The Big Lie

by Julie Mayhew

  ‘She lost her job.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  Clementine sat down on the edge of her bed, sort of perched there, as if it wasn’t really her room, as if she was waiting to be taken away. I thought she would be excited to have me here – at last, someone to confide in about her suspension! But she just stared up at me, waiting to be disappointed.

  We’d had a read-through of Hamlet that afternoon in drama. Act four, the bit where Ophelia goes mad, which is a metaphor for the Weimar Republic or something (or is that Gertrude? I can never get my head around it). Anyway, Claudius says, When sorrows come they come not single spies but in battalions. This came into my head then, and I quoted it at Clementine. She gave me this look of disgust and I felt instantly embarrassed for thinking it might be what she wanted to hear. Clementine was in the other drama group, doing The Merchant of Venice. That was much easier to get your head around – evil Jews, pounds of flesh.

  ‘So, why did your mum lose her job?’ I asked.

  ‘Why do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Was she not very good at typing?’

  Clementine dropped her head into her hands.

  ‘At being a journalist,’ I corrected feebly.

  Clementine’s hair was matted at the crown, like she’d spent too much time lying in bed. I waited for her to lift her head and tell me the actual reason her mum had been fired but the silence dragged. I’d always assumed Frau Hart’s job was hanging by a thread, a thread that would break any day. Saying what you really think all the time wasn’t really conducive to the job of journalist.

  ‘So!’ I announced. ‘I’ve brought this!’ I pulled the pad of expensive writing paper out of my bag with a flourish. ‘And this!’ The fountain pen this time. ‘We’re going to write a letter!’

  Clementine kept her head buried. ‘Who to?’ she growled through the mask of her hands.

  ‘Um.’ I pulled the chair out from beneath Clementine’s desk. I hadn’t thought that bit through. ‘To your doctor, I guess.’

  She lifted her face. She’d dug her fingers into the skin; there were white blotches in her cheeks and moon-shaped fingernail dents in her forehead.

  ‘Saying what?’ she asked.

  ‘That you shouldn’t have the operation.’ I sat down, started clearing a space among the junk – plates with crumbs, old magazines. ‘We’re going to tell them that they’ve made a mistake.’

  Her head went back into her hands.

  ‘I don’t want children anyway,’ she said. I ignored this. She was being difficult on purpose. How could anyone not want children?

  ‘Dear Sir,’ I said, speaking as I wrote. When I’d imagined this moment, I’d thought that Clementine would sit and do the writing while I paced the room and did the dictating, like Dad did on those occasional evenings when Fräulein Krause came to the house taking shorthand on some urgent business. ‘Change in directive. Any person seen in the vicinity of 35a George Park is to be assumed complicit and to be brought in immediately for …’ But I could be adaptable.

  I went on. ‘I’m writing to you concerning the sterilisation order for Clementine Amelia Hart dated … What was the date on your letter, Clementine?’

  I waited. Her head stayed in her hands.

  ‘Never mind. We can put it in later. I believe there has been some mistake. Clementine Hart is of sane mind and good health with no genetic abnormalities.’

  ‘George,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry?’ I said.

  ‘George.’ Her head was up now. ‘My brother.’

  ‘What brother?’

  ‘The one who was killed.’

  ‘Oh … Yes … Put out of his misery,’ I said trying to soften the moment. ‘I didn’t realise you’d given him a name.’

  ‘Of course he had a fucking name, Jess!’ she spat. ‘He was a person! A real, flesh and blood person!’

  Her telling me his name stopped me in my tracks. George. With this name came an imagined face. A real baby. I put down my pen.

  ‘Is that the reason they gave you on the letter?’ I asked, not looking her in the eye.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied.

  ‘Oh.’

  I didn’t know what to do. Or what I felt. Because, of course, if there were abnormalities, if there was a good chance her children wouldn’t … Then she had to … Anything that is weak and not strong must die out, because that’s for the best, that’s how nature is arranged. But this was Clementine and she was my friend and I didn’t want this for her. I didn’t want this to be the last of her.

  ‘Still, it doesn’t seem right,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said. There was a fierceness in her voice, tears dripping down her cheeks. ‘No. It doesn’t.’

