Pierre Frei - Berlin - A Novel

She softly rose to her feet and climbed the few steps to the deck. Morning mist lay over the sleeping boats around them. Without a sound, she slipped into the cool water which washed around her naked body. She swam far out, dived down on returning the last few metres to the boat, and hauled herself up by the side. David, looking the other way, was holding a towel ready for her. She wrapped herself in it. 'Good morning, darling.' She gave him a wet kiss.

He was reserve itself. 'I hope you slept well? Breakfast's almost ready.' He climbed down. There was an aroma of fresh coffee and fried eggs. 'The bacon's from Hefter. I'm afraid they didn't have any Danish,' he stiffly apologized. And afterwards I thought we could take a little round trip to the Tegeler See. Before Nigel Hawksworth went away he told me the Lake Pavilion there serves a good lunch. Poor fellow, he's having to eat Chinese food now. Although there are supposed to be a number of outstanding European restaurants in Shanghai.' He spoke with his face turned to the spirit stove, and in a great hurry, as if afraid she might interrupt him. 'Would you like an orange juice first?'

She let the towel drop. 'David, look at me.' He turned round. 'You talk too much, darling,' she said, in a deep, cooing undertone that was new even to herself. His Adam's apple, bobbing up and down, betrayed the fact that he was swallowing hard. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. As she did so, she took his hand down to her sex.

It was an unforgettable encounter for them both. Amazed as children, they explored their bodies, giving themselves up to this wonderful game. Ever afterwards, the smell of burnt bacon would always bring back the memory of her first delicious orgasm.

You must forgive my silly behaviour,' he said, apologizing for his awkwardness. 'We English are permanently embarrassed.' It was a concept that she found difficult to translate into German.

When they reached the dessert course in the Lake Pavilion, his face assumed his expression of grave concentration again. 'Would you marry me?' he asked over red summer fruit puree with vanilla sauce.

'I don't know,' she said truthfully. 'But I'll think about it.'

Frau von Aichborn had come to Berlin for the Olympic Games. A year earlier, she had offered to look after the wives of the Spanish team. But there was no Spanish team. The Civil War was raging on the Iberian peninsula.

Lieutenant Hans-Georg von Aichborn had not qualified for the three-day eventing. His mother and sister consoled him for his disappointment. 'I can't go to Spain with the Condor Legion either,' he complained. 'My commanding officer won't let us. Prussian officers are not mercenaries, he says.'

'Well, he's right,' said Detta. 'Imagine how easily something could happen to you there. I don't even like to think of it,' she added quietly, looking at her brother with affection. Anyway, what does the war in Spain have to do with us?'

'More than you think,' said the Baroness gravely. She was watching her daughter closely, and summed up her observations in the laconic inquiry: 'When are you going to introduce him to us?'

Detta was surprised. 'How did you guess?'

The Baroness smiled. 'I'm your mother.'

'When he's back from England,' Detta promised.

'Does he have a name?'

'David Floyd-Orr. He's third secretary at the British Embassy.'

They had been together for nearly a year and saw each other almost daily, either at his place in Tiergartenstrasse or Detta's small apartment on Steubenplatz, where she had moved in January. She had recovered from her obsession with Tom Glaser, and had no regrets. She loved David, his dry English manner, his occasional 'embarrassment' and the lanky, youthful appearance that belied his twenty-nine years.

They explored Berlin together. They drank lager at the Plumpe, as the people of Berlin called the Fountain of Health; they visited Museum Island; they watched the annual firework show 'Treptow in Flames'; and they drank sticky lemon liqueur at 'Goldelse's'. The proprietress as a blonde child had modelled for Zille, the illustrator and photographer. Detta hadn't been able to entice David up the Radio Tower, known affectionately to Berliners as their longer Lulatsch, the term for a tall beanpole of a man. 'I get vertigo if I so much as climb on a kitchen stool,' he confessed.

'He is the heir of the eighth Earl of Bexford, which makes him Viscount Floyd-Orr,' the Baroness wrote to her daughter. She had looked the family up in Debrett's Peerage.

'David hasn't said anything to me about that,' Detta replied. 'He wants me to accept him as he is.'

'Invite him to Aichborn,' her mother wrote. 'If he can stand the shock of meeting the family he'll probably be up to dealing with you too.'

In the summer of '38 Detta was a guest at Bexford Hall, and won the hearts of David's parents and the rest of his family. A Prussian wife with an impeccable background,' said the delighted Lord Rexford. 'You couldn't have done better for yourself, my boy.'

At the house party held in Detta's honour, the earl expressed his admiration for her countrymen. 'Fine people, these Germans. Particularly their Reich Chancellor. Amazing, the way the man is creating order out of chaos.' The other guests, all members of the establishment, seemed equally impressed by Herr Hitler. Only the Duchess of Newcastle had reservations. 'The man isn't married, and apparently he speaks terrible German. So Queen Mary says, anyway. She heard him on the radio.'

There had been changes in Berlin. Arvid von Troll introduced Detta to the new Foreign Minister. Joachim von Ribbentrop had previously been ambassador to London. 'Minor gentry from the Rhineland,' remarked her secretary disparagingly. Detta laughed. 'Frau Wilhelmi, you're a snob.'

'He's good-looking and polite,' Detta told David over supper. 'We talked about horses a little. He used to be a hussar officer.' They were eating potato salad and meatballs, which she bought ready made from the butcher and put in the pan: she was no great cook. David had fetched a siphon of light Botzow beer from the bar on the corner.

'My boss Sir Nevile Henderson calls him a social climber,' he said, shrugging his shoulders. 'Could I have some more potato salad, please?' He liked the hearty Berlin fare.

Detta put some on his plate. 'Herr von Troll thinks its time we fixed a date for the wedding.' She waited to hear his reaction.

'Why?' he asked, teasing her a little. 'Is Herr von Troll hoping for an invitation?'

'He told me that as a Foreign Ministry staff member I have to apply for permission to marry a foreigner, and it could take a little time.'

David nodded. 'My people see it the same way. I'm a diplomat in the service of his Britannic Majesty and I want to marry a German girl.'

'Your king is as German as I am. I'm sure he'll have no objection.'

But Detta had to wait. The Foreign Office wants to be clear about Great Britain's future relations with the German Reich before it will agree to our marriage,' David patiently explained. The usually down-to-earth Detta was too much in love to wonder what their wedding had to do with international politics, of which she only very occasionally took any notice — although she began to take notice in March 1939.

'Goodness, can we actually do that?' she cried in surprise when German troops marched into Prague.

'We have written a protest note to the government of the German Reich asking the same question,' David told her.

And?'

Your ambassador, like his colleague in Paris. simply refused to accept the note.'

A week later, when the German Wehrmacht occupied the Memelland, the Western powers expressed no more protests. The shocked Lithuanian government gave up the territory without opposition, and it was incorporated into the province of East Prussia.