I cleaned up and went in search of our host whom I tracked down in the candle-lit salon, glass in hand, dressed for dinner and, clearly, radiating happiness. He poured exquisite old port for an aperitif and put us all at ease; which we needed badly in view of this very strange and over-powering interlude. We were, after all, in our early twenties and hardly used to castles and superbly gracious, eighty-year-old hosts.
Then ‘Jeeves’ announced dinner and served an exquisite, long-drawn out meal. Finally, we followed the chandelier-carrying retainer to the library for the worst coffee and best cognac I have ever tasted. At this point, our host raised his glass, welcomed us to his home again and mentioned, more as an aside, that this was one of the happiest days of his life. We asked the obvious question as to why that should be. ‘You shall see shortly’, said our host with a slight smile and continued to tell us about his house, his art treasures and his extensive travels. Jeeves reappeared, asked for our wishes and undertook to telephone the garage early in the morning to have them come up and repair our tyres (in fact, when I looked out of my window at 08.00 hours the next morning, they were just putting the wheel back on our Mercedes).
Much later, our host rose, took a chandelier with candles flickering romantically and indicated that we should follow him.
Up we went, to the first floor, across a sitting room – clearly that of a lady – through a tapestry-covered door and up a spiral staircase. We were obviously in a tower and went up a further floor where the old gentleman opened yet another door.
At first we saw only more candles and then, between them on a catafalque,[1] we saw the body of a dead woman. She was quite old, looked quite aristocratic and, even in death, we expected her to pronounce some chastisement, or to issue orders to the effect that we must stop keeping her husband up so late, (and slightly intoxicated).
‘Yes, yes’, he said slowly, ‘my wife! She died this morning. She was the hardest woman that ever lived. We were married sixty-two years. She was wonderful, in a way. But far too hard, certainly on me. Now I can relax. I will be at ease now, though not for long. I am happy today. I told you that.’
With that, he picked up the chandelier and we followed him down the spiral stairs. He bid us goodnight outside our rooms and slowly went down the long corridor.
Jeeves delivered his apologies the next morning, Monsieur was very tired and resting. It was hoped we had been comfortable. We were not invited to stay for the funeral. Maybe, after the previous night’s confession, any words spoken across the grave might have made us chuckle. I remembered my father’s cremation!
There was, I reflected as we were driving towards the Cote d’Azur the next day, really only one moral to this story: if two people can’t live together in happiness, they should call it a day. There is no use waiting for death, it might come very late indeed.
We joined Herbert Hemmeter (the Garden Dwarf) in the evening at our hotel in Monte Carlo. He had travelled down separately in his Bugatti. As usual, he was not interested in our adventures but felt that one would have to be moronic indeed to run out of spare tyres. All tickets for the Grand Prix had been sold. Standing room only – queue early in the morning – which we did – minus Gilbert and Herbert. They had vanished.
In those days grand prix racing was a very different kettle of fish to how it is now. There were of course the factory teams, but there were also private entrants, and instead of the engines being tuned electronically by teams of scientist-mechanics in the pits of the carefully sealed-off track, tinkerers were at work in rented garages in the town. No television, no artificially built-up heroes, just superb drivers, glorious machines and all of it one could touch, look at from close by and, if one went to the right bar, one could actually rub elbows with tomorrow’s winner.
That Sunday we had to cope with something which, at least briefly, seemed incomprehensible. As we stood watching in the crowd, an hour or so before the start, the gates to the track were opened and Herbert’s blue-and-white Bugatti appeared. It had large numbers ‘23’ painted in the appropriate places. At the wheel, in racing drivers’ dress, sat the Garden Dwarf. On the tail, long legs dangling nonchalantly, sat Gilbert in dirty overalls. The motor was being revved quite convincingly, and then the Bugatti was parked in a suitable spot from which our two chums watched the grand prix in extreme comfort and for very little money. For the price of a pot of paint and the assistance of a professional sign painter the Garden Dwarf had delivered another masterpiece. Nobody even asked, certainly not the man at the gate.
We had a very lively celebration that evening, spending the saved ticket money, particularly Gilbert who decided on a visit to a local brothel. Herbert and his girlfriend departed in the morning in Bugatti number 23 and we stayed on for a few days. We noticed that Gilbert had started scratching himself in certain places but didn’t deduce that he had simply caught a dose of the crabs. He sneaked off to a doctor who prescribed something which should have been applied greatly diluted. Gilbert didn’t understand the French instructions on the label and suffered badly from burns – a truly unique case of a racing accident – but, on the whole, it had been a lovely trip.
7. THE PRICE, QUALITY AND QUANTITY OF LOVE
I LEFT THE ADLER WORKS and Dr Meyer of SS fame, not so much because I couldn’t stand the anti-Semitic atmosphere but because I had wrecked the company’s only demonstration model of a long-awaited new vehicle against a tree outside the Regina Hotel. I had the presence of mind the following morning, with the help of a mechanic friend, to simulate a faulty bake, leaving the left overs in the yard and my letter of resignation on Meyer’s desk. This resulted in the all-important remark ‘verlaesst die Stellung auf eigenen Wunsch’ (leaves his employment by his own request) being included in an otherwise unusually brief testimonial.
I moved on to work at the Kolb Garage in the Bauerstrasse to sell their, and my own, used cars. I managed to take my tame, brake-fixing mechanic friend, Tony, with me and between us we produced some – outwardly – truly well reconditioned automobiles.
Tony also discovered a racing car for me he had found in a barn near Munich, for which I paid 500 Marks to a peasant whose son had left the thing behind without an explanation when he left to go abroad. Called ‘Tracta’ it had been made in France, had a 1.5 litre four- cylinder engine, was supercharged with front-wheel drive and was twenty years ahead of its time. The makers had disappeared, and rumour had it that none of the twenty cars they had built had ever been raced. Tony put the machine into tip-top running order and we polished the aluminium body to a high degree. We timed the car at 183km per hour, which was a lot for this sized engine in those days, and I entered it in a race, the Kochelberg Hill-climb in which three classes of drivers were allowed to compete; professionals (including factory drivers), drivers licensed by national associations and ‘others’ like me. In each class the top boys started first and the slowest last.
1
A decorated wooden framework supporting the coffin of a distinguished person during a funeral or while lying in state.