He pulled back from the microphone and, like a ballet, behind him the other Secretaries filed on from the sides. Kim Philby and Arthur Wynn took their seats at the side of the dais. They looked self-assured. Today was the day they jostled for public recognition, building popularity among the people, while their backroom deals for influence stayed hidden. Yet someone was missing: the Secretary for Information, Guy Burgess, never appeared. And he was said to be the most ambitious of all.
‘Have they purged Burgess already?’ I heard someone snigger. ‘Gone like Cairncross?’
‘Shut up,’ a woman muttered angrily.
The man must have been drunk. Nobody dared mention John Cairncross in public these days. Not since he had been caught sabotaging our industrial effort in order to aid the Americans. His trial had been broadcast on the radio, and he had famously broken down in tears when the verdict was announced, mumbling an apology to the nation that he had betrayed for money. At the end, it was said that he had looked up towards the public gallery, as if hoping to spot someone there, but the only spectators were feverishly clapping the judgement.
Blunt’s speech boomed for half an hour through the damp air. He spoke of our place in the world and our commitment to the peoples of other nations before returning, at the end, to ourselves. ‘We are pioneers,’ he said, his voice alive with self-belief. ‘Ahead of us is a new land of equality and justice and plenty for all, where the people who create the wealth have equal shares in that wealth, instead of being forced to stand by and see it leached away by birth right and privilege.’ The crowd bristled with energy at his words. ‘Yes, we are pioneers of a new land, yes, we are pioneers of a new, better humanity!’ And they burst out in cheers, men and women crying for their golden future. The Red Guards fired into the air. And again. And again.
And yet, when Blunt retired to a wall of applause led by Comrade Philby, who thanked the First Secretary for his inspirational words, he had been on his feet for far less time than in previous years. That sign, we all knew, would be pored over in the privacy of people’s homes that evening – not to mention at the DUK’s London headquarters in St James’s Palace.
Among all the joy I was itching to leave, and as soon as I felt I could do so without turning up too early and worrying Kenneth, I pushed my way through the crowd and down a street leading in the direction of the Thames. The road turned out to hold a picture house that, like all the cinemas that day, was showing Lorelei’s crowning glory, Victory 1945. It was one of a triple bill with Charlie Chaplin’s old anti-capitalist satire Modern Times and the new one he had produced since moving back to the Republic from Hollywood, The Old Soldier, in which a thinly disguised Churchill rants all day at his peaceful and bemused neighbours and ends up shovelling himself into a hole that he can’t get out of.
There was something queer about the street, though. It was filled not with the normal mix of damp people and dirty vehicles, but with a hundred former army motorbikes, all painted black. Their riders sported old-fashioned clothes and greased-up hair: Teddy Boys, many with girls perched behind them on the machines. They swarmed like bees around the entrance to the cinema and there was a constant buzz of engines as more arrived or departed.
I should have expected to see Lorelei’s image that day, of course, but still it was a shock suddenly to come across it on the film’s poster outside the cinema. I had seen it in her house after her death but out in public like this it seemed almost to bring her back to life.
I hadn’t watched the film since meeting Nick, because seeing her light up the screen would only have made me more envious of all that she had, and left me wondering again what Nick could possibly see in me. But, as I stared at the poster, her character rousing her resistance cell to rise up against the Nazis, something fell into place like a tumbler in a lock. Tibbot had said there would be a key to decipher the book code. Well, there it was, I was sure, right in front of me. Lorelei’s face was whispering it: whispering the name of the film. Victory 1945. Victory Nineteen Forty-Five.
‘I think you’re lost,’ a voice close to me said. It was an oily-haired boy, little older than the ones I had tried, with mixed success, to interest in Romeo and Juliet. ‘This is our street. Not yours.’
‘Not now,’ I said. I couldn’t tear my eyes from Lorelei’s.
He seemed taken aback. ‘Yes, now.’
‘Come on, Alfie,’ called one of the girls. ‘Just tell her to piss off.’
I looked at her. ‘I used to teach little girls like you,’ I said. ‘I used to rap them across the knuckles with a ruler.’
Her friends hooted with laughter at my words and the boy broke into a grin. ‘I like you,’ he said, making a low, sweeping bow. ‘Yeah, I think I like you. All right, where you going?’ I pointed to the picture-house entrance. It was surrounded by the other Teddies like a guard. He started leading me towards it. ‘Right, you sods, out the way. Lady coming through.’ He pulled a few out of my path and I made it to the doorway to stare at the poster and Lorelei’s image, working things out. From inside the cinema, there was a chaos of shouting – it looked like the management were trying, and failing, to maintain order while the Teddies were milling around, throwing drinks and food from the kiosk, juggling with bottles of milk. A man in a suit kept shouting that he had called the police. I could hear the film playing; it must have been the scene in which the Archangel arrives – there were gunshots and explosions, cheers from the auditorium. ‘This is our Liberation Day,’ chuckled Alfie.
There were dissidents in our society. There were the intellectuals who opposed the regime, citing long-dead philosophers – they usually got one warning before they were shipped off to be re-educated, their homes requisitioned and their families moved into the worst houses, without running water. And there was an underground of those who took more direct action: digging escape tunnels under the wall, trying to organize trades unions or holding up half-hearted banners like the couple in Liberation Square. But it hadn’t occurred to me that there were some who were open about their rebellion. They stood their ground with their clothes and their motorbikes, instead of political theories and clandestine meetings. If there was a vanguard of defiance, here they were.
I became aware of a ripple of movement outside. A rising of voices to match those within the building. A wave of noise – the Teddies shouting to one another, kicking their motorbikes into life. Alfie dropped his hand from my back and stared at the end of the street, where a commotion was flying towards us through the smog. Scores of policemen were rushing down, batons out, swiping left and right, knocking many of the boys to the floor. Their girlfriends screamed.
‘The Bogeys. Blades up!’ Alfie yelled over my shoulder into the cinema. His shout was echoed and magnified within the walls until it became a roar. I felt a chill. On the few occasions I had seen real violence close to me – once a fight with broken bottles outside my local pub, once when the Nazis had caught a member of the Home Guard – I had felt every blow in my own flesh. The prospect of it happening scores of times in front of me made my chest clench around my ribs. As one, the boys snatched inside their jackets and back pockets for brass knuckles or knives, clicking out the blades and sprinting in defence of their friends.