The Girl Behind The Curtain (Hidden Women) (16 page)

Chapter 19

Friday 16th September 1932

Dear Diary,

I am so much in love with Otto Schmidt. I have even been practising signing my name as his wife. Can you imagine me as a Frau? Frau Schmidt. Frau Kitty Schmidt. I rather like it. Much more exotic than a plain old Missus back in the Home Counties, even if Schmidt is more common than Smith. There are three Schmidt families on this street alone. Perhaps I would differentiate myself by being Katherine Schmidt Hazleton. Gosh that sounds grown-up.

Otto is a virgin. Can you believe it? I have to say, I was surprised when he admitted it. How could someone so gorgeous not have had a hundred girls queuing up to give themselves to him? I told him so. He said the queues had indeed been embarrassingly long but he has been waiting for the right girl. Then he looked at me in a very meaningful way. I went all hot and cold.

Thankfully, he did not move the conversation on to my own past. Thank goodness he’s much too polite to ask such questions of a lady. Though lady I fear I am not. As he told me about himself, I was suddenly deeply ashamed about the whole business with Cord. I had managed to stay pure for so long – though admittedly not through want of trying. After Matthew Spencer, I too had been determined to save myself for the right one. I still can’t believe I ever thought Cord was the right one. His eyes were so close together.

How I wish I could turn back the clock to the night of that dance in Munich and tell Cord Von Cord that he should keep his wandering hands to himself! Why did I have to be taken in by his wanton whispering and his delicious cologne? A scent that I now find quite disgusting, by the way. A customer at the club was wearing it the other night and I swear I was almost sick on the spot.

Oh, how I wish I had been more careful. I love Otto so much. I want to be able to give him a gift worth more than all the gold in the world and I no longer have it to share with him.

Saturday 17th September 1932

Dear Diary,

I decided that I had to tell Otto the truth face to face. It would have been too awful if he found out some other way. He had already told me he wanted to lose his virginity to me and he must have been assuming that it would be a moment of mutual discovery. I didn’t think he would be able to tell I’d already lost mine just from looking at me – Cord was very quick after all and there was no blood, despite Bettina’s insistence that there would be great spurting gouts of it as my hymen was ripped to shreds – but what if I moved in such a way that made it obvious I wasn’t an absolute beginner?

It was the most awful thing I have ever had to do.

‘Otto,’ I said, quite meekly, ‘I will understand if you decide you never want to see me again.’

But darling Otto took my hand, lifted it to his mouth and kissed it.

‘My dear Kitty,’ he said, ‘you are the angel of my heart. Of course, I am disappointed that I won’t be the first man to know you, but I knew when I met you that you were a woman who would always defy convention. You are an adventuress with an appetite for experience. That is a part of your character I adore.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘it was just the once so I’m practically good as new.’

‘You’re as good as
you
,’ said Otto. ‘And that’s all I ever want you to be.’

It was the most marvellous thing I’d ever heard. Otto always says the right thing.

And then it happened. We did it! At last!

After Otto told me he still wanted me, I threw my arms round his neck and started to kiss him. Before long, we had fallen back on to my bed. Ordinarily, we would have just kissed but kept our clothes firmly in place. Sometimes Otto would not even put his hand up my skirt for fear of inflaming unstoppable lust. Today was different. Now that we had spoken honestly, the barriers to propriety had come down. For once we wanted our lust to be unstoppable.

As we kissed, I felt his hand move beneath my sweater. I felt his fingers on the bare skin of my midriff. The slightest contact sent a sensation like electricity throughout my whole body. Every tiny hair on my skin stood on end.

Oh, I felt like a virgin in Otto’s arms. I had never experienced such a rush of desire. I wanted him to be all over me and in me. I wanted him to fill all my senses. How I love the sight of him, the sound of his voice, the way his skin tastes when I kiss it. At the same time, I was incredibly nervous in a way I hadn’t been with Cord at the Adlon. Of course, it was because this time it really mattered. I wanted it to be perfect. With Otto it could never be ‘just sex’.

