Above the Fold

by Peter Yeldham

  Among the crowd of guests were many from the racing fraternity, for Charles was a leading trainer of steeplechasers. His two children from his first marriage were present, and Luke wondered what they thought of their new stepmother. She looked graceful in a Pierre Balmain gown of light blue silk that reached mid-calf, and she wore high heels that accentuated her height and her dancer’s legs. Her blonde hair was cut short in a different style, giving him the strange impression she was younger than when he’d last seen her almost eight years ago. Which was ridiculous, but that had been a time of great stress following years of unhappiness. This was a new Louisa who seemed too young at forty-six to be his mother, but after all she’d been barely eighteen when he was born. She looked dazzling; both bright and happy.

  “She’s so beautiful,” said Charles’s daughter Rowena, and his son James confided they were glad their father had found someone like Louisa.

  “Dad’s been a widower for five years,” he said, “and Rowie and I were worried he’d get stuck with one of the gold diggers who’ve been hanging around like blowflies at one of your Aussie barbecues. So this is an especially happy day for us.”

  A happy one for him too, Luke told them, and his step-siblings and he were friends from then on.

  “When are you leaving on your honeymoon?” he asked his mother and Charles later, when the guests had departed.

  “We’re not bothering,” Louisa said with a soft laugh. “We’ve had a six-month honeymoon already. It started the week we met.”

  “At our advancing age,” Charles said cheerfully, “you don’t hang about. You get on with it.”

  Advancing age, indeed, he thought. Louisa looked like a spring chicken, and Charles was a fit fifty-something. He hugged her and shook Charles’s hand, and accepted their invitation to come and spend a couple of weeks with them, before he took off to wherever he was going next.

  It was early October, the leaves turning to autumn colours and beginning to fall, the early mornings dark when he accompanied Louisa and Charles onto the Downs to watch the horses exercise. Summer and the flat racing season was over. Throughout the winter there’d be hurdles and the great steeplechases like the Cheltenham Gold Cup, and the Grand National for which these superb animals were in training. There were lovely moments to treasure — the loud straining breath of the big horses stretching muscles in the gloom, and the reflected glow of London’s street lights blending with the first gleam of sunrise in the distance across the Downs.

  Louisa and Luke walked up to the top of the slope and watched the gallopers. He knew she was going to ask him something, and knew what it would be.

  “I thought you and Hannah … she sounded lovely in your letters …”

  “She is lovely. It was by mutual consent, Mum.”

  She didn’t ask for details or protest that Luke had stopped calling her Louisa. That had been in defiance of her first husband. Content now, she was happy to be a mother, and even more than that, as she asked, “Are you ever going to make me a grandma?”

  “Plenty of time.”

  “Don’t leave it forever. You’ll soon be thirty. I still think you’re not over Claudia. Maybe you never will be.”

  Luke didn’t pursue this. Claudia was a closed chapter. Besides, he had other news for his mother. He’d seen a small house for sale, and had money sitting in the bank that had been accruing each year without the slightest effort on his part. He’d helped others and, through Alistair Tate, he was still helping Steven. Now with Louisa’s future secure it was time to spend some of this unexpected benefit on himself.

  “Where is this house?” she asked.

  “In Chelsea. I’ve made an offer, and I heard this morning it’s been accepted.”

  “In Chelsea! You’ll only be half an hour’s drive away?”

  “Not too close for you?”

  “Too close? Darling, it’s perfect. You’ve made my lovely new life even lovelier,” she said, hugging him.

  “It’s a base. I’ll probably be away from time to time, but when I’m there I’d enjoy driving down to be with you on mornings like this.”

  “You’ll always be welcome. Come and stay for weekends, and I’ll beat you at this new game called Scrabble.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “That’s all the better,” she said smiling. “It gives me an advantage. And show me your new house as soon as you get the keys.”

