The Truth in Our Lies Read online

  Research unit? It sounded like a respectable academic outfit.

  ‘That’s a euphemism for a team based in the Home Counties but pretending to be a German station,’ he said impatiently.

  I felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole.

  ‘Would you be interested?’ the first man asked. ‘There’s no compulsion, we’re not Nazis. Your current job is obviously a worthwhile one. But Alexander Beattie thought you’d have a natural talent for this work.’

  Beattie thought I’d be a natural at deception?

  I left the interview telling them I’d think about the offer, taking deep breaths of what seemed like the clearer air of Aldwych.

  I was still uncertain I wanted to work with Beattie on this strange project of his when the second letter arrived with the offer of a job in a government information department. I smirked at the bland euphemism. Stroking the smooth black coat of my landlady’s retriever by the fire that night, I bent my head down to him. ‘Should I take the job, Pharaoh? Would you miss our walks in the forest?’

  He let out a gentle sigh, seeming to acknowledge our parting. Accepting the offer could be a huge risk. I didn’t know Beattie well; at university we’d been in different crowds. He’d been a year or two ahead of me, as well. At our last meeting he’d certainly rubbed me up the wrong way. But even so, there’d been something about him that day: an energy, a drive that quickened my spirits.

  I’d miss the team here. But these days nothing was permanent; people moved around. Or suffered injury or death. If you stayed in one place too long, you could find yourself the only remnant of the original group.

  The retriever rolled over for me to stroke him between his front legs. ‘You don’t care that I’m not pretty any more, Pharaoh,’ I told him. ‘Other males won’t be as kind.’

  I needed to rise to the challenge. I thought of my sister, born with, as my mother put it, a number of challenges, physical and intellectual. Despite always struggling with maths, Grace had mastered numbers and complex instructions by adapting recipes to what was available. She’d dug her wartime vegetable garden to strengthen her muscles, even though it must have been difficult – probably even painful – for her at first. My sister was an inspiration, but thinking about her was something I tried not to do too often.

  The dog lifted his head and licked my scarred cheek. The nurses where I’d been treated would have been appalled, but I laughed. ‘That’s probably the most ardent male attention I can hope for, Pharaoh.’

  Beattie also wrote a short letter to me, one paragraph in his spiky writing, telling me I’d be housed in a small but comfortable cottage in the same Bedfordshire village he operated from.

  Plenty of walks over the Woburn Abbey estate grounds, among the wallabies and bison, Hall. I know you like that kind of wholesome activity. And the landlady of our HQ even has a dog she’ll lend you. There’s a pub, too, but you won’t be allowed in there much or at all. London is an hour-ish on an indirect rail service, if you can justify the trip. All in all, not a glamorous place, but less turnip-ridden than your current location. And you won’t be bored. And not being bored is the main thing, isn’t it?

  2

  February 1943

  ‘We need more. More people, more material, more scripts.’ Beattie rubbed his hands together. The two of us were alone in Mulberry House, his operations centre, as he termed it, but in reality a large red-brick Victorian villa on the south-western edge of the small village of Aspley Guise in Bedfordshire. ‘There’s a new and more powerful radio transmitter coming on board later this year. I won’t bother your head with all the technical details.’

  I stiffened. I probably knew more than he did about radio and perfectly understood the implications of a new medium-wave transmitter.

  ‘Suffice it to say, we might have more airtime by autumn,’ Beattie continued.

  We had a new recording studio now, at Milton Bryan, a village just a few miles from here. I’d already been over a few times to admire the new broadcasting facilities. Working somewhere purpose-built and intact was a thrilling prospect. Three and a half years into the war most people had to put up with, at best, shabby and decrepit workplaces.

  Beattie balanced his chair on its two back legs. I hoped they’d take his weight. ‘We need more news, more material, more people to feed us information. Our audience is just lapping up what we transmit.’

