‘Oh, it’s you!’ she said, grasping at her throat in relief.
‘Who did you think it would be?’
‘Your footsteps were like a stampede – I imagined it was the Gestapo,’ she said, her chest still rising and falling with effort. ‘I thought I was going to have to get Elias into the attic by myself.’
‘I’m so sorry, my love,’ Rubin said, though he could barely contain himself, desperate to reveal the good news. ‘I’m just so relieved! She said yes, Sara. That reporter, from the Olympics, she hired me! A regular monthly fee – a very generous one at that. We’ll be fine, for the time being at least.’
Sara smiled her pleasure, though she couldn’t match Rubin’s feverish optimism. It would mean paying the arrears at the local grocery store, with possibly something left over. No one admitted it, but all their friends were squirrelling away every spare pfennig, and not for a family holiday on the lakes, as in the old days. The stockpiled Reichsmarks were for escape – enough to bribe for a visa, more for a safe route, with the rumours circling that soon all borders would be closed to Jews. Imprisoned in their own country, one that had recently been robbed from them.
An idea brewed within Sara Amsel’s mind as she began scraping together their meagre evening meal, and she chanced on asking while Rubin was in a good mood. He’d already pulled out the chessboard and was preparing for his evening match with Elias.
‘Rubin?’
‘Yes, my love?’
‘Do you think she can help with anything else, this reporter?’ She looked at her husband, her eyes wide and serious. ‘I mean, she’ll have some influence, surely – at the embassy? She’ll know people. She might be able to help Elias and the children? It doesn’t matter about us, but …’
Rubin stepped quickly across the tiny kitchen, put one hand on each of her shoulders, as if to silence her hope. So that he didn’t have to quash it bluntly.
‘No, Sara, I don’t think she can,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘She’s very nice, and already I suspect she sees past all this … the lies, the Reich. But she’s a junior reporter. She’s new. She’s just finding her own feet. So, no Sara. It wouldn’t be right to ask her.’
Her look of disappointment, the way she stared past him and into the small parlour, where her own brother was awaiting his highlight of the day, cut into him, like a sabre into soft flesh.
‘We’ll be all right, Sara,’ he reassured her, rubbing at the thin blouse covering her equally sparse skin. ‘I’m sure of it.’
But as he turned, his own face creased with worry. Would they? Could anyone with even a ripple of Jewish blood running through their veins really be safe?
10
A Good-Natured Scrap
15th August 1938
‘Here she is – reporter extraordinaire!’ Rod’s resounding tone spread far beyond the large, half-filled table at La Taverne. ‘Watch yourselves, boys – we can only stand by as this hot-shot correspondent puts us all to shame.’
Georgie slipped in beside Rod and nudged his broad shoulder with an embarrassed coyness, but she couldn’t deny being pleased at the good-humoured teasing. She snuck another glance at the back-page spread the Chronicle had afforded her piece, the photograph of the scrawny stable boy prominent alongside her copy; from George Young in Berlin. The coverage and Henry’s short but sweet telegram – ‘Spot on. HP’ – meant it had been worth it.
‘Just a lucky break,’ she said, her cheeks flushing.
‘Quite the opposite,’ Bill Porter replied, wiping beer froth from his moustache. ‘It was a very nice twist on what will prove to be, on the day itself, a nauseous brown-nosing of the Führer’s status in this sycophantic world.’
‘Thanks, Bill,’ she said, and Rod nodded his own admiration. Max was sitting opposite, and she noted his look – was it bordering on a scowl? But his attention was soon elsewhere, talking to an equally engaged Simone Doucette. Utterly enamoured.
Several of the reporters peeled away to file copy – the broadcasters had late slots booked in various studios dotted around the city, and Georgie and Simone settled on sharing a cab back home, too weary to brave a late-night tram.
‘Can I hitch a ride?’ Max asked. ‘I’ll take the cab on.’
Simone was only too keen, positioning herself between Georgie and Max, urging him in for coffee as they reached the Herderstrasse apartment.
‘If you’re sure,’ Max said. For all his aloof nature, he was ever the gentlemen, though he didn’t look to Georgie for her opinion.
‘Of course,’ Simone breathed. ‘Frida may be in too.’
