The Winter Garden (2014) (3 page)

‘Not too good. I’ve been at the clinic in Dresden again.’

Like most women in Berlin, Magda Goebbels was obsessed with her health. She was always visiting spas and clinics to receive injections which purported to calm her nerves.

‘I’m afraid I haven’t kept up with your films.’ She gestured at the family photographs. ‘My life is rather busy.’

So this was how it was to be. From the first line of the script, Clara could judge the expected dialogue, and she was glad of it. Their conversation would be confined to pleasantries. Magda was
icy as ever. There would be no reference to what had gone before.

‘I’ve been busy too, fortunately.’

‘Indeed. You have a new film out now, I see.’ In her lap, Magda’s hands were a tight fist of nerves. ‘I’m trying to remember what it’s called?’

‘
Madame Bovary
. It’s directed by Gerhard Lamprecht. I’m just finishing another, called
A Girl for Everything,
and in a few weeks I’ll begin a new film
with Ernst Udet:
The Pilot’s Bride
. He plays a Luftwaffe pilot who is shot down and I’m his wife.’

At the mention of Ernst Udet, Magda Goebbels responded the way everyone, from small boys to middle-aged women, tended to respond. Her eyes brightened and her attention was captured. The subject
of aviation in general and Ernst Udet in particular was an exciting one just then. The handsome fighter ace, with his strikingly blue eyes, deep cleft chin and jovial smile, was not just a war hero
but a national celebrity. He had been the best friend of Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron, and after the war he became a film star, moving to Hollywood and taking up stunt flying for the
movies. Now back in Germany, in his forties and unmarried, he was something of a playboy. His lean frame had rounded out, but it suited him and besides, German women liked their men with some flesh
on them. His autobiography had sold millions. Lessing and Co, the cigarette company, had even produced a special Ernst Udet brand, which came in a pretty cobalt tin, bisected by a soaring scarlet
biplane.

In the past year, however, Udet had been dragooned into the service of the Reich. At Goering’s insistence he had been appointed head of the technical division of the Luftwaffe. He was
supposed to be too busy overseeing aircraft manufacture and development to waste his time stunt flying, but still he couldn’t resist it. He was coming into the studio later that week to
discuss filming
The Pilot’s Bride
.

‘Generaloberst Udet! What fun for you! We saw him flying at the Olympics. Such a clever man. Will he be performing any of his stunts?’

‘Of course. We’ve got a day’s filming out at Tempelhof.’

The fact that Udet’s stunts were to be filmed at a real airport, in the real sky, was unusual. Hardly anything was shot on location now. All movies were filmed in the studio. It was as
though the Nazis wanted to present their fictional world, perfect in every way, without any interference from the real world and all its complexities.

‘Then I shall make certain to see it.’ Magda speared a slice of lemon and suspended it in her tea. ‘And I’m grateful you could spare time in your schedule to see
me.’

‘It is a pleasure, Frau Doktor,’ said Clara neutrally. But her mind was racing. She took a bite of sponge cake and waited for Magda to come to the point.

‘I have a little request for you. About a party I’m hosting on Saturday. I wondered if you might like to attend?’

A party at the home of the Propaganda Minister? Clara could think of nothing she would like less. And no offer harder to refuse.

‘How kind of you.’

‘I have an ulterior motive, I’m afraid. There are some English guests. Their German is not quite as proficient as one would hope, and I think they find conversation quite exhausting.
As you have an English father I thought you might be able to speak to them and make them feel relaxed.’

‘I would be delighted.’

‘Excellent.’ Her mission accomplished, Magda glanced around restlessly, as if in search of small talk. Her fingers hovered over a biscuit, then withdrew. ‘And how is your
family? You have a sister, don’t you?’

‘Angela.’

‘Perhaps I will meet her one day. I imagine she is most interested in the country where your mother grew up. Your mother’s family came from, where was it again?’

‘Hamburg.’

‘Ah yes.’

Clara wondered how long these cordialities would continue. Their words hung between them like mist drifting over deep waters. Frau Goebbels avoided her eye, tapping her fingers on the arm of her
chair like a pianist trying to recapture an elusive melody.

‘I wonder . . .’ ventured Clara, ‘could I ask who these English friends are?’

‘Oh, didn’t I say? You know them, I think. Unity Mitford and her sister Diana.’

