The Accomplice Read online

  Yevgenia Konstantinovna had been the person with whom she had first made contact in her enterprise to come to England and she had never really understood why, once the plan had been accepted and she had obtained her letter of invitation, it had been arranged for her to go to Hampstead rather than to Broad Woodham. Seeing Naomi had explained what had happened, at least to some extent. Naomi herself had said that her mother-in-law was elderly and crippled, as if these facts, in themselves, accounted for Xenia’s not staying with her. Naomi’s discursive explanation went on to relate the details of Yevgenia’s relationship with Marcus, of Marcus’s father, first wife and children. Naomi’s free flow of information was astonishing to Xenia, who was used to people who only admitted such confidences to those they had known for many years and trusted absolutely. She, in particular, had always had to be extremely guarded in what she said about her family and to whom. She felt some contempt for Naomi’s carelessness; how could she know that Xenia was to be trusted? However, Naomi’s open speech revealed a deeper level of explanation for how and why she had achieved her ambition. Naomi liked power, the power that came from meddling in others’ lives, in “making a difference”, in “doing good”, and from the allied power of binding people to you with the bonds of admiration and gratitude through the giving of presents, making of telephone calls, bestowing of hospitality. Xenia was acutely sensitive to power and always studied what counterposing force she had. In the main, it was simply the will to resist it, even when obeying, and on her first arrival this was the only way she could avoid being overwhelmed by Naomi, a detachment that separated her from the poor, appreciative student she appeared to be. Then she discovered that Naomi was interested in her, not simply as a recipient of her benevolence, but as a Chornoroukaya.

  “Tell me about your family,” she had said in the car on the way to do some shopping. They were driving on the complicated tangle of roads in North London that links the Edgware Road with the North Circular. Naomi drove with cautious confidence, always correctly signalling her change of lane, accurately choosing the exits and slip roads to bring her through the maze to the car park of the shopping centre. “Jean tells us nothing about the past and all I know comes from bits of research I’ve done myself. Marcus is not really interested in this sort of thing, though he sometimes dredges up bits from his childhood about Jean’s aristocratic family.”

  Xenia’s own knowledge of this subject was almost as limited as Naomi’s. It derived from her father’s rambling and drunken monologues. He would sit in their bleak room, fifteen floors above the wind-scoured Siberian plain, as if he were an ancient Slav chieftain beside his fire, chanting the exploits of his forebears. For Xenia his stories had little coherence. The history she was taught in school did not permit her to place the anecdotes of her parent into any factual context. From his tales she was hard put to distinguish between her grandfather and the earliest pagan Chornorouky prince who had ruled in the time of the Grand Princes of Kiev. Most of her father’s sagas were, in any case, about the feuds of the gulag. Tentatively, she had produced one or two of these stories for Naomi, vague, generalized, their theme being the immense antiquity, power and riches of the Chornorouky. She could see that Naomi was disappointed by such impersonal stories and with an immense effort told the story of her father’s terrible end. It was the first time she had ever recounted her version of the episode to anyone, apart from the police. She was astonished at herself for having done so. Her halting description had been a great success. She saw that Naomi interpreted the story as an act of intimacy and her evident pain in telling it as signifying the revelation of deep emotion. So, even though she had had no information about her family’s princely past, she felt that the confidence she had forced herself to make had been worth while.

  * * *

  For Zita, Jean’s lunch party only became important in retrospect. A death focuses the attention of the living; and a death, especially if it is doubtful, unexpected or violent, casts the mind back to the past to sift through the soil of everyday events for tiny, fateful shards of truth. Zita only selected the elements of the explanation – or an explanation – later. At the time, the events pointing back to the lunch, or even further to the evening in the garden of Asshe House, were only a part of the normal pattern of existence: work, Tom, no-Oliver, music. She was a believer in significant detail. She had begun her career as an observer as an only child in a household that did not pander to childish things. She had spent many hours at lunch tables, watching the adults who argued and gossiped over her head. Their topics might range from a Feynman formula recently published to Cambridge politics: the subjects were of no interest to her. Her attention had always focused on a detail from which she would extrapolate meaning. Although the fantasies of her childhood had been discarded and the rules of evidence had imposed boundaries to her ideas, she still found importance in small things.

