Widowland

by C. J. Carey

  Against the wall was a series of curtained booths. On each table stood a small pink shaded lamp that threw out a pool of light – just enough for two people to see each other while casting the rest of the place into shadow.

  Oliver ushered her onto a seat and settled himself opposite.

  Cigarette smoke drifted over shafts of lamplight. Rose was aware of couples dancing around them, the bare flesh of the women’s arms gleaming in the ceiling chandelier, along with the flash of paste diamonds and insignia on the men’s uniforms. The booth had the effect of cutting them off from the world, as though just the two of them existed, in a warm, rose-tinted cocoon.

  He poured her a glass of Alliance gin. It tasted oily and bitter, as though it was drugged.

  ‘Sorry, again, if I surprised you. I don’t make a habit of it. I was just following on from that suggestion I made back in Oxford, that we might have a drink together.’

  ‘You didn’t mention the drink would be Alliance gin.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have come if I had.’

  He tipped his glass at her.

  Rose smiled wanly. The events of the past twenty-four hours had pulled the ground from beneath her feet, but this warm, smoky basement felt like a refuge from the chaos of her existence.

  ‘How d’you know this place?’

  ‘I have a drink here some evenings. When I want to blot everything out with the aid of alcohol.’

  She wasn’t surprised. Alcohol was the fuel that the Alliance ran on and for most people regular oblivion was a necessity.

  Rose stared around her, wishing she had worn something more appropriate than the blouse and pencil skirt that she had thrown on, when all the other Gelis in this place were decked in the latest evening gowns.

  She fixed on a man who was moving from table to table with a pack of cards.

  Oliver followed her gaze.

  ‘That’s worth watching. He’s a close-up magician.’

  The man was a shabby character, in his fifties, wearing a threadbare velvet smoking jacket and a bow tie. A cigarette dangled from his lips and on his briefcase in fading print were the words Magic Stan. The Card Man.

  Magic Stan’s hands were deft and flexible, shuffling, flicking and cutting the deck before fanning the cards out in front of his customers, who craned over them, watching every move, determined to spot the trick.

  ‘I used to love magic tricks when I was a boy,’ said Oliver. ‘At one point – probably about the age of eleven – I thought it was all I wanted to do in life. Be a full-time magician.’

  A delighted cry came from the table as Magic Stan retrieved a card from a Geli’s sleeve.

  ‘It’s the three of diamonds! The three of diamonds!’

  ‘That’s incredible,’ muttered her companion, a perspiring Bavarian in a double-breasted dinner jacket. Rather than impressed, he looked angry that he’d allowed himself to be tricked.

  ‘You try again, my friend, you won’t catch me out.’

  Sensing the bridling violence, Stan bowed and moved swiftly on. As he approached their table, he leaned towards Rose.

  ‘I can never resist a beautiful lady.’

  Rose smiled. Close up, Stan reeked of sweat and there were ebony smudges on his neck where his hair dye had run.

  ‘Does the lovely lady have a photograph? Your identity card perhaps?’

  Rose took out her wallet, placed it on the table and removed the card that by law she carried everywhere with her, identifying her as an Alliance Female Class I (a). Two pictures of herself stared out, front and profile, rosy-cheeked, with a slight, vigilant smile.

  ‘What a face!’ Magic Stan clutched a hand to his chest and feigned a stagger like a stage Italian. ‘I am smitten.’

  He took her hand and kissed it, then reached an imploring hand out to Oliver.

  ‘Sir, with great respect, this lady’s beauty has overwhelmed me. In fact, I must make her disappear. Do I have your permission?’

  Oliver shrugged, and Magic Stan closed his eyes and grimaced in concentration before gesturing to Rose to check her wallet.

  In the place where her identity card had been was a playing card. Astonished, she slid it out.

  ‘The Queen of Hearts.’ Magic Stan beamed. ‘How appropriate.’

