The Other Side of Love (19 page)

“This is Christmas!”

The moustached man, who was aiming a murderous blow, stopped uncertainly. His cohort, arms raised to club Wyatt between the shoulders, lowered his hands with an uneasy smile.

“Go on home, all of you,”

Clothilde ordered.

The pair of fighters exchanged an indecisive glance.

“Go home,”

Clothilde repeated.

“We’ll be back,”

the original attacker snarled at Wyatt.

“So you steer clear of trouble.”

He linked arms with his shorter comrade, and the two stamped along the road to Partenkirchen.

The crowd melted into the night.

Wyatt, wiping the blood from his nose, went to reach out a hand to Sigi.

“Thanks for wading in.”

“Wasn’t much help, was I?”

Sigi said with a goodnatured laugh.

The following morning, a wiry, youngish policeman came to the chalet. Apologizing for disturbing their Christmas day, he jotted down notes about the incident, requesting to see their papers and Wyatt’s passport.

“A Kingsmith family gathering,”

he said politely.

“Herr Oberleutnant, you’re a guest, I take it?”

“I have the honour to be Herr Kingsmith’s stepson. Those two thugs provoked the fight.”

“Well, I see that our American visitor has a black eye,”

responded the policeman, his face noncommittal.

Afterwards, over a cup of coffee and butter platzchen, he thanked them for their cooperation.

“We like to keep order in the Reich,”

he said to Wyatt.

V

In the middle of January a letter arrived for Kathe on Kingsmith’s custom-watermarked stationery with Rossie’s monogram. The first page warmly told her what a delightful guest she had been this summer. The second page consisted of one paragraph.

There are no married students at Columbia Law School. Wyatt is doing so well. If he makes a wrong move now, he could lose his chances to get into a top firm. He should be increasing his circle now, not settling down. As

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a European, it must be difficult for you to understand the social influences at work here, but the friends he makes now could influence his entire life. Please don’t take this the wrong way, dear. I only want what is best for Wyatt and for you. The crux is that your parents are right. I couldn’t agree more with them. Waiting three years to announce an engagement is by far the wisest course.

The writing blurred. Kathe was reading a hidden subtext. Wyatt would be far better off marrying an American girl.

VI

On 12 March the Anschluss, the uniting of Germany and Austria, was achieved. The press was euphoric. There were photographs and newsreels of panzer divisions streaming over the Austrian border and being greeted by joyous crowds waving swastika flags and pelting flowers. In essence, Austria was now a province of the Third Reich.

A few days after the Anschluss, Sigi invited his sister to a variety show at the Metropol. He picked her up, his amiable face oddly stern. Though the top of his touring car was closed, the air was as frigid inside as out. He handed her the car rug, but didn’t start the engine.

“What’s wrong?”

Kathe asked.

“Do you remember Otto Groener?”

“Isn’t he the friend you went with on the walking tour of the Berchtesgadenland?”

“Yes, he’s a Bavarian. He joined the party early. At the time the Nazis were nobody - to be honesťI didn’t know anything about them. Groener had been through iard times, and at school I found him a good chap. His swastika seemed harmless enough. We’ve been out of touch for years. Now he’s over there on PrinzAlbrechtstrasse.”

“God,”

Kathe whispered.

Himmler had taken over the School of Applied Arts and Design as well as the baroque Hotel Prinz Albrecht and other lesser buildings on PrinzAlbrechtstrasse for his terror agencies, the Gestapo and the SS, joining the basements into a prison with up-to-date torture methods. Now the street-name was a synonym for dread in Germany.

“He’s a higher-up in the Gestapo.”

Sigi inserted the ignition key.

“Evidently all reports concerning visiting foreigners cross his desk.”

“It’s about Wyatt, isn’t it?”

she asked, shivering.

“Did you know Rossie was a widow when she married your uncle? Her first husband was related to the Leventhal department-store family. He died only a few months before Wyatt was born.”

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‘But how could the Gestapo find that out?”

