Spy Hook (10 page)

During tea I asked the old woman about life in Berlin before the war. She had a good memory and answered clearly and fully but the answers she gave were the standard answers that people who lived under the Third Reich give to foreigners and strangers of any kind.

After forty-five minutes or so I could see she was tiring. I suggested that we should leave. The old woman said she wanted to go on longer but the daughter gave me an almost imperceptible movement of the head and said, They have to go, Mama. They have things to do.' The daughter could also show a hard edge.

'Are you just passing through?' Ingrid asked politely while she was handing our coats.

'We are booked in to the big hotel on the road this side of Valbonne,' I said.

'They say it's very comfortable,' she said.

'I'll write up my notes tonight,' I said. 'Perhaps if I have any supplementary questions, I could phone you?'

'Mama doesn't have many visitors,' she said. It was not meant to sound like an encouragement.

When we reached the hotel it was not the 'honeymoon hotel' that I'd described to Gloria. It was at the end of a long winding road – broken surfaced and pot-holed as are all local roads in this region – and behind it there was an abandoned quarry. In a bold spirit of enterprise someone seemed to have fashioned a car park gate from two cartwheels, but on closer inspection it was a prefabricated plastic contraption. A few genuine old wine barrels were arranged across the patio, and in them some rhododendrons and camellias were struggling to stay alive. The hotel was a pink stucco building with shiny plastic tiles.

At the far end of the car park there was an out-building in which some derelict motor vehicles of indeterminate shape and marque were rusting away undisturbed by human hand. We parked beside a new Peugeot station wagon and a van that carried advertisements for a butcher's shop in Valbonne. A large sign said that all cars were parked at owner's risk and another pointed the way to an empty swimming pool which was partially repainted in a vivid shade of cerulean blue.

But once inside everything looked up. The dining room was clean and rather elegant, set with starched cloths and shining glass and cutlery. And there was a big log fire in the bar.

Gloria went straight upstairs to bathe and change but I went into the bar and wanned my hands at the fire and tried the Armagnac that the barman said was especially good. Gloria didn't enjoy alcohol: she preferred orange juice or yogurt or even Seven-Up. It was another manifestation of the generation gap I suppose. Concurring with the barman's verdict I took a second Armagnac up to our room, where Gloria had just finished taking her bath. 'The water is hot,' she called happily. She walked across the room stark naked and said, 'Have a shower, darling. It will cheer you up.'

'I'm cheered up already,' I said, watching her.

All the way from Le Mas des Vignes Blanches to the hotel, she'd kept quiet, giving me time to think about the Winter woman. But when I said, 'So what did you think of her?' Gloria was ready to explode with indignation.

'What a cow!' said Gloria, dabbing herself with a towel.

'If I have to be knocked out in the first round it's a consolation to know it's done by a world champion,' I said.

'She trapped you.'

'And you have to admire the skill of it,' I said. 'She sensed what we'd come for even before we started talking. It was quick and clever. You have to admit that.'

'What a vicious old moo,' said Gloria.

'Are you going to put some clothes on?'

'Why?'

'It's distracting.'

She came and kissed me. 'You smell of booze,' she said and I stretched out my arms to embrace her. 'Well, that's very reassuring, darling. Sometimes I think I've lost the art of being distracting.'

I reached for her.

'No no no! What time's dinner? Stop it! There's no time. I said what time's dinner.'

'It's too late to think of that now,' I said. And it was.

Afterwards, when we were sitting quietly together, she said, 'What are you, Bernard?'

'What do you mean?'

'Are you English, or German, or nothing? I'm a nothing. I used to think I was English but I'm a nothing.'

'I used to think that I was German,' I said. 'At least I used to think that my German friends thought I was a Berliner, which is even better. Then one day I was playing cards with Lisl and an old man named Koch, and they just took it for granted that I was an Englishman and had never been anything else. I was hurt.'

'But you wanted it both ways, darling. You wanted your English friends to treat you like an Englishman, while your German friends thought of you as one of them.'

'I suppose I did.'

'My parents are Hungarian but I've never been to Hungary. I grew up in England and always thought of myself as one hundred per cent English. I was a super-patriot. Being English was all I had to hang on to. I learned all those wonderful Shakespeare speeches about England and chided anyone who said a word against the Queen or wouldn't stand up for the National Anthem. Then one day one of the girls at school told me the truth about myself.'

