Solitaire

by Jane Thynne

  To Clara, Anglo-German by birth and English by upbringing, the idea of her native land under Nazi occupation was a special horror. She had arrived in Berlin at the age of twenty-six after a less than glorious stage career in London, hoping that at Babelsberg she might make a fresh start in films. Yet the past seven years had taught her far more than the talents required for motion pictures. Whereas in England a girl of her background might have learned to type and address letters, to set a table, arrange the silver and make correct conversation with vicars, in Germany she had acquired far more specialized skills. How to pass as a guileless actress amid the highest echelons of the Third Reich. To listen to the complaints and confidences of the wives of the senior men, observe their feuds and mine their every move for evidence of Hitler’s intentions. And to relay every piece of useful information back to her contacts in the British secret service.

  She had learned how to spy.

  Yet since war had been declared, her position was more dangerous than it had ever been. For years her British heritage had marked her out, but now it was a terrifying vulnerability, a dreadful weakness, and although her Englishness had been formally renounced and eradicated by a sheaf of official documentation, the stain of it lingered. And as if that were not enough, beneath the perilous mark of her ancestry another, far more damning vulnerability remained. When she first arrived in Germany, in 1933, she had discovered that her grandmother, Hannah Neumann, was a Jew. Therefore, Clara, through her maternal line, was Jewish too. It was a fact she kept deeply hidden, a secret that would not only end her career but could threaten her life itself.

  Last summer, the family she had not seen for so long, her father, sister and brother, had all written separately, urging her to return to England. Her father sent two lines of spiky script like a military command, Kenneth’s letter was full of brusque, brotherly concern and her elder sister Angela had filled pages in her elegant, flowery hand, offering a schedule of tennis parties, bridge evenings, dances and dinners, and all the chintz-covered safety of the Home Counties.

  Yet still Clara hesitated, reluctant to abandon Erich. It was seven years now since his mother, a fellow actress at Babelsberg, died in a suspicious fall and Clara had vowed to care for the orphaned ten-year-old. Since then the relationship between them had grown close, and nothing pleased her more than his company on their weekend outings, watching him develop into a teenager of quick intelligence, debating, relaxing, laughing with him. Then in September the borders of the Reich clanged shut and she lost her chance to leave. She was left with only Erich and a document declaring her a citizen of the German Reich. One she loved dearly, the other she hated more with each passing day.

  A chill breeze sliced the night air and she tried to walk faster. Clara always travelled by train now; the little red Opel she had once driven was locked up in a garage in Neukölln and she had been required to surrender its battery. Even if she’d kept it, petrol was impossible to come by. However, the twenty-minute S-Bahn ride from Babelsberg station to the centre of Berlin suited her. It was impossible to read on the train because the windows were fitted with thick blinds fastened to the panes and alternate light bulbs had been removed, leaving only small pools of light above the seating in a zigzag pattern, so Clara had put the leather bag containing the script for a new film to one side as the train swayed on its tracks through the shadowy suburbs. She relished these small moments of solitude where she could exist, unobserved. Everyone did. You saw people on the trams and the trains and the buses, building invisible barriers so they could sink into their thoughts. Nobody looked at each other if they could help it. Everything was rationed nowadays – even smiles.

  That evening she had been especially late leaving the studios and the carriage was entirely empty until Mexikoplatz, when the train braked with a hydraulic sigh, the doors slid open and a figure walked in through the gloom. Despite having an entire carriage to choose from he had approached and settled himself on the wooden seat directly facing Clara. A brief glance upwards told her that he was youngish – thirty perhaps. Average build, regular features, anonymous-looking. Unassuming. That was how she would have described it had she been paying enough mental attention even to put it in words. He wore a greasy beige fedora, shabby suit and a white shirt that gleamed in the blue light. Dark hair, with a widow’s peak. Politely she looked away, but when she glanced back, the man’s eyes remained unflinchingly on her face. Almost certainly he recognized her – that happened increasingly often – and was trying to work out exactly why. Most probably he was ransacking his memory, seeking to place her, running through a mental list of his acquaintances until it dawned that she was neither one of his neighbours, nor a girl in his office, nor the woman who served him in his local bakery but an actress he had seen on the big screen. Clara Vine, that was the one, who had starred in Black Roses and The Pilot’s Wife and The Stars Shine. When that happened, the realization would be generally accompanied by an embarrassed smile or a sheepish shake of the head. Sometimes even an autograph request. And yet . . . this man’s stare suggested no such mental confusion. His gaze was intent, the mouth steady, the eyes pools of inscrutable shadow. Clara felt a prickle of unease. It was as if he did know who she was.

