Edge of Eternity (66 page)

“But I'm different!”

“Of course you are, but to him it looks as if you just want to throw away everything he and his parents and grandparents have achieved.”

“I have to live my own life.”

“I know.”

“I've left school. I had a row with old None Above. You'll probably get a letter from him today.”

“Oh, dear. Your father will find that hard to forgive.”

“I know. I'm leaving home, too.”

She began to cry. “Where will you go?”

Dave felt tearful, too, but he kept control. “I'll stay at the YMCA for a few days, then get a flat with Walli.”

She put a hand on his arm. “Just don't be angry with your father. He loves you so much.”

“I'm not angry,” said Dave, though he was, really. “I'm just not going to be held back by him, that's all.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “You're as wild as I was, and just as pigheaded.”

Dave was surprised. He knew she had made an unhappy first marriage, but all the same he could not imagine his mother being wild.

She added: “I hope your mistakes won't be as bad as mine.”

As he was leaving, she gave him all the money in her purse.

Walli was waiting in the hall. They left the house carrying their guitars. As soon as they were outside in the street all feelings of regret vanished, and Dave began to feel both excited and apprehensive. He was going to be on television! But he had gambled everything. He felt a little dizzy every time he remembered that he had left home and school.

They got the Tube to Euston. Dave had to ensure the television appearance was a success. This was paramount. If the record did not sell, he thought fearfully, and Plum Nellie was a failure, what then? He might have to wash glasses at the Jump Club, like Walli.

What could he do that would make people buy the record?

He had no idea.

Eric Chapman was waiting at the railway station in a pin-striped suit. Buzz, Lew, and Lenny were already there. They loaded their guitars onto the train. The drums and amplifiers were going separately, being driven in a van to Birmingham by Larry Grant; but no one would trust him with the precious guitars.

On the train, Dave said to Eric: “Thanks for buying our tickets.”

“Don't thank me. The cost will be deducted from your fee.”

“So . . . the television company will pay our fee to you?”

“Yes, and I'll deduct twenty-five percent, plus expenses, and pay you the rest.”

“Why?” said Dave.

“Because I'm your manager, that's why.”

“Are you? I didn't know.”

“Well, you signed the contract.”

“Did I?”

“Yes. I wouldn't have recorded you otherwise. Do I look like a charity worker?”

“Oh—that piece of paper we signed before the audition?”

“Yes.”

“She said it was for insurance.”

“Among other things.”

Dave had a feeling he had been tricked.

Lenny said: “The show's on Saturday, Eric. How come we're going on a Thursday?”

“Most of it's prerecorded. Just one or two of the acts perform live on the day.”

Dave was surprised. The show gave the impression of a fun party full of kids dancing and having a great time. He said: “Will there be an audience?”

“Not today. You've got to pretend you're singing to a thousand screaming girls all wetting their knickers for you.”

Buzz, the bass player, said: “That's easy. I've been performing for imaginary girls since I was thirteen.”

It was a joke, but Eric said: “No, he's right. Look at the camera and picture the prettiest girl you know standing right there taking her bra off. I promise you, it will put just the right sort of smile on your face.”

Dave realized he was smiling already. Maybe Eric's trick worked.

They reached the studio at one. It was not very smart. Much of it was dingy, like a factory. The parts that appeared on camera had a tawdry glamour, but everything out of shot was scuffed and grubby. Busy people walked around ignoring Plum Nellie. Dave felt as though everyone knew he was a beginner.

A group called Billy and the Kids was onstage when they arrived. A record was playing loudly, and they were singing and playing along, but they had no microphones and their guitars were not plugged in. Dave knew, from his friends, that most viewers did not realize the acts were miming, and he wondered how people could be so dumb.

Lenny was scornful of the jolly Billy and the Kids record, but Dave was impressed. They smiled and gestured to the nonexistent audience, and when the song came to an end they bowed and waved as if acknowledging gales of applause. Then they did the whole thing all over again, with no less energy and charm. That was the professional way, Dave realized.

Plum Nellie's dressing room was large and clean, with big mirrors surrounded by Hollywood lights, and a fridge full of soft drinks. “This is better than what we're used to,” said Lenny. “There's even toilet roll in the bog!”

