The Forgotten

by Mary Chamberlain

  ‘What a great idea,’ he said, his voice welcoming, excited even. ‘What time?’

  ‘In about an hour? My train’s about to leave. Is that okay?’

  ‘Lovely. I’ll meet you at the station.’

  ‘Caller, your time is up. Do you wish to extend?’

  ‘By the clock,’ she shouted into the phone. ‘The clock.’ The line went dead.

  Perhaps he’d been asleep, woken up by her call, grumpy like a startled baby.

  The station was crowded, even though it was a Saturday. Families, mostly, out for the day. Taking the kids to London. Big Ben. St Paul’s. The Tower. All the sights. She made her way towards the large clock, searching for him. He wasn’t there. She craned her neck, wishing she was taller. She couldn’t see him. A small boy darted in front of her, pushing as he passed, catching her off balance. She teetered for a moment, staggered, regained her footing.

  ‘Brian, come back here.’ A harassed woman ran past her. ‘Sorry, love. Brian. This. Minute.’

  She watched as the woman caught the boy, raised her hand and walloped his bottom. The boy pulled a face, pretending it hadn’t hurt, pretending he wasn’t humiliated. Betty smiled at him, it’s okay. Shook her head, but your mum’s right.

  Perhaps John hadn’t heard the bit about the clock. He knew it was St Pancras, though. He’d seen her off at the end of an evening so many times. He kissed her these days, properly, pressing himself against her, Betty, Betty. She’d give him fifteen minutes, get some change at the ticket office, ring him again.

  Though what if he was on the way? They could easily miss each other.

  She positioned herself under the clock, checked her watch against it. She was a few minutes fast, but she did that on purpose. She hated to be late. She’d never understood this English ‘ish’. Come at elevenish. Why? Come at eleven, come at ten past eleven. No ish.

  She felt a movement behind her, two hands cover her eyes, the rough tweed of a jacket sleeve brushing her cheek.

  ‘Guess who?’ She smelled him, his signature.

  The hands came down, spun her round. He must have been running. He was breathing heavily and there was perspiration on his forehead.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘Have you been waiting long?’

  She shook her head. John respectable in his schoolmaster’s jacket with the leather patches, a woollen tie. She brushed her finger against his forehead. ‘Aren’t you hot?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, slipping off his jacket, slinging it over his shoulder, groping for her hand, claiming her, she is mine. Why had she thought he could have a girlfriend?

  ‘Come on. What shall we do?’

  She braced herself for a moment. Sometimes, she thought, a woman needs to move first.

  ‘I’ve never been to your rooms,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we go there? Have a cup of tea and then decide?’

  He stopped, paused. Her doubts hurtled back. He has someone there. Not just another girlfriend. He’s married. He could be. She’d never asked, but the arrangement would suit him. What had he told his wife? Just got to nip out for a bit.

  ‘See,’ he said. ‘The problem is…’ He moved a step away from her, looked into the distance. Her stomach lurched and she felt tears threatening. Her nose was beginning to run and she sniffed.

  ‘You have someone,’ she said. She couldn’t help herself.

  ‘What?’ He looked surprised. ‘No, nothing like that. The thing is, my rooms are in a dreadful state.’

  She laughed.

  ‘Is that all? No mummy to tidy up?’ It was a spiteful thing to say, and she wanted to swallow it back straight away. Anxiety, that’s what it was, made her say silly things.

  He looked cross. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m very tidy. The thing is, a couple of birds flew down the chimney and made a terrible mess. I thought I’d been vandalised, to be honest. Until I realised what had happened.’

  ‘Are they still there?’

  ‘I’ve got rid of them but I haven’t had time to clean up. It looks like a battle zone.’ He looked confused, as if he shouldn’t have said that.

  ‘Then why don’t I help?’

  ‘Would you?’ he said. ‘I’m a bit squeamish about blood.’

  They hopped on a bus, clambered up to the top. The two front seats were unoccupied and they scrambled forward, lurching as the bus started up.

  ‘I like to sit up top,’ John said. ‘Childish, I know.’

  ‘Me too,’ she said. ‘But it has to be the front.’

  He squeezed her hand. The evening would be fine.

