Widowland

by C. J. Carey

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Sunday, 25th April

  ‘I understand the Leader arrives in Britain on Friday.’ One of Geoffrey’s golf acquaintances had a brother who worked at Heston airport. ‘It’s all very hush-hush.’

  ‘Then perhaps we shouldn’t be speaking about it,’ replied Rose tartly, if only to shut him up.

  In the car mirror, Geoffrey flicked her a look of pure hatred. She hoped Hannah didn’t see.

  ‘Is that an official reprimand, Rose? Only I understood Alliance citizens were still permitted to discuss national events in their own cars.’

  ‘Oh, Geoffrey, don’t fly off the handle. Rose was only being careful.’ Celia gave a tight smile from the front seat of the Jaguar and resumed staring out of the window. ‘If we’re going all this way, we might as well try to get on.’

  Hannah, sitting in the back seat next to Rose, squeezed her hand. The child’s other hand trailed in the thick fur of their father’s dog, Rollo, who was seated between them. Geoffrey had been reluctant to bring the dog, objecting that it would be sick on the leather of his Jaguar, and even if it wasn’t, would make the car smell for weeks, but Hannah had protested, and faced with a journey leaden with his daughter’s tears, Geoffrey had given in. Swift capitulation to greater forces was a hallmark of his character, and just occasionally everyone benefitted.

  Rose and Celia’s mother had opted not to accompany them, preferring instead to take a bus ride to Oxford Circus to ‘look at the crowds’. Celia, who would have loved to accompany her, was sympathetic to this choice, but Rose was incredulous.

  ‘How could you turn down the opportunity to visit your own husband, Mum? You’ve not seen him for more than a week. He must be desperate to see you.’

  If her mother felt uncomfortable or guilty, she wasn’t showing it.

  ‘I don’t want to overexcite him. Dad needs expert care. It’s what the doctor said. You’ve no idea what a strain it was, Rose.’

  ‘But he’s all alone in a strange hospital. He must think we’ve abandoned him.’

  Her mother’s face took on a pettish expression. ‘I love your dad, God knows, but the trouble with your father, Rose, is he could never avoid a row. He never knew how to keep quiet. You have to know when to keep your mouth shut in life, don’t you?’

  Rose adored her mother. With her pillowy cheeks and petal-soft skin, her girlish beauty echoed the fact that, in many ways, Mum had never much matured. She hated confrontation and was happiest singing along to the piano, listening to her favourite wireless programme, Music While You Work, flicking through women’s magazines or doing jigsaw puzzles. Apart from Oscar Stephenson, she couldn’t bear any discussion of politics, or what she called ‘unpleasantness’. Their father had always indulged her like a child and their happiest times were when he would take her dancing, or to the seaside. His ‘episodes’, however, had increasingly intruded on this peaceful existence, and Rose had to accept that her mother was relieved to have him tidied away.

  Abandoning the argument, Rose allowed herself to be drawn into a discussion of plans for the street party Geoffrey was co-ordinating like the Battle of the Somme.

  All morning, she had been sick with anxiety. A week had passed, and still she had no answer for the Commissioner. Bruno Schumacher had seemed certain that the Friedas were at the bottom of the insurgency, but even if one person was caught red-handed, that would still not prove who was co-ordinating the action. Yet if she had nothing to tell the Commissioner, he might seriously carry out his threat to have Rose and Martin investigated by the Morality Office. What might the consequences be? Not only to Martin, but to Celia and perhaps even Hannah?

  There was only one course of action, and it weighed on her with a mixture of dread and fascination.

  As soon as possible she would have to return to Widowland.

  The nursing home, in Midhurst, was a stolid Edwardian house with bars on the lower windows. The Jaguar crunched down a long drive, flanked with elm trees, and pulled up on a semi-circle of gravel. From the distance came the sound of a lawnmower and the smell of cut grass, while a gardener trudged around the beds, poking the earth with a hoe.

