The Truth in Our Lies

by Eliza Graham

  When the service was over I saw Atkins, hands in pockets, striding away, probably making for the tube station. ‘Come with us to the pub,’ I said. ‘You’re part of the team.’ Her eyes narrowed, but she nodded.

  The five of us huddled together in a corner drinking the brandy supplied for the occasion.

  ‘Top-ups?’ Atkins asked. She took our glasses and headed for the bar.

  ‘I still can’t work out what happened,’ Micki said, looking down.

  ‘Forgive me, but perhaps Mr Beattie was still intoxicated in the morning and fell into that pond,’ Father Becker said. But I’d seen Beattie drink a bottle of wine and two brandies and sit down to write a perfectly formed script all the while. And I knew he hadn’t been drunk that night but couldn’t tell the priest why I knew this.

  ‘The waste,’ William said. ‘So much work still to be done.’ He hunched over, grimacing. Atkins returned with our refills.

  William excused himself and headed for the gents.

  ‘The back is really bad today,’ Micki said, watching him as he walked away. ‘He goes that pale colour. But I’m not sure the drugs are helping his state of mind.’ She took another sip and replaced the glass on the table.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Benzedrine tablets. Aspirin. I’ve seen a phial of morphine in his desk drawer, too.’

  ‘Sometimes morphine’s the only thing that can get rid of the pain.’ I remembered lying in my hospital bed, watching the clock hands move around to the time the nurse would give me my next dose.

  ‘God knows what he keeps in his lodgings,’ Micki went on. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he took barbiturates at night.’

  ‘I’d no idea.’ It wasn’t uncommon for RAF pilots to take Benzedrine to keep them alert. Patrick had told me that many of his friends kept a bottle in their lockers. I hadn’t considered what they might take to help them sleep. Something stirred in my memory: a conversation?

  ‘Often William says he’s just taking aspirin, but there are all kinds of pills in that box of his.’ Micki shrugged. ‘Who can blame him if it’s the only way he can do his work? But he shows verworrenes Benehmen. Confused behaviour?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Atkins asked.

  ‘As we came into the church he muttered something about Beattie I didn’t understand. And he relies heavily on that notebook of his to remind himself what’s happening.’ Micki frowned. ‘Where is he? He’s been ages in the gents.’

  Just then William came back through the saloon. He stepped aside to let a young girl pass. She was clear skinned, rosy cheeked, her fair hair falling in a cloud onto her shoulders. She looked at William through her eyelashes as she walked past, and smiled. He returned the smile.

  At Mulberry House there’d been whole days when I’d forgotten my ruined face. Beattie had enabled me to be clever Anna Hall: doing important and secret work. And he’d shown me I was desirable. The reality was that girls like this one were the ones most men wanted, even the kind ones, like William. I’d probably be starting again in a new work place soon. I wasn’t a native German speaker, unlike William, Micki and Father Becker. They could write scripts in the language. William and Micki could interview prisoners and search German-language newspapers for material, analyse code-broken signals for the little nugget that could be twisted and presented to the German public. As for me, I’d probably have to face the pitying stares of those interviewing me for a new job. My face would matter again.

  Father Becker was looking at the girl, too. He saw me observe this, blushed slightly and looked down at his drink. The priest was a man of flesh and blood, as Beattie had told me. We all played roles but sometimes we showed ourselves for what we were.

  Something nagged at me, telling me to pay attention. I had to be alone to concentrate, to work out what it was. The pub was filling as lunchtime continued, growing noisier.

  I looked at my watch.

  Micki put down her glass. ‘We don’t need to go to Euston yet, do we, Anna?’

  ‘I said I’d help my father close up the church again.’ The lie came quickly to my lips, but that was no surprise. ‘You’re all up to date with your scripts. I’ll be back in good time for the car to the studio.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ Micki asked me.

  I picked up my handbag.

  ‘Please look after yourself, Anna,’ William said, his face creased with concern. ‘You can rely on us.’

  Atkins watched me, expressionlessly.

