The Explosionist

by Jenny Davidson

  Sophie had a very vivid picture of Sheena’s devastated body; thinking about what had happened to Sheena’s mind was even worse.

  “Sophie,” said Great-aunt Tabitha, her voice softer than before, “it’s pretty certainly going to come into law within the next few months that IRYLNS shall have every girl it asks for, the minute she turns sixteen. At that point, there won’t be anything I can do to keep you out of it.”

  “So I’m going to have to come to IRYLNS?” Sophie asked, feeling like the stupidest person in the world.

  “I wish you’d never seen any of this,” said Great-aunt Tabitha, sighing and adjusting her body in her chair. “You’ve seen only the worst. There are wonderful aspects to the work we’ve done here too. Really wonderful! I’d have given anything to spare you this terrible foreknowledge.”

  “Anything?” said Sophie. “Then why can’t you—”

  Great-aunt Tabitha cut her off. “Anything but break the law,” she said. “At this point, just when we’re about to expand IRYLNS on a far grander scale than before, it would be a public relations disaster if anyone found out that one of the scheme’s originators had pulled strings to get an exemption for a relative. And there’s every reason to believe your conversion will go quite smoothly, without any negative impact on your health. It’s only a very few girls who don’t do well under our regime. Some of them even get married in the end—there’s no real reason they shouldn’t. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you, Sophie?”

  Sophie understood.

  “Susan, do you think we can handle this without the police?” asked Great-aunt Tabitha.

  “Certainly,” said Dr. Ferrier. “No need for them now—I can see Sophie quite understands what’s required of her. We won’t see any repetition of this little incident, will we, Sophie?”

  Sophie shook her head.

  “I’m going to take you back to school in a taxi,” Great-aunt Tabitha said. “Peggy will collect you after school tomorrow, and from now on, there won’t be a moment when you’ll be allowed out of sight of one or the other of us, except when you’re at school. I’ll notify your teachers that you need to be kept under close supervision because of a security threat. We’ll keep this up through the time when you actually get admitted to the program at IRYLNS. And within a week of coming here, you’ll no longer have the faintest desire to leave.”

  No longer have the faintest desire—Sophie thought her heart might actually stop beating, she was so frightened by her great-aunt’s calm certainty.

  They sat together in silence until Great-aunt Tabitha moved to collect her things.

  “Thank you, Susan,” she said, shaking the director’s hand.

  “I’ll look forward to meeting you again under happier circumstances, Sophie,” said the director to Sophie.

  Sophie muttered a few words in return, but nobody—not even herself—knew exactly what they were. The older women let the lapse in manners pass.

  “I won’t be sixteen until December,” Sophie said in the car. The words sounded pitiful, even to her, but it was too late to take them back.

  Great-aunt Tabitha just looked at her. Sophie hung her head. There was nothing more to say.

  Sophie’s great-aunt dropped her back at school, coming in herself to make sure Sophie wouldn’t be able to skive off. What she said to the housemistress, Sophie would never know, but back in the girls’ bedroom, getting ready to lie down, Sophie thought she’d never survive the others’ idle chatter.

  “Any more tales about the horrors of IRYLNS?” Priscilla even asked, laughing when Sophie shook her head and got into bed without saying good night.

  As she lay in bed, trying and failing to fall asleep, dreading the prospect of Peggy arriving tomorrow to pick her up as if she were still a little girl, hardly knowing how to console herself at the prospect of months of virtual imprisonment followed by a transformation in which she would permanently lose herself, Sophie thought that perhaps she should overcome her scruples and run away with Mikael after all. Would she even be able to get away to meet him, though? And without a visa, how would she get onto the ship? Knowing what she did now about IRYLNS, she wondered whether that wasn’t the reason Scotland regulated travel visas so strictly, much more strictly than any of the other Hanseatic states.

  Sophie drifted through the day on Friday and met Peggy in the front of the school without saying a word. In her bedroom at home, she found the planchette she’d used as a toy when she was younger, and idly set it up on its little table. Resting her fingertips on the little rolling platform, she asked the spirits whether she should try to leave with Mikael.