Otto undressed me so carefully. As he took off my skirt, he even went so far as to fold it before he put it on the back of the chair.

‘For Heaven’s sake,’ I told him. ‘I’m waiting to be ravished.’

He blushed in that way I adore and bounced straight back to the bed. He admired me in my underclothes.

‘If I were a painter,’ he said, as he pushed my silk slip up my thigh, ‘I would stop and capture your beauty right now for all eternity.’

‘Otto,’ I said. ‘Please don’t stop for anything!’ I pulled him towards me by his belt.

I unbuttoned his shirt. I was so excited I was actually trembling. He too seemed slightly shaky with the momentousness of the occasion. When I pretended I was going to fold his shirt, he pulled it from my hands and threw it into the air so that it landed on a lampshade.

‘I am waiting to ravish you,’ he said.

His body is so beautiful. Otto claims that he absolutely hates sport, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him. He is so muscular. I love to lie on his chest. It makes me feel so petite and feminine. I feel so very safe within his arms.

Without his shirt on, I saw for the first time that he has quite a hairy chest. As we lay down side by side, I ran my fingers through the soft fur. I followed a line right down his middle to the waistband of his underpants. His penis was already tenting the fabric there. The sight of his arousal made my heart skip.

I laid my hand upon it. I felt it twitch beneath my palm.

‘Are you sure about this?’ I asked. ‘You don’t want to save yourself for a worthier girl?’

He put a finger on my lips. ‘You are all I want. You’re all I’ve ever wanted. You’re all I ever will want and I want you now!’

I helped him out of his underpants at once.

Suddenly we were as naked as Adam and Eve before the fall. When we realised that we were totally bare together for the first time, we both laughed. It was so wonderful and so natural. I pressed myself against him, revelling in the warmth of his skin. I massaged his penis until he begged me to stop out of fear he would have nothing to give me when the time came. Meanwhile, he touched me between my legs in the gentlest of ways. He carefully rubbed my clitoris, then he slipped a finger inside. I was thoroughly wet and ready. Total bliss!

‘Shall we? Now?’ I asked him.

He nodded. I arranged myself on the bed with my legs open wide. He positioned himself above me and closed his eyes tightly as he pushed his way inside.

We moved together so perfectly. It was as though our bodies had been made to find each other. It did not hurt in the least when he thrust into me. I was ready for him. I had felt that strange blossoming feeling from the moment he kissed me. He told me I felt warm and juicy. Juicy! I told him he felt strong and firm and I’d never been so happy in my life.

It did not take long before we both reached a climax.

Otto’s face . . . I want to remember his expression for ever. At first he was a little shocked but soon his mouth spread in a wide, wide grin. He collapsed on top of me and we both dissolved into the giggles. When we’d finished laughing, Otto took my face in his hands and regarded me quite seriously.

‘I love you,’ he said.

‘And I love you, Otto Schmidt.’

He was still inside me. His penis gave a little spasm as if it agreed with me.

‘How was it?’ I asked him afterwards. ‘Was it like you imagined it would be?’

‘It was so much better,’ he said. ‘I want to do it again and again.’

We managed another three times that day.

Before he left to go back to the Prenzlauer Berg, he sang me to sleep. The song I like best is called ‘The Song is Ended’. It’s by Irving Berlin and it’s very romantic. It’s the perfect tune for such a momentous occasion. I’ve decided it will be our song.

Oh Diary, I start and end each day by thanking God for bringing me and Otto together. It was worth it, the embarrassment of Matthew and the horribleness of Cord, because without them I would be back in Surrey and getting married to some horrible accountant. Now I have my darling Otto. I am the luckiest girl in the world.

