The Berlin Girl

by Mandy Robotham

  The tinny speaker aboard the plane crackled into life. ‘Thank you for flying Lufthansa today, ladies and gentlemen,’ the stewardess said in her native, crisp tone. ‘Welcome to Germany’s great capital – Berlin.’

  Towards the back of the plane, a voice rang out in response, distinct and audible: ‘Heil Hitler!’

  4

  A Simmering City

  Berlin, 2nd August 1938

  Georgie stepped onto German soil for only the second time in her life and sensed a change in the air, dense with heat and politics. Glancing back at the plane, she noted the Lufthansa tailfin was painted entirely in a large swastika and felt a pinch in her gut that she had been unwittingly flying inside a large advert for a party she already viewed with a great deal of suspicion.

  The small line of passengers made their way towards the terminal, which – though dressed in Nazi regalia – was undoubtedly impressive: commanding yet stylish, the sleek art-deco lines of its tall, slim windows cut into fawn limestone brick, glowing against the sun’s rays.

  Civilian staff along the way smiled and said how welcome the passengers were, how much they hoped she and Max would enjoy their stay. And yet the atmosphere was thick with mistrust. A uniformed border guard thrust out his hand for Georgie’s passport, his eyes boring into the print for some secret missive between the lines. He caught her eye and held it defiantly, perhaps as a way of injecting a clear message: You may be welcome, foreigner. But you are watched. If she didn’t know otherwise, Georgie might have imagined Germany was already at war.

  A good deal of Tempelhof Airport was still under construction, with builders milling about amid the staff. Georgie also felt a definite presence of Stormtroopers and army personnel, their red or white Nazi armbands easily picked out against the dull granite of construction and the ghost grey of SS troops, eyes narrowed under their caps. She stared almost open-mouthed at the spectacle, while Max the seasoned traveller strode confidently into the building, casting about for signs of the driver who was due to meet and transport them both into the city centre. Seeing no obvious driver, he stood awkwardly, shuffling his feet.

  Georgie, for her part, was marvelling at the inside of the terminal, the great height of its ceiling and its coolness, sleek desks of chrome and muted beige, airport staff in crisp attire, plus a bustle and excitement that she only ever felt when travel and change were imminent. It felt a world away from her routine life in London. It was wonderfully cosmopolitan.

  ‘Coffee while we wait?’ Max said finally, gesturing at a small bar to the side.

  Again, the answer was a resounding yes. It was one of the things about the continent Georgie missed most – like the French, Germans knew how to brew thick, strong coffee, unlike the distinctly weaker version back home. It was stout and uncompromising, and not unlike its politics at present. She was thirsty but coffee was needed most.

  The bartender raised his eyebrows in anticipation, but Max’s eyes shifted uncomfortably. He turned to her instead. ‘What will you have?’ He’d lost his air of confidence – and authority – in an instant.

  Georgie took up the mantle. ‘Zwei Milchkaffee bitte,’ she said, surprising herself at how easily it tripped off her tongue. Max pulled a wad of Reichsmarks out of his pocket before she had a chance to delve into her own bag, but she let this one go – for now. She would pay her way.

  Balancing on bar stools, they sipped at the hot, strong liquid, the caffeine giving an instant thrust to their senses.

  ‘So, George, how did you get this posting?’ Max asked.

  ‘Not how you probably imagine,’ she said smartly. It was a common query from other journalists, almost always male.

  ‘And how would that be?’

  Georgie looked at him squarely, trying to work him out; even if they were to have little to do with each other in Berlin, it irritated her that he already swayed in her estimation, minute by minute. She liked to get the measure of people quickly – her survival in this world depended on it. But so far she could make neither head nor tail of Max Spender; arrogance in abundance, yes, but there was something else. That large chip on his shoulder aside, she also tasted something nearing fear.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘either you imagine I’ve had some romantic liaison with an editor or publisher, someone who’s able to arrange a job like this, more as a way of keeping me out of the way of his wife, or that my daddy is someone rich in the city and has used his influence.’ She sipped again, keeping a firm look upon his face. Did she catch a split-second wince around his eyes? Maybe.

