Tuesday, April 13
“Mummy! Rose has been reading to me about the Snow Queen!”
Hannah was six years old. Her legs were like string with knots at the knees, her face was as freckled as a fresh egg, and Rose adored her.
Rose’s sister, Celia, and her husband, Geoffrey, lived in an elegant, four-story Georgian house with a russet brick façade and striking long windows that overlooked the northside of Clapham Common. The house was far beyond Geoffrey’s means, but it had come available in the early days of the Alliance—like much other desirable property whose owners were no longer around—and one of Geoffrey’s golf club friends had pulled strings. Celia’s natural good taste ensured that the house was outfitted with gleaming Regency furniture, chintz sofas, fresh flowers, and all the latest appliances. A stack of Deutsche Grammophon discs sat next to their machine, and the mantel was festooned with a clutch of silver-framed photographs of Hannah.
Hannah was their only child, and despite all efforts to the contrary, this was unlikely to change. The problem was Geoffrey’s, Celia confided, but Rose suspected that her sister reckoned she had done enough for the birth rate and banished Geoffrey from the bed. Either way, Rose tried not to think about it. Hannah was quite enough. Rose loved babysitting her niece, and Celia shamelessly exploited it.
“I chose a story with a queen in it because of the coronation,” Rose volunteered.
“How appropriate,” laughed Celia. “I can just see Wallis as the Snow Queen, swathed in white ermine. What do you think she’ll wear on the big day? My girlfriends are going crazy discussing it. The King’s robes have been designed by Hugo Boss, but apparently Wallis’s outfit is top secret. My money’s on something madly stylish from Dior. That would be so like her. What do you think?”
“I haven’t a clue,” said Rose absently, running a hand through Hannah’s silky hair.
“I bet you do know and you just can’t tell me. Classified information.”
“Hardly,” said Rose shortly. She could just imagine Celia’s girlfriends dissecting Queen Wallis with their mixture of snobbery and social cruelty. It was a peculiarly English virtue—to admire and disdain at the same time—and while they despised Wallis for being American, they envied her undeniable style. That a Baltimore socialite should marry into the British royal family and challenge centuries of gilt-encrusted protocol was plain wrong, yet Wallis had injected a glamour and edginess into the House of Windsor that had been sorely lacking.
“Marjorie Stevens played bridge with her, back in the day. Says she’s frightfully clever.” Clever was not a compliment among Celia’s friends. “Apparently, she’s simply longing to go back to America. She finds being royal an absolute bore, and she says all those stuffy courtiers are stuck in the past. The King won’t hear of it, of course.”
Rose glanced down at the copy of Vogue sitting on Celia’s coffee table. Perhaps because fashion belonged to the elite, or maybe because their other diversions were limited, clothes were an obsession for Geli women. Rose was not the only one who spent hours bent over her Singer sewing machine, running up skirts from old curtains or turning cotton sheets into little blouses. The Queen, of course, had no such constraints, and the women’s magazines pored over her clothes, her hair, her shoes, even her interior decorators. That month’s edition carried a cover photograph of the Queen in the garden of Fort Belvedere, the couple’s getaway cottage in Windsor Great Park, wearing a cerulean silk Ferragamo suit and pussy-bow blouse, flanked by a pair of pugs.
“Can I have another story?”
Emboldened by her aunt’s presence, Hannah was dancing up and down and tugging at Rose’s hand.
“I suppose…”
“No, you can’t!” snapped Celia. “Aunt Rose has been working all day. She’s tired. Get up those stairs before your father arrives.”
Once Hannah had retreated sulkily, teddy dragged by one arm, Celia flung herself down on the turquoise sofa, looping her slender legs over the end and running one hand through her shining hair, which was dyed a popular shade called Nordic gold.
“Don’t know how you manage it. Even reading one story bores me to tears. Children are so exhausting.”
“I enjoy it. Really, I do. And I’ve been thinking about the Snow Queen a bit recently.”
For the past month, Rose had been correcting a version of stories by the Grimm Brothers to be distributed in schools and kindergartens, as well as Bride Schools and Mother Training centers. Fairy tales were an important part of childhood conditioning, and Rose had attended a lecture at the ministry for Early Years Propaganda on Malet Street to learn the acceptable adjustments for the educational syllabus. Most changes were simple. Princes wore storm trooper uniforms. Dwarves were subhuman. Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters were Scots.
