The accompanying letter doesn’t say much, but it does mention that she has met a man, ‘a darling pinko,’ she calls him, who is teaching her all sorts of new tricks. He is from Worcestershire and called Jamie and has (What did I tell you, Jo-jo?) a British passport, and he lived in Shanghai before Switzerland, so he is almost the most exotic man she has ever met.
I hope you’re keeping an eye on that cousin of mine, she writes. I’m surprised he hasn’t been interned yet after what happened in Poland. I can’t imagine the benefits to Russia went unnoticed in England. Send him my love, will you?
Joan reads this part of the letter out loud to Leo and then stops, but he does not look up from his work. ‘What I don’t understand is why she doesn’t write to you herself?’
Leo’s shoulders stiffen. It is a small movement but Joan does not miss it. His pen stops moving but he does not turn around.
‘Leo?’ Joan feels a sudden lurch in her stomach. Why does she always fear the worst? ‘What is it?’
‘Sonya and I had a . . . ’ He pauses, searching for the word.
‘A fight?’ Joan offers.
He turns the page of the book in front of him. His hands fidget a little as the page springs up again and he attempts to press it flat. ‘Clash,’ he says eventually, turning to look at Joan. ‘We had a bit of a clash while you were ill.’
‘Because she wanted you to go to Switzerland with her?’
Leo presses his lips together. ‘That was part of it. Not all of it.’ For a moment it looks as though he is going to tell her more, but then his eyes become glassy and she knows that this subject, like so many others, is not open to her. She hates it when he is like this. Even though she tells herself that his reluctance to tell her everything is only natural after the life he has had, she still feels angry with him that he does not want to share everything. Perhaps Sonya was right. Perhaps she doesn’t understand him enough. But still, why has he not mentioned this until now? Why must this be a secret? He turns back to the desk and picks up his fountain pen, and then he begins to scratch a list of numbers onto the paper in front of him. ‘Have you seen my supervisor’s book? The orange one?’
‘It’s over there.’ Joan points to the chair where he left it the previous evening, where he always leaves his books, and does not take her eyes from him as he stands up from his desk and goes over to pick it up. ‘Well, she sends her love to you anyway,’ she adds, not ready to let the subject drop quite yet.
Leo nods. ‘Please say I send her my best wishes.’ He pauses. ‘Tell her I’ll write soon.’ And then he bends down, kisses Joan on the top of the head, and walks out of the room.
TUESDAY, 10.41 A.M.
Ms. Hart takes a letter from her briefcase and hands it to Joan. ‘This is from Leo’s file,’ she says. ‘He seems to have managed to convince someone that he’d lost interest in the cause by the time the war started.’
Joan does not lift her eyes from the piece of paper.
‘Would you say that was true?’ Ms. Hart asks.
Silence.
Ms. Hart’s voice is gently persuasive. ‘I’m just asking your opinion, Mrs. Stanley. Would you have said that Leo’s dedication, faith, whatever you want to call it, wavered at this point?’
‘Leo wasn’t a very expressive person. I don’t know what he thought, and I wouldn’t like to speak for him.’
‘But how did it appear to you?’
Nick interrupts. ‘Who are you questioning here? My mother? Or this Leo person?’
Neither Ms. Hart nor Mr. Adams look at Nick.
‘I would say,’ Joan begins tentatively, ‘that his viewpoint changed slightly as a result of the pact.’ She pauses. ‘But I wouldn’t have said he wavered.’ She looks up. ‘Leo wasn’t the type to waver.’
22 March 1940
Leo GALICH has been interned, apparently at the instigation of Sir Alexander Hoyle.
Personally, I think we shall have to decide on a policy with regard to aliens with socialist leanings. If we accepted them in the first place, and if we have no evidence that they abused the hospitality we have shown them by engaging in extreme political activities, there does not seem to be any justification for interning them.
