Echoes of a Life

by Robin Byron

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s a mercy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  At first there was just numbness, a matter-of-fact acceptance. So, this was it. There had to be consequences. She was alive but something inside her was dead. Then she thought of Edward and a whole new sensation swept over her – shame for herself and misery for him. What of their plan to have at least one more child and perhaps two? And his unspoken desire for a son. How to tell him that her stupid frolic had deprived him of the chance of being a father again? That is, assuming he stays with me, she thought.

  The afternoon passed in alternating phases of fearful sleep and miserable awakening. There were no tears, but self-pity was having to compete with a latent anger at what had happened to her. I’ve been in an accident, she told herself. This has nothing to do with Larry. You can’t expect a plane to crash. I need to clear my head of all this guilt. But the guilt wouldn’t let her go.

  She was asleep when she first heard the sound and it didn’t seem quite real. Then she heard it again. The high notes of a child, and suddenly it seemed to her that no voice had ever before sounded so sweet. ‘Mummy,’ Izzy cried, ‘Mummy.’ And that was enough; huge sobs began to shake Marianne. Painful sobs, if she could have felt the pain. Izzy pressed her face to Marianne’s cheeks. ‘Why are you crying, Mummy?’

  The arrival of her husband and daughter provided the most perfect balm for Marianne’s distress. From Edward, there was nothing but love and sympathy. No mention was made of why she had been flying back from Georgia and Marianne never mentioned the consequences of her injuries. These conversations would have to take place, but that was for later. Mostly Edward held her hand and smiled at her, blinking away his own tears while Izzy gabbled on about their time in Cheltenham and Cambridge. How they had spent Easter with Granny and how she loved Granny’s two cats and how Granddad had arranged an Easter-egg hunt and how they had to rush to the airport to return to Moscow. ‘And… and… Mummy,’ she said, ‘our plane didn’t crash.’

  That night, drugged with pain killers and the powerful narcotic of her family’s overwhelming love, she fell into a dreamless sleep.

  Edward was with her again by noon the next day. This time he was alone and the anxiety in his eyes and slight frown hovering across his forehead told Marianne that he knew the worst about her condition. ‘The doctors said that they told you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I mean, that you won’t be able to have more children.’

  ‘Yes, they told me.’

  ‘Oh God, Marianne, I’m so desperately sorry – can you bear it? Thank heaven we have Izzy.’ Edward spent the next hour at her bedside trying to comfort her, and although it may well have been that his pain was greater than hers, he never gave the slightest sign of anger or resentment. Marianne felt humble at his selflessness; I am unworthy of his love, she thought. The subject of her trip was raised only obliquely: ‘You know, Aeroflot don’t have a very good safety record.’

  ‘Don’t they? Well, I wish to God I’d never taken the trip.’

  ‘You never mentioned that you were planning to fly down to Georgia.’

  ‘I wasn’t. At least, not then. But I was having a coffee with Larry on one of his visits to the university and he said he was going down there for a week and I rather foolishly said how much I wanted to visit the Caucasus. As a result, he offered to arrange a short trip for me… I’m sorry, Ed, I know you don’t like the guy, but it was kind of him and no one could expect the plane to crash.’

  Edward frowned and shook his head, but said, ‘Well, I must say he was very efficient in tracking me down and telling me about the accident and sending a car to the airport. Even so…’

  ‘I know, and I’ve decided I won’t go on meeting him. You were right. I mustn’t get involved in politics. But when I’m better, I’d like for us to go down to Georgia together. I think perhaps by train this time – it was really fascinating, and I would love it if we could go together and see the Caucasus properly…’

  Edward squeezed her hand: ‘Yes, that does sound like fun.’

  Three days after his first visit, Larry came again to the hospital. ‘So they’ve moved you into the foreigners’ wing,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not much privacy, though, with the toilet and bathtub in the middle of the room.’

  ‘Well, that’s not my greatest concern.’

  Then he told her. He was being expelled from the Soviet Union. His diplomatic status had been revoked and he had to be on a plane out the next morning.

  ‘So I came to say goodbye.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Larry, and look… thank you for everything… I’m sorry if…’

  ‘Don’t try to explain, Marianne. We have always understood each other. I have never had any illusions that you would leave Edward. Whatever happens in the future, I will never forget you.’

  ‘What will happen to you now?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about me. It goes with the territory. Cultural attachés usually get expelled after a couple of years. We tend to mix too much with people the authorities regard as undesirable. But I should warn you, it is possible that they may try to ask you some questions. Don’t worry if they do; you’ve done nothing wrong. It’s just routine.’

  Marianne was relieved that Larry hadn’t stayed long at the hospital and she was also comforted that his departure from Moscow would remove any temptation that she might have had to see him in the future – not that she could imagine ever having sex again with anyone. Needless-to-say, Edward felt entirely vindicated. ‘I knew he was a bloody spy,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not how he sees it.’

  ‘I doubt if you know the whole picture.’

  ‘Probably not. Anyway, now there’s no risk of my bumping into him again.’

  ‘Well, just make sure his replacement doesn’t try to contact you and carry on where he left off.’