  Yet she most certainly did not know him.

  Moments passed and the thud of doors echoed down the platform. The man was still staring at her, directly, and then, as the guard’s whistle sounded, he moved fractionally forward as though he was about to address her. At that moment a heavily panting woman in a stout tweed suit and woollen stockings slammed open the dividing doors at the end of the carriage and settled herself in the seat next to Clara, giving off a mingled odour of cooking and cheap perfume. The train jerked forward with a pneumatic hiss and began to move.

  The woman got out her bag and despite the poor light, which rendered the needles almost invisible, began knitting. Everywhere you went women were knitting now. On every street and in every magazine the jaunty governmental slogan could be seen. The German Woman Is Knitting Again! At home and in public places women knitted and knitted as though needles themselves were weapons of war and the nets of wool they created could somehow reach out and wrap themselves round their distant sons and hold them safe.

  The man leaned back slightly, placed one leather-gloved hand on each splayed knee, and relocated his stare to a spot just beyond her left shoulder. Clara did the same, focusing on a poster opposite reading I am a member of the NSV – are you? while she allowed her mind to drift.

  The eye adjusts to darkness, and just as Clara’s eye had adjusted over seven years to the placards condemning the Jews, the arrests and disappearances, the police informers in every shop and office, so she had grown accustomed to the darkness that had fallen on her life. The ashy deadness of Berlin suited her, because it matched the leaden monochrome of her existence.

  Berlin was a city of absent men, but the man missing from Clara’s life would never return. The previous year her lover, Leo Quinn, was reported killed in a shoot-out at the German border, along with Conrad Adler, the German officer who was helping him escape. Leo, the person who first encouraged Clara as a nervous young actress to relay the gossip she encountered in the company of senior Nazis back to British intelligence. Leo, who schooled her in espionage and, in the process, had fallen in love with her.

  It had been Mary Harker, an American journalist and Clara’s closest friend, who picked up the news of the incident from the press club that evening a year ago and passed it on. Two unnamed enemies of the state, challenged at a border checkpoint, had attempted to escape and been cut down in a hail of fire. Mary had known barely anything of their love affair because Clara and Leo had kept their secret from everyone, so their story had slipped into the past unseen, engulfed by events like a raindrop sliding into a lake.

  Perhaps for that reason, or because she had not witnessed his death, Clara found it hard to accept the finality of the event. She had no photograph of Leo. She would never know his last words. When they parted th
ey imagined they would meet up again within days, or at the very least weeks, but instead Leo had disappeared as entirely as his car’s red tail lights had vanished that evening from view.

  She remembered people telling her about shell shock during the last war. How it would come in waves, and there would be intervals of feeling almost entirely normal, and now she knew that was true, because it was exactly how she felt. At times her whole body ached, as though heartbreak was a physical condition, yet the rest of the time she functioned the same as ever. She had a horror of staying still and did everything she could to keep busy. During the day, acting, getting into costume, in make-up, in the canteen or talking to friends, she was able to shut the thought of Leo away entirely, but at night her sleep was torn with dreams and memories. Frequently she was jolted into wakefulness by a sense that he had returned – even that he was sleeping right next to her – only to fall back into a fitful doze. Or she would lie awake with the same scenes playing over and over in her mind, as if she was caught in some remorseless searchlight she couldn’t escape. Insomnia slowed time to a leaden pace. She craved sleep like an addict. Yet every morning she welcomed the moment when she woke up and the world surged in; even if it was a world filled with war, it was still a place where people baked bread, played games and made films – more so now than ever.