  So Luke became a resident of Chelsea, the owner of a shabby little house that needed some tender loving care. It was in Caversham Street, just a short walk to the Chelsea embankment and close to Tite Street, where Oscar Wilde had lived at number 34. He could never pass Wilde’s blue ornamental plaque without thinking of his favourite Oscar quote, not the celebrated ones in all the books of clever epigrams, but the simple one that always made him laugh.

  I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out.

  His house was small, two bedrooms upstairs, a study in which he erected bookshelves, and a comfortable living room with a fireplace. A small backyard, fully paved, which meant no grass to cut, so he bought pots to display flowers when spring arrived. The inside needed painting, and Luke decided to do it himself. His first real home, he wanted to make it cosy as well as chic. He had ladders all over the house, and a lot of paint over himself the day Ben Warren arrived on a surprise visit. Ben, who had run the radio unit in Japan, was now with the publishing firm Morgan and Flint in Australia, and had come with an offer to Luke.

  “It’s to do with the Petrov Affair,” he explained.

  Vladimir Petrov had recently been a name in the headlines, the third secretary at the Soviet Embassy in Canberra, he had suddenly defected and requested asylum in Australia. SOVIET SPY RING IN CANBERRA had been on placards all over London. The story was given impetus when Moscow ordered Petrov’s wife be brought back to Russia. Newsreel cameras were at Sydney airport to record her struggle with armed guards as she was wrestled on board a Qantas aircraft. A photo of one shoe left on the tarmac by the guards who would not allow her to retrieve it was on front pages everywhere.

  The progress of her flight across Australia had been followed by hourly reports on radio. At Darwin the plane had to land and refuel, and questions were being asked: “Would authorities allow her forced removal? It was a blatant kidnap!” Darwin airport was packed with newsreel cameras, reporters and a noisy partisan crowd. Police met the plane, and removed her amid cheering supporters. Pictures of her rescue had been seen around the world.

  “It’s why I’m here,” Ben said, “to see if you’d like to meet Mrs Petrov.”

  Luke stared at him. “Eh?” was his startled reply.

  “Evdokia Petrov,” Ben repeated. “Evie for short.”

  “Mate, are you serious?”

  “Bloody oath. A trip home, expenses paid. There’s a book in it, Luke.”

  “Ben, if you’re talking about publication, I’d be killed in the rush. I’ll bet half a dozen Petrov manuscripts are being bashed out by eager beavers this minute. And a ghostwriter lined up for Petrov’s version. It’s a big espionage story, but just how many renderings of it does the public want or need?”

  “Luke, you’re not listening, mate. I said Mrs Petrov.”

  “So …?”

  “So everyone’s hot on the espionage angle, but this is the lady he tried to doublecross and leave behind. Remember that photo of her shoe left on the tarmac, while the Russian heavies dragged her to the plane?”

  “Of course. Nobody could forget it.”

  “We feel it’s the ideal cover. Inside is whatever you want to write. She has a history, Luke, her very own personal life, and what it was like on her side of the marriage bed. Does the idea appeal?”

  “Strewth! When you put it like that,” Luke said, “is the Pope Catholic? Let me open a bottle of serious French plonk. We need to talk about this.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  It was a Saturday when Luke landed in Sydney, his first visit home i
n nine years. Ben, who’d returned a week before him, met him at the airport and they drove through the city and headed across the Spit Bridge towards the Northern Beaches. He was surprised that after all this time there was so little change in the pattern of life. Shops still closed at noon on Saturdays and remained shut all weekend. Ben told him the six o’clock swill was still in force, the streets full of drunks afterwards. The city itself hadn’t altered. Trams still ran in the main streets, and the AWA building with its high radio transmitter like a miniature Eiffel Tower, remained the tallest structure. He soon learnt there had been little improvement in the arts. Books were censored, radical plays were liable to be closed by the police, and there was a scarcity of Australian films. The few being produced invariably featured overseas stars, with local actors consigned to supporting roles.

  From a writer’s point of view, it seemed unlikely he could settle here again. But at least the weather was good, an improvement on dismal skies in Britain. It was November and almost summer. Children were playing on the beaches, there were surfers between the flags, and along the peninsula jacarandas and grevilleas were in brilliant flower.

