The Steppes of Paris (17 page)

In the unlikely days after he first spent the night with Irina, Edward was greatly cheered to see what a difference she made to Paris. He experienced an inevitable lapse into depression straight afterwards, dismayed by the futility and possibly unattractive aspect of what he was doing. The unrelievedly drear grey Sunday which followed it was the worst. He went straight back to bed in the rue Surcouf and woke around midday with the unmistakable feeling that something had gone awfully wrong. When he remembered what, he wanted to burrow even deeper under his bedclothes. He had to go out and eat a sizeable solitary lunch to raise his spirits. But walking back, the bare, empty streets in the winter weather so depressed him that he was forced to acknowledge the worst of it; in this frozen, miserable, empty January, he and Irina were sure to stick together, to keep each other company.

So it was a relief to realise, as the working week progressed, that having Irina in the background improved certain aspects of Paris considerably. The knowledge that he was having at least a slight sexual adventure here seemed somewhat to validate his presence. Lovers on benches ceased to be distressing. At the paper, he was able to portray himself as an enigmatically sexually active person. Naturally, no one there was ever going to find out who it was he was seeing. But he could at least
convincingly hint at fully booked nights. Best of all, perhaps, he knew he was now enjoying one of the fundamental pleasures of travel; untrammelled and cosmopolitan sex. He only faintly regretted the women of South America, who would have writhed, he felt, without speaking, or if they had spoken, he would not have understood.

On principle, he did not telephone Irina until Thursday, and the way she answered the telephone convinced him he had done right.

“Edouard! I’ve been dying for you to ring. What have you been doing with yourself all week?”

“Oh,” he said vaguely. “This and that.”

“You haven’t,” asked Irina, “you haven’t regretted what occurred?”

As non-committally as he could, Edward answered, “Nope.”

There was a silence.

“What have
you
been up to?” he asked.

Irina sighed. “Oh, not a lot. Term doesn’t start again until next week, you know. I’ve been sitting here, waiting for you to call.”

“Don’t do that,” he said, more sharply than he had intended. And then, placatingly, “I mean, I don’t want you languishing for me when I’m not there, OK?”

After what he took to be a hurt pause, Irina laughed. “Certainly, sir,” she said.

He suggested, as casually as possible, that they could see each other again the coming Saturday. To his dismay, Irina had assumed this would happen, and she presented him with a ready-planned programme of activities. It started with tea at Great-Aunt Elena’s at four. “She wants to talk English to you again and her protégée, Varvara Stepanovna, is longing to meet you.” It went on conveniently to one of the cinemas not far away on the Champs-Elysées and after that to dinner
à
deux.
Irina even recited the titles of the films she wanted to see.

Edward consented to the programme for two not especially creditable reasons; the Russian family was one of the key attractions, and they cut down on the amount of time he spent perilously alone with Irina.

This time, Irina arrived absolutely punctually at Metro
Courcelles. It was an afternoon of nasty diagonal drizzle and as they came out of the Metro station onto the Boulevard de Courcelles, almost as a reaction against the weather, Irina took Edward’s arm and snuggled up against him. He was surprised; he had assumed that in view of the secrecy Irina had stipulated, this was something she wouldn’t do, especially on the way to visit a member of her family. However, it was a much more pleasant way than usual to walk around Paris and, besides, he was fast becoming blasé with Irina’s inconsistencies. He passed his arm around her shoulders and they walked companionably up to Great-Aunt Elena’s.

She opened the door to them in a froth of happy anticipation. But the perpetual anxious bustle of the night of the concert remained; welcoming them, taking their coats, exclaiming at their cold fingers all generated a welter of activity in the small hall, and it wasn’t for several moments that Edward noticed another woman standing watching them from an open doorway. The sight of her rather startled him for he was smartly on guard to conceal any signs of his new relationship with Irina, and here was someone who had been watching him without his noticing.

Great-Aunt Elena saw him look at the woman and whirled into a new preoccupation.

“Varvara Stepanovna,” she clucked at the woman bossily. “What are you doing, hanging back there? Come over here and meet Mister Wenwright.”

