The Heart of the Ritz

by Luke Devenish

  Lana Mae only then saw the second Wehrmacht officer standing at the door; a younger man, even taller, extremely good looking and no less athletic. Claude seemed to fade into the wall between these two giants.

  ‘Here, Herr Oberstleutnant,’ said Jürgen, handing him a blueprint from the manila folder.

  ‘Ah, very good,’ Metzingen said, unfolding it. ‘Now, what have we here.’ He looked around the room, comparing what he saw with the plan.

  With sickening realisation, Lana Mae saw it was a map of the entire Imperial Suite. She looked to sweating Claude. ‘What’s going on here?’

  He just shook his head.

  ‘The Hôtel Ritz Imperial Suite comprises three separate bedrooms, quarters for a maid, three connected salons, a dining room, and of course the grand boudoir,’ said Metzingen. He looked to Lana Mae. ‘A lot of rooms for just one lady?’

  ‘I – well.’

  ‘I’m sure you like to entertain.’ Metzingen smiled. He turned to Jürgen. ‘Let’s examine the suitability of the boudoir first?’

  ‘Yes, Herr Oberstleutnant.’

  They walked in the direction of Lana Mae’s enormous bedroom and with terror she thought of her furs, hidden or not behind the massive armoire. The Oberstleutnant lifted his eyes from the blueprints, appreciating the suite’s interior. ‘Look at the care that is taken with the décor, Jürgen. Such tastefulness abounds.’

  ‘It is very beautiful,’ agreed Jürgen.

  ‘Auzello, please, what’s happening?’ Lana Mae hissed at the general manager.

  ‘I tried to warn you,’ he hissed back, but his face was only full of sympathy.

  She regretted how she’d spoken to him. ‘But you could’ve told me why – told me in code or something.’

  ‘How could I? They are in control, Mrs Huckstepp, they are in total control.’

  ‘Oh, Herr Auzello?’ Metzingen called out from the boudoir.

  Claude winced. ‘Herr Oberstleutnant?’

  Lana Mae could see into her bedroom, where Metzingen stood now directly in front of the armoire, the plans in his hand. How long until he wondered where the built-in was?

  ‘Do you know that fragrance by Guerlain?’ Metzingen asked Claude.

  ‘Which one, Herr Oberstleutnant?’

  ‘You know the one, it’s very famous. Such a charming scent. What is it called?’

  ‘I am not sure which fragrance you refer to.’

  The Oberstleutnant’s face darkened. ‘Please do not imagine I am a fool.’

  Claude further paled. ‘I – you see I am not so familiar with women’s perfume.’

  ‘Is it Shalimar?’ Lana Mae offered, her heart in her throat.

  Metzingen brightened once more. ‘That is the one, Frau Huckstepp! A most heady fragrance. It comes in an exotic bottle?’

  ‘It’s awful nice,’ said Lana Mae. ‘And expensive.’

  ‘No doubt,’ Metzingen nodded. He turned to Claude. ‘Go to Guerlain and acquire twenty bottles of Shalimar, that should suffice.’

  Claude was horrified. ‘The House of Guerlain will be closed, Herr Oberstleutnant.’

  ‘Oh, I know it is,’ said Metzingen, ‘we passed it on the rue de la Paix. Please open it.’

  Jürgen started pushing Claude towards the door.

  ‘Thank you, Herr Auzello!’ Metzingen called happily as he returned to the blueprints.

  Lana Mae looked on helplessly as Claude was treated with contempt by the younger German.

  ‘Just get the perfume,’ Jürgen told him.

  Claude found himself staring at the incongruous camera hanging from the young man’s neck. ‘But, how can I? I’m not the owner of the shop.’

  Jürgen gripped him hard by the lapels. ‘This is how the Reich has walked all over you frogs like dirt. When we say we want something, we get it. Now go.’

  ‘But our Mrs Huckstepp?’ Claude pleaded. ‘What is to happen to her?’

  Jürgen’s look was cold. ‘The Oberstleutnant will decide.’

  Claude caught Lana Mae’s sickening fear as Jürgen kicked the doors shut in his face.

  * * *

  Completely alone on the pavement, Claude hurried up the rue de la Paix in the direction of Guerlain, huddled into his suit jacket as if it was late November and not mid-June. He could not stop himself from shivering, and nearly stumbled against a wall with it. He had to halt to calm himself, trying to think of what on earth he might do and say when he got to the perfumery.

