by Gareth Rubin
The policeman rolled his pen in his fingers thoughtfully. Then he went back to asking me more questions and I answered them. Questions about my family and how long I had been in London, that sort of thing. From time to time he would softly return to the image in the mirror but what remained of the memory seemed to crumble and become less real every time.
He wrote everything down in his notebook and I had to sign each page to say it was a true statement of the facts. My fingers could barely hold the pen as I did so – the shock still, I supposed. I might be required to attend the station to make another statement soon, he told me. ‘What happened to her?’ I asked, with my eyes cast down. ‘To Lorelei.’
He cleared his throat. ‘That’s what we’re going to find out.’
And then, finally, the other man spoke. ‘I think that will be all,’ he said. His voice was calm and controlled.
At first I presumed he was speaking to me. But the policeman replied, ‘Is that so?’ I could tell by his face that he was beaten, though, and I got the sense that there was something going on that I couldn’t see.
‘Thank you, Detective Sergeant. May I have your notes, please? They will go in our files.’ And that’s when I realized who he was. I had thought he must be a senior plain-clothes policeman, but I was wrong, of course.
The old police officer paused briefly to critically appraise him, but he didn’t challenge him before ripping the pages out of his notebook, handing them over and walking out.
The bald man spoke. ‘My name is Grest. I’m an officer of the National Security Police. Mrs Cawson, you’ll be free to go soon.’ I had never come face to face with a NatSec officer before. If I had started feeling less tense, less taut about where I was and what had happened, his presence reversed that.
‘I’ll go now,’ I said, feeling a seed of fear in my stomach.
‘No. Not yet, I’m afraid.’ His tone was smoother than the other officer’s, yet the message underneath it was far harsher and he made me nervous. I went for the door but he moved more quickly than I could and jammed his arm against it, stopping me in my tracks. There was something frighteningly mechanical and practised about the way he plucked me away and pushed me back into the centre of the room to sit on the bed. It made no sense because I had explained all I knew and I just wanted to leave with Nick.
‘Please let me go,’ I said.
‘Soon.’
I sank a little into the bed and stared around. Lorelei’s face gazed out from posters on every wall. The theatre bills were the more sedate, with just the name of the show, an inked image or two and the performance dates, but the garish film posters seemed crass, her presence in those films a mockery of a life that was now consigned to the past. The Whole Deal; A Month in the Country; Daisy Daisy; Victory 1945. Her image would still laugh and move and dance in them, but the human being was gone.
I stared blankly at Victory 1945. Lorelei’s finest hour. It was a film we had all seen many times, its poster dominated by the image of her character’s boyfriend wrestling a Gestapo officer to the ground. At the side she stood on a plinth, rousing the crowd to rise up against the Nazis and welcome our Red Army liberators arriving on the Archangel.
Below it, her cosmetics and hairbrush lay on the dresser still, objects as strangely lifeless now as her images on the posters. I touched the brush; it was made of fine bristles, with an ebony handle and silver detailing. A few of her hairs were entwined on it, long and shining. I put it to my own hair. Then in a moment I caught myself and dropped it, remembering where she was now.
After a few minutes, Grest checked what was happening outside. He seemed satisfied by what he saw and opened the door wide, indicating that I could leave. At that sign I felt an inexpressible surge of relief and hurried out to the top of the stairs, but, as my feet touched the top step, something pulled me up. The terrifying sight below was of Nick being pushed out the house by a heavyset man, his wrists in handcuffs. I couldn’t understand. He looked up at me. ‘It will be fine. I haven’t done anything,’ he called up. But his face betrayed the worry he clearly felt and I could only stare open-mouthed. ‘I’m all right. I’m all right.’ He was shoved out the door.
A second later my mind began to work again and I started to rush down, but the thin, white-haired policeman was at the bottom and he caught me before I could run outside. ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Best not.’
‘Is he under arrest?’ I asked, frantic for someone to tell me what was going on.
It was Grest who spoke again. ‘It would be best if you go home, Mrs Cawson,’ he said from above us.
