The Wolves of Leninsky Prospekt

by Sarah Armstrong

  I lay in bed reading Eva’s stories, the picture of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour clear in my eye as the dragon burned it down, the smell of the Metro vivid, and the Apothecary’s Garden, drenched with rain in my imagination, wolves in the forests. I realised that I yearned for Moscow how Eva yearned for her piece of England. I understood the last story now, torn between two places and two peoples. I felt it in my stomach. Neither place existed. Britain now was a very different place to the one Eva had left thirty years ago. It had been battered then, but now it was angry, and even in this privileged corner of Gloucestershire, I could feel it.

  Moscow wasn’t perfect, and even there I was in a privil-eged position, but it was new to me. If anything, it had made the problems here much clearer. And the propaganda. The national anthem every time the national TV station closed down for the night, the programmes celebrating the lives of the ordinary working man and woman. Willie Turnbull and Hugh Adam Crawford had had their turn at charming the country this month, not to mention all the guests on Pebble Mill at One and Nationwide. The country was fracturing with people realising that things could change, and the rich didn’t have an automatic right to run the world. Who knew how long Heath could hang onto power?

  Then there was me, in this house, not even knowing the real name of Cook or the woman who came in to clean five mornings a week. ‘That girl,’ Ma called her, and in all those years I’d never asked what they were called.

  But I could change. I didn’t have to be like my mother, coolly dismissive, or my father, upholding the status quo silently in the background. I suspected that he had been behind my return, safeguarding what I’d left of his reputation. It didn’t make me happy to have intruded on his territory like that. I also suspected that he felt guilty for pulling me back here.

  One day when ‘that girl’ was cleaning his room, and had left to empty the bin, I went in and sat in his chair. The books were sociological, political and geographical. I tried the drawers. All were locked. His letter rack was full of neatly lined up envelopes.

  The books and the autumn weather reminded me of the smell of packing for a new year of study. It was the time of leaving home.

  I picked up the telephone and called Harriet.

  32

  I met Kit in London. I knew when he called that this was the end, but I was still happy to see him.

  ‘Darling,’ he said, his arms open. I held onto him, smelling the Russian cigarette smoke embedded in his coat. We walked arm in arm from Paddington, through Norfolk Square Gardens where we sat down.

  ‘Tell me everything,’ I said.

  ‘I wanted to tell you in person that your chest has been sent back with your things in. I couldn’t bear for it just to turn up, and we know what the phones are like.’ He grimaced. ‘Isn’t it nice not to wonder who’s listening in?’

  ‘I have no one to phone, and at home my parents would be listening in. Not that I’m at home right now.’

  ‘Yes, I heard you were staying with friends. I’m glad you’re not alone. You’ll make new friends,’ he hesitated, ‘and more than friends, of course. I was wondering how you felt about getting a divorce. What would be easiest for me would be to get the no fault divorce after two years. So, it would be dated from when you left Moscow. But, darling, you’re the only one who would be wanting to marry again, so I need to know if you are all right with that.’

  I tried to hide my face by looking at the pavement.

  ‘You’re upset? Martha, I am so sorry.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not you, Kit. I know it’s inevitable, and not a real marriage. It just feels as if we’ll fall out now.’

  ‘Never.’ His arm tightened on mine. ‘Let’s do what we dreamed of for all those months in Moscow.’

  ‘Go to the pub?’

  He nodded. ‘Absolutely.’

  He stood and offered his hand to pull me up. I took it and seeing my wedding band, realised I’d have to take it off. My temporary husband. I would always miss him.

  We walked away.

  ‘London feels different, don’t you think?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Unsettled.’ I looked at him. ‘Is it snowing yet?’

  ‘It’s going to start next week, according to the reports. I know you think you’re missing out, Martha, but it will be below freezing until the end of March. It’s not pleasant.’

  I thought of the pictures and couldn’t bring myself to agree with him. He squeezed my hand as we went into The Royal Exchange. I found seats while he went to get served. It had only recently opened for the day and we were the only customers.

  He carried our drinks over, a pint for him and a half for me.

  ‘Kit, when you come home, can I have your tin money box? Or could you get me another one, and I’ll pretend it’s the same.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll give you the poster too.’ He smiled. ‘Just in case you need reminding.’

  I changed the subject. ‘How’s Leila?’

  ‘I don’t see much of her. In fact, I only bumped into her once outside our building. I told her where you’d gone, of course.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Just that it was a shame. That kind of thing.’

  I was annoyed that he would sound so uninterested. Or maybe they were spending a lot of time together and he thought I’d be jealous. I didn’t know. I just knew he was lying.

  ‘Have you thought about what you are going to do next?’ he asked.

  I nodded. ‘I have a plan.’

  ‘Oh, tell.’ Kit sat back on the bench. I leaned toward him.

  ‘I’m going back to university. I’ve got an interview at the University of Essex.’

  ‘Martha, why?’

  ‘I need a change.’

  Kit’s voice went high, ‘You haven’t had enough of those?’

  I laughed. ‘No. I’m switching to Political Science too.’

  Kit leaned forward. ‘This is about going back, isn’t it?’

  I shrugged and smiled.

