Winter Garden

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘I’m afraid it’s urgent,’ he said. ‘But I’d love to come for a stroll later.’

  The President shrugged his shoulders and pointed at a door along the corridor.

  Ashburner entered a room divided into cubicles. Bags of cement lay mouldering in a corner. The walls and ceiling appeared to be splashed with brown paint. Opening the door of the nearest cubicle, he was faced with a cone-shaped mound of concrete cut with rough foot-holds. Climbing as best he could he rose above the level of the cubicle door and relieved himself into a hole bored into the cone. It was only when sliding down again that he realised the brown paint was excrement. He couldn’t think how it had been managed. It was true that the lavatory was unnecessarily primitive in style, but even if it had been used by successive gangs of construction workers caught on the hop with upset tummies it was difficult to account for the smears on the ceiling. No wonder one picks up infections, he thought. Shaken, he went out into the passage. As he reached the front entrance a dog trotted in through the open doors and ran round his legs in a friendly fashion. He bent down and played with its ears; the dog was rather like his own, though livelier. It ran off almost immediately and he went after it to the door. It wasn’t quite dark, and he could see, beyond the concrete slabs and the bulldozers, the tall figure of the President in his luminous mackintosh, standing in the road beside the parked cars, talking to someone. Ashburner returned to his seat in the cinema. Bernard had fallen asleep.

  ‘Do you think such women as those understand what they are seeing?’ asked Olga Fiodorovna, stealing glances at the Amazons in the back row. ‘Do you think they have brains beneath those curls?’

  ‘I really don’t know those ladies,’ Ashburner protested.

  ‘I am merely trying to find out if you have preconceived ideas,’ whispered Olga Fiodorovna. ‘They are both professors.’

  In the second half of the film the young girl was betrayed by her mother-in-law, but not before the poetic villager had sent some sort of note to the husband telling him of his wife’s assignations. At the very end the girl was dragged through the mud by neighbours and stoned to death on a hillside. When the lights came on Enid could be seen wiping her eyes with a handkerchief.

  Arriving back at the hotel Ashburner was all for slipping off to bed, but surprisingly Olga Fiodorovna wouldn’t hear of it. She stood arm in arm with one of the Amazon women. The President hadn’t returned to the cinema after the interval and at some point before the end of the performance his other lady companion had disappeared. In the restaurant, seated by the picture window, Olga Fiodorovna still held on to the arm of her new-found friend. It seemed to Ashburner that she deliberately sat as close to her as possible, so that he would make comparisons between them. As it happened, he found the strange lady rather pleasant. Though larger than was usual, with arms like a stevedore, she was considerably less tiring to converse with than the interpreter and spoke English almost as well. She was obviously interested in him. She asked him what he did for a living.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m an Admiralty lawyer.’

  ‘Do you enjoy your work?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m good at it.’

  ‘Describe something of it to me,’ she said. ‘So that I will understand.’

  He recounted to her the details of a case in which he had been involved for several years. A Greek American family had bought a ship which they had subsequently chartered out to an Iranian concern. The captain was a brother-in-law of the owners and took half shares in any cargo. He began to realise that pilfering was going on, on a vast scale. He was originally tipped off by the third mate, a Greek born and bred in Birmingham. ‘To make matters more confusing,’ Ashburner explained, ‘they all had the same name – the shipping firm, the captain and the third mate. You know how it is with Greeks. They’re a little like you lot with your Valentinas and Tatianas. The ship was impounded in American waters while the captain was in London. We finally took all the relevant papers to the Fraud Squad at Scotland Yard. To cut a long story short, they found there was no case.’ He stopped, worried lest he was boring her. Olga Fiodorovna had already moved away and was now sitting between Bernard and Enid.

  ‘Why?’ the woman asked.

  For a moment he hesitated. He wasn’t sure if the name was one to bandy about in a communist country. ‘The fellow that ran the Iranian concern was brother-in-law to the Shah,’ he said. Now that he had got started he wanted to tell her about the trial, in particular the remark made by the third mate under cross-examination. It was perfectly suitable for an educated woman to hear. He had often told the same story at home and nobody had minded except possibly his wife. ‘Funny thing happened in court,’ he said. ‘The third mate was asked if he was surprised at what was going on. I think I mentioned that he was born in Birmingham. “Surprised?” cried the mate. “You could have buggered me through me raincoat.”’

