The Other Son

by Nick Alexander

  Tim returns to the lounge, relieves the packing guy of the iPad (which it seems he was about to bubble-wrap) and instructs him not to unplug the broadband box until the very end. ‘I need Wi-Fi till the last possible moment,’ he says.

  He returns briefly to the kitchen. Natalya is standing over the espresso machine making coffee. At least she’s not hunting for the vodka bottle.

  ‘Nat?’ he says. ‘You said the broadband’s sorted in the new place, right?’

  ‘The Internet?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I tell you. The Virgin will come this afternoon. The only thing you care is Internet.’

  ‘It’s work, hon,’ Tim says, now returning to the lounge.

  She’s right though. Tim’s biggest fear is being deprived of access to the Internet during the move, and of suddenly, on reconnecting, discovering that the world has changed and that he has missed some vastly important boat. Things move fast these days, and as mobile reception in the new house seems patchy, he’s worried. They could stay in a hotel for a few days and he wouldn’t care one bit. They could eat every meal out of a Pizza Hut box for a week, and he would barely even notice. But to find himself without an Internet connection – that would be a disaster. As far as Tim’s concerned (and it’s probably the case, he reckons, for about half of his generation) Wi-Fi has replaced food or water or sex, or very probably all three, at the base of Maslow’s triangle of human needs.

  In the lounge, on a garden chair (the sofa has been dragged away, either to the new place or to the tip – he’s not sure what they decided any more) he logs into his share account and misses a heartbeat as he looks at the column of red figures. This move has stretched him to breaking point, and he really doesn’t have any spare capacity for a failed deal. But Greece, bloody Greece, is dragging the Euro even lower, and his Gazprom shares are down too. That’s because of Putin sizing up to Europe for a fight. (Actually, Natalya, who occasionally blindsides him with her lucidity about international affairs, says it’s NATO pushing Putin into a corner, not the other way around, and she may well be right.) Still, whoever’s fault it is, it’s not good for Tim. He needs one of three things to happen: either Greece to pull through, to be saved by the EU, or Putin to back off and let things calm down in Ukraine, or for Greece to do a deal with Russia to get all that Gazprom gas flowing into Europe by the back door. Actually, they could even just look like they’re going to do a deal for long enough for him to sell his damned shares. Ten minutes would do, hence the importance of the Internet connection.

  And right now, in the midst of Tim’s international stress, here’s Natalya who promised to organise ALL of this asking him about every bloody item they own. ‘Should we take this or get new one, Timski?’ she’s asking, over and over as she points to the bookcase, or the coffee table, or the CD rack. And Tim really, honestly doesn’t give a shit.

  ‘Take it all, or replace everything, or do both,’ he tells her, dragging his eyes from an article about the Greek finance minister (who may or may not have stepped down). ‘There’s enough bloody room, isn’t there?’

  ‘But is expensive, no? To change everything,’ Natalya says, revealing her preference.

  ‘It honestly makes no odds, Nat,’ Tim says.

  Natalya blinks at him confusedly. She wonders if her husband is telling her they’re so rich that money’s no object.

  The truth is slightly more complex. If Greece gets saved and Tim can flog his Gazprom shares, then Natalya’s interpretation will be spot on – they’ll be so loaded it won’t matter. If neither of these happens, they’ll be down millions. Either way, the cost of a new sofa is neither here nor there.

  7

  MAY

  Tim pads down the polished concrete staircase to the lounge, and thinks, yet again, that he needs to buy slippers. His feet are freezing.

  They’ve been living here two weeks to the day, and he has had the same thought thirteen mornings in a row.

  It’s just before five, so the sun isn’t up yet. Natalya and the kids are still sleeping, and the house feels boundless and empty and as cold as a train station at 3 a.m. Tim glances around, almost expecting to discover a tramp sleeping in a corner.

  He crosses the lounge and enters the galley kitchen, another over-designed, oversized space, shaped, in this case, like a canal boat. The six-metre countertops running along either side look absurd and empty. They need, Tim thinks, more stuff on them. But Natalya’s against. Natalya likes her surfaces.

