Flight from Berlin Page 4

  Charlie spotted her in the doorway and clicked his fingers several times to get the attention of the pianist, who obliged him by playing the signature tune Eleanor sang in her shows with the band.

  ‘Charlie,’ she said, arching an eyebrow. ‘I’m on board as an athlete.’

  ‘Eleanor, my rose, you know Helen of course? Come and meet our friends.’ The men stood up. He introduced her to Allan Gould of the United Press, and two journalists, John Walsh of the Chicago Tribune and Paul Gallico, the chief sportswriter of the New York Daily News.

  ‘The pleasure’s ours, ma’am,’ said Gallico. ‘We’re fans of yours.’

  He had a fresh, square-chinned face, glasses, a college tie, and an Ivy League manner of the shy sort. She liked him immediately.

  A groomed young man with an Errol Flynn moustache stepped forwards, holding a half-pint glass brimming with champagne. He was the only one wearing white tie. ‘William,’ he said, handing her the glass. And she realised he must be William as in Randolph Hearst Jr. ‘You’ve got some catching up to do, my dear. We’re all getting pleasantly soused here.’

  ‘You can’t shake your shimmy on tea,’ Eleanor said, raising the glass and downing it in one.

  ‘Now, where did you learn to do that?’ said Hearst, slipping his arm around her waist.

  ‘An Illinois roadhouse called the Sudsbucket,’ said Eleanor, gently removing his hand.

  Another gentleman, introduced as George Kennan, an American diplomat returning to Moscow, joined them. ‘Seems you’ve got the run of the decks here,’ he said to Eleanor, a pipe clenched in his teeth. ‘I’ve been dodging gum-chewing Tarzans all afternoon.’

  ‘Mr Kennan, some of those Tarzans were Janes,’ she said.

  Helpless laughter.

  ‘So I guess you finally told those boycotters where to get off,’ said the diplomat.

  ‘Oh please, George, this is a party,’ said Helen, clutching his elbow. ‘Did Charlie tell you I’ve returned to Broadway? California was simply ruining my skin . . .’

  Eleanor considered for a moment, reminded of something that had irked her in Brundage’s speech. She’d heard every boycott argument over this last year and shrugged them off. Politics, as far as she was concerned, was supremely irrelevant to the Games. Not once had her conscience been troubled by the thought that she shouldn’t go to Berlin; not a wink of sleep had she lost. But tonight? She found herself very reluctant to side with Brundage, whose pro-German argument had struck her as highly unsavoury, with its mysticism and horseshit about forging a new race. The text of that anonymous note from under her pillow flickered across her mind like a title card in a silent movie—every day citizens who do not think like the Nazis are tortured and murdered—and now she caught herself wondering how much truth was in it. And yet . . . her mind reached for an argument that trumped them all: Jesse Owens. Wasn’t he the key?

  ‘The fastest man on earth is on board this ship,’ she said, interrupting Helen, ‘and he’s a Negro. He’s going to win gold in Berlin in front of the whole world. Don’t you think that’ll be one in the eye for stupid, hokey race theories? I think it’s damned right that we’re going to these Games.’

  Mumbles of ‘Here, here.’

  But for the first time along the contours of her brash and uncomplicated worldview, there were buds of doubt.

  They were joined by a dozen more friends and acquaintances of Charlie’s and Helen’s, who arrived to squeals and cheers—‘My dear, what a surprise seeing your name on the passenger list’—and the party progressed noisily through its indistinct stages: sociable, elated, raucous.

  Eleanor was enjoying herself. Enjoying herself more and more as the champagne went down. Two hours later, after repeated requests from Paul Gallico, and now more than a little refreshed, Eleanor was persuaded to sing.

  ‘Name your song,’ she said.