  Dad returned to the vicarage to find me sitting at the kitchen table. ‘Anna? I didn’t expect you to still be here.’ He gave me a peck on the cheek.

  ‘Just finishing up a few things.’ I hadn’t actually done anything, except sit staring out of the window.

  ‘It’ll be sad for you, returning to work with your boss so sadly absent.’

  ‘I’m not sure whether they’ll redeploy me or whether I’ll be out of a job.’

  ‘Someone like you will never be out of work for long, my dear.’

  ‘I need to think,’ I blurted out. ‘To work out what has happened.’

  ‘Sometimes a change of scene gives objectivity, doesn’t it?’ he said, looking at me with particular intensity. He opened the larder door and pulled out a bottle of sherry. ‘Someone gave me this last Christmas. I find a small glass now and then helps.’

  ‘I could have told you that.’ I found two glasses and Dad poured the sherry.

  ‘I don’t know what the bishop would say.’ He looked out at the garden. Grace had replaced some of the flowerbeds with her vegetable plots, but enough of the tulip bulbs my mother had planted years ago had survived to make a splash of red and yellow.

  ‘You and Grace loved growing up here with such a big garden to play in. Your old swing’s still up, though the ropes probably need replacing.’

  I swallowed. ‘There’s something I need to say.’

  He looked at me enquiringly.

  ‘It’s about that night.’

  Dad sat down at the table, shoulders slumping, looking older.

  ‘It was my fault. I persuaded Grace to go back into the church with me to save what we could. She wanted to stay in the cellar.’

  His face went very pale. I’d spoilt the moment of closeness between us. ‘You couldn’t regret your actions that night any more than I regret mine,’ he said, in a harsh tone I’d rarely heard him use before. ‘What was I thinking, not checking you were both safe in the cellar?’ He shook his head. ‘We all cared too much for that church, that building. That was my fault, too. I encouraged you to cherish it, Anna.’

  As children Grace and I had polished the silver chalices and candlesticks and the wooden pews. At Christmas we’d arranged the crib figures and cut laurel branches to make the stable.

  ‘They’re just objects, aren’t they?’ I said. ‘The kneelers, the chalices, the bibles. The church itself, too.’

  ‘They held such memories. But they weren’t the church.’ Turning to me, he touched his chest. ‘The real church is the love of God we carry inside us, not in bricks and mortar.’

  ‘I’m glad we’ve had this conversation,’ I said. ‘For so long Grace has been between us.’

  He nodded. ‘I’m glad, too.’

  Companionable silence fell between us as we gazed out at the garden. I could imagine a woman weeding the beds, children playing on the swing.

  ‘Anna?’ Dad was looking at me gently. ‘There’s something else. Just before you came home that terrible night, Grace told me she thought you were serious about a young man.’

  I stared down at the table.

  ‘The nurse on your ward told me he came to the hospital many times, but you’d never see him?’

  ‘I wasn’t kind to him,’ I whispered.

  I had read all the letters Patrick sent me in hospital, but I did not weaken. When I was discharged, I placed them in the desk in my bedroom at home and took to my bed. Whenever I woke I’d remember Grace was dead all over again.

  I accepted the thick p
ancake make-up that friends in the theatrical world found for me and wore a veiled hat outside when I wasn’t in uniform. At my request the WAAF found me the job in East Anglia. Patrick might have been able to trace me if he’d really wanted to, but it wouldn’t have been easy for him to come and see me in person.

  Not that he would have done. Not after he’d read the last sentence I’d written to him: I don’t love you any more. What a lie that had been; the biggest of my life.

  My father squeezed my arm gently. ‘Have you . . . ?’

  ‘No. I haven’t seen Patrick.’ Saying his name aloud made me shiver. ‘Hopefully he’s safe and found some nice girl.’

  With a smooth face and no demons inside her.

