‘Thanks,’ she said, as I placed the cup down in front of her. ‘I needed that. It’s cold outside now. I should have brought a scarf. So how was your morning?’
I shrugged my shoulders, irritated by her cheerful demeanour and meaningless chit-chat, as if there was nothing wrong in the world at all, as if our lives were as they had always been and would ever be. ‘No different to usual,’ I said. ‘Boring.’
‘Oh Georgy,’ she said, reaching her hand across the table and placing it on top of mine. ‘Don’t say that. Your life isn’t boring.’
‘Well, it’s not as exciting as yours, that’s for sure,’ I said, regretting the words immediately as she froze, trying to decide whether I had meant them to be quite as cutting as they had sounded; her hand remained flat on top of mine for a few seconds longer and then she removed it, looked out of the window and sipped her tea cautiously. I knew that she wouldn’t speak again until I did. After over thirty years of marriage, there was very little she could do that I wasn’t able to anticipate. She could surprise me, of course, she had proved that. But still, I knew her moves like no one else ever could.
‘The new girl started,’ I said finally, clearing my throat, introducing a safe topic for conversation. ‘That’s news, I suppose.’
‘Oh yes?’ she asked in a neutral tone. ‘And what’s she like?’
‘Very pleasant. Eager to learn. Quite knowledgeable about books. She read Literature at Cambridge. Frightfully smart.’
Zoya smiled and stifled a laugh. ‘Frightfully smart,’ she repeated. ‘Georgy, how English you’ve become.’
‘Have I?’
‘Yes. You never would have used phrases like that when we first came to London. It’s all those years of being surrounded by dons and academics in the library.’
‘I expect it is,’ I said. ‘They do say that language changes as one becomes more assimilated into a different society.’
‘Is she mousy?’
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘Your new assistant. What’s her name, anyway?’
‘Miss Llewellyn.’
‘Is she Welsh?’
‘Yes.’
‘And is she mousy?’
‘No. Just because she chooses to work in a library doesn’t mean that she’s some sort of shrinking violet who can’t bear to be spoken to in case she turns bright red, you know.’
Zoya sighed and stared at me. ‘All right,’ she said, shaking her head a little. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just making conversation.’
Irritability. Petulance. Anxiety. A subconscious desire to find something wrong in every phrase she employed. A need to criticize her, to make her feel bad about herself. I could hear it every time we spoke. And I hated the fact of it. This was not who we were supposed to be. We were supposed to love each other, to treat each other with respect and kindness. We had never been Georgy and Zoya, after all. We were GeorgyandZoya.
‘She’ll do fine,’ I said, my tone a little lighter now, not wishing to increase the tension of the conversation. ‘Things won’t be the same without Miss Simpson, of course. Or Mrs Harris, I should say. But there we are. Life goes on. Times change.’
‘Yes,’ she said, reaching down for her handbag and taking out a copy of that morning’s Times newspaper. ‘Have you seen this?’ she asked, placing it on the table in front of me.
‘I’ve seen it,’ I replied after only a slight hesitation. I made sure to read The Times every morning at the library, she was well aware of it. What surprised me was that she had seen it, for Zoya was not a person who particularly enjoyed reading about current affairs, particularly when so many of them in these days were bellicose in nature.
‘And what do you think?’
‘I don’t think anything,’ I said, picking the newspaper up and staring for a moment at the face of Josef Stalin in the photograph, the heavy moustache, the lidded eyes smiling back at me with fake cordiality. ‘What do you expect me to think?’
‘We should hold a party,’ she said, her voice cold but triumphant. ‘We should celebrate, don’t you think so?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘What is there to rejoice over, after all? So he is dead. And after him, you think… what? You think things will be as they once were again?’
‘Of course not,’ she said, taking the paper from me and looking at the photograph again for only a moment before folding it over and pressing it forcefully back into her bag. ‘I’m just happy, that’s all.’
‘That he’s gone?’
‘That he’s dead.’
I remained silent. I hated hearing such venom in her tone. Of course I was no admirer of Stalin; I had read enough about his actions to despise him. In the thirty-five years since leaving Russia I had remained well enough informed on the events that were taking place in my native land to feel relieved that I was no longer a part of them. But I could not celebrate a death, even his.
‘Anyway,’ I continued after a moment, ‘I don’t have long before I have to go back to work and I want to hear about your morning. How did it go?’
Zoya looked down at the table for a moment. She seemed disappointed that we were changing the subject so quickly; perhaps she wanted to engage in a long conversation about Stalin and his actions and his purges and all his multiplicity of crimes. She could have that conversation if she wanted, I had already decided in my head. Only not with me. ‘It was fine,’ she said quietly.
‘Just fine?’
‘It was a little more… complicated this time, I suppose.’
I considered this and hesitated before questioning her further. ‘Complicated?’ I asked. ‘How so?’
‘It’s hard to explain,’ she said, her forehead wrinkling a little as she thought about it. ‘When we had our first appointment last week, Dr Highsmith seemed interested in very little other than my daily life and routines. He wanted to know whether I enjoyed my work, how long I had lived in London, how long we had been married. Very basic questions. The kind of things you might chat about at a party if you were talking to a stranger.’
‘Did that make you uncomfortable?’ I asked.
‘Not particularly,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders. ‘I mean, there was a limit to how much I was willing to talk about, of course. I don’t even know the man. But he seemed to recognize that in me. He challenged me on it quite early.’
I nodded. ‘And how far back did you go?’
‘Quite far, in different ways,’ she admitted. ‘I talked about how things had been during the war, the years leading up to it after we first got here. About how long we had waited to become parents. I talked…’ She hesitated now and bit her lip, but then looked up and spoke in a more determined voice; I wondered whether this was something Dr Highsmith had encouraged her to do. ‘I talked a little about Paris.’
‘Really?’ I asked, surprised. ‘We never talk about Paris.’
‘No,’ she said, her tone betraying a slight accusation. ‘No, we don’t.’
‘Should we?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘What else?’
‘Russia.’
‘You spoke about Russia?’
‘Again, only in the most general terms,’ she said. ‘It seemed strange to discuss such personal matters with a person I’ve only just met.’
‘You don’t trust him?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘I do trust him, I think. It’s just… it’s curious, he doesn’t really ask any questions as such. He just talks to me. We have a conversation. And then I find myself opening up to him. Telling him things. It’s almost like a form of hypnosis. I was thinking about that earlier as I was waiting for his secretary to return and he put me in mind… he reminded me of—’