Widowland

by C. J. Carey

‘Marina.’ Sarah’s face broke into a smile. ‘Yes. She used to live opposite us, in Kensington. As soon as I saw Oliver again, I recognized her in him. He has her eyes, and the same nose and brow.’

  ‘What was she like?’ asked Rose.

  She found herself suddenly ravenous for any information about the man she had worked alongside for more than a year yet had known for the space of a single day. Their intimacy lingered in her body as much as her mind. Even now, her fingertips retained the precise feeling of his flesh, the hard muscle in his arms, the softness of his neck, his warm hands clasped around hers in the train carriage.

  ‘Oh, self-possessed. Intelligent. Very beautiful. Marina could be quiet, but she loved wearing bright colours. Shot silk in vivid emerald and purple. I used to think Marina looked like a fantastic peacock among hens. She had a particular dress, with a nipped-in waist and a full skirt, that she’d copied from a painting. When I admired it, she said that actually it would suit me better, and the next time we met she brought it with her, folded in brown paper. And she was right, it did suit me. I thought of Marina whenever I wore it.’

  ‘You were with her when she died.’

  ‘She was expecting it.’ Sarah’s face grew solemn. ‘Though not in the way it happened. For a while she had been talking about what she called her “exit plan”. She believed we should all have worked out our own way of killing ourselves in the event of an invasion. She said she personally was storing petrol so that when it came to it, she could shut the garage door, keep the car engine running and die from carbon monoxide.’

  Rose thought for a moment, and then reached into the pocket of her mackintosh for the small glass phial and placed it on the table between them.

  ‘A few days ago, my father gave me this. He said I might need it. I think it was his own exit plan. I don’t know what it is, but I suspect it’s some kind of drug.’

  ‘My husband was a chemist. Let me see.’

  Sarah reached for the phial, rolled it in her palm, then very tentatively prised off the cap. She held it about six inches from her nose and immediately recoiled.

  ‘It smells of bitter almonds. That’s a tell-tale sign. It’s potassium cyanide. It’s fast-acting and will kill you in seconds.’

  In a flash, Rose understood. Her father had told her precisely what the phial contained. Let’s just call it a gift. Gift. The German word for poison. Dad had given her poison because it was the only present he was able to bequeath her.

  ‘Be very careful,’ said Sarah. ‘It’s extremely dangerous. A touch of it can permeate the skin.’

  Rose replaced the stopper and stowed it back in her pocket.

  ‘Will you sleep tonight, do you think?’ asked Sarah.

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘There’s a spare mattress in Kate’s room. I’ll use that. You can take my bed.’

  Sarah’s room was a cramped space right up in the eaves of the house, barely big enough to contain a rickety iron bedstead. Rose sat on it tentatively.

  ‘Do you ever think about your old home?’

  ‘All the time. Wouldn’t you? Mentally, I imagine going over my mother’s Regency furniture with lavender beeswax polish or walking on our Persian carpets or looking at our Victorian oil paintings. When I lie in this bed, I think myself back into our marriage bed and the gorgeous Italian hand-embroidered sheets we bought on honeymoon.’

  ‘What happened to your house?’

  ‘It was made available to an elite family.’

  ‘You must miss it terribly.’

  ‘Do you know? The idea of a horde of strangers trampling on the carpets or using the Wedgwood china or stealing the cutlery ought to make me shudder, yet it doesn’t. Once David died, I didn’t give a damn for those things. I’d have given a whole street in Kensington for one more kiss of his lips.’

  They were still for a while, listening to the clank of couplings and the guard’s whistle issuing from the nearby railway tracks.

  At that moment from the far distance came a fresh sound: the rumble of military trucks, followed by the drum of soldiers’ feet disembarking, the clatter of equipment and muffled shouts of command.

  ‘They’re arriving!’ gasped Rose.

  ‘Where will you go tomorrow?’

  ‘I have no idea. The city centre, I suppose.’

  ‘Do you have any other clothes?’

