Liberation Square

by Gareth Rubin

  ‘They are prisoners for what they believe! We do not know where they are. Please do not forget them,’ it added below the top line. There was a long list of names, most of them male.

  I had heard – we had all heard – of the new usage that the mental hospitals were being put to. Those poor people. They didn’t deserve what had happened to them, but there were so many names on the sheet that I would never recall them. I looked along the road. With the paper in my hand, the memory of the couple, and the NatSec van receding into the distance, I began to wonder where on earth the Republic was going.

  Grest’s words were still ringing in my ears and the sharp smell of his sweat was still on me when I arrived home. I needed to wash it off or I would be ill. As I entered the house, I found Hazel on the crushed silk sofa – one of Nick’s rescues from bombed-out houses – and the room warm, with a fire going in the grate. I usually loved returning to the house when Nick had the fire going, so we could cuddle and warm up. Now there was heat, but no warmth.

  ‘Did you find it?’ she asked the second that I stepped in. ‘You’ve been gone so long.’ She was still keeping her distance from me, but most of the resentment and defiance seemed to be gone. I think she had probably cried it away – her cheeks were wet with more tears – and she was now feeling sad and alone, rather than angry at me and the world. I wished that I hadn’t had to leave her when I went to search Lorelei’s house.

  ‘No, I’m sorry, there was nothing there,’ I said. I didn’t like lying to her, but I couldn’t have her involved any more. She sat down heavily. ‘But this will all be over soon. You don’t need to worry.’

  Her expression changed. She struggled to get the words out. ‘Do they think Dad killed my mum?’

  I looked into her eyes and saw such a rush of conflicting emotions that I didn’t know where to begin: her fear for her father, her grief for her mother, even a suspicion that perhaps her father was guilty. And what then? I hadn’t even come to terms with my own fears; I had no idea how to address hers too.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I confessed. ‘I don’t know what they think. But I know he didn’t do it. These people, they just …’ I waved my hand, unable to finish the sentence because my eyes were also seeping tears. The adrenalin had got me through the time in Lorelei’s house and the van with that foul man, but now I broke down next to her. I was glad she was there so I wasn’t alone.

  We spent the evening on the sofa telling each other that we would hear Nick’s key in the lock any minute now, that he would saunter through the door, smile at seeing us together and make some joke about having escaped from NatSec’s cells. My cat Julius came in and wound himself around our ankles. I made myself feed him, and he did his best to show his affection afterwards, rubbing himself on our legs, but it meant nothing as the time stretched on and Nick never returned home.

  Twice I slipped away to my bedroom – first to stow in my wardrobe the book and white carton I had found in Lorelei’s house; and then to open that book again, desperately staring at its contents. I think I was hoping for inspiration, a lightning bolt that would turn those letters and numbers into meaningful words and messages, but they remained a mystery.

  At eleven o’clock I told Hazel it was time she went to bed and we would see her father in the morning. When she had got herself ready, I went in to see her and I realized just how young and vulnerable she was. Only fourteen. I stroked her hair and told her everything would be all right and she seemed to believe me. Yet, in the space of a day, the girl had lost both her parents and I, a virtual stranger, was all that was left for her.

  9

  All of the Republic of Great Britain is looking forward to today’s celebrations for Liberation Day. Dignitaries from the Soviet Union, France, Jugoslavia and our friends in Africa are among those attending to show their support and celebrate the day when the Red Army drove the Nazis from our shores. What a day it promises to be!

  News broadcast, RGB Station 1,

  Tuesday, 18 November 1952

  I slept for two, perhaps three hours that night before I was woken, disoriented, by the Archangel’s bright searchlight beams sweeping the clouds and rooftops, shining in through people’s windows to make the rooms brighter than day. I lay there thinking of those lost moments in Lorelei’s house, of what I had seen but couldn’t recall. And I tried to recover the memories but the effects of the concussion still kept them from me. I wondered if Hazel, in the next room, had had any more rest than I had had, or if she too had stayed awake hoping still to hear the sound of Nick’s key in the lock.

