The Milliner's Secret

by Natalie Meg Evans

  Ramon Cazaubon had been sent by his sister, he told her later. Henriette had asked him to poke about the stockroom, to go through the accounts. ‘She is afraid of you, Coralie, and I understand why. Unlike her, you do not wait for life to unfold. You ride after it, like a gaucho roping a steer.’ It was crystal clear, he said, that Coralie could out-business Henriette blindfolded, with her hands tied. ‘Anyway, I will write and say all is well.’ As for looking over the books, for his sins he spent his days staring at lines on paper. Evenings, he said, were for friendship. And nights were for pleasure.

  Against her better judgement, Coralie allowed him to take her out that first time, then a second and a third. Soon, she was looking forward to the bump of the door, the energetic wiping of feet that announced his arrival in the salon. She’d told him off for spoiling the carpet.

  Ramon shared his sister’s brusque impulsivity, but his nature was warmer. Fiery, even. He never flagged. By midnight, when she was begging to go home and sleep, he was suggesting they go on to Pigalle or boulevard de Clichy, to this or that nightclub. He seemed to know every dance band in Paris. Working by day in one of the drawing-offices of the national railway company, he descended by night into vaults and basements, and soused himself in modern music. He lived several lives in parallel, he told her.

  ‘I adore Paris, but I am also at home in the foothills of the Pyrénées. I am an intellectual, a wage-slave, a hunter and also a Bohemian. I am a politician who hates politics, an anarchist who believes in God. I am a warrior who loves peace. Life is short, Coralie. My parents are like oak trees, growing one slow ring at a time. Henriette, with all her talent, is like a field of standing corn waiting to be cut. To me, life is a rampaging bull. I throw myself over the horns, daring it to gouge and trample me.’

  ‘It might, one day,’ she warned him.

  ‘Then I hope I have you to bind my wounds. I am not comfortable to live with, but I know my mind.’

  A week into December, he asked her to marry him.

  She said no. Twice in her life, she’d thrown herself into uncharted love. Twice-deserted and pregnant, she was wiser. And she didn’t love him. ‘And you, in your middle thirties, a steady wage-earner . . . there’s a reason no woman’s caught you yet. What’s in it for you?’

  ‘I have bedded many, many women, but never until now have I wanted to marry one. I like your spirit and I want your body.’

  ‘With another man’s child inside it?’ She’d intended to shock him. She failed.

  ‘I love children.’

  Still, she held back. ‘I’m not a charity case.’

  ‘Far from it. But your child is.’ He knew how to aim his attacks. ‘Being a bastard is a bad deal. If you don’t believe me, wait till you go into hospital. See how the nurses treat you, and the officials at the mairie when you register the child’s birth and can’t put a father’s name to the form. Your little one will come home from school every day, crying. And just think, if you marry me—’

  ‘I get you every night!’ Could she live with his relentless vigour? She had not yet slept with him. He didn’t mind her belly, but she was sensitive about it. He would be a red-blooded lover and she needed to be strong.

  ‘I was going to say, if you marry me, it will really annoy Henriette. She cannot bear me liking other women. She is jealous when a fly lands on her food. It’s her nature and I smell the rivalry between you. You like to win.’ And the final persuasion: ‘I like you, Coralie, and respect you. I am willing to try to be a good husband. I think you need a man to care for you.’

  The word ‘care’ broke her and she began to cry. He put his arms round her and it felt good to be held. They married a week before Christmas.

  On her wedding day, she presented her false documents at the town hall and saw the presiding official accept them without a blink. Even the page of mad scrawl from Henriette, railing at her for having the temerity to marry her brother and palm off a bastard on ‘one of the oldest families in France’ – even that failed to dent her new-found security.

  On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, 1937, Coralie was lighting candles in the shop window, dreaming up ideas for the spring collection, when pain tore through her, followed by a gush of liquid down her legs.

  An American client in the fitting room heard her howl of dismay. As the salon girls fluttered about helplessly, the American came and helped Coralie to her feet. Supporting her until the pain passed, she said, ‘Honey, you’re going to be pulling Christmas crackers in hospital. You, Mademoiselle,’ she beckoned a vendeuse, ‘go holler at my chauffeur, have him drive right up on the pavement. Someone get towels and somebody else fetch the husband. This lady is in labour.’

