The Milliner's Secret (22 page)

Dietrich told Claudia she might leave the table. ‘Give me a hug, then go and devour
Frauen-Warte
.’ He’d spied the magazine of the National Socialist Women’s League on the hall table, guessing Claudia was saving it for the quiet of the afternoon.

She slid from her seat, but instead of coming to him, she went to peck her grandfather on the cheek. ‘You don’t mind me leaving you to slurp coffee alone, Opa?’

‘“Slurp” isn’t a polite word to use to your grandfather, and he won’t be alone since I am here.’ The sight of Claudia’s red-gold plaits against his father-in-law’s thatch of white made Dietrich realise that all through lunch he’d been trying to see Waldo in her. Failing, because she possessed all the rude health that had been denied to her brother. He held out his hand. Claudia ignored it.

‘Opa says you never talk to any of us.’ Almost fourteen now, her self-confidence matched her ripe colouring. ‘Grandpapa talks to me about the Party.
He
listens when I tell him I want to advance the glory of Germany and save the honour of our family.’

Dietrich had been schooled never to flinch, from either word or blade. Dropping his hand, he said, ‘If it’s glory you’re after, you will no doubt find me wanting. Honour I believe I can supply, though perhaps not in the form you expect it.’ When she’d gone, he turned to his father-in-law. ‘Are you teaching her Nazism, Ernst?’

Ernst Osterberg squared his jaw. ‘Don’t use that filthy term with me. We are the National Socialist Workers’ Party, with the emphasis on “workers”.’ Something malevolent danced in the old man’s eye. ‘And Claudia’s right. The future belongs to such as she, and I’m proud to have shown her that.’ As if to prove it, Osterberg went to the dining-room door, and called after his granddaughter, ‘Like to come for a ride in my new car after school tomorrow,
Sternchen
?’

‘Yes, please!’ Claudia called back.

Ernst Osterberg returned to his seat, leaving the door open. As Dietrich stirred a quarter-teaspoon of sugar into his coffee, he heard Hiltrud talking in an uninterrupted stream on the telephone about knitted squares and her certainty that their local women’s circle would produce more blankets this winter than any of the other welfare
Bunds
in Berlin.
We survive
, he thought.
I in my ice-cube in Berlin, she with her knitting needles. Claudia expresses her grief in cold contempt for me, egged on by her grandfather.

Rain pattered against the window. Ernst Osterberg took out a pocket watch and said, ‘You won’t want to leave it too late to drive back to the city.’

‘There was something you had to tell me?’

Osterberg had heavy bulldog jowls, which limited his range of expressions. He gave what might have been a smile. ‘My news, yes. Silberstrom’s companies are all now Aryanised. The paint division was finally signed over to a new board on Thursday. The whole lot, purged of their Jewish directors. So, a good birthday present for you?’

‘You’re on the new board? A “trustee”?’

The brisk nod implied, ‘Of course.’ Osterberg said, ‘You know, you can tell a Jew by his ear-lobes?’

‘You told me that once.’

‘We will inspect every employee, ten at a time, outside my office.’ No twinkle in the heavy-lidded eyes to suggest a joke. ‘Max von Silberstrom appointed Aryan board members as his surrogates.’

‘As he had been required to do since April.’

‘But they worked for
him
, not for the state.’ Ernst’s fist came down. ‘A Jew can’t help being a Jew, but a Jewish stooge is a knowing traitor. The Chamber of Commerce will push for harsh punishments. ’

‘Mm. You mishandled Max von Silberstrom badly, you know.’

The jowls quivered. ‘You spent too much of your childhood playing in the Silberstroms’ damn garden. Max and Ottilia should be as foreign to you as . . .’ Osterberg searched for imagery, first inside his head, then, finding nothing, within the room ‘. . . as that coal scuttle. We were all too soft on foreign parasites. Now, thank God, we’re ridding ourselves of them. I’d like to have seen Max von Silberstrom in jail, but he escaped to Switzerland. Somebody helped him.’

‘Men like Max have friends everywhere, I’m afraid. I hope you have some, Ernst. Your institute mismanaged the seizure of Silberstrom Industries. Arguing among yourselves as to who should run the place.’ Dietrich tutted. ‘Your dithering gave Max time to sell his chemical formulas abroad.’

‘What do you mean?’

