We helped ourselves to vegetables, the gravy that poured thick as honey with its hints of red wine, fennel and mustard. The Airedales remained well-behaved beside the fire. A violin concerto played in the background and the winter light added an ethereal glow, a patina of well-being. I looked about to see if there were a camera crew recording what was, with a surface glance, just a family sitting down to lunch, but had in the soft light a feeling of being rehearsed, being performed, that we were taking part in a documentary that would be titled The Way To Live.
Like a puck in ice hockey, the conversation skated back and forth across the table. Everyone talked and everyone listened. There were no quiet moments. We heard the kissing incident again and Hugh said he didn't really like girls, except his sisters. Joe spoke about the 'uptick' in the markets. It was good for everyone. Unemployment was a social sickness; a disease. It destroyed lives. He was a dove with the eyes of a hawk juggling contradictory positions.
He poured red wine from a decanter.
Tom talked about the Holi festival in Sri Lanka when everyone throws paint and perfume at each other in the street, and the children at the orphanage thought he had turned into a devil when he appeared with a red face.
'It's fun, but sort of tragic,' he said. 'The paint used to be made from herbs, neem, turmeric, stuff I don't even know the names of, but actually helped offset colds and viruses when the weather changed. Now, they use synthetic dyes that are toxic and have the opposite effect. The tradition's the same, but instead of being healthy it's dangerous.'
'Traditions that have lost their origins are the hardest to break,' Tamsin quoted. 'Who said that?'
'Oscar Wilde or Samuel Johnson, it's always one or the other,' Tom replied.
'I think it's JK Rowling,' Clemency proposed, and her dad laughed.
'I wouldn't be surprised.'
Hugh took advantage of this moment to slide his plate closer and I transferred his asparagus to my own. He then told a convoluted story about a boy with a chocolate passport that melted while flying from America to England. He mashed his food so that it looked smaller and didn't eat a thing. Tamsin, who had, of course, noticed the asparagus ploy, forked up a small chunk of kidney from Hugh's plate.
'For the blue team,' she said.
He took the piece of meat, rolled it around his mouth and chewed it down, the ritual fulfilled. Gretchen explained.
'Daddy and Clemency have grey eyes and are so greedy they eat everything.'
'We're not greedy, are we, daddy?'
'Except when it comes to marzipan dipped in chocolate,' he said.
'Yes, yes, I want some. I want it now.'
'So do I,' said Hugh.
'That's not going to happen,' said Tamsin, and glanced at me with neat white teeth in her pink smile. 'The blue team are epicureans and the grey team are bon vivants.'
Everyone laughed. Everyone seemed satisfied and Clemency changed the subject. With that odd fascination with death that often visits small children, she was sure Dr Watson was dead, like Harold, the hamster, and Mr Holmes would need counselling. Joe thought Dr Watson might have gone to visit Marmalade, the ginger cat that lived over the hill at Hawley House, and promised to go out and look for him again after lunch. Tom said he would go, too. There was nothing he liked more than a good walk in the country.
'That's a plan,' said Tamsin, glancing at me.
We drank the red wine, Muga, a Rioja, 2003, the year of the heat wave; of Roger Devlin. Joe thought life too short to drink bad wine. The steak and kidney pie had been cooked with mead instead of water, and the grey team had second helpings.
'Katie?' Tamsin asked, a wedge of pie balanced on a serving spoon.
'I'm in the green team. We don't believe in coalitions,' I said, and won a laugh from Tom.
Gretchen followed her mother into the kitchen with the dirty plates and helped ferry out individual dishes in the shape of apples cut in half, the set made by Tamsin, the crumble with apples from the orchard.
'That's where the house got its name, Bramley,' Gretchen told me. 'We have trees that are, like, five-hundred years old.'
'Two hundred,' Clemency corrected.
Gretchen turned to her father. 'It's five hundred, isn't it?'
'Sorry, honey, she's right this time.'
There was cream in a glass bowl. I assumed it was home-made. Joe stood, his head skimming the beams, and threw an extra couple of logs on the fire. Red sparks danced up the chimney and the Airedales swivelled their heads to watch. I accepted more wine. I wasn't keen on desserts, but the crumble was delicious, and I ate it all.
