House of the Lost (16 page)

She had not previously known or thought much about politics or economics or world affairs. Her father had said it was not for the likes of them to know about these things and her mother would not have dared question his attitude. There was no money for newspapers, even if anyone could have read them. When Zoia was seven, her father caught her reading a children’s storybook the kindly teacher had lent her, and beat her for wasting her time when she should have been helping to cook the supper. Afterwards, huddled miserably on her corner of the bed she shared with her sisters, she heard her brothers whispering that there was always a bulge in Father’s trousers when he hit the girls.

The teacher who had helped Zoia get to university had possessed a small wireless to which the enthralled Zoia had listened once or twice, but when she left the village there was no money for such luxuries. She spent all her vacations doing whatever work she could get to provide money for term time, but even so there was barely enough money for food and lodgings.

But Annaleise and her friends had books and newspapers and radios, and Zoia was made free of them all. She tried to form her own opinions but always returned to the belief that Annaleise’s views were the right ones. Annaleise said Romania’s government had the well-being of the people at heart. The nationalization of large businesses and banks was sound and logical, she said, and collective farming – the sweeping away of individual ownership and the creation of one massive agricultural cooperative – was logical, as well. It meant the pooling of labour and income for the greater good of all. Those farmers who did not want to give up their land were simply clinging to the selfish old ways of capitalism, insisted Annaleise, her eyes glowing with fervour. Admittedly the government had used force to make them yield up their land, and yes, it was true that large numbers of the farmers had ended up being arrested or deported.

‘Made homeless?’ asked Zoia doubtfully.

‘Oh, they all have friends and families where they can go to live. You must understand, Zoia, this is the natural progression of Stalin’s original five-year plan of the 1920s – it’s revolution from above. It’s not a goal that can be lost because ignorant and recalcitrant farmers are jealous of their few paltry acres.’

Because these were Annaleise’s beliefs, Zoia knew they were right and they became her beliefs as well. She repeated Annaleise’s phrases with as much reverence as if they were charms or incantations.

Annaleise. She was like a glittering thread running through Zoia’s new life and Zoia sometimes felt she was living inside a dream. She had never met anyone like Annaleise and had never expected to experience even the smallest part of the emotions Annaleise aroused in her – mentally as well as physically. She had not even known such emotions existed. They certainly bore no relation to the grunting poundings which used to come from the tiny upper floor of the farm cottage, mostly on nights when her father had been helping to get the harvest in and the workers had been given ale afterwards.

Zoia and her brothers and sisters were grateful to escape his attention on those nights. Sometimes Father became angry and called Mother ugly names and blamed her if he was not able to do what he wanted to her. Cock-shriveller, he called her, belching his beery breath into the small cottage. It was embarrassing to have to hear all this, but it was worse on the nights when Father had not taken too much beer, and the poundings on the rickety bed were fast and fierce. Mother would gasp and say please stop, they could not afford another child, the birth would kill her and there was not enough food for them all as it was.

Father never stopped, though. He shouted that she was a bitch to expect him to do so, and it was against the law of the country to withdraw. A man should spend his seed in his wife, that was the law and the teaching of their religion, and anyway it was every man’s right. Then there would be an urgency to the sounds, followed by a groaning cry and moments later would come the creak of the bedsprings as he moved off Mother. And in just under the year there would be another baby in the overcrowded cottage.

But none of this needed to be remembered now, years afterwards. It was all in the past, and all that mattered to Zoia these days was the goddess she had discovered: Annaleise.

After that first startling and bewildering night when Annaleise had poured wine into Zoia’s glass – the night that had been so agonizingly incomplete – there had, as she had prayed, been other times. Evenings spent in the perfumed bedroom of Annaleise’s beautiful apartment, afternoons spent on the riverbank, with dappled sunlight falling over their naked limbs, and the guilty, but wildly exciting knowledge that someone might come along and catch them. Occasionally and blissfully there were whole nights spent together. To wake up and see Annaleise’s tumble of silken hair on the pillow next to her, then to feel Annaleise’s knowing, skilful hands moving over her body, gave Zoia such a deep and complete joy she would not have cared if she died in that moment.

When Annaleise, three years older than Zoia, graduated and made plans to move on from the university town, Zoia was distraught. She pleaded with her to stay – or at least to take her with her wherever she went. She did not care where it was.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Annaleise. ‘You can’t run out halfway through university. Think of the waste.’

‘I don’t care about the university. Let me come with you. Please let me.’

A smile curved Annaleise’s lips and for the first time Zoia saw it not as a beautiful and loving smile, but as self-satisfied. ‘You’ve become quite a little slave, haven’t you?’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I wonder how much you would do for me, Zoia. I mean – really how much?’

‘Anything,’ said Zoia at once. ‘Truly, I would do anything.’

‘Yes,’ said Annaleise. ‘I believe you would.’ Then, speaking very slowly as if selecting her words carefully, she said, ‘There might be work you could do. It might sometimes appear to be quite menial, at least on the surface. Washing, serving food, cleaning. But really you would be working for the Party. For the government.’

‘Then I wouldn’t mind menial work.’ Zoia would have scrubbed floors or cleaned out sewers if it meant staying near Annaleise. Hesitantly, because Annaleise did not like to be questioned too closely, she said, ‘What would the real work consist of?’

‘Gathering information,’ said Annaleise. ‘Doing so in secrecy, of course.’

‘What kind of information?’

‘About people mostly. About what they do and what they think. About their families and movements. It’s probable the Securitate would give you names of people to watch specifically – people already under suspicion. The Securitate are keen, you know, to get more control over people – to know more of what goes on in their lives. It’s vital to know who the agitators are.’

‘Know thine enemy,’ said Zoia, half to herself.

