The Heart of the Ritz

by Luke Devenish

  ‘You must forgive me that I do not recognise you at all, meine Dame,’ Metzingen offered to Zita. ‘Perhaps I will place you if you remind me of the roles you have played in your films?’

  She sneered at his conceit. ‘I play upper-class virgins,’ she countered. ‘I’ve made a whole career out of them.’ She leant forward on her elbows. ‘Someone told me you Occupiers are opening a brand-new studio to make French films. But I didn’t believe it. Why the hell would you make pictures people want to go see?’

  Metzingen smiled at the provocation of being called an ‘Occupier’ to his face. ‘And yet it is true, Frau Zita. This new enterprise is to be called Continental Studios. Why do you ask? Are you hoping for a walk-on part?’

  Zita blithely lit a cigarette. ‘Sure, puss,’ she said, exhaling. ‘Just show me the dickless rube I’m expected to screw and we’ll all be in business.’

  Alexandrine filled the next pause. ‘Did you know that Herr Metzingen has been tasked with keeping Parisian culture alive?’ she asked the table.

  ‘Culture?’ said Zita. ‘Is that like cultured pearls? Never as good as the real thing?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure the dear Oberstleutnant won’t disappoint us with anything fake, darling.’ Alexandrine’s glass clattered as she placed it unsteadily on the table. ‘It must be a very big job for a very big man, Herr Metzingen?’

  Polly looked alarmed and Zita saw her try to grip Alexandrine’s hand under the table to warn her to stop, but the Comtesse evaded her.

  Metzingen kept his eyes only on Zita. ‘We all look forward to seeing your face on the silver screen, meine Dame. I’m sure with adequate rehearsal you will even be passable.’

  ‘You can take a flying continental with your Continental Studios,’ Zita told him.

  Lana Mae gave a sharp gulp of breath. ‘Please don’t over-egg the cake now, honey . . .’

  Metzingen’s expression didn’t change. ‘And yet, I feel that you will appear in these forthcoming films, Frau Zita.’ He tapped his nose. ‘And I have a sixth sense for these things.’

  ‘But what if your sixth sense is nonsense?’ From the corner of her eye, Zita saw a German officer who was not in dress uniform approach Tommy from behind – and saw that Polly saw it too. This man’s uniform was stark black against the white of his fellows. He tapped Tommy hard on the shoulder. Tommy turned in surprise, before Zita’s attention was taken by Metzingen again.

  ‘No, no. You see, I’m so often right,’ he told Zita. ‘I feel stardom is ahead for you at Continental.’ He stood up abruptly, his chair clattering behind him. He scanned the crowded dining room. ‘Jürgen! Where are you, Jürgen!’

  L’Espadon fell into silence at his shouting. At the far end, Göring’s table of cronies halted their sycophancy a moment to look at Metzingen with interest.

  ‘Jürgen!’ Metzingen bellowed at the room. ‘Speak up, man – where are you in here?’

  ‘I am here, Herr Oberstleutnant.’

  The young Wehrmacht Hauptmann stood up from a little table near the terrace. Those at Zita’s table now saw with surprise who it was he’d been dining with: Coco Chanel.

  ‘Ah, Jürgen,’ said Metzingen, pleased. Every eye was watching him, every ear was listening. ‘Why don’t you bring me that exciting new screenplay?’

  ‘Screenplay, Herr Oberstleutnant?’

  ‘Yes, yes. You know the one. It’s very good. The one Doctor Goebbels most especially recommended for our new studios. You have it with you, of course?’

  ‘Of course, Herr Oberstleutnant.’ Jürgen’s briefcase full of manila files was beside his chair. He bowed and clicked his heels at Chanel. ‘Please excuse me a moment, Fräulein.’

  The designer looked at no one, gazing coolly at the garden outside.

  Jürgen removed a bound wad of paper from the case as he approached Zita’s table and placed it in Metzingen’s hand. His eyes wandered to Polly’s and caught them. He smiled.

  ‘Ah, yes, this is the one,’ said Metzingen, thumbing through. He shut it again and tossed it onto the table where it fell at Zita’s plate. ‘Why don’t you read it, Frau Zita? There’s an excellent role for you.’

  She could plainly read the words on the cover: The Filthy Truth of the Jew Rothschilds.

