The Hidden

by Mary Chamberlain

  She had a bottle of Riesling in the fridge. It had been on special offer. Not that Dora was poor, but she was careful with her money. Perhaps all refugees were careful with money.

  ‘Thank you,’ Barbara said. ‘I have no plans for this evening. That would be nice.’

  ‘Well, make yourself useful,’ Dora said. ‘There are olives in the fridge. Please will you take them out, put them in that dish.’ She pointed towards a brightly painted bowl that she’d bought in Spain one year.

  It was strange having another woman in the kitchen. Dora had always thought she’d resent it, but Barbara didn’t seem to crowd the space. This is what it must be like to have a daughter, taking charge, knowing where the cutlery lived, or where the breakfast cereal was kept. Perhaps when she was older and she needed care, she’d allow a nurse in to prepare her meals. Could she afford that? Better than meals-on-wheels, cooked in some institution and delivered at ten o’clock in the morning. She had a neighbour who relied on them, and he always complained that they were cold and came at uncivilised hours. Well, she had a few more years before she need think about that.

  ‘Will you pass the wine, too,’ Dora said, ‘while you’re there.’

  Dora rummaged in the drawer for the corkscrew, reached up to the shelf for two glasses. No. She’d use the best. Bohemian crystal. Uncle Otto had bought them on the black market on a trip he’d made to Prague.

  ‘Shall we sit outside?’ Barbara said.

  ‘Why not?’

  They threaded their way down the steps and across the lawn, placed two fine flutes on the table, and a bowl of olives. Dora opened the wine, poured. She raised a glass, and Barbara did too, smiling at each other, like old acquaintances, Dora thought.

  ‘May I ask you another question?’ Barbara said.

  Now Dora wished she hadn’t invited Barbara to stay. She’d be happy with chit-chat, Do you have anything planned for the weekend? Are you going on holiday this year? Of course Barbara wanted to carry on dredging up the past. Why else would she accept the invitation? Perhaps, Dora thought, she was asking for this. Deep down, was her unconscious grateful for Barbara’s questions? Imprisoned by memory, hammering to be set free. That was a shocking thought, that she welcomed Barbara’s probing. Dora felt small beads of sweat break out on her forehead. That hadn’t happened since the change, and Dora wasn’t sure why she felt so agitated.

  ‘You said you’d seen my mother on the island. Do you know when she left?’

  Dora bit her lip, felt something stir deep inside, as if a slumbering volcano was taking a stretch, a yawn, working its way to erupt. ‘As I said, I didn’t know her. I’d see her riding her bike, in her uniform. I really didn’t notice when she went,’ she said.

  ‘But approximately? Was it in the spring or the summer of 1944?’

  ‘No one could come or go after the summer,’ Dora said. ‘The island was under siege.’

  ‘I forgot. Was it the spring?’

  Dora had lost track of time, dates jumbled and jumped. 1944. 1945. She wasn’t even sure about the seasons, at least, not the in-between seasons, those days when winter and spring fought it out. What had the weather been like? It was cold. They’d had Christmas, because she remembered thinking what an extravagance it was, to have a tree, when they were short of firewood. Or was that the year after? Was it the Christmas before, the time List sent her to work in the Revier? When had he given her the soap?

  ‘I can’t think,’ Dora said.

  ‘Please try,’ Barbara said. ‘It is so important.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My mother showed up in Hamburg in August 1944,’ she said. ‘Frau List thought the baby was about six months old. That makes sense. But my mother doesn’t look pregnant in the photograph with List that I showed you.’

  ‘Sometimes women don’t show much,’ Dora said, especially, she thought, the fleshy ones.

  ‘Hmm,’ Barbara said. ‘Not in my experience.’

  Dora laughed, took a sip of wine. ‘You are a midwife?’

  Barbara laughed then. ‘Maybe not.’

  ‘When is your birthday?’

  ‘The twenty-fourth of February.’

  Nurse Hoffmann was not pregnant, Dora knew, or if she had been, it was early days. Was that why Hoffmann had disappeared? It would make sense, before she showed. Dora lifted her blouse away from her neck, waved it so the breeze came through.

