A War of Flowers (2014) (15 page)

She couldn’t get that picture out of her mind. Why had the captain instructed her not to mention it? Why should such a tragic thing be hushed up? The fact that she had exchanged a few
words with the girl gave her a sense of personal responsibility, as though she was actually involved in the death, which was plainly absurd. Surely just being a witness to a crime, if indeed it was
a crime, didn’t make you a participant? She, Rosa, was not responsible for what she had seen. Yet the disquiet lingered and she knew it was not going away.

Her first thought was to confide in the Führerin – that would be the proper thing to do. After all, her entire purpose on the cruise had been to assess the suitability of the
Wilhelm Gustloff
as a VIP venue and details like passengers falling overboard must surely reflect on the ship’s safety record. Not mentioning what she had seen was a direct violation
of her duty, and yet . . . it was hard to imagine confiding anything in the Führerin. Besides, it would only spoil the glow of approval that Rosa was enjoying just then. The Führerin was
already talking about sending her on another trip, this time to explore the Prora complex, a vast holiday camp on the Baltic coast which was being built by the KdF. The place was a hulking,
blank-faced high-rise almost three miles long with ten thousand rooms. It looked like Rosa’s idea of hell but grandiose constructions were essential to convey the epic status of the Reich and
someone needed to reconnoitre the complex for the forthcoming conference on Women and Domesticity. If Rosa confided her discovery to the Führerin it would only mar this pleasant glow of
approbation. She would be bound to question why Rosa had left the incident out of her original, post-cruise report and would immediately take it up with the ship’s captain, who would be
likely to contradict Rosa directly, meaning that it would be the word of a secretary against that of a decorated captain of the German navy. Rosa might lose her job. Weakly, too, she remembered the
words of Captain Bertram warning her that any mention of the incident would mean neither she nor her family would ever again attend a KdF holiday. Her mother would be heartbroken if her
daughter’s actions meant she was barred from KdF cruises for life.

Yet at the heart of Rosa Winter was an unorthodox spirit. She knew there was something wrong about what she had seen and there must be somebody she should tell. The girl’s face seemed to
float before her, like a photographic negative developing in its solution, standing out sharp from its blurred surroundings. The bloodless face and the empty blue eyes that just a few hours earlier
on the sun deck had been looking around with a panicky air.
Is anything the matter? No. Why should it be?
Other than the few words they had exchanged, Rosa had no idea who she was.
Somebody’s daughter or someone’s mother even. It might be that the girl’s own family had no idea what had become of her, and they never would, unless someone disobeyed the
ship’s captain and revealed what really happened.

The Elizabeth Arden Red Door salon on the Kurfürstendamm was the haunt of Berlin’s most fashionable women. Its perfumes and potions escaped the general disapproval
of foreign cosmetics because Miss Arden herself, despite being American, was a personal friend of Reich Minister Hermann Goering, and the Nazis’ favourite beautician. She was the only person
who had ever been brave enough to offer the gargantuan minister some useful diet and exercise tips, and he had indeed gone so far as to buy an exercise horse on her recommendation, even if he never
used it. Every Christmas Goering would buy up dozens of boxed sets of cosmetics to distribute to the wives of his officers, whose photographs hung on the salon walls, alongside famous clients like
Leni Riefenstahl, Olga Chekhova, Zarah Leander and Marlene Dietrich and, in their midst, Miss Arden herself, swathed in white mink and shot by Cecil Beaton. Also dotting the walls were pictures of
the Arden spa, with its hooded sun loungers and Riviera striped canvas awnings, and a framed advertisement for the famous Eight Hour Cream.
Neither wind nor sunrays will alter the purity and
brilliance of your complexion
. It might have been the photographs of the actresses, or the expectation of glamorous transformation, but the whole salon had the air of a movie set, from its dove
grey walls and silver drapes to the gleaming marble floor and crystal chandeliers. There were French chairs, upholstered in rose velvet and flatteringly lit mirrors surrounded by pink and blue
bottles of ‘Venetian Cream’, cosmetics, oils and treatments. Only the white leather treatment chairs added a slightly clinical touch, suggesting that beauty was essentially a science
and its effects could be scientifically obtained.

