The Girl Behind The Curtain (Hidden Women) (29 page)

‘I don’t ever want to be without you,’ he said.

‘I feel exactly the same way.’

Then, though we really didn’t have time, we made love again. We didn’t properly undress. He pulled down his trousers and I pushed up my skirt. It was, as Marlene would put it, just a quickie. But how wonderful it was to be filled by him and to feel his urgency as he pushed into me. I never tired of seeing his face as he came. That look of shock, bewilderment and ultimate satisfaction.

‘I’ll have to go to the Boom Boom smelling of you,’ I chided him.

‘You have no idea how excited that makes me feel,’ he said.

We walked to the club hand in hand. It was a beautiful evening. The sky was clear and the stars were bright. The streets were busy with shoppers, admiring the Christmas window displays. Even the SA goons who hung around on the corner by what used to be the Beluga Bar nodded a greeting.

At the club, Marlene and Isadora were deep in a tête-à-tête about Isadora’s complicated love life. Schluter was looking harassed. He said his niece had just announced she wanted to become a doctor and he wasn’t sure how on earth the family was going to pay for it. But I could tell he would pay for it. It was obvious that he was very proud of her decision.

The band was already tuning up. Otto kissed me on the end of the nose and went to join them. He was about halfway across the room when he turned and hurried back to me again. This time he folded his arms round me and gave me a proper kiss that made Marlene and Isadora whoop with delight. The band all applauded.

‘What was that for?’ I asked him.

‘It was just to remind you that I love you. I want you to be able to feel my lips on yours for the whole of your act.’

I grinned at the idea. ‘I can’t wait to feel them in reality later on.’

At eight o’clock the club officially opened. There were people already on the doorstep when Schluter opened the doors. The fast-approaching end of the year made people want to kick up their heels. One last burst of debauchery before January’s clean slate. They were ready to make merry indeed.

As usual, Friday’s show would be partly devoted to the amateurs. Marlene would open with her routine, then I would follow with two songs. After that, the amateurs would take the stage. We hoped there would be at least five. Assuming that there were, I would not be back on stage until the very end of the evening.

I spent my time backstage writing another letter to Mother, telling her I had persuaded Otto that we should come to England in the new year and would Papa please wire the money for our passage. Writing the letter made me feel very happy. Otto had taken quite some persuading. He didn’t want to have to borrow money off my father to visit him for the first time. But I reminded him that he was keen for me to go back home. If he came with me, I would, and perhaps I would stay for a little longer while he came back to finish off his exams.

I was so excited by the thought of showing Otto around my home town. I felt sure he would love it. I asked Mummy if she would arrange a Sunday lunch at which Otto might meet the extended family. My aunt would adore him, I knew.

I finished my letter and took my place in the wings. The atmosphere in the club was pretty good by now.

The Steinway Sisters, who were in fact two elderly brothers who liked to dress up as young girls, put in an appearance. They were always extremely popular. Every week, they came up with a completely new act. They would take the most popular song of the moment and come up with a wonderful routine to go with it. That night, they sang ‘Was That The Human Thing To Do?’ by the Boswell Sisters. They were note-perfect as usual, harmonising beautifully. They had new outfits for the occasion too: matching blue dresses with demure lace collars. They might have been schoolgirls fresh from the convent were it not for their wrinkled faces and stubbled chins.

They were followed by the young man who liked to dress as Jean Harlow. He too was a regular. He was certainly dedicated to his art. Like the sister-brothers, he was constantly honing his routine, making sure that he kept up with the very latest hits. He made a shocking Hollywood goddess, however. I once asked Marlene if she couldn’t give him some advice on hair and make-up.

‘What? And make him good enough to take my job?’ was her response.

Well, Marlene didn’t need to worry about competition for the moment. As usual, Jean Harlow gave his best but came nowhere near hitting the notes. And as usual, Otto changed key three times in an attempt to accommodate him, getting so low at one point that ‘Love Me Tonight’ began to sound like a funeral march. I watched from the side of the stage with Schluter, who shook his head in despair.

‘Where are his friends?’ Schluter asked. ‘Why does nobody tell him that the crowds only cheer for an encore because they want to laugh?’

I shrugged. ‘Perhaps he knows the truth,’ I suggested. ‘But he loves dressing up so much and this is the only place he can do it.’

‘Might not be able to do it here for much longer,’ said Schluter. ‘Not if Herr Hitler has his way.’

I shivered at the mere mention of that man’s name.

‘Oh Jerry,’ I said. ‘Perhaps Adolf will get some Christmas spirit too.’

On stage, Jean Harlow’s rendition of ‘Love Me Tonight’ came to a tortuous, warbling end. Marlene led the applause. There were no more amateur acts that evening. It was my turn to go on.

I was excited to be debuting a new routine and my new costume too. At first glance, it looked like an extremely elegant silver evening dress, but it was held together by a precarious arrangement of buttons and poppers that would enable me to transform it from demure to shocking with just a couple of flicks. I also had a hat. From the front, it looked like the sort of bowler city gents wore to work. From behind, it resembled a cowboy’s Stetson.

Otto hit the first note of my first song. Ordinarily, I would already be in the centre of the stage. That night, I was going to try something different. My entrance would be part of the act. I had modelled my new routine on something I had once seen at the Kakadu. First, I gave a high side-kick, so that all the audience saw was my leg. Then I snaked out an arm. Then arm and leg moved up and down together. I hope that from the audience, it looked as though my two limbs were floating effortlessly. Behind the curtain, I was leaning heavily on Schluter so that I didn’t fall over. Finally I poked out my head.

The ambience was great. No matter how bad the amateur acts had been, they had certainly warmed things up for me. The crowd clapped along as I sang ‘Burlington Bertie’ with my personalised lyrics.

