Liberation Square

by Gareth Rubin

  Soon Nick returned with our drinks. ‘Very kind,’ Charles said, as Nick handed out the glasses.

  ‘I’m sure Charles has been too modest to tell you,’ Nick began, with a glint in his eye. ‘But it’s largely down to him that I’m out of choky.’

  ‘Is it?’ I said, rather surprised.

  ‘His connections. He made some calls; I’m sure that’s what got me released.’

  ‘I doubt it was that entirely, Dr Cawson.’

  ‘But it must have helped.’ Nick secretly winked at me. He didn’t believe for a moment that Charles’s attempts had helped.

  ‘Well, perhaps,’ Charles replied.

  ‘Thank you for that.’

  ‘Not at all. Although, Dr Cawson, I do believe now is the time for you to join the Party – this might all have been avoided with the right friends.’

  Nick looked serious now. ‘Yes, you might be right. I’ve put it off for a long time. But it’s true.’

  ‘I’m sure it is.’

  ‘I’ll need a sponsor,’ Nick said. But as he said it he wasn’t looking at Charles. Something was distracting him.

  ‘Yes, one of your patients, I would say. Would you like me to go through the list?’ He paused. ‘Dr Cawson?’

  ‘Hmmm?’

  Nick was looking at a young man in the corner of the room who was confined to a wheelchair, his legs ending at his knees. There were others around him, but they were standing and talking over his head, and Nick’s gaze took on that melancholy, faraway look I saw when he was back thinking about his War service. The man caught sight of Nick, and their eyes met. They seemed to understand each other. Nick raised his drink to the man and the gesture was echoed. They drank.

  ‘Dr Cawson? Shall I make some enquiries among your patients who have influence? Discreetly, of course.’

  Nick’s attention returned to us. ‘What do you think?’ he asked me.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. I never wanted to go through what had happened to us again, but, unlike Nick or Charles, I knew just how close NatSec had been. They might even have been in our house – the young man with the pebble-like goitre on his neck who had pulled Tibbot and me from the train, perhaps. They would never let Nick join the Party unless it was as their stooge, their blackmailed and beholden puppet keeping tabs on the other members. The Party was said to be rife with those.

  ‘Yes. Well, go ahead, then,’ Nick said decisively.

  ‘I’ll make the calls in the morning.’ Charles looked satisfied.

  It struck me that three days ago Nick had been in NatSec’s cells; now he was planning to join the Party. All of our memories were becoming shorter.

  29

  The following evening saw me sitting at the kitchen table, leafing through a copy of the Morning Star’s thick Sunday edition. Despite its length, there was little in it: a long article about one Louise Archer, the mother of six children who was being lionized by the state as our own Stakhanov, explaining how easy and pleasant she found it cooking for a family of eight; and below it a warning to expect the heaviest smog of the year. There was still no mention of Lorelei, and I supposed that there never would be now.

  Nick had just returned from spending the day in Waltham Forest with Hazel. She was still crying from time to time, but it had been almost a week, so I thought and hoped that she was over the worst. During six years of war as a country, we had got used to swallowing down our grief, so, sad to say, Hazel’s experience was far from unusual. She had asked if I could come out with them, which was touching, and I wished I could, but I knew Nick wanted to be alone with her.

  The telephone rang. When I went to answer it, however, a tinny voice was already speaking – Nick must have picked it up on the extension line in his study. The voice was too distant and hollowed out by the line for me to recognize it, and I was about to hang up when I caught a few words: ‘… and how is your wife?’ They made me pause.

  ‘She’s bearing up. Things have been … difficult for her,’ Nick replied. I lifted the receiver back to my ear, placing my palm across the mouthpiece to deaden it.

  ‘I’m sure they have.’

  Who was this person, asking about me? I tried to work it out, but couldn’t even tell for sure if it was male or female. Probably male.

  ‘If she had started turning things upside down, it would have made it all ten times worse.’ Nick was keeping his voice down, but sounded disturbed. ‘She hasn’t mentioned anything so I won’t bring it up.’

