Blood Red, Snow White (18 page)

Was it when we moved to the country? Maybe life was too dull for her. Maybe that’s why she’d had to invent all the nonsense that she did.

We talked on and reminisced about our days in London, and with a shock I realized I was enjoying myself. It was a shock, because it was the last thing I had expected.

Eventually, I began to yawn and decided to turn in for the night.

I made my way upstairs.

I passed Tabitha’s room, and then paused briefly at the next door, which stood open. That had been our room. I mean Ivy’s and mine. It looked the same as ever, but it was not mine anymore. I moved on down the corridor to the guest room, and in the dark, I undressed and slipped into bed.

*   *   *

Next morning I was woken by Tabitha jumping on the bed.

“Daddy, wake up! It’s so late!”

I rolled out of bed and forced my eyes open, then fixing Tabitha with one eye, pretended to fall back asleep like a plank hitting the deck.

She laughed, tugging my hands to pull me up.

“Careful, you’ll have them off!”

I sat up and made Tabitha a deal.

“Let me have a bath and then we’ll do whatever you want. Agreed?”

“I want to go and lie in the grass in the sunshine and sing songs,” she said. “It’s a lovely sunny day.”

I looked out of the window.

“Yes, it is. But it’s also November, and I think lying in the grass may not be a good idea.”

I raised a hand to silence her protests.

“However, we can go for a walk and dance and sing songs instead.”

“Hooray!”

“That’s a yes, is it?”

“Yes, it is,” she said. “Now do get in the bath, Daddy.”

“Yes, Miss.”

Tabitha made a very solemn face.

“And do wash everywhere, won’t you?”

I took my bath and ate a quick breakfast, informing Tabitha that I had indeed done my duty and laid right down in the bathwater. On the sideboard lay a stack of newspapers that I had ordered. I made out the word “Russia” in a headline and leaned across to pull it over, when I caught Ivy’s eye. She looked from me to Tabitha, who was already putting her shoes on, and with an effort I pushed the paper back into place with the others.

I finished some toast, pulled on my boots and made for the door.

I turned. Ivy stood by the table.

“Coming?” I said.

She hesitated.

“Come on,” Tabitha said. “Just a little walk.”

“Bring the camera,” I added, and Ivy nodded.

She smiled.

*   *   *

We walked up the lane and saw that Tabitha was right. It was a lovely sunny day, and we were easily warm enough without coats. Tabitha took my hand and began to dance about, lifting one leg and then the other like a demented sailor.

I danced, too, laughing and singing a song I made up on the spot. It wasn’t very good but it made Tabitha giggle and once she’d started, Ivy couldn’t help joining in.

“Here,” said Ivy. “Let me take a photograph. Arthur, help me set it up.”

I took the camera from her and still dancing like a lunatic fiddled with the iris and shutter settings.

“That should do it,” I sang, and rejoined Tabitha under the big oak at the top of the hill.

“I want a photograph of us dancing!” Tabitha declared.

“You’ll have to keep still,” Ivy called. “You’ll come out all fuzzy if you’re moving like that.”

“Right, Tab, you’ve got to pretend to dance, get it? Or the camera will get confused. That’s it, one leg in the air. Wait for me. Okay! Ivy! Quick!”

We just about held on while Ivy took a shot, then collapsed on the ground, laughing ourselves silly.

“Let’s dance again,” Tabitha said. “Please?”

“No more!” I protested as we picked ourselves up. “No more for now. But just think, in the photograph we’ll always be dancing.”

“That’s true,” she said, thoughtfully, and suddenly she seemed much older than her years. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

*   *   *

On the way home, we picked up sticks and branches from the woods to have a fire. We were nearly at the house when I turned to see Tabitha dragging a massive branch, as long as she was tall.

“Here, Babba,” I called, “let me give you a hand.”

Tabitha turned around.

“Don’t call me Babba, either!” she said, so seriously I didn’t know if she was joking or not.

She grinned, stuck her tongue out and ran into the house, laughing.

There and then I cursed myself a hundred times. How could I have done it? How could I ever have left her? She was delightful, funny, and pretty. But more than that she was my daughter, and I, her father, had all but left by the back door when she was asleep.

