The Forgotten

by Mary Chamberlain

  They spoke every Thursday, six o’clock. There was a shared telephone where he lived, tucked beneath the stairs in a makeshift booth, and he sat on the bottom step waiting for her call, poised to answer at the first trill of the bell. She always called from the same telephone box and he imagined her standing at the other end, holding the receiver to her ear with one hand, twisting the flex with the other. She’d lean against the glass, leg outstretched so no one could open the door, wearing slacks and a jumper. Or perhaps her office clothes, a smart skirt and blouse. She fed in the pennies until her change ran out, and if there wasn’t a queue to use the phone, he’d ring her back straight away. He knew the number off by heart now.

  He wished he could see her more often but she said her father insisted she stayed at home at the weekends. She didn’t talk about him, but John got the impression he was a bully. Or overprotective. She was, he learned, his only child. During the week they were both busy at work, but they met when they could, a squeezed hour here or there, CND meetings in St Pancras, the big march on London at the end of the month. He longed to be alone with her, to wait for the moment when he could invite her home, to his rooms.

  The last time they’d met, John thought he’d test the waters, see how she felt about him.

  ‘The thing is, Betty…’ He took a deep breath, catching the words before they fled. ‘I like you.’ He had no thoughts, only a hurly-burly of desire. He had never been here before.

  She looked away. ‘And yes…’

  Sentences half opened, smiles half closed.

  ‘Do you have anyone else?’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘I’d have thought half the men in London would be wanting to go out with you.’

  She laughed then.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. He saw a blush creep up her neck. She looked down, stared at her feet. He couldn’t work her out. She gave nothing away that could calm the anarchy rampaging in his soul.

  That Thursday, he left the telephone booth, and was climbing the stairs to his flat when the phone rang again. He wasn’t expecting her to ring back, and his parents always wrote. His mother considered the telephone for emergencies only. John swallowed hard, his stomach tightening as he turned and leaped the last three steps to the ground. What if it was an emergency? A heart attack? His father drank too much and since he’d retired did little exercise, unless you counted nine holes once a fortnight before a liquid lunch. He grabbed the receiver.

  ‘Bloomsbury 5657.’

  There was silence, although John could hear breathing.

  ‘Dad?’ he said. ‘Dad?’

  He could see his father lying by the telephone in the hall at his parents’ house, alone, though it would be odd for his mother to be out at this time of night. Perhaps it was her, too distraught to talk.

  ‘Mummy? Is that you?’

  He heard a click, silence and then the dialling tone. No. It was a prank call. Perhaps one of his pupils had found his number in the telephone book, rung him for a dare. He put the receiver back on its cradle. His hands were clammy and his heart racing. Calm down. How stupid to get so agitated. Or it was a wrong number? That happened. He climbed the stairs again, two at a time. The linoleum was worn and the backing was showing through in places. The landlord should replace it. The phone rang again. John hesitated. There was another tenant on the floor below. Perhaps he could answer it. It could be for him. John peered over the bannister. There was no sound coming from his neighbour’s, no light beneath the door. Nothing for it. It could be serious.

  He walked down the stairs this time. No hurry. If the prankster was going to do this all night, he’d have to take the phone off the hook. Perhaps they’d give up. He lifted the receiver. There was silence again, echoing, as if the caller were on a party line or this was a trunk call from a thousand miles away.

  ‘Hello?’ John said. ‘Hello?’ He tapped the cradle a couple of times, in case the connection had broken. ‘Anyone there?’

  Perhaps it was Betty after all. She’d run out of pennies. He rang her usual number. Counted. Twenty rings in all. No one was there to answer. It couldn’t have been her. He put the receiver down again and returned upstairs.