  At the lunch that Sunday she noticed how recently Jean had become Yevgenia, and in the abandonment of her English name she seemed to have begun the journey in reverse that had made Yevgenia – Genya – Jean, a Baltic-Russian aristocrat, into a middle-class Englishwoman. At the time she put the change down to the influence of her mother, who, in deciding to speak Russian again, was instrumental in returning Yevgenia to her past. However, the significant detail of the name led Zita to overlook something which she later saw as even more important: Yevgenia’s first meeting with Xenia. She did not really remark on it because of Valentina, who was seeing Marcus and Naomi for the first time in six years, whose presence attracted all attention, allowing other activity only as an eddy of the main flow.

  As they walked next door for lunch Tom was making the low, rushing noise in his throat which indicated he was annoyed. Zita could not bear to think of the frustration that he suffered. His consciousness was shut up, like Ariel in the cloven pine, in a body that he could not move, even to speak. The computer by which he was learning to communicate was his passion and he was vexed that Valentina could not play with him any longer. Valentina embraced Naomi and Marcus, remembered Rosie as a teenager, was introduced to Al. Watching, Zita saw that for each of them Valentina was exceptional, meeting her was a memorable event. And it was not simply that an encounter with the famous is always interesting; Valentina’s personality imprinted itself on everyone she encountered. She led the way into the garden where chairs had been arranged in the shade and where champagne was waiting for Marcus to pour.

  “It should have been Russian champagne, Jean,” he said, handing Valentina a glass.

  “A revolting idea.”

  Marcus countered Valentina’s contempt for all things Russian by appealing to Xenia. She had been introduced to everyone except Zita, arriving late from the kitchen, but her presence had made no impact. She was standing on the edge of the group, marginal, although perfectly self-possessed. She was not a striking figure; there was no reason why anyone should have noticed her, Zita thought. Her hair was fair, like a dun horse; her eyes were pale, too, yellowish-grey. She was astonishingly badly dressed, in a reddish cardigan of some nasty synthetic material, which was clearly, on such a fine day, going to be too hot for her, but which she could not discard as she wore no T shirt or blouse. Her skirt, in an incoherent pattern of muddy tones, hung loosely on her frame. Her legs were bare and her feet were shod in a pair of battered trainers. Zita realized with a shock that these were the garments of poverty. Even in Russia, surely, where supply was limited, no one would have put on such clothes, in such a combination, if their choice had not been decisively determined by lack of money. Even Naomi, who made not thinking about her appearance part of her creed, was today rather attractively dressed in a natural-coloured linen skirt and blouse. Zita dragged her mind back to the conversation. She paid far too much attention to clothes, lavishing time and money on the purchase of material to be made up by Wladzia, an elderly Polish dressmaker, now retired, who shared her passion for colour and texture and shape.

  “Is Russian champagne that bad, Xenia?
” Marcus was asking.

  “I have not tasted it so often. I should say it is not as good as this.” Everyone laughed at this judicious reply, as if she had said something witty.

  “I don’t expect it is. This is vintage, I see, Jean.”

  “I found it in the cellar when I was clearing Asshe House. And some other wines as well. I have put a couple of cases out for you, and another two for Rosie, to take back to London, Marcus. You drink more of it than I do.”

  Zita left them to park Tom in the shade. “Will you be all right there, Tom?” she asked him. He had recovered his good humour and cast up his eyes, his method of affirmation. The conversation reached him across the lawn, very loud and cheerful, fuelled by the champagne and the presence of Valentina. That at least was how Zita saw it at the time; later she wondered whether other mechanisms were already at work, whether Xenia’s deceptively unobtrusive personality was already having an effect.

