‘Thank you, Fräulein.’ He smiled at her; his very best smile. ‘While we sit in these chairs – would you do me the honour of calling me Günther?’
She tipped her head. ‘All right. Günther.’
There was still some champagne left at the table. But he saw that Polly wasn’t drinking any and so he sipped from a water glass instead.
He cleared his throat. She was an innocent girl who deserved a more considered seduction than the perfunctory effort he’d made with Chanel. Such an enterprise could take months. He didn’t mind. So much of the excitement was to be had in anticipation of the prize, after all. ‘It might be possible for me to arrange for you to visit Frau Huckstepp.’
He saw the rush of hope this gave her. ‘At Vittel?’
‘Perhaps not there.’ Now that he’d said it, he needed to give it proper thought. ‘I have connections. Frau Huckstepp’s internment was unfortunate but necessary – yet no one wishes her to suffer in her illness. She will be permitted to receive treatment in a Paris hospital.’
He was gratified by seeing Polly’s hopes soar higher.
‘Will you let me see what I can do, Polly?’
She beamed at him. ‘Yes, Günther. That would be so wonderful.’
* * *
The late-night tap at the door to her suite roused the twin griffons first. They lifted their little heads on the bed and looked to Mimi, her head on the pillows, where she was dozing but not quite asleep. They whined but didn’t bark, trained to show alertness but never alarm; a prerequisite for all who lived at the Ritz.
Mimi’s eyes opened. ‘What is it, girls?’
She heard the tapping for herself.
‘Ah.’ She lifted the book from her chest where it had dropped, and placed it on the bedside table, next to her favourite photograph of her late husband César; one taken when he was so handsome and young.
The dogs dropped off the bed, racing to the door, the clicking of their nails lost in the carpet. Mimi carefully rose from her pillows, feeling her age but refusing to succumb to the indulgence of ‘old lady’ noises. Mimi was not in the custom of adhering to the expectations that came with growing aged. She put on her peignoir over her nightgown and sought out her mules where the griffons had knocked them under the bed in their haste.
The tapping came again.
She made her dignified way to the entry, where the griffons were waiting, wagging their tails. She teased them affectionately as she opened the door. ‘We know who it is, don’t we, girls?’
Odile was on the other side, for all the world looking as if she’d spent the evening lying in dust. ‘Hello, Madame Ritz. Am I disturbing you?’
‘Never you, young lady.’ She gave a theatrical look up and down the empty corridor. ‘But if you were one of our German guests . . .’ Then she remembered that theatrical looks were likely lost on Odile. ‘Well, fortunately you aren’t. Come inside, won’t you.’
Never entirely sure how much or how little Odile could actually see, Mimi preferred to err on the side of caution with the girl, taking her by the hand. ‘This is nice,’ said Mimi, closing the door behind them. ‘Would you like some hot chocolate? We don’t need to ring for it, I can make it in my suite.’
The girl was uneasy, upset about something. ‘Perhaps another time, Madame Ritz.’
‘Call me Mamie,’ she said, using the French word for granny, ‘you know it gives me joy.’
‘Mamie,’ Odile repeated.
She led her to the divan. ‘Take a seat then.’
Odile sat. Mimi took position by her side. ‘What is it, Odile? You don’t seem yourself.’
Odile had clearly prepared her words. ‘I cannot use your mimeograph machine anymore, Mamie.’
Mimi took a long breath. ‘I see. And why is that?’
‘I’m not going to tell you.’
‘All right . . .’
‘I don’t mean to offend you. It’s just safer this way. Safer for you.’
‘I understand, Odile. Since they took poor Guy . . .’
‘That was the krauts’ crime not ours. We can’t let ourselves feel guilty for it. They are the monsters.’
Mimi only wished she herself could have achieved absolution for Guy’s fate so easily. ‘All the same, I do understand. The mimeograph can stay hidden. No one will ever know that I have it in here.’
Odile’s young face was full of commitment.
‘Perhaps we will think of some other way to put the wind up them, then?’
Odile nodded and then fell into silence.
The pain in the girl’s heart was so transparent to her. ‘What else is troubling you?’ Mimi asked gently. ‘Are you still in love?’
