A Season of Secrets (33 page)

‘Just the one, I believe.’ Dieter replied smoothly.

Though he had no intention of admitting it, he had no first-hand experience of Babelsberg, but via a friend whose mistress was one of Germany’s most popular actresses he knew enough
Babelsberg gossip to sound as if he had. ‘The first feature-length talkie shot on it was
Melody of the Heart
starring Willy Fritsch.’

‘And directed by Hanns Schwarz, a Dane,’ Sárközy said with a rare glimmer of a smile. ‘Do you know Schwarz, Count von Starhemberg?’

‘Sadly, no. I am, however, familiar with Josef von Sternberg.’

That at least was true. He’d met von Sternberg at a party the last time he’d had diplomatic leave and spent it in Berlin with Olivia.

‘And von Sternberg is an Austrian,’ Sárközy said, beginning to lead the way off the set and towards the VIP lounge, where the conversation could be continued comfortably
over ice-cold vodka. ‘I – as Violet will have told you – am Hungarian.’

Violet didn’t excuse herself in order to change out of her costume and remove her stage make-up. Instead, discreetly silent for once, she walked at Dieter’s side, wondering what his
reaction would be if she were to tell him truthfully that she and Sárközy were lovers – and that it wasn’t only her extraordinary acting skills that had got her the plum
part of Delilah.

‘What is the latest news from Babelsberg?’ Sárközy asked as they settled themselves around a small table in the lounge. ‘What is von Sternberg directing
now?’

‘His latest film,
The Blue Angel
, is just about to be premiered. Gossip is that the unknown actress in the lead part is sensational.’

Sárközy gave a wolfish grin. ‘Whoever she is, she will not be as sensational as Violet. Violet’s portrayal of Delilah is going to be a . . . what is the French expression
the English use? A
tour de force
.’

Dieter didn’t doubt it. The part of beautiful seductress was one tailor-made for Violet.

He shot her a burning glance. She met it with a naughty glint in her eye, well aware of his thoughts where she was concerned. They didn’t disturb her. She had very similar, reciprocal
thoughts of her own.

‘Everyone is directing talkies now,’ Sárközy was saying to Dieter. ‘The subjects chosen are interesting, don’t you think? In Germany, Hanns Schwarz makes
Melody of the Heart
, based on an operetta. In America, the first talkie is also a musical,
The Jazz Singer
. In Britain, Alfred Hitchcock makes
Blackmail
, a thriller. No one has
done what I, Sárközy, am doing. No one has taken a great biblical epic, like Samson and Delilah – the kind of epic that talkies were made for.’

Knowing the conversation was likely to continue in the same vein for quite some time, Violet allowed her thoughts to drift. After only a year at RADA, she had attracted the eye of a talent scout
and had been cast in small parts in several silent films. The films had been made at Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire, and it was when she was at Beaconsfield that she had first seen
Sárközy. He, of course, thought that
he
had initiated their first meeting and done the chasing. Violet knew differently.

As Sárközy and Dieter’s conversation moved on to a discussion of Alexander Korda’s first talkie,
The Squall
, which had been made in Hollywood, Violet wondered who
had made the running in Rozalind and Max’s relationship and in Olivia and Dieter’s relationship. She rather thought that although Roz liked to think she called a lot of the shots where
she and Max were concerned, in reality it was Max who had made the running and Rozalind who had been caught.

She was aware, of course, that most people who knew of Roz and Max’s adulterous affair thought it a tragedy – or certainly did so where Roz was concerned. Because of the way Roz ran
her life, Violet didn’t see it as a tragedy at all. Roz was an independent young woman who travelled the world as a press photographer. Every few months she and Max would meet up in New York,
or in London. Once or twice they had met in Berlin – a city Roz had made very much her own, since Dieter had introduced her to the up-and-coming leaders of the National Socialist German
Workers’ Party and she had become their favoured and accepted foreign-press photographer.

‘The Nazis make rich pickings,’ Violet had heard Roz say to Thea, when Thea had queried why she was, yet again, en route to Berlin. ‘Of all the countless political parties
fighting and arguing themselves to a standstill in Germany, the Nazis are the only party growing at a rate of knots – and their meetings are always accompanied by high drama. Pullman’s
can’t get enough of the photographs I’m able to take.’

