Walking in Darkness

Paul harshly said, ‘It bothers the hell out of me.’

There was a silence. Sophie and Vladimir stared at him, then at each other, with shock and surprise. He had spoken in Czech: fluent, unaccented Czech.

‘You didn’t say you spoke Czech,’ Sophie said, in her own language.

‘What the hell is going on?’ Steve asked in English, looking from her to Paul.

‘Do I know you?’ Vladimir asked Paul slowly, eyes hard and thoughtful. ‘I thought I recognized you earlier, when I first arrived, then I wasn’t sure. But I was right, wasn’t I? We have met somewhere.’

Paul laughed with an odd sort of defiance and recklessness. ‘Maybe. Sorry, I have to go.’ He turned towards the front door and Vladimir drew a sharp breath, staring at his face in profile.

‘My God. Pavel.’

Paul turned to look at him again, not speaking.

Vladimir stared at him fixedly. ‘It can’t be. He’s dead. But my God, you look like him.’

Sophie stared at Paul too. ‘Looks like who?’ she asked Vladimir, still speaking Czech.

Furiously Steve shouted, ‘What are you all talking about? Will you speak English, please?’

But Sophie was remembering her own brief sense of familiarity when she saw Paul. Who was it he looked like? One of her photos . . . what had happened to them? She had had them last night when she talked to Cathy.

‘My family photos,’ she said in English, looking at Steve. ‘Have you seen them around this morning? I had them last night. Could you look in the drawing-room over there, please, Steve?’

‘I burnt them,’ Paul said, and she looked at him sharply.

‘Why did you do that? You burnt my photos? I . . .’

Vladimir had been staring at him all this time, his face confused, uncertain.

‘It is you, isn’t it? My God, it is!’ he burst out. You aren’t dead, you were never dead. You’re alive. My God. I don’t believe it. Pavel . . .’

Cathy started. Pavel? He couldn’t mean . . . no, it couldn’t be! Pavel was a popular name; there must be thousands of Czechs with the name Pavel. What was the matter with her, getting into a panic over nothing? Vlad must know a hundred Pavels. She knew several herself; there had been three Pavels in her first year at college, she remembered.

Then she thought: of course, Paul was the English version of the name Pavel. Vladimir must have met Paul before somewhere. Nothing to do with her father!

But what was all that about being alive, not dead?

Vladimir said hoarsely, ‘It is you, isn’t it? I’m not imagining things? My God, I can’t believe it, although after the story your wife told me about Anya I’m almost past being amazed. Even if you tell me you’re a ghost I think I’ll believe it.’ He grinned. ‘Are you a ghost, Pavel?’

Sophie began to shake violently. She felt she was almost breaking apart. It couldn’t be true. Her father had been killed by the Russians; she knew the story by heart, she had heard it all her life – how he had been in a car that didn’t stop at a Russian checkpoint, they had shot the driver and the car had crashed, killing everyone in it, and her father had been a martyr to the cause of freedom, a hero of their country.

What was Vladimir talking about? He had mentioned Anya. Asked if Paul was a ghost. But he couldn’t mean her father. Paul couldn’t be her father. Her father was dead.

But she had been told Anya was dead. Her own mother had told her over and over again how Anya had died of measles before she was born. She had visited Anya’s grave a thousand times, talked to her, taken flowers to her, even taken her own first communion wreath to her – but it hadn’t been her sister in that grave; it was Gowrie’s child. All those years her mother had been lying to her.

Had her father’s death been another of her mother’s lies?

Once upon a time Sophie had believed in something she thought of as ‘facts’, but now she was beginning to realize that ‘facts’ could be just as lying and manipulative as any fiction ever written. Her head spun dizzyingly. Everything was a cheat, you couldn’t believe anyone or anything.

‘What did you say, Vlad? What the hell are you talking about?’ Steve asked, his eyes sharp as diamond cutters, whirring from Vlad and Sophie to Paul’s grey, stony face, biting into them all.

Sophie was almost fainting. Vladimir saw the colour draining from her face, the wild shock in her eyes. He caught hold of her just as her body turned heavy, began giving at the knees, falling. He held her up, muttering roughly, anxiously, ‘Sophie! I’m sorry, girl. I am stupid, a stupid fool. I forgot what it would mean to you . . . Steve, you better take her in that room. She should lie down, she’s going to pass out, I guess.’

‘No! I want to know . . .’ Sophie took a long, audible, shuddering breath, fixing her eyes on Paul. ‘It isn’t true, is it?’ She didn’t believe it, yet she had to ask because she no longer knew what was real and what wasn’t, and she had to know or she would go mad.

Paul looked at her bleakly. ‘I don’t know what to say to you. I’m sorry, Sophie.’