Both sessions at the stables and the uniforms were, as expected, played out like a Reich PR exercise, with the best horses and the most decorated soldiers laid out for Georgie to inspect, almost as the Führer would in less than a month’s time. With 100,000 loyal subjects marching and 350,000 spectators expected to fill the field-cum-stadium – Herr Bauer had reeled off the figures with pride – preparations began early. Fortunately, the photographer seemed to gauge Georgie’s desire to dig a little deeper, instinctively snapping close-ups of the skin-and-bone stable boy and his visible rack of ribs as he worked to beautify the cossetted, well-fed animals.
Whenever she could escape the minder following her every move, Georgie snuck into corners and talked with anyone she could find, engaging the woman whose brow was wet with sweat as she pressed each uniform, thanking the Führer for the chance to participate in his glory, on top of her full-time job as a cleaner. Georgie felt there would be little need to inject even a mild irony into her written piece – it was all there for any intelligent reader to see.
Herr Amsel drove her back to the office and she worked late in typing up her piece, the images still fresh in her mind. There was a post train leaving from the central Zoo station the next afternoon, and the photographer promised to meet her on the platform with his prints, all to arrive in London in the next few days, leaving no possibility for the editorial team to make excuses over lack of page space in the time she had allowed. As the light began to fade within the office, though, she pulled down the blinds that had become her shield, turning on the lamps. If not safe from prying eyes, it made her feel cocooned at least.
The piece flowed easily for Georgie – her style was naturally more suited to the lengthier news features than to hard fact stories. Inevitably, editors would be more brutal with their red cutting pen over the coming months, so this was her chance to really play with words.
As if by some spooky coincidence, the phone trilled loudly as she pulled the last sheet from the roller, the sudden intrusion causing it almost to rip. Her eyes shot to the cracks between the blinds. Who knew she was here?
‘Hello,’ she said, guarded.
‘Georgie! I was hoping to catch you,’ said the crackled but familiar voice of the Chronicle’s foreign editor, Henry Peters.
‘Why are you working so late?’
‘Because Berlin never sleeps, didn’t you know, Henry?’
He laughed and coughed cigarette smoke down the phone. ‘How is everything? Is Adamson there? Helping you to settle in?’
‘Hmm … Paul’s in Munich. He has been for … a while.’
‘Munich? What the hell’s he doing there? I didn’t send him.’ Henry sounded slightly irritated. ‘Are you all right, though, finding your way about?’
‘I’m fine, Henry – the press pack here are very helpful.’
‘Good, good,’ he mumbled. ‘Press men anywhere are usually a nice bunch. And how’s that Telegraph man we sent you with – are you sorting each other out?’
‘Yes, we’re muddling through,’ Georgie lied. Henry – a true mother hen despite his reputation – might have been on the phone to the Telegraph offices if he’d known the truth about Max’s chilliness. And gaining a reputation as a whining female was the last thing she needed.
‘The diary’s pretty run of the mill at the moment, Henry,’ she told him. ‘But I’ve secured a contact and I’m just about to dispatch a words and pictures piece, a preview to Nuremberg. The word this year is that Hitler will use it to assert his strength.’
‘Great,’ he said. ‘Can’t promise anything, but I’ll give it a look. Stay in touch, Georgie. Keep safe.’
He rang off, and Georgie sighed at the finished piece in her hand. Was it all worth it? Along with every other journalist under Henry’s wing, she was now vying for column inches on the page, and with the rise of fascism across Europe nudging for space – Franco’s war in Spain hotting up and demanding attention – she had to come up with fresh angles to bid for the reader’s interest.
‘Come on, George,’ she breathed to herself. ‘Just get on with it.’
9
Hope and Fear
8th August 1938
‘Sara, Sara!’ Rubin came barrelling through the door of their apartment in haste, only to be met with his wife’s ghostly pallor.
‘Oh, it’s you!’ she said, grasping at her throat in relief.
‘Who did you think it would be?’
‘Your footsteps were like a stampede – I imagined it was the Gestapo,’ she said, her chest still rising and falling with effort. ‘I thought I was going to have to get Elias into the attic by myself.’
‘I’m so sorry, my love,’ Rubin said, though he could barely contain himself, desperate to reveal the good news. ‘I’m just so relieved! She said yes, Sara. That reporter, from the Olympics, she hired me! A regular monthly fee – a very generous one at that. We’ll be fine, for the time being at least.’
Sara smiled her pleasure, though she couldn’t match Rubin’s feverish optimism. It would mean paying the arrears at the local grocery store, with possibly something left over. No one admitted it, but all their friends were squirrelling away every spare pfennig, and not for a family holiday on the lakes, as in the old days. The stockpiled Reichsmarks were for escape – enough to bribe for a visa, more for a safe route, with the rumours circling that soon all borders would be closed to Jews. Imprisoned in their own country, one that had recently been robbed from them.
An idea brewed within Sara Amsel’s mind as she began scraping together their meagre evening meal, and she chanced on asking while Rubin was in a good mood. He’d already pulled out the chessboard and was preparing for his evening match with Elias.
‘Rubin?’
‘Yes, my love?’
‘Do you think she can help with anything else, this reporter?’ She looked at her husband, her eyes wide and serious. ‘I mean, she’ll have some influence, surely – at the embassy? She’ll know people. She might be able to help Elias and the children? It doesn’t matter about us, but …’
Rubin stepped quickly across the tiny kitchen, put one hand on each of her shoulders, as if to silence her hope. So that he didn’t have to quash it bluntly.
‘No, Sara, I don’t think she can,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘She’s very nice, and already I suspect she sees past all this … the lies, the Reich. But she’s a junior reporter. She’s new. She’s just finding her own feet. So, no Sara. It wouldn’t be right to ask her.’
Her look of disappointment, the way she stared past him and into the small parlour, where her own brother was awaiting his highlight of the day, cut into him, like a sabre into soft flesh.
‘We’ll be all right, Sara,’ he reassured her, rubbing at the thin blouse covering her equally sparse skin. ‘I’m sure of it.’
But as he turned, his own face creased with worry. Would they? Could anyone with even a ripple of Jewish blood running through their veins really be safe?
10
A Good-Natured Scrap