Dietrich sipped his coffee, enjoying the sight of his father-in-law squirming. The fire had erased the freezing vigil at Waldo’s grave and, though Dietrich wanted to get home, he was reluctant to leave the warmth. He certainly had no intention of allowing Ernst the last word. Ernst Osterberg: a natural bully, he’d blighted Dietrich’s marriage, crowding him and Hiltrud in the early days when they should have been getting to know each other. Finding fault in Dietrich, training Hiltrud to see those faults for herself. But that was nothing,
nothing
, to the evil the man had sown latterly. ‘You know Silberstrom Industries pioneered coloured paints for cars.’

Osterberg returned an impatient movement. ‘I considered their Bear’s Claw Red for my new vehicle. I decided in the end that a man of my age and position—’

‘Thanks to their scientists,’ Dietrich cut in, ‘you can have your green or blue or sunshine yellow, whereas a few years ago it would have been “Any colour, sir, as long as it’s black.” But do you know that Silberstrom’s laboratories also developed a camouflage paint for aircraft?’

‘I’m running the place! Of course I know!’

‘Paint using polymers to reduce drag and improve aero-dynamics. It gives our fighter planes greater agility.’

‘Which is why the factory was Aryanised.’

‘But not fast enough.’ Dietrich gave a smile that was not quite a smile. ‘It was this paint formula that Max sent abroad. “Americanised”, you might say. You will enjoy explaining the consequences of that to Reichsminister Göring. Ernst, you may have lost us the next war.’

Now a frightened old man sat at the table with him. ‘There’s no certainty of war.’

‘There is. We are armed way beyond the point of merely defending ourselves and you, Opa, have bungled.’

Osterberg stared at the fire, perhaps imagining his position as head of the local Chamber of Commerce and deputy to the Gauleiter of Brandenburg going the same way as the apple logs Hiltrud had piled on the embers before she left. ‘You could help me. You’re Göring’s friend. You could go and see him.’

‘I’m his art supplier – one of many. And he’s a busy man, air minister as well as guardian of our economy.’

Osterberg wiped sweat from his upper lip. ‘You flew in his squadron, you wear the same medals. Brothers in arms.’

‘Ah. There you touch my weakest side. I always wanted a brother.’ Dietrich twisted the ring on his middle finger and its dim ruby caught a little firelight. The jewel had been in his family since the 1300s. ‘I’ll see Göring in Munich in a couple of days. I’ll put in a word.’ Raising his coffee cup to his lips, Dietrich unexpectedly smelt Paris. His stomach flipped and, for a moment, he was lying in a bath at the Duet, a satin thigh in his eye-line, breasts falling forward as Coralie leaned in for a precarious kiss—

‘What are you thinking?’ Osterberg demanded. ‘What are you seeing?’

Dietrich was seeing Coralie de Lirac. He had given her his trust, a new identity and, briefly, a precious family ring. In return, she had carelessly robbed him of the last chance to see his son alive. He prayed he never saw her again because he wasn’t sure he could behave as a civilised man ought.

CHAPTER 11

5 OCTOBER 1939

The salon was crammed – with customers, journalists and girls in hats. Trays of champagne were still coming out and going back empty. In fact, the only thing flagging was Coralie’s feet. Slipping off a shoe, she took a moment to reflect on the afternoon. Many people considered this, her fourth solo collection for Henriette Junot, to be the best the house had ever produced. One fashion journalist had even insisted that this 1939 autumn–winter line should be billed ‘Coralie de Lirac
pour
Henriette Junot’.

The sixty hats paraded by mannequins wearing Hollywood-style evening dresses unarguably reflected Coralie’s personality. She just wasn’t sure if she’d strayed too far towards theatricality and away from style.

Style, the tyrant with a permanent position at her elbow. Nothing to do with fashion or chic, style was indefinable when present and screamingly obvious when absent.

Through an edgy spring and summer, as free Europe woke up to the certainty of war, Coralie had groped for inspiration for this collection. As Polish–German negotiations started up and broke down, she had prowled art galleries and museums for the spark to ignite her imagination. As German troops marched into Bohemia and Moravia, she’d held powwows with her technical staff, trying to summon up the elusive brilliant idea that would get fashionable Paris talking. A night out with friends at the Gaumont-Palais cinema on boulevard de Clichy had finally shoved the answer in front of her face.

