Widowland

by C. J. Carey

  ‘So that’s why you were staring at me. I assumed you were checking if I was wearing make-up.’

  ‘Max Factor, Sweet Cherry. I know all your secrets.’

  She ran her fingers lightly over the skin of his face.

  ‘Not all of them.’

  ‘Good. I want more.’

  It was almost as though they were avoiding the subject that loomed over them, willing the clock to slow. The plan that was almost too audacious to imagine. Whatever happened, these would be the last hours that life would feel like this.

  At Didcot, a couple came into the carriage and settled themselves opposite Rose and Oliver, obliging them to fall quiet. Oliver moved next to her so they sat, shoulders touching, and beneath the cover of her mackintosh she felt him reach for her hand. The intimacy of his presence was electrifying. Although she had so much more to say, they sank into their own kind of silence, communicating on a frequency only the two of them could receive. Fingers locked together, they stared at the framed photograph that hung on the wall opposite.

  Side by side, they looked into the eyes of the Leader.

  After they left the train, Oliver turned to Rose and said, ‘You need to stay out of sight. Even though we’ll separate, they’ll still be looking for you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She was seized with alarm. ‘We can’t separate!’

  ‘We must. Staying together is too risky. The people I’m working with – they have a safe house in the city. I’ll go there.’

  ‘But where will I go?’

  He put his palms on either side of her face, brought her mouth to his and kissed her. It was a deep embrace, one that seemed to compress in its brief moment more tenderness and passion than she had ever known. Then he pulled away and surveyed her.

  ‘I’ve thought of that. The Frieda I mentioned. The one who called out to me that night, walking in the park. My mother’s friend. She told me she’d been visited earlier that day by a Geli. A pretty girl from the Culture Ministry, she said, come to do some interview for the Protector.’

  ‘You mean, she was one of the widows I met?’

  ‘She’s called Sarah Walsh. And you need to find her. Widowland is the only safe place to be.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Rose spent all day walking around the city, lurking in shops, dawdling down the high street, trying to remain inconspicuous. She sat in a café and peered past the twin posters of the King and Queen pasted on the window to survey the stream of shoppers outside, seemingly buoyed up by anticipation of the excitements to come. At one point she thought she saw a follower – a middle-aged man with a bloodless complexion, who lingered in Carfax, darting covert looks at her. He was in no hurry, and he wore the kind of buttoned trench coat that a watcher might deploy to look anonymous, but when she saw him directing similar glances at another woman of her age, she concluded he was merely seeking female company. If Oliver had been with her, his training would have told him instantly if the man was a threat, yet all she could do was be cautious, aware that the city would be saturated with policemen and crawling with spies. Even though she and Oliver had evaded the team shadowing them in London, there was every chance surveillance had been picked up once they arrived in Oxford.

  She was haunted by the thought of her family. Was Oliver right to suppose that Celia and Geoffrey would be questioned? What would they tell Hannah? She couldn’t help picturing her sister’s face blotched with tears, and Hannah, clutching at her mother’s skirt until she was pulled away. Geoffrey, in shirtsleeves and braces, blinking into an interrogation spotlight, alternating between accusations and appeals. Eventually, maddened by speculation, Rose went into a telephone box and dialled Celia’s number. The receiver was picked up on the second ring, but instead of the Gretl or Geoffrey’s booming tones, ‘Clapham 2768,’ a different voice answered. A male voice, German-accented.

  ‘Hello. Ja?’

  Terrified, she crashed the receiver back into the cradle, and walked swiftly away.

  For hours, she loitered around the town, checking shop windows. A toy store had devoted its entire window display to a battlefield of Alliance soldiers, and she stared for some time at the plastic figures painted the colours of different regiments: field grey, khaki and black, ranged in serried ranks across a green-painted terrain, with no enemy to fight.

