The Girl Behind The Curtain (Hidden Women) (7 page)

I think that Marlene is starting to like me since I gave her a lipstick. It’s the one Mummy bought for me in London. It doesn’t suit me in the least but on Marlene it looks rather wonderful. She in turn has promised to show me how to do my make-up. She said it is all very well my going for the natural look, but my eyes are magnificent and would look more amazing still with the application of proper eyeshadow and a set of those scratchy falsies that look like spider’s legs. I can’t wait to try them.

But the little kindnesses of Herr Schluter and Marlene aren’t the only reasons I’m feeling happy about my job at the Boom Boom. On Fridays, the club hosts a talent evening when members of the audience are invited up onto the stage to do their party pieces. The club gets very busy. It seems that half of Berlin harbours a secret dream to sing. Anyway, on such nights Herr Schluter hires a special pianist. It’s important to have someone who can play all the latest hits, since you never know what someone is going to ask for. The usual pianist is about a hundred years old and doesn’t know anything written since the Great War and so he gets Friday evenings off.

So, the new pianist . . . As soon as he walked in I thought he looked familiar. It was only when he said to me, ‘I see you’ve bought some new boots,’ that I remembered exactly where we’d met before. It was Otto Schmidt, the handsome young man who saved me from that slavering beast in the café, that night when I did not know the first thing about how this city works and I went out inadvertently dressed like a 1920s domina.

I was slightly embarrassed to see him. I didn’t suppose he would think I had gone up in the world from being mistaken for a prostitute to working in a transvestite bar, but, what the hell, he was going to be working alongside me! He must have been on his way to the Boom Boom when he left me that awful afternoon.

The ladies – by which I suppose I mean all the men who dress like ladies – all cooed when Otto Schmidt walked in.

‘He’s such a dreamboat,’ sighed Marlene. ‘If only he wasn’t absolutely straight.’

‘Heaven knows we’ve all tried to turn him,’ said Isadora. ‘He’s got such big shoulders.’

‘And a nice arse,’ Marlene added.

I had to agree with them both, though of course I didn’t say so out loud. Otto really is incredibly good-looking. His astonishingly blue eyes have everyone enchanted. Not only that, he is charming, well-mannered and incredibly intelligent. Turns out that he’s not just a nightclub pianist. He’s studying to be a lawyer. The job at the Boom Boom helps to pay for his education and to keep his widowed mother and little sister. I liked him when he rescued me and now I like him even more.

I think he likes me too. I caught him looking at me while Marlene was bantering with a contestant who had just sung ‘
Heute Nacht Oder Nie
’ (which means, said Otto, ‘Tell Me Tonight’) without ever hitting upon the right note no matter how enthusiastically he warbled. Otto was very kind. I noticed that he changed key after the first verse in an attempt to flatter the singer, but the singer only changed his pitch so that he sounded as out of tune as before. It was a disaster. Marlene did a good job of pretending to be impressed though.

While the crowd was applauding and the next contestant took the stage, Otto played a little medley. He doesn’t need music. He doesn’t even need to look at his hands, so he looked straight at me instead. I blushed to my roots and nearly ruined my first breakage-free night by dropping a plate!

Marlene teased me backstage during her break.

‘Perhaps you’ll be the one who gets to find out what he’s like after hours,’ she said.

Otto’s working again tomorrow. Herr Schluter says that the amateur talent nights are by far the best of the week as far as takings are concerned, so he’s decided to have more of them. Tomorrow will be the Boom Boom’s first ‘Saturday of the Stars’, with the stage open to anyone who thinks they can own it. I told him I thoroughly approve.

So that’s all good. Still no news from Mother or Father, though. I will write Mummy another letter tomorrow. I will try to disguise my handwriting so that Papa doesn’t guess it’s from me right away and throw it in the dustbin without even opening, as I suspect he has been doing so far. That said, I’m not sure how I’m going to get away with the fact that the letter will have a German postmark. Never mind. I will write and write and write until Mummy writes back to me. In the meantime, I shall have to ask Herr Schluter for another small advance.

