The Words I Never Wrote Page 9

  She pressed on through the clotted shadows. The bushes were still bowed with rain and the air saturated with the perfume of imported hothouse flowers, newly installed in baroque planters. In the weak moonlight a mossy stone fountain was visible, and beside it, lean as a shadow, a uniformed man was standing, smoking a cigarette and tapping ash into the fountain’s bowl. She knew by the way he looked up that she had startled him.

  All inhibitions long ago dissolved in several glasses of Dom Pérignon, Irene advanced boldly.

  “Hello again. How nice to meet properly.”

  He straightened. Up close, his sharply sculpted face had a look of intense reserve. He was tall, and powerfully built, with a straight back and piercing gray eyes. He had the pale face of a north German; his skin was white as a church candle, and his demeanor just as monastic. She could feel him taking in the whole of her, from the blond chignon secured with a pearl clip to the flimsy silk dress and bare arms prickling in the chill.

  “Good evening, Frau Doktor.”

  His accent was Prussian. As Martha had told her the higher Nazi ranks were dominated by Bavarians, she knew he was not one of those dignitaries Ernst fawned over. He clicked his heels.

  “May I introduce myself? Sturmbannführer Axel Hoffman.”

  “Delighted to meet you. I’m Irene Weissmuller.” She offered a hand, and he bent to kiss it. Irene had still not got used to this Prussian custom, when one was expecting a hearty handshake, and it secretly charmed her. “Do you work with Doktor Goebbels?”

  If he did, he might know her brother-in-law—Gretl’s husband, Fritz—who had a job at the Propaganda Ministry. Then they would have some common ground. She might even risk a joke at Fritz’s expense.

  “I work for the man you were talking to.”

  “Actually. On that subject”—she sensed her own tipsy lack of inhibition—“I wonder. Could you remind me who he is?”

  “Are you really saying you don’t know?”

  “He looks familiar. But I’m terrible with faces.”

  “That man is Reinhard Heydrich.”

  Ah. She remembered now. The face next to Rudolf Hess in the women’s magazine.

  “And what does Reinhard Heydrich do?”

  Hoffman tilted his head, as if to check that she was being serious. “You’ve heard of SS Reichsführer Himmler?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the Geheime Staatspolizei? The Gestapo?”

  “Of course.”

  “All police forces throughout Germany—the Gestapo, the SD, and the Criminal Police—are under the command of Himmler, who answers only to Hitler. Heydrich answers to Himmler.”

  “And you answer to Heydrich?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  There was something behind his eyes that was seeking her out. Was it humor? Was he laughing at her?

  “So you’re a policeman then, Sturmbannführer?”

  “I trained as a lawyer.”

  “Like my husband!”

  Yet in other ways, this man was most unlike her husband.

  “It’s strange. Herr Heydrich seemed to know everything about me, yet I don’t think we’ve ever even met.”

  “It’s Heydrich’s job to know everything, Frau Doktor.”

  Hoffman seemed about to say more, but at that moment there was a shout and a pair of storm troopers blundered into the clearing. The blade of a knife caught in the moonlight as one of the men seized the dagger that all storm troopers carried and waved it high above his enemy’s shoulder blades. The other launched himself on the assailant, pinning him to the ground. Tussling violently, the pair rolled toward her, knocking her aside.

  In two strides, Hoffman was there. Wrestling the men apart, he trapped the aggressor beneath him, ignoring the knife slashing at his face and pinning the man down with one knee on his back. A groan issued from the storm trooper, followed by drunken protestations.

  Hoffman turned his head sharply.

  “Leave. Leave at once.”

  Irene did not need to be told twice. The encounter had shocked the intoxication out of her.

