The Heart of the Ritz

by Luke Devenish

  She looked at Metzingen and knew that desire was still raging inside him. There was a chance she could win this, she thought; there was a chance that all those flimsy justifications she had made to her three beloved friends might yet hold firm. ‘Is all Paris to learn of it? Is the Ritz?’

  ‘Learn what?’

  She couldn’t say it.

  ‘Ah,’ said Metzingen, understanding, ‘you mean your betrayal?’

  She hated that word. How could what she had done ever be called a betrayal in the scheme of things? What tiny importance was a single hotel when measured against Hitler’s war? So, she’d stolen some floor plans, tattled a few tales. She had done it because no one would really be hurt by it. She had done it to ensure Lotti’s safety, the very purest of motives: a mother protecting her child. Who could condemn her for that? Zita well knew: everyone.

  Polly.

  ‘Do you wish Paris to know of your brave actions for the Reich?’ he wondered.

  She swallowed. ‘Do you wish Paris to know?’

  He seemed to consider it.

  ‘I don’t think I could bear it if people found out . . .’

  ‘No?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I agree it is too early,’ Metzingen conceded. ‘When the dust is settled, and Paris has accepted its changed circumstances, then will be the time. You’ll be celebrated then, along with all the Führer’s spies.’

  She shivered, knowing this was a temporary reprieve. She would simply have to make the best of things. ‘And what of us, Hans? What are we to be now that you’ve come for me?’

  ‘To the world or just to ourselves?’ he wondered.

  ‘Both,’ she said.

  He considered again. ‘To the world we will be strangers for now,’ he told her, pragmatically. ‘If your service to the Reich is to remain secret. But in private, away from all eyes, well then . . .’ He clearly savoured the prospect.

  ‘Well then, what? What will we be, Hans? Tell me.’

  ‘Oh, Liebchen.’ He smiled. ‘You already learned that script.’

  She didn’t shift from his gaze, but her fingers found the buttons of her blouse. She undid the first one.

  Metzingen let his incongruous robe fall open, so that she could gaze upon him again, as he gazed upon her. Each were as magnificent now to the other as they had been when they were younger.

  ‘On these occasions, Hans, we know that a script isn’t required,’ Zita told him. She knew what would come next for her, but she knew what she must hear from him before it began. The blouse slipped from her shoulders. ‘My friends here. You will not hurt them? Promise me.’

  ‘What friends?’

  ‘You know very well who, Hans. Lana Mae. Alexandrine. And now there’s a young girl we look after. Her most of all. Promise me.’

  He moved towards her, the robe falling to the floor. ‘I promise you anything.’

  ‘And our child,’ she whispered. ‘You will let me see Lotti now – now that I’ve done all you asked? You’ll let me make up for my abandonment, somehow?’

  ‘Of course, I will.’

  ‘Promise me.’

  His mouth was on hers. ‘I told you. I promise it, Liebchen.’

  He scooped her up and threw her onto the bed, in the sumptuous grand boudoir that was formerly Lana Mae’s. He tore off Zita’s shoes, her silk stockings, her stained summer skirt; he hurled all of them out the door. Then he regarded her, naked before him, as the smell of her reached his nose.

  ‘I have walked for four days,’ Zita told him, embarrassed.

  He pulled her from the sheets by her ankles and tossed her bodily into the shower. He turned both taps on full and left her there alone to achieve his scrupulous hygiene standards; a fastidious German to the end.

  PART TWO

  Interruption

  8

  7 August 1940

  Out of necessity, Polly had conditioned herself to wake up first, ahead of the Girls, just as the first rays of dawn brought a glow to the muslin curtains. Trying not to groan at feeling so stiff from yet another night spent clinging to the edge of her once spacious bed, she was glad she could at least slip out from under the covers and into the bathroom before the others awoke and monopolised it. Once the Girls were awake, the bathroom became a battlefield.

  Still under the eiderdown, Lana Mae stirred a little, ceased her snoring, and rolled over to Polly’s vacated spot, but didn’t wake up. She began snoring again. Next to her, at the other edge, sleeping Alexandrine stayed perfectly, elegantly still. On the Watteau pink sofa, under a mound of quilt, Zita slept curled like a cat. Picking her way through discarded shoes, hats and other apparel that wouldn’t fit into the built-in, Polly crept inside the little bathroom and gratefully shut the door.

