“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.”
Twenty-One
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.
“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.
“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.
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.
2005 - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian Page 18