  As she stumbled from the clearing and down the graveled path, she had a sudden memory of a painting that hung in the hall at Birnham Park—The Ferryman Charon Crossing the River Styx. It was a copy, her father said, of one in the Prado, a sixteenth-century vision of the classical world that summed up the fragility of existence in bright enamel shades. It portrayed the gardens of Heaven and Hell, twin vistas separated by the winding Styx. One bank was composed of verdant meadows, fountains, and fruit trees, where people danced and sang and twined in dalliances, clasped in each other’s arms. The other side of the Styx, by contrast, presented a truly horrifying prospect. Blazing fires and scorched earth entrapped the miserable inhabitants, who screamed and writhed in a hideous dance of pain as they suffered the flames and agonies of the underworld.

  The medieval torments were so vividly painted that whenever she looked at the picture, Irene could barely drag her eyes away. Yet the strange thing was, the lovers under the fruit trees on the opposite bank paid them no attention at all.

  Chapter Nine

  The Courier,

  Place de l’Opéra,

  Paris

  October 5, 1936

  Dear Irene,

  I’m supposed to be typing up a letter to the Prime Minister’s office, but Torin Fairchild—he’s our bureau chief—has just gone out, Paris is full of sunshine, and I’m daydreaming. It’s easy to do that in Paris. Pleasure is compulsory!

  Your Olympic parties sound heaven, and how fascinating to meet all those politicians. It’s so different here. Torin says the French are insular and willfully blind, but despite his best efforts most of them run a mile from political discussions. The haut monde spend their time at the Longchamps races, and the socialites, artists, and writers circulate from party to play to gallery with an insouciance only Parisians can muster.

  As for me, don’t die laughing, but the fact is, I’ve become rather interested in fashion…

  “It is important not to dwell on the diplomatic situation. Let us present an image of serenity. The more elegant French women are, the more our country will show the world we do not fear the future.”

  The speaker was herself the most elegant woman Cordelia had ever seen, an origami of narrow limbs and elegant lines, folded into a shape of slender nonchalance. Her somber face, with its sallow complexion and mournful eyes, entirely belied the subversive spirit that lay beneath the conservative black suit. She was standing in a room dressed with pastel drapes and velvet-upholstered chaise longues, enclosing at its heart a cage of gilded pillars. It was a décor more appropriate to an Italian palazzo than a couturier’s salon, yet it was here, in an eighteenth-century building on 21, Place Vendôme, that Elsa Schiaparelli was holding court to a select crowd of journalists summoned to witness the crowning event of 1936—the launch of her winter season.

  Every two minutes a model would appear from behind a curtain, twirl a couple of times, then nonchalantly cross the floor as if oblivious to the ranks of men and women perched on spindly gilt chairs, avidly sketching and chatting and swapping notes on the lengthening hemlines.

  Until recently, Cordelia’s everyday acquaintance with fashion had been limited to outfits run up by her mother’s dressmaker, complemented by blouses and skirts off the peg from Swan & Edgar in Piccadilly and scratchy cardigans knitted by her grandmother. She had never wanted anything else. Whereas Irene, with her natural height and poise, could transform anything—an old mackintosh, a dull twinset—into haute couture, Cordelia favored comfort and practicality over style, and valued skirts and shoes that allowed her to walk swiftly, if not actually run, without being encumbered.

  Yet now, after the past weeks in Paris, she was beginning to see the point. She had been to shows at Jean Patou and Lucien Lelong, h
eld in opulent salons lined with silk and dripping with chandeliers, where gold screens were spotlit from behind to cast a flattering radiance on the guests’ faces. She had sat among women swagged with pearls and cinched with enameled bracelets at Chanel’s mirrored boudoir on the Rue Cambon. She had floated in clouds of L’Heure Bleue at Guerlain’s on the Rue de Rivoli, and interviewed Jeanne Lanvin on the Rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré. She had even made visits to the designers’ ateliers, where seamstresses bent like medieval nuns over long workbenches, stitching and hemming swaths of material, or presided over entire rooms dedicated to buttons and bobbins of thread. She had been shown the detailed techniques for buttonholes and seams, and how to distinguish the different types of stitching each garment required.

