The Big Lie (9 page)

Revolution, you arseholes.

I understood why she got suspended.

When Dad got home, he told me that Frau Hart had lost her job and I made out that I didn’t know. She had been fired, he said, for theft. Not even the Reich Labour Service would trust her with a broom in a factory after this.

‘Oh my gosh, what did she steal?’ I gasped.

‘No one likes a scandalmonger, Jessika. Control yourself,’ he snapped back.

I wondered if he could feel it too, how we were performing, playing our parts. Without much enthusiasm.
I have of late – but wherefore I know not – lost all my mirth.

Dad told me, ‘Just let there be a lesson in there for you, Jess.’

He never usually spelt things out like that. The moral was always implied and understood. It lived there in the Zwischenraum – that space between. You absorbed it like oil through the skin. Now he was drawing my attention to it, this slick of oil.

There it was, sitting on the surface.

I was grateful for the birthday celebrations – a day of song and ceremony. Something to replace that missing mirth. It was just what Clementine needed, too. Though she had opted out of the BDM, she couldn’t opt out of this. The Hitler birthday celebrations were the highlight of our year.

We boarded the train to London that Saturday with the extra thrill of knowing that the day would be one big dress rehearsal for the show we’d be putting on in Trafalgar Square that summer.

Clementine did not sit with us; she was in a separate carriage, with the others who had opted out. They were all from the other school, of course. No one else from our school would have dared leave the BDM. I didn’t like to think of Clementine being grouped with those other girls. Despite all evidence, I still believed that she was one of the upright, quality people from the illustration in my biology textbook. How could she be wonky or bandy? Because what would that have said about me if she was my friend? Or rather, what did it say about my dad, choosing her as my friend?

There had been talk of Clementine being moved to the other school, as punishment for the essay.

‘How awful,’ I’d said when Dad told me.

Though I couldn’t help thinking about that girl GG had envied – Mariel – with her hair dyed two different colours. Clementine would have actually liked to switch schools, I was sure of it. She would have taken a twisted pride in being considered wonky and bandy, enjoyed the liberties of it.

‘They won’t move me, though,’ she said during one of my secret visits to her house. ‘They can’t. Because that would only demoralise all the “little people” at the other school, wouldn’t it? To say that going to their school was somehow a punishment.’

‘I suppose so,’ I said.

Clementine’s little knocks and taps – I couldn’t deny it – they all made sense. I was hungry for more of them, just to test them out.

‘And they have to keep all of those lowly folk on-message, don’t they?’

I shrugged.

‘Yes, they do,’ she said. ‘Because they’ll be needing them for cannon fodder down in Egypt and Tunisia any day now.’

‘Nothing’s going on in Egypt and Tunisia,’ I told her.

I was aware of Frau Hart’s words coming through in the things that Clementine said.
Demoralise. Lowly. On-message. Cannon fodder.
It made me nervous.

‘No, you’re right,’ said Clementine. ‘It would have been on the People’s News, wouldn’t it? If something was happening. A big deal like that.’

She raised an eyebrow and let me do the rest.

Clementine and the girls in the other carriage were wearing armbands. I didn’t know why. I thought perhaps it was a gesture to remember the fallen. But the day wasn’t about that. It was a happy one – marching, dancing, all the ten-year-olds getting sworn into the Jungvolk and Jungmädel, their very first step on the ladder. So it had to be some kind of health and safety measure, I decided. Their teacher in charge needed a way for her group to stand out in the busy crowds of London, as they didn’t have a uniform like us. That was why they wore that black triangle.

The train was decorated with strings of tiny little flags. Helium balloons bobbed against our carriage ceiling. Ruby Heigl led us all in song. Fräulein Eberhardt had just announced that Ruby would be the new leader of our area’s Jungmädel in September. I was doing my very best not to be cross about it. It didn’t mean that she was better than me. I had a different calling. And if I hadn’t been going off to skate camp, I would have been chosen to lead those girls (including my little sister) and teach them how to use a sewing machine and bake a soufflé and how to tuck and roll their way out of an explosion. I would have signed up to Faith and Beauty too, like Angelika and the others who were all staying local, and become an expert in hairstyles and all those lovely dances. Everyone was gradually being given their opportunities. This would be the last spring and summer that we would all be together like this, in our little Mädelschaft, alongside our Kameradschaft of boys.

