A War of Flowers (2014)

by Thynne, Jane

  ‘Are there any other recent developments you would like my readers to know about?’ he enquired, flatly.

  The Führerin frowned.

  ‘We have brought about new reforms to the divorce law which allow divorce on the grounds of one partner’s refusal to have children,’ she volunteered. ‘We call voluntary childlessness a diseased mentality.’

  ‘Diseased?’

  ‘A disease of the mind, rather than the body. But just as harmful to the health of the nation.’

  Rupert had spent the previous evening at the bar of the Adlon drowning the world’s sorrows with a group of journalists who had just returned from Prague. Now he felt the excesses of the night before return to him in a bilious wave.

  ‘I always wonder, Frau Reichsfrauenführerin, how it is that a woman of your impressive stature can support the fact that one of the first ordinances of the Nazi party was to exclude women from ever holding a position of leadership. As I understand it, you believe that women should no longer have the vote?’

  Sarcasm glanced off the Führerin like a bullet from a tank. She regarded him pityingly.

  ‘The Führer sees the emancipation of women on the same level of depravity as parliamentary democracy or . . .’ she cast around, ‘jazz music.’

  ‘Jazz music?’ said Rupert incredulously.

  ‘I think that’s what he said. He believes, and we agree with him, that there is no interest whatsoever in women maintaining the vote.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘I wonder . . . are there large numbers of female politicians in your own country, Herr Allingham?’

  Rupert shrugged.

  ‘Precisely. And I think you will find the reason is that women themselves prefer to confine themselves to their own sphere. They don’t want to be spending their time wrangling in parliamentary chambers with men who are equipped with law degrees. They would far rather occupy themselves in their own area of expertise, which is producing children and ensuring that they are properly equipped to carry on the nation’s culture to future generations. I daresay it has never occurred to the British to have their own Women’s Leader either?’

  The face of Lady Allingham, sorting out the estate’s paperwork at the breakfast table in her reading glasses, floated into Rupert’s mind. If Britain ever decided to instate a woman to micro-manage the affairs of the entire female population, he could think of the perfect candidate.

  The Führerin paused. ‘As it happens I’ve just been invited to London next year by a very prestigious grouping. The Anglo-German Fellowship. Do you know it?’

  Rupert was only too familiar with the doomed selection of the deluded and the desperate drawn from the ranks of the aristocracy and the far right who actively supported Hitler’s territorial ambitions. It had been started by an associate of Clara Vine’s father and some of the early meetings had taken place in the Vine family home in Ponsonby Terrace.

  ‘There’s to be a dinner at Claridge’s. Lord David Douglas-Hamilton will be there. His wife is head of your Women’s League of Health and Beauty and, as it happens, I’m due to welcome her shortly to Hamburg at the International Women’s Fitness Congress.’

  Women’s Fitness? It seemed astonishing that at a time of grave political crisis such events could still be going on. The leader of Germany was attempting to annihilate Czechoslovakia and his female equivalent was planning a fitness conference. For someone like Rupert, who lived in the drama of the moment, the idea that anyone should be occupying their mind with gymnastic routines was inexplicable.

  But then, glancing up at the poster, Warriors on the Battlefield of Childbirth, he realized that was the thing about the Nazi regime: every human activity from cradle to grave was transformed into part of the Nazi struggle. Every aspect of life would be approached with military precision. From what he had seen of the lines of BDM girls in their cotton shirts and navy shorts practising synchronized gymnastics in the Tiergarten, even an apparently innocent enterprise such as women’s fitness would be carried out with the efficiency and ruthlessness of a Wehrmacht manoeuvre.

  A gawky, pale-faced girl carrying a stack of papers entered the room, then immediately attempted to back out again.

  ‘Stop! Rosa! Where have you been? Fetch coffee for Herr Allingham at once, please.’

  Rupert watched with sympathy as the girl scurried away.

  ‘Now then . . . about that news. As it happens, the Führer is working on something very exciting. It’s been under wraps, but it’s felt that now is a useful time to reveal it.’

