A Season of Secrets

by Margaret Pemberton

  At last, knowing he should get as much sleep as possible, Gilbert made his way to his cabin, but his dreams were troubled, full of the images of burning towns and rampant swastikas.

  By the time he was on a train, travelling through Belgium into Germany, it was early dawn. He ordered coffee and croissants from the steward and focused his thoughts on Violet. She was living in Dahlem, an affluent residential district in south-west Berlin. The train he was on terminated at Berlin’s central railway station, and from there it was only a short cab ride to Dahlem. Only when Violet had packed her bags, closed her apartment and was with him was Gilbert going to head towards Olivia and Dieter’s home in Bellevuestrasse, near the zoo.

  That he now knew why Violet had for so long cultivated relationships with members of the Nazi hierarchy was a relief so great that in private he had wept. With the relief had come a terror that was overwhelming. Reckless and courageous as she was, that her motives for her friendships had gone for so long undiscovered could only have been down to the most phenomenal luck – and it was luck that could run out at any moment.

  If it did, would it have any repercussions for Olivia and Dieter? At the very least it would raise doubts as to their loyalty – and if once there was a sliver of doubt and attention was focused on Dieter, the result, where he and his fellow plotters were concerned, would be catastrophic.

  Snow was falling as the train approached the German border. Gilbert took his passport out of his breast pocket. Violet was a heroine on a mega-scale, but so too, in her own quiet way, was Olivia. He didn’t, though, want to be the father of heroines – for heroines too often became dead heroines. What he was hoping, on this trip, was that he would be returning to England not only with Violet, but with Olivia as well.

  He didn’t want Olivia trapped in Germany when war was finally declared – and he was as certain as his friends Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden were that the Sudetenland was not going to be the last of Hitler’s territorial demands and that war with Germany was inevitable.

  The train came to a halt. Along with everyone else he disembarked in order to have his passport inspected and stamped, reflecting that if he returned with two out of three of his major anxieties taken care of, he would be profoundly grateful. It would, though, still leave an anxiety that was growing bigger with every passing day – and that anxiety was Judith Zimmermann.

  ‘Danke,’ he said as his passport was stamped and handed back to him.

  It was six months now since his visit to the Home Office. Within twenty-four hours of that visit he had signed legal forms naming him as Judith Zimmermann’s sponsor and guaranteeing that she would be no financial burden on the state. Copies of his guarantee had been sent to the British Embassy in Vienna. Judith had been notified. All the paperwork that could be done had been done. And still Judith was without an exit visa.

  He stepped back into the train, wondering if Dieter would be able to cut through whatever red tape was holding up Judith’s emigration. Even as the thought came to him, he realized how inadvisable it would be for Dieter to be seen to have a Jewess’s welfare at heart. His safety lay in his apparent total loyalty as a Nazi. As a senior Foreign Office official, he even sported a much-coveted gold swastika lapel pin that was given only to the favoured and had Hitler’s initials engraved on the back of it.

  If anyone was going to have to wrestle with German officialdom over why no exit visa had yet been granted, then he, and not Dieter, was going to have to be the one doing the wrestling.

  It would mean his travelling from Berlin to Vienna – and that would mean a delay in getting Violet out of the country. Much as he hated the thought of it, it was something that couldn’t be avoided. He couldn’t be so close to Vienna and not make personal contact with Judith, and with the officials who were stonewalling her visa application.

  As the train eased away from the border halt and steamed into the Third Reich, Gilbert remembered travelling through the same countryside with Olivia, fourteen years earlier. The difference between the Germany of then and the Germany of now was so great – and so monstrous – as to seem almost unbelievable to him. In 1924 it had been a country he’d had great hopes for. Now it was a country that filled him with repugnance and despair.

  At Berlin’s cathedral-like central station a mammoth, impossible-to-ignore poster of Hitler looked down from a wall, eyes glittering and arms folded. Everywhere that could be draped with a flag was draped with one. There were so many swastikas everywhere that his head spun.

  Ignoring Hitler’s piercing gaze, he made straight for the taxi rank. The queue was long and, as he waited, he bitterly regretted not having realized that though it wasn’t snowing in London, it most certainly would be in Berlin. He was wearing an overcoat over a three-piece Harris tweed suit and was warm enough, but his leather-soled shoes weren’t the best kind of footwear for the icy, snow-covered streets.

