Ivari straightened up and gestured gently towards Rudi with the cafetiére. “You can be clever about it all you want. Some of us have to spend all our time with him.”
Rudi bugged his eyes out at his brother.
“I had to go up to Aasumetsa this morning and tell Maret in person that Paps was fit and well and staying with us. She really cares about him. You’d like her.”
“Not going to happen,” Rudi warned.
Frances sighed and looked at her watch. Then she looked at Ivari. “He’s done it again.”
“I DON’T KNOW when he started doing this,” said Ivari. “He just has too much to drink.”
“Which really is something new,” Rudi added.
Ivari had opened the lock on the bathroom door with a screwdriver kept handy for the purpose. They were standing in the doorway looking at Toomas, who was sitting on the toilet with his jeans and boxer-shorts around his ankles. His head was leaned against the wall and his eyes were closed and he was snoring gently.
Frances, who was standing behind them, said, “The first time, it was a little worrying. The second time, it was quaint. Now?” She shook her head. “I’m in unknown territory. I have no idea.”
Rudi said, “What do you usually do in these situations?” Hoping the answer would be, ‘We leave the old bastard here all night so the edge of the toilet seat cuts off his circulation and his legs die. Or he gets pneumonia, at the very least.’
“Well,” Ivari admitted, “if you recorded it and posted it online, I’m sure there would be a really big audience for it.”
Rudi pulled a face. “I was afraid you were going to say something like that.”
Frances landed a large and goodnatured hand on their shoulders. “And that’s where I leave the Sons of Toomas to work their magic. I’m shattered. ’Night, boys.”
When she had gone, Ivari said, “You think anyone will do this for us when we’re his age?”
“I don’t plan on getting into this state in the first place,” said Rudi. “You?”
Ivari shook his head. “Nah. We talked about it. First time I do this, Frances is off to find a better-behaved model.”
“You believe her?”
“Do you?”
Rudi thought about it. “Better not get in this state, then.”
“We’ve got Mama’s genes as well,” said Ivari. “It wouldn’t happen to us.”
“No,” agreed Rudi. “We’d run away first.”
“Did you ever find out where she went?”
Rudi shook his head. At one time, he’d really wanted to know, but by the time he was old enough to do anything about finding their mother he’d had enough of being disappointed by his parents.
“I looked,” said Ivari.
Rudi looked at him. “And?”
His brother shook his head. “Better you don’t know.”
“Ivari,” Rudi said, quite seriously, “we’re standing here looking at our father sitting fast asleep on a toilet with his underwear around his ankles. How much worse can it be?”
Ivari shrugged. “Well, she went to England.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Ivari nodded. “After she left us, she went to England. Place called Doncaster. After that, I don’t know.”
“Are you sure it was her?”
“Oh yes. These political people who keep coming here to have their photographs taken with me? They keep saying, ‘Anything you want, Ivari, just name it.’ They don’t mean it, of course, because they think I’ll ask them for money, but now and again I ask them about Mother.”
“And they bother to look?”
“I’ve got no way of checking, of course. But, I mean, Doncaster. Either that’s real or someone fancies themselves as a writer of fiction.”
“Do we have any family in England?” Rudi asked, not because he was particularly interested but because every minute Toomas sat there unconscious with his skivvies around his ankles was another little victory over his father.
“Not that I could find out,” Ivari admitted, himself not conspicuously eager to rescue Toomas. “Wasn’t there somebody who went to Plymouth?”
Rudi shook his head. “He came back. Almost immediately.”
“I thought so.” Ivari looked at his father. “Have we waited long enough?”
“Do you have a camera?”
“I do, but is that going to make you feel any better?”
“I’ve had moments, these past few years, when it might have,” Rudi admitted.
“Me too.”
They stood there, side by side, looking at their father as he snored and snuffled on the toilet, for quite a long time without moving.
Finally, Ivari said, “Oh, sod it,” and stepped forward, and Rudi stepped forward with him.
AFTERWARDS, THEY RETIRED to Ivari’s study, where Ivari had a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label and an extractor fan powerful enough to tow a car, Frances being opposed to smoking in the house. Ivari paused in the kitchen long enough to collect two glasses and a carafe of water, then he closed the door of the study behind them, switched on the extractor, and put bottle, glasses, carafe and a small ceramic ashtray down on his desk. He took his battered Aeron chair at the desk; Rudi got the comfy armchair in the corner beside the bookshelves.
“Well,” said Rudi eventually. “That went better than I expected.”
“It does help, having an extra pair of hands,” Ivari admitted, opening a drawer of his desk and taking out a packet of Marlboros and a Zippo. He waved the packet of cigarettes at Rudi, but Rudi shook his head and showed his brother a tin of small cigars. “Frances won’t help me.”
“I don’t blame her,” Rudi said, lighting a cigar.
Ivari poured measures of whisky into the glasses, handed one to Rudi. “Help yourself to water.”
“Thanks. Where did you get Blue Label from?”
“Oh, Christ.” Ivari sat back in the Aeron and crossed ankle over thigh as he took a cigarette from its packet. “You wouldn’t believe the stuff some of these people bring.”
“These people?”
Ivari nodded as he lit the cigarette. “The celebrities,” he said in a cloud of smoke. “Grabiański. The President. They don’t feel able to visit the Park without bringing gifts. Flowers. Fruit. Fluffy toys. Flash keys full of their native folk music. Chocolates.” He picked up his glass and waggled it. “Alcohol.” He took a sip. “Much the most useful gift of all.”
Rudi added some water to his drink, sipped it, added a little more.
“We divide most of it up among ourselves,” Ivari went on. “Kaisa and Jaan have a couple of kids, so they get all the fluffy animals. Mikhel’s really keen on world music, so he usually gets that. The flowers go into the Manor. Brighten the place up for a while.” He took a drag on his cigarette, exhaled through his nostrils. “The Americans gave us a car.”
“Americans?”
“The President gave us a car. One of those little fuel-cell things. Humptys? Humbles?”
“Humboldts.”
Ivari shrugged. “Fat lot of good it would have been here. A good strong wind would have blown it into the Gulf. Either that or it would have vanished forever into a bog. We gave it to a hospital in Tallinn.”
“I don’t remember seeing a photograph of you with the President of the United States,” said Rudi.
“We weren’t allowed to take any.” Ivari raised his glass in mock salute. “Nobody was allowed to know he was here. Security. Officially, he never travels outside the United States because there’s always a chance some crazed foreigner might blow themselves up next to him.”
“Whereas in the United States that chance is just vanishingly small,” Rudi added.