  It was about seven, I think, when I heard the newspaper rattle through the letterbox. I hurried down to intercept it because I wanted to see what they knew of Lorelei’s death – maybe it would lend some hint as to who or what lay behind it – and I also didn’t want Hazel presented with the lurid details. I flicked through the pages before going back to the beginning, confused. There was no word of her. Well, perhaps it had been too late for the edition.

  I sat on the stairs, thinking. Nick’s continued absence had me frightened, but, after what I had done the previous day – taking the book from Lorelei’s house and surviving the encounter with Grest – I felt more able to cope. Was there something I could do to help Nick? One idea occurred, even though it was itself daunting.

  I called Number Enquiries. I had to repeat my request because it was hard to hear down the crackling line, but they connected me and the call was answered immediately.

  ‘National Security Police,’ said a gruff voice when it connected. There was a pause while I told myself that I really was doing this. ‘National Security Police,’ it repeated with annoyance.

  I shook myself into action. I had to concentrate if I were going to find out anything about Nick. ‘Hello. You have my husband in custody,’ I said. Despite my resolve, it was painful for me even to pronounce the words, and, at the back of my mind, there was the worry that calling might somehow make matters worse. ‘My … his name is Nicholas Cawson.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Can you tell me if you will be releasing him soon? His daughter is here. Her mother died yesterday.’

  ‘We can’t discuss any case. But what did you say your name was?’

  My heart skipped – it felt dangerous even to give these people your name – but there was no point in withholding the information, because they would have it all on file anyway. ‘Jane Cawson. Can you tell me anything at all?’

  ‘No. But I’ll make a note that you called.’

  ‘Please, just something.’

  ‘I will make a note that you called.’

  I didn’t doubt that. It was clear too that I was going to get nothing more from him. ‘Thank you. Goodbye,’ I said. The words seemed strange and self-mocking under the circumstances.

  I thought it over. I had no influential friends in London – hardly any friends at all, in truth. But I remembered one man who had seemed kind, who might be able to help. Once again, I requested a line from Number Enquiries.

  ‘Borough Police Station.’ There was no love lost between the regular police and NatSec, and I was banking on that.

  ‘Hello. I hope you can help. I wanted to speak to an officer I met yesterday.’

  ‘His name?’ The accent was Cornish, I wondered how he had ended up in South London.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It’ll be hard to find him, then, won’t it?’

  I remained as polite as I could. ‘He’s about sixty, thin, white hair. A sergeant, I think. Detective. And he attended a death yesterday in Eastcheap.’

  ‘Eastcheap?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Won’t be us, then. You want Tower Hamlets Central.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Thank you.’

  I hung up and went through it all again. Repeating my request to a man at Tower Hamlets Central Station. I heard him mumbling to someone else in the background. Then he came back to the telephone. ‘Well, we don’t know who it was. But most of CID’s not in til
l eight. We can try them when they get here. What’s your name?’

  Half an hour later I made breakfast for Hazel. She looked even more wan than yesterday. ‘You have to eat something. Your dad would want you to,’ I said, persuading her to take some bread and butter and a glass of milk. ‘It’s going to be all right now. Today’s the day he comes back.’ I squeezed her hand in mine. She didn’t squeeze back but neither did she immediately pull her hand away, which was something. Six years of war had taught us how resilient kids could be: they had seen their families buried in rubble or graves and still those children managed to survive. I just hoped she could find it within herself to keep going until her father was free.

  When the telephone rang, I jumped and hurried to it. ‘Hello?’ I said, lifting the receiver.

  ‘Mrs Cawson?’

  ‘Yes, that’s me.’

  ‘This is Detective Sergeant Tibbot at Tower Hamlets Central. We met yesterday.’

  The relief washed through me. It was a step towards getting Nick back. ‘Oh, thank you so much for calling,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything yet,’ he replied. ‘Why did you want to speak to me?’

