The Truth in Our Lies

by Eliza Graham

  ‘No.’ I hoped the single word didn’t convey the mixture of emotions churning inside me. How many aircraft had I helped position in my previous job? How many crews had I protected with my rapid, accurate calculations, my use of trigonometry? And yet I had never myself set foot in a plane. Would anyone be watching over us as we headed across the Bay of Biscay? I reminded myself that the pilot would have radio contact. The flight would be listed. But radar wouldn’t extend into the Bay of Biscay. There’d be no early warning of the enemy’s approach. And the Luftwaffe was highly active down there.

  ‘Passenger flights these days aren’t as comfortable as the films would have you believe,’ Beattie went on, sounding less smug than I might have expected. ‘But it’s reasonably rare for difficulties to be experienced.’

  Atkins drove towards the white buildings. ‘The terminal’s here.’ She got out to open the boot for our suitcases.

  ‘No time to hang around,’ Beattie said, examining his watch. I murmured a thanks to Atkins and followed Beattie inside, where we joined a short queue of people waiting to board the Lisbon flight.

  Our tickets and passports checked, I walked up the steps into the Dakota behind Beattie, feeling nothing like a movie star, hoping the funk didn’t show on my face.

  As we seated ourselves, Beattie patted his slightly bulging jacket pocket. ‘A quick nip of brandy before take-off eases things, Hall. There’s a blackout on the windows so you won’t see anything, anyway.’

  He could be kind, when it suited him. On several occasions he’d helped refugees working for us who needed papers or assistance with locating other family members who’d fled Europe. He’d presented me with exotic objects such as oranges or tins of shortbread, but liked to keep me off balance, surprising me with sudden changes to routine, this trip to Lisbon being an extreme example. Perhaps his true kindness had been giving me this job, though. Even if I’d never admit this to him.

  Only eighteen passengers on the flight. The rest of the cabin was piled with bags of what looked like mail. A co-pilot gave brief, clipped instructions. Beattie passed his flask to me. I took a small sip, feeling the warm liquid hit my stomach. As the Dakota accelerated up the runway, I clutched the edge of my seat, but felt the nip of brandy taking away the edge of my nervousness.

  ‘Fatalism,’ Beattie told me, voice carrying above the Dakota’s engines. ‘If we run into a patrol, you and I can’t do anything about it so we might just as well relax.’

  I gave a grim internal smile, imagining how this philosophy would have gone down in the Filter Room at Bentley Priory.

  He settled into his seat, tugging the belt over his solid middle and letting out a deep breath. ‘I’m a bit funny about water,’ he said. ‘Don’t like the thought of having nothing between me and the Atlantic.’

  It was an unusually frank admission. ‘Can you swim?’ I asked. Not that it would make much difference if we were shot down.

  ‘They tried teaching me when I was a child, but when I was about four I had a bad experience, lost my footing in a lake and my head went under. I prefer to keep away from situations where being in water is required.’

  ‘You chose a good landlocked place to work, then,’ I said. ‘Apart from the pond in the woods there’s not too much water near Mulberry House.’

  I understood about phobias. My fear of fire had lessened only slightly as months and years passed. I tried not to think of my previous work, of the last radio exchanges I’d heard with pilots screaming as flames engulfed their cockpits. I could see this Dakota dropping to the bottom of the Atlantic, the passengers sitting in their seats as the cold water rose above our faces. I could feel my lungs filling with salty water and not experience the terror that afflicted me when I considered death by fire. My scar seemed to burn more painfully. I closed my eyes and made myself think about Lisbon. Would there be blossom on the city’s trees? What might there be to eat? Could I buy presents for my father and my landlady?

  Beattie and I didn’t say a word during the six-hour flight apart from when we thanked the steward for the mugs of coffee and sandwiches. The latter looked like the usual curly-edged offerings but were actually filled with ham that didn’t have the texture of carpet lining.

  As the plane descended to Lisbon, some of my stomach churning returned, but when the Dakota came to a stop and we were allowed to lift the blackout, I blinked. It was night but I saw lights. Brightness everywhere. Lisbon called itself the City of Lights, just as Paris did. First time I’d seen an illuminated metropolis in over three years.

