Widowland

by C. J. Carey

  She had to brace herself not to recoil as Martin bent to nuzzle her neck and ran a hungry hand down the curves of her dress.

  ‘Out there in Berlin, you were the only thing I was thinking of. What were you up to while I was away?’

  ‘Nothing. Work.’

  She had been correcting a version of Jane Austen’s Emma. It was a useful text for schoolchildren because of a plotline in the story where Emma attempted to matchmake her low-born friend Harriet Smith with a man above her social status. The matchmaking ended badly and the message was that women like Harriet Smith should not dream of marriage beyond their caste. Yet the way Jane Austen had written it, the effect of the lesson was nuanced. Harriet gained self-confidence through her mistaken romance. She came to understand that a high social class did not necessarily imply a finer character. Indeed, Jane Austen seemed hell-bent on undermining traditional class divisions and suggesting some difference between mere accomplishments and the deeper understanding that signals self-knowledge.

  It was going to take a lot more clarity and editing to be suitable for sixteen-year-olds.

  ‘We’re impressed with your dedication, you know. You’re the star of the Correction team. Everyone admired what you did with Wuthering Heights.’

  Emily Brontë’s masterpiece had nearly defeated Rose. It was degenerate on so many levels with the matching of its dark-skinned, low-status hero, Heathcliff, and the outspoken, aggressive, unconventional heroine, Catherine Earnshaw. Eventually, Rose had been obliged to correct Heathcliff’s skin colour and background, Aryanize his status, and tone down Catherine’s more outspoken assertions. Yet it remained a troubling text, one that sat badly with the Protector’s idea of romance as a union between a man and a woman of correct caste and race.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Is that all? You seem quiet, darling. Were you pining for me?’

  Rose wanted to share her worry about her father, but she knew Celia was right. Any suspicion of madness in the family was dangerous. Telling anyone was risky. Even Martin. Perhaps especially Martin.

  ‘I saw my niece. My sister’s worried that if I read to her, I might expand her vocabulary.’

  He laughed shortly. ‘Then don’t. You know the Party believes there’s no shame in illiteracy. We discourage reading for lower orders. It’s hardly revolutionary. American slaves weren’t permitted to read. For centuries Catholics held the mass in Latin. Besides, most people don’t actually want to read. They’d rather listen to the wireless or go to the movies. Once this new television gets off the ground, reading will wither away in a generation, you’ll see. People will fall out of the habit, and once that happens, the mere act of reading will be harder.’

  Rose knew what he meant. It had been hard for her. To someone unaccustomed to them, the long, archaic rhythms of Victorian literature were tricky to grasp. It required discipline to summon the sustained concentration necessary for novels that often ran to six or even seven hundred pages. In a way, her correction work was almost superfluous. No doubt Martin was right, and reading would soon become a specialized interest, like Sanskrit, or Ancient Greek, with no relevance to everyday life.

  But while anyone in the Alliance was still interested in literature, she had a job, and with a perfectionist like Protector Rosenberg in charge, she needed to get it right.

  ‘Is that all that’s bothering you?’

  Rose looked up the river towards the darkened neo-Gothic shell of the House of Commons, the mother of parliaments and the ancestral home of English democracy. Or as the Protector had recently described it, ‘Disneyland’.

  ‘No.’ She braced her shoulders. ‘The Commissioner has asked to see me.’

  ‘I heard.’

  Rose jolted out of his arms and scrutinized him anxiously.

  ‘You knew! And you didn’t tell me!’

  ‘He mentioned it last week.’

  ‘What does he want?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You must know something! You’re his deputy.’

  ‘Honestly, darling? I’ve no idea.’

  He reached out to her mouth and rubbed the lipstick roughly off with his thumb.

  ‘But I’ll tell you one thing. If you don’t want to be sent to a re-education centre with a recommendation for hard labour, don’t go into Eckberg’s office with a faceful of cosmetics.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Thursday, 15th April

  Since the restriction of religion, there was only one place to which the populace reliably turned for consolation, contemplation, relaxation and human companionship.

