The Winter Garden (2014) (29 page)

He leaned closer to her, cradling his whisky in his hands.

‘What we need, what I would really like, is to find out more about that camera.’

‘You seem to have plenty of access. You were just telling me how the Luftwaffe show you all their new fighter planes.’

‘This is top secret, Clara. For Nazi eyes only.’

‘Then I don’t see how I could help.’

‘Let me explain. This camera sits in a bay behind the back seat of the aircraft, right next to where the machine gun is placed in a bomber. My man says that Strauss is due to trial the
camera within the next two weeks, probably in a Henschel 126, like the one he took for your joyride. What I would really like is to get some more details of this camera. To understand what
it’s capable of. Depth of resolution, focal length and so on. It could make all the difference.’

‘To a war?’

‘I’d go that far, yes. If we can rival the Nazis’ aerial reconnaissance it will be like . . . oh, seeing properly. Having a whole new perspective. What does that chap in the
Bible say? Not through a glass darkly . . .’

‘Now I see as through a glass darkly, then we shall see face-to-face.’

‘That’s it.’

‘I still don’t see how I could help.’

He frowned and tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair.

‘Nor do I just yet. It’s a question of waiting for an opportunity to arise. But you do understand, don’t you, that Arno Strauss is the lynchpin? The man at the centre of it
all. Which is why, at this party of Goering’s . . .’ he looked at her eagerly, ‘it’s essential that you are friendly, or more particularly that you—’

‘I understand.’ She cut him off tersely. ‘I know what to do. I’ll cultivate Strauss.’ She ground the cigarette stub, ringed with her lipstick, in the ashtray, and
then said, ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. It’s been a long day.’

His eyes roved over her, taking in the shadows beneath the eyes, the pallor of her skin. She knew he was trying to read her. He would certainly have registered the ceases in her dress caused
when it had been torn carelessly from its hanger during the break-in. Perhaps he was wondering why a woman like Clara would come out looking less than her best. He must have noted her abstraction
and realized there was something on her mind. Clara desperately wanted to tell him about the burglary, even about the row with Erich, but she stayed silent. She needed to find out the truth for
herself first.

‘Why are you here, Clara? Why are you doing this?’

‘I might ask the same of you.’

‘You could give it all up tomorrow. Go back to Britain. Resume your stage career. Become the toast of the Eastbourne Pavilion again.’

‘Perhaps I prefer the pictures.’

He seemed to ignore her answer. The intensity of his gaze seemed set on penetrating her defences.

‘You must know that there is a whole apparatus of horror out there that would have no compunction in locking you up or sending you to a camp so you would never see the light of day again.
You haven’t seen those camps – I have. Do you know the penalty for espionage?’

‘You can’t seriously be asking me that.’

Every day the newspapers carried reports of people arrested for treason against the Fatherland, complete with the verdicts and the sentences spelt out in aggressive detail. When she came across
them Clara read them with secret horror, but mostly she tried to avoid them. She turned a blind eye.

‘If something happened, there’s not much anyone could do to protect you. Despite all your family contacts. In fact the Gestapo take a dim view of spying by those closest to the
élite.’

‘I know that.’

‘So why do you stay?’

She resented the tone he had taken. This was not some job they were talking about. He was not some chap in a pinstriped suit grilling her about an opening in the Civil Service.

‘I can be useful.’

‘But you have no emotional ties? No boyfriend? No lover?’

‘There is someone actually. Someone I care for very much. He’s called Erich.’

Like a chess player watching her opponent, she noted the involuntary flicker of his eyes.

‘Oh. I see.’

She paused a while, deliberately, then added, ‘He’s a boy. A godson, sort of. He’s the son of a friend who died. I take care of him. At least, he lives with his grandmother in
Neukölln, but I see him often and help a little with money. He has no father either and I don’t ever want him to think he’s alone in the world. Before she died my friend Helga
asked me to look after him. Those were her last words.’

Ralph leaned back and ran a hand through his hair. ‘Poor chap, losing his parents. I think I know how he must feel. My parents were pretty much missing in action. I was packed off to
boarding school at seven.’