'When are you off again?' Joe asked Tom.
'Another two weeks,' he replied; the first I'd heard of it.
'You know they've started oil exploration in the Cauvery and Mannar basins?' Joe continued. He sat. 'At least that'll end the country's dependency on imports.'
'Is it a good time to invest?'
I thought Tom was probably joking, but Joe removed his glasses and thoughtfully polished them on his linen napkin before answering. 'I don't really like to give advice, the markets are driven more by emotion than common sense. But, yeah, I'd say so. Future wars are going to be about resources.'
'Haven't they always?' said Tom, and Gretchen continued.
'Why do they have to have wars all the time?'
'It's man's nature,' Tamsin answered, and gave her daughter a conspiratorial look. 'And we girls have to pick up the pieces.'
'It doesn't matter how much people have got, they always want more,' said Joe, and everyone laughed as Clemency waved her napkin in the air like a flag.
'Yes, more, I want more.'
Gretchen had finished her apple crumble and Tamsin sent her out into the kitchen to help herself.
I finished the Rioja in my glass. Smooth, deep, the taste of Spain; warm days below blue summer skies. Yes, life is too short. The children asked permission to leave the table and went off to do those things children do on winter afternoons. Joe brought a tray with coffees to the library, an unpretentious room with books higgledy-piggledy on the shelves, a television and another log fire. The dogs wandered in and stood gazing at Joe with dull expectant faces. He drank his coffee, placed the cup back on the tray, added a log to the fire and spoke to Tom.
'Shall we?'
Tom had opened a book, which he tucked back in its slot on the shelf. He turned to me with a smile I was growing used to, curious, enigmatic. 'Don't let her bully you,' he said, and glanced at Tamsin. 'Lovely lunch, as always.'
'Yes, thank you. Bye, Thomas.'
Joe whistled, the Airedales bolted out and Tom closed the door behind him as he left the room. Tamsin pushed off her shoes, tucked her legs beneath her, and yawned as she stretched out on the sofa.
'Oh, I'm so sorry, Katie, it's been a long day.'
'I imagine all your days are long.'
'I can't begin to tell you,' she said, and then she did.
Tamsin sang in the church choir with Gretchen. Hugh didn't enjoy all the starting and stopping at rehearsals; he was one of those people who, once they started something, want to see it through to the end. Clemency was a 'committed agnostic.' Her youngest daughter considered it scientifically impossible that Jesus had walked on water or raised Lazarus from the dead. She was, at six, sceptical, inquisitive and had one of those memories like a filing cabinet with everything neatly tucked away. Gretchen was more like her, organized, industrious, 'a busy bee,' she said, the words Tom had used to describe Tamsin.
She removed a clip and shook out her hair; it glimmered like gold in the thin light. Just as Tom's tone changed when he talked about Sri Lanka, Tamsin's voice took on an intense quality when she came to Hugh. He had the eyes of the blue team, but the intellectual potential of the grey. He suffered from non-progressive cerebral palsy, a condition that normally begins during pregnancy or at child-birth. Tamsin didn't say, but I got the feeling she blamed herself for Hugh's disability and her mission was to put it right, put the world back in balance.
Her life was a canvas on which she had painted a portrait of herself against the landscape at Bramley, the scene illustrated by the horses, obedient dogs, inventive pottery, her clever husband and super-kids. Hugh was undertaking oxygen therapy to reactivate malfunctioning brain cells and was taking elocution lessons with 'an old Shakespearean hand.' He was a work in progress, the unfinished detail at the heart of the canvas.
There was silence, less reflective than theatrical, a re-crossing of those good legs, an obligation to take part in this game of show and tell. When the red wine reaches the bloodstream there is a yearning to tell the truth; it bubbles out of you like sweat, like tears, like a confession that leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Better a well told lie than a tedious truth. Truth is flexible, malleable, a yellow exercise ball, a chunk of wet clay that can be shaped into a spiralling futuristic vase suitable for pale winter roses or a little black devil with whiskers and a grinning face.
