by Peter Rimmer
“Is this for King and country?” said Celia, giving the young man a longer look of approval.
“I suppose you could call it that.”
“Let’s have tea first.”
“Splendid… You have a very nice flat.”
“You should visit us more often,” said Fleur. “What’s your first name, if that is not too forward?”
“We’re always a bit forward in the Royal Air Force, or so we like to believe. Forward with the best aircraft, the best pilots and the best intelligence. My name is Timothy.”
“Do you mind if I call you Tim?” said Fleur, letting her tongue slide slowly between her lips, just the tip showing.
“Not at all.”
Going over to the small kitchen window that looked onto the back yard of the block of flats, Timothy Kent was smiling to himself, his back to the girls. Why was it, he asked himself, that girls in their early twenties had so much spark and life in them without all the baggage of wanting something material in return from a man?
What had first caught Henning von Lieberman’s attention on the first night he had taken himself to the Mayfair was not the girl’s beautiful face but her beautiful playing. As an amateur cellist, Henning had recognised a classically trained violinist in a band playing a nightclub instead of the Albert Hall. The more he had listened, sitting on his own that first Thursday night, the more he became intrigued with the whole ensemble.
They were all classical musicians playing a blend of jazz and romantic music he had never heard in Berlin. There were even traces of Beethoven and Brahms woven into original music. Within the first three pieces he knew the music was their own, not composed by someone else for the all-girl band to perform, using their sex appeal and low-cut dresses to attract the nightclub customers; more importantly to Henning von Lieberman’s love of music, the girls were enjoying themselves.
Watching the dancers on the small square of the dance floor next to his table under the bandstand, Henning could see the music was easy to dance to, not just pleasant to hear. The girls intrigued him, which brought him back the second and third nights having no idea he had attracted any attention, let alone the attention of the British Secret Service.
On the Saturday, when the evening was drawing to an end and the girl with the short dark hair had blatantly caught his eye, he asked the waiter to deliver the girl a note asking her to join him at his table for a drink. He was surprised when the girl brought the second violin player along as well.
With his speech impediment, Henning found talking to strangers an ordeal, even one at a time. Two became even more difficult. It was one of the reasons he had stayed unmarried after his wife and two children died in the flu epidemic that had swept Germany in 1919, as if the war had not been enough for everyone. After four years of fighting what had once been a country of friends, Henning had been mentally and physically exhausted, which had left him with a twitch in his right eye and an impediment in his speech that Mrs Wakefield had already spent two weeks trying to cure without very much success.
The loss of his family had left him devastated, bitter and vulnerable, a man who believed he had been abandoned not only by God but by the whole German nation and the whole human race. As bad went to worse, and the German economy collapsed under the weight of war reparations demanded by the victorious allies, any glimmer of light he could see at the end of the terrible dark tunnel was worth his attention.
Adolf Hitler, one of the most charismatic speakers Henning had ever heard, gave him the idea of hope, of restoring German pride, making his own life worth the living, making his daily drudgery worth the getting up for in the morning. Because there was nowhere else to look, Henning had joined the Party right at the start of the rise of German National Socialism, believing the alternative of complying with the Versailles Treaty was intolerable, the way for France to keep a jackboot on Germany for generations to come.
With his rise in the Nazi Party, helped by his army father’s close involvement, it was imperative he be able to speak properly without the long embarrassing pauses caused by his stammer. On his return from a Party mission to England visiting Harry Brigandshaw at his home, his cousin Klaus had promised him Mrs Wakefield would be able to cure his stammering, or at least bring it under control. It was by luck and Henning’s father’s help that Mrs Wakefield owed the von Liebermans a personal favour for saving her husband’s life from the ferocity of the thugs the Party were forced to employ to keep the path clear for the new future of Germany that was going to once again make his nation great. Like Adolf Hitler, Henning von Lieberman, released from his misery caused by the war, believed the Third Reich could last a thousand years.
When the girls sat down at his small table, and as the rest of the guests began to get up and leave now the band had stopped playing, he had no reason to be on his guard. And when he spoke, remembering the instructions of Mrs Wakefield to use the tip of his tongue and not rush his speech, the words had come out with only the trace of a stutter, something that had not happened in Henning’s life since 1917 and the last great German offensive.
When two days before Christmas Celia Larson introduced him to what she described as her beau, he was enjoying himself in London, relaxed for the first time in years. He was talking freely in the English he had perfected in his years at the London School of Economics soon after coming down from Heidelberg University, a young man without a worry in the world, with a young German wife and a hopeful career ahead with a Merchant Bank.
Sitting there so relaxed he was off-guard, his hatred for the Allies who had killed so many of his friends suspended by Mrs Wakefield and the lovely sounds of the girls’ music playing in the Mayfair. In his mind sitting back in his chair smiling, he was young again. The girls were the same age his wife had been when he and Fidelia were married. Before he had heard of war. Before bitterness and hatred had tried to destroy his life. When they all went off for a late-night drink at Barnaby St Clair’s flat, they were laughing together in the back of the taxi, two older men with two much younger girls all having fun.
