The House of Special Purpose (22 page)

‘You’re older than I expected you to be,’ I said, wondering immediately whether Arina was only the latest in a series of girlfriends he had seduced.

‘I’m twenty-four,’ said Ralph quickly. ‘Still a young man, I hope.’

‘Of course you are,’ said Zoya. ‘Try being fifty-four.’

‘Arina’s only nineteen,’ I said.

‘Five years then,’ he replied, as if this difference in age was neither here nor there, and cutting me off from offering any further observation on it. Every time he spoke he looked across at Arina for approval, and when she smiled, he smiled too. When she spoke, he watched her, and his lips parted slightly. I felt there was a part of him that wanted to lean towards me and explain, in an entirely academic fashion, that he really couldn’t believe his luck that someone like her was interested in someone like him at all. I recognized the mixture of passions in his eyes: admiration, desire, fascination, love. I was pleased for my daughter, unsurprised that she could inspire such emotions, but it made me a little sad, too.

She was so young, I thought. I wasn’t ready to lose her.

‘Arina tells us that you’re a musician, Ralph,’ Zoya said as we ate the kind of dinner we usually only ate on Sundays. Roast beef and potatoes. Two different types of vegetables. Gravy. ‘What do you play?’

‘The clarinet,’ he replied quickly. ‘My father was a wonderful clarinettist. He insisted that my brother and sisters and I took lessons from the time we were very small. I used to hate it when I was a child, of course, but things change.’

‘Why did you hate it?’ I asked.

‘I think it was the teacher,’ he said. ‘She was about a hundred and fifty years old and every time I played badly she would beat me at the end of my lesson. When I played well, she would hum along to accompany Mozart or Brahms or Tchaikovsky or whoever.’

‘You like Tchaikovsky?’ I asked.

‘Yes, very much.’

‘I see.’

‘But your attitude must have changed eventually,’ said Zoya. ‘If you play for a living, I mean.’

‘Oh, I wish I could say that I do,’ he said, interrupting her quickly. ‘Forgive me, Mrs Jachmenev, but I’m not a professional musician. Not yet, anyway. I’m still studying. I take my classes at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, just off the Embankment.’

‘Yes,’ she said, nodding her head. ‘Yes, I know of it.’

‘A little old to be still studying, aren’t you?’ I asked.

‘It’s an advanced course,’ he explained. ‘So that I can teach as well as play, should the need arise. I’m in my final year now.’

‘Ralph plays with an orchestra outside of class too,’ said Arina quickly. ‘He’s performed at the Christmas service in St Paul’s for the last three years; last year he was even given a solo, weren’t you, Ralph?’

‘Really?’ said Zoya, sounding impressed as the boy smiled and blushed to be the centre of so much attention. ‘Then you must be very good.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, frowning as he considered this. ‘I’m improving anyway, I hope.’

‘You should have brought your clarinet with you,’ she continued. ‘Then you could have played for us. I played piano, you know, when I was a child. I’ve often wished we had the space here for one.’

‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘Yes,’ she said and opened her mouth to say more, but then seemed to think better of it and became immediately silent.

‘I never learned an instrument,’ I said, filling the silence. ‘I always wanted to, though. Had I been offered the opportunity, I might have studied the violin. I’ve always considered it to be the most elegant of musical instruments.’

‘Well you’re never too old to learn, sir,’ said Ralph and the moment the line was out of his mouth he flushed scarlet with embarrassment, which was not helped by the fact that I was staring directly at him with the most serious expression I could muster, as if he had just insulted me terribly. ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ he said, spluttering out the words. ‘I didn’t mean to imply that—’

‘That I’m old?’ I asked. ‘Well, what of it? I
am
old. I was only thinking about it earlier. You’ll be old yourself one day. See how you like it then.’

‘I simply meant that one can take up an instrument at any age.’

‘It would be a comfort to me in my dotage, perhaps,’ I suggested.

