The Girl Behind The Curtain (Hidden Women) (2 page)

Now Otto threw in an instrumental passage, as he had always warned her he might when they discussed how this moment could be. He was buying time for the people behind the curtains. For Marlene and Schluter and Isadora and Old Hans. Kitty wished he could play for ever. She watched Otto’s hands moving over the keyboard and heard in every note he played a love song just for her.

And then suddenly it was the last verse. Kitty’s voice cracked as she sang the song’s final line. But she couldn’t let it end on such a sad note. She wouldn’t. She added a flourish. A final line of her own, over the top of Otto’s fading chords. ‘But I’ll be coming back for you, dear.’ She looked right at him and blew him a kiss.

Then the crowd began to applaud and there wasn’t a second to lose. Kitty bowed quickly, curtly, and exited stage left at a run. The crowd continued to clap. They wanted her back. Another bow. Another encore.

‘More more more!’ they yelled.

But there would be no encore. Not tonight. Maybe not ever. Kitty was already on her way down to the basement.

Upstairs in the theatre, a gunshot rang out.

Chapter 1

Berlin, last September

Another month, another country. If it’s September, it must be Berlin, I said to myself, mocking the touring rock stars who claim they only know which town they’re in by consulting the day on the calendar. I was beginning to feel a little bit like that. I had started the year in London, then moved to spend two months in Venice. I’d followed that with two months in Paris, then back to London again and now Berlin.

The plan was that I was going to be in Berlin for the long term. I was in Germany to teach English to support myself as I began a new project, studying the experiences of British expats in the capital between the two world wars. It was a project I was looking forward to undertaking, but I couldn’t help but feel a little nervous as the plane touched down. Another country, another adventure? Or another dose of heartache?

Thanks to my friend Clare, who had been living in Berlin since we finished our undergraduate degrees in London almost a decade earlier, I would at least be arriving in the city with some idea of what to do and where to go. Clare had already helped me to find a flat to rent. She’d actually offered to have me stay at her place for as long as I needed, but I’d done enough couchsurfing in London over the spring and summer and I didn’t feel like imposing. I wanted a place of my own. Somewhere I could stay for as long as I wanted. A home.

Clare couldn’t meet me at the airport that first day because she had to work, but she had sent very detailed instructions on how to get to my new place. She’d been kind enough to spend some time there too, checking it would have everything I needed and filling the kitchen cupboards with essentials. She had also made an inspection of the landlord. The elderly man, who was called Herr Schmidt, lived on the ground floor of the building. That kind of arrangement – a live-in landlord – could be difficult, but Clare didn’t think he would be too much trouble.

‘And if he is,’ she said, ‘you’ll easily outrun him. He must be ninety-five if he’s a day.’

I was grateful that she’d checked out the flat
and
the landlord. It made me feel just a little less lonely when I arrived on the Hufelandstrasse in the Prenzlauer Berg and pressed the doorbell. My first impression was certainly good; the outside of the tall white building was very clean and tidy and the neighbourhood seemed quiet and safe. Clare had explained to me that the area was the Berlin equivalent of London’s ‘Nappy Valley’ between Clapham and Wandsworth Commons – lots of young families chose to live there. It might not be the hippest part of town, but it was very nice.

It was a short while before Herr Schmidt answered the door. He was exactly as Clare had described him. Easily in his nineties. He walked with a cane but he was by no means a helpless old man. He was beautifully dressed in smartly pressed clothes. He was still tall and only slightly stooped with age. He looked well-fed and, indeed, I could smell something delicious wafting into the hall from his kitchen on the ground floor.

‘Fräulein Thomson,’ he greeted me. ‘I am very glad to meet you. Welcome to Berlin.’

He gave me a small nod. He had such bearing that I found I wanted to curtsey in response, but I made do with a nod of my own. Bizarrely, I found I was slightly lost for words. Herr Schmidt had the most startling blue eyes, almost aquamarine.

‘Do you have much luggage?’ he asked, breaking the spell.

‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘This is it.’

‘I’ll take it for you.’

