But nobody would come. Nothing would happen. The stench of the cell would be overpoweringly stale. He would not know what time of day it was, or how long he had been there. Impossible to tell in a room with no sunlight, no windows, no lights to be turned on or off, intermittent food and nowhere to wash. His mouth would be dry and sore, and it would hurt to swallow.
At last, the door would be unlocked and pulled open, and the light from the corridor would temporarily blind him so that he could see only the silhouette of a guard standing over him with a baton. Leo would sit up, shielding his face from the light with his arm. ‘There’s been a mistake. If I could just see someone about it and explain—’
But no. That would never have worked. He’s in the system now. She imagines the guard’s silence as he takes Leo’s arm and hauls him roughly out of the cell and along the too-bright corridor. His limbs would ache at the movement, and his lips would sting with dryness. His whole body would be weak and crumpled, and he would be taken to another, similar room, only this time it would have an electric bulb, and he would be shoved inside.
Still no water.
Sonya told her that the interrogation lasted five days. Joan burns to think of the pain they must have inflicted upon him. She has read about the ‘special measures’ allowed during interrogations. The broken bones, the dislocations, the bright lights and loud noises. The terror.
After three days, another man was brought into the cell, but Sonya says that she doesn’t recognise the name. Leo’s co-accused, who was shot a few days after Leo.
Shot? she thinks again. Such a clean, abrupt word.
Joan cannot think who this other man might be, but he enters her dreams at night. She sees a face so badly beaten and bruised that Leo does not recognise him either.
‘Do you know this man?’
‘No.’ The man’s mother would barely recognise her own son after what they’ve done to him. ‘I’ve never seen him before.’
‘You’re lying.’ A wooden stick is brought down onto Leo’s left arm, leaving a sharp, sudden pain in his elbow and a dull nausea in his stomach.
‘I don’t know him,’ Leo would still have insisted.
‘Are you willing to swear that you have never before met this man? That you have never—’
In Joan’s imaginings, Leo does not hear the end of that sentence. It happens every time she pictures this, Sonya’s words running hopelessly around in her head. She pictures Leo staring at the man, and there is something in his expression that tells Joan he did know that man, although Joan did not, and that he could remember the particular colour of his eyes, the shape of his head. The few remaining recognisable features of his swollen face. The next blow would have been to Leo’s right arm. And then to his back and his ribs and his kidneys. He would have felt his pulse slowing, his heart suddenly unable, or unwilling, to beat as strongly as it had before.
The following morning, Leo was dragged outside and shot in the back of the head.
Joan cannot speak. Her heart pounds in her chest. ‘But why?’ she whispers.
Sonya shakes her head. ‘Who knows? But he has been quite critical of the regime. It did sometimes cross my mind that his research undermined the whole system.’
Joan stares at her. ‘You don’t believe them, do you? He didn’t do anything wrong. You know he didn’t. He only published those results to prevent famine during the war.’
Joan’s voice is raised, and she feels Sonya put her hands on her shoulders, trying to calm her and quieten her. ‘Shhh, Jo-jo, not here. People can hear you.’
But she cannot be quiet. ‘He wasn’t a traitor. You know he wasn’t. It was his whole life. He only ever wanted to make it work.’
Sonya shakes her head and puts her finger to her lips. ‘I thought so too,’ she whispers, her voice soft and soothing; too calm, Joan will think later. ‘But it’s like I told you. Trust no one.’
Nick stares at her, disbelief evident in his face. ‘Is it true? Did they actually kill him?’
Joan nods slowly. Her eyes are dry now but there is a pain spreading through her whole body at the memory. She wills herself to think of something peaceful and ordinary—a cloud floating in a bright blue sky—in an attempt to calm her fluttering heart.
‘I don’t believe this.’ He looks at Joan, and for a brief moment Joan detects a flicker of sympathy mixed in with the anger. ‘But why?’
