‘And is that information right?’ Rozalind put a hand against the coffee pot on the table to see if it was still hot.
‘Yes. It accords with the information we have on the Hill.’
‘On the Hill’ was the way he always referred to the Capitol Building in Washington. Quite what Max’s responsibilities were in Congress, over and above those of every Congressman, she didn’t know, but whatever they were, she strongly suspected they were to do with foreign affairs – and with Germany in particular.
She rose to her feet. ‘The coffee is still hot. I’m just going to fetch a cup.’
Once in the kitchen, she stood for a moment, thinking. Whenever she crossed the Atlantic, Berlin was always her next stop after London. Thanks to Dieter, who had been posted back to Berlin more than a year ago, her contacts there were as good as they had always been and she knew at first hand about the abuses of freedom that had been taking place since Germany had become a one-party state.
Until now, though, the photographs she had taken from privileged viewpoints had been of Nazi parades, conventions and rallies, or occasions such as Hitler arriving at a meeting to explain why he was taking no further part in the Geneva Disarmament Convention and was withdrawing from the League of Nations.
There was a big difference between photographs like those appearing in British and American newspapers, and photographs of prison camps where people were being imprisoned for crimes as trivial as reading a banned book, writing anti-Nazi graffiti or simply being a Jew, a homosexual, a prostitute, a Jehovah’s Witness or a gypsy.
Once those kinds of damaging photographs began appearing, her unique contacts with the Nazi hierarchy would be over and she would be lucky even to be allowed back in the country.
She walked out onto the balcony, reflecting that it was a difficulty almost as great as that of maintaining a good relationship with Dieter – without which she would be just another freelance news photographer without special access to anything.
‘He just doesn’t see what horrors Hitler is plunging Germany into,’ she said to Max, pouring coffee and not bothering to preface what she’d said with the name of the person she was talking about. Like an old married couple, the two of them picked up on each other’s half-begun or half-finished sentences instantly.
He pulled her down onto his knee. ‘He will – eventually.’ He slid a hand up her leg until he reached the smooth, firm flesh above her stocking top. Pleasurably he let it linger there, saying, ‘At the moment all Dieter sees is the way Hitler has brought unemployment under control and suppressed the communists.’
‘And as he and Olivia are happy to see the communists being suppressed, Thea is no longer on speaking terms with either of them. She and Olivia have always had frequent spats, but this is the first time they’ve ever not been on speaking terms with each other.’
‘I think,’ he said, his voice thickening as his hand moved a fraction higher, ‘that it’s time we stopped talking about Germany and went indoors for a little while.’
Her eyes darkened with heat. ‘I think so, too. In fact, I rather think the bedroom for preference.’
‘My thoughts entirely.’
She slid from his knee and, as he rose to his feet, the telephone in the living room rang.
The only people who had the apartment’s phone number, other than themselves, were Rob Dawkins, Max’s chief of staff, and Doris Tyndall, his personal secretary – and neither Rob nor Doris ever used it except in matters of emergency.
With his mood instantly altered, Max strode towards the phone.
‘Yes?’ he said peremptorily as, certain their already too-short time together was about to be cut even shorter, Rozalind sat on the arm of a sofa and waited. ‘Yes,’ he said again, his jaw tightening. ‘I understand. Thank you, Doris.’
One look at his face as he hung up and Roz knew without being told that their precious time together was at an end.
‘I’ll pack your bag,’ she said, knowing there was going to be no languorous goodbye lovemaking, only a fierce hug and a hurried passionate kiss.
The packing of what was only a weekend bag took no more than three minutes. She did it while he rapidly changed out of his casual clothes and into Congressman mode: a dark suit, white shirt, subdued tie and well-polished black leather shoes. He held her against him tight and hard, kissing her as if he was doing so for the last time ever and then, ten minutes after he had answered the telephone, he was striding away in the direction of the lift and all she had left of him was a lingering tang of lemon cologne and the feel of his hands on her body and the taste of his mouth on her lips.
