The Big Lie Read online

  The Harts were quiet to begin with, knew their place. At our gatherings, they positioned themselves at a table on the edge of the patio, looking down into their glasses. They always dressed well, they drank moderately. Soon they made friends. In fact, now I think about it, they went through a transformation of sorts. Miraculous. Quick. Because one moment they were the people on the edge, and the next they were the people in the middle. Yet I can’t quite remember how that happened. I suppose it was because they were unusual – different enough to be exciting, but enough like us to be accepted. They seemed younger than all the other parents, thinner and more urgent. Their lack of flesh was down to some kind of inner fire burning it all up. Herr Hart was born in Germany and had lived in Berlin for much of his life. He had the accent so that made him particularly glamorous.

  But still, I can’t work it out, how we let them become so popular.

  AUGUST 2012

  At our final garden gathering of the summer Herr und Frau Hart were at the peak of their popularity.

  There they were, at our back gate, immediately smacking lips and cheeks with our guests, throwing a ‘Grüβ dich!’ and a ‘How are you?’ to the folk who couldn’t get close.

  ‘Where’s Clementine?’ I asked Herr Hart, lucky to get a word in sideways. I was desperate to see her. The Harts had just got back from their annual holiday and we had some serious catching-up to do.

  ‘She’ll be over in a little while,’ he said, his accent making those ts into delicious ds – a liddle while. ‘She’s just finishing some homework.’

  The Harts settled into a conversation with Herr und Frau Gross. The only thing they wanted to talk about that summer was Herr Dean. The Harts in particular (and perhaps all alone on our estate) were terribly excited about his rise to power after the death of our beloved Herr Erlichmann. ‘Liberal’ was a word they used for our new leader. ‘Nervous,’ was the word everyone else decided upon, trying not to make it sound too negative for fear of being reported.

  ‘He seems to stand for broadmindedness,’ Herr Hart said.

  ‘Well, as much as a man can. Within the current … framework,’ added Frau Hart, thinking her popularity made her immune to a grassing up.

  Perhaps this was what precipitated the Harts’ downfall – their rabbitting on about politics. Nobody was interested. What in the world did it have to do with us? They even began doing it over the dinner table when I ate at their house. Or at least Frau Hart did. Don’t you think our leaders should be more like this and not do that? What if we changed this law and that law? – as if this was somehow within their control or, more specifically, mine. Frau Hart would push me into a corner with her questions, spearing the air with her fork, while Clementine tried to hide her grin. Eventually Herr Hart would give her a look, and a sharp little ‘Jocelyn!’, indicating that he too had had enough of her wittering.

  ‘It’s high time there was more integration, don’t you think, Peter? Equality, if you like, Helen.’ This was what Frau Hart was saying to Herr und Frau Gross that August afternoon. ‘I really applaud Herr Dean for that.’ She was talking about the restructuring of the HJ and the BDM. ‘I mean, girls and boys are not different species!’

  Herr und Frau Gross were slowly nodding, their old faces confused, too embarrassed to tell Frau Hart that she was talking claptrap, that of course boys and girls were put on this earth for entirely different reasons. She was intimidating though, Clementine’s mum, with her big hair and her bright clothes and her fondness for touching other people’s arms. Intimidating also because everyone thought Herr Hart was my father’s very best friend.

  ‘But mainly we’re just so relieved it’s no longer compulsory, aren’t we, Simon?’

  Herr Hart closed his eyes in one slow, deliberate, emphatic nod, happy for his wife to be their mouthpiece.

  ‘Clementine is an artist, not a soldier!’ Frau Hart exclaimed. ‘It was just so ridiculous that she was being made to march in line and shoot to kill.’

  I nearly spat out my orange juice.

  Clementine? An artist? I was thinking. She’s utterly hopeless at drawing.

