Secret Kingdom

by Francis Bennett

  She was looking for Pountney to help her find any explanation to excuse Leman for what he had done.

  ‘I’m certain the Soviets exerted great pressure on him,’ Pountney said, offering what comfort he could. ‘What’s damaging is that Joe agreed to go through with it. That makes him an accomplice and people don’t like that. Somehow you’re expected never to give in to the kind of pressures only the Soviets know how to exploit. It’s easy to say that. It’s a damn sight harder to live up to it when the power of the Soviet system is ranged against you.’

  ‘He’s not a man who gives in easily,’ she said. What she wanted to say but couldn’t bring herself to do so was that, despite appearances, Leman wasn’t a coward. Pountney sympathized with her difficulty.

  ‘I’m sure he’s not.’

  ‘They must have done something terrible to him.’

  ‘We know the Soviets to be skilled persuaders. I don’t think it would be helpful to go into detail.’

  ‘If I hadn’t seen that newsreel with my own eyes,’ Anna said, her despair mixed with anger, ‘I would never have believed he was capable of doing something like that. He always preferred silence to words.’

  ‘It’s best not to rush to judgement until we know more.’

  ‘Do you think he did it to save his own skin?’

  Her investigation into Leman’s motives was no different to the questions they had all asked themselves, and to which they had no answers. It was wrong to condemn a man unheard, however tempting such an act might be.

  ‘We’ll know more when we are allowed to see him,’ Pountney said. ‘The ambassador is pressing the Hungarian authorities to arrange a meeting.’

  ‘Can anything be done?’ she asked. ‘Or do we have to sit around and watch this drama getting worse every day? I don’t think I could stand that.’

  ‘At this moment, there’s nothing useful we can do except wait.’ Leman was beyond their reach now. It was better to let tempers cool, and the enormity of what he had been made to do settle into some kind of perspective. ‘That’s what’s so damaging. By making his confession public, he’s given the Hungarian authorities everything they wanted, propaganda against the West and a guilty verdict. He’s done them a good turn. You can’t expect people here to warm to Joe right at this moment, can you?’

  She was crying now, holding a handkerchief to her eyes. For a moment he was surprised. He imagined they’d gone past the point where she might break down. ‘What am I going to tell his parents?’

  Margaret was at her side, her arm round her, comforting her. ‘You must give them something to hope for. You must do that.’

  ‘What is there to hope for? Joe might as well be dead. None of us is going to see him again, I know we’re not. I can’t tell them the truth but I can’t deceive them either, can I?’

  She gave way then to uncontrolled sobbing, her anguish and misery destroying the control she had so steadfastly imposed on herself since her arrival.

  No, we won’t see him again, Pountney wanted to say. You’re right. Leman’s as good as dead. He’s cast himself off. Perhaps he was already dead when he appeared in front of the press. He must have known there’d be no way back once he’d crossed that boundary. Leman might be an idiot but he certainly wasn’t a fool.

  ‘Tell them we’re doing everything in our power to bring him back,’ Pountney said. How easily the hypocrisies fell from his lips. Had the system slyly corrupted his soul too? Or was he lying out of sympathy for this drowning woman?

  ‘Please help him,’ she said. ‘I know you think what he did was wrong. Believe me when I say he would never have done that unless he had no alternative. I know him because I love him. Nothing will ever change that.’

  *

  My son, [Esther wrote]. We see your picture on the cinema and the papers. I do not recognize your voice nor how you look, your father neither. What have these people done to you? How could they make you say those things? Your father and me, we know it is not you who speak the words. They come from your mouth but not from your heart. Someone bad make you say it, I don’t know how but they do. It leaves me upset. I want to cry all the time. Your father too.

  Anna comes every day. She is with us now. She explain us what is going on. She is doing everything to get you free from these terrible people. She is a good woman. We are lucky in her. You too.

  I cannot bear to think of my son in prison. Anna says there is no shame to go to prison for political reasons, but for me all prison is the same. A door you cannot open when you want to. You are not free. You cannot do what you wish. For a mother that is terrible pain to bear.

