Black Roses

by Jane Thynne

  The jazz band on stage began to pack up and Leo’s companion turned to him.

  ‘There won’t be much of this any more. They hate jazz, don’t they? It’s nigger music they say. Or was it Bolshevik? I can’t remember.’

  ‘Whatever it was, it’s going to be all Strauss waltzes and Bavarian folk music from now on.’ Leo grimaced. ‘Get used to it.’

  ‘You might enjoy the odd waltz, Leo, if you tried it. There’s something to be said for a dance that requires you to clasp a beautiful woman in your arms.’

  Leo looked at Rupert’s broad, good-natured face with affection. He had met Rupert Allingham in their first term at Oxford. They’d discussed politics, women, and even God. Rupert described himself as “Church of England by race, rather than religion”, Leo was a more conflicted agnostic. They had talked as honestly as possible about their backgrounds. Rupert’s mother was a landed aristocrat, who indulged her only son’s every whim, and tried hard not to mind when he dropped out of Oxford after the second year and opted for journalism rather than managing their thousands of Northumbrian acres. Leo tried to explain life in Clapham, and had even taken Rupert home to meet his parents. They had sat together at the same kitchen table where Leo had had his tonsils removed as a small child, and Leo’s parents had asked Rupert respectful questions about Lord and Lady Allingham, while Rupert had responded with unfeigned interest in Mr Quinn’s accountancy work. Yet although his friend had a boundless curiosity for other people’s lives, and it was that which made him a good journalist, Leo knew Rupert would never properly understand the life of the lower middle class, with all its inhibitions and dull propriety. Rupert’s was a different England from his own. It was that “precious stone set in the silver sea” England that Shakespeare wrote about, whose identity was distilled in architecture and ancient places. While they were at Oxford, treading the same cobbles and honey stone quads, they had shared a country. A decade later, Leo wasn’t sure they did any more.

  After university, they drifted apart. Throughout the second half of the twenties Leo would see Rupert’s name above a story from Paris, or Cairo or the Lebanon. Colour pieces, he thought they were called, about local life, a row about antiquities in the Valley of the Kings, the last interview with Gertrude Bell in Iraq. But even though he knew Rupert was a foreign correspondent, it had still been a pleasurable surprise when he turned up one morning last month, announcing that he was to run the Chronicle’s Berlin bureau and asking where the best restaurants could be found.

  The audience chatter died down as a handsome man in a suit peered round the curtain and edged shyly onto the stage. He had a strong face, round, horn-rimmed glasses and an expression like an accountant about to break bad news. His appearance drew cheers from the customers. This was what they had come to see.

  ‘Oh!’ he said in mock surprise. ‘Are we still here?’

  Another laugh. Everyone knew Werner Finck. He was renowned for sailing close to the edge in poking fun at the Nazis. He had a technique of allowing the end of his sentence to fall away, so his jibe was implied rather than directly stated, but still everyone knew how it ended. They liked to finish his jokes for him, and all too often they shouted the punch lines out. Rupert looked bemused.

  ‘It’s a skit about Hitler,’ Leo explained. ‘It’s a favourite. He’s done it before.’

  ‘That’s one joke where I’d like to know the punchline.’

  Finck moved onto the next part of his story. “Goering, who as you know is to be made Reich game warden, likes to take his animals for a walk now and again. He is walking past the Reich Chancellery, and Hitler looks down and says “Hermann, I see you are taking a tortoise for a walk.” And he says, “No, this is just Goebbels in a steel helmet”.’

  The audience erupted, banging their tables in appreciation. Suddenly Finck leant towards a man in the audience, a small man with a fedora and a face as bony as a bag of spanners, whom Leo had not seen before.

  ‘Am I going too fast for you? Do you want me to slow down so you can take notes?’

  The audience laughed, but more quietly this time. Finck had identified a police informer. The man shifted uncomfortably, turning scarlet with embarrassment and anger. As faces turned towards him, the man rose and shouldered his way roughly out of the room, to the accompaniment of clapping. As he ducked out of the door he shouted a parting shot.

  ‘Filthy Jew!’

  ‘I’m afraid not, good sir,’ Finck called after him. ‘I’m not a Jew. I just look intelligent.’

