Moskva

6 Kisses for Mayakovsky

A stark black-and-white sticker on the girl’s bedroom door announced Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics. A smiling sun below it declared Atomkraft? Nei Takk. Inside, posters were plastered so thickly they overlapped. A huge fishing net hung from her ceiling. It had been spray-painted black and silver. A poster of a vaguely familiar movie star claimed pride of place on the biggest wall.

His collar was up, a slash of light lit his eyes.

‘Bela Lugosi,’ Anna Masterton said.

A flyer for Killing Joke, The Pale Fountains and Heist at the Hammersmith Palais rested under the glass sheet that topped her bedside cabinet.

Anna sighed. ‘We didn’t let her go.’

Of course you didn’t, Tom thought.

‘And that?’ he asked.

A postcard of a wolf peering through wire with fir trees behind.

‘She got it from an East German girl at the swimming pool. The one having the party. We’re caged, you see. It’s free…’

Turning it over, Tom found a cartoon from Krokodil, Moscow’s satirical magazine, pasted to the back. It showed a Soviet tank exhibiting a bad case of brewer’s droop. The card was made in Leningrad, not East Germany; Tom wondered if Anna realized that.

‘You don’t mind Edward asking you to help with this?’

That wasn’t the question she wanted to ask.

Even upset, Anna Masterton was far too polite to put the question she really wanted answered. Why the hell would my husband suggest I show you round my daughter’s bedroom?

‘I’ve done a certain amount of investigative work,’ Tom said carefully. ‘While seconded to Intelligence. Sir Edward thought I might find something to indicate where this party was held.’

Anna nodded doubtfully.

Yanking back a black curtain, Tom found himself staring towards Vodootvodny Canal, with Gorky Park to the right. A purple-haired gonk smirking at the recently revealed view was the first babyish thing he’d seen.

Alex’s books sat in a row against the skirting board.

Mostly Stephen King or Virginia Andrews, with a battered copy of Lace defiantly on top. It had been read so often page 292 fell out. Tom didn’t need to look to know it was the goldfish scene. ‘Lizzie’s,’ Lady Masterton said. ‘So, I can’t bin it.’

‘Whose?’

‘The girl who went to Westminster.’

A black vinyl box revealed a Russian-language Linguaphone course: a row of well-used cassettes and a tatty paperback full of instructions on how to order a coffee, ask the way to the library, or tell someone you needed a lavatory and could they point you in the right direction please…

‘She’s fluent in Russian?’

‘Better than me, but that’s not saying much.’

‘“To speak another language is to have a second soul.”’

‘I’m not sure I find that idea reassuring.’

The only large-format book was a stained copy of When the Wind Blows, with an elderly and ordinary-looking cartoon couple on the front. Flicking through, Tom discovered it took them forty-eight pages to die of radiation sickness.

‘Edward hates that book,’ Anna said.

‘That’s why Alex owns it?’

‘No. She really likes it. It makes her cry.’

An advertisement for The Company of Wolves torn from Cosmopolitan had Sellotape scars to say it had been up somewhere before. Beside it, a poster for Legend showed Tim Curry painted red and wearing horns.

‘What are we looking for?’ Anna asked.

‘A photograph of the East German girl would be good. A note of where the party was being held would be better. Do you know if your daughter kept a diary?’

‘Not that I’m aware.’

On the bedside cabinet was a tiny cardboard box; Tom opened it without asking, feeling Lady Masterton bridle slightly.

‘What should be in here?’ Tom asked.

‘A jade ring from Lizzie. It’s ghastly. And not jade, obviously. Luckily it’s too big and keeps falling off, even when we tied cotton round the back. Alex must have decided to wear it after all.’

Tom wondered if maybe her friendship with Lizzie wasn’t over. Or perhaps Alex had another reason for taking the ring. The only photograph on display was a Polaroid of a busty teenager in a tight pink top and purple ra-ra skirt, her hair teased to the point of bullying.

‘Lizzie?’ Tom asked, and Anna nodded.

‘And that?’ He pointed to a television and keypad.

‘Alex’s computer.’

‘Her computer?’

‘It works like a fancy typewriter. Alex expressed interest and Edward thought…’ Anna shrugged. ‘Who knows what he thought? Perhaps that anything was better than hiding up here sulking.’

‘Lady Masterton… would you mind if I did the rest alone?’

She did mind. She minded very much. Forcing a smile, she said, ‘It’s Anna. And that’s fine. There are things I should do. I’ll tell Edward you’re still up here.’

