It was dark when he got back to the Moskva. It had been dark since three thirty in the afternoon. Somewhere in the darkness, the violet-eyed imp traipsed after him.
Charlie was up. Up, in the bathroom, naked to the waist, braces dangling around his knees, chest hair grey bleaching out to white, pectorals as big as breasts, the sad, defeated slant of his nipples, spreading out like frying eggs. Up, and shaving, and singing to himself. Badly.
‘I got plenty o’ nuttin’ and worraworraglub plenty for me . . . got no slooshwhooshworra château-bottled claret, down to me last Savile Row trousers worraglubsloosh an’ bugger all’s plenty fo’ me.’
He glanced over his shoulder. Grinned at Troy through the mask of shaving foam and went scat.
‘Zabdabzabaddyboopshoop, boopshoop plenty fo’ me.’
The hot water suddenly ran cold. A pipe in the system heaved and groaned. Large beast in pain. Charlie stared at the ceiling as though asking heaven for an explanation. All Troy could see was the fresh plasterwork where microphones had been set to record their every syllable. He wished the spooks well with Charlie’s scat singing, and hoped they were familiar with the work of Ella Fitzgerald. Plenty of nothing could scarcely be more appropriate.
‘Do you think all of Russia is going to turn out to be like a seaside boarding-house?’ Charlie asked.
‘Don’t ask me. I’ve never been here before.’
‘Skegness . . . Llandudno . . .’
‘You chose it. I didn’t.’
‘No hot water, baths by prior appointment, no spitting, no loose women in your room . . .’
They seemed to Troy to be having two conversations where there should have been one.
‘Should I be grateful for small mercies? The crap hotel has got to be marginally better than the state apartment. You know Guy’s in a crummy two-room flat in the suburbs with one of his boyfriends?’
‘You’ve heard from Burgess?’
‘Phoned me uptwo days ago. Pissed out of his brain. Rambling on about how much he missed England . . . You know what I’ll miss about England?’
All of it, thought Troy. ‘No,’ he said.
‘Marmite sandwiches. Who wouldn’t? But after Marmite butties I’ll miss the women – or rather the lovers – men and women. From the first to the last. Do you know who my first was?’
Of course Troy knew. They’d told each other everything.
‘Neville Pym. Blew me when I was twelve. In his study, when I should have been in the nets hitting sixes. The first time I came inside another human being and it was Neville Pym’s mouth. I can still remember how his teeth nipped. I thought I’d come for ever.’
On cue, the hot tapadded a short spurt of water to the greying scum in the basin. Charlie scraped away at his stubble, the rolls of fat around his midriff quivering at every movement of his arm.
‘And then that wet summer of ’29, when your sisters had me in the summerhouse, down by the river, in the middle of a downpour.’
As a teenager Charlie had boasted of this to Troy. Ever since, he’d mostly managed enough tact not to allude to it. Troy’s sisters never mentioned it. He knew why they’d done it. At fourteen going on fifteen, Charlie had looked divine. At nineteen, Sasha and Masha had been amoral vixens delighting in the seduction of a willing boy.
‘Sasha was bloody marvellous.’
And now, thought Troy, she was probably mad. Strung out just shy of alcoholism. Grim, bitter, miserable or ironically, insanely funny. Troy had had little time for an elder sister in his youth. At best Sasha had been a beautiful, inane nuisance. Now she turned up on him uninvited and propped up bars with him rather like a man, wanting for the first time to be a friend rather than a sister. Her husband had hanged himself two years ago and let her out of a loveless marriage. But she could no more play the widow than the wife.
‘And the last?’ Troy asked to steer the topic to its end.
Charlie pulled the plug.
‘Whore in Soho,’ he said sadly. ‘Knew I was home for the last time. Never done it. Odd that. All the times I could have had a Soho tart and I never had. So I did. Must have looked like classic punter, one of ’em leant out of a window and pinged me with a peashooter.
There I was, wondering, “How do you approach a whore? Do you haggle over the price?” Needn’t have worried. Like falling off a log.’
‘And?’
‘Awful,’ Charlie said. ‘Absolutely fucking awful. Imagine. I paid to be despised. I should be able to get that for free almost anywhere from now on, I should think. And you’re wrong, by the way.’
‘About what?’
‘I didn’t choose Russia. All my life I’ve heard people saying things like, “If you don’t like it here go and live in Russia.” Fatuous remark. It was England I was trying to change. Russia was doing very nicely without me. I was committed to an idea – a way of thinking, doing and being – not a country. What’s a country? A few arbitrary lines on a map.’
There was nothing, Troy thought, quite like a few days in Beirut – a long weekend with Mr Sykes and Monsieur Picot – to teach one the arbitrariness of lines on a map.
Charlie pulled his shirt on. From beneath its folds Troy heard, ‘What d’ye reckon to Russian women? Most of ’em look like Widow Twanky to me.’
‘Dunno,’ said Troy. ‘The one following us is a looker.’ ‘Is she still following us? Close enough to see her face? Good bloody grief. I must be losing my touch.’ Wrong tense, Charlie.