  Beattie seemed to guess what I was thinking. ‘Shame it’s slightly foggy, but it’s always cheering to see peacetime civilian life, isn’t it?’

  Of course he’d been over here ‘harvesting’, as he put it, several times in the early years of the war, during the first refugee rush from Europe.

  ‘Tonight you can just relax, Hall,’ he said as a taxi drove us from the airport. ‘Nothing on the cards until we meet Herr Silberman at a café for a mid-morning coffee tomorrow at the seaside.’ I looked at him. ‘Not my choice of venue, but they were adamant it had to be out there.’

  It almost sounded like a peacetime jaunt. I sat, still blinking in the taxi. The brightness: street lamps, light shining from apartments and houses, the multi-coloured glare from neon advertising on the top of buildings, all blazing out, unafraid. On a hilltop I saw a floodlit castle. ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘The Castle of São Jorge – St George to you.’

  ‘It’s so . . .’ Words failed me.

  ‘Blatant?’ he suggested. ‘You’re feeling the liberation of getting off a small island, Anna. Heady, isn’t it?’

  Darkness and a sense of geographic confinement had become natural.

  ‘Lisbon has seven hills, like Rome, so there are some good views.’

  I watched the brightly lit trams whistle and rattle next to us, some of them curving off the road we were on to shoot up- or downhill like fairground rides. We turned onto a wide avenue, fronted by lit-up hotels and restaurants. The taxi slowed. I clung to the edge of the seat, feeling exposed, half-wanting to glance skywards to check nothing was going to attack me from above.

  ‘Here we are,’ Beattie said. ‘Not the Aziz or the Tivoli, I’m afraid – bit over budget for us. But this establishment is only mildly infested with the enemy.’

  I stopped, half in and half out of the taxi. ‘Germans are staying here?’

  ‘Everyone’s cheek by jowl in Lisbon. Don’t let it worry you, Hall.’

  I walked into the lobby feeling like an antelope approaching a pride of lions.

  3

  Inside the hotel smartly dressed people crowded the reception desk. The staff appeared almost overwhelmed. ‘The embassy recommended this place, but they warned that standards mightn’t be as they were before the war,’ Beattie told me. ‘Hotel rooms are scarce in the city now.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Half of Europe’s Jews who are still free and have any money left are here in Lisbon, trying to get out by ship or aeroplane. Half of Germany’s here spying on them.’ He ran a finger over the reception desk and nodded approvingly. I was looking at an obviously German party at the far end of the lobby, two of the men in uniform. ‘Don’t scowl at people, Hall, even enemies. I booked rooms next to one another on a floor that’s tacitly for Allies only. One does hear stories about our Teutonic friends.’

  My skin prickled. Tonight there’d be reassurance in knowing he would sleep in the neighbouring room. I was still blinking at the lights and the chatter of people coming and going, the sounds of motor engines on the avenue outside. ‘It’s a bit livelier than Aspley Guise, isn’t it?’ Beattie said.

  Once inside my room, I didn’t turn the light on – wartime habits being hard to break – and walked to the windows. I stared at the street lights, fascinated by the neon advertising strips for watches, cameras and cars. I craned my neck but couldn’t make out the fort on the hillside to the south-east. If things had been different, if I’d been here with Patrick,
we might have planned sight-seeing and some shopping. The only demand placed on us would have been choosing a restaurant. I told myself not to be so foolish but couldn’t stop my imaginings. Would we order nightcaps from room service: a couple of brandies? Perhaps I’d run myself a bath and he’d sit on the edge, chatting to me. Or sit in the tub with me . . .

  Or perhaps we’d just stand at this window, arms round one another, looking at the lights.

  Damn him. Damn Patrick for still being so much in my mind, after all this time. I’d purposefully not read any of the RAF death notices in the newspapers. I prayed he was alive, but I didn’t want to know anything about him. And I didn’t need him in my head, especially not now, in this new city. Let him be happily entangled with another woman, safe from danger. But let him perhaps think of me sometimes? No, I didn’t deserve that. Let him have forgotten me completely.