  He was soon back to teasing, except she couldn’t decide if it was out of humour or conceit. ‘So which is it?’ he said.

  ‘Could you ever contemplate that’s it’s neither of those?’

  ‘Try me.’ His confidence was rising again in line with the caffeine consumption.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I got my degree in English at university. I worked on a local newspaper first and then climbed my way up at the Chronicle. From the bottom.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you started as the tea lady?’ His eyes sparkled at his own joke.

  But Georgie wasn’t laughing. ‘Pretty much. You’d be surprised at how many pots of tea you have to make to get an editor to notice your work.’

  He noted her vexation and heeded the warning. ‘So, was it in regional news that you earned your stripes?’

  Now, her eyes dropped away – Georgie’s turn for her confidence to take a knock. She wasn’t ashamed of it, but she surprised herself at how hard it was to admit which department was responsible for her promotion to foreign news.

  She flicked up her head, drew in a breath. ‘I started in fashion actually,’ she said. Her tone was tart, daring him to respond with incredulity.

  He took a second to absorb the meaning of what she’d said. ‘You were here, at the Olympics, as a fashion correspondent?’ He was barely keeping his laughter under wraps.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. Steady, Georgie, she chanted to herself, don’t let them get to you. It had been her mantra almost since entering the Chronicle’s office just two years previously, principally when she was handed a sheaf of typing and told to ‘make it snappy’. Handing it back and voicing – calmly – that she was a reporter rather than one of the typing pool had taken a good deal of resolve. Good training for any journalist.

  ‘And we uncovered a good many stories that the news hacks did not,’ she added with pride. ‘It does well to be invited to plenty of social events and mingle among the gossips. It’s where tongues are loosened by too much champagne. In the end, it was the news boys who came to us for the goods.’ It was also where she had nurtured her contact for the Diana Mosley exclusive, but she held back on revealing that little nugget.

  It was clear from Max’s face that he didn’t quite know what to do with this unexpected piece of information – his deep frown signalled it was worse than he could possibly imagine: stuck with a woman, and one who reports on tweed versus linen instead of hard news. Georgie, though, was unapologetic. Better she admit it now, rather than risk being ‘outed’ at some gathering of the press corps, when the drinks and the secrets flowed freely. She knew her resolve wouldn’t hold so well in a crowd.

  Despite the office prejudice of some, Georgie truly loved the Chronicle. It was a people’s paper, filled with a diverse mix of news, features and stories; alongside the adverts for Bile Beans, Bird’s Custard and lawnmowers, there were endless articles on home management and ‘The best way with a cauliflower’. But the Chronicle was also keen to publish editorial on women’s career achievements, and not afraid to call ‘Jew-baiters’ to task. Its politics were firmly on the side of humanity.

  ‘I know I have plenty to learn, and plenty to prove,’ she said to Max, filling in the awkward silence.

  ‘You and me both,’ she thought she heard him mutter into his cup. But by then he’d leapt off his stool and was yards down the concourse, chasing after a man with a welcome sign. Their driver had finally arrived.

  Th
e journey north from Tempelhof took them through residential streets and then into the heart of bustling Berlin. Max rode in the taxi’s front seat, talking with the driver who had a decent grasp of English, while Georgie was happily alone in the back, tasting the air through the open window and enjoying the breeze on her cheeks. A chance to absorb, to take in the extraordinary sights.

  Extraordinary it was, in overshadowing Georgie’s last view of the city in August 1936, when the world’s athletes had descended upon the unlikely choice of Berlin as host of the Olympic Games. Back then, the pomp and ceremony had been enough of an eye-opener. Streets around the city and the specially built stadium – designed to seat 100,000 spectators – were swamped with Nazi insignia, clean lines of flags that seemed programmed to flutter by order. Everything was precise and in its place. Pristine. The world was watching as the Nazis orchestrated their best show at the opening ceremony – a Wagnerian display of music and procession under the silver cloud of the imposing master airship, the Hindenburg, which hovered above, a tense build-up to when Hitler himself arrived in the arena with all the kudos of an emperor and strode up to his viewing box.