Time to tell, but tell what? She wants to know who I am but I don't know who I am. It's just an insane question that strikes you – that strikes me, in moments of doubt – and even in those moments there is another part of me, a reflection, a shadow in the corner asking why I am suffering this feeling. There are those, Mother for one, who say I have everything. If only life were that simple. We see the façade, the exterior. We can't see the rooms and compartments inside other people's heads. There are many ways to live, to love, to aspire. The mountain only has one peak but there are limitless paths that you can take to reach it. The secret, they say, is to find your own path and stick to it. What they don't tell you is that the path is invisible. If you find it, or imagine you've found it, you follow the path in the dark with nothing to guide you but self-belief. Knowing who you are and what you want is only one part of the puzzle. Conquering doubt and growing wings of self-confidence is the inner core of self, and there's always the Black Dwarf to pull you back down when you feel the air beneath your wings and start flying.
Life is too short for cheap wine and good wine pours itself from the bottle. My head was full of grey matter turning darker. It was hot, the fire blazing. I took off my jacket.
'More coffee?'
'No. Thank you.'
Her smile was patient; relentless.
I write. All writing is tenuous, abstract, self-indulgent. The ultimate fear is that nothing means anything and it is that fear that haunts you every time you stroke the keyboard and watch the words slip from your head to the screen, pinning them there like an accusation. Apart from writing, how do I caricature myself in a few lines? Cambridge, that box that's always ticked. Whispering spires and damp cobbles. The first story published in an erotic magazine. Trips to Singapore to visit Daddy – a spy, bureaucrat, I'm never sure of the difference. The abandoned attempt to learn Chinese. Marketing. Waitressing.
Boyfriends?
What do I say? What did I say?
A film clip of forgotten faces flashed behind my eyes, a journalist, a photographer or two, a sculptor, the gay set designer sampling alien fruit; actors, they are such fun, such narcissists. It all seemed so shallow when I compared myself to Tamsin and her busy-bee ring of activities and achievements. She knew who she was, where she fit into the universe, her life in some strange way given greater significance by her beautiful son and their biblical quest to cast off his crutches and speed up the tape of his gently blurred voice.
'You are so lucky to be a writer. It's so creative.'
Was this a question? Am I lucky?
'Yes, except for the migraine, the insomnia, the long hours with the words like mosquitoes...' I paused.
Was I plagiarising myself?
'Like moving ants you try hopelessly to arrange in some sort of order. The feeling that nothing's ever perfect.'
'Is that so important with erotica? I thought it was all, you know, rumpy-pumpy.'
'A lot of it is.' I sighed. I had been out-manoeuvred. The steak and kidney felt like lead in my gut.
'Why did you choose erotica?'
'You sound like my mother.'
'Really? I suppose people say the same things. We're all a bit of a cliché.' Her expression changed. 'Are you close?'
'No.'
'Tom says you're rather brilliant. He's a good judge,' she said. 'It's such a relief he's his old self again after Marie-France. I knew she was trouble the moment I laid eyes on her.'
'Marie-France?'
'Oh, you don't know her. She was awful. Awful. She broke Tom's heart.'
'Oh.'
'I'm sorry, Katie, I didn't mean that. It's over. I assure you, and thank heavens for that.'
'Marie-France,' I said. 'It's a beautiful name.'
11
Kamarovsky's Girl
Who among us has not dreamt, in moments of ambition, of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and rhyme, supple and staccato enough to adapt to the lyrical stirrings of the soul, the undulations of dreams, and sudden leaps of consciousness. This obsessive idea is above all a child of giant cities, of the intersecting of their myriad relations. – Baudelaire, from Le Spleen de Paris
In the last days of Soviet Russia, two groups of people disappeared through the vanishing iron curtain: the former apparatchiks turned oligarchs, who had obtained the deeds to the nation's natural resources, and the party insiders at the defunct ministries, who were going to help them spend it.
Leon Kamarovsky was one of the latter. An adviser on French art at the Ministry of Culture until its dissolution in 1991, he was a guest at the marriage of a former KGB general who revealed after hurling his glass in the fireplace that his young bride, tall, blonde and with an interest in fashion, had refused to submit to his fondness for restraints until he found them a home in France. The two men wept, the Russian way, and, in the beat of those sobs, the young art attaché heard the sound of opportunity knocking.
