Widowland

by C. J. Carey

  Just a shame the woman had never set eyes on the place.

  ‘You don’t want to miss this, Rose!’

  Helena’s excitement was contagious. All around her, more Culture Ministry staff were emerging from their offices and cubicles – her friends in the Film division, girls from the Astrology Office, young men from Advertising in their braces and red ties, Press department staffers, a gaggle of people from Broadcasting, even some stragglers from Theatre and Art, who were relegated to a couple of back offices on one of the building’s lower floors.

  Rose was about to give in and join them, when from across the office she became aware of a Leni bustling towards her desk with an air of self-importance. She was a dumpy, matronly figure, steel hair gripped into a bun and an upper lip disfigured by a badly mended cleft palate. She wore no make-up – she wouldn’t dare – but her cheeks were flushed with a bright disc of pink and her eyes glinted in the fleshy folds of her face. Encased in thick wool stockings and a pewter-grey suit in the kind of crusty, hard-wearing tweed favoured by her type, she might have been a crab, scuttling towards her prey, carrying a clipboard pincer-style. Generally, Lenis believed themselves to be the essential cogs of any factory or workplace, and no matter how low level their actual function, they regarded themselves as the glue that kept the economy running. They were probably right. There was plenty of dogsbody work in the current administration and it required an army of women to carry it out.

  This woman, Sheila, had a desk right outside the Commissioner’s office and believed she knew everything that was going on in the Ministry. She smiled blandly as she sighted Rose, certain that the message she was conveying would bring a shiver down anyone’s spine.

  Rose steeled herself, summoned an expression of polite enquiry and refused to turn a hair.

  ‘Ah, Miss Ransom. An important memo for you.’ Sheila detached a piece of paper from the clipboard and floated it onto Rose’s desk.

  ‘The Commissioner wants to see you. He’s away at the moment but he’s back on Friday. You’ll report to him first thing.’ She leaned closer, bringing a waft of unwashed clothes and cheap perfume. ‘Little word of advice. Be punctual. In fact, I recommend you arrive ten minutes early. The Commissioner despises bad timekeepers. He takes a very dim view. And no one likes to see him angry.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘Aren’t you excited? I am. I’ve never seen a king crowned. It’s like a fairy tale.’

  ‘Not my kind of fairy tale,’ said Rose, wiping a porthole in the window’s condensation and peering out.

  The bus was packed and stuffy with tired commuters making their way home. Rose and Helena always shared the journey and they liked to take seats on the upper deck so they could look down on the passers-by. It was a kind of free entertainment, watching the crowds trudging up Whitehall in their shabby clothes and worn shoes. They poured like a polluted river up the Strand, the Magdas in their cheap coats and hats, the Lenis, with their heels and pencil skirts and buttoned jackets, and the Klaras, pushing enormous prams, usually with a couple of children hanging off the handles. Sometimes a trudging Frieda, encased in compulsory black, scurrying home before her curfew. Widows suited black, because they were, effectively, a form of shadow themselves, the sooty remnants of a married life snuffed out.

  The detailed regulations on clothing worked through a system of coupons, with the number of points given varying according to caste. Because textile and leather production was geared towards the needs of the mainland, all shoes were made of plastic and rubber, their soles from cork or wood, and most clothes were fashioned from the same rough materials. Yet even with these constraints, it was not hard to distinguish a higher order woman from her sisters.

  The differences between men were more subtle, marked less by appearance than by demeanour. Foreigners carried themselves with a natural confidence and swagger, whereas natives remained buttoned up, modelling their famous stiff upper lip.

  On the corner of Adam Street, a group of elderly men rolled out of the pub and deferred obsequiously to a pair of officers monopolizing the pavement two abreast.

  In a flash an image came to Rose. Her father, in one of his rages, when the Alliance was first announced.

  It’s a failure of leadership. We were led by fools and charlatans. No wonder we caved in so quickly with leaders like ours.

  Her mother, white-faced and flustered, explaining that Dad was ill and didn’t know what he was saying.

