Face Me When You Walk Away

by Brian Freemantle

  Several minutes elapsed before Josef replied. Then he said, quietly, ‘No, I don’t want that.’

  Why hadn’t he considered how vulnerable marriage would make him? Perhaps Illinivitch was right. Perhaps his preoccupation with constantly advertising Devgeny’s error was clouding his reasoning. Perhaps he really did need psychiatric help.

  ‘Then I have given you a way out,’ said Illinivitch.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Josef. ‘You have.’

  Illinivitch stood, moving towards the door.

  ‘Consider it,’ he advised. Think about it more deeply than you’ve ever thought about anything …’ he gestured again to the study and to the apartment beyond. ‘… And learn to control this vindictiveness. It’s destroyed Devgeny. Be careful it doesn’t destroy you.’

  At the door he turned, smiling. ‘Don’t worry, Josef. No one will ever know this meeting took place.’

  Josef was smiling broadly when he went back into the lounge and Pamela responded, happily.

  ‘You seem pleased.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, obtusely. He decided another celebration cognac was justified. As he handed her the glass, he added, ‘There were great problems. But now I think they have been solved.’

  ‘Sounds as if you’ve made a decision.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Josef. ‘I only hope to God it’s the right one.’

  *

  The letter had lain on the silver salver throughout breakfast, the Russian stamp and Moscow postmark uppermost. Both had ignored it, like youngsters with a childhood dare, waiting to see which one gave in first.

  ‘Well?’ demanded Sir Hudson Bellamy.

  Stupid bastard, thought his wife. Sir Hudson was a barrel-bellied, brandy-flushed man who affected Edwardian suits, mutton-chop whiskers and an apparent disdain for publicity. He was the sort of M.P. every British political party maintains, like a medieval court jester, guaranteed to perform with complete predictability. He went to Chelsea football matches by Rolls and to the House of Commons by bicycle and during elections could be expected to descend more mines, drive more tractors and ascend more construction and dockland cranes than any other prospective candidate in any party. He had held a safe seat in Buckinghamshire for fifteen years and would stay there until death or party disfavour removed him, of which the former was more likely than the latter.

  ‘Well?’ challenged his wife.

  Her contempt for her husband exceeded that of fellow M.P.s, which made her dislike intense. Doreen Miller had been first his secretary and then his mistress when Harry Bellamy – Hudson was a later creation of his publicity machine – had left the army with a £500 gratuity and a business sense honed by the black markets of immediate post-war Berlin. Now he had another secretary and several other mistresses and Lady Bellamy had a flat of her own separate from the Eaton Square apartment. She had a separate suite in the Buckinghamshire country house, too. Her future was more assured than her husband’s, for Lady Bellamy, a diligent, observant secretary, had retained detailed knowledge of her husband’s early business activities that could, even now, result in a prolonged jail sentence.

  ‘I thought I’d given strict instructions that no mail was to be delivered to this house from Russia?’ he said. He spoke ponderously, as if for the benefit of a poor note-taker.

  ‘Shut up,’ she said.

  ‘I told you I wanted the staff instructed no such letters were to be allowed in this house,’ insisted her husband.

  ‘Harry,’ sighed the woman, allowing a pause to follow his correct Christian name, knowing it upset him. ‘If you want to go through this ridiculous charade of erasing Pamela from your life, then you do it. I’ve no intention of cutting myself off from the girl.’

  ‘Your daughter betrayed her own country.’

  Lady Bellamy erupted into genuine amusement at the pomposity.

  ‘Oh, you stupid bugger,’ she said.

  ‘But that man!’

  ‘What’s the matter, Harry? Angry he’s more famous than you are and doesn’t have to ride a bike to get his pictures in the papers?’

  Sir Hudson buried his head on his chest and glowered, a Churchillian affectation he had cultivated for Question Time in the House and TV current-affairs programmes.

  ‘You’re getting impossible to live with.’

  ‘Pity,’ said Lady Bellamy. There’s not a thing you can do about it is there?’

  ‘Cow,’ he said, weakly.

