The Desolate Garden

by Daniel Kemp

  My smile had not been misplaced in any sense, particularly as she had found out Judith's lie. However, it was not just the two of us that were sharing the joke. As I glanced towards the interrogator she, too, was giggling, and was not averse to admitting her mistake.

  “I apologise for misleading you…I shouldn't have done that. My name is Judith Meadows, and I work for the Foreign Office. I thought it might worry you if I had declared that when I rang. It was simpler to allow the woman who I spoke to on the telephone to assume that I was Lady Paterson, but that was wrong of me. As for deportation…that has never been a consideration. I expected that it would have been harder to get you to admit to being the person you have been forced to portray for so long. I expect your husband and son are very proud of you. You are right. We are here to find out if you can assist us in Harry's loss through memories of Maudlin and his friends, in order to protect Harry here from becoming the third Paterson to be murdered, even though it has not been reported in the newspapers or on television. Shall we start all over, and this time try to be friends?” Judith, holding an olive branch, was a surprise to me.

  Tanya grimaced as she lowered herself back in her chair. Whether it was the news of murders or what I thought I detected as a stiff back, or both, I was not sure, but did not have to wait long to find out. “Are you all right?” Finally, I had an opportunity and the courage to speak.

  “Yes, thank you. I suffer from rheumatism. I have cortisone injections for it but nothing helps, especially in the damp air of today. Most of us here do. That's why you found us inside, and not outside on the green.” She straightened the cushions on her chair to support her back, easing herself slowly into the comfort they provided. I found the resilience I required.

  “Would you prefer that we address you as Loti, or Tanya? It's all the same to us. We want you to feel comfortable in all this, and I'll be grateful for your help. There are many things missing in what we're trying to put together over Elliot and Edward's death…my only hope is you.” It was a genuine statement, not meant to counterbalance Judith's abrasive opening, but it did no harm to endear myself to her.

  “You are not dissimilar to Lord Maudlin. He was a polite and caring gentleman as well, gracious, I used to say. He was never demeaning in his attitude to either of us. I owe him everything, as does George. It broke my heart when he died, but I always understood why George had to go, and I never questioned it.

  I would prefer Loti; it is the name I'm known as here. Tanya was in a different time, an unhappy time, one I'm not sorry to have left behind. Would you like me to start in Leningrad, or my escape when the ambassador's wife let me out of her sight in Harrods, in 1956? To be brutally honest to both of you, it will come as a relief. I've never been able to open my mouth about it for over fifty years. You don't know how hard that's been for a chatty person like me…you really don't.” There was a pause in the conversation, neither Judith or I knowing who should start, and where to begin. However, Loti had not quite finished; she had a request.

  “Now that you have found me, I presume that I am no longer the threat in Paulo's life that George goes on about so much. Could you, Lord Harry, consider allowing me to come with George to the funeral? I know that he would appreciate that, and I've never been able to say thank you for all Lord Maudlin did for us. It will be good to reveal the truth to my son who still believes me to be his aunt.”

  “Please, call me Harry,” I said as I nervously looked at Judith, wondering if we had overstepped the mark and jumped too many hurdles before they needed to be jumped.

  She was an affable, engaging woman, obviously sociable and apparently full of life. All this reconfirmed my confidence in Maudlin and restored my hopes in the closure of all that enveloped me. My one concern remained with George, whose name I saw Judith confine to that ominous red and black book of hers, underlining it heavily. As to what I would do with Tanya at the funeral, I left that at the back of my mind, to revisit another day.

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Forget-Me-Nots

  “The shared apartment block at 2397 Baskov, in District 19 of the City of Leningrad, had been progressively plagued by ever increasing numbers of rats for the three exceptionally harsh winters leading up to 1956. The sewers had frozen in places, and the stench of effluent and the screech of rodents filled the Arctic blasts of icy air that whirled endlessly around, never moving for months.

