Our Woman in Moscow

by Beatriz Williams

  Sasha said to Iris in a low voice, “I want her out of the house as soon as we get back.”

  “Sasha, she’s my aunt. And the girls!”

  “She goes or I go.”

  “You’re hardly ever there to begin with.”

  He reached into his jacket pocket and tore out a packet of cigarettes. He was down to the last two. He jiggled them a moment and took one out and lit it, and when he smoked it was as if he were sucking life into himself.

  “She doesn’t mean what she says, you know. She just likes to stir people up.”

  “She’s exactly what I’m fighting against. Don’t you see? That kind of ignorance and . . . and willful selfishness . . . that individualism that’s got no regard for the common good—”

  “Not now, Sasha. For God’s sake.”

  “Chambers is a rat, a goddamn rat. He’s going to get people killed. Innocent men killed, just for believing in something.”

  “Please, Sasha—”

  Burgess cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted a halloo. “There we are! Thank God. Abby! Abby, old boy!”

  “He can’t hear you, you sod,” said Davenport.

  Iris squinted into the distance and didn’t see much, just shadows next to the moon-speckled Solent. “I think everyone’s gone to bed.”

  “Nonsense.” Burgess jogged heavily ahead. Davenport shrugged and followed him, then Sasha chased them both down the narrow, rocky strip of shore.

  Iris ranged up next to Aunt Vivian. “Can you see anything?”

  “There’s a house there, all right, but I don’t see a single light. This should be good.”

  Iris squinted harder and discovered the outline of a large, rectangular, symmetrical building, maybe Palladian, right on the brink of the water. The moonlight glinted white on its edges and corners. There seemed to be a terrace of some kind. Already the men had reached it. Iris caught their movement up some steps—heard their drunken shouts for the owner.

  “God help us,” she said.

  They’d left the picnic basket on the shingles near the terrace steps. Aunt Vivian perched on one side and Iris on the other. More shouting. A spotlight flashed on, illuminating the terrace. Someone cried out—stumbled—a couple of thumps—a howl of pain.

  Iris leapt from the basket and ran to the steps. Guy Burgess staggered up, clutching his head. Blood streamed out between his fingers.

  “My God, he’s hurt!” she screamed. “Somebody get help! Aunt Vivian, the napkins!”

  Aunt Vivian opened the picnic basket—rummaged around until she found the napkins—bounded triumphantly to Iris and Burgess, who lurched away.

  “S’fine—s’fine—”

  “You’re not fine, you’re bleeding to death—my God—hold still—”

  Iris stuck a napkin to the side of his head. The blood soaked right through and she told him to sit down, for God’s sake. He sat. Above her head, there was more shouting, a new voice. Abingdon, in his dressing gown, roaring like an elephant.

  “What the devil’s going on here? Burgess?”

  “He’s fallen off your step,” said Davenport. “Haven’t got a doctor about, have you?”

  Abingdon swore. “Lay him out on the chaise—that’s it—Christ, what the devil d’you think you’re doing, turning up at this hour? Everyone’s long gone, you bloody fools!”

  Iris grabbed another napkin and Davenport supported Burgess to some kind of chaise, like a deck chair. Burgess shouted out obscenities.

  “We’ve got to use your telephone,” Sasha said to Abingdon.

  “Who the devil are you?”

  “Chap from the American embassy,” said Davenport. “I say, that’s an awful lot of blood.”

  Iris was starting to get woozy from the coppery smell of Burgess’s blood. She handed the napkin to Aunt Vivian and stepped to the edge of the terrace, where she vomited onto the shingles. When she looked up, she saw another man bounding up the steps, followed by a man in a constable’s uniform.

  “What the devil’s going on here?” said the constable.

  “It’s a private matter, damn it!” said Abingdon.

  “Caught these drunkards coming up the beach! Trespassing on the terrace!” yelled the other man.

  “For God’s sake, Houlihan!” Abingdon shouted. “If I wanted you to call the constabulary, I’d have done it myself!”