“They’d done a preliminary check of Wyatt before the Olympics. The Kingsmith family comes and goes; they could be spies. Or so the Gestapo decided. The incident at GarmischPartenkirchen set them to snooping again.”

“Aunt Rossie lives in New York, but her first marriage was in Boston, and her husband died there,”

Kathe said stubbornly.

“Nobody in the family even suspected. It’s impossible for the Gestapo to have tracked down the Leventhal connection.”

“Groener was very proud of the Gestapo’s foreign intelligence. The bastards are nothing if not thorough.”

Kathe stared at the curlicued silhouette of the porte-cochere.

“Don’t tell anyone about Wyatt.”

“Are you crazy? Of course I won’t.”

Sigi started the motor, and it coughed violently.

“Groener asked me to lunch to spill all this jis a favour to an old friend, he said.”

“Wasn’t he ashamed of spying on everybody?”

“Not in the least. But it chilled me to the bone. Kathe, our people probably won’t issue Wyatt another visa. Even if they do, it’s not safe for him to come here.”

The variety show at the Metropol blurred by Kathe as if she were on a fast train. Her parents, she knew, would never permit her to go to New York. She must keep Wyatt out of the Reich. There was no way she could explain the situation. Therefore it behoved her tactfully to arrange some neutral meeting-place. Yet as she sat tensed in the red-plush theatre seat at Sigi’s side her mind, cloaked in cold dread, refused to solve the problem.

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I

Though a mere one hundred and ninety seven pages, C. Osmond’s TARNHELM (Keiffer Press, 2s 6d) is a major work by any standards. In light of the recent events in Austria, the novel is doubly important as a companionpiece to the depressing newsreels and photographs.

The story is austerely simple. A young Englishman on a skiing holiday in Switzerland falls A love with a German girl of highly anti-Nazi sentiment* Later in the year, he visits her home in Berlin to discover that she has disappeared. Her frightened family refuse to discuss the matter with him; her friends pretend nothing is amiss, insisting that she will return shortly. His search through the stone wall of the Nazi bureaucracy and then the terrible landscape of concentrationcamps makes the young hero realize that the Germans courageous enough to raise their voices against the current government, like the girl he loves, will disappear from sight as surely as though they have donned the title’s magical helmet.

C. Osmond chooses each word with the care with which one would select a gem. The prose is lean and sinewy. There is not one false plea for sympathy nor a maudlin sentence. TARNHELM is a masterpiece.

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II

Aubrey, at his desk in the glassed offices overlooking Kingsmith’s, held The Times of 2 April 1938 folded to the review.

He had changed the title of The Thousand Years to Tarnhelm the cap of invisibility crafted by the Niebelungen dwarfs of Teutonic myth - for the same reason that he had chosen a pseudonym: he wanted no connection to the novel. Yet as he reread the glowing review a leaden gloom settled over him. What’s the use of being down in the mouth? It’s not as if you had any choice, he told himself. But why were circumstances forever forcing him into decisions against personal happiness? From his tenth year throughout adolescence he had secretly nourished himself with the idea that Aubrey Kingsmith, skinny, non-athletic, shy, was actually the larva of a Great Author and eventually would spread his wings as one with Homer, Shakespeare, Tolstoy. It goes without saying that reviews of this ilk were part of the dream. At Oxford, when he had started to write seriously, he’d ceased indulging in such idiotic fantasies. And, to be honest, writing the novel, even the inevitable frustrations, had been a kind of delirious ecstasy. Tarnhelm was its own reward. Yet on the other hand public acclaim of this type would have secured grudging praise from his father instead of a stream of backbiting reminders that his writing stint had been a complete and utter waste of time, not a penny brought in. Kathe, after reading the book, would have given him the glowing dreamy smile that she bestowed on Wyatt; here Aubrey again lapsed into folly, imagining what Kathe might have done.

