The Forgotten

by Mary Chamberlain

  He was not a spy. He was not an informer. He knew what Anatoly was after, but he’d lost Betty in the process, the conduit that Anatoly relied on. And the funnies. And then this new twist. Vasily. Anatoly. One and the same. She’d been right to think he’d used her. If the boot had been on the other foot he’d be angry, hurt beyond measure. Could they ever rekindle what they had, put all of this far behind them?

  Waterloo Bridge. He skirted up Aldwych and into Southampton Row. The leaves were falling from the trees, crisp from the autumn, from the emerging frost. One caught in his rear wheel, crackled as he rode along.

  Anatoly was ruthless and John had no doubt that he would use the most brutal weapons he could to secure his goal. Of course, she had her own reasons to fear him. He should have told her tonight, but it was too long a conversation and he needed her to be calm, receptive. He owed it to her, at the very least. This would shatter her. He still had no idea where she was living, or if she had a telephone. He couldn’t ring her at work. He’d have to meet her after hours, hope it wasn’t too late. Drop her a line at the office.

  He turned into Bury Place, eyes darting, scouting. There was no one there. He opened his door, wheeled his bike into the hall, propped it up against the wall and, pulling off his bicycle clips, went up to his rooms.

  §

  He was in the habit of buying the Times Educational Supplement. From time to time there were interesting articles, on selective versus comprehensive education, or language teaching, and he kept an eye on job vacancies, although it would need to be something like a head of department job to tempt him to move school. He tried to act as if nothing was wrong, but his sinews screamed at the strain, his limbs in free-fall. He couldn’t eat and his mind raced. He’d caught Jarvis in the third form imitating him more than once, walking down the corridor like a victim of St Vitus’s Dance, all palsied steps and jerking hands and head.

  ‘Listen, old boy,’ his father had said at their regular dinner at the Rag. ‘Far be it from me to pry, but you’re not yourself.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Take some time off. Come back to your senses.’

  This new terror lay on the old one like strata in a volcano and John could see no way of stopping the final eruption, squeezed between pressure from Anatoly to betray his country and the security service to protect it, and in between, like a lava neck suppressing it all, was Betty. Bette. He yearned the loss of her, grief as wide and deep as a canyon.

  He flipped the TES to the back section, turned to secondary schools. Rhayader Grammar School, established in 1793, is looking for a dynamic new head of its modern language department to replace Goronwy Davies, who is retiring after 39 years’ service. The department offers French as a first language, and German as a second…

  He’d felt easy over the summer, at peace, in that tumbledown cottage in Pantydwr. Of course, a rural grammar school wouldn’t be a patch on Camden Boys, and he wouldn’t get London weighting, but the classes would be smaller and the rent cheaper. Perhaps he could even buy a little house, that little cottage, for instance. Anatoly could go to hell with his threats. The security boys knew all about the accusations, and he reckoned he’d more than discharged his debts to them by feeding them details of what went on at the Partisan Coffee House. He was damned if he was going to hand Betty up on a plate to them, and he’d said as much to Norman.

  He heard the letter box open and shut. He knew what it would be. Judas money. Thanks. Here’s the quid I owe you. Norman.

  He could live like a hermit with the kites and owls for company, waking in the morning with the silhouette of a hare on the brow of the hill, counting chickens and collecting the eggs, rich and tasty from the grubs and worms they’d eaten. He checked the time. It wasn’t too late to ring Arthur, though he’d do it from the public phone on Southampton Row. Couldn’t risk his own being bugged.

  His daughter answered. ‘I’ll just fetch him,’ she said. He heard the phone placed down on the table, her shout, Dad, Dad. Phone. There was a pause. Arthur picked up the receiver and John could hear his muffled voice.

  ‘I said, go to bed. You were supposed to have gone up half an hour ago.’ There was a pause. ‘Yes, I’ll come up and kiss you goodnight.’

  Arthur spoke into the receiver, voice clear. ‘Sorry about that, John,’ he said. ‘Kids. Drive you to Bedlam.’

  John laughed. He’d give his eye teeth to have Arthur’s life. ‘Sorry to ring you so late, Arthur,’ he said. ‘But there’s been another complication.’

  ‘You do pick them, if you don’t mind me saying so. What is it this time?’

  ‘The young lady I told you about. Remember?’