  At the far end, he switches on the little espresso machine, waits for it to warm up, and then makes himself a cup of coffee before returning to the lounge where he sits on the sofa and stares at the blackness of the window. He watches as the sky beyond begins to lighten. He’s never, as a general rule, awake before dawn, but has managed it three times this week. It’s all the stress of the move, his worries about the markets and the novelty of the new house. It will pass.

  He checks his trading accounts on the iPad. There’s been no surprise reprieve overnight and everything’s as grim as it was when he went to bed. He mentally calculates how long he can continue paying the loan on this place as well as the bridging loan on the old one before the well runs dry. He reckons they’ll be OK till July, maybe August. And surely something will give by then, won’t it?

  The sky is edging towards pink now, the sun peeking over the horizon, and, seemingly automatically, like a mathematical result, the imminent arrival of daylight makes him feel a little better. There are things you can still count on, the planet seems to be telling him. The sun will still rise.

  Tim shivers and looks around for a jumper or a blanket he can throw over himself, but Vladlena has tidied everything away and he can’t be bothered to return upstairs. He notes again the strange space surrounding him and feels vaguely surprised. He keeps finding himself doing this. It’s as if he forgets that they’ve moved houses and has to remind himself of the fact every time he wakes up, every time he looks up from the iPad or switches off the TV. It’s not a comforting feeling. It’s the opposite of comforting, in fact. He tries now to remember why they did all of this, tries to remember the vision he had of this house and momentarily it’s there again: Tim, relaxed, trim, well dressed, smiling; Natalya, beyond the window, rubbing in suntan lotion beside the pool; Tim’s music blaring from the hi-fi; the kids running around upstairs . . .

  The rising sun is highlighting a series of ugly smears on the big picture window – Vladlena, apparently, can’t reach any higher than five feet from the ground. The sofa beneath him is their old one and, lost in the vastness of the lounge, it looks like a small tatty armchair that doesn’t fit the space at all.

  Tim hasn’t bothered to set up the hi-fi yet because he’s holding out for new speakers and it’s too cold outside to use the pool, which in any case has turned in the two weeks since they’ve been here from translucent turquoise to a deep shade of algae green. Tim shivers again. The much-dreamt-of picture window creates a permanent downdraught of chilled air. It’s all a long way from his original vision. Thank God summer will be here soon.

  He turns the thermostat up to twenty-three, grabs an overcoat from the entrance to use as a blanket and soon he’s asleep on the sofa with the iPad on his chest rising and falling as he snores.

  He’s woken at seven by Boris climbing on to his legs, and opens his eyes to see Natalya in her dressing gown, looking down at him concernedly.

  ‘You can’t sleep again?’ she asks softly.

  ‘Uh huh,’ Tim says.

  She strokes his hair. ‘Poor Timski.’

  ‘Have you seen the state of the pool?’ Tim asks.

  Natalya nods.

  ‘When’s the pool guy supposed to be coming? It looks like bloody pea soup out there.’

  ‘Pea soup!’ Boris repeats. He seems for some reason to find this funny.

  Natalya frowns. She reckons Tim knows perfectly well that the pool guy was supposed to come yesterday. She’s pretty sure his question is not
hing more than disguised reproach. ‘Today maybe,’ she lies, removing her hand from his head.

  ‘And have you seen the state of the windows?’ Tim asks. ‘It looks like Vladlena’s been cleaning them with a dead cat.’

  ‘Maybe she did. Is Russian tradition, you know?’

  ‘Seriously though, can you buy the woman a stepladder or something? Or maybe even get someone new who knows how to actually clean windows?’

  Natalya pulls a face, shakes her head, and blows out through pursed lips in an apparent indication of despair.

  ‘What?’ Tim asks, as she turns back to the staircase. ‘Seriously? What did I say?’

  ‘And good morning to you, darling,’ she says sarcastically.

