The Best of British Crime omnibus (8 page)

After the meal, we were joined by a group of spruce young collective farmers, male and female, including a boy with a balalaika. By now we were all very mellow. There was a lot of singing, and then the indefatigable Russians cleared a space for dancing and we really let ourselves go. There was one extremely handsome girl – a dark Don Cossack – who danced some of her native folk dances with enormous zest. She was later monopolised by Bolting, and from what I could see as the air grew thicker and the fumes headier, he was making fast progress with her. He was a man, evidently, who enjoyed the good things of life.

The
bonhomie
of that evening didn't last. Relations between the two women in the party were becoming increasingly strained, and by the third day Waterhouse, who was now almost as intrigued by the human side of the delegation as I was myself, was prepared to lay odds on an early and violent breach. The atmosphere was particularly threatening on the Wednesday, when Perdita had to spend the morning with Mrs Clarke going over a crèche and the afternoon interviewing a Heroine-Mother who had won a medal for producing ten children. The climax came in the evening at the ballet. The women, as usual, were sitting together and Mrs Clarke – who had put on a staggering violet frock for the occasion – was in one of her most voluble moods. In the second entr'acte she started to tell Perdita about her daughter Ruby who had won a prize for jiving at some South London
palais
and had always thought it would be nice to be a ballet dancer, until Perdita suddenly cried, ‘Oh, for heaven's sake!' and stalked out of the theatre.

This open rapture had repercussions the next day. Still out of temper, Perdita vented her annoyance on Islwyn, who became sulky. She didn't make things any better by ostentatiously switching her attentions to Bolting. By this time she was barely on speaking terms with Mullett, and Mrs Clarke had become very cantankerous, so one way and another there was quite an atmosphere. Also, Cressey was being difficult. After lunch at a Children's Home on the Thursday, Mullett began talking about how successful the ‘peace' rally had been and what a fine report of the Russian spirit they'd be able to give when they got home. Cressey, when pressed to agree, said that of course the spirit
had
been fine, but there was something he couldn't quite understand. Mullett, eager as ever to help him over any little difficulty, probed deeper, and Cressey said rather diffidently that he'd happened to hear a broadcast by Mr Attlee just before leaving England and what he couldn't understand was how the western countries could be warmongers when they practically hadn't got anything to fight with and the Russians could be peace-loving when they'd got 170 divisions and about 25,000 tanks. He raised the matter in such a modest way, as though he realised it was only his own stupidity at fault, that everyone tried hard to be patient with him, but he certainly cast an ideological cloud over the latter part of that luncheon. Perdita, who had formerly referred to Cressey in her patronising way as ‘that sweet little man,' now looked at him as though he were a viper in the delegation bosom.

The high spot of the week was the reception given by VOKS in honour of Perdita. It was on the Saturday, and the press attended in full strength, for the buffet meals provided by VOKS were famous. It was held in a fine old house with high carved ceilings and Empire columns, and there were probably a couple of hundred people there, comprising the artistic and intellectual elite of Moscow. Perdita, despite her accumulating resentments, was in her most regal mood and looked terrific in midnight-blue velvet, cut with devastating slinkiness. The photographs which she had brought with her to Russia had been carefully framed and hung on the walls, and for the first half-hour we all strolled round and made the admiring noises which are expected on such occasions. There were Several Russian sculptors present, and the air became thick with technicalities.

When everyone had said everything that could possibly
be
said about the somewhat exiguous collection, we all moved to another room where chairs had been set out in rows as for a meeting. The president of VOKS, a man called Vassiliev, opened the proceedings with a brief but fulsome eulogy of Perdita and then she was called upon to give a talk about ‘her art,' which Mirnova translated with great virtuosity paragraph by paragraph. It all sounded most erudite. I caught phrases like ‘the rhetorical magnificence of the Baroque, “the ardent yet naïve simplicity of archaic art,' and ‘the pursuit of realistic verisimilitude.' Perdita was very cool and sure of herself, and she was obviously revelling in the limelight. She must have managed to avoid all the ideological pitfalls, for the lecture was received with prolonged and enthusiastic applause and she sat down with a flush of pleasure. She was followed by a tedious old man named Rabinovitch, introduced as one of the Soviet Union's most famous sculptors, who said a lot more nice things about her. I noticed that Mirnova cut him a little in translation.

