but the really important things, things that directly affect you and worry you and wake you up in the middle of the night… those things. Not wanting to face up to how bad – or how easily solved – those things are.’
Blair felt the words dump over him, like a wave at the very moment of hitting the shore, when it’s like a punch and stronger than any resistance and knocks you over and sends you sprawling on the sand, looking a fool. They’d had their shots and he’d had his and they were still at either end of a hugely wide bridge. He said, ‘You’ve seen Paul, both of you? Talked to him?’
‘Yes,’ said Kemp.
‘So what’s his problem? What wakes him up in the middle of the night and seems insoluble?’
‘We don’t know,’ said Erickson. ‘Because he doesn’t know. That’s the problem, because it’s the problem with so many of the kids, not just Paul. Why he sat like a dummy with you last night and when you asked him why he did it said something stupid, like he didn’t know. Is that what he said, that he didn’t know?’
‘About that,’ agreed Blair. Wanting to air the doubt, he said, ‘ Could the divorce, the fact that I’m thousands of miles away and his mother’s got to cope by herself, could that be it?’
‘Maybe,’ said Kemp unhelpfully. ‘Or maybe his problem is not being able to hack his school work or pimples or how much or how little pubic hair he has or how a girl he’d like to show that pubic hair to is more interested in someone else’s.’
‘I didn’t smoke dope or snort coke and hold up stores to do either because I couldn’t hack my school work or had pimples or was worried about getting laid!’ said Blair.
‘Because that was thirty years ago,’ said Erickson. ‘Didn’t you drink a beer, occasionally?’
Yes, thought Blair, giddy on the carousel. Determined to achieve something, he started, ‘My problem…’ and at once stopped. ‘Paul’s problem,’ he began again, ‘is that he lives in Washington and I live in Moscow. I’m here now – will be here now – to see him through whatever needs to be done but then I’ll have to go back and I won’t be around to follow up what the court decides and whatever you guys try to do. I know I should be but I can’t be.’
‘What about visiting?’ asked Kemp. ‘Not just for Paul: I know there’s John, as well. What are the visitation arrangements?’
‘Whatever, whenever,’ said Blair. ‘My wife and I remain extremely friendly. But I’ve been in Moscow for two years and it isn’t easy, bringing kids there…’ He hesitated. ‘And if there’s one thing I’m certain about, about my kids, it’s their resentment against my second wife.’
‘You haven’t seen the kids for two years!’ said Erickson.
Blair took the rebuke, knowing now – no, not now, knowing as he had for too long – that it was justified. ‘Eighteen months,’ he said, in desperate qualification, ‘I came back eighteen months ago to sort some things out.’ For two days and didn’t stay at the house, he remembered.
‘Divorce things?’ said Kemp, refusing him an escape.
‘Yes,’ said Blair, trapped.
‘Thirty years ago, when I was a kid too,’ said Kemp, ‘I think I might have taken a drink – maybe two – if I hadn’t thought I was important enough for my father to bother about, for eighteen months at a time.’
‘How was it?’ asked Ruth, when Blair got to Dominiques: he was late and she was already in the small side bar, nursing a whisky sour.
Blair didn’t answer, not at once, still not through with stripping away the self-protective attitudes, a process which had started at the end of his encounter with the counsellors and continued in the cab on his way to the restaurant. ‘Good,’ he said, self-reflective. Expanding more forcefully he went on, ‘I’m not sure – because nobody’s sure about anything – but I think it was good and I think I’ve found a way to help Paul.’
Now it was Ruth’s turn to hesitate. ‘How?’ she said at last.
‘I’ve been wrong, Ruth,’ said Blair, intent upon a complete catharsis. ‘I abandoned Paul. John too. I’ve got to work out some way to be their father again. Their proper father.’
Ruth sipped the whisky, needing it and wishing it were stronger. ‘How?’ she managed.
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Blair, still self-enclosed and not fully aware of how intently Ruth was waiting. ‘Find some way of getting them into Moscow… of liking Ann. And if that isn’t possible, then making Ann understand there have got to be times I have to spend with my kids.’
Ruth’s drink became really sour, curdling in her stomach and coming back into her throat, so that she had to swallow against it and she actually coughed, to clear the sensation. If it helped Paul – please God, cured Paul – then it was a special occasion, more special than any before. But not special like she’d wanted it to be.
Natalia sat awkwardly before him, cowed but slightly bent to one side, like a beloved pet who’d always obeyed and done every trick suddenly brutally beaten for some misdemeanour it didn’t understand. ‘Why?’ The question came out as a wail.
‘I just don’t feel anything any more.’ Orlov was wet with perspiration, forcing himself on, feeling like a man trying to wade a swamp without knowing where the safe ground was, the mud dragging him down deeper and deeper.
‘But why?’ said the woman again. ‘You haven’t given a proper reason.’
‘Apart too long,’ said Orlov. ‘Not the same any more.’ Where were the rehearsed sentences and the balanced arguments, points carefully anticipated against points, everything arranged so there wouldn’t be a scene like this?
‘It can be the same,’ she pleaded desperately. ‘We can learn to love each other again. I love you!’
‘No!’ he said. Orlov wished the mud were real and he could be engulfed by it.
‘ Please! ’
‘No!’
She fell physically sideways, against the edge of the chair, once trying to raise her head for another protest but being swept away by tears before the words formed, staying huddled there with the sobs shuddering through her. This hadn’t worked as it should have done, thought Orlov. Not at all. Would the rest?
The dissident arrests in Moscow were reported in the Western media, as Panov predicted, and it was linked with the famine in the regions, which Panov also predicted. The practice of rushing the Western supplies in their entirety to the areas of worst unrest, which Sokol organised initially, became unworkable because it denied anything to other suffering districts and caused rioting to break out there. Whenever there was trouble, Sokol had any obvious leaders immediately arrested and jailed in penal institutions as far away from their homes and regions as possible. The internal militia worked always on orders to open fire on any mob violence. Five people were killed and twenty wounded in Rovno, in the Ukraine, and three died in Gomel. Sokol, the methodical man, evolved a regime, working from six in the morning through until mid-afternoon monitoring the shortages and guaranteeing the transportation of the relief shipments and from then working until near midnight on other material moving through the Second Chief Directorate. More alert to fresh, undermining danger than the now scarcely thought-of need for an impressive coup, he stared down at the report of Blair’s return to Washington. What, he thought worriedly, did that mean?
Chapter Fifteen
It was not a sudden idea. It had been with Ann for some time but she refused to acknowledge it. Then she realised how ridiculous she was being and determined there was nothing wrong with it. Jeremy Brinkman was a friend – just a friend – and she was by herself and almost climbing the wall with boredom so what was wrong with seeing a friend? She’d even discussed it with Eddie. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. She’d told Eddie about the Bolshoi and that hadn’t happened yet. But there wasn’t a lot of difference. Eddie wouldn’t see anything wrong with it. How could he? There wasn’t anything wrong with it. She just wanted to talk to someone else before she started talking to herself. Nothing wrong with that at all. Nothing that any sensible adult would find. Betty Harrison would probably make it into something rivalling War and Peace but sod Betty Harrison. Gossiping old cow.
Brinkman, who was growing increasingly frustrated because everything had gone quiet but he knew – was absolutely convinced – that Blair was involved in something big, was delighted to get Ann’s call. Despite the previous decision not to, he was approaching the point of calling her. He told her dinner sounded like a good idea and no he wasn’t doing anything and she had no reason to apologise in advance for her cooking and he’d be there at seven. Which he was, as the hour struck. With a bottle of wine – French, not Russian – and a gift-wrapped box of
