A Season of Secrets (53 page)

‘Which is?

Violet gave a Gallic, dismissive shrug of her shoulders, ‘Because of a little naughtiness I indulged in years ago with Dieter. It was nothing important, and I can’t imagine why
Olivia is making such a fuss about it.’

‘I can,’ Roz said drily, imagining only a heavy flirtation.

Violet shrugged and shot her one of her dazzling smiles. ‘Let’s have another Martini while you tell me all the latest gossip about Max. Is it true that since the Republicans did so
badly in last year’s presidential election he’s said he won’t be a contender next time around?’

‘That was the quote printed in the
Washington Post
– and presumably you read it in the
International Herald.
That being the case, it must be true.’

‘And is it true he’s getting a divorce?’

Feigning an indifference she was far from feeling, Roz said, ‘As several newspapers have printed in their gossip columns the news that he and Myrtle are divorcing, I’m assuming
that’s true also.’

‘And?’ Violet said impatiently. ‘Come on, Roz. Don’t keep secrets from me. Are the two of you back together again? Are you the reason for the divorce?’

‘Absolutely not. No. Zippo. Zilch.’ Roz was beginning to regret arranging to meet up with Violet. The last thing she wanted to do was talk about Max. ‘I haven’t seen or
spoken to him since I decided our affair was going nowhere and broke things off with him.’

Her fingers tightened around the stem of her Martini glass – the tension not because it was still difficult for her to give a false account of why she had broken off her affair with Max,
but because she knew exactly how long it was since she had last seen him. In two weeks’ time it would have been exactly four years. If anyone had asked, she would probably have been able to
give them the days and hours as well.

Four years in which no one had replaced him in her life, though heaven knows she’d tried hard enough. She’d had so many brief affairs – and even briefer flings – that she
hadn’t fingers enough to count them. The only constant in her life had been Barty, but in the end even Barty had realized he was wasting his time and had become engaged to a debutante whose
father not only owned 1,000 acres of Perthshire, but a Scottish island as well.

Violet was now chattering about the film she was presently making. Every now and then Roz made a polite, interested noise, but her thoughts were on Max. Why was he risking potential harm to his
political career by divorcing Myrtle? She could think of only one possible reason, and the reason made her feel physically ill. It had to be that he wanted to remarry. It had to be that he was
having an affair, and that the new woman he was in love with was so important to him, so utterly necessary to him, that he wanted to make her his wife.

As she continued feigning interest in what it was Violet was telling her, she didn’t know which emotion she was battling the hardest: a searing, crucifying hurt or rampant, raging
jealousy.

Later that day, after dinner and when she was sitting with Olivia and Dieter in the library of their Bellevuestrasse home, Max’s name was again brought into the
conversation.

‘It’s a shame Max didn’t make it to the White House,’ Dieter said, one leg across the other, his right ankle resting on his left knee, a glass of grape-brandy in his
hand. ‘His disappointment must have been colossal.’

Roz thought of the way she had sacrificed her own and Max’s happiness so that Max could enter the running for the presidency and knew that, if Max’s disappointment had been colossal,
then her own had been – and still was – off the Richter scale.

Struggling to keep the strain from her voice, and aware that some response was needed, she said, ‘I’m sure you’re right, Dieter. But it was all over for Max quite early on.
Governor Landon pipped him to the post in the primaries and then was unable to make inroads into Roosevelt’s popularity. A sitting president nearly always has an advantage, and
Roosevelt’s New Deal policies ensured he had enormous overall support. Every rancher and farmer in the country was totally behind him. Big-city political machines were behind him, as were the
Labour unions. I doubt if Max being the Republican nominee would have made any difference to the final outcome.’

American politics didn’t interest Olivia and she changed the subject. ‘You must have been hugely disappointed Thea wasn’t around last November, Roz, when all the drama of the
abdication was going on.’

Roz, grateful the conversation had been steered away from Max, smiled wryly. ‘I don’t think even Thea’s long-standing friendship with Edward would have been enough to have
given me special access to him, Olivia. I was in London on the off-chance of getting something emotive, but the entire thing was announced, over and done with so quickly that all I managed was a
couple of shots taken when Edward’s car was speeding between 10 Downing Street and the Palace.’