  ‘My husband. You know who took him.’

  There was a pause. ‘Yes, I know.’

  I tried to weigh up his tone of voice. Given his age, Tibbot had probably joined up forty years earlier. He had been there long before the Soviets arrived, long before they had helped Blunt’s comrades set up NatSec. A lot of the older police felt the same way about them as the rest of us, and I had seen Tibbot’s anger when Grest had pushed him aside at Lorelei’s house. But I didn’t want to tell him that Grest had come for me: it would put him on guard, wondering if anything he said would get back to them. ‘Can you help me find out about him?’

  He hesitated. ‘That’s not really for me to do.’

  ‘Please, I just want to know if he’s all right and if he’s coming back or …’ I left it hanging because my own words brought home to me the fact that he might not. I waited.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you,’ said Tibbot.

  ‘He has a daughter.’ I was growing desperate.

  There was another pause, and he answered in a voice harder than before. ‘I can’t help you.’

  He hung up and the line hummed with a mechanical buzz. By now Nick had been in their custody for eighteen hours. At least they hadn’t found what was in Lorelei’s house, I told myself. But suddenly, thinking of that, a thought struck me.

  According to Hazel, Lorelei had been storing those secret items in the house even when she and Nick were together – meaning there was a good chance he had been involved. In that case, if NatSec were to search our own house, there was no telling what they would find. If there were something incriminating, I had to get to it first.

  The place to start looking would be Nick’s study, where he did his paperwork. That door was always locked and he said that was because it contained confidential medical records, but now I wasn’t so sure. And I knew the key was in his chest of drawers in our bedroom.

  I looked through the doorway to where Hazel was waiting to see if the call had brought news about her father. ‘I’m sorry, it was nothing. Do you have a friend you would like to go to today?’ I asked, even though I presumed they would all be at the Liberation Day events. ‘As soon as your dad is back, we’ll come and collect you.’

  She shook her head, dejected that it wasn’t news that Nick was coming home. ‘I want to stay here with you,’ she said. I was surprised by the closeness of those words. Our shared fears for Nick seemed to have brought us together. ‘Can I?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I just have to do some things upstairs. You could listen to the radio or to some records. Take your mind off things.’

  ‘OK.’

  She went to her room and I looked up towards Nick’s study. Perhaps it would provide the key to what I had found hidden in Lorelei’s house.

  10

  In May, four months after he caught me falling out of a train at Waterloo, Nick met me outside Lambeth Records Office, where we signed the marriage register. He had bought a bunch of sunflowers and Sally threw a packet of confetti over us as we left the building.

  I think Sally had a bit of a soft spot for Nick herself, and it was the morning of October the twenty-fifth, a few weeks before Liberation Day, when I received a letter from her that ended with: So tell me about the dashing doctor. When will he do the decent thing and get you knocked up? After all, IT’S OUR DUTY TO THE STATE. I wondered if any censor reading the last line would hear the irony in her words.

  What she didn’t know was that I already was pregnant. When, in August, I had missed my first period the thought had occurred but I didn’t pay too much attention. Then I’d missed another and soon each morning had become a scramble to the bathroom to be sick. I would see women with children in pushchairs and I couldn’t stop myself smiling. They always smiled back and I was sure they could tell. Nick had performed a test – he called it an hCG test – and told me I was definitely pregnant. While he had been closely monitoring my temperature and blood pressure, I had been thinking about names.

  It was chilly that October evening as I walked up and down the steps of the Brookfield Hotel until Nick arrived at last, wearing his evening suit. I was in the simple white dress I had worn at our wedding, and we were there for some dreary function with a bunch of Party dignitaries, welcoming Comintern delegations from Poland and Russia. Nick thought he might be able to make some connections that would be helpful for his career, but I had felt ill all day and didn’t want to be there. ‘Hello, darling,’ he said as he started out of the cab. I was about to kiss him but as he fully emerged I saw that he wasn’t alone. Charles was behind him. I took Nick by the arm and led him away as Charles paid the fare.

