Black Roses (16 page)

‘There are so many things I love about Germany,’ he said. ‘Rilke, his wonderful poems. Do you know them?’

‘Of course.
The Duino Elegies.
Or that lovely one, “Exposed on the Mountains of the Heart”.’ Clara laughed. ‘I used to learn great long chunks of poetry as a child. Heaps of Tennyson and Shelley and Browning.’

‘I like Browning. He’s underrated.’

‘You know “My Last Duchess”? The one about the evil Duke who murders his wife because he suspects her of having an affair? I adored that one. And I won the school prize reciting “Ozymandius”.

I still say it to myself when I’m about to go on stage. I know it’s supposed to mean the opposite, but it’s awfully good for stirring you up.’

They walked on for a while discussing poetry until they came to the Tiergarten, and followed one of the winding paths lit only by the occasional iron lamp. It was cold for the time of year, and their breath made spindly clouds in the icy air. Between the pools of light it was properly dark, and it was possible to imagine the deer and wild boar that were said to still roam out there in the trees. She thought for a second she could see their eyes glinting, but it was only the glow of cigarettes studding the distant spaces like fireflies against the inky grass.

‘I wonder, Clara.’ Leo bent to light a cigarette and snapped the lighter closed with a deft movement of his wrist. ‘You mentioned that you had met Frau Goebbels. Without wanting to intrude, could I ask how you come to be attending Nazi cocktail parties?’

‘I was invited by a man at the Ufa studio. Klaus Müller.’

He raised his eyebrows at this. ‘Sturmhauptführer Müller? Goebbels’ new aide?’

‘That’s him. He invited me to the cocktail party and then we had a drink at his apartment.’ She felt suddenly defensive, as though she were being asked to account for herself. She shrugged. ‘That’s about it, though.’

‘And did you like her? Frau Goebbels?’

‘Not exactly. She’s not the kind of person you’d warm to. Or ever really feel you’d know.’

‘Might you see her again?’

‘That’s the funny thing. She’s been asked to set up a bureau for German fashion and she wants me to get involved.’

‘Why you? Do you know a lot about fashion?’

‘Absolutely nothing. She said she wants actresses to do the modelling and she thought she’d start with me.’

She decided to omit Magda’s comment about her husband. Leo didn’t need to know that.

‘She invited me to a tea party at the Adlon, to meet some of the other women involved. Goering’s girlfriend was there. And Frau von Ribbentrop.’

Leo was silent for so long she guessed he must be horrified. Well, let him be, she thought. It was not as though she had any intention of spending any more time with Frau Goebbels. Or Sturmhauptführer Müller. Leo obviously disapproved, or considered her frivolous or ignorant, but he didn’t say anything so she added sharply, ‘Not that I’ve any intention of getting involved.’

‘Why not?’

‘For a start, fashion modelling isn’t my thing.’

He remained silent.

‘More importantly, I dislike everything they stand for. I’m not one of those English girls who are fascinated by fascism. I don’t get carried away at the sight of a man in uniform, especially not if it’s a Nazi uniform.’

Leo seemed to be looking at her intently. Then he said, ‘I wonder if you might do something for me. I would be very grateful if you would get involved. See Frau Goebbels every time you can. Listen to what she says, then come back and tell me.’

‘What a strange request. Why?’

‘I’d be very interested.’

‘So you want me to keep seeing them for the sake of your curiosity?’

‘Not just my curiosity.’

‘It sounds like you’re asking me to spy.’

‘For Christ’s sake!’ Leo looked around swiftly, but there was no one nearby. A group of young men – students, they looked like – were up ahead laughing, and showing no sign of eavesdropping on a pair of visitors speaking English.

‘Sorry. Just . . . speak more carefully, please, Clara. What I’m asking, what I mean is, the information could be useful.’

Something about the way he said it, made her burst out laughing. How melodramatic he was. ‘Useful! What information? I haven’t got any information. It was only very trivial chat.’

‘What did you chat about?’

‘First we talked about films, and then we talked about clothes.’

‘I don’t mind what it is. Anything. It doesn’t matter if you think it’s important. Just tell me.’

‘Why should I?’