‘And the coronation?’ Olivia’s eyes glowed. ‘Wasn’t it wonderful? I was in the Abbey with Papa, and I kept having to pinch myself to make sure I was awake and not
dreaming. Even now I find it hard to believe that Bertie’s now King, and that Edward is the Duke of Windsor and doesn’t even live in England any more.’

Rozalind’s amusement was vast. ‘But you were heartbroken at the thought of Edward giving up his throne for love of Wallis. When did the sea-change take place?’

There was a giggle in Olivia’s voice. ‘When I realized that if Bertie was King, then my friend, Elizabeth, would be Queen.’

Dieter finished off his brandy and, making no attempt to refill his glass, said, ‘Thea still being in Spain when Edward married Wallis must have been as big a blow to you professionally as
when she wasn’t around at the time of the abdication.’

‘Oh, bigger,’ Roz said with deep feeling. ‘Far bigger. If Thea had been around when the wedding at Candé took place, she would most certainly have been one of the
handful of guests who risked the Palace’s displeasure by attending it – and just as certainly she would have suggested to Edward that I take the wedding photographs. If I had, it would
have been the most spectacular photographic coup of my career.’

‘I might be able to put another coup your way, Roz. Perhaps not quite so historic, but a coup nevertheless.’ Dieter put his now-empty brandy balloon down on the small table next to
his armchair and rose to his feet.

He crossed to the fireplace and leaned against the corner of it, his arms folded, his head down, as if debating whether or not to continue with what he’d begun to say.

Olivia, too, was suddenly tense, her hands clasped tightly in her lap.

‘What is it?’ Roz asked, intrigued. ‘What’s bugging you both?’

‘Hitler is what is bugging us both,’ Dieter said tautly. ‘Things have become even grimmer in Germany than they were the last time you were here. The Security Police take the
law into their own hands without going through the courts. Anyone can be arrested for nearly anything at all. And there are informers on every street and in every block of flats. Informing on
people has become a way of repaying old grudges. As for the poor benighted Jews . . . There are so many laws now prohibiting their movements and personal freedoms that it’s virtually
impossible for them to breathe without being marched off to a camp.’

‘A forced-labour camp?’

‘We don’t have any of those now,’ said Olivia quietly. ‘And there are no more detention camps. Everything has been centralized into larger camps, called concentration
camps.’

‘And there are four of them.’ A lock of pale-blond hair fell low over Dieter’s forehead. ‘Dachau, north-west of Munich. Buchenwald, near Weimar. Lichtenburg – which
is solely for female prisoners – in Saxony. And Sachsenhausen, on the outskirts of Berlin.’

Roz, vastly relieved at hearing Dieter speak in a way that was no longer admiring of what was going on in Germany, said drily, ‘So you’re no longer a fan, Dieter?’

‘Of the Nazi creed and the Führer? No, I’m not. In the beginning I thought Hitler was the best thing that had happened to Germany in a long time. You have to remember the state
Germany was in when he began his rise to power, Roz. The country was in such a mess, and in two, three, years all the things that had made it a mess were there no longer. There were no more
communist agitators; no more street fighting. There was no more unemployment – even Britain and America were envious of that. There was no more inflation. We began to feel proud of ourselves
as Germans once again, after all the indignities of Versailles. We even dared to begin feeling moderately prosperous again. I never liked everything about Hitler’s regime, but for a time it
seemed a great improvement on what had gone before, and Hitler spoke of bringing the Kaiser back from Holland – of restoring the monarchy.’

‘And now?’ Roz asked.

‘And now?’ Dieter opened his arms in a gesture of despair. ‘Now I know Hitler never had the slightest intention of restoring the monarchy. It was simply part of his plan to be
everything to everybody, until he had sufficient power not to have to please those he didn’t want to please. And we Germans, God help us, gave him that power. So much power that we are now
living in a country where no one dares publicly express any criticism of him; where even making fun of him can end in the perpetrator facing a death-sentence. Telephones are tapped. The mail is no
longer sacrosanct. For the slightest infringement of any one of the scores of new laws constantly being brought into being, all citizens – Aryan as well as Jewish – face arrest and
imprisonment without the benefit of a trial.’