  Aching for strong coffee, he made his way slowly up the queue. He’d been travelling for fourteen hours and had been awake – apart from the couple of hours’ sleep he’d managed to snatch on the ferry – for twenty-eight hours, and he was tired now, as well as anxious. What if Violet wasn’t at home? What if she was at the studios? If he took a taxi to the film studios, would they let him in? And if they did let him in, would there be anywhere private where they could have the kind of conversation he’d come to Berlin to have with her?

  Finally, with relief, he stepped into a taxi.

  ‘Gartenstrasse dreiundzwanzig, Dahlem, bitte,’ he said to the driver, knowing he wouldn’t be having to ask himself all these questions if he’d telephoned Violet before he’d left Dover, but that to have let her know he was travelling in such haste to see her would have given her too much prior warning of why he was doing so; and that, Violet being Violet, she might no longer even have been in Berlin by the time he’d arrived. It was better this way, but as the taxi headed out of the centre of the city in a south-westerly direction, he was fervently praying he would find her at home.

  The villas in Dahlem bordered on being mansions, and number twenty-three, though with smaller grounds than some of its neighbours, was still a preposterously large house for a single young woman to occupy alone.

  That was, of course, if she was occupying it alone.

  As he paid off the driver and stepped out of the taxi there was a sheen of perspiration on his forehead. Whenever he had visited previously there had never been a trace of any other occupant, but whenever he had visited previously Violet had always had plenty of advance warning.

  With compacted snow scrunching beneath his feet, he walked up the steps to the door and rang the bell.

  A maid, neatly dressed in black and wearing a dainty lace-edged apron, opened the door.

  ‘Guten Tag,’ he said, removing his hat. ‘Informieren Sie bitte Fraülein Fenton dass ihr Vater mit ihr sprechen möchte?’

  The maid, whom he judged to be no more than sixteen or seventeen, bobbed a curtsey and opened the door wide.

  He stepped inside, his relief vast that Violet was obviously at home. As the door closed behind him, he heard Violet call out from a nearby room, ‘Wer ist es, Irmgard?’

  ‘Ihr Vater!’ Irmgard called back.

  From a room on the left-hand side of the large hall came a loud shriek. Gilbert couldn’t tell if it was delighted or horrified.

  In the brief seconds before Violet hurtled out of the drawing room and into his arms, he was filled with horror at the prospect of the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, or the Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, striding out of the drawing room in her wake.

  ‘Papa! How lovely! Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’

  She was wearing grey flannel trousers and a shocking-pink sweater that should have clashed with her torrent of red hair, but didn’t.

  After he had hugged her fiercely, she held onto his arm, propelling him into a drawing room that was blessedly empty.

  ‘Are you in Berlin on government business?’
she asked as he shrugged himself out of his coat, handing it, and his hat, to her maid.

  ‘Goodness, no. I have not the slightest thing to do with foreign affairs. That’s Halifax’s department.’

  Viscount Halifax, a fellow Yorkshireman, had been Foreign Secretary ever since Anthony Eden had resigned in protest over the prime minister’s appeasement policy.

  ‘When did you arrive? Are you staying with Olivia and Dieter?’ As he sat down on a comfortable sofa, Violet slipped her feet out of her shoes and curled up beside him, her arm still hugging his.

  ‘I travelled on yesterday’s late-night ferry to Ostend and I’ve come straight here.’

  ‘But why on earth . . . ?’ The delight in her eyes vanished, to be replaced by alarm. ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there, Papa? It isn’t Thea, is it? Or Roz, or Carrie?’

  ‘No, sweetheart. Everyone is fine. I’m not bringing bad news from home.’

  She stared at him in bewilderment. ‘Then I don’t understand, Papa.’

  His eyes held hers, so much love in his heart that it hurt. ‘There’s a lot I want to say to you, Violet, but before I do I’d like some coffee – black with no sugar.’

  ‘But with a slug of cognac?’ she asked, realizing for the first time just how tired and drawn he looked.