  The chief advantage of the bus journey was that it offered the chance for Rose and Helena to talk out of earshot of their office colleagues. You could never talk completely freely, because surveillance was notoriously easy to carry out on public transport, and watchers were hard to spot, so it was as well to shoot a look over the shoulder before speaking. But the Leni behind them – plain with plaits and thick spectacles – was buried in a paperback called A Soldier’s Love and the two Magdas on the other side, their hair tucked under turbans, were engaged in fervent bitchery about a friend.

  Helena rolled her eyes.

  ‘I forgot. You’re the expert on fairy tales. How’s it going?’

  ‘Fine. Fairy stories are easy really. Better than the Brontës.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re complaining about. I’d kill for your job.’

  ‘Says the girl who goes to every movie premiere in the land.’

  ‘I know it sounds fun, but you can’t relax. I’m there to check inaccuracies. Anything that’s slipped through the net. If political errors remain, it’s on my watch. Imagine how stressful that feels. I’m not just sitting back eating chocolate.’

  ‘Chocolate. I remember that.’

  Helena grinned. It was as though she could not help the good humour shining out of her. Everything from the milky blonde tendrils spilling from her hat, to the smile always hovering at the edges of her mouth, was irrepressible. Short of being German, Helena had been gifted with all the blessings the gods could bestow, chief among them a sense of the ridiculous – a vital attribute in Government service.

  ‘Don’t tell me Assistant Commissioner Kreuz doesn’t bring you back chocolate from all those foreign trips he makes. I bet he has huge boxes tied with satin ribbon hidden in that briefcase of his.’

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Oh, come on. Give me credit for having eyes in my head.’

  ‘And . . . ?’

  ‘He adores you. I’ve seen him around you. You’d have to be blind to miss it. And I know full well you’re mad about him too.’

  She gave Rose a gentle nudge with her elbow.

  ‘I can keep a secret, you know, Rosie. We are best friends, remember?’

  The bus shuddered to a sudden halt. Peering out, Rose saw a series of army vans blockading Waterloo Bridge. White tape had been hoisted across the carriageway, and a policeman was directing traffic with officious semaphore, as though conducting an especially bracing marching band.

  ‘There’s been an incident,’ murmured Helena.

  ‘Where?’

  Helena checked swiftly over her shoulder.

  ‘In the office they were saying it was the Rosenberg Institute. It happened right in the middle of a Classification procedure. As if that’s not nerve-wracking enough. Remember?’

  Back in the early days of the Alliance, shortly after the Time of Resistance, every female in the land over the age of fourteen had received a letter summoning her for Classification. The procedures were staggered to cope with the numbers, but in the event, the processing of more than half the population was carried out with military efficiency. Sixteen-year-old Rose, along with thousands of others, had reported one Saturday to the Alfred Rosenberg Institute, the former County Hall, on the South Bank of the Thames.

  It was a bright, sunny morning, and the consignment of women being processed that day was held in a strict line that snaked out of the building and all the way across Waterloo Bridge. Guards with dogs patrolled, and Rose noticed the younger men staring hungrily at one
girl about her own age, whose beauty and natural confidence marked her out. She had the glossy pedigree beauty of a racehorse, with long, coltish legs, wide-set pale blue eyes, gleaming hair and a light dusting of freckles. She was tossing her head, aware of the men’s glances and knowing her looks were precisely the kind that the regime loved. They called such attributes Nordic – the highest praise – and Rose had no doubt that her neighbour would be instantly assigned to the top caste.

  For a moment she had considered hanging back, in case proximity to this beautiful girl affected her own chances, before she checked herself. Systems in the Alliance never worked on whim. The Rosenberg Assessment Procedure was scientifically rigorous and in case of doubt, the Institute walls were plastered with charts showing precise comparative measurements of head size, nose shape and eye colour for each different racial type. Every minute calibration would be translated into a precise position on the scale of caste, from ASA Female Class I (a) to ASA Female Class VI (c).

