Читать книгу Golden Boy - Paula Astridge - Страница 8

CHAPTER ONE

There was no disputing the fact that Albert Speer got where he wanted to go by design. Talent and intent, however, are two vastly different things. And being in possession of the first did not necessarily mean he was guilty of the second.

Yet that was the way the world saw it, laying on him the blame for what had happened. What did it matter whether or not his involvement in the Holocaust had been hands-on? He was there and that was that — enough evidence in the eyes of the horrified human race to hold him responsible and to hound him to his grave.

At the age of ten however, Albert Speer had a long way to go before reaching that end and for the time being only had to cope with the fact that he was down and out.

It was for the third time in a week that a perfectly healthy boy fell flat on his face in a dead faint.

‘What on earth’s the matter with him this time?’ his mother, Frau Luise Speer, asked.

‘Bad blood circulation,’ the doctor replied as he detached the stethoscope and folded the rubber cords back into his black, medicine bag.

‘Well what are we supposed to do with him?’ Frau Speer’s voice picked up pace with anxiety at the sound of the clock chiming in the hall. It alerted her to the fact that her prestigious assembly of guests would be arriving for luncheon within the hour.

‘Live with it!’ the doctor advised with an austerity that matched her own.

His less-than-commendable bedside manner was perfectly acceptable to Frau Speer. She liked people who got straight to the point rather than dance around it with what they called ‘finer feelings’. Unfortunately, Albert was full to the brim of the wretched things, an emotional overload that, together with his skinny body, nervy movements and complex network of highly-strung emotions did not appeal to her one iota.

This ice-hearted austerity of hers, however, came nowhere near matching that of her husband’s, whose astonishing disinterest in his middle-placed son and namesake, Albert, broke all bounds of fatherly neglect.

‘He’s far too sickly to ever amount to much,’ he announced within his son’s earshot as Albert lay shaking and sweating all over his mother’s prized chaise longue. For that, Albert had already been soundly reprimanded by his Mama. Her distress over the damage done to its expensive French fabric had marked her beautiful but implacable brow with lines of concern — lines much deeper than those imposed by her son’s mystery illness. Both, however, threatened to mar her perfect peaches-and-cream complexion. A source of pride for her at the age of 30, which, but for her second son, would still be flawless.

Albert, it was always Albert! Quite honestly, there were times when she could not bear the sight of him. Times like these when she had to admit that, basically, she just didn’t like him. She found his thoughtful, intense presence oppressive, as if he were forever expecting some intangible thing from her that she could not give. Love, she supposed.

He could forget that idea! These days, she hadn’t the time or inclination to expend any more of it. Not with her hectic social schedule and when she had already drained her restricted resources of that particular commodity in favour of her two other sons: Hermann, her eldest, who was bursting with athletic prowess and future promise, and little Ernst, her youngest, whose beguiling blue-eyed, blonde-haired precocity made him the apple of everyone’s eye.

Yet this was exactly her point. If Albert wanted his share of her, then why didn’t he have the pluck to push himself forward and demand it, as did her other two sweet boys? Why did he persist, instead with such tiresome displays of emotional blackmail?

These regular fainting fits were enough to drive a saint mad. Albert’s mother, who fell fathoms short of the like, could more readily accept the doctor’s diagnosis than the possibility that Albert might be suffering from something more deep-seated than thin blood. It never crossed her mind that the root of his problem was stress as a result of the constant bullying he received from his two brothers and the conspicuous absence of love and attention from his parents.

‘Shut up!’ Albert’s 12 year old brother, Hermann, hissed at him the day before, as he rammed home his command with one, then two swift, savage kicks to Albert’s stomach. A third aimed at his head for good measure.

This was Albert’s punishment for having let out a yelp of acute pain after Hermann slammed the kitchen door fair in his face and watched with glee as Albert, for a stunned moment, stood stock-still with his body reverberating before he crashed face-first to the floor. There he lay dead still. The third kick to his temple had knocked him unconscious and it was taking him a few moments to surface from his swirling, black oblivion. He ‘came to’ just in time to hear the sound of his mother’s voice. ‘Really Albert!’ she called out, automatically blaming him. ‘Can’t you ever look where you’re going?’

It was comments like these that drove the accident-prone Albert to head in the direction of his father’s office. That large, sandstone building at the rear of their ten-bedroom, three-storey Mannheim mansion, where his father, Albert Speer Senior, conducted his successful architectural business with his 15 staff.

