The Winter Garden (2014) (2 page)

That much was true. Yet it was a deeper restlessness which was troubling Anna Hansen. All day she had had the curious sensation that she was being watched. It was nothing obvious. Just a
brooding self-consciousness that crawled across her skin, raising the minute hairs on her neck, making her tense, the way a gazelle tenses when it scents the approach of a predator. Several times
during the day, both in the garden and the house, she had the distinct feeling of someone’s eyes upon her, only to wheel round and find nothing there. She had repeatedly attempted to
rationalize the sensation. Perhaps it was the sorry shortage of nicotine that set her nerves jangling. Or maybe the ugly gardener, Hartmann, the one with the limp and the hedgehog haircut, was
spying on her. He was always hanging around eyeing up the Reich Brides. What was a man like him even doing in a place like this? Why couldn’t he be sent to the Rhineland or something?

The feeling came on her again as she lay trying to sleep in the dormitory, listening to the distant crump of fireworks, and to shake it off she had risen and crept out into the chill October
air.

The moon was obscured by a bank of heavy cloud as she progressed down the garden, avoiding the gravel path and hugging the shrubs at the edge of the lawn. Behind her in the distance the house
was a shuttered and slumbering hulk, with only a single lamp burning on the ground floor, and ahead lay the leaden expanse of the lake, visible only by the lights which glimmered from the few
yachts and pleasure boats moored at its edges.

She stopped at the trunk of a large pine tree and pulled out her cigarettes. Around her a dim tangle of laurel receded into a pool of deeper shadow. There was dense vegetation underfoot. Flecks
of water from the lake blew against her face and she hugged her arms to her chest, wishing she had worn something warmer than an old silk dressing gown. Because of the rigid dress code at the
School, nightwear was the only area where brides had any self-expression. Most of the girls opted for a floral tent of scrubby towelling, but Anna’s was creamy silk with ivory lace inserts
with a matching negligée which smelled of smoke and perfume and acted as a consoling, luxurious reminder of the good old days.

Suddenly she sensed a glimmer of movement in the bushes, a spectral flicker accompanied by a rustle of leaves. She froze, her senses on the alert, straining to filter the night sounds. The
fireworks had subsided now and the night’s silence was penetrated only by the whine of the high trees swaying and the thrum of a car making its way along the lake road. More faintly, the soft
rattle and groan of boats, their timbers creaking and the water slapping on their sides, carried on the breeze.

There it was again. A distinct crackle of leaves, a couple of yards to her left. Anna stiffened, her heart lifting in her throat, and turned to see a white shape and a pair of golden circles
trained on her. She almost laughed with relief.

‘God, Minka. You gave me a fright. Hiding from the fireworks are you?’

The cat approached and rubbed against her leg. She was a friendly animal and much loved by the Bride School inmates. Anna squatted down to stroke her head, then took out her lighter, an elegant
silver lozenge engraved with her initials. God forbid anyone should find her with it. She had had to smuggle it in here, because smoking was strictly forbidden at the Bride School. The Führer
called cigarettes ‘decadent’ and said smokers were unfit to be German wives and mothers. All brides had to sit through a lecture on the poison of nicotine and how the Jews had brought
tobacco to Germany to corrupt the native stock. She snapped the lighter open, the flame leapt up, lit the cigarette and she took a deep drag, impatient for the first delicious hit to coil down her
throat, then rested her back against the bark of the tree. This was a long way to come for a smoke, but it was worth it.

Beside her the cat froze and lifted its head. It had seen something, but what? A mouse perhaps, or a bird? A fox even? Following its gaze she stared blindly into the murk.

‘Is someone there?’

A sudden screech heralded the launch of a single rocket that flared and dissipated in an emerald shower, lighting up the sky. The cat’s pupils contracted to slits. As the sound died away,
Anna heard something else. The soft crunch of a footstep on the wet earth.

‘Who is it?’

The words choked in her throat. As she stared desperately around her into the darkness, frantic thoughts raced through her mind. It had been a mistake to come out here. She should never have
left the dormitory. Perhaps it was the creepy gardener, spying on her.

‘Hartmann? Is that you?’

