The Girl Behind The Curtain (Hidden Women) (26 page)

‘Which song?’ I asked.

Everyone immediately had a suggestion but Otto refused them all. ‘It can’t be too popular. It can’t be a song that people are going to ask for night after night.’

‘How about “The Song is Ended”?’ suggested Schluter.

Otto and I shared a look.

‘You do know it?’ Schluter asked.

‘Yes,’ said Otto. ‘Of course. I think we all do.’

The other people gathered around the table that evening agreed.

‘It’s the perfect choice,’ said Marlene. ‘Hardly anyone requests it because the lyrics are in English, but everybody at least knows the tune, so it won’t seem odd if you start to play it.’

Otto agreed. ‘Then that’s the song we choose. Now, we must clear the escape route and have a practice run. Whoever is on stage at the time we give the alarm, someone backstage must be allocated to gather their street clothes for them and be waiting in the wings as soon as the curtain comes down, so they can do a quick change.’

Together with Marlene, I set about writing down the names of everyone in the room and allocating them a second – someone who would collect their things.

An hour later, we all knew how to find the passageway out of the cellar and we had all learned by heart what our duties were should the terrible moment ever arise.

‘It’s all rather exciting,’ said Isadora, but I could tell he didn’t really believe that. It wasn’t exciting. It was frightening. I wished it weren’t necessary but I knew Otto was not one to make us go through such a rigmarole for fun.

We said goodnight to each other especially tenderly that night. The enmities that are present in any workplace had been weakening over the months since Marlene was beaten and now it felt as though we were an unshakeable team.

‘See you tomorrow, everyone,’ said Schluter. ‘The show must go on!’

As we walked back to the Hotel Frankfort, Otto asked me if I thought he had gone over the top. He hoped he hadn’t scared anybody.

‘What you had to tell us might save our lives,’ I said. ‘With luck, we’ll never need to put the plan into action. The SA idiots who did over the Beluga Bar will be punished and calm will be restored. Think of the number of people that come over here on a Saturday night. I can’t believe they’re all going to stay away just because Herr Hitler says so.’

I thought I had done a pretty good job of convincing Otto that I was perfectly calm about the whole thing, but, in the end, I couldn’t keep my eyes from misting up on me.

‘Don’t cry, my sweetheart.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s just that I can’t believe that the next time I hear our song, I might have to run for my life. I wish we’d chosen something else.’

‘We couldn’t choose anything too popular,’ said Otto. ‘Or we’ll all be running for cover three times a night. No one ever asks for ‘‘The Song is Ended’’. It’s too much of a stretch for a bad singer.’

‘Will you sing it to me now?’ I asked Otto. ‘Just here. Just for the two of us, while the only thing it means is that you love me and I love you back.’

Otto nodded and started to sing for me. His voice, though he was keeping it quiet out of respect for the neighbours, still filled the room and my heart. By the time he finished singing, I was in floods of tears.

Otto stayed the night with me. He said his mother and sister wouldn’t mind and he no longer cared what his brother thought. Party morality was no kind of morality to which he wished to subscribe. As far as Otto was concerned, Gerd might as well be a stranger to him now. He would remain civil to him so long as it was useful for keeping the rest of us safe. That was all.

‘With luck,’ he added, ‘this is just a phase. When the German people get bored of young Adolf as they’ve got bored of every politician before, I’m sure it will be business as usual.’

When we made love it was with an added intensity. Otto had insisted that the plans we’d made that evening would by no means inevitably be pressed into action, but it was as though at some very deep level we both knew differently.

For that reason, we made love so sweetly. I wanted to take everything more slowly than before. Whereas previously I had joked that Otto should be as quick as he could because I needed my beauty sleep, I didn’t feel I could be so flippant again. I wanted our lovemaking to last for hours. I wanted it to be the kind of lovemaking that we could both look back on, if we ever found ourselves apart. I wanted to imprint myself upon him and bear his mark upon me. In me. I wished last night for a baby.

Otto kissed the tears from my face.

‘My sentimental darling,’ he called me.

In the morning, he pinched my cheeks and told me to cheer up.

‘Though, if you’re going to insist on making love to me as though every time might be our last, I’m perfectly happy if you worry for a little while longer.’

I am worried. When I first arrived in Berlin, I was surprised and impressed by how liberal the city seemed. London seemed quite stiff and reactionary in comparison. But that does seem to be changing. We all make jokes about Adolf Hitler but there are obviously an awful lot of people in this country who find his rhetoric compelling rather than ridiculous. I take much more notice of politics now than I did before. Gerd might almost be proud of me.

Chapter 33

Berlin, last October

As intrigued as I was by the deepening seriousness of Kitty Hazleton’s situation in 1933, another Berlin story had taken me over.

I continued to read Marco’s diary. I didn’t want to but I couldn’t keep away. I kept reading even though I was burning with jealousy as he described the time he spent with Silke. She had spent days in his company and nights in his arms. She’d had so much more of him than I ever did. I could hardly bear to think about it. There were moments when I wanted to tear the diary into pieces, but I had the feeling that I needed to read to the end, and so I carried on, with my Italian dictionary beside me, deciphering Marco’s handwriting and reading his secret story, even though my envy was driving me insane. I began to wonder whether Silvio had sent me this diary to scare me off or make me think I’d had a lucky escape. There were plenty of reasons here why Marco could be considered damaged goods. Yet I had to know more.

Marco spared me no detail.

