The Big Lie (24 page)

I listened at doors.

They started having hushed little arguments. And Mum took to drinking. Not much, just a gin and tonic in the evening, but it was quite a development considering she was all set to have another baby once I’d flown the nest. Something had to be badly wrong for Mum to throw purity out the window.

I was convinced it was all about me, the bickering. They were deciding what sentence to dish out – for the keys, for the typewriter, for GG. But when no punishment materialised, I told myself I was paranoid. My time as a national hero had led me to believe, mistakenly, that I was the centre of everything. The graffiti at the ice rink – that was just a coincidence and not the harshest of words. VERRÄTER would have done the job better.
TRAITOR.
My parents’ spatting, meanwhile, was down to their wobbly marriage. Mum’s plan to have another baby was a fantasy. She was too old. I had seriously started to doubt then whether she had even given birth to Lilli. A memory of my mother fat and pregnant just wouldn’t come to the surface. Dad, of course, still had a lot to offer.

So I left them to it. I moved on.

I volunteered to walk with Lilli to school, which might have raised suspicions if that bus wasn’t taking to me to skate camp in three days’ time. We were all allowing ourselves to be a little more sentimental – like the families on the television dramas who stroke each other’s hair in broad daylight and tip their heads to the side in love and admiration. And actually, I did feel sad about leaving Lilli, and my parents.

‘You know it’s not your job to look after the new neighbours,’ I told my little sister as we headed along the cut towards the stream and the ditches. I’d slipped on Wolf’s lead and brought him with me. Moral support. His claws skittered against the pavement beside us, his furry back bouncing reassuringly.

‘What do you mean?’ Lilli asked.

Yes, what did I mean? Because I did want her to look after them, just like I had tried to look after Clementine. But I also knew that was too much responsibility for an eleven year old.

‘I mean, you don’t have to play with them if you don’t want to. If you really don’t like them.’

‘I don’t ever play with anyone I don’t like,’ Lilli replied, smartly. And I could hear my old arrogance in her voice, the sense of position and entitlement you got from being in our family.

‘Good for you,’ I replied. And I think I meant it. I envied her, that she could feel so sure of herself.

I dropped Lilli at her classroom, promising to meet her there at the end of the day and took the fork in the path leading to reception, tying Wolf to the school sign. He curled up straight away, grateful for the rest.

At the desk, I rang the little bell and Fräulein Gruber’s stockinged legs
snip-snipped
her over to the window of reinforced glass. Her long, neat nails slid it open. I couldn’t shake the idea that Herr Hart’s sleeping bag should be there underneath her desk.

‘Fräulein Keller, how lovely to see you!’ She adjusted the position of her glasses on her nose as if focusing binoculars. ‘Not off to skate camp yet?’

I shook my head. ‘Three days’ time.’

‘Well, we’re all so looking forward to seeing you on television in the National Championships.’ She beamed, I grinned back and we stayed like this until our smiles wore out.

‘So what can I do for you?’ she offered.

‘Well, I’ve written a newsletter,’ I announced, pulling it from my bag and sliding it across the counter for inspection. ‘It’s for everyone in our old Mädelschaft, a bit of information on what everyone is up to now.’

A bit premature, isn’t it, Fräulein Keller?
– she should have said.
Some of you have only been gone a day or two.
But Fräulein Gruber wasn’t someone to be bothering with original thought. Not in the presence of the Reich’s favourite daughter.

‘Oh, how lovely!’ She picked up the newsletter and held it at a distance, as if it was a piece of art to be put on the wall and admired, not something to be read. This was probably for the best as most of it was made up.

‘So,’ I told her, ‘I need the key to the photocopy room.’

The rest of the day, I wandered, scared to head home with my bulging bag, all those copies of Clementine’s face. I went up to the high street and had a cup of tea in The H Place, shivering at one of the outside tables because Wolf was too whiny to leave alone. My mother had been nudging me to organise some kind of meeting with Fisher where I could lay down the case for us to remain a couple throughout my time at skate camp. I momentarily considered heading to his lodgings to do this, if only for a more awful distraction from the awful thing I’d just done. But I knew I couldn’t go there with my bag stuffed with posters. I wouldn’t be able to do anything with any real focus until they were out of my hands. But I had to wait, until the last minute. Do it, get on the bus to skate camp, get out of there. That was the plan.

I busied myself buying small going-away gifts for Mum and Lilli in Fascinations, then I went in search of something to give to Dad, picking up book after book in Smiths, but not finding anything right.