  The woman’s face remained impassive. She regarded him with alarmingly bright eyes outlined in black pencil. He tried to explain it to her, but he could tell she was disappointed in him. She began to discuss with Enid the meaning of the film they had watched earlier. Ashburner was taken aback to hear that the poetic villager hadn’t sent a damaging note to the husband after all. It was an elaborate pretence. It suddenly struck him that it needn’t have been Nina on the telephone. I have only Olga Fiodorovna’s word for it, he thought. I may have been duped.

  17

  On their third and final day in Tblisi, Ashburner woke with swollen glands in his neck. For a moment he just lay there thinking how ill he was, and then a feeling of such unease seized him that his physical discomfort was forgotten. He could pin nothing down. His mind, usually simple, was a confusion of dark and intangible thoughts. Staggering from his bed to go into the bathroom he became aware that he was actually looking over his shoulder. He telephoned Bernard’s room but received no reply. Recklessly, he rang Enid. ‘I’m not awfully well,’ he croaked. ‘My head hurts.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to get you anything?’

  ‘I rather wanted to speak to Bernard.’

  ‘Well, he’s not here,’ Enid said, a trace sharply. ‘I expect he’s gone drawing. He generally goes out before breakfast. Hang on and I’ll pass you some aspirins over the balcony.’

  He drew back the curtains and unlocked the doors; it was another beautiful day. His eyes began to water in the sunlight. Enid’s hand appeared round the side of the concrete partition holding a packet of headache powders. ‘Did you lock yourself in again?’ she asked. ‘No wonder you feel awful.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, taking the powders from her. He had no intention of using them. In his weakened state he felt he needed a blood transfusion, not a few paltry grains of sodium bicarbonate.

  Enid thought he was a peculiarly insecure man, always seeking attention one way or another. In that sense he was very like Nina, though usually she chose men who looked important. Whenever Nina came to receptions or gallery openings she was accompanied by someone special, someone high up in medicine or politics. Once, at a do at the Tate, she’d brought the Russian cultural attaché – at least she’d said he was the cultural attaché: he was certainly Russian. Douglas was a nice man, even lovable, but then Nina wasn’t the sort to like lovable men. Perhaps Douglas had hidden depths.

  She began to laugh. ‘I’m not laughing at you,’ she called. ‘I’m thinking of you locking yourself in. Bernard told me what happened on the train. I hope you don’t think it was me?’

  ‘Good Lord, no,’ he cried, and hastily withdrew into his room.

  He had locked the doors last night on account of the noise, and even then he had been unable to shut out the dull thuds and the high shivering vibrations, the footsteps that pounded along the corridor, the melancholy voices in the restaurant below droning like the wind flowing through a tunnel, raised in a Georgian chant. The singing had raged into the small hours. Once he thought he had heard Olga Fiodorovna outside his door, shou
ting for him to come out and play.

  While Ashburner was shaving, Bernard telephoned. ‘I believe you were looking for me,’ he said. ‘What’s up now?’

  ‘I’ve got an awfully sore throat,’ Ashburner said.

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Bernard. ‘Thanks for telling me.’

  ‘I wondered if it was to be expected?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Bernard. ‘You’ve started taking the pills?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Ashburner admitted. ‘I didn’t think it wise. Not when we keep having all this drink flung at us.’

  ‘Then it’s probably a cold,’ said Bernard. ‘It’s the sudden change in temperature.’

  ‘But my glands are up,’ protested Ashburner. ‘And I feel odd . . . in my mind.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Bernard shouted. ‘It’s a mild infection. You’re not in the final stages of syphilis.’

  At breakfast, however, seeing that Ashburner did indeed look ill, sitting by the picture window hardly touching his yoghourt and dejectedly shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun, he told Olga Fiodorovna that perhaps she should take him to a doctor.

  She studied Ashburner for a moment and said she didn’t think it was necessary.

  ‘It could be the beginnings of pneumonia,’ Bernard warned.

