The Winter Garden (2014) (39 page)

‘When I went to your apartment the other day I saw a tail. A standard-issue Gestapo shadow. You’re being watched.’

‘I knew that.’

‘But then you were knocked down, and it was quite deliberate.’

‘I thought it was an accident.’

‘I saw it, Clara. That was no accident. The car drove straight at you. I couldn’t see his face but the man who knocked you down was not Gestapo. The shadow was already there. And
besides, why watch you, if the order is to kill you? If the Gestapo wanted to get rid of you it would have happened already. It’s clear there’s someone else on your tail.’

She saw anxiety etched in his face, his brain rapidly calculating, his mind running through the possibilities.

‘Someone is after you, Clara. But why? Who are they?’

She shook her head.

Ralph drew himself up. ‘I’ve been thinking about it over the last two days and I’ve changed my mind. Archie Dyson was right. You’re going to have to lie low.’

‘You can’t mean that.’

‘I do. It’s the safest thing. It’s imperative. You need to stop everything you’re doing with Arno Strauss. You need to go back to being an actress whose only concerns are
her wardrobe and the affections of her leading man.’

‘I won’t do that.’ She frowned.

‘You must. Don’t use the telephone, except for business calls. Don’t fraternize with American journalists. Don’t talk in bars.’

‘Give me credit for knowing the basics.’

‘Look at me, Clara.’ He took her shoulders. ‘You asked me why I didn’t want to get involved with you. Perhaps it was because of what’s happened to Tom. I’ve
lost one person already. I wouldn’t want to lose another.’

He tipped her chin towards him.

‘The most important thing is, you mustn’t go home. There’s someone out there who wants to kill you. I don’t know who they are, or who they represent, but it’s
essential you don’t give them the chance. You need to stay here. For your own safety. Promise me.’

She glanced away, but his fingers dug into her arms and he gave her a little shake. ‘Don’t look away! This is important, Clara. You could be jeopardizing far more than just yourself.
If we were at war then this would be an order. Treat it like that. Promise me.’

‘I promise.’

That Friday Ilse had been assigned the linen change. It was one of the better jobs at school, right up there with baking, and she wondered briefly if perhaps the staff
recognized this and were making allowances for her, until she realized that it was just the rota. She loved the sweet, starchy smell of the fresh linen as she unfolded it stiff from the washing
line, then took it to the ironing room, bright with clouds of scented steam. After ironing, the linen had to be taken to the cavernous airing cupboard, tucked away up in the eaves of the house,
which meant you could disappear for a while with no one watching, and relax in the dim space with your eyes shut, leaning against the fragrant linen and feeling the warmth enter your bones. Ilse
enjoyed everything about the linen change. She even loved the idea of it, rendering something fresh and clean and new.

But the last couple of times she had gone to unpeg the washing, she had a bad feeling. A prickle on the back of her neck which said someone was watching her. She could not see, smell or hear
anything, but she felt it, at the limit of her senses. She whipped round several times, and caught nothing more than a few last leaves abandoning their branches and whirling down to a damp mulch
below. One time she caught a flash of something white from the corner of her eye, but it could have been the tail of a bird, or the flick of the sheets in the breeze.

After lunch she had gone out again to feed the geese, which were being fattened for Christmas. The birds were confined in wooden boxes with just their long necks and heads protruding, so that
they grew as big as possible before being killed. Ilse had grown up on a farm, so she wasn’t sentimental, but she felt sorry for the geese all the same. Most of the time they were quiet but
whenever they sensed anyone approach they would crane their necks as much as they could, cackling for grain. As she stuffed the corn down their throats she looked around constantly, but there was
nothing.

All afternoon she tried to focus on her household accounts, sorting everything into neat columns, Coffee, Tea, Milk, Sugar, with the amounts required and the cost, and then totting up everything
at the bottom, stretching her terrible arithmetic to the limit. During all this time she cast glances out into the darkening garden, trying to probe the mass of shadow at the end of the lawn.

She had thought about calling the American lady, but she couldn’t find the card with her number on it. She must have dropped it somewhere. And how on earth would she go about telling
Fraülein Harker she had a bad feeling in her bones?