Monarchs were problematic. Despite the forthcoming coronation, the regime was generally against kings and queens. Royalty was a symptom of a corrupt and archaic society, and Rose tended to replace them with regime functionaries. Gauleiters. Mayors. When she came across a king, she would insert an obergruppenführer.
Queens, though, were something special.
“Can’t think where Hannah gets it from,” said Celia, rolling her eyes. “I never liked fairy tales. Or any kind of books really. They’re always trying to teach you something.”
She gave a light laugh, revealing her perfect teeth. It was a laugh that could shatter a heart at a hundred paces and had indeed caused numerous men to fall in love with her before Geoffrey won the prize. Not for the first time, Rose asked herself the same question.
Why Geoffrey?
Like so many other women, Rose’s sister had coped with the drought of men in the Alliance by dating one many decades older than herself. Tedious, humorless, and balding, Geoffrey had been forty-five and working in an accountancy firm when the Protectorate was formed, and because he had never taken up arms, he was at an advantage when it came to serving the new regime. His transition, indeed, had been practically seamless, and if Geoffrey harbored a resentment for the foreigners who had been placed over him, his innate, pasty-faced dullness was the perfect cover. Not to mention the toothbrush mustache that, like so many others, he had adopted in the Leader’s honor.
The occasional dinner or dance with Geoffrey was just about understandable, but actually to marry him, a man who was more like a distant uncle than a husband? To listen every day to his ill-informed opinions and knee-jerk prejudices. How could Celia bear it?
Even as Rose contemplated this, there was the sound of the door slamming, and Geoffrey arrived. He handed his umbrella and briefcase to the Gretl and came over to dispense a sour-breathed kiss.
“Rose. Lovely to see you. We must have you and your…friend over for dinner sometime soon.”
Rose knew exactly what he meant. On the one hand, he despised her for consorting with Martin Kreuz, a married man, but on the other hand, it was useful to have a brother-in-law—even an unofficial one—with such impressive connections. She could just imagine Geoffrey hosting such a dinner, smiling greasily, adjusting the position of the cutlery, as he resolutely social climbed. And Martin, endlessly courteous, flirting with Celia, laughing with Geoffrey, privately despising them both.
“Rose has been reading fairy stories to Hannah.”
“Hmm.” Geoffrey grunted and picked a strand of tobacco from his mustache. “I’m not sure I’m keen on all these stories.”
“It’s harmless, darling.”
“It’s not going to do the child any good.”
“Rose keeps it ever so simple, don’t you, Rose?”
Why must Celia always try to placate him?
“Very. It’s only fairy stories, and they do those in ideology classes.”
“The next thing you know, she’ll be trying to read herself.”
Reading for females was strictly banned before the age of eight, and when they were taught to read, girls learned at a more basic level than boys. Under the Rosenberg rules, females should have a limited vocabulary—ideally two-thirds that of a man—and the risk of reading was that it could accidentally expand a child’s use of language. It might enchant and intoxicate her. Help her express herself in new and exciting ways.
Rose was saved from further discussion by the wail that floated over the banisters from the floor above.
“Rose! I want Auntie Rose!”
“I’ll just pop up and say good night.”
“We don’t do that, Rose. Giving in to her is spoiling.”
“Oh, let her, Geoffrey.” Celia rested a hand lightly on his pin-striped arm. “Just while you mix me a drink.”
When Rose entered Hannah’s bedroom, the little girl was sitting up in bed triumphant, teddy under one arm, and her other toys arranged in a semicircle in order of size, their fur combed and their button eyes glinting beadily. Celia, with her clever eye for décor, had made the room into a young girl’s dream with candy-striped wallpaper, a bright patterned rug by the fireplace, and white painted furniture that was just the right size for a child.
“Give me another story, Rose.”
Rose settled herself on the low, chintz-covered chair beside the little girl’s bed and opened a volume of Grimm’s fairy tales.
“What shall we have then? Sleeping Beauty?”
