A tall bobby rounded the corner, recognizing the boys, and he ran towards them. —Oi!
The boys turned to look. Temerity seized the distraction, sweeping one boy’s ankles with a kick and sending him to the ground, and striking the second in the sternum with her elbow. The boys writhed at her feet.
The bobby reached out to touch Temerity on the shoulder, then thought better of it. —You all right, Madam?
— Fine, thank you.
One of the boys got his breath back. —Bitch!
Swift and graceful, the bobby reached down and hauled up the two boys by their collars. —No way to speak to a lady. Right, lads, off to the nick. You know the way. Madam, you follow me.
Adjusting her glasses and head scarf, Temerity noticed the bobby’s preoccupation with handling the boys and decided to ignore his instructions. Instead, she continued to the address she’d been given in a crisp telephone summons. The boys’ cologne and behaviour had stirred deeper memories of Moscow, memories already polluting her dreams and thieving sleep. One dream recurred. The beginning varied and over time became grotesque in its absurdities of just how Temerity found herself back in Moscow and compelled to find Kostya. She might glimpse him in a crowd, hear his voice, catch a whiff of Shipr. After long and complex quests, sometimes interrupted by another recurring dream of Gernika fires, the dreams ended the same way, with Temerity running to a train platform and arriving too late. She knew, knew as much as she knew that she existed, that Kostya had just been forced aboard.
She’d not seen Kostya after the 1957 evening at the Moscow café, and she knew nothing of his possible defection. After her friendly debriefing, as it got called, with Neville Freeman and then his superiors, she’d lost her security clearance. Just temporary, Neville had said, his cheer brittle and forced, just until we get a few things sorted.
She knew better than to ask about her former students and thereby further compromise them. Still, she ached to know, ached to apologize.
So Temerity had concentrated on her West Language School. Administration, recruitment, and scholarships, on top of teaching, filled her days, yet she felt empty, adrift. This limbo, this shadow existence of imperfect loyalties and exclusion, left her more lonely than she’d thought possible. Neither love nor duty drove her life. Purpose had fled.
Sometimes she wondered if she’d seen Kostya in ’57 at all, wondered why she’d bothered with hope. So much risked…
Yet now, obeying a strange phone call, she stood in the worsening drizzle outside a dingy tea shop in Woking. The window bore spatters of mud and the remains of children’s sneezes round the smudges of nose prints. Inside the window stood a display of bright cakes and sweets — dusty cardboard, Temerity discovered inside as she passed the tables nearest the window for one closer to the kitchen.
She sat with her back to the wall and facing the door, glanced around for other exits, and took a compact from her handbag to check her lipstick. Then she ordered tea for one with a slice of Battenberg cake. Stale and dry, the cake crumbled to a parching mess in her mouth, and the tea tasted muddy and weak. Milk only made it worse. She sighed. Lowest grade Ceylon, none of the sparkle and bite of Simla or Darjeeling. She unfolded her newspaper and turned to an obituary she’d read twice on the train. She now read it a third time, waiting for the thrill of schadenfreude. William Brownbury-Rees, who’d disgraced himself during the war and endured imprisonment as a fascist, had died after a long struggle with cancer. His attempts to return to politics in the early 1950s had failed. His estate, mortgaged in 1939 to support the British Union of Fascists, would go to the National Trust. Of Brownbury-Rees’s now penniless widow, the obituary said nothing.
No schadenfreude, Temerity told herself, only sadness.
On her third cup of tea, now cool, Temerity asked the waitress for the location of the ladies’ room. She could not risk missing the rendezvous for something as silly as a full bladder, yet whomever she was expected to meet was almost an hour late.
The waitress offered Temerity another pot of tea, stressing the word another in a voice loud enough for a music hall performance. —Or are you just about to leave?
Temerity’s memsahib voice, much quieter, seemed the stronger. —Another pot would be lovely, thank you. And do your best to scald the pot first this time.
Temerity smiled to herself as the waitress departed. She’ll probably do her best to spit in the pot, after that.
As she stood up to visit the ladies’ room, cold and damp air swirled around her ankles. An elderly man stepped inside the teashop, tall and slim, elegant, using a silver-topped cane. She’d last seen him before Christmas, by chance, at a London performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No 5. They’d not spoken. Now, as he removed his hat, strands of his fine white hair stuck to the fabric, then fell, and his bright blue eyes looked sad. Spotting Temerity, he made for her table. The waitress noticed him, too, and she almost tripped over herself, addressing him as sir and asking if he’d like some of the reserved Keemun today. He agreed, his accent as crisp and aristocratic as Temerity’s own. As the waitress left, he commented to Temerity on the dreadful rain. Perhaps aiming for non-rhoticity, perhaps overcompensating, he seemed to swallow his Rs.
Temerity nodded to him. —Count Ostrovsky.
— Mister will do. It is pleasant to see you again, Miss West.
— It’s been a long time. I’m surprised you recognized me.
— I knew about the injury. A pity about the scars. You had such a pretty face. I would worry about you when I was your Russian tutor, because your other tutor, Freeman…well, I did not approve of how he looked at you. And then I did not approve of how later he handled you.
Temerity gave a polite smile. Ilya had just as good as told her that he worked for one of the services, mostly likely in domestic counterespionage for MI5. Five, whose agents had tailed her openly since she’d lost her clearance. —Do you come here often?
Ilya frowned at the Battenberg crumbs on Temerity’s plate. —Yes. Why?
— They must like you here. Keemun’s not on the menu. The last time I drank any Keemun was well before the war.
— Your family preferred Indian tea.
As Temerity considered Ilya’s rebuke, the reminder of empire, the waitress arrived with a large pot and fresh cups. —There you are, sir. I know the lady’s had quite a lot of tea already, but no doubt you want to share.
Ilya waved the waitress away with a flick of his hand. Temerity, forgetting her own imperious manner earlier, wanted to apologize for him.
Neither of them spoke as the tea steeped.
After checking his watch, Ilya poured, first for Temerity, then for himself. —You require a Russian teacher for your school?
For just a moment, Temerity thought Ilya meant himself. —I’m sorry, Mr. Ostrovsky, you’ve caught me off guard.
Ilya stirred sugar into his tea. —When he told us about the day he struck you on the face, I almost struck him myself.
Pulse quickening, Temerity inhaled the scent of the tea. Struck my face? Brownbury-Rees?
Oh my God. Kostya?
Face neutral, Ilya studied her. —Please think hard before you answer me, Miss West. Do you need a Russian teacher?
— I could certainly use one.
Ilya took two good swallows of tea. —That will warm my bones. Do you want a Russian teacher?
— I just said—
— Do you want him? Not just to see him over tea and cakes, but at your school. In your life. After everything he’s done.