The Big Lie

by Julie Mayhew

  ‘Does your mum know you’re here?’ she said, smoothing out the creases in her apron before adding a strangled little, ‘And your dad?’ to the end of her sentence.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. An almost truth. ‘They know.’

  ‘But it’s coming up to curfew …’

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ I said. Then: ‘Can I come in? Lilli is really very heavy.’

  After a couple of weeks of our visits, Frau Gubbins seemed to relax, or at least give in.

  ‘Oh, you three, again,’ she’d say, stepping aside as we headed along the hallway and up the stairs. But I did notice that she’d stopped answering the door to me in her apron.

  GG was always very welcoming, right from the start. It quickly occurred to me that I had been an idiot to endure all those years of waiting on front lawns and being exposed to contraband music players and dirty carpets when there had been a perfectly adequate friend living opposite us on Lincoln Drive all along. I could have avoided a great deal of heartache.

  If I was honest, GG’s horse teeth had always put me off. It was so hard to have a conversation and not be completely self conscious about the fact you were staring, mesmerised, at the horror of her mouth. But somewhere along the line, when I wasn’t properly paying attention, GG had grown into those teeth. All of a sudden she was – not pretty, exactly – but handsome. Her forehead was high and strong, her lips very full, her hair honeyed and golden. But more importantly, compared to Clementine, she just seemed safe. GG was high-ranking in the BDM, kept her school work in rows of clearly-labelled ring binders, her wardrobe organised by clothing type and colour. You knew what you were getting with GG. She was like a familiar statue, or a dependable sandwich. There would be – I believed – no surprises. Though not long into our new relationship there came one startling revelation: she too didn’t understand the hysteria over Jay Acker.

  ‘Don’t you find him attractive?’ I asked.

  ‘No!’ she shrieked.

  ‘But you told Angelika Baker that you were in love with his rectus abdominis muscle. I heard you.’

  She put her finger down her throat, pretended to be sick and then bellowed with laughter. ‘As if! I just say those things so the other girls don’t suspect.’

  I could have kissed GG right there and then! But I was on the bed and GG was hanging out of her bedroom window having a cigarette and I didn’t want to go over and get the smell of smoke on me. (Mum was forever giving me the ‘you must care for your body so you have healthy children’ lecture.)

  I realise the contradiction, of course. How could I have seen GG as safe territory if she smoked? But GG had always smoked. Everyone knew. I’m not saying I approved – I fully intended to harangue her into stopping – but GG headed up the HJ and BDM’s patrol that enforced the smoking ban in our local cafes. Clementine had no authority to be breaking her rules. GG did.

  I sat there grinning, delighting in GG’s confession about Jay Acker, stroking the thick, blonde hair of Lilli, who had fallen asleep on my lap. Wolf had been snoring and farting all evening but my resulting irritation had now completely evaporated.

  Then it landed. What GG had said.

  ‘So they don’t suspect you of what?’ I asked.

  GG blew her last mouthful of smoke up at the stars. She stubbed out her cigarette in the lid of the box.

  ‘Ah, Jess,’ she said. ‘You are just too cute.’

  Then she jumped down from the windowsill, made her way over to the bed and planted a big, gutsy kiss on my unsuspecting face.

  Clementine caught up with me. It was only a matter of time.

  GG got held back after school one day – another cursory telling-off for smoking behind the PE sheds.

  ‘If you really believe you’ve seen me smoking then why don’t you take that up with Herr Fisher?’ GG would say to Fräulein Allis.

  Mind games. Despite all her pouting and eye-narrowing, Fräulein Allis was too much of a mouse to question the integrity of one of Fisher’s senior recruits. A criticism of GG was simply a criticism of Fisher, and Fräulein Allis wanted to keep her job. No one would listen to her outside of the school anyway. She was far from being an excellent German woman with those painted eyelashes and stockinged calves.

  So without GG to walk home with, I walked alone. It was either that or fall in with Angelika and Erica and have to think up something new to say about the shape of Jay Acker’s chin.

  ‘Hey, you!’

  Clementine ran to catch up as I cut across the playing fields.

