by Roger Bax
Early on Saturday morning Denny came down from town to go for his first sail. I may as well say at once that from my point of view it was a disaster. The visit started well enough—I introduced him to Joe and was glad to see that they didn’t take an instant dislike to each other. In fact, they soon found some common ground. They were both experts in their own field—it didn’t take Joe long to realize that what Denny didn’t know about engines wasn’t worth knowing. Denny gave barely half a glance at Dawn’s pleasing lines and stout timbers and his comment was a derogatory, “So this is the ocean liner!” But when he went aboard and Joe showed him the old engine it took him only a couple of minutes to get grease up to his elbows. He and Joe both looked at the engine as though it were something the cat had brought in, and then they went into a technical huddle about the sort of engine Dawn really needed. Denny had no special knowledge about marine engines but I could see he was learning fast.
That was all quite satisfactory. The trouble began when the tide came in and I took Denny aboard Wayfarer. I realized afterwards, when it was too late, that I had been foolish to give him his nautical baptism in so small a boat. Though he was marvellous with his hands, and could fish a small nut out of an oil-bath with two fingers, he never knew what to do with his feet, and in that tiny cabin and cockpit his feet seemed to be everywhere. He would obviously have preferred to stay and talk to Joe, but I was determined to take him down the creek now that I’d got him there. So as soon as Wayfarer swung to her anchor I had the sails up and we were slipping down towards the sea over the tide.
There was a nice sailing breeze and it was a lovely spring day. In fact, conditions seemed to me to be perfect. I knew the channel through the mudbanks very well by this time and we reached deep water without incident. I tried to give Denny an explanation of all I was doing as I did it, but he had an abstracted air which I interpreted as meaning that he had already made up his mind to have nothing to do with my wildcat scheme. However, I was wrong about the cause of his abstraction. It soon appeared that he was feeling seasick. I had become so used to messing about on the water myself that I had quite forgotten that there were people who couldn’t stand the slightest motion. But the expression on Denny’s face was becoming more and more that of a man who is working out a complicated arithmetical problem in his head and suddenly he went ominously green and practically threw himself out of the boat in his effort to get his head over the gunwale in time.
He looked so bad that I hadn’t the heart to go on, and his relief as I put Wayfarer’s head round was unmistakable. He picked up slowly as we returned to the quieter waters of the creek and became rather shamefacedly apologetic. Naturally I assured him that most people were like that at first, and that after one or two trips he’d get his sea-legs, but he obviously disbelieved me. There was a stony look in his eye which said as clearly as anything could that it would be a long time before he left terra firma again. He positively staggered when he set foot once more on the saltings.
Joe grinned when we told him about it, but he backed me up loyally. He said he’d never known anyone yet who didn’t vow that the first trip to sea in a small boat would be the last, and that nine people out of ten felt like making a second attempt after they’d been a few days ashore. But Denny was not to be persuaded. He was full of apologies about the whole episode, but when I put him on the train back to town he said he thought I’d better try to find someone else if I meant to go on with my plan. He didn’t feel he’d be much use as a companion, and in any case he’d decided that the whole scheme was far too risky.
In spite of what Denny said I couldn’t bring myself quite to give up hope of him. I knew that he had lots of guts, and that being seasick once wouldn’t have been sufficient by itself to decide the issue. However, it would have been unrealistic to rely on him now. I was all the more disappointed because Joe had rather taken to him and I valued Joe’s judgement. Actually Joe’s attitude rather surprised me, because although Denny had shown himself good with engines he hadn’t a clue about sail, and it was odd that Joe should think it a pity such an obvious landlubber couldn’t accompany me.
I really didn’t know what to do next. I was in a curious mood. From every practical point of view there seemed less chance of carrying out the plan than ever, and yet in my own mind it was steadily taking shape. Perhaps it was due to the fact that the fitting-out of Dawn was proceeding so satisfactorily. Her solid hull was for me the tangible evidence that the scheme wasn’t all moonshine. Although there was no doubt at all that Joe took a poor view of the trip he was determined to send me off—if I finally insisted on going—with a boat that was fit to do the job, and Dawn had become the apple of his eye.
