by Rose Tremain
After a bit, I wished I’d taken the bureau and given Mrs Gavrilovich the desk, because more interesting things turned up in the bureau. There was a bag of champagne corks with dates written on them, each date apparently corresponding to the publication of one of Valentina’s books. There was a leather lizard stuffed with dry beans, a packet of Polish joss sticks, some broken amber beads, a town plan of Beijing, a bottle of Ambre Solaire, an old photo of nurses and prams in the Luxembourg Gardens, a collection of theatre programmes, a bottle of scarlet nail polish, a magnifying glass with a pearl handle, seven boxes of old Christmas cards, a Russian history book, a paper knife stamped Made in Iceland and bank statements for five different bank accounts. I put the leather lizard on top of the computer, where he gazed out at the room, while I worked through the desk drawers.
All I found in these were stacks of envelopes and typing paper, staples and paperclips and rubber bands and scissors. There were files of press cuttings and a stash of manuals showing Valentina how to programme her telephone memory, set up her video recorder and mend her vacuum cleaner, should it ever break down. I was going through these when I heard Mrs Gavrilovich say: ‘Louis, here’s something,’ and when I turned I saw that she was reading Valentina’s Filofax diary.
‘Hospital,’ said Mrs Gavrilovich. ‘On Tuesday, after lunch with Grisha, Valentina had an appointment at the hospital.’
I put down the instruction manuals and we both stared at the diary entry: Déjeuner G. Hôpital i6h 10.
‘Unfortunately,’ said Mrs Gavrilovich, ‘we don’t know which department . . .’
‘X-ray,’ I said.
Mrs Gavrilovich took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes with her stubby fingers. Then she found the hospital number and dialled it. She had to wait to be connected to the X-ray department. I saw the leather lizard watching me. I felt really stupid that I’d forgotten all about Valentina’s hospital appointment. Porphiry Petrovich would never have had such a fatal memory lapse.
Mrs Gavrilovich had a short conversation with the receptionist at X-ray, talking slowly in her heavy French. ‘This person says,’ she said, ‘that she didn’t personally check Valentina in when she arrived, but saw her in the waiting area. She remembers admiring her dress.’
I thought, that’s right: nobody who’d seen Valentina in that beautiful black-and-white dress would ever forget it. And I saw her again, clear as light: she goes into the revolving door of the hotel and she turns and she waves . . .
I tried to blank the image out. I said: ‘I guess this tells us that Valentina definitely left Grisha when he got into the taxi at three-thirty, or before,’ but as I was saying this I was getting a new thought. ‘Suppose,’ I said, ‘that the taxi which left the hotel wasn’t going to the airport? Suppose the taxi was taking Valentina and Grisha to the hospital and then later, after the hospital appointment, Grisha somehow persuaded Valentina to go back to Russia with him?’
Mrs Gavrilovich stared at me and the lizard stared at us both. The brigadier had told Alice that all evening flights to Moscow on that day would be checked for Passenger Gavril, but I knew and Mrs Gavrilovich knew that this was more or less a waste of time; if Valentina had wanted to disappear, she wouldn’t have travelled under her own name.
We talked about all this for a while, then drifted back to our search of the bureau and the desk. In the last drawer of the bureau, Mrs Gavrilovich found a photograph album. As she hauled it out, she said: ‘Come, Louis, now I will show you when we were younger.’ She laid it on the bureau and I stood by her as she began turning the pages.
It was ‘the time of the café’, she said. Twenty years ago, before Anton died. And there was Anton, looking handsome, with thick dark hair and a walrus moustache, smiling by the bar, smiling sitting on his coal cart, smiling in a garden, wearing his best clothes, smiling with his arm round a beautiful blonde girl. ‘Valya,’ said Mrs Gavrilovich.
The girl was Valentina. She was wearing a white embroidered blouse. Her hair was long and piled up on the top of her head. She’d lain her head on her father’s shoulder. I thought, it’s not surprising that I’m in love with someone so fantastically gorgeous.
