A War of Flowers (2014)

by Thynne, Jane

  ‘As it happens, my new film is based on a novel. And a French novel at that. Bel Ami.’

  ‘Ha! Well I approve of that, certainly. I like to think in my salon we are all of us, French, German and English, meilleurs amis. Like Herr Brandt here.’

  Clara looked round to see a man watching her. She had noticed him earlier, in the thicket of guests, because he stood out from the polished and manicured crowd. Though as smartly dressed as the other men, in perfectly cut dark blue suit and tie, his powerful build and glowing tan made her think of the countryside and vigorous exercise, rather than the refined air of this couturier’s perfumed parlour. He must have been in his late forties, with golden brown eyes, hair that was greying around the temples, a deeply cleft chin and little arrows of laughter crinkling his eyes.

  He advanced and held out a hand.

  ‘Max Brandt.’

  ‘Clara Vine.’

  ‘Herr Brandt is a cultural attaché at the German Embassy.’

  ‘How interesting,’ said Clara politely. ‘I imagine that means an awful lot of opera.’

  He chuckled and swept a lock of hair from his brow. ‘Indeed. But we must all perform our duty for the Fatherland, no matter how arduous. Besides, sometimes only opera can make our German language sound as lovely as French.’

  Clara, who often thought that sounds had their own colours, imagined Brandt’s voice as a rich, chocolate brown. He had the languid, easy demeanour of a man secure in his own attractiveness and well used to the company of women. His expression had a subtle sparkle to it, as though he knew already who she was. Perhaps he had seen one of her films, Clara thought. Detecting her schoolgirl French, he switched to German and raised his voice against the dance music that had started up in the background.

  ‘Can I ask what brings you here?’

  ‘I’m making a film. With Willi Forst. It’s called Bel Ami.’

  ‘Maupassant, eh? Do you have official clearance for that? It’s hard to imagine our Propaganda Minister favouring a film whose hero is a lying cheating womanizer.’

  Laughter danced in his eyes but Clara dipped her head. Jokes about the notoriously womanizing minister were dangerous.

  ‘Perhaps Doktor Goebbels hasn’t read the script.’

  ‘Don’t all scripts have to gain his approval? Besides, I thought nothing escaped his eyes.’

  ‘Maybe he admires Maupassant.’

  ‘Possible,’ he nodded, pretending to consider this. ‘And of course, romance is a keen interest of his.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Romanticism. His doctoral thesis was on the German Romantics, I recall.’

  Brandt smiled, and Chanel chose the moment to intervene sinuously. ‘Mademoiselle Vine is here this evening on the recommendation of Madame Goebbels.’

  A frisson of surprise passed across Max Brandt’s face at this information. He had just made fun of Goebbels’ womanizing, only to discover that the woman in front of him was on friendly terms with the Propaganda Minister’s wife.

  Chanel, however, seemed to delight in his faux pas.

  ‘Magda has entrusted Mademoiselle Vine to collect a special package of my perfume. If you wait here, I’ll go and fetch it.’

  Brandt took a deep drag of his cigarette and smiled.

  ‘So our Culture Minister’s wife prefers a French scent? I thought the Minister was most strict about a perfume’s provenance?’

  That much was true. Goebbels was frequently delivering radio diatribes about how buying foreign cosmetics meant robbing the German Volk. He himself was generally preceded by a blast of Scherk’s Tarr pomade, a citrussy blend made by one of Berlin’s biggest perfumiers, whose smell always provoked in Clara a Pavlovian shudder.

  Clara surveyed Max Brandt warily.

  ‘I would have thought perfume, of all things, was free of nationality.’

  ‘You’re right, of course. It’s a holy thing. Comes from the Latin actually, per fumus, by means of smoke.’ He exhaled, as if to illustrate his point. ‘Perfume once meant the sacred incense in temples but it’s rather more debased now, I fear. Did you know they make civet out of the musk of a wild cat? It’s pretty disgusting, isn’t it? Strange how something so rank can be transformed into something so alluring.’

