The Big Lie

by Julie Mayhew

  Once they had both negotiated their way into a chair, the whole dance began again when Dad got up to pace and dictate some new words for the speech.

  ‘Will you just sit down, boy!’ my father barked – and things ran a little smoother from then on, now restraint was gone and Dad felt able to openly, loudly, pull rank.

  Moving onto the fire itself, Dad grilled Fisher on his ability to recreate the construction in my sketch, adding in his own exacting specifications for the condition of the wood and the timings of the build. And where will you source these logs? How many boys will you send to collect them? Which boys? Why have you chosen that boy? What are his particular qualities for the task?

  Fisher stuttered his way through his answers, unprepared, understanding that though we were talking about logs, we were also not talking about logs. Sweat patches bloomed around Fisher’s armpits. I’m sure he was aware of them and was willing his body not to release any more testosterone into the air, in case the alpha dog got a whiff and decided to bite.

  That battle settled, I took up the issue of music and dance. ‘I think you should pay a visit to the Baxters’ house, Felix; make sure Michael and his brothers really have made a start on their trumpet practice. Each year they say they’re rehearsing into the night but do we ever hear them, Father?’

  Dad shook his head.

  ‘Yes, Fräulein Keller,’ came the reply.

  ‘And I’m thinking Ruby Heigl should work on a new arrangement of the “Freedom Song”,’ I went on. ‘Last year’s “Young People Rise Up” was okay but I think we can do something that honours the dignity of the celebration a little better. And the dance … Some of the moves Angelika thinks are appropriate … you should see them! Well, no, you shouldn’t. Isn’t that right, Felix?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. Then, realising that his reply sounded all wrong: ‘No, no, they are not suitable in any way.’

  In the following silence, I looked up and met my father’s gaze, awaiting his judgement on the scene I had created – his efficient, patriotic daughter, and her potential suitor of rank.

  ‘This is excellent work, Jess,’ he said, at last. ‘All of it, it really is excellent.’

  At dinner, Lilli stared, mesmerised, at Fisher, churning her food with an open mouth. We were not used to boys in our house, especially not at such close quarters, or with Fisher’s startling blue gaze and taut, imposing physique. I remembered my own fascination with the older Anderson boys next door when I was little, the swagger of them but also the awkwardness of them, being young boys trapped inside their big, masculine bodies.

  My mother fussed at the hob more than usual, putting her apron on, taking it off again, apologising over and over about how, had she known we were having a guest (an aggressive lilt to her voice, a stare in my direction) she would have prepared something rather more impressive than cottage pie. ‘And we don’t usually eat in the kitchen when we have visitors,’ she emphasised for the third time, ‘but I would hate to disturb all those very important notes and plans you have laid out on the dining-room table.’

  ‘It’s quite all right, Frau Keller,’ said Fisher, on repeat, fielding the unnerving glare of my little sister with small, tight smiles.

  Then my father tersely instructed Mum to ‘just bloody sit down, Miriam, would you?’ chuckling in Fisher’s direction afterwards. A little joke between the menfolk, there, hahaha. And my mother did as she was told.

  ‘Right,’ said Mum, eventually seated, finally picking up her knife and fork. She turned to our unexpected guest with a new vigour, perhaps realising in the hierarchy of the table she was still second in command. She narrowed her eyes. ‘So, tell me of your parents’ lineage, Herr Fisher.’

  When the longest day finally fell dark, I was the first on our street to light a torch. Everyone left their houses – the children excited to be out after curfew with no risk of being punished – and they lit their torches from the fire of mine. Before we marched up the hill, Lilli and I did a puppet show for the littlest ones, based on the old story Trust No Fox on the Green Heath and No Jew Upon His Oath. We’d made the puppets ourselves by stitching felt and buttons onto Dad’s old socks. We handed out sweets and, once up the hill, I helped Mother serve sausages from the grill with Frau Gross. I thankfully saw little of Fisher; all his focus was on making sure that fire burned as fiercely as he’d promised.

