by David John
Can get our num-ber,
The world’s in slum-ber
Let’s misbe—’
She stopped midnote. Her face froze, and the piano fell silent one bar later. The revellers turned, following the line of her gaze towards the doorway of the lounge, where a stout woman in the Olympic team uniform was standing with her arms folded. Mrs Hacker stared straight at her ward with a slow nod of her head.
‘Eleanor Emerson,’ she said. ‘Go to bed. Now. Or shall I fetch Mr Brundage?’
Someone snickered as everyone in the room looked back at her. But Eleanor wasn’t going to feel embarrassed.
‘Friends . . . ,’ she began, with a straight face. ‘Do we need to go to Germany to see a notorious dictator with a moustache? We have our very own right here. Folks, meet our team chaperone, Mrs Eunice Hacker,’ she yelled, throwing her arms out as if introducing a star act. The party cheered and raised their glasses.
A flash of alarm in the chaperone’s eyes, but then her face hardened, and so did Eleanor’s resolve not to have her evening spoilt.
‘What’re you gonna sing, Hacker? Hey, this is first class. You can’t wear that movie-usher’s uniform up here.’ Mrs Hacker turned and waddled away, to more applause from the revellers.
‘Oh boy,’ said Eleanor, collapsing in a fit of laughter. ‘That’s done it.’
Chapter Four
Denham smoked an HB between courses, staring out over the great expanse of the lake at dusk. The place had drawn him into its mood—placid, untroubled, deep—and he remembered why people took holidays. He stubbed out the cigarette just as two white-gloved waiters arrived to serve him the duckling with champagne cabbage; a third showed him a Moselle from the Kurgarten’s cellar and uncorked it for him to taste.
For something to read he’d brought the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, the publication with the most pictures and the fewest lies. It was full of features on the Olympic athletes and the hopes for Aryan victories. One story, titled ‘Seven Beautiful Girls from the USA,’ caught his eye. The magazine saw movie-star qualities in the American team and had given one girl a full-page photo. Wearing a white, one-piece bathing suit and a white cap strapped beneath her chin, her long legs crouched at the edge of a pool as though she were about to dive, the girl faced the camera, wide mouth smiling provocatively, her nose puckered. She had a long neck and a beauty spot to the right of her nose, one of those little imperfections that only seem to magnify loveliness. ELEANOR EMERSON FROM NEW YORK, the caption read, WAS THE 1932 GOLD MEDALLIST IN THE BACKSTROKE. SHE IS ALSO A SINGER AND THE WIFE OF A POPULAR BANDLEADER.
The hotel’s restaurant was filling up. He heard the rough sounds of Swiss German from one table—bankers and their wives on an evening out from across the lake; at another, two English ladies keeping diaries seemed to know all the waiters by name; at a table near the door, a solitary woman in expensive Italian clothes kept giving him the eye.
The maître d’ was showing another couple to a table.
Oh, shit.
It was Willi Greiser, the Nazi press chief, dressed in Teutonic weekend wear: a green Bavarian jacket trimmed with braid. The blonde with him must be his wife. What the hell is he doing here? Let’s hope he’s not staying the week, Denham thought. Fortunately, Greiser didn’t seem to have spotted him.
He finished eating, refilled his glass, and walked out onto the terrace. Lights twinkled around the shore, and the air was heady with the scent of honeysuckle. In the distance, the Alps gave off a pale glow in the crystalline air. He leaned on the stone balustrade and listened to the laughter and fragments of conversation from couples walking the promenade below.
‘Good evening, Denham.’ A man’s voice.
Denham screwed his eyes shut. So he’d been spotted after all.
‘This is a pleasant coincidence,’ the voice continued. ‘I thought I saw your name on the hotel register. What brings you to Friedrichshafen?’
‘The scenery, Greiser,’ Denham said, turning round. ‘How about you? Aren’t the local papers printing all the good news from Berlin?’
A match flared behind Greiser’s cupped hands, illuminating the low-lidded eyes, the heavy hair that fell in blond slices over his forehead, and the ridiculous college duelling scar down one cheek, the badge of a phoney pedigree. His lapel held an edelweiss.