Finally we adjourned to the banqueting room for what VOKS called a ‘chai.' The word means ‘tea,' but to VOKS it meant a spread that Nero himself could hardly have rivalled. There was, as Waterhouse put it, ‘everything but a vomitorium.' Perdita was carried off by Mirnova to grace a special table where the elite of the elite were gathered for worship, and the rest of us had our wants attended to by a bevy of young and charming hostesses. Mrs Clarke, still in her violet frock, was waited upon by a rather pansy young man. A blonde attached herself to Islwyn Thomas and Jeff's Tanya was soon deep in conversation with Cressey. Jeff himself was still exploiting his unusual opportunities, and had buttonholed a Russian who spoke a few words of English.

I was helping myself to a plate of hors d'oeuvres when Waterhouse edged towards me through the crowd, his eyes sparkling with mischief. ‘Well, George,' he said, spiking about half a pound of smoked salmon, ‘what did you think of it?'

‘I'm not cultured,' I said. ‘As entertainment, I thought it went on too long.'

He laughed. ‘Well, I do happen to know something about it, and you can take it from me, dear boy – that woman's fourth-rate. Fifth-rate! This stuff of hers… ' he waved a derisory hand at the exhibition, ‘… it's pitiful.' He poured out some vodka. ‘As for this preposterous notion that Russia leads in culture – pah! Art? – Soviet Russia hasn't produced any art, not for years. Remember what Shaw wrote in
Back to Methuselah
?
–
“Art has never been great except when it has been providing an iconography for a living religion.” That's the trouble here – there's no living religion. There hasn't been since the early days of the Revolution. These people have ritual and dogma but they don't feel anything inside any more. Their Communism is just a husk.'

He looked up at me sardonically and then round at the cultured throng whose claims he had dismissed. There was a clatter of plates and a rising buzz of conversation and above it all boomed a monologue from Mullett.

‘By the way,' Waterhouse went on, ‘did you know that
la Manning
has asked if she can model Stalin?'

‘I knew she was going to.'

‘Well, she has. There's a rather nice story going about. It seems that Mirnova consulted Mullett on the subject, because she didn't want to hurt the lady's feelings, and according to the story Mullett said – you know that club-footed humour of his – “I don't think we need take Miss Manning's desire to confer immortality on Mr Stalin too seriously.” The Russians are tickled to death – my secretary heard them talking about it at the Press Department. What's more, it appears that the lady's heard about it too, and she's furious.'

‘So that's why she's not on speaking terms with him!'

‘I imagine so.' Waterhouse balanced his vodka glass on his plate, preparatory to moving off. ‘Now who, I wonder, would appreciate that little story?' He gazed round the room again as though choosing a suitable recipient for his conversation, and his eye rested for a moment on Tranter. ‘It's odd, you know – I can't help feeling I've seen that fellow before somewhere, but for the life of me I can't remember where … ah, well, excuse me.' He wandered off, and soon I saw him bending towards one of the agency men.

A waiter swept past me with a loaded tray, and an eddy of humanity carried me to the side of Joe Cressey, who was with Tanya and Tranter. At the same time Bolting converged on the group.

‘Oh, yes, the factory was all right,' Cressey was saying, apparently in reply to a question from Tanya, ‘but what surprises me is the way ordinary everyday things don't get seen to here. You don't seem to be what I'd call thorough. Only this morning I was looking out of my window and three times I saw one of those trolley arms jerk off the wire at the same place. There must be some little thing wrong, but nobody seems to bother. Now why is that?'

‘I was watching exactly the same thing last Sunday,' said Potts, who had crept up on us silently. ‘In three hours it happened twenty-two times.'

Bolting gave him much the same sort of look that Jeff had done. ‘Quite a vigil, Mr Potts!'

‘Actually I was reading, but the flashes made me look up. I estimated that only seventy-three per cent of the buses got through without trouble. It was really quite an amusing sight.'

