The Other Side of Love (26 page)

“Oh?”

“I still remember my exact thoughts when you came flying down that magnificent carved staircase.

“What else did you expect in this palace, dummkopf?” I said to myself.

“Of course there’s a little princess with swan-gold hair.”

“

A flush showed in Kathe’s cheeks, and she pulled her cardigan more tightly closed.

Sigi noted her discomfort.

“Otto was about to show me snapshots of his boy.”

Groener fished in his pocket, extending a pack of photographs of a solemn long-faced four-year-old in various poses.

“Little Otto,”

he said proudly.

“Can you believe it, this little tyke’s already met the Fiihrer six times.”

Sigi and Kathe thumbed through the stack. Groener kept up a running commentary on little Otto’s achievements, omitting mention of the long-faced, long-bosomed woman, clearly the child’s mother. He continually tapped Kathe’s shoulder as if for emphasis. While he replaced his snapshots, she moved a few steps from him, pressing her cold blue-tinged hands on the stone ledge.

He came to her side, pointing at a conical mountain.

“That’s the Untersberg. Do you know the legend? Charlemagne and an army of five thousand knights sleep inside, waiting to restore the fame and glory of the German Empire. Well, let them snooze on. The Fiihrer’s restored fame and glory to us.”

He gazed down at the faraway blue sparkle of the Konigsee.

“God, what scenery!”

#..

“Isn’t it incredible?”

Sigi shifted to stand between Groener and his sister.

“Did you know the Fiihrer comes here to meditate?”

Groener’s awed tone suggested that he had imparted a revelation about the nature of Christianity.

“But it’s just not gemiUlich like his Berghof in Berchtesgaden. Such jolly times we have there.”

An accordionist had started to play Austrian folk-tunes, and the wind tore at the rollicking music in the same way that it tugged the shivering women’s dresses.

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Groener glanced around. Nobody was near them.

“Sigi, you did tell her about that American so-called Kingsmith?”

Sigi’s affable smile faded.

“Naturally.”

Groener ignored the cold tone.

“So it seems this cousin’s not quite a kosher cousin,”

he said, laughing at his own joke.

“Starting fights at church on Christmas Eve!”

Kathe stared in the direction of Salzburg, which at this moment was hidden by a large puffy white cloud.

“Wyatt was jumped by two bullies,”

she said.

“Loyal party members understandably annoyed because he tore down government property”

He halted in mid-sentence.

Hitler was moving towards the steps that led up to the glass doors.

“Ah, lunch-time,”

Groener said, bending his elbow to offer his arm to Kathe.

She moved towards her halfbrother.

“Kathe’s sitting with me,”

Sigi said.

“You have the honour of being near the Fiihrer with your uncle. We lesser folk are far below the salt.”

Groener’s wink indicated that he no longer considered himself lesser than Sigi or anyone else, including the assembled High Command. Traulein Kathe, you’re shivering. Come on inside.”

The long clothless oak table surrounded by twenty-six brown leather chairs gave the diningroom the impersonality of a boardroom. The highest-ranked officers sat nearest Hitler. Kathe, at the far end where silk dresses were interspersed witMBavarian outfits, noted the High Command’s strained expressions ami wondered if the blanket tension would have been lessened by alcohol. Because Hitler was a teetotaller, no drinks had been served earlier and no wine was being poured with the meal. However, although the host was a vegetarian, stringy pallid hunks of stewed veal were offered. Groener ate rapidly and greedily. Kathe moved her food around her plate, her mouth too dry to chew. Wyatt, she thought over and over. Wyatt. There hadn’t been time for mail to arrive from him in New York, but after his other passages he had cabled immediately he landed. Following her custom of writing before she went to bed, she had sent daily letters, none of which referred to the argument in London.

Evidently mental telepathy existed in the Bavarian air.

Groener gulped down the last mouthful on his plate.

“In London, did you see a great deal of that American?”

She tensed.

“How did you know Wyatt was there?”

