Red Joan (45 page)

By mid-morning, the police have cordoned off the front and side of the house, and there are cars and bikes jammed together at the end of the cul-de-sac. There are people milling around, setting up cameras and drinking coffee from flasks. Photographs are being taken of the front of the house, unassuming and pebble-dashed with net curtains and ornaments on the windowsill. The front door is made of solid oak and the narrow path cuts through a neat square of frost-covered grass, bordered by shrubs. A recycling bin stands empty at the front of the house and there is a microphone set up on the garden path.

Joan calls Nick's mobile again. Answer phone. She hangs up.

She feels an ache as she thinks of all the people she has loved: Max, her mother, her father, Lally. She imagines Lally's grown-up children, her nieces and nephew, watching the press conference on the television, calling each other afterwards to discuss their odd estranged aunt who never forgot a single birthday throughout their childhood, who always sent extravagant postal orders tucked into cards with koalas and kangaroos on the front, but who didn't come home for her own mother's funeral, and whose sister never forgave her for that. At least now they would know why she had always stayed away, even if it was too late to explain it to Lally. Would any of them call her afterwards? Would any of them forgive her?

No. And why should they?

She dresses carefully, selecting something neutral and smart. She puts on a lilac skirt and a cream blouse, and then ties a dark brown silk scarf around her neck. She slips on her tan-coloured mackintosh and buttons it up to the top. There is a handkerchief tucked into the bottom of her sleeve. Her shoes are black and practical-looking with Velcro straps. She stands in front of the mirror and looks at herself. She breathes out slowly.

She checks her watch. Two minutes. She goes into the hallway again and lifts the telephone receiver. She starts to dial Nick's number once more, but her hand is shaking too much. She puts the receiver down. It is too late now.

She walks to the front door. Behind it she can hear the hum of people talking, jostling, preparing. She unhooks the silver chain and puts her hand on the catch. She thinks that somewhere inside her she has always known that this is how it would end. Just her, alone with her terror.

But she also knows that it is no more than she deserves. She turns the catch and the door clicks open.

T
here is a strobe effect of all the cameras starting at once, freezing her in time. Joan steps forward and raises her hand to her chest, trying to calm the terrible pounding of her heart. She stands on the front step, and the door closes behind her. She scans the crowd for Nick but cannot see him anywhere. A young man wearing headphones and a brown duffel coat approaches to adjust the volume of the microphone, and then he steps back, grins and gives her a thumbs-up signal.

She lifts her eyes but the sight of so many people makes her feel giddy and she has to look down again. She had not expected such a mass of interest. Perhaps a local newspaper or two, but not this. There are proper news cameras accompanied by live reporters and huge sound receivers as well as journalists and photographers. She recognises an Australian news logo on one of the microphones, and then an American one, and there are many, many more she doesn't recognise. Ms. Hart and Mr Adams are poised at the side of the house, ready to intervene if necessary, along with the line of policemen stationed at intervals along the cordon. Her legs are unsteady. If she could just catch a glimpse of Nick's face . . .

An image of Sonya flits into her head, and for a moment she thinks how much better Sonya would be at this than she is. She would be enjoying all the attention. Joan can picture her standing on a doorstep somewhere, dressed in silk and diamonds, holding a cat under her arm and denying everything, and at last Joan's body floods with a terrible blend of anger and hurt at the memory of Sonya's betrayal. But the anger is not with Sonya. The anger is with herself for not seeing it in time, for ignoring the clues, for not warning Leo, for not holding him in her arms and telling him that he mustn't go to Moscow because Sonya was not to be trusted, for believing that Sonya would warn her if she was ever in danger. For not realising that Sonya did understand the rules because they were her rules, and really, they had both known that from the start. She had known it from the day Sonya took her to that woman's house and pushed her forwards, up the stairs, and told her never to tell anyone.