  Babelsberg, the Hollywood of Europe, was busy. Two thousand people worked on its eight sound stages, turning out the mélange of escapist musicals and stalwart military films that was their contribution to the war effort. Clara was relieved to be occupied, even if the work presented its own problems. The bag beside her contained the script of a new film called Jud Süss for which she had been asked to audition. Its director, Veit Harlan, was one of Babelsberg’s stars and no one turned him down him with impunity, yet a brief glance at the script caused Clara’s heart to sink. Although it was set in the eighteenth century, its theme of a ruthless conniving Jew destroying the city of Württemberg could not echo more clearly the sentiments of its originator, Joseph Goebbels.

  What the five foot six Goebbels lacked in stature he made up for with the longest title in the Reich – Minister for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment and Head of the Reich Chamber of Culture. For years he had mistrusted Clara. He had had her tailed and investigated. Once he had her arrested and imprisoned. Despite her acquaintance with his wife, Magda, Clara knew Goebbels could never quite shake the conviction that this London-born actress was memorizing the gossip and information she encountered in the circle of the Nazi elite, and relaying it to British intelligence. As ever with Goebbels, his instinct was stronger than his evidence. All the same, she was increasingly careful to avoid him.

  Clara carried on through the unlit streets. The walls had a different texture in the darkness, as if they were made of something more solid than mere brick. Anti-Jewish graffiti appeared sporadically like prickly stigmata. She crossed the canal, and turned the corner into Potsdamer Strasse. With dismay she noted that the flags were out again. Each residential block was decked in swastika banners to mark the recent victory in France. Since May, there were more posters and banners than ever. Flags were hung out as regularly as washing on the stucco façades and if any window failed to display one when the order had gone out, a zealous blockwarden would complain. Either a pennant must appear within two hours, or the authorities would. Rudi, the old man who supervised Clara’s own block in Winterfeldtstrasse more fiercely than Cerberus guarded the gates of hell, was no exception.

  ‘I’m sorry, Fräulein Vine,’ he explained, with not a trace of apology, the last time Clara had neglected to unearth her musty scarlet pennant from its place at the bottom of a drawer. ‘You actresses are busy. We all know that. But there’s only one Führer and the law’s the law.’ He tapped his watch. ‘As soon as you can, please.’

  In the distance she saw a speck of light that formed into a disembodied luminous swastika wavering towards her. It might have seemed something from a horror movie, had Clara not known it was a phosphorescent lapel badge, one of the newly fashionable kind that allowed their wearer to express Party allegiance even in the darkest hours.

  The swastika came closer, its wearer a shapeless shadow. She felt a leap of disquiet and picked up her pace. With so many men away from Berlin, those that remained had become emboldened and were given to approaches they would never previously have dared to make. She told herself that there were plenty of people who worked late hours. This man was probably just as eager to get home to his bed as she was.

  He was only a few feet from her when a torch beam sliced through the thick darkness. She startled as he obstructed her path and flipped his torch upwards, dazzling her as she raised her hand to shield her eyes. His body blocked the background light. Squinting, she saw it was the man she had noticed before, the one on the train. Dark hair with a widow’s peak. Expressionless. Beige fedora. The light of the torch from below made the lines and angles of his face stand out chalky against the blackness.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  She sidestepped him and made to walk on but the man sprang to stop her.

  ‘Please get out of my way.’

  He moved towards her so that she was forced to edge up closer against the wall and his hand went to his pocket. Panic overwhelmed her and in a reflex she brought the heavy manuscript bag swinging upwards, clashing against his solar plexus, winding him. The man reeled back in surprise, but only for a moment, before stepping forward again, his face looming towards hers.

