The Other Side of Love (24 page)

A muscle jumped at Wyatt’s jaw.

“Offhand, isn’t two years long enough?”

“I’d never break my promise to you.”

“So here we are in a full circle. I take it, then, that you’re staying within the legal code of the Third Reich?”

Her heartbeats seemed to cease as she gaped at him.

“What?”

“The law banning marriage between an Aryan and a non-Aryan.”

“God,”

she whispered.

He moved away from her to stand by the case of silver birds.

“The evidence is all in. You lie to keep me out of the Vaterland. I’ve begged, grovelled, pleaded with you to marry me, done everything short of dragging you off by that beautiful Nordic hair. OK, I’m willing to accept that you don’t realize how your subconscious mind works. But, whichever side of your brain makes the decisions, Kathe, the fact remains. You aren’t willing to trade in that big swastika on your passport for a half-Jew.”

“Never say that.”

“It’s true.”

The reverberations of a rumbling double-decker bus clattered crystals of the Waterford chandelier. Kathe’s eyelashes went down. Now was the time to tell him about Schultze and Heinrich Leventhal. But would succouring his (unacknowledged) relation against his express wishes prove anything more than her further deceptions?

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‘I’ve . I’ve helped Jewish people,”

she mumbled. Boasting as it were of her nobility of character made her flush with shame.

He was watching her.

“Oh, I imagine thousands of them,”

he

said.

“What a rotten thing to believe of me!”

“I’ve cut myself open for you. Kathe. Any more self-surgery and I’ll bleed to death.”

“Even if you hadn’t told me about your … about Myron … I couldn’t marry you until my parents released me from my promise.”

“Which is it, Kathe - are we going to the American embassy or are we forgetting the whole thing?”

She couldn’t speak.

His shoulders slumped, and his colour drained to that awful jaundiced shade.

“You’re a Nazi, Kathe,”

he said quietly.

“Whether you realize it or not, you’re a Nazi.”

A small involuntary sound escaped her.

As his steps dragged heavily across the parquet hall, the words bubbled up she would go anywhere with him, she would do whatever he asked. Yet her larynx remained constricted. This inability to break her promises was part and parcel of the black obstinacy that dangled her midpoint between her English and German origins.

IV

The following morning he arrived at the usual time. The dark shadows of sleeplessness showed beneath his eyes as well as beneath hers. He didn’t refer to the previous day’s battle royal, and she eagerly fell in with his plan that they hike to Hampstead Heath for lunch at The Spaniard. Working-classAnen drank Guinness and threw darts. Wyatt’s leg pressed trembling against hers. Neither of them did more than nibble at the sausage rolls.

Outside he hailed a taxi, telling the driver:

“Dorchester.”

As soon as they were in the hotel room, they strewed their clothes. On the narrow bed, with no preliminary embraces, they joined together feverishly. Only when he was inside her did the caresses begin, the endless kisses, the murmured endearments, the groans and hoarse requests -

“Yes, that, do that again … ah, love

The roar of late day traffic in Park Lane had swelled when, gasping and drenched in sweat, they came together. She clasped him tightly with her arms and legs as if to bind them together always.

Tm nothing without you,”

she murmured.

“I’m so wild about you that sometimes it makes me think I’m crazy.”

“I’ll love you for ever,”

she said.

“Always.”

His voice shook.

They splashed together in the bathtub. Afterwards, he tucked the

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towel around his waist and sat on the edge of the bed watching her draw on her sheer silk stockings.

“I got a cable from Mother this morning,”

he said.

“It seems Carrothers, Uzbend and Hanson have urgent need of my courtroom skills in their litigation department. They want me to start before I take the Bar.”

Her nail snagged the silk.

“You’re going home.”

“They’re the tops. Talk about luck. I was able to change my reservations and get a single cabin-class berth. Queen Mary sails tomorrow evening.”

