The House of Special Purpose (7 page)

And with that he stepped outside our hut, leaving my sisters staring at him in awe, my mother looking as scared as she had ever been, and my father counting his money.

I forced myself to sit up even further and as I did so, I could see through the door on to the street beyond, where a yew tree stood, in full flower, strong and thick and hearty. But something was not quite the same. A great weight appeared to be swinging from its branches. I narrowed my eyes to identify it and when I finally focussed, I could do nothing but gasp.

It was Kolek.

They had hanged him in the street.

1979

I
T WAS ZOYA’S
idea to make one final journey together.

We had never been great travellers, either of us, preferring the warmth and security of our peaceful flat in Holborn to the exhaustion of holiday-making. After we left Russia, we moved immediately to France; once there, we spent a few years living and working in Paris, where we married, before settling ultimately in London. When Arina was a child, of course, we made our best efforts to take a week away from the city every summer, but it was usually to Brighton, or perhaps as far as Cornwall, to show her the sea, to allow her to play in the sand. To be a child among other children. But we never left the island shores once we arrived. And I thought we never would.

She announced her idea late one evening as we sat by the fire in our living room, watching as the flames diminished and the black coals hissed and spat for the final time. I was reading
Jake’s Thing
and set the book aside in surprise when she spoke.

Our grandson, Michael, had left half an hour earlier after a difficult conversation. He had come for dinner and to tell us of how his new life as an acting student was progressing, but all the joy of the evening had been swept away when Zoya broke the news to him about her illness and the spread of the cancer. She didn’t want to keep anything from him, she said, although she didn’t want his sympathy either. This was life, after all, she suggested. Nothing more than life.

‘I’m already as old as the hills,’ she told him, smiling. ‘And I’ve been very lucky, you know. I’ve been closer to death than this.’

Of course, being young he had immediately looked for
solutions and hope. He insisted that his father would pay for any treatments that were necessary, that he himself would leave RADA and find proper employment to pay for anything she needed, but she shook her head and held his hands in hers while she told him that there was nothing that anyone could do, and there was certainly nothing that money could do either. This thing was incurable, she told him. She might not have many months left and she didn’t want to waste them searching for impossible cures. He had taken the news badly. Having spent so many years without a mother, it was natural that he hated the idea of losing his grandmother as well.

Before leaving, Michael had taken me aside and asked me whether there was anything he could do for his grandmother to ease her comfort. ‘She has the best doctors, right?’ he asked me.

‘Of course,’ I told him, moved by the tears that were pooling in his eyes. ‘But you know, this is not an easy disease to battle.’

‘She’s a tough old bird, though,’ he said, which made me smile and I nodded.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, she is that.’

‘I’ve heard of people that find a way to beat it.’

‘As have I,’ I told him, not wishing to offer him any false hope. Zoya and I had already spent weeks arguing over her decision not to seek any treatment but to allow the disease to work its way through her body and take her when it was finally bored of her. I had tried everything I could to dissuade her from this path, but it was useless. She had simply decided that her time had come.

‘Call me if you need me, all right?’ Michael had insisted. ‘Me or Dad. We’re here whenever you need anything at all. And I’ll stop by more often, OK? Twice a week if I can manage it. And tell her not to cook for me, I’ll eat before I get here.’

‘And insult her?’ I asked, chiding him. ‘You’ll eat what she puts before you, Michael.’

‘Well … whatever,’ he said, shrugging it off, running a hand through his shoulder-length hair and presenting that lean smile
of his to me. ‘I’m here, that’s all I’m saying. I’m not going anywhere.’

He has always been a good grandson. He’s always made us proud of him. After he left, Zoya and I both confessed that we had been moved by his thoughtfulness.

‘A trip?’ I asked, surprised by her suggestion. ‘Are you sure that you would be able to manage it?’

‘I think so,’ she said. ‘Now, I could, anyway. A few months from now, who knows?’

‘You wouldn’t prefer to stay here and rest?’

‘And die, you mean?’ she asked, perhaps regretting the words as soon as she said them, for she caught the expression of dismay on my face and leaned across to kiss me. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. But think of it, Georgy. I can sit here and wait for the end to come, or I can do something with whatever time is left to me.’