Chapter 8

Berlin, last September

My second weekend in Berlin, I saw Clare and Harry again. Clare’s birthday was coming up. Like me, she was turning thirty that year and she wanted to make a real event of it. Harry was full of plans.

‘We’ll have to go to the Boom Boom,’ he said.

I was interested to know more.

‘You’d love it,’ he carried on. ‘It’s absolutely how you imagine the Berlin clubs of the early thirties. There was a club called the Boom Boom on the same spot back then.’

‘But it was destroyed in the war?’ I suggested.

‘Oh no,’ said Harry. ‘It was destroyed long before then. Anyway, they’ve recreated it and every Friday night they have an amateur night. They did exactly the same thing in the original club apparently. Like a 1930s
X Factor
. Can you imagine?’

‘
Berlin’s Got Talent
,’ Clare chipped in. ‘There’s nothing new in this world, as my grandmother used to say. Hey, Harry. That can be your birthday present to me. You can get up on stage at the Boom Boom and sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me. In the style of Marilyn Monroe.’

Harry seemed to think it was a fantastic idea. He elaborated. ‘The Boom Boom’s speciality was transvestites. They were a huge draw in Weimar Berlin. There were thousands of clubs devoted to cross-dressers. It went the other way too. Perhaps Sarah could dress up as a man and sing something in the style of Frank Sinatra.’

‘I can’t sing,’ I said quickly. ‘Let alone in the style of Frank Sinatra.’

‘Everyone can sing,’ said Harry. ‘That’s the motto of the Boom Boom.’

‘Wishful thinking,’ said Clare. ‘You’ve never heard anything quite so awful as the people who take the stage in that club. Susan Boyle spoiled it for everyone. Now every time someone a bit ugly or dowdy steps up from the crowd, you expect them to sing like an angel. Of course, they never do.’

‘Well, in that case I’m definitely not singing,’ I said.

Harry rolled his eyes.

‘You’re hardly Susan Boyle. In fact, I’ve been meaning to say, splitting up with Steven was really good for you. You’ve never looked so sexy.’

‘Thank you,’ I replied. ‘It’s a pity you’re gay.’

‘That makes my opinion much more valuable,’ Harry insisted. ‘At least you know I’m not telling you any old thing so you’ll sleep with me. Perhaps it was Paris that did it. You’ve got that Euro-polish going on.’

‘I think it was Venice, actually,’ I said. I remembered my shopping trip with Bea and getting dressed up every day I went to the library just in case Marco deigned to drop in. ‘Yes. Italy is definitely where it started.’

‘Italian men are the most gorgeous on earth,’ Harry declared. ‘Even the dustbin men of Rome look like they’ve stepped out of an Armani ad. And as for the
carabinieri
. Those boots!’ Harry laid his hand on his heart.

‘Why are boots such a universal fetish?’ Clare asked. ‘Someone ought to do a paper on it.’

‘I’m sure someone already has,’ I said.

‘Where do you stand on boots?’ Harry asked me.

I laughed at his question, but for a brief moment, my thoughts went to my birthday in Paris and the shoes that Steven had bought me as a gift. They were boots, but not exactly the kind you’d wear to muck out a farmyard. And far from making me feel empowered, when I put them on I’d felt the very opposite of powerful. Unable to walk without tottering, I’d been anxious.

‘I take the view that a girl should always wear shoes she can run in,’ I said.

‘So boring,’ chimed Harry and Clare.

‘Perhaps I am.’

We spent the rest of the evening making outrageous plans for Clare’s birthday. Harry was in his element. He planned a performance that would bring the house down. Forget ‘Happy Birthday’. He would sing ‘Thank Heaven For Little Girls’ and he would dress as one too, in a pink romper suit with a frilled white apron to match. Oh yes, he had the outfit already. He even had a curly blonde wig that he would wear beneath a frilled cap, along with his false eyelashes and glittering lipstick.

‘I can’t wait to see this,’ I said.

