The Big Lie

by Julie Mayhew

  The train was decorated with strings of tiny little flags. Helium balloons bobbed against our carriage ceiling. Ruby Heigl led us all in song. Fräulein Eberhardt had just announced that Ruby would be the new leader of our area’s Jungmädel in September. I was doing my very best not to be cross about it. It didn’t mean that she was better than me. I had a different calling. And if I hadn’t been going off to skate camp, I would have been chosen to lead those girls (including my little sister) and teach them how to use a sewing machine and bake a soufflé and how to tuck and roll their way out of an explosion. I would have signed up to Faith and Beauty too, like Angelika and the others who were all staying local, and become an expert in hairstyles and all those lovely dances. Everyone was gradually being given their opportunities. This would be the last spring and summer that we would all be together like this, in our little Mädelschaft, alongside our Kameradschaft of boys.

  Karl Pfizer was joining the air division, Michael Baxter was going out on the boats. Erica Warner was being all secretive, making out she couldn’t tell us what she’d been allocated because it was so absolutely classified. Total shit, we all decided. Something deathly dull in the Reich Labour Service. Her skin would be turning yellow while she stuffed TNT up the backsides of bombs.

  The quota place at university for a girl was going to Helen Beider. No one talked to Helen Beider, apart from Greta Askwith, because they were both über-bright to the point of weirdness. Then something happened, because all of a sudden the girl’s place was going to Greta, and absolutely no one was talking to Helen.

  ‘Greta grassed her up, didn’t she?’ GG said.

  ‘For what?’ I asked.

  ‘Dunno, but she found something.’

  GG had got what she wanted – she was going to the West Country to help train the horses.

  ‘What’s going to happen to you?’ I’d asked Clementine.

  ‘I know, right?’ she’d exclaimed, as if the question had been rhetorical.

  Ruby started us off with ‘Tanz Rüber, Tanz Nüber’ – ‘Dance Hither, Dance Thither ’ – our favourite song, especially when the boys weren’t with us, because we could have fun doing all the voices. We bellowed it back and forth to each other across the carriage.

  Oi, lend me your sweetheart because mine ain’t here!

  No, I won’t!

  No, I won’t! You parasite!

  Lots of fun. Then we went all hymn-like for a bit of ‘Kein Schöner Land in Dieser Zeit’ – ‘No Country More Beautiful in This Time’ – with Angelika and Ruby competing to see who could make their voices warble on the highest harmonies. Ruby was the victor, of course. She could have joined the opera with lungs like hers. Except, if she did, who would she get to boss around then?

  We moved onto some marching songs, ready for when we got off the train at Marylebone.

  In the East wind, lift those flags!

  In the East wind, they stand so well!

  We got drunker and drunker on the sound of ourselves. The songs always seemed to unify me with my friends. Just the right combination of notes to swell the heart, the perfect rhythm to match the fall of your feet. I’m not sure I ever paid much attention to the lyrics, only the melody, only the feeling.

  We kept up our singing as we took the Tube across town, joining in with the boys, our words bouncing off the curved ceilings.

  Clear the streets for the brown battalions!

  Clear the roads for the stormtroopers!

  We joined up with other companies from across the city, from across the Home Counties. By the time we reached Victoria there were thousands of us – one big voice, an amazing sight. I was arm in arm with GG and Erica. Women lined the concourse, come especially to show their little children the sight of us. They lifted them up onto their shoulders for a better view and the children waved their flags, their faces painted red, white and black.

  Millions look up to the swastika with hope!

  A day of bread and freedom is coming!

  We transformed that train station into a stadium. The vibrations from the singing went through your belly and into your bones. As we made our way along the platform, I turned to find Clementine in the crowd. I wanted to see if her heart was full too, if this had been some kind of tonic for her. Her group was a short distance behind us, heads down. Most of the girls’ mouths were moving along to the words, but none of them were really giving it their guts. There were no smiles.