  ‘These days,’ Olga Fiodorovna said, ‘doctors are useless. He will either refer him to a hospital or hand him a prescription. It will save time if we go straight to the pharmacy. I know the people in charge.’

  Though taking no part in the discussion on his health, Ashburner was listening. In the circumstances he thought the interpreter’s attitude strange. Nina hadn’t even been running a temperature and they hadn’t thought twice about rushing her off in the middle of the night to a sanatorium.

  ‘In my father’s time,’ reminisced Mr Karlovitch, ‘there was an old man of the village. He cured everything from ingrowing toenails to tumours.’

  ‘I remember breaking my leg on a bloody railway line,’ said Bernard. ‘The doctor set it and put it in plaster. But that was the past, wasn’t it?’

  ‘In the past,’ said Enid, ‘one always went to the doctor. Never to the hospital.’

  This constant reference to the past bewildered Ashburner. Squinting down at the blurred town he had the curious notion he hadn’t got one.

  The President sent a car for them after breakfast. They were going to Gori to visit the house in which Stalin had been born. The President himself was busy but he would join them in the evening. First they must take Ashburner to the pharmacy.

  Ashburner and Olga Fiodorovna disembarked on to the road in front of a blue distempered house. On the flat roof a goat stood tethered to the chimney. Olga Fiodorovna led the way through a dark and empty shop into a storeroom at the back. The door, propped open, looked out on to a yard in which hens stalked between petrol drums. Nobody was about.

  ‘I had a most interesting talk with your friend in the night,’ said Olga Fiodorovna.

  ‘My friend?’ he said, startled.

  ‘The President’s woman,’ said Olga. ‘She is very clever, I think.’

  ‘I thought she was awfully nice,’ said Ashburner. He noticed that a quantity of straw quivered on the dusty floor. Overhead the goat dragged its rope across the asbestos roof. He couldn’t help wondering whether he had been brought to a vet, either by mistake or design.

  ‘She was interested to know your opinion of her, Mr Douglas.’

  ‘Really,’ he said. He was pleased.

  ‘I told her you thought her clothing old-fashioned and her make-up too strong,’ said Olga Fiodorovna.

  Just then a brown hen ran in from the yard, followed by a quartet of matronly women in white coats. Olga spoke to them. Ashburner imagined that she implied he was malingering, because they looked at him without sympathy and brusquely pushed him down into a sitting position on an upturned packing case. Olga ordered him to remove his tie and unbutton his shirt. She joined in the examination of his ears and tongue. Trodden on, the hen flew squawking on to a shelf. If I am asked to take anything else off, Ashburner thought, I’ll pretend I don’t understand. He couldn’t help comparing unfavourably this assault of farmyard women with that of a lady dentist last year, who, called in as a locum while the regular man was away, had tilted him backwards in the chair and expored the moist lining of his open, lascivious mouth with fingers fragrant with the scent of sandalwood.

  After a noisy consultation Olga informed him there was nothing wrong apart from a mild inflammation of the throat. He was handed a cup of water and three differently coloured capsules. Obediently he swallowed the pills and put a further supply, neatly packaged in blue paper, into the pocket of his coat. He had hardly taken a few paces through the shop when he was afflicted with a curious sensation of weightlessness. Foolishly smiling, he floated through the door. The road swirled beneath him, striped with sunshine, dappled with leaves. He had to be hauled down like a flag to fit inside the car. He fell instantly asleep with his head on Enid’s shoulder.

  Presently he awoke and found himself alone with Bernard in a parked car in a village square. Outside stood Olga Fiodorovna, arm in arm with Mr Karlovitch, looking up at a war memorial. At a distance a little child in a black dress crouched on the cobblestones, staring at the car. There was no sign of Enid or the driver.

  ‘All right then, mate?’ asked Bernard.

  ‘Fine,’ said Ashburner. He did feel well, though less affable now that he had come down to earth. ‘Is this it?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said Bernard. ‘Enid wanted to pee.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to stretch your legs?’ said Ashburner.

  ‘There’s nothing here that interests me,’ said Bernard.

