If Only You Knew

by Alice Jolly

  I put my arms around him, asking if it still hurts, but he moves away. ‘It’s nothing. Really, nothing.’ He stops the taps, dries his hands, then takes the muffins from their packet and makes the tea. He’s angry with himself because he isn’t the kind of man who makes a mistake like that. His burnt hand jerks away as he accidentally touches the cupboard door. In my mind that picture keeps coming back of him, ten years old, and frightened, with water down his shirt. But he won’t let me pour the tea or get the milk from the fridge, he’s determined about that. ‘Sit down. I’m OK. I’m getting breakfast.’

  We sit at the table, our knees close together. The muffins are several days old, and crumbly, but they still taste good. Rob is purposefully good-humoured. I watch a red blister forming on the pad of his thumb. He never really said much about Christmas with his father but now he starts to fill in the details. ‘I got there and he’d done nothing. Nothing. Not one sprig of holly, not even a candle. So I said, “Dad, this Christmas business, I agree there’s no need to make a big thing out of it, but should I at least buy us a turkey?” Then suddenly he has this huge fit of guilt. “Christmas, yes, Christmas. Of course.” So he books us into the flashiest restaurant you’ve ever seen, and it’s all truffles, foie gras, string quartets. And all I wanted was a turkey.’

  Rob winces as he tries to undo the lid on a pot of jam. Again the boy, the water, the sink. I stretch out my hand but the lid is off. ‘And of course the conversation is always the same,’ Rob says. “‘Shouldn’t a young man like you be doing the exams for the Foreign Office?”’ Rob does a good imitation of his father’s heavy-smoker voice.

  From the sitting room the phone rings. I go to answer it and my head is so full of the blisters and the splashing tap that I don’t even think of Jack. So when I hear his voice my head lurches forward like vertigo. He asks me how I am. Fine, fine. He knows from my voice that I’m not alone. He asks me if I want to meet up some time. When? Maybe today, he says. And I’m thinking, How dare you ring up on a Sunday and demand to see me right away? And how dare you behave as though it’s normal just to disappear and then turn up again?

  But I say, ‘Today? Well, yes, we could do.’ And so it’s agreed. We’ll meet at the Polianka Metro at four. I try to put the receiver down, but I keep getting it the wrong way round, and it clatters against the phone again and again. I’m still wearing that ridiculous blouse and I look down at the sleeve, seeing my arm through the translucent material. I wonder if Maya used to wear a blouse like this when my father came to visit her in London?

  ‘So who was that on the phone?’ Rob asks.

  ‘Just a friend from college. I said I might meet up with her later – since you’ll be out. I won’t go for long. I’ll probably be back around six.’

  ‘OK. I’ll be back around the same time. So then I’ll cook some supper. Carrots in a frying pan, perhaps?’ He’s still finishing his muffin, but stretches out his hand and touches my arm. Another blister has formed on the side of his index finger. I stand beside him and pull his head towards me, holding him against me. ‘Yes, carrots in a frying pan. Why ever not?’

  Jack is less than I remembered him. When I see him standing near the entrance to the Metro, it takes a moment for me to align the image I had in my head with the reality before me. Wasn’t he taller? More vivid? I let him kiss my cheek. I want to be vile to him, but I know that I’m not going to manage it. All those eloquent, vicious speeches I prepared over the last two weeks shrivel in my throat.

  For days it has been too cold for snow but now the temperature has lifted and the air is muffled. Snow falls in huge, slow-moving flakes. People trudge past with their heads down. Darkness is already gathering and along the streets, lights come on.

  Jack and I shelter under the overhang of a building and talk about where we should go, but we both know that on Sunday everywhere is closed. Jack suggests that we take the Metro back towards the centre. At least there we may find somewhere to sit down. I don’t mind what we do. All I can think of is how to make this time last. When we turn back to the Metro, a crowd has gathered. Jack approaches a man to ask what is going on but the man looks at him in fear and turns away. He speaks to a babushka with a black shawl around her head. ‘A power failure,’ he tells me. ‘Or perhaps some problem due to ice.’ I’d thought that the Metro never broke down.

  We stand together in the street, snow gathering on the shoulders of our coats. ‘What can I do? I said I’d be back by six. I’ll have to start walking.’

