Paving the New Road

by Sulari Gentill

  Not entirely sure if that was some kind of censure, Rowland hastened to the front door.

  Though he’d been prepared by the housekeeper, Rowland was nevertheless startled by the sobbing which reached his ears before he stepped out. Eva threw herself into his arms and continued to weep into his chest.

  “Good Lord, Eva…Whatever’s the matter?”

  She was unable to speak, gulping and crying anew as she tried. He just stood there and let her be for a while. It was perhaps because she took so long to compose herself that Rowland had time to notice the car full of uniform-clad SA officers on the street at the end of Richter’s cobbled driveway.

  He wasn’t particularly disconcerted—the Brownshirts seemed to be everywhere these days—but he did note it.

  “Fräulein Eva,” he said gently, “shall we go inside? We can get you a cup of tea and you can tell me precisely what is the matter.”

  Eva nodded, wiping uselessly at the sodden patch she’d left on his jacket. He took her into the formal sitting room and asked Mrs. Schuler to bring tea. Clyde stuck his head in, but seeing Eva weeping on the settee, disappeared again, presumably to hide in the studio until the drama was over.

  When the tea service had been wheeled in and a tray placed upon the parlour table, Rowland stood by the door till Frau Schuler realised he wished her to leave. She did so reluctantly. Rowland closed the door firmly behind the housekeeper and took a seat beside Eva. He poured her a cup of tea, and handed her his handkerchief.

  “What has happened, Eva?”

  She shook her head and for a moment he thought she might cry again. “Do you think I’m pretty, Herr Negus?”

  Rowland’s brow rose, but he said, “Yes, of course.”

  “When you are in love with a woman, how would you show it?”

  Rowland shifted uncomfortably. “It depends on the woman, I suppose,” he said uncertainly. “Has something happened, Eva?”

  She rummaged in her purse and then handed an envelope to Rowland. It contained a thick wad of banknotes—Reichsmarks. “Herr Wolf took me for a picnic today…He said he had something to give me.” She wiped her eyes. “I thought he might present me with a dachshund, or a bracelet—I would have liked a bracelet—or even flowers.” She broke down again. “But instead he hands me this envelope, without a word of kindness. He treats me like some schlampen from the street!”

  Rowland wasn’t quite sure what to say. The envelope of money did strike him as a little cold and unseemly.

  “What would you give Fräulein Greenway, Herr Negus?”

  Rowland hesitated, and then he answered honestly. “Anything she wants.”

  That seemed to wound Eva anew, and she disintegrated into an anguished keening wail.

  Rowland was becoming quite alarmed by the depth of her despair, not to mention the noise. He tried to comfort her.

  “Eva…please stop crying.”

  She clung to him and eventually the sobs subsided. Then, pressing against him, Eva raised her face, her lips parted slightly. She closed her eyes and waited.

  Rowland realised suddenly that she wanted him to kiss her. He decided quite quickly against it. Putting his hands on her shoulders, he pushed her back gently. “Eva, perhaps you should find someone other than your Herr Wolf.”

  She started and pulled back from him. “No, that is not possible.”

  “Why?”

  “You do not understand. I love him. God help me, I love him. I would happily stop breathing before I was without him. If he discards me, I shall die!” Eva threw herself onto the arm of the settee, calling the name of her lover. “Wolf, my darling Wolf…”

  Rowland was unsure what to do. The girl seemed on the verge of a breakdown of some sort.

  Just at that point, the door was opened. Alois Richter had returned to find his houseguest entertaining a young woman who seemed to be hysterical. The moment was excruciatingly awkward, but Rowland could not help but be relieved that there was someone—anyone—to intervene, as he was clearly doing an inadequate job of comforting the poor girl.

  He left Eva to her grief and, taking his bewildered host aside, explained its cause quickly.

  “Her gentleman friend seems to have disappointed her, I’m afraid,” Rowland said quietly. “She’s quite inconsolable.”