  ‘You look done in, Papa.’

  He turned with a yelp. The untidy teenage girl with round, darkened glasses and a long length of cane was lounged in a doorway, smoking a cigarette. Blanche’s daughter.

  ‘You shouldn’t call me that – I’m not your papa.’

  ‘For want of a better one,’ said Odile. ‘You’re still married to Mama, aren’t you?’

  Claude tried to achieve dignity. ‘Your mother led a full life before I came along.’

  ‘Of course, she did, she’s beautiful – and so what if it’s anyone’s guess who my real father was? I don’t lose sleep over it,’ claimed Odile, ‘you’re still Papa to me. You brought us here to the Ritz, didn’t you?’

  ‘You know why I did that.’

  ‘Sure. So, we’d be safe and sound if the krauts showed up. Turns out they’re here.’

  Claude’s anxiety got the better of him and he had trouble getting his breath.

  ‘You’re not well, Papa.’

  ‘I – I’ll be all right,’ said Claude. He tried to screw in his monocle, but his eye was watering.

  ‘The hell you will. Here.’ Odile stuck her arm under Auzello’s elbow. ‘Lean on me. I’ll help you get where you’re going to.’

  The girl lurched forward with Auzello pinned beside her; she swept the cane from side to side on the pavement like a long magician’s wand.

  Claude felt his breathing ease. Her presence was actually comforting.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Guerlain.’

  ‘It’s closed.’

  ‘It’s fallen to me to open it.’

  ‘We’ll chuck a rock through the window then.’ She turned her head. ‘Oh shit. They’re back.’

  A black German military vehicle was heading slowly up the street behind them. Claude didn’t dare look at it.

  The vehicle drew up beside them.

  ‘We’d better stop,’ said Odile, ‘it’ll get things over quicker.’

  Claude looked with terror to the road. On top of the vehicle was a cluster of shiny megaphones. Inside the car, two young Wehrmacht men were smirking at him. The one in the passenger seat had a microphone in his hand, looking at a typewritten sheet in his lap as he began to read out. His German-accented French was ear-splitting through the megaphones.

  ‘You have been completely betrayed!’

  ‘Tell us something we don’t know, kraut,’ Odile muttered.

  ‘There is no longer any efficacious resistance you can mount against German–Italian military superiority!’

  ‘Jesus and Mary, are the dagoes turning up, too?’

  Claude jabbed the girl with his elbow to shut up.

  ‘It is useless to continue the struggle. Think of your poor children, of your unfortunate wives!’

  ‘He must think we’re related, Papa,’ said Odile with a laugh.

  ‘Demand that your government end this struggle that has no hope of success!’

  ‘Oh, we will, kraut, if we can ever find them again!’

  The Wehrmacht soldier pulled down the window of the car, turning the microphone off. Claude’s stomach turned itself into knots. ‘You,’ said the soldier, pointing right at him.

  ‘Yes, Monsieur?’

  ‘Where is the Boulevard des Capucines?’

  Claude had lived in Paris for decades but couldn’t think where that street was for the life of him.

  ‘You want to go back the other way, Monsieur,’ Odile told the soldier, ‘you’re heading in the wrong direction. Go back to the Place Vendôme an
d from there go down to the Seine. You can’t miss it.’

  The soldier was pleased. ‘Thanks, kid.’

  ‘You’re very welcome, Monsieur.’

  The German driver put the car in reverse and returned the way they had come down the eerily empty street.

  It was only when Claude and Odile had gone another ten feet that Claude recalled where the Boulevard des Capucines really was. His stomach knotted twice. ‘You sent them in the opposite direction!’

  Odile was laughing.

  ‘You stupid girl, you’ll get us both killed.’

  ‘Gotta die of something, Papa.’

  ‘What if they come back for us?’

  ‘They’ll be too embarrassed now.’

  ‘Embarrassed?’

  ‘Well, wouldn’t you be?’ said Odile, tapping her skull. ‘They just took directions from a blind kid.’

