‘You are lucky to come from such a beautiful place,’ she said, as they drove across the wild, treeless moorland between Launceston and Bodmin. The landscape was dotted with granite boulders and thickets of rough furze, devoid of human markers except for the occasional isolated farmhouse, and it interested Archie that she should find its starkness beautiful. ‘Why did you leave it?’ she asked.

‘College first, and then the war.’

‘You must have been young to fight.’

‘That’s kind of you, but not really. I was twenty when I signed up, and there was nothing particularly young about that, even in those early days. I suppose you were still at school?’

Marlene nodded. ‘They made us knit for the soldiers – mittens and scarves, sweaters if you were older. I’m sure they only did it to make us feel useful.’ She stared out of the window at a dark mass of rock on the summit of a hill, silhouetted against a pale sky like the ruins of a castle. ‘The wool was so rough, and I could never keep it from tangling. They called it field grey, which puzzled me. I’d never seen a field that was grey, but I suppose the battlefields were.’

‘Brown and grey, yes – like a never-ending winter. I remember coming back to England on leave, and all those summer greens seemed so artificial.’

She lit a cigarette for each of them and looked curiously at Archie. ‘Why are you smiling? You surely don’t have fond memories of that time.’ 89

‘No, not at all. I was just trying to reconcile the little girl and her tangled knitting with the woman I saw showing the Nazis out of her hotel suite.’

‘The little girl was defiant too.’

‘Yes, I’m sure she was.’

‘I was thrown out of school for it,’ she said, a hint of pride in her voice. ‘There was a French POW camp near my home and we weren’t supposed to go anywhere near it, but I loved France, even then. On Bastille Day I took the soldiers white roses and pushed them through the barbed wire fence. Someone saw me doing it and the mothers demanded my blood.’

Archie smiled again, picturing the scene. ‘How did your family fare during the war?’ he asked, realising how little he knew of Marlene’s life outside her films. ‘Did your father fight?’

She shook her head. ‘No. My father was a lieutenant in the Royal Prussian police, but he died when I was six and I never really got to know my stepfather. He was killed in the middle of the war. Most of my cousins, too. By the time it was over, we were a family of women, all in black.’ She had spoken vehemently against the Nazis throughout the journey, expressing opinions very similar to his own, and it was easy to forget that he and her family had fought on opposite sides. ‘It seemed to go on for so long,’ she said. ‘My cousin Hans said that your men pitied ours towards the end. They threw cans of food over whenever the gunfire stopped. He loved your corned beef.’ There was a weariness in her voice, which spoke for both sides. ‘It’s good to know that people can think for themselves when it really matters, isn’t it? It gives me hope.’ 90