Secret Kingdom

by Francis Bennett

  3

  The pain strikes the back of his head as he crosses Lower Church Road. It is like a wire snapping. Everything goes black. The world he knows disappears. He is dimly aware of a sensation of weightlessness and loss that later he recalls as drifting through billowing clouds of nothingness. He is cold, disconnected from his body, detached from the world, unnaturally calm.

  Images rush past him. At first his vision is blurred and he sees nothing, then the seething in his head subsides and he is aware of a young man standing on Harlow station, full of trepidation, waiting for the train to Cambridge. There is no one else around. No porter, no ticket collector, no other passengers. He looks for his mother and father, but cannot see them. The railway lines are rusty from disuse, thickets of grass have grown between the sleepers. He remembers his childhood fear that the train will never come, that he will spend the rest of his life waiting hopelessly for an escape from the prison of his youth. It was the first time the memory had returned to his consciousness since his arrival at Cambridge so many years before.

  What is happening to him? Why has his past returned to haunt him?

  One image dissolves rapidly into another. He is sitting in an elegant, well-furnished room that is full of books. A pale afternoon light pours through the leaded window. A fire in the grate struggles to give out heat. He can feel the bone-chilling mist of the Fens creeping up the wooden stairs, sliding in under the oak door and sinking into his soul. He is alone in his supervisor’s room in Peterhouse, reading out an essay. He does not understand what he is saying because he cannot recognize the language he is speaking. Nonsense pours out of his mouth. He experiences again the terror of his first term when everyone he met knew so much more than he did, that he was sure he would not be clever enough to succeed. How close he had come in those difficult early weeks to returning, defeated, to his attic room in Harlow.

  A spreading light drives the darkness from his mind, a shadowy present swims back into view and the episode passes as unexpectedly as it appeared. The sun is shining, it is still morning. He is walking down Lower Church Road as he does at this time every day. He sees the railway bridge, the narrow cut that runs beside the railway line to the station, he hears the rumbling of the silver carriages of the District line as the Underground sets off for Kew.

  He doesn’t know how long the episode has lasted. He has the impression he is waking from an endless dream, surfacing from an immersion in a world of painful memories he thought he had lost for ever. Reality now has a watery appearance; if he moves too quickly it loses coherence and breaks up into abstract shapes and colours. The world he has returned to is insubstantial, barely holding together. Its fragility frightens him.

  Should he go home and take to his bed? Since he can’t explain to Harrier what has happened (she wouldn’t understand), it is not a difficult decision to continue on his journey. He has the physical strength to do so. His condition reminds him of coming out of a fever – the crisis has passed but the shadow of illness is still upon him. He walks carefully, afraid he might lose his balance.

  Even in King Charles Street there is no escape from these sudden and overpowering attacks. He finds concentration on his work difficult. Are these episodes – what a neutral word – signs that something infinitely worse is about to happen? Will he collapse with a stroke? Will he suddenly turn into a demented being? Panic surges through him like a tidal wave. He closes his eyes and leans against the filing cabinet.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Cramp,’ he lies. ‘Pain in my leg. It’ll pass.’

  He retreats to his office. There’ve been no warning symptoms. The attack has come out of the blue. He tries to rationalize what is happening to him. Something must have triggered it off. But what? An event he has experienced, or an event in his mind? Or is his mind out of control? Panic boils inside him once more like incipient nausea. He grips the edge of his desk until the moment passes and he can open his eyes again.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

  He hasn’t heard Margaret coming in. This is getting out of hand.

  ‘Cramp again. I can’t seem to get rid of it.’

  ‘I’ll get you a glass of water. You aren’t taking enough salt. That’s why you get cramp. You must look after yourself, Gerry.’

  Not enough salt. If only the answer to his pain were as simple as that.

  4

  The sudden downpour gave her the excuse she was looking for. It had been humid all day, the low clouds about to break but never quite doing so until now. As the rain started, she gathered her skirt and ran quickly across the road, seeking shelter.

  It was years since she had been inside a church. Why was she here now? She had no faith (she had never had any faith, despite her parents’ efforts), yet she felt herself driven to come into this place of quiet. She sat down. Candles burned brightly in the gloom beneath a statue of the Virgin Mary. She could hear the rain beating on the roof above her. As far as she could see the place was deserted.

  What mattered most to her? Her love for Bobby Martineau or her loyalty to Julia’s memory? Every day that she was alive was bought at a terrible price. Had she the right to fall in love, to feel passion for another human being, when Julia, sweet, innocent Julia, was dead in her place and the mystery of her death unresolved? Wasn’t it her duty to devote herself to discovering who had done this terrible thing? How could she do that and keep Martineau?

  Searching for the truth about Julia’s death was difficult and dangerous. She had already taken huge risks and so far got away with them, but she was no nearer her goal. There was no reason to suppose her luck would not run out at some point. She had no right to involve Martineau in events that had nothing to do with him. She could not give up her search for Julia’s killer and be in love with Martineau. She owed Julia more than she owed the Englishman. She must choose between them. Her heart turned at the thought of not seeing him again. He was a good man, she couldn’t lie to him. Where would she find the courage to tell him to go? What would she say?