  At last. Rupert wondered how exciting the Führer’s new plan would turn out to be. Most of his recent innovations had involved the destruction of nation states.

  ‘It’s a Mother’s Cross,’ continued the Führerin. ‘To be given to kinderreich women with four or more children. Only live ones of course, and not defectives. There will be three gradations. Bronze for four children, silver for six and gold for eight or more. In fact, I think there may be plans for a diamond cross, featuring genuine diamonds, for mothers of twelve children. Anyone wearing a Mother’s Honour Cross must be saluted in the street and receive a range of deferences.’

  ‘Deferences?’

  ‘She must be given the best seat on the bus, for example, go to the front of the queue in a shop, have the best seats at the theatre and so on.’

  ‘Interesting idea.’

  ‘I’m glad you think so. It’s our women’s equivalent of the Iron Cross. It is to be awarded every year on 12th August, the birthday of the Führer’s mother. Despite our excellent figures, we need to give women every encouragement we can to reproduce.’

  Which included banning abortion and contraception. One of the major contraceptive firms had been owned by Robert Ley, head of the Labour Front, Rupert recalled, but Doktor Ley’s interests lay in a completely different kind of labour now.

  The gawky girl returned with the coffee and handed Rupert a receptacle the size of a doll’s cup, which he drained in one.

  ‘As a mother myself I understand personally how important the birth rate is in the strengthening of the Reich,’ added the Führerin. ‘I have produced six children already.’

  ‘Of course.’ Rupert tried very hard not to picture her in the act of procreating them.

  ‘Our regime promises every unmarried girl a husband. Indeed . . .’ Her eyes dwelt on Rupert speculatively. ‘We are establishing a chain of marriage bureaux for eugenically eligible candidates. Everyone who signs up must declare themselves willing to establish a large family.’

  ‘Marriage bureaux?’

  ‘That’s right. It probably seems terrifically modern to you, Herr Allingham, but in Germany we have never been afraid to embrace change in the cause of national advantage. Are you married yourself?’

  ‘Afraid not.’

  She frowned, then gave a girlish smile.

  ‘We shall have to see if we can help you!’

  Horribly, it occurred to Rupert that the Führerin was flirting with him. He remembered one of those mottos Goebbels liked to come out with. ‘A German woman does not marry a man of alien blood.’ He would have to keep that in mind, should it be needed.

  On his way out, the plain girl was back at her desk, spectacles perched on her beaky nose, a pile of paperwork at her side. Rupert gave her a smile intended to convey sympathy with her plight in working in this godawful place and as she ducked her head in embarrassment, he saw something that brought him up short. It was just an ordinary thing, a framed holiday snap of the girl herself, with the same diffident air, although the mousy hair was sun-kissed and the arms lightly tanned. Yet it was not the girl herself who interested Rupert, as much as the cruise liner looming like an iceberg behind her.

  ‘Isn’t that the Wilhelm Gustloff?’

  ‘Yes, Herr Allingham. I was sent on a cruise. For work.’

  ‘Nice work.’

  ‘It was important reconnaissance business,’ she added hastily. ‘We’re staging the National Congress of Women’s Fitness in Hamburg next month. The important guests
will be housed on the ship.’

  ‘Ah yes. The Führerin mentioned it. So did you have a good time?’

  The girl frowned. She looked downwards, to where her hands rested on the typewriter, then she raised her face and he saw a kind of anguish and a resolve in those washed-out eyes, as though she was not just answering his pleasantry but making an important decision. She glanced around the room, checking that the door to the Führerin’s office was closed, leant across the typewriter and lowered her voice.

  ‘No, I did not, mein Herr. I did not have a good time at all.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Why?’

  She appeared to be on the brink of saying something else, but at that moment there was the sound of a door slamming along the corridor and the simultaneous ring of the telephone, which she picked up with alacrity. Rupert hesitated a second before taking a card out of his wallet and sliding it onto the desk, observing with satisfaction that the girl covered it at once with her other hand and slipped it silently into her bag.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Eva Braun’s home was a square, red-roofed villa in Bogenhausen, an elegant suburb across the River Isar, with white shutters on the windows and a small green door at the side with panes of criss-crossed glass. It was surrounded by a high stone wall with wooden gates, and its privacy was further enhanced by a group of apple trees in the front garden, bursting with bright fruit. When Clara rang the bell, frenzied yapping ensued from deep within.

