Black Roses (51 page)

‘We have a Herr Henkell in room 368.’

‘It’s Herr Winkelman,’ she pouted. ‘And he very specifically told me the fourth floor.’

‘I’m sorry.’ The man gestured at a bank of telephones in little wooden cabins across the lobby. ‘I can’t help you. Perhaps if you would like to make a call?’

‘Oh, don’t bother.’

She turned away, a picture of sulky indignation, then as if on impulse, made a sharp left and walked swiftly up the red-carpeted staircase. When she reached the first floor, she walked along the corridor, waited two minutes, then took the lift back down to the lobby. She hoped Herr Henkell in room 368 wasn’t taking a shower, because he could expect a couple of uninvited visitors ringing his bell before too long.

Crossing the lobby she entered the tunnel lift and descended to a gleaming underground stretch of marble, lined with shops selling jewellery and cosmetics. A last deluxe retail opportunity for the hotel’s guests before they re-entered the grimy streets of Berlin. There were high class fashion boutiques with stiff-limbed mannequins frozen in their furs and displays of finely stitched leather gloves. The plate windows gave her every opportunity to see there was no one behind her. A hundred metres later she clipped up a flight of steps and emerged in the vast glass cathedral of the Anhalter Bahnhof itself.

At five minutes to six on a Friday evening the station was a single heaving mass of people flowing towards the platforms and funnelling themselves into the six trains that left every three minutes. The great trains heaved and exhaled, their clanking adding to the cacophony of sound that rose high into the ribs of the sooty glass ceiling. The forecourt was thronged with shoe shine boys, newspaper vendors, flower sellers, men unloading carts and porters hauling luggage. And right there beneath the clock, blinking and looking around him with a distinctly nervous air, was Arlosoroff, accompanied by a stained suitcase and a coat folded over his arm.

Scanning the crowd Clara realized how difficult it would be to spot her followers if they had managed to catch up with her. The forecourt was a seething press of travellers, milling around the booking halls, cramming the waiting rooms and gazing up at the destination board, which registered services, not just to Leipzig, Frankfurt and Munich but as far away as Prague, Naples and Athens. The train to Vienna, she noted, was leaving from Platform 6. It was the Express, no stops all the way to Austria.

Her eyes swept the concourse. There was a man sitting on a bench a little way off who was ostensibly reading a magazine but kept glancing at her. An old fellow with a gold watch chain and a bow-tie had her directly in his line of sight. A plump girl in a crimson jacket standing in line at one ticket desk seemed to be staring right at her. But no sign of the pair from the street. The air was filled with the clash of iron on steel and the bitter hiss of gas.

At that moment her gaze snagged on something familiar. The ginger hair of the briefcase man. He had sat himself up on one of the tall mahogany seats used by the shoe-shine boys, high enough to afford him an excellent view of the passing masses. The wispy ginger locks were visible because the fedora sat on his knee. It looked to her as though he had taken his hat off to conceal something beneath it, and it wasn’t the evening newspaper.

When Arlosoroff saw Clara approach his knuckly face registered first relief, then dismay.

‘She’s not coming,’ said Clara quietly.

‘You’re lying to me.’

‘I wouldn’t lie.’

He made to pick up his suitcase. ‘Then I’m going to see her. You don’t write a letter like that and then abandon someone.’

‘Listen to me, Victor. Her husband has discovered. His men are following you. You have to leave as soon as possible.’

His face was incredulous, wounded. ‘He’s told you to say this, hasn’t he? You’re one of his spies.’

‘I’m not. But they are here all right. Ten yards away from us there’s a man having his shoes shined. Don’t look. He’s holding a pistol under his hat. The faster you can get on this train, the less chance he has of using it.’

‘What is this nonsensical melodrama?’

‘I’m trying to explain. Goebbels knows all about you and Magda and he’s aiming to kill you.’

Arlosoroff’s eyes peered myopically through the furling steam. Clara snatched a glance at the briefcase man and saw him tense for a second before a family of children passed in front of him, obscuring his view.

Arlosoroff was scratching his densely curled head, as though tackling some obscure Talmudic question.