  Rose frowned at the playing card, then began to cast around for her ID.

  ‘Ah, so now you have my Queen, but you have no ID. You are a lady without a name, and without a classification. How does that feel? A little frightening perhaps?’

  Magic Stan’s patter was practised and smooth. It was a trick he had performed many times before. His tone darkened with mock menace.

  ‘What will a lovely lady like you do without an identity? Are you worried?’

  ‘Should I be?’

  ‘Let me think.’ His brow creased, then he darted forward and pulled something from the chest pocket of Oliver’s jacket.

  ‘But it was here all along! I might have known. He was keeping you close to his heart.’

  Oliver smiled, reached for an Alliance mark and pushed it in Stan’s direction. Pocketing the money, the magician bowed and shuffled off.

  ‘How on earth did he do that?’ said Rose, taking her ID card back from Oliver and stowing it safely.

  ‘Sleight of hand. He’s worked out the science of attention. You can pull off anything if you distract people. It’s called misdirection.’

  ‘But I was watching him the whole time.’

  ‘You watched him kiss your hand, right above your wallet on the table, then reach out to me. You focused on his theatrics and failed to see what was really going on. When people are consumed by one thing intensely, they’re blind to anything else. They see only what they’re expecting to see. It’s like the Coronation.’

  ‘Huh? How?’

  ‘All the tea towels and the bunting. The talk of carriages and coronets. The television. It’s just distraction.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘From what really matters.’

  For a moment, she thought he would go further, before he smiled and changed the subject.

  ‘So this is what I do when I want to get away from it all. What do you do?’

  ‘In the evenings?’ Rose hesitated for a second. The gin, on her empty stomach, was having its effect on her. The horror of the previous night, and her encounter with Kaltenbrunner, had chipped away at the barricade of her caution.

  She took a brief, fortifying sip and said, ‘I write.’

  ‘You take your work home? I might have guessed.’

  The words Rose had never spoken clamoured in her mind. She felt as giddy as a parachutist, about to take a step into the unknown. She tipped up her chin and said, ‘No. Not my work. I write for myself. That’s what I was about to do when you turned up outside my door.’

  Once she had begun, she was unstoppable. The wall that she had built so carefully in her head, brick by brick, to stand between her thoughts and her words, was beginning to crumble. The booth became her confessional, its formica table her altar, its draped curtains her sacred space.

  ‘I don’t know why I do it. Writing would never have crossed my mind until I started this job, but now, it’s as natural as breathing. In fact, I don’t know how I would have carried on without it. It began when I was given my correcting job. The Assistant Commissioner told me that literature was dangerous, that it could infect minds. Those who did it might need to protect themselves psychologically from what they would read, but he was sure I could deal with it.’

  ‘He underestimated you.’

  ‘Martin . . . I mean, Assistant Commissioner Kreuz . . . had such faith in me. He asked if I was a reader, and I told him I hadn’t read books since childhood.’

  Oliver’s expression hardened.

  ‘He must have assumed you were deaf and blind if he thought you would be able to read the classics and remain unaffected.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She was fiddling with her glass, running her finger along the rim. ‘I feel I don’t know anyt
hing anymore. Do you think writing is . . . reprehensible? I know the Party disapproves.’

  Oliver drained his gin, cast a quick look around him and frowned.

  ‘The Party hates writing for the same reason they hate reading. Because it involves being alone, in contact with an unfettered human imagination. That’s why they fear it.’

  ‘I don’t quite understand why I do it.’

  ‘Why does anyone write? Because all our lives are heading for the night. By writing we preserve our brief snatch of life. Like placing a star in the darkness of the past.’

  His eyes were intent on her.

  ‘Good job you write, frankly. There’s been nothing worth reading published in the last thirteen years.’

  ‘Nor will this be. It’s only short stories, and thoughts and fragments. No one’s ever going to see it.’

  ‘I hope you let me read it.’