“My department deals with foreign visitors, especially those who might be troublemakers.”

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Her hand shook, and it was all she could do to cut off a nibble of the cream cake that had been set before her. Could the Gestapo also be aware of her meeting with Heinrich Leventhal, her activities with Schultze, the weekend in Devon? No, she told herself firmly. If they knew any of that, Groener wouldn’t be watching her with such admiring interest.

“They really did jump him,”

she said.

“Tell me, is there some sort of understanding between you two?”

“Are the State Police interested in gossip?”

“Fraulein Kathe, this man is connected to the Jew Leventhals in Berlin. If it were anything less than the laws against racial pollution involved, I’d never bring this matter up, but there’s a report on file that you and he had some kind of relationship.”

“I’m surprised at you. Believing talk of a friend’s sister.”

“So it isn’t true?”

“Wyatt was a guest of the Reich at the Olympics; he won a gold medal. We were told to be polite to our guests.”

With an unexpected sympathy, Groener said:

“You’ve set my mind at ease. I knew it was best to talk to you directly. And I understand your attitude. I’m also a loyal person. All right, subject closed.”

He finished wolfing down his dessert, scraping up the last bit with his fork.

“Tell me about your boyfriend.”

“What?”

“If you aren’t involved with this so-called cousin, you must have somebody. How can such a beauty be unattached?”

“I’m not ready yet.”

“Good girl. Before you trap yourself, take your time. Fraulein Kathe, make sure the man’s right for you. As far as I’m concerned, the sun rises and sets on my little Otto, but my wife … well, she isn’t the one for me.”

IV

The Fiihrer had finished his second large slab of cake and was Ť looking around at his guests. The various conversations ceased, cutlery clinked down on to china, and there was only the sound of the wind outside. Kathe was astonished how these august officers, most of them Prussian aristocrats who thoroughly despised Hitler, turned servile in his presence.

“The Polish pigs are castrating our German Volk in Danzig,”

Hitler said, repeating the word kastrieren on a rising note three times before launching on his monologue. The Polish people, like all of the Slavic races, were subhumans. To have these Untermenschen defiling German women and persecuting the German men trapped on Polish soil was a cruelly unjust situation that could no longer be borne. His voice grew hoarsely shrill, the famous moustache wiggled

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like a dancing black rodent.

“Those vermin were put here to serve the Master Race, not persecute us!”

Groener and the men in Bavarian get-ups at Kathe’s end of the table applauded vigorously. From the OKW came murmurs of approval.

“And this, my commanders, is your task.”

Hitler jumped to his feet, hammering his left fist into his right palm.

“To grind down these crazed, dimwitted Poles. As I have brought the Rhineland, the Saar, Austria and Czechoslovakia into the Reich, so I must fulfil the rest of the task and reunite all the Volk and punish their tormentors!”

Despite Hitler’s jerky gestures and raised voice, his outburst seemed calculated. He stood glaring for a full minute. Then, hands behind his back, he stalked into the enormous glazed rotunda which served as a conference-room. The heads of the OKW and their aides followed him.

y

“Sigi, how do your uncle and the others put up with it?”

“They’re soldiers. A soldier’s first duty is to his commander-inchief.”

It was after ten, and they were ambling down the dark road that led from the Hotel Kronprinz into the town of Berchtesgaden. Immediately after lunch, Rathe and the other women had been brought back to the hostelry. Sigi and his uncle had just returned.

“He’s terrifying,”

Kathe said.

“Especially when he starts on that hysterical racial tack.”

“He’s not crazy, though.”

Sigi sucked at his pipe.

“The discussions today are top secret, but I can tell you ťfs not crazy by a long shot. In fact, at times, there’s a touch of milirary genius about him.”

“Your old friend thinks he’s the Second Coming.”

“Did you ever see such a party stalwart? Still, Groener has a real soft spot for his son. You can bet the boy - all his children will have everything he missed.”

