by C. J. Carey
‘Thank you, Rosalind.’
Celia was one of the few people in the world who used her original name. When she was born, Rose had been named Rosalind, but in the past thirteen years Rose had seemed more appropriate. It sounded a little like Rosa and everyone wanted German names now. As for their children, there were plenty of little Adolfs and Alfreds and Evas running around the kindergartens, but names that began with H, after the Leader and deputy leader, were by far the most popular.
Celia only used Rosalind when she wanted something.
‘Do you have time for a G and T?’
‘Thank you. Yes.’
Geoffrey busied himself with administering the drink, titrating a thimbleful of gin into a glass and topping it up with tonic in the fastidious manner that put Rose’s teeth on edge, before handing it to her like a dose of medicine.
‘Drink up.’
He disliked her, she realized, and he didn’t quite know why. Geoffrey often remarked on the disparity between the two sisters, as though baffled that Rose lacked Celia’s insouciance and Botticellian beauty. His antipathy only made Rose more watchful and reserved, which was one reason he disliked her in the first place.
‘If you two girls don’t mind, I have a few papers to see to. The elections for the chairman of the golf club are coming up and I’ve been landed with the application process.’
Before the Alliance, the Germans had code-named the verdant British Isles ‘Golfplatz’ – the Golf Course – and the nickname was increasingly appropriate. With a nation of ageing men, golf had overtaken football as the national game, and each village club’s green was maintained with the same meticulous pride men used to devote to burnishing their Morris Minors and Austins. The golf club was Geoffrey’s life, and as he bustled off to his ‘den’ – a leathery sanctuary that Celia never entered – Rose had no doubt that he would soon be securing the chairman’s role for himself.
‘Ciggie?’
Celia pushed a silver box towards her and Rose helped herself. They were National cigarettes, limp and dusty, but other brands were rare to find. Celia leaned towards her conspiratorially.
‘Lovely stockings. I can’t imagine where they came from.’
‘They’re Aristoc,’ said Rose neutrally.
‘So, how’s Martin?’
There was a sly edge to her voice, salacious almost, as though she was vicariously savouring Rose’s affair. In reality, Rose realized, her sister would far prefer the life that Martin offered than she did. Celia had always been intensely feminine and loved dressing up. Since the Alliance, fashion had taken on a greater importance than ever because only Gelis had the means to experiment. As all other castes had severely limited clothing rations, it was left to elite women to compete on colour and style. Despite the shortages that saw leather shoes replaced with plastic, and natural fabric with synthetics, Gelis harvested their coupons and combed the fashion glossies obsessively. Rose, like other women who knew high-ranking men, was able to supplement this allowance with the gift of lace underwear and nylon stockings that she frequently passed on to her sister. Celia complemented this with a natural dressmaking talent, hand-stitching elaborate beading in macaroon colours of violet and peach, pistachio and rose, running up floral-print skirts and embroidered blouses, and fashioning evening gowns of mock satin.
Any kind of glamour, however, was wasted on Geoffrey’s ancient golf club friends, with their fading eyesight and dimming libidos. It was an irony that while Celia would adore the parties and events and meals, Rose had never felt comfortable in public with Martin.
‘We’re having dinner at the Savoy tomorrow night.’
‘The Savoy!’
‘It’s where he always goes. His office canteen, basically.’
When the Alliance began, the Germans had immediately commandeered all the top hotels. The Ritz went to the SS, the Dorchester to the Abwehr, and Grosvenor House to the Office of the Protectorate. Joachim von Ribbentrop and his wife, who had spent time in London in 1936 when he served as English ambassador, took Claridge’s. The Culture Ministry, virtually at the bottom of the pecking order, got the Savoy, and over the past year, Rose had been treated to numerous meals there. They gave out tiny mint chocolates wrapped in gold foil with the coffee and she always slipped hers into her bag to pass on to Hannah.
‘Sounds romantic,’ cooed Celia.
