The Truth in Our Lies

by Eliza Graham

  ‘Helping us must be worthwhile for Mary.’ Beattie returned to his desk and fed an envelope into the typewriter, his fingers as deft as any professional typist’s. ‘I know that type of farming stock – if you push them, they dig their heels in. Stubborn folk.’ He rattled out an address. ‘What might Mary like?’ He removed the typed envelope and inserted his letter into it. ‘Come on, Anna, you’re a woman of the world.’

  I could feel the unblemished side of my face blushing as I answered. ‘Nylons. Hand cream. Nail polish. Or lipstick.’

  He opened his desk drawer and removed a key before nodding at a cabinet on the opposite wall. ‘Second shelf down.’ Beattie tossed me the key.

  The very scent of the shelves’ contents took me back to pre-war visits to department stores: perfume, leather goods and the fresh smell of linen and cotton, like a microcosm of Harrod’s. I riffled through bottles of scent and lace handkerchiefs, bars of soap, even a packet of silk stockings, almost salivating. Every one of my atoms yearned for fine things: soft, beautiful, pampering clothes and toiletries. For the first time I understood how shoplifters could be tempted. Beattie was seemingly absorbed in the papers he was reading. How easy to slip something into my jacket pocket.

  Perhaps that was why he’d asked me to do this. He’d hold a mental inventory of every item here and would love to see me fall into temptation. I forced myself to ignore the senses screaming at me to open a flask of Givenchy scent and apply it to the inside of my wrists.

  Paranoia, I told myself. I was no thief and Beattie wasn’t testing me. What would Mary like? I found a small tub of Helena Rubinstein face cream, a brand I’d always lusted after even before the war and now wistfully thought might soothe my ruined skin.

  ‘Not that cream, Hall.’ Beattie was watching me. ‘I’m saving that for someone else. Keep looking.’ I moved a crocodile-skin evening bag and a silver cigarette case aside and lingered over a pot of hand cream with a French name on it, unsure it was quite right for Mary. No nail polish, but the former would probably just be a nuisance if it kept chipping when Mary was at work. ‘Try the shelf above,’ Beattie said. ‘There was a Czech lady a few months ago who passed on a few bits and pieces.’

  Questions about the Czech lady bubbled unspoken in my head.

  ‘What about this?’ I held up a silver tube of lipstick. The colour was a berry pink, perfect for Mary. The silver case alone made it covetable.

  He sucked in his own lips. ‘That came from a very sophisticated Polish lady I met trying to find a boat in Bordeaux in June 1940.’

  I felt something like a pinprick of jealousy – mad because I had no feelings for Beattie.

  ‘All right,’ he went on. ‘Mary can have the lipstick. Organise a courier – ask for Atkins – to drop it off at the same time she collects the papers from Schulte.’

  This was all highly irregular, probably verging on the criminal or black market.

  ‘Perfectly fine to give legally obtained luxuries as presents,’ he said. ‘You should see what Churchill gets. My cabinet of delights is modest, really.’

  ‘You’re not Churchill. Sir.’

  He gave me that smug smile of his.

  Mary sounded breathless and slightly stunned when I telephoned the farm and told her that she would be receiving a small present. ‘To thank you for your efforts,’ I said, giving a time roughly an hour after the motorcycle would have retrieved Schulte’s report. I didn’t want Mary sniffing around the log and seeing what Atkins was collecting. ‘Continue to keep an eye on Lieutenant Schulte. Tell us if anything worries you.’

  I returned to the front office feeling satisfied with the morning’s work, yet unsettled by something I couldn’t identify. William stood up, script in hand. ‘I’m going to read this to myself outside in the garden,’ he said.

  ‘Bad luck.’ Micki looked through the window. ‘More English spring weather.’ Gentle raindrops fell.

  ‘Blast.’ He looked rueful. ‘I’ll go into the hallway and read it to myself.’

  His footsteps went up and down the stone-slabbed hall. His was an uneven gait that countered the equally uneven clatter of Father Becker’s typing. Perhaps it was the result of the crash-landing. Every now and then the footsteps stopped. I knew he was marking up the script, or perhaps adding something to the list he carried around with him. William was certainly fond of lists. I’d seen him write notes to himself on all manner of things.

