Dominion

by C. J. Sansom

  The colonel nodded stiffly, then looked at Frank. ‘That him? He looks pretty groggy.’

  ‘He’s drugged,’ Ben said. ‘He needs putting to bed.’

  ‘Come inside.’

  They took Frank into the house. The cold had woken him up a little and he gazed fearfully around the hall, blinking in the light. The furniture was an odd mixture of shabby English fittings and exotic mementos of India – a little stone sculpture of an ox pulling a cart, a portrait of a royal-looking Indian in a turban. A big black Labrador stood beside Colonel Brock, looking uncertainly at the visitors. An inner door opened and a short, plump woman came out. ‘My wife,’ the colonel said, nodding at her. ‘Elsie, my dear, could you help our visitors to some food?’

  ‘Of course.’ The woman looked at them nervously, her gaze lingering on Frank.

  ‘He’s all right,’ the colonel said firmly. ‘We’re going to put him to bed. Come on now, darling, food. Chop! Chop!’ Colonel Brock led them to the stairs. David and Ben helped Frank, the old man walking ahead, a gnarled hand on the banister. David saw that though he tried to keep his back straight he had a stoop.

  He led them to a little bedroom with a single bed: a boy’s bedroom, a map of the world with pictures of the peoples of the Empire round the edges, schoolbooks on shelves, old copies of the Magnet piled in a corner. On the front of the topmost comic Billy Bunter, trying to skate on an icy pond, was falling over, other boys laughing as he went up in the air. They eased Frank onto the bed, where he turned over and fell asleep at once. Ben checked his pulse, then eased off Frank’s shoes and put a blanket over him. ‘He’ll sleep till morning, I should think. But someone should stay with him.’ He looked at David. ‘I’ll sit wi’ him till say four, then can you take over? If he wakes he should see someone he knows.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The colonel looked down at Frank. ‘What’s he on?’ he asked bluntly.

  ‘Largactil. It’s a sedative. I gave him a heavy dose to quiet him while I got him oot.’

  ‘Looks done in, poor bugger.’

  They left Ben with Frank and went back downstairs. The colonel showed David and Geoff into a big dining room. The television was on with the sound turned down, a quiz show, Isobel Barnett in an evening dress. A statue of the four-armed god Shiva stood incongruously on a Welsh dresser. David looked at it. ‘Pagan stuff, I know,’ Colonel Brock said, ‘but it’s very well done.’ He turned to Natalia. ‘I’d better get to the radio, let them know you’ve arrived. Elsie’s got it in the kitchen.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  David asked, ‘Is there any news of my wife? Someone was being sent to pick her up.’

  ‘I haven’t heard anything.’ The colonel looked at him sympathetically. ‘I’ll ask.’ He went out. David and Natalia and Geoff sat down at the dining table.

  ‘Maybe no news is good news, old chap,’ Geoff said.

  ‘If they’ve got her safe, you’d think they’d have let us know by now.’

  The colonel’s wife came in with a large tray containing bowls of vegetable soup, a loaf of bread, some butter. Geoff got up and helped her lay it on the table. ‘Short commons tonight, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘We’ve sent our housekeeper on holiday for a few days, since we heard you were coming.’

  The colonel returned and sat at the head of the table. ‘Thank you, my dear,’ he said to Elsie. ‘You’d better get back to the radio.’ He looked at David. ‘No news about your wife yet, Fitzgerald,’ he said gently, ‘but London might not have been able to get through. There’s been a lot going on with this Jew business. Elsie will come and tell us if anything changes.’

  ‘Thanks,’ David said.

  ‘I’m told the chap upstairs is pretty important?’ Colonel Brock said.

  ‘He could be, sir,’ Geoff answered.

  The old man raised a hand. ‘Don’t need to know the details. I gather Churchill’s been personally involved with this one, though.’ He looked at Natalia, a little uneasily David thought. There was another silence while they ate the thick, flavourless soup. David suddenly felt very tired. He thought, about forty-eight hours ago I was sitting in my office, at work. How fragile our lives are, how a day can turn them inside out.

  Geoff said, to break the silence, ‘You have a lot of Indian mementos, sir.’

  ‘Yes. Served there thirty years. My son’s out there now, God help him. Rioters broke his bloody arm with a brick in Delhi last year.’