  We think of you every day, every hour, your father and me. We talk of you. We have your picture in every room. I light a candle in the church every day. We pray for you. If God is willing, you will by some miracle soon be free. I pray every hour that I may wake from this nightmare and find you back here drinking tea. All I can hope is that I see you again before I die.

  *

  It was very hot in the crowded cinema. She was wearing a thin cotton dress but the material clung to her and the fabric of the seats irritated her bare legs. Was it simply physical discomfort? Or was she reacting to her own role in the events she had witnessed on the screen?

  The newsreel closed with absurdly uplifting martial music over the open, innocent face of a young man of iron from Novosibirsk or somewhere like that (who cared, anyway?) surrounded by his smiling fellow workers, another Hero of the Soviet Union who had felled more trees or dug more coal or loaded more barrels of oil or bales of wheat to help his soviet fulfil its quota for the month, the year, the decade. Did anyone believe this nonsense any more than they believed the nonsense about the poor Englishman they’d seen stammering out his staged confession?

  She had shuddered when the film had cut to a display of documents and letters, all in English, carefully laid out on a table. She could easily read the words ‘Top Secret’ and make out signatures at the end of the letters as the camera played lovingly over the proof of the West’s duplicity.

  ‘… Authenticated signatures on documents captured from this counter-revolutionary force’, the voice-over commentary had said, ‘prove beyond doubt the complicity of the British and American governments …’

  As the house lights came up, Dora leaned towards her mother and whispered: ‘Is he guilty of all those crimes, Mama? Is all that true?’

  How do you answer? Do you lie to your own daughter? Do you break the strict instruction of silence that made you an accomplice in a crime against an innocent Englishman? Can you forget the warning touch of that elderly man’s hand upon your shoulder?) Will you break your daughter’s heart if you tell her the truth?

  ‘Did he look guilty?’ she asked.

  ‘Before he began to speak, I thought he was dead,’ Dora replied.

  She looked around the auditorium. The same question was being asked everywhere. No words were spoken, no answers given. The thoughts in the heads of those who had watched with her were no different to her own. How could they be? They were all Hungarians in this audience.

  For a moment she had an almost unstoppable urge to stand up and scream. Why can’t we admit it to ourselves, openly and honestly? This man is innocent. The film we have seen is lies. How do I know? I’ll tell you. These documents that are being used to convict him of crimes he has not committed are forgeries. They were written in Hungarian. I translated them into English. I am an accomplice in this crime against this poor man. Why aid I do it? For the same reasons we all do it, each in our own way, every day of our lives I want to keep my job, feed my daughter, stay alive. I was afraid of what they might do if I refused their request. My hands are dirty. I am guilty. But so are we all, guilty of connivance in a conspiracy against decency and dignity and the right to our own freedoms. Our lives are built on lies; we see them on the cinema screen, we read them in the newspaper, we hear them on the wireless. Never-ending lies. They surround us until we hear nothing else, see nothing else, know nothing else. We a
ccept them as truth. We are too frightened of the monstrous authority that controls our lives to reject them. What will make us find the courage to say ‘No more’? When will we stand up and say ‘Enough of these crimes against us’? When will we prove to ourselves that we are no longer a slave race, and demand justice and truth?

  ‘What do you think, Mama? Is it true or not?’ Again, Dora whispers.

  Take control of yourself. Answer your daughter. Tell her the truth even if you conceal your own involvement. At least find the courage for that.

  ‘None of it is true,’ she said loud enough for Dora to hear. ‘What we all saw on the screen just now is an invented confession. That poor Englishman was forced to say what he did. He is one more victim of the lies and deceptions of this intolerable Soviet occupation. None of what you have seen is true. Not one scrap of it.’

  In her mind Leman and Martineau became one, both victims of the same regime. She felt tears beginning to push against her eyelids. Mercifully the lights dimmed, the screen flickered, the soundtrack crackled into life and at last the feature began. Under cover of darkness Dora took her hand and squeezed it.

