A War of Flowers (2014)

by Thynne, Jane

  ‘To Munich?’ Heydrich queried, his face alive with calculating tension, his eyes already scanning the Chancellery doors.

  ‘Herr Mussolini won’t come to Berlin. The Führer will leave from the Anhalter Bahnhof within hours.’

  Heydrich swivelled and marched off towards the Chancellery without a word. Welzer turned stiffly to Clara.

  ‘And now I should let you leave, Fräulein.’ He held her gaze. ‘It’s indeed wonderful news, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she repeated numbly. ‘Wonderful news.’

  Chapter Thirty-three

  When Clara closed the door of her apartment behind her and looked at herself in the mirror a ghost stared back at her. Her lips were bloodless and as a delayed reaction to the tension, a violent shaking ran through her body.

  So Chamberlain was making an eleventh-hour trip to dissuade Hitler from military action. How could he be so blind as to believe that Hitler posed no further threat to Europe? If only there was some kind of documentary proof of Hitler’s ambitions. Something that could prove beyond question what he was planning.

  Inside her pocket the key to the Reich Chancellery private entrance weighed ominously. How long would it be before Eva Braun guilelessly mentioned that she had given away her key to the private door? And even if she didn’t, what would happen when some part of the plot was rumbled and everyone who had been in the Reich Chancellery that day was arrested and interrogated? Clara thought anxiously of Max and prayed that he was lying low somewhere, keeping all traces of his involvement well hidden.

  She paced around the apartment with jittery limbs, unable to settle. She knew it was only a matter of time before the actions of that morning caught up with her. It could be days, but it might only be hours. Her only hope was that in the rush to board the Führer’s special train to Munich, Eva would be too busy to worry about the key. Too busy joyfully packing up her clothes and perfume samples, delighted to escape her Berlin prison. The thought of Eva’s perfume samples recalled something else – a remark which had been hammering at the doors of her mind since she heard it. Eva Braun’s comment about her only acquaintance in Berlin. The girl from Ludwig Scherk’s.

  Scherk’s was one of the biggest cosmetic companies in Berlin. Everything about it was successful, even its headquarters – a red-brick modernist building in Steglitz – had won a clutch of architectural prizes. Advertisements for bestselling Scherk products like Arabian Nights perfume, a concoction of sandalwood and amber, or the Mystikum powder compact, could be found in every glossy magazine. But its cosmetics weren’t limited to women. Scherk’s Tarr pomade was Goebbels’ favourite and according to Magda, in one of her periodic fits of jealousy, he had selected an especially pretty salesgirl to bring his personalized supplies to the Propaganda Ministry. Could that be a coincidence, or might Goebbels have recommended his own salesgirl to Eva? Clara was prepared to take a bet on it. What better way to spy on the Führer’s girlfriend than to have a young woman befriend her and report back, with all the snippets of gossip and the confidences that involved?

  This was Eva’s life. Spied on from every quarter. Unable to bear children for her Führer. Befriended on all sides by people who would happily betray her.

  Clara went over to her desk and took up the bottle of Black Roses that Eva Braun had made for her, inhaling the deep, voluptuous scent. Perfume was Eva’s small act of mutiny against a lover who hated cosmetics of any kind, but it was nothing to the real dissent that existed beneath the surface of this country. All over Germany people were carrying out their own individual acts of resistance against the regime, from the Munich citizens who skirted round the alley to avoid having to salute the Feldherrnhalle, to Helga Schmidt who had loved repeating jokes about the Führer until she was silenced, and even little Nina Schaeffer kicking down the cabinets of Der Stürmer. But what did any of those acts of defiance amount to, when even men like Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, and Count von Helldorf, the chief of police, had failed to unseat Hitler? All resistance was destined to be crushed like flowers in the path of a Panzer tank.

  If Hitler was to be stopped, it would have to come from further afield. From England or France. From the men at their desks in Whitehall that Guy Hamilton had spoken of, with their calm assumption that Clara would carry out whatever task they asked of her, no matter what risk to her personal safety.

