A War of Flowers (2014) (20 page)

There was no better place to spot a tail than a large department store. Drifting through dress rails fingering the fashions, lingering at cosmetics displays and sampling the odd perfume was a
woman’s natural habit but entirely anomalous to a male agent. In a beauty hall, with its infinite mirrors, glistening reflections and largely female clientele, a Gestapo agent in a leather
coat would stand out a mile. And nowhere were men and women more different than in the way they shopped. Men were impatient and impulsive; browsing was anathema to them and most could not spend two
minutes in a shop without being bothered by a sales assistant, whereas women could loiter for hours, sniffing, sampling and examining themselves in mirrors, which in Clara’s case afforded an
excellent view of what lay behind her.

After several minutes of browsing at a cosmetics counter, trying, then rejecting, Palmolive soap, Pond’s face cream and a few Tosca powder compacts, then going up the escalator and down
again, Clara had seen nothing to worry about. Leaving the department store on Kaufingerstrasse she ducked into Loden-Frey, which was all stuffy Tracht and Tyrolean suits in hairy green tweed, as
might be expected from the official uniform makers to the SS, then exited right and crossed the central square of Marienplatz, coming to a halt beneath the impressive façade of
Dallmayr’s delicatessen. Unlike Berlin, where the signs reading ‘For Display Only’ had been there so long they were bleached white, here the goods were piled high and in pride of place were shining packages
of the store’s own coffee, roasted to a special recipe on the premises. Clara paused for a moment, but the window’s reflection revealed no solitary figures behind her, and the siren
call of coffee was strong. It was impossible to resist, she told herself, as she counted out the marks. You would never be able to find coffee of this quality in Berlin.

Having left the shop, she returned to the Hofgarten, where the fountain’s splashing water made a gauze veil, suspended in the air. The flowerbeds were packed with colour and butterflies
floated above autumnal roses. Clara paused, savouring the dense fragrance of the earth and the deep scent of the flowers, made a circuit of the park, then turned suddenly back on herself and
retraced her steps to Dallmayr’s coffee counter, where she enquired anxiously about the possibility that she had left an umbrella. Once the apologetic assistant had confirmed that no umbrella
was to be found, Clara headed north past Hoffmann’s photography shop in Schellingstrasse and the smoky interior of Schelling tavern, before finally reaching Maximiliansplatz.

The light was falling as she turned into her pension. Whatever her instinct told her, she trusted her routine. She had taken every precaution. She had conducted every procedure to shake out
surveillance and seen nothing untoward. The man she had seen in Odeonsplatz was an ordinary Munich citizen, who was, she hoped, entirely oblivious to Clara’s suspicion of him. So why was she
filled with fear, like a musical instrument vibrating with the notes of an invisible player?

She had an early supper in the gloomy dining room – leek and bacon soup, followed by chicken breast and cabbage – during which Frau Altenburger, the owner of the pension, a jovial,
uninhibited matron, divined that Clara was an actress and interrogated her on the private lives of the stars like the most ruthless reporter for
Filmwoche.
Was Zarah Leander genuinely
stand-offish? Was Joachim Gottschalk really married to a Jew? Was Lil Dagover Hitler’s favourite actress?

Eventually Clara escaped and closed the bedroom door behind her.

Unclipping her hair she shook it out, releasing the faint fragrance of
Soir de Paris
.

‘I knew someone who used it.’

She thought of Max Brandt dancing in Chanel’s salon, his arms keeping firm hold of her, smiling seductively as he took his own nonchalant sex appeal for granted, and she wondered if she
would be able to resist his advances so firmly if he were here now. Often, as she slid into sleep, she craved the warmth of a man next to her. She yearned for the frank pleasure of sexual
fulfilment. Her body ached with emptiness.

Wearily, she stretched out on the bed and reached for her book.

The first thing Rupert saw, as he stood in the lobby of the National Socialist Women’s League headquarters, was the face of Gertrud Scholtz-Klink glaring from the wall
like a leathery gorgon guarding her lair. With the basilisk smile and a face as scoured as a pan, it was perfectly possible to believe that her stare alone, like her mythic doppelgänger, could
turn onlookers to stone.