“No.”
“Cinderella?”
“No.”
“Hansel and Gretel?”
“No,” Hannah settled back expectantly. “Want one of yours.” She placed her thumb in her mouth.
Rose got up and closed the door.
When she had told Martin she knew nothing about writing, she had not told him the truth.
At first, it had been merely a blank, more feeling than conscious thought, a kind of energy pushing up, straining at her fingertips, as though the edges of her skin would burst. She had no typewriter—all machines were strictly controlled, and you needed a license to own one. Hearing a typewriter through the wall or floorboards was one of the most frequent complaints to the authorities. But one day a couple of years ago, quite on impulse, she had bought a couple of plain brown notebooks and, tentatively, set them in front of her, pen in hand. Before long, it was cascading out of her, ideas and phrases that she herself barely understood, thoughts that emerged from somewhere deep within, that had never before been given expression. Words rolled around her mind like playthings. She wrote and wrote, recklessly, like a galloping horse that could barely be reined in. She wrote about everything—her life, her experiences, her dreams. Short stories, descriptive fragments, journal entries, poems. Bedtime stories for Hannah.
Soon enough, she found if she didn’t write, she didn’t feel properly alive.
When each notebook was full, she peeled back a flap of wallpaper that had come loose at floor level behind her bed. The wallpaper was hand-printed and exquisitely pretty, its pale-green background stenciled with darker green leaves and flowers, writhing upward in naturalistic abundance. It was a legacy of the previous degenerate occupants that had often piqued her curiosity about them. Beneath the wallpaper was a splintered plank, and carefully levering it upward, she revealed a soot-caked cavity where a fireplace had once stood. The flue had been bricked up, but the gap for the grate remained, and instead of wasting valuable bricks, the builder in charge of the renovation had merely filled the vacancy with rubble and nailed over a couple of pieces of wood.
There, Rose stored the notebook, along with six others.
Now she put a finger against the soft bow of Hannah’s lips.
“Shh. It’s our secret, remember? Just for us?”
Hannah nodded solemnly and settled back against the pillow.
Rose pulled a small brown notebook out of her pocket and opened it up.
“As it happens, I did just write something for you.”
“Is it the Kingdom of Ilyria?”
Recently, Rose had created an imaginary kingdom, Ilyria—the name meaning happiness—where there were no female castes and girls were free to become princesses or dragon riders or artists or whatever they chose. Hannah, as expected, had the starring role.
“Yes. So settle down.”
When she came downstairs again, Celia and Geoffrey were conferring, their heads close together. They moved apart when they saw her.
“She’s going to sleep now, I think.”
“Thank you, Rosalind.”
Celia was one of the few people in the world who used her original name. When she was born, Rose had been named Rosalind, but in the past twelve years, Rose had seemed more appropriate. It sounded a little like Rosa, and everyone wanted German names now. As for their children, there were plenty of little Adolfs and Alfreds and Evas running around the kindergartens, but names that began with H, after the Leader and deputy leader, were by far the most popular.
Celia only used Rosalind when she wanted something.
“Do you have time for a G and T?”
“Thank you. Yes.”
Geoffrey busied himself with administering the drink, titrating a thimble full of gin into a glass and topping it up with tonic in the fastidious manner that put Rose’s teeth on edge, before handing it to her like a dose of medicine.
“Drink up.”
He disliked her, she realized, and he didn’t quite know why. Geoffrey often remarked on the disparity between the two sisters, as though baffled that Rose lacked Celia’s insouciance and Botticelli beauty. His antipathy only made Rose more watchful and reserved, which was one reason he disliked her in the first place.
“If you two girls don’t mind, I have a few papers to see to. The elections for the chairman of the golf club are coming up, and I’ve been landed with the application process.”
Before the Alliance, the Germans had code-named the verdant British Isles Golfplatz—the golf course—and the nickname was increasingly appropriate. With a nation of aging men, golf had overtaken soccer as the national game, and each village club’s green was maintained with the same meticulous pride men used to devote to burnishing their Morris Minors and Austins. The golf club was Geoffrey’s life, and as he bustled off to his “den”—a leathery sanctuary that Celia never entered—Rose had no doubt that he would soon be securing the chairman’s role for himself.
