A War of Flowers (2014) Read online

  A War of Flowers

  By the same author:

  The Winter Garden

  Black Roses

  The Weighing of the Heart

  Patrimony

  The Shell House

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2014

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Thynker Ltd 2014

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Jane Thynne to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  HB ISBN: 978-1-47113-188-2

  TPB ISBN: 978-1-47113-189-9

  EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-47113-191-2

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset in Bembo by M Rules

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  For Charlie

  ‘How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.’

  Neville Chamberlain, September 1938

  ‘Our displacement of women from public life occurs solely to restore their essential dignity to them.’

  Joseph Goebbels

  ‘In my state, the Mother is the most important citizen.’

  Adolf Hitler

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Prologue

  August, 1938

  Another fine, summer’s day and the MS Wilhelm Gustloff cruise liner was making its leisurely way across the Atlantic Ocean. The 25,000 ton ship rose like a sheer white cliff from the water, eight storeys high, gracefully transporting a cargo of more than a thousand citizens of the German Reich. The sun was already dazzling, bouncing back from a sea of hammered cobalt as the liner’s prow carved a confident line past the spectacular coastline of Madeira. The island, with its black volcanic sand, its coves fringed with laurel trees and red-roofed houses clambering up the mountain slopes, glittered in the sapphire morning light. Birds with iridescent necks and little dashes of blood at their throats fluttered through the wooded mountains, which were swathed at their peaks with a light garland of cloud. A fine spray, thick with the tang of salt, pearled the faces of the people watching from the deck, many of whom had never set foot outside the Reich and had mostly never seen the sea. The liner was the first tailor-made ship of the National Socialist Strength Through Joy movement, the Kraft durch Freude, organized by the German Labour Front, and it was the only way an ordinary German was able to leave the country now. The fact that they were getting a glimpse of the world that lay beyond the borders of the Reich – for now at any rate – and they were seeing it on a two-week cruise costing less than a fortnight’s wages, was yet another reason to be grateful for the Führer’s reforms.

  Ada Freitag had never seen the sea before either, but that didn’t mean she wanted to hang over the deck, waving a swastika flag at it. Smearing a little more Elizabeth Arden suncream on her freckles and over the skin on her shoulders, already turning a rich caramel, she anchored her bag more firmly beneath one arm, lay back in her deckchair and tried unsuccessfully to relax.

  Relaxing was not, Ada had quickly realized, a priority on a Strength Through Joy holiday. Even when at sea, any citizen enjoying a KdF tour had a packed schedule of daily activity, requiring daunting levels of enthusiasm and stamina. The day began in the main dining room with a ceremony of dedication to the Führer (compulsory), presided over by a portrait of the man himself, regulation scowl in place, tar-black hair slicing diagonally across his brow. The ship had originally been named the Adolf Hitler, until the assassination of Gustloff, Party leader in Switzerland, by a Jewish upstart provided a Nazi martyr tailor-made for the bow of a ship. But even without his name on the side, Hitler’s image was still everywhere; in the cocktail lounge, above the swimming pool, even glowering out at passengers when they took a bath. There was no such thing as a holiday from the Führer.

  The morning’s dedication ceremony was followed by a strenuous series of PE workouts on deck, gym sessions, fencing, table tennis, dancing lessons, piano recitals, swimming galas and bridge parties, all of which were not so much obligatory as strongly recommended by the ship’s holiday reps who didn’t leave you alone until you gave in.

  Just walking round the ship was a major expedition. There was the Führer suite on B deck, kept for VIPs, the walnut-panelled Folk Costume lounge, and the Winter Garden. The German hall, the Music salon, the Ballroom and seven different bars. There was an indoor swimming pool, bouncing with echoes from excited Bund Deutscher Mädel girls bathed in dazzling, refracted light. And then there were meals, meals and more meals that you had to dress up for and were served with napkins folded into swastika shapes, beneath banners sewn with the KdF slogan ‘Enjoy Your Lives!’. The coffee tables had ashtrays with pictures of the ship on their plastic bases, and matchbooks, with Wilhelm Gustloff printed in gold lettering alongside them. Someone had put the Hitler Jugend in charge of the ship radio, which meant that in between the dance music and regular broadcasts from Joseph Goebbels, random exhortations were bellowed over the Tannoy, mostly concerning military excitements. The most recent one had come when the Wilhelm Gustloff passed a couple of German warships idling off the coast of France, and passengers were urged to ‘think of the man who had given the German people their reputation and their position of power in the world: our Führer’. The HJ boys had also instituted a daily quiz – sample question ‘What is Adolf Hitler’s favourite flower?’ – to which the passengers roared the answers in unison.