  “It’s my duty to protect this property, sir, and by God—”

  “Oh, shut up, you idiot!” Sasha yelled.

  “Shut up? I’ll not be told to shut up by some bloody American!”

  Sasha lurched forward, grabbed the baton from the constable, and started to beat Houlihan about the shoulders.

  Burgess shouted to Davenport, “For God’s sake, take him down!”

  Davenport made a lunge for Sasha and the baton, but Sasha had several inches on him, to say nothing of all that pent-up drunken fury. He roared in rage and turned on Davenport. They crashed to the stone terrace together in some kind of struggling, punching tangle—not unlike last night’s lovemaking, Iris thought loopily—then she screamed and reached for Sasha’s shoulder. He rolled away from her, right on top of Davenport.

  A sickening crunch escaped one of them.

  Davenport howled in agony and went limp.

  Abingdon let Iris use the telephone, not because he was any less angry but because he wanted them gone. They carried Davenport into the nearest room and laid him out on a sofa, where Sasha sat beside him, apologizing and berating himself. She dialed the operator and asked for Highcliffe. The operator asked her name and she said simply, “Iris.”

  A moment later, Philip Beauchamp’s voice came down the line. “Iris! What’s the matter?”

  “I can’t even begin to tell you. I don’t suppose you’ve got some kind of motorboat handy, have you?”

  The thing about Philip, he didn’t ask why, or how. He gathered the necessary details and told Iris he’d be there as quickly as he could. He showed only a single sign of humanity—or maybe this matter-of-factness was itself one giant example of humanity—when Iris, by now on the brink of tears, thanked him for his kindness.

  “All you ever have to do is ask me, my dear,” he said.

  Iris, Sasha, and Aunt Vivian returned to Honeysuckle Cottage just as the sun cracked pink above the eastern horizon. Aunt Vivian climbed the stairs without a word and found her bedroom. Sasha had already downed most of a bottle of gin from Abingdon’s private stock, and Iris had to support him up each step—not an easy task.

  For once, shame had silenced him. Davenport declined to press any charges. He was at the hospital now, having his leg set, while Burgess and Philip Beauchamp dealt with the telephone calls and paperwork, to ensure there was no international diplomatic incident. There was nothing left for Sasha to do but sleep off the champagne and the gin and the shame and then figure out how to salvage what was left of his career.

  Iris guided him into the bathroom first and told him to use the toilet, to change his clothes. She left to fetch his pajamas from the dresser and handed them through the crack in the door. As she turned away, she heard him vomit.

  Eventually he staggered to the bedroom. She rolled him into bed and threw the blankets over him. Though she was exhausted, she didn’t climb in beside him. What was the point? The children would be up soon, and anyway he stank of vomit and piss and gin and shame. Instead she turned for the door. The sound of her name stopped her.

  “What is it? Do you need something else?”

  Sasha stared at her with bleary blue eyes. His cheeks were streaked with tears. “I need to tell you something.”

  “Tell me tomorrow.”

  Sasha shook his head painfully and beckoned her close. “Can’t wait.”

  Iris trudged back to the bed. He crooked his finger and she leaned a little closer, though the stench of him turned her stomach.

  “Well?”

  “I slept with Ruth.”

  Iris’s head jerked. She stepped back. “What did you say?”
>
  “The night you were in the hospital, after the accident. The first night. And the one after that. Maybe another time? I can’t remember, sort of blurs together now. Not sure why, it just happened.”

  For some reason, Iris didn’t feel anything at all. The night had numbed her—so many shocks—this was just another one. It just happened, he’d said. Maybe it was a dream. She tilted her head and stared at him as if he were a foreign object in her bed, a bug or something.

  “It was you I really wanted,” he said. “If that makes any difference.”

  Iris lifted her hand and slapped him once on the cheek. His head snapped back and he smiled at her, pleased. She slapped him again and walked away—returned to the bathroom and cleaned up the mess—he’d aimed for the toilet, at least, and mostly succeeded—while she ran a hot bath.

