Black Roses (26 page)

He saw her reflection on the glass of the picture, but did not turn.

‘The
Crucifixion
,’ she said. ‘Brueghel the Younger.’ She fingered the ticket that had arrived the previous evening in a plain envelope with no accompanying note.

Wednesday 5 April, Alte Nationalgalerie. Admit one.

‘At least it’s still here,’ Leo said conversationally, as if engaging in art appreciation with a fellow visitor. ‘I’ve heard Goering has begun helping himself to whatever catches his eye. All the gallery owners are terrified when he comes to visit. He’s already had Rubens’
Diana at the Stag Hunt
taken out of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum and put up in his own place.’

‘Goebbels disapproves of robbing the galleries.’

‘As does Hitler, apparently. Mind you, given his taste, it would be a favour to everyone if he did spirit his favourites away.’

They walked around the gallery like tourists. Part of Leo wished they were. They peered into glass cabinets jumbled with watercolours and gouaches. On the second floor they entered a side room of foreign artists, and found Millet and Corbet, and Constable’s house on Hampstead Heath. They stopped in front of a Degas, flush with the pink and apricot flesh tones of a woman dressing. It reminded Leo a little of Marjorie Simmons, in the deft way she refastened her brassiere after love-making, putting herself firmly out of reach. Repackaging herself. That way women had with their bodies, of controlling them after an ecstasy of release. He wondered about Clara too, whether she loved to watch herself during sex, the way Marjorie did. But then he reproached himself. Today she was wearing a navy suit and a blue hat tipped to one side. From the shadows under her eyes, it seemed she was a little tired.

‘How is your acquaintance?’

‘Not good. She looks exhausted and she’s constantly on edge . . .’ Clara hesitated.

‘What?’

‘It may be nothing, but I think there’s something wrong.’

‘Go on.’

‘I can’t work out what it is. I thought she was going to tell me the other day. She said she wanted to talk to me about “a matter of some delicacy.” She started crying.’

‘Crying? Why?’

‘They’d had a row.’

‘What about?’

‘That’s just it. I’m not certain. Though I’m sure it was serious.’

‘Politics perhaps?’

She gave a short laugh. ‘I shouldn’t think so. She did complain that Joseph is betraying her.’

‘He’s a famous womanizer.’

His eyes were surveying the room while they talked. There was only one other visitor, American it looked like, by the Kodak Brownie he was carrying.

‘Yes, and it’s hard for her. Apparently the girls just swarm over him. She has to take such care over her appearance. She obviously feels she needs to keep up.’

‘Without the help of cosmetics, one assumes.’

‘Not at all. And forget no drinking or smoking either. She changes outfits several times a day. He’s just the same. He takes manicures and he sits under a sun lamp. He thinks it makes him more attractive.’

‘I shouldn’t think it’s the suntan the women are falling for.’

‘It’s strange though, isn’t it?’ she mused. ‘All this talk of making women more simple and natural, when Magda and the other women are doing their level best to be as glamorous as possible.’

‘It matters, glamour. People believe that an élite should be glamorous. The Nazis don’t want to actually
look
like a gang of murderous roughnecks now, do they?’

A gaggle of schoolchildren, satchels on their backs, entered the room, accompanied by a teacher with a booming voice. The girls, in short white socks and gymslips, stared obediently up at the Brueghel, but the boys at the back glanced at Clara. Leo drifted away into a room of Post Impressionists and she followed him.

‘I suppose he’ll end up leaving her,’ she said.

‘I doubt it. She reflects well on him. It’s more a case of whether she will stay with him, I’d have thought. I wonder why she stands it.’

‘I asked her that. She says he’s a brilliant man. He lives three times as intensively as other men. He can’t be judged by a middle-class moral code. She’s very proud of him. She remembers the days when he would give talks in Communist neighbourhoods and they would throw beer mugs at him, and now he’s the youngest ever minister in Germany.’

‘So she does share his politics?’

‘I didn’t say that. They argue a lot about women. He thinks that women should concentrate on being mothers. He says he respects them too much to allow them involvement in politics.’

‘That’s rich. Without the votes of women, the Nazis wouldn’t be where they are.’