  * * *

  When Lana Mae entered l’Espadon, dressed in the best frock she’d been able to throw on in a hurry, her face unmade, her hair unset, and forced, without the order having been given, to take the Oberstleutnant’s arm, there had been more of the hotel’s regulars in attendance. She had been unable to meet their mortified eyes. One by one, most had melted away. Mr Wall remained, along with his chow, and so did the industrialist’s forgetful wife. Most of the dining staff had already fled in the exodus, so waiters were thin on the ground. Monsieur Lefèvre, the chilly sommelier, was still on hand, performing triple duties as maître d’, food waiter and wine expert.

  Once they were seated, Oberstleutnant Metzingen took the handwritten l’Espadon luncheon menu with glee. ‘My dear Frau Huckstepp, will you look at the delights the chefs have prepared for us?’

  The offerings were more limited than Lana Mae had known in twenty years at the Ritz, but to the Oberstleutnant they were evidence of the hotel’s exceptionality. The luncheon menu had been named the ‘Victory Menu’.

  ‘Fillet of sole poached in German white wine,’ Metzingen read out. ‘What an excellent appetizer – and so appropriate for the occasion!’

  Lana Mae smiled politely without remotely feeling joy.

  ‘Roast chicken for the principal dish,’ Metzingen read on, ‘presumably French, you suppose? Served with asparagus dressed in Hollandaise sauce. It is the simplicity of the cuisine that is to be celebrated, is it not? And cheese and local summer fruits to follow. French fruits for the picking! There is humour here, Frau Huckstepp, I detect young Jürgen’s hand with the kitchen staff.’

  Lana Mae gulped at the German wine while Metzingen sat back in his chair expansively. ‘Oh, to be here at last at the Hôtel Ritz. They say exceptional planning is its own reward, but truthfully, it is the faultless execution of those plans that brings the greatest joys, don’t you find?’

  ‘I – I don’t know what to say to that,’ Lana Mae told him.

  ‘Really? Yet you strike me as a woman who has planned her trajectory most precisely, Frau Huckstepp.’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Forgive my French, I would speak in your native English, but sadly it’s rather worse. Not “trajectory” then, “career”.’

  ‘I haven’t had to slave for a living in years,’ said Lana Mae, coldly.

  ‘Well, of course you haven’t, that’s just what I mean. Yours is a career of quite another kind. What was the little phrase I read about you in the file we assembled . . .’ He raked his memory. ‘Of course: Lana Mae Huckstepp won first prize in the American Cinderella Derby!’

  Lana Mae choked. ‘They’re my words! I say that about myself!’

  ‘Well, yes, you must say it quite often, that’s why it’s in the file.’

  ‘How did you get those words? Who told them to you?’ But in her heart she already knew who.

  He looked away. ‘I’ve no idea. A discarded lover perhaps?’

  Lana Mae darkened. ‘Are you calling me a whore?’

  The Oberstleutnant was shocked. And then apologetic. ‘My French, meine Dame. Cultural differences. We Germans think of the women in Paris as being extremely liberated – highly independent.’ He chuckled. ‘So, yes, perhaps you were right. A whore.’

  Lana Mae stuck her chin out. ‘How dare you say that to me.’

  ‘Good!’ said Metzingen. ‘There’s your independence right there! We admire you for it, you know.’ He took a sip of his wine. ‘But we’d never put up with it at home, of course.’

  Lana Mae felt she might weep. She blinked the threat of tears away. ‘What else is inside your lousy file?’ She dreaded the answer, yet she had to know. It wasn’t so much what had been revealed that was distressing, but how the Germans had chosen to interpret it.

  ‘Oh, this and that,’ said Metzingen. ‘Your life of pointless idleness, for instance. That’s in the file.’

  Lana Mae winced.

  ‘Your lack of intellect. The fact you contribute so little to anything other than your beautification and comfort – your astonishing self-indulgence. And then there’s the staggering extent of your American wealth.’ He smiled at her. ‘Your decadence is breathtaking, Frau Huckstepp, quite breathtaking.’

  Stung anew with shock and shame, Lana Mae tried to pick up her glass from the table but found she could no longer hold it. Her stomach twinged. She scraped her sweating palms against her napkin before reaching inside her purse for the reassurance of her pink bismuth bottle.

  ‘The important thing to remember is that yours is only one of many thousands of files,’ said Metzingen, ‘files meticulously assembled and kept. The organisation behind it, Frau Huckstepp. It’s allowed us to know everything.’