  At seventeen minutes past midnight on Christmas Day, Coralie’s daughter was born, weighing a shave over five pounds. They named her Noëlle Una. Noëlle because the midwife suggested it, Una in honour of Madame Una Kilpin, whose Rolls-Royce had ferried Coralie through the Paris traffic, and who later offered to stand as godmother.

  Coralie took December and the whole of January 1938 off work. On the first of February, however, she left baby Noëlle with a nanny and took a taxi through the chilling rain to rue Royale.

  It was a wrench, leaving her newborn, but Coralie knew that, professionally, she was riding a wave. At Ramon’s strong suggestion, Henriette had reluctantly made Coralie directrice and head designer, effectively giving her full creative control of the business. Then, still unwell and feeling ill-used by the world, Henriette had left for Italy. Her doctor had recommended the warmer climate for her lungs and she’d taken one of her nurses with her. Rumours soon reached Paris of a new relationship. Everyone agreed: Henriette would not be back for a while.

  As 1938 unfolded, and profits rolled in, Coralie thanked Providence for her job. For all his promises, his passion, Ramon was not a good provider. His desire for her had not waned. He was an ardent, if sometimes thoughtless, lover. But his salary somehow always melted away before rent day. He had stopped going out to nightclubs so often, but was still addicted to dark basements. Only now it was to attend meetings of left-wing political groups. Coralie knew he was personally funding two or three, and supporting political refugees too. His only useful contribution to their household was coal, which he ‘liberated’ from the freight-marshalling yard alongside his office.

  ‘Be fair, Coralie,’ he would say, when she blasted him yet again for failing to pay her any housekeeping. ‘I gave you the best gift. My name. You are Madame Cazaubon.’

  True. Thanks to her marriage, she was now a fully fledged French citizen. The secret English part of her slept.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 10

  GERMANY, 6 NOVEMBER 1938

  He’d stood motionless for so long that his feet seemed to belong to some far-off frozen continent. The leather coat protecting him from the icy rain was beginning to let the moisture through. His ears felt raw, but there was no point putting his hat back on because that was dripping wet too.

  Hiltrud stood like a fur-clad pillar, seemingly untouched by the cold. He started to say something, then gave up. It was implicit that whoever broke silence at the graveside was the one who cared least. The one guilty of recovering from intolerable bereavement. It was invariably him.

  Rain made the letters on the headstone shine darkly. ‘A beloved son, Waldo Dietrich von Elbing, 16 September 1921 to 28 July 1937’. Above Waldo’s name, the words ‘Blut und Ehre’; ‘Blood and Honour’. Above that, a tilted swastika. Hiltrud and her father had instructed the stonemason to make the swastika larger than the Christian cross at the base. It was Hiltrud who insisted they come out to this graveyard on the banks of the river Havel every Sunday, but what did she see here? That trumpeting stone or the pitiful mound under which lay their son?

  Like many other youths of his age, Waldo had been sent to do his Landjahr, his year of service, learning to farm. Sent in spite of an inherited heart condition that resulted in defective oxygenation of the blood. Hiltrud and her father had hid
den it from his supervisors because, in perfectionist Germany, inborn weakness was a cause of shame.

  My shame, Dietrich railed at himself, though he hadn’t known just how far Waldo’s health had deteriorated, that he was collapsing after long stints of outdoor work. Or that the other boys were mocking him, calling him ‘girl’ because he was so pale. Had Waldo said any of this in his letters, Dietrich would have stepped in. Instead, he’d persuaded himself that his son would emerge fitter and stronger from his experiences. He, meanwhile, had thrown himself into his love affair, into his Paris adventure.

  His poor, beautiful boy. Taking advantage of Dietrich’s absence, Hiltrud and her father had arranged for Waldo to move on from farm work. To military camp, to learn artillery skills. Ultimately to become a member of an anti-aircraft battery. They’d been determined to make a soldier of the boy. The moment he’d learned their plans, Dietrich had left Paris for Hohen Neuendorf. It was unthinkable – a military camp, where boys were made to run miles every day with weighted backpacks? Where they loaded and fired guns, dragging them across rugged terrain while a Gefreiter screamed orders and smoke-bombs were thrown to mimic real warfare? For strong, war-minded boys, no doubt it was the best kind of life. For Waldo . . .