  They were greeted in the entrance hall by a tight-faced Paula dressed in nurses’ whites and rubber shoes. Her wire-wool hair was clipped beneath a starched cap and her face was as pinched as a pair of surgical pliers. She led them down an endless corridor of repeated arched doorways, a sea of herringbone parquet reeking of polish and some indeterminate but sinister chemical. A doctor in a white coat strode by officiously. Swing doors banged as Paulas manoeuvred trolleys laden with drugs. Glancing through an open door, Rose caught sight of a ward lined with supine patients. She flinched as she saw two orderlies prop up an old man and administer a glass of what looked like milk but almost certainly wasn’t.

  The smell, and the faceless corridors, gripped her with dread. What kind of nursing home had bars on the windows?

  ‘Mr Ransom was a bit unsettled when he arrived, but he’s calmer now the doctor has adjusted his medication,’ said the Paula, by way of conversation. As they progressed, Rollo’s meaty tail began to wag and he pulled on his lead, padding faster, his paws clicking on the parquet.

  ‘Extraordinary how they know,’ observed Celia. ‘You’d think he actually wants to be here.’

  ‘Just as well. None of the rest of us does,’ murmured Geoffrey, who had relinquished his morning round of golf with exceptionally bad grace.

  The nurse opened a door.

  ‘He’s not talking much, but he’s very thoughtful, aren’t you, Mr Ransom?’

  Rose’s father was seated in an armchair, staring at a stone slab of sky that lay beyond the barred window. He did not turn immediately. He exhibited that subtle change in appearance common to all patients, which makes a week in hospital seem so much longer. His hair was brushed differently, in lanky strands, and hollows had appeared in his cheeks. He wore his own shirt, but the braces had been taken from his trousers and he had no tie. A thin crust of saliva ran down the side of his mouth and his posture was slightly slumped. There had been times, in the past, when Dad travelled to another place, and could not be reached, his eyes glassy, like a mannequin. Was this one of those times, or was it the medication?

  ‘Morning, Father,’ boomed Geoffrey. There was no response.

  Celia went over to her father and kissed him and at the same time the dog, wild with excitement, jumped up and put his paws on the chair, licking the old man’s face.

  ‘We’ve brought Rollo,’ said Celia, redundantly.

  Mr Ransom turned his milky eyes, bent down and buried his face in the dog’s fur and kept it there. When he lifted his head, Rose saw that Rollo’s fur was wet. She had never seen her father cry. She had never, in fact, seen any man cry, but the poignancy of seeing her valiant, beloved father reduced to sobs made tears prick her own eyes. She leaned down, rubbing her face across his cheek. He smelled strange, of unwashed linen and carbolic soap.

  ‘Dad.’

  Gently, he pushed her away and gruffly broke his silence.

  ‘There are plenty of people who should cry, but not you, Rosalind.’

  ‘Why d’you call her that, Grandad?’ demanded Hannah. ‘She’s called Rose.’

  ‘I always wondered,’ said Geoffrey, with the air of someone determined to change the subject, ‘about those names.’

  Rose turned towards him. ‘Dad loves Shakespeare. He named us after Shakespearean heroines. Celia and Rosalind.’

  Drowsily, their father murmured,

  Thus Rosalind of many partsBy heavenly synod was devised,Of many faces, eyes, and heartsTo have the touches dearest prized.

  ‘Very appropriate,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I don’t know about a heavenly synod, but Rose is certainly admired in the highest places.’ A spiteful smirk. ‘Or so we hear.’

  ‘It’s a play called As You Like It,’ Celia explained to Hannah. ‘It’s a bit unusual, because it has heroines at the centre of it, rather than heroes. Celia and Rosa
lind are two girls who are escaping from court. They go out into the Forest of Arden and they have to dress in disguise. It’s a journey of discovery.’

  ‘We don’t need the entire plot, thank you, Celia. We get the gist.’

  It was easy to see why Geoffrey had been attracted to Celia. He was, as someone said, a cage in search of a bird.

  Rose proffered the bunch of daffodils she had brought.

  ‘Got you some flowers, Dad.’

  She cast around for a vase. The room was almost bare. Just two chairs, a bed and a minute cabinet provided for inmates to store their paltry possessions. Spectacles, pills, hand cream. An empty vase was there too, next to a photograph that Rose recognized.