‘Don’t think he won’t do it,’ Clare warned me. She pulled out her phone and brought up some photographs of Harry at his own birthday party. There he was dressed as Marilyn Monroe, in the iconic dress over the air-vent scene from
The Seven Year Itch
. He looked remarkably good in women’s clothing. In fact, both Clare and I agreed, he looked far better than we would have done in the same get-up. It was the legs. He had much longer legs, with much more defined muscle tone than Clare and I could ever have achieved even with years in the gym. It was all down to that perfect balance of testosterone. Just as small boys always have the best eyelashes, the big boys get to have the best pins.

Harry preened as we looked at the evidence of his previous triumphs.

‘In Berlin, I can be absolutely myself. This place. Individuality is in the air.’

I had to agree.

As we parted he said, ‘Sleep tight, Ms White Bread.’

It was another warm night. Berlin really was experiencing an Indian summer. I went to bed with the windows closed but woke up again in the middle of the night, sweating and tangled in the bedclothes. I got out of bed with the intention of opening the window to let in some air. As I was struggling with the old casement, warped by the years, I saw a couple pause underneath the street-lamp across the road. She threw her arms round his neck. He kissed her passionately, bending her backwards as though in a dip at the end of an exotic tango. He held her in that position for quite some time as he explored her with his mouth.

They were clearly very hot for each other. She straightened up and continued to clutch at the fabric of his shirt as she kissed him with abandon. She devoured him and he couldn’t seem to get enough of her. I felt a small stab of envy as I wondered if I would ever be kissed like that again.

Ms White Bread? I’d laughed at the time, but Harry’s throwaway line had touched me in a far more personal way than he could have imagined.

I had been so confused about my desires since breaking up with Steven. I was conflicted, feeling both excited and ashamed by the way I’d responded to the whorish lingerie Steven had me in for our trip to the swingers’ club and the shoes he bought me to wear in Paris. Yet I had played with myself according to instructions on a laptop screen, for the pleasure of a man watching through a secret peephole. I must have known on some level that he would be watching. It was crazy to think otherwise. In fact, I had liked the idea that Marco had been watching me.

The drawings had given me quite a shock when I first discovered them. On the one hand, I might have felt violated. On the other hand, they were something quite different from photographs. A photograph required no effort. It required no real knowledge of the subject. A drawing required time. It required concentration. As I considered that, I had allowed my shock to fade so that instead I felt flattered by the thought that someone saw me as worthy of the effort the drawings took to produce. The thought of Marco’s gaze was every bit as erotic to me as the thought of his actual touch.

I wondered what had happened to those pictures. Had Marco kept them or had he thrown them away as I had discarded his letters and the dried flower? I would probably never know. I liked to think that he had kept them and that he looked at them still. I hoped in some way they tormented him.

The following morning I had my first English-language student. Her name was Anna Fischer. When she arrived in my office, exactly on time, unlike any of the students I’d taken for tutorials in London or Venice, I was surprised to find that she looked familiar. It took a moment before I placed her as the girl I had seen being kissed beneath the lamp-post. She sat down somewhat heavily.

‘Up all night,’ she laughed.

I had the feeling I was going to like her.

Chapter 9

Berlin,

Saturday 25th June 1932

Dear Diary,

Who would have thought I would be such a great hostess? It’s only the end of my second week in the job and already customers are asking for me by name when they book their tables in the evening. They actually want to be in my section! It’s quite flattering that they think I’m so good at my job, even if Marlene says what they are really hoping is that I will spill their drinks all over them so they can put in an extravagant claim to cover cleaning costs. I’m taking no notice of her. She can be the most terrible cow at times. But Isadora assures me that Marlene’s caustic asides are actually a sign of great affection. She never bothers to tease people she doesn’t like.

She has been teasing me about Otto endlessly. The usual pianist has been off sick, so Otto has been coming in every night of the week, not just when there’s a talent show. And every time he walks into the club, Marlene whistles at him, then looks all innocent and pretends that the horrid whistle came from me. I don’t think Otto believes her little ruse but it certainly makes me blush. It makes him blush as well. Marlene says that’s a good sign. It means he likes me too.