  ‘Only now, darling,’ she reminded him, honestly. ‘You fucked up this marriage, not me.’

  ‘Is it necessary to use language like that?’

  Lady Bellamy laughed at him, in feigned surprise. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Another Harry Bellamy campaign? “Let’s wash the English language whiter than white.” You’re on to a loser trying to remove “fuck” from the vernacular.’

  ‘I’m not trying to erase it from the English language. Just yours.’

  She stared at him for a full minute.

  ‘Fuck,’ she said, very deliberately. Then she stretched out and picked up the letter.

  ‘I forbid you to open it.’

  She slit the envelope with her table-knife, ignoring the shuffling as he collected the other morning mail he had already opened and prepared to leave the room.

  ‘She’s happy,’ reported Lady Bellamy.

  Sir Hudson pretended not to hear.

  ‘Don’t make yourself look utterly foolish,’ sighed his wife. There’s no audience to impress. She asks if you have forgiven her.’

  ‘That’s a ridiculous question.’

  ‘Any more ridiculous than your asking me to forgive you for letting your mistress die in my bed from a back-street abortion?’

  ‘You didn’t forgive me,’ reminded the M.P.

  ‘It wasn’t the first time I’d discovered a whore in my own bed. This one just happened to be dying.’

  It was a familiar, accepted goad, like a picador driving a lance into a nerve.

  ‘I said Pamela asks if you’ve forgiven her,’ repeated the woman.

  ‘You know I haven’t. Nor will I.’

  ‘Then I’ll ignore the question when I reply.’

  ‘I forbid you to reply.’

  Lady Bellamy’s pained expression was as theatrical as his earlier posture the cartoonists frequently seized upon.

  ‘Oh, fuck off,’ she said.

  She stood at the window, looking down over the threadbare trees of Eaton Square. Minutes later he emerged, cycle-clips already bagging his trousers around his ankles. A few people recognized him and watched. He mounted the bicycle, contrived an unsteady wobble and then weaved, face broken in genial smiles, up the square. Doreen Bellamy turned away like someone sickened at a blood-sports spectacle. It had been bad today, the worst for some time. Pity the swearing was so effective. She found it offensive. She hadn’t realized how much she would suffer from the break with Pamela. Two and a half thousand miles away, Pamela was having exactly the same thoughts. But she wasn’t as strong as her mother. She was crying, as she had almost every day for the past month.

  9

  ‘Sorry you married me?’

  Pamela’s question startled him out of his reverie. Fora longtime they had sat at the dinner-table, without talking. They were like old people approaching their golden wedding anniversary, thought Josef, who had used up all the conversation in their life, leaving only squabbles over memories. But they didn’t have any memories.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t sound very convincing.’

  He sighed. These conversations had the familiarity of Nikolai demanding praise.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Let’s not start again.’

  ‘Start what?’

  It was like the opening scene of a well-known play. ‘I know I’ve been ignoring you,’ he admitted. ‘But there’s a lot of pressure. Please help me. Let me get this thing over and I promise we’ll have a long holiday. Somewhere in the sunshine,
by the Black Sea perhaps.’

  She frowned, unimpressed.

  ‘Who the hell wants to go to Georgia? Why can’t we go somewhere civilized, outside this bloody country? The South of France … the Middle East even …’

  ‘All right,’ he agreed, urgently. ‘Anywhere you want.’

  ‘You’re just saying that.’

  He held his hands out, helplessly. ‘What more can I say? I promise you … anywhere you like.’

  ‘How long will it be before we can leave?’

  Again, the helpless gesture. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know. There’s still a lot to do with Nikolai’s award. I’ve got to go away again, as you know …’ He took a breath. ‘… It won’t be for a few months, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘Only a few months.’

  ‘In this place, that’s a bloody lifetime.’

  Silence grew cold between them.

  ‘What’s wrong with me?’ she demanded, embarking on another familiar path.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, exasperated. ‘I’ve told you, I’m preoccupied. I’m sorry.’

  ‘We won’t … we don’t even make …’ she stumbled.