  ‘That’s probably for the best. Do you think she knows?’

  Nick sighed. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘But she might.’

  ‘Yes. She might. I’ll do my best to prevent that.’

  ‘This is all more dangerous now. I’m not sure we’re going about it the right way.’

  ‘Don’t worry. You’re always worrying,’ said Nick, with more than a hint of irritation in his voice.

  ‘Citizen Informants.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be bloody stupid.’ There was a pause.

  ‘Can you get more norethisterone?’ the voice asked.

  ‘Yes. I knew we would need more. That’s good. But I don’t want to talk about this on the telephone. Meet me there in an hour.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘I could have put it to good use before, though,’ Nick added, thoughtfully.

  ‘How?’

  ‘If I had had it before, Lorelei wouldn’t have ended up like she did.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true.’ The line crackled. ‘Who do you think killed her?’

  ‘Who can say?’ He paused. ‘But we can’t let it distract us right now. The norethisterone. I found someone to test it.’

  ‘A patient?’ the voice asked.

  ‘A private patient.’

  ‘What was the outcome?’

  ‘It works as predicted. Now it’s time for them to start the course again.’

  ‘All right. Well, I’ll see you in an hour.’

  ‘Goodbye.’ Nick put the receiver down. I made to do the same. But, as I did so, I knocked the earpiece against the mirror on the wall. The glass rang and I gasped at the sound. My fingers wrapped so tightly around the telephone that all the blood drained from them and I held my breath, listening, praying that the person on the other end hadn’t heard. There was nothing, only my heart beating. It was all right. I began to put the handset down.

  ‘Is someone there?’ It rattled out of the earpiece. I waited, staring at the receiver. ‘Are you there?’ the voice repeated, slowly and cautiously. Then a click as they hung up. I breathed out.

  30

  I couldn’t stop thinking about that call even as I made Hazel breakfast the next morning. It had been – in part, at least – about me. Of course Nick would have occasion to talk about me sometimes, but this sounded very much like a conversation I was being deliberately kept from.

  Hazel was wearing her navy-blue school uniform. I had worried that it was too soon for her to go back, but Nick thought it would be better for her to be with her friends than wandering about in our house with no one to talk to. Maybe he was right. ‘Are you sure you feel up to it?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’ With Nick around, things between her and me were warming by the day. ‘What are you learning in English?’

  She sighed. ‘How Dickens depicts class conflict in Oliver Twist.’

  Burgess and his friends had been clever. They had used our national love for literature as a way to open up our nascent political consciousness. So Tressell’s The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists and Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier were required reading. And yet Lorelei had said Orwell had fallen foul of Burgess’s assistant, Ian Fellowman, and ended up in a re-education camp.

  ‘That sounds very interesting,’ I said. ‘I can help you with it if you want.’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  I was happy about that. ‘It’s a wonderful book,’ I said.

  ‘I’m really glad you’re here,’ she blurted out.


  I hugged her. ‘I’m glad I’m here too, Hazel. We’re going to be fine,’ I said.

  After seeing her off, I took a tram heading south, watching the wrapped-up people and the bomb sites flit past. When I stepped down at the stop for the South London Hospital, a big black car slowed a little as it passed me. I briefly tried to stare into it before shaking my head and telling myself that I was seeing faces in clouds – that if they had wanted to remain hidden they would have done so, and if they had really wanted me to see they were there, they would have been a damn sight less subtle about it.

  It was hard just getting to the hospital building. I had to push my way through a crowd milling outside the Irish Embassy, where at least a hundred people were clamouring for entry. I asked a young woman in a pinny what was going on and she said everyone in the scrum had an Irish parent so they were applying for Irish passports – apparently applications had just reopened after a couple of years, so there was a lot of pent-up demand. I wished her luck. I could understand their attempt, although anyone trying to get out of the country that way would have to endure months of harassment from the authorities. They would lose their job, and if they got another at all it would be the dirtiest in the city, kilometres from where they lived, just to teach them a lesson. After that, of course, the government might still refuse to grant an exit visa.