  The cinema.

  It wasn’t only human warmth the citizens craved. The general lack of heating meant people welcomed any opportunity to huddle together in an enclosed space, and the chance to forget their vicissitudes with a couple of hours’ laughing and dreaming. Technically, escapism was frowned on, because who would want to escape the Alliance paradise? But paying tribute to the gods and goddesses of the cinema was an acceptable diversion, providing that those deities were politically correct, in private as well as on screen. In the old days, before the Alliance, film stars were the staple of every women’s magazine, and so it continued, though now a different breed of film star, like Hans Albers, Kristina Söderbaum, Zarah Leander or Lilian Harvey, was available for worship. And if the cinema was the new church, then the Odeon, Leicester Square, was its veritable cathedral: a vast, plush art deco temple of black polished granite and blue neon, smelling of wet tweed and stale cigarette smoke.

  Rose, Helena and their friend Bridget Fanshaw from the Press department were ensconced in the elite section, separated by a crimson velvet rope from the seats reserved for lower orders. For a decade after the Protectorate was established, all places of entertainment had been barred for lower caste women, just as they had for Jews and other underclasses on the mainland. Recently, however, the regime had decided that the cinema was a useful conduit of propaganda and for certain categories the banning order was relaxed. Magdas and Gretls predictably flocked to the cinemas, where a steady diet of romantic comedy and thrillers were specifically designed to distract them from their ongoing privations. Spy thrillers in particular were hugely popular. In a nation rife with paranoia, where every action was circumspect and no neighbour could be trusted, the idea that spies lurked at every turn was actively encouraged by the authorities. It helped to keep the populace watchful and alert – that was the Ministry thinking – and the idea of a faceless enemy deflected criticism of the regime.

  As the lights went down, the newsreel began. The news always came before the feature, and while the words changed, the theme was always the same – great strides had been made in international friendship treaties. Record harvests were seen, record productivity, record scientific achievements. Generally, cinema-goers let this information flow over them in a soothing tide of white noise. No one chatted – they wouldn’t dare – and everyone knew that watchers were placed in the auditorium to report any disrespectful or dissenting view, but nor did anyone pay the slightest regard. The women – because it was mainly women – occupied themselves with lighting up cheap cigarettes, kicking off their shoes and relaxing their aching shoulders against the worn plush of the seats.

  That evening, however, the newsreel opened with a genuine news story – the funeral of Joseph Stalin, who had died the previous month. The event took place in Moscow’s Red Square. Hundreds of troops lined the route as a team of black horses carried the hearse, draped with a Soviet flag, followed by wreaths the size of cartwheels. Solemn music played as the cortège progressed to the mausoleum where the mummified corpse of Lenin, in waxen solitude, awaited him.

  At one point the camera panned upwards to where a line of dignitaries could be seen on a balcony above Red Square, muffled against the cold, surveying the melancholy scene. In pride of place was the Leader, his face noticeably pasty, even in monochrome, hunched and insipid, clutching the rail in front of him to disguise a trembling hand.

  Helena gave
her a nudge.

  ‘Looks like something off a fish slab, doesn’t he?’

  ‘For God’s sake. Careful.’

  ‘Don’t worry. No one’s listening.’

  Despite herself, Rose could not help shooting a quick glance around her. The seats for the lower orders were packed but the elite section was largely empty. Helena continued, unabashed.

  ‘He’s half dead. It should be him in the coffin. Wonder if all those people queuing for the Coronation parade will even recognize him.’

  She had a point. In the early days of the Alliance there had been no end of newsreels of the Leader, hair flopping over his forehead, glistening with sweat, chopping the air with an angry hand as his voice rose. His image was seared on every retina. Yet in recent years he had cut a diminished figure, pasty-faced, shuddering, shrunk inside his clothes as though afflicted with a wasting disease. The camera no longer focused tightly on him, and he was filmed only in long shot, conferring with world leaders or meeting children as he strolled on Alpine paths.