‘Just a few days’ relaxation before the Olympiad,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a busy time for me. Half a million foreign visitors expected in Berlin.’
‘That’s a lot of people to fool.’
Greiser grinned with genial menace. ‘There’s only one thing that would bring you here, Denham, and I don’t recall receiving your request to visit the Hindenburg, much less endorsing it.’
‘I’m here to see Hugo Eckener, who is an old friend of my father’s.’
Denham touched the engraved watch in his pocket, fearful now of the raw emotion it had released in him.
‘Really? A social visit?’ Greiser chuckled, breathing out a mix of sarcasm and smoke. ‘You’re here to write a feature, and this time you’ll clear it with my office—before that fucking agent of yours sells it all over the world. The chief read your piece on National Socialism in football and was highly annoyed by it.’
‘Goebbels read that?’ Denham punched the air.
‘In German. It was syndicated in one of the Austrian dailies. I had to calm him down, tell him you’re not a bad sort. But this is a warning to you, Denham. I’m serious. Any more damage like that and your press accreditation will be revoked. You’ll be expelled . . . or worse.’
‘Greiser, what could be worse than that?’
He fixed Denham with a hard stare. ‘Watch your step,’ he whispered and turned back through the terrace doors into the restaurant.
Denham jabbed two fingers up and down at Greiser’s departing head, then turned and slumped onto a stone bench. Somewhere off to the left, in the hotel ballroom, a string orchestra was playing the waltz from The Merry Widow.
He’d clashed before with Greiser over pieces he’d written and had got away with it. But this time it sounded like the Bank of Cheek and Luck was calling in the loan. He cupped his face in his hands and rubbed his eyes. Meeting the combined demands of Greiser and his agent was like finding his way through a fantasy castle riddled with mirrors, mines, and trapdoors.
Someone had left a wineglass on the stone paving of the terrace. On a sudden impulse Denham jumped up and kicked it, sending it high into the air in a great arc that ended in the lake.
He’d known Greiser for years. They were the same age, both reporters, but the similarities ended there. Greiser was an opportunist with a diabolical talent for manipulating the foreign press. His cosmopolitan background was unusual in the Nazi hierarchy—he’d spent a year at Cornell, spoke fluent English, and had something of the college jock about him, which made him popular with the United Press boys. Yet he was the worst type of careerist fostered by the regime. Even the fanatics had the integrity of their faith, however loathsome, but Greiser believed in nothing. He’d begun his career reporting the truth and had switched to suppressing it, as though it were a natural evolution. He was wholly without conscience. Whatever grim fate he was threatening at the end of that exchange, Denham had no doubt that he meant it.
Feeling a sudden urge to speak to someone human he returned to his room and placed a telephone call. The operator called him back after a few minutes with his connection to London.
Tom answered. Their conversation was stilted at first, talking about school and cricket, but that changed when Denham mentioned he’d been inside the Hindenburg. His son had question after question, some of them highly original, in the way that only children can be.
‘You didn’t smoke a cigarette on board, did you?’
‘No, I didn’t. But there is a special fireproof smoking room.’
‘But how do they light the cigarettes?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you get me those stamps?’
‘Of course,’ Denham lied, hitting his forehead. ‘I’ve put them in the post.’
He remembered that none of Tom’s school friends had got their hands on a recent Zeppelin issue. By such small tokens are status and respect conferred among eight-year-olds.
Denham said, ‘How’s Mummy? Is she there?’
‘She’s gone for a walk with Uncle Walter.’
Who’s Uncle Walter? ‘Ah, I see.’
‘When are you coming home?’
‘Soon.’
Their chat concluded after Tom gave him a trumpet recital he’d been practising for school. It was an uncertain performance, full of breathy squeaks and duff notes, but Denham could picture the concentration on his small face.