  Jack is close to me, his eyelids full of snow. ‘You can’t walk. You’ll get frozen.’ Across the street a trolley bus pulls up and crowds of people fight to get on. Most of them are turned away. A car passes but it’s as full as the bus. Jack turns to me, wiping snow from his face. ‘You could come back to my place. It’s about a mile from here.’ His voice is apologetic.

  ‘No, I can’t do that. I’ve got to get back.’ I’m gripped by a sudden fit of temper. Like a child, I might stamp my foot, or shout. I don’t want Jack to have this victory. It’s the fault of the snow, the stupid, stupid snow. I don’t want to go to his flat. I want to go to the No Name Café, and I want to sit there talking, and I want it all just to go on as it was before.

  ‘Come on.’ Jack puts his hand out and pulls up the collar of my coat. I brush his hand aside and walk behind him as he sets off. When I look up, the shapes of buildings are lost in whiteness. My boots are soon soaked, and my hands are numb although they’re pushed into the pockets of my coat.

  Ahead of us, a lorry pulls in close to the pavement and stops. Two men jump down and undo a piece of tarpaulin at the back. They shout words I can’t understand and two or three people gather. A light inside the back of the lorry shines out into the falling snow. In typical Russian style, people begin to form a queue even before they can see what might be available. Jack pushes forward to see what’s going on. The lorry is stacked with crates of oranges and the two men start to weigh them out. I’ve only ever seen oranges in Moscow once before, and that was in a hard-currency shop. The oranges drop, flame-coloured spheres, into reaching fingers. People are laughing as they turn them in their hands.

  Jack says shouldn’t we buy some oranges, but I don’t want to bother. He takes no notice of me, pushes forward and holds out a note. Suddenly we’re showered by fiery oranges. We don’t have a bag to put them in, so we push them into our pockets, our jumpers, the lining of my coat. We turn away, fat with oranges, and despite myself, I can’t help smiling at Jack.

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘I know, I’m sorry. But at least if we go to my place then you’ll be able to call.’

  We walk on, the oranges jostling against us. The snow is getting deeper and the wind starts to blow. Above us the sky swirls and snow comes straight at us, gathering on the front of our coats, turning our faces to ice. We cross the Dobryninskaia junction, although it’s hard to recognize it, and head south along Liusinovskaia Bol’shaia. Walking with Jack the route seems easy – just one left turn off the main road.

  When we reach his building I stand behind him as he keys in the code. I watch his fingers – 4660. I repeat that number to myself several times. The door clicks open and we enter a high-ceilinged hall. Ahead of us are concrete stairs, beside them a broken pram and scattered newspapers. The lower half of the walls is covered in green tiles. The air is sharp with the smell of rubbish bags and bleach. As we climb unlit stairs, I grip the metal banister and stare up through twisting rails. High above, a flat glass roof, dirty and green, is divided by a metal grid. Light from the snow, falling through it, fills the hall with an underwater stillness.

  We reach another steel door and Jack puts a key into the lock. We step into darkness and a smell of vinegar. Jack turns on a light, revealing a high-ceilinged corridor, narrow and white, without any pictures. Jack takes off his shoes and I do the same. A small woolly dog lies in a basket, wriggling and snuffling. Jack tells me that this is Kashtanka. He allows the dog to lick his hand, then he picks it up, stares into its eye
s, snuggles its woolly head against him. To me, Kashtanka looks like a mouldy sort of dog, but I like Jack’s affection for him. Two or three pairs of worn sheepskin slippers lie near the door and Jack pushes a pair towards me. I say that I don’t need slippers but he tells me I’ll catch cold. As I push my feet into them, I wonder who else might have worn these slippers. Anna or Valia or whatever her name is? Through a half-open door I see a twin-tub washing machine and a mangle. We push past a curtain which hangs from a piece of cord.

  Jack ushers me into a darkened room and fumbles for the switch. The room wakes suddenly, flooded by light from a standard lamp with a yellow shade. So this is the place where Jack gets up in the morning, where he sits, where he works. The room is large and bare. It’s like a boarding school or a guest-house, but there’s nothing squalid or dreary about it. A vase on the desk is full of catkins. Each object in the room seems loved and precious and has been positioned with care. Against the wall, a gate-leg table is covered in books and papers. A cheap oriental rug covers the brown painted floor. One corner of the room has been divided off to make a kitchen, but the partition wall doesn’t reach up to the ceiling. A double bed is neatly made, a white sheet, poking up above the blanket, is pulled flat. ‘It’s a good room,’ I say, but in truth, I’m shocked by how naked his life is. Other foreigners in Moscow own property somewhere else, or go back to families with proper lives. For Jack, this is really everything.

