White Ice

by Celia Brayfield

  He was being shown to his table. She quickly licked her lips, pulled up her skirt and winked at him over the rim of her glass. Lovely smile he had. Perhaps she was actually feeling a little randy tonight after all. Andrusha said her problem had always been giving it away, but how could she help it with a tempting dish like this under her nose?

  ‘Are you feeling lonely, by any chance?’

  To her surprise, he answered her in Russian. ‘The truth is, I’m not looking for company, but if you don’t mind I’d like some conversation. For the same money – I am serious, my Russian is pretty rusty.’

  ‘It’s not so bad. Your accent is good, a Leningrad accent, too.’ He stood up, walked around the table and pulled out the other chair for her to sit down. The waiter, arriving with a cheese puff for hors-d’oeuvre, snickered audibly. She could have hit him. ‘Shall we have some wine? Bring me the list.’ His tone was dismissive and the man slunk away.

  ‘What is this, is it cheese?’ Doubtfully, he prodded the food with his fork.

  ‘Cream cheese in pastry. It’s very good, eat it.’

  ‘I’ll look like a pig by the end of the week if I eat this stuff.’ He saw her eye the food, and noticed the meagre plate on her own table. She was a voluptuous woman, everything about her spoke of healthy appetites. ‘Why don’t you help me? Bring us another fork, and a knife, please.’ This was to the exasperated waiter. ‘Take my fork, go on, don’t be shy. I ate on the plane, I’m not really hungry.’

  A more contented stomach improved her eyesight. This one would never have to pay for it, even in a strange town. He must have been a real looker when he was young. His body was still good, you could see that, and he held himself well. The face – nothing wrong with it, but those boyish looks could dry out in the thirties. The hair had lost its bounce, but he had cheekbones, nice eyes. And something else, she could not put a name to it.

  ‘What’s your business here in Leningrad?’

  ‘I’m an agent for a London auction house, they’re mounting a big sale of Russian works of art, crafts, everything.’

  ‘I see. And where did you learn to speak Russian so well?’

  ‘Here. When I was a kid I studied ballet, and I was a student at the Vaganova Academy.’

  Her heart hit the floor. She felt sick. That lousy cheese was halfway down her throat planning a comeback. Was that it, the reason she felt she knew his face?

  ‘Wolfie?’ The name came hurtling back through the years and reached her lips before she knew it.

  ‘That was what they called me – Jesus Christ! It’s you! It’s really you. Anya. Ever since I knew I was coming here, all I’ve been able to think of is running into you again. My little love. Here … come …’ And he was on his feet again, walking round the table, holding out his arms, pulling her up, holding her. They were both weeping. The waiter almost hit the table with the plate of chicken, determined to bring the girl to her senses.

  ‘Why didn’t you forget me?’ she managed to say at last.

  ‘How could I forget you, the first woman I ever loved?’ He was about to add ‘the only woman I ever loved’, but held it back. Not for Anya the big, easy words he used with other women. ‘I’ve always thought of you. Did you remember me saying goodbye to you when they took me away?’

  ‘I thought it was a bad dream.’ She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. He had a handkerchief, new, clean, smelling very faintly of Vetiver.

  ‘And I heard …’ Few men who were not themselves obstetricians could talk about women’s physical mysteries with less inhibition than Alexander Wolfe, but now he was unable to say the simplest words.

  ‘You didn’t hear anything. Our little mistake was taken care of – it was nothing, I was back in class next day. They let me graduate, I went to a little folk-dance group for a year or two, then got a job as an air hostess. I’ve had a very good life …’

  ‘How beautiful you are.’

  ‘Don’t give me that crap … I’m a fat, middle-aged tart and you’re used to those Western girls with their soft lives and proper cosmetics …’ Shut up, you fool, the best chance you ever had and you’re going to blow it twice?

  ‘You don’t look any different from the Anya I’ve always remembered. What about me?’

  ‘Well, you haven’t changed, you were always as vain as a peacock.’ Self-consciously he ran his palms over his temples, brushing back his hair. ‘When they showed me your picture I thought you were an American film star.’

