Widowland

by C. J. Carey

  Leni – the original Leni – was here.

  Leni Riefenstahl’s groundbreaking documentary Triumph of the Will, charting the Leader’s visit to the Nuremberg Rally in 1934, still played in cinemas across the land. Most citizens knew its opening scenes by heart – the camera panning along the cobbled backstreets of Nuremberg, the fog over the mediaeval squares, the massed ranks of stormtroopers assembled in the rally ground awaiting their leader. And then the Leader himself descending from the skies, his plane dipping and diving through the clouds, to emerge in a burst of sunshine above the Gothic spires.

  The movie’s success had sealed Leni’s status as the Leader’s favourite film director, and she had followed it up with a celebration of the 1936 Olympics, Olympia. In the 1940s, she had documented the conquest of other European countries with her epic Europa, and the building of the Leader’s grand library in The Eighth Wonder of the World. So it made perfect sense that she, above all other film-makers, should have been awarded the rights and access to record the Coronation of Britain’s King and Queen.

  Now, at the age of fifty, Leni Riefenstahl was at her zenith. Lauded throughout Europe, afforded every privilege, her every move was saturated with her own publicity – and it was publicity that she very much believed.

  Needless to say, there was not a Leni in the building who did not want an excuse to catch sight of their namesake. Some clustered shyly, peering out of doors; others loitered brazenly on the stairs, star-struck and jittery with excitement. Mentally mirroring their heroine as if hoping to absorb her nonchalant glamour and make it their own.

  ‘You have no idea how much work that woman has caused the Film department,’ said Helena, whose status as a Geli meant that she remained untouched by the office girls’ excitement.

  She folded her arms and pursed her lips.

  ‘She has a production staff of a hundred. Sixteen cameramen plus their assistants, aerial photographers and special dollies for tracking shots up the nave of Westminster Abbey. Scores of sound operators, not to mention strict rules surrounding other cameras, which has led to a frightful row with the Americans.’

  ‘What does it have to do with them?’ Rose asked.

  ‘The Americans are making a documentary about Wallis Windsor. American Queen, I think it’s called. But Fräulein Riefenstahl insists that exclusive filming rights to the Leader’s tour belong to her. No long lenses. No unauthorized shots along the route. The Americans are up in arms. They say the Coronation is an international event and they never tire of reminding us that the Queen is, after all, one of them. We’ve had to compromise.’

  ‘You overruled Leni Riefenstahl?’

  ‘They’ve been given permission to cover the Leader’s visit to Oxford as a kind of compensation. Leni gets the Abbey to herself and the Americans can shoot outside. But even then, I see trouble ahead. Leni’s got Albert Speer to design the lighting, and massed ranks of stormtroopers will be lining the aisles.’

  ‘Sounds fun,’ said Rose.

  Helena narrowed her eyes as the subject herself stalked past the press posse towards a set of double doors.

  ‘And she’s demanded that the King and Queen present themselves for a run-through at the Abbey on Wednesday morning so she can work out positions and discuss angles with her cameramen.’

  ‘I can’t imagine the Queen allowing anyone to order her around,’ said Rose.

  ‘And I can’t see Fräulein Riefenstahl taking no for an answer, so it should be good to watch. Probably more entertaining than the Coronation itself.’

  The doors slid open and Commissioner Eckberg could be glimpsed, extending a greasy welcome. Bridget Fanshaw detached herself from the caravan of flunkeys buzzing round Fräulein Riefenstahl like flies around a picnic and joined them.

  ‘Hope all this takes their minds off it,’ she said.

  The journalists filing into the briefing room seemed more subdued than usual.

  ‘Off what? Is something wrong?’ asked Helena.

  Bridget nodded. ‘One of the reporters was arrested this morning.’

  ‘Who? What happened?’

  The penalties meted out to journalists were especially harsh. Indeed, the Fleet Street office block belonging to the Daily Mirror was nicknamed ‘Suicide Tower’ because of the number of journalists who’d jump off it, rather than submit to official punishment.