  ‘Can you stay here permanently?’ I ask.

  ‘No, unfortunately not.’

  ‘So what will you do when you have to go?’

  ‘Something will come up. Someone I know has a dacha in Malakhovka. Anyway, I have to go to Leningrad in a couple of months and I may stay there.’

  Is that where he’s been since Christmas? A grey metal heater stands against one wall and Jack pulls two chairs towards it. We unload the oranges and Jack hangs my coat up near the heater. I look at my watch and it’s a quarter to five. Jack takes me back along the corridor to where the telephone stands on a table. I call Rob at home but there’s no answer. I telephone him at Sasha’s flat – again, no answer.

  ‘I’ll make us some tea,’ Jack says. He disappears into the partition kitchen. I wander over to the bookcase and note the academic-looking tomes about psychology, myths and medicine, and try not to see the cranky-looking paperbacks about astrology, past lives and faith healing. Press cuttings and political magazines are organized in a neat pile. Next to them is a stack of blue notebooks and on top an Aeroflot ticket. Destination – Vilnius, Lithuania.

  A sea shell lies on his desk, and a small wooden box with an ivory clasp. I check that Jack isn’t looking, then raise the lid. Inside are syringes and needles, in transparent packages, and tiny bottles standing in a row. Perhaps he has started taking medication for his heart? China clinks behind the screen and I push the lid of the box back down. I turn to find Jack carrying a tray with a pot of tea, cups and saucers, a jug of milk, a bowl of sugar. He’s also brought a plate, a knife and two oranges.

  He sees me looking at a glass case on the mantelpiece which contains a teapot and two small teacups. Their edges are rimmed with gold and they’re made of china so fine it’s almost transparent. Beside the case is a black-and-white photograph in a frame. It shows a house in the country, like a large Swiss chalet. In front of it is a horse and cart, women in long skirts, men in hats, and one small child. Jack puts the tray down, stands beside me and points out his mother. ‘This was taken only a year before we left. Strange, isn’t it, to see us all gathered there …’

  He turns away and begins to peel one of the oranges. ‘You’re still cold,’ he says, as I sit on the chair near the heater. I’m not cold, but I’m shivering. ‘I like that blouse,’ he says, and he touches the sleeve, rubbing the material between his raw fingers. Was it only a few hours ago that Rob said the same? It seems to me ridiculous that there has to be this separation between the two of them. They’re people who’d probably get on quite well together, who’d agree about most things. I look back at his desk – that wooden box, the ticket to Vilnius. ‘Jack, you know I was worried when you didn’t call.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that.’ His hands work with the knife, easing the peel off the orange, then he looks across at me. ‘The truth is, my dear, that I thought – hoped – that I was finished with all this. But it seems that isn’t the case. You know, in three months I’ll be sixty-five. I hadn’t really expected to last that long and I feel this rented time I’ve had coming to an end. There are other things I should be doing – and the same is true for you. But then – well, I suppose I’m just shocked by the extent to which you affect me.’

  I get up and move away from him towards the window. Outside, the snow glitters in the light from the window. In the distance, cars and trolley buses creep along the main road. The snow is nearly six inches deep. I turn back to look at him, still holding the orange knife in his hand. So he’s the wicked old philanderer who suddenly found himself in too deep. He wanted another Anna or Svetlana, a good-time girl, but instead he’s finished up trying to save me. I’m starting to love him a little less, now that I have him in my power.

  ‘Jack, you have to understand. I can’t do this – not unless I leave Rob.’

  ‘And your own life counts for nothing, I suppose?’

  I don’t answer him. I’d like to start a conversation about how we’re both powerless in this, how we’re being over-whelmed by a force beyond our control, but he would never let me get away with that. I stand with my back to the window, thinking that I should leave, and knowing that I won’t. He’s filled with an urgent physical yearning for me, I know that. I’ve seen it in men before and it makes me curious, and perhaps a little jealous.

