by Thynne, Jane
‘Keep it for a while, darling. I’m not using it at the moment and your life is so much more glamorous than my own. I imagine a car comes in handy.’
Albert always tried to balance his raging appetite for gossip with the discretion that politics demanded. On the subject of Clara’s encounters with the Goebbels, he accepted that the less he knew the better.
‘I just hope your trip to Schwanenwerder was successful.’
‘I don’t know about successful. It was interesting.’
Albert stretched out and helped himself to a bottle of schnapps which rested in the bottom drawer of his desk. He knew Clara far too well to worry about drinking in front of her, though she noticed that the bottle had taken quite a hit since she last saw it. Everyone had their own ways of coping with the atmosphere at the studios. Albert took a deep swig and surveyed her, his eyes crinkled in concern.
‘You seem a bit jumpy this morning, darling. And rather pale. Not in any kind of trouble, are you?’
‘Trouble?’ Clara gave a light laugh. ‘Quite the opposite. I’m getting plenty of work, aren’t I?’
It was true. Clara had been in almost continuous demand since her arrival in Germany. The advent of the talkies meant actors were discovering that their voices mattered just as much as their looks. Some stars dropped out of fashion overnight, because their voices were too high, or their accents too comical. Others complained that they couldn’t party at night any more, because of all the lines they had to learn. Clara’s first film, Black Roses, had been one of the innovative, tri-lingual talkies shot in German, French and English, but that experiment didn’t last long. Foreigners lost their appetite for the films being shot in the new Germany. Especially now that war films, starring brave German soldiers ready to die for their country, dominated the screens.
Albert abandoned attempts to probe her mood. ‘Did you hear our Master’s latest theory?’ He waved the latest issue of Filmwoche, compulsory reading for everyone in the industry, which contained a lavish profile of Goebbels. ‘He says in here that the ideal woman should be composed of the three Ms – the Mother, the Madonna and the Mistress.’
‘I thought he preferred to keep them separate.’
‘So did I. But if what I’m hearing about Lída Baarová is true, he’s thinking she might like to combine two roles.’
Lída Baarová was Goebbels’ latest girlfriend. A sultry Czech actress with stunning Slavic cheekbones, she had been propelled to stardom by her devoted admirer. Her new film, Patriots, about a brave German soldier befriended by a French girl, was to be the subject of a lavish premiere later that month at the city’s plushest cinema, the Ufa Palast am Zoo.
‘So it’s serious this time?’
‘He’s really smitten. Obsessed. He vets all her leading men. I’ve heard he makes her leave her phone line open so that when he’s at his desk he can pick up the earpiece just to hear her breathing.’
‘Her breathing!’
‘Romantic, isn’t it? Or perhaps he wants to hear if she’s packing her bags for Hollywood like everyone else. They say he’s so desperate to keep her he’s going to ask Magda for a divorce.’
‘I thought Lída was already married.’
‘What’s marriage? A piece of paper. Goebbels is good at fixing paperwork.’
Clara moved away from the window. Even though he was a hundred metres away at the studio gate, she had the sudden feeling that Goebbels might have eyes in the back of his head. Albert laughed.
‘You don’t need to worry, darling. You’re obviously doing something right. Looking forward to your first title role?’
The part in the new film, The Pilot’s Bride, was technically Clara’s first major role. She was playing Gretchen, the young wife of a Luftwaffe flying ace, known for his heroics in the sky, until he was tragically shot down. The story was a simple one. Gretchen alone refused to believe her husband was dead and daringly, she learned to fly so that she could seek him out and bring him home. Evading enemy guns she landed on hostile territory and found her husband injured but alive. So far, so standard. Brave Luffwaffe, long-suffering heroine, happy ending. There were any number of films that like being made right now, but this one would be a sure-fire, cast-iron, guaranteed success. Because of Ernst Udet.
She smiled. ‘We all know who the real star is.’
She moved over to Albert’s desk and flipped through a stack of postcards featuring Udet’s beaming figure in a variety of poses. Udet was a born celebrity. During his time in Hollywood, he liked to perform his stunts in a full dress suit and top hat. One of his favourites was to fly at zero height scooping objects from the ground. The press had been ecstatic when he won a bet with Mary Pickford to pick her handkerchief off the grass with his wing tip as he flew past.