  Since the end of June and their return to the Ritz, the four of them had been faced with no other respectable choice than to bunk in together. Lana Mae, Alexandrine and Zita had all held suites on the Vendôme side of the hotel that were now fully occupied by Germans. Only Polly’s rooms, on the Cambon side, had been left alone. It would, they all hoped, be a temporary arrangement; Claude had promised to give them all rooms of their own just as soon as more became free again. Polly hadn’t minded being the answer to the Girls’ accommodation crisis, despite the imposition it entailed, for as she saw it, there was safety in numbers, and safety was now paramount to them all.

  Polly sat on the lavvy before filling the bath, using the time it took filling with water to brush her teeth, while running through her mind the day’s intended routine. Today, as with every other day now, Polly would bathe first and return to the bedroom just as the others complainingly yawned and stretched. Then would follow a short burst of recriminations from those (Zita and Lana Mae) who felt that Polly’s early rising was somehow a ruse to deprive them of things. Then a knock at the door would see the delivery of coffee, croissants and fresh fruit brought up from the hotel kitchen. Given there were always Germans to be found in l’Espadon now, the four of them had abandoned going downstairs for breakfast at all, declaring that their daily fortifications needed to be taken in private if they were ever to have a hope of facing the enemy with élan. So, they ate in Polly’s room, strewing the communal bed with croissant crumbs as they planned how best to tackle whatever the morning’s particular obstacles might be. This was when the set routine branched into variety.

  The four of them had decided, back in late June, when the sudden shift in circumstances had made them look at every aspect of their lives anew, that not only did safety reside in numbers, camaraderie did, too. When they left the Ritz, which they did every day, they went together. Whatever individual appointment each or any of them might have, it was faced in company. Sometimes they split into pairs, but they never went anywhere alone.

  When Polly had finished getting ready, she opened the bathroom door to find the others awake and glaring accusingly at her.

  ‘Every morning,’ said Lana Mae, with sleep in her eyes, ‘every goddamn morning you get up before any of us do, fresh as a goddamn daisy, to turn that perfectly acceptable bathroom into a goddamn sewer.’

  ‘Good morning to you, Lana Mae,’ said Polly, affectionately, bending down to kiss her American guardian on the cheek. Lana Mae hugged her tightly, as she did every morning, her guilt at not having shared the ordeal on the road by no means dissipated since her friends’ return. ‘And what do we have to look forward to today?’ wondered Polly.

  ‘I’ve gotta go see my banker,’ said Lana Mae, ‘now that he’s opened up shop again. It’s been too long since I’ve made that smarmy bastard do a song and dance for me.’

  Polly smiled. ‘I’ve got to make my daily visit to dear Gendarme Teissier,’ she said, which was how she referred to the police officer in charge of the Foreigners Register at the 8th arrondissement prefecture.

  ‘And I have no plans,’ said Zita, fluffing her hair, ‘although I should drop in on my heel of an agent. It’s time the layabout got me more work.’

  �
��You can do that tomorrow then,’ said Alexandrine, neatly swinging her feet from the bed and into a pair of mules. ‘Let’s try to keep things simple today. I promised I would visit poor Suzette.’

  It was agreed.

  There was the expected knock at the door. Polly was becoming practised at not letting a sliver of her feelings show as she went to open the door before anyone else thought to. Tommy was waiting in the corridor with their breakfast on a trolley. He gave her the little toss of his head and she gave it back, beaming at him, which was as far as they went in stepping outside protocol with the collective eyes of Zita, Lana Mae and Alexandrine upon them.

  ‘Bonjour, Tommy,’ called Lana Mae, yawning and in danger of spilling from her nightgown.

  ‘Bonjour, Madame,’ said Tommy, being careful where he put his eyes. ‘I’m sorry there is no fruit today.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Zita.

  ‘The produce at Les Halles wasn’t acceptable when Monsieur Auzello went down there before dawn, Mademoiselle. The Germans have requisitioned the best.’