The silent precision with which Anna Masterton shut the door almost shamed Tom into calling her back.

Stripping back Alex’s duvet, Tom checked the bottom sheet, then stripped that back too and examined her mattress. Then he stood the mattress against the wall and examined the bed’s base. It had its original stitching; its springs moved as they should. The mattress ditto. Recently stained from an unexpected period but otherwise original. Nothing hidden inside. No evidence of anything ever having been hidden inside.

Remaking Alex’s bed, Tom sat on it and emptied her bedside cabinet.

The drawer at the top held two kohl pencils, sharpened down to stubs, three tampons, a metal comb, nail clippers, black nail varnish, purple nail varnish and pearl… A handful of British change had been pushed into one corner.

The only letter was from Lizzie.

She complained about Alex not writing.

At the back, behind the nail varnishes, Tom found an empty packet of Rothmans with a disposable lighter inside. The shelves below held old copies of Smash Hits, Jackie and NME. The NMEs were recent. The Smash Hits stretched back to 1983, which meant Alex had brought them with her. The Jackies were even earlier.

No hidden letters or photographs fell out when he riffled their pages.

Behind the stack of Smash Hits he found condoms, the Durex packet unopened and still in its cellophane. The lack of a price sticker suggested it had come from a slot machine. Tom put the packet back where he had found it, and replaced Alex’s magazines. So she liked pop music, smoked in secret and had, at the very least, considered sex. Nothing to suggest she wasn’t like most kids her age.

Except this was a girl who’d been feather-bedded and wrapped in cotton wool. Boarding school from God knows what age, holidays undoubtedly spent with her family. No street smarts at all. Tom knew what he’d been doing at fifteen. He knew what easy prey he’d have found a girl like Alex.

Nothing was taped to the cabinet’s rear. Nothing but eye shadow, mascara, blusher and moisturizer occupied the dressing table. A bottle of Babe by Fabergé stood on its glass surface, unopened.

A Walkman balanced against it.

First and Last and Always, Love, Power, Corruption & Lies, Hyæna.

The cassettes inside the boxes matched their titles.

Nothing was taped to the underside of any of the drawers, nothing hidden in the dead space below the lowest. Bare hangers showed where clothes had been taken. The last thing Tom did was drag a chair to Alex’s wardrobe and step up so that he could check the top. It was dusty, but nothing like as dusty as it should have been.

In the space below the detachable top were Alex’s secrets.

Some of them anyway.

A new edition of Yevtushenko and a Complete Andrei Voznesensky, both collections of poetry in the original Russian. Kisses for Mayakovsky was English, by Alison Fell. Loved obsessively from the look of it. The book had been published only the year before and was already falling to pieces. Inside, Tom found a postcard of the wedding-cake monstrosity that was Moscow University:

‘Dxxxxx’? Five kisses?

Immediately, Tom wondered if D was the East German girl and all of this was more complicated than Sir Edward and Anna were prepared to admit. Perhaps Alex’s old school friend’s sulk was about more than her lack of letters. How careful need he be in how he asked about that?

By the way, do you know if your daughter is a lesbian?

Oh, you’re right. Of course. It’s probably just a phase she’s going through.

Beside the books sat three Soviet pin badges and a gothic cross on a chain. Tom wasn’t sure if the last was cheap or expensive. His wife would know. Caro was good at things like that. Two computer disks sat underneath.

Amsoft WordProcessor, LocoScript.

Tom had decided this was his lot when he saw a cassette box at the back. It was empty, the insert homemade. A photocopied Soviet Star coloured in with fluorescent highlighter. For Alex said the spine.

He wondered if she’d taken the tape, then had a better idea.

Putting the chair back where it belonged, he flipped open her Walkman and found a C60 ferrous-oxide tape, American made, no writing either side. Hitting play, he heard drumming so precise it had to be a machine, followed by a few bars of intro from an electric guitar and then a voice dark enough to come from deep inside a cave.

A second track followed, then a third.

It was the third Tom recognized. The words of ‘Comfortably Numb’, familiar and frighteningly true. But this version was darker and stranger and altogether more anguished than any he’d heard. The hissing of the tape told him that Alex had played it half to death. Looking round her room, Tom read what he saw.

The purple-haired gonk on the window ledge, the photograph of her friend, the copy of When the Wind Blows said fragments of an earlier Alex remained. But they were fragments. The sense of a newer, more complex, more adult Alex was overpowering. Tom ran through the options.

She’d run away. She’d been enticed away. She didn’t want to come back. She wanted to come back and couldn’t…

There was no her to come back.