  Cognac in midday coffee wasn’t a habit with him, but he nodded, grateful for the suggestion.

  Violet jumped to her feet and pressed a wall bell for Irmgard.

  When the maid entered, Violet said in German, ‘A huge pot of coffee, please, Irmgard. And the Rémy Martin.’

  When he judged Irmgard to be well on her way to the kitchen, he said, ‘Is your telephone safe, Violet?’

  ‘No, in Berlin no one’s telephone is safe. Consequently my telephone lives in a small cubicle to the left of the hall.’

  He took her hands in his, saying emotionally, ‘I spoke with Max yesterday. He told me the reason for your being in Berlin. The reason for your friendships . . .’

  He choked up, unable to continue.

  She squeezed his hands tightly, her eyes as suspiciously bright as his. ‘Please don’t be upset, Papa. I can’t bear to see you upset.’

  ‘You’ve been very courageous, Violet. I’m very, very proud of you. But you have been here – doing what you’ve been doing – for too long. Max urgently wants you to leave.’

  ‘His superiors in Washington don’t want me to leave.’

  ‘To his superiors in Washington you are expendable.’

  To put such an unpalatable truth into words cost him a lot.

  Violet flashed him a sudden wide smile. ‘Well, now I know why you’re here, let me make you some breakfast, before we make necessary arrangements. What would you like, Papa? Bacon and eggs or an omelette?’

  ‘An omelette,’ he said, sagging with relief that his mission had been so easily accomplished.

  She rose to her feet and he said, startled, ‘You’re not really going to make my breakfast yourself, are you? Surely in a house this size you have kitchen staff?’

  Violet giggled. ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But I don’t. I only have Irmgard.’

  ‘But why?’

  He was looking so perplexed that she felt a surge of protectiveness towards him.

  ‘Dear Papa, in Berlin everyone is an informer. To pass on tittle-tattle about neighbours or employers has become the accepted way of showing loyalty to the party. I don’t want someone under my roof who is polite to my face and behind my back is watching and reporting on what music I play, what books I read. I know without a shadow of doubt that Irmgard doesn’t do so. I have a cleaning lady come in twice a week for a couple of hours, and I can just about suffer that. Would you like some cheese in your omelette? I have some nice Emmentaler cheese, very mild and nutty.’

  She left the room as Irmgard, carrying a tea-tray with coffee cups, percolator and a bottle of Rémy Martin, entered. With a shy smile she put the tray down on a low table and poured his coffee.

  When he had the room to himself once again he poured a generous amount of cognac into the coffee and felt relaxation seeping through his bones. If the task he had set himself in Vienna went as smoothly as the one he had set himself in Berlin, he would be able to begin sleeping easily again.

  He looked around the room. The furnishings were very modern; very Violet. The carpet was white with black zebralike markings running through it. The long low table that the tea-tray was resting on had chromium legs and a glass top. The sofa he was sitting on was covered in white leather, as were the chairs in the room. Over a pale marble fireplace was a large abstract painting, and in a corner was a Christmas tree, looking unlike any Christmas tree he had ever seen before. Though the tree was unmistakably real, it had been sprayed silver and all the baubles on it were silver.

  With a catch in his throat he saw that the angel on the top of the tree was as near a replica as Violet had been able to get of the angel that decorated the top of the tree at Gorton every year.

  Violet popped her head round the corner of the door. ‘Your omelette is ready, Papa. It’s going to be on the dining table the minute you sit down.’

  He drank the last of his cognac-laden coffee and rose to his feet. In contrast to the way he had felt when he arrived at the house, as he walked out of the drawing room and into the dining room he did so a very happy man.

  There was a fresh percolator of coffee on the table and Violet sat opposite him, every now and then passing him a fresh roll, or the butter dish.

  ‘The painting in the drawing room,’ he said. ‘It’s Nazi doctrine that abstract art is degenerate and not to be tolerated, so how do you get away with having a Kandinsky-type painting so prominently displayed?’

  Violet clasped her hands in front of her on the table. ‘First of all, Papa, the painting isn’t a Kandinsky-type painting. It is a Kandinsky. And second, I get away with it because no one – apart from my cleaning lady and Irmgard – ever steps across the threshold.’

