by Thynne, Jane
‘So tell me about Babelsberg,’ he called from the kitchen. ‘Is it everything you imagined?’
‘I never imagined it, because I’d never acted on film before I came to Berlin. It was a whole new art for me. Coming here was a step into the unknown.’
His voice had lost its wariness and was full of unguarded enthusiasm. He had thrown a white cloth over his small dining table and lit a candle, but offset the romantic touch with a small, ironic bow, offering her a glass of Hock.
‘German wines are much better than we give them credit for, but no one much drinks them back in Britain.’
The lunch he had prepared was surprisingly good. Though the onion soup was canned, the mushroom omelettes were springy and glistening with butter. He had made a salad of cabbage and apple. She ate ravenously, realizing how hungry she was. It was as though all her senses had been starved up to this moment. His eyes searched her face anxiously as she ate.
‘I hoped you might have an appetite. I’m not much of a cook, but I can knock up the basics.’ There was something endearing about this admission. It was like a chink in his armour. Clara savoured every mouthful, realizing that it was years since anyone had cooked specifically for her.
When they were sated, she lay on his cracked leather sofa with her head on his lap as he talked, smoothing her brow with deft, hypnotic strokes.
‘My father was vicar of St Anselm’s in Brooklands. It was a standard, redbrick, Victorian place with a standard Victorian congregation to match. I think Dad had ambitions to be a bishop, but he didn’t have quite the right connections and by the time I was aware of it, he seemed always to have a lingering resentment about him. Not that he’d ever express it, of course, he was far too buttoned-up for that, but it was clear he intended to fulfil his ambitions through me. He always wanted me to follow him into the Church; unfortunately he was disappointed.’
‘You’re not a believer then?’
He gave a dry laugh. ‘When I was younger I was perfectly happy to pay lip service to God. The kind of childhood God you say grace to, or pray to when your dog is ill. But the war changed everything. After what I saw there the idea of God meant nothing any more. How could a God of love preside over such desolation and misery?’
‘Did you tell your father that?’
‘He would have seen it as weakness. My father didn’t have much patience with human weakness.’
‘And you do?’
‘That depends entirely on the human.’
His fingers traced her hair tenderly as he spoke. ‘The only person I discussed it with was Tom. We’d always talked about everything, especially politics, even if we didn’t always see eye to eye. Tom was an intellectual. He was the kind of person who sees things entirely in black and white. Ideologies mattered very much to him, more than people, I sometimes thought, and yet after the war he lost interest entirely. He said all politicians were a load of frauds and none of them were any better than the others. I suppose the war affected everyone in different ways. That’s why it surprised me when I heard he’d gone out to Spain. I got a letter from him at Christmas, saying that the place he was holed up in had come under heavy bombardment and he didn’t rate his chances of coming out of it alive. Since then I’ve heard nothing.’
‘Surely there are people you could ask? I mean you have so many connections?’
‘Spain doesn’t work like that, Clara. It’s not orderly like Germany. People don’t keep records of every prisoner taken, or every body found. Whatever the moral chaos of the Nazis, their filing skills are second to none. But Spain is, well, it’s a maelstrom. I . . .’ He looked away, unwilling to finish the sentence, as if by uttering the words he was making them true. ‘I rather suspect that Tom’s dead.’
Then he smiled, a little too brightly.
‘Still. There’s no point discussing it.’
He fell silent so Clara began to talk about her arrival in Berlin, about meeting Leo Quinn and agreeing to spy on the Nazi women for him. Her discovery that her maternal grandmother Hannah Neumann had been Jewish, a fact which Clara’s own mother had never told her. Her determination to do everything she could to bedevil the Nazi regime. Ralph was a good listener. He absorbed her story without interruption, just the occasional nod, or raised eyebrow. The intimacy between them felt so complete it was as though they had not just stripped off their clothes, but entire layers of their being.
‘What you said before, that I understand nothing. What don’t I understand?’
He sighed, and kept stroking her hair. ‘The thing about me is, I’ve always needed to maintain control. I’ve become used to keeping other people at arm’s length. That’s the job, isn’t it? Control. Distance. Self-discipline. What you said about learning to build an invisible wall around oneself, well it’s true. It’s essential, in fact, if you’re going to do what I do. Nothing should breach it.’
‘And now you’ve let me breach it?’
‘Perhaps I was crazy to think I could avoid it. Or that I wanted to.’
Later, she watched him as he shaved, the blade flashing smoothly backwards and forwards as he scraped against his face, the splash of the hot water as he rinsed his razor, the intense concentration as he stared into the clouded mirror. Seeing her watching him, he kissed her and she ran her fingers through his damp hair where it was threaded with grey at the temples. For the first time in years she was free of the caution that waited at the edge of her mind, the need to keep part of herself secret. She hoped it was the same for him.
