“Listen to this, Nadezhda!” he shouts down the telephone, his voice fizzy with excitement. “GCSE result of the Stanislav. Grade B in English! B in music! C in mathematics! C in science! C in technology! D in history! D in French! Grade A in religious studies only!”
I can hear Stanislav faintly protesting in the background, and my father’s voice taunting, “Grade C! Ha ha! Grade C!”
Now I hear a terrifying screech as Valentina pitches in, then a crash and the phone goes dead. I try to phone back, but get an engaged tone. Again and again. I am beginning to panic.
Then after about twenty minutes a dialling tone but no reply. I put on my coat and grab the car keys. I’d better go and rescue him. Then I dial once more and this time my father picks up the receiver.
“Hallo, Nadezhda? Yes, good job we discovered the truth. Psychologist who wrote IQ report was a fraud. Stanislav is not genius, not even very clever. Merely mediocre.”
“Oh Pappa…”
“There can be no excuses. In English, yes, science even maybe command of the language is a factor. But mathematics is pure test of intelligence. Grade C! Ha!”
“Pappa, are you all right? What was that crash I heard?”
“Oh, just the smallishbump. You see, she cannot stand to face the truth. Her son is not a genius, but she will not believe this.”
“Are Stanislav and Valentina still there with you?”
I want to shut him up, before she does him a serious injury.
“No is gone out. Shopping.”
“Pappa, it’s more than two weeks since the court granted you the injunction. Why are they still living there? They should have moved out by now.”
It is clear to me that Valentina has another base, maybe even another home somewhere, where she and Stanislav and the small portable photocopier are installed. Why is she still hanging around my father?
“Sometimes here, sometimes not here. One day is gone, one day is back. You know, this Valentina is not a bad type, but she cannot accept that the boy is not genius.”
“So has she or has she not moved out? Where does she live?”
There is a long silence.
“Pappa?”
Then, quietly, almost with regret, he murmurs, “Grade C!”
Vera has been on holiday in Tuscany, so I ring her to fill her in on what has happened in the last fortnight. I describe the scene in the courtroom, Laura Carter’s speech, and my father’s finger-pointing intervention.
“Bravo!” cries Vera.
I describe Valentina’s impassioned but unintelligible declaration of love, and our plum wine celebration.
“We both got a bit tipsy, then he started talking about his days at the Red Plough Factory.”
“Ah yes, the Red Plough.” Vera’s Big Sis voice makes me feel uneasy, as though something bad is coming next. “You know of course that in the end they were betrayed. Somebody whose bicycle they had mended reported them to the NK. VD. The director and most of the staff were carted off to Siberia.”
“Oh no!”
“Fortunately, that was after Pappa had already left. And one of the neighbours betrayed Anna and Viktor, and they ended up in Babi Yar. You know that they were Jews, of course.”
“I didn’t know.”
“So you see everybody is betrayed in the end.”
I had thought there was a happy story to tell about my parents’ life, a tale of triumph over tragedy, of love overcoming impossible odds, but now I see that there are only fleeting moments of happiness, to be seized and celebrated before they slip away.
“What I find hard to understand, Vera, is-why were people so quick to betray each other? You would have thought they would show solidarity in the face of oppression.”
“No no, that is the naive view, Nadezhda. You see, this is the dark underside of human nature. When someone has power, the lesser people always try to gain favour with them. Look at the way Father always tries to please Valentina, even when she abuses him. Look at the way your Labour politicians are creeping up to offer their homage” (she pronounces it hom-aahj) “to the capitalists’ (she pronounces it cap-it-alists) “whom they vowed to overthrow. Of course it’s not just politicians, it happens throughout the animal kingdom too.”
(Oh, Big Sis, what a nose you have for sniffing out the tainted, the soiled, the venal, the compromised. When did you learn to see so darkly?)
“They’re not my Labour politicians, Vera.”
“Well they are certainly not mine. Nor Mother’s, as you know.”
Yes, my generous dumpling-hearted stuff-‘em-with-food-till-they-burst mother was a devoted supporter of Mrs Thatcher.
“Let’s not talk about politics, Vera. We always seem to fall out.”
“Of course some things are so distasteful they are better not talked about.”
Instead, we make plans for the immigration tribunal hearing, which has crept up on us and is suddenly only a fortnight away. Vera and I have informally swapped roles. I am now Mrs Divorce Expert, or at least, it is my job to take care of the divorce side of things. Vera plays the part of Mrs Flog-‘em-and-send-‘em-home. She is superb in the role.
“The secret, Nadia, is in meticulous planning.”
Vera has visited the tribunal courtroom, checked out the lie of the land, and made friends with the usher. She has contacted the tribunal office, and without actually telling them that she is acting for Mrs Mayevska, has ensured that there will be an interpreter.
I travel down to London for the tribunal, because I don’t want to miss the excitement. Vera and I meet in a cafe opposite the building in Islington where the tribunal is to be held. Although we have talked on the phone, it is the first time we have actually met since Mother’s funeral. We look each other up and down. I have made a special effort, and am wearing a this-season Oxfam jacket, a white blouse and dark trousers. Vera is wearing a stylishly crumpled jacket and skirt in earth-coloured linen. Cautiously, we lean forward and each peck the air at the side of the other’s cheek.
“How lovely to see you, Nadia.”
“You too, Vera.”
We are treading on eggshells.
Giving ourselves plenty of time, we take our places at the back of the courtroom, which is in a sombre oak-panelled chamber where oblique sunlight filters through windows too high to see out of. A few minutes before the hearing starts Valentina and Stanislav enter. Valentina has excelled herself: gone is the navy polyester with the pink lining. She is wearing a white dress and black-and-white hound’s-tooth check jacket, cut low at the front to show her cleavage, but cleverly darted and tailored to conceal her bulk. Above her blonde bouffant perches a small white pillbox hat with cut-out flowers in black silk. Her lipstick and nails are blood-red. Stanislav is wearing the uniform and tie of his posh school, and has had a haircut.
She catches sight of us as soon as she comes in and lets out a low cry. The blond young man accompanying her, whom we take to be her counsel, follows the line of her gaze, and they confer quietly as they take their places. He is wearing a suit so sharp and a tie so bright that we are sure he is not a Peterborough lad.
Everyone has made an effort to dress up except the three members of the tribunal, who come in a few moments later, dressed in unfashionably baggy trousers and not-stylishly crumpled jackets. They introduce themselves, and at once Valentina’s counsel rises to his feet and asks for an interpreter for his client. The tribunal members confer, the clerk is consulted, then a plump woman with frizzed hair enters from a side door, seats herself in front of Valentina and Stanislav and introduces herself to them. I can hear them gasp. Now the young barrister rises again, points to Vera and me sitting at the back, and objects to our presence. He is overruled. Finally he rises again, and launches into a long and eloquent account of the love-match between Valentina and my father, how love-at-first-sight swept them off their feet at a function in the Ukrainian Club in Peterborough, how he pleaded with her to marry him, bombarded her with letters and poems-the young man waves a wodge of photocopies in the air-and how happy they were before the two daughters-he points to me and Vera-started to interfere.