Dave put on his red shirt, then went back to watch the filming. Mickie McFee was performing now. She had had a string of hits in the fifties and was making a comeback. She was at least thirty, Dave guessed, but she looked sexy in a pink sweater stretched tight across her breasts. She had a great voice. She did a soul ballad called “It Hurts Too Much,” and she sounded like a black girl. What must it be like, Dave wondered, to have so much confidence? He was so anxious he felt as if his stomach was full of worms.

The cameramen and technicians liked Mickie—they were mostly the older generation—and they clapped when she finished.

She came down off the stage and saw Dave. “Hello, kid,” she said.

“You were great,” Dave said, and introduced himself.

She asked him about the group. He was telling her about Hamburg when they were interrupted by a man in an Argyle sweater. “Plum Nellie onstage, please,” the man said in a soft voice. “Sorry to butt in, Mickie, darling.” He turned to Dave. “I'm Kelly Jones, producer.” He looked Dave up and down. “You look fab. Get your guitar.” He turned back to Mickie. “You can eat him up later.”

She protested: “Give a girl a chance to play hard to get.”

“That'll be the day, duckie.”

Mickie waved a good-bye and disappeared.

Dave wondered whether they had meant a single word they had said.

He had little time to think about it. The group got onstage and were shown their places. As usual, Lenny turned up his shirt collar, the way Elvis did. Dave told himself not to be nervous: he would be miming, so he didn't even have to play the song right! Then they were into it and Walli was fingering the introduction as the record began.

Dave looked at the rows of empty seats and imagined Mickie McFee pulling the pink sweater off over her head to reveal a black brassiere. He grinned happily into the camera and sang the harmony.

The record was two minutes long, but it seemed to be over in five seconds.

He expected to be asked to do it again. They all waited onstage. Kelly Jones was talking earnestly to Eric. After a minute they both came over to the group. Eric said: “Technical problem, lads.”

Dave feared there was something wrong with their performance, and the television appearance might be canceled.

Lenny said: “What technical problem?”

Eric said: “It's you, Lenny, I'm sorry.”

“What are you talking about?”

Eric looked at Kelly, who said: “This show is about kids with groovy clothes and Beatle haircuts raving to the latest hits. I'm sorry, Lenny, but you're not a kid, and your haircut is five years out of date.”

Lenny said angrily: “Well, I'm very sorry.”

Eric said: “They want the group to appear without you, Lenny.”

“Forget it,” said Lenny. “It's my group.”

Dave was terrified. He had sacrificed everything for this! He said: “Listen, what if Lenny combs his hair forward and turns down the collar of his shirt?”

Lenny said: “I'm not doing it.”

Kelly said: “And he would still look too old.”

“I don't care,” said Lenny. “It's all of us or none of us.” He looked around the group. “Right, lads?”

No one said anything.

“Right?” Lenny repeated.

Dave felt scared, but forced himself to speak. “I'm sorry, Lenny, but we can't miss this chance.”

“You bastards,” Lenny said furiously. “I should never have let you change the name. The Guardsmen were a great little rock-and-roll combo. Now it's a schoolboy group called Plum fucking Nellie.”

“So,” Kelly said impatiently. “You'll go back onstage without Lenny and do the number again.”

Lenny said: “Am I being fired from my own group?”

Dave felt like a traitor. He said: “It's only for today.”

“No, it's not,” said Lenny. “How can I tell my friends that my group is on telly but I'm not in it? Fuck that. It's all or nothing. If I leave now, I leave forever.”

No one said anything.

“Right, then,” said Lenny, and he walked out of the studio.

They all looked shamefaced.

Buzz said: “That was brutal.”

Eric said: “That's show business.”

Kelly said: “Let's go for another take, please.”

Dave feared he would not be able to jig about merrily, after such a traumatic row, but to his surprise he managed fine.

They went through the song twice, and Kelly said he loved their performance. He thanked them for their understanding, and hoped they would come back on the show soon.

When the group returned to the dressing room, Dave hung back in the studio and sat in the empty audience section for a few minutes. He was emotionally exhausted. He had made his television debut, and he had betrayed his cousin. He could not help remembering all the helpful advice Lenny had given him. I'm an ungrateful rotter, he thought.

Heading back to join the others, he looked in at an open door and saw Mickie McFee in her dressing room, holding a glass in her hand. “Do you like vodka?” she said.

