Dominion

Chapter Three

THE FOLLOWING SUNDAY Sarah went into town to meet Irene and go to the pictures. They had spoken on the telephone during the week, and discussed what had happened on Remembrance Sunday. There had still been nothing about it on the news; it was as though the attack on Rommel and the arrests had never happened.

They went to the Gaumont in Leicester Square to see the new Marilyn Monroe comedy from America. Before the big feature the B film was the usual frothy German musical, and between the films they had to sit through one of the government-commissioned Pathé newsreels. The lights always came up then, to discourage Resistance supporters from booing if any Nazi leaders came on. First came a report of a European eugenics conference in Berlin: Marie Stopes talking with German doctors in a pillared hall. The next item was a vision of hell: a snow-covered landscape, an old woman swathed in ragged clothes weeping and shouting in Russian outside the smoking ruins of a hut, a German soldier in helmet and greatcoat trying to comfort her. Bob Danvers-Walker’s voice turned stern: ‘In Russia, the war against communism continues. Soviet terrorists continue to commit fearful atrocities not just against Germans but against their own people. Outside Kazan a cowardly group of so-called partisans, skulking safely in the forests, fire a Katyusha rocket into a village whose inhabitants had dared to sell German soldiers some food.’ The camera panned outwards, from the ruined hut to the smashed and broken village. ‘Some Russians have chosen to forget what Germany rescued them from: the secret police and forced labour of Stalin’s regime; the millions dumped in Arctic concentration camps.’ There followed familiar grainy footage of one of the camps discovered by the Germans in 1942, skeletal figures lying in deep snow, barbed wire and watchtowers. Sarah looked away from the horrible scenes. The newsreader’s voice deepened: ‘Never doubt Europe’s eventual victory over this evil Asian doctrine. Germany beat Stalin and it will beat his successors.’ As a reminder, there followed the famous shots of Stalin after his capture when Moscow was taken in October 1941: a little man with a thick moustache, pockmarked, grey hair dishevelled, scowling at the ground while his arms were held by laughing German soldiers. Later he had been hanged publicly in Red Square. Next there was footage of the new, giant German Tiger 4 tanks with their eighteen-foot guns smashing through a birch forest on a hunt for partisans, knocking over young trees like match-sticks while helicopters clattered overhead. Then came the launch of a V3 rocket, the camera following the huge pointed cylinder with its tail of fire as it rose into the sky on its way to the far side of the Urals. Optimistic martial music played. Then the newsreel switched to an item on Beaverbrook opening a shiny new television factory in the Midlands, before the lights finally dimmed again and the main feature opened with a clash of music and a bright wash of Technicolor.

When they came out of the cinema the short winter day was ending; lights were coming on in shops and restaurants, a faint yellow haze at their edges. ‘It’s starting to get foggy,’ Sarah said. ‘The forecast said it might.’

‘We’ll be all right on the tube,’ Irene replied. ‘We’ve time for a coffee.’ She led the way across the road, pausing for a tram to jingle past. A couple of young men jostled them, wearing long drape jackets and drainpipe trousers, their hair in high, greased quiffs. A little way off a policeman frowned at them from the open door of a police box.

‘Don’t they look ridiculous?’ Irene said, ‘Jive Boys,’ her tone disgusted.

‘They’re just youngsters trying to look different.’

‘Those jackets—’

‘Zoot suits.’ Sarah laughed. ‘They’re American.’

‘What about that fight they had with the Young Fascists in Wandsworth last month?’ Irene asked indignantly. ‘The knives and knuckledusters? People got badly hurt. I don’t like boys getting the birch but they deserved it.’

Sarah smiled to herself. Irene was always so indignant, so outraged. Yet Sarah knew it was all words; underneath her sister had a warm heart. The news item on the eugenics conference had reminded Sarah of the time, a few months before, when they had left another cinema to find a group of boys tormenting a Mongol child, telling him how he would be sterilized when the new laws came in. It was Irene, supporter of eugenics, who had waded in, shouting at the bullies and pushing them away.

‘I don’t know where we’re going with all this terrorism,’ Irene said. ‘Did you hear about that army barracks the Resistance have blown up in Liverpool? That soldier killed?’

‘I know. I suppose the Resistance would say they were fighting a war.’

‘Wars just kill people.’

‘You can’t believe everything you’re told about what the Resistance do. Look at how they hid what happened last Sunday.’

