thought she looked very pretty and very vulnerable. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That was unforgivable.’
He felt across for her hand and she let him take it. ‘You’re forgiven,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that what friends are for, to have convenient shoulders?’
‘I’m not sure that other friends are supposed so openly to cry upon them,’ she said, still embarrassed.
‘It’s allowed, for special friends.’
‘Thanks, for being a special friend,’ she said.
After the meal – which he praised again – they left the table and drank brandy sitting in easy chairs. They listened to some Verdi and he promised to let her have the latest Graham Greene novel which he’d had sent from London and which he’d almost finished. Refusing – absolutely – to give up he told her to give his regards to Eddie when they next spoke and she said she would and then stopped, so he failed again. But she’d opened up to him about a lot of other things, Brinkman realised. Maybe he was expecting too much, too soon, in his impatience. There was the Bolshoi yet. Maybe he’d get a clue when they went to the Bolshoi.
‘It’s been a wonderful evening,’ he said, making to go. ‘And it was a super meal. Really.’
‘You said you lied all the time,’ she remembered, happier now the confession was over.
‘Not to you,’ he said. He extended his hand in invitation, little finger crooked. Joining in the game she linked her finger with his, in a child-like handshake. ‘I promise never to lie to you and if I break it the witches will see that all my teeth fall out.’
She laughed at the nonsense of it and said, ‘Eddie used to say things like that,’ and wished she hadn’t the moment she spoke.
Brinkman disentangled their fingers and said, ‘Thanks again.’
‘You’re welcome,’ she said.
He leaned forward to kiss her goodnight and she offered her cheek, allowing it.
He hadn’t learned a thing – not a thing he wanted to learn – and the meal had given him indigestion, thought Brinkman, on his way home through the foreign enclave.
It had been a wonderful evening, decided Ann. She didn’t feel as uptight or miserable or lonely as she had. And it had been a comforting shoulder to cry upon. Jeremy Brinkman was very nice. She liked him.
That night they ate as a family, together, because Blair insisted upon it. Barriers were bullshit and he determined to bulldoze them, like you’d bulldoze barriers. Or bullshit. He thought he’d come close to losing the kids – in every meaning of the word losing. And he thought he’d been lucky, if it were possible to imagine luck emerging from what had happened to Paul, because it had brought him back and made him see what he was doing. Or not doing. It was their barriers that needing bulldozing. And his bullshit. Blair ignored their silences and their resentments, insisting they help him prepare the barbecue even though he knew they didn’t want to and he didn’t need them, deputing John to fan the coals into life and Paul to put on the hickory chips when the time was ready. He hadn’t discussed it with Ruth but she got a sense of what was happening and joined in as well, an actress enjoying the play, setting the table outside and bringing Blair beer which he drank from the can. John found it easier and because the child had tried in the morning, asking about Moscow, it was easier for Blair, too, because it looked initially as if he were fulfilling a promise. Which was how he started, intentionally, talking about the 1917 revolution and how Moscow hadn’t been immediately important, but St Petersburg. They didn’t know what his job was but he knew they’d be interested in spies because kids were always interested in spies and so he told them about Dzerzhinsky and the statue in front of the KGB headquarters. He could have lectured about all the others, of course, but he missed out the dull ones and concentrated upon those involved in the better anecdotes, like Yagoda who started as a pharmacist and who assassinated using his pharmacist’s expertise and Yezhov who epitomised the terror the like of which they could never imagine and Beria who came within an inch – maybe less than an inch – of seizing power after Stalin’s death. He told them about the decay of the Romanovs and of a monk called Rasputin and how – although a lot of people didn’t believe it – he was sure a woman called Anna Anderson who’d died within the last few years was genuinely Princess Anastasia, who had survived in a way no one knew from the Bolshevik massacre at Ekaterinburg. And he got them. Blair worked hard – physically worked hard so he ached – but he got them. He said, ‘You’ll like it.’
Blair had talked continuously, dominating everything, presenting a monologue. So when he stopped they didn’t at first realise it. It was John – more responsive throughout – who reacted first. ‘Like it?’ he said.
