Widowland

by C. J. Carey

  As she closed the door his eyes flickered towards her. Kneeling down by his face, she put her mouth to his ear.

  ‘I’m going to get you out of here, Dad. I promise.’

  The eyes were keen now, and the face animated. He looked quite different. Almost his old self.

  ‘Rosalind. I knew you’d come. There’s something. There.’

  She followed his gaze.

  ‘Is it this you want?’

  It was the family photograph in its ornate gilt frame.

  ‘Pass it to me.’

  He took it, but instead of studying the photo he turned it over, withdrew the picture and laid it down. Then he slid his thumb beneath the frame and edged it away to reveal, inside the moulding of the frame, a tiny cavity.

  ‘Some time ago it occurred to me to prepare something for my quietus.’

  It was a glass phial, no bigger than a baby’s thumb, containing a white powder.

  ‘Remember Dr Freeman? He gave it to me.’

  ‘Sophy’s father?’

  ‘He was helping all his friends.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Her father didn’t answer directly, but held it out on his outstretched palm.

  ‘Let’s just call it a gift. I won’t need it now, so I’m giving it to you. It’s all I have. You may never need it either, but if you’re my daughter, you just might.’

  Rose took the phial and plunged it into her pocket. She had a good idea what it was, but she couldn’t bear to ask any more.

  Kneeling, she took her father’s face in her hands.

  ‘I remember the poetry, Dad. All of it. I think of it all the time.’

  He smiled. The moment of lucidity was over, and he was retreating somewhere she could not follow.

  As she straightened up, he said, ‘Be careful, Rosalind. They know everything.’

  ‘What do they know?’

  ‘Where you go, who you are, what you eat and drink. They know your dreams.’

  ‘My dreams?’

  ‘Of course. Why do you think they’re so frightened?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Monday, 26th April

  At the guard post the sagging, chain-link fence was still tangled and twisted, but beside it a new concrete pillar had been erected, with a coil of barbed wire snaking like savage bindweed up its length. On the top a spotlight fixed Rose with a glassy eye.

  Inside the guard hut, a sentry was studying the Oxford Mail.

  Excitement mounts as Leader’s visit approaches. City selected as first attraction on whistle-stop tour

  He laid the paper aside reluctantly as Rose slid her ID through the window.

  ‘What’s all this for?’ she said, gesturing at the spotlight.

  ‘Extra security.’

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘Curfew violations.’

  Beside him, a hunched Alsatian with patchy fur issued a low growl. The sentry prodded the dog with the tip of his jackboot.

  ‘So better make sure you’re out by dusk. Unless you want to get stuck here.’

  He gave Rose’s photograph a perfunctory glance before returning it with an ironic grin.

  ‘Welcome to Widowland, Fräulein.’

  The route to the widows’ house was deserted. Rose knew the houses would be largely empty because most Friedas left in the early morning for their factories and places of work. Yet all the same, she found herself glancing over her shoulder, as though even in these mean streets she might be observed.

  Nothing looked back. Except for a rat, which paused its exploration of a baked bean can to stare at her boldly, before disappearing beneath a bicycle with broken spokes.

  Rose had telephoned ahead to ask the authorities to ensure that all the previous interviewees stay at home for another session of questions. Even before she had knocked, Kate opened the door, and gestured her inside.

  The destruction of the previous week’s raid was still evident, but the Friedas had made valiant efforts to put the damage right. The ripped sofa had been carefully draped with a blanket. In place of the smashed china shepherdesses, an old jam jar filled with buttercups, twigs and birds’ feathers sat on the mantelpiece and the spot on the wall where the Canaletto had hung was now occupied by a painting of a wheat field.

  Rose settled on the William Morris chair, whose lacerations had been neatly stitched, while Kate, Sylvia, Sarah and Vanessa gathered around her circumspectly.

  ‘About that police visit the other day,’ she began. ‘I was shocked. I want you to know I made an official complaint. I saw a senior officer and informed him how badly his men had behaved.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Kate. ‘Though if you’d asked us first, we would have preferred you not to. We’ll be targeted more than ever now.’

  ‘Oh, don’t say that, Kate!’ Vanessa intervened soothingly. ‘It was kind of Fräulein Ransom.’