At one point he left the apartment to fetch milk and food and out of habit she had a quick look around the bedroom. There was the Harris Tweed jacket with leather on the elbows hanging in the wardrobe, and clothes neatly folded in the drawers with an orderliness that spoke of a boarding school training. When she felt beneath them she found nothing but a torch. She unearthed a photograph of a couple she took to be his parents in old-fashioned clothes standing in front of a wisteria-framed oak door, and another of Ralph standing next to a young man in cricket whites whom she guessed to be Tom. He was shorter than Ralph and a handsome man, though there was a severity in the set of the jaw and a hardness in his chiselled cheekbones that suggested a certain arrogant self-assurance.
When she heard his key in the door she resumed her place on the sofa and picked up The Times, trying to focus on the crossword. Her eyes glazed over the clues. A prize for exhaustion, 7 letters. But almost immediately she put the paper down again. Her mind was so full of Ralph, she didn’t require any distraction. He came up behind her and kissed her.
‘Atrophy.’
She frowned.
‘Seven letters, prize for exhaustion. A trophy.’
‘Oh, of course.’
‘On which subject,’ he said, reaching down to pull her towards him, ‘how exhausted are you?’
She kissed him back, and they went to bed again.
Afterwards, she saw him looking at her, his eyes glazed with thought, and she questioned him.
‘To be honest with you, generally after I’ve slept with a woman I want nothing more than for her to leave as fast as possible.’
She laughed. ‘I suppose I did ask you to be honest with me.’
‘I feel differently now. It’s like . . . I don’t know, like jumping into some damn Scottish loch and feeling the water so bracing that the blood rushes to your heart. Being with you reminds me I’m alive.’
The following morning when she woke he was not in bed beside her. She slipped quickly into her clothes, brushed her hair and came into the kitchen where he was standing at the window, wearing his dark silk dressing gown, staring sightlessly out at another leaden Berlin sky. He acknowledged her with a slight hunch of the shoulders.
‘Ralph.’
She approached and touched him, tentatively. He faced her, once again brisk and businesslike, with the inbuilt rigidity of the military man.
‘I need to be out today. I have a meeting with Rosenberg. We’re driving out to the Staaken airfield where he’s
going to show me the Messerschmitt Bf 109. They’ve refined it in Spain, apparently. It’s much improved. Then we’re on to inspect the new Heinkel factory at Oranienburg and after that there’s a dinner. It means I’ll be out pretty much all day. I can’t see myself getting back much before eleven.’
‘That’s fine.’
‘And there’s a lot going on in the next few days. You’ve heard of Charles Lindbergh, the American aviator?’
‘Of course.’ Wasn’t it Lindbergh who had helped Mary with her visa?
‘He’s coming over. It’s supposed to be an unofficial visit but all the air force top brass are turning out to meet him. There’s a reception at the Adlon.’
‘I’ll get my things together.’
‘No. Wait.’
He turned to her, took her in his arms and brushed the hair out of her eyes.
‘There’s something I need to tell you. I didn’t want to worry you until absolutely necessary. It was selfish of me, I know, but I just wanted a little time alone with you before . . .’
‘Before what?’
‘When I went to your apartment the other day I saw a tail. A standard-issue Gestapo shadow. You’re being watched.’
‘I knew that.’
‘But then you were knocked down, and it was quite deliberate.’
‘I thought it was an accident.’
‘I saw it, Clara. That was no accident. The car drove straight at you. I couldn’t see his face but the man who knocked you down was not Gestapo. The shadow was already there. And besides, why watch you, if the order is to kill you? If the Gestapo wanted to get rid of you it would have happened already. It’s clear there’s someone else on your tail.’
She saw anxiety etched in his face, his brain rapidly calculating, his mind running through the possibilities.
‘Someone is after you, Clara. But why? Who are they?’
She shook her head.
Ralph drew himself up. ‘I’ve been thinking about it over the last two days and I’ve changed my mind. Archie Dyson was right. You’re going to have to lie low.’
‘You can’t mean that.’
‘I do. It’s the safest thing. It’s imperative. You need to stop everything you’re doing with Arno Strauss. You need to go back to being an actress whose only concerns are her wardrobe and the affections of her leading man.’
‘I won’t do that.’ She frowned.
‘You must. Don’t use the telephone, except for business calls. Don’t fraternize with American journalists. Don’t talk in bars.’
‘Give me credit for knowing the basics.’
‘Look at me, Clara.’ He took her shoulders. ‘You asked me why I didn’t want to get involved with you. Perhaps it was because of what’s happened to Tom. I’ve lost one person already. I wouldn’t want to lose another.’
He tipped her chin towards him.
‘The most important thing is, you mustn’t go home. There’s someone out there who wants to kill you. I don’t know who they are, or who they represent, but it’s essential you don’t give them the chance. You need to stay here. For your own safety. Promise me.’
She glanced away, but his fingers dug into her arms and he gave her a little shake. ‘Don’t look away! This is important, Clara. You could be jeopardizing far more than just yourself. If we were at war then this would be an order. Treat it like that. Promise me.’
‘I promise.’