  He laid down his knife and fork.

  ‘But surely – the people you see . . . Goebbels and Göring . . .’

  ‘They don’t come here, Papa. This house is my sanctuary. It is what keeps me sane, and is why I have been able to do what I have been doing for so long.’

  ‘Then is what the foreign press has led us to believe . . . The photographs of you accompanying . . .’ His voice tailed off. It was beyond him to utter the names again.

  Seeing his distress, she said gently, ‘I think it’s about time I told you about the relationships that trouble you so much. First of all, Paul Goebbels.’

  ‘Paul? But I thought his Christian name was Joseph?’

  ‘His full Christian name is Paul Joseph. He likes me to call him Paul. I don’t sleep with him, Papa. He doesn’t want me to sleep with him. I’m just window-dressing.’

  Gilbert stared at her. ‘You mean Goebbels is homosexual?’

  Violet giggled. ‘Heavens, no. He’s notorious for his extramarital affairs, but our relationship is a little different.’

  She unclasped her hands and poured herself another cup of coffee. ‘One of the first people I became friendly with when I arrived at Babelsberg was another actress, Lída Baarová. Goebbels was crazy about her, but she’s a Czech, and as Czechs are Slavs – and therefore members of an inferior race, in Nazi eyes – Goebbels tried to keep the affair from Hitler for as long as he could. His being seen out and about with me was a smokescreen, nothing more.’

  She took a drink of her coffee and then said, ‘It worked quite well for a year or two, but when Goebbels asked his wife for a divorce, his wife went straight to Hitler, and Hitler’s reaction was instant. Divorce was verboten, and so was a Slav mistress. Lída fled to Prague, and Goebbels maintained his dignity by continuing to be seen out and about with me, which means that I still circulate in the very highest of Nazi circles.’

  ‘And Field Marshal Göring?’

  ‘Ah, well. Hermann Göring is a slightly different matter.’

 
Violet took a deep drink of her coffee.

  Gilbert waited.

  When she put her cup down she said, ‘What you have to understand, Papa, is that there is great rivalry between Goebbels and Göring. Göring believes I am Goebbels’s mistress and that, by his being seen in public with me, he is plunging the man he loathes into frenzies of jealousy. In actual fact Göring is devoted to his wife, who understands the game being played.’

  She paused, a shiver running down her back. Other men in the Nazi hierarchy, men like Luther Schultz, second-in-command at Kripo, the criminal investigative branch of the country’s police force, most certainly did not understand the game being played, and his not doing so resulted in the kind of unpleasant situations she had no intention of telling her father about. Her refusal to become his mistress had made Schultz into an enemy – the kind of enemy no sane woman wanted.

  With great effort she pushed the thought of Luther Schultz to the back of her mind. What she was trying to do at the moment was reassure her father, not give him even more cause for concern.

  ‘So you see, Papa,’ she continued, ‘where Paul Goebbels and Hermann Göring are concerned, nothing is as it seems.’

  ‘Except that every time you passed on information to the Americans you risked your life.’

  She pushed her chair away from the table and walked across to one of the room’s long windows. Looking out of it, and with her arms folded tightly across her chest, she said, ‘I know you, and the rest of the world, are aware of what happened in Germany a month ago, Papa, but cold facts will not give you any idea of the horror of it – and, for the Jews, the terror.’

  ‘Kristallnacht,’ he said, knowing only too well to what she was referring. ‘Crystal night. The Night of the Broken Glass.’

  It had been the night when, thanks to the instant reporting of it by foreign journalists, any lingering trust he might have had in the policy of appeasement had been snuffed out like a candle-flame.

  In retaliation for the shooting of a German Embassy official by a Polish Jew, Hitler had ordered full-scale coordinated attacks on Jews throughout Germany. Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were ransacked and looted by both paramilitary forces and non-Jewish citizens. Nationwide, in an orgy of hate and destruction, the windows of Jewish shops were smashed with axes and sledgehammers, the shards of broken glass in the streets giving birth to the name Kristallnacht. In towns the length and breadth of the country synagogues burned; businesses were looted; Jews were beaten on the streets, and thousands were arrested and taken to concentration camps.