  “What did he do?” Richter asked, his eyes bright, his tone hushed.

  “He’s made her an inappropriate gift that seems to have left her doubting his esteem.”

  “Oh, dear, the poor child,” Richter said. “Pour her a glass of sherry, Mr. Negus. Stasi and I shall see if we cannot comfort her a little.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  OUR MISTRESSES:

  THE PRESS

  ...In June 1933, having read in the English Press of the riots in Germany, and of the slaughter of the Jews and of general acts of lawlessness, I crossed the Rhine fearing the worst. I found cities and countrysides orderly and peaceable as in England. I found a courteous, industrious people, absurdly like ourselves, a little resentful, but generally highly amused at the misrepresentation of the Foreign Press. I even met Jews in Berlin trading under their own names, who hardly knew whether to be indignant or scornful of the Semitic atrocities they read about. In Berlin there were fewer traffic police than in Sydney.

  Then the deliberate misrepresentation as regards alleged “breakaways” in the New Guard, proves the unreliability of the Press to demonstration...

  It is when a newspaper, for its own purposes, seeks to mould public opinion that it ceases to be a public utility and becomes a sinister menace. As an industry, a newspaper is but a marshalling of machinery, paper, and ink, plus a few operatives and technicians.

  What right has such an undemocratic minority to influence the opinions and control the thought of the majority?

  —Eric Campbell, The New Road, 1934

  To Rowland’s surprise, Alois Richter was able to calm Eva much more effectively than he. The tailor was patient and kind, sitting in an armchair making soothing noises and plying the girl with sherry.

  “Alcohol,” Milton murmured, as the three of them watched from the doorway. “You should have thought of that.”

  Rowland nodded. It seemed to be doing the trick. Eva was now sitting quietly with Stasi occupying her lap and a glass of sherry in her hand as Richter rambled about love and loss and hats. He spoke most confidently of the last.

  Rowland motioned his friends into the hallway and explained the anguished commotion that they had heard, but from which they had assiduously kept their distance.

  “Perhaps he didn’t mean to offend her,” Clyde suggested, glancing back towards the sitting room. “Some blokes are just not good at buying presents. My old Dad gave Mum a cross-cut saw for her birthday one year.”

  Rowland exhaled slowly. “Who knows? It’s all rather unfortunate.”

  “So what do we do now?” Milton asked.

  “I’ll drive her home when she’s ready, I suppose,” Rowland replied.

  “Don’t get too involved, Rowly,” Clyde advised. “It won’t be good if she switches this obsession of hers to you.”

  “She won’t do that,” Rowland said, with a great deal more confidence than he felt.

  “Don’t you believe it, mate,” Clyde replied. “I like Eva and I feel sorry for the poor kid, but she’s as silly as a wet hen.”

  Rowland folded his arms across his chest, leaning back against the wall. Clyde had a point.

  After supper, Rowland drove Eva home. She took with her the second, more traditional nude which he’d painted when he’d realised the first revealed too much. The painting cheered her somewhat, and she talked excitedly about how she would present it to Herr Wolf.

  “Do not be angry with me, Herr Negus,” she pleaded, when she noticed his silence.

  “I’m not angry, Eva.”

  “You
do not want me to give my painting to Herr Wolf.”

  “I just wish you didn’t want to, Eva. It seems to me that he makes you quite desperately unhappy.”

  “When he sees the painting, Herr Negus, he will be happy and that will make me happy. He is all I live for.”

  Rowland left it. She wasn’t about to be talked out of her loyalty to the man.

  He carried the painting into her apartment, where she introduced him awkwardly to her family. They were polite but cold and he wondered if perhaps they assumed he was the married man with whom their daughter was involved.

  Rowland arrived back at Richter’s not long before Edna finally returned.

  Hans von Eidelsöhn walked Edna to the door, but it was there that she left him.

  The sculptress joined them as they were sipping brandy by the fireplace.

