Oliver Ellis leaned against the reception desk, a suitcase standing at his feet, as though he was in the process of checking in. He wore a trilby and mackintosh and looked wearied by travel. When he saw Rose, he had the grace to look startled, and a flush rose to his cheeks.
“Rose! What on earth are you doing here?”
In her surprise, she had to grope for the ostensible reason.
“The minister asked me to conduct some interviews for him. In the Widowlands here.”
Though she remained outwardly calm, shock and alarm collided within her. There was no possibility that Oliver Ellis’s arrival, at the precise time she was here, at the very hotel she had chosen herself, could be sheer chance. Who had sent him, and why? Plainly the minister distrusted her, but was it possible that he had sent an emissary to monitor her while she was on his own secret mission? She wouldn’t put it past him, but whatever the reason, she thanked God she had come into the lobby at that moment. If she had not had the good luck to catch sight of Oliver Ellis, she would have been entirely unaware of his presence.
Quickly, he recovered himself and smiled. “How intriguing.”
“What about you?”
His story would be down pat. Of course it would.
“I have some books to access in one of the libraries. I’m looking for certain historical texts.”
He was certainly a good actor. He seemed entirely natural.
“Matter of fact, I was delighted when I discovered that the texts I needed were here. Getting out of the office in the current madness is especially pleasurable. If I hear any more vapid chat about coronation robes or tiaras, I may go insane.”
Rose was still standing, heart thudding, calculating what to do or say. “I call this an extraordinary coincidence.”
“Isn’t it?” Oliver scrawled his signature on the ledger, and the receptionist slid a key across the counter. Pocketing it, he smiled. “But it’s serendipity too. Seeing as we’re here and off duty, what do you say to a drink?”
Rose opened her mouth to refuse. She had every excuse. It was late. She had notes to write up. She had no desire to indulge in office gossip. Yet the shock of the police assault on the widows’ house and the conversation with Bruno Schumacher had combined to produce a deep weariness.
Even if Oliver Ellis was here to shadow her, the idea of a drink seemed suddenly irresistible.
“Just one.”
He led the way to the hotel’s wood-paneled bar where a few battered leather armchairs were clustered around a fireplace. A clutch of charred sticks shifted listlessly in the grate, giving off a faint warmth. A tattered carpet covered the flagstones, and the walls were paneled in planks of splintered oak. The only other occupants of the room were an ancient couple consulting a large guide book on Tudor architecture.
“To be honest, it’s a treat to be here. You have no idea how pleasurable it is to visit these fabulous medieval buildings after the archives I’ve been working in recently. Have you ever seen the Rosenberg Documentation Unit?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Well, don’t. A hundred miles of vaults and shelving. You could die down there and no one would notice.”
He ordered two glasses of Scotch and leaned back against the clubby leather armchair, to all appearances a man relieved to be out of London and on an enjoyable mission. Perhaps he did enjoy shadowing Rose. Maybe sharing a drink with her was some kind of double bluff.
“Being here takes me back to my student days, even if they were in Cambridge rather than here. In some ways, my undergraduate days were perfect preparation for the Protector’s work.”
“How so?”
She was relieved that he was so keen to talk. Perhaps he was lonely, or maybe it was designed to relax her guard, but either way, he seemed to require little input from her.
“I studied historiography. That’s the study of the way historians reinterpret the past. When you read the great historians, Tacitus, Machiavelli, Gibbon, you see that there’s nothing new about adjusting history. The past is always being remodeled to reflect more accurately the views of the present. Every generation interprets history to its own agenda.”
“I would have thought the job of a historian was to reveal the past as it really was.”
He gave a slight, wry laugh. “That’s what everyone thinks. Each historian believes they’re revealing things as they really were. They’ll give you a load of detail. What the Romans ate. How the Georgians built their ships. Victorian coins. Edwardian stamps. But the truth is, we can never know how things really were. Everything we think we know about the past is determined by what historians choose to tell us.”
“It doesn’t alter the facts though.”
“Depends what you call facts,” he said airily. “There was a saying by the traitor Churchill…”
Reflexively Rose glanced around her. Churchill’s name was not mentioned lightly, and preferably not at all, but Oliver Ellis seemed unconcerned.
“Something along the lines of ‘History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.’ Whatever you may think of him, he got that right.”
“Shh.” Rose couldn’t help herself. “I try not to think of him at all.”
“Sure.”
Oliver rubbed his thumb against the tumbler and broke off to stare into the flickering coals in the grate. Rose could not help studying him. The firelight shadowed the cliffs of his cheekbones, and his jaw was hazed with stubble. His hair was at least an inch longer than that prescribed for men, and a shock of it tumbled frequently into his eyes, prompting him to run his hands through it in an unconscious reflex. Off duty, in shirt sleeves and suspenders with his tie loosened, he seemed more boyish than the buttoned-up, suited figure who sat beside her every day in the office. She realized she had never had a proper conversation with him—little more than a few tame jokes and the routine, guarded exchange of pleasantries.
