‘I should have done, darling, and I’m very sorry – but there never seemed to be a right time.’
‘It’s something we have in common – not knowing our biological fathers. When you think about it, you know even less than I do – a Latvian soldier in the German army. You don’t even know for sure that he died in the war.’
‘No, I can’t be certain.’
‘And you said it never mattered to you and it doesn’t matter to me. So we don’t need to discuss it any more. Does Claire know?’
‘I don’t think so. I think she believed Andy had died a few years after the accident.’
Callum laughed. ‘Claire would have a field day if she knew this – more evidence of your controlling nature. You have always wanted to mould events to your will, she would say.’
After he had left, Marianne thought about Callum’s visit. Perhaps Claire was right and she did underestimate him. First, he had made a decent job of persuading her that what she had done was nothing to be ashamed of – she wasn’t quite convinced but it was good to hear his absolution; then he succeeded in cheering her up by being relaxed and not too serious; finally, he had made a short but powerful plea: not so much that she should change her mind but to postpone her appointment at the clinic. Live for another six months and see how it goes. Why not?
She had not succumbed to his blandishments but they had seemed heartfelt. What he doesn’t know, she thought, is that I have been giving myself a few more months for the last year before I made the final decision. She had to acknowledge, however, that it was tempting and she had promised to think about it seriously. And I will, she thought. After all, what else do I have to think about?
32
The feeling was extraordinary; a kind of weightless euphoria had taken hold of her. She felt wonderfully energised but also completely calm. Her many sources of pain were still there in the background but had become irrelevant, as if they belonged to someone else. Apart from the occasional joint in her student days, she had never been one for recreational drugs. Perhaps I should have been more adventurous, she thought. I have never had a high quite like this before.
The reason for her sudden elation was that Marianne had decided to live. That is to say, she had decided to postpone for a while her final appointment with the AD clinic. She couldn’t explain exactly how or why she had made this decision. Indeed, she didn’t recall making the decision at all; she had just woken up in the morning knowing that the decision had been made. Perhaps it was down to Callum, perhaps it was Dorrie or perhaps she had just lost her nerve, but now she was wallowing in a warm bath of rapture, the like of which she could never before remember.
So far she hadn’t told anyone, but she had been upbeat when she spoke to Callum that morning, hinting that she might change her mind. She planned to call the clinic on Monday and let them know. In the meantime, comforting ideas floated around her head. She thought of her mother’s diaries and then she thought of Jake. I could work with him. He could be my research assistant. To make sense of it all I need to look at contemporary records from wartime Normandy. It’s all too much for me on my own but with his help… Yes, together we could make something of it, she thought.
Then she thought about her other grand-daughter, Emma. I would like to see her again before I die. I don’t want to summon her from the other side of the world to a death-bed scene so I have an idea that I could travel out halfway and spend a few days with her and perhaps Leah could come too. I could stay in one of those luxury Asian hotels I have read about, perhaps even swim in the sea again. A warm sea which would wash away all my aches and pains. It would be expensive but there’s still a bit more I could borrow on the house. Perhaps we could all spend Christmas out there, she thought, and images of herself lying in the shade of a palm tree while the girls played on the beach (had they suddenly got ten years younger?) floated before her.
Surely I’m not too old to travel, she thought. My friend Penny flew around the world last year and she’s nearly as old as I am. She said that if you fly business class it’s not uncomfortable and they whisk you through the airports on those electric carts. After all, if I peg out on the way, so what? It wouldn’t be a bad way to go.
Thoughts of the future mingled with memories of the past. She recalled that moment of exhilaration when she realised she was being released from her Moscow detention and was no longer at risk of a lengthy prison sentence. Then another image from Moscow came to her. She is attending a conference on Pushkin – it must have been the end of the nineties, a good few years after the demise of the Soviet Union – the first time she has been back. She is chatting to another delegate in the bar after dinner. He introduces himself as Nicholai; a good-looking Russian professor perhaps ten years younger than her.
He pours her some vodka and they drink a toast to the great names of Russian literature. They talk about poetry, about their families, about the old Soviet Union and the new Russia – where his friends are trying to keep their heads above water in the wild, anarchic, mafia-dominated world of the modern Moscow. He seems well acquainted with her CV, and asks her about her time in Moscow in the seventies. Perhaps it’s the vodka, but suddenly she is doing what she has never done before; she is pouring out the whole story of her arrest and expulsion from Russia – and how the photos were later used to try to blackmail her.
He listens, encouraging her narrative with appropriate expressions of sympathy. He says that he is ashamed; ashamed at the way his country has treated her – her, a lover of Russian literature. Anyone who loves Pushkin is a friend of Russia. They drink more vodka; he flirts and she reciprocates. She wonders vaguely what he wants from her but she doesn’t care. She knows she is more than a little drunk but, cresting a wave of careless optimism, she allows him to come to her room. After all, it’s been a long time.
The scene shifts to South America. That magical holiday when everything seemed so right with the world. The return to Cambridge achieved – the disasters in Moscow transformed into an exciting tale; no longer threatening to destroy her marriage and her career, but to be re-inhabited as part of a daring youth. True, her injury has not healed well but this does not intrude into the fantasy of her half-remembered narrative. Large butterflies flit amongst the purple flowers on the banks of the river, and as they approach the bottom of the falls she relives that moment of elation when she, Edward and Izzy seem enclosed in a circle of refracted light – an inviolable trinity.
Waking from her reverie, Marianne felt so cheerful that she clambered to her feet, walked across to Anna and gave her a long hug.
‘So, Marianne – you are very happy today, I think?’
‘I do feel much more cheerful today, Anna. I am sorry I have been so bad-tempered.’
‘It’s OK – shall I play some music?’
‘Yes – anything you like.’
‘You must choose.’
‘OK – put on Beethoven’s Pastoral. And if you’d like to make some coffee I think I might have another go at my mother’s diaries.’
‘Music coming – and I will make the coffee,’ said Anna. ‘It’s good that you feel better today.’
Listening to the serene but cheerful opening movement of the symphony, Marianne began looking again at some passages from the first of her mother’s diaries that she had not read for some time. The family had arrived in Paris after a harrowing journey from the other side of Rheims. It was the day her mother spent with her aunt before they continued their journey south. They go to the Sorbonne and while her aunt works, the fourteen-year-old Simone has an hour on her own and wanders down to the Seine. She stands gazing across to Notre Dame when a boy comes up and offers her a cigarette. Ah, how much easier pick-ups were when everyone smoked! She refuses but he tells her that they may all be dead in a week’s time and she will never have smoked a cigarette. She relents, they talk, and he tells her that when the Germans get there she will have an easier time than him. It’s a moment of innocence and suppressed sexuality. From the diary entries, the boy seems to have been Jewish but her mother hadn’t picked up on this. I suppose she must have been too young, Marianne thought.