Our Dad Was a Spy in the Eighties

"Our Dad Was a Spy in the Eighties" by Martin Taulbut

Issue 3.1 | Fiction

Cover Art: L. Erickson

We gaze up at the loft, flummoxed.

‘How the hell d’you lose a ladder?’ mutters Don. ‘Where’d they put it, eh, Jim?’

‘I don’t know,’ I snap. ‘It’s not as if we can ask them.’

Yeah. Dad’s up in the geriatric unit, telling the same daft stories he used to regale us with when we were kids. Only this time, he means them. That was when I was in the jungle, hunting Pablo Escobar. That was when I was in Berlin, slipping polonium into Erich Honecker’s cocoa. Waking to find Mum dead in the bed they'd shared for fifty-four years had transported him to a shadowland.

My brother sighs. ‘Right. Well, what do we do now?’

‘You’ve checked the garage?’

For a moment, forty years slough off him, and he’s back to being an irritable older, ten-year-old brother.

‘Course I’ve checked the garage,’ he scoffs. ‘First place I looked. They cleaned it out last year. Jon helped them.’

Ah. Makes sense. Our nephew is a hulking lad.

‘We cannae leave it,’ I insist. ‘Well, we cannae.’

Don’s quiet for a moment. Maybe he’s thinking about the note handed to us in that run-down solicitors’ office in Parkhead. Half the letters were missing from the sign above the firm’s entrance. Didn’t bode well. But the letter itself, passed over by some slip of a blonde girl, seemed genuine enough.

Jimmy, Donald and Katie,

If you get this, it means I’m dead or loopy. Before you divvy up the estate, there’s something you can do for me. There’s a wooden trunk in the loft. Don’t open it. Burn it. Should be some petrol in the garage, told your nephew to leave it be. There’s lighter fluid and matches in the kitchen drawer, the bust one. Do it for your mother and me.

With love, your Dad...Bob.

An unspoken fear crackles into life. Mum and Dad were married a long time. Did this signify infidelity? All those weeks away, to MOD training courses at the other side of the country. Enough to make you think. You don’t like thinking about your dad like that. Bad enough to realize your parents must’ve had a sex life, but . . . in his day, he was a good-looking guy. We didn’t tell Katie, couldn’t tell her. She was the youngest, always temperamental. Better we handle this ourselves.

Don finally speaks. ‘I’ve got steps. But they’re down the road, I’d have to drive all the way there, and all the way back.’

‘Is Cindy in? Could she not . . . ?’

He shakes his head. ‘Nah. She’s visiting her mum.’

Oh. Jacqueline, his mother-in-law, was diagnosed with cancer in March. Second time around. I liked Jackie. She used to invite me around to watch the football with her, when she found out I was a big St Mirren fan too. Bad one.

Wait a minute. The neighbors.

‘What about McCartney? I know he’s getting on a bit, but he was always good with his hands.’

‘McCartney died, Jim,’ says Don.

‘No?’

‘He was eighty-four, Jim.’

‘Oh.’

I peer into the main bedroom. It’s shocking, almost sacrilegious, how empty the room is. Where familiar mementos should be, there are only naked walls. The photo of my mum and dad, taken in the Forest Hills hotel dining room. The big picture window behind them framing the loch and the glorious, bloody sunset. A pale-blue banner curling across the top of the window frame: ENID AND BOB – 40 YEARS AND STILL GOING STRONG! Gone. The photo of my father grinning, wearing his long-service medal, as he shook hands with a posh naval officer. Vanished.

The bed and chest of drawers are away, too. The removal company did their job well. A shame.

I try the back bedroom. There’s an old bookcase there. Not pine either, but some sturdy antique oak thing, about four feet high, its shelves thick and robust. Yes. That would do.

‘C’mon,’ I tell Don. ‘Give’s a hand.’

He follows me into the cold spare room. We pull books and magazines off the shelves and stack them in piles on the bare floorboards. Among the Pan Horror anthologies and dog-eared novels by Colin Forbes and James Herbert, there are some weird anomalies. Magazines with unfamiliar names: Primo, Sibylle. A pretty blonde woman in a stylish gray dress and hat smiles out at me from the cover. From the shoulder pads, I guess this must be from the 80s. A strange thing for them to keep.

