by Ann Swinfen
'Is the book still there?'
'Yes, I think so. It certainly was the last time I looked.' Frances reflected briefly that it was quite natural that it had not occurred either to Natasha or to herself to consider selling Edmund's books, which were probably worth double the money needed to do the repairs.
'I'll have to look it out, so I can read the stories to our baby.'
'Of course you must. There are a lot of beautiful children's classics there. It's a shame children have to put up with paperbacks and small print these days. I think a child finds a good solid book with thick paper and clear print so much more satisfying.'
The road wound away underneath them, swooping round the sleeping fields and past the RAF base. The town was empty of traffic and just under twenty minutes after leaving St Martins they were pulling up in the hospital car park.
'You go on in, Paul,' said Frances, 'and find the maternity ward. I'll just check that it's all right to leave the car here and then I'll catch you up.'
'Right. Thanks.' He gave her a shaky grin.
The hospital was very quiet. Although it was Saturday night the casualty department was almost deserted. The usual drunks and fist-fights of Saturday must already have been and gone. Frances's rubber-soled trainers made no sound on the lino floor as she followed the directions the girl on reception had given her. The group of rooms that formed the maternity suite had been painted in cheerful colours, and the empty waiting-room had a play corner for children awaiting the arrival of new brothers and sisters. Frances sat down and took up a magazine. She began to turn over the pages without looking at them. There was no sign of Paul. On the wall opposite her, a mural had been painted. It depicted a rather crude fairyland in bright harsh colours. The elves and gnomes were faintly grotesque, and the characters from fairy tales who peopled its improbable landscape were a poor imitation of Disney. She got up and took another seat, so that she was facing the blank uncurtained windows instead. The whole place felt weirdly deserted. No one else, it appeared, was having a baby tonight.
'Mrs Fenway?' A nurse had approached on silent feet, and Frances jumped, startled.
'No, Mrs Kilworth. Lisa Fenway is my daughter.'
'Oh, yes, of course. Mr Fenway did say you were his mother-in-law.'
'Is she all right?'
'Yes, mother and baby are splendid.' The nurse spoke in that clinically cheerful tone that always makes one suspect the worst. 'Mr Fenway just arrived in time,' she added brightly.
'We did expect you to let us know sooner,' said Frances, rather grimly.
'I'm sure we did send a message. Perhaps Mr Fenway didn't receive it. I understand he was at a party.' The public mask slipped slightly. The nurse's tone was accusing.
'It was a fiftieth anniversary party given by my ninety-four-year-old grandmother, the artist Natasha Devereux,' said Frances, rising to the provocation, and thinking: This is ridiculous, why should I feel I have to justify him? Just because I'm tired I mustn't let her upset me.
She went on firmly: 'Lisa was very anxious that Paul should not disappoint her great-grandmother. And no message was sent to us until the last moment.' She drew a breath to steady herself. 'May I see my daughter, please?'
'Yes, of course,' the nurse looked slightly mollified. 'Please come this way.'
As Frances followed her along a corridor, she decided she would wait and let Lisa and Paul tell her whether it was a boy or a girl. They turned into a small ward holding four beds. In two, the humped blankets showed where the women were asleep; in the third a young black girl was sitting up reading. She smiled at Frances as she passed. Lisa was propped up in the furthest bed, looking rather pale, with damp tendrils of hair clinging to her forehead. Paul got up to let Frances sit down beside the bed, and in the hospital cot she could see a small red face with eyes screwed shut and spiky black hair. Frances leaned over and kissed Lisa.
'How are you feeling, darling?'
'Sore!' said Lisa, 'And a bit tired, but otherwise I'm fine. It was all quite fast in the end.'
'And you've saved yourself a whole month of pregnancy.'
'Brilliant, isn't it? And she's fine – six and a half pounds.' She called softly across to the nurse: 'Nurse, could my mother hold her new granddaughter?'
The nurse lifted the solid little bundle and put her into Frances's arms. The baby moved her head, turning away from the light, and made little sucking motions with her lips.