  ‘Gestapo nark,’ said Leo tersely.

  ‘It won’t be just jazz they’re getting rid of, if he keeps taunting Nazis like that,’ said Rupert.

  ‘I don’t know. Finck is careful. It’s all puns and innuendo. He doesn’t say anything directly critical of them. Besides, the manager here is a Party member.’

  A gust of laughter greeted Finck’s next gibe. He was telling a joke about Erik Jan Hanussen, Hitler’s personal astrologer. The intense, dark-featured Viennese psychic, with his persuasive voice and mesmeric eyes, had come to public notice the previous year when he began casting prescient horoscopes and astounding audiences with his feats of mind reading. Then, more audaciously, his own weekly newspaper, the Bunte Wochenschau, printed the startling prophecy that within one year Hitler would become Reich Chancellor. It was a long shot then. The Nazis were short of money. The results of the November Reichstag elections were disappointing for them. Even his avid supporters were doubting that Hitler really had it to become their country’s leader. Berliners in particular scoffed. But they weren’t laughing now.

  ‘Hanussen should watch out himself,’ said Leo quietly. ‘He’s lent a lot of money to the SA. That doesn’t go down well. Nobody likes to be in debt.’

  The waitress arrived with Leo’s Weisse, the traditional Berlin light beer with a dash of raspberry juice. It was sweet enough for a child, but he liked it. As she leant across Leo, the waitress gave him a look that needed no translation. If he was prepared to wait until the end of her shift, it said, there would be something worth waiting for. She batted her black spider eyelashes at him and wiggled away. Rupert laughed.

  ‘At least she’s a woman,’ said Leo, dryly.

  ‘So how are things on that front? Anyone special?’

  He shrugged. ‘There’s a girl at work. But you have to be careful.’

  Irene was a receptionist. She was an English girl born in Berlin and she had the kind of blonde, Aryan prettiness that would have melted the heart of any storm trooper. He couldn’t ignore the looks she gave him as he dashed past her desk in the morning, or handed her a sheaf of paperwork to type up. Or the way she lingered when she handed him a letter she had prepared, as if there was something he needed to ask. He knew what that meant. He had thought about asking her out somewhere, but dismissed it instantly. You had to be careful, they had stressed in London. You were being watched and you knew it.

  ‘You’re a lone wolf Leo. You always have been. You probably always will be.’

  ‘Well, I’d like to see the woman who could get you to settle down.’

  Rupert grinned. ‘I’m far too young for that. You won’t find me on my knees in front of a priest till I’m at least forty. If ever. Enough of that. What’s this onerous task you were talking about?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’ Leo took a draught of his beer and wondered how far Rupert could be trusted. Then he gave a mental shrug. If he couldn’t trust his oldest friend, what had things come to?

  ‘It’s about certain English visitors to Germany. I’ve been asked to keep an eye on them. Anyone who fraternizes with the Nazi élite. Young men who come to learn the language. Girls who’ve been packed off to finishing school or music classes. They might take all sorts of ideas back home, and the worry is that favourable reports about the new regime will only encourage elements in England who want to disarm.’

  Rupert’s habitual warm laugh rolled out of his mouth. ‘And they pay you for that?’

  ‘It’s not frivolo
us, Rupert. These people, our compatriots, they’re coming over here to look at the Nazi regime as though it were the Chelsea Flower Show or the Lord Mayor’s Show. It’s a spectacle to them. They see all the marching and speeches as the sign of some tough, hard-line discipline, rather than a militaristic display designed to rehabilitate Germany in the eyes of the world.’

  ‘We’re not all taken in, you know.’

  ‘Of course not. It’s just . . . at first glance it looks so normal here. Everyone going about their business, visiting the cinema, the cabarets, the parks, the dance halls. They’re like sleepwalkers. People under anaesthetic!’

  ‘And what kind of operation do you think the doctor has in store for them?’

  ‘War. Within ten years. Perhaps even five or six.’

