Blair was still disorientated by the time changes and despite the final head-dropping tiredness as he sat with Ruth he awoke early, while it was dark. Seven in Moscow, he calculated: his normal time. Would Ann be awake? He’d have to call her today. He had to call a lot of people today. Blair lay, feeling the familiarity of his former home wrapped about him, thinking about the previous day and trying to decide whether he had handled it correctly. Unsure, too, about some of the things he’d said to the boy. Maybe thousands of kids stayed straight and all right after their parents divorced but could he dismiss it entirely? No, he thought, honestly. Continuing the honesty Blair realised he’d tried to take the divorce out of any discussion as much for his own conscience as to get through to Paul: maybe more so. The acceptance discomfited him, making him feel guilty. He had given the kid a bad shake. He’d given all of them a bad shake. Ruth worst of all because they were only kids but she’d been able to understand it all. He’d behaved like a shit and she’d behaved like a saint. Like she was still doing. He had to do more, determined Blair: not just now – he was doing all he could now – but later, when this had been settled. She deserved it; the kids deserved it. Conscience again? Sure it was. What else could it be? But proper conscience this time.
Blair reviewed the day ahead, watching the sky gradually lighten outside and listening intently for the sounds of movement elsewhere in the house. When they came, after a further two hours, Blair remained where he was, the earlier feeling of familiarity giving way to another sensation, the awareness that it was no longer his home and that he was a visitor to it and like a polite visitor it was necessary to wait until the people who really lived there got through their established morning routine and cleared bathrooms before he intruded. The boys were at the breakfast bar when he emerged, Ruth cooking the pancakes at the stove. She wore a housecoat but her hair was carefully brushed. The boys appeared tidier than they’d been the previous day; he saw Ruth had cleaned their shoes. The tightness remained between them all but Blair thought it was slightly less strained than yesterday. Awake for so long he had prepared for the encounter. Deciding it was important to create some sort of balance – even if the effort appeared obvious – and not refer constantly to the reason for his being there he asked if there were a team they supported and hesitantly, almost unconvincingly, they said the Orioles and Blair said if there were a game that weekend would they like to go out to Baltimore and take it in? The acceptance was hesitating, too. John made an effort, asking what Moscow was like and Blair snatched at the opening and said it was very different from America and he had a lot to tell them about it and why didn’t they talk about it over dinner? John nodded eagerly, the excitement at having his father again in the house obvious. Paul gave no reaction. Why the hell does he behave all the time like some goddamned dummy! thought Blair, irritably. They were waiting, lunch pails ready and packed, when the car sounded outside. Ruth kissed them both but Blair held back, like he had the previous night. Maybe it would be possible before he finally went back, he thought: but not now.
With the importance of that in mind he telephoned Langley while Ruth was clearing the boys’ breakfast things and setting places for them. He didn’t know whether the division chief would already be in but was glad when Ray Hubble came on to the line. It was insecure, so the conversation was necessarily general. Hubble had been the supervisor in Rome when Blair had been there and they’d worked together at headquarters before Blair’s London posting, so an acquaintanceship at least existed between them. Hubble said he was sorry to hear Blair had a problem and was there anything he could do and Blair said that was what he wanted to talk about. Hubble offered that day but Blair said tomorrow: he wasn’t going to rush the encounters with the counsellors. Blair had thought about them, in the early hours, wanting to get the maximum out of the meeting so he telephoned them both and suggeted a combined rather than separate encounter. Both agreed. Erickson’s office was decided upon.
Ruth had brewed fresh coffee by the time he returned to the kitchen, which was all he wanted. He told her about the altered arrangements with the counsellors and the reason and asked, in afterthought, if she wanted to come.
‘Would it help?’ said the woman at once. ‘I’ve seen them both, several times. But if it would help of course I’ll come.’
‘Maybe better by myself the first time,’ he agreed. He finished his coffee and said, ‘I’d like to make another call.’
