Widowland

by C. J. Carey

  By contrast, Rose had no difficulty telling the nationalities apart. The German men took every opportunity to wear uniform and observed the minute gradations of correct dress with military precision. A sea of black serge was sprinkled with the appropriate insignia: daggers, cufflinks, death’s head badges. The Americans, on the other hand, were almost horizontally relaxed. Some of the Hollywood men hadn’t bothered with evening dress at all, but had come in lounge suits and ties, handkerchiefs in top pockets. In one case, Rose even spotted a pair of brown suede shoes. The nearest these men got to regalia was a Rolex.

  ‘The Commissioner’s delighted with the turnout,’ whispered Helena. ‘They’ve netted some pretty senior film executives here tonight. Eckberg thinks a slate of co-productions is ideal for cementing friendly relations between the Alliance and America.’

  Could it be true? Was the relationship between America and the Alliance genuinely thawing? Avidly, Rose scrutinized the guests. The way that Alliance citizens were encouraged to think of Americans was carefully controlled by the Propaganda unit of the Culture Ministry. In the past, the general line was that America might be called the Land of the Free, but in fact it was a chaotic melange of organized crime, alcohol and pop music. Recently, however, more positive images of the United States were being propagated. Hence the appearance of Little Women, the tale of ordinary, good-hearted American girls, on the school curriculum. And the appearance of grander German women at the reception tonight.

  Rose glanced across at von Ribbentrop’s wife Annelies, in a gown the colour of dried blood. She was in deep discussion with Robert Ley, the Labour leader, who had met the King and Queen when they visited Berlin on honeymoon, his face as mottled as a slab of spam. Rose had never been in a room with so many senior Party members, and was relieved that Heinrich Himmler, who had famously vowed to shoot his own mother if the Leader asked him, was unable to attend. In the middle of the throng, a towering German with a lantern jaw was lecturing a squat, balding American in thick glasses.

  The pair was almost comically mismatched, and the German was using his advantage of height in overbearing conversation.

  ‘That’s Rudolf Hess.’ Bridget had been eavesdropping. ‘He’s telling the head of MGM about his aeroplane.’

  Rose gawped at the Deputy Leader. Just being in the same room as him, a few feet away, should have impressed, even overwhelmed her. Instead his heavy brows and flashing eyes made him look almost . . . enthusiastic was the polite word but deranged would be more accurate.

  ‘He has a vintage Messerschmitt Bf 110 apparently. It’s all he talks about. He’s telling them precisely how long it takes to fly from Germany to his estate in Scotland. He always flies solo.’

  ‘Isn’t that dangerous? What if he crashed?’

  ‘He’s never crashed. He says it’s not his destiny.’

  Restlessly, Rose looked across to Martin. They had arrived together, but he had left her immediately. For some time he’d been deep in conversation with a strikingly handsome officer with a curve of Brylcreemed hair brushed back from his broad face and wide, sensual lips. In contrast to his gentlemanly appearance, a coiled aggression emanated from the neck of his tightly compressed black SS tunic down to his glimmering patent leather shoes.

  As Rose watched, the man’s eyes flickered towards her, taking in every detail in a moment’s chill appraisal. He knew about her, she could tell. He knew she was not Martin’s wife.

  Breaking off, Martin approached and drew her to a corner where they were shielded from sight by a vast urn of lilies and ferns.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘No one you want to know,’ he muttered, taking out a cigarette. She noticed that his fingers were trembling slightly.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Walter Schellenberg. Remember I told you about him once? Head of the Reich Security Service. He learned his art at Heydrich’s knee. After Heydrich died, he became Himmler’s closest confidant. He’s come over to take charge of the security arrangements. The Leader insisted on it.’

  Rose couldn’t stop herself glancing back at Schellenberg. He had been joined by a much older woman dressed entirely in black, whose porcelain complexion was traversed by a vivid slash of scarlet lipstick. With her kohl-blackened eyes, garlands of pearls and darkly lustrous hair, she resembled some frail, exotic bird. In stark contrast to the other women in the room, her outfit was acutely slim-cut to accentuate her toothpick figure. They made an odd couple, the elegant older woman and the bullish younger man. When he put his arm round her, she looked as if she might snap.