'Truth?'

'You Hungarians, she said. All the other girls were there watching us, I wasn't going to let it go. She knew that. I told her I was born in England. She said, if you were born in an orange box, would that make you an orange? The other girls laughed. I cried all night.'

'My poor love.'

'I'm a nothing. It doesn't matter. I'm used to the idea now.'

'Here's to us nothings,' I said holding the last of my Armagnac aloft before drinking it.

'We'll miss dinner unless you hurry,' she said. 'Go and have a shower.'

There was no breakfast room of course. In this sort of French hotel there never is. And unlike Gloria I don't like eating food in bed. Thus she was propped up in bed, the tray balanced on her thighs, and I was halfway through my second cup of coffee, and eating Gloria's second brioche – 'You are a fool, darling. You've had two already' – when the phone rang.

I knew it would be the Winter woman. No one else knew where I was. Contrary to regulations I'd not left a contact number at the office. People who left overseas contact numbers were likely to find themselves answering questions about where they'd been and why.

'This is Ingrid Winter. Mama is feeling rather fit today. She wonders if you'd like to join us for lunch.'

'Thank you: I would.' Gloria had used the extra earpiece that all French phones have, and was waving a hand, in case her violently shaking head escaped my attention. 'But Miss Kent has an appointment in Cannes. She could drop me and pick me up, if you'd suggest convenient times.'

'Eleven and three,' said the daughter without hesitation. The Winter family seemed to have answers ready for everything.

Gloria dropped me at the gate a few minutes early. It was better that way when dealing with Germans. 'So! Exactly on time,' said Ingrid Winter as she opened the door to me. It was a statement of warm approval. We went through the same formalities as before, talking about the weather as I gave her my coat, but today she proved far more affable. 'Let me close the door quickly: that yellow dust gets everywhere when the wind is from the south. The Sirocco. It's hard to believe that the sand could be blown all the way from the Sahara isn't it?'

'Yes,' I said.

She locked my raincoat away in a closet painted with big orange flowers. 'My mother is a very old lady, Mr Samson.' I said yes, of course she was, and then Ingrid Winter looked at me as if to convey some special meaning, apprehension almost. Then she said, 'A very old lady.' She paused. 'Komm!'

With that she turned and walked not into the drawing room we'd used the previous afternoon but along a tiled corridor, hung with old engravings of ancient German cities, to a room at the back.

It had not always been a bedroom of course. Like Lisl she'd had a downstairs room converted to her use. Few people of Inge Winter's age wanted to go upstairs to bed.

She was not in bed. She was wearing the sort of grey woollen dress provided to poor patients in State hospitals, and sitting in a large angular armchair with a heavy cashmere shawl draped round her thin shoulders. 'Sit down,' she told me. 'Do you want a drink of any sort?'

'No thank you,' I said. Well, now I understood Ingrid's fears. This wasn't a bedroom it was a shrine. It wasn't simply that Inge Winter had surrounded herself with pictures and mementoes of times past – many old people do that – it was the ones she'd chosen that provided the surprise. The top of a large side-table was crowded with framed photos; the sort of collection that actors and actresses seem to need to reassure themselves of the undying affection that their colleagues have promised them. But these were not film stars.

The large silver-framed photo of Adolf Hitler had been carefully placed in a commanding position. I'd seen such photos before: it was one of the sepia-toned official portraits by Hoffmann that Hitler had given to visiting dignitaries or old comrades. But this one was not just perfunctorily signed with the scratchy little abbreviated signature normally seen on such likenesses. This was carefully autographed with greetings to Herr and Frau Winter. It was not the only picture of Hitler. There was a shiny press photo of a handsome middle-aged couple standing with Hitler and a big dog on a terrace, with high snow-capped mountains in the background. Berchtesgaden probably, the Berghof. Prewar because Hitler was not in uniform. He was wearing a light-coloured suit, one hand stretched towards the dog as if about to stroke it. The woman was a rather beautiful Inge Winter, with long shiny hair and wearing the angular padded fashions of the nineteen thirties. The man – presumably Herr Winter – slightly too plump for his dark pinstripe suit, had been caught with his mouth half-open so that he looked surprised and slightly ridiculous. But perhaps that was a small price to pay for being thus recorded consorting with the Fuhrer. I couldn't bring my eyes away from the collection of pictures. Here were signed photos of Josef Goebbels with his wife and all the children; greetings from a black uniformed blank-faced Himmler; a broadly smiling, soft focused and carefully retouched Herman Göring; and a flamboyantly inscribed picture of Fritz Esser, with whom Göring faced the judges at Nuremberg. The Winters had found welcome in the very top echelons of Nazi society. So where did that put her sister Lisl?