‘With respect,’ Ms. Hart interrupts, ‘Stalin ordered the execution of millions of people. I don’t think he was particularly fussy.’ She takes a piece of paper from the file and holds it against her chest. ‘However, in this case, the KGB report from Leo’s interrogation was included in one of the other files smuggled out by our defector. Would you like to see it?’
Nick sits forward. ‘Yes.’
Joan does not speak. It was all so long ago. It can’t change anything. It can’t bring him back. It can’t make his death any less terrible. And it won’t make Nick forgive her.
‘I can read it out to you,’ Ms. Hart offers. ‘It’s only short.’
Joan shakes her head. ‘I don’t think . . . ’
Nick does not seem to notice his mother’s objection. ‘Yes, just read it out.’
Ms. Hart glances at Joan who does not protest this time. ‘Fine,’ she says. ‘Citizen Leo Galich was today found guilty of attempts to undermine the Soviet Empire with his campaign of misinformation in relation to the Soviet agricultural policies and his work with the Canadian government during the Great Patriotic War.’ She pauses. ‘His connection to Citizen Grigori Fyodorovich—’
At this Joan emits a small cry. Ms. Hart glances at Nick and then back to Joan, who is sitting with her hand over her mouth.
Ms. Hart looks down and continues to read, her voice louder now. ‘His connection to Citizen Grigori Fyodorovich was denied to the bitter end but the evidence we received from Agent Silk is utterly trustworthy, and so for this reason we know for a fact that Citizen Galich is a liar as well as a traitor. He is hereby sentenced to immediate death by firing squad.’
Joan opens her mouth and closes it again. There is something she desperately needs to ask but her voice is not to be trusted. It breaks and croaks as she tries to speak.
‘What is it? What are you trying to say?’ Ms. Hart asks.
Nick takes the piece of paper from Ms. Hart.
‘Who’s Agent Silk?’ Joan whispers, and she notices that the words are somehow joined together when she speaks. She tries to lean forwards while the wave of nausea passes but she finds that she cannot move her body. Or at least, she can move half of it, but the rest seems disjointed and slack. It is stuck, suspended in time.
She hears Ms. Hart’s voice but, really, she does not need to be told. Sonya. Sonya was the only other person who knew about Grigori Fyodorovich. Sonya must have told them about Leo’s encounter with him. But why?
She imagines Leo denying all knowledge of him, even though it would not have saved him anyway. Always so stoic, so brave. The cause above all else. Perhaps he was still convinced that it was a terrible mistake and they would realise they had the wrong man before it was too late, and that he had actually been invited over for a conference. For a medal. If she closes her eyes, she can still remember the beam of his face as he confided his hope of a medal to her, and it is momentarily soothing until, with this, comes an earlier memory of his triumphant return after that first trip to Moscow when he told her what he had learnt and insisted that she must never, ever tell anybody, and Joan is hit by the realisation that when Leo was dragged out to the execution yard all those years ago he must have believed it was she who had betrayed him, because he would not have known who else it could have been.
No, she cries, although her mouth will no longer move, so the cry is inside her head and she does not know if Nick or Ms. Hart or Mr. Adams with his video recorder can hear it. There is a blackness rising up inside her.
She can see it. She can almost touch it. She reaches out to Nick. How to tell him what is happening? My heart, she thinks. Oh, my heart. She feels a stabbing pain in her head, a giddy swirl of light and noise as her heart seems to slump in her chest. And then nothing.
WEDNESDAY, 10.44 P.M.
She’s been lucky.’ The voice is deep, young-sounding. ‘It was only a small one. It’s fortunate you were with her when it happened as if they’re left untreated the little ones often lead to much larger ones. But this should leave no lasting damage.’
Small what? thinks Joan. She is lying in a strange bed in a strange room and it is hard to distinguish Nick’s voice above the noise. She opens her eyes but the process is laborious and her mind feels strangely detached. Where is she? What is she doing here? For a moment she doesn’t remember anything at all. There are flowers by her bedside, a few sprigs of foxglove in a plastic-looking vase. She thinks they must be from Nick. Who else would have given her flowers? She remembers suddenly that he has been cross with her although she cannot think why, and for an instant she believes that perhaps she has been forgiven for whatever it is she has done, and it is a warm, woollen feeling, as if the bandage on the part of her head where she fell is not medicinal but a soft hand, stroking, anointing.
