The Other Side of Love (29 page)

VIII

On 3 September, Araminta, Euan and Elizabeth sat around the radio in the library. A hot muggy day, the windows were open, admitting a lazy buzz of bees that had as much emotion as Neville Chamberlain’s flat voice.

“I am speaking to you from the cabinet room at Number Ten Downing Street. This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that unless the British government heard from them by eleven o’clock that they

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were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.”

“War!”

Euan reached to turn the switch.

“I suppose that young flyer of yours will be seeing action,”

he said, irritably pulling at his tie. Though secretly delighted by Araminta’s friendship with the son of an earl, he often advised her to concentrate on ordinary businessmen like himself.

“Well, it seems that Aubrey did the right thing, enlisting.”

“We’ll do our bit,”

Elizabeth added.

“Yes, of course,”

Euan said testily. Til be working all hours now to relieve Aubrey, so it’s best to stay up in London. You’ll stay down here at Quarles and take in some of those evacuees.”

Til find a war job,”

Araminta said.

“Poor old Alfred, over there in Germany.”

Euan thumped a fist on his thigh.

“I shouldn’t want to be in his shoes.”

“Or Katy’s, either,”

Araminta said.

“She’ll have the worst of it.”

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I

On 31 August, Kathe found a letter from New York on the ornately carved hall-table. Snatching up this, the first mail she’d received from him since the debacle in London, she raced up to her room.

It was dated 23 August 1939. As she read, her lips moved as if she were a small child puzzling out the words. Finishing, she read the letter over again, then closed her eyA He’s been taking out other girls while he got my letters. That idiotic adcmng pap! How could I have written such trash? Her mind clenched tight around her humiliation, and it took several minutes for reality to hit.

This was a goodbye letter. Wyatt was saying goodbye to her.

She dropped face-down on her bed, breathing unevenly. A watery pressure filled the cavities around her eyes. Excusing herself with illness, she didn’t go down to dinner.

The windows showed a grey dawn light when she heard the voices. Alfred’s rumbled queries, Trudi the downstairs maid and Frau Milch the cook shouting that berserk Poles had attacked the Reich. By the time Kathe ran into the hall, her father was alone. She seldom saw him in his night clothes. How vulnerable he looked m the ancient sagging dressinggown with his grey hair rumpled. He held a newspaper. From twenty feet away she could read the huge headlines:

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POLES STORM GLEIWITZ RADIO STATION

FUHRER ORDERS COUNTER-ATTACK!

WILL ADDRESS REICHSTAG AT 10

Breaking his habit of speaking English to her, Alfred used his heavily accented German.

“We’ve got a nasty business on our hands.”

Nastier than he knew, she thought, recalling what Major Downes had told her of England’s secret treaty with Poland.

“How can we be sure the Poles attacked?”

she asked.

“Kathe, you know as well as I do that the Poles’ve been on a rampage against every German trapped in their territory. The Chancellor’s been more than reasonable.”

Alfred’s tone of rectitude told her he was not voicing his own convictions but what he preferred to believe or wanted others to hear.

“It’s high time we showed them a firm hand.”

He stopped as she gave three staccato sneezes.

“Kate, that’s a nasty summer cold you’ve got. Under no circumstances are you to come to work this afternoon.”

Til call Sigi and find out what’s going on.”

“Call Siegfried about what?”

Clothilde emerged from the bedroom wearing a wide-brimmed hat, her su rimer coat and laced Oxfords for her walk.

Alfred held up the newspaper.

Clothilde gave the headlines a cursory glance.

“Didn’t I mention that Siegfried telephoned two days ago? He’s gone on manoeuvres.”

“At the Polish border of course. He and the rest of the Army had to be on the ready for this

“surprise attack”.

“

Kathe’s wan sarcasm ended in another sneeze.

“Go back to bed, dear.”

Clothilde glanced at her lapel watch.

“Trudi will bring you up something.”