She took other kinds of photographs when in Berlin – photographs that weren’t for her press agency. She loved the grandeur of the buildings. The neo-Romantic splendour of the Kaiser
Wilhelm Church on Breitscheidplatz. The Italian Renaissance majesty of the Reichstag. The grandeur of the Brandenburg Gate surmounted by its statue of the Roman goddess of victory driving a
four-horse chariot.

She took photographs in the pearly light of early dawn and in the hazy dusk of twilight. As well as buildings, she took photographs of Berliners going about their daily life in the leafy acres
of the Tiergarten, the great tree-studded park that lay at Berlin’s heart. In October 1929 there had been a small exhibition of these photographs in a prestigious Manhattan Lower East Side
gallery. If anyone had been in any doubt about Roz’s professionalism, after the exhibition they had been so no longer.

‘Apart from Sternberg’s
The Blue Angel
, most films being shot at Babelsberg are of individuals battling against nature in the mountains,’ Dieter was saying wryly and in
a way that, if Violet hadn’t known better, would have convinced even her that he was speaking from first-hand information.

Whatever was going on at Babelsberg, her present ambitions lay in another geographic direction. For a film actress, Hollywood was the place to be, and it was Hollywood she had in her sights. It
was, she knew, where Sárközy wanted to be, and it was why she had every intention of clinging to him like a limpet.

She wondered what it would be like to be so far away from family and friends. She would miss Hal – whom she met up with in Fleet Street pubs quite often – far more than she would
miss Carrie, for being at Outhwaite so rarely, she only saw Carrie two or three times a year. She would also miss Olivia far more than she would miss Thea.

Ever since they had been children she and Thea had been incompatible. When she had been small she hadn’t understood why she irritated Thea so intensely. Now, however, she understood very
well. It was because she was frivolous, and Thea didn’t have a frivolous bone in her body.

Why Kyle Anderson – who was handsome enough to commit suicide for, and who could certainly have had a career in films if he had wanted to – was so besotted with a serious-minded
bluestocking like Thea she couldn’t imagine. The only interesting aspect of Thea’s life was her long-standing friendship with the Prince of Wales, and even that friendship was built on
the boring interest that the two of them had in social and economic wrongs. To listen to Thea, unemployment and hellish housing conditions were the only things the two of them ever talked
about.

Violet couldn’t imagine how both of them could be bothered with something so dreary, but when she had once said so to Hal, he had astounded her by saying in a hard, fierce voice,
‘Unlike you, Violet, Thea has a code of principles that she lives by. You can chatter idiotically to me about anyone else, but never about Thea. Understand?’

She had been completely taken aback – but she had understood. What she had also understood was that there was never going to be any delicious naughtiness between her and Hal, which was,
she still thought, a pity. Dieter, however, was another matter entirely.

For nearly a year now Violet had sensed that Dieter was quite capable of being naughty – and probably
was
naughty – just as long as his beloved Olivia didn’t find out
about it. By her own lights Violet had behaved very well about this. She had been flirtatious (it would have been impossible for her not to be), but had never given him blatant encouragement
– a romantic romp with a brother-in-law seeming, even to her, a little excessive.

However, as Olivia quite obviously knew nothing about Dieter’s spats of unfaithfulness, and they consequently never upset the tenor of his own and Olivia’s marriage, she had decided
she was being overly well-behaved. It had been Dieter’s suggestion that he drive out of London to visit her at Beaconsfield, ostensibly out of curiosity to be shown around a film studio.
Violet hadn’t been fooled. He just wanted her on her own, away from the family. It was a situation she was entirely happy about. A girl could only be good for so long, and with Dieter no harm
would be done.

When Sárközy brought his tête-à-tête with Dieter to an end, she took Dieter on the tour they were both pretending was the reason for his visit.

‘We’ll go to the sound stages first,’ she said, still in her Delilah costume. ‘And then out to the back lot, where workmen are building a Dickensian asylum.’

‘Sounds grim. What film is it for?’

‘
The Woman in White
. It’s some kind of ghost thriller.’

