‘Yes, OK – but what now?’ wrote Marianne, handing the notebook back to Fitzgerald, so they could continue their written exchange.
‘More questions – then probably a confession to sign.’
‘Should I sign?’
‘Difficult. You have to judge: are they making you the innocent dupe or something more sinister?’
‘If I sign, what then?’
‘Either they let you go or put you on trial.’
‘If I’m tried?’
‘You will be convicted.’
‘And…?’
‘A prison sentence – measured in years. Ten is usual, maybe only five.’ No doubt Mary Fitzgerald noticed how pale Marianne had gone because she took the notebook back and added: ‘Likely you are not important enough to put on trial so good chance they will let you go.’
‘The other thing is,’ said Marianne, taking back the notebook and pausing for thought. ‘They have some photographs,’ she wrote, ‘…of Larry and I…’
Fitzgerald nodded. ‘I can guess,’ she wrote. ‘Anderson should have known better. His bosses are not pleased.’
‘What will they do with the photographs?’
‘Keep them, and… who knows…?’
The days after Fitzgerald’s visit were the most distressing of all for Marianne. Hour after hour of exhausting interrogations by ‘Blackberry’ which, as far as she could see, were going nowhere and all the time she thought about the possibility (or was it even a probability?) of a long prison sentence. In addition to the photographs, they had tapes of her conversations with Larry at the Minsk Hotel. Who were these individuals you spoke of, they demanded to know? Who was Solomon? Who was Abraham? Who was David? She had to acknowledge that they were code names for members of the Jewish community, but she tried to maintain that she couldn’t remember exactly who they referred to. In the evenings, she would vomit up her meal and then lie awake nauseous but hungry. The thought that it might be years before she saw Izzy again was making her physically ill. The pain in her pelvis was getting worse and although she had asked to see the doctor again nothing had happened.
Finally, after another ten days had passed, she was given a confession to sign. It was uncomfortable reading but perhaps not as bad as it could have been. The emphasis was on how she had been seduced by the spy Anderson who was a CIA agent with links to Mossad (this was a new one to her) and how he had tricked her into assisting him in fermenting trouble amongst Russian Jews and persuading promising scientists to steal state secrets and then defect to Israel. There were some references to individual names and also much about the betrayal of the hospitality that had been shown to her in Moscow, and her deep regret and shame that she had allowed herself to be used and exploited by the enemies of the Soviet people. She expressed her gratitude for the good treatment which she had received and was thankful that she had been given the opportunity to express her remorse and explain the treacherous conduct of the spy Anderson.
Well, it looks like I’m the dupe, she thought, and Larry’s safe enough now so I can’t see it matters much what I say about him. She signed. Two days later she was escorted back to her flat, where she packed as much of her remaining clothing as she could take before she was driven to the airport.
‘We will be expecting your continued cooperation,’ was the last thing the colonel had said to her before wishing her good luck with her research into Russian literature. ‘I hope we meet again some day, Mrs Davenport.’
11
Marianne sat at her desk watching the light fade through the tulip tree at the end of their garden while a sharp East Anglian wind blew yellow leaves across the grass. It was twelve years now since she had been expelled from the Soviet Union and five years since she and Edward had achieved their ambition of returning to Cambridge after what they now felt to have been exile from their natural home. Edward had finally obtained the consultant’s position at Addenbrooke’s which he had craved, and she had followed him back to the city which had been her first love when she had arrived in England nearly twenty years earlier.
Turning her gaze back to the screen of her word processor she thought again about her novel… filling the hiatus in her academic career and making use of all that knowledge of Russian history and literature, she had told herself. Initially worried that it might lower her standing among her academic peers, Marianne had started cautiously, then with increasing enthusiasm before hitting the buffers of self-doubt. What hubris, she thought, to imagine that I – French-born, American-bred, and now wed to England and an Englishman – how can I inhabit the Russian psyche, that place of such profound contradictions that even the greatest Russian authors are baffled by their own mysteries?
‘Writing from a background of impressive scholarship,’ Marianne doodled onto her screen, ‘Davenport weaves a complex story of love and betrayal…’ Then again: ‘Davenport’s impressive first novel converts her profound knowledge of early-nineteenth-century Russia into a story of suffering and survival, a redemptive tale of love and endurance…’
Hearing the front door slam, Marianne deleted the text on her screen and went downstairs to greet her husband, only to find that it was Izzy slipping past her to the kitchen.
‘Hello, darling, I wasn’t sure you were coming back for supper… As soon as Dad’s back I’ll start cooking – it won’t take long…’
‘No time,’ said her daughter, pouring milk into a bowl of cereal and beginning to munch at speed.
‘Does this mean you are going out again?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘You need more than cereal, particularly…’ Deciding not to continue in that vein, she added, ‘Why don’t you let me make you an omelette or some cheese on toast – or I could make some pasta quickly…’ Izzy shook her head. As she finished her bowl and stood up, Marianne said, ‘You know, darling, we really need to have a talk…’
‘Not now, Mum,’ she replied, tearing past Marianne and up the stairs. Marianne sighed. What was it she had told herself all those years ago when she had learnt that she could never have another child? Izzy will be my cherished daughter and also my best friend. What a conceit that was. Maybe it would happen one day, but the last couple of years had not been easy and now this – a week ago – casually dropped into the conversation: ‘No thanks, Dad. Pregnancy seems to have turned me off coffee.’ Since then Izzy had avoided any discussion of the subject. At first she and Edward had wondered whether she was joking, but Marianne’s close observation of Izzy’s queasy look in the morning and unusual tiredness convinced her that it must be true.
‘You just missed Izzy,’ she said to Edward when he arrived home half an hour later.
‘That’s a shame. She’s gone out for the evening, I suppose? Has she said anything?’
‘No. I tried, but she wouldn’t talk.’
‘Do you get any feeling as to whether she’ll want to have it?’
‘No idea. I need to pin her down.’
‘Are you going to try to steer her?’
Am I? Marianne wondered. She’s seventeen and a half. It’s now the beginning of November. The baby must be due around June. If she’s lucky she might just get through her A-levels – if not, it would be a disaster. One way or another a baby at this age will seriously interfere with her life. And then there is the father. Either Andy – about whose unsuitability as a father she and Edward were in complete agreement – or some other unidentified boy. Marianne shook her head. ‘I just don’t know.’
‘If she wants a termination, she should get on with it quickly,’ said Edward. ‘That way there’s much less trauma – physical as well as psychological.’