'She's very like you,' said Frances. 'Same shape of head. And your hair was just like that when you were born.'
'Was it? I think she has Paul's chin.'
Frances studied the small square chin and looked across the bed, where Paul was standing with a smile of great self-satisfaction on his face. 'Yes, definitely Paul's chin. He looks as though he did it all himself.'
Paul laughed joyously. 'Sssh,' said the nurse.
'Have you thought of a name yet?' asked Frances.
'Oh, no question,' said Lisa, smiling up at Paul. 'It has to be Natasha.'
'Absolutely,' he said.
'She'll be very pleased,' said Frances, laying her cheek for a moment against the spiky hair, and feeling the strong pulse of the baby's new life beating. 'I wonder what the world will be like when she is ninety-four.'
'It's almost unbelievable, isn't it?' said Lisa, reaching out and laying her hand on her mother's, where it cupped the baby's head. And for a moment Frances saw before her the chain of women linking this Natasha to the other, and then back into the past, to all those other generations of women, who had laboured and brought forth. She had a fleeting sense of the great sisterhood she shared with all those women.
'Paul and I had better go now, and let you get some sleep,' she said, getting up and starting to lay the baby back in her cot. The nurse bustled over officiously and intervened, taking the baby from Frances and putting her down again. Lisa and Frances exchanged glances.
'My mother-in-law has five children of her own,' said Paul stiffly. Frances shook her head at him.
'Oh, I'm sure,' said the nurse in a disbelieving tone. 'But things have changed since those days.'
Frances managed to get Paul out into the corridor and halfway down the stairs before he exploded.
'Well, honestly, Frances – what an awful woman!'
'She was very young,' said Frances mildly. 'She got under my skin at first, but when I saw how young she was – perhaps it's her first night in charge. She's just protecting her dignity and her professional position.'
Paul snorted. 'Well, I hope she knows what she's doing. I can't wait to get Lisa and Natasha out of there and bring them home.'
Natasha. The name hung oddly in the air between them as they got into the car and started home.
* * *
'I was in Kashmir about five months,' said Hugh. He got up and moved two more lamps over to the table where he sat talking to Natasha. There was hardly anyone else left outside now. For the last quarter of an hour the final guests had been coming up to Natasha and saying good-night, enthusing over the party. 'It will go down in the annals of Clunwardine Priors,' Richard Lacey had said as he was leaving. 'I'll write something up to go in the parish records. I don't suppose there has been a grander party in the history of the village.'
'You are very kind, Richard, but you exaggerate,' said Natasha. 'I am sure in the eighteenth century there were some very grand parties here indeed.'
'Well, then, it has been the grandest in the Irish sense – the most wonderful, the most fun.'
At last everyone had gone, and Mabel organised her squad of helpers to start clearing up.
'You stay put, Hugh,' she said firmly when he offered to help. 'You've come the furthest and you are the most longed-for guest, so just you stay and sit with Natasha. Only – wouldn't you both rather move inside? It's getting quite dark even with the lamps.'
'We will do very well here for a little longer,' said Natasha. 'And look, there's a moon coming up.'
'Well, just don't catch a chill. We all know that you
are as strong as a horse, but it has been a very long and tiring day.'
'I promise,' said Natasha solemnly, with her eyes dancing, 'that I will not deliberately catch a chill.'
They watched the last of the dishes being cleared away, then Natasha turned to her grandson.
'Now, doushenka. You spent five months in Kashmir.'
'Yes. It was a sad experience, really. I was last there about seventeen years ago, and of course, as you know, Kashmir was my very first expedition, back when I was a student, when you financed me.' He smiled at her fondly. 'I'm sure you only did it because I was jealous of Frances's MG.'
'Not at all. They were both, in their way, gifts of freedom. You both needed to stretch your wings. Just because you had been brought up in the St Martins community it didn't mean you would necessarily want to spend the rest of your lives here. So I gave you each the chance to escape.'
Hugh looked at her in surprise. 'I never realised that was your reason. How subtle of you. But rather sad, I suppose, that we did both leave.'
