Rupert noticed that his compliment had caused only a fleeting smile to pass across Mary’s face. He poured her a little more Gewürtztraminer.
‘So now you’re going to tell me what’s wrong.’
She looked up gratefully. Because Rupert generally kept up such a banter, it was sometimes difficult to be serious with him. He had a light-hearted English habit of turning everything into a joke. She had no real idea even now whether he saw her as a girl, or a colleague, or simply one of the guys. Their dates had generally ended with a chaste peck on the cheek, no matter how hard she tried to signal that she would like something more. This time she had vowed to make her feelings clear. After the day she’d had, she had been looking forward to it intensely.
‘Oh, I had a bad encounter this morning. At the Ministry.’
‘I saw Dr Dietrich collar you. What happened?’
Her heart buckled to see a touch of concern in his face.
‘They hated the last article I wrote. That interview with Rosenberg about the sterilization of women who are deemed unfit to reproduce. It’s Rosenberg’s pet subject. He says if the Nordic races are to survive there will be no place for weaklings. It’s no different from farming, he says, and the Reich needs to establish breeding programmes to produce the strongest specimens.’
‘Breeding programmes? You’re not telling me this is this Party policy?’
‘I’m not sure. Rosenberg’s an eccentric. But Dietrich was mad at me. He said I had no right to spread erroneous conjecture. He told me they’ve appointed a translator who in future will go through all my pieces and next time I write something they take e
xception to, my visa will be cancelled. He also said under the new Ordinance for the Defence against Malicious Attacks on the Government of National Renewal, or whatever it’s called, there’s a two-year prison sentence for anything critical of the regime.’
‘Come on, Mary. This is 1933 and year one of the Thousand-Year Reich. No one’s going to get off to a bad start by putting an American journalist in prison. Not when they’re desperate to cosy up to the United States.’
‘I guess not. But if I wrote anything else they objected to, I could get thrown out.’
‘Other people have been thrown out. They come back again.’
‘But I’d hate to be thrown out! This is where the action is!’
‘If you do get thrown out for what you write, make sure it’s a great piece. You want to go out with a bang.’
Mary smiled despite herself. Why was Rupert incapable of taking anything seriously? Perhaps now was the moment to broach the subject. Her heart began to beat the way it had as a teenager when her horse, Dora, came up to a jump. Her stomach clenched with nerves as she hunted for the right words. She felt angry with herself. She was supposed to be a journalist, wasn’t she? Getting people to confide the truth was her speciality.
‘You sound like you don’t care if I stay or go.’
‘Surely not.’
‘Well, do you?’
‘Do I what?’ he smiled, draining his glass and pouring another.
‘Do you care, Rupert?’ she said, reaching her hand across the table to him. ‘If I went, would you miss me?’
‘Of course I’d miss you.’ He gave her hand a little pat. ‘You know, Mary, you are the only person, and moreover the only woman I know who . . .’ His brow knitted and he looked at her steadily, as if trying to summon the right words.
The tension overcame her. ‘Who what?’
‘Who likes asparagus as much as I do!’ He burst out laughing. ‘If you went who else would I spend Spargelzeit with?’ He wiped his lips. ‘And to be honest, you’re the only woman I’ve ever met who can really make me laugh.’
‘I’m glad.’ It wasn’t a protestation of love, but perhaps that had been too much to hope for. ‘Because I sure as hell don’t want to go.’
‘So try keeping on their good side then. Make an effort not to annoy them for a while. You’re specialising in women, after all. That should be fairly uncontroversial.’
For a second she paused, as she replaced her glass and looked at him in amazement. Uncontroversial? Had he really not heard anything she’d said?
‘Do you mean that?’
‘Sure. I bet there are a million stories around. I saw something the other day in the Tageblatt. A young woman who wants to be the first female Lufthansa pilot. Germany’s own Amelia Earhart. Aged twenty-three. Lives with her proud parents on a potato farm just outside Berlin. You could interview her.’
Mary had to wait a moment, while the waiters arrived with platters of Wiener Schnitzel and whipped off the silver covers with a flourish. She felt the emotion rising within her as a flush crept up her face. Then in a low voice she said, ‘You know, Rupert, when Frank Nussbaum first asked me to write colour pieces about women’s lives in the new Reich I thought, Jesus, all this politics going on and I’m having to do pieces about weddings and babies! I told him that. I complained like hell.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘But you know what I found out?’ She was twisting the tablecloth in her hands in an effort to keep her voice steady. ‘I found out it’s so much more than that.’
‘Is it?’ he said, slicing hungrily into the crisp golden veal.
‘Yes, Rupert, it is! Frank’s right. Reporting on women is about the most important thing you can do right now. The way a country treats its women is an exact measure of its moral health. Even though women are Hitler’s strongest supporters, he intends to change their lives radically.’
‘In what way?’
‘To start with, for the first time since 1919 there are no female deputies in the Reichstag. They’ll probably take the vote away too if they can.’
‘I think that’s just propaganda.’
‘You can’t deny it’s the Nazis aim to remove women from public life?’
‘That’s just their rhetoric. It’s crowd pleasing.’