  One benefit of her forays was that she had come by some clothes—samples donated by press liaisons—including a gossamer black cocktail dress by Dior with crisp white frills around the collar and cuffs and a chic bolero-style Chanel jacket, edged with contrasting white braid and accessorized with pearl buttons.

  The clothes on display this evening, however, were more astonishing than anything she had seen so far. They were outfits that screamed to be seen: luxury knitwear decorated with harlequins or circus animals, bags in the shape of telephones that lit up or played a tune when opened, and buttons disguised as candlesticks, playing cards, ships, crowns, and carrots. Necklaces of feathers alongside false fingernails made of tiny mirrors and satin gloves with gold claws attached.

  Cordelia did a double take as a mannequin in a day suit with pockets like a chest of drawers passed by. Then came a girl in a dramatic long evening coat, lapels embroidered with golden leaves and turquoise beads. And was she dreaming, or was the next one wearing an upside-down, high-heeled black felt shoe on her head? The following model confirmed it. She sported a hat in the shape of a lamb chop, complete with a white frill at the bone.

  “Would you look at that.”

  The remark was uttered in a cool, American drawl. An American voice was no surprise—they were everywhere in Paris, drawn by the cheap franc, the louche living, and the city’s intoxicating romance, which, if it could only be bottled, would sell for more than any amount of Chanel No. 5. This American was sitting on Cordelia’s left with a notebook in hand.

  Before she could reply, another model stalked past in an ivory organdy confection, a column of fluttering material dominated by the print of a giant lobster running all down the front, garnished with parsley.

  “And I hear that one has been bought by Wallis Simpson. As if that lady needed an ounce more attention than she has already.” The American stuck out a hand. “I’m Janet Flanner.”

  The New Yorker correspondent. Cordelia had heard of her. Her Letter from Paris was famous among the expatriates, and Cordelia read it religiously. Flanner was a star among reporters, and she stood out just as much in the flesh, with her mannish figure, strong jaw, and bobbed gray hair in stark contrast to the elegant daintiness of the salon. She was clad in a tailored Lanvin suit and carried a monocle.

  “You’re new here, aren’t you? I’ve not seen you on the front row before.”

  “I’m reporting for The Courier.”

  It had taken weeks to summon the nerve to tell Torin she would like to attend the couture shows. It was, Cordelia reminded him, Henry Franklin’s suggestion that she should write up some of the collections, but Torin’s derisory remarks about the frivolity of fashion had deterred her from broaching the subject. Instead she had confined herself to typing up reports, sending letters, taking calls, and booking appointments. Occasionally Torin dictated in French to test her spelling, but he stopped after discovering she was able to correct him. True to his word he had taken her to meet Sylvia Beach and her companion, Adrienne Monnier, at their tiny two-room bookshop in the Rue de l’Odéon, and together they had attended evenings at the bookshop, sitting cross-legged among the stuffed and precariously balanced shelves to hear André Gide and Paul Valéry read aloud from their unpublished manuscripts. Often they were accompanied by Gregory Fox, a fellow English journalist with the sharp features and coppery hair of his namesake, and a delicate complexion spangled with freckles. Gregory had a three-piece suit with a watch chain and a demeanor of fin de siècle languor. He was so precisely the opposite of Torin that Cordelia could never determine exactly why the two men were friends.

  After the readings the three of them would decamp to a bar and clash over Art and Politics, sharpening their opinions on each other like swords, but whenever Cordelia mentioned the fashion world, Torin quirked a dismissive eyebrow.

  “For most of those people, it doesn’t matter if the Barbarians are at the gate, so long as they’re dressed à la mode. They think France is impregnable and their great Maginot Line will preserve them.” The Maginot Line was a series of concrete fortresses, stocked with provisions and armaments, designed to protect the country from Germany’s armies.

  “Fashion’s an important export. It brings in foreign currency,” retorted Cordelia staunchly. “And besides, even if the fashion crowd do care more about cocktail parties than political parties, you’re missing the point.”

  “Which is?”

