by Lloyd Jones
Last night they had driven through Poland. Around dawn Mr Simpson briefly awoke to discover they were in a city. He thought it might be Warsaw; and he had thought about waking Maggie to say they were in Warsaw, but instead he fell asleep again, and the next time he woke they were travelling in the countryside. It wasn’t until the bus had reached the border, or shortly before it, that the Simpsons were given a rest stop.
Tonight they would be in Kaunas; Daugavpils; Riga around dawn, and, late afternoon, Pskov, and Leningrad later that night.
Mr Simpson started a letter to Yvonne. He wrote that they had spent much of the day passing through ‘no-account country’. But he fell asleep before he could explain himself.
Shortly before dusk the bus stopped, but not at Kaunas. Mr Simpson had brought a map with him, and he could see they were a short distance east of where the itinerary placed them. Tall pines made a secret of the surrounding countryside. They had stopped at a restaurant and a warm and almost circular glow in the distance suggested they were on the outskirts of a small town.
‘Look here,’ Mr Simpson said to the Greek driver. ‘Shouldn’t we be in Kaunas?’ The driver gazed at the plastic which covered Mr Simpson’s map, then at Mr Simpson with a flicker of contempt for his need to know, as if to say, ‘I decide. Me. The driver.’ Mr Simpson trailed after him.
He could hear his wife saying, ‘I’m sure it is all right. There’s no point in our worrying.’ Then she said, ‘Look, we’re the only ones not inside the restaurant.’ He turned back to her. Suddenly they could hear voices, and laughter, and even what sounded like tears. Over the windows of the restaurant were wooden shutters and warm glow at the bottom of each sill. It occurred to Mr Simpson that they were the only ones left outside. Alone, out here in the Russian night, thought Mr Simpson. Well, it was not quite night because they could see the tops of the pines. But Mr Simpson thought it might be a moment worth telling about once they got home. It would be something Maggie would bring up. ‘Bill, why don’t you tell Paddy and Dan about that time in Russia …’ His wife would have on oven-gloves and she would be holding an oven-hot casserole dish, and he would shoot a quick look of disapproval, or perhaps laugh, as if she had rekindled a lost memory.
They walked along a path of trodden pine-needles. Mr Simpson allowed his hand to be held, but inside the restaurant, in the cloakroom area, he shook free. Through another set of doors a speech was in progress. Mr Simpson braced himself for the moment when a roomful of faces would stare his and Maggie’s way; but none did. They pushed through the swing-doors and no one paid the Simpsons the slightest attention. A man with greying hair and a sad drooping moustache was giving the speech. At times he interrupted himself to blow his nose and brush away a tear. Mr Simpson’s eyes moved to the far end of the room, where in an open doorway he saw the driver seated at a table. He had started on his food and ate hungrily from a fork, while keeping his other hand on the stem of a wine glass for fear it would be removed, or stolen. None of what was happening in the restaurant seemed to be of concern to him.
There were two long tables set with white table-cloths. Bouquets of wild flowers were set between carafes of spring water. Now, at last, a man in a waistcoat, an older man about Mr Simpson’s age, found them a place at the bottom end of the second table. The Simpsons stepped over a bench and sat down. The Russian spoke in Mr Simpson’s ear, but it was unintelligible. Mr Simpson spoke in English. He said he was sorry. The waiter shushed him. He held up the palms of his hands, as if Mr Simpson had expressed impatience.
The speech had come to an end, and now the speaker began to read from a list of names. ‘Serge.’ A man got up from the Simpsons’ table. A second name was called. ‘Masha.’ A woman slowly rose from the other table. The entire room looked up. The man ‘Serge’ held out his hands and the woman walked over to where he stood, and took both his hands. Another woman at the other table was crying loud, painful sobs. Now the speaker held up his glass and offered a toast and on either side of the Simpsons glasses were raised. The Simpsons tried to follow suit but were raising their own as the rest of the glasses in the room were returned to their resting places. Applause broke out. From both tables people called out ‘Masha’ and ‘Serge’. Room was made at the top end of the Simpsons’ table, and the couple sat down. When the woman began to touch the man’s face with her fingertips Mr Simpson looked away. He folded his napkin and looked at it a while.
