The White Russian (22 page)

‘Yes, Constance did me nothing but good, all the time I knew her,’ she said, and though I could still hear anguish in her voice, I thought I could also hear something steelier. She sat up, drawing back the billowing breasts. ‘God bless her.

‘But her tragic death has interrupted the last wonderful thing she did for me,’ she went on, and something smooth and prepared in what followed set me on my guard. ‘Maybe I have already mentioned that she was funding a gramophone recording of my voice? I hoped it would be a new lease of life for my career. Move with the times, she told me, and she paid for the use of a wonderful German Magnetophon. How happy she was to help me, and how happy I was to receive this wonderful help from my dear friend …’

She eyed me. ‘But now it might never happen.’

I stayed still and kept my face uncomprehending. I still so wanted her to be, for another few minutes at least, that comforting maternal presence, wiping away my tears. And I wanted to go away and think, in my own time, about her lost son being called Zhenya, and what that might mean. I didn’t want her to shake me down for money for her recording. But I could see it coming.

She sighed. ‘When she died, I think the company took away the equipment from her apartment, and anyway the last payments have still to be made before the edit can be completed. I saw nothing at the apartment at her funeral.’

She took my hands. Any minute now, I thought, feeling manipulated and claustrophobic at her touch, yet ungrateful too, she’ll just ask me straight out to complete the payments.

Quickly, loosening her grip on my hands, I got up. I knew I probably would end up paying for that recording, but I didn’t want to be railroaded into agreeing to it now. I didn’t want to agree as a result of the warmth I’d felt from her while she was wiping away my tears. I wanted it to be a sound decision, taken calmly.

‘So that’s something you’d like me to look into,’ I said – smiling, but with infinitely more distance than a few minutes before, ‘while I’m going through Grandmother’s papers? Of course I will. And now …’ I bowed my head again, trying to hide my disappointment behind at least a brittle imitation of politeness. ‘Thank you … but I must run.’

But I happened to meet her eyes as I turned away, and was stricken by the panicky look of loss in them. Even if she was just manipulating my emotions to get me to pay for something, I could see she was also genuinely frightened of what lay ahead for her without that recording. And how kind – more than kind – she’d been.

I patted her shoulder as I passed. I didn’t want to commit myself. But I didn’t want to leave her without hope. ‘Leave it with me,’ I said. ‘I’ll try and work something out.’

General Miller was tweaking the points of his moustaches. How tiresome the boy could be: dogged and repetitive, with that angry look in his eye.

‘So are you absolutely sure there are no secrets you should be telling me?’

Miller patted the air down under his hands at waist height, as if smoothing down his son’s feelings and massaging them away. That had been all that was needed, once. For a moment, remembering, he felt nostalgia for the great simplicity of that time in the woods, when Jean had still been a skinny dark-haired urchin, soaking up that gesture with his great, burning, trusting eyes, pale as water, wanting nothing more than to believe everything Miller told him.

‘No, don’t do that,’ Jean said now. ‘Just answer me.’

Wondering rather uneasily if there were any way Jean could possibly have got wind of anything about his relationship with poor Constance, or even about the awkward visit yesterday from that girl, Constance’s American relative – but no, that would be quite impossible, surely – Miller twirled his moustaches and smiled his blandest smile.

‘I do wish, dear boy,’ he said, ‘that I could at least offer you a drink.’

Because, if he
were
to tell the other news, the news his professional mind was concentrating on, which was keeping at bay everything he might otherwise have allowed himself to feel about Constance’s death, they’d want to raise a toast to the future, wouldn’t they? And a proper toast, too, not a damn glass of milk.

‘Father,’ Jean said warningly. ‘I can see in your eyes there’s something. Come on.’

And so, in the end, he broadened his smile and began, ‘Perceptive of you, dear boy, because, as a matter of fact, I
do
have some rather exciting news …’ and he’d told him the whole story of the letter from Canaris, head of the Abwehr, offering German support to ROVS. The Germans behind us! Skoblin’s hard work repaid! All we have to do is satisfy the two agents who are on their way to Paris, right now, that we’ve thought everything through; there’ll be secret talks in the next few days and then an alliance against the Bolsheviks in time for the coming war – and, soon, Victory! The Future!

