Wednesday, April 28
It was like being on the battlements of some ancient castle looking down on a tattered brocade of bloodlines, tradition, and deference. A pageantry of flags and banners that hung between the tapered arches and French Gothic pillars and unfurled over the marble statuary, obscuring every sightless saint. Filtered through the stained glass windows, lozenges of light shimmered against the pale stone.
Rose, Helena, and Bridget had signed themselves out of the office on the pretext of coronation preparations, which covered almost anything. Following Bridget’s lead, they clambered up a cramped spiral staircase into a small recess between two fluted pillars that looked down on the cavernous vault of Westminster Abbey. The camera to be positioned here would focus directly on the spot where, in a ceremony descended directly from King Edgar in 973, Edward VIII would become the thirty-ninth English sovereign to be crowned. Nobody mentioned the thirty-eighth—the King’s younger brother, George VI, who had been crowned after Edward abdicated back in 1936.
That was all blood under the bridge.
The three women rested their elbows on the cold stone, gazing a dizzying way down at the small party that had assembled to practice the coronation ceremony. Directly below them stood the King, his strangely blank face with its deeply indented lines between nose and jaw giving him the appearance of a ventriloquist’s dummy. Already a diminutive figure, he looked even smaller from above—boyish almost, his hair lightened and his skin tanned from his recent Caribbean holiday. After golf and bridge, holidays were said to be his favorite thing.
“I can hardly believe I’m here,” whispered Rose.
“Is that the actual King?” said Helena.
“Shh. Yes.” Bridget rolled her eyes. “Keep as quiet as you can. I’ll be banged up if anyone discovers you’re here.”
Rose shrank farther behind a pillar without tearing her eyes from the proceedings below.
The nave was bathed in arc light, and a series of podiums and gantries had been erected to hold the dozens of cameras that would be preserving the events for posterity. The Abbey’s magnificent acoustics, designed by generations of medieval stonemasons to carry the voice of prayer to heaven, now enabled them to hear snippets of a distinctly less pious exchange.
A figure in flowing robes of white and red bustled into the arena rubbing his hands in an ecstasy of supplication.
“I’m really most awfully sorry to keep you waiting.”
The Queen’s voice floated upward, as sharp as a shard of glass in a martini.
“We’ve waited fifteen years, Archbishop, so I suppose a few minutes more won’t hurt us.”
She wore a pale-pink satin evening dress stitched with velvet chrysanthemums and a pair of high heels that clicked like gunshots on the ancient floor.
The archbishop’s apology, however, was directed elsewhere. He was gazing earnestly at a figure in long gray flannel trousers and a jockey cap who was approaching up the nave, a bunch of cameramen and her own personal photographer trailing in her wake. Leni Riefenstahl went up to the venerable oak throne in the manner of an actor scrutinizing a theatrical prop.
“Can we move this chair?”
She nudged it with her toe. The throne, battered and carved with the initials of ancient visitors, looked especially shabby in the phosphorescent light.
“Ideally not,” prevaricated the archbishop. “It’s the coronation throne. It goes back to 1296.”
Leni Riefenstahl tossed the golden coils of her hair. The Protector might be obsessed, but history cut no ice with her.
“Well, it needs to move. Here is awkward. It doesn’t go with the choreography.”
The archbishop winced. “The throne is central to the ceremony, Fräulein Riefenstahl. It’s named after Edward the Confessor. It’s only been moved from the Abbey once, and that was for Oliver Cromwell.”
With an exasperated snort, Leni turned aside and began to discuss takes, filters, and apertures with the flock of cameramen tailing her.
“I want the camera to pan from the crown and dissolve to the face of the Leader. He will look simple, dignified, modest. Above all this…flummery.”
At that moment, a figure who seemed the human embodiment of flummery entered the Abbey.
“That’s Fruity Metcalfe,” whispered Bridget. “The King’s equerry.”
He was hailed with obvious relief by the monarch.
“Fruity! D’you have a light?”
Fruity Metcalfe was wearing an outfit of frogged velvet that was as ridiculous as his name. Rose knew he had been best man at the King and Queen’s wedding during their brief French exile in 1937. Now, many thousands of country weekends and golf games later, he was about to play a prominent role in their enthronement. Seizing a votive candle from a rack, he proffered its flame.
“Thanks.” The King shifted impatiently, fiddling with his cuffs. “This rehearsal is taking a godawful long time. If it goes on any longer, I’ll be up there with my forebears.”
He nodded to the abbey walls, encrusted with the tombs of other, more memorable monarchs.
“Let’s get on with it, Archbishop, shall we?” said the Queen in her trademark Baltimore twang.
