The Tightening String

by Ann Bridge

  The Dutch Minister’s wife, with her huge torch, appeared just then from the next coach; Rosina looked at her watch in the strong beam.

  ‘Good God! It’s just on midnight’ she said. ‘Martha, do look after David.’

  Chapter 15

  Everything in Russia generally takes much longer than Westerners expect, and is also completely unpredictable. Having left Martha with David, sitting quietly in the warm, Mrs Eynsham addressed herself to getting the transport of the hand-luggage completed with a fairly easy mind. But what a mass of it there was! The two Russian porters carried out another couple of trips, along with the Dutch Minister’s wife, the typists, and the English staff wives; but when this coolie-party was returning to the Hungarian train for the fourth time they encountered a furious Russian official, who withdrew the porters, boxing their ears with his fists, and shouting angrily at the foreign women.

  ‘I think he says the luggage is not to be moved’ said the Dutch Minister’s wife, who had been en poste in Poland.

  ‘If you know how, tell him to go to hell!’ Rosina replied briskly. And in spite of the Russian’s angry shouts and threatening gestures they went back into the other train, collected Eleanor Wheatley and the last of the hand-baggage, and for the fifth time humped their loads along that two hundred yards of snow, and lugged them up the high steps into the train for Moscow.

  ‘Well, that’s the lot,’ Mrs Eynsham was just saying in a satisfied tone, when suddenly the lights came on.

  ‘Oh, how splendid! Well done your husband!’ she exclaimed to the Dutch Minister’s wife. ‘Now we can sort it all out.’ And they proceeded to allocate carriages in two coaches to the various members of the party, and to put the appropriate luggage into them. Still no one had come to arrange the sleepers and make up the beds; it was all very un-European, unexpected, and uncomfortable. ‘Well, we must just put our heads on our handbags, and our coats over us’ said the Dutch Minister’s wife resignedly. ‘The train is warm; this is one thing.’

  ‘When the hell do we start?’ David Eynsham asked rather crossly, when his wife looked in on him and Martha.

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘We’ve run out of whisky, too. Where’s that mineral water? This train stuff tastes foul.’

  Mrs Eynsham lifted the pigskin bag down out of the rack and got out the bottle of whisky, took a corkscrew from her handbag, and opened it.

  ‘There you are. I’m afraid the mineral water must be with the heavy luggage; I don’t know what goes on about that. Shall I go and see?’

  ‘You’d better have a drink yourself first’ David said – but at that moment Horace Wheatley came in.

  ‘Sorry to have left you like this – it’s rather a mix-up here. No one understands anything. That Russian Colonel had never heard of a diplomatic laissez-passer, and wants to examine all the luggage. What’s happened about the hand stuff?’

  ‘It’s all here, in this train’ Rosina said.

  ‘Oh splendid! How did you manage that?’

  ‘Les girls carried it themselves’ David said sharply; his face was beginning to flush angrily again.’ I think Morven and Milton at least might have done their bit – they can’t interpret. Anyhow, where’s the mineral water?’

  By some mistake, Wheatley explained, the mineral water had been put in the wagon along with the heavy luggage. ‘But when we get that transferred, it will come into this coach.’

  ‘Good Heavens, hasn’t it been transferred yet? Have my wife and the typists got to shift the heavy luggage too?’ Eynsham asked furiously.

  ‘No, David. It will all get done in time; only the Bolos are a bit slow, because they don’t know anything about anything. What I came to ask was, is anyone hungry? There’s a restaurant in the station where one can get supper of a sort.’

  ‘David, do you want anything to eat?’ his wife asked.

  ‘No! I want to get moving, and go to sleep!’

  ‘Rosina, I brought some sandwiches and a Thermos of soup, just in case,’ Martha muttered in an aside. ‘That will do for him and me. So do go and eat if you feel like it.’

  Mrs Eynsham did feel like it. They had finished their last meal at 8.45 p.m., and it was now half-past one; in the interval they had done quite a lot of hard work. She, with Lucilla, the typists, and the rest of the wives once more tracked along through the snow to the station and into the restaurant.

