‘Who mentioned Nina?’ said Bernard, recovering. ‘I was with Enid.’
Ashburner removed a paisley dressing gown and several carrier bags from the armchair and sat down. A small bottle of pills fell to the carpet. He twitched the hem of his coat to cover the tops of his white knees and sighed heavily.
‘You’re absolutely right,’ he said. ‘I’m a fool. I’m out of my depth.’ He attempted to grasp the bottle of pills with his navy blue toes. ‘I suppose in Nina,’ he admitted, ‘I got more than I bargained for.’
‘You could say that,’ said Bernard.
During what remained of the night, Ashburner received four more telephone calls. The first was inconclusive because the moment he spoke the line was disconnected. The other three, commencing at a quarter to five and occurring at forty-minute intervals, acquainted him with the time.
9
The problem of Ashburner’s missing suitcase threatened to take up most of the morning. There wouldn’t be time to visit the Ostankino Palace as Olga Fiodorovna had originally suggested. Mr Karlovitch was unfortunately detained at the office and it wouldn’t be advisable for the group to travel unattended. They would have to accompany her while she made her enquiries.
‘You like to have a veto on where we go – is that it?’ asked Bernard mutinously, though at this particular moment the only place he wanted to go was back to bed.
‘You are quite free to visit any place you wish, Mr Burns,’ said the interpreter, looking at him calmly. ‘Without prior notification from the Soviet Artists’ Union, or a similar body, you are equally free to spend all your time queuing for admission. It is minus twenty-three degrees outside. Please put on your hats.’
Neither Bernard nor Ashburner possessed a hat. Frowning, Olga led them out into the street in search of the car. They followed several paces behind, mincing along the slippery pavement and clutching at each other for support.
‘It’s not all that cold,’ boasted Enid, who was wearing a swagger coat which had belonged to her mother and a cap with ear-flaps which she had bought at the Army and Navy Stores when she was a student. ‘Sometimes,’ she lied, ‘it’s worse than this at home.’ Before going to sleep at night, she often read for pleasure Cherry-Gerrard’s chilling account of the worst journey in the world, the dreadful polar trek north when it had blown so cold that the breath of sledge-hauling men froze to ice on their lips. In her warm bed she had shivered. Now she wondered if there hadn’t been some exaggeration.
Olga Fiodorovna gave her a lecture on the differences between island and land masses. ‘Your country is surrounded by water. If the temperature drops severely, you know about it quickly. Here it can appear deceptively mild until a complete stranger rushes up to you and pulls your nose because he can see it is getting frost bitten.’ She turned and gripped Enid’s nose between thumb and forefinger.
‘Gracious,’ cried Enid, and she fell back behind Bernard, her eyes smarting.
They had found the car and settled into it when Olga Fiodorovna uttered a moan of despair and ordered them out. For an instant they feared she had commandeered the wrong car or that the engine was about to explode, but it transpired that the interior was badly polluted; the driver had been smoking again. They huddled together at the kerb, waiting for the nasty smell to blow away. A party of infants, roped together for safety, enormously rotund in padded snow suits and scarves and woolly hats, tottered along the sidewalk. Enid chose to distribute sweets among the rear of the column. The children at the front, checked in their wandering stride, lost their balance and sat abruptly in the snow; keeling over like nine-pins, the kindergarten fell into disarray. The stricken toddlers, tangled in their guidelines and stoically silent, thrust mittened thumbs to their mouths and stared cheerfully at the sky.
‘You’ve a way with children,’ observed Bernard, as the car drove off.
Ashburner hoped he was being driven to the airport. He had stopped apologising for upsetting everyone’s plans. The contents of his suitcase, previously despised, had become precious. Wretched in yesterday’s shirt, he had attempted to buy various toiletry articles at the visitors’ shop on the second floor of the hotel. Though lights blazed above the counter and at least three women lounged behind it, he had been turned away empty-handed. Worse, Nina hadn’t come down to breakfast. He had telephoned her frequently from the lobby, without success. Enid had knocked at the door of her room but received no reply. She’s said that Nina couldn’t be all that tired; they’d both gone upstairs to bed shortly after he himself had left the restaurant. Ashburner hadn’t liked to pursue the matter further. Knowing that Enid had spent most of the night with Bernard, he could hardly ask her if she had heard Nina moving about in the room next door. Olga Fiodorovna, when told that Nina couldn’t be roused, had said it would be best if Mrs St Clair stayed where she was. There was no point in disturbing her; they weren’t going anywhere important. Inwardly, Ashburner disputed this. Nina could be lying seriously ill. To his shame, he was far too exhausted and unwashed to make an issue of it.