Then I galloped through my cowboy song. I’d practised the dance a hundred times but I still felt as though my thigh muscles would snap from the strain of remaining at half-squat – or demi-plié, as Marlene liked to call it – for every chorus.

‘Stop complaining. It’ll make it easier for you to go on top,’ Marlene always said when I moaned during practice.

As I came to the end of the cowboy song I whipped off the last section of my skirt, so that I was standing in my leotard. The crowd whooped their appreciation. The fat guy in the front row looked close to having a coronary. While I was taking a moment before my next song, I called to the barman to send a glass of water to the front.

‘Don’t want you dying on me,’ I told the fat guy, with a wink. ‘The night is still young!’

That seemed to delight him. He slapped his thighs and rocked back and forth in his chair. He was having a capital night. Everybody was.

Having caught my breath, I turned to Otto and gave him the nod that told him I was ready to carry on. The lights changed so that I was standing in the centre of a single spot, slightly pink in tone, just as I liked it.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ I said. ‘It’s been a real pleasure to sing for you this evening. Thank you for being such a warm and welcoming crowd. To end tonight’s entertainment, I’m going to sing one of my favourite songs for you, but not before I’ve asked you to put your hands together one more time for the fabulous amateurs who gave their all for your delight.’

The crowd duly clapped and cheered.

‘And for Marlene, our mistress of ceremonies.’

Marlene pastiched my act by poking her own hefty leg round the curtain. That provoked a gale of laughter. ‘And for our wonderful musicians.’ I blew a kiss towards my love.

‘Thank you everybody and now . . .’

I looked to Otto for my cue.

Then he started to play ‘The Song Is Ended’.

Though we had practised our escape half a dozen times before the dreadful day came when we needed to put the plan into action for real, it seemed so much harder than I remembered. I bumped my head on the beam in the tunnel. The beam that we had all been warned of a thousand times. I twisted my ankle, even though I was wearing my flattest shoes.

Perhaps there was a part of me that wanted to be caught. I couldn’t bear the fact that up there, in the club, Otto was facing down the Sturmabteilung without me.

‘Keep going,’ said Marlene. ‘Otto will be fine. Idiot though his brother is, I’m sure that when it comes down to it, Gerd will do his best to help him. He’ll call the dogs off. Have no fear.’

‘Please, God, let that be true!’ I exclaimed.

Schluter turned to ‘ssshh’ me. We were going through the cellar of the Paradise Hotel at that point. The hotel’s owner was sympathetic to our plight but he could not be certain that all his staff felt the same way. For that reason, the owner said that he was happy for us to use his cellar as an escape route, so long as we didn’t tell him about it. He wanted to remain genuinely ignorant.

Feigning ignorance was the best defence when faced by the Sturmabteilung.

After what seemed like an eternity in the cellars under the Ku’damm, we came out into a service tunnel for the U-Bahn. We walked west, just as Otto had instructed, and emerged into the soft night air somewhere near Charlottenburg. Schluter had friends there, who were going to take us all in until the danger passed. The following day, we would wait for Otto’s assurance that it was safe to return to our part of town and gather the rest of our belongings. For now we had to lay low.

I could hear nothing but ‘The Song is Ended’. That tune, now hateful to me, would not be chased from my head, no matter what I tried to think about instead.

‘Tell me something happy,’ I begged Marlene.

She tried to tell me a joke but her usual wit fell flat. I knew that nothing would ever be the same again. I put my hands to my face and breathed in the smell of him that lingered still.

The following morning we heard the terrible news that the club had burned to the ground. The investigators were saying that the fire was caused by someone leaving a lighted cigarette near a feathered costume in one of the dressing rooms. We all knew that wasn’t the case. Schluter had always been very aware of the dangers of fire in a theatre. No one dared smoke backstage for fear of a lecture. Besides, to have burned with such ferocity and speed, the fire would have needed some help. It would have needed petrol. Indeed, one of Schluter’s spies saw charred petrol cans among the ruins. The cans were never mentioned in the official report.

As for Otto. We heard that he had been taken into custody, together with Arnold, the big bass player, who had stayed behind to back him up. The grounds for their arrest were that Otto had punched a police officer, who was trying to calm down a disagreement between Otto and a customer who was querying a bill. It was the biggest cock and bull story you ever heard. But we were learning that the SA was not overly bothered about the truth if a story would better fit their needs.

‘Better in custody than in that fire,’ said Marlene, which was true. But I found it hard to believe, as she did, that Otto’s brother would make sure he didn’t stay in custody long. Not when the club itself had been treated with such brutal disregard. Not when it was clear that the SA had come prepared to destroy the Boom Boom, not just close it down.

Given the way that things had turned out, Schluter decided that it wasn’t safe for any of us to go back to within a mile of the Ku’damm even two days later.

‘Those thugs will be angry,’ he said. ‘They must have felt outsmarted when they got backstage and discovered we had already gone.’

‘Or perhaps they thought we’d burn to death in the cellar,’ said Isadora.

Whatever, it would not be safe to go back for a long time. We stuck together at Schluter’s friends’ house for a couple of days, then Schluter said to me, ‘Kitty, I think it’s time for you to go home.’

‘But you just said I shouldn’t,’ I began.

‘Not home to the Hotel Frankfort. Home to England. Home to your parents. This country is changing. Right now, it is people like me who are the target of hatred, but it won’t be long before the net is cast wider. You’re an Englishwoman. There are people in this city who think the English are to blame for the way this country suffered after the Great War.’

‘I’ve never experienced any nastiness because of my nationality,’ I protested.

‘Not yet but every day, Herr Hitler is focusing the blame on someone else. When he’s got rid of us Jews and the gays and the communists and anyone who disagrees with him, you will be next.’

Marlene agreed with him.