  ‘A feature writer on the Chronicle. Eddie Davies. Apparently he wrote a piece on Fräulein Riefenstahl’s plans to make a film about Russia after the death of Stalin.’

  ‘Is she? What’s wrong with that?’

  Rose knew, though. It would come under the label of ‘political speculation’. In the Time Before, this topic alone had filled acres of newspaper space. Yet since the Alliance, discussing the political scene was deemed unhelpful. No one wanted journalists looking into the future, especially the kind of future that didn’t bear looking into.

  ‘It wasn’t published, of course. The editor spotted it at once and insisted it would never have made it into print.’

  ‘And he reported his own journalist?’

  ‘Not this time. The Security people had someone in the newsroom. Actually, because the editor was so co-operative the Commissioner’s decided to go easy on the paper. He instructed us to offer the Chronicle some kind of exclusive. I had to dig one up.’

  ‘What did you give them?’ asked Rose. ‘Or shouldn’t I ask?’

  ‘Oh, it’s top secret classified information. I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you.’ Bridget gave a derisory laugh. ‘Actually, I cobbled together a leak about the Queen’s Coronation bouquet. It’ll have lilies and roses to represent England, stephanotis from Northern Ireland, orchids from Wales and Edelweiss from Germany.’

  ‘What about Scotland?’

  ‘God, I don’t know. Can’t remember. Thistles probably. Something prickly.’

  The populace of Scotland was considered the most recalcitrant of any Alliance territory. Most of the acts of terrorism were said to stem from there.

  As they made their way reluctantly back to work, Rose held open the door and Bridget said, ‘What’s that on your hand?’

  Rose looked down. A faint violet smudge of the line she had scribbled in the library was still there. She cursed herself for not scrubbing harder.

  ‘Just something I needed to remember.’

  As soon as she got back to her desk she looked around, grabbed a piece of paper from beside Oliver’s typewriter, tore off a small strip and wrote down the phrase. Then she folded the paper to the size of a postage stamp, rolled it into a cylinder like a matchstick and slid it between the edges of the lining at the bottom of her bag, before covering it with the usual detritus of handkerchief, notebook and hairbrush. After that, she hurried to the cloakroom and scoured her hand fiercely under the tap.

  Back at her desk, she couldn’t focus. The typewriter blurred before her eyes and leaning over to a nearby Geli, she said, ‘I think I need some fresh air.’

  ‘Too much champagne at the reception last night?’

  ‘Something like that. I’m over at the library if anyone asks.’

  Grabbing her bag, she clipped down the marble stairs to the street outside.

  She had no idea where she would go. She just wanted to walk, while the thoughts milling in her brain settled in some kind of order. She had an idea to head towards Embankment Gardens where she could sit on one of the benches, watching the sparrows, but she hadn’t gone a few steps before she felt a touch on her shoulder and jumped.

  ‘I thought it was you!’

  A beaming figure had detached himself from the straggle of journalists leaving the Culture Ministry, and sprinted to her side.

  Members of the British press were not notable for their looks. Indeed, most were identifiable by the physical infirmities that had made them unsuitable for Extended National Service. With their tea-stained teeth and smokers’ complexions, they were not a handsome crowd. Yet amid the drab jackets and dishrag ties, Laurence Prescott stood
out. Even in his forties, his springy gait and flung-back shoulders exuded a boyish confidence. His pinstriped suit was Savile Row and his shoes came from Church’s.

  Not for the first time Rose wondered what services Laurence’s aristocratic mother had performed for Joachim von Ribbentrop to secure her son such favoured status.

  ‘Laurence!’ She proffered her cheek for a kiss. ‘You must have been in the press conference. How was it?’

  He groaned as they walked along Whitehall in lockstep.

  ‘Same old, same old. Should the Queen wear a tiara that once belonged to the Russian royal family? How touching it is that the Coronation cake was made by some old Magda in Wales. Can you explain to me why women actually care who styles Her Majesty’s hair? I mean, really, can anyone tell?’

  The clatter of a helicopter overhead jogged Rose’s memory.