We spent a long time going through the album. I saw the coal yard where Anton had died and the little dog, Semion, he’d owned at the time. There were photographs of a New Year’s Eve party in the café, where everyone looked drunk and Valentina was kissing a man wearing a wastepaper basket on his head. ‘Alexis,’ said Mrs Gavrilovich. ‘Valya’s husband, long ago. Crazy, he was. You can see it, no? Completely crazy.’
‘What kind of crazy?’ I asked.
‘Just crazy, Louis. Valentina came to me about one year after the wedding and said, “Matushka, last night Alexis tried to burn down the flat.” So she left him and came back to live with us over the café.’
‘What happened to Alexis?’
‘I don’t know. Valya divorced him long ago. Perhaps he’s still living, still crazy somewhere, still poor. Who knows?’
By the last page of the album, Valentina was fatter and Anton’s hair was going grey. Mrs Gavrilovich had lost one of her front teeth and the terrier, Semion, had a white muzzle. The café, which was called the Café des Russes, had acquired an awning and the old horse and cart used for the coal deliveries had been replaced by a second-hand Citroën pick-up truck. There was only one other photo of Alexis. In it, he was lying on the ground in the snow, looking up at the sky.
Tucked loosely into the back of the album were two pictures of a young woman, sitting at a desk. I recognised the desk: it was the one I was going through right now. There was a different, smaller computer on it, but it was definitely Valentina’s desk. ‘Who’s this?’ I asked.
Mrs Gavrilovich glanced at the photos and then looked away. She shook her head. ‘Aach,’ she said. ‘That girl! Put them away.’
‘What girl?’
‘Trouble, that one. Nothing but trouble for Valya. Put her away.’
I took the pictures over to the desk and laid them face down in a drawer. I thought, I’ll do as she says now, but I’m not going to forget about them.
That evening, a rainstorm came. I stood at my round window and looked out of it for ages, remembering rain. There were a few people in the windows opposite, staring out too, like you’d stare if war had broken out, or if the street had caught fire.
When the storm was over, the air smelled odd, like damp wool. I felt lonely. I thought, the days are just passing. What if September comes and we have to go back to England and Valentina still hasn’t been found?
I picked up Le Grand Meaulnes, which had fallen under my bed. It was getting dusty under there. It was a long time since I’d read a word of it; I’d been diverted by Crime and Punishment. But now I thought, I want to see how François is holding up. I knew what he’d called his ‘days of sorrow’ could be coming soon and I wanted to see what he did to get through them.
He was on a quest to find someone. It wasn’t really his quest, but Meaulnes’, whose only single waking and sleeping dream was to get back to the ‘lost domain’ where he’d glimpsed Yvonne de Galais and made friends with her brother, Frantz. François has never met either of these people. The only evidence he has that they exist is this silk waistcoat Meaulnes brings back with him after his adventure. But this is all François thinks about, too – helping Meaulnes to find them. He never says, ‘Listen, Augustin, perhaps you dreamt up this fantastic château and the dazzling Yvonne and the fancy-dress party and Frantz’s fiancée who never arrives; perhaps you fell asleep in the cart when you got lost and had the most brilliant dream of your life?’ He just makes all that the centre of his existence and then his first real ‘day of sorrow’ arrives.
Meaulnes announces suddenly that he’s leaving Sainte-Agathe, because he’s heard Yvonne is living in Paris. He just deserts François and Millie and Monsieur Seurel and everyone and goes off with hardly a word. François watches his carriage disappear at the turn of the road, then he says: ‘For the first time in months, I
found myself alone before the prospect of a long Thursday afternoon, feeling as though my adolescence had been borne away in that old-fashioned carriage for ever.’
The thing that made me feel worst about the departure of Meaulnes was that Millie was embarrassed in front of the superior Madame Meaulnes, who came to collect him. It had been Millie’s washday and all the damp sheets and towels were draped around the classrooms to dry, which made the schoolhouse seem like some old stinky laundry, and so she was ashamed. Millie is a tragic character. She makes new hats out of bits and pieces sewn on to old ones; she cooks on the school stove to save fuel.
The rain had stopped, but the wet wool smell seemed to linger in my room and merged in my mind with the smell of Millie’s laundry. I was thinking about the power a book can exert over my psyche, when I suddenly asked myself a question. I may even have asked it out loud. The question was: ‘Why, when every other book in Valentina’s study is on a shelf or in a pile on her desk, was that one Russian book hidden in a bureau drawer?’