Odile’s face folded with the emotion of it.
‘Ah. And it is still unrequited, I see?’
She nodded, miserable.
‘And still he doesn’t know?’
The girl said nothing.
‘Odile? What is it?’
Mimi had the sudden sense of Odile standing at the tip of a great precipice.
‘Oh, Mamie . . .’
The old lady watched as Odile fatefully stepped off. ‘It is not a he, Mamie,’ she whispered.
‘Oh!’
With it finally said, Odile couldn’t stop herself crying.
As she comforted her, Mamie realised she had suspected it all along, but still her old heart broke for the girl. First love was always the most wonderful and painful love of all. She put her thin arm around Odile, stroking her hair.
‘I’m so ashamed,’ Odile told her, after a time.
‘But why should you be? Do you think you are the first young lady who has ever felt this way about another young lady?’
Odile could only cry again.
‘Well, I assure you, you are not,’ said Mimi. ‘I have known plenty of young ladies like you – and young men too. At the Ritz we applaud such love – why, we applaud any love. All love is worthy, Odile. One only has to think of the alternative.’
Odile took off her dark glasses to dry her eyes on her sleeve. ‘Thank you.’
Mimi kissed her cheek. ‘Maybe you should tell this girl?’
Odile shook her head. ‘She loves someone else.’
‘Oh.’
‘A boy.’
‘I see.’
‘And because it’s so much easier to lie I’ve been making out like I love him, too,’ said Odile, ‘which of course he believes – boys are such vain idiots.’
Mimi chuckled. ‘And what does this girl believe?’
Odile sighed. ‘She’s got no idea. She’s an even bigger idiot than he is.’
Mimi chuckled more but Odile wanted to reassure her. ‘She is a very nice girl, Mamie. I don’t just love her, I respect her. I couldn’t cause her embarrassment or hurt.’ Odile thought about this. ‘She is courageous, Mamie. I admire her.’
‘Well, you’re remarkably courageous too,’ Mimi told her.
Odile dismissed this. ‘I don’t know any better – I’ve got all my mama’s craziness to blame for it. This girl’s been brought up nice. You’d never guess the truth if you met her.’
A warning bell rang for Mimi. ‘Are this girl and this boy in the butterflies venture?’
Odile stiffened. ‘I cannot tell you that.’
Mimi knew then that they were, and of course, she knew then who they most likely were, too. She could hardly blame Odile for falling in love with a girl like Polly Hartford.
Then Odile added, ‘And we’re not doing butterflies anymore, remember.’
Mimi had to accept it, although her mind raced. ‘Perhaps, you will simply fall out of love? It happens, you know. Then you might fall for someone new who can love you in return.’
But Odile fervently rejected the idea. ‘No. I don’t want to fall out of love with her, Mamie. I don’t care if it hurts. I need my feelings. They make me be brave. Do you understand that?’
Mimi looked through the door to her boudoir and saw the little photograph of César; taken when he was ba
rely older than Odile. When she’d pulled out the old mimeograph machine from the attic stores and given thought as to how she might do something useful with it, the memory of César had fuelled her. He would not have taken kindly to half a hotel full of ‘guests’ who never paid one sous of their bill. ‘All right then.’
Odile stood to go. ‘You’re very kind to me.’
‘How could I not be? You inspire this old woman.’
Odile blushed. ‘Don’t be silly, Mamie.’
At the doors to her suite, Mimi watched as the sightless girl made her way down the corridor, so confident of the hotel map she kept inside her head that she had no need of a cane when she visited.
Odile not only inspired Mimi, she shamed her.
12
20 December 1941
Zita remembered when she saw it again: Lotti’s home was both imperially magnificent and unexpectedly pretty. Steinhof Psychiatric Hospital had seemed at the time such a fearful name to give to a refuge in which they might place their little girl, but Hans had encouraged Zita to look beyond the forbidding title and see the Steinhof for what it was. She had tried to put her faith in him then, and he had rewarded it when they had visited the Steinhof in person, her hand in his, just like they did now. The hospital had looked beautiful, not at all the Gothic institution of Zita’s fevered French imagination. Surprisingly, the Steinhof was not one vast building but many smaller ones, called ‘pavilions’. These were dotted throughout an enormous park, at the centre of which stood a golden-domed church on a hill – St Leopold’s – build in the Art Nouveau style in which the turn of the century Viennese architects excelled. The hospital had seemed perfect, blessed with the added appeal to both her and Hans of being nowhere near Paris or Berlin. Their Lotti would be kept safe here – and secret.