  ‘Apparently there was an incident the other day. At the Rosenberg Centre. What was it, did you hear?’

  ‘You know I can’t talk about things like that, Rose. You shouldn’t even be asking.’ Laurence wagged a finger. ‘On the record, it never happened.’

  ‘And off the record?’

  ‘It never happened.’

  He shrugged cheerfully.

  ‘Anyway, much more important, how are you? Still with your Sturmbannführer?’

  ‘Don’t ask.’

  She knew Laurence disapproved. She could see the mixture of concern and curiosity in his eyes.

  ‘What about you?’ she said quickly. ‘Is there a girlfriend on the scene? Any wedding bells on the horizon?’

  ‘You know me, Rose.’ He laughed. ‘Once you’d turned me down . . .’

  This was a charming and inaccurate version of their break-up. Laurence was never going to marry. Why would he need to? Men like him could have any woman they wanted, provided an Alliance officer didn’t want her first.

  ‘Besides, I’m too busy. They’ve parachuted in a new editor so I need to make a good impression. I’m in the office all hours.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘He’s called Douglas Powell. Highly thought of. His sister’s married to one of the Leader’s aides, apparently. Seems a good chap. So far we seem to have hit it off. In fact, he’s put me in charge of co-ordinating a big story for next week.’

  ‘You mean, after the Coronation? I thought that was the big story?’

  ‘Apparently we’ve been put on standby for a major Government announcement. It’s all hands on deck.’

  ‘What do you think it is?’

  ‘No idea.’ Laurence winked. ‘But I don’t imagine it’s going to be a royal pregnancy.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was getting dark, and the plane trees outside threw a fretwork of shadows on the linoleum floor, but Rose didn’t switch on the overhead light. Instead she sat in her chair, staring at the wireless, contemplating turning the dial.

  The urge had become greater recently, batting like an insistent moth at the edge of her consciousness until it was almost irresistible. Everyone knew shortwave radio broadcasts emanating from America encouraged dissidents and ordinary citizens to resist the regime. With the right radio set, it took only the minutest twiddle of the dial to find a bright Atlantic voice engaging in a chat show, or a political discussion, or a historical documentary. Freedom Radio, it was called. Mostly the Alliance administration refused to recognize the station’s existence, but in the Ministry corridors, where it was acknowledged, Freedom Radio was denigrated as propaganda, or psychological warfare. The penalty for listening was harsh. Imprisonment, at the very least.

  None of this would have mattered had not Celia, a few months ago in a fit of home renovation, acquired a brand-new Bakelite Volksempfänger – the official Alliance wireless with its pre-set stations – and offered their cast-off Roberts Radio to Rose. Nobody wanted old-style English sets, least of all Geoffrey, who fancied himself a technology buff, and Rose’s own transistor was a primitive thing. The Roberts had a fresh set of batteries, which should not go to waste.

  The first time she touched the dial, she sprang away from it, as if scalded. The second time, she had summoned her courage late at night and turned it sufficiently to catch the whisper of a talk show, fading in and out from the fog of static. Voices rose and dipped, and once they settled enough to make anything out, she discerned that the format was not unlike Men of Distinction. Yet in another way it could not have been more different. For a start, the panel appeared to be made up of both men and women, but the more astonishing aspect of it was that the females spoke entirely without deference. One woman in particular, who got annoyed by a fellow male panellist, said, ‘I’m afraid, Professor, you don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about!’

  Just like that.

  Now, moving towards the set, Rose reached tentatively for the dial, and stroked it towards the position she had memorized, keeping the volume as low as possible. A susurration emerged, like the faintest whisper of wind, carrying with it a trace of two voices, one male and one female, that resolved into a fuzzy dialogue.

  ‘. . . the Britain problem.’

  ‘Oh, the Britain problem! Britain can look after itself. Don’t we have enough problems on our doorstep?’

  ‘I call that a most regressive viewpoint considering that our new president Eisenhower has specifically set his face against isolationism. Didn’t he say all free nations have to stand together? There’s no such thing as partial unity?’