  ‘I worked in the Colonial Office. I was in Kenya for quite a while.’

  The colonel smiled. ‘Wondered if you’d been out in the Empire. Your tan hasn’t quite faded.’ He grunted. ‘Quieter out in Africa. The blacks know their place. God knows how it’ll all end in India.’ Geoff set his lips, but didn’t reply. The colonel continued, ‘Lefties in the Resistance say we should pull out, and even Churchill seems to have accepted that now. I suppose I must, too, though it’s not what I joined the Resistance for.’

  ‘Why did you join, sir?’ David asked.

  Colonel Brock pulled himself upright. ‘Because it was cowardly to surrender the way we did in 1940. I always knew it’d end with these Nazi thugs dictating to us. Winston was right, we should have let them try to invade and fought them off.’ He looked at them fiercely. ‘I know I’m an old relic of Empire, my views aren’t popular in the Resistance any more. But it’s hard, when you see your life’s work falling apart. God knows what sort of mess the Indians will make of independence if they get it.’

  He got up abruptly. ‘Let’s have something stronger.’ He crossed to a tray of drinks beside the statue of Shiva. He poured whisky for them and, quaintly, a sherry for Natalia. As he passed the glasses round the door opened. David looked up sharply, hoping it might be the colonel’s wife with news of Sarah, but it was Ben, carrying a tray. He laid it on the table. ‘Yer wife said tae bring this doon when I’d done,’ he told the colonel. He was deliberately exaggerating his Glasgow accent.

  ‘Your chap still sleeping?’

  ‘Frank? Aye, like a wee bairn. No’ bad soup, mate,’ Ben said to the colonel with a grin. ‘Compliments to the wife.’ The old man answered, ‘Thank you,’ stiffly, as Ben went back out. The colonel looked at the door and grunted, ‘He’s a Communist, you know, that chap. Outranks me in the movement, likes to remind me of it.’

  ‘He’s done brave work tonight,’ Natalia said quietly.

  ‘Oh, I don’t question his courage. Just worry that one day his lot will put me up against a wall.’ Brock gave a humourless laugh, then took a long slug of whisky and stood up. ‘I’d better take that dog for his evening walk, or he’ll be restless tonight.’

  David was deeply asleep when Ben woke him at four. For a second he thought he was in bed at home and it was Sarah shaking him awake, then he remembered everything and his stomach went as cold as the dark little room.

  ‘Ready to take over?’ Ben whispered.

  David nodded and got up. Geoff was still asleep, breathing regularly. David asked quietly, ‘Is there any news? About Sarah?’

  Ben shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, pal, no’ yet.’

  David dressed quickly, then followed Ben across the corridor to Frank’s room. Inside Frank lay curled up, his hands one on top of the other by his head, like a child praying. ‘Not a peep out of him,’ Ben whispered. ‘Here, the colonel’s left a cardigan out for you, it’s cold. He’s no’ such a bad old sod, I suppose,’ he added grudgingly. ‘For one of his sort.’

  David nodded; he didn’t want to wake Frank. He thought, let him sleep through, wake in daylight. He looked at him, deeply asleep. He thought of the hell Frank must have been living through, his attempted suicide. He wondered if he had been trying to take his secret with him. He wished he had written to him more often these past few years. Even back at Oxford, Frank’s hopeless, desperate vulnerability had made David fear that one day something bad would happen to him.

  He looked at the orange-and-blue covers of the Magnet in the corner. He remembered reading it himself
as a boy. Colonel Brock’s son would have lain on the bed reading the same public-school stories. He was out in India now, on the wrong side so far as the Resistance was concerned. David remembered his mother telling him off sometimes for reading comics, such nonsense she called them, so common. He realized now how lucky he had been, the only child of devoted parents, top of the class and good at sport, like the heroes in the Greyfriars stories. Yet he had always resented the demands people made. He didn’t want to be special, just ordinary. But had people really asked that much of him? He looked down at Frank’s thin, unhappy face, and felt a renewed sense of purpose; Frank knew something that could help the Germans and they had to stop them getting it, whatever it took.