‘Well, I suppose we could take a train somewhere for a week or two,’ I said, considering it. ‘We had some happy times on the south coast when we were younger.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of Cornwall,’ she said quickly, shaking her head, and it was my turn now to feel regret, for the name inspired memories of our daughter, and in that direction lay grief and madness.

‘Scotland, perhaps,’ I suggested. ‘We’ve never been there. I’ve always thought that it might be nice to see Edinburgh. Or is that too far? Are we being too ambitious?’

‘You can never be too ambitious, Georgy,’ she said with a smile.

‘Not Scotland, then,’ I said, imagining a map of Britain in my mind and looking around it in my imagination. ‘It’s too cold there this time of year anyway. And not Wales, I think. The Lake District, perhaps? Wordsworth country? Or Ireland? We could take a ferry over to Dublin, if you think you could manage it. Or travel south, towards West Cork. It’s supposed to be very beautiful there.’

‘I was thinking further north,’ she said, and I knew by her tone that this was no idle conversation, but something that she had been considering for some time already. She knew exactly where she wanted to go and would settle for nowhere else. ‘I was thinking of Finland,’ she said.

‘Finland?’

‘Yes.’

‘But why Finland, of all places?’ I asked, surprised by her choice. ‘It’s so … well, I mean, it’s Finland, isn’t it? Is there anything to see there?’

‘Of course there is, Georgy,’ she said with a sigh. ‘It’s an entire country, like anywhere else.’

‘But you’ve never expressed any interest in seeing Finland before.’

‘I was there as a child,’ she told me. ‘I don’t remember it very much, of course, but I thought … well, it’s as close to home as we could get, isn’t it? As close to Russia, I mean.’

‘Ah,’ I said, nodding slowly and considering it. ‘Of course.’ I pictured the map of northern Europe in my head, the long border of over seven hundred miles that stretched the length of the country, from Grense-Jacobsely in the north to Hamina in the south.

‘I’d like to feel that I was close to St Petersburg once again,’ she continued. ‘Just one more time in my life, that’s all. While I still can. I’d like to look into the distance and imagine it, still standing. Invincible.’

I breathed heavily through my nose and bit my lip as I stared into the fire, where the last of the coals were turning to embers, and considered what she had asked. Finland. Russia. It was, in the most literal sense of the phrase, her dying wish. And I confess that the idea excited me too. But still, I was unsure of the wisdom of such a journey. And not just because of the cancer.

‘Please, Georgy,’ she said, after several silent minutes had passed. ‘Please, just this.’

‘You’re sure that you’re strong enough?’

‘I am now,’ she said. ‘In a few months’ time, who knows? But now, yes.’

I nodded. ‘Then we will go,’ I told her.

There was a range of signs to predict Zoya’s illness which, taken together, should have been warning enough to me that she was not well, but separated by several months as they were, and appearing alongside the typical aches and pains of old age, it was difficult to recognize the connections between the symptoms. Added to this was the fact that my wife kept the details of her suffering private for as long as possible. Whether she did this because she didn’t want me to know of the agony she was enduring or because of a reluctance on her part to seek treatment to alleviate it is a question I have never asked her, for fear of being wounded by the answer.

I did notice, however, that she was more tired than usual and would sit by the fire in the evenings with a look of sheer exhaustion on her face, her breathing a little more laboured, her countenance a little more pale. When I asked her about this fatigue, she shrugged it off and said it was nothing, that she simply needed to get a better night’s sleep, that was all, and that I shouldn’t worry about her so much. But then her back began to trouble her too and I could see her wincing in pain as she put a hand to an area at the base of her spine, holding it there for a moment until the agony passed, her expression contorted with distress.

‘You need to see a doctor,’ I told her when the pain seemed to be lasting for longer than she could possibly cope with. ‘Maybe you’ve pulled a disc and it needs to be rested. He could give you an anti-inflammatory or—’

‘Or maybe I’m just getting old,’ she said, making a determined effort not to raise her voice. ‘I’ll be fine, Georgy. Don’t fuss.’