The suggestion seemed to me nothing but a joke at my expense. Amid all the madness and confusion, I had been clinging to Nick, and now all that was left was the chaos.
‘Is he under arrest?’ I pleaded.
‘Yes,’ replied the old policeman.
‘Why?’ I couldn’t think why they wanted him. It made no sense. He couldn’t have been involved in Lorelei’s death. He hadn’t been there. I wanted to shout it to them to make them understand. What were they not telling me?
The policeman just looked up at Grest. ‘Ask him.’
The Sec spoke: ‘We will speak to you again later, Mrs Cawson. But for now I can have a car take you home.’
I looked to the white-haired officer. He seemed to shake his head very subtly. With an effort, I quelled my nerves. Nick hadn’t done anything, I told myself, so he would be safe. ‘No, I can find my own way,’ I said, forcing the words out as if things were normal. ‘Thank you.’
‘Your choice,’ Grest replied.
‘When will my husband be back?’ I asked.
‘That depends on him.’
I wanted to scream out that we weren’t criminals. ‘Where are you taking him?’
I looked again to the policeman, and his uncomfortable silence gave me my only answer.
5
Our house was in a street of semi-detached properties built for the Edwardian middle classes, close to the southern end of Blackfriars Bridge. When I first saw it, I was taken by its simple, solid lines. It wasn’t grand but it had four bedrooms – twice as many as the little house where I had grown up – so it seemed huge to me. I wondered how Nick could afford such a place on a GP’s salary but his dark eyes had twinkled when I asked and he led me around the back to show why it was so cheap: the rear wall had been shorn away by a doodlebug in ’44, leaving a pile of rubble and a scar in the ground. A hastily erected wall in the middle of what had once been a rear parlour was the new back to the house, and a split in the bricks halfway up gave a pair of jackdaws access to the wall cavity, wherein they had built a nest.
If there hadn’t been a shortage of labour due to all the new flats being put up, Nick said, he could possibly have had the back of the house repaired properly, but as things stood we would just have to lump it. It didn’t seem such a hardship, in fact, I was excited about changes like the government’s push for housebuilding.
There were people who grumbled about the new way of things, but I couldn’t understand them, really – it would be wonderful, as far as I was concerned, to see an end to people living in slums and tenements. That would be the first great achievement of our new system and it did seem that the future could only be brighter. I had even been allowed to attend a couple of Party meetings in Herne Bay – although I had been quietly shown the door when I unwittingly broke the rules by mentioning the wrong thing.
Before the outbreak of the War, the Soviet Union had signed a peace agreement with Germany and had stuck to it, watching while the Nazi soldiers marched into Warsaw, Brussels, Paris and, finally, in 1944, London. That was when the Royal Family had fled to safety in Northern Ireland, then exile in Canada a month later, for it seemed all was lost. Six months after that the Red Army’s twelve million fresh troops had overrun the over-stretched German lines to claim all that territory for themselves; and the Soviets’ ensuing advance up through Britain had been halted only when the Americans had arrived in the North. The Royal Family
had followed and taken up residence in Holyrood, their Edinburgh home. But, in the drizzle outside the Herne Bay Party meeting, it was explained to me that, while the glorious arrival of the Red Army was to be frequently celebrated, no reference was ever to be made to the Soviet Union’s prior agreement with the Nazis. It was no longer history. Well, I had my misgivings, but I tacitly agreed. After all, the past was less important than the future.
As I drew close to our house now, I saw someone on our doorstep: Charles. I felt such a rush of relief. We were hardly friends but here was someone who knew Nick, who would sympathize and help. Maybe he even knew something about why they had taken Nick, or what could have happened to Lorelei, and could lead me through the confusion.
‘Mrs Cawson. I have been calling for an hour. Is Dr Cawson here?’ he asked as soon as I was within earshot.
‘Oh, God, he’s been arrested,’ I said.
He stopped, confused. ‘The police?’
‘NatSec.’
Confusion turned to amazement. ‘They took him to Great Queen Street?’
