Widowland

by C. J. Carey

  At that point, however, she stopped. Nauseated, she put down her pen, screwed up the paper and threw it in the bin.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Tuesday, 27th April

  ‘OK. Listen up, you two. Today I have an exclusive of my own.’

  Bridget Fanshaw assumed the mock demeanour of a minister delivering a scoop at the morning press conference.

  ‘The news is, I’m applying for a transfer. To the mainland.’

  She took a sip of milkshake, sat back and savoured the reaction as her announcement sank in.

  ‘You’re joking,’ said Helena.

  ‘You have no idea where you’ll end up,’ said Rose.

  Bridget looked around her. Coffee bars were all the rage, and the Soho Bar, with its booths of flaking, varnished wood and egg-yolk clapboard walls, was typical of its kind. The crimson leatherette seats felt stylish and modern, as did the cigarette machine, even if it was empty. The sound of ‘Crazy Man, Crazy’ by Bill Haley & His Comets issued from the jukebox and neon signs optimistically advertising Coca Cola and Pilsner beer jittered above the counter. The fact that the bar was a pastiche of its American counterparts made it an edgy venue – its very existence implied that America might offer better recreation than any Alliance paradise. Yet the Soho Bar and others like it were tolerated as the mark of a confident regime. Even if everyone knew that in America there would be hamburgers with melted cheese and chocolate milkshakes, whereas here the Krups espresso machine was almost certainly fake and the cappuccinos were made of Muckefuck.

  ‘Wherever it is, it’s got to be better than here.’

  Just as Jane Austen’s spinsters hankered for Bath, and Chekhov’s Three Sisters pined for Moscow, so a great many women in the Alliance dreamed of life on the mainland. They had never been there, so they had no idea what awaited them, apart from what they’d seen on newsreels and in magazines. It was a gamble; a step into the unknown, from which there was no return.

  ‘You’ll never get a job like you have here,’ said Rose.

  Bridget rolled her eyes.

  ‘I don’t care. Think of the food. The sausages. The beer!’

  Here, they were always hungry, even for the soggy toast in front of them, spread with margarine pungent with petroleum and a mauve chemical slime that passed for jam.

  ‘What’s to keep me?’

  Perhaps Bridget was right. Her accommodation in Kings Cross might be elite, but it was a gloomy basement, reeking of hops from the nearby brewery, and with walls that shook every time a train passed. Her parents were dead, and her only brother had been relocated.

  ‘Anyhow, Rose, you told me Germania was wonderful.’

  ‘That was different,’ Rose said awkwardly.

  ‘Because you went with a senior man.’

  ‘I mean, I’ve heard worrying things.’

  ‘What have you heard?’ demanded Bridget.

  It was hard to explain. Certainly, there was a snob factor attached to English staff. Rudolf Hess had employed English nannies for his children. The von Ribbentrops kept a library of English books. Yet . . . she had heard whispers. Gossip. ‘Pavement radio’, some people called it. And she remembered the terror in the eyes of the English Gretl who’d brought the tray to their room in the Hotel Excelsior.

  ‘They don’t always treat foreigners with respect. Even Gelis. Once you’re there, you have no rights.’

  ‘People will always spin tales to stop other people going. I can look after myself.’ Bridget hoovered up the foam from her glass. ‘Besides, I’ll have a friend when I get there. I’ve met a man.’

  Rose and Helena exchanged glances. With Bridget, it was always a man.

  ‘At the Grosvenor House reception the other night, I met an attaché with the Press Ministry there. His name’s Friedrich Bauer. Frightfully handsome. Single. I went back to his hotel. Don’t look at me like that! I’m not married.’

  Ostentatiously she drew out a packet of German Roxy cigarettes from her mackintosh pocket and offered them round. Roxys were made of good tobacco, aromatic and strong. They tasted of privilege.

  ‘Smoking?’ enquired Rose. Cigarettes were strongly discouraged for women, especially elite women, because of the Leader’s conviction that they damaged health and breeding potential. Some restaurants and bars carried tin signs banning women from smoking, but the Soho Bar, in its attempt to appear glamorous, presented a more relaxed facade.