  But also the Harts had been terribly excited when Herr Erlichmann – when he was still in power before his very sad death – had introduced more military pursuits into the BDM, alongside all of our usual housekeeping tasks. (We still had to do those. The same amount. Our sessions were simply extended so we could fit it all in. I preferred it when we knew what girls were for. Because how were we supposed to do it all, to the same standards as the boys, when they didn’t conversely have to worry about perfecting their crocheting or learning how to do laundry?) But now all this marching and shooting wasn’t good enough for Frau Hart? What on earth did she actually want?

  The way the Harts had made their entrance that afternoon had not escaped the attention of my mother – how they’d gone through a showy display of greeting everyone, then stepped straight up onto their soapbox in praise of Herr Dean without expressing the proper amount of grief for the death of Herr Erlichmann. How they’d not bothered to say hello to their hosts. How they’d just abandoned their gift of cherry wine on a nearby table.

  Mum made her way to our side of the patio and thrust a platter of her famous mushroom pastry parcels into the middle of the Harts’ conversation.

  ‘Hi, Jocelyn,’ Mum said, all smiles. A turn of the head and then, ‘Hi, Simon.’

  It was nothing really, but, oh, the steel fist! All conversations stopped. Mum looked from Frau Hart to Herr Hart, waiting for a greeting in return, waiting for them to take her food.

  ‘Guten Tag, Miriam,’ said Frau Hart.

  ‘Guten Tag, Miriam,’ said Herr Hart.

  They picked up a mushroom pastry parcel each. Mum watched, waiting for them to take a bite. Everyone watched, waiting for them to take a bite. And once they had, still we waited.

  ‘Mmm,’ said Frau Hart, eventually understanding what was expected of her.

  Those mushroom pastry parcels were well renowned among the residents of the County Roads Estate. Mum was generous with the recipe, but no one could get them to come out exactly like hers. I think this was because, when Mum copied out the ingredients, she always left out something small but really quite crucial.

  ‘Yum! Das ist lecker, Miriam!’ said Herr Hart.

  Mum nodded, satisfied. Then she went on her way.

  Sometimes, when I think back to that moment, I hear my mother whispering, ‘Be careful,’ at the Harts as she headed off, but I wonder if I have added that in afterwards from my own imagination. Still, I had much to learn from my mother. A steady flow of little knocks and taps, that is how you make a person know who’s in charge. Softly, softly catchee monkey.

  When Clementine finally arrived at the garden party (‘How was your homework?’ I asked. ‘Wasn’t doing any,’ she said) we shook off Ruby Heigl and Erica Warner at the juice table and disappeared down to the end of the garden. We didn’t feel too old to climb up onto the log swing tied to the tallest elm, so we took it in turns, kicking off in the dust, hanging backwards, watching the clouds slide behind the branches, letting our hair collect leaves from the garden floor.

  That summer, Clementine was also at her peak. She had all of a sudden grown up – a ghost girl no more. I began to feel something very strongly for her. Envy. That’s what I thought it was.

  I watched as she threw herself back on the swing, her T-shirt riding up, her flat, white belly exposed to the air. She stuck one pointed bare foot out to get more height. She made these little grunts of effort that stirred something strange inside me.

  I was devastated that Clementine wasn’t going to be at the BDM meetings any more. If it was no longer compulsory, she wouldn’t go. I knew that. She wouldn’t be there on the camping trips, the hostel evenings, the rallies at Crystal Palace – all those moments in life when you feel the world is so good your heart might burst, she wouldn’t be there … And I couldn’t talk to her about it, mostly because Clem was now as outspoken as her mother. She would w
ant to tell me how happy she was to be free of it all. I couldn’t bear that. So I let her babble away about other things. I loved to listen. Her voice had grown up too. She drawled a little, like she was half asleep, but with an end-of-sentence lilt that grabbed you by the collar and pulled you close.

  ‘Soooo, they take this banana, right,’ she was saying. We were lying in the grass now, in the shade of the elm, the sound of the river washing away the chatter of the party. She was telling me about something she’d eaten while she’d been away on holiday. ‘And they cut it down the middle …’

  She began to speak quieter so I had to tip my head towards her.

  ‘Then they put chocolate pieces in the gap …’

  And then what? You couldn’t help yourself. It was her voice. And then what?