  She didn’t seem angry at all about my complete absence from her life, which made me instantly nervous, and more than a little hurt.

  ‘Hey, you!’ I said back, missing the little spring in my voice that Clementine had managed.

  The tattooed words on my forehead turned into a flashing neon sign.

  I HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO ATTEND JAY ACKER’S CONCERT AND YOU HAVEN’T LA LA LA.

  ‘How’s it going?’ she said, her breath making clouds.

  ‘Good,’ I said.

  EVERY OTHER EVENING, UNBEKNOWNST TO YOU, I AM PRACTISING A FLAG MARCH TO PERFORM AT JAY ACKER’S CONCERT.

  ‘You?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, okay,’ she said, neither happy nor sad. We watched a man ahead of us throw a frisbee for his Jack Russell. The dog leapt a metre or so in the air to make the catch and, following each success, ran around in circles, desperate not to return his prize.

  ‘Funny,’ said Clementine, commenting on the dog but not sounding even slightly amused. Then, ‘They took away my place at music college.’

  ‘What?’ I stopped walking. So did she.

  I wasn’t sure which question to ask first. Since when did you have a place at music college? Which music college? Where? Why has it been taken away? Who are ‘they’? But the question so desperately on the end of my tongue was, Why didn’t you tell me?

  When I was awarded my place at skate camp she was the first person I ran to with my letter. She was the one I wanted to celebrate with, jumping and squealing and dancing.

  ‘Fuck ’em,’ she said, still watching the dog. I think she might have cried if she’d had to look me in the eye. ‘I guess this is supposed to be a warning. But they can stick it up their arses.’

  She began working her tongue over her teeth beneath a tight-shut mouth – fighting back the tears, but one escaped. She brushed it away quickly with the mittens she’d knitted herself the previous winter. ‘Probably would have been wall-to-wall fucking Wagner anyway. I’d have hated it. They’ve done me a favour.’ She pulled her scarf up over her chin, her hat down over her eyebrows.

  ‘I didn’t even know you had a place at music college,’ I said, trying not to sound wounded.

  ‘No?’ She turned to examine me for a moment. Then she gave a small shrug and a nod. ‘Well …’ she said.

  We watched the dog perform a few more of its impossible leaps. The image in my mind: Clementine’s illegal music player, wrapped in plastic.

  ‘But I’m not the only one who is good at keeping secrets, am I?’ Clementine was smiling now. Her nose was screwed up, ready for mischief.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s okay, silly,’ she said. ‘I’m really pleased for you.’ She came to stand in front of me, demanding that my attention be put onto her. She stroked the length of my arms with her mittened hands, as if she was ironing me back into shape, making me solid. My mind caught up. She knew. About Jay Acker. She knew.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Good.’

  ‘You should know by now I don’t think like everyone else.’

  I was confused. ‘But you do,’ I said. ‘You do think like everyone else. You’re as excited as the rest of them.’

  Her turn to look confused. ‘What?’

  ‘I mean, about the concert,’ I went on. ‘I didn’t want you to feel bad that I was … Or annoyed that I was …’

  She was shaking her head now. ‘No, no, no, no, no!’ She gripped the top of my arms, gave them a squeeze. ‘I was talking
about GG,’ she said.

  ‘About GG?’

  ‘Jess,’ she all but boomed, still hanging onto my arms – arms that had gone limp, turned to jelly. ‘No one’s listening! We’re in the middle of a field!’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said, hushed, instinctively looking around to see if anyone was actually in earshot.

  Clementine brought her face very close to mine, lining up our eyes. The ends of our noses were almost touching. Her breath was warm and sweet. ‘You don’t need to sweep everything under the carpet with me.’ She spoke very carefully and very deliberately. ‘Because I don’t believe that’s the right thing to do.’

  I nodded slowly, only because I thought that if I pretended to understand then this conversation might be over. Because I didn’t understand. How could I, when I didn’t have a word for it. You have those words – words that are good. Though you shouldn’t congratulate yourselves too much, because I know you have the bad ones as well.