“Did you really give him his tuition?”

“What choice was there?”

Sigi mumbled. He was embarrassed by his tender heart, a characteristic noticeably absent in his von Graetz and von Hohenau forebears.

“I can still see Groener when the whole school lined up in the yard to pay. The way he held his down, ashamed. Well, poverty’s behind him now. Before you came over he was telling me about his palmy new home in Dahlem, the servants, and how understanding his wife is.”

“Women, you mean?”

“Such naivete,”

Sigi chuckled.

“Of course women. He’s quite the big shot on PrinzAlbrechtstrasse.”

“Thank God I won’t see him again.”

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VI

I can’t tell you how thrilling it was, Aubrey, being up there above the clouds in Eagle’s Nest. You feel all you have to do is reach out and grasp the entire world.

If only I could describe how marvellous the Fiihrer is! The other times I met him were so brief, and today I was in his presence for nearly four hours. Oh, Aubrey, he is a truly great man! So firm and yet so all-knowing. When he talked about the need to reunite the German people, he held us spellbound I wish I could think of another, less hackneyed phrase, but there isn’t one. It was as if nothing else existed except his nobility and will. If this sounds like girlish awe, believe me, it’s not. Everyone, even General Keitel, listened with reverent attention.

The one unpleasant note of the day was the wind. The wind blew very strong out of the east.

Kathe reread the entire letter. This was the first time she had written to Aubrey since her tutorial from Major Downes.

“The wind blew very strong out of the east”

meant Hitler would assuredly mass troops on the east - on the Polish border.

“Another, less hackneyed phrase”

meant that Hitler had the High Command totally in hand, and whatever he said went.

“Reach out and grasp the world”

meant war. The code stuck out bizarrely to her. She visualized Haupsturmfuhrer Groener, heavy shoulders hunched over her letter. Loathing him didn’t prevent her from accepting his intelligence.

Ink had splattered on to the page. Using her blotter, she signed her name rapidly and sealed the envelope.

She started her nightly letter to Wyatt. Abruptly she put down the pen. It had come to her that, if the Gestapo were indeed reading her letters to Aubrey, they would also be opening her mail to Wyatt. She sat still for a few moments, then began to write again. Leni Trischen, filer old friend, was going to Holland next week. She would ask Leni to mail a batch of letters from Amsterdam.

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7

A humid breeze wafted salt odours of the Rhode Island Sound up acres of lawn to compete with the French perfume being exuded on the outdoor dance-floor. The twenty-five-piece Meyer Davis Orchestra was scattering inventions and riffs, the glowing lights strung in the huge copper beeches were minor moons, summer-tanned bosoms rose like ripe exotic fruit from strapless white formals. Viewed dispassionately, Wyatt admitted Ae Marchains”

dance should have been a magical evening rather thaw an ordeal.

When he had returned from England solo, Rossie had questioned him about Kathe, and he had responded in a purposefully unconcerned tone:

“We decided that it’s finished. Nuff said, OK?”

Since then both Rossie and Humphrey had been urging him to get back in the swim. As old friends of the Marchains, they had insisted he join them in Newport for the dance.

Now, like most of the older couples, the Kingsmiths had retired to the vast gilded drawingroom, leaving the dance-floor to the kinetic gyrations of the unmarried set.

Wyatt swung out the brunette whose name he couldn’t recall, his knees bending lower and lower as she whirled, organdie skirts flaring to expose bronzed thin legs. Sweat shone on his face, his smile was manic. He’d been drinking steadily all evening, but nobody could gauge how soused he was from complicated steps that he improvised. The band-leader drove his clarinet to higher peaks, horns blared, drums raced. The dancers gathered round Wyatt and the brunette,

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clapping them on to greater extravagances. With the final raucous chords, Wyatt bent her so far back that her spine paralleled the floor, then lifted her high in the air.

Applause burst. Then the clarinet began a bitter-sweet mating call. Couples melted close to one another as the male vocalist started to croon