Black Roses

by Jane Thynne

  ‘Not if Doktor Müller’s the price. Besides, I’ve already been offered an audition. For a Gerhard Lamprecht film.’

  ‘Oh, that’s wonderful!’ Clara noted the flash of envy in her eyes. ‘You should have told me. All the more reason for us to celebrate tonight.’

  ‘What’s more,’ Clara added quickly, ‘Albert says there will be plenty of roles for you too.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I know.’ Helga relaxed. ‘Bauer will see to that. But still,’ she added coaxingly, ‘there’s no need to be nasty to Müller. He’s awfully handsome. Not even married, from what I hear. And Bauer was telling me they’re all interested in you.’

  ‘Me? I can’t imagine why.’

  ‘You fascinate them. They’re used to putting women in two camps – wives and actresses. They sleep with the wives but they make love to the actresses. Actresses are for sex, but they get no respect. You’re a respectable girl, and an actress, so they can’t make you out. They don’t know what kind of bird you are.’

  ‘I don’t care. I’m not interested.’

  ‘Please, Clara.’ She came over to Clara, knelt theatrically and took her hands. ‘I need this. Bauer is useful to me. He could be the best thing that’s ever happened to my career. But if you offend Müller, then Bauer might be obliged to drop me too.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t offend him. I’ll just keep away.’

  ‘That’s the same thing.’

  ‘I’ll be otherwise engaged.’

  ‘Please,’ she wheedled, ‘just think about it.’

  She went across to collect her cigarettes and as she did Clara picked up a photograph from the mantelpiece. It was a little boy, perhaps six years old judging by the gap in his cheeky smile, holding a banner. Helga came over and snatched it away from her.

  ‘That’s private.’

  Startled at her tone, Clara apologized. ‘I’m sorry. I was only looking. Who is it?’

  For a moment, as she replaced the picture and straightened it, Helga looked as though she was not going to answer. Her previously pert expression had clouded, her features drooped.

  ‘It’s Erich.’

  ‘Who’s Erich?’

  ‘My son.’

  ‘You have a son?’

  ‘He lives with my mother.’

  ‘You never mentioned him.’

  ‘You never asked. Besides, what business is it of yours?’ She hesitated. ‘I was very young. Only sixteen. I was so innocent I hardly knew what I was doing and this big bruiser came on to me. I was too young to know any better and too scared to get myself out of the fix. So I had my son. I’ve made a couple of mistakes since then but I’ve dealt with them.’

  ‘You mean . . .?’

  Helga smiled briskly. ‘There’s a woman in the west end who works in a maternity hospital and does a little private business on the side. Lots of the actresses have used her. It hurts like hell and it costs a hundred marks a time, but it’s better than the alternative. Only now it’s been outlawed she doesn’t dare perform operations any more so God knows what I’ll do if another mistake comes along.’

  ‘So where’s Erich’s father now?’

  ‘Long gone, thank God.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘He’s ten now. He’s just joined the Pimpf – that’s the junior part of the Hitler Jugend. I didn’t want him to, but the school . . .’ She grimaced. ‘They say it’s an important part of a boy’s development. There’s hiking, sports, den evenings. They say they’re developing the whole boy – you know, his spirit.’

  ‘We have something like that at home. It’s called the Scouts.’

  ‘I don’t like it. When you join the HJ they give you this pamphlet with a quote from Hitler. “The Hitler Jugend are as agile as greyhounds, as hard as Krupp steel and as tough as leather.” And that’s about the last way you’d describe my Erich. He’s such a sweet thing. Small for his age, but so intelligent.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘They live out in Havelberg, about two hours from here. He visits, whenever she can afford to send him. I’m hoping he can come soon. You could meet him! We could go to Luna Park, there’s a funfair there. Once I get my big break, he’s going to live with me all the time. Until then, he’s best off with Mutti. Besides, I don’t want him meeting savages like Bauer.’

  ‘If you think that about Bauer, why do you see him?’

  Helga crossed her arms and took a deep drag of her cigarette. The eyes she fixed on Clara were swimming slightly.