There was no way I was going to let him try to drag my heavy case up the stairs. ‘I can manage,’ I insisted.

Still, we did an awkward little dance in the doorway as he tried to take my bag off me. Eventually, I let him wheel it into the hallway. I sensed it was important to him to feel that he was treating me as an esteemed guest rather than a lodger.

‘Your rooms are upstairs,’ he explained to me. ‘But first perhaps you would like to share some coffee and cake.’

I certainly wasn’t going to say no. I was hungry. I hadn’t eaten the plastic-covered roll that passed for breakfast on the plane from Heathrow. Plus, I wanted to get to know my new landlord. I was relieved that I immediately felt comfortable in his company. It’s funny how we make such judgements, isn’t it? We can look at someone’s face for just a second and know at once we’ll get along. That’s how I felt about Herr Schmidt; there was kindness in his incredible blue eyes. I was also intrigued. He spoke good English – there had to be a story there. It was lucky too, since my German still left quite a bit to be desired. My first month in the city would be full of one-to-one German lessons to bring me up to speed. I was sure I would learn as much from my English-language students as they would learn from me.

‘So you are going to be working at the university?’ he asked me.

‘Yes.’ I explained the nature of my project.

Herr Schmidt nodded. ‘Well, you will find plenty to interest you here. The 1930s were a fascinating time to be living in this city.’

‘So I’ve heard. I’m very keen to explore the juxtaposition of the decadence of the legendary nightlife and the political change,’ I said, hoping I didn’t sound too pretentious.

Herr Schmidt smiled distantly. ‘There was certainly plenty of change,’ he said.

And then he changed the subject by offering me another slice of cake.

The cake was delicious. I didn’t need to be encouraged to have more than one piece. After that, Herr Schmidt offered to show me my new apartment. Between us, we carried my suitcase up the narrow stairs. He opened the door to my flat and waved me inside. There was, as Clare had promised, everything a girl could need (including Nutella in the cupboard, as I would later discover). The four small rooms – bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and study – were light and immaculate. Though the furniture was a little old-fashioned, it was charmingly solid. I liked the idea that it might have been around during the period I was hoping to write about.

‘How long have you lived in this house, Herr Schmidt?’ I asked him when he had finished pointing out how everything worked.

‘All my life,’ he told me. ‘I was born here.’

I decided not to ask exactly when that might have been.

‘That’s pretty rare these days,’ I said. ‘To be born at home and then live in the same house one’s whole life.’

‘I suppose it is.’

He seemed sad at the thought. Perhaps it was the memory of all the people who had lived in the house with him. As far as I could tell, I would be the only lodger. The only other person in the building, in fact. The rest of the place was empty. But once upon a time it must have teemed with people: his parents, his siblings, maybe even his own wife and children, though he hadn’t mentioned them.

‘I hope you’ll be very happy here,’ he said.

I assured him that I would.

And I did feel that I could be happy in Berlin. Since leaving Paris – upset by my final meeting with Marco Donato and angry that I’d only got my job researching Augustine du Vert because of him – I had been killing time in the UK. I was eager to make a start on a new life.

I was tired from a day spent travelling, but after Herr Schmidt left to go back downstairs I unpacked my case, knowing I was unlikely to feel much more energetic the next morning. I hung my clothes in the narrow wooden wardrobe that seemed to have been made to accommodate the belongings of someone with much smaller shoulders. I imagined the wardrobe’s original owner, who must have been a good deal more fine-boned than me, hanging gossamer-light frocks cut on the bias where I now hung my jeans and a couple of black dresses. I placed my underwear in a drawer lined with floral paper that was faded and brittle with age. It might have been put there by Herr Schmidt’s mother. I don’t know why I assumed that the room’s first occupant must have been a woman but there was definitely something feminine in the atmosphere.

I’d brought with me framed photographs of my sister and my parents. I set those on the dressing table, with its speckled old mirror. Herr Schmidt had put a small vase of flowers on the well-polished top. It was a kind touch. It made me like him even more. It also made me well up just a little, as for some reason it put me in mind of the flowers on Augustine du Vert’s grave at Père Lachaise. I put my overly emotional reaction down to fatigue.

