The Girl Behind The Curtain (Hidden Women) (18 page)

But all that is to change. Otto and I will marry as soon as we have completed the paperwork. On that subject, Mummy, I shall need you to send my birth certificate as soon as you possibly can. I can’t get married without it. After that, I will move in with him and his family in the Prenzlauer Berg. Mummy, you would love Otto’s mother. She is a very kind lady and she makes the most tremendous strudel. His father, unfortunately, is dead, but I understand he was a great man, beloved by all who knew him. Otto has a sister, called Helga, who wants to be a doctor, and a brother, called Gerd, who is a sort of soldier with the Sturmabteilung. You might have heard of them. They all support Adolf Hitler. Helga is the sister I wish I’d had. A far better influence than Bettina. Gerd is a nice chap, too. He saved another boy from drowning when he was only twelve.

I am so happy to be joining Otto’s family. Most of all, I am so happy to become Otto’s wife. Mummy, I’m sure you never would have predicted that I would end up with a singing lawyer and a German one at that, but I know he is the right match for me. I am over the moon. I know you will be too.

With lots of love from your only daughter and your soon to be son-in-law,

Kitty and Otto

xxx (for the dogs)

Monday 17th October 1932

Dear Diary,

So, I have sent my letter to the Aged Ps. I hope they will be even half as pleased as Otto’s mother, who clutched me to her bosom as soon as she knew I’d said ‘yes’. She told me that the news that I had agreed to marry Otto made her almost as happy as the day he was born. She said she could not imagine a better match for her dear son and that I should consider myself to be her daughter from that moment forward.

Helga also smothered me with kisses and told me I was the sister she’d never had. What fun we would have together! How lovely to think that one day, when we were both eighty years old, we would be sitting together on a porch, reminiscing about this day. Our children would grow up together. What fun times lay ahead.

Otto’s mother told him to put on the gramophone and open a bottle of sekt and supper was a jolly affair. At least, it was very jolly until Gerd came home. He was in that horrible uniform again. He had spent the evening putting a troop of small boys from the Hitler Jugend through their paces in a local community hall. Apparently, the SA is getting very popular with boys under the age of ten. Anyway, he was as serious as usual. Otto made some joke about playing toy soldiers and Gerd did not even crack a smile. Rather, he told Otto that the future of the Reich was no laughing matter. The young boys who had been practising endless drills that evening might one day be called upon to defend good German lives.

‘Kitty is becoming a German,’ Helga chipped in then.

‘What?’

Gerd’s eyes narrowed when he looked at me.

‘I asked Kitty to marry me and she has agreed to become my wife,’ said Otto.

‘Isn’t it the happiest news you’ve ever heard?’ Helga clapped her hands together.

‘Indeed,’ said Gerd, in such a way that we were left under no illusion that he was anywhere near as excited as the rest of us. Still, he had the grace to lift a glass of sekt to his lips in a passable impression of somebody wishing us well. And Helga and Otto’s mother didn’t let silence reign for long. The gramophone went back on. Though only for a little while because Gerd informed us all that he needed to go to sleep as soon as possible. He had important SA business to undertake in the morning.

Gerd doesn’t like me. That much is pretty sure. I think he despises me as much as Otto loves me. How could two men born to the same parents have grown up to be quite so different? Otto is so gentle and open-minded. He is at home in any company. Gerd is stiff in his bearing and just as rigid in his opinions. If he were not going to be my brother-in-law, I don’t think I would seek him out as a friend.

Anyway, now that we are engaged, Otto is less worried about being seen accompanying me into the hotel after dark. We told Enno our good news – apart from Otto’s family, he was the first to know – and he seemed very pleased for us. He offered us half the wurst he had been eating as an engagement present. I declined.

‘Ha!’ Enno laughed. ‘I suppose you’ve got your own sausage now.’

Otto gave him a very stern look.

We went upstairs to my little room. How I used to hate it with its peeling green wallpaper and heavy dark wood furniture that put me in mind of my grandmother’s house. Now I am fond of it. Otto has changed my whole world.

You know, I do believe that being engaged has made our lovemaking even better. There is not the faintest shadow of doubt in my mind when I climb into bed with Otto. I know that he loves me more than anyone and will never leave me for another girl. And I will never look at another man. We are promised to each other for ever and it is the most wonderful feeling on earth.

I am never happier than when he is inside me. When we are face to face and I feel him move so carefully as he tries to make me come. I love it when we press our lips together as he fucks me. I wrap my arms and legs round him. We could not be closer if he opened his mouth and swallowed me whole. Even when we are both entirely spent, I am loath to let him go.

I am crazy about him and I intend to remain so for the rest of my life.

Tuesday 1st November 1932

Today I saw that old man from the café. The one who wanted to be my slave. He was standing outside the cinema, with his hands in his pockets. I called out ‘hello’ and wished him a lovely day. ‘I hope you’ve found your perfect goddess,’ I told him. After all, he helped me find my Otto.

The old man looked rather confused and shuffled away without returning my cheerful greeting. Perhaps he didn’t recognise me. I didn’t have my boots on. Perhaps he was simply embarrassed.

Sex, sex, sex. How it moves us. Now that I have Otto, I understand that old man and the people who come to the club so much better.

Sex drives people to such desperate measures. Otto says the reason there are so many English visitors to the club is because we are all horribly repressed back home. I told him he could count me out. But he has a point. Here, in the clubs, no one bats an eyelid if a woman dresses as a man and kisses another woman. Or a man decides he wants to be kissed by a great big brute with a beard.

I hope that one day the whole world will be as free as Berlin.

Chapter 23

Berlin, last October

Kitty was right. How uncomplicated our lives would be without sex or the promise of it.