  ‘There won’t be any smoking on the mainland.’

  ‘Who cares? Friedrich said I’d love it there. With my experience, I could maybe get a job on a newspaper. And I must be sure to look him up.’

  Rose took a cigarette and inhaled thoughtfully.

  ‘Do you remember Violet? From the Astrology Office?’

  A couple of years ago, Violet Thomas, a cool blonde who dreamed up daily horoscopes for syndication in the national press, had expressed a sudden yearning to go to the mainland. She had promised to stay in contact. She would write, and use her status as a Geli to make a return visit. Her aged parents, after all, would want to see their only child. She had never been heard of again.

  ‘Violet never came back,’ said Rose.

  ‘Maybe. And perhaps I won’t either. We can’t all be like you, Rose, smooching with a senior man who treats us to expensive dinners. Where is it this week? The Dorchester? Claridge’s?’

  It was true, as it happened. Martin had telephoned that morning to inform Rose that they would be dining together the next day.

  ‘He’s taking me to his club, actually.’

  ‘Well, I hope you enjoy it. You deserve it. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s too late to change my mind.’ Bridget’s eyes sparkled with excitement for the future. ‘I’ve handed in my cards and I’ve been issued with the papers. Come on! Be happy for me!’

  ‘It’s just . . .’ Rose stopped herself. Who was to say she was right anyway? Helena saved her the trouble, throwing herself on her friend, and squeezing her in a fierce hug.

  ‘We’ll miss you.’

  Bridget checked herself in her compact, then snapped it shut.

  ‘And I’ll miss you too, but I won’t miss much else. The problem with us is, we don’t have enough fun here. I intend to dance myself silly at the office Coronation party. It’ll be a lark.’

  Rose could see there was no point in trying to dissuade her.

  ‘Tell you what,’ Bridget beamed across the table. ‘That rehearsal at Westminster Abbey tomorrow morning. There’ll be a hundred film operators around the place and the Press team needs to check that the positions for the commenters and producers are hidden from view. The King doesn’t want technology spoiling a timeless event, I think that’s what he said. He’d really rather it wasn’t televised at all, but he’s no match for Fräulein Riefenstahl. How would you two like to come and watch? Even if I do get reprimanded, I don’t care – I’m demob happy.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Wednesday, 28th April

  It was like being on the battlements of some ancient castle looking down on a tattered brocade of bloodlines, tradition and deference. A pageantry of flags and banners hung between the tapered arches and French Gothic pillars, and unfurled over the marble statuary, obscuring every sightless saint. Filtered through the stained-glass windows, lozenges of light shimmered against the pale stone.

  Rose, Helena and Bridget had signed themselves out of the office on the pretext of Coronation preparations, which covered almost anything. Following Bridget’s lead, they clambered up a cramped spiral staircase into a small recess between two fluted pillars that looked down on the cavernous vault of Westminster Abbey. The camera to be positioned here would focus directly onto the spot where, in a ceremony descended directly from King Edgar in 973, Edward VIII would become the thirty-ninth English sovereign to be crowned. Nobody mentioned the thirty-eighth – the King’s younger brother, George VI, who had been crowned after Edward abdicated back in 1936.

  That was all blood under the bridge.

 
The three women rested their elbows on the cold stone, gazing a dizzying way down at the small party that had assembled to practise the Coronation ceremony. Directly below them stood the King, his strangely blank face with its deeply indented lines between nose and jaw giving him the appearance of a ventriloquist’s dummy. Already a diminutive figure, he looked even smaller from above – boyish almost, his hair lightened and his skin tanned from his recent Caribbean holiday. After golf and bridge, holidays were said to be his favourite thing.

  ‘I can hardly believe I’m here,’ whispered Rose.

  ‘Is that the actual King?’ said Helena.

  ‘Shh. Yes.’ Bridget rolled her eyes. ‘Keep as quiet as you can. I’ll be banged up if anyone discovers you’re here.’

