David John - Flight from Berlin

Later that day, when he was propped up with pillows on the divan in the sitting room, Eleanor showed him his Hannah interview in print. It had been published over three weeks previously. The News Chronicle had the British exclusive.

It looked good. And the picture he’d taken of them-Jakob, Ilse, Roland, and Hannah-exceeded all his expectations. He was no great photographer, but the play of light from the windows that morning in Grunewald had conspired to make a haunting picture of depth and shadow.

He riffled quickly through the newspapers Eleanor had kept for every day he’d been away. The interview had revived Hannah’s story in the public eye, giving it new impetus for a day or two. But then worrying reports of the war in Spain began filling the headlines, infecting the national mood, dominating the letter pages, as was the news that Mrs Ernest Simpson had filed a suit for divorce. Clearly the King now wanted to marry the woman and make her Queen.

Within a week the world had moved on. Hannah’s story was dead, and as far as he could see there had not been a single reaction from the German government. Just as Rex had said.

He flung the papers to the floor.

While Richard lay in the hospital Eleanor had been busy with more than the house. With some leads from Rex she had written to everyone she could think of who might help in the matter of the Liebermanns. And once she’d started, the list only seemed to grow.

She wrote to the Berlin correspondents of the New York Times, the Daily Express, the Mail, and the Herald Tribune, urging them to keep Hannah’s name alive at press briefings. She thanked Sir Eric for his efforts in getting Richard released and asked him to raise the matter of the Liebermanns with the German Foreign Ministry. She made pleas to Lord Beaverbrook and William Randolph Hearst, underlining the public interest in the case and calling for their newspapers to adopt Hannah’s cause. She appealed to the president of the IOC, flattering his vanity by suggesting the Reich leadership would hear his petitions for the release of Hannah Liebermann.

As the weeks passed and the season changed, the responses to Eleanor’s letters dropped like so many leaves onto the doormat: a mixed bag of general sympathy, vague support, and one or two blunt rebuffs. Sir Eric had broached the subject over tea with von Ribbentrop and had been heard with ‘cold contempt.’ A response from the IOC’s president, Count Henri de Baillet-Latour, contained such flannel about goodwill between nations as to be almost meaningless-or at any rate, it meant he wasn’t going to do anything. Only Rex seemed to be really trying, but his questions were met each time by the same statement: that Hannah Liebermann was convalescing from a breakdown and was not receiving visitors in her weakened state. Eleanor tossed each letter onto the shelf over the escritoire. At the end of October a letter from Ambassador Dodd arrived. She and Denham read it together.

My dear Eleanor:

Life at Tiergartenstr has been most dull without you. Martha, Mattie, and I have missed your company. I can only apologise for taking so long in responding to your letter about the Liebermanns. You’ll forgive me, I hope, when I tell you that we have been waiting on responses to petitions made by the State Department to the Reich government.

Hitler’s reply to our request that Hannah and her family be permitted to emigrate to the States was, I regret to say, a flat refusal. When I tried to get a private interview with him to plead the case in person I was brushed off.

There is little more I can do. I am deeply sorry that this news will disappoint. Let us hope that Hannah’s fame affords her some protection for the time being.

We wish you well, my dear. Martha says she’ll write soon. She has been much in the company of a young Russian here in our diplomatic community, which she’ll want to tell you all about I’m sure. Knowing well how disapproval only emboldens her, I’m keeping my views on this latest suitor to myself!

Please send my fond regards to your father.

Yours affectionately,

W E Dodd

Denham stood up, put his hat on, and went out without saying a word, but Eleanor read over it again, lit a cigarette, and sat watching the trees thrashing in the wind through the kitchen window. The cat was curled on a chair, with one eye open. A log in the stove shifted, sending a heap of ash through the grate.

Despite their efforts, it seemed the book was closing on Hannah, Jakob, and Ilse.

Eleanor never seemed to tire of Tom’s company, even when his persistence and curiosity exasperated Denham. On weekends he would stay over and go swimming with her while Denham rested. The boy had none of his father’s taciturn nature and would chat happily for hours, so she soon had knowledge of everything from model gliders to soccer’s offside rule. More than once she’d called him George without thinking. The eight-year-old kid brother she still missed.

She watched Denham recover his health and grow stronger by the week. At half term he was well enough to take Tom to see the new television mast at Alexandra Palace, driving the Morris Oxford she had bought from the automobile dealer on Regent’s Park Road. By November he was working again, writing features for Harry Garobedian. The money he’d earned from the Hannah interview had barely been enough to tide them over, so she was thankful for having funds of her own.

Two matters had preoccupied Eleanor since Denham had proposed that evening on the Hill. The first, her determination to be busy and useful, had been solved with relative ease. With the help of a string pulled by her dad she’d got a job at the United States embassy in Grosvenor Gardens; nothing high level, just filing the voluminous documents pledging plight, peril, or ancestry attached to applications for visas. Most were from European Jews in transit through London to the States.

The second matter was a real headache. Herb had consented to a divorce, but there was still the problem of Reno. In a letter almost as disappointing as Dodd’s, her dad’s lawyer explained that obtaining a divorce in the state of New York was difficult. Most marriages were dissolved out of state. So she or Herb would have to take up residency in Reno, Nevada, for six weeks, after which the state’s more relaxed laws would grant her a divorce. Of course, Herb refused to go, so she would have to, and as she couldn’t leave Richard just yet, Reno, and her freedom, would have to wait, whatever her mother said about living in sin.

O n a grey afternoon in mid-March, cold enough for snow, but not to deter the crocuses from blossoming on Primrose Hill, Eleanor was returning home from work when she saw Mr

Blount putting a sign in the window of his grocery store that exhorted her to STEP INSIDE AND SEE WHY SPAIN IS FIGHTING FOR YOU!

A smaller sign announced that the shop was offering Spanish goods for sale and a service to send aid parcels to the Republican cause.

An hour later Eleanor returned with an armful of dresses, slacks, blouses, and suits to donate for Spain to the delight of Mr Blount, the grocer, whose eldest son, she learned, was with a brigade outside Barcelona.

‘Are you sure, miss?’ he asked, now joined at the counter by his wife, who was eyeing the bolero jacket and clutch coat. ‘They’re very smart.’

‘I’m positive,’ said Eleanor. ‘And do sell them if you think the cash will be more useful.’

She was turning the corner into Chamberlain Street when the grocer came panting after her, smiling and tipping his cap.

‘You left this, miss, in one of your pockets.’

In his hand was a yellowing sealed envelope.

‘I don’t think so-’