The Mitfords. Diana and her younger sister Unity were notorious in London for their fascist sympathies. Diana had caused a scandal by leaving her husband to set up house with Oswald Mosley, the
darkly handsome leader of the British Union of Fascists, whose rallies were frequently the opportunity for violent clashes between his gang of black-shirted followers and their opponents. Though
Clara had indeed met Diana and Unity, they were Angela’s friends really, part of a set that adored fancy dress, cliquish societies and wildly extravagant parties. How curious that their
politics should share some of the same characteristics.

‘We’ve met, yes. But it was a while ago.’

‘Diana’s a Mosley now, of course. She married her husband last year in our apartment in Hermann Goering Strasse.’

Magda’s face softened as she recalled the occasion. ‘They wanted a quiet ceremony, you see, because Mosley’s first wife had only recently died. So they decided to marry here in
Berlin and the Führer graciously agreed to attend. Diana wore golden silk. Unity and I were her witnesses and afterwards we drove out here for lunch, down by the lake, and my little girls
presented her with posies of wild flowers. We gave them a twenty-volume set of the works of Goethe. It was so romantic.’

At this, it was as if Magda realized she had confided something she shouldn’t have. As if she had stepped into some territory that had been declared forever out of bounds. A blush bloomed
momentarily in the pallor of her complexion and her whole body stiffened.

‘Anyhow, they’re coming over for the day. I had planned a whole day of sightseeing, only . . .’ she hesitated momentarily, as if uncertain over imparting any further
information. Clara concealed her curiosity with careful sips of scalding tea.

‘Only I’ve had to cancel a local outing I had planned for them. I had hoped to show them round the new Bride School just down the road from here, but unfortunately there’s been
an incident. Well, a bit more shocking than that, actually.’ She flicked an eye towards the door as though the maid might be eavesdropping and lowered her voice. ‘One of the brides was
found murdered.’

‘Murdered?’ The word rang harshly in the tranquil, teatime air.

‘Yes. In the garden, apparently. A girl called Anna Hansen. Terrible, isn’t it? It’s so sad for her fiancé.’ Magda grimaced in annoyance. ‘And rather
inconvenient for us. The visit can’t possibly go ahead. It’s obviously cast a cloud. It wouldn’t be the right atmosphere.’

Anna Hansen. For a second, the name snagged in Clara’s mind. Then she realized she used to know a girl of that name, though it could hardly be the same one. The Anna Hansen Clara knew was
an easy-going, bottle blonde from Munich who would be more at home in a negligée than an SS Hausfrau’s apron; indeed, when Clara first met her, she hadn’t been wearing any
clothes at all. She had been a life model for the artist Bruno Weiss, whom Clara had met through Helga Schmidt, the small-time actress who had been the first person to befriend Clara when she
arrived in the city. After Helga died in 1933, Bruno and Clara had become good friends and Clara would often drop into his Pankow studio to watch him working and bring him meals he might otherwise
forget to eat. Since Helga’s death Bruno had been working with feverish intensity, his canvases becoming bloodier and more grotesque, his hatred for the regime erupting in livid clots of
paint. It was on such a visit one day last year, bearing a couple of rolls and some sausage, that Clara had encountered Anna. Her naked form was arranged obligingly on Bruno’s crusty velvet
sofa, her legs splayed and a cigarette dangling from a long amber holder in her hand. She had the kind of flexible, muscular limbs which came from a dancer’s training. The idea of
Bruno’s Anna Hansen marrying an SS officer was too incongruous for words.

The inconvenient death of the Reich bride seemed to have caused a chill in the room. Magda rose with unexpected haste and clacked across the parquet floor. ‘Anyway, Fräulein Vine,
don’t let me keep you any longer.’

She held the door open.

‘The party will be next Saturday at seven p.m. Only twenty or so people. Is there . . .’ she hesitated, ‘a guest you might like to bring? A fiancé perhaps?’

‘No, there’s no one.’

‘Then we shall be most pleased to see you.’

With a peremptory nod she disappeared across the hall and up the stairs.

Clara walked back to her car, her mind working furiously. Her mouth was dry with nerves and she found herself unexpectedly shaking. An invitation after all this time? Magda had said it was her
idea, but could it be really? She tried to analyse the request. There was nothing especially strange about the Goebbels’ entertaining English visitors. There were plenty of high-ranking
Britons arriving in Berlin, even now when Germany’s march into the Rhineland and her backing of Franco’s faction in Spain had opened the eyes of most British people to the intentions of
the regime. Last year, during the Olympics, Berlin had been full of tourists and last month’s Nuremberg rally had attracted another clutch of politicians and dignitaries. Yet much as the Nazi
élite enjoyed meeting them, conversation could be strained. The truth was, the British were lazy about learning the language. Many of them had nothing more than a few phrases picked up from
a
Baedeker
guide to help them. They could order a beer in a restaurant and find their way to a nightclub, but that was not much use when discussing the delicate matter of friendship
between Germany and Britain in an increasingly difficult international situation.