The flowers in the vase remind her of another sick bed many years ago, and with the memory comes the return of awareness, spreading slowly across her brain like congealing blood. She thinks of Leo and her heart thuds inside her.
‘Ah, hello there,’ says the doctor, noticing that she is awake. He comes to her bedside and leans over. Joan’s eyes flicker and she catches a glimpse of him. He is not as young as he sounds. His hair has receded halfway back along his scalp and his eyes look as if he has been awake for hours. ‘Now, Joan. Don’t worry, you’re going to be fine. It was a minor stroke, a transient ischemic attack to give it its proper name, but I’ve been treating you and you’re going to be absolutely fine.’
‘A stroke?’ Joan whispers. Her mind is numb.
‘Just a small one. Nothing to worry about. You may experience a few lingering symptoms but they should clear up in the next few hours.’ He stands up straight, wipes his hands on his jacket and looks across at Nick. ‘Make sure she doesn’t get anxious,’ he says. ‘Press this button if you need me or one of the nurses. I’ll be back in an hour or so to see how she’s getting on.’
He leaves, slipping out between the curtains, and Nick watches him go. He turns to Joan and attempts a smile, although it is not his habitual, easy one. ‘Well,’ he says eventually. ‘I thought you were a goner for a moment.’
Joan does not move. ‘I’m sorry for giving you a scare,’ she whispers, and his expression momentarily softens.
‘Don’t be sorry. Briony and the boys send their love. They wanted to come in but I told them visits were restricted because . . . ’ He stops and makes a sweeping, uncertain gesture. ‘Well, I haven’t told the boys yet.’
Joan nods. She understands. ‘Thank you for the flowers,’ she whispers.
‘What flowers? Oh, those. They’re not from me. They’re from our friends in MI5.’
‘Oh,’ she whispers. ‘I thought . . . ’ Stupid of her to think he could be so easily won over. Who is she to expect such forgiveness? What right does she have to expect it?
‘They’re waiting outside. Maybe they think I’m going to help you stage some sort of getaway.’ He laughs at this, a sharp, too-loud laugh, but it is not unkind exactly. Hurt, perhaps.
It tears at Joan’s heart to hear it. ‘I take it you haven’t changed your mind then?’ she asks tentatively.
‘About what?’
‘About being my lawyer.’
There is a brief silence. Nick sits down and picks up a magazine which has been left by the previous occupant of the cubicle. ‘Let’s not talk about this now.’ He turns a page of the magazine, tuts, turns another page, tuts again. ‘How much of this did Dad know?’ he asks suddenly.
Joan closes her eyes. Her head feels fuzzy from the medication.
‘I mean, you and he were so close,’ Nick goes on. ‘I often think of how you two were together, and I’ve even thought that Briony and I lack something in comparison.’ He stops. ‘I haven’t said this to her. I haven’t said it to anyone. It’s just that I don’t remember you ever snapping at Dad as she does at me. Or him ignoring you when you said something.’ He gives a half smile. ‘Apparently I do that to her.’
Joan reaches out her hand and holds Nick’s arm. She is touched that this is how he remembers his childhood, although she is aware that there was another reason why she would never have snapped at his father, even if she had felt like it, which, in truth, wasn’t often; how grateful she was to him; how careful she had always been to try to deserve him. ‘Australia was a long way from home,’ she says eventually. ‘We were all each other had. And I didn’t have a high-powered job like you do. It’s much easier not to snap when you’re not so busy.’
Nick shakes his head, moving his arm slightly so that Joan’s hand falls away. ‘There was more to it than that. You both laughed at each other’s jokes even when they weren’t funny. You just seemed so . . . ’ He stops. ‘So happy.’
‘Yes,’ Joan whispers, thinking of her husband’s hand reaching for hers from his hospital bed. Right as rain tomorrow. She feels an ache in her chest. ‘We were happy.’
