Valentina has received a wedding invitation from her sister in Selby. She has shown it to my father, waving it under his nose with a few nasty gibes. The accompanying letter describes the husband-to-be as a doctor, forty-nine years old, married (no longer married, of course) with two children of school age (both in private school) and a good house with good garden and double garage. The no-tits wife is making plenty trouble but husband is too much in love, no problem.
In double garage is Jaguar and second car Renault. Jaguar is good, says Valentina, but not as good as Rolls-Royce. Renault is little better than Lada. Nevertheless, her sister’s letter has fired up in Valentina a new dissatisfaction with her plenty-money-meanie no-good husband and the second-rate life-style he has condemned her to.
As my father burbles on down the phone, stopping from time to time for a violent fit of coughing, I cannot help glancing across at Mike, who is sitting there with his feet up and a glass of beer in his hand, watching the Channel Four News. He looks so decent, so nice, greying a bit, with the slight beginnings of a paunch, but handsome still, so loved, so-husbandly. But…an anxious thought brushes my mind.
The baby alarm What is it with men?
And now, with another fit of coughing, my father comes to the nub of his telephone call. Valentina requires more money, and he must liquidate some assets. But what assets does he have? Only the house. Ah! At the back of the house is a large area of land which is good for nothing. This he could sell. (He is talking about Mother’s garden!)
He has had a discussion with a neighbour, and the neighbour is willing to take it off his hands for a sum of three thousand pounds.
My heart is pounding now, my eyes so misted with rage that I can hardly see, yet I must control my voice.
“Don’t rush into anything, Pappa. There’s no hurry. Maybe this sister’s husband-to-be will turn out to be a meanie as well. After all he must provide for his wife and his private-school children. Maybe the wife will get the Jaguar, and the sister will have the Renault. Maybe Valentina will realise how lucky she is. Just wait and see.”
“Hmm.”
As for selling Mother’s garden-my jaw is clenched tight so that I can barely get the words out through my teeth-these things are often more complicated than they seem. The deeds would have to be redrawn. Probably most of the money would be swallowed up in solicitors’ fees. And the offer from the neighbour-well that is quite a paltry amount. If he had planning permission to build another house there, why the plot of land would fetch ten times as much. Just imagine how pleased Valentina would be. (And planning permission takes ages and ages.)
Would he like me to ask a solicitor? Would he like me to contact the council about planning permission? Should I talk to Vera?
“Hmm. Solicitor yes. Council yes. Vera no.”
“But probably Vera will find out. Imagine how upset” (he knows I mean furious) “she will be.”
Vera did find out. I told her. She was both upset and furious.
It took her two hours to drive from Putney to Peterborough. She was still wearing her house slippers when she arrived (an unusual lack of attention to detail). She marched straight up to the neighbour’s house (it is an ugly mock-Tudor house, much larger than my parents’), banged on the door and confronted him. (“You should have seen the look on his face.”) The neighbour, a retired businessman and gardening amateur of the Leylandii-and-bedding-plants school, cowered under the onslaught.
“I was only trying to be helpful. He said he was having financial difficulties.”
“You’re not being helpful. You’re making things worse. Of course he’s having financial difficulties, because of that bloodsucking wife of his. You should be keeping an eye on him, not encouraging him. What sort of neighbour are you?”
His wife has heard the row, and comes to the door, twin-setted and pearled, with a gin and tonic in her hand (it is these neighbours who witnessed the codicil to Mother’s will).
“What’s going on, Edward?”
Edward explains. His wife raises her eyebrows.
“That’s the first I’ve heard of this. I thought we were saving to go on a cruise, Edward.” Then she turns to Vera. “We were worried about Mr Mayevskyj, but we didn’t like to get involved. Did we, Edward?”
Edward nods and shakes his head at the same time. Vera needs to keep them on side, so she softens her tone.
“I’m sure it was all a misunderstanding.”
“Yes, a misunderstanding.”
Edward seizes the lifeline and retreats behind his wife, who has comes forward to take her husband’s place on the doorstep.
“She doesn’t seem a very nice sort of lady,” she says. “She sunbathes in the garden wearing…wearing…” She steals a backward glance at her husband, her voice drops to a whisper, “I’ve seen him watching out of the upstairs window. And another thing,” her tone is confidential, “I think she’s having an affair. I’ve seen a man…”-she purses her lips-“…who calls for her in a car. He parks up under the ash tree-where Mr Mayevskyj can’t see from the window-and beeps his horn and waits for her. She comes running out, all dressed up to the nines. All fur coat and no knickers, as my mother used to say.”
“Thank you for telling me this,” says Vera. “You’ve been so helpful.”
