The Big Lie (22 page)

They pulled it out of me, tipped me upside down and clapped me on the back to make sure I was empty. Then they set about filling me up again.

‘Do you know why we didn’t cut off your hair?’ my interrogator asked at the end of my last session. On that brief walk I was given outside, weeks back, I’d seen girls with hair shorn tight against their heads and others with long plaits. Like much of what went on in there, I thought it was all random.

‘We don’t do it to the clever girls,’ he told me. ‘The girls with excellent heritage.’

I nodded. My hair grew very fast at home. Mum would trim it regularly. Here it had grown hardly at all.

‘We knew we could re-educate you. And quickly. Quicker than it would take for your hair to grow back.’

I was supposed to be thankful, but I was nothing but angry – that they thought they had me all sussed out, right from the start.

It was not only my hair that had stopped growing there, but my nails too. Everything had slowed – my breath, my pulse. I was becoming stiller, a tortoise. I stayed in my shell most of the time.

‘We’ve had a few hiccups, haven’t we, Fräulein Keller?’ He grinned. ‘But your mind is clean now. I will personally vouch for that.’ He signed the piece of paper in front of him with a flourish. My skin felt tight over my jaw. It would have hurt to say ‘thank you’, so I didn’t.

The freckly warden collected me. But she was a different person now. She wasn’t pretty, not viewed from the inside of my shell. Perhaps the place had turned her ugly. We collected my few belongings from the single cell – my toothbrush, spoon, beaker, dish, the warm sweater – and she took me on my first long walk outside in two months. It was freezing, but I didn’t care. The light, the blue, the feeling of the wind pushing my smock between my legs, the birdsong clear, not muffled – I had jumped into a lake after the longest, hottest day.

‘This way.’

We turned the corner of a long, thin building. Ahead a group of women moved rubble from one end of the fenced parade grounds to the other. Wardens stood watching. German shepherd dogs panted clouds into the air.

‘You will learn to become useful again,’ the uniformed man had said. ‘And to do that, you must get back in touch with the land, with work.’

Useful to whom? He didn’t say. I was useful to no one. I could barely put one foot in front of the other. We came to a door.

‘We’re putting you in with the politicals,’ the freckly warden said, each word a grudging gift. ‘Count yourself lucky.’ She hooked a finger under the black triangle on my chest and tore it off in a swift yank. ‘Don’t let them see you with that.’ She shoved a flimsy red triangle into my palm instead. ‘If they did, they’d eat you alive.’

The breast of my smock was ripped and flapping, my loose grey bra on show.

The freckly warden punched me in the back, her knuckle meeting bone. I thought of Fisher’s gentle touch loosening my spine as he kissed me behind the curtains of the meeting hall. Just a different kind of force – no better. The room was warm and fuggy, and silent as soon as I came in. Heads turned and lifted from their beds.

‘Baumann!’ the freckly warden barked.

A tall woman in a grey smock stepped forward. ‘Yes, Fräulein.’

‘She’s all yours,’ muttered the freckly warden, and I was handed over.

I leapt out of my seat, put myself between the typewriter and the door, my backside on the keys. I thought I had locked myself in. WHY HAD I NOT LOCKED MYSELF IN? My heart was climbing out of my throat. I looked up.

GG – standing in the spill of light. Dirty riding trousers, untucked shirt, tall black boots. It could have been worse, it could have been one million times worse.

‘You have to go!’ I spluttered. ‘Go away!’

‘What?’ She grinned.

‘I’m serious, G. Go! Pretend you never saw me.’

‘What
are
you doing? Sneaking around in here in the daytime, Secret Agent Keller …’

She closed the door behind her and headed my way.

‘I’m serious, GG.’ My voice climbed an octave. ‘You’re going to get me into trouble, or I’m going to get you into trouble.’

Killed,
I wanted to say.
You’re going to get us killed
.

She ignored me, came right up close. I pressed myself back against the typewriter and the table. Her eyes were red, as if she’d been crying. But GG never cried, so that couldn’t have been it.

‘Come on, Jess,’ she said all quiet and low. ‘We’re going to be hundreds of miles away from each other in a few days’ time. No one is worried about …’ She didn’t finish. She took a great big stuttering breath and buried her face in her hands.

There was a weird silence. Then an even weirder snort from behind her fingers.

It took me a few moments to realise. GG was crying. GG. Crying.

I wanted to move forward and comfort her, put my arms around her, but I couldn’t. MUSN’T. I kept my hands pinned to the frame of the typewriter behind me.

‘Sorry,’ she said, coming up for air. ‘I’ve just had to say goodbye to Sassy. Mum and Dad have sold her because I’m going away and …’

She buried her face in her hands again.

‘When do you leave?’ I felt like a monster, just watching her sob.

She lifted her head. ‘Thursday. You?’

‘Next week.’

She nodded.

We stood there for a moment in the quiet of the hall, watching dust motes fall from the skylights.