  ‘Rose. Please call me Rose.’

  It was strange how comfortable she felt talking to these Friedas, when just a few weeks ago she would have been horrified to find herself in the same room as them. She knew she should correct them for addressing her as an equal and she should certainly not invite them to use her Christian name, but nobody was watching, and besides, a relaxed atmosphere was likely to generate more information, which was essential if she was to compile a report for the Commissioner.

  As she pulled out her notebook, the cat jumped up and kneaded its head against Rose’s hand, asking to be stroked. As she caressed the ripple of fur along its spine the animal purred and arched its back, and a memory returned of her family’s pet cat Tom, an impish tabby they had owned before the Alliance. He had disappeared shortly afterwards and she had not thought of Tom for years.

  ‘Oh, I almost forgot. I brought you this.’

  She took a package from her bag and placed it on the orange box table. It was a small container of silver cardboard featuring a garishly painted belly dancer hiding coyly behind purple veils amid a crowd of lascivious men in robes. Across the lid ran the scrolly legend Turkisches Entzücken. A gift from Martin after a recent trip.

  ‘Turkish delight!’ exclaimed Sarah, in girlish excitement.

  The widows’ eyes gleamed.

  ‘I haven’t eaten that in decades,’ said Sylvia. ‘My parents used to buy it for us every Christmas.’

  ‘I had it once in Turkey,’ commented Kate. ‘In a bazaar in Istanbul, just after the war.’

  Vanessa picked the box up reverently.

  ‘All right if I open it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Inside, a clutch of translucent ruby cubes, glistening with dusted sugar, nestled in pink tissue paper. All four Friedas stared at the treasure. It was almost certainly more sugar than they had seen for years. Rose had been hoarding the gift for the Coronation celebrations, but that seemed less important now.

  ‘We haven’t had sweets since we’ve been here,’ said Sarah, examining the box with pleasure. ‘We don’t have a sugar ration. We have to rely on the bees.’

  ‘I’m glad you like it.’

  ‘Mind if we eat one now?’ asked Vanessa eagerly.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  The women handed the box around and each took a cube, allowing a solemn silence as the sweet melted slowly in their mouths. When the box was passed to Rose she declined swiftly.

  ‘Oh, no thank you. I don’t have a sweet tooth.’

  For a short while a companionable silence reigned until the kitchen door opened and another woman entered carrying a pile of logs. She was about to cast them into a basket, when she caught sight of Rose and straightened up.

  She was older than the others, in her late sixties perhaps, yet she exuded the energy of a woman half her age. She had a broad, almost mannish face, a strong nose and a commanding air. She must once have been beautiful, but her greying hair was straggly now and a bloodshot vein spidered the white of one eye. She wore a torn shirt, a pair of men’s trousers and scuffed tan gloves.

  Rose recognized her immediately. The Frie
da in the street who had been arrested on suspicion of painting graffiti and whose police statement had been shown to her by Bruno Schumacher.

  ‘This is Adeline Adams,’ said Kate, closing the lid of the Turkish delight and surreptitiously sliding it beneath a pile of papers. ‘Adeline, this is Fräulein Ransom.’

  Adeline fixed Rose with a sharp, appraising glance before crossing the room, and removing her glove to clasp her hand in a firm grip.

  ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Fräulein Ransom. I heard about your previous visit. It sounded eventful. I’m sorry I wasn’t here.’

  ‘I’ve heard about you too,’ said Rose. ‘In fact, I think I saw you being arrested.’

  ‘Did you? It was annoying, considering I’d only just got out of their clutches. Though I hasten to add,’ she said with heavy emphasis, ‘that no charges were brought against me.’

  As if to forestall further insubordination, Sarah leapt in.

  ‘Fräulein Ransom’s undertaking research concerning some particular interests of the Protector.’

  Adeline looked unimpressed.

  ‘I’ve always wondered what the Protector is particularly interested in.’

  Rose chose to ignore the undertow of sarcasm.

  ‘He’s keen to know more about ancient English superstitions.’

  ‘You mean like this?’

  Adeline reached for a buttercup from the jar on the mantelpiece, plucked one out and brought it up close to Rose’s face. Her proximity felt uncomfortable.