“Ciggie?”
Celia pushed a silver box toward her, and Rose helped herself. They were National Cigarettes, limp and dusty, but other brands were rare to find. Celia leaned toward her conspiratorially.
“Lovely stockings. I can’t imagine where they came from.”
“They’re Aristoc,” said Rose neutrally.
“So how’s Martin?”
There was a sly edge to her voice, salacious almost, as though she was vicariously savoring Rose’s affair. In reality, Rose realized, her sister would far prefer the life that Martin offered than she did. Celia had always been intensely feminine and loved dressing up. Since the Alliance, fashion had taken on a greater importance than ever, because only Gelis had the means to experiment. As all other castes had severely limited clothing rations, it was left to elite women to compete on color and style. Despite the shortages that saw leather shoes replaced with plastic and natural fabric with synthetics, Gelis harvested their coupons and combed the fashion glossies obsessively. Rose, like other women who knew high-ranking men, was able to supplement this allowance with the gifts of lace underwear and nylon stockings that she frequently passed on to her sister. Celia complemented this with natural dress-making talent: hand-stitching elaborate beading in macaroon colors of violet and peach, pistachio and rose, running up floral-print skirts and embroidered blouses, and fashioning evening gowns of mock satin.
Any kind of glamour, however, was wasted on Geoffrey’s ancient golf club friends, with their fading eyesight and dimming libidos. It was an irony that while Celia would adore the parties and events and meals, Rose had never felt comfortable in public with Martin.
“We’re having dinner at the Savoy tomorrow night.”
“The Savoy!”
“It’s where he always goes. His office canteen, basically.”
When the Alliance began, the Germans had immediately commandeered all the top hotels. The Ritz went to the SS, the Dorchester to the Abwehr, and Grosvenor House to the Office of the Protectorate. Joachim von Ribbentrop and his wife, who had spent time in London in 1936 when he served as English ambassador, took Claridge’s. The Culture Ministry, virtually at the bottom of the pecking order, got the Savoy, and over the past year, Rose had been treated to numerous meals there. They gave out tiny mint chocolates wrapped in gold foil with the coffee, and she always slipped hers in her bag to pass on to Hannah.
“Sounds romantic,” cooed Celia.
Rose shrugged. “Not particularly. He probably wants to talk about work.”
“Sure that’s all?”
“What are you getting at?”
“You are twenty-nine, after all, Rose. And no children. We had hoped it would work out with you and that journalist chap. Laurence.”
Laurence Prescott was a dashing and universally popular feature writer for the Echo whose looks and relative youth made him popular with Gelis in the Culture Ministry. Rose had accompanied Laurence to a year’s worth of press screenings and dinners. She had even met his family. But somehow, she never felt comfortable with him. Perhaps because, like all journalists, Laurence gave the impression that he was noting down everything she said for future reference.
“Geoffrey’s worried about your status. We’re both surprised you haven’t had a visit from the Family Promotion people.”
Rose had. She had found them waiting at the door when she arrived home a few months ago. A man and a woman, in the navy-and-red uniform of the ASK—the Amt für Sozial- und Kinderpolitik—the office charged with raising the national birth rate. The ASK was known colloquially as the Association for Screaming Kids. The English loved nicknames, and giving a monstrous proposition a funny name lent it a subversive edge, as though they were taking ownership of it.
The ASK came armed with a sheet of questions and veiled threats about Rose’s still unmarried status. She remembered the stout Leni with the mole on her chin staring enviously around the room as she ran through the standard mix of threats and inducements.
“Rosenberg Regulations state that marriage is the appropriate state for adult women. Spinsterhood puts your elite privileges at risk. There are plenty of Class I women who would love a flat like this.”
“If you wait much longer, you might stay single and have no children,” said Celia. “What would happen then? You don’t want to get reclassified.”
That was entirely possible. Strictly legally, a Geli might remain unmarried until the age of fifty, but any woman’s status was downgraded if she committed a crime or behaved in an aberrant way, and refusing to marry and have children was placing self above state and a prima facie example of asocial behavior. One might be moved to less attractive accommodations, probably a block where the kitchen and bathroom were shared between several families.
