Widowland

by C. J. Carey

  And then another thought arose.

  Martin didn’t know her. He had certainly misjudged her. Did he really think that she could read all this and remain unchanged? Was he so convinced of her stupidity and her incurious nature that he thought she could spend every day with these texts and see them as mere words – as weeds – rather than ideas that would take root and blossom and flourish within her?

  Rose’s ostensible reason for a visit to the London Library that morning concerned a corrected version of Jane Eyre that was shortly to be issued to schools and libraries. The text was problematic in all kinds of ways. The love story concerned a lower born woman who fell in love with a rich man from the higher orders and aspired to marry him. Yet when she finally won his affections, she left him. The narrative was riddled with assertions of female self-sufficiency. Empowerment, independence, self-awareness. Practically every page required an edit.

  Rose had come to the point where Jane berates Edward Rochester, wrongly believing he plans to marry a higher caste woman.

  Do you think I am an automaton? – a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! – I have as much soul as you – and full as much heart!

  There was not much to do with this subversion, other than strike it out.

  The fact was, as time went on, Rose found that her task of editing was getting increasingly difficult. The more she read, the more she liked to think of herself as a collaborator, rather than a corrector. She felt herself growing close to the writer, breathing the same breath, linking hands, as if the writer herself had entrusted Rose with this enormous task. And this made crude censorship impossible. When Rose corrected, she tried to maintain the tension and clarity of the text, keeping the narrative flowing, remodelling paragraphs, emulating the style, preserving its rhythms and fluency. She became attuned to the beat of the syllables and the internal music of a phrase. Perhaps this meeting of minds was what editing was supposed to be.

  At the best times, Rose saw herself slipping invisibly like a spy behind the novel’s lines. An agent operating from within.

  Anyhow, it turned out that the aristocrat, Mr Rochester, was already married and keeping his existing wife hidden under the care of a nurse due to her mental illness. Rose would have to check this. Was keeping a madwoman in an attic quite as reprehensible as Charlotte Brontë made out? Rose was unsure about the correct depiction of female insanity, but she suspected that Mr Rochester’s treatment was broadly in line with Alliance protocol. She never encountered mad people in daily life. No one did. Presumably there was little mental illness in the Alliance, but she supposed if it happened, it made sense that the patients were not left to roam the streets. And yet . . . even as she edited, Celia’s words about their father sounded in her mind.

  Those fits he has. It’s madness. And it’s been getting worse.

  She carried on through the text, deleting lines, occasionally improvising a subtle dialogue change – Reader, he married me – all the time keeping one eye on the clock.

  Although she had right of access to the stacks, this right did not extend to any kind of generalized exploration. Every area required a specific permission slip, stamped and signed, attesting that the holder had reason to examine the texts involved. Very little escaped the chief librarian, a gimlet-eyed Leni who manned the desk like a gorgon at the gates of hell. Past visits, however, had told Rose that the Leni took a short break at precisely one o’clock.

  That day was no different. As the muffled peal of the bell from St James’s Church dissipated through the London afternoon, the Leni levered her bulk to her feet. None of the other correctors, craned over their texts like mediaeval monks, even looked up.

  Rose left her desk swiftly and trotted up the wide staircase, whose walls contained bleached rectangles where the photographs of degenerate writers – T. S. Eliot, Henry James, Virginia Woolf – had once hung. It was bad enough that their work should remain here, under conditions of rigorous control, but nobody needed to look at their faces as well.

  Two floors above were the stacks marked Degenerate Literature: Female Non-Fiction.

  Before she could examine them, however, she needed to get past the archivist, another Leni, but this one by contrast was young and cheerful, wilting in the library’s deathly hush like a plant deprived of light and air. She had glossy brown hair in earmuff plaits, apple cheeks and a sweet, friendly demeanour. Going by looks alone, she might have qualified as a Geli, so there must be something in her background that told against her. Rose could imagine her at weekends, meeting her friends in coffee bars, idolizing film stars and experimenting with the most daring interpretation possible of the Leni’s standard scratchy grey worsted.

  At Rose’s approach she brightened.

  ‘Can I help?’

  Definitely not.

  ‘Got your permission slip?’

  A wooden box containing a ream of stamped permission slips sat on the desk in front of her. Collecting them was the girl’s chief, and not very taxing, job.

  Rose shifted her bag from one arm to the other, as if in prelude to finding the necessary scrap of paper, and hunted for a question of her own.

  ‘Looking forward to the Coronation?’

  It was rare, but not forbidden, for Gelis to make idle chat with women of a lower caste. The girl blushed accordingly.

  ‘I can’t wait! A gang of us are going to watch the parade. We’re just wondering what position to take on the route for the best view. What do you think?’

  She froze, as if this question might constitute an attempt to exact classified information.

  ‘Not that . . . I mean—’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Rose reassured her. ‘Everyone wants the best view and the authorities will ensure that all citizens get a good look wherever they are. But if you wanted my professional opinion . . .’

  Here she hesitated slightly, as if uncertain whether to divulge sensitive material, and lowered her voice. ‘I’d say St James’s Street is the perfect spot. It’s very near the palace and fairly narrow, so you can get close up. You’ll see all the dignitaries. You won’t regret it.’

