* * *
Now things are complicated. Elena has pushed Mykola’s black-eyed delivery man into the stairwell and sent him on his way. She strips the old green overalls off Rachel and picks up her bucket before disappearing downstairs herself. Rachel doesn’t know what to make of any of this, but she does know she hasn’t heard the last of it.
Lucas bumps into the machine when he comes home that night. He catches his hip on one corner and Rachel hears him cursing as he fumbles in the darkness by the front door.
‘What the hell is that?’ he asks, as she steps out of the bathroom, still brushing her teeth.
‘It’s a present, I think,’ she mumbles, wiping her mouth. ‘A washing machine. From Mykola, the man I met in the white goods shop. I don’t know how they got it into the lift.’
Lucas is not feeling so open-minded.
‘A present? If you didn’t pay for it, and I hope to God you didn’t as there’s nothing left on the Visa card, then it’s a bribe. Jesus, Rach, it’s a fucking great bribe. He hasn’t even tried to disguise it. Something for the wife – very clever. Well, it’s going right back to wherever it came from. Just as well you didn’t let him bring it in – then we’d be in receipt.’
Rachel lowers her toothbrush.
‘It might not be a bribe,’ she says. ‘It’s only a second. Some Russian make.’ She thinks of Elena spitting at the delivery man, his black eye. And then she remembers how Mykola had looked at her, how he had put his hand on her son’s head.
Lucas knows none of this. Alarm is twitching across his face. No one gives washing machines away for no reason. Not even a damaged one.
‘What exactly did this Mykola guy say to you?’ he asks. ‘He doesn’t expect us to pay him for it, does he? And how did he know where to bring it?’
Behind Rachel, the day’s washing drips from the nylon line above the bath: Lucas’s shirts, Ivan’s yellowing vests and her own knickers and stained nursing bras. She wants the machine. She wants clean laundry, but she doesn’t understand what Mykola wants.
‘We don’t have to keep it,’ she says, following Lucas as far as the living room and flicking the light switch so that the view beyond the windows is obscured by bright reflections. ‘I didn’t pay anything. I didn’t sign anything.’
‘Okay,’ says Lucas, taking out a pack of cigarettes. ‘I’ll get Zoya to call the shop. You’ve got to be careful, Rach. You don’t know how these people operate – starting small, finding your weakness, inveigling their way in and then suddenly I’m expected to reciprocate in some way. What the hell is this?’
Lucas is peering at the balcony door and before Rachel remembers to stop him he grasps the handle and gives it a yank. The frame makes a sticky sound like an Elastoplast being pulled off a knee. He has broken Elena’s freshly made seal.
The lorries start thundering towards Rachel as cold air rushes across the floor. There will be consequences, now, tomorrow, or sometime. She cannot shut out the balcony. The balcony will not be shut out.
Chapter 12
The winter freeze deepens throughout January. As an Arctic front sinks down from Siberia dead crows drop out of the sky. On the afternoons when it snows, when the apartment blocks are shrouded and tiny flakes like splinters whip across the road, muffling the shrieks of the trams and swirling in dim halos around the streetlights, Rachel and her son stay indoors. Ivan pulls at her skirt hem and practises his rolling on the bedroom floor. When his erupting gums make him whimper, or his nappy rash flares up and he howls for three hours at a stretch, she rocks him on her hip in front of the mirror by the front door, or distracts him with a mobile made from bottle caps, but she never takes him into the living room. On days when the skies clear and the thermometer won’t nudge over minus ten, Rachel dresses him in five or six layers, with little zip-up bootees she bought near the football stadium and a pom-pommed balaclava on his head. Then she bumps him down the steps in his pushchair with the see-through rain cover pulled around him to keep out the worst of the cold that burns her nostrils and makes her eyes sting, and they walk around the car park or take a trolleybus to the ramshackle BBC office, where Zoya frowns her disapproval and Lucas lets him play with his keys.
The washing machine is still out there on the thirteenth floor landing. At first Lucas tries to get Zoya to have it returned, but she tells him she won’t do his dirty work and besides, everyone knows about Mykola Sirko’s dealings with the new racketeers. His shop is almost certainly used to launder their money.