  Aunt Vivian slept until eleven, and Sasha stayed in bed until nearly three in the afternoon. The weather had turned drizzly again, and Philip telephoned just after lunch to update Iris on Davenport’s condition.

  “He’ll be all right,” Philip reassured her. “Spiral fracture of the left tibia.”

  “Whatever that means.”

  “It means he’ll be all right. Your husband can thank his stars he attacked a military man who knows his duty. He’s not pressing charges, nor filing a report. I’ve received assurances from Abingdon and the local constabulary.”

  “You’re an angel. I can’t even begin to thank you.”

  “Believe me, I’m not doing it for Digby’s sake.”

  Iris lowered her voice. “I don’t deserve you, Philip.”

  “You’ve got me anyway. Let me know how you’re getting on, all right?”

  Iris hung up the phone and returned to the study, which had been put to rights without comment by Mrs. Betts. Jack asked whether Daddy was sick, and Kip said, “No, stupid. He’s just drunk.”

  “Kip!” Iris exclaimed.

  Tiny put a consoling arm around Kip. “My daddy gets drunk, too.”

  “Well, I’m never going to get drunk. I’m never going to touch a drop,” Kip said.

  Aunt Vivian snorted. “Funny, that’s what they all say.”

  At last Iris heard her husband stirring. The water ran in the bathroom—footfalls and thumps and clatters—doors open and shut. She went up to check on his progress and found him standing in front of the dresser, concentrating on his necktie. He looked remarkably well for a man recovering from the bender to end all benders—skin pink, hair brushed back wet, trousers and shirt correctly buttoned.

  “Was it true about Ruth?” she asked.

  He gives the tie a last tug. “Yes. I’m sorry. I never meant to tell you.”

  “You’re going up to London, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Say good-bye to the boys. They’ll miss you.”

  Sasha turned from the dresser and looked down at her. He’d always looked down at her from that height, her spindly husband. He lifted his hand to touch her, but she slapped it away. He sighed and walked past her to pick up his briefcase and walk carefully down the stairs. She listened to his voice, talking to the boys, and stared out the window toward the sea.

  At last, the house was still. The boys were in bed, and so were the girls. Mrs. Betts had retired to her room—God only knew what she thought of all this, because she didn’t let on—and Aunt Vivian was reading a book in the library.

  “I’m going for a walk,” Iris said.

  “Good for you. Take as long as you need. All night, if you want.”

  Iris studied her aunt’s blue eyes, her blond hair pulled back from her elegant cheekbones, and she thought how much Ruth looked like Aunt Vivian, while Iris resembled their mother.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  She walked out the kitchen door and into the cool, clear night that smelled of hay. The clouds had moved on, the stars sprang from the black sky. A slender moon lit the path before her. When she reached Highcliffe, she circled around back and rapped on the French door that led from the study, where Philip always sat at his desk in the evening. He looked startled to see her.

  Then his face relaxed, as much as a face so ravaged could express tranquility.

  Ruth

  July 1952

  Moscow

  The hospital’s like any American hospital, not that I have much experience of hospitals. Actually, it reminds me of the one in Rome, where Iris lay in that bed with her cast and bandages and her mournful expression. Bare white walls, doctors and nurses who don’t speak your language, a sense of panic that nobody really knows what they’re doing.

  And lo! There’s Sasha Digby in the waiting room, looking destroyed. He sits hunched on a chair, hands plunged into his hair. “How is she?” I ask him.

  “It’s my fault. I’m a beast, aren’t I?”

  “It takes two.”

  “She wanted another one so much. How could I—but I should have—”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. She’ll be all right. She always pulls through.”

  Fox is all business again. He finds the nurse for us. Even though he has to pretend he doesn’t know more than a few words of idiot tourist Russian, he’s at least able to communicate who we are and why we’re there, before Kedrov comes rushing down the hallway.

  “Mrs. Fox! At last.”