The name ‘Andrei’ was called out—it was the man who had sat across the aisle on the bus. This morning he had offered Maggie a carrot smeared with horse radish. Mr Simpson had declined it with a wave of his hand. Maggie had smiled, and said, ‘No, but thank you very much.’ They had their water crackers and tea flask.
Now this same man left the table to run and hug ‘Lenka’, a woman unused to make-up perhaps, and whose hair was more usually kept in a scarf. The women whose names were called appeared older than the men. Their faces bore the lines of perseverance Mr Simpson had seen in old National Geographics—Soviet women in overalls and scarves, shouldering brooms and shovels.
Not everyone stood up and paired off, thankfully. And soon the business was completed, and the Simpsons were fed a watery stew of potatoes and cabbage. The man alongside pointed to the contents of his glass and said, ‘Schnapps.’ Mr Simpson nodded that he understood. So did Mrs Simpson.
There was no dessert. There were second helpings if the Simpsons cared for them. The other diners, Mr Simpson noted, gave no thought to it; and he did not wish to appear insensitive. The room was abuzz with laughter and had recovered the high spirits of earlier, when the Simpsons had found themselves alone, outside. The ‘couples’ wandered around the two tables. The women presented their men, who were embraced, their faces held and kissed on both sides.
They were deserters from the Russian army. Soldiers in the last regiments to fall back from occupied Germany in the late forties. Men impatient to be with their girlfriends, their wives and families. They had fled the army, only to flee their homeland.
Mr Simpson learnt this outside the restaurant. Maggie was off trying to find a bathroom; and he was enjoying a cigarette when he felt a tap on his shoulder, and the surprise of his name spoken.
‘Mr Simpson, please?’
It was the same man who had shown them to their place in the restaurant. Over his shoulder Mr Simpson saw the doors of the restaurant burst open with the exit of a happy laughing couple and there was a split-second view of the bus driver looking back his way.
The man in the waistcoat was very polite. He meant no harm. But he needed to know some things.
‘How did you find this bus tour, please?’
Mr Simpson told him the business of his wife going out to buy ice-cream—how she had returned with the cardboard notice. And the man said, ‘Yes, yes,’ as if these were things he already knew. He said there was a man, Kolya, and he pointed back at the restaurant. Kolya had a confectionary shop popular with Russian émigrés in London. Could it have been there that Mr Simpson’s wife had found the notice?
‘Look, she went out to buy ice-cream. That’s all,’ said Mr Simpson. He didn’t know anything about Russian deserters. He told the man he was a builder. A successful builder. Then he told him the name of his country, as if that fact alone might explain everything.
‘It is very important,’ the man said. ‘The women are to travel in the bus as far as Leningrad. From there they will return and the men will carry on. Please, we do not want unhappiness. We wish to avoid mistakes.’ The man asked Mr Simpson to show mercy. ‘These people are not traitors. They are husbands and wives.’
There were more people than seats on the bus but no one thought to complain. Mr Simpson looked out the window. It was pitch-black. Nowhere did there appear so much as a farmhouse light. He guessed they would be on back roads all the way to Leningrad. He passed on to Maggie what he had been told. He whispered of the people around them who were swaying in the bus aisle, laughing and kissing. Someone had a camera and was taking photog
raphs. Across the aisle Lenka sat in Andrei’s lap. He tickled her behind the ear, and she in turn gave his nose a playful tweak. A Polaroid was passed around. The couple laughed at themselves in the photo. Only in the photograph did Mr Simpson notice the woman’s bad teeth. She was laughing and he could see the black pits of her teeth and the swollen gums.
Here were people—men and women the Simpsons’ age—laughing and crying. There was a jokester among them—a man with a shaven head and twinkling blue eyes who every so often rose out of his seat and shouted something that cracked everyone up at the Simpsons’ end of the bus. To the front of the bus were younger faces—young men and women—and Mr Simpson wondered if they were relations, perhaps even the offspring of marriages forged in newly adopted countries.