  Dad looked as though he wanted to ask me more but I left him to his sermon writing and went upstairs to my bedroom. I sat on the bed in which I’d slept from infancy, every sinew and tendon relaxing into the old sags in the mattress. A wave of feeling swept me, so powerful that I clutched the edge of the bed. People didn’t show too much emotion for loss these days, not in public and sometimes not even in private. In wartime there was always someone else who’d made a bigger sacrifice, lost more. And if you fell apart you might not be able to continue. Had I even wept much for Grace when she died? Or for the end of my relationship with Patrick? After the fire I’d told everyone I was fine and carried on, following the accepted script.

  The night with Beattie and the discovery of his body had released something buried deep inside me. I rocked on the bed, hands over my face. I was safe from being overheard in this room. I had time. The first noises I made seemed to come from a stricken animal, hurting my chest as I let the loss overwhelm me. Beattie and I had found a kind of peace together that night. I hadn’t loved him, but there had been something between us: an understanding, an acceptance. I was weeping for Beattie, but also for the death of Grace and of the relationship with Patrick.

  Eventually I lay back on the pillow and looked at the cracks in the ceiling. The blast from the church bomb in 1941 had damaged the plaster. I could trace out new cracks, like roads or pathways, some of which led to other paths, others that faded out.

  Buck up, Hall.

  I needed to return to Aspley Guise and find out who had killed Beattie.

  First I had to patch up my face. I examined it in the dressing-table mirror. The left side was still a young woman’s, with a clear complexion and only a few lines around the eyes. I smiled and the left corner of my mouth curled up. I peered at my right side. The smile pulled up that corner of my mouth more than it had before; the muscles or tendons seemed to be slowly recovering. But the skin above my mouth still appeared incapable of fluid movement. I put more exertion into my smile and the scarred tissue shifted like a layer of rubber. It wasn’t hurting as much these days. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken anything for it. I let the muscles relax and patted my face with pancake and powder and applied lipstick. My eyes still bore the puzzled, weary expression of someone who’d lost a person they cared about. I knew from experience that they might stay like this for some time.

  I turned my back on my reflection and went to the wardrobe. The clothes left inside were years out of fashion, but had been expensive when I’d bought them. I wondered if Micki might like some of the dresses for summer but worried about offending her again. I folded a few into my suitcase anyway.

  I went to my writing desk. I hadn’t opened it in two years. I pulled down the flap and found the letters in the little drawer at the top. Patrick’s handwriting – clear, slightly hesitant – reproached me. I should throw them away – not fair to hang on to a former lover’s letters like this. He was probably long-since married. Or dead. I knew the last letter off by heart. Give me a chance to show you how much I love you . . . You are everything to me and I want to help . . .

  I’d put a little jeweller’s box in the drawer with his letters. Inside the box lay the small four-leafed clover brooch. I hadn’t been wearing it the night of the raid because I hadn’t had time to change out of my uniform.

  I hadn’t sent the brooch back to Patrick when I’d ended things between us. He’d told me it wasn’t valuable, but he’d thought I’d like it. It brings out the green in your eyes, he’d said. Returning it to him would have been giving him another slap in the face. So it had stayed here, in the dark, ever since.

  When I went downstairs my father was making notes for the parish newsletter. I wanted to confide in him, tell him my fears about Beattie. I’d signed the Official Secrets Act and never told him anything of my wartime work. But I could tell him that—

  ‘Goodness me.’ Dad was looking at the clock above the stove. ‘Tonight’s bible class is almost upon me. I must go, child, I’m afraid.’

  I said goodbye to him but decided to give myself ten minutes to say farewell to the garden, to look at the shrubs and bushes my mother had nurtured.

  Beside the gate leading into the church’s graveyard a small rhododendron’s buds were bursting into cream and pink flowers. I opened the gate and entered the graveyard, stopping briefly at my mother’s and Grace’s graves.

  Beattie’s resting place was now filled in with earth. ‘I’m still not sure what happened to you,’ I told him.

  If you had half the wits I thought you possessed, Hall, you’d have worked it out by now.

  I looked at my watch. Time to leave for the station. I was cutting it fine and if a train were delayed or cancelled, as frequently happened, I’d be late for the studio.