She walked slowly back out onto the balcony, picked up the newspapers and took them into the kitchen ready to be dropped into the rubbish bin. Then she went back outside to clear the coffee pot and coffee cups away.
She was just wondering whether to take a shower before heading off to her apartment on the Upper East Side when the doorbell rang.
The sound knocked the breath from her body. No one, not even Rob Dawkins and Doris Tyndall, had the address of the apartment, and nothing was ever delivered to them there. Max wouldn’t have left without his key, so it couldn’t be him coming back after having forgotten something. Yet if it wasn’t Max, who could it be?
The bell rang again.
Aware there was only one way of finding out, she moved quickly across to the door.
When she opened it, the world seemed to rock on its axis and, even as Rozalind struggled with her disbelief, she knew the world – her world – was never going to be the same again.
‘Good afternoon, Miss Duveen,’ Max’s wife said. ‘I’d like a few words. May I come in?’
Speechlessly Rozalind opened the door wider.
Perfectly composed, Myrtle Bradley walked past her. She was a tall woman, verging on plumpness. The plumpness didn’t matter, though, for she was supremely elegant. Her beige mid-calf-length suit was worn with a fox-fur flung carelessly over one shoulder. There were pearls at her throat. Her fair hair was streaked with silver and was worn in a chignon beneath a coffee-coloured pillbox hat decorated with a wisp of net veiling.
Elegance personified, she seated herself on the sofa, took a cigarette-case and lighter from her clutch-bag and said without preamble, ‘You and I have to talk.’
Rozalind struggled to gather her wits, and her composure.
‘Before we do,’ she said tartly, ‘I’d like to know how you got hold of this address, because no one has it. Absolutely no one.’
There was a suffocating tightness in her throat. Myrtle at a distance, unintroduced and never spoken to, was one thing. Myrtle, cool and insultingly composed and seated opposite her in the apartment that was her own and Max’s sacred space, was quite another.
‘I’ve always had it. Max gave it to me the day he signed the lease.’
The floor tilted beneath Rozalind’s feet. The room swam.
‘Sit down,’ Myrtle said with almost disinterested practicality. ‘We can’t talk about serious matters if you’re going to behave like an old-fashioned Victorian maiden in need of smelling salts. Would you like a brandy?’
She made a movement as if about to rise to her feet and get her some.
Indignation cleared Rozalind’s head in a flash. ‘I don’t need a brandy, and if I did I’d get one for myself!’
Myrtle pursed her lips. ‘I accept that my coming here this afternoon has been a surprise to you, Miss Duveen, but there’s no need for rudeness.’
Her effrontery and self-possession were on such a scale that although Rozalind didn’t want to sit down – didn’t want to do anything to indicate the two of them were settling in for a cosy chat – she had no choice. Not to sit down would be to risk her legs giving way.
She sat down on the stiffest-backed chair the room possessed, hoping it would somehow give her an advantage.
Myrtle adjusted her fur.
‘Before you think my finding you here alone was a coincidence, Doris’s telephone call was prompt
ed by me: which may indicate to you, Miss Duveen, just how serious my meeting with you is.’
Rozalind felt sick with giddiness. First had come the utter shock of finding herself face-to-face with Myrtle. Then had come the devastating revelation that Myrtle knew the address of the Greenwich Village apartment – and that she knew it because Max had told her. Now Myrtle had come to a matter that was obviously of great importance to her – which could only mean she’d become afraid Max wanted a divorce.
She said dismissively, ‘There’s no need for anxiety, Mrs Bradley. Max has no intention of divorcing you, and I have no intention of asking him to divorce you.’
Myrtle arched a finely plucked eyebrow. ‘I’m well aware Max has no intention of divorcing me, so whether you would or wouldn’t like it if he did so is immaterial to me, Miss Duveen. What I have come about is something completely different.’