Mr Simpson looked at his watch, as was his custom before turning off the bedside light. It was ten o’clock when he sealed his face with a smile and closed his eyes. He never really managed to fall asleep. The bus rocked and on corners pitched him sideways. When next he opened his eyes the lights in the bus were out. It was quiet. Maggie was sitting upright, wide awake but lost in thought. Mr Simpson had to shake her arm to make her aware that he was no longer asleep. He said he would like a peppermint. Maggie felt around in a bag for the peppermints. The rustling of the peppermint bag was unreasonably loud, like in a picture theatre, and Mr Simpson was suddenly aware of the other noises.
Across the aisle in the tight confines of their seat, Andrei and Lenka rested awkwardly in each other’s arms. Towards the back of the bus, in the aisle, a man lay on top of a woman who still had her shoes on.
Once, many years ago, Mr Simpson and Maggie had made love on the floor of a bach—and an hour later sat in the same spot with the Ralstons eating a ham salad.
Mr Simpson took a peppermint from his wife, and popped it in his mouth. He noted Maggie’s restlessness, a certain look that overtook her face when he occasionally breached a rule of etiquette, and wondered if it was the noise of him sucking the peppermint. Then she whispered, ‘Have you noticed?’ Yes, he nodded. He had noticed. ‘Those poor people,’ she whispered. She felt that they should give up their seat.
‘For the time being. We can do that at least,’ she said, and she gave a slight nod for Mr Simpson to check the aisle behind.
Two couples were embracing. Mr Simpson reached across to the nearest pair and tapped the man on the trouser leg. The man lifted his foot and shook his leg, and went on kissing the woman. This time Mr Simpson pulled on the man’s coat, and was more successful.
A man with grey sideburns and crew-cut turned around. He was perhaps a few years Mr Simpson’s junior, but he had held and continued to hold his woman like a teenager, both hands around her waist, her crotch pulled in against his own. Mr Simpson might have thought of the time he switched on a light to surprise his daughter with Grant Wicks. But there was no such terror in the eyes of the Russian man—not even surprise. More a patient kind of curiosity. But the woman understood before he did and gave a big smile and a push when she saw Mr Simpson and his wife stand up from their seat.
The Russian man clasped Mr Simpson by the shoulders and nodded formally. Mr Simpson gave the man a pat on the shoulder. Maggie was smiling happily. She felt proud; and Mr Simpson knew that part of that pride was for himself. He knew he had done something that his wife would never have expected him to do.
‘Hold me,’ she said. Mr Simpson did what was asked of him. Mrs Simpson put her hands against his chest, to steady herself, and then rested her head there. They stayed like that for a few minutes; then his wife looked up. She wanted him to kiss her. Mr Simpson wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and cleared his throat, as if he was about to deliver a few words, and kissed his wife.
‘That was nice,’ she said, and put her head back against his chest.
Mr Simpson was watching the Russian couple making love on their seat, and he was wondering what he and Maggie would look like. He watched the heave of the man’s body—and the woman’s mouth open to catch bubbles of air. The expertise in the man’s limbs caused Mr Simpson to wonder if he would appear the same, and whether after such a long separation from Maggie he would be able to restrain the greed of his body, and how could one sustain the greed without the separation?
Once he had thought about leaving Mrs Simpson. It was after the birth of their second child, and Mr Simpson had started to think about other women. It turned out to be a passing thing. And, of course, he had never told Maggie. Now he turned his thoughts to the young faces in the front of the bus. And as he watched he wondered which life the Russian man was thinking of, at that particular moment.
All of a sudden the motion stopped. The man’s head fell to one side; the woman’s eyes opened and smiled at Mr Simpson. Maggie crouched down and scratched around in her bag until she found the bottle of Vitell. She poured a cup and handed it to the woman, who had to reach over the man’s shoulder to receive it.
‘Spasiba,’ she said.
The man whispered something, and the woman said in hesitant English, ‘Thank you.’
She kissed the man’s forehead and gently pushed him up, and as he reluctantly rose he pulled up his trousers, and the woman flicked her coat over her legs. She slapped the seat beside her, rose, and said something in Russian. The man agreed.
