A War of Flowers (2014) (6 page)

Sipping her champagne, she wondered if there was any way Chanel would be able to detect that Clara’s lipstick was by her arch rival Elizabeth Arden. The manager of the Elizabeth Arden
salon on the Kurfürstendamm, Sabine Friedmann, was another friend and often gave Clara samples of lipstick, mascara and the fabulous Eight Hour Cream. Indeed Sabine had sent a couple of
messages recently asking her to call in. She hoped it was for something nice.

Across the room the mellifluous flow of French conversation was intercut with the jagged, polysyllabic growl of German. There was no need for Nazi uniforms here; the men in their impeccable Hugo
Boss suits and mandatory swastika pins were identifiably Nazi government officials, but in Chanel’s salon they were spared the looks of hostility or trepidation they met elsewhere in Paris.
That must account for their boisterous good humour. The leader of the group was a handsome man with sandy hair swept off a high brow whom Clara recognized as Chanel’s lover, Baron Hans
Günther von Dincklage, better known as Spatz.

Though Chanel was famous for loving black and white, her love life was a distinctly grey area. Most of her relationships were with married men, including a long running affair with the Duke of
Westminster, but the scandal which had recently leaked into the Paris newspapers concerned her liaison with Spatz, the special attaché at the German Embassy in Paris. Sections of the French
press had waged war on Spatz, accusing him of building up a spy network throughout Paris reporting directly to the Gestapo, monitoring German exiles in Paris and passing on their addresses to
Reinhard Heydrich. Watching Spatz now, possessed of the loud, confident demeanour of a German abroad, Clara could understand, just, what Chanel must see in him. She was known for liking winners,
and Spatz, with his suave, playboy’s manners, blond hair and distinguished looks, fitted precisely that template, not to mention the fact that he was more than a decade younger than her.

The man Spatz was talking to was his equal in good looks, with a broad, intelligent forehead and neatly parted tawny hair above eyes set widely apart. In his well-cut grey flannel suit he looked
vaguely familiar and Clara racked her brains to place him. Was he a studio executive? A politician perhaps? She hoped very much that she would not be obliged to talk to him.

A waiter approached with a bottle of champagne and, unthinkingly, Clara held out her glass. The conversation that afternoon, and Guy Hamilton’s request, had set her nerves on edge. It was
not only the thought of what she was being asked to do, but the timescale involved – just weeks perhaps – that alarmed her. She took a sip of crisp bubbles and tuned into the
conversation of the women beside her, who were arguing about the secret of Chanel’s success.

‘It’s all down to tailoring,’ said an exquisite blonde, wearing the gold lamé evening dress and short jacket that Chanel had showed for that year’s collections.
‘Chanel can make a woman look like a princess just through tailoring.’

‘Except when she’s a real princess,’ said another.

There was general laughter. Everyone knew this was a reference to Elizabeth, the frumpy new queen of England, elevated as a result of Edward VIII’s liaison with Wallis Simpson.

‘In London Wallis and Elizabeth both used the Elizabeth Arden salon in Bond Street,’ murmured another woman. ‘The staff had a terrific job trying to keep them apart. Sometimes
they had to pretend they were closed for redecoration when there was a clash. Anything rather than have that pair end up side by side.’

‘Wallis can be most awfully amusing,’ said a petite figure with a bob as sleek and black as a bird’s wing sweeping across her cheekbones. ‘When she was asked what Queen
Elizabeth could do to boost British fashion, she said, “She could stay at home!”’

‘The Duchess of Windsor is a loyal customer,’ came an imperious voice. ‘I won’t tolerate gossip about her.’

Coco Chanel had materialized among the women as silently as a cat, accompanied by a gust of Camel cigarettes. She had a hard face and taut neck, from which several ropes of pearls were hanging.
Her skinny legs were bowed like a grasshopper and her intelligent, feline glance travelled across Clara’s moss-green dress as though calculating to the last pfennig its provenance and likely
cost.

‘Good evening, Mademoiselle Vine,’ she said softly, resting a silken claw briefly on Clara’s arm. Then more loudly she addressed the women around her.

‘I have always been a great admirer of the Duchess. When the Duke was courting Wallis, Winston Churchill came to dine here with me at the Ritz and begged me to exert my influence. He
wanted me to persuade the King of England not to marry an American divorcée.’ She gave a laugh, like the snort of an aggressive little bull. ‘Winston burst into tears and said,
“A king should never abdicate!” David should do his duty. Could I not persuade him to think again? I said, “Winston, are you asking me to stand in the path of true
love?”’

‘What would you have done, Mademoiselle Vine?’ She switched to English, with a glance of cool scrutiny. ‘Do you believe anyone should stand in the way of true love?’

‘I think love has its place, but Churchill’s right. There are times when duty is more important.’

‘Ah, a realist then! I think you, Mademoiselle Vine, are like me. Passion fades. Only work remains. You need to be a realist when your work is peddling dreams. Because that’s what we
both do, isn’t it? We peddle dreams. We put romance in people’s lives, even when there’s none in our own.’

‘I suppose that’s true.’

Chanel’s feline smile was shot through with spite. ‘I’m sorry I don’t know your work. Perhaps you think me rude, but since my time in Hollywood I never go to the movies.
I find them insufferably dull.’

Though Chanel had made the trek to America, her hopes of a new life designing for Hollywood had fallen flat and she had returned to France with a lasting grudge against a film industry too
philistine and shallow to appreciate her talents.

‘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.