When he replaced the receiver, a valve in his heart opened and flooded him with sadness. He imagined for the thousandth time how it might have been if he’d made a success of things with Anna. He knew how hard it must have been for her to cope with him: his sudden departures on trips lasting weeks, his silences and secrets. His craving for solitude. He didn’t blame her for leaving him. But he missed Tom. Could they ever have been a happy, carefree family? The three of them living in that house in Hampstead, pottering in the garden on summer days like today or roaming on the heath . . .
Or had there, in truth, been no real choice for him?
He took out a small framed photograph he kept in his travelling case: of Tom holding up a slow-worm he’d found in a flowerbed, a squeal of horror and delight on his face, and Anna sitting on a deck chair behind him looking cross—a disjunction that never failed to make him smile. He placed it on the bedside table, lay his head on the pillow, and angled the frame so that his face was reflected in the glass. Then he imagined that he, too, was in the picture with them.
But he was slipping into that slough of loneliness.
He looked at his watch. It was still early.
With an effort he got up and wandered downstairs to find the bar, thinking how much he was in the mood to hear a slow trumpet melody, pulled along by the lazy rhythm of a double bass. The orchestra, however, had moved on to a medley from Der Rosenkavalier. It seemed to be working its way through all the Führer’s favourites. Nothing with any Negroid syncopation, which pretty much ruled out anything that might set your feet tapping. Perhaps they saved the Wagner for cocktail hour.
As he passed the reception desk Denham saw that he’d caught the eye of a young man sitting with a group of four others in the corner of the lobby, and was immediately on his guard. He walked into the deserted bar, sat at a tall stool in front of the barman, and glanced in the mirror behind the crystal and bottles. Sure enough, the man followed him in, accompanied by the others, and they all sat at a table nearby.
Were they watching him?
He ordered a large whisky. The young man glanced again at Denham, but the others, deep in some boisterous discussion, didn’t seem to be looking. Nothing unusual if the local police were keeping a tab on him, he supposed. Especially after he’d come so spectacularly to the attention of the area Brownshirt division on his arrival. He lit an HB and watched the reflected smoke coil into the air. Couldn’t a man have a quiet drink without being spied on?
Before he could even sip his whisky, the young man was standing next to him at the bar, waiting to order. He turned to Denham with a broad smile.
‘You’re American?’
First Greiser, now this. Why hadn’t he stayed in his room?
‘English, actually.’
‘Wonderful. I love your Cary Grant.’
The remark was more unexpected for being spoken in English.
‘So what do you like about Friedrichshafen?’ the man said, still smiling. ‘The friendly locals?’ This he said with a slight tip of his head towards the barman, who was polishing a glass and eyeing them both with suspicion.
It was hearing the actor’s name pronounced with a German accent that made Denham smile, despite himself. ‘I’m here as a guest of the Zeppelin Company.’
The man’s eyes widened. ‘That’s why we’re here,’ he said, ‘for the Hindenburg, I mean. We’re the movie crew filming the opening ceremony of the Olympiad on Saturday. We were just arguing about how to set up the shot as we fly over.’
Denham turned to look properly at him. He was quite young, perhaps about twenty-seven, slender, good-looking, and dark for a German, with glossy black hair sleeked stiffly back. His features were delicate, Italian almost, with a straight nose and long eyelashes. He had on a white sports sweater over an open-necked shirt, like a tennis player.
‘Friedrich Christian,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘But everyone calls me Friedl.’
Denham introduced himself. ‘You’re a cameraman?’
‘I’m training to be one. I used to be an actor,’ he said with a shrug, ‘but there are not so many roles for dark-haired boys these days . . . I write poetry, too. And you? You must be a reporter. You don’t look like a tourist.’
‘Is it that obvious?’ Denham said with a wink and straightaway wished he hadn’t. The young man gave him an odd, private smile.
Denham shifted on the bar stool and mentioned that he’d be on Saturday’s flight, too.
‘Excellent—then together we’ll descend through the clouds to Olympus, like gods.’
‘Where did you learn such good English?’
‘In Berlin. I lived with a poet from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He taught me. But so did Agatha Christie and John Buchan . . . and Jean Harlow, Bessie Smith, and Cab Calloway.’