'People usually do nowadays,' said the old woman. There's far too much drinking.' Without giving me much of a chance to answer she reached over for one of the pictures. Holding it in her hand, she looked at her daughter and said in rapid German. 'Leave us alone, Ingrid. You can call us when lunch is ready.'

'Yes, Mama.'

When I said how pleased I was that she'd spared time to see me again, I automatically continued in German.

The old woman's face lit up in a way that I wouldn't have thought possible. 'Such beautiful German… You are German?'

'I think I am,' I said. 'But my German friends seem doubtful.'

'You are a Berliner?' She was still holding the photo but seemed to have forgotten about it.

'I grew up there.'

'I hear you speak and I am drinking a glass of champagne. If only my daughter didn't have that dreadful Bavarian growl. Why didn't you tell me yesterday? Oh, how splendid that my daughter made me ask you back today.'

'Your daughter made you ask me?'

'She thinks I am being too Prussian about the house,' she smiled grimly, as one Prussian to another. 'She thinks I should let Lisl give it to the wretched Jew, if that's what she wants to do. Poor Lisl was always the simpleton of the family. That's why she married that piano player.' It was a relief to hear her speaking German instead of her uncertain English with its terrible accent, the sort of accent people only acquire when they come to a language late in life. I suppose that's how I spoke French. But Inge Winter's German was – apart from a few dated words and expressions – as clear and as fresh as if she'd come from Berlin yesterday.

She looked at me. I was expected to respond to her daughter's offer of the house. 'That's very generous, Frau Winter.'

'It makes no difference to me. Everything will be Ingrid's when I die. She might as well decide now.'

'Lisl has borrowed money on the house I believe.'

She ignored that. 'Ingrid says it's too much trouble for nothing. Perhaps she's right. She knows more than I do about these things.'

'There will be taxes and so on…'

'And Ingrid says it's better that we don't have to go to all the trouble of filing accounts and submitting tax forms. Who would I find here who knew about German tax?'

I didn't answer. Considering how many rich Germans had big houses on the Riviera – and the fleets of huge German-registered yachts that crowded local ports and marinas – I would have thought it a not insurmountable problem.

'But I have things there in the house,' she said. 'Personal things.'

'I can't think there would be any difficulty about that,' I said.

'The ormolu clock. My mother was so insistent that I should have it. Do you remember seeing it?'

'Yes,' I said. Who could forget it: a huge horrid thing with angels and dragons and horses and goodness knows what else jumping about all over the mantelshelf. And if you missed seeing it, there was every chance that it's resonant chimes would keep you awake all night. But I could see a complication just the same; Lisl had often expressed her fondness for that dreadful object.

'And some other oddments. Photos of my parents, a tiny embroidered cushion I had when I was a little girl. Some papers, keepsakes, diaries, letters and things that belonged to my husband. I'll send Ingrid to Berlin to get them. It would be tragic if they were thrown away.'

'Nothing will happen as quickly as that,' I said. I was fearful that she'd phone Lisl before Werner had spoken to her. Then there would be a fearful rumpus.

'Just private papers,' she said. 'Things that are of no concern to anyone but me.' She nodded. 'Ingrid will find them for me. Then Lisl can have the house.' She looked down at her hands and became aware of the photo she was holding. She passed it to me. 'My wedding,' she announced.

I looked at it. It had been an elaborate ceremony. She was standing on the steps of some grand building in a magnificent wedding gown – there were pages behind her to hold the train of it – and her husband was in the dress uniform of some smart Prussian regiment. Deployed on the higher steps there was a sword-brandishing honour guard of army officers, each one accompanied by a bridesmaid in the old German style. On each side the guests were arrayed: a handsome naval officer, high-ranking Brownshirts and SS officers, richly caparisoned Nazi party officials and other elaborate uniforms of obscure Nazi organizations.