  ‘Why is he here?’ I asked.

  ‘He was the one who got me invited. He heard there are going to be some very important people here tonight. You know Charles – always star-struck.’ He looked at me, concerned. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Let’s go inside.’ We went to the corner of the lobby. Charles waited a little way off. ‘What’s wrong?’ Nick asked.

  ‘I’m feeling quite sick.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘This is bad timing, isn’t it?’ I said, forcing a smile.

  He smoothed down my hair. ‘All right. It’s just morning sickness – they really should call it something else. But shall we go home anyway?’

  I was grateful to him and was about to say yes, I did want to go home and curl up by the fire or listen to the evening concert on the radio, when Charles strode over. ‘Dr Cawson, I really do think we should try now, before he sits down to dine,’ he said, keeping his voice low. ‘He won’t be here very long. Just for Comrade Burgess’s address, then he’ll probably go.’

  I must have looked confused. ‘A patient of mine is at the Ministry of Food,’ Nick explained. ‘He’s offered to introduce me to one of Burgess’s people tonight.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Ian Fellowman. Assistant Secretary of State Information. In charge of broadcasting.’

  ‘It would be excellent to meet Comrade Fellowman,’ Charles added. ‘Of course, there’s no real chance that we can meet Comrade Burgess himself. He –’

  ‘Charles, could you give us a minute?’ Nick said, without looking at him.

  ‘Yes. Of course, Dr Cawson.’ He went through into the ballroom.

  There was a silence between us. I really didn’t want to be there. ‘Would it be useful to you?’ I asked.

  He sighed. ‘An Assistant Secretary is a useful contact, and perhaps things could develop from there. I’ve heard his usual GP is planning on retiring soon.’

  ‘Will you get a chance to meet him again?’

  ‘Who knows? To be honest, I don’t know how well my patient really knows Fellowman. That’s why this looked like the best chance – a social gathering.’

  ‘Where
you can charm him,’ I said, mustering as much of a smile as I could. ‘How long would you need?’

  He paused. ‘If I could have just five minutes … God, it’s awful, isn’t it? The lengths we have to go to. But look –’

  ‘No. Of course you must meet him.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, you might not get another chance.’

  He took my hands in his. ‘All right. If you’re sure.’ I wasn’t. I felt dreadful, but I knew it was important to him and I didn’t want him to go home and miss his opportunity, so I resolved just to keep a lid on the nausea. I did my best not to let on how I felt as we crossed the lobby to the ballroom, had our identity cards checked against an approved list, and stepped inside.

  There were no shortages where Comrades Burgess and Fellowman ate, that was clear. There were waitresses in black skirts and perfect stockings handing around trays of genuine French Champagne; plates of canapés stacked on tables; food I had never seen even in the pages of an old Vogue I had found in a pile on the floor of our wardrobe. All around it was as if the previous decades had never taken place, and we were still in the roaring twenties. The era of The Great Gatsby and all that excess. I couldn’t help but feel a shade of anger at the hypocrisy.

  Burgess and Fellowman weren’t in the room – they had probably been escorted through to a more private place – and Charles was nearby, talking to a tiny man who kept wiping sweat from his head with a handkerchief. Nick was known here too, I found. Within seconds he had been grabbed by a fat Party apparatchik, accompanied by an unhappy-looking young woman, who wanted to know if Nick was treating any of the Politburo and if he had heard anything about the health of Comrade First Secretary Blunt. The tiresome man allowed his jacket to fall open so that we could see a copy of Blunt’s ruby-coloured treatise on our future, The Compass, tucked into an inside pocket. I sighed within myself. Men like this were the most irksome manifestation of the new regime, trying to ingratiate themselves here and intimidate others there.

  It was Charles who intervened. ‘Dr Cawson,’ he said, attempting to suppress his excitement as he came towards us. ‘Comrade Honeysette is over there.’