  ‘It’s what you do, isn’t it?’

  Instantly her thoughts turned to the meeting she had set up for the following day. If London Films had found her message in the Chronicle and read it correctly, the contact should be waiting at the Siegessäule at 6.45 p.m. to hear the results of her encounter with Eva Braun. Yet what would Clara be able to tell them? Apart from the fact that Eva had tried to kill herself and was unable to have children and was more interested in the affairs of film stars than in her lover’s aggressive intentions in Europe.

  A knock on the door caused her to freeze. Had a security check identified her as a visitor to the Reich Chancellery? Had Eva already mentioned that the actress Clara Vine had borrowed her private key? It seemed she was about to find out.

  She opened the door to find the lean figure of Herr Engel, rimless glasses glinting, and a smile on his smooth, professional thin-lipped face. Faint layers of baroque music, which Clara recognized as Telemann’s piano suite in A, issued from his opened door. He cast a curious glance round what he could see of her room.

  ‘I hope I wasn’t interrupting.’

  She wedged herself in the doorway, to block his view.

  ‘Did you want something?’

  He looked slightly taken aback at her hostility.

  ‘I thought I should let you know. Some visitors called for you.’

  ‘Visitors? Did they say what they wanted?’

  ‘I didn’t think it was my business to ask.’ A small wince of elaboration. ‘I think they may have been policemen.’

  ‘Oh? Did they say so?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what gave you that impression?’

  ‘Just something about them.’

  Lowering his voice, as if by instinct, he bent towards her.

  ‘Forgive me, Fräulein Vine, for presuming, but I said you were out. I explained you were probably away filming and I wasn’t sure when you would return, but I advised them not to bother coming back for the next few days.’

  Why had Herr Engel said that? He had seen her only the previous evening.

  ‘I said if I saw you I’d let you know someone had called. I asked if they wanted to leave a message, but they said it wouldn’t be necessary.’

  Clara heart plummeted within her, but she endeavoured to maintain a tone of polite curiosity.

  ‘So when exactly was this?’

  He frowned. ‘It must have been about ten this morning.’

  Ten o’clock? That was impossible. It was before she had even set foot in the Chancellery. An hour before the coup attempt. How could the Gestapo have predicted her involvement?

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. I know because I was listening to the wireless. I would normally be at work, but my rounds don’t start today until one.’

  ‘Your rounds?’

  ‘I’m a doctor.’

  ‘A doctor?’ she repeated dumbly.

  ‘Yes. I’m Doktor Engel actually. I work in the children’s department of the Charité.’

  Looking at the gaunt figure with his apologetic smile, she realized that she had been entirely mistaken in Herr Engel. She had taken the thin-lipped, severe-looking stranger for an informer, and assumed that his arrival in the neighbouring apartment was just another hazard to be watched for, when instead he was a doctor who had fobbed off the policemen who called, who worked with children, who played Telemann on his gramophone, and gave every indication of being on her side.

  Relief, and the stress of the day, came together, and she felt tears spring to her eyes. Politely, he looked away.

  ‘Are you all right, Fräulein Vine?’ />
  ‘Yes. Of course. I’ve been working a lot recently. I’m tired.’

  ‘Don’t let me disturb you then. I simply wanted to let you know.’

  ‘Thank you Herr – Doktor – Engel. I’m very grateful.’

  ‘Not at all. Just being a good neighbour. Any time.’

  He smiled kindly, and disappeared. That was the thing about Berlin. Everyone was playing a part, but it was impossible sometimes to know what part they were playing.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  At Tempelhof airport, Dansey’s man hauled his brown leather valise into the back of the cab and gave directions to an address in Wilmersdorf.

  The flight from London had been full of worried faces. In the rapid ebb and flow of diplomats to Berlin in recent days, it was easy to arrive relatively unremarked. There had been no attempt to check his credentials as he made his way past the border guards, and he had no concern that he would be followed or taken as anything other than one more international bureaucrat, attempting to solve the insoluble puzzle that Hitler had set them.