  ‘Martha, the whole world is waiting for you. You could always go to Iceland or Denmark. There is snow in lots of beautiful places that are a bloody lot safer than the Soviet Union.’

  ‘It’s not just the snow. I really do love Moscow, and I’d like to be able to decide when I’m ready to leave. I couldn’t decide anything for myself then, but there’s no reason why I can’t make my own application to the British Council.’

  ‘They won’t give you a visa. Not after the last few months. And you really shouldn’t try. They have their hooks in you, Martha.’

  Kit looked ashen. I’d really thought he’d be more impressed by the way I was working around problems.

  ‘Didn’t you listen to me when I told you what it was really like? All the hypocrisy, all of the lies. Everything you did was orchestrated. Did you listen? If you go back you will never be free again.’

  I laughed. ‘They don’t have anything on me.’

  He looked at me in disbelief. ‘You have no idea, do you?’

  I sipped my drink. ‘Is this going to affect your job?’

  ‘I don’t know. No. Maybe.’ He sat and drank for a while. ‘You’ve been back a few weeks, and all this has happened.’

  I finished my drink and went to the bar without asking him. His eyes were glazed over as he worked out something. When I got back he’d formed his questions.

  ‘When do you start your degree?’

  ‘In the autumn.’

  He took a long drink. ‘What does your father say?’

  I moved the empty glasses to the table next to us. ‘I’m twenty-one. I get a grant. I don’t need permission.’

  ‘You can’t get a grant when you’ve been expelled, surely?’

  ‘I am lodging with Harriet’s family while I work. I started as a secretary a couple of days ago in Bayswater. It has a different LEA, so I used her address to apply for another grant. I thought you’d be pleased that I wasn’t relying on you to get me back there.’

  Kit shook his head. ‘After all
the money they spent on your schools to get you into one of the best universities, you don’t think your parents deserve a say?’

  I raised my eyebrows.

  ‘And Political Science? At that hotbed of radicalism?’

  I laughed. ‘Kit! Seriously?’

  The door opened and a group of men came into the pub. Kit glared at them.

  ‘It was radical about five years ago,’ I said.

  He lowered his voice, ‘You remember the Angry Brigade trial last year? The longest trial in history, that one? Two of them were at Essex.’

  I whispered, ‘I promise that I won’t join the Angry Brigade. Maybe the Slightly Patronised by Well-meaning Men Brigade.’

  ‘I am not patronising you.’

  ‘You’re saying I’ll end up in some bombing group.’

  ‘I’m saying,’ Kit hissed, ‘that you should consider your father’s position before you make decisions like that.’

  ‘If my father wants me to consider his position, then I suggest he bloody well tells me what it is.’ I pushed my chair back and walked away.

  I left the pub and walked back to Paddington. I was furious with Kit, forgetting that I’d been convinced I would love him forever less than an hour ago. A hotbed of radicalism? That’s exactly what Pa would say. And that was why I hadn’t told him, or Ma.

  In the hour it took me to get home, my parents had been informed. They swore it hadn’t been Kit who told them, but some unspecified university tell-tale. The phone kept ringing that night. When Ma had finished, Pa called, and then David. I sat on the stairs to speak to him.

  ‘What have you done now?’

  ‘I’m going back to university.’

  ‘But not Cambridge?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I can, and I can’t stay at home. How would you feel?’

  ‘Essex sounds like a good choice. Have fun. If she calls you again, please tell Ma that I’m going out, so not to call me back.’

  ‘Will do.’

  I put the phone down and stood up. It rang again.

  ‘David has gone out and I can’t tie up the phone any longer. I’m off to bed now.’

  Ma’s voice was trembling. ‘We’re not going to allow this to happen.’

  ‘Why not? Because it’s a hotbed of radicalism?’

  ‘Because you cannot be trusted. You never know when to stop speaking to people.’

  ‘I really don’t think you have a say in this. We could meet for lunch in London and you can interrogate me on what I’m up to.’ I sat down again. ‘Or we could just talk about normal things, like life.’

  Ma sighed and put the phone down. I went to bed.

  1974

  33

  Essex was different to Cambridge in more ways than I could count, but it felt like home. I imagined having a room in one of the tower blocks, almost as high as my home in Moscow, and from it I would see woods, green spaces and a river.

  It had been a long day, and the paperwork was complicated. I’d had my interview in the Politics Department, my British Council application was being reviewed and every decision was mine again. If I didn’t get the Council exchange, I’d apply for a holiday visa. If I didn’t get that, I’d look at something else. One way or another, I was going back to find out what happened to Eva.

  There seemed to be many similarities with Moscow at the university when I arrived earlier, but gradually the differences reminded me that I was not there. The blocks of building didn’t have guards or dezhurnaya on every door, watching and noting who came in and out. There was laughing and kissing in public. When I ordered food, they had it.

  Since I’d been back, I didn’t have to eat sour cabbage in vinegar and oil, so I missed it. The fact that almost everyone wore jeans, usually flared jeans, struck me as decadent and wasteful, before I bought my own pair. It was almost impossible to stay in the present, thinking all the time about what came next. But I would try.

