Black Roses

by Jane Thynne

  As Putzi stood open-mouthed, Magda rose and addressed herself to Clara and Frau von Ribbentrop.

  ‘Now I have to leave you. I have a piece to record for the radio. I shall be in touch with you shortly, Fräulein Vine.’

  With that she was clipping across the Adlon’s marble floor before Clara had had a chance to explain.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ever since Helga told her about the Romanisches Café, Clara had been wanting to see it. It was an enormous space the size of a barn, opposite the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church and famously packed with artists, film directors, writers and intellectuals. Or as Helga more simply put it, everyone went there. Outside, awnings and trellises of greenery sheltered tables for those who wanted to watch the world go by; inside, the marble topped tables were crowded with people wrangling and disputing. In the old days customers could spend twelve hours nursing a single cup of coffee before a discreet card would be placed on the table top, asking them to order more or leave. But since January, the atmosphere had changed. As the regular clientele realized it was only a matter of time before they were arrested or went into exile, an uneasy lull had fallen on the long, disputatious discussions. Who wanted to talk politics, when politics were all around them, threatening to report them to the police or haul them off to the cells in the middle of the night?

  Eyes flickered upwards as Clara walked through the café. She had been planning to find a quiet corner where she could enjoy a cup of coffee and a cigarette before going home to Frau Lehmann’s for the evening. Beneath her coat she was wearing a yellow cardigan over a new china blue polka-dot dress which she had bought that afternoon, a purchase she had justified as a vote of confidence that work was on the way. And it teamed well with her blue hat, as the glances she got confirmed.

  As she made her way to a table, a man sprang to his feet and blocked her way.

  ‘Good heavens! It’s Clara Vine!’

  For a fraction of a second, Clara was bewildered to be accosted by the handsome Englishman with a loop of fair hair, until she recognized him as the man she had met at Gerald Mortimer’s party. The man who had given her Max Townsend’s number. Rupert something.

  ‘Rupert?’

  ‘So you came after all.’ He held out a hand. ‘I wondered if you would. I should have mentioned I’d just been made head of the Chronicle’s Berlin bureau. Fancy joining us? This is Mary Harker.’

  He gestured at a fair woman in spectacles and a heavy tweed suit which looked a little warm for the occasion. ‘And that’s Leo Quinn.’ The other man was lean and broad-shouldered, with a suit that hung off him, and striking green eyes that could pierce a sheet of steel. ‘Leo has the dubious distinction of being one of my oldest friends.’

  Clara took his hand. Beneath a thatch of thick brown hair he had a fine, sensitive nose and a serious face, which was transformed when he smiled. In his jacket and flannels he struck an almost donnish figure.

  ‘Leo is working at the British Consulate.’

  ‘Sit down, won’t you, Clara?’ said Mary, throwing her jacket off. ‘We’re all drinking Pilseners. Rupert told me the froth is supposed to be so firm you can lay a coin on it and thanks to him I’ve lost three pfennigs already.’

  Rupert laughed and pulled out a crumpled packet of cigarettes from his pocket, offering Clara one. He tilted his head to survey her.

  ‘I never thought you’d actually come.’

  ‘Well, I’m here,’ she said, taking off her gloves.

  ‘What did Angela say?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t tell anyone I was going. I just left a note saying I’d been offered an acting job in Berlin and I’d explain in good time.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘They must be worried.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ she said briefly.

  ‘Clara’s an actress,’ he explained to the others. ‘And she has me to blame for her appearance here. I advised her to contact an old friend of mine, a film producer. So how’s it going? Are you having any luck in Naziwood?’

  ‘Yes, actually. Though no thanks to your friend. Max Townsend seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.’

  ‘Oh dear. That sounds like Max.’

  ‘Schwarze Rosen has been delayed, but luckily I’ve been offered a part in a spy film instead.’

  ‘I’m glad it’s worked out.’

  ‘It has. What about you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m in disgrace.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Leo.

  Rupert shot him a look. ‘I just got in a bit of trouble with Putzi Hanfstaengl for something I wrote.’

  ‘What now?’ asked Mary.

