“Pappa, please try to be sensible,” says Big Sis, slamming the milk-jug down on the table. “You cannot be the father of the baby. Why do you think she ran off when I suggested a paternity test?”
“Vera, you have always been a nose-poking autocrat,” says Father, drenching his Shredded Wheat with the creamy top of the milk and burying it under a heap of sugar. “Leave me alone. Now go back to London. Please go!” His hands are shaking, but he still tries to stuff his mouth, then he starts to cough and projectiles of Shredded Wheat fly across the table.
“Please try to act like an adult for once in your life. What has happened to your brains? You’re not the father of the baby, you’re a baby yourself. Look at the way you behave-you’ve become completely infantile!”
“An Infantile Disorder! Ha ha ha!” He bangs his spoon on the table. “Vera, you become more like Lenin every day.”
“A paternity test is a good idea,” I intervene slyly, “because then you will know not only whether you are the father of the baby, but whether it is a boy or a girl.”
“Aha.” He stops in mid-cough. “Good idea. Boy or girl. Good idea.”
Vera throws me an appreciative glance.
Stanislav and Dubov are in the front garden, engaging in father-son bonding under the open bonnet of the Rolls-Royce. Mike is still asleep in the front room, but he has fallen off the settee on to the floor. Vera, Father and I are having breakfast in the back room, which is now both the dining-room and his bedroom. Slanted sunlight is streaming in through the dusty windows. Father is still wearing his nightshirt, a strange self-made garment constructed out of an old check Viyella shirt which he has extended in length with some pieces of a paisley winceyette fabric, stitched on to the flaps in large loops of black button-thread, and held together in front with brown shoelaces. It is opened at the neck, and his long-since-healed wound, bristling with silver hairs, winks at us as he talks.
“But…” he looks warily from me to Vera to me again, “…paternity test is only possible after birth of baby. Then it is plain whether is boy or girl without any test.”
“No, no. It is possible to have a paternity test before the baby is born. In utero.” Vera catches my eye. “Nadia and I will pay.”
“Hmm.” He still looks suspicious, as though he thinks we are trying to trick him. (As if we would!)
At that moment, the letter-box rattles. The morning post has arrived. Among the pile of invitations to open credit card accounts, amazing offers on health and beauty products, and promises of fabulous prizes to be won or already won and waiting to be claimed (Pappa: “How lucky she is to win such prizes!”), all addressed to Valentina, is a letter to my father from Ms Carter. She reminds him that the divorce hearing is to be in two weeks’ time, and puts forward an offer from Valentina’s solicitor not to contest the divorce, nor to make any further claim upon my father’s property, were a payment of £20,000 to be offered in full and final settlement.
“Twenty thousand pounds!” cries Vera. “It’s an outrage!”
“Anyway, you haven’t got £20,000, Pappa. So that’s that.”
“Hmm,” says Pappa. “Maybe if I sell house and go into old person’s home…”
“No!” Vera and I call out in unison.
“Or maybe you two, Nadia, Vera, maybe to help one foolish old man…”
He is dearly troubled by the demand.
“No! No!”
“But if the matter goes to court…” I am thinking aloud, “what would the court award?”
“Well, of course they could award half the property,” says Mrs Divorce Expert, “if he is the father of the child. If he is not, then I expect they would award little if anything.”
“Don’t you see, Pappa? That is why she is asking for the settlement now. Because she knows the child is not yours, and the court would award her nothing.”
“Hmm.”
“It’s a crafty trick,” says Mrs Divorce Expert.
“Hmm.”
“I’ve got a good idea, Pappa,” I say, emolliently topping up his teacup, “why don’t we telephone Laura Carter and say you are happy to offer £20,000 in full and final settlement, provided she is willing to undergo a paternity test, at our expense of course, and provided the child is found to be yours.”
“What could be fairer than that?” says Mrs Divorce Expert.
“What could be fairer than that, Nikolai?” says Mike. He has woken up and is standing in the doorway massaging his temples with both hands. “Is there any tea left in the pot? I feel a bit rough.”
