The Winter Garden (2014)

by Thynne, Jane

  ‘So tell me about your career. What brought you to Berlin? Why isn’t a girl like you living it up in London, the toast of Drury Lane?’

  She laughed. ‘I was only the toast of the Eastbourne Pavilion until I came to Berlin. I came here on the off chance, in 1933, because someone had said there might be a job for a bilingual actress at Ufa. And they were right. Since then I’ve been working non-stop.’

  The wine he ordered was a Burgundy, rich and musty. He swilled it round his glass.

  ‘And now you’re filming with Ernst Udet? That’s quite impressive. I know him a little. I should think he would be quite a card to work with.’

  ‘I hope so. It’s going to be fun. The other day I went up in a plane in preparation.’

  ‘Ernst took you in a plane?’

  ‘It was a friend of his. Oberst Strauss. He had a test flight to carry out at Tempelhof and offered to take me along.’

  ‘A test flight? What was he testing?’

  ‘Oh, I’m hopeless with names. All planes look the same to me. But it was one of the most exciting experiences of my life. Terrifying too. Though I suppose you don’t find flying terrifying at all, given your job?’

  ‘My job can get a little nerve-wracking at times. But I’m sure you were in good hands with Oberst Strauss.’

  ‘I suspect he was breaking all sorts of rules taking me with him.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s a fan.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. He says he rarely goes to the cinema. And he never watches Udet’s stunts on film because he says he is always thinking of technical details and it distracts him from the story.’

  ‘He won’t know what he’s missing then, when your film is made,’ said Sommers with a gallant little flourish of his glass.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And are you planning on staying in Berlin?’

  That question again. Why did people keep asking?

  ‘The thing is, Captain Sommers, I’ve made my life here. I have a good apartment, I’ve made friends and I adore acting. Besides, my mother was German, so the language was never a problem. And as you know,’ she said carefully, ‘there’s so much going on.’

  All true.

  ‘Exciting things,’ he agreed.

  ‘Yes. Germany is certainly changing very rapidly.’

  True again.

  ‘The new Germany,’ he said. ‘Germania, isn’t that what the Führer calls it?’

  He took a languid sip.

  ‘Do you see much of the Goebbels?’

  ‘Not recently, no. I’ve been so busy.’

  ‘Of course.’ Another sip. ‘Joseph seems very impressed by you.’ He gave his dazzling smile. The phrase ‘matinée idol smile’ popped into her head, with its connotations of a smile meant for a wider audience. ‘I’m not sure, however, if impressing the Herr Doktor is such an advantage for an attractive actress.’

  She shrugged, lightly. ‘I can look after myself.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt of that.’

  ‘Excuse me, mein Herr.’

  The waiter appeared and stood between them, replenishing their glasses. Ralph Sommers bent his head away from her to exhale a plume of smoke and when the waiter had gone the matinée idol smile had vanished. He stared at his drink for a second and then looked up and said quietly, ‘So tell me, what’s in it for you then?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She was confused at the change in his demeanour. The seductive expression had disappeared and instead he was observing her with forensic interest. He looked at her with his hooded eyes and dabbed his mouth meticulously with his napkin.

  ‘You cosy up to them. You let them think you’re a friend. And actually, you’re watching them all the time, aren’t you? Watching them with those sharp eyes behind that pretty veil. You’re cleverer than them. You have them fooled, I suspect. But you don’t fool me.’

  ‘Really, Captain Sommers. I can’t begin to know what you’re talking about. Are you drunk?’

  ‘Sober as a judge, actually. Though I may not stay that way.’ He reached over and drained his glass, then poured himself another.

  ‘You’re an observer, aren’t you? It was your remark about the ambassador that interested me. Where would a lovely German actress know a thing like that? How would she be intimately acquainted with the movements of a British ambassador? Unless, of course, she’s more English than German. Unless she had access to some information that others don’t.’

  ‘This is madness. I’m going to leave now.’

