“Neither did I. But I thought she would care for my father.”
“Ha! She will care only for his money! Your poor mother, who saved every penny. All spent on greasepaint and see-through dresses.”
“And cars. She has three cars, you know.”
“Three cars! What folly! Who needs more than a good pair of legs? Mind you, she won’t walk far on those stab-stab shoes she wears.”
“Now she’s disappeared. We don’t know how to find her.”
She drops her voice to a whisper and puts her mouth close to my cheek.
“Have you tried the Imperial Hotel?”
The Imperial Hotel isn’t really a hotel, it’s a pub. It isn’t really Imperial, either, though the maroon dralon upholstery and mahogany panelling suggest it has pretensions. I still feel awkward going into pubs alone, but I buy a half of shandy at the bar, and take it to a corner where I can sit and observe the whole room. The clientele are mainly young, and very noisy; the men drink bottled lager, the women drink vodka chasers or white wine, and they shout across the room to each other in a relentless ear-splitting banter. They seem to be regulars, for they call to the barman by his first name and make jokes about his bald-look haircut. How do Valentina and Stanislav fit in to this place? At the far side of the lounge I notice a young man clearing glasses from the tables. He has longish curly hair and a horrible purple polyester jumper.
As he reaches my table, he looks up at me, and our eyes meet. I smile a broad friendly smile.
“Hi there, Stanislav! Great to see you! I didn’t know you worked here. Where’s your Mum? Does she work here too?”
Stanislav does not reply. He picks up my glass, which is still half full, and disappears into the room behind the bar. He does not re-emerge. After a while the barman comes up and asks me to leave.
“Why? I’m not doing any harm. I’m just enjoying a quiet drink.”
“Appen yer’ve finished yer drink.”
“I’ll get another.”
“Look, just piss off, will yer?”
“Pubs are supposed to be public, you know.” I try to muster my middle-class dignity.
“I said, piss off.”
He leans over me so close I can smell his beer-breath. His bald-look haircut suddenly doesn’t look very amusing.
“Fine. I’ll cross this hotel off my recommended list, then.”
It is dusk when I find myself out on the pavement again, but still warm from the afternoon sun. It hasn’t rained for a fortnight, and the yard at the back of the pub smells of beer and urine. I am surprised to feel that my hands are shaking as I reach for my car keys, but I am not ready to give up yet. I sneak round to the back and peep through the open scullery window. There is no sign of Stanislav or of Valentina. Inside I can hear one of the rowdy regulars calling, “Hey, Bald Ed-what was all that about?” and Bald Ed’s reply: “Oh, some old cow that was threatening the staff.” I sit down on an empty barrel and feel the tiredness sink into my bones. All the encounters of the day bang around in my head: so much aggression. I can do without it. I climb into my car and, without going back to my father’s house, drive straight home to Cambridge and to Mike.
Vera puts her finger on it straightaway.
“They are working illegally. That’s why he doesn’t want you asking questions. Of course Stanislav is probably under age to be working in a pub, too.”
(Oh, Big Sis, what a instinct you have for digging up the dodgy, the dirty, dishonest.)
“And the woman at Eric Pike’s house?”
“Obviously his wife has been having an affair while he has had an affair with Valentina.”
“How do you know all these things, Vera?”
“How do you not know them, Nadia?”
Twenty-Two. Model citizens
After they came to England in 1946, my parents were model citizens. They never broke the law-not even once. They were too scared. They agonised over filling in forms that were ambiguously worded: what if they gave the wrong answer? They feared to claim benefits: what if there was an inspection? They were too frightened to apply for passports: what if they weren’t allowed back in? Those who got up the nose of the authorities might be sent off on the long train journey from which there was no return.
So imagine my father’s panic when he receives a summons through the post to appear in court for non-payment of Vehicle Excise Duty. Crap car has been found parked on a side street without a tax disc. He is the registered keeper of the vehicle.
“You see, through this Valentina for the first time in my life I am become a criminal.”
“It’s OK, Pappa. I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding.”
“No no. You know nothing. People have died from misunderstanding.”
“But not in Peterborough.”
I telephone the DVLA and explain the situation. I tell the voice on the other end of the phone that my father has never driven the car, is no longer physically able to drive. I had been braced for an encounter with a distant bureaucrat, but the voice-older, female, with a touch of Yorkshire about the vowels-is gently sympathetic. Suddenly for no reason I burst into tears and find myself pouring out the whole story: the enhanced bosom, the yellow rubber gloves, the pork-cutlet driving licence.
“Oh my! Oh, I never!” coos the gentle voice. “The poor duck! Tell him he’s not to worry. I’ll just send him a little form to fill in. He only has to give the details of her name and address.”
“But that’s just it. He doesn’t know her address. We have to communicate through the solicitor.”
“Well, put the solicitor’s address. That’ll do.”
I fill the form in for my father, and he signs it.
A few days later, he rings me again. Overnight, Crap car has reappeared on the drive. It sits with two wheels on the grass, next to the rotting Roller. It has a flat rear tyre, a broken quarter light on the driver’s side, and the driver’s door is buckled and tied up with string to the door pillar, so that the driver has to get in on the passenger side and climb over the gear lever. There is no tax disc. Meanwhile, the Lada has disappeared from the garage.
“Something fishy has occurred,” says my father.
There are now two cars in the front garden, and they are parked in such a way that my father has to squeeze up against the prickly pyracantha hedge to get to his front door. The thorns catch at his coat, and sometimes scratch his face and hands.
“This is ridiculous,” I say to my father. “She must take her cars away.”
I telephone Ms Carter, and she writes to Valentina’s solicitor. Still nothing happens. I telephone a second-hand dealer, and offer them for sale at an advantageous price. He is very interested in the Roller, but backs off as soon as I tell him there are no papers. I don’t even get to mention that there are also no keys.
“But couldn’t you just tow them away, and use them for parts or scrap?”
“You need a registration document, even to scrap a car.”
Valentina’s solicitor has stopped responding to our letters. How are we to persuade Valentina to move the car, when we do not even know where she lives? Vera recommends Justin, the five-o’clock-shadow man who delivered the divorce papers to Valentina. I have never hired a private detective before. The idea seems fantastic-something people in TV thrillers do.
“My dear, you will find him quite exciting,” says Vera.
“But won’t she recognise him? Won’t she spot the black BMW outside her house?”
“Oh, I’m sure he will go undercover. Probably he has an old Ford Escort he uses for such occasions.”
I contact Justin through Ms Carter and leave a long rambling message on his answering machine, for I have no idea what I really want to say. He rings me back in a few minutes. His voice is deep and confident, with traces of the Fenland accent that he has tried to iron out. He is sure he can help me. He has contacts in the police and in the council. He takes down all the details I can give him, her variously spelled names, her date of birth (unless she has made that up too), her National Insurance number (I found it on one of the papers in the car boot), Stanislav’s name and age, all I know about Bob Turner and Eric Pike. But he seems more interested in negotiating the fee. Do I want to pay by results, or by the day? I choose to pay by results. So much for her address, so much for details of her work, more for the evidence of a lover that will stand up in court. After I put the phone down I am pleased and excited. If Justin can find this information, it will be cheap at the price.