Omega

Somehow Tatiana had not only survived but also ended up in the West. Tanya considered it unlikely that she had been in Kharkov when the Red Army recaptured it. Her knowledge of German might have meant that she was used by the occupiers for interrogations of captured Soviet officers. Or she could simply have been put aboard a slave train and sent west to become a captive worker for the Reich. If she had ended up in the British or American zones of occupation, she may have been employed as a translator by the Allied armies of occupation. Later she might have been granted special status and been dispatched to London, where her experience would have continued to be of considerable use during the Cold War.

There was another, rather more personal, scenario that I did not discuss with Tanya. As a young woman in 1941 it was highly likely that Tatiana had had the same striking good looks as her granddaughter. I could easily imagine her attracting the interest of a senior German officer who may well have continued his patronage throughout all the military upheavals that ensued. Such a man could have found her safe passage to the west at any time. She could have survived by the sheer good fortune of being a beauty.

The possibilities were numerous, and Tanya and I explored them with increasing relish as the afternoon shaded into evening and we sat together in the garlanded room. We even contemplated writing a fictionalised biography based on our speculations. There was nothing ghoulish in this: it was driven more by a sense of wanting to memorialise Tatiana’s doubtless remarkable story in some way.

Because of the absence of documentary evidence the true story of Tatiana’s life was always to remain an enigma. Though I often fantasised that one day Tanya would discover some crucial piece of evidence, or that one of her grandmother’s elusive civil service colleagues—if that’s what they really were—would re-establish contact with her, it never happened. The closed book of Tatiana’s life, with all its potential for drama, remained a slim domestic volume, crucial chapters missing, gone forever. It was much the same, I realised, for my own grandfather. He would never have the opportunity to answer the implicit charges that my father had brought against him in The Eye of the Storm.

A sheepdog came bounding out of nowhere and waded into the shallow water of the pond to retrieve a red ball. It clambered out, shaking itself, spraying Geoff with water.

I heard Tanya laughing. She was on the opposite side of the lake and waved to us with a mittened hand. There was a little cluster of young children nearby, shepherded by a woman in a navy coat and floral headscarf. Tanya tossed a stray ball back at them. One of the boys kicked it back in her direction. Two of the girls ran after it, squealing. Someone was making groaning noises.

“Owen?” said Geoff.

It was me. I made myself stop.

“It’s all right,” I said. “Felt a little nauseous.”

I made him walk on, my back the children. He kept asking if I was OK. I kept insisting I was. My stomach was churning. My head felt like it was going to implode.

He led me gently by the elbow. I was grateful for the contact, for his solidity. He was one of those lucky people with no rough edges, immune to the grubby sort of insecurities that afflict most of us from time to time. He hadn’t returned to Tanya’s house after the cremation for over two hours, by which time I’d told Tanya that I planned to move back to London chiefly to be close to her again. Tanya gave a small laugh at this and said, With Lyneth. She asked if we would like to rent the house while she was away. She was going to need reliable tenants. Away? I said. She was off to California, to Berkeley, to do a PhD. Geoff was accompanying her. He had an internship at a hospital in San Francisco. They were leaving at the end of the month.

In desperation I asked her to write to me so that we could stay in touch. She invoked Lyneth: Wouldn’t she find it odd? I insisted I didn’t care, that whatever happened I couldn’t bear the thought of not being any part of her life again.

She took pity on me, promising that she’d let me know how she was getting on, would send any mail to my father’s address in Bishopston, in a plain brown envelope to avoid embarrassment. This was, of course, a joke, but for me it was no laughing matter.

“Dad! Dad!”

The girls were calling me. I looked around. There was nothing. Tears were oozing out of my eyes.

“Come on,” Geoff said gently. “Nearly there.”