He stopped to admire a nude, looking closely at the thick, stippled paint of the thighs, marvelling at how a painter could conjure such a convincing illusion of living flesh from oil and greasy pigment.

‘She seems to talk quite readily to you.’

‘I think she’s lonely. They don’t have many friends in high command. I suppose she just likes having someone to chat to. Someone who’s not going to spread gossip.’

‘So this latest row then. It’s just about the womanizing?’

The American had entered the room and begun photographing the paintings. Leo wondered briefly why. There were plenty of postcards weren’t there, in the kiosk downstairs? Then again, Americans tended to photograph everything. It was a habit of theirs. Perhaps they thought looking through the lens of a camera was the only authentic way of seeing the world.

‘I don’t think so. She was talking about him being jealous.’

‘Who would he be jealous of?’

‘That’s just it. She’s there at home most of the time, unless she’s out with him. They seem to spend every night watching films.’

He drifted away as if transfixed by a Seurat of three women at the seaside in varying stages of undress. Clara caught up with him.

‘I still can’t understand why you want to know all these trivial things. What use is it to you?’

He gestured to the painting in front of them. ‘Pointillism.’ She frowned, so he continued. ‘The amassing of tiny specks of colour, which when seen close appear meaningless but from a distance create an effect. They got the idea from tapestries originally. When French restorers worked on them, they noticed that the only way to replace missing sections was to look at the colours surrounding them. You need to look at the interplay of colours, the role of every little bit, to find out what’s missing. It all counts. When you’re trying to see the big picture, you need details.’

Clara stared at the women and the seascape behind them, letting the focus of her eye relax until the turquoises and the azures of the water blurred into one brilliant blue. She spoke softly, without moving her head.

‘Goebbels distrusts me, I know. You should have seen his face when I visited the other day.’

She remembered the shining, intent dark eyes that flickered over her as he passed down the corridor.

‘Don’t worry. You’re doing well.’

Leo loved being here, surrounded by scenes from the past, reminders that beauty and sensitivity and civilization had flourished and would flourish again outside this brutal regime. He wished they really were a pair of ordinary sightseers, drifting around discussing art, with nothing more pressing to decide than where to go for lunch and whether to visit the Brandenburger Tor or Sanssouci. He’d like to know if Clara felt as passionate about painting as she did about poetry. He longed to debate the pictures in front of them. Instead of which, he had a pile of work waiting for him back at the office, no chance of lunch and his conversation with Clara must be confined to the business in hand. He stared over at a small Manet pastel of a woman naked in a tin bath. It was a graceful, understated study, the light glancing off her ordinary, imperfect curves. The model’s back was turned to the painter, and she was looking up at him, bold and unashamed, as the water ran in sparkling rivulets down her thighs. She seemed utterly unconcerned at being observed. Not proud and theatrical like Marjorie, but spontaneous and fresh.

‘You haven’t mentioned Müller.’

Clara was looking at the nude too, and immediately detected his train of thought.

‘I haven’t seen much of him,’ she said shortly.

‘That’s a shame.’

‘Not for me.’

‘But this isn’t for you,’ he said, with an edge of impatience, as though he were talking to a subordinate, or a child.

‘I know it’s not. But I don’t see how this . . . whatever you call it . . . can profit from my seeing Sturmhauptführer Müller.’

‘It will help. Just the appearance of it would help.’

‘Why?’

‘You need to be someone they would never suspect. Anyone liaising with a Nazi official would have to be above suspicion.’

‘I don’t see . . .’

‘You may not see, but that doesn’t matter, Clara. Just keep meeting him.’

He was riffling through a French guide to the museum’s pictures, consulting the notes on the Manet.

‘It’s perfect from every point of view,’ he continued as if he was explaining the style of the work in front of them. ‘It suits them, because they’re keen to build up connections with people from England, and it suits us because Müller is valuable cover.’

Clara looked down at the page too. ‘But if I keep meeting him he’ll assume I return his interest. What can I do about that?’ He didn’t answer, so in a low tone she added, ‘It’s difficult to go on meeting a man who . . . who expects something.’

Leo turned a leisurely page. ‘No one said doing this was going to be easy. It’s for your own safety. You’ll think of something.’

