Hitler's Girls (4 page)

“I suppose I couldn’t face the implications of what Monica was saying. I mean, what do you do when a friend goes right out of it, like that?

“I thought of going and calling Mrs. Walker, who had by now huffed off back to her own house. But I decided against it. To think of the gossip—no, I couldn’t do that to Monica. She has—had—a good mind, even if she couldn’t do the
Times
puzzle in ten minutes—I know, I know, but some can, no names mentioned.

“‘I’m Hitler’s daughter,’ Monica said. ‘I’m being followed. Jim, for God’s sake help me!’”

Putzi took me to the circus today. You can walk to it across a wooden bridge over a stream, there are ducks swimming about and Putzi made me laugh when he threw bread onto the island and hit them with it. “Hurry up Clemmie,” the big woman calls to me as Uncle Leader and his friends arrive and sit down in ringside seats just in front of us. “Yes, hurry up and go with your Uncle Führer,” the big woman who is Magda shouts to me. A piece of paper, caught by the wind, floats over the sea which is shallow and choppy. I’m anxious—I want to go back to England—but when I see Uncle Leader smile at me I want to stay here with him. Is this the first time I have understood the Führer—does he smile at me because he secretly knows we love one another? Can I go over to him now, I ask the big woman Magda and she nods at me as the music grows louder, as the big woman settles in her chair and looks back at me and smiles, the same smile as Uncle Leader’s, only more happy and it’s all for me
.

It grew dark and torches were lit for the circus. I was happy at last. I know I have Uncle Leader forever—and I understand the game the Führer likes to play in the garden. To celebrate the genius of the Führer we must salute, we must stand like statues, waiting for him to grant us life
.

I’m in Monica’s house. It was too late by the time I left Jim Graham, to find a cab. No minicab would come: “They don’t fancy coming through the Badlands to reach Bandesbury Road at this time of night,” Jim said and he laughed.

I shall make no comment on Jim Graham. The transcription of his revelations and opinion of Monica Stirling this evening speaks for itself.

Now the whole episode re-runs in my head, like the video that played and replayed. Mel’s face. The murder scene. And I am positive, now, that the arm holding the knife could belong to any of the girls. Everyone wants it to be Mel. Little wonder she ran off into the night.

The video ended at long last with the BBC News. Grim prognostications of success for European neo-fascist groups in the forthcoming Euro-elections. At this point Jim snapped off the TV and turned to face me. I was glad at that time that I hadn’t abandoned my position by the door, despite the
inevitable strain that standing for long periods inflicts on my back, which was injured on disembarking from a fishing-boat on a recent visit to St Ronan’s.

I resolve to record matters as they eventuate, without prejudice. I shall not think of Monica, or the house on the island, or the implications of what Jim Graham told me tonight.

But I have to speculate after hearing this extraordinary account on the possibility of Jim Graham’s incipient insanity. Killing, cruelty, and pain witnessed on a global scale over more two generations have conceivably altered his perceptions. Only a melodramatic reason for Monica’s distraught behaviour could occur to him.

I suspect—I know—that my old friend Monica came from the most blameless and respectable of backgrounds. The doctor and his wife in Eddleston were no doubt informed that the child they were pleased to adopt was of good English stock. The mother had not been able to afford to keep the child, neither financially nor psychologically. In the late fifties, before the Pill, these situations were commonplace.

Poor Monica—how she would have hated this tabloid rendering of her parentage. Monica liked privacy. She wanted to do good—and, as her work in the Social Services can testify, she did.

Monica’s last card to me bemoaned the cuts in assistance to single mothers. “Single parents” as PC Speak has it these days.

Was Monica the offspring of England’s most reviled woman, Clemency Wilsford, mistress of the man who sent millions to their deaths? Was Monica’s mother a “single parent” of her day, with Adolf Hitler as the absent father?

Impossible.

Then I see the knife upraised—I see it go into the quivering bundle of grey-brown coat, Monica’s hand stretched out in supplication on a pavement where blood gathers and falls into the gutter. And the knife shooting up, a triumphant spear above the tangle of limbs. The knife covered now in the same innocent woman’s blood.