  Father Becker sighed. The tapping of his keyboard stopped. He rubbed his neck, squinting at what he’d written, and reached for the New Testament he kept on his desk.

  ‘Checking something, father?’ Micki asked. She was now lying on the parquet floor, legs up against the wallpapered wall. She carried out this exercise once every couple of hours in between writing up the interviews she carried out with Beattie, saying it was good for her circulation and brain. I was so used to her being inverted I barely noticed any more.

  ‘Best to make sure the quotation is correct,’ Becker said.

  ‘Surely you and the whole holy black book are on intimate terms?’ she replied.

  ‘My memory isn’t as strong as it used to be.’

  I noticed shadows beneath his eyes. Perhaps the strain of producing the scripts was starting to take a toll.

  ‘Unfortunate, for a priest,’ Micki said. ‘Still, at least the faithful know you won’t remember all the stuff they blurt out in the confessional.’

  He looked thoughtful. ‘I’ve been fortunate in other ways.’ Father Becker stared out of the window, perhaps thinking of Switzerland, of the peacetime life he’d forsaken. Of all of us I found him the most commendable. Conscience had led him to Bedfordshire to work for the soul of his country of birth, rather than lack of alternatives, or as was the case for me, the possibility of a fresh start.

  Before I’d come here I’d never have imagined doing work like this, with colleagues like these. I’d certainly been extracted from the comfortable but tedious hole I’d dug for myself after the fire.

  William came in. ‘I’ll need to post a letter later. Is there a bag it can go in to be mailed from London?’

  ‘On the console table by the front door,’ I told him. ‘The couriers pick it up every morning and afternoon. Seems to work pretty efficiently.’ We weren’t allowed to use the village postboxes for reasons of security.

  At lunchtime, instead of returning to his lodgings, I watched William go to the bench in the garden with a writing pad. A girlfriend somewhere? I’d be surprised if there wasn’t.

  14

  Micki’s throat had been sore for a few days and was now troublesome. Her face was pale but her eyes were bloodshot. She wasn’t talking much. The last symptom worried me more than any of the others.

  Beattie ordered her home to Lily Cottage, even summoning Atkins to drive her the short distance through the village. I told Micki about a small pot of honey I kept in my bedside table. Grace had given me the honey a few years ago when she’d kept bees. Dad had passed the hives on to one of his parishioners. There wasn’t much honey left in the jar and it was more of a keepsake now.

  ‘I can’t take it,’ Micki said. She didn’t know it had been given to me by my sister, but instinctively she seemed to understand there was something about the honey that made it special.

  ‘It’ll just crystallise if it isn’t used,’ I said, keeping my attention on my writing. ‘And I don’t want you off sick any longer than possible.’

  The office felt too quiet without Micki. William was marking up his script. Father Becker was strolling around the garden. I hoped he wouldn’t trip over the rake Mrs Haddon had left out on the lawn while she dead-headed spent daffodils. Father Becker’s neck was obviously still stiff; he stopped to roll it one way and then the other. He’d been quiet the last few days, staring at his typewriter for long periods. Perhaps the strain of working in England instead of in peaceful Zurich was starting to take hold. Though his work helping refugees from Germany must have taken a toll. He’d never talked about what
he’d done for them.

  I took the script I’d produced about fun and games for bigwigs at a lakeside hotel into Beattie’s office. Welcome respite from the rigours of work . . . good food and relaxation. It’s certain the public will be pleased their leaders can refresh themselves in the tranquillity of this beautiful spot . . .

  ‘We’ll run it just after the report on air-raid casualties in Munich,’ Beattie said. ‘And before the new rationing restriction story.’ I watched him, knowing that something wasn’t quite right.

  ‘You want more?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s a good story, Hall.’ He leant back in his chair.

  ‘But?’ I maintained eye contact with him.

  ‘Wasn’t there something meatier?’

  ‘I’ll have another go when I interview him next week.’

