They only managed to escape from the apartment once more. She caught a bus to the end of Kutuzovsky and he picked her up in his car.
They drove towards the forest, nipping in between the lorries, glancing apprehensively at any Volgas overtaking them and even more apprehensively at any Volgas that stayed behind them.
‘This is madness and you are a crazy man,’ she said.
‘And you are a crazy girl to come with me.’
They were both crazy and he knew it. A warm hazy day tufted with cloud, the smell of blossom in the city air and a crazy impulse because intrigue and suspicion had no place in such a setting.
‘That fawn Volga has been behind us ever since you picked me up,’ she said.
‘You’re imagining things,’ he said, and glanced in the driving mirror.
The Volga changed lanes and powered past them, the driver exultant at the superiority of big Russian cars over small British ones. From somewhere behind a militia motor-cycle and sidecar eased itself out from the line of traffic and applied itself to the tail of the Volga. Five minutes later they passed the militiaman and the Volga driver standing at the side of the road. The driver was talking excitedly and the militiaman was making calm notes.
They drove through a small town on the point of being connected to Moscow by a brand new suburb. Pedestrians stood in the middle of the road poised for suicide and a Western car with a diplomatic number plate was an irresistible temptation. Out they lunged, marching serenely towards the pavement as Mortimer braked and swerved and cursed.
Where shall we go?’ he asked.
She shivered despite the heat. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I feel very frightened.’
Protective instincts stirred inside him and he put his arm round her shoulders, steering desperately with his left hand as another pedestrian beckoned death. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘No one can possibly know we’re out together.’
‘You don’t know this country.’
‘What if they did know? We’re not committing a crime.’
‘It is not permitted. That is all there is to it. Other girls have got into serious trouble in the past. And what about your Ambassador? He would not be very pleased to think you were out with a Russian girl, would he?’
‘No,’ Mortimer said. ‘He would not be very pleased.’
‘It is all very cruel and unnecessary.’
‘To hell with them,’ Mortimer said. ‘To hell with them for this one day anyway.’
‘Perhaps we will be able to do it again.’
‘I thought you were scared.’
‘I am.’ She moved closer to him and he felt the warmth of her body. ‘But I feel very happy at the same time.’
‘Then perhaps we will do it again.’
‘I’m frightened the militia will stop us along the road. They will want to know who I am. They will see that I am not English like you.’
‘Just don’t say anything. I always pretend I can’t speak any Russian and after a while they get so angry and frustrated that they let me go.’
He turned down a side road branching into the forest.
‘We must be safe,’ she said. ‘There is no one behind us.’
If anyone was following, he thought, all he had to do was to radio a mobile militiaman at the other end of the side road. ‘Shall we stop along here somewhere?’ he said.
‘If you wish. The forest is very beautiful. I do not think that anyone in the West ever believes that Russia can be as beautiful as this.’
‘I didn’t believe that it could be. I thought it was always covered in snow.’
‘And I believe it always rains in England. Is that true?’
‘Not quite,’ he said.
They walked along a path quick with bees busying themselves among the wild flowers. Birds sang high up in the trees. A youth walked past carrying a transistor radio—a fifty-piece orchestra held in one hand. He looked at them with curiosity accompanied by Tchaikovsky.
‘Couldn’t I ever be mistaken for a Russian?’ Mortimer asked.
‘Never. If you shaved your head and burned all your expensive clothes you’d still look like a Westerner.’
‘These clothes aren’t expensive. I put on my oldest sweater and my baggiest trousers so I wouldn’t be conspicuous.’
‘They’re good material,’ she said. ‘Better than Russian men can ever buy.’
They sat down for a while and because he felt sixteen again and she was his first love he held her hand and stroked her hair and kissed her gently. When he kissed her he felt her trembling.
They walked on along the path which gradually widened, like a river approaching the sea, until it flowed into a green field. The field sloped down to a stream, and on the other side of the stream a wooden village dozed in the sunlight.
‘Let’s go and have a look at it,’ he said. ‘Look there’s an old church over there.’
She shook her head. ‘People would see us and know that I was Russian and you were from the West. Every village has its party officials, and its policeman even though he isn’t necessarily in uniform.’
‘Until people like you stop thinking like that there’s no hope for any of us,’ he said.
A breeze smoothed the grass, burnishing each blade. It played with her autumn hair and blew a few strands across her eyes.
‘It would not be wise.’ She sighed. ‘I do not think you will ever appreciate the difficulties. We have been brought up to this way of thinking.’
‘And so it goes on,’ he said. ‘Fear of evils which probably no longer exist being handed down from one generation to another.’
‘You do not understand. I have a mother and a father and a brother. They might be made to suffer because of my indiscretions.’
The mention of her brother decided the matter for Mortimer. He took her hand and led her down the slope. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’re going to investigate.’