The cleric began a lengthy mumble about the timetable of the ceremony—the recognition, the oath, the anointing, the enthronement, the investiture, and the homage.
“I will place St. Edward’s Crown on the King’s head, and before the anointing, I shall say a few words along the lines of the fact that the Leader is the first from overseas to sit here since William the Conqueror and how proud the nation had been then. Et cetera, et cetera.”
Wallis paused to take a drag of a cigarette and looked around her. She was bored already, and this wasn’t even the real thing. In search of diversion, she lit on the director with a malicious glint.
“David and I enjoyed your movie, Fräulein Riefenstahl. Triumph of the Will. So theatrical. All those handsome soldiers in Nuremberg. A hundred and fifty thousand, wasn’t it? Can’t imagine how you got them all to stand still.”
“That is the gift of a great director,” replied Leni briefly.
“Well, I’m simply longing to hear what surprises you have planned for my li’l old coronation.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” Sarcasm glanced off Leni Riefenstahl like raindrops off a Panzer. “I have many plans.”
“Oh, do tell.”
Leni Riefenstahl folded her arms, signaling that her patience was an expensive commodity and running short. She was a rival queen, glorious in her haughtiness. “Already, the entire structure of the film exists in my head. An oratorio to the majesty of monarchy and the glory of the Leader. We begin with the Leader’s car, gliding along the parade route like a Roman emperor, the footage intercut with faces in the crowd expressing their joy. Then we move to the golden carriage that contains you, the Queen and King. When you make your way up the aisle, some of my cameramen will be wearing roller skates so they can film the moving shots. I will have them dressed in uniform so they can blend with the crowd.”
“Congregation,” corrected the archbishop. “On the subject of which, Fräulein, your request to pack the pews with massed ranks of the Schutzstaffel does, I confess, worry me a little. We have royal heads from around Europe and the world attending the service. Eight thousand guests in all. Dignitaries, presidents of local associations, and so forth. Representatives of ancestral faiths—Zoroastrians, Muslims, Buddhists, Catholics, and, er, Jews.”
“Jews?” inquired Leni Riefenstahl. Her voice curled like dry ice.
“Are you kidding me, Archbishop?” Wallis joined in. At last, a subject on which they could unite. “In a Christian church? I don’t really think they can expect to attend.”
“Absolutely beyond the pale,” added the King. This was no ventriloquist’s dummy speaking now. His eyes were a blaze of anger. “We saved our Jews, didn’t we? They ought to be damned grateful. What more can they ask?”
At this point, the conversation was obscured by the shouts of workmen erecting gantries for the television cameras amid a clatter of scaffolding and the whine of an electric drill. One of the construction team pointed up toward the women’s cubbyhole, and they were forced to duck their heads for cover before climbing shakily back down the narrow stone stairs and emerging into the bustle of Parliament Square.
“How’s that for a private view?” said Bridget. “I never thought I’d get that close to the genuine King and Queen.”
“What does he mean, he saved the Jews?” said Rose.
“No idea,” said Helena absently.
“Saved them from what?”
“Don’t ask me,” said Bridget. “But I’d better be getting back to the coalface. The Daily Mail wants to know the number of seed pearls used in the Queen’s coronation robe, and I have a story for the Mirror about how many baby girls born this year have been called Wallis. Who says the Press Department doesn’t perform a vital public service?”
Rose and Helena walked on through the clear spring morning, dallying in the warm sunlight and delaying the moment they had to return to the Culture Ministry and the stack of work that awaited them.
“Do you have to rush back?” said Helena.
“I should, really.”
“Would you come with me somewhere? Right now?” Her natural jollity had vanished, and she looked uncharacteristically serious.
“Where?”
“It’s not far. I’ll explain when we get there.”
The house was one of those faceless wedges of Belgrave Square where wealth and power had solidified over generations into immaculate cream stucco. It was set on the corner of a block and protruded into the square like the prow of a battleship, its black door so glossy you could see your face in it. As they watched, a smart young Geli, visibly pregnant, her honey hair trained in a chignon and her swollen belly draped in a maroon coat, emerged from the building and clipped down the steps. She glanced at the girls with a knowing smile before heading off down the street.
“Do you know what this place is?” said Helena.
Rose went closer. The wall was bullet scarred—left over from the Time of Resistance—but next to the door was a smart brass plaque etched with the word Lebensborn and underneath in curly italics The Fount of Life. She couldn’t remember where she had heard the name before, but it echoed in the ether like a fragment of a bad dream.
“I think I’ve heard of it, but I’m not sure what it is.”
“Me neither. Not until last week.” Helena chewed her bottom lip, and a frown appeared on her brow, like a breath of wind on a millpond. “Can I trust you?”