  But rather than moving to yes or no, or spelling out words by pointing to letters of the alphabet, the planchette simply meandered over the table.

  In a dull stupor, Sophie went downstairs and put a telephone call through to Mikael.

  The professor answered, and Sophie exchanged a few words with him before asking to speak to Mikael.

  She thought Mikael might be able to tell something was wrong, to read her mind and somehow break her out of the cloud preventing her from exercising proper self-determination. If he would only say he wanted her, if he himself only felt about Sophie the way she felt about him, all her difficulties would vanish and she would go joyfully with him.

  But when Mikael came on the line, he sounded distracted. After thanking her for calling, he fell silent. And then, even as Sophie cast about for a way to broach the topic of København—there had to be some fashion in which she could take him up on his offer without being a burden, there just had to be, and he had said himself that Mr. Petersen might find a way around the visa difficulty—Mikael cut her off.

  “Look, I’m sorry, Sophie, but I’ve got something I must go and do now, something really important.”

  It was as if he’d dug a skewer straight into her eye socket. Something really important! It wasn’t as though Sophie was important, of course, not even when her sanity—her life—was at stake. Some small part of her could smell the self-pity—the silliness—in the way she was handling all this, but she didn’t have the energy to change course.

  “Best of luck, Sophie. I’m sure it will be all right. You’ll write me a letter as soon as anything happens about you-know-what, won’t you? And you know you can ask my brother for help at any time.”

  Then Mikael put down the telephone before Sophie could even say good-bye.

  Sophie had imagined she’d be the one to cut their conversation short, in an understated but noble gesture of self-sacrifice.

  It must be more fun to be the person leaving than the person left behind. Who knew how much longer she would remain the person she was now, anyway?

  Sophie had never felt so alone in her entire life.

  Great-aunt Tabitha popped her head around the study door and gave Sophie a sharp look, making Sophie fear she would never be allowed a moment of privacy again, but she kept her face still and submissive. There was no point seeming outwardly rebellious.

  “You’ll be ready to go first thing in the morning, won’t you, Sophie?” said Great-aunt Tabitha.

  “Go where?” Sophie said. Surely not to IRYLNS, not yet?

  “It’s the annual outing of the New Town Women’s Spiritualist Association,” her great-aunt said. “I expect you to come with us so I can keep an eye on you.”

  “No!” said Sophie, feeling for the first time as if she might break down and cry. She hadn’t been dragged on one of these trips since she was quite a small child; she always stayed at home with Peggy instead. Her great-aunt knew how self-conscious it made Sophie to trail around after the idealistic middle-aged ladies who made up the cohort. “Please, Great-aunt Tabitha, please don’t make me go….”

  But Great-aunt Tabitha was adamant.

  “You’ve forfeited the right to be treated like an adult,” she said. “How can I trust you, Sophie, after you broke your word not to pry? No, I want you under my own supervision when you’re not at school.”

  Seeing the
re was no chance of her great-aunt relenting, Sophie went upstairs and packed her overnight bag. At first she put in just the bare essentials—toilet bag with toothbrush and flannel, pajamas, clean underclothes. But the valise seemed to sit there and reproach her.

  Something grew in her as she stood there in the middle of the room, a feeling so unfamiliar she wasn’t even sure at first what it was.

  Sophie was furious.

  She was absolutely enraged!

  She felt like one of the avengers in a Greek tragedy. How dare Great-aunt Tabitha paper over the violence being done to hundreds of girls in the name of patriotism? Did she not care about them at all? How could she be willing to sacrifice Sophie?

  It came to Sophie in a flash that she had to leave, she couldn’t not leave. She supposed she would honor Sheena’s wishes by not telling the others about IRYLNS. But she, Sophie, was not bound to immolate herself for the greater good.

  She had the right to make her own choice. And she chose not to destroy herself.

  It was amazing how much calmer Sophie felt now. She lay down on the bed and began to think about what to do.

  She could slip out in the middle of the night, lie low somewhere until the late afternoon, and then meet Mikael at Leith. But she didn’t have a visa. Without one, they wouldn’t let her aboard. And Mikael was angry with her, or else why would he have cut short their conversation like that? The last thing she wanted was to force her company on an unwilling partner.

