The Diplomat's Wife

by Michael Ridpath

  Dick pursed his lips; too late, I saw that I had hurt him. But then he relaxed, smiling. ‘You haven’t changed much, have you, Emma?’

  ‘Haven’t I?’

  ‘You do say what you think.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘That was a bit cruel.’

  ‘The cruel thing is you are right.’

  ‘Didn’t it sell?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’ I searched for something good to say. ‘I did like the scene in the bistro with the aristocratic young English lady. That wasn’t me, was it?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Dick said, reddening. ‘No resemblance to any person living or dead.’

  ‘Because there seemed to be quite a lot of intimacy between her and Leonard.’ Leonard was the young hero of the book.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Dick. ‘I suppose there was, rather. I tried not to be too explicit.’

  ‘You did,’ I said with a wicked grin. ‘You left just the right amount to the imagination. I rather liked those bits. Leonard seemed frightfully keen on her.’

  ‘Yes, he was.’ Dick cleared his throat. ‘Has Roland read it?’

  ‘Not his cup of tea.’

  ‘That’s probably for the best.’

  A small squad of boys, no more than ten years old, marched past in brown shirts and black shorts, looking as serious and grown-up as they could. I hated the way the state was grabbing the youth of the country and moulding them into little Nazis.

  ‘Do you think they play conkers in Germany?’ I said, remembering Hugh at that age.

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Dick. ‘Why? Do you think that’s the SS Conkers Battalion?’

  I laughed. ‘German conkers are probably bigger and more modern than ours.’

  ‘But not as plucky.’ Dick sipped his coffee. ‘You are still with Roland, I take it?’

  ‘I am,’ I said. ‘Are you surprised?’

  ‘I suppose I am. But you have your daughter to think of. He is a frightful cad. You may have forgiven him, but I can’t.’

  ‘That’s sweet of you,’ I said, and I meant it. I was suddenly overwhelmed by an absurd sense of gratitude to Dick. I realized I needed someone to agree with me about how appalling Roland’s behaviour had been; it was even better that Dick had volunteered his opinion without me asking for it.

  Roland was a frightful cad.

  ‘I don’t know whether there is very much stigma to divorce these days,’ Dick said. ‘If you left him, people would understand.’

  ‘Perhaps. But I’ve decided to stay.’

  I could see Dick wanted to ask me why. And frankly, I wanted to tell him. But I couldn’t do that without explaining that I was spying for the Comintern, and that I couldn’t do.

  Just like Hugh.

  Dick had disapproved of the idea that Hugh was a spy.

  ‘Have you joined the party?’ I asked.

  ‘The Communist Party?’ said Dick, surprised. ‘Oh, no. I suppose you could say I’m still a socialist, but I’m nowhere near as left-wing as Freddie.’

  ‘Do you still see him? What’s he up to?’

  ‘Occasionally he invites me to some deeply outrageous parties in London. He likes to shock in politics and in other things. How do you find Berlin compared to Paris?’

  ‘Totally different. It’s disconcerting living in a police state with uniforms everywhere telling everyone what to do. In France no one seemed to obey anyone; here everyone does.’

  I grimaced. ‘I was here for Kristallnacht last November. I saw not just windows broken, but Jews badly beaten up, and the state encouraging it. And it just gets worse. In Paris the Cagoulards would start the odd scuffle and sometimes the police would look the other way, but in Berlin it’s much nastier.’ I shuddered. ‘It’s terrifying how this can happen in a country that seems on the surface so civilized.

  ‘A friend of ours at the university just lost his job. He’s a lecturer in English Literature. He wrote an article about George Bernard Shaw several years ago – I think it was before Hitler had even come to power. A colleague of his sneaked on him: told the Ministry of Propaganda that it was a socialist tract. So Christoph was out, and he can’t get a job anywhere else. He swears the article was nothing about politics at all, just a criticism of St Joan. I looked it up in the Staatsbibliothek. It had gone.’

  ‘Presumably it would have been worse if he was Jewish?’

  ‘Much worse.’ I sighed. ‘I do feel as if I am on the diplomatic front line.’