“God forbid you end up in Widowland.”
Even as she spoke, Celia’s eyes widened like her daughter’s did when a fairy tale took a frightening turn.
Widowland. The word itself was like a howl of wind across its own bleak façades. The Widowlands were the desolate residential districts where Friedas were housed. They were derelict areas, as crumbling and unkempt as the women who dwelled there, tucked away on the stained edges of the towns, their littered streets ringed with tangled wire. Ramshackle terraces of Victorian brick and barren blocks of weeping concrete where nobody wanted to live.
Celia chewed a fingernail and then brightened.
“If nothing comes of Martin, there’s a friend of Geoffrey’s who would adore meeting you. He’s a nice chap, a dentist actually. Or he was before he retired.”
Of course he was retired. They always were, the men who Geoffrey proffered. The hands that plucked at Rose were kippered with nicotine, their eyes yellowing, their scalps pink beneath wispy hair. Frequently they were deaf too, not that it mattered, because they did most of the talking, yet despite the woes of age, Geoffrey’s friends were upbeat about their situation. Usually, they opined that things were not so bad. It could be so much worse. That was a favorite refrain.
And it was true. The system suited older men. Most had accepted the classification of females without protest, and they had their pick of young women, with their satiny complexions and firm flesh. Although a man’s choice of official consort was generally determined by her caste, nothing stopped them casually patting the bottom of a young Gretl or running a proprietary hand across a Magda if she appealed.
As for the women, what were they expecting? Romance?
“A dentist. Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Not exactly.” Celia twirled a curl of hair between two fingers and gazed at her sister speculatively. “There’s something I need to tell you, in fact. It’s about Dad.”
Rose felt a jolt of alarm. She jerked upright and put her drink down.
“Daddy? Is he all right?”
“Yes, of course. Or rather no.” Celia had found a small snag on her skirt and was picking at it. “Geoffrey, that is to say both of us, think he’d be much better off in a facility.”
“A facility? What kind of facility?”
“A nursing home. A hospital type of place. Where they can look after him properly. Those rages he has are too much for Mum to cope with now. Her nerves are in shreds. She’s utterly ground down.”
“You’re not thinking of shutting our father away! There’s nothing wrong with him. Mentally, he’s absolutely sound. Considering what he went through in the trenches in 1918, is it any wonder that he occasionally gets upset? It’s nervous stress. That’s what the doctor told us. There’s a name for it. It’s called shell shock.”
Celia pouted. “Doctors always have names for things. But names don’t change what things are. Those fits he has. It’s madness. And it’s been getting worse.”
“So what are you saying?”
Celia avoided her eyes and remained fixed on the snag on her skirt, her fingers delicately plucking.
“You’re not telling me you’ve done it already?”
Celia looked up, her tranquil, blue gaze entirely unapologetic. “I’m afraid so, darling. A place came up, and we took him in yesterday. Geoffrey and I drove down.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We didn’t want to bother you, what with your important work. We’re allowed to go and visit next week. When he’s settled in.”
Rose felt the blood rush to her face. She stood up, her heart pounding. “How could you be so selfish?”
“It would have been selfish not to. Think what it means for the family. Madness is hereditary, you know.”
“Dad’s not mad. He’s probably saner than any of us. He was injured in the war…”
“These things get around. And I have Hannah to think of. What’s going to happen when she goes for her assessment if they discover that her grandfather is mentally unbalanced? How is she going to be a Geli if she has madness in the family? Her whole future is at risk.”
“So you’ve sacrificed Dad’s future instead.”
Celia shrugged. “Motherhood’s all about sacrifice. As you would know, if you ever got around to it.”
Rose couldn’t stand to hear any more. She snatched up her handbag, her mind whirling, and headed for the door. The thought of her brave, sensitive father confined in an institution and deprived of his dog, his garden, and everything he cherished brought tears to her eyes. But she could not bear Celia to see them.
“Think about it,” called Celia as Rose, her cheeks burning, departed down the path. “It’s so much better for Mum. It means she can come up in two weeks and watch all the excitement with us. You can’t begrudge her that, now, can you? Everybody wants to see the coronation.”