  Lucia was calling them to the table, Yevgenia directing them to their places. Where was Ivo, Zita wondered, noticing for the first time the preponderance of women. Was he not supposed to be joining them? She found herself between Lucia and Xenia, opposite Rosie, while the other end of the table was dominated by Valentina, who held Marcus and Al captive in her conversation, so that Naomi was almost defeated. Lucia, a very competent cook, was setting down cold soup in front of each of them. Zita picked up her spoon and listened to the surge of voices.

  “What are you doing here, exactly, Valentina?”

  “Reskimer is very well thought of.”

  “Where is Ivo?”

  “I went yesterday to see Richard III in the park.”

  “A wonderful exhibition.”

  “I am looking at a very interesting subject: the effect of the future on the past in quantum situations.”

  “He did two years of medical training before he turned to archaeology.”

  “Did you understand it? I mean the language is not exactly what you hear on the street.”

  “Some crisis at one of the restaurants, he said. He phoned this morning.”

  “You see, some of the equations seem to suggest that a quantum particle acts or makes its decision to act, one could say, on the basis of information it does not yet have, that is, it is receiving knowledge from the future as well as from the past.”

  “I bought a little sculpture.”

  “He uncovered an eighteenth-century graveyard and did some work on the bones.”

  “I expect he was in bed with his girlfriend and did not want to have lunch with his family.”

  “Yes, of course, not every word, but the sense.”

  “It was very expensive.”

  “Doesn’t that rather bugger up the arrow of time? And what about free will?”

  “Ivo used to creep around doing imitations of Olivier as Richard III.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Or he is a very good actor. He sounded sorry.”

  “I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,

  Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,

  Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up…”

  “Well, it does in a way. But it’s rather like predestination if one is a Calvinist, we are free to make any decisions we like, the past already knows about them and has taken them into account.”

  “How much was it, Naomi?”

  “I can’t tell you, darling. I have forgotten myself by now.”

  “The thing I can’t take about that play is the idea that being maimed or crippled or a bastard is an outward and visible sign of inward moral turpitude.”

  “So there is both forward and backward causation, but we can’t see it. Except at a quantum level.”

  Zita sat listening to the lapping of conversation around her. Yevgenia, at the head of the table, took little part, once she had defended Ivo’s right to be absent. Al and Marcus were engaged by Valentina, who was not someone who assumed that her world of quantum physics was too abstruse for the ordinary person. The exposition of work in progress by some academics might be numbingly boring. In her it was fascinating, flattering to her listeners, who thought they understood the science of a Nobel prizewinner. Zita also attributed Naomi’s display of affection towards her husband to Valentina’s presence. As Naomi moved around the table helping Lucia to remove the soup plates and to put vegetable dishes at either end, she paused behind Marcus, on one occasion resting her hands in a proprietory manner on his shoulders, on another listening to what he was saying and dropping an approving kiss on his thick grey hair. Only later did Zita recognize that, although Valentina’s charisma was great enough to disturb her daughter’s equilibrium, her power was not so influential on others. The cause lay elsewhere, in the other new arrival.

  However, even at the time, Zita was struck by a conversation that grew out of Lucia’s visit to the theatre, to the extent of losing track of who was gaining the upper hand at the other end of the table.

  Xenia, who had been listening to Lucia and Rosie, said suddenly, “He does this because it is true.”

  “True?” Rosie was so surprised at the intervention that she seemed momentarily to have forgotten what she had said.

  “That physical disability shows moral distortion.”

  “You think it does?” Rosie flicked a glance at Zita, whom she saw was listening, and quickly averted her gaze.

  “Of course.”

  Rosie reacted as if she had found someone who asserted that the earth was flat, with a kind of exasperated contempt, which came in part from her consciousness of Zita’s attention. “You can’t believe that; it’s patently untrue.”

  “Not at all. Look at Stalin.”

  “Stalin?”