  ‘Isn’t that . . . ?’

  ‘Coco Chanel. Yes. She’s an old friend of the Queen. She’s doing the Coronation robes.’

  ‘Gosh. That’s a big secret, isn’t it?’

  ‘Secret? I wish. The woman won’t stop talking about it. I’ve been subjected to ten minutes on the subject of the design symbolism of the dress. The robes are going to be stark black and white with the Alliance emblem picked out in pearls and an androgynous twist – whatever that means. Lots of ermine and no colour.’

  ‘No colour! The Queen’s going to look like a Magda!’

  ‘It’s what she wants apparently.’ Martin lifted another drink from a passing tray. ‘He thought you were attractive.’

  Rose frowned. She never knew what to make of her own looks. Throughout her childhood she had always been seen as a foil to Celia, whose beauty was acclaimed by everyone, so that eventually it became her defining feature. Rose, therefore, was thrown back on other qualities. And despite his endearments, Martin had never made her feel beautiful. Sometimes he would undress her and hold her by the wrist as he stood back to observe her, but the way he scrutinized her body made her feel like a machine part on a production line.

  Now he drained the drink and looked around for another one.

  ‘Not sure how I’m going to get through the next few days. You have no idea of the preparations I’ve been landed with. The Leader’s meals – how that comes under Culture God knows, but it does – and the detail is mind-boggling. I’ve been sent a diagram of his breakfast table with the correct placings for his plate, bowl, teaspoon and salt cellar. Can you believe it? He doesn’t drink coffee. He must have apple juice. No meat. No alcohol. His favourite dish is cheese noodles. And he wants linseed oil on his bread. Linseed oil! I ask you. Then there’s his travel, and his sleeping arrangements.’

  Something had changed. Was Martin wearying of his loyalty? Rose had never heard this tone before, suggesting fraying nerves and ideological fatigue.

  ‘Surely you can delegate that.’

  ‘As if I haven’t a thousand other things to do with a week to go before the Coronation. It’s madness. And all this on top of the Blenheim conference. We’re about to stage the most important conference for a decade, for which I’m co-ordinating the agenda, and here I am being sent memos about table settings. I ask you.’

  ‘You never mentioned any conference.’

  ‘It’s scheduled for the day after the Coronation. But frankly, it’s the main event.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘It’s nothing you need to know about.’

  ‘Even so.’

  ‘I’m telling you now, aren’t I?’

  ‘Is that what’s making you stressed?’

  Another sigh of exasperation erupted.

  ‘Actually, that’s not what’s stressing me.’ He was staring at the wall as if he wanted to punch it. ‘The graffiti’s getting worse.’

  Her throat tightened in alarm.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Reports are coming in from all over the country. There’ve been incidents in Birmingham and Leeds. In Bristol they scrawled something on a factory wall yesterday, right where the Magdas come out. It must have been seen by hundreds of them, even if it was absolute gibberish. Something like, She is too fond of books and it has turned her brain.’

  Rose recognized the quotation at once. It was a remark made by one of Loui
sa May Alcott’s characters, Christie. Irony again.

  ‘They also daubed some nonsense on one of the Cambridge colleges. King’s, I think. The Fellows were livid.’

  ‘What did it say?’

  ‘Does it matter? It’s not what it says, it’s the fact that it’s there at all.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  He rolled his eyes.

  ‘It said, I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.’

  Martin growled in frustration at the urn of scented lilies, as though he might rip their heads off. ‘It’s all so . . . trivial. This idiocy of desecrating public buildings. Foolish, worthless old women who contribute nothing to society but trouble. They’re certain to pop up somewhere on his visit. I can just imagine how the Leader’s going to react when he’s confronted with some degenerate trash plastered across the country’s finest buildings. Makes it look as if we can’t keep our own Protectorate safe from a bunch of toothless old witches.’