Returning to Steinhof now, so many years later, Zita was comforted to see that nothing of any lasting importance had changed. Yes, there were banners with swastikas everywhere, that was to be expected, but the eye became blind to the ugliness quickly. The gardens were still the same, although dusted with snow. The church was still lovely upon its hill.
If there was one difference, it was the large numbers of recuperating soldiers taking in the frosty garden air as the car had driven up the long drive towards the Children’s Pavilion.
‘Are these soldiers all patients?’ Zita, swathed against the winter in her furs, had wondered to Hans as she viewed them from the window of the Benz.
‘They must be, Liebchen.’
There were dozens of men, and men alone.
They reached the pavilion that for the past twelve years had been their daughter’s home. If it had been spring, there would have been flower beds; bulbs poking their heads through the soil. It was still early winter, so instead there was a snowman to greet them from the lawn, and above the entrance lintel, Christmas holly. The Wehrmacht driver opened the rear car door for them and Zita alighted after Hans, her winter boots connecting lightly with the gravel while he clapped his arms in the cold. Through the pavilion doors she glimpsed a cheery Christmas tree in the lobby, sparkling with lights.
More men were taking exercise on the frozen lawn where the snowman stood with coal lumps for eyes.
‘Good morning!’ she called out to them in German, waving. Their wounds looked entirely physical – missing limbs and other injuries implied under bandages. What were the wounds to their minds, Zita wondered, that would have seen them sent here?
‘I know who you are, sweetheart,’ one called back to her. ‘You’re a kino star!’
His fellows searched her lovely face and saw he was right.
‘You’re Zita!’
‘You’re my favourite!’
She had expected as much; she would have been crushed if they hadn’t known who she was. She looked to Hans apologetically, but he was indulgent of it. Six strapping young men surrounded her; excited to meet a real film star, yet scrupulously polite and articulate – perfect Germans. They were additionally respectful of Hans, of course, as he watched on from the steps in his Oberstleutnant’s overcoat. They Heil Hitler-ed him.
Zita brought a fountain pen with her for just such occasions. She signed plaster casts.
‘Why are you here, Fräulein?’
‘To visit you sexy boys – why else would I come?’
They laughed at that, but wisely didn’t believe it. ‘Why are you really here? Tell us.’
She cast a private smile to Metzingen. ‘To see a dear one.’
‘Ah.’
They understood and liked her the more for it.
Metzingen ushered them on. ‘Perhaps the Fräulein will charm you again when she leaves, lads.’
She well knew that she would; her heart would be bursting by then. The men Heil Hitler-ed Hans once more. He held the pavilion’s door open for her. Inside, Zita stopped to take in the Christmas tree. She pronounced it the most beautiful she had ever seen.
* * *
Jürgen had not expected to feel anything like shock in bringing Polly to visit her American guardian – yet he was shocked deeply when he saw the extent of the woman’s decline. That Frau Huckstepp had cancer was undeniable; she was stark and gaunt and had lost much weight. Her skin was drained of all colour and sheen; her once henna-red hair was now grey. Her face had acquired deep, scouring lines that made her look ancient. She was not the same woman who had lived at the Ritz; she was advanced on her journey to death. Jürgen knew that it could not be long before she reached her destination.
That Polly was clearly profoundly upset by how fast the disease had consumed her guardian was to be expected. Polly was female, after all, but Jürgen was made to feel vulnerable by his own reaction, and he disliked it. When the American woman shifted in her bed, lifting herself from the pillows to embrace Polly, Jürgen had glimpsed her wasted body beneath the blanket and seen the livid red stain at her lap. She was haemorrhaging. Jürgen had lived through carnage in the battlefields of Poland and France, and yet the sight of Frau Huckstepp’s body corruption threatened to bring his breakfast up.
