Black Roses (7 page)

The Kaiserhof Hotel in Wilhelmplatz, opposite the heavy grandeur of the Chancellery, was a hulking, six-storeyed building, the colour of dirty snow. The portico was decked with scarlet begonias as precisely ranked as a division of storm troopers, and from the upper floors a line of red and black banners billowed, proclaiming the Kaiserhof’s status as the favourite hotel of the Nazi top brass. Inside there was a dull stolidity to the marbled staircase, the mahogany and chandeliers, that suggested the respectability of less exciting times. The air was tinged with the smell of kitchens and cleaning fluid.

They found a table in the lobby and Helga took off her coat to reveal a floaty blue silk dress with a bow at the neck and a stole of champagne fur. The dress was paper thin, and could have done with a good wash, but from a distance the impression was undeniably glamorous. She was visibly excited, glancing around her restlessly as her crimson-lacquered nails fiddled with a lighter, her head swivelling to and fro as she checked out the guests, as though she, rather than Clara, was the tourist.

‘Hitler has his flat here,’ she hissed in a loud whisper. ‘But he doesn’t eat here anymore because the Communists in the kitchen tried to poison his food.’

Clara looked sceptically at the waiters, ferrying silver trays laden with drinks and small bowls of nuts between the potted palms. The idea that potential poisoners were abroad seemed outlandish. With its red plush chairs and bowls of orchids, the Kaiserhof felt like the height of propriety.

‘I still can’t believe we’re having a drink with Sturmhauptführer Klaus Müller!’ Helga lit her cigarette and smiled broadly. ‘He’s the coming man. It’s just a shame that he has to bring his fat friend.’

Clara was already realizing that her new friend was dangerously indiscreet. ‘Shh! Remember how Sturmbannführer Bauer said your voice was clear as a bell. Well, it is. They can hear you from across the lobby.’

After the bustle of the street outside, the lobby was an oasis of calm, with National Socialists seated in comfortable seats throughout, drinking beer, or strutting around in their boots and breeches. Beyond them, up a flight of white marble steps, a cocktail party was in full swing. Clara could see a stately reception room, where light from the crystal chandeliers sparkled on the jewels of the women among the black and brown uniforms and a string quartet sawed away in the corner.

‘Albert tells me both Bauer and Müller have just been appointed aides to Dr Goebbels,’ said Helga in a theatrical whisper. ‘They’re going to help him run the Culture Department at the Ministry. Which includes film!’

‘Is that good?’

‘Are you crazy, Clara? It could be wonderful. A girl needs to keep on top in this business. It’s all about having the right friends in the right places.’

At that moment the brown kepi of Bauer could be seen bobbing towards them, and seconds later his portly frame was visible, bustling importantly to their table. His tunic was ringed with underarm sweat and his face was gleaming. He took off his cap and wiped his brow. Without the hat his head looked too small for his body and the back of his neck bulged over his collar like soft cheese.

Müller, by contrast, was in evening dress, with a little silver swastika pinned to his lapel. He had a look of forceful energy only just contained by the stiff winged collar and white tie. Clara imagined he must be around forty. When he bent to kiss hands, his hair gleamed like patent leather. He slid into the seat next to her, and clicked his fingers.

‘Herr Ober. Champagne.’

The waiter hurried off with more than usual alacrity.

Clara gestured at the party in the neighbouring room. ‘What’s going on there?’

‘It’s a political soirée.’ Müller had a smile hovering on his lips. ‘I assume you follow politics, Miss Vine, with a family like yours?’

Clara guessed a political discussion right then would be unwise.

‘I’m afraid I’m not political. I’m just an actress.’

He laughed again. ‘I think you’ll find everything is political in Germany right now. Even actresses.’

They were interrupted by a shriek from Helga, a reaction to something Bauer had said in her ear.

‘And I thought you were a gentleman!’

Bauer’s face had deepened to shade of puce, which crept across his cheeks and extended to the bristles of his scalp. He clamped a meaty hand on Helga’s shoulder and treated her to an unambiguous leer.

Müller turned to Clara with an almost imperceptible shudder, as though to provide a physical barrier from Bauer, and addressed her in English.

‘It’s good to have visitors from England. I hope you’ll be able to give a true account of National Socialism when you return.’

‘I’m not planning to go back quite yet. I’ve only just arrived.’

‘But you have favourable impressions so far?’