  I had been desperate to talk about Clementine’s letter with Ingrid this morning at the rink. I thought she might be the right person to help me. But I knew asking her outright was altogether too bold. Instead I’d asked, ‘How come you don’t have any children?’

  ‘How do you know I don’t have any?’ she’d said back, trying to be playful.

  She worked all day; I knew that she wasn’t a mother.

  ‘Because I wasn’t able to,’ she said, the playfulness gone.

  ‘Aren’t you married?’ I asked. I really did know nothing about her, I realised, this woman I had spent every morning with for the last ten years.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ she said.

  Her voice had an edge to it now. So I shut up. My last question had been pretty silly, after all. If Ingrid couldn’t have babies, who would want her?

  ‘I think I should still write the letter,’ I told Clementine. ‘What do you think?’ One of my own tears splashed onto the page. ‘I think they’ll listen to me. Don’t you?’

  ‘And why’s that?’ she asked. She already knew the answer, but she wanted me to say it out loud, so we could both hold it up to the light. ‘Why would they listen to you?’

  ‘Because …’ I tried to wipe away the tear before it would spoil the paper, but this only smeared ink across the page. I was making a mess of things. Of everything. I tore the page from the pad and screwed it up, bashed it smaller and smaller in my hands.

  Neither of us said anything for a long time. The house was quiet. Frau Hart didn’t have the radio on. The People’s News would be starting right now. She usually liked to listen to that, butt in every five minutes with her own particular thoughts. There was just the bump and whistle of the central heating system. I looked around Clementine’s room for something to talk about, but everything seemed tired and trivial and not really relevant to anything. Relics. Props on a set.

  Then Clementine said, ‘It’s hard for you.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I said it’s hard for you. Harder than it is for me, I think.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said, gathering my things together. I was ready to go now. I needed to be back in the house before Mum and Lilli got back. ‘I’m fine,’ I said, laughing her concern away. ‘It’s you I’m really worried about.’

  ‘But at least I know what I am,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  And there I was, furious with her again. I wanted to help but she just kept poking me with a stick.

  ‘I know what I am, thank you very much!’ I told her. ‘I know what I am!’

  I hated her in that moment, as she nodded at me solemnly, as if my shouting at her was proof of something somehow. I could have actually clouted her one, if she hadn’t chosen that instant to get up from her bed, lurch across the room and hug me.

  I didn’t want her to say anything else. I couldn’t bear it.

  So I whispered in her ear: ‘Erzähl mir von dem Ort, an dem du vorher gewohnt hast.’

  Tell me about the place where you used to live, before.

  ‘Nein,’ she replied. Then into my ear: ‘Erzähl mir von deinem Vater.’

  Tell me about your father.

  ‘Er ist ein guter Mann,’ I told her.

  He is a good
man.

  ‘Aber?’

  ‘Aber …’ I said.

  But …

  We waited, knowing neither of us was going to speak. Why is there no English word for Zwischenraum? The space between things, all the things we say without saying them, the gaps in the jigsaw. Did the English never need the word before?

  ‘I have to go home now, Clem,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  And as I went she pulled some sheaves of lined paper from the mess on her desk, folded them up and pushed them into my bag.

  ‘Ich hab dich lieb,’ she said as she closed her bedroom door, leaving me to find my own way out. I stood on the landing for a moment.

  I love you, she had said. No, actually, a small, gentle step back from that. I have love for you.

  ‘Ich liebe dich,’ I said to her closed door before moving away.

  I love you, pure and simple.

  The poison was in my ear. It didn’t kill me – it did something far more awful than that. It divided me in two. It created another version of me.

  GG was wrong. There was Good Jessika and Bad Jessika. Bad Jess was up on stage, doing and thinking all these terrible, crazy things. But that wasn’t me. The devil hath power t’assume a pleasing shape. Meanwhile, Good Jess was forced to watch and judge and have her conscience caught. Sometimes Good Jess would hide behind a curtain and listen in to other people’s conversations, hoping (and dreading) to get a little bit closer to the truth. Or was it the other way around? Was Good Jess up on stage acting – pretending – and was Bad Jess sitting and doing nothing, still a slave to the devil?