  Beneath them, through the soft fug of smoke, the lower castes watched attentively. Because it was illegal to listen to unauthorized radio stations, or to meet foreigners or read any publication that had not been previously censored, no one in the Alliance had much idea of life beyond their shores. Newsreels were the main source of information, and very dull they were too. Yet that evening’s film was no propaganda melange about increasing steel production or advances in the African colonies. This was a glimpse of the exotic. Foreign travel was forbidden for the population – a Strength Through Joy trip to the Lake District was the most anyone could hope for – so the imposing beauty of St Basil’s Cathedral, and the panoramic expanses of Red Square, were a glimpse of something miraculous, beyond imagining.

  ‘In spite of the death of our esteemed ally, friendship between the Soviet Union and the Alliance remains as firm as ever,’ proclaimed the announcer. ‘As a mark of our continuing co-operation, Soviet troops will be deployed to fortify positions on the Asian front.’

  The BBC logo flashed up, and finally the movie began, a tepid romance from the state-controlled UFA studio starring an elderly Kristina Söderbaum and Emil Jannings. But even as it cranked into action, Rose’s attention remained fixed on the newsreel. With international news heavily censored, and most foreign mail forbidden, this was the only conduit for piecing together an idea of lands beyond their shores. Even for those who tried, it was a pointillist endeavour, in which tiny scraps of information must be amassed to create an image of the outside world. What did the death of Stalin signify? What might happen to Poland, which Russia and Germany had carved up between them? Might the Russians now look to the Leader, as the rest of Europe had, so that Germany stretched even further, over the Russian steppes, bringing ever more people under the control of the Party?

  And what about America, who, like Germany, possessed an atom bomb that kept an uneasy mutual détente?

  When the credits eventually rolled, the three friends went out and stood for a while, sharing an illicit cigarette under cover of an umbrella. A thin drizzle was falling, and passers-by, their faces muffled with hats and scarves, emerged and disappeared like phantoms through the damp mist. The blinking neon of the billboards shivered in the puddles and the taste of soot hung in the air, penetrating everything.

  ‘I assume you’ve seen that movie already?’ said Bridget.

  ‘Of course,’ said Helena. ‘I passed it. Hope you didn’t notice anything bad.’

  ‘Only the script and the acting.’

  Helena grinned. ‘I have no say over that. Otherwise I’d be banning every UFA movie I see.’

  While Helena had, in terms of looks, been gifted all the blessings the gods could bestow, Bridget was far from the Nordic ideal. So much so, that even she openly wondered how she had managed to qualify as a Class I (a) female, and put it down to the fact that her father was a minor aristocrat who from the 1930s onwards had favoured an Alliance and had reaped the benefits in the form of a senior position in the Government hierarchy. She had an angular face, gold batwing spectacles and a spiky personality to match. Her hair, which coiled and sprang naturally outwards unless it was tamed, was beginning to frazzle in the moist air.

  She smiled and plucked at Rose’s sleeve.

  ‘Why don’t you come for a cocktail at the Café de Paris? Some girls from the Press department will be there. Then we’re going on to the 400 Club. Snakehips Johnson is playing.’

  Even if no one was permitted to travel to America, American music was wildly popular, so long as it stayed within prescribed limits and avoided swing rhythms or jazz.

  ‘And we are dressed up, after all.’

  She wriggled her hips in her new swing skirt, patterned with birds on a sky-blue background.

  ‘Thanks, but no.’

  ‘Might be some nice men,’ coaxed Helena. Although she herself was still single, Helena was protected from the scrutiny of the Family Promotion department by an arrangement with a senior man in Radio Censorship. Rolf Friedel had a face that looked as though God had given up, and his conversation dwelled heavily on wireless frequencies and signals technology, but he left Helena largely to her own devices, requiring her attention no more than one night a week.

  ‘Except they’re all British at the 400 and that usually means trouble.’

  It was not only the absence of so many men on Extended National Service that left the women of the Alliance forlorn. It was as though those native men who remained had been bled of their masculinity. Defeated, and unable to protect their homeland, their bitterness was all too often ignited by alcohol. Plenty of men were prepared to risk prison for the chance to unleash their anger and abuse, and women out in public often found themselves the targets.