Then after struggling to fill the time, I managed to leave a whole five minutes late to meet Lilli. This became ten minutes when a strange woman grabbed me by the arm on the high street and asked directions to the station, ignoring all of my claims that I was in a mad hurry. Three times I ran through the very basic instructions before she would let me go. I sprinted the last stretch to Lilli’s playground, Wolf struggling to match my pace. I arrived hot-faced and sweaty as the last of the kids trailed away with their stachels and paintings of sunsets. I went up to the door of Lilli’s classroom just as Fräulein Kling was shutting the door.

‘Oh, she’s gone,’ she said, not taking her hand off the handle or looking me in the eye.

‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘We’d arranged to walk home together.’

‘Quite sure. She left with a man, I think,’ said Fräulein Kling. Then quickly: ‘Though I couldn’t possibly say for sure.’

She closed the door and flicked the latch.
A man!

‘Wait!’ I banged on the glass, but Fräulein Kling had left the classroom, pretending not to hear.

Guilt hit me hard and immediately. Crazy with panic, I went to every set of swings near the school, yelled her name across the fields, Wolf joining in with sorrowful howls. I would find her, I told myself, no one need know, all would be fine. That thought danced menacingly with the belief that I would certainly discover her mutilated body in the woods. I worked my way back to the high street, Wolf limping now, on his last legs. Lilli wouldn’t have left with a man she didn’t know, I was convinced. She understood the rules of stranger danger. Fräulein Kling was mistaken. She must have sneaked off alone, to get me a going-away present in town. But she wasn’t there, I checked at Fascinations, everywhere! Nothing. The little daisy chain bracelet I’d bought for her suddenly felt heavy in my bag – heavy with tragedy.

I was going to have to go home, raise the alarm. I started running, past the Party building, past the florist, up towards the turning for the County Roads Estate … And then, there she was. She was stepping out of the back of a large black car. I ran to her as she waved her driver away.

‘Where have you been?!’ I shrieked.

‘For a milkshake,’ she said. The most obvious thing in the world.

‘With who?’

‘That man.’

‘Did he hurt you?’

I worked my hands down her hair, face, arms, checking for damage. Wolf licked at her ankle.

‘No, of course not.’ Again, the way she was talking, I was the stupid one. ‘He was actually quite nice.’

She took my hand and started walking us back in the direction of our home. I was the kid sister now and she was the grown-up.

We walked past the lamppost. And we both stared, because today it was a girl. I recognised her. She was just a couple of years older than me. From the rough end of town. The sign around her neck read
VERR
Ä
TER
. Just that.
VERR
Ä
TER
. We were to fill in the rest, with our own guilt, our own shame.

‘What was his name?’ I asked Lilli, my voice trembling. ‘This man.’

‘He didn’t say.’

‘Oh,’ I said. I looked back over my shoulder at the girl, her hands tied behind her back, her head on one side like she was waiting for the answer to a question.

Then my little sister said, ‘But he knew your name.’

‘He did?’ A ball of something hot rose into my throat.

‘Yes,’ Lilli said, so pleased with herself. ‘He said you’re called Jessika and really you ought to be more careful.’

We didn’t always talk about death. Sometimes we talked about love.

‘Do you like girls more, or boys?’ Nina was pinching my feet between her thighs to warm them. In return, I rubbed her hands, careful to feel in the pitch black for the newest of her blisters and not press too hard upon them. ‘In the real world, I mean.’

‘Well, it’s not like there’s much choice in here,’ I snorted, because I wasn’t sure how to answer honestly.

‘I like boys most,’ she told me.

‘Right,’ I said.

‘Well, I did before I came in. Not so sure how I’ll feel when I get out.’

‘Can you change then?’ I asked. We swapped hands and feet. She shoved her steel cold toes between my legs. I could feel the indent in her calf from the dog bite she’d got that week, the wiry stitches resting against my thigh.

‘I dunno.’ She went quiet for a while. ‘They send men into the whores’ block sometimes. Men from other camps, the ones who have sex with other men. It’s supposed to make them normal again.’

Nina pinched each one of my fingers in turn, forcing the blood back into them.

‘Does it work?’ I asked.

‘How should I know?’ She placed my hands together on the mattress, making a pillow of them for her warm cheek. ‘Can’t stamp out the gays, can you? They just keep getting born right under their noses.’ She laughed at this. This was funny. ‘I wouldn’t let them know you like girls though,’ she said, serious again. ‘Not in that way.’

‘I never said I liked girls,’ I replied, ‘in that way.’

I wished it wasn’t dark and that I could see her eyes.

Nina went on. ‘Clara says, if a guard gets word, they send you off to a room with a soldier to … you know … get put right again.’

