by Roger Bax
Stepan shrugged. “Only the evening can show what the day has been,” he said. “It is a Russian saying. If they sent me back I should be no worse off than now.”
Denny said: “I don’t see why our people shouldn’t let him stay. After all, he’s helped us. We should never have got out of this mess without him.”
I couldn’t help saying, “We should probably never have got into it without him.”
“We aren’t obliged to tell them that,” said Denny seriously.
“Anyway, I bet they’ll be glad to have him. He’s a coal-miner—they need miners.”
Joe said, “What are you all talking about?” He listened gravely while Denny translated.
“There’s another thing,” I said. “Haven’t you got a sweetheart in Russia, Stepan? And parents? What about them? You’d never be able to go back.”
“I have many sweethearts in Russia,” said Stepan. “Ten, twenty—but they will all marry someone else. My parents—they were killed by the Germans in Poltava.”
“What about relatives? The N.K.V.D. may punish them instead of you.”
“I have a sister in Irkutsk,” said Stepan. “But perhaps if I come to England the N.K.V.D. will never know about me. The aeroplane did not see me. I can have a new name in England. They will not know what happened to Neva or to me.” He gave a fleeting smile. “Perhaps I shall receive a posthumous decoration.”
Marya said: “Please let him come, Philip. We shall never be happy if we send him back. We shall always think of him.”
“It’s all very well,” I said, “but how are we going to get him to England? If we touch at Stockholm or any other port on the way he’ll probably be taken off and shipped back to Russia. Don’t forget he hasn’t any papers. I can see no end of trouble. We can put up a case to our own people—we can’t argue with the Swedes. It seems to me our only hope is to sail straight to England without touching anywhere. What about it, Joe? You’re the skipper.”
Joe stubbed out his cigarette and gave me an odd look. He said, “You really want my advice?”
“Of course.”
He said: “We’d be crazy to try. It’s more than a thousand miles. We’ve been lucky with the weather so far but it probably won’t hold. There are the girls to think of.”
No doubt Joe knew best, but it wasn’t the answer I had hoped for. It was crazy, of course, though no crazier than everything else we’d done. I said, “You really think we ought to dump him in Stockholm?”
Everybody looked at Joe—Denny with anxiety, Svetlana with reproach, Marya pleadingly. Poor Joe wriggled uneasily. He said, “Well, if you put it like that—I don’t.” He seemed to ponder for a moment. I knew what he was thinking about—high winds, torn sails, strange waters, inexperienced passengers, Dawn a wreck on some wild shore in the Skagerrak or the Sound. Surely we had tempted Providence enough.
Then he gave a little shrug and a slow smile spread over his face. He wetted his thumb, held it up and blew on it. The smile broadened. “There’s a fair wind,” he said. He got up and gave Stepan a friendly pat on the shoulder. “I’ll go and alter course.”
Chapter Fifteen
As it turned out, the weather favoured us. We had light fickle winds and a slow passage, but never a hint of danger. We were overcrowded, and towards the end we had to ration our water, but these were minor discomforts. The days slipped by very happily in almost a holiday cruise atmosphere, and just over a fortnight after we had parted company with the Vittorina we were sailing past the Nore.
It was indescribably thrilling. The girls and Stepan were agog for their first sight of England and we all gave a cheer as Joe pointed to the hazy outline of Sheppey and Canvey. My thoughts went back to the early summer, when what we had now successfully accomplished was no more than a crazy idea. I remembered the grim nights I’d spent alone on the saltings aboard Wayfarer, and my desperate hopeless longing for Marya. I remembered vividly that depressing day when Denny had been seasick, and the catastrophe of his torn hand. I reminded him of that incident as we passed almost the very spot where it had happened, and he smiled. We could afford to smile now, but neither of us would ever forget those moments of utter despair.
We motored up the creek on a flood tide. Joe’s eyes were sparkling and he was sniffing the strong salty air as though it were a precious perfume. He said: “You can have the Baltic. Give me Southfleet.” His eyes travelled from one high wall of mud to another, remembering the shape of the banks, recalling the channel. Stepan watched Joe rather as Joe had watched Stepan during our penetration of the islands. All this mud was something quite new to him, and so was the three-knot tidal stream and the great rise and fall of the tide. Marya and Svetlana were studying with interest the little houseboats which lined both sides of the creek. There were quite a lot of sailing-boats and launches out at Southfleet itself, and as we approached we were inspected—as all boats are always inspected by enthusiasts—and then hailed. Joe waved back—it was almost like a royal procession. A few minutes later he turned Dawn’s head into the tide and I let go her anchor exactly opposite the old workshop. We were home again. Solemnly we shook Joe by the hand. It was a great moment for him as well as for us. I think he was proud of the job he’d done, and he had a right to be.