  It was strange passing through Collaroy and Narrabeen, seeing his old home, particularly as part of his contract with the publishing company was there’d be no press reports, or any news of his visit home. Not until his meetings with Mrs Petrov were over.

  “I’m afraid it means friends as well,” Ben said. No contact with Helen or Alistair. No Rupert Meredith-Lacey, no friends from Macquarie or any of the crowd he’d worked with in Kure. Not even Harry Morton. “Particularly not Harry,” Ben had stressed. “I know what a mate he is, but he’s also a Herald journalist, and this has got to stay under the radar until you’ve finished. Or else we’d be caught up in a race with others who haven’t cottoned on to telling Evdokia’s side of the story.”

  Luke had reluctantly agreed to this; in fact, it began to suit him being hidden away in comfortable accommodation at Palm Beach until the work was done, able to concentrate on the job, then catch up and relax with his close friends afterwards.

  His induction over the bottle of burgundy in Chelsea had been brief but informative. The former spy and his wife were now living in a safe house at Careel Bay on Sydney’s Pittwater, guarded by ASIO agents and giving evidence to a Royal Commission on espionage, while waiting for their promised new identities. Ben explained there was already discussion about a biography of Petrov, and a journalist was to ghostwrite it. Other books were in the early stages. Among those rushing to print was Michael Bialoguski, who’d been a key player in the Petrov defection.

  “So many bloody books,” Luke said. “Where do we fit in?”

  “But they’re all about him,” Ben replied. “That’s our ace. The lady feels sidelined. As you’ll find out when you meet her.”

  “How do we meet? Will ASIO allow us access.”

  Ben filled him in as they drove through Newport. “We’ll meet her on Avalon Beach tomorrow. Evdokia spends most days there. Their safe house is near, and the agent in charge is friendly enough, and accustomed to her meeting people at the beach. The first time it happened he tried to stop her, and she made a fuss. Said she might as well be in Moscow, if she wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone. She got her way, because they don’t want her causing trouble and upsetting him. He’s a moody bugger, and their marriage is a sham. But ASIO needs him on side, to check documents and identify KGB agents. So Evie — that’s what we call her — is allowed to chat to other people, but only if the agent approves of those she meets.”

  “And if he doesn’t approve of me?”

  “He already does,” Ben smiled. “He thinks her story will make a bloody sight better book than her husband’s. He’s on her side.”

  She was wearing dark glasses and a tight-fitting two-piece costume that showed off her curves, the first time Luke met her. Neat blonde hair, an engaging smile, and a buxom, if inviting figure. They were on a quiet stretch of secluded beach, a tranquil bay protected from the surf by reefs, and a young man in shorts was sunbaking face-down nearby. Luke had already been told this would be Terry Watson, the friendly ASIO guardian.

  “G’day Terry,” Ben said as they walked past him. Terry just raised an arm in reply. “This long skinny bloke without a suntan is a friend of mine from the Old Dart. Luke, meet Terry and the lovely Evie.”

  This time Terry lifted himself from the sand, gave Luke a brief scrutiny, then raised an arm again. It seemed his customary greeting.

  Luke smiled at Evdokia Petrov. “Good morning,” he said to her.

  “G’day,” she attempted an Australian accent. “Did I get that right, Ben?”

  “Pretty good, Evie. Luke and I are off for a swim.”

  “I might come with you,” she said, fitting a bathing cap and following them into the calm water. She let herself float. Ben went swimming away from them, and Luke remained to tread water alongside her.

  “Where shall we begin, Evie? Do you mind if I call you Evie?”

  “It’s easiest,” she said. “My full name is Evdokia Alexeyevna Petrova.”

  “I’ll stick with Evie,” he grinned. I’ll get the correct spelling later, but in English lettering, not Cyrillic.”

  She smiled at him. Luke thought it transformed her face, made her look very pretty.

