A War of Flowers (2014) (47 page)

‘We can’t talk with this racket. Come with me.’

He stalked briskly across the room and opened a door which gave into a small dressing room, with a large mirror on one wall surrounded by lights, and a dressing table on which he perched, legs
crossed. He gestured for Clara to close the door behind her.

‘There is another matter that has been on my mind. A delicate matter.’

‘Herr Doktor?’

His eyes never left her face.

‘I heard that you may have been on the end of some unwanted attention.’

Clara remained impassive, waiting for him to elaborate.

‘To make myself clear, I understand you’ve suffered some unnecessary official interest.’

‘Forgive me, Herr Doktor . . .’

‘Don’t be dense, woman. Someone’s been following you.’

‘I’m not sure I understand.’

He rolled his eyes, as though dealing with a starlet who was being deliberately obtuse. ‘Really? Don’t you? Then let me explain. I’ve heard that you, quite wrongly, have been
the target of some official interest from the officers of the SS-Reichsführer.’

Himmler?

‘What would the SS-Reichsführer want with me?’

‘It’s a case of misplaced innuendo. Coarse minds. It’s quite revolting what filth some imaginations can conjure.’

‘But I’m not sure precisely what they think . . .’

‘It doesn’t matter
precisely what they think
. If these goons are even capable of thinking. The fact is that a rogue section of our security forces has been assembled for a
quite outrageous task. They’ve been involved in wiretapping my hotel rooms and so on, intent on laying spurious allegations against me which could only be of help to our enemies.
They’ve been selecting certain innocent women and following them, then inviting those women to be interviewed at the Lichterfelde Barracks. I wanted to know if you had received a
visit?’

‘What kind of visit?’

‘An early morning one.’

Understanding was dawning on Clara with a great exhilarating rush of relief. The people who had followed her for the best part of the month – who had come to her apartment just the other
day – were not Heydrich’s men suspecting her of espionage at all. They were a special division of the Gestapo commissioned by Heinrich Himmler, and the crime they suspected of her was
adultery. Adultery with the Minister of Propaganda. Clara almost laughed out loud. It must be the first time anyone had been relieved to be followed by the Gestapo.

‘As a matter of fact, Herr Doktor, I did have a visit the other day. Two men called for me, but I was out.’

Goebbels’ relief was visible.

‘I’m pleased you were spared the trouble. And don’t worry about a repeat visit – it won’t happen. I’ve taken action to prevent this nonsense in the strongest
possible terms. You should find yourself free from bother, but if anything does happen, I shall take it as a personal affront. I want you to contact me instantly.’

‘Of course.’

His face twisted with anger. ‘It’s monstrous that members of the Reich Chamber of Culture should be interrogated about their every move. I, and no one else, am in charge of the lives
of artists in the Reich.’

‘I assure you, Herr Doktor, if I get any more calls, you’ll be the first to know.’

His anger abated, he flashed his wide smile.

‘You’ve done well, Fräulein Vine.’

He looked her up and down.

‘When we first encountered you in – when was it, 1933? – we worried that your looks might be a little . . . dark for a National Socialist actress. You seemed, if you’ll
forgive the slur, a touch non-Aryan in appearance, not to mention half-English, which is hardly something to boast about. Yet your performances have won us over.’

‘Thank you, Herr Doktor.’

‘And I’ve not forgotten that documentary you’re to voice about the Frauenschaft. The film will be ready to dub at the Ufa sound studio any time now. I shall have them call you
to discuss it.’

He straightened his lapels and brushed some invisible dust from his jacket, as though mentally dismissing the whole sorry matter, and started for the door.

Clara hesitated. ‘Since you ask, Herr Doktor . . . there is another member of the Reich Chamber of Culture who would very much benefit from your help.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Ursula Schilling.’

Goebbels’ eyes flickered over her, but he didn’t answer.

‘I think she’s in great need of your protection. She’s been a victim of that misplaced innuendo you talked about, and even worse, I’ve heard she’s been
arrested.’

Goebbels gave her a dyspeptic look.

‘Fräulein Schilling is accused of consorting with a Jew.’

‘Yet her enemies are suggesting so much more.’

