Some finishing schools attempt to teach their students to walk elegantly by balancing a book on their heads. This only trains them to walk with a faintly terrified stare, eternally waiting for the book to fall off. Instead imagine a friendly puppeteer holds your head and shoulders erect and still with his strings, and your spine extends deep into the soil, balancing you between soil and sky. Yes, Sophie, I accept that a kangaroo balances on its tail, but hopping around the ballroom — or when being presented to Her Majesty — is not the image one wants to give.
Miss Lily, 1913
‘Unter den Linden,’ breathed Ruffi. ‘The heart of Berlin.’
Sophie looked. Four rows of trees, presumably lindens, with bright green leaves and a slight scent of honey above the smells of horse and car exhaust and pigeons, pretty shops and the solidity of what could only be embassies and banks.
‘And that is the Adlon Hotel — it is where the Palais Redern used to be. Magnificent!’
Sophie was not sure if Ruffi was referring to the hotel or the palace.
He gestured out the window again, his gloves as immaculate as they had been this morning. ‘And that is the Ministry of Culture.’
Another stately building. Culture, it seemed, was most serious in Berlin. ‘And that is the famous Brandenburg Gate,’ which Sophie had never heard of. Miss Thwaites’s education had focused on the kings and queens of England, with a short detour into the ‘gardens of Italy’.
They passed the Ministry of Finance, ‘With cellars full of gold,’ said Ruffi. It was the first time Sophie had heard a note of bitterness in the light voice. But then all of Europe knew that any gold the ministry might glean must go not just to reparations for war damage to France, but to repay loans from the American bankers who had helped finance both sides of the war until the United States of America had thrown its hat in with Britain.
And yet the city looked prosperous, more so than London, despite the thin-faced newspaper sellers, many in tattered uniforms, one armed or one legged or scarred by gas, propped up on shooting sticks along the footpath, despite the match girls whose desperate smiles at potential customers hinted that they would sell far more than their boxes of matches.
Double-decker trolley buses proceeded along the broad, well-maintained roadway, accompanied by more motorcars than horse-drawn vehicles. Even the horses seemed well fed and many of the signs in the shop windows were in English and French as well as German, as if to announce, ‘We live in a cosmopolitan city, the largest in Europe, the industrial centre of the world.’ American loans and investment during the past five years had made the German middle and upper classes the wealthiest in Europe, even if the poor, or those crippled in the aftermath of war, still struggled or died, for the most part forgotten by those who would rather look at a prosperous present, not the tragedy of the past.
Hannelore’s aunt, it appeared, lived at Grunewald.
‘It used to be such a hike to come out here,’ said Ruffi. ‘That is the correct word, is it not? Hike? But now even ordinary people can ride out here on the tram.’ He gestured at a conveyance rattling by on the rails. Apart from the tram’s clatter the street was quiet; it was tree lined, with mansions behind well-tended gardens of more trees and shaped hedges and neat beds of perennials.
The Silver Ghost stopped. Jones opened the door for Ruffi. He bowed to Sophie, clicked his heels and kissed her hand, damply but thankfully without the relish or flourishes of the ex-Kaiser. ‘Vaile, old chap, I will see you tonight, eh? A little fun.’
‘You are too kind,’ murmured Nigel. ‘But I retire early these days, as you know.’
Ruffi’s smile did not waver. ‘Then I will show you Berlin tomorrow. Both of you.’
‘Hannelore may have other plans, or our hostess —’ began Sophie.
‘I will send a message.’ He shrugged. ‘Your hostess does not like the “vibrations” of the telephone.’ Another heel click and Ruffi was gone, back to where the chauffeur waited in his own car, behind those ferried across the Channel from Shillings.
Vibrations? thought Sophie. She had only heard the term from those who believed in séances — and from mechanics, referring to vehicles. But at least they were temporarily free of Ruffi.
The Silver Ghost drove through the gates — quite discreet gates — and up a gravel drive to a stuccoed house, comfortable but not lavish, a pale pink façade above cream marble stairs leading to a modest portico, and no serried ranks of servants bowing or curtseying.
The door opened. A manservant, not quite haughty enough for a butler, bowed, as the other cars drove around to the servants’ entrance. ‘Your ladyship, your lordship. The Prinzessin Elizabat and the Prinzessin Hannelore are in the sun room. Please follow me.’
They followed as a maid appeared to direct Nanny, Amy, Rose and Danny upstairs.
The hall floor was marble, the walls adorned with an astonishing number of niches and plinths holding nude figures, all extremely athletic rather than erotic, with bunches of flowers, a spray of leaves, or even what looked like a large bundle of asparagus, hiding the most erogenous zones. Pilasters were painted, with stucco trim, all in a symphony of creams and pinks.
It also smelled delicious, a perfume Sophie recognised as almost, but not quite, that of the pot pourri that scented Shillings. She peered into what was evidently a drawing room as they passed. The room seemed strangely empty, with delicate chairs situated where surely no one would ever sit on them, and a pink-tiled stove at one end giving out a small amount of heat that, despite the summer warmth, was welcome, for the marble seemed to breathe out cold.
The manservant turned into yet another hall, slightly smaller, leading to two oak doors carved with leaves and flowers. He opened them and announced quietly, ‘Her ladyship and his lordship, the Earl and Countess of Shillings, Your Highnesses.’
At first all Sophie could see was greenery: ferns twice as tall as herself; full-grown trees, peach trees, lemon trees and, yes, that was a lime. And pineapples and half a million orchids . . .
The second impression was glass — three sides of glass walls, a domed glass ceiling, slightly fogged with moisture, and sunlight, so much summer sunlight, golden beams magnified ten times, so bright she had to blink to clear her sight.
‘Sophie! Oh, Sophie, it is so good to see you.’
Sophie blinked again. Hannelore stood before her, blonde hair in perfect coils about her head, colour in her cheeks and what was surely genuine joy in her voice.
She was also entirely nude.