  ‘My mother always said these flowers would reveal if you liked butter. A soft gleam on your skin if you do. If you don’t like butter, then nothing at all. But I think that’s a crazy superstition, don’t you, Fräulein Ransom? How could a little yellow flower signify anything?’

  Rose sat immobile. She understood the implication instantly; anyone would. This was a direct challenge, if not a taunt, to see if she would acknowledge the fact that yellow flowers were the symbol of resistance. Every citizen knew that, but to admit it would be to acknowledge the very fact that the regime might be resisted, and that was a crime in itself.

  ‘I’ll take a note of it.’

  Frowning, she bent her head and leafed stiffly through the pages.

  ‘I wonder if I could ask some more questions about your memories. The Protector is especially interested in ancestral folktales. He believes they have their roots in an ancient time when our two nations were more closely joined.’

  ‘I’m sure we’d all like to help, Fräulein Ransom,’ Sylvia interjected coolly, ‘but I wonder. Are you sure you should be asking this?’

  Rose was surprised at such impertinence. But instead of reprimanding Sylvia for asking a Geli a direct question, she said, ‘Why on earth do you say that?’

  ‘I was led to understand that memory is treacherous.’

  Memory is treacherous. The familiar motto resounded instantly in Rose’s brain. It was like that with all Government catchphrases. They stuck in the mind like rags on a barbed-wire fence, fluttering, distracting, ineradicable. Simple slogans that became mental roadblocks which you needed to dodge round to reach any original thoughts. Like advertising jingles, they were sandwiched between programmes on the wireless, and chanted in schools and community meetings. Memory is treacherous. Especially memories of the Time Before.

  Technically Sylvia was right, though questioning a Geli on official Protectorate business could not be more reprehensible. Rose hesitated for a second, wondering how to proceed. She ought to persist, but her questions about childhood memories were, after all, only a cover for her actual, more pressing investigation. She had just a few days to discover if these women were involved in criminal activities that could affect the Leader’s visit.

  The urgency of the mission brought a fresh lurch of nerves and she changed the subject.

  ‘I noticed, when I came in, that a new searchlight has been installed at the guard post.’

  ‘The authorities do seem to have a curious fear of older women,’ commented Adeline. ‘Perhaps it’s justifiable.’

  ‘The sentry said it was due to curfew violations.’

  ‘Extraordinary,’ commented Sylvia. ‘As if anyone would want to escape Widowland.’

  ‘I suppose it’s for show, but I can’t understand why they’ve bothered,’ said Sarah. ‘There are plenty of holes in the fence for anyone who really wants to get in or out after hours. There’s no way the authorities are going to waste scarce resources on repairing an entire boundary.’

  ‘I for one would prefer they spent the money on our housing,’ ventured Vanessa. ‘These places really are very cramped.’

  ‘But at least you have company,’ said Rose. ‘No Frieda is condemned to live alone. You have companions.’

  ‘Not that we get to choose,’ said Sylvia.

  ‘How do they select who goes with whom?’

  ‘I heard the authorities allocate women on the basis of whether they are likely to get along,’ said Adeline.

  ‘That’s something, I suppose.’

  ‘I think what Adeline means,’ said Kate with icy deliberation, ‘is that they choose people who won’t get along. Characters who might rub each other up the wrong way. They’re not looking to foster happy friendships.’

  Even as she said it, Rose saw that it was true. It was entirely plausible that the authorities would select groups on the basis of incompatibility. Adeline and Kate were a prime example. Two strong women who seemed perpetually to clash. Merely talking to them made Rose feel like Odysseus navigating between the mythical female monsters Scylla and Charybdis. As for the others, Sylvia was reserved, but sceptical and spiky. Vanessa was kind-hearted and obviously hated conflict and Sarah was the peacemaker. They were all very different, and that difference was designed to reduce strong bonds. Primary loyalty must always be to the Alliance itself.

  Her gaze fell on the oil painting on the wall opposite. Something about the landscape transfixed her. What should have been a pleasant and harmless subject, a field of wheat beneath an open sky, was rendered dark and menacing. The sky writhed disturbingly and the blazing gold seemed to throb from the frame.