  He reached across and took her hand in his own – an electric brush of skin that ran through every nerve in her body. It was the first time they had ever touched, yet the momentary contact was enough for her to register the large palm, the long fingers and the strength of his grip. The warmth of him surprised her. Everything else about him seemed cool.

  ‘Martin says nobody will read much of anything after this generation. After television gets going.’

  ‘Perhaps we should allow for the possibility that sometimes, just sometimes, Herr Martin Kreuz could be wrong.’

  She turned her face downwards, to hide her smile, then said, ‘What about you? I feel I know nothing about you.’

  ‘My mother’s dead. My father lives in New York.’

  The information astonished her.

  ‘So you have dual nationality? You’re half American?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Then you can travel. You could leave. You could go anywhere!’

  ‘I suppose I could.’

  ‘Yet you don’t.’

  ‘To start with, I didn’t want to go. Now, I don’t go because if I did, I could never come back.’

  ‘Why would that matter?’

  She felt the answer before he spoke it. She saw it in his eyes, green with flecks of flame in the iris, as they fixed her, and heard it deep inside herself.

  ‘Why do you think?’

  He took her hand again and she felt her blood quicken. Excitement pulsed through her, as though her body already knew what her mind had not yet recognized. Turning her palm, she interlaced his fingers tightly with her own, and returned his gaze.

  After a moment she said, ‘There’s something I haven’t told you, but I should tell you now. I was interrogated yesterday. At the ASO. They kept me in overnight, then they released me without charge.’

  The vivacity vanished. Sombrely, he asked, ‘Does the Assistant Commissioner know?’

  ‘I’m . . . I’m not sure. He’s very busy. He’s organizing a big conference to be held at Blenheim the day after the Coronation. Only, just before I was arrested, he told me he was being relocated to Paris.’

  ‘Did they tell you why they pulled you in?’

  ‘No. But the man who interrogated me was Ernst Kaltenbrunner.’

  Oliver’s eyes widened, but he remained silent.

  ‘They seemed to think I knew something. But I don’t know anything! None of it makes sense.’

  ‘Perhaps you do know something. You’re just not aware of it.’

  The atmosphere between them had shifted. He grasped her hand more tightly, and in an urgent whisper said, ‘We can’t talk here. And we need to talk. I have something to explain. Come with me.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  They walked in darkness south to the river. The Thames was a black mirror, dark and glassy, reflecting back a glittering necklace of lights from the opposite bank. All around them rose the soft murmurs of a spring night: the tide lapping against the hulls of the houseboats, causing them to knock gently together, and the faint hoot of a tug moving downstream. Crossing Chelsea Bridge, they passed a green cabman’s shelter where taxi drivers were congregated, drinking tea and waiting for fares. A ribbon of canned laughter leaked from a wireless set. A little way further they came to an elegant red-brick mansion block overlooking Battersea Park, typical of an elite residence for a single man.

  Through a tiled hallway reeking of Jeyes Fluid, Oliver led her up two flights of steps and unlocked a door. He stepped back to allow her in first before pulling the door shut behind them.

  It was a generous sitting room, with eau de nil walls and a tiled fireplace into which the fractured elements of a gas fire had been wedged. The paint was dappled with the odd damp stain and the plaster was cracked. Through a door she saw a hand basin and taps, and beyond it, a narrow bed. Even by the standards of most dwellings, where furniture tended to be shabby and carpets worn, this dwelling was unusually vacant. The floorboards were bare. No pictures hung on the walls. No cards or photographs on the mantelpiece. A lone kettle stood on the tiny workspace, next to an empty milk bottle. Curtains featuring blowsy chrysanthemums framed the window, and a faded Turkish rug lay between two chairs.

  Oliver locked the door and threw his jacket on a chair.

  ‘It helps to keep it simple. I go over it every day, top to bottom.’ He gestured up to the light fitting, and the electrical sockets, and tapped the switch by the door. ‘I don’t think there are any microphones but you can never be sure.’