Until now, happily certain that it was her own relationship with Max that mattered to him, and not his relationship with Myrtle, Rozalind had scarcely given a thought to his wife. She was doing so now, though, because Myrtle was giving her no option not to. After all, Myrtle should have been concerned that Max might one day ask for a divorce. Her complacency as to the stability of her marriage wasn’t just infuriating. It was insulting.
Tight-lipped, Roz waited to hear what the different matter was.
Myrtle lit a cigarette and said starkly, ‘Max has been asked to run for office.’
Rozalind stared at her, understanding now why Myrtle was so confident that Max wouldn’t ask for a divorce. No divorced man could ever hope to run for the highest elective office in the land.
She said slowly, wanting to be sure she hadn’t misheard, ‘Max has been asked to be a nominee in the primaries?’
Myrtle nodded. ‘And he would stand a good chance of winning.’ She paused, and added with steel in her voice, ‘He would stand a good chance of winning all the way.’
Rozalind thought of Max as a presidential candidate. Of course he would stand a good chance of winning all the way.
‘The difficulty, Miss Duveen, is that the nomination process will entail rigorous scrutiny into his private life – and at the moment his private life won’t stand up to such scrutiny. You can imagine Max’s dilemma. Does he end his affair with you and seize the chance he is being given to embark on a four-year battle for the White House? Or does he continue with your affair and never know whether he could, or could not, have won for his party the greatest position any American can hold?’
The room was very quiet.
Somewhere Rozalind could hear a clock ticking faintly.
As if from a vast distance she heard Myrtle say, ‘My reason for being here, Miss Duveen, is because of the decision Max has made.’
Rozalind remained perfectly still, not daring to move. Not daring to speak.
Myrtle reached over the arm of the sofa to crush out the cigarette she’d just lit in the ashtray on the small adjacent table. After a pause that seemed to last an eternity, she said, ‘Max has decided to decline the invitation he has been given, his reason being that he loves you too much ever to end his affair with you.’
As relief surged through every vein and nerve-ending in Rozalind’s body, Myrtle rose to her feet. ‘That decision needn’t be the end of the matter, Miss Duveen. Max could still achieve his life’s ambition of becoming a presidential candidate, but only if – just as he loves you enough not to end your affair – you love him enough to end it for him.’ She tilted her head a little to one side, her eyes as glacial as a winter sea. ‘I wonder what choice you will make, Miss Duveen? I wonder how deep your love for Max really is?’
And, without waiting for a response, without another word, she walked from the room. Seconds later Rozalind heard from the hallway the click of the door as it opened and then closed.
She remained where she was, her legs still too weak to bear her weight, question after question, and realization after realization, thundering through her brain.
That Max had told Myrtle the address of the apartment was something so shattering that she didn’t how she was going to come to terms with it. And when Myrtle had arranged with Doris for Max’s recall to Washington, just how had she done so? It indicated a closeness and a trust between Myrtle and Doris that Roz had never remotely suspected. Did Max know of it? Did he sometimes discuss her with Myrtle? It was a crushing thought, but it paled into insignificance compared to his having been invited to stand for office.
She knew, just as much as Myrtle did, what a chance at the presidential candidacy would mean to Max – and yet, rather than end their affair, he was going to turn his back on it.
Faced with such evidence of how much she meant to him, tears burned in her eyes. Unsteadily she rose to her feet and went in search of the brandy she had previously scorned and now so desperately needed. With a glass in one hand and the bottle in the other, she went out onto the balcony, sitting where, such a short time ago, she had sat with Max and been so thoughtlessly, idyllically happy.
There was no way she could ever be so happy again. If she behaved as if Myrtle’s visit had never happened, and as if she had no knowledge of the sacrifice Max was making, how would she live with herself? It would be impossible.
The late-afternoon light smoked into dusk. The traffic noise changed in character as the evening street scene began to get under way. Not until darkness fell did she know not only what she must do, but how she must go about doing it.
