The Girl Behind The Curtain (Hidden Women) (31 page)

And without your grief to seal you in aspic, you wouldn’t have stayed the same either. You wouldn’t have carried on being so shallow and thoughtless. That’s the privilege of the very young. Other, smaller tragedies would have chipped away at your edges. You might have fallen in love and found yourself rejected a dozen times or more. You might have married. You might have divorced. Had you had children, your heart would have been pricked all over with the pain of loving them.

You too, would think of Silke from time to time and you would smile to remember that first night you spent together in Berlin.

What I am trying to say is simply this: I believe that Silke would want you to be happy again. She would want you to live life to the full on her behalf. She might even want you to be with someone like me.

Come to Berlin, Marco. Finish the story.

Your ever loving,

Sarah

I sent my email and sat back, looking at the glowing screen. I hoped I had said the right thing. I hoped Marco would appreciate that I had written to him from a place of love. I hoped he wouldn’t think it was sentimental claptrap.

I undressed and got into bed, feeling more tired than I had ever done. However, I wasn’t able to sleep. Every time I thought I was feeling dozy, my brain would kick in again, wanting to go over everything I’d said and written and done for pretty much my entire life. It was one of those nights when the past will not stay in the background and the future looks precarious and uncertain.

All the following day, I heard nothing in response to my email. I tried not to think about it, but of course it was the only thing on my mind. I went into the office and I met Clare for lunch. I think I did a pretty good impression of someone without a care in the world, but my hand was constantly on my BlackBerry, waiting for the vibration that told me an email had come through. Fortunately, Clare was too eager to tell me about her latest date to notice that I was distracted and back at the office, no one even looked up from their screens when I came in.

Evening came. I walked back to my flat, narrowly escaping death as I checked my BlackBerry one more time in the middle of the road.

I had an email but it was not from Marco. It was from a woman called Katherine Naylor. It read:

My grandmother has asked me to write to you on her behalf. She dictated the following as arthritis makes it difficult for her to type these days. She is almost a hundred years old! She says she is very glad you tried to track her down. The diaries are almost certainly hers. I have transcribed some pages she wrote on her return to England. The rest is as she told me earlier today.

I opened the attached file. Another story was coming to an end.

Chapter 39

It was right before Christmas 1933 that I left Berlin in the middle of the night. My parents had wired the money for my passage as soon as they received my telegram. My mother’s response was brief but it reeked of worry. I have to admit that during my time hiding out with Marlene and the gang, I had grown more worried myself. Otto’s sister had sent me a letter saying she was certain that Gerd would do what he could to have Otto sprung but two weeks had passed since the night the Boom Boom burned. If Otto had really punched a policeman in the heat of a fight, he would have been home by now. He was being detained under the laws that he had warned me about. The Nazi Party didn’t need a good reason to throw someone in jail even then.

Before I left, I gave my engagement pearl to Schluter.

‘Take this,’ I told him. ‘I’ve got the money I need to get back to England now but I don’t know how Otto will raise the cash to follow me. Please, sell the pearl and make sure he gets what you raise for it. He can use it to pay a lawyer and with what’s left over he can get out of Berlin.’

Schluter promised that he would get the best price and he did, though alas Otto would never get to use the money.

That night in 1933, Marlene accompanied me to the main train station. It was still strange to see her in her man’s clothes. It was strange too, how she changed when she was not in costume. Suddenly, she reminded me of my father with his Victorian manners. She insisted on carrying what few belongings I had. She was a proper gent.

‘I’ll see you soon,’ I said, as we embraced on the platform at the Lehrter Bahnhof.

‘Yes,’ said Marlene. ‘I’ll see you very soon indeed.’

I would never see her in the flesh again.

I did not sleep for the entire journey. Even when I was out of Germany and well away from the Nazi bullies, I regarded everyone with suspicion.

My parents were ecstatic to see me. They were waiting on the dock at Dover when my boat arrived. My mother was dressed to the nines. My father had a new car. When Mummy reached out her arms to me, I finally crumpled in shock. Not only had I not slept in four nights, I had not eaten anything either. I was so light and weak that Papa was able to lift me like a child. He laid me down on the back seat of the car and Mummy covered me with her new fur coat.

It was a long drive back to High Trees, my childhood home, which I had left in disgrace a couple of years before, off to finishing school in Munich. My parents spoke in whispers, but I could hear every word.

‘What on earth has happened to her? He must have called the engagement off.’

‘I knew it,’ said my father. ‘I knew it. He was never a lawyer. She met him in a nightclub, for goodness’ sake. Now she’s found out that he’s a liar and she’s been left heartbroken. Still, at least it happened before the wedding so we won’t have any nastiness with a divorce. He must have been a gold-digger.’

I didn’t have the strength to tell them the truth. Not then.

Later that day, once my mother had forced some chicken soup down me while I sat propped against the pillows in bed, I did tell her the truth of the matter. She listened with growing concern.

‘But why would they put him in custody, dear? It must be more complicated than you imagine. It can’t only be because he was working in a nightclub that was owned by a Jew?’

It would be a long while before my mother fully understood the whole story. Years, in fact. At first, the trickle of Jewish immigrants arriving in London would not seem to be such a significant story. After 1939, we’d all know differently. And then my parents would understand that my grief for Otto was not the simple grief of a girl who’d lost a boyfriend. They understood that I had lost the love of my life.

