The Year of Dangerous Loving. John Davis Gordon

had a brother who had come back from the army and he told her many things. My mother was dead and my father was very sick now, and my brother had left to work in the mines. Then suddenly Mr Gorbachev was the new boss and he was talking about perestroika and glasnost. I was living in the orphanage now and I was very interested in boys, and clothes, and all this was very exciting to us. We only understood that the West was maybe not so bad, but to us it meant being pretty girls with rich husbands. So romantic. Then I went to work in the aluminium factory, but there were no pretty clothes, everybody was poor except the apparatchiks; things got worse not better because there was so much confusion, so many criminals now. Then I was offered the job at Mosfilm, like I told you, but it really was a KGB job. Then everything went crazy when the old Communists tried to take Gorbachev’s power, and I was sent to Istanbul. I was very confused.’

      ‘And now?’

      She spread her arms. ‘Now I am the happiest girl in the world, with my knight in shining armour. Now I am not confused, even if I am still a whore.’

      ‘You’re not, you’re a singer.’

      She smiled. ‘Yes, with you I am not a whore. And I never want to be a whore again, that is what I have learned, that is one of the things I am not confused about.’

      He believed her; but what would she do the week after next when this holiday was over? He felt the happiest man in the world, too – but was this the real world?

      ‘And another thing I am not confused about: now I really know what I want to be. I always wanted to do it, but now I am really determined. Study to be a vet. I like animals very much. On the collective farm I often helped the vet, and I was very good at school with chemistry and biology, so interesting. So after I have bought my brother a farm I will study to be a vet.’

      He was very pleased to hear that. She was no whore in her heart! But it raised a number of questions. ‘But where? In Russia?’

      She wanted to say, Wherever you are. She smiled: ‘Wherever I can, darling, I will find a way to do it.’

      Oh, yes, he wanted her to do it, he wanted to ensure she did it, pay for her to do it, but it was too early yet to consider the implications of all that. At that moment the two-way radio rasped in the wheelhouse: ‘Yacht Elizabeth, this is Kingfisher, come in.’

      Hargreave went to the machine and picked up the receiver. ‘Kingfisher, Elizabeth, good evening, Jake. Pick a channel.’

      ‘Seventy.’

      ‘Seventy.’ Hargreave turned his control switch from the mandatory Channel 16 to Channel 70. ‘Where are you, Jake, over?’

      ‘Anchored about two hundred yards astern of you. Want to come over for a drink? I’ve got some friends aboard for the weekend.’ He added: ‘Including some very pretty ones.’

      Hargreave hesitated. It would be nice to see Jake but right now it was much nicer being alone with Olga, and he didn’t want to face questions about her; they hadn’t even worked out a proper alibi yet.

      ‘Not now, thanks Jake, we’re just making supper, maybe tomorrow. Where’re you going from here?’

      ‘Thinking about having lunch on Lamma, join us if you like. After that just wandering up the islands, probably to Sai Kung area.’

      ‘Good, we’ll look for each other on channel sixteen, huh?’

      ‘Roger, we’ll be listening. Have a good time. Out.’

      They had a good time. They slept late the next morning. Repulse Bay beach was full of people; there were many more pleasure-craft anchored when Hargreave and Olga left, lots of topless girls sunbathing on decks. They did not go to Lamma for lunch: it is a pretty island, with a quaint Chinese village with excellent seafood restaurants and Hargreave indeed intended taking Olga there sometime this week, but not today: today was a public holiday, there might be many people he knew and he did not want to start tongues wagging about Olga, and why Liz shot him. So after a late champagne breakfast they set sail up the island-studded coast towards Sai Kung area. The sun shone hot out of a clear sky, the blue sea was flat but there was just enough breeze to fill the sails and keep them cool. Hargreave was very happy: this is what he would love to do for the rest of his life, sailing, messing about on boats, living on his own boat, maybe even making a bit of money out of it – he would be perfectly happy for the rest of his life in the Caribbean, taking the odd charter party out for a week’s cruising around the islands to augment his pension, he would be perfectly happy living like that with Olga. Look at her – she was loving it as much as he, revelling in the quiet shh-shh of the sea, loving the gentle slop and surge of the sails, the feeling of freedom, of free power, of working with nature, having an adventure, sailing to distant islands, sailing anywhere you like, to faraway places with strange-sounding names.

      ‘Darling, this is so beautiful …’

      And she was so beautiful: she was sitting topless on the roof of the wheelhouse, sometimes studying the islands through binoculars, sometimes flopping on to her back, arms spreadeagled, just looking up at the sails towering above her.

      ‘Alistair, I could do this for ever.’

      He was sitting on the wheelhouse roof near her, his legs dangling over the end, looking aft, drinking beer. ‘And what about being a vet?’

      She rolled over on to her stomach.

      ‘You see, when I am a vet I will make lots of money. And you will not have to be a lawyer any more. You can look after the boat, you see, and maybe the chickens and ducks too, and then every weekend we can sail this boat. But –’ she held up a finger – ‘at the end of every month I do not work for the next month, because I have made so much money and anyway I am such a good vet all the animals are very healthy, so off we go sailing for a month!’

      It was a pretty scenario. ‘And where’s your surgery going to be?’

      Her reply astonished him. ‘Cuba.’ She added: ‘Anywhere you like: maybe Florida is better for you Englishmen, but I like Cuba.’

      Hargreave grinned. ‘Why?’

      She rolled over on to her back again and looked up at the sails.

      ‘Because,’ she said solemnly, ‘Cuba is like Russia, starting all over, only much better. So exotic. Beaches and palm trees. And rum! Cuba is soon going to collapse, like Russia, and then it is also going to need everything. And then Cuba is going to go vroom, because the Americans are going to put a lot of money into Cuba, oh boy yes. And Cuba is a very big agricultural country, many farms, many animals and they will need many vets. But all the fat American vets will not go there, because they are making so much money looking after cats and dogs in Miami, and New York, and all the Spanish vets are making too much money in Madrid, and anyway Spaniards do not love animals because they have those terrible bullfights. So they will need plenty of vets in Cuba. And Cuba will be like America was fifty years ago – many opportunities.’ She held up her finger at the sails: ‘And that is when Doctor Olga Romalova arrives!’

      Hargreave grinned. ‘And when are you going to start studying?’

      She looked up at him seriously, upside-down.

      ‘When I leave Macao. I already have enough money, even after I have bought a farm for my brother and me – I have decided I will not buy an apartment.’ She paused. ‘But, of course, if you do not tell me to go away, I will start after you leave Hong Kong.’

      Tell me to go away. Oh you poor girl. Before he could respond she twisted on to her stomach, scrambled to her knees and flung her arms around his shoulders. ‘Oh, don’t be frightened of me – I am not putting pressure on you! I am so sorry! Oh darling, of course you are not responsible for me, we are just discussing and the truth is I love you so of course I want to do what you say, but I am not a crazy girl who thinks everything is decided, I am just telling you what I have decided about my life because I do not like to be a prostitute any more!’

      ‘I didn’t look frightened,