  Arriving back in Germany, Dietrich had discovered that his son had already started his military training. During a tense family summit, Hiltrud had begged him not to rock the boat. Her father had called in so many favours to gain this cherished posting, it would be an insult if Waldo were recalled. Hiltrud’s father had thrown his weight behind his daughter, declaring he would not stand by and watch his grandson denied the opportunity to grow manly.

  At artillery camp the bullying had worsened and Waldo’s letters to Dietrich that summer had echoed his grandfather’s phrase: ‘If I show them I am a man, they will stop.’

  They hadn’t. Waldo had begun to fall behind in his studies and practical training, so his instructors had added their own threats. He’d been in Hell, and he’d finally written to Dietrich, confessing to daily black-outs. ‘Mein lieber Vater, I cannot go on. Please fetch me away.”

  That letter had not reached Dietrich until it was too late.

  On this occasion, it was Hiltrud who broke the silence. ‘We’d better go. I promised Father an early lunch. He has so many duties these days.’

  ‘Come, then.’ Dietrich offered his arm, but Hiltrud walked ahead of him towards the gates and his car. As they drove from the Lutheran cemetery, the swoosh of tyres on wet roads masked their silence. Only as they swept through the fringes of Hohen Neuendorf did Hiltrud speak again.

  ‘You will stay and dine with us? My father has a birthday gift for you.’

  He’d planned to drive back to Berlin and fill his day with paperwork. He and Hiltrud had been living fully apart for more than a year, a brief reconciliation after Waldo’s death having proved unsustainable. He visited the family home only a couple of times a month now, to see his daughter. As for his birthday, what was a fortieth birthday when your son hadn’t reached beyond his fifteenth? ‘No presents, Hiltrud. Anyway, my actual birthday is two days off.’

  ‘I know that. But you’ll be with your mother that day.’

  He wasn’t planning that either. He was going to Munich. To the beer hall where the Führer was to make his traditional annual speech.

  ‘So, will you take lunch with us?’

  ‘All right.’

  His father-in-law’s gift was a framed photograph of himself at the wheel of his new Mercedes 540K and a sugarplum of news for which Dietrich had to wait. Lunch was tense, everybody so civilised, their knives and forks squeaking. Glancing at his daughter, Dietrich wondered if these Sunday rituals were setting Claudia up for a lifetime of chronic indigestion.

  When, at last, the coffee pot was brought in, Hiltrud excused herself to make an urgent telephone call. Before she left, she added fresh logs to the fire in the grate.

  Dietrich told Claudia she might leave the table. ‘Give me a hug, then go and devour Frauen-Warte.’ He’d spied the magazine of the National Socialist Women’s League on the hall table, guessing Claudia was saving it for the quiet of the afternoon.

  She slid from her seat, but instead of coming to him, she went to peck her grandfather on the cheek. ‘You don’t mind me leaving you to slurp coffee alone, Opa?’

  ‘“Slurp” isn’t a polite word to use to your grandfather, and he won’t be alone since I am here.’ The sight of Claudia’s red-gold plaits against his father-in-law’s thatch of white made Dietrich realise that all through lunch he’d been trying to see Waldo in her. Failing, because she possessed all the rude health that had been denied to her brother. He held out his hand. Claudia ignored it.

  ‘Opa says you never talk to any of us.’ Almost fourteen now, her self-confidence matched her ripe colouring. ‘Grandpapa talks to me about the Party. He listens when I tell him I want to advance the glory of Germany and save the honour of our family.’

  Dietrich had been schooled never to flinch, from either word or blade. Dropping his hand, he said, ‘If it’s glory you’re after, you will no doubt find me wanting. Honour I believe I can supply, though perhaps not in the form you expect it.’ When she’d gone, he turned to his father-in-law. ‘Are you teaching her Nazism, Ernst?’

  Ernst Osterberg squared his jaw. ‘Don’t use that filthy term with me. We are the National Socialist Workers’ Party, with the emphasis on “workers”.’ Something malevolent danced in the old man’s eye. ‘And Claudia’s right. The future belongs to such as she, and I’m proud to have shown her that.’ As if to prove it, Osterberg went to the dining-room door, and called after his granddaughter, ‘Like to come for a ride in my new car after school tomorrow, Sternchen?’

