Black Roses (21 page)

‘Entirely unsuitable,’ said Magda sharply. Her neck coloured, the way it did, Clara had noticed, whenever her emotions were charged. ‘So let’s concentrate on more important matters. There is another thing. The Führer has suggested that we compile a special book to be given to all newly married couples. So they understand how to live in a truly German culture.’

‘Yes, I heard him mention that,’ Frau von Ribbentrop cut in. ‘He has a dream that all German brides should be able to consult a book with instructions for marriage. A kind of marriage manual.’

‘Why on earth would you need instructions for marriage?’ asked Clara.

‘Oh, there are many things.’ Magda consulted her notes. ‘He suggests brides should be taught how to hem curtains, how to plan a budget and keep a house clean.’ She ticked off a list. ‘How to create an attractive table decoration. Correct behaviour before a husband. Fashion guidance obviously, and advice on children and cooking and so on.’

It astonished Clara that Herr Hitler should have time to be troubled by the question of whether the Reich’s new brides were capable of hemming curtains, but Frau von Ribbentrop leant forward.

‘The Führer told me that he would like to create a school for brides, where they might learn this kind of thing before they are married.’

Magda nodded. ‘You know, we’re fortunate to have a Führer who gives so much thought to marriage. He has such interesting plans. Because he wants to encourage more babies he’s thinking of giving a medal to prolific mothers. And he says if a man has not established a family by the age of twenty-six, then he should not be eligible for promotion.’

Clara thought of Müller’s face when he described his wife’s battle to have children. The expression had seemed more grim frustration than tight-lipped grief. Had the death of his wife held him back? Or did the Nazis’ views on large families not apply to the senior ranks?

‘Must all married men have families?’

‘Of course. It matters that we set a good example. Joseph wants at least five! It doesn’t apply to the Führer, though. He tells us he will never have children, because they would never be able to live up to him.’

Emmy flicked her fingers through her hair, with the slightest trace of impatience. She must be in her late thirties, Clara guessed. Her first marriage was over, so presumably she wouldn’t be collecting a medal for prolific mothers any time soon.

‘What else do we need in this manual?’ she asked.

Magda consulted her notes. ‘Every girl should know how to make simple meals, with ordinary ingredients like herrings, chicken or veal. I’ll ask my cook to suggest some recipes.’

‘Mine too,’ added Frau von Ribbentrop quickly.

‘And we’ll include some of the Führer’s favourites,’ said Magda. ‘He has entrusted me with the details.’

‘Speaking of cooking . . .’ Emmy smiled.

A housekeeper had emerged and hovered by the door. Emmy waved her across.

‘Don’t worry, Cilly, you’re not disturbing us. Bring it here.’

The little housekeeper presented a sheet of paper.

‘It’s the menu,’ Emmy explained. ‘Actually, we have Herr Hitler dining tonight and Hermann has drummed it into me that I must get the menu right. Last time he came I ordered cold dishes from Kempinski’s, and to make sure they were special, I said they were for the Führer. The salmon arrived decorated with his initials in mayonnaise. I thought it was so pretty, but you should have heard the fuss! Silly me. Hermann told me he hates anyone to know where he eats.’

Magda looked aghast. ‘You should be more careful, Frau Sonnemann. The Führer is aware that there are enemies out there who could poison him. He needs to take great care with his eating arrangements. Besides, he prefers a home cooked meal anyway. He has a delicate constitution.’

‘Well, I’m sorry. I find it enough of a trial with all those raw vegetables he eats. He sits there nibbling a lettuce leaf and taking sips of orange juice and everyone else feels bad about having a good hearty dinner. Last time we dined, I said to him sorry, but I’m going to order a juicy steak. And do you know, he laughed and said go ahead!’

Magda began collecting up her designs. ‘Obviously if you have the Führer to entertain you must be very busy, so we should be getting on. I shall assume we pick these two for our first outfits. I’ll have them made up and modelled by Fräulein Vine. I hope very soon we will have our own headquarters and staff but until then . . .’

‘Perhaps we could meet at my place?’ cut in Frau von Ribbentrop swiftly.

‘Of course. How kind of you.’

They were making their way to the door when Emmy stopped them.

‘Wait! Before you go you have to see this.’

