Read Objects of Desire Online

Authors: Roberta Latow

Objects of Desire (22 page)

BOOK: Objects of Desire
13.15Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

‘Yes, I guess I did. You’ll both come along for the ride, won’t you?’

There were whoops and hollers of joy and congratulation from Page and Anoushka, a few screams of excitement from Sally, and lots of kisses between the three women.

‘What made you decide to give in finally? I know with Jaha you will live happily ever after, and it really will be till death do you part, otherwise he would never have pursued you as he has. Oh, I’m so happy for you! He’ll give you back the lifestyle you love so much, and more of it than I think you have ever dreamed of.’

A laughing Sally said, ‘And this time round, I know it’s love for keeps for both of us. The deciding factor was Jahangir. His love and understanding were right there in something he said.’

‘What? If you can tell us.’

‘ “As long as you have Page and Anoushka for best friends, I know you’ll be happy with me.” ’

‘When I asked him what he meant, his answer was so simple. I can’t understand why I hadn’t seen it myself. He said, “You’ll never be lonely”.

‘I asked him what he meant by that and he answered me with, “I can be everything to you, your lover, your husband, the best man friend in your life, fulfil all your dreams, but I’m a man and you’ll always love me as a man. That loneliness a woman has in her all the time, no matter how much she loves her husband and her children, the only real partner in that kind of loneliness can be another woman, her best girlfriend. You and Page and Anoushka, you absorb that loneliness you carry by being close to each other”.’

Sally paused. It was an emotional moment for the three of them. Then she continued, ‘And then he said, “Sally dear, this time try not to be late, and tell the girls I thank them. At least they’ve galvanised you to accept me and put me out of my misery”.’

Until Jahangir had pointed out what best friends they were, none of them had realised what a cradle of support and inspiration they had become for each other. I have friends, was the thought that kept tripping over in Anoushka’s mind as she punched in Robert’s telephone number.

She checked her watch. The timing was perfect. She could see him now, in his office with his first cup of morning tea, Fortnum & Mason Royal Blend. He would be going over the night reports on his patients,
studying them meticulously for the least hint of change or a problem before going on his rounds. He never operated before nine in the morning unless there was an emergency. How well she knew the pattern of his life. Out with the old wife, in with the new maybe, but she knew her Robert. When it came to his work it would not be out with the old pattern, in with a new one.

The ringing tone and a click. Anoushka’s heart stood still. This was not going to be easy. Then the familiar sound of Mrs Winkler’s voice, ‘Hello, Dr Robert Rivers’ secretary speaking.’

For a moment Anoushka hesitated, but only for a moment. ‘May I speak to the doctor, Mrs Winkler?’ There was hesitation on the other end of the line. ‘Yes, Mrs Winkler, it’s Anoushka Rivers.’

Mrs Winkler was all courtesy as she always was. ‘So nice to hear from you. I hope you’re well?’

‘Yes, very well, thank you.’

‘I don’t know that the doctor’s available …’

How many times had Anoushka heard that and accepted it as truth when it hadn’t been? she wondered. ‘I do know that the doctor is available. He’s reading the night charts.’

‘Then you must know too that he doesn’t like to take calls during that time.’

‘Frankly, Mrs Winkler, I don’t give a damn! Tell him I am on the line and insist on speaking with him. It’s very important. As important as his reading the charts.’

Several seconds passed and Anoushka rolled her eyes at Page and Sally whom she insisted should remain with her. Then suddenly she heard his voice. ‘Hello, Anoushka, I hope you’re well?’

This was only the second time she had spoken to him since their separation and subsequent divorce. It did knock her a bit off balance, but she quickly regained her poise. ‘I’m very well thank you, Robert.’

‘What is it you want?’

‘I don’t
want
anything. This is a courtesy call.’

‘Oh.’

Why had she never noticed when she had been married to him that he had nothing but contempt in his voice for her? She heard it now, so crystal clear, and hated him a little bit more for it. ‘Robert, I spoke with the boys earlier and as a result have decided to fly over for Parents’ Weekend and to be with them on their birthday.’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Anoushka.’

Now the voice had on its best bedside manner. The one he always used to talk her round to his way of thinking in some matter. Not this time, buster, she told herself, but what she said was, ‘I don’t care what you think, Robert.
I
think my boys have the right to have both their parents with them on Parents’ Weekend and their birthday, separated as we are or not.’

