Woman in the Shadows (6 page)

“I hope you can come and meet some of my friends, Fräulein. We should get to know each other, considering you are going to be my bride. Bring Herr Lindemann here with you. But be warned: I make a pretty lethal cocktail.”

A
sharp breeze corrugated the surface of the Wannsee, setting the water dancing and nudging the boats against their moorings. Until a few years ago these boats had names like
Edda
or
Ute
or
Gretel
on their bows, but these names had now been painted over. They'd been replaced with grander, National Socialist aspirations like
Courage
or
Victory
or
Endurance.
Clara turned away from the view and shivered. Perhaps it was the chill breeze blowing through the opened French windows of the Goebbelses' drawing room, but more likely it was the company that was gathered around her.

The furniture had been cleared to make way for a crowd of women in bright sheath dresses, the glint of their jewelry competing with the gleam of silver death's-heads on black SS dress uniforms. As always, it was an unnerving experience to be in close proximity to a bunch of SS officers. The bark of German conversation was interspersed with the familiar bray of the English upper classes, but so far no one had taken up the offer of Clara's translation. The Germans pretended they already understood, and the English assumed that speaking their own tongue both more loudly and more slowly would make them perfectly comprehensible.

“It's a lovely spot you have here, Frau Doktor,” said one. “I hear the Führer sometimes prefers Schwanenwerder to Berchtesgaden.”

“Nothing could be better than Berchtesgaden!” interceded a gawky Englishwoman with a straw-colored bob. “Berchtesgaden is the nearest you can get to heaven.”

Unity Valkyrie Mitford had a stolid, impassive look, which reminded Clara of the stone women on the theater façade on Nollendorfplatz. Her face, with its high, plucked eyebrows, was like a blank pool into which you longed to throw a pebble. The girl who had asked a German newspaper to let everyone know she was a “Jew-hater” had a sullen air, like a cow that has been thwarted at a gate. Though she was only twenty-three, Unity had relocated to Germany to be as close to Hitler as possible, basing herself in Munich and hoping each day for an invitation from the Führer to lunch, or the opera, or just to take tea at his apartment. Occasionally she was asked to make speeches or write newspaper articles. Then she would turn out a tirade against the Jews as dull and plodding as a twelve-year-old schoolgirl's essay.

Unity's awkward woodenness only served to emphasize the beauty of her sister Diana. Four years older, smaller by a head, and exquisitely dressed in cream Dior, Diana had milky blond hair and eyes of bright, hostile blue. The two had the same broad brow and high cheekbones, but the features that produced Diana's loveliness were cast more coarsely in Unity. Looking at the two sisters together made one wonder how birth could fashion such different outcomes from identical raw materials. The same thought must have occurred to Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler's personal photographer, who was circling the guests with surprising nimbleness armed with a Leica.

“Don't mind me. Please don't let me disturb you!”

Hoffmann was a dapper character with the practiced charm and ingratiating smile of the professional hotel manager. His hair was slicked with pungent pomade, and a silk handkerchief bloomed extravagantly from his top pocket. The fact that he had for many years been the only photographer permitted to take official portraits of the Führer meant he was the VIP photographer of choice at gatherings of senior Party figures. That evening he had abandoned lights and tripod in favor of a handheld camera, but his efforts to remain unobtrusive were quite unnecessary because the Mitfords ignored him completely. Being photographed was, for them, entirely routine.

“The Berghof is terrifically homely,” agreed Diana, who had just returned from a break at the Führer's hideaway in the Bavarian Alps. “The view is glorious, though it is just the teensiest bit like staying in a bed-and-breakfast in Bournemouth. The cushions have little slogans embroidered on them, can you believe?” She had a sharp, tinkling laugh, like a champagne glass being smashed. “There was even one that said,
The German Woman is knitting again!
And the cushion itself was knitted! Isn't that funny! If there hadn't been so many great big guards around, I would have popped it in my bag and taken it home.”

“That's a terrible thing to suggest,” objected Unity humorlessly. “Guests wanting souvenirs from the Berghof are a frightful problem for him, poor Führer, but he can hardly say anything. His spoons get stolen by everyone. Even the brushes and nail files from the bathroom. Just because they're engraved with his initials.”

