by Paul Gallico
Mrs Butterfield’s mind was simply unable to adjust to the letter that her friend was carrying, equating it now with the bombs for which the police were so industriously searching and once more she tackled the subject saying, ‘Oh dear, Ada, supposing them two cops ’ad arsked to look into your ’andbag and ’ad found that there letter? They’d ’ave ’ad the cuffs on you quicker than wink.’
Mrs Harris wanted to say, ‘Don’t be a fool, Vi, this ain’t Russia,’ but thought better of it since what was going on all around them could not be called exactly true British, besides which Vi was still at her.
‘Come on, Ada, tear it up. Throw it away, don’t ’ave nuffink more to do wif it. You can chuck it over there in that litter bin. When you see the girl you can tell ’er all abaht ’er boyfriend.’
For a moment for the sake of peace Mrs Harris was of half a mind to do just that except that two blue-clad special officers who had been strolling by stopped wholly by chance to take up a position by the wire refuse basket to look the crowd over. If holding a carrier bag was suspicious what about being caught throwing away a sealed envelope in these days of postal bombs? In addition there is something connected with a love letter which makes it impossible to dispose of in such a manner. She was transporting not so much a letter as a piece of Mr Lockwood’s heart.
The loudspeaker came to her rescue, announcing their flight 501 Aeroflot to Moscow and requesting that they present themselves to passport and inspection and pass through into the departure lounge.
Ada said, ‘That’s us, Vi. Come on, we’re off.’ As the flow of people ensued in obedience the two for the first time had a glimpse of their fellow passengers on the tour and even to Mrs Butterfield a sufficiently reassuring one. They were mostly middle class or elderly people with a few groups wearing special badges to identify them on a trip to confirm the Soviet Paradise as well as a few worker types, probably, Mrs Harris thought, shop stewards going over to get their instructions for making more trouble for British industry. Mrs Harris’s politics were those of her clients.
The inspection of passports at immigration was cursory but then they found themselves guided by several airport hostesses off to one side and a door leading to an enclosure before the departure lounge. There was a long counter in the room, a number of uniformed police and two policewomen. It took only the first glimpse of the blue to set Mrs Butterfield off again and clutching Ada by the arm she quavered, ‘It’s the police. What’s ’appening? I told you, they know about that bloody letter. We’re for it.’
Ada shook her off and whispered, ‘Shut up, Vi, it ain’t us. It’s the syme for everybody. Carn’t you see? There’s nuffink to be afraid of.’
Although Mrs Harris had never before been through one of these airport frisks she was knowledgeable from complaints of some of her employers as to what a bore it was to travel by air these days. Indeed the inspection was routine and one which by now has become familiar to every airline traveller who, unless he is packing a .38 or a hand grenade, goes through it with resigned patience and even a sense of relief that precautions are taken to make sure that the party sitting next to them isn’t loaded for bear.
Handbags, briefcases, airline overnight carryalls and packages were given a swift but thorough inspection and then returned to their owners who were then guided along to pass between two uniformed technicians who, holding electronic metal detectors in their hands, passed them over the contours of the passengers which would signal the presence of any untoward hardware concealed about their persons. One man going through elicited a faint piping from one of the gadgets but, asked to turn out his pockets, proved to be carrying nothing more lethal than a rather over-large bunch of keys.
However, the effect upon Mrs Butterfield when the inspector opened Mrs Harris’s handbag and the fatal letter showed between the brochures was shattering. Her tiny mouth quivered, her round florid face was drained of all colour and gobbets of perspiration gathered on her forehead. If the police were looking for anyone acting in a suspicious or agitated manner they had a beauty right under their noses.
Still, the searchers merely dug their fingers into the corners feeling for small calibre artillery and not finding any in the property of the two ladies handed the bags back.
In her agitation Mrs Butterfield at first did not take notice that she had been given Mrs Harris’s handbag while Ada had hers. It was not until she reached the men with the gadgets that she realized that it was now she who carried the letter.
Thus she arrived before them in a state of abject terror which was wholly justified apparently by the results, for as the technicians performed their little contour pantomime rather exaggeratedly around the outlines of her rotund figure both the gadgets gave forth loud and high-pitched screams of triumph.