After supper there was a short period before lights out which the brides used to write letters, read and chat or listen to the wireless. Ilse took the opportunity to slip down to the kitchen.
The place was completely empty. Everything had been cleaned, the pots were washed and the pans hung in their places above the range. The kitchen smelled comfortingly of baking and faint wafts of
that night’s chicken dinner. The dough for the next day’s bread was rising on the stove, swelling like a great bloated skull, and outside trails of woodsmoke curled through the evening
air. Everything in Schwanenwerder was tranquil and Ilse was scared.

She wasn’t going to make Anna’s mistake and wander into the garden. She would only venture a couple of steps out from the kitchen door to the yard at the back of the house and see if
she had the same feeling. Keeping the door open she edged a couple of steps forward. She couldn’t switch the kitchen light on, because she was out of bounds, so there were only the dancing
flames of the woodburning stove to go by. The air was as cold as a knife, edged with moss and pine and the soft lapping of the lake. The distant sound of dance music on the wireless rippled from
the drawing room. Ilse peered blindly into the dim garden, past the tall daisies beginning to crumple from the first frost, through the shrubs and the flowerpots lining the gravel of the path.

And that was when she saw it. Or rather him, because it was a man, she was sure of it, fifty metres away from her at the other side of the garden, emerging from the mass of trees towards the
house itself. Ilse’s throat clenched with fear, preventing any scream she might have emitted, but her legs buckled beneath her and she took a step backwards. At the sound of her staggering
the figure froze like a fox, stared at her, then hurried on, moving swiftly across the grass until his dark shape merged with the shadow of a wall, like a piece of the night itself.

Clara waited until Ralph had left and then another fifteen minutes before she slipped out of the apartment and walked swiftly along Duisberger Strasse. She could keep her
promise about not using the telephone and not fraternizing with American journalists, but she couldn’t stay with him. However much she liked the idea, it would compromise him. Ralph was right
to be afraid, but for the wrong reason. If someone was pursuing her, it would draw the danger to him, too. But at the same time, if the Gestapo really were watching her apartment, there was no
sense in going straight home either.

The day was dingy and overcast. She walked deep in thought, barely seeing what surrounded her. Berlin was a city of straight lines, the perspective was in every way rectilinear, from the
flatness of its terrain to the long avenues, even ascending to the rigid right arms of its people. Yet beneath those lines, everything was devious and twisted. Berlin was like a crossword –
an apparently straightforward grid filled with puzzles and enigmas.

Who was on her tail? The Gestapo, almost certainly, but an assassin too? Was he a professional hitman, hired to kill? The idea seemed too ludicrous for words and yet, Ralph told her, she had
been deliberately knocked down. He had seen it himself. What did she know, that someone needed so badly to obliterate it? What danger could she possibly pose to anyone? All around her the familiar
streets were coated in a sheen of invisible danger. Everything ordinary glinted with threat, like rain on the cobblestones.

Eventually the cold overtook her. Her fingers were freezing because her gloves were at home, her coat was a little torn from where she had fallen and the clothes she was wearing were too flimsy
to keep out the penetrating breeze. She crossed Wittenbergplatz and entered KaDeWe.

Ever since Clara had arrived in Berlin, she had loved that department store. Beyond the brass doors, within the warm, glistening, scented interior, it was almost a world of its own. The store
had thought of everything its customers could wish for, from the special room at the side of the entrance, where a uniformed assistant would look after your dog, to the racks where gentlemen could
rest unfinished cigars while they perused the shop. Just stepping through the doors caused you to relax, as the wall-length mirrors reflected your image back to you, replete with a patina of
glamour and luxury. You could happily pass half a day immersed in the book department, or sipping coffee among the potted palms in the sixth-floor café.