‘Exactly. As an instance,’ went on Annaleise, ‘just purely as an example, that young student who has rooms near the old quadrangle – her name is Elisab—’

‘I know who you mean.’ Zoia cut in before Annaleise could finish saying the name because she was afraid there might be the caress in Annaleise’s voice that once had been exclusively reserved for Zoia herself. She had seen Annaleise watching the elfin-faced Elisabeth for some weeks, and a bitter jealousy had scalded her soul because Elisabeth was so very lovely, so graceful and amusing, all the things Zoia was not. To cover her emotions, she said, ‘She’s reading political history.’ But because she was truthful by nature, she added grudgingly, ‘They say she’s extremely clever.’

‘A brilliant student by all accounts.’

And you like the brilliant ones, thought Zoia miserably. The brilliant, beautiful ones.

‘My masters believe she’s dangerous,’ said Annaleise, and Zoia looked at her because she had not been expecting this. ‘They think she’s a conspirator – an enemy of the Party. Therefore an enemy of the people. We suspect – very strongly – that she’s working to uncover secrets.’

‘Are there secrets?’ asked Zoia, and then, seeing Annaleise’s sudden severe frown, added hastily, ‘Within the Party, I mean?’

‘All people in power have secrets, Zoia. All kinds of things have to be kept quiet and private. It isn’t good for the masses to be told everything.’

The masses . . . she peddles the maxim that everyone is equal, thought Zoia, but underneath she’s as arrogant as any old-style aristocrat. That’s what I love so much, I think. Aloud, she said, ‘So the work I would really be doing would be finding out about people like Elisabeth?’

‘Elisabeth would be a good starting point.’

Zoia did not speak, and Annaleise said, ‘Zoia, when a country is undergoing change – when it’s being re-shaped – it’s sometimes necessary to do rather underhand things. Perhaps to read private papers or listen to private conversations. To tell lies. There is,’ she said, in what Zoia thought was a careful voice, ‘a particular profession that comes into its own at such times. There are people who regard it as rather despicable, but it is necessary.’ She stopped and in the silence that fell between them, Zoia could hear the popping of the worn gas fire on the hearth of her small room. She could feel her heart beating.

‘You want me to become a spy,’ said Zoia at last. ‘An informant for the Party. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Annaleise, ‘that’s exactly what I mean.’

The present

Theo hit the Save key and leaned back, turning his head from side to side to ease his aching neck and shoulder muscles.

He noticed he seemed to have a surname now: Zoia had referred to Matthew’s father as Andrei Valk. Valk did not sound very Romanian, but that was the name it seemed to be.

It was half past three and he needed a break from Zoia and Annaleise, and their machinations. He glanced at the uncurtained window wondering whether to take himself for a walk. Shadows were already creeping across the garden and it would be completely dark in another hour. He switched off the laptop and went out.

He enjoyed his walk and he enjoyed the sharp winter scents that prickled his nose and made his eyes sting with cold. He went past the convent gates, glancing along the drive. What would the nuns be doing at this time of day? For a wild moment he considered ringing the bell and asking if Sister Catherine was free. Probably she would be busy with patients and, in any case, he had no real reason to see her. He went briskly on, through the grey, sepia lanes. The troubling ghosts of Annaleise and Zoia receded a little as he walked, although Matthew’s ghost did not. Theo thought Matthew walked with him, and he smiled at this idea.

The cousins had walked along these lanes hundreds of times. In the autumn they went blackberrying, and in the summer there were raspberries and strawberries – there was a fruit farm on the other side of the village that grew the most delicious raspberries. Mostly it was Theo with Charmery and Lesley, but other members of the family came and went. Lesley’s brothers were often there; when they were younger they ran back and forth along the lanes like unruly puppies. Once, when Charmery’s and Lesley’s parents had gone off somewhere for the day, the five of them had tried to make raspberry wine but something had gone wrong with the process and a container had exploded, splattering the kitchen wall. Lesley had been horrified and had wanted to rush out to buy paint so they could cover the marks up before anyone saw it, but Charmery only laughed and said no one would care and she was not getting covered in paint for anyone.

A thin icy rain was starting to fall, and Theo retraced his steps, turning up the collar of his coat and hunching his shoulders against the rain. As he went past the convent gates again, he smiled at the prospect of Wednesday’s talk and of seeing Sister Catherine again.

Fenn House, when he got back to it, felt chilly, and he turned up the heating. The water was hot, though, and he thought he would have a bath to warm up. Last night’s chicken casserole could be re-heated at the same time.

It was one of life’s minor luxuries to lie in a hot bath, and the water out here was so soft it felt like silk. Theo let his mind drift. He wondered vaguely at what point he would phone his agent to explain that instead of a book with a flawed hero suffering from post-battle trauma, she would be getting children living in Ceausescu’s bleak Romania, and a predatory female whose appetites ran rapaciously to her own sex.

When he went back downstairs the casserole was ready, and he ate it watching the television news, smiling rather wryly at the staid ways he was falling into since coming to Fenn. Supper on a tray in front of the television – it was hardly the high life. But he knew the solitude and the extreme quietness of Melbray was responsible; it had a soporific effect and it was one of the reasons he had come to Fenn anyway.

The drone of the newsreader’s voice on the television was soporific as well; by the time the weather forecast started Theo was almost falling asleep. Once he sat up sharply, thinking he had heard a sound outside, but he seemed to be mistaken and lay back in the chair. The weather forecast finished and he got up to take the plate back to the kitchen, but a sick dizziness engulfed him and he had to grab the back of the chair to stop himself falling. Eventually, he managed to reach the kitchen, but he felt so giddy he simply put the plate and used casserole dish in the sink and staggered back to the sitting room, half falling into the chair.