‘Did you not like it?’

‘It was a place down in Sussex, Hardingly Hall, it’s called, and perfectly typical of its kind. Not brutal, and not kind either, though I was terrified when I first saw it. All those
gothic crenellations and turrets put the fear of God into a little kid. A list of alumni as long as your arm in Government and the Church, all of whom spent their formative years singing
I Vow
To Thee My Country
and building an invisible armour around themselves so no one would ever know if they were lonely or unhappy. Emotional discipline is the highest virtue of a place like
Hardingly. It’s a perfect machine for manufacturing men to run the Empire. It takes them in at seven, homesick and crying for mother, runs them through a production line which toughens them
like anodized steel and your end product is a chap adaptable to any situation, anywhere in the world. Good at a cocktail party, excellent behind a desk, useful at cricket. Great at deciphering
Latin on tombstones. Utterly self-sufficient, able to be alone, without the need of anyone else. The only trouble is, some find it impossible to be any other way.’

‘Was that where you met your friend? Tom Roberts?’

‘Tom was the best thing about Hardingly. Funny thing was, I didn’t like him at first. His family was Welsh and they were pretty humble. In fact he was on a scholarship and the other
boys never let him forget it.’

‘How did you come to be friends?’

He reflected a moment. ‘I suppose the thing that drew us together was that both of our fathers were vicars. It meant I understood the make-up of his mind. After a while, when both his
parents died, he would come and stay with us in the holidays. Tom was the most argumentative person I ever knew. The only time we weren’t arguing about politics, we were rowing about cricket,
but he was also the closest thing I had to a brother.’

This moment of reminiscence had changed the atmosphere between them. He pulled off his jacket, and removed his bow tie, loosening his shirt collar.

‘What about you, Clara? I’m guessing you had an idyllic childhood in the Home Counties.’

Clara paused. His suspicion was right, but only half right. Her childhood was like a tapestry with a rent through the middle of it, happiness followed by awfulness. When she thought about the
past, a series of disconnected images flashed before her. Angela teaching her to pick out
Für Elise
on the piano. Their old home with its mossy stone covered in blowsy roses, its
alley of espaliered fruit trees and topiary through which the children would play hide and seek. Her mother gardening in a straw hat and linen apron. Chilly holidays on British beaches where the
sand got into their picnics and their father organized games.

‘It was pretty idyllic, I suppose, up to the point that my mother died. It changed a lot after that.’

It had changed, and grown sadder and more constrained. The family navigated their wounds warily, as if afraid of reopening them. The sisters talked less frequently to each other and Kenneth
immersed himself in sport. Their father retreated to a world of his own and everyone trod on eggshells around him. When she first came to Berlin, Clara had experienced a sudden rush of liberty, as
though she was at last free of her family and her social status and all her past. As it turned out, she couldn’t have been more wrong.

Ralph was leaning forward, gazing at her intently, waiting for her to go on and suddenly Clara longed to reveal more. She had an urge to reach beneath her carefully constructed surface to the
self that she always concealed. Telling him was a risk, but she had already gone too far to worry about that.

‘When I came here I discovered something else. I’m a quarter Jewish. My grandmother Hannah was a Jew, but my mother had always hidden it from us. I think my father was
ashamed.’

He cocked his head, curiously.

‘You’re a quarter Jewish? So how did you get to work at Ufa then? Aren’t quarter Jews excluded from the Reich Chamber of Culture? I know there are still some who’ve
managed to hang on there, but only through forging their documents.’

Clara thought back to the day Leo Quinn left. The final envelope he had left for her, hand delivered and simply addressed with her name. It was a gift. The work of a master craftsman, as
expertly created and exquisitely precise as any necklace or precious ring. Only it wasn’t jewellery, but a complete set of ancestry documents, the kind you bought at stationery shops, tracing
your genealogy back three generations. It was filled out in her name, yet her grandmother had been transformed into an Ayran. Clara’s Jewish blood had been diverted into different channels.
The document had been stamped by the official race office – or rather a contact of Leo’s whose expert forgeries were much treasured by the British Secret Service.