‘Yes. They –’
‘No.’ He looked around to see if anyone had overheard. ‘Tell me inside.’
I was gabbling, I knew, as we hurried to the parlour. Charles had a limping gait, the result, Nick had once told me, of taking a round to his hip on D-Day, and I was rushing ahead of him. ‘Lorelei. She’s …’ The shock came back to me as we reached the room. ‘I found her dead.’ His mouth fell open. ‘In her home.’
‘Her home?’ He could only repeat what I had said, as if it couldn’t be true.
‘The bathroom. She drowned.’
‘Why?’ he asked after swallowing hard. ‘What –’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know. They’ve taken Nick. Why do you think they did that?’
He stared at me. ‘I have no idea. Was he there?’
‘No,’ I said, fighting back tears.
‘What happened to her?’
‘They’re trying to find out. Can you think of anything about her, why it could have happened?’
He shook his head, scratching that rash on his hand until it became an angry crimson. ‘What did they tell you?’
‘Nothing!’ I related what had happened. When I had finished, he went to the window and stood there for a while, before pulling the curtain fully across and sitting in the wing-backed chair. ‘What shall we do?’ I begged him. Now that the shock was wearing off, my stomach was twisting at the thought that it was my baseless suspicions that had resulted in Nick being taken in. If I hadn’t gone there, he would never have been sent for and would probably have come home from the surgery like any other day.
Charles rubbed his forehead. Mine still ached from where I had hit it on the bath, although the pain was lessening. ‘It’s hard to say. I have some friends in the Party. I’ll contact them and ask them to find out the situation.’
‘Can they get him out?’ It was a glimmer of hope.
‘I believe they can try.’
‘Well, please call them. Please. Do anything you can think of. Anything.’ That guilt, I knew, would tear me to pieces if things turned worse.
‘Yes, yes, I will. Straight away. Can you think of any friends of your husband’s who might be able to exert some influence?’
I sat mentally running through all of Nick’s friends and colleagues who might be of use. But my mind just wasn’t working properly. And, besides that, I didn’t really know many or what they could achieve. Charles put forward a few names but I was only vaguely aware of them. He knew them and their potential far better than I did, so I just agreed to whatever he suggested. I ran out of words. I had never known anyone taken away by NatSec.
We were interrupted by a knock on the front door and my heart leaped at the thought that it might be news of Nick’s release. When I dashed to answer it, I found a woman in police uniform on the doorstep and I felt sure this must be it, she had come to tell me Nick was coming home – but then I saw, behind her, a tall, thin fourteen-year-old girl, her orange hair falling across her face from under a school cap, and I realized that the officer’s visit was for a different reason. ‘Oh, Hazel,’ I said, going to the girl with my arms outstretched.
‘Are you her stepmother?’ asked the policewoman.
‘Yes.’
Nick’s daughter had been at one of the state’s dreary boarding schools until the beginning of the new academic year, when she had come back to live with her mother and go to a normal school. I had only met her a handful of times and now she was here. Nick’s parents were dead and Lorelei’s mother was old and frail, I knew, so there was no immediate place of safety and familiarity to take her in. I tried to put my arms around her shoulders in the hope that I could bring her some comfort, but she pulled back and hugged her bag to her torso. My arms hung in mid-air before I let them drop.
‘She was at a friend’s. Got home and found us there, packing up,’ the officer explained quietly, as if the girl wouldn’t hear her. Why do people think children can’t see what’s right in front of them?
‘Come in,’ I said. The girl shuffled into the hall. She looked like all the blood had been drained from her.
‘Will she be staying with you?’
‘Oh, yes. Of course.’ Hazel looked at her feet and seemed to shrink further into herself. ‘She’ll be all right here.’ The officer nodded, glanced at the girl and left, joining a male colleague stamping his feet to keep warm in the five o’clock twilight.
Charles had appeared behind me. ‘Are you really going to look after …’ he began, with a sceptical look on his face.
‘Yes.’
‘As you wish.’ He returned to the parlour.
