A Season of Secrets

by Margaret Pemberton

  Gilbert tried to speak and, seeing that it was beyond him, Max said quietly, ‘Under the circumstances, Thea, no alternative seems possible.’

  Thea gave a cry of anguish, and Judith, tears streaming down her face, put an arm around her shoulders.

  Barely able to comprehend the hideous enormity of what Gilbert had just told them, Carrie’s immediate instinct was not to give vent to her own shock and grief, but to give Gilbert what comfort she could.

  Crossing swiftly to his side, she slid her hand through his arm and hugged it tight. ‘Maybe it isn’t true,’ she said fiercely. ‘Until we know for definite, or until more time has passed, surely there’s still hope?’

  She’d known, as his hand had lovingly covered hers, that grateful as he was for the comfort she was trying to give, he didn’t believe there was any hope – and she sensed that no one else in the room did, either.

  There came the sound of a car coming down the quarter-mile-long drive. Sending gravel flying, it swerved to a halt in front of the house.

  Roz crossed to one of the room’s long windows. ‘It’s Kyle,’ she said. ‘He must have only been twenty miles or so behind us all the way from London.’

  ‘Kyle? Oh, thank God!’ The gratitude in Thea’s voice was naked.

  Breaking away from Judith, she rushed from the room, and moments later all that could be heard from the circular hall were her choked sobs and Kyle’s voice, low and tender as he tried to soothe her.

  When she re-entered the room his arm was around her waist and her head was on his shoulder, her face ravaged, but her sobs under control.

  Still with his arm around her as if he was never, ever again going to let her go, Kyle said to Gilbert. ‘What’s the latest news? Roz told me the arrest was six weeks ago, but not the circumstances surrounding it.’

  ‘The whole thing is a long story.’ Gilbert looked towards Max. ‘Would you fix brandies for everyone, Max? I’ve never in my life been more in need of one.’

  Carrie had no need for brandy. What she needed was fresh air. ‘I’m going outside, Gilbert,’ she said. ‘I’d like to be on my own for a little while.’

  He patted her hand to show he understood, his throat so tight with grief that he didn’t trust himself to speak.

  More than anything in the world he wanted to leave the room with her. He didn’t want to have to say again the words Tom Kirby had used to Max. Where Kyle was concerned, though, he had no choice. And Kyle was a diplomat. He knew as much as – if not more about Nazi Germany than – Max or Gilbert did. He would know that Violet would have either died under torture or on a scaffold, her head severed from her neck by a headsman wearing impeccable evening dress. The knowledge would be there in Kyle’s eyes – and Gilbert didn’t know how he was going to survive seeing it there.

  Carrie went to the cloakroom for her jacket and then walked out of the house. For a long moment she stood beneath the pillared portico and then, slowly, she walked down the wide flight of steps. As she did so, the day in 1917 when Violet had been seven and she had been ten, and she’d walked down the steps on the way to post the officers’ mail and had found Violet seated glumly on them, was as vivid in her memory as if it had happened yesterday.

  She remembered the way they had bicycled into Outhwaite and how Violet had sung ‘Tipperary’ at the top of her lungs, and the way her torrent of fiery hair and the patriotic ribbons tied to her handlebars had streamed in the wind.

  That she would never see her again was a monstrosity beyond all imagining – and so she refused to imagine it. Sinking down onto an ice-cold step, she clasped her hands tightly in her lap, knowing that she was the only person who still had hope – and, with typical Yorkshire stubbornness, refusing to relinquish it.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  In Sachsenhausen concentration camp August Groebler prepared for his day’s work. He took pride in being an executioner and dressed carefully. A stiff-fronted white shirt. Black trousers with a broad stripe of braid down the side, the trousers shiny from daily usage. Black socks – wool because the temperature in the vast room where executions took place was frequently freezing cold.

  He hooked a pair of braces over his shoulders, wondering how long a day lay ahead of him. Sometimes he had only three or four decapitations to carry out. Other days he worked until even his strong-muscled arms ached.