I never wanted to leave her, but it didn’t stop the guilt, and feeling like a bad dog, sick to my bones, I slunk into the house.

*   *   *

That evening, as I tucked Tabitha into bed, she held my hand.

“Daddy?”

“What is it?”

“Are you going to stay forever?”

“It’s not that simple,” I said, and already hated myself.

“Why not?” she asked, not cross, simply innocent. But she was right: Why wasn’t it that simple?

“Some things are complicated, and one of those things is my job. I may have to go back to Russia.”

“Is it very far to Russia?” she asked.

“Very far.”

“Farther than London?”

“About a hundred times as far. Across the sea and across the land.”

“Oh,” she said.

“But listen, Tab. I’ll always be your father, and I’ll always love you.”

“I’ll always love you, too.”

“Goodnight,” I said, quickly kissed her forehead, and left.

I went downstairs and picked up the newspapers, and read about Russia, so very far away.

14

WHAT A FARCE IT ALL WAS!

That whole episode with the Americans, that trip home, the first in eighteen months. Once again my mind had been occupied with seeing Tabitha, seeing Mother, and England, and I’d been blissfully unaware of the nonsense going on behind my back. It was only years later that I learned some of the details. How someone in London had given orders to the Finnish police that I be arrested if I tried to cross their borders, and that I should be locked up in a Finnish jail, without informing the local British Embassy. How I traveled with Bullitt and Steffens, as one of their party, so the Finns let me through, unaware of who I was. How the Finns then arrested the agent tailing me, locked him in a jail cell without informing the local British Embassy, and refused to believe his protestations that he wasn’t Arthur Ransome.

Even when I got to England the farce didn’t stop. The Secret Service lost track of me once or twice, as I crossed Scandinavia and caught a boat to Newcastle, though when I got to King’s Cross I was approached by a plainclothes man and asked to accompany him to Police Headquarters.

At Scotland Yard, I was being grilled by the Chief Superintendent, a man named Thomson, when the phone on his desk rang. He listened briefly, opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, then put down the receiver without saying a word.

“That,” he said, with a heavy sigh, “was our man in Newcastle.”

“Really,” I said.

“Yes,” said Thomson. “He tells me that Arthur Ransome will be arriving on a boat in Newcastle tomorrow…”

“I see,” I said, and grinned.

Thomson sighed again.

“Bloody, bloody fools,” he said, and then laughed.

With the ice broken, Thomson dropped the hard-man routine. We talked about fishing for a while and then he told me I was free to go. I found him a charming man.

*   *   *

I went to see my mother, who was down in Kent, recovering from an eye operation. She was well, in spite of a nasty bruise lingering around her eye, but that was the moment when I realized she was old. We talked about Geoff, but strangely found there wasn’t much to say. Over a year had gone by since it had happened, and over six months since I’d found out, and the pain had crept away into a dark corner inside us both, I think.

“If I had lost both of you…” was all she would say.

“It’s good to see you,” I said. “To be home.”

She smiled.

“But where is home for you, Arthur? It’s not here in Kent, is it? It’s not with Ivy anymore. With Tabitha.”

I winced, but didn’t deny it, because she was right.

“The Lakes,” I said, firmly. “The Lakes are my home.”

“The Lakes,” she echoed. “Then what of Russia? What of your Russian lover?”

If Mother had been unable to see my letters, I knew then that someone must have read them to her.

“What about her? Is your home not with her?”

I hesitated.

“It will be,” I said. “I will go back to her and then … I don’t know. I don’t know. But the Lakes will be my home again, one day. They have to be.” She slipped her hand from under mine and rang a tiny bell on the tray beside her.

“I hope so, Arthur,” she said, “and I hope I’m there with you, but remember, home is where you can be with the one you love. Now, do you want some tea?”

*   *   *

I went to the Lakes, and saw some good, old friends. And I saw friends of the human kind, too, who were delightfully disinterested in dead Tsars and Revolutions.

Summer was coming early and I walked for miles above Windermere and Coniston, the heavens above my head and the earth beneath my walking boots. I thought of Evgenia often, and smiled, but one day I tried to picture her face, and with shock realized I couldn’t.