‘Divorced, Anoushka, divorced!’ It was true, the divorce came through when she had been travelling in Sicily, but she tended to forget that. She ignored the correction.

‘You’ve left this a bit late. How typical of you. Arrangements have been made.’ There was more than annoyance in Robert’s voice. Was it fury?

‘Arrangements can be rearranged. Look, Robert, I don’t want to get heavy about this but I do have it in writing, remember, visiting rights, any time I want to see my boys or the boys want to see me. I don’t think this is an unreasonable visit and I’m sure you don’t really.’

‘No, of course it isn’t. But I doubt that you will find any place to stay within fifty miles of the school. The inns and hotels will have been booked by the parents months ago. And then the party … it might be painful for you. It’s in the house. They wanted a barbecue and all their friends from Lakeside and the school. I’m flying a dozen of the boys back just for the night.’

‘It sounds wonderful for them. Tell them to bring sleeping bags. We’ll need two of the guest rooms.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m coming with some friends, the women who will be playing host to the boys when they’re with me on holiday.’

‘That would be awkward.’

‘Why, Robert? We have two sons we both love very much, and we don’t want to create a tug of love situation or do anything to mar their happiness, do we? For their sake we’ll be civil to one another, nothing more than that, and therefore you will open the house to me and my friends so we can be part of the birthday celebrations you’ve planned for them. I would
expect to do the same for you on their next birthday.’

‘And Rosamond?’

Anoushka chose to ignore the question. ‘I won’t like being there any more than you will like having me in the house, but yes, for our sons’ happiness, I dare say we will be able to manage.’

‘I don’t like this, Anoushka, not at all. I concede your right to be at the Parents’ Weekend, even to be with them some time on their birthday, but to crash in on a party Rosamond has been planning for months …’ Here he hesitated for a few seconds then continued, ‘That’s so unfair of you.’

‘Unfair! To stand up to Rosamond and remind her that they have a mother, and no matter how much she crawls into their lives I will still be there? Yes, I suppose it
is
unfair of me not to lie down and die for Rosamond so she can take over even my sons as she has taken over my husband and my life.’

‘You see, there will be scenes. Is that fair to the boys?’

‘No, you’re wrong there, Robert, there will be no scenes. I wouldn’t ruin the boys’ weekend for the world.’

‘Why do you and your friends insist on staying in the house? It’s my house and I don’t want you and some strangers in it.’

‘My friends are not strangers and don’t insist on staying in the house. I do. I want the boys to understand that you and I, Robert, no matter what our differences, will be together in bringing them up. That
they live with you and Rosamond but I am welcome there as their mother and in Lakeside, and am not just some reject, some lowly untouchable who has been made to wander the world. I want them to see I have a life and friends, and am not the lonely woman you shipped off into exile, as I so stupidly agreed to.’

‘Anoushka, you don’t have friends. I have never known you to have a real friend in your entire life.’

She tried to keep her anger within bounds, but that last remark cut deep because it was so true. She had never had or wanted anyone but him from the very first time they met. ‘Robert, you’re a real prick, and I have had enough of this conversation. I’ve told you what I want. You see that I get it.’

‘And if I don’t?’

‘Oh, I suggest you do, because if ever you hope to see those precious antique coins of
mine
again, either in your hands or in trust for the boys, you’d better come to terms with me.’

‘That’s blackmail.’

‘Yes, it is, but at least I don’t use my sons to get what I want.’

There was a long pause. No matter how many antique coins Robert might receive as gifts in the future, he knew that to lose even one irreplaceable coin was tantamount to disaster. He stressed, ‘No scenes. Do I have your word on that?’

‘You have my word, Robert. I didn’t have to call and tell you that I’m coming, but I’m glad that I did. Believe me, I will treat you better than you have done
me. Don’t tell the boys. I want it to be a surprise. I’ll call the headmaster myself.’

Anoushka disconnected before Robert had a chance to say another word, placed the instrument on the table and her hands over her eyes. She felt quite exhausted.

‘I think that’s called playing hard ball. You were terrific,’ said Sally.

Anoushka removed her hands. There was no sign of distress on her face, all anxiety was gone from her eyes.

‘How do you feel?’ asked Page.

‘Just great. I’m going home.’

Later that evening the women walked down from their house and through the pretty narrow streets to a small taverna in a large walled garden. The proprietor placed a table and rickety wooden chairs in a quiet corner, against a wall hung with a trumpet vine.