  At home, I’d scoured the papers for news of Russia. Scotland had had the northern lights for eleven nights, and some snow, and I envied the Scots for being under that northern sky. Here I watched the fog, thick on the fields and river, thin in the weak sunlight. I wished Eva knew that I was where she wanted to be, scanning the stories for clues even now.

  I had time before my train, so I walked across the hill that dropped down to the campus buildings and went to the lake. The edge was muddy with footprints and where the geese and ducks had paddled, and I remembered my frozen feet. I still needed rubber boots.

  It was late afternoon and the frost was coming, but I wasn’t ready to leave. Moscow had introduced me to trees and I gazed at the greens, yellows, oranges and reds, sometimes purple leaves, thinking, I should know what that tree is called. I noticed every birch tree like a friend. I noted the oak tree recently hollowed out by lightning, the tree where the earth between the roots had been hollowed out, heard the traffic of the long road to Clacton. I wished for a dog to walk with me.

  I started to walk back to Rayleigh Tower. I passed a group of students performing Shakespeare under a tree, Othello, and I slowed my pace to listen. Desdemona was about to be murdered. I watched her beg for her life, disbelieving her fate. Maybe I should get involved in something like that. They were bound to put on a Greek play which I already knew. Or maybe I should take up a sport. It might help me sleep. Or just run on my own. I hadn’t seen anyone run in Moscow, but here people used the park as if it was purposeful. In Moscow–

  I had to stop comparing everything to Moscow. I had to stop shutting myself off. If I was going to get through this, I had to meet people.

  I turned back and headed for the square with the rectangular fountain in the middle. I sat on the edge, like a dozen other students, but I was on my own in the dusk. Someone had been chalking slogans on the step: ‘art belongs to the people’.

  ‘Marta.’

  I didn’t turn. That wasn’t my name, after all, and there were other people here meeting, talking, making plans. I looked away, through the arch to where it was already dark.

  ‘Marta.’

  Slightly closer now. The hairs began to prickle on the back of my neck as the voice seemed familiar. But it couldn’t be. I didn’t know anyone yet. And that wasn’t my name, even if the voice made it sound like mine. I kept my eyes focused on some distant point.

  A woman sat near me, the fountain trickled, and the sun continued to set behind the buildings. I shivered. It was like Eva’s first story where she sits next to the water and the wolf sits next to her. I couldn’t smell a wolf, just the harshness of Russian filterless papirosy and something else, something underneath that.

  Close, and very quiet now, one last time.

  ‘Marta, I am with you.’

  I could hear the smile in her voice, my wolf, and everything became clear. She’d fed me information I wanted. She’d taken me drinking, got me to talk. And I hadn’t stopped. There had been no boyfriend in the flat, not even a pair of trousers that he might have left behind. I went through everything I’d told her from my conversations with Eva, everything Eva had said. I’d spied for the Russians and never even realised. She’d won and I didn’t even know I was competing.

  ‘Still thinking about Moscow?’ Leila asked. ‘I heard you applied for the British Council exchange.’

  Everything Kit had talked about came back to me. My hands were shaking and I clasped them together. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘We know each other, Martha. I know you’re going to argue that you don’t know some things about me, but you know everything that’s important. We got on, and we had fun. And I think that you know this could work.’

  ‘What could?’

  ‘Things need to change. Things need to be shared. You understand that.’

  ‘And what about protest when things aren’t right? You claim that it’s all for the little people, and then tell them to shut up.’

  ‘There’s more than one kind of communism. The Soviets have the on
e that suits such an immensely vast country and population. Same with China. But Cuba and Britain, they are small islands. It would be a version that worked for us. You have to start somewhere. And it would be people like us making the decisions.’

  ‘And what exactly would I be doing? Censoring books? I read Doctor Zhivago before I went, and The Master and Margarita. I can’t support banning them.’

  ‘Did you read Solzhenitsyn?’

  I shifted my legs. ‘I tried.’

  ‘Boring, isn’t it?’

  She grinned and I couldn’t help but smile. I had liked Leila. But Kit was right. I was part of a plan so big that I couldn’t even see it. They had something on me, but I didn’t know what it was.

  She opened her hands. ‘Look, it’s a work in progress. The theory is sound, but the Soviet Union is still progressing towards communism, slowly. They’re going to get things wrong. We will too. But what chance do we have as women to change things now? Those men who run Britain don’t see us as intelligent people, just future mothers. This is the only way to get true equality. It’s what you’ve been fighting for.’

  I knew that look of excited conviction. I used to like the way she’d sweep me up in her arguments. But not now.

  I looked at the clouds, as if considering what she said. ‘I didn’t see any women in the line-up at the Kremlin.’

  When she looked up, Leila’s face had hardened. ‘Again, you’re talking about Soviet communism.’

  ‘It’s the one I know.’

  I leaned back on my hands and stretched my legs out.

  ‘We want you to work for us.’

  ‘I don’t know anything.’

  ‘You could find things out. Your father is working on some really interesting projects. Non-secret analogue encryption. Does that ring a bell?’

  ‘I don’t want to help you. Look what happened to Sandra.’

  ‘Sandra?’ Leila laughed. ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous.’