  Paulo had money, and at first had bought special rat catching dogs, which soon ran away after seeing how many rats there were and the size of them. Then, when his Spanish mother's condition worsened, he made friends with chemists and some less qualified and legitimate bribing them for extra medicine or the like, and getting from them the poison that I used to pretend that I was going blind. That's how we fooled the polits…our name for the Cheka…those who checked everything, including his reason for bringing me with him to England.”

  Slowly, the corners and the side-pieces of Judith's jigsaw puzzle were being put in place by Loti, as we sat and listened whilst the hours ticked by. We were invited and accepted the invitation to stay for dinner. Apparently, we were told, it would please the others greatly to dine with a Lord, which Loti rectified quickly.

  “He's an Earl as well you know, tell them that. Their tongues won't stop wagging long enough for them to eat!” She winked at me, revelling in knowing more than Matron, conspicuously happy as she took my arm and led me to the dining room and her collection of wide-eyed friends. At the end of an agreeable meal, the two of us followed Loti to her spacious rooms, where I could not stop myself from passing comments on some of the refinements.

  “Wow, that's more a cinema screen than a television, very hi-tech, I must say. Bet those speakers blast out a noise. Don't you keep everyone awake with all that? Must have cost a bob or two!”

  “It was bought by my George, and so was the smaller one in my bedroom. They're both high-definition, but I expect you've got that as well. Brilliant for watching certain films on Sky. Keeps me on the ball, does George. He just updated my computer. Nothing wrong with the old one, I told him, but he wants me to keep abreast of all the modern things going on. He says it keeps my mind active, and keeps me young at heart.” There was a broken accent to her speech which, although her excellent English disguised it, could still be heard.

  “I'm being a bit intrusive, I know, but does George pay for all this? Or did Maudlin provide for you?” I asked, with a degree of shame.

  “Lord Maudlin provided for me throughout my life, as I told you. He left me a house and a tidy sum of money, but I had employment, you know, and it was he, my employer, that left George and I well off. The legacy is managed by a firm of advocates. You'd have to ask George the name…he deals with it all. I'll tell you something funny about this place though. They only invoice us all here every three months in advance - they don't want to have to refund large amounts to relatives, if we don't last longer than that. They only speak of next month's excursions, never next year's,” she said, laughing as she did so.

  “Not a cheap place to live, I suppose, but they do seem to look after you well.” Judith ineptly put in her pennyworth.

  “No, it's not,” she replied defiantly, then added less severely, “I think it's just short of four thousand a month…but you're right, we are well cared for. George tells me he is at Eton Square. Will you move in there now, sir, become a banker?” She was able briefly, to ignore Judith, but was ambushed again only moments later.

  The extent of her knowledge of Maudlin and the Paterson's was vast, as was her memory, aided by the shoe box she carried into her sitting room from the bedroom. In it were documentations of all manner of things. The original marriage certificate in Cyrillic, George's birth papers carrying an Irish Carmelite seal, a contract of employment drawn up and signed by a Feydor Grogonsky, and, to Judith's wonderment, the letter that Paulo had addressed to Maudlin as an introduction.

  “Thank you for holding on to so much. It will help enormously,” Judith delightedly exclaimed, carefully sc
rutinising it all.

  “I'm nobody's fool, not even Paulo's. I trusted no one. I got everything in writing and kept everything I could, it was my way of getting guarantees. Paulo had a way with words, and he could tell you things that you'd never believe from anyone else. I'd seen him do it at local meetings of Bolsheviks, or at parties with superiors in that KGB of his.

  He would praise them all, pledging his obedience to the red flag, telling them what they wanted to hear. The next minute he would be telling me a different tale of how they were fools, and how one day he would rule them and repay the Paterson's for their good works and kindness. He would do wonderful things for England, he said; he would make nana and England proud. What was I to think? Would you have believed him…that his nana, his dad, was an English Lord? I went along with it all because I wanted out of that repressive place, that country where you were told what to do, what to think, what to wear. Paulo would never have considered me as an equal in Russia, so I twisted his arm a little. I wanted a little protection, and a tie to him if his arm hurt in the future and he wanted rid of me and a child. A form of insurance, you could say.” There was a single-mindedness that was apparent to us both. Judith's indecision about who had made the first move in the relationship had been answered.