Two more steps and then a face was looming up before her. As she peered through the darkness, terror engulfed her. Her knees almost buckled, and it took everything she had to summon a tone of
coy flirtatiousness.

‘Well, hello stranger.’

The man raised the Walther 6.35-calibre pistol and Anna’s eyes widened a moment, but the sound of the shot was drowned in an exuberant volley of fireworks. A spume of scarlet sparks arced
and spangled the sky. The man with the gun watched Anna languidly as she fell, then he turned away and melted into the shadow. For a moment Anna’s hand clutched frantically, as if she were
trying to haul herself up on empty air, then it dropped back and the lighter slid out of her opened palm, down into the damp grass.

Clara Vine swung her car through the wrought-iron gates of the villa and braked violently to avoid a peacock crossing the drive. As the bird strutted onto the lawn, dragging
its magnificent lapis lazuli tail, she was sure she divined an arrogant glint in its beady eye. Still, she was relieved she hadn’t hit it. It wouldn’t do to damage any property
belonging to the Reich Minister for Enlightenment and Propaganda, even if it did happen to be an unwanted pet. The birds were a leftover from Joseph Goebbels’ magnificent Olympics party the
previous year, when Peacock Island in the Wannsee had been turned into a fairy-tale playground for two thousand guests, filled with dancing and fireworks. Film stars, singers and all kinds of
celebrities mingled with diplomats and high-ranking visitors. The papers had been full of it for days. After the balloons and the banners had been packed away some of the birds had ended up here,
even though Frau Doktor Goebbels detested them. Their jewelled crowns and magnificent displays concealed a nasty temper, and the stillness of Schwanenwerder was constantly pierced by their raucous
cries.

Not that the neighbours would have dreamt of complaining. The Goebbels’ villa, at Inselstrasse 8, was in the most desirable position on this tiny, exclusive enclave. Though it was called
an island, it was actually a peninsula, which stretched out from the Grunewald into the lake, connected by a single, narrow road. Surrounded on all sides by water, and wooded with oak, birch and
pine, Schwanenwerder was only a few kilometres from the centre of Berlin, yet it might have been another country. It had been colonized a hundred years ago by the very wealthiest of Berlin’s
society, the bankers, industrialists and department-store owners, who had competed among themselves to build the most tasteful, luxurious country houses and take advantage of Schwanenwerder’s
restorative air. Since then, in the space of four years, a new élite had emerged to replace them. On the day Hitler came to power, Nazi stormtroopers flocked onto the island and raised the
swastika flag on its water tower. Most of the homes were now occupied by senior party figures. Number eight had been bought by Goebbels at a price far beneath its genuine value from the chairman of
the Deutsche Bank, who had been all too keen to sell before his enforced departure abroad. It had a panoramic view of the Greater Wannsee, extensive lawns running down to a boathouse and a garden
ringed with oaks, pines and fruit trees.

Clara parked the red Opel next to a Mercedes Benz cabriolet with beige leather seats, checked her lipstick in the rear-view mirror, and smoothed her hair beneath her hat. She sat for a second,
waiting for her trepidation, like a surge of stage fright, to come under control, then stepped out of the car. As she made her way to the front door a pear, like a tiny, unexploded bomb, dropped
down beside her into the grass.

The maid showed her into the drawing room, whose French windows at one end led to a stone-flagged terrace circled by a balustrade, beyond which was a magnificent view of the lake, edged by the
gloomy, impenetrable Grunewald. Now, at five in the afternoon, the sun was a molten orb in a streaked caramel sky, turning the waters of the Wannsee into a sheet of hammered gold. At the end of the
garden Clara could see a private beach and a jetty, where Goebbels kept his motor yacht,
Baldur
. Seagulls squawked and wheeled in the sky and, further out in the lake, a couple of
fishermen drifted in their boats, hunched over their tranquil lines waiting for pike, like figures from a nineteenth-century painting.

Clara crossed her arms and waited, affecting a nonchalance she did not feel, as she tried, yet again, to work out what Magda Goebbels could possibly want with her.

