The Girl in Berlin (16 page)

fifteen

L
IFE RETURNED TO SOMETHING
like normal at the Courtauld. Dr Blunt resumed his lectures. With no further news of the missing diplomats the crowd on the pavement slowly dwindled and after a few weeks only a couple of loitering journalists remained. Yet with nothing to feed on, press speculation about the missing men grew wilder, although all that could actually be said was: Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean had completely disappeared.

The journalists and photographers might have decamped from the pavement outside, but they still pestered Dr Blunt with calls, badgering him for interviews and revelations. His secretary, Miss LeFebvre, acted as chief front-line protector, fending off all comers from her office in what had once been a bathroom, her desk to one side of a magnificent marble bath, now used as a receptacle for parcels and stationery. The telephone rang ceaselessly, but Dr Blunt was always unavailable for comment.

Everyone at the Courtauld was naturally appalled at the way the press had pursued the director. It was shocking and indefensible that the fallout from the madness of politicians should have crashed right up to the doorstep of the Courtauld to torment Dr Blunt: Dr Blunt
of all people
, the most distinguished art historian of his generation, a patron saint of high
classical art and prophet of its beauty and importance. Indeed, he looked more saint-like than ever, with his papery face and fragile build. He was as insubstantial as ectoplasm. Yet, willowy he might be, but his was the thinness of fine steel. He appeared both tough and vulnerable and it was this combination, together with his wit and charm, that inspired the adoration of every individual who frequented the cathedral of art.

‘You haven’t really explained why you think he’s so wonderful,’ complained Alan, when Dinah described the iniquities Dr Blunt had suffered. ‘He was very close to Guy Burgess. He surely must know where he’s gone.’

‘That’s unfair!’ But when challenged, Dinah found it hard to pinpoint the source of the director’s charisma. Finally she said: ‘He has – I don’t know what it is – a lightness of touch – he’s amusing – and he’s so passionately dedicated to what he’s doing, to art.’

‘Art with a capital A,’ said Alan.

‘Charm’s too elusive to explain.’

‘Charm … isn’t charm a bit treacherous? Doesn’t it always disappoint in the end?’ As Alan spoke he was thinking of Kingdom and whether he could be described as charming. No; there was something more determined and steelier about Kingdom. Charm was too lightweight a word for the spy.

‘Dr Blunt isn’t disappointing. His lectures are wonderful.’

Alan laughed. ‘I know he can do no wrong, darling, as far as you’re concerned.’

They were relaxing in the little sitting room in the late evening light. Dinah was knitting a jumper for Tommy. She bent over the needles and the bright yellow wool. Thinking about Dr Blunt, she’d dropped several stitches.

‘They definitely think Eberhardt was murdered,’ said Alan. ‘You know, the old chap I interviewed in Deal.’

‘Reggie said something. How awful.’

‘It’ll probably mean we can’t broadcast the interview, but it was all such a mess anyway.’

‘Have you heard from your Berlin friend at all? The communist?’

Dinah was sitting with Regine in Regine’s walled garden. ‘We think he must have gone back to Germany. Though he seemed awfully disillusioned when we saw him. But then he didn’t seem to like it here either.’

‘William says some people enjoy being disillusioned. He’s still getting all these manuscripts written by Reds who’ve seen the light. He says it’s quite a little genre. I can’t understand why people always look on the dreary side of things. I always try to look on the bright side.’

‘Even you seemed rather depressed—’

Regine swept depression aside. ‘Oh, that was when I still wasn’t feeling well, darling. I’m feeling much, much better the last week or so. I think I’ve finally recovered from the birth of the twins.’

‘You’re looking wonderful.’ Dinah spoke rather wistfully. And indeed Reggie was looking wonderful again. Post-birth blues had evaporated. Her wild red hair stood out in corkscrews and her pale green linen dress set off her eyes.

‘My tummy’s still sagging a bit.’

‘Oh, nonsense, Reggie, you’re thin as a rake.’

‘It’s not fat, it’s the muscle tone, darling.’ She twisted her green jade necklace between her fingers. ‘How is your Dr Blunt bearing up? The scandal just goes on and on, doesn’t it?’

‘It’s got awfully boring, don’t you think,’ said Dinah. ‘Alan was talking about some old chap he interviewed who’s been murdered or something – the missing diplomats business quite knocked it off the front pages. And yet he was quite well known, a scientist, I think.’