Kathe didn’t touch the roll and margarine. She had developed a sick cold. Sipping tepid coffee, she stared out of the window. The sunlit morning was sultry. Across the small still lake, the Bolle Dairy horse waited docilely while the milkman chatted with a laundress hanging out sheets. From here the pair resembled miniature dolls in the serene landscape. Could war seem more of a delusion? Kathe wondered. But, if it comes, we’ll be cut off from the English family. And already I’m cut off from the American. Returning to the affairs of her aching intransigent heart, she began to cry hot sparse tears.

While she wept, Hitler was delivering an announcement to the Reichstag. His attempts to keep the peace were over, his patience was exhausted. From now on Polish bombs and bullets would be met with German bombs and bullets. The venomous speech entirely ignored the panzer divisions that were already deep into Polish territory.

At six Kathe dressed for dinner.

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Because of stringent petrol-rationing, Kathe and Alfred now took the S-bahn to work, returning on the train that stopped at the Griinewald station at six thirty-three. Tonight, when the hall clock chimed seven Alfred still hadn’t returned.

The tense silence was punctuated by Kathe’s sneezes and the rattling of her outdated English Vogue. When double chimes indicated seven-thirty, Clothilde folded the sock she was mending and replaced the darning-egg in her sewing-box.

“Dinner-time. We’ll have to go ahead without your father.”

Her voice was uneasy. Alfred was the embodiment of promptness, and deviations from routine disturbed them both.

“What’s that?”

A ululation had started, rising and falling like the howl of distant wolves.

The fine pale hair of Kathe’s arms prickled.

“The air-raid alert.”

Frau Milch and the new scullery-maid barged into the hall clutching their gas-masks, both shrilling at once.

“Those sneaky PolacksF

“They’re bombing us!”

‘The cellar!”

‘Yes, the cellar hurry!”

“Turn out the lights,”

Clothilde commanded calmly.

“For the blackout.”

No Polish planes appeared, but the all-clear didn’t sound until the small hours of the morning.

Alfred did not return home.

At dawn Kathe drove the old Steyr to the nearest police station. When she returned, she found Clothilde dressed for her walk.

“The Schupo in charge was very kind,”

Aathe reported.

“He called headquarters in the Alexanderplatz. No frccidents were reported in Berlin.”

“Accidents? Kathe, you’re far too imaginative. Your father decided to stay in town, that’s all. I’m certain he’s at the shop.”

Normality reigned on Unter den Linden. Nobody hurried to buy the newsboys”

extras, sunlight reflected on the freshly washed pavement outside the Hotel Bristol. Kingsmith’s window, however, remained barred. The employees were congregated in the narrow rear courtyard. The last anybody had seen of Alfred was as he locked the door the night before.

Suddenly lightheaded, Kathe held on to the wall and went into her father’s utilitarian office, sinking into the deep indentations of his leather desk-chair.

“Fraulein Kingsmith?”

Herr Knaupf stepped inside. His lips quivered on his overly white dentures.

“There isn’t anyone more loyal to the Reich than Herr Kingsmith, mind you, but there is the consideration that… uh, well, that the authorities might be rounding up certain foreigners.”

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Hearing her own fears put into words increased Kathe’s apprehension.

“He’s not Polish,”

she snapped.

“This has nothing to do with anything.”

Herr Knaupf s tone grew yet more placating.

“But those bloodthirsty Poles are trying to drag in the French and the English.”

As the door closed behind him, Kathe buried her head in her folded arms. only Sigi were here, he could find Father with a single phone call. He has high connections. Then, clear as if a snapshot had materialized on the desk, she saw the brilliantined sleekness of blond hair, the bull-like stance.

Otto Groener.

Her upset stomach rebelled. She sat tensed for over a minute, then blew her nose and reached for the telephone.

An instant after the secretary buzzed him, Groener stamped into the windowless waiting-room. The Bavarian Tracht was replaced by a meticulously tailored black uniform. There must be lifts in his glossy jackboots, for he was several inches taller.