‘If it’s from the book of the same name, it is. It seems Sárközy is right in that, where talkies are concerned, no one else is yet doing biblical epics. He’s a man
with the market cornered.’ Dieter was enjoying himself. The sun was hot on his back. He had Violet all to himself, and striding around the studios with her he felt like a king – or, at
the very least, like a film director.

On the sound stages she introduced him to sound men, prop men, gaffers and focus boys. On the back lot she introduced him to a wizened little man, ‘Ginger’ Martin, who boasted that
his ‘boys’ could build anything that was asked for – and that they could do so overnight, if need be. Dieter was duly impressed and even more impressed when, in the canteen, as
well as introducing him to Basil Curtis and to the American actor who was playing the part of Samson opposite her Delilah, Violet also introduced him to Sybil Thorndike, an acclaimed actress he had
seen in many West End stage productions.

Miss Thorndike’s friendliness and lack of pretentiousness was, Dieter thought, extraordinary.

‘I saw her on-stage four or five years ago in a Bernard Shaw play,’ he said as he and Violet walked down a covered walkway towards her dressing room. ‘The play was
Saint
Joan
, and Shaw wrote the part of St Joan specifically for her.’

‘Then perhaps you’d have a word with him and ask if he’d write a part specifically for me,’ Violet said as they came to a halt in front of a door bearing her name.

She was only half-joking. To appear on the West End stage in a play written for her by Bernard Shaw would send her stock as an actress soaring into the stratosphere.

She opened the door and Dieter followed her into a small, untidy room dominated by a large dressing table and an even larger, bulb-surrounded mirror.

It was taken as a given by both of them that he should follow after her.

She went straight to her dressing table and seated herself in front of it. He perched on the arm of a small sofa that was cluttered with clothes. ‘Sybil has an advantage you don’t
have, where Shaw is concerned,’ he said, fighting to keep his desire for her under control for a little while longer, as Violet set about removing her Delilah make-up with cold cream.
‘She’s as passionately left-wing as he is.’

Violet, who hadn’t the least interest in politics, rolled her eyes. ‘So she is. I’d forgotten. Do you know that during the first run of
Saint Joan
, when the General
Strike was on and the strikers closed the theatre down, she gave them her support?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ he said, knowing that when she had finished removing her make-up she would then remove her Philistine princess costume – and that, being Violet, she would
do so in front of him.

He shifted uncomfortably on the arm of the sofa, his erection so hard it was making his eyes water. Would she do so because she wanted the outcome that he already yearned for so badly? Or would
she do so simply because she was naturally shameless – as shameless as the cabaret artistes in Berlin’s raunchy nightclubs?

He missed his city’s nightlife. London nightlife was sophisticated, of course, but prudishly tame compared to Berlin’s sexually uninhibited nightlife. He remembered a night when
he’d been with friends in the El Dorado, on the Ku’damm. A sensationally beautiful woman had walked into the club who was quite obviously naked beneath her white mink coat, a gold
bracelet around her ankle and with a pet monkey sitting on her shoulder. In the El Dorado her arrival had caused barely a stir. In Bond Street’s Embassy Club she would have caused a riot.

The only woman he had met in London whom he could imagine effortlessly dressing and behaving in such a way was Violet. Violet was fun – and having fun with her would, he knew, come with no
strings. She would never expect, or want, a serious commitment from him. She would never be clinging. She would never tell Olivia and, best of all, she would be very, very naughty in bed.

Naughtiness had been lacking in his life since his marriage.

Olivia was passionate – she was, after all, as deeply in love with him as he was with her – but she wasn’t naughty, and nor did he want her to be. Naughty women did not, in his
book, make good, faithful wives. Violet, he was quite sure, would one day make some man an appalling wife.

For romps in the hay – which is all she would ever want from him – she would, though, be mesmerizing.

She removed the last of the cream from her face and he walked across to her, saying thickly, ‘I’ll help with your zip.’

Through the mirror she shot him a bright, wicked smile and rose to her feet.

He stood behind her, his mouth dry with sexual tension. Still holding her eyes through the glass, his fingers closed on the zipper tab and then, slowly, he ran it down to the base of her
spine.