  Gratified, the Leni beamed.

  ‘Thank you. I’ll tell my friends.’

  ‘I’m just . . .’ – Rose mimed directions to her left – ‘going to be a minute. I have a reference to check. It only just came up, so I didn’t . . . Don’t tell on me!’

  Before the girl could protest, Rose slipped through the stacks and followed the alphabet around the corner.

  She moved along the shelves, noting the perfectly filed volumes with their corresponding reference numbers marked above; the aged binding of their spines, polished leather in autumnal shades of golden brown, moss green, ochre and faded yellow, not to mention a whole case of reds – claret, merlot, cabernet sauvignon. Carefully she ran her finger over their ridges and indentations. In the past she had sometimes picked up a book and breathed it in, as if the emotions of the past could seep out from between the covers.

  A whiskery man with glasses suspended on a chain around his neck was squinting at record cards. Another Leni further up was wheeling a trolley along the stacks, returning books to their correct places.

  She ran her finger along the books to help her focus. Political writing. Pre-Twentieth Century.

  Frances Burney, Harriet Martineau, Frances Trollope.

  Rose pulled the odd volume out at random. Much of the writing focused on the importance of female education in a way that was directly in conflict with Alliance ideals. It was a familiar trope of nineteenth-century women’s fiction, too, she had noticed. Elizabeth Bennet defending her education because we were always encouraged to read. Anne Elliot, the heroine of Persuasion, urging the importance of reading because it could rouse and fortify the mind by the highest precepts.

  These reflections, however,
were not what Rose had come for.

  Feverishly, she scanned the shelves until her gaze caught on a small, slim volume covered in pale blue linen, badly foxed.

  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft

  She was in the act of levering it out when she saw him. A portly man, wearing a tweed jacket, with an enamel Alliance pin on one lapel and a navy and white spotted bow tie that marked him out as an intellectual. His name, she knew, was Oscar Stephenson.

  Stephenson had been a political journalist originally, and his bulbous visage and pink scalp with its crinkly strands of tow-coloured hair was familiar to any reader of the Radio Times – the magazine that listed wireless broadcasts – illustrating the programme that he compèred called Men of Distinction. Its format was simple. The guests – always male – debated moral philosophy or the rights of man, along with the occasional light-hearted problem. For example, should women be permitted to play chess against men in public places? Or, was the Alliance ban on girls wearing trousers excessive? Occasionally, a debate would be held on the ethics of Widowland. What good were these useless people to society? Women who had contributed no children to the nation and whose withered frames were incapable of most manual labour? Technically, Stephenson adjudicated, but in reality he preferred the sound of his own opinions, issued in a blustering manner, which he used to patronize or batter his opponents, especially when they had the better argument.

  Rose’s mother loved him. She always referred to him by his nickname, ‘the cleverest man in England’. It was a soubriquet Stephenson had popularized, if not actually invented.

  He had been an early and vocal supporter of the Alliance: when he detected a lack of political enthusiasm in his guests, or a debate became especially complex, Stephenson would make the argument personal, suggesting that his guest was in some way questioning Alliance beliefs. Being invited onto Men of Distinction was a poisoned chalice, but turning Stephenson down was equally hazardous. Soon he would be even more prominent. Rose had read that Men of Distinction was to become a programme on the new television service.

  Now, he was staring openly in her direction. She froze and tried to focus her eyes on the pages in front of her, but she could tell he was attempting to see the book’s title. Much as she was yearning to open it, she felt uncomfortable reading a work of such heresy under his blatant gaze.

  Casually, she glanced over her shoulder. Stephenson was still squinting at her so, covering the book’s spine, she replaced it, and tugged the neighbouring volume forward a fraction to conceal it.

  Next to Mary Wollstonecraft, and upsetting the alphabetical order, was another Mary. Mary Shelley. The archivist must have gone momentarily mad, and mistakenly shelved the women under their Christian names. As Oscar Stephenson’s eyes burned into her back, she opened it at random. Looking down at the page, a phrase caught her eye.

  The beginning is always today

  The words sent a curious sensation up Rose’s spine. A stirring of recognition and a creeping sense of déjà vu. She knew this phrase. She had heard it before. It felt like a riddle, or a call to arms. She had no idea what it meant.

  A cursory glance told her that Stephenson was still watching. In a split-second judgement, Rose decided that on her way out she would make it clear that she knew his face. Encountering occasional celebrities through the Culture Ministry had taught her that famous people detested being approached by members of the public and obliged to make small talk or, worse, to prove that they were really who they resembled. She would confront Stephenson with delighted semi-recognition, question whether it could really be him, and then heap praise on one of his recent guests.

  Smiling broadly in Stephenson’s direction, she pivoted fractionally towards him and drew breath to speak. To her relief, the ruse succeeded. While he didn’t actually retreat, he did at least turn his face away.