  The method had been trialled on the mainland and was highly reliable. Since 1935, people had been measured, not only to distinguish between Aryans and other races, but also to assess young women who wanted to marry into the SS. There was no reason at all why the practice should not be expanded to classify an entire female population.

  No amount of reasoning, however, helped when the procedure itself made every woman flinch.

  First the craniometrist fitted a steel device like a giant claw around their heads and assessed their other dimensions with a series of metal rods. Then the anthropometrist, seated between a tray of glass eyes in sixty shades and an array of sightless plaster skulls that looked uncomfortably like death masks, measured the angles of their jaws and noses and brows and noted them down. The endless queues of women shuffled slowly through a hall pungent with a school gym smell of sweat, unwashed clothing and fear.

  When it was the pretty blonde’s turn to have her profile measured with a contraption that looked like a pair of giant compasses, she rolled her eyes at Rose, and it was all Rose could do not to giggle. The girl seemed to brim with anarchic hilarity and mischief, as if the two of them were sharing some outrageous private joke. Amid the tense and nervous throng of women filing through the packed hall, proximity to this larky woman seemed the best way to get through the ordeal.

  Charting every facial feature, then weighing and measuring each female took a good half hour, after which they all trudged into an adjoining hall to face the second level of selection: the questionnaire. This required them to provide a host of information about their family, their ancestry, past health and mental conditions. Eventually, when all the boxes had been ticked, the women were assigned the classification that accorded with their heritage, reproductive status and racial characteristics. This label would determine every aspect of their life, from where they should live, to what clothes they would wear, what entertainment they could enjoy and how many calories they could consume.

  Although each classification had its official title, nobody bothered with a mouthful like ASA Female Class II (b), when they could use the inevitable nicknames. Members of the first, and elite, caste were popularly called Gelis after the woman most loved by the Leader, his niece Geli. Klaras – after the Leader’s mother – were fertile women who had produced, ideally, four or more children. Lenis were professional women, such as office workers and actresses, after Leni Riefenstahl, the regime’s chief film director. Paulas, named after the Leader’s sister, were in the caring professions, teachers and nurses, whereas Magdas were lowly shop and factory employees and Gretls did the grunt work as kitchen and domestic staff. There was a range of other designations – for nuns, disabled mothers and midwives – but right at the bottom of the hierarchy came the category called Friedas. It was a diminutive of the nickname Friedhöfefrauen – cemetery women. These were widows and spinsters over fifty who had no children, no reproductive purpose, and who did not serve a man.

  There was nothing lower than that.

  Many of these classifications changed, as women became mothers, for instance, or failed to. Women were regularly screened, and an entire division of the Women’s Service was devoted to the business of reassessments. Yet in a way, the labels became self-fulfilling. Certain occupations favoured a particular class of female. Poorer food, clothes and housing reinforced women’s differences. Without meat, fresh fruit and vegetables, Friedas and Gretls grew sickly and their complexions dulled. Deference became second nature. No one needed to ask if a woman was a Leni, or a Gretl, or a Magda, because you could tell at a glance. And a Geli, whose rations and work were enough to put a spring in her step, would always walk taller and hold her head that little bit higher.

  A Geli card was the golden ticket.

  When the two girls left that day with ID marking them as ASA Female Class I (a), Rose’s new friend locked arms with her and gave a little spontaneous whoop.

  ‘I’m Helena Bishop. How about we go and get our pictures taken?’

  It was becoming a tradition, among young women classified as Gelis, to have their photographs taken beneath the statue of the original Geli that had been newly erected on the Embankment. Photographers had set up shop there, with instant cameras, producing Classification Day pictures on request.

  ‘OK then.’

  The two girls were friends from that day onwards.

  Yet Rose and Helena were the lucky ones. Some young women, having their life chances radically diminished by Classification, abandoned common sense and created mayhem, weeping, screaming and attacking the guards. Such hysterics were always hustled quickly away, to have their caste downgraded yet again on account of antisocial behaviour.