“Perhaps he should be more careful with his guests then,” concluded Diana brightly. “I must say, some of those women at dinner the other night seemed of doubtful origin. And not much to look at either. I don't know how the darling Führer can stand to look at them. Figures like the
Hindenburg,
didn't you think?”

Diana's body by comparison was as fine and delicate as a whippet's. In profile her face had a freakish perfection, like that of a Greek goddess. Beside her Magda Goebbels, in a white dress and striped cardigan, an ashy film of powder on her face, looked stout, her ankles swollen. The sisters began talking to Hoffmann's daughter Henny, a vivacious girl whom they knew from Munich, as her father took another photograph. Henny spoke in a low, gossipy whisper.

“You were lucky to be sitting with the Führer at the Berghof. I was stuck next to Herr Bormann. He kept gabbling on about his grand plans for matrimony in the Reich. He wants to institute mass weddings with fifty couples getting married at the same time. Can you imagine anything more awful?”

“I think it would be rather a hoot,” said Diana. “Just think of all the brides' mothers, competing in pastels.”

Clara wondered if Archie Dyson was right in his assessment of the Mitford sisters as a busted flush. They seemed to her to occupy an extraordinary place in the Nazi hierarchy. They were respected guests of Hitler, privy to intimate conversations among the top brass at his Bavarian retreat. They listened firsthand to the Führer's plans for Europe's future and in turn fed him a vision of England that was eccentric in the extreme. Contemplating this, she sensed Diana's clever eyes travel over her, as if reading her thoughts.

“Clara! How lovely to find you here. I haven't seen you for too long. How's your divine sister, Angela?”

Diana knew Angela, but she was closer to Angela's new husband, Gerald, a stolid barrister who had political ambitions and, in Clara's eyes, absolutely no redeeming features. Gerald had flirted with joining Mosley's British Union of Fascists, though in the end he had opted for the Conservative Party as a safer bet.

“Angela's very well, thank you. She's coming over soon.”

“Frightfully good fun, your sister is. It's a shame she couldn't have come in time for the rally. It was terrifically impressive. Did you make it down to Nuremberg?”

“Not this year, I'm afraid.”

So far, Clara had managed to avoid attending any of the Party rallies, though she guessed sooner or later she might have to accept an invitation. The talking point of that year's Party congress in Nuremberg had been the “Cathedral of Light” designed by Albert Speer, in which a hundred and fifty searchlights reached up into the night sky, like the pillars of a holy building.

“It was awfully naughty of you to miss it, Clara.” Unity butted in. “It was just the best
Parteitag
ever. The Führer was thrilled with it. I can't believe you've never been. All the rallies and the marches are absolute heaven, and the Hitler Youth boys look like angels.”

Clara laughed lightly. “There are plenty of marches in Berlin to be going on with.”

“Maybe. But I think it's a crime to miss it. You've never seen so many people all in one place. It culminates in the procession of the Blood Flag—that's the flag held by the young Nazi struck down in the Putsch—and all the other flags are consecrated by touching the Blood Flag. It's the most sacred moment. You can't really describe it. You have to see it for yourself. It's monumental.”

“Not as monumental as the Herr Doktor's speech,” teased Diana. “Fifty pages on the evils of Bolshevism!”

Magda laughed uneasily at this joke at her husband's expense, but any further embarrassment was prevented by the entrance of three tiny Goebbels children, five-year-old Helga, three-year-old Hilde, and two-year-old Helmut, who were ushered in to dance to a tinkling piece of Strauss on a music box. The girls, in white pin-tucked party dresses and ankle socks, shepherded the toddler Helmut between them around the floor. The adults gazed on their performance in silence, then broke into a ripple of applause as the three children ended with tiny Heil Hitler salutes and posed obediently for Hoffmann to take photographs. The solemnity was broken only when Hilde kicked up her leg and yelled, “Look! I have new shoes!” prompting a ripple of benevolent laughter.

“Heini Hoffmann,” hissed a voice in Clara's ear. “The Führer's own photographer. We are honored.”

