The Heart of the Ritz

by Luke Devenish

  He pulled back the door for her and looked from the unmade bed to the room’s only chair. ‘Where –’ Nervous when alone with her, he didn’t know how to finish the sentence.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she whispered. He felt her hand touch his before she shut the door behind her. He knocked his uniform from the chair and straightened the bedcover. The only light came from the window above. Tommy went to turn on the lamp.

  Blanche’s hand found his again. ‘Leave it. It’s nicer like this.’

  She stood there staring at him for what felt like minutes in the shadow. Tommy could see the gleam of feeling in her eyes. ‘What do you want, Madame?’ he whispered.

  She seemed to remember herself. She sat down in the chair and opened her purse, rummaging for her packet of cigarettes. She found it and offered him one. He took it half-heartedly. Tommy watched from the end of the bed as she fumbled for the match, her hand shaking. He found his own matchbook first and lit the cigarette for her, not bothering to light his own.

  ‘They hate me here,’ Blanche said.

  ‘Who do?’

  ‘These dames. Lana Mae Huckstepp and Zita. They look at me like I’m some heap of dirt.’

  ‘No, they don’t.’ Tommy said softly. ‘You’re a wonderful woman . . .’

  She shook her head. ‘I remind them of where they’re from, you see. We’re all phonies at the Ritz and they loathe me for rubbing it in their faces.’

  ‘That isn’t true – they’re your friends.’

  Blanche sniffed and pulled on her cigarette. ‘The Comtesse, though, she’s decent.’

  Tommy wasn’t sure what she expected him to say.

  ‘I used to be an actress once.’ She smiled. ‘Did you know that?’

  He didn’t know. He didn’t know why she wanted him to know it either.

  ‘Back when the movies didn’t have sound. I was in one with Zita. But my voice was too squeaky. When the talkies came they told me I was through in the business.’ She exhaled a cloud of smoke and wine fumes. ‘When that happened, I had to work on making new friends . . .’

  ‘What is it, Blanche?’ Tommy pressed her.

  ‘You happy here?’ she asked him.

  He answered automatically. ‘Of course.’ Then he added, ever mindful of her, ‘And grateful.’

  ‘Being happy has nothing to do with grateful,’ she told him. She took another drag and exhaled, the smoke rising to the dormer window. ‘You’re still very young – you’ve a right to know happiness before your life gets too thorny. While things are still simple, you should be happy.’

  He smiled for her again. ‘I am happy. I like working here. I think I’m getting better at it.’

  ‘Good. Good for you.’ Blanche started to cry.

  He reached out for her from the bed. ‘What is it, Blanche? Please tell me what’s wrong tonight. You’re making me worried.’

  ‘Oh, Tommy . . .’

  ‘You mustn’t cry for me,’ he told her, ‘you’ve been my great friend. I owe you everything for what you’ve done. You’ve given me my life.’

  ‘I’ve done nothing.’ She sniffed and wiped her cheeks with her hand. She took another drag from her cigarette. ‘Claude and me, we got paid for it, didn’t we? Don’t sucker yourself into thinking we’re anything good.’

  He said nothing at that.

  She glanced long at his narrow bed. ‘Sometimes, at night, I think of you all alone up here . . .’

  ‘I’m not lonely, Blanche.’

  ‘Is that because you’re thinking of me?’

  The air was loaded between them. ‘It helps to know I have someone who cares,’ Tommy offered her.

  Blanche stood up abruptly from the chair. ‘I’m drunk. I’m saying things I shouldn’t be saying, instead of things that I should. I don’t know how to say those, Tommy . . .’ She began to cry again.

  He stood up, too. ‘Please, you’ve said nothing wrong, Blanche.’

  ‘Oh, I have,’ she said. ‘It’s because you’re so young and so cute. It takes me back to when I was cute, too.’ She pulled herself together. ‘Well, I’m not cute anymore. I’m the mother of a kid who’s going blind.’

  ‘Blanche . . .’

  ‘There’s been a death.’

  Tommy felt the words like a punch to his gut. ‘Not Claude?’

  Blanche blinked. ‘What?’