  Then the weirdest thing happened, after keeping me at arm’s length for all this time, Clementine pulled me tight and kissed me on the cheek.

  FEBRUARY 2013

  One evening, Fisher asked me to stay behind after the HJ and BDM meeting. His singling me out came as no surprise. I had begun to suspect he valued my skills and intellect above those of the other girls in the Mädelschaft. My bowline knots were continually given the highest praise, my suggestions in tactics sessions were always congratulated. I was hungry for the validation, especially after Clementine had taken such strange pleasure in my friendship with GG. I eagerly accepted Fisher’s request. And very loudly.

  ‘Of course!’ I cried, carving that jealous scowl just a little deeper into Ruby Heigl’s face.

  We’d finished that evening’s meeting with a tug of war as a reward for doing well in our concert march rehearsal. I was to stay back and help put away the ropes.

  Once alone, we wound fat loops around our wrists and elbows, fastening tight the bundles with their own tails. We worked in silence. A heavy, AWKWARD silence. My eyes kept wandering to the hairs on Fisher’s arms. I hadn’t noticed them before, how blonde they were – lighter than the sandy hair on his head. I was staring, I suddenly realised, and became convinced that my mouth was about to blurt out something inappropriate – a grenade of a wholly different kind. Perhaps I would do something crazy, like reach over and stroke that soft hairy arm or … ENOUGH, I told myself.

  ‘What will we be doing in Thursday’s session?’ We were outside of our normal meeting hours so I hoped he wouldn’t mind that I had broken the rule of speaking only after I was spoken to. He’d taken off his woggle and necktie, after all; he’d made a big show of it.

  Fisher looked up and smiled, those scary blue eyes latching onto mine. I felt myself flush red.

  ‘Want to get a head-start on the others, eh, Jess?’

  He knew me well. If I ever got a whiff of what we’d be doing in the knowledge section of a forthcoming session I’d go to Dad’s bookcase and look it up. I would make guesses as to what Fisher’s questions would be and memorise the possible answers.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose I do.’

  ‘Excellent,’ he replied. He gestured for me to pick up my pile of tied ropes and follow him behind the curtained storage section at the back of the hall. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the dark.

  Either Fisher was making me wait for a response to my question about Thursday’s session, or the answer would be somewhere here, hidden in the shadows. I heard him drop his armload of ropes into the plastic barrel, felt him turn around. I could see well enough now to make out the wet flicker of his eyes, the line of his jaw and the open collar at his neck.

  ‘Let me help you,’ he said.

  I moved forward to tip my pile of ropes into his open arms but as we made this exchange – DISASTER. The knuckles of one of his hands bumped into one of my breasts.

  I shot backwards.

  ‘I’m so, so sorry,’ I said. What if he thought I’d made that happen on purpose? What if the mad, grenade-filled part of my brain had made that happen on purpose?

  ‘Sorry for what?’ Fisher asked. He was smiling; his teeth flashed in the dark. He wasn’t appalled. Not appalled at all. Thank god.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing.’

  Someone of Fisher’s standing had much better things to be doing than going around noticing girls’ breasts, I told myself, even if he did just poke his fingers right into mine.

  I turned to go, but he stopped me.

  ‘What do you know about sexual intercourse, Fräulein Keller?’ he said.

  I was a little shocked, yes. The question had come from nowhere. Mostly, though, I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to give the right answer.

  Then it came to me. Of course! This was going to be the subject of the knowledge section of Thursday’s meeting. Sexual intercourse! And it was going to be horribly embarrassing for him, to have to teach us boys and girls together. He was looking for reassurance. That was what my staying behind was all about, and the loosening of his tie. He needed my respected opinion.

  ‘Well, my mother has shown me the book,’ I said.

  I meant Mädel von Heute, Mütter von Morgen – Girls of Today, Mothers of Tomorrow. On the cover there is a picture of a good deutsches Mädchen about my age, in profile, looking deadly fierce and ever so soft all at the same time. Our copy is a family heirloom. Oma Davina’s name is written on the first page next to the date – 1955.