  ‘So what made you decide to come to London?’

  ‘Spur of the moment.’

  She didn’t want to tell him she’d had an argument with her father. The row wasn’t important. Lots of people shared his views. Most of the lawyers where she worked, for a start. A deterrent, they called it. The nuclear deterrent.

  It was her father’s attitude. Lieselotte. His own daughter. His anger. How many German men had disowned their women once the Russians left? Wished them dead? Her father was one of them, she saw that now. She didn’t even know if he’d voted for Hitler, supported the National Socialists. Had he been a willing member of the Party? A fellow traveller? He never spoke about it, what part he’d played in that wrecking ball of history. It was hard to live with a man who gagged his past. She’d been a child in the war. It hadn’t been her fault. She had not been responsible. But she felt it, because her father did not.

  ‘Spur of the moment? You’ve gone very quiet. Did something happen?’

  And Berlin? The muteness of the women was thick and heavy as tarpaulin over a corpse. Nice girls don’t talk about that. Why keep this secret from John? Why pretend? John had never asked where she came from. Her English was flawless, she’d made sure of that, so why would he suspect? She couldn’t bring herself to say, I was there. I am German. Ich bin Deutsche. She was as guilty as her father.

  She broke away from her thoughts, looked up at him, smiled.

  ‘No. Nothing. I was in town. In St Albans, as it happened,’ she said, adding, ‘It’s not far away from Hatfield.’

  ‘I know where St Albans is,’ he said. ‘What were you doing there?’

  ‘Sitting down,’ she said. ‘In the marketplace. With our CND banners.’ And her badge, now ground to dust in the garden.

  ‘You’re lucky you weren’t arrested.’

  ‘In St Albans? I think the police were bemused, that’s all. Everyone was so young. School children, really. I was by far the oldest.’

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I know how you feel. I’ll tell you about that later. Come, this is our stop.’

  She knew he lived in Bloomsbury, but had no idea it was so close to the British Museum. She followed him into Bury Place, through a narrow door next to a café. The hall was dark and she had to adjust her eyes. A man’s bike was propped against the wall, ahead of them a flight of stairs with chipped brown paint, covered in torn green linoleum. It was dingy and shabby, and she thought of her father. He’d paint it all pale blue, rip out the old lino, put down Marley tiles.

  ‘One more flight,’ John said. ‘Watch the step.’ There was a grimy skylight that lit the last of the stairs and a small landing. John pulled out his key and opened the door.

  ‘Won’t you come into my parlour.’ Said the spider to the fly. Betty felt a small knot of excitement. She’d never been alone with him. They’d always met in public places. Would he have suggested they come here if she hadn’t mentioned it? Or was he, in his own way, luring her inside?

  She brushed him as she stepped past into the sitting room, an inch too close but she couldn’t stop herself. He touched her hand, let it linger. Her skin fizzed. Ahead was the mantelpiece, bookshelves either side and on them, a clock. Her blood drained, made her giddy for a moment. She shivered.

  ‘Cold?’ he said.

  ‘No. Nothing.’ She smiled, added, ‘Someone stepped on my grave.’

  Her parents had had an identical clock, until Lieselotte ha
d sold it. Of course, thousands of them were made. The factory churned them out for years. Still, it was odd that John would have one. Perhaps he’d picked it up in Germany at the end of the war.

  Either side of the mantelpiece were two sagging armchairs covered in a brown moquette. His table was heavy and plain. Utility, no doubt. Solid. Value for money. Too clumsy, her father had said. Where is the flair? He had got rid of theirs years ago, bought a new G-plan dining set. The floor was covered in brown linoleum, and in front of the fire was a black semicircle with a long, shaggy pile.

  ‘I didn’t know you…’ She was about to say had a dog before she realised it was a hearthrug. What an idiot.

  ‘I thought it was one of those black retrievers,’ she said. She pulled a face, silly me, looking either side of the mantelpiece, at the shelves in the alcoves stacked with books, paperbacks, mainly, though she could see some hardbacks on the top shelves, Schiller and Goethe, Brecht and Mann written on the spines, and a fat Oxford German Dictionary.

  ‘You’re taking it in,’ he said. ‘Does it meet with your approval?’

