A War of Flowers (2014) (5 page)

Clara gasped. ‘Eva Braun? If she’s Germany’s best-kept secret, how on earth would I go about even meeting her?’

‘She admires your work, doesn’t she?’

Clara paused, remembering a postcard with a scrap of neat, curly handwriting on it that had arrived at the Babelsberg studios the previous year. ‘
Just wanted to tell you how much I
enjoyed Black Roses.
’

‘You’re talking about that fan letter.’

‘Exactly.’

‘She sends plenty of actors fan letters. She sees all our films, several times over. None of us know who she is, of course. She doesn’t mention the fact that she’s seen our
films sitting next to Hitler at the Berghof. Anyhow, how on earth did you hear about it? I didn’t exactly pin that postcard up in my dressing room.’

He shrugged. ‘All her mail is monitored. They keep a very close eye on her, as you can imagine. So I’m sure your letter was genuine. She adores Ufa movies, as you say. Appears to be
somewhat fanatical about the cinema. She’s going to the Venice Film Festival next year.’

Clara looked out at the city beneath her, but in her mind’s eye she had already travelled far beyond it, across Europe to the distant Alps of Bavaria, towards the slight, blonde figure of
the Führer’s girlfriend watching movie after movie in the Great Hall of Hitler’s impregnable mountain retreat.

‘I don’t see how . . . just because she sent me a letter . . . I mean, Hitler keeps her out of sight, doesn’t he? Magda Goebbels says Eva Braun wasn’t even allowed to
meet the Duke of Windsor when he was in Berlin last year. Hitler made her hide in her room. Not even the top brass are supposed to know Eva Braun’s exact status. She can have anything she
wants, except to be known as Hitler’s girlfriend.’

‘And one of the things she wants is to meet some famous actors. Celebrities, you know. Perhaps have a look around a film set. You could offer to show her round.’

Despite herself, Clara laughed out loud. ‘I think you’re rather overestimating my powers of persuasion. How on earth would I do that?’

‘We’ve thought of that. There’s a film being shot in Munich.
Good King George
, it’s called. About the Hanoverian monarch, I hasten to add, rather than our present
king. All entirely above board. It’s directed by a chap called Mr Fritz Gutmann, who we understand would like to make his career in England very soon. He’ll be getting in touch with you
about an audition for the role of Sophia, the unfaithful wife. She falls in love with a Swedish count, but their affair is destined to be unrequited.’ He squinted pensively. ‘It goes
without saying we’re hoping you get the part.’

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 thought 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.

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.