  He sucked in his cheeks. I could tell his irritation was mounting. ‘Every day counts. Last time we spoke about this you told me Schulte had said something about the sons of farmers feeling resentful that POWs were taking their place on the farm?’

  ‘Oh that . . .’ I said.

  ‘Yes, that.’

  ‘It wasn’t that exciting.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’ He observed me. ‘Anna?’

  ‘It wasn’t so much what he said as what I inferred. Suggested.’

  ‘Remind me what that was?’ His voice was cold now.

  ‘I suggested that farmers’ sons away on the front might worry they were being replaced, that they weren’t missed.’

  Beattie looked over my shoulder. ‘I like the sound of that.’ He nodded slowly. ‘A young farmer lad, away from home for the first time. On the Eastern Front. He hears rumours that his parents have replaced him. Perhaps they never really loved him as much as he thought.’ His eyes sharpened. ‘But that’s not all, is it?’

  I wanted to say that it was, but he could always read me.

  ‘I mentioned British POWs who were Jewish. I wondered whether German farmers might keep quiet about this if they worried about losing valuable farmhands.’

  ‘Yes.’ Beattie was nodding slowly to himself. ‘That’s more like it, Hall. I wonder why you didn’t remember to include this in your draft?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Perhaps you were saving it for a later date? I’m thinking of German soldiers and submariners,’ he continued. ‘Sons of the soil who sit in fox holes on the front or in freezing metal tubes, fighting for the Fatherland while Allied Jews find healthy work in the countryside and gorge themselves on fresh vegetables, milk and eggs.’

  ‘Schulte never actually said that.’ The air in Beattie’s office seemed chillier.

  ‘But we will. Very undermining. Very nice indeed.’ He looked at me quizzically. ‘What?’

  ‘Schulte grew nervous when the conversation went this way.’

  Beattie shrugged.

  ‘He was worried about the consequences for his family. That someone listening might link the story to the hotel and remember that the proprietors had a son who’s a prisoner over here.’

  ‘You’re not more worried about Schulte and his family than your own people, are you?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Keep the pressure on him. Run this story, Hall.’

  ‘But he’ll say—’

  ‘Don’t tell him we’re using it.’ He sighed. ‘He’s not going to find out, is he? And if something happens to his family as a result, it’ll be weeks or months before he’s informed. By then we will have extracted even more from him.’

  ‘But that’s—’

  ‘Being pragmatic.’

  ‘Suppose there really are Jewish POWs on German farms?’ I said, aware I was grasping for reasons why we shouldn’t use the story. ‘Aren’t we putting them at risk by tipping people off that this might be the case?’

  ‘Unlike the Yanks we don’t put details of soldiers’ religion on their dog tags. There’s no way the Germans could officially identify our prisoners as Jewish.’

  I picked up a pencil from Beattie’s desk and studied it hard to avoid meeting his eyes.

  ‘If we never broadcast anything that might cost a civilian life our broadcasts would be worthless.’ His voice was gentle now. ‘We send bombers to kill German women and children, Hall. You of all people know this. We’re waging total war here, too. I don’t even know why we’re still discussing this.’

  The story we were creating had to be like the point of the pencil I’d picked up: fine and sharp. I stabbed it into my left palm, feeling a release as the lead hurt me.

  ‘We need as much material as we can find,’ he continued in a cooler tone. ‘I’m pushing for a longer slot. I’m confident we’ll get it. Ours is possibly the most successful research unit in Aspley Guise.’ His brow puckered. ‘No, actually we are the best.’

  It was all about his self-aggrandisement. Perhaps he read this suspicion in my face.

  ‘We can’t afford to squander stories because of unwarranted scruples. Shall I provide you with the exact figures of merchant ships sunk last month, Hall? How many sailors were killed, how much food was lost? If you’re worried about innocent civilians, what are you going to tell the British mother who mightn’t have enough food for her children?’ He hadn’t spoken with such passion before. ‘Food, or lack of it, is becoming the defining issue in this fight. Do you think that women like Mary Waites and her mother can provide all the lost calories for the nation?’ His words echoed Schulte’s doubts.

  ‘All right.’ My reply sounded defensive, weary. I felt as though he’d physically pummelled me. ‘I’ll weave in something about Jewish prisoners on German farms.’