  ‘I said despite everything Herr Hitler is saying about peace, Germany is determined to recover everything she’s lost. And if it can’t be done through peace, it’ll be done through war.’

  ‘War?’ said Clara. ‘Surely not.’ The thought of it sent a cold shudder through her. She thought back to childhood, of the lines of men she had seen tramping the street. A troop train at Waterloo station. Two teachers at her school who had come to lessons red-eyed as the news went round that their fiancés had been killed.

  ‘I’d bet on it,’ said Leo sombrely. ‘Only I’m not a betting man. And it’s not a betting topic’

  ‘I’ve come round to your analysis, Leo. At the very least I said Hitler wants to carve up Europe the way he likes it, preferably with some colonies thrown in.’

  ‘And they didn’t agree?’

  ‘Apparently not. They told the office back in London that they’d prefer someone more concerned with facts than trivialities.’

  ‘So you know you’re doing something right,’ said Mary. ‘We could do with a few more sceptical correspondents.’

  ‘Perhaps. But sceptical correspondents are like giant pandas in Berlin. There aren’t very many of us and we’re disappearing fast.’

  ‘I’m certainly not going anywhere,’ said Mary. ‘It’s the most extraordinary time. Every journalist in Europe should want to be here. Things are changing day to day, it’s almost too hard to keep up.’

  ‘All the same,’ said Rupert gloomily, ‘the Nazis are making it harder for people like us. They have dossiers on every foreign journalist in Berlin.’

  He turned to Leo. ‘It’s got worse since Putzi fixed up Hitler for an interview with Dorothy Thompson from the Chicago Daily News. She called Hitler an insignificant little man and said he was so dull you needed smelling salts to keep awake. That went down like a bucket of cold sauerkraut, as you can imagine.’

  Mary Harker burst out laughing, but Clara noticed that Leo looked quickly over his shoulders.

  ‘Are you still safe then, Rupert?’ asked Clara.

  ‘For a while, I reckon. They’re still very sensitive about international opinion. They know if they chuck us out we can write just as effectively from elsewhere. They take their feelings out on the domestic press instead. Bully those in a position of weakness, that’s their motto.’

  ‘It’s true,’ added Mary. ‘Last year Vorwärts ran a jokey piece about Goebbels, saying he had always ranted against high society yet now he was mingling with aristocrats and his wife was curtseying to princesses. The next day an SA man with a riding whip turned up at the offices and beat the editor to a pulp. None of the journalists dared intervene.’

  Rupert turned to Clara. ‘Tell us about this film then. It’s a spy movie, you say?’

  ‘Just a caper called A Certain Mr Gran. The hero is played by Hans Albers.’

  ‘How exciting,’ breathed Mary. ‘He’s damn good-looking, Hans Albers.’

  ‘You’d better watch out,’ said Rupert. ‘It’s a dangerous occupation, being the girl in an Ufa movie. The heroines tend to die. They commit suicide usually. They’re careless with women, these Nazis.’

  ‘Stop trying to scare the girl, Rupert!’ Mary turned to Clara. ‘At least you can count on good reviews.’

  ‘How would you know that?’

  ‘They’ve issued an edict. All film criticism is to be pos
itive, no negative reviews. The Doktor is going to great lengths to ensure that only the films he likes become popular.’

  ‘How on earth can he determine that?’

  ‘Any way he can. Didn’t you hear what happened at the launch of All Quiet on the Western Front? It was premiering at the Mozart cinema near my place on Nollendorfplatz. The Doktor hated it. He said it was an unpatriotic insult to the brave men who fell. So he arranged for sackfuls of live mice to be released into the cinema at the start of the movie, which prompted all the females to run screaming from the stalls.’

  ‘And that’s a guy who really knows how to make women run screaming,’ laughed Rupert.

  ‘Hitler and Goebbels are obsessed with the cinema, though, aren’t they?’ said Mary. ‘You’re always seeing them at premieres, surrounded by stars, or having all those glamorous women at their receptions. You’d think their wives would be jealous.’