  They collectively grunted.

  ‘At least they’ve left us the coffee,’ said Zita, although she might well have added ‘for now’.

  Alexandrine didn’t even acknowledge Tommy.

  As Polly held the door open for him to wheel the trolley into the corridor again, and out of sight of the breakfasting Girls, she tried to catch his eye. ‘Hello,’ she whispered.

  ‘Hello,’ he whispered back.

  They stared at each other for a moment, feeling something between them that didn’t quite need any words.

  Then, for want of anything else to say, Polly asked, ‘You’re not working in the Cambon bar so much these days?’

  ‘Are you still trying to like cocktails?’ Tommy asked back.

  ‘No.’ She laughed. ‘I’ve given them up. They didn’t quite suit me.’

  He appreciated this. ‘It’s healthier. I’ve given up cigarettes because they didn’t suit me either.’ Then he added, ‘We’re short-staffed these days, I work where Monsieur Auzello puts me.’

  ‘I see. And so, you live here, too?’

  She held his look and saw his small reaction of surprise that she had somehow discovered this.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tommy. Then he added, ‘There are empty attic rooms. They’re from the time when more guests travelled with their servants.’

  If not for her resolve to remain unaffected by males, Polly might have wondered whether he was telling her where she might find him should she so care to look. Inside the room, the Girls were aware of them talking now. ‘See you around then,’ said Polly.

  ‘Sure.’

  He brushed against her hand, his fingers sweeping the most sensitive part of her wrist. She gave an intake of breath with the surprise of it. Tommy went on his way down the corridor. Polly stayed where she was, her mouth slightly open, watching him go.

  ‘Darling.’ Alexandrine had an eyebrow raised, warningly.

  Polly closed the door and came back inside the room.

  Every day that she had seen Tommy since her return to the Ritz, Polly had tried to look for the proof that would confirm he was Blanche Auzello’s lover. Always she saw the look in his eye that told her he carried a secret. Yet this look wasn’t proof.

  When Polly sat down while the Girls began their morning bathroom war, she discovered the tiny, folded piece of paper that Tommy had slipped inside her sleeve. She didn’t take it out to read what it said, for fear of her guardians noticing. She kept it exactly where Tommy had hidden it, knowing that it would be something that united them both.

  * * *

  For Polly the German Occupation meant the thing she had most feared had happened, and yet it wasn’t as bad as she had feared. Still, Polly knew, this didn’t mean she could abandon caution. Leaving the Ritz as one of a foursome, via the hotel’s Cambon doors, brought Polly into a city still denuded of Parisian males. Those men who hadn’t been killed at the front had been taken captive and were now held in prisoner of war camps. Polly had heard talk that these men would be allowed to return home in stages, yet so far very few had. She had also heard talk that these camps were really labour camps in disguise. Despite the absence of men, the capital was no longer feminised. The women of Paris were now matched by thousands upon thousands of admiring men. The German invaders routinely stood aside to allow Polly and the Girls to pass in the street. French men had rarely done that. The German men did not harass them, and did not call out, unlike the French. The Germans offered seats in cafés, and even when out of uniform, they were equally well dressed, well-mannered and amiable, and most surprising of all, so many spoke French. This was what Polly meant when she said that the German Occupation wasn’t as bad as she had feared. Beguilingly, yet disturbingly, Paris had almost become better for all women. Yet Polly wondered how long this would last.

  While the city appeared to be functioning as it always had, it wasn’t. In addition to the lack of cars driven by French people (the Germans had ‘purchased’ them all), the clocks had been brought forward one hour so that Paris was the same as Berlin; an unsettling, if not unbearable imposition. Parisians coped with it. They also coped with the night-time curfew from ten o’clock at night until five in the morning. All the lively establishments, including the Ritz, now started their entertainment while still bathed in daylight, in order to be done by the restriction.

  This morning, Polly and the Girls headed off as a group. Polly’s practice of getting her guardians to share their stories, which she’d honed to a fine art on the road home from Dreux, was now one she continued in Paris. She could see that reliving old times from before the Occupation helped strengthen the Girls’ faith, and her own, that such times might return.