‘Exactly!’ says Lucas, exasperated. ‘Why do you think I want it out of my hallway?’
Elena Vasilyevna, on the other hand, cannot leave the washing machine alone. She climbs the stairs almost daily, arriving after Ivan’s nap to watch the next episode of Simplemente Maria on Lucas’s TV. She’ll skip it if Lucas is at home, though most of the time he’s out and when Rachel opens the door to let her in, Elena bangs on the washing machine with her fist and mutters some curse in Russian.
The TV sits in a corner of the kitchen now – it is too big for the narrow space, but Rachel has balanced it on a box opposite the stove, telling Lucas it is too cold in the living room. This is true, but also she doesn’t want Elena to notice the broken seal on the balcony door. She is still wary of Elena and assumes the old woman wants to nose around the apartment and peer at her private things. Nevertheless, she is learning that Elena’s visits offer a crucial, if temporary, reprieve from the fear that on some days makes Rachel lock herself in the bathroom while Ivan naps. When Elena is around, her son is safe from harm – safe from treacherous hands that might pluck him from his cot, carry him to the open balcony window, dangle him out and let go. Soon Rachel finds herself anticipating Elena’s impatient rattle of the door handle. They cannot speak to each other and Elena wants the volume turned up loud, which always wakes Ivan, but when he’s fed and sitting in his bouncy chair or sliding around on the kitchen floor, the caretaker tickles him with the toe of her felt slipper. Ivan giggles, which sometimes makes him bring up his mashed potato or cough on his bread ring, though mostly the three of them settle down to a tolerable silence.
One afternoon Rachel finds herself offering Elena some coffee. The next day, she opens a packet of biscuits.
* * *
Rachel wakes in the night to the sound of dogs barking. She can hear them thirteen floors down, despite the double glazing. They sound as if they are fighting, their yelps and snarls echoing between the buildings and across the valley. Lucas isn’t home yet; he is filing late from the office and as Rachel stares into the darkness the sounds seem to get louder, until she imagines the dogs are on the balcony, though she knows this can’t be true.
In the morning Lucas has returned. Rachel sees him from the hallway, looking tired and unshaven. He is smoking out on the balcony.
‘Christ,’ he says, peering down through the open window. ‘Those dogs have murdered each other.’
‘What dogs?’ she asks, willing him to pull his head back inside.
Lucas straightens up and takes a long drag on his cigarette. His chest expands with the inhalation and he holds it in for three or four seconds before breathing it out.
‘Two of them, down by the bins. They’d been tied together by their back legs. They must have attacked each other or died from exhaustion. Horrible. The caretaker is dealing with them.’
‘Oh, that’s awful.’ So Rachel hasn’t dreamt it. ‘Did you see them last night? The dogs?’
‘Yes, when Zoya dropped me off.’ Lucas flicks his butt over the side of the balcony, shuts the window and steps back into the living room. ‘I couldn’t untie them, before you ask. They would have gone for me. They were half-crazy already. It’s a mess down there. Don’t look.’
* * *
Lucas and Vee are lounging on leatherette sofas in the bar of the Hotel Rus.
‘So how’s Rachel?’ asks Vee. She stubs out a cigarette and push
es her fingers through her hair. ‘Did she finish the survey already?’
Lucas lifts his glass of beer, checks it in the dull, flat light from the chandelier above their heads, and takes a sip.
‘The survey’s done, though it took quite a while. Don’t worry – I fed her some numbers. Kiev is a hardship posting, no question. Your diplomat buddies will get their allowance.’
Vee sighs. ‘Did you hear the Finns are opening an embassy in the building next to mine? Sorin told me, though I don’t know why he bothers. Maybe he wants me to get him into some parties.’
‘Hmm.’ Lucas hopes Sorin hasn’t told Vee about his film industry feature, where progress is frustratingly slow. He imagines Sorin accompanying Vee to a party, brushing the small of her back with his bureaucrat’s palm and staring at her cleavage. Lucas can see the serpentine curve of her right breast as she leans back against the sofa and yawns without covering her mouth. What would she do if he made a pass? He’s been playing this game more often lately, eyes fixed elsewhere so as not to betray the inevitable direction of his thoughts: how it would go, how it would feel. Not that anything would happen; if visions appear uninvited in his head, then he is hardly to blame. Besides, Vee would be scathing.