  “How old are you, Evie?”

  “Thirty-eight.”

  “If we spend a lot of time on this, is your guardian going to intervene? Might he prevent us?”

  “I don’t think so,” she shook her head. “Terry, he likes me. Last night he … make the pass, is that how you say it? Makes the pass at me?”

  “That’s more American. Australians might say he put the hard word on you.”

  “The hard word. I must remember, and write that down to improve my English. You see, he quite likes me.”

  “Well, I’m not surprised.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No. You’re a very attractive woman.”

  “So …” she smiled flirtatiously, “do you put the hard word on me?”

  Luke hesitated. “I don’t think I should do that, Evdokia.”

  “Oh? You don’t?” She thought about it for a moment. “Why not?”

  “If I did, I wouldn’t be able to write about you. We’d be too busy flirting and putting the hard word on each other.”

  She laughed out loud, and Luke saw Terry raise his head and gaze at them. Evie noticed it, too.

  “Very well,” she agreed, “no hard words for you and me. But with Terry, is a nice compliment. He’s twenty-five, I’m thirty-eight. So we see what happens. My husband … we don’t do much in the bed these days.”

  “You don’t?”

  “He’s too busy having shags with other womens.”

  “Women. That’s the expression you want, if it’s more than one.”

  “Oh, it’s plenty more than one,” said Evie. “He has a shag with more than two or three, the bastard. Is that how to say it, he has a shag?”

  “That explains it perfectly,” Luke replied.

  Afterwards they walked up and down the beach. Ben drove into Avalon to buy them all lunch, Terry went for a swim, and Evie talked. Information poured out, and he wished he had his recorder, but felt sure he’d remember it all. That night, at the smart hilltop house where he’d been provided with an apartment, he started typing his first page of notes, and each day the notes accumulated as she spoke freely. Chapters in the book began to follow.

  The days, mostly spent on the beach, were intense hours of questions and answers, and in the process they became like trusted friends. She spoke frankly, and no part of her life was excluded. Sometimes she asked him questions about himself, and while he steered clear of intimate details, he had no hesitation in talking of his time in Kure and Korea. In return she revealed all of her past.

  “I work in the Gulags, the labour camps in Siberia. I was bureaucrat there, in the office. But the camps were cruel places. I hated it, but people like me i
n Russia had no choice. I work there nearly five years.”

  “When did you come to Australia?”

  “In 1951. I have training in Moscow, then come to Canberra as a diplomat with the embassy, but my real work was spying for KGB.” At times this upset her; she tried to convince Luke spying against his country was not by choice. “I had to spy, Luke. Or I go back to the Gulag, this time as punishment. And then I would disappear. It is easy in Russia to disappear.”

  “Nobody will hold spying against you, Evie,” he tried to assure her. “It’s this crazy Cold War. Easy to forget we were once on the same side.”

  “And easy to forget Vladimir and I used to love each other. But then he changes. He would leave me in Canberra and come to Sydney, to sleep with womens. I call them that because there are so many. He tries to say they are girlfriends, but they are all prostitutes. You see, he likes whores. He tells me he can give them fuck, and walk away. No talk, no arguments like in a marriage. Then one day he decides to defect, but he never tells me that.”

  “Not a hint?”

  “Nothing.” She shook her head as if it still perplexed her. “The biggest decision of his life. He tells ASIO, but not me. For weeks he vanishes. I think he might be dead. He was going to defect without me, and let me be taken back to Russia. To the Gulag perhaps, or …” she shrugged and looked morose, “who knows what happens to me?”

  Her moods were mercurial; moments later she smiled. “The crowds, the Australian crowds save me. And the pilot and flight crew, they ask do I want to go home to Russia? No, I say. Please God, no! If not for them by now I’m dead. They tell the Russian guards to sit down and shut up. They take me to safety. And all this time Vladimir, he sees pictures of me being dragged onto plane in Sydney, and he does nothing. The Australians save me, but not him. How could he see what is happening to me and just do nothing?”