“Fraulein Kathe,”

he said, beaming. ‘Come inside.”

This new wing of Gestapo headquarters at PrinzAlbrechtstrasse

8 had just been completed. Morning sunlight flooded through the large modern windows to polish the chestnut-brown leather sofa, cast a white glaze on the heroically scaled marble of a male nude and glint on the glass that protected the enlarged wall-hung photographs of Groener posed informally with Hitler. Everything in the spacious up-to-date office shouted:

“I’m at the top of the ladder.”

“Sit here, Fraulein Kathe - no, I’m going to call you Kathe. And you must call me Otto. Now, tell me about your father. I didn’t catch everything on the telephone.”

Going through the story of her father’s disappearance, she blew her nose twice.

“That’s a rotten cold you have there. Let me get you a schnapps.”

Ignoring her refusal, he moved to the credenza.

“Drink up,”

he said, and stood over her until she had choked down the brandy.

“That’ll cure you.”

And her sinuses did feel less clogged.

“Now, about your father.”

He sauntered back to his desk.

“Does he often stay out late?”

“Never.”

“Never? Between ourselves, a lot of very high-class ladies frisk in and out of Kingsmith’s. Take it from one who knows, Kathe. Very few men can resist those ladies.”

“He’s missing!”

she cried. She hadn’t eaten this morning, she’d had no dinner the previous night: taken on an empty stomach,

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the massive dose of brandy was working instantaneously.

“I tell you he’s missing!”

“Stop breathing fire. In my line, you learn it’s always best to look for a simple explanation first. All right, I’ll start tracking him down. But you must understand it’ll take time. Everything’s in an uproar His voice grew hollow, then roared loudly, reverberating against her eardrums. She noticed haphazard details about Groener, the death’s-head insignia on his black uniform, the hairs clipped on his earlobes, the broad fingernails that were buffed and kept long as a woman’s. She missed several sentences, jolting to attention as he said: Til do whatever’s in my power to get to the bottom of Herr Kingsmith’s disappearance.”

“Very kind of you.”

Her tongue felt oily, and she had difficulty holding on to the words.

“Sigi and I, very grateful.”

“I’m doing this for you, Kathe.”

He was coming around the desk. A box inside her brain warned her she would vomit if he touched her, and she pushed out of the chair. The motion was too rapid. Dizziness overpowered her. Her head seemed to rise to the faraway ceiling, her body and legs dwindled into mush.

“What is it?”

a receding voice asked.

Groener’s massive head, the desk, the marble statue, gold-framed photographs, the big office circled around her. Then the vivid sunlight dimmed and went out.

IV

She was floating on something slickly comfortable, and a cool wetness was being held to her temples then toAie pulses in her throat. She could hear a man calling her namdr but everything felt loose and comfortable and she didn’t want to open her eyes. As the coolness touched between her breasts, she stirred feebly. Groener had unbuttoned her cotton dress and was pressing a balled wet handkerchief beneath her freshly ironed slip.

“Stop it.”

She meant to shout, but her voice was a thin dry whisper. She flailed weakly at his hand. He kept the wet cloth firmly between her breasts.

“Just rest,”

he said in a low hoarse voice.

“No need to be embarrassed. My God, you’re beautiful; I never saw any woman so beautiful.”

After that the sequence of events was never quite clear in Kathe’s mind. Had he cupped her breasts before he stuck his tongue in her mouth? Did she punch his arm after he sprawled on top of her? His fingers with those long, elegantly manicured fingernails were shoving under her panties. Had she twisted too vehemently or were his scratches on her vagina intentional?

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He jammed her knees apart, shoving his penis into her. Pain. Intense corrupting pain. The sensation of betraying Wyatt and defiling love. Groener’s mouth stayed clamped over hers. She snorted and bubbled in her struggle to breathe as he rammed at her.