The Forgotten

by Mary Chamberlain

  ‘Why did he do that?’

  ‘I’d shamed him, apparently.’ She swallowed. ‘You see, I’d been allowed to pick an outfit for the journey. The Red Cross had these second-hand clothes, donations, I suppose. I’d been living dressed as a boy, but now was my chance.’ He could see her smiling at the memory. ‘There was a party dress, with sequins and a tutu. It looked so pretty. I put it on and the UNRRA nurse gave me some lipstick. I thought I looked like a queen.’ She laughed a little. ‘Now, of course, I see I looked an absolute fright.’ She paused. ‘But I did it for him.’ Betty was facing the cabinet but he could see the tear trail down her cheek. ‘And he turned me away.’

  She rummaged in her bag, pulling out a handkerchief, blowing her nose.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I haven’t ever told anyone that. Bottled it up, you know?’ She blew again. ‘I think he expected a nice wholesome child to emerge in a dirndl and plaits, the pride of Germany. Not an urchin in a cabaret dress.’ She blew out, as if the telling had exhausted her breath. ‘I wasn’t the child he thought I should be. I don’t know why I’m telling you this now. It’s not important.’

  But it is, he thought, it hurt. She was sharing this with him. Perhaps she still cared for him, enough to trust him with this?

  ‘What was he doing in the war?’

  ‘He was in the Wehrmacht, part of the occupying force in the Channel Islands.’ She smiled again. ‘He spent his war learning cricket in Sark. And English.’

  John wondered if Anatoly had got it all wrong, that Betty Fisher was not Bette Fischer but some other namesake.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Arnold Fisher,’ she said. ‘He changed his name too. Anglicised it. It was Hermann Fischer.’

  John stood behind her, watching her reflection in the glass. Her hair had been twisted into a pleat and a wisp had come loose, resting on her collar. He wanted to lift it, tuck it back in place, brush her neck, smell her scent.

  ‘There’s a physicist called Hermann Fischer. Is that your father?’

  ‘No. He’s an engineer,’ she said. ‘He works on aeroplanes. On engines.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At the de Havilland factory, in Hatfield. I told you this ages ago.’

  ‘Why did he leave Germany?’ John said.

  ‘He never went back,’ Betty said. ‘He was a POW. He fell in love with England, and England was crying out for workers at the end of the war. Europeans, ideally, like him.’ She laughed. ‘The people who came in the end were West Indians. But one or two of the POWs stayed, like my father.’

  This was going nowhere. Anatoly had got the wrong man. Fischer was a common enough surname, and Hermann a popular first name. This whole business was shambolic, he thought, had cost him his love, his sanity.

  ‘So who is Hermann Fischer the physicist?’ Betty said, daring him to contradict her.

  John took a deep breath. He looked at her, trying to lock her eyes with his, pumping up his courage.

  ‘There’s a man by that name who works for de Havilland,’ he said. He spoke slowly, softly. ‘In a secret division of the company. He was a German physicist during the war. Among other things, he helped develop the V1 and V2 rockets.’

  She faced him, her colour fading from her cheeks. ‘Go on.’

  ‘After the war, he was invited to come to Britain.’ His eyes steadied on her, monitoring her, drilling into her, willing her to respond. ‘A number of Germany’s top scientists left at that time. Some went to the Soviet Union. Some to the United States. Some here.’

  ‘So?’ she said, shrugging her shoulders, a tone of defiance. ‘Why? What’s that to do with my father? That’s some other man.’

  ‘They came,’ he said, his voice level, authoritative, ‘to work on the nuclear programme.’

  Betty opened her mouth, hand to her lips. ‘I didn’t know this,’ she said. ‘Those scientists? Who worked for the Nazis? Came here?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You think my father was among them?’ She shook her head, staring at the coins, at their inscriptions. ‘Who knows this?’

  ‘It’s not a secret,’ he said. ‘Not with a capital “S”. But it’s not common knowledge, either.’ His lips were dry and he moistened them with his tongue. ‘They were vetted, of course, to make sure they weren’t still active Nazis, and some of them were given alibis.’ She was listening hard, her forehead creasing, taking in what he was telling her, making sense of it.