  ‘May I help you in any way?’

  The priest’s voice awoke her from her dreams. How long had she been sitting there?

  ‘No, thank you.’ The priest smiled and turned to leave. She experienced an unaccountable wave of loneliness. ‘Don’t go.’ He sat down near her.

  ‘I haven’t seen you here before. Did you come in for a reason?’

  ‘It was raining.’

  ‘The rain stopped an hour ago.’

  An hour? Had she been there that long? It seemed like a few moments.

  ‘I wanted to be alone to think.’

  ‘Are you in trouble?’

  We are all in trouble, she wanted to say. We live our lives in the grip of a power that kills innocent men and women for no reason, that changes names on a file, a momentary act which either ends your life or lets you live. There is nothing we can do to stop it because we have buried our consciences and lost the will to refuse. Of course I’m in trouble.

  Before she could say anything, she was crying. The priest touched her arm briefly. ‘Is there anything you want to tell me?’

  He was a thin man, probably in his fifties. He had white hair, his face was lined and pale, his eyes deep-set and sad. He had witnessed the agony of a nation reduced to its knees and he carried the pain of it in his expression.

  ‘I had a friend,’ she confessed. ‘We met in Moscow in 1939. We shared a room in a hostel during the war. We came back to Budapest in 1946. She taught Russian at a school not far from here. She was a good woman. We were very close. She never harmed anyone in her life. One night, more than a year ago, the police called at her apartment and took her away. I never saw her again.’

  ‘You didn’t come here to tell me that,’ he said. ‘Nor did you come to pray.’

  ‘What are you asking me to tell you?’

  ‘The truth,’ he said simply. ‘This is the only place where you may speak the truth in safety. You did not come here to grieve for your lost fr
iend. Tell me what is truly on your mind.’

  Could she tell him what she was almost too afraid to admit to herself? She felt an unbearable need to break out of her isolation, to tell someone the truth, to share the burden. Could she trust him? At this moment, she no longer cared. The need to break her silence overcame any objection she might raise.

  ‘I have seen her file,’ Eva said. ‘Please don’t ask me how. The name on the file is hers. The details in the file are mine. Someone instructed that the names were changed and she died in my place. She was murdered to save me.’

  ‘You feel guilty at being alive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your sense of guilt is destroying your life.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What are you doing about it?’

  ‘Trying to find who was responsible.’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘I must discover the identity of whoever changed the names. Then I will know who killed her.’

  I must know why I am alive, she wanted to say.

  ‘Then what?’

  She had no answer to that. She shook her head. It was a moment she had never had the courage to imagine.

  ‘If you discover the truth, then you must forgive,’ he said. ‘Without forgiveness, the soul dies. You can forgive a crime without knowing the identity of the person who committed it.’

  She looked into his dark, sad eyes. He had heard other stories like this, too many probably. He carried the burden of broken lives in his heart. He knew that words are no barrier to the rule of injustice, that in the end each of us individually must stand up for what we believe in and hope that by our example others may follow so that one day evil may be conquered.

  ‘Forgive murderers?’

  He looked at her. ‘Especially murderers. Forgiveness is the way of life, the path forward. Not forgiving means living in the past, and that in itself is a form of death. The living must always choose life over death. That is what your friend would tell you.’

  That was always the position of the priests; some mysteries can never be solved, so don’t try. She had rejected religion in her youth for the same reason. To her surprise she found some comfort in his words.

  ‘Will you tell me your friend’s name?’

  She was surprised at his request. ‘Why?’

  He took his time to reply. ‘I am compiling a list of the missing. It is important to record the history of evil in the hope that some day, and in another time when the darkness lifts, our Book of the Dead will come to light and lessons may be learned from our suffering. Unless we are brave enough to act as witnesses of the truth, how can we stop this evil happening again? If we cannot save ourselves, we must try to save future generations from making the same mistakes.’

  Again the thought flashed through her mind: could she trust him? She had little choice if she wanted answers. Confronting the truth meant taking risks.

  ‘Julia Kovacs.’

  He wrote her name in a black notebook which he buried in the folds of his cassock.

  ‘Thank you. I hope you find the peace of mind you are looking for.’

  9

  1

  On that warm day in June, Martineau slipped silently across an invisible border that separated the world he knew from the secret kingdom of his passion for Eva. He was now in a dangerous, unmapped territory from which, had he thought about it, he would have known return was unlikely. He was in the grip of a madness whose strength he was powerless to deny, and it made him reckless. Lovers never give any thought to the future, lost as they are in the eternal present of their senses. Martineau was no exception. If he was risking everything, so what? How could you live without risk?

  In the hours he spent away from her, he had brief moments of sanity when he recognized the dangers in this relationship. He was an intelligence officer and she a foreign national and very likely a communist. (Come on, admit it. Of course she was a communist.) Forbidden territory. On that basis alone, theirs was an illicit union. Once he would have stopped short before the cries of his conscience and listened to their warnings. Now he ignored them, banishing his anxieties as he had banished caution. He couldn’t give her up, there was no question of it. He was prepared to risk his life, his career, anything for this woman.