They headed for a British Corner House, as all the Lyons Corner Houses were now known since the expropriation from their Jewish owners. The tearoom, all mirrors and bright chrome, was crowded with women shoppers, but they found an empty table for two and sat down. As the nippy, neat in white apron and cap, took their order Irene looked around her. ‘I’ll have to start thinking about Christmas shopping soon. I can’t decide what to give the boys. Steve’s talking about getting them a big Hornby train set, but I know he just wants to play with it himself. Nanny says they want a whole army of toy soldiers.’

‘How is Nanny?’

‘Still got that cough. I don’t think the panel doctor she’s with is any good, you know what they’re like. I’ve made an appointment with our man. I worry about the children getting it, and you can see the poor girl’s in discomfort.’

‘I’m dreading Christmas,’ Sarah said with sudden bleakness. ‘I have since Charlie died.’

Irene reached over and put a hand on her sister’s, her pretty face contrite. ‘I’m sorry, dear, I do go on so—’

‘I can’t expect people never to mention children in front of me.’

Irene’s blue eyes were full of concern. ‘I know it’s hard. For you and David—’

Sarah took her cigarettes from her bag and offered one to her sister. She said, with sudden anger, ‘After more than two years you’d think it would get easier.’

‘No sign of another?’ Irene asked.

Sarah shook her head. ‘No.’ She blinked away a tear. ‘I’m sorry David got into that argument with Steve on Sunday. He gets – moody.’

‘It doesn’t matter. We were all upset.’

‘He said he was sorry afterwards. Not that he really meant it,’ she added heavily.

‘You and David,’ Irene said hesitantly, ‘you find it hard to share the grief, don’t you?’

‘We used to be so close. But David’s become – unreachable. When I think – when I think how we were when Charlie was alive.’ She looked her sister in the face. ‘I think he’s having an affair.’

‘Oh, my dear,’ Irene said softly. ‘Are you sure?’

Sarah shook her head. ‘No. But I think so.’

The nippy came with her silver-plated tray, set out the tea and biscuits. Irene poured and handed Sarah a cup. ‘Why do you think that?’ she asked quietly.

‘There’s a woman at work he’s friendly with. Carol. She’s a clerk in the Dominions Office Registry. I’ve met her a couple of times at functions, she’s quite plain but very smart, went to university. She’s got a bright personality.’ Sarah gave a brittle laugh. ‘Good God, they used to say that about me.’ She hesitated. ‘David goes into work at weekends sometimes, he has for over a year. That’s where he is today. He claims they’re very busy, which I suppose they are, with relations with the Dominions being so tricky. But sometimes he goes out in the evening, too, he tells me he goes to the tennis club to play with his friend Geoff. They have an indoor court now. He says it relaxes him.’

‘Maybe it does.’

‘More than being at home with me, I suppose. Damn him,’ Sarah said, angry again, then shook her head. ‘No, I don’t mean that.’

Irene hesitated. ‘What makes you think he’s interested in this woman?’

‘She’s interested in him, I could see that when we met.’

Irene smiled. ‘David’s a very good-looking man. But he’s never – well – strayed before, has he? Not like Steve.’

Sarah blew out a cloud of smoke. ‘You told me last time that you threatened to leave him, take the boys with you.’

‘Yes. I think that’s stopped him, you know how he loves the boys. Me too, in his way. Sarah, you’re not thinking of leaving David?’

She shook her head. ‘No. I love him more than ever. Pathetic, isn’t it?’

‘Of course not. But, dear, it doesn’t sound like you’ve any real reason to suspect anything.’ She looked at her sister sharply. ‘Or have you? It was strange perfume on his collar that gave Steve away last time.’

‘A few weeks ago, when the weather was getting colder, David asked me to take his winter coat to the cleaners. I emptied out the pockets, like I usually do – he leaves handkerchiefs in there sometimes. I found a used ticket, for one of those lunchtime concerts they give in churches round Whitehall. There was a name on the back – her name, Carol Bennett. She must have reserved them.’

‘Maybe a whole group of them went. Did you ask him about it?’

‘No.’ Sarah shook her head. ‘I’m a coward,’ she added quietly.

‘You’ve never been a coward,’ Irene answered emphatically. ‘Was it a Saturday concert?’

‘No. It was during the week.’ Sarah took a deep breath. ‘Then last Thursday evening, when David was supposed to be playing tennis, I rang the club to speak to him, just to check if he was there. Spying on him, I suppose. Well, he wasn’t.’

‘Oh, darling,’ Irene said. ‘What are you going to do? Confront him?’