  Even when African-American athlete Jesse Owens won four gold medals, threatening to soil the whiter than white showing of Aryan strength, the Nazis did not falter. Georgie heard foreign visitors with her own ears, muttering that perhaps France and Britain, even the US, had been wrong in judging the National Socialists too harshly. Germany – and with it, Berlin – seemed a place where you could feel safe. The Nazi propaganda machine had triumphed. What the visitors hadn’t seen, but the journalists were party to, was more telling; those Jewish athletes ‘persuaded’ not to take part, or the visitors who’d stood naively by during a Nazi parade without offering the Hitler salute, being shuffled off the pavement by Stormtroopers and given a firm, sometimes physical reprimand. Those were the stories that made it to Georgie’s ears, via the whirl of social parties and ‘trivial’ fashion journalism. The same stories that occasionally made it into the paper, buried as a few lines in the back pages, always overshadowed by the pseudo-fiction of the German Minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, and his army of crack publicists.

  Two years on, the sheen was gone and the Berlin in front of Georgie’s eyes was astonishing in a different vein; it was still ordered, the wide impressive streets designed in distinct, neat lines and the buildings grandiose and imposing. But there was no mask anymore, no need to hide what the National Socialist German Workers’ Party – the Nazis – were about. Their determination to dominate was unabashed; that much was clear from the imposing columns that came into view as the taxi approached and then turned into the capital’s most prominent thoroughfare, the Unter den Linden. Scores of white pillars, four abreast, swept down the entire length of the boulevard, many topped with the eagle emblem of the Nazi insignia, some white, some gold, blinding in the midday glare. It was no accident that Georgie needed to look upwards at these towering symbols of power, like the pictures of ancient Rome she remembered from her history books – the phrase ‘delusions of grandeur’ came immediately to her mind. It was an uneasy feeling, and one she would be keeping to herself.

  The driver parked at the far end of Unter den Linden, on the Pariser Platz, unmistakable with the city’s iconic gateway directly opposite: the impressive Brandenburg Gate, with its six vast columns leading towards the Tiergarten, the city’s equivalent to Hyde Park. The gate was topped with the statuesque goddess of peace on her chariot and four horses, embellished nowadays with the Nazi emblem. Another supreme irony, Georgie mused, given the storm clouds of war looming in the nearby embassies and scores of government offices.

  ‘I think my hotel’s a bit further down this road,’ Georgie said. They were parked directly outside the renowned Hotel Adlon, and although the Chronicle had been generous in its first week’s allowance of a decent hotel, she definitely wouldn’t be housed in Berlin’s centrepiece of style.

  ‘Seems there’s a little bit of a post-lunch welcome party arranged for us in here,’ Max said from the front. ‘The driver says he’ll take our luggage on.’

  She felt like royalty as the doors were opened by staff in neat blue livery, and then immediately underdressed in her tailored but worn everyday skirt and blouse.

  ‘Welcome, madam,’ the doorman said in perfect English, and she replied her thanks in German. Walking into the lobby was like entering a labyrinth of sheer opulence; her eyes combed over the vaulted and painted ceilings in Baroque style, feet stepping on intricate Turkey carpets, with statues alongside dripping in gilt, silent staff gliding to bring glasses that chinked with good cheer and echoed money. Somewhere in the background, the gentle trickle of water fountains calmed a total assault on the senses. Neither needed a journalist’s nose to locate the welcome party, following a general hum of conversation rising above the splendid aura of the Adlon.

  ‘This looks like us,’ Max said as he led them eagerly towards the bar.

  ‘Here they are, another couple of lambs for the slaughter,’ one loud voice boomed with good cheer, as his long arms extended and his imposing form scooped them into the fray. ‘What’ll you have?’

  The drinks – Georgie opting for a soda water, while Max craved a cold German beer – seemed to appear magically and before long they were deep in conversation. The group was mostly made up of print journalists from the British, American and French papers, with a smattering of radio hacks too. Was this their first assignment? they quizzed. What was the feeling back in Britain? Was there much talk on the streets about Germany, Hitler or war?

