Free Woman in the Shadows by Jane Thynne Page B

to look at them. Figures like the
Hindenburg,
didn’t you think?”
    Diana’s body by comparison was as fine and delicate as a whippet’s. In profile her face had a freakish perfection, like that of a Greek goddess. Beside her Magda Goebbels, in a white dress and striped cardigan, an ashy film of powder on her face, looked stout, her ankles swollen. The sisters began talking to Hoffmann’s daughter Henny, a vivacious girl whom they knew from Munich, as her father took another photograph. Henny spoke in a low, gossipy whisper.
    “You were lucky to be sitting with the Führer at the Berghof. I was stuck next to Herr Bormann. He kept gabbling on about his grand plans for matrimony in the Reich. He wants to institute mass weddings with fifty couples getting married at the same time. Can you imagine anything more awful?”
    “I think it would be rather a hoot,” said Diana. “Just think of all the brides’ mothers, competing in pastels.”
    Clara wondered if Archie Dyson was right in his assessment of the Mitford sisters as a busted flush. They seemed to her to occupy an extraordinary place in the Nazi hierarchy. They were respected guests of Hitler, privy to intimate conversations among the top brass at his Bavarian retreat. They listened firsthand to the Führer’s plans for Europe’s future and in turn fed him a vision of England that was eccentric in the extreme. Contemplating this, she sensed Diana’s clever eyes travel over her, as if reading her thoughts.
    “Clara! How lovely to find you here. I haven’t seen you for too long. How’s your divine sister, Angela?”
    Diana knew Angela, but she was closer to Angela’s new husband, Gerald, a stolid barrister who had political ambitions and, in Clara’s eyes, absolutely no redeeming features. Gerald had flirted with joining Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, though in the end he had opted for the Conservative Party as a safer bet.
    “Angela’s very well, thank you. She’s coming over soon.”
    “Frightfully good fun, your sister is. It’s a shame she couldn’t have come in time for the rally. It was terrifically impressive. Did you make it down to Nuremberg?”
    “Not this year, I’m afraid.”
    So far, Clara had managed to avoid attending any of the Party rallies, though she guessed sooner or later she might have to accept an invitation. The talking point of that year’s Party congress in Nuremberg had been the “Cathedral of Light” designed by Albert Speer, in which a hundred and fifty searchlights reached up into the night sky, like the pillars of a holy building.
    “It was awfully naughty of you to miss it, Clara.” Unity butted in. “It was just the best
Parteitag
ever. The Führer was thrilled with it. I can’t believe you’ve never been. All the rallies and the marches are absolute heaven, and the Hitler Youth boys look like angels.”
    Clara laughed lightly. “There are plenty of marches in Berlin to be going on with.”
    “Maybe. But I think it’s a crime to miss it. You’ve never seen so many people all in one place. It culminates in the procession of the Blood Flag—that’s the flag held by the young Nazi struck down in the Putsch—and all the other flags are consecrated by touching the Blood Flag. It’s the most sacred moment. You can’t really describe it. You have to see it for yourself. It’s monumental.”
    “Not as monumental as the Herr Doktor’s speech,” teased Diana. “Fifty pages on the evils of Bolshevism!”
    Magda laughed uneasily at this joke at her husband’s expense, but any further embarrassment was prevented by the entrance of three tiny Goebbels children, five-year-old Helga, three-year-old Hilde, and two-year-old Helmut, who were ushered in to dance to a tinkling piece of Strauss on a music box. The girls, in white pin-tucked party dresses and ankle socks, shepherded the toddler Helmut between them around the floor. The adults gazed on their performance in silence, then broke into a ripple of