  ‘The title is a little unwieldy,’ Metzingen admitted. ‘Still, it does catch the eye.’

  ‘I’m illiterate, sorry,’ said Zita, stubbing her cigarette. ‘I’ve always preferred to feel my parts.’

  Metzingen chuckled at her smutty joke. ‘I’m sure that’s not so. This role will be a refreshing departure. She’s a poor little simpleton who knows nothing of how the world is run. The writer has called her Lotti . . .’

  Zita stiffened – as did Alexandrine and Lana Mae. Zita glanced across the table then and saw it: Polly had reacted, too, frozen just like the rest of them were. She felt sick as she guessed what this meant: Polly knew about the child. Yet she had never confronted Zita with it. Why hadn’t she? Zita arrived at the likely answer: Polly had not yet learned that the father was Hans. Polly alone took the conversation between Zita and Metzingen at surface value, believing that they were meeting for the first time. How much longer could Polly’s ignorance last with Metzingen behaving as recklessly as this, Zita wondered.

  ‘Ah, you like it already?’ Metzingen noted. ‘I agree, Lotti is a very charming name. And yet there are conflicting thoughts on what the ending should be. Does Lotti win over her captors and return to her mother’s arms? That’s the one I prefer. But others feel she should meet a different fate. Perhaps you will have your own ideas?’

  Zita gave him nothing for a moment. Then she said, ‘I don’t believe that is the plot at all.’

  ‘No?’ said Metzingen. He chuckled again. ‘Perhaps I have confused it with another storyline. I read so many these days.’ He patted the screenplay in front of her. ‘All the same, you will read this.’

  The restaurant began to hum again as people returned to their own conversations.

  ‘Thank you, Jürgen, that will be all,’ said Metzingen. He took his seat again. The younger man saluted and winked at Polly.

  Zita saw Polly gawp for a moment, unsure of what to do. Then instinct seemingly told her she must wink back, for she did so. Jürgen’s face split into a wide grin before he returned to where he had been dining. Zita felt her heart thumping in his wake. In her mouth was an unpleasant metallic taste.

  Metzingen signalled to a waiter that he wanted a setting brought for him. None of Zita’s friends looked at each other.

  ‘If our dear Herr Metzingen is looking to staff this new enterprise, perhaps he’ll find an opportunity to encourage new writers?’ Alexandrine wondered at last.

  Metzingen raised his eyebrow at her.

  ‘Particularly those with a gift for comedy.’ She sipped from her glass. ‘Such a funny piece I read today,’ Alexandrine went on. ‘The writer was so happy to share it with everyone. Did you chance to see it, Herr Metzingen? I seem to recall you were strolling the rue Cambon.’

  Zita saw anxiety fill Polly’s eyes.

  ‘Oh, that writer?’ said Metzingen. ‘Yes, it was a very funny thing he wrote.’ He waited while cutlery and crockery were laid before him by one of the other waiters. When the process was finished, he added, ‘Yet, that writer is no longer available.’

  Zita stared at their ward. Polly seemed to be willing herself to give nothing away. She has secrets of her own, Zita thought to herself. It was impossible not to, for any woman keen to survive.

  ‘No?’ said Alexandrine. ‘That’s disappointing.’

  ‘My very sentiments,’ said Metzingen. ‘Disappointing, too, because he was resident at the Ritz. I had allowed myself to think otherwise of those who live here. A good lesson learned.’

  Zita saw the silent panic that now hit Polly and prayed that Hans wouldn’t notice it.

  ‘I believe he is writing for the Gestapo boys this evening.’ Metzingen shrugged. ‘But as to whether he is still funny . . .’

  Z
ita watched on as Polly forced herself to seem calm, casting a casual glance to where Tommy had been serving at the Germans’ tables. There was no sign of him now. Polly gave a slow sweep of the room. Then she took a sip of her glass of water before carefully dabbing her lips with her napkin. Then she knocked the glass over.

  ‘Oh, bother.’

  Water dripped onto Zita’s dress.

  ‘Butter fingers,’ said Lana Mae.

  Polly looked bashfully at the oblivious Hans. ‘Will you excuse me a moment, Herr Metzingen? I think I should change.’

  ‘But of course, little Fräulein.’ He stood up politely as she arose from her chair, smiling.

  None of the Girls made anything more of the table accident – Zita most especially.