  ‘Perhaps you were a big baby,’ she said. No baby was big in the war, but Barbara wouldn’t know that. She was sure Hoffmann had left in March 1944. Cold. Windy too. What was it the English say? March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. It had been windy, standing outside for the Appell in the driving, biting rain.

  ‘That woman, the one whose photograph I first showed you,’ Barbara said. ‘Are you sure you don’t know her?’

  ‘I’ve told you,’ Dora said. Snapped. ‘No.’

  ‘Perhaps she was a friend of my mother’s. Please think.’

  ‘Why are you dredging up the past?’ Dora said. ‘Why are you doing it? Why are you really doing it?’

  Barbara sat back in the chair, ran her finger round the rim of the flute so it sang like a glass harp.

  ‘It’s been difficult for my generation of Germans,’ she said. ‘To live in the shadow of the war, with parents refusing to admit what happened. We took on their guilt.’

  ‘You can’t be blamed for the past.’

  ‘No, but we are responsible for the future. We need to account for what went on, before we can forge ahead. That doesn’t start in the archive. It starts at home.’

  ‘But why is this woman important to you?’

  ‘Because I have this crazy feeling,’ Barbara said, ‘since I found the photographs, that perhaps my mother isn’t even my mother.’

  ‘She brought you up. Cared for you. That’s a mother.’

  ‘Perhaps she adopted me.’

  ‘Still your mother. Besides, she would have told you.’

  ‘She lied about the war. Why shouldn’t she lie about that? Women of her generation often lied about adopting a child.’

  ‘Do you not have a birth certificate?’

  ‘Only a replacement,’ Barbara said. ‘My mother said that all her papers were lost in the war, the originals, and the archives were bombed. She could have made anything up.’ She breathed in. ‘I think that woman might know. Perhaps my mother kidnapped me.’

  Dora laughed, a short nervous tee. ‘Your father isn’t your father, your mother isn’t your mother. You’re not who you think you are. Goodness me, you don’t think you’re making too much of this? The English have an expression for that, making a mountain out of a molehill. Do you know it?’

  ‘I’m serious,’ Barbara said.

  ‘Enough.’ Dora’s voice was firm.

  ‘But the Nazis did,’ Barbara went on. ‘They kidnapped babies. Little blond, blue-eyed babies. To bring up as Aryans.’

  ‘This is nonsense,’ Dora said.

  The wine was making Barbara talkative.

  ‘Besides,’ Dora went on, ‘your eyes and hair are brown. Not very Aryan.’ She gathered up her glass and the bottle of wine and walked towards the kitchen, sensing Barbara behind her. ‘You have your mother’s colouring,’ she said over her shoulder. The end of the matter. She had been harsh. She wasn’t used to company, not awkward company. She wanted to be on her own. Barbara would have to understand that. She put the glass and bottle on the table, as a flash of emotion charged through her. She was going to cry, could feel the tears welling, her nose running. She brushed her eyes with the back of her hand, reached in her pocket for a tissue, and blew her nose.

  ‘I want you to leave, please.’

  She heard Barbara breathe in, limber up. ‘What is it you’re hiding from me?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Dora’s voice was loud and she could hear it quiver. ‘Go away.’

  ‘I am very sorry,’ Barbara said, ‘this upsets you. I had no idea.’

  ‘No,’ Dora said. ‘You have no idea. T
here are some things best forgotten. I can’t help you. I told you that from the start. Perhaps your friend in Jersey. What was his name?’

  ‘Mr O’Cleary?’

  ‘Yes. Perhaps he can tell you more.’

  ‘He’s not really a friend,’ Barbara said. ‘I’ve only met him once, and that was briefly.’

  ‘Then go back and ask him,’ Dora said. ‘I can’t think who he is, or how he knew me, or had my address.’

  ‘Ah,’ Barbara said. ‘He doesn’t know you. It was the old man who lives at the farm who recognised you. Mr O’Cleary just wrote to me. He’s the caretaker. Maybe the carer.’

  ‘The old man at the farm,’ Dora repeated the words. The old man at the farm. Her breathing became shallow, short, light pants. ‘Did you meet him? What did he look like? What was his name?’

  Barbara blinked, put up her hands. Dora wanted to grab her, shake the information from her.

  ‘Do you think you know him?’

  Dora curled her tongue over her lip, her thoughts moiling like an ocean in a storm. ‘I may,’ she said, her voice in quavers. ‘I may.’