Frida was lounging on the sofa in a long silk kimono and talking French into the telephone. She hung up as they came in, though didn’t move to get up, and accepted a brandy that Simone offered everyone; coffee clearly only a metaphor for an invitation. When Georgie pleaded exhaustion and headed for bed, Frida implored her to stay.
‘You’ve lived here for well over a week and we’ve hardly seen each other!’
‘Well, all right, just one.’
From across the room, Georgie observed Max and his intent gaze on Simone as she poured the drinks and handed them out, drawing in her every fluid move, admiration worn on his sleeve. With her striking looks and breathy delivery, an accent tinged with Parisian, men flocked like moths to a flame, and Max was no exception. Frida didn’t appear to notice and was keen to talk about work.
‘I liked your piece, Georgie,’ she said. ‘The irony was very subtle – I’d struggle to phrase something like that.’
Georgie was startled, unsure how to accept praise from a woman with Frida’s fearsome reputation as a hard news reporter, her bravado in rooting out stories that sold to publications worldwide. Instead, she said: ‘I only hope I’ve not made myself persona non grata with Bruno Bauer, so early into my posting.’
‘Oh no,’ Frida replied coolly. ‘Quite the opposite. I saw him today at the ministry and he was full of it. The stupid man wouldn’t know irony if it clouted him in his oily face. You’re his star, right now. It won’t last, however, so just milk it while you can.’ She closed her eyes and sank back further amid multiple cushions.
‘I wonder why you went with a feature?’ Max’s steely voice cut in suddenly, Simone perched on the arm of his chair. ‘Surely the whole point of a posting for a foreign correspondent is to report the news – the facts.’ He looked at her directly, his face rigid with some sort of challenge: Come on, golden girl, show us what you’re made of.
Georgie sat up, as if she’d been physically yanked by the scruff of her neck. Frida, too, opened her eyes and perked up at the prospect of a juicy dispute, a good-natured scrap.
‘In times like these I think even news pages have room for healthy speculation,’ Georgie began in defence. ‘It’s what might make our readers think, stir them to change their opinion.’
‘Isn’t that what the paper’s editorials are for?’ Max said, brow knitted and leaning forward, readying for some form of hot debate. ‘It’s not our job to change opinions. Only to report what we see.’
‘Really? I don’t agree,’ Georgie said. ‘You’ve heard of newspaper bias, surely?’
‘Of course I have! I’m not blind. But if we report the facts, then we minimise any bias.’ He seemed to have forgotten Simone’s presence temporarily, hell bent on sparring with George. ‘Putting our own spin on it doesn’t help the cause. We shouldn’t get involved.’
‘And how do you propose to do that?’ Georgie fired back, her fatigue overridden with passion. ‘Did you forget to pack your heart in your suitcase? The fact that we’re human makes us biased, Max. Seeing others treated poorly – Jews unemployed, scraping a living, despite the Nazi glitz. It’s a fact, but it involves people. We can’t ignore that.’
He sat back, looking stunned at her outburst, as if regrouping his own argument. ‘It’s just not my style,’ he muttered. ‘I prefer to follow where the facts take me.’
‘Yes, well, each to their own,’ Georgie conceded, sizzling with irr
itation. Who the hell does he think he is?
‘Music?’ Simone suggested swiftly, before they could go in for round two. Max grunted, but didn’t object, and Georgie only nodded – the static fizz of their sparring still bouncing in the air. The gentle jazz did temper the atmosphere, though, and the talk moved on to the bands playing in Berlin.
‘We have to show you the sights, Georgie,’ Frida said from the sofa. ‘We’ll go dancing and drinking, keep up Berlin’s reputation with a healthy dose of debauchery!’
‘Perhaps you can write a piece about that?’ Max muttered, firing his final arrow as Simone pulled him out of the room by the hand, and Georgie was left smiling inside at poking so well at that spit again.
‘You certainly touched a nerve there,’ Frida said with her familiar pout. ‘Well done, that woman!’
11
A Grey Butterfly
20th August 1938
When it came to socialising, Frida Borken was true to her word. Having spent her day trawling through government buildings and varying embassy introductions, walking the city until her feet ached, Georgie was ready for Berlin’s nightlife in all its excess.
