Page 6 of An Invitation to the Kennedys
‘Beatrice,’ the woman said.
‘You know, I studied violin for a time.When I was a little older than you.There is a particular trick for holding the bow that I learned.Perhaps I could show it to you?’She said it idly, thinking of this only as a puzzle – could Hannah’s technique be improved?Would the trick Doris had taught herself be something she could teach?– but the eagerness with which Hannah said ‘Yes please’ made her glad.
‘Are you sure …?’her mother began.
‘Absolutely,’ Doris said.Perhaps, she thought with a grin as she stood politely back to let them out of the lift, she could teach her something that would make the early-morning sounds more bearable.
Chapter Five
Berlin
Doris
Horcher’s was filled with cigarette smoke and noise.Loud voices vied with music from the piano in the back and white tablecloths floated like so many conjuring tricks.Doris was welcomed effusively and led to the table beneath the photograph of Wallis Simpson and the Prince of Wales.The waiter bowed graciously in recognition of this elegant touch.Doris nodded and stifled a laugh.
Von Arent was there already, and with him a girl with brittle blonde hair that shimmered pale and melancholy like the under-belly of a chub.There was always a girl with him.Rarely the same girl.
‘Doris!’He rose to greet her.
‘Benno, darling.’Doris allowed him to kiss her hand and begin the elaborate, inevitable rearranging of table, cutlery and chairs.He never could forget that he was a set designer, she thought, watching as he moved a vase of white flowers an inch or so.
‘Off you go,’ he said to the girl, who yawned and stood up.She looked vaguely behind her, for a bag or coat, Doris thought.Von Arent snapped his fingers.A young waiter appeared, a heavy white fur draped over his arm.The girl shrugged herself into it despite the heat of the day.That too was part of the conjuring trick of Horcher’s.Waiters appearing and disappearing, food in clouds of smoke and the occasional noisy flambé.She really wasn’t in the mood, Doris thought, then shook her head slightly.She had to be in the mood.
‘You must tell me about your new production,’ she said, sitting down in the seat the girl had vacated.She looked to see who was at the tables surrounding them.These were fewer than they had been a month ago – she had heard that Göring, Chips’ favourite of Hitler’s cronies, had ordered them thinned out to prevent being overheard.‘Although,’ the man who had told her had added spitefully in a low voice, ‘after a few bottles, the whole street can hear him.’
‘Yes, at the Schiller Theatre,’ von Arent said, and he was off.
‘And you, what are you writing?’he asked when their starters arrived.He had ordered for both of them.Doris’ stomach turned when she saw the dumplings – liver, she was sure, steaming greasily – but smiled and picked up her silver fork and knife.
‘An account of a most delightful day out,’ she said.‘Young people from the cities brought to hike the Müggelberge.Many hours outside, in nature, walking and climbing.So wholesome.’
His lip curled.‘How charming.’He barely tried to cover the sarcasm.
‘Charming!’she agreed, carefully enthusiastic.
The wine arrived in a bell-shaped decanter; French, Doris assumed.For all that Berlin society sneered at the degeneracy of the French, they were slow to switch to the coarse German wine.But slower still to be caught drinking French.Gustav Horcher, of course, was quick with a solution, sending out ‘house wines’ in unmarked decanters that he charged grand cru prices for, even when – as now – they were far inferior.She took a small sip.‘Delicious.’
Von Arent talked about his projects – the design of street decorations for a series of marches – and how he hoped to make a film ofBrave New World.‘Do you know Mr Huxley?’he asked, so that Doris understood why she was there.
‘I imagine I do,’ she said lightly.She needed to be thought to know everybody in England.Everybody important.She cast her mind quickly through her London address book.Someone, she felt certain, must know Mr Huxley.‘Would you like to meet him?’she asked sweetly.She took the last of the smoked eel von Arent had ordered for them on her fork and swallowed against a rush of nausea.
She said no to dessert – that was allowed; and indeed von Arent made some heavy pleasantry about watching her figure, then went to pay his respects at a table of high-ranking Nazis by the windows.Doris sighed, lit a cigarette and sat back.It could have been anywhere, she thought, looking around the room.Any restaurant in any city.The same starched white tablecloths and smoothly choreographed waiters gliding between them.Every bit of it as staged as any of von Arent’s theatricals.And maybe that was the point?These men – and women, she thought, nodding at the wife of a party official she knew – were so very ordinary.They wanted what all people wanted.Nothing grand or terrible at all.A little more wealth than their neighbours, a sense of security, to see their children flourish.A pity they had chosen to find these things in ways that destroyed them for others, she thought, watching the woman send back a dish, small mouth pursed in disapproval.
They were her enemies, if only they knew, these men and women so seriously studying menus and wine lists.But she didn’t hate them.There was so little to hate in most of them.Greed, selfishness, cowardice, dullness … common failings, seen as much in London as Berlin.Just as well, she thought.It would be hard to do her job clouded by hate.Or love, she reflected.By personal feelings of any kind.And so she squashed down the anger that came upon her as she watched gangs of young men in uniform swagger about the streets, taking for respect the fear that sent those in their path to huddle in doorways as they passed.She looked away from broken windows and mangled shutters, choked back distress at the crude daubings on building fronts: of ‘Juden Raus’ (Jews Out), and the ugly twisted Nazi cross.She pushed it all away from her so that she could continue to attend parties and receptions, to laugh and chatter.And listen.
The table in front of her was bare except for her coffee cup and a heavy black ashtray with ‘Horcher’ written across it in thick gold letters.Her own place was spotless but where von Arent had sat there was a smattering of mustard-coloured stains on the snowy white of the tablecloth.Doris nudged her napkin across to cover them.
The young waiter who had brought the blonde girl’s coat arrived silently by her side and leaned forward to pick up her empty coffee cup.‘Perhaps Madame thinks of a walk in Tiergarten on such a day?’he said quietly, face turned so that no one could have seen his lips move.
Doris was careful not to look up at him.‘Perhaps she does,’ she murmured.
‘The Tritonbrunnen fountain is particularly pleasant,’ he said, then straightened up and, with a tiny bow, left her.
Von Arent returned, giddy at having been retained so long at the other table where important men discussed important things.‘Fräulein Coates,’ he said gallantly, ‘to lunch with you is always a delight.Will you accompany me to the Café Kranzler?’
‘Alas I must go and do some writing,’ she said, with a show of regret.‘Us poor working girls have so little time to call our own.’This, naturally, led him to more gallantries that saw them along Augsburger Strasse to where he hailed a taxicab and left her.
Was there anything useful in the lunch?Doris wondered as she walked quickly away.Anything he had let slip that could be passed on?Anything unexpected she could file away for later?No, she decided.There was nothing.More and more, this seemed to her the case.The people she met, the parties she went to, the names and news she passed on – they were things anyone could know.Could read in a newspaper or discover by listening to the radio.What she did was pointless.She did not pan for nuggets of gold, sieving sand and stone from precious metal.She didn’t know enough to do that.She simply filled the pan and handed it on, in the hopes that buried in all that scree there was something someone else would recognise as gold.