‘Rupert! Don’t you see?’
She was blinking back tears, but it was her own fault. Her fault for expecting Brits to be different. It was all part of her fantasy that went with a childhood burying herself in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre and going to every Shakespeare play that was available in the state of New Jersey in the 1920s. She had a crazy, romantic idea that British men would be somehow more sensitive and refined than the boys she had been brought up with. Sure, they liked to turn everything into a great big joke, but underneath it all they believed that women were their equals and needed to be treated as such. What a fool she had been to think that.
She pushed away her plate in annoyance and leant over to him urgently, elbows on the table. ‘It’s straight from their mouths, Rupert. Hitler says German women don’t need to be emancipated. He’s determined to turn them back into a nation of hausfraus.’
‘Don’t women like staying at home?’ He emptied the Gewurtztraminer into his glass. ‘I mean, let’s talk more personally. What if it were you, Mary? If some man came along and said he wanted to marry you and for you to keep home, are you really saying you wouldn’t consider it?’
For a moment her chest tightened, and she marvelled at the way Rupert’s easy charm could slide like a knife between the ribs. How those dancing, humorous eyes could almost make her say, ‘All you have to do is ask me, Rupert, and I’ll raise babies and bake cookies with the best of them.’
‘After all,’ he added casually, looking around for the wine waiter, ‘that’s what women really want, isn’t it?’
A wave of frustration rose over her. ‘And what would you know about what women really want, Rupert?’ she snapped. ‘Do you actually have any interest in women at all?’
The glance he gave her, sharp and unadorned, explained everything. It was as though she had touched something raw and deep within him. It was like opening the wrong page in a book and discovering the ending before you were ready for it. She realized, though she wouldn’t feel capable of accepting it for a while, that not only did Rupert have no understanding of women, but he had no real interest in them either. Sure, he would have girlfriends, and might marry even, in good time. But men were the focus of his interest and always would be. She thought of how his eyes lit up when he saw Leo. Of how happy he was, joking and laughing with the male correspondents. How his highest praise for a female journalist was that she was ‘a good chap’. Rupert was no Heathcliff, and no Mr Darcy either. In that instant Mary understood something about him that he probably didn’t understand himself and perhaps would never confront.
She took a long swig of wine and looked at him resolutely.
‘In answer to your question, I could never be a housewife. I love my job too much.’
‘That’s exactly what I thought.’ Rupert smiled with visible relief as the waiter uncorked a fresh bottle. ‘I knew that from the moment I met you.’
Mary took out her glasses from her handbag and the world swam back into focus. She could carry on breaking her heart over Rupert as long as she liked, but it would never do her any good. She might as well concentrate on breaking stories instead.
Chapter Fifty
The sky could not be bluer. It was as though the weather itself had received orders from some newly formed Ministry of Meteorological Events. It was unnaturally sunny for April. A clever journalist with an eye on promotion had even come up with a name for it: Führerweather. The newspapers were full of congratulations for Hitler having reached the grand age of forty-four. Lapels everywhere were spattered with swastikas. The Brandenburger Tor was wrapped up like a Christmas present in scarlet ribbons, and school children from out of town who had been woken before dawn for the occasion, larked and yawn
ed in the streets.
Clara had to turn out for the parade. It would have looked strange if she didn’t. The whole city was streaked with billowing red flags, and in the shops the Führer’s photograph was displayed, wreathed in ribbons or studded with crimson carnations. The Graf Zeppelin, a long, hydrogen-filled airship, sailed like a great silver salmon above the trees, the sun glinting off its sides. All this, she thought, the banners and the formations and the flags, were no more substantial than the struts and props you saw at the Ufa studios. They were merely flimsy, colourful surfaces, concealing hard, gritty rubble underneath.
As she made her way towards Mitte the noise was extraordinary. Church bells were ringing and horses clattering. A new linden tree had been planted to mark the occasion and stalls had been set up where people could donate towards Hitler’s birthday. And all this without the star himself. Hitler was in Bavaria, opening the first of the prestigious Napola academies, the schools Erich wanted to attend, if his intellect proved enough to make up for his asthmatic chest.
A stream of schoolchildren passed her, their faces alight with excitement as they were guided to a specially reserved place at the front of the crowd. Clara thought of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, all those laughing children dancing to the irresistible tune of the piper, and following him to their uncertain fate.
She took up a place behind a barrier on the Siegesallee where the crowd was five deep. Beside her, boys twined like ivy around a bronze Prussian on horseback, so only his helmeted head peered above the crowd, gazing out at the parade. Just about everyone was there; goose-stepping soldiers and the Hitler Youth with spades slung over their shoulders, and finally, way behind them, the motorcade of Nazi officials.
From the east it came, like a flutter of breeze in the trees. A low sound at first, but when the crowd saw the first cars in the distance, a roar went up like a great murmuring wind and the Heil Hitlers began. The faces of soldiers lining the street turned like the leaves of a book as the motorcade passed. A little boy in front of Clara, dressed in army uniform, put his fingers in his ears to stop the noise, but his father gently moved them away.