At ten in the morning the salon was almost empty, except for a single elderly woman attempting in vain to stave off the ravages of time with a bottle of Ardena Skin Tonic and a cloud of scented
steam. With the temperature already rising on the street, Clara pushed through the door, relishing the cool air against her face, tinged with the scent of pine and eucalyptus, and a faint trace of
Blue Grass.

Sabine Friedmann had started out as a make-up assistant at the Ufa studios, where she and Clara had first met, but her flair and personal charm had attracted the attention of Elizabeth Arden
herself and Sabine was offered a job at the salon, followed within a few years by a promotion to manager. Now she was a walking advertisement for the products she promoted. Tall and striking with
suitably Aryan blonde hair, she made it her business to adopt the Arden ‘Total Look’, which entailed lip, cheek and fingernail colours coordinated with military precision. That day her
face was a porcelain mask and her mouth a cupid’s bow of signature salmon pink. Her usual effusive greetings, however, were muted. Instead she gave Clara a quick kiss, then walked over to the
door, turning around the sign to read ‘Geschlossen’ and with a quick glance round the salon ushered her to an alcove at the back, where a chair was spread with a spotless white
towel.

‘We keep this seat for our special customers. They like a little privacy.’

‘I’m flattered.’

‘It’s less obtrusive.’

Clara cast her a quizzical glance in the mirror.

‘I thought you had come by some new samples, Sabine. They must be pretty hush-hush!’

‘It’s not about that exactly.’ Sabine’s china-blue eyes met Clara’s soberly in the mirror. ‘It could be nothing, but I thought I should let you know. Why
don’t I give you a facial?’

Rapidly Clara realized that whatever Sabine wanted to discuss, it wasn’t cosmetics. Leaning back obediently she closed her eyes as Sabine poured a few pearls of apricot-scented oil into
the palm of her hand, and began massaging her face with soothing, rhythmic strokes. Bending over Clara she murmured softly in her ear.

‘I tried several times to get hold of you.’

‘I’ve been in Paris.’

‘Perhaps you should have stayed there.’

‘What on earth do you mean by that?’

‘I hope you don’t mind me saying this, Clara.’

‘Please . . . tell me.’

‘It’s very delicate. If anyone knew I had mentioned this . . .’

‘Sabine, I know how to keep quiet.’

‘You see, they all come here, the top wives. Frau Heydrich, Frau Goering, Frau Goebbels, Frau Ley. I hear all the talk. Not deliberately, but I can’t help it sometimes. They gossip,
you know. What else are they to do when they’re having treatments? When you’re lying on your back having a massage or relaxing with a facial, your guard is down. You talk. They assume
that the person who tends to them is a servant who simply won’t hear. Or perhaps they think a servant can’t understand.’ Her fingers fluttered over Clara’s brow, smoothing
the apricot oil in relaxing circles.

‘Anyhow, the other day, I overheard something Frau von Ribbentrop was saying. She knows you a little, I think.’

‘She does. I didn’t know she was a client of yours.’

Sabine made a grimace which suggested she knew of no beauty treatment that could soften the iron mask of Annelies von Ribbentrop.

‘She comes often. And she’s very happy at the moment. This spring the SS took over a castle called Fuschl near Salzburg, executed the owner and handed it to her family. It’s
proving to be the perfect holiday place, apparently.’

‘I pray I never get invited. What was she saying?’

‘She was talking to Frau Lina Heydrich, the Obergruppenführer’s wife.’ Sabine lowered her voice, though they could not possibly have been overheard. Merely the name of the
man in charge of the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst, the SS’s own spy service, was enough to provoke people to an instinctive whisper. He was called
Himmler’s Hirn
,
Himmler’s brain, because his severe meticulous attention to detail was invaluable to his superior. His wife Lina, a cool, Nordic beauty, was known to be a more ardent Nazi than her husband,
if such a thing was possible.

‘Both ladies were here to have a treatment before the Nuremberg rally. And they were gossiping about the Propaganda Minister. There’s always so much gossip about him. It’s
their favourite topic.’

‘I think the same goes for everyone in Berlin.’

‘Annelies von Ribbentrop was telling Frau Heydrich that Joseph Goebbels is so blinded by love for this actress – you must have heard – that his judgement is quite askew.
Otherwise he would notice that Berlin is infested with English spies.’

‘English spies?’