This remark had a curious effect on her. She looked him full in the face, with a high spot of colour in her cheeks and a kind of frustration in her expression, and then in a tight voice she said, ‘I’m starting to wonder why I’m doing this at all.’

After which she turned abruptly, and made her way down the wide marble hall and out of the gallery.

Leo stared at her retreating back in astonishment. If he had been taking notes, he would have had to include the impression that there were tears in her eyes.

Goering’s pale grey airforce jacket was studded with strips of medals, marching across the broad expanse of his chest.

‘If he gets any more he’ll have to start going round the back,’ murmured Leo’s boss Foley, in a voice drier than the sherry he was sipping.

Dyson, the embassy attaché, grunted. ‘Goebbels has a new nickname for him apparently. He calls him the Christmas Tree.’

‘They say he’s had a rubber set made to wear in the bath,’ added Leo.

The new Prime Minister of Prussia was attending a party at the British Embassy for which a collection of dignitaries, socialites and assorted journalists had been assembled. No matter how grandiose Goering might be, he was never likely to outshine Number 70, Wilhelmstrasse. The grand colonnaded Palais Strousberg was a magnificent and stately building, designed originally for a railway pioneer and bought by the British Government when the previous owner, a banker, went bankrupt. The visitor passed through a two-storey marble hall, where fountains splashed gently, to a spectacular ballroom, which that evening contained a large gathering of National Socialist officials, fortified by liberal quantities of His Majesty’s champagne. They had all been there quite a while. In the new regime everyone who was not a Nazi, even if they were foreign ambassadors, expected to be kept waiting. And Nazis themselves were kept waiting by officials of a senior rank. This etiquette of unpunctuality broke down a little, however, towards the top. Although Goering had arrived promptly, Goebbels was late, which could either have been unavoidable, or a calculated snub, and going by everything they knew, the British assumed the latter.

Leo moved to talk to a group of aides. It was incredible to him how easily the National Socialists had eased themselves into high society. Industrialists and aristocrats fought to host their evenings. These men who just months ago were staging fist fights on street corners, now spent their evenings being courted by ambassadors and princes. Though Herr Hitler was not attending tonight, there was a big turn-out of all the top brass. The rising young architect Albert Speer was there and von Ribbentrop had just arrived with his hard-faced wife, her gaze raking the room like a searchlight for the most prestigious guests. Across the room the bushy-browed Rudolf Hess glowered at Goering with a look of invincible hatred. Goering himself was kissing hands as he circulated, his pudgy fingers glittering with rings like some ancient potentate.

‘The Minister is celebrating his success on today’s hunting trip,’ said one of the lackeys, stiff as a ramrod with an expression to match. ‘He has managed to shoot more than three hundred in a single afternoon.’

‘Animals, I trust,’ murmured Leo.

The Nazi gave him a contemptuous look. So much got lost in translation with these British. He was a desiccated fellow with a face of parched solemnity and all the conversational skills of a Ministry press release. He tried again.

‘Let us hope that tonight will be evidence of the friendship between our two nations. Germany has a great love of England, whereas France plans to squeeze her like an orange. It is France that England should beware of.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Of course. Although it is important that England recognizes she has responsibilities too.’

‘What might they be?’

‘England must be the breakwater to stop the Communist flood. You saw how the Communists set fire to our Reichstag? They would like to set fire to the whole of Europe.’

Leo noticed Hitchcock, Archie Dyson’s deputy, coming towards him, signalling that he lose his companion. He carried two glasses of champagne and nodded towards a side door that led into a corridor. A few feet further on was an empty office, the typing pool, which Hitchcock entered, kicking the door closed behind them. He didn’t turn on the light.

‘Thanks, Quinn.’ He handed over a glass. ‘Just to say. We’re rather pleased with your progress.’

He perched on the edge of a table and leant back. Hitchcock liked to cultivate the air of effortless establishment superiority he thought was essential for someone working for the British Government’s secret service. In that, as in so many things, he was mistaken, Leo thought. From what he had seen of it, the secret service was full of oddballs and misfits. Lone wolves like himself who knew how to assimilate, but never properly belonged. Besides, he never really saw the point of Hitchcock, who seemed to spend most of his time playing golf and being dined by businessmen in the Ku’damm’s classier bars.