  As dusk fell, she headed west, hugging the backstreets approaching the canal. A wind had got up and was thrashing the tops of the trees and harrying the fish and chip papers that littered the towpath. She felt a kind of hyper-vigilance to everything in her surroundings: from the pair of boys kicking a ball, to the man mending a roof and the pair of Klaras immersed in conversation over a fence. Anyone and anything was transformed into a threat. At one point a sharp sound made her jump and, looking round, she saw a dog chained to a fence. It was rare to see a pet dog now. Soon after the Alliance, the shortage of food meant that people had killed their dogs, and in some cases ate them. She’d even heard that people switched animals with their neighbours so as not to consume their own pet. The few dogs that remained tended to be working animals, and this one looked like a police dog, but if so, he was off duty. Instead of barking, he stayed low, his pointy muzzle and yellow eyes following as she passed.

  Eventually, she reached the outskirts of Widowland.

  Any worries she might have had about getting back into the district were unnecessary. Remembering what Sarah had said about the newly installed barbed wire being only for show, she headed some distance away from the guard post and found a place where the fence was full of gaps and holes, with some stretches entirely replaced by weeds. Once through, she hurried along the dreary, impoverished streets, inhaling the sour reek of drains and rubbish, keeping her head down. The route was familiar to her now. She threaded her way past soot-blackened houses with grimy windows and yards filled with iron debris and redundant machinery until at last she spotted the square brick church tower silhouetted against the marbled sky, clouds drifting like cannon smoke across a mother of pearl moon.

  ‘When we met before, I still thought you might be a Government spy. So I wasn’t as friendly as I might have been. Forgive me.’

  ‘You were right to be cautious.’

  Sarah Walsh had started when she opened the door hesitantly and saw Rose’s face emerge from the gloom. But when Rose whispered that she needed a place to stay, and that Oliver Ellis had sent her, Sarah took her hand and beckoned her quickly inside.

  The house was just as Rose remembered it, only this time the odour of woodsmoke, mildew and coal dust was overlaid with a savoury, spicy fragrance. Even though she was shivering from nervous exhaustion, the smell reminded her that she had eaten nothing all day.

  ‘We’re making dinner,’ said Sarah. ‘You must eat with us, Rose. But first I need to consult the others. I won’t be long.’

  She disappeared into the kitchen at the back of the house and after a few minutes of hushed conversation, re-emerged.

  ‘They’d be honoured if you’d join us. I told them you’d explain everything later.’

  In the kitchen, Sylvia was peeling potatoes, saving the skins for a pig, and Kate was stirring what smelled like a stew. Rose’s stomach rumbled.

  ‘Thank you so much for inviting me in,’ she said awkwardly, glancing around her. Here too, she observed, the widows had done their best to create a homely space. Despite the curlicues of paint peeling from the ceiling and mould gathering in the corners, someone had carved flowers and animals into the wooden mantelpiece and arranged a series of battered photographs along the top.

  ‘That smells wonderful. What is it?’

  ‘Lobster bisque, boeuf en croute and black forest gateau,’ said Kate.

  ‘Take no notice,’ said Sarah. ‘We fantasize about the meals we’ll have. We take turns constructing the menus. Last night was poached salmon with hollandaise sauce. Please, sit down. Actually, it’s bean stew.’

  Sarah, Vanessa, Kate and Sylvia assembled around the table, set with a range of chipp
ed plates, and began to help themselves to food. If they were astonished at Rose’s sudden appearance, they summoned every social grace to conceal it.

  ‘This is delicious.’ Rose was eating the stew ravenously and discovering it was unexpectedly tasty, even if it was accompanied by the lowest quality bread, black and crumbly, packed with sawdust.

  ‘We’ve had to learn to cook with vegetables alone,’ said Sarah. ‘Because we have no meat or eggs or milk.’

  ‘And I think we’ve done rather well.’

  Adeline had come in from the garden. She had cast off the black serge smock in favour of a liberty print shirt, a pinafore and the same worn tan gloves. Her abundant hair was neatly tamed into a bun and even without make-up, her broad face with its high cheekbones was strikingly handsome. She gave Rose a penetrating stare.

  ‘Fräulein Ransom. This is a surprise.’

  ‘Rose has run into difficulties with the authorities,’ said Sarah, with quiet emphasis. ‘She’s asked if she can stay here tonight.’