Father looks at Mike, who winks at him encouragingly and nods his head.
“Hmm. OK.” Father gives a little shrug of surrender.
“What could be fairer than that?” says Ms Carter over the phone. “But…are you sure…?”
I look over at my father, frowning with concentration as he sips his tea, the paisley flaps of his nightshirt extension only partly concealing swollen arthritic knees, scrawny thighs, and above…I refuse to imagine.
“Yes, pretty sure.”
Stanislav led Dubov to Valentina. They disappeared together in the Rolls-Royce some time in the morning.
It is past midday by the time Dubov comes back, on his own.
He has a sombre look on his face.
“So tell us, where is she living?” I ask in Ukrainian.
He spreads his hands, palms up.
“I’m sorry, I cannot say. I have it in confidence.”
“But…we need to know. Pappa needs to know.”
“She is very afraid of you, Nadia and Vera.”
“Afraid of us?” I laugh. “Are we so frightening?”
Dubov smiles diplomatically. “She is afraid of being sent back to Ukraina.”
“But is Ukraina so frightening?”
Dubov considers for a moment. His dark eyebrows draw together in a frown. “At this time, yes she is. At this time, our beloved mother-country is in the grip of criminals and gangsters.”
“Yes, yes,” chips in Father, who has been quietly sitting in the corner peeling apples, “this is exactly what Valenka says. But tell me, Volodya Simeonovich, with such an intelligent type of people, how has this been allowed to happen?”
“Ah, this is the Wild West nature of the capitalism we are subjected to, Nikolai Alexeevich,” says Dubov in his calm, intelligent-type voice. “Those advisers who came from the West to show us how to build a capitalist economy, their model was the rapacious type of early American capitalism.”
Mike catches the words ‘Americansky capitaleesm’ and now he wants to get stuck in.
“You’re right, Dubov. It’s all that neo-liberal garbage. The crooks grab all the wealth, consolidate it into so-called legitimate businesses. Then, if we’re lucky, some of it can trickle down to the rest of us. Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan. They all started out as robber barons. Now the sun shines out of their million-dollar foundations.” (There’s nothing he enjoys more than a good political barney.) “Can you translate that, Nadia?”
“Not really. I’ll do my best.” I do my best.
“And there are those who argue that this gangster stage is necessary in the development of capitalism,” adds Dubov.
“This is fascinating!” cries Vera. “Do you mean to say the gangsters were brought there deliberately?” (Either her Ukrainian is rusty, or my translation is worse than I thought.) “Not exactly,” Dubov explains patiently. “But those gangster types who are already there, whose predatory instincts are held in check by the fabric of civil society, once that fabric is torn asunder, why, they flourish like weeds in a newly ploughed field.”
There is something irritatingly pedantic about the way he talks, a bit like Father. Normally it would drive me up the wall, but I find his earnestness is engaging.
“But do you see a way out of this, Dubov?” Mike asks. I interpret.
“In the short term not. In the long term I would say yes. Personally, I would favour the Scandinavian model. Take the best from both capitalism and socialism.” Dubov rubs his hands together. “Only the best, Mikhail Gordonovich. Don’t you agree?”
(Mike’s father was called Gordon. If there is a Russian equivalent, no one knows what it is.)
“Yes, of course, you can do that in a developed industrial country with a strong trade union movement, like Sweden.” (This is Mike’s home turf.) “But could it work in a country like Ukraine?”
He asks me to translate. I’m wishing I had not got involved in interpreting. We have both already taken the morning off work, and we need to get going. If we carry on like this, we’ll be getting out the plum wine next.
“Ah, there we have the big dilemma,” sighs Dubov with deep Slavic emotion, his black-pebble eyes fixed on his audience. “But Ukraina must find her own way. At present, alas, we accept unquestioningly everything from the West. Some of course is good; some is rubbish.” (Despite myself, I carry on interpreting. Mike nods his head. Vera moves over to the window and lights a cigarette. Father keeps peeling). “When we can put behind us the terrible memories of the gulag, then we will begin to rediscover those things which were good in our former socialist society. Then these advisers will be seen for what they are-truly robber-barons who plunder our national assets and install American-owned factories where our people will work for miserable wages. Russians, Germans, Americans-all of them-when they look at Ukraina, what do they see? Nothing but a source of cheap labour.”