‘Now what I have to ask myself is, why should I believe what you have to say? Magda loves me. She wouldn’t change her mind without a word.’

Clara remained still, willing him to pick up his suitcase and focus on the train standing at Platform 6 which was issuing the kind of grunts and sighs that generally preceded departure.

He continued, ‘It may be that she needs some time to decide. Leaving home is a serious business, after all. She’ll need to make plans.’

‘She doesn’t want to come, Victor.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She wants to stay with her husband. She urges you to leave immediately.’

‘And yet, I have only your word for this. What I am wondering,’ he continued ponderously, ‘is why I should trust you?’

Clara reached into her pocket and passed something into his fleshy palm. The golden Star of David.

‘There.’

He stared at it for a moment and closed his hand over it. Clara looked round with a start as she was jostled by a passing commuter. Behind the barrier that led to Platform 6 a whistle sounded. But Arlosoroff’s drooping sadness moored him to the spot.

‘Does she realize what it means for her if she stays?’

Clara took his hands in hers. ‘Victor, she’s not coming and it’s not safe for you. Think of all those people you’ve been helping. They need you more than Magda does. Getting people out of Germany and setting them up with new lives, teaching them new skills, helping them to survive in a different country, that’s what matters. Who knows how bad it will get here? Magda can choose what she does, but the Jews can’t. You have to go, right now. Please get on the train.’

Doors were slamming as, with creaks and wheezes, the train began pulling out. Behind them the man on the shoe-shine chair was jumping down. With an alacrity that surprised her, Arlosoroff gave a curt nod, plucked up his case and strode towards the barrier waving his ticket. Once through he sprinted for the final compartment and slammed the door. Clara turned away at once, so she didn’t see the fedora man reach the barrier and conduct a furious dispute with the railway official, as the Express train headed off through the Berlin suburbs into the darkening night.

She was out of the station and about to hail a cab when she became aware of him. It was the man she had spotted in the station, on the bench by the booking hall, reading the magazine. He was pacing after her now, his hat bobbing above the crowd.

‘Wait a moment please!’

There was no time to wait for the cab. She would have to evade him on foot. She turned from the taxi queue, quickening her step.

‘Please. Wait!’

Hurrying against the flow of commuters, she turned her collar up and walked briskly towards the U-Bahn, her slight figure weaving easily through the thicket of overcoats and mackintoshes flooding towards her. But as she made to duck into the subway a passing woman detained her with a friendly hand on her arm.

‘Fräulein, I think there’s someone who wants to talk to you.’

‘I’ve never seen him before in my life.’

She shook the woman’s hand off and clattered down the steps to the underground. Her plan was to insert herself at the far end of the platform, deep amid the thick of the crowd, take the first train that came for a couple of stops and then switch routes. But the man pursuing her was faster than she was. His steps thudded heavily after her until, panting, he drew level.

‘Am I right in thinking that you are Clara Vine?’

He had an upper-class English accent. How clever of them to choose someone so unthreatening. A genial English gentleman. She squared her shoulders and turned to face him. He wore a tartan scarf round his neck, and a heavy overcoat that looked a little too large for him. He blinked at her through wire-rimmed spectacles.

‘Yes.’

‘I thought so. You know, I was back there in the station looking at your picture in
Filmwoche.
Upcoming talent, it said. I recognized you at once.’

He held out his hand. He had an extravagant manner and a slight lisp.

‘I’m sorry. I should have introduced myself. My name’s Max Townsend. Friend of Rupert Allingham. I’ve only just arrived, actually. Got rather caught up in London.’

‘You’re Max Townsend?’

‘Weren’t we going to meet up about this film I’m planning? Would you like to come for a drink? I see you’ve got off to an awfully good start.’

Berlin, June 1933

It had rained again that morning. Lightning cracked the charcoal sky and brought rain drumming on the ground, drenching the air and bringing the scent of the Grunewald deep into the city’s heart. It spattered on the statues, ran down the awnings of the shops and soaked the geraniums in the municipal beds. At midday, as sunlight warmed the chalky air, Clara walked slowly along the side of the canal.