She flung open a door and led them into a room entirely devoted to a model train set. The vast table was covered in mountains and fields, intricately crafted from baize and wood and papier mâché, over which ran intersecting tracks connected by tunnels. The entire vista was like an idealized representation of Germany, with its beer houses, stations and town halls. Little villages with gabled roofs and timbering were separated by pine forests, a posse of hunters chased a deer and milkmaids laboured in the farmyard. A group of children on their way to school waved at the train track and a dog ran alongside.

‘Hermann keeps this for his nephews, or so he says,’ laughed Emmy. ‘There’s three hundred feet of track. Incredible, isn’t it? Now gather round, everyone. You have to watch carefully!’

She selected one train and set it running round the track. On its side it bore the beautifully painted livery of the French flag, and inside portly French gentlemen in evening jackets could be seen dining in the restaurant car, raising miniature glasses in a toast as they passed through the tiny countryside. After the train had performed one lap, Emmy flicked a switch on the side of the table and from one side of the room a Junkers aeroplane attached to a wire puttered through the air.

‘It’s a four-engine bomber. Hermann had it specially made when he was given the Ministry of Aviation. He loves his toys.’

When it reached the French train, the model plane released a tiny parcel which fell with precision, knocking the back half of train from the tracks. The parcel gave off a crack and a puff of white smoke. Inside the derailed train, its wheels whirring uselessly, the little Frenchmen could be seen, glasses still raised in futile celebration.

‘He did that for the French ambassador. It was so funny. You should have seen his face!’

For a moment they gazed as if dumbfounded at the train set, until there was a sudden cry from Annelies von Ribbentrop.

‘
Mein Gott!
’

One of the lion cubs, which had followed them in and had been scampering round the room, had urinated on her handbag.

Magda had plainly had enough.

‘If you come now, Fräulein Vine, my driver can give you a lift as far as you want.’

The labour camp in Spandau was an old poorhouse that had been taken over by the Party, disinfected, cleaned and furnished. There were forty-eight girls, twelve to each dormitory, squashed in on narrow wooden bunks with blue gingham bedspreads, and sheets which looked like they had been straightened with a set square. They probably had, for all Mary knew. This place was a long way from the summer camp her parents had once forced her to attend, in the mistaken belief that a dose of countryside and communal living was all their daughter needed to cure her quirky, solitary addiction to books. She’d bet there were no toasted marshmallows and apple-pied beds round here.

‘It’s very tidy.’

‘But of course. There is an inspection check every morning.’

Frau Hegel, the supervisor, a flat-faced ideologue in braids, who could have done with a lick of make-up, explained how the girls made their beds every day at five a.m. The occupants of this hut had also saved their daily allowance of thirty pfennigs to buy a portrait of Hitler, which now glowered above them on the dormitory wall.

Mary jotted down details on a notepad as she followed the supervisor round. Labour camps were a relatively new institution in Germany. They had been established on a voluntary basis to provide work for young people, in the belief that menial labour, moving away from home for six months and mixing with other classes was an emancipating experience. The boys made bridges and roads, worked on wasteland and shovelled coal, while the girls laboured on farms and in private houses. A six-month spell at an
Arbeitsdienst
was soon to be compulsory for all German youth. And from what Mary could see, it looked as though singing songs and being insanely cheerful already were.

She gazed through the window at the field outside where someone had marked out a track and the girls were staging running races. Large and small, fat or thin, they all wore the uniform of the BDM and it was not a good look: white blouse, tied at the neck with a black scarf and leather knot, belted navy-blue skirt, short white socks and clumping leather shoes with flat heels.

‘Every girl must run sixty metres in fourteen seconds, throw a ball twelve metres and complete a two-hour march,’ boasted Frau Hegel.

Just watching them reminded Mary with a shudder of school sports days and herself flailing along at the back of the hundred metres while her mother, in her best dress and too much lipstick, cheered weakly on the sidelines. Not putting a child through all that was yet another advantage to having no kids, she thought grimly.

She had suggested the trip to the labour camp with bad grace after Frank Nussbaum told her he wanted to know about ordinary women’s lives, and he had been predictably excited.

‘Great idea, Mary! It’ll make a change from writing about storm troopers roughing people up and depressing everyone.’

