2005 - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (27 page)

It can’t be.

It is.

Valentina and Bald Ed are sitting opposite each other at a round table in one corner of the lounge. The door is of panelled glass, and I can see her quite plainly. She is fatter than ever. Her hair is a mess. Her eye make-up is smudged. Then I see that it is more than smudged, it is running down her cheeks: she is crying. As Bald Ed raises his head, I see that he is crying too.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” I want to yell, but I stand back and say nothing, watching them holding hands across the table and snivelling shamelessly. Their tears make me suddenly unaccountably incensed: what do they have to weep about?

Then someone pushes past me into the lounge, and they both look up and see me standing there. Valentina jumps to her feet with a cry, and as she does so, her coat slips off her shoulders, and I clearly see what I should have seen before—what I did see before but did not recognise: Valentina is pregnant.

We stand facing each other for a few moments. Both of us are speechless. Then Bald Ed lumbers to his feet.

“Can’t you see we’re talking? Can’t you leave us alone?”

I ignore him.

“Valentina, I have some important news for you. Your husband has arrived from Ukraina. He is staying with my father. He would like to see you. And Stanislav. He has something he wants to tell you in person.”

Then I turn on my heel and leave.

The light is already fading when I get back to my father’s house and the rain has stopped, leaving the air moist and smelling of mysterious autumn fungi. Perhaps it is a trick of the twilight, but the house seems larger than before, the garden more spacious, set back from the road behind its row of lilacs. It takes me a few seconds to realise that the Rolls-Royce has gone. So have the four men.

I suppose I should be pleased, but I am just irritated. There they are, enjoying their laddish fun, while I have been doing the unacknowledged but important chores—replenishing food and drink supplies. Typical. And there is no one to congratulate me on my masterly piece of detective work. Well, there is one person who will appreciate my efforts. I put on the kettle, slip my shoes off, and telephone my sister.

“Pregnant!” cries Vera. “The slut! The hussy! But listen, Nadia, maybe this is just another ploy. I bet it’s not a baby at all, just a pillow pushed up inside her jumper.”

My sister’s capacity for cynicism never ceases to amaze me. And yet…

“It looks very real, Vera. Not just the bulge, but the way she stands, the puffiness around her ankles. And besides, she’s been piling the weight on for quite some time. We just didn’t put two and two together.”

“But how incredible! Well done, Nadia, for tracking her down!” (Coming from Big Sister, that is praise indeed.) “Maybe I’d better come up and see for myself.”

“Suit yourself. We’ll find out soon enough.”

I finish my tea, and start to unload the shopping from the boot, when I hear a car pulling up behind me. I turn, fully expecting to see four grinning men climbing out of a white Rolls-Royce. But it is the green Lada, with Valentina at the wheel.

She pulls up on the brown oil-scarred lawn and eases herself out of the driving seat. Her belly is vast, her splendid bosom engorged with milk. She has tidied up her hair and put on some fresh make-up and perfume. There is a whiff of the old glamour, and despite myself, I am pleased to see her.

“Hi Valentina. Glad you could make it.”

She says nothing, pushes past me to the back of the house, where the kitchen door is open.

“‘Ello! ‘Ello, Volodya!” she calls.

I have followed her into the house, and now she turns on me, her mouth curled dangerously.

“Is nobody here. You tell me lying.”

“He is here, but he has gone out. Look in the bedroom if you don’t believe me. His bag is there.”

She marches up the stairs and throws opens the door so forcefully that it slams against the wall with a thud. Then everything goes quiet. After a while I go upstairs to look for her. I find her sitting on the bed which used to be hers, cradling the small green rucksack in her arms as though it was a baby. She looks up at me blankly.

“Valentina.” I sit down beside her and lay a hand on the rucksack which is resting against her belly. “It’s wonderful news about the baby.”

She says nothing, gives me the same blank look. “Is the father Ed? Ed at the Imperial Hotel?” I am pushing my luck, and she knows it.

“Why you go pocking nose in every place? Eh?”

“He seems like a very nice man.”

“Is nice man. Is no bebby father.”

“Oh. I see. What a pity.”

We sit side by side on the bed. I am turned towards her, but she stares straight ahead, frowning with concentration, showing me only her handsome barbarous profile, her cheeks flushed, her mouth impassive, her skin radiant with pregnancy. Variable lights seem to flicker in the depths of her syrup-coloured eyes. I cannot read her thoughts.