  I tried to sound breezy and confident. I was not the sort of girl to get giggly and stupid about these things. They were, after all, just a function of nature. I swatted a hand through the air to demonstrate how it would be absolutely no big deal when it came to discussing the ins and outs (so to speak) with us girls. ‘I’m sure most of our Mädelschaft have seen the book too,’ I added.

  They had, ages ago. We’d all brought our copies into school and had a good snigger over our favourite sections. Well, they had sniggered. I, as always, as the continual ambassador for my father, had controlled myself.

  Fisher nodded, moving off to another corner of the store where a box of rubber quoits had tipped over and spilt. I went with him. My eyes had adjusted by then. I could see where I was going.

  ‘But it’s one thing to read a book, Jessie.’ He began threading the escaped quoits onto one of his arms. ‘It’s another to have practical expertise.’

  The knowledge sections of our meetings were usually followed by hands-on experience. We were told how to pitch a tent, then we put up a tent. We were told how to clean out a gun, then we practised doing just that. So in some way I managed to convince myself that it was entirely normal that Fisher should, once we’d both shed our armload of quoits into the box, take hold of me by the hips.

  They weren’t allowed to touch us. It wasn’t proper. There was a rule. So this had to be some kind of practical demonstration, it just had to be.

  He put his lips to mine.

  And I let him. Of course I did. How could I have said no? He had chosen me. Also, I did want to know.

  He started pushing his tongue into my mouth.

  And the first thought that came into my head was, so this is what it feels like, on the other side of things, when one person kisses another, unexpectedly, without asking.

  Or had I asked him? I wondered. Silently, somehow? When Fisher put his face up-close to ours during uniform inspection, his hot breath hitting our noses, had I given him some signal that he should, at the first available opportunity, close off that gap? Or maybe it wasn’t even as considered as that. I had no conscious thought before leaning in and pushing my lips against Clementine’s. Only men obey commands of the blood. Men and animals. That’s what our school books told us. Men, animals … and me.

  I focused on the scent coming off his clothes, tried to work out what brand of washing powder he used, because I thought this would keep me calm.

  He pulled away.

  ‘You have to use your tongue
too, Jess,’ he breathed. His eyes were heavy lidded, full of something.

  I nodded, cleared my throat. The idea of putting my tongue in his mouth seemed ridiculous, revolting even, but also entirely natural. Hadn’t that been my instinct, after all, the instinct that I had held back? I couldn’t decide if continuing what we were doing was a terrible sin, word of which would reach my father, or if not doing as Fisher asked was actually the very worst sin, guaranteed to enrage him. The inspirational quotation poster on the wall of the meeting hall that week read: LOYALTY IN FEELING MEANS ABSOLUTE OBEDIENCE. I put my mouth back on his and slotted the tip of my tongue between his lips. He loosened my spine with his hands, fought my tongue back with his, then began kissing his way down my jaw and neck. He went close to my ear.

  ‘You have skin like milk,’ he whispered. ‘My sweet little Jay-Jay.’

  My back became rigid at his words. To be spoken to like this, by a grown man, by my superior. The knowledge we were taught was always general, it applied to everyone. These words were just for me. I think this was the first time I had ever felt truly alone.

  I tried to conjure up one of the phrases the girls had used to describe Jay Acker, something I could whisper back into Fisher’s ears, something to save me.

  ‘Felix,’ I managed, feeling an odd thrill to be using his forbidden first name. ‘Your eyes are …’

  I didn’t get to finish. He made a start on the buttons of my shirt. He left my necktie still fastened around my collar, so we could maintain the pretence that this was still a lesson, that we were still on official business. He slid his hands inside my bra. My breath caught at the sensation – the cold contact creating a loop of energy between us, an electrical circuit. Parts of my brain were lighting up – parts of my body too. He began squeezing at the flesh of me in the same way Fräulein Eberhardt had taught us to knead dough, his breath getting brisker, rasping. He pulled at my skirt with one panicky hand, unzipped his fly with the other. I may have stood there rigid so far, but I understood what was supposed to happen next. Anatomically. It was all in the book.