The Girl Behind The Curtain (Hidden Women) (20 page)

We are invited to his mother’s house for lunch today. I am relieved that Gerd won’t be among us. He is at a training camp in Bavaria, learning how to defend the Nazi honour in the snow. I rather hope he stays there.

Chapter 25

Berlin, last October

I was making notes on Kitty’s diary when my mobile beeped. Steven had sent me a text message, asking whether I was really going to work all weekend. Didn’t I want to show him Berlin’s nightlife?

I hesitated, thinking back to Paris. I remembered the tension that had crackled between us as we sat on red velvet chairs in the Opera Garnier and later across a scrubbed wooden table in that Italian restaurant. Just thinking about it made my skin prickle. Was it ever going to be safe for me to be around Steven? Would I ever be able to be in his presence without feeling that subconscious urge to have him pull my body against his and kiss me passionately?

I could not risk it. I made my excuses and agreed instead to meet Steven for lunch the following day. Sunday lunch and daylight. I would be safe. I told him to meet me at the Ku’damm, outside the branch of H & M that had once been Heaven and Hell.

‘Fate keeps pushing us back together,’ he said.

‘Do you think it’s fate? I rather think it’s just that we move in very small circles.’

‘You used to be such a romantic. The old Sarah believed in fate.’

‘The new Sarah has read her Dawkins.’

Steven laughed.

‘I couldn’t believe it when Kat phoned me in Paris, telling me you guys had just been to a swingers’ club.’

I shook my head. ‘I didn’t know it was that kind of club.’

‘We met up and she told me that you’d dumped me for some guy in Venice. Seems pretty clear to me it didn’t work out.’

‘You’re talking about Nick?’

‘Yes.’

‘It wasn’t him.’

‘Oh, really. Then who was it?’

‘No one you know.’

‘But obviously someone very special.’

I nodded. Steven’s probing was starting to become frustrating to me and not because he was being unnecessarily nosy. It was because I knew that if I told him about Marco, it would sound ridiculous. Besides, it was over. I had heard nothing from Marco since my last furious email. I changed the subject.

‘Do you ever hear from Kat these days?’

‘Not often,’ Steven admitted. ‘She’s quite the star. She doesn’t spend much time in London any more. She’s always in Hollywood. In fact, she’s rumoured to be on the shortlist for Tom Cruise’s next leading lady – and I don’t mean in a film. All she has to do is convert to Scientology.’

We both laughed.

‘I’m sure she’d pull it off. Does it ever make you sad?’ I asked. ‘That’s she’s moved away?’

‘Not half so sad as it makes me not to see you.’

His fingers sneaked across the table in search of mine. When they were close, I thought I could almost see a spark jump across the gap. Our electricity, our chemistry was still strong. Before his fingers could actually touch mine, I lifted my hand to ask for the bill. Safe again for just a moment.

After lunch, Steven asked if we could go to the Helmut Newton collection. I couldn’t refuse. I’d told him I was free until four. As we walked there, we linked arms. He bought my ticket, despite my protestations.

‘I’ll expense you,’ he said.

‘Ever the romantic,’ I teased him.

The exhibition was challenging from the start. At the top of the stairs were four of Newton’s gigantic nudes.

‘He may have created these images that we’ve come to think of as fetishistic, but I think Newton really liked his women.’ I was quoting Anna Fischer. Straight from her thesis.

They were indeed strong images. While Newton’s women were naked, they were by no means vulnerable. I couldn’t help but compare their athletic beauty with the modern aesthetic, which demands that women are either the kind of thin that can only be achieved with an eating disorder or cartoonishly pneumatic. Neither were they waxed into a pastiche of prepubescence. It was hard to imagine any of them giving an interview to a women’s magazine in which they coyly shared with the readers their self-hatred.

‘When did it start to change?’ I wondered aloud.

I thought of Kat, with her extraordinary body confidence. She would have made a good model for Newton. She was proud of the way she was. She knew the power of her beauty and she used it.

‘You would have made a good Newton girl,’ said Steven. ‘You’ve got the physical strength. You’ve also got that indefinable thing inside you. And a timelessness. Look at this. Don’t you think this photograph is just like Manet’s Olympia? She may be naked but she’s got all the power.’

I wasn’t reminded of Olympia. I had another scene in mind. The sumptuous surroundings that were typical of a Newton set-up. Velvets and silks. Antiques. Jewels. The trappings of wealth. The defiant stare of the model.

That was how I had felt when I’d looked into the mirror at the palazzo. Not the first time perhaps, but definitely the second, when I knew for sure that I was being watched. My image, reflected back at me, was like a Newton photograph. Had I held all the power in that moment? Though I was looking at Newton’s black and white Amazons, Marco was back in my head.

‘I have missed you,’ said Steven suddenly. ‘It doesn’t seem to matter how long we’re apart. I see you and boom – all the old feelings are back.’

I continued to look at the photograph. I couldn’t trust myself to look at him. He seemed to follow my gaze to my fingers and soon our hands were entwined.

‘What happened in Paris? I thought that we were getting back together and all of a sudden you’re freaking out about how I really see you. I wonder if what actually bothers you is that I am the one person who does genuinely see you. I can see beyond the strait-laced image to what’s really going on beneath.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t think there’s anything going on beneath,’ I insisted.

‘But there is. I saw it in Paris when we were watching the dancers at the Crazy Horse and I saw it in London when we were at L’Infer. There is a side of you that is wild. So wild that you’re afraid of what might happen if you indulged it. I think you like to be watched and I think you like to watch other people.’

Steven was so close to me now that I could feel his warm breath on the side of my face. He talked quietly, forcing me to lean closer still to hear what he wanted to say, until his lips were actually brushing my face with each word.