The girl gang did it. Wanting money for drugs. If Mel is involved she can plead manslaughter. Jennifer Devant shall represent her… Jennifer is the best barrister in Edinburgh.

But I’m not in Edinburgh now.

I’m in Monica’s house. I shall sleep where I can. Not in Monica’s room, which has been turned upside down more thoroughly than the rest.

Not in Mel’s room. Old pictures of the Spice Girls and an unappetising mess of dirty black “gear,” as I believe this type of clothing is known, make the prospect unenviable in the extreme. I shall clear the sofa of the old newspapers, discarded sweet wrappers, and unidentifiable items of clothing with which this house is littered.

It will be light, I calculate, in four hours.

I go round the two-up, two-down little semi—thanking my lucky stars, I admit, that the Scottish Georgian group has seen fit to grant me my pleasant flat in the New Town.

Ugliness is totally unacceptable, like chaos and confusion. Monica, in the old days, used to agree with me there. She always loved colour, and the house is saved from utter drabness by the kelims and Mediterranean powder paints she has used liberally in sitting-room and hall. Poor Monica! She certainly did let herself go: indeed, it’s hard to tell how much the effect of her ruined home is due to the ransacking by the murderous gang and how much grew of its own accord.

Then I see it. I break off, and go pick it up. Before I cease speaking I record the time: 3.10 a.m. and in my hand is a brooch. I would recognise it anywhere. It lay under a battered cushion on the sagging settee. There are tiny diamonds round the frame and a central locket, containing a twist of hair. “Jean!” Monica’s voice comes back to me as clearly as if we sat together now, and the voice was not a memory, echoing from that Eddleston front room with the piano, all those years ago. “Jean,” the voice in my ear insists, “do you like it? It’s meant for me. I found it upstairs in Mother’s desk with my name written on a slip of paper by it. Shall I wear it for the end-of-term party? What do you think, Jean? What can it have to do with me?”

Oh Monica, now I look at it and turn it around, vacant smile spreading across my face like the woman in the Antiques Roadshow. For now, of course, it seems to decode itself: a dull gold locket, initials engraved on rear. Contains one lock of bright yellow hair, remarkably unfaded.

The second initial is W, worked to appear ornate and serpentine, though my throat closes in the effort to wish away the other letter, which clasps it like an eager half-moon. C and W.

“I don’t know what it is, Monica,” I repeat the words forty years later, this time to an empty room.

Then I see, in the nest of accumulated rubbish (a book with a broken spine, half its pages torn away; the remains of an old stuffed animal of Mel’s under the cushion) an assortment of notes that spill from a purse into the threadbare loose cover, falling into its folds like paper water. I pick them up—I count them, I take them to the table and set them in a neat pile on the only available space.

At least £200 here. Why on earth didn’t the ransackers take the money? So available, so easy to take and run.

Then it occurs to me: Monica’s house was never entered by the assailants we saw on the video on Jim’s TV. When they realised Monica was dead, they ran away. Monica was the one who caused all the damage to her own home. She was searching for something—not for money, not for this brooch. Why did Monica Stirling ransack her own house? What did she want to find?

“What are you doing?” Magda says. It is like a hiss, unfriendly. Then she says, “Girls who sleep with gods catch fire, and die.” I don’t answer. How can I? German is a hard and manly language, very precise and not like ours, full of vagaries and half the time you don’t know where you are. But I can’t answer Magda. I’m in a corner by myself, near the long table, with the candles in candelabras waving over all the silver and glass and food and wine bottles. Magda’s hemmed me in. I don’t want to talk to her. Tonight, I don’t want to talk to anybody. I just look at the flames of the candles and say, “Thank you.” She goes away, in the end. Good
.

We drove here in a fleet of long, black cars. So thrilling
.

Now there is charming piano music, waltzes by Strauss, or something, all played by the odious Putzi, a giraffe with the face of a frog, if you can imagine it, but I can’t see him and won’t think about him, not on this wonderful, wonderful night. Under the chandeliers, music floating round the room,
are the cleverest and most powerful men in the world, with Amadeus, as I call him to myself, the most clever and most powerful of all. He sweeps all the rot and corruption ahead of him like a tidal wave; he is making a new world, better and purer and cleaner
.