  Ashburner left the car and called out to Mr Karlovitch and the interpreter. The child ran headlong across the square and into a doorway. Olga Fiodorovna turned and stared at Ashburner as if she didn’t know who he was; he had the dark thought that she hadn’t expected to see him on his feet. Reaching her and respectfully bowing his head in the shadow of the war memorial, he asked in a low voice if there wasn’t some little café they could pop into for a morning drink of coffee. ‘It is morning, isn’t it?’ he enquired, not sure how long he had slept.

  Mr Karlovitch said certainly it was morning but it was a little early for drinking, even for him. They would drink themselves under the table at Gori.

  Appalled at such a prospect, Ashburner sauntered away and came to a little path bordered with wild raspberries that led to an ancient church glimpsed through eucalyptus trees. As he walked he whistled, not wishing to embarrass Enid should she be squatting in the bushes. He didn’t look up; he was thinking of yesterday and wondering if his liver hadn’t been permanently damaged. The President had taken them to a dusty plateau on a hillside to the south of Tblisi. Honoured guests at a Fair, they had stumbled from tent to tent, from enclosure to encampment. Forced to sit on upturned buckets in front of fiercely glowing wood fires, various friends of the President had pressed them to sample the young wine and the old. Whether under canvas or the blue sky, a goggling populace had observed their every move, separated from the inner sanctum by barricades. At some point a cookery demonstration had taken place. Men with daggers in their belts stood over vats of semolina and alternatively whipped and stirred the glutinous mess with paddles. A boy, stripped to the waist, worked the bellows against the fire. They had all broken down, weeping from the smoke. The crowd, lips bursting open like plums, swayed against the barricades and split their sides with laughter. Bernard was photographed amid a wedding party from Tashkent. Placed incongruously between the groom, who wore white, and a fat girl in a navy blue anorak, he smirked uncertainly into the camera. Behind him stood a row of octogenarian giants in astrakhan caps, mouths inlaid with teeth of solid gold. As the shutter clicked, the golden, flash-bulb smiles exploded in the sunlight.

  In all that wine-consuming day, bloated with semolina pudding, garlanded with pink carnations and laden with gifts, grapes, honey sticks, handk
erchieves from Samarkand, no one mentioned Nina. Not once. When they returned to Moscow, thought Ashburner, she would always be about to arrive, or have just left.

  Turning a bend in the path he saw Enid, standing on tiptoe at a wire fence, peeping in a furtive manner at something beyond. At his approach she looked over her shoulder and gestured for him to keep quiet. He stood stock still on the path.

  ‘What’s up?’ he whispered.

  She beckoned him and he stared through the netting at a vegetable garden filled with runner beans in flower.

  ‘It’s Rasputin,’ she said. ‘I’ve just seen Rasputin.’ Behind a wall of green leaves a man moved slowly up and down, snipping with secateurs. ‘Look at his beard,’ she hissed. ‘Look at his eyes.’ But dazzled by the sunshine Ashburner saw nothing save a figure in a long black coat.

  In the car, Enid described what she had seen. She was full of it. ‘There were several men at one time,’ she cried, ‘planting things. One of them threw a dead sheep over the wall. A man and a dog were passing and the dog sniffed at the sheep and Rasputin threw a stone at the dog to make it leave off.

  ‘What sort of a dog?’ asked Olga Fiodorovna. Ashburner noticed that Mr Karlovitch was looking at her in the driving mirror. He was frowning.

  ‘Just a dog,’ said Enid. ‘The man had a long beard, didn’t he?’ She appealed to Ashburner.

  ‘I’m afraid I didn’t see anything like that,’ he confessed. ‘But then I’m not very observant, and of course I’ve been recently drugged.’ He hadn’t meant to sound quite so censorious.

  ‘Such eyes,’ exclaimed Enid. ‘Like Indian ink. And hair right down to his shoulders.’

  ‘Monks,’ said Olga Fiodorovna. ‘Georgia is full of monasteries.’

  Bernard was staggered. He had thought religion stamped out and all the priests sent packing to Siberia. He could have kicked himself for having remained in the car and missed those hippie monks.

  ‘This is not Moscow,’ said Mr Karlovitch. ‘Nobody cares. The churches are empty.’