by Jane Thynne
“Why?”
“All writers who come to Paris visit this shop. And you’re a writer, aren’t you?”
“I thought you said fashion notes didn’t count.”
“They don’t. I meant your own stuff. Before dinner, I telephoned Franklin to vouch for the unexpected arrival of a female assistant. He told me you were a budding novelist.”
A peculiar rush of astonishment burst inside Cordelia. That she had spoken her secret dream aloud and been believed. Not just believed but taken seriously, as though becoming a writer was the most natural thing in the world.
“That’s what I’d like eventually.”
“Why not now?”
“It’s journalism I’m interested in. Novels aren’t going to change things.”
“Don’t let Sylvia Beach hear you say that.”
“But it’s true, isn’t it?”
“I should probably agree, being a journalist. But I reckon fiction can be another way of telling the truth. All novelists put the truth of their lives into novels, don’t they? Secrets they can’t tell any other way.”
“I don’t have any secrets.”
“Everyone does. And if you don’t have now, you will one day.”
She didn’t reply. Torin’s conjecture about novelists seemed too arresting to grapple with just then. It was something she would need to ruminate on in private.
“Anyhow, it’s late and you’ll want your sleep. Where are you staying?”
“The Rue Victor Massé.”
“Pigalle?” He frowned. “What an extraordinary choice.”
“It was cheap.”
“I’m not surprised.”
They came out of the Métro at Abbesses, with its green, art nouveau curlicues, and walked up through a labyrinth of ocher and saffron façades to where the sugar white dome of Sacré Coeur rose through the gloom. As they approached the seedy outskirts of Pigalle, Cordelia felt glad to have Torin beside her. Prostitutes hung on corners, flicking open their coats at passersby, and rough men came and went through grimy doorways that stank of drains.
When they reached the Hotel Britannia, Torin looked up and down the frontage with a puzzled frown.
“You do know you’re staying in a brothel?”
She blushed. That explained everything—the furtive grunts and cries, the slamming doors, the matter-of-fact flounce of the girl who swept down the corridor in her underwear and the other soaping herself nonchalantly over the bidet in the shared bathroom.
“It’s not so bad.”
“You can’t stay here. It’s completely inappropriate. I’ll arrange somewhere else for you.”
“I don’t mind. It seems perfectly safe—”
“Nonsense,” he interrupted, “I’ll sort something out.”
“It’s fine for now—”
“It’s far from fine. Fetch your things. We’ll book you into a hotel straightaway. There’s a place near me that will still be open. We should get a cab.”
She remained where she was on the sidewalk. “So it’s not just my sister then?”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
“Mr. Fairchild. Torin. Whether it’s Irene in Berlin or me in Pigalle, you seem to have extremely firm views about where other people should live. And I’m grateful for your concern, I really am, but the fact is, I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
“We’ll see about that, won’t we?” For one moment he hesitated. “Tomorrow, then.”
Turning decisively on his heel, he strode away.
Chapter Eight
Villa Weissmuller,
Am Grosser Wannsee,
Berlin
September 2, 1936
Dearest Dee,
I know what you mean about heiling, but here it’s merely polite, like men taking off their hats in church. The Germans set a lot of store by respect—Ernst says it’s a sign Germans are taking pride in their country again. He thinks the Versailles treaty gave Germany an awfully raw deal and without Hitler the country would have lapsed into Bolshevism.
The Olympic Games were the icing on the cake. Considering that the nearest I’ve ever got to sport has been tennis with you on the grass court at Birnham Park with old Trenton collecting the balls, you’d be amazed how closely I followed the athletics scores! I’ve become quite the enthusiast. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so spectacular as the opening ceremony in my life. Imagine Richard Strauss conducting the Berlin Philharmonic and a thousand girls dressed in white, while the Hindenburg hovers overhead and Luftwaffe planes fly past in swastika formation. You could have heard a pin drop when the solitary torchbearer entered the stadium and went up to the podium to light the eternal flame. It was terrifically solemn, exactly like being in church. Unfortunately the mood was shattered when a flock of pigeons was released and promptly splatted on everyone’s straw hat!
