I start with the bed. There are some photos, a few official-looking papers, an application for a provisional driver’s licence, a?45 from her job at the nursing-home (I notice that the surname is spelt differently on both documents), an application form for a job at McDonald’s. The photographs are interesting-they show Valentina in a glamorous off-the-shoulder evening gown, elaborately coiffed, standing beside a dark stocky middle-aged man who is a couple of inches shorter than she. Sometimes he has his arm around her shoulder; sometimes they hold hands; sometimes they smile at the camera. Who is the man? I study the picture closely, but it does not look like Bob Turner. I pick one of the photos and slip it into my pocket.
Under the bed, in a Tesco’s carrier bag, I make my next discovery: it is a bundle of letters and poems in my father’s crabbed hand. Interspersed with the letters and poems, someone has supplied an English translation. My darling…beloved…beautiful goddess Venus…breasts like ripe peaches (for goodness’sake!)…hair like the golden wheat fields of Ukraina…all my love and devotion…yours until death and beyond. The handwriting of the translations looks like a child’s, with large rounded letters, and the i’s dotted with little circles. Stanislav? Why would he do this? Who is the intended reader of these translations? One of the letters, I notice, has numbers as well as words. Curious, I pull it out. My father has set out his income, giving details of all his pensions and all his savings accounts. The spidery numbers crawl up and down the pages. It is a modest amount, but enough to live comfortably, and all will be yours, my beloved, he has written at the bottom. All this has been neatly transcribed in the childish hand.
I read it through again, my irritation rising. My sister is right-he is a fool. I should not blame Valentina for taking his money-he has more or less thrust it upon her.
Now I turn my attention to the drawers. Here the same chaos prevails. I sift through the jumble of underwear, outerwear, sticky sweet wrappers, bottles of lotions, cheap perfume.
In one drawer, I find a note. “See you on Saturday. All my love, Eric.” Beside it, buried in a pair of knickers, is a half-eaten ham sandwich, its crusts grey and curled back, the pink dark-dry sliver of ham poking out obscenely.
At that moment, I hear the sound of a car pulling up. Quickly, I sneak out of Valentina’s room and into Stanislav’s. This used to be my room, and I still keep some things in the wardrobe, so I have an excuse to be there. Stanislav is tidier than Valentina. It does not take me long to realise that he is a fan of Kylie Minogue and of Boyzone. This ‘musical genius’ has a roomful of tapes of Boyzone! On the table under the window are some school books, and a writing pad. He is writing a letter in Ukrainian. Dear Daddy…
Then I realise there are two new voices-it is not Mike and my father, it is Valentina and Stanislav talking to each other in the kitchen. I close Stanislav’s door behind me quietly and tiptoe downstairs. Valentina and Stanislav are in the kitchen poking at some boil-in-the-bag delicacies bubbling away on the cooker. Under the grill, two shrivelled sausages are starting to smoke.
“Hallo Valentina. Hallo Stanislav.” (I’m not sure of the etiquette here: how are you supposed to talk to someone who is beating up your father, and whose room you have been rifling through? I opt for the English way: polite conversation.) “Had a hard day at work?”
“I always working hard. Too much hard,” Valentina replies grumpily. I notice how fat she has grown. Her stomach has swelled like a balloon, and her cheeks have stretched and bulged. Stanislav, on the other hand, seems to have grown thinner. My father is lurking in the doorway, emboldened by Mike’s presence.
“Sausages burning, Valentina,” he says.
“You no eating, you shut up mouth.” She flicks a wet tea-towel in his direction.
Then she throws the boil-in-bags on to a plate and slits them with a knife, spewing out their indeterminate contents, slaps the sausages down beside them, splatters some ketchup on top, and stomps back up to her bedroom. Stanislav follows mutely.
The pen is mightier than the tea-towel, and Father writes his own revenge.
Never was the technology of peace, in the form of the tractor, transformed into a weapon of war, more ferociously than with the creation of the Valentine tank. This tank was developed by the British, but produced in Canada, where many Ukrainian engineers were skilled in the production of tractors. The Valentine tank was so named because it was first born into the world on the day of St Valentine in 1938. But there was nothing lovely about it. Clumsy and heavy with an old-fashioned gearbox, it was nevertheless deadly, indeed a true killing machine.
“Ugh!” exclaims Vera, when I tell her about the ham sandwich. “But of course, what else would one expect from such a slut?”
I cannot describe the smell. I tell her about the cotton wool.
“How simply ghastly! In Mother’s bedroom! But didn’t you find anything else? Was there nothing from the solicitor about her immigration status, or any advice about divorce?”
“I couldn’t find anything. Maybe she’s keeping it at work. There’s no trace in the house.”
“She must have hidden it. Of course it is only what one would expect from a highly developed criminal mind like hers.”
“But listen to this, Vera. I had a look in Stanislav’s room, and guess what I found.”
“I haven’t a clue. Drugs? Counterfeit money?”
“Don’t be silly. No, I found a letter. He’s writing to his Dad in Ternopil, saying he’s really unhappy over here. He wants to go home.”
Thirteen. Yellow rubber gloves
Of course Valentina finds out the true meaning of ‘duress’. Stanislav tells her. Worse, she finds out on the same day that a letter comes from the Immigration Service, telling her that her appeal has been refused once more.
She corners my father as he is coming out of the toilet, bent over, fumbling with his flies.
“You living corpse!” she screeches. “I will show you dooh-ress!”
She is wearing yellow rubber gloves, and has in her hands a tea-towel, wet from washing up, which she starts to flick at him.
“You useless shrivel-brain shrivel-penis donkey.” Flick flick “You dried shrivelled relic of ancient goat turd!”
She flicks at his legs and at his hands that are stretched out for protection or in supplication. He backs away and finds himself pressed up against the kitchen sink. Over her shoulder he can see a pan of potatoes bubbling on the stove.
“You creeping insect I will stamp on.” Flick flick! The steam from the potatoes is misting his glasses and there is a slight smell of scorching.
“Dooh-ress! Dooh-ress! I show you dooh-ress!” Emboldened she starts to flick at his face. Flick flick. The corner of the tea-towel catches the bridge of his nose, and sends his spectacles skittering across the floor.
“Valechka, please…”
“You morsel of old gristle that dog chewed dog spat out! Thphoo!”
She pokes him in the ribs with a yellow rubber finger.
“Why you still living? You should be long ago lying beside Ludmilla, dead beside dead.”
His body is shaking and he can feel the familiar churning in his bowels. He is afraid he is about to soil himself. The stench of the burning potatoes fills the air.
“Please Valechka, darling, little pigeon…” She closes in on him, the yellow fingers now prodding, now slapping. The pan of potatoes is beginning to smoke.
“Soon you will return where you belong! Under ground. Under dooh-ress! Hah!”
He is saved by Mrs Zadchuk, ringing at the doorbell. She comes in, sizes up the situation and lays a plump restraining hand on her friend’s arm.
“Come, Valya. Leave this no-good meanie oralsex maniac husband. Come. We go shopping.”