  In her deckchair on the sun deck, a silk scarf round her head, Ada kept her eyes shut and sighed. Looking at the sea made her feel sick, what with the glare of the sun off its writhing currents and the smell of
fish. The vast expanse of water only reminded her how far from home she was, and the proximity of so many others made her feel nervous. Far better to lie back and pretend to be asleep, even if there was no chance of relaxing.

  Yesterday, to break the tedium, she had taken a trip ashore, but even on dry land the pace did not relent. It was an outing to Funchal to view the flora. The group wended their way past jacarandas thrusting fiery purple blossom in their faces, giant ferns and dragon trees, yellow frangipani and tremulous orchids. Above them the mountain slopes were tumbling with verdant growth and in the market old women in shawls attempted to sell them lace, wicker baskets and painted gourds. One woman had a fruit Ada had never seen, pomegranate it was called, a fruit like a cup full of jewels, but as she stretched out her hand, the tour guide leapt forward and advised her not to touch it on account of disease. The guides were exactly like schoolteachers. While everyone was marvelling at the banana trees and the birds of paradise and flamingo flowers, the tour guide kept pointing out the poverty of the local inhabitants, their ramshackle homes and gutters flowing with waste, saying it proved how other cultures were inferior to the Germans. It was lucky the locals didn’t understand. The peasant women kept on smiling their toothless smiles while the group ignored them and hurried on. Bringing up the rear were a couple of SS surveillance staff, employed to prevent the women striking up holiday romances with foreign men. The guards were a burly pair, who saw everything and wouldn’t hesitate to rough up any locals who tried as much as a friendly greeting.

  Avoiding men had become a full time occupation for Ada. She couldn’t help having good legs, a nice dress and a suntan, but the ship was full of lads who had qualified for their tickets in groups from the factories where they worked and were delighted to find any unattached women, let alone a pretty twenty-three-year-old with a voluptuous figure, a snub nose, full lips and eyes of bright Aryan blue. Ada’s creamy blonde plaits framed a face as delicate as a porcelain doll and her red and yellow halter-neck sundress emphasized her generous curves. They hung around her like wasps, offering to buy her a beer and asking for a dance. Even when she picked up one of her stack of film magazines they didn’t let up, making idiotic comments about movie stars or suggesting, predictably, she should be on screen herself.

  But Ada had not the slightest interest in men just then, or Madeira and its flowers. She was far too nervous for that. Her entire attention was fixed on the ship’s next stop, Lisbon, where the Wilhelm Gustloff would dock and she would complete the business she had come for. Then there would be plenty of time to enjoy herself and she might even take one of the young men up on his offer. In the meantime, to stop being bothered, she had come up with a pretty good deterrent.

  At first, when the teenager from the neighbouring cabin had begun stealing glances at her, she sighed inwardly. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen, with a wiry boy’s frame just beginning to fill out and the faintest dusting of hair on his upper lip. Actually his lean, dark-eyed face reminded Ada of her little brother. The lad was on holiday with his grandmother, who had qualified for the tickets through her job at Berlin’s Charité hospital, and they had been assigned to Ada’s table at breakfast. As she tried to eat her eggs, Ada found herself machine-gunned with questions. Where did she come from? Berlin? Them too! Weren’t they lucky to have tickets on the best ship of the fleet? And only its second cruise. How had she qualified for hers? Then the boy noticed the film magazines and an album of movie star cards she had – the kind you sent off for with coupons from your cigarette packet – and he became even more excited. Did she know his own godmother was a film actress? Her name was Clara Vine and she featured on a cigarette card herself. Perhaps Ada had her picture?

  Enboldened at this shared enthusiasm, the boy had skipped his post-breakfast gym session and offered to carry Ada’s coffee up to the sun deck. She groaned inwardly, until she suddenly realized the boy might actually be an advantage. His name was Erich Schmidt, and he wanted to tell her all about his plans to join the Luftwaffe. That was fine by Ada. She closed her eyes and instructed Erich to keep talking.

  The fact was, it wasn’t just the factory workers who had set Ada’s nerves on edge. Yesterday, she had been lying in the same spot on her lounger when she caught a brief snatch of scent that made her sit up in alarm. She couldn’t understand why she had reacted the way she did. It was inexplicable. But there was some prickle of danger in that harsh, citrus-edged cologne, some quality in its musky base notes that left an ominous imprint on the air. It was the kind of perfume that hung on a person, like garlic on the breath. For a second the perfume formed itself into something mistily substantial – a wraith with an arrogant face, eyes black as olive pits and a smile sharp as a knife – but the image was gone as soon as it had come, like a puff of breath misting a mirror, wiped away to reveal nothing. Ada tried to conceal her alarm, yet she must have looked worried because a girl in a deckchair near to hers, with pasty skin, lank braids and thick spectacles, noticed her distraction.

