2005 - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (23 page)

“Did I ever finish telling you about the half-tractor?”

He reaches for the narrow-lined A4 notepad, which is now almost full with his masterwork, and reads:

The half-tractor was invented by French engineer by the name of Adolph Kegresse, who had worked in Russia as technical director to the Tsar’s automobile fleet, but at the time of the 1917 revolution he made his way back to France, where he continued to perfect his designs. The half-tractor is based on the simple principle of normal tyred wheels in front of vehicle, and caterpillar tracks at back. The half-tracked tractors, cavalry cars and armoured cars were especially popular with the Polish military, where they were deemed suitable for driving on the country’s poorly maintained roads. The historic union of Adolph Kegresse with Andre Citroen is said to have given birth to the whole phenomenon of all-terrain vehicles. In their time these seemed to promise a revolution in agriculture and heavy transport, but alas they have become one of the curses of our modern age
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After my big clean-up, only two things remained to remind father of Valentina, and they were not so easy to remove: Lady Di (and his girlfriend and the girlfriend’s four kittens) and the Roller on the lawn.

We all agreed that Lady Di and his family should stay, as they would be company for my father, but that their eating and toilet habits should be taken in hand. I was all for getting a litter tray, but Big Sis put her foot down.

“It’s utterly impractical. Who’s going to empty it? There’s only one thing to do—they have to be taught not to make their mess indoors.”

“But how?”

“You grab them by the scruff of the neck and rub their noses in it. It’s the only way.”

“Oh Vera, I can’t do that. And Pappa certainly can’t.”

“Don’t be such a milk-sop, Nadia. Of course you can do it. Mother did it to every cat we had. That’s why they were all so dean and docile.”

“But how will we know which cat made the mess?”

“Every time there is a mess, you rub all their noses in it.”

“All six of them?” (It sounded like something out of Russia in the 19305.) “All six.”

So I did.

Their feeding was rationalised, too. They were to be fed in the back porch only, twice a day, and if they didn’t eat the food, it was to be thrown away after a day.

“Can you remember that, Pappa?”

“Yes yes. One day. I leave for only one day.”

“If they’re still hungry, you can give them dry cat biscuits. They won’t smell.”

“Systematic approach. Advanced technological feeding. Is good.”

The council came round and put down rat poison, and soon four brown furry corpses were found lying belly-up in the outhouse. Mike buried them in the garden. The cats were banned from sleeping in the house or in the Rolls-Royce, and a box lined with an old jumper of Valentina’s was provided for them in the outhouse. Lady Di protested at the new regime, and tried to scratch me once or twice during nose-rubbing sessions, but he soon learnt to obey.

Lady Di’s girlfriend turned out to be a star—friendly, affectionate, and clean in her habits. My father decided to call her Valyusia after Valentina, and she would curl up purring on his lap while he snoozed in the afternoon, as no doubt he had hoped the real Valentina would. Notices were put up in the village post office advertising delightful kittens free to good homes. An unexpected bonus was that a number of elderly ladies in the village, who had been friends of my mother, dropped by to admire the kittens and stopped to chat to my father, and after that they continued to call in from time to time, lured perhaps by the air of scandal which still surrounded the house. He commented rather ungraciously to Vera that he found their conversation tedious, but at least he was polite to them, and they kept an eye on him. The vicar called round to thank him for the tins of mackerel, which had been donated to a family of asylum seekers from Eastern Europe. Gradually he was being reintegrated into the community.

On the car front, things were not so straightforward. Crap car disappeared mysteriously one night, but the Roller remained on the front lawn. Although my father paid £500 for it, Valentina had both the keys and the documents, without which it could not be sold or even towed away. I telephoned Eric Pike again.

“Could I speak to Valentina please?”

“Who am I speaking to?” said the gritty oily voice.

“I’m Mr Mayevskyj’s daughter. We spoke before.” (I should have prepared a false name and a cover story.)

“I wish you’d stop telephoning me, Mrs er…Miss er…I can’t imagine why you think Valentina is here.”

“You drove away into the sunset with her. And all her possessions. Remember?”

“I was just doing her a good turn. She’s not staying here.”

“Where did you take her, then?”

