‘But you do mind a little bit, don’t you?’ her mother insists, aware that something is wrong with her eldest daughter and unable to fathom what else it might be.
‘No.’ How Joan wishes she could tell her everything, explain everything, and then close her eyes in a lavender-scented embrace and believe, just for a moment, that everything would be all right.
‘Just a little bit. I know you do.’
‘Really, Mother. I don’t. The only situation in which I might mind Lally getting married would be if Jack was the only man in the whole world I thought I could ever love, but I don’t. I don’t even like him very much.’
‘Joanie! You mustn’t say such things about him. He’s going to be family soon.’
‘I’m only saying it to you, and I know you think it too.’
‘Joanie!’ Her expression is one of guilty outrage. ‘I don’t think I ever did say such a thing. Or if I did, it was a long time ago.’ A pause. Her mother nods to herself as she turns away, and her words are muffled by her collar, but Joan can still hear them. ‘I knew you minded a little bit.’
And so it goes on, round and round, until they reach the house and her mother bustles off to the kitchen, and Joan can slip upstairs to her old bedroom to put her bags down. There is a letter on the dressing table, postmarked from the previous day. She recognises William’s writing on the envelope, but there is no letter inside; just a folded page of newspaper with a red line carefully encircling a short news report at the bottom of the page below an advertisement for domestic bleach.
Tragic Family, the headline reads. A small white Rover with a curved silver bumper and a dent in the passenger door is reported to have been abandoned at the docks in Harwich. There is a note in the glove compartment, and a hat fished from the water a little way down the coast. The hat is identified as having belonged to Mrs. Sonya Wilcox of The Warren, Firdene, Norfolk and, a few hours later, an overcoat belonging to Mr. Jamie Wilcox is also recovered. Inquest closed with final verdict of suicide, although no bodies have yet been found. No further investigations pending.
Joan feels cold all over. She reads it again and then carefully tucks it into the back of the grate, ready to set alight later. She knows they will not find any bodies. The hat and coat must have been planted to make them so easily traceable. There will have been a dry-cleaning ticket in one of them or an old name tape, something subtle yet obvious to allow ease of reference. It is one of the things Sonya once told her: that you can make anyone think anything you want them to, so long as you also make them think they have figured it out for themselves. Besides, it is too neat, too tidy. Joan remembers how Sonya always said that if she ever had to escape from England she would go back to Switzerland via Italy, first heading south by sea and then north through the mountains. She wonders if William helped them too. Perhaps that was how he knew to look out for the article.
Why had Sonya not had time to say goodbye? Why had she not warned her?
She imagines their car turning into the docks at Harwich, headlights dipped into the dawn and Sonya’s dark hair wrapped up in her favourite silk scarf. (‘It’s far less conspicuous to look beautiful than to look worried,’ she had once said when Joan admitted to being anxious before one of their meetings.) What was she thinking as they stepped out of the car and onto the boat? Perhaps she was thinking of Leo. Of Jamie, next to her, carrying their luggage. Of her daughter, Katya, wrapped up in her arms. Of Joan. Of the test bomb in Russia, that breathless burst of atoms, red and gold and almost beautiful from a distance. Or was she thinking of home, of her long-ago mother, of the house by the lake in Leipzig where she had holidayed in summer with Leo and Uncle Boris?
How long would that journey down to Italy take? Three days in a small boat? She imagines the three of them huddled below deck among ropes and tarpaulin and droplets of sea collecting in pools on the wooden boarded floor. Joan shivers. Such an odd idea, to leave like that, with such finality. But also quite dramatic, Joan thinks, and she finds herself suddenly unsurprised that this was how Sonya chose to leave.
But who will be next? Will this be how she has to leave, when it is her turn?
Joan tries to imagine this but she cannot do it. She imagines her mother and sister being called to the scene, her mother’s face ashen and wide-eyed. My child, she might cry, my child. Joan feels the pulsing of blood in her heart, a sense of bursting flesh, as if someone is shining a torch inside her mouth and up towards her brain. No, she thinks. No, no, no.