‘No, not at all. I mean—’

‘Georgy, don’t tease the poor boy,’ said Zoya, reaching across and taking my hand for a moment. Our fingers interlaced and I looked down at them, noticing how the skin on either side of her knuckles was starting to become a little more taut with age; for a moment I imagined I could see the blood and phalanges beneath, as if her hand was being made translucent by the passing years. We were both growing older and it was a depressing thought. I squeezed her fingers tightly and she turned to look at me, a little surprised, perhaps wondering whether I was trying to offer her reassurance or hurt her. The truth was that at that moment I wanted to tell her how much I loved her, how nothing else mattered, not the nightmares, not the memories, not even Henry, but it was impossible to speak such words. And not because Ralph and Arina were there. It was just impossible.

‘Did your father attend the same school?’ Zoya asked a moment later. ‘When he was learning the clarinet, I mean?’

‘Oh no,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘No, he never took any lessons in England after he arrived here. His father taught him when he was a child and he simply practised on his own after that.’

‘After he arrived here?’ I asked, picking up on the phrase. ‘What do you mean by that? He isn’t English, then?’

‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘No, my father was born in Hamburg.’

Arina had told us quite a lot about her young man but this was something she had not mentioned before, and Zoya and I immediately looked up from our plates to stare at him, entirely surprised by this news. ‘Hamburg?’ I said a few moments later. ‘Hamburg, Germany?’

‘Ralph’s father came to England in 1920,’ explained Arina, her expression betraying a little nervousness, I thought.

‘Really?’ I said, considering it. ‘After the Great War?’

‘Yes,’ said Ralph quietly.

‘And during the other war, the one that followed it, he returned to the Fatherland, I suppose?’

‘No, sir,’ he replied. ‘My father was vehemently opposed to the Nazis. He never returned to Germany, not since the day he left.’

‘But the army?’ I asked. ‘Wouldn’t they have—’

‘He was interned for the duration of the conflict,’ he explained. ‘In a camp on the Isle of Man. We all were. My father and mother, our whole family.’

‘I see,’ I replied, considering this. ‘And your mother, she’s from Germany too?’

‘No, sir, she’s Irish.’

‘Irish,’ I said, laughing and turning to Zoya as I shook my head in disbelief. ‘Well, this just gets better and better. I suppose that would explain the red hair.’

‘I suppose,’ he replied, but there was a resilience in his voice now which I admired. Zoya and I knew only too well what it had been like to be in England during the war with an accent that did not fit with our neighbours. We had been insulted and abused; I had found myself on the receiving end of violence. The work that I had done during those years had been conducted, in part, to affirm my solidarity with the Allied cause. But still, we were Russians. We were émigrés. And while this was difficult enough, I could scarcely imagine what it might have been like to have been a German family in England at the same time. I suspected that
young Ralph had more steel in his bones than his nervousness around his girlfriend’s parents implied. I imagined that he knew very well how to defend himself.

‘That must have been difficult for you,’ I said, aware of the understatement.

‘It was,’ he said quietly.

‘You have brothers and sisters, I suppose?’

‘One of each.’

‘And did your family suffer?’

He hesitated before looking up and nodding, his eyes staring directly into mine. ‘Very much,’ he said. ‘And not just mine. There were others there too. And there were many who were lost, of course. Those are not days that I like to remember.’

A silence descended on the table. I wanted to know more, but felt that I had asked enough. Telling us this much, I decided, was a testament to how much he cared for my daughter. I decided that I liked this Ralph Adler, that I would be his supporter.

‘Well,’ I said, refilling everyone’s wine glass and raising mine before them in a toast. ‘We all live here now, émigrés together. Russian, German, Irish, it doesn’t matter. And we have all left people behind us and lost people along the way. Perhaps we should drink in memory of them.’

We clinked our glasses together and returned to our meals, a family of four already, not three.

Arina begged me to buy a television set so we could watch the coronation of the new Queen at home and I resisted at first, not because I was uninterested in the ceremony itself, but because I couldn’t quite see the point of spending so much money on something that we would only use once.

‘But we’ll use it every day,’ she insisted. ‘Or I will anyway. Please, we can’t be the only family on the street not to own one. It’s embarrassing.’

‘Don’t exaggerate,’ I told her, shaking my head. ‘What is it that
you want anyway, that we sit here every night, the three of us, staring at a box in the corner of the room and never speak to each other? Anyway, if everyone else has one, why can’t you sit with one of the neighbours and watch the service there?’

