Widowland

by C. J. Carey

  He lit the cigarette and smiled.

  ‘I’m sorry about earlier. As I said, we’re on red alert. The Leader’s visit is the biggest event this city has ever seen. I’m implementing a ring of steel around the city centre, no cars or buses will be running, and I’ve had to draft in help to erect the barriers. Gun emplacements to be established in All Souls, Hertford and Brasenose colleges. Dog handlers to go into the Radcliffe Camera half an hour before his arrival. Snipers authorized to shoot to kill. I’ve been making plenty of precautionary arrests and evening curfew for all orders was tightened to six o’clock from last week.’

  So that was why the city seemed so eerily quiet when she had ventured out the previous evening.

  ‘Then after the Coronation, the Leader, the King and the senior men are congregating near here at Blenheim Palace.’

  ‘Martin mentioned that the Leader was staying at Blenheim. He said he needed to check everything right down to the cutlery and the swans on the lake.’

  He chuckled.

  ‘So Martin takes care of the decor, while his oldest friend does the policing side. Who would have thought it?’

  The notion seemed to please him.

  ‘There’s a bit of professional pride at stake for me too. The chief of the Reichskriminalpolizeiamt will be in attendance. A man called Arthur Nebe. My ultimate boss. He’s been Kripo chief since 1936. He’s a god to us detectives. I met him once. Want to see?’

  He opened his wallet. Inside, where a picture of a sweetheart might be, was a tattered print of the younger Schumacher shaking hands with a wiry old man, on whose cap the glinting silver death’s head shone like his own silver hair. His face was a blank canvas pierced with eyes like shards of ice.

  ‘He should have retired years ago, but nobody’s going to tell him that. Nothing escapes Nebe, so I don’t want anything blotting my copybook.’ He tilted the glass of beer towards her. ‘This, therefore, is my last drink for a week.’

  ‘Hope you enjoy it.’

  ‘Oh, I will. But that’s beside the point. It’s no excuse for misconduct by my men. Can you tell me what happened?’

  Rose took a sip of her coffee – a mouthful of tepid mud.

  ‘I went to the Widowlands to question the Friedas about their early lives.’

  ‘Can I ask why?’

  ‘It’s Ministry business in connection with a book that the Protector is writing.’

  ‘Fascinating.’

  ‘Yes. And I was just winding up my interviews when your men arrived. They barged in without asking and acted very forcefully. When I protested, one of your officers pushed me against a wall and hit the back of my head. But worse than that was what they did to the Friedas’ house. It can’t have been necessary. They ripped up the furniture and kicked through the doors. Those women have little enough as it is. It was shocking. I assured them I’d lodge a complaint about it.’

  Schumacher bent his head to his glass of beer, as if some cryptic answer was inscribed in its watery foam, then looked up abruptly.

  ‘Have you ever been to our Class VI residential area before?’

  ‘No. Why would I?’

  ‘And you say your visit was to, remind me, question the Friedas about their early lives?’

  ‘As I told you, research. For the Protector’s forthcoming book.’

  ‘It’s not often we get people coming to our Widowlands wanting to talk to Friedas about their childhoods.’ He motioned a cartoon scratch of his head and frowned. ‘In fact, now I think about it, it’s never happened before.’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Whereas there is a lot of interest in the Friedas at the moment for quite another reason.’

  ‘Because of these low-level annoyances you referred to.’

  Schumacher sipped his beer thoughtfully.

  ‘Miss Ransom. I’m not sure if you have any idea of what’s been going on. Normally this city is a pretty quiet place. In a typical week we might have a pair of drunken students in a brawl, a Magda who is pulled out of a restaurant where she’s been flaunting herself with a married man, or a husband who’s beaten up his wife – we get a lot of that.’

  Rose knew all too well. Violence behind doors was endemic now. Native men who felt emasculated by their position in the hierarchy liked to take out their anger on those closest to them, and that was usually their wives.

