The Heart of the Ritz

by Luke Devenish

  The plane was so close they could make out the markings on the wings: square black crosses edged in white. It was a German Messerschmitt.

  The bullets seemed to hit the ground before Polly even heard them, or at least that was how it seemed as she shrank into the weeds, as hopelessly vulnerable as everyone else. The screams of the refugees became one with the plane’s shrieking engines, before all sound melted away entirely. Polly could hear nothing at all, she could only see. Abandoned prams and makeshift carts began to lurch and jump about as if someone was still there controlling them. Then they began to disintegrate. Car tyres popped, windows shattered. A man who had carried nothing but a mattress with him all the way from Versailles had taken cover beneath it in the middle of the road. The bullets ran up the length of the cushioning in eruptions of wool and springs. A spray of blood shot out from the blue striped ticking.

  Polly could see directly into the Mercedes: Suzette still in the front, Alexandrine in the spacious rear. The Comtesse leant forward to rest on the old woman’s shoulder. Suzette placed her hand on Alexandrine’s own. They were tenderly saying something to each other that no one else would ever know.

  The snaking trail of bullets smashed the Mercedes’ windscreen into shards that exploded glittering all over the road. The hood punctured, emitting steam in geysers as liquids gushed from underneath. Projectiles tore up the sleek, black roof. There was blinding dust everywhere and Polly began to splutter. She went from seeing everything to seeing nothing at all.

  She couldn’t tell whether she was about to live or die.

  * * *

  When Polly found herself able to make out her surroundings again, the plane had passed overhead, continuing its rain of destruction upon the hundreds more who filled up the road behind them. And then it was gone.

  Zita was no longer there.

  Polly wasn’t in any pain. She sat up in the ditch and saw her handbag with the jar of Lana Mae’s face cream. She was just putting it inside her bag again when she remembered what had happened to the Mercedes. She leapt out, screaming Alexandrine’s name. She made no sound and neither did anything else. Polly realised she’d lost her hearing. At the shot-up car, Zita was pulling the rear door open.

  Inside, the spot where Polly had been sitting was ripped into shreds. Stuffing had burst from the seat obscenely. Two bullets had passed cleanly through a book she had brought with her. From inside, the roof of the car looked like an upturned colander. Alexandrine, impossibly, was quite unscathed, apart from the dust that caked her entire body. She showed Zita the bottle of Dom Perignon she’d been about to open before the plane came along. It was open now. The cork had been shot off.

  In the front seat, just as impossibly, Suzette was unhurt. The old woman took a deep drag of her cigarette.

  Polly saw Zita mouthing the words: ‘Are you all right, puss?’ just as her hearing came back to her.

  ‘Depends what you call all right,’ said Suzette, sniffing the air. ‘I reckon Madame’s gone and messed herself.’

  The old woman went to get out of the car, which was when she looked at her other hand. Two of her fingers were gone.

  Polly found herself feeling dizzy then and lost her balance and hit the ground, vomiting, just as Suzette did the same.

  6

  14 June 1940

  Clutching to her entitlement as a means of suppressing her guilt, Lana Mae threw open the doors of her Imperial Suite and stuck her henna-red head into the hallway. ‘Help me! Is anyone there? Help me!’ Her voice echoed down the corridor, bouncing off the ceiling and walls. She waited, panting, for several seconds. The Ritz was so silent she could hear the roof creak. ‘Help me!’ she called out again.

  It wasn’t quite seven o’clock in the morning and yet incredibly, impossibly, there was not one person to answer her.

  ‘This is not acceptable!’ Lana Mae screamed into the nothingness, feeling the panic in her throat rising now. ‘This is not what I pay good American cash for!’

  She flew back into the suite, leaving the doors open, passing the first salon and re-entering the second, where for the past five minutes she’d been trying to raise someone – anyone – on the internal telephone. She picked up the receiver again, striking the cradle over and over with her fingers as if that would somehow solve everything.

  ‘Hello? Hello! Are you there? I need help!’

  Just as she was thinking of throwing the phone at the window someone answered at the other end.

  ‘This is the Vendôme lobby.’

  ‘Monsieur Auzello!’

  ‘Ah, Mrs Huckstepp.’

  ‘Where is everyone? I’ve been screaming for hours! I need help up here. Right now!’