‘It’ll be good there,’ she sighed. She was talking about the stables, not skate camp; reassuring herself, not me. Her chest started hiccupping from the tears.

‘More horses,’ I offered brightly. ‘New ones that you might like better.’

She scrunched up her face to show how little I understood.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

She closed the gap between us and peeled one of my hands off the typewriter. ‘It’s okay,’ she said, playing with the end of my fingers. ‘Bit like me saying you’ll find another Clementine at skate camp.’

She met my eyes. I was speechless. That she had said her name, more than anything. No one had since the concert. Only Herr Hoffman, only to condemn her.

‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

I nodded. I thought about asking her the same thing back.
Are you okay? That all along I loved someone else?

‘Do you know what’s happened to her?’ asked GG.

I shook my head. I started to cry. I let myself ask – GG was in all sorts of trouble now anyway, just being in this meeting hall with me. ‘I couldn’t see,’ I said. ‘Afterwards. Did you see?’

‘I saw them carry her off stage but …’ She stopped; she shrugged. Then her arms came around me. I let her pull my head into the crook of her neck – figs, brown sugar, mixed with a little bit of horse.

‘I miss her so much,’ I said, tasting my tears and her skin.

‘I know you do.’

What I wouldn’t have given for someone to have done this on the day of the concert. In that blacked-out car that took us home, couldn’t my father have held me then? No one would have seen. My mother could have squeezed me tight when I came into the house, all sooty and stained. Or would that have been an admission? Of something …

‘I just want her back,’ I sobbed.

‘Me too.’

She let me cry, then she gently pulled my head away from her neck so she could kiss me full on the mouth. A kiss of life. I kissed her back, hard and urgent. This was all I had wanted, someone to be truthful.

GG went over to the door and locked it. We took ourselves behind the curtained section at the back of the hall and made a bed of the PE mats. I was grasping at love, I realise, and I knew GG might be the very last of it.

The tall woman with the cheekbones stepped forward. If not for her grey smock and rubber clogs she would have looked like one of the girls in Clementine’s magazine. Angular, underfed.

‘Clara Baumann. Block senior,’ she announced. Her newsreader English made me stand up straighter. The rest of the women in the room started creeping – cats towards a bird.

‘Name?’

I gave her absolutely all of it. ‘Jessika Davina Keller.’

It wasn’t what she was expecting. Her hard jaw dropped. ‘Sorry?’

‘Jessika Davina Keller,’ I repeated.

The cats slunk nearer.

Clara twisted her neck to look at me with one questioning eye. I thought she was gearing up to slap me, but no, she started laughing.

‘You’re kidding me! You’re
kidding me
!’ She spun round to call to another of the cats. ‘Bells! Bells! Come here, look at this.’

A short, stout woman elbowed forward and came to stand alongside Clara, making her seem even taller, giraffe-like.

‘Daniel Keller’s daughter!’ Clara announced.

They knew me.

How could they know me?

Bells narrowed her eyes, the grooves in her forehead rivalling those of a toast rack. ‘Can’t be.’ Her voice was like gravel. ‘We would have had word of this.’ She folded her arms.

The pair stared, Clara’s face wavering between amazement and suspicion; Bells’ face unimpressed.

Clara coughed, she sharpened her vowels. ‘Right. Tell us what happened on 13
th
August.’ She laid it down as a challenge.

I didn’t know what to say. If I had been in one of those white-washed rooms with a tape recorder whirring, I’d have understood which version of events to give. If I had been stood in front of a smiling peppermint lady … But what did these women want?

The cats were shoulder to shoulder now, bringing with them the sour smell of unwashed hair.

‘There was a concert,’ I began, ‘in Trafalgar Square and …’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Bells cried out – her words came as if raked through a cheese grater. ‘She would know all of this, even if it wasn’t her.’

‘Who was your neighbour on Lincoln Drive then?’ Clara chimed in.

My mouth opened and shut uselessly like a fish on dry land.

She knew where I lived.

How could she know where I lived?

‘See!’ cried Bells. ‘She don’t know nothing. She’s nothing but a liar.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not a liar!’ Not in that moment. ‘The Hart family!’ I blurted. ‘The Hart family were my neighbours!’

Clara gasped. Bell’s narrowed her eyes. The cats shuffled closer.

‘First names,’ prompted Clara.

‘Jocelyn …’ I began.

A little cry of
oh gosh
…

‘… Um … Simon …’

… a few laughs of joy …

‘… And Clementine Amelia Hart.’

Delighted squeals from them all.

‘Still …’ muttered Bells. ‘But she’s still …’

‘No, she’s not,’ said Clara. ‘Not, if she’s in here.’

But Bells wasn’t giving up. ‘It looks nothing like her! The Nazi’s daughter had meat on her bones!’

Clara took hold of my chin, lifted my face to the light. ‘I can see it, can’t you? Her father. Look at the nose, the eyes.’

