The Forgotten

by Mary Chamberlain

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ John said, again.

  ‘So I’ve asked for you,’ he said.

  John reached over for an ashtray, suppressing a yelp. ‘Asked for me?’

  ‘My man isn’t a patch on you,’ he said. ‘I’ve put in a request for your transfer. Base duties, I’m afraid, but I don’t suppose you’d mind that, eh?’

  John smiled, though he was unsure what the major was suggesting.

  ‘Translating.’ He smiled, went on. ‘You won’t be counting the dead again, or staring at lampshades made from human skin.’

  John coughed, the ash from the cigarette settling on his trousers. He brushed it away. ‘You’ve lost me, sir,’ he said. ‘Translating what?’

  ‘Physics, mainly. We’re working our way through the detail from their top scientists. You’re the only man I trust on this. Billets in Hounslow. Cavalry barracks. Welsh Guards. Handy.’ The major stood up, pulled down his jacket, picked up his cap and tucked it under his arm. ‘Start Monday,’ he said. ‘There’s a RAF flight tonight. I’ll be on it too. They’re expecting you.’

  ‘You flew over here for me?’ John said.

  ‘I have the highest regard for your father,’ he said.

  John watched as the major left the room. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved, or humiliated. Old boys’ networks and all that.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Hatfield: spring 1946

  Betty put the empty milk bottle back in its crate, threw the straw into the bin, and walked out into the playground, pulling her school coat around her. It was cold for March, with a chill wind. Mrs H had come with her to buy the uniform, a size too large, to allow for growth. It was a dull navy-blue tunic, strapped at the waist with a blue and yellow girdle. Cream blouse, blue and yellow tie. She had to tuck the sleeves up, pull the sash tight and bunch the bodice over it.

  ‘Tie?’

  ‘You’ll get used to it,’ Mrs H had said, showing her how to knot it, long side over, and under, up and down through the top. ‘Pull the short end and slide it up to your neck.’

  Her father wore a tie these days, and a suit. A car had collected him at first and driven him to work, but now he’d bought his own, a 1937 Daimler. Good as new. Pre-selected gearbox. The seats were leather, the dashboard walnut. She could just about remember the car he’d driven before the war. That had been a Daimler, too. His new job at the aircraft factory came with a house and he’d employed Mrs H, a widow, to cook and clean for them. Ever polite round her, Betty noticed, always correct.

  ‘Such a gentleman, your dad,’ Mrs H said. ‘I thought all Germans were bad. He must be the exception.’

  ‘And me?’ Betty said. ‘Am I an exception?’

  Mrs H had nodded, but her look said it all.

  §

  She’d had English lessons from a retired teacher with a ruddy face who picked the skin on the palm of his hand. His name was Mr Hopkins and he came to the house every day, sat opposite her in the dining room with his legs straddled wide and his belly over his belt. He reminded her of Boris. Betty was nervous around him, insisted that the door was open, that Mrs H was in earshot. Still, he did the job, explained to her that English had German roots as well as French, had her talking in no time, her accent flawless, though the spelling had taken longer.

  ‘So now you and I, Betty,’ her father said, ‘we speak only English from now on. German we put behind us. Germany we put behind us. The war.’

  ‘When it ended,’ she said, ‘I was glad.’

  ‘Glad?’ He thumped his fist on the table so the crockery jumped and the milk splashed from the jug. ‘You have no idea, child.’ He grabbed a napkin, dabbed at the spilt milk, curled his lip, huffed. ‘Glad.’

  He has no idea, Betty thought. He doesn’t want to know.

  ‘But they talk about it at school,’ Betty said. ‘All the time. The trials, at Nuremberg.’

  ‘Rotten apples,’ he said. ‘We’re not guilty for what the hotheads did.’ He wagged his finger. ‘If it hadn’t been for them…’ His voice trailed to nothing before he added, ‘Dönitz was right. We could be the bulwark against Communism, but who listens?’

  He changed her name to Betty, his own to Arnold. Dad, daddy. That was too cuddly a word for the father who was the perfect gentleman, blind, deaf and cruel to the core.

  §

  She stood on the edge of the playground. Some of the girls in her class were skipping, two long washing lines twisting in opposite directions. A girl was jumping over two ropes, fast, left, right, left, right while the others chanted.