  ‘Here’s the thing, Clara. I’m not like you. I’m not a foreigner with a family back home and a big-shot politician for a father. I’m Helga Schmidt with a lousy apartment in the worst part of town and about two Reichsmarks to rub together. I have nothing to my name except this body and a little bit of talent. I need to take every opportunity that comes my way.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  The five o’clock Tee und Tanz sessions at the Adlon Hotel were the height of social sophistication. All the top hotels held them – the Esplanade, the Bristol, the Eden and the Kaiserhof – but the Adlon was where the cream of Berlin society took their tea. With its palm court and its fountain and its magnificent view of the Brandenburg Tor, the Adlon’s dances were so well attended that two orchestras played alternately, to ensure the music didn’t stop.

  They were especially popular with elderly matrons who would order an Eintänzer, a professional dance partner, the way other people might order Apfeltorte or Spritzkuchen. The Eintänzer, a breed of fetching young man, would approach the old ladies and ask politely for a dance, before steering them like ancient tugboats round the dance floor. Some were said to provide services that went beyond professional dancing, but there was very little erotic frisson detectable among the potted plants that afternoon as Clara threaded between the marble-topped tables, determined to tell Frau Goebbels that she was sorry, but she would not be available for modelling, after all.

  Magda Goebbels was wearing a black Persian lamb jacket with a matching hat. She was seated next to a statuesque blonde of about forty, with a broad face and a disconsolate expression, eating a slice of chocolate cake. At her feet a schnauzer sat, its oily eyes switching alternately from cake to mouth, like a spectator at a tennis match.

  ‘Fräulein Vine. I’m so glad you could come.’

  Magda indicted her plump companion with a gold-tipped cigarette. ‘This is Frau Emmy Sonnemann.’

  Clara had heard of her. She was Minister Goering’s girlfriend, a provincial actress who had, through her relationship with Goering, been catapulted into starring roles in Berlin theatres. She looked like a Wagner heroine might look, if Wagner heroines ate chocolate cake. She wore a Vionnet bias-cut dress, whose sinuous folds were designed to drape flatteringly over the wearer’s curves but were failing hopelessly in their task. She seemed engrossed in a newspaper.

  ‘Emmy is celebrating. She’s been given the lead at the Schauspielhaus. The play is Schlageter. About that brave man who was executed by the French in the Ruhr. Do you know it?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Emmy, scarcely looking up. ‘You’re forgiven.’ She was poring over a report of the Aviators’ Club ball. She pointed to a picture of Goering. ‘He’ll loathe this picture. He hates looking fat.’

  Clara looked. Fat was an understatement. In his tight airforce uniform Goering was a sweating hippo, whose spindly gilded chair was bending dangerously under his weight.

  ‘It’s Hess who’s to blame. He asks to see every photograph of Hermann and then he only allows the most unflattering ones to be published.’

  Magda motioned to a ravishingly attractive blonde, perched across from her. She had marcelle-waved hair and matching wine-red velvet cape and muff. It was impossible not to notice how her slender figure and shapely legs contrasted with Emmy’s thick waist and stolid calves. She offered Clara a white-gloved hand.

  ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Frau Ley’s husband is the new head of the Labo
ur Front,’ said Magda. ‘He’s going to get our people working again.’ Then, gesturing to the third person, a tank of a woman in a flowery dress with puffed sleeves, she added, ‘Do you know Frau von Ribbentrop?’

  The girlish prettiness of Frau von Ribbentrop’s outfit was in unfortunate contrast to her square-jawed, pudding face with a mole above one lip. She was a formidable figure. Her necklace looked like bunting on a battleship. Her neck was swathed in a mink stole on the end of which the head of its previous owner stared out glassily, teeth bared. She looked at Clara as though she were a housemaid who had just broken the Dresden china.

  ‘Annelies is extremely interested in fashion, so we are relying on her to have some great ideas.’

  All Clara knew of Annelies von Ribbentrop was that she was an heiress to the Henkell sparkling wine firm. The von Ribbentrops were rich, and they lived in some style at a handsome villa in Dahlem.

  ‘It is my Führer himself who has the best ideas,’ she said ingratiatingly. ‘He even helped design the uniform of the BDM.’

  From what Clara had seen of the uniform of the Bund Deutscher Mädel – the German Girls’ League – it was not the kind of costume many people would put their name to. It was guaranteed to transform the most elegant girl into a frump.

