The Truth in Our Lies

by Eliza Graham

  ‘Thanks.’ He took what might have been an aspirin from a pill box and swallowed it with a sip of water. ‘I feel better now it’s nearly time.’ He glanced at the clock.

  ‘Waiting around’s the worst bit. But you’ve prepared very thoroughly for this.’ I couldn’t do much to help him from within the glass box, but I hoped my presence would be reassuring. The announcer, a German from Saxony, came inside and introduced himself to William. ‘Break a leg,’ I said.

  I moved into the control room, Beattie coming to join me. We put on our headphones, waiting for a radio station in Hamburg to go off air, at which point we’d jump onto its frequency, seamlessly assuming its identity. Eventually, Beattie said, when we were using the new transmitter, we’d have our own frequency, and there wouldn’t be this moment of heart-racing as we took over from Hamburg.

  The announcer would commence with the news. Then the audience would be expecting to hear the broadcast – sermon, you could call it – by the kindly, ageing German priest Father Josef as performed by Gerhard Meiner. Meiner had probably now been transferred to a discreet clinic for the addicted. He might reappear in Aspley Guise again at some point.

  As always, I pictured our listeners. A middle-aged couple, perhaps. He too old to fight but drafted into some civil defence job. Sometimes he came home too late to listen to us. His wife always tuned in, though. She’d be knitting something warm for their son on the Eastern Front. There was a daughter, too. She was younger, doing her homework, half an ear on the wireless, having attended a League of German Maidens session earlier in the evening. Perhaps she’d find the religious broadcast a bit staid, preferring the upbeat music, an antidote to the stodgy old League meeting. Or she might enjoy my Clara play. I felt a connection with this imagined family, almost an affection for them. I spent so much time trying to enter their heads.

  Just before William started, the announcer would briefly explain why a new priest was taking over the slot, using Beattie’s words about correction and gratitude. I looked at William in his blue uniform – surely Beattie could find some way of letting him wear civilian clothes, so much more suitable for broadcasting? William rubbed his back in slow circles. The legacy of the crash landing?

  As the last minute trickled away William seemed to change in front of me. His pallor left him, his posture became more upright. Yet simultaneously his face almost lost its smoothness, turning into something more wrinkled and lined.

  Seconds to go. William straightened the script in front of him and adjusted the microphone again. Three seconds. Two. One. The announcer pressed the button illuminating the green light on the control position beside us. The engineer pushed a key to switch off the green light and replace it with the red one. We were live.

  ‘Guten Abend,’ the announcer said. I felt the usual relief that the jump onto the frequency had worked. He read the news. We still obtained quite a bit of it from an official German teleprinter accidentally left behind in the London embassy at the start of hostilities. ‘The audience actually gets more truth from us than they do from their own broadcasters,’ Beattie liked to tell us. ‘When we’re not lying to them, that is.’ We’d added to this evening’s news with our own intelligence: accurate, but not necessarily what the German authorities wanted the public to know. Accounts of bomb damage provided by RAF reconnaissance and verified on the ground by people who supplied information to British intelligence, specific as to street names and numbers. Commendations for members of the armed forces. A little piece about a Berlin film studio Beattie was particularly pleased with. We’d probably informed the actors, director and producer that they’d be filming a new production of a Grimm’s fairy tale before the propaganda minister Goebbels himself had had time to tell them. I hoped this infuriated him.

  I pictured the announcer’s voice turning into electrical impulses as it passed through the microphone, running through amplifiers in the control room, along telephone lines to the transmitters and from there pulsing above English fields and then the sea, eventually to be picked up in Germany. We couldn’t easily fight the Germans on their own soil. Even the arrival of the Americans into the war hadn’t seemed to bring an invasion of Occupied Europe much closer. Until it happened we had bombers. And we had the war of minds, a part of which was fought here.

  The announcer introduced the religious programme, explaining what had happened to Father Josef, using Beattie’s suggestions. Being sent to a camp would do Father Josef good, he explained, making the ordeal sound like a kindly if robust educational experience, until he added that Father Josef had requested listeners’ prayers for a quick recovery from a bout of dysentery.