  ‘Yes, please!’ Claudia called back.

  Ernst Osterberg returned to his seat, leaving the door open. As Dietrich stirred a quarter-teaspoon of sugar into his coffee, he heard Hiltrud talking in an uninterrupted stream on the telephone about knitted squares and her certainty that their local women’s circle would produce more blankets this winter than any of the other welfare Bunds in Berlin. We survive, he thought. I in my ice-cube in Berlin, she with her knitting needles. Claudia expresses her grief in cold contempt for me, egged on by her grandfather.

  Rain pattered against the window. Ernst Osterberg took out a pocket watch and said, ‘You won’t want to leave it too late to drive back to the city.’

  ‘There was something you had to tell me?’

  Osterberg had heavy bulldog jowls, which limited his range of expressions. He gave what might have been a smile. ‘My news, yes. Silberstrom’s companies are all now Aryanised. The paint division was finally signed over to a new board on Thursday. The whole lot, purged of their Jewish directors. So, a good birthday present for you?’

  ‘You’re on the new board? A “trustee”?’

  The brisk nod implied, ‘Of course.’ Osterberg said, ‘You know, you can tell a Jew by his ear-lobes?’

  ‘You told me that once.’

  ‘We will inspect every employee, ten at a time, outside my office.’ No twinkle in the heavy-lidded eyes to suggest a joke. ‘Max von Silberstrom appointed Aryan board members as his surrogates.’

  ‘As he had been required to do since April.’

  ‘But they worked for him, not for the state.’ Ernst’s fist came down. ‘A Jew can’t help being a Jew, but a Jewish stooge is a knowing traitor. The Chamber of Commerce will push for harsh punishments. ’

  ‘Mm. You mishandled Max von Silberstrom badly, you know.’

  The jowls quivered. ‘You spent too much of your childhood playing in the Silberstroms’ damn garden. Max and Ottilia should be as foreign to you as . . .’ Osterberg searched for imagery, first inside his head, then, finding nothing, within the room ‘. . . as that coal scuttle. We were all too soft on foreign parasites. Now, thank God, we’re ridding ourselves of them. I’d like to have seen Max von Silberstrom in jail, but he escaped to Switzerland. Somebody helped him.’

&
nbsp; ‘Men like Max have friends everywhere, I’m afraid. I hope you have some, Ernst. Your institute mismanaged the seizure of Silberstrom Industries. Arguing among yourselves as to who should run the place.’ Dietrich tutted. ‘Your dithering gave Max time to sell his chemical formulas abroad.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Dietrich sipped his coffee, enjoying the sight of his father-in-law squirming. The fire had erased the freezing vigil at Waldo’s grave and, though Dietrich wanted to get home, he was reluctant to leave the warmth. He certainly had no intention of allowing Ernst the last word. Ernst Osterberg: a natural bully, he’d blighted Dietrich’s marriage, crowding him and Hiltrud in the early days when they should have been getting to know each other. Finding fault in Dietrich, training Hiltrud to see those faults for herself. But that was nothing, nothing, to the evil the man had sown latterly. ‘You know Silberstrom Industries pioneered coloured paints for cars.’

  Osterberg returned an impatient movement. ‘I considered their Bear’s Claw Red for my new vehicle. I decided in the end that a man of my age and position—’

  ‘Thanks to their scientists,’ Dietrich cut in, ‘you can have your green or blue or sunshine yellow, whereas a few years ago it would have been “Any colour, sir, as long as it’s black.” But do you know that Silberstrom’s laboratories also developed a camouflage paint for aircraft?’

  ‘I’m running the place! Of course I know!’

  ‘Paint using polymers to reduce drag and improve aero-dynamics. It gives our fighter planes greater agility.’

  ‘Which is why the factory was Aryanised.’

  ‘But not fast enough.’ Dietrich gave a smile that was not quite a smile. ‘It was this paint formula that Max sent abroad. “Americanised”, you might say. You will enjoy explaining the consequences of that to Reichsminister Göring. Ernst, you may have lost us the next war.’