I sat up and looked at my clock. It was just after midnight. In the maids’ rooms opposite, some lights were still burning. I crept down to Valentina’s study. Sergei still slept on his tatami mat in her bedroom, just as though she were snoring there in the enormous bed. Dogs’ memories are meant to be good, but Sergei’s sometimes seemed a bit flawed.
I took the book out of the bureau drawer and went back up my stairs with it. The cover had no picture, only a lot of Russian writing in red and black. In my search with Mrs Gavrilovich I hadn’t paid it any attention, but now I saw that it was interleaved with yellow Post-It notes, about twenty of them, going right through the book. As well as these, there were pencil writings in the margins – all in Valentina’s handwriting. They said, for example, voir Pierre, voir Isabelle, utilise ceci à prop. de B, idée possible pour Belfort (ville)?, quels étaient les poisons?, voir Père H . . .
I could guess immediately from this what she was doing. It was completely transparent: she was snitching ideas from this old Russian history to use for Pour l’amour d’Isabelle! I remembered what Alice had told me about the pressure on Valentina from Bianquis and I thought, this is how she’s getting through the new novel – she’s stealing stuff from a Russian source that nobody will ever unearth.
I turned back to the red-and-black jacket. The author was called Гρиґoρий Паиии I thought, I bet Гρиґoρий Паиии whoever he may be, lives in some horrible little apartment, worse than Violette’s, where the electricity comes on for only a few hours a day. He’s probably never earned any proper money in his entire life and would die of shock if he knew what Valentina had spent on her ‘Ypres’ scarf.
I went to sleep dreaming about the scarf. I was counting the number of poppies on it and the number came to ten and then to thirty-one and then to fifty-three and then to a hundred and seventy-five.
In the morning, it was as if the rain had never been. The rue Rembrandt was dusty and dry again and the sky was bright.
Alice told me there was a parcel for me, from Hugh. ‘What’s he sent you, then?’ she asked.
I said: ‘I can’t tell you. It’s to do with his project,’ and took the package up to my room.
Hugh had wrapped Elroy in a piece of kitchen roll. When I took him out, I saw that his Royal Marines uniform, which had got dirty over the years, had been washed and ironed. The feel of his plastic body in my hands evoked for me all the hundreds of missions I’d sent him on and, to my horrible shame, I found I was quite affected by this. I threw him on my bed and thought, God, I’m a retard.
Included with him was a letter from Hugh, which went:
Dear Lewis,
Just a quick bulletin from the Home Front.
Bertie and I have had a go at mending Elroy. (We’re getting so skilled at building things, we believe we can fix anything now!) His body won’t be quite as mobile as it was, but at least he’s in one piece! We hope you approve.
Drove Bertie and Gwyneth into Portsmouth yesterday, for shopping and tea. Your Gran spent a fortune on a splendid new outfit for Cousin Minnie’s wedding next month (you and Mum will be back in time for this; a rather glitzy affair in London), then we found a wonderful Danish tea room with a garden at the back, serving excellent pastries. All in all, a very enjoyable outing.
Trust all continues fine chez Valentina. I miss you both and have started to count the days till you return.
With love from Dad
I made my bed and buried Elroy in it, so that Alice wouldn’t find him. I put all the packing stuff and Hugh’s letter in the wastepaper basket.
I heard footsteps on my stairs then. Footsteps on those stairs were always Valentina’s in my mind.
Alice’s head appeared and she said: ‘I just had a phone call from the commissariat. An Inspecteur Carmody. He wants to see us straight away.’
‘Why? Has something happened?’
‘He wouldn’t say. He wants us to go there now.’
I sat down on the top step. Alice sat three steps lower. All I knew was that if I was going to be told that Valentina was dead, I wouldn’t be able to bear it. I’d start screaming or howling like a wolf, or throwing chairs around, or biting the wall. I just wouldn’t be able to get through the next moments of my life.
‘How did he sound?’ I said. ‘Did he sound as if he had bad news.’
‘He sounded ordinary . . .’
‘What do you mean, “ordinary”?’