He couldn’t say those phrases himself without skipping through the whole necessary-evil phase of war – planning, advances and all the rest of it – and straight on to imagining himself watching a vast, familiar, yearned-for panorama fade into twilight, and the tremendous satisfaction of smelling the moss and melancholy of a summer nightfall, where he belonged. The scent of the pines. A great hurrah.

But he couldn’t say the phrases to Jean without a twinge of nervousness, either, because the boy had his own bookish views, learned from all those night courses he’d been on,
no doubt, and those writers he was currently following around, which no doubt he’d grow out of in time – it was all a question of age and maturity, surely. But still, the boy and he didn’t always see eye to eye on the really important questions, and the last thing he wanted, with something as important as this, was some foolish quarrel.

So he was already shaking his head and smiling warningly even before Jean began to speak, while his young eyes were still threatening and his fists clenching and unclenching, before he’d even got out that first ill-considered yelp: ‘What – you don’t really mean you’re going to make a deal with the Nazis?’

Because, really, what could a boy know of high politics?

Jean

So
this
was the secret. Not a love affair, or not only.
This
was what Father and Skoblin had been muttering about the other night. I shouldn’t be half this shocked. I should have guessed. They’d been angling for some sort of support from Germany for years. I’d just never thought for a moment that they had a hope in Hell. I should have been paying more attention.

For one appalled moment, I told myself that what Father was saying, with that foolish don’t-oppose-me-dear-boy smile clamped on his face, must surely have been Skoblin’s idea – or anyone’s, anyone’s, except his.

And then, before I could stop it, a mental picture of Evie imitating Father with a Hitler salute and the mocking words ‘Herr Schickelgruber’ flashed into my mind. She’d been right, then. Odious, vile, smug … but right. The thought made me hot with rage and cold with humiliation
all at once; and, at the same time, filled me with a new protectiveness towards Father, who shouldn’t be mocked like that; who, though misguided, was a good man, deep down.

With an effort, I put her out of my mind, knowing I could never speak to her again.

Or I tried. Because she was still lingering there, like an unquiet ghost, which meant that for a moment I actually thought of arguing against Father’s plan on principle.

But then the hopelessness of it struck me. It would mean nothing to Father that I found the notion of that German alliance morally repulsive. He simply wouldn’t hear if I started telling him what my friends, just out of Berlin, had been telling me – which, in my mind, I’d coalesced down to two or three images. Triumphant yobs in uniform picking out their victims; a bowed old man going down under their fists here; a window smashing into a thousand pieces there … Or Schickelgruber himself, spitting and howling at a crowd of fools under a giant swastika, turning that gentle land of music and philosophers and students into a brute wilderness where the bully-boy was king.

What was the point of trying? Father would just start going on about boys not understanding high politics, or talking lyrically about the power he saw in those displays of brutality: the number of tanks, the number of feet marching … I couldn’t believe that was the heart of it, for him – not really – because I also knew that his real motivation – the strength of his yearning for that long-ago peacetime home I’d never known – was, genuinely, something I couldn’t understand. I could only imagine how strong it was, because of what he was prepared to do to get it back. For
me, as an exile, imagining how Father felt about home was all working backwards – as if by seeing a shadow I could draw a picture of the object that had cast it. But, since I was tied to ROVS out of love for this stubborn old fool, I’d just have to try to understand his point of view, and tailor my counter-arguments accordingly.

So, when I said, ‘Don’t do it,’ I tried to put my horror and anger aside, and keep things simple. I told him all the practical reasons I was frightened. I tried to appeal to his love.

I asked him: didn’t he worry about all the rumours that Skoblin had a hand in the last kidnapping? I asked: what if his number two was a double agent for the Bolsheviks? And I said: what if this was a Red ambush?

But when I saw the coldness in Father’s eyes, I saw that this was hopeless, too, and stopped, because he’d started again. If I can’t persuade my son to work with me, I must have faith in my other friends, he was saying. Skoblin is a good man. Skoblin is much maligned. We are old, old comrades, together since Constantinople and the camps. It’s dishonourable to think he might betray me in the way you suggest. I trust him absolutely.