‘When you come,’ said Blair.
‘Come…’ started the younger boy and then jerking to a halt, remembering the obstruction.
The final stripping time, realised Blair. It was like exposing himself, nakedly, and he didn’t like the idea. But he disliked the idea of losing the kids more. ‘I wasn’t honest yesterday,’ he admitted. ‘I used the word but I wasn’t honest…’ Blair looked at Ruth. She was sitting not looking at anyone, both hands cupped around a can of beer which she was drinking just like he was, without a glass. Their drug, thought Blair. He said, ‘I got near to something, when I talked about your mother and I not being together any more. What I didn’t get to say – get to admit – was that only your mother, who’s a very special lady, has fully adjusted to it. I hadn’t – haven’t – and you certainly haven’t. But it’s mostly my fault. Nearly all my fault. You can’t accept that I love you because I haven’t given you any reason for believing me. But I do love you. Now I want to say sorry and show how I feel. Your very special mother and I agreed when we divorced that we should each spend as much time with you as we could…’ Blair stopped, looking at Paul. If you were naked then everyone automatically looked at your private parts, so what the hell! He went on, ‘I accused you last night of copping out. Because you have. You’ve copped out. But so have I. More than you. I’ve known -understood – how you feel about Ann and instead of trying to find a solution for that I’ve used the difficulty of Moscow as an excuse…’ He stopped again. Paul and John were important, not his own stupid fucking pride. He said, ‘I ran away, Paul, I ran away from you and I ran away from John just like you tried to run away from whatever it was you didn’t want to confront. Which was probably the thought of me not wanting you any more, which was never the case but which I can understand you thinking…’
Ruth hadn’t moved and the boys were not looking at him either, embarrassed at the admission that Superman couldn’t really fly. He said, ‘I can understand why you hate Ann…’ Blair paused, qualifying himself again, unhappy at the exaggeration of hatred against someone he loved ‘… why you dislike her,’ he resumed. ‘I want that – am determined – that should stop.’ Blair slapped the table, to maintain their attention. ‘I’ve told you tonight about Moscow and I want you to come to see it. See it with me. And that means meeting Ann and understanding what things are like – not what you’d like them to be instead – and learning to accept that I have a new wife who won’t intrude into your life but would like to be part of it, if you’d let her. It means us becoming friends again – I’d like to be your best friend, the person you come to when you’ve got a problem instead of running away from it to some street corner. And it means that I’m going to come out of Moscow whenever I can – with or without Ann, while you’re learning to adjust to the fact that she’s now my wife – and be with you, as often as I can.’
Blair stopped, all the words used up, needing to gulp from the can. He didn’t – couldn’t remember – how it had sounded but it was the best he could do. He said, ‘As things are – as you know things are, not perhaps as you’d like them to be – let me come back. The track record so far isn’t particularly impressive and I’m ashamed of it, but let me start being a proper father again.’
The sort of silence developed when there seemed to be sounds when really there weren’t any. He’d taken control and now he had to exercise it, decided Blair. ‘Well?’ he said.
John, predictably, responded first. ‘Sounds good,’ he said. Then, hurriedly, ‘Dad.’
There was a further loud silence. ‘Paul?’ prompted Blair.
The key turned and the dam burst. The boy had tried to hold back so when he couldn’t, any longer, the tears burst from him and Blair felt forward for Paul’s hands – to have got up to move to comfort him would have been wrong and Blair was still measuring everything with a slide rule – and Paul felt forward for his and Blair started to cry, too, unashamedly, wanting to weep if it would help Paul, which was after all what he was trying to do.
‘Please, Dad,’ said the sobbing child. ‘Please!’
‘Sure,’ soothed Blair, ‘Sure.’
Ruth was crying, too. The reconciliation between Eddie and the boys was the excuse, not the reason.
Chapter Sixteen
Blair glanced at the statue of Nathan Hale, the American patriot hanged as a spy by the British during the
