I hung up. I hoped she would be too worried about the consequences of having said too much to report it.
Up in Nick’s study, I found a big red volume filled with his expansive looping hand. His handwriting was often hard to read, but with a bit of effort I managed to make out Honeysette’s address in Brixton, the commuter edge of London. Victorian clerks living there had taken trains to their jobs in the City, but it was better known now for its prison, where low-level political criminals sat out their sentences.
I stepped out on to the landing, already planning my journey, when a sound reached my ears – Hazel was in the hall talking to someone. ‘…W-S-O-N. Yes, that’s right,’ she was saying. I quickly descended the stairs and she looked at me, startled, lowering her hand with the telephone receiver.
‘Who are you talking to?’ I said.
‘It’s…’
I looked at her, waiting for an answer. Then I took the handset and lifted it to my ear. ‘Hello? Who is this?’
A woman on the other end replied, ‘National Security Police.’ She sounded annoyed. ‘Who are you?’
I slammed the telephone down. ‘What are you doing?’ I demanded.
Hazel looked scared and retreated a step. ‘I wanted to help. I thought I could find some way to help get Dad out.’
For a second, I was speechless, chilled by the danger of what she could have said if I hadn’t stopped her. I took her by the shoulders, trying to keep calm. ‘You can’t speak to anyone about this! Do you hear? It’s very dangerous. It will make things worse for your father.’ I paused, doing my best to soften. ‘Hazel, I know you want to get your dad out, but you have to leave it to the adults.’
‘You’re not doing it, though,’ she said. It wasn’t bitter, nor was it an accusation, just a simple statement with the logic of a fourteen-year-old.
I wanted to explain but I didn’t have time. ‘Look, I know why you’re saying that. I do. But I’m doing all I can and I can’t tell you about it. Now, it would help me to help your dad if I can go out and leave you just to sit in your room and not do anything else.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No, you can’t.’
She looked frustrated. ‘All right. But will you tell me what you’re doing?’
‘Later. Please, please, just stay in the house and don’t speak to anyone.’
After watching her retreat to her room, I went out on to the street, shaken by what she had almost done. I just hoped to God she wouldn’t try anything like that again.
Honeysette’s house was a solid-looking place, a few doors down from a row of bombed-out buildings where two vagrants were huddled at the back of the rubble, wrapping themselves in sheets and attempting to get a fire going from some broken wood they had scavenged. There was a lot of grey smoke but little flame. Compared to the thrilling colourful trips I had made to this city as a child, modern London often seemed like a flickering black-and-white newsreel.
I pressed the bell and steeled myself. It was risky, but if he refused to help Nick, or even to speak to me, I would threaten to expose him. The door opened to reveal Honeysette wearing an overcoat, about to go out. He blinked, clearly surprised to see me, and glanced nervously over my shoulder before taking me inside without a word.
His large, warm parlour was decorated with pictures of Marx, Engels and Blunt, and with stacks of books all around. They were everywhere – old and new volumes – as was the sweet smell of cherry tobacco. I couldn’t help but think of my father, who had infused our little house with the same scent. Comrade Honeysette stood upright in the centre of the room with his arms by his sides, waiting for me to say something.
‘We met at–’ I began.
‘Yes, I remember.’
‘I’m here on my husband’s behalf.’
‘He sent you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’ He was suspicious.
I thought it best to face him down; it was less risky than an excuse that could fall apart under scrutiny. ‘He has business to attend to. It can’t wait. And neither can I.’
He stared at me, evidently weighing up the situation. ‘You know what this concerns?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
He paused. ‘Then tell me.’
I kept myself in check as much as I could. There was only one thing I could think of. ‘Orders from America.’
He pursed his lips, considering. He seemed to take in the expression on my face, the way I was standing.
‘All right,’ he said after a while, although he didn’t seem entirely relaxed.
With his back to me, he went to a polished wooden box on the mantelpiece, opened it and took out a brown envelope. He placed something in it that I couldn’t see and handed it to me, hesitating just for a brief moment. I lifted the flap and looked inside. It held two five-pound notes. It was all so strange and I had no idea what I was supposed to do with them. There was little point leaving with them, though – they told me nothing. I tried to fill the pause, hoping he would say more so I could better understand the situation. ‘Do you have a message for Nick?’
‘No, that covers it,’ he said, indicating the envelope and apparently waiting for me to do something, tell him something, take something – leave?
I tried to think of anything else to say or do. The wait became impossible and I began to lose control. I opened my mouth to speak but could only stutter the beginnings of words. I was utterly at a loss.
His eyes widened as realization dawned on him. Wildly, he snatched the money back. ‘Get out!’ he ordered me.
I didn’t know what to do. He began to push me hard towards the door; he wasn’t a strong man but he was stronger than me.
‘Nick’s been arrested,’ I said urgently. He stopped dead and stared at me. Then he pushed me again, harder. ‘You have to help him.’
‘Just get out!’
‘Please help him.’ He pulled the door open and shoved me to the threshold. ‘Just put me in touch with people who can help. I’ll give NatSec your name if you don’t!’ I did my best to sound as if I would go through with it.
He threw me out and I stumbled over the step as he slammed the door. I tried knocking although I knew he wouldn’t answer. The house might as well have been empty and boarded up. Not wanting to draw the attention of the neighbours, I walked away, but only to the end of the street, where I waited, thinking. For once the smog was a blessing, as it hid me.
Ten minutes later, with the cold seeping through my limbs, I saw him emerge. I planned to follow him but he opened up his garage, jumped in a car and drove off, so that I saw only his rear lights glowing as they sped away.
On the way home, I stopped to sit on a wooden bench to think. Above it, a hoarding depicted the Needle road as the tip of an actual syringe, literally sucking the blood out of the RGB.
Schoolchildren filed past me towards a large secondary school, and I deliberated whether, if I never saw Nick again, looking after Hazel would be a role that I could take on indefinitely. That would be if they let me, of course – the state often took away the children of dissidents, raising them in communal schools to drain them of their parents’ divergent views.
It was a daunting prospect. After all, I had no experience of actually bringing up a child, and fourteen was probably the hardest age of all to take on – she would be old enough to rebel against my edicts but not yet able to take responsibility for her own. How would I deal with that? With great difficulty, I imagined.
The sound of the radio buzzed down from Hazel’s room when I got home around eleven o’clock. Churchill was speaking. ‘I walked through Regent’s Park this morning to breathe the fresh air of freedom. It is a simple thing to walk along the road without fear, without let or hindrance,’ he rumbled. ‘To know that the man or woman that you pass is a friend and not the bully-boy agent of a state that treats its own citizens as the enemy. And so, to my friends on the other side of that ugly scar on the face of our nation, I say only this: courage. Courage, for…’ And then the Internationale broke in with a loud and tinny whining, as our jamming stations locked on to the frequency.