  ‘With lots of hearty food.’ Beattie smiled. ‘Good. Let me have the amended script in . . .’ he looked at his watch, ‘forty minutes.’

  ‘I need more than that.’ I hadn’t won this round, but I wasn’t going to let him gain every point.

  ‘Forty-five. Or else Atkins will be banging on the door. Oh, and give me back my pencil, please.’

  I dropped it onto his desk, picked up my script and returned to the front room, where I sat down to work. The story must have been forming inside my head even while I’d been telling myself I wouldn’t write it because I made the additions quickly and fluently, with ten minutes to spare.

  I took it into Beattie’s office. He looked up, a frown on his face, obviously expecting me to give an excuse. When I put the script on his desk he smiled. ‘See? That wasn’t so hard, was it? Friend Schulte will never know. His parents will never know. It will all be fine, Anna.’

  I couldn’t bring myself to answer him so nodded and left the room. The doorbell rang as I walked into the entrance hall. Officially only the landlady was permitted to open the front door because of the risk of us coming across people we weren’t supposed to meet. I could hear Mrs Haddon calling to her dog in the garden. I peered through the spy hole. Atkins stood outside. I unlocked the door. ‘He barely lets you rest,’ I said, letting her in. She grinned but for a second her eyes narrowed a little.

  ‘It’s unusual, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘That you’re a driver and courier? Most people are one or the other.’

  Atkins rolled her eyes conspiratorially. ‘Is he in his office?’ She tapped her dispatch bag. Sometimes we were asked to tweak broadcast scripts or add news items just after Atkins had paid a visit. I suspected she regularly rode her bike up to the cipher people at Bletchley Park before coming here.

  ‘Help yourself,’ I said, nodding at Beattie’s door.

  In our office William was still marking up his script, occasionally stopping to rub the small of his back. Outside Father Becker had managed to negotiate the lawn without tripping up. The landlady stooped down to throw a tennis ball for her terrier. The dog missed the ball. Father Becker caught it and flicked it back at him in a single flowing movement. The dog caught the ball in his jaws. Eyes pinned on Becker, he tensed and lowered his body, backing towards the bushes.

  15

  ‘The bluebells are out,’ Micki said the next d
ay, in a somewhat husky voice. ‘In the woods. Have you seen them, Anna?’

  ‘Hmm?’ For a good ten minutes I’d been staring at a paragraph of the latest draft episode of my Clara radio play, trying to make a minor character add more impact to a scene. I became aware that Micki was watching me. William had left the office for lunch at his lodgings.

  ‘I had a look at them yesterday afternoon, when I was feeling a bit better. Perhaps a walk in the woods would help you, too?’

  I smiled. It amused me when Micki took on the role of caring for me. She was the refugee and I the person who’d discovered her in Lisbon and now managed her work and kept an eye on her. But really she was in every way better at looking after people than I was. Years of being on the run with her young, sick brother, I supposed. She was not a soft protector; in our lodgings she expressed views on the way I folded my bathroom towel, the correct positioning of my toiletries on my dressing table, and even the way I ate a rare boiled egg.

  ‘The fresh air would do you good.’

  ‘Excuse me.’ Father Becker rose. ‘I need to use one of the reference books in Mr Beattie’s room.’

  ‘All right. Come with me?’ I asked Micki.

  ‘Can’t. I need to buy some salt in the shop before lunch.’ She pointed at her throat. ‘Saltwater gargle.’

  ‘Still giving you problems?’

  ‘I feel much better but want to be sure it’s gone for good. Your honey helped, though. It was kind of you. There’s still a bit left.’ She wouldn’t meet my eye. I knew she still worried about her time off for sickness. I’d already tried reassuring her that nobody thought she was shirking.

  ‘I’ll go for a walk,’ I told her. ‘On condition that next time you’re ill you go to the doctor. We’ll pay for it.’

  ‘Ach.’ But the deal was struck.

  ‘And finish the damn honey.’

  She came closer to the desk. ‘I noticed a little picture of a bee and a hive on the label. Looks hand-drawn?’