Winter Garden Read Online Free PDF Page A

and his hand shook as he unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen.
    The interpreter went away to tell Mr Karlovitch what had happened to his guests. As she crossed the hall she was surprised to see the Englishman in the soiled mackintosh being marched in the other direction. After an argument, during which permits and documents were passed frequently from hand to hand, she obtained Bernard’s release and led him to a vacant chair near the tea-bar. Subdued by his experience, he agreed to remain upright.
    Enid stared anxiously in the direction of the arrival lounge and thought of the Secretary of the Artists’ Union pacing the red carpet, the smile of welcome fading from his eyes. She told Ashburner that she was sure his suitcase had just been mislaid in another part of the airport. Perhaps it had fallen off a wagon and been temporarily buried under a fall of snow. In no time at all it would appear on the conveyor; she would keep an eye out for it.
    ‘I don’t mind telling you,’ said Ashburner, ‘that I feel pretty sick. I’m not saying that I can always put my hand on everything when I need it, but I’ve never lost anything like this before. It could have the most frightful repercussions.’
    ‘But you didn’t lose it,’ Enid told him. ‘You can’t be blamed – and anyway, you’re not the only one.’ She indicated a fellow passenger who sat at an adjacent desk laboriously filling in forms. ‘That man who was sitting next to you on the aeroplane has lost his briefcase.’
    It was of no interest to Ashburner. He knew he wouldn’t see his suitcase again, not until he returned home to Beaufort Street, where it would be standing in the hall, ransacked, its Moscow label torn from the handle to be later used in evidence against him, its contents of new pyjamas and nylon stockings and co-respondent underpants in lurid and assorted colours strewn across the doormat. God knows what his wife would make of the several bath plugs, complete with lengths of chain, wound about his waders. Would she weep or rant? Either way he wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. If she chose to rave at him there’d be no nonsense about keeping her voice down for the sake of the neighbours. He would stand propped against the wardrobe like a dead twig, the sap squeezed from him, waiting for the moment when she would snap him in half. If she cried, he would drown, sunk by his own philandering. Eventually she’d take herself off to her friend Caroline’s. She would also take, after a judicious interval, his house, a third of his income and almost certainly the car.
    ‘If it’s any comfort to you,’ said Enid, disturbed by the expressed on his face, ‘I think you’re being very brave. I’d hate to lose all my little bits and pieces.’
    When Olga Fiodorovna came back she was carrying half a dozen tulips on abnormally long stems. She presented them to Ashburner and told him that Mr Karlovitch had a deep sympathy for him and that he mustn’t worry any more. The Artists’ Union would locate his suitcase. Now they must go to the hotel, and further enquiries could be made in the morning.
    ‘How very kind,’ murmured Ashburner. He trailed behind her, holding the flowers awkwardly in his fist. Due to the length of their stems and the weight of their full-blown heads, forcibly grown and streaked with yellow, the tulips rolled in all directions and finally hung down, pointing at the floor. It was as though Ashburner had just eaten a particularly large banana and hadn’t yet thrown away the peel.
    ‘Are you all right?’ inquired Enid.
    ‘Resigned, perhaps,’ said Ashburner. ‘It’s out of my hands.’
    ‘ Que sera, sera ,’ she said.
    No one could be sure what time it was. They had been so long under the artificial lights of the airport building that they had become confused.
    ‘Don’t you possess such a thing as a watch?’ Nina asked Ashburner.
    ‘Certainly I own one,’ he told her. ‘But I can’t wear it. I’m too full of