Dominion

Chapter Forty-Eight

ON SUNDAY, 30 NOVEMBER, Sarah had travelled by train to Brighton. She had been told where she was going the previous evening by Meg, who had returned to Dilys’ with a suitcase of new clothes, some money and new identity papers. Briskly, Meg went through the details of Sarah’s new identity. From now on she would be Mrs Sarah Hardcastle, widow of a London schoolteacher. She would be staying in a Brighton boarding house until David, and some others, were ready to join her. The cover story was that she had wanted to get out of London for a few days following her husband’s death in a car crash earlier that year. Meg didn’t know or wouldn’t say where they would be going after that.

Dilys had dyed her hair – it was dark red now, the colour surprisingly convincing, the style quite short. By the time Meg left it was late evening and Sarah was very tired. She spent the night on a camp bed in the room where she had met Jackson, and where, Dilys told her, her customers waited. I’ve gone from a suburban lounge to a prostitute’s waiting room, all in a day, Sarah thought. She wanted to laugh hysterically.

Next morning Dilys walked with Sarah to Piccadilly Circus tube station, Sarah carrying her suitcase and wearing a pair of tough, sensible shoes. In the crowded foyer Dilys hugged her tightly. ‘Thank you,’ Sarah said. She added, ‘Will you be all right? Where are you going to go?’

‘A new flat. Good luck, love.’ Then Dilys hugged her again and left. Sarah forced herself to move, she shouldn’t just stand there, she would draw stares. A little group of young Blackshirts, the electric flash of the BUF on their armbands, strolled along on their way to some function; she walked rapidly away to the ticket booth. She caught a tube to Victoria and bought a ticket for the Brighton train. Waiting on the platform, her heart jumped at a glimpse of a patrolling policeman. She was glad to get on the train.

After the horrible chaos of the last few days the normality of the train journey felt surreal. Sarah stared blankly at the Southern Railway Company crest embossed on the seat opposite her. Someone had left a newspaper there. It was the Guardian, the old liberal newspaper which her father always took. Beaverbrook had bought it last year and now it was laden with right-wing propaganda like all the other papers. An article said there had been an incident in France: Communist agitators from the Resistance had attacked a lorry taking Jews to the internment camp at Drancy. Some gendarmes had been killed, a couple of Jews too. She wondered how much of it was true; she knew the French Resistance was said to be growing larger and to be even more violent than the British. There was an article too about a senior civil servant, working for the junior health minister, Church, being suspected of having relations with a prostitute, visiting brothels with his cousin, a mental hospital superintendent, Dr Wilson. She was dubious; people said the government often blackened the names of people they wanted rid of by leaking such stories to the press. Either way, he would soon be gone.

There were few people on the train, and by the time it left Haywards Heath her carriage was almost deserted. Sarah had been to Brighton a few times as a child, on summer day trips with her family, the train full of eager, excited children. At the thought she might never see any of her family again she burst into tears, sat hunched over in the empty carriage sobbing quietly. She knew she should do nothing to draw attention to herself but couldn’t help it.

She had been told to get a taxi to the hotel. Brighton Station smelt of smoke but when she stepped outside the air was wonderfully clean, bitterly cold with a salty tang. She hailed a taxi and it drove her through dingy streets, then came out into the broad avenue of the Steine. She saw the domed roofs of Brighton Pavilion, George IV’s Indian palace. The taxi drove across the Steine and turned into a side-street of narrow three-storey buildings with flaking paint, hotel signs above the doors, boards with Vacancies in the windows. At the end of the road was the sea, startlingly close.

The hotel was called Channel View. There was no porter and she dragged her suitcase into a dark, poky vestibule. Behind the little counter sat a small, tired-looking woman in her forties. Sarah put her identity card on the desk. ‘Mrs Hardcastle,’ the woman said, then looked at her anxiously. ‘Come through and meet my husband.’ Her voice had a gentle burr, an almost rural sound. She opened a flap and Sarah followed her into a little office where a plump, balding man in shirt sleeves and waistcoat sat working on some accounts. His wife gave him Sarah’s identity card. He read it, then looked up and studied her.

‘You got down here all right?’

‘Yes.’

‘You look as though you’ve been crying.’ His tone was reproving.

‘Yes. On the train. There was no-one else in the carriage.’

He looked at her severely. ‘Someone might have come in.’

Sarah took a deep breath. ‘Two days ago I was a normal housewife. Now I’m on the run, I’ve learned my husband’s a spy, I’ve no home and I don’t know if my family are all right or whether I’ll ever see them again. So yes, I’m sorry, but I had a cry.’

‘You didn’t know your husband was working for us?’

‘He never told me.’

‘Well, that’s often best,’ the man said, his voice less hostile. ‘Your family are all right by the way, we know that. We’ve been watching their houses. Your sister and parents have had Special Branch visits, but that’s all. Your brother-in-law has a lot of Blackshirt friends –’ he looked at her sharply again for a moment – ‘that will have helped.’

Sarah closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘What about my husband?’