  Clara rose from the table, and attempted to brush past him, but he grasped her wrist tightly and pulled her down again.

  ‘Don’t make a spectacle of yourself. It’s all right. You’re not in danger.’

  His eyes were intent on her as, with one hand, he extracted some bills from his wallet and folded them under the silver saucer on the table. With the other, he kept hold of Clara’s hand and, pulling her gently to her feet, led her out of the café. He adopted a deprecating expression for the benefit of any interested customers, which suggested they were in the midst of a lovers’ tiff.

  Quietly he said, ‘Shall we take a walk? I could do with some fresh air.’

  He was still holding her hand tightly. The skin on his palm was hard and dry. The feel of it made her wonder what things he had done, and what things he might be capable of. He didn’t let go until they had turned onto Einemstrasse.

  ‘Sorry,’ he murmured, releasing her. ‘But it’s not a good idea to talk seriously in a place like that. And I do, very much, want a talk with you.’

  Her heart was hammering in her chest. ‘About what?’

  ‘About you. I was interested in you from the moment I saw you. Looking like a little Geisha at the Goebbels’ party. Giving nothing away. I watched you talking to Goebbels and I thought if a girl like that can keep her nerve among a crowd of Nazi thugs with more decorations than a Christmas tree, she might just work in intelligence.’

  ‘You’re making a mistake.’

  ‘I never mistake a woman taking risks.’

  ‘You know a lot about risk, do you?’

  ‘I know everything about risk.’

  They rounded the corner of the street and turned left again. This was an exclusive area, on the fringes of the Tiergarten, a diplomatic quarter with grand houses whose lush, mature gardens pressed up against high railings. Against the felty darkness, the lamps glowed mistily in the almost empty street.

  ‘I’m afraid, Captain Sommers, you’re imagining things.’

  ‘Don’t worry, my dear. I’m like an art dealer. I’m trained to spot fakes. I’m quite sure your observation went unremarked by the others.’

  The image of herself, like a piece of fine art in his hands, being turned over and closely examined, sent a curious shiver through her.

  ‘So after I met you,’ he added lightly, ‘I made some enquiries.’

  ‘Enquiries? With whom?’

  ‘With my contacts in the Air Ministry. The British Air Ministry. That confirmed it.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘Though if you don’t mind me saying, that remark about the ambassador was a damn fool mistake to make.’

  Clara was mortified. But still she kept silent. Sommers paused until a man with a dog had passed, then said, ‘It’s getting more dangerous here by the day. It’s no time for making silly slip-ups.’

  He gave her a sidelong look and continued.

  ‘On the other hand, I can see that it might be the first time you’ve put a foot wrong.’

  Clara’s mind was racing. She still had no idea who he was, but it was obvious that he knew far more about her than she did about him.

  ‘Never attempt anything that wouldn’t come naturally. Build on what you know. Didn’t they tell you that in training?’

  ‘The only training I’ve ever had was theatrical.’

  She remembered Leo Quinn asking her how she portrayed a character on stage. Use the same technique, he told her. Imagine you are playing a role and th
en become that person.

  Sommers craned a quizzical eye at her.

  ‘My God. No training at all? What are they thinking of? In that case you’ve done remarkably well.’

  ‘In what way?’

  He gave a tight laugh. ‘You’re still not sure of me, are you? That’s to your credit. I’m going to have to persuade you to trust me.’

  Clara didn’t reply. What did he know? How much could she deny?

  ‘And I’m going to trust you too.’

  Clara walked on, too angry with herself to be afraid. What had possessed her to meet a relative stranger, with no form of protection? She wondered if Sommers was leading her somewhere, or if they were going to carry on walking like this, through the night. She began calculating how and where she would be able to give him the slip.

  He said, ‘I can see I’m going to have to go first. The fact is, I’m not without a little cover story of my own.’

  ‘So you don’t really run an aviation business?’