  Rose shrank further behind a pillar, without tearing her eyes from the proceedings below.

  The nave was bathed in arc light and a series of podiums and gantries had been erected to hold the dozens of cameras that would be preserving the events for posterity. The abbey’s magnificent acoustics, designed by generations of mediaeval stonemasons to carry the voice of prayer to heaven, now enabled them to hear snippets of a distinctly less pious exchange.

  A figure in flowing robes of white and red bustled into the arena rubbing his hands in an ecstasy of supplication.

  ‘I’m really most awfully sorry to keep you waiting.’

  The Queen’s voice floated upwards, as sharp as a shard of glass in a Martini.

  ‘We’ve waited fifteen years, Archbishop, so I suppose a few minutes more won’t hurt us.’

  She wore a pale pink satin evening dress stitched with velvet chrysanthemums and a pair of high heels that clicked like gunshots on the ancient floor.

  The Archbishop’s apology, however, was directed elsewhere. He was gazing earnestly at a figure in long grey flannel trousers and a jockey cap who was approaching up the nave, a bunch of cameramen and her own personal photographer trailing in her wake. Leni Riefenstahl went up to the ancient oak throne in the manner of an actor scrutinizing a theatrical prop.

  ‘Can we move this chair?’

  She nudged it with her toe. The throne, battered and carved with the initials of ancient visitors, looked especially shabby in the phosphorescent light.

  ‘Ideally not,’ prevaricated the Archbishop. ‘It’s the Coronation throne. It goes back to 1296.’

  Leni Riefenstahl tossed the golden coils of her hair. The Protector might be obsessed, but history cut no ice with her.

  ‘Well, it needs to move. Here is awkward. It doesn’t go with the choreography.’

  The Archbishop winced. ‘The throne is central to the ceremony, Fräulein Riefenstahl. It’s named after Edward the Confessor. It’s only been moved from the abbey once, and that was for Oliver Cromwell.’

  With an exasperated snort, Leni turned aside and began to discuss takes, filters and apertures with the flock of cameramen tailing her.

  ‘I want the camera to pan from the crown and dissolve to the face of the Leader. He will look simple, dignified, modest. Above all this . . . flummery.’

  At that moment a figure who seemed the human embodiment of flummery entered the abbey.

  ‘That’s Fruity Metcalfe,’ whispered Bridget. ‘The King’s equerry.’

  He was hailed with obvious relief by the monarch.

  ‘Fruity! D’you have a light?’

  Fruity Metcalfe was wearing an outfit of frogged velvet that was as ridiculous as his name. Rose knew he had been best man at the King and Queen’s wedding, during their brief French exile in 1937. Now, many thousands of country weekends and golf games later, he was about to play a prominent role in their enthronement. Seizing a votive candle from a rack, he proffered its flame.

  ‘Thanks.’ The King shifted impatiently, fiddling with his cuffs. ‘This rehearsal is taking a godawful long time. If it goes on any longer, I’ll be up there with my forebears.’

  He nodded to the abbey walls, encrusted with the tombs of other, more memorable monarchs.

  ‘Let’s get on with it, Archbishop, shall we?’ said the Queen, in her trademark Baltimore twang.

  The cleric began a lengthy mumble about the timetable of the ceremony – the recognition, the oath, the anointing, the enthronement, the investiture and the homage.

  ‘I will place St Edward’s crown on the King’s head and before the anointing I shall say a few words along the lines of the fact that the Leader is the first from overseas to sit here since William the Conqueror, and how proud the nation had been then. Et cetera, et cetera.’

  Wallis paused to take a drag of a cigarette and looked around her. She was bored already and this wasn’t even the real thing. In search of diversion, she lit on the director with a malicious glint.

  ‘David and I enjoyed your movie, Fräulein Riefenstahl. Triumph of the Will. Frightfully theatrical. All those handsome soldiers in Nuremberg. A hundred and fifty thousand, wasn’t it? Can’t imagine how you got them all to stand still.’

  ‘That is the gift of a great director,’ replied Leni, briefly.