Later, I set up my laptop on the table in the little study I would doubtless come to know very well. There was wireless, thank goodness. I’d worried that someone of Herr Schmidt’s age might not bother with the Internet, but he’d told me he’d had it installed at the behest of his great-nephew, who had assured him it was a non-negotiable requirement for any modern lodger. I had felt oddly comforted by the thought that Herr Schmidt had relatives somewhere. Until he mentioned the nephew, he had seemed worryingly self-contained.

I logged on and checked my emails. I sent Mum a message to let her know I was safely installed. I let my sister know the same. I attached a photograph, taken with my phone, of the little study and another of the kitchen, small and so neat – for now, anyway. I texted Clare to thank her for filling my fridge and cupboards with so many goodies. It was very kind of her. I was lucky to have such a good friend.

After that, with a cup of tea in hand, I looked out of my new bedroom window. It had a wide sill that was the perfect seat, made cosy by the velvet curtains.

I was in the former East Berlin and some of the architecture I’d seen on my way to the Hufelandstrasse did have a distinct touch of the Soviet to it. But there was a large park just down the road from the house – the Volkspark Friedrichshain – and there were tall trees on either side of the street. The September sun was still warm and welcoming and the pavement was busy with locals going about their business. As I looked out, a couple walked by with their children: two in the pram and an older sibling who was entertaining the babies with a song. The parents embraced. How happy they seemed. Ordinary people leading ordinary lives, bolstered by their ordinary love for one another. Extraordinarily ordinary love. Wasn’t that what Marco had wished for me?

Oh Marco. I couldn’t even
think
his name without sighing. What was he doing right then? Closing my eyes for a second, I could see him quite clearly as he had been at our last – our only – face-to-face meeting, when we sat opposite each other in his office. He had held my hands and looked into my face. It should have been the moment we confirmed our love for one another. Instead it was the moment he declared himself out of the game.

Was Berlin where I would find the love he thought I wanted? I felt as though, ever since I had broken up with Steven in London almost a year before, I had been on the run in one way or another. Literally, as I moved from country to country, and perhaps psychologically too, investing my heart in the impossible dream that was Mr Marco Donato. The love I longed for seemed to dangle in front of me, like the carrot on the stick that remains out of reach no matter how fast the donkey runs.

I still thought about Marco every single day. Now, of course, I knew what he looked like – I’d burst in on him in his secret lair and seen his partly burnt face and withered hand – and that had added all sorts of complications to my feelings. I had fallen in love with his mind and told myself that his exterior did not matter. Not to me. Not to us . . . In any case, once you know someone, you look beyond their face, don’t you? You look directly into their eyes. The eyes don’t change. It’s why your best friends never seem to age, no matter how long you know them. When we met face to face for the first time, however, in the office hidden in the library walls, Marco had been altogether less optimistic. He had said some things that shocked me to the core. He’d accused me of wanting to ‘rescue’ him for all the wrong reasons. He said he thought I liked the idea of the attention being with him would bring. What better way to feel beautiful than to stand alongside someone so damaged?

Marco’s words had seemed so cruel and so hurtful. But with the benefit of time and distance, I wasn’t so sure he was wrong after all. I had gone over our conversation many times and had to admit there were elements of truth to his accusations. Was it possible that I had latched onto him in order to boost my own self-esteem?

I hoped that wasn’t the case. Though I had to admit that when Marco was in hospital, all those years ago, long before I knew who he was and what role he would come to play in my life, I had felt proud of my efforts to keep him going through his recovery. It
had
made me feel good about myself to be looking after him. And when I got to Venice, having broken up with Steven, God knows I needed something to make me feel good about myself again. But that wasn’t what had drawn me back to Marco in particular, was it? It couldn’t have been. When Marco and I began to write to one another, I’d had no idea he was the same Italian man who had wound up in the hospital where I had worked during my school holidays. No idea at all. How could I?