Red Joan (21 page)

Joan smiles but she is suddenly unconvinced. Her mind scuttles, aware of a certain unease insinuating itself into the conversation.

‘So will you help?' He is looking at her now, his expression serious. ‘We need designs, documents, research.'

She narrows her eyes to look at him more closely. ‘How did you know?'

‘Know what?'

‘About the . . . ' she looks around and covers her mouth with her hand before continuing, ‘ . . . about the project?'

‘It doesn't matter. The point is Churchill promised in the House of Commons that all technological advances would be shared between Britain and the USSR. He's not keeping that promise.' He sits back. ‘This isn't about you. Your feelings are irrelevant here. This is about saving the Revolution. It's about saving the world. Sharing what you know about the project with Russia is the only way to ensure that we're in with a chance. It's as simple as that.'

Joan stares at him. Surely he is not asking what she thinks he is. He can't be. ‘You want me to smuggle the research out? You want me to steal?'

‘Not steal,' he says in a softer voice, as if he can hear what she is thinking. ‘Replicate. Share.'

Joan doesn't move. She can't believe he is asking her to do this. The thought flashes across her mind that this is why he has written to her all this time, because he had plans for her. Because he thinks he can persuade her to do whatever he asks.

She shakes this thought from her head. Surely not, she thinks. Nobody can be that cynical, that forward-thinking.

His hand is on hers across the table, his voice quiet and urgent. ‘Don't you see, Jo-jo? This is your chance to
do
something for the world, to make a difference.'

‘I didn't know you were so . . . ' She stops. She was going to say she didn't know he was so committed to the cause that he would actually do something like this, but she realises as she is about to say it that, if she did not know this, it was through her own stupidity. He has always been quite open about how much it means to him, so why does it come as a surprise to have it confirmed? Did she just never really believe he meant what he said? She sees that he is still waiting for an answer. ‘No, Leo,' she whispers. ‘I won't do it.'

Leo's expression is one of studied patience. ‘We've been through this before, Jo-jo. Being loyal to a country is a false loyalty. It doesn't mean anything. You know that. Vertical divisions between countries only exist in the imagination. It's the horizontal divisions that count. And as members of the international proletariat, we must defend and help the Soviet state by any means possible.'

Joan shakes her head as he speaks. She knows it is part of his charm, this ability to persuade people that they want to think like him, that they should see the world exactly as he sees it. ‘Don't,' she says. ‘I'm not at one of your rallies now. It's not my fault my hands aren't worn down by years at the Soviet coalface. I didn't choose to be born in St. Albans but I don't see why my loyalties should be any less legitimate than yours.'

‘This isn't about where you were born. There are no sides any longer, not once this thing exists. This isn't the sort of weapon only one
side
should have. A whole nation can be destroyed in a single swoop. It's inhumane.'

His persistence is astounding. Surely he must have known she would not do this. She is too honest, too loyal. If he does not know this about her, how can he know her at all? She looks up at him. ‘There must be a reason why Churchill isn't sharing it with Stalin. Perhaps he is, for all we know.'

This is the wrong thing to say. She knows this as she says it, and she sees Leo's expression harden but, for the first time, she doesn't care.

‘Don't you see? Churchill
wants
the Germans in Moscow. There are thirty thousand Russians dying on the Eastern Front every week and it's the only thing keeping Hitler out of Downing Street.'

Joan looks down. ‘I'm sorry, Leo. I won't do it.'

Leo shakes his head. ‘I expected more from you, Jo-jo. I thought you, of all people, would be able to see that there's more to loyalty than being true to an arbitrary place or state.'

Joan feels her chest swell and her eyes burn but she does not move. ‘Stalin didn't think so when he signed the pact.'

Leo leans forward, his hands pressed flat against the table and his expression suddenly hard and unreadable. She knows she has scratched a nerve. ‘That was tactical.'

‘If you say so.'

‘I do.'

There is a pause. ‘Anyway,' she says, ‘I'd have thought the Soviets would be developing their own weapons?'