I dump them alongside the books.

Don and I shuffle the bookcase back out onto the landing and slide it beneath the attic hatch. By the time we’re finished, I’m sweating and breathless. Don handles it better: he got into running in his forties and regularly does park runs. Still, even he’s a bit ruddy around the gills.

‘Right,’ I say. ‘Give us the key, then.’

Don looks at me as if I’m daft. ‘You? You’re going first?!’

‘Yeah,’ I bluster. ‘One of us has to go up first, Don.’

‘Hmm.’ For a minute I think he’s going to say something like, We’re joint executors. But instead, he shrugs. He pulls the key from his pocket and passes it to me. ‘You’re up for this?’

‘Yep.’

I climb up the improvised ladder while Don stands behind me, steadying the bookcase. Once I reach the top, I unlock the latch. Then I give the hatch a shove.

‘It’s stuck. If I can just…’

I try both hands, shoving against the wood as hard as I can. It scrapes against the frame, opening a narrow slit. A musty, dank blast of cold air escapes through the gap, making me cough.

‘Give it a good dunt,’ suggests Don.

‘All right, all right.’

I shove it again, this time putting my shoulder into it. The hatch flies open, making me stumble. Don grabs my left leg and slaps his palm down on the bookcase as it wobbles.

‘Careful!’ he shouts.

Shaking, I take a breath. Then I stand up, poking my head through the hatch. It takes a minute or two for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. I pull myself through, haul myself on my belly onto the attic beams, roll over and pull the cord. The single bulb barely illuminates the space around the hatch.

But I can see it.

‘What’s up there?’ calls Don. ‘Family fortune?’

‘Could be,’ I murmur.

Stooping, I make my way across the creaking floors, towards the heavy wooden box in the middle of the floor. Locked tight. Dad didn’t want us to go in here.

It’s funny, he was always such a soft touch in all areas of his life, back home by six every night in time for tea, attending every one of Katie’s football matches, Don’s recitals, my plays. And the attic wasn’t always out of bounds. In fact, we used it as our playroom, Don and Katie and me, back in the day. This must have been the year I started primary school, when Band Aid was all the rage. But around that time, we came home one day to find all our toys turfed out, decanted to the bedroom Don and I shared and Katie’s wee boxroom, and the attic locked. Dad turned into Cerberus whenever we tried to go up there, even as a joke.

Snapping at us, furious. Some game of hide-and-seek interrupted, and him red-faced, lips wet with spit.

‘I’m doing this for our family, James!’ he ranted. ‘Don’t you get it?’

I approach the trunk. Try the lid, just in case, but the thing’s sealed tight. There’s a leather strap bolted to one end.

Stooping, I grab the leather strap. Strain and pull. It’s heavy. It scrapes along the floor. My back jerks as it hits an obstacle. It’s stopped by a beam. Grunting, I manage to huckle it over the wooden nub. Bit by bit, I drag it closer to the hatch.

Don pops his head through the hatch. ‘What’s the hold up?’

‘Doing ma best, man,’ I grumble. ‘Gies a minute . . . here. . . .’

I reach the hatch. My brother extends his arms. He pulls, and I tip the trunk toward him, hanging on to the strap with both hands.

Don strains. ‘Careful . . . careful, hold on. . . .’

 My arm aches, my shoulder feeling like it’s being wrenched from the socket. ‘You . . . should be . . . careful!’

The strap snaps. I fall backwards, managing to put my hands out before I brain myself on the attic beams. There’s a series of thumps, then a violent crash.

‘Don!’ I shout, my voice wobbling with panic. ‘Donald!’

Silence for a moment. Then:

‘Aah,’ he complains. ‘I’m . . . all right. Ah, Christ . . . sore yin. It missed me. You, Jim?’

‘Yeah. . . .’

I lurch to the hatch and peer down. Rubbing my back, I clamber down into the hallway. The trunk is lying on its side. Don is standing over it, nursing his elbow. The lock’s not as sturdy as I thought. The metal shank has popped out. The trunk opens a crack.

 I crouch. Don mutters something, but curiosity overrides any residual big-brother authority. Flipping open the lip, I reach into the trunk.