As he warms to his theme, he talks faster and faster, gesticulating with his large hands. I am having trouble keeping up with him.
“Once we were a nation of farmers and engineers. We were not rich, but we had enough.” (Father is nodding enthusiastically in his corner, the apple-peeling knife suspended in mid-air.) “Now racketeers prey on our industries, while our educated youth fly westwards in search of wealth. Our national export is the sale of our beautiful young women into prostitution to feed the monstrous appetites of the Western male. It is a tragedy.”
He pauses, looks around, but no one speaks.
“It is a tragedy,” says Mike in the end. “And there’ve been plenty in that region.”
“They laugh at us. They suppose such corruption is in our nature.” Dubov’s voice has become quieter again. “But I would argue that it is merely characteristic of the type of economy which has been thrust upon us.”
Vera has been standing by the window, looking increasingly impatient with the conversation.
“But then Valentina will feel quite at home,” she declares. I throw her a ‘shut up’ look.
“But tell me, Dubov,” I ask, and I can’t help it if even now a note of bitchiness creeps into my voice, “how will you ever persuade someone as…as sensitive as Valentina to return to such a place?”
He shrugs, palms upwards, but a little smile plays about his lips.
“There are some possibilities.”
“Fascinating man,” says Mike. “Mmm.”
“Impressive grasp of economics, for an engineer.”
“Mmm.”
We are only half-way home, and I have a three o’clock lecture. I should be thinking about Women and Globalisation, but I too am thinking about what Dubov said. Mother and Vera in the barbed-wire camp; Valentina slaving long low-wage shifts in the nursing home, behind the bar at the Imperial Hotel, toiling in my father’s bedroom. Yes, she is greedy, predatory, outrageous, but she is a victim too. A source of cheap labour.
“I wonder how it will all end.”
“Mmm.” I was the lucky generation.
I do not know how Dubov pursued his courtship during the next fortnight, but Father told me that he went out in the Rolls-Royce every day, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the evening. When he came back he was invariably pleasant and cheerful, though sometimes his mood seemed more subdued.
It was Dubov, too, who sustained my father’s resolve in relation to the divorce, whenever he started to have second thoughts, which at first was almost daily.
“Nikolai Alexeevich,” he would say, “Vera and Nadia had the benefit of your parental wisdom when they were growing. Stanislav also needs to be with his father. As for the baby-a young child needs a young father. Be content with those children you already have.”
“You’re not so young yourself, hey, Volodya Simeonovich,” Father would retort. But Dubov was always calm.
“Indeed not. But I am much younger than you.”
A letter came back to Ms Carter from Valentina’s solicitor refusing absolutely to consider a paternity test, but agreeing to accept the much lower sum of £5,000 in full and final settlement.
“What should I say?” asks Father. “What should we say?” I ask Vera.
“What do you suggest?” Vera asks Ms Carter.
“Offer £2,000,” says Ms Carter. “That, is probably what a court would award. Especially as there is prima facie evidence of adultery.”
“Quite,” says Vera.
“I’ll put it to Pappa,” I say.
“OK. If that’s what you want,” my father concedes. “I can see everyone is against me.”
“Don’t be so stupid, Pappa,” I snap. “The only one who is against you is your own folly. Be grateful that there are those around you to save you from yourself.”
“OK. OK. I agree to everything.”
“And when you go to court, let’s have none of this nonsense about ‘I am bebby father’. No paternity test, no ‘bebby father’. OK?”
“OK,” he grumbles. “Nadia, you are turning into a monster like Vera.”
“Oh, shut up, Pappa.” I slam the phone down.
It’s only a week to the court hearing, and everyone is getting a bit tense.