  ‘We might see a Leni whose clothes outrage public decency’ – Schumacher ticked off imaginary offences on his fingers – ‘and so on. That’s pretty much normal. But these are not normal times . . .’

  He sighed and gazed across the bar, where the Gretl was rearranging a pyramid of buns as if the magic of geometry might make them any less stale. Catching Rose’s eye, she abandoned the doomed enterprise and disappeared.

  ‘I can’t tell you much, of course, but in return for the actions of my overzealous men, I owe you a little explanation. We picked up a woman yesterday on suspicion of sabotage of a public building. Specifically, graffiti. It’s been cropping up everywhere.’

  ‘And you think the Friedas are guilty?’

  ‘Almost certainly. When it first happened, we assumed it was a student prank, but calls began to come in suggesting that it was happening in every big city. These examples of graffiti, you understand, are taken from degenerate texts. Listen, I have no views either way about literature – the most I ever read is the back of a cornflake packet and when I get home I fall asleep the second my head hits the pillow, so if they outlaw reading tomorrow, it’s not going to bother me. But there are, as you know, specific laws governing the discussion of literature.’

  ‘Always use regulation texts and never in groups of more than three people, unless in an authorized setting.’

  ‘Exactly. Schools. Tick. Alliance Girls and Boys groups. Tick. Anything else, it’s going to come to our attention.’

  Rose recalled what Kate had said. We talk about books. Just groups of three.

  ‘We’ve known for a while that these old women regularly meet to talk about literature. In large groups, and most likely verboten texts. Now, I’m just here to keep the peace, so the idea of some ancient Friedas boring each other to death isn’t going to keep me awake, but when it comes to defacing public buildings, that’s another matter.’

  ‘How can you be so sure it has anything to do with the Friedas?’

  He gave her another crinkly-eyed smile.

  ‘Are you questioning the ability of my detective department, Miss Ransom?’ Then he laughed. A deep, gurgling smoker’s laugh. ‘Only joking. You wouldn’t be the first. But believe me, we know it’s them, though we’ve not been able to catch any of them red-handed. Once we do, we can round them up and administer justice.’

  ‘But you have no proof.’

  ‘Unfortunately not.’

  ‘Why would they do it?’

  ‘We assume it’s linked to the Leader’s visit. They know the crowds will follow wherever he goes, so they want to get their half-baked message across, whatever that message is supposed to be. They seem to have no idea how ineffective it is. Nobody wants to hear. No one knows or cares.’

  ‘What happened to the Frieda you arrested yesterday?’

  ‘Let’s just say she was un-cooperative.’

  ‘Did she tell you anything?’

  ‘Nothing I can make out. But she’s a devious character. Turns out she was in prison until recently on charges of sedition. A Frieda called Adeline Adams. As a matter of fact,’ said Schumacher, ‘I have her statement here. Want to see?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  He reached into a battered leather briefcase and withdrew a piece of paper.

  My name is Adeline Adams. I am sixty-five years old. I studied literature at London University and became a teacher. In 1937 I left my place of work to visit Spain where I participated in the Civil War. This is on my file, and well known to authorities. I was swiftly disenchanted with the fighting and returned the same year to teach at a high school for girls on the south coast. When the Alliance
was formed, like all teachers, I was approached for a list of my pupils and asked to provide remarks concerning their personalities and their political attitudes. I was told that I would be given privileged treatment if I complied. My response was that divide and rule is a hallmark of all totalitarian societies and therefore I would not provide the necessary information. Shortly afterwards I was relocated and I have lived in Class VI districts since then.

  In January this year I was arrested at my home on unfounded allegations of sedition. I was imprisoned and interrogated at the Alliance Security Office, as you can see.

  [Suspect shows her fingernails. Nails on right hand are missing.]

  Despite this encouragement, no charges were brought against me.

  I have nothing more to add except this.

  You ask me who has influenced me. If I model myself on anyone, it would be Aphra Behn, and I assure you there is no hope of arresting her.