  ‘ “Let’s Misbehave,” ’ someone shouted to howls of laughter and encouragement. She stepped unsteadily up to the piano, which played her in, and began, in her low voice:

  ‘We’re all alone,

  No chaperone

  Can get our num-ber,

  The world’s in slum-ber

  Let’s misbe—’

  She stopped midnote. Her face froze, and the piano fell silent one bar later. The revellers turned, following the line of her gaze towards the doorway of the lounge, where a stout woman in the Olympic team uniform was standing with her arms folded. Mrs Hacker stared straight at her ward with a slow nod of her head.

  ‘Eleanor Emerson,’ she said. ‘Go to bed. Now. Or shall I fetch Mr Brundage?’

  Someone snickered as everyone in the room looked back at her. But Eleanor wasn’t going to feel embarrassed.

  ‘Friends . . . ,’ she began, with a straight face. ‘Do we need to go to Germany to see a notorious dictator with a moustache? We have our very own right here. Folks, meet our team chaperone, Mrs Eunice Hacker,’ she yelled, throwing her arms out as if introducing a star act. The party cheered and raised their glasses.

  A flash of alarm in the chaperone’s eyes, but then her face hardened, and so did Eleanor’s resolve not to have her evening spoilt.

  ‘What’re you gonna sing, Hacker? Hey, this is first class. You can’t wear that movie-usher’s uniform up here.’ Mrs Hacker turned and waddled away, to more applause from the revellers.

  ‘Oh boy,’ said Eleanor, collapsing in a fit of laughter. ‘That’s done it.’

  Chapter Four

  Denham smoked an HB between courses, staring out over the great expanse of the lake at dusk. The place had drawn him into its mood—placid, untroubled, deep—and he remembered why people took holidays. He stubbed out the cigarette just as two white-gloved waiters arrived to serve him the duckling with champagne cabbage; a third showed him a Moselle from the Kurgarten’s cellar and uncorked it for him to taste.

  For something to read he’d brought the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, the publication with the most pictures and the fewest lies. It was full of features on the Olympic athletes and the hopes for Aryan victories. One story, titled ‘Seven Beautiful Girls from the USA,’ caught his eye. The magazine saw movie-star qualities in the American team and had given one girl a full-page photo. Wearing a white, one-piece bathing suit and a white cap strapped beneath her chin, her long legs crouched at the edge of a pool as though she were about to dive, the girl faced the camera, wide mouth smiling provocatively, her nose puckered. She had a long neck and a beauty spot to the right of her nose, one of those little imperfections that only seem to magnify loveliness. ELEANOR EMERSON FROM NEW YORK, the caption read, WAS THE 1932 GOLD MEDALLIST IN THE BACKSTROKE. SHE IS ALSO A SINGER AND THE WIFE OF A POPULAR BANDLEADER.

  The hotel’s restaurant was filling up. He heard the rough sounds of Swiss German from one table—bankers and their wives on an evening out from across the lake; at another, two English ladies keeping diaries seemed to know all the waiters by name; at a table near the door, a solitary woman in expensive Italian clothes kept giving him the eye.

  The maître d’ was showing another couple to a table.

  Oh, shit.

  It was Willi Greiser, the Nazi press chief, dressed in Teutonic weekend wear: a green Bavarian jacket trimmed with braid. The blonde with him must be his wife. What the hell is he doing here? Let’s hope he’s not staying the week, Denham thought. Fortunately, Greiser didn’t seem to have spotted him.

  He finished eating, refilled his glass, and walked out onto the terrace. Lights twinkled around the shore, and the air was heady with the scent of honeysuckle. In the distance, the Alps gave off a pale glow in the crystalline air. He leaned on the stone balustrade and listened to the laughter and fragments of conversation from couples walking the pr
omenade below.

  ‘Good evening, Denham.’ A man’s voice.

  Denham screwed his eyes shut. So he’d been spotted after all.

  ‘This is a pleasant coincidence,’ the voice continued. ‘I thought I saw your name on the hotel register. What brings you to Friedrichshafen?’

  ‘The scenery, Greiser,’ Denham said, turning round. ‘How about you? Aren’t the local papers printing all the good news from Berlin?’