From Mrs Butterfield emerged one anguished moan. ‘Oh my Gawd, the bloody letter.’ She then melted to the floor in a dead faint. Even from that distance the metal detectors continued to cheer.
Mrs Harris stared horrified at her friend. Would she have been so foolish because of what she had been told of Mr Geoffrey Lockwood as to have concealed a lethal weapon upon her person? But no, she had only known about the letter in the very last moment.
The police were quietly efficient. They surrounded Mrs Butterfield. Smelling salts were produced. When she returned to life the two uniformed policewomen raised and escorted her into a side room. A policeman told Ada, ‘You can’t go in there.’
‘Oh, I can’t, can’t I? I’d bleedin’ well like to see you keep me out. That’s me friend what I’m travelling wif and I’m lookin’ after her.’
Mrs Butterfield was propped up in a chair and one of the policewomen was expertly running her hands over her torso when suddenly she started to smile, and turning to her partner whispered, ‘Oh no! Madge, you won’t believe this.’
Madge said, ‘Believe what?’
‘In this day and age.’ Then aloud to Mrs Butterfield, ‘Madam, will you please stand up for a moment.’
Mrs Harris said, ‘Look ’ere, what’s all this? Leave me friend alone. She ain’t got nuffink.’
The policewoman called Madge had begun to smile too and said, ‘It’s nothing serious. I just think it’s her stays. If Madam would be so good as to let us look.’
‘Stays?’ cried Mrs Harris. ‘What’s that got to do with that thing making noises like somebody was cutting its throat. Stays is made of plastic. Vi? What the bleedin’ ’ell is it you’ve got on you?’
Sanity began to return to Mrs Butterfield and with it understanding. She raised her skirts. The three women stared. Mrs Harris said, ‘Cor blimey, Violet, where did you get that?’
‘That’ turned out to be one of those long, old-fashioned corsets stiffened with steel ribs, padded and laced.
Violet said, ‘What’s wrong wif it? I got it in the Portobello Road. I only wears it when I goes out or dresses up for a trip because it ’olds me up comfortable like. ’Ere, see?’ And she revealed the further benefits that her large bosoms derived from the contraption.
The policewoman explained, ‘We’re sorry, Madam,’ and apologized. ‘Of course, it’s the steel. Here, we’ll let you and your friend out this way and then you won’t be embarrassed.’ They permitted them to emerge from a second door while one of the policewomen gave the thumbs-up sign to the inspectors. Violet whispered to Mrs Harris, ‘I thought their bleedin’ machines had found the letter. ’Ere, take your handbag back. I want nuffink to do wif it.’ The two women proceeded along the ramp to the loading bay.
9
If the departure from Heathrow was somewhat less than soothing to the two travellers their arrival before the stunningly glittering glass and sleek façade of Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow was chaotic, terrifying and for Mrs Harris and all her plans, dreams and expectations a disaster of the first magnitude.
For here there was not only all of the turmoil of the great airport but it was conducted some fifty decibels louder, not only in a foreign language amongst foreign uniforms b
ut also with every sign in a wholly unintelligible foreign alphabet, the Cyrillic lettering. Different sounds, different smells, a kind of combination of cheap soap and disinfectant and the clothes basket containing last week’s wash, different tempo, rude and hard looking officials, lumpy sheep-like ill-clad crowds, salted here and there by a colourful and exciting Eastern costume or two.
The flight from London to Moscow aboard a highly efficient aircraft had given no warning of this, though Mrs Harris later declared that from the moment she stepped aboard the Ilyushin jet she was subconsciously aware, except the way she phrased it the feeling was centred somewhere in her bones, that she had left behind the safety, comfort and familiarity of everything she knew and loved, Britain – London Town – and although they had not yet left the ground she had entered a foreign country which in no way that she could define had about it a slight feeling of menace.