It wasn’t that his namesake, young Albert Junior, had any real interest in architecture as such. His enthusiasm was more for the friendly four walls that housed those who plied the trade – the only people on earth, it seemed, who wanted and welcomed him. Or who at least made a good show by putting up with him on a daily basis, even going so far as to set up a special desk for his use.

It was at this draftsman’s desk that Albert was working hard to impress his father. Sitting on a high stool with his legs too short to reach the ground and his tongue tucked conscientiously at the corner of his mouth, he was tackling a would-be professional sketch of a clock and its intricate internal workings, each of them in precise proportion and fine detail.

This work was a challenge quite beyond him, which he took on in his determination to prove that it wasn’t. At ten, he was too young to realise that this ‘nothing is impossible’ quality that was establishing itself in his nature, was to become its very keystone. That destined in the future to take on projects of mammoth proportion, young Albert Speer was to become one of the few people in the world undaunted at the prospect of achieving them. But for now, he was yet to prove himself.

‘Take great care with that, young man,’ said the head draftsman, Josef Rosenthal, as he looked over the rim of his glasses and smiled at the child’s innocent intensity. ‘You know what a stickler your father is for accuracy.’

‘I will, Herr Rosenthal, don’t worry.’

Rosenthal quietly turned and shook his head. He was more worried that the boy was going to get hurt; that no matter what he did he would never win his father’s favour. Where Albert had failed with one parent, he was sure to fail with the other and frankly, would need a battering ram rather than a pen and paper to break down the impenetrable fortress that surrounded his father’s heart.

Undeterred by this sad reality, young Albert had spent the last few weeks painstakingly working on his project to surprise him. Doing so, because he not only loved his father, he revered him and had weighed it up as a risk worth taking. With this, Rosenthal had to reluctantly agree. Lesser qualities aside, Albert Speer Senior was a man to be commended for all he had achieved in the corporate arena.

‘Make no mistake,’ Speer Senior told his staff. ‘I am not inspired to create and build for the love of it, but on a strictly cash basis.’

Expedient in his prostitution of the Arts, this businessman extraordinaire, sporting his gold-handled cane, stylish goatee and dashing, grey felt homburg, was nevertheless respected for his strong sense of morality which, much like his finely tailored, pinstripe suit was all black and white. Yet firmer still than his strong line of design was the one he drew between good and evil. He was determined to stay on its right side.

In the same pragmatic way, he drew the line when it came to love, casting it aside in favour of good sense with those closest to him. Starting from when he had married the rich industrialist’s daughter, Luise Hommel.

He had whisked her pretty, social-butterfly-self away from her set of excited suitors — that large contingent of soldiers and solicitors, doctors and dandies who waved her and her fortune farewell as she left with her up and coming architect husband. Not disappearing into a romantic sunset of crimson and gold, but down the hard asphalt road that led to Mannheim, a German city with sooty grey edges, which was on the move and where money, in its millions, was to be made.

‘This provincial little backwater,’ as Frau Luise Speer called it, ‘has effectively put an end to my life. But I refuse to be cut off entirely from society. If I have to live here, I’ll make them all sit up and take notice.’

And always a woman of her word, she never let her husband forget what she had given up for him. It was fortunate that they were both sensible, financially-oriented creatures. Within days of their honeymoon they struck a deal that had nothing to do with romance, but rather a kind of detached sense of security. Its lurks and perks coming in the form of separate beds, social prestige and buckets of cash. With enough of it left over for Luise to hire a live-in dressmaker to cater for her insatiable love of fashion.

It was strange that in the Speers’ striving for all that was superficial in life they should fail to recognise the potential in their middle son, the only one of the three at their disposal who showed any signs of being able to provide them with their heart’s desire. They never dreamed that it would be this innocuous, second son of theirs who would do them proud and provide the fodder for their frequent ego trips around the vanities of the world. But for the time being, Albert being named after his father and looking like his mother endeared him to neither.

‘Who did this?’ asked Albert Speer Senior, when tired and tense after his last business meeting, he returned to his office, picked up the finished sketch that his son had proudly placed on his desk and quickly scanned it.

Red-cheeked with shyness and suppressed excitement, young Albert could barely wait for his father to guess and cover him with praise. The last thing he expected was to see him immediately rip it in half and throw it in the bin.

‘Don’t waste my time with such amateurish rubbish,’ he instructed his secretary, as he sat down, irritably, in his black, leather chair and picked up the phone. ‘Just bring me the Holzman file and a strong cup of coffee.’