  What did he see when he looked there? A slender woman in a pale blue skirt and a blouse buttoned to the neck beneath a jacket that was a couple of seasons old. A solemn face, thinner than it had been, the girlish roundness gone, but still heart-shaped and framed by wavy chestnut hair that was cut short and fastened with a clip to one side. A straight nose, generous lips outlined with just a trace of blush pink, and brows tweezered into high arches to emphasize eyes of deep blue. If he had looked deeper in those eyes he would have seen a steel harder than any blade, tempered by loss and untarnished by fear, the steel of someone who had already come so close to death that it no longer had the power to frighten her.

  A sudden burst of male laughter sounded to their right and both looked round to see twin red glows bobbing towards them. Two cigarettes were approaching, accompanied by their smokers. Their large forms were indistinct, but a glimmer on the pavement showed where the men had applied luminescent paint to the toe of their shoes.

  The man in the fedora stiffened, sensing discovery, and stepped back. Clara took the opportunity to break away, running swiftly the few yards round the corner of her own street. She guessed he would not pursue her with other people so close by and she was right. Yet her heart was still hammering as she reached the ochre block at 35, Winterfeldtstrasse and pushed the heavy wooden door.

  The dim entrance hall was empty, the tiled floor pitted and rank with bleach. Buckets of sand stood in case of fire and on the notice board Rudi had pinned directions to the air-raid shelter – as if they were needed – alongside a variety of yellowing notices, warnings and threats. A memo from the Propaganda Ministry about an upcoming parade. Fresh protocols from the Reichsluftschutzbund, the air-raid body. Collections for the Winterhilfswerk. Slipping in, Clara decided against taking the elevator, in case the clanking iron cage woke the other residents, and instead trudged up the stone stairway to the fifth floor.

  Removing the tiny pebble from the door handle – her precaution against unsolicited guests – she locked it behind her and kicked off her shoes. She adored this apartment. It was perfectly situated and in a lively area. Its single corridor had a bathroom, bedroom and kitchen leading off it and at the end, its glory, a high-ceilinged, book-lined sitting room with a window that looked out over the crooked grey rooftops of Nollendorfplatz, although that window was now patterned with criss-crossed strips of tape to prevent bomb damage. It also contained a desk with a wobbly leg and her old, red velvet armchair, next to a towering pile of books waiting to be read.

/>   She drew the heavy black curtain, switched on the lamp and gazed around her at her beloved possessions and the photographs of her mother and Erich on the mantelpiece, as if drawing comfort from their familiar presence. Sometimes these walls seemed to squeeze her so it was hard to breathe, at other times their embrace enclosed and comforted her. Now was one of these times.

  She went into the kitchen, put some water on to boil and moved restlessly about, her pulse still racing, clasping and unclasping her arms around her chest. She wasn’t cold, even though coal had run out in May, meaning the apartment was chilly and she couldn’t heat the stove. Nor was she hungry, which was lucky because she had not had the chance to shop that day. Rationing had been in force since war broke out, but the complexity of the system, coupled with the scarcity of groceries on offer, meant there were always long queues. Had Clara’s Jewish identity been known, her cards would have been printed with a J and her much reduced rations would only be available at the end of the day when most of the food had gone. But then if her Jewish identity was known she would not be in the Reich Chamber of Culture, or in this apartment, or in Berlin for that matter.

  She ran her fingers down her throat. There was a rushing sound in her ears. Abstractedly she twirled a lock of hair that fell down into her eyes – a habit she had when thinking – as the implications of her encounter dawned. In recent weeks a spate of attacks had taken place on or near the tracks of Berlin’s S-Bahn. A man dubbed the S-Bahn attacker was being held responsible for several assaults that had left women fighting for their lives. The attacks had transfixed the citizens of Berlin and details of each one were relayed with breathless urgency in the local papers. Everything about that evening suggested that Clara had met the same man. The moment on the train when he leaned forward and seemed about to accost her until the Hausfrau with her knitting settled in the seat alongside. The fact that he followed her from the station to her home, only to be interrupted by a pair of pedestrians. Even as she digested the shock she knew it would no doubt reverberate as she reflected on her lucky escape over the next few hours.