There had been nothing during the three and a half hour flight to instil this sensation of unease. The plane was clean, its appurtenances neat but not gaudy, and the stewardesses crisp in their fresh, beige, linen uniforms with blue cap and gold badges, efficient and extraordinarily pretty as well as coolly helpful. There were sapphire-eyed blondes and dark-eyed brunettes displaying all the attractions of the colour photographs in the brochures. They were also in some subtle way slightly different and perhaps even more alluring than their British or American counterparts and looking them over Mrs Harris was able to understand how Mr Lockwood could have fallen in love with one of them and if Liz in the flesh was anything like her picture it was easy to comprehend. These pretty girls gave Mrs Harris an earnest of what she was going to encounter in the unhappy and lovelorn Liz and she took pleasure in contemplating the moment when she would be kindling the light of happiness in the sad and melancholy eyes.
Even Mrs Butterfield, now that she was under way and her tremors with regard to her friend’s mission had begun to fade, was beginning to enjoy herself and when the girls in relays began serving up an excellent meal with even a dollop of caviar, she was prepared to announce that at least in the culinary department the Rooshans were a little bit of all right.
A stewardess had come by pushing a trolley and inquired, ‘Will you have vodka, wine, beer or Russian champagne?’
‘Cor blimey,’ said Mrs Butterfield, ‘ ’eavens above. Caviar and champagne and all that lot for free.’
Even Mrs Harris who was difficult to impress had been affected by this largesse and said to the stewardess, ‘I’ll ’ave a bit of that white stuff,’ pointing to the vodka. ‘It looks like gin and maybe a glass of beer to ’elp it go down.’ She turned to her friend, ‘Now then, Violet Butterfield, what ’ave you got to say about yer ’oliday trip?’
They had enjoyed the coffee and thereafter peace and somnolence descended upon the two voyagers as all early misgivings were forgotten. They had even slept part of the time until the changed note of the jets signalled the fact that they were coming in to land.
Touch down at an airport after having been whizzed through the air against seemingly all the laws of nature enclosed in several hundred tons of metal and highly explosive fuel is likely to crowd all other thoughts or emotions with the exception of a large sense of relief from the minds of most passengers, and Mrs Harris and Mrs Butterfield were no different.
And then, during that long trundling ride on the runway and tarmac from the point of impact to the disembarkation line during which the bird has suddenly turned itself into a bus, there is the busying with last minute brushing off of crumbs from lunch, tugging at one’s clothes, reaching for hand luggage, discarding unwanted periodicals and generally preparing to become a locomotive biped once more. These trifles also occupied the two friends as the main airport building hove into sight; and then there was the hustle and clatter of the plane being surrounded by tall flights of steps, tankers, luggage transporters, vans, cars, while waiting to come aboard could be seen barrel-chested men in blue with badges or gold stripes, several girls in uniform and some half-dozen plainly dressed women from young to middle-aged.
At last the wheels stopped turning, the jets sighed and whispered to a stop and while those outside the plane prepared to come on board, the chief stewardess at the head of the aisle, microphone in hand, said, ‘Attention, please, will all tours and groups please keep your seats. Your Intourist guides are here and will call for you by your tour number and you may then leave the plane.’
Mrs Harris felt a small, cold chill trickle down her spine and every other thought was driven from her head but the blending of two similar sentences. ‘Your Intourist guides are here,’ and the remembered revelation by Mr Lockwood, ‘She is the Intourist guide for your package tour number 6A to Moscow.’
The moment was at hand upon which she had reflected and dreamed many a night ever since the arrival of the tickets to romance. Not her romance to be sure, but none the less exciting because of her participation. In another instant or two she would lay her eyes upon the lost love of Geoffrey Lockwood, Liz in the flesh. Would the girl be as beautiful as hinted at in her photograph?
The door in the hull of the plane slid open, the steps made their contact, the officials and the group of women came stamping up and piling aboard.
‘There,’ said Mrs Harris, ‘them must be the guides,’ and in her excitement trying to look at all of them at the same time in an effort to spot Liz immediately. She actually saw none too clearly though there seemed to be a mixture of ages and three were girls who were undeniably pretty. She remembered that in the picture Liz had been wearing a fur hat so that one could not see her hair style.
Three groups were called and marched down the aisle and into Russia, two of them under the aegis of a pair of the girls. Mrs Harris had calmed down now so that she could focus and so she saw and heard quite clearly what happened next.