  ‘Have you seen most of the wives?’ Rupert rolled his eyes. ‘The Nazis don’t believe wives should be glamorous. You know the phrase “Kinder, Küche, Kirche”. The first calling of a woman is as a wife and mother.’

  ‘Why don’t those double standards surprise me?’ said Mary.

  Rupert picked up his hat.

  ‘We have to be off, I’m afraid. Mahatma Propagandi is holding a press conference in the morning at his new ministry. Apparently we’re to be treated to a daily newsreel before the event.’

  ‘I met his wife the other day.’

  Rupert stopped in his tracks.

  ‘Did you? How?’

  ‘I went to a cocktail party at her house.’

  ‘A cocktail party with Magda Goebbels? What did you make of her?’

  It was the first time anyone had asked Clara that, but she had been asking herself the same question for days. Given that the Nazis had at long last achieved the power they craved, Magda Goebbels, First Lady of the Reich and Hitler’s favourite hostess, should be having the time of her life. Instead, she seemed tense and preoccupied, as though behind the dazzle of diamonds and pearls, a darkness lingered.

  ‘I think she’s miserable.’

  ‘Married to the Doktor she has a lot to be miserable about,’ said Mary. ‘I wonder if she shares his views.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Leo. ‘She’s a fully paid-up Nazi. There was a big row last year when six National Socialists murdered a Communist down in Silesia. They woke him up in the night and beat him to death in front of his mother. They were all sentenced to death but the Frau Doktor told the wives and mothers of Germany it was a duty of humanity that they should be released. It worked.’

  ‘So how was the cocktail party?’ persisted Rupert.

  ‘I didn’t stay long,’ Clara said noncommittally, taking a deep draw of her cigarette. She regretted mentioning it now.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Rupert, standing up and removing his hat in farewell. ‘You really must tell me more next time. And remember, watch out for those movie heroines!’

  There was an awkward silence after he and Mary left. Leo Quinn was fiddling with his glass and staring at the tabletop. Clara hesitated for a moment, wondering if she should stay or leave. She didn’t want to go back to Frau Lehmann’s now, especially since she had missed the evening meal, and the thought of hours in the cramped front parlour listening to the wireless, chatting to Herr Professor Hahn and watching Fräulein Viktor do her knitting was more that she could bear. Either that, or shivering in her bedroom, which was icy cold and smelt of mothballs. But nor was she bold enough to invite a comparative stranger out to supper. Eventually, she was about to say goodbye, when he looked up and said, ‘Do you fancy a walk? It’s still quite early.’

  ‘All right.’

  They walked out of the café and turned eastwards, towards Budapester Strasse. Rain had fallen. The black asphalt was striped with vivid bands of sodium, and the neon shop fronts turned the rain into blue and ruby puddles. In the far distance the pale beam of the Funkturm radio transmitter flooded the sky.

  ‘You should have seen this place on the night of the torchlight procession,’ said Leo. ‘You could hardly take in how many people there were. Four hours it went on. People were hanging out of the windows of the Adlon. You could even see Hitler craning out of a window in the Reich Chancellery with the crowd below all chanting.’

  ‘It must have been an amazing spectacle.’

  ‘Spectacle is the right word for it. It’s hard to explain how it felt. You sensed that you were there, and yet not there at the same time. As if you were watching something staged.’

  It was, he had thought at the time, like the light and dark of a silent movie, with the torches and flames against the night sky and the spotlights passing through the Nazi banners, causing a stream of light to pour onto the upturned faces. Watching it provoked the curious sensation of seeing fantasy and reality collide.

  ‘They burned the flag of the Weimar Republic and when the bands passed the French embassy on the Pariser Platz they actually stopped and played a new tune, “Siegreich wollen wir Frankreich schlagen”

  ‘We will defeat France?’

  ‘Yes, and they mean it.’ He remembered the excitement of the mob in their brown shirts, surrounding the embassy with their arms outstretched and shouting. It was almost a religious ecstasy on those faces, as though salvation was at hand, along with a lot of less pleasant things like vengeance, and petty power.