All the senior people vie to outdo each other with the grandeur of their parties. Goering had two thousand guests to his and a whole village built, complete with a merry-go-round and donkeys and a corps de ballet that danced by moonlight. Apparently von Ribbentrop was in despair with jealousy. Doktor Goebbels retaliated by commandeering an entire island in the Havel. He was determined his party should be the most memorable and I certainly won’t forget it in a hurry…
Irene had never seen a fountain that gushed champagne before. Nor, to judge by the crowd flocking around, laughing and filling their glasses from the frothing stream, had anyone else. But then, Irene had never seen anything like this garden party either, lit by glowing butterfly lanterns strung in trees and flickering torches carried by young pages wearing white rococo costumes. She longed to wander unobtrusively around, drinking it all in, but Ernst was already tugging at her arm.
“This may be pleasure for you, darling, but it’s work for me, I’m afraid. Come on. Let’s meet our host.”
“Do we have to?”
“Business, remember.” He frowned. “My God, look at that.” He pointed to a procession of girls in the diaphanous gowns of Grecian virgins carrying silver trays of food. “Can you imagine how much this junket cost? But I guess it’s not our host who’s paying.”
As they moved ahead, Irene gazed around her in amazement. Pfaueninsel, the prettiest island in the Havel River, had once been a fantasy playground for Prussian royalty. Princes and their favorites had strolled beneath its pergolas and along its vine-covered walks, and the peacocks that gave the island its name fanned their tails or sat in branches screeching. At the heart of the island the emperor Friedrich Wilhelm II had built a tiny, white wooden Lustschloss—a pleasure castle—perfect in every detail, for intimate meetings with his mistress.
But on that August evening a new kind of royalty thronged Pfaueninsel’s landscaped paths.
The National Socialist haut monde.
Two thousand guests—politicians, Nazi dignitaries, visiting ambassadors, sportsmen, and actors—were surging across the Havel on a pontoon bridge built by the Reichswehr Pioneer Corps and held fast by men in boats along the sides. All seemed determined to enjoy the costliest extravaganza ever staged in Berlin. The island had been transformed into a theatrical set, the winding paths through the trees and hills illuminated by torchbearers in tights. Ballet dancers, singers, the entire state opera, and three dance bands had been shipped in, and the little wooden castle had been turned into a cloakroom.
Despite being August it had rained all day, and the trees dripped water from their sodden branches. The misty air was edged with a chill. Shivering in her turquoise chiffon halter neck, Irene wished she had kept her fur wrap, and envied the men their dinner jackets and tightly buttoned uniforms, but Ernst was guiding her firmly toward a velvet-roped enclave containing Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. This Sommerfest was his idea, to mark the national triumph of the Olympic Games, and a cl
uster of liveried dignitaries buzzed round him like wasps at a picnic.
Goebbels had the kind of sunlamp tan that belonged on a film poster, and a smile to chill the cockles of the heart. In immaculate double-breasted gabardine, with silk gloves and hair gleaming with pomade, he might have been a cadaverous Fred Astaire, even if his wife, Magda, quivering alongside him in ivory organza, was no Ginger Rogers. Behind them a pumice-faced bodyguard in SS uniform loitered. Attending parties where bodyguards were required was just another thing Irene was getting used to.
While Ernst traded courtesies, the minister’s wife inclined her head infinitesimally.
“Gnädige Frau. So pleased you could come.”
Her voice was frostier than the evening air and her hand rested limply in Irene’s.
“We’re lucky the rain has ended,” volunteered Irene.
At this, Goebbels leaned over confidentially.
“I’ve thought of nothing else all day. Garden parties are always so nerve-racking.”