There was much he didn’t know about her, he thought as they walked—almost ran—down the slope. He knew about her gentleness, her pride, her humour. But he knew very little about aspects of her character moulded by a system which caught them young and never let them go. He had never discussed politics with her and he did not know how strong her loyalties would be if ever he asked her to make a decision. Perhaps she would refuse to accompany him to England. Then, if he still wished to marry her, he would have to renounce everything he believed in and stay in Russia. He knew that he could never do that.
They crossed a wooden bridge over the stream. Two goats stared at them belligerently, pink eyes full of resentment at the temerity of strangers entering their village. The cottages were heaped together, like people seeking each other’s warmth, their woodwork intricate and dilapidated. There was no one in sight.
‘The authorities do not like foreigners to see such places,’ Nina said. ‘They think you will go back to your smart cities and tell everyone that Russians live in cowsheds.’
‘You should see some of our slums,’ Mortimer said.
‘I have seen pictures of them. There was an article in one of our magazines saying that parts of London had not changed since Charles Dickens wrote about them.’
‘They haven’t. It’s a pity we haven’t got another contemporary Dickens to write about them.’
‘That is the difference between our two nations. We in the Soviet Union do not like any criticism but you do not seem to mind it.’
As they reached the main street the door of one of the cottages opened and a crowd of villagers tumbled out. They wore fancy dress masks, faces dusted with flour and daubed with red; men in skirts, women in trousers; devils, witches, clowns, harlequins.
Nina shrank behind him.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ he said, ‘none of this lot is going to take any notice of us. What’s it all about anyway?’
‘I don’t know. A local festival of some sort. Or it may be a wedding.’
The procession galloped on to the road where a man wearing antlers charged at a re
d blanket flourished by a woman wearing trousers tied up with string and a man’s cloth cap.
No one took any notice of the foreigners in their midst.
‘I suppose one of those is a member of the secret police and another one is the leader of the local party cell,’ Mortimer said.
She permitted herself a laugh. ‘I think the one with the antlers is the policeman,’ she said.
The procession turned left and cavorted into another cottage. The door shut and there was silence, as abrupt as if a gramophone record had come to an end.
‘You wouldn’t think a rickety old place like that would be sound-proof,’ he said.
‘You forget that it has to keep out the cold in winter.’
They came upon the church behind some trees, not as tall as it had seemed to be from the other side of the stream. It was old and disillusioned, red bricks powdering on its round tower, grass growing from the patched roof.
‘It’s sad, isn’t it,’ he said.
‘It is always sad to see anything neglected.’ She looked at him shyly. ‘I suppose you are a Christian. It’s funny but it never occurred to me before.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m a Christian—although not a very good one. I presume you are not.’
‘Of course not. We have never been taught Christianity. We know nothing about it.’ She touched the cement between the crumbling bricks. ‘There are a lot of differences between us, are there not?’
‘I expect we believe in the same things. It’s just that we give them different names.’ It did not sound very convincing. ‘Let’s see if we can get in.’
‘It seems to me that it would not be wise.’
He pushed the bleached wooden door and it surprised them by creaking open. She said: ‘I will wait for you outside.’
It was dark inside and the air smelled of hay. The light from the open door threw a dusty beam picking out piles of bricks, bales of straw and, at the far end, an indistinct figure crouched in prayer. He cleared his throat and the noise seemed to hang in the thick darkness.
The figure moved from the path of light with a faint scuffling, like the sound of birds fretting in the rafters. A door opened ahead of him allowing a shaft of sunlight, as thin as the beam of a torch, to cross the path of light from the main door. The beam was snapped off and he knew that he was alone in the church.
He closed the door and returned to Nina. He began to tell her about the secret worshipper he had seen and then stopped. He was not sure why; except, perhaps, that he had stumbled upon a private act of devotion which, like a confession, was not meant to be shared. He hoped that he had not frightened whoever it had been too much, and he hoped that they would return to the darkness that smelled of hay instead of incense. He rather thought they would.
They left the village and walked back through the forest to the car. As they turned into the main highway Mortimer saw a
Volga pull out from the side of the road. It stayed behind them, two cars away, all the way back to the centre of Moscow. He could not tell whether it was following him because it was the only road into Moscow and there was no reason why it should overtake them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
In Washington and London statesmen talked about an easing of East-West tension. In Moscow the Western community noticed little change in the petulant private warfare which had absorbed them long before Vietnam, long before Korea.
Foreign correspondents in particular failed to notice any local change. The Russians invoked old regulations which prevented the correspondents from importing food in quantity from Helsinki or London and a visiting girl journalist received publicity of an unusual nature.
She was invited out for drinks by two Russian journalists—in itself a rare occurrence—and taken to the restaurant in Kutuzovsky which had displeased the Soviet Press because of the rudeness and inefficiency of its staff.
The journalists ordered a carafe of brandy and drank enthusiastically while the girl sipped timidly at a single measure and listened to a lecture on the merits of Tass and the Russian Press and the faults of Western newspapers.
At one stage one of her hosts insisted on taking her on a tour of the restaurant which had achieved a certain popularity through notoriety. When she returned she took another sip of her brandy and almost immediately became dramatically drunk.