The woman came forward and Edward shook her extended hand with a mixture of revulsion and pity; he thought she was one of the fattest, flabbiest, palest people he had ever seen. ‘It was about you,’ he thought, ‘that poem was written:

As if she were aware of his condemnation, the woman offered a pale, pleading smile and murmured, “
Enchantée
.”

Great-Aunt Elena swept them all forward into the sitting-room. In her unexpected Scottish burr, she announced, “Come in, come in. Make yourselves at home.”

“Look here,” Irina interrupted her ungraciously in French.
“School doesn’t start for me until Thursday. I hope we’re not going to speak English all afternoon.”

“You can speak to me,” Varvara Stepanovna said quickly. “My English is terrible.”

Great-Aunt Elena gave a first-rate Iskarovian snort. “Those who are capable of it will speak English,” she replied disdainfully. “And those who are not will have to make the best of it.” She took Edward by the arm. “Come and sit beside me, dear boy. I don’t hear very well any more and I want to have you right next to me.” She cast Varvara Stepanovna another patronising look. “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

She questioned Edward avidly: about the paper, about his training, his education, his home, his family. To every answer, she gave a little vigorous nod, or cocked her round head on one side and considered it beadily for an instant or two. Some of her follow-up questions were bizarre: did his family eat kedgeree for breakfast? At their “property” in Kent – Edward imagined their short lawn – how many acres did they own? Did they have domestic servants? Big dogs? Her vision of England appeared fixed before the First World War: red double-decker buses laden with bowler-hatted passengers still lumbered along Piccadilly. For breakfast, every Englishman had Frank Cooper’s Oxford marmalade and
The
Times.
When Edward told her about
The
Times’
forthcoming move to Wapping and the imminent demise of Fleet Street, she was quite horrified. “Really?” she kept exclaiming. “Really? How are the mighty fallen!”

Across the room, a conversation of sorts was puttering along between Irina and Varvara Stepanovna. Edward caught stray and rather scientific-sounding phrases: “
cellulite
”, “
lipo
aspiration
”. He wondered what on earth they were talking about.

Once he intercepted a look of Irina’s. Despite her stress on secrecy, she frankly ogled him. Perhaps her conversation with Varvara Stepanovna was not all that engrossing; she called across to Great-Aunt Elena, “
Alors
, are you going to give us something to eat, or do we go hungry?” She turned back to Varvara Stepanovna and giggled. “Here we are talking about slimming and then straight away clamouring for cakes!”

Great-Aunt Elena stood up, grumbling good-naturedly, and went to the kitchen. Conscientiously, Varvara Stepanovna went after her and he and Irina were left on their own in the living-room. In an instant, Irina swooped on Edward and seized him in a starved embrace.

“For Christ’s sake!” he protested. “What are you
doing
?”

Irina clung onto him. “I couldn’t help it,” she whispered. “Sitting there watching you; I was beside myself.”

And, with totally devastating accuracy, she began to lick at his neck.

Edward had not had occasion to find out before what a powerful stimulus the risk of discovery could be. To his profound embarrassment, he felt himself responding urgently to Irina’s caresses. In the middle of an eighty-year-old lady’s afternoon teaparty, he was ready to leap on her between the nest of occasional tables and the bookcase.

Luckily, Varvara Stepanovna’s return could be heard from some way off; her careful, heavy tread bringing a clinking tray. They let go of each other reluctantly and Irina bent away to separate the nest of occasional tables.

Wistfully, Varvara Stepanovna set out their silver-handled tea glasses and plates, and a china basket of little biscuits.

“Elena has bought such lovely things,” she said sadly. “But I know I shouldn’t touch them.”

Great-Aunt Elena followed her into the room, bearing two proud cakes. “Bring the tea and the hot water, please, Varvara,” she said crisply, and as soon as the sad, fat lady had left the room, she whispered maliciously to Irina and Edward, “‘Shouldn’t touch them!’ You watch her; she’ll eat more than the rest of us put together.”

Edward was disappointed to see that, once again, Great-Aunt Elena had catered to his supposed English tastes. Instead of the luscious
pâtisseries
he had been looking forward to, Great-Aunt Elena had managed to lay her hands, in Paris, on two pale, bland sponge cakes and a dish of plain biscuits.