Her heart was in her mouth. How had she dared to allude to Ursula’s harassment by Goebbels? In the Reich Minister’s scrawny face, conflicting imperatives were at war. Goebbels’
hatred of Jews was competing with his fury over Himmler’s interference in his affairs. Which would win out?

He rubbed his hands together and shrugged.

‘I’ll look into it.’

‘She’d be extremely grateful.’

‘As I said, I’ll have a look. But I take a dim view of artists who are known to have prostituted themselves with Jews.’

‘I wondered . . .’

He sighed and drummed his fingers on the table. She was trying his patience now.

‘What did you wonder, Fräulein? I do have a houseful of Hollywood executives waiting for me outside.’

‘That’s just the thing. As it happens, Ursula Schilling has been approached to work in Hollywood and I know the Chamber of Culture is generally against our actresses leaving to work
abroad at a time of national unity. Yet I wondered, perhaps, whether it might be worth making an exception in this case? The British have a saying, “Out of sight, out of mind.” Maybe if
Ursula had an exit visa and went to America she would be out of everyone’s mind?’

He grunted.

‘Perhaps you’re right. The Reich would be well rid of a Jew-lover like her. Anyhow, I have to leave now – I need to be away by eleven. In such momentous times it is more vital
than ever that I complete my diary. Did you know I keep a diary?’

She did. She had once, on a visit to his home, even managed to get a glimpse of it.

‘The Frau Doktor mentioned it.’

‘Did she? Well, I’m proud of it. I write it every evening. It’s a document of immense historical value. I keep the past volumes photographed on Agfa glass plates and stored in
a special underground vault at the Reichsbank because if, God forbid, war should come, they’re far too valuable to be allowed to fall victim to an air raid. My diaries provide a record of my
entire life and times and if fate allows me a few years for the task, I intend to edit them for the sake of future generations.’

‘I’m sure your diaries would be of interest to a lot of people.’

‘Exactly. It takes a certain skill to write a diary. I treat mine as a work of literary art – I like to include observations, detail and colour. It gives texture to history, I
think.’

Sometimes, his ambition still amazed her. Not content with directing the thoughts of an entire nation through their newspapers and radio programmes and horoscopes, Goebbels wanted to direct
posterity too. His unseen editorial hand would live on through his diary, editing history the way he wanted it.

‘Some people see their diaries as a kind of snivelling receptacle for every little woe, but that never reads well. Posterity doesn’t want to know about that. I always think there are
some diaries that should be preserved in a vault and others that should never see the light of day.’ He nodded briefly.

‘I’ll say goodnight.’

Clara was longing to find Rupert, but as she threaded back through the crowd there was no sign of him. He had definitely been there earlier, talking to the American journalists, but he must have
gone. As she left herself, the band struck up a familiar tune, the hit song that she had heard in Paris.

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

I shall wait for your return. Sometimes, Clara felt as though she had been waiting for something for years, yet she was still not quite sure what it was.

Rupert plucked another glass from a passing tray and leant against the bar. He had already been there for an hour and the initial effects of the alcohol were wearing off,
leaving only a light nausea and the habitual sense of doom. His brain was foggier than the Spree in November and the usual brass band was marching through his head. He wished he had never come. He
has missed the chance of talking to Clara. He had seen the limping figure of the Propaganda Minister approach her, and knew better than to draw attention to himself, and then he saw the two of them
disappear from the room before he had had the opportunity to say what he wanted to tell her.

The news from London, that Chamberlain had capitulated to Hitler’s demands over the Sudetenland, made him feel sick. He laughed to himself as he remembered Lord Halifax’s faux pas on
meeting Hitler at the Berghof last year – how he had taken the diminutive man in the black coat for a servant and almost handed him his coat, before realizing in the nick of time that he was
the Führer of Germany. Yet now Chamberlain had mistaken the Führer in a far more fatal fashion. People in London were saying that war had been averted. Reginald Winstanley had no interest
at all in Hitler’s designs on eastern Europe, though it was clear to Rupert that war was more certain than ever.