  ‘Negus! Stasi! Be quiet!’

  Eva Braun flung open the door with a little flourish, gesturing at the whirling dervish of fur that was circulating around her feet.

  ‘I’m sorry. They’re so protective. They think they’re my bodyguards!’ The black fur separated into two Scottish terriers. ‘Go on, you two, back into the garden.’

  She was dressed that day in a high-necked blouse with puffy sleeves, and a full, flowery skirt, her blonde hair rolled neatly away from her face. She raised a quick hand to touch Clara’s own outfit – a teal-coloured pencil dress which had originally been made for her as a costume by Steffi Schaeffer.

  ‘I love that dress, by the way! I have one just like it!’

  She led Clara proudly through into a small front room, stocked with heavy, Bavarian-style furniture, a bookcase, and two chintz-covered armchairs. Turkish rugs lay in front of the fireplace. A stack of Filmwoche magazines was piled high beside a chair. Eva gestured to a telephone on the sideboard.

  ‘It connects directly with the Berghof. Isn’t that something? I only have to pick it up. The trouble is, the SS installed it, which means it connects directly to an awful lot of other people too.’

  She saw Clara glance politely at a couple of insipid watercolours, one of a church and another a Bavarian street scene, hanging above the fireplace.

  ‘Nice, aren’t they? Wolf painted them. Not that he ever has time to paint any more. In fact he hardly has time for anything. He bought this house two years ago, but I had to furnish the entire place myself. He was always too busy to help. He just said if I wanted something for the house I should get the money from Martin Bormann.’ She gave a little, theatrical moue. ‘Do you know Bormann?’

  ‘Only by reputation.’

  ‘Well, let me give you some advice. Never discuss home decorating with Martin Bormann. In a bad mood he’s terrible. And he’s never in a good mood. He’s a horrible man. Really. He hates his brother Albert so much they will only communicate through their adjutants, even when they’re in the same room.’

  She looked at Clara reflectively.

  ‘In fact, Bormann warned me against you.’

  Clara gave a start and tried to disguise it.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Not you in particular. Anyone really I didn’t already know. He said in future I should avoid making friends with people in case they wanted to know about my relationship with the Führer. They might not be interested in me for myself, but only because of him.’

  ‘He might be right.’

  Eva laughed. ‘He might, but what do I care? I hate Bormann. And I don’t mind if he knows it.’

  She went over to an Anglepoise lamp, drew it towards her like a megaphone and shouted into the bell, ‘I hate Martin Bormann!’

  Clara tried to conceal her shudder. The special telephone line was almost certainly not the only thing that the SS had installed in the house, but the thought didn’t seem to trouble Eva Braun.

  ‘Let’s hope that gives someone earache!’ she said, turning brightly. ‘Bormann lives to prevent me doing things. He’s even stopped me writing a diary. He says any kind of personal reminiscence is absolutely banned. Never write anything down, that’s what he told me. Don’t leave a trail. Memorize. That’s what you actresses do, isn’t it? You just remember?’

  ‘It helps to have a good memory, but you can train it too.’

  ‘What do you memorize?’

  ‘Oh, you start with poems, and then you proceed.’

  ‘I don’t know if I could manage a poem. A song perhaps, that’s different.’ She began to sing a snatch of Blood Red Roses.

  ‘But I’m forgetting myself. Let me make tea.’

  She bustled into a minute kitchen, barely large enough to contain a porcelain gas stove with two rings, from which a door led onto a wide terrace covered with an ochre-striped awning and edged with windowboxes of scarlet geraniums.

  ‘Would you like a chocolate?’

  She opened a lavish silver box, tied with frilly ribbons, in which a luxurious pound of chocolates nestled invitingly. Despite herself, Clara’s mouth watered. Luxuries like that were increasingly rare in the Reich.