  Rose scanned the statement silently, then passed it back to him.

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘We’ve had to let her go. But before we did, we looked up her address and it was decided that the place should be searched for anything that might incriminate her. The rest you know.’

  ‘Why are you telling me all this?’

  ‘As I said, any friend of Martin’s . . .’ He grinned. ‘Besides, why would I pass up the chance of a drink with a beautiful woman?’

  Rose sensed in Bruno Schumacher a deep loneliness. More than sensed it – she recognized it, from one loner to another. She saw at a glance the endless nights, the half-hearted single meals, the alcoholic excess, the solitary watchfulness, and she felt an answering ache inside her.

  It was a mystery to her, why she should feel this way. Did she not have everything she could ask for? An elite home, a fulfilling job? Friends, family and a senior man who professed himself in love with her? Surely, she was not so different from Celia or Helena or Bridget, or any of the other women she saw regularly. Why could she not share their pleasures and excitements?

  Why did she long for something else?

  She didn’t need to ask. It went back to her father and the grimy, oil-stained ‘office’ in his garage, where he would conjure worlds and try to share with her his love of history and poetry. Celia belonged to their mother and liked nothing more than donning an apron and baking or pretending to clean the house. Celia even resembled their mother, with her heart-shaped face and wide-set, implacable blue eyes, but Rose had always been her father’s child.

  Schumacher got up and pulled on an ancient trench coat that made him look more than ever like a tortoise longing to retire into its battered shell.

  ‘The curfew’s on now, so I’m going to issue you with a pass.’

  He scrawled on a piece of paper and handed it to her.

  ‘Anything else you need, just ask. I mean it. And send my regards to Sturmbannführer Kreuz. I’m pleased he’s met a lady like you. Really, I am. Helga never understood him. But that’s the thing about Martin, he was always able to look after himself.’

  If there was a wistful note to his voice, it was immediately covered by a prolonged bout of coughing which made it sound as though he had a truckload of gravel in his throat.

  ‘And if you ever fancy a wild night on the town in Oxford, you know where to come.’

  Rose walked slowly back through the deserted streets. A couple of bicycles passed, lights winking, and a bracing wind shivered scraps of litter down the cobbled alleys. The smell of jasmine and lilac floated over a college wall and she glanced through a gate to see long, striped lawns draped in shadow. As she passed Christ Church she was stopped by a sentry on duty and produced her identity card along with Schumacher’s pass.

  Further on, outside the gates of St John’s, a police car was parked, and a pair of plain-clothed policemen was escorting between them a tall man with wire-rimmed glasses and a shock of white hair. His trailing, scholar’s gown caught in a gust of wind like a sail, and as he turned his face, she saw his eyes, wild with rage and fear. But his empty protests were carried away on the night air. Presumably this was one of the ‘precautionary arrests’ that Bruno had mentioned. The man was shoved swiftly into the police vehicle, and Rose watched his head jerking through the back window as the car crunched away.

  In the Red Lion’s dining room, supper was almost over. The narrow tables were set with tablecloths and single carnations jammed in vases. A scrap of typed paper pinned to a green baize board announced that the evening meal was a choice of pickled beetroot and tinned pilchards, fish, or slices of cold ham and peas. Pudding was a type of fatless apple flan.

  A resentful Gretl came up.

  ‘Ham’s off.’

  She smelled overpoweringly of cheap scent. The perfumes used by lower orders had a sharp, astringent fragrance, far from the sophisticated French perfumes of the 1930s. Gelis were more discriminating with perfume because the Leader was known to disapprove, and those that did have tiny quantities of Dior, or Guerlain, or Chanel left over from before the Alliance used them only sparingly.

  ‘What fish is it?’

  ‘Nothing particular. Just fish.’

  The Gretl flicked a pointed glance at the clock, as if to convey the immense inconvenience caused both to the kitchen staff and herself of still serving dinner at almost nine o’clock.

  ‘I’ll have that then.’