All hail, ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’ and Ethel Merman in a black top hat. This collection was a salute to Hollywood, with a nod to English restraint. She’d launched it despite war having been declared just over a month earlier.
War? What war?
Blackout was in force, thousands of men had been mobilised, but Paris could still have fun. That was the message at Henriette Junot. There were still plenty of Americans to swell the party – British, too, and even Germans. Only the South Americans were lacking. An Allied blockade of the Atlantic had choked them off.

‘Honey, you’ve given us a blast of London!’ A confident beauty in her middle thirties approached as if cameras were trained on her. The accent was American, but such a cocktail of east coast and Deep South, Coralie never could pin down where her friend Una actually came from. For her part, Una Kilpin masked her past which cemented the affinity between the two women. Both were self-made. Both had much to hide and, sensing this, they kept their probing to a minimum.

They often spoke English together, and enjoyed confusing those around them by jumping between English and French at will. With every new person she met, Coralie always stuck to the life-story Dietrich had created for her but she’d made an exception for Una, divulging her work for Pettrew & Lofthouse. She’d called it her ‘foreign apprenticeship’. She’d had to; Una had jumped on her cockney accent.

‘I spent five years in London and every housemaid I had there said “butter” the way you do. Whenever you talk English, Coralie, I hear Bow bells ringing.’

When it came to the truth about Noëlle’s parentage, Coralie was equally frank with Una.

‘In a London park? I hope there was a nightingale singing,’ came the response. Amorous lapses never shocked Una Kilpin.

Una
McBride,
as they were to call her now. Separated from her shipping-magnate husband, who was in the service of the British government, Una had reverted to her maiden name. ‘I’ve scuttled the Kilpin ships,’ was how she’d announced her new identity.

‘You must be boiling.’ Coralie returned her kiss. Una was stunningly turned out in a Javier
tailleur
of zingy tartan cloth, a tam o’ shanter perched on her rippling blonde hair.

‘A little snug, but I love showing off this suit. D’you know, I was the only client to get one of the maestro’s Scottish ensembles? Javier’s ’thirty-seven autumn–winter show was scrapped, as you know.’ Una made a ‘don’t ask’ gesture. She’d been implicated in that disaster. ‘I had lengths of this fabric made privately and a girl I knew copied the design.’

Coralie had never questioned Una about the demise of Maison Javier or the pirating of the collection. As with a good country sausage, it was sometimes best not to know all the ingredients that made up her friend. All she’d asked was that Una never steal or copy any of her designs and, to the best of her knowledge, Una had not. She didn’t really need to as she was the salon’s unofficial ambassadress, taking as much stock as she liked for free.

An exacting client, who only ever wore shades of biscuit, toffee and cream, Una McBride was rarely out of the fashion magazines and women bought what she wore. Monsieur Moulin always entered her name in the books in red, but freely admitted that she earned her eternal credit.

Now Coralie frowned at Una’s tam o’ shanter. ‘You should be wearing one of my hats. People will wonder if you’ve fallen out of love with us.’

‘One cannot wear anything else with this suit, but from tomorrow, it will be all Coralie de Lirac. Oh, sublime!’

A mannequin was sauntering past, demonstrating the effortless
glissade
of her trade. Her gown had the sleeves and shoulders of a Southern belle. Her hat was black plush, with an organza bow secured at the front with a diamond butterfly. Drawing on her Pettrew’s roots, Coralie had created equestrienne top hats. Tipped low at the front, high at the back, they complemented the new trend for lush hairstyles. Though not a single German boot had stepped over the border with France, war seemed to have awakened a desire in women to be feminine again. Clothes were becoming curvier, bosoms were ‘in’. Along with top hats, Coralie had also produced berets. War’s first winter demanded something practical for women walking to and from work in the blackout. She’d chosen bright colours, adding flowers and pom-poms in opposing shades. The lights might have gone out, but working women didn’t have to disappear from view.

Please, God, there’d be a full order book after today’s show because Henriette was back. Recovered from her illness, but minus her latest lover, she’d swept into the salon as if she’d been away just a week or two, not for two years. Her first act had been to sack Monsieur Moulin and appoint a new accountant. This man, Soufflard, was utterly unmoved by millinery. As far as he was concerned, hats existed to keep off the rain and to make a profit. He was standing beside Henriette right now, watching a tray of caviar canapés going past. Probably counting the fish eggs, Coralie thought, totting up the cost. As for Henriette, she was tête-à-tête with a journalist from the
New York Times
, Mrs Fisk-Castelman, who had wanted to interview Coralie. Henriette had thrust herself forward, saying, ‘
One
voice speaks for this salon – mine.’