Rose shrugged. ‘Not particularly. He probably wants to talk about work.’
‘Sure that’s all?’
‘What are you getting at?’
‘You are twenty-nine, after all, Rose. And no children. We had hoped it would work out with you and that journalist chap, Laurence.’
Laurence Prescott was a dashing and universally popular feature writer on the Echo whose looks and relative youth made him popular with Gelis in the Culture Ministry. Rose had accompanied Laurence to a year’s worth of press screenings and dinners. She had even met his family. But somehow, she never felt comfortable with him. Perhaps because, like all journalists, Laurence gave the impression that he was noting down everything she said for future reference.
‘Geoffrey’s worried about your status. We’re both surprised you haven’t had a visit from the Family Promotion people.’
Rose had. She had found them waiting at the door when she arrived home a few months ago. A man and a woman, in the navy and red uniform of the ASK – the Amt für Sozial- und Kinderpolitik – the office charged with raising the national birth rate. The ASK was known colloquially as the Association for Screaming Kids. The English loved nicknames and giving a monstrous proposition a funny name lent it a subversive edge, as though they were taking ownership of it.
The ASK came armed with a sheet of questions and veiled threats about Rose’s still unmarried status. She remembered the stout Leni with the mole on her chin staring enviously around the room as she ran through the standard mix of threats and inducements.
Rosenberg Regulations state that marriage is the appropriate state for adult women. Spinsterhood puts your elite privileges at risk. There are plenty of Class I women who would love a flat like this.
‘If you wait much longer, you might stay single and have no children,’ said Celia. ‘What would happen then? You don’t want to get reclassified.’
That was entirely possible. A woman’s status was downgraded if she committed a crime or behaved in an aberrant way. Refusing to have children was placing self above state and a prima facie example of asocial behaviour. One might be moved to less attractive accommodation: probably a block where the kitchen and bathroom was shared between several families.
‘God forbid you end up in Widowland.’
Even as she spoke, Celia’s eyes widened like her daughter’s did when a fairy tale took a frightening turn.
Widowland. The word itself was like a howl of wind across its own bleak facades. The Widowlands were the desolate residential districts where Friedas were housed. They were derelict areas, as crumbling and unkempt as the women who dwelled there, tucked away on the stained edges of the towns, their littered streets ringed around with tangled wire. Ramshackle terraces of Victorian brick and barren blocks of weeping concrete where nobody wanted to live.
Celia chewed a fingernail, and then brightened.
‘If nothing comes of Martin, there’s a friend of Geoffrey’s who would adore to meet you. He’s a nice chap, a dentist actually. Or he was before he retired.’
Of course he was retired. They always were, the men who Geoffrey proffered. The hands that plucked at Rose were kippered with nicotine, their eyes yellowing, their scalps pink beneath wispy hair. Frequently they were deaf too, not that it mattered because they did most of the talking, yet despite the woes of age, Geoffrey’s friends were upbeat about their situation. Usually, they opined that things were not so bad. It could be so much worse. That was a favourite refrain.
And it was true. The system suited older men. Most had accepted the classification of females without protest and they had their pick of young women, with
their satiny complexions and firm flesh. Although a man’s choice of official consort was determined by her caste, nothing stopped them casually patting the bottom of a young Gretl, or running a proprietary hand across a Magda, if she appealed.
As for the women, what were they expecting? Romance?
‘A dentist. Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?’
‘Not exactly.’
Celia twirled a curl of hair between two fingers and gazed at her sister speculatively.
‘There’s something I need to tell you, in fact. It’s about Dad.’
Rose felt a jolt of alarm. She jerked upright and put her drink down.
‘Daddy? Is he all right?’
‘Yes, of course. Or rather, no.’ Celia had found a small snag on her skirt and was picking at it. ‘Geoffrey, that is to say both of us, think he’d be much better off in a facility.’
‘A facility? What kind of facility?’
‘A nursing home. A hospital type of place. Where they can look after him properly. Those rages he has are too much for Mum to cope with now. Her nerves are in shreds. She’s utterly ground down.’