  “What on Earth is around your neck?” Milton asked the moment he saw her.

  Edna smiled as she put her hand to the string of typewriter keys and pen nibs that hung around her throat. “It’s Hans’ latest creation. Isn’t it delightful?”

  Rowland smiled. “It’s interesting. Another gift?”

  “Of course it is. Nobody’s going to pay for that,” Clyde said flatly.

  “I don’t know,” Milton said, standing to study it more closely. “What does he call it?”

  “Writer’s Folly.”

  “Figures,” Clyde observed. “Doubt his typewriter will be much good for anything now.”

  “Stop laughing,” Edna admonished Rowland. “It was a parting gift.” She sat down beside him, playing absently with the lettered keys.

  “Parting?” Rowland asked. “Where’s he going?”

  Edna frowned. “Apparently the SS visited the gallery yesterday. They took some of his paintings.”

  “So?” Clyde shrugged. “A sale’s a sale.”

  “They didn’t purchase them,” Edna said. “They confiscated them. Apparently they have been deemed degenerate.”

  Milton sat up. “Von Eidelsöhn’s work is dread—unconventional, but who’re the flaming SS to say it’s degenerate?”

  “Well, they did. Hans is worried he’ll end up in Dachau, so he’s leaving…He’s going to Vienna.” She sighed, her eyes misting slightly. “Silly boy thought I might come with him. I think I’ll miss him rather dreadfully.”

  Rowland suppressed an irrational surge of irritation that the artist had even suggested such a thing. He had made a practice of ignoring Edna’s various suitors and it rarely occurred to him that she would leave with one. The thought did not sit comfortably.

  “He was silly to think he could entice you away from us,” Richter soothed, pouring her a glass of brandy. “But it is sad that he should have to go when you were so fond of him.”

  “Indeed,” Rowland murmured, hoping he sounded sincere.

  Edna looked at him and smiled. Obviously, he had not.

  “Were you aware that there are Brownshirts watching the house?” she said suddenly.

  “Brownshirts?” Richter flushed immediately. “Watching my house?”

  Edna nodded. “Yes…they’re not terribly subtle. Hans was quite unnerved.”

  Rowland scowled. “I noticed them earlier, but I thought it was just a passing patrol or something of the like.”

  “So!” Richter stood and went to the window. Of course, it was dark now and he could see nothing. “This can only be Hugo Boss. He thinks he can send the SA to spy on me…to discredit me so he can steal my contracts!”

  Rowland glanced at Edna. Could what she feared be coming to pass?

  “Perhaps it is us, Alois.” Edna stood and joining him by the window.

  “But why would it be you?”

  “Perhaps it’s because of the art we’re buying, the artists with whom we’re meeting. Hans and the others. We should go back to the Vier Jahreszeiten…There’s no reason you should have to endure this.”

  “I will not hear of it!” Richter said vehemently. “You should not have to endure it, either! I will speak to Himmler…He will call off Röhm and his dogs or I will interfere with the seat of the trousers in every uniform that comes out of my factories!”

  For a moment there was silence as they absorbed the startling threat. Then Edna began to giggle. Rowland smiled, unable to prevent the extraordinary images that came to mind. Milton laughed outright and Clyde adjusted the belt of his own trousers.

  Edna kissed the tailor on the cheek. “Alois, I adore you,” she said.

  Nancy Wake was waiting in the same café to which she had taken them on the night of the book-burning. She sat at a table near a trio of fiddlers, and she hummed along as she waited. It was nearly midnight.

  Rowland had slipped out after she’d called and arranged this meeting. A little concerned that the SA might still be watching, he had come alone, hailing a motor cab after walking a little way from Schellingstrasse. And so it was that he was a little late. He launched straight into an apology as he removed his overcoat and hat.

  She waved his words away. “That’s all right, I like it here.”

  Rowland ordered drinks. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Miss Wake,” he said sincerely.