  ‘It’s your turn today, Lana Mae,’ announced Polly, slipping her arm through the American’s.

  ‘Me?’

  There was a group of Germans ahead of them on the street – uniformed men. Four beautifully dressed women emerging from the Ritz had gained their instant attention.

  ‘The lessons I learn from these stories are very enlightening,’ Polly told her, well aware of the Germans, as were her guardians, yet making no mention of it. The four of them started walking towards the soldiers down the rue Cambon, hats held high.

  ‘You were born in Kansas,’ Polly started Lana Mae off.

  Lana Mae settled into the rhythm of their heels upon the pavement, seeing the Germans but not seeing them. ‘That’s right, honey. The polite term for what I was back then is “rural poor”, but I prefer my own words for it: hick town trash.’

  The others laughed, loud and confident; a show of feminine unity.

  ‘That was me,’ said Lana Mae, stopping now to perform a little curtsey, ‘I started working for a living of my own when I was young, real young, and only because I had to. You see, I wanted to eat.’ She patted her ever-straining girdle. ‘Maybe a little too much, but then I’ve always loved my food. The very first job I got was as a waitress, and it had one perk: free grits. But everything else about it was lousy. So, I got a job as a telephone operator, and from there, because I had such a charming speaking voice, you understand, I got hired as a receptionist at a very respectable doctor’s practice.’

  ‘Which was where she screwed the boss,’ Zita crowed.

  ‘Zita, please!’ Lana Mae complained, covering Polly’s ears. She uncovered them again. ‘It’s where I seduced the boss.’ She saw Alexandrine frowning. ‘Oh honey, please. And this from the dame with her la-di-da “arrangement” with the Comte.’

  Polly grinned at this grown-up talk while Alexandrine chose to say nothing, dignified.

  ‘She did more than screw the doc,’ said Zita, enjoying this. ‘Clever puss, she married and divorced him, too.’

  ‘And all before I was seventeen,’ said Lana Mae, proudly, wiggling her behind.

  The soldiers looked at each other, delighted at Lana Mae’s posing, but none called out or spoke. As one, they stepped from the pavement and stood in the roa
d respectfully while Polly and her companions passed. ‘Bonjour Mesdames!’ called one of them in French. He tipped his cap at them, his smiling companions following suit. They were ravishingly, unsettlingly handsome.

  By now Polly and the Girls had well learned it was safer to engage with the Occupiers when they were being friendly than risk making them otherwise by not. ‘Bonjour Messieurs,’ called Lana Mae in return. There was a moment while the two groups appraised each other, before Lana Mae started her story again. ‘The doc thought I was twenty-one,’ she said, as the women resumed their walk as if nothing about the encounter was noteworthy at all. ‘Gruesome to-do when he found out the truth.’

  They laughed again, deliberately feminine and gay. Not one of the four turned to look back at the soldiers.

  ‘Anyhoo, sometime after that,’ said Lana Mae, ‘as a gay divorcée, I took myself to Cincinnati, which is where I met my beautiful Horace T. Huckstepp.’ She became wistful.

  ‘He was your second husband?’ Polly sought to clarify.

  ‘Two times the charm,’ said Lana Mae, ‘and before you ask, yes, I loved him, and yes, with all my heart, and yes, he loved me – we were written in the stars, baby.’

  ‘And in the newspapers,’ said Zita, sticking her head between Polly and Lana Mae’s linked arms. ‘Horace T. was a steel magnate, filthy rich, and thirty years older than little Lana Mae.’

  ‘True love is blind to age,’ said Lana Mae. ‘Sadly, we were shunned by Cincinnati high society, if you could call it that, and by Horace T’s family, which was worse. They wanted nothing to do with us.’

  She turned back to Polly. ‘I’d had enough of being looked at like dirt, baby, and I was taking no more of it. So, we moved to New York. I wanted to live the high life that was due to the both of us.’

  Ahead of them were more Germans appraising them.

  Alexandrine stepped in. ‘Lana Mae and Horace T. tried to buy entrée into the Manhattan upper crust with several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of profligate hospitality,’ she said, archly. ‘And they failed.’