  ‘What a doom-monger you are!’ Rupert laughed. He possessed the kind of optimism, whether of birth or disposition, that no amount of experience could entirely erase. It provoked in Leo a little wave of bitterness, a ripple of class consciousness, that made him momentarily angry at his friend and he said more sharply than necessary, ‘Hitler’s bound to re-introduce conscription. Haven’t you read Mein Kampf? You’ll need to if you want to do this job properly. It’s a blueprint.’

  ‘I’ll do my homework.’

  ‘Good. Or listen to Goebbels on the subject. Goebbels is intelligent. He proves even intelligent people can fall under Hitler’s spell.’

  ‘I’ve yet to meet the cripple. What happened with his foot, by the way?’

  ‘He had a botched operation as a child. Though he prefers people to think he got it in the war.’

  ‘The surgeon who did that has a lot to answer for.’

  ‘He likes the limp apparently. He thinks it makes him look distinctive.’

  A ripple of laughter at Werner Finck caused them to look round. Leo studied the patrons, their faces relaxed in laughter. How long could all this go on for? Surely it was only a matter of time before Hitler and his crew shut these places down. Laughing at themselves was not on the prescribed list of National Socialist pastimes.

  ‘Anyhow, Rupert, about this other thing. All I’m asking is, keep in touch. Let me know if you see anyone coming through that I might like to know about.’

  ‘Well-born young English girls, you mean? I can’t promise that, but there’s a rather sweet American girl just turned up in the press corps. Perhaps she’ll fall for your strong and silent routine. I’m meeting up with her tomorrow night. At the Romanisches Café. Why not come along?’

  Chapter Ten

  Ten long-stemmed roses stood in a cut-glass vase. Pearls of dew clung to the deep cleavage of the petals and the colour seemed to throb through the air around them. They looked so expensive, they might as well have had a price tag attached, instead of a note. Frau Lehmann was eyeing them with approval, evidently relieved that her lodger had turned out to have the right connections after all.

  ‘A gentleman delivered them.’

  Clara’s heart sank. One look at the note that accompanied them confirmed it. Sturmhauptführer Müller would not, it seemed, be easily shaken off.

  At that moment the telephone rang. Frau Lehmann answered it, then turned to Clara, proffering the receiver as cautiously as an unexploded bomb.

  ‘Fräulein Vine?’

  She recognized his commanding, jocular tone immediately.

  ‘I’m so glad to reach you.’

  ‘How did you get this number?’ Even as she said it, she realized it was a foolish question.

  He gave a brief laugh. ‘I had my driver ask.’

  ‘Of course. Thank you for the roses.’

  ‘That is my pleasure. And I have a request for you.’

  Clara braced herself. She was going to have to tell the aide to the Minister of Propaganda she had no intention of seeing him again.

  ‘It has been passed to me by the wife of the Minister. She wonders if you might call on her.’

  ‘Frau Goebbels wants me to call on her?’ Surprise made her raise her voice so that Frau Lehmann who was hovering at the end of the hall, pretending to adjust the clock, had no trouble catching every word.

  ‘She has something to ask you. It seems you made quite an impression the other evening. She asks if you could visit her at two o’clock, if you are free. I’ve arranged to send my car.’

  Clara rang the bell and heard the quick clip of heels on the marble floor before a maid dressed in black and white uniform opened the door.

  ‘Please come in.’

  As the maid led her down the corridor and into the drawing room there were the distant sounds of an animated discussion in progress, but when a few moments later her hostess entered, wearing a soft cream jacket and pearls, she appeared entirely controlled, apart from a spot of high colour on her cheeks. It was the only hint of warmth in an otherwise glacial demeanour.

  ‘Forgive me, Fräulein Vine. We are having the whole house remodelled, but my decorator’s taste in wallpaper does not always accord with my own.’

  She pressed a small buzzer and a second maid appeared instantly with a tea trolley. A silver pot suspended over a small flame sat in the centre, surrounded by cups of delicate bone china, and a platter of sandwiches. On a separate plate was butter cake, speckled with cinnamon, and slices of fruit cake with a yellow marzipan rind.

