Comrade Charlie (12 page)

‘I'll let you have a memorandum today.'

‘My personnel record should also have an attachment to that effect too, shouldn't it?'

‘I'll ensure that it's done,' promised the other man.

‘Thank you, sir,' said Charlie. ‘I'm very glad everything has been settled so satisfactorily.' Enough, Charlie told himself; a time to shaft and a time to stop, enjoyable though it had been.

Laura was waiting apprehensively in the outer office, standing beside her desk. ‘He's fired you, hasn't he?' she said.

‘Of course not,' said Charlie, grinning. There's inside knowledge here, my son, he reminded himself. He said: ‘Any chance of our getting together some time?'

‘I'd like that,' said the girl.

Blackstone looked with disbelief at the other man, not immediately able to speak. Then he realized how stupid he must look and tried to recover, swallowing heavily. ‘I see,' he said.

‘I thought you'd realize it would have to come to an end some time,' said Losev.

‘I didn't,' admitted Blackstone. Desperately he said: ‘There's nothing at all?'

Losev shook his head. ‘I can understand how awkward that is going to be for you, with two homes to support. That can't be easy.'

Blackstone stood more open mouthed than before, his tongue moving over his bottom lip. He said: ‘Who are you?'

‘Your friend, Henry. Still your friend. You mustn't worry.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘You will, when we've had a little chat.'

13

Natalia had been away on the Australian visit when Eduard became eligible for leave, which therefore had to be postponed, so it had been almost six months since they were last together. Natalia was relieved that another overseas trip had not intruded to make this visit impossible. And pleased at how quickly permission had been granted for her to take leave herself, a Friday and a Monday, giving them a long weekend together.

Natalia tried hard to make everything right for her son's homecoming. She planned a Saturday-night outing and shopped widely at the concessionary stores, where she hesitated uncertainly at the alcohol counter. Natalia hardly drank but believed, although she was not sure, there was a half bottle of vodka somewhere in the Mytninskaya apartment. Eduard was nineteen, living in an all-male, military environment, she reminded herself: a man, which had been a strangely abrupt realization when he'd been home for the last time. He'd expect her to have something in: consider it odd if she hadn't. Still hesitant Natalia bought whisky, vodka and some imported Danish beers. As an afterthought she added four bottles of French wine, two white and two red. In a final touch Natalia displayed flowers in the hallway and the living room: she knew Eduard wouldn't appreciate them – probably wouldn't be aware of them – but Natalia thought flowers in a home were welcoming so it was really a gesture for her own benefit.

His letter had guessed at his reaching Moscow some time in the afternoon but she knew the risk of delay was too great for her to start preparing the homecoming meal in advance of his arrival. Natalia wandered about the flat, touching and moving things that didn't need to be touched and spent time in Eduard's bedroom, tidying things already tidied. Why – or of what – was she nervous? Natalia couldn't decide. Just that she was nervous, which was ridiculous. What on earth was there to be nervous of, receiving home a soldier-son whom she had not seen for half a year? Nothing. Ridiculous, she told herself again.

It was gone seven when Eduard telephoned and she was glad she had not started to prepare because he still had to go through some leave formalities at the military post at the Kursk station. An hour, Eduard guessed: an hour and a half at the outside. It was more than two hours from the time of the call before he got there.

Natalia was unaccountably disoriented by Eduard's entrance into her home. He appeared to be bigger, filling more space and making everything correspondingly smaller. The army boots looked huge and the uniform was rough when he held her to him and kissed her, quickly as if he were embarrassed by the gesture. There was a smell to his clothing, a stale, unclean impression mingled with the odour of his own body. There was another, more obvious smell on his breath and Natalia wondered if it really had taken more than two hours for him to get through the railway station formalities.

The hallway greetings over, he stumped directly into his room with his bag and topcoat but reappeared immediately, looking around as if he hadn't seen the apartment before.

‘It's good to see you, Eduard.'

‘Good to be back.'

‘I'm cooking beef: I'm afraid it might be a little overdone.'