Her heart felt swollen and sore. You’re a Nazi, Kdthe. Whether you realize it or not, you’re a Nazi. Had there been a cable? Had he meant that ultimatum in the park? Was it over between them? Glancing down at the rumpled sheets, she knew only that the physical love between them had blazed with honesty and trust.

V

The following morning she saw him off at Waterloo Station. Oblivious to the crowd and the noise, they embraced, arms tight around each other.

“Be happy,”

he said against her ear.

Til write to you every day.”

“I love you.”

He pressed a kiss near her cheek.

“Always remember that I love you.”

“Oh, darling, darling,”

she whispered,

“it won’t be long.”

“Mind the do-o-ors …

“

He kissed her mouth hard, then pulled away. Jumping the steps, he reappeared a moment later at the closed window of the corridor. He stood there with his palms pressed against the large pane. Maybe it was the dust-streaked glass: his face seemed contorted into a grimace of mortal agony, as if he were being stabbed in the back with a curved rusty knife.

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I

Unable to control her tears, Kathe didn’t go down to dinner or breakfast. Before her grandfather left for work, he came in to say goodbye, resting his veined old hand on her head. Wordless comfort. In mid-morning a summer breeze blew across the park. She gazed with dry if aching eyes at the billowing old-fashioned lace curtains. A tap sounded, and at the same moment the door swung open. Mary, the housemaid, popped henfcapped grey head inside.

“A gentleman on the line for you, Miss KdRe, a Major Downes.”

Kathe, on the verge of not taking the call, told herself she couldn’t keep moping for ever. And here was somebody who knew nothing of her private life, somebody who would neither question nor pity her.

The major invited her to tea at the Connaught.

Outside the hotel, the routine quiet of Carlos Place was broken by a newsboy shrilling:

“Riots in Danzig. Read all about it. Riots in Danzig.”

The major was waiting on a sofa in the lounge.

“Are you all right, Kathe? If you don’t mind my saying so, you look a bit under the weather.”

“I’m feeling much better.”

“Good. You see, I’d like you to spend a long weekend in Devonshire.”

Aubrey’s working in Dublin.”

Euan had sent him to an estate sale with orders to sniff out bargains in old Beleek and Irish silver. She

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managed a wan smile.

“And my grandfather would take a dim view of me going off alone with a strange man.”

The major paused until the waiter had set down the thin sliced Madeira cake before handing her an opened envelope with an English postmark. Her name and the Bayswater Road address were written in a Germanic hand as was the letter. Liesl Wenders, who had also come to England for her summer holiday, was dying of boredom and begged an old schoolchum to save her life by visiting her uncle’s house on the Devon moors for a long weekend.

The tall thick hedge blocked the empty moors from every aspect of the crenellated Victorian Gothic house and its spacious gardens. A fine afternoon, men and women were clustered in deckchairs around a short stout woman.

“Your lecturer looks like a Berlin Hausfrau,”

Kathe said.

The major smiled noncommittally.

Inside, he led her to a good-sized library whose bow window looked out on to a small herbaceous garden ensured of privacy by yet another tall hedge. The upholstery was worn but comfortable, the shelves were jammed helter-skelter with German books - not the matched sets of Goethe and Schiller one expected to find in this kind of mansion but new Nazi bestsellers like The Belief in the Nordic State, Socialism Betrayed and So This Is Poland. A wheeled cart was set for lunch, and the major removed covers from the cold roast chicken and potato salad. Kathe was unable to down anything more than few sips of her Spanish wine; since Wyatt’s departure, her throat passage had narrowed to a hair.

Her host pulled off the napkin tucked in his waistcoat.

“This is highly confidential and must go no further than these walls,”

he said.

“England and France are ready to sign commitments to Poland.”

Kathe shivered as if a chill had invaded the summer-warm library. The major was not second-guessing when he spoke of mutualassistance pacts.

“Why are you telling me?”

“If Hitler doesn’t back down, you and Aubrey won’t be able to write to one another. Could we set you up with a pen pal in a neutral country?”