  Rose looked down at her outfit. The only clothes she had were the ones she was standing in and they were creased and grubby now. The white blouse and black skirt she had thrown on after she got home from the ASO. A light, belted mackintosh, and a navy pillbox hat. A pair of pale blue calfskin gloves.

  ‘These’ll do.’

  ‘Wait there.’

  Sarah returned with a garment of dense silky cloth, as blue as a summer’s sky. She shook it out and held it up to Rose.

  ‘This is Marina’s dress. I’ve kept it for years. I smuggled it here, even though I knew I’d never wear it again, but I can see that it would suit you perfectly. Why don’t you wear it for me?’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Saturday, 1st May

  She couldn’t sleep. All night a clamour of images thronged her brain: of Oliver, and Helena and her unborn baby. Of Hannah, Celia and their parents. Her body was rigid with tension and her muscles refused to relax. Memories that rarely escaped from her subconscious, even in the darkest reaches of an insomniac night, rose to the surface of her mind.

  She began to remember the Time Before.

  Alliance citizens were routinely discouraged from thinking about the Time Before, and all youth clubs, Mother classes and community groups taught mental strategies to prevent memories intruding in unguarded moments. Build a wall in your mind, to keep the past behind, went the popular refrain. Any stray remembrances should be quashed with thoughts of the future, until eventually they would fade, like photographs left out in the sun. Geoffrey was such a stickler for the rules that Celia refused to discuss with her sister any aspect of their youth, so the past had dwindled to a series of bright, unconnected cameos in Rose’s mind.

  Yet now, as she lay, a kaleidoscope of childhood revolved before her. Images that had lain long buried came back with all their vivid smells and sensations. The family eating fish and chips on the seafront at Brighton, or tramping up Box Hill as Dad strode ahead, recounting tales from history. She and Celia staging plays in the garden with her sister pirouetting in her sugar-pink ballet costume through every star role.

  When she finally dozed, Rose dreamed of her father kneeling at the flowerbeds, weeding and plucking, with Rollo snuffling in the grass alongside him. Looking round to see a squad of policemen coming through the gate.

  We have reason to believe your daughter Rose is an enemy of the Alliance and a traitor to the state.

  Her father standing up, brushing the dust off his hands onto his old moleskin trousers, and turning to the policemen, beaming with pride.

  Only then did she sleep, while the houseboats moored on the canal shunted softly against each other in the muddy pull of the water, and a pumice moon slowly descended the sky.

  At dawn she climbed out of bed, and using the jug of water and the flannel left by Sarah, did her best to wash. Then she brushed her hair and pulled on the blue dress. Sarah was right – it did fit well and the colour matched her eyes, bringing out their depths.

  It was strange to think that Oliver’s mother had made it. For a second, surveying herself in a fractured washstand mirror, she allowed her vision to blur her into Marina herself and imagined what that courageous woman might have made of her. She wondered if her own parents, Dad particularly, would ever have the chance to meet Oliver, but almost immediately she dismissed these ruminations. They were as poignant as they were meaningless.

  After throwing on her mac and fixing her hat, she quietly let herself out.

  She picked her way through the fissured roads to the point where the houses gave way to a stretch of grassland leading to the canal and followed a path through the meadow.
The wide, flat plains imbued her with a sense of infinite possibility, and she had a sudden yearning to walk away and escape into another existence. The future had never seemed so formless. She had no idea at all of what the coming day might bring.

  The morning held the trace of the previous night’s rain and dew, glittering on the grass, refracting light upwards towards a sparrowhawk hanging motionless in the sky. All around, cattle and horses grazed. She took a lungful of air. Everything seemed newly minted, as if on the first day of creation. As she walked, Rose sensed something watching her and, turning, saw a young, sandy-coloured deer standing stock still in the gentle mist, ears pricked, berry-black eyes unblinking, fixed on hers. For a few steady seconds she held the creature’s gaze, allowing herself to be watched, and in a flash of understanding she realized it was the first time that she had ever been content to be observed.

  Then the deer flicked its ears, spooked by someone coming, and bucked away to the far end of the meadow, into the tangled undergrowth.