'Do you see Lisl there?' she said with an arch smile.

'No.'

'She's with the civilian.' It was easy to spot them now; he was virtually the only man there without uniform. 'Poor Erich,' she said and gave a snigger of laughter. Once no doubt this cruel joke against Lisl's piano player husband had been a telling blow. But this old woman didn't seem to realize that history had decided in Erich Hennig's favour.

I slid the photo back into its narrow allotment of space on the table.

'Just private papers,' she said again. 'Things that are of no concern to anyone but me.'

Promptly at one o'clock her daughter called us for lunch in the small dining room which looked on to the courtyard. The old woman walked there, slowly but without assistance, and continued to talk all through the meal. It was always about Berlin.

'I know Berlin not at all,' said Ingrid, 'but for my mother there is no other town like it.'

It was enough to start another story about her happy prewar days in the capital. Sometimes the old woman's stories were told with such gusto that she seemed to forget that I was there with her daughter. She seemed to be speaking to other people and she larded her stories with '…and you remember that stuff that Fritz liked to drink…' or '… that table that Pauli and I always reserved at the Königin on Ku-Damm…' Once in the middle of a story about the gala ball she'd attended in 1938, she said to Ingrid, 'What was the name of that place where Göring had that wonderful ball?'

'Haus der Flieger,' said Ingrid. I must have looked puzzled for she added, 'I know all Mama's stories very well by now, Herr Samson.'

After lunch her mother quietened. Ingrid said, 'My mother gets tired. I think she should have a little sleep now.'

'Of course. Can I help?'

'She likes to walk on her own. I think she's all right.' I waited while Ingrid took her mother to her room again. There was still another quarter of an hour before Gloria was due to collect me so Ingrid invited me to sit in the kitchen and share a second pot of coffee she was just about to make for herself. I accepted.

Ingrid Winter seemed a pleasant woman, who waved away my suggestions that forgoing a share in the house was a generous thing to do. 'When Mama dies, and Tante Lisl dies,' she said, not using any of the common euphemisms for death, 'I will have no use for a house in Berlin.'

'You prefer France?' I asked.

She looked at me for a moment before answering. 'Mama likes the climate.' There was no indication about her own likes and dislikes.

'Most people do,' I said.

She didn't respond. She poured more coffee for me and said, 'You mustn't take any notice of what Mama says.'

'She's a wonderful old woman considering her age.'

'That may be true but she is mischievous: old people often like to make trouble. They are like children in that respect.'

'I see,' I said and hoped she would explain.

'She tells lies.' Perhaps seeing that these allegations had little effect upon me she became more specific. 'She pretends to believe everything but her brain works like lightning. She pretends to believe that you're a writer but she knows who you are.' She waited.

'Does she?' I said in a bored voice and sipped some coffee.

'She knew before you arrived. She knew your father a long time ago: before the war she said it was. She told me your father was an English spy. She says you're probably a spy too.'

'She is a very old woman.'

'Mama said your father killed her husband.'

'She said that?'

'In those very words. She said, "This man's father killed my darling husband" and said I must be on my guard against you.'

'You've been very frank, Fräulein Winter, and I appreciate it, but I truly can't fathom what your mother was referring to. My father was a British army officer but he was not a fighting soldier. He was stationed in Berlin after the war, she might have met him then. Before the war he was a travelling salesman. It seems very unlikely that she could have met him before the war.'

Ingrid Winter shrugged. She was not going to vouch for the accuracy of anything her mother said.

There was a peremptory toot on a car horn and I got up to go. When Ingrid Winter handed me my coat we were back to discussing the vagaries of the weather again. As I said goodbye to her I found myself wondering why her mother might have said 'killed my darling husband' rather than 'killed your father'. I didn't know much about Inge Winter's husband except what I'd heard from Lisl; that Paul Winter had been some kind of civil servant working in one of the Berlin ministries, and that he'd died somewhere in southern Germany in the aftermath of the war. Now that I'd met Ingrid – this woman of whom her aunt Lisl knew nothing – I could only say that there were a lot of things about the Winter family that I didn't understand, including what my father might have had to do with them.