  *

  ‘Anna, Anna, Anna.’

  He lay on the bed, his head cradled in his hands, his body shaking in distress. He wanted to weep but no tears came. That was the mark of his shame. He could not cry because there was nothing to weep for. He had betrayed himself and those he loved. He was a man whose soul was trapped in a no man’s land of guilt and horror, whose punishment it was to live for ever in a twilight world between life and death. He was nothing. He had ceased to exist.

  ‘Anna, please.’

  They had even denied him any news of the girl’s reprieve. He had listened for shots in the courtyard below his window but heard nothing. He had not been taken down from his cell to watch her execution. He had asked his guards what had happened to the girl but they had been instructed to say nothing. He was kept in solitary confinement, only allowed to wash when the other prisoners had gone. He had asked to see the Russian general again but his request had been refused.

  They were denying him the consolation of knowing that he had saved a life, leaving him to live with the thought that perhaps he had sacrificed his own for nothing.

  Should he kill himself? Was that the answer? His life was over. He would never leave this place. He would never see Anna again. But how? He had no rope to put around his neck, no knife to stick in his heart, no drugs to swallow. There was no escape from his own punishment.

  ‘Forgive me, Anna,’ he said out loud. ‘Forgive me, please.’

  THE SWIMMING POOL IN THE DYNAMO STADIUM

  September 1940

  Osanova had edged in front though not by much. Head and shoulders. That was all right. She hadn’t got a finish, everyone knew that. Eva had gone by her in the past; she could do it again now. A few more strokes and she’d put an end to the Soviet girl’s dreams.

  Keep your rhythm. Don’t tighten up.

  She shouldn’t have let her get away. That was stupid. She’d lost concentration on the last turn and made a mess of a routine she could usually perform in her sleep. There’d be hell from Matyas when the race was over.

  Now go for it. Accelerate. Fly past her. Show her who’s best.

  For an instant she imagined she was accelerating, clawing back the distance stroke by stroke. Victory would be hers again. Then she knew that she had left it too late. The familiar surge of power on which she had relied so often in the past, her physical strength coupled with an iron desire to win, had vanished and there was nothing she could do about it. Osanova was increasing her lead and there weren’t enough strokes left to catch her.

  On any other day she would have experienced fury at her carelessness on the turn, horror at the loss of her strength, despair at being beaten by Osanova. But a sense of calm settled on her. Weren’t there more important things than winning? Who cared if that cow Osanova beat her for once? What did it matter?

  ‘What the hell happened out there? Why didn’t you accelerate?’ Matyas was yelling even before she had got out of the water. ‘You didn’t lose that race, you gave it away. You hear me? You gave it to her.’ He turned away in disgust.

  She touched Osanova’s shoulder as she climbed out of the pool, acknowledging her victory. ‘Good race,’ she murmured. ‘Well done.’

  ‘Better get used to losing, bitch.’ Osanova hissed. ‘That’s the way it’s going to be from now on. You’ll never win again.’

  ‘You all right?’ Julia draped a towel around her shoulders. Eva smiled but said nothing.

  ‘What came over you?’ Matyas was unable to stifle his anger. ‘You swim like that, I don’t know why I bother. What have I been telling you all these months? Do you listen to nothing I say?’

  Behind her a roar of approval went up from the audience as the extent of Osanova’s win was clear from the board that was being raised. The Hungarian champion had been beaten. The predominantly Soviet crowd was delighted.

  ‘You’re shivering,’ Julia said, concern in her voice. ‘Are you sure you’re all right? You don’t seem yourself.’

  Suddenly she couldn’t bear it any longer, Matyas shouting, Julia fussing, Osanova accepting the applause of the Russians, arms raised high in victory. She ran up the stairs to the changing room.

  ‘You don’t get away that easily,’ Matyas shouted after her. ‘You and I, we’re going to have this out, you hear me? When you’re ready, I’ll be down here waiting for you. We’ve got some talking to do.’

