Winter Garden Read Online Free PDF Page B

rent an apartment in an area that was considered desirable. Also, it was near his wife’s place of employment.
    ‘How marvellous,’ enthused Nina. ‘In our country too we have blocks of flats, though they are not always heated.’
    ‘Except when someone sets fire to them,’ said Bernard.
    Nina told Olga Fiodorovna that she was interested in the women of Soviet Russia. She would like to know whether Mr Karlovitch’s wife was a skilled worker. The interpreter leaned forward in her seat to translate into the ear of the Secretary. The car drove past an enormous billboard straddling the edge of the motorway, stamped with the portrait of a smiling and bare-headed Brezhnev; blobs of snow clung to his painted cheeks.
    ‘For God’s sake,’ hissed Nina, speaking out of the corner of her mouth. ‘Don’t leave it all to me. Think of a question.’
    ‘Has anyone seen my hat?’ asked Ashburner. He couldn’t believe he had been so careless as to drop it in the airport lounge. All through the interpreter’s rambling account of somebody’s father sleeping in an oven, he had been probing the back of the seating in search of it.
    Nina called him the giddy limit. At this rate, she said, he’d end up stark naked with nothing to show but his fishing rod. They all trembled with laughter; even Mr Karlovitch, who surely hadn’t understood.
    This outburst of hilarity, continuing as it did for a mile or two, served to relax the English contingent. They now became high-spirited and unrestrained, conducting themselves like deprived youngsters on an outing who, having wound down the windows and sniffed the salt air, fancied the sea was just round the corner.
    Olga Fiodorovna smiled and nodded pleasantly. She had had sufficient experience of foreign visitors to appreciate the eccentricity of the English. It was they who were the most likely to be subdued in Moscow, obediently visiting the museums selected for them, and the most capricious in Leningrad, skilfully giving her the slip in both the Winter Palace and the Hermitage. They acted either with courteous reserve or wanton familiarity and could be counted on at all times to know precisely where and when such differing modes of behaviour might be found acceptable. Every one of them, unlike the French or the Dutch who had no necessity for guilt, had encouraged her to believe that when they returned to England they would write her a letter. Not one of them, not even the famous baritone who had said he was in love with her, had yet done so. Despite this, she was aware that each insincere declaration, each false promise, was dictated by politeness. She therefore allowed Ashburner to beat her about the shoulders with his wilting tulips until, having reached the suburbs of the city, the car slowed to the kerb and stopped.
    Bernard peered out of the windows and was depressed to see a penitentiary made of reinforced concrete, twelve storeys high, with icicles fringing the windowsills.
    ‘Is this it?’ he said.
    Mr Karlovitch clambered silently over Bernard’s knees and left the car. They watched him sprinting through the snow, and then the car drove on.
    ‘Was it anything we said?’ asked Enid worriedly.
    Olga Fiodorovna explained that it was Mr Karlovitch’s day off. He had merely come to the airport out of respect. Now that they had safely arrived he could go home and eat his lunch. He would return tomorrow in his official capacity.
    ‘His lunch!’ cried Nina. Astonished, they learnt it was early afternoon.
    With Mr Karlovitch gone from the car, Olga Fiodorovna assumed control. She indicated to the driver that he must stop smoking at once; she released the window a fraction to let out the stale air. Such was her authority that Bernard, who had just taken out his cigarettes, refrained from opening the packet.
    ‘Now,’ began Olga Fiodorovna, ‘you will want to know something of the history of Moscow. You will not perhaps realise that the Kremlin was built on the site of the camp of