No reply.

“Please—how can I contact her? She’s left some things behind I thought she might want. And mail keeps arriving for her.”

There was a moment’s silence; then he said, “I’ll pass her a message to get in touch with you.”

A few days later my father got a letter from Valentina’s solicitor, saying that all correspondence should be forwarded to his office, and all contact was to be through him only.

I could understand the desolation my father must feel, because, strangely, I shared it. Valentina had become such a huge figure in my life that her disappearance left a gaping void, in which questions wheeled around like startled birds. Where had she vanished to? Where was she working? What was she planning to do next? Who were her friends? What man or men was she sleeping with? Was there a succession of sleazy pick-ups, or was it a special someone—a nice innocent English bloke, who found her excitingly exotic but was too shy to make a pass at her? And Stanislav—where was he laying down his new stash of porn?

The questions consumed me. My imagination created one scene after another: Valentina and Stanislav lying low in squalor somewhere in Peterborough in a rented room with chipboard furniture; or crammed with all their bin bags into the attic of a fly-blown boarding-house; or maybe living in style in a chic love-nest paid for by a lover; the pots and pans which had been my mother’s bubbling away, filling the kitchen with boil-in-bag steam, the small portable photocopier perched on the table beside them when they ate. When they have eaten, do they go out? Who with? Or if they stay in, who taps on the door in the middle of the night?

I drive past the Zadchuks’ house in the village again and again, looking to see whether Crap car is parked outside. It is not. I ask the neighbours whether they have seen Stanislav or Valentina. They have not. The man in the post office and the woman at the corner shop have not seen her. Neither has the milkman on his rounds.

I have become obsessed with finding Valentina. Each time I drive into the village or through Peterborough, I seem to catch a glimpse of Crap car disappearing up every side street. I slam on the brakes or perform wild U-turns, and other drivers beep annoyance at me. I tell myself it’s because I need to know what her plans are—whether she will contest the divorce, how much money she will ask for, whether she will be deported first. I convince myself that I need to find out because of the Roller and the mail that keeps pouring through the letter box for her—mostly junk mail offering dodgy get-rich-quick schemes and dubious beauty treatments. But really it’s a burning curiosity that has possessed me. I want to know her life. I want to know who she is. I want to know.

One Saturday afternoon, in a frenzy of curiosity, I go and stake out Eric Pike’s house. I find the address from the telephone directory and the A-to-Z. It is a modern neo-Georgian bungalow set back behind a sloping lawn in a cul-de-sac of similar bungalows, with white columns beside the door, lions’ heads on the gateposts, leaded windows, a Victorian gas-lamp in the drive (converted to electricity), plenty of hanging baskets spilling mauve petunias, and a large pond with a fountain and Koi carp. In the driveway are two cars—the big blue Volvo estate and a small white Alfa Romeo. No sign of Valentina’s Rover. I park up a little distance away, turn the radio on, and wait.

Nothing happens for an hour, an hour and a half. Then a woman emerges from the house. She is an attractive woman in her mid-forties, wearing full make-up, high heels and, I notice, a little gold ankle-chain under her tights. She walks over to my car and gestures to me to wind down the window.

“Are you a private detective?”

“Oh, no, I’m just…” My imagination deserts me. “I’m just waiting for a friend.”

“Because if you are, you can fuck off. I’ve not seen him for three weeks. It’s all over.”

She turns and marches back towards the house, her heels sinking into the crunching gravel.

A few moments later, a man emerges and stands in the doorway staring in my direction. He is tall and thickset with a heavy black moustache. As he begins to walk down the drive towards me, I quickly turn the key in the ignition and drive off.

On my way back, I have another idea. I make a detour to Hall Street, to Bob Turner’s house, where we once delivered the fat brown envelope. But the house is clearly empty, with a For Sale sign by the front gate. I peer in through the window; the net curtains are still up but I can see that there is no furniture inside. A neighbour sees me and sticks her head, bristling with curlers, round the door.

“They’ve gone away.”

“Stanislav and Valentina?”

“Oh, they went ages ago. I thought yer meant the Linakers. Left last week. Gone to Australia. Lucky sods.”