  “Fashion’s about ideas. It’s about an approach to life. Just like Paris is. This city has everything: art, music, literature. It’s narrow to focus on politics, when there’s so much cultural life going on.”

  Torin gazed at her a moment, as if she could not be serious, then shrugged. “If they don’t pay attention to politics, they might find their cultural life doesn’t last long. If that German madman carries out what he threatens, no amount of fashion’s going to help anyone.”

  “Come, come, Torin.” Gregory worked as a stringer for several of the British papers, one of them the Daily Express, and now he dragged out a copy from his pocket and unfolded it. “Listen to our esteemed former Prime Minister Lloyd George on the subject. He’s just visited Herr Hitler and written an absolute paean of praise. ‘Hitler is a born leader of men. A magnetic, dynamic personality with a single-minded purpose, a resolute will, and a dauntless heart. He is the George Washington of Germany.’ ”

  Gregory lowered the paper teasingly. “You liberals dislike Hitler because he doesn’t fit the mold of European leaders. He’s not a conventional politician. He’s a strong man. He doesn’t speak in diplomatic niceties. But the fact is, the chap gets things done. And even you have to admit the German people voted him in, so that’s democracy in action. We are supposed to have some respect for democratically elected leaders, aren’t we?”

  “Christ, Gregory! If you think Hitler has any respect for democracy you’ve even less intelligence than I gave you credit for. The first thing he did when he came to power was round up the opposition.”

  “Please, you two.” Cordelia intervened with a smile. “Let’s not fight. We’re about to eat, so why don’t we invoke the dinner party rule? We can talk about anything except politics and religion.”

  “If, God forbid, I were ever to attend a dinner party like that,” Torin growled with somber ferocity, “I would inform my hosts that avoiding the subject is exactly what Herr Hitler wants us to do. As far as Hitler is concerned, English etiquette is our most valuable export.”

  * * *

  —

  AFTER THE FINAL BOWS and an explosion of applause for Schiaparelli’s designs, waiters appeared with trays of cocktails, threading past vases crammed with flowers dyed shocking pink, the couturier’s signature color. Weightless women, dressed in gossamer, turbans, and feathered caps, swapped airy scraps of conversation.

  “Schiap never disappoints.”

  “That’s why everyone loves her.”

  “And why she makes millions of francs a year.”

  Janet Flanner lifted a champagne flute to her lips. “This sure beats the last drink I was offered. I’m just back from interviewing the Führer of all Germany. And you know what he offered me?
A glass of milk.”

  “You actually met Hitler?” Cordelia was transfixed.

  “I did. And let me tell you, honey, that man is more extraordinary than you can imagine. He’s the dictator of a nation devoted to sausages, cigars, beer, and babies, yet he’s a vegetarian, teetotal nonsmoker, and as far as anyone can tell, entirely celibate. Though if he treats women the way he treated me, I’m not surprised. His idea of a date was a slice of walnut cake in the Hotel Kaiserhof.”

  “What did you make of him?”

  She fixed a Sobranie into her gold and tortoiseshell holder. “Strange you should ask that. I’ve written a three-part profile of the guy and I’m still not sure.”

  “How about Berlin?”

  “Same. Though after all my years in Paris, the first thing you notice is that it’s frightfully clean.”

  Exactly what Irene had written in her last letter. The streets were so well kept they practically shone, the shops were full of food, and even the dogs were the plumpest and most cosseted she had ever seen.

  “Cordelia!”

  From out of the crowd, Gregory Fox emerged.

  “I suppose our mutual friend’s not here?” he asked, stooping to kiss her cheek.

  “Torin? This has to be the last place you’d find him.”

  “It’s true. And a shame. You know he’s half French?”

  So that explained the dark eyes and the perfect accent.

  “It’s obviously not the half that’s interested in fashion.” Cordelia grinned.

  Gregory gave a fey shrug. “Or decent food or fine wine.”

  He liked to mock Torin’s obliviousness to luxury, but behind his acid wit, part of her suspected Gregory was half in love with Torin. Or perhaps Torin just had that effect on people.