by Ann Michaels
Chapter 17
Monday 21th November, 1988
Dana Roberts is Sally Brown.
Women Troubles
It was a bit of a thrill to be picked up by a handsome man in a gold Porsche. As we sped along the roads as sleek as quicksilver, past imposing mansions and the ruffled blue of the bay, I noticed other drivers turning their heads to look at us, and one or two young women stared out brazenly through the glass at Peter Ruslen, as though inviting his interest. It is amazing what a bit of expensive moving metal can do for your mate value!
Electronic gates opened like magic and we drove down into an underground car park of Ruslen’s mansion, Palais Royale, where I could see a fleet of large, expensive cars, a generic white van, and one small Saab parked right at the end. June Roze had driven a Saab, but I couldn’t see the registration number from where I was. So as we stopped, I turned and said, ‘Can I take a look at your Corvette? I love Corvettes!’ I sounded like a brainless twit but it did the job, as he laughed and said, ‘please do’.
I quickly walked along the line of luxury cars, until I came to the Corvette; the Saab was parked right next to it. Yes! It had June Roze’s registration plate.
‘What a fabulous yellow!’ I lied, as I stared at the corvette, which screamed ‘look at me! ‘But that white van doesn’t really match, the rest does it?’ I added.
‘That van is mostly used for our charity work and is used by Liam, our boatswain and security man’.
Surreptitiously I tried to look over at the Saab. Through its window I could see what looked to be a huge advertising poster for swimwear. The lady posing on the front could have been June Roze, but there was another woman in the bottom, right hand corner…….was I hallucinating, or did she look like Kristina Ruslen? The words appearing on the poster, however, appeared to be in Greek, or was it Russian? I could make no guesses about what the poster was communicating. From the corner of my eye I could see Peter Ruslen advancing toward me, so I began gushing about the Corvette again, just rabbiting on about how sleek it was and how fast it must go. Absolute total drivel.
After this, we went up in a mirrored elevator, which reflected various versions of me back, adding to my discomfort. I followed Ruslen out into a carpeted hallway, and then, straight into a kind of sitting room, which was basically all beige and gold; I thought this must be the room where the Ruslen’s interviewed staff, as it reminded me of an upmarket doctor’s waiting room. It was very quiet and I felt sealed off from the outside world. We sat down and he picked up the phone and ordered some coffee. He didn’t ask me if I wanted tea or sugar; he didn’t offer me any choice at all. But so far, this was the first evidence of paternalism that I had seen from him, since we had met.
He was asking me about my family and I was filling him in with my bullshit story, when a maid, dressed in the full regalia entered the room after a timid knock. She had a frilled band in her black glossy hair, white frilly apron over a synthetic apricot dress and a skittish look about her, like a graceful, untamed horse. She placed a tray loaded with cakes and tiny sandwiches and a tall coffee pot upon the table, and then, quickly left. Peter Ruslen had his lecherous eye trained on her the whole time; like a sniper, on her attractive, youthful flesh. What a strange and confusing man he was!
While I munched on a couple of sandwiches: cucumber if you can believe it! Ruslen offered me a job as his personal assistant. He also mentioned how his money supplies had dried up. Then he stated telling me about his theories about women and how some were the ‘marrying kind’ and others, were more or less, ‘good-time girls’. He seemed to see me as the marrying kind….but not for him; all down to the obscure reason that I looked like his fiancé. It was all very confusing and I wished Liz was here, with her kindness and knowledge.
But as he talked, I was racking my brain about how I could get him to share some more personal and useful information, when my eyes alighted on a small painting of a harbour, surrounded by lots of small houses. ‘Oh what a lovely harbour’, I gushed. ‘Where is this place?’
‘This is the Russian port city of Vladivostok. My grandfather was born there, but the family fled to Shanghai China in 1922, when the Merkulov brothers, with whom my grandfather had business dealings, were deposed. Later my father, my real father, settled in New York.’
Ruslen reached into his pocket, which freaked me out for a moment, until I saw that he was holding a fine leather wallet. He opened it and removed what appeared to be a very odd looking bank note, printed all in one colour. ‘My grandfather gave this to me when I was young. This was the new currency given to him by the Merkulov brothers…….But my father, his brother and my grandfather never had the opportunity………He and the other anti-Communists had to flee to Shanghai.’
I watched Peter Ruslen struggle with his emotions, so oddly inarticulate.
‘It must have been very hard for your family to survive in China in the early 1920s’, I said, with what I hoped sounded like sympathy.
He was silent for a moment. ‘It was very difficult. Some were able to set up restaurants in the district known as Little Russia, which my grandfather did. But there were too many other such restaurants and he did not prosper’. Ruslen grew silent again and I was afraid that he would not continue. Finally he said, ‘my grandmother, who was still young, was forced to work as a taxi dancer….a paid dance partner, when her music teaching work dried up……………’. He looked angry as he said this and for a moment I felt scared. I also thought that he was not telling me the complete truth about his grandmother….and other things.
The door was flung open, and his mother, Kristina Ruslen, advanced like a tornado toward us. ‘Excuse me’ she said somewhat sarcastically. In the harsh light coming from the window, I noticed that her face was pulled so tight by a face lift, that she looked like wax work. ‘Peter, I hear that there is another housemaid that needs to be dealt with, by you.’ She pointed her icy, painted talon at his chest, like a weapon.
Peter Ruslen flushed slightly, and nodded, and was gone, leaving me with the old dragon.
La mare glared at me for a while, making me feel like I was a dirty, old, bag lady, with an enormous pimple on my nose, while her sickly, floral perfume gassed me slowly.
‘Ah, you are the young gal who has been enquiring all about town about my son and his……many paramours.’ She hissed in that ridiculous, whip-like, cut-glass accent. My heart stopped and seemed to fall like a rock; but then, I realised that she just thought I was a silly, love-struck girl. She obviously thought my enquiries around the place were aimed at capturing her heart-throb son.
This was good, but it also made me feel sad that we women often seemed to be so often at cross purposes; spending so much time and effort fighting each other and underestimating and distaining each other, in order to fight for what power we could get. In reality, in the whole scheme of things, we often had so little power and autonomy compared to men.
‘He is engaged, I will have you know; to his cousin, a most suitable gal, who also happens to be in business with me’.
I was beginning to get sick of her fake accent, and her upper class dame act, but I thought it prudent to remain quiet.
‘Also, I would not accept this job he is offering you. He has perhaps taken rather a shine to you…. just now, but it will not last, and then, he will want to be rid of you…….Which may not be pretty’.
‘That sounds like a threat’, I said, incensed now.
‘You may choose to interpret it that way’, she smiled, showing lots of pointed, perfect teeth, of an unnatural, artic white.
And with a swish of her designer skirt, she swept from the room, and as the aroma of her perfume, and the disturbance of her presence faded away, I began to breathe more easily.