Visually it was that a woman who must have been in her late fifties who looked as though she had been carved out of grey, weathered wood, stepped to the fore and with a strong no-nonsense gesture snatched or possessed herself of the microphone from the last user. Two small suspicious eyes glared out of the square face unrelieved by flaring nostrils, tending towards the porcine and a bitter, turned-down mouth. Her lumpy grey clothes too were like wood carvings in their stiffness and she wore a nondescript hat perched on the bun of piled up grey hair on the top of her head. She spoke with slightly more of an accent than had the other guides and the words that fell upon Mrs Harris’s horrified and unbelieving ears were the following, ‘I am Praxevna Lelechka Bronislava. I am your Intourist guide for Package Tour 6A. All peoples from Package Tour 6A raising their hands.’
Twenty-nine went up. Mrs Harris found herself unable to lift hers so much as a centimetre out of her lap.
‘… I will show to you Moscow. We will be friends. If you do as I tell you there will be no trouble. Come now, I will take you to Customs and Immigration. If you have obeyed the rules in the little booklet about what you may or may not bring to Russia you need not be afraid. We will go.’
Icy panic had Ada Harris in its freezing grip and it was just as well that the aisle was filled with members of their tour obediently following instructions for she would not have been able to stir. In fact it was a wonder that she did not lapse into one of those strange comas that immobilized her in moments of extreme crisis particularly when brought on through her own actions.
Stunned, she gazed after the square, retreating back of the Intourist guide. What name? Praxevna Lil something or other and God knows what. Liz! Liz! Where are you? What has happened to you? What am I to do? For from the moment Mr Lockwood had revealed that his sweetheart was the guide for Package Tour 6A and would be greeting her at the airport Mrs Harris had never for a single instant doubted that she might not, that she might have become ill, died, transferred or even have a week off. Had she known that the Soviet’s second government, the Secret Police or KGB, had for this particular tour substituted Praxevna Lelechka Bronislava for Lisabeta Nadeshda Borovaskaya, otherwis
e known as Liz, and placated the latter by temporarily moving her ‘upstairs’, Mrs Harris might well have entered a state of catalepsy, remained in her seat and thus been wafted back to London on the same plane.
It was Mrs Butterfield who was the first to give vent to an opinion with regard to the situation, remarking innocently enough, ‘Looks like Mr Lockwood’s girlfriend is a bit long in the tooth, don’t it?’
The observation started Mrs Harris’s adrenalin flowing again and she hissed viciously, ‘Shut up, stupid. That ain’t ’er. That wasn’t Liz.’
‘No?’ said Mrs Butterfield. ‘Where is she then?’
The full nature of the calamity now was plain to Ada as she replied, ‘I don’t know,’ for she was realizing for the first time the fact that not only did she not know but that outside of having been told that the girl was an Intourist guide which no longer seemed to be the case she had no address nor any other means of finding or identifying her beyond her memory of the photograph.
Mrs Butterfield’s system of alarm bells became activated again and she turned an anxious glance upon her companion. ‘You don’t know! That’s a fine one. What about that bleedin’ letter?’ And then she remembered something and the bells jangled again, even louder. ‘Oh my Gawd, Ada, you ’eard what that old bag said. If we weren’t bringing nuffink in there wouldn’t be nuffink to worry about. Couldn’t you go to the loo and stuff it down? They’re a sure thing to look into your ’andbag.’
‘For the good Lord’s sake, stop worrying Vi, I’ve been to the loo and it ain’t in me ’andbag any more.’
By this time almost the whole tour had passed up the aisle and there was nothing for the pair to do but gather up their belongings and follow on, practically the last ones to emerge from the doorway of the giant airliner and into the focus of the telescopic lenses of the KGB.
As the two women appeared at the top of the steps the KGB crew in the concealed room in the upper storey of the airport went into action. The man observing the plane through field glasses gave an exclamation, glanced at two blown-up photographs on the table before him and then using the glasses again said, ‘There they are. The small one in blue is the courier, Mrs Harris, and the other is the one called Mrs Butterfield.’ The cameras with their long, zooming lenses began to whirr and click.