“Helena! If you can’t trust me…”
“I’m pregnant.”
Rose received the calamitous news as calmly as she could.
“Congratulations. Are you happy? Is it…?”
“Rolf’s? Yes. I’ve told him.”
“How did he take it? He’s married, isn’t he?”
“He was fine. Perfectly fine and not angry at all.”
“You mean, he wants…?”
“No.” Helena paused, her eyes glinting with tears. “He doesn’t want to marry me, if that’s what you’re asking. Or to be a father for the fifth time. The thing is, Rose, Rolf said, when it’s time, he wants me to come here. It’s a place where women of the right stock can have their babies without prying. He says there’ll be no problem. We have proof of racial purity on both sides. And it’s wonderful for the mothers, he says. They have extra rations, cream and meat and all sorts, and specially trained Paulas to look after the children.”
Rose squinted through the long windows at the ghostly shapes of women dressed in white moving around behind them. Distantly came the howl of a child and the fast, gulping sobs of a young baby wanting milk.
“After the birth, you can stay for weeks…” Helena trailed off.
“And then what?”
“Rolf says babies with Nordic attributes are highly valued by the Lebensborn. If your kid has blond hair and blue eyes, then it will have a fabulous life.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? How do they know it will have a fabulous life?”
Helena bit her lip and kneaded her hands, frowning at the ground. Maybe it was the glow of pregnancy, but to Rose, she had never seemed more beautiful. Her waist was tightly cinched in a red leather belt that complemented the flowers of her skirt. Small pearl buttons marched down the front of her cardigan. She stared at the pavement with her head gently inclined, like the soft face of a woman in a Vermeer portrait, or a Renaissance Madonna.
“You don’t understand. Rolf’s not like Martin. He doesn’t have a romantic bone in his body.”
“Are you saying…you don’t get to keep the child? They take your baby away?”
Helena looked at her straight. “What other choice do I have?”
A Barren Womb Spells Doom. That was one of the sayings they taught in the Alliance Girls’ League. Gelis, on account of their superior racial characteristics, were expected to bear children, but only within marriage. An unmarried Geli who was foolish enough to have a baby alone faced rapid declassification. She would be relegated immediately to the lowest sector of Class III womanhood and moved out of her elite accommodation and would have her rations dramatically reduced. The only way to avoid this was to find a man prepared to take on a pregnant bride and raise a child who was not his own. Those men, understandably, were vanishingly rare.
“And it’s not as if I can…” Helena left the unmentionable act hanging in the air, but Rose grasped her meaning instantly. Abortion was out of the question. It was a crime, punishable by death. Desperate women might procure one, dangerously, in city backstreets, but it was outlawed for all but Class V females. Class VI would be exempted too, but they were assumed to be beyond childbearing.
“I’m not sure I want kids anyhow,” said Helena, brushing her tears away roughly. “I don’t know the first thing about them.”
Celia had said the same. Rose remembered her grappling with the newborn Hannah, saying, “Infants aren’t really my thing,” as though babies were a pair of kitten heels that you could take back to the shop.
“It’s not what we imagined, is it, when we were kids.”
“I can’t remember what I imagined,” said Rose automatically before adding, “No. Nothing like it.”
She thought of Hannah, her hair bright cinnamon gold, her sandy freckles and sweet, round face, playing with her stuffed toys. Hannah still lived in a world of possibility, where anything might happen. Not only that animals might speak or nymphs live in trees but that girls could grow up to be anything they wanted. A parallel universe, so close that it almost touched the real one. Rose dreaded the time that world of possibility would end.
“I always thought I’d be like my own mum. Marrying a nice man and moving somewhere in Surrey. Having a Labrador that wouldn’t be allowed on the sofa. Four kids, I thought, two boys, two girls. Not…this.”
There was an edge of anguish in Helena’s voice, and she turned away, blinking. A pang of pure love went through Rose, and she took her friend’s arm protectively.
“Hush. Is there anyone who might…? I mean, my sister knows some older men. She has a dentist lined up for me. I could give her a call.”
Helena gave a sniff and braced herself. “It’s alright. I’ve already decided.”
“Don’t come here.”
“Easy for you to say.” With a last look at the Lebensborn, Helena linked arms with Rose and pulled her along the street. It was as though they were sixteen again, skipping out of the Rosenberg Institute, marching into a sunlit future of friendship and fun. “Rolf’s right, you know. We’re lucky to be Gelis. Better food. Lovely clothes. Kind men to spoil us. We have the golden ticket, remember? So what if we don’t get to keep our babies? We have a wonderful life.”