  Once she has gone back to bed, Tim turns his attention to Boris, wide awake and attempting to bounce on his stomach. ‘Whoops. Looks like Daddy’s upset Mummy,’ he says.

  ‘Whoops,’ Boris repeats, smiling mischievously.

  ‘We’ll buy her some flowers later,’ Tim says, realising that he has been mean to Natalya recently. It’s the shock of the new house. It’s waking up at 4 a.m. and not knowing where he is and never being able to find anything. It’s all been getting to him, and he’s been taking at least part of it out on his wife. He vows to make up for it today. ‘She likes flowers, yeah?’

  ‘And chocolate?’ Boris asks.

  ‘Yes, chocolate too.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘Sure, OK,’ Tim laughs.

  ‘Not for Alex though.’

  ‘Why not?’ Tim asks.

  ‘Alex is baaad,’ Boris says, starting to bounce up and down again.

  By the time Natalya resurfaces, Tim has left for work. Vladlena is playing with the boys on the big grey rug.

  ‘Dobroye utro,’ Vladlena says, looking up and smiling – good morning.

  ‘Good morning,’ Natalya replies in English. ‘Tim is gone, yes?’

  Vladlena nods and raises an eyebrow. ‘Da,’ she says. ‘He told me off about the windows, but I told him, I’m only little – I can’t reach that high.’

  ‘I know,’ Natalya says. ‘It’s fine.’ She kneels between Boris and Alex. ‘What are you two making?’ she asks.

  Alex shrugs. He’s holding a block of randomly stuck together Lego pieces.

  ‘Mine’s a space motorbike,’ Boris says.

  Vladlena glances at her watch. ‘We need to be off soon,’ she says. ‘You want a coffee before I go?’

  Natalya nods. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘That would be nice.’

  She lies down on the rug and allows herself a brief moment of comfort as the boys’ physical presence swarms around and over her. What with the move and everything, she’s been ignoring their needs almost as much as she’s been forgetting her own need for them. As Alex drives his unnamed object through her hair and Boris runs his space motorbike along her leg, she glances up at the ceiling, so high above them. She notices the way the sunlight cuts across the room. Wow, she thinks. We did it.

  Once Vladlena has returned with her coffee and has whisked the boys off to school (the school is on her way home, after all), Natalya’s emotions shift slowly but surely from awe of the new house, through pride, to a strange sensation of loneliness.

  It’s peculiar, the effect that space, that the shape of space, can have upon your psyche. She never once felt lonely in the old house, but it’s the sheer volume of the rooms here. They make her feel smaller than usual, as if she’s dominated by the building, as if the house perhaps is winning some unnamed battle.

  She shrugs off the feeling and takes a hot shower. The downstairs water pressure here is amazing, more jet wash than shower. Afterwards, she dries herself, gets dressed and begins to hunt for her make-up bag. It’s not where it should be.

  She checks the upstairs bathroom three times, checks the bedroom twice, then returns downstairs to look there. This search, this wandering from one unfamiliar semi-furnished room to another does nothing to lessen her sensation, this morning, of being lost. There are so many damned rooms here. There are so many unpacked cartons still to get through – boxes and boxes containing thousands of individual tiny items that each had their own place in the old house, items she can’t even think where to put now they’re here. Perhaps she can just leave them all in boxes in one of the rooms. Perhaps she can just close the door and forget them forever. But her make-up bag – she had that just yesterday. So how can it be lost today?

  She starts checking unlikely places. The kitchen. The refrigerator. The children’s rooms. She returns upstairs and checks the bathroom, which is silly because she’s already looked three times. But sometimes things do vanish and reappear. She has no explanation, but she knows it to be true. Poltergeists maybe. She should look for her glasses first, she decides, and so she starts to hunt for those instead.

  Eventually, almost distraught, she hurls herself on to the sofa, and there beside her, poking from beneath a cushion, is the goddamned make-up bag. And inside it are her glasses. She feels almost tearful at the discovery, or perhaps at the wasted hour. She’s not sure quite which.