Venice, 2001

We were together for four nights and they were the most amazing four nights I had experienced in my short, overprivileged life. I could think of nothing more wonderful than spending the rest of my days in a small cottage in the Lake District with this crazy, blue-haired woman. But of course, I wanted my cottage dream to run alongside my Eurotrash existence. And on Friday night, the Eurotrash was calling me. Specifically, Gianni was calling me. He called me all day long. Finally, when Silke was sleeping – as had become the pattern of our afternoons – I walked out into the lane and called him back.

‘Hey, bro. I heard you’re in England. What are you doing? Come to London tomorrow night. We’re having a party. Cameron Diaz is going to be there.’

‘Cameron Diaz?’

‘Yeah. You know that American guy who came on my boat last year? Well, he’s set up his own film production company. Cameron is doing a film with him.’

‘Who else will be there?’ I asked. I knew Gianni wouldn’t be offended by the question. It was automatic. We were all of us quite transparent when it came to how we decided to spend our precious weekends. If the faces didn’t fit . . .

Gianni reeled off a list of names, which contained scions of just about every great family in Europe. If by ‘great’ you mean rich.

‘Tell me you’re coming, bro. Won’t be a party without you.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ I told him.

‘Think about it? Where the hell are you anyway? Who are you with? You’ve got awful mysterious since that trip to Berlin.’

I laughed it off but I wanted to go to the party. I also wanted to spend more time with Silke, though, and we were supposed to be in the country all weekend. It should have been easy, right? I should have taken Silke with me. She would have loved to go along, I’m sure. She would have been fascinated by my friends and their trashy, spoilt ways. We could have laughed about it afterwards. But for some reason, the opinion of those trashy, spoilt people still mattered to me. When Silke woke up and came to find me, I had a flashback to the very first time I saw her. She was crumpled from sleep. She looked vulnerable. It made me hate her for just a second. I had a weird visceral reaction of horror to the thought that I might have saddled myself with someone who might need my care.

‘I understand,’ said Silke when I told her that Gianni had called and we needed to cut our romantic holiday short. ‘I wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to party with a proper movie star either. So when are we going?’

‘If we leave after lunch, I thought I could drop you off at the airport at five. There’s a flight at six thirty.’

‘What? You’re dropping me off?’

‘Yes.’

‘But I don’t need to go back for a couple of days. I thought I was going to come to London with you.’

‘I know, but . . .’

‘But what?’

‘Gianni. I mean, he’s only expecting me. I haven’t told him. I can’t explain it,’ I began.

Silke’s eyes flashed. ‘There’s no need to. I understand what’s going on. You don’t want to introduce me to your fancy friends. Is it the same crowd you were with in Berlin? Those braying idiots? You haven’t told them about me, have you?’

‘Of course I’ve told them about you,’ I lied. ‘They saw me leave the club with you that night. They know I spent all that time with you in Berlin. They knew back then that I was interested in you.’

Silke snorted.

‘But they don’t want me to come along to the party? There’s something else, isn’t there? There’s a girl. You’ve got a girlfriend. She doesn’t know you’ve been here with me and you’ve got no intention of letting her find out. Either she’ll be at this party I can’t go to, or you’re frightened that someone who knows her will be there and they’ll pass on the gossip.’

‘There’s no other girl, I swear.’ That much at least was true. I’d told Katrina it was over the day before I left for the UK.

‘Then why won’t you just take me along?’

How could I tell her? Because you look so different. Because I am frightened that people will judge me for being with you. Because I don’t have the strength to defend you from their stares.

‘Forget it,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I don’t want to come to a stupid party anyway. I saw what your friends are like the night we met. I’d rather spend the evening with the old people at work.’

For the moment, the conversation was over, but for the rest of the day Silke was distant. She had every right to be. I did my best to make it up to her. I took her out to dinner in the local town. I took her shopping – though there wasn’t much to buy. But I stopped short of doing what I should have done, which was tell her I wasn’t going anywhere without her by my side. And the following morning, we began the long drive back to London.

We had not been on the road for long when Silke asked if she could drive. I wasn’t quite sure she should – she had very little experience of driving anything, let alone such a powerful car. But I was so desperate to mollify her and make up for having hurt her that I pulled over, let her climb into the driver’s seat and take the wheel for the first time.

And it was fine, for a while, until I took a call from Gianni and Silke was reminded where we were heading and why.

‘I can’t believe you don’t want your friends to meet me,’ she mumbled. And then she put her foot down. She had been so nervous of driving my car, but suddenly she seemed very confident indeed. I watched as the figures on the speedometer crept upwards.

‘Silke,’ I said. ‘Slow down. The limit’s fifty on this sort of road.’

She just put her foot down harder.

‘Silke, please.’ We were doing seventy, but it felt a good deal faster, because the road was so narrow and bounded on both sides by high hedges.

‘Silke,’ I begged her. ‘Please slow down.’

By now the speedometer was showing ninety. On a straight piece of motorway we would have been fine, but a bend was coming. To this day, I am not sure whether Silke tried to negotiate that bend at all.

We ploughed into the hedge that concealed a stone wall. The car was hurled into the air. I remember glimpsing the road above our heads and then . . .

You know how time seems to slow down when you’re in danger? In reality, everything is happening in seconds, but somehow your brain arranges things so that you seem to have time to think and work out what best to do, even when you’re hurtling at warp speed towards oblivion. The car rolled and bounced but landed, by God knows whose hand, the right way up. I was wearing my seat harness. That kept me from the windscreen. Not so Silke. She hadn’t wanted to wear her harness because she said it hurt. So there was nothing to keep her in her seat. A blow to her head had left her unconscious.

I scrambled out of the passenger side of the car and raced to pull her free. For the first time ever, she felt heavy to me. It was hard to move her. I remember shouting and shouting that she needed to help me free her legs, but she was out cold. She didn’t seem to hear me at all.