The Truth in Our Lies

by Eliza Graham

  We reached the corner of our avenue. In front of us Dad’s church loomed, a large ruined edifice. ‘I barely notice it any more,’ Dad said.

  I said nothing.

  He cast a sideways look at me. ‘You haven’t ever been inside since . . . then, have you?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘They’re going to condemn it.’

  I stopped.

  ‘Knock it down?’ I couldn’t imagine the street without the church.

  ‘A few years ago I’d have been shocked. But there are worse things than buildings being pulled down. It’s not of great architectural note. The Victorian improvements, as they termed them, destroyed many of the medieval features. But I liked to think it was a fitting place of worship.’

  ‘More than that. It was beautiful. Still is.’ The church retained a quiet dignity. The tower was almost completely undamaged and seemed to watch over the rest of the damaged building like a sentinel. Dad had brought us up to cherish this place of worship from our infancy.

  ‘I need to go inside,’ I said. ‘It feels like the right time to do it.’ Even so, a coldness filled me at the prospect.

  ‘It’s in a sad state,’ Dad said.

  But he seemed pleased that I wanted to do this. In the kitchen he took the large key off the hook where it had always hung. ‘You’ll remember how the key sticks in the lock. I must oil it. A man’s coming to look at the rood screen this week so I uncovered it. You’ll be able to have a good look.’

  ‘They’re going to save the screen? Thank goodness.’

  I went out through the vicarage back door and up to the gate leading to the graveyard – the private access we’d always used. My mouth tasted metallic and my hand made a nonsense of unlocking the door. I could say I hadn’t been able to get inside, abandon the pilgrimage, but then Dad would feel he had to come out and unlock the church for me. I had to do this alone.

  The key finally turned and I went inside. The electrics had been switched off and it was hard to see much until I turned into the nave. Where the roof had collapsed, light poured in. I could hear birds outside. Dad had covered the font, pews and pulpit in tarpaulins. Paralysis struck me again. I could still see and smell the black smoke, feel the heat of the flames. I had to do this, had to make myself walk up the nave now.

  Put one foot out. Put the other foot out. Repeat. I heard Grace’s voice in my head. I kept my eyes on the stone slabs beneath my shoes until I stood by the rood screen. A ringing noise hummed in my ears. I tried to draw in another breath. My lungs still seemed to ache from the stench of the smoke that was no longer here.

  The London Blitz had reached its final weeks when I came home for a twenty-four-hour leave. Grace had amazed me – she was so much more confident than she had been. Within the somewhat shabby embrace of the vicarage, she’d found a spurt of energy following our mother’s death: cooking, cleaning, helping tend the flock.

  ‘Your WAAF uniform really suits you,’ she told me. ‘I’m sure this hasn’t gone unnoticed, Anna?’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘The Wrens have a far more attractive uniform than we do, but you know me, never one for vanity.’

  ‘Oh, I’d never call you vain,’ she said earnestly. ‘You do love beautiful clothes, though. I expect your young man likes you in them.’

  ‘Young man?’ I hoped I sounded casual.

  She pinched my arm. ‘I’m not stupid.’ Grace smiled her full, glorious smile at me. ‘I’m pleased for you. I say a prayer for him, whoever he is, each night.’

  ‘How did you know that it was . . . ?’ I didn’t know what to call it.

  ‘Serious?’ She laughed. ‘I can read you, Anna.’

  ‘I don’t think it can be serious, really, not when . . .’ When he could be killed each time he flew. But I was lying.

  ‘Give me a hand with these?’ She pointed at the carrots in the colander that needed peeling and slicing and watched me critically. ‘Try this knife, it’s sharper.’

  ‘Isn’t it more dangerous?’

  She passed me a knife with a short but deadly looking edge. ‘Sharper blades are safer than blunter ones.’

  ‘I should get changed,’ I said when I’d finished, yawning.

  ‘Too late now,’ Grace said, turning to the kitchen clock.

  I’d planned on putting on a dress and cardigan, with the brooch Patrick had given me. But she would have noted the new piece of jewellery and questioned me further, so perhaps it was as well.