  This move, it’s true, has worn her out. Tim thinks she’s exaggerating when she says that, but it really has. She’s on the edge of tears all the time. She’s feeling stressed and exhausted and lonely. She’s waking up every morning feeling disoriented, wondering where she is. Yet she can’t be seen to complain because it’s her own fault: she pushed for this move. It was she who wanted it, after all.

  And this getting people to do things . . . Getting the pool guy to actually drop by when she’s here, getting the delivery guys to unbox things in the right rooms, getting Vladlena to clean the windows properly; it all turns out to be as hard, if not harder, than doing it all yourself. Who knew?

  She looks up at the smears of Windolene. It’s true that in the sunlight they really do look horrible.

  She walks to the kitchen where she snatches a roll of kitchen towel from the counter, takes the proper window cleaner from the cupboard (not that horrible white cream Vladlena uses), and returns to the lounge. She drags the new coffee table to the window and puts a chair on top of it. She climbs up uncertainly and begins angrily to rub away Vladlena’s smears. It really does look like she used a dead cat.

  Her anger, Natalya realises as she works, is not against Vladlena, and it’s not against Tim. She’s angry, it transpires, with life. She’s angry with life for making everything so difficult, with making everything so goddamned disappointing.

  Vladlena, she thinks, as she climbs down and drags the table and chair to the right, is going to leave them. She’s not sure where the thought came from, but she’s certain, now she’s thought it, that it’s true.

  Vladlena has been complaining about the distance she has to travel to get here. She’s been complaining about dropping the boys at school, too. And she’s upset about not being able to manage the windows. They do, it has to be said, have acres of the damned things, and whoever the architect was, he doesn’t seem to have ever planned for quite how they might be cleaned. To do them properly you’d need to be that comic hero who climbs buildings . . . Spider-Man – that’s the one. And even Spider-Man would leave little sucker traces. Natalya needs to have a word with Tim about that. He needs to lay off criticising Vladlena until he’s tried to do them himself.

  Yes, unless they sweeten the deal, perhaps reduce her hours or up her pay, Vladlena will leave them. And that would be more than a shame.

  Natalya remembers the search that led them (eventually) to Vladlena. Jenny, the previous girl – a live-in au-pair – had slapped Boris across the face. She had threatened him with another slap if he told his parents about it, too. If it hadn’t been for his bright red cheek and Natalya’s intuition, her tenacity in interrogating the boy, they might never have found out. Natalya had slapped Jenny back and then fallen out with Tim, who insisted that slapping employees was not acceptable behaviour even if they had abused your children.

  Natalya remembers how happy she had been once Jenny
had gone. The house had been a mess, and their dinners had all been takeaways, but she had loved being with Alex all day. She had loved picking Boris up from school.

  The chair on which Natalya is standing wobbles and slips a little, and she realises that she’s taking risks by leaning too far out, so she climbs down and drags the table and chair a little farther.

  And poor Tim, what is the move doing to her lovely Timski? He’s working more than ever in an attempt to pay for everything. He’s trying to sell the old place and worrying about Greece, and when he isn’t at work he’s staring into the middle distance through these same smeary windows, looking almost as lost as Natalya feels.

  She peers back at the window to her left – it’s definitely an improvement – then returns, encouraged, to the task at hand.

  Yes, Tim looks lost and his brow seems permanently furrowed these days. And they haven’t had sex once since they moved here; not since Boris interrupted them in the old place, in fact. And that’s not like Tim at all.

  He’s waking at three in the morning and complaining of chest pains as well. And it’s all Natalya’s fault because she knew. She had read the damned article about how moving house was as stressful as bereavement and yet pushed for this all the same. If she had never mentioned seeing the house on the market, then Tim wouldn’t be having chest pains and they’d still be having sex, and Vladlena wouldn’t be thinking of leaving them, and Natalya wouldn’t be standing on a wobbly chair on a table trying to clean Vladlena’s smears of Windolene from these stupid bloody windows.