‘That’s not true.’ I knew that wasn’t true. I felt bad for cutting her down though. It wasn’t like I still believed that only Commie bastards did it, Commie bastards who kidnapped nice German girls.

‘Besides,’ I whispered, ‘all of the women in here are at it. So how could they possibly …’ They were, you could hear them, in the night.

‘It’s only because of this place.’ Nina rolled over, pushing the curve of her back into my chest. I put my arms around her. ‘You’ve got to get your affection somehow.’

I listened to her breath getting slower and deeper. Usually I fell asleep quickly, no matter what terrible things had happened that day. My brain was only too happy to switch off.

Today’s horror – having the new Frau Aufseherin, the one standing in for Boogie, a woman made of a different metal, come into the dorm and demand to know which one of us was going to beat Stephi for falling asleep at her workbench. My ‘Mutti’, Kika, had been the first to shoot her hand into the air. There were plenty of volunteers – maybe that was what upset me most.

‘Someone has to do it,’ Kika argued. ‘It may as well be me.’

She would be given cigarettes and extra bread as payment. Being part of her family, I would profit.

So off she went with Stephi, who returned half dead, her clothes drenched in blood. She’d had to remove her underwear and be strapped down while Kika whipped her arse until the skin was gone. Lesson learnt – Stephi wouldn’t be falling asleep again for days.

And I couldn’t sleep.

I thought of Clementine, about how when her family got to the USA at the end of their mythical escape they would have undergone a process of ‘de-Nazification’. Clementine said it didn’t matter if they were revolutionaries or not, they would be detained and questioned and counselled until the Americans were absolutely sure they held no sympathies whatsoever with the ideals of the Greater German Reich.

‘What ideals?’ I had asked her.

She gave me a long list. I didn’t recognise any of them as beliefs that belonged to me. I didn’t realise I had any ideals.

But now I saw.

Exactly the same thing was going on in here. We were being detained, questioned, counselled, with some hard labour and harsh punishments thrown in for kicks. And, then, in the end, though the intention was entirely different, the result was exactly the same. De-Nazification. All my sympathies, gone.

Oh god oh god oh god …

I ran through the house, unlocked the back door, burst out into the garden.

There wasn’t any time. There wasn’t nearly enough time.

‘Where are you going?’ Lilli squealed after me.

‘Nowhere!’ I shouted back. ‘Don’t follow me! If you do I will kill you!’

I tripped over myself to get to the trees, to the swing, to the stream, my heavy bag slamming against my kidneys. Wolf came with me, full of some kind of second wind, all deer leaps and skipping. To him this was some kind of game. It wasn’t. That girl on the lamppost had been for me, sacrificed just for me.

I stopped at the swing, the earth kicking and wheeling beneath me, my head spinning like I’d fallen from a badly executed spin. I would have toppled down the bank if it wasn’t for Wolf yipping at my feet, keeping me there, present, ready to act. I dropped my bag to the ground, fell to my knees and I started to dig, using fingers, pulling at the soft dirt. Wolf joined in, his front paws pedalling at the hole. We kept going. Panting, both of us. When the space was big enough, I opened up my satchel, pulled out the stack of posters and dropped them in, Clementine’s face looking back at me, that sneer. Wolf’s eyes peered up at me, all wet and eager.

Oh god oh god oh god …
It wasn’t going to work! It was never going to work! Wolf would dig them back up the first chance he got. I needed something else. I needed fire. I ran back to the house, Wolf still with me, springing at my heels. I slammed into the kitchen. Lilli was at the table drinking a juice she’d poured for herself. There was a pool of it on the table all around her cup.

‘Urgh!’ she cried, gulping down her mouthful. ‘You’re all messy!’

I yanked open the useful drawer and grabbed the box of matches. Wolf was turning crazy, muddy-footed circles in the kitchen, woofing out a
now what now what now what.

‘Where are you going?’ Lilli whined as I flew outside again. ‘Why can’t I come?’

We bolted the length of the garden, Wolf and me, and when we got to our hole in the ground, there it was – our next game.
Oh god oh god oh god …
Wolf spotted it quicker than me. He was off. Playing catch. The breeze had lifted the top sheets of posters and was casting a trail of them down the bank and into the water. Off they went, some of them becoming little rafts, heading downstream.

Into the water we went. In to save my skin. Not bothering to take my shoes off first. I didn’t care. I wanted to live, I realised. I wanted to protest, I wanted to have my say, but also I really, truly wanted to live.

Mum’s first words when she got back from her
Frauenschaft
meeting: ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Jess, look at my floor!’ I was standing by the washing machine, stripping away my soaking, filthy clothes. Wolf was at my feet, dripping, wearing a teatowel. Lilli loitered behind my mother in the doorway.