  He fastened a celluloid wing-collar to his shirt. A short working day meant he would be able to meet his grandchildren from school, a task that his daughter appreciated.

  With great care and peering close to the mirror, he fastened his white bow-tie, wondering about the age and sex of those he was about to behead. Strangely the young, who had so much more to lose, often behaved with more dignity than the old. Even more strangely, it was usually the women who showed the most courage.

  He slid his arms into his low-cut white piqué waistcoat, fastening mother-of-pearl buttons over his gigantic girth.

  There had been a time when executing a woman had been something of a rarity for him. Now it had become commonplace.

  He put on his shoes, tying the laces in a double bow. A man’s feet had to be firmly planted when wielding an axe, and the last thing he could risk was a shoelace coming undone. To trip over when bringing the axe down on someone’s neck would be a very messy business.

  As he shrugged himself into his tailcoat he had a strong feeling that his first beheading of the day was going to be a woman. Hopefully she wouldn’t be too much trouble. Whatever the day ahead held, at the end of it he would be eighty marks and an extra ration of cigarettes better off.

  He put his top hat on his head and picked up his regulation white gloves.

  His axe, which he’d personalized by having a white lily engraved on it, was waiting for him.

  And so was his first victim.

  Violet lifted her head high as she started on the walk she had always known she would one day take. Nothing mattered any more but the scene around her. The lane leading down from Outhwaite was edged with flowering blackthorn and the meadows leading down to the river were starred with celandines. Soon she would come to the curve in the lane that led to the bridge and then, beyond the bridge, would be Gorton Hall.

  It was a mild day for March – she had decided a long time ago that it would be a mild, gentle day when she made this walk. The breeze was soft against her face and in the branches of an alder a blackbird was singing.

  In her mind’s eye she peopled Gorton with the people she wanted to find there when she arrived. Her father, of course, and Carrie. Thea, Olivia, Roz and Judith. If Olivia and Roz were there, then Max and Dieter would be there too, and if it was to be a complete family gathering, then Kyle would be there as well.

  It would be quite a crowd, and in the evening the crowd would be even bigger, for there would be a party – she was determined there would be a party – and at a party would be Jim and his wife, and Charlie and Hermione, Charlie junior and Miss Calvert.

  When she reached the bridge she came to a halt, knowing that her journey was almost at an end and wanting it to last just a little bit longer.

  Resting her arms on the stone parapet, she gazed down into the limpid depths of the slow-moving river, remembering all the other times she had stood in exactly the same place, doing exactly the same thing. Sometimes she had been alone, as she was today. Sometimes Carrie had been with her. Often it had been her father who had been with her and, when she had been a little girl, her mother. She could remember the feel of her mother’s hand holding hers: the sense of safety it had given her.

  With all the force of her vivid imagination she imagined she was holding her mother’s hand now as, turning away from the parapet, she continued the walk towards the people she loved.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Carrie had no idea how long she had been sitting on the steps, but what she did know was that, if she stayed where she was much longer, someone would come and try to persuade her to return indoors.

  And she didn’t want to do so
. Not yet.

  Plunging her hands deep in the pockets of her jacket, she walked down the remaining steps and then across the gravel to the drive. At the end of the drive, where it ran into the lane and the bridge came into view, she came to a halt.

  A woman was walking from the bridge in the direction of the house. She was too far away for Carrie to see her clearly, but she could see that although the woman’s hair was dark, not fiery, there was something familiar about her; so familiar that the breath stopped short in her chest.

  Then she sucked air back into her lungs and began to run.

  She ran as she had never run before. She ran with a prayer on her lips and hope blazing in her heart.

  Violet began running too.

  As, with wings on their heels, they sprinted towards each other and all Carrie’s hopes were confirmed, tears of joy streamed down her face.

  ‘Oh, Violet!’ she gasped as they hurtled into each other’s arms. ‘You’re alive! I knew you were alive!’