  I'm not sure which of the two of them was the more excited Tanya in her joyous recollections, or Judith in her reverence to all that she heard, but I can say for sure that some things became clearer to me. It was well past midnight when all of us became confused again.

  “Loti, do you recognise this?” Judith asked, showing her the coded paper I had given Judith.

  “Yes, it was the second letter Paulo instructed me to give Lord Maudlin. I imagined it was a secret code when he showed me. Was it?” Tanya asked.

  “I was hoping you could have told me, and if it was, explained how you used it to contact Paulo?”

  “You think this old lady was a spy, don't you? That's why you're here Foreign Office lady, isn't it? You can't be serious!” laughing loudly she replied.

  The drive back south to Clapham Common was both swift and full of conjecture, not least the subject of overtime for our driver who, despite our assurances that we would both gladly sign his docket, refused to stop referring to it.

  “They're cutting back everywhere, haven't you noticed? They will want written affidavits from the three of us just to keep my job, let alone the extra time. I made it three this afternoon, when we left. I'll be lucky if I'm home in Hammersmith by three, and I'm starving. Can't eat at this time of morning, no good for me…or the wife, if you get my meaning. Flatulence you see hers, not mine! Oh well,” he muttered, when neither of us joined his laughter.

  “I best leave a timed message on the FO drivers line when, and if, I ever get home. You'll have to add another half an hour on my time sheet when you sign me off. I'll try me best to be in me front door by then. Bet you'll be in for a ragging from the boss for keeping me out for so long. Anyway, hope it was worthwhile. I don't like seeing our own in trouble over nothing, do you?” he added solicitously, before recalling other occasions when he, or unfortunately for us, other drivers had been out for after-hours' expenses.

  There were many in his repertoire, and neither of us felt cruel enough to beg him to stop relating. “Once, you know I had an SAS escort, back and front all the way from Portsmouth to Durham. Three and half hours we did it in. Flat out hundred miles an hour, police outriders on all the lights!”

  “Exciting,” I said, and regretted it as soon as I had done so.

  “Bloody worn out I was, I can tell you!”

  I felt sorry for whoever the passenger was, but I never voiced my opinion on this story or any of the others, unlike Judith. Oblivious to my own experience and indifferent to Steve's discomfort, she added, “Next time I'll drive. Then I won't have two fools to put up with. Do shut up, man, I'm trying to think!”

  Steve decided that discretion was, indeed, the better side of valour, and kept his own counsel for the remainder of our journey. As for me, the few words that Tanya had spoken when we were alone, about George's valiant role in deserving a Knighthood, kept rolling around in my mind. Judith had sought permission to use the bathroom, and Tanya had quietly confided in me.

  “With you not living in London, my Lord, you will not know George well. He has become a secretive man over the years, not even telling his own mother much. He spends a lot of time abroad, mainly Germany, I know that much. I have a photograph of him at the wall in Berlin when they pulled it down.” She withdrew the cardboard-mounted snapshot from her box and placed it in my hands, as if it were a prized trophy. “Look at it carefully, sir. What do you see?” she asked, and I had nothing to quell her inquisitiveness.

  “Exactly. There is nothing to see. No crowds, no television cameras nothing. An empty background, apart from concrete slabs. He took it himself, and I believe it was on the other side, from East Berlin…otherwise, why so empty? I saw the pictures on the television there wasn't an inch of space anywhere. Why not take it where everyone was celebrating? He gave me this, as well; it's a German Bible. He uses my printer when he visits, runs off copies from the pages. Why would he do that if he wasn't working with his father? I'll tell you why, Lord Harry. He's a spy for Lord Maudlin's England and working with Paulo…that's why. I have never forgotten the look on Paulo's face when he said what he did about Lord Maudlin and making England great again. He meant every word…it was a pledge, not an idle wish. You want to know his last words to me, the night before that trip to Harrods? I'll tell you: Never forget me, Tanya, because one day I'll be more famous than Lenin and Winston Churchill put together. Watch out for me, from England.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Dead-Heading