‘As I said, I’d be grateful.’

‘And who could Frau Goebbels’ views on fashion possibly be useful to? Apart from her dressmaker?’

‘To people at the embassy. And I give you my word it would go no further.

Her face grew grave. ‘At the embassy. Why? Why do they want to know?’

‘It’s politics really. We’re trying to build up a picture of these people. The way they think, what they’re like in private.’

‘I can’t imagine I’d be any help.’

‘You’d be surprised. They harbour great hopes for increased friendship with the English. Last year, Winston Churchill and his wife were over here, hoping for a meeting with Hitler, only at the last moment Hitler ducked out of it. But it’s certain to come up again and when it does, they’ll need briefing.’

‘You’re telling me Mr Churchill would need to know the Nazis’ views on fashion?’ Clara said incredulously.

‘Not only that. Anything could be important.’

‘But why me?’

‘They plainly don’t suspect you. And . . .’

‘And what?’

‘And it helps that this Müller is friendly towards you.’

His green eyes held hers unblinkingly. Although it was dark, a flush crept up her neck as she began to divine what he was suggesting. He thought she was having a relationship with Klaus Müller. Images of herself making love with a Nazi official were playing through his mind.

‘He has taken me for a drink. Once.’

‘And back to his apartment.’

‘Once
.
’ Her voice was tight with indignation. ‘Look, I’d better be going now. I’m in the opposite direction, I’m afraid. I’m going to look for a cab.’ She pulled her coat more tightly around her, as the rain flicked into her face.

‘I’m sorry, Leo. But the fact is, I’d already decided. I don’t want to see these people again so whatever it is you want me to do, I can’t do it.’

He looked down at her, frustration and annoyance warring in his eyes. For a second his expression made her shiver.

‘Let me give you my address. Just in case.’

He threw away his cigarette and bent his head in the darkness to write an address in a notebook. As he did so there was the faintest rustle and scurry in the darkness.

He froze and laid a warning hand on her arm. ‘Quiet!’

As they peered into the gloom they saw a figure had dashed out and taken the still glowing cigarette butt from where it fell. Leo laughed, a short, joyless laugh.

‘Sorry. Sharp ears everywhere these days.’

He tore off the paper from his notebook, gave it to her, and held her hand briefly.

‘Here. Take this. And think about it. Seriously, please.’

The rain had come on again but Leo decided to walk all the way home to punish himself. He pulled up his collar yet the stinging rain still drenched him and the cold air flayed his face. However warmly he dressed, the freezing Berlin wind still took him by surprise. The English expected their weather to be soft. In weather, as in other things, they disliked extremes. He plunged his hands in his pockets and carried on.

At the end of the Tiergarten he crossed the Platz der Republik and passed the blackened hulk of the Reichstag. It had been more than a fortnight since the fire and the embers were cold now, piles of rubble and masonry shifted into the street. For days passers-by had had to navigate charred planks of wood and sooty bricks, with many of them stopping to stare at the crumbling parts of the stately old building and reflect on everything its destruction stood for. Which was the devastating fires of Marxism, if you thought along National Socialist lines, but for most people, the home of democratic parliament standing in ruins meant something far more ominous.

Leo had been in a bar that night, not far away, eating a pile of noodles with the first of several beers at his side. Alerted by the clanging of the fire engines, he had run out into the street with the rest of the clientele to see the red glow in the west and plumes of smoke coil into the night sky.

The fire had started around a quarter to ten that evening, in five different corners of the assembly hall, where cloths soaked in petrol had been placed at the oak panelling. The glass cupola glowed scarlet and the flames funnelled up it until it burst and crashed to the ground. It was only minutes before two black Mercedes screeched into view, passed through the police cordon and Hitler could be seen running up the steps, two at a time, closely followed by Goebbels and his bodyguard.

Once Hitler had entered the smoking hulk, he stood at a little balcony in the hall, laid his arms on the stone balustrade and peered down into the flames. His voice rising to an uncontrollable screech, he announced, ‘There will be no mercy now. Anyone who stands in our way will be cut down. The German people will not tolerate leniency. Every Communist official will be shot where he is found.’ If it was proved to be the work of Communists, he would round up the murderous pests with an iron fist. The bit about being “proved” was plainly superfluous, because the same night hundreds of Communists were dragged from their beds, given a beating in the local SA cellars, followed by interrogation, imprisonment, and in many cases a bullet in the back of the head.