  It was almost midsummer, and the day was fading into dusk, the clouds filtering the late sun and turning the sky red. He pulled up the window sash and leaned out. The air was warm. A bee buzzed in his window box, a soft muted sound but clear as a bell against the hum of London traffic. Strange how nature could hold its own. He’d spent time in Kew Gardens when he worked at the War Office, curating his memories, filing them away in collector’s drawers where they would muster, out of sight, out of mind. The gardens had calmed him, transported him to another world where the vast redwoods reminded him that they had seen it all and were still there and the autumn beeches promised they would return, green and strong in the spring. In the winter, when the hoar frost made lace from spider webs and a single snowflake had a thousand shapes, he’d found refuge in the Palm House, in the lush velvet of the damp air, against the stark axe-cold outside. Once, a robin had ventured in from the frost, sat at the top of an ancient cycad and sang his heart out. He could be heard over the buzz of conversation and the hiss of the humidifiers.

  He wanted to share all this with Betty and lay the ghosts of war to rest. He still had nightmares. Running away from something, but never moving forward.

  Anxiety dreams, Norman said in the staffroom the next day. ‘You know, turning up for an exam on the wrong day. Mine is 3C for a double period on a Friday afternoon.’ Norman taught history. He added, ‘And no lesson plan.’

  ‘Or feeding the five thousand with only five loaves and two fishes,’ the technology teacher said, winking at the vicar from St Michael’s who came in to give the RE lessons.

  Staffroom banter. It kept them all going while they dipped their Marie biscuits into their tea. The phone rang. John was the nearest, and picked it up.

  ‘Just the person,’ the secretary said. ‘There’s a call for you. I’ll put it through.’ John could hear her voice in the distance. Hello. Caller? Are you there?

  ‘Sorry, John,’ she said. ‘Whoever it was couldn’t wait. The line’s gone dead. I expect they’ll ring again if it’s important.’

  ‘Did they leave a name?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It was a man, though.’

  John wondered who was trying to reach him. The bank manager? Had he dipped into the red? He was careful with money and wasn’t extravagant with clothes, had stopped going to his father’s tailors for his shirts and bought the new St Michael drip-dry ones from Marks. Perhaps it was someone from the CND, though they were unlikely to ring him at work. Nor would the bank manager, come to think of it. He would write.

  Well, if they hadn’t left a name or a number, then it couldn’t be serious. Perhaps it was the same person who’d rung last night. Besides, why was he so sure that last night’s caller was for him?

  ‘Back to the chalkface.’ He drained the last of his tea, put the cup and saucer back on the table and picked up a pile of exercise books.

  He did his usual detour through Holborn and round Lincoln’s Inn Fields. It was, he thought, one of the most beautiful squares in London, with its luscious trees and gracious buildings. Barstow’s was on the west side of the square, and he lingered as he passed it. She finished work at five and they could sometimes snatch a cup of tea before she had to head home to Hatfield. Now it was summer the café stayed open long enough, though by that time of day the tea was stewed and the scones gone. He was seeing her in two days, but a glimpse now would be perfect. He didn’t like to loiter in case it got her into trouble. Some firms could be funny like that.

  Never mind, he thought. He wouldn’t see her today. She might even have left work early. They sometimes let her do that, if there was no more typing to be done. He cycled off towards his flat, crossing Theobalds Road and turning right into Bury Place. A man was standing at the far end, just by the
entrance to his building. He began to walk towards him. A tall, thin man, with bowed legs and arms looped like cup handles. He walked with a limp, but there was no mistaking him. John pulled at his brakes and shut his eyes, hoping the man would vanish.

  ‘My friend,’ the man said, drawing up close to John. ‘You’re looking well.’

  ‘How did you know I’d be here?’ A lame, manufactured response. He should have said, Get lost.

  The man laughed, looked at the back of his hand, checking his nails.

  ‘You forget. We know everything about you.’

  No. That was over. Finished. Kaput. He had expunged the debt that summer in Berlin in 1945. Thirteen years ago, for God’s sake. He owed them nothing.

  ‘What do you want?’

  The man’s face was as pasty as ever, the scars of his acne still visible.

  ‘We have unfinished business, you and I.’

  John was gripping the handlebars tight, white knuckles on chrome. He reared the bike up on its back tyre like an angry stallion.

  ‘Two words, my friend,’ the man said. ‘Bette Fisher.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ John said.