  The bus lurched forward again, leaving the traffic jam behind.

  ‘So, this incident, what happened?’ asked Rose quietly. ‘Was it a girl?’

  ‘A man, apparently. Walked in quite calmly and shot one of the guards.’

  ‘An angry father?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who then?’

  ‘I heard it was, you know . . . one of Them.’

  Helena jumped up and grabbed her bag, as though relieved to have reached her stop.

  ‘Better get going! See you tomorrow!’

  All eyes followed her hourglass figure as she sashayed her way down the stairs.

  Two stops later, the bus came to a halt and Rose made her own way into the shadowy streets.

  Although street lighting was installed in elite zones, its hours of operation were strictly limited, and it would be another few hours before the dim wattage of the lamps, haloed in the evening mist, pierced the murk. Rose didn’t mind. It was still twilight and besides, she preferred shadows. They obscured the everyday gloominess of the streets – the potholed pavements, cracked windowpanes and pallid, malnourished faces – and in the crepuscular light, the dirt-darkened brick buildings and cobbled alleys had a historic feel. The fanlights above ancient, narrow doors and the glint of stained glass transported her to a different age. Sometimes she allowed herself to fantasize that she was going back in time, before the Alliance, even to Victorian times.

  Instantly, she checked herself.

  Nostalgie-Kriminalität. Nostalgia crime. Any suggestion that the past was better than the future was strictly outlawed. Sentimentality is the enemy of progress. Memory is treacherous. The sentiments every half-diligent schoolchild knew by heart.

  Citizens of the Alliance were not encouraged to think about the past, except in the way that the Protector wanted them to think of it, as a mythical story. History with a capital H, like something out of the Bible.

  When Rose was first allocated housing in Bloomsbury, the name sounded curiously familiar, and it was a few moments before she registered why. Then she remembered that the name had once belonged to the Bloomsbury Group, a circle of subversives who had lived here some decades before, producing degenerate art. From what she knew, their ring leaders had been arrested early in the Alliance and their homes turned over to elite citizens.

 
Which fortunately included herself.

  A blast of stale beer and light emanated from a pub, and a couple of Magdas approached, their exchanges brittle on the evening air.

  ‘She says she can’t find a man for love nor money. I said, why don’t you get a transfer to the mainland? There’s plenty of choice for your sort there. You wouldn’t believe the look she gave me.’

  They dropped their conversation instinctively as they drew level with Rose and, with obligatory deference, gave way to let her pass.

  Rose pushed open the door to her block. The hall was floored with linoleum and to one side stood a shabby deal dresser strewn with a haphazard collection of letters and leaflets. A notice pinned to the wall declared Females Class III to VI inclusive are forbidden entry to these premises after 6 p.m. A sour smell hung in the air and instinctively she tried to separate out its components, detecting alongside the usual cabbage and floor polish a tang of vinegar and a top note of oily fish. That was a dangerous smell. In the absence of meat, citizens were sometimes tempted to catch their supper in the Thames – unauthorized fishing was prohibited, but hunger and the need to supplement meagre rations was often enough to drive amateur anglers to try their luck under cover of darkness. Generally, they were picked off by the patrols who waited in the arches of the bridges or concealed themselves by riverbank trees, and their corpses would be found floating alongside the other detritus of society – suicides, desperate women, drunks. But if they returned and cooked their catch, there was still the chance that a vigilant neighbour or caretaker would detect the crime by odour alone.

  Snapping on the light, Rose shut the door behind her and leaned against it, looking round. Her room was simple. A bed, a chair and a small partitioned section for a kitchen stove and cooking ring. Tattered photographs of London in the Time Before: a leafy square with smart railings, cheerful shopfronts, and a street scene featuring vans painted with advertisements for bread, sausages and tea. A worn orange rag rug lay before the gas fire. And against the window, a rickety, wood-wormed desk looked down over the tops of the plane trees in Gordon Square.