Widowland

by C. J. Carey

  ‘From what I recall.’

  ‘Everyone knows Lizzie Bennet. And that annoying mother of hers. I read the novel as a teenager in English class too many years ago. It didn’t mean much to me then. It seemed a small, domestic tale of social climbing, centred around snobbery and various English gentlemen taking too long to make up their minds about their romantic affairs. Yes?’

  ‘It’s a comedy of manners, I think. We did it at school.’

  ‘Precisely. But it’s not until you reach adulthood that you appreciate what Miss Austen has to say. She’s saying that Elizabeth Bennet is intelligent, yes? That marriage can subject women to degradation. That masculine superiority should be questioned.’

  ‘That never occurred to me.’

  Kreuz came towards her, perching on the edge of the desk so that they were uncomfortably close.

  ‘The thing is, Rose – if I may call you Rose . . .’

  She smelled the aroma of his pomade, and the hot, animal scent of him. From his uniform came a faint odour of horses, suggesting he had been out riding before he came into the office. Close up, his eyes were a warm hazel, splintered with gold.

  Despite herself, she felt something inside her buckle. An involuntary kick.

  ‘We can’t just erase Pride and Prejudice or Middlemarch or Jane Eyre or any of these novels. They’re too famous. They’re ingrained in the culture. Cleansing them from the popular consciousness will take a generation. But we can do something about them now.’

  His voice was low and confidential, as though they were caught up in an enterprise that involved just the two of them. A personal conspiracy.

  ‘I can’t take credit for this, it’s Rosenberg who had the idea. He says, far better than destroying these books is to correct them. To edit them.’

  ‘Edit them? Classic texts?’

  ‘Updating, is the word he uses. There’s nothing irrational about it. Scientists update their theories as new discoveries are made. When Galileo discovered that the earth moved round the sun, everyone had to adjust their textbooks, didn’t they? Mapmakers correct their charts every time a new island turns up. Are you saying they’re wrong?’

  ‘No, but . . .’

  ‘So why not novels?’

  ‘It’s just . . . That would be a huge enterprise. To rewrite the classics.’

  ‘I agree. And no one’s suggesting that. What’s required is something far more subtle. An adjustment of ideology. An abridgement really. A slight, minor correction to some characters and themes.’

  ‘What do you mean by correction?’

  ‘I mean that books, like people, need discipline. Not only the discipline of grammar and sentences, but the hard discipline of meaning.’

  She steeled herself to maintain eye contact.

  ‘So I’m talking about excision. Rephrasing. Carving out the rotten and diseased meanings, the subversive suggestions that trigger disturbing thoughts and infect young minds. The necrotic attitudes that have the potential to rot an entire nation. Shaping books, like a sculptor shapes stone.’

  The way Martin Kreuz put it, it sounded almost like art.

  ‘How would one know what’s subversive?’

  He smiled, mock stern.

  ‘Well, Miss Ransom. I might say, a citizen of the Protectorate should have the correct attitudes written on her heart. But I won’t insult you. Let’s just say, I can see that you’re intelligent.’

  ‘But if . . . there was a specific issue. Of ideology . . . ?’

  ‘In that case, I suppose, you would ask the question that every Culture Ministry employee should ask themselves.’

  He waited, eyebrows raised, for the answer, and when none came, supplied it himself.

  ‘What would Minister Goebbels do?’

  Standing up, he thrust his hands in his pockets and looked down at her.

  ‘I’ve got a whole Fiction Correction team to assemble, not to mention teams overseeing portrayals of women in advertising, wireless and film and so forth. But to begin with, I need someone to update a series of classic texts for the school curriculum. Think you can do that? It’s quite a task, but I hope you’ll see it as an honour and I’m sure you’re equal to it.’

  Perhaps it was the hush in the carpeted office or some unspoken instinct that told her Martin Kreuz would not penalize her for questioning him. She looked deeper into the gold-brown eyes.

  ‘Why me? I know hardly anything about literature. And apart from press releases and digests of speeches, I’ve never written anything in my life.’

  ‘Because I have faith in you.’