  ‘And from the diplomatic front line, do you think there will be war?’

  ‘Probably. The British government has more or less decided it’s inevitable since the Germans took the rest of Czecho in March. The ambassador here still believes in appeasement; he’s desperately trying to find things we can give away to the Germans for more empty promises of peace.’

  Nevile Henderson had recovered from his cancer and returned to Berlin as ambassador in February, changing the tone at the embassy and putting Roland in a tricky position. A couple of junior diplomats from the embassy had resigned in protest, but Roland felt his duty was to stay and do what he could to encourage his country to stand up to Germany. And his umbrella remained resolutely in its stand by the front door of our apartment.

  ‘I agree appeasement hasn’t worked, but it was worth a try,’ Dick said.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Anything is worth a try if it’s going to stop a war. Now all we can hope for is that we stand firm enough to force Hitler to back down from a war he thinks he can’t win.’

  ‘The trouble is, he thinks he can win,’ I said. ‘That’s the gossip here. Some of the generals aren’t so sure, but Hitler seems pretty determined. Danzig is next. And then Poland.’

  ‘So I’ll be wearing a uniform too this time next year,’ said Dick.

  ‘I fear you will. Probably by Christmas.’

  A stray thought struck me unawares. Hugh would have looked very handsome in uniform.

  Chapter 39

  ROLAND AND I had been invited to a reception at the American Embassy. It was a beautiful summer’s evening, and we decided to walk from our flat along the edge of the Tiergarten: the embassy was in Pariser Platz right next to the Brandenburg Gate. It had been a warm day, but a gentle breeze of the famous Berliner Luft, the brisk Berlin air, rustled the trees and cooled the temperature. An unseen multitude of birds in the park discussed the day’s events. While the cars still hurtled along the Tiergartenstrasse, the pedestrians seemed less hurried than usual, under the spell of the soothing evening sunshine.

  ‘I saw Dick Loxton today,’ I said. I thought it best to be open with Roland; I had secrets I needed to keep from him, but the fewer the better.

  ‘Oh, really? Nice chap. What’s he doing in Germany?’

  I explained Dick’s plan to interview Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

  Roland frowned. ‘Bonhoeffer is definitely persona non grata. He would have been locked up long ago if it wasn’t for his Prussian Junker friends. Hitler is still wary of tussling with them. You should tell Loxton to be very careful.’

  ‘Too late,’ I said. ‘He’s off to Dresden tomorrow. But I will see him when he comes back here.’

  ‘I wish him luck,’ said Roland. ‘I doubt very much Bonhoeffer will tell him anything interesting. He won’t want to get arrested himself.’

  We walked in silence. Two girls passed us. One of them, a tall woman trailing thick blonde plaits like sledgehammers, flashed her striking blue eyes at Roland, allowing them to linger there before she saw me staring at her.

  I glanced at my darkly handsome husband. He was indeed attractive, and as he reached his middle thirties, his attractiveness was, if anything, growing.

  And I was impressed with what he was doing in Berlin. He talked a lot about his work with me now. Somehow he managed to tread what seemed an impossible path working for an ambassador hell-bent on grovelling to the Germans, yet still putting forward the revised policy of the British government, which was now to persuade Germany that Britain re
ally, really would stand behind Poland if Germany attacked her, honest.

  He was working hard. And his reputation was rising; I knew his colleagues thought a lot of him, as did the diplomats from the other embassies in Berlin. He was going places, my husband, and I would be there to tell the Comintern all about it. At that moment the British were conducting tortuous secret negotiations with Russia to form an alliance against Germany. Being in Berlin, Roland wasn’t directly involved, but he was aware of what was going on, and he found in me a receptive audience for his thoughts on the matter.

  Kay told me her bosses were very interested in Roland’s thoughts, reflecting as they did the position of the British officials with whom the Soviet diplomats were negotiating.

  I don’t know whether Roland had noticed me noticing the girls noticing him, but he turned to me.

  ‘You know, Emma, you are looking lovely this evening.’