  Clara focused on his swastika tiepin. ‘But then people do sometimes find the most repugnant things appealing.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right. And perfume’s power has nothing to do with sweetness. Apparently, it works on the brain in the most extraordinary way – it stimulates olfactory memory. That’s the part which lies in the deepest part of the brain and connects with our primal drives. So you see, perfume unleashes our most primitive desires.’

  ‘How funny. Perfume always seems so sophisticated to me. I love the words they use. Ambergris, attar, wormwood. Wormwood, especially.’

  ‘Yes! I’ve always thought that too. But those words don’t work so well in German – you have to say them in French. Like your own perfume. Soir de Paris.’

  Clara regarded him, astonished.

  ‘You can tell?’

  ‘But of course.’

  Then he laughed. ‘Don’t look like that. I can’t really tell a thing. The only reason I recognized Soir de Paris is that someone I know used to wear it. It’s sweet. It suits you. And it’s somewhat appropriate, in the circumstances.’

  Responding to the gramophone music, some of the couples had cleared a space on the parquet floor and begun an impromptu dance. Brandt looked round.

  ‘I wonder, would you permit me?’

  Without waiting for an answer, he reached for her waist and drew her towards him. The imprint of his hand, firm against the flimsy silk of her dress, was suddenly at the centre of her consciousness. The music was hypnotic and her body fitted perfectly into the rhythm of his own, the more easily because he was a natural dancer. As she moved beside him, Clara felt the champagne spreading like a warm tide through all the veins of her body, relaxing her and softening the edges of the world. Normally she refrained from drinking; it only let down her guard, and in most situations it was far too dangerous to lower her defences. But the mere fact of being in Paris had induced a certain recklessness and she had already downed two glasses of Chanel’s Pol Roger. She pressed closer to Max Brandt. His hand rested on her back in a way that would have seemed erotically possessive, if it wasn’t merely customary. Not for the first time, Clara wondered how dancing ever came to be seen as an empty convention of polite society, rather than the tantalizing, sensuous experience it was.

  ‘Perhaps I spoke a little hastily earlier,’ he murmured. ‘About our Culture Minister.’

  ‘Don’t worry. If you can’t relax at a party . . .’

  ‘Quite so. And our hostess is good at getting people to relax. She likes us to shed our defences so we render up better gossip. She sees it as a challenge. Whenever I come here I go away wondering what indiscretions I’ve committed.’

  ‘A few glasses of Pol Roger must help that.’

  ‘It’s true. Perfume’s not the only expensive substance Chanel understands. She’s an expert practitioner in the use of champagne. She has a saying, “I drink champagne on only two occasions; when I’m in love, and when I’m not.”’

  Clara laughed. ‘I wonder which it is tonight?’

  Brandt nodded his head in the direction of Spatz, whose head was bent close to Chanel’s, in intimate conversation.

  ‘Can’t you guess?’

  ‘Your fellow attaché, I presume.’

  ‘We both work at the Embassy but our paths don’t often cross. I’m not sure Spatz shares my tastes.’

  ‘Your tastes?’

  ‘In opera and so on.’

  ‘Who’s that other man he was talking to?’

  Clara nodded at the man in the grey pinstripe, who had seemed vaguely familiar.

  ‘That’s Schellenberg. SS Hauptsturmführer Walter Schellenberg, to be precise. Ever heard of him?’

  Clara shook her head.

  ‘That’
s good. You don’t want to have heard of him.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  He smiled. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’d rather talk about you. So you’re a friend of Frau Doktor Goebbels’?’

  Clara sensed him trying to place her, to gauge her status in the Nazis’ social hierarchy. It was unusual for actresses to befriend the Propaganda Minister’s wife. Usually they were too busy trying to escape the clutches of her husband.

  ‘More of an acquaintance. I modelled for her Fashion Bureau when I first came to Germany from London. My father’s English, you see, and I grew up there.’

  ‘You’re English?’

  Surprise hardened his voice. His eyes held a flicker of suspicion at discovering she was not what he thought.

  ‘Half English, half German,’ she clarified. ‘My mother was born in Hamburg but she left for England at the age of twenty-two. She was a concert pianist. My father went to Germany on holiday and fell in love with her when he saw her playing Brahms.’

