The Girl Behind The Curtain (Hidden Women) (22 page)

Bea

xxx

Inside the inner envelope was a diary and yet another note. I put the diary, which was blue and A5 in size, to one side while I opened the pale cream envelope that had accompanied it. This note was written in Italian. It said:

Dear Signorina Thomson,

I know you like to make a study of diaries. Here is one that you should read at once. For your own sake and for Marco’s.

Yours sincerely,

Silvio Fiorangelo

It was a moment before the name made any sense to me. When it did, I was astonished. Silvio had written to me? Silvio the old retainer from the Palazzo Donato? It made no sense at all. Then I opened the diary. I recognised the sweeping handwriting at once but the words were in Italian again. It took me a little while to translate them.

‘
I am writing this under duress
,’ the first paragraph began. ‘
My psychiatrist thinks it might aid my recovery to set down the story as I remember it. He is worried that I am being too harsh on myself. He thinks that writing rather than talking might enable me to properly reconnect with the facts of the matter rather than indulge my feelings of guilt. I’ve told him that my guilt is a fact of the matter. After all, I know exactly what I’ve done.’

I stared at the page. Did Marco know I had
his
diary in my possession? He almost certainly didn’t, otherwise why would Silvio have written the covering letter? I closed the cover and my eyes as well, as though that might absolve me of having read something I shouldn’t. Make it disappear like the diary in my dream with its vanishing writing. I opened my eyes again. The book was still there.

When was this diary written? The cover said 2001. I reread the first paragraph. Marco’s unhappiness was so obvious. He was writing under duress. I was reading out of prurience. I shut it again before anyone saw me looking at it, as though they might have known what it was and judged me for it.

I didn’t drink my tea. I left enough euros on the table to cover my bill, put Marco’s diary in my bag and headed home right away. I told myself I wasn’t going to read the diary. Not if Marco hadn’t expressly asked me to himself. But I think I already knew that I would, and I wanted to do so in the privacy of my own study. I hurried across the Volkspark as though I was evading arrest. I felt furtive. I was, after all, carrying stolen property.

What had possessed Silvio to take Marco’s diary and give it to Bea? He didn’t know her. He barely knew me. Why did he think I could be trusted with such a personal possession? If I told Marco that I had the diary, he would be within his rights to give Silvio the boot. And yet . . .

When I got to the Hufelandstrasse, I was grateful that the door to Herr Schmidt’s apartment was closed and I didn’t have to make up some excuse to avoid conversation. Half an hour after Nick had handed me the parcel, I was alone in my bedroom, with the diary on the bedspread in front of me. I got out my Italian dictionary. Feeling just as much guilt as the diary’s author, I opened the first page and dived into Marco’s past.

Chapter 29

Wednesday 22nd March 1933

Dear Diary,

At last, a letter from Mummy. It was waiting for me when I came downstairs for breakfast this morning. Enno handed it over, commenting as he did so that it felt rather thick.

‘Maybe some money, eh?’ he said.

‘I certainly hope so!’ I told him.

There was indeed a money order for twenty pounds – such riches! – and three sheets in my mother’s extravagant handwriting, bringing me up to date on everything that had happened since I ran away to Berlin. It seemed my father hadn’t decreed that I be cut off from the family after all. Quite the opposite.

The Grange, Surrey

Monday 13th March 1933

My Darling Darling Kitty,

Thank goodness you wrote. We have been so very worried! Then to get your letter saying that we’ve forgotten you exist! Oh, you’ll laugh when you hear what really happened. You must think we are terrible parents.

Of course the minute your father heard about that silly little incident at the finishing school, he went straight to Germany to fetch you home. He got to Munich less than forty-eight hours later only to have the horrible headmistress tell him you’d gone to Berlin in pursuit of that terrible Cord Von Cord boy. So your dear father took the overnight train straight to Berlin and presented himself on Cord’s doorstep first thing in the morning. When he discovered that Cord had seen you but had sent you off into the city on your own because he was already engaged to be married, your father caused the most awful scene. Cord’s fiancée and her family were at the house at the time. I don’t believe she was his fiancée for much longer.

But since you weren’t with Cord, the trail was cold. Your father spent five more days in Berlin searching high and low. He went to the Adlon, of course, since that is where Cord last saw you, but they said you’d checked out that very day with no forwarding address. So Papa visited all the girls’ hostels in the city and showed your photograph to everybody he met but no one had any idea where you might be at all. He thought he saw you on the platform at the Lehrter Bahnhof and chased hundreds of yards to catch up with you, only to discover it wasn’t you at all but a boy dressed in girl’s clothing. Can you imagine? An actual cross-dresser in the train station! What a funny lot those Berliners are!

He came back to England quite broken-hearted. I told him you would not be lost for long. You always were a resourceful sort of girl. I felt certain you would have found yourself good lodgings and perhaps even a job and that you would write to us soon. But no letter came. Every morning, I would wait for the postman to arrive. Every afternoon I would write another letter to you and put it in the top drawer of my bureau. You will be able to read them all when at last you are home.

The months passed. We were getting more and more desperate. I know your last exchange with your father was an angry one, but I could not believe you would not have sent even a postcard to let us know where you were.

And then in September, we were invited to dinner at a neighbour’s house. You don’t know the Bradshaws. They moved in after you left for Munich. Well, I didn’t want to go but your father insisted. Well, darling, thank goodness he took a strong line with me. Margery Bradshaw is no great conversationalist – in fact she is rather a bore – but that evening we got talking on a very dull subject that unexpectedly brought joy to my heart. She told me she and her husband had been waiting all week for a cheque from the building society and it hadn’t turned up. Neither had a birthday card sent to their son from her mother. A birthday card that contained a postal order!