‘Someone got me the right papers.’

‘Someone must have thought very highly of you.’

‘I suppose he did.’

Ralph rose and stood before her, then reached down to her hand, turning it over to reveal the bluish white, unsunned flesh of her wrist as if examining the newly christened blood in her veins.
His touch was electrifying. She felt exposed, as if he was peeling back her skin.

‘I can understand why.’

He pulled her to her feet and moved his hand upwards to the pearls at her throat, feeling their warmth, then he reached over to the shoulder of her dress and pushed it a fraction, exposing the
strap of her pale pink crêpe de Chine slip. She edged towards him so that they were separated only by inches of trembling air. Her body quickened and, lifting her face, she saw his eyes cloud
with desire. The image of him kissing her, smoothing his hands over the tight satin of her dress, the weight of his body pulling her to him in a tight embrace, was already running through her mind.
Her senses filled with the warm scent of limes and tobacco, mixed with the starched cotton of his shirt. Every particle of her flesh was attuned to him like a physical force. But despite the
current of attraction between them, she sensed resistance too. Ralph reached down and touched the tips of her fingers, then his fingers pushed hers gently away.

‘Forgive me. That was unacceptable.’

‘There’s nothing to forgive.’

‘I should have stopped myself.’

‘Did you see me object?’

‘All the same. That mustn’t happen.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘It’s not something I can easily explain.’

She remained as she was, her blood racing, her breath caught in her throat. She felt dazed, all the atoms inside her still vibrating for his touch. He had stirred an ache in her that clamoured
to be fulfilled.

He turned away, thrusting his hands in his pockets.

‘So . . . do you want me to leave?’

He kept his back turned, his shoulder blades tensed.

‘I think it would be for the best.’

‘All right then. I’ll go.’

Summoning a strength she did not know she possessed, she turned, picked up her coat, and walked out of the door.

Dr Theo Morell was the doctor to the stars. A stout, balding dermatologist with an expensive practice on the Ku’damm, his marriage to the actress Hanni Moller had opened
the doors to a long list of actors who wanted moles and warts removed and other unphotogenic blemishes remedied. As a sideline he specialized in ‘vitamin injections’ which were said to
promote instant vitality, perhaps because their principle ingredient was amphetamines. One of Morell’s early patients was Heinrich Hoffmann and it was through him that Morell had been taken
up by Hitler as his personal physician and had somehow managed to cure the stomach cramps that plagued the Führer. As a result of this triumph, Morell’s waiting room was now crowded with
senior Nazis. He was the most famous doctor in the Third Reich and that day he was attending Ufa to administer a course of injections to Doktor Goebbels, who was, for all purposes, in perfectly
robust health.

Clara sat outside Goebbels’ office, disguising her trepidation by flipping through the latest edition of
Filmwoche
. There was a photograph of a rising actress, one of the many who
Goebbels had put through nose surgery to correct an over-Semitic appearance. Cosmetic surgery was one of several perks Goebbels was known to offer his protégées, and most of them
found the offer impossible to refuse. ‘Be careful,’ Albert had quipped as Clara left for the meeting that morning. ‘Don’t let Joey get his hands on your lovely face.’
Yet in the case of the girl in the magazine the surgery had paid off. She had just won a leading role in a prestigious new biopic of Frederick the Great.

That morning a scrap of chilling news had fluttered along the Babelsberg corridors like a newspaper in the breeze. The actress Gisela Wessel, following her arrest, had been sent to the Moringen
concentration camp, the women’s camp in Lower Saxony. She had been taken from Prinz Albrecht Strasse where she apparently confessed to making a drop into the letter box of the Soviet trade
envoy on the evidence of two secret policemen who had observed her passing information. Clara shuddered to think how Gisela’s confession had been obtained. She thought again of Ralph’s
comments the previous night.

‘
Don’t you know that there is a whole apparatus of horror out there that would have no compunction in locking you up or sending you to a camp so you would never see the light of
day again?
’