The Winter Garden (2014) (14 page)

‘Very well. Come in here. They’re preparing a wedding breakfast for one of the brides. I’ll see if anyone can help.’

They entered a large, sparkling kitchen, crowded with a bevy of brides in white aprons. Either the warmth of the ovens, or the proximity of food made the atmosphere jollier here than in the rest
of the house. There was a hum of chatter and a mouth-watering smell of spice and baking. In the shafts of sunlight, clouds of flour floated over a worktop where a couple of brides were bent
attentively, in the act of what looked like plaiting strands of dough. Others were weaving ivy and orange blossom into table settings in the shape of a swastika with a candle at each corner. In the
middle of the wide pine table, glistening in the sunshine, stood the wedding cake. It was a glorious, two-tier effort, and when Mary looked closer she saw that on its snowy top, instead of a bride
and groom, a tiny, black-suited effigy of the Führer stood to attention, rendered in marzipan right down to his little moustache, and surrounded by sugar roses.

‘As you can imagine, we make a lot of wedding cakes here,’ said Fräulein Wolff, tersely. ‘What’s the matter, Ilse?’

A plump blonde girl, with greasy braids and an agonized expression, was surveying the sugar figure in dismay.

‘I’m worried, Fräulein Wolff. Will it not be difficult?’

‘Difficult? Why?’

‘Who is going to cut up the Führer? No one will want to do that, so no one will be able to eat him. It’s a waste, and the Führer hates waste.’

The teacher’s face creased in contempt. ‘Let’s not get into that, Ilse. I need your assistance. This is Fräulein Mary Harker from the
New York Evening Post
.
She’s an American journalist, and she would like to write a piece about an average day at the Reich Bride School. You will accompany her to the music room.’

At this suggestion Ilse looked thunderstruck. She stared from Mary to the teacher in dismay.

‘Well, go with her, girl! Be as helpful as you can.’

Ilse wiped her hands on her apron and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Despite the uniformity of the dreary serge uniform, she somehow made it look untidy, bulging out in places, her
blouse spilling out between the laces of her dirndl. She led the way to the music room and Mary closed the door behind them.

‘Forgive me, Fräulein, I’m sure I can’t help you. I don’t know very much.’

‘It’s fine, Ilse,’ said Mary, pulling out her notebook. ‘I’ll ask the questions. All you need do is answer them.’ She gave her best, most encouraging smile.
The one she reserved for policemen and small children. ‘Tell me about the Bride School.’

‘Well,’ Ilse chewed a lip and cast her eyes around the music room, as though she might draw inspiration from the posters proclaiming
‘Cooking Is the Woman’s
Weapon’
and
‘Order saves you Time and Effort’
which had been tacked to the wall.

‘What do you learn?’

‘All sorts of things.’ She rattled off a list. ‘How often to change linen, how many times to wax and polish a floor, how to can fruit, how to obey your husband, what to cook on
special days.’

‘And why did you choose to come here?’

‘Oh but you have to. If you don’t attend, then your man will be dismissed from the SS. When you get your certificate you must submit it to the wedding office of the Race and
Settlement central office, so that the marriage gets official SS approval.’

‘Approval?’

Ilse looked at her as if she was mad.

‘Everyone in Germany needs approval to get married. Everyone needs an Ariernachweis, that’s a certificate of Aryan purity. But it’s stricter for people marrying in the SS. You
have to report to the Race Bureau to have your racial characteristics assessed.’

‘And how do they do that?’

‘It’s very simple really. You get weighed and they measure your nose and your upper lip. You won’t get permission to marry if you don’t pass that. You also need to
provide birth and marriage certificates for your ancestors going back to 1750 – that’s such an effort. Sometimes you have to visit all the churches they married in, to find the proof.
But the SS needs to be absolutely certain you are racially pure, with no Jewish or mixed blood.’

Their conversation was interrupted by the clanging of a bell and the clatter of shoes on the stairs.

‘It’s lunchtime, Fräulein. Would you like to join us? It’s not Sunday but the school has declared today we will have Eintopf.’

Mary had heard about this. Every Sunday, in an effort of national belt-tightening, everyone, from party leaders downwards, ate only one dish at dinner and gave the savings to the Winter Relief
fund. Generally the Eintopf was a stew with floating islands of grease, into which the least glamorous parts of an animal had gone. Mary decided to pass on it.

