As he warms to his theme, he talks faster and faster, gesticulating with his large hands. I am having trouble keeping up with him.
“Once we were a nation of farmers and engineers. We were not rich, but we had enough.” (Father is nodding enthusiastically in his corner, the apple-peeling knife suspended in mid-air.) “Now racketeers prey on our industries, while our educated youth fly westwards in search of wealth. Our national export is the sale of our beautiful young women into prostitution to feed the monstrous appetites of the Western male. It is a tragedy.”
He pauses, looks around, but no one speaks.
“It is a tragedy,” says Mike in the end. “And there’ve been plenty in that region.”
“They laugh at us. They suppose such corruption is in our nature.” Dubov’s voice has become quieter again. “But I would argue that it is merely characteristic of the type of economy which has been thrust upon us.”
Vera has been standing by the window, looking increasingly impatient with the conversation.
“But then Valentina will feel quite at home,” she declares. I throw her a ‘shut up’ look.
“But tell me, Dubov,” I ask, and I can’t help it if even now a note of bitchiness creeps into my voice, “how will you ever persuade someone as…as sensitive as Valentina to return to such a place?”
He shrugs, palms upwards, but a little smile plays about his lips.
“There are some possibilities.”
“Fascinating man,” says Mike. “Mmm.”
“Impressive grasp of economics, for an engineer.”
“Mmm.”
We are only half-way home, and I have a three o’clock lecture. I should be thinking about Women and Globalisation, but I too am thinking about what Dubov said. Mother and Vera in the barbed-wire camp; Valentina slaving long low-wage shifts in the nursing home, behind the bar at the Imperial Hotel, toiling in my father’s bedroom. Yes, she is greedy, predatory, outrageous, but she is a victim too. A source of cheap labour.
“I wonder how it will all end.”
“Mmm.” I was the lucky generation.
I do not know how Dubov pursued his courtship during the next fortnight, but Father told me that he went out in the Rolls-Royce every day, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the evening. When he came back he was invariably pleasant and cheerful, though sometimes his mood seemed more subdued.
It was Dubov, too, who sustained my father’s resolve in relation to the divorce, whenever he started to have second thoughts, which at first was almost daily.
“Nikolai Alexeevich,” he would say, “Vera and Nadia had the benefit of your parental wisdom when they were growing. Stanislav also needs to be with his father. As for the baby-a young child needs a young father. Be content with those children you already have.”
“You’re not so young yourself, hey, Volodya Simeonovich,” Father would retort. But Dubov was always calm.
“Indeed not. But I am much younger than you.”
A letter came back to Ms Carter from Valentina’s solicitor refusing absolutely to consider a paternity test, but agreeing to accept the much lower sum of £5,000 in full and final settlement.
“What should I say?” asks Father. “What should we say?” I ask Vera.
“What do you suggest?” Vera asks Ms Carter.
“Offer £2,000,” says Ms Carter. “That, is probably what a court would award. Especially as there is prima facie evidence of adultery.”
“Quite,” says Vera.
“I’ll put it to Pappa,” I say.
“OK. If that’s what you want,” my father concedes. “I can see everyone is against me.”
“Don’t be so stupid, Pappa,” I snap. “The only one who is against you is your own folly. Be grateful that there are those around you to save you from yourself.”
“OK. OK. I agree to everything.”
“And when you go to court, let’s have none of this nonsense about ‘I am bebby father’. No paternity test, no ‘bebby father’. OK?”
“OK,” he grumbles. “Nadia, you are turning into a monster like Vera.”
“Oh, shut up, Pappa.” I slam the phone down.
It’s only a week to the court hearing, and everyone is getting a bit tense.
Twenty-Eight. Gold-rimmed aviator-style glasses
Only a day to go before the court hearing, and still there has been no reply from Valentina’s solicitor regarding the £2,000 offer.
“I suppose we’ll just have to go through with it, and see what the court awards.”
Is there a nervous wobble in Ms Carter’s refined English-rose voice, or are my own nerves playing tricks on me?
“But what do you think, Laura?”
“It’s impossible to say. Anything could happen.”
It is unseasonably mild for November. The courtroom, a low, modem building with tall windows and mahogany panelling, is bathed in a wintry light, which has a hard-edged crystalline quality, making everything seem at the same time both sharp and surreal, as in a film. Thick blue carpets muffle the sound of footsteps and voices. The air is conditioned, slightly too warm, and there is a smell of wax polish. Even the pot plants in the tubs are too luxuriantly green to seem real.
Vera, Pappa, Ms Carter and I are sitting in a small waiting area outside the courtroom which has been assigned to us. Vera is wearing a pale peach two-piece in fine wool crepe with tortoiseshell buttons, which sounds awful but looks stunning.
I am wearing the same jacket and trousers I wore to the tribunal. Ms Carter is wearing a black suit and white blouse. Father is wearing his wedding suit and the same white shirt, with the second-to-top button sewn on with black twine. The top button is missing, and his collar is held together by a strange mustard-coloured tie.
We are all terribly nervous.
Now a young man arrives wearing a wig and a gown. This is to be Father’s barrister. Ms Carter introduces us. We all shake hands, and I forget his name instantly. What is he like, I wonder, this young man, who will play such an important part in our lives? He looks anonymous in his court uniform. His manner is brisk. He tells us that he has looked up the judge’s name, and that his reputation is ‘robust’. He and Ms Carter disappear into a side room. Vera, Pappa and I are on our own. Vera and I keep looking at the door, wondering when Valentina will arrive. Dubov did not come back to the house last night, and there was an awkward moment this morning when Father almost refused to come into Peterborough at all. We are worried about the effect the sight of her will have on his resolve. Vera can’t stand the tension and nips outside for a cigarette. I am left sitting next to Father, holding his hand. Father is studying a small brown insect which is making its way unsteadily up the stem of one of the pot plants.
“I think it is some type of coccinella,” he says.
Then Ms Carter and the barrister come back, and the usher takes us into the courtroom, and at the same moment a tall thin man with silver-grey hair and gold-rimmed aviator-style glasses takes his place at the judge’s bench. Still there is no sign of Valentina or her solicitor.
The barrister rises to his feet, and explains the grounds for the divorce, which is not, as far as he knows, to be contested. He takes the judge through the circumstances of the marriage, dwelling on the disparate ages of the parties, and my father’s distressed state after his bereavement. He mentions a series of liaisons. The judge, inscrutable behind his aviator-style glasses, takes notes. The barrister now goes into some detail about the injunction, and the subsequent non-compliance therewith. My father nods vigorously, and when he gets to the bit about the two cars in the front garden, he calls out, “Yes! Yes! I stuck in hedge!” The barrister has the pleasing knack of retelling father’s story, casting him in the heroic role, much better than he could tell it himself.