What were her impressions so far? There was the mood of nervous uncertainty at Babelsberg, the graffiti she had seen spattered on walls and shops threatening death to the Jews, the brown-shirted storm troopers bullying people into parting with money for their collecting tins, and the marching band that had stamped past her as though they hoped to grind the very soil of Germany beneath their boots. Which of those would Müller consider a true account of National Socialism?

‘I’m surprised to see so many men wearing uniform. I mean it’s not as if anyone’s at war.’

‘A uniform is a mark of pride.’

‘Is it? I think uniforms give people airs. It’s like an actor wearing a costume. It makes people forget what they are underneath.’

For a moment Müller’s eyes widened and a shadow crossed his features. No one, she realized, generally answered him back.

‘I believe, Fräulein, you’ll find people here like a uniform. It gives them a sense of solidarity. It gives them the opportunity to feel that they belong to the group.’

Clara took a sip of her champagne. ‘I’d say it gives them the opportunity to intimidate people when they’re filling up their collecting boxes.’

Suddenly Müller rose to his feet. Craning behind her, Clara was aware of a tall woman approaching them, her heels clicking on the black and white marble floor. She wore a Schiaparelli evening gown in ivory, which flattered her creamy skin, and pearls the size of little birds’ eggs hung round her neck. Her platinum hair was waved tightly around her face and a gust of perfume attended her. The flesh of her arms had the dense solidity of a Greek statue, and her eyes had a statue’s veiled, impenetrable stare.

‘Herr Doktor Müller! Just who I wanted to see!’

Müller clicked his heels. ‘Frau Doktor Goebbels. How are you?’

She had a deep, fluting voice, a little clipped. ‘Good, thank you, though a little tired with the move.’

‘I heard. Is the new house to your liking?’

She sighed. ‘The apartment was becoming too cramped. I liked it, but Joseph wanted something that fit better with his official duties.’

Müller gestured towards Clara. ‘This is Clara Vine. She’s the daughter of Sir Ronald Vine, the English politician.’

The woman seemed to notice Clara for the first time and looked at her curiously.

‘Is that so? I have some English friends. They have promised to come and visit us.’

‘Miss Vine is acting at Babelsberg.’ Müller gave a stiff little gesture towards their companions. ‘Helga Schmidt perhaps you know.’

Frau Goebbels glanced at Helga and something in her expression hardened momentarily.

Müller turned to Clara. ‘Frau Doktor Goebbels is the wife of the Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.’

Clara nodded politely, thinking what a dreadful mouthful that title was to be saddled with.

‘But we prefer to call her the First Lady of the Third Reich,’ he added, with a gallant bow.

The sigh was replaced with a bright smile.

‘Well, it’s good luck I ran into you. I’m planning a cocktail party tomorrow night at our new home. Won’t you come? And bring Fräulein Vine with you?’ She glanced briefly at Bauer. ‘And your young lady too, Herr Bauer.’

Clara looked around her to see Helga open-mouthed.

‘Filthy tea, I’m afraid. I’ll ask Miss Jenkins to bring fresh, if you like. You’d think in the British Embassy tea would be the one thing we could get right.’

Sir Horace Rumbold poured a watery stream from the silver teapot, pushed a cup towards Leo, then leant on the stiff-backed sofa with a sigh. The British ambassador was a lofty man, whose benign, mild-mannered face and flaring nostrils gave him the look of a friendly camel. His neat moustache and horn-rimmed spectacles imparted a myopic expression, quite at odds with his keen wit and sharp sense of humour. He had asked Leo to see him in the library of the British Embassy, a wood-panelled room from whose walls portraits of past ambassadors stared out mistily. In pride of place above the fireplace was the King, with something of the morose bloodhound about him, looking gloomily similar to his exiled first cousin, the doddery Kaiser Wilhelm, who was now safely confined in Holland, well away from any temptations to power. Around the room burnished leather armchairs rested on slightly threadbare rugs as though a gentleman’s club had been uprooted from Pall Mall and translated to the German capital.