Even as he recoiled from the portrait, the Führerin herself bustled over and shot out a hand like a Walther 6.35. That morning she had foregone uniform in favour of a grey worsted jacket
which looked a little warm for the weather and what looked to Rupert Allingham awfully like an Old Etonian tie, though he doubted very much she was entitled to wear one. Then again, if Reich
politicians stuck to what they were entitled to, Europe wouldn’t be in the state it was today. Nazi foreign policy was, at bottom, a case of a vast sense of entitlement out of all
control.

She led the way into her office, talking as she went. As female Führer she was in charge of all National Socialist women’s organizations, including the Women’s League, the Reich
Mothers’ Service and the German Women’s Enterprise. It was her duty to train all German women in accordance with National Socialist ideology. She oversaw the culture, education and
training sections and even a propaganda department which produced leaflets for German women living abroad detailing the inferiority of foreign races. At least that’s what Rupert thought she
said, but as he trailed behind her the Führerin’s voice was having to compete with an entire, ill-tuned orchestra pounding in his head.

She seated herself beneath an especially hideous poster of a woman and child beneath a sun in the shape of a swastika, emblazoned with the slogan
Warriors on the Battlefield of Childbirth
and wearily Rupert pulled out his notebook.

He was badly hung over. The previous night had been emotionally wearing and you could have powered a Panzer on the amount of schnapps he had consumed. He wondered why the epicentre of German
domesticity had so far failed to furnish him with a cup of coffee.

‘I’m not sure if you were present at my talk to the annual rally, Herr Allingham,’ said the Führerin, sliding a sheaf of paper across the desk.

‘Sadly not.’

‘Then you will have missed our exciting news on tax reductions. I’ve had some information printed out for you. No income tax at all for families with more than six children. So long
as the children are racially pure and valuable.’

‘I see.’

‘You’ll be wanting some statistics, I daresay. The figures are extremely encouraging. Marriages are up, there are only half as many divorces, and births have risen to . . .’
she checked a sheet, ‘1.4 million this year. 19.2 per thousand head of population.’ She rattled off the figures like a Lewis machine gun. ‘That’s up from five hundred
thousand births in 1932. So National Socialist ministers have tripled the number of babies being born.’

Some National Socialist ministers more than others, if gossip was to be believed, Rupert thought.

‘More cribs than coffins is my motto, and it seems the birth rate is exceeding all our expectations,’ she added with satisfaction.

Babies, Rupert realized, were just another crop in the new Reich, like potatoes or wheat, to be counted, monitored, improved and lied about. Good one year, free of blight for the most part, a
creditable reflection on the citizens of the Reich.

He doodled his pen idly across the page.

‘Could you remind me, please, what exactly the Reichsmütterdienst . . .?’

A flicker of irritation crossed her brow. ‘The Reichsmütterdienst is open to all racially pure women in the Reich. It prepares women for their role as housewives and mothers because
the family is the germ cell of the nation.’

Rupert scribbled wearily.

‘We already have hundreds of Mother Schools all over Germany, and so far more than a million and a half women have attended 56,000 courses. There are four million women in all the
Frauenwerk organizations. Not to mention the Reichsbund der Kinderreichen, the league for large families.’

Rupert’s head was already reeling. He had given up trying to note down the numbers. When was she going to come out with this scoop Goebbels had talked about? He had planned to give this
interview no more than half an hour before proceeding to the Foreign Ministry to hear von Ribbentrop’s latest threats against the Czechs.

‘Are there any other recent developments you would like my readers to know about?’ he enquired, flatly.

The Führerin frowned.

‘We have brought about new reforms to the divorce law which allow divorce on the grounds of one partner’s refusal to have children,’ she volunteered. ‘We call voluntary
childlessness a diseased mentality.’

‘Diseased?’

‘A disease of the mind, rather than the body. But just as harmful to the health of the nation.’

Rupert had spent the previous evening at the bar of the Adlon drowning the world’s sorrows with a group of journalists who had just returned from Prague. Now he felt the excesses of the
night before return to him in a bilious wave.