  ‘Monsieur Auzello is dead?’ He felt sick. ‘The krauts –’

  ‘Not Claude. Oh God, Tommy, not my husband.’

  He knew then why she had come to him. ‘Who is dead, Blanche? Tell me . . .’

  * * *

  Polly had no way of knowing which of the attic rooms might be his. She had discovered that the fifth floor was kept in near-darkness after midnight, located as it was right at the top of the stairs. The Ritz was very different at roof level. The walls and floors had been left bare; the attic rooms were intended only for the people who served the guests.

  Polly didn’t know how she might locate Tommy, surely asleep at this hour, hidden somewhere behind one of so many closed doors. Yet, she had to find him. Tomorrow, Polly knew, would bring the distance of a night’s sleep, and with it a weakening of certainty. It had to be tonight that she told him, so that her words of commitment could be spoken while they burned inside her, and once said, could not be taken back again.

  ‘Tommy?’ She whispered. The noise felt deafening in the depths of the quiet. ‘Tommy, are you up here?’

  Somewhere in the corridor she heard a door creak open.

  With a rush of fear, it occurred to Polly there might be Germans on this floor. She heard footsteps coming towards her from the shadows. Polly pressed herself to the wall, knowing how hopelessly visible she must be.

  The footsteps were those of a woman in high heels, unsteady, as if she was staggering. The steps stopped for a moment, and Polly held her breath. Then they began again.

  Blanche Auzello loomed from the darkness, tottering towards Polly at the wall. She stopped in shock. ‘You?’

  Polly could smell the wine and knew Blanche was drunk. She felt a pang of sympathy for her before the sharper pang of disappointment. What reason could there be for Blanche to be here other than the same reason Polly had come? Tommy.

  She watched as Blanche came to the same conclusion. The older woman’s face softened. ‘Oh girl. You like him, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course not!’ said Polly.

  ‘You don’t like him?’

  Polly stammered. ‘He’s a friend – nothing more.’

  Blanche touched Polly’s cheek, sad. ‘I should warn you off him. But there’ll be others who’ll warn you, and they’ll be doing it soon. So, all that I’ll say is knock yourself out before they get to you, honey. You’ll be cute together.’

  Polly knew she had to make herself clear. ‘It not like that, Madame, I promise you.’

  Blanche was kind. ‘Okay.’ She made her way to the stairs, but as she turned to descend, she whispered, ‘Watch out for him at least, will you? He needs his friends now.’

  Polly didn’t know what this meant. ‘Yes, Madame.’

  Polly moved in the direction Blanche had come from, knowing she hadn’t heard a door close. She walked quickly, not caring for the sound of her own footsteps as she peered into the gloom.

  She found the still open door. Tommy was inside his little attic room, seated on the edge of his narrow bed, in his threadbare tweeds and dirty undershirt, without any shoes. He was slumped forward, his fingers clutching fistfuls of his German blond hair.

  Polly didn’t have to say his name; he looked up when she came, sensing her.

  She lurched straight into it. ‘That paper you gave me – Tips for the Occupied. Why did you want me to read it, Tommy?’

  He’d clearly almost forgotten. He stared at her in the light of the stars from the window. ‘You were discovered with it?’

  She considered lying, but then could see little point. ‘Yes.’

  He stood up. ‘Oh my God.’

  She stepp
ed into the room. ‘It’s all right, Tommy, it doesn’t matter now. I’m safe.’

  His face was filled with remorse, far deeper than she had imagined he would be. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be.’

  ‘But I put you at risk.’

  ‘Perhaps I want to be at risk?’ Then she said, ‘After what’s happened to me today, and after everything I’ve seen and experienced since the Germans arrived, risk seems more and more irrelevant.’

  There was a moment’s quiet. ‘What happened today?’ he asked, softly.

  She paused. Her breath was shallow in her chest. ‘Can I sit down, please?’ She sat in the lone chair before he said anything.

  Tommy closed the door. He sat on the edge of his bed and waited.

  ‘A man died,’ Polly told him, simply. ‘I didn’t know him, but he was a good man and he killed himself because of his fear of the Germans.’

  He stared at her uncomprehendingly. ‘That was also my day . . .’

  She stared back. ‘Someone you know took his own life?’

