The train doors were opening and Marianne was jolted back to the present. As she emerged onto the platform she was confronted by a giant poster: a majestic soldier in a greatcoat, carrying under one arm a small child, was slashing with his enormous sword at the Hydra-like beast of the Soviet enemies: in giant letters of the Cyrillic script, the poster screamed ‘DON’T FORGET THE LESSONS OF HISTORY’ as the sword severed the serpent heads of ‘revanchism, espionage and anticommunism’. Ah yes, she thought, that’s what he was sent to fight, communism – the cancer of world-wide communism – keeping the world safe for democracy. He was twenty-six when he was drafted into the army and he was twenty-eight – the same age as I am now – when his luck ran out in some blood-filled ditch of the Vietnam slaughterhouse.
3
‘You had a letter?’ said Edward, as he poured coffee into two red-and-white-striped mugs and passed one across to Marianne.
‘Yes, it was that invitation I told you about. From this guy Larry, at the embassy. It’s some sort of dinner he’s holding.’
‘I suppose it will be a hundred per cent Americans?’
‘Not quite, as long as you come with me,’ she said, blowing him a kiss. ‘And anyway, us Americans are not so bad, are we?’
‘Hmm… and by the way, I counted eleven cockroaches in the kitchen this morning.’
‘Oh dear. Is that a record?’
‘Probably not. Anyway, I’m off now. Is Izzy still asleep?’
‘Yes, don’t wake her. A bad night, if you remember – and hey, give me a kiss – I know I got you into this and it’s hard for you but you’ll look back on it as a worthwhile experience in years to come.’
I doubt whether he will, thought Marianne, as she watched the door of the apartment close behind her husband. For her, these three years in Moscow would be an important stage in her academic career, enabling her to complete her PhD and improve her chances of a good job back in England. She also enjoyed the few English classes which she taught. For Edward, having spent nearly two years in high-powered medical research, this was a career siding: teaching anatomy to foreign English-speaking medical students and helping in the general surgical wards. Sometimes she felt guilty for dragging him to Moscow. Not for the first time in their five years of marriage, Marianne was conscious that she should be careful not to exploit Edward’s good nature. His gentle demeanour and English politeness would always tend to mask genuine unhappiness.
She could still hear the muffled sound of Procol Harum’s ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’ coming through the thin wall of her temporary lodgings in London where she stayed when she first arrived in England. It was 1967, and her fellow graduates from Cornell were heading west to Haight Ashbury for the summer of love, whereas she headed east to England to study French and Russian literature at Cambridge.
Life in Cambridge was an idyllic bubble away from the constant drumbeat of conscription and the Vietnam war and she went a little mad, smoking dope, drinking too much, forgetting to take her pill and ending up pregnant before the end of her first year.
The father was Edward, a graduate of Pembroke College and at that time a junior registrar at Addenbrooke’s Hospital. Edward wanted to marry her and she agreed. They went over to her parents’ home in Vermont and were married in August; Isabelle was born the following January. An unplanned pregnancy was something of an embarrassment to a woman who prided herself on being in full control of her life, but Marianne was still at an age when she didn’t doubt her past decisions or that her life was on the right course. Izzy might have been an accident, but it was an accident for which she felt doubly blessed.
Putting her mug into the sink, Marianne went into the bedroom where Izzy was still asleep in her cot at the foot of their bed. Marianne would have much preferred her daughter to have slept in a separate room but that was an impossibility in Moscow. As it was, they were lucky with their apartment: two good-sized rooms with a kitchen, bathroom and efficient central heating. However, at four and a half, Izzy was no longer a baby and their sex life had not been improved by this arrangement. They tended now – if they were both in the mood, which seemed less and less often – to make love on the living room sofa or on the floor, before going into the bedroom. Recently Edward had developed a taste for her kneeling on the rug, which wasn’t her favourite position, but at least it seemed to get him fired up and he hadn’t been in the best frame of mind since their arrival in Moscow.
Marianne sat at the end of the bed and watched her daughter. Her breathing now was quiet and steady; her darkening yellow curls spread across the pillow, her hair colour slowly changing towards Marianne’s own blonde-brown. From the side, her profile showed her little upturned nose and the distinctive curve of her eyebrows.
For some time now Edward had been talking about enlarging their family and expressing concern about the age gap which would exist between Izzy and any future child, but Marianne did not feel ready. She knew that the tiredness and nausea which had marked the early stages of her pregnancy would play havoc with her work and she was determined to complete her doctorate before starting another pregnancy. The age gap would already be too great to provide a companion for Izzy.
Marianne held her daughter’s hand as they walked past the policeman in the guard box at the front of their apartment block and made their way towards the metro station. Autumn is the best season in Moscow, Marianne had been assured, and she acknowledged that sentiment now as she breathed in the freshness of the air after the stifling heat of the summer. The sun felt warm on her face despite the coolness of the air; watermelons were still on sale in the fruit stands but accompanied now by crates of Hungarian apples.
‘Can we go past the magic castle?’ asked Izzy, skipping along beside her mother.
‘I’m not sure that we will have time, darling,’ said Marianne, smiling to herself as she remembered Izzy’s name for St Basil’s Cathedral. ‘We are going to buy you some new clothes today because you are growing out of everything and you start at kindergarten next week.’
‘Don’t want to go.’
‘I’m sure you will enjoy it. There will be lots of other children to play with. And think about it. If you don’t go to kindergarten, I won’t be able to do my own work. Do you remember I told you the Russian words for kindergarten?’
‘No.’
‘Yes, you do, think.’
‘Oh… sad, you said it’s sad.’
‘Not just sad,’ laughed Marianne, ‘detsky sad, and today we’re going to a shop called Detsky Mir, which means “Children’s World”.’ It was an article of faith for Marianne that Isabelle would pick up fluent Russian while they were in Moscow. Then, with Marianne’s help, she would be able to keep it all her life. Later Marianne would introduce her to French and send her to stay with her cousins in France.
Emerging from the metro at Dzerzhinsky Square, Marianne and Izzy were met by the large and imposing statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, known as Iron Felix, founder of the Soviet secret police. And behind the statue loomed the massive Lubyanka building, headquarters of the KGB. There was a certain irony, Marianne thought, that the Children’s World should be almost next door to the sinister Lubyanka. Moving towards the front of Detsky Mir, Marianne’s heart sank at the sight of the crowds thronging the entrance. Everyone had said that this was the place where you had to go for children’s clothes or toys but it seemed that the whole of Moscow was there as well.