‘You’re not thinking of shutting our father away! There’s nothing wrong with him. Mentally, he’s absolutely sound. Considering what he went through in the trenches in 1918, is it any wonder that he occasionally gets upset. It’s nervous stress, that’s what the doctor told us. There’s a name for it. It’s called shell shock.’
Celia pouted.
‘Doctors always have names for things. But names don’t change what things are. Those fits he has. It’s madness. And it’s been getting worse.’
‘So what are you saying?’
Celia avoided her eyes and remained fixed on the snag on her skirt, her fingers delicately plucking.
‘You’re not telling me you’ve done it already?’
Celia looked up, her tranquil blue gaze entirely unapologetic.
‘I’m afraid so, darling. A place came up and we took him in yesterday. Geoffrey and I drove him down there.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘We didn’t want to bother you, what with your important work. We’re allowed to go and visit next week. When he’s settled in.’
Rose felt the blood rush to her face. She stood up, her heart pounding.
‘How could you be so selfish?’
‘It would have been selfish not to. Think what it means for the family. Madness is hereditary, you know.’
‘Dad’s not mad. He’s probably saner than any of us. He was injured in the war . . .’
‘These things get around. And I have Hannah to think of. What’s going to happen when she goes for her assessment if they discover that her grandfather is mentally unbalanced? How is she going to be a Geli if she has madness in the family? Her whole future is at risk.’
‘So you’ve sacrificed Dad’s future instead.’
Celia shrugged.
‘Motherhood’s all about sacrifice. As you would know, if you ever got around to it.’
Rose couldn’t stand to hear any more. She snatched up her handbag, her mind whirling, and headed for the door. The thought of her brave, sensitive father confined in an institution and deprived of his dog, his garden and everything he cherished brought tears to her eyes. But she could not bear for Celia to see them.
‘Think about it,’ called Celia, as Rose, her cheeks burning, departed down the path. ‘It’s so much better for Mum. It means she can come up in two weeks and watch all the excitement with us. You can’t begrudge her that, now, can you? Everybody wants to see the Coronation.’
CHAPTER FIVE
It hadn’t always been that way between them.
As Rose walked back through the streets of Clapham to the station, allowing the red mist of indignation to subside, she thought back to the day the Alliance was announced.
Thinking about, let alone discussing, the Time Before was officially discouraged. Yet for Rose, as for every other citizen, the events of that day were etched as though in acid in her mind.
The weather was beautiful. A late September afternoon that contained the dying breath of summer. The sky was a high, porcelain blue, the apple trees were bulging with fruit and she and Celia had been playing badminton in the garden. She could still feel the gravel under her plimsolls and the sweatiness of her aertex shirt as they came in, cheeks flushed, to find the adults gathered around the wireless, their faces tight with anxiety.
The drawing room, with its floral wallpaper and patterned pink and green carpet, seemed like a natural extension of the garden. The scene was bathed in mellow sunlight and every object, from the eighteenth-century clock on the mantel to the Chinese vase on the card table with its indigo scrolls and cracked glaze, felt as though it had been there forever.
The voice of the announcer emerged, so smooth and patrician that you could practically see the dinner jacket that he apparently wore to broadcast. Only that afternoon, his voice betrayed a quiver of fear, and a note of something deeper. Desolation.
‘Air supremacy over Britain has been achieved. Prime Minister Halifax is shortly to sign a treaty of a Grand Alliance with Germany and the formation of a Protectorate is being discussed in London. Citizens are urged to remain in their homes. A temporary curfew has been imposed and will remain in place until further notice.’
Then, in an addition that sounded unscripted, the announcer added, firmer and more boldly, ‘God save the King.’
For a few moments, the family sat in silence. Then, from a distance out in the streets, unfamiliar noises arose: the low rumble of trucks and the tinny echo of a megaphone. Everyone strained to make out what it was saying.