  Sometimes, looking out at the garden with its first crocuses and narcissi blooming, it seemed so incongruous that we were broadcasting to people in occupied Europe and Germany and sometimes below the sea in the North Atlantic. In fact, this apparently quiet corner of the country, fifty miles north of London, possessed excellent telephone connections with the capital. A large signals and ciphering centre a few miles away, at a place called Bletchley Park, seemed to employ a number of people. Though they kept the exact nature of their work to themselves, we received regular decrypts from them, delivered by courier. Beattie had selected this house as his research unit headquarters and personal residence, probably because it was large, well furnished and had covetable views of the woodland bordering this side of the village. I was getting used to Beattie, too: his sudden flashes of inspiration, his mood swings. I’d thought I’d miss using the mathematical part of my brain to position bomber squads, miss the way I’d fired calculations at the girls standing at the table in the Filter Room at Fighter Command. But I was becoming accustomed to this work and how it called on skills I hadn’t known I’d possessed, not even when I was trying to write copy persuading people to buy a particular brand of custard powder.

  He nodded at the door. I stood up and closed it. The only other person in the building was the housekeeper, but I was now used to the strict secrecy.

  ‘We need more of everything, in fact.’ Beattie all but licked his lips.

  ‘We’re going to interrogate another batch of POWs?’ I asked. We’d already been down to the holding camps known as cages on several occasions to interview German and Italian prisoners. Some of them were prepared to provide information both military and domestic that we could use to add credibility to our broadcasts. We’d only just completed a round of interrogations. As far as I knew, nobody else of interest had arrived in the country since then.

  He gave a dismissive wave. ‘Better than that. They’re sending me on a fishing expedition to scoop up German refugees who can help us.’ His eyes shone in the same way I’d noticed when he got hold of a rare sirloin steak. ‘And there’s good news for you, too, Hall. You’re coming with me to Lisbon. Today.’

  I stared at him. This was the first I’d heard of a trip to Portugal. ‘Me?’

  ‘Don’t sit there with your mouth open. There’s someone out there who might be able to help us with material.’

  Neutral Lisbon with its shops and restaurants. And Jewish and anti-Nazi refugees fleeing there from all over occupied Europe, looking over their shoulders in case the Gestapo or the Portuguese secret police were coming for them.

  ‘I have a visa for you.’ He tapped his chest pocket. ‘Go and grab civilian clothes for a two-night stay.’

  I was going to be liberated from my WAAF uniform?

  ‘You’ll need smartish frocks for daytime and night. Perhaps a pair of slacks for . . . more active pursuits, though the Portuguese are a bit old-fashioned about female immodesty.’

  I knew better than to ask questions. Mentally I sifted through my wardrobe, selecting garments that still, more than three years into the war, looked smart. End of winter here, but already spring in Lisbon? Where exactly had I hung up my lighter-weight suits and spring dresses? Most importantly, did I have a hat and veil suitable for spring? For a few days I might be spared people gawping at my face. I could play the role of a normal woman.

  The telephone rang. ‘Answer that, will you?’ Beattie said.

  I listened to the caller and then placed my hand over the receiver. ‘It’s the BBC, you might want to—’

  ‘Tell whoever it is I’m busy. They’ll p
robably want something I don’t want them to have.’

  ‘It’s the Director-General’s office, they—’

  ‘Definitely tell those blighters I’m busy.’ His hand went up, forbidding further debate. I made excuses to the irate voice on the telephone. ‘I’ll expect you here again in half an hour,’ he told me.

  By now I was used to Beattie’s impossible deadlines. Outside acute emergencies it was frowned upon to run in uniform. Even at a very brisk walk it would take me ten minutes to reach my own lodgings.

  The landlady was far too astute to pass comment when I arrived red-faced, but I gave her a story about a trip to London, which made us both feel we’d observed the rules of discretion. She insisted on making me a cup of tea to gulp down while I packed a small suitcase. Thank God I’d handwashed underwear and stockings only the previous day and they were dry enough to pack.

  Just nine minutes to make Beattie’s deadline. I wouldn’t have put it past him to drive off without me. As I rushed down the narrow pavement, suitcase in hand, satchel over my shoulder, I nodded at various villagers I’d come to recognise. They no longer stared at my face as much these days, but wearing my veil again felt good.

