A War of Flowers (2014)

by Thynne, Jane

  Clara looked across the rooftops and a wave of vertigo hit her in a panicky rush, making her stomach heave and her head swirl. Guy Hamilton’s proposition seemed an equally dizzying prospect.

  ‘Why would you expect this of me? I mean . . . to go to another city and attempt something that is almost certainly going to be entirely unfeasible. It’s an impossible task.’

  He looked at her, puzzled. ‘It’s what you do, isn’t it?’

  Clara had a sudden vision of a great web of people, strung out across Europe, all assembled by this man Colonel Dansey and responding to his requests. All like her, carrying on with their ordinary lives, and living an entirely different life in the shadows. Holding their secrets and their loyalties close. Waking each day not knowing what it might bring. Despite herself she was already knitting her fingers, already calculating the task in hand.

  ‘If I do . . . manage to meet her . . . what would you want to know?’

  ‘Any little details you think might be relevant. Pillow talk, I think they call it. We believe Miss Braun could be the chink in Hitler’s armour. We’re hoping she will provide that crucial “back door” into the Führer’s thinking.’

  ‘I can’t imagine he would confide military detail in her.’

  ‘Who knows what he would confide? The man’s an enigma. He’s very careful with his top people. Plays them off against each other. Miss Braun may be the only person he’s completely straight with.’

  ‘If I find anything, what then? How do I let you know?’

  ‘Put a classified advertisement in the Situations Wanted column of one of the British newspapers.’ He reflected a moment. ‘Include the word “Latin”. That should stand out. We’ll set up a meeting at the Siegessäule in the Tiergarten, the Thursday after the message appears. Let us know the time and so on. We’ll keep a look-out.’

  ‘What if it’s urgent?’

  ‘There’s always a DLB we have in Berlin. It’s checked regularly.’

  ‘A DLB?’

  ‘A dead letter box.’

  ‘Oh, of course.’

  That was one of the things that Leo Quinn had tried to teach her, along with other espionage terms. It belonged to the world of ‘brush contacts’ and ‘switches’ and ‘box surveillance’. A world where people passed messages rolled up inside cigarettes or secreted inside tubes of toothpaste. A world with which Clara still felt somewhat unfamiliar.

  ‘You’d have to go back to Berlin. Do you know the Volkspark in Friedrichshain?’ continued Hamilton. ‘There’s a fountain there. The fairy-tale fountain, I think it’s called.’

  ‘The Märchenbrunnen.’

  It was an elaborate fountain surrounded by sculptures of fairy-tale characters which had been created for the children of Berlin in the nineteenth century. Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel and the Frog Prince were all there; but despite the theme, the serried ranks of stone figures with their frozen limbs and vacant eyes had very little magic about them.

  ‘I know it well.’

  ‘Excellent. Look for the stone bench on the left-hand side closest to the pillar. There’s a cavity on the underside.’

  ‘That’s a little public, isn’t it?’

  ‘It needs to be somewhere people congregate so one doesn’t arouse suspicion. But time, as I said, is of the essence.’

  A rabble of voices rose from the entrance to the stairwell behind her and Hamilton looked over her shoulder. A party of schoolboys had emerged and were making their way along the walkway, giggling and play-fighting, pretending to throw each other off the side.

  ‘It’s getting a little crowded up here. Shall we go down?’

  They descended the stairway into the chilly, flickering gloom of the Cathedral itself and Clara pulled on her jacket. The place felt like the sanctuary it once was, resounding with hushed murmuring, heavy with the odour of incense, its glimmering shadows pierced by great shafts of light. Hamilton went over to light a candle at one of the side chapels, dropped to his knees and gazed fixedly at the countenance of the Madonna in an attitude of pious contemplation. Clara knelt beside him. Now that her vertigo had disappeared, the sense of panic had ebbed too, allowing her to fix her mind on the task in hand.

  ‘About those men this morning,’ she murmured. ‘They were Germans, weren’t they? I thought at first they were following me.’

  ‘Has that happened recently?’

  ‘Not here, as far as I know.’