Karl Pfizer was joining the air division, Michael Baxter was going out on the boats. Erica Warner was being all secretive, making out she couldn’t tell us what she’d been allocated because it was so absolutely classified. Total shit, we all decided. Something deathly dull in the Reich Labour Service. Her skin would be turning yellow while she stuffed TNT up the backsides of bombs.

The quota place at university for a girl was going to Helen Beider. No one talked to Helen Beider, apart from Greta Askwith, because they were both über-bright to the point of weirdness. Then something happened, because all of a sudden the girl’s place was going to Greta, and absolutely no one was talking to Helen.

‘Greta grassed her up, didn’t she?’ GG said.

‘For what?’ I asked.

‘Dunno, but she found something.’

GG had got what she wanted – she was going to the West Country to help train the horses.

‘What’s going to happen to you?’ I’d asked Clementine.

‘I know, right?’ she’d exclaimed, as if the question had been rhetorical.

Ruby started us off with ‘Tanz Rüber, Tanz Nüber’
–
‘
Dance Hither, Dance Thither
’ – our favourite song, especially when the boys weren’t with us, because we could have fun doing all the voices. We bellowed it back and forth to each other across the carriage.

Lots of fun. Then we went all hymn-like for a bit of ‘Kein Schöner Land in Dieser Zeit’
–
‘
No Country More Beautiful in This Time
’
–
with Angelika and Ruby competing to see who could make their voices warble on the highest harmonies. Ruby was the victor, of course. She could have joined the opera with lungs like hers. Except, if she did, who would she get to boss around then?

We moved onto some marching songs, ready for when we got off the train at Marylebone.

We got drunker and drunker on the sound of ourselves. The songs always seemed to unify me with my friends. Just the right combination of notes to swell the heart, the perfect rhythm to match the fall of your feet. I’m not sure I ever paid much attention to the lyrics, only the melody, only the feeling.

We kept up our singing as we took the Tube across town, joining in with the boys, our words bouncing off the curved ceilings.

We joined up with other companies from across the city, from across the Home Counties. By the time we reached Victoria there were thousands of us – one big voice, an amazing sight. I was arm in arm with GG and Erica. Women lined the concourse, come especially to show their little children the sight of us. They lifted them up onto their shoulders for a better view and the children waved their flags, their faces painted red, white and black.

We transformed that train station into a stadium. The vibrations from the singing went through your belly and into your bones. As we made our way along the platform, I turned to find Clementine in the crowd. I wanted to see if her heart was full too, if this had been some kind of tonic for her. Her group was a short distance behind us, heads down. Most of the girls’ mouths were moving along to the words, but none of them were really giving it their guts. There were no smiles.

The female teacher from the other school who was leading the group, a pug-like woman with a decorated hat, saw me craning to see and followed my line of sight. Clementine’s mouth wasn’t moving at all. The woman looked stung by this, and by me – told off, I suppose – even though I hadn’t insinuated anything. She took her elbow and jabbed it sharply in Clementine’s ribs.

‘Sing!’ she instructed.

Clementine swung sideways like a punchbag. She was off somewhere else, in her head.

‘Sing!’ hollered the woman again, her elbow giving a double stab this time.

I let go of Erica and GG, let them press ahead while I moved against the surge of the crowd to find my way back to Clementine.

I would tell this woman, this subordinate teacher from the subordinate school, to leave Clementine the hell alone. And she would listen to me – that was what I was thinking – she would listen because of who I was.

But before I could get there, Clementine had neared the pair of Wehrmacht men who were keeping order on our side of the platform. They had heard the woman yelling. They were watching, waiting for Clementine to get close.

‘Sing, Schlampe!’ The nearest man barked as Clementine passed.

Sing, bitch.

‘Sing fröhlich, du Hure!’

Sing gladly, whore!

And he poked the end of his rifle into Clementine’s cheek, so hard that it nearly knocked her off her feet.

At Crystal Palace, Clementine was herded into a low section of the stadium with lots of other children who weren’t in uniform, other children with black triangle armbands. They were crammed in tight by the running track. We had a high position in one of the stands where we were able to see the formations of the dances. The Faith and Beauty girls spelt out the words WIR GEHÖREN DIR for the Führer.
WE BELONG TO YOU
.

‘You should have seen it from where I was standing,’ Clementine said later as she lay bundled up in her bed. She was under the duvet, her forehead hot and damp, as if she had a fever. I was on my back next to her, on top of the covers.