The day before, news had come that the bullet-ridden body of Victor Arlosoroff had been found on a beach in Tel Aviv. The death was attributed to a feud between factions of the Zionist movement. At least that was what the
Jüdische Rundschau
said. She had found the newspaper in her dressing room, tucked into a basket of fruit and inked with a stamp that said “Property of the Office of the Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda”. When she read the report the familiar fist of fear balled up in her stomach once again, and the tears welled in her eyes. But by the time she was called on set, her expression was as sunny and carefree as any heroine of a Nazi spy caper should be.

She wondered how the news would affect Magda, but guessed that whatever she privately thought, her demeanour would not betray a dent. The moment Clara told her that Arlosoroff had no reply to her letter, her expression had hardened and she turned away, dismissing Clara from her presence with a terse wave. In the weeks that followed, it was as though Magda had decided she was now inescapably bound to her fate. Life with Joseph and the baby. Perhaps even a little sister for the child, but preferably a brother, as her husband so publicly hoped, because a man always wanted sons. There even began to be a detectable show of affection between the two of them. Joseph was
“Engelchen”
again. They had just returned from a holiday in Heiligendamn on the Baltic. Very soon they were off to Rome.

Soon after Arlosoroff left a man called Archie Dyson had telephoned Clara, asking to meet up. He had an instant familiarity. He reminded her of Angela’s friends, right down to the tan, which suggested a year-round presence on the tennis court, the smooth Etonian self-assurance and the name-checking of mutual acquaintances. They had met at a bar up west, a place full of hothouse flowers and pale leather furniture, and Dyson ordered her a gin and tonic without asking before outlining his request. He thanked her for everything she had done so far and was interested to know if Clara intended to stay in Berlin? If so, whether she might continue to help them? He avoided specifics but Clara detected the deadly seriousness beneath the veneer of charm. She told Dyson she would think about it.

Leo’s proposition, however, was rather different.

They had spent the previous night at the new apartment, in a yellow-painted nineteenth century block in the east of the city in Friedrichshain, rented indirectly by His Majesty’s Government. It had a hallway of speckled marble, heavy brass lamps and a grandly sweeping staircase. It was bigger than the place in Xantener Strasse, boasting two rooms and a separate kitchen, but the bed was just as narrow.

It was the first night they had spent together for weeks, and it had been a joyful reunion, folded in each other’s arms. Yet in the morning Leo seemed preoccupied, dawdling over his coffee and glancing up at her from time to time with a frown. Eventually he told Clara that he had something to say and she need not answer right away. The apartment was safe, of course, but he still turned on the radio, filling the room with a burst of Viennese dance music, before he spoke. She should have guessed right then, but Leo was always exceptionally hard to read, even when he standing before her in his shirt and braces, regarding her with that unwavering, deep green gaze.

He asked her to marry him. But if she did, they couldn’t live here. She should leave Germany and return to London. In time, when the flood of refugees had abated, he would take another job, and escape the fevered violence that pervaded daily life in Berlin. Meanwhile, he would go over to London and rent a flat for them. She could get in contact with the people at the Gaumont-British, where other German exiles had headed, because with one film already under her belt and Gerhard Lamprecht’s recommendation it wouldn’t be hard to resume her career, and then as soon as he possibly could he would join her.

Marriage. England. Peace. Or Berlin, where Max Townsend had finally announced that work was due to start on
Black Roses
. Where the studio executives had been admiring of her cameo in
Ein gewisser Herr Gran
. Fresh scripts had been sent to her and Gerhard Lamprecht was talking seriously about a role he had for her in his next film. And where death was all around.

As she was about to speak Leo placed a finger on her lips.

‘Don’t answer straight away.’

He held her tightly, so she felt his breath on her cheek, and the slow drumbeat of his heart. They stood frozen as the music whirled around them, like dancers moving to their own, silent tune.

She said, ‘I haven’t told you about Erich, have I?’

‘Who’s Erich?’

Clara pulled the postcard from her pocket, the one she had taken from Helga’s room. The face of Marlene Dietrich had acquired an uncharacteristic number of wrinkles from being carried around so long.