  This was a very large room, glaringly lit by unshaded electric bulbs, with bare wooden tables set with coarse crockery. In a corner Sir Hugh and his staff, still deep in argument with the Russian Colonel, sat in a gloomy little group; local Russians occupied some of the tables, on one of which was set a gramophone playing English and French records – a number of shabby men and women were dancing to these in an open space from which the tables had been pushed aside.

  ‘Goodness, fancy their having Parlez-moi d’Amour here!’ Lucilla observed, sitting down.

  ‘Ah, those are the P.C.O.’s records, and his gramophone’ Horace said. ‘They’ve never heard one before – and I’m afraid we shan’t get away till they’ve played through every single disk! He has hundreds, alas! What will you eat? There isn’t very much but Bortsch.’

  Rosina, with memories of Bortsch in the London house of Polish friends – strong and dark as claret, with a heavenly taste of beetroot, and whipped sour cream on top – agreed to Bortsch; but at the frontier station it was rather different, being made principally of turnips and field cabbage, with lumps of dark horse-meat in it; this was high, and smelt terrible. However the soup was hot, and they supped it up, and munched the sour greyish bread served with it, thankfully; but everyone was surprised ultimately to be charged the equivalent of a pound sterling for this meal. The Dutch Minister’s wife asked Horace if they could have coffee?

  ‘I shouldn’t recommend it – it will be ersatz if they have it. Have some tea – you’re always fairly safe with tea in Russia, even nowadays, they tell me.’

  The Russian passion for tea is a curiously persistent thing. Practically every coach on their long-distance trains has its samovar at one end, tended by youths who feed it with charcoal and brew tea which they serve in tall tumblers with sugar but without milk; such glasses presently appeared at the travellers’ table – fragrant and quite good, even in that sordid place.

  ‘How clever you are, Horace!’ Mrs Eynsham said, lighting a cigarette and sipping gingerly at the scalding liquid. Like all the others she was watching everything in these extraordinary surroundings – the dirty fingernails, necks and blouses of the girls who served the food and the tea, the clumsy shuffling movements of the ill-clad people who were dancing to the Passport Control Officer’s gramophone; the unhappy Sir Hugh, courteously but stiffly continuing his insistence that their heavy luggage must not be opened, since they had laissez-passers; the table where the Chancery clerks and the Legation porters were smoking.

  ‘Are they all right? ‘she asked Horace Wheatley.

  ‘I think so – I ordered their food, and gave them roubles to pay for it.’

  Sir Hugh’s party now broke up; the Dutch Minister and the Attaché from Bucharest went out with the Russian Colonel and several station officials, and Sir Hugh, with Milton and Colonel Morven, came over to where the women were sitting.

  ‘I think we’ve won’ the Minister said to Horace. ‘They’ve agreed at last to put our big luggage onto the Moscow train, unexamined. But what a performance!’

  Horace at once mentioned the mineral water. ‘Some of that must come into our coaches, Sir.’

  ‘Didn’t it? Why not?’

  ‘Anton must have made a mix-up this morning – anyhow it’s with the heavy stuff.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ the Minister asked rather brusquely. Rosina put her oar in.

  ‘I know, because I checked every single piece of hand-luggage from our train into the Russian one. We had to carry most of it ourselves.’

  ‘Why?’ Sir Hugh asked, still more brusquely – he too was having a very di
sagreeable night.

  ‘Because there aren’t porters, and all the men went along with you! What help Geoffrey and Hugo were to your negotiations I can’t think’ Rosina said tartly, ‘but they could have been of real use to us. Five trips!’

  ‘Now Rosie’ Colonel Morven protested – ‘We had no idea that you were carting luggage.’

  ‘This is dreadful’ Sir Hugh said. ‘I am so sorry, Mrs Eynsham.’ He spoke very formally.

  ‘Oh, I know you couldn’t do anything’ Rosina said. ‘You had to be arguing.’ She pulled herself together, ashamed of having lost her temper. ‘Never mind – it’s done now.’

  ‘I am inexpressibly sorry’ the Minister repeated. He turned to Milton. ‘Geoffrey, go and find out where the heavy luggage is, and tell Dickie Aston that one case of mineral water must come into our sleepers, tonight’

  ‘They aren’t sleepers yet’ Lucilla put in, in her cool little voice. ‘The upper bunks haven’t been let down, and there are no pillows or blankets or anything.’