  And then he introduced the new Father Friedrich, who would provide the radio flock with fresh spiritual nourishment. With a final nod to the newcomer, he sat back. William was on.

  What came from his mouth, from his whole body, astonished me. I had known some good student actors, one or two who’d gone on to act professionally. I’d seen Laurence Olivier onstage several times. I’d expected William to be satisfactory.

  He wasn’t satisfactory. It wasn’t a good acting performance. It didn’t seem to be a performance at all. William was Father Friedrich. I couldn’t even see his blue RAF uniform any longer. I was seeing a shabby German priest in his late thirties who was pleading – subtly, carefully, but intensely – for his radio listeners to think about what was going on in their country.

  A bead of perspiration fell down William’s neck. He twisted a hand to wipe it away. I held my breath. He paused, coughed. Good. Father Friedrich wasn’t a professional broadcaster, coached to perfection; he was a cleric.

  William followed Father Becker’s script exactly, without a mistake but with an occasional slight hesitation to make him utterly believable. It was one of Becker’s best creations. Not for the first time I wondered at how our somewhat bumbling team member could produce such well-tailored pieces.

  William blessed the audience in Latin. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, he concluded. The announcer introduced the swing band. When the switch to the music studio had been made and the technician gave us the thumbs-up, Beattie let out a sigh. ‘Told you the lad would be good.’

  ‘More than good,’ I said.

  ‘I know how to choose people.’ Beattie took out a cigar and scowled at me as though implying I was the exception to the rule.

  ‘I’ll go and get him something to eat and drink.’ William had been too nervous to eat beforehand.

  The meat pies had not been replenished but the canteen hut gave me a plate of sandwiches and a mug of coffee for him. I returned to find William in the corridor outside the studio. ‘You were wonderful.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He looked triumphant but as though every particle of energy had been pumped out of him.

  I held out the sandwiches. ‘Let’s get you some fresh air and refuel you.’

  ‘You make me sound like a plane,’ he said.

  Another man might have made a joke about me changing his oil or checking his plugs, but not William. He seemed relaxed with women, holding doors open for the uniformed girls and secretaries rushing past, seeming to note, like any man would, the pretty, shapely ones, but not leering at them.

  There were a couple of folding seats we sometimes took out of the studio to sit on if the guards were amenable. While we were outside the sealed studio we couldn’t talk about what had been broadcast; it was strictly forbidden, and if another team of broadcasters appeared we were not supposed to talk to them at all.

  ‘Do you miss flying?’ I asked.

  He thought about it for a moment. ‘I miss the crew. Crews. I was on several.’

  ‘Switching over must have been hard.’

  He nodded. ‘I started to feel like a bit of a Jonah, to be honest. I was the only one of my first crew who survived. Then, when they switched me to the second Halifax, we lost two men. By the time I moved to the third crew to replace the navigator they’d lost, everyone must have seen me as an albatross.’

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nbsp; ‘That’s tough.’ I remembered how superstitious flying crews were. Everything had to be done the same way, each time. Same lucky charms and mascots. Same meal. Same drink. Same jokes. Survivors could be irrationally blamed for all kinds of ill luck.

  ‘The last crew were a good bunch.’

  ‘You must miss them.’

  ‘Sometimes, yes.’ William gazed up to the sky, where the Milky Way blazed. ‘Even in London you can see all these stars some nights,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember it being like this before 1939. Some religions believe that people become stars when they die, don’t they?’

  ‘“When like stars his children crowned, all in white shall wait around,”’ I quoted.

  ‘“Once in Royal David’s City”, my favourite carol,’ William replied.

  I stared heaven-wards. Was Grace a star now? My mother? Such a childish fancy, but appealing.

  ‘Who did you lose, Anna?’ William looked at me. ‘It’s the question we’re not supposed to ask, isn’t it?’