  He reached out a hand and drew it slowly down the skin of her cheek. When he felt her flinch, he withdrew.

  ‘And because unlike Miss Austen’s gentlemen, I have never been one to ignore the attractions of a beautiful woman.’

  Rose jerked awake from her doze. The fumes from the gas fire had made her drowsy and she had pins and needles where her head had pressed on one arm.

  Did Martin know about the Commissioner’s request to see her? Surely, if he did, he would never have allowed her to endure this nail-biting tension. Even Martin must understand the cold undercurrent of fear that haunted every citizen of the Protectorate. The anxiety that was fuelled by the knowledge of surveillance and informers. The fear that functioned as an invisible force – a kind of electric field that contained its victims and ensured they policed themselves.

  Wrapping her hands round her knees in a foetal clasp, she reassured herself that she had no good reason to fear the meeting with the Cultural Commissioner.

  But then, no one needed a reason to fear anything anymore.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Tuesday, 13th April

  ‘Mummy! Rose has been reading to me about the Snow Queen!’

  Hannah was six years old. Her legs were like string with knots at the knees, her face was as freckled as a fresh egg, and Rose adored her.

  Rose’s sister Celia and her husband Geoffrey lived in an elegant four-storey Georgian house with a russet-brick facade and striking long windows that overlooked the north side of Clapham Common. The house was far beyond Geoffrey’s means, but it had come available in the early days of the Alliance – like much other desirable property whose owners were no longer around – and one of Geoffrey’s golf club friends had pulled strings. Celia’s natural good taste ensured that the house was outfitted with gleaming Regency furniture, chintz sofas, fresh flowers and all the latest appliances. A stack of Deutsche Grammophon discs sat next to their machine, and the mantel was festooned with a clutch of silver-framed photographs of Hannah.

  Hannah was their only child and despite all efforts to the contrary, this was unlikely to change. The problem was Geoffrey’s, Celia confided, but Rose suspected that her sister reckoned she had done enough for the birth rate and banished Geoffrey from the bed. Either way, Rose tried not to think about it. Hannah was quite enough. She loved babysitting her niece and Celia shamelessly exploited it.

  ‘I chose a story with a queen in it because of the Coronation,’ Rose volunteered.

  ‘How appropriate,’ laughed Celia. ‘I can just see Wallis as the Snow Queen, swathed in white ermine. What do you think she’ll wear on the big day? My girlfriends are going crazy discussing it. The King’s robes have been designed by Hugo Boss, but apparently Wallis’s outfit is top secret. My money’s on something madly stylish from Dior. That would be so like her. What do you think?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue,’ said Rose absently, running a hand through Hannah’s silky hair.

  ‘I bet you do know and you just can’t tell me. Classified information.’

  ‘Hardly,’ said Rose shortly. She could just imagine Celia’s girlfriends dissecting Queen Wallis with their mixture of snobbery and social cruelty. It was a peculiarly English virtue – to admire and disdain at the same time – and while they despised Wallis for being American, they envied her undeniable style. That a Baltimore socialite should marry into the British royal family and challenge centuries of gilt-encr
usted protocol was plain wrong, yet Wallis had injected a glamour and edginess into the House of Windsor that had been sorely lacking.

  ‘Marjorie Stevens played bridge with her, back in the day. Says she’s frightfully clever.’ Clever was not a compliment among Celia’s friends. ‘Apparently, she’s simply longing to go back to America. She finds being royal an absolute bore, and she says all those stuffy courtiers are stuck in the past. The King won’t hear of it, of course.’

  Rose glanced down at the copy of Vogue sitting on Celia’s coffee table. Perhaps because fashion belonged to the elite, or maybe because their other diversions were limited, clothes were an obsession for Geli women. Rose was not the only one who spent hours bent over her Singer sewing machine, running up skirts from old curtains, or turning cotton sheets into little blouses. The Queen, of course, had no such constraints, and the women’s magazines pored over her clothes, her hair, her shoes, even her interior decorators. That month’s edition carried a cover photograph of the Queen in the garden of Fort Belvedere, the couple’s getaway cottage in Windsor Great Park, wearing a cerulean silk Ferragamo suit, pussy bow blouse and a pair of pugs.