  He had meant to stay awake, he had been on night watch plenty of times during the Norway campaign, but the armchair was comfortable and he must have fallen asleep because suddenly he was being shaken again, and it was full day. He blinked in the sunlight, then stared at Natalia. She was looking down at him, smiling a little ironically. She wore a white roll-neck pullover, like someone in the navy; it suited her. ‘Oh God,’ David said. ‘I fell asleep—’ He turned round quickly. ‘Frank—’

  ‘He’s fine.’ Frank was still asleep; he hadn’t even changed position.

  ‘I’m sorry—’

  ‘You had a hard day yesterday. It’s all right, Ben and I have been up all night manning the radio, and watching to make sure nobody came near the house. We looked in on you from time to time. We sent the old people to bed.’

  ‘The radio – is there any news—’

  ‘Of your wife? No, I’m sorry, not yet.’

  David rubbed a hand over his stubbly face. Natalia stared at him hard with those green, slightly slanted eyes. ‘Your wife is safe, I’m sure. We’ll get her out, you will all get to America.’

  David laughed hollowly. ‘It sounds like a dream, a fantasy.’

  He looked at her. He wanted her, he knew she wanted him, but she had been right to say he must put Sarah first. And she was staying behind, in England. David sighed, and turned to Frank again. ‘I suppose we need to wake him.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll get Ben. It will be good if he sees you both when he wakes up.’

  David said, ‘The colonel says Ben’s a Communist. Like your brother was.’

  She smiled. ‘You remember me telling you that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Peter was not a Communist after he went to Russia.’ She looked down at him. ‘Maybe I will tell you all about it one day.’

  ‘On the way to the submarine, eh?’

  She smiled and left the room. David wondered where Natalia stood on politics. Where did he stand himself, for that matter? He wanted democracy, an end to authoritarianism and fear, and to the persecution of the Jews. Beyond that he didn’t know. He leaned over and shook Frank’s hand gently, feeling the thinness of his wrist under his sleeve. He didn’t move at his touch, just lay there breathing heavily.

  The door opened and Ben came in. He too looked tired, unshaven, but his eyes were sharp and keen as usual. David said, ‘I’ve tried to wake Frank, I shook his arm, but he didn’t move . . .’

  Ben walked over to the bed. ‘He’s just in a deep sleep, poor wee man. It’s all right, I’ll wake him.’ He pinched Frank’s arm. He stirred and groaned. His hands shifted, revealing the right one with its withered fingers and scarred palm.

  ‘Come on, Frankie boy,’ Ben said encouragingly. He gave him another, harder pinch. Frank’s eyes opened and he blinked. He stared at them in terror, then sat up and screamed.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  SARAH HAD SAT ON HER OWN in the cell for an hour after the German left her. She was still in shock at being there, at what David had done. Where was he? After a while, through sheer tiredness, the cogs of her brain stopped turning and she just sat staring round the bleak room. But fear soon grew again; she thought of the weight of the great building above her, all the power of the Third Reich it represented, the terrible rumours about what they did to people here. She felt faint and had to grip the edge of the table.

  Shortly before midnight, there was a rattle of keys in the door. Heart beating fast she looked up, expecting to see the big fair man again. She feared him; for all his civility earlier, there was something implacable about him. But it was a young man who entered, in the black uniform of the SS, with a pudgy face and heavily oiled brown hair. He carried a leather bag, which for a horrible moment Sarah thought might contain instruments of torture. But when he emptied it on the table her own possessions tumbled out, handbag and identity card, purse and keys.

  ‘You can go, Mrs Fitzgerald,’ the SS man said in a strong German accent. His tone was formal, polite. ‘I will escort you out. You are to go straight home and to remain there until further notice. The British police may wish to speak further with you.’

  ‘My husband—’

  ‘You must tell the police if he tries to contact you. And now . . .’ He looked at the items on the table, then waved an arm towards the door.

