“She wants me to repair her,” says my father with a helpless little shrug, as if he is the fairytale prince set an impossible task as a test of love by the beautiful princess.
“I think it’s past repair,” says Mike. “Anyway, where would you get the parts?”
“True, she is needing some parts, and even then it is by no means any certainty that she will run,” says my father. “Such is a pity. Car like this should run for ever, but she has dearly suffered from some abuses in her past. Nevertheless, what beauty…”
Just at that moment, Valentina emerges from the house. Although it is June, and the weather is warm, she is wearing a huge pinch-waisted wide-shouldered fur coat, which she wraps around herself with her hands in the pockets, movie-star style. She has grown so fat that the coat hardly meets in the middle. Around her neck twinkle some sparkly beads which in a poor light could be mistaken for diamonds. Stanislav, in a short-sleeved shirt, walks behind her carrying her bag.
She stops when she sees the three of us standing in the garden looking at her Roller.
“Is nice car, yes?” She addresses all of us, but looks to Mike for a reply.
“Yes, a very nice car,” says Mike, “but possibly more of a museum piece or a collector’s item than an on-road vehicle.”
“Hallo, Valentina,” I smile ingratiatingly. “You’re looking very elegant. Are you going out?”
“Verk.” One word. She doesn’t even turn her head towards me.
“What do you think, Stanislav? Do you like the car?”
“Oh yes. It’s better than a Zill.” Flash of chipped tooth. “Valentina always gets what she wants in the end.”
“Car is kaput,” says my father.
“You mend car,” she snaps. Then remembering she is supposed to be nice to him, she bends forward and pats his cheek. “Mr Engineer.”
Mr Engineer draws himself up to his full crooked height.
“Rolls-Royce kaput. Lada kaput. Soon Rover kaput. Only walking is not kaput. Ha ha.”
“Soon you kaput,” says Valentina. Then she catches my eye and gives a little laugh as if to say, only joking.
She drives off with Stanislav in the Rover, leaving behind a cloud of smoke and a smell of burning. While Mike and my father continue to pore over the Roller, I go inside and search the Yellow Pages.
“Hallo, is that Mr Eric Pike?”
“How can I help?” The voice is both oily and gritty, like burnt engine oil.
“I’m the daughter of Mr Mayevskyj. You sold him a car.”
“Ah yes.” Gritty chuckle. “Valentina’s Roller. Came from the Glaswyne estate, you know.”
“Mr Pike, how could you do a thing like that? You know the car doesn’t even go.”
“Well now, Miss er…Mrs er…You see Valentina said that her husband was a wizard engineer. Aeronautics. You see I happen to know a bit about planes.” The oily gritty voice becomes confiding. “You see some of the world leaders in aeronautics in the 19305 were Ukrainian. Sikorsky-invented the helicopter. Lozinsky-worked on the MiG. Saw them in action myself in Korea, you know. Fine little fighters. So when Valentina told me about her husband, how he promised her he would get it going in no time…Believe me, I had my doubts, but she was very persuasive. You know what she’s like.”
“My father’s looked at it, and he says he can’t fix it. Perhaps you could just take it away and give him his money back.”
“Five hundred quid is a very good price for a vintage Roller.”
“Not if it doesn’t go.”
There is silence on the other end of the phone.
“Mr Pike, I know what’s going on. I know about you and Valentina.”
Silence again, then a soft click. Then the dialling tone.
Lady Di likes the Roller. There is a window on the rear passenger side that does not fully close, where he can squeeze in. He invites his friends round, too, and they party all night on the sumptuous leather seats, and then spray a bit of piss around to mark that they were there. Lady Di’s girlfriend is a shy skinny tabby, who, it soon becomes apparent, is pregnant, and who likes to curl up on the driver’s seat, sinking her claws into the soft leather.
It is unseasonably wet in June. It rains and rains until the lawn is a sea of mud. The Roller sinks deeper and deeper; grass and weeds grow tall around it. Lady Di’s girlfriend has her babies on the front seat of the Roller-there are four of them-blind, soft, mewing bits of fluff that suck at their skinny mother, pawing her belly in rhythm. Pappa, Valentina and Stanislav are enchanted with them, and try to bring them into the house, but the girlfriend moves them all back, carrying them one by one by the scruff of the neck.
Vera’s visit to Pappa comes very shortly after the kittens are born. She drives up from Putney in her battered open-top Golf GT, a love-gift from Big Dick in the days when he still loved her (of course it wasn’t battered then). She arrives in the middle of the afternoon, while Stanislav and Valentina are out, and Pappa is snoozing in his armchair with the radio on full blast. He wakes up to find her standing over him, and lets out an involuntary scream: “No! No!”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake be quiet, Pappa. We’ve had quite enough melodrama this week already, thank you,” Vera barks in her Big Sis voice. “Now!” She looks around, as though Valentina might be hiding in a corner. “Where is she?”
Father sits in the armchair gripping the armrests and saying nothing.
“Where is she, Pappa?”
He bites his lips together theatrically and stares straight ahead.
“Pappa, for goodness’ sake, I’ve driven all the way up from Putney to try to get you out of this mess you’ve got yourself into, and you can’t even bring yourself to talk to me.”
“You tell me to be quiet, so I am quiet.” He damps his lips together again.
Big Sis marches through every room in the house, slamming doors as she goes. She even looks in the outhouse and the greenhouse. Then she goes back into the room where my father is sitting. He hasn’t moved. His lips are still pressed tight.
“Really, Nadia,” she tells me, “I could quite understand why Valentina threw a cup of water at him. I felt like doing just the same. I suppose he was trying to demonstrate how clever he was.” I say nothing. My lips are clamped tight. I am trying not to laugh. “Of course it was easy to get him talking again. I just asked him about Korolev and the space programme.”
“And what happened in the end? Did you meet Valentina?”
“But I thought she was quite wonderful. So…dynamic.”
Apparently, Big Sis and Valentina got on like a house on fire. Valentina admired Vera’s style and panache. Vera admired Valentina’s up-front sexuality and her ruthlessness. They both agreed that Father is pathetic, crazy and contemptible.
“But the peach pearlised nail-polish? The high-heeled peep-toe mules? The Roller on the lawn?”
“Ah yes. Of course she is a tart. And a criminal. But still, I had to admire her.”
My heart sinks. I have been so looking forward to this confrontation: the Zadchuk matrimonial canon v. Mrs Divorce Expert; the green satin rocket-launcher v. the Gucci handbag. I realise how much I have been depending on Big Sis to take on Valentina. Now I recognise that in some ways they are two of a kind.
“Poor Pappa. I know he’s a bit eccentric, but I wouldn’t call him contemptible.”
“Look at all the trouble he has caused everybody-us, the authorities, even Valentina. In the end, she will realise that she would have been better latching on to somebody else. It would have been better if he could just have said no right from the beginning. He thinks he really is a suitable match for a tarty thirty-six-year-old. If that isn’t contemptible, tell me what is.”
“But she led him on. She flattered him. She made him feel young and sexy.”