  I turned away from the view to unpack the few clothes in my suitcase. One of the Czech refugees I’d worked with in Bedfordshire had swapped a pot of cleansing lotion for a pair of my warm lisle stockings. The lotion was supposed to be good for damaged skin, but the pot was almost empty. Was there anything in Portugal that might be good for my face? They said olive oil was soothing. Did the Portuguese produce olive oil? Or would almond oil work better? I was desperate to strengthen the small muscles on the right side of my face, and massaging it might help. When I looked at my reflection, my attempts at smiling still looked lopsided. Often the damaged skin woke me up at night, seeming to recall the fire in its cells, the pain cranking up my mind, filling it with fears.

  I woke to hear car horns on the street outside instead of the muted late-winter birdsong of Lily Cottage’s garden. Checking my watch I saw it was quarter to eight. No mention of breakfast had been made. Beattie wasn’t one for early morning meetings. I washed and dressed quickly and headed out of the lobby onto the street, relieved not to see any Germans hanging around, nodding at the concierge. The tree-lined avenue on which the hotel sat stretched left and right. I read the name on a signpost: Avenida da Liberdade. Liberty Avenue. It seemed an appropriately positive name.

  A motorist hooted at me as I crossed the road without looking. So many cars. So many people driving around on non-essential business: shopping, visiting friends, going to non-war-related jobs.

  Businessmen headed by foot for work. Some of them stepped into cafés where they were obviously in the habit of buying the tiny cups of what looked like very strong coffee. Small boys buffed their shoes as they drank. All around the bustle of a peacetime city made my eyes widen. No barrage balloons. No signs directing pedestrians to air-raid shelters. No sandbags, boarded-up windows or shattered glass.

  A side street leading uphill promised a good view. I followed an elderly woman carrying a wicker basket, admiring her stamina as she briskly tackled the walk up the cobbled pavement. The street opened up into a small square, where more men sat at tables, plates of pastries in front of them. My stomach gurgled. I wished I had the nerve and the Portuguese to order coffee and pastries for myself, but there were few other women sitting outside at the tables and I was wary of drawing attention. I checked my watch again and decided to head back down to the Avenida and our hotel for breakfast. As I turned towards the street leading steeply downhill, I saw a single woman sitting at a café table, probably a refugee, perhaps Jewish, from France or Belgium. Something about her clothes, the navy slacks and the silk blouse, worn half tucked in, half out, caught my eye. A long string of pearls was wound twice round her neck. Two curves of vermillion marked out her lips, through which she drew on a cigarette. In front of her was one of the small coffee cups. Our eyes met. She gave me a half-smile and raised the cup. I nodded at her.

  Perhaps she was a German spy. There was something in that salute that made me think not. She’d been proud, yet wary, perhaps on the defensive. That lipstick was her shield against the world. The slacks were an act of defiance. Did she feel she needed to assert herself in Lisbon, where so many of her enemies walked around?

  I’d dressed in a light wool-blend frock, cut on the bias, falling just below my knees, with a veiled hat trimmed in the same navy. Grace had made the dress for me in the spring of 1940, using the last of a precious piece of fabric and a pre-war paper pattern. She’d been a promising seamstress and had briefly taken tailoring classes before Mum had become terminally ill. I’d frequently been asked where my dress had come from. It had been the last thing she’d sewn for me.

  Patrick had never seen me in this day dress because our courtship had played out either at night, or on days out when we’d gone for walks to country inns. I’d started to borrow his knitwear for these excursions. I love to see you bundled up in my old jumpers, darling. So wholesome and yet so alluring . . .

  It struck me that dressed in civilian clothes rather than uniform I was technically a kind of spy.

  As I approached the Avenida a solidly built young soldier in German uniform came towards me. My muscles stiffened. An enemy, right in front of me. Half of me still expected him to stand to one side and let me pass, as most men would. This one smirked and continued to walk directly at me. I jumped aside, missing his grey-uniformed shoulder by an inch. A tram bell rang out in warning. My nerves jangled. ‘Lovely manners,’ I called after him in my best High German accent. His shoulders stiffened and he turned around to glare at me. I wanted to ask him if his mother had brought him up to be so discourteous, wanted to scream at him that his people had taken my sister’s life – had murdered a good, kind person. I reminded myself that we were supposed to be keeping a low profile. I looked away and walked on.