  Then it was time to join my Mädelschaft to sing the ‘Freedom Song’.

  Freedom is the fire,

  It is the bright vision!

  I led the low harmonies that I’d insisted Ruby insert for gravitas. We danced as we sang. I was paired with Angelika. GG with Erica. We circled one another in a slow and solemn two-step, finishing in a circle as I’d drawn on my sketch, our arms aloft. That week’s inspirational poster at the BDM meeting hall: TOGETHER WE ARE EVERYTHING; AS INDIVIDUALS NOTHING. As we stood around the fire, the final notes of the song vibrating through our ribs, it made sense.

  It did.

  I didn’t want to be different. I wanted to be in the arms of the group. I wasn’t fighting a battle against my mother or my father. Not really. Only myself.

  We girls stayed firm, our arms lifted, as the men of the town made their sombre march to the trumpet calls. Then – silence. Awed silence. My father took his place on the decorated podium. He didn’t wear his black uniform often, but when he did, he looked formidable.

  ‘Fire is a great cleanser,’ he told us, as the heat of the Sonnenwendfeuer beat hard against our cheeks and the underside of our lifted arms. ‘In its flames we see the end of treachery, the end of lies and a death to the rebels.’

  Clementine and her mother were there. I’d seen them on the edges of the crowd watching our puppet show. They couldn’t have not come.

  ‘Today is the longest day, and on this day we celebrate our victory over darkness,’ my father proclaimed. GG was opposite me, our faces visible to one another on the edges of the flames. We held each other’s gaze, our faces giving nothing.

  ‘But today is also the day when the darkness begins again. So we must work hard! We must struggle! There must be no weakness whatsoever in our hearts!’ I watched the skin of GG’s throat roll up and down. ‘Tonight we stand united as one people, regardless of our class, and on this evening we give our pledge. We put aside our own wants, we forget our own needs. We give ourselves, heart, body and soul, to our community – this community here today and our wider community, the Greater German Reich.’

  When the victory cries went up from the crowd, it took my breath away. Maybe because I knew I had scored a victory of my own. I never saw Dr Hardy again.

  Perhaps this should have been a time of contemplation for me, mourning even. Though I’d clawed back my father’s approval, his trust was gone. GG’s friendship too. But there was no time to dwell. The concert was drawing close and things were moving fast. Maybe the tally of what I’d lost wasn’t actually that high. Had my father’s wholesale trust ever really belonged to me? And when it came to love and affection, my attentions were still on the house next door. On Clementine.

  A few nights later, men came in the night to empty Herr Hart’s garage. They lifted the door and his things tumbled onto the driveway. Heavy pots of soil smashed onto the concrete, bags of coathangers spilt their clattering guts, boxes tipped, letting off hundreds of lightbulb bombs. It was as if Herr Hart had purposely balanced those things at the front so they would ring out like an alarm.

  They woke me. That, and the screams of Frau Hart. I crept down the stairs to see my father standing, silhouetted in the frame of the open front door. He had been woken up too. Or maybe he hadn’t gone to bed, because he was still fully dressed and not wearing his pyjamas. At 3 a.m. Which was unusual. I worked my way down to the stair that gave the best view over his shoulder.

  ‘You bastards,’ Frau Hart was shouting. She was dressed for bed (or rather, underdressed for bed), chasing the men up and down the driveway in bare feet and a flapping shirt, trying to stop their progress b
ut having little luck. Crate after crate went past, armfuls of paperwork, a typewriter (illegal), a tape-player with a red dot button (illegal), a large clumsy piece of machinery with a handle (I wasn’t sure what it was, only that it was certainly illegal). I even saw a small, flat computer like the one Dad would occasionally bring home from work. When he did, Lilli and I would pester him to press the keys and see things come up on the screen, pretending that we were controlling television. The Harts having one of those computers hidden in their garage was so beyond illegal it hurt. I couldn’t understand how all those things could have been there, right next door to us, buried beneath tins of paints, piles of wood, and sacks of dried dog food for the Harts’ non-existent pet. Watching it all go past our doorway was like being a contestant on that quiz show on the People’s Television where you have to remember everything on the conveyor belt – fondue set! Hunting rifle! Aaaaaannnd a bust of the Führer!