‘You mean Konrad Eberhardt? But there was a long obituary
yesterday and the papers are picking up on it now, the
News Chronicle
had a big report today. And shall I tell you something? Don’t mention it to anyone, will you, not yet, but it looks as though he’s left his copyrights, his estate and all that, to Drownes. So William will make lots of lovely money. Drownes published his book of essays that made such a stir last year.’

‘Who’d want to murder an elderly scientist?’

‘That’s just the thing, darling. William says it might have something to do with atomic secrets, you see.’

‘Good heavens! Alan never said anything about that.’

In fact Regine’s version was a highly imaginative embellishment of what her husband had actually said, but that was how rumours started. Dinah had nothing to cap it with and after a friendly, lazy silence Regine spoke again. ‘I’ll tell you what else – Drownes is doing so well just now. We’re going to publish one of your Dr Blunt’s monographs. So I’ll meet him at last and decide for myself whether he’s really as wonderful as you say. I’ll have him round to dinner. You and Alan will come, won’t you?’

‘That would be lovely,’ said Dinah.

There was a little sound from the lawn where the twins lay sleeping in their double pram and Tommy was playing on the grass. She gasped. ‘Oh look – Tommy – he’s walking.’

Her son staggered forward, then fell to his knees on the grass. But as she ran forward to stop him from crying he looked up at her and shouted with laughter.

Dinah looked at the papers on Alan’s desk in his little study, the second bedroom, upstairs behind their own. This would soon have to become Tommy’s room, and then Alan would have to move either to the attic or to the dining room, or else they would have to move house.

She was looking for the gas bill, because this morning an
unpleasant letter printed in red had arrived from the Gas Board. Alan must have forgotten to pay it – they weren’t too hard up at the moment.

As she leafed through the mess of papers on the table she came across the stuff on Konrad Eberhardt. Alan had cut out
The Times
obituary. It was a respectful and admiring piece beneath an unprepossessing photograph. It must have been taken some years ago, but Eberhardt was already balding, and she didn’t warm to his face with its lines carved down either side of his mouth and prominent, shining nose. And while his clothes weren’t slovenly or neglected exactly, his dress managed to convey the impression that to think or care about his appearance was beneath him, that the Thinker had no time for such trivial matters. The Thinker, Eberhardt seemed to suggest, was essentially a mobile brain, which unfortunately for the time being had to be encased in a vulgar fleshly casing and the less attention paid to this the better.

Some of Alan’s friends had that sort of attitude. The way they complimented her on her appearance, on the rare occasions they bothered to notice, conveyed the view that only a woman would stoop to the trivialities of fashion. In their eyes it was part of what made women so generally unsatisfactory. And some of their wives and girlfriends were worse, with wrinkled or laddered stockings (they even wore
lisle
stockings, which surely wasn’t necessary any more now that clothes rationing was a bad memory from the past, even if nylons were still in short supply and so expensive). They had wiry hair that had never seen a hairdresser, naked, scrubbed faces and dreadful, peasant dirndl skirts that seemed to have been made out of curtain material. She sometimes feared she was slipping into the same low standards – she had so little time for herself – and it wasn’t that she minded if some women preferred to dress like that, but their looks at her efforts at smartness conveyed a surely unmerited air of superiority.

Of course not all Alan’s friends were like that. Some, both men and women, were really quite smart. Edith Fanshawe, for example, always looked well turned out and glamorous.

Underneath the press cutting was a manuscript annotated in both pencil and red ink, which must be Alan’s interview with Eberhardt and beneath that was an edited transcript of the interview itself. It was covered with more notes and crossings out in red ink and as Dinah read it she understood why. It barely made sense. The first bit was better: the drama of his flight into exile followed by internment. She tried to imagine that wandering life, the fractured sense of identity, the shock of facing extermination or expulsion from your own country, the country of your birth. How complacent the English are, she thought, how complacent I am, yet she didn’t understand some muddled remarks on the importance of identity. Who cares if I’m English? I never think about it. I’m just me, she thought.

She laid the transcript aside and continued her search for the missing gas bill, but she was distracted again by seeing a copy of Eberhardt’s book. She picked it up, seeing the Drownes logo on the spine and as she opened it a scrap of paper fell out. It was part of a cigarette packet, torn off and now evidently used by Alan as a book mark. Scribbled on it in a stranger’s writing were the words, ‘See you by the seaside!’