  ‘And then they put it on the grill …’

  Her eyes went wide, but her voice was still tired.

  ‘And it went all, you know …’

  No, I don’t know. What?

  Her voice lowered. ‘It went all manky inside … but …’

  She held me there for a minute.

  ‘But it tasted delicious.’

  No one else could talk about a grilled banana like that.

  I rolled forward and without deciding or meaning to, I kissed her on the mouth. It just felt like the most obvious thing to do. Clementine laughed. It bubbled out beneath my lips. She put a hand to my head and shoved me away. It was a playful move, but there I was, feeling devastated all over again.

  ‘What was that?’ she cried. She was giggling but beneath it all, I could hear it – she was sort of appalled.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  I didn’t. I only knew how it had felt.

  She stopped her laughter, noticing that I wasn’t joining in. Her eyes were on me, her green stare. (Her eyes were – are – definitely green.) ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter, Jess,’ she said. ‘Seriously, it doesn’t but … we’re friends, yeah?’

  It didn’t feel like she was saying anything to contradict me.

  ‘Best friends,’ I managed.

  ‘Yes, best friends.’ She took my hand and squeezed it. ‘But nothing more.’

  I was finding it hard to breathe.

  I had to say something. Sorry, maybe. Or, I promise it will never ever happen again. Or, Please don’t tell anyone. Instead I said, ‘So where was it you went on holiday?’

  My voice was horribly high, so clumsy and fake compared to her effortless drawl.

  ‘America,’ she replied, not missing a beat. She was looking at me strangely now, differently. She wasn’t appalled; I’d got that wrong. She had her eye on something, not me exactly, but something in me.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, not really registering her answer, distracted by her stare. Then, ‘What?’

  ‘Joke!’ She started tearing the yellow heads from a stalk of cudweed.

  I laughed. ‘Like you’d want to go to America! Wander around enemy territory!’

  ‘We holidayed in the Greater German Reich,’ she said, putting on that voice we use when learning things by rote in school. ‘We went to Cornwall. I already told you.’

  Of course, I did want to ask how she had come to lay her hands on a banana – in CORNWALL of all the unlikely places – but I didn’t. Because something was out of joint. Not the kiss. Something else. At the time, I couldn’t have said what it was, or even if there was truly anything at all. It just felt like I had been nudged in my sleep, but instead of waking up I had incorporated the nudge into my dream.

  So I said, ‘Tell me about the place where you used to live, before.’

  ‘I can’t really remember it,’ she replied.

  This was a conversation we ran through all the time. Always the same words. It was a joke, sort of. A distraction, maybe. Perhaps it was how we reassured one another that everything was good.

  ‘I bet it wasn’t as nice as here, was it?’

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Nowhere near as nice as here.’

  Sometimes we’d say these lines to one other in a jumbled Mischmasch of our languages. But when I really needed a guarantee, I began the conversation in German. Because I did always wonder, if I had been fooled by her white blonde hair and her so-pale skin and her marvellous way of talking. Perhaps she had been softly, softly knocking and tapping at me all these years. Perhaps she wasn’t really my friend.

  ‘Erzähl mir von dem Ort, an dem du vorher gewohnt hast,’ I said to her that day in August. Tell me about the place where you used to live, before.

  ‘Ich kann mich kaum erinnern,’ she replied.

  ‘Es war bestimmt nicht so schön wie hier oder?’

  ‘Nein, überhaupt nicht so schön wie hier.’

  No, nowhere near as nice as here.

  The answers were the same. And this was proof, I decided.

  Because sometimes you have to decide what you’re going to believe in and then stick to it, otherwise you can drive yourself mad thinking about all the possibilities.

  SEPTEMBER 2012

  I trained every morning before school.

  Boots on ready for 6 a.m. Always. Right from when I was seven years old. I liked it like that. Dani Hannah could take the 7.30 a.m. slot if she wanted, if the lazy cow was really that desperate for a lie-in.