The message had come that morning out of the blue. A studio runner brought the note to Clara directly onto the set at the Ufa film studios in Babelsberg where she was filming a romantic comedy
called
A Girl For Everything
. He shouldered his way through the make-up girls and the script man, right into the dazzle of the arc lights, to deliver it. The boy’s face was a picture
of urgency and intense curiosity, as befitted a summons from Magda Goebbels, wife of Hitler’s right-hand man and the woman informally known as the First Lady of the Reich. The other actors
had looked on avidly as Clara quickly scrutinized the message, then folded the note and stowed it in a pocket. Her face, she knew, gave nothing away.

Now Clara walked around the drawing room, assessing the pictures and furniture on display. Last year Goebbels claimed he was embarrassed to have moved into such a large villa because he hated
luxury, yet for the sake of the Reich he could not be expected to receive distinguished guests in his old apartment. One look at this room, however, revealed that his aversion to luxury did not run
very deep. The place was furnished in solid bourgeois taste; rich Persian rugs and fat sofas upholstered in satin and watered silk, side tables in restrained, nineteenth-century style on a parquet
floor polished to a high shine. A Gobelin tapestry hung on the wall and a Bechstein piano stood in the front window. The standard portrait of the Führer,
de rigueur
in any Party home,
hung above a mantelpiece crowded with family photographs, most of which Clara had already seen in the newspapers. There was Goebbels in open-necked shirt and sunglasses, at the wheel of his
motorboat. The four Goebbels children, Helga, Hilde, Helmut and Holde, the girls in matching white dresses and ribbons, and Helmut in a sailor suit, sitting in their miniature pony carriage.
Goebbels, it was said, insisted on one baby a year. Four children may be enough for a string quartet, he joked, but not enough for a National Socialist. He had publicly promised another five babies
for the Reich.

Catching sight of herself in a gold rococo mirror, Clara scrutinized the picture she presented with a critical eye. She was wearing a buttoned ivory blouse beneath a fitted serge navy suit with
a fur collar, her chestnut hair freshly cut in a neat bob. A new, fashionably tilted navy velvet hat. Red Coral lipstick by Max Factor. Lizard-skin clutch bag. Every inch the screen actress whose
career was on the rise, though not so successful that she would be recognized in the street. And all of it a façade. Clara was used to a life of deception now. Sometimes deception seemed
like an extension of her own being, moving bodily with her as she walked the streets of Berlin or sat with friends in bars or crossed the sets of the Ufa film studios. The Clara Vine she saw in the
mirror was both herself and not herself. What the real Clara Vine might look like, she could no longer say.

Though she couldn’t fault the image, still Clara felt anxious. The near miss with the peacock had done nothing to improve her nerves. Behind her she heard the creak of the door and the
heavy tread of her hostess.

‘You haven’t changed a bit!’

It sounded more of an accusation than a welcome. As Magda Goebbels entered the room, permitting a transitory smile to twitch across her crimson lips, Clara tried to conceal her surprise at the
change in her. Even if she had wanted to return Magda’s compliment, it was impossible. Four children in five years had done Magda no favours. Clara had seen her often enough in the
newspapers, of course, decked out in satin and pearls, hosting grand Party occasions alongside Hitler, presiding at the Mothers’ Union and the Winter Relief charity, partying with foreign
dignitaries at last year’s Olympic Games. But close up it was a very different picture. Magda was still elegantly turned out in the height of fashion; she wore a Chanel dress in peach silk
and her platinum hair was scalloped tightly against her cheek. But beneath the rouge her skin was putty-coloured, her mouth lined and the dress bulged at the belt. Her body was waging a war between
elegance and middle-aged spread and it seemed the spread was winning.

They sat on low chairs looking out onto the garden while a maid shuffled in, straining under the weight of a tea tray laden with brown bread spread thickly with butter, sponge cake and
Lebkuchen. Magda aligned the handles of the cups precisely and gestured to the girl to pour the tea, wincing as her trembling hand spilled tea into the saucer. Impatiently Magda waved her away.

‘I’m sorry about that. She’s training. There’s a Bride School on the island and we like to help out by giving their girls a little practice with serving. But I have to
say I feel sorry for those poor husbands-to-be.’

She waited until the girl had left and closed the door behind her, then turned.

‘So, Fräulein Vine. Your career is blossoming, I hear. My husband tells me you are quite the rising star at Ufa now.’

‘Thank you. And how are you, Frau Doktor?’