She poured everyone tea. Edward was pleased at least to see it was lemon tea, which was, he felt, authentic.

Varvara Stepanovna passed round the cakes, looking down at them with a fearful longing. “I have only to look at a piece of cake and straight away I put on a kilo,” she said miserably.

Great-Aunt Elena, who was already well into her slice, snapped at her, “Then eat it with your eyes shut,
ma
chère
.”

Irina and Edward giggled, and Varvara Stepanovna, almost defiantly, helped herself to two slices and started to gobble them, chewing and swallowing very fast and vindictively.

Irina perhaps felt sorry for her, or perhaps she felt guilty at forking up her own slice. “I suppose I shouldn’t be eating this either,” she commented.

Edward looked across at her and wondered suddenly what she would look like when she was Varvara Stepanovna’s age, which he took to be approaching fifty. Would she also be bloated and shapeless, desperately guzzling cakes because they were the only source of sweetness in her life? He felt actually queasy. He faced the fact that he was having an affair with someone much further on down the road of ageing and decay.

“If you prefer,” Great-Aunt Elena snorted, “next time, I shall offer radishes all round.”

While Varvara Stepanovna was despatched to the kitchen to get some more hot water, it occurred to Edward to ask if she was a member of the family too.

Great-Aunt Elena shook her head even more than usually vigorously. “She worked for my husband, Boris,” she explained. “He had a business and, as a favour to her really, he took Varvara Stepanovna on to keep the books. When Borya died and the business was sold, Varvara Stepanovna transferred her allegiance to me. She’s a poor soul, you see; she hasn’t got anyone else in the world. We look after her, don’t we, Irina?”

As if content to be reminded of her own generosity, Great-Aunt Elena was noticeably more amiable to Varvara Stepanovna when she came back in, even going as far as encouraging her to help herself to a handful of biscuits, saying, “
Allons,
ma fille
, it’s too good to waste.”

Edward very much wanted to ask Great-Aunt Elena about her past. The amount of history she had lived through was bound to yield some stirring stories. But he hesitated. Would it mean good stories or would it mean trauma, stirred up trouble and a row?

Finally, when Irina and Varvara Stepanovna had gone into
another room where Irina was going to try on a dress Varvara Stepanovna had promised to alter for her, he raised the subject delicately. Great-Aunt Elena was threatening to embark on another interrogation, this time about where in the world the paper might one day send him, and that provided him with an easy transition.

“You must have seen a fair bit of the world in your time?” he asked her.

Great-Aunt Elena shook her head wistfully. “I haven’t seen the places I wanted,” she answered. “Only the ones I didn’t: Berlin, Geneva, New York, Nice. I haven’t seen the Pyramids or the Great Wall of China or the Taj Mahal.” She brightened somewhat. “Maybe I still will, though; they organise the most splendid trips for pensioners nowadays, you know. Although, I must say, I don’t like the idea of going somewhere with a whole group of senile old dears in a bus. I’d rather travel independently.” She gave another vigorous head shake. “It gets me so angry when Vera tries to set off with her suitcases to places that don’t even
exist
any more, when the world is so full of the most marvellous sights we’ve neither of us seen. If she would only concentrate more on
those
places, she’d have a much better grip on reality. I keep giving her books about China and about Egypt, but I don’t think she even opens them.”

“What d’you mean?” Edward asked. “Places that don’t exist any more?”

Great-Aunt Elena gave him a fond but faintly condescending smile.

“Russia,” she said.

“But Russia still exists,” he argued.

She shook her head. “Unfortunately not.”

For a moment, Edward felt himself floundering. “You’d better explain that one,” he said.

Great-Aunt Elena was terse. “The Russia we knew no longer exists. It has been replaced by a country called the USSR; that is a completely different place.” But it was clear she didn’t want to dwell on this sorry state of affairs. “Tell me, Edward, where would you most wish to be sent next?”

He had to insist. “Where in Russia did you live?”

Her round face began implausibly to lengthen. “St Petersburg.”

He wanted to say, “Tell me what it was like”, but he sensed he was pushing in a perilous direction. Instead, he asked, “How old were you when you left?”