  ‘This doesn’t look too bad,’ she said. ‘I was expecting worse when you said it was a battlefield.’ Could she ask him about the clock?

  ‘It wasn’t too bad in here,’ he said. ‘Though the bulb’s gone in the reading lamp, which is a nuisance. Come through.’

  He opened the door to the kitchen. There were blood smears across the window and down the walls, on the table and the cupboard doors, thin rusty blood, the kind you get from an insect or a reptile. She shut her eyes for a moment, squeezing out the memory of blood along the pavement, splattered on walls. Of Otto, pale against the cobbled street.

  He’d called it a battle zone, but he’d obviously never seen one. Betty knew about blood, knew how to steel herself against it. ‘Do you have a bucket? Disinfectant?’

  ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘My charlady…’ He bent down to the space below the sink and pulled out a small can of Jeyes from the back.

  ‘Rubber gloves?’ Betty said. ‘This stuff burns like mad. Stinks like hell.’

  John rummaged some more, produced gloves, a floor cloth and a bucket.

  ‘Come on, I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘I can’t let you clean up for me. Why don’t you put the kettle on?’

  ‘I thought you were squeamish,’ she said.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t look so dreadful now. It was the shock, I think.’

  Sitting opposite each other, cradling their cups, Betty could smell the disinfectant on John’s hands even from a distance. He was right, the place was tidy, and clean. She liked that, in a man. She’d have to ask him to wash his hands, get rid of the stench of the Jeyes, though she wasn’t sure where the bathroom was. She looked again at the clock. The chrome had worn round the edge and on the stand, as it had on theirs, but the smoky glass and the Roman numbers telling the hours were clear and bright apart from the II.

  ‘I like your clock,’ she said.

  ‘Do you?’ he said. ‘I think it’s Bauhaus.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s art deco for sure. The designer was a man called Heinrich Möller and the clocks were made by Kienzle.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ he said. ‘You know a lot about it. Nobody’s ever told me that.’

  ‘I’m full of odd snippets of information,’ she said.

  ‘Your pronunciation is excellent, too.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. Keep to the subject. Don’t let him ask. ‘My father had a similar one. He got it in Germany.’ That was no lie. ‘Where did you find that one?’ She was heading into dangerous territory, towards Germany, to Berlin.

  ‘In Germany too,’ John said. ‘At the end of the war. Possibly your father got it the same way as me. For cigarettes.’ He reached over to the mantelpiece for a packet of Weights, his hand trembling.

  ‘Possibly,’ Betty said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Fine.’ He fumbled at the packet and it fell to the floor. Betty leaned forward and picked it up, tossing it to him.

  ‘Butterfingers.’

  He opened the flap, took out a cigarette, tossed the packet back.

  ‘Help yourself,’ he said. ‘Where was he?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Betty said. She was practised in this lie. ‘He won’t talk about the war.’

  She took a cigarette, waited while John struggled with the matches, striking one against the coarse surface, again, again, his hand shaking, his face twisted in anguish.

  ‘Here,’ she said, standing up and taking the matches. ‘Let me do it. Perhaps you should see a doctor?’

  She lit his cigarette and her own, blew out the match, threw it in the empty grate.

  ‘It passes,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing. A trapped nerve. Listen.’ He leaned forward, picked up the ashtray from the hearth, balanced it on his quaking knee. ‘Why don’t we go for a drink? What time do you have to get back? Have you eaten?’

  ‘Questions, questions. Yes to a drink. No, I haven’t eaten. And my last train goes just after ten.’

  ‘It’s half seven now.’ He stubbed out the cigarette, waited a moment, steadying himself. ‘Let’s go.’ He stood up, placing the ashtray on the mantelpiece. ‘If you want to use the, you know, lavatory…’ He turned red. Why were men so squeamish about those things? ‘The bathroom’s down the stairs, on the landing below. I share it with my neighbour, Bob.’

  She put out her cigarette as he grabbed his jacket and keys and opened the door for her.