She wouldn’t end her affair with him face-to-face. She couldn’t; she simply didn’t possess that kind of strength. She would treat the next few days as if they were perfectly normal. Max would telephone from Washington, telling her how much he was missing her and how he hoped she’d have a good trip. And, though it would near kill her, she would respond in a similar manner, not letting him know by so much as an inflection in her voice the bombshell she was going to drop once she was thousands of miles away in London.
And, once in London, she wouldn’t return to America. Her agency had an office in Knightsbridge. Nearly all her work was in Europe. She had no home of her own in London – even under Zephiniah’s reign she always stayed at Mount Street – but finding a flat in Knightsbridge or Kensington wouldn’t be a problem.
Her problem would be a quite different one. Her problem would be how to live without Max in her life.
The prospect was unimaginable – seemed inconceivable; and as the stars came out and the moon rode high in the sky, she remained sitting on the balcony that she would never sit on again, her heart breaking with the knowledge that her world had altered and would never be the same again.
Chapter Twenty-Six
JULY 1934
‘The situation isn’t good, Congressman Bradley. Not for us, and not for the British.’
That the situation in Germany wasn’t good for America and Britain – and for the French too, come to that – was something Max was well aware of.
Tom Kirby, the man he was seated across a desk from, was a senior officer in the State Department’s European intelligence and research section and their meeting was taking place in a small room in the Office of Public Affairs, not far from the White House.
‘We have good people undercover in Munich and Berlin, of course, but in the situation we are now facing there can never be enough of them.’
Max nodded agreement and waited, curious as to what might be coming next.
‘I understand you have contacts in Berlin?’
Max’s face remained inscrutable, but his brain was racing. What contacts were being spoken of? His contacts with Olivia and, via her, with Dieter? Since Rozalind had so abruptly ended their affair nearly a year ago he’d had no contact at all with either of them.
‘I was once on social terms with Olivia von Starhemberg and, to a much lesser extent, with her husband, Dieter. I’ve had no contact with them now for a long time.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Kirby looked down at a sheet of paper in front of him. ‘The von Starhembergs are admir
ers of Chancellor Hitler, I believe.’
Max nodded, impressed by the scope of his country’s intelligence-gathering, but wary of the direction in which the conversation seemed to be heading.
‘Because of their sympathies, the von Starhembergs are of little interest, Max. However, Olivia von Starhemberg’s younger sister, the movie actress Violet Fenton, is. Are you on social terms with her as well?’
‘Yes. I’ve known the family well ever since serving on the Dawes Committee when their father, Lord Fenton, was my opposite number in London. Look here, Tom, it’s quite obvious you know everything there is to know about my friendship with the Fenton family, so let’s cut to the chase. Just what the heck is this all about?’
‘Violet Fenton is about to leave Hollywood for Berlin, where she’s to make a film at the Babelsberg film studios. She’s a bit of a catch for them. The Reich’s newly appointed Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, a guy named Goebbels, is eager to trumpet Babelsberg as an international film studio, and she is unwittingly helping him do so.’
‘And . . . ?’ Max asked, wondering what on earth was going to come next.
‘And we want to know if her sympathies are the same as her sister’s?’
Max cracked with laughter. ‘God, no! Unlike her sisters – the other sister is a paid-up member of the British Socialist Party and virtually a communist – Violet hasn’t the remotest interest in politics. I can no more imagine her a Nazi sympathizer than I can imagine her a nun.’
‘Then have a word with her, Max. Put her in the picture about the war-mongering side of Hitler and what a European war could mean for us, here in America. Impress on her how important small details of information can be for us – especially if that information is picked up when socializing with men like Goebbels. That she doesn’t come with any political baggage will be an advantage to her. An even bigger advantage is her brother-in-law’s position in Germany’s Foreign Office. With a connection like that, she isn’t going to be regarded with suspicion – especially if she makes the right kind of Hitler-admiring noises.’
A Season of Secrets Page 31