As she backed the car out of the drive Clara told herself that her role would be simply to chat to those guests and perform a little polite translation to oil the conversational wheels; she
would be no more than an accessory, a party decoration, like those peacocks. Her task would last a couple of hours, at most. How difficult could that be?

Making her way back round the single road that skirted the island, Clara craned her head to glimpse the houses she passed. Most had fences and forbidding gates, or signs announcing that they
were patrolled by dogs and security guards. Others had long drives, screened with trees. Between the branches she caught snatches of handsome, turn-of-the-century villas, with balconies and
impressive porches and well-kept lawns. It hadn’t taken long for the occupants of this slice of paradise, the Rothschilds and Israels and Goldschmidts, to yield to the offers of high-ranking
Nazis and pack up their belongings. One villa had been purchased by the Reich Chancellery and reserved for Hitler’s own use. Another was occupied by Hitler’s doctor, Dr Morell, and
Albert Speer, the Führer’s young architect, had been seen house-hunting on Schwanenwerder too. It was hard to connect such men with this idyllic place. Now murder, too, had tainted this
paradise.

It was fifteen minutes before Clara’s Opel Olympia passed through the dense Grunewald, reached the leafy avenues of Wilmersdorf, and moved along Königsallee into the clanging bustle
of Kurfürstendamm, Berlin’s smartest shopping street, known to all as the Ku’damm. The noise was always what one noticed first at the heart of Berlin. The high-decibel blaring of
car horns, the screech of brakes, the calls of the newspaper boys. Then the smell, the fumes of traffic and hot oil, the spicy scent of a pretzel cart or a wurst stall. Normally the pavements
outside the fashionable cafés were crowded with customers, sipping coffee and watching life go by. Today, though, the tables were largely empty. The cold of the past few days had reminded
everyone that another bone-chilling Berlin winter was approaching fast, and shoppers passed quickly, huddled into their coats and scarfs.

At the junction with Wilmersdorfer Strasse Clara braked as a traffic policeman stepped forward with his hand extended to allow a detachment of soldiers to pass. There was always some kind of
military procession now. Either it was troops or a formation of the Hitler Youth or the BDM, the League of German Girls with their flaxen plaits and navy skirts. The storm troopers, the SS or the
Hitler Jugend, all with their different uniforms and insignias. War was constantly in the air. Even the collecting boxes and the banners talked of the ‘War on Hunger and Cold’ as though
the most charitable of enterprises must be undertaken with military aggression. There was a stirring of something just over the horizon that people preferred to ignore and pedestrians, looking
forward to the weekend, kept their heads down, their faces as blank as the asphalt underfoot. They hurried on, hoping that no motorcade of Party top brass would be following the soldiers, requiring
everyone to halt and raise a respectful right arm. The Führer supposedly trained with an expander so he could perform his own salute for two hours without flagging, but most people found even
a few minutes a trial. Clara wondered where the soldiers might be heading. These days, that was all anyone was thinking.

She recalled the British newspapers she had flicked through that summer. The dispatch in
The Times
, informing the world how a special German flying unit, formed to support the
Nationalists in the Spanish civil war, had bombed the ancient Basque town of Guernica. For more than three hours Junkers and Heinkel bombers unloaded bombs and incendiaries, while fighter aircraft
plunged low to machine-gun those of the civilian population who had taken refuge in the fields. The town was razed to the ground and hundreds of women and children were killed. The evidence of
three small bomb cases stamped with the German Imperial Eagle had proved to the world that the official German position of neutrality was a sham. Looking up now at the bone-white sky, Clara tried
to imagine the bombers screaming out of the stillness of a spring morning and the terror of the people fleeing as they were strafed from the air. Then she pictured the same happening in England,
Hitler’s bombers raining their payload on the House of Commons or Westminster Abbey, or Ponsonby Terrace where her father lived. On Angela’s home in Chelsea, or further out in the quiet
suburbs, in Hackney and Greenwich and Barnes. On the Wren churches and Nelson’s Column and the National Gallery. She imagined the raid sirens, the women and children hurrying out of their
houses, the fighter planes diving low to finish off those stumbling figures who had escaped the incendiaries. The horizon lit by the red glow of a thousand fires, gas bombs sending coils of poison
into family homes. She shook her head. That could never happen.