  ‘Is anything the matter?’

  Ada was tempted to ask whether the girl herself had seen anyone, but realized instinctively that this was a matter she needed to keep to herself, so she turned a dismissive, suntanned shoulder and said rudely,

  ‘No. Why should it be?’

  That morning, after Erich had gone off to fetch the coffee, Ada caught a trace of the cologne again. There was definitely a memory floating there, amid the mix of lemon, amber and moss. Though the day was perfectly warm, a chill crept over her and she clutched her cardigan to her and sat up, her filmy scarf snapping in the breeze. She looked around at the women, wedged in their deckchairs with their copies of Stern and Die Dame, and their husbands with their trousers rolled up, but she could see nothing to account for it. Yet like an animal hearing a note much higher than human ears can hear, Ada detected in that perfume a note of danger, a high, ringing register of alarm with a bass undertone of fear. Attempting to rationalize the feeling, she reminded herself how many different thousands of people used the same scent. Kölnwasser, Eau de Cologne, for instance, Germany’s oldest scent, was used by millions. It was said to be the Führer’s favourite. There was no reason why this one particular scent should mean anything at all. It reminded her of something though, and it was something that made her afraid. It was a male scent, so it must be a man she was reminded of, but which man?

  Was it someone back home? She frowned and chewed her lip as she tried to place it, but all she knew was that the scent made her heart race and the hairs rise on the back of her neck. She needed to know where that perfume came from, if only for her peace of mind.

  Thank goodness for the boy, who was just coming back at that moment, balancing two cups on a tray and two pastries which he must have bought with his own cash.

  ‘What a darling you are, Erich! Now I have to go somewhere, just for a minute. Could you look after my things? Make sure you keep an eye on them. And don’t let anyone take this deckchair.’

  The boy looked dismayed at having his coffee spurned and she felt a pang of guilt, but there was nothing for it.

  Decisively Ada put down her magazine, rose from the deckchair and strode off.

  Erich waited an hour watching Ada’s coffee grow cold and ate both pastries himself, before he realized that she did not have an important appointment at all. She had just been trying to get rid of him. A humiliated flush spread across his cheeks as he imagined all the fat women – friends of his grandmother’s sitting around in their deckchairs – secretly laughing at him while they pretended to read their magazines. They must assume he had an adolescent crush. He felt a twist of anger. He had never wanted to take a summer holiday with his grandmother, what boy would? Oma kept going on about what a privilege it was to go on a KdF trip and how the ship would be luxurious beyond their wildest dreams. There was even a library on board. But what boy in his right mind wanted a library on holiday?

  A little after four o’clock that afternoon a squall blew in from the east, pi
tting the watered silk of the sea and driving everyone from the sun decks inside to play Skat or table tennis and watch the spray lashing the portholes from the warmth of the recreation areas. Only one hardy passenger, shivering in the spitting rain, remained on deck to witness what followed.

  The first thing she noticed was a commotion at the port side of the ship, where a gaggle of sailors were shouting and hauling an object onto the rain-lashed deck. She thought at first it was a fish, a shark perhaps, or a porpoise, but looking closer she saw it was a young woman’s body, beached like a delicate, exotic mermaid from some child’s fairy story. The dead girl lay on her back, curly hair plastered across her face like seaweed and skin as white as a fish, her flesh already turning to ice. Water gushed from her mouth and nostrils and ran in rivulets down her face, pooling around her body as it lay defencelessly still. For a second the sailors stood staring at her until the youngest of them, the one who had first glimpsed the white shape rolling on the waves and raised the alarm, felt sick and grabbed a tarpaulin to wrap her up. So the woman watching caught only a glimpse of the girl’s face, just enough to see that it was extraordinarily pretty in the conventional Germanic model, with high, arched eyebrows and blue eyes now fixed and empty, as if their colour had already been washed out by the sea. She wore a halter-necked sundress that clung to every voluptuous curve, leaving nothing to the imagination except, perhaps, the method of her death. For on the back of her head was a great bloody mess of hair and bone, the kind of wound that might have been sustained by hitting the side of the ship as she fell, or even, perhaps, a blow from a heavy instrument, if such a thing were possible.

  The horrified passenger was moved swiftly away from the scene and later that day received a personal visit in her cabin from Heinrich Bertram, the ship’s captain, who was most solicitous about her shock. He suggested that she try to forget it as much as possible and enjoy the rest of her holiday. It would be wrong to allow a tragedy like this to mar such a special voyage, let alone spoil the enjoyment of others by talking about it. Going further, Captain Bertram had to warn the gnädiges Fräulein that any mention of the incident anywhere else at all would have serious repercussions for her, both at home and in the workplace, and put at risk the chance of any future trips she or her family might hope to make with the KdF.