  When she realised she could do nothing to stop her garage being emptied, Frau Hart turned on my father.

  ‘You fucking bastards!’ she screamed. Her voice broke apart. Her second scream was nothing but a rasp. ‘You total bastards!’

  Dad put his hands up, his fingers spread, in a gesture that said, very calmly, Please quieten down, Frau Hart, but also, Back the hell off, you crazy bitch! I wished that I could see his face to know exactly how he felt. I’d seen Clementine’s mother in this kind of state before, but seeing it again didn’t make it any easier to watch. I was terrified that Frau Hart might attack my father, rip at his skin. I wanted to run downstairs, grab his arm and drag him away from the trouble.

  But also I wanted to watch.

  He would send me back to bed if he knew I was there – like he had the night the Andersons and their five boys had packed up their stuff and walked in one sad line to the large, black cars. My dad had watched that procession too. I missed most of it, because I was only six and not stealthy enough to know which of the creaky stairs would give me away.

  In the end, two uniformed women took an arm and shoulder each and pulled Frau Hart back onto her own driveway. As they did, Frau Hart spat in my father’s face. I put a hand over my mouth to muffle the gasp, but Dad didn’t recoil. It was as if he’d been expecting it, or was just so totally used to that kind of thing that Frau Hart would have to do something a whole lot more disgusting to make him flinch. It was really shocking. It was weirdly impressive.

  ‘You’ll never take our souls!’ Frau Hart cried as Dad cleaned his face with a handkerchief, and the blank-faced women in their sludgy uniforms yanked our hysterical neighbour towards her own front door. ‘NEVER!’

  They took her into the house. The men continued their ant march with the boxes. I craned my neck to see if Clementine had taken up a similar position to me on her stairs. I couldn’t see her. Maybe she wasn’t in the house at all. Maybe she had gone. Without saying goodbye. Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god …

  ‘Are they leaving?’ I blurted out.

  My voice made both of us jump, more startling to my father than a faceful of gob.

  He turned to look up at me. ‘Jessie?’

  He was wearing his official uniform again, I realised, as he leant towards the light of the house. Part of his uniform at least. The shaped trousers and the brown shirt with the black tie, not the jacket. He watched me look him up and down.

  ‘The Harts?’ he asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘They’re not going anywhere.’

  I let go of a huge bubble of air that I hadn’t realised had been there, held down hard in my lungs. It had only just occurred to me – Clementine could go away one day. She had come from another place – one that was nowhere near as nice as here – and she could return there.

  ‘Clementine and her mother are staying right where they are, so we can keep an eye on them,’ my father said. His voice was very gentle, very kind. I understood that he knew more than he was saying, but I was happy not to know. I wanted to be protected from it – the truth. I did as I was told. I went back upstairs and I went to bed.

  The last days of June, Clementine returned to school to prepare for her exams. And I kept an eye on her, just as Dad had asked. At the front door of the Harts’ house, a man in uniform kept an eye on Clementine’s mother.

  This was because, the morning after the garage clear-out, Frau Hart had taken a chainsaw to the flagpole in her front garden. And the flagpole in ours. In fact, I’m sure she would have felled every one of them in the street if Frau Gross hadn’t got on the phone at lightning speed and sent the sirens wailing in our direction. Not that the cars could get very far. Frau Hart, dressed in Herr Hart’s trousers and a pair of worker’s boots had given the poles the final kick that sent them falling across the pavements and blocking the street. You wouldn’t have thought they were long enough to stretch that far but they were. One lay with its dead-flag-head in Frau Gross’s front garden, the other landed in GG’s. It could have been worse, I suppose. Frau Hart could have made them topple the other way, onto our car, in through our front window, onto Lilli and me as we stood gobs-gaping in our front doorway.

  Of course, it was a really terrible thing to do and it absolutely shouldn’t have happened, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. ‘A piece of theatre,’ Mum had called it when Dad and the fat man grilled her for every detail in the kitchen later that evening.