She knew nothing about him at all.
“What part of history are you adjusting at the moment?”
“Medieval. In particular a book about King Alfred. The Protector’s a big fan of medieval history. He likes their way of doing things. He wants me to show how the English and the Germans share the same racial soul. That’s what fascinates him.” He grinned. “Nobody else though. I’d guess the only people who will ever read this book are me and the Protector, and the Protector has other things on his mind.”
“In that case…” She faltered but was too tired to stop herself. “Is there any actual point in correcting history? I understand the case for literature, of course. People are so easily influenced by novels. You have to watch what goes into people’s minds. But if no one is reading all those historical tomes, then why exactly?”
“Because we owe it to future civilizations to explain the evolution of the past. People will always look to history to understand the present. There’s a saying ‘Those who don’t know history are condemned to repeat it.’ That’s why we need to make sure history is cleansed of false and erroneous views.”
“It must be strange, spending all your time on something nobody might ever read.”
He paused, as if exhausted by the magnitude of the Protector’s ambition. “That’s true. And it’s an enormous task. The Protector won’t rest until all the history books in libraries and public spaces across Europe have been corrected. He sees it as an ideological battle. If we can control what people know of history, we control memory too.”
Across the room, mention of the Protector had piqued the attention of the elderly couple and caused them to glance in their direction. Rose wondered what they made of them—a couple of business associates? Or, God forbid, given that she and Oliver were roughly the same age, a pair of lovers, sharing a romantic nightcap before bed. Either way, Oliver seemed unconcerned. In the office, he always appeared something of a cold fish, but now he was animated, almost physically charged with excitement. The reflection of flames lit up the depths of his eyes.
“It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? When you think about it. History takes such shaky steps. So little determines that it goes one way or the other. Just imagine, if things had gone differently, it might be a different monarch being crowned next week. We could have a Queen Elizabeth instead of a Queen Wallis.”
“I’d rather not think about hypotheticals.”
“Why? Gelis are permitted to think, aren’t they? Encouraged in fact. Doesn’t the Faith and Beauty School train its Gelis in philosophy and logic?”
The Faith and Beauty School was another institution imported from the mainland. It was open only to elite young women likely to marry into the SS. Just three branches existed in England—one in Knightsbridge, another in Chelsea, and the third in a stately home in Sussex. They provided residential training in a host of accomplishments: music, tapestry, weaving, painting, classical philosophy, conversation. Everything necessary to mold fitting companions for the cream of German manhood.
Fortunately, the elderly couple had finished their drinks and were making their way fussily up to bed, forgetting first their spectacles, then the guidebook, then the need to request an early morning call. Once they had finally gathered their possessions and left the bar, Rose shook her head in amazement.
“Frankly, Oliver, if I’d gone to one of those places, which I didn’t, I might also have learned discretion.”
Oliver seemed undeterred. He stretched his legs out, crossed his hands behind his head, and regarded her thoughtfully.
“You know what happened to Geli? The original one?”
“She died tragically young. Everyone knows that.”
“Angela Raubal. The Leader’s half niece. She killed herself. Shot herself through the heart in the Leader’s apartment in September 1931 with his own Walther PPK pistol. She was just twenty-three. She’d come to Munich to be a medical student, and moving in with her uncle must have seemed the most natural thing in the world, but there was nothing natural about what happened next. The idea was that he would look after her, but in effect, he controlled her every move. He was crazily possessive. Wouldn’t let her have a boyfriend. Went mad if she spoke to other men. Eventually, she formulated an escape plan. She would go to Vienna and train as an opera singer—but the Leader wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted her with him always. This was his own niece we’re talking about. He was infatuated with her.”
Despite the warmth of the bar, Rose felt a chill go through her. She had never heard such a scandalous tale. To her, as to every female in the Protectorate, Geli was the apogee of womanhood. A secular saint, pure and perfect, to be honored and emulated. Her brief life story was taught to five-year-olds. How she had grown up in Linz, the Leader’s hometown, a model child and then a faithful follower and supporter of her uncle. Photographs of her round, slightly pudgy face, with its unruly bob of brown hair and broad smile, beamed from the windows of department stores. It hung in classrooms and replaced the Virgin Mary in churches. Often, Geli was seen alongside the Leader’s own image, as twin male and female ideals.
Rose thought of the day she and Helena had posed arm in arm beneath the statue of Geli on their classification day, trying to look suitably sober beneath her stately bronze form. That this same girl had taken a gun to herself at the age of twenty-three in an emotional crisis prompted by the incestuous behavior of her own uncle was incredible. Horrifying.