Chapter Thirty-one
That Friday Ilse had been assigned the linen change. It was one of the better jobs at school, right up there with baking, and she wondered briefly if perhaps the staff recognized this and were making allowances for her, until she realized that it was just the rota. She loved the sweet, starchy smell of the fresh linen as she unfolded it stiff from the washing line, then took it to the ironing room, bright with clouds of scented steam. After ironing, the linen had to be taken to the cavernous airing cupboard, tucked away up in the eaves of the house, which meant you could disappear for a while with no one watching, and relax in the dim space with your eyes shut, leaning against the fragrant linen and feeling the warmth enter your bones. Ilse enjoyed everything about the linen change. She even loved the idea of it, rendering something fresh and clean and new.
But the last couple of times she had gone to unpeg the washing, she had a bad feeling. A prickle on the back of her neck which said someone was watching her. She could not see, smell or hear anything, but she felt it, at the limit of her senses. She whipped round several times, and caught nothing more than a few last leaves abandoning their branches and whirling down to a damp mulch below. One time she caught a flash of something white from the corner of her eye, but it could have been the tail of a bird, or the flick of the sheets in the breeze.
After lunch she had gone out again to feed the geese, which were being fattened for Christmas. The birds were confined in wooden boxes with just their long necks and heads protruding, so that they grew as big as possible before being killed. Ilse had grown up on a farm, so she wasn’t sentimental, but she felt sorry for the geese all the same. Most of the time they were quiet but whenever they sensed anyone approach they would crane their necks as much as they could, cackling for grain. As she stuffed the corn down their throats she looked around constantly, but there was nothing.
All afternoon she tried to focus on her household accounts, sorting everything into neat columns, Coffee, Tea, Milk, Sugar, with the amounts required and the cost, and then totting up everything at the bottom, stretching her terrible arithmetic to the limit. During all this time she cast glances out into the darkening garden, trying to probe the mass of shadow at the end of the lawn.
She had thought about calling the American lady, but she couldn’t find the card with her number on it. She must have dropped it somewhere. And how on earth would she go about telling Fraülein Harker she had a bad feeling in her bones?
After supper there was a short period before lights out which the brides used to write letters, read and chat or listen to the wireless. Ilse took the opportunity to slip down to the kitchen. The place was completely empty. Everything had been cleaned, the pots were washed and the pans hung in their places above the range. The kitchen smelled comfortingly of baking and faint wafts of that night’s chicken dinner. The dough for the next day’s bread was rising on the stove, swelling like a great bloated skull, and outside trails of woodsmoke curled through the evening air. Everything in Schwanenwerder was tranquil and Ilse was scared.
She wasn’t going to make Anna’s mistake and wander into the garden. She would only venture a couple of steps out from the kitchen door to the yard at the back of the house and see if she had the same feeling. Keeping the door open she edged a couple of steps forward. She couldn’t switch the kitchen light on, because she was out of bounds, so there were only the dancing flames of the woodburning stove to go by. The air was as cold as a knife, edged with moss and pine and the soft lapping of the lake. The distant sound of dance music on the wireless rippled from the drawing room. Ilse peered blindly into the dim garden, past the tall daisies beginning to crumple from the first frost, through the shrubs and the flowerpots lining the gravel of the path.
And that was when she saw it. Or rather him, because it was a man, she was sure of it, fifty metres away from her at the other side of the garden, emerging from the mass of trees towards the house itself. Ilse’s throat clenched with fear, preventing any scream she might have emitted, but her legs buckled beneath her and she took a step backwards. At the sound of her staggering the figure froze like a fox, stared at her, then hurried on, moving swiftly across the grass until his dark shape merged with the shadow of a wall, like a piece of the night itself.
Chapter Thirty-two
Clara waited until Ralph had left and then another fifteen minutes before she slipped out of the apartment and walked swiftly along Duisberger Strasse. She could keep her promise about not using the telephone and not fraternizing with American journalists, but she couldn’t stay with him. However much she liked
the idea, it would compromise him. Ralph was right to be afraid, but for the wrong reason. If someone was pursuing her, it would draw the danger to him, too. But at the same time, if the Gestapo really were watching her apartment, there was no sense in going straight home either.
The day was dingy and overcast. She walked deep in thought, barely seeing what surrounded her. Berlin was a city of straight lines, the perspective was in every way rectilinear, from the flatness of its terrain to the long avenues, even ascending to the rigid right arms of its people. Yet beneath those lines, everything was devious and twisted. Berlin was like a crossword – an apparently straightforward grid filled with puzzles and enigmas.
Who was on her tail? The Gestapo, almost certainly, but an assassin too? Was he a professional hitman, hired to kill? The idea seemed too ludicrous for words and yet, Ralph told her, she had been deliberately knocked down. He had seen it himself. What did she know, that someone needed so badly to obliterate it? What danger could she possibly pose to anyone? All around her the familiar streets were coated in a sheen of invisible danger. Everything ordinary glinted with threat, like rain on the cobblestones.
Eventually the cold overtook her. Her fingers were freezing because her gloves were at home, her coat was a little torn from where she had fallen and the clothes she was wearing were too flimsy to keep out the penetrating breeze. She crossed Wittenbergplatz and entered KaDeWe.