Her mother does the fitting that evening, wanting to get it out of the way before dinner. The material for the bridesmaid’s dress is soft, pink cotton shot through with silk. It is pre-war material, bought up years before, just in case one of the girls should need it. Or both of them, her mother had hoped at one time although she would not admit to this now. Lally’s dress is a heavy satin number with a covering of matching lace at the front. It is cut into a tight fishtail, so that it swings around when she tries it on and twirls in front of the mirror. Which she does. Often. Although not while Joan is there.
‘Such a lovely colour on you,’ Joan’s mother says, and for a moment her eyes mist a little, threatening to break out. ‘I just wish your father . . . ’ She shakes her head. ‘Listen to me going on.’
‘It’s fine, Mum. You can talk about him if you want.’
‘Oh, I do. I talk to him as well. He’s a good listener now, better than when he was alive.’ She laughs, and presses the tear that is glistening on her lower eyelash. ‘He was so proud of you, Joanie. I wish you could have heard how he spoke about you. He always said you were going to do something marvellous.’
Joan nods. She feels a terrible ache in her chest, as if someone has wrapped their hands around her heart and is pumping it out of time. ‘Silly,’ she whispers.
But for the first and only time in Joan’s life, her mother does not agree with this statement. She shakes her head. ‘No, Joanie. Not silly. I was the silly one. Your father was right to be proud of you.’ She puts her hand firmly on Joan’s back. ‘Now stand there and don’t move.’
There is a pause, and for a moment Joan considers telling her mother everything.
‘Terrible news about that bomb in Russia,’ her mother says suddenly. She does not look up but takes a handful of pins out of her tin and then holds each of them by the sharp point between her lips, so that her mouth is a row of spikes. She has always done this. It is one of Joan’s earliest memories, being told to stand up straight while her mother pinned linens and cottons under her arms and around her waist, her mouth so full of pins that Joan was scared to move in case she surprised her mother and caused her to swallow them. She thinks of those months before she left for Cambridge, her mother planning and stitching her University Trousseau in spite of her opposition, plotting ways of finding a fur coat to make her look the part, all of it parcelled up and packed into her trunk for her to open once she had arrived.
‘Yes.’
‘They thay,’ her mother lisps, removing the pins one by one and pulling the fabric out straight so that she can make sure the hem fans evenly around her, ‘they think the Ruthians mutht have had a thpy.’ She removes the two final pins from her mouth and stands back, surveying her handiwork, and then she pinches the material just below Joan’s bosom and pins it symmetrically, more or less, so that the bust is accentuated. ‘They think it’s a British scientist.’
A pause. Joan’s breaths are suddenly shallow.
‘It’s all nonsense anyway, that’s what your father says. Said,’ she corrects herself. ‘All wars start because of secrets.’
‘So if there were no secrets . . . ’ Joan whispers.
Her mother frowns, considering this, and then shrugs. ‘If only everyone would play nicely,’ she says airily, and the moment of vindication that had appeared to be hovering above Joan evaporates.
‘But they don’t have any evidence anyway,’ Joan continues. ‘They�
��re only saying they’ve got a suspect to keep the Americans happy, to show they’re doing something.’
Her mother looks at her in astonishment. She shakes her head slowly. ‘I shouldn’t think so. Haven’t you heard? It was on the radio this morning. They’re holding that Cambridge professor in Brixton Prison until it goes to trial. So there must be something to base the charges on. Now lift your arms.’
Joan holds her arms out at the sides so that her mother can pin the waistline of her dress, tugging the joins of material tighter and tighter against her ribs until Joan can hardly breathe. Does this mean they have actually found some evidence? She sees the furrow of her mother’s brow as she bends forward to adjust the waistline of the dress, and she feels a shot of panic rising up inside her. She breathes in, out, in again.
Her mother steps back. ‘There,’ she says. ‘Beautiful.’ She pauses. ‘Joan? Are you all right? You look rather pale.’