  The scene at the hospital reception desk was almost identical to last time – a mass of people pushing and shoving, some demanding to be dealt with, some begging. Dr Clement was in his cubicle, writing on a card as he bid goodbye to a woman who was buttoning up her blouse. She left and he motioned me to a wooden chair opposite his that had been broken and shabbily bolted together again.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Cawson,’ he said. ‘I have read the results from your blood and urine tests.’ He rolled his lips over his teeth and bit down on them thoughtfully. ‘They were to check your hormone levels. The reproductive hormones that you produce.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Yes. There is one that we must talk about.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘It is called oestradiol. It is one of a group we call oestrogens that are vital for pregnancy to occur.’

  ‘And?’

  He cleared his throat. He seemed uncomfortable. ‘Please tell me: what first said to you that you were pregnant?’

  ‘How did I first realize, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My periods stopped.’

  He noted that down. ‘Yes, yes. That is the way most women first believe they are pregnant too.’

  ‘Well, obviously.’ He avoided my gaze. There was something he didn’t want to tell me. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Mrs Cawson.’ He looked at a form on his desk. It was divided into sections, each with a few words of black type above red handwritten words and numbers. ‘The tests we did. There was something we found.’

  ‘What was it?’ I said, now very worried – had losing the child meant I could never fall pregnant again?

  ‘I am sorry to tell you that we find your levels of oestradiol are low. Very low. Too low for you to have ever been able to conceive a baby, I must say. Too low for you to have been pregnant before.’

  I was dumbstruck. It was impossible, what he was saying. ‘But I was pregnant,’ I stuttered. ‘Before. That’s why I’m here.’

  He took his glasses out of their pouch and looked down at them. ‘I am afraid not.’

  I stopped. For a second my mind whirled. ‘But I was. I had morning sickness. My husband, he’s a GP. He did a test and told me I was definitely pregnant.’

  ‘An hCG test?’

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s what he called it.’

  ‘Perhaps he said that he thought you were, and you misunderstood.’

  But, no – Nick had assured me I was expecting. I recalled how he had kept monitoring my temperature and blood pressure. ‘I was pregnant!’ I stood up and thrust the chair behind me. He watched me without moving. ‘I had a mis–’ I couldn’t complete the word. The sheer pain of that night hit me like a wave. I sank back in the chair and put my hands over my face. I was going through it all over again: the feeling of having a part of me taken away. ‘If I wasn’t pregnant, what was that?’ I insisted.

  He put his hand on my shoulder. It felt gentle. ‘I do not think you had a miscarriage. I think that was your period,’ he said. ‘For some reason we do not know, they stopped for a time; so it was more heavy than usual when they started again.’

  My mind began to throb. My cycle had always been very regular, so when it stopped, I had been certain it could only be one thing. I tried to speak, to make sense, to know what this meant for Nick and me. ‘Are you saying I’ll never be pregnant?’

  He seemed to relax a little. ‘Well, the good news is that there is much research going on into collecting or synthesizing hormones. We have extracted oestrogens from urine; already created a synthetic progesterone – norethisterone – and soon –’

  Something leaped into my brain. ‘Norethisterone?’ I asked, interrupting him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, looking at me curiously. ‘You have heard if it?’

  ‘Nick mentioned it once.’ That unknown voice on the telephone had asked if Nick could get more of it. It was right after Nick had said he would do his best to prevent me from finding something out.

  ‘Well, as I said, it is a synthetic form of progesterone, which is another of the hormones you make during your menstrual cycle.’ He hesitated. ‘Have you come into contact with it?’

  ‘No. Why? What would it do?’ He moved his glasses to another part of the desk and considered. ‘Dr Clement?’ I waited for an answer.

  After a while he spoke, cautiously. ‘I believe it …’ He trailed off.