‘Perhaps I should, but you see . . .’ Sarah picked at the uneaten biscuit on her plate. ‘I’m frightened that if I’m right it could be the end of us. And if I’m wrong, confronting him could drive us further apart than ever. So you see, I am a coward.’ She frowned. ‘But there’s only so much I’ll take. It goes round and round in my head, being stuck alone in that bloody house all day.’

‘Have you thought any more about going back to teaching?’

‘They won’t take married women.’ Sarah sighed. ‘Well, at least I’ve got my charity work. The Christmas toys for children of the unemployed committee starts meeting next week. That’ll get me out of the house. But it won’t stop me worrying.’

‘Darling, you can’t just let suspicion eat away at you. Believe me, that’s what it does.’

‘I’m keeping track of him. I will say something, but I have to be sure.’ She looked at her sister in appeal. ‘I could be risking everything.’

It was dark when they left the Corner House, a slight fog in the air. Wet tram rails glittered in the streetlights. They embraced and parted. Sarah walked to the tube station; if the trains were running normally she should have dinner cooked by the time David came home at seven thirty. The streets were getting crowded, everyone wrapped up in coats, men in bowlers and caps and Homburgs, women in headscarves or the large saucer-shaped hats with feathers that were fashionable this year. Outside the entrance to Leicester Square tube station some workmen were scrubbing at a whitewashed letter ‘V’, one of the Resistance symbols. V for victory. Someone must have painted it there secretly during the night.

When Sarah arrived home the house was cold. She stood in the little hall, with its coat stand and the big table where the telephone sat, next to a large, colourful Regency vase that had belonged to David’s mother. They had had to lock it away for safety when Charlie started toddling.

When she was growing up between the wars Sarah had thought of herself as an independent woman, a teacher. Before she met David she had begun to worry, at twenty-three, whether she might turn into a spinster, not because men didn’t find her attractive, but because she found so many of them dull. She had wondered, during the 1939–40 war, whether women would become more independent, with their husbands away, but everything had gone back to normal afterwards, and government policy now was for wives to stay at home, keep what jobs there were for the men.

Irene was the beauty in the family but Sarah was pretty too, with blue eyes and a straight little nose, and her square chin gave her face a strong look. She had never been in love before she met David at the tennis-club dance in 1942. He had swept her off her feet, as they said in the romantic novels. A year later she was married and then she had gone with him on his two-year posting to New Zealand. When she returned she found she was pregnant with Charlie. She missed her work sometimes but she loved their baby, already looked forward to others following on.

Charlie was a bright, excitable, cheerful boy, quick to walk and learn. He had Sarah’s blonde hair and her features, but occasionally his expression would turn serious and solemn, in a way that reminded her of a look she caught on her husband’s face sometimes; though with his son David was playful, childlike in a way that clutched at her heart. He would come home as early as possible from work and they would hold hands watching Charlie play on the floor beside them.

The stairs in the house were quite steep, and they had put child gates at the top and bottom, though they made the active little boy howl, resenting the restriction on his freedom. One day when he was nearly three Sarah had gone into the bedroom to put on some make-up before going to the shops. She had taken Charlie upstairs with her, closing the latch on the gate behind them. Outside it had been snowing – the tree in their little front garden and the privet hedge were thickly dusted with white – and Charlie was desperate to get out in it. He had gone out into the upstairs hall and called back, ‘Mummy, Mummy, want to see the snow!’

‘In a minute. Be patient, sweetheart!’

Then there came a series of little bumps and tiny cries and a thud, followed by a silence so sudden and complete she could hear the blood thumping in her ears. She had sat rigid for a second, then called, ‘Charlie!’ and ran into the hall. The gate at the top was still closed, but when she looked down Charlie was lying at the bottom of the stairs, limbs spreadeagled. She and David had said only a couple of days before that he was getting big and they would have to watch he didn’t climb over.

Sarah ran downstairs, hoping against hope, but before she reached the bottom she could see from the complete stillness of Charlie’s eyes and the angle of his head that he was dead, his neck broken. She lifted his little body and held it. It was still warm and she carried on hugging it, with a wild, mad feeling that if she held him to her own warm body, so long as he did not grow cold, somehow he might come back to life. Later, after she had at last telephoned 999, after David had been sent home from the office, she had told him why she had held him for so long, and David had understood.

Sarah shook herself, took off her coat, and switched on the central heating. She lit the coal fire, then went into the kitchen and turned on the radio, cheerful dance music on the Light Programme breaking the silence. She began to prepare dinner. Despite what she had said to Irene, she knew she couldn’t face it, she couldn’t confront David yet.