‘Ah, you mean Natalia Pushkina,’ he said almost dismissively, as though Pushkin’s wife had little claim to her own Christian name.
He lifted a slim volume with an inlaid medallion, briefly examined a faded lock of two-centuries-old hair, and dropped the book on the window sill. It was as though he had lost interest in the project. Even when I opened that precious edition of Onegin, the one he had been so keen on acquiring, he barely looked at it.
Gorsky started disappearing for days at a time. He was in the country or away on business: Moscow, Zurich, Berlin, Jerusalem, Almaty. In between the jaunts he popped in, delivering a gift of an expensive bottle that could have come from anywhere as though he was trying to placate me in some way, or pretending to check on me, but was unfazed if he found me with my nose buried in a collection of Russian poetry or a Victorian travel book. I was not expected back at Fynch’s just yet, and he did not seem to mind my increasingly obvious freeloading.
‘Ivanushka, durachok,’ he laughed when I asked why he tolerated me – little Ivan, little ninny – as though I was a useless younger brother and not an employee.
On the mornings after some of those nights he spent in residence, I could smell a woman’s scent on the corridors, a faint, powdery smell of mimosas, Natalia’s smell. I found a pair of sunglasses on one of the shelves. In the evenings, I looked out but saw only lights going on or off. I heard music, old Russian waltzes, simple tunes. I suspected that Gorsky played them himself.
Once, I crept up almost to the open window. I stood on the grass barefoot and recognised the chords of ‘Dark is the Night’, a melancholy Russian love song from the Second World War. I thought I heard a female voice as well. I tried to climb on one of the marble pots to look in, when a bodyguard gripped me and pulled me back a few yards by the scruff of my neck.
‘You think we don’t see you, malchik … We do, but we let you hear the boss play the tune because we understand. We love to hear him play too. Now run away before he finds you here.’
The second May bank holiday brought an unseasonal, and short-lived, hot spell. The air was heady with the sweet scent of lime trees, which that year, in spite of the endless rain, came to flower earlier and more profusely than I had ever remembered in London before. One Saturday morning Tom Summerscale unexpectedly decided to make his peace. Gery claimed that he felt chastened. Rumours about his overwrought behaviour and his insult of Gorsky were not going down well in his business circles. It was not the done thing. He had too much capital invested in Russia not to care. He sent a note of apology to Gorsky.
Then, in a further gesture of contrition, he instructed Gery to invite Gorsky and me to his rooftop swimming pool. Gorsky, even more unexpectedly, accepted. The pool was small and secluded within the walls of a former hospital chapel on the top floor, giving the lie to the wondering gossip about the slide to the basement pool. It had an ingenious retractable glass roof and beyond the walls it was surrounded by a roof garden modelled on the Alhambra. In the course of my year among the Russians, I had become accustomed to architectural flights of fancy, but this was a revelation. To swim with a view of Gothic-revival mosaics of Christian saints, no doubt the source of those jumbled stories I heard months ago, and sunbathe surrounded by jasmine, while in the middle of London: how can the human capacity for happiness continue to take in such luxuries?
Only Daisy and I swam. Natalia reclined under a white parasol. She was leafing through some glossy magazine too thick to be held up, so she rested it on a boyish hip and faced away from the rest of us. She must have been aware of the strangeness of the situation, and her body – exposed though it was to our collective gaze – responded by pretending it wasn’t there. She was wearing a dark blue swimsuit whose plain cut was more suited to water polo than to the pool on a Chelsea rooftop. The movement of her right shoulder blade as she turned the pages was the only sign that she was alive.
Gery sunbathed in a tiny crimson bikini consisting of minute triangles connected by straps thinner than shoelaces, as she must have done many times already. The tan of her bronze-aged body was the colour of milky coffee. Gorsky and Summerscale sat side by side in huge garden armchairs. They sipped their whiskies in silence; Summerscale in striped swimming trunks, with white trails of sun cream on his wide shoulders, Gorsky in jeans and a linen shirt. An awkward straw hat hid the upper half of his face. He was sunning only his bare feet.