  They rocked together, hugging each other tight, and then Carrie pulled away from her a little, to look into Violet’s face. ‘Everyone else thinks you’ve been executed. Papa. Max. Thea. Everyone!’

  Violet laughed, delighted at the sensation she’d caused. ‘I would have been, if I’d been arrested for what I thought I was being arrested for, but I wasn’t. I was arrested for being a prostitute.’

  Carrie gaped at her.

  ‘Don’t look so horrified, Carrie darling. I wasn’t one. I simply rejected a man who objected to being rejected, and he decided to revenge himself on me by having me arrested.’

  She tucked her arm into Carrie’s as they began walking towards the entrance of Gorton’s long tree-lined drive.

  ‘The bastard in question, Luther Schultz – more commonly known as Schweinehund Schultz – is Kripo’s second-in-command. Kripo,’ she said as she saw Carrie’s bewilderment deepening by the second, ‘is Nazi Germany’s criminal police. In other words, Schweinehund Schultz can arrest anyone he wants, on any charge he wants. He was risking it a bit by arresting me, because I have friends in much higher positions than the one he holds, but I wasn’t arrested under my name, only as a number.’

  ‘Which meant that when you were finally released, your imprisonment could be put down to an error that he would appear to have no connection with?’

  ‘Very sharp of you, Carrie love. What he didn’t know was that he was doing me the most gigantic favour, because if he hadn’t had me arrested, I would most certainly have been arrested on a charge of treason. As it was, being only a number in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, no matter how hard the Gestapo may have been looking for me, they couldn’t have found me.’

  ‘But what about when you were released? What then?’

  ‘Oh, then I had a problem. I had to get out of Berlin fast, and I had no passport. That had been taken when I was arrested.’

  They were in the drive now, walking between the avenue of beeches.

  ‘Then how?’

  ‘There was another passport. A passport at Berlin’s Central Office for Jewish Emigration in the name of Judith Zimmerman.’

  ‘So that’s why you dyed your hair black!’

  ‘And it’s probably going to take weeks of washing to get back to its natural colour. Who will be there when we walk into Gorton, Carrie? Is everyone there? Is Roz there? Are Olivia and Dieter there?’

  ‘Thea and Roz are there. Max is there, and so is Kyle. Olivia and Dieter are on their way from Ireland. They live there now, and Olivia is having a baby.’

  ‘A baby?’ Violet’s eyes shone with delight. ‘How wonderful! Do you think if it’s a girl they’ll name her after me?’

  ‘I think if it’s a girl they’ll name her after your mother – but Olivia is going to be so over the moon at knowing you’re still alive that she’ll probably do anything you ask of her.’

  ‘When is the baby due? I’ll have to arrange to be home from America when it is.’

  ‘America?’ Carrie came to a shocked halt. ‘But you’ve only just arrived home! How soon are you going to be leaving for America?’

  ‘Quite soon, but not until after there’s been the most glorious welcome-home party for me – and I wouldn’t be leaving even then, if it wasn’t for the screen test.’

  ‘Screen test?’ Carrie was beginning to wonder if she was dreaming the entire bizarre conversation.

  ‘For Gone with the Wind. While I was on the train I read in a newspaper that although Vivien Leigh has been signed up for the part of Scarlett O’Hara, she hasn’t started filming yet. And she’s dark-haired and, as Scarlett O’Hara is Irish, she must have had red hair, mustn’t she? I’m going to get Zsigmund to get me an introduction to David Selznick, who’s producing. Once he sees me, I’m quite sure I’ll replace Vivien as Scarlett. It’s a part I was born to play.’

  ‘You’re going to have to do a lot of hair-washing first. And who is Zsigmund?’

  ‘Zsigmund is Zsigmund Sárközy, a director who was once in love with me – as I now realize I was with him.’

  Violet came to a halt. The house was now only a hundred yards away and she was savouring the moment.

  With a deep, ecstatic sigh, she said, ‘Let’s hold hands, Carrie, and run all the way to the house.’

