The White Russian (24 page)

I knew where Plevitskaya and her husband had had breakfast. And I knew she was a talker. So, as soon as I’d found out from the café owner which couturier she’d been boasting of visiting, I jumped in a taxi myself, and followed.

Of course it was a long shot. But I couldn’t believe that the woman who had embraced me so tenderly yesterday, who’d briefly been so full of sorrow and understanding – whom I’d so wanted to trust – could have been plotting something so evil. And what I was counting on was that fleeting look of shock and uncertainty that I’d surprised on her face earlier: the possibility it seemed to hold out that, if she
were
involved in all this, she might in some way be willing to talk to me.

All mixed up in my tumult of feeling, as I slammed the door of the cab and sat, perched on the edge of my seat, willing the driver forward, was the flickering possibility of a rage more intense than anything I’d ever experienced – because if Plevitskaya
had
been sitting at the restaurant with me, drying my tears, holding my hand, hugging me, reminiscing, talking about her pain at losing a child she loved and ordering up champagne, when all along she was
planning to steal the man Jean loved so much … why then, it was betrayal of the most unforgivable kind.

My knuckles tightened to white points as I clutched the car seat.

Chez Caroline turned out to be on one of the twelve opulent avenues that radiate out from the place de l’Étoile. As we turned off from the Arc de Triomphe, I recalled the pride in Jean’s voice when he’d told me, on an earlier drive along the Champs-Élysées to this central tourist point, about its Russian connections with the past. The great white arch had been commissioned by Napoleon in 1806 to celebrate winning the Battle of Austerlitz, but had then been abandoned, half-finished, for many years, because soon afterwards Napoleon had been forced into retreat and defeat after trying to conquer Russia in 1812. My heart wrenched with pity at the memory.

My taxi drove quite a long way down the broad, tree-lined avenue Victor-Hugo towards Passy; I should have gone with Jean after all, I was thinking as we got caught up in a slow-moving crowd of honking taxis, between towering
hôtels particuliers
in grey-white stone with delicate wrought-iron balconies. Then, on a suddenly empty stretch of road with no cars parked for several yards in either direction, my driver stopped and let me out.

I’d been half expecting pink fur bears, dresses with trompe-l’oeil drawers for pockets, necklines trimmed with lobsters – the alarmingly avant-garde Surrealist Paris fashion scene that New York magazines were always writing about. But instead I found myself in front of a small, expensive-looking but respectable store, just right for this neighbourhood. It was the kind of place I could
imagine my mother enjoying. Under an awning on which the word ‘C
AROLINE
’ was written in dignified capitals, its window contained a single slender dummy kitted out in quite conventional evening glitter: a black ball gown with an ugly, over-sequinned halter neck, and a glistening mink wrap above. Still, my heart was pounding as I rang the bell.

An intimidatingly groomed and very tall young woman answered.

I took one look at her supercilious expression, recognized her type, and decided not to rush in with any explanations about wanting to have a frank and perhaps unpleasant conversation with one of her clients whom I thought might be inside.

‘
Bonjour
,
mademoiselle
,’ I began instead, stepping smartly forward as I started on my alternative story about the imaginary party for which I had no dress, and how struck I’d been by the
chic
of the pre-assembled
ensemble
in the window, which would go so splendidly with my diamond earrings. Even if I had no appointment, did she think I might, just possibly, try that dress and mink stole on?

I kept my accent almost laughably American throughout on the assumption – correct, as it turned out – that, however haughty the shop assistant might appear, the thought of the mighty greenback I represented would persuade her to let me in.

Finally, after careful examination of the quality of my shoes, bag and dress – I’d never been so grateful for that understated dress Mother had bought me – she nodded, sweetened visibly and led me up to the first floor. We
entered a high-ceilinged, chandeliered salon that took up the entire space. Its walls were done out in pale-grey velvet panels, with knick-knacks and armchairs everywhere, in the manner of a luxurious private home. I could hear conversation from two remote corners of the room, each screened off by a small fence of Chinese lacquer-work.

