Roza nodded but didn’t speak. Her eyes were boring into him out of those mauve shadows. John seemed to fall, knowing there was no hand that could reach him. ‘He called again, said he’d loved the “Lives Lived in Secret” piece, it was wonderful, marvellous, this was our win, our first strike back, he was halfway to London, and now he had someone else. A documentary film-maker. She’d spent her life winding up the authorities. She was a wild cat. Wouldn’t stop and wouldn’t go. They’d been offering her a passport for years and she wouldn’t take it. They put people like her in prison and threw away the key Not six months, ten years, so get on to her, she’s another life lived in secret.’
‘And you put all this down in your journal?’ asked Celina, her voice transparent like India paper. Anselm couldn’t quite see through it; something was on the other side; he wasn’t sure she’d even asked a question. Her lips moved slowly beautifully.
‘I kept the rules,’ said John. ‘My journal was the contemporaneous account of his bona fides. It was the means to get him out. It was the way to open my mother’s file… I wanted to see with my own eyes what she’d done to my father.’ He turned to Roza, reaching out again with blind eyes. ‘I didn’t tell him about the plan to meet the Shoemaker. I turned up and saw you walk to a man that I’d never seen before. Then I got my head kicked in. I didn’t know the Dentist was the guy in the graveyard until he walked into the cell. I was thrown out of Warsaw before the end of the week. He’d used me to find you, Roza. He’d used my pride and self-importance. He’d used my mother’s mistake. He’d used my longing to change what she’d done.’
Roza showed no emotion. A hand moved to the brooch, a silver triangle, a complex of tiny sculpted flowers. The dusk round her eyes had grown dark. A kind of night settled on her face. Silence pounded from her closed mouth. The fire snapped, a log rolled into flame.
‘I didn’t tell you about her because I didn’t know what to say’ John had turned to Anselm. ‘There’s nothing worse, you know Shame without knowing why My father never spoke about her when I was a child. At ten I’d seen her name on my birth certificate. But he wouldn’t tell me anything about her life, except that she’d ended it. He’d razed her life to the ground. He’d built a golf course on top and a club house with bourbon on tap. I only learned about her past when they picked me up in Bucharest. They made a call to the SB in Warsaw and the next thing I know a sort of Eton Old Boy walks in, the real thing, genteel English with the vaguest Russian accent. “A cigarette? A cup of Earl Grey? No scones, I’m afraid.” What did I think of Reagan? And what about Thatcher? Then I was free, a favour to the memory of my mother, he said. Because of the price she’d paid for socialist values. That’s why I took the job with the BBC. I wanted to learn about her values. Her country, her history, her roots. My country, my history, my roots. I wanted to find her. And then the Dentist called. If only I’d known of his place in your life, Roza; if only I’d known that he’d picked me with you in mind.’
John threw his head back. He was almost done. Coming forward, he planted his face in his hands, slipping his fingers behind his glasses. He appeared at once the tragic buffoon: hands covering his eyes, with spectacles on top; hiding behind lenses that wouldn’t let him see even if someone pulled his arms away.
‘I didn’t use you, Celina.’ His voice was muffled into his palms. ‘I loved you. I was completely devastated by who you were. Your crazy shoes and rings and torn trousers. Your hair always in a mess. Your beads and bangles. But I couldn’t see straight. I didn’t know if I wanted you for who you were, or because you were everything my mother should have been, a rebel, someone who’d fought back. I didn’t know if I loved you because you cleaned up the weird guilt shovelled on to me by my father, by not talking, by not explaining — ’ his breath ran out in a sigh of fatigue and surrender — ‘God, in those days I thought too much. It was all so much simpler than I realised.’ He came to an exhausted halt and dropped his hands. In an act of total surrender he took off his glasses. Anselm had never seen him without them — not since he’d agreed with John (post op) that he had a faraway look… no, not Martian, just far off. The glasses had become a heat shield easing his entry into a new, dark world. And he’d taken it down. Tiny scars ran over his lids, above and below. The eyes were the palest brown, with tiny clouds and frail red streamers flying over the whites, the pupils awfully still, not reacting to the firelight. ‘I thought too much. I did love you, simply and innocently I knew that after you’d gone.
Notwithstanding John’s immolation before Celina, Anselm’s mind — naturally withdrawing from any display of strong emotion — lay with Roza’s unmoving face: the haunted lilac shadows and the coming of night. She barely moved and she didn’t take her eyes off John. It had turned into a conversation between two broken friends, with Roza watching and waiting. She was like a silent guide, always one step ahead, always observant, always waiting. A deep comprehension flickered and died in Anselm’s mind. He’d barely noticed its outline before it was gone.
Stirring, suddenly he remembered a little trick from his days at the Bar. Not so much a trick as a technique that reflected the depths of the human person; the workings of the conscience. Put the question to the person who has already framed the enquiry: ask them what they asked of someone else. The answer was often surprising. He coughed, lightly.
‘Celina, of all the film-makers in all the studios in Warsaw, why did Brack pick you?’
Chapter Forty-Two
Celina asked for some water. Anselm went to get some, wondering if they’d ever get on to the wine. He thought of Belloc; All, all must face their Passion at the last. The fetching didn’t break the tension. There was no escape, now It just grew tighter. Anselm roused the fire in a vast hearth with wood that was hard and dry. There was little smoke, the perfume faint but deep. Roza still said nothing. She watched. Her eyes wouldn’t shift from John.
‘I’m not what you think, John,’ said Celina, looking into the glass as if it were a goldfish bowl. ‘I never was. Though it’s what I wanted… wanted with every ounce of longing that dragged me down. You can’t weigh longing, of course. It’s a just a wisp of air. Smoke from a fire. The scales don’t change. You remain what you are.
It was true; Celina had been kicked out of four schools. But there were no aunts and uncles chalked up dead by the Tsar’s secret police. Her mother had dumped her father, but not because of any high-minded principles. She hadn’t got any; and he’d been no dissident. There’d been no contributions to the Club of the Crooked Circle; he’d been no Vagabond, at least, not of the noble kind. The nearest he’d got to a secret society was the SB.
‘He didn’t tell me outright, but you find out, eventually’ Celina sniffed quietly finding a tissue from inside a sleeve. It was inconspicuous, petite, wholly unfit for purpose. ‘It’s their way of talking, the habitual evasions, the sense that they’re important and nobody knows it, that no one appreciates them, that they understand things that no one would ever…’ Her delicate voice trailed off. She wiped her eyes. Folding it neatly, square upon tiny square, she made the tissue into a pellet, something insignificant to hang on to. ‘My mother walked out when I was nine.’
She’d been a go-alonger, the sort of woman who didn’t mind what she ate, where she went or what they did. To this day Celina ground her teeth if someone said, ‘I don’t mind’. Her mother had sat in the corner doing puzzles, her shiny dyed hair in curlers. All she’d wanted to know was six down or whatever. And no matter what you said, it clashed with four across. Celina had no other memory of her. She wondered now if doing crosswords had been inevitable: she’d avoided every big question, leaving all the big answers to her husband. What more could she do? She’d gone off with another SB officer. Someone with a higher rank — someone who knew more answers to more questions. And what of the daughter she’d left behind? Well, perhaps she didn’t mind.