In the days that followed, even though a young Dutch Communist was quickly apprehended and charged with setting the fire, the reprisals carried on regardless. Squads of Brown Shirts in trucks raged through the Communist districts enacting mass arrests, smashing windows and raiding businesses. Swingeing new measures against personal liberty followed. The German Communist party, the KPD, was banned, and hundreds of people crossed the Swiss border into exile. The result of this fresh fear of Bolshevist terror meant a surge in the Nazi vote in the March 5 elections, since when the euphoria of the Nazis had known no bounds.

Tonight, though, the rubble heaps were being shifted. Labourers had been brought in with spades and shovels, and neither the late hour nor the rain was going to stop them. Hitler had acted swiftly. First thing tomorrow he was to re-open the Reichstag in Potsdam. The old President had been dragged along in his dotage to provide a fig-leaf of respectability for the dismantling of democracy. Deputies would no doubt have to pass through a cordon of SA men and the mandatory cheering crowd. The Day of Potsdam would symbolise the continuity between the Third Reich, Prussia and the German empire. In the evening Hitler and his friends would return to Berlin for a performance of
Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg
at the State Opera. It made sense that the National Socialists loved opera. Presumably it was the only art form loud enough to drown out the shouts of protest on the streets outside.

Leo waited as a lorry bristling with SA men and banners passed, and it was only when he had crossed Pariser Platz and headed up Unter den Linden that he at last let his mind turn to the matter that was troubling him. Not so much troubling him as clanging through his head like a klaxon in a frenzy of alarm and recrimination. Clara.

A young British woman in social contact with the new regime. It was exactly the thing Horace Rumbold had asked him to look out for. Her story of the meeting with Frau Goebbels had amazed him and at the same time seized his imagination. What astonishing access she had. Listening to their conversations, their complaints and their confidences. Entry to social circles that would be closed to almost every foreigner. And a woman on her own, out of contact with her family back in England. After what Rumbold had asked him, he would have been irresponsible if he’d passed up an opportunity like that.

And yet . . . he had fumbled it. He had been crazily, disastrously, unprofessionally reckless. On the slightest acquaintance he had been guilty of the most extraordinary clumsiness and broken the first rule of intelligence work. Not to trust anyone. And the second rule, not to give away too much information. And all sorts of rules down to about the tenth, which had to be not to alienate a potential source. The memory of Clara’s pretty, dark-eyed face staring at him with shock and a certain amount of disdain, rose lividly in his mind.

His first instinct had been simply to befriend her. When he asked her for a walk, he had been thinking that a stroll might allow the gossip to flow more naturally. A young Englishwoman alone in a foreign city would probably be glad of some company. If he was honest with himself, he had found her attractive. She had fine, delicate features, and a petulant fullness to her lips that hinted at sensuousness. Her enquiring, intelligent eyes, coupled with a sense of reserve, brought to mind the perennial lover’s question, ‘What are you thinking?’ All these impressions had passed through his mind as she sat before him in the café wondering whether to stay or go.

And then he had to come right out with it and ask her! Something about the intimacy of the evening, the soft, enclosing trees of the Tiergarten, the tenebrous darkness speckled with the pinprick of cigarettes, had provoked his rash confidence. Or perhaps it was the girl herself, all that talk of poetry, or a sudden, unexpected shaft of homesickness. Since he arrived in Germany Leo hadn’t spoken about England much, except in a professional capacity, with people at the consulate. And despite the reserve, she seemed the kind of girl who was easy to confide in. He could have kept on walking with her all night. He still held the memory of her handclasp in his, cold and surprisingly soft.

And now he risked compromising the entire operation. He had behaved like a madman. Heaven knew who she would run and tell. Perhaps even Sturmhauptführer Müller, God forbid. He should never have alluded to her acquaintance with Müller. She was outraged and annoyed, as she had every right to be.