  ‘Yes. I apologise. I changed hotels and I thought I’d thrown them off. I was warned about it last night by a chap we have working for us here, a fellow called Steinbrecher. Steinbrecher says the Gestapo’s pretty well entrenched in Paris now. Heydrich has an extensive network of informers in place and Steinbrecher thinks they’ve been watching me for a couple of days. I’m glad you’ve been free of them, but if I were you, Miss Vine, I’d be very careful all the same. Check your hotel room for bugs. All the usual things. Watch out for any gifts. I’m sure there’s nothing I need tell you.’

  He rose, brushed the knees of his trousers and gave a warm smile.

  ‘Have a pleasant journey. And very good luck. Forgive me if I don’t shake hands.’

  He strode off into the dim interior, transforming instantly into the amateur enthusiast, guidebook in pocket, contemplating the splintered ruby and violet majesty of the famous south rose window.

  Clara walked slowly back through the winding, cobbled streets of the Ile de la Cité, onto the Ile St Louis. She watched the fishermen down at the water’s edge throwing out their lines, fracturing the Seine into a thousand choppy diamonds. The meeting with Hamilton had unsettled her profoundly. Partly because his mild, unassuming Englishness had provoked a sharp nostalgia for her homeland, yet also because his request was daunting. The mention of the mysterious Dansey reminded her that there was an entire realm of people in England whom she had never met, yet who knew of her existence. Uniformed men in Whitehall, perhaps even well-known politicians like Winston Churchill and Sir Robert Vansittart, and others sitting behind desks in shabby, anonymous London offices, posing as civil servants or accountants or film producers, while they ran shadowy intelligence networks. People who were aware of her activities, and whose confidence in her was seemingly far greater than her own.

  She thought of the task they were asking of her now. Getting close to Eva Braun, and in the space of a month? How was she possibly going to manage that? She didn’t even know what Eva Braun looked like. Emmy Goering had once said she looked like the film star Lilian Harvey only stupider, but that wasn’t much to go on. And even if Clara was to meet the girl and manage to talk to her, what were the chances that she would be willing to confide private details about Hitler’s state of mind? Clara would need to employ all her persuasive skills. She had become well versed in asking ingenuous questions under the guise of female curiosity – the paranoid, isolated existences of most Nazi wives meant they tended to open up gratefully to an apparently sympathetic listener – so all she could hope was that Hitler’s girlfriend felt the same. Yet even if she did manage to talk to Eva Braun, and to extract information, what good would that do? Could it really be the case that the fate of nations rested on the whim of one man, or that a Munich shop girl could do anything to affect it?

  The thought of Leo Quinn rose once again to her mind. The man who had met her and trained her in this new and dangerous life, and then proposed to take her away from it. The more she thought, the more she realized that Guy Hamilton’s mention of Ovid had been exactly what it appeared – a coincidence – simply proof that Leo was never far from her mind. After all, she reasoned, Leo had never wanted her to put herself at risk. He’d made it a condition of his marriage proposal that she abandon her secret work and return to England out of harm’s way, so he was hardly likely to encourage her to undertake an even more risky enterprise now. When she had refused to give up her work, Leo had abruptly left Berlin himself, taking her quite by surprise. She had never really believed that he was serious in his ultimatum. Maybe she though
t she could persuade him otherwise, but before she knew it, it was too late.

  Still, there was no point dwelling on the past. It was the present that required all her attention now. Before she returned to Berlin she had another intriguing errand to run. On her last evening in Paris she was to visit the salon of Coco Chanel. French cosmetics were hard to come by in Germany now, even for VIPs, and Clara’s mission was to collect some perfume for the Propaganda Chief’s wife, Magda Goebbels herself.