‘There are delays in London. It may be a few days before he gets here.’

‘Then what happens?’ Sarah asked. ‘No-one will tell me.’

‘The plan’s to get you out of England. You and your husband, and some friends.’

‘How? Where to?’

The woman said, ‘Somewhere safe, we can’t tell you any more for now. I’m sorry.’ She added, ‘I’m Jane by the way, and this is Bert.’

Bert handed back her identity card. ‘We’ve got you a room here. You can go for little walks round the town if you like but don’t stray too far. We don’t have many residents this time of year, just a few commercial travellers who come and go. Best if you keep yourself to yourself.’

‘I’ve been told to say I wanted to get out of London after my husband died. I can say I don’t like all the fuss about Christmas. It’s true, I hate it.’

‘Good,’ Jane said. ‘Don’t get into conversation with the other guests, some of them have a roaming eye.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Mealtimes are on a card in your room.’ Jane gave her a key. ‘There’s hot water on if you want a bath.’

‘Thank you,’ Sarah said. As she went through the door Bert said quietly, ‘Mrs Hardcastle?’

She turned. ‘Yes?’

He smiled. ‘Just making sure you remember your new name.’

The hotel was a strange little place, with narrow corridors, small rooms, threadbare carpets. The bed in Sarah’s room sagged from the hundreds of people who had slept there before. Channel View was probably full in summer, but now the only other guests were a few middle-aged men in shabby suits who nodded to her in the dining room. She nodded back, politely but distantly. The food was awful.

For the next few days Sarah barely spoke to anyone. Several times when Jane was on her own at reception, Sarah asked if there was any word of when her husband’s group was coming, and always she was told not yet. Jane was pleasant enough but Sarah sensed that Bert was uneasy about her. She wondered if it was because she wasn’t in the Resistance, she was just a spy’s wife, an encumbrance.

She avoided the communal lounge, only going in to see the news on the old TV. On her first night she wondered whether there might be something about the policeman Meg had killed, half expecting to see her house appear on the screen, but there was nothing. They would hush it up of course. There was only the usual news – there had been a big demonstration in Delhi, the Blackshirt mayor of Walsall had been shot and injured by Resistance terrorists, the Germans were making ‘temporary strategic withdrawals’ on sections of the Central Volga. When the news was on some of the commercial travellers muttered and grunted about Communists and uppity wogs.

Sarah spent long hours in her room, reading dog-eared romantic novels that guests had left behind in a little bookcase, or sitting looking out of her window, with its view of a yard choked with bins and the backs of neighbouring buildings. During the short December afternoons she went for walks around the almost-empty town, drinking tea in little cafes. Once or twice she saw small groups of Jive Boys on the corners in their long, colourful coats and drainpipe trousers; but they looked listless and pasty, smoking roll-ups. Probably just unemployed lads, she thought, as she steered away from them. Occasionally, on walls, she saw the Resistance logos ‘V’ and ‘R’ painted, just like in London. The weather was sunny but very cold; there was ice on the pond in a little park she walked round. She thought constantly about David, where he could be, what he was doing, when he would get here. She ached with worry and longing but she was also filled with fury about his lies to her, going over his absences in her head. She knew David had loved her once, but then Charlie had died and he had turned aside from their quiet home life together to become a spy. Without a thought of telling her, taking her into his confidence. Making her into what Bert thought she was, an encumbrance. She remembered her desperate jealous anxiety when she thought David was having an affair with Carol. She determined she would never put herself through anything like that again. If David didn’t love her any more they had to part. If they survived this, if they did go on to new lives, she would not cling onto something that was dead. Walking the cold streets, the seagulls making their sad cries above her, she could have cried out, too, with desperation and anger and sorrow at the thought of losing the only man she had ever loved.

On her sixth night at the boarding house, she saw a thin man in his forties with a big, untidy moustache at the next table, reading the London Evening Standard. The headline caught her eye. ‘Fog Brings London to Standstill’. Hesitantly, she asked the man if she might see the paper when he had finished with it.

‘Of course,’ he said. He nodded at the headline. He had friendly brown eyes, like a dog’s. Sarah noticed there was dandruff on his collar. ‘I’ve just come down from the city, it’s brought chaos up there. Worst ever, some say. Lot of people in hospital. Are you from London?’ he added.

‘Yes. Just – having a few days away.’ She heard the coolness in her voice.

The man smiled gently. ‘I’ll leave you the paper when I’m finished.’ He nodded and returned to his meal.

Later that evening Sarah sought out Bert and Jane in their little office. She said she was worried there was still no news and asked if the smog in London was part of the problem. Jane smiled nervously. ‘I’m sorry, dear. We don’t know any more than you’ve been told. It’s always a worry for us too, the waiting time.’ From the way Jane had spoken, this wasn’t the first time they had helped people get out of England.

On Sunday she went for another walk, down to the promenade. It was still sunny but very cold, the sea completely still and calm, the promenade deserted apart from a few elderly people walking dogs. The sea looked freezing cold. She walked towards the Palace Pier, past closed booths advertising their summer wares in faded paint.