‘They are. But it's taking too long. They're starting from a disadvantage.' He sighs and reaches once more across the table. ‘Please, Jo-jo. Don't you see? You're in a unique position here to change the history of the world.'

Joan crosses her arms across her chest. ‘Why must you always be so dramatic? You're worse than Sonya.'

‘Because it's the truth.'

‘Well, I won't do it. You shouldn't have asked. I wish you hadn't.'

Leo sighs. He sees that the matter is, for the moment, closed between them. The waiter brings their dinner and they eat in silence, the meat tender and perfectly done, the mash creamy and light.

‘Nice, isn't it?' he says, his voice flat in an unenthusiastic attempt to change the subject.

‘It's all right.' Joan will not allow him the satisfaction of thinking she is enjoying it. The taste is bitter, metallic, and quite suddenly she knows that this is it. This is the end, right now. She swallows a mouthful of food, feeling the lump of it in her throat. Her chest feels tight and constricted. ‘I'm not very hungry,' she says in a voice which is intended to be both strong and offhand at the same time.

Leo looks at her, and then picks up his fork, reaches over, and swipes half the venison from her plate. Joan's mouth drops open but Leo does not flinch. ‘Couldn't let it go to waste.'

The waiter returns to refill their wine glasses, pouring the luxurious blood-red swirls of liquid into the silence. When he has gone, Leo raises his glass. He clears his throat in a conciliatory manner. ‘A toast, anyway.'

Joan shakes her head. How can he ask this of her and then, when she refuses, just carry on as if it was a perfectly reasonable request? As if nothing has happened. Why does he not even apologise when he sees how much he has upset her?

She wants to stand up, spin on her heel and fling the door of the restaurant shut behind her so that the window cracks and shatters. She wants to make a scene. She wants him to run after her, catching her in his arms and kissing her in a blaze of sunlight like a princess in a fairy tale, and declare that he loves her and has loved her all along. She wants to force the words out of him.

There is a pounding, aching silence. Joan raises her eyes to meet his and, in that moment, she realises it is hopeless. It always has been. For over a year she has waited for him, dreamt of him, written to him, and in all that time he has never once told her he loves her because—the reason is suddenly glaringly, blindingly obvious—he does not. Or not enough. Not in the way she wants. He is not interested in love. Emotion without intellect, he has called it before. Why did she not see it then? How can she have been so blind? She realises now that he will never hold her in his arms and kiss her like a princess in a fairy tale because that is not Leo's kind of fairy tale. His fairy tales are fields of spun gold, full of barn yields and statistics.

Joan raises her glass numbly, suddenly stricken with the knowledge that he has not come to see her because he loves her but to persuade her to do this for The Struggle. Because he thinks, because they all think, that she will do anything he asks.

‘To the future,' Leo says.

Joan shakes her head. Her chest aches as she holds out her glass to his. She had not known it could hurt this much. ‘I'm not going to change my mind.'

‘Oh, come on, Jo-jo.'

She wants to put her face in her hands and sob. She shakes her head. She will not cry. Not yet. She will later—she will lie on her bed and curl herself into a ball and her body will be racked with the strength of her despair—but she will not cry in front of him. ‘To the past,' she murmurs.

‘Ah no,' he says, and Joan registers the familiar flash of his lenses as he smiles at her. ‘There's the difference between us. I don't feel like this is the end. You'll come round. I know it.'

‘No, Leo.' Joan is adamant. ‘I won't do it. You shouldn't have asked.'

She lifts her glass to his and they drink, silently, their eyes locked on one another. And then a single spot of red wine spills onto her dress.

I
n the bathroom of her house, away from the questioning and alone for just a brief moment, Joan turns on the cold tap. The shock of icy water against her skin makes her shiver. It is almost like being touched, and the sensation awakens an old hunger in her, one to which she has lately grown accustomed. Until her husband died, she had not realised how much it mattered, to touch and be touched, but right now, she misses the physical comfort of his arms around her, the smell of his skin, the habit he had of tapping his spoon against his bowl between mouthfuls of cornflakes. She thinks of his body filled with tubes as he lay in his hospital bed the day before he died, reaching for her hand and smiling, telling her that he'd be right as rain tomorrow.