They drove through the white city, hurtling along avenues so broad that the pedestrians on the distant pavements swirled like black flecks in the snow.
‘Stop,’ shouted Bernard, suddenly.
He had glimpsed in the narrow gorge below the citadel the outline of a swimming pool. Steam puffed above the blue water and drifted into the trees. The driver, deprived of nicotine, accelerated and the car leapt on the icy road. Bernard, too choked for words, swivelled in his seat and pounded on the leather upholstery. Olga Fiodorovna gazed at him placidly and played with the knot of her silken headscarf.
‘He had a bad night,’ volunteered Enid.
Ashburner was comfortably dozing; now and then as the car bounced in its tracks a little snort of tiredness broke from his open mouth.
‘I’ve got to get out,’ said Bernard. He took hold of the handle of the door. ‘I’ve got to use my bloody legs.’
Olga Fiodorovna looked anxiously at Enid, who explained that Bernard probably needed exercise on account of his funny hip.
Olga Fiodorovna leaned forward and placed her arm round Bernard’s shoulder. She talked soothingly to him. She would make her phone calls to the airport and, while she did so, he and the others were at liberty to walk in the open air. Everyone must avoid gaining entrance to buildings, however historical and enticing. He personally must give an undertaking to be good and remain outdoors.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ agreed Bernard, flinching under the chummy pressure of her arm and determined the moment he was rid of her to make for the swimming pool in the moat.
Some minutes later the car came to a halt beside the steps of St Basil’s Cathedral. Helping Bernard from his seat as though he were an invalid, Olga Fiodorovna pointed diagonally across Red Square towards a large Gothic edifice, turreted and towered, situated lower down the hill. She stipulated that in one hour’s time they should meet in the English bar of the Hotel Nationale.
‘One hour,’ repeated Bernard, thrusting his fists deeper into his pockets lest they should fly out and punch her to the ground. Normally a solitary man, he wasn’t used to taking orders.
Ashburner, dragged from the interior of the car, staggered under the onslaught of the wind. He waved uncomprehendingly as Olga Fiodorovna was driven away. He was all at sea. Within seconds his ears turned purple, and so fierce was the pain that he shuffled on the spot like a tap dancer. Upon learning from Enid that Bernard wanted to go to some outdoor swimming pool, he was flabbergasted. ‘My dear fellow,’ he shuddered. ‘You can’t. The shock would kill you.’ He looked wildly about him for shelter. Clutching his incendiary ears and calling for the others to follow, he jogged tormentedly up the steps of St Basil’s.
Bernard walked off in a northerly direction. He saw no reason why he should enlighten Ashburner; he hadn’t any intention of swimming, only of sketching the surroundings of the pool.
Cowering behind a stout pillar at the entrance of the cathedral, Enid and Ashburner watched his progress. But for a flock of pigeons he was alone in the centre of the Square. A line of people, plodding two by two, heads bowed, wound in a straggling procession about its perimeter. Directly opposite the cathedral the wooden doors of the Fortress opened on to a courtyard. A squad of soldiers, fur-capped and muffled from throat to ankle in top-coats of olive green, stood to attention on the cobblestones. Above them the golden domes burned in the grey sky. The soldiers, responding to some unheard shout of command, tramped into the square and advanced towards Bernard. Unaware that he was outflanked, mackintosh flapping, he limped onwards. Ashburner called his name. Alerted, Bernard looked back and faltered; attempting to run for it he slipped and fell on all fours in the snow. The pigeons lifted into the wind and circled above the square. The troops strutted past. Picking himself up and changing course, Bernard headed for the street. He raised his arm as if hailing a taxi.
‘Better pretend we didn’t see that,’ said Enid, as they stumbled down the steps in pursuit. ‘I expect he’s in pain.’
Nobody could be sure they would recognise a taxi if they saw one. Ashburner thought taxis probably didn’t exist; such things were surely out of place in an equal society. When a large white car stopped at the kerb he hesitated but then, nudged forward by the others and galvanised by the cold, clambered inside.
‘Hotel Nationale,’ said Bernard.