  He had that smile. Roland had many smiles, which had varying degrees of superficiality and charm, but this was my smile. It was just for me.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said, blushing. I couldn’t help it. This handsome man genuinely found me attractive. He wasn’t pretending: he meant it.

  ‘I’m not being silly.’ His fingers reached for mine. I clasped them.

  I felt good. I felt happy. I almost felt loved.

  I wondered whom Roland was having sex with. Not with me. And not, I thought, with anyone I knew. Berlin differed a little from Paris; diplomats here were more likely to have mistresses among the showgirls and hostesses in all those clubs they frequented, rather than wayward aristocratic ladies or their friends’ wives.

  Who knew? Maybe he even paid for it, as I had told him to.

  I let his fingers go.

  Sex was too important to Roland for him to ignore.

  Yet he was a patient man. I knew that his patience was one of the reasons my relationship with him was tolerable.

  Whereas there was none between me and my mother; our split was dramatic. She had seen her granddaughter only twice since Caroline had been born. Between the two of us, we managed to ensure that she was in London whenever Roland and I visited Chaddington.

  Over the last couple of years, I had learned the insult in Italian – and Spanish and Portuguese for that matter: figlio di puttana. Son of a whore.

  Well, I was the daughter of a whore. Why wasn’t there a phrase for that?

  I was getting better at being a diplomat’s wife. Lothar had encouraged me to pass on diplomatic gossip, and to be able to do that I needed to cultivate a group of people willing to gossip with me beyond just Kurt. I had built up a group of confidants in Paris, and I was doing well building up a similar crowd in Berlin.

  Most diplomats thought it absurd that a twenty-four-year-old girl could have any views on politics worth listening to, but a minority found my bluntness bracing and my unorthodox ideas intriguing. Foolishly, some of them appeared to believe they could trust me with indiscretions that they would never have shared with a fellow diplomat. They could come from any country and be any age: a fifty-five-year-old first secretary from the Brazilian Embassy was an incorrigible gossip about diplomatic life in Berlin, and was also one of my best sources.

  I was speaking to him about the scandalous love life of the daughter of a previous American ambassador when I recognized a familiar face.

  ‘Kurt! How wonderful to see you!’

  Kurt clicked his heels and bowed, his familiar smile transforming his stiff demeanour. I introduced him to my Brazilian friend, who did the tactful thing and withdrew to let us talk.

  ‘Are you on home leave?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Kurt. ‘I was transferred back to the Foreign Ministry here in March. Working for Herr Brickendrop, as you English call him so disrespectfully.’

  I smiled, recognizing the nickname of the Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop, who had earned it in London during his stint as German ambassador there.

  ‘I haven’t seen you about the place?’

  ‘I’m not in that kind of department,’ Kurt said. ‘But I wangled an invitation to this evening’s reception in the hope that I would bump into you.’

  ‘I’m flattered.’

  Kurt bowed. ‘It is nice to see you, but I have something rather important to discuss with you.’

  ‘This is where I have to keep smiling and nodding,’ I said, smiling and nodding, but intrigued.

  ‘Yes, but not here. Perhaps we could bump into each other in the Tiergarten tomorrow afternoon? Around one o’clock?’

  ‘The Rose Garden?’

  ‘That would be perfect. Until tomorrow.’ Kurt bowed, clicked his heels, and withdrew.

  It was much nicer hanging around in the Rose Garden with Caroline in June than in November. The giant statue of the Empress Auguste Viktoria looked over the mothers and the nannies and their charges with the benign attentiveness of a headmistress of a small but strict elementary school. Her husband had arguably started the First World War, and there were certainly echoes in the Third Reich of the militarism of Wilhelmine Germany. But in her long Edwardian dress, she seemed a symbol of a more civilized time.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Kurt stroll past, enjoying the lunchtime sunshine, puffing on a thin cigar. He noticed me, stopped and raised his hat. ‘Mrs Meeke? How nice to see you! May I join you for a couple of minutes before I return to my office?’

  ‘Of course you may, Kurt,’ I said, attempting an expression of polite surprise.