  ‘Yes.’ Tommy cleared his throat. ‘My father . . .’

  In the half light of the stars she could only see now how much he was fighting not to break down in front of her.

  ‘I didn’t know him,’ he told her. ‘I’d barely met him my whole life. He was ashamed of me, you see. I was his illegitimate son.’

  Realisation crashed upon Polly. ‘Your father was Comte Eduarde?’

  He scraped a hand through his hair. He didn’t need to answer.

  Polly reeled. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘he was not ashamed of you. I was with him before he died. He spoke of you, he loved you, he wanted you safe – he was not ashamed, Tommy. I swear he wasn’t.’

  He clearly didn’t believe this. ‘You know all about me then.’

  ‘Now I do. But I didn’t before. I knew none of it.’

  ‘Ah,’ he sniffed and scraped back his hair. ‘Then things are very difficult for you now. I’m sorry.’ He stood up to open the door again.

  ‘Wait,’ said Polly.

  ‘Your guardian Alexandrine despises me,’ said Tommy. ‘My mother was her husband’s mistress. My mother is dead, but the Comtesse’s hate for her lives on for me. I am her enemy.’

  ‘Then why are you living here, where Alexandrine lives?’

  Tommy took a deep breath. ‘Because my father begged her to use her connections to hide me. Alexandrine had me taken away from my school because it would be targeted by the krauts. She had me hidden here where everyone, yet no one, would see me, because I’d be a mere servant. I think she loved this, in truth. She paid Monsieur Auzello to do it. She paid his wife, Blanche.’

  The spectre of Blanche as Tommy’s would-be lover receded for Polly forever. The woman was Tommy’s benefactor. ‘But why did Alexandrine do this – I don’t understand.’

  ‘Polly,’ he whispered, ‘it’s because I’m a Jew . . .’

  She felt ashamed of her naivete. ‘Your father killed himself for being that.’

  He looked at her defiantly. ‘Maybe, but I will not. The krauts will have to do it for me.’

  She stood up to face him. ‘Then they’ll have to kill me too.’

  It was a moment before he laughed. ‘Why would they ever kill you? A little rich girl living at the Ritz?’

  The words stung her anew. Then she remembered her resolve: male disregard would no longer hurt her. Polly bit the hurt back. ‘Little and rich is irrelevant. They’ll want to kill me because I’ll be just like you now,’ she told him.

  ‘Don’t insult me. You’re not a Jew, Polly.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’ll be resisting the Occupiers alongside one.’

  There was a pause once she’d said this.

  ‘I know why you gave me that mimeographed paper,’ Polly told him, after a moment. ‘You did it because you wanted me to feel the way that you feel: angry. Well, I do, Tommy. The adults are weak, and they’ve let us all down. They’ve forgotten what France even stands for – what the Republic was founded on: liberty, equality and fraternity.’ For Polly there was something wonderful in speaking those three words aloud. ‘The future is ours,’ she said, ‘so that means it’s all up to us now if we want to see those notions mean something again.’

  He blinked at her. ‘But you’re not even French.’

  ‘Neither was my Aunt Marjorie. Why don’t you ask me to show you her Légion d’honneur?’

  He was astonished by this. ‘So, what do you suggest?’ he asked her, after a moment.

  ‘We fight back,’ said Polly. ‘We resist. I know that’s what you’re doing already, Tommy, and I know there must be others who are doing it with you. Who wrote the leaflet – was it you?’

  ‘I don’t know who wrote it,’ he said. ‘The original we had was only a copy.’

  ‘Who printed it then?’

  He hesitated. ‘My friend.’

  ‘A friend with a mimeograph machine?’

  He was reluctant. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t asked. I’m not going to ask, either.’

  Polly was incredulous. ‘But shouldn’t you know? This is so important.’

  ‘It’s also very dangerous,’ said Tommy. ‘It’s better not to know anything at all.’

  She tried to take this on. ‘Then who else is part of this? Are there dozens by now?’

  Tommy shook his head. ‘There are only three. There’s me. And now there’s you . . .’

  Polly found that her resistance dreams retreated a little in the face of reality. ‘All right then. And who’s number three?’