  ‘I can assure you, that won’t happen,’ said Marianne, noting to herself that this was at least one question she could answer with complete honesty.

  Marianne received visits every day from Edward and most days he brought Izzy with him. She also received a surprise visit from her sister Claire, now a nineteen-year-old, studying in Paris. With her long, untidy and presumably unwashed hair, and a coat which looked as if it had been retrieved from the trenches of the first world war, she was every inch the Sorbonne student, anxious to light up her Gitanes in the corridor whenever the opportunity arose.

  ‘Got an emergency visa,’ she said, speaking in French. ‘Maman insisted I come. I can only stay forty-eight hours.’

  ‘I’d prefer to speak in English,’ said Marianne.

  ‘Forgotten your French?’

  ‘Not at all, but…’

  ‘This way we won’t be so easily understood,’ said Claire, looking around and continuing to speak in French.

  Marianne shrugged. ‘It was good of you to come.’

  ‘I want to know what’s going on. What were you doing in Georgia and who is the mysterious man you were with?’

  Marianne had never been particularly close to Claire. The age gap of nearly ten years meant that she had always thought of Claire as a child. Part of her would have loved to have confided in her sister but she didn’t know her well enough and wasn’t sure she could trust her to keep her mouth shut. More importantly, however, she wanted to put the whole Larry episode behind her and wipe it from her memory. She therefore laughed off her sister’s suggestion of an affair, explaining he was just an acquaintance from the embassy – and a very dull one at that.

  In the meantime, Marianne tried her best to be stoical. She longed to be able to telephone her mother but although there was a payphone in the hallway, to which she was wheeled on a couple of occasions to speak to Edward, it was impossible to make international calls so all she could do was rely on Edward or Claire to rela
y messages. She realised that she would have ugly scarring across her lower stomach and the top of her left thigh and this was not going to look pretty in a bikini. The Russian doctors had decided that she didn’t need surgery for the pelvic fracture, but they had fixed a metal frame on the outside of her body which made sleeping difficult; Edward told her she should get a second opinion as soon as she was well enough to fly to England.

  The dominant topic, to which Edward reverted again and again – which had evoked sympathy even from her sister, and on which her parents had sent her a long and emotional letter – was one where Marianne recognised that she did not feel as distressed as perhaps she ought, or indeed as much as Edward or her parents expected. She covered up her feeling, but with a growing discomfort that she did not deserve this outpouring of sympathy. No more agonising about when to have more children; it was simply one less problem to figure out. It was a guilty secret now for Marianne to look at Izzy and know that she was content with this one child; a child who would never have to share her mother’s love with another sibling, who would not only be her most beloved daughter but also her best friend and life-long companion.

  When the serious question came – the one she might have expected Edward to have asked immediately – it took her completely by surprise. So relaxed and confident had she become – so certain that she had finessed the issue with an explanation that, whilst not entirely truthful, was not a direct lie – that at first she seemed unable to understand what he was asking.

  ‘I have to know the truth, Marianne. Was it an affair?’

  She looked at him blankly, as if the words had no meaning for her.

  He stared back at her – a look of anxiety – perhaps even fear – on his normally composed features. ‘Where you in a sexual relationship with Larry?’ he asked, enunciating each word clearly, like a barrister addressing a witness who was feigning stupidity.

  ‘Oh God, no. No, absolutely not. I mean, I may have been foolish, perhaps he was a spy, but an affair – no, never.’ The words came out in a rush – an unpremeditated babble of denial.

  Edward closed his eyes and gradually his expression relaxed. ‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘Thank God for that. I am sorry if I doubted you, but it’s been gnawing away at me.’

  ‘I am the one who should apologise. I shouldn’t have got mixed up with him – and given you cause to worry.’

  Edward leant across the bed and kissed her on the forehead. ‘I never really doubted you, my darling – but I had to be sure.’

  Marianne spent a wretched night. I should have confessed, she told herself a hundred times. He would have forgiven me, I’m sure. We could start again on an honest basis. When sleep did come, it was inhabited by the familiar face she had learned to associate with feelings of guilt. She resolved to tell Edward the next day but when the morning came she began to doubt herself. Would he really be so forgiving? Especially as she had lied to him about it the previous day. She knew Edward as an exceptionally kind and generous man, always calm and patient, even when provoked. But this would be uncharted territory; she worried that his manifest goodness and decency might make it harder for him to accept her transgression. Larry’s gone now, she reasoned, and what’s done is done. Nothing would be gained now by a confession. Best to keep quiet.

  As the time approached for Marianne to leave hospital, it was agreed that they would fly back to England to allow her to recuperate there and have further medical checks. Meanwhile, her mother would fly over from Vermont to be with her and help look after Isabelle. The day before their planned departure she was waiting for Edward to arrive and pick her up from the hospital. She expected him to arrive at around eleven and when he had not turned up by twelve she hobbled into the hallway on her crutches to make a telephone call. To her surprise she was confronted by a man in uniform she had not previously noticed.

  ‘You must return to your room,’ said the man, speaking in such heavily accented Russian that at first she didn’t understand him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I need to telephone my husband.’