  There was no sign of Beattie in the hotel reception. I’d have to eat my breakfast alone.

  It was served in the smaller dining room of the hotel, a tiled room full of morning light. Fresh bread rolls with real butter, pastries, coffee, a small plate of fruit. To my left a couple sat talking quietly to one another in French. In the corner a single man read a Frankfurter Allgemeine. From time to time he lowered the paper and studied the other guests in the breakfast room. When our eyes met, he bowed his head, eyebrows raised. At least this one was pretending to be civil. I found this more unsettling than the uncouthness of the soldier earlier on. I gave a curt nod and returned to my pastry, which was worthy of attention, being one of the most delicious things I’d eaten in over a year.

  When I’d finished I walked past a middle-aged couple coming into the room, he in uniform, she in a severely cut suit. They looked me up and down. I felt an urge to ask them who the hell they thought they were.

  The woman eyed me with distaste and muttered something about the veil being a good idea for one such as me. A childish part of me wanted to tell her that if I had a piggy face like hers I’d be wearing a bag over my head. The thought made me smile. I was glad to see her eyes narrow with irritation. Then I felt a pang of embarrassment at my schoolgirl response.

  I returned to my room to clean my teeth and waited for Beattie in the lobby, mercifully less crowded now. He appeared in a lightweight suit and greeted me with a grunt. Still too early for him to want much conversation. At a nod from Beattie, the doorman found us a cab, which drove us through a large square with a statue in the middle, tiled in an unusual wavy pattern. ‘Rossio Square,’ Beattie said. ‘The railway station here is where most of the refugees arrive in the city. We’ll come back later.’

  The taxi turned off into a quieter street, heading south-west, I estimated. We passed shops selling leather goods, embroidered linens and books. ‘There may be time for some quick shopping tomorrow,’ Beattie said, ‘but probably not from that establishment.’ He pointed to a corner. ‘Alemanha’, the sign said. Germany. A propaganda office with window displays. I glimpsed photographs of uniformed men and posters of saluting youths.

  ‘We might examine the displays in detail another time,’ Beattie said.

  ‘How can the Portuguese bear having the Germans here?’

  Beattie shrugged. ‘They probably feel the same way about us. W
e’re supposed to be their old allies, but keeping us happy while preventing the Germans and their Spanish friends from invading Portugal is a tricky business.’

  The Germans wanted Portuguese wolfram, I remembered, a metal used in munitions manufacturing.

  ‘We’ve got a propaganda centre in the city, too,’ Beattie told me. I wondered what our shop displayed: pictures of the King and Queen? The Trooping of the Colour? Henley Regatta? Was our version more or less acceptable to the Portuguese?

  The Tagus was in front of us. My heart lit up at the sight of the river, glittering in the spring sunshine. We turned into a modern-looking road. ‘Newly built and makes it much quicker to get to the coast,’ Beattie said.

  ‘Where exactly are we going?’ I asked.

  ‘A resort called Estoril,’ Beattie told me. ‘It also boasts a rather interesting fortress, but the main draw now is the casino.’

  ‘People still go to casinos?’ The world was in turmoil, but people still bet on black or red?

  ‘Don’t be such a vicar’s daughter. Even in the trenches men place bets. And you yourself must have played rummy or whist off-duty or down in an air-raid shelter.’

  ‘Not as glamorous.’

  ‘The more prosperous refugees catch the sun, while the Gestapo watch them. Cat and mouse. For a period in 1940 the refugees included our very own Duke and Duchess of Windsor, until they were sent to the Bahamas.’

  The Duke, our king until his abdication, had long been rumoured to have friends on the German side.

  ‘Herr and Frau Silberman have a favourite café on the front – not my favourite rendezvous with all that damn water around, but whatever makes them happy.’

  The city started to fall away, replaced by suburbs. It was market day in one of the squares; stalls were set out with cabbages, cauliflowers, beetroots and fish in a variety of shapes and sizes. Oranges, too. My mouth watered as I recalled the taste. ‘Stop gawping, Hall,’ Beattie said. ‘You’re like a child outside Hamley’s toyshop at Christmas.’