‘I'm starving!'

‘Would you like a bath first? There's time.'

Eduard frowned but started a smile at the same time, as if he suspected her of making a joke. ‘Bath! What for?'

Natalia raised and lowered her shoulders. ‘I thought you might have felt like one after all the travelling.'

‘No,' he said positively. He looked inquiringly around the apartment again as if looking for something.

‘I got some drink in. Beer: vodka and whisky, too.'

Eduard allowed the grin to register. ‘Bloody good!' he said.

Natalia couldn't remember his swearing even minimally in front of her before. He appeared unaware of having done so. She said: ‘It's all in the kitchen. Why don't you get it yourself?'

‘You want anything?'

‘No thank you.' Natalia became aware that she had remained standing since his entry. While he was out of the room she sat down on one of the two easy chairs: he'd trodden something black, like oil, across the room and into his bedroom.

Eduard returned with a glass of vodka in one hand and a beer in the other. He gestured with the beer can from which he was drinking direct and said: ‘Imported beer and beef in the oven! Still all the privileges! You should try the beer we get at the camps: just like horse pi…' He stopped just in time, but remained smiling. ‘Absolutely filthy,' he finished.

‘What's it like there?' There hadn't been any reports of nationalistic protests between the Armenians and Azerbaijanis for a long time, but she wished his officer-cadet field course had not been somewhere so active.

‘Boring,' said Eduard at once. ‘I don't know why we don't make our minds up: either shoot the idiots when they riot or stand back and let them kill each other. Perfect solution, one way or the other.' He slumped in the opposing chair and thrust both legs out towards her. The boots really did look huge: she couldn't see whatever had caused the marks he'd trodden through the apartment.

‘How about your grades?'

‘I'll graduate easily,' said Eduard.

He'd always found easy anything academic, always the perfect student, remembered Natalia. Like Igor had always had a quick and receptive mind. The recollection of the husband who had deserted them surprised Natalia: she couldn't think of the last time he'd come to mind. At once she decided it was not surprising at all. There had always been a strong facial resemblance between father and son, even in unconscious mannerisms like the way each flicked back the straying, coal-black hair and smiled crookedly, one mouth edge up, the other down, but Natalia was caught now by how much stronger the similarities seemed to her. Imagination, she dismissed. How could any of Igor's behaviour or attitudes have washed off on a son he'd abandoned when the child was three? She said: ‘How much longer will you be attached to an active field unit?'

The boy shrugged, making a noise as he drank from the can. ‘You know what the army's like. They don't have any idea where their ass is most of the time.'

There was no apology for the expression, which Natalia did not really understand. ‘You don't know?'

‘Shouldn't be more than another two or three months but there's no way of telling.'

Eduard helped himself to another vodka before she served the meal, for which he opened one of the bottles of red wine and for which he sat down without washing his hands. The boy ate bent low over the table, head close to his food, practically spooning it into his mouth in a hand-circling, conveyor-belt fashion. He finished long before her and helped himself to a further complete plateful. He gulped at the wine with food still in his mouth, swallowing and chewing at the same time. Natalia forced the conversation throughout, telling him as much as she felt able about her new job and explaining the overseas travel and how different it was from anything to which she'd been accustomed before. Eduard grunted acknowledgement sounds from time to time but she didn't get the impression he was listening fully to what she said.

Eduard allowed her to clear away without offering to help, settling with his legs outstretched once more, another glass of vodka resting upon his stomach between cupped hands. He'd undone his tunic and shirt collar and Natalia thought he looked very scruffy, a conscripted soldier instead of a would-be officer.

‘There's some laundry,' he announced.

‘I'll do it tomorrow.'

‘Some of it is pretty disgusting. There's been a lot of moving about. Not much time to change.'

‘That's all right,' accepted Natalia. ‘You seem to be drinking a lot.' He'd had the majority of the wine, too.

Eduard examined the vodka glass as if he were surprised to find it in his hand. ‘You should see the officers' mess at the weekend!' he said with bombastic teenage bravado. ‘I can drink the rest of them unconscious: actually done it!'