  None of my neighbours had intervened to stop Frau Hart’s treacherous act and I had wondered if we might all get arrested for failure to act when the Schutzpolizei eventually arrived. We had all just watched those Party flags swoop down like big, red birds. But who could blame us? Who would challenge a mad woman with a chainsaw? Not that Frau Hart seemed very mad that morning. She looked the happiest she had in ages.

  Clementine had stood on their driveway, her arms crossed, during the whole thing. She gave a demure cheer and a clap as each pole fell. GG’s youngest brother, Kurt, had tried to join in with the cheering, only because he was little and excited and didn’t really understand what was going on, and GG had had to slap him across the head to make him stop. Their family got the foulest of stares from Frau Gross, as if a five-year-old’s cheers were a worse crime than desecrating Party property. Frau Gross wouldn’t have dared pull that face at Frau Hart. Frau Gross was far too fond of having two arms, two legs and a head.

  In the end the Schutzstaffel had turned up, as well as the Schutzpolizei. Overkill, some might say, for one skinny woman, even if she was armed with a chainsaw. The men had run from their vans, leaving the doors wide open, and clambered over the hurdles in the street. Frau Hart had just finished with our flagpole and was waving her saw triumphantly in the air, but she dropped the weapon with no resistance when the men got to her. Her work was done. She let them escort her back inside the house. Clementine had tried to follow, but another man put a hand to her breastbone, keeping her on the driveway.

  This sent Frau Gross scurrying across the street to our mother who, Lilli and I hadn’t realised until then, had been standing quietly behind us. Mum’s face – all still and flinty – made me think of Dad when Frau Hart had spat on him. You’d have thought someone chopping down your Party flagpole at 8.30 a.m. on a Saturday morning would make you slightly hysterical. Mum was glacial – as if she too had been expecting it.

  ‘What are they doing, Miriam?’ Frau Gross was hissing, trying not to be heard by the member of the Schutzstaffel keeping watch over Clementine. ‘Why are they putting her back in the house? Why are they not taking her away? She’s a danger! She’s a danger to us all!’

  My mother shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know, Helen.’ Her voice was low and flat. Her hands went up like Dad’s had – Please calm down, the gesture said, and also, Please back off.

  ‘Where is Herr Keller?’ Frau Gross asked, craning to look over my mother’s shoulder, as if Dad might be hiding from her somewhere in the house – not so far-fetched an idea.

  ‘Work,’ my mother said.

  ‘On a
Saturday?’ Frau Gross exclaimed.

  ‘Yes, Helen, it’s a very busy time.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ She folded her arms across the big shelf of her breasts and turned to survey the damage in the street. ‘I mean, where did she get a chainsaw?’ She tutted, raising her voice so all our neighbours would, for the record, hear her indignation. ‘How could she have been allowed to own a chainsaw!’

  All eyes drifted over to the Harts’ garage, which I knew was empty. I guessed Frau Gross knew this too. As if she would have missed last night’s entertainment. There were dirty patches on the ground by the garage door where the men hadn’t properly swept up. Those patches of spilt soil were glinting with flakes of glass.

  ‘My mother stole the chainsaw from your garage, Helen!’ This was Clementine yelling across from her driveway.

  All eyes on Frau Gross, who choked out a gasp.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to tell the stormtrooper here if you have a licence for that?’ Clementine went on, sending one suspicious eyebrow skyward.

  The young Schutzstaffel guy looked to my mother, as if the decision to arrest our busybody neighbour belonged with her.

  Frau Gross went white. She began to gabble. ‘I do not … I have not … How dare you, girl!’

  Clementine started chuckling. Lilli, realising what was going on, started chuckling too. My mother jabbed her sharply in the back of the ribs.

  ‘Ignore her, Unterscharführer,’ Mum said firmly, showing off that she knew a boy’s rank from the design of his shoulder straps. ‘The chainsaw is ours. Frau Hart stole it from our garage.’