  ‘Please return to your room and the situation will be explained to you,’ said the uniformed man, blocking her path to the telephone. Marianne reluctantly obeyed and returned to sit on her bed, worrying what might have happened to Edward. A few minutes later a younger man of about thirty-five, dressed in a typical, badly fitting Russian suit, arrived in her room.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Davenport, are you ready to leave?’ he said to her in surprisingly good English.

  ‘I am, but I am waiting for my husband.’

  ‘I’m afraid he won’t be coming this morning. You must accompany us and everything will be explained.’

  Marianne looked from one to the other. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but who exactly are you?’ The man did not reply, but at that moment she saw one of the doctors passing her room and called out, ‘Dr Kuznetzova, please. I don’t understand. I was waiting for my husband to arrive and these men have come in…’ The doctor looked at the men and then at Marianne.

  ‘They are policemen,’ she said in an expressionless voice. ‘You must go with them.’

  10

  It wasn’t the Lubyanka, Marianne acknowledged with relief, nor was it exactly a cell. In appearance, it was more like a hostel room at some remote truckers’ stop with an iron frame single bed, a small table with upright chair and a narrow wardrobe. In one corner, a doorless cubicle housed a shower and lavatory; on the other side of the cubicle a small sink hung from the wall. The floor was covered with green lino on which lay a forlorn strip of brown carpet. A small window was obscured by frosted glass and did not seem designed to be opened.

  As Marianne lay on the bed her initial feeling was one of anger towards Larry; they might ask you some questions, he had said, almost as a throw-away line – and now she had been arrested, at least she supposed that is what had happened to her, although no one had actually used those words. Shut in this dingy room, she had no idea what would happen next and no news about Edward. What if they had arrested him and there was no one to collect Izzy from kindergarten? Thanks a lot, she thought with some bitterness; you, the professional diplomat – or spy, as Edward would have it – are happily back in America while I’m here in the hands of the KGB. She tried to reassure herself that she had done nothing wrong, but was that strictly true? And what was right and wrong here anyway? Increasingly she came to realise how naïve and foolish she had been. Edward had been right; this wasn’t London or New York. She should have been a lot more careful. All the same, she thought, this is not the nineteen thirties. Stalin has been dead for twenty years. Surely nothing too bad can happen to me?

  For the rest of that day no one came to her room other than the same stout woman with swept-back grey hair and what appeared to be a badly repaired broken nose who had originally told her to ‘make herself comfortable’ and who now brought her a meal on a tray. Marianne bombarded her with questions but she merely answered, in an accent which Marianne placed as coming from somewhere east of the Urals, ‘I have no information’.

  Depressed at the thought of the long night ahead of her, Marianne remembered that she had with her some sleeping pills and pain killers prescribed by the hospital, which she had persuaded her crooked-nosed jailor to allow her to keep. Taking two of each she got into bed, shut her eyes and tried to will herself to sleep. Before the pills eventually did their work, she had a vague recollection of reading somewhere that the KGB always conducted their interrogations at night. Oh well, she thought, they won’t get much out of me now.

  Waking the next morning she felt groggy and nauseous and realised that she was extremely hungry; the now cold and congealed evening meal, lying untouched on the floor, reminded her that she had eaten nothing since the previous morning. She was pathetically grateful when at last her jailor brought in her breakfast: strong black tea with bread, butter and a bowl of yoghurt.

  She didn’t have long t
o contemplate what might have happened to her husband or daughter before the crooked-nosed woman appeared again. ‘Follow me, please,’ she said, setting off down a succession of corridors while Marianne hobbled after her as fast as her crutches would allow. Entering a brightly lit office, she was greeted by a uniformed man of about forty, slim, with blond hair and dark circles under his eyes who rose from his seat when she came in.

  ‘Mrs Davenport, will you sit down,’ the man said in English, ‘I am sorry that we could not talk yesterday but I was rather busy. May I express my sympathy about your unfortunate accident? Are you comfortable in that seat?’ Marianne ignored his expression of sympathy and launched herself into a series of questions.

  ‘Please tell me what’s going on. Why am I here? Where is my husband? What has happened to my daughter? Am I under arrest? What am I supposed…’ The man held up both his hands to halt her flow of questions.

  ‘Please, first things first. Let me introduce myself. I am Lieutenant Colonel Petroff of the Committee for State Security; as for your husband and daughter, they were escorted to the airport yesterday and will now be back in England.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? Oh dear, Mrs Davenport, I think you must know the answer to that question.’ Marianne said nothing, though she felt a huge surge of relief that Edward and Izzy were safe – assuming, of course, that she was being told the truth. ‘Let me give you a start then,’ the colonel continued, ‘it seems you were an associate of the American spy Larry Anderson, who operated under diplomatic cover and who has now been expelled from the Soviet Union.’

  ‘I knew Mr Anderson but I didn’t think that he was a spy.’

  ‘Indeed. It seems though that you were meeting him on a regular basis?’

  ‘Yes. I met him at an embassy party soon after I arrived here. He gave me useful tips about living in Moscow. He was quite often at the university and I would have a coffee with him.’