‘The sad thing is, this is his last part,’ said Albert. ‘They say the Führer’s banning him from filming or performing any more stunts.’
‘I thought his film work was supposed to be great propaganda for aviation?’
Udet’s last film, The Miracle of Flight, the story of a boy who wanted to be a pilot, had been box-office gold.
‘It is. But now he’s too important to the Luftwaffe. They can’t risk anything happening to him. He’s so miserable about it I heard he’s talking about going to America.’
‘Does he not like his job?’
‘Hates it. He’s a real duck out of water. He sits at his desk all day doodling and making paper aeroplanes.’
Goering was so determined that his old war colleague should be at the forefront of the Luftwaffe’s rapid expansion he had made Udet head of the entire Technical Division of the Luftwaffe, responsible for the development of all fighter and bomber planes and other specialized aircraft. Udet’s trouble was, he hated paperwork and Party politics as much as he loved women, alcohol and planes. Nor did the public seem to understand that he was now a dignified Party bureaucrat because they persisted in begging him for autographs whenever he walked down the street. The studio was making the most of Udet’s celebrity status. That morning he was due to sign a number of promotional postcards and posters for the forthcoming film.
The phone rang. Albert picked it up and semaphored to Clara.
‘That’s it. He’s arrived. Want to come and meet your screen husband?’
They hurried through the offices and took a short cut through the Great Hall where all the filming took place. It was the size of an aircraft hangar and housed a dozen sets crammed in back to back, preparing a dozen different versions of reality to distract the German public from military manoeuvres and butter shortages. Skirting the tattered backs of the sets, behind the wooden props, they passed a group of bishops chatting to some men in powdered wigs and lace cravats. Ropes and electrical cables snaked over the floor. A director complained about the sound of drilling and shouted ‘Ruhe!’ for silence. They exited the other end of the hall and crossed the lot to a redbrick reception office where a robust figure in his early forties stood, wearing a slate-grey Luftwaffe uniform which emphasized his dazzling blue eyes.
‘Herr Generaloberst, may I introduce Clara Vine?’
Udet had a smile hovering around his lips as though engaged in an elaborate practical joke. He clicked his heels and kissed Clara’s hand with old-fashioned courtesy.
‘My sweetheart. On film at least. And, may I say, an excellent choice.’
‘We’re delighted you could make time for this, Herr Generaloberst,’ said Albert, obsequiously.
‘I’m delighted too, let me tell you,’ he said, winking at Clara. ‘I nearly didn’t make it. I had an accident the other day. The plane was a complete shit crate. I escaped, but another inch and I’d have been singing soprano.’
Behind Udet Clara saw a pair of secretaries stop and signal to each other, covering their mouths and giggling. Those girls saw famous actors every day of the week, so if they went weak at the knees over Udet, he had to be a big star. Everything Clara had heard about Udet’s charisma and the easy-going jollity that prompted peopl
e to besiege him in the street seemed true. She warmed to him instantly.
‘Ever done any flying?’ he asked Clara.
‘I’m afraid not. But I saw your Olympics display last year.’
Like everything he had a hand in, Hermann Goering’s Olympics gala for seven hundred guests at his Leipziger Platz home could not be called understated. A swimming pool had been built in the garden, complete with swans. There was a miniature French village, a carnival, shooting galleries and a merry-go-round. An entire corps de ballet was brought in to dance on the moonlit grass, while above them Udet’s plane had performed a series of gliding acrobatics, swooping and circling in the sky.
Udet beamed. ‘You enjoyed that, did you?’
‘It was the most amazing stunt I’ve ever seen.’ It was the truth. The sight of the plane curving down in the night sky, twisting through beams of light with balletic swoops, had transfixed her.
‘I’ll arrange a flight for you, if you like.’
‘Oh, I don’t know . . .’
‘You’ll love it! It’ll help you get into character. Isn’t that what you actresses say?’
‘In that case, it’s very kind of you.’
‘Leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do.’