And it had to be said, no one looked especially depressed here. Even the girls on kitchen duty who got up at four a.m. to chop carrots and peel potatoes for the army camp nearby. Everyone else got to lie in until five a.m., Frau Hegel explained, after which there was roll call, then an hour’s run through the woods, before a day hoeing or ploughing in the fields.

‘Hard work,’ said Mary, who felt exhausted just hearing about it. It had been tough enough getting up at six to drive here. She was simply aching for a cup of coffee, but nothing had been proffered so far. She reached in her handbag for a cigarette and lit up, ignoring the supervisor’s steely glare.

‘But it needs to be hard. The idea of the
Arbeitsdienst
is to teach girls the value of work, to harden them up.’

‘Harden them up for what, exactly?’

‘For marriage, of course,’ said the woman, as though to an idiot. ‘At the end of the course they will get a certificate, which marks them out as fit for marriage. The idea is that they should make good wives.’

‘Very romantic.’

Frau Hegel’s face crinkled in disdain. ‘Come and see our little farm.’

They walked out to the outhouse where along one wall stood a long row of cages, like a military barracks, with hundreds of pink, twitching noses protruding through the wire.

‘This is our special experiment.’ She gestured at the cages with pride. ‘It could be a very profitable enterprise for us. They are angora rabbits, so we can use the meat and sell the fur. It’s very luxurious. The Luftwaffe use their skins for lining flying jackets. Here, take a look.’

She opened a cage and hauling a rabbit out by its scruff, plumped it in Mary’s arms, where it sat, its tiny heart juddering, as she stroked its velvet ears uneasily. What was it about the rows of docile creatures, palely fattening in their cages, that made her think of flaxen girls obediently breeding for the Fatherland?

Mary replaced the quivering animal carefully in its cage. A couple of girls were washing down the yard, and, as she passed, the supervisor scanned their scrubbed faces as if checking for evidence of ideological disobedience.

‘There should be no shame about manual labour,’ she told Mary. ‘Nor should the daughter of factory owners shirk the company of children of factory workers. Now you wanted to find Gretl. There she is.’

Mary looked across to where a red-faced girl in glasses, her cheek squashed against the flank of a cow, was tugging squirts of milk unevenly into a tin pail. She was recognizably Lotte Klein’s sister, though younger and fatter.

‘Gretl had never been near a cow. Now she is an
Arbeitsmaid
she loves them. She can milk as though she was born to it.’

Mary thought the plump and sweating Gretl resembled no more a natural milkmaid than she did Greta Garbo.

‘What if she doesn’t want to work on the land? Is there any point learning how to milk a cow if she’s going to spend her life in a city?’

‘But of course. Besides, our girls learn the kind of domestic skills that will set them up for life.’

‘Such as?’

‘Cooking, sewing and knitting. Baby care.’

Frau Hegel left her side to reprove a group of giggling girls, who were bungling the herding of goats. Mary took the opportunity to crouch down beside Gretl.

‘Hi Gretl. I work with your sister Lotte and she suggested I visit. My name’s Mary Harker. I’m a journalist.’

‘Oh, Fräulein Harker! I’ve heard of you.’

With a broad smile, Gretl let go of the cow’s teat and offered a damp hand, which Mary tried to take without flinching.

‘Lotte has told me all about you. She loves working in the office. And meeting your friends. It sounds so stimulating!’

‘It is, I suppose. So, do you like it here? Do you really enjoy learning how to cook and milk cows?’

Gretl removed her glasses and blinked. ‘If it helps to make me a better woman, then of course!’

Mary wanted to take her by the arm, shake her and say, “Milking cows never helped anyone be a better woman! Finding your vocation makes you a better woman!” Instead she waited while Gretl finished the bucket, emptied the milk into a giant churn, wiped her hands on her apron and accompanied her across the yard to the poorhouse block.

From the cows, it seemed a natural progression to the baby lesson, where Mary stood and watched while a howling infant was prised from its crib and passed between a group of girls, having its nappy inexpertly removed and replaced several times. The poor creature rolled and kicked to no avail, thrashing its fat legs, its little face scrunched in scarlet protest, its wails resounding round the concrete walls. Mary gritted her teeth. She tried to switch off but the cry went through her like a knife. She wondered who the baby belonged to.