Free Dominion by C. J. Sansom

a meeting we’ve been asked to arrange. A bit delicate. Some of the SS officials at the German embassy want to meet with
appropriate staff from South Africa House, to look at whether aspects of apartheid might be useful in organizing the Russian population. I wonder if you could arrange that tomorrow. It’s just
bilateral liaison, low-level at this stage. Keep it quiet, would you?’
    David thought he saw a flicker of distaste cross Hubbold’s face when he mentioned the SS. But he had no idea where Hubbold stood politically, if anywhere; anybody politically suspect had
been weeded out of the Civil Service years ago, along with the Jews. Civil servants had always discussed politics between themselves in a detached, superior way but these days they tended to avoid
even the hint of commitment to anything at all unless speaking with friends they trusted.
    ‘I’ll speak to the South Africans tomorrow.’ He left, his hands shaking slightly as he walked down the corridor.
    He arrived home just before six. Sarah was sitting knitting in front of the fire. He held out a large bunch of Michaelmas daisies he had bought from a stall on the way home.
‘Peace offering,’ he said. ‘For last Sunday. I was a pig.’
    She got up and kissed him. ‘Thanks. Good afternoon’s tennis?’
    ‘Not bad. I left my kit to be washed there.’
    ‘How’s Geoff?’
    ‘All right.’
    ‘You look tired.’
    ‘Just the exercise. What was the film like?’
    ‘Very good.’
    ‘It’s getting foggy out.’ He hesitated. ‘How was Irene?’
    ‘She’s all right.’ Sarah smiled. ‘We saw some Jive Boys in Piccadilly, and that got her going a bit.’
    ‘I can imagine.’ The two of us speak so stiffly now, he thought. On an impulse, he said, ‘Look, why don’t we re-wallpaper those stairs?’
    Her body seemed to relax with relief. ‘Oh, David, I wish we could.’
    He hesitated, then said, ‘Somehow I’ve felt – if we did it then we might come to forget him.’
    She came across and hugged him. ‘We won’t ever forget. You know that. Never.’
    ‘Perhaps everything’s forgotten, in time.’
    ‘No. Even if one day we managed to have another baby, we’d never forget Charlie.’
    David said, ‘I wish I believed in God, could believe Charlie still existed, in some afterlife.’
    ‘I wish that too.’
    ‘But there’s only this life, isn’t there?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. She smiled bravely. ‘Only one. And we have to do the best we can with it.’

Chapter Five
    F RANK SAT LOOKING THROUGH the window at the grounds of the mental hospital, the sodden lawn and empty flowerbeds. It had been raining since early
morning, hard and steady. The drug they gave him, the Largactil, made him feel calm and sleepy most of the time. In the Admissions Block he had been on a large dose, but after he was stabilized and
had moved to a main ward, they reduced the dose and in his mind now the periods of dull calmness were sometimes broken by violent flashes of memory: the school; Mrs Baker and her spirit guide; how
his hand had become crippled. He suspected he was getting used to the drug, lessening its effect, but he did not want to go back on a larger dose because he needed his mind to be clear enough to
keep his secret.
    He had come into a little side room off the main ward that Monday morning, the quiet room as it was called, partly because the other patients frightened him, and also to get away from the
overwhelming smell of cigarettes. Frank had never smoked. At school he knew he couldn’t dare join the other boys smoking behind the boiler room; tobacco had passed him by like so much else.
The patients were constantly wheedling the staff for tobacco, a Woodbine or just a dog-end. The hospital ceilings were all brown with it. He sat in an armchair, which, like all the hospital
furniture, was huge, old and heavy. His right hand hurt, as it often did when it rained, pain coursing through the two damaged fingers, shrunken and claw-like.
    It