Golden Boy. Paula Astridge
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.’
CHAPTER TWO
Albert’s only redeeming feature, in his parents’ eyes, was that he continued to distinguish himself at school. His most recent accolade was that he had won the prestigious National Mathematics Competition.
It was an outstanding achievement for one so young, which not only elevated Albert’s own scholastic status but also that of his school, rocketing it up into the ranks of those more select educational institutions which had the credentials to demand exorbitant fees and the respect of those wealthy enough to pay them.
The Speers’ blissful few months of boasting about their son was almost enough to make them feel a certain warmth for him. And would have, had Albert not destroyed his homefield advantage with his peculiar penchant for mingling with Mannheim’s lower classes. It was a quirk in his nature that his parents were convinced he embraced out of spite as another of his stubborn attempts to hinder their happiness. By constantly dredging up friends from the pits of the city’s population, Albert was creating a major stumbling block for his family’s footing in high society.
‘How dare you embarrass us by bringing the butcher’s son home for tea!’ his mother remonstrated with her perfectly manicured fingernails dug deep into Albert’s arm and her voice at a volume loud enough for the poor boy in question to overhear.
Needless to say, that friendship came to a swift end, as did all others of which his mother did not approve. Which left Albert back where he always seemed to be: alone, both at home and at school. Unlike his popular, athletic brother, Hermann, who had just been voted class captain and his younger brother, Ernst, whose audacious charm made him the centre of attention, Albert had nowhere else to turn but to the thing he did best.
That was, concentrating full-time with that astonishing IQ of his, on reading, writing and arithmetic. For the third, he had a passion and proficiency, which was to set his direction in life. For reading and writing — a yearning destined to help him battle his way through it. In fact, if school had only required his skill behind a desk he would have sailed through, but his obligatory lunchtime excursions into the ‘killing fields’, commonly known as the school playground, put paid to that.
Within its harsh, asphalt confines he was beaten up on a daily basis, the regularity of the attacks to his person and pride making him