  She turned to see a figure dressed in black picking her way through the damp turf before drawing level.

  ‘I come here sometimes too,’ said Sarah. ‘Before work. When I want to be by myself. I don’t have long this morning because the cleaners need to be out of the library in good time for the visit.’

  They continued in silence, weaving their way through the meadow, yet Rose was consumed by anxiety, and overlaying it something that had been troubling her since the previous evening. Or rather, someone.

  Adeline.

  Both times that they had met, Adeline had been wearing a pair of battered tan leather gloves. But the first time they met she had removed them for an instant to shake hands. Rose recalled her firm grip, and the fingers slender and perfectly formed. Yet in the statement she had given to Bruno Schumacher, her fingernails were missing.

  I have been interrogated in the past, as you can see.

  [Suspect shows her fingernails. Nails on right hand are missing.]

  What else had Adeline’s statement said?

  You ask me who has influenced me. If I modelled myself on anyone, it would be Aphra Behn and I assure you there is no hope of arresting her.

  Slowly, Rose said, ‘This may seem a strange question, but have you ever heard of someone called Aphra Behn?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Who is she? Does she live here?’

  Sarah laughed delightedly.

  ‘Hardly. She died more than two hundred years ago. She was England’s first female playwright. She actually managed to make a living from writing, which was a feat no woman had achieved before and not many since. She’s buried in Westminster Abbey.’

  ‘I see,’ said Rose uncertainly.

  Sarah grinned. ‘I always admired the fact that Aphra Behn said she lived a life wholly dedicated to pleasure and poetry. To me, that sounds like the perfect combination.’

  Rose frowned. Somehow, this hedonistic ambition didn’t fit with the steely rigour of Adeline Adams, who left a comfortable life in England to fight in a foreign war.

  ‘Aphra Behn did have other occupations, though,’ Sarah mused. ‘One of her more exotic sidelines was working as a Government spy.’

  It was as though parts of her brain were reconnecting. All Rose’s questions were organizing themselves into a coherent pattern. She gasped.

  ‘She’s not safe!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Adeline’s not safe. She knows about the plan and she’s going to inform on us. We need to find Oliver. We need to warn him.’

  Sarah studied her with alarm. ‘Slow down. What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘Adeline told the police that she modelled herself on Aphra Behn. That was her way of saying she’s a spy. A Government spy.’

  Sarah scrutinized her, the intense dark-lashed eyes puzzled.

  ‘That’s not rational, Rose. Adeline detests the regime. She fought in the Spanish Civil War.’

  ‘On which side? There were communists and fascists in that war, weren’t there? And both sides were riddled with double agents. When did Adeline come to Widowland?’

  ‘A few months ago. Then almost immediately she was arrested and imprisoned. They tortured her, Rose. Badly.’

  ‘They pulled out her fingernails, didn’t they?’

  ‘Amongst other things. She suffered terribly.’

  ‘But her hands are perfect. When I first met her she took off her gloves. Just briefly, but long enough for me to see.’

  Sarah was hesitant, calculating.

  ‘She always wears those gloves . . .’

  ‘Adeline must have been put among you because the authorities suspected insurgency. She was planted in Widowland as a spy. None of you knew her, but who could possibly suspect her, with a track record like that?’

  Comprehension was dawning on Sarah’s face.

  ‘Kate suspected her. She never trusted Adeline. Kate said being a journalist had made her a good judge of character and she tried to warn us, but Adeline’s a strong personality.’

  ‘As I’ve seen. She managed to get me to tell her everything. It was her who was asking, even though Kate tried to stop me. Kate told me I needn’t explain, but I didn’t take the hint. And now, Adeline knows about Oliver. We have to find him.’

  ‘That’s impossible. You don’t even know where he is.’

  Rose was gulping for breath.

  ‘If Adeline betrays him to the authorities, it will all have been for nothing.’

  ‘If she’s going to do that, my guess is, she’s done it already.’

  ‘Then they’ll know about the plan. They might even cancel the Leader’s visit. They’ll be arresting every camera crew on sight.’