  Clara looked around her. In daylight the Goebbels’ home appeared no less impressive. Everything about it was sumptuous. One might have been in a small art gallery, rather than a private home. The parquet was covered with rich Turkish rugs, the furniture was antique and gleaming. Fat armchairs were clustered round a low marquetry table and French Louis XIV chairs stood by. The walls were hung with oils, all in exquisite taste – gorgeous Italian hunting scenes and pink-fleshed cherubs fluttering round a Madonna. Pride of place above the fireplace however, was given to a photograph of Hitler. His face was bathed in light as if from some divine revelation and his eyes were fixed mystically on the middle distance, yet no amount of soft focus could disguise the undistinguished profile and jutting, stumpy nose. Clara wondered how an Old Master would have tackled Herr Hitler. But even Michelangelo had to paint the odd Borgia, she supposed.

  ‘You have a lovely home, Frau Goebbels.’

  She gave a tight, formal laugh. ‘Thank you.’ She poked at the open fire, which felt like the only warm thing in the room. ‘We’ve only just moved in but Joseph already dislikes it, I’m afraid. It’s not the house, it’s the city really. He’s never liked Berlin. He calls it “asphalt culture”. He thinks it will be much healthier if we move further out. He has an eye on a place up by Wannsee.’

  ‘And would you like to move?’

  Magda Goebbels shrugged. ‘I lived in the country for years. My former husband had an estate in Mecklenburg. If I’m honest, the country bores me to tears. I love the city, don’t you? Berlin is the loveliest city on earth. The Führer always says Paris is the most beautiful city and I suppose I know nothing about architecture, but I was born here, in Bülowstrasse, and I’d die here too, given the choice.’

  Just then the maid returned with a pile of post, which Magda waved impatiently away, then turning to Clara, she sighed, ‘We receive so many letters. Of course it is lovely that ordinary people write to Joseph and myself all the time, but to answer them . . . you have no idea of the work. Please, eat something.’

  She had a way of issuing invitations so that they emerged as commands. Clara, who was always hungry, decided it would be polite to obey. As she selected a liverwurst sandwich, Magda leant forward in her chair, crossed tan stockinged legs and fixed on her an unnervingly intense gaze.

  ‘Tell me, do you know much about fashion?’

  ‘Fashion?’ Clara was mystified.

  ‘Yes, I noticed you were wearing a lovely gown the other night – by Jean Patou, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I think so. Yes. But I can’t pretend to know much about clothes and so on. It was my sister’s dress, actually. Angela’s terribly interested in all that.’

  �
�No matter. I still think you’d be perfect.’

  ‘Perfect for what?’

  Magda got up and went over to the mirror. Absently she adjusted her hair, then walked to the window and sighed, crossing her arms in front of her and cupping her elbows. It was almost as if she had forgotten Clara was there. Clara remembered what had struck her at the party: the sense that some private misery preoccupied this woman, some secret unhappiness hovered just beneath her steely surface. Outside, gardeners were raking the gravel and tending to flowerbeds packed with tulips that were, by accident or design, National Socialist red. But Clara felt sure that gardening was not uppermost on Magda Goebbels’ mind. She turned.

  ‘This is a rather confidential thing I have to say. I hope I can trust you to keep it to yourself for a while. Until it’s made public.’

  Clara nodded.

  ‘I have had a rather special request from the Führer. He wants me to establish the Deutsches Modeamt. A Reich fashion bureau.’

  ‘A fashion bureau?’

  ‘Yes. I am to be honorary president.’ Magda came over and clasped her hands, her vivid grey-blue eyes taking on a look of intense urgency.

  ‘You see, he has very strong feelings on this. You might not expect a man to take such an interest in women’s things, but the Führer is exceptional. He doesn’t think like an ordinary man. He understands how all parts of our culture affect the German people. Even something that a lot of other people might think trivial, he has opinions about, and ideas for change.’

  ‘And what sort of opinion does he have about fashion?’

  ‘For a start, he believes French couture is absolute poison. It has been wreaking havoc on German women.’

  ‘Poison?’ Clara said, mystified.

  ‘Yes, and it’s not just clothes. The Führer has strong feelings about cosmetics too.’

  ‘He doesn’t like them?’ hazarded Clara. She couldn’t help recognizing Frau Goebbels’ perfume – Elizabeth Arden’s Night and Day. Angela wore it all the time.