A War of Flowers (2014) (24 page)

It was the kind of thing Joseph Goebbels dictated in his sleep.

She shrugged. ‘That’s just the usual, isn’t it? We’ve all heard it before.’

‘That’s not the point. Take a closer look.’

Clara did. And on closer inspection she realized the problem. One of the sterile vamps, poised on a barstool against a painted background of a cocktail bar, staring at the camera with
smouldering eyes and clad in nothing more than a top hat, black stockings and a pout, was Ursula herself.

‘That’s me done for.’

‘I can’t believe it.’

‘It was freezing the day we did that shoot. A studio lot in January. I almost died from pneumonia. If I’d known this was going to happen I would never have bothered.’

Clara took the magazine from her in amazement. For all the years she had been at the Ufa studios, Ursula Schilling had been a rising star of the Reich, a goddess whose picture graced the foyer
at Babelsberg and whose voluptuous figure was a staple at every Nazi reception and society party. Her curves, Schwarzkopf-dyed blonde hair and wholesome Aryan looks had made her a natural for the
syrupy confections that were turned out like candy floss by the Ufa studios with the intention of taking the population’s mind off butter shortages and wars. She had a wardrobe full of mink
coats and her photograph in a thousand soldiers’ wallets. She had been the ultimate pin-up of the Ufa studios, and now she was the poster girl for the scheming vamp.

‘It’s astonishing. But then, I have been wondering . . .’

‘Why I agreed to take a bit part in this dump?’ Ursula took out her patent leather handbag and lit a cigarette, then passed one over.

‘I suppose I ought to tell you.’

She gave Clara a look of scrutiny, as if assessing whether she could trust her, exhaled a long stream of smoke and said,

‘It started around a month ago. I had an unwanted visit. They turned up first thing in the morning, and it had been a rough night. Two of them, with faces like a wet Wednesday. I thought
they were asking for my autograph so I slammed the door on them, but it didn’t work because they just stood there knocking until I opened up again.’

‘Police?’

She lowered her voice to a husky murmur. ‘That was my first thought too. But they said they weren’t policemen at all. They described themselves as civil servants.’

‘Civil servants?’

‘They worked for the government, apparently.’

‘What did they want?’

She crossed her perfect legs and flicked a languid tower of ash into a nearby hatbox.

‘They wanted to know if I had ever received a sexual advance from the Propaganda Minister. What kind of question is that for a girl at six o’clock in the morning?’

‘My God. What did you say?’

‘What do you think I said? I said of course I have! What girl hasn’t? It’s like breathing to him. Our Minister likes conquering women the way the Führer likes conquering
countries.’

‘You actually said that?’ Whether Ursula was immensely brave, or entirely reckless, Clara couldn’t decide, but she couldn’t help being impressed.

Ursula sighed and raked her fingers through her ice-blonde locks.

‘I told you, it had been a rough night. I’d only had a couple of hours’ sleep. I was barely conscious.’

‘What happened?’

‘By the time they’d barged into my apartment and stamped their muddy boots all over my cream carpet, I’d come to my senses. I mean I’m used to giving interviews, but not
the sort which end with a warrant for your arrest. I told them I had nothing more to say.’

‘Did they accept that?’

‘They said if I refused to talk it would constitute a refusal to help a government department with its enquiries and I might find my own activities investigated.’

‘Your activities?’

Ursula fitted another cigarette in her mother-of-pearl holder and raised a pair of exquisitely plucked eyebrows.

‘Precisely. You see the flaw in their argument, Clara. I have no activities. Not off screen anyway, and now it looks like I’ll have precious few on screen either. I knew I should
have kept quiet. Remember poor Renate Müller?’

How could Clara forget? Renate Müller was a rising star who had the misfortune to come to the attention of the Führer himself. An evening alone at the Reich Chancellery with Herr
Hitler had proved so eventful that Renate dined out for months on the eye-popping details, until Goebbels placed her under Gestapo surveillance. Eventually the girl was found dead, having fallen
from a window in a clinic where she was being treated for anxiety.

‘I don’t want to go the way of Renate Müller. Or Helga Schmidt for that matter.’ She gave Clara a meaningful look.

‘I knew if I said a word about the Herr Doktor it wouldn’t go well for me. We all owe our careers to him and we’re fooling ourselves if we think otherwise. Anyhow, it turned
out I was right – there’s been not a whisper of work since. Why else would I be playing in a low-budget historical romp? And today I see this.’