  ‘He has an artist’s soul,’ agreed Magda. ‘He tells me he sees fashion as another form of artistic creation.’

  It was clear that the two women were engaged in some kind of competition for the favours of Hitler. Which was doomed, Clara knew, given that Frau Goebbels’ access to the Führer was second to none.

  ‘Now to update you. Doktor Hans Horst has been appointed acting director of the Deutsches Modeamt and I am the honorary president. We don’t want our designers to be unduly influenced by what other races might choose to do so we plan to hold our first show before the Paris collections, at the Grunewald Horse Race Track. I shall be sending invitations to Zarah Leander, Olga Chekhova and Kristina Söderbaum, but Fräulein Vine has already graciously agreed to model. I thought we should donate the profits of the first show to the Winterhilfswerk. Is that agreed?’

  ‘What is it the Führer wants exactly?’ enquired Emmy, looking up from her paper.

  ‘As I was explaining,’ said Magda, a trifle tersely, ‘he has been thinking of the importance of fashion, not just as an industry but as an indispensable part of German culture. Fashion is a way by which women too can play their part in strengthening the nation.’

  ‘How would that be?’

  ‘Well, for a start, the Führer wants French fashion replaced with German fashions. I have had some preliminary sketches made.’

  Out of a leather portfolio she pulled a sheaf of sketches. Clara saw women in flat heels and black skirts down to the ground. Tyrolean hats. Tight-fitted bodices with puffed tartan sleeves. Gretchen braids and little brown jackets. Emmy looked over and made a face.

  ‘The Leader dislikes fur, too, doesn’t he?’ she said regretfully, patting her mink.

  ‘He hates killing animals, as you know. Short or long hair?’

  ‘Oh, short, please, we’re none of us getting any younger,’ sighed Emmy. ‘And you won’t find many film stars willing to wear their hair in braids. Butterkuchen, Frau von Ribbentrop?’

  Annelies von Ribbentrop winced as though someone had offered her cyanide and shook her head. She leant forward to look at the sketches with a wrinkle of disdain then said, ‘What does Joseph think?’

  ‘Joseph is very supportive of our plan. He says too much of German culture has been hijacked by cosmopolitan intellectuals.’

  Frau von Ribbentrop nodded. ‘The Führer told me that fashion is interwined with the racial problem.’

  ‘Exactly so. He feels the international silhouette encourages women to remain too thin to have children.’

  ‘He has my vote there,’ said Emmy, crossing her legs to reveal a plump stockinged knee.

  ‘So no haute couture then?’ ventured Frau von Ribbentrop.

  ‘Absolutely not. We need to compete with Paris. Here. I placed a piece about it in Die Schöme Frau.’

  ‘Ach, I can never bother with that,’ said Emmy. ‘It’s one long nag.’

  Frau von Ribbentrop produced some spectacles and read the magazine aloud.

  “Finally the possibility is given for the fashion makers of Germany to unite in a great work to rid themselves of foreign influences and to create proper standing and status for German products in fashion, industry and in the field of arts and crafts.”

  ‘Actually,’ said Emmy. ‘I don’t mind a dirndl. It’s very supportive. When you get to a certain point, you need all the support you can get. And Hermann adores a low-cut dress. How about you, Frau von Ribbentrop? I know how you love all those French fashions you find abroad.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone has ever questioned my commitment to German culture,’ she said stiffly.

  Emmy laughed and popped another piece of cake in her mouth, then turning her back entirely on the others, addressed herself to Magda. ‘So are you enjoying your new home?’

  ‘It is beautiful, thank you. The Speers came to our film evening last night. Albert is remodelling the house, and adding a reception hall. I was hoping that Margaret Speer could become involved in our fashion enterprise, but sadly she felt it was beyond her.’

  ‘Hermann is having the palace at Leipziger Platz remodelled too. He’s planning a cinema room with a Wurlitzer organ. I don’t know if our taste in movies will ever agree, though! He asked me to watch a stag movie the other night and I thought it was something naughty but it turned out to be a film about stags! Lots of footage of Hermann walking around in his leather suit.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Magda said quickly, ‘it was a good idea of Joseph’s to involve figures from the film world and it’s lovely to have Fräulein Vine as our first model.’