  ‘You will find out.’ The man smirked and sauntered away, looking over his shoulder once. John let go of the handlebars and the front wheel bounced down on the macadam. He caught the frame before it toppled between his legs, his hands sticky and the sweat clinging to his shirt, those last hideous months of 1945 galloping past, like a drowning man whose life flashes before him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Berlin: late April 1945

  Bette could cope with the bombs, with the firestorms and explosions, but this was different. This terror smelled of dread, of stale onions and dried urine, of menstrual blood and unwashed bodies. The Müllers on the floor below had died of dirt, so young Frau Baumann said, but Mutti said it was hunger. Or infection. Suicide, old Herr Baumann said. Suicide.

  ‘Is Vati safe?’ Bette said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Mutti said. ‘He’s safe.’ She made it sound as if it was his fault.

  Their cellar was dark and damp and musty. Earthy mounds of rubble and broken glass and empty mortar shells swept into a corner with the buckets of faeces and vomit. Careful where you tread. Even the thin air of the U-Bahn or the bunker in Oranienburg was better than here but with the Russians now there was no warning, no sirens. Just the roar and clatter of the tanks, the thunder of the artillery and the race to the cellar. The nights were the worst. And the stink.

  Greta Weber sat next to her. The Webers lived in the back building with their grandmother. Before the war, Mutti had said they were common and Bette was forbidden to talk to them even though Greta and she were classmates. But now. Now was now. Women sweated under blankets in the cellar, front and back building together, hugger-mugger.

  Opposite them Tante Winkler, who wasn’t a real aunt, just old, sat with her white napkin spread over her lap, cutting half a crust into cubes on a china plate and sprinkling them with pretend salt. She always said grace, again and again, Bless me, Father, for what I am about to receive… There was no food, only routines.

  Bette was squeezing her hands until the nails left half-moons in her palms. The ground shook as a tank rolled down the street, and she could hear the percussion of soldiers banging their guns against the turret. The tension curdled inside her, slabs of bile and gall that choked in her throat and soured her taste. She wanted to hammer her head against the wall, to fling herself at the ground and roll in the rubble, to feel pain in her legs and arms where it belonged, in bruises and cuts and not in her belly, where it gnawed and churned. She wanted all this to go away, to end. Her lips curled downwards, a whimper building up. She heard a mewling and knew it was her.

  Bette saw the tracks of the tank as it lumbered past the cellar windows, close enough to buckle the frames, shaving the outside wall. The ground was trembling, the grind of the engines deafening, the squeak of the tracks like a screaming, tortured beast, on and on until it passed their building and hobbled on down the street, its echo drifting back. The explosion threw them backwards. There was a roar as if the Devil himself had belched. Thick smoke billowed through the broken windows, and Bette could hear the flames crackling, clicking their fingers as the paint outside blistered, pop-pop-pop.

  Soldiers burst through the cellar door, their machine guns poised at the ready, ash and carbon on their filthy uniforms, searching, searching, eyes left, eyes right. They could shoot us all, Bette thought. That’s what they did at Nemmersdorf, it said so in the newspapers and on the wireless. That’s what they’re going to do. She shut her eyes, screwed them tight, hearing herself breathe in short, grating rasps, hearing everyone else do the same. The soldiers backed out. A woman across the room began to cry. No one moved. Bette didn’t know how long they sat, petrified. Stone shapes in the dust.

  Two more soldiers entered the cellar. Mutti sat the other side of her with her hand on Bette’s knee, pinning her to the ground. Her mother’s lips were tight and narrow, her neck taut, the pulse throbbing. Lieselotte was the other side of Mutti, her face hidden by her hair.

  Bette leaned forward and retched, right there, thin yellow sick all over her socks and shoes, and over Greta’s too, and splattered on the soldier’s dusty boots and grubby puttees. The barrel of his rifle pointed down but he moved on, not bothering.

  That night it was Waltraud, Greta’s sister.

  She screamed as the Ivan yanked at her arm, shrill as a wounded raven. Bette had never heard a human cry like that. Waltraud was digging in her heels, struggling. Her mother, Frau Weber, tugged at her daughter’s sleeve, nein, nein. Another Ivan slapped Frau Weber’s face with the butt of his rifle and she staggered back, blood pumping from her mouth. Bette smelled its iron.