“Did you know Valentina and Stanislav?”

“Not much. Made a lot of noise, him and her romping about the house in the middle of the night. Don’t know what the lad made of it.”

“You don’t know where she’s living now?”

“Last I heard she married some old pervert.”

“A pervert? Are you sure?”

“Well, a dirty old man. That’s what Mr Turner called him—‘Valentina’s dirty old man’. ‘Appen he had a load of money—that’s what they said.”

“That’s what they said?”

The watery eyes below the curlers blink and continue to stare. I meet their gaze.

“She married my father.” The eyes blink again, and look down. “Have you tried the Ukrainian Club? ‘Appen she goes in there once in a while.”

“Thank you. That’s a good idea.”

I recognise the elderly lady on reception at the Ukrainian Club as a friend of my mother’s, Maria Kornoukhov, whom I had last seen at the funeral. We greet each other with hugs. She has not seen Valentina for several weeks. She wants to know why I am looking for her, and why she isn’t living with my father.

“Painted doll. I never liked her, you know,” she says in Ukrainian.

“Neither did I. But I thought she would care for my father.”

“Ha! She will care only for his money! Your poor mother, who saved every penny. All spent on greasepaint and see-through dresses.”

“And cars. She has three cars, you know.”

“Three cars! What folly! Who needs more than a good pair of legs? Mind you, she won’t walk far on those stab-stab shoes she wears.”

“Now she’s disappeared. We don’t know how to find her.”

She drops her voice to a whisper and puts her mouth close to my cheek.

“Have you tried the Imperial Hotel?”

The Imperial Hotel isn’t really a hotel, it’s a pub. It isn’t really Imperial, either, though the maroon dralon upholstery and mahogany panelling suggest it has pretensions. I still feel awkward going into pubs alone, but I buy a half of shandy at the bar, and take it to a corner where I can sit and observe the whole room. The clientele are mainly young, and very noisy; the men drink bottled lager, the women drink vodka chasers or white wine, and they shout across the room to each other in a relentless ear-splitting banter. They seem to be regulars, for they call to the barman by his first name and make jokes about his bald-look haircut. How do Valentina and Stanislav fit in to this place? At the far side of the lounge I notice a young man clearing glasses from the tables. He has longish curly hair and a horrible purple polyester jumper.

As he reaches my table, he looks up at me, and our eyes meet. I smile a broad friendly smile.

“Hi there, Stanislav! Great to see you! I didn’t know you worked here. Where’s your Mum? Does she work here too?”

Stanislav does not reply. He picks up my glass, which is still half full, and disappears into the room behind the bar. He does not re-emerge. After a while the barman comes up and asks me to leave.

“Why? I’m not doing any harm. I’m just enjoying a quiet drink.”

“Appen yer’ve finished yer drink.”

“I’ll get another.”

“Look, just piss off, will yer?”

“Pubs are supposed to be public, you know.” I try to muster my middle-class dignity.

“I said, piss off.”

He leans over me so close I can smell his beer-breath. His bald-look haircut suddenly doesn’t look very amusing.

“Fine. I’ll cross this hotel off my recommended list, then.”

It is dusk when I find myself out on the pavement again, but still warm from the afternoon sun. It hasn’t rained for a fortnight, and the yard at the back of the pub smells of beer and urine. I am surprised to feel that my hands are shaking as I reach for my car keys, but I am not ready to give up yet. I sneak round to the back and peep through the open scullery window. There is no sign of Stanislav or of Valentina. Inside I can hear one of the rowdy regulars calling, “Hey, Bald Ed—what was all that about?” and Bald Ed’s reply: “Oh, some old cow that was threatening the staff.” I sit down on an empty barrel and feel the tiredness sink into my bones. All the encounters of the day bang around in my head: so much aggression. I can do without it. I climb into my car and, without going back to my father’s house, drive straight home to Cambridge and to Mike.

Vera puts her finger on it straightaway.

“They are working illegally. That’s why he doesn’t want you asking questions. Of course Stanislav is probably under age to be working in a pub, too.”

(Oh, Big Sis, what a instinct you have for digging up the dodgy, the dirty, dishonest.)

“And the woman at Eric Pike’s house?”