In late October, Nick Marsden, my old friend and colleague from Venice, came to Berlin for a conference. We hadn’t seen each other since that crazy night back in the summer when we had both got very drunk indeed and he had finally made a move on me, which, for a while, I reciprocated.

I was pleased and relieved when I got Nick’s email. Ever since that evening in Venice, silence had yawned between us. I’d heard from Bea, our mutual friend, that Nick was OK with what happened and that I shouldn’t be angry with myself about it, but I was very glad when, at last, I heard from him. His email was as jolly and friendly as ever.

‘Thomson,’ he wrote. ‘Or should I say “Dottore”! I’m coming your way. I’ll be in Berlin from Friday morning until Sunday night. Giving a talk at eleven o’clock on Saturday morning, but otherwise pretty flexible. Let’s meet.’

I already knew he was going to be talking on the Saturday morning, of course. I’d had the conference timetable for weeks and was planning to attend several events. I hadn’t been planning to attend Nick’s event because I didn’t want the first time we saw each other to be with me looking at him from the audience, but now that he’d broken the ice of course I would be there. I found I was looking forward to it.

But there was one other person I knew who might be attending the conference. Steven, my ex-boyfriend, had always taken every chance he could to travel on the history department’s budget and this conference was right up his street. I had heard nothing from him, however, and I wasn’t about to contact him. In fact, I hadn’t heard anything from him since that night in Paris – my birthday – when I freaked out as he started to make love to me as though I were an object. The lack of connection between us that night had disturbed me greatly. It confirmed that something between us had died when we broke up. There was no getting back together.

For that reason, when I walked into the lecture theatre where Nick would be delivering his lecture I was doubly nervous. I still wondered if it would be a little strange to see Nick after what had happened last time we were together; then there was the danger that Steven would be at the lecture too. And what would I say to him?

The last year had been a catalogue of romantic disasters and my split with Steven had precipitated the whole thing. His rejection had made me vulnerable in Venice and later, when I was feeling vulnerable again in Paris, he had reappeared to add to my confusion. Since I had finally burned my bridges with Marco, I was trying to put
all
the shadows behind me. But while it was unlikely that Marco would ever appear to test my resolve, Steven was quite another prospect.

Of course, he was there. I didn’t notice him at first as I walked into the theatre and nodded at a couple of my new German colleagues. Nick was already on the stage, talking to the professor who had coordinated the whole event and working out how to use the slide projector. I gave him a shy wave, which he reciprocated by giving me a big smile and mouthing that he would see me as soon as the lecture was over.

I glanced around the room furtively, looking for Steven. When I didn’t see him, I relaxed. I chose a seat three rows from the front and draped my coat over the back of it before popping out of the theatre for a moment to visit the ladies’ room. When I returned to the place I had earmarked, I found Steven sitting in the seat right next to it.

‘Well, fancy seeing you here,’ he said.

He said it as though we were just old friends. There was no hint in his demeanour of the anxiety I had been feeling when I thought about the possibility we would meet again.

‘I put my coat here earlier,’ I said, wanting him to be quite clear that I had not seen him across the room and decided to make a beeline for him. Had I not left my phone and my wallet in my coat pockets, I might have abandoned it altogether in order not to have to interact with him at all.

‘I must have subconsciously known it was yours,’ said Steven. ‘Pheromones.’

On stage, Nick was sitting down beside the lectern, waiting for the room to settle so that Professor Klein could introduce him. He looked in my direction, of course. When he saw Steven, his expression was visibly pained.

‘This is your friend, isn’t it?’ Steven nodded towards the stage. ‘The guy from Venice?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I wasn’t going to come to this lecture but I thought I’d better pretend to be serious about my subject. I’ll have to give some kind of report.’

‘I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.’

‘I’ve heard he’s hot stuff. In the lecture theatre, at least.’

I blushed. I don’t know why. As far as I knew, there was no way that Steven could know Nick and I had ever crossed the line from being colleagues. He had to be making a snide reference to someone else. We moved in a small world. Undoubtedly, Nick and Steven had met some of the same students during their tenures at Oxford and London respectively. I could easily imagine Steven seducing a female graduate who had once rebuffed Nick’s charms. Steven’s comment made me feel oddly protective of Nick.

But perhaps he was making a dig at me. Had he decided that our attempt to rekindle our relationship failed because of someone in Venice and, putting two and two together, decided that someone must be Nick? It was more plausible, I supposed, than the truth.

There were a great many questions I wished to ask Steven. Had Kat used the telephone number I gave her and called him before she left Paris? I thought perhaps she hadn’t. I’d been following her progress in the gossip columns. She had, as I’d predicted, soon left Calum, the actor who had insisted she be auditioned for a part in the Augustine du Vert biopic. She was now dating a far bigger star and had been cast as the female lead in a big-budget action movie. No, I suspected Steven didn’t ever hear from her at all. But I very much doubted that meant he was alone most nights.

The conference leader was back on stage. He announced that the event was about to start. Steven turned to look at Nick and I couldn’t help sneaking a glance at his profile. His perfect nose. His lips. Those lips that had been everywhere, on every part of my body. How was it possible that so much intimacy had left us almost strangers?

We sat through Nick’s lecture. I’d seen him talk before. Even on the very driest subjects, Nick could usually find an historical anecdote that would have the whole audience rolling in the aisles. But that day he was surprisingly lacklustre. He couldn’t seem to hit his stride. He presented his slides as though he couldn’t wait to get through them and get out of there. From time to time he glanced in my direction and I thought his expression was questioning. I wished I could tell him that whatever he was thinking was wrong. I hadn’t invited Steven to join me. I would never have chosen to sit with him. Should I have scooped up my things and moved to the other side of the room?