I sat on a rock, brooding. Coniston Water lay stretched like a silver finger in the early evening light. It was an utterly beautiful landscape, serene and perfect as only nature at a distance can be. Back in Moscow the streets would still be filthy and the river reeking as it always was in summer, yet here the day was mild, and the air fresh; the whole world was green and blue. Moscow would be gray, and red. I tried to imagine myself there, and failed. Then I tried to imagine that I had ever been in Petrograd, either, and to my surprise, I failed again.

A chill spread up my spine as I tried to remember that I had ever lived in Russia, that I had ever been there, that I knew Robert. Or Evgenia. I came closer to home and tried to remember that I had ever been happily married, that I had ever loved Ivy.

I failed it all.

Then with a cold hand descending on my heart, I tried to believe that I still had a daughter, a happy little thing called Tabitha.

And I failed.

*   *   *

When I came off the hills that night I went straight to my room and packed my case. Next day I caught a train south, to London, and then another out to Hampshire, to see my daughter.

15

COMINGS AND GOINGS.

It had been a long trip already; leaving Evgenia in Moscow, the pointlessness of Bullitt and Steffens’ mission, seeing Mother, walking in the Lakes. And now to Hatch.

The last contact I’d had from Ivy was a letter in Stockholm. It had been a reply to one of mine pressing her for a divorce, and it had been, unsurprisingly, a fairly uncompromising letter. But I needed to see Tabitha.

It had been so long, but though I felt the time like a huge gulf, Tabitha was as pleased to see me as ever. I had to work hard to keep my promise not to say how tall she’d grown.

I bit my tongue, and smiled at Tabitha.

“Here. I’ve got you something.”

From behind my back I pulled out a long, and very thin parcel that I’d brought with me.

“If you can’t guess from the shape of it,” I said, “I’ve obviously bought the wrong thing.”

Tabitha looked as if she was racking her brains, but I could see she was teasing me.

“What can it be? I wonder, I wonder, I wonder … It’s no good, I’ll just have to open it.”

She laughed, pulling the brown paper from around the segments of the fishing rod.

“It’s a small one, but a proper one,” I said. “We can go down to the river tomorrow and try it.”

Tabitha smiled.

“All right,” she said, looking at Ivy. “Is that all right, Mother?”

*   *   *

Maybe it wasn’t the best idea. But Tabitha did seem to want to go fishing. We went down to the Little Nadder, and it was a fine summer day, warm as you could wish for. I showed Tabitha how to use the rod, and how to be silent. We pushed out on the water, in a hired boat, letting the boatman guide us to what he thought would be the best spot.

“It’s very important to be quiet,” I said, “and you mustn’t let your shadow fall on the water, or the fish will know you’re here.”

She nodded, and I showed her how to thread a worm onto the hook. She pulled a face, but she did it without fuss.

We fished. Tabitha caught minnows, and I caught nothing, until finally I conjured up a huge pike, which I pulled snapping into the boat.

Tabitha shrieked, and the boatman grabbed the fish. He tried to stun it, but messed it up, and then took a long time clubbing the pike until it stopped moving.

Tabitha buried her face in her hands and howled; I was about to tell her it was all right when something surfaced in my memory, something about a small boy hearing the screams of a hare after his father had winged it.

“Take us in,” I said to the boatman, and we went silently home.

*   *   *

I stayed at Hatch another day or so, and as much as I wanted to spend time with Tabitha, I had to leave. It was doing no good, anyway. On more than one occasion Tabitha had caught Ivy and me arguing about the divorce, the final time standing quietly in the doorway of the kitchen for God knows how long until we saw her.

I knew then there could never have been a solution for Ivy and me. And as for Tabitha, I could be a better father to her from a distance than I could under the same roof as her mother. Maybe. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking. Either way, the facts were unaltered.

So I went, and once again, made my farewells to my daughter. This time, though, something had changed. In the past, the sadness had only been mine. Now, I saw it tinged Tabitha, too, like the touch of a disease. And for the sadness of this sickness I knew there was no cure.

No cure, just the palliative of love.