FRIDAY, 7.24 A.M.
Brixton Prison
25 September 1949
Dear Joan,
First day over. They say the first of everything is always the worst, although I can think of numerous exceptions to that rule, but let me hold to it on this occasion so that I can assume the worst has now passed. I have not yet begun etching the days into my bedpost but perhaps that will come. Tomorrow, maybe. I can’t imagine that it’s going to be easy to adjust. It’s not the discomfort; in fact, I find that much easier than I had expected. I have a room to myself, and a choice of bunks, so obviously I have taken the top one. Surprising, really, how I still felt a rush of glee at the prospect of a top bunk. But the mattress is hard and the blanket is coarse; prison-like, you might say.
To be honest, it isn’t the loss of freedom which is so difficult. I can stop myself thinking about that if it becomes too bad. The hardest thing is to give any sense to this kind of existence, other than the purely negative sense of punishment for something I have not done.
Of course, I know that I should look on the bright side—justice will prevail, etc—and in the meantime I should try to consider this whole period as an opportunity for learning. I’ve already signed up for a plumbing course, and I’m going to move on to woodwork after that. And I’ve been thinking that I should read the Bible or the Qur’an or some other sort of religious text. I’ve been meaning to read those for years, although there used to always be something better to do. One of the fellows I met here today is ploughing his way through the dictionary, which sounds like a hellish read—no narrative arc, no plot, no romance!—but anyway, the poor chap’s conversation now is so alphabetically top-heavy that all this dreary study hasn’t made him any more lucid than he was before. It’s all ‘antagonism’ and ‘appreciable’ and ‘belligerence’ with him, which is all very well, but he has to translate himself for most of them in here. He’s been reading it for almost a year and still hasn’t reached C. What new forms of purgatory we find to punish ourselves!
I hope everyone is well at the lab and they don’t think too badly of me. How I wish I could convince them all that I am who I say I am, who I have always said I was—just me. I cannot write more as there is the censor to think of, and I am not allowed to discuss details of the case in my personal correspondence (but this, dear Censor, is only an indirect detail)—I received a terrible letter from Donald the other day, saying that I could not possibly understand the extent of the dismay I had brought to all of them, and how the least I could do would be to confess. They said that treason cannot be mitigated, but if I confessed (to what??! I wouldn’t even know how to approach a Russian agent, let alone become a spy! Sorry Censor, no more I promise) at least I would have made a start. Oh Joan. I sat down on my bunk and wept. Better to have remained aloof, they said, than to have befriended us and betrayed us so deeply.
If you see them, speak well of me. I don’t expect you to convince them, only it would help me sleep more easily if I knew someone might stick up for me occasionally.
Lights out soon. Must finish so that I can send this in the morning post. If you do want to write—although I completely understand if you don’t—regulations about letters are that I can write and receive one letter at indefinite intervals, at present one every two weeks. So it’s not much use writing letters, except in answer to a letter from me, unless it is a question of urgency. In that case the Governor would tell me about it though I would not necessarily see the letter myself.
I can have my first visit on Saturday. Please let me know whether you want to come. I have been told that the first visits are a bit dismal, although apparently we can at least be in the same room for a time, and I might have skipped it only I don’t know how long I shall be here. I have some news which I want to tell you in person. I’m hoping the trial date will be set not too far in the future, and then at least I can find out what they have against me to keep me here.
And please don’t hesitate to say if you’d rather not come.
Yours,
Max
From St. Albans, she takes the train to London and then the tube to Stockwell, from where she will take a bus to Brixton. Her travel bag is light against her body. Money, a change of clothes, a sandwich, a hand towel, a comb, a toothbrush, and a few packets of cigarettes for Max. Even after thirty years of living, the essentials amount to so little. There is nothing else she really needs to take with her, apart from the three letters which she will post once she has left: one for her family, one for the police and one for Max. She had considered one for Karen too—after all, it was she who forwarded Max’s letter on to her at her mother’s house—but she will send something to her later. An explanation, an apology. A lie. She thinks of her dress for Lally’s wedding and feels sorry that it will go unused, but beyond that she refuses to imagine. She does not think of her mother singing in the concert next week, or of Lally dicovering that she would not be there on her wedding day. She will not torment herself with picturing her mother’s face when she reads the letter. She cannot, as otherwise she would not be able to do it.