After moving another Chinese screen around the armchair she’d arranged me in and taking a few tape-measurements, she wafted off, now all flirtatious smiles and come-hitherishness, promising to have a glass of champagne sent to me while she found the clothes I wanted to see modelled.

Knowing I’d have a good five or ten minutes before she reappeared before me, wearing the dress herself, no doubt with elbow-length evening gloves and possibly a cigarette holder, I applied myself to listening as hard as I could to the conversations coming from behind the other screens. There were two stages to this buying process: first the sales model sashaying around, looking magnificently bored yet perfect in a long, slim version of the chosen outfit; then the customer trying a wider, shorter model. The screens were intended to spare everyone’s blushes if the effect, at that second stage, was less alluring than the designer had intended.

I needed to establish where Plevitskaya was, but, for the moment, all I could hear was everyday sales patter – ‘The line, you see, so fluid …’ and ‘The stuff,
chère madame
, so fine …’ – which didn’t give the slightest clue as to the identity of the customer.

And then, suddenly, I intuited which was the right conversation. Not because Plevitskaya herself had
spoken – her deep Russian rumble would have been an unmistakeable giveaway – but just because of the excessively sycophantic tone the entourage was taking. ‘
Ça, c’est magnifique
!’ a man’s voice was cooing, delightedly, while lesser female voices echoed, ‘
Ah oui! Épatant, madame!
’ and ‘
Ça alors!
’

What that told me was that Plevitskaya must be on the second, try-it-yourself stage, and require theatrical adulation. Quietly I got to my feet and sneaked out round the edge of my lacquer screen.

I peeped through the slit between the two panels and, sure enough, there was Plevitskaya, pirouetting in front of a mirror in a long gold dress whose intended slinky line was so interrupted by the billows of flesh in her centre that it was hard to tell how it had originally been meant to hang. She was absorbed in contemplation of herself.

I could see from her expression in the glass that she was enjoying the praise from her audience. Infuriatingly, and quite against my will, I found myself warming to her childlike showing-off. I could see, too, that she was red-faced and almost unable to breathe for holding her tummy in, and – from the dissatisfied sideways glances she kept giving her reflection – uncomfortably aware of the way the surplus flesh on her exposed upper arms was drooping and quivering.

‘There! The stole, just a
little
lower, madame,’ the perfumed salesman sang, tweaking the near-transparent white silk oblong she had round her neck down over her arms. Plevitskaya noticeably relaxed as the offending portion of blancmange-like flesh, now modestly covered, disappeared from view.

‘Maybe’, she said flirtatiously, after another long consideration of herself, and a further chorus of praise from all around, ‘I should step outside and show this to my husband, too. What do you think, Monsieur Epstein?’

There! I told myself. We must be wrong! Skoblin must be somewhere here, after all.

The relief was tremendous. I’d go back to ROVS, and the General would be sitting with Jean, and there’d be laughter everywhere and—

I was actually looking around, as though I’d suddenly see Skoblin hidden behind a newspaper on one of these genteel chaises longues, when I heard the salesman’s reedy laugh. ‘Poor man, waiting in the car all this time,’ he was saying. ‘Your husband is a patient man, madame – but the husbands of beautiful women have to learn patience.’

The sheer outrageousness of that piece of flattery brought my attention sharply back to the group behind the screen, because I had a clear memory that there had been no one waiting outside in a car, and definitely no Skoblin. The street had been empty.

If Plevitskaya was making out that her husband was here, just outside, then she was lying.

The hurt, angry rage I’d felt earlier came closer.

I needed to catch her in this lie. And I needed to do it right now, because I was also uncomfortably aware of the sound, approaching me from behind, of a pair of high heels clacking over the parquet. It was my saleswoman with my glass of champagne. There was no time to lose.

Boldly, I put my head round the screen.

‘Aha, so it
is
you – I
thought
that was your voice!’ I said
brightly, and moved forward to kiss Plevitskaya on both cheeks to establish, in the eyes of our audience, that we were friends.

There was, however, no trace of the faintly friendly hesitation I’d sensed earlier in her; none of yesterday’s tearful fondness either. It was obvious she just didn’t want me here.