  ‘Please.’

  He looked at me curiously. ‘Well, I believe it would stop your periods. But …’

  My mind was hot. ‘What else?’ I interrupted him. ‘What else would it do?’

  ‘It could … produce nausea, cramps. Other effects too, probably.’ He returned to that searching look I had seen.

  ‘As if you’re pregnant?’ He nodded. ‘And if a woman stopped taking it after a while, would her periods return?’

  He nodded thoughtfully. ‘I expect so.’

  ‘And would the first be heavier than usual?’

  ‘It is probable,’ he said.

  My God. What had happened to me?

  I stood up and walked to the bed. I placed my fists on it and leaned on them, my head down, my back to him. ‘And what is it used for? Its purpose?’

  He fidgeted and glanced at the battered door. ‘It is a little … something there is an argument about. The effect of halting the menses – your periods – means it can be used as a contraceptive. Something to prevent pregnancy.’ He looked at me meaningfully. ‘Of course, no doctor would prescribe such a drug. It would be disloyal. To the Party.’

  On the wall outside was a poster of Louise Archer, mother of six Pioneers, bouncing a child on her knee. OUR STATE RELIES ON ITS CHILDREN, ran the slogan.

  ‘Do people supply this drug? On the black market?’ I asked. He hesitated. ‘Please tell me.’

  He cleared his throat. ‘Doctors talk. I have heard of it happening. I do not know if what I heard is true.’

  When the voice on the telephone had asked Nick if he could get more of it, Nick had said he had been testing it on a ‘private patient’. ‘It works as predicted. Now it’s time for them to start the course again,’ he had said.

  ‘Would it be expensive?’

  ‘I really could not –’

  ‘It would, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I imagine so.’

  Expensive. Lucrative. So this was surely the basis of the new ‘big orders’ that Lorelei had told Rachel to expect. It was what they had fought about.

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘What does it … I do not know. I have never seen it,’ he said.

  ‘Guess.’

  He sighed. ‘A pill, a liquid, it is ha
rd to say.’

  ‘Would it taste of anything?’

  ‘I really do not know. Maybe. Probably not. Mrs Cawson, is there something that you want to say to me?’

  My throat was hoarse. ‘No,’ I managed to whisper.

  Hardly able to think, I stumbled out of the room. My head spun with thoughts and images. I turned at random down corridors and through archways. In the end, I looked up and found myself in an unfamiliar corridor. There was a door beside me with the sound of voices behind it. I didn’t know where I was and I needed someone to help me, so I pushed on the door and it swung open. The sight that greeted me made the ground shake underneath my feet.

  I was looking into a huge ward of at least fifty beds. Occupying them were as many young women, sitting up under the blankets, leaning against the walls and breathing deeply or slowly walking up and down the room assisted by nurses. They were all, every one, just hours away from giving birth.

  When I was a girl I had a collie dog named Sheba. When she died I screamed and ran out the gate, to the beach. I sat on the sand with my knees pulled up to my chin, trying to reconcile the images of my father who cuddled me on his lap at our warm dinner table, cheerily carving slices of meat while a pipe dripped from his lip, with the man who had tossed Sheba’s body into a pit in the back garden without any emotion at all. Now that image came to my mind again, as the thoughts tumbled. Could it really be that Nick too had this side to him, something cold and hard?

  I could hardly think as I wandered out of the hospital and along streets I didn’t recognize, every step feeling like someone else was taking it, until I found myself at the Thames. My fingers twisted through the wire links on the fence that kept us from the water, and I hung there like one of the D-Day survivors who you saw on park benches staring ahead for hours on end.

  Nick had hidden his continuing relationship with Lorelei from me, their involvement in black-market medicines. Had he also been using me as a test subject to see if the drug – a drug that mimicked the effects of pregnancy – worked? He had kept monitoring my heart rate and blood pressure. And the night that he was released I suggested that we try for another child and yet he had been reluctant – when he had previously been so happy that I seemed to be pregnant.