  ‘We make love as much as other married couples,’ he insisted, curtly.

  The telephone stopped it becoming a major row. She saw his face twist, almost in pain.

  ‘What is it?’

  He turned to her, as if he had forgotten she was there.

  ‘Nikolai is drunk again,’ he said. ‘Go on to bed without me.’

  ‘I often do.’

  Without answering, he left the apartment, collecting the Mercedes from the basement garage. Josef had often thought that the Soviet Union’s acceptance of alcoholism was the admission of a moral fault, but he supposed there was a need for approved places to which police could take the unconscious drunks. Left on the streets in the winter, they would freeze to death.

  Josef sat outside, staring at the sobering–up station, feeling the fear burn through him. It was a low, block-house type building, with tiny, squinting windows, barred and set high in the walls. The punishment cells had been like that, he remembered, squat in the middle of the camp, where they could always be seen, a constant reminder. No one was ever the same when they came out. They stared with eyes that didn’t see, deadened to everything except the word of command, the only thing left. Their whole being was geared to obey, so they wouldn’t be punished again. Josef couldn’t remember anyone who had emerged from a second term.

  It was nearly midnight and quite cold, but perspiration soaked his back and his hands felt sticky when he stepped from the car and walked up the crackling pathway to the door. Inside, the light was harsh and yellow. The desk man stared up at him and again Josef felt the lurch of fear. Guards were always the same, he thought. They were rarely excessively tall, but they were still large men, with heavy shoulders and bellies that sagged over the belts upon which they carried the tools of their trade, the guns and the truncheons and the keys and small things in stiff leather pouches. Josef often wondered what the pouches contained. They probably hurt worst of all.

  ‘Yes?’

  They always spoke like that, he recalled, harsh and challenging.

  ‘Josef Bultova.’ His voice was even and unworried. He was surprised.

  ‘Ah! Comrade Bultoya.’

  There were others in the room and conversation stopped. There was a discomforted shuffling and men found things to do in other parts of the building. The desk man’s truculence became a fawning eagerness to please.

  ‘A dreadful mistake, I’m afraid.’

  How good it felt. Guards were actually frightened of him, cringing almost.

  ‘We had no idea … there was nothing to indicate …’

  ‘What happened?’

  Josef was arrogantly demanding, enjoying their fear. The man sucked in his lips and chewed, rabbit-like. He scuffed some papers on his desk, seeking some sort of official report. They always need the barrier of officialdom, thought Josef.

  ‘I wasn’t in charge, you understand. Some other colleagues. I have names …’

  ‘For God’s sake, what happened?’

  It was over-stressed, he knew. He couldn’t stop himself.

  There is a liquor stall, about two kilometres on the south side of Alexander Park. It’s the worst sort of place. Every night we have at least three drunks from there alone …’

  Josef shifted, impatiently, increasing the man’s nervousness.

  The dregs get there … down-and-outs. They’ve never got enough money for a whole bottle, so they hang around, pooling what they’ve got or stolen, until they have enough to buy one between them. Then they go into the park and drink it…’

  ‘And Nikolai was found with such a group?’

  The man jerked his shoulders, his eyes widening, as if he were as baffled as Josef.

  ‘It’s incomprehensible,’ he offered.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I’m afraid he was put through the wash-room,’ added the desk man. He took a piece of grey material from his pocket and dried his hands.

  The what?’

  The man moved from behind his desk and momentarily the flicker of fear returned as the man came towards him. Then he passed and Josef followed down a bare, sour-smelling corridor. From behind doors came sounds, screams of men seized in nightmares and of moaning and of deep, animal-like snoring. The man opened a door at the far end and Josef was immediately aware of dripping. The room was an empty rectangle, with no furniture in it. At either end there was a nozzle with a screw top jutting from the wall. The whole room was rubber-lined.

  ‘What the hell is it?’ he demanded.

  ‘This isn’t a rest home …’ began the man and immediately stopped, afraid the remark might be inferred as insolence. Josef motioned impatiently for him to continue.