In the past Clara had always enjoyed lingering in the clothes department, or trying out the perfumes, but that day she found it impossible to distract herself with hats or cosmetics. She had
intended to keep herself surrounded by people, and yet she felt utterly alone. She dallied aimlessly, feeling the warmth enter her bones but unable to relax. There was a competition in the lobby to
guess the total of Winter Relief collected by the city of Berlin in the last six months. The winner could choose between the prize of a vacuum cleaner or a portrait of the Führer, and both of
these cherished objects were displayed side by side. The portrait was one of Hoffmann’s photographs, which had been badly colourized, with Hitler’s low, sloping forehead and prominent
nose rose-tinted in a way that defied irony. Hitler was striking the commanding, hands-on-hips pose that he had developed over the years to look intimidating, and his famously piercing blue eyes
seemed to follow the observer like the Mona Lisa. It was a frightful thing. All the same, Clara wondered if anyone would be brave enough to choose the vacuum cleaner.

In the afternoon she went to a cinema. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and the smell of damp clothes. The newsreel was full of the recent Party rally and it moved on to images of the Duke
of Windsor meeting workers. He was touring a factory, with a rictus smile on his face, mechanically shaking hands. The workers returned his salute and shouted ‘Heil Windsor!’ The
Duchess was emptying her entire purse into the hands of an SA man for the Strength Through Joy fund. Clara dropped off to sleep momentarily, an uneasy doze from which she jerked and looked around
her. Never relax, she told herself.
Never relax
. The place on her temple ached where she had hit the road and her head was throbbing again.

She reached into the pocket of her coat and found a handkerchief. It was a large, white man’s handkerchief, stained brown with blood. The blood was hers, she knew, but the initials on the
corner belonged to Ralph. He must have stuffed it into her pocket when he picked her off the road. She pressed it against her face, inhaling a faint trace of him. It was consoling to carry a little
piece of him around with her.

After the film she walked further down the Ku’damm and sat in the companionable fug of Kranzler’s, oily steam pressing against the misted windows, the ceiling stained nicotine yellow
by decades of cigarettes, and a man beside her with a newspaper full of the victories in Spain. She glanced at the headlines and thought of the way Ralph talked about the imminence of war. How
similar his language was to the way Arno Strauss talked. Mapping the terrain. Noticing every little change in the environment. Watching which way the wind was blowing. Studying the lie of the land.
But Strauss was talking about flying, and Ralph was talking about war. She imagined German bombers like a great flock of migrating birds darkening the European lands beneath them, and Strauss in
the cockpit, losing the last traces of his fear.

Since Ralph had told her about the Gestapo shadow outside her apartment, every person she passed looked as though they might be the one. Was there anything about the man beside her that could
mark him out as a tail? He was middle-aged, with calloused hands suggesting some form of manual work, and a worn heel to his shoes, which meant either that he did a lot of walking, or that he was
short of cash, or both. He had a rash of spots on his neck and the faintest whiff of wurst about him. The man sensed her scrutiny and glanced indifferently in her direction before returning to his
paper. Was he looking at her without interest because she was just one of a thousand suspects to be watched and followed, dehumanized? Or was he merely bored? She had lost all powers of
discrimination.

Then, Clara thought, there was the other one. The man who had tried to kill her. Perhaps he was watching her even now, as she sat here finishing a cup of hot chocolate, gazing out of the
café window. Maybe he was waiting for his second chance. What did he want from her? What did she know that was so important he would kill to keep it quiet?

She left Kranzler’s and carried on. As the rain intensified she slipped into a Catholic church and sat in the flickering light, noting how the shrine to Our Lady now had a picture of
Hitler above it, sharing the same lighted candle. The Virgin gazed frigidly into the distance, as if offended by this forced proximity. Clara had a sense of sanctuary in the church and perversely,
in that dim, holy place, infused with the smell of incense and damp stone, her mind began to brim with the memory of sensual pleasure. She relived every moment she and Ralph had spent in bed
together. Ralph’s hands caressing her, and his face, as his desire overcame the jealousy of Strauss and the mental barriers he had erected. His tousled hair and the fuzz of golden stubble
rasping against her skin. His innate military posture, shoulders back, head straight, chin up.
If we were at war then this would be an order
. Then the way he bent to take her in his arms,
ceding to the insubordination of desire. She yearned to be back in bed with him. She had not felt this way about a man since Leo.