‘Well,’ I said, refilling everyone’s wine glass and raising mine before them in a toast. ‘We all live here now, émigrés together. Russian, German, Irish, it doesn’t matter. And we have all left people behind us and lost people along the way. Perhaps we should drink in memory of them.’
We clinked our glasses together and returned to our meals, a family of four already, not three.
Arina begged me to buy a television set so we could watch the coronation of the new Queen at home and I resisted at first, not because I was uninterested in the ceremony itself, but because I couldn’t quite see the point of spending so much money on something that we would only use once.
‘But we’ll use it every day,’ she insisted. ‘Or I will anyway. Please, we can’t be the only family on the street not to own one. It’s embarrassing.’
‘Don’t exaggerate,’ I told her, shaking my head. ‘What is it that you want anyway, that we sit here every night, the three of us, staring at a box in the corner of the room and never speak to each other? Anyway, if everyone else has one, why can’t you sit with one of the neighbours and watch the service there?’
‘Because we should watch it together,’ she told me. ‘As a family. Please, Pasha,’ she added, offering me the beseeching smile that never failed to win me over. And sure enough, the following Monday, only the afternoon before the Queen was due to make her way to Westminster Abbey, I finally relented and returned home with a new wedge-shaped Ambassador console, which fitted snugly into the corner of our small living room.
‘But it’s so ugly,’ said Zoya, sitting on the sofa while I tried to attach the wires correctly. At the showroom I had been momentarily seduced by the models on display and had chosen this particular receiver for its wooden surround, which was made from a similar material to our dining table. It was divided into two halves, a small twelve-inch screen resting comfortably above a similar-sized speaker, the two settings giving the box the appearance of an unfinished traffic light. Despite myself, I was quite excited by this new purchase.
‘It’s wonderful,’ said Arina, sitting down beside her mother and staring at it in wonder as if it was a Picasso or a Van Gogh.
‘It should be,’ I muttered. ‘It’s the most expensive thing we own.’
‘How much was it, Georgy?’
‘Seventy-eight pounds,’ I said, astonished even as I said the words that I could have spent so much money on something so essentially worthless. ‘Over ten years, of course.’
Zoya uttered an old Russian oath beneath her breath but didn’t offer any criticism; perhaps she was already seduced by the machine too. It took a little time for me to understand how to operate it, but I finally finished making all the connections and pressed the ‘on’ button and we watched, the three of us, as a small white circle appeared in the centre of the screen and then, two or three minutes later, spread out to fill the screen with a symbol for the BBC.
‘Programmes don’t start until seven o’clock,’ explained Arina, who seemed content nevertheless to sit there staring at the test card.
The whole country had been given the following day off work and the streets were lined with so much bunting and decoration that the city appeared to have transformed itself into a circus overnight. Ralph arrived before lunchtime, laden down with cold meats, chutneys and cheese for sandwiches, and more bottles of beer than I thought strictly necessary.
‘Anyone would think you were getting married, the way you’re carrying on,’ I said to Arina, who had been up since six o’clock, fussing about in great excitement, and had finally ended up sitting on the floor in front of the television in an attempt to get as close to the proceedings as possible. ‘Is this what we’re going to be like from now on, a family of baboons, transfixed by a flickering light emerging from a wooden box?’
‘Oh, Pasha, shush,’ she said, watching as the reporter in the studio repeated the same information over and over again and passed it off as news.
Zoya did not seem as interested as the young people in the events taking place, maintaining as much distance from the television set as was possible in our small living room, busying herself with small unnecessary jobs. But when the young Queen began her journey in the gold-crested carriage from the palace, looking out towards her people with a confident smile upon her face and waving with that particularly regal twist of the wrist, she pulled a seat over and began to watch silently.
‘She’s a pretty thing,’ I remarked as Elizabeth ascended the throne, only to receive another shushing from my daughter, who thought nothing of commenting on every jewel, every tiara, every throne and every piece of ceremonial splendour which was displayed before us, but didn’t want me to interrupt the proceedings with a single word.
‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ she asked, turning to us then, her face lit up with delight at what she saw. I smiled at her, feeling uncomfortable, and glanced across at my wife, who was transfixed by the images on the television too and had, I thought, not even heard a word that our daughter had said.
‘Ralph and I are going to the palace,’ announced Arina when the ceremony was finally over.
‘Why, for heaven’s sake?’ I asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘Haven’t you seen enough?’
‘Everyone’s going there, Mr Jachmenev,’ said Ralph, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Don’t you want to see the Queen when she steps out on the balcony?’
‘Not particularly,’ I said.
‘You go,’ said Zoya, standing up and stepping away from us, filling the sink with hot water and throwing the used plates into it forcefully. ‘It’s for the young people, not us. We couldn’t stand the crowds.’
‘Well, we better go now, Ralph, or we won’t get a good place,’ said Arina, grabbing his hand and dragging him away before he even had a chance to thank us for our hospitality. I could hear others on the street beyond, leaving their houses too, having watched the Coronation, and making their way along Holborn towards Charing Cross Road, and from there on to the Mall in the hope of getting as close to the Queen Victoria Memorial as possible. I listened to them for a few minutes before standing up and walking over to Zoya.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘No.’
‘Was it the ceremony?’
She sighed and turned around to look at me, our eyes meeting for a few seconds before she looked away.
‘Zoya,’ I said, wanting to take her in my arms, to hold her, to comfort her, but there was something that prevented me from doing so. This disruption in our marriage. She sensed it herself and offered an exhausted sigh, walking away from me without another word or touch and stepped towards the bedroom, where she closed the door behind her, leaving me alone.
I knew that something wasn’t right long before she told me about it. This man, Henry, had arrived at the Central School, where Zoya worked, from America to teach for a year and they had quickly become friends. He was younger than her, in his late thirties, I think, and no doubt found himself lonely in a city where he knew no one and had no friends. Zoya was not the type to feel a responsibility towards people in this way – she typically eschewed any form of social interaction with her colleagues outside of the school itself – but for some reason, she took him under her wing. Soon they were taking their lunch together every afternoon and arriving back late for classes because they had found themselves so engrossed in conversation.
They went for a drink together every Thursday evening after work. I was invited along only once, and found him pleasant company, if a little trivial in his conversation and prone to self-importance, and then I was never invited again and no reference was made to this fact. It was as if my audition to join their little club had gone badly and they didn’t want to hurt my feelings by mentioning it. I didn’t mind particularly; if anything I liked the fact that Zoya had made a friend of her own, for she had never had very many of those, but still, the rejection smarted.