'Frances is coming back. Has she told you? Of course she has.'
'Yes, she told me almost at once. And I hope to spend more time here. There are still some places I want to visit – did I tell you about the trip to Siberia? But I've been feeling more and more that I need to get the essence of my experience down on paper. I know I've been writing pretty coffee-table books for ages. Yes, that's what they are, Natasha, don't protest. But now I want to try to distil something more worthwhile out of all these years of travelling and meeting people from the world's hidden cultures. So I plan to be around for longer periods, if you will have me.'
'What nonsense, of course we will have you. But,' she prompted gently, 'you were saying that Kashmir was a sad experience.'
Hugh gathered some cake crumbs into his hand and began rolling them into a ball. 'Yes. Quite a few of my friends from way back were alleged to be dead. Some of them really were. Others were in hiding, and refused to see me. There is so much hatred and mistrust now, the country is spoiled for me, and I used to love it.'
He sighed, and flicked the ball of crumbs into the shadows.
'Anyway, I travelled from Kashmir back to Delhi, then I flew to Moscow. I had heard about a fellow who might be willing to act as a guide for me on an expedition next spring, just before the snows melt, into the remoter parts of the Siberian forest. The idea is to stay right through the short summer and study both the flora and fauna, and also to assess whether the exploitation of other parts of Siberia is having any effect on that area.'
'This you will enjoy. I have seen on the television a film of Siberia. So strange it seems, after all the years of the gulags. And before, when I was a girl, one thought of Siberia as one might now think of the dark side of the moon.'
Hugh nodded. 'Even to someone of my generation it seems strange.'
He hesitated before he went on, and studied his grandmother in the light of the lamps. He was not sure how much he should say.
'I found that the man I wanted to meet – Potopov – wouldn't be available for a fortnight. He was off somewhere, Georgia I think. So I had a couple of weeks to fill in. I haven't been in Russia for – what? – nearly twenty years. And then it was only to give a paper at a conference. Surrounded by KGB men masquerading (very unsuccessfully!) as academics. Looking behind me every minute, wondering whether a hand was going to drop on my shoulder and I was going to be led away to the Lubyanka. It's very different now. I decided to do a bit of exploring for myself in Mother Russia. And that's what I want to tell you about.'
* * *
Hugh had travelled from Moscow to St Petersburg by train in the company of a Canadian journalist, Charlie McGregor, whom he had known for at least ten years.
'You're right,' said Charlie. 'Things sure have changed in Russia. Mostly for the better, but, Jesus!, the rise in the crime rate is scary. In a totalitarian state you have state-run crime, but private enterprise is strictly a no-no. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the fastest growth industry has been organised crime. Mafia-type bosses – home-grown or imported – are getting a grip on commerce, distribution, you name it. And of course the drug trade. Alcoholism was always a problem – it's getting worse. On top of that, food supplies from the satellite countries have dried up because the Russians can't take them by force any more, and don't have any currency to pay for them. Their own farms are inefficient, but a large proportion of what they do produce is rotting away because they have no understanding of how to organise a distribution system.'
'Yes,' said Hugh. 'It's upsetting to see emaciated old ladies in the streets begging for food. And it's summer. The winter doesn't bear thinking about.'
'They just die,' said Charlie bluntly. 'A lot of people are starting to say that things were better under the communists. Mostly the old people, and parents with a lot of children to feed. Many of the young, however, are grabbing their opportunities. Either to become legitimate entrepreneurs, or to operate on the fringes and beyond the law. Take this guy I'm going to interview. Ex-KGB. But he's only about twenty-six, twenty-seven. So he's not going around beating his breast and bemoaning the past. He's set himself up as a private detective. Employs two of his former colleagues and a woman who left the police in rather mysterious circumstances. He uses his know-how and his contacts still in post to get hold of information, and he makes a very lucrative living, so I understand. Mind you, he may be just a bit too clever by half. He works for private clients – OK, divorce, missing persons, all that. But he does little jobs for the police and little jobs for some of these shadowy men who have got very rich very suddenly. It's possible that one of these days the latter will find out he is shopping them to the police and he will end up at the bottom of the Neva.'