Solicitously the Russians helped her from the restaurant and posed, obviously supporting her, while a cameraman took leisurely photographs outside. The pictures were published accompanied by a story describing the decadent behaviour of Western correspondents and extolling the chivalry of the two Soviet journalists who had helped a lady in distress.
There was a lot of speculation about the Russian motives in slipping the girl a Mickey Finn. Often a journalist was upbraided in the Soviet papers if he wrote anything detrimental about the system, but the girl had only contributed a few innocuous articles on Soviet food and fashions. Next the policies of her paper were discussed; it was Right Wing but not particularly anti-Soviet.
Foreign journalists who were allowed to dine in the Soviet Press Club on Thursdays tried particularly hard to divine the motive. They divined nothing: instead they became involved in long vodka arguments comparing the dreary Russian newspapers with the sensational Western Press. The arguments broke up when the Western correspondents accused the Russians of trying to doctor their drinks. And no logical motive for the doping of the girl ever emerged.
She flew out of Moscow in tears and everyone said it was a shame. Then, because they all happened to be out at Sheremetievo airport, they adjourned to the customs department, where their steaks were being held, to protest once more about the ban on imports.
One journalist took his revenge on the system by exporting Russian folk songs which were converted into pop tunes in his own country. One or two songs climbed quite high in the charts in West Europe. And an enterprising Scandinavian sold a recipe for borsch to a canning factory in his home capital. A few contented themselves with writing unfavourable copy about the Soviet Union; they were summoned to the Foreign Ministry and rebuked by officials who said they were hurt that anyone should want to criticise the Soviet Union during the anniversary year of the Revolution.
Diplomats continued to complain about living conditions—cockroaches in the apartments, lifts that stuck between floors, lack of hot water, lazy maids. Wives did most of the complaining, insisting that the hardships were imposed deliberately by the Russians. When they complained too vehemently their husbands sent them to Black Sea resorts to forget. The wives then phoned them from Socchi or Yalta complaining about the crowded beaches, the queues, the food and—in diplomatic whispers—the bad manners of Russian holidaymakers.
In Moscow a West German wife complained that someone had defaecated on the landing outside her apartment and asked the commandant of the block to send someone to remove the deposit. She waited most of the day and no one arrived; when she phoned the commandant’s office again it was suggested that she remove the deposit herself. She refused angrily and the faeces remained on the landing while other members of the foreign community speculated on the nationality of its original owner. Russian was a popular first choice; but as various debates got under way so traditional enmities and even racialism surfaced. Almost every nationality was suspected by someone and it was even suggested that some ancient Germanic score had been privately settled. The speculation had one unique aspect: no one blamed the British. ‘For Christ sake,’ said an American magazine writer, ‘you can’t imagine a British diplomat having a crap on the can let alone on the landing.’ Finally a disgruntled Russian arrived to clean up. ‘Dirty pigs,’ he said, dismissing all foreigners without bothering about definitive identification.
Very occasionally Russians and Westerners met socially at parties. At first conversation was elaborately polite and the humour laboured. The Russians drank thirstily and eagerly and before long arguments started. Vietnam, Press freedom, reunification of Germany, apartheid, Vietnam. The Russians also g
ot very angry about the Westerners’ attitude to their health services. Most diplomats and correspondents took the night train or day plane to Helsinki to have anything from appendicitis to toothache treated. They were advised to do so by their embassy doctors who shuddered at the thought of sending patients to Soviet hospitals. The doctors’ advice annoyed the Russians who failed to see how there could be anything wrong with their hospitals because they led the world in scientific achievement.
On these levels the mutual antagonism smouldered through the early summer days. During this time Richard Mortimer contributed nothing to the bickering because he was in love with Mother Russia—and one of her daughters.
Then one day in June an event occurred which provided the antagonists with fresh ammunition. Israel and the Arabs went to war. And Mortimer found to his surprise that the private views of many Soviet citizens could sometimes differ from the Kremlin line.
On one side of Mortimer stood a Sikh in Air Force uniform, on the other a swarthy man in a starched khaki uniform from an unidentified South American country. Mortimer wished he had studied the Middle East crisis more carefully before the Queen’s Birthday reception. His two companions were disagreeing violently about the war; he tried to hide his ignorance with reticent neutrality.
The Ambassador and his wife had hoped it would stay fine for Britain’s principal contribution to the diplomatic whirl. But warm rain was falling and the guests elbowed and buffeted each other in the rich and gracious room upstairs. They reminded Mortimer of a gathering of film extras from different films. Impoverished spies in freshly-ironed and starched suits, Russian Orthodox priests in robes and beards, American diplomats in blue mohair and button-down collars, correspondents on the prowl, all the wives straight from the Ascot set.
But the film with the biggest budget featured service attachés. The British military attaché with plump calves extending his tight ceremonial trousers, Naval attachés crackling in white starch, air attachés wearing the swagger of old pilots. The uniforms were green, khaki, blue; pleated, pressed, pompous and splendid.
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