Kamarovsky had travelled to Paris on official delegations. He had always enjoyed the city, the language, the river turning gold at sunset, the girls with their swaying nonchalant walk. Like a fly buzzing against a window, thoughts of seeking asylum had moved often through his mind. But to do what exactly? And with what? Even now, with the frontiers open, unlike those who had got their hands on the oil and gas, the Chigalls and Kandinskys in The Russian Museum were an unmoveable feast.
By the time the general dried his eyes and filled another glass, he was committed to Kamarovsky's proposal that he, Kamarovsky, a French speaker, journey to France to find a suitable property. With a small retainer, he left immediately, such was the general's misery, and every day through the coming weeks faxed back photographs and details of the houses he had visited. They spoke regularly on the telephone and, sight unseen, the general finally agreed to buy a 17th century chateau in Sancerre, a hilltop town noted for its gourmet restaurants and fast road links to the couturier shows in Paris. With its wistful towers and high arched windows, the chateau satisfied two preconditions: it was flooded with light and had wide vistas in every direction, the opposite of the general's office in the Lubyanka Building with its windowless cells and abiding demons.
It was the start of the global boom in house prices that ended with the banking crisis and the worst depression since the 1929 Wall Street Crash. But that was to come and, in the heady years of the nineties, Kamarovsky found, as few men do, his raison d'être. With their innate fear of inflationary spirals and fluctuating exchange rates, Russians with bulging suitcases were eager property buyers and the French nobility, who had inherited their chateaux without the funds to maintain them, were willing sellers.
Kamarovsky travelled from the austere agricultural towns of the north to the sun-washed Côte d'Azur, from the Alpine slopes of Saint-Jean Montclar to Biarritz with its faded hotels and neglected boulevards. The small city was like an ageing beautiful woman in a dress from another season, an echo to Kamarovsky of the Russia he had left behind. He stood on the long wind-blown beach in this forgotten corner of south-western France with the waves filling his vision. His eyes wel
led-up in tears, real tears, as he realized for the first time that he was free. Free of morose Mother Russia. Free of the party, the past. Free to be whoever and whatever he wanted to be. As he walked back to his hotel, it was as if he had left behind on the empty beach an empty shell, the husk of the past. He pulled back the wide doors at the Hotel du Palais and it was a different person who stepped across the threshold.
Leon Kamarovsky was tall, dark with wide cheekbones, a hooked nose, like some Caesar on a Roman coin, full, sensitive lips, dark hair and deep-set almond-coloured eyes, a reminder of the forebears who had migrated west from Kazakhstan a century before his own journey westward to Paris and Biarritz. He was immensely strong but light, supple, like a dancer with a dancer's sense of rhythm and timing. Free from the cropped brush cut customary at the Ministry of Culture, he wore his dark hair swept back in a shiny wave and grew a moustache that added maturity to his firm features. In 1992 he celebrated his thirty-first birthday, a milestone in the age of a man, thirty being connected to the twenties, of youthful vanity and excess. At thirty-one, he reasoned, it was time to lay the foundations for the future. With his Emile Lafaurie suits in pale colours, long walks following street plans through the bejewelled fabric of French towns and cities, and a love of sea swimming, be it the Mediterranean or the Atlantic, he grew lean, bronzed, and was one of those men who turned the heads of women when he passed.
Arranging the purchase of the chateau for the KGB general provided Kamarovsky with a reputation as a fixer, a man who got things done; great success often begins with a minor triumph. He sought out properties for the new Russian entrepreneurs, yachts and berths to keep them in, rundown hotels needing a cash injection, there were a great number in Biarritz; empty castles, abandoned vineyards, towns hungry for a shopping mall. He took commissions from the sellers, not the buyers. Those men who had slipped through the crumbling walls may have shaken the dust and debris from their collars, but remained what they were. They knew Kamarovsky would never cross them and he knew, if he did, he would be cast off, most probably from the deck of a yacht at night with his throat slit and his feet weighed down with a rusting bust of Joseph Stalin.
Katie In Love: full length erotic romance novel Page 12