Albert gestured to the pile of promotional material he was carrying.
‘We were wondering, Herr Generaloberst,’ he said unctuously, ‘if you could spare the time, whether you could come to my office and sign some of these?’
‘And,’ Clara intervened, ‘may I ask you for an autograph for a young admirer? He’s a friend of mine called Erich. He’s seen you fly and he wants to join the Luftwaffe when he’s old enough.’
Udet peeled off a postcard from the top of Albert’s stack. It was a shot of himself standing next to a Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber, wearing his cap at a jaunty angle. With a flourish he scrawled on the back,
‘To Erich! Best wishes, Ernst Udet!’
Then he took another postcard, wrote on it, and handed it to Clara with a mock bow. She read:
‘Fräulein Clara Vine is invited to a party at Pommerschestrasse 4, Berlin-Wilmersdorf. 18th October, 8 p.m.’
‘I hope you can come and meet some of my friends. We should get to know each other, considering you are going to be my bride. Bring Herr Lindemann with you. But be warned, I make a pretty formidable cocktail.’
Chapter Six
A sharp breeze corrugated the surface of the Wannsee, setting the water dancing and nudging the boats against their moorings. Until a few years ago these boats had names like Edda or Ute or Gretel on their bows, but these names had now been painted over and replaced with grander, National Socialist aspirations like Courage or Victory or Endurance. Clara turned away from the view and shivered. It might have been the chill breeze blowing through the opened French windows of the Goebbels’ drawing room, but more likely it was the company that was gathered around her.
The furniture had been cleared to make way for a crowd of women in bright sheath dresses, the glint of their jewellery competing with the gleam of silver death’s heads on black SS dress uniforms. As always, it was an unnerving experience being in close proximity to a bunch of SS officers. The bark of German conversation was interspersed with the familiar bray of the English upper classes, but so far no one had taken up the offer of Clara’s translation. The Germans pretended they already understood, and the English assumed that speaking their own tongue both louder and slower would make them perfectly comprehensible.
‘It’s a lovely spot, you have here, Frau Doktor,’ said one. ‘I hear the Führer sometimes prefers Schwanenwerder to Berchtesgaden.’
‘Nothing could be better than Berchtesgaden!’ interceded a gawky Englishwoman with a straw-coloured bob. ‘Berchtesgaden is the nearest you can get to heaven.’
Unity Valkyrie Mitford had a stolid, impassive look, which reminded Clara of the stone women on the theatre façade on Nollendorfplatz. Her face with its high, plucked eyebrows, was like a blank pool into which you longed to throw a pebble. The girl who had asked a German newspaper to let everyone know she was a ‘Jew-hater’ had a sullen air, like a cow that has been thwarted at a gate. Though she was only twenty-three, she had left England and relocated to Germany to be as close to Hitler as possible, basing herself in Munich and hoping each day for an invitation from the Führer to lunch, or the opera, or just to take tea at his apartment. Occasionally she was asked to make speeches or write newspaper articles, in which event she would turn out a tirade against the Jews as dull and plodding as a twelve-year-old schoolgirl’s essay.
Unity’s awkward woodenness only served to emphasize the beauty of her sister Diana, who was four years older, smaller by a head and exquisitely dressed in cream Dior, with milky blonde hair and eyes of bright, hostile blue. The two had the same broad brow and high cheekbones, but the features which produced Diana’s loveliness were cast more coarsely in Unity. Looking at the two sisters together made one wonder how birth could fashion such different outcomes from identical raw materials. The same thought must have occurred to Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler’s personal photographer, who was circling the guests with surprising nimbleness armed with a Leica.
‘Don’t mind me. Please don’t let me disturb you!’
Hoffmann was a dapper character with the practised charm and ingratiating smile of the professional hotel manager. His hair was slicked with pungent pomade and a silk handkerchief bloomed extravagantly from his top pocket. The fact that he had for many years been the only photographer permitted to take official portraits of the Führer meant he was the VIP photographer of choice at gatherings of senior party figures. That evening he had abandoned lights and tripod in favour of a handheld camera, but his efforts to remain unobtrusive were quite unnecessary because the Mitfords ignored him entirely. Being photographed was, for them, entirely routine.