Then Daisy invited us all to play a board game. Her mother declined and disappeared inside, promising that she would be back in a minute, but did not return. Gery followed her in a bit later. Gorsky, Summerscale and I indulged the girl. It was a sort of Snakes and Ladders involving miniature plastic rabbits and a huge red dice. We tried surreptitiously to ensure that she won every time. She yelped, counting alternately in Russian and English as she moved the figures on our behalf. We slowly relaxed into the simple rhythm of the game.
Summerscale and Gorsky found themselves imprisoned in the same square for three rounds while Daisy and I raced ahead. It was the first time since the auction that I saw the two men engage in something you could describe as the beginnings of a conversation. Then Daisy cast the dice and it rolled off the table together with the board pieces. She reached below to collect the figures and squealed: ‘Look, everyone, look!’
She moved the table away. The three of us followed the direction of her index finger.
‘Look. Uncle Roman’s feet!’
Gorsky’s feet were long and narrow, and at first glance there was nothing remarkable about them. He had a high instep and his toes were almost as long as Daisy’s fingers. But his small toe was disproportionately tiny and turned inwards in a way that made it look as though it was made of plasticine and attached as an afterthought to the foot itself.
‘The girl has found your Achilles heel, Roman. So to speak.’ I had never quite managed to call him by his first name before.
To amuse her, he wiggled his toes as though he was playing an imaginary piano with them. Summerscale’s face darkened. He stood up and walked away. Daisy took the seat he had vacated and, sitting side by side with Gorsky, started imitating him. The sight of her feet stopped me in my tracks. Gorsky tickled the girl’s right foot with his left, one silly plasticine toe next to another, much smaller but otherwise identical, one.
‘You are a clever little girl, you know, Margaritka,’ he said in Russian, using the Russian word for daisy. ‘My clever little girl.’
I did the maths quickly amid the stunned silence. The suggestion, which I did not dare articulate even to myself, was utterly impossible. Poor, deluded soul, I thought. In the months and weeks that followed, I never forgot his tone.
He and I sat with the girl for quite a while, abandoned by our hosts. She had fallen asleep in her chair, and Gorsky covered her with a beach towel. Below us, the streets of London hummed with activity. Voices and sirens and the screeching of tyres melded in a distant symphony. Then Summerscale re-emerged, his mood completely changed. He was fully dressed and almost euphoric as he walked towards Gorsky and patted him forcefully on the back.
‘I am sorry I left you, old boy. I remembered something that needed to be resolved instantly. But it’s all sorted. We need to get moving. I told Natalia to get ready. We can’t sit here on a day like this. London belongs to us.’ He uttered that last sentence in Russian and raised his arm towards the surrounding roofs, which seemed to pulsate with human energy. He lifted Daisy in her towel, and she hugged him without waking up, lowering her head on his rugby player’s shoulder. Gorsky said nothing.
‘Nick and I will go ahead,’ Summerscale said, ‘and grab a table at the Cabana in Notting Hill. Would you like to bring Natalia when she is ready? Gery will look after Daisy.’
The promise of being alone in the car with Natalia must have tipped the scales. Gorsky nodded. I could hardly demur. I pulled my jeans and T-shirt on and laced up my plimsolls, then Summerscale and I walked down several flights of servants’ stairs to the underground garage. It housed the fa
miliar silver limo, the Land Rover in which Summerscale had driven me back from Notting Hill once before, a two-seater sports car of some make I did not recognise, a motorcycle, a couple of Vespas and a blue hatchback. The little car was dusty and full of clutter. I had assumed it was driven by one of their servants. Summerscale surprised me by jumping into it.
‘Gery and I use this baby whenever we are up to no good,’ Summerscale explained. ‘I don’t mean together, my dear man. Although I wouldn’t say that we haven’t tried. It seems that we don’t find each other exciting enough. All that muscle, urgh.’
He was a changed man all right. He had reverted to his usual vile self.
The automated gate opened and we merged with the London traffic. No one gave us a second glance as we drove through South Kensington and across the park towards the warren behind Ladbroke Grove. I assumed we were going straight to the Cabana, but Summerscale paused in front of a familiar house.