Having done what he was told by the Intelligence Department of the RAF through their young spokesman, Timothy Kent, Harry Brigandshaw had gone down to Surrey by train with a clear conscience to spend Christmas at his mother’s ancestral home at Hastings Court, his three friends silent in the first class carriage as the train ran through the stark winter countryside on its way from Waterloo Station to Leatherhead. What went on between Timothy Kent, Barnaby St Clair and the girls was out of his hands. If his friend Klaus von Lieberman’s cousin was a spy, the British Intelligence Service would find out and he had done his piece, whatever came out later not something he would have on his conscience.
By the time Barnaby was entertaining in his Piccadilly flat late at night on what by then was Christmas Eve, as the time was well past midnight, Harry was fast asleep in the big double bed next to Tina, the fire still glowing in the grate some thirty feet from the foot of the bed. He was dreaming of Africa, as was his habit.
Tina, on the left side of the bed, was wide awake and miserable; she had finally realised her long-time hold over men was gone. Next year in November she was going to be forty. She was a middle-aged mother of five children. Not one of the men at her Christmas party had looked at her wanting to take her to bed. They were more inclined to look at her thirteen-year-old daughter Beth, a girl who looked like her mother when Tina was thirteen years old; when the St Clair and Pringle families had separated Barnaby and herself and the power of her sex appeal had first become apparent; when a shy, hooded smile could send a grown man’s composure into lust and Tina’s happiness soaring into the sky.
No one was interested in seeking her company now, never mind listening to her every word. Her life as she knew it was over, the years ahead a dark tunnel with nothing to find at the other end. Even Harry, poor old cuckolded Harry, hadn’t touched her for a month. If it weren’t for the others not looking at her, she would have put down Harry’s lack of interest to his age
and the almost twelve years that separated them. But it wasn’t. Life was not fair.
There was Barnaby, by all accounts, running around with a twenty-two-year-old still having the time of his life while she, once considered the sexiest girl alive, was throwing weekend parties for people she barely knew in an attempt to still find something in life to live for. For all the fun she was having in England they might as well be in Rhodesia in the middle of the bush, drinking sundowners every night on their own and getting tight.
To add to her frustration, outside in the cold winter countryside, a pair of barn owls were hooting at each other like a pair of lovebirds with everything to live for still ahead of them. With the question of what old women did with themselves for the rest of their lives hammering away at her brain, Tina finally found solace in sleep, the warmth of her husband’s body in the bed next to her comforting in her final moment of awareness. In the dream that came to her later in the night she was young again. Young again and happy. Pretty. In full control of her sex appeal.
William Smythe went home that morning with the idea of spending Christmas alone. His only relative, Polly, his sister, lived in America and had not been seen or heard from since his mother’s death. It was a lonely thought, especially after turning down Betty Townsend by not going down with her to Brighton for Christmas. A big mistake.
“We work together, Betty. Can’t do it.”
“Then I’ll resign.”
“Don’t do it, Betty. I need you. There’s just the two of us in the office. What would happen when I’m away on assignment? As a secretary you’re a man’s best friend.”
“What’s the matter with you men? Can’t you see the mushroom on your doorstep?”
“Indeed I can, Betty, which is why I will not spend Christmas with you in some sleazy hotel in Brighton.”
“It’s a very nice hotel. Why spend Christmas alone?”
“Betty, it just wouldn’t be right.”
“Why ever not?”
“Because we are better off just as friends, and because I need you as my secretary… Don’t you have a family to go to yourself?”
“Oh yes I do but you won’t catch me dead going there.”
“Why ever not?”
“You should have grown up with them.”
Both of them had laughed with what, looking back an hour later, had sounded like hollow laughs. William had left the office to walk to the Tube at the Aldwych to head on home to his lonely Christmas.
Bruno Kannberg received his call from Genevieve at lunchtime, the person to person call having taken all morning to go through, it being Christmas Eve. Gillian, his wife of less than a year, had answered the telephone in their two-roomed flat on the Edgware Road.
“I have a call for Mr Bruno Kannberg. Will he take it?” asked the operator.
From the small bathroom, Bruno heard his wife call out his name.
With only the money coming in from his salary at the Daily Mirror, Gillian had reduced his bank balance to just under five pounds, with bills outstanding that made his head spin. She had spent the advance for the Abdication of King Edward that never came, and told him their financial plight was all his fault. The only consolation at the time, as she spent the illusionary money, being sex for a few days as his young wife had worked off her spendthrift ways.
By the time the operator asked for him Bruno was back on short rations and had not had sex for a week, his whole body about to explode with frustration. To make it worse, Gillian had taken to walking around the cold flat without a bra under her thin blouse, her nipples sticking out like false promises, making him even more frantic, which seemed nigh impossible. His wife wanted to be taken to a smart restaurant for Christmas lunch which Bruno had pointed out they could not afford, his wife’s hopeful mind still on the four pounds and shillings still left precariously in their bank account.
“Who is it?”