  Heart quickening, Rose pulled out her pen and scribbled Mary Shelley’s line impulsively on the back of her hand.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Thursday, 22nd April

  The five sisters might have had their individual quirks, but the wide-set blue eyes, bobbed flaxen hair and porcelain complexions, not to mention their shared reputation for upper-class eccentricity, were recognized everywhere. They were said to have created their own private language, in which they planned practical jokes. Their exploits were faithfully followed by the newspapers’ society pages, and the eldest had already made a wealthy and advantageous engagement. The second sister had a penchant for wild parties that embarrassed her parents and often ended with the police being called. The middle sister was writing her first novel. Whenever they got into scrapes, or were seen out with unsuitable companions, or had to be rescued from rowing boats at dawn, the establishment chuckled and rolled its eyes. The sisters’ disdain for convention was the preserve of the elite, and it was also what made them household names.

  Everyone had heard of the Goebbels girls.

  The five daughters of Joseph Goebbels and his former wife Magda – Helga, Hildegarde, Holdine, Hedwig and Heidrun – had grown up in the bosom of the Party. As the First Family of the Reich, the image of them as children, outfitted in identical white smocked dresses and lined up in order of size, was seared on popular consciousness and reproduced in glossy magazines and propaganda posters everywhere. When they were younger, pictures of the Goebbels girls frolicking in the garden with the minister and his wife had been used in a sheaf of propaganda campaigns. Their suntanned bodies were juxtaposed with stark shots of mentally and physically handicapped children during a national drive to popularize the Elimination of the Weak. Once, there had been another VIP child to rival them: Edda Goering, who had grown up as a Princess of the Party, showered with gifts from crowned heads around the world. But Edda was now living in exile on a pig farm in Silesia, whereas the Goebbels girls were in England on a jaunt that had already taken in the best nightclubs, and several days’ hunting at their father’s country home.

  That night, Rose observed them assume centre stage in the ballroom of the Grosvenor House Hotel where the reception for the delegation of American film-makers was being held. The walls billowed with cream satin lining, and on the dais, behind the band, a portrait of the King and Queen was propped – Edward small and crumpled in his regalia like a child in fancy dress, and Wallis a matchstick in taffeta with a helmet of raven hair.

  The Party VIPs were out in force for the Coronation. They had flown over and block-booked the best hotels and their loud, well-fed, self-confident voices jingled through the ballroom, like a cash register of Alliance marks. Their hair was sleek and their complexions soft as butter. The light of the chandeliers reflected off a roomful of diamonds and jewels, not to mention the silver insignia of a hundred SS dress uniforms. All the visiting women wore couture. The two elder Goebbels girls were dressed by the Parisian couturier Madame Grès, in bold patterned evening gowns with cut-out backs, one in silver stripes and the other in scarlet and black. The native women had resorted to whatever could be cobbled together with coupons and a lot of imagination.

  Rose had agonized about her own outfit, in the end choosing an old evening dress donated by Celia that bared her shoulders, and the pearl necklace that Martin had given her in the early days of their relationship and which she had worn every day since. The dress’s narrow waist flared out to a full skirt that flattered her slim figure and the purple silk complemented her complexion. She had waved her hair and pushed the ends back behind her ears, and her cheeks were already tinged with excitement. Yet as she stared into the mirror on her dressing table past the ancient bottle of Givenchy perfume that had belonged to her mother and the round tin of Max Factor Crème Puff, it was her father’s eyes that stared back at her in scrutiny.

  What would Dad make of her partying at the heart of the Alliance? Just occasionally she was grateful that his situation spared him the details of his daughter’s life.

  Bridget Fanshaw was standing alongside Rose, people-watching from th
e sidelines. Although Bridget was not naturally pretty like Helena, she compensated through the sheer effort she put into her appearance. Her moss-green dress was as low-cut as possible while keeping just within the demands of female modesty that applied even to Gelis (cleavage to be covered and skirts below the knee, nothing that excited sensuality or lascivious thoughts). Bridget routinely flouted the general disapproval of make-up by wearing both lipstick and rouge, despite regular admonishments. That evening her eyebrows were plucked into twin brackets of surprise, although thanks to her job in the Press department, very little surprised her.

  ‘Not much love lost there.’

  She folded her arms and nodded at the two elder Goebbels girls, who were ostentatiously ignoring their stepmother. The woman was, in fact, their second stepmother, being Goebbels’ third wife, and although she had plenty in common with the sisters – she was practically their age – relations were frosty. The attraction between Suzy Ziegler and the powerful elderly minister had been instantaneous. They had met, in time-honoured fashion, in a casting session, and within a few months the bleached blonde and the wizened cripple acknowledged their love publicly in marriage.

  Now, blotting out her surroundings with her fourth glass of champagne, her bosom encased in a froth of lace, Frau Goebbels was modelling the one Alliance fashion that trumped all others.

  Pregnancy.

  Being pregnant, producing a child for the Leader, was the highest honour of womanhood, so Suzy Ziegler, hanging on Goebbels’ arm, had every reason to feel pleased with herself. Nonetheless, it was impossible to ignore her new husband’s wandering eye as the cream of British female society drifted past in wasp-waisted dresses modelled on Dior’s New Look. Their dresses may have been run up by backstreet seamstresses using synthetic nylon and cardboard instead of taffeta and satin, but it had been done so skillfully that it was hard to tell them from the real thing.