Free Woman in the Shadows by Jane Thynne Page A

classes, but so far no one had taken up the offer of Clara’s translation. The Germans pretended they already understood, and the English assumed that speaking their own tongue both more loudly and more slowly would make them perfectly comprehensible.
    “It’s a lovely spot you have here, Frau Doktor,” said one. “I hear the Führer sometimes prefers Schwanenwerder to Berchtesgaden.”
    “Nothing could be better than Berchtesgaden!” interceded a gawky Englishwoman with a straw-colored bob. “Berchtesgaden is the nearest you can get to heaven.”
    Unity Valkyrie Mitford had a stolid, impassive look, which reminded Clara of the stone women on the theater façade on Nollendorfplatz. Her face, with its high, plucked eyebrows, was like a blank pool into which you longed to throw a pebble. The girl who had asked a German newspaper to let everyone know she was a “Jew-hater” had a sullen air, like a cow that has been thwarted at a gate. Though she was only twenty-three, Unity had relocated to Germany to be as close to Hitler as possible, basing herself in Munich and hoping each day for an invitation from the Führer to lunch, or the opera, or just to take tea at his apartment. Occasionally she was asked to make speeches or write newspaper articles. Then she would turn out a tirade against the Jews as dull and plodding as a twelve-year-old schoolgirl’s essay.
    Unity’s awkward woodenness only served to emphasize the beauty of her sister Diana. Four years older, smaller by a head, and exquisitely dressed in cream Dior, Diana had milky blond hair and eyes of bright, hostile blue. The two had the same broad brow and high cheekbones, but the features that produced Diana’s loveliness were cast more coarsely in Unity. Looking at the two sisters together made one wonder how birth could fashion such different outcomes from identical raw materials. The same thought must have occurred to Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler’s personal photographer, who was circling the guests with surprising nimbleness armed with a Leica.
    “Don’t mind me. Please don’t let me disturb you!”
    Hoffmann was a dapper character with the practiced charm and ingratiating smile of the professional hotel manager. His hair was slicked with pungent pomade, and a silk handkerchief bloomed extravagantly from his top pocket. The fact that he had for many years been the only photographer permitted to take official portraits of the Führer meant he was the VIP photographer of choice at gatherings of senior Party figures. That evening he had abandoned lights and tripod in favor of a handheld camera, but his efforts to remain unobtrusive were quite unnecessary because the Mitfords ignored him completely. Being photographed was, for them, entirely routine.
    “The Berghof is terrifically homely,” agreed Diana, who had just returned from a break at the Führer’s hideaway in the Bavarian Alps. “The view is glorious, though it is just the teensiest bit like staying in a bed-and-breakfast in Bournemouth. The cushions have little slogans embroidered on them, can you believe?” She had a sharp, tinkling laugh, like a champagne glass being smashed. “There was even one that said,
The German Woman is knitting again!
And the cushion itself was knitted! Isn’t that funny! If there hadn’t been so many great big guards around, I would have popped it in my bag and taken it home.”
    “That’s a terrible thing to suggest,” objected Unity humorlessly. “Guests wanting souvenirs from the Berghof are a frightful problem for him, poor Führer, but he can hardly say anything. His spoons get stolen by everyone. Even the brushes and nail files from the bathroom. Just because they’re engraved with his initials.”
    “Perhaps he should be more careful with his guests then,” concluded Diana brightly. “I must say, some of those women at dinner the other night seemed of doubtful origin. And not much to look at either. I don’t know how the darling Führer can stand