The soothing motions of Sabine’s hands massaging Clara’s face were in inverse proportion to the alarm that this remark engendered.

‘Yes. Infested, Frau von Ribbentrop said.’

‘Strange thing to say.’

‘Perhaps not. You know better than me that the von Ribbentrops hate England with a passion. Ever since he was ridiculed when he was ambassador there. His wife is worried that the
Führer has been so blinded by those Englishwomen he hangs about with, the Mitford sisters and their crowd, that he will let them influence him in this Sudetenland business. He will refrain
from action out of an unfounded respect for the English.’

‘If he refrains from action that’s good, isn’t it?’

‘Maybe, but it’s not that . . .’

‘What are you getting at, Sabine?’

‘That’s just it, Clara. It’s what surprised me. Frau von Ribbentrop mentioned you.’

‘Me?’

‘She said you might have Goebbels fooled, but you don’t fool her. It was about time someone checked up on you.’ Sabine lowered her voice yet further to a frightened whisper.
‘Frau von Ribbentrop said Heydrich should have one of his men keep an eye on you.’

Clara opened her eyes and caught Sabine’s agonized expression in the mirror. Her own face, sleek with cream, had a ghostly, impenetrable glow.

‘Keep an eye on me?’

‘That’s all she said. To Frau Heydrich. I thought you should know.’

‘Thank you,’ said Clara, closing her eyes again in an attempt to suppress the panic that was rising within her.

Sabine didn’t bother with platitudes about trying not to worry. Nothing could be more worrying than the attention of Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. Lean and blond with a savage,
watchful gaze, of all the Nazi leaders, it was Heydrich who most conformed to the Aryan stereotype, which was ironic, given that as a child his schoolfriends had called him Issy in reference to the
rumours of Jewish blood in his veins. But no one was making jokes about Heydrich now. In his immaculate black SS uniform, with the silver insignia of the SD on his arm and jackboots polished to a
high gleam, the man who proclaimed himself ‘as hard as granite’ was considered the most fearsome member of the Nazi élite. A shadowy army of fifty thousand men were under his
command and everyone in Germany lived in fear of them. Their base was an ominous cluster of buildings in Prinz Albrecht Strasse, but like a poison gas Heydrich’s men were seemingly
everywhere. If the grocery had run short of eggs, or a military parade held up your car, and you made an unwise comment, the man next to you might show his Party badge, demand your papers and
request your appearance at the police station. It was worse when they didn’t make themselves known. Heydrich’s stool pigeons were always there, keeping an ear out for anyone who might
betray a sympathy for Jews, Marxists, Social Democrats or Freemasons, and if they did, the details would be noted in a vast archive of files stored in the bowels of Prinz Albrecht Strasse for
future reference.

One of the beauticians arrived to place a cup of steaming coffee on a tray beside Clara and Sabine stepped back, folding a towel neatly over her arm and lightly touching Clara’s
shoulder.

‘Please. Have a drink.’

Clara took a sip and forced herself to think. Annelies von Ribbentrop was an heiress, born into a wealthy wine merchant family, the Henkells. Her family had been scandalized by her decision to
marry Ribbentrop – before he had added the aristocratic ‘von’ to his name – yet that made little difference, because Annelies had plenty of ambition for two. With the help
of lavish entertainment at their villa in Dahlem, she had angled successfully for her husband’s appointment as ambassador to the Court of St James in Britain, only to find that the London
posting was a disaster. English society had scoffed at the von Ribbentrops’ grand attempts to impress them and were scandalized by the grandiose marble cladding at the embassy in Carlton
House Terrace. Rumours spread that the ambassador was sleeping with Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee now married to the Duke of Windsor, and that he sent her seventeen red roses every day.
Undaunted, Annelies had simply redirected her energy to securing her husband the job of Foreign Minister, and refocused her decorating obsession to an exorbitant refurbishment of the Foreign
Ministry in Wilhelmstrasse.

She had known Clara for the past five years, and disliked her for that long too. It might have been because Frau von Ribbentrop loathed Emmy Goering, who had been friendly to Clara, and was,
like Clara, an actress, but if Clara had to guess, it was probably the mere fact that she was half English – a member of that despised race who had laughed at Annelies behind their hands,
ridiculed her pretensions and gossiped about her husband’s affairs.