  Lana Mae crossed her arms and tried to brazen it out with him. ‘You could read what you told me in any society column. That’s what you Germans call “everything”, is it, honey?’

  The Oberstleutnant laughed and clapped his hands. ‘You are the most delightful luncheon companion.’

  Lana Mae managed to take another slug of the riesling. ‘I’m waiting.’

  The Oberstleutnant’s face changed. He levelled a stare of his own. ‘There is a file on every significant building, every apartment block, every crossroad, and every Metro station in Paris. Why do you think that is?’

  Lana Mae wouldn’t let her nerve fail her. ‘Because you’ve got too much time on your hands?’

  He didn’t laugh. ‘It is so that our complete assumption of this city would be instant and tremendous for those who live within it, meine Dame. It is so that we would know before we even arrived which of the crossroads were crucial and must therefore be controlled – which they now are. It is so that we would appreciate which of the so many splendid and beautiful buildings would need to be requisitioned – which they now have been. It is so that we would understand where the most essential of the archives of France could be found, that the information within them could be made our own. It is so that we would know which of the many extraordinary museums have the most desired collections.’ He regarded his napkin. ‘It is so that we would know which of the art galleries are owned by Jews.’

  Lana Mae swallowed.

  Oberstleutnant Metzingen pushed back his chair. ‘The Führer has a grand vision for Paris, Frau Huckstepp – and accordingly, I have a vision for the Ritz. We are not the barbarians but the shield against those who would undermine centuries of tradition.’ He rose from the table, folding his napkin. ‘I am afraid I must draw this luncheon to a close.’

  ‘But – but you haven’t even eaten yet,’ said Lana Mae, frightened of him.

  ‘I am tired. My food will be sent to our suite.’

  ‘Our suite?’ Lana Mae’s tongue felt thick in her mouth.

  His lips split into a grin, but his eyes didn’t soften. ‘I am sorry, my poor French once again. I meant “my” suite. The Imperial Suite is mine as I prepare it for Reichsmarschall Göring’s arrival.’

  ‘But – but where will I go?’

  Metzingen stopped and considered, before replying. ‘That is of no concern to the Reich.’ He gave a short bow and clicked
his heels. ‘I am sure that as a liberated, independent whore you will think of something.’

  Lana Mae only managed to lift her eyes from her glass once he was gone. She cast a look of desperate shame around the room. Of the few diners left, every one of them was looking right back at her. She had been hoping for sympathy but there was none. Lana Mae saw all too clearly the expressions of condemnation in her fellow guests’ faces. They had heard every word the German had said about her – and, what’s more, they agreed with him.

  Feeling the wound of this silent denunciation far worse than the German’s summation of her character, Lana Mae knew she was on the verge of breaking down. But then at the far end of the dining room, a middle-aged woman sitting alone at a table in a chic summer hat with a flute of champagne in her hand turned and gaily raised her glass in Lana Mae’s direction. Her beaming smile, far from condemning Lana Mae, offered only ample encouragement. ‘Surprise them,’ the woman’s warm grin seemed to say, ‘show them that’s not who you are . . .’

  With a dreadful jolt, Lana Mae recognised the woman. ‘Marjorie?’

  She lurched from her chair, tipping backwards, spilling the last of the riesling in a wide, golden arc all around her. Scrabbling ungracefully on the floor to right herself, Lana Mae looked to the far end of the room again.

  The table was empty, set for no one.

  Lana Mae’s emotions overwhelmed her. ‘Oh, Marjorie . . .’ she sank to her knees. ‘How did I ever deserve you as my friend?’

  7

  22 June 1940

  The beautiful Renoir canvas was undamaged, at least, wrapped in its quilt in the trunk. Its frame had been struck by a bullet, however, leaving a long, ugly gash along its gilt. This was the best of the news. The Comte’s black Mercedes was immovable. Faced with no option, they retrieved the portrait and abandoned the vehicle, leaving it with all the others that had been shot to uselessness by the Messerschmitt.

  With Suzette’s bloody hand bandaged as best they could with a scarf, she, Zita, Alexandrine and Polly sat at the roadside, the older women drinking from the shot champagne bottle, while they argued their best course of action. For Polly there was no argument. ‘We’re going back to Paris,’ she announced.