The Girl Behind The Curtain (Hidden Women) (3 page)

No, I told myself for the hundredth time. I had not fallen for Marco Donato because he seemed like a lost soul or someone who needed rescuing and I thought it might make me feel better to be that rescuer. I had just fallen for his wit and his charm . . .

And for the face in the old photographs I found online, a small voice reminded me. The model-handsome face that no longer existed. Even alone in my room in Berlin, I blushed with shame as I remembered how excited I had been at the idea that someone as glamorous and good-looking as the man in those pictures might be interested in someone like me.

But what did that matter any more? After I insisted that he see me, Marco had sent me away in such a determined and final manner that I could do nothing other than believe he sincerely hoped he’d never see me again. I had heard nothing from him since. The crazy fantasies we had shared were fast fading even in my overactive imagination. It was time for me to move on.

Chapter 2

The
Adlon Hotel, Berlin

Monday 9th May 1932

Dear Mum
my,

I am w
riting to you from Berlin! I’m sure Papa has told you I’m to be cut off altogether after the incident in Munich, but I know you won’t take any notice of him. I feel certain you will want to know how I am getting on, so I’m writing to let you know that I am getting along very well indeed.

Of course, Cord has been looking after me here in the big city and I’m sure we will be engaged just as soon as he has finished his training. I know that when Papa finally meets Cord in person, he will understand absolutely why I fell for the lovely man. He’s not just tall and handsome, he’s clever and very polite. Papa will be glad I didn’t come back to do the season and end up with some chinless wimp like Eleanor’s husband. I know she is my cousin and I should be more generous, but really, Mummy, I’m sure you agree.

I must go now. Cord has promised to take me to a cultural evening at the Opera and he’s picking me up in ten minutes. Please write soon and if you could send a few quid at the same time, it would be gratefully received. Only on a temporary basis, of course. This hotel is expensive so Cord is going to arrange for me to stay with his relations until we can organise a wedding and get a place of our own. I am also looking for work as a bilingual secretary. I’m sure I’ll have something within the week.

Give my love to the dogs and to Papa, even if he says he doesn’t want it.

Your loving daughter,

Kather
ine

Katherine Hazleton, Kitty to her friends, sealed the envelope and took it to the post office, where she spent far more than she could afford on sending the letter back to England. She prayed that it would yield some kind of return. She was sure it would. Her mother had always been a soft touch compared to her papa. Kitty had no doubt whatsoever that Mrs Hazleton would defy her father’s inevitable furious decree that Kitty should be cut off without a penny.

Her crime? Kitty had fallen in love. His name was Cord Von Cord. Kitty met him in Munich. Cord was visiting his aunt, who ran the boarding house where Kitty was staying while she attended finishing school. Cord was a medical student. He was tall and blond and very, very good-looking in that chiselled German way. Totally swoonsome, is how Kitty described him to her finishing-school room-mate, Miranda. And he was scrupulously well-mannered too. At least, until after dark.

Kitty and Cord had been caught in her bedroom. Nothing had happened – not even, much to Kitty’s disappointment, a proper tongue-filled kiss – but Cord’s aunt simply would not believe it. A young lady alone in a bedroom with a man! Oh, the scandal! She sent Cord straight back to Berlin with a flea in his ear and telephoned Kitty’s parents the very next morning. Rather than wait around for her father to pick her up and face the long journey home to Surrey, listening to a lecture all the way, Kitty did a bunk, using the last of her cash to catch a train to Berlin where she took a room at the Adlon (the only Berlin hotel Kitty had ever heard of) and waited for Cord to come and justify her impulsive move.

Well, Cord did come to the hotel and he did tell Kitty that he loved her. They went to bed properly this time and did everything Kitty could imagine and quite a few other things beside. Who knew such dreadful acts could be so pleasurable! But then Cord told her that while he loved her passionately, he rather wished she hadn’t followed him to Berlin because, actually, he was already engaged to be married to someone else. He was sorry he’d neglected to mention it. His wedding would take place in two weeks.