  Emmy shot Clara a glance. ‘Did the Herr Doktor specifically recommend Fräulein Vine?’ she enquired sweetly.

  ‘Fräulein Vine is the daughter of a prominent English politician,’ replied Magda, with a touch of acid. ‘She wants to help us in any way she can.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Emmy looked at Clara with renewed interest.

  ‘My father was formerly a Conservative MP. Sir Ronald Vine.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Annelies von Ribbentrop. ‘My husband is a great admirer of England. We have visited many times.’

  Magda tilted her head towards the ceiling and exhaled a plume of smoke. ‘So can we count on you, Emmy? To participate in the Deutsches Modeamt?’

  Emmy sighed. ‘Of course. I’m at the Führer’s disposal.’ As she stood up, the schnauzer truffled for the crumbs that fell from the folds of her dress. ‘Time for me to go. The curtain’s up in two hours.’ She allowed her hand to rest briefly in Clara’s.

  ‘So pleased to meet you, Fräulein Vine.’

  As she bustled off, flanked by a grovelling hotel manager and eyed by a sprinkling of drinkers at the bar, Magda leant back with a sigh.

  ‘I feel sorry for her really. Hermann adored his wife, Carin. He keeps a room in his home devoted to her. Pictures of Carin, her furniture, her harmonium, everything. Emmy’s not allowed to set foot in it. He’s even ordered a sarcophagus so they can both be buried together. How is poor Emmy to compete?’

  ‘She can’t. And he shows no signs of making an honest woman of her,’ added Frau von Ribbentrop, snapping her snakeskin cigarette case shut. ‘He’s issued instructions that she is to be known only as his “private secretary”.’

  ‘The theatre loves her though,’ said Magda. ‘The box office takings have shot up because people think Goering will come to see her. They keep a box reserved for him at all times.’

  These confidences were interrupted by a commotion taking place across the lobby. A large, bearlike man with floppy hair and a clownish face had commandeered the piano and the bandleader had given way. The couples who had been circling the dance floor hesitated uncertainly as the music changed, then quietly departed. Magda looked pain
ed.

  ‘That’s Putzi. The fool.’

  The piano player was hammering out a number of his own devising choreographed with strange jerky movements of his head.

  ‘Who’s Putzi?’ asked Clara.

  ‘Putzi Hanfstaengl is our Foreign Press Chief. He considers himself very musical.’

  ‘And he has to be the centre of attention,’ added Frau von Ribbentrop. ‘Still, as long as the Führer enjoys his playing, I suppose his jokes will be tolerated.’

  Catching sight of them, the man abandoned the tune midway, rose and came across the dance floor. He was very tall with a lantern jaw and limbs that looked too big for his body, like a puppet whose strings are not quite tight. He was wearing a brown uniform with little gold epaulettes.

  ‘Oh dear, I had hoped he wouldn’t notice us,’ murmured Magda, then standing she extended a hand and said,

  ‘Fräulein Vine, can I introduce Putzi Hanfstaengl? Foreign Press chief. Fräulein Vine has come from England to join us. Putzi’s half American, aren’t you?’

  ‘Indeed.’ As he kissed Clara’s hand his eyes lingered on her thoughtfully. In perfect, American-accented English, he said, ‘Wonderful to have you with us. Can I ask you ladies what the occasion is?’

  ‘We’re discussing a fashion initiative,’ said Magda brusquely.

  ‘How marvellous. I’m a great admirer of the fashionable woman.’

  ‘German fashion,’ clarified Frau von Ribbentrop.

  ‘Ah well, there you have me. I’m a sinner, I’m afraid. This uniform, you see . . .’

  ‘I was just thinking I haven’t seen you in uniform before,’ said Frau von Ribbentrop, sounding bored.

  ‘I decided I would join the club. But that SA uniform is so dreadful. Such a ghastly dun colour. So I sent for a length of chocolate brown gabardine from Savile Row and had my tailor make it up. It makes all the difference, don’t you think?’

  ‘Considering we’re launching a bureau to promote the use of German materials, Putzi, I would say that your decision was especially ill-timed. I advise you not to mention it to the Führer.’