  Waltraud wasn’t as pretty as Lieselotte, but she was plumper.

  Bette was forbidden to go out, but that morning Greta had climbed the stairs to the Fischers’ apartment and they had stood on the landing outside their door, opposite the Baumanns’. The paint in the stairwell had peeled and in places the plaster had fallen off. The building shook every time the tanks rolled through the street, a slab of brick here, a chunk of masonry there. The stone steps had cracked, the treads become chipped and uneven, the bannisters taken for firewood. The apartment on the ground floor was empty, the windows broken and gaping where the artillery had fired through.

  That was where they had taken Waltraud, Greta said, right there.

  ‘They rammed her mouth with the barrel of a gun to shut her up.’

  Bette was holding the handle on the front door so it didn’t slam shut, but the door opened inwards, pulling Bette with it.

  ‘I wondered where you’d got to,’ her mother said. ‘Come inside now. And Greta,’ she added, forcing a smile. ‘You go home too.’ She pushed Bette indoors and stepped out onto the landing, closing the door behind her. Bette heard her whisper, ‘How is Waltraud? And your mother?’ She didn’t hear Greta’s reply.

  Mutti backed into the hall, shutting the front door and locking it. She took Bette’s hand and led her into the sitting room. Lieselotte was staring out of the window. Three of its panes were missing and the fourth was cracked.

  ‘Black and burnt,’ she said. ‘Everything black. And burnt. It’s like a funeral pyre.’

  Bette didn’t know why Lieselotte was saying that now, as if she was seeing it for the first time. They were used to it, scorched air thick as dust, smouldering homes, the charred bones of cars. It never ended, the black and the burnt, the ruins and the remains, cratered roads, a flash of curtain like a flap of skin. A piano hanging out of a shattered room, the wind plucking the strings so it played a strange, ghostly melody. They could taste death, grit in their teeth and up their nostrils. There were graveyards everywhere now with makeshift crosses. They could hear the fighting in Wilhelmstrasse or Prenzlauer Berg, explosions that shook the core of the city. They’ve flooded the U-Bahn. Rumours swirled like spinning tops. They’re at the Reichstag. No, the Landwe
hr canal. Nobody believed it, anyway.

  ‘Come away. You’ll be seen.’

  ‘I’d fight like hell if it were me.’

  Mutti glanced at Bette, then Lieselotte, putting a finger to her lip, shaking her head, not in front of the child.

  ‘I’m not a baby,’ Bette said. ‘I’m twelve years old and I know what’s going on. What they did to Waltraud. And Frau Müller before that. You can talk about it in front of me.’

  ‘Who told you?’ Mutti was shouting.

  ‘Greta,’ Bette said. ‘But I have eyes. And ears.’ She knew she was being cheeky but her mother just said, ‘Well, then,’ and walked over to Lieselotte and placed her mouth across Lieselotte’s ear. ‘If you fight, you make it worse.’ She spoke softly, but Bette heard.

  ‘What am I supposed to do?’ Lieselotte turned to face her mother, not bothering to lower her voice. ‘Lie back and do nothing?’

  ‘Yes,’ her mother said. ‘You don’t want to be hurt.’ She paused, her words quiet and gentle. ‘Or worse.’

  Lieselotte gave a strange twisted smile, turned her back to her mother, looked out of the window again.

  ‘Then I’ll fight my way.’ She tossed the words over her shoulder.

  Mutti glanced at her, picked up her cigarettes and lit one, faced Bette. She reached over to the table and held up a pair of boy’s shorts and braces, and a shirt.

  ‘Try these on. Otto has grown out of them.’ Otto was fighting in the Hitler Youth. Frau Baumann and Mutti had sat in the kitchen the day he left, sobbing into their handkerchiefs. Only a child.

  ‘You can trust the Baumanns?’ Lieselotte said.

  ‘Who knows?’ Mutti answered. ‘You have a better idea? Come on, Bette.’ She held her cigarette between her lips, shook the shirt impatiently. Bette slipped out of her dress and pulled on the shirt.

  ‘The buttons do up the wrong way,’ she said.

  ‘Never mind that,’ Mutti said. ‘Try the shorts for size.’