  The anonymous fish, when it arrived, lived down to expectations. Rose consumed it in silence and declined pudding. She got up and left the dining room with relief. Yet as she crossed the lobby she felt a prickling sensation she had long learned to trust.

  She turned, and to her astonishment saw a familiar figure.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Oliver Ellis was leaning against the reception desk, a suitcase standing at his feet, as though he was in the process of checking in. He was wearing a trilby and mackintosh and looked wearied by travel. When he saw Rose he had the grace to look startled and a flush rose to his cheeks.

  ‘Rose! What on earth are you doing here?’

  In her surprise, she had to grope for the ostensible reason.

  ‘The Commissioner asked me to conduct some interviews for him. In the Widowlands here.’

  Though she remained outwardly calm, shock and alarm collided within her. There was no possibility that Oliver Ellis’s arrival, at the precise time she was here, at the very hotel she had chosen herself, could be sheer chance. Who had sent him, and why? Plainly the Commissioner distrusted her, but was it possible that he had sent an emissary to monitor her while she was on his own secret mission? She wouldn’t put it past him, but whatever the reason, she thanked God she had come into the lobby at that moment. If she had not had the good luck to catch sight of Oliver Ellis, she would have been entirely unaware of his presence.

  Quickly, he recovered himself and smiled.

  ‘How intriguing.’

  ‘What about you?’

  His story would be off pat. Of course it would.

  ‘I have some books to access in one of the libraries. I’m looking for certain historical texts.’

  There was no doubt he was a good actor. He seemed entirely natural.

  ‘Matter of fact, I was delighted when I discovered that the texts I needed were here. Getting out of the office in the current madness is especially pleasurable. If I hear any more vapid chat about Coronation robes or tiaras, I may go insane.’

  Rose was still standing, heart thudding, calculating what to do or say.

  ‘I call this an extraordinary coincidence.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Oliver scrawled his signature on the ledger and the receptionist slid a key across the counter. Pocketing it, he smiled. ‘But it’s serendipity too. Seeing as we’re here and off duty, what do you say to a drink?’

  Rose opened her mouth to refuse. She had every excuse. It was late. She had notes to write up. She had no desire to indulge in office gossip. Yet the shock of the police assault on the widows’ house, and the conversation with Bru
no Schumacher, had combined to produce a deep weariness.

  Even if Oliver Ellis was here to shadow her, the idea of a drink seemed suddenly irresistible.

  ‘Just one.’

  He led the way to the hotel’s wood-panelled bar where a few battered leather armchairs were clustered around a fireplace. A clutch of charred sticks shifted listlessly in the grate, giving off a faint warmth. A tattered carpet covered the flagstones, and the walls were panelled in planks of splintered oak. The only other occupants of the room were an ancient couple consulting a large guidebook on Tudor architecture.

  ‘To be honest, it’s a treat to be here,’ Oliver said. ‘You have no idea how pleasurable it is to visit these fabulous mediaeval buildings after the archives I’ve been working in recently. Have you ever seen the Rosenberg Documentation Unit?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, don’t. A hundred miles of vaults and shelving. You could die down there and no one would notice.’

  He ordered two glasses of Scotch and leaned back against the clubby leather armchair, to all appearances a man relieved to be out of London and on an enjoyable mission. Perhaps he did enjoy shadowing Rose. Maybe sharing a drink with her was some kind of double bluff.

  ‘Being here takes me back to my student days, even if they were in Cambridge rather than here. In some ways, my undergraduate days were perfect preparation for the Protector’s work.’

  ‘How so?’

  She was relieved that he was so keen to talk. Perhaps he was lonely, or maybe it was designed to relax her guard, but either way, he seemed to require little input from her.

  ‘I studied historiography. That’s the study of the way historians reinterpret the past. When you read the great historians – Tacitus, Machiavelli, Gibbon – you see that there’s nothing new about adjusting history. The past is always being remodelled to reflect more accurately the views of the present. Every generation interprets history to its own agenda.’