“I don't know what it tastes like,” said Dave.

“I'll show you.” She kicked the door shut, put her arms around his neck, and kissed him with her mouth open. Her tongue had a booze taste a bit like gin. Dave kissed her back enthusiastically.

She broke the embrace and poured more vodka into her glass, then offered it to him.

“No, you drink it,” he said. “I prefer it that way.”

She emptied the glass, then kissed him again. After a minute she said: “Oh, boy, you are a living doll.”

She stepped back, then, to Dave's astonishment and delight, she pulled her tight pink sweater over her head and threw it aside.

She was wearing a black bra.

D
imka's grandmother, Katerina, died of a heart attack at the age of seventy. She was buried in Novodevichy Cemetery, a small park full of monuments and little chapels. The tombstones were prettily topped with snow, like slices of iced cake.

This prestigious resting place was reserved for leading citizens: Katerina was here because one day Grandfather Grigori, a hero of the October Revolution, would be buried in the same grave. They had been married almost fifty years. Dimka's grandfather seemed dazed and uncomprehending as his lifelong companion was lowered into the frozen ground.

Dimka wondered what it must be like, to love a woman for half a century and then lose her, suddenly, between one beat of the heart and the next. Grigori kept saying: “I was so lucky to have her. I was so lucky.”

A marriage such as that was probably the best thing in the world, Dimka thought. They had loved one another and had been happy together. Their love had survived two world wars and a revolution. They had had children and grandchildren.

What would people say about Dimka's marriage, he wondered, when he was lowered into the Moscow earth, perhaps fifty years from now? “Call no man happy until he is dead,” said the playwright Aeschylus: Dimka had heard that quote at university and always remembered it. Youthful promise could be blighted by later tragedy; suffering was often rewarded by wisdom. According to family legend, the young Katerina had preferred Grigori's gangster brother, Lev, who had fled to America, leaving her pregnant. Grigori had married her and raised Volodya as his son. Their happiness had had an inauspicious beginning, proving Aeschylus's point.

Another surprise pregnancy had triggered Dimka's own marriage. Perhaps he and Nina could end up as happy as Grigori and Katerina. It was what he longed for, despite his feelings for Natalya. He wished he could forget her.

He looked across the grave at his uncle Volodya and aunt Zoya and their two teenagers. Zoya at fifty was serenely beautiful. There was another marriage that seemed to have brought lasting happiness.

He was not sure about his own parents. His late father had been a cold man. Perhaps that was a consequence of being in the secret police: how could people who did such cruel work be loving and sympathetic? Dimka looked at his mother, Anya, weeping for the loss of her own mother. She had seemed happier since his father died.

Out of the corner of his eye he looked at Nina. She was solemn but dry-eyed. Was she happy being married to him? She had been divorced once, and when Dimka met her she had said she never wanted to marry again and was unable to have children. Now she stood beside him as his wife and carried Grigor, their nine-month-old son, wrapped in a bearskin blanket. Dimka sometimes felt he had no idea what was going on in her mind.

Because Grandfather Grigori had stormed the Winter Palace in 1917, a lot of people had showed up to say a last farewell to his wife. Some were important Soviet dignitaries. Here was the bushy-eyebrowed Leonid Brezhnev, secretary of the Central Committee, glad-handing the mourners. There was Marshal Mikhail Pushnoy, who had been a young protégé of Grigori's in the Second World War. Pushnoy, an overweight Lothario, was stroking his luxuriant gray mustache and turning his charm on Aunt Zoya.

Anticipating this crowd, Uncle Volodya had paid for a reception in a restaurant just off Red Square. Restaurants were dismal places, with surly waiters and poor food. Dimka had heard, from both Grigori and Volodya, that they were different in the West. However, this one was typically Soviet. The ashtrays were full when they arrived. The snacks were stale: dry blinis and curling old pieces of toast with perfunctory slices of boiled egg and smoked fish. Fortunately, even Russians could not spoil vodka, and there was plenty of that.

The Soviet food crisis was over. Khrushchev had succeeded in
buying grain from the United States and elsewhere, and there would be no famine this winter. But the emergency had highlighted a long-term disappointment. Khrushchev had pinned his hopes on making Soviet agriculture modern and productive—and he had failed. He ranted about inefficiency, ignorance, and clumsiness, but he had made no headway against such problems. And agriculture symbolized the general miscarriage of his reforms. For all his maverick ideas and sudden radical changes, the USSR was still decades behind the West in everything except military might.