  Travelling through the English countryside on his way to the airport, he had seen the last of the summer ebbing away. From out of the train window he had noticed a couple picnicking on a tartan rug, a farmer and his sheepdog, and two boys up a tree, scrumping for apples, in scenes of such utter ordinariness that the idea of nation states readying themselves for mass conflict seemed quite fantastical. Even in town, there were sunbathers on deckchairs in Green Park, queues for the Test Match and a full programme at the Albert Hall.

  Now, as his cab approached Berlin Mitte, he gazed hungrily out of the window. It was extraordinary being back here, as though Time had folded in on itself. These streets had once seemed as familiar to him as his own skin, littered with remembered incidents. Berlin had entered and become part of him, its parks and buildings and pavements grey as damp newsprint beneath the gunmetal German sky. He marvelled again at the enormity of the scarlet banners, pinioned to the giant stands erected along Unter den Linden and draped, with operatic grandeur, between the arches of the Brandenburg Gate. Pariser Platz was populated by gleaming, patent leather crows with white helmets, strutting their path through the square as if they owned it. As the cab passed Wilhelmstrasse he glanced down it to see a fleet of Mercedes, sleek and ominous as a shoal of sharks, making their way accompanied by motorcycle outriders, and in an instant he remembered the faces of women turning towards Hitler when he passed, like flowers to a dark sun.

  Berlin was so different, and visually at least, so much more glamorous than the London he had just left. More clean and modern than his Georgian terrace in Bloomsbury where the houses stood like shoulders perpetually braced. Or the anonymous Edwardian mansion block in Victoria that he now frequented in working hours, and the dingy warren of the offices on the top floor of Bush House in the Aldwych, serviced by a rattling cage lift. Londoners greeted the prospect of war with weary endurance. Every morning, standing on the Underground platform in a whoosh of warm air, he would join the crowd shuffling into the carriage, then opening their newspapers with anxious faces as the train hurtled them onwards into the darkness.

  The previous weekend he had been at a friend’s house in Wiltshire and at dinner an argument had been started up by another guest, a bold young man who claimed that the British could not afford another war. They weren’t militarily prepared for one and besides, Hitler was no more than a school bully. He had tried not to respond. With immense forbearance, he had left the room as soon as possible and gone into the garden for a smoke. Only it wasn’t forbearance, he realized, once the calming nicotine had entered his veins and the evening air had cooled him. It was weariness. Exhaustion even, for what was to come, and a good dash of fear.

  He had a couple of reasons for being back in Berlin. There were new contacts who needed sounding out, a man with an import-export business and reliable routes to Switzerland and a car salesman from Charlottenburg who might prove useful. He was also preparing to perform a little handholding, because a recent, disastrous arrest had shaken a lot of people, worried that their entire network might be compromised.

  But really, there was only one reason on his mind.

  As the cab edged round the southern fringe of the Tiergarten, heading for the Ku’damm, memories ambushed him again, as they so often did, and one memory in particular. A minotaur memory, hiding in the labyrinthine coils of his brain, that emerged when he was least expecting it. Anything might trigger it – a line of poetry, a snatch of women’s perfume. It was an image that had sustained him for years, one he ran over and over in his mind the way a pilgrim polishes the image of a saint, and sometimes he frightened himself that the act of thinking might wear it out, so that like the features of an icon it would be gradually erased.

  It was her face. The subtle poetry of her face. Where others might see calm, he saw a bright tension, like a lute string soundlessly vibrating. She was so alert to the world and its nuances, it was as though there were some register only she could hear. Sometimes it expressed itself as abstraction, the kind of air that led children to be chastized for daydreaming, which he was sure must have happened to her as a young girl, but really it was a deep, instinctive connection to the world around her – the kind an animal needs to survive in the wild. She had the unpredictable quality of a wild creature too, like a rare bird that might fly off without warning.