  Sarah gathered up her things and followed him out of the room and down the corridor. Two more SS men approached, half-carrying an elderly man in a rumpled suit with a yellow badge. He was unshaven, his face bruised, grey hair standing up in tufts, eyes wide with fear. They walked past Sarah and her escort; behind her she heard a door slam. She looked at her guard. He took her back up the same flight of steps Gunther had escorted her down, along empty corridors then through a side door and out into the cold night air. He led her round to the front of Senate House, the building and its immense swastika flags floodlit. The guard walked Sarah to a gate in the side of the high wall, bars of thick iron with barbed wire on top, and unlocked it for her. He actually bowed slightly as she passed him and stepped out into Gower Street. A British policeman standing on duty outside the embassy with a sub-machine gun turned and glanced at her without interest. The gate closed behind her with a little clang, and she stood staring blankly down the dark street. Then she began walking away, fast.

  She caught the last tube back home. There were not many people on it at that time of night. There was a man, though, a small man in a heavy overcoat, who got into the carriage with her at Euston Square who also got off at Kenton. But he turned in the opposite direction as she left the station. By the time she arrived home she was so frightened and exhausted that when she tried to put her key into the lock her hands shook and it took several tries to open the door. She entered the cold, empty house and went into the kitchen. She stood looking at the table where the men had sat waiting for her. The door to the garden hung open. She closed it – the lock was smashed – and went upstairs, kicked off her shoes and lay on the bed. She fell asleep in an instant, still in her coat. Alone.

  She was woken by the sound of the doorbell ringing loudly and insistently. Her body shuddered. She had been having a terrible dream; she was back in the cell with the German but this time David was there, too, a prisoner. His face was turned away and when she called out his name he wouldn’t look round and she knew it was because they had done something terrible to his face. She sat up with a groan. It was daylight, she had slept through the night. She heaved herself up and walked shakily downstairs, in coat and stockinged feet, terrified they had come to take her away again.

  But it was Irene standing on the doorstep, smart in her coat and her little circular hat with the red feather. Her eyes widened. ‘Darling, what’s happened to you?’

  Sarah swallowed, her throat dry. Irene reached out and took her arm. ‘I rang and rang last night! How’s David, is he better, how ill is he . . . ?’

  Sarah stared blankly at her sister. ‘Ill?’

  ‘He telephoned me yesterday. He said he was ill, he’d been sent home from the office, he was trying to get hold of you—’

  ‘David was here? Yesterday?’

  ‘Yes. In the morning – Sarah, what’s happening—’

  ‘Come in.’

  ‘Why are you in your coat? Have you been out—’

 
‘Come into the lounge, let me get the heating on. My feet are bloody frozen.’

  Irene took charge, lighting the fire and going to make a cup of tea. Sarah stretched her numb feet to the warmth. The clock on the mantelpiece showed ten o’clock. Irene came back with a tray and set it on the coffee table. Sarah saw that her sister was forcing herself to be calm. She thought, I have to tell her what happened, they might question her and Steve. She took a cigarette, passed one to Irene, and had a sip of the hot, sweet tea. It tasted wonderful. She took a deep breath, then said, ‘David wasn’t having an affair, Irene. He was spying for the Resistance, passing them files from his work. His friend Geoff Drax was, too. They’re both on the run. I spent last night being questioned at the German embassy.’

  Irene stared, her blue eyes wide. ‘David was working for the Resistance?’

  ‘I’d no idea, I couldn’t tell them anything because I didn’t know. They let me go. I’ve been told to stay at home. I think I was followed home on the tube, though I’m not sure.’

  ‘Did they – did they do anything to you . . . ?’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘They were very polite. Though as I was being taken out I saw another prisoner who looked – bad.’ She told Irene everything that had happened. Then she said, in a low voice, ‘I’m scared.’

  ‘The swine!’ Irene exclaimed. For a moment Sarah thought she meant the Germans, but then she continued. ‘Bombings and riots and killing policemen! They’re murderers! I knew David had gone anti-German the last few years, but this—’

  ‘What other choice have they left people who oppose them?’

  ‘We’ve always believed in peace!’ Irene’s voice rose in indignation. ‘He’s placed you in terrible danger! All of us, the whole family! Spying for those Resistance thugs!’

  Sarah put her head in her hands. Irene, suddenly apologetic, reached out. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘It’s just such a shock . . .’

  Sarah looked up. ‘I know. Thank God Charlie was spared this. But then I think, if he hadn’t died David wouldn’t have done this. I wasn’t enough, you see. All these times he’s not come home till late, disappeared at weekends – God, his uncle Ted, that must have been a lie, too.’