Worst of all, the opposition to Khrushchev within the Kremlin came from men who wanted not more reform but less, hidebound conservatives such as preening Marshal Pushnoy and back-slapping Brezhnev, both now roaring with laughter at one of Grigori's war stories. Dimka had never been so worried about the future of his country, his leader, and his own career.

Nina handed the baby to Dimka and got a drink. A minute later she was with Brezhnev and Marshal Pushnoy, joining in their laughter. People always laughed a lot at funeral wakes, Dimka had noticed: it was the reaction after the solemnity of the burial.

Nina was entitled to party, he felt: she had carried Grigor and given birth to him and breast-fed him, so she had not had much fun for a year.

She had got over her anger with Dimka for lying to her on the night Kennedy died. Dimka had calmed her with another lie. “I did work late, but then I went for a drink with some colleagues.” She had remained angry for a while, but less so, and now she seemed to have forgotten the incident. He was pretty sure she had no suspicion of his illicit feelings for Natalya.

Dimka took Grigor around the family, proudly showing people his first tooth. The restaurant was in an old house, with tables spread through several ground-floor rooms of different sizes. Dimka ended up in the farthest room with his uncle Volodya and aunt Zoya.

That was where his sister cornered him. “Have you seen how Nina is behaving?” Tanya said.

Dimka laughed. “Is she getting drunk?”

“And flirting.”

Dimka was not perturbed. Anyway, he was in no position to
condemn Nina: he did the same when he went to the Riverside Bar with Natalya. He said: “It is a party.”

Tanya had no inhibitions about what she said to her twin. “I noticed that she went straight for the most high-ranking men in the room. Brezhnev just left, but she's still making eyes at Marshal Pushnoy—who must be twenty years older than her.”

“Some women find power attractive.”

“Did you know that her first husband brought her to Moscow from Perm and got her the job with the steel union?”

“No, I didn't.”

“Then she left him.”

“How do you know?”

“Her mother told me.”

“All Nina got from me was a baby.”

“And an apartment in Government House.”

“You think she's some kind of gold digger?”

“I worry about you. You're so smart about everything—except women.”

“Nina is a little materialistic. It's not the worst of sins.”

“So you don't mind.”

“No, I don't.”

“Okay. But if she hurts my brother I'll scratch her eyes out.”

•   •   •

Daniil came and sat opposite Tanya in the canteen at the TASS building. He put down his tray and tucked a handkerchief into his shirt collar to protect his tie. Then he said: “The people at
New World
like ‘Frostbite.'”

Tanya was thrilled. “Good!” she said. “It took them long enough—it must be at least six months. But that's great news!”

Daniil poured water into a plastic tumbler. “It will be one of the most daring things they've ever printed.”

“So they're going to publish?”

“Yes.”

She wished she could tell Vasili. But he would have to find out on his own. She wondered if he was able to get the magazine. It must be available at libraries in Siberia. “When?”

“They haven't decided. But they don't do anything in a hurry.”

“I'll be patient.”

•   •   •

Dimka was awakened by the phone. A woman's voice said: “You don't know me, but I have information for you.”

Dimka was confused. The voice belonged to Natalya. He threw a guilty look at his wife, Nina, lying beside him. Her eyes were still closed. He looked at the clock: it was five thirty in the morning.

Natalya said: “Don't ask questions.”

Dimka's brain started to work. Why was Natalya pretending to be a stranger? She wanted him to do the same, obviously. Was it for fear that his tone of voice would betray his fondness for her to the wife beside him in bed?

He played along. “Who are you?”

“They're plotting against your boss,” she said.

Dimka realized that his first interpretation had been wrong. What Natalya feared was that the phone might be tapped. She wanted to be sure Dimka did not say anything to reveal her identity to the listening KGB.

He felt the chill of fear. True or false, this meant trouble for him. He said: “Who is plotting?”

Beside him, Nina opened her eyes.

Dimka shrugged helplessly, miming:
I have no idea what is going on.

“Leonid Brezhnev is approaching other Presidium members about a coup.”

