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Authors: Georgina Harding
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that she'd bought, and a few other things like
a rosary that came from one of Dad's aunts who was very holy, and a funny little black cat that she brought all the way from
Germany. I knew about the cat. Peter didn't. It was made of fur and wire, with pale bead eyes and a frayed ribbon about its
neck. I told Peter she brought it from Germany in her pocket.
'How do you know?'
'She told me so.'
'It's got a name on its collar. Sophie Schwarz.'
'That must be its name then.'
'Suppose it must be.'
Peter didn't like me knowing more about it than he did.
'So what do we do now?'
'The next thing is to write down what we can remember. I've got exercise books for us. I got them from school. We write down
who she saw, what she did. How often she went out, and where, everything. You put down what you remember, and I'll do mine,
and then we'll compare what we've written. That's what you do. It's important to do it separately, without talking about it
first. If we talk about it we influence each other's memory, make the other one think they saw things they didn't actually
see.'
He got the books down from his room.
'And don't think too hard first. Just go and start doing it and see what happens. Memory's strange. Some of it comes from
the unconscious. You've got to let it come.'
He was too serious, insistent. It scared me.
'You know it wasn't true, what you said about her being undercover. You know you were only saying it.'
He took my wrist and held it in a wrist burn.
'Then what's it matter if you write this? You won't be doing anyone any harm.'
So I took the exercise book back to my room and wrote. I put it beneath my clothes in a drawer. Every now and then I took
it out and added something else as it came to me. I thought there was going to be a whole book but I covered only a few pages.
You'd think there was so much to say about a person but when they're gone the record doesn't amount to much. It diminishes
them. She took us to school, she had her hair done, she went shopping. (I was recording what she did. What she was didn't
come into it.) Margaret came in the morning, she had a cup of coffee with Margaret, Margaret went. On Tuesday or Wednesday
or Thursday, the butcher's van came by, or the grocer's, or the laundry. Peter thought it especially important that we record
things like that, the regular things, in case one was a contact. He said there would have been some regular contact, a way
of passing material or messages.
'It couldn't be the butcher,' he said.
'Why not?'
'Remember once he ran over a dog on the road? Mrs Jones's dog, that little terrier she had? He ran it over and it was dead.
I saw. And he went to her and owned up. A spy wouldn't have drawn attention to himself like that.'
The laundry came and went in a grey box with a leather strap around it. It would have been easy to put messages in, folded
into the sheets or inserted between the lists on the pages in the laundry book. The laundry man had a funny twisted leg, as
if it had been ironed in a crease. I told Peter he was wounded in the war.
'How do you know?'
'Mummy said so.'
'How did she know?'
The next day he came we greeted his van on the road and talked to him as he got down from it and limped to the house. 'Have
you two got somebody looking after you now?' he asked, and Peter was quick and said yes, there was someone in the house all
of the time, though it wasn't true just then, it was the afternoon and Margaret had gone and there was nobody else there.
I knew he did it to make us safe, just in case, but it made me afraid of what might happen. When I went to bed that night
in the clean laundered sheets I felt the coolness of them and smelled the starch, and they seemed too white. I could sense
their whiteness even with my eyes closed, as if there was a bright light that would not let me sleep.
Besides the tradesmen there was hardly anyone. It had not seemed to us before that this was odd and yet now
a rosary that came from one of Dad's aunts who was very holy, and a funny little black cat that she brought all the way from
Germany. I knew about the cat. Peter didn't. It was made of fur and wire, with pale bead eyes and a frayed ribbon about its
neck. I told Peter she brought it from Germany in her pocket.
'How do you know?'
'She told me so.'
'It's got a name on its collar. Sophie Schwarz.'
'That must be its name then.'
'Suppose it must be.'
Peter didn't like me knowing more about it than he did.
'So what do we do now?'
'The next thing is to write down what we can remember. I've got exercise books for us. I got them from school. We write down
who she saw, what she did. How often she went out, and where, everything. You put down what you remember, and I'll do mine,
and then we'll compare what we've written. That's what you do. It's important to do it separately, without talking about it
first. If we talk about it we influence each other's memory, make the other one think they saw things they didn't actually
see.'
He got the books down from his room.
'And don't think too hard first. Just go and start doing it and see what happens. Memory's strange. Some of it comes from
the unconscious. You've got to let it come.'
He was too serious, insistent. It scared me.
'You know it wasn't true, what you said about her being undercover. You know you were only saying it.'
He took my wrist and held it in a wrist burn.
'Then what's it matter if you write this? You won't be doing anyone any harm.'
So I took the exercise book back to my room and wrote. I put it beneath my clothes in a drawer. Every now and then I took
it out and added something else as it came to me. I thought there was going to be a whole book but I covered only a few pages.
You'd think there was so much to say about a person but when they're gone the record doesn't amount to much. It diminishes
them. She took us to school, she had her hair done, she went shopping. (I was recording what she did. What she was didn't
come into it.) Margaret came in the morning, she had a cup of coffee with Margaret, Margaret went. On Tuesday or Wednesday
or Thursday, the butcher's van came by, or the grocer's, or the laundry. Peter thought it especially important that we record
things like that, the regular things, in case one was a contact. He said there would have been some regular contact, a way
of passing material or messages.
'It couldn't be the butcher,' he said.
'Why not?'
'Remember once he ran over a dog on the road? Mrs Jones's dog, that little terrier she had? He ran it over and it was dead.
I saw. And he went to her and owned up. A spy wouldn't have drawn attention to himself like that.'
The laundry came and went in a grey box with a leather strap around it. It would have been easy to put messages in, folded
into the sheets or inserted between the lists on the pages in the laundry book. The laundry man had a funny twisted leg, as
if it had been ironed in a crease. I told Peter he was wounded in the war.
'How do you know?'
'Mummy said so.'
'How did she know?'
The next day he came we greeted his van on the road and talked to him as he got down from it and limped to the house. 'Have
you two got somebody looking after you now?' he asked, and Peter was quick and said yes, there was someone in the house all
of the time, though it wasn't true just then, it was the afternoon and Margaret had gone and there was nobody else there.
I knew he did it to make us safe, just in case, but it made me afraid of what might happen. When I went to bed that night
in the clean laundered sheets I felt the coolness of them and smelled the starch, and they seemed too white. I could sense
their whiteness even with my eyes closed, as if there was a bright light that would not let me sleep.
Besides the tradesmen there was hardly anyone. It had not seemed to us before that this was odd and yet now
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