‘I am sure you will remember my accountant?’ He winked. ‘Do come along to say hello. Safety in numbers!’
Allaoui opened the front door himself. He was in the same bournous and wore the same pair of trainers on his sockless feet as last time. He said nothing and gave no indication of recognising me. He was in a bad mood, but he invited us in and seated us in a surprisingly neat little kitchen. We declined an offer of mint tea. When he disappeared into the back of the house, Summerscale lit a cigarette and I stared at a calendar with the picture of some unfamiliar walled town by the sea. There was a caption in Arabic and French partly obscured by a large blue glass pendant, an amulet to ward off the evil eye. Next to it hung several framed photographs of two apparently English kids, a boy and a girl of about ten or twelve, in blue school shirts and stripy neckties, casting forced smiles towards the camera. Their pale chubby faces and lanky hair made it evident that they had no connection with our host. I looked at Summerscale. He shrugged. He appeared to have no idea who they were and, even more clearly, did not care. The house was silent. We could hear the shuffling of Allaoui’s trainers as he returned to the kitchen. He followed my eyes to the calendar.
‘Essaouira, Morocco, the most beautiful town in the world,’ Allaoui said, as though my interest in the picture had pierced the cloud of his foul mood. It was the first time he had registered my presence.
‘Where you from?’ he asked, and gave no indication of recognition when I mentioned my birthplace. Nonetheless, he must have realised that I was not English because something akin to warmth flickered in his eyes.
‘You know how hard it is for us then. How hard to live here. Everyone thinks we are just monkeys come down from banana trees. Es Sauira, yes.’ He now said it as two words and sighed. ‘This town is nothing, and you and I are nothing in it, my friend.’
He pushed another envelope across the table towards Summerscale.
‘The best you are likely to get in this town, Mr Sumicale,’ he said.
‘Let’s give you the Swiss then.’ Summerscale counted several five-hundred-franc notes, then left them on one of the little doilies that dotted the surface of the table.
‘Where’s the missis?’ he asked, casually, as he stuffed the envelope in his pocket.
Allaoui squealed like a wounded animal, hit his chest with a fist a couple of times, then started cursing as though Summerscale had just punched him in the solar plexus.
‘That fucking whore,’ he shouted, somehow gaining greater English fluency in his rage. ‘I locked that prostitute inside her bedroom a week ago. I will let her out when she admits that she has been cheating. She swears she is faithful, but she is an English whore. She is lucky I haven’t killed her yet. All English women are whores. I’d never have married the bitch but for her fucking passport.’
He composed himself as quickly as he had lost his temper. He gave an ingratiating smile.
‘I am sorry, Mr Sumicale. I am touched by your care.’
He escorted us out. Although I had some sympathy with Allaoui in view of what I knew of his wife’s activities, I was sufficiently concerned for her safety to wonder aloud if we should call the police. Summerscale laughed it off.
‘Oh, I have seen worse from Mahdi, old boy. Much worse. They love each other in their crazy way, as much as I love my own missis. You know what Tolstoy wrote about happy families? He was wrong. The unhappy ones are all the same. We must allow the happy ones to be happy in their own ways.’
To this day I regret that I did nothing, but the subsequent drama of that evening wiped out Janice Allaoui’s predicament. When we arrived, the Notting Hill bar was heaving with a smart cosmopolitan crowd. Waiters in guayaberas held trays of cocktails high above their heads: glasses of brightly coloured liquid decorated with paper parasols, sparklers and pieces of tropical fruit. The place was postmodern and ‘ironical’ in that greedy, calculating way which was never a sufficient excuse to charge fifteen pounds for a glass of something nasty, however skilfully it had been PR-ed as ‘the place to be’. Only the music was genuine, and, luckily, not particularly loud. Summerscale ordered for both of us, and we sat together in silence sipping something green with a lot of tequila until Natalia and Gorsky arrived.