  Sir Hugh frowned; then he got up. He had really had all he could take, a common experience among those who encounter Soviet officialdom for the first time.

  ‘All the same, I think I shall go and sit down,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll take you to the train’ Horace said, getting up. ‘Where is H.E.’s carriage, Rosina?’

  ‘Not in the first coach; in the second one, next to the van Damms.’

  The Minister glanced at the tables where his staff and the women-folk were still sitting smoking.

  ‘Shall you be all right?’ he asked of the Dutch Minister’s wife and Rosina.

  ‘I’ll finish my tea’ Rosina said. ‘I do likewise’ said the Dutch lady.

  ‘I’ll stay with them’ Colonel Morven said to his chief reassuringly.

  ‘Well don’t be too long – we ought to be off as soon as that luggage has been transferred.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Merciful Heavens, it’s half-past two! Come on, Horace.’ They went out into the dark and snow.

  Presently Horace came back.’ The mineral water’s been found, and they are making up the sleepers at last’ he reported. Rosina had gone over to the table on which the gramophone stood, where the P.C.O. sat gloomily keeping guard over his records.

  ‘How are they doing?’ she asked him.

  ‘Oh, a lot to go yet. I’m half inclined to smash them, but they’d murder me if I did, I’m sure.’

  ‘Must we really wait till they’ve all been played?’ Mrs Eynsham asked Horace.

  ‘I’m afraid so – no one has any control over these people.’ The Passport Control Officer grinned gloomily.

  ‘Go on till 7 a.m., if you ask me’ he said.

  Rosina, with Horace, returned to the others. ‘Is David all right?’ she asked as they walked through the tables.

  ‘Yes, he seems fine – only he didn’t want to be turned out to have his bed made up. He and Martha were laughing like anything when I looked in.’

  ‘Then I think I’ll have another glass of tea’ Mrs Eynsham said. There come times when even the most dutiful of wives feel that they want the pressure taken off, want not to have to do anything for a little while – and as the devoted Martha was in charge of David, and he was well enough to laugh, she was glad to sit and relax a little longer, even in that glaring room. The other women followed her example, and sipped slowly at second glasses of tea. And then, the more modern records having been worked through, the gramophone began to blare out ‘Always.’

  Lucilla sprang up and bent over her Mother.

  ‘I’m going to bed. D’you mind?’

  ‘Of course not, darling. I’ll be along soon.’ Rosina had no idea of the impact of that particular tune on her daughter. ‘You’re next to us, with Martha.’

  ‘I know.’ She said Goodnight politely to the Dutch Ministress, and hurried out. The lumbering Russians liked ‘Always’, and stamped with their feet to beat out the time – the waltz-step was quite beyond their ken.

  Suddenly Lucilla came running back. ‘Mummy, Daddy’s ill! Come quick.’

  Mrs Eynsham threw on her fur coat, grabbed up her bag, and went out with her daughter. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Martha came and told me to fetch you – she thinks it may be another coronary’ Lucilla panted out, as they hurried along the now deeply-trodden track in the snow – this had frozen, and they slipped and slithered while they ran through the dark.

  As they climbed up into the train Rosina heard her husband’s voice, raised angrily.

  ‘Then break the windows! I tell you I must have air.’

  ‘Lucilla, go and open the door at the other end of the coach’ her Mother said; she had already noticed that this Russian train had double windows, apparently screwed shut. Lucilla ran off, and Rosina went into the carriage. David was half sitting-up on the long green velvet seat, gasping and waving his arms about. ‘I want more pillows’ he said when he saw her, with almost a child’s angrily confident demand. ‘Have you got some morphia?’

  ‘Yes, David. Just keep quite quiet. You’ll have more air in a minute – I’m getting something opened.’ She took off her fur coat, rolled it up, and slipped it in behind the pillows.

  ‘Have mine too’ Martha said, doing likewise.

  ‘That’s better’ David said, lying back; his wife’s presence seemed to calm him a little. ‘Where’s that morphia?’ he asked. ‘God, this hellish pain in my arm!’