Clara turned to see Annelies von Ribbentrop, wife of Germany's Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. The Ribbentrops, it was said, were returning to Germany, with hopes that he would be made Foreign Minister. Holding her cigarette to one side, Annelies proffered Clara her cheek for an air kiss.

“Frau von Ribbentrop. You're back from Britain!”

“At last. Though I don't know for how long.”

Annelies von Ribbentrop's square face was framed by dark hair, severely disciplined in tight braids, and her formidable form was upholstered in a type of bottle-green woolen jacket that suggested hunting, though without any of the fresh air or exercise that went with it.

She sniffed. “I do admire you British for coping with such dreadful weather. The damp affects me badly, I'm afraid. I'm sensitive to atmospheric depressions.”

It had to be the only sensitive thing about her, Clara thought.

“But how are
you
?”

The force with which Frau von Ribbentrop inquired into Clara's well-being was always in inverse proportion to her actual interest.

“Very well, thank you.”

“Your father threw a delightful dinner for us in London.” Clara had heard about this occasion. The Anglo-German Fellowship had taken the Grosvenor House hotel ballroom for a dinner to honor Hitler's ambassador. “They had all the tables decorated with swastikas. So touching! You must thank him for us. He's a wonderful man. Though I must say it's a relief to be back in Berlin.” Her eyes flickered around the assembled company. “I've been catching up on all the goings-on. What unexpected joy for Frau Goering! I suppose you heard the news?”

Everyone in Germany had heard the news. Emmy Goering, at the ripe age of forty-four, had become pregnant with her first child. The event was considered a near miracle. Many people believed the baby could not possibly have been fathered by the Reichsminister, who was said to be impotent, from his morphine use or his war wounds or his enormous bulk. The whole country was gossiping. Everyone had their own favorite joke about it, and the nightclub artiste Werner Fincke had been arrested for telling his.

“Such wonderful news,” said Clara, neutrally.

Outside, there was the scatter of gravel on the drive and the purr of an engine. Clara looked out to see a figure jump from a gleaming, low-slung Bugatti. Then the front door closed and a minute later the late guest appeared. He was a tall, sandy-haired man in his forties wearing the expression of someone who has left a casino to attend a meeting of the parish council.

“Sorry I'm late,” he said in English.

“Goodness, Ralph,” said Diana, plucking imperiously at his sleeve. “That hat makes you look like a Jewish bookmaker. Do come in. It's very naughty of you to keep us waiting.”

As the maid took his hat and coat and Magda drew him aside, the newcomer's gaze lingered fractionally on Clara, though no one thought to introduce them.

Clara was finding it hard to focus on the party. For the past seventy-two hours Archie Dyson's words had rung ominously in her head.

We had a hint that you might have aroused suspicions.

His remark had frightened her more deeply than she expected. She knew—she had known for years—that she would be watched. Someone like her, who was half English, mixing with the Nazi elite, couldn't hope to go unremarked. She was ready for it. She had always been prepared to accept the consequences of what she did. Yet the absolute confirmation that she was being spied on produced a continuous, dull tension, which knotted her stomach and dragged her mind relentlessly through the same questions. Again and again she had run through her acquaintances, trying to work out which of them might have confided their suspicions about her to the occupants of Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. But she could think of nothing she had done recently that was out of the ordinary. No revealing conversations that might have been overheard, no meetings with anyone hostile to the regime.

At that moment, standing amid the crowd, she detected a scent that brought her attention sharply back to the present. An astringent citrus fragrance. Scherk's Tarr aftershave.

“Fräulein Vine. What a pleasant surprise.”

No matter how often she saw him from afar at the studios, hurrying along the corridors with his jerky crippled gait, an actual encounter with Joseph Goebbels, archpersecutor of the Jews and the man charged by Hitler with responsibility for “the spiritual direction of the nation,” still made Clara shudder. His skin was stretched tightly over a pinched, clever face, and his shrunken frame dared you to look down at his deformed foot. His smile was as dazzling and intermittent as a prison searchlight, and he crackled with nervous energy. Tonight he was dapper as usual, wearing a well-cut light serge suit and navy tie. He dipped his head swiftly and kissed Clara's hand, then took out a cigarette case and offered her a cigarette.