  ‘What a romantic story.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she replied. It wasn’t in fact. Though it had started well, her parents’ marriage had been far from happy ever after. Rows and silences had punctuated their relationship for years as her father’s need to control clashed like a harsh bow against her mother’s highly strung nature.

  ‘What about you, Herr Brandt? Is your wife here?’

  She sensed him stiffen.

  ‘A less romantic story, I’m afraid. My wife is no longer with me.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You needn’t be. She’s certainly not. Gisela found the appeal of an instructor at the Grunewald Riding School an infinitely more exciting prospect than travelling the capitals of Europe as the wife of a cultural attaché.’

  He shrugged and smiled down at her, moving lightly, and swaying closely to the music. Clasped in his arms, Clara felt at once soothed, and at the same time intensely alive.

  ‘But you, Miss Clara Vine, agree with Chanel.’ His voice was a teasing murmur in her ear. ‘You’re a realist, like her. You think we should all put love firmly on one side when duty calls.’

  Clara laughed. ‘That’s hardly what I said!’

  ‘Don’t be ashamed, it’s an admirable thought. In these difficult times, duty must drive us. Though as Paris is the city of lovers, I don’t think you’d find it a popular sentiment here.’

  ‘What I said was, there were times when duty is more important than love.’

  He moved her round the floor with the lightest of touches. Was he aware that with every movement of his body, a current of heat ran through her, making the blood rush to her face? That he was provoking in her the most unseemly tide of excitement? Clara guessed that he was and she looked away, hoping he didn’t see the blush suffuse her cheeks.

  ‘And,’ he whispered, ‘is this one of those times?’

  Hamilton’s comment ran through her mind. War could be just weeks away.

  ‘I suppose it is.’

  ‘Some might say people must seize their pleasures where they find them. Carpe diem.’

  She looked up at him and tried to keep herself from smiling.

  ‘Some might. But at the moment my duty is to catch a train tomorrow for Berlin.’

  ‘Are you leaving Paris?’ He seemed dismayed. ‘Surely not. Stay a while, won’t you? There’s so much to see.’

  ‘I’d like to, but I can’t.’

  ‘It would be a crime to leave Paris without seeing the Louvre. You have to walk in the Left Bank and take coffee at the Dôme. Visit Fouquet’s on the Champs Elysées. See the zoo at the Jardin des Plantes. There’s an ape there who can make a charcoal drawing as well as a human. Surely you couldn’t leave without seeing him?’

  ‘I’m sure I’ll come back sometime.’

  The music finished and the couples began picking up their glasses and lighting cigarettes, but Brandt’s hand remained on the small of her back. Clara felt the pulse of his body against her and could tell the dance had stirred him too.

  ‘I wonder . . .’ he began.

  Clara glanced across the room to see Chanel watching them fixedly, a trace of irritation creasing her brow. She was holding a black and white package with intertwined double C, tied with a lavish amount of black ribbon.

  Swiftly, Clara detached herself.

  ‘Actually, I should leave now.’

  ‘So soon?’

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s been a long day and I’ve a bit of a headache.’

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘The Hotel Bellevue. It’s not far.’

  ‘Perhaps I could walk with you then?’

  ‘No. Really, thank you, Herr Brandt, but I’m quite all right. The fresh air will clear my head.’

  He kept hold of her hand for a moment, as if unwilling to let her go, or unable to believe she was leaving, and she had to give a little tug before he freed her fingers from his grasp.

  Chanel proffered the package with a little smile.

  ‘Tell Madame Goebbels this comes with my compliments. I’m flattered that she wants to try my No. 5. Please let her know that my perfume always tells a personal story, as well as a public one, so although my perfume is popular, for every woman it is unique.’

  Accepting the package, Clara clattered down the stairs and nodded as the reception manager in his long cut-away coat bowed solemnly to her, as she passed through the Ritz’s gilded doors.

  She walked swiftly to the north of the Place Vendôme, making her way westwards through the streets towards the fourth arrondissement. The mingled fragrance of garlic and roasting meat blew across her path, and the cobbles beneath her feet, wet from a brief shower, were sequinned with light as she peered into courtyards behind high wrought-iron gates, past tall doors illuminated with iron lanterns with elaborate stone scrolling above them.