There was no point in arguing. I knew from past experience that neither of us would change our minds. I let it wash over me. I’d heard it all before.

But it seemed worse today, our obstinate non-agreement – much more claustrophobic and depressing than usual. I didn’t let myself think of Evie – or not exactly, not more than I needed to resolve that I wasn’t going to betray Father like that again or expose him to her ridicule. But I was aware that what seemed so much worse was that, for the
past few days, I’d believed there might be something else for me beyond the loneliness of living at one remove from all this. And now that was all closed off again, and there was just this, again, like prison gates clanging shut.

‘I mean,’ I said dispiritedly, ‘don’t do it
without telling me
, at least. Please.’

For some reason, that seemed to reach him. I could see his eyes smile. Perhaps, for once, he’d heard the unspoken declaration of love that was always in my voice. At any rate, he nodded and touched me briefly on the shoulder with his big hand.

‘Do you know yet when the meeting will be? And where?’ I went on. ‘Can I take you?’

But no, he was already shaking his head, smiling that confident smile. I could see he didn’t want me involved.

‘As for the date, well, it all depends on when our German colleagues arrive, of course,’ he said, and he couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice. ‘All I know is that, when the time comes, Skoblin and I will slip off to meet them somewhere quiet … Passy … Auteuil … you know.’

The smartest bits of residential Paris, beyond the Trocadéro: retired ministers, countesses walking Pekes, big spreading trees, the rudest taxi clients. Everywhere was somewhere quiet in those secluded streets. ‘Where?’ I said.

‘I don’t know exactly where myself, dear boy,’ Father said, and again I heard an unfamiliar note of weariness in his voice, as well as caginess. ‘I think he might have said rue Jasmin, or rue Raffet, but I’m not really sure. I’m everyone’s prisoner, as you know. That’s all in Skoblin’s hands. But now – I’m in yours. Will you take me home?’

I wanted to say something loving; something that
would dispel the fatigue in his voice, and show that, even if I detested the idea of the alliance he wanted to make, I supported
him
with every fibre of my being. Always had. Always would.

But I didn’t know how, any more than I had words for the helpless, childish rage locked away inside me that he could be so indifferent to what I felt or wanted for him. Even if he was the family I’d chosen, the family I’d always choose, that was just how things were. There was no point in quibbling. So I nodded and picked up his briefcase.

My taxi-driving knowledge told me that there wasn’t even a café on the rue Jasmin or the rue Raffet, which met each other between Passy and Auteuil: just old money and conventional good taste behind the shutters for as far as the eye could see in every direction. But, I was thinking, if I could find out when the planned meeting would take place, perhaps I could at least sit outside, in my cab, and keep watch till Father came out.

It was the last thing I wanted to be doing with my life. But I needed to keep busy. I needed not to think.

Evie

There was something a bit furtive in the way Marie-Thérèse looked up from the dish she was prodding with a skewer. A very large meaty object secured in a net was bubbling in a pan on top of the stove, in a broth seasoned with vegetables, parsley, peppercorns and salt. There was far too much of it for just me. But then I’d worked out, by now, that her cooking fed not only me, her and her husband, but also assorted other out-of-work family members: all those cousins and nephews who couldn’t find jobs in the Billancourt car factories. I saw the casseroles in the pantry, lids tied on with string, waiting to be delivered, and sometimes I saw Gaston taking them out to the car or, of a morning, bringing back empties. Well, that was fine by me. I’d learned that the cuts of meat she chose for these cookathons were economical ones. I didn’t particularly want to eat a whole calf’s head myself anyway. And I knew these were hard times for many.

‘Mm,’ I said politely. ‘That smells good.’ I wanted to put her at her ease. But there was uncertainty in her answering nod.

‘It won’t be ready until dinner time,’ she said, averting
her eyes. ‘You need to boil it for at least five hours to be sure it’s cooked.’

‘Oh, I’m not hungry now,’ I said quickly. Heavens, I’d only just had breakfast.