Rough fabric grazes my fingertips. Heavy woven material. I drag it into the light. A jacket, badly tailored, beige, looks to be a couple of sizes too small, even for Dad in his pomp, when he was our age. Something wrong with the seams, too, as if a wire has come loose. If I twist here. . . .

There’s a heavy click and a bright flash, then a whirring mechanism. Puzzled, I poke through the cheap lining. Sewn inside is a slim little plastic cuboid, about the size of two matchboxes, with a tiny cylinder poking through the lapel.

Some kind of joke? Instead of a squirting flower, a buttonhole that snaps your image?

Next up, a cheap-looking cardboard folder. I slip open the cover, and a sheaf of charcoal colored paper slips free, floating to the floor. I squint at the faint hieroglyphics. ASLAN AVAL BAS.

I reach in again. This time, a hard, metal disk cuts against my palm. I pull it out and stare at it. A little bronze circular medallion, showing a set-square over a hammer, against a red background. The edges of the medallion are marked with flags with black, red, and gold horizontal stripes and ears of corn. Etched into the bronze is an inscription:

FÜR VERDIENSTE UM DIE DEUTSCHE DEMOKRATISCHE REPUBLIK

My high school German is more than corroded. For something? to the German Democratic Republic. The DDR? A line from a Billy Bragg song. Hazy memories. Pootling little boxy motors. A mustached man on top of the Berlin Wall, swinging a sledgehammer. Goose-stepping soldiers in olive green, parading past a wall of fluttering red flags. . . .

‘Hey!’ calls Don. ‘What d’you find?’

Hastily, I stuff the carbon paper and the medal in the hip pocket of my jeans.

‘Nothing,’ I yell. ‘Load of garbage.’

‘Here, let me in.’ he says. ‘That’s not nothing?!’

He rakes through the trunk, pulling out more material.

More papers. Schematics of what look like submarines. An Ordnance Survey map of Scotland, covered with colorful markings. Blue circles over Rosyth and the Holy Loch, angry red flares, ringed by orange and yellow, over Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Dundee. The key next to them showing numbers, big numbers, thousands, tens of thousands.

Don’s appalled. ‘What is this stuff? Like, props from films, or. . . .’

I sigh. ‘You know what it is. What it looks like.’

Don shakes his head. ‘No. No. He bloody hated lefties. Hated them. He wouldn’t have done this.’

‘He didn’t do it,’ I said. ‘There’s no evidence.’

‘Whit? Ye kiddin, there’s all. . . .’ Don realizes. ‘Oh. Right.’

‘Yeah,’ I say.

Still, a question nags at me. Why? 

I have to know.

—

They let me into the supported accommodation unit without asking many questions. Don wanted to come but I convinced him otherwise. Better that he stays down at the house and sweep the place for anything else that might incriminate Dad. The nurse, a beefy, kindly guy in spectacles called Derek, shows me through to the lounge. It’s a spacious oblong room with a narrow slit of a window running around the walls, giving it a pillbox feel. The rest of the patients are out for the day, some musical therapy thing; it helps, Derek explains.

At first glance, Dad seems ok, standing with his back to me, facing the window. Up and dressed, quite smartly too, in a clean gray suit and pale blue shirt. As he faces me, I see his hair’s been newly trimmed, and they’ve even managed to give him a shave, too.

Then I see his eyes, wild, agitated. He paces up and down the room, restless.

‘Look what they’ve done to my river, Jock!’ he exclaims, sweeping his arm towards the window. ‘It’s a bloody disgrace!’

Chugging down the river is a giant cruise liner, its hull painted with a giant orange eye, surrounded by a smear of pink mascara. Bearing German tourists to the heart of sunny Greenock, no doubt.

When Dad spots me, a suspicious look creases up his face. ‘Who’s this, Jock? I’ve told you, no more interlopers!’

Behind me, Derek offers soothing words. ‘Now Bob. It’s just a cruise ship. No danger, eh. This is Jim, you remember him?’

‘Jim?’ My Dad’s brow creases again, a fleeting look of panic, before he suddenly breaks into an easy smile. ‘Course I remember him! How could I not…’

There’s hope there. Maybe he’ll get better.

‘Used to work together in the base, didn’t we, Jim and me?’ chuckles Dad. ‘Sit down, you old reprobate.’