  ‘You must forgive me, dear Mrs Huckstepp, but we are presently unable to assist you.’

  ‘What!’ Lana Mae couldn’t believe such words could ever come down a telephone receiver at the Ritz.

  ‘It is regrettable, but true,’ said Auzello from the lobby. ‘Our hands are full.’

  ‘Have you lost your Frenchy mind?’

  ‘I’m sure Mrs Huckstepp is quite correct,’ said Auzello. ‘Will that be all?’

  ‘No, that will not be all!’ Lana Mae roared down the phone. ‘Where’s that goddamn Mimi? Is she down there, too? Put her on the line, Auzello, I wanna remind her just how much I pay for this highfalutin set of rooms.’

  ‘Madame Ritz is right by my side, but as I said, our hands are full.’

  ‘And why the hell aren’t they full of me?’

  ‘Because new guests are about to arrive.’

  Lana Mae felt an arctic chill. She flicked the muslin curtain at the window and peered out onto the Place Vendôme. What she saw made last night’s dinner repeat itself at the back of her throat. With an effort she fought back the urge to be sick. ‘I – I can see Germans in the square,’ she rasped into the receiver.

  ‘Then you have the full picture,’ said Auzello. He hung up.

  Lana Mae started to shake. ‘This is what I deserve for letting the girls go without me,’ she berated herself, ‘for letting Polly go, like I didn’t give a damn . . .’ She appealed to the ceiling. ‘Can you forgive me for it, Marjorie?’ The nausea became a stomach twinge. She fumbled for the bottle of pink bismuth she kept in her purse.

  ‘Can I help you, Madame?’

  Lana Mae spun around with a mouthful of bismuth, spluttering a scream.

  The tall, lean, impossibly young, impossibly blond assistant barman had come into the room. It took her a moment to place him – and remember what it was about him that she, along with Zita, had been sworn not to tell anyone. Secret-keeping was second nature to her. ‘I know you, don’t I?’ Lana Mae pointed at him, wiping the pink from her mouth.

  ‘You look upset,’ Tommy said gently, with a smile of concern, holding her stare with his soft brown eyes. ‘How can I help you, Madame?’

  Lana Mae felt herself slipping again. ‘Oh God, I let Polly go . . .’

  He raised an eyebrow, recognising the name.

  ‘How could I? How the hell could I?’ Lana Mae wailed.

  Tommy took her gently by the hand, not caring for guest protocol. Lana Mae quieted almost at once, struck dumb by the surprise of feeling her skin enclosed within his. He felt warm. Clean. He led her to a chair, looking through the door to the master bedroom as he did so. A huge rosewood armoire was out of place, showing evidence of having been dragged along the carpet.

  He helped her sit down.

  ‘I think I want to kiss you, kid,’ she muttered, dazed.

  ‘Madame?’

  Lana Mae flushed. ‘What the hell’s wrong with me?’ She started crying again. ‘Oh Jesus, they’re here.’

  ‘The Germans?’

  Lana Mae’s face was full of fear. ‘They’re outside in the square. Dozens of them. Just standing around their motorbikes taking photographs.’

  Tommy nodded. He’d already seen them.

  ‘What the hell will they do?’

  Tommy didn’t know. He indi
cated the master suite. ‘Were you trying to move the furniture, Madame?’

  She remembered then. ‘Oh, yes, oh God – there might still be enough time – will you help me, kid?’ She shot up from the chair, pulling him across the salon’s carpeted floor into her bedroom.

  The doors to the built-in robe were wide open.

  ‘My furs,’ said Lana Mae. ‘All seventeen. I can’t let ’em fall into Fritz hands, I can’t.’ She indicated the armoire. ‘You see. I was trying –’

  Tommy did see. ‘You thought if you moved it in front of the built-in robe?’

  ‘Yes! Maybe it’d hide ’em? Make it look like there’s no built-in at all? What do you think, kid? Good idea?’

  ‘A very good idea, Madame. I helped Mademoiselle Chanel do the same thing.’

  Lana Mae frowned. ‘Oh, you did, did you?’

  ‘Your furs are much nicer, Madame.’

  She smiled. ‘Once I’ve hidden ’em safe, maybe I could get away from here somehow – follow the girls to Saint-Malo, make it up to ’em.’

  ‘Are the furs all you wish to hide?’