‘It’s all right,’ said Ilse. ‘I’m not hungry either. We could take a walk in the garden if you’d like.’ She cast a glance at Mary’s bag, from
which a packet of cigarettes protruded. ‘You can smoke outside, if you want.’

They strolled into the garden and down the path. It was a crisp autumnal day and as they rounded the path they came across a workman hammering the timbers of a building, midway through
construction. He straightened up politely as the women passed, then continued with his task. It was a mediaeval-style cottage, complete with flowering window boxes, beams and timbered gables. Only
the roof remained to be finished. It looked like a playhouse for grown-ups.

‘That could be straight out of
Snow White
. It looks like it ought to have the seven dwarves inside it.’

‘It’s going to be a model home,’ explained Ilse. ‘For the brides to practise married life.’

‘Not so much of a fairy tale then.’

‘Oh, it will have everything you need,’ continued Ilse earnestly. ‘A kitchen, an ironing board, a sewing room. They’re going to bring in children from a local
kindergarten for childcare practice. I love looking at it. It’s going to be like a perfect little home . . .’ She stopped suddenly, and Mary noticed that tears had sprung into her eyes.
‘I’m sorry, Fräulein Harker. It’s a difficult time for me.’ She let out a sob. ‘A friend of mine has just died.’

‘Died?’

‘Here in the garden. I don’t know what happened to her.’ Ilse shuddered, imagining Anna face down on the grass, a ruby line of blood leaking from her mouth and smearing the
strands of her bleached hair. Then she remembered that Frieda Müller had said Anna had been shot directly in the heart. Killed the way an expert huntsman would kill a deer, Frieda had
explained to a little group of brides in a hushed voice. That’s what one of the policemen had told her. The thought of Anna hunted down like an animal made fresh tears come.

‘You mean Anna Hansen?’ probed Mary.

‘How did you hear? It hasn’t even been in the newspapers.’

‘I heard they arrested the gardener.’

‘Hartmann. Yes, they took him away, so I suppose it must have been him. But I would never have guessed it. He’s just a simple lad really. Soft in the head. And he has a lazy eye. He
was always staring at us, but I thought looking can’t hurt, can it? I suppose I was wrong.’

‘To be honest, Ilse, I knew about the case already. That’s partly why I’m here. I was planning to ask Fräulein Wolff about it.’

Ilse looked horror-struck. She stopped in her tracks.

‘You can’t do that! They won’t talk to you about that!’

‘Why not?’

‘We’re not allowed to talk about it. We were all told to keep quiet and not ask any questions. They said it was a tragic accident and Hartmann had been taken away, so there was
nothing more to say. Oh dear,’ she wailed, realizing her indiscretion. ‘Fräulein Wolff will kill me if she thinks I’ve been talking to you about Anna.’

The thought of punishment to come brought on a fresh burst of tears, prompting Mary to put a consoling arm round Ilse’s shoulder and say coaxingly, ‘I would never tell anyone you had
spoken about it. You have my absolute word on that. But it seems unfair that poor Anna’s death should be hushed up, doesn’t it? That she should be swept under the carpet as though she
didn’t matter?’

It was a shrewd image. The idea of Anna being tidied away in the same frenzy of cleanliness that ruled everyone’s lives at the Bride School had its intended effect on Ilse. She bit her
bottom lip and swiped a sleeve across her face.

‘No. You’re right.’

They carried on walking down the gravel path until they reached a group of pine trees standing at the end of the grounds, overlooking the lake. Ilse stopped and looked beseechingly at Mary, as
though she held the answer to the questions which had been troubling her.

‘To tell the truth, Fräulein Harker, I don’t really believe it was anything to do with Hartmann. Anna would never have had a relationship with him. She wouldn’t give him
the time of day. She loved her fiancé, Johann. She used to tell me how she met him, when she was dancing at the Wintergarten, wearing a sequinned corset and a feather headset.’

‘She was a dancer?’

‘Yes, and Johann came to see her. He walked up to her in a bar afterwards to tell her how much he admired her performance, and it was love at first sight. She was always writing to him.
And he wrote back. She kept his letters in a special place.’

‘A special place?’

Ilse froze like a trapped deer, as though Mary had laid a cunning snare for her, into which she had innocently wandered. She was the kind of interviewee who made you feel like the Gestapo, Mary
thought.