  ‘Sweetheart, sweetheart, will you marry me?’ It was hard to make out the words, but the rhythm was clear enough. ‘Yes, love, yes, love, at half past three.’

  Another girl jumped into the spiralling ropes.

  ‘Ice skates, spice skates, all for tea.’ Betty furrowed her brows. That made no sense. Spice skates?

  ‘And we’ll have a wedding at half past three.’ The voice was close to her ear. Betty jumped, turned. Deirdre O’Cleary. Brown hair, green eyes, skin stippled with dark brown freckles. Betty had never seen a complexion like it. She’d been put to sit next to her in class, sharing the double desk in the front, under the teacher’s nose. Deirdre would run off at break time, sit by herself with a book. None of the other girls spoke to her, any more than they spoke to Betty.

  ‘Can you skip?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Betty shrugged. ‘Doesn’t everybody?’ She hoped she sounded casual, not surprised that someone was talking to her, even if it was Deirdre O’Cleary. ‘Spice skates? What are they?’

  Deirdre laughed. ‘Cakes. Iced cakes. Spiced cakes.’

  Betty could feel a blush creeping up her neck. It was bad enough they called her a Kraut to her face, did Hitler salutes behind her back. Now they’d think her stupid as well. She’d never make friends. The school might be one of the best around, but she hated it. She hated the nuns who ran it, the teachers who policed it, the girls who peopled it. Poisoned it.

  ‘I had to push to get you in there,’ her father said. ‘School is not a party. School is for study.’

  ‘Why did you come to England?’ Deirdre said.

  ‘My father was a prisoner of war here,’ Betty said. ‘And volunteered to stay.’ She shrugged. ‘They’re short of workers. In the factory.’

  ‘Did he fight in the war?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘What about your mother?’ Deirdre said. ‘Is she here?’

  Mutti, Berlin, Lieselotte. That seemed so very far away, such a very long time ago.

  ‘My mother died,’ Betty said, holding down the choke in her voice. ‘At the end of the war.’

  ‘Mine too,’ Dee said. She kicked at an imaginary stone, scuffing the toe of her shoe. ‘What did she die of?’

  ‘We think it was pneumonia.’

  ‘Think?’

  ‘There was no doctor,’ Betty said. ‘We couldn’t get one.’ Dee stared at her feet, twisting them onto their sides.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘What did your mother die of?’

  ‘A tumour,’ Dee said. ‘About a year ago. Who looks after you?’

  ‘Mrs H cooks and cleans,’ Betty said. ‘My father leaves early and comes back late.’

  ‘From the factory?’ Dee said. ‘He must work two shifts then.’

  Betty shrugged. She had no idea. ‘Who looks after you?’

  ‘My father. Me. My Auntie Bridey says I have an old head on young shoulders.’

  Betty thought for a moment, translating its meaning. She smiled, a tight, cautious tweak. We have much in common.

  ‘You can call me Dee,’ Deirdre said. ‘If you like.’

  Betty tried not to smile, but they were the kindest words anyone had spoken in all the months she’d been in England.

  §

  Dee brought a piece of tarpaulin and two faded cushions, frayed round the piping, threadbare in the corners. They borrowed Mrs H’s dustpan and brush and swept the floor as best
they could, but the earth was dusty and damp where leaves had drifted in and settled. Betty held her breath as she swept them up, woodlice scuttling and an earthworm glistening. She couldn’t tell Dee she was scared of worms. They rearranged the gardening tools in a stash in the corner, the spade and fork, the rake and the lawnmower, stacked the flowerpots inside each other, rolled the hose into a tight coil. Dee laid out the tarpaulin, threw the cushions onto the ground.

  Betty pushed the door wider and let in a long sliver of light. ‘Did people really shelter here in the war?’

  Dee nodded. ‘My father said they were a wing and a prayer. He said it made the government feel good and was cheaper than building deep shelters.’ She paused. ‘Did you have them in Germany?’

  They’d never talked about the war in the months they’d been friends, not even when it was the VE anniversary. The nuns said she needn’t go to Mass with the others for the celebrations, given that she was German. She hadn’t told her father they’d done that.

  ‘No,’ Betty said. ‘We had some deep shelters. And the buildings have cellars.’ Sitting with Mutti and Lieselotte as the buildings shuddered above them and the stench and smoke closed in. ‘It was terrifying.’