‘Stay in your houses. Do not go out.’
Suddenly, from another direction, a series of small, sharp cracks, like fireworks, filled the air. Their father switched off the wireless, and as if in slow motion, went out to the cupboard beneath the stairs in the hall, where he kept an air rifle. The gun was meant for pigeon shooting but Dad was so gentle he could never bear to use it – he could hardly kill a wasp, let alone blast a bird out of the sky. Now he weighed it in his hands, assessing its weight and unfamiliar dimensions.
Impotently, Rose watched his long, delicate fingers deftly loading the ammunition. Then he plunged some spare bullets in his pocket and pulled on his coat.
‘Where are you going, Dad?’ demanded Celia.
‘You stay here.’
‘We’ve been told to keep inside, Frank!’ pleaded their mother.
‘All the more reason.’
‘Don’t go, Daddy!’ said Rose.
He touched her cheek with his finger, then was gone.
The three of them stood, stunned. The dog began whining, tail down, and Rose put her hand on his head to quieten him. The room was filled with the stillness of expectancy. She was acutely aware of the scent of mown grass coming in from the French windows, mingled with the fragrance of star jasmine on the wall.
A few moments later came a crash and shouts of motion, and despite their mother’s protests, Rose and Celia ran out of the house. On their quiet tree-lined street nothing stirred, except for the twitch of curtains. Most homes were firmly closed, but others had their front doors swinging open and peering inside one house, they saw a couple crouched in their hall, a half-packed suitcase beside them spilling with clothes.
When the girls arrived at the high street, however, a different sight greeted them. A rudimentary blockade had been constructed, haphazardly compiled of parked cars and tyres and planks. Pub signs had been dragged down and added to the barricade – The Duke of York, The Queen Victoria, The King’s Head – like a line of the nation’s own family photographs, gazing wanly out from a nest of timber and masonry. Figures darted from behind the rampart into nearby shops and houses. Neighbours and other men had taken pickaxes to the road and were tearing up bricks and rubble to use as projectiles.
Their father was nowhere to be seen.
The megaphone came nearer, its harsh, metallic voice
issuing the same bark, over and over.
‘Stay inside. Do not go out. Everything is under control.’
‘We should go back,’ said Celia.
‘No. We need to find him!’
Moving in zigzags, they dodged left and right, crouching to avoid the threat of missiles flying through the air, until the howl of a mortar sent the greengrocer’s shopfront collapsing to one side, unleashing a glittering shower of glass, and just yards away a Morris Minor burst into a sheet of flame. Rose felt the boundaries of the known world collapsing around her.
They ran.
Two hours later, their father returned. He sat down in his usual chair by the fireplace and refused to speak a word.
The next day, Lord Halifax himself addressed the nation. As head of a unity government, Halifax had taken over in May from Neville Chamberlain, his elderly predecessor with his wing collar and scrawny chicken’s neck. The gaunt, colourless Halifax may have reminded Rose of an old heron, but he had been savage in demoting troublesome voices like Winston Churchill, who found himself instantly sacked.
Was it fear, or merely fatigue, that haunted Halifax now? In leaden, patrician tones he explained how King George had called him to Buckingham Palace and reminded him that the royal family had German blood themselves. With Poland and mainland Europe gone, would it not make sense to make some kind of accommodation with the Germans? America was also in favour. The American ambassador, Joseph Kennedy, had urged the formation of an Alliance. The United States had no desire to intervene in an unnecessary war. The only alternative was for Britain to fight on alone with no food supplies, help, or contact with its empire.
‘Guided by God and the love of my country, I have authorized an Act of Emergency Powers,’ said Halifax. ‘All future law-making will be under the auspices of a Protectorate.’
Then silence fell, like dust after a bomb blast.
For a week, the radio waves were full of static while jams on all foreign stations and publications were put in place. Newspapers vanished from the racks, and no mail was delivered. Foreign travel was banned, and all letters passing in and out of the Protectorate were censored.