My father perks up a bit. His masculinity is intact.
“Well, I will have nothing more to do with her. You are quite right.”
It’s getting late now. We say goodbye and prepare for the long drive back to Cambridge. As we are leaving the house, the phone rings, and we hear my father talking in Ukrainian. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but something in his tone makes me suspicious-a lingering, gentle note. I suppose I should stop, listen, intervene, but I’m tired, and I want to get home.
“Do you know how much money was in that envelope?” Mike asks.
We are driving through twilight, half-way home, and mulling over the events of the day.
“I saw there was quite a wad of notes. Maybe a hundred pounds, I’d say.”
“It’s just that I noticed the top note was a fifty. When you go to the bank to draw money out, they don’t usually give you fifties. They give you tens or twenties. Unless you’re taking a lot of money out.” He frowns with concentration into the bending road. “I think maybe we should find out.” He pulls to a halt abruptly outside a red telephone booth in a village. I see him fumbling for coins, dialling, talking, feeding the coin box, talking some more. Then he comes back to the car.
“Eighteen hundred pounds.”
“What?”
“In the envelope. Eighteen hundred pounds. Poor old man.”
“Poor old fool. It must be all his savings.”
“Apparently Valentina rang him and tried to get him to pay the money into her account.”
“She wasn’t interested in reading his poetry then?” (Ha ha.)
“He says he’ll put the money back in the bank tomorrow.”
We drive on. It is Sunday night, and there are few other cars on the road.
Dusk has fallen now, with strange streaks of light across the sky where the sun has gone down behind clouds. We have the windows down, and the scents of the country buffet our faces-hawthorn, cow parsley, silage.
It is about ten o’clock when we get home. Mike rings my father again. I listen on the extension.
“Just letting you know we got back safely, Nikolai. Are you sure you’ll be able to get to the bank tomorrow? I don’t like the thought of you having all that money in the house overnight. Can you put it somewhere safe?”
“Yes…no…” My father is agitated. “What if I give it to her after all?”
“Nikolai, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think you should put it in the bank, like you said you would.”
“But what if it’s too late? What if I given it her already?”
“When did you give it to her?”
“Tomorrow.” He is confused, and the wrong words come tumbling. “Tomorrow. Today. What it matters?”
“Hang on, Nikolai. Just-hang on.”
Mike puts on his coat and picks up the car keys. He looks terribly tired. In the early hours of next morning, he returns with the envelope, and stows the £1,800 safely in the drawer under his socks, until he can get to the bank tomorrow. I don’t know what happened to the poems.
Four. A rabbit and a chicken
I’m not sure at what point Valentina sweet-talked my father into handing over the money, but she got it in the end.
I know I have to report this to Vera but something makes me hold back. Every time I phone my father or my sister, it is like crossing a bridge from the world where I am an adult with responsibilities and a measure of power, to the cryptic world of childhood where I am at the mercy of other people’s purposes which I can neither control nor understand. Big Sister is the absolute monarch in that twilit world. She rules without demur or pity.
“My God, what an idiot he is!” she exclaims when I tell her about Valentina and the envelope of money. “We’ve got to stop him.” Big Sister is always certain.
“But, Vera, I think he’s really serious about it-about her. And if she makes him happy…”
“Really, Nadezhda, you are so gullible. We read about these people in the papers every day. Immigrants, asylum seekers, economic migrants. Call them what you will. It is always the most determined and ruthless people who make it over here, and then when they find it isn’t so easy to get a good job, they will turn to crime. Can’t you see what will happen if she comes and stays? We’ve simply got to stop her coming back from Ukraine.”
“But he’s so determined. I’m not sure we can stop it…” I’m transfixed between two certainties-his and hers. This is how it’s been all my life.
My sister telephones the Home Office. They tell her to put it in writing. If my father finds out he will not forgive her, as he has never forgiven her for anything before, so she writes anonymously:
She came here on a tourist visa. This is her second tourist visa. She has been working illegally. Her son is enrolled in an English school. Three weeks before her visa was due to expire she came up with the idea of marriage. Her intention is to marry Mr Mayevskyj in order to obtain a visa and work permit.
Then she telephones the British Embassy in Kiev. A bored-sounding young man with a blue-chip accent tells her that Valentina’s visa has been granted already. There was nothing in her application to indicate that she should be refused. But what about…? Vera lists the points she made in her letter. The young man gives the telephonic equivalent of a shrug.
“So you see I’m relying on you, Nadezhda,” Big Sis says.
I raise the subject a couple of weeks later, while we are sitting having lunch at my father’s house, Mike, my father and I. Tinned ham, boiled potatoes, boiled carrots. His daily diet. He has prepared it for us with pride.
“Have you heard from Valentina, Pappa?” (Voice chatty, conversational.)
“Yes, she has written. She is very well.”
“Where is she staying? Has she gone back to her husband?”
“Yes. She is staying there now. He is very educated type, by the way. Polytechnic director.”
“And what are her plans? Is she coming back to England?” Bright keeping-a-distance voice.
“Hmm. Maybe. I don’t know.”
He does know, but he won’t say.
“So who was the man with brown hair, the man in the window, who was so rude to you?”
“Aha. This is Bob Turner. A very decent type, by the way. A civil engineer.”
My father explains that Bob Turner is a friend of Valentina’s uncle in Selby. He has a house in Selby where he lives with his wife, and the house in Peterborough, which was his mother’s, where he had installed Valentina and Stanislav.
“And what do you think is his relationship with Valentina?” It seems obvious to me, but I am trying to lead him through a sort of Platonic dialogue to see the truth.
“Aha, yes. It was a relationship. There was even some possibility that he would marry her, but his wife will not give him divorce. Of course this relationship is finished now.”
“Of course it’s not finished, Pappa. Can’t you see that you’re being taken for a ride?” I can hear my voice getting shrill. But he isn’t listening. A faraway look has come into his eyes. He has turned into an eighty-four-year-old teenager, tuned in to his private music.
“He paid for my naturalisation, by the way,” he murmurs, “so when I marry her, I will be British subject.”
When he marries her.
“But Pappa, ask yourself-why? Why did Bob Turner pay for you to be naturalised?”
“Why?” A little self-satisfied smile. “Why not?”
My Platonic dialogue hasn’t got me very far so I try another approach. I invoke the spirit of Big Sister.
“Pappa, have you talked to Vera about this business with Bob Turner? I think she would be very upset.”
“Why should I talk to her? It is absolutely none of her business.” His eyes refocus. His jaw twitches. He’s scared.
“Vera’s worried about you. We both promised Mother we would look after you.”