She stared mournfully at the magazine again.

‘It’s a message from him. He might as well have sent me a postcard.’

‘I’m sure you’re worrying unduly,’ said Clara, who wasn’t sure. ‘Goebbels has plenty of other things on his mind at the moment.’

‘Him! The one thing you can say about him is that women are always on his mind.’

Ursula laughed, but there was fear in her eyes. She was far too skilled an actress to allow it to dominate, but there was too much fear in Germany now for Clara not to recognize when she saw it.
You could read the signs like a gambler’s tell; the tremble of the hand which made Ursula replace her coffee cup too swiftly in its saucer, the toss of the head which disguised a discreet
glance around the room.

‘It’s probably safer being a soldier than an actress these days. Whoever guessed we were signing on for such a dangerous job? If I’d known I’d have gone into something
more secure. Stunt flying, perhaps, or doing the high-wire trapeze.’

‘What actually happened with Goebbels?’

‘Oh, that. It was fine to start with.’ She flexed out her fingers in front of her like a cat’s paw and studied the nails. ‘The day after our first . . . encounter . . .
at the after party for one of my films, he called me to his office and said he had great plans for me. I was perfect material for the Reich – material, that’s what he called me, not
flesh and blood – except that I needed to be “refashioned”. I liked that idea because it sounded, well, it sounded rather pleasant, you know? I love fashion, and clothes, what
girl doesn’t, and the way he said it made me think I was going to get a whole new wardrobe. Ha!’

A frown snagged her ivory forehead. ‘It turned out he wanted to refashion my image. I was to represent the woman of the new Reich. I was not to resemble a little American vamp any more.
Instead I should say I dreamed of owning a farm in the country and riding horses.’

‘Horses?’

‘Horrible, isn’t it? Filthy great beasts. Don’t you just hate horses?’

Actually Clara loved them. She’d had a horse back in Surrey, a dappled bay called Inkerman, a creature of infinite patience and intelligence, and the smell of him – warm leather and
horsehair – came back to her in a rush. All the same, it was hard to think of Ursula cantering through the Tiergarten with a flush on her cheeks.

‘You could probably get to like them.’

‘Never. Just think what riding does to the thighs. Besides, darling, horses were just the half of it. Goebbels wanted
Stern
to take pictures of me in the kitchen, whipping up a
stew. I had to contribute my favourite recipe to a stars’ cookbook. My dear, can you imagine me with a recipe? I couldn’t boil an egg. If I could find an egg to boil, that
is.’

She shook her head as though Goebbels had asked her to split the atom rather than perform a perfunctory domestic task.

‘Besides, I had other plans.’

She gave Clara a look, as if assessing whether to trust her, and leaned forward.

‘I’d had an approach from Hollywood. A man called Frits Strengholt, the head of MGM – you must have heard of him.’

Vaguely Clara recalled a dough-faced bureaucrat who had been snapped at Hitler’s right hand during a number of screenings.

‘He’s very close to Goebbels. He sacked all the Jewish staff in the MGM offices at the request of the Promi and he even agreed to divorce his wife because she was Jewish and Goebbels
complained. Anyhow, Strengholt said I would be a knockout in the States. I was a second Garbo and had a face to die for. I wasn’t complaining. It felt like it was my turn. Everyone’s
been going to Hollywood and back for the past decade – name me a single star who hasn’t been there – Emil Jannings, Lilian Harvey, Olga Chekhova, there’s no end of them, so
why not me? Only when I applied the bastards at the Chamber of Culture refused to recommend me for an exit visa.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘Too many actresses are jumping ship. It looks embarrassing. It’s bad enough that Marlene Dietrich, the most famous German actress in the world, won’t come back. So now
they’ve slapped a ban on any other actresses crossing the Atlantic. I’m cursing myself. I would have left last year if it wasn’t for . . .’

‘Wasn’t for what?’

Something in her face had wilted, so that her eyes were huge and woeful, and a dab of wetness smudged her mascara. She frowned at Clara, as though she was about to continue, but at that moment
the costume girl appeared, hovering behind them, bearing two powdered wigs.

‘Oh, never mind. I’m pinning my hopes on this evening at the Künstlerklub that von Arent’s invited us to. It’s for the benefit of the Americans, to showcase the Ufa
stars, and all the big cheeses will be there. I’m going to have another try with my MGM man. See if I can persuade him to sort things out for me.’