  Dee nodded as if she understood, but Betty wondered. She knew there’d been a bit of bombing in Hatfield, because of the factory, but nothing really heavy. She shifted her cushion, adjusted it under her bottom and sat cross-legged. The wall was damp and the floor hard. She couldn’t imagine having to spend a night here.

  ‘What did your father do in the war?’ she said. She’d been asked the question so many times, had never dared ask it herself.

  ‘He was a Conscie,’ Dee said.

  ‘A Conscie?’ This was a new word to Betty. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A conscientious objector,’ Dee said, adding, ‘He doesn’t believe in war.’

  Old Herr Baumann called them traitors. Bundled up in the Wehrkraftzersetzung. Subversives. Defeatists. Deserters.

  ‘Wasn’t he shot?’

  ‘Shot?’ Dee said. ‘Not in this war. But he had to go away, worked in a forest. He said it was hard.’ She uncurled one leg, rubbed her thigh. ‘And people called him names. He went to prison once, too. My leg’s gone dead. Here—’ she reached into her satchel and pulled out a packet of five Woodbines and a box of matches. ‘Would you like one?’

  ‘I’ve never smoked,’ Betty said, watching as Dee opened up the packet and held it towards her. Dee was daring. Betty took a cigarette, leaned forward as Dee struck a match.

  ‘Put one end of the cigarette in your mouth,’ Dee said. ‘And the other end in the flame, and suck.’

  Betty leaned forward, her hair singeing as it brushed the match. She sucked, eyes watering. ‘That’s disgusting,’ she said, coughing hard.

  ‘Gaspers,’ Dee said. ‘They’re called gaspers.’

  Betty thought she was going to choke.

  ‘Don’t suck so hard next time,’ Dee said. ‘You get used to it. But you have to make an effort, to like it, I mean.’

  Betty tucked her hair behind her ear, took another drag, smaller than the first, felt the hot smoke burn her throat, tasted its acrid bitterness, watched as Dee recrossed her legs and held her fingers scissored and aloft, like the girl in the Craven ‘A’ advertisements. Betty took a small puff. Well, she thought, this wasn’t so bad, but nothing to write home about, although Dee looked sophisticated and Betty envied her that.

  ‘Why doesn’t your father believe in war?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, well.’ Dee flicked the ash onto the earth floor. ‘He says it’s not the way to settle a quarrel.’

  ‘How else do you settle one?’

  ‘You talk.’ Dee shrugged. ‘Or there’s international policemen. Law. I don’t know.’

  ‘Like the United Nations?’

  Dee shook her shoulders with an irritable flair. ‘Who cares?’

  ‘I’m just interested,’ Betty said. ‘I don’t want another war. Especially with the bombs they dropped on Japan.’

  ‘Well, you should talk to my dad sometime then,’ Dee said.

  Betty pulled out her cushion and leaned it up against the wall behind her, looking at her friend. ‘Is that why they don’t talk to you in school?’

  Dee looked down at her school tunic, folded and unfolded the pleats. She straightened her legs, crossed them at the ankles. She didn’t need to answer.

  ‘That’s awful,’ Betty said.

  ‘You can see their point,’ Dee said, stubbing out her cigarette on the earth floor, throwing the stub in the corner. ‘Their fathers risked their lives. Maggie Ascombe’s father actually died in the war. And what did mine do? Gardening.’

  And what did mine do? Betty thought. He was happy to carry out the Führer’s will. Had he ever stopped to question it?

  ‘What about now?’ Betty said.

  ‘He works for the council,’ Dee said.

  ‘No, I mean, about war? About stopping war?’

  ‘I don’t think he does anything except shout at the wireless,’ Dee said. She looked up then, and smiled. ‘He’s the loveliest man, Betty. He just doesn’t believe that violence is the way out of a crisis. Though he did say once that perhaps it had been necessary to get rid of Hitler. I don’t know.’ She pulled out the cigarettes again, offered one to Betty, who took it, holding back her hair as she leaned forward to light it. ‘This can be our little house,’ Dee said. ‘Our secret place. Shall we go out this weekend? A cycle ride?’

  ‘That’d be nice,’ Betty said. ‘We can pack some sandwiches.’