‘Because we should watch it together,’ she told me. ‘As a family. Please, Pasha,’ she added, offering me the beseeching smile that never failed to win me over. And sure enough, the following Monday, only the afternoon before the Queen was due to make her way to Westminster Abbey, I finally relented and returned home with a new wedge-shaped Ambassador console, which fitted snugly into the corner of our small living room.

‘But it’s so ugly,’ said Zoya, sitting on the sofa while I tried to attach the wires correctly. At the showroom I had been momentarily seduced by the models on display and had chosen this particular receiver for its wooden surround, which was made from a similar material to our dining table. It was divided into two halves, a small twelve-inch screen resting comfortably above a similar-sized speaker, the two settings giving the box the appearance of an unfinished traffic light. Despite myself, I was quite excited by this new purchase.

‘It’s wonderful,’ said Arina, sitting down beside her mother and staring at it in wonder as if it was a Picasso or a Van Gogh.

‘It should be,’ I muttered. ‘It’s the most expensive thing we own.’

‘How much was it, Georgy?’

‘Seventy-eight pounds,’ I said, astonished even as I said the words that I could have spent so much money on something so essentially worthless. ‘Over ten years, of course.’

Zoya uttered an old Russian oath beneath her breath but didn’t offer any criticism; perhaps she was already seduced by the machine too. It took a little time for me to understand how to operate it, but I finally finished making all the connections and pressed the ‘on’ button and we watched, the three of us, as a small white circle appeared in the centre of the screen and then, two or three minutes later, spread out to fill the screen with a symbol for the BBC.

‘Programmes don’t start until seven o’clock,’ explained Arina, who seemed content nevertheless to sit there staring at the test card.

The whole country had been given the following day off work and the streets were lined with so much bunting and decoration that the city appeared to have transformed itself into a circus overnight. Ralph arrived before lunchtime, laden down with cold meats, chutneys and cheese for sandwiches, and more bottles of beer than I thought strictly necessary.

‘Anyone would think you were getting married, the way you’re carrying on,’ I said to Arina, who had been up since six o’clock, fussing about in great excitement, and had finally ended up sitting on the floor in front of the television in an attempt to get as close to the proceedings as possible. ‘Is this what we’re going to be like from now on, a family of baboons, transfixed by a flickering light emerging from a wooden box?’

‘Oh, Pasha, shush,’ she said, watching as the reporter in the studio repeated the same information over and over again and passed it off as news.

Zoya did not seem as interested as the young people in the events taking place, maintaining as much distance from the television set as was possible in our small living room, busying herself with small unnecessary jobs. But when the young Queen began her journey in the gold-crested carriage from the palace, looking out towards her people with a confident smile upon her face and waving with that particularly regal twist of the wrist, she pulled a seat over and began to watch silently.

‘She’s a pretty thing,’ I remarked as Elizabeth ascended the throne, only to receive another shushing from my daughter, who thought nothing of commenting on every jewel, every tiara, every throne and every piece of ceremonial splendour which was displayed before us, but didn’t want me to interrupt the proceedings with a single word.

‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ she asked, turning to us then, her face lit up
with delight at what she saw. I smiled at her, feeling uncomfortable, and glanced across at my wife, who was transfixed by the images on the television too and had, I thought, not even heard a word that our daughter had said.

‘Ralph and I are going to the palace,’ announced Arina when the ceremony was finally over.

‘Why, for heaven’s sake?’ I asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘Haven’t you seen enough?’

‘Everyone’s going there, Mr Jachmenev,’ said Ralph, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Don’t you want to see the Queen when she steps out on the balcony?’

‘Not particularly,’ I said.

‘You go,’ said Zoya, standing up and stepping away from us, filling the sink with hot water and throwing the used plates into it forcefully. ‘It’s for the young people, not us. We couldn’t stand the crowds.’

‘Well, we better go now, Ralph, or we won’t get a good place,’ said Arina, grabbing his hand and dragging him away before he even had a chance to thank us for our hospitality. I could hear others on the street beyond, leaving their houses too, having watched the Coronation, and making their way along Holborn towards Charing Cross Road, and from there on to the Mall in the hope of getting as close to the Queen Victoria Memorial as possible. I listened to them for a few minutes before standing up and walking over to Zoya.