Sunday 18th September 1932

Dear Diary,

We had dinner with Otto’s mother and sister again last night. Gerd turned up late, as before. He was at one of his terribly important SA meetings. Oh, he takes himself so seriously. It makes me want to giggle. The horrible uniforms and the heel-clicking. It’s all so very camp! Otto told me that there is a cabaret artist in one of the private gay clubs who dresses as one of the Sturmabteilung for a striptease, which he performs to the tune of the
Horst Wessel Lied
, the Nazi anthem. When the conversation hit a lull over dinner, I’m afraid I brought the subject up. Gerd was absolutely furious.

‘There will come a day very soon when no one will dare laugh at the uniform of the Sturmabteilung,’ he warned us all. He was full of portent. Then he burst into a rendition of the
Horst Wessel Lied
of his own. It wasn’t a bad rendition. He is an excellent singer but his face was so very serious it was all I could do not to laugh.

Chapter 20

Berlin, October last year

Kitty Hazleton’s diaries would make the perfect basis for my research project, but, of course, I couldn’t start writing about her without trying to find out whether she was still alive. Just as I had promised Herr Schmidt, I had to look for her. A quick online search had turned up nothing useful, but I had found a record of her birth, which at least helped me to narrow down the part of the country she had come from. I would be able to do more in London, where I could get easy access to marriage and death records at the National Records Office.

I would have a good reason to go back to London relatively soon. At the beginning of October, I got the news that I had been awarded my PhD for my work on Luciana Giordano. At the same time, I heard that the university press would be publishing my thesis. It was cause for great celebration. I immediately phoned Mum and Dad, who were thrilled by the news. It was a validation of all the time I had spent with my nose in a book.

‘Does this mean we have to call you Doctor Thomson now?’ my mother asked.

‘Absolutely,’ I told her. ‘I will answer to nothing less.’

When I called Bea with the news, she burst into a rendition of the ‘dottore’ song that rang out from the beloved student bars of the Campo Santa Margherita whenever someone took their gown. It made me wistful for the other side of Venice, the raucous partying side that had been the counterpoint to my quiet days in the library. I wished that I might have been there in the bar by the Ponte dei Pugni, celebrating with a good Venetian spritz.

Instead I celebrated with Harry and Clare in the traditional German way. With lots of beer. It was such a relief to know that I had achieved my goal. Sticking those letters after my name would make it much easier to find respect in the academic community.

‘You’ve got to get your credit cards changed to say ‘‘Dr’’,’ Harry told me.

‘I’m worried it’s just a matter of time before someone has a medical emergency and expects me to be able to deal with it,’ I said.

‘They should probably make a first-aid course compulsory for a doctorate,’ Clare agreed.

We had a wonderful evening celebrating my success, but I couldn’t help but feel a little sad when I got back to my apartment that night. I had told so many people and received so many heartfelt congratulations. Earlier in the day, Herr Schmidt had shaken my hand and told me, with a twinkle in his eye, that he would have to put my rent up now that I was more highly qualified. Later, he pushed a congratulatory card under my door. It had a picture of a mountain scene beneath the word ‘
Glückwünsche
’. I was pleased to be able to add that word to my vocabulary.

So, I was being suitably well lauded, but there was still one person I didn’t tell. One person I really wanted to know how I had done. Marco.

Was this the excuse I needed to contact him? It wouldn’t be such a big deal. I could even just copy him in on an email to several people, as though he were an afterthought. But then I thought again about the last email I had sent him and further back to our meeting face to face. The words still stung.

I decided he would have to wait. If I ever told him at all. Perhaps when the thesis was published, I would send him a bound copy for his precious library, where it could gather dust along with his heart.

Perhaps because I had spent so much of the day thinking about Luciana Giordano, she came into my dreams that night. Her laughing face was so familiar. She was dressed in boy’s clothes. It was the disguise she had used for her secret assignations with Casanova. I glimpsed her as she weaved across the Rialto bridge, with her hat pulled low to meet the mask that hid her eyes. She had not covered all her hair. I followed her through the city’s rambling streets until she ducked down a narrow alleyway.