‘Hazel.’ I lifted her satchel from her hands, placed it on the floor and wrapped my arms around her. She was shaking. ‘You’ll be staying with us now. You’ll be all right.’
She tried to speak but could hardly form the words. She was in shock too, I could see; the grief hadn’t yet hit her. ‘Where’s Dad?’ she managed to stutter.
I didn’t know what to say. I had presumed the policewoman had informed her about Nick, but the girl had been told only that her mother had died.
‘He’s not here right now,’ I said.
‘Where is he?’ There was need in her voice, but in her eyes there was something else. A flash of what? Resentment? She wanted her father and instead here I was swanning around in his home.
It was best she knew, I thought, or she would become more frantic the longer it was delayed. ‘The National Security people are talking to him.’
‘He’s in Great Queen Street?’ she gasped. I had hoped she wouldn’t know much about 60 Great Queen Street. A forlorn hope.
‘Yes, but he’ll be fine,’ I said quickly. ‘He’s done nothing wrong; they just think he can help them work out what happened.’ She dropped on to the stairs and buried her face in her arms. I could do nothing but stroke her back. She flinched from my touch. ‘He’ll be with us soon.’ Her mouth opened as if she were trying to form words, but closed again as tears began to course down her cheeks. ‘I have to …’ she sobbed, trying to speak. ‘My mum. I …’ But she couldn’t go on and I gave her a few minutes just to cry.
‘You’ll be all right,’ I said again, at a loss for anything else to say, anything with depth to it. I wanted to talk more to Charles, to see if there were anything we could do for Nick, but right now this girl needed me.
‘No,’ she whispered.
‘You will.’
She gazed up at me and her expression changed, as if she were making her mind up about something. ‘I have to go back to my house,’ she said, her mouth still twisted by sadness.
‘What?’ I couldn’t understand. Did she want to say goodbye to her mother? ‘Why?’
‘I just have to go there. I need to get something.’
‘What is it?’
She froze. I turned to see Charles with his arms folded. Hazel looked at her feet. ‘What are you talking about?’ he said. ‘Perhaps I can help.�
��
‘Thank you, but no,’ I said forcefully.
‘As you wish.’ He walked back to his chair and I closed the door behind him – this looked to be something that Hazel wanted to keep private.
‘Hazel, you can’t,’ I whispered. ‘It’s … you just can’t. The police won’t let you.’
‘I’m going!’ she said defiantly.
What could I say? ‘Oh, Hazel, I can’t think what you’re going through, but I have to make sure you’re all right. Do you want your clothes? I’ll lend you some.’ She looked at me, then suddenly broke away and ran out the door. She was in such a state of distress that I was worried what she would do. ‘Hazel!’ I shouted, as I grabbed my purse and keys from the table and chased after her along the smog-filled road. I caught up with her after twenty paces and pulled her, struggling, to the side of the pavement. ‘You can’t go there. It’s not safe!’ I insisted. I was becoming almost as wild as her. I held her tightly and she tried to fight me off. ‘Hazel, that’s enough. It’s not safe for you or for your dad.’ She kept tugging away from me, but with less fervour.
‘I need to get something,’ she said to the ground.
‘What? Tell me.’
She wiped her face. She was trying to remain defiant but it wasn’t really in her. ‘Something of Mum’s.’
She stopped again. Charles was walking towards us. ‘I’m going to see what I can find out,’ he said.
‘All right,’ I said, exasperated by his interruption.
‘You should go inside. Both of you. Wait until I come back. Don’t do anything else.’
‘Charles, he’s my husband.’
‘I’m as concerned as you are. But we have to understand that the state takes precautions when it feels a citizen may be endangering society.’ He had changed his tune.
A fury hit me. ‘Is that what you think he’s done?’ I demanded. ‘Put the state in danger?’ It seemed so absurd. He seemed absurd. I saw the curtains of the house beside ours twitch.
‘It doesn’t matter what I think. It is what the state thinks that matters. And that is precisely what I’m going to find out.’ He stalked away without another word. I had no time to argue with him too.