Illegal Action

20

Like the guests, supper at Sonia’s was an Anglo-Russian mix. They started with cold borscht that Sonia made a point of calling beetroot soup. “Delicious,” said Misha Vadovsky. He was a slight figure who walked with a cane. When he spoke, in fruity tones redolent to Liz of the BBC of her childhood, his Adam’s apple moved in and out like a pair of bellows.

His wife, Ludmilla, was a tiny woman who wore black orthopaedic shoes. She had been an undergraduate with Sonia at Girton—“About a millennium ago,” her husband declared tartly.

The other couple were called Turgenev-Till, an Anglo-Russian alliance of surnames which Sonia seemed to find very amusing. “Oscar taught at the Courtauld for many years,” she had told Liz that afternoon. There was a mischievous glint in her eye. “He is a descendant of the great writer, which his wife, Zara, will tell you before she gets her coat off. Though some have been unkind enough to remark that Oscar is a rather remote descendant.”

For supper, they sat around a dark, round oak table in the small dining room. As the light of the spring day faded, Sonia lit two tall church candles in wooden candlesticks. Next to Liz was an empty place, which Sonia explained—“Dimitri rang. He’s missed his train and will be a little late.”

Liz reckoned that the combined ages of the assembled company added up to four centuries, but the conversation proved remarkably lively. They talked and reminisced and joked about subjects from Stravinsky to rap, about Russian writers Liz had never heard of, and about the comparative merits of Sancerre (which Sonia served with the main course) and Saumur. It was all so deeply cultured, thought Liz, but without the slightest affectation. The gentility of English intellectual life from a bygone era.

But there was something different about them too, Liz felt, something setting them apart from, say, her mother’s intensely music-loving friends in Wiltshire. And she realised what it was—a persisting Russianness they seemed happy to retain. As if, in the melting pot the UK had offered these descendants of émigrés, part of them had refused to melt.

Misha Vadovsky mentioned a service he and Ludmilla had attended at a Russian Orthodox church in London. “They are ruining that church. I tell you, soon there will be a complete takeover. Sixty years members of my family have attended service there, but I predict not for much longer.”

Oscar tried to joke with him. “You mean, you’ll take your business elsewhere.”

“Business is precisely the problem.” He sounded bitter. “The likes of Pertsev think a church is just another piece of real estate. The largest donor gets the title deed.”

Ludmilla remonstrated. “Oh, Misha, don’t be so serious.” She turned to Liz and explained. “The oligarchs. Misha gets furious with them when they throw their money around. I think you just have to laugh. They have so much money and absolutely no idea what to do with it. In the next generation I’m sure they will establish foundations and do good works. But not yet.” She giggled. “Now it’s spend, spend, spend.”

“It’s disgusting,” said her husband.

“Shush,” Ludmilla reprimanded him. “Don’t be a sourpuss. It gives the newspapers something to write about. Every week I read a new article on their excesses. Or their wives’. Diamond-studded mobile phones. Taps of real gold in the lavatory.”

“I ran into Victor Adler in London,” said Oscar. “He told me the most marvellous story.”

“The man’s as bad as those oligarchs,” declared Misha crossly. “He may mock them behind their backs, but to their face he acts like a courtier at Versailles, sucking up to the king.”

“Let Oscar tell his story,” his wife said sharply.

“Victor is Victor,” said Oscar, seeming to acknowledge Misha’s complaint. “But it’s still a funny story. Apparently one of these oligarchs wanted to buy a house in Eaton Square. He commissioned some estate agents but then forgot he had employed them. Being Russian he charged in and approached the owner directly, only to be told the house was under offer. ‘How much?’ he demanded. Seven million pounds. ‘I’ll give you £10 million.’ Sold.

“Three days later Knight Frank ring and say they’ve lost the house. ‘What house?’ You know, the one in Eaton Square. We offered £7 million as you instructed, but some lunatic went and offered £10 million.”

While they were laughing there must have been a knock at the front door, because Sonia suddenly stood up. “There’s Dimitri,” she said. Liz assumed this late guest would be another Anglo-Russian septuagenarian, so she was surprised when a moment later Sonia returned with a man no more than forty. He was tall, with a handsome face and a shaggy mop of black hair that he brushed back with an impatient hand. He wore a grey polo neck sweater, dark slacks and sharp-toed boots.

