The Beginning of Spring. Penelope Fitzgerald

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СКАЧАТЬ went now to the telephone, wound the handle twice and asked for the Reid’s Press number, repeating it several times. Meanwhile Toma appeared with a samovar, the small one, presumably suitable for the master of the house now that he was left on his own. It was just coming to the boil and gave out a faint chatter of expectation.

      ‘What are we to do with the children’s rooms, sir?’ Toma asked in a low tone.

      ‘Shut the doors of their rooms and keep them as they are. Where’s Dunyasha?’

      Frank knew she must be about the house somewhere but was lying low, like a partridge in a furrow, to avoid blame.

      ‘Dunyasha wants to speak to you. Now that the children are gone, what is to be her employment?’

      ‘Tell her to set her mind at rest.’ Frank felt he sounded like a capricious owner of serfs. Surely he’d never given them much reason to worry about their jobs?

      The call came through, and Selwyn’s light-toned, musing voice answered in Russian: ‘I hear you.’

      ‘Look, I didn’t mean to interrupt you this afternoon, but something’s happened which I didn’t quite expect.’

      ‘You don’t sound altogether yourself, Frank. Tell me, which has come to you, joy or sorrow?’

      ‘I should call it a bit of a shock. Sorrow, if it’s got to be one of them.’

      Toma came out into the hall for a moment, saying something about changes to be made, and then retired to the kitchen. Frank went on: ‘Selwyn, it’s about Nellie. She’s gone back to England, I suppose, and taken the children with her.’

      ‘All three?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘But mayn’t it be she wants to see …’ Selwyn hesitated, as though it was hard for him to find words for ordinary human relationships, ‘… might one not want to see one’s mother?’

      ‘She didn’t say so much as a word. In any case her mother died before I met her.’

      ‘Her father?’

      ‘She’s only got her brother left. He lives where he’s always lived, in Norbury.’

      ‘In Norbury, Frank and an orphan!’

      ‘Well, I’m an orphan, for that matter, and so are you.’

      ‘Ah, but I’m fifty-two.’

      Selwyn had a reserve of good sense, which appeared when he was at work, and unexpectedly at other times when it might almost have been despaired of. He said, ‘I shan’t take much longer. I’m checking the wage-bill against what the pay clerks are actually handing out. You said you wanted that done more often.’

      ‘I do want it done more often.’

      ‘When we’ve finished, why don’t you dine with me, Frank? I don’t like to think of you sitting and staring, it may be, at an empty chair. At my place, and very simply, not in the heartless surroundings of a restaurant.’

      ‘Thank you, but I won’t do that. I’ll be in tomorrow, though, at the usual time, about eight.’

      He put the mouthpiece back on its solid brass hook and began to patrol the house, silent except for the distant rising and falling of voices from the kitchen which, in spite of what sounded like a burst of sobs, had the familiar sound of a successful party. Ramshackle, by Frank’s standards, and roomy, the house consisted of a stone storey and on top of that a wooden one. The vast stove, glazed with white tiles from the Presnya, kept the whole ground floor warm. Outside, towards the bend in the Moscow river, a curious streak of bright lemon-yellow ran across the slate-coloured sky.

      Someone was at the front door, and Toma brought in Selwyn Crane. Although Frank saw him almost every day at the Press, he often forgot, until he saw him in a different setting, how unusual, for an English business man, he looked. He was tall and thin – so, for that matter, was Frank, but Selwyn, ascetic, kindly smiling, earnestly questing, not quite sane-looking, seemed to have let himself waste away, from other-worldliness, almost to transparency. With a kind of black frock-coat he wore a pair of English tweed trousers, made up by a Moscow tailor who had cut them rather too short, and a high-necked Russian peasant’s blouse, a tribute to the memory of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. In the warm room, with no ladies present, he threw off the frock-coat and let the coarse material of the blouse sink down in folds around his lean ribs.

      ‘My dear fellow, here I am. After such news, I couldn’t leave you by yourself.’

      ‘That’s what I would have preferred, though,’ said Frank. ‘You won’t mind if I speak out. I’d rather have been by myself.’

      ‘I came on the twenty-four tram,’ said Selwyn. ‘I was fortunate enough to catch one almost at once. Rest assured that I shan’t stay long. I was at my desk when a thought came to me which I knew immediately might be of comfort. I got up immediately and went out to the tram stop. The telephone, Frank, isn’t the right way to convey such things.’

      Frank, sitting opposite, put his head in his hands. He felt he could bear anything rather than determined unselfishness. Selwyn, however, seemed to be encouraged.

      ‘That’s the attitude of a penitent, Frank. No need for that. We are all of us sinners. The thought that came to me didn’t concern guilt, but loss, supposing we think of loss as a form of poverty. Now poverty, or what the world calls poverty, isn’t a matter for regret, but for rejoicing.’

      ‘No, Selwyn, it’s not,’ said Frank.

      ‘Lev Nikolaevich tried to give away all his possessions.’

      ‘That was to make the peasants richer, not to make himself poorer.’ Tolstoy’s Moscow estate was only a mile or so away from Lipka Street. In his will it had been bequeathed to the peasants, who, ever since, had been cutting down the trees to make ready money. They worked even at night, felling the trees by the light of paraffin flares.

      Selwyn leant forward, his large hazel eyes intensely focused, alight with tender curiosity and goodwill.

      ‘Frank, when summer comes, let us go on the tramp together. I know you well, but in the clear air, in the plains and forests, I should surely come to know you better. You have courage, Frank, but I think you have no imagination.’

      ‘Selwyn, I don’t want my soul read this evening. To be honest, I don’t feel up to it.’

      In the hall Toma appeared again to help Selwyn into his sleeveless overcoat of rank sheepskin. Frank repeated that he’d be at the Press at his usual time. As soon as the outer door was shut Toma began to lament that Selwyn Osipych hadn’t taken any tea, or even a glass of seltzer water.

      ‘He only called in for a moment.’

      ‘He’s a good man, sir, always on his way from one place to another, searching out want and despair.’

      ‘Well he didn’t find either of them here,’ said Frank.

      ‘Perhaps he brought you some news, sir, of your wife.’

      ‘He might have done if he worked at the railway station, but he doesn’t. She took the Berlin СКАЧАТЬ