  Funny, he seems genuinely concerned. I presume he’s just worried about the blow to Soviet prestige should this American woman die in childbirth in a Communist hospital. I follow him down the white corridor to Iris’s room at the end. Along the way, I catch glimpses of other patients, other rooms, all of them serene and private, and it’s only later that I learn this is a special hospital for party officials and their families.

  I’ve resolved to remain calm. After all, our plan depends on a difficult labor—the more difficult the labor, the more plausible our actions. During our days in Rome, Fox and I studied Iris’s medical history, the likely complications, the points at which intervention might occur.

  But nothing prepares you for the sight of your sister lying gray-faced and sweating on a hospital bed in the throes of a mighty contraction. Nothing prepares you for the sound she makes when the pressure reaches its zenith. I hurtle to the bed and snatch her hand. I demand to know why they haven’t given her something to numb the pain. They don’t understand me. Iris gasps, “I don’t want it! I don’t want to go to sleep!”

  “I won’t let them do it, pumpkin. Trust me.”

  The contraction eases. When Iris catches her breath, she looks wanly at me and says she’s sorry.

  “My God. Don’t be sorry at me. What do you need?”

  The nurse says something to me in Russian. I gather they don’t want me here—a woman in labor isn’t allowed to have guests who might, by their pity, soften her too much for the task at hand. I look the nurse square in the eye and tell her I’m not going anywhere. We glare at each other, mutually stuck by this inability to communicate in words.

  I turn to Iris. “How much Russian do you speak?”

  “Enough.”

  “Because I can get a translator.”

  “I don’t need a translator. I need—” She bites herself off and digs her fingers into my hand.

  An illogical idea takes hold of me as those fingernails cut tiny crescents on my skin—that whatever pain she inflicts on me somehow diminishes the share she endures. In my terror, I imagine this pain flowing like a current of electricity through her fingers into my palm, so that I can bear her agony and she can be free.

  The first hour passes, inch by inch, and I don’t see how either of us could endure another. But we do, hour after hour. At three o’clock in the afternoon, I leave to use the toilet and see how Digby’s holding up. But he’s not inside the waiting room; Fox sits by himself in a chair, nursing a cup of coffee. He shoots to his feet when he sees me.

  “You look like hell.”

  “You should see the other guy. Where’s Digby?”

  “Went home to look after the kids. How is
she?”

  “She just keeps going, that’s all.” I lower my voice. “I’m not going to have to put on an act, you know that? I want her out of there. I want a doctor I can understand, a nurse with even a grain of sympathy—”

  “What can I get you? Coffee? Glass of water?”

  “Coffee. Please.”

  I don’t know where he goes, some kind of cafeteria or canteen or something, but he brings back coffee that isn’t half bad. I gulp it down black and hand back the cup. I’ve forgotten all about the night before. What we did to each other. What I felt and said. I’ve almost forgotten my own name.

  By six o’clock in the evening, the doctor’s shaking his head and looking tragic, and a few more doctors gather to shake their heads and look gravely at one another. I can’t exactly ask Iris to translate for me—she’s too tired to speak, spends the minute or so between each contraction just lying there with her eyes closed—so I march over and ask if anyone can speak English.

  One of them makes a shallow, affirmative inclination of his head. He’s about sixty years old—tall and gaunt with wide cheekbones and cobweb hair. He looks at me as if he thinks I’m going to be trouble. I can’t imagine why.

  I speak as nicely as I can. “Can you tell me what’s happening? Is my sister in danger?”

  “We are talking possibility of operation,” he says, in a heavy accent.

  “You mean a cesarean section?”

  “Yes.” He makes a tiny circle with his hands. “Cervix growing too slow.”

  “But she doesn’t want a cesarean!”

  He gives me a withering look. “Then she dies.”

  “That’s not true. She’s had three babies before, all—you know—the ordinary way.”

  He shrugs. “Maybe this time different.”

  “Well, it seems to me that if the Italian doctors could do it, and the Turkish doctors, surely the Soviet doctors could figure out how to get this baby out of her without ripping her open.”

  Apparently, he’s too old to care about this challenge to his national pride. He sets his jaw at me. “Is big baby.”