'Sounds like Chicago during Prohibition,' said Hugh.
'You'd better believe it. Though I understand St Petersburg isn't quite as bad as Moscow. Anyway, I'm in a hurry to do my interview with this Ivan Brelov before the Mafia beat me to him.'
Hugh took a pull from the small bottle of vodka they were sharing, and nibbled without enthusiasm on a dry sandwich he had bought in the station.
'Any chance I might come with you?'
'He's not your sort of person. Young Ivan has no interest in wild life outside the streets of St Petersburg, or in cultures other than the new capitalism.'
'No, I don't suppose he does. But I might have a job for him.'
'You? Now watch it, Hugh. These people are strictly for keeping at arm's length.'
'Oh, purely as one of his "private" customers, as you describe them. I am trying to trace someone.'
'Who?' Charlie's interest was caught.
'Well, not one specific person. My grandmother came from St Petersburg. She escaped during the Revolution, and walked – literally – almost the whole way to Paris, when she was in her teens. The rest of her family was murdered by the Bolsheviks, but I know where she lived. At least I know the name of the house. And I thought I might be able to find someone who remembered someone – perhaps who worked for her family. There won't be any of her contemporaries left. She's ninety-four.'
'She's still alive!'
'Very much so. She's the painter, Natasha Devereux.'
'Jesus, Hugh, I never knew that before.' Charlie pulled a dog-eared notebook out of his pocket and began scribbling. 'But Devereux isn't a Russian name.'
'No, no, that's her married name. It's an English name, even though it sounds French. Not too uncommon in Herefordshire, where my grandfather came from.'
'So what was her maiden name?'
'Greshlov. She was the Princess Natasha Greshlov, but she dropped the title after she got to Paris.'
'This is fascinating. Maybe I could do a story on it?'
'Maybe. We'll see. I am doing this very much on the quiet. I don't want my grandmother upset. But if you want to help me in a bit of sleuthing, and you've got some useful connections . . . '
'You're on.'
The next morning in his office – w
ith its expensive imported Italian furniture, its computers, and its smart secretary bringing coffee in English porcelain – Ivan Brelov showed himself a model of courtesy, although he gave the impression of a man with meetings booked end-to-end for the next eighteen months, who was fitting the two of them in by forgoing his workout in the gym with his personal trainer. He reminded Hugh of the young financial whiz-kids who rose and then fell so spectacularly in the City of London in the eighties. Hugh, introduced by Charlie as a colleague, had been accepted without question by Ivan, though Hugh noticed that he exchanged a glance with the secretary. Throughout the interview he listened quietly to Charlie as he skilfully drew out the ex-KGB man. It reminded him of the skill needed to track and photograph a wild animal. Slow, innocent, cautious – then the quick flick of the shutter and the quiet move on before the quarry was alarmed. No doubt this particular quarry had a good grasp of Charlie's tactics, but he did not take fright. From time to time he would look at his computer screen and tap a few keys, but otherwise he gave his undivided attention to the newspaper man.
Charlie moved smoothly from his last question to introducing Hugh's proposition of a small private investigation in St Petersburg.
Ivan smiled. 'Ah, Mr Appleton, I wondered why you were here. Our city is too old and too civilised to be of much interest to you for one of your expeditions, is this not so?'
Hugh and Charlie exchanged startled glances.
Ivan laughed out loud, like a small boy proud of his cleverness. 'There is no mystery, my friends. This is my business. You would not think much of me if I let anyone who pleased come and go. My attractive secretary – whose legs I noticed you both admired – so delightful, is it not, that the short skirts of the sixties are coming back? – my secretary is in fact one of my investigators. Former police detective, Lyudmila Sergeyevna Babin. She has sent through to me on our computer network all the details she has been able to discover about you while we have been having our pleasant chat.' His English was flawless, if a little old-fashioned, and spoken with an American accent. He smiled like a happy shark and rotated the computer screen so they could read it.