  We sat down. Dad recited the brief grace I remembered from childhood.

  ‘I used to think that you were saying a prayer just for me, Dad,’ Grace said. ‘Grace before meals. It was years before I stopped feeling smug that we weren’t praying for Anna, too.’

  ‘How unkind. I need prayers.’ Though I knew, of course, that Dad and Grace both prayed on their knees for me each night before they went to bed.

  I told them what I could about my work in the Filter Room, how we organised the tables and responded to new information on incoming Luftwaffe positions and those of our own fighters.

  ‘We’re proud,’ Dad said. ‘You’re saving lives, Anna. Or should I say, Sergeant Hall?’

  ‘I hate being a sergeant,’ I said. ‘I think of someone very bossy, with thick ankles.’

  Grace stacked our empty plates. ‘You said they might put you forward for officer training? Would that mean a uniform more to your highness’s preference? Like the Wrens’?’

  ‘Our skirts are shaped like oblongs. The Wrens just have that something about them.’

  ‘Well I think you look very smart, darling,’ Dad said. ‘And the shine on those shoes of yours is impressive.’

  ‘It’s the years of practice polishing woodwork and silver in the church,’ I said.

  ‘I’m afraid your mother and I were hard taskmasters.’

  Many of the church’s artefacts were very old, some bequeathed centuries ago, long before the Victorian redesign. In my teens I’d raised my eyebrows at the women who’d given up months, years, to embroider the kneelers. But I’d come to love the biblical scenes or religious symbols intricately represented in woollen thread. My own favourite was a kneeler embroidered with the Lamb of God wearing a little chain of flowers round his neck. Dad said the theology behind the image was dubious, but I loved it.

  The siren screamed and the three of us started. ‘We can’t always stop them getting through,’ I said, to myself as much as to Dad and Grace. My mind switched to my work friends at Bentley Priory, the RAF’s Fighter Command located on the northern edge of London. I felt guilty that I wasn’t there with them, though I had been owed leave for months. I thought about Patrick, down in Kent, wondered whether he was scrambling right now, dashing to his Spitfire.

  Grace sighed and took off her apron. ‘Into the crypt we go.’ At the start of the war Dad had adapted the church crypt as a shelter, with a lavatory and running water.

  The thought of being crammed in with a small crowd below the ground made me shudder. I wanted to tell them I’d take my chances in the vicarage, but knew we were supposed to set a good example, so followed them to the church, outside which a small queue had formed.

  For the first hour it was just a stuffy, dull night sitting on a wooden bench to the accompaniment of bombers rumbling overhead and bursts of anti-aircraft guns. I did my best to smile and help Dad and Grace keep up morale.

  ‘It must be strange,’ Grace said. ‘Being here on the receiving end rather than doing whatever it is you do to defend us from those bombers.’

  I glanced up at the ceiling, suddenly feeling more on edge down here than I did when I was at Bentley Priory.

  I was filling the large earthen teapot with boiling water from the urn when something crashed through the nave above us. The pot shook in my hand. I set it down on the table before the water could scald me.

  Enamel mugs toppled from the shelves built on one wall. I felt plaster dust sprinkle my hair and face. The warden came down. ‘Everyone out.’

  We were ushe
ring the parishioners through the door into the graveyard when someone shouted from across the road. Fire. I looked up and saw the white and yellow flames. Either the explosive had caused it, or a following Heinkel had sprinkled the roof with incendiaries. Bad luck, but not unknown for one building to receive two hits on the same night. One of the elderly women started coughing, doubling over. ‘It’s her asthma,’ her companion said, biting her lip. ‘The smoke . . .’

  ‘We need an ambulance,’ Dad said. ‘Get everyone down into our cellar, girls, it’s closer than the public shelter.’

  ‘I’ll get the ambulance, you stay here with this lady,’ the warden told Dad.

  Grace led our group through the side gate into the vicarage garden, moving so smoothly that only a glance down at the brace on her foot would have alerted anyone to her disability.

  We walked through the kitchen towards our cellar door.