A wonderful spectacle, the men in their medals and orders, the women in their elaborate dresses and jewels. Tonight I am in white, simple as a nun, no jewels, my pure blonde hair swept up with only a gold clip to hold it
.

A little shiver runs down my long, white back, exposed by the simple gown. Is the evening growing colder, in spite of the candles and the crowd? Or am I, perhaps a little nervous, like a bride on her wedding night?

I am silent; I feel alone, somehow, in this great, important party. Suddenly, so quietly, there he is at my shoulder. “Come out with me,” he says. “Walk.” It is almost too great an honour. I can only nod and together we walk through the crowd, which parts for us as we go out onto the terrace. We stand away from the lighted windows, looking out on to the quiet, dark garden. So quiet—just the subdued sounds from inside the room. A little wind, carrying the scent of mown hay
.

He puts his arm on mine. I feel the roughness of his jacket against my bare arm. I screw up my courage. “Tonight,” I say. I can scarcely get the word out. Yet I have waited, waited so long
.

“Yes, my little one. Yes, my darling,” he says. Then the arm is gone. He is gone. I follow him, treading in his footsteps back into the room. I am dreamy, near fainting. Tonight. My wedding night, I think
.

The bedroom is gloomy, with thick curtains and a lot of heavy furniture. There are dull old engravings on the walls, showing buildings and people in old-fashioned clothing. Then over the mantelpiece there’s a picture of a naked woman cradling a swan in her lap. The swan is looking up at her, like a pet dog. So silly! Swans are very big and not at all cuddly. Everybody knows that. I have a beautiful nightdress, never worn before. It is satin with lace at the bosom. I have turned off the light but I cannot sleep, of course. Worse, I can hear men crossing and recrossing the hall below, loud voices, laughter and, further off, the constant ringing of a telephone bell. I can imagine the talk, the planning, the study table covered with maps and documents. Will he come? The waiting is unbearable
.

Across a chair by the window lies my white dress, gleaming in the darkness. Above the fireplace that huge painting, shining a little in the gloom
.

Then, louder voices, and heavy feet on the stairs and good-nights and all the rest of it. And still, I wait
.

Until a gentle knock on my door, so soft that if I had been sleeping I would not have heard it. I put on the bedside lamp,
and call, “Come in.” He is there, just a darkened figure in the dim light of the hallway. He comes in and closes the door. He is a little tired, I can see. His eyes a little dull. There is a loud voice further off. A door slams. He drops to his knees beside the bed and takes my hands in his. “My darling. My little dove. My blonde maiden,” he murmurs. The bed is high. I grasp his hands and pull him up. I rise up in the bed and put my arms about his neck. “My blonde maiden,” he says. “My little darling.”

He cannot insist. It is for me to act now. I unbutton his jacket and pull a shoulder free. He takes off the jacket and I pull him down, down, down onto the bed with me. I cover his face with kisses, I smooth his hair. “Are you tired?” I ask. “Never tired,” he tells me. Of course not. Amadeus is steel; he is thunder; he is lightning
.

Now there is a silence between us. He lies beside me on his back. He puts a hand on my breast. “Little darling, little sweetheart,” he says. “Little darling, little love—sleep now.” He raises up a little and kisses me, whispering endearments, over and over again. It is for me to act. “Undress,” I say, “and come to bed.” He gets up and moves to a corner of the room. I turn out the bedside lamp so that now I can see little but the white of his shirt
.

He comes back to me, still in his shirt, and then, there I am, in that huge high bed, with my love, my conqueror, beside me.
He puts his hand on my breast and with his other hand feels his own body, between his legs. I lie very still, silent
.

“Ah! Ah!” he sighs. I do not know if it is pleasure or pain. Pain? How can that be? I murmur, “My lover—my god—”

“Ah! Ah!” he sighs again
.

“I have waited so long—”

“Hush. Hush,” he says
.

Then he is on me, his hands digging like claws into my shoulders, no gentleness now, no words. Then with one hand he grasps me hard between my legs. I try not to cry out. This is blood and fire, this is purging flame, this is a man like no other, no other in the whole world. He is breathing hard. My open eyes look into his. They are wild
.