Or maybe she wouldn’t.
‘How about a proper drink?’ he asks. ‘Vodka?’
‘Kicking back, are we?’ Vee smiles, raises an eyebrow. ‘Then you should call Rachel, get her to join us. She must be going crazy in that flat.’ She leans forward, her blouse falling open a little. ‘How does she do it? I mean, with Ivan, and you, for chrissakes . . .’
Lucas looks over his shoulder, searching for a waiter, but the bar is deserted except for a man who is just leaving via the revolving door of the lobby. He steps into the darkness. It’s no one Lucas knows. ‘Yeah, well, it’s been hard for her. Not just Kiev, but being a mother. Her focus has shifted. She worries about stuff. She’s promised me she’ll see that new embassy doctor.’
‘Philip Alleyn?’ Vee pushes her hair back from her face. ‘Seems like a thorough kind of guy.’
‘Right.’ Lucas frowns at her choice of words. ‘Anyway, it’s funny – all of a sudden she’s friends with the dezhornaya – the one who’s been complaining about Ivan’s nappies. She comes up most days to see Ivan, and they watch TV together. Rachel says it’s good for Ivan to be around someone else, though I have to say I’m surprised. She makes it pretty clear that she hates the crap out of me – the dezhornaya, I mean. What is it Teddy calls her? The Baba Yaga—’
‘Hey!’ says Vee, sitting up. ‘That reminds me.’ She slips her hand into the shoulder bag on the seat beside her and pulls out a red-bordered copy of Time.
Lucas glances across, sees the full-page image of a pavement stall. It is a familiar Kiev scene, though only the vendor’s hands are showing: an old person’s hands, fingers bound in dirty strips of fabric, held out as if in supplication. Most of the frame is taken up with the meagre vegetables on a sheet of damp newspaper: a couple of wrinkled carrots, a cabbage or two and, in sharp focus in the foreground, a single banana, dotted with flakes of fresh snow. The text beneath reads ‘Ukraine – crisis or stasis?’
‘Nice,’ he remarks, to hide the dismay that rushes up each time he sees a story about Ukraine that someone else has written.
‘The pic’s one of Teddy’s,’ says Vera, smiling, pinning him with her gaze. ‘Clever boy. He’s made the front cover.’
* * *
Rachel is sitting on a hard chair in the new doctor’s office at the British Embassy on Desyatynna Street. Ivan wriggles in her lap and she reaches nervously for his hands. She hasn’t seen a doctor for over four months.
‘So, baby first, then you,’ says Dr Alleyn – Philip, as he has asked her to call him, though she would prefer him to maintain his professional distance. He looks like a doctor, she thinks, with his wiry grey beard, dark, bright eyes and a tweedy tie that swings forward as he manoeuvres round his over-sized Soviet-era desk and lifts Ivan out of her arms. When he speaks his vowels curl at the edges, the hint of a past life in Australia, perhaps.
‘Let’s get him undressed. Seven months, hey? He’s a good weight! Had all his jabs, I take it, eating well . . .’
‘Shall I do that?’ asks Rachel, rising to her feet as the doctor lies Ivan down on the narrow consulting bed and starts to unzip his snow suit.
‘No need. Means I can check his joints and his reflexes . . . You sit down, have a rest.’
Rachel does as she is told.
The consulting room is taller than it is wide. There is a long, wooden-framed window behind the desk and freshly-hung net curtains, still with their horizontal creases, open slightly. Beyond Rachel can see a small courtyard and the trunk of a plane tree, its bark patchy as if it has a skin disease: impetigo or psoriasis or another of those words that used to fascinate her as a child. There’s an austere quality to the room – the thin February light, the pale blue walls, the high ceiling with its airy cornicing – that lightens the weight on her shoulders, opens up her lungs. She takes a deep breath, then exhales slowly.
‘Nasty rash,’ says Dr Alleyn, as he opens Ivan’s nappy. ‘I’ll give you something for that. But the best treatment is plenty of fresh air. Put him on a mat on the floor and let him go commando.’