The car drove off so fast they all fell backwards in their seats. Almost at once the driver held up his arm and rubbed his fingers together suggestively.
Enid was the only one who had any roubles. ‘This isn’t a taxi,’ she whispered. ‘There’s no meter.’ She was fearful they were being hijacked.
Ashburner didn’t care what sort of vehicle it was; he would gladly have ridden in a cattle truck to be out of the frightful blast of the wind. His ears, previously frozen, now throbbed exquisitely.
They waited for two hours in the English bar before Olga Fiodorovna arrived. She had spent a banal morning holding on to the end of a telephone.
‘Somewhere outside,’ she said, gesturing towards the windows, ‘people are conducting their lives in a simple, uncomplicated manner.’
Ashburner nodded doubtfully and fetched a chair to the table.
Telex messages were stuttering back and forth between Sheremetyev airport and Heathrow, she said, but as yet there was no news of his elusive suitcase. Ashburner’s signature was required on several new forms. Her life, she implied, was a paper chase. Even so, she had managed to purchase some little commodities; taking from her handbag a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste and a bar of soap, she laid them in front of Ashburner.
‘I’m much more concerned about head-gear,’ he said ungraciously, and began to question her as to where he could buy a fur hat or a cap with ear pieces and the relative prices of such items here and at home. It wasn’t until Enid put her oar in and mentioned balaclavas, recounting a gruesome incident on the Polar trek north when sweat soldered wool to the head, necessitating medical treatment, that he remembered the absent Nina and cried out her name. His energetic rise from the table spun a dish of sweet gherkins to the floor.
Olga Fiodorovna said there was no need for alarm. At this moment Mrs St Clair was lunching with Boris Shabelsky in the Artists’ Union Club, once the home of Prince Nevsky, and afterwards she would be driven by him to her next appointment. This afternoon they would all be reunited in the studio of the illustrator, Andrei Petrov.
Reassured, Ashburner went into the washroom to clean his teeth. The paste lathered like soap and the brush disintegrated in his mouth. Spitting nylon stalks into the basin and examining his ears for frostbite, he dwelt on an image of Nina, blue eyes wantonly regarding her companion as they talked meaningfully about Art. This Boris character was obviously one of those clever chaps who spoke English; otherwise the interpreter would have been present. Perhaps Mr Karlovitch was chaperoning them. It’s just possible, thought Ashburner, that she will mention me. Holding the remains of his toothbrush in one hand and still frothing at the lips, he ran back into the lounge bar and seizing Bernard by the shoulder exclaimed, ‘Boris!’
‘He is, I think, a friend of yours,’ said Olga, when she had fathomed the cause of his excitement. ‘He contacted Mr Karlovitch this morning and was most insistent that you should attend the exhibition.’
‘I thought we were having tea with a metal worker,’ Bernard said.
It was important, Olga Fiodorovna stressed, to realise that arrangements were flexible. A great deal of care had gone into the organisation of their visit, but if Mr Douglas thought fit to make alternative plans it wasn’t in her nature to dissuade him.
‘I’m quite in the dark,’ protested Ashburner. ‘I really don’t know the fellow from Adam.’ He felt in some undefined way that he was at fault and wished his wife was at his side. In company she had been known, once or twice, to back him up. He thought she might have found the exact, light-hearted phrase calculated to put Olga Fiodorovna in her place.
He was further discomfited during lunch to be handed an envelope containing a hundred roubles.
Olga Fiodorovna seemed annoyed when he argued that he wasn’t a guest of the Soviet Union. ‘Mr Douglas,’ she said, ‘You are destined to be awkward.’
Blushing, he pocketed the money. He felt like a kept man.
Later they drove to a tourist’s shop to buy him a hat. Bernard refused to step inside. Shopping, he said, was anathema to him and he didn’t want anything for his head. If need be he’d wrap an old newspaper about his ears. After a whispered consultation the driver was instructed to take Mr Burns to the artist’s studio and return without delay.
Inside the store, Ashburner changed his mind. He was disinclined to spend eighty pounds worth of traveller’s cheques on a fur hat which would have to be abandoned long before he arrived in Chelsea. He was forced to loiter in the wake of the two women as they wandered from counter to counter. Shocked, he examined his reflection in a mirror; his complexion flared pink and mauve. Far from resembling a stone carving he thought his face looked like something stamped on the lid of a biscuit tin.