  She had a lemonade shandy. The pub didn’t serve food in the evening, but they rustled up a Scotch egg and a couple of packets of crisps. She was hungrier than she realised and devoured the egg, wiping her mouth free of crumbs, fishing in the crisps for the twist of salt, washing it all down with the shandy, listening to John as he told her about this coffee house he’d found, about his vigil last weekend, about the boys in the school who’d carved the CND symbol on their desks.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I turned a blind eye.’ He nodded at her glass. ‘Another?’

  The pub was round the corner from where he lived, old-fashioned with dark mahogany panels below the dado, the walls ochred with tobacco tar. She watched while John bought the drinks. She’d known him now for five months. Long enough to fall in love, to dream. He was chatting to the barman. He was obviously a regular here. If they went back to the flat, what would happen? They’d never been alone before. She curled her hands, her toes, pulled in her stomach, smiled.

  ‘You look happy,’ he said. ‘Happier than earlier. Here.’ He handed her the glass.

  ‘John…’ She leaned forward, pushing her shandy towards his drink. She was tipsy, light-headed. ‘For all we know, a bomb could be flying our way as we speak. It would only take a few seconds. We’d know nothing about it.’

  ‘Just as well,’ John said. ‘I can’t think of anyone nicer to be vaporised with. Besides, who’d want to live in a post-nuclear world?’ He drained his glass. ‘Drink up. Let’s go back to my rooms.’

  She swallowed. She’d never done it with anyone. Her father had left it to Mrs H to spell out the moral code. No man likes second-hand goods. Sex could be brutal, she knew that. She’d overheard Mutti once, in those night-time mutterings when her mother and sister thought she was asleep.

  ‘The marriage act is not like this, Lieselotte. It is a beautiful thing.’

  She left her drink on the table. He took her hand again as they crossed the road. It was dark, a clear night. Venus was glowing and other stars were beginning to appear.

  ‘I used to think I could count the stars,’ she said. ‘When I was little.’ Leaning out of her bedroom window with Lieselotte, You see the Plough? The Bear, Bettechen?

  They climbed the stairs to his rooms at the top, the hot air rising with them. The flat smelled of disinfectant and they laughed as they came in.

  ‘I’ll open the windows,’ John said. ‘All of them.’ She watched as he struggled with the sashes. ‘Most of the cords have gone.’ He took some books from
his shelves, wedged them underneath the frames to keep them open. Turned and looked at her and it was a tender look of longing and desire, and when he held out his hand to her, she took it and leaned against him, no need for words.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded. The hell with convention, with prissy primness, nice girls don’t. ‘You’re the first, John.’

  ‘I shall be gentle.’

  He took her hand and led her into the bedroom as the book slipped from the window frame and the sash tumbled down.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  London: July 1958

  A hazy London dawn filtered through the bedroom window, the sun casting a faint filigree on her face. She lay still and serene, one arm across his chest, her head tucked in the crook of his shoulder. Her breathing was slow and shallow, feather puffs across his skin, her body limp. He edged out of the embrace, dozy and warm, his shoulder stiff, his hand dead. He caught the scent of her. He would remember this night, this first night with her.

  London was quiet on a Sunday, but the early-morning silence was the quietest of all. He guessed it was about six o’clock. He crept out of the bed, wincing as it creaked. Her mouth twitched but she didn’t wake, not even as the rusty bed frame brayed and the mattress bounced. She was sleeping deeply, and he was glad. He tiptoed to the door, pulled on his dressing gown and padded down to the half landing below, and the bathroom he shared with Bob. It was on a rear extension, damp and cold, mildew on the tiles and walls. They took it in turns to buy the soap and paper. He had to remember to add Bronco and Imperial Leather to his list this month, remind Bob it was his turn to complain to the landlord.

  Back in his flat, the open windows had cooled the rooms, and the smell of the disinfectant had dispersed. He poured himself a glass of water and wandered into the sitting room, slipped off his gown and stood by the open window, letting the air breeze over his naked body. If he looked to the right he could see the portals of the British Museum, the Portland stone of its facade black with soot. He shut his eyes, imagining how it would have looked when first built, the cream edifice glistening as brightly as the Parthenon. A hundred years of London smog had made its mark. He ran his finger along the windowsill. Even now, in the summer, even after the Clean Air Act, fine grit layered the buildings, clouded the air.