How stupid Kitty felt then. She felt even more stupid two days later when her mother still hadn’t written with money and what little cash she had was almost run through. Perhaps it had been a mistake to pretend that Cord was planning to marry her. Perhaps the truth would have elicited a quicker response. The Adlon was terribly expensive and the manager flatly refused to give her credit, no matter who her father was. After three nights, Kitty moved out of the hotel and went to look for cheaper lodgings. She had to look for a very long time; the best parts of Berlin were suddenly closed to her. In the end, after a horrible day, dragging her suitcase for what felt like fifty miles, she checked into an absolute fleapit at the wrong end of the Kurfürstendamm – the legendary Ku’damm spoken of by the finishing school’s more experienced girls. It was awful. The only running water was coming down the
inside
of the walls. There was no fiancé, no bilingual office job and definitely no cultural evenings at the Opera. Kitty was all alone and absolutely skint.

But she still had her inner fire, is what she told herself as she gingerly lifted a grey blanket to check for bedbugs. Surviving in Berlin should be no problem at all. So what if she wasn’t in the best part of town? She had her street smarts and her savvy and she had just enough German to get by.

And to get into trouble, as it happened.

When Kitty booked into the Hotel Frankfort in the late afternoon, she found the neighbourhood shabby but otherwise unremarkable. As soon as night fell, however, the street outside was transformed. During the day, the locals shuffled grey-faced about their errands. In the evenings, everybody perked up and the street was transformed into a market, though not a market selling anything that Kitty would have wanted to buy.

But she had to go out. She was hungry and even the food her horrid hotel offered at a discount for residents was way beyond her budget. She put on her boots – the green boots her mother had bought for her on their last trip to London – and strode out onto the street. It was important, she told herself, to convey an air of confidence. When you tried to make yourself inconspicuous, that was when you marked yourself out as a victim. If you walked tall and with a purpose, no one would bother you. That was the theory. Alas, Kitty’s theory was wrong.

It started within a few feet of the hotel door. The catcalling and the whispers. One ruffian even went so far as to grab her arm and ask her, with incredible impudence, ‘How much?’

‘Unhand me,’ she told him, speaking English loudly and slowly, in the way that had won and was losing an empire. She shook him off and continued on her way. He followed her halfway down the street, making terrible kissing noises as he stuck close like a dog at her heels.

At last Kitty spotted a respectable-looking restaurant and quickly slipped inside. But while she was reading the menu, an elderly man came and sat right opposite her and made no bones at all about his desires. He called her ‘mistress’. She told him to leave her in peace. She wasn’t interested in having any company that night.

Perhaps he didn’t understand Kitty’s accent. Far from leaving her alone, the old man reached for her hand and pleaded. She
must
let him sit with her. He had been waiting his whole life for someone so lovely. He would spend the rest of his days in her service if she’d only say ‘yes’ to him. When should he start?

‘If you want to be of service to me,’ she told him in her best schoolgirl German, ‘you can tell that waiter to come over here and take my order. I’ve been waiting far too long.’

To Kitty’s astonishment, the old man scuttled off and the waiter duly appeared, with the old man right behind him. Kitty gave her order and closed the menu with an irritated snap.

‘I still don’t want any company,’ she told the old man, who was about to sit down opposite her again. She only wanted to fill in her diary. She had kept a daily diary since she was eleven years old and right then she had a lot to catch up with. ‘Will you please leave me alone?’ she asked. ‘Go on. Shoo.’ She waved him off.

With that, he fell to the floor at her feet and begged her not to send him away. He beseeched her. He would do whatever she required of him. She only had to say the word. All he asked was that she let him clean her boots with his tongue and after that he wanted nothing more than to lie prostrate upon the floor while she unleashed the contents of her bowels on to his head.

‘What?’

Kitty stood up. The man was still clinging to her ankles.

‘Unleash my what?’