  One of the first English words that Paulo learnt from the old man at the postal office in Leningrad was 'Garden.' At his tender age, everybody was old. Even his own mother was ancient, and as far as his father was concerned, the fact that he was nearing his fiftieth birthday was beyond his youthful comprehension. A colourful garden, however, was not. Yuri, a name he was to use himself later in his life, had been a gardener's apprentice on an estate in England before the Great War had started in Europe and he had begun Paulo's education by showing him pictures of how the huge kitchen garden looked, behind the walls that sheltered it and kept it warm.

  The young, aspiring, Paulo found a parallel between life and gardening, and he became more aware of the words that Yuri used to describe the art in which he had wanted to prosper, before the world erupted. The sun and the rain were important, of course, but so too was nourishment and care. Knowledge of where best to grow a particular plant and how to prune it, to keep its shape, or to maximise its production.

  “Have you ever seen a plot of land that's been left to its own and God's devices, Paulo? All overgrown, with the plants strangling each other?” he asked, then answered without delay, “Of course you have. They're all around you. That's what happens when nature has its own way, without us to supervise and manage it. The world would be in a sorry state without gardeners, that's for sure. Do you know what God's answer to pruning is? It's war and desolation; that's what it is. A messy way of doing things,” he sagely proclaimed. He had forgotten to add an important aspect of prolonging a flowering plant's life before it turned to seed; that of deadheading, allowing the production of more flowers to flourish.

  To the ageing and sceptical, more pragmatic, Paulo, life was equivalent to war. The strong must survive at the expense of the weak. He had adopted and followed this philosophy, except for on one occasion; when he failed to spot a shoot left to grow from the base of his rose bush, one that threatened to suck the life out of its host, the merciful Paulo himself. This parasite had no Latin family name that it could be referred to in order to find a cure. Instead, it was homegrown, a Russian variant, a species hitherto unknown, called Dimitriy by his friends, his full patronymic name being Dima Nikolaevitch Lebedov.

  Dimitriy was a brute of a man but not physically, in that depart
ment, he was not noteworthy at all. He was five foot six and skinny, with thinning white hair vanishing quickly, and thick black-rimmed spectacles that made him feel important. He was not a tyrant with a fear factor; instead, he frightened others by his mental dexterity. He was the type of man that never forgot a thing, especially about an opponent, and he saw competition everywhere. Any idiosyncrasy or fascination, perhaps a fetish or compulsion, a habit or a quirk…whatever it was, he never forgot it. Those who did not care for him, and these were many, told a story that said that his mother never knew she was pregnant until she gave birth in the town Library of Nyvina, whilst reading one of her favourite books.

  She had a choice of two, both read a dozen times or more Private Property or The Holy Family two of Karl Marx's works, who she worshiped and preached passionately about. Dimitriy's father, unfortunately for his son, was of the same inclination. Consequently, Marxism took preference in their house over everything, including sex, and the unexpected baby boy when it came to mother's milk. In truth the story was told in a crude, more obscene way, with no respect to either of the parents, which sounds unkind and cruel, but not if you knew Dimitriy. That was how he would be, if he found your weakness and had a dislike of you: cruel. He abhorred the version of communism that the young Korovin represented and that had been followed, by many in important positions so unashamedly. The trouble was that he had few friends he could turn to with his protest, and even less when he did. His first approach was to the city council committee on which he served as deputy secretary. He presented his damning indictment in a way that he just knew they would approve of,…and knew too that they would punish the pretender severely.

  “This Korovin, a KGB officer, deals openly with black market racketeers, forcing them to sell him contraband goods through his position. He then entices senior officers to accept these goods as gifts, in order to ingratiate himself into their company. He is anti-communist, an opportunist, and a capitalist amongst our committed community. It is my strong recommendation that he be expelled from the party, and banished to a gulag in Siberia.”