Denham felt sorry for him. He would have to hide his nature a bit better if he was to avoid a visit from the Gestapo’s queer squad. All the same, there was something not wholly trustworthy about him—in the hustlerlike way he grinned and stood a fraction too close for comfort.
‘Who’s starring in the film?’
‘It’s a documentary, called Olympia. The athletes are the stars I suppose . . . although in a way I don’t think the film is about sport at all. May I?’ he said, pointing at Denham’s matches on the bar and producing a very fine cigarette case. It was a beautiful object, Denham noticed, fashioned of engraved silver and inscribed with the initials KR.
‘Let me guess,’ Denham said as Friedl lit up. ‘The film is really about showcasing the might of the new Germany to the world? No one knows that better than the reporters. Everything serves politics now, including the Hindenburg.’
Friedl pondered this as he inhaled. ‘No, not that even,’ he said. ‘It’s about perfection, physical perfection. The whole film is about the power and beauty of the body . . .’
That’s probably the biggest Nazi obsession of all, Denham thought.
Later, on the way back to his room, he wondered about the Nazis’ attitude towards homosexuals. A boy caught with a boy faced conviction under Paragraph 175 and a long stretch in a camp, where the ‘175ers’ got a worse time than the Jews. Yet no other regime in history had done more to throw boys together with boys, not to mention kitting them out in a fetish of straps, belts, and boots.
Other things about that lad rang warning bells, too, all of them faint except for one: the initials on that silver cigarette case meant that either his name wasn’t Friedl Christian, or it wasn’t his. And if it wasn’t his, he’d probably stolen it.
The Alpine air had made Denham drowsy. He lay down on his side in the same spot as before and was gazing again at the photograph next to his bed when he realised that his reflection was no longer in its frame.
He sat up, all his suspicions coming alive.
Had it been moved?
Warily he looked around the room, at his case, his typewriter.
Maybe he was being paranoid.
Chapter Five
The summons was swift in coming. At ten-thirty Eleanor was still slumbering when Olive shook her. ‘Hey,’ she squeaked, sounding for all the world like Betty Boop. ‘Mr Brundage wants to see you in the C deck coffee room.’
She sat up slowly and felt her temples with her fingers. ‘Jesus.�
� Her eyes felt too small for their sockets, and there was a bilious, grapey concentration coating her tongue.
Show them what you’re made of, sister, she told herself. ‘Kid, pass me those Alka-Seltzers next to the washbasin, would you?’
Half an hour later she entered the coffee room, fresh, made up, and wearing her team uniform for the first time. Avery Brundage was sitting behind a table with three other committee members she didn’t recognise. But at least Hacker wasn’t there to gloat.
The door opened again, and Mrs Hacker plodded in and took a seat.
‘Good morning,’ Eleanor said with a bright smile. ‘What’s this about?’
‘I think you know what this is about, Mrs Emerson,’ Brundage said, tapping his thumb with a pencil. They each had a copy of the AOC handbook in front of them. ‘Mrs Hacker discovered you drunk and abusive at two o’clock this morning.’
‘That’s hardly true,’ said Eleanor. ‘It was one-thirty for a start.’ She noticed one of the committee members suppressing a smile, but Brundage was not amused.
‘Don’t screw with us, young lady. I made the rules perfectly clear. If you set yourself above everyone else you will disrupt the team’s morale and discipline, and I will not stand for that.’ His voice rose to a shout. It was a shock, like a clap of thunder on a fine day. ‘I spent two years fighting old man Taylor. Tell me, am I fighting you, too? Because you will not win.’ His eyes were blazing. For several seconds he glared at her. Then, in a calmer voice, he said, ‘I should tell you that I am minded to drop you from the team. However . . . my colleagues, in their wisdom, think it fair to give you one more chance.’
Eleanor glanced at the other men, grateful to know she had allies who had restrained him.
‘You will not be seen on the first-class deck again. Do you understand me?’ He slammed his fist on the table. ‘One last chance. Now get out and train.’
She was close to tears. As she rose to leave, she saw victory playing around the edges of Hacker’s whiskery lips. Well, the old buzzard got her revenge all right.