  Dee stood up, brushed the skirt of her tunic, and pulled out a small lipstick which she dabbed on, smacking her lips. ‘Does your father let you wear this?’

  ‘No.’ He’d taken his thumb and pressed it hard against her lips, wiping it off.

  Dee was modern, the best friend anyone could have.

  §

  Mrs H told her father and he summoned Betty into the shelter. He made her sweep up the cigarette butts and burn the cushions and tarpaulin.

  ‘I sent you to the convent so you would become a lady.’ His eyes grey like her own, icy as a glacier. ‘Not to mix with the Irish.’

  He didn’t say it, but Betty heard. Untermenschen.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  London: November 1958

  John suggested the British Museum. It was too wet for a walk, and the nights were closing in. The museum would be warm and quiet, with little chance of anyone recognising them.

  He stood between the pillars at the top of the steps, the hood of his duffel coat pulled up, a scarf muffled at the neck. He’d bought a two-bar electric heater for his flat and it cosied up his sitting room, but his nerves stayed frozen and his flesh goose-pimpled and now the chilly, dank air made him shiver. He’d come early and she was late. He thrust his hands deep in the pockets of his coat, fiddling with the fluff at the bottom, stomping to stir his circulation. He could slip inside the building, but then he might miss her. And if she didn’t come soon, there’d be no time before closing.

  He peered across the courtyard, trying to make out the figures in the thick, mustard light. Someone tapped his shoulder. He turned.

  ‘I’ve been waiting inside,’ she said. ‘Have you been here all the time?’

  ‘This was where we agreed to meet. On the steps.’ Her breeziness made him cross. He didn’t care if he sounded irritable.

  ‘I know. But it was cold and I thought you’d see me. No matter.’ She turned, led the way through the revolving doors. ‘Where to?’

  ‘Coins,’ he said. ‘Korea. No one ever visits.’

  They threaded their way up and into the empty gallery with its serried ranks of display cases in dark wooden frames.

  ‘You have to be seriously interested in coins,’ he said, ‘to come here. It’s all a bit forbidding, don’t you think?’

  She nodded, drifting over to a cabinet against the wall, her coat tucked over her arm. Her face gave nothing away.

  ‘Let’s get dow
n to business,’ she said. ‘Shall we?’ He’d hoped they’d talk their way into the matters at hand, pleasantries to make them feel better. He was still in love with her. All he needed was a signal, however slight, to suggest that all was not lost.

  She stared at the coins in front of her, pretending to study them, one finger on the glass as if she was pointing at something.

  ‘You begin,’ she said.

  He breathed in hard. He’d thought through what he had to say, but not how to start the conversation. He’d expected her to be less forthright, to coax him, tickle it out of him. He had no ready words.

  ‘I had no idea—’ He coughed, a nervy ahem, buying time. ‘I had no idea that you and Lieselotte were sisters.’ She was staring ahead at the coins. Joseon Dynasty. 1752. ‘She didn’t speak about her family.’ He glanced at her sideways, added, ‘Any more than you.’

  ‘I learned to keep my counsel,’ Betty said, her eyes fixed on the inscription. ‘Nobody wants to hear from a German. Much less a self-pitying one.’

  ‘Did you lose anyone else in the war?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘But not like the Jews, or the Roma or Sinti. Or the labourers or the prisoners. Or the millions of others who died. We were the lucky ones.’ She paused and he watched as her lips moved, as if she was about to say something more. ‘My mother died. My grandparents too, shortly after. And my father.’ She spoke into the display, as if describing what she saw, an alloy coin with a hole in its centre. ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I was six when he left. I never saw him again until the war was over. I was twelve, almost thirteen. I was sent to England.’ She turned, faced him. ‘I’d never been out of Germany and I had to meet him in England. Our enemy. Our conqueror. I travelled alone. Can you imagine? I was terrified. I had an envelope with my papers and was put on a RAF plane at Tempelhof. It was full of demobbed airmen.’ She gave a half-smile, shook her head. ‘My father met me at the airport. Croydon, I think it was. Walked across the tarmac. Of course, I’d grown, changed, but when he saw me…’

  She sniffed deep and turned away, but he saw the tears welling in her eyes. ‘He didn’t hug me. Didn’t say he’d missed me. Just dragged me by the hand out of sight.’