  ‘I’ll explain everything,’ said Rose. ‘It’s just for one night. I’ll be gone in the morning.’

  ‘That’s for the best,’ said Adeline briefly, sitting down and heaping her plate with stew. ‘I don’t want to appear inhospitable, but it doesn’t do to underestimate them.’

  ‘I’m sure Rose is aware of that,’ said Sylvia.

  Adeline flashed her a look.

  ‘Maybe. But did I ever tell you how I was first arrested? Back in London?’

  The others looked up curiously, as though this information was new to them.

  ‘I was expecting a visit – aren’t we all, constantly? – but I was complacent. When they arrived, I watched the Gestapo go over everything with a fine-toothed comb, but I still wasn’t worried. I wasn’t expecting to be caught out. I had no typewriter, obviously – I knew they were looking for anything that might suggest I could make pamphlets. But I was so certain that I’d been careful. That was my mistake.’

  ‘How was that a mistake?’ asked Rose.

  ‘I underestimated them. Never underestimate them. Can you guess what they found?’

  She looked around the table theatrically, as if waiting for an answer to her rhetorical question, her eyes blazing with a kind of steely rapture.

  ‘A lid. Nothing more. An inch-square lid. I had a child’s printing set – one of those things with little rubber letters and an inkpad – and I’d disposed of it meticulously – the letters, the stamp, the box. Yet for some reason, the lid of the carton that held the inkpad had fallen to the bottom of a drawer, and they found it. That was enough.’

  She paused briefly to take a sip of elderflower wine, and closed her eyes, savouring it like a rare delicacy.

  ‘When they took me in, they had a lot of questions. But believe me, I didn’t furnish them with any answers.’

  She flinched slightly, as though recalling the tortures she had endured, and glanced down at her gloved hands. Then she surveyed them benevolently.

  ‘It was a great comfort to me, when I was in prison, to think you’d all be carrying on our work.’

  Our work. Rose glanced at Kate and was startled by the flicker of cold dislike.

  ‘Kate was our pioneer, actually,’ said Sarah, as though reading Rose’s thoughts. ‘The slogans were her idea.’

  ‘Such a clever idea,’ said Rose.

  Kate shrugged.

  ‘Of course, I used to write at greater length. Back when I had a newspaper column, I’d complete a thousand words a day on issues of major national importance.’

  The others laughed. This was clearly a joke of long standing.

  ‘What kind of issues?’ asked Rose.

  ‘Oh, shopping, baby care, keeping house. How to polish a hob or clean your husband’s shoes or mix a cocktail for him when he returns from work. How to refrain from conversation if he’s feeling tired or make yourself seductive if he requires entertainment.’

  She gave a rueful smile at the world she had left behind.

  ‘All that changed when the Alliance began. Along with everything else, I realized that society was moving away from literacy and entering a slogan world. There were slogans everywhere. So I thought, if that’s how it’s going to be, then that’s how we should fight back. With slogans.’

  ‘Kate stole a pot of paint from the factory and daubed a line on the wall of Rhodes House,’ said Sylvia. ‘That’s a building dedicated to Cecil Rhodes who founded Rhodesia.’

  ‘I chose the words of Emmeline Pankhurst. We have to free half of the human race, the women, so that they can help to free the other half. And after that, the whole thing just took flight.’

  ‘I did wonder,’ said Rose, ‘how exactly it spread.’

  ‘How do any ideas travel?’ asked Kate. ‘Like a ripple on a pond? Or some invisible microbe on the air? All I know is, it was marvellously effective. No sooner had we begun than all over the country writing began to appear on walls, like the invisible hand at Belshazzar’s Feast.’

  Rose frowned.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘It’s a story from the Book of Daniel,’ explained Vanessa. ‘The tyrannical ruler, Belshazzar, was holding a feast, when behind him a sentence appeared on the wall, traced by a hidden hand. It was a message prophesying that he’d die. The story’s in the Bible.’

  Rose nodded. The Bible was not degenerate exactly, but it was hardly the kind of book anyone would be caught reading.