  ‘My sister. She died when . . . After an incendiary hit us.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘And someone else. He didn’t die, but I . . . couldn’t face him.’ I twisted my mouth. ‘Literally.’

  ‘Do you miss him?’ His eyes were full of concern.

  My sigh was a little puff of mist in the cool air. ‘Sometimes.’

  He stared down into the contents of his mug. His hand shook. Some of the tea splashed onto the grass. Noticing my eyes on him he appeared to flip out of whatever was troubling him. ‘Those sandwiches were good. Do you remember coming in after a performance and suddenly feeling ravenous? I used to raid the larder at my landlady’s.’ He spoke jovially but beads of perspiration had formed on his brow again. He shook slightly. Post-performance release, I remembered, could make you feel shaky with relief. Or was it his back? He rocked forward slightly, clasping it with one hand. That malicious companion, pain, always lying in wait. I hadn’t thrown it off completely myself.

  I smelled Beattie’s cigar before I saw him. ‘Nothing more we need to do here tonight. Let’s get home, kids.’ The black car was pulling up in front of the studio. I took a last look at the Milky Way streaming across the night sky.

  Atkins got out to open the doors. She really didn’t need to. ‘Good for me to jump in and out of the car, sergeant,’ she said, reading my mind. ‘Need to keep fit.’

  ‘Atkins is missing her riding,’ Beattie told us.

  ‘When I’m on motorbikes it’s almost as good,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I’ll get some time at home soon. We’ve got lots of American officers in the house. Bit of a change for my folks, but they’ll survive.’

  Atkins said it drolly, but I thought we’d all fallen into a fast-flowing river. When we surfaced again we’d find ourselves washed up in places we didn’t recognise.

  9

  ‘Let me come with you to Waites Farm,’ Micki said. I was packing up my satchel with notepad and pen. The nib on the latter had started to scratch. I took a spare pencil as insurance.

  ‘Not this time.’ A fortnight had passed since William had joined us and Schulte had been transferred to the farm. William and I had prepared our interrogation approach just as we might have rehearsed scenes from a play. We would extemporise according to the answers we pulled out of Schulte.

  The corner of Micki’s mouth twitched. I’d come to recognise this as a sign of deep displeasure. Her initial quietness had definitely faded. It was a relief to hear her sing to herself or chatter to the terrier in her rapidly improving English. But as her confidence grew, so did her boldness.

  ‘I could ask that Nazi the questions that would really show him up for what he is.’ She folded her arms.

  ‘I know.’ William was already standing outside, waiting for the car. Father Becker was smoking in the garden. I could speak freely. ‘But it’s not your project. You’re not authorised. Sometimes we have to keep our work in separate boxes. Even among ourselves.’

  ‘You don’t trust me.’

  ‘I do.’ I put down my satchel. ‘In due course Beattie may have you working on projects that I’m not authorised to know about, things you can’t mention to me. He may even lend you out to research units I’ve – he’s – never even met.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘I might not always work with Beattie?’

  ‘Quite possibly. We aren’t supposed to ask questions about the other units, though.’

  ‘This place.’ She shook her head.

  I touched her arm. ‘It seems mad, I know. Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole – you know that story?’

  ‘Of course.’ She flashed a look at me. ‘I did actually grow up in a house with books, you know.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’

  This time it was she who touched my arm. ‘Forgive me, I’m over-sensitive. It’s still so strange, all this . . . what we do. I do not always know how to behave. Part of me still thinks I need to defend myself, take what I can from other people to survive.’ She looked down. ‘I am trying not to be like this.’

  ‘You’re doing well. It’s a big change coming from Lisbon to here.’ I looked at her, trying to establish whether I could say what I wanted to. I took the plunge. ‘And Maxi, you must miss him.’

  She swallowed. ‘At first I didn’t. It’s so different here. But now, I think of him, Anna. At night, in bed.’

  ‘That’s always the worst time,’ I said softly.

  Micki looked up. ‘Beattie said you had a sister.’ I hadn’t mentioned Grace to her before. I’d told William about my sister, so why not Micki?