“Come and sit down next to Jane,” said Sonia, “and let me get you some supper.”

Immediately Liz found herself engaged in animated conversation with the new arrival. He looked exotically Russian: high Slavic cheekbones, black eyes and long eyelashes that would have seemed feminine if he had not been such a powerful-looking man. He spoke good English, with a strong guttural accent, and had the gift, rarely found among English men in Liz’s experience, of making everything she said seem worth listening to. He talked without inhibition, but his bluntness was refreshing, and when he told Liz how pretty her dress was, the remark sounded genuine rather than smarmy or flirtatious.

“You are really very English,” he said at one point admiringly, and Liz found herself blushing like a child complimented out of the blue.

“Not like us?” teased Ludmilla. She gestured at the rest of the table.

“Definitely not like you,” Dimitri said. “You are Russian. Maybe, one century from now, your great-grandchildren will think they are English. But we know better. Russia never leaves the soul.” He beat his chest like Tarzan.

It turned out that Dimitri, far from being an actor, or a member of the Moscow State Circus, was a curator at the Hermitage, a world authority on Fabergé and Russian expressionism. “Mix and match,” he said puzzlingly of his two specialities, one of many English expressions he seized on without regard as to their precise meaning. He was in Cambridge as a visiting Fellow at King’s, and explained to Liz that he had gone to the British Museum that day to talk about a forthcoming Russian exhibition.

How had she come to be at Sonia’s? he asked. Liz explained that she was interested in Pashko. His face lit up. “The master,” he said simply, but to Liz’s relief, before he could pursue the subject, Sonia started talking about the influence of Fauvism on the cubists, or was it the other way round?

Eventually Misha Vadovsky yawned, his wife stirred, and the party broke up. When Sonia came out with Liz’s coat, Dimitri appeared as well, wearing a leather jacket. “May I walk with you?”

At his insistence they avoided the middle of town and walked along the west side of the Backs. It had turned cool again after a warm cloudless day, and Liz wrapped herself up in her raincoat and wondered when they would turn towards the town to reach her hotel. Suddenly Dimitri took her elbow and, striding forward, led her across a small bridge spanning the Cam. In the dark she could hear the mild gurgle of the river, and saw looming ahead of them an elaborate iron gate, leading to an avenue of trees.

The gate was locked when Dimitri tried it. Now what? thought Liz, feeling cold and a little annoyed by this elaborate detour. “The privileges of a visiting Fellow,” Dimitri announced, and produced a key.

A minute later they stood on the back lawn of the college, staring up at the looming shape of the chapel. Lights flickered on the massive stained-glass window and Liz, who had only seen the building in photographs, thought how beautiful it looked silhouetted against the night sky. When Dimitri moved closer, she thought, Please don’t spoil it.

He didn’t. “Lovely, yes?” is all he said, then led her through the college on to King’s Parade. It was almost deserted and they walked in ghostly silence, broken only by the sharp staccato of their heels on the pavement. At her hotel, Dimitri stopped outside. “You are very nice to meet,” he said.

“Likewise,” said Liz.

“You go back to London soon?”

“The day after tomorrow.”

“No doubt you are very busy until then.”

“Well, I have work to do with Sonia.”

“I would like to meet you in London, for dinner perhaps.”

Touched by his seeming shyness, Liz agreed.

He smiled. His hair fell over his forehead, and he pushed it back abruptly. “Au revoir then.”

On their last day together, Sonia talked exclusively about Russian art, and in the afternoon she concentrated on Pashko. “All his life he was moving towards the abstract—first abroad, when he lived in Ireland and Paris, then in Russia when he went home after the revolution. Always in his pictures I find there is something deeply Russian, even when he had left. You must have observed last night,” she said wryly, “how Russia lives on in the people who have left her.”

Later, as Liz was leaving, she tried to thank Sonia for her help, but the older woman shook her head. “The pleasure was mine,” said Sonia. “You have a good eye and a clarity with words. I am not worried about that.” She hesitated. “I am not aware of exactly what you’re going to be doing, which is as it should be. But there is one thing I think it is important to say. People sometimes become a little starry-eyed about Russians. They are a romantic people, with great souls and passionate intensity. Many of them are utterly charming. Like young Dimitri.” She smiled mischievously, then grew serious again. “But deep down they are all hard. Please don’t forget that.”