2005 - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (22 page)

“How lovely to see you, Nadia.”

“You too, Vera.”

We are treading on eggshells.

Giving ourselves plenty of time, we take our places at the back of the courtroom, which is in a sombre oak-panelled chamber where oblique sunlight filters through windows too high to see out of. A few minutes before the hearing starts Valentina and Stanislav enter. Valentina has excelled herself: gone is the navy polyester with the pink lining. She is wearing a white dress and black-and-white hound’s-tooth check jacket, cut low at the front to show her cleavage, but cleverly darted and tailored to conceal her bulk. Above her blonde bouffant perches a small white pillbox hat with cut-out flowers in black silk. Her lipstick and nails are blood-red. Stanislav is wearing the uniform and tie of his posh school, and has had a haircut.

She catches sight of us as soon as she comes in and lets out a low cry. The blond young man accompanying her, whom we take to be her counsel, follows the line of her gaze, and they confer quietly as they take their places. He is wearing a suit so sharp and a tie so bright that we are sure he is not a Peterborough lad.

Everyone has made an effort to dress up except the three members of the tribunal, who come in a few moments later, dressed in unfashionably baggy trousers and not-stylishly crumpled jackets. They introduce themselves, and at once Valentina’s counsel rises to his feet and asks for an interpreter for his client. The tribunal members confer, the clerk is consulted, then a plump woman with frizzed hair enters from a side door, seats herself in front of Valentina and Stanislav and introduces herself to them. I can hear them gasp. Now the young barrister rises again, points to Vera and me sitting at the back, and objects to our presence. He is overruled. Finally he rises again, and launches into a long and eloquent account of the love-match between Valentina and my father, how love-at-first-sight swept them off their feet at a function in the Ukrainian Club in Peterborough, how he pleaded with her to marry him, bombarded her with letters and poems—the young man waves a wodge of photocopies in the air—and how happy they were before the two daughters—he points to me and Vera—started to interfere.

He has been speaking for perhaps ten minutes when there is a commotion and the usher rushes in with several sheets of paper which she places before the chairman. He skims through them and then passes them to the other two panellists.

“And he would be present in person to testify his love for my client, were it not that a chest infection, coupled with his extreme age and frailty, have prevented him from travelling here today.” The young man’s voice rises to a climax. The chairman politely waits for him to finish, then he holds up the papers which the usher brought in.

“I would find your speech most convincing, Mr Ericson,” he says, “were it not that just at this moment we have received a fax from Mrs Mayevska’s husband’s solicitor in Peterborough, with details of a divorce petition he has filed in respect ofyour client.”

Valentina jumps to her feet, and turns to where Vera and I are sitting.

“This is doing of this evil witch sister!” she cries combing the air with her scarlet nails.

“Please listen, Mr Sir,” she puts her hands together in a gesture of prayer and appeals to the chairman, “I am love husband.”

The interpreter, miffed at being excluded from the drama, butts in:

“She says that the sisters are evil witches. She wants to say that she loves her husband.”

Vera and I keep quiet and look prim.

“Mr Ericson?” the chairman asks.

The young man has gone scarlet beneath his pale hair.

“I would like to ask for a ten-minute adjournment while I consult with my client.”

“Granted.”

As they file out of the courtroom, I can hear him hissing beneath his breath to Valentina something like, “…you’ve made a complete fool of me…”

Ten minutes later, Mr Ericson conies back on his own.

“My client is withdrawing her appeal,” he says.

“Did you see the way he winked at us?” says Vera.

“Who?”

“The chairman. He winked.”

“No! I didn’t see. Did he really?”

“I thought he was so sexy.”

“Sexy?”

“Very sort of English and crumpled. I do so like English men.”

“But not Dick”

“Dick was English and crumpled when we first met. I liked him then. Before he met Persephone.”

We are sitting side by side with our feet up on a wide sofa in Vera’s Putney flat. In front of us on a low table are two glasses and a bottle of chilled white wine, almost empty. Dave Brubeck plays quietly in the background. After the alliance of the courtroom, it seemed the most natural thing in the world for me to come back here. It is a cool white-painted flat, with deep pale carpets and very little but very expensive furniture. I have never been here before.