  ‘I only saw him in the distance. White hair. Frail. I think Mr O’Cleary said his name was Geoffrey.’

  Dora grabbed the sink again, turned to face the garden. ‘Are you sure?’ she said, throwing the words over her shoulder.

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Dora said. She stared through the window, her mind churning, inchoate shoals of memories jostling her thoughts and reason. She saw them swarming in front of her, synchronised, beyond her control. What did they call it? Group intelligence. Fish. Birds. Ants. Memories. She heard Barbara cough.

  ‘Please let yourself out,’ Dora said, without turning.

  She waited until she heard the front door click shut, then poured herself another glass of wine, wandered back out into the garden.

  Geoffrey was alive. She sat, repeating it, like a mantra. Geoffrey is alive. Barbara’s questions swum in and out of focus. Dora had lost count of the days. Could have sworn it was March when Hoffmann had left, but perhaps it was earlier, in February.

  She had to go to Geoffrey. She couldn’t waste a moment. She’d go to the travel agent first thing, book a ticket to Jersey.

  Jersey

  The sea stretched as far back as the horizon and crags of rock jutted from the sand, sharp as sharks’ teeth. When the tide was in, the waters looked calm and peaceful, belied the treachery beneath.

  Green Island. That’s what the locals called this beach. The Germans had called it something else, but Dora couldn’t remember what. They’d cut it off with barbed-wire scrolls and mines, patrolled it night and day with dogs and short-haired soldiers. You’d never know that, looking at it now, Dora thought. Only if you’d lived through those times.

  It didn’t seem as strange coming back as she thought it would be. The houses were newer, fresher, more suburban than she remembered, as if they’d burst free from the chrysalis of her memory to become something altogether different. Not quite a butterfly, Dora thought, they were too ordinary for that, too pebble-dash and dull. Unless it was a plain butterfly, for instance, or a common-or-garden moth, the sort that chomped through cardigans and carpets.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Dora caught sight of double gates. She stopped the car, reversed. They were shut, chained and padlocked. Through their railings, Dora saw the gardens, overgrown and gone to seed. It had once been the beauty of the town with its promenade to the beach, its elegant terraces and well-tended beds, roses and begonias, hydrangeas and camellias, filled with the scents of jasmine and honeysuckle. That was how she knew, all that time ago. She’d recognised its perfumes. The building looked closed, unkempt, as if it had been shut for months, if not years.

  Dora moved the car forward, turned left, and left again. The gardens at the rear were as unloved as those in the front and the back of the hotel was boarded up. There was a side gate, from memory, that led to the courtyard behind the kitchens. Dora parked the car, walked round the corner. It was still there. She tried the handle. The gate was unlocked, though it dragged on its hinges and was heavy. Dora levered it open wide enough to squeeze through, pushed it shut behind her. It had been padlocked from the inside, but someone had wrenched the lock free. Children, most likely. Dora entered the small yard. The hotel was to her left, the street wall behind. The outbuildings and the old coal bunkers made up the other two sides of the courtyard.

  In her memory, the space had been bigger. Time did that, played tricks. Now it had shrunk, was small and shoddy. Seedy, even. The stucco walls were stained with blotches of mould which crept up from the ground, the paintwork on the windows flaking, a dull, dead green. Some of the panes were broken, and the courtyard was filled with shards of glass, broken wood and old cardboard boxes. Plastic bags had drifted into the corners and sweet wrappings littered the ground. Dora guessed the rubbish had been thrown over the wall. A buddleia straggled close to a drainpipe and weeds had sprung up through the spaces between the cobbles. It used to be spotless, swept twice a day, the mould scrubbed clean and whitewashed away. It was hard to remember it now with the women lined up and the soldiers shouting out the numbers. Hard to remember how the square itself had taken on a life, had domineered and threatened.

  Dora walked forward. A block of plywood had been nailed across the windows of the kitchen doors. It was rotting round the edges. Dora prised it free with the car keys. The glass panes beneath had been shattered. Dora put her hands through the gap, felt for the bolt, released it. The door swung open and Dora stepped down inside. The smell of must and damp, the fungal emptiness of the building, made her cough.