  ‘Who painted that?’

  ‘I did,’ said Vanessa. ‘It’s a poor copy, I’m afraid. After Van Gogh.’

  ‘Van . . . ?’

  Rose recognized the name, but could not place it. She suspected the painter was degenerate. On the mainland, from 1937 onwards, a tranche of artists had been outlawed and their works removed from public display. Painting, like fiction, was subject to a blizzard of regulations and one of Rose’s colleagues in the Art department had once taken her through the checklist. No colours to be used that were not from nature, no painting the sky green or the sun purple or the trees blue. No art that distorted the human figure or deviated from the Nordic ideal. Once the Alliance was formed these rules were imported to Britain and degenerate artists dealt with accordingly.

  Yet even if he was degenerate, Kate seemed determined not to let the subject drop.

  ‘You must know Vincent Van Gogh!’

  ‘I don’t see why,’ said Vanessa defensively. ‘Fräulein Ransom’s a busy woman.’

  ‘He’s not the kind of artist you forget.’

  ‘I do forget things, though,’ Rose admitted. ‘Increasingly.’

  Memory was like a muscle. The less you used it, the less it worked.

  As Kate opened her mouth to reply, Sarah leaned forward.

  ‘It’s the same for me. Sometimes, I can hardly remember my husband’s face. I wonder, would you like to see our garden?’

  As they walked down the narrow brick path, fringed with ramshackle cold frames and raised beds crafted from old timber, Rose sensed the others standing at the window, their eyes burning into her back. Sarah touched the shrubs as she went, trailing her fingers along their leaves as though they were living companions.

  ‘Our lovely Cox’s Orange Pippin,’ she murmured, caressing the bark of one tree as though it produced globes of gold rather than, as Rose
suspected, a harvest of gnarled and bird-pecked apples.

  ‘And this one’s a Bramley. Isn’t that lucky?’

  ‘I guess so,’ Rose allowed.

  ‘We trade among ourselves,’ Sarah said. ‘Some households grow potatoes or onions. Others grow strawberries and soft fruit. We have leeks and carrots. We’re only eligible for very short rations, you see, and strictly we’re supposed to hand in what we grow ourselves, but they very rarely check, and besides, there’s no choice. Otherwise we wouldn’t survive.’

  She looked at Rose warily, out of the side of her eye, as though she was determined to nurture the frail trust between them like one of her own tender plants.

  ‘What Kate said, about us not getting along . . .’

  ‘I won’t mention it.’

  ‘I know you have your important work for the Protector, and other things that we can’t begin to understand . . .’

  She didn’t need to elaborate. Rose realized that Sarah knew, and all the widows knew, that she was a Government spy.

  ‘But you see, a comment like that would count as subversion. Any complaint about the nature of our accommodation risks severe penalties and we’re none of us young and vigorous. Vanessa has her arthritis. Kate gets all sorts of headaches because of her eyesight and even Adeline is taking a while to recover from her recent interrogation.’

  What were these penalties to which Sarah referred? What punishment could be worse than living in these dilapidated habitations, with their creeping mould and flaking plaster and damp brickwork? Yet no sooner had she asked herself the question, than Rose began to imagine the answer.

  ‘I won’t say anything. I promise. You have my word.’

  ‘Thank you. And not that you will ever need it, but we’re in your debt.’

  When Rose reached home that evening, she began the letter.

  Findings of research into insurgency in Oxford Widowlands

  Category: Highly Confidential

  Herr Commissioner,

  I am writing to report on my two visits to Oxford, with regard to the alleged suspected insurgency by Class VI females. I met a Fräulein Kate Wilson, who was aware of the author Mary Wollstonecraft and repeated several lines of her heresy in my hearing. Fräulein Wilson is a former journalist who appears to know the work of this degenerate writer by heart. In addition, I encountered a Fräulein Adeline Adams, recently arrested on grounds of suspected defacement of public buildings, who suggested that the authorities were rightly in fear of older women. With reference to the availability of painting materials available at the address, another of the household, Fräulein Vanessa Cavendish, showed me a work by the degenerate artist Vincent Van Gogh that she had recently reproduced . . .