‘Their tits were jiggling,’ she sneered, ‘their little white shorts even shorter than last year … SS stiffies all round.’

Clementine told me that she had got the round, purple bruise on her upper arm (to match the one on her cheek) when she didn’t salute at the correct moment and was instructed, ‘Salutier, Schlampe!’ and given another jab with a Wehrmacht gun barrel.

‘Oh, they made sure our arms didn’t droop too,’ I said, because they had, and because I was sure that Clementine must be exaggerating. I let myself wonder if she had given herself the second bruise to support her story.

When the rows of chosen HJ boys did their march past, Clementine said that they did an extra eyes-right, after the one for Herr Dean up in his part of the stand, just so they could gob on the black triangle kids.

She waited for my reaction.

‘We should have a day to mark Herr Dean’s birthday as well, don’t you think?’ I said in the perkiest voice I could manage. It had been a day of celebration, I didn’t want her to twist it. ‘It’s silly that we don’t already, isn’t it?’

‘It’s because we’re living in the past, Jess, and a pretty shitty one at that.’ Her dark boulder of a voice squashed mine flat.

‘Oh, come on, Clementine,’ I said, pleading a little now. I put my hand on the duvet-ed shape of her. ‘I really must forbid you to think like that.’

She shrugged me off. ‘Well, you can’t,’ she spat. ‘Because you don’t have that kind of power.’

I should have given up, walked away, let what she’d said so far settle in my mind. But we were still desperately grappling with each other then, trying to pull one another over some invisible line.

‘So, why were you wearing those armbands anyway?’ I said. It had meant to be a way to change the subject. On a conscious level, at least. I thought we could share a joke about the fussy dog-faced lady who’d been leading her group.

‘Oh, stop playing innocent,’ Clementine cried from beneath the covers. ‘You know why I was wearing one.’

‘I don’t,’ I said. ‘I don’t know why.’
And I am innocent, actually
, I wanted to add
.

‘
Asocials
,’ she said. It was a heading to a familiar list: reasons to wear the black triangle. I knew it. But I hadn’t put the two together – Clementine’s black triangle and THE black triangle. I hadn’t let myself. Because why would they have ever gone together?

‘
Vagrants
,’ she began. ‘
Beggars, idiots, workshys
– what a lovely poem this is! –
the diseased, the damaged, the dissolute
…’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Okay.’

‘
Alcoholics, prostitutes, pacifists …’
She said that last word with a little upward inflexion of pride. Then she threw another word into the air, a word that wasn’t on the list. ‘Lesbians?’

It fell fast, like a stone.

‘It’s not a crime,’ I told her.

She rolled over then to face me properly.

I folded my arms – eyes to the ceiling. ‘I mean, they said it was okay for you to opt out. That’s not a crime,’ I went on. ‘There was an announcement.’

‘Yes, there was,’ she said. ‘You’re right. And wasn’t that just a wonderful, wonderful trap?’

‘No, you’ve got that wrong.’
Nonsense
, my brain was screaming.
This is nonsense.

‘You wait until they make changes to Paragraph 175,’ Clementine said, rolling back over, ‘without anyone telling you first. Then you’ll see how it feels.’

Paragraph 175.

I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of asking what that was.

‘Anyway,’ she muttered, ‘I should have been wearing a red triangle.’ She curled her fingers into a tight, defiant fist against the pillow. ‘All of my crimes are political.’

Sometimes, I would pick Lilli up from school, if Mum was busy with charity work, or sewing club, or extra Frauenschaft responsibilities.

‘Where’s Mum?’ would be Lilli’s first words as she handed me her satchel. Not hello.

‘Oh, she was really very naughty so they put her on a fast train to Highpoint,’ I’d say.

And Lilli would tut and roll her eyes.

‘No, she wasn’t,’ she’d say. ‘No, they haven’t.’ Then she’d launch into an epic monologue about her day, as if her life was just the busiest in the whole of dem dritten Reich.

I would take Lilli the short walk across town to the gymnasium, fold her clothes while she changed into her leotard, help her work the lockers. Then I’d go up to the rows of seats on the balcony gallery and watch her practise. She would work on the bars: her killer blow in competition. Her wrists bound, her hands powdered, she mounted the block she used as a launch pad to the highest bar and up she went – a flying monkey.