They were both in jeans and white shirts. She wore a pair of red trainers of some fashionable make. Her hair was gathered on top of her head with a white ribbon tied in the kind of knot Russian schoolgirls used to wear back in Communist days. She walked slowly, without making the smallest effort to look happy. Gorsky, on the other hand, practically glowed. I was struck, although God knows it was for the umpteenth time, by how tall she was. They were almost of equal height, even though Gorsky was certainly six foot if not an inch or two taller. I noticed, and Summerscale probably did too, that Gorsky’s hand rested on her back as they made their way through the crowd. That gesture may have been the reason why, almost as soon as they were seated, he started talking about the beauty of Russian women. They were the most beautiful in the world, the best educated, passionate, innately elegant … as he counted superlatives, Natalia looked more and more uncomfortable.
‘The best tractor drivers and cosmonauts too.’ I made a feeble effort to bring in the Communist stereotype and redirect the flow of his speech. Natalia threw me a half-smile.
‘But most importantly,’ Summerscale ploughed on, ‘they are not poisoned by feminism. They are real women and proper, obedient wives to their husbands. Pity about the Russian men …’
‘Why?’ enquired Gorsky.
‘Neanderthal oafs,’ Summerscale said, as though he wasn’t speaking to a Russian. ‘No wonder Russian women prefer Western men. They would rather marry an ordinary Englishman than a Russian millionaire. Wouldn’t they, Nick?’
I could only point out that someone like me must be at the bottom of the food chain however you calibrated it.
Gorsky had had enough.
‘This Russian woman prefers a Russian man to you, Summerscale.’
At least he did not say me. Natalia stood up to leave but he put his hand on her right shoulder and she froze in her seat. Her left hand hovered over his as though she was unsure whether to remove it or to grasp it. The wedding band, which she usually wore on her left hand – rather than the right, the Russian way – was no longer on her ring finger.
‘Russian man, you say …’ Summerscale laughed. ‘Oh, well, even if we accept that you are Russian, Roman, and that’s a questionable proposition, why did she marry me then? She is a refined soul, our Natalia, and you know it. She doesn’t want a Yid arms smuggler, all that blood on her hands.’
Gorsky’s fist put a stop to Summerscale’s speech. The blow was so forceful that Summerscale’s body, together with the chair he was sitting on, flew into the air before landing on the floor with a massive thud. The crowd fell silent. Gorsky’s bodyguards, whose presence was so constant I had long stopped registering them, stepped menacingly closer. The strength of Gorsky’s blow was such that they may well have wondered why he needed them. Natalia ran out even before one of the waiters ordered the three o
f us to leave and threatened to call the police if we didn’t. I straightened the chairs. Gorsky pulled a wad of fifty-pound notes from his pocket and left them on the table, crumpled, red fingerprints all over the red paper. The waiter turned towards Summerscale who was just standing up, clearly hoping that he wouldn’t have to call the police after all. Summerscale blew his bloody nose into a paper napkin, dropped it over the money, then grabbed my arm and walked out. On our left, already almost at the top of Portobello Road, I could see Gorsky catching up with Natalia, remonstrating.
Summerscale drove in the opposite direction. We were soon stuck in lanes of traffic on Shepherd’s Bush roundabout. I watched people in red buses, slumped and drowsy in the unexpected heat of the evening. It was nice to be in an ordinary car, for once free from that insistent gaze with which the poor follow the movement of the rich in their midst, but that was the only pleasant aspect of my situation. We were cramped too close to each other. Summerscale tapped restlessly on the steering wheel. I could see a streak of dried blood below the signet ring on his little finger. There was another thinner line on his cheek, stretching from his nose towards his ear.
‘You seem fond of that word,’ I said. I did not know how to start talking about the situation. There was an air of bonhomie about him which I took for an ironic upperclass take on being a spiv. It misled you into thinking that he was more approachable than Gorsky, yet this was far from true. I felt uncomfortable about the things he had allowed me to witness. Did he think that he was invulnerable or that he had me in his power in some way? That he could trump the knowledge of him I had involuntarily acquired? Or was he, simply, stupid? You needed to be the king of crooks to carry on semi-publicly with your drug dealer’s wife and to keep visiting him at home, bringing your so-called friends along. To be the king of crooks, monumentally stupid, or to feel protected in some way I could not begin to fathom. Or perhaps just to be English.
Gorsky Page 12