  Chapter Four

  The Place Vendôme had, in mediaeval times, been a cloister for Capuchin nuns, but now the exclusive octagonal arena at the heart of the Right Bank was the shrine to another form of female devotions. The spectacular adornments of Van Cleef & Arpels, Chaumet and Cartier were showcased in opulent shop fronts clustered around the chief attraction of the Place, the Ritz Hotel. And the star occupant of the Ritz was Coco Chanel, who had been given the use of an entire third-floor suite and decided to make it her home. The couturier had redesigned every aspect of the suite to reflect her personal style and now the room seemed to float with colour and light, a mirrored cocoon of cream, black and gold. Around the lavish sitting room with its white satin armchairs, lacquered, Ming dynasty Coromandel screens were grouped, whose silver cranes and dragons glinted beneath crystal chandeliers. Banks of sofas were piled with velvet cushions and heavy gold drapes framed the long windows. Long, smoky Venetian mirrors turned the guests into Mondrians and oriental tables were clustered with silver vermeil boxes, bronze animals and a gold-plated frog. The guests at Chanel’s salons – international socialites, playwrights, poets, politicians and artists, members of the haut monde – were just as gilded. Jean Cocteau was a regular. Salvador Dali came frequently. Winston Churchill was known to call in.

  Clara caught sight of her elongated image and thought how easy it was to change a perspective. Being here, in this looking-glass world, had a transformative effect on the guests. Just like certain actresses who, on the street, seemed as unremarkable as any waitress or shop assistant, yet were transformed into astonishing beauties once they stepped in front of the camera, so these elegant people might have existed in a different universe from the anxious crowd outside. They even smelt different. Most of the people you passed on the street, or pressed up close against on the Métro, smelt of old clothes, sweat-stained at worst, mothballed at best, but patched and mended and made good. Here there was a mingled aroma of fur, cigars, champagne and perfume, a haze of opulence dominated by the complex undertow of Chanel’s own No.5, which the hostess liked to spritz on the coals in the fireplace.

  ‘Good manners and a fine disposition are the best beauty treatments.’ It might have seemed that way to Ovid, but that view wouldn’t pass muster here. The women, long and lean in sumptuous confections of lace and tulle, with hair as sleek and polished as the pelts of the animals they wore, were made up to the nines. They held flutes of sparkling champagne and their antique Russian necklaces, star medallions and enamel cuffs were studded with glass stones according to Chanel’s own fashion for costume jewellery, which mixed real gems with glass and paste, so that one didn’t know what was real and what was fake. As far as the guests’ clothes went however they were all genuine. Every dress was by Chanel; no one would have dared to wear a Schiaparelli suit or a dress by Patou, Lanvin or Mainbocher. The only fake in the room was Clara herself, who had always admired the sleek dresses and narrow jersey tailored suits that made Chanel’s name, but would never be able to afford her prices. That evening she was wearing a green silk dress with a matching short jacket with pearl buttons made by her friend Steffi Schaeffer, a Berlin dressmaker who tailored costumes for the Ufa studios and ran up clothes for Clara at bargain rates. Her hair was fastened at the back and fell to her shoulders in loose curls.

  Sipping her champagne, she wondered if there was any way Chanel would be able to detect that Clara’s lipstick was by her arch rival Elizabeth Arden. The manager of the Elizabeth Arden salon on the Kurfürstendamm, Sabine Friedmann, was another friend and often gave Clara samples of lipstick, mascara and the fabulous Eight Hour Cream. Indeed Sabine had sent a couple of messages recently asking her to call in. She hoped it was for something nice.

  Across the room the mellifluous flow of French conversation was intercut with the jagged, polysyllabic growl of German. There was no need for Nazi uniforms here; the men in their impeccable Hugo Boss suits and mandatory swastika pins were identifiably Nazi government officials, but in Chanel’s salon they were spared the looks of hostility or trepidation they met elsewhere in Paris. That must account for their boisterous good humour. The leader of the group was a handsome man with sandy hair swept off a high brow whom Clara recognized as Chanel’s lover, Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage, better known as Spatz.

  Though Chanel was famous for loving black and white, her love life was a distinctly grey area. Most of her relationships were with married men, including a long running affair with the Duke of Westminster, but the scandal which had recently leaked into the Paris newspapers concerned her liaison with Spatz, the special attaché at the German Embassy in Paris. Sections of the French press had waged war on Spatz, accusing him of building up a spy network throughout Paris reporting directly to the Gestapo, monitoring German exiles in Paris and passing on their addresses to Reinhard Heydrich. Watching Spatz now, possessed of the loud, confident demeanour of a German abroad, Clara could understand, just, what Chanel must see in him. She was known for liking winners, and Spatz, with his suave, playboy’s manners, blond hair and distinguished looks, fitted precisely that template, not to mention the fact that he was more than a decade younger than her.