‘Oh dear. That’s something else I shouldn’t have told you. There’s no privacy here, you see. They say privacy is bad for brides and leads to indolence. But Anna found
somewhere.’ She shot a defiant, damp-eyed look at Mary. ‘A sort of hiding place, behind the wardrobe in the dormitory. If you push the wardrobe out, there’s a vent in the wall
where a fireplace was. It’s bricked up, but there’s a space at the top, where the bricks don’t fit.’

‘How do you know? Have you looked in there?’

‘No! Well, yes. You see, I had noticed that Anna would go to the dormitory in the evening sometimes, when we were supposed to be singing, and one day I followed her there and saw her
sitting on the bed, with the wardrobe pulled away from the wall and this little leather case on her knees. Well, it was not a case so much as a little portable desk, a lap desk I think you call it,
with a handle at the top, and doors that open out and little places to keep your pen. For writing letters when you travel, you know?’

‘Sure. My grandmother had one of those.’

‘Anyhow, when Anna saw me she got terribly cross and said it was bad enough having no privacy, without having nosy brides following her every second of the day. She was so angry I thought
she was going to slap me.’

‘Did you read the letters?’

Ilse’s cheeks blazed with colour. ‘Of course not! What must you think of me? I would never have done that. But after she died I checked to see if the case was still there. I thought
she probably kept her jewellery in it too, and you aren’t allowed jewellery here. I knew I should have said something about it but, you see, I felt it was disloyal to her. When I asked
Fräulein Wolff what they did with Anna’s things, she said they had sent them on to Johann. Her clothes belong to the Bride School, so there wasn’t much. Just a hairbrush and shoes
and so on. I should have mentioned the case then, I suppose, but Fräulein Wolff would have been so angry. I do keep thinking about it. Someone’s going to find it, sooner or later, and
read all of Anna’s private thoughts. I wish I could give it to Johann, or her family, but I haven’t the first idea where they are. All I know is that she had a sister who lives in
Munich called Katia.’

‘Perhaps I could help.’

‘How could you?’

Mary improvised fast. ‘The woman who shares my apartment is a family friend. It was she who told me about Anna. That’s how I heard about it.’

‘And do you think she could return the letters to Anna’s family?’

‘I’m sure she could.’

Ilse flushed with joy. ‘Then you
must
take the case. At least that way it’ll go to someone who cares. They’ve already reallocated her clothes to another bride.
There’s a new girl in her bed and Anna’s only been dead a couple of days.’

‘Could you fetch it for me?’

Ilse cast a panicky glance back at the house, as if they were being watched.

‘I’m late for Volksgemeinschaft anyway.’

‘What’s that all about?’

‘Oh, um, community issues, you know. We’re doing race and the national economy today. But the teacher, Frau Schneider, is very easy-going.’

‘Right.’

‘I’ll say I need a clean apron from the dormitory. This one is covered with flour. And if anyone sees me with the case, I can always say it’s yours. Wait for me in the
hall.’

She was back in minutes, carrying a small case of burgundy leather by a brass handle. It was good-quality leather, supple and soft, with a brass fastening. The last worldly goods of Anna Hansen.
Mary was appalled at how anxious the Bride School had been to rid themselves of all traces of their former pupil. As Ilse made to hurry off, Mary pressed a card on her.

‘Take this. It has my old address on it but they know where to reach me. You must contact me if anything else occurs to you.’

Ilse scrutinized the card solemnly. The address was a street called Winterfeldstrasse that she had never heard of. She tucked it in her belt.

‘Thank you, Fräulein, I will.’

The leather case was far heavier and more expensive-looking than she had expected. Mary wondered whether to open it herself, or wait till she saw Clara. As she was pondering this, Fräulein
Wolff bore down on her with an expression of suspicion and dismay. Now that she had what she needed, Mary decided to broach the subject.

‘I meant to ask you, Fräulein Wolff. I was so sorry to hear about the dreadful incident with one of your brides the other day.’

Fräulein Wolff flinched, as though she had been physically assaulted.

‘How did you hear about that?’

‘A family friend told me.’

‘It was a tragic accident, Fräulein. Her family have asked for absolute privacy on this affair. And before you ask, no one will be speaking about it, do you understand? No one at
all.’