He took my chin in his hand and turned my face towards his so that our lips were millimetres apart.

It would be so easy to give in. If he was right and I did want to be led astray, then Steven would certainly help me in that regard. He would not judge me for indulging my desires. It would not be safe to let Steven choose my path for me. If I was ever going to explore those parts of myself properly, it would have to be with someone I could truly trust.

‘I don’t feel safe with you,’ I said.

‘I understand.’

But he still would not let me go. He held my face in his hands, daring me to keep resisting him. He held me until my phone started ringing. It rang and it rang and it rang. A museum security guard started towards us, as though we hadn’t noticed.

‘You’d better get it,’ said Steven.

It was too late. The caller had been sent to voicemail. But whoever it was had broken the spell. I was grateful to them for that. Saved by the bell.

‘I should go outside,’ I said. ‘To listen to the message.’

‘I should get going too,’ said Steven, with a shrug of disappointment. ‘I’m supposed to see one of my colleagues give a talk at four. I’ll see you around.’

‘It seems unavoidable.’ I smiled.

Steven left me with the most tender kiss he had ever placed on my lips. I closed my eyes so that I didn’t have to watch him go. Some things were never meant to last, no matter how much you tried.

Outside, I listened to my voicemail. The caller was Nick. He said he needed to see me before he went back to Venice. It was important. Very important. Bea would skin him alive if I didn’t catch up with him. He sounded so flustered, I had to return his call straight away.

Chapter 26

Venice, last October

The Palazzo Donato was as silent as a grave. It was hard to believe that the house had once been the scene of wild parties that scandalised the whole of Venice. Silvio remembered how he had arrived at the house as a fourteen-year-old. Back then, Marco’s grandfather, the man after whom Marco was named, was still alive. The first Marco Donato had made his fortune and bought back the palazzo that had been built by one of his ancestors. Since the eighteenth century, the Donato family had seen many ups and downs but when Silvio arrived, they were on a very sharp upward trajectory. They needed staff. The house buzzed with activity by day and by night.

Marco’s grandfather soon ditched Marco’s grandmother for a younger model. He had chosen a film star. The entire male staff of the house had hidden in the garden gallery to watch her sunbathing in the nude. While she was the mistress of the house, there were parties every evening. So many famous faces arrived at the watergate: politicians, princes, dazzling silver-screen beauties. So much alcohol was drunk. So much flesh was bared. Almost every gathering ended in an orgy. Rumours spread throughout the city that the Palazzo Donato was the most exclusive bordello in the world. If any paparazzo had found his way into the courtyard garden, he could have lived off the proceeds of his pictures for the rest of his life.

Silvio, still just a teenager, quickly shed his naivety and learned the power of a reputation for discretion. Night after night, he received enormous tips just for keeping his mouth shut.

Now, the partygoers were gone. Ghosts.

Silvio hoped he had done the right thing.

Marco was sitting in his chair by the fire in the library. On his knees was Remi Sauvageon’s sketchbook filled with his loving portraits of Augustine du Vert. Marco had read Sarah’s research into Augustine’s short life. He knew it hadn’t ended well. Her death from tuberculosis had sounded so crushingly lonely. Marco could imagine nothing worse than such a solitary death and yet that was what awaited him if nothing should change. Marco tucked his own picture of Sarah on her first day at the library between the pages, imagining as he did so a pressed flower. A moment of life fast fading.

When he walked around the palazzo now, all he saw were ghosts. He remembered the parties, just as Silvio did. He especially remembered the Martedì Grasso party that had ended so badly. He heard Sarah’s voice. But there were other voices too, from further back in his past. And the dream of the accident was back. Every night, he was back in the car. Every night, he had a chance to make things different. Every night, he chose not to act and the nightmare ended the same. The flames were all around him again. There was nothing he could do to escape them. He put his hands to his face but it was already too late. He felt as though he would burn for all eternity. For what he had done, that would hardly be too long.

Chapter 27

Monday 27th February 1933

Dear Diary
,

There has been such drama in Berlin tonight. While Otto and I were working at the club, unknown to us the Reichstag was burning down. The Reichstag! That’s like the Houses of Parliament going up. We heard about it from Enno, who dropped into the club for a drink after his shift. Of course we had to go and see it for ourselves. It was the biggest conflagration I have ever seen. We could feel the heat from hundreds of yards away. The firemen had no hope of putting it out, though from where we were, we could see them doing their best. We could only stand and pray that no one was inside when the building went up. They would not have stood the slightest chance.

I found the whole thing quite exciting but Otto was very grave as he walked me back to the hotel. He says there is something fishy afoot. He says he does not understand how anyone was able to get into a government building and cause such a blaze without being interrupted. It would have taken more than a box of matches to set such a tremendous fire. I suggested to him that perhaps the Reichstag burned so well because it was full of papers. All those law books! Perfect for a bonfire.

‘Exactly,’ said Otto, rather darkly.

Tuesday 28th February 1933

Schluter says that the Reichstag fire is being blamed on communists, but he has other ideas. Just as Otto does. Apparently Gerd has been strutting around all day like a prize cockerel, making grave pronouncements about the dangers communism poses to the decent ordinary German.

This morning, an emergency meeting of Parliament was called and civil liberties were suspended. When I asked Otto what that meant, he said it means the end of the world as we know it. He says the change of law is not just about catching the people who set the Reichstag on fire – assuming it wasn’t the Sturmabteilung in any case. Otto has no doubt that Hitler and his ilk will use the fire as an excuse to start cracking down on their enemies. He is as vehemently opposed to the funny little man as his brother Gerd is so passionately for him. When I asked Otto who Hitler’s enemies are, he told me they are ‘people like us’. He said there are things happening behind the scenes – laws being made – that the people of Germany will not fully understand until those laws are used against them.