  A match flared behind Greiser’s cupped hands, illuminating the low-lidded eyes, the heavy hair that fell in blond slices over his forehead, and the ridiculous college duelling scar down one cheek, the badge of a phoney pedigree. His lapel held an edelweiss.

  ‘Just a few days’ relaxation before the Olympiad,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a busy time for me. Half a million foreign visitors expected in Berlin.’

  ‘That’s a lot of people to fool.’

  Greiser grinned with genial menace. ‘There’s only one thing that would bring you here, Denham, and I don’t recall receiving your request to visit the Hindenburg, much less endorsing it.’

  ‘I’m here to see Hugo Eckener, who is an old friend of my father’s.’

  Denham touched the engraved watch in his pocket, fearful now of the raw emotion it had released in him.

  ‘Really? A social visit?’ Greiser chuckled, breathing out a mix of sarcasm and smoke. ‘You’re here to write a feature, and this time you’ll clear it with my office—before that fucking agent of yours sells it all over the world. The chief read your piece on National Socialism in football and was highly annoyed by it.’

  ‘Goebbels read that?’ Denham punched the air.

  ‘In German. It was syndicated in one of the Austrian dailies. I had to calm him down, tell him you’re not a bad sort. But this is a warning to you, Denham. I’m serious. Any more damage like that and your press accreditation will be revoked. You’ll be expelled . . . or worse.’

  ‘Greiser, what could be worse than that?’

  He fixed Denham with a hard stare. ‘Watch your step,’ he whispered and turned back through the terrace doors into the restaurant.

  Denham jabbed two fingers up and down at Greiser’s departing head, then turned and slumped onto a stone bench. Somewhere off to the left, in the hotel ballroom, a string orchestra was playing the waltz from The Merry Widow.

  He’d clashed before with Greiser over pieces he’d written and had got away with it. But this time it sounded like the Bank of Cheek and Luck was calling in the loan. He cupped his face in his hands and rubbed his eyes. Meeting the combined demands of Greiser and his agent was like finding his way through a fantasy castle riddled with mirrors, mines, and trapdoors.

  Someone had left a wineglass on the stone paving of the terrace. On a sudden impulse Denham jumped up and kicked it, sending it high into the air in a great arc that ended in the lake.

  He’d known Greiser for years. They were the same age, both reporters, but the similarities ended there. Greiser was an opportunist with a diabolical talent for manipulating the foreign press. His cosmopolitan background was unusual in the Nazi hierarchy—he’d spent a year at Cornell, spoke fluent English, and had something of the college jock about him, which made him popular with the United Press boys. Yet he was the worst type of careerist fostered by the regime. Even the fanatics had the integrity of their faith, however loathsome, but Greiser believed in nothing. He’d begun his career reporting the truth and had switched to suppressing it, as though it were a natural evolution. He was wholly without conscience. Whatever grim fate he was threatening at the end of that exchange, Denham had no doubt that he meant it.

  Feeling a sudden urge to speak to someone human he returned to his room and placed a telephone call. The operator called him back after a few minutes with his connection to London.

  Tom answered. Their conversation was stilted at first, talking about school and cricket, but that changed when Denham mentioned he’d been inside the Hindenburg. His son had question after question, some of them highly original, in the way that only children can be.

  ‘You didn’t smoke a cigarette on board, did you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. But there is a special fireproof smoking room.’

  ‘But how do they light the cigarettes?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did you get me those stamps?’

  ‘Of course,’ Denham lied, hitting his forehead. ‘I’ve put them in the post.’

  He remembered that none of Tom’s school friends had got their hands on a recent Zeppelin issue. By such small tokens are status and respect conferred among eight-year-olds.

  Denham said, ‘How’s Mummy? Is she there?’

  ‘She’s gone for a walk with Uncle Walter.’

  Who’s Uncle Walter? ‘Ah, I see.’

  ‘When are you coming home?’

  ‘Soon.’

  Their chat concluded after Tom gave him a trumpet recital he’d been practising for school. It was an uncertain performance, full of breathy squeaks and duff notes, but Denham could picture the concentration on his small face.