“I like your flat, Vera. It’s so much nicer than where you used to live with Dick.”

“You haven’t been here before? Of course not. Well, maybe you’ll come again.”

“I hope so. Or maybe you’ll come up to Cambridge one weekend.”

“Maybe.”

When Vera lived with Dick, I visited their house once or twice—it was full of polished wood and elaborate wall-paper which I found pretentious and gloomy.

“What do you suppose it means, Vera—that she’s withdrawing her appeal? Will she give up altogether? Or do you think it just means she will ask for another date?”

“Perhaps she will simply melt away into the criminal underworld where she belongs. After all, they can only deport her if they can find her.”

Vera has lit a cigarette and thrown off her shoes.

“Or it could just mean she will go back and work on Pappa. Get him to back down on the divorce. I’m sure he would if she went about it the right way.”

“He’s certainly stupid enough.” Vera watches a long finger of ash glow at the end of her cigarette. “But I think she will go to ground. Hide herself in a secret lair somewhere. Live off fraudulent benefit claims and prostitution.” The ash falls silently into a glass ashtray. Vera sighs. “Soon enough she will latch on to another victim.”

“But Pappa can divorce her in her absence.”

“Let’s hope so. The question is how much he has to pay her to get rid of her.”

As we are talking, my eyes wander around the room. There is a vase of pale pink peonies on the mantelpiece, and beside them a row of photographs, mainly of Vera and Dick and the children, some in colour, some in black and white. But one photograph is in sepia, in a silver frame. I stare. Can it be? Yes it is. It is the photograph of Mother wearing the hat. She must have taken it from the box in the sitting-room. But when? And why didn’t she say anything? I feel an angry colour rising in my cheeks.

“Vera, the photograph of Mother…”

“Oh, yes. Delightful isn’t it? Such an enchanting hat.”

“But, it isn’t yours.”

“Not mine? The hat?”

“The photograph, Vera. It’s not yours.”

I jump to my feet, knocking over my wineglass. A pool of Sauvignon blanc forms on the table and drips on to the carpet.

“What’s the matter, Nadia? It’s only a photograph, for goodness’ sake.”

“I must go. I don’t want to miss the last train.”

“But won’t you stay the night? The bed’s made up in the little room.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t stay.”

What does it matter? It’s only a photograph. But
that
photograph! But is it worth losing a new-found sister over? These thoughts race through my mind as I sit on the last train home, watching my reflection in the window as it fleets over the darkening fields and woods. The face in the window, colours washed out in the dusky light, has the same shape and contours as the face in the sepia photograph. When she smiles, the smile is the same.

Next day I telephone Vera.

“So sorry I had to rush off. I’d forgotten I had an early morning appointment.”

The lady vanishes

A
few days after the botched tribunal, Eric Pike calls round at my father’s house in a big blue Volvo estate. He and my father sit in the back room amicably discussing aviation, while Valentina and Stanislav run up and down the stairs piling all their possessions in black bin bags into the back of the car. Mike and I arrive just as they are ready to leave. Eric Pike shakes my father’s hand and takes the driver’s seat, and Stanislav and Valentina squeeze into the passenger seat together. My father hovers on the doorstep. Valentina winds down the window, sticks her head out and shouts, “You think you very clever, Mr Engineer, but you wait. Remember I always get what I want.”

She spits, “Phphoo!” The car is already moving forward. The gob of spit lands on the car door, hangs for a moment, and slides slimily to the ground. Then they are gone.

“So are you all right, Pappa? Is everything all right?” I give him a hug. Under the cardigan, his shoulders are bony.

“All right. Yes everything all right. Good job. Maybe one day I will telephone to Valentina and seek reconciliation.”

And now for the first time I hear a new tone in my father’s voice: I realise how lonely he is.

I telephone Vera. We must make plans for how Father is to be supported now that he is on his own. Big Sis is all for getting him certified and carted off to a residential home.

“We must face the truth, Nadezhda, unpalatable though it is. Our father is mad. It’s only a matter of time before he gets into some other lunatic scheme. Better put him where he can cause no more trouble.”