  ‘Can I have another story?’

  Emboldened by her aunt’s presence, Hannah was dancing up and down and tugging at Rose’s hand.

  ‘I suppose . . .’

  ‘No, you can’t!’ snapped Celia. ‘Aunt Rose has been working all day. She’s tired. Get up those stairs before your father arrives.’

  Once Hannah had retreated sulkily, teddy dragged by one arm, Celia flung herself down on the turquoise sofa, looping her slender legs over the end and running one hand through her shining hair, which was dyed a popular shade called Nordic Gold.

  ‘Don’t know how you manage it. Even reading one story bores me to tears. Children are so exhausting.’

  ‘I enjoy it. Really, I do. And I’ve been thinking about the Snow Queen a bit recently.’

  For the past month Rose had been correcting a version of stories by the Grimm Brothers to be distributed in schools and kindergartens, as well as bride schools and mother training centres. Fairy tales were an important part of childhood conditioning and Rose had attended a lecture at the Ministry for Early Years Propaganda in Malet Street to learn the acceptable adjustments for the educational syllabus. Most changes were simple. Princes wore stormtrooper uniform. Dwarves were subhuman. Cinderella’s Ugly Sisters were Scots.

  Monarchs were problematic. Despite the forthcoming Coronation, the regime was generally against kings and queens. Royalty was a symptom of a corrupt and archaic society, and Rose tended to replace them with regime functionaries. Gauleiters. Mayors. When she came across a king she would insert an Obergruppenführer.

  Queens, though, were something special.

  ‘Can’t think where Hannah gets it from,’ said Celia, rolling her eyes. ‘I never liked fairy tales. Or any kind of books really. They’re always trying to teach you something.’

  She gave a light laugh, revealing her perfect teeth. It was a laugh that could shatter a heart at a hundred paces and had indeed caused numerous men to fall in love with her before Geoffrey won the prize. Not for the first time, Rose asked herself the same question.

  Why Geoffrey?

  Like so many other women, Rose’s sister had coped with the drought of men in the Alliance by dating one many decades older than herself. Tedious, humourless and balding, Geoffrey had been forty-five and working in an accountancy firm when the Protectorate was formed, and because he had never taken up arms, he was at an advantage when it came to serving the new regime. His transition, indeed, had been practically seamless, and if Geoffrey harboured a resentment for the foreigners who had been placed over him, his innate, pasty-faced dullness was the perfect cover. Not to mention the toothbrush moustache that, like so many others, he had adopted in the Leader’s honour.

  The occasional dinner or dance with Geoffrey was just about understandable, but to actually marry him, a man who was more like a distant uncle than a husband? To listen every day to his ill-informed opinions and kneejerk prejudices. How could Celia bear it?

  Even as Rose contemplated this, there was the sound of the door slamming and Geoffrey arrived. He handed his umbrella and briefcase to the Gretl and came over to dispense a sour-breathed kiss.

  ‘Rose. Lovely to see you. We must have you over for dinner sometime soon.’

  Rose knew exactly what he meant. On the one hand, he despised her for consorting with Martin Kreuz, a married man, but on the other hand, it was useful to have a brother-in-law – even an unofficial one – with such impressive connections. She could just imagine Geoffrey hosting such a dinner, smiling greasily, adjusting the position of the cutlery, as he resolutely social-climbed. And Martin, endlessly courteous, flirting with Celia, laughing with Geoffrey, privately despising them both.

  ‘Rose has been reading fairy stories to Hannah.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Geoffrey grunted and picked a strand of tobacco from his moustache. ‘I’m not sure I’m keen on all these stories.’

  ‘It’s harmless, darling.’

  ‘It’s not going to do the child any good.’

  ‘Rose keeps it ever so simple, don’t you, Rose?’

  Why must Celia always try to placate him? Rose wondered.

  ‘Very. It’s only fairy stories and they do those in ideology classes.’