I wanted to ask her a quite different question. Something Plevitskaya had said yesterday about Grandmother had been coming back into my head all morning: ‘… her death so unexpected … when dear Constance was so full of life just a week ago.’

It had made me wonder: had Grandmother’s stroke been brought on by a sudden shock?

For a while that morning, that thought, gloomy though it was, had at least been a distraction from the emptiness that not thinking about Jean kept leaving me with. But then an awful new thought had struck me – had the shock perhaps been the prospect of my arrival?

‘I’ve been wondering,’ I went on casually, ‘what you think made Madame la Comtesse take ill so very suddenly … when, as everyone says, she was so full of life just before?’

Looking relieved, and suddenly interested, too, Marie-Thérèse put down the meat skewer. ‘It
was
very sudden,’ she said. ‘I’ve wondered that myself. As if something had happened to bring it on. But, you know, mademoiselle, there was nothing …’

Leaning against the cooker, she added reflectively, ‘She was in the study that evening, where the young men had been working with that machine.
Ah, cette musique!
Playing the same tune over and over again, far too loud – enough to make anyone ill, you’d think;
my
head was certainly aching from it. But
she
was fine; she didn’t seem to mind it in the least. Then, that last evening, after they’d gone, she took
her apéritif in there – well, it’s the best place to watch the sunset from. She was right as rain when I took it in – even asked me to make up a bed for you and get Gaston to meet your train, nice as anything. But then, just a few minutes afterwards, she came staggering out, calling for me. I could hear at once that her voice wasn’t right. I rushed out from your room, where I was making up your bed. But she’d already collapsed, right there in the doorway, before I’d got halfway down the corridor.’

She nodded, not without gloomy satisfaction. ‘So you see,’ she finished, ‘there can’t have been a reason. It just happened, from one moment to the next; the will of the Lord.’

I nodded back, feeling fractionally reassured that Marie-Thérèse had at least said Grandmother had sounded calm when she’d told her I was arriving in Paris.

‘But of course it was those men coming back the next morning that finished her off,’ Marie-Thérèse added crossly. ‘The Russian thieves.’

Well, I thought dispiritedly, not wanting to argue, it did look as though, this time at least, she must be right. Those men
had
just taken their chance and pinched the machine.

It was painful for me to remember that morning’s commotion – the shouting and barging, and Marie-Thérèse’s hiss of ‘
Sacrés Russes!
’ as the door slammed behind them. I’d never forget it, because that was also the moment when, behind the bedroom door, Grandmother had woken up, and had her second, fatal attack. I was never going to be able to banish the horror in her face, the hand flapping, her agonized ‘MMMM!’ and the pandemonium that had followed, or the way I’d failed to listen; the way I’d run away.

But right now the person I felt sorriest for was Plevitskaya
— because the only real loser from that morning’s theft was her and her recording, which had vanished with the machine. She must have thought, when we’d last spoken, that I could get the recording back and have it finished. She must think I had the machine. But I didn’t. It had gone with the engineer thieves. She’d never have her disc.

I sighed. On second thoughts, the person I felt sorriest for now was myself.

Leaving Marie-Thérèse to her pots, I wandered back to my bedroom, taking stock.

There was no Grandmother in Paris, no cosy friendship with the General, no cosy friendship with Plevitskaya either (she’d really only been so nice to me to get her recording finished, I could see now), and no Jean – nothing but dead ends.

What I should have said to Marie-Thérèse when I went into the kitchen just now was that I was giving her and Gaston notice. (Details were running through my head at a great pace. I’d give them wages until Christmas; she could have Grandmother’s fur coat; would it be absurd to give Gaston the car?) Only cowardice had stopped me, or inertia – the same inertia that had stopped me even thinking of wiring the family news of Grandmother’s death (which I now saw, in a sudden, separate agony of self-reproach, had been terribly wrong, because however estranged Mother had been from her, she’d surely have wanted to be told that her own mother had died. Anyone would). Now was the time to face up to these things, because, whatever anyone said when I got home, and however much I might be dreading my return, I had to accept that there was nothing left to do here but get ready to leave.