‘What shall we drink to? The great leader and his ridiculous cronies?’ Frida chinked her glass and wrinkled her nose to signal her mockery. In turn, Georgie willed the noise of the nightclub to drown out Frida’s words. She was beginning to believe there really were ears everywhere, not least in her own office, where the phone line had begun to echo with a curious clicking each time she rang out.
Their indulgence was an alcoholic remedy to an entire day of pure PR – the Reich, it seemed, needed no excuse to march in front of their adored leader and afforded lucky Berliners a preamble of what could be expected in Nuremberg, though it was anything but brief. Bill Porter’s assessment of the Adolf adulation was perfect: a cacophonous, military brown-nosing, with a passing appearance on the balcony of Reich Chancellery of the man himself, a few salutes – rather half-hearted, Georgie thought – but no speech. Instead, they were bored witless by Göring’s puffed-up words, oozing flattery from his portly features.
In the small press box constructed along the Unter Den Linden, the front rows were given over to the German press – reporters from the Nazi-controlled Völkischer Beobachter, the violently anti-Semitic Der Stürmer, and Goebbels’s own Der Angriff, nicely translated as ‘the Attack’.
‘It’s a wonder they bother to bring their pencils at all,’ Bill whispered in Georgie’s ear, ‘since Goebbels has already written the pieces they’re allowed to print. He’s a dab hand with that crystal ball of his, being able to forecast their news each day.’
Frida had been placed somewhere near the front of the box, and Georgie already noticed how she seemed on friendly terms with many a Nazi officer, SS in particular – and yet she was so scathing of the regime when in press company or at home. Perhaps it’s what brought her the best stories, some of which Georgie knew that she wrote under a false name for protection. Being seated in the back rows, however – with Rod, Bill and more of the Adlon crowd – made Georgie feel like part of the naughty set. Amid the Nazi sycophancy, it was exactly where she wanted to be.
Bruno Bauer sat to the side of the press box, like the small child with a large bag of sweets, eyes fixed on his lookalike hero. For any foreign reporter, the crowds lining the avenue held the most fascination: some thrusting the true zeal of a Nazi salute, while others were lukewarm in their reactions, looking furtively around to check they weren’t being spied on, or that their near neighbour in the crowd wasn’t undercover Gestapo. What was in the mind of the average German then? And as the horses came by in their highly polished livery, Georgie thought of the boy back in the stables, no doubt utterly exhausted, and the sweat-stained woman, furiously working her hot iron for Nuremberg and the Reich.
After tolerating such a spectacle all day, Frida had decided they needed fun, food and alcohol in abundance. Simone – who had ducked out of the parade – professed a headache and needed an early night. Frida was undeterred and rallied two friends from the theatre world, insisting on wining and dining at Horcher, possibly Berlin’s most exclusive restaurant – ‘my treat,’ Frida had chimed when Georgie put up a protest. Now she was intent on dancing; expressing her pent-up energy, effervescing like the bubbles in very good champagne.
‘We need to show you the Resi.’ She winked at her friends.
Georgie had allowed herself to be piloted to a street just off Alexanderplatz, and into a world that she’d only ever glimpsed in the pages of a novel. She heard herself gasp as they entered the vast and legendary Residenz-Casino, eyes squinting against a blanket of tiny bulb lights above her, glimpsing a carousel and shooting gallery in one corner, a sideshow of water ballet on the other, where spray jets ‘danced’ to the tune of a live band. It was pure decadence, a veritable playground for adults. The air was dense with a cosmopolitan hum of conversation, floating towards the ceiling where endless glitter balls hung and turned, twisting the light this way and that.
Almost stupefied by the sight, Georgie let herself be led by Frida, who hopped towards a vast dance floor in the middle of the club and seemed instantly to bag a table on the edge. She flicked a finger at the waiter and two Martinis swiftly appeared. By then, Frida’s two friends had peeled away and were waving at them from the opposite side of the dance floor, already coupled with two men.
‘So, let us see who we can see.’ Frida peered into the crowd, the look of a vixen on the prowl.