  The kitchens were dark. They always had been, half below ground and overshadowed by the buildings in the courtyard. The little natural light they owned was now covered up and the day came through in the cracks and chinks. Dora waited for her eyes to adjust. The equipment had gone, the pots and pans, the cookers and cupboards. The quarry tiles on the floor were stained and littered, like the yard, with broken glass and scraps of paper. There were a couple of old wooden tea chests in the corner. To her left would be the dormitory with its stacks of bunks and the stench of drains. To her right, the boiler room. Opposite, the steep steps up to the interior of the building. Dora climbed them and pushed open the green baize door, into the hall.

  The chequered marble floor needed a scrub. Her heels clicked as she crossed it, echoed in the hollow house. The vast oak staircase was still there, though the balustrades were dull and dusty, the ruby carpet threadbare on the tread, the stair rods covered in verdigris. To her left was the officers’ bar, where she’d first heard the words of ‘Lili Marleen’ being played on the gramophone.

  The verses swirled in her head. She knew the words off by heart, even now, after all those years. She walked along the landing, up and into the attics. Her fingers were shaky as she turned the door handle. She was all alone. What if the door slammed behind her and she couldn’t get out? No one knew she was here and her cries would not be heard. But something was drawing her in, churning flashbacks into compulsions. Come closer. The windows in here were unboarded and the sunlight filtered in, as it had always done. The cries of the soldiers evaporated into the past, but the smell of their wounds seeped into this dead air. The beds had long since gone, but the nurses’ office was still there, with its glass partitions. She could see her profile through the glass. Hoffmann. Nurse Hoffmann. Trude Hoffmann. The office was empty, the scales and instruments removed, the examination bed and medicine cabinet consigned away. The room was full of cardboard boxes.

  Dora took out her cigarettes. This was where she had begun to smoke properly, whole cigarettes, real cigarettes. Senior Service. She could remember the day. And the time. It was in the evening, about six o’clock. 10 May 1945. The bells of St Nicholas in Greve d’Azette had been ringing all day, but they had stopped then. Gone to tea, the Tommy had said. He was a Geordie and Dora couldn’t understand him, not at first. He’d given her that first
cigarette. He’d called it ‘a fag’. D’you fancy a fag then, pet? She’d had a twenty-a-day habit ever since. She took one out of its packet, placed it on her lips and fished around inside her bag for a match. Swan Vesta. She struck it against the coarse edge, lit her cigarette, tossed the match away as she walked towards the cardboard boxes with ‘Campbell’s Tomato Juice’ stamped on the side.

  The boxes were unsealed. Dora pulled out long strands of tinsel and twisted paper chains, rolls of crêpe and folded tissue bells. Christmas decorations. Box after box. It was a big hotel. Every room would need to be decked out. The English did that at Christmas, made dull rooms gaudy, tasteful spaces cheap. Tawdry. They even ruined the majesty of a fir tree, hanging it with pink baubles and stringing coloured lights through the branches.

  She sniffed. The match had set fire to a scrap of paper. Its edges were blackening and curling and small orange flames flickered towards the unburned centre. Dora watched it flare and die.

  This room was so very different now, but its ghosts were tumbling in. Collette’s emaciated frame, Agnes’s jowls hanging like dewlaps on a cow. The faces of the young women and girls who had come and gone.

  Hotel Maison Victor Hugo, Jersey: February 1944

  ‘You know what?’ Agnes squatted on the bench beside Dora that evening, after the meeting with List and Hoffmann. She put her bowl on the table, slurping the soup over the side as she steadied herself. She licked her hands. ‘Waste not, want not.’ Grimace of a smile. ‘He took my baby,’ she said, leaning into Dora.

  ‘What baby?’

  Dora wondered if Agnes wasn’t a little delirious, had caught a fever. She had no child that Dora knew of.

  ‘My little blond-haired baby. He still had his curls.’ Agnes’s eyes filled with tears and her nose began to run. She wiped the mucous with two fingers, dragging it across her mouth, ran the back of her hand across her cheek. ‘I never told you this. I never told anyone.’

  Then why me? Dora thought. Agnes had made no secret of her contempt for Dora, and Dora didn’t trust her now. But Agnes was no actress, and the tears were genuine. It could have been a phantom pregnancy, of course. Dora had read about them, though she’d never had a case.