“No,”

she burst out. Then into her mind came the smell of smoke, the glitter of fire on broken glass. Clenching her hands, she said:

“I mean yes at least, until the Christmas after next.”

Were she and Wyatt still getting married? Yes, yes, yes.

“Your first answer was the brainy one, at least so far as you’re concerned. You must consider all the angles, the guilts involved. The dangers. You’ll be putting yourself in the thick of it.”

“I thought you said a few letters, not blow up the Chancellery.”

* 156

‘Never underestimate your Gestapo.”

“I don’t,”

she sighed, suddenly remembering how they had exhumed Rossie’s first marriage to Myron Leventhal.

“But I’ve got nothing to be afraid of. I’m an Olympic gold medallist. My brother’s in the Bendlerblock. Why would they suspect me?”

“That’s in your favour. But there’s still risk. And what about the future? Think about the future. It goes without saying that if Germany wins you’ll stay silent.”

“I can’t believe all of this. You’re acting as if we’re already aiming cannons at each other.”

“It’s coming, Kathe, it’s coming.”

The major ruffled his greying eyebrow - one of his few mannerisms.

“If England gets the upper hand, you won’t be able to talk, either. I don’t imagine you’ve ever heard of the Official Secrets Act?”

He waited until she had shaken her head.

“You’ll need to sign a paper that whatever you do for us will remain absolutely secure - private. For ever.”

She looked down at her hands.

“I keep my word,”

she said.

“The point I’m trying to make is that you’ll never be able to tell anyone.”

“Glory’s the last thing I care about.”

“What of your parents, your brother, your fiance?”

“Can’t I even let him know after we’re married?”

“The Official Secrets Act makes no distinctions about husbands and wives. Secrecy across the board. Kathe, there might come a day when it would save your life to say you’d worked for us. How would you bear up then?”

“Let’s hope well,”

she said with a smile.

“You’re brave. Cowards don’t throw in A;h men like Schultze. But this is making a commitment to our sideffVnd you can’t expect any help from us. Ever.”

“Is this what’s called playing devil’s advocate?”

“Aubrey’s not here to do the job.”

Going to the library table, the major pressed a corner of veneer. A narrow drawer slid open.

“Don’t make your final decision until you’ve read this carefully.”

He extended a stiff triple-folded document.

“Once you sign this paper you’ll be bound by the Act.”

Reaching for the cart, deft with his single hand, he wheeled it from the study, closing the door behind him.

The document, headed by the British lion and unicorn, at first glance appeared much the same as any of the half-dozen visa applications she’d made out in the British embassy in Wilhelmstrasse. But this was pricked with a circular stamp:

C14

UTMOST SECRECY

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It was only two brief paragraphs. She must swear by Almighty God not to divulge matters pertaining to activities engaged in for His Majesty’s government. Under pain of full penalty for treason, these activities must remain secret and confidential even from spouse and closest relative.

She heard a strange whirling clatter. A crow rustled its black wings while it pecked at the window. She shivered as if the harmless bird were an omen. You’re a Nazi, Kdthe. Whether you realize it or not, you’re a Nazi.

She unscrewed the top from her fountain pen and scribbled her signature.

The CI4 code was hers alone, known only to the major and to her control, Aubrey.

She never left the library. The smaller sofa turned out to be a put-you-up, and she slept there, using the connecting bathroom and lavatory. She never met any of her fellow-guests, she never saw a servant. The major wheeled the cart with their meals in and out. She ate little, shifting her food around the plate. Just as well she had no appetite. Over breakfast, lunch and dinner the drilling continued. She must learn approximately four hundred phrases and maxims. The wind is heavy now meant that she had seen an unusual number of soldiers in Berlin. Noisy sparrows referred to people complaining. Quiet sparrows meant a large number of newspaper advertisements of deaths placed by the bereaved. The deeper she sank into memorization, the greater her conviction that all would be well between her and Wyatt. Did intense concentration directed away from a source of great unhappiness always act curatively?