  The female teacher from the other school who was leading the group, a pug-like woman with a decorated hat, saw me craning to see and followed my line of sight. Clementine’s mouth wasn’t moving at all. The woman looked stung by this, and by me – told off, I suppose – even though I hadn’t insinuated anything. She took her elbow and jabbed it sharply in Clementine’s ribs.

  ‘Sing!’ she instructed.

  Clementine swung sideways like a punchbag. She was off somewhere else, in her head.

  ‘Sing!’ hollered the woman again, her elbow giving a double stab this time.

  I let go of Erica and GG, let them press ahead while I moved against the surge of the crowd to find my way back to Clementine.

  I would tell this woman, this subordinate teacher from the subordinate school, to leave Clementine the hell alone. And she would listen to me – that was what I was thinking – she would listen because of who I was.

  But before I could get there, Clementine had neared the pair of Wehrmacht men who were keeping order on our side of the platform. They had heard the woman yelling. They were watching, waiting for Clementine to get close.

  ‘Sing, Schlampe!’ The nearest man barked as Clementine passed.

  Sing, bitch.

  ‘Sing fröhlich, du Hure!’

  Sing gladly, whore!

  And he poked the end of his rifle into Clementine’s cheek, so hard that it nearly knocked her off her feet.

  At Crystal Palace, Clementine was herded into a low section of the stadium with lots of other children who weren’t in uniform, other children with black triangle armbands. They were crammed in tight by the running track. We had a high position in one of the stands where we were able to see the formations of the dances. The Faith and Beauty girls spelt out the words WIR GEHÖREN DIR for the Führer. WE BELONG TO YOU.

  ‘You should have seen it from where I was standing,’ Clementine said later as she lay bundled up in her bed. She was under the duvet, her forehead hot and damp, as if she had a fever. I was on my back next to her, on top of the covers.

  ‘Their tits were jiggling,’ she sneered, ‘their little white shorts even shorter than last year … SS stiffies all round.’

  Clementine told me that she had got the round, purple bruise on her upper arm (to match the one on her cheek) when she didn’t salute at the correct moment and was instructed, ‘Salutier, Schlampe!’ and given another jab with a Wehrmacht gun barrel.

  ‘Oh, they made sure our arms didn’t droop too,’ I said, because they had, and because I was sure that Clementine must be exaggerating. I let myself wonder if she had given herself the second bruise to support her story.

  When the rows of chosen HJ boys did their march past, Clementine said that they did an extra eyes-right, after the one for Herr Dean up in his part of the stand, just so they could gob on the black triangle kids.

  She waited for my reaction.

  ‘We should have a day to mark Herr Dean’s birthday as well, don’t you think?’ I said in the perkiest voice I could manage. It had been a day of celebration, I didn’t want her to twist it. ‘It’s silly that we don’t already, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s because we’re living in the past, Jess, and a pretty shitty one at that.’ Her dark boulder of a voice squashed mine flat.

  ‘Oh, come on, Clementine,’ I said, pleading a little now. I put my hand on the duvet-ed shape of her. ‘I really must forbid you to think like that.’

  She shrugged me off. ‘Well, you can’t,’ she spat. ‘Because you don’t have that kind of power.’

  I should have
given up, walked away, let what she’d said so far settle in my mind. But we were still desperately grappling with each other then, trying to pull one another over some invisible line.

  ‘So, why were you wearing those armbands anyway?’ I said. It had meant to be a way to change the subject. On a conscious level, at least. I thought we could share a joke about the fussy dog-faced lady who’d been leading her group.

  ‘Oh, stop playing innocent,’ Clementine cried from beneath the covers. ‘You know why I was wearing one.’

  ‘I don’t,’ I said. ‘I don’t know why.’ And I am innocent, actually, I wanted to add.

  ‘Asocials,’ she said. It was a heading to a familiar list: reasons to wear the black triangle. I knew it. But I hadn’t put the two together – Clementine’s black triangle and THE black triangle. I hadn’t let myself. Because why would they have ever gone together?