  Lana Mae looked around the scattered contents of the room. ‘Oh God. I don’t know. I mean, I’ve gotta leave myself something to wear . . .’

  He pointed at the bed. ‘Will you wear that?’

  A huge French flag, big enough to unfurl from the Imperial Suite’s windows, had been balled up in Lana Mae’s frenzy.

  ‘Oh hell – I must be crazy!’ She snatched it up and was about to toss it inside the built-in before she teetered on the edge of breaking down again. ‘I love this flag – I love France. Is this the end of it all, kid?’

  He gently took the flag from her hands and kissed it, before placing it on the floor of the built-in. ‘France is eternal, Madame,’ he told her, simply.

  Lana Mae blinked back the tears in her eyes.

  Tommy got behind the armoire and began to push. ‘This will take two of us.’

  She joined him in the effort. Positioned next to him, straining to shove the huge piece of furniture in front of the built-in doors, it seemed to Lana Mae that the nice young man, impossibly blond, was also very comfortable in the company of a sophisticated older woman.

  She was actually sorry when they got the armoire in place.

  * * *

  Mimi endured an apprehension so overwhelming that all she could think of was the cognac bottle. It was not even 7 am and here she was, shaking so badly her jewellery rattled, until Claude made her sit down. All she wanted was one little nip to calm her. She loathed herself for such disgraceful weakness; she was surely no better that Claude’s wife, Blanche. Yet still all she wanted was cognac.

  She tried to focus on the crisis at hand. ‘What are they doing out there now?’

  Auzello was near the glass front doors, peering into the square. ‘The same, Madame. Taking photographs of Napoleon’s column. They are posing in front of it.’ He looked to Mimi over his shoulder. ‘Apart from the Germans the square is empty. No other people or traffic at all. I’ve never seen it like this . . .’

  They had both been awake since well before dawn, when, with those who remained of the staff, they had listened to a radio broadcast announcing the fall of Paris. They had clutched each other and wept. The sky on the horizon had been lit by artillery fire. The streets outside, unnaturally silent, had gradually filled with the sounds of the first of the German motorcycle patrols entering the city, followed by the rhythmic feet of soldiers marching in formation. Then had come loudspeakers, demanding in French that citizens surrender all private arms.

  Mimi made to get up again but Auzello was onto her. ‘Please do not rise, Madame, you are not looking well.’

  ‘I am perfectly all right.’ She struggled to her feet, only to feel weak at the knees.

  ‘Madame!’

  She fell back in the chair.

  ‘Oh, Madame.’ He took her hand. It was hot and damp.

  ‘Please, Claude,’ she whispered, ‘perhaps a little cognac?’

  He went to ring for service until he remembered there likely wouldn’t be any. Easily half the staff had fled the city in recent days, along with many of the guests. The Ritz had been left with a skeleton crew of rusted-on retainers and long-term guests already marked for their obstinacy, self-delusion or bad luck. And then there was himself, Mimi, and Blanche and Odile, who together wouldn’t be leaving the Hôtel Ritz even if Hitler’s bombs were dropping on top of it. Mercifully, it hadn’t come to that yet.

  Just as his mind wandered to Blanche, out for the count upstairs in their bed, the boy with the shock of blond hair appeared on the stairs. Her ‘nephew’.

  ‘Tommy?’

  ‘Monsieur Auzello?’

  ‘You’re still here?’

  ‘Where else should I be, Monsieur?’

  Claude felt an onset of emotion at the simplicity of such an outlook. He pulled himself together. ‘But of course. Madame Ritz is feeling faint. Will you bring a cognac bottle and glass from the Petit bar?’

  Tommy saw Mimi, weak in the chair. The grand old woman looked tiny, exhausted. ‘Of course, Monsieur.’

  ‘Wait – the key.’ Claude fumbled at his waistcoat pockets. He couldn’t find what he sought. ‘It’s at the desk.’ He went to look in the drawers.

  ‘Claude . . .’ Mimi croaked.

  ‘In a moment, Madame.’

  ‘Claude,’ she repeated.

  ‘I will find it.’

  ‘Claude, please –’

  He looked up. Two German officers were entering the lobby from the square. They loomed like giants, as tall as the doors, densely muscled and unexpectedly tanned, as if part-way through a summer holiday; a duo of fair-haired, blue-eyed Teutonic tourists in Wehrmacht steel grey. The younger of the two had a camera hanging from a strap around his neck.