  ‘Well, I’m simply longing to hear what surprises you have planned for my lil’ old Coronation.’

  ‘Thank you, Your Majesty.’ Sarcasm glanced off Leni Riefenstahl like raindrops off a Panzer. ‘I have many plans.’

  ‘Oh, do tell.’

  Leni Riefenstahl folded her arms, signalling that her patience was an expensive commodity, and running short. She was a rival queen, glorious in her haughtiness.

  ‘Already, the entire structure of the film exists in my head. An oratorio to the majesty of monarchy and the glory of the Leader. We begin with the Leader’s car, gliding along the parade route like a Roman emperor, the footage intercut with faces in the crowd expressing their joy. Then we move to the golden carriage that contains you, the Queen and King. When you make your way up the aisle, some of my cameramen will be wearing roller skates so they can film the moving shots. I will have them dressed in uniform so they can blend with the crowd.’

  ‘Congregation,’ corrected the Archbishop. ‘On the subject of which, Fräulein, your request to pack the pews with massed ranks of the Schutzstaffel does, I confess, worry me a little. We have royal heads from around Europe and the world attending the service. Eight thousand guests in all. Dignitaries, presidents of local associations and so forth. Representatives of ancestral faiths – Zoroastrians, Muslims, Buddhists, Catholics and, er, Jews.’

  ‘Jews?’ enquired Leni Riefenstahl. Her voice curled like dry ice.

  ‘Are you kidding me, Archbishop?’ Wallis joined in. At last, a subject on which they could unite. ‘In a Christian church? I don’t really think they can expect to attend.’

  ‘Absolutely beyond the pale,’ added the King. This was no ventriloquist’s dummy speaking now. His eyes were a blaze of anger. ‘We saved our Jews, didn’t we? They ought to be damned grateful. What more can they ask?’

  At this point the conversation was obscured by the shouts of workmen erecting gantries for the television cameras, amid a clatter of scaffolding and the whine of an electric drill. One of the construction team pointed up towards the women’s cubby hole and they were forced to duck their heads for cover before climbing shakily back down the narrow stone stairs and emerging into the bustle of Parliament Square.

  ‘How’s that for a private view?’ said Bridget. ‘I never thought I’d get that close to the genuine King and Queen.’

  ‘What does he mean, he saved the Jews?’ said Rose.

  ‘No idea,’ said Helena absently.

  ‘Saved them from what?’

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ said Bridget. ‘But I’d better be getting back to the coalface. The Daily Mail wants to know the number of seed pearls used in the Queen’s Coronation robe and I have a story for the Mirror about how many baby girls born this year have been called Wallis. Who says the Press Office doesn’t perform a vital public service?’

  Rose and Helena walked on through the clear spring morning, dallying in the warm sunlight and delaying th
e moment they had to return to the Culture Ministry and the stack of work that awaited them. In Victoria Tower Gardens, a small park next to the House of Lords that overlooked the river, a squad of soldiers were drilling, their officer’s bark of command slicing the peaceful air and setting the pigeons aflutter.

  ‘You’ve been different these last few weeks, Rose. Like your mind is elsewhere. Or you’re worried about something.’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘Yes. It’s as though you’re constantly preoccupied.’

  Helena was about to ask Rose to reveal her terror, and Rose was about to lie. But instead Helena said, ‘I noticed, because I’ve been trying to tell you something. And there’s never been a good time.’

  ‘What is it? Something important?’

  ‘Kind of. ‘Do you have to rush back?’

  ‘I should, really.’

  ‘Would you come with me somewhere? Right now?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘It’s not far. Wait till we get there.’

  The house was one of those faceless wedges of Belgrave Square where wealth and power had solidified over generations into immaculate cream stucco. It was set on the corner of a block and protruded into the square like the prow of a battleship, its black door so glossy you could see your face in it. As they watched, a smart young Geli, visibly pregnant, her honey hair trained in a chignon and her swollen belly draped in a maroon coat, emerged from the building and clipped down the steps. She glanced at the girls with a knowing smile before heading off down the street.