I twisted free of her grip. I was nothing like him.

‘Tell us what happened on 13
th
August,’ Clara asked again.

‘There was a concert,’ I said. ‘In Trafalgar Square and …’

‘Shhh!’ Clara spat to the whispering cats behind her.

‘And …’ I said.

‘Go on …’ she said.

A terrorist made an attempt on our young people’s lives.

‘I can’t,’ I said. I looked over my shoulder. Had the freckly warden really left? Did I imagine that? Had she heard everything? Would she be reporting back? ‘I just want to …’

They moved as one, wordlessly, and created a cocoon around me.

‘They can’t hear you,’ Clara whispered. Her breath was sweet but stale, her lips a firm and definite line. ‘You can tell us the truth.’

I could feel the warmth of them. They bent their heads in. They all wanted it. They wanted me to say it, even though they had heard it already. To them, this was good news, proof that the fight goes on.

‘Clementine Amelia Hart tried to start a revolution,’ I said.

All around me, teeth, smiles.

‘And what did you do?’ Clara asked, a tear trickling down her sharp, grey cheek.

‘I put out the fire.’

The women held their breath.

‘But only because,’ I said, ‘I wanted to save my friend.’

The cocoon fell in on me, so many arms wrapped tightly around my vanishing body, even the reluctant arms of Bells.

We stayed curled up into each other.

I wished that I’d had a moment like that with Clementine, a quiet and gentle moment which I knew for sure was the last. I wanted to go back, say a proper goodbye.

‘It’s terrible what happened,’ GG said, her mouth close to my ear. ‘I can’t stop thinking about it. Whatever made her …’

‘I understand, I think.’ I traced a finger across GG’s chest, joining one scattered freckle to the next.

Ever since I’d learnt to talk, I’d learnt to be careful about what I said and who I said it to. Even a good friend could betray you. So this was self-destruction.

‘There were too many reasons …’ I told her. I pictured my typed list:

THEY TOOK AWAY HER PLACE AT MUSIC COLLEGE. THEY TOOK AWAY HER MOTHER’S JOB, THEY TOOK AWAY HER FATHER. THEY WERE GOING TO CUT HER OPEN AND STOP HER HAVING CHILDREN.

The list snapped me back to reality. GG must never hear Clementine’s reasons coming from my mouth. She must not see the paper. Had she seen it already? I leapt up.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

‘I have to …’ I found my bra and fastened it in place, gathered together my hair that smelt of rubber from the PE mats beneath us, pulling it into a neat-enough bun. ‘I just have to …’ That pang of disgust at myself again, for my desires. I was wicked. I let it pull me off track, away from the most important thing I would ever do. There was something wrong with me. All the risks I would take and the risks I was willing to ignore. I slipped on my pants, bundled the rest of my clothes together and walked out from behind the curtains.

‘What happened to her parents?’ GG called after me.

I dropped my clothes by the typewriter and ripped the typed sheet from the roller, slipping it carefully into my bag.

‘I don’t know,’ I called back.

‘Are they dead?’ She was out from behind the curtains, still naked, holding her jodhpurs, shirt and underwear against her chest. The blonde triangle of hair between her legs made me think of fish-scales, of mermaids.

‘I think so.’ My voice came out as a whisper. ‘They don’t do all of them in the square, or on the lamppost.’ There had been a man on the high street earlier when I passed through, quite young, the flies just getting word that he was there. I STOLE FROM PARTY PREMISES AND SOLD THE SPOILS FOR MY OWN PROFIT, his sign read. ‘They do some of them quietly,’ I told GG. I had listened through the door one evening when Dad had Fräulein Krause over for urgent business. I’d heard him dictate the word ‘guillotine’.

‘I’m not quite sure why they waited so long,’ I went on. ‘They could have avoided so much trouble for themselves if they’d just taken the Hart family away when they first discovered that … If they’d just done it, I mean, just got on with it, then …’

What was I saying?

WHAT WAS I SAYING?

‘No,’ I spluttered. ‘I didn’t mean … I didn’t mean …’

Defending the Harts would get me killed. Condemning them meant I was an animal.

GG’s mouth was open.

‘I have to go.’ I couldn’t look at her any more. I couldn’t have her look at me any more.

I lifted up the typewriter, the sharp metal edges pushing into my arms and bare belly, and started towards the cupboard.

A loud crash stopped me in my path – the sound of a bunch of keys falling to the floor. The bolt was turning in the meeting hall door. The door was opening. Fisher’s keys sang as they slid across the floorboards in the door’s path. I backed away from whoever might be coming in. GG, not caring that she was naked, stepped forward to get a better view.

Fräulein Eberhardt. Her piled-up hair, like a squashed plump pudding, came around the door.

‘G-girls?’ she stammered, her mouth then forming a perfect ‘O’.

And in my panic, I dropped my favourite typewriter, shattering it to pieces at my feet.