  He paused, and tried breathing deeply.

  ‘The question is, how do we prevent it? Schellenberg’s told me he wants to hold off from anything that might unsettle the populace before the Coronation, but at the same time he says it’s essential that we crush any rebellious behaviour before it escalates. How exactly does he propose we do that?’

  Extinguishing his cigarette in a glass of champagne, he lowered his voice.

  ‘I’ve told him, there’s only one way. Executive measures.’

  Why should these bland, bureaucratic words have such an effect on her? ‘Executive measures’ was not a phrase Rose had heard before, but at the sound of it, the hairs rose on her skin, as though a chill wind had blown through the ballroom all the way from some barren, eastern plain.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘What do you think it means? We go into the Widowlands, round them up and get rid of them once and for all. After all, we have the experience.’

  ‘What experience?’

  ‘It’s not as if it hasn’t been done before.’

  Rose opened her mouth to respond, but before she could, Martin had taken her arm and moved her closer to the silk-covered wall.

  ‘Listen, forget that.’ He looked into her eyes as if registering her properly for the first time that evening. He had aged visibly in the last couple of weeks. The cheerful, confident man who first seduced her was now burned out and irritable. His complexion was jaundiced, the skin around his eyes bruised from lack of sleep and he seemed to have shrunk slightly within his evening dress. She felt a sharp pang of sympathy.

  ‘I’m going up to Blenheim for a couple of days but l need to see you as soon as I get back. I have something to tell you, Rose, and I can’t explain it here.’

  Her ribcage constricted.

  ‘Is it something I should worry about?’

  ‘No. Yes. It’s important. It’s something you need to know.’

  It was a relief to escape the reception.

  Martin was obliged to go on to dinner with the VIPs. Goebbels and Frau Goebbels the third were hosting a banquet for eighty at Apsley House, where Rose’s presence would be mercifully inappropriate. As soon as Martin told her, she slipped away.

  Outside, a faint shower had brought down a line of bunting whose sodden paper flags squelched underfoot. The lights of the hotel spilled out onto a line of limousines, gleaming Mercedes and shiny Adlers, waiting, engines idling, for their VIP passengers. Chauffeurs loitered together, smoking, raindrops speckling their caps.

  Across the road, campers in Green Park, determined to secure a good position on the Coronation route, crouched beneath the trees or huddled under makeshift tents. In their hooded coats they looked like strange dun-coloured gnomes, watching the pageant from their place in the shadows. Further on, the long red and black Alliance banners draping Marble Arch and the department stores of Oxford Street stirred in the darkness.

  Rose turned right, heading up Park Lane, turning Martin’s words over in her mind.

  It’s not as if it hasn’t been done before.

  What was he suggesting? Was he referring to the relocations? Everyone knew the labour force was required on the mainland, and although mothers desperately missed their sons and husbands, they presumably saw that Extended National Service was in the Alliance’s interest. Or did he mean the arrests, earlier, of political dissidents? Get rid of them once and for all. There must be hundreds of thousands of women in the Widowlands. How could you possibly do that?

  She was so deep in thought that it wasn’t until she was quite near them, turning down Upper Brook Street towards Grosvenor Square, that she noticed two figures ahead of her, a couple in close conversation standing beneath a street lamp. Even though Rose could only see her from behind, and the collar of her coat was turned up, something about the woman’s lithe frame, and bouncy hair with a small upwards flick at the ends, was familiar.

  Then she turned slightly, and the opalescent lamplight illuminated her face.

  Sonia Delaney was more lovely, if possible, than her airbrushed photograph. Her perfectly framed profile showed a straight nose and a high forehead. In the spill of street light the garnets round her throat seemed to glow like the russet streaks in her hair. It was the kind of colour that came with a romantic name on the box: Autumn Gold or Honey Caramel or Chestnut Whisper. Her coat was belted at the waist and her hands were plunged deep in the pockets.