  The man Spatz was talking to was his equal in good looks, with a broad, intelligent forehead and neatly parted tawny hair above eyes set widely apart. In his well-cut grey flannel suit he looked vaguely familiar and Clara racked her brains to place him. Was he a studio executive? A politician perhaps? She hoped very much that she would not be obliged to talk to him.

  A waiter approached with a bottle of champagne and, unthinkingly, Clara held out her glass. The conversation that afternoon, and Guy Hamilton’s request, had set her nerves on edge. It was not only the thought of what she was being asked to do, but the timescale involved – just weeks perhaps – that alarmed her. She took a sip of crisp bubbles and tuned into the conversation of the women beside her, who were arguing about the secret of Chanel’s success.

  ‘It’s all down to tailoring,’ said an exquisite blonde, wearing the gold lamé evening dress and short jacket that Chanel had showed for that year’s collections. ‘Chanel can make a woman look like a princess just through tailoring.’

  ‘Except when she’s a real princess,’ said another.

  There was general laughter. Everyone knew this was a reference to Elizabeth, the frumpy new queen of England, elevated as a result of Edward VIII’s liaison with Wallis Simpson.

  ‘In London Wallis and Elizabeth both used the Elizabeth Arden salon in Bond Street,’ murmured another woman. ‘The staff had a terrific job trying to keep them apart. Sometimes they had to pretend they were closed for redecoration when there was a clash. Anything rather than have that pair end up side by side.’

  ‘Wallis can be most awfully amusing,’ said a petite figure with a bob as sleek and black as a bird’s wing sweeping across her cheekbones. ‘When she was asked what Queen Elizabeth could do to boost British fashion, she said, “She could stay at home!”’

  ‘The Duchess of Windsor is a loyal customer,’ came an imperious voice. ‘I won’t tolerate gossip about her.’

  Coco Chanel had materialized among the women as silently as a cat, accompanied by a gust of Camel cigarettes. She had a hard face and taut neck, from which several ropes of pearls were hanging. Her skinny legs were bowed like a grasshopper and her intelligent, feline glance travelled across Clara’s moss-green dress as though calculating to the last pfennig its provenance and likely cost.

  ‘Good evening, Mademoiselle Vine,’ she said softly, resting
a silken claw briefly on Clara’s arm. Then more loudly she addressed the women around her.

  ‘I have always been a great admirer of the Duchess. When the Duke was courting Wallis, Winston Churchill came to dine here with me at the Ritz and begged me to exert my influence. He wanted me to persuade the King of England not to marry an American divorcée.’ She gave a laugh, like the snort of an aggressive little bull. ‘Winston burst into tears and said, “A king should never abdicate!” David should do his duty. Could I not persuade him to think again? I said, “Winston, are you asking me to stand in the path of true love?”’

  ‘What would you have done, Mademoiselle Vine?’ She switched to English, with a glance of cool scrutiny. ‘Do you believe anyone should stand in the way of true love?’

  ‘I think love has its place, but Churchill’s right. There are times when duty is more important.’

  ‘Ah, a realist then! I think you, Mademoiselle Vine, are like me. Passion fades. Only work remains. You need to be a realist when your work is peddling dreams. Because that’s what we both do, isn’t it? We peddle dreams. We put romance in people’s lives, even when there’s none in our own.’

  ‘I suppose that’s true.’

  Chanel’s feline smile was shot through with spite. ‘I’m sorry I don’t know your work. Perhaps you think me rude, but since my time in Hollywood I never go to the movies. I find them insufferably dull.’

  Though Chanel had made the trek to America, her hopes of a new life designing for Hollywood had fallen flat and she had returned to France with a lasting grudge against a film industry too philistine and shallow to appreciate her talents.