‘I always wonder, Frau Reichsfrauenführerin, how it is that a woman of your impressive stature can support the fact that one of the first ordinances of the Nazi party was to exclude
women from ever holding a position of leadership. As I understand it, you believe that women should no longer have the vote?’

Sarcasm glanced off the Führerin like a bullet from a tank. She regarded him pityingly.

‘The Führer sees the emancipation of women on the same level of depravity as parliamentary democracy or . . .’ she cast around, ‘jazz music.’

‘Jazz music?’ said Rupert incredulously.

‘I think that’s what he said. He believes, and we agree with him, that there is no interest whatsoever in women maintaining the vote.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘I wonder . . .
are there large numbers of female politicians in your own country, Herr Allingham?’

Rupert shrugged.

‘Precisely. And I think you will find the reason is that women themselves prefer to confine themselves to their own sphere. They don’t want to be spending their time wrangling in
parliamentary chambers with men who are equipped with law degrees. They would far rather occupy themselves in their own area of expertise, which is producing children and ensuring that they are
properly equipped to carry on the nation’s culture to future generations. I daresay it has never occurred to the British to have their own Women’s Leader either?’

The face of Lady Allingham, sorting out the estate’s paperwork at the breakfast table in her reading glasses, floated into Rupert’s mind. If Britain ever decided to instate a woman
to micro-manage the affairs of the entire female population, he could think of the perfect candidate.

The Führerin paused. ‘As it happens I’ve just been invited to London next year by a very prestigious grouping. The Anglo-German Fellowship. Do you know it?’

Rupert was only too familiar with the doomed selection of the deluded and the desperate drawn from the ranks of the aristocracy and the far right who actively supported Hitler’s
territorial ambitions. It had been started by an associate of Clara Vine’s father and some of the early meetings had taken place in the Vine family home in Ponsonby Terrace.

‘There’s to be a dinner at Claridge’s. Lord David Douglas-Hamilton will be there. His wife is head of your Women’s League of Health and Beauty and, as it happens,
I’m due to welcome her shortly to Hamburg at the International Women’s Fitness Congress.’

Women’s Fitness? It seemed astonishing that at a time of grave political crisis such events could still be going on. The leader of Germany was attempting to annihilate Czechoslovakia and
his female equivalent was planning a fitness conference. For someone like Rupert, who lived in the drama of the moment, the idea that anyone should be occupying their mind with gymnastic routines
was inexplicable.

But then, glancing up at the poster,
Warriors on the Battlefield of Childbirth
, he realized that was the thing about the Nazi regime: every human activity from cradle to grave was
transformed into part of the Nazi struggle. Every aspect of life would be approached with military precision. From what he had seen of the lines of BDM girls in their cotton shirts and navy shorts
practising synchronized gymnastics in the Tiergarten, even an apparently innocent enterprise such as women’s fitness would be carried out with the efficiency and ruthlessness of a Wehrmacht
manoeuvre.

A gawky, pale-faced girl carrying a stack of papers entered the room, then immediately attempted to back out again.

‘Stop! Rosa! Where have you been? Fetch coffee for Herr Allingham at once, please.’

Rupert watched with sympathy as the girl scurried away.

‘Now then . . . about that news. As it happens, the Führer is working on something very exciting. It’s been under wraps, but it’s felt that now is a useful time to reveal
it.’

At last. Rupert wondered how exciting the Führer’s new plan would turn out to be. Most of his recent innovations had involved the destruction of nation states.

‘It’s a Mother’s Cross,’ continued the Führerin. ‘To be given to kinderreich women with four or more children. Only live ones of course, and not defectives.
There will be three gradations. Bronze for four children, silver for six and gold for eight or more. In fact, I think there may be plans for a diamond cross, featuring genuine diamonds, for mothers
of twelve children. Anyone wearing a Mother’s Honour Cross must be saluted in the street and receive a range of deferences.’

‘Deferences?’

‘She must be given the best seat on the bus, for example, go to the front of the queue in a shop, have the best seats at the theatre and so on.’

‘Interesting idea.’

‘I’m glad you think so. It’s our women’s equivalent of the Iron Cross. It is to be awarded every year on 12th August, the birthday of the Führer’s mother.
Despite our excellent figures, we need to give women every encouragement we can to reproduce.’