‘All local calls are free in Washington,’ she reminded him, imagining he had forgotten.
‘This isn’t a local call,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ she said, realising. She seemed to spend longer than was necessary with her back to him, getting more coffee, and then she said, ‘Sure, go ahead.’
‘Collect calls are difficult in Moscow,’ he said. ‘If you’ll let me know the cost when the bill comes in I’ll send you a cheque.’ Polite visitor, he thought again.
‘No problem,’ said Ruth. She looked down at the housecoat, as if surprised to find herself wearing it. ‘I should get dressed,’ she said.
Blair used the kitchen extension. It was a bad connection and he had to shout over the echo on the line, wishing it hadn’t been necessary. Each agreed they were fine. Ann asked how things were and he said he didn’t know, not yet. He didn’t know, either, when he would be getting back. She told him she was taking Brinkman to the ballet and he agreed it was a good idea.
‘I miss you,’ she shouted.
‘Me too,’ Blair yelled back.
‘I love you.’
‘Me too,’ he yelled again. He supposed Ruth, who would be able to hear every word, would guess but he’d tried. Polite visitor.
Blair promised to call again and Ann said she hoped everything would turn out all right. She said again that she loved him but Blair didn’t respond this time. He finished the call before Ruth came back into the room.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘Everything all right?’
‘Seems to be. It was a bad line.’
‘So I gathered. Shall I fix lunch?’
‘Thought we might eat out.’
Ruth smiled, immediately pleased at the invitation. ‘Fine.’
‘Anywhere particular you like?’
‘You choose,’ she said hopefully.
‘Dominiques used to be good.’
She smiled again, glad he’d remembered. Dominiques had been important to them, the place where they’d celebrated special occasions like birthdays and wedding anniversaries and news of his promotions and postings. It would be nice to have another special occasion to celebrate there. ‘Dominiques would be lovely.’
Blair was early for his appointment with the counsellors, at Erickson’s office ahead of the other official. Both men were similar and Blair wondered if it were the job. They dressed uncaringly, pants unpressed and creases concertinaed in the bends of their arms, ties straying from their collars. Kemp was taller and wore spectacles, but both were overweight, stomachs bulging over their belts. Erickson offered coffee which Blair didn’t want but which he took anyway.
‘Thanks for seeing me like this,’ said Blair. ‘I thought it was best.’
‘Makes our schedules easier,’ said Kemp.
‘So you’re busy?’ said Blair, to the school counsellor.
Erickson smiled, an attempt at reassurance. ‘Believe me, Mr Blair, what you’re going through right now isn’t unusual, for American parents today.’
Blair recognised the effort but found the man faintly patronising. Would kids feel the same way? He said, ‘It’s unusual for me. I want to get it sorted out.’
‘That’s what we all want,’ said Erickson.
‘So how do we do it?’
‘I wish I knew,’ admitted the school official. ‘I’ve got seventy kids I’m trying to help and I’d guess that many again I don’t know about yet.’
‘And I’ve stopped bothering to count the number I’m responsible for,’ said Kemp.
Fuck their problems, thought Blair; all he cared about was his own. ‘You’re the experts,’ he said, holding his irritation, if I can’t get answers then I’m looking for advice.’
‘You live abroad?’ said Erickson.
‘Moscow.’ said Blair.
‘Have you had a chance to talk to Paul?’
Blair nodded, ‘I tried, last night.’
‘ Tried? ’ picked up Kemp.
‘I couldn’t get through to him,’ said Blair. ‘Maybe I did, towards the end, but I’m not sure. But he wouldn’t talk to me… say anything. I asked him why he did it and he just sat there, like a dummy!’
‘That’s usually the way,’ said Kemp.
Blair decided the man was definitely annoying him. ‘So you’re the experts,’ he repeated. ‘So you tell me. Why do they do it?’