She takes a deep breath and the crowd falls silent, waiting for her to speak. She knows what she wants to say: that she does not agree with the principle of spying against one's country but these were unprecedented times. But when she tries to speak the words will not come. There are small flashes of black behind her eyes, infrequent at first but becoming gradually more regular so that now all she can see is a familiar watery darkness. She feels her heart falter and then her knees buckle beneath her. There is a rush of air as she falls. Is this it? she wonders. Am I dying? Is it really happening here, now, in front of all these people?

The porch step makes a snapping sound under her arm, the cold grey stone causing her to cry out in pain as her arm folds beneath her. There is a sudden burst of noise, a chatter of camera lenses buzzing and clicking as people jostle closer. She hears her name being called, but the noise is distant and irregular. Her head thrums as the waves of blackness swell and recede.

A hand is placed on her back, and a voice calls out for an ambulance. A blanket is laid over her and there is a tapping on her chest and arms. She slips in and out of consciousness, her mind swirling with memories of Leo and Sonya, until eventually she feels her body being rolled onto a stretcher. An oxygen mask is strapped across her face and now all she can think of is Max. Her body feels suddenly light and soft. Someone is holding her wrist and numbers are being called out. She is lifted up and jolted into the ambulance, her wrist still suspended in mid-air and held aloft by the paramedic. Why could she not just have agreed to Nick's plan? Why could she not just have given them what they wanted?

Her eyes flicker. Her heart is jumping in her chest. ‘Nick,' she whispers. ‘Nick.' She wants to pull the mask off her face but she cannot move her arms. One of them is strapped down and the other is twisted awkwardly across her stomach. There is a loud beeping noise on the monitor next to her. The paramedic sees her panic and lifts the mask a little, bending down so that he can hear her.

‘Nick,' she mouths.

The paramedic frowns uncomprehendingly at her. ‘Don't try to speak.' He tightens the mask over her face, and she hears the engine ignite. The siren sounds once and then stops, and a door slams somewhere near Joan's head. The ambulance starts to move.

It is over, she thinks. I will never see my son again. He will never know how it ended, or just how much I have loved him.

But then she feels the ambulance jerk to a halt and there is a sudden blast of cold air as the back door is flung open.

‘I'm sorry, you can't just open the door like that. We need Home Office consent for anyone to accompany her. Who are you?'

‘Nicholas Stanley, QC,' Nick announces, his voice rising above the sound of the engine and the hiss of the oxygen mask, curt and impatient as he steps up onto the platform at the back of the ambulance.

A pause. The paramedic is not expecting this. ‘Well, I'm afraid it's not normal practice for a patient's lawyer to . . . '

‘No, no, of course not,' Nick says abruptly, but when he speaks again his words fall on Joan like balm on an open wound. ‘But she's my mum and I'm going with her.'

 

The mink coat was a mistake. In Southampton it stands out like a small red poppy in a sea of green, but it is too heavy to carry along with her suitcase, and besides, at five-thirty in the morning, the streets are still dark enough for the fur to remain dull and coarse-looking. It could be fake fur. In fact, anyone who saw it would think it was. It wouldn't be real, not here among the dockyard warehouses and traffic. The sky is pink, shot through with tiny flares of orange. There is a milk cart weaving its way through the steady stream of dockers and passengers heading down towards the port. A slowly rising smell of fires and bread filters up among the cranes and funnels.

Impossible to think that the hotel room she has just left will be the last place she ever sleeps in her home country, that she will never again see her mother or sister or the house in which she grew up; that this is the end. Impossible to imagine that she is capable of running away like this, slipping off from one life to another. What will they say at the laboratory when they hear the story? Will Karen pretend she knew all along that something was going on, or will they simply be flabbergasted and silent, as they were last week when Max was arrested? No, she thinks, the silence would not last for long. Perhaps, if anything, Karen will be pleased for them both when she hears. Joan will send her a postcard when they settle in, explaining things. Explaining some things, to be precise. Not everything, of course.

She walks on down the hill towards the dockyard from which the boat will depart. William has arranged to transport Max personally from Brixton to Southampton as the official government escort. Her instructions are quite plain: she must meet them at the boarding station at 6
A.M.
precisely—no earlier, no later—and then he will see them onto the boat. There can be no deviation from this plan. It is risky enough as it is.