Within a few weeks, the pain had begun to spread towards her
abdomen and I noticed a distinct lack of appetite as she sat at the table, pushing her food around the plate with her fork, taking only small morsels into her mouth and chewing on them carelessly before pushing the dish away and claiming that she wasn’t hungry.

‘I had a big lunch,’ she said to me, and fool that I was I allowed myself to believe her. ‘I shouldn’t eat so much in the middle of the day.’

However, when these symptoms continued for several months, and she had started not only to lose weight but to be unable to sleep with the agony of her condition, I finally persuaded her to visit our local GP. She returned to say that he was running some tests on her, and two weeks later my worst fears were confirmed when she was referred to a specialist, Dr Joan Crawford, who has been a part of our lives ever since.

It seems a curious thing to me that I took the news of Zoya’s illness worse than she did. God forgive me, but she seemed relieved, almost happy, when the results came through, imparting them to me with consideration for my feelings but without any fear or devastation for her own condition. She didn’t cry, although I did. She didn’t seem angry or frightened, both of which emotions poured over me throughout the days that followed. It was as if she had received … not good news exactly, but a piece of interesting information with which she was not entirely dissatisfied.

A week later, we sat waiting for Dr Crawford in her office. Zoya appeared perfectly at ease but I was restless in my chair, fidgeting nervously as I stared at the framed certificates that hung on the walls, convincing myself that someone who had been trained in this disease and had received so many qualifications from famous universities would surely be able to find a way to combat it.

‘Mr and Mrs Jachmenev,’ said Dr Crawford when she arrived, late but brisk, her manner entirely businesslike. Although she was not unsympathetic towards us, I felt immediately that she lacked a degree of compassion, which Zoya put down to the fact that she
was dealing with patients suffering the same illness every day and it was difficult to view every case as tragically as the relatives of its victims would. ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. As you can imagine, it gets busier and busier here every day.’

I wasn’t entirely reassured to hear that, but said nothing as she studied the dossier which lay on the desk before her, holding an X-ray up to the light at one point, but betraying nothing in her expression as she examined it. Finally, she closed the folder, placed her hands on top of it and looked at the two of us, her lips pursed in what was an approximation, I thought, of a smile.

‘Jachmenev,’ she said. ‘That’s an unusual name.’

‘It’s Russian,’ I said quickly, not wishing to entertain any small talk. ‘Doctor, you’ve examined my wife’s file?’

‘Yes, and I had a conversation with your GP, Dr Cross, earlier this morning. He’s spoken with you, Mrs Jachmenev, about your condition?’

‘Yes,’ she said, nodding her head. ‘Cancer, I was told.’

‘More specifically, ovarian cancer,’ replied Dr Crawford, using both hands to smooth out the papers before her, a habit which for some reason put me in mind of bad actors who never know what to do with their hands on stage; perhaps this was my way of not entering the conversation entirely. ‘You’ve been suffering for some time, I expect?’

‘There were symptoms, yes,’ replied Zoya cautiously, her tone suggesting that she did not want to be chastised for her tardiness in reporting them. ‘Some back pain, fatigue, a little nausea, but I didn’t think anything of it. I’m seventy-eight, Dr Crawford. For ten years now I’ve woken every day with a different complaint.’

The doctor smiled and nodded, hesitating for a moment before speaking in a more gentle tone. ‘This is not uncommon, of course, in women of your age. Older women are more at risk of ovarian cancer, although typically they will develop it between their mid-fifties and mid-seventies. Yours is a rare, late-in-life case.’

‘I’ve always tried to be exceptional,’ said Zoya with a smile. Dr
Crawford smiled in return and the two women stared at each other for a few moments, as if they each understood something about the other one of which I was necessarily ignorant. There were only three of us in the room, but I felt terribly excluded from their company.

‘Can I ask, do you have any history of cancer in your family?’ asked Dr Crawford after a few moments.

‘No,’ said Zoya. ‘I mean yes, you can ask. But no, there is none.’

‘And your mother? She died of natural causes?’