He held back near the door of the little private room at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital while Polly spoke with Lana Mae; all whispered encouragements and steadfast denial from the women of what was so obvious. There were tears, of course, feminine tears; the kind that could fall without halting conversation. And then there was gossip, at the commencement of which Frau Huckstepp noticeably lifted in spirit. She and Polly talked of people they knew at the Ritz, while Jürgen zoned out until he heard his own name mentioned. He looked up as Polly gushed words of praise for his kindness. At this he stepped forward, hoping the near-dead woman might guess of his intentions towards her ward and bestow her approval of them.
Lana Mae reached out for his hand. ‘Herr Jürgen – we’re so very grateful for you.’
He winced at the touch of her skin on his; clammy and cold. ‘It is nothing, Frau Huckstepp.’ He gave her his brightest smile.
‘Please, call me Lana Mae.’
‘If you wish – Lana Mae.’
‘You must call him Günther,’ Polly told her guardian. She lightly gripped Jürgen’s other hand, before releasing it again. It was the first time she had ever touched him so intimately. The impression of her hand remained on his skin. ‘He’s a good friend to us,’ she said, ‘not like some other Germans.’
Jürgen frowned at Polly’s words, but from Polly’s perspective, he supposed it was true; he was not much like his comrades, especially those boors like Göring.
‘Thank you, Günther,’ said Lana Mae, weakly, smiling at him. ‘I don’t know how you did what you did so that Polly and I could see each other again – but honey, you’re a gem all the same.’
The word ‘gem’ seemed to lift him from the moment as he remembered what Lana Mae was most known for at the Ritz. So meaningless is great wealth in the face of death, he thought to himself, and then, because he enjoyed the high esteem of women, he fell into his old trap of trying to think on the spot of new ways to pleas
e them.
‘Perhaps,’ he offered Lana Mae, smiling his most flawless smile again, ‘perhaps there is a way to keep you interned here in Paris instead of Vittel. I have connections.’
Polly’s face lit up bright with hope. ‘Oh, Lana Mae – yes.’
He loved her like this.
But the American was oddly reticent. ‘I don’t wanna risk it.’
‘Your illness is obvious – and you are no criminal. The authorities are not without compassion with such things.’ He overstepped himself now with his candour: ‘And really, to most Germans, the war with America is meaningless; a token conflict. No one expects any shots to be fired.’
She seemed to appreciate this. ‘I agree. Thank you, Günther honey.’ She closed her eyes a moment, cradled by her pillow. Then she added, ‘The authorities have let me be brought into Paris when I need to get treatment. I don’t want to push their patience any. I’ll keep staying at Vittel in between times.’ She looked pointedly to Polly. ‘You understand, don’t you, baby?’
It seemed to Jürgen that Polly clearly didn’t, yet she nodded bravely.
‘Doctor Mandel is at Vittel,’ Lana Mae said, ‘I told you that, didn’t I, baby?’
‘Yes. Yes, you did.’
There was a secretive smile now shared by the women.
Jürgen conceded to Lana Mae’s wishes, patently relieved. In truth he would have been hard pressed to achieve any more than he had already.
Lana Mae seemed to be looking at her ward meaningfully. ‘Baby, I’m feeling so parched,’ she told Polly. ‘Could you see if there’s coffee to be had? Or maybe some tea?’
Polly stood up to leave the little room. ‘Of course, Lana Mae.’
‘Günther will keep me company.’ Her guardian smiled, sinking deeper into the pillows. She actually winked. ‘No need to rush . . .’
With Polly gone, Jürgen saw Lana Mae’s demeanour change instantly.
‘Günther . . .’ She beckoned him closer.
He bent his head to hear better.
‘I’m gonna beat this,’ she whispered.
‘Of course, you will,’ he said automatically.
There was now a desperation to her eyes that she’d kept hidden from Polly. Her voice seemed a husk of itself, a dry leaf. ‘When I started hurting and bleeding down there, I told Doc Mandel that I knew what was causing it . . .’
The Heart of the Ritz Page 30