‘But for the Jews it’s much worse.’ It was a flat statement of fact that Roz wanted to hear Dieter admit.

He flushed. ‘Yes, for the Jews it’s much worse. In the beginning I thought the Jew-baiting and Jew-hating were a craziness that would come to an end when Hitler gained control of the
hooligan elements amongst his followers. Only slowly did I realize that he was always in control of them; that Jew-hating wasn’t an aberration, but a policy.’

For a long moment the room was silent, and then Roz said, ‘What will you do? You’re in the Foreign Office. You must be aware, as the British government is, that despite all his
avowals to the contrary, Hitler is intent on war. What are you, and anyone who thinks like you, going to do when that time arrives?’

It was a rhetorical question. She was certain that neither he nor anyone else could do anything.

Dieter crossed the room, checked that the door was firmly closed and then said, ‘Because there is no freedom of speech or action in Germany now, only the army has any power – and
there are certain high-ranking figures in the army who feel the same way I do, and the same way many other high-ranking Foreign Office officials feel.’

Roz felt her heart almost cease to beat. ‘You’re part of a secret opposition group?’

He nodded.

She knew better than to ask for any more details. The less she knew, the safer it would be for both of them – and for Olivia. Instead she said, ‘Can I tell Gilbert?’

‘Yes. The British government needs to know – and Gilbert will know how much to say, and what not to say.’

‘I’m assuming that because of her liaisons with men like Göring and Goebbels, Violet knows nothing about this?’

‘God, no!’

The mere suggestion had robbed Dieter’s face of blood and, judging that it was time the subject was changed, Roz said, ‘When you started this conversation, Dieter, you began it by
saying that you could put a photographic coup my way. How does that connect to anything that’s just been said?’

‘The Führer likes to present the image of being so totally committed to Germany that romantic relationships never intrude upon his time. It isn’t strictly true, though the term
“romantic” may be a little excessive.’

Olivia said, speaking Violet’s name for the first time that evening, ‘Violet met Hitler not long after she first came to Berlin. She said he was a neuter – and, when it comes
to masculine sexuality, if anyone’s instincts can be trusted, Violet’s can.’

She was looking at Dieter as she spoke and he flushed, saying, ‘Rumour has it that several years ago Hitler was inordinately fond of his half-niece, Geli Raubal.’

‘Geli shot herself,’ Olivia said, in a tone indicating that in such a situation any woman in her right mind would have done the same thing.

‘And now?’ Roz asked, intrigued.

‘And now, for more than six years, a young woman named Eva Braun has been Hitler’s companion, though he doesn’t publicly acknowledge her as such. She lives with him at the
Berghof, his private residence at Berchtesgaden, on the Austrian frontier, though when he entertains there she only rarely makes an appearance. When he comes back from Berchtesgaden to Berlin in
two days’ time for the mammoth rally at the Field of May, he’s bringing Eva with him – but she won’t be one of the million or so people in the Olympic Stadium. She will be
out of sight, as usual; and, because Olivia is one of the few people Eva has met socially, and because she and Eva got on so well together, she’s asked if Olivia will keep her company that
evening in her suite at the Adlon Hotel.’

‘And you’re suggesting that I go along with my camera?’

‘I’m suggesting that if you are in the hotel at the same time, and if Olivia mentions this fact to Eva, Eva is certainly going to want to meet you.’

Roz hesitated. ‘I came here to take photographs of Hitler and Mussolini together on the same platform. Why should I forgo photographs that my agency will certainly place for photographs of
a young woman that no one in America or Britain has heard of?’

Dieter smoothed his hair back, away from his forehead. ‘Because one day Hitler will marry her – and when he does, photographs taken by you, when the bride was totally unknown to the
world, will be photographs that are unique. There’s only one proviso. Even if the press should show an interest, the photographs can’t be published now. Hitler’s fury would be so
great that you would never be allowed into the country again. And, for her part in it, Olivia would most likely find herself in Lichtenburg.’

Roz hesitated, but she didn’t hesitate for long. She had always trusted her instincts and was going to trust them now. She was going to forgo the shots of Hitler with Mussolini for
photographs of Eva, not because she felt any certainty about such photographs one day being of any value, but because of curiosity.