  I kept the pieces of lined paper that Clementine had slotted into my school bag under my mattress. Then I realised that this was the first place that anyone would look, so I found a gap big enough behind the loose skirting board by my desk and pushed them into there. It still wasn’t perfect but it would do.

  On the papers were a series of notes, with handwriting just as messy as Clementine’s room.

  Detail how the Nationalso‌zialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei achieved a successful resolution to the English government’s intrusion on Kampf um Lebensraum with Operation Seelöwe.

  That was written at the top. That bit was the neatest – clear and underlined twice. Then followed pages of half sentences and phrases and crossings-out, all vomited onto the page.

  They were Clementine’s notes for the controlled conditions essay.

  This question is bullshit.

  Is how those notes began. Then …

  Operation sealion was not a resolution.

  IT WAS NOT THE END.ITS NOT THE END!!!

  1940. Earlier than that …

  Peeple of britain live in terror as nazis rampage across Europe. Nine countries taken raped! Occuppying, pilaging, banning books, murdering peeple. No mercy. Thousands of Jews, and men who love other men, and disabled people and mentaly ill, sent to their deaths in gas chambers. Mass graves to hide piles of bodys. The british knew Everyone knew, surely??

  Pictures of nazi rallys shown in british cinemas. We laugh at them. CRAZY CRAZY FUCKERS.

  Hitler. Huge ego. Thinks hes the dad of everyone. Thinks hes GOD.

  Treaty of Versailles just an excuse. DICKHEAD.

  German peeple charmed by window dressing. Did not see what was going on? Chose not to see? Did not care?

  @@@@@Hipnotised@@@@@

  Desprate after poverty of pre-war years. Who gives a shit! No excuse!!

  ‘Look at me in a funny way and I will burn the whole of your village to the ground, eastern SCHWEINEHUND!!!’

  So.… Operation Seelowe. BATTLE FOR BRITAIN, MORE LIKE. Churchill – WE SHALL NEVER SURRENDER!

  We are underdogs but we scare the hell out of them.

  Dunkirk spirit!!!! Fuck yeh.

  Lord Halifax pushs for peace but Churchill knows …

  Peace = Ocupation = murder, murder, MURDER. Death of spirit. DEATH TO THOUGHT.

  No comprimise!

  France surrenders. Nazis use French air bases to close in.

  Londoners pick thro remains of there houses for the dead. Southampton in ruins. Nazis have world-class airplanes, more of them. Hundreds dead at Biggin Hill. We fite fite fite until the end.

  But the bastards still come.

  September 15th 1940 - THE DAY OF THE BASTARDS!

  We spit on their soldiers, sabatage their trucks.

  The lucky ones escape. Flee to america, canada, ANYWERE BUT HERE.

  The Jews that had escaped france and germany are rounded up, shot.

  Churchill and his Clementine exicuted in public display.

  ‘Diletants and drunks - let that be a lesson to you!!!’

  NO. WE RESIST.

  We hide books so they cant be burned. We keep thought alive.

  Resistence fighters = arrested. Inprisoned. Shot. Sent to work in factorys in Eastern Europe until they are crippled/blind/dead.

  British sorted like buttons. Valuble blood. Useless blood. Bring up your children to be Good german citizens or we will take them off you and do it ourselves!!!

  It comes down to this … you have to make a choice. Oh but theres a member of the SS holding a gun to your childs head while you make this choice – dont let that sway you either way!!! Or holding a gun to your richs/your title/your busness/your livlihood. WHATEVER.

  Fight or keep your head down and try to make the best of a horible situation?

  Do you choose to survive?

  We choose survival.

  WE WILL SURVIVE.

  We keep our mouths shut so we dont sudenly DISAPPEAR.

  (Can you smell gas??????)

  Children grow up thinking that THINKING LIKE THIS is normal. We cant travel outside the reich. They control our TV and our radio. No way of seeing that this is BULLSHIT. (Shiiiit!!! Don’t let the peeple know the real capabilitys of the internet because then your fucked!!!! Ha ha ha ha).

  We are prisoners. We keep Churchill alive in our hearts.

  WE SHALL NEVER SURRENDER!!!