  ‘Stop flattering me. And they – I suppose they are in my room?’ She nodded, a grimace of remorse stretching her lips. ‘Don’t be unhappy, we all do what we have to do in this life. Come, sit down, let’s finish our dinner then we can go for a walk, yes?’

  By midnight they were walking along the Neva embankment by the Hermitage, alone except for a single dogged fisherman. The sky was several shades of grey, with neither sun nor moon visible. The wide river, rippling like a white witch’s hair in the pale sub-arctic night, carried sounds of music and laughter from a beach party on the distant bank.

  They had exchanged versions of their life stories which they both recognized as carefully edited, but felt no need to question. All that mattered was that they had found each other. Beside that epic synchronicity, everything else was insignificant. For two superstitious people nothing had ever felt more like fate.

  ‘And you mean to tell me that you’re actually here to look for the Kusminskaya necklace?’ Anya drew him into a semicircular embrasure and leaned against the stone wall with her back to the river. ‘That’s another one, another incredible coincidence. I translated for an Englishman who was after the same thing last year.’

  ‘And …’

  ‘I found it. Or rather, we went to a dealer – we have them, it’s legal, it’s all free trade now – and he got hold of it. Don’t ask me how. They have their ways.’

  ‘So it’s already in England?’

  ‘No, it’s here in Russia. The bastard keeps stalling on it, saying jewellery isn’t his thing.’ Alex rapidly confirmed the details of the affair, the location of the house, of the necklace within it, and finally, the name of the Englishman. She could not remember.

  ‘I’ve got it written down in my apartment, but we’ll have to wait until the bridges come down again at two.’

  They leaned on the balustrade and watched the river in silence for a while. A small launch weaved crazily across the empty channel, its wake widening over the calm surface until wavelets slapped the wall below them.

  ‘I’d like to see it, you know. The necklace. Grandmère always used to say I would understand what she was when I saw her necklace.’

  ‘It could probably be arranged.’ She wanted to tell him the whole story, but forced herself to be prudent. On the street behind them passed two cars crammed with young people, the windows open to release tinny music to the street.

  ‘Everybody’s having a party tonight.’

  ‘The white nights get people that way.’ She put her hand on his and linked fingers.

  ‘I always thought of you being settled down with a good man and six little ones by now.’

  ‘In this country a good man is a relative concept.’ She laughed awkwardly, aware that she sounded harsh. ‘Besides, you spoiled me. You were the best fuck I’ve ever had, you know that?’

  He put his arm round her shoulders and looked into her eyes, half smiling, inhaling the hayfield scent of the camomile flowers she infused to rinse her hair. ‘I’ve learned a lot since then.’

  ‘And me.’ It was a simple statement of fact. How luxurious to flirt just for the fun of it, not for make-up or a new iron or a job or the privilege of being able to stay in the hotel another week. How strange that being wicked could make you feel so pure. They whiled away a few more hours, then flagged down cars until they found one to take them out beyond the Smolensky cemetery to her neighbourhood.

  On the bookcase in her apartment was the picture of Anya at her graduation performance, partnered by one of th
e Armenians, both posed stiffly with huge, phoney smiles and eyes cast upwards to the supposed gallery. ‘It should have been me.’ He traced the image of her face with his fingers. ‘I let you down, I’ll never forgive myself.’

  ‘Darling, you mustn’t talk like that. It was my fault, my birthday. Believe me, I never blamed you. I was only glad that you were safe, that nothing happened to you.’

  ‘I love the way you are now.’

  ‘Oh, you’re silly …’ She gave a little half-annoyed puff and although her lips were no longer plump he saw the pouting goldfish expression once more. He could not bear to let go of her, and the bed, uneven under its red divan cover, was beckoning them.