With leaden feet, I cross the room and sit down opposite my old man on a couchette thing. It’s . . . upsetting seems too small, too trivial a term. I upset my glass and spilled red wine on the wallpaper and the carpet. Besides, upset denotes something that can be fixed, so that no trace of the violation remains. Whereas this . . . there is no quick reversal. In a sick inversion, it is the disease itself that leaves no trace of the man my father was.

Once I’m sure Derek’s gone, I dredge up the courage to begin. But he pre-empts me.

‘We had some fun times, didn’t we, Jim?’ he chuckles. Then a crafty look; ‘Never got caught, did we!’

We sure did. Holidays in caravan parks when we were wee. Down in the south of England, Cornwall, or Devon. He must’ve driven what, 600 miles or so. My head aches. I blink away the threat of tears.

‘Bob,’ I manage. ‘I need to ask you something. There’ve been rumors. Leaked documents. Commander Mirren asked me to speak to everyone. Everyone. No one’s above suspicion.’

‘No,’ he’s shocked. ‘You’re kidding me on, Jim. I’d never . . . I mean even after they showed us that civil contingency film. . . .’ He stops, covering his mouth with his palm. ‘I’ve said too much.’

‘What film, Dad, Bob?’ I blurt out. ‘What film?’

 He grabs me by both shoulders, pressing into the flesh so tightly it hurts. ‘No! I told you, I’ve said too much. There’s no pension plan for guys like us, Jim. It’s a terrible thing.’

Tears well up in the corner of his eyes. His voice drops to a hoarse whisper.

‘Civil defense they called it. This was around Christmas eighty-three, after that mess of Able Archer . . . I couldn’t let that go.’

I lean forward. ‘What’d you do?’

My father’s desperate now. ‘Ha, some cruel joke! You remember, Jim? The civilian population . . . they were expandable. We all had family, kids. They told us this, and expected us just to keep shtum?’

‘What did you do?’ I beg. ‘Who did you tell?’

But he suddenly smiles. Folds his arms. He glances up. I turn around and Derek is hovering at the doorway.

‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. So you and your colleague can just turn around and do your story on something else. Some celebrity tittle-tattle. Should be right up your cul-de-sac.’

Dad’s stubbornness is legendary. I appeal to Derek, but the nurse shakes his head sadly. He’s seen this before.

—

We stand in the back garden as the sun goes down, staring at the smoldering gray-white circle of ashes at the center of the overgrown lawn. Even as it dies, the heat from what remains of the fire is uncomfortable upon our skin. Didn’t think the flame would catch, but Don, Don’s a big barbeque man. He laid the wood and added charcoal, even squirted on some lighter fluid as an accelerant.

We searched the rest of the house after we cleaned out the attic. Foreign magazines, even travel books and phrase books, they went into the flames too.

Just in case.

All gone. Vanished. Better lose all that historical material than our dad’s reputation.

‘We had good Christmases when we were young,’ says Don. ‘You remember that, Jimmy? And then, you remember they seemed really flush with cash around eighty-nine, ninety, we went to Disney World that year…’

‘I remember.’

We found no trace of money, no dollars, no Deutschmarks, no gold Krugerrand. Gone too.

‘That’s everything?’

‘Everything that would burn,’ I say. ‘Wait. Haud the bus.’

Patting my pockets, I pull out the carbon paper, crumple it and chuck it onto the hot ashes. The fire briefly flares, the blackened sheet shriveling and collapsing to nothingness. Then the medal, complete with its ribbon. The dedication mocks me. I turn it over in my hand.

More lettering here.

No. Impossible.

‘What’s that?’ says Don.

I close my fingers over the lettering. ‘Souvenir.’

‘That’s no’ gonna burn. The ribbon, maybe, but we need it hotter to melt the bronze.’

So, we buried it and walked away. I never told Don what I’d read on the opposite face of the medal.

FÜR VERDIENSTE UM DIE DEUTSCHE DEMOKRATISCHE REPUBLIK, 

GENOSSE ENID MARSHALL.

—

Martin Taulbut lives in Dumbarton, Scotland, with his wife, their little dog and two cats. A member of the Shut Up and Write! Glasgow Group, his previous short stories have appeared in Psychotrope, Scheherazade, Albedo One, Black Petals, Mycelia, Tales of the Unreal and Archive of the Odd.