Valentina must have seen Vera’s car, for she is waiting for her in the doorway blocking the way, arms at her waist, ready for a fight. She looks Vera up and down. Her eyes rest momentarily on Vera’s slippered feet, and a quick smile flickers across her mouth. Vera looks down too. (“It was only then that I realised what a mistake I had made.”) Valentina is wearing a pair of stiletto shoes, which make her bare muscular calves bulge like a boxer’s biceps.
“What you go for next-door, nose-pock?” Valentina demands.
Vera ignores her, and pushes past into the kitchen, which is full of steam, the windows all misted up. There is a pile of washing-up in the sink, and a smell of something disgusting. Pappa is hovering by the door, wearing a pair of navy blue nylon dungarees, the straps criss-crossed over his thin crooked back.
“I’ve spoken to the people next door, Pappa. They are no longer interested in buying Mother’s garden.”
“Vera, why must you do this? Why can you not leave me alone?”
“Because if I leave you alone, Pappa, this vulture will peck out your liver.”
“Eagle. Eagle.”
“Eagle? What are you talking about?” (“Really, Nadia, I thought he had completely flipped.”)
“Eagle pecked out liver of Prometheus because he has brought fire.”
“Pappa, you are not Prometheus, you are a pitiful, confused old man, who through your own idiocy have fallen prey to this she-wolf…”
Valentina, who has been listening with a storm gathering in her face, lets out a low howl, and flexing her arms shoves Vera hard in the chest. Vera staggers back, but doesn’t fall.
“Valya, please, no violence,” Father pleads, trying to get between them. He is way out of his depth.
“You dog-eaten-brain old bent stick, you go in room you shut up.” Valentina gives him a shove too, and he stumbles against the frame of the door which Mike put in, and leans there crookedly. Valentina produces a key from her pocket and dangles it in front of Father’s nose.
“I have room key ha ha I have key room!”
Father makes a grab for it, but she holds it just above his reach.
“Why you want with key?” she taunts. “You go in room. I lock unlock.”
“Valya, please give key!” He makes a pathetic little jump as he attempts to grab, then falls back with a sob.
Vera tries to make a grab, too-“How dare you!”-but Valentina pushes her away.
“I have a microphone!” cries Vera. “I will get evidence of your criminal activities!”
Out of her handbag she takes a small hand-held Dictaphone (you have to admire her!) and switches it on, holding it up above Valentina’s head.
“Now, please, Valentina, give my father back the key to his room, and try to behave in a calm and civilised manner,” she says in a clear dictating voice. She is taller than Valentina, but Valentina has the advantage of heels. She grabs for the Dictaphone, and would have got it, but her attention is distracted, as at that moment Father makes a snatch at the key in her other hand. Attacked on both fronts, she shrieks and jumps into the air (“It was just like one of those Kung Fu films that Dick used to watch”) and comes down with a crash, the stiletto heel of one shoe landing on Vera’s slippered foot, the other heel catching Father’s shin just below the knee. Father and Vera both buckle. The Dictaphone falls and skids across the floor under the cooker. Vera makes a dive for the Dictaphone. Valentina pushes Father through the door of his room, wrestles the key out of his hand and locks the door. Vera falls upon Valentina, pulling, twisting-they are both on the floor now-and tries to wrest the key from her hand, but Valentina is stronger, and grips the key in a fist behind her back, pulling herself up off the floor. Defeated, Vera wields the Dictaphone:
“I› have it all on tape! Everything you say is on tape!”
“Good!” says Valentina, “this is what I want say you bitch vixen no-tits. You have no tits, you jealous.” She puts her hands under her breasts, pressing them obscenely up and together, and makes little pouting kisses with her mouth. “Man like tits. You Pappa like tits.”
“Please, Valentina,” says Vera, “control yourself. There is no need for foul language.”
But she knows she is defeated. She holds her head high, but humiliation sits heavy in her heart.
On the other side of the locked door, Father is scratching and whimpering like a whipped dog.
“Oh Vera! You did your best. You are magnificent. A heroine. Have you got the tape?”
“There was no tape in the Dictaphone. It was all a bluff. What else could I do?”
Later on, before she went out, Valentina unlocked the door of Father’s room, but she kept the key.
Father had soiled himself again.
“He can’t help it. He really shouldn’t wear dungarees.”
“Oh yes, he can help it-not the incontinence, of course, but the obsession. He clings to it against all reason-the excitement, the glamour of it. He still defends her against me, you know.”
“I know.”
“And do you know what else I found? Plugged in to the socket under his bed was a baby alarm.”
“Goodness. What does he need that for?”
“She, not he. The other one’s plugged in upstairs in her room. It’s one of those clever things that works on the mains circuit. It means she can hear everything he says in his room.”
“But does he talk to himself?”
“No, stupid, when he talks to us on the phone.”
“Ah.”