They ordered lamb chops cooked over a fire of charcoal and sprigs of rosemary, a salad of tomatoes and feta cheese, dressed in a rich extra virgin oil and torn leaves of basil. A bottle of red wine was placed on the table and they sat in silence, listening to the sounds of the night all round them and a guitarist playing early Hadsadaki, music from before the ’67 Junta took over Greece.

Anoushka leaned her chair back against the white-washed garden wall. Page thought she looked lovely and relaxed in the candlelight, the trumpet vine draped all round her, its elongated cream blossoms
partially closed for the night but still looking as if they were waiting for Gabriel to come blow them. They had not spoken since they had given their order to the proprietor and seemed quite content just to be there. Sally poured the wine.

Apropos nothing Anoushka said, ‘My mother was forty years old when I was born. That was in St Petersburg. Not the city you see in black and white movies, still magnificent and in its glory as it was at the turn of the century, but a skeleton of that beautiful and glamorous place. She was a doctor, extremely beautiful and refined-looking, glamorous for a Russian. She was resented by her colleagues for all those reasons and for her aristocratic background, though she was a staunch communist. My father was a painter, not a very good or successful painter but a man who believed unequivocally in communism. He was well in with the regime and the power brokers of the party who bought his paintings. I never knew him. He died when I was eighteen months old. Cirrhosis of the liver.

‘We were poor, middle-class and poor. Imagine a doctor being poor. Only in the Russia my parents loved could that be possible. But that’s the way it can be when you are not politically correct in the Soviet Union, or what was then the Soviet Union. The regime of my father’s time had gone, a new one was in place.

‘Four years after he died my mother met a man, a rising star in the party. He worked in the diplomatic
service: Serge Kuznitzikoff. He was completely besotted by my mother. She was charismatic, and now when I think of her I realise what a sensual and flirtatious creature she was. She could have been an actress in the old style, a blonde Garbo, a Dietrich. He moved us from the dreary back two-rooms we lived in, in a once famous palace that we shared with seven hundred other people, to a dacha just outside the city. A new life began for us. He doted on my mother and me.

‘As he advanced in the party, so did our standard of living. My mother had more success in her work but finally gave it up for Serge and me, to be with us. I called him “uncle” but I always thought of him as my father.

‘At the beginning, when he started travelling abroad, we didn’t go with him, and our life at those times was very empty. You see, he was our world. We yearned for his love and protection. I could hardly wait for him to come home, to feel the touch of his hand, to have him pick me up and kiss me, to be caressed by him. I felt so bright and alive when he took me by the hand and showered all his attention on me. My whole world revolved round Serge. He spoiled me, and so did my mother.

‘By the time I was eight years old we were travelling with him wherever he went. And lived with him in the cities where he was posted: London, Paris, New York, Tokyo.’

‘Hence your ease with languages,’ said Page.

‘Yes,’ said Anoushka, and refilled their wine glasses.

The balmy night and the scent from the trumpet vine, the odour of roasting meat and rosemary, the music, all seemed to add to the nostalgia of Anoushka’s story.

‘Serge was a diplomatic trouble shooter, a very important man who knew where a great many skeletons were buried, and in whose closet. That meant that we lived on the fringes of the official diplomatic service and were able to keep a degree of privacy. People did not want to ruffle Serge’s feathers. He had power, a quiet, discreet power, but power nonetheless. And that was a good thing because he never married my mother.

‘He was a handsome man, tall, broad-shouldered, heroic-looking, what every child wants her father to be. He was, too, very ambitious for me to be educated and cultivated, a fitting companion for him in his old age. There were private tutors, no bad schools for me. Abroad there were private schools, but never for long. We seemed only to get settled when he was re-posted. He instilled in me a love of reading, something that kept me apart from other children, I learned to like my own company and that of those I loved, no others’. We were free spirits, Serge and my mother and I, behind the prim and proper image: the coarse plebeians the party liked to portray themselves as.

BOOK: Objects of Desire
13.15Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Devil's Reprise by Karina Halle
Dead in the Water by Robin Stevenson
Honor Thyself by Danielle Steel
Doomed Queens by Kris Waldherr
American Icon by Bryce G. Hoffman
The Jewish Dog by Asher Kravitz
Her Last Love Affair by James, Clara
Return to Sullivans Island by Dorothea Benton Frank
Wetware by Craig Nova