  ‘Betty?’ Arthur said. ‘Don’t tell me, she’s married.’

  ‘No. It turns out she’s Lieselotte’s sister. Not only that, she knew Anatoly in Berlin.’

  Arthur whistled, soft as a bird.

  ‘Thing is, Arthur. We’ve had an almighty falling-out. She thinks I’m using her.’

  Arthur laughed. ‘So I’m your agony uncle now, am I? As well as your confessor.’

  ‘Yes,’ John said. ‘The only way I can see to win her back is to tell her everything, and to hell with the consequences.’

  ‘That’s about as sensible as shooting yourself in the foot to get out of the army, if you ask me,’ Arthur said.

  ‘I can’t carry on like this, Arthur.’

  ‘Tell them to bugger off, if you’ll excuse my language,’ Arthur said. ‘Say you can’t do it anymore. Just walk off the bloody job and take the consequences. I doubt anything will happen. Have a change. Good as a rest and all that.’

  John looked out of the windows of the booth, at the buses passing by.

  ‘I have told them,’ he said. ‘I’m waiting for the repercussions.’

  ‘What can they do?’ Arthur said. ‘Move on.’

  ‘Actually,’ John said, ‘this is why I’m ringing. There’s a job come up.’ He wound the telephone cord round his hand. ‘Head of Department, Rhayader Grammar School.’

  ‘That’d do it,’ Arthur said. ‘Throw them off the scent. Settle your nerves. What have you got to lose? When’s the deadline?’

  ‘End of the week,’ John said. ‘They want a January start, so they need to get a move on with the appointment.’

  ‘And Betty?’

  ‘It’s over,’ John said. This was the first time he’d admitted it, and the words stuck in his throat.

  ‘Well, there’ll be a Gwyneth or an Angharad in Wales,’ Arthur said. ‘Plenty more fish in the sea. Or sheep on the hills.’ John could hear him chuckle.

  John shook his head. He had waited a lifetime for Betty, lost her in a moment.

  ‘Apply anyway,’ Arthur said. ‘See what happens.’

  ‘Do you think I stand a chance?’

  ‘You won’t know till you try,’ Arthur said. ‘But if I were a governor, I’d snap you up. Listen, I have to go now. Let me know how you get on.’

  John sauntered back to his rooms. He’d write his application tonight, post it first thing. Goronwy Davies – he already saw him as his predecessor – had been at the same school for nearly forty years. That was a good recommendation, though the department was probably stuck in its ways. It wouldn’t be easy, bringing in modern teaching practices, but it would get his mind off things, be a challenge in its way.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Berlin: August – December 1945

  The jeep stopped at a tall house, one of a short row that had survived the bombing. The sergeant left the engine running as the UNRRA nurse rang the bell. She turned to Bette, smiled to reassure her.

  ‘Sie kommt,’ she said in her primitive German. ‘Jetzt.’

  Bolts slid back and a woman opened the door. Another nurse, older, plumper.

  ‘Willkommen,’ she said without smiling. ‘Ich heiße Fräulein Schneider.’

  The nurse handed over a file to the Fräulein and leaned close to Bette, her breath sweet with lipstick, the same that Mutti used, and for a moment Bette held the s
cent inside, willing it to stay in her nose, filter into her lungs and heart.

  ‘Fräulein Schneider will look after you for now,’ she said. ‘Until we get you sorted. So goodbye. And be good. Gut sein.’

  Bette watched as she turned and climbed into the jeep, waved as the sergeant put it into gear and drove away. Fräulein Schneider shut the door. The hallway was dark but silent except for a rhythmic bom, echoes like a kettledrum. Bette peered into the shadows. A small boy was rocking himself on the floor, his arms wrapped round bony knees which he clutched tight to his chest, banging his head against the large, hollow radiator, bom, bom. The Fräulein walked past him. Stop, Bette wanted to say, what’s wrong with him? The boy stared ahead with ancient, empty eyes, an old man in a child’s body. He didn’t flinch.

  ‘Follow me,’ the Fräulein said, leading the way into her office. She sat at her desk and opened the folder.

  ‘You are German?’ She looked at Bette with critical eyes. ‘Why are you dressed as a boy?’

  Otto’s trousers were filthy and itchy and the buttons had come off one of the braces. Bette knew how shameful she must look. She swallowed. ‘My mother and sister thought it would protect me,’ she said, adding, ‘from the Ivans.’