  He comes towards me and puts up his hand to touch my face. ‘Tell me,’ he says, ‘what’s the fear? Is it because you’re so sure there’s something wrong with you? I don’t believe that. There may be something wrong with some of the people around you, but there isn’t much wrong with you.’

  ‘Jack, if you start this, you’ll be sorry.’

  He bends down and kisses my lips, gently. ‘You think all men leave? Is that it? Sometimes you have to believe that there could be an exception to the rule, or nothing can ever change.’ He picks up my hair and runs his fingers gently over the knobs of my spine, and then places his hands either side of them, feeling his way down my back, as he did at Maya’s party.

  He touches a muscle and, for one second, I glimpse the child on the sandy path in the stripes of moonlight. ‘I have to go,’ I say. ‘I’m sure the Metro will be open.’ I reach for my coat and scarf and pull them on. My limbs are fluttering and weightless, my lips feel swollen where he kissed them. I must leave now, for him as well as for me. What I want is to be friends with him, but he’s not going to agree to that. I remember the old seaside postcard joke – men talk to women so they can go to bed with them, women go to bed with men so they can talk to them. There may be truth in that. At the door I look back and see that he’s turned away, his head bent down.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘But I can’t.’

  ‘You don’t have to apologize. I know I’ve got nothing to offer you.’

  I think how cheap he is, playing the sympathy card, and I gather my coat around me ready to leave. But instead I allow myself one last look at the makeshift room, and see his bent head, and that grey polo-neck jumper he wears, which is so neatly darned at the elbow. And I know that he’s going to die, and who will be with him then? None of those cheap Moscow women, I’m sure of that. And on the mantelpiece, in that glass box, those china cups glisten, and next to them the photograph of the people who had no idea that disaster was about to engulf them.

  I move towards him and he stirs. He takes hold of my hand and places it against his lips, kissing the palm. I rest my head lightly against his shoulder, and he gathers me to him, so I can feel the rise and fall of his breath. Then he takes off my coat, undoes my scarf, leans down and kisses my neck. He pulls me to him and
I dissolve into his body, his hands holding the back of my head. He draws me down onto his knee and undoes the top buttons of Maya’s blouse. The clasp of my bra seems ridiculously small in his hands. He can’t make the clasp work because he’s shaking. I undo it and watch as he reaches out to cup my breast. He bends down and I feel his lips touch me. I push my cheek against his hair. His hand moves across my back and I kiss him then, surprised by how natural it seems, how easy. I feel him touch the inside of my thigh and I press my lips against his.

  A door slams and a voice rustles. We sit in stillness and hear the turn of a key and footsteps in the hall. ‘Who’s that?’ I start to pull my jumper down but Jack says it’s just a neighbour from upstairs, and that she won’t come in.

  ‘But Mrs Pastukhova might come back.’

  ‘No, no one will disturb us.’

  I feel his hand on my thigh again. ‘Jack, I can’t … Please, not here.’

  He nods, kisses my neck and straightens my blouse. ‘I know. You’re right. Not here.’ His hand runs up and down my ribcage, his lips brush my forehead and he puts my jumper back in place. ‘Not here. But stay – just for a while.’ He puts out his hand and I follow him to the bed. We he down together. I know that he wants to kiss me again, but he doesn’t. My head is against his chest and I can feel the beating of his heart – a wind-up watch, its spring steadily uncurling, ticking out its time. And Rob’s contract may not be renewed, and Jack will go away to Leningrad in two months’ time. And there’s nowhere we can go to be together. We’ve become like all those Russian couples kissing in the Metro, or gripped together next to the hot-air vents. It’s only a question of logistics now. Only where and when, not if or what.

  We lie together on that bed sharing the silence for half an hour, perhaps more. Then Jack gets up and makes fresh tea, and we drink that, and eat the oranges, sitting close on the bed, the juice running down our chins. I tell him then about the court order. He’s sceptical that anyone would go so far just because of an adulterous relationship, but that’s because he doesn’t know the world I lived in as a child. I also tell him about the letter I wrote to my father. ‘You know, when the school sent me to see that Doctor Gurtmann, he said that I must feel angry with my father, and my mother says the same – but they’re wrong. I’ve never felt anger. But what I did feel was the desire to comfort him. I knew that things were going badly wrong for him and I did nothing.’