‘Okay,’ says Rachel. Here is the doctor, she thinks. He is telling her how to look after her baby. This is what she has been missing. This is what she needs.
‘He’s sitting well. Pulling himself up to stand, yet? Wouldn’t be surprised if he’s a late walker. He’s got long legs. Higher centre of gravity. Super chap!’
Rachel smiles, nods. She remembers the way the security guard had squinted at Ivan’s passport photo when they arrived. The photo had been taken when Ivan was six weeks old. The photographer had lain him down on a white sheet on the counter in the shop near Clapham Junction, then stood on a step ladder above him. When the flash went off Ivan’s arms and legs had shot out in surprise. The result was an image of a moon face – white, hairless, eyes half-closed and that wide, searching mouth. He looks quite different now, she thinks, as the doctor hands her son back to her, nappy re-taped, vest flapping about his long, strong thighs. Ivan swings his torso forward, fists open, reaching to grab something from the desk. She glances down to see what has caught his attention and notices a copy of Time with a picture of a snow-flecked banana on the front cover.
‘Look, Ivan!’ she says, as a memory flickers. ‘Banana.’
‘Likes them, does he?’ asks Doctor Alleyn, washing his hands at a sink behind a curtain. ‘You’ve done well to keep breastfeeding. Those journalists are a tough crowd – not like us coddled Foreign Office types! But you – well, not many western wives and mums out here, I should think. Everything else all right?’ He turns off the tap and pulls a paper towel out of a dispenser, before returning to his chair behind the desk and writing something on a pad of paper. A silence settles around the room. Rachel realises she is expected to answer.
‘I’m fine.’ She chews her lip. ‘My back aches a bit. We don’t have a washing machine, so I do the laundry in the bath . . .’
Doctor Alleyn looks up at her.
‘Quite.’ He frowns a little; just enough to suggest sympathy, should she need it. ‘Are you sleeping?’
‘Well, yes, mainly. The dogs wake me sometimes. And I still get up twice a night to feed Ivan . . .’
‘Try letting him cry. Tough love, and all that. It’s not easy, but it works. Are you eating properly?’
She thinks of the soft folds of flesh across her abdomen that won’t shift, despite all the walking and lifting and bending. ‘Yes. Too much, probably.’
‘I shouldn’t think so.’ He notes something down, then regards her with a calm, practised gaze. ‘Do you ever feel weepy? I mean, cry for no particular reason?’
A pause.
‘No.’
‘Are yo
u more irritable these days? Do you feel any more angry or more lethargic than before you had your baby?’
‘I don’t think . . . No,’ says Rachel, carefully, as she realises, too late, where these questions are heading.
‘Don’t mind me asking. I’m sure you are on top of things. Anyone who brings a child to Kiev must be pretty resilient . . .’
Rachel, however, is struggling to concentrate. The room’s height, its airy spaces are pulling her away from her chair, her heavy stomach, the baby on her lap. If she stands now, he’ll fall to the floor and the magazine he is grasping will fall too. I know this picture, says the voice in her head. I’ve seen those bandaged hands, I was there, this is Teddy’s photograph taken outside the monastery and Ivan and I are just out of shot, beyond the red border . . .
‘I have to ask . . .’ The doctor is still speaking. ‘It’s all part of the service – no stone left unturned. Have you ever had thoughts of harming yourself or your baby, Rachel? Even for a moment?’
Rachel looks up and sees that one of Dr Alleyn’s eyes is not quite level with the other, as if an invisible finger is tugging at the side of his face. She resists the urge to laugh, though she must bite the inside of her cheeks if she is to remain composed. A lie isn’t always a lie. Sometimes you simply nudge the camera sideways.
‘Everything’s fine,’ she says, pushing Ivan’s legs into his snowsuit. ‘I’m just tired. Thank you so much for seeing me. You’ve been very reassuring.’
She stands quickly, holding Ivan against her hip. Doctor Alleyn stands too.
‘Take my card,’ he says. ‘For emergencies. I have to tell you I won’t be in Kiev for most of the summer, though I can recommend a good private clinic . . .’ He hesitates, but Rachel is in control of herself now and her grasp, when he holds out his hand, is swift and firm, as if to say you do not know me, I am not what you think and now I am going to step back outside the frame.
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