  ‘Vagrants,’ she began. ‘Beggars, idiots, workshys – what a lovely poem this is! – the diseased, the damaged, the dissolute …’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Alcoholics, prostitutes, pacifists …’ She said that last word with a little upward inflexion of pride. Then she threw another word into the air, a word that wasn’t on the list. ‘Lesbians?’

  It fell fast, like a stone.

  ‘It’s not a crime,’ I told her.

  She rolled over then to face me properly.

  I folded my arms – eyes to the ceiling. ‘I mean, they said it was okay for you to opt out. That’s not a crime,’ I went on. ‘There was an announcement.’

  ‘Yes, there was,’ she said. ‘You’re right. And wasn’t that just a wonderful, wonderful trap?’

  ‘No, you’ve got that wrong.’ Nonsense, my brain was screaming. This is nonsense.

  ‘You wait until they make changes to Paragraph 175,’ Clementine said, rolling back over, ‘without anyone telling you first. Then you’ll see how it feels.’

  Paragraph 175.

  I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of asking what that was.

  ‘Anyway,’ she muttered, ‘I should have been wearing a red triangle.’ She curled her fingers into a tight, defiant fist against the pillow. ‘All of my crimes are political.’

  Sometimes, I would pick Lilli up from school, if Mum was busy with charity work, or sewing club, or extra Frauenschaft responsibilities.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ would be Lilli’s first words as she handed me her satchel. Not hello.

  ‘Oh, she was really very naughty so they put her on a fast train to Highpoint,’ I’d say.

  And Lilli would tut and roll her eyes.

  ‘No, she wasn’t,’ she’d say. ‘No, they haven’t.’ Then she’d launch into an epic monologue about her day, as if her life was just the busiest in the whole of dem dritten Reich.

  I would take Lilli the short walk across town to the gymnasium, fold her clothes while she changed into her leotard, help her work the lockers. Then I’d go up to the rows of seats on the balcony gallery and watch her practise. She would work on the bars: her killer blow in competition. Her wrists bound, her hands powdered, she mounted the block she used as a launch pad to the highest bar and up she went – a flying monkey.

  One of the stern-faced trainers – usually Bettina – stood at the side, shouting instructions. The training made Lilli’s muscles visible in her thighs and shoulders. It was hard to take your eyes off her. She was such a different creature from me. Blonder, leaner. The skating never really changed my body like the gymnastics did hers. I stayed soft.

  Beneath one of the sets of practice bars was a large pit of broken foam shapes. The girls were expected to fall. It was encouraged. They didn’t want anyone developing a fear of the drop that would make them cautious. After a few swings, a few kips and beats, Lilli would throw herself into this foam pit, get swallowed up by it. Then she would swim her way back to the side. She would do this quite urgently, panicky almost.

  On the way home after one practice session, Lilli told me: ‘If you slip down to the bottom of the foam pit you end up in China.’

  I laughed.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ She was furious with me. ‘Why are you laughing?’

  ‘Because it isn’t true,’ I told her.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ she spat. ‘Bettina said.’

  ‘Well, Bettina is pulling your leg!’

  ‘No, she isn’t!’ Lilli was almost breathing fire. ‘It’s true, Jess, I’m telling you!’

  And nothing I could say would convince her otherwise. Bettina was a big, solid woman, a woman in charge, whose every word meant the world to Lilli. Bettina would never ever do anything as terrible as tell a lie.

  Did I feel the same way about Ingrid?

  Not exactly. I knew she didn’t lie to me, but I understood that she left things out. It was like when I marked a routine on the ice for the first time, just to get a feel for the pace and my position on the rink; I left gaps. In here will go the single lutz; in there, a double axel. Ingrid left spaces in her life. She never mentioned where she lived, who with, what she did when she wasn’t coaching. I never bumped into Ingrid in the outside world, caught her doing anything as normal as walking down the street. She was a half made-up person who existed at the rink, a ghost haunting the scene of her death.