  It had been taken in the summer of 1939 – a time of foreboding, when the country seemed poised on the edge of war, uncertain if Chamberlain and Halifax between them could save it. The four of them were pictured on a bench in the garden – the glimmer of the greenhouse just behind. Her father, in shirtsleeves and braces, a smile on his handsome, good-natured face. Mother, even in her drab pinafore and bundled-up hair, as lovely as she was at twenty-one. To one side Celia, arch and knowing, head angled for the most flattering shot, and on the other, Rose, a hand draped lightly on her father’s shoulder.

  Rose squinted curiously at her fifteen-year-old self, recognizing at once the expression of watchful detachment, and the sense that she was apart from everything that went on around her.

  ‘You’re looking well, Father,’ Geoffrey lied.

  Rose filled the vase and plunged the daffodils in it, then sat beside her father, her fingers linked through his.

  ‘Geoffrey’s right, Dad. Which means they can’t keep you here long. There’s nothing wrong with you that a bit of rest won’t cure.’

  ‘Why does Grandad need to rest?’ demanded Hannah.

  ‘Shh, Hannah,’ said Celia.

  ‘I don’t,’ said their father shortly.

  ‘Tell you what, sweetheart.’ Geoffrey summoned a tone of bonhomie that must have cost him dear, and smiled at Hannah. ‘Why don’t we give Rollo a run in the garden?’

  As the pair of them disappeared, Rose continued holding her father’s hand and Celia chatted about the plans for the Coronation.

  ‘First we’re going to the golf club where they’ve set up a television. I can’t wait to watch the parade. You’ve no idea how many crowned heads are coming. The Sultan of Zanzibar. The Crown Prince of Japan. The Queen of Tonga. Isn’t that funny? I didn’t even know that Tonga had a queen. She’s six foot three and frightfully fat, apparently. She’s come over in a canoe. Then we’re expecting two hundred people for the street party. Geoffrey’s organizing all the Gretls to wash the pavement and we’re having trestle tables down the middle of the road. He’s hanging posters of the Leader from the windows. And the King and Queen, of course.’

  Celia’s conversation ran on and on, as fluffy as fake whipped cream in a sponge cake. Their father stared blearily into the distance, but his fingers twisted incessantly in Rose’s hand, as if in agitation.

  ‘Don’t know what we’ll do when it’s all over. Nobody’s talked of anything but robes, tiaras, postillions, coronets and tea towels for weeks. Somebody’s even invented a new dish called Coronation Chicken. Cold chicken, mayonnaise and two tablespoons of curry powder – to represent the Indian colonies, you see. It’s going to be served at the royal banquet, so somebody – well, Mrs Herbert from next door – said why don’t we make it ourselves? That way we can really feel in the swing.’

  Outside, the garden was bathed in brilliant sunshine. Through the barred windows came the breath of recently mown grass, lying in faded stripes on the lawn. A strange fractured cry, like that of a wild bird, echoed across the herbaceous borders, and looking out, Rose saw a woman tussling between the arms of two Paulas. Behind them a couple of patients in wheelchairs were being pushed along the paths, their bodies silted with drugs, their posture as stiff and motionless as Guy Fawkes dummies. Rose could not stop thinking of something she had come across a couple of days ago – a discovery that brought fear, like a wash of acid, to her mouth.

  It had arisen when she tried to work out how to deal with the mad woman in Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë’s portrayal of Rochester’s first wife, Bertha Mason, was directly in line with Alliance protocol. It might have been made for the posters and propaganda films that had been circulated for many years by Minister Goebbels’ department. From the 1930s onwards, short information films produced by the Racial and Political Office played in cinemas throughout Germany to illustrate the problem of subhumans. Imbeciles and idiots were portrayed as terrifying figures, grovelling on filthy floors, raging with haggard faces and empty eyes. In that respect Jane Eyre’s terrifying encounter with Bertha Mason seemed right on target.

  What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face.

  Rose’s problem came when correcting Jane Eyre’s reaction to Rochester’s dilemma. Surely a true heroine would pity Rochester for his ties to a monster and congratulate his attempt to keep her under the care of a nurse? Instead of which, Jane Eyre abandoned him. To leave such a noble, high-born man was not only selfish, but unfeminine, and contrary to every model of female behaviour.