  She had to find a way of getting an exit visa, and then make her own plans to escape. Mr. Petersen would help her. She would go and speak to him first thing Monday morning. With his Nobel connections, he would almost certainly be able to get her a visa and a safe place to go to, perhaps even in Stockholm rather than Købnhavn so that it wouldn’t look as though she were chasing after Mikael, and then everything would be all right.

  Now that she’d come to a decision, the idea of waiting even until Monday seemed almost unbearable, but it wouldn’t do any good to fuss. Still, she added to her bag a few other things she felt funny about leaving behind, just in case she got a chance to escape this weekend after all: her passport, the beaten-up leather slippers that had once belonged to her father, a photograph of her parents on their wedding day, the small soapstone elephant named Horatio that usually lived on Sophie’s bedside table. She crammed all her money into her purse and tucked it out of sight at the bottom of the case. It would be silly not to have it with her if some opportunity for flight presented itself. As an afterthought, she tucked in her chemistry textbook.

  She got a surprisingly good night’s sleep, the best one she’d had for ages. Decision-making as a remedy for insomnia—now, there was a thought. If only she could speak to Mr. Petersen right away!

  THIRTY-NINE

  THE VEHICLE HIRED FOR the expedition was a bright maroon charabanc, its seats covered in a lurid bottle-green leather substitute. A green-and-yellow-striped fringed canopy had been raised to protect the ladies’ complexions from the Saturday morning sun. As president of the New Town Women’s Spiritualist Association, Great-aunt Tabitha had designated Heriot Row for the morning rendezvous, and as the driver leaned on the hood of the charabanc smoking a cigarette, she scanned the horizon for stragglers.

  The ladies of the NTWSA were scheduled to arrive at the Nobel dynamite factory by midmorning—Sophie was particularly dreading this part of the trip, as it brought to mind her parents’ untimely deaths at the factory’s Russian counterpart—then take a tour of the facilities, to be followed by a late lunch. In the afternoon they would pick wildflowers in the countryside, spending the night at the Ayrshire Temperance Hotel and visiting Culzean Castle and the Electric Brae the next day before returning home in time for Sunday afternoon tea.

  As the last few ladies arrived, Peggy ran out the front door and pressed a packet of barley sugar into Sophie’s hand.

  Tears came to Sophie’s eyes. Only Peggy ever remembered that Sophie got carsick.

  “Thank you, Peggy,” she said, and wished the housekeeper a nice weekend, though the words seemed quite inadequate to her feelings.

  Peggy snorted at the idea of herself having a nice weekend, but she stayed outside and waved at Sophie from the front doorstep until the bus turned the corner.

  As they drove out of Edinburgh to the main road that ran west to the coast, Sophie found the movement of the charabanc distinctly sickness inducing. She popped a piece of barley sugar into her mouth and sank down low in her seat. She would have been quite interested to talk to Miss Grant again—she might know more by now about the minister and Nicko Mood, mightn’t she?—but Miss Grant sat in the front seat, sequestered in conversation with Great-aunt Tabitha.

  Once they reached the main road, Sophie stopped feeling so queasy, and when Miss Gillespie passed around the inevitable Kelvinsulated flasks of warm milky tea, Sophie accepted a cup and a shortbread biscuit. There was plenty to look at on the way, and she was surprised by how quickly they reached the tiny coastal station where they would board the train for the very last part of the journey to Ardeer.

  The Nobel factory lay on an industrial estate served by a private road, but a narrow-gauge railway ran all the way in to the gates of the factory, where the private train station admitted workers and a few select visitors.

  Sitting in the railway carriage as they traveled toward the compound, Sophie looked out over the isolated coastal landscape and remembered Alfred Nobel’s notorious loathing for this place. He had written of Ardeer to his brother, in a letter reprinted in the leaflets the train conductor gave them with their tickets:

  Picture to yourself everlasting bleak sand dunes with no buildings. Only rabbits find a little nourishment here; they eat a substance which quite unjustifiably goes by the name of grass. It is a sand desert where the wind always blows often howls filling the ears with sand. Between us and America, there is nothing but water a sea whose mighty waves are always raging and foaming. Now you will have some idea of the place where I am living. Without work the place would be intolerable.