Kitty’s German vocabulary was fairly limited but she certainly knew ‘
Scheißen’
. The old man repeated his fondest wish and added actions to make his meaning even clearer.

Fearing that the old man was about to pull down his trousers in the middle of the dining room, Kitty flew into a panic. She swatted at him with her napkin. He seemed to think it was all part of the game. The more she whipped him about the head with the dirty white cloth, the harder he clung onto her. And then he started
licking
her boots. Actually trying to clean the leather with his tongue. It really was too much.

‘Help!’ Kitty screamed. ‘Someone help me! Help!
Hilfe! Helft mir!
’

On the other side of the room, a young man, tall and smartly dressed, decided it was time to come to Kitty’s aid. He pulled the old man to his feet and, dusting him off quite gently, told him with a smile of wry amusement that he’d got the wrong girl.

‘But she . . .’ The old man gave Kitty’s green leather boots one last longing glance.

‘I know,’ said the young man. ‘But I don’t think that’s their meaning. She isn’t from round here. You heard her accent. Let her get on with her dinner and look for your ideal mistress outside. This lady doesn’t wish to be bothered.’

‘She’s asking for it, the way she’s dressing . . .’

‘How dare you!’ said Kitty. ‘Go away, you vile man.’

‘You’re a prick-tease, you are,’ said Kitty’s aged admirer.

The young man’s face hardened. ‘Come along, Grandpa.’ He nodded towards the door and the old man slunk away. Kitty collapsed back down into her seat and fanned her pink cheeks with her hand.

‘Thank you,’ she said to the young man. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you. That old chap was quite deranged,’ she continued. ‘Kept calling me “mistress”. He wanted to lick my boots and have me . . .’ Kitty pulled a face in place of the terrible word. ‘You
know
. On
him
. Can you imagine?’

‘I’d rather not. But it is what you were advertising,’ said the young man after a pause. He pointed at her footwear. ‘Green boots. Gold laces. Debasement and a bit of defecation.’

That was how Kitty came to be aware of the secret semaphore of footwear in Weimar Berlin.

‘You should stay away from red boots too, if you’re going to frequent this establishment. Red or maroon means you’re into flagellation.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Kitty. ‘These are the only boots I’ve got.’

‘In which case, best buy a longer skirt,’ said Kitty’s hero. ‘Or dine somewhere else. All the old dominas hang out here when they’re not busy.’

‘Dominas? I don’t think I understand you . . .’

‘I have to go to work now,’ he said. ‘But it has been nice to talk to you, Miss . . .’

‘Hazleton.’ She held out her hand. ‘Katherine Hazleton.’

‘Otto Schmidt.’

With gentlemanly grace, the young man lifted her hand to his mouth and pretended to kiss it. ‘Pleased to be of service.’

Kitty felt an unexpected tingle as for the first time she got a proper look at the young man’s startlingly blue eyes. He smiled in a way that suggested mutual recognition. This was something more than two strangers making passing acquaintance. Kitty watched Otto Schmidt leave the restaurant and found herself wishing he might have stayed.

Chapter 3

Venice, September last year

The Palazzo Donato was silent as ever. Outside, Venice carried on as it had always done, unchanged for centuries, entertaining all-comers from every country in the world. Late-summer tourists crowded the narrow streets and posed for photographs against the eternally romantic background of crumbling ochre buildings and sleek black gondolas in that perfect mellow light. The cafés of San Marco were doing a roaring trade. Meanwhile, liners as big as tower blocks docked at the Maritime Port and disgorged yet more visitors, keen to lay eyes on the most beautiful city on earth.

Unseen inside the courtyard garden of the Donato house, the roses were putting on one last show. The fountain was turned off; only the persistent drip that provided a shower for the dusty sparrows revealed that it still worked at all. The statues of Orpheus and Eurydice still reached for each other in vain. The gallery from where the palazzo’s original owner, courtesan Ernesta, had once observed the comings and goings of her eminent guests, echoed only to the sound of Silvio the old retainer’s footsteps as he went about his business like a monk.