As far as we are concerned, GALICH is a borderline case. We have been presented with evidence by one of GALICH’s tutors at Cambridge who declares himself a dyed-in-the-wool Tory. He believes that GALICH’s interest in communism stems from witnessing the rise of Hitler during his early years in Leipzig but, like so many of his type, the Nazi–Soviet Pact has done for any misguided sense of loyalty he may have felt towards Stalin.
There does not seem to be anything in his activities to which we could properly take exception beyond youthful exuberance, but it would be more satisfactory if he could find employment in his own sphere of usefulness in one of the Overseas Dominions to keep him out of harm’s way. We will ask the Special Branch to pursue this actively.
In my opinion, our policy should be to intern alien communists only when we have evidence that they are in touch with the Communist Party of Great Britain. Any very drastic change of policy should be taken only when it is quite clear that the communists are on the side of Hitler in the war against Great Britain.
In the spring of 1940 the bombing starts—not just in London, Birmingham, Gateshead, Glasgow, but also to a lesser extent in Cambridge—and there is a round-up of enemy aliens. Leo is arrested and marched off to the police station, along with a significant proportion of the science faculty.
‘Look after my papers, Jo-jo,’ he instructs as he is taken away. ‘And can you hand-deliver my thesis to my supervisor and collect it once he’s read it? Keep it safe for me.’
‘I will,’ she says. Her eyes fill with tears and, although she knows that she needs to be brave and there are far worse places he could be sent during wartime than a camp out of the line of fire, she still wishes he did not have to go. Or at least, that he would be less prosaic about his departure. It could be years before they see each other again and she wants something more from him than this. Something to hold on to while he is away.
Say it, she thinks. Please say it.
But he does not. He might think it. She is certain that somewhere inside him he does think it, or at least feel it, but he does not say it. He frowns as he pulls on his jacket and pats his pockets to check he has his keys, cigarettes, gloves. ‘Don’t forget,’ he says.
‘I won’t.’
The policeman puts his head back around the door. ‘Come on.’
Leo nods and turns to leave.
‘Leo.’
‘Yes?’
Her voice is small and hopeful. ‘I’ll miss you.’
‘Of course.’ He takes a step towards her and kisses her quickly, too quickly for her to be ready for it and leaving only the lingering scratch of his stubble against her lips. ‘I’ll miss you too, Jo-jo.’
He is sent to an internment camp on the Isle of Man, and thence to Canada on board a ship flying a swastika flag to indicate that it is transporting German prisoners of war alongside the British internees, most of whom are Jewish and have spent the last five years trying to avoid being trapped in enclosed spaces. However, it is seen as a way of keeping the ship afloat, and the voyage passes without incident.
Leo writes to her from Quebec, reporting that the camp is clean and bright and the air smells of pine needles. There are huge portions of food served up in the canteen, and he has been asked to deliver a series of lectures about Soviet Planning to the discussion group he and his comrades have formed to keep their minds active. Joan can imagine Leo at the camp, assuming his position as unofficial leader as if he would expect nothing else, just as he always did back home.
Although he would not say he is enjoying it exactly, there is no evidence of any bitterness or resentment in his letters, and it is a relief to Joan to know that he is not unhappy. Once again,
she takes comfort from the fact that the frequency and length of his letters must at least indicate that he thinks of her often, but she wishes he would say something, anything, a bit . . . well . . . softer.
She does not mention this in her letters back to him. It seems such a small thing to complain about when there are so many terrible things happening across Europe. Later, she will think that one of the reasons for Leo’s attitude towards Britain (‘an unheroic nation’ he will call it, once it is all over) was because he missed those early, dreadful months of the Blitz during which German planes droned over the country every night and the earth shuddered and flashed under the weight of bombardment. He did not stand on the roof as part of the Newnham Fire Brigade as Joan did to watch the fires burning themselves out along Vicarage Terrace, nor did he see the smoking piles of rubble that sometimes littered the streets near the station in the mornings, the photographs of funeral carriages in the newspapers, the pictures of mansion blocks of flats blown open like dolls’ houses, women sitting tight-lipped on buses, determinedly not looking out of the windows and smiling at the conductor as she—they were nearly always women in those days—clipped the tickets. And everywhere, in every crack and pore, the tireless, clinging dust.