‘Yes,’ he said and, nodding at the Simpsons, gestured to the space left behind.
Mrs Simpson laughed. ‘Oh no,’ she said. Then she smiled up at her husband. Mr Simpson rested a hand on his wife’s hip. The other couple moved away. The man patted Mr Simpson’s cheek with his hand. Mr and Mrs Simpson resumed their seat.
‘I feel so …’ she began to say, but Mr Simpson cut off the sentence with his lips. For a moment he wondered how things would appear in the morning and, back home, what he and Maggie would tell their friends. Then he felt inside his wife’s coat for her breast, and discovered the nipple ready.
where the harleys live
A group of them had been swapping stories about their parents: about life growing up under other people. Harley had told a story about his father, the ritual surrounding the family car, and the way his mother had driven the old man everywhere. His father was a big man, in the physical sense, who wore buttoned-up cardigans. He hardly ever spoke, and sat with his hands folded in his lap, while his wife drove him to the Phillips plant, to the bowling club, and home from the RSA. On Friday evenings she would lead him up the path to the house, quietly guiding him at the elbow, and, despite the gallons of alcohol slurping around inside of him, there was always a terribly serious look on his father’s face.
Easterman told how it had been necessary to lie to his elderly grandmother, and tell her he was marrying a Catholic. He had married a dental nurse, Karen. They married at Our Lady of Mercy. There is a photo on the Eastermans’ wall. Mark in his number ones, Karen in white, there they are smiling down at the crowd gathered on the steps of the church. Karen appears to be touchingly surprised by the crowd that has turned out. Easterman, on the other hand—you sense he is about to reach for his speech notes.
It was later at that same party that Easterman drew Harley aside to tell how he had fallen for Mary-Anne Richmond. ‘Does she know?’ Harley asked—without intending the insult. The Richmonds he had known for years. Terry Richmond was in Japan to sew up a deal with a rubber-technology plant to bring in a hardwearing synthetic rubber. He ran a small factory further up the line, a large tin-roofed warehouse in a paddock, turning out shoe soles. As for Mary-Anne, she had a useful profile about town. She was always out and about, getting involved with things. She was someone you called when you needed someone to knock on doors. There was a time when she marched around the car park of the supermarket with her placard of support for the Sandinistas. The Harleys knew her through the play centre, and of course Mary-Anne was a force behind the community theatre.
Towards the end of winter she had telephoned to badger Harley to take part in the local production. ‘Not this year, but maybe next year, Mary-Anne,�
�� he said, which was the same answer he had given the previous year, and the year before that. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ve got your name down for backstage, to help with the curtains and lighting on one of the nights—that okay?’ Harley said it was, in the safe knowledge he would not be required.
Two months earlier Easterman had got the same call, and actually turned up at the auditions for a school fundraiser, Sleeping Beauty.
Apparently he and Karen were going through a sticky patch. At least this was the account Easterman gave Harley. He just wanted something that would get him out of the house. So he went along to the school hall and landed the part of the Prince, who comes across the sleeping Kingdom—and awakens it and the Princess with a perfectly delivered kiss.
Come audition time, Easterman had wandered out to the middle of the stage. He raised his hand against the glare of the stage footlights and said he was sorry, but he had nothing prepared; however, he would sing ‘Jerusalem’ if required. Everyone fell about laughing. Easterman hadn’t intended a joke, but was pleased anyway, and grinned back in the direction of the darkened hall.
His next time on stage Easterman waved his arms through an imaginary thicket of undergrowth and cobwebs to where Mary-Anne Richmond lay asleep. Easterman knelt beside the Princess, imparted a trusting look to the audience, then lowered his lips against Mary-Anne Richmond’s. To Easterman’s surprise, the kiss lingered, and the Princess offered a murmur of satisfaction.
Later, after the show, Easterman picked up his five-year-old boy and held him in his arms, and while his wife was saying, ‘You were great. Wonderful. Really. Wasn’t he, Paulie?’ he looked around for the Princess.