‘Tea is one of those things that can never be the same,’ agreed Leo diplomatically. It sounded like a cliché but he meant it. Tea for any Englishman evoked a cascade of associations, symbolizing consolation and continuity, a pause in the day, a moment of reflection. He doubted very much though that Sir Horace shared the same associations as himself. For Leo, the thought of tea evoked his mother, with her worn apron, reaching for the battered caddy decorated with red-jacketed soldiers, which lived on the shelf above the range, spooning one for each person and one for the brown Bessie pot. The rich, musty scent of Assam brought with it the memory of a hundred afternoons working on the dining room table in the fading light, while his parents tried not to disturb him, a deep russet cup of tea at his elbow. So unlike the pallid offering here before them, in porcelain cups stamped with the British Embassy crest.

‘Sugar?’ said Sir Horace, proffering the bowl.

‘No, thank you.’ Leo took a sip and said, ‘You were going to explain, sir.’

‘Yes, I was, Quinn. All in good time.’ He bit into a biscuit. ‘Tell me, how is it going? You’ve been in Berlin what, a couple of months?’

‘Six months.’

‘And you’re happy? Getting around? In the evenings?’

‘I’m seeing a bit of the clubs, as you do. But to be honest, sir, most evenings now I’m dead beat.’ He laughed. ‘Must be feeling my age.’

‘Feeling your age!’ Sir Horace guffawed, exhibiting teeth as mottled as old piano keys. ‘My goodness, man. How old are you? Barely thirty! At your age I was good for a couple of receptions a night and dancing till dawn. And you’re a single chap too. No lady on the horizon? We shall need to get you sorted.’

The face of Marjorie Simmons rose in Leo’s mind and he wondered if a mention of her appeared on his file. More curtly than intended he said, ‘This is not about my social life, I take it.’

‘Only tangentially.’

‘Sir?’

‘It’s a simple brief really. Now, you were at Oxford. Not at the House, were you?’

Leo flinched inwardly at the assumption that he would not have attended the upper-crust Christ Church, popularly known as “the House”.

‘I was at Balliol, sir.’

‘Of course. Well, you’ll have seen
The Times.
This vote in the Union. “This House would not in any circumstance fight for King and Country”.’

In fact, Leo had read the report that very morning. The sensation caused by the Oxford Union’s vote against fighting was picked up by newspapers throughout Europe, including the
Vossische Zeitung,
the liberal-leaning paper that Leo read daily over his coffee and roll.

The university’s debating chamber, the Union, liked to think of itself as a miniature House of Commons, and might as well have been, given the number of men who graduated pretty seamlessly from one to the other. The result of the debate had prompted headlines everywhere. Winston Churchill had called it “abject, squalid and shameless”. But Leo had not bothered to accord it much attention. For one thing he recoiled from the kind of undergraduate posturing he remembered only too well. For another, he was too damned busy. The pressure of work was keeping him awake at night. Being called in to see Rumbold, while intriguing, only meant more piles of paperwork when he returned.

‘It’s in the nature of undergraduates, sir, to be provocative. This kind of thing is just an immature pose. I’m certain if war broke out tomorrow they would sign up just as fast as their fathers did.’

‘I’m sure that’s true. Bloody shameful nonsense all the same.’

Sir Horace put down his cup, wandered over to the window of the library and stared down at the churning traffic on Wilhelmstrasse below. Along the principal thoroughfare of the government district, housing the Reich Chancellery and the Foreign Office, a pair of gleaming Mercedes-Benz 770s containing Nazi top brass could be seen cruising.

‘The thing is, Quinn, these are interesting times. We are officially still feeling our way with the new regime. We don’t want to antagonize them. In some respects their hatred for the Reds is shared at home.’

Leo nodded. That much was clear from what Hugo Chambers said. For some years now the British Security Service, which monitored domestic subversion, had focused all its energies on the threats within Britain from the Left. It was only recently that anyone had taken a closer interest in the activities of the Right.

‘As we all know, there’s a rapidly growing body of Englishmen who favour disarmament at all costs. You know the sort of thing they say. That the last war should mark the end to all wars. Any rearming is sanctioning large-scale murder. I’m sure you’ve heard the kind of thing.’

‘Frequently.’

‘I think we both agree that a powerful England is vital to ensure peace. Yet these pacifists at home have no idea of the effect their talk has on our reputation abroad. I’ve already been informed that various associates of Herr Hitler believe our young people are “soft”. If they think Hitler has any time for pacifists, they are much mistaken. To Hitler, man is a fighting animal and any country which does not fight back deserves to be overtaken. I fear this new administration brings out the worst traits in the citizens too. Jingoism, brutality, all this business about the Jews. It leaves a very nasty taste in the mouth.’