The ability to drink more than anyone else, and never suffer a hangover, had been one of Igor's boasts, thought Natalia, isolating other similarity. She said: ‘You're not in an officers' mess now.'

Eduard grimaced, not appearing to regard it as the rebuke she intended. ‘Good life, the military,' he said. ‘I'm enjoying it.'

Another thing Igor had often said. It had taken her a long time to realize it was because of the freedom it gave him, to whore and impress women at air shows and exhibitions by flying faster or lower than anyone else. She guessed her ex-husband would have by now gained a substantive promotion in the Air Force. Igor would like that, insignias of rank on a fine uniform, medals and ribbons arrayed in lines. She wished it were not proving so easy to think of the man today. She reckoned the last time she had consistently done so was when she'd been with Charlie, here in Moscow, the reflections then those of persistent comparison, good against bad. Which, she supposed, was what they were again. She still wished it weren't so. She said: ‘I've managed to get tickets for Saturday for the State Circus! It's a new season: quite a lot of fresh acts.'

Eduard stared at her with that frowning, about-tolaugh expression again. ‘The circus!'

‘It's hardly children's entertainment!'

Belatedly he realized her disappointment. ‘It's just…well, I wish you'd mentioned it before.'

‘I didn't think of it until about a week ago, when it was too late to write. And I wasn't sure I could get tickets anyway. They're not easy to come by, you know!'

‘I made plans, that's all.'

‘Plans!' exclaimed Natalia, genuinely upset at the flippancy with which he was discarding her proposed treat.

‘With some of the other cadet-officers I came up from Baku with.'

‘For Saturday night?'

‘You don't mind, do you?'

‘Of course not.'

‘It's our first time off base for months.'

‘I understand.'

‘One of them says he knows some good places here where we can enjoy ourselves. Have a few drinks…a few laughs.'

And more, thought Natalia. The unchanged pattern: drink, whore, boast, exaggerate. ‘I said I understood.'

‘I knew you would.'

Eduard slept late, snoring loudly. His bedroom was redolent of him when Natalia crept in to collect up the laundry and she wondered how long the windows would have to be left open to air the place after he'd gone. The washing was filthy, a lot personally stained, and she doubted her son always emerged the victor in the drinking contests, as he claimed. If Eduard could handle his drink intake one way he did not appear to be able to do so in another. She pressed him to bathe when he finally arose and he said he supposed he should, though there was little enthusiasm. He had his first drink before noon, although only a beer. Eduard kept prowling around the apartment and Natalia guessed he was bored or felt restricted or both. She suggested an ice-hockey game that afternoon and he said OK without much interest although when they got to the stadium his demeanour changed. He yelled and shouted and swore uncaringly, although not obscenely, and when it ended said he'd enjoyed himself.

Afterwards Eduard said there didn't seem any point in his returning to Mytninskaya and then having to come out again so soon, so why didn't they have a drink to fill in the time before he had to meet friends. Because it was convenient they used the bar in the Berlin Hotel, on Zhdanova. Eduard ordered vodka with a beer chaser again, telling his mother to get more than one purchase ticket to save time when they wanted refills.

‘There's no real reason for me to go back to the apartment, either,' said Natalia when they were seated. ‘I might as well go on to the show straight from here.'

‘Show?' queried Eduard blankly.

‘The circus,' reminded Natalia sadly. ‘It would be silly to waste both tickets.'

‘Right!' agreed Eduard, with surprising eagerness. ‘You'll have fun.'

Natalia moved to make the obvious reply but then stopped, saying nothing. Eduard took the tickets which lay between them and returned with more vodka and beer. ‘You didn't want another juice, did you?'

‘No,' said Natalia.

‘I didn't think you would. That's why I got the beer, instead.'

‘That's fine.' Natalia had no real interest in going to the circus on Vernadskovo by herself, but the alternative was to go home by herself which wasn't really an alternative at all. She realized that quite apart from wanting to see Eduard again she had been looking forward to some brief hours of simple companionship.