  Carrie’s smile was luminous as she thought of the expression she would see on Gilbert’s dearly loved face when they walked into the drawing room together. ‘Yes, let’s,’ she said, taking hold of Violet’s hand and knowing they were about to run faster than they’d ever run in their lives before.

  Epilogue

  JUNE 1939

  Luther Schultz was seated behind his desk in Police Headquarters in Alexanderplatz, his fists clenched, a newspaper laid out before him. The newspaper was the International Herald Tribune. On its front page was the headline ‘Italy and Germany sign Pact of Steel’, but it wasn’t the front page he was looking at. It was one of the inner pages, and the photograph that was enraging him was a wedding photograph.

  The photograph was credited to Rozalind Bradley and the caption read, ‘Movie star Violet Fenton is bridesmaid at Father’s wedding, with Britain’s King and Queen in attendance’.

  The photograph was a group shot, with King George standing on one side of the happy couple and Queen Elizabeth on the other side of them. All of the family, apart from the traitor von Starhemberg, Starhemberg’s wife and Violet, were unknown to him. Two spaniels sat immediately in front of the bride and bridegroom as if they, too, were guests.

  Beneath the photograph was a short write-up of the wedding and where it had taken place, none of which held any interest for him. It was the concluding couple of sentences that had sent the blood roaring along his veins in a tide of white-hot frustrated fury:

  Miss Fenton has recently returned from Berlin, where she has made many movies at the Babelsberg studios. Now recently married to movie director Zsigmund Sárközy, she is no longer disappointed at not replacing Vivien Leigh in the movie Gone with the Wind. Instead she is to be Cathy to Hollywood heart-throb Tyrone Power’s Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, a movie being directed by her husband.

  The consensus in Hollywood is that the new Mrs Sárközy is about to take the world by storm.

  Savagely, Schultz tore out the page and screwed it into a ball.

  An American movie would never get past Goebbels’s Film Review Office – especially as it was rumoured that Goebbels would no longer even allow Violet’s name to be spoken in his presence.

  Not only was Schultz no longer able to stalk her; he wouldn’t even be able to see her on-screen. He sucked in his breath, his lips flattening against his teeth. How had she done it? How had she disappeared from Berlin within hours of being released from Sachsenhausen? Even more bewilderingly, how had she managed to leave the country when he held her passport? And why was her passport an American one and not a British one? He didn’t understand it any more than he understood how people could look as happy as the people in the photograph looked.
/>   Everyone, including Britain’s king and queen, had radiant smiles on their faces.

  A bizarre thought struck him. He seized hold of the sheet of balled-up paper and feverishly smoothed it flat to see if he was right, or not.

  He was.

  Even the spaniels looked to be smiling.

  Also by Margaret Pemberton

  The Londoners

  Kate Voigt and her father Carl have always been at the heart of Magnolia Square. Then war breaks out, and suddenly it feels as though the Voigts – with their German blood – are outcasts in their own community. When Carl is interned, Kate’s only support comes from her best friend Carrie and her beloved sweetheart Toby, who is working as a pilot in the RAF. But when Toby is killed, and Carrie suddenly turns against her, Kate finds herself pregnant and very much alone.

  Late one Christmas Eve she is approached by a wounded sailor looking for lodgings. Like Kate, Leon Emmerson is also a lonely misfit and they soon strike up a rapport. But as their friendship and the war develops, and Kate experiences one traumatic event after another, she wonders if she will ever be a part of Magnolia Square again.

  Also by Margaret Pemberton

  Magnolia Square

  1945. The war is over, and the inhabitants of Magnolia Square are looking forward to their men coming home and their lives returning to normal. But for some, the end of the war has brought serious problems . . .

  Kate Voigt is finally able to marry Leon Emmerson, a Londoner like herself, but of mixed race. When old man Harvey, a powerful and wealthy figure in south London and greatgrandfather to Kate’s son Matthew, hears of the match, he is determined that young Matthew should not be raised by Leon. Slowly, insidiously, he begins a plight to wrest Kate’s son away from her.