  When he replaced the receiver, a valve in his heart opened and flooded him with sadness. He imagined for the thousandth time how it might have been if he’d made a success of things with Anna. He knew how hard it must have been for her to cope with him: his sudden departures on trips lasting weeks, his silences and secrets. His craving for solitude. He didn’t blame her for leaving him. But he missed Tom. Could they ever have been a happy, carefree family? The three of them living in that house in Hampstead, pottering in the garden on summer days like today or roaming on the heath . . .

  Or had there, in truth, been no real choice for him?

  He took out a small framed photograph he kept in his travelling case: of Tom holding up a slow-worm he’d found in a flowerbed, a squeal of horror and delight on his face, and Anna sitting on a deck chair behind him looking cross—a disjunction that never failed to make him smile. He placed it on the bedside table, lay his head on the pillow, and angled the frame so that his face was reflected in the glass. Then he imagined that he, too, was in the picture with them.

  But he was slipping into that slough of loneliness.

  He looked at his watch. It was still early.

  With an effort he got up and wandered downstairs to find the bar, thinking how much he was in the mood to hear a slow trumpet melody, pulled along by the lazy rhythm of a double bass. The orchestra, however, had moved on to a medley from Der Rosenkavalier. It seemed to be working its way through all the Führer’s favourites. Nothing with any Negroid syncopation, which pretty much ruled out anything that might set your feet tapping. Perhaps they saved the Wagner for cocktail hour.

  As he passed the reception desk Denham saw that he’d caught the eye of a young man sitting with a group of four others in the corner of the lobby, and was immediately on his guard. He walked into the deserted bar, sat at a tall stool in front of the barman, and glanced in the mirror behind the crystal and bottles. Sure enough, the man followed him in, accompanied by the others, and they all sat at a table nearby.

  Were they watching him?

  He ordered a large whisky. The young man glanced again at Denham, but the others, deep in some boisterous discussion, didn’t seem to be looking. Nothing unusual if the local police were keeping a tab on him, he supposed. Especially after he’d come so spectacularly to the attention of the area Brownshirt division on his ar
rival. He lit an HB and watched the reflected smoke coil into the air. Couldn’t a man have a quiet drink without being spied on?

  Before he could even sip his whisky, the young man was standing next to him at the bar, waiting to order. He turned to Denham with a broad smile.

  ‘You’re American?’

  First Greiser, now this. Why hadn’t he stayed in his room?

  ‘English, actually.’

  ‘Wonderful. I love your Cary Grant.’

  The remark was more unexpected for being spoken in English.

  ‘So what do you like about Friedrichshafen?’ the man said, still smiling. ‘The friendly locals?’ This he said with a slight tip of his head towards the barman, who was polishing a glass and eyeing them both with suspicion.

  It was hearing the actor’s name pronounced with a German accent that made Denham smile, despite himself. ‘I’m here as a guest of the Zeppelin Company.’

  The man’s eyes widened. ‘That’s why we’re here,’ he said, ‘for the Hindenburg, I mean. We’re the movie crew filming the opening ceremony of the Olympiad on Saturday. We were just arguing about how to set up the shot as we fly over.’

  Denham turned to look properly at him. He was quite young, perhaps about twenty-seven, slender, good-looking, and dark for a German, with glossy black hair sleeked stiffly back. His features were delicate, Italian almost, with a straight nose and long eyelashes. He had on a white sports sweater over an open-necked shirt, like a tennis player.

  ‘Friedrich Christian,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘But everyone calls me Friedl.’

  Denham introduced himself. ‘You’re a cameraman?’

  ‘I’m training to be one. I used to be an actor,’ he said with a shrug, ‘but there are not so many roles for dark-haired boys these days . . . I write poetry, too. And you? You must be a reporter. You don’t look like a tourist.’

  ‘Is it that obvious?’ Denham said with a wink and straightaway wished he hadn’t. The young man gave him an odd, private smile.