  Even from a distance, Rose could see how animated the conversation was. The lean, dinner-jacketed man was gesticulating, hands upturned, as he bent forward to make a point, running his fingers through his hair in a gesture that Rose recognized.

  Oliver! Two days ago she had left him in Oxford, working in the archives, and preparing to spend several more days buried in a library. Yet here he was, not only in London, but fraternizing with an American actress, their heads together and their bodies close, as if they were engaged in an intense and confidential argument. How had Oliver Ellis plucked up the courage to approach Sonia Delaney? He wasn’t even interested in showbusiness. It seemed so out of character. What had he called the last film they’d seen? Anodyne schmaltz.

  For a moment, Rose could not wrest her eyes from the sight of the couple, intimately absorbed in their conversation, and she felt a prickle of something more than curiosity; an emotion she couldn’t quite name.

  Oliver Ellis and Sonia Delaney. What on earth could they find to talk about?

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Friday, 23rd April

  A scrum of journalists bobbed around the lobby of the Culture Ministry waiting for the Friday press briefing. With a week to go until the Coronation, a steady diet of news stories was being drip-fed to satisfy the raging appetite of the populace for all things royal. The items ranged widely, from the exact number of steps the monarchs would take to the altar and the precise part the Leader would play in the ceremony, to pure froth such as that the King enjoyed his breakfast eggs lightly boiled and Elizabeth Arden had given the Queen an exercise bicycle for Buckingham Palace.

  The previous day’s papers had been full of photographs of England’s ancestral crown jewels. Altogether twenty-three thousand precious stones would be on display, including the largest diamond in the world, weighing five hundred and thirty carats, embedded in the royal sceptre. The most precious of the treasures were the St Edward’s Crown, which was made for the coronation of Charles II, and the Imperial Crown that had been worn by Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt.

  The whole lot had been crated up and brought over from Berlin in a Lufthansa plane all of their own, symbolically accompanied by six members of the Leader’s own personal bodyguard, the Leibstandarte SS, as though they were guarding the King and Queen themselves.

  The journalists jostled and chatted as Rose and Helena walked past. Journalists always seemed a race apart, more daring and confident than civil servants, waving notebooks and greeting each other in familiar, joshing tones. They gave each other nicknames and made jokes about the ministers.
Yet this carefree demeanour, Rose knew, was an illusion. Journalists were scrutinized even more closely than ordinary citizens. They trod a daily tightrope of compliance.

  On the mainland all press and broadcasting came under the control of the Party Press Chamber. Every workplace from 1933 onwards had been cleansed of employees who were ideologically inappropriate. The system had been transferred seamlessly to the Alliance. Every journalist was assessed before being given a job, but the scrutiny didn’t stop there. Those who overstepped the mark in their daily work were sent for re-education, their fate recorded prominently in their own publications. Times correspondent admits perfidy. Sentenced to two years’ hard labour. Or, Daily Mail writer in false story shock. Judge jails him with warning. When a journalist walked into their newsroom they were effectively entering a minefield.

  A hum of expectation ran through the press posse. One of the photographers, pushed backwards, knocked over the Ministry noticeboard where daily announcements were displayed in Government font, a Gothic barbed wire of black officialese. Generally, these notices announced some fresh regulation, but when there was nothing new to ban, the default was a quote from the Protector. That day a functionary had plumped for one of Rosenberg’s platitudes involving artists.

  It is beyond question that the true culture bearer for Europe has been in the first place the Nordic race. Great heroes, artists and founders of states have grown from this blood.

  Even as the photographer scrambled to prop up the noticeboard, that day’s particular artist, whose honey-blonde hair and startling sapphire eyes attested to her undiluted Nordic blood, unfurled her long legs from a Government Mercedes and strode through the brass doors. She wore a cream cashmere coat with a silver fox collar and walked with the supple gait of a wild cat that might at any moment unsheathe its claws. As she passed, her image was bathed in the photographers’ flash, to be reproduced for the evening papers, preserved in silvery aspic.