also
Number Six: listen for what you don’t hear.
And if surveillance was certain, there was
Number Seven: stick to public places
. In case of arrest or capture there was
Number Eight: stay calm. Don’t react instinctively
.
There were a couple of other points on the list and Leo had made Clara commit them to memory and recite it back to him.
‘That list will keep you safe, Clara. It’ll be more use to you than any creed.’
That was one relief about the trip she was to make the next day. In London, there was no chance of being followed. And it would not be the Gestapo she had to worry about, but Captain Miles Fitzalan, whoever he might turn out to be.
Chapter Five
Of all the beautiful places in Berlin, could there be any lovelier than the sunlit drawing room of the Faith and Beauty community building, with its marzipan-yellow walls, charming meringues of plaster on the cornices and tall windows propped open to allow a freshening waft of pine from the woods beyond? Outside, a flock of hens pecked in the shade of the orchard and horses were being saddled up for riding lessons. A group of rowers were preparing for an outing to the lake, and on the lawn, two girls in face masks were taking instruction from the fencing master, their bodies as quick and flexible as the sleek silver foils they wielded. The quiet of the morning was punctuated by the solid, comforting clunk of the grandfather clock, and the faint scrape of a violin issued from the music room on the other side of the house. It was impossible to imagine that near this idyllic place just a few days earlier, a crumpled body had been found beneath a heap of leaves.
When Hedwig Holz first saw the Faith and Beauty home she was open-mouthed with amazement. She had grown up in a drab apartment, with nothing but a window box to tend and a dank cobblestone courtyard below. Even though their apartment was slightly better than their neighbours’ on account of her father’s managerial job, it had still taken weeks to accustom herself to such refinement. When she told her parents about the classes in Art, home décor, fashion design, needlework, flower arranging and conversation, her mother could barely contain her amazement.
Conversation!
Who needed classes in that?
Hedwig felt much the same about Art. Sitting in front of her easel she sighed, squinted at the life model, made some further experimental cross-hatching, then rubbed out the face she had drawn. Already a murky patch testified to the number of times the sketch had been erased – the model was beginning to look like something from one of those old horror films,
The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari
, starring Conrad Veidt, with nothing but a shadowy void where her features should be. Hedwig dreaded the moment Herr Fritzl, the art master, turned up to linger at her easel, twirling his moustache while he tried to think of something constructive to say. Their portraits were supposed to mirror the correct proportions of the Nordic form – every figure must have broad shoulders, a long body, and slender hands – but Hedwig’s sketch could have been straight out of Grimm’s fairy tales.
The Saturday life drawing class had been Lotti’s idea. Hedwig didn’t have an artistic bone in her body and would gladly have signed up for skiing, rowing, even high board diving rather than humiliate herself with Art. Hedwig’s father, a stolid production line manager at the AEG engineering works, thought art training, like everything else on the Faith and Beauty curriculum, was a lot of effete nonsense, but he deferred to her mother, who had ambitions for her only daughter. Privately Herr Holz told Hedwig to concentrate on her job and think about her promotion prospects. If indeed she had time for promotion, before marriage and motherhood came along and put an end to all that.
Hedwig agreed. She had never imagined getting a job as a librarian and she loved it. Although her most taxing duty involved looking interested while
Number Six: listen for what you don’t hear.
And if surveillance was certain, there was
Number Seven: stick to public places
. In case of arrest or capture there was
Number Eight: stay calm. Don’t react instinctively
.
There were a couple of other points on the list and Leo had made Clara commit them to memory and recite it back to him.
‘That list will keep you safe, Clara. It’ll be more use to you than any creed.’
That was one relief about the trip she was to make the next day. In London, there was no chance of being followed. And it would not be the Gestapo she had to worry about, but Captain Miles Fitzalan, whoever he might turn out to be.
Chapter Five
Of all the beautiful places in Berlin, could there be any lovelier than the sunlit drawing room of the Faith and Beauty community building, with its marzipan-yellow walls, charming meringues of plaster on the cornices and tall windows propped open to allow a freshening waft of pine from the woods beyond? Outside, a flock of hens pecked in the shade of the orchard and horses were being saddled up for riding lessons. A group of rowers were preparing for an outing to the lake, and on the lawn, two girls in face masks were taking instruction from the fencing master, their bodies as quick and flexible as the sleek silver foils they wielded. The quiet of the morning was punctuated by the solid, comforting clunk of the grandfather clock, and the faint scrape of a violin issued from the music room on the other side of the house. It was impossible to imagine that near this idyllic place just a few days earlier, a crumpled body had been found beneath a heap of leaves.
When Hedwig Holz first saw the Faith and Beauty home she was open-mouthed with amazement. She had grown up in a drab apartment, with nothing but a window box to tend and a dank cobblestone courtyard below. Even though their apartment was slightly better than their neighbours’ on account of her father’s managerial job, it had still taken weeks to accustom herself to such refinement. When she told her parents about the classes in Art, home décor, fashion design, needlework, flower arranging and conversation, her mother could barely contain her amazement.
Conversation!
Who needed classes in that?
Hedwig felt much the same about Art. Sitting in front of her easel she sighed, squinted at the life model, made some further experimental cross-hatching, then rubbed out the face she had drawn. Already a murky patch testified to the number of times the sketch had been erased – the model was beginning to look like something from one of those old horror films,
The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari
, starring Conrad Veidt, with nothing but a shadowy void where her features should be. Hedwig dreaded the moment Herr Fritzl, the art master, turned up to linger at her easel, twirling his moustache while he tried to think of something constructive to say. Their portraits were supposed to mirror the correct proportions of the Nordic form – every figure must have broad shoulders, a long body, and slender hands – but Hedwig’s sketch could have been straight out of Grimm’s fairy tales.
The Saturday life drawing class had been Lotti’s idea. Hedwig didn’t have an artistic bone in her body and would gladly have signed up for skiing, rowing, even high board diving rather than humiliate herself with Art. Hedwig’s father, a stolid production line manager at the AEG engineering works, thought art training, like everything else on the Faith and Beauty curriculum, was a lot of effete nonsense, but he deferred to her mother, who had ambitions for her only daughter. Privately Herr Holz told Hedwig to concentrate on her job and think about her promotion prospects. If indeed she had time for promotion, before marriage and motherhood came along and put an end to all that.
Hedwig agreed. She had never imagined getting a job as a librarian and she loved it. Although her most taxing duty involved looking interested while
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