  ‘Did she . . . ?’

  ‘She died in the Blitz, yes. In one of the last raids.’

  ‘Same time your face was burned?’

  I nodded.

  She spread out her fingers on her desk and looked down at them. ‘I keep wondering whether I could have done more for him. If he’d got better food when he first fell ill, perhaps he might have put up more of a fight.’

  ‘I blame myself for my sister’s death, too. She wasn’t strong. She was born with some handicaps.’

  She looked startled. ‘Surely not, Anna – it was a bomb, it was the Nazis—’

  I could have told her, but there wasn’t time, not when the car was already crunching up the drive. ‘Oh I blame them, too. Part of the reason I came here was to get my own back.’

  ‘Me too.’ She gave me a conspiratorial smile.

  Car doors were opening outside. I picked up my satchel. ‘Do me a favour and read through my Clara episode? I’m not sure I’ve got the locals quite right. William and Father Becker don’t quite understand what I’m trying to do with the female characters.’

  ‘Comment on your play?’ She sounded startled. ‘Me?’

  ‘It’s not restricted, so anyone in the unit can read it and I think you’d have very useful comments.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Pencil any observations in the margin.’

  Beattie came in. ‘Haven’t you gone yet, Hall?’ He looked at Micki. ‘You’re coming with me, get your jacket. Some German sailors have washed up in the local cage. I want you to talk to them.’

  ‘I’ll look at the script later,’ she told me, looking excited. ‘If you don’t mind, Anna?’

  Schulte, the German prisoner, didn’t look as much like a fox this morning as he sat in the farmhouse kitchen. Spring had given way to winter again. It had rained – the drops turning to sleet – since dawn. Through the window I could see the mud-strewn tractor. The two Italian prisoners prodded at the engine, their expressions bleak, perhaps wondering if they’d ever again enjoy the sunshine of their homeland.

  Fresh air and better rations had filled out some of the sharpness in Schulte’s face. His boots were muddy. Sewn to his uniform were strips of coloured fabric identifying him as a prisoner in case he tried to escape. I could see by the way he glanced down at them that the strips and dirty footwear weren’t to his taste. Let him feel uncomfortable, on edge.


  The Waites’s daughter, Mary, who looked about seventeen, wanted to set up a trestle table and some hay bales in the barn for our interview of the prisoner, but Mrs Waites had intervened, quietly clearing the kitchen table, placing a log in the stove. Mrs Waites was a well-preserved woman in her forties and would have been pretty if she hadn’t lost her son to a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany and her husband to a heart attack.

  ‘Thank you, both of you,’ William said. ‘Please stay out of earshot until I come and tell you you may return.’

  ‘See if Giovanni and Carlo have got the tractor going yet, Mary,’ her mother told her.

  Schulte turned his head at the mention of the tractor.

  William gave the girl the apologetic smile I’d already noted. Her frown softened as she left with her mother.

  It hadn’t taken long for me to see why Beattie had wanted William to work for the research unit. William’s emollient skill and ability to read people meant he could do far more than act out the part of a radio padre. It had only been a few weeks, but it felt as though he’d always sat in the front room of Mulberry House with Micki, Father Becker and me. Only last week that bashful smile had worked its charm on the stationery officer when we’d run out of envelopes and were informed that no more could be obtained for two weeks. William had strolled over to the cottage housing the supplies office and returned an hour later carrying half a dozen envelopes and knowing more of the private history of the stationery office clerk than I had gleaned in months.

  He closed the stripped oak door behind the two women and sat down beside me, facing the prisoner.

  I slung my satchel over the back of my chair. Light from the kitchen window streamed in, casting the men’s shadows against the wall to my side. Only a wooden kitchen table, its surface worn smooth by decades of use, stood between them. The young men’s silhouettes were almost identical: both formerly enemy combatants, both tall and athletic, still in uniform, though Beattie had agreed that William should wear civilian clothing and was negotiating with the RAF on this concession. He still hadn’t made a similar move on my behalf.