  Beattie was waiting outside his front door. ‘Good grief, Hall, you were quick. No need to kill yourself. The car is only just here.’

  A large black Austin driven by a girl in Wren uniform pulled into the drive. ‘Where are we flying from?’ I asked.

  ‘Whitchurch.’

  I calculated that the aerodrome just south of Bristol was a drive of ninety-odd miles. These days it might take three hours, depending on roads. Then again, it might take a lot longer.

  ‘Atkins, our driver here, is good at shortcuts,’ Beattie told me.

  As we headed west towards Buckingham my head was full of questions.

  ‘You’re wondering who we’re going to see?’ Beattie looked at me.

  He wanted me to ask him, but I was still feeling peeved about the unnecessarily tight timing he’d imposed on me. He looked at me in a more pointed fashion.

  ‘So, who are we going to see?’

  ‘A wealthy Jewish industrialist from Hamburg who’s been hanging around in Lisbon with his wife, waiting to fly to the United States.’

  ‘If they’re so wealthy, why are they still in Europe?’

  ‘They holed up in Nice for a while, until the Germans arrived. They’d have moved on to Lisbon earlier to fly out, but the wife fell ill.’

  ‘What industry was the husband in?’ Technically I ought to drop the odd ‘sir’ into conversation, but Beattie didn’t insist on it. Most of the time.

  ‘Herr Silberman owned a large rubber-processing business specialising in seals used on German naval craft.’

  We exchanged glances. I could already see the way we’d formulate the radio broadcast to the north Atlantic and Germany. Officials refute rumours that seals on German vessels hundreds of miles offshore might be letting in water. Of course, there were no rumours. Beattie and I would make them up.

  Beattie read my mind. ‘Of course, our slant would be that of good news: production errors on rubber-seal factory lines have almost been eliminated.’

  Subtle and believable. German submariners beneath the surface of the freezing North Atlantic, wondering whether the seals on their vessels were part of the batch afflicted by production errors. Beattie’s propaganda broadcasts in German, aimed at entertaining and informing listeners, often provided more truth than most Germans acquired from their own radio stations. Beattie and I researched the stories meticulously, checking all our facts, but included just the merest bending of the truth: usually a false piece of good news that wasn’t really good news at all. Or a little nugget that introduced doubts. Heartening reports from children’s evacuation camps! Diphtheria rates have dropped to their lowest this year. Doctors are optimistic that mortality rates will sink to below a quarter of all infected children . . . You were a German submariner whose house had been bombed, whose family had been evacuated. You heard that story over the airwaves and your attention was distracted away from British merchant shipping convoys towards the much-loved children you hadn’t seen for months. Why the hell couldn’t the authorities get a grip? Why was your family’s life so unbearable? What exactly were you doing underneath the Atlantic when you should be protecting that wife, that infant son, that sweet daughter of yours?

  I blinked, suppressing the thought of my father’s face if he knew exactly what kind of work I was engaged in. ‘Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from telling lies’ – words from the Psalms I tried not to think about too often. When I’d worked on the defence of London from the Luftwaffe he’d been able to tell himself I was saving civilian lives. Helping British bombers drop explosives on German cities had been harder for him to comprehend. Deliberately deceiving people over the radio was something else.

  ‘This kind of material also works on civilian broadcasts to the anxious mother or wife,’ Beattie said. ‘Makes her fear that her loved one will drown in a leaky submarine.’

  Something else to worry about. Something else to make them doubt the value of the war they were fighting.

  ‘Merchant shipping losses have never been higher,’ Beattie said, sounding less bullish and – for him – worried. ‘The pressure on British farms to produce food is more than farmers can bear. We need the convoys from the States.’

  If we could persuade some of those submariners to waste time having their seals checked, more of the precious food cargoes might make it across the Atlantic. Last time I’d been in London I’d noticed how the walls were plastered with posters reminding people not to waste food, depicting stern-jawed merchant seamen facing waves the size of cathedrals or wolf-packs of German submarines to ram home the message.