Joan does not mention any of this either. It is not done to complain, so instead she tells him about the books she is reading, the films she has been to see, the essays and experiments she is working on for her finals. She mentions dances and dressing-up parties and taking fifteen-year-old Lally punting on the Cam when she came to visit by herself for the first time. She tells him about the craze for skating on Mill Pond when it freezes over during Lent Term, and about cycling out to Lingay Fen with some of the other girls from college to practise on the much bigger, smoother rink where the All-England Championships used to take place before the war.
She does not tell him that her greatest enjoyment is her weekly hot bath, how she fills the tub with metallic-tasting water from an array of kettles and saucepans, and holds her breath while she submerges her whole body so that the world around her becomes muffled and muted. She does not tell him that lying naked in warm water is the only substitute she can find for the warmth of his body next to her own, for his arms, his smell, the comforting weight of him, and how, for a brief moment, it allows her to forget the terrible empty ache in her stomach.
Final examinations come and go. The undergraduette protests outside Senate House on results day are muted this year, seeing as the country is in the throes of pulling together and there are far worse things happening in the world than women not being allowed degrees. But still, it exists as a minor gripe, a rumbling of discontent, and there are assurances that surely, surely, after this second war, they will have to relent and allow women to be admitted fully into the university.
Not long after this, a letter arrives from the Metals Research Facility in Cambridge summoning Joan to report for an interview the following Monday. Leo has told her to expect this, having learnt something of the project from a fellow internee at the Canadian camp whom Leo has persuaded to recommend Joan for the post. Apparently, Joan is the perfect candidate, according to Leo, although he is not very forthcoming on the matter of what the job actually entails, and nor is the letter of summons. She knows only that it is essential to the war effort, that it is not a research post but still requires detailed scientific knowledge, and that even her Physics tutor has been approached by her future employers to enquire if she is up to the task.
On Monday morning she takes her time, unfurling the rollers from her hair with more care than usual and putting on her best woollen suit, navy blue and a little patched, but brightened up with peacock blue buttons which she hopes will draw attention away from the faded fabric. She looks for her smartest shoes, charcoal grey with a sharp heel, and then remembers that she lent them to Sonya last year and has not used them since. Sonya’s room has been untouched since she went away, the war having left several college rooms empty, and she has to borrow a spare set of keys from the porter to retrieve them.
When she enters, the first thing she notices is that Sonya’s bed still has the same sheets on it and the pillows are stacked up against the small wooden headboard as if she has just got up and gone out for the day. A glass stands next to the bed, its insides smudged where the water has evaporated. Joan goes to the wardrobe. Her shoes are exactly where she remembers seeing them last, tucked to the side of the bottom shelf. She reaches in to pull them out and, as she does, she is struck by the faint scent of a long-remembered smell. Lemony soap and tobacco. She sees a light blue shirt crumpled into the shelf above her shoes. She takes it out, the cotton soft against her fingers, and she holds it up to her nose and breathes in the scent of it. It is unmistakeable, that smell. She closes her eyes and for a moment she is somewhere else, and it takes a while for the question that is burning in the back of her mind to form itself into words.
How, she wonders, did one of Leo’s worn shirts end up in Sonya’s cupboard?
Joan holds the shirt away and frowns, puzzled. Leo is normally so careful with his things; everything folded and in its place, quite the opposite of Sonya. He would never bundle it up like that.
The answer comes to her in the form of a sudden sickness in her stomach. No, she thinks, not that, and for a moment she is disgusted with herself that she has even allowed such an unkind, sordid thought to enter her head. What is wrong with her? When did she become so—she cannot think of the right word—corrupted?
