In mid-January 1934, Saffron flew back down to Johannesburg with her father for the start of the new school year. She assured him that she was perfectly capable of handling the journey alone, for she had already flown unaccompanied from South Africa to Kenya and back again for her mid-year holidays, but he insisted. ‘What kind of a father would I be if I didn’t take my daughter all the way to school, at least once a year,’ he said. ‘Besides, who’s going to pay for all your shopping if I’m not there to do it?’
That was a point to which Saffron had no counter, for another expedition to the emporia of Johannesburg was required to replace everything that she had either broken, worn out or grown out of during her first year. When they went to the outfitters, Leon doffed his hat to Miss Halfpenny, gave her a winning smile as he said how charmed he was to see her again and obediently did as he was told when Miss Halfpenny said, ‘Father may leave us now. We ladies will manage quite nicely by ourselves.’
Leon felt an unexpected pang of disappointment at his dismissal. But there was something else, too, a bittersweet realization provoked by two little words: ‘We ladies.’ That was what Miss Halfpenny had said, and she was right. Saffron was becoming a young lady. She wasn’t just his little girl any more. And as much as Leon was proud at the woman he could see his daughter becoming, it saddened him, too, to say goodbye to his little girl.
Five thousand miles from Johannesburg, at the Meerbach Motor Works, a sprawling citadel of industry that covered several square kilometres in the southeast corner of Bavaria, Oswald Paust, the Head of Personnel, was coming towards the end of his annual report to the company’s trustees. ‘After many months of hard work, the task of ridding the company of all Jewish employees, as well as other undesirable races, workers with any form of mental or physical deformity, no matter how minor, and sexual or political deviants is very nearly complete,’ he proudly asserted. ‘I can now confirm that Jews, who used to form some 4.2 per cent of the workforce, have entirely disappeared from all our factories, workshops, design studios, maintenance depots and offices …’
His next words were drowned out as the trustees banged the palms of their hands against the boardroom table around which they were gathered as a sign of approval.
‘As I was saying …’ Paust went on. ‘There are six remaining cases of so called “Mischlinge”, which is to say mongrels who have one Jewish parent, or one or more grandparents. I am presently in discussions with representatives from the SS Race and Settlement Main Office to determine whether the fact that none of them shows any signs of Jewish appearance, or practises any Jewish religious or domestic customs, entitles them to any special consideration. I am deeply indebted to Herr Sturmbannführer von Meerbach for his assistance in this regard.’
More palms were slapped against the great oak tabletop and the massive, brooding figure at the end of the table nodded his head in acknowledgement of the tribute.
‘The work has not, of course, been without difficulties,’ Paust said, in the tone of a man who has taken on a great burden, but borne it willingly. ‘It was relatively easy to weed out the communists, since we already knew who the troublemakers and strike leaders were. These people have never kept their affiliations quiet. Establishing the deviancy of suspected homosexuals, however, required considerable investigation, which proved expensive. Nevertheless, a little over one per cent of our workers were found to be practising homosexuals and lost their jobs as a consequence. It must be noted, unfortunately, that the loss to our workforce from these two groups was disproportionately skewed towards higher skill occupations, so that our legal, accounting, marketing, design and research departments have been quite severely affected and may take some months to recover from the loss of experienced and, if I may say so, talented personnel. Of course it is no surprise that the Jew, with his greedy, disputatious nature, should gravitate towards legal and financial work, while the effeminacy of homosexuals may give them a certain aesthetic flair in the design of advertising posters, for example, or even aircraft fuselages. But I feel sure that the trustees will accept that any short-term loss of company income will be more than outweighed by the benefits of knowing that our workers are all decent, healthy Aryan folk.’
This time the banging was markedly less hearty. As keen as the trustees were to ensure that they maintained the highest standards of racial, sexual and political purity, they were even more interested in maintaining the highest possible profit. SS-Sturmbannführer Konrad von Meerbach had dropped his aristocratic title in favour of his Nazi rank, but he remained chairman of the company that bore his name. Clearly irritated by the want of enthusiasm for Paust’s conclusions, he made a point of slamming his great lion’s paw of a hand, its back covered with a furry mat of ginger hair, so hard that all the pens and coffee cups sitting in front of the company trustees rattled with the impact.
‘Thank you, Paust,’ said von Meerbach, rising to his feet. He was still young, in his very early thirties, but his physical stature – for he had the massively muscled shoulders, thick chest, tree-trunk neck and glowering brow of a heavyweight boxer – and inborn air of dominance gave him the authority of a much older man. ‘I am deeply appreciative of your efforts and I am sure that all my fellow trustees would wish to join me in applauding your achievements.’ He gave half-a-dozen hearty claps, prompting six of the eight other attendees at this meeting of the Meerbach Family Trust to take the hint and join in with equal heartiness.
The only two whose applause seemed perfunctory at best were a thin, nervous-looking woman in her mid-sixties, whose fingers were otherwise occupied holding a long, black cigarette holder, and a young man sitting next to her. He was not clad in a formal business suit and stiff collar, as the other men present all were, but preferred a jacket cut from heathery grey-green tweed, a flannel shirt and a knitted tie over a pair of grey worsted trousers. He looked like an academic or some form of intellectual – neither of which was a remotely complimentary description in Germany any more – and the impression of nonconformity was reinforced by the sweep of dark blond hair that insisted on flopping down over his right eyebrow no matter how often he swept it back up to the side of his head. He could, however, afford to treat Konrad von Meerbach more casually than the others did for he was his younger brother, Gerhard, and the woman sitting next to him was their mother, the dowager Countess Athala.
‘You may go now,’ said Konrad, and Paust scuttled from the room. Konrad remained standing. He looked from one side of the long, rectangular table to the other, scanning the faces pointing back at him.
‘I am shocked, gentlemen, truly shocked,’ he said, ‘at the idea that anyone here … any … single … one,’ he repeated, jabbing a finger onto the table with each word, ‘could possibly consider it more important to grab a few more Reichsmarks than to carry out the work to which the Führer has sacrificed his entire life, namely the purification of the Aryan race. Anyone would think that you were Jews, the way you place money first, above all else, when we all know that our first duty is to our Führer. I would give away these factories here, all the estates around them, even the schloss that bears my family name, all the great works of art and furniture within it, everything I own, in fact, before I parted with this …’
Konrad pointed to the Nazi badge on his jacket lapel: the black swastika on a white background surrounded by a red ring and outside that a gold wreath, running right around the badge. ‘The Führer himself pinned this golden badge, awarded for special services to the Party, on my chest, because he remembered me from the early days, this rich kid, not even twenty, who joined the march through Munich, November the ninth, 1923 …’
‘Oh God, here we go again …’ Gerhard sighed to himself
‘… who stood shoulder to shoulder with the others who were proud to call themselves National Socialists, who did not break ranks when the police fired on us. Oh yes, the Führer remembers those who stood by him then and who remain true to him now. That is why I combine my role as the head of this great