“Her suicide almost pushed the Leader over the edge. His men feared that he would give up politics altogether. He was sunk for months in a pit of depression and rage. It was touch and go whether he would desert his career. His niece was said to be the only woman he ever properly loved.” Oliver would not unlock his gaze from her eyes. “Sad, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You mean you don’t know if Geli Raubal’s death is sad?”
“I mean I don’t know if what you say is true.”
“I do, and it troubles me to think about it.”
“The Mind Must Know Its Bounds,” she murmured. It was one of the endless mottos the ministry pumped out for posters and public information campaigns. Don’t think beyond your own shores. Don’t presume to speculate on other cultures. Cultural misappropriation, it was called, trying to imagine you could understand how other people thought.
“Of course. The British like being an island, don’t they? ‘This precious stone set in the silver sea,’ isn’t that Shakespeare’s phrase? Makes them feel safe.”
Why was he talking like this? Almost certainly it was designed to test her, but even so, it was reckless. The bar might be ostensibly empty, but waiters were hovering, buffing tables and polishing glasses. Gretls passed, with brushes and piles of sheets. No public space in the Alliance was free from prying eyes and keen ears. If Oliver was trying to draw her into some kind of treachery or indiscretion, he would need to try harder.
But he seemed to recover himself. He shrugged pleasantly. “So how did you find the Friedas?”
“They were…cooperative. Intelligent. But their homes…”
“Yes, what is Widowland like? I’ve never seen those places.”
“You wouldn’t believe it…” The events of the day were catching up with her. She reached for a sip of whisky, but her hand trembled so much she put it down again. “It’s like a different world. One that’s going on right under our noses, but we never see it. The Friedas are very poor. They make do, but they have almost nothing. No electricity even. Very few possessions. It’s the kind of place I’d never dreamt of.”
He was silent for a moment, still monitoring her intently. “What do you dream of?”
“Me? I never remember. How about you?”
“You don’t want to know my dreams.” The spell was broken. Oliver shook his head and grinned. “But as far as my aspirations go, I have it pretty good. A lovely apartment. Congenial working companions… Another Scotch? It’s doing me good, even if they do water it down.”
He looked like he was planning on talking all night, so she feigned a yawn and signaled her imminent departure. “Actually…”
“You look tired, Rose.” He leaned forward solicitously. “I would have thought time out of the office would be a relief for you, but…”
“It’s been a trying day.”
“I’m sorry. I’m here for a while. Until Friday at least. How long will you stay?”
Three days, she had planned. There would be further interviews to conduct and notes to write up and, after that, the report to file for the minister. All in a frighteningly brief time frame. The Leader arrived in ten days. She had until then to unravel the insurrection of the widows, or she—and, even worse, Martin—might be referred to the Morality Office. She had to find something. At the very least provide some names. Yet the thought of doing it under the observation of Oliver Ellis, with his restless dark eyes and searching gaze, was unbearable.
“I’m leaving in the morning actually.”
His face fell. No doubt she had thwarted whatever plans he had laid. Perhaps he too was operating under a tight deadline.
“Must you?”
“I must.”
He lifted his arms as if to protest, then dropped them again. “Shame. No night on the town for us then.”
“Sorry.”
“Maybe some time back in London?”
But she was already getting to her feet. “Maybe. I’d better say good night now. I have an early start.”
When she closed the door behind her, she was shaking. The events of the day had left her in a state of nervous shock. Her head was throbbing, her ankle hurt, and her back ached where the ugly policeman had pushed her against the wall, yet these physical pains were nothing compared to the trauma in her mind.
The encounter with the Friedas had profoundly unsettled her. She could not forget Kate’s forthright gaze or the skeptical way Sylvia questioned her entire raison d’être. “Why would the Party need to control literature, Fräulein Ransom?” Then Oliver’s dreadful, scandalous suggestion about Geli, which had opened dark doors in her mind.
If she was to make any sense of it, she needed both time and space.
Leaving for London early meant that she may need to make a return journey to the Widowlands if she was to find enough information for the minister. Yet the urge to slip the scrutiny of Oliver Ellis and return to familiar surroundings felt suddenly overwhelming.
As she undressed and crept between the chill sheets, she longed for all the little rituals that represented the sacred in her ordinary life. To open the creamy pages of her notebook and sit, head bowed, lost in concentration as the ideas flowed from her. To make tea and curl up in the armchair, listening to the trams trundling past or the shouts of the children in the street or the birds singing in Gordon Square. To take a walk through the streets of Bloomsbury and imagine herself back in historical times. Or, even better, catch a bus to Clapham and cuddle up with Hannah in her candy-striped bedroom, reading the latest installment of their secret story, until, mouth open and eyelids heavy, the child finally fell asleep.