His telephone rang. Expecting his father with a list of cornmands, he hastily crushed The Times into his wastebasket. But Norbert Frognall, a desiccated second cousin, was on the line with an invitation to his club in St James’s Street, a club in which no tradesperson like a Kingsmith would ever be put up for membership. There was somebody who wanted to meet Aubrey. As Norbert Frognall said the fellow-member’s name, Aubrey’s expression changed to reverent mystification.

As the short rotund man with the unlit Corona-Corona cigar in his small pudgy hand stamped across the gloomy

“strangers”

room’, Aubrey pulled his shoulders back. Even if he hadn’t known whom he was to meet, the sparse white hair, the hunch of shoulders, the scowl, the cigar were instantly recognizable. Every Englishman knew this politician from scurrilous cartoons as well as from photographs.

“Mr Kingsmith?”

A gruff yet sonorous voice. A firm handshake.

“Winston Churchill.”

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Winston Churchill, though a backbencher, was the most controversial member of the House of Commons. An outspoken disciple of social justice, he had been born in Blenheim Palace, the grandson of the Duke of Marlborough. He had held many cabinet posts. He wrote prolifically for newspapers and magazines around the globe; his books were in every library. He had been called one of England’s greatest men; he had been called a flamboyant fraud, a warlover and a pathetic old bore. In 1916, as First Lord of the Admiralty, he had been unfairly excoriated for the Gallipoli disaster. He had championed King Edward’s recent ill-fated attempt to crown Mrs Simpson his queen.

Almost alone, Winston Churchill sounded the tocsin against Hitler. For this last reason, he was currently being vilified as a warmonger.

Aubrey himself, during his pacifist phase, had shared the view of Winston Churchill as one dedicated to hurling the country back into the blood-soaked trenches. The Olympic summer, however, had altered vital circuits of Aubrey’s brain. During their greetings he couldn’t quell his admiring deference.

A butler was setting down a humidor and a bottle of Hine brandy.

“Drink?”

Churchill asked.

“Please,”

Aubrey responded.

Waiting until the servant had scuttled to his shadowy station near the green-baize service-door, Churchill took an appreciative sip.

“Since we are colleagues,”

he said,

“I shan’t attempt a cagey game, but will lay my cards on the table.”

“Colleagues, sir?”

“Both afflicted with the insatiable urge to put pen to paper, Mr Kingsmith - or shall I say Mr Osmond?”

Aubrey’s start of surprise, the pink age-spotted face beamed with Impish pleasure.

“By either name, Mr Kingsmith, you are younger by far than I anticipated. Might I call you Aubrey?”

“Please, sir. But how did you know about … ?”

“You hardly flatter me.”

Churchill was smiling.

“There are a clearsighted few who agree with my position on Herr Hitler, and Keiffer’s one of them. When I looked into his author’s identity, he gave me your name and mentioned that you were a connection of Frognall’s.”

He raised his brandy.

“To Tarnhelm, a fine novel.”

Aubrey glanced around. Another member and his guest had their heads together in a faraway corner.

“You’ve read it, sir?”

“Where do you think I got these reddened -eyes? After I finished my own work, I stayed up the rest of the night with yours. Those scenes in the concentrationcamp, the smell of fear in the pulpit!”

“I didn’t do either justice.”

“No need to be so modest. A miraculous evocation,”

Churchill said.

“It never fails to astonish me how blind many of our finest minds are

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to Herr Hitler and his goals. They consider him a rambunctious boy with his parades and his flatulent howling bellicosity. They ignore the Saar, the Rhineland and now Austria all under his belt. Will they keep their eyes closed until he’s gobbled up the rest of Europe?”

Til do anything to help you, sir.”

“Exactly what I was hoping you’d say. You’ve an acute instinct for the hidden horrors in the Third Reich. You travel there.”

“Not often, and then it’s a quick business-jump. I’m in my grandfather’s business”

“Yes, Kingsmith’s in Bond Street. Mrs Churchill buys wedding gifts there.”

“I know, sir, and we’re honoured,”

Aubrey said.

“We have a branch on Unter den Linden.”

Churchill showed no surprise.