Quickly, she stuffs the shirt back into the cupboard, picks up the shoes and closes the door behind her. The lock slips back into the catch so that the room will be left undisturbed once more, either until Sonya returns or the college decide they cannot hold it for her any longer, and then she hurries down the corridor to her own room. Five minutes until she needs to leave. Her shoes still need to be polished, her hair brushed and clipped back. Why must she always be late for everything?
She has been to these laboratories before as an undergraduate, but never into the secure section where she goes now. She is told to report to reception where she is to wait for Professor Max Davis, the director of the Research Facility.
She sees him before he sees her, stopping at one desk and then another to ask questions and nodding his approval to whatever answers are given. She has heard his name mentioned in the science department before, always spoken with a degree of awe, as if his scientific precision is a near-beatific gift. But, in the flesh, he appears younger than she anticipated, perhaps thirty, and dressed in a slim-fitting suit with an eager expression on his face when he talks to the other scientists. He glances up at her and nods, indicating that he will be with her in a moment. He is good-looking, in a conventional sort of way, with dark brown hair that curls up from his head in tufts even though he has attempted to pomade it into place. He looks like the sort of man who used to enjoy a good game of chess during his schooldays, or perhaps ping-pong. When he meets her in the draughty reception room he seems to spring across the room at her, insisting as he shakes her hand that she call him Max rather than Professor or anything of that nature.
‘How was your journey?’
Joan smiles, thinking that the ten-minute walk from Newnham to the laboratories could hardly pass for a journey. ‘Uneventful.’
‘How very un-English of you. Most people would say that uneventful passed for good.’
Joan smiles.
‘Ah-ha, but of course. Must be your scientific outlook. Step one of the interview passed with flying colours.’ He grins. ‘Let me take you to my office, and we can have a look in at the lab on the way.’
There is a long red-tiled corridor of swing doors with square, white-washed rooms to either side which are visible from the corridor through large screens. The building smells of disinfectant and polished glass. It is a clean, light smell, accentuated by the sense of industry present in each of the rooms.
Max is reading from a wad of papers as they walk
. ‘It says here,’ he says suddenly, ‘that you liked to attend communist marches, talks, that sort of thing while you were a student.’
Joan does not break her stride as she looks up at him. ‘Oh yes,’ she says, answering directly as she has planned. It was Leo’s advice, of course, to think about how she would tackle this question if it should ever arise. She had guessed that this job would require security clearance given that it is classed as a war job, and had decided in advance that she would admit some interest in the cause if asked, hoping to explain it away as youthful optimism mixed with academic interest. She knows that any attempt to evade or deny would only make her blush and look guilty. ‘Yes, I was rather interested in that sort of thing,’ she says. ‘Intellectually.’
‘And now?’
‘Now? Well, times have changed since then.’ She will not look away. Not yet.
He nods, and for a moment Joan wonders if he is going to confess to a similar leaning. ‘Well, I suppose the Nazi–Soviet pact saw to a lot of that.’ He pauses. ‘Bad idea, in my opinion, but I suppose Russia came out of the first war terribly hard, poor buggers.’
Not a confession then. But Max is seemingly unfazed by what has just passed, and his reaction is considered, almost sympathetic, Joan thinks. They turn a corner and he bounces ahead of her to push open a wooden door, holding it with his arm outstretched along the width of the door so that she can pass through.
‘Here we are,’ he says, leading her into a smaller office and gesturing towards a chair on one side of the desk while he sits down on the other side, looking directly at her now. ‘But still,’ he continues, ‘try everything once, eh?’
He is testing her now. His eyes are deep blue, sea-blue. She feels a faint burn in her cheeks but she knows she must continue. She must pretend to herself that she is a normal young woman who has never met Leo or Sonya, who was interested in peace marches for a brief while but has no interest in political movements. She must convince herself that she is not sympathetic to the cause, that she thinks communists are brutal and vicious and in need of a good haircut rather than hopeful idealists, and she hears the required note of outrage slip into her voice. It is, she realises as she speaks, her mother’s voice, firm yet reprimanding. ‘I wouldn’t say I went that far.’
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