‘How?’ I said. ‘My mother… She would never…’
His mouth puckered. ‘Your mother had no choice in the matter.’ His words made me stagger, but his strong hands held me upright. ‘What your father wants, he takes. And I think perhaps at the start, she cared for him…’
My legs were weightless as he guided me towards a chair, the timber seat sliding beneath me. Bright light filtered in from the window beside me, melting the room’s sharp edges. The man I had believed my father, who had given me his name – Captain Volkov – was talking, pacing back and forth as if conducting a meeting. I tried to concentrate on his words but they slipped from me.
‘… already pregnant at sixteen when I married her,’ I heard him say. ‘When she died, I was sent away and told never to contact you again.’
Had I known? I cast my mind back, a wash of memories flooding in while I snatched at them. My mind snagged on an image of myself as a child being jostled on my uncle’s knee at the house in Zubolovo while my mother lay with a book propped on her knees, watching on from a shaded place beneath the canopy of a linden tree. Uncle’s hand was warm on my back, holding me steady, keeping me from falling. Ripe peaches lay half-eaten at our feet. In the hazy afternoon sunlight, the lake glimmered like blue silk. Uncle patted my hair and then said something – I couldn’t decipher it but I knew it was about me, something favourable, a compliment ground out around the cigar clutched between his teeth. My mother laughed. She pushed herself up; her book thudded to the ground. Her shadow fell over me; her fingernails brushed against my skin as she stroked my hair away from my face.
‘Yes.’ Her voice was uncharacteristically proud; all hint of vulnerability gone. She paused midstroke, her fingers digging into my scalp. ‘Yes,’ she continued, straightening her spine so that we were both, Uncle and me, cast in her shade. ‘Yes, Josef. You are right. It is just like yours. It is exactly the same.’
The memory receded, pulled away as if the tide had dragged it out. In its place, I saw my mother the week before her death, darkness encircling her eyes. She was not sleeping well, I heard Olga say to Zoya. She woke each night, disturbed by terrors nobody could explain. I had hidden myself behind the curtain as I listened to their whispered discussion, knowing I should reveal myself but unwilling to admit I was eavesdropping. I heard Olga say that Mama was homesick; she wanted to go home and take me with her. She had begged and begged but he would not allow it. Later that day, Mama had taken me out into Red Square to watch the autumn leaves flutter down from the bare boughs like birds coming home to roost. She had squeezed my hand and told me I should always keep what was in my heart a secret. It was the only place that was safe.
At the time, I had thought the ‘he’ to whom she referred was my father, and I thought it odd. Papochka was not a cruel man. If my mother had begged him, surely he would acquiesce to her request. But now an idea grew clearer in my mind. I recalled the times, more recently, when Olga would pass on gossip about girls of my age who had had affairs with married officers and diplomats and found themselves pregnant. If they were lucky, they became mistresses, their children taken care of; if they were unfortunate, nothing was ever heard of them again.
What if mother had been one of these women? What if it was not Captain Volkov she had been referring to – what if it was someone else, someone whose control extended to everything: family, friends, colleagues, former lovers, the State?
‘You wrote to me,’ I said suddenly, remembering with a jolt the letters I had hidden between the pages of my schoolbooks. My hands were shaking. I fisted them together.
‘I felt sorry for you.’ Captain Volkov paused in his pacing. ‘Abandoned at eleven by your mother and a man who would never claim you as his own? Who would not. I see now that it was a mistake. My mistake. I regret it bitterly. I encouraged you. I should have… left you alone. I only did more damage. It was not my intention. Your mother would be angry, if she knew.’
I did not want to hear any more. I put my hands to my ears, and the room spun and spun, a kaleidoscope of shapes and colours, jagged sunshine and fragments of shade. I heard my own voice speaking, although I was so detached now it was like hearing a stranger. ‘Why did she kill herself?’
He shrugged sadly. ‘Shame. Grief. Loneliness. Perhaps she thought he would give you to me, once she was gone. She was wrong. Instead, he has claimed you… unofficially.’ His words bit painfully into my skin. ‘She escaped him, you see. In a manner of speaking. But you…’ He shook his head. ‘You’re always there to remind him of what he lost.’
‘Why did you agree to marry her?’ I asked.
‘That was not my decision to make.’ The sudden coldness in his voice made the hairs bristle on my arms. ‘I was following orders. Your father already has a family, if you recall. It was a practical arrangement; I was promoted to Security Chief, your mother was allowed to stay with you and enjoy a life of comfort. I would visit every few months and play my part. Nobody was the wiser, except that nursemaid she hired to baby you.’
Nursemaid. I stared at him, disbelieving. Olga knew? She had known?
‘I gave you my name and a happier childhood than you would have known. It should have been enough. I never imagined you would seek me out.’ He frowned suddenly. ‘I did like your mother. She was a beautiful woman. Estonian, as I think you know. Your father met her at a Party meeting before your grandparents died. But he was already married by then with children of his own. A public scandal would have exposed him to ridicule.’ He pursed his lips and then turned away and bent down to pick up some fallen pieces of parchment, slipping them back into the file on the desk. He tidied them with his long fingers, squaring them until they were perfectly aligned.
I sat watching him, helpless, alone. ‘What will happen to me?’
‘You will stay at my townhouse until arrangements can be made to send you back,’ he said. ‘You have come at quite an inconvenient time. Russia is on the brink of war with the Germans. Olga will have to stay with you. Your father wants you to write him a letter. An apology. Perhaps you can do that while you’re waiting. I will ensure it is posted.’ He had picked up the telephone again. ‘I will organise a car to take you to my lodgings,’ he said. He was calm, businesslike. There was nothing of the man I remembered. Nothing of the man in the letters, the man who had written Your loving Papochka.
‘Did my mother love him?’ I asked.
He paused, the receiver halfway to his mouth. ‘Of course she did,’ he said, a flicker of warning crossing his features. ‘Who doesn’t? He is always right. I would advise you to consider wording your apology carefully. Your future may depend on it.’
I dragged in a shaky breath. Everything I had thought about myself was a lie. The man I had believed in and trusted to protect me was merely a false front, an invention of my own imagining, helped along with a little bit of misplaced information from Olga. Her round face sprang into my mind. She had lied to me. But why? I knew she loved me. She had loved Mamochka, too. It could not all have been pretence. The demands she had made of the staff in the House on the Embankment to ensure we were given enough food and that our rooms were always spotless. The lengths she had gone to to hide my mother’s secrets, standing guard at the door while Mama taught me her language and shared her stories of Estonia. The many times I had left her half-dozing on the lounge in our living room, determined to make sure Mamochka arrived home safely from her parties, no matter how late the hour. She had loved Mama and when Mama abandoned her, she had kept her greatest secret safe.