  WE SHALL NEVER SURRENDER!!!

  WE SHALL NEVER SURRENDER!!!

  WE SHALL NEVER SURRENDER!!!

  WE SHALL NEVER SURRENDER!!!

  WE SHALL NEVER SURRENDER!!!

  WE SHALL NEVER SURRENDER!!!

  WE SHALL NEVER SURRENDER!!!

  WE SHALL NEVER SURRENDER!!!

  We decide that surviving isnt enough. We want to live. We are waiting for our moment. And when it comes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  REVOLUTION!!!!! ARSCHLŐCHER!!!!

  Revolution, you arseholes.

  I understood why she got suspended.

  When Dad got home, he told me that Frau Hart had lost her job and I made out that I didn’t know. She had been fired, he said, for theft. Not even the Reich Labour Service would trust her with a broom in a factory after this.

  ‘Oh my gosh, what did she steal?’ I gasped.

  ‘No one likes a scandalmonger, Jessika. Control yourself,’ he snapped back.

  I wondered if he could feel it too, how we were performing, playing our parts. Without much enthusiasm. I have of late – but wherefore I know not – lost all my mirth.

  Dad told me, ‘Just let there be a lesson in there for you, Jess.’

  He never usually spelt things out like that. The moral was always implied and understood. It lived there in the Zwischenraum – that space between. You absorbed it like oil through the skin. Now he was drawing my attention to it, this slick of oil.

  There it was, sitting on the surface.

  APRIL 20th 2013

  I was grateful for the birthday celebrations – a day of song and ceremony. Something to replace that missing mirth. It was just what Clementine needed, too. Though she had opted out of the BDM, she couldn’t opt out of this. The Hitler birthday celebrations were the highlight of our year.

  We boarded the train to London that Saturday with the extra thrill of knowing that the day would be one big dress rehearsal for the show we’d be putting on in Trafalgar Square that summer.
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br />   Clementine did not sit with us; she was in a separate carriage, with the others who had opted out. They were all from the other school, of course. No one else from our school would have dared leave the BDM. I didn’t like to think of Clementine being grouped with those other girls. Despite all evidence, I still believed that she was one of the upright, quality people from the illustration in my biology textbook. How could she be wonky or bandy? Because what would that have said about me if she was my friend? Or rather, what did it say about my dad, choosing her as my friend?

  There had been talk of Clementine being moved to the other school, as punishment for the essay.

  ‘How awful,’ I’d said when Dad told me.

  Though I couldn’t help thinking about that girl GG had envied – Mariel – with her hair dyed two different colours. Clementine would have actually liked to switch schools, I was sure of it. She would have taken a twisted pride in being considered wonky and bandy, enjoyed the liberties of it.

  ‘They won’t move me, though,’ she said during one of my secret visits to her house. ‘They can’t. Because that would only demoralise all the “little people” at the other school, wouldn’t it? To say that going to their school was somehow a punishment.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said.

  Clementine’s little knocks and taps – I couldn’t deny it – they all made sense. I was hungry for more of them, just to test them out.

  ‘And they have to keep all of those lowly folk on-message, don’t they?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Yes, they do,’ she said. ‘Because they’ll be needing them for cannon fodder down in Egypt and Tunisia any day now.’

  ‘Nothing’s going on in Egypt and Tunisia,’ I told her.

  I was aware of Frau Hart’s words coming through in the things that Clementine said. Demoralise. Lowly. On-message. Cannon fodder. It made me nervous.

  ‘No, you’re right,’ said Clementine. ‘It would have been on the People’s News, wouldn’t it? If something was happening. A big deal like that.’

  She raised an eyebrow and let me do the rest.

  Clementine and the girls in the other carriage were wearing armbands. I didn’t know why. I thought perhaps it was a gesture to remember the fallen. But the day wasn’t about that. It was a happy one – marching, dancing, all the ten-year-olds getting sworn into the Jungvolk and Jungmädel, their very first step on the ladder. So it had to be some kind of health and safety measure, I decided. Their teacher in charge needed a way for her group to stand out in the busy crowds of London, as they didn’t have a uniform like us. That was why they wore that black triangle.