  “Yes. He was like Richard III with a withered arm. It came from being dropped as a child, I think.”

  “Possibly. But one can counter that with innumerable cases of tyrants who were physically fine specimens or alternatively of handicapped people who were saints.”

  “For example?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Attila the Hun, perhaps – or Hitler.”

  “Attila,” said Xenia with some defiance now. “How do you say it? He had a funny foot. Club-footed? Yes. And Hitler, you have only to look at him to see he was unsafe and insane.”

  Al had given up his conversation to listen to the row that had developed between the Russian girl and Rosie. It seemed to amuse him. He began to hum, “Hitler, he only had one ball…”

  Zita was thinking of Tom. She was a believer in childhood’s innocence. Tom’s condition could not be a statement of his moral condition; he had no power to act, for good or evil. He could only be, according to Xenia’s thesis, a reflection of the state of his mother’s soul. Zita suddenly realized that this was not so far from an idea that lay at the base of the rationalization of her life, that Tom was in some way a retribution for a failing in herself which she could not identify, but of which she was always guiltily aware. Her attention returned to Rosie and Xenia who were both by now furious with one another.

  Rosie was faintly pink with annoyance and contempt, exacerbated by Al’s indirect support for Xenia. The Russian girl was flushed in an uneven, mottled fashion. The stupidity of the argument (Zita was convinced there was some linguistic misunderstanding at the bottom of it), bore no relation to the passion of hostility that it had evoked. Xenia was speaking, fumbling for her words. “You have only to look around you to see how a person’s soul is shown in their outside.” She hesitated for a moment.

  Lucia, placatory, said, “I understand in the play it is symbolic.”

  Xenia continued as if she had not spoken. “Even clothes show you. A person’s soul is shown in the colours they choose, in the way they are.”

  The tension drew Yevgenia’s gaze; Zita saw her watch her granddaughter lean over and say with the cruel triumph of someone who has been dealt a winning card, “If honesty is shown by appearance, who will they believe, you or me?”

  Xenia r
ecoiled. Her humiliation was so acute that Zita felt a sympathetic pain. Comparing the two of them was like pitting a glossy-coated house dog against an ill-fed but combative mongrel. She could smell the sharp, repellent odour of sweat emanating from the Russian girl, physically underlining what Rosie had just said.

  Zita began to speak to cover the rift that had been torn in Yevgenia’s lunch party. “Perhaps the English tradition of identifying with the underdog had not developed then.”

  Lucia, bewildered by the antagonism that her carefully practised English had aroused, got up to fetch Zita’s tart. She placed it in front of Yevgenia who was still looking abstractedly down the length of her table at Xenia who was sitting in silence, her face a mask, and at Rosie who had turned away to listen to Valentina’s conversation with Al. Lucia touched her arm to recall her. Yevgenia took up the knife and handed it to Valentina, inviting her to help herself.

  Xenia’s encounter with Yevgenia did not come until after lunch. After their initial handshake, her hostess had more or less ignored her, making no attempt to speak to her alone. There was none of the warmth which, however self-referring, had been present in Naomi’s welcome. Yevgenia showed only reserve. Xenia was not disturbed by this attitude, for she did not find it strange. It was how she would behave, until all suspicions were allayed. She had already decided that she must break down Yevgenia’s hostility; she was not yet sure how she would do it. Yevgenia presented a very different problem from Naomi, who, for all her love of power, was complacent, easy to please, contemptible. She began to think, as the day wore on, that she would have no chance to speak to the old woman. Only towards the end of the afternoon, as she sat in a deck chair on the edge of a conversation, was her eye caught by Yevgenia’s beckoning finger. She rose and stepped into the empty drawing room. Yevgenia sat down heavily and dropped her sticks beside her.

  “Come and tell me a little about yourself,” she said in English. Xenia seated herself opposite her. The afternoon light fell full on her face, making it difficult for her to see Yevgenia clearly, who, with her back to the french window, was in shade.