“I don’t think he’s mad, Vera; he’s just eccentric. Too eccentric to live in a home.”

Somehow, I can’t see my father with his apples and his tractor talk and his strange habits fitting easily into the routine of a residential home. I suggest that sheltered housing, where he will have a greater degree of independence, might be more suitable, and Vera agrees, adding with strong emphasis that this is what should have happened in the first place. She thinks she has scored a victory. I let it pass.

After Valentina and Stanislav had left, I cleared out enough rubbish from their rooms to fill fourteen black plastic bin bags. Out went the soiled cotton wool, the crumpled packaging, the cosmetics bottles and jars, the holey tights, the papers and magazines, mail-order catalogues, junk mail, discarded shoes and clothes. Out went the half-eaten ham sandwich and several apple cores and a decayed pork pie which I found under the bed in the same place I had once found a used condom. In Stanislav’s room I discovered a little surprise—a carrier bag full of porn magazines under the bed. Tut tut.

Then I turned my attention to the bathroom, and with the help of a wire coat-hanger pulled out a sticky clump of matted blonde hair and brown pubic hair that was clogging the bath outlet. How was it possible for one person to generate so much mess? As I cleaned I realised with a flash of insight that Valentina must have had someone to clean up after her for most of her life.

I set to work in the kitchen and pantry, clearing off the grease from the cooker and surrounding walls—it was so thick I scraped it off with a knife—throwing out scraps of food, mopping up sticky patches on floors, shelves and worktops where unidentified fluids had been spilled and never wiped up. Pots, jars, tins, packets, had been opened, started, and then the contents left to fester. Ajar of jam left open in the pantry had cracked, turned rock hard, and stuck to the shelf so fast that as I tried to pull it away it shattered in my hands. The shards of glass fell to the floor among a debris of newspaper, empty boil-in bags, spilled sugar, broken pasta shells, biscuit crumbs and dried peas.

Under the sink, I found a stash of tinned mackerel—I counted forty-six tins altogether.

“What’s this?” I asked my father. He shrugged. “Buy one get one free. She likes.” What can you do with forty-six tins of mackerel? I couldn’t throw them away. What would Mother have done? I took them and distributed them to everyone we knew in the village, and gave the rest to the vicar, for the poor. For several years afterwards, tins of mackerel turned up in little heaps before the altar at harvest festival.

In the outhouse, in a cardboard box, were several packets of biscuits. All had been opened, and crumbs and bits of wrapping were everywhere. In another corner were four mouldy loaves of white sliced bread. Again, all the packets were torn open and their contents scattered. Why would someone do that? Then I noticed something large and brown scurrying in the corner.

Ohmygod! Call the council, quick!

In the sitting-room, kitchen, and pantry, saucers of food and milk had been put down for Lady Di which had not been to his taste, and they too had been left to rot in the August heat. One was infested with brown mushroom-like growths. In another, white maggots were squirming. The milk had soured to a green cheesy slime. I put the saucers to soak in bleach.

I am not usually the sort of woman who finds cleaning therapeutic, but this had the feel of a symbolic purging, the utter eradication of an alien invader who had tried to colonise our family. It felt good.

I am cautious about mentioning to Vera that my father has talked about reconciliation with Valentina, for I know that if there is one thing that will surely drive him back into her arms, it is a confrontation with Big Sis. But somehow I let it out.

“Oh the fool!” I can hear her intake of breath as she chooses her words. “Of course you social workers are familiar with this syndrome of abused women clinging to their abusers.”

“I’m not a social worker, Vera.”

“No, of course, you’re a sociologist. I forgot. But if you were a social worker that is what you would say.”

“Maybe.”

“So I think it’s so important to get him out of harm’s way, for his own sake. Otherwise he will simply fall victim to the next unscrupulous person to come along. Weren’t you supposed to be looking for some sheltered housing, Nadia? Really, I think it’s time you started taking some responsibility, as I did for Mother.”

But my father is determined to make the most of his new freedom. When I raise the possibility of sheltered housing, he says he will stay where he is. He is far too busy to consider moving. He will get the house in order, and maybe even rent out Valentina’s old room on the top floor to a suitable middle-aged lady. And then he still has his book to write.