  20

  The following morning found us attempting to recover our routine at Mulberry House. All of us listened for Beattie’s footsteps in the corridor outside, the flinging open of the door to our office. ‘That telephone of his seems so quiet.’ Micki sighed. ‘It feels so wrong.’

  William stood up and bent over, breaths coming in short rasps, grimacing. ‘We can do this,’ he said, standing straight again. ‘Anna has everything under control. We’re a team.’

  Father Becker regarded him from behind his typewriter with an impassive stare. He must have known of far worse situations than this when he’d helped refugees fleeing Germany. Perhaps he was considering his own position, wondering if he could ask to be returned to Zurich now Beattie was dead. He worked hard for us but I recalled his struggles with the typewriter, his obvious discomfort with the liberal atmosphere we worked in and the more salacious stories we fed to his compatriots. Becker lit another cigarette.

  The scripts and news items for this evening I’d sent over for Sefton Delmer to approve reappeared in the bag delivered by a courier none of us recognised. I found myself longing to see Atkins, for the reassurance of those blue eyes, that ramrod-straight back. Micki had thought to take the remaining smoked salmon sandwiches when they’d left the pub for Euston. I ate one at my desk, not liking to leave the office unattended over the lunch hour.

  At half past three William retired to his lodgings to take his medication and freshen up. Minutes later Father Becker pulled his sheets out of his typewriter. ‘This afternoon I shall finish a little early,’ he said. ‘It is my feast day, my patron saint’s day. I have completed my script for tomorrow. William has read it over.’ He flicked off another invisible speck on his jacket. ‘I’d like to spend some time quietly in my room.’ Of course a man of God would want to spend time praying in a situation like this one. Becker looked drained. Perhaps my suspicion that he’d had enough of working for us was correct. I couldn’t blame him. He didn’t have to be here. Or perhaps he couldn’t adjust to being managed by a woman, even temporarily. You didn’t have to be a Roman Catholic priest to find this an unusual arrangement; most men would find it strange.

  I didn’t have time to dwell on Father Becker’s state of mind. This evening I would go to the studio as programme editor in Beattie’s place as I had every evening since his death, except for the night before his funeral. I would be the one who checked that everything was in order. I hadn’t got used to the responsibility. Half of me still felt sick, half excited
. I knew this state of affairs could not continue. Our research unit would be redeployed or given to someone else – not a sergeant, not female – to direct. For the moment, there was a kind of solace in carrying out the work as Beattie would have wished. But even as I sorted through papers and wrote myself notes something niggled at my mind. I watched Father Becker tidy his desk with his usual meticulousness, wishing us a good afternoon. Something he’d said was bothering me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  As he left the room he nodded at me with solemnity. ‘Thank you, Anna,’ he said, ‘for letting me go early.’ The relationship between us certainly was shifting, perhaps because of my changed role. But he’d used my Christian name for the first time. The moment of solemnity was lost when the corner of his jacket caught the script on William’s desk, sending pages fluttering over the floor. ‘Ach, how can I always be so clumsy?’ he said, falling to his hands and knees to recover the pages and replace them on William’s desk. ‘Entschuldigung.’

  ‘It’s reassuring,’ Micki said. ‘Some things never change, father.’

  With a parting nod he left us. I watched the door close behind him, heard him stride across the gravel drive.

  I sat for a moment, thinking, trying to make sense of the contradictory thoughts and memories pulsing through my mind, before standing and going into Beattie’s office. The desk was empty. Sefton Delmer or the Grey-suit Man must have had someone clear it while we were away at the funeral. To my relief the library of reference books remained on the shelves. I wondered whether Beattie’s cabinet of delights had already been emptied but didn’t have time to look now. It took me five minutes to find the book I needed. I read the relevant pages carefully and several times.

  I sat for a moment, eyeing Beattie’s black telephone. I picked up the receiver and asked the operator to put me through to Grey-suit Man. His secretary transferred me to him immediately and I told him what I suspected.