  He liked to re-imagine her minutely, as though drawing her from top to toe; the slender legs, with their slight tracery of blue veins across the shin bone, the concavity above her hip bones when she lay stretched out on the bed, the line on her neck where the sun met the skin and the network of lines around her eyes which testified to her smile. At other times his thoughts were drawn more by desire and the memory of it, so he thought less of her eyes and more of her breasts pressed against his chest, her legs wrapped around him and her body beneath him.

  He remembered with painful tenderness the last time he’d seen her. Coming behind her and encircling her waist with his arms, feeling her slight, instinctive tilt towards him. The warm, complicated smell of her and her hair, like spilled flowers, on the pillow beside him. Then, when he left, her face framed in the pure northern light that poured in from the window and her wave, blurring into the distance.

  Without her the world had acquired a drabber, more serious tint, unrelieved by any intimacy. He felt as if his life had faded to black and white. Often he watched himself as if from above, carrying on his work, trying to submerge his own little grief beneath the sea of troubles around him. Work, and yet more work, had been the answer.

  He felt sick with anticipation.

  The cab had drawn up before a tall, ornately decorated house in Fasanenstrasse. He jumped out, and rang the bell.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Berlin’s Victory Column, the Siegessäule, a two-hundred-foot monument to Prussian military victory, had not escaped the mania for architectural reorganization that gripped the rest of Berlin. The tower, on its base of red granite, had been hauled up from its position in front of the Reichstag, where it had stood for more than sixty years, and relocated to the Grosser Stern roundabout at the centre of the Tiergarten. It was all part of Speer’s plan to create a great alley running from east to west in the new Welthauptstadt Germania, culminating in his giant dome. No matter how grandiose Hitler’s plans though, how durable the steel and granite of his monuments, they were no match for the wit of his citizens. Berliner humour was sharp enough to undercut the tallest building and the joke going round the studios was that the golden angel which stood on top of the column was the only virgin left in Berlin, because up there on her tower she was the only one safely out of Goebbels’ reach.

  At twenty minutes to seven Clara approached the monument quickly, her coat belted tightly and her hair bundled up beneath an anonymous grey trilby. Under one arm she carried a copy of the Berlin Illustrated and in her pocket was her fallback, a ticket to a KdF concert at the Volkstheater Berlin on Kantstrasse. The events
of the previous day and the last-minute failure of the coup had shattered her.

  That morning the conference had been held in the Führer’s apartment in Prinzregentenplatz. The Berlin Illustrated carried pictures of Hitler, a red carpet rolling out from the steps of the Führerbau for the signing of the Munich Agreement, and Daladier, Mussolini and Chamberlain sitting on the same scarlet sofa where Hitler and Eva Braun first became lovers. They agreed that Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland should be permitted. By 10th October Czech troops would evacuate the Sudetenland.

  The photograph of Chamberlain waving the paper in the air at Heston Aerodrome had gone round the world. Chamberlain and Hitler had signed an agreement ‘never to go to war again’. The way he waved it reminded her of the autograph hunters who congregated outside the Ufa Palast after a premiere, waving their books in triumph with the signature of their favourite star. Chamberlain and his wife had appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with George VI and Queen Elizabeth, and outside the palace people stood ten deep, cheering. Three vanloads of flowers had been delivered to Number Ten.

  Hitler’s popularity had never been higher.

  The Siegesäule was a popular meeting place and there were several people milling around the base of the tower, but no sign of anyone who might be from London Films. Clara scanned the faces quickly, focusing on single men who might possibly be her contact, and fixed on a man with a briefcase looking twitchy, until he was joined by a woman in a trench coat and swung his arm jubilantly round her shoulders. Although the nights were drawing in and the light falling, there were still plenty of people taking an evening constitutional with their dogs among the Tiergarten’s winding gravel paths, but she identified no remotely likely candidate. No single figure, hesitating in the shadows.