  But Sophie found it rather beautiful.

  It was no accident, of course, that the factory had been built in such a desolate place. The English Explosives Acts of the 1860s made it impossible to build dynamite factories south of Hadrian’s Wall, but Scotland welcomed them, so long as they were built far from populated areas and in accordance with the provisions of the Carriage and Deposit of Dangerous Goods Act. The Ardeer factory was now owned and operated by the Nobel Consortium, the sophisticated transnational holding company that managed what had once been Nobel’s personal empire.

  They got off the train at a platform lacking even the most basic railway-station amenities—no newspaper stall, no flower seller, not even a coin-operated chocolate machine—to find stringent security measures in place. Guards with Alsatians patrolled the barbed-wire perimeter, and the security officer at the gatehouse checked each woman’s national identity card against the names on the prearranged list of visitors. Fortunately Great-aunt Tabitha had telephoned ahead to add Sophie’s name to the list, or she would have been left under the supervision of the guards while the others took their tour.

  They were all asked to deposit their bags in the gatehouse, along with any personal items made of metal, which led to great indignation on the part of two ladies who had to retire and take off their steel-boned corsets and another one who didn’t want to put aside her cigarettes and lighter. Though smoking was not at all the thing in Great-aunt Tabitha’s circle, this lady was an old-fashioned Decadent who wore vegetable-dyed handwoven scarves and smoked a special mentholated tobacco to clear her airways. She left behind her smoking paraphernalia only after a serious dressing-down from Great-aunt Tabitha. They would be searched again, of course, before being allowed to enter the buildings where nitroglycerin was actually produced.

  “We’ve got a very special lecturer for the occasion,” said Great-aunt Tabitha as she herded the ladies away from the gate to the building where the tour would b
egin. “He’ll be here any moment now. Sophie, I think you’ll enjoy this bit of the tour, I don’t know why you’re looking so sullen.”

  In the minutes that followed, Sophie’s great-aunt checked her watch a few times, irritation growing.

  When their guide finally appeared, Sophie almost fell over in shock. It was Mr. Petersen!

  He greeted Great-aunt Tabitha with a firm handshake, apologizing profusely for keeping them all waiting. Great-aunt Tabitha introduced him to all the ladies and he shook everyone’s hand, including Sophie’s.

  “Nice to see you, Sophie,” he said quietly.

  Sophie couldn’t help the surge of pleasure that rose in her heart at finding him here. Now if only she could snag him for a few minutes of conversation, she could tell him she’d decided she must leave and ask for his help. It was progress, distinct progress!

  “Mr. Petersen,” Great-aunt Tabitha told the others complacently, “is a research chemist in the employ of Mr. Alfred Nobel. He has kindly agreed to show us about today, and will take questions afterward.”

  “The Nobel Consortium produces more than half the world’s dynamite,” said Mr. Petersen as they walked toward the first building. Oh, he was in his element here, all right! If ever a person loved talking about explosives, it was Mr. Petersen. “Dynamite is used most frequently for the purpose of demolition, as in mining and tunneling. It’s also used in bombs, warheads, and mines, but not in guns, as the rapidity and intensity of the blast would shatter a metal barrel. By the end of the last century, it had become illegal to manufacture nitroglycerin and dynamite in Europe and the Americas, and the production of dynamite has since then been almost exclusively the charge of the Hanseatic states.”

  “Isn’t it awfully dangerous, though?”

  The words came from Miss Grant, whose calm confidence made the question sound almost mocking.

  “Well, it’s true that nitroglycerin’s immensely volatile,” said Mr. Petersen, “but we take every possible precaution. And the compound we call dynamite’s actually quite safe: it burns rather than exploding when it’s set on fire, and aside from deliberately detonating it with caps and fuses, the only way to ignite it involves compression and a high degree of heat. All the explosives manufactured here are tested for stability in two subsidiary departments known as India and Siberia; in India, as you might guess, the explosive material is subjected to extreme and protracted heat, whereas in Siberia, the temperature is kept very cold.”