He thought of his daily frustrations, the distance between what he had hoped for and what he had achieved. The things he believed in – a certain kind of Englishness, a resilience, a
tendency to laugh at authority, a quiet determination of the sort that Leo possessed – what was it worth? He wished he had not asked Clara to intercede with her father now because his days in
Berlin were numbered, anyone could see that.

His friend Melcher approached, accompanied by a pink-faced Obersturmbannführer with a poker up his arse.

‘Hello, Rupert. Herr Freiburg here has been explaining to me how the Jews are secretly running the world.’

‘I wish they would.’

The Obersturmbannführer frowned at Rupert for a moment, then stubbed out his cigarette as though grinding it into bare flesh, and turned on his immaculately polished heel.

‘They’d make a better job of it than the National Socialists,’ added Rupert, to his retreating back.

Melcher was regarding him with wry admiration.

‘Sometimes, Allingham, I think you actually want to be on the next train out of here.’

‘I have that in common with much of the population of Berlin.’

‘I can’t understand you. You’re in on the biggest story in Europe and you give them every excuse to get rid of you.’

‘Perhaps I’m just making up for our Mr Chamberlain.’

‘You mean the peace-maker? Our office is full of admiration for the way Chamberlain handled those negotiations. It’s just been decided that Adolf Hitler will be
Time
Magazine’s Man of the Year for 1938.’

‘Would that be for tearing up the Treaty of Versailles, rearming Germany to the teeth or persecuting the Jews?’

‘Mostly for his handling of the Anschluss. A war of flowers, they’re calling it.’

‘Ah yes. Herr Hitler, the patron saint of florists,’ Rupert observed. ‘I suppose it wouldn’t interest them to know that he also recently referred to the United States as
a Jewish rubbish heap?’

‘Probably not. The thing is, there are certain people in the States who would agree with that. Like those Hollywood chaps over there. They’re busy patching up a Nazi-Hollywood pact.
They’re happy to see Jewish employees fired in their German studios. They let the German censors dictate cuts to their films in every respect. Well, almost every respect – American
audiences do need a happy ending.’

‘Not something that’s ever troubled the Nazis.’

‘And besides, Herr Hitler has promised to stop at the Sudetenland.’

‘Hadn’t you noticed, Melcher? Hitler doesn’t keep his promises. It’s only his threats he keeps.’

‘You going to write that?’

‘Much good it would do. Hitler could spell out his intentions in giant neon letters and hang it all the way down Friedrichstrasse and my editor would say it’s a matter of
debate.’

Hearing his voice in his own head like a worn-out record he paused.

‘By the way, I saw Chuck Lewis earlier. I thought he’d done a bunk?’

‘Ah. That was a case of
cherchez la femme
. Turns out he was due to meet some woman in Lisbon but she never arrived. Same old story.’

Rupert cocked his head towards Goebbels, who was making a grand tour of the room, bidding farewell to the female guests with hand-kisses as Magda stood by.

‘How’s our Minister’s own love story?’

‘You heard he tried to get Magda to agree to a
ménage à trois
?’

‘Sounds a little Parisian. I thought we were supposed to be shunning all things French?’

‘Hitler thought the same. Magda informed the Führer and now Goebbels is in the doghouse. He’s furious about losing his status with his beloved boss. Apparently he’s
determined to do something to regain his popularity.’

‘Something nasty, I assume.’

‘Another attack on the Jews, probably.’

‘So if Joseph unleashes one of his pogroms Magda only has herself to blame.’

‘Here’s another thing.’

Melcher leaned closer.

‘Apparently Himmler has been taking full advantage of Goebbels’ predicament. He’s been compiling a list of actresses who have received advances of a sexual nature from the
Propaganda Minister. His men are conducting interviews with these ladies at the Lichterfelde Barracks and getting together a dossier.’

‘A
dossier
? The Reichsführer-SS is compiling a dossier against the Propaganda Minister? What for?’

‘Bedtime reading for the Führer, presumably, if Goebbels puts another crippled foot wrong. Hitler hates sexual impropriety.’

‘It beggars belief.’

‘Oh, they’re all at it. Goering hates Goebbels, Himmler despises the pair of them. It’s a miracle they can focus on the international situation considering the number of
internal wars they’ve got going on in the Party.’