  ‘We just don’t leave them to sleep it off. We try to sober them up. We take their clothes off and put them in here …’

  He stopped again, searching for another apology. Unable to find one, he scurried to the end.

  ‘… And then one of the men puts on protective clothing, fixes a hose to one of the outlets and hoses them around the room.’

  Josef stared at him. ‘You mean, helpless through drink, men are washed up and down this room by the pressure from a hose?’

  The man nodded. ‘The walls are padded. And the water isn’t really freezing. They can’t really get hurt. It’s supposed to dissuade them from coming back again.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  The man led Josef to a side room where concrete bunks jutted from the floor, like decaying teeth. Josef shivered as the memory flooded over him. So similar, he thought, although in his barrack block the beds had been wooden and the concrete blocks had formed the tables around which they tried to eat. Most of the men were uncovered, spread-eagled like animals awaiting sacrifice. But blankets had been placed over Nikolai, who lay appearing quite comfortable. Gently the guard shook his shoulder and Nikolai snuffled into wakefulness. He stared unseeingly around the room, finally focusing upon Josef. He gave a shy half-smile.

  ‘I told them to get you,’ he said. ‘They were very frightened when they learned you were my friend.’

  He’d enjoyed it, Josef realized. Another self-indulgent experiment, to draw attention to himself. He stood, frowning around the room, while Nikolai dressed, helped by the solicitous guard and then filed ahead of them back along the corridor. In the car, Josef demanded, ‘Well?’

  Nikolai hunched down into his clothes, shivering.

  ‘Doesn’t this car have a heater?’

  ‘Well?’ demanded Josef, again,

  ‘Good material for a writer,’ said Nikolai, defensively.

  ‘Not for the sort of books you’re writing,’ warned Josef.

  It was as if Nikolai had been awaiting the remark. ‘Why am I being kept away from everyone in the Writers’ Union?’ he asked. ‘No one else can get published in Russia unless they belong.’

 
It was a question the man didn’t really want answering, thought Josef. He was unsure of the direction that Nikolai was taking.

  ‘You’re an exceptional writer,’ ventured Josef cautiously.

  That’s not enough,’ argued Nikolai. He was silent as they picked their way through the deserted streets towards the apartment into which the author had moved two months before. ‘Are they frightened, Josef? Are they frightened that I might get into contact with some dissidents?’

  Was it Nikolai’s usual query, wondered Josef? Was he merely anxious for more importance to be bestowed upon him? He stopped the car outside the writer’s home and turned in the seat, looking at him.

  ‘It could be,’ he said, honestly.

  ‘No one need worry, Josef,’ said Nikolai, returning the direct stare. ‘You can tell them there is no need to worry.’

  For the briefest moment, Josef was uncertain and then he realized what the writer was telling him.

  ‘I’m being manipulated, aren’t I, Josef?’

  ‘We’re all manipulated, one way or another,’ said the negotiator. He felt tiredness reaching out for him. If only it meant sleep instead of near exhaustion.

  ‘I don’t mind, Josef,’ assured the writer, earnestly. ‘I mean I know. But I don’t mind.’

  Another opportunist, realized Josef. Like Devgeny, Nikolai was interested in nothing but himself.

  ‘I see,’ said the negotiator.

  ‘You will make it clear … if anyone wonders, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ promised Josef, wearily. ‘I won’t let anyone misunderstand.’

  ‘Thank you, Josef. You’re a friend.’

  At the door of the flat, Nikolai announced, ‘Sanya’s here,’ and carelessly punched the bell. Instantly a girl opened the door, looking frightened. She was plump, her hair straggled over her face. She had a dressing-gown that was too large hugged around her body. Nikolai pushed past her, straight into the bedroom, not bothering to introduce them. Josef and the girl looked at each other.

  ‘I’m Sanya,’ she identified, finally.

  ‘Nikolai told me. I’m Josef Bultova.’

  ‘I know.’

  Each stood, waiting for the other to speak.

  ‘I work at the Ministry,’ she said.

  ‘I thought I recognized you.’