  I liked the emptiness and the echo, the proper coldness before our bodies had warmed up the place, the fog rising towards the Party flags hanging from the rafters. I liked being the first one on the ice – the first to make a mark. It was how they used to judge you, on how neatly you drew your figures. It’s where the sport gets its name. It was all about surface. Once upon a time.

  Now there are jumps and spins and being daring and being brave. I had begun to prepare my free skate for the World Championships the following year. (‘Not the “World Championships”,’ said Clementine’s voice in my head. ‘Only the championships in this little world.’) They needed to see my rhythm, my musicality, my strength. Coach Ingrid believed that none of this was possible without one special ingredient – emotion.

  ‘Pretend like you’re in love,’ she said to me.

  ‘I am!’ I told Ingrid. ‘I am!’

  ‘Then we need to see it,’ she yelled. ‘Show that desire in the layback. Make that lutz a declaration!’

  Ingrid was very small and delicate – black hair, always in a ponytail, a thick fringe that made her eyebrows seem impossible and drawn-on. She looked like a pixie, but her instruction was fierce. If she was feeling especially passionate, she’d dish it out in German. Ingrid didn’t hit me though. I sometimes wished that she would. That was how you got better. Dani Hannah was forever getting a slap from Coach Dorothea and her upright spins were so fast and smart they made me want to cry.

  ‘That’s only because of the way her hips are built,’ Ingrid told me.

  My problem was that I enjoyed it too much. I still got a thrill from the simplest moves, a step from forwards to backwards, the neatness of a 3 turn, the wind on your skin as you built up speed, ready to fly. You weren’t supposed to enjoy it, if you wanted to get better. You were supposed to take it seriously.

  ‘Show me your heart!’ Ingrid called above Bruckner’s Fantasie. ‘Zeig mir dein Herz!’ So I pushed my chest out – and lost the camel spin, tipping forwards, down onto my hands and knees. I became an ACTUAL camel on ice. There was a clunk from the speakers as Ingrid stopped the music. Her boots scraunched into view under my nose. I got a faceful of ice shavings. If Ingrid had been Dorothea, she’d have given me a jab in the belly with her toe-pick right there. I’d have felt her blade nip across the end of one of my fingers – just a little scar, reminding me never to do it again.

  I think Ingrid was the way she was – too soft – because she had also competed when she was young. Coach Dorothea had only ever taught. Ingrid kept putting herself in my boots, and that made her feel maudlin. She’d won so many medals but dislocated her knee very badly when she was nineteen in a display at one of the Party’s Grand Exhibitions. She couldn’t land the big
jumps any more. She was told to give up competition and teach. I asked her once if she was sad about this, that she could no longer perform for her country.

  ‘Well, they could have taken me out back and shot me like a lame horse,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Can’t complain.’

  Ingrid said things like that all the time and, when she did, there would be an awkward few moments where I didn’t realise that she was making a joke.

  She helped me up back onto my feet – a wet, clumsy camel.

  ‘I didn’t mean show me your heart literally, Fräulein Keller,’ she said. ‘Thrusting your ribs out like that will only lead to you breaking one of them. Come on, you know better.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘I meant for you to show me love.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘Look.’

  And she took off, building speed, picking up from the spread eagles, throwing her arms up to the heavens, then wide. I love you, I love you, I love you, said her arms, and I don’t care who knows! More speed, a right foot glide, a jump to the left and – into the camel spin. I love you, I love you, I love you so much. Her spine curved, melted backwards. Then she let herself dissolve into a broken leg spin. This wasn’t part of my routine, she was just showing off. Her arms tangled above her, then covered her face. She spiralled down towards the ice. It was as if her knee had never been mangled at all.

  When Ingrid came back to join me, she took my gloved hands in hers and slid us together, toe-to-toe.

  ‘Tell me who it is you are in love with,’ she whispered.

  And this is exactly what I was talking about. She should have been taking off one of her leather gloves and cuffing me across the jaw with it to make me see sense.

  ‘I love my country, and the Führer,’ I told her, like I was supposed to.