  ‘Oh no. That part’s true. In a manner of speaking. I’ve always been keen on aircraft, since I was a boy.’

  The streetlights threw their shadows ahead of them and she watched them, his tall and broad, her own slender and shorter, leaning into his and merging with it, as though the shadows, unlike their owners, were lovers out on a stroll. He spoke softly and intently, staring straight ahead.

  ‘I was born into an ordinary family. We lived in a village in Surrey. Chintz sofas, roses in the garden, tea at four, that was our life. What you might call an archetypal Englishness. I wasn’t especially bookish but I did like planes. Model ones, of course, to start with. When the war broke out I ditched school and enlisted in the Royal Flying Corps, much against my mother’s wishes, because I wanted to fly. I’m a Group Captain, as it happens. Unfortunately my plane was shot down by Goering’s chaps and I was taken prisoner in 1917. I spent a year in a prison camp, down in the southwest of Germany. You can’t imagine the tedium of that, stuck in a camp, playing endless games of chess. For a long time the family thought I was dead.’

  ‘That must have been hard.’

  ‘Yes. Great wails and gnashing of teeth all round,’ he chuckled. ‘I never knew what a fine fellow I was until afterwards when I read the obituary they’d printed of me in the local newspaper.’

  She couldn’t see his face well. Between the street lamps the darkness was thick and impenetrable, the texture of soot or oil. A harsh wind cursed in the trees. His tone turned serious again.

  ‘There were, however, two good things about being stuck in a prison camp in the middle of nowhere. The first was that I learned perfect German. And the second was I gained a lot of respect for their air force. It was clear to me that the Germans had obviously thought much harder about air strategy than we had.’

  ‘It didn’t win them the war.’

  ‘That’s true, fortunately. Anyway, after the war was won I went back to England and lounged around with no real direction. I went up to Cambridge for a while but it was difficult. I couldn’t think what I wanted to do. The idea of putting on a hat and taking my briefcase into an office every day was anathema. I didn’t want to be tied down. Then, by sheer chance I met up with a friend who had flown with me in the war and he recommended I contact the air section of the Secret Intelligence Service.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘The truth was, I didn’t even know they existed. At first I didn’t waste much energy on it. I was off on a walking holiday in the Alps. I thought whatever it was could wait a couple of weeks. In the event, they called me.’

  ‘And you agreed to work for them?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking. It’s a complicated situation.’ For the first time he turned to face her and she saw he was sober. Perhaps he really was risking as much as her.

  ‘I agreed to gather information on the development of military aviation in Germany. Even back then there was a serious concern in some quarters about the growth of the Luftwaffe. The idea was that I should come over in a business capacity and collect as much information as I could about the build-up of the air force and in the process recruit some friendly parties and create a network of contacts. I discovered that the Nazis were keen to cultivate high-level contacts in Britain. They seemed to believe that as we were an imperial power we would share their views on conquering other races. Perhaps, regarding certain quarters, they were right.’

  Clara thought of her own father and said nothing.

  ‘Anyway, as soon as I got here I decided to act as a channel by immersing myself fully in National Socialist circles. I got to meet everyone who mattered – Hitler, Hess, Rosenberg, General von Reichenau, General Kesselring, Erhard Milch. And I was able to patch together meetings between Nazi bigwigs and our own RAF. So far, it’s worked very well.’

  ‘That must take some nerve.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s something you know all about.’

  She cast a glance about her at the deserted street.

  ‘So you’re an agent?’

  ‘I’m what you might call a freelance. Deliberately so. It was my own idea and I’m a loner here. I don’t have contact with any other agents. At least, I haven’t had.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s safer that way. Everything’s in flux at the moment. Everyone has their own agenda. It’s a complicated place, the intelligence world.’

  Although they were talking in English, he gave a quick, instinctive look behind him.