  Then he nodded towards a stack of papers and magazines heaped in a corner, like a student’s filing system, and next to them a desk, cluttered with more books. The top one, Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, she recognized. It was a poetry book her father had owned.

  ‘That’s my little rebellion. This whole nation is obsessed with order. Ordering books, ordering women. So I figure a little disorder threatens their sense of control. Einstein said if a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, what’s a tidy desk a sign of?’

  He paused at her look of puzzlement.

  ‘You’ve heard of Einstein, right?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘He’s a friend of my father’s. They knew each other in Berlin.’

  Rose took off her mackintosh. Despite its shabbiness, the flat felt like a fortress. For the first time in ages, she felt safe.

  ‘Tell me about your father.’

  He put his finger to his lips, went over to the wireless and selected the Home Service. The room came alive with a burst of music and the patter of applause followed by the voice of a compère: ‘Ladeees and Gennelmen, pray silence for . . .’ It was a variety performance from London’s oldest music hall, a faux Victorian repertoire awash with confected cheer.

  Oliver came to sit opposite her.

  ‘Dad was born in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. His name was Ellermann but he changed it to Ellis when he met my mother and came to settle here. In the late 1930s, sometime after the Leader came to power, my father wanted to move. He’d seen what happened in his homeland and believed it would happen here too, but my mother refused to leave. She loved England and said if her country was in trouble, she should stay and fight for it. My father went without her.’

  ‘Were you an only child?’

  ‘Yes, it was just my mother and me, and I hated him at the time for deserting her. On the night the Alliance was formed, before the telephones were cut off, my father tried to call her. He worried that she would act recklessly and get caught up in the fighting. I wasn’t there, but eventually he managed to get hold of me and ordered me down to London to find her. I discovered she’d been killed on the barricades.’

  Softly she said, ‘Oh, how awful for you.’

  ‘My father was broken when I told him. Their marriage was over but he blamed himself for leaving. At the time he believed he had no alternative. He’s Jewish, you see.’ He looked at her for a wordless moment. ‘Do you have any idea what’s happened to Jews on the mainland?’

  A memory came to her, of the diary she had picked up in the Protector’s library in Berlin. Agatha Kettler, ag
e fifteen.

  This morning they arrested another thousand Jews. I’m keeping this in a safe place in the hope that it might survive me.

  ‘Not really. Do you?’

  He was leaning forward, close to her, and his face had never seemed so intent or alert.

  ‘I’ve heard things. Rumours of prison camps. It’s hard to tell what’s true.’

  ‘Does your father know more?’

  ‘If he does, he has no way of telling me. I can only communicate by letter and there’s not much I can say in them. Nothing to excite the censors. I haven’t spoken to him properly since that last telephone call in 1940. He urged me to come to New York as soon as I could. I thought he was overreacting. There was no way the Alliance would last. As it happened, plenty in the regime agreed with me.’

  He gave a dry laugh.

  ‘The fact is the authorities couldn’t believe how smoothly it went here. They expected a long, hard-fought resistance and instead they found the population was mostly placid. People liked the idea of a strong leader – they didn’t much care what that leader stood for. What citizens wanted above all things was a quiet life. They didn’t mind shrinking their horizons. They didn’t object to not travelling, as long as nobody else was travelling either. They wanted an orderly life, with everyone knowing their place. Plenty of rules, the more of them the better. So that’s what they got. The British didn’t feel like collaborators, they felt like victims. And that’s always much more comfortable.’

  He jumped up to root in a drawer for cigarettes, lit two and handed her one.

  ‘But the death of Stalin has changed everything. Tell me, when you saw the BBC newsreel of Stalin’s funeral, what struck you?’

  She recalled the immensity of Red Square, the black horses of the cortège, the banks of flowers and the flags at half-mast. And most striking of all, the figure of the Leader on the balcony and Helena’s comment.