  ‘The next thing you know, she’ll be trying to read herself.’

  Reading for females was strictly banned before the age of eight, and when they were taught to read, girls learned at a more basic level than boys. Under the Rosenberg rules, females should have a limited vocabulary – ideally two thirds of that of a man – and the risk of reading was that it could accidentally expand a child’s use of language. It might enchant and intoxicate her. Help her express herself in new and exciting ways.

  Rose was saved from further discussion by the wail that floated over the bannisters from the floor above.

  ‘Rose! I want Auntie Rose!’

  ‘I’ll just pop up and say goodnight.’

  ‘We don’t do that, Rose. Giving in to her is spoiling.’

  ‘Oh, let her, Geoffrey.’ Celia rested a hand lightly on his pinstriped arm. ‘Just while you mix me a drink.’

  When Rose entered Hannah’s bedroom, the little girl was sitting up in bed triumphant, teddy under one arm, and her other toys arranged in a semi-circle in order of size, their fur combed and their button eyes glinting beadily. Celia, with her clever eye for decor, had made the room into a young girl’s dream with candy-striped wallpaper, a bright patterned rug by the fireplace and white-painted furniture that was just the right size for a child.

  ‘Give me another story, Rose.’

  Rose settled herself on the low, chintz-covered chair beside the little girl’s bed and opened a volume of the Grimms’ fairy tales.

  ‘What shall we have then? Sleeping Beauty?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Cinderella?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hansel and Gretel?’

  ‘No.’ Hannah settled back expectantly. ‘Want one of yours.’

  She placed her thumb in her mouth.

  Rose got up and closed the door.

  When she had told Martin she knew nothing about writing, she had not told him the truth.

  At first it had been more a feeling than a conscious thought, a kind of energy pushing up, straining at her fingertips, as though the edges of her skin would burst. She had no typewriter – all machines were strictly controlled and you needed a licence to own one. Hearing a typewriter through the wall or floorboards was one of the most frequent complaints to the authorities. But one day a couple of years ago, quite on impulse, she had bought a couple of plain brown notebooks and, tentatively, set them in front of her, pen in hand. Before long it was cascading out of her, ideas and phrases that she herself barely understood, thoughts that emerged from somewhere deep within, which had never before been given expression. Words rolled around her mind like playthings.
She wrote and wrote, recklessly, like a galloping horse that could barely be reined in. She wrote about everything – her life, her experiences, her dreams. Short stories, descriptive fragments, journal entries, poems. Bedtime stories for Hannah.

  Soon enough, she found if she didn’t write, she didn’t feel properly alive.

  When each notebook was full, she peeled back a flap of wallpaper that had come loose at floor level behind her bed. The wallpaper was hand-printed and exquisitely pretty, its pale green background stencilled with darker green leaves and flowers, writhing upwards in naturalistic abundance. It was a legacy of the previous degenerate occupants that had often piqued her curiosity about them. Beneath the wallpaper was a splintered plank, and carefully levering it upwards, she revealed a soot-caked cavity where a fireplace had once stood. The flue had been bricked up, but the gap for the grate remained, and instead of wasting valuable bricks, the builder in charge of the renovation had merely filled the vacancy with rubble and nailed over a couple of pieces of wood.

  There, Rose stored the notebook, along with six others.

  Now she put a finger against the soft bow of Hannah’s lips.

  ‘Shh. It’s our secret, remember? Just for us?’

  Hannah nodded solemnly and settled back against the pillow.

  Rose pulled a small brown notebook out of her pocket and opened it up.

  ‘As it happens, I did just write something for you.’

  ‘Is it the Kingdom of Ilyria?’

  Recently, Rose had created an imaginary kingdom, Ilyria – the name meaning happiness – where there were no female castes and girls were free to become princesses or dragon-riders or artists or whatever they chose. Hannah, as expected, had the starring role.

  ‘Yes. So, settle down.’

  When she came downstairs again Celia and Geoffrey were conferring, their heads close together. They moved apart when they saw her.

  ‘She’s going to sleep now, I think.’