It shouldn't have been as much of a shock as it was. She had known he was ill. She just hadn't thought it would come so soon. She hadn't expected to be left so abruptly, to be cut adrift with nobody to talk to, nobody who knew what she
meant
about anything, always having to explain herself and never quite being able to.

She remembers suddenly that it is Tuesday, and that normally she would have spent the afternoon in her watercolour class at the church hall, putting the final touches to her snow scene in preparation for the exhibition her class is planning for the end of the month. She likes her classmates, the seams of their faces reflecting her own. It is a comfort to know that they are all in it together, this business of being old, complicit in their unspoken agreement to make the best of what they have left and not be too morbid about it.

Their exhibition is to be called ‘Snow: a Study of White on White,' which they had thought rather amusing at the time but which now strikes Joan as slightly pretentious. What would they say if they knew? She feels a tremor along her spine as she imagines them reading about her in the evening newspaper on Friday, fear turning to horror as she imagines how they might react if they were ever to see her again. She could not go back. It wouldn't be fair. She thinks of her unfinished snow scene lying discarded in the corner of the room while the others are framed for the exhibition, eventually being thrown away once it is clear she will not be coming back for it.

But then again, the third day of interviewing is nearly over and they still haven't got anything to bring against her. Perhaps . . . ?

No. She cannot allow herself to get hopeful. They must know more than they are letting on, or why else would William have done what he did? They're just holding back so that her confession is not forced, giving her space to implicate William as well as herself.

She glances at the shelf above the washbasin, and observes her stash of blood pressure pills, thyroid pills and vitamins which she keeps in view so that she does not forget to take them. The accoutrements of managed decline. Aspirin, calcium supplements, zinc. Has she taken any of these since it all began? She cannot remember. The days are rolling and fading into one another and into so many other long-forgotten days. She picks up the thyroid tablets to take one, and at the same time she notices a small tinted bottle of sleeping pills at the back of the shelf—it is full when she shakes it—and her heart shivers inside her. Quickly, she replaces the packet of thyroid tablets in front of the pill bottle. She knows she cannot think like that.

Her lipstick and mascara lie untouched next to her toothbrush, and for a moment Joan allows herself to be distracted by them, thinking that she must remember where they are when she is getting ready to give her statement to the press on Friday.
Always rouge, always darken, always pat
, Sonya used to say.
No situation was ever made worse by looking pretty
. Is that what Sonya would do if this was happening to her instead of Joan? Would she dress herself in fur, throw her hands in the air and deny everything?

Just thinking about Sonya makes Joan feel suddenly numb. She wonders, as she has often done, if Sonya ever made it back to Russia as she planned. And if she did, was she happy there? Is she still alive? Joan turns off the tap and scrutinises her reflection in the mirror, her eyes ice-blue against her pale skin. What a terribly lonely thing it is to grow old. She is not sure she would recommend it to anyone; outliving everyone she ever cared about, her husband, her sister, her friends; watching them fall away one by one, a slow closing-down of life and laughter.

Except for Nick, of course, and his family.

She has experienced loneliness before, although never like this. Never solitariness. She remembers those long days after Leo went back to Canada, when she lay on her bed and sobbed, allowing herself to weep as she never had before and never would again. She had hoped he might come to see her again after that last argument and beg her forgiveness, but he had not. The day of his departure to Canada came and went without any communication from him, and she had spent the next week feeling sick and hopelessly, deathly cold.

The war had continued to drag on in its dreary, terrifying manner; busy, restless years of sleepless nights and long hours at the laboratory, punctuated by tea dances and raffles and early-to-bed curfews. She did not write to Leo and he did not write to her, and Sonya's letters also dried up at around the same time, although Joan continued writing to her for a little while before deciding that there was no point. It was clear that Sonya had been informed of the rift between Joan and Leo and had chosen a side, and it astonished Joan to see how easily it could all unravel.