  But if I’m honest, I didn’t really want to see her anywhere else. If I witnessed that, I knew it would be sad. It was exactly like she had said herself: on the ice we are free. She was free. No rules, only wonderful secrets to help you fly. (For an axel jump, get a good grip on the edge, don’t pre-rotate, then leap out, leap forward.) The real world, when I left the door ajar, was a dangerous intruder.

  I decided to ask Ingrid about Paragraph 175.

  I watched her flow through a sequence of single and double axels, biding my time. Ingrid had never landed a triple in competition. Girls didn’t really do it when she skated, but it would be expected of me. I had managed it a few times in a pole harness, a giant fishing rod contraption that Ingrid held to keep me straight in the jump and stop me having a bone-crunching fall. Soon, like a baby bird jumping from the nest, I’d have to do it all by myself.

  I loved watching Ingrid skate. I’d often pretend that I didn’t understand what I had to do so that she would huff and sigh and take off in one of those whip-smart demonstrations. All her jumps rotated to the right, whereas mine, like most other skaters’, went to the left, so her demonstrations were only useful to a point. We stepped onto opposite feet in everything we did, Ingrid and me. But that wasn’t what I was looking for when I watched her skate. I watched to understand her. I could see into all the gaps.

  ‘Your turn,’ she said, returning to the centre of the rink with pink in her cheeks and more air in her lungs. ‘I need to see that beautiful curve in your body on the landing,’ she said, taking hold of my arm and stretching it to show exactly what she wanted.

  Then I asked what I wanted. ‘What’s Paragraph 175?’

  Ingrid let go of me, as if I was a red-hot pan handle. The colour washed from her face.

  I had known this was a question I could not ask my father. It was a question to ask someone as they stood very close to you, in the middle of an expanse of ice.

  ‘Well, off you go, then,’ she said. She wasn’t ignoring my question, just buying herself time to shape her words, to make them land as perfectly as I was about to.

  I did as I was told, skated off, built up speed, switched to the backward edge, waited and kicked forward, whipping myself through the air. One and a half turns. I landed that single like a curved arrow shot from a bow. I went back to Ingrid for my answer.

  ‘It’s a rule,’ she said. ‘It’s a law.’ I felt the heavy placing of each word, like stones onto the ice. Stones that left dents. ‘It is a law that says men must not love one another.’

  ‘As friends?’ A genuine question. I was ready for the next jump.

  ‘Go again,’ she said. ‘A double now.’

  Off I went, placed my feet as carefully as Ingri
d had placed those words, but lighter, filling my leap with all the necessary desire. Two and a half turns – a double – again with that curve just as she’d wished. I spiralled back, knowing I’d earned my answer.

  ‘No, as lovers,’ she said, her voice low. ‘As sexual partners.’

  ‘But men can’t … How would they be able to …?’ I stopped.

  A violin melody was whining from the tannoy. It sounded sarcastic somehow.

  I saw the sadness in Ingrid’s expression. But was it for the men? The law? For the things I didn’t know? She kept her eyes on me, so much better at reading my mind than my father.

  ‘Ah, the feeling of a triple axel!’ she announced suddenly, her voice loud again, deliberate, as if we had an audience. ‘The feeling when it’s yours. I can’t imagine … Well, I can. I mean, I came close but … I wish I had … I wish I’d grabbed that joy with the both of my hands, do you know what I mean? Joy in whatever form it comes to you. Whatever the consequences …’

  Her voice trailed off.

  The violin climbed higher in place of her words – a strange, plastic imitation of a violin, making Ingrid sound genuine, crystal-sharp.

  Consequences.

  ‘Do you mean falling?’ I asked.

  ‘What’s falling?’ Ingrid replied with a silly shrug and a smile – a smile that I knew slotted into one of the gaps in her past.

  MAY 2013

  We stood between the gap in the curtains in the room shared by GG’s three little brothers, hidden behind the nets, and we watched the strange people come and go from the Hart residence.

  GG had decided what Frau Hart must be doing and why she was doing it – there was no way she would find another proper job after being sacked, and she had to earn money somehow. Our street wasn’t a cheap place to live – the salary of a telephone engineer wouldn’t be enough.