“That was proper work-not this namby-pamby molly-coddly waste-of-time do-gooding nonsense. It would have been more useful to grow vegetables.”
“You don’t understand work, do you, Vera? You always had Big Dick with his expense account, his share options, his annual bonuses, his clever little deals and ways of avoiding tax. Then when it all went wrong, you tried to fleece him for every penny he had. Mother always said she could understand why he divorced you. You were so nasty to him.” (Ha! I scored there.) “Your own mother said that, Vera!”
“She didn’t know what I had to put up with.”
“She knew what he had to put up with.”
The telephone spits and crackles with our rage.
“The trouble with you, Nadezhda, is that your head is so full of nonsense that you don’t know the real world.”
“I’m forty-seven, for God’s sake, Vera. I know the world. I just see it in a different way.”
“Forty-seven doesn’t make any difference. You’re still a baby. You always will be. You’ve always taken everything for granted.”
“I gave back, too. I worked. I tried to make things better for people. More than you ever did,” the whining four-year-old pipes up again.
“Oh, my goodness! Tried to make things better for people! How noble you are!”
“Well look at you, Vera-you just went out to feather your own nest, and sod everybody else.”
“I had to learn to fight for myself. For myself and my girls. It’s easy to be superior when you don’t know what hardship is. When you’re in a trap, you have to fight your way out.”
(Oh, please! She’s still going on about all that old wartime stuff! Why can’t she let it go?)
“What trap? What hardship? That was fifty years ago! And just look at yourself now! All bitter and twisted like a snake with jaundice.” (Now I put on the social-worker voice.) “You need to learn to let go of the past.”
“Don’t give me this new age hippy nonsense. Let’s just talk about the practicalities.”
“I’d rather give the money to Oxfam, Vera, than let you win by extortion.”
“Oxfam. How pathetic!”
So Mother’s little legacy stayed in the bank, and after that my sister and I didn’t talk to each other for two years, until a common enemy brought us together.
Three. A fat brown, envelope
“So did you get the letter from the solicitor, Pappa?”
“Hmm. Yes. Yes.”
He’s obviously not feeling chatty.
“So what did you think?”
“Aha, well…” He coughs. His voice sounds strained. He doesn’t like talking on the telephone. “Well, I have shown it to Valentina.”
“And what did she say?”
“What she says? Well…” More coughing. “She says it is impossible that the law will separate a man from his wife.”
“But didn’t you read the solicitor’s letter?”
“Yes. No. But still, this is what she says. This is what she believes.”
“But what she believes is wrong, Pappa. Wrong.”
“Hmm.”
“And what about you? What do you say?” I struggle to control my tone.
“Well, what can I say?” There is a little helpless shrug in his voice, as though he has surrendered to forces beyond his control.
“Well, you could say you don’t think it’s such a good idea to get married after all. Couldn’t you?”
My stomach contracts with dread. I realise he really is going to go ahead with this marriage, and that I am going to have to live with it.
“Aha. Yes. No.”
“What do you mean, yes, no?” Irritation grates in my throat. I am trying my best to keep my voice sweet.
“I cannot say this. I cannot say anything.”
“Pappa, for goodness’ sake…”
“Look, Nadezhda, we are going to get married and that is that. There is no more point to talk about it.”
I have a feeling that something terrible is going on, but I can see that my father is alive and excited for the first time since my mother died.
This isn’t the first time he has harboured fantasies of rescuing destitute Ukrainians. There was once a plan to track down members of the family whom he had not seen for half a century, and bring them all over to Peterborough. He wrote letters to town halls and village post offices all over Ukraine. Dozens of replies came pouring in from dodgy-sounding ‘relatives’ who wanted to take him up on his offer. Mother put her foot down.
Now I see his energy is all redirected towards this woman and her son-they will become his substitute family. He can speak with them in his own language. Such a beautiful language that anyone can be a poet. Such a landscape-it would make anyone an artist. Blue-painted wooden houses, golden wheat fields, forests of silver birch, slow wide sliding rivers. Instead of going home to Ukraina, Ukraina will come home to him.
I have visited Ukraine. I have seen the concrete housing blocks and the fish dead in the rivers.
“Pappa, Ukraina isn’t like you remember it. It’s different now. The people are different. They don’t sing any more-only vodka songs. All they’re interested in is shopping. Western goods. Fashion. Electronics. American brand names.”
“Hmm. So you say. Maybe it is so. But if I can save one lovely human being…”
He’s off again.
There is a problem, however. Her tourist visa expires in three weeks, my father explains.
“And she still must get divorce papers from husband.”
“You mean she’s married to someone else?”
“Her husband is in Ukraina. Very intelligent type, by the way. Polytechnic director. I have been in correspondence with him-even spoken to him on telephone. He told me that Valentina will make excellent wife.” There is a smug lilt in his voice. The soon-to-be-ex-husband will fax divorce papers to the Ukrainian Embassy in London. In the meantime, my father will make arrangements for the wedding.
“But if her visa expires in three weeks it sounds as though you’ve left it rather late.” (I hope.)
“Well, if she has to go back, then we will be married when she returns. On this we are absolutely decided.”
I notice that I has become ‘we’. I realise that this plan has been developing over quite a long time, and that I have been permitted to know about it only in its very latest stages. If she has to go back to Ukraine, he will write her a letter and she will come back as his fiancee.
“But Pappa,” I say, “you read the solicitor’s letter. They may not allow her to come back Isn’t there someone else, someone a bit younger she could marry?”
Yes, this resourceful woman has an alternative marriage plan, my father says. Through a domestic care agency she has met a young man who is totally paralysed following a road accident. He, by the way (says Pappa), is a very decent young man from good family. Used to be teacher. She has been looking after him-bathing, spoon-feeding, taking to toilet. If she is rejected as my father’s fiancee, she will arrange to be invited back as an ‘au pair’ to look after this young man. This kind of work is still permitted under immigration regulations. During the year she is permitted to stay as an au pair, he will fall in love with her and she will marry him. Thus her future in this country will be secured. But this would be a life sentence of servitude for poor Valentina, for he is totally dependent on her, twenty-four hours a day, whereas my father’s needs are small (says Pappa). My father knows this, because she has invited him to the house where she works, and has shown him the young man. “You see what he’s like?” she said to my father. “How could I marry that?” (Only of course she said it in Ukrainian.) No, my father wishes to spare her that life of slavery. He will make the sacrifice and marry her himself.