There is a pause. Nick leans forward. ‘But how much did he know?’
Joan closes her eyes. She cannot speak. ‘Enough,’ she whispers.
THURSDAY, 10.00 A.M.
After a depressing hospital breakfast of cold toast and margarine along with a bowl of watery porridge, Joan is informed that she is being discharged. Ms. Hart appears at the door when this news is delivered, and it is apparent that she has been there all night, dozing in the corridor outside Joan’s room after visiting hours had ended and keeping an eye on things. The nurse has evidently not been told the nature of their relationship, and is talking to Ms. Hart as though she is Joan’s daughter or some other close relative, explaining what Joan should eat, how many aspirin she should take, while all the time affirming that Joan will be absolutely fine as long as she is properly looked after.
Ms. Hart nods, her expression indicating that she is listening intently, but Joan knows that the cause for her concern is not, as the nurse believes, Joan’s welfare, but the fact that the announcement in the House of Commons is scheduled for just over twenty-four hours’ time and they still haven’t got anything on William. Joan asks the nurse to close the door while she gets dressed, and there is a brief moment of confusion before the nurse realises that Joan wants to be alone, and that she also wants the woman who sat up outside her room all night to be taken outside too.
Once Joan is ready to go, the doctor comes in to talk to her. She observes his eyes flick down to the electronic tag on her thin ankle, visible above the slippers she was wearing when the stroke occurred, and which nobody had thought to replace so that she might be more appropriately dressed when she left the hospital. He looks away again, his curiosity unsatisfied but hidden now beneath a veneer of professional calm. He seems to have an idea of who Ms. Hart is and why she is being so attentive, but Joan can see in his expression of pity and kindliness that he does not know any of the details. He would not smile at her like that if he knew what she’d done. She wonders if he would recognise her if he saw her picture on the evening news. Possibly. Probably. She feels a throbbing pain in her stomach.
‘Rest, rest and rest,’ he announces. ‘That’s all I’m going to prescribe. And aspirin.’
He looks at Ms. Hart as he says this, but she is preoccupied with removing the plastic lid from a huge coffee cup without spilling any of the contents, and doesn’t appear to be listening.
The doctor coughs and continues: ‘There should be no lasting symptoms, but you must come straight in again if you feel anything unusual. Anything at all.’ He
pauses. ‘Are you sure you feel okay?’
Joan looks at him and she knows that she is being given a chance. If she claimed to feel dizzy or light-headed now, he would believe her. She would be allowed to stay here. She could delay the press conference, maybe even delay the statement in the House of Commons, at least until after William’s cremation.
But she also knows that there is no point in delaying. It will not go away now. And it is what she has always known. Badness deserves to be punished.
Her bones feel like chalk when she stands up, rubbing against each other as she walks to the door. ‘I’m fine,’ she whispers. ‘I’d like to go home now.’
Those first few months after Leo’s death pass in a blur for Joan; blank, sleepless passages of time through which she gropes her way, cycling to the laboratory every morning, forgetting her sandwiches, working so hard that she emerges from the building blinking like a new-born rabbit and then cycling home again. Getting out of bed every day feels like stepping into the North Sea on a chilly morning, but without the benefits of any bracing after-effects. She is thinner, smokes too much, drinks sherry on her own when she gets home. The invitations from the young men she used to date are no longer forthcoming. Most of them are now married or have moved away, but Joan is largely indifferent to this lack of romantic interest. She cannot be bothered to attend cinematic outings with men she cannot talk to. How could she possibly talk to anyone when there is nothing she can say? Or nothing true, at least.
There will be things she will later remember about that time. Sitting at the kitchen table and eating burnt toast. Listening to the phone ringing, ringing, and marvelling at how long some people (Sonya, her mum, Lally) will keep holding, still expecting an answer. Why don’t they realise I’m not here? she thinks. And she is momentarily irritated by this until she realises that she is there. She is always there. She puts a cigarette in her mouth but she does not light it. She simply holds it. Waiting.
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