  Mentally, Rose posed herself the question that was supposed to solve any tricky edit.

  What would Minister Goebbels do?

  There were no set rules for Fiction Correctors – they operated on instinct and a general understanding of Alliance attitudes – but short of calling up Minister Goebbels himself, Rose had to cast around for other guidance.

  She found it eventually, in a document that had been compiled back in 1939 on the mainland, entitled ‘Hereditary Health and Racial Hygiene’. It had been authored, apparently, by the Leader’s own physician, Dr Karl Brandt, and its guidance was therefore impeccable.

  In the first instance, various categories of madness including imbecility, schizophrenia, epilepsy and social deviance merited compulsory sterilization. Yet, the document continued, those patients in care homes and special hospitals who, after a most critical diagnosis, on the basis of human judgement are considered incurable, would be deemed unworthy of life and granted Gnadentod.

  Rose had to read it several times.

  Gnadentod. Merciful death.

  Mad people beyond cure were granted merciful death.

  Now her thoughts returned anxiously to her father, slumped in his chair. Dad wasn’t mad. He might be drowsy and disorientated, but he was in full possession of his faculties. He was highly intelligent and could recite Shakespeare from memory. Anyone could see that. Couldn’t they?

  Celia was still chatting about the street party, filling the emptiness like someone inflating balloons, unleashing every bright thought that floated into her head.

  ‘The lovely thing is that everyone comes together in a proper community, Geoffrey says. He’s given everyone a task. I’m making fish paste sandwiches. And all the children are to have fruit gums and Spangles.’

  At last their father stirred.

  ‘Sounds quite a festival.’

  ‘Oh, it will be!’

  ‘Can I come?’

  Celia shot Rose a panicky glance.

  ‘I don’t think . . . I mean, the doctors think . . . that you need to stay here for a while, Dad. For treatment.’

  Rose looked at the medication on top of the cabinet and picked up a brown bottle.

  ‘What exactly are they giving you, Dad?’

  ‘Those are just aspirin. They’re not going to leave anything there,’ said Celia soberly. ‘They don’t want people taking their own pills.’

  ‘They’re to help me sleep,’ their father replied.

  ‘Do you have trouble sleeping?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  He struggled to sit up
straighter, propping himself with effort by gripping the arms of the chair and staring ahead, as if trying to focus.

  ‘Too many of us are asleep. That’s the problem. We need to wake up.’

  As he spoke, the dog dashed back into the room followed by Hannah and Geoffrey, who clasped his hands together decisively, as if preparing to snap a neck.

  ‘Well, fat chance of any sleep for me. I’ve a thousand things to do before next week. No rest for the wicked.’

  ‘You’re not wicked, Daddy, are you?’ queried Hannah. ‘Are you? Is Daddy wicked?’

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense, Hannah,’ said Celia.

  ‘Time waits for no man,’ said Geoffrey, reaching deeper into his personal collection of clichés. ‘We’d best be off, Father. Bye for now.’

  Mr Ransom gave only an inarticulate snort, and a half-hearted wave of dismissal.

  Celia, Rose and Hannah kissed him and followed Geoffrey out of the door.

  They made their way down the long corridor and onto the drive where Geoffrey’s navy blue Jaguar glinted in the sun. He ran a proprietary hand along the bonnet, like it was a racehorse.

  ‘I think that’s proof if you needed it that we did the right thing. He’s in the proper place for an old man with his problems.’

  ‘Oh, do stop it, Geoffrey,’ said Celia, more sharply than Rose had ever heard. She fixed her headscarf with a savage tug. ‘Just for once. Let’s just get going, shall we.’

  ‘Wait.’ Rose stopped. ‘Rollo’s lead. I left it in Dad’s room.’

  Geoffrey sighed theatrically and turned, but Rose stopped him.

  ‘No. Don’t worry. I’ll get it.’

  Before he could object, she retraced her steps swiftly through the corridor towards her father’s room.

  Dad was still sitting exactly as they had left him, hands gripping the arms of the chair, gaze fixed on the daffodils whose gilded blaze lit up and transfigured the room.