Tranter said mildly, ‘I dare say you'd find just as much to amuse you at home, Mr Potts, if you kept your eyes open there as well.' It was the first time I'd really been close to Tranter, and I turned to have a good look at him. He had seemed so quiet and undistinguished at first sight, and until now I'd never noticed how extraordinarily cold his blue eyes were. There was no mildness there! I began to wonder if I'd been mistaken in the man.

‘At least, Mr Cressey,' said Tanya, smiling prettily, ‘you must admit that our trolleybus girls are very efficient at scrambling on to the roofs of the buses to fix things.' She was looking directly at him as she spoke, and I had the impression, not for the first time, that she was deliberately trying to cultivate him. Perhaps she was intended to be part of the Soviet embrace. She looked very dashing in a little black suit with gilt frogging. Jeff's nylons couldn't have been shown off to better advantage, and her exquisite small shoes were far too frivolous to have been bought in Moscow. I thought again how very attractive she was, with her high cheek-bones, lovely complexion and dancing blue eyes. She might be all the things Jeff knew she was, but I felt pretty sure he'd miss her.

Bolting intercepted her smile. ‘Would you think me an enemy of the people,' he asked, ‘if I told you of a funny incident
I
once saw in that square?' His usually melodious voice was a trifle husky, as though he were just starting a cold.

Tanya said, ‘Not
you,
Mr Bolting,' with a reproachful glance at Potts.

‘Well, it was one summer during the war. I was sitting out on my balcony, and just across the road was a trolleybus stop. A man had been watering the streets with a hose from a hydrant, and he'd left the hose leaning against something and still sluicing out water while he went off somewhere. It was very hot, and all the buses had their windows down, and one of them pulled up at the stop with its first window right in the line of fire. The passengers yelled, of course, and the driver realised that something was wrong and moved forward. But he did it very slowly, so that the hose played the whole way along the bus. All the passengers were soaked, and they were all yelling like mad. It was quite one of the funniest things I've seen.'

‘In summer, at least, it wouldn't hurt them,' said Tanya, smiling in spite of herself. ‘They would soon dry.' She sighed. ‘If only it were summer now! Mr Cressey, why did you have to come in the winter – that was a mistake. Russia is so beautiful in the summer – the wide fields and the flowers and the big rivers.'

‘It can be lovely in winter, too,' I said. ‘Hundreds of miles of virgin steppe, with the smooth snow lying in wide ridges, blue in the shadow, yellow in the sun. Wonderful!'

‘I agree, Mr Verney, but I still prefer the summer. The Caucasus in the summer is heavenly. Last year I was there for six whole weeks.'

‘That's a long holiday,' remarked Cressey. ‘It was at a rest home for workers. You know our workers have wonderful holidays, all quite free.' Tanya didn't explain the selection system. ‘It was near Mount Elbruz, and on one expedition I climbed four thousand metres, right up into the glacier. It was a mass climb in celebration of the founding of the autonomous republic – very exciting, with ice picks and ropes. A special postage stamp was struck in honour of the event.'

‘Talking of postage stamps,' said Tranter, ‘I'm reminded that I promised a nephew to take some back with me. I mustn't forget.'

‘I will go with you to the post office myself,' Tanya said, ‘and I will choose you a beautiful selection. You, too, Mr Cressey – you must take some of our stamps back with you. They are very artistic.'

‘They're not much good from the collector's point of view,' said Cressey. ‘You've printed too many of them.'

Bolting laughed. ‘Joe,' he said, ‘I sometimes think you deliberately set out to be difficult. Now why don't you accept Miss Tanya's offer nicely – you can always learn something fresh, you know.'

‘Well, you see… ' began Cressey, but before he could begin to explain Jeff burst upon us with apologies, and took Tanya's arm. ‘Honey,' he said, ‘would you come and translate something for me? There's a guy here who's trying to tell me about some meteorite that fell last year… '

Tanya said, Will you excuse me?' and followed Jeff through the crowd, taking Cressey along with her. The others began to circulate – all except Bolting. As I turned to the table to refill my glass he picked up a bottle of wine and examined the label. ‘Tsinandali 1933,' he said. ‘An excellent wine – very sound indeed. Will you join me, Mr Verney?'