  Afterwards she had a cigarette, then remembered the minor purpose of their trip. She pulled on a pink kimono and began searching through an untidy mess of papers in a drawer while he lay in bed, watching. What he loved was the way she sat solidly with her elbows turned out and her head up, making round gestures as if to collect all the knowledge that they had between them and knead it into shape. Everything about her was muscular and sound, even the firm knot which tied her sash under her breasts. She was a goddess of womanly wisdom. He could lie on her altar, confess his sins and be absolved without judgement.

  ‘Here he is, the pig.’ She fished a business card from the corner of the drawer and handed it to him.

  ‘Whitburn-Tuttlingen, Inc. Lovat Whitburn, vice-president.’ Alex became angry. It was rare for him to feel this emotion, still rarer for him to express it, but his sense of humiliation was strong and it was safe to let out his true feelings with Anya. ‘This is him, the guy who sent me out here!’

  ‘But I don’t get it, why? We got the necklace for him, he knows where it is …’

  ‘He’s not straight, whatever the explanation. This is a set up. He got the whole story out of me, then sent me to see this woman who runs a big firm of auctioneers. And she used to be his wife. I’m being used, Anya.’

  ‘I certainly agree, but by whom?’ There was a flash of pain in his eyes. He had not disclosed his relationship with Bianca. But the idea of a man living off a woman was so alien to Anya’s experience that he was mistaken in assuming she had guessed it. ‘What’s in this for him? I don’t understand it. Are they still working together, this man and his wife?’

  ‘Nothing like – there’s no love lost there, I can tell you. It was a pretty messy divorce, and now her business is in trouble and he’s trying to buy it.’

  ‘Ah, so maybe that’s what he’s after, it’s really this woman he’s setting up, you’re just in the middle.’ Anya tested the explanation against all the facts she knew and was satisfied with it. The Englishman was a shrewd operator and she could easily believe that he had sussed the scam with the necklace. ‘So – what to do? Have you got money?’

  ‘Some.’ He rolled his eyes rapidly round the room, implying that they might be under surveillance. He was right, you never knew. She passed him a piece of paper and he wrote down the sum, and under it wrote ‘in cash, in US dollars’. It was more than they had asked the Englishman.

  ‘So – we can do the deal. There’s no problem.’ It seemed a satisfying short cut to his search. Almost at once Alex began to feel that he had been remarkably clever in finding the necklace so quickly. She reached out her hand and pulled his face close so that she could kiss him. ‘How long can you stay?’

  ‘I don’t know. Ten days, two weeks …’ The hopeful curve of her cheek fell back into disappointed lines. ‘But, if we can get the business done – I can spend all the time with you.’

  It seemed that this was a poor substitute for something, and in four days or so, when he had been presented to Mitrokin as the Englishman’s agent, acquired the necklace, hidden it simply in his film preserver, and then been shopping with Anya, and learned to some degree how she was earning her living, he understood.

  Alex had never seen himself getting married. He knew that he had nothing to offer a woman in life besides himself, and that was not really good enough. For a year, maybe two, once, when he was young, for four years, his skilful body and his sympathetic mind might be enough, but beyond that there were all the considerations of material substance, and in those he was deficient.

  He had come to realize that women came to him always from some dark chrysalis state, when they were soft-bodied, vulnerable, their wings mere gummy membranes stuck uselessly together, and he would blow on them like a warm zephyr, until they reached their proper state of strength and glorious colour, and were ready to take flight into their real lives. He was an interlude to them, a convalescence but nothing more.

  Anya was not like that. She faced her miserable life like a hero, fighting it into a corner again and again, but she would never overcome it. He, on the other hand, could for once in his life take the role of knight in shining armour and deliver her from all her suffering, simply by offering her what his other loves had not needed – himself.

  On a day which was wholeheartedly sunny, she procured a car and they drove out into the country, along a road lined with decorated wooden houses, each with their potato patch, fruit trees, wood pile, haycocks and family of chickens, nestling behind a windbreak of birches or poplars. Their destination was a track which led off a side road through birch woods. The land was uniformly flat, and half waterlogged, with the pale summer flowers, meadowsweet, ladysmantle and cow parsley, standing among the lush leaves with their roots in water. Here and there were clearings in which a few battered beehives stood, leaning towards each other like groups of drunks on street corners.

