‘But you had real things to be frightened of,’ Natalia said. ‘My brother was different, he didn’t have any real cause for fear. Not until the war came.’
‘What was he like?’
She smiled. ‘Peter was two years older than me. He had Tartar eyes like mine, but blond hair like our mother, who had German blood. A mixture. A beautiful mixture. A big, noisy boy, always getting into scrapes. But everyone forgave him, because he never meant harm to any living thing. And all the girls loved him.’
Frank frowned slightly. He sounded too good to be real. Natalia caught his look and smiled. ‘It’s true, everyone loved him. I worshipped him. Yet sometimes I would find him standing in a room quite still, looking so afraid. I used to ask him what the matter was and he would say, “Nothing, I was just thinking”. Our mother died just after Peter started university, while I was still at school, and that made him worse.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘She had a sudden heart attack. I remember one day after she died going into our sitting room and Peter was standing looking out of the window, his hands clasped together so tightly. He had that frightened look and there were tears in his eyes. I asked what the matter was. He said, “We’re all alone, Natalia. There’s no meaning, no safety. Something can just come out of the blue and destroy us like it did Mother and there’s nothing we can do.” He said, I remember it exactly, “We spend all our lives walking on the thinnest of thin ice, it can break at any moment and then we fall through.” I see him now, standing there, the words rushing out of him, the blue sky outside our window.’ Natalia broke off and smiled. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to distress you.’
‘Thin ice. Yes. I’ve always known about that.’
‘Perhaps we all do. But we all have to go on hoping it won’t break.’ She sighed. ‘Otherwise, like Peter, or your mother, you can go looking for salvation in some mad theory, some pattern to the world that isn’t really there.’
‘What did he believe in?’
‘Communism. He joined the Party just after our mother died. So many people in Europe turned to the Fascists and Communists in those years. Peter became a Communist and he was much happier for a while. He thought he had found the key to history. The Fascists thought they had too, of course, in nationality. Peter finished university, did some painting – he was a painter like me, though a much better one. Before he joined the Party he did some remarkable work, surreal, I think it reflected the confusion in his mind. But later he designed Party posters, square- jawed workers and beautiful maidens waving scythes . . .’ She laughed. ‘Our father was a merchant, he was so angry when Peter became a Communist.’
‘I’ve never really believed in anything,’ Frank said sadly. ‘I just wanted to be left alone.’
‘You believed in science. You worked at a university.’
‘Believed in it? I was interested in it.’ He shook his head. ‘In my old life I worked. I ate. I slept. I read science-fiction magazines and books. I had a flat in Birmingham. I don’t think I’ll see it again.’
‘Peter was living in a science-fiction book called communism,’ Natalia said with sudden bitterness. ‘He thought he saw the future of humanity, its true meaning, in Russia. But then he went there. On an official tour. I had been away studying English, in London.’
‘That’s why you speak it so well.’
She lit another cigarette. ‘I remember when I came back Peter was getting ready for his visit to Moscow, he was full of it, he even said he might emigrate to Russia. But when he got there, being Peter, he wandered off on his own one afternoon, gave the tour guide the slip and went exploring Moscow. The Communists were destroying the old city then, putting up big blocks of flats, bright and white, accommodation for the workers’ future.’
‘They’re starting to build them here, too. The high-rises.’
‘There were some near where Peter was staying, they were new, they hadn’t even laid the pavements yet. Peter told me how he walked over the muddy ground, opened the door of one of the blocks and went inside. He said it was indescribable, filth everywhere, people had been going to the toilet on the floor. The flats were full of families crammed into single rooms, more than one family sometimes, just a tatty curtain to divide them and give some privacy, all swearing and fighting with each other. They screamed abuse at him when he wandered in. And somehow, seeing the inside of that block of flats, seeing how people really lived in his Communist paradise – he was never the same after that.’
Frank thought of Peter stumbling through the mud of that Moscow building site. ‘Poor man,’ he said.
‘Yes. Poor Peter. I don’t know what he expected to find there, a palace?’ Her voice was angry. ‘He got into trouble with the tour people for that. He was lucky he had a foreign passport. That was 1937, during the worst of Stalin’s Great Terror. When Peter came back to Bratislava he left the Party and spent more and more of his time indoors, alone in his room.’
‘A room, a home, it’s a place to hide, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ She blew out a cloud of smoke, sighed. ‘Meanwhile, out in the world, things were getting worse. Next year Hitler took the Sudetenland, then in 1939 he made Slovakia an independent puppet state, and then the war broke out. Father was retired by then, but he had money and I was working as a translator so I was able to take care of Peter. I looked after him for two years. Father helped too, but he was old, he did not really understand.’
‘Peter was lucky. Having someone to look after him.’
‘I did what I could. Then in 1941, the Germans invaded Russia. The Slovak government sent soldiers to help them. My brother was conscripted, he was young and fit and they didn’t care about his mental state. He fought all the way to the Caucasus. He came back with a shattered leg. It healed, but the effects on his mind –’ she shook her head sorrowfully – ‘he was terrified people were going to come for him, terrified. Communists or Fascists or priests – I don’t know who, anybody. Father had died while he was at war. In the end he jumped out of the window.’ She gave Frank a long, hard look. ‘It was a terrible thing to do to me.’
‘He couldn’t live with his fear,’ Frank said simply.
‘The whole world has had to learn to live with fear now.’ She got up, her knees creaking. It reminded Frank that she was his age, she wasn’t young. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I did not mean to talk of all these sad things.’
‘It’s all right.’
She walked over to the window, pulled the curtain aside. The fog was as bad as ever, thick, cloying, almost liquid; there was nothing to see but darkness. ‘No sign of this ending,’ she said. Then she turned to face him, smiling. ‘Thank you.’
‘What for?’ he asked, surprised.
‘Because you understood about Peter.’
After she had gone Frank thought, was her brother really like me? He felt a little awed that she’d talked so openly to him. Then David had come to check on him. He’d tried to doze again but he was restless now, all the conversations he had had that day coming back into his head. After a while he decided to go downstairs. As he passed the door of the next room, he was surprised to hear low voices. He wondered whether they were talking about him. He stood next to the door. He heard Natalia’s voice, very quiet, ‘You need a woman as much as I need a man.’ He stepped away, suddenly filled with betrayal and loss and jealousy. Then he felt numb.
Downstairs Ben was sitting with the O’Sheas, still playing cards. He looked up. ‘A’ right? Thought you were asleep.’
‘No. No, I – I couldn’t settle—’
Ben looked at him keenly. ‘Sure you’re all right?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a bit early for your bedtime pill. I’ll give it you in an hour, that’ll get you to sleep.’
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Eileen asked with a smile. ‘A bit of cake maybe?’
‘No, no thanks. Where’s Geoff?’
She nodded to the door of the front room. ‘He’s asleep in there. Why don’t you go and see how he is?’
Frank opened the door. He felt their eyes on his back. The light was on; Geoff was asleep in an armchair but he woke as Frank came in. He coughed.
‘I’m sorry,’ Frank said. ‘Did I wake you?’
‘I was only half asleep.’ Geoff sat up, coughing again, a harsh rasp. He didn’t look well, there was sweat on his brow. ‘What time is it?’
‘Nine o’clock. How are you feeling?’
‘A bit rotten.’ He looked at Frank. ‘How are you? Holding up?’