  I stopped. The church was full of the precious artefacts and fixtures that we’d talked about over supper. The candlesticks. The kneelers embroidered by generations of parishioners. All things that our parents had encouraged us to look after.

  ‘I can’t leave it all to burn,’ I told Grace.

  I stood in front of the rood screen willing myself back two years in time, willing my words unspoken. One poor decision of mine; so many consequences for other people.

  12

  I returned to Bedfordshire on Sunday evening, promising my father that I would visit again soon. The train was cancelled, and I waited for hours in Euston before catching a slow service. After I’d changed at Bletchley, I dozed in my seat, waking with a start. The station signs had been removed and for a moment I panicked that I might have missed my stop. I opened the window to look out as we slowed. The stationmaster’s house came into view and with relief I saw we were approaching Aspley Guise.

  I felt a sense of homecoming as I walked down the quiet lanes to Lily Cottage. Our strange little team was starting to feel like family.

  Micki had already gone to bed when I finally let myself in the front door. We had a busy day ahead of us on the Monday morning and hurried to Mulberry House after a quick breakfast. I was too distracted to remember what had happened after we’d separated on Saturday night.

  After lunch we had a quieter moment before the afternoon couriers arrived. Micki and I stood watching William and Father Becker smoke in the garden underneath the flowering cherry.

  ‘So peaceful,’ Micki said.

  ‘And seems so safe.’ I told her about the man who’d followed me to Leicester Square tube station.

  ‘You think it was one of those soldiers from Wardour Street?’

  ‘Not sure. Think he was wearing a peaked cap, not a side cap.’

  ‘Could be any maniac,’ she said. ‘We forget what the rest of the world’s like. That’s what William said, too.’ Her brow puckered. ‘He was worried about you walking to Leicester Square tube station alone. It seems he was right.’ Then she grinned. ‘London’s certainly a bit livelier than here. Did you see Father Becker’s face when he saw the black soldier with the white tart? Those clerics are all the same: sex-deprived.’

  ‘He was certainly shocked.’

  Micki considered it. ‘Not sure whether it was what they were up to that was shocking him or the fact that she was with someone dark. Probably not many like that GI in Zurich. And certainly not in Germany, walking around with white women, enjoying a night out.’

  Before I returned with William to Waites Farm on the Thursday, I rang ahead – thank God for the farmhouse telephone – to tell Mary to bring the prisoner to the copse.

  ‘My brother used to shoot in there,’ she said. ‘He’d be pleased to have it looked after, but it’s hardly priority food production, is it? And it’s the wrong time of year to do very much with the trees.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. Just make it look as though the prisoner’s got a legitimate reason to be out there.’

  ‘All right.’ Mary sounded more resigned to helping us, if still grudging.

  The car parked up in the lane and William remained inside it. We’d agreed that the spark of animosity ignited between Schulte and me at the last interview could be useful.

  I walked up the track to the copse, glad to be wearing non-uniform wellingtons instead of my black lace-ups. Small clumps of bluebells had sprouted since we’d last been here. A few more sunny days would bring them into flower. Despite the adrenaline flowing through me the prospect of warm weather made me feel cheerful.

  I had a clear view of the farmyard. A motorcycle was propped up against the barn wall. My heart sank. We couldn’t risk the military policeman overhearing. He sat on a straw bale, back to me, smoke from his cigarette circling him, showing no sign of having heard the motor engine. Good.

  I walked on. The prisoner was hacking at brambles and thorns, jacket off, shirt sleeves rolled up. I stopped and watched him at work. He moved methodically, switching from scything to raking offcuts into a neat pile on the side of the path. I thought I’d approached without the crackle of a twig or rustle of dead leaves, but he spoke without turning towards me. ‘It’s going well, Sergeant Hall.’ There was a hint of mockery in Schulte’s words. He removed the thick gloves he wore and turned to me.

  ‘As you can see, I am working hard.’ He nodded at me. ‘But surely there’s more essential farm labour, nein?’

  ‘You’re an agricultural expert now, are you?’