  Why the sudden abandonment of prudence? He had only to feel her body, respond to her touch, her smile, her sheer physical enjoyment of their lovemaking, to know in his heart that this was love without disguise and without compromise. He was consumed by it, empowered by it, obsessed by it, lost to it. What he felt for Eva reduced the world beyond her to a desolate and empty landscape, its warning cries fractious whispers that his passion drove him to ignore. Outside the impulses she aroused in him, nothing else mattered

  because nothing else existed. In her arms he forgot who he was. All he knew was this woman, all he wanted was what she had to give him. Hers was the only world he lived in.

  The hours they spent together were stolen from their daily lives. They would meet in her apartment for lunch, too hungry for each other to eat; during the afternoon he would have to go to the café across the square to appease his complaining stomach. Sometimes he would visit Eva after work (‘You must be away by seven, that is when Dora comes back’), sometimes he would spend the night knowing that he would be creeping out of her bed before six (‘Dora stays the night with her friend Elena but she will return here before going to school’).

  On those mornings he would turn up at the embassy early, ready to lie about the operation he was involved in if questioned. He never was; the developing political situation in Budapest provided the perfect cover for his erratic behaviour. He would lock himself into his room for half an hour or so to give substance to the deception – nobody noticed, but it gave him a feeling of security and made the lie appear real – and then go out for a shave and breakfast before telephoning Christine to let her know he was still alive after working all night. Everything told him his life was building to a crisis, that this extraordinary intensity could not last. But he remained powerless to control it.

  *

  The idea of a weekend away was Eva’s. Dora, he learned, was going camping near Lake Balaton with members of her class.

  ‘We have never spent even one whole day together.’ She begged him to come to her summer house, the gift of a grateful State for her Olympic success. She wanted him all to herself, with no worry about when he had to leave, no anxious anticipation in her dreams of the sounds of Dora’s footsteps on the stair or a key turning in a lock. She would borrow a car from a friend. Couldn’t he arrange it, please, for her?

  For the first time he panicked. In the last few days he had only been able to spend as much time with Eva because Christine had gone to their summer house to escape the heat of the city. Rachel Randall had been with her during the week but would return on Saturday morning when Martineau was expected. If he didn’t turn up, Christine would be alone. She hated being alone, which, he admitted ruefully, was largely why they were still together.

  How could he escape for the weekend? What lies would let him sleep in Eva’s bed knowing that Christine was only a couple of hundred yards away up the hill? It was absurd, too risky, he couldn’t possibly do it, but he hadn’t the heart to tell Eva that what she wanted was out of the question, and he heard himself agreeing. This is madness, he told himself, sheer madness, no good will come of it. But he went ahead all the same.

  He lied to Hart. He was on to something, he said, it was too early to say what, he didn’t know how long it would take, would Hart mind the shop over the weekend? He’d be in touch as soon as he could. He lied to Christine. Something had come up, he said, London were making heavy demands, damn them, if things cleared up he’d join her. She should expect him when she saw him but not to worry if he didn’t put in an appearance.

  He worked late on Friday night, locking himself in after Hart had gone home, left the office after ten (looking tired, anxious, preoccupied) and took a taxi to Vaci Street. She was waitin
g for him, as he knew she would be, her face and body alight with the inexhaustible energy that both delighted and terrified him. She kissed him and handed over the keys to her friend’s car. She leaned against him as he drove the borrowed Volkswagen. It was after midnight when they turned off the battered road, down a bumpy dirt track to park out of sight under a tree.

  It was a still moonlit night, the stars hanging like a shroud in a black sky above him. No wind. The air soft and clear from the lake. He looked up the hill towards the house in which Christine was sleeping. No lights. She must have gone to bed. He experienced no sense of release in the knowledge, only breathless constraint. He felt Eva’s arms around him.

  ‘This is our time now,’ she whispered. ‘For these few days you are safe. No one can take you from me.’

  She was wrong, only he couldn’t tell her. He was safe while it was night. With the dawn, danger returned.

  *

  He remembers only fragments of the days that followed, moments that stay in his mind, mental images in which he sees himself and the girl and through which he can relive the voyage of discovery on which they launched themselves under the stars on the night of their arrival. Are they images of madness? Does he lose his mind in the hours they spend together? If this is madness, then he never wants to be sane again. What he experiences is his own rebirth, the finding of sensations and emotions he has not touched for half his lifetime. The essence of passion is to possess and be possessed. In that exchange, nothing is forbidden. Passion denies rules because it acknowledges no restraints. It is the freedom to discover oneself through another being.

  *

  He wakes to clear, sharp light pouring in through the window illuminating the whitewashed walls of the bedroom. It is early, not yet seven. Through the opened window he hears birds singing, otherwise there is silence. Eva sits at her dressing table, her back to him, drying her hair with a towel, unaware that he is looking at her. He watches the play of muscles under her skin, he hears her humming softly to herself some Hungarian tune he doesn’t recognize. Can this woman really be his? Or is he dreaming?