  ‘In a moment, David. Here – take these, and chew them’ – she gave him a couple of Dr Mendze’s pills from a little bottle in her handbag. He began to chew the pills obediently; like so many sick husbands he had become for the moment, not the head of the household, the master, but his wife’s child. Rosina took out a phial of morphine and the little case with her hypodermic syringe and a flask of surgical spirit with which to sterilise it; she set all these on the broad window-sill, and rolled up the sleeves of David’s pull-over and shirt – he had taken off his jacket in the hot stationary train. Then, having sterilised the syringe she filled it with the exact dose of morphia which Dr Mendze had prescribed, and plunged the needle into Eynsham’s upper arm.

  ‘You did that rather well – didn’t hurt a bit’ David said. ‘Thanks, Rosie.’ Mrs Eynsham was re-sterilising the syringe; she sprayed the last drops of spirit onto the spot where she had made the injection, and then rolled her husband’s sleeves down again. He lay quiet now, with closed eyes; Rosina sat down beside Martha on the opposite seat, and waited. After some minutes David Eynsham opened his eyes again.

  ‘That’s lovely’ he said. ‘No pain now. Bless you, Rosie – you’re a clever girl.’ He closed his eyes once more.

  The Eynshams were in one of the old-fashioned double sleepers left over from the Czarist régime, roomy and comfortable to a degree, with two broad seats.

  ‘Did you have some supper?’ Rosina asked Martha, in a low voice.

  ‘Oh yes, heaps, and so did David; he took two glasses of soup and three sandwiches, and enjoyed them,’ Martha replied in the same low tone. ‘Look, Rosina, now that the train-boys are functioning, I think I’ll go and get some pillows – we may want our coats if the heating goes off.’

  She went out, and returned in a few minutes accompanied by a rather surly youth, suffering badly from acne, who carried pillows, several blankets, and two pairs of sheets. Rosina took three of the pillows and very gently and carefully substituted them for her and Martha’s fur coats under David’s head; meanwhile the pimply train-boy made up a proper sleeper-bed on the opposite seat. Having done this, he turned to the couch where Eynsham lay, and spoke eagerly in his own tongue – clearly he wanted to make a proper bed there, too.

  ‘Nyet!’ Martha-said – ‘No’ was the only word of Russian she knew. After more fluent speech on his side, and repeated ‘Nyets’ on hers, the pimply youth at last went away defeated, with his unwanted sheets.

  Lucilla suddenly appeared in the open doorway of the carriage.

  ‘How is Daddy?
’

  ‘Quite comfortable. He’s had some heart pills, and a morphia injection.’

  ‘Oh good. I opened the other door.’

  Horace also appeared, peering over Lucilla’s shoulder, to enquire about David. Martha Beckley took her usual firm grip of the situation.

  ‘Horace, wait outside; Lucilla, you go to bed – with you both blocking the doorway he gets no air at all.’ Lucilla, looking hurt, went away; Martha followed Horace into the corridor.

  ‘Are both the coach doors open?’ she asked him.

  ‘Not the further one. The train-boys don’t like them open – they say it wastes the heating.’

  ‘Well if they don’t like it, they must lump it! Just go along and tell Hugo Morven to open it again, and keep it open.’

  Horace obeyed, and a faint breath of cold air came down the corridor as the Colonel returned. ‘How is he?’ he asked Martha.

  ‘Quite comfortable – but he must have air. When we get moving it will come in from the ventilators, of course. I leave that door to you, Hugo.’

  ‘I’ll deal with it.’ He went away.

  ‘Does H.E. know that David’s had another turn?’ Martha asked Horace.

  ‘I don’t think so. Should I tell him?’

  ‘No – what can he do? Let him be; I hope he’s asleep.’

  The First Secretary looked worried.

  ‘Martha, do you think David’s dying?’ he asked. As he spoke the train-boys closed the door at their end of the coach; Horace went along and opened it again, and stood propping it open. ‘Nyet!’ said the train-boys angrily, and tried to push him away; ‘Nyet to you, you mannerless oafs!’ Horace muttered in English; in Russian he said ‘Diplomatiki’ very firmly. ‘God, how ghastly this is! Well?’ he asked Martha.

  ‘I’m afraid so. It’s his third go, and that isn’t so good. And he’s been frightfully angry twice today, so bad for blood-pressure – and he would carry that bag with all the alk in it from our train to this. It weighs a ton, and he oughtn’t ever to carry weights.’