I don’t know how long we have been sitting like this, before the sound of a car pulling up outside the house startles us. The white Rolls-Royce is parked on the road, for there is no room in the garden beside the Lada and Crap car. Four men climb out, with grins as big as water-melons on their faces, jabbering in a mixture of languages. Through the window I watch my father throw up his hands when he sees the Lada on the lawn. He summons Dubdv, excitedly pointing out its engineering idiosyncrasies, while Dubov seems eager to establish the whereabouts of its owner. Eric Pike is gripping Mike by the elbow and making zooming gestures with the other hand. They disappear from view, and I hear their noise echoing up the stairs from the hallway and sitting-room.

Then there is silence downstairs—as sudden and total as if a switch has been turned off. Then just one voice—Valentina’s. “Is bebby father my husband Nikolai.”

They are all gathered in the sitting-room by the time I come down. Valentina is sitting upright in the beige moquette armchair like a queen on a throne, facing the room. Dubov and Pappa are sitting side by side on the two-seater settee. My father has a radiant smile on his face. Dubov has sunk his head in his hands. Eric Pike is hunched up on the footstool by the window, scowling at everybody. Mike is in the corner behind the settee. He puts an arm round my shoulder as I slip in beside him.

“Hang on a minute, Valentina,” I butt in. “You can’t get pregnant from oral sex, you know.”

She throws me a withering look.

“Why you know oralsex?”

“Well, I know…”

“Nadia, please!” my father interrupts in Ukrainian.

“Valenka, darling,” says Dubov, his voice creamy with love, “maybe when you were in Ukraina last time…? I know it is a long time, but when there is love, all miracles are possible. Maybe this baby has been waiting for our reunion to bless us…”

Valentina shakes her head. “Not possible.” There is a quiver in her voice.

Eric Pike says nothing, but I see him counting surreptitiously on his fingers.

Valentina, too, is calculating. Her eyes move from Dubov to my father, and back to Dubov, but her face shows no expression.

At that moment, there are footsteps outside and a loud ringing on the doorbell. The door is not locked, anisuddenly Bald Ed bursts in, followed closely by Stanislav. He barges his way through the sitting-room to where Valentina is sitting. Stanjslav lurks in the doorway, his eyes fixed on Dubov, smiling and blinking away tears. Dubov beckons him over, and, squeezing up closer to my father, makes a space for Stanislav beside him on the settee and folds an arm around him.

“Now then, now then,” he murmurs, ruffling the boy’s dark curls.

Stanislav’s cheeks burn pink and a tear slips from his eye, as though he is melting under the warmth of his father’s touch, but he doesn’t say a word.

Bald Ed has stationed himself proprietorially at the side of Valentina’s chair. “Now, Val, come on!” (He calls her Val!) “I think it’s time you told that ex-hubby of yours the truth. He’s bound to find out sooner or later.”

Valentina ignores him. Holding my father’s eyes, she slides her hands around her breasts and down over her belly. Pappa quivers. His knees start to tremble. Dubov reaches across and places a large meaty hand on his thin bony one.

“Kolya, don’t be a fool.”

“No, I’m not the fool, you’re the fool. Whoever heard of a baby carried for eighteen months! Eighteen months! Ha ha ha!”

“It matters not who fathered the child, but who will be the father to it,” says Dubov quietly.

“What did he say?” asks Bald Ed.

I translate.

“Yes it does bloody matter! I’ve got rights. A father has rights, you know. Tell them, Val.”

“You no bebby father,” says Valentina.

“You no bebby father!” chimes Pappa, a mad look in his eyes. “I bebby father!”

“There is only one answer. The baby must have a paternity test!” says a cold voice from the doorway. Vera has slipped in so quietly that no one heard her arrive. Now she steps forward into the room, and moves towards Valentina. “If there is a baby at all!”

She lunges forward to feel Valentina’s belly. Valentina jumps to her feet with a shriek. “No! No! You cholera-sick eat-bebby witch! You put no hand on me!”

“Who the hell is she?” Bald Ed turns on Vera and grabs her by the arm.

Dubov steps forward and folds his arms around Valentina’s shoulders, but she brushes him off and makes for the door.