What must it take to fray that man’s nerves? Were those white-gloved hands not drenched in blood? As they walked away, Irene thought of what Martha had said about the Night of the Long Knives, the executions that left bullet-ridden bodies strewn across prisons and private houses, including the body of Hitler’s closest friend. When she first arrived in Germany Irene had been relieved that Ernst was a mere industrialist, not mixed up in politics. Yet now, as he steered her along an arcade of wet trees decked with fairy lights, scanning the dining area for the best table, she realized with a sinking heart that politics and industry were inextricably entwined.
“Can’t we just sit quietly on our own?”
“And miss all the chat?”
Evenings out were always like this. Work was constantly uppermost in Ernst’s mind. An opportunity to meet and mingle with the right people was not to be wasted.
“Let’s sit here.”
He steered them to a deliberately artful woodland clearing where tables were elaborately set with wineglasses and groaning with food—seemingly endless supplies of rosy Westphalian ham veined with fat, orange lobster, slices of cold veal, pumpernickel and rye bread, draft beer, wine, and champagne. In the center, in vivid reds and greens, shuddered elaborate jellies called Götterspeise, the food of the gods.
The gods of that evening were already tucking in, women with their furs draped across the backs of their chairs and men in evening dress or uniform. Irene recognized Max Schmeling, Germany’s star prizefighter, who had just defeated the black American Joe Louis. Several of the other guests looked like fairground wrestlers who had been forced to wear suits, and judging by their blunt features and broken noses, they might have been, though Irene was rapidly learning that not all fighting in Berlin took place in the boxing ring.
The dinner party rules she had learned in England, of alternating rigidly between one’s neighbors for every course, did not seem to apply here. As she toyed with her food, the back of the man next to her remained stubbornly turned and Irene assumed a mask of polite interest as boredom descended. Despite the fact that she never touched alcohol, because of its effect on her habitual reserve, she found herself downing several glasses of champagne in quick succession. No one was looking, and besides, soon she wouldn’t care what anyone thought.
Eventually the man on her left turned.
“And how is the charming Frau Doktor Weissmuller?”
She was startled that he knew her name. Yet he did look vaguely familiar. His face was straight from an Egon Schiele painting: profile like an inhospitable mountain crag, equine nose, close-set eyes, and bloodless lips. He knifed his veal as though sawing through a neck.
“Did you enjoy your honeymoon?”
“Thank you, yes. We went to Rügen island—a place called Prora.”
“Interesting. I’ve never seen it, though the Strength Through Joy is constructing a resort there, I understand. It won’t be long before twenty thousand of our citizens will be taking their vacations in Prora every year.”
So that was the explanation for the towering concrete rectangles she’d seen along the shore, facing out over the glittering Baltic like a military barricade, a construction as vast and implacable as the sea itself. Beside the new buildings, their sweetly old-fashioned stucco hotel, its railings hung with painted shells and dried starfish, seemed like something from another world. Yet soon the whole town would be a resort for the state holiday company. Did German citizens really want vacations as regimented as their working lives?
“I’m glad we beat the crowds then.” She forced a smile.
“Indeed. I hope you are enjoying married life?”
Irene shivered from the cold burn of his eyes. The man’s scrutiny was not lustful or admiring but uncomfortable, pitiless even, making her aware of every ounce she had gained in the first flush of marriage, every nuance of expression. He had a way of looking as though he was memorizing every inch of her face—or had already done so.
“Marriage is wonderful, yes.”
She racked her brain to identify him. She should have confessed at once to forgetting his name, but it was too late now without seeming rude. Given that he knew who she was, and the fact that she had only recently married, they must have met, but the past months had been a social blur. She couldn’t possibly be expected to recall every face, though this did seem like one she ought to remember.
“It’s exhausting, though. We’re out almost every night.”
Perhaps this would prompt him to mention their last meeting. Was it the Roxy or the Delphi?
“And you must be so busy too,” she added.