  So absorbed was Rose in this exchange, she almost missed a sound from the next-door flat. It might have been no more than a chair shifting, or the tread of a footstep, or the slight rearrangement of a timber floorboard, but as soon as she heard it, she turned down the volume.

  It was foolish to underestimate Elsa Bottomley.

  Elsa Bottomley could hear a bat-squeak of conversation. She knew when Rose woke and when she went to bed, and almost certainly every detail of her private life. She was wasted in the Transport division. She should have been one of those women in the Alliance Secret Communications HQ, with headphones on their ears, charting every illicit conversation, every breath of dissent.

  Her ear must be perpetually pressed to the wall.

  Rapidly, Rose swivelled the dial to the BBC and the jocular tones of an announcer filled the room. ‘This one’s for Hubert Smith from his granny, Mrs Sandra Smith. Hubert is ten tomorrow and going to his first ever meeting of the Alliance Boys. Congratulations Hubert, and your granny has asked for a marching song to get you in the mood!’ The BBC evening request show, an institution. Nothing suspicious there.

  Rose got up and paced around her room. The exchange she had heard on Freedom Radio made it impossible to settle. What did the panellist mean about free nations standing together? More importantly, what exactly was the Britain problem? Did it mean that Americans knew the truth about life in the Alliance? That they saw the oppression, the surveillance and the deprivation Britons suffered and believed them to be wrong?

  The questions would not go away, resounding in her head as she supplied her own, inadequate answers. Restlessly, she made toast, then tea, tidied her clothes, took up a piece of mending and put it down again. Eventually, to quieten her racing mind, she turned off the wireless, settled herself down and picked up Middlemarch.

  Without doubt it was Rose’s status as star of the team that meant the correcting of George Eliot’s masterpiece had fallen to her. She had only just begun the work, and already she knew she had never faced a challenge like it.

  When she first picked up the nine-hundred-page volume, her heart had sunk a little, but Rose set about approaching the task in her usual meticulous fashion – perusing the entire text and, as she went, diligently marking out with a pencil her first impressions of those passages that would infringe the Alliance line on feminine portrayal. No female protagonist should be overly intelligent, dominant or subversive, no woman to be rewarded for challenging a man, and no narrative should undermine in any way the Protector’s views of t
he natural relationship between the sexes.

  To begin with, Middlemarch was straightforward. Astonishingly so. The story was set in the nineteenth century at a time in England when women could not vote, had no rights, and their status was wholly dependent on that of their husband. The nineteen-year-old heroine, Dorothea Brooke, wanted to marry a severe, elderly scholar called Edward Casaubon so as to support him in his literary endeavours. This seemed wholly commendable. The twenty-six-year age gap between the pair was scarcely unusual in Alliance terms, and Dorothea’s justification for learning Latin and Greek to assist her husband was entirely appropriate. It would be my duty to study that I might help him the better in his great works. Dorothea quelled her naturally passionate nature to become a model of self-sacrifice, dedicated to providing Casaubon with secretarial aid. All this was fine. Even the title of Casaubon’s great work, The Key to All Mythologies, seemed to carry a ghostly ring of the Protector’s own magnum opus, The Myth of the Twentieth Century.

  And yet . . . as Rose read on, the novel took a different turn. Somehow, George Eliot managed to show that Dorothea should aspire to learning for its own sake, for herself, and not to assist her husband. That she should live in tune with her own noble, intelligent nature, rejecting passive submission to a male intellect. That she should take responsibility for her existence on her own terms.

  As with many of the novels she read now, Rose began to see her own life refracted through its pages. In Dorothea, who sought to devote her life to a cause and a passion, who yearned for a life beyond the strictures of femininity, who thrilled to the idea of opening books and hearing voices she had never expected, Rose saw herself.

  The more she became engrossed in Dorothea’s story, the more her heart expanded.

  She was so deeply absorbed that she no longer heard the grumble of the traffic outside or the sounds of her neighbours around her. Curled up in her armchair, under the glow of the desk lamp, she read on and on until the pencil dropped from her hand, and outside, the last vestiges of light gave way to a starless night.