The more Margery complained, the more other people at the party added to her chorus of woe. Mrs Johnson said she too had been waiting for a birthday card that never arrived. She knew her mother would not have forgotten. The Major said he’d assumed that year’s dearth of Christmas cards was due to his having made a fool of himself at his niece’s wedding. Well, perhaps in his case that was true, but it was all stacking up. Almost everybody who lived within two miles of us was missing some of their post. Eventually, Papa asked everyone to tell him exactly what they thought they ought to have received. He made a note of it and together with Mr Bradshaw he went to the police the following morning.

Well, it turned out that our postman – that shifty chap with the eyes too close together – had been going through the mail, opening envelopes in the hope of finding money inside and, when he couldn’t seal the letters up again without it being obvious they had been tampered with, he would hide them in the attic of his house with the intention of disposing of them later on. Of course, he hadn’t been hiding all the post, because then we would have discovered his crime altogether sooner. He was too clever for that.

But your letters were among those found in his attic, my love. He had opened every one. How I hate to think you might have thought we’d forgotten all about you! Not for one second. Of course, Papa was angry about the whole Cord affair, but when he thought we might have lost you altogether, he quickly got over that.

Oh, I am so relieved that you’ve written again. And with such good news! An engagement!

Your father is not sure what he thinks about your sudden betrothal but I have a feeling he will come round to the idea. Otto sounds like the perfect gentleman. Training to be a lawyer and musical with it! I am so glad he is musical. I could not bear the thought of you ending up with someone without a creative bone in his body. I did exactly that with your father. Oh, of course I love him but from time to time, I wish he would surprise me and I know he never will.

But I digress. Now that we know what has become of you, we need to know when you are coming home to England. We will have a lovely party for your new German boy! Write back at once so that I know you have received this. I am rather paranoid about the post these days. I’m not sure it’s safe to send your birth certificate this way.

Papa sends a kiss, as do the dogs.

Your ever loving,

Mummy

xxx

It was so wonderful to hear from Mummy. I read her letter over and over and pressed it to my face so that I could smell her perfume. Patou’s Joy. To think that postman might have rendered me estranged from my family for ever. Thank goodness he had been caught out. I showed Otto the letter that evening.

‘I knew they wouldn’t have cut you off,’ he said. ‘A woman as wonderful as you must have wonderful parents. They must have been so worried.’

‘We must arrange a trip to see them,’ I said. ‘I know they will love you.’

I hesitated for a moment before I dared suggest, ‘You know, perhaps we could have our wedding in England. Now that I know they haven’t cut me off after all. My parents’ house is rather large. We could have a marquee in the garden. Mummy would love that so much.’

‘So long as you would love it too,’ said Otto. ‘We will marry wherever you like. All that matters to me is that you are happy.’

‘Then how about you make me happy now?’ I suggested.

I took him by the tie and led him to the bed. ‘Take your jacket off and make love to me at once.’

‘You are a terrible domina,’ he said. ‘I should have guessed that the first time we met.’

‘I think I’m quite good at being a domina, actually,’ I said.

‘Perhaps terrible is not what I meant.’

‘Your English could do with improvement,’ I nodded. ‘Perhaps you should conjugate some verbs. And every time you get one wrong, you will have to take off another item of clothing. And then you can take all my clothing off too. I don’t suppose it will take very long.’

‘It will be even faster if you are the one who has to conjugate her verbs. In German.’

To tease him, I decided I would conjugate ‘zu ficken’. To fuck.

‘That’s it!’ he said. ‘You got that wrong. You bad girl. Bend over the bed at once.’

He picked me up and plonked me down on the pillows. I quickly wriggled out of my dress.

He is so good at giving me pleasure. I wish with all my heart that I had saved myself for him. If I had known what was coming, I would never have looked twice at Matthew Spencer or Cord Von Cord. At least I know that I will never have to look for anyone else.

‘Otto Schmidt,’ I told him. ‘I love you so much I think my heart may explode.’

‘I cannot wait for you to be my wife.’

‘I cannot wait to be your wife. I can’t wait to take your name. Though “Kitty Schmidt” sounds like some sort of cat ailment,’ I teased. It earned me another tap on the bottom.

1st April 1933

What a horrible day. The Nazi Party called for a boycott of Jewish shops. It turned out their boycott included Jewish-owned nightclubs too. When I tried to go to the Boom Boom this afternoon, my way was blocked by a bunch of mean-looking thugs in the same hateful brown uniform that Gerd never seems to take off. They asked me what I thought I was doing, working for a vile Jew. I told them it was none of their business and they should be more polite. I pushed past them to the door, but one of the young men caught my arm and gripped it so hard it made me squeal.

How I wished that Otto were there, but in retrospect, I was very glad he wasn’t. He would not have stood by while those thugs tried to threaten me. He would almost certainly have challenged them to a fight and goodness knows what might have happened then.

The club opened as usual. It was a quiet night but by no means empty. Some of the customers told me they had quite deliberately chosen to come to the Boom Boom that night in defiance of the Party’s pathetic attempt to tell them who they should or should not consort with.

Schluter made an announcement that everyone who had made the effort to support him should have free champagne. I downed half a bottle as news filtered in of trouble all over town. The Nazis had even beaten Jewish women and old people as they tried to go about their business. How they can live with that kind of brutality on their conscience, I will never know.