  The poignant refrain of J’Attendrai, the hit song of the moment, snaked up from a basement bar.

  ‘J’attendrai, le jour et la nuit, j’attendrai toujours ton retour.’

  I will wait, every day and night, for your return. How perfectly Jean Sablon’s melancholy lilt suited the mood of the time, Clara thought. Waiting was what everyone was doing now. There was a sense of time suspended and breath bated as Europe’s leaders, like invisible chess players, bided their next move.

  In the deserted marketplace of Les Halles the cleaners were sweeping the vestiges of cabbage leaves and rotten fruit left over from the day’s trading and hosing down the floor. Clara loved this louche aspect to Paris, the blast of petrol and urine from the Métro entrance and the slick of oil on the pavement that reminded you how closely earthiness and glamour co-existed here. Huge wheels of cheese were being rolled onto a cart, the last traders were stacking boxes and a litter of dead chrysanthemums withered in a heap.

  As she picked her way through the remnants of vegetation, a flock of starlings whirred balletically up into the glass and iron vault, and, turning to watch them, she noticed out of the corner of her eye the figure of Max Brandt rounding the corner about two hundred yards behind her, his shadow under the streetlamp stalking boldly ahead of him. At once, a bubble of laughter rose in her throat. Brandt was actually in pursuit of her! He was evidently a man who couldn’t take no for an answer. He couldn’t possibly have known that he was following a woman expertly versed in the arts of evasion. She could lose him in an instant if she wanted. But did she want to?

  Quickening her step, Clara wove through the streets, doubling back on herself, choosing side streets and alleys. A current of exhilaration spurred her on, as she walked away up the Rue Quincampoix, and ducked into a tiny cul de sac containing a couple of shops and the back door of a bar. Easing herself into a doorway, she saw Brandt stride past, heard him hesitate, grunting with frustration as he looked from right to left, wondering how she could have disappeared. The heat made her skin prickle with sweat and she shifted a little in the darkness, stifling a laugh.

  Suddenly, behind her, a door swung open and a ribbon of noi
se billowed out. A man was emerging from the bar backwards, manoeuvring a crate of empty bottles towards her. A blade of light, as sharp as any Gestapo lamp, sliced across Clara’s face and at that moment Brandt glanced down the alley and saw her.

  He smiled, and she couldn’t help smiling too.

  ‘Fräulein Vine.’ He came slowly towards her, ambling now that he had his prey in his sights. ‘When you wanted to clear your head, I hadn’t imagined you intended to walk halfway around the city.’

  ‘I enjoy a long walk.’

  ‘It is refreshing, isn’t it?’

  He smiled and leant a hand on the wall beside her head, imprisoning her in the circle of his arms. Clara felt a familiar giddiness rise within her.

  ‘In fact, I have an even more refreshing idea. Why don’t you and I go for a cognac at my apartment?’

  ‘You forget. I need an early night.’

  ‘Of course. What if I promise not to detain you too long?’

  His hand brushed lightly along her arm. An electric thrill ran the length of her body and her pulse quickened. Brandt was right; she did find him attractive and he knew it. Perhaps a man like him assumed that women would fall at his feet. Or maybe he thought that an actress on her own in a foreign city for a single evening would be an easy target. He was not to know that Clara would not dream of succumbing to the approaches of a Nazi bureaucrat. If indeed a bureaucrat was what he was. She thought again of Hamilton’s comment. Steinbrecher says the Gestapo’s pretty well entrenched in Paris now. Heydrich has an extensive network of informers in place.

  ‘I don’t think my boyfriend would like that very much.’

  Brandt recoiled visibly and straightened up.

  ‘A boyfriend? You didn’t mention him. Is he here, or back in Berlin?’

  ‘He’s in Berlin.’

  ‘Of course. Is he an actor too? Perhaps I know him. Can I ask his name?’

  Clara’s mind went blank. The only two men she had ever cared for – Ralph Sommers and Leo Quinn – were both English. In the heat of the moment, she conjured the first name that entered her head and gave him a rank for good measure.