  ‘Why?’ she said.

  ‘There was a race to develop the A-bomb.’ She nodded. ‘The big fear was that the Germans had already developed it, or were damn close to developing it.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ she said.

  ‘It turned out that the Allies were more advanced than the Germans on the A-bomb,’ he said. ‘Or the Americans, at least, as we learned in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the Germans were more advanced in their delivery systems. They didn’t need bombers. They could send weapons on rockets. Ballistics. The Russians were way behind both.’

  ‘And Hermann Fischer?’

  ‘He came to work on ballistic missiles.’ He paused. ‘De Havilland was a cover. He commuted from Hatfield to a secret location in Buckinghamshire where he and a bunch of other German scientists used their expertise to work on rockets and guided missiles.’ He shouldn’t be telling her this, could be had under the Official Secrets Act, but she had to know.

  ‘The Brits and Americans agreed that the Americans would develop the Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles,’ he went on. ‘And we would focus on the Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles. All the more urgent now, after Sputnik.’

  She stood nodding, silently.

  ‘De Havilland are building the rocket,’ John went on. ‘And Hermann Fischer, Arnold Fisher, is the principal scientist responsible for its production.’

  She said nothing, but he saw her swallowing, again and again.

  ‘My father.’ She walked out of the room and he followed her. There was a stone bench, and she sat down.

  ‘How do you know this?’ she said. ‘Who are you? Some kind of spy?’

  ‘When I was in Berlin my job was to translate,’ he said. ‘I was there when they interviewed the scientists.’

  ‘Did you interview him?’ She twisted on the bench, searching his face.

  ‘I may have done,’ he said. ‘I can’t remember. We interviewed so many.’

  She breathed in deep. ‘Are you sure?’ she said. ‘Are you sure it’s the same person?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She turned to face him once more, her face flushed, lips twisted. ‘He lied. He lied.’ She stood up, slinging her bag over her shoulder. He held her arm, gripping it hard as she winced.

  ‘Bette.’ He used her German name. ‘There is more. Lass’ mich bitte ausreden. You must hear me out.’

  He pulled her back down on to the bench, holding her firm. She must not run off again. He looked at her, the grey water of her eyes, the framing of her nose and cheeks.

  ‘I’ll go to prison for telling you this,’ he said. ‘But I’m prepared to do it if it saves you.’

  ‘Saves me?’

  ‘Anatoly. Vasily. Whatever his name is. He’s a colonel in the GRU.’

  ‘A spy?’

  ‘They want the secrets of Blue Streak. And you are their means.’

  ‘Me? How?’ She shook his arm free and stood up. ‘How do you know all this? Are you working for them?’ She shook her head. ‘Or someone else?’ She flung her head back. ‘What is going on?’

  John swallowed. If there was any lingering affection from her to him, it would be blown forever now.

  ‘They needed me to get close to him. I was their go-between, and you were mine. I’ve told you that already, but not why.’

  Her eyes narrowed, and the tips of her ears blushed red. She shook her arm to free herself.

  ‘No, Betty, no.’ He held her hand, resisting her efforts to pull it free. ‘I met you in good faith, and I fell in love with you in good faith.
But Anatoly had followed us the morning I broke off with you. Do you remember? I pulled you out of that café?’

  She nodded.

  ‘He knows who you are. And he blackmailed me again, unless I complied.’

  ‘I saw him. He didn’t recognise me.’

  ‘He probably didn’t notice you,’ John said. ‘He knows everything about you. Where you live, where you work.’

  She swallowed, searching his face. ‘Somebody rang at work,’ she said. ‘Asking if I worked there.’ Her eyes opened wide. ‘Funnily enough, the night we met, there was a man in Lyons, sitting by the door. He was wearing a coat and a hat, a trilby or fedora, pulled down low. It was just a glimpse, as I passed him, but he reminded me of Vasily. It was too ridiculous a thought, so I put it out of my mind.’ She looked up at him. ‘Now I wonder.’

  ‘You will know how ruthless they are,’ John said. ‘And you could be in danger.’

  ‘You’ve said this before,’ she said. ‘How am I in danger?’