  She rolled her eyes. “For pity’s sake, call me Nancy—we’ve been far too familiar for such formalities.”

  Rowland smiled. “Yes, I daresay that’s true.”

  “Now what can I do for you, Rowly?”

  Rowland recounted his conversation with the actress-cum-cigarette girl at the Kammerspiele.

  “You believe this woman, Anna Niemann, was having an affair with Peter?”

  “Not necessarily, but I would like to know what happened to her. I was hoping you might…”

  “Be able to dig around?”

  “Yes, if you’d be so kind.”

  She considered momentarily. “I think I shall. I’d like to know what happened to Peter myself.”

  “There is something else,” Rowland began, a little embarrassed to be asking so much.

  She regarded him curiously. “Go on, then. You’d best spit it out.”

  Rowland took a deep breath. This would take some explaining. “We’d like to encourage Colonel Campbell to return to Australia,” he began. Nancy listened carefully as he outlined the plan to plant in Campbell’s mind the idea that his army was disintegrating in his absence, that his second-in-command was on the brink of succeeding him. “If you were to tell him all this in the course of an interview, he would not doubt it,” Rowland said, watching the young journalist’s face carefully. “He would assume the information was coming through your contacts in the press.”

  Nancy grabbed his hands and squeezed them excitedly. “Why, that’s marvellous! What a wonderful plan!” She laughed delightedly.

  “Then, you’ll…?”

  “Of course! It’s a fabulous caper. We don’t need Hitler’s nonsense getting back home. I say, I have a friend with a printing press…I may be able to mock up some articles to show him.” She raised her glass. “To subterfuge, Rowly-Robbie Sinclair-Negus.”

  Rowland amended the toast. “To you, Nancy. I will be in your debt for many years, I suspect.”

  The fiddlers picked up their tempo and she stood with his hand still in hers. “I think we’d better dance, don’t you?”

  Rowland yawned. He had got in at dawn, which had left him just two hours to sleep. Immediately after breakfast, Alois Richter had stormed off to threaten Himmler in his indignation over the SA surveillance.

  With the exception of the domestic staff, they were alone. Once the housekeeper retreated to attend to her duties, Rowland told his friends of his meeting with Nancy Wake.

  “So she’ll do it?” Milton asked.

  “She’s rather keen.”

  Clyde chuckled. “She’s forgiven you for the liberties you took, then?”

  R
owland smiled. “I believe she has.”

  Milton studied him. “Miss Wake is a bloody good sport.”

  Rowland rubbed his neck drowsily. “I think she’s splendid.”

  For a moment, Edna looked at him strangely. “Nancy’s very beautiful,” she said wistfully.

  Rowland glanced up, a little surprised.

  Edna folded her arms. She smiled now, her eyes teasing again. “Alois won’t be back for a couple of hours, Rowly. You should get some sleep while he’s not here to wonder why you’re so tired.”

  “No, I’m fine,” he replied, sitting up.

  It wasn’t more than a few minutes, however, before he drifted off in the chair. His companions let him be, passing the time playing cards. At some point Edna slipped a cushion between his head and the wing of the chair, but otherwise they left him undisturbed.

  It was past eleven when he stirred. Groggily, Rowland checked his watch.

  “Damn it,” he groaned.

  “What’s wrong?” Clyde asked, discarding a pair of cards.

  “I promised to try running into Unity Mitford again to keep Blanshard happy. If Hitler doesn’t arrive at the restaurant by twelve, I presume she won’t wait.” He stood and straightened his tie. “I’d better chuff off.”

  Milton folded his hand. “I might go with you.”

  “What?”

  “It’ll look suspicious if she encounters you on your own again. She’ll assume you’re madly in love with her…following her around. It could get awkward.”

  “And it’ll be less awkward if I bring you?” Rowland’s eyes rose from the poet’s emerald green cravat to the burgundy beret he wore on his head.