  The older man needed no camera; he was committing it all to memory. He looked about him as if the act of stepping inside the Ritz had a near-religious significance to him. ‘Like returning to the womb . . .’ he muttered reverently in German.

  Claude guessed the older German had visited before; he was not making memories, so much as refreshing them. Yet he still had the manner of a stranger – or of one of those pathetic unfortunates who had looked through the doors without ever gaining the courage to enter. He almost pitied him.

  Despite it, decades of experience delicately dealing with guests of every imaginable temperament and persuasion asserted itself. ‘Bonjour Messieurs, welcome to the Hôtel Ritz.’ Claude beamed, his arms expansive in his usual gesture of greeting, ‘And how might we help you on this exquisite summer morning?’ It was only when he’d finished these words that he realised he’d spoken to them in French.

  The older of the two men replied, also in French. ‘Bonjour Monsieur. It is indeed a magnificent day. And in reply to your offer of help perhaps you might answer me this: how should we treat the inhabitants of a city that have not lifted a finger against us?’

  The senior officer then burst into a peal of laughter that was loud and deep and immediately echoed by the younger German standing next to him. They ceased laughing and stood smiling at Claude, disarmingly open-faced and happy. This question was, Claude realised, a German attempt at a joke, and yet an answer was still expected from him. ‘You must treat them with equal goodwill, I have no doubt, Monsieur,’ Claude replied.

  The senior German held out his huge hand, pleased. ‘I am Oberstleutnant Hans Metzingen.’

  Claude went to respond as he would ordinarily, until an impulse held him back. His own hand wouldn’t move. He froze on the spot, mortified, knowing how offensive this must be to the German, yet he simply could not shake the hand of the invader.

  The younger German flinched, then frowned, his eyes on Auzello’s fist where it stayed still at his trouser seam.

  Oberstleutnant Metzingen saw Claude’s problem for what it was. The hand with which he had intended to shake Claude’s own now went smoothly upwards, ending in a Nazi salute. ‘Heil Hitler!’
>
  ‘Heil Hitler!’ the younger German echoed, doing the same.

  ‘I appreciate your apprehension, mein Herr,’ said the Oberstleutnant to Claude. ‘I would no doubt feel the same, were I in your shoes.’

  ‘Monsieur . . .’ Claude tried to explain.

  Metzingen stopped him. ‘Please, there is no need. The truth is, I am not in your shoes. Instead I am the barbarian who is at your gilded gate.’

  ‘Mein Herr . . .’ Claude started again.

  ‘Herr Oberstleutnant, I am Madame Marie-Louise Ritz.’

  Claude glanced to his side. Mimi had risen from her chair, perfectly calm and poised.

  ‘Frau Ritz, it is an honour,’ said Metzingen, bowing to her with a click of his heels.

  Mimi did not offer her hand either. ‘I am the owner of this hotel.’

  ‘Indeed, I am well aware, meine Dame.’

  ‘And I am Monsieur Claude Auzello,’ Claude said, finally, buoyed by Mimi. ‘I am the General Manager of the Hôtel Ritz.’

  ‘And of that I am well aware, too, meinen Herr.’ Metzingen indicated a manila folder the younger German carried under his arm. ‘We have made extensive notes on all the key positions here . . .’

  Claude froze at the sight of the file – and yet he was not surprised. He had suspected for months that someone he trusted – someone unknown – had been betraying the Ritz by stealing and copying confidential information. He allowed himself to show no trace of this to the Germans. ‘Then perhaps if Herr Oberstleutnant wants nothing more than his question answered?’

  ‘I’m afraid I want far more than that,’ Metzingen smiled, good-naturedly. He nodded at the younger German. ‘This is Hauptmann Günther Jürgen,’ he said. ‘We are here to oversee all operations.’

  Jürgen clicked his heels.

  ‘In Paris?’ Claude asked.

  ‘In the Ritz,’ said Metzingen. He gestured about him. ‘This hotel occupies a supreme position among all the Paris hotels to be requisitioned by the Reich.’

  Mimi went pale. ‘Requisitioned, Herr Oberstleutnant? The Hôtel Ritz is to be taken from us after all?’

  Metzingen cast a look to Jürgen in embarrassment. ‘I must apologise, meine Dame. My command of the French language is not as it was during the last war.’