‘And she’s been playing with matches,’ she piped up.

‘Have I fuck!’ I spat back.

My mother gasped. I put my hand over my mouth.

I never said words like that in front of her. Ever.

‘I mean, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ I gabbled. I’d known that there was no chance I’d get cleaned up before she returned. I had prepared my lie. ‘It’s just that Wolf fell in the stream and I had to go in and get him and I was really scared because I thought that he was drowning and …’ I was crying. This was perfect. I couldn’t have rehearsed it any better. Wolf looked up at my mother with a pitiful face, slipping expertly into his role.

‘Just get upstairs,’ my mother muttered. She was shedding her coat and cardigan, ready to tackle the mess. I slunk past her wearing just my underwear.

‘Not you!’ my mother bellowed, snagging Wolf by the collar before he could follow me onto the hallway carpet.

I showered quickly, still doing everything to the beat of my racing heart. I raided my skate camp trunk for clothes. I’d been carefully not wearing anything I might want to take with me, but I had nothing left. They’d have washing machines where I was going, I told myself, I needn’t worry.

I didn’t bother to dry my hair. I got back to work. I shoved a chair up against the door, to stop Lilli wandering in, and lifted down my stack of magazines from the shelf above the desk. I pulled out the birthday celebration edition of
Das Deutsche Mädel
. I hadn’t hidden it exactly, because what better hiding place than in a stack of other completely harmless magazines. I flicked it open. I’d pulled out the wrong one – the genuine one. I tossed that aside and went through the spines looking for Clementine’s version.

Not there.

I spread them out across the floor, looking for the cover – the Faith and Beauty girls spelling our WIR GEHÖREN DIR.

Not there.

I went back to the edition I’d thrown aside, flicked through it again, expecting it to suddenly transform into the illegal version. No.

Not there.

Where was it? WHERE WAS IT?

Then I thought – Lilli. It had to be. She had been in here, nicking my things. I was all set to storm across the hall and create a tornado in her room when another thought arrived …

No
, I told myself.
No, no, no, no, no.

I crawled over the carpet to the loose piece of skirting board, slipped my finger down the gap.

Not there.

Clementine’s notes. Gone.

Oh, god!
I climbed to my feet, backed up against the door, clattered against the chair, forgetting it was there.

‘You okay?’ This was Mum’s voice.

‘FINE!’

Could I tell for sure? Would there be a clue? They must have left a trace, surely. I searched for it, no desire on this earth to find it. But there it was, on my windowsill. My skating trophies. They were neatly arranged, evenly spaced, that was okay, but I always organised them according to which win I was most pleased with, left to right, ascending order. Two trophies had switched places.

I couldn’t breathe.

Everyone in this house knew my trophy system. We had discussed the merits of each victory at length. Only a stranger would have made that silly error. Not my parents. It couldn’t have been my parents. The men must have come while we were all out. Acting without my father’s permission. Or the women. Maybe they send women to do the searching. Who knew? No one. That was the point.

I couldn’t leave my room. I couldn’t look my mum or dad in the eye. With one glance they would just know. I was no longer the Reich’s favourite daughter. I’d dropped the role. I hadn’t kept up my side of the bargain. I was not good.

I sat on the floor by the door. Didn’t shift. I pictured the magazine and the essay notes sitting on a desk somewhere. A wet poster hanging up drip drying – because we hadn’t got all of them, Wolf and me. I waded as far as I dared without getting pulled under by the current. I ripped the soles of my shoes on the rocky bed in the process. Wolf swam merrily, the ripples breaking over his face, freed by the buoyancy of the water from his irritating limp. The wet posters I collected, I rubbed into pieces at the stream edge until they were nothing but pulp that washed away. The dry ones I burned. I tried to picture the path of the stream – where those runaway posters might wash up. I imagined a group of faceless people standing around that evidence on their desk, speaking in murmurs, deciding my fate. Would it be a public one, where they sold tickets for the viewing gallery with Kaffee und Kuchen, where Ruby Heigl could strike up a verse of ‘Eine Flamme Ward Gegeben’
just so she could, eternally, in my last moments, make it all about her? Or would I get a lamppost, a one-word sign? Or maybe something private?

I stayed curled up and waited for the doorbell, for the men to come. Or the women. To take me away. And my family for harbouring me.

And during all of this, despite my regret, still my admiration for Clementine swelled, that she had faced all this and more, every day, without cowering in the corner of her bedroom. I was no revolutionary. What was I thinking? I was a failure, a coward. I was a traitor.