Then, of course, the excitement started. The return of a boat to its home port after a long cruise always makes big local news in a place like Southfleet, and we hadn’t had our anchor down ten minutes before the saltings began to seem very crowded. The news spread quickly that we had a boatload of passengers, including two women, and I thought I’d better go and see the police and immigration people before they came to see me. I left Denny to deal with the Press while I went along to the police-station. I wish you could have seen the face of the station sergeant when I told him I had come to report the presence aboard Dawn of three people without papers of any sort. He’d never had anything like it happen to him before. A slightly hurt expression came over his features, as though I’d been a bit inconsiderate in not waiting until he was off duty, and then he reached for a pad and began writing down particulars as calmly as though I’d been offering a reward for a lost wallet.
Naturally, we had a lot of trouble, and at much higher levels than the local police-station. Denny and I had to rush up to town and call at the Foreign Office and the Home Office and see a lot of V.I.P.s. We told them the whole story, just as it had happened, naturally stressing the part Stepan had played in getting us out of a jam and the fact that he was now a political refugee. The upshot of it all was that he was given a permit to stay in the country temporarily while further investigations were made, and was taken off to a Ministry of Labour hostel where Poles and other displaced persons were being given an English language course. We managed to keep his name out of the papers—which was quite a feat in the circumstances, for the story really hit the headlines—and I doubt if the Russians ever connected the arrival in Southfleet of an unidentified foreigner with the strange disappearance of the launch Neva in the Baltic Sea.
We didn’t have our grand reunion on Steve’s birthday after all. We had it much earlier. The moment I reached London I asked his office to send him a tactfully worded cable, for I knew how anxious he’d be. The next thing was that Donovan rang me to say that Steve had been ordered to leave the Soviet Union and that he was already on his way out. Marya and I met him at the airport and took him straight back to the flat. I must say no one ever looked less like a deportee—he was in the highest spirits and as thrilled as a schoolboy over our success. We got Denny and Svetlana along for a celebration that very evening and we really ‘went to town’. The meeting between Steve and the girls was quite touching, and then of course we had to have his story in detail.
He told us how the correspondents were rushed back to Moscow after Svetlana’s disappearance, and how a day or two later he’d been summoned to appear before Mangulov, the Head of the Soviet Press Department.
“Mangulov’s new since your time, I guess?” said Steve. “He�
�s nothing much—just one of those suavé diplomatic guys doing what he’s told. He tried very hard to pin something on me but he hadn’t a chance. He didn’t know anything. I told him Svetlana was a big grown-up girl who pleased herself what she did, and that I hadn’t seen Marya in months. He went on asking questions, trying to tie me up, and in the end I got sore. When he said, ‘So I take it, Mr. Quillan, you’ve really nothing at all to tell us about this regrettable affair?’ I said, ‘Only that I’m mighty glad they got out of Russia, Mr. Mangulov.’”
Steve took a sip of champagne and his eyes sparkled. “Then he thought he’d be smart. He came right back at me. ‘And how do you know they’ve left Russia, Mr. Quillan?’ I said, ‘Hell, they’re both sensible girls.’”
I laughed. It was always good to hear of anyone who’d answered back in that country. “But they wouldn’t have thrown you out for that,” I said. “They must have suspected you all right.”
“Oh, I guess they did. They knew someone on the inside must have had a hand in it, and who else was there? I reckon they’d already decided to deport me whatever I said. Anyway, when Mangulov finally got up and bade me a stiff ‘Good-bye’ without offering to shake hands, I felt sure they’d put the black spot on me. So I said, ‘Good-bye, Mr. Mangulov. See you after the liberation!’”
Steve raised his glass. “Maybe I will at that. Let’s drink to it, anyway.”
There’s not much more to tell. Steve was finally assigned to Paris, so we continued to see him from time to time. I made Joe a present of Dawn so that he could raise a mortgage on her and build the larger workshop that he’d planned. Denny had no difficulty in getting his old job back and before long he and Svetlana were leading a quiet suburban existence in rooms at Streatham. I reported at the office, and after a few days of intense excitement Marya and I settled down at the flat, absolutely determined to live happily ever after.
Oh, there’s just one other thing. About a month after the party a letter arrived at the flat from Stepan. It was postmarked Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, and was written in very creditable English. It said that his permit had been extended on condition that he worked as a miner for an agreed period, that he was very happy and hoped we were too. There was a postscript that made us laugh. It said, simply, You will like to hear number three shift overfulfilled his norm five per cent for this week. Next week we do better.
THE END
Copyright
First published in 1949 by Hutchinson & Co
This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world
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Copyright © Roger Bax, 1949
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