Turning to the costume girl she fixed her with a beaming smile and said, ‘Darling, could you fetch me another coffee? As black as sin and as hot as hell. That’s how I like
it.’

Then she tossed her head, dried off her eyes, and turned her attention to Clara.

‘Enough of my troubles. You’re doing fine. Kaffeeklatsch with the Führer’s girlfriend, that’s a good start.’

‘Shh.’ Clara looked around her. ‘Your voice carries, you know.’

Ursula laughed. A rich, husky, knowing laugh.

‘You imagine they don’t know already? They know everything, Clara, and anything they don’t already know, they’re going to find out. They know everything you think, even
before you’ve thought it. There’s no point having secrets here. Secrets in Germany are like butter; they don’t keep. You’ve heard the saying: the only person with a private
life in the Reich is the person who’s asleep, but that’s not enough for them. Goebbels wants to control your dreams.’

She shrugged. ‘What I want to know is how you do it. I’ve seen the way they hang around you, all the men at the studios, and yet you’ve managed to keep out of Goebbels’
clutches. How’ve you pulled it off? Are you in love or something?’

The question brought Clara up short.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘You have that look about you just now. As though you’re thinking about a man.’

‘I am. I’m thinking about my godson Erich. He’s fifteen.’

Ursula sighed, a long, world-weary sigh.

‘Ah well, fifteen or fifty, men are always a worry. Don’t I know it?’

After the fittings had been completed, and they had spent the afternoon in the rehearsal room, the cast drove back to Berlin for dinner at the Hofbräuhaus, the former
royal brewery adopted by Hitler in the Twenties for the inaugural meeting of the newly launched National Socialists. By that time in the evening the place was already loud with the drinking songs
of boisterous men in leather Bavarian jackets and fur-edged Tyrolean hats. Barmaids balancing great steins of beer blithely ignored the men’s ribald remarks as they placed huge dollops of
sauerkraut and sausage on their plates. In the past Mozart had drunk there, and Lenin, but no one remembered that now, when the riotous alpine flowers painted on the ceiling were entwined with
ornate blue swastikas, and the buxom waitresses had Nazi symbols embroidered on their dirndls.

As she sat with the cast Clara wondered again if the feeling she had – that a man was on her tail – had been correct, and if so whether someone might be following her even there. It
would be hard to spot a watcher in a crowd – the place was packed to the rafters – but after a while she decided to relax. If a shadow was there, then good luck to him. He
wouldn’t be up to much surveillance after a couple of steins of the Hofbräuhaus’s finest, strong Bavarian beer.

Back in the pension in Maximiliansplatz Clara sat for some time at the little desk in front of the window, watching a moon of pale bone climbing the sky. It was true that she
had been thinking about Erich. She had not seen as much of him recently as she would like and she was dismayed that his first experience of foreign travel had been marred by that incident on the
Wilhelm Gustloff
. She wondered if Rupert had taken the chance to find anything out about it.

She had meant to write a postcard to Erich, but instead she sat, abstracted, making shapes on the letter pad as a tapestry of thoughts wove through her mind. She picked up
Rebecca
and
tried to read, but the descriptions of the Cornish landscape only reminded her of Joachim von Ribbentrop saying that Cornwall was his favourite part of England, with the unspoken implication that
if ever the Nazis were obliged to invade, Cornwall would pretty much be his. It was terrible to think of her beloved Cornwall, her childhood holiday home, in his hands. She thought of sitting on
the gritty beaches and cutting her feet on the flinty rocks. Of walking through rhododendron woods, fragrant with moss and damp earth, in the early days of her childhood.

The thoughts stirred memories, and on impulse she went over to her suitcase and picked out a locket. It was a pretty thing, Victorian probably, with a design of entwined flowers and leaves and a
filigree silver clasp, and all she possessed of her mother’s apart from a fox fur coat. Inside was a photograph of her mother and herself at the age of six – her mother’s
watchful, luminous eyes and high cheekbones repeated with uncanny precision on the child beside her. Clara dimly remembered that she had been trying to copy her mother’s air of reserved
self-control, a look that she had eventually perfected. She realized that she must be the same age now as her mother was in the picture, and wondered what her mother would have made of her current
situation. Would she urge Clara to return to the safety of London, as Leo Quinn had, or would she acknowledge that her daughter had made a new life in a foreign land, just as she had done
herself?