  ‘Sorry, I can’t,’ said Rose.

  ‘She thinks Martin would disapprove,’ laughed Bridget.

  Martin would. He disliked Helena and Bridget, dismissing them as ‘not good enough’ for her. They’re shallow, Rose, and vain. I’m amazed they have Ministry jobs. They have no proper allegiance to the Alliance.

  ‘Actually, I need an early night. The Commissioner wants to see me first thing tomorrow. As soon as he gets back.’

  She could tell by the way her friends started that they had no idea.

  ‘God, Rose.’ Helena reached out a hand and touched her arm. ‘What’s all that about? What’s so urgent?’

  Rose smiled numbly.

  ‘No idea. But if you don’t see me again . . .’

  Vehemently, Bridget shook her head.

  ‘Don’t be dramatic! It’s a promotion, I bet.’

  ‘Someone has said something,’ muttered Rose.

  Helena squeezed her hand harder, worry wrinkling her flawless brow.

  ‘You know not to trust anyone, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course, I know that.’

  ‘What could they possibly say?’ demanded Bridget.

  ‘Nothing.’ Helena turned on her fiercely. ‘As if that mattered!’

  Bridget summoned a bright smile. ‘My guess is, the Commissioner wants to take Rose out for a drink. He’s a randy old goat, I’ve heard. I just hope Martin doesn’t find out.’

  Rose didn’t bother to correct her, but instead kissed her friends and made her way back through Leicester Square to the tube.

  As she threaded her way through the crowd, the wail of sirens rang through the air. Sirens were everywhere now – on lamp posts, on the corners of buildings, attached to apartment buildings and redundant church towers – and mostly, no one took the slightest notice. When they sounded, people registered the volume, calculated the distance, and like a bomb dropping from the sky, thanked God it was not coming for them.

  This siren, however, was accompanied by a commotion just a few yards away, at the northern corner of Leicester Square. From where she stood, Rose could make out barely anything more than the screech of wheels, followed by the clatter of police boots and the sound of doors thumping. Then, a sudden, sharp crack o
f gunshot sliced the air.

  The pedestrians around her flinched and fanned away, like a flock of pigeons dispersed by a stone. A man in the uniform of a senior officer approached rapidly, parting the crowd like a knife, and from a doorway emerged a huddled figure slumped between two policemen, hands cuffed, before he was bundled into a van.

  Rose recalled what Helena had told her about the incident at the Rosenberg Institute a few days earlier.

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

  Back in the Time of Resistance, street clashes had been a constant feature of city life, yet, as the years passed, they were replaced by a pattern of chronic, low-grade, sporadic disruption: isolated incidents of terrorism, chiefly shootings and grenade attacks on Alliance buildings. Stones through windows and train derailments. At one point a bomb was detonated under a London bridge. Nobody discussed these incidents. Nobody wanted to know. If they had to be mentioned, due to transport or traffic disruption, the perpetrators were referred to only as ‘Them’.

  Them. The grit in the Protectorate’s jackboot. As invisible as antimatter in the Alliance’s smooth universe. They merited no name but a pronoun.

  Who were they? Was this man one of them? Normally, these questions would not detain Rose for an instant, and she knew there was only one reason for her anxiety now.

  Her appointment with the Commissioner.

  It was not about a promotion. And nothing Hermann Eckberg asked her would be as genial as her choice of drink. In her bones Rose knew that the summons meant only one thing. Someone, somewhere, had informed.

  Life in the Alliance was a process of continual observation. Universal Surveillance, it was called. Eyes followed you everywhere, seen and unseen. In offices, cafés, stations, hotels and shops, an array of unofficial watchers noted every detail: what cigarettes a person smoked, which magazines they bought and what drinks they ordered. Watchers reported on their own family and friends for a vast range of infringements. Infidelity. Religiosity. Use of make-up. Sex outside of caste. Joking. Writing. It was almost impossible to keep to all the rules.