  The Fräulein looked up. ‘And did it?’

  It hadn’t fooled Vasily. He’d come back for her. But she couldn’t tell the Fräulein that, nor that she’d shot him.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. The Fräulein smiled.

  ‘Well done. Some mothers said their daughters had typhus. That worked too. There is no end to the ingenuity of mothers, don’t you agree?’

  Bette nodded. She’d heard that said so many times in the Jungmädelbund, the cleverness of mothers, their resourcefulness.

  ‘But it says here you are an orphan.’ Her voice was sharp, as if she’d caught Bette in a lie.

  ‘Mutti died.’

  The Fräulein nodded, turning back to the notes. ‘And your father?’

  ‘He never came back. But my sister is here,’ Bette said. ‘Somewhere.’

  Fräulein Schneider leaned forward. ‘We’ll put a notice up,’ she said, her tone softening. ‘With your name. Ask if anyone knows you.’

  Bette had seen them, pinned to boards, everywhere. Has anyone seen my wife, Frau Gerda Wagner? Some had photographs. Do you recognise this person? Fräulein Hildegard Krüger, last seen on 26 April…?

  ‘Could I put one up about Lieselotte?’ she said. She didn’t have a photograph of her. She didn’t have photographs of anyone, she realised. How long would she remember Lieselotte’s face? Or Mutti’s? She was losing them now in a vortex of forgetting, as if her past were dissolving. Smells brought Mutti back, dried perfume on her clothes, sweet lipstick wax on a stranger.

  Fräulein Schneider was shaking her head, lost in her own thoughts. Bette had seen that often of late, the shaking of the head, the bewildered, angry faces.

  ‘Was ist mit uns?’ the Fräulein said under her breath. ‘What about us?’ She turned to Bette, her voice far away. ‘What have we done to deserve this?’

  Bette thought of Frau Weber. That was the kind of thing she’d say, no care for another. Just herself. Obsessed, as if this war had turned on her, was personal. The night Mutti died, she left her and Lieselotte. The night Lieselotte went missing, she told Bette to go away. ‘We’re starving too,’ she’d said once to Bette, her upper lip twitching in fury. ‘Was ist mit uns? Was ist mit uns?’ What about us?’

  Bette had never considered Hitler. He was all she’d ever known. But she wondered now.

  ‘Where did you get that ring?’ the Fräulein asked, pointing to Bette’s hand. ‘Did you steal it?’

  ‘No,’ Bette said. ‘It was my mother’s.’ It was the truth, though Bette understood how to lie to get by, for she’d cheated the Russians by dressing as a boy and told the Americans she couldn’t remember her address, kept quiet about Vasily. In this world, she thought, this new world, you needed cunning to survive.

  ‘Shall I look after it for you? It could get stolen. The children here…’ She shrugged. Thieves.

  Bette clutched her hand. She’d never take her mother’s ring off. They’d have to kill her to remove it. She backed into her seat, pushing away from the Fräulein. ‘Nein,’ she said. ‘No. No.’

  The Fräulein held up her hand in surrender, turning once more to the notes. ‘It says you’re a refugee, but I can tell you’re a Berliner from your accent,’ Fräulein Schneider went on. She looked cross, as if she’d finally caught Bette cheating her in some way, as if she was used to being lied to, disrespected. ‘How much schooling have you had?’

  Bette calculated. ‘Five full years,’ she said. ‘But the last year…’ Her voice trailed off. She added, ‘I’d passed the test for the secondary school, and had started there.’

  The Fräulein smiled for the first time. ‘That,’ she said, ‘is excellent news. You can teach the younger ones. Come.’ She beckoned her forward. ‘Let’s get you something to wear.’

  She led Bette into a room where freshly laundered clothes hung on rails arranged according to size and gender.

  ‘Thank the Red Cross,’ the Fräulein said, running her finger along the rack, pulling out a dull brown dress, holding it up against Bette.

  ‘That’ll do.’ The dress next to it had a net skirt, like a tutu.

  ‘I prefer that one,’ Bette said.

  ‘Prefer? There is no choice, my dear.’ She thrust the dress at Bette. ‘Put it on.’

  She selected a second dress, and a cardigan, a pair of shoes from a rack. She walked over to a shelf, pulled out two vests, two pairs of knickers, socks and a nightdress.