“The operator, darling. Long distance. Maybe it’s your American publisher.”
When Bruno heard the voice of Genevieve answer his tentative hello, he was surprised. He thought the book he had written on her life was out of print and out of mind. When he looked up from the phone his wife’s face was expectant, an expression that he knew well could go one way or the other depending on the news.
“Where are you, Genevieve?”
“Happy Christmas. I’m in England, staying in Dorset with my father. How are you and Gillian?”
“We’re fine, thank you.”
“I have a nice Christmas present on the way to you from our publishers. With the success of Keeper of the Legend they did another print of our book in time for Christmas which I heard last night has sold out on both sides of the pond.”
“How much, Genevieve?”
“Sorry to hear about the abdication book. When I spoke to William he said you had been made to withdraw the book. Something about the establishment not wanting their feathers ruffled. Sixteen thousand copies at full commission, half for you, half for me.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful. Just wonderful. Sixteen thousand half-crowns is two thousand pounds which at five per cent gives us one hundred pounds each. When will the cheque come?”
“They said it should arrive in today’s post but you never know with Christmas.”
“I’ve joined the Territorial Army, what with all the war flap. They’re giving me a commission. They even pay us a little, which is another reason I joined.”
“If you were that short you could have asked me. Give my love to Gillian and have a nice Christmas.”
“We will now.”
When Bruno turned round after putting down the phone his wife’s nipples were again staring at him. When he looked up at Gillian’s face she was smiling.
“Why don’t we go into the bedroom, darling?”
“Now?”
“We can phone the restaurant for a reservation a little later if that will be convenient. It’s much warmer in bed, don’t you think? She’s such a sweet girl. One hundred pounds! What fun. After Christmas we can go shopping without worrying about horrible money. Bruno, you are so clever.”
His wife’s small hand felt warm as she led him into the bedroom.
They had all arranged to meet for Christmas lunch at the Savoy Hotel where Henning von Lieberman was staying while he visited Janet Wakefield every morning for his therapy. From the hotel, the Chelsea house of the Wakefields, with the bottom floor kept aside for the practice, was just down the River Thames, a short ride in a London taxi. The room at the Savoy had been deliberately taken in the back of the hotel so as not to draw attention to his visitors, now masked by the visits of the girls and Barnaby St Clair as the four of them took in the sights of London. Someone had said to Henning during his year at the London School of Economics that to be bored with London was to be bored with life. Whichever way Henning looked at it, he was certainly not bored.
The meeting in his room with Rodney Hirst-Brown was arranged from a public telephone booth some distance from the hotel. Finding the man’s telephone number had been a problem and it had taken Henning von Lieberman two weeks to track down, the man having left no trace of his whereabouts after he was fired from the Rosenzweig Bank in London, a branch of the bank that had been forced to cancel his Uncle Klaus’s mortgage over the family estate in Bavaria in exchange for the lives of one hundred and sixteen Jews. The sweet irony of this made Henning smile as he awaited the three o’clock appointment in his hotel room on Christmas Eve, a time chosen, Henning had surmised, when people in London had other things on their mind than a German national trying to alleviate his stammer, diligently attending his therapy every morning excluding Sundays and Christmas.
There were eleven people living in England on Henning’s list; all had similar gripes with the establishment.
“Hatred and greed, Henning,” his father, General Werner von Lieberman, had told him before he left Berlin. “Hatred and greed. Often little men. Men who cannot get what they want from life by their own ability. Jealous, bitt
er little men who want their revenge on society for not having what they rightly consider to be theirs. Hating the success of others. These are the people we seek. These are the people who will sell out their own countrymen to get their revenge, assuage their jealousy, make themselves feel big and powerful. Make themselves hopefully rich. Such dogs of men are easy to train and let off the leash when the time comes for the Third Reich to take its place in history, when we can use such men to further our cause to defeat the enemy and restore the pride of the Fatherland. Given the right tools and incentive such men will be soft clay in our hands, my son. Even if you come back with a worse stammer it will not matter, provided you have put these men in place to do our bidding when the time is right.”
As he sat waiting for the knock on the door he remembered his father’s somewhat bombastic words, words that had grown more strident with the rise of Adolf Hitler and the importance of his father’s career in the army and the Nazi Party. Some of the rhetoric aimed at the common man by Hitler had gone to his head.
‘Never lose your perspective,’ Henning thought to himself. ‘Never lose the cold precision of a good mind. Don’t let all the bloody excitement get into your head, Father. Not until we have won.’
When the knock came he got up like a cat, slowly, lithely, ready to do what was necessary to further the cause of raising Germany from the rubble of war to her rightful place among men.
“Come in, Mr Hirst-Brown,” said Henning, shutting the door. “My name is Herr von Lieberman. It has come to my attention that we may be able to do business together. So kind of you to come.”
“What kind of business?”
“I believe you hate the Jews. Like myself. How would you like to get back at Rosenzweigs for your wrongful dismissal? Banks can’t employ a man for all those years and then just throw them out on the street. What about your family?”
“I don’t have one.”