She went onto the pier, her shoes clumping on the wooden boards. She passed the carousel and the shuttered freak show, and walked on towards the end of the pier. There was a little breeze out here, cold as a knife, the sound of the sea all around.

There was only one other person there, leaning over the rail, gazing towards the shore. She recognized the man whose paper she had borrowed at the hotel. There was a battered suitcase at his feet. Hearing her footsteps he looked up, tipping the brim of his bowler hat to her. ‘Out for some sea air?’ he asked.

She approached him. ‘Yes. Freezing, isn’t it?’

‘Bitter.’

‘I heard on the radio that the fog is as bad as ever in London.’

‘Yes. So they say.’

She was about to walk on, she knew she shouldn’t be talking to him, but there was something appealingly pathetic about the man huddled against the railing, and she was desperately lonely. So she said, ‘Not working today?’

He shook his head. ‘Just booked out of the hotel. Off back to London now. Not having much luck this trip. I travel in toys and novelties, you know. Going round the Sussex resorts. People normally buy in for next spring at this time of year, but times are hard.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I’m not going to be splashing out on Christmas this year, I don’t think.’

‘Toys and novelties?’ She remembered her committee, the toys for poor children in the North, Mrs Templeman.

‘Yes.’ He smiled. ‘I’m from Brighton originally, everyone knows me round here.’ He extended a gloved hand. ‘Danny Waterson.’

‘Sarah Hardcastle.’

They were silent for a moment. He said, ‘I heard the Coronation’s fixed for June.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes. I phoned the office this morning and they told me. They still haven’t found anyone she’ll marry. They say the Queen Mother’s pressing German princes on her.’

‘Maybe she’ll stay single, like the first Elizabeth?’

He looked across to the shore again. ‘I remember this place in 1940. Barbed wire all along the promenade, down on the beach too, concrete tank traps in the water. You can’t believe it now.’

‘No.’

‘And the rationing, remember that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Now you can buy what you like. So long as you can afford it.’ He spoke with a touch of bitterness. ‘I was in the Home Guard for a couple of months, remember them?’

She did: old men and boys on the newsreels, parading with wooden sticks because there weren’t enough rifles. She had thought of how they would all be slaughtered in an invasion. Danny went on, ‘I was just too young to be called up. Then in a couple of months it was all over.’ He leaned on the railing again. ‘I wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t made peace, whether the Germans would’ve invaded. It would have been difficult, you know, getting an army across the Channel.’

‘They tell us it would have been easy. We’d lost all our equipment at Dunkirk.’

‘Maybe. Well, we made our choice in 1940 and here we are.’ From his tone he was anti-regime, though he hadn’t actually said anything incriminating.

‘Yes.’ Sarah sighed heavily.

Danny shook his head sadly. ‘I worry about my kiddies’ future, I do. I saw one of those places where they’re holding the Jews outside Worthing yesterday. In the distance, from the train, it looked like an old army barracks. Surrounded with wire, guards patrolling. My wife says the Jews deserve it, they can’t be trusted, they’re not really loyal to Britain.’ He shook his head again. ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do.’

Sarah realized she had hardly thought about the Jews over the last few days. ‘There’s been nothing on the news,’ she said.

‘No. People will forget soon, they do if it’s things they can’t see and don’t affect them.’

‘How old are your children?’ she asked.

‘Two boys. Six and eight. You?’

‘No. I – I’m a widow.’

‘From the 1940 war?’

‘No. Recently. My husband died in a car crash.’

‘Ah. I’m sorry.’

‘Maybe I should be getting back,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s cold.’

He looked at her. ‘Must be a hard time for you, Christmas.’

‘Yes. That’s why I had to get away for a few days.’ She realized that lying was already coming easily to her. Had it been like that for David? She looked into Danny’s sad face and felt guilty.

He said, nervously, ‘Perhaps you’d like to come for a drink. Lots of nice little pubs in the Lanes, warm coal fires. They’ll be opening up about now.’

She thought, he’s trying to pick me up. But maybe not, perhaps he was just looking for companionship on this bleak morning. She hesitated a second, then smiled and said, ‘Thank you very much, but no. I should be getting back.’

He was apologetic and a little embarrassed. ‘Of course, I’m sorry, I hope you don’t mind—’

‘Not at all. But I must go.’

He tipped his hat again, an awkward little gesture, then said, ‘This is a sad sort of town in winter. Maybe, don’t think I’m intruding, but maybe you’d be happier back in London.’

She sighed. ‘Yes, perhaps. Well . . .’ She turned away.

‘I hope I didn’t speak out of turn—’

‘No. No, it was nice to talk to you.’

She walked away, down the pier, back to the promenade, bleakly conscious of the loneliness that might now lie ahead for ever.

As she reached the promenade a newsboy was shouting, from the stand outside the Old Ship Hotel. ‘Hitler dead!’ she heard, ‘Führer dies!’