  ‘I shall be back in a moment,’ Polly told them.

  * * *

  Polly fled to the Cambon lobby, hot tears of dread stinging at her eyes. ‘Tommy – oh, please, not Tommy.’ She stopped uselessly, frozen with indecision as to whether she could risk looking for him down in the kitchens. How could she explain why she wanted him? Her mind ran with horrific possibilities and recriminations. What had they overlooked when they had laid their silly prank? What was it they had done to give themselves away so hopelessly?

  She remembered her last image of Tommy in the dining room: the black-clad German officer tapping him hard on the shoulder, Tommy’s look of surprise – or had it been alarm? Polly tried to remember which Germans had black uniforms. Was it the Gestapo? She was sure it was. ‘It can’t be true – it can’t be.’

  A little huddle of people was grouped near the entrance to the Cambon bar, visibly distressed. There was an air of fearful incomprehension and shock. Polly saw Mimi in the middle of them, weeping into her gloved hands while other crying people tried to comfort her. Claude Auzello was there, his face dark with grief.

  Then a head of German blond hair.

  It was Tommy.

  He looked across to her. His expression bewildered, marked with something far worse: crushing guilt.

  With sickening certainty, Polly realised who she had selfishly forgotten about in her fear.

  The Germans had Odile.

  Her own tears threatened to spill now as she thought of what must be happening to the schoolgirl who couldn’t even see. Horrific images overwhelmed her.

  Tommy was breaking away from the group, still looking across at her, imploring her without words to turn around and retreat. She somehow pulled herself together and took to the stairs. Polly reached the second floor, and then the third, with Tommy keeping one flight behind her. She reached the attic rooms with no one but Tommy to see it. Polly kept walking along the corridor until she reached the door to his room.

  Odile was waiting there.

  ‘Oh my God!’ She threw herself at the girl, hugging her and kissing her cheeks. ‘Thank God, you’re safe, Odile. Thank God.’

  ‘Keep it down, Pol,’ Odile complained. She extricated herself from her arms.

  Tommy appeared. Silently, he unlocked his door. When they were all inside, Polly started crying fully. ‘I thought it was you – then I thought it was you,’ she told them both. Her tears were those that came only with a miraculous reprieve. ‘But it was neither of you. The Germans don’t even know.’

  Her co-conspirators didn’t share her relief.

  Tommy told her. ‘They took Guy.’

  It took Polly a moment to comprehend. ‘But he had nothing to do with us?’

  ‘It didn’t matter,’ said Tommy. ‘They just took him anyway.’

  Fresh emotion overcame her. ‘But he’s innocent – Guy’s innocent!’

  Tommy had to put his hand to her mouth to stop her screaming.

  PART THREE

  Insurrection

  10

  11 December 1941

  It was already very cold for early December, but mercifully it wasn’t yet snowing. The morning sky was clear, coloured the very palest of blues. For a moment Polly lost herself staring at it, then her mind went somewhere she didn’t wish it to go, and she was pricked with anxiety for Tommy. He and Odile were conducting a butterflies prank today. How much longer before they – before any of them – made an error that would see them exposed? It had been more than a year since they had started on this path of resistance; more than a year since Guy had been taken by the Gestapo, never to be heard from again. Her mind full of his unknown fate as it so often was, and with it a fear of what her own fate might be, Polly glanced guiltily at Suzette standing in line with her in the narrow Marais street. As ever, it was as if the old woman could read her mind.

  ‘What are you thinking about, Mademoiselle?’ said Suzette, looking up at her, suspiciously.

  Polly tried to shake the thought of what Tommy had planned for today. ‘Nothing, Suzette. Or everything perhaps. Queues.’

  Suzette grunted and looked to wordless Alexandrine. The three of them returned to waiting in the cold.

  Polly had vowed never to eat at l’Espadon again after Guy was taken, and her guardians had seemingly understood, without understanding at all, Polly knew. They knew nothing of what she did with Tommy and Odile, just as she continued to know nothing of their secrets. Although, lately Polly knew rather more than she chose to let on. She was seventeen now and considered herself a young woman – more than old enough to harbour secrets of her own. She had a cast-iron conscience to guide her.