  I’d grown up assuming that food would always be available. My parents disapproved of gluttony and too much unnecessarily fancy food, but Grace and I had never gone hungry. Rationed food just about kept you going now, but wasn’t abundant, unless you had a passion for parsnips and turnips. If rations were further cut, mothers would be sending hungry children to school. The Depression was a vivid memory for many people in industrial cities. Empty stomachs and lack of morale were bedfellows.

  We passed Bicester and, after some twists and turns, what I thought was the town of Witney – the signposts had gone. Occasionally a shop front retained a place name, but otherwise it was almost impossible to know exactly where we were. I clenched my hands together, hating the feeling of disorientation.

  ‘How are we doing, Atkins?’ Beattie asked the driver.

  ‘Making good time, sir.’ She made a left turn at an unmarked crossroads. On the front passenger seat a road atlas sat ready for her to refer to. Atkins hadn’t even glanced at it.

  ‘Broadcasting live from the new studio makes us sharper, more responsive.’ Beattie was speaking to himself as much as me. ‘No more transporting those damn records by Hillman Minx all over the place.’ At the moment we pre-recorded our content onto discs and motored them to small radio stations set up in the neighbouring county of Buckinghamshire.

  We made a sharp turn into a small lane somewhere north of Swindon. Or so I estimated. A late-winter mist swirling through the valleys made me feel even more disoriented. Beattie frowned. ‘We seem to be heading north-east, Atkins?’

  ‘Rumours of army convoys down here, sir.’ She had an accent that suggested a smart school and a spell as a debutante. ‘Bottlenecks on roads, they said.’

  ‘Are you sure we won’t end up in someone’s farmyard? Or back in Bedfordshire?’

  ‘I used to hunt around here, sir. Don’t worry.’

  The car overtook a slow-moving horse-drawn cart and turned left. Beattie nodded approval at the blond head under the peaked cap. He turned his attention to me.

  ‘Submariners remain a key audience both for us and for our sister units. But Herr Silberman may also give us more material suitable for targeting civilians. Once you start talking to refugees it’s amazing what po
ps up in conversation. I’m still hoping to persuade him to come to Britain instead of taking the Pan Am flying boat to New York,’ Beattie went on. ‘But his wife has family in Brooklyn.’

  The mist lifted. We sat looking out at the Cotswold landscape, still washed in muted winter tones, but pleasing, I thought, with its pale gold stone walls and villages that seemed to have emerged from the earth.

  ‘God, I hate the countryside,’ Beattie said. ‘At least we’ll have a few days somewhere warmer and more interesting.’

  Atkins slowed down to take a bend. As she accelerated out of it, the car’s gearbox emitted a squeak. She tutted.

  ‘Still giving you gyp?’ Beattie asked.

  ‘I’ll have to look at it once I’ve dropped you off.’

  She didn’t always call him sir, I noticed.

  I recognised what I thought must be the tower of Cirencester parish church. Dad had once had a friend who’d been vicar here and we’d visited as a family years ago. Atkins turned the car to the south. With her confident tone and whippet-slim figure she reminded me of some of the well-connected girls who’d joined the WAAF at the same time as me. Some of them had been posted to the large RAF station at Rudloe Manor in Wiltshire, less than thirty miles from here, to help with the defence of Bristol and South Wales. I wondered whether they were still there now that the Luftwaffe had eased its raids. Perhaps if I’d been posted to the south-west instead of Bentley Priory, I wouldn’t have met Patrick. And wouldn’t have been able to make a one-night visit to my family in south-west London in the spring of 1941. So many things would have been different.

  The lack of signposts couldn’t disguise the views and we were obviously now somewhere to the north-east of Bristol. The city had endured terrible air raids early in 1941. We skirted the centre, heading south-west, I estimated, through outlying villages and suburbs. Eventually we slowed and Atkins turned off the road towards a group of white buildings. This must be Whitchurch. The gearbox emitted another protest. My heart gave a thump.

  ‘Been on a plane before, Hall?’ Beattie asked. He probably knew I hadn’t.