  ‘A few lines of graffiti might have been nothing in the scheme of things, but they rankled,’ said Sylvia. ‘They’ve never managed to catch anyone, though they suspected it was coming from the Widowlands. I suppose they assumed we were the only ones capable of it. They know older women enjoy discussing novels.’

  ‘A truth universally acknowledged,’ smiled Vanessa.

  ‘On the subject of literary discussions,’ said Sarah, ‘we were engaged in one just now. There’s to be a presentation to the Leader tomorrow. At the Radcliffe Camera. The head librarian wants to donate a special volume to the Leader’s library in Linz. It’s only symbolic, of course. The Leader could have the entire Bodleian shipped to the mainland tomorrow if he wanted.’

  ‘What has he chosen?’ Rose asked.

  ‘That’s what we were discussing. It’s an interesting choice,’ said Kate. ‘I was surprised when Sarah told us about it, though on reflection I can see there’s a certain significance in the subject matter. It’s the first edition of a novel set in Ingolstadt, about a German genius who changed the world. Have you heard of Frankenstein?’

  ‘I saw the movie, but I had no idea it was a book.’

  ‘Written by Mary Shelley at the age of eighteen. She, Shelley and Byron were on a rainy holiday in Switzerland in 1816. While they waited for the weather to clear, they decided to hold a horror story competition. I’ve always wondered what the men made of the fact that a teenage girl came up with a work of such genius while their own efforts were forgotten. Not to mention that after Frankenstein was published, a lot of people assumed it was written by Mary’s husband.’

  ‘This is the actual, handwritten version. It’s more than a hundred years old,’ added Sarah. ‘It’s very fragile. You have to wear special gloves to touch it.’

  Adeline snorted.

  ‘I’d like to see the librarian who dares ask the Leader to wear cotton gloves.’

  ‘I find it impossible to imagine that the Leader appreciates literature,’ said Vanessa quietly, as if she was still uncertain of uttering such heresy in front of a Geli who, until only recently, had been engaged on Government business.

  ‘It’s not the appreciation of literature. It’s the possession of it,’ said Sylvia tersely. ‘He sees books the way other people see diamonds. For ownership. Shutting up in vaults.’

  Rose said nothing. She wanted to explain what Martin had told her about novels – that it was literature’s power that the Party understood and feared – but in her hungry and disorientated state, such reflections were beyond her. She fo
cused on finishing the food and allowing the warmth of the kitchen to seep into her bones.

  Abruptly, Adeline said, ‘You were going to explain why you were here.’

  Kate leaned towards Rose and reached out a reassuring hand.

  ‘Actually, don’t.’

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘I mean, you don’t have to tell us,’ she qualified. ‘Say as little as you want. But there’s absolutely no need to say anything at all.’

  Yet, for Rose, one look around the widows’ concerned, intelligent faces was enough.

  ‘Adeline’s right. I owe you an explanation.’

  As soon as she began, Rose found the events of the past forty-eight hours spilling out of her, almost as if she was trying to explain it to herself. As if she was still attempting to rationalize everything that had happened – her arrest, Oliver’s revelations and their escape from London. She told them of the film crew and the assassination plan, yet for some reason she could not understand, she withheld her own extraordinary truth. That she and Oliver had become lovers.

  It was as though she wanted to hoard that intimate secret for herself.

  The widows’ faces grew grave as they listened. The earlier atmosphere of warm-hearted banter evaporated, and a hush fell on the room, making the tick of a battered clock above the stove sound unnaturally loud.

  ‘Where’s your friend Oliver now?’ asked Adeline quietly.

  ‘I don’t know. Somewhere in the city, I think.’

  Outside, a mournful siren sounded the curfew.

  ‘We need to sleep,’ said Kate. ‘The bus for the factory arrives at six thirty. Anyone who misses it is docked a week’s rations.’

  She got up, came over to Rose and kissed her cheek.

  ‘You and your friends are very brave. I hope for all our sakes they succeed.’

  One by one, the others disappeared upstairs, leaving only Sarah and Rose together, in the oily light of the kerosene lamp.

  ‘Oliver told me you knew his mother,’ said Rose.