The man licked his thin lips. “There are always numerous demands on my time. Now more than ever.”
Irene focused on his hands. He had finished his meat and they were resting motionless on the table in front of him. His stillness was oppressive. Perhaps he intended it that way.
“I’m afraid Ernst loves nights out more than I do.” Where could they have met? The Uhu? The Kakadu? The more she looked at him, the less he looked like a nightclub kind of man. Her head was swimming but she took another glass of champagne. By now she had stopped counting. “I sometimes wish we could spend our evenings alone together, just reading.”
“I imagine you’ve read the Führer’s book? As you were recently married.”
All newlyweds were sent a free copy of Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, My Struggle.
“Mein Kampf, you mean?” She laughed lightly. “I’ve tried, really I have, but I can see why it’s called My Struggle. I struggled to get past the first chapter.”
There was a pause. She had a sense that this might be heresy, but the champagne had done its work and she didn’t care.
“I’m surprised to hear it.”
The masklike visage stiffened.
“Can I advise you, Frau Doktor, although you are a newcomer to our Reich, that we are united in our admiration of our Führer and his work. A slight to him is a slight to us all. I’m aware that in England, humor about the most revered subjects is almost compulsory, but here in Germany you’ll find that we require respect for our leaders.”
The rebuke sliced through her tipsy humor like an SS knife through jelly. All around the dinner guests chatted on, oblivious. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed Ernst some way down the table, engaging his neighbor in ardent debate, no doubt about some fine detail of Reich labor law.
Only one person had observed their exchange. He was seated directly opposite them. An officer in uniform with a high, bony brow and a swoop of dark hair falling onto his temple, watching with the arrested stillness and intense focus of a hawk. Their eyes locked for an instant, before he looked away.
“Actually, I’m thinking of getting a job.”
She hadn’t been, not until then, but even as she spoke she realized that this could be the perfect solution to the lon
g, dull hours when Ernst was away.
The idea, however, sank like a stone.
“Married women belong at home. Surely it’s the same in your Surrey? Our Führer has strong feelings about the place of a mother.”
“I’m not a mother.”
“But soon, you will be.”
Irene raised her glass and fortified herself with another gulp of champagne. “Not too soon, I hope.”
A violent bang, followed by a noise like an artillery barrage, interrupted them. Everyone startled instinctively and some ducked as the noise resounded, deafening the guests and lighting up the sky in a dazzling crucible of red and yellow fire. All eyes jerked upward to where a panorama of exploding light punctured the night. Every conversation was drowned and all faces were bathed in fizzing bursts of gold.
Fireworks. There were always fireworks.
Seizing her evening bag, Irene jumped to her feet, murmured an excuse, and escaped. Ernst would want to know where she had disappeared to, but it was impossible to see clearly in the strobing light, and besides, she could always say she needed the cloakroom.
* * *
—
TO EACH SIDE GARDENS stretched, drowned in a deep green gloom. The air was full of the babble of chatter and the clink of glasses, and dank with the odor of rotting leaves. She wove quickly through the woodland glades, across a small bridge, and along a winding path. At one point she lingered beside a string quartet, outfitted in ruffs and Italian doublets, and struggling to make a performance of Brahms audible above a rabble of drunken storm troopers raucously singing the “Horst Wessel Lied.” Two girls in Greek costume with laurel headdresses ran shrieking and laughing into the thickets, pursued by a pair of uniformed SA men. Another man staggered into the bushes and threw up. A figure in a carnival mask thrust his face into hers, and Irene turned away with a wave of drunken nausea.
The theme of the evening was a fantasy on the idea of Venice, she remembered. This custom of alternative fantasies, like the starry sky of the Atlantis, or the Arabian décor of Ciro’s, was typical of Berlin. There was something about the city that made everyone want to escape its own granite reality. And perhaps all the banners and the parades were fantasy too—one man’s fantasy of how Germany should be.