  Tommy grinned at her. ‘That’s my friend. She’s a blind kid.’

  Polly was astonished in turn, realising this must be Odile.

  Tommy paused for a moment, staring at Polly, before coming to a decision of his own. He wanted only to be honest with her. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I gave you that sheet for a very simple reason, there were no high ideals behind it. Yes, I wanted to see if you felt as I did, and the Tips for the Occupied was a test of that, which clearly you passed, because you came and found me up here. But liberty and equality and the rest of it, they were not what was most in my mind, Polly.’

  She hung on his words. ‘What was, then?’

  He seemed to drift in her eyes, as if she was suddenly to him quite beautiful. ‘Your gun.’

  Polly gave an intake of breath.

  ‘It is precious – more precious than anything these days,’ Tommy told her. ‘I gave you that sheet because you have a weapon, and I hoped you might be persuaded to use it in a way it can do the most good.’

  ‘The gun . . .’ Polly felt the stab of past hurts. She hadn’t been wanted for herself, only for what she owned – or had owned.

  Tommy was sincere. ‘You keep it in your handbag. Or perhaps you hide it somewhere safer these days. It doesn’t matter – what matters is that you have it, Polly, and with a gun we can make a difference.’

  If there was anything good to be had from his words, it was this: Tommy had not been the one who had taken Aunt Marjorie’s gift. He truly believed she still had the gun in her possession.

  Polly didn’t know how to break it to him.

  * * *

  Naked, Metzingen tossed the Renoir onto the grand Imperial Suite bed where Zita could properly see it. She was naked herself, propped up on the pillows. While she stared at the ringleted girl, Hans tried to pull the cork from the fresh champagne bottle with his teeth. When this failed, he found his sabre and slashed at the cork instead. It came off at the second go, spewing bubbles across the carpeted floor. He topped up their glasses.

  ‘I know this one . . .’ she told him. She blinked at the portrait of Alexandrine’s mother and then looked away.

  ‘The vintage?’ said Hans. ‘It is excellent, I believe. I gave a bottle to von Stülpnagel. He looked pleased.’

  Zita’s eyes were expressionless. ‘The painting, Hans.’

  ‘Ah.’

  She didn’t touch her drink. ‘You promised me you would no
t hurt them.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My friends. This painting belongs to the Comtesse.’ She seemed to be summoning all her strength to stop herself shaking. ‘What did you do to her to get this?’

  He went to tell her, but Zita held up a finger before he could answer. ‘If I don’t like what you tell me, I’ll kill myself, Hans.’

  He looked briefly gobsmacked at that, before bursting out laughing. Then he saw what she clutched in her other hand: a Modèle 1935. ‘Liebchen?’

  She flicked the safety switch. ‘But first I’ll kill you.’

  He sipped from his glass, studying her. ‘Where did you get that weapon?’

  ‘I mean it,’ she said.

  ‘All right . . .’

  ‘So, tell me, what did you do to Alexandrine?’

  Hans enjoyed her like this: unpredictably dangerous. Behind the one-liners and sass was a woman who had the means to arm herself – and smuggle a weapon into the very place of their lovemaking, without him even suspecting she would. He let the smile play at his lips, contemplating the endless surprises that came with his passion for the film star. ‘But the painting is kitsch. Fit to print on a chocolate box. I had planned to give it to Göring when he comes. More his taste than mine.’

  She waited.

  ‘When you know what happened, you will thank me for it,’ he tried teasing her. Despite the threat she posed, his loins were growing hard, anticipating. ‘I saved the Comtesse’s life.’

  Zita didn’t move. ‘How?’

  He shrugged. ‘I erased the Jew.’

  He loved that he could still make her reel at the ease with which he said such words.

  ‘What – what does that mean?’ Zita demanded.

  He started stroking himself, wanting her to see the effect she had on him when she was like this. But she held only his eyes. ‘The Comtesse began the day a Jewess and the very worst kind: one who had chosen to join the parasites willingly.’ He lifted his other hand to drain the last drop from his glass. ‘Well, she has finished the day clean – she is no longer a Jewess. All thanks to me.’ He indicated the painting. ‘As you can see, she was grateful for it.’