There is a beating in her chest. It is in her heart, in her lungs, in her head. It is not a pounding, even though she can feel the separate bursts of blood, but the beats are too small to be pounds, too regular. It is more of a ticking. Yes, that is what it is. Her whole body is ticking, marking off the seconds.

What if they don't come? She has her passport and enough money to buy a ticket for herself if they don't show up. In fact, if they don't, she would have no option but to go, as the only reason they would not come would be if something had gone wrong, if they had found some last minute evidence to implicate her, or if William had let them down, or if—she can hardly bear to think of the last possibility—Max had changed his mind and decided that he would prefer to tell the truth and clear his name rather than run away like this. And why wouldn't he? Tick, tick, tick.

A church bell rings, slowly, loudly. Six o'clock. She waits, counting the chimes. She feels a trembling along her spine. Nothing happens. She waits a little longer. A dark blue car turns into the wide cobbled street and approaches slowly, its windows opaque. Somewhere close by she hears the sound of a crane hauling a box of cargo up onto the boat. A sudden cough of smoke from one of the funnels. Tick, tick. A bus halts a little way down the road and begins to offload its passengers. The dark blue car pulls up in front of the bus, just a few feet away from Joan. This is it, she thinks. She pictures Max on the other side of the window, his hair prison-short, no longer fluffing up at the sides.

The driver's window opens. William's eyes are tired and bloodshot. He looks as if he has not slept for days. Joan approaches, resplendent in mink, her suitcase clasped in her hand. Her skin is hot, too hot, and her legs are suddenly weak.

‘Have you got him?' she asks, bending to look further into the car. Her view is obscured by William but she can see Max's hands resting on his thighs. His stillness unnerves her.

William nods. He hands her an envelope. Her fingers tremble as she opens it and checks the tickets. Two passengers; Southampton to Cairo, Cairo to Singapore and, finally, Singapore to Sydney. She takes out her new passport and runs her finger over the name. Joan Margery Stanley. She opens Max's new passport and checks that too. George Stanley. Not entirely new but a common enough name for some overlap not to matter, and enough of a difference to allow him a fresh start, albeit on the condition that he never again returns to Britain. Birth certificates, marriage certificate, employers' references. It is all there. And at the bottom of the envelope, a St. Christopher's medal with a note stapled to the chain. She will look at the note later.

‘Thank you,' she whispers. ‘How can I ever repay you?'

‘Never tell anyone,' he whispers. ‘That's all I ask. And burn the photograph.'

Joan shakes her head. She reaches into her pocket and hands the photograph to him. ‘I thought you might like to do it,' she says. ‘That's the only copy, as far as I know.'

William smiles and slips it into the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘Thank you.' He turns to Max, still sitting motionless beside him, and touches him on the arm. ‘Time to go, Professor.'

William winds the window up, his job done. The two men shake hands, and then Max gets out of the car and walks around to take his suitcase from the boot. He does not look at Joan as he does so, not even a glance or a nod to give any indication of what he is thinking. Has he changed his mind? Does he want his old life back now after all? Perhaps he will say it once William has gone, hand her over to the authorities at Customs, tell her that he cannot believe she ever thought she'd get away with it. Or . . .

But the next thought does not have time to form itself in Joan's mind, because just at that moment Max closes the car boot and looks straight at her, his blue eyes glittering in the dim glow of the dawn, and he is smiling, grinning even, and in another second his arms are around her waist and he is lifting her, snatching her up like a leaf caught in the wind, and holding her so tightly that she can hardly breathe (‘I'm sorry,' she whispers into his neck, ‘I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry') and her suitcase and coat must be making her heavy but he doesn't seem to notice because he is laughing, and then suddenly so is she, both of them giddy like children. He puts her down and they begin to walk—it is almost a run—up the wooden steps and onto the boat, turning at the top of the steps to see William flash the car headlamps in farewell and, for a brief moment, Joan lets go of Max's hand so that she can put her fingers to her lips and blow William a kiss.