  ‘Do you really think there could be another war?’ Clara asked. ‘Surely it would never come to that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’

  It felt strangely intimate, walking beside this man she had only just met, in the fresh evening air that smelt of mingled petrol and rain. There was something closed and impenetrable about him. In his dark suit and soft brimmed hat, with his hands in his pockets and his mackintosh flapping behind him, he reminded her somewhat of a medieval monk. She knew nothing about him, yet she felt close to him. Why should that be? Probably because it was the first time she had spoken English for days.

  ‘There are so many things I love about Germany,’ he said. ‘Rilke, his wonderful poems. Do you know them?’

  ‘Of course. The Duino Elegies. Or that lovely one, “Exposed on the Mountains of the Heart”.’ Clara laughed. ‘I used to learn great long chunks of poetry as a child. Heaps of Tennyson and Shelley and Browning.’

  ‘I like Browning. He’s underrated.’

  ‘You know “My Last Duchess”? The one about the evil Duke who murders his wife because he suspects her of having an affair? I adored that one. And I won the school prize reciting “Ozymandius”.

  “My name is Ozymandius, king of kings:

  Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair!”

  I still say it to myself when I’m about to go on stage. I know it’s supposed to mean the opposite, but it’s awfully good for stirring you up.’

  They walked on for a while discussing poetry until they came to the Tiergarten, and followed one of the winding paths lit only by the occasional iron lamp. It was cold for the time of year, and their breath made spindly clouds in the icy air. Between the pools of light it was properly dark, and it was possible to imagine the deer and wild boar that were said to still roam out there in the trees. She thought for a second she could see their eyes glinting, but it was only the glow of cigarettes studding the distant spaces like fireflies against the inky grass.

  ‘I wonder, Clara.’ Leo bent to light a cigarette and snapped the lighter closed with a deft movement of his wrist. ‘You mentioned that you had met Frau Goebbels. Without wanting to intrude, could I ask how you come to be attending Nazi cocktail parties?’

  ‘I was invited by a man at the Ufa studio. Klaus Müller.’

  He raised his eyebrows at this. ‘Sturmhauptführer Müller? Goebbels’ new aide?’

  ‘That’s him. He invited me to the cocktail party and then we had a drink at his apartment.’ She felt suddenly defensive, as though she were being asked to account for herself. She shrugged. ‘That’s abo
ut it, though.’

  ‘And did you like her? Frau Goebbels?’

  ‘Not exactly. She’s not the kind of person you’d warm to. Or ever really feel you’d know.’

  ‘Might you see her again?’

  ‘That’s the funny thing. She’s been asked to set up a bureau for German fashion and she wants me to get involved.’

  ‘Why you? Do you know a lot about fashion?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing. She said she wants actresses to do the modelling and she thought she’d start with me.’

  She decided to omit Magda’s comment about her husband. Leo didn’t need to know that.

  ‘She invited me to a tea party at the Adlon, to meet some of the other women involved. Goering’s girlfriend was there. And Frau von Ribbentrop.’

  Leo was silent for so long she guessed he must be horrified. Well, let him be, she thought. It was not as though she had any intention of spending any more time with Frau Goebbels. Or Sturmhauptführer Müller. Leo obviously disapproved, or considered her frivolous or ignorant, but he didn’t say anything so she added sharply, ‘Not that I’ve any intention of getting involved.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘For a start, fashion modelling isn’t my thing.’

  He remained silent.

  ‘More importantly, I dislike everything they stand for. I’m not one of those English girls who are fascinated by fascism. I don’t get carried away at the sight of a man in uniform, especially not if it’s a Nazi uniform.’

  Leo seemed to be looking at her intently. Then he said, ‘I wonder if you might do something for me. I would be very grateful if you would get involved. See Frau Goebbels every time you can. Listen to what she says, then come back and tell me.’

  ‘What a strange request. Why?’

  ‘I’d be very interested.’

  ‘So you want me to keep seeing them for the sake of your curiosity?’

  ‘Not just my curiosity.’

  ‘It sounds like you’re asking me to spy.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Leo looked around swiftly, but there was no one nearby. A group of young men – students, they looked like – were up ahead laughing, and showing no sign of eavesdropping on a pair of visitors speaking English.