In the doorway she pauses, reaches deep into her handbag, and takes out a small key on a fob. She flings it on the floor, and spits on it. Then she disappears.

All will be corrected

“So who do you think is the father? Eric Pike or Bald Ed?”

I am in the top bunk, Vera is in the bottom bunk, in the room that was formerly Stanislav’s room, before that, the room where Anna, Alice and Alexandra stayed when they visited, before that the room that Vera and I shared as girls. It seems in a way amazing for us both to be here, yet in another way the most natural thing in the world. Except that Vera used to have the top bunk and I used to sleep down below.

Through the thin plasterboard wall we can hear the low murmur of male voices in the next room as Stanislav and Dubov catch up on eighteen months of separation. It is a gentle, companionable rumble, punctuated by loud bursts of laughter. From the room below comes the intermittent sound of Father’s long rasping snores. Mike is in the front room, uncomfortably curled up on the two-seater sofa. Fortunately he had quite a lot of plum wine before he went to bed.

“There’s someone else,” says Vera. “You’ve forgotten about that man she stayed with right at the beginning.”

“Bob Turner?” The idea had not crossed my mind, and yet now that Vera says it, I remember the fat brown envelope, the head leaning out of the window, the way Father crumpled. “That was more than two years ago. It couldn’t be him.”

“Couldn’t it?” says Vera sharply.

“You mean she kept on seeing him after they were married?”

“Would that be so surprising?”

“I suppose not.”

“One would have thought she could have done better. None of them seems very appealing. Really,” Vera muses, “she is quite attractive, in a sluttish way. Then again, it is one thing to sleep with that kind of woman, quite another to marry her.”

“But Dubov married her. And he seems a decent sort of guy. Dubov still loves her. And I think she really loves him—the way she came rushing over as soon as she knew he was here.”

“And yet she abandoned him for Pappa.”

“The lure of life in the West.”

“Now she thinks with this baby nonsense she can weasel her way back in with Pappa—he’s so obsessed with the idea of having a son.”

“But imagine, abandoning the love of your life for Pappa, and then finding out he isn’t even rich. All he has to offer is a British passport—and that paid for by Bob Turner. Don’t you feel even just a little bit sorry for her?”

Vera is silent for a moment.

“I can’t say I do. Not after the incident with the Dictaphone. Why, do you?”

“Sometimes I do.”

“But she pities us, too, Nadia. She thinks we’re stupid and ugly—and flat-chested.”

“The thing I can’t understand is what Dubov sees in her. He seems so…perspicacious. You’d think he could see through her.”

“It’s her boobs. All men are the same.” Vera sighs. “Did you see the way Bald Ed ran after her? Pitiful!”

“But did you see Bald Ed’s car? Did you see the way Pappa and Dubov were gazing at it?”

“And Mike.”

After Valentina left, Bald Ed rushed out into the garden calling “Val! Val!” in a pathetic whine, but she didn’t even look round. She slammed the door and drove off in the Lada leaving a cloud of acrid blue engine smoke swirling in the garden. Bald Ed waved his arms and ran down the road after her. Then he jumped into his car that was parked out on the road—it was an American ipsos-style Cadillac convertible, pale green, with fins, and lots of chrome—and chased her through the village. Father, Mike, Dubov and Eric Pike all stood at the window and stared as he drove away. Then they all got stuck into the beer I had brought back. After an hour or so, Eric Pike left, too. Then they got out the plum wine.

“Vera, you don’t think Pappa
could
be the father? Men of his age have been known to father children. He did talk about it himself at the beginning.”

“Don’t be silly, Nadia. Just look at him. Besides, he was the one who raised the issue of non-consummation. I think Bald Ed is the most likely candidate. Just imagine being related to a man called Bald Ed!”

“I expect he has another name. Anyway, if Pappa divorces her, we won’t be related.”

“If!”

“You think he could still change his mind?”

“I’m sure of it. Especially if he convinces himself the baby is a boy. Conceived by oral sex. Or through some kind of Platonic exchange of minds.”

“Surely he couldn’t be
so
stupid.”

“Of course he could,” says Vera. “Look at his track record so far.”

We chuckle smugly. I feel close to her and far at the same time, stacked up above her in the dark. When we were children we used to share jokes about our parents.