  ‘It would be the simplest thing in the world for them to kidnap you,’ he said. ‘Use you to bargain with.’

  She laughed out loud, too loud. He hadn’t expected that.

  ‘My father doesn’t give a toss about me,’ she said. ‘I doubt he’d trade.’

  ‘Then they’d kill you.’

  Her face froze. She turned to him, twisting in slow motion, searching his eyes for an answer. She fumbled her lip with her teeth, rubbed her hand along her cheek. ‘Chinese ceramics,’ she said. ‘Let’s look at those.’ Betty pushed up from the bench and stepped forward. She was unsteady and he walked behind her, arms at the ready, to catch her, in case she fell.

  ‘More cabinets,’ she said as they entered the gallery. ‘More dreary cabinets.’ She walked into the centre of the gallery. ‘Plates and pitchers and cups and ewers.’ She stared, pointing. ‘Though that is very beautiful. Ming. I like it.’ She pressed her nose against the glass, her voice muffled as she spoke.

  ‘You seem to know a lot about my father,’ she said. ‘Have the Soviets told you this?’ She pulled away and faced him. ‘If you’re working for the Soviets, why don’t you just feed me to the wolves?’

  ‘Because I love you,’ he said.

  She bit her lip, turned away again. ‘Before,’ she said, bending down to study a teacup at the bottom of the cabinet, ‘you said they blackmailed you, in Berlin, but you wouldn’t tell me if you’d given them secrets.’ She stood up, level with him. ‘Why are they blackmailing you now?’

  He looked away, the fine ceramics merging into one blue and white porcelain blur.

  ‘You fed the Russians what they wanted, didn’t you? This was my sister they used. Murdered. You didn’t give a damn, did you? Too busy saving your own skin.’ Her voice had risen, and though the gallery was empty, he put a finger on his lips and a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I told my commanding officer. Came clean with him. Betty…’ He blew through his mouth, lips vibrating. ‘I was used as a double agent, feeding the Soviets misinformation.’

  She narrowed her eyes, her mouth open, her head turned to one side. ‘Why can they still blackmail you?’

  ‘I also fed them real information. Just once. Something specific. Something not important, but by then they knew I had been double-crossing them. The British didn’t know what I’d done but they knew I was in danger, so moved me to Nuremberg.’

  She was taking it in, working through the levels of trickery and duplicity.

  ‘And are you still a double agent?’

  He nodded. ‘I was. A quid pro quo,’ he said. ‘The government won’t prosecute me for that one lapse if I monitor you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘As they see it, you’re a weak link, a security risk, because of your political leanings.’

  ‘My political leanings? What on earth do they mean?’

  ‘CND and all that.’

  ‘Good God, I thought this was a democracy. Why would I be a threat?’

  ‘For the same reason the Russians see you as an asset. You could turn him.’

  ‘Don’t they understand? I am opposed to war. Especially nuclear war. Full stop. This is nothing to do with Left or Right, East or West. Nothing to do with ideology.’ She paused and he could see her calculating it all. ‘You’ve been spying on me, haven’t you? Feeding me to the Soviets, and MI5 or 6 or whoever it is. I’m the piggy in the middle here.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Believe me, please. I’ve passed nothing on you, or anyone, anything, to Special Branch that they don’t know already. But yes, I have been used by them. As much to sniff out the Soviets as to sniff out CND.’

  ‘Special Branch?’

  ‘They were collaborating with MI5,’ he said. He could hear himself, knew what she must think of him, was powerless to claw it back. His stomach clammed tight and he could feel a tremor creep out and convulse his body. He clenched his hands. Don’t move.

  She wandered off, running her finger along the cabinets, leaving a trail of condensation. ‘He lied to me,’ she said. ‘My father lied to me.’ She looked at her feet, then up at him. ‘I’m going to have it out with him. Tell him what I think of him. What it’s like to have a bastard for a father. He betrayed me. All of us.’ She threaded her arms through the sleeves of her coat in sharp, awkward gestures. ‘And you lied to me.’

  ‘No, Bette,’ he said, using her German name again. ‘I never lied to you.’

  She fumbled with the belt, knotting it tight.