  The gathering of ten or so clustered around the bar introduced themselves, though the names swam around Georgie’s tired brain. She was glad to see two women on the edges of the group, heads together, and for a minute she didn’t feel quite so alone. She longed to approach them and ask how it was, being a woman on the job – how they were treated and viewed – but the two seemed preoccupied, perhaps a little aloof, so she didn’t dare intrude. There’s plenty of time, she told herself.

  Max appeared very much at home, and as if he half knew some of the personalities. Certainly, his father was mentioned more than once, but he replied only briefly, steering the conversation promptly back to the Berlin of the moment.

  ‘I’m supposed to hook up with my bureau man today. Cliff Sutton?’ Max queried, draining his beer. As perhaps the longest serving of the resident correspondents attached to the overseas newspaper offices – or bureaux – Cliff was distinctly absent. Looks were exchanged across the group. Georgie noted several sets of eyes making contact with the floor.

  ‘Ah well, you’ve missed him for today,’ said Rod Faber, the New York Times’ veteran correspondent and he of the long arms, copious beard and resonant voice. ‘He’s usually here until about midday, but probably at home by now. I’d give him ’til at least six before you make contact.’

  Max’s face dropped. Reading between the lines was essential for a journalist and, whatever his background, he was no exception. Anyone who propped up a bar until midday and then needed a rest was clearly a slave to the bottle – no wonder the London office had wanted a fit and mobile apprentice in Berlin. Someone who could focus.

  ‘And my contact – Paul Adamson? Will he be coming?’ Georgie asked. Surely they couldn’t be so unlucky in having two hacks married to the schnapps?

  ‘Hmm, Paul’s suffering from a touch of confusion,’ a man behind her pitched in. Georgie cocked her head with interest.

  ‘He’s fallen head over heels for a German actress,’ the man went on, then paused. ‘And his wife’s just about to have a baby in England, meaning you might not see a great deal of him, either before or after the birth.’ He placed his empty glass on the bar. ‘Still, you’ve always got us to guide you through, eh guys?’ There was a small cheer as they all raised glasses at the suggestion.

  Georgie failed to dredge even a weak smile out of her supply bag, despite the friendship on offer. Instead, she glanced at an equally apprehensive Max. S
he had expected to think on her feet, even relished the challenge. But guidance in a foreign city was essential. She had no contacts and finding them would be almost impossible in the dark. These men and women of the press, they seemed nice enough, generous too, but everyone guarded a good story when they had one. That was just the name of the game. She cast around the Adlon and its luxury, the beautiful people of Berlin sipping coffee and cocktails, and it all seemed so perfect. But it wasn’t, was it? This was real life now, not a soiree or a socialites’ party designed to produce critical copy on whether lace or organza was more suited to the occasion. This would be hard, and she’d better grow up swiftly, or Berlin might swallow her whole.

  As the hour wore on, one or two of the group left to send over their stories to newsrooms worldwide and the bar began to empty. Georgie and Max made their excuses and left together; the Hotel Bristol was a short walk along the Unter den Linden, and Georgie especially was keen not to waste the day, eager to map the city in her mind. They walked in silence, Max clearly deep in thought, and – for the first time – a despondency in his step. Georgie’s eyes couldn’t help but be drawn upwards, at yet more of the red swathe draping each and every stone monolith – scores of Nazi flags rippling in a minor breeze, like vast ceiling-to-floor curtains upon a stage. The same thought crept into her mind from two years previously: never mind the strong rumours of Hitler’s rearmament, using Germany’s heavy industry to stockpile weapons and tanks, all in breach of worldwide conventions, Georgie Young wondered how many factories and women were now employed in making Nazi insignia, weaving and stitching the symbol of their Führer into cloth? And how many really believed in its power? Or his, for that matter?

  Such lightweight notions she kept to herself, while Max closely guarded his own thoughts, his face a cloud compared to its animation at the Adlon bar. They neared the grand edifice of the Hotel Bristol, embroidered with its layers of ornate stone lacing. As with every other building, it flew the colours of its Nazi allegiance at the entrance.