  In a large, sunny clearing they drew up. Here were about twenty hives, and thousands of their occupants whizzing in the air all around. There was a hut of plain, unpainted wood, and an old canvas awning tied to one side of the low roof shaded a table.

  ‘This is where we buy honey,’ she told him, greeting the woman who sat on a crate beside the table with a small girl leaning against her lap. The child ran into the hut and came out with a loaf of bread. It was fresh, still hot, with a strong, smoky tang on the crust. He imagined it being made in some primitive wood-fired oven – yes, there it was at the back of the hut, a stone smoke-stack built into a rear wall. The woman tore the bread into chunks and motioned them towards the table, where half a dozen plates were set out with a pool of golden honey in each. The bees swarmed over the product of their labour, some of them drowning blissfully, clutching each other in pairs or trios.

  They dipped the bread into the harvest and tasted, discussing the merits of one hive, one blend or one flower over another and finally choosing the linden blossom for Anya and the mixed flowers for her neighbours. The price was ten roubles a pound.

  ‘That’s steep!’ Alex had never bothered much about the price of anything before. Now that he knew that a hotel prostitute such as Anya had impersonated could expect ten roubles for half an hour, he had some standard of comparison.

  ‘Yes, but what can we do? There’s no honey in the shops now, ever. And no sugar quite often. This city – I tell you, it’s impossible to live here and impossible to leave.’ She argued bitterly, feeling the injustice more keenly than he did. A man appeared from the hut bearing three small glasses of home-distilled vodka, a brew of volcanic strength.

  On the way back they stopped where water flowed clear and free under a plant bridge to wash their sticky hands. It was there that he asked her to marry him, but a full two days of assurance that he was serious were necessary before she accepted. By the time Andrusha had pulled strings to get around the waiting list, and the ceremony was performed in the Palace of Weddings, she had been more in tears than not for a week. He left the next day, promising to return as soon as the necklace was delivered to sit out the long wait for an exit visa with her. After all, he would not be needed in London once the diamonds were in Berrisford’s safe.

  Once back in London, his perspective altered, and he began to panic at the idea that Bianca would need him after all. She never reacted quite as other women did – the business
of the apartment for example. How he hated the place, with its little reproach of a kitchen and cold corners smelling of loneliness.

  He found her as he always did, in her office in the evening, taking advantage of the calm after business closed to plan the forthcoming day. She looked utterly beautiful, the curved planes of her face enhanced by the hard light from her desk lamp, the folds of the cinnamon silk suit which he had picked out for her glowing in harmony.

  ‘This is it – the Orlov collier.’ He had kept it for a few hours rolled in a handkerchief in the inside pocket of his suit and when he laid it across the palms of her hands it was warm as if it were alive. The stones threw tiny rainbows over her wrists. ‘I’d say it was worth five million of anyone’s money, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ She turned it over, automatically looking for hallmarks, signs of repairs or alterations and the other details which would affect the authenticity or the value of the piece, while at the same time realizing that her future, and that of a hundred other people, rested on the value of this handful of minerals.

  ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just imagine, the last time anyone wore it was my grandmother, going to some wonderful ball in a palace…’

  ‘Unless her maid tried it on. Or even my grandmother.’ She draped it over the back of her hand and admired the way it was articulated, a hundred tiny gold joints, invisible and so supple that it moulded itself over her fingers.

  ‘You’re such a realist.’

  They smiled at each other. ‘Yes, I am. I’m glad I am, it makes life simple. Not pleasant or easy, but simple.’ Another luxurious quality he had was never seeming to be in a hurry, never living with one eye on his next appointment, like all the other men she knew. Alex lay elegantly across his chair as if he had all the time in the world to place at her disposal.

  She suggested dinner, but added that she wanted to be home early. He agreed, setting a seal on the distance which had opened between them. She kept clothes in the apartment, and while she was showering he chose a plain black dress with thin straps, and he suggested that she wear the necklace.