  ‘Let me come with you,’ he said.

  ‘Haven’t you caused enough pain and havoc?’

  Yes, he wanted to say, yes, you’re right. But he couldn’t let her slip away, not again. Nor did she say no, not in so many words.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Hatfield: November 1958

  John was the last person she wanted with her, but she was nervous about going alone. She knew her father’s metal, the freeze-cold steel of his heart, but this felt like a deeper betrayal. Mutti used to say that his work in the war was top secret. Bette had thought it a mysterious, important job that put her a cut above Greta with a common foot soldier of a father. She had no idea how insidious it was, how evil. Had Mutti?

  It was raining when they got off the train and the wind had picked up, gusting drops of icy water that stung her cheeks.

  ‘We can get a bus,’ she said. ‘But it’s quicker to walk. It’s not far.’ She set off with large strides, her hair limp and sticky from the wet. John walked beside her, hands in his pockets, silent. Her thoughts spun round, ribbons on the maypole, always the same. Why had he lied to her, over and over? Had he lied to himself, too? To Mutti? Lieselotte? It was such a slippery line between delusion and lies.

  A police car drove past, seconds later, an ambulance, their bells bouncing off her roiling emotions like radar. What if he wasn’t there, after all this? Mrs H would know where he was. She knew everything. Did she know who he was? Did she care?

  ‘Not too far now,’ she said, more to herself than to John. At least he had the gumption to keep his mouth shut on the journey here. It was bad enough coping with thoughts about her father. She couldn’t begin to think about John and his two-faced treachery. She felt as if she was at the centre of a world that was crushing her in the weight of its ambitions, like a walnut between nutcrackers, a disposable shell.

  They turned the corner into her street, the rain silver sequins in the light of the street lamp. She slowed her pace, fearful of the confrontation with her father, her anger burning and erupting. What would she say to him? You lied. Lie was too small a word for the betrayal she felt. Why didn’t you love me? That was as much a crime as anything. Why didn’t you take me in your arms at the end of the war, nuzzle me with your moustache, Bettechen, meine Bette. Tell her she was safe, that everything would be all right, that he knew about Mutti, and Lieselotte, understood how lost she was, how frightened, how very young? He’d pressed his thumb on her lips, skidding it hard across them so the lipstick came off.
She’d wanted to look so pretty. Her eyes began to blur and she stopped, wiped them with a gloved finger. She didn’t want him to see her crying, to see how frail she was, how vulnerable. She would be strong. She was strong. He was nothing but a pigeon of a man strutting with a puffed neck, Look at me. Look what I can do.

  Deliver a nuclear warhead. He made instruments to kill.

  Betty opened the gate. ‘Stay here,’ she said. She walked up the garden path, knocked on the door. The hall light was off and the front room was in the dark, its curtains undrawn. Her father liked to keep the curtains open. We have nothing to hide. He was frugal with the electricity and the heating, never lit a room or warmed it unless he was using it. This was one thing she had agreed with him on. The English didn’t know how to heat their homes.

  The house was silent inside. She knocked again, expecting to hear his impatient voice, Hold on, hold on, I’m coming. She peered through the letter box. There was a light in the kitchen.

  ‘No reply,’ she called to John, standing by the gate blowing on his hands with the hood on his duffel coat up. ‘I’m sure he’s there. I’ll try the back door.’

  ‘Let me come with you,’ he said, adding, ‘I won’t come in.’

  She opened the gate, sidling past the dustbin. John was close behind her, breathing hard. She tried the handle on the door. It opened. She stepped inside, wiping her feet out of habit on the mat. The kitchen was empty, no traces of cooking, no cups on the draining board, bread on the dresser. That was how her father liked it, without the footprint of the living.

  She held out her hand, reaching for John, as she walked into the hall, flicking on the light. The dining room was on her right, the door shut. She peered through the keyhole. The room was in darkness.

  ‘Perhaps he just forgot to lock up,’ John said.

  ‘You don’t know my father,’ she said. ‘He always checks and double-checks.’

  ‘Not if he left in a hurry,’ John said.

  She twisted round. ‘Why do you say that? Do you know something?’