  Through Rose’s mind flashed a multitude of images. Of Oliver and Sonia Delaney and the camera crew being executed, in that special way reserved for enemies of the regime who needed to die quickly. A bullet in the back of the neck.

  The entire uprising compromised. Because of her own stupidity.

  An anguished cry broke from her.

  ‘There must be something . . .’

  As she spoke, a thought stirred, so dangerous that she could scarcely breathe as it took shape. A proposition both terrifying and ingenious that she could not suppress. Reaching into the pocket of her mackintosh, her fingers searched out the phial of white powder that her father had given her. The one she had shown Sarah the previous evening. She brought it out on her palm.

  ‘That book. Frankenstein. The one only the Leader can handle.’

  The two women’s eyes met. The same thought coursed like electricity between them. Sarah would be cleaning the Radcliffe Camera that morning. She would dust the lectern and the precious volume that had been selected for presentation to the Leader. This tiny phial contained a lethal poison that could permeate the skin. Suppose the Arriflex camera plan failed in some way. What then?

  ‘Nobody would ask the Leader to wear gloves.’

  Sarah’s eyes met hers, level and calm.

  ‘Do you dare?’ Rose asked.

  Carefully Sarah took the phial and put it in her pocket.

  ‘I’ll go now.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  For more than five hundred years, the city of Oxford had woken early on May Morning. By tradition, on 1st May, choristers rise before dawn and ascend the fretted turrets of Magdalen College to salute the arrival of spring.

  On May Morning 1953, however, a rather more important arrival was awaited.

  As the rising sun glittered off mercury-grey domes and towers and the bells of Magdalen College Tower rang out, Rose caught the faint voices of the choirboys tangling high above in exquisite counterpoint. Below the wheeling pigeons the whole city lay, slate spires glinting, college quads shining like emeralds set in pewter, towers and pinnacles cupped by the misty blue surrounding countryside. From the street, all that could be seen of the choristers was a line of heads, red-haired, blond and dark, and the white billow of vestments, as the traditional ‘Hymnus Euch
aristicus’ floated into the crisp air.

  Their song was almost drowned out, however, by the thump thump thump of helicopters circling over the city. Black uniforms were scattered antlike around the quads. The entire central area of Oxford, including Radcliffe Square, Catte Street, Holywell Street and halfway down Broad Street, had been roped off, guarded by a cordon of field-grey uniforms. Police dogs sniffed the sandstone courtyard of the Bodleian and the steps of the Radcliffe Camera, scrambled over the wooden dais that had been erected for dignitaries and snuffled behind rubbish bins and newspaper stands.

  Rose pressed through the crowds, already sweating in her dress, trying to zone out from the blare of the military bands relayed by loudspeaker all through the city centre. As she went, she saw a knot of people divert around a spot on the end of a terrace facing a deconsecrated church whose noticeboard advertised meeting times for the Mother Service and the Alliance Girls. The whitewashed brick bore a message in orange paint.

  Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful

  The words resounded like the beat of her own heart. A moment later a soldier with a bucket and mop raked the words into a sloppy, terracotta stain as she watched and the crowd averted their eyes.

  Rose passed the chequerboard red and ivory brick of Keble College, and opposite it, the Pitt Rivers Museum, its Gothic arches rising like the ribs of some extinct mammal. In the distance the cloud-grey dome of the Radcliffe Camera seemed to float above the commotion on the ground, as if testament to the loftiness of the generous imagination that designed it.

  Scanning the stream of onlookers, glancing upwards at the roofs and church towers, she felt sick with nerves. Behind her ribs her heart lunged, like a giant bird in her chest.

  Amid a crowd this size, how could she possibly find Oliver? She had no idea if he would be with Sonia Delaney and her camera crew or whether he would be acting as a lookout. Might he be hiding on one of the rooftops, in the eaves of Exeter College maybe, or behind some ancient, half-eroded gargoyle? Crouching behind a chimney stack or secreted in one of the narrow rooms of All Souls?