  ‘You don’t need to be an expert to see that two women and three prisoners can’t possibly produce all the food your ministry tells them they should.’ He wiped his brow, the muscles in his arm showing beneath the rolled-up sleeve. ‘Poor Mrs Waites is nearly in tears when she receives the latest missives from Whitehall.’

  I pointed at the brambles. ‘Are you taking them all out?’

  ‘No. Just getting them under control.’

  How Germanic.

  His gaze took on its watchful expression. ‘You haven’t driven out here to examine my forestry skills, have you?’

  Schulte’s tone was bordering on the insolent. He’d forgotten he was a prisoner. ‘I do the questioning, not you,’ I told him, glad my voice was level and cool.

  Food and exercise had filled Schulte out. He was a fit, if lean, young man. Hidden under my jacket was a whistle I could pull out if needed. The MP would hear it, and so would William. But I didn’t want to summon William, have a male come to my rescue for the second time in a week. ‘So the family are still treating you well?’

  He pushed at dead leaves with the tip of his boot, seeming to mull it over. ‘Mrs Waites says her son Malcolm is a POW on a farm in Germany.’ His voice was less angry. ‘She told me she’d treat me as she hoped some German family would treat Malcolm. I told her that farmers near my home use POW labour and they treat the prisoners well.’

  Something stirred in my imagination. I kept my expression blank. ‘Unless they’re Jews?’ I wasn’t sure why this observation had come to me; perhaps because I’d just left Micki behind at Mulberry House, reading German newspapers with an eye for stories we could embroider for our news broadcast.

  Schulte looked down at the leaves he was kicking. ‘I don’t know why you’re asking me about that.’

  ‘But do you know of cases where German farmers discovered that their POWs were Jewish?’ I hoped the excitement I felt wasn’t showing.

  He picked up his saw. I stroked the outline of the chain under the thick wool of my jacket. I could pull the whistle out in a second. But Schulte was looking at the saw’s edge, not at me, running a finger over it tentatively. ‘When I was home on leave I heard that some farmers who appreciated Jewish prisoners’ hard work might forget to tell the authorities. Or pretend they didn’t know. Their own sons were away fighting. The animals still needed tending, and the crops harvesting.’

  The kernel in my mind continued to grow. ‘Tell me about the farms in your area: the crops grown, animals reared, that kind of thing.’

  ‘So much detail?’


  ‘Remember what’s at stake for you. That cage?’

  His eyes blazed at me in that cold way of theirs. ‘Threatening me won’t make me want to help you, Sergeant Hall.’

  ‘You’re obviously no friend of the regime,’ I said, more softly. ‘You know the arrangement we made with you: cooperate and you stay here in a good, healthy job. No more questions about Dunkirk. Eventually, when we’re satisfied, you can opt for POW camp in Canada as is your right as an officer.’

  ‘My family.’ He looked less like a fox and more like a young man again.

  ‘I understand your concerns.’

  ‘Do you, sergeant?’ He was staring at the saw again. I wanted to step away but held my ground.

  ‘Tell me what you can,’ I said. ‘You want the war to end. So do we.’ For a few seconds there was silence. He looked at the bramble bush, his expression unreadable. I’d lost him. Beattie would be furious. William would think me incompetent.

  Schulte nodded. My heart rate slowed. ‘In the afternoon I’ll be working on the tractor inside the barn. The engine still isn’t firing properly. The other two will be cleaning the cowshed now the cattle are out in the field. If you give me paper and pencil I’ll write it all down for you: local farms, animals kept, crops, fruit and vegetables grown. If they have prisoners of war.’

  A nice little story about how useful the prisoners of war were proving, with a joke at the end along the lines that some farmers might prefer a hardworking British-Jewish prisoner to the idle son sent to the front. I tried to think of any reason why giving Schulte writing materials might be a security risk but couldn’t come up with anything. He had no access to the postbox. There were no other Germans in the area. ‘Thank you.’ I must have sounded much warmer now because the tension in his shoulders seemed to disappear as he took the sheets I tore from my writing pad.

  He folded the sheets carefully and placed them inside his shirt and put the pencil I gave him into a top pocket. ‘You will be careful with the information?’

  ‘It’s in our interest to keep our sources safe.’