Dinah turned the scrap of card over between her fingers. It puzzled her for a moment, but she replaced it and continued her search for the bill. By the time she found it she’d forgotten about Eberhardt.

sixteen

T
HEODOR FEIERABEND’S FLAMBOYANCE
was a startling contrast to Hoffmann’s ultra-correct appearance. He wore a royal-blue satin shirt with full sleeves and a floppy collar and had tied a green neckerchief round his throat in lieu of a tie. A long lock of his already receding dark hair fell forward over his domed forehead, emphasising his large, dark eyes, rosy face and lips and fleshy nose.

‘Things are much better in Berlin these days,’ said Feierabend, looking round the Hotel Am Zoo lounge. ‘The cultural life here is truly amazing.’ He gesticulated with large red hands that poked incongruously from his satin cuffs and laughed in a friendly way. His teeth gleamed white, unlike those of so many Germans.

‘I myself work for the East German Opera,’ continued Feierabend. ‘I sing in the chorus.’ He smiled. ‘It is difficult for me – I have more than one job. Opera is my dream, but in the daytime I do various jobs and then some evenings I work in a cabaret. You should come and see my show before you leave. You should come this evening, in fact. Why not? I sing at the Eldorado. The Eldorado is great fun – I think so, at least. Come this evening – unless you have something better to do.’

The friendly and seemingly artless introduction unsettled McGovern. His British contact, Victor Jordan, was briefly in
Bonn, so McGovern had been unable to do what he would have preferred, which was to see Jordan first and get the lowdown on the German scene in general, and his German contact in particular.

Feierabend did not seem like an agent. Actually, he was not exactly an agent. He was, McGovern supposed, one of the hundreds – thousands – of individuals who, Kingdom had warned him, played an ambiguous role in the floating world of Berlin, men, and no doubt women too, who acted in various ways as go-between, messenger, and who knew useful individuals on both sides of the divide. It occurred to him that, downtrodden as she appeared, Frieda Schröder could also possibly be one of those individuals.

The long mirrored bar of the Eldorado was set off by wood panelling and the room was furnished with sofas heavily upholstered in faded brocade, and leather chairs which looked rather new. The chandeliers certainly were new and altogether this was an interior McGovern had already come to think of as – similar to the Hotel Am Zoo – heavily opulent in the Germanic style. At the opposite end of the room from the bar was a small stage on which a band was assembling.

Dolores the singer was ushered in with a chord from the three-piece band. The drummer brushed the cymbals. Dolores, who was very tall, wore long diamanté earrings and a sequined dress. It took McGovern several minutes to recognise her heavily made-up features as those of Theodor Feierabend.

‘
Ich bin eine Frau die nie nein sagen kann
’ came the throaty tenor. McGovern, stunned, didn’t immediately realise the song was the familar ‘I’m just a girl who can’t say no’. Feierabend’s feminine coyness was parodic, he winked at his impassive audience and gestured with his large, meaty hands. McGovern found the performance hideously embarrassing. He felt even more embarrassed when at the end of the set Feierabend swayed to his table and sat down.

‘Did you enjoy it? You did look surprised,’ said Feierabend with a roguish laugh. ‘But, of course, I’m a happily married man, you know. I just do this to earn some money.’

‘You sent Dr Hoffmann to meet me,’ said McGovern.

Feierabend’s smile became almost coquettish. ‘I hope you found him useful,’ he said. ‘He knows everyone, even your Englishman.’

‘Yes, Dr Hoffmann has arranged a meeting.’

‘Dr Hoffmann can arrange anything. He has so many contacts. He will be extremely useful so long as you remember that you cannot actually trust him.’

Across the naked expanse of what had been Alexanderplatz a gigantic photograph of Stalin stared out. The slogan in German beneath it read: ‘The unshakeable friendship of the Soviet and German peoples is a guarantee of peace and freedom’.

McGovern had passed without difficulty from West to East, but now he was actually in East Germany, in the Russian sector, he felt apprehensive, unsure how to handle the imminent encounter with Harris. Harris might recognise him from the funeral in Kensal Green Cemetery, but that was easily dealt with: McGovern in his persona as a journalist had known Garfield – that would be his line.