  He made immediate friends with Caroline.

  ‘Don’t you miss Paris, Kurt? I do.’

  ‘Berlin is dreadful. It’s very tough on poor Martine.’ Martine was Kurt’s bubbly French wife. They had been married just over a year.

  ‘We were at a dinner party last week, and the butler refused to serve one of the other guests! Claimed she was Jewish – he had somehow found out her maiden name was Goldstein. Afterwards our hostess said she couldn’t sack him because he knew things about her.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘She didn’t say. My guess is she’s part-Jewish too.’

  ‘Why do you put up with it, Kurt?’

  Kurt shook his head. He reached down and chucked Caroline’s chin. ‘What choice do I have?’

  ‘Can’t you resign?’

  ‘And then what would I do?’ He sighed. ‘I’ve always hated things that are unfair, even as a child. Especially as a child – I drove my parents mad. That’s why I became a lawyer, to sort out all the unfair stuff. And it’s why I became a socialist. Society is unfair. It’s not fair that some people are rich and powerful and some people are poor and starving. At university I learned how to phrase all this in terms of jurisprudence and justice, but, basically, it’s just not fair. It’s wrong.’

  ‘And yet you ended up working for a Nazi government,’ I said.

  Kurt gave me half a smile. ‘There are some little things I can do.’

  I understood. ‘What do you have to tell me?’

  ‘You remember how you passed on my message about your friend Cyril Ashcott in Paris?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I have a similar request. Once again, I would rather you didn’t tell your husband if you can. From what I know of your current ambassador, he will want to squash what I have to say. Ideally, you should find a way of getting my message directly to the right people in London.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said. I wasn’t sure exactly how I was going to do that. It would depend on the nature of the message, but I would find a way.

  ‘This may shock you. It certainly shocked me. It’s about a country that I know is close to both our hearts.’

  ‘France?’

  ‘No.’ He looked me in the eye. ‘Russia.’

  Chapter 40

  BERNADETTE, THE FRENCH babysitter, was due to look after Caroline that afternoon anyway, so I was able to visit the Stabi, as the Staatsbibliothek was affectionately known by those who toiled in her. I had become interested in the nineteenth-century w
riter Heinrich von Kleist, who had sought solace from a life plan he had drawn up for himself at the age of twenty-one, but from which he had diverged when he had shot himself and his terminally ill girlfriend at the age of thirty-four. I found him fascinating, and his stories wonderful. I had ordered up a biography and a couple of pieces of literary criticism.

  I had difficulty concentrating on the words as I turned the pages, one pencil lying across the other on my desk, waiting for Kay to stroll past and spot the signal. My habitual desk was located in one of the many crannies off the large octagonal central reading room, which, while partially hidden, was easy for Kay to pass naturally.

  She didn’t come in every day, but she usually visited the library two or three times a week to check on me. Presumably there were other spies she dealt with in Berlin other than just me. I probably had equivalents from other countries – France, maybe, or America.

  She strolled past my desk shortly after four. She took a book out from a nearby shelf, and ten minutes later she replaced it. I waited ten minutes and then removed the same book. Inside, I found a scrap of paper with two numbers. I subtracted three from the first number to get that day’s date, and added six to the second number to get eight. Eight o’clock at her flat that evening.

  Roland and I were due to see Coriolanus as the guest of an official in Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry. Shakespeare had always been popular in Germany, and in recent years Coriolanus had become the Nazis’ favourite play. All those opportunities for Roman salutes.

  I telephoned Roland at the Chancery to tell him that I couldn’t come because I would be out with a friend from the American Women’s Club, and bribed Bernadette to babysit Caroline. Kay had suggested that I join the Women’s Club – there were also a small number of British women members – as a cover for making her acquaintance. They gave occasional literary talks, which I found interesting, as well as the odd concert. I left the teas and bridge to others.

  Roland wasn’t happy about me chucking him and his Nazi friend at such short notice, but I told him that was the kind of diplomatic incident he was qualified to deal with. Inconsistency and unpredictability were still my watchwords in my dealings with him.