“Shit.” Brezhnev was one of the half-dozen most powerful men under Khrushchev. He was also conservative and unimaginative.

“He has Podgorny and Shelepin on his side already.”

“When?” said Dimka, disobeying the instruction not to ask questions. “When will they strike?”

“They will arrest Comrade Khrushchev when he returns from Sweden.” Khrushchev was planning a trip to Scandinavia in June.

“But why?”

“They think he's losing his mind,” said Natalya, and then the connection was broken.

Dimka hung up and said
shit
again.

“What is it?” Nina said sleepily.

“Just work problems,” Dimka said. “Go back to sleep.”

Khrushchev was not losing his mind, though he was depressed, seesawing between manic cheerfulness and deep gloom. At the root of his disquiet was the agricultural crisis. Unfortunately, he was easily seduced by quick-fix solutions: miracle fertilizers, special pollination, new strains. The one proposal he would not consider was relaxing central control. All the same, he was the Soviet Union's best hope. Brezhnev was no reformer. If he became leader the country would go backward.

It was not just Khrushchev's future that worried Dimka now: it was his own. He had to reveal this phone call to Khrushchev: on balance that was less dangerous than concealing it. But Khrushchev was still enough of a peasant to punish the bringer of bad news.

Dimka asked himself whether this was the moment to jump ship, and leave Khrushchev's service. It would not be easy: apparatchiks generally went where they were told. But there were ways. Another senior figure could be persuaded to request that a young aide be transferred to his office, perhaps because the aide's special skills were needed. It could be arranged. Dimka could try for a job with one of the conspirators, Brezhnev perhaps. But what was the point of that? It might save his career, but to no purpose. Dimka was not going to spend his life helping Brezhnev hold back progress.

However, if he was to survive, he and Khrushchev needed to be ahead of this conspiracy. The worst thing they could do would be to wait and see what happened.

Today was April 17, 1964, Khrushchev's seventieth birthday. Dimka would be the first to congratulate him.

In the next room, Grigor began to cry.

Dimka said: “The phone woke him.”

Nina sighed and got up.

Dimka washed and dressed quickly, then wheeled his motorcycle out of the garage and rode fast to Khrushchev's residence in the suburb called Lenin Hills.

He arrived at the same time as a van bringing a birthday present. He
watched as security men carried into the living room a huge new radio-television console with a metal plaque inscribed:

FROM YOUR COMRADES AT WORK IN THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE
AND THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS

Khrushchev often grumpily told people not to waste public money buying him presents, but everyone knew he was secretly happy to receive them.

Ivan Tepper, the butler, showed Dimka upstairs to Khrushchev's dressing room. A new dark suit hung ready to be put on for the day of congratulatory ceremonies. Khrushchev's three Hero of Socialist Labor stars were already pinned to the breast of the jacket. Khrushchev sat in a robe drinking tea and looking at the newspapers.

Dimka told him about the phone call while Ivan helped Khrushchev on with his shirt and tie. The KGB wiretap on Dimka's phone, if there was one, would confirm his story that the call was anonymous, supposing that Khrushchev checked. Natalya had been clever, as always.

“I don't know whether it's important or not, and I didn't think it was for me to decide,” Dimka said cautiously.

Khrushchev was dismissive. “Aleksandr Shelepin isn't ready to be leader,” he said. Shelepin was a deputy prime minister and former head of the KGB. “Nikolai Podgorny is narrow. And Brezhnev isn't suited either. Do you know they used to call him the Ballerina?”

“No,” said Dimka. It was hard to imagine anyone less like a dancer than the stocky, graceless Brezhnev.

“Before the war, when he was secretary of Dnepropetrovsk Province.”

Dimka saw that he was supposed to ask the obvious question. “Why?”

“Because anyone could turn him round!” said Khrushchev. He laughed heartily and put his jacket on.

So the threatened coup was dismissed with a joke. Dimka was relieved that he was not being condemned for crediting stupid reports. But one worry was replaced by another. Was Khrushchev's intuition right? His instincts had proved reliable in the past. But Natalya always got news first, and Dimka had never known her to be wrong.

Then Khrushchev picked up another thread. His sly peasant eyes narrowed and he said: “Do these petty plotters have a reason for their discontent? The anonymous caller must have told you.”