‘The Berghof is terrifically homely,’ agreed Diana, who had just returned from a break at the Führer’s hideaway in the Bavarian Alps. ‘The view is glorious, though it is just the teensiest bit like staying in a bed and breakfast in Bournemouth. The cushions have little slogans embroidered on them, can you believe?’ She had a sharp, tinkling laugh, like a champagne glass being smashed. ‘There was even one that said, The German Woman is knitting again! And the cushion was knitted itself! Isn’t that funny! If there hadn’t been so many great big guards around I would have popped it in my bag and taken it home.’
‘That’s a terrible thing to suggest,’ objected Unity humourlessly. ‘Guests wanting souvenirs from the Berghof are a frightful problem for him, poor Führer, but he can hardly say anything. His spoons get stolen by everyone. Even the brushes and nail files from the bathroom. Just because they’re engraved with his initials.’
‘Perhaps he should be more careful with his guests then,’ concluded Diana brightly. ‘I must say, some of those women at dinner the other night seemed of doubtful origin. And not much to look at either. I don’t know how the darling Führer can stand to look at them. Figures like the Hindenburg, didn’t you think?’
Diana’s body by comparison was as fine and delicate as a whippet’s. In profile her face had a freakish perfection, like a Greek goddess. Beside her Magda Goebbels, in a white dress and striped cardigan, an ashy film of powder on her face, looked stout, her ankles swollen. The sisters began talking to Hoffmann’s daughter Henny, a vivacious girl who they knew from Munich, as her father took another photograph. Henny spoke in a low, gossipy whisper.
‘You were lucky to be sitting with the Führer at the Berghof. I was stuck next to Herr Bormann. He was boring on about his grand plans for matrimony in the Reich. He wants to institute mass weddings with fifty couples getting married at the same time. Can you imagine anything worse?’
‘I think it would be rather a hoot,’ said Diana. ‘Just think of all the brides’ mothers, competing in pastels.’
Clara wondered if Archie Dyson was right in his assessment of the Mitford sisters as a busted flush. They seemed to her to occupy an ex
traordinary place in the Nazi hierarchy. They were respected guests of Hitler, privy to intimate conversations among the top brass at his Bavarian retreat. They listened first-hand to the Führer’s plans for Europe’s future and in turn fed him a vision of England that was eccentric in the extreme. Contemplating this, she sensed Diana’s clever eyes travel over her, as if reading her thoughts.
‘Clara! How lovely to find you here. I haven’t seen you for too long. How’s your divine sister Angela?’
Diana knew Angela, but was closer to Angela’s new husband Gerald, a stolid barrister who had political ambitions and, in Clara’s eyes, absolutely no redeeming features. Gerald had flirted with joining Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, though in the end he had opted for the Conservative Party as a safer bet.
‘Angela’s very well, thank you. She’s coming over soon.’
‘Frightfully good fun, your sister is. It’s a shame she couldn’t have come in time for the rally. It was terrifically impressive. Did you make it down to Nuremberg?’
‘Not this year, I’m afraid.’
So far, Clara had managed to avoid attending any of the Party rallies, though she guessed sooner or later she might have to accept an invitation. The talking point of that year’s Party congress in Nuremberg had been the ‘Cathedral of Light’ designed by Albert Speer, in which a hundred and fifty searchlights reached up into the night sky, like the pillars of a holy building.
‘It was awfully naughty of you to miss it, Clara,’ butted in Unity. ‘It was just the best Parteitag ever. The Führer was thrilled with it. I can’t believe you’ve never been. All the rallies and the marches are absolute heaven and the Hitler Youth boys look like angels.’
Clara laughed lightly. ‘There are plenty of marches in Berlin to be going on with.’
‘Maybe. But I think it’s a crime to miss it. You’ve never seen so many people all in one place. It culminates in the procession of the Blood Flag – that’s the flag held by the young Nazi struck down in the Putsch – and all the other flags are consecrated by touching the Blood Flag. It’s the most sacred moment. You can’t really describe it. You have to see it for yourself. It’s monumental.’