Stepping off the bus, Joan finds that she can plant one foot in front of the other quite easily as long as she does not think about what she has to do next. It is like walking along the edge of a cliff, watching how the breeze blows the daisies and buttercups on one side, and knowing that it is fine, it will all be fine; just don’t look down. Except in Brixton there are no daisies or buttercups. There are rows of Victorian houses next to piles of rubble, war damage left untouched even though the war ended over four years ago, crowded buses, fruit stalls, bread shops and a lingering smell of uncooked fish.
It is not a long walk from the bus stop, mainly up the hill towards Streatham. She doubles back, stopping to look in the reflections of shop windows as is her habit. Nobody. Nothing. She is on her own and there is still a chance. The prison is on a quiet street, surrounded by a high brick wall. The Victorian architecture of the building has the intended effect: daunting and unassailable. It makes her shiver to look at the small windows, the neatly packed brickwork, the furnace chimneys soaring above the slanting roof. She has read that the footings of the old treadwheels remain visible in the main hall of the prison, and that at night the cells are overrun with rats and mice, although Max made no mention of this in his letter.
He is being brave but she knows it is a front. All week, he has been with her, appearing at the edge of her dreams. He has been tapping at the side of her head, trying to get her attention. She knows he will be lonely and frightened, even though he would hate to admit it.
She walks faster in the hope that her quickened heartbeat might drive these images out of her head. She breathes in and tips her head back so that the sunlight can splash her face with its brightness. Remember this, she thinks.
She goes to the visitors’ entrance and is greeted by a man in a peaked cap, dressed rather like a bus conductor and with an air of having seen it all before. Certainly he has seen women like her before at the visitors’ entran
ce, freshly powdered and prettily dressed.
‘I’m here to see Professor Max Davis.’
‘Old Lord Haw-Haw, eh?’
Joan looks at him sharply, remembering the fuss after the war when Lord Haw-Haw was hanged in Wandsworth Prison. The dark shadow of a hood flits into her mind, being pulled down, down over her face, and she shivers. She must be stronger than this, she thinks. And besides, it’s not the same. Britain wasn’t actually at war with the Soviet Union as it was with Germany when he was making his radio broadcasts. She lifts her head. ‘Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence?’
The man shrugs, concentrating not on Joan but on riffling through his collection of forms.
‘Ah-ha,’ he says. ‘Here you go. Prisoner Davis. First door on the left.’
Joan takes the form he is holding out to her. ‘He didn’t do it, you know. They’ll let him off.’
The man looks at her. He sees the intensity of her gaze, her too-large irises making her eyes appear almost black, hands encased in gloves, hair swept back. He gives a slight frown and then his face seems to change in some small, imperceptible way. ‘All right love, I believe you.’
‘Thank you,’ she says, and this time she says it very politely. She steps through the gateway and proceeds to the next door where she presents her form to another man in a peaked cap who instructs her to follow him, and this time he makes no comment and nor does she. She follows him down one long concrete corridor and then another, until eventually he stops at a heavy door of reinforced metal and pushes it open with his shoulder to allow her through.
‘Wait here,’ he says.
Joan nods. The door crashes shut behind her but it is not locked. She sits at the table, facing the window. There is a smell of wet dogs and urine, and over the crust of this is another smell; more industrial, bleach perhaps, or some other cleaning fluid which is not quite enough to cancel out the other, stronger odours. She cannot look at the door behind her, at its dull blue wash of paint, at the bars across the viewing slot, at the great lock with its immoveable handle. She takes off her gloves and grips them tightly, uselessly, in her hands.
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