  ‘You need to mark these with your name.’ She pointed to a worktable and a reel of tape. ‘I take it you can embroider?’ There was no mistaking the disapproval in her voice, dressed as a boy.

  ‘Now?’ Bette said.

  ‘Yes. Now,’ the Fräulein said. ‘And have you come on yet?’ It sounded strange, put like that. Mutti had called them monthlies. Bette shook her head. ‘Well, that’s one blessing.’

  The dress had a pleated skirt and a Peter Pan collar in cream. It was baggy and long and old-fashioned. Her legs were naked without the thick flannel of trousers, and the swish and whirl of the skirt let in the draughts. Was it only yesterday that she’d tried on Mutti’s evening gowns, had longed to wear a dress? Now that she had to, it felt strange and wrong. She sat embroidering her name on pieces of tape, sewing the tags inside her new wardrobe, eyeing the dress with the tutu which, she now saw, had sequins on the straps.

  The house in Eisenacher Strasse was full of old, heavy furniture. The woodwork was dark, the glass in the windows murky. Still, Bette thought, at least there was glass. The Fräulein allocated her to the girls’ dormitory, a large room at the top of the house with twenty beds. It smelled of stale clothes and pee.

  ‘You will sleep with the younger ones. Keep them in order.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Put your things away, and come down.’

  Supper. Apart from the hard biscuits the Americans had given her, Bette hadn’t eaten all day. Hadn’t eaten properly for days. Weeks. She folded her clothes, made her way down the stairs. The noise of children grew louder the deeper she went. Below ground, in the basement. She opened a door. Approximately forty children sat at tables. The Fräulein directed her to one where some younger ones fidgeted on stools, as if they were unsure what to do with them. The boy she’d seen upstairs sat by himself on the floor, eyes cast down, twitching. There was a basket of rolls on the table, bowls of steaming soup, glasses of water. Bette reached over to grab one as the Fräulein rang a bell.

  ‘The eyes of all look to You, O Lord, and You give them their food. You—’ She stopped, rang the bell again, caught Bette’s eye and glared. Bette pulled back her arm. ‘Manners. Maketh. Man,’ she shouted, breathed in, added, ‘You open Your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.’ She looked up. ‘Amen.’

  The children lunged at the rolls, shoving them in their mout
hs, sinews charged like feral dogs over a carcass, eyes wild and murderous. Bette knew that look, could have killed for food herself once, cut off another’s arm for the sake of a mouthful. There was a bowl of broth in front of her with chunks of fat and vegetables. Bette hadn’t seen real food for months, not hot food, not like this. She wrapped her arm around the bowl, shovelling the stew with her spoon, licking her lips as it dribbled out and down her chin, watching that the other children didn’t snatch at it. She wouldn’t share this. She mopped the sides with her roll, stuffing the bread in her mouth, Waltraud bla-bla-ing in her ear about better to die of hunger than let a soldier starve. Waltraud might have been one of the BDM leaders, but she had grown fat on it too. Who’d die for hunger? The Jungmädelbund was so long ago now. She’d liked the sports, mind, had been good at running, swift as a greyhound. She shut her eyes. She’d run enough today. She was very tired.

  §

  Most of the children couldn’t read, nor knew how to sit still, nor keep in order, but there was a blackboard on an easel, and chalk. Someone had drawn a crude picture of a head with zigzag lines around it, eyes wide, mouth open. Bette knew that fear, the kind that exploded, the thunder of terror. A small child got up from her desk and slipped her hand into Bette’s. Bette looked down at her and the child smiled. She’d lost her front teeth.

  ‘Bitte,’ she said, her voice light and breathy. ‘Are you my sister?’ Bette swallowed. She knew that neediness, too. Fräulein Schneider shooed the child away.

  ‘You mustn’t encourage them,’ she said. ‘They must forget. That’s the only way. Put it behind them, forge a new life.’ She looked at Bette. ‘That’s how we civilise them again.’ The child was no more than five or six. ‘We must all forget. Don’t talk about the past.’

  Bette wondered what had made the Fräulein so harsh. Perhaps she’d been an orphan once too, for Bette could see how that would build a brittle wall from thorns and fear. Had these children been cherished once? How long had they lived unloved and alone, fending for themselves like wild creatures, attached to none but the pack and the instinct to live? Wolf children with cowed, snarling faces.