When I went on, still brightly but with determination, the others all began to look a bit worried, too. ‘General Miller’s vanished, did you know?’ I said, keeping my eyes on her, aware of the awkward movements all around as the sales staff – now joined by a new six-foot beauty with a brimming champagne glass on a tray – started registering how uncomfortable this newcomer was making their client. ‘His men are all out looking for him. His son Jean’s gone to the rue Jasmin, not far from here. He thinks your husband was taking him there to meet some men from Germany.’

Plevitskaya stuck out her chin as I eyeballed her. I could see she was going to fight. ‘Germany? No!’ she said, shaking her head vigorously but also giving me the sort of defiant smirk that someone always does give when they see a way of saying something that isn’t – quite – a lie.

Something clicked inside me and the world went light and hot and red. I’d never dared openly confront a woman of my mother’s age before. But now I had the General in mind, with his whiskers and beard and pot belly – a flesh-and-blood elderly man under that fancy uniform, with many weaknesses and blind spots, for sure, but someone Jean loved, and Grandmother had, too. He was probably bleeding in a sack somewhere, while Plevitskaya blithely
tried on gold dresses. It was overwhelming, how angry I suddenly was. I’d do anything to force her to tell me the truth.

Plevitskaya, though, was giving her Monsieur Epstein a look that said, perfectly clearly: Please get rid of this annoying interloper. Throwing out one arm in a magnificent (if quivering) gesture, she told me, with a smile that now seemed utterly false, ‘My husband is
here
, as it happens; he is just outside in the car, waiting …’

‘No he isn’t,’ I said. ‘The street is empty.’

And I pulled back the linen at the window to make my point.

Plevitskaya stayed right where she was. But Monsieur Epstein looked down. So did the women. So did the girl with the champagne glass. They let their eyes follow my arm, pointing dramatically down to the empty kerb.

For a long, embarrassed moment, Monsieur Epstein just wriggled like a butterfly stuck on a pin.

‘Ah, well, Monsieur Skoblin will no doubt have finished his paper and gone to buy another,’ he finally said with a nervous giggle. Given what he’d just told Plevitskaya about the husbands of beautiful women having to learn patience, he could hardly suggest, without insulting his client’s appearance, that her husband had simply got bored and gone off. Clearly trying to get his bearings again in this confusing conversation, he turned to his client and put a hand on her arm. ‘I suppose we
have
been a long time, you and I,
chère madame
…’

I could see he was about to have me thrown out for upsetting his client, who was so close to buying that hideous gold dress. There was definite hostility in his eyes when he
turned back to me. In all their eyes, in fact: the saleswomen looked as though they’d happily stick hatpins in me to make me disappear. For a cowardly moment, I almost let myself be distracted by the idea of these lovely creatures manhandling me out.

Then, catching myself losing my resolve, I forced myself to be braver and look straight into Plevitskaya’s face. I read guilt in her eyes, but also a defiance that made plain she didn’t intend to tell me anything.

Catching her other arm, and trying to stop my voice trembling, I pleaded, ‘If you know anything, I beg you to help. Jean is beside himself. He thinks the General’s been kidnapped by Soviet agents – that good man, who’s been so like a father to him.’

Plevitskaya snorted, and – another proof of guilt, I felt – ignored the key word ‘Soviet’, which had made the rest of the audience catch each other’s eyes. ‘Ah, I can see you don’t know any of the people you’re talking about very well, mademoiselle – because our General
is
the father of the young man you’re talking about.’

‘No, he’s not,’ I angrily corrected her. ‘He adopted him in the war, which is why I think Jean loves him
more
than most people love their fathers – because he
saved
Jean, back then, in some army camp in the forest in Russia. And so Jean would be distraught if anything happened to him. Surely you can understand this?’

I paused, aware that the shop assistants were looking in puzzlement from one to the other of us. They didn’t know whom to believe. Be braver, I told myself. Be simpler. There’s nothing she can do to you, after all. Stop saying ‘Jean’s upset’ and tell them what
you
think.

‘
I
also believe your husband is part of a kidnap plot,’ I said loudly, ‘and I think you know about it.’