Back in 1933, my parents were still horribly confused, but at least after that first night, my mother did not mention again the Christmas party she had planned. I would not have to be paraded in front of the neighbours. I was in no state to meet anybody. Not without news of Otto. The last thing I wanted to do was celebrate.

Marlene wrote to me in the new year. She told me everything she knew about Otto, which was not much. The last she had heard was that he had been charged with pimping, of all things, and sent to a prison camp. No one had been able to visit him.

Marlene herself was living a very different life from the one she had enjoyed before. She had given up dressing as a woman, she said. Isadora, too, was a changed man. They had not seen Schluter for a while. He had gone to visit relatives. Someone thought he might have got out of Germany altogether and gone to New York, where he had a cousin who ran a club that was almost a twin of the Boom Boom.

I received a last letter from Marlene in 1938. By that time, Hitler had turned his attentions to the gay community. Though Marlene had toned his life down, I doubt he’d really had the willpower to stay away from rent-boys altogether. I can only imagine that he followed Otto to a camp.

In 1941, Schluter wrote to me from New York to tell me he thought it was time to put the money from Otto’s pearl to good use. I agreed he should release the funds to an underground group helping Jewish refugees escape Germany. I know Otto would have approved.

During the Second World War, I did my bit for the war effort by becoming a land girl and working on the farm attached to the Spencer family house. I didn’t tell anyone about my time in Berlin. It would have been too hard. While they were living in fear of the Blitzkrieg, no one would have wanted to hear how much I had loved my time in Germany. How a German had become my true love.

I tried to find out what had happened to Otto but got nowhere. And then it was twelve years after I’d left Berlin in the middle of the night. The war was over and the Nazis had been vanquished. Otto would be free to contact me at last. But he didn’t. And eventually I had to accept that either he was dead or he had made himself a life that had no room for me in it. I had to do the same.

I finally married at the age of thirty, which was very late in those days. My husband was a good man. I don’t think he was ever in love with me, as I was never properly in love with him, but we had great affection for one another and once we had our two boys, we were very happy indeed. I made an effort to think about Otto less often. I allowed myself to be truly sad only once a year: on his birthday.

Decades passed. I have grandchildren now. Great-grandchildren. But still from time to time I’ll see a familiar-looking young man walking down the street and I’ll have to catch my breath before I remember that my long-lost love would be more than a hundred years old now. Otto is eternally young to me. They all are: Otto, his sister Helga and Gerd.

I wrote back to Kitty at once, telling her that Gerd was still alive and was eager to talk to her. The following day I received another email, dictated via her granddaughter.

I assumed that Gerd must have been lost in the war too. I sent a letter to the address in Hufelestrasse in the 1950s. I heard nothing in response. You must tell him that I meant everything I said back then. I forgive him. Otto would have forgiven him. My only feelings for Gerd are those of a loving sister.

A week later, an actual letter arrived from England.

Chapter 40

Gerd asked me to read the letter to him. We sat opposite each other in his tidy sitting room. I knew now that the table where we had dined together was the table where Kitty and Otto had announced their engagement. I knew that the clock on the wall was the clock that ticked in the awkward silence after Gerd heard the news.

‘Are you sure you want me to read to you?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Because of your voice. When I hear your voice, with your accent, I can almost hear Kitty. It will make it as though she is speaking to me.’

I read aloud.

Otto would not have wanted you to punish yourself for the rest of your life. He loved you and would constantly remind me that beneath the SA uniform, you were still the little brother who had shown such generosity and bravery as a small child. He was certain that had your father lived, you would not have been taken in by the Party. Instead, you would have drawn strength from your papa and become a great force for good.

Losing Otto changed all our lives, but when I look back over the vast plain of years, spreading out behind me, I see there are glittering moments of happiness that I might not have experienced if Otto and I had not been parted that day. I have my children and my grandchildren and I have told them all Otto’s story. I hope I have passed on to them even a tenth of your brother’s sense of justice, his generosity and his kindness, his ability to see the good in everyone. Even you. Especially you, Gerd.

Know that Otto loved you, and so do I.

Kitty xxx

The following morning, I knocked on Gerd’s door as I headed out. He did not answer. I pushed the door to his apartment open. I think I knew the moment I stepped into the study that Gerd was no longer alive. He was sitting at his desk. Kitty’s letter was there in front of him, as was a letter in his own hand.

I called for an ambulance and waited while they came and took Gerd’s body to the morgue. I helped the policewoman who came on a routine call to gather together the numbers she would need to contact his family. The following day, I met his great-nephew, who came from Hamburg. His name was Otto too, after the great-uncle he had never known. He told me that I should stay in the house for as long as I needed to. He was also concerned that I would not suffer any lasting stress from having been the one to discover his great-uncle’s body. Otto was so kind and caring that I did eventually allow myself to cry in front of him. He put his arm round me and gave me a squeeze.

‘He was a strange old thing but we loved him,’ he said of his great-uncle. ‘He always held himself apart from us, as though he thought he was a burden. I wish I’d had the chance to know him better. Makes you think about the perils of wasting time, does it not?’

I agreed.

Otto Schmidt picked up a photograph of his great-uncle and mother as children.

‘Life is beautiful but brief. We should make the most of it. What is it they say? Live, laugh, love.’

While the young Otto Schmidt continued to make arrangements for his great-uncle’s funeral, I went back upstairs.

As I climbed to the top floor, I checked my BlackBerry and saw that a new message had come in. Thanks to some peculiar feeling of portentousness I waited until I was safely inside my room before I opened it. And of course it was from Marco.