  ‘There are parties in the British government who resist any warnings about Germany as alarmist. The people you’ve been cooperating with, Dyson and his friends, have to deal with those men. My Nazi associates are full of praise for our new ambassador Mr Henderson. They tell me he’s “sympathetic to rightful German aspirations”. I fear some parts of the British government have turned a deaf ear to what people like us might say.’

  His casual phrase ‘people like us’ did not go unnoticed. Yet Clara was still uncertain how much he knew about her and how much she should reveal. Her deep, instinctive caution told her not to let down her defences. Not yet.

  He continued. ‘There are other factions, of course, who believe a war is just the thing that’s needed to persuade the Germans to overthrow Hitler.’

  ‘If everyone has an agenda, what’s yours?’ she asked.

  ‘I want my information to get through to people with a real appreciation of the threat the Nazis pose. It’s plain to me that the Germans intend to build the most powerful air force in the world.’

  Though his mention of Archie Dyson had relaxed Clara slightly, she was still trying to assess Ralph Sommers. She knew never to take a story at face value. The part of his story about being captured in the war sounded credible. Sommers had the kind of upright bearing that suggested military training. Yet he had professed admiration for the German air force. And he had made quite clear he was acting outside normal boundaries. A loner.

  ‘Why should they give you any access? Why should they trust you? What are you offering them?

  He smiled at her broadly, as though she was a good student.

  ‘All excellent questions, and ones which I assure you have run through my mind a thousand times. I think they trust me because I was lucky enough to have met some of the senior Nazis before the regime was in power. My British associates wanted me to pursue those relationships, and while my first response was revulsion, I was also genuinely excited by the possibilities of being up close.’

  ‘You felt revulsion?’

  ‘Is it possible to look at the face of the Nazi regime and feel any other way?’

  They had come to a small park. He looked around in the gloom and saw there was no one else nearby. That was hardly a surprise. No one in their right mind would be walking in the park on a night like this. A shiver of rain drops needled her face.

  ‘Shall we sit a moment?’ Without waiting for a reply he settled on a bench, lit two cigarettes and gave her one. Clara inhaled deeply then said, ‘If you feel revulsion, what do they fe
el about you?’

  He shrugged proudly. ‘I think they’ve taken rather a shine to me. The Nazis believe I’m a channel to the British authorities. They think they can use me to sound out British intentions and to send any kind of message they want. So I act as an intermediary.’

  ‘And how exactly do you do that?’

  ‘I put them on to people who have been talking or writing favourably about Germany in Britain and they invite them over. Not just politicians; industrialists, journalists and novelists too. Some of those guests at the Goebbels’ house were suggestions of mine.’

  Clara was glad she had worn her fur-collared coat. She drew it more closely around her in a vain attempt to shut out the biting cold. She felt the warmth of Sommers beside her, and longed to edge closer to him, but it was far too risky to abandon her guard. Sommers seemed quite happy to go on talking, there, in that freezing park, as though he had an urge to unburden himself. Which might be the case, but why had he chosen her?

  ‘I’m not sure why you’re telling me all this, Captain Sommers.’

  ‘I’m coming to that. The fact is, I need your help.’

  ‘My help?’ She gave a short laugh. ‘I really don’t think—’

  ‘Wait. Listen to me. You’re working with Ernst Udet.’

  ‘Only a few days’ filming.’

  ‘Udet’s interesting. He’s completely unsuited to be part of a war machine. He’s a good fellow, even if he was indirectly responsible for one of the most unpleasant episodes of recent times. You know about the German activities in the Spanish civil war, I take it? The Legion Condor?’

  ‘I’ve heard about it.’ An image came to her of the navy armband worn by Arno Strauss, embroidered with the words Legion Condor.

  ‘Udet bears some responsibility for what went on there. The dive-bombing that he pioneered was the centrepiece of the blitzkrieg, you know, the aerial bombardment. He even designed a special siren called a Jericho Trumpet which emits a wailing shriek as the planes approach, to terrify the poor beggars on the ground all the more.’