  ‘Wolf gets sent them all the time but he won’t eat them. He’s convinced he’s going to be poisoned. I say, “Well, I’m not going to waste them! If it’s my fate to be poisoned, then I accept it willingly!”’

  Somehow, this idea seemed to lessen the chocolates’ appeal and Clara demurred.

  ‘How about a smoke then? If we want a cigarette, and I do, we’ll either have to go outside or upstairs to the smoking room. Wolf absolutely hates smoking. He says every cigarette is a bullet in your heart. He has plans to give all cigarette packets plain packaging and have giant warnings saying “Danger! Cancer!” I told him he’s wasting his time. I’m never giving up.’

  She poured hot water into the pot, placed it on a silver tray with two cups and carried it out to a rickety wooden table set in the dappled shade of the fruit trees. In the corner of the lawn the dogs had momentarily ceased their yapping to tussle over a dead mouse, worrying its tiny corpse in their jaws, then each grabbing one end and pulling it apart.

  ‘Is this all right for you, Clara?’ There was still an edge of shyness in Eva Braun’s voice, as though she could not quite believe that an actress she had seen on the screen was right there in her own garden. Her moods reminded Clara of a spring day, one minute cheerful, the next downcast, as though the barometer of her temperament was in constant flux.

  ‘Your garden’s charming!’

  ‘I know.’ She flipped open a packet of cigarettes and offered one to Clara, who accepted. ‘I’m very lucky really. We have everything here. In fact they’ve only just finished installing the air-raid shelter in the cellar. It has an armoured door leading to an underground passage with radio, telephone, cupboards with provisions, medical supplies. You wouldn’t believe it! The only problem is that Wolf’s never here with me.’

  ‘I suppose he must be terribly busy.’

  ‘He is!’ Eva looked up, as though Clara had had an impressive insight. ‘And just now he’s in a terrible state.’

  ‘About the international situation?’

  ‘I think it’s that. All I know is, he has dark patches under his eyes and he’s not sleeping. It’s partly his food. He’ll only eat boiled vegetables now, mainly corn and beans and asparagus, and that can’t help, can it? I tell him, “Wolf, you have to eat something that gives you energy,” but there’s no chance of changing him. He says meat-eating is a pervers
ion of our human nature and when we reach a higher level of civilization, we’ll overcome it. In fact the other day at lunch he told everyone at the table that he’s thinking of banning meat altogether.’ She laughed gaily at the memory. ‘You should have seen Himmler’s face when he said that! It was so funny! Himmler was a chicken farmer you know. I almost hope Wolf goes ahead, just to annoy him.’

  Already Clara could see how this uncomplicated girl would appeal to Hitler. Eva Braun was never going to uncover the ill-educated, provincial side of him, never going to mock the Führer’s liking for operetta, or his taste in art. Unlike the other wives, her pretensions to sophistication ended at clothes and perfume. She was more likely to worry about his digestion than his dictatorship. The worst that Hitler could expect from her was a momentary moodiness if her desires were thwarted.

  Unfortunately this spelled failure for Clara’s own task. She thought of Guy Hamilton’s remark, ‘Pillow talk. Isn’t that what they call it?’ But pillow talk between the Führer of all Germany and his girlfriend was never going to focus on the Treaty of Versailles. It was hard to imagine Eva listening intelligently as Hitler confided his plans for European domination and if he started talking about Lebensraum, she would probably interrupt with a reminder to straighten his tie.

  She took a draw on her cigarette and tried again. ‘It’s impressive that the Führer has time to consider such things given all the other affairs that must be preoccupying him.’

  Eva’s face drooped. ‘I’m so sick of politics. I absolutely pine for the Berghof but we hardly go there now. There’s a cook there called Lily who he hired from the Osteria because he loved her cheese noodles. He had her brought out from the kitchen at the end of a meal and said, “Lily, I’m taking you to Obersalzberg.” It’s not just the food though. Everything’s wonderful there. I swim in the Königssee, there’s a bowling alley in the cellar and you can ski, though he hates that. In fact, he’s thinking of having it banned because of the number of accidents involved.’