‘I wish I knew that, too,’ said Kemp. ‘There’s never one single reason. Or a way of assembling all the factors into any understandable answer. There’s peer pressure, being shamed into it by someone they admire, a bigger guy. There’s experimentation, the way most kids have: should have. There’s boredom. There’s the availability of the stuff, all sorts of stuff: it’s easier to buy dope on a street corner than it is to buy bread. Supermarkets close: dealers are always there.’
‘So why aren’t they cleared off the damned streets!’
‘They are,’ said Erickson. ‘And the moment – literally the moment – they go there’s two more to take their places.’
Blair felt the frustration building up inside him. ‘Let’s talk specifics,’ he tried again. ‘Let’s talk about Paul and let’s talk about me and let’s try to find something we can do. I’ll take your word about it being a modern American problem and I’ll take your word about all the reasons it can happen but I want to find a way – will find a way – to stop Paul fucking himself up.’ Blair hadn’t intended to swear but didn’t really give a damn whether they were offended or not. There wasn’t any reason why they should be.
‘How did you talk to him, last night?’ asked Erickson.
‘ How? ’
‘Calmly, trying to understand? Or did you lose your temper?’
Blair conceded it was justified, after his outburst. ‘Calmly, as far as I was concerned,’ he said, i don’t think I shouted and I don’t think I lost my temper. But I let him know how I felt. I let him know I thought what he had done was stupid and weak and that I thought he’d let everyone down and that I wasn’t accepting the fact that my wife and I are divorced to be any excuse. That there wasn’t an excuse…’ Blair paused. Then he said, ‘And I am trying to understand. I keep asking questions but no one seems able to provide any answers.’
Blair saw the two men exchange looks and realised they considered he’d handled it wrongly. Erickson said, ‘You were aggressive?’
‘No,’ refused Blair. ‘I was direct and straight, like I felt a father should be.’ Except, perhaps, that a father should be at home and not a polite visitor.
‘A factor I didn’t mention was that sometimes drug-taking is a rebellion against authority,’ said Kemp, in his lecturing voice.
‘Rebellions against authority get crushed: that’s what law and order means,’ said Blair, impatient at the meaningless cliche. ‘Growing up, becoming an adult…’ He stopped, unsure which way his argument was leading him. ‘… OK,’ he resumed. ‘Making the mistakes that growing up means, that’s all right. That happens… it happens. That I can understand. Accept even. If he got drunk I’d understand it
…’
‘Why?’ demanded Erickson, slightly ahead of the other counsellor.
Blair blinked at the concerted demand. ‘Kids get drunk: it happens,’ he said, badly.
‘Do you know what the worst drug in existence is, Mr Blair?’ said Kemp, who appeared to regard himself as the spokesman. ‘Alcohol is the worst drug. It kills more people and causes more lost work days and more lost school days and more accidents than marijuana and cocaine and heroin and pills put together.’
‘Whose side are you on?’ said Blair, letting the exasperation show.
‘Paul’s side,’ said Kemp. ‘I’m not on your side and I’m not on your wife’s side and I’m not on anybody else’s side. Just Paul’s.’
‘At last!’ said Blair. ‘At last someone’s said something positive.’
‘We always try to be positive, Mr Blair,’ said Erickson. ‘I’ve sat through a hundred meetings like the one I’m having with you now and let me tell you that your reaction is the reaction of practically everyone. You think we’re inconclusive and you think we’re weak and you get impatient but try not to show it, because you love your kid and think you might in some way affect how we’ll try to help him, if you loudmouth us. We’re not interested in making our own points, Mr Blair: in expressing our opinions and our attitudes because our opinions and attitudes are middle-aged and already formed and at the end of every frustrating day we go home to a home where there’s a six-pack in the fridge and if it’s been a bad, particularly frustrating day we might even blow the whole six pack and get drunk and when we’re drunk we might believe that things aren’t really as bad as they are. Which is what taking drugs is all about, Mr Blair. Not wanting to know how things are – not dramatic, major, world-shattering things – 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?