  The wrinkled old housekeeper now lived in the apartment Eduarde had bought for her in the Jewish community she’d been born to in the teeming Marais. Suzette had made queueing her main daily activity out of sheer necessity. She needed to eat. When Alexandrine had discovered that Polly had joined her, queuing at shops and paying with ration tickets, just like an ordinary Parisian, her shame at her own flawed character had grown to become shame at her aristocratic entitlement. She in turn had rejected l’Espadon, and with it La Tour d’Argent and Maxim’s. And with this rejection, she had ended her practice of slipping fifty-franc notes under dinner plates to ensure she received black market food.

  The alternatives to queuing were few. To refuse to bribe waiters was to refuse the black market, which in turn was a refusal to fatten the ‘BOFs’. These were the Beurre Oeufs Fromages – or the Butter Eggs Cheese – the name given to those who grew rich from black market racketeering. Some of the fabulous profits the BOFs made were blown at the very best fashion houses. To Alexandrine, who had seen BOFs for herself with their fistfuls of francs at Jacques Fath, the coarse language and manners were a very ill match for the tone of haute couture. She, like Polly, despised them. Yet only Polly and her guardians had heard the word ‘collabo’ hissed at them for continuing to live at the Ritz. But where else should they live? It was home.

  The line inched forward again. More women exited the shop. The lone gendarme at the door, whose job it was to ensure the queue remained orderly, allowed more women to go in. There were at least ten women ahead before Polly, Alexandrine and Suzette would get their turn.

  Suzette bemoaned her empty basket. ‘Every patch of public land has been turned over to growing vegetables,’ she complained to no one in particular, ‘and still there’s not enough to eat.’ She gave meaningful glances to those in the queue behind and in front of them. ‘I wonder why?’

  A woman directly behind, as old as Suzette, was happy to join in. It helped pass the time. ‘Oh, I think you know why, Madame,’ she replied, grinning toothlessly. ‘France is the food bowl for the armies of the Reich. Everything goes off to them now, while we’re all stuck here on starvation diets.’

  ‘There’s a generation of babies growing up with rickets,’ said Suzette, shaking her head.

  Tommy returned with anxiety to Polly’s thoughts. She tried to force him away.

  ‘My neighbour sent off her youngest on her bike all the way to her husband’s cousin in Picardy,’ said their queue neighbour.

  ‘Did she come back with anything good?’ Suzette wondered, her interest piqued.

  ‘A cauliflower and
a couple of eggs.’

  ‘A feast day!’ Suzette cackled.

  ‘The eggs broke in the basket.’

  The two old women nodded grimly, warming to each other in deprivation. They introduced themselves.

  ‘I am Suzette.’

  ‘A pleasure. I am Alma.’

  Surnames weren’t necessary. Standing in queues removed so much formality.

  ‘There’re soup kitchens set up now,’ said Suzette, ‘if things get too bad. I hear you can eat for ten francs a day.’

  ‘They’re giving soup to us Jews?’

  Suzette wasn’t sure.

  ‘No,’ said Alma, cynically. ‘Why would they?’

  The slow and lengthy lines so often gave them time for contemplation, and occasional moments of revelation, too. Polly had come to see that the queues were intended to simulate the experience of being prisoner. To queue for hours in all weather was to have one’s notion of time, space, and desire controlled utterly by the Occupiers. Yet the experience was not without benefits. The interminable periods, the forever lost mornings that stretched into long afternoons spent standing in lines sometimes provided gossip more credible than the news from the German-controlled radio and newspapers.

  Polly saw the toothless Alma looking at Alexandrine.

  ‘That’s a very nice outfit, Madame.’

  ‘Thank you, Madame,’ said Alexandrine, graciously. Her accent exposed her to the woman as upper class. She introduced herself. ‘I am Alexandrine. This is my ward, Polly. Suzette is my friend.’

  Polly smiled at Alma and watched as the old woman adjusted herself, knowing it was not with any intention of rejection. In the food queues all were made equal. Those who queued had licence to pass comment on anything.

  ‘Make it yourself?’ Alma asked Alexandrine.

  Polly watched as Alexandrine suppressed a smile and Suzette stood just that little bit taller beside her. The old housekeeper was made proud by such interest in Alexandrine’s fashion.

  ‘If only I possessed such skill,’ Alexandrine told their neighbour. ‘I’m afraid I purchased everything I’m wearing today.’