  It was only then that she realized Alexei had not been there to see her race.

  *

  She sat on the bench in the changing room shrouded in towels. Only her eyes were visible. She stared blankly at the wet floor. It wasn’t cold but her body shook uncontrollably. She felt ill, exhausted, bitterly unhappy.

  Matyas had lost his temper, the first time that had happened since he had taken over her coaching. His words echoed remorselessly in her mind.

  ‘You let the Russian girl take half a length off you in ten strokes and then you make no effort to fight back. What the hell’s come over you? You gone soft or something? You let her win the race, damn you. What’s the matter? Don’t you care any more?’

  The other girls in the changing room had heard every word. Some – those she hated – were laughing openly at her humbling; others had turned away in embarrassment, too shaken to say anything. They’d left her on her own to cry, humiliated by Matyas’s criticisms and Osanova’s triumph. Osanova herself had come in later. She had stood in front of Eva and stared down at her. Eva had refused to look up at her.

  ‘One victory does not make up for the pain of other defeats,’ she said. ‘I will never forget what you have done to me. Never. You understand?’

  Eva had said nothing in reply.

  However Matyas might try to revive the spirit that had so mysteriously disappeared from her performance, she knew she wasn’t going to beat Osanova again. It was over. Perhaps not for ever; certainly for now. To that extent the Russian girl was right, though for reasons she couldn’t know. Maybe sometime it would all come back, but not this year. She knew why her strength had vanished and why she no longer cared about losing. What she didn’t know was how to break the news to Matyas. Or Alexei. They both had to be told.

  *

  The doctor had said little when she’d gone for her tests. A week later he’d told her she was pregnant and that was that. An everyday occurrence. She had kept the secret to herself. Part of her believed that if she told no one, it would all go away. Of course it hadn’t. Ten weeks gone and her body no longer felt her own. She was lethargic, invaded, her mind on this other mysterious new life growing inside her. No wonder her reserves of energy had not been there when she wanted them. Her life had a new claim on it now, her strength faced new demands.

  *

  How long had she sat there? She was no longer shivering but she still felt cold. Her watch had stopped but she knew it was late. Time to get dressed.
She’d been dreaming for too long. She was alone in the changing room. For all she knew, she was alone in the swimming pool. She unwrapped herself and stood, naked and damp, looking for a dry towel.

  The three conscripts appeared at the door of the changing room. She had not heard them approach. They had taken off their boots and socks and rolled up the bottoms of their trousers. They were not wearing jackets, only shirts, loosened at the collar. She turned and saw them watching her.

  ‘Get out of here.’ She grabbed a towel to hide herself from their sight.

  ‘We came to see you, love.’

  ‘Get out.’ She backed away from them, holding the towel around herself.

  ‘We liked you better the way you were before.’

  They were coming towards her, grinning; three boys, not more than seventeen or eighteen, she imagined. She retreated before them, her heart beating frantically, searching for something to throw at them, some weapon to hold them off. She could find nothing.

  ‘We’ll get you in the end,’ the leader said, laughing. ‘So why not give up now? Save us all a lot of trouble.’

  They were coming closer. She could read the tattoos on their arms and the intentions in their eyes. A few more paces and she would be up against the back wall of the changing room. She kicked some wet clothes towards them, momentarily breaking their attention. They reached for her as she ran past them, but she was too quick. She raced out of the changing room, her feet thundering on the wooden floor, down the stairs and into the pool area. She had no idea why she’d gone this way except the pool was her territory, where she always felt safest. She screamed for help but no answers came, no voice to her rescue. Only the echo of her cries, the pounding feet of the soldiers on the wooden floor, their coarse shouts, threatening laughter. Too late she saw that they had spread out, blocking all her escape routes. She was cornered. They were coming towards her.

  ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  The one closest to her was loosening the belt of his trousers. As she went backwards she slipped on the wet floor and fell, hitting her head on the edge of the pool. She felt the stickiness of blood in her hair. That was when they caught her.