‘Calm. Polite. He just said he wanted to talk to us.’
‘About Valentina?’
‘I assume. Shall we go now and get it over with?’
I didn’t want to ‘go now’. I felt as if I wanted to sit rooted to this step for the rest of time.
I said quickly: ‘If anything terrible had happened to her, he wouldn’t have wanted me to go, would he? He’d have tried to protect me, because I’m thirteen. He’d just have asked to see you on your own, wouldn’t he?’
‘Yes, probably.’
‘Definitely, he would. Then you would be able to tell me later, when I was at home, when I was sitting down, or something . . .’
‘Perhaps.’
‘No, it’s certain. Are you sure he asked to see us both?’
‘Yes. “You and your son”, he said.’
‘Then it’s OK. I know it’s OK . . .’
The walk to the commissariat took only about four minutes. Part of me wanted to get there right away and another part didn’t want to get there at all, ever. We didn’t talk on the way, but just walked hand in hand, like we used to do when I was small. It was Saturday and some of the residents of the rue Rembrandt had their chauffeurs there, polishing their cars, and I wished I was a chauffeur with nothing to worry about except a Mercedes.
There was a different brigadier on the desk, older-looking, with better handwriting. He asked us to wait. I wondered if there was ever a moment in this commissariat when there was no one waiting and the brigadiers could all lounge around and talk about football.
We waited quite a long time. I thought I was going to get that feeling of being behind a glass panel again, but I didn’t. I just had a pain in my chest that felt like a tumour. Grandma Gwyneth told me that shock and terror can give people cancer. It makes their immune systems forgetful.
A woman police person came to get us. She wore trousers like the men and carried a gun in a holster on her hip and the brigadier addressed her as Denise. She had black hair in a ponytail. As we followed her up a flight of echoey stairs, I thought, I hope Denise will hold me when I start to hurl the chairs around.
We were shown into Carmody’s office. The room was small, on the sunny side of the building, with a venetian blind drawn down. Inspecteur Carmody didn’t look like a policeman; he looked more like a flamenco dancer. He had large brown eyes that glittered in a tanned face. He wore a white shirt and a smart little blue waistcoat, undone all the way down because of the heat. ‘Sit down,’ he said.
We waited. I wanted Alice to say somethin
g, but she didn’t. Carmody had a piece of paper in front of him with typed notes on it. He picked up a pen and rolled it in his brown hands.
‘She isn’t dead, is she?’ I blurted out.
Carmody looked at me kindly. ‘I hope not,’ he said. ‘We don’t know where she is or what has happened, but we have realised now who she is and so we are treating this as a possible kidnap. This is why I wanted to talk to you.’
So, he didn’t know anything. He wasn’t about to describe finding Valentina’s black-and-white dress on a piece of wasteland or floating in the river. Nothing was going to become final – at least, not yet. I began to breathe deeply again and after a minute I felt my tumour get small again, as if the air I was taking in was making it melt away.
We bought hot dogs and sat in the Parc Monceau near the kids’ roundabout. The children all had big smiles on their faces, as if this carousel ride were the most brilliant thing that had ever happened to them. Alice said: ‘Sometimes I wish you were a child again,’ and I said: ‘I am a child for about two point three minutes in every twenty-four hours. But on certain days I’m seventeen, as I expect you’ve noticed.’
Alice smiled. Then we started to discuss our meeting with Inspecteur Carmody. He told us that the likelihood of a kidnap having occurred was, in his opinion, high. The motive would be money. Everyone knew that Valentina Gavril was rich. If she had been kidnapped, he would expect a ransom demand to arrive within the next few days, sent either to Valentina’s publishers, Bianquis, or to Mrs Gavrilovich, or possibly even to us at the flat. He said the case had been assigned to him and he would be talking to everybody who had had anything to do with Valentina in the last year.
He watched us closely all the time he was speaking, as if, in the back of his mind, lay the idea that we might be guilty in some way, and then asked us to state exactly what we were doing in Paris and how long we intended to stay.
Alice remained calm. She smiled at Carmody and I watched him to see if her beauty was going to affect him and I saw immediately that it did. He leaned forward as she began speaking and rested his chin on his hands. He wrote nothing down.