In contrast, Georgie could only cast about in wonder. The whole place was, at first glance, a glorified meat market, and yet vibrant enough not to appear sleazy. Each table was a mini station, furnished with a telephone on a wooden stand and a number. Brass tubing in a vast network above head height linked the tables together, with an ornate dispatch pipe hooking over the edge like the elegant neck of a swan. She watched a woman at the next table shrieking with delight as a small package arrived in the mouth of the tube and plopped onto the table – a neatly tied wrap of bonbons.
Minutes later, the phone next to her tinkled and she was soon talking to her suitor, whose eye she had caught across the floor. They waved and smiled at each other and, at the woman’s urging, the man slipped into the chair next to her. So simple, Georgie thought. And yet, it made her feel uncomfortable too – women being picked over like an assortment of chocolates. Except, wasn’t that the function of every dance floor in England too? She liked to think it was about the dancing, but in reality it was little more than a matchmaking event. Berliners were simply more open about it.
‘Back in a minute,’ Frida said, ‘I’ve just seen someone I know.’ She bobbed away like a firefly in the general glow. Slightly groggy with the champagne, Georgie was content to soak up the atmosphere and focus on the swirl of dancers beginning to populate the room. It was simply by chance that she spotted him in between the bodies gliding in front of her; Max sitting at a table to one side of the floor, deep in conversation. Georgie had to wait for several couples to twirl by before she had sight of his companion. Her. Not the timid woman. Simone – an unmistakable flow of her red mane, hand tucked under her chin, eyes fixed on Max.
Her poise screamed allure and not headache. But why did she feel the need to lie about it? It had been obvious from their first meeting that the two were hopelessly attracted to each other. Why would Max want to hide their liaison from the timid woman? Especially as no one knew who she was, and she seemed to have faded of late from Max’s side. Was he stringing both along? Much like the wife and lover of her bureau boss, Paul Adamson. Georgie felt slightly sorry for both women. And irritated by Max’s arrogance. Less than a month in the country and he was already playing the field, and yet professing loudly to being a serious journalist. No wonder he hadn’t wanted her to hang around as the proverbial gooseberry.
The sudden trill of the phone next to her startled her out of her reverie, and she jumped. It rang at least six times before she gingerly picked it up.
‘Hel
lo,’ said a voice in German, deep and masculine.
‘Hello,’ she replied.
‘You look a little lonely, I wonder if you might welcome a companion.’ Rapidly, Georgie scanned the tables for anyone speaking into a receiver, but the band had struck up another tune and the dance floor swarmed with bodies.
‘I’m with a friend,’ she stalled, eyes still skimming the crowd.
‘Ah well, sorry,’ he said, voice flattened. ‘It was a thought, that’s all.’ He sounded deflated. What harm would it do? Georgie reasoned quickly. She was here to learn about Berlin and Berliners – and talk was innocent enough, even in a place like the Resi.
‘I suppose we can say hello, since she’s not here right now,’ she found herself saying, then instantly regretting it as she put down the receiver.
The next thirty seconds dragged as Georgie squinted into the lights, scanning for a body belonging to the voice. Waitresses streamed by, while one older man seemed to be heading for her table. Was he looking at her? He strode right by and into the arms of another woman. With her head turned to one side, Georgie’s heart began to pound. She wasn’t very good at this, not blessed with Simone’s innate magnetism, nor a social butterfly like Frida. Speaking of which, where on earth was she?
‘Hello again,’ the voice came from behind her, and Georgie’s head swivelled.
‘Oh, hello,’ she said. Anxiety and curiosity bubbled in unison. He was either here to engage her, or arrest her: unlike the majority of men, he was in uniform – SS. She’d noted a smattering of military as they’d arrived, but unlike Café Kranzler the SS weren’t in abundance at the Resi. Clear bewilderment must have given her away.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you,’ he said. ‘May I?’ and gestured at the opposite chair. Since it was clearly free, how could she say no?
He was tall and lean, yet folded his body gracefully into the chair, placing his cap on the table. He was every inch what Hitler might hold to be the perfect German: blond, with a strong jawline and full mouth, undeniably handsome. But it was his eyes that beguiled instantly; even in the gloom they were distinctive and distinguished – one iris a cat-eye green, the other a pale grey ringed with black, as if the dye inside had simply drained away to leave a void of colour. Together, they had a captivating, disconcerting effect. Truly mesmerising. She had to forcibly remove her gaze in order to focus.
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