It was quite clear that I should have to have a companion, but I had no one in mind. I knew one or two sailing men, but it was most unlikely that they’d be able to get away for half the summer, and in any case I didn’t feel I could ask them. At the very best our mission would be dangerous. Denny and I had everything at stake, but I could hardly ask a colleague or casual acquaintance to risk his neck in such an adventure for the sake of me and my wife. Denny’s refusal was really most depressing. I felt sure that if he had gone into the matter a little more deeply, or been a bit more realistic about the Russians, he’d have come to a different decision.
Then, when I was sunk in gloom, something happened which altered everything. From a narrowly selfish point of view it was a stroke of luck, though it came in a very disguised form. I had gone back to the flat for the week-end, as I usually did, to collect clean clothes and food, and on this occasion to buy the best map I could get of the Baltic countries, particularly those along the Finnish Gulf—which actually wasn’t very good. I was poring over this on the Saturday night, making some preliminary calculations of distances and possible lines of approach, when my telephone rang. It was Denny, and he wanted to see me urgently. I told him to come over right away, and he arrived in a taxi, which suggested a desperate state of mind.
Almost before he was inside the door he held out a letter for me to read. It was from Svetlana, in Russian, and had come through the ordinary post. It began with rather formal expressions of affection and then went on to say that as there now seemed to be no likelihood that she would ever get out of Russia, or that he would ever be able to see her again, she thought the only thing to do was to face the fact and call the marriage off. The letter wound up by saying, rather bleakly, that she had already applied to the Soviet registrar for a divorce, which would no doubt be granted, and that she hoped Denny would find another girl and be very happy.
I read the letter through twice. I felt grieved and shocked. I had known Svetlana pretty well, and this didn’t sound like her.
I handed the letter back. “What are you going to do?” I asked.
Denny said, “What would you do if you got a letter like that from Marya?”
The mere suggestion was like a blow between the eyes. If I’d had a letter like that from Marya I wouldn’t have believed it. Other wives might want to divorce their husbands, but mine wouldn’t! I felt ashamed of myself for so readily taking the thing at its face value. I said, “May I have another look at it”
It was Svetlana’s handwriting and signature, of course. It was genuine enough, in the sense that she’d undoubtedly written it. But what had made her write it? Had she done it spontaneously? That opened up a field of speculation which I felt it was better not to explore. There were worse things even than divorce and parting.
I poured out a drink for Denny, who needed it badly. “Look,” I said, “Steve will be here this week. I ’phoned his office today. He’s probably on his way now. He’ll have all the news. This letter was posted nearly three weeks ago—he’ll be more up-to-date than that. I shouldn’t worry too much until you’ve seen him.”
Denny crumpled the letter and thrust it into his pocket with a gesture of hopelessness. I could see he didn’t know what to believe. He had been remarkably philosophical through the long years of separation, but he l
ooked more unhappy now than I had ever seen him. I told him I’d let him know directly Steve arrived, and we agreed to meet at the flat. We had a couple more drinks and then Denny went off, looking as hurt and helpless as a dancing bear with sore feet.
I stayed on at the flat so that no time would be wasted once Steve had arrived, for I could imagine what Denny was going through. A couple of days later Steve’s office rang me to say that his ’plane had touched down at Heath Row. I could hardly contain my impatience. Not long afterwards Steve himself ’phoned from the Savoy to say that he was having a bath and a meal and would be round for a drink at about nine. I managed to contact Denny at his lodgings without difficulty—he was probably sitting at the end of the telephone—and the two of them arrived at about the same time.
Steve had a letter for Denny, and two or three for me. He didn’t look very happy. He took the drink I poured out for him with an absentminded “Thanks, tovarisch,” and we watched Denny begin to read. It was a tense moment for me; Steve, of course, knew the facts already.
Denny doesn’t show emotion readily, but his face flushed a dark red, and his long chin stuck out, and presently he muttered an obscenity which I should hardly have thought him capable of using. He said, “Listen to this!” and read out:
“They took me to the N.K.V.D. headquarters where I had been before and they told me I was a worthless person and had no sense of Soviet patriotism to want to be the wife of a foreigner, and they said I would never be allowed to leave Russia and that I might as well give up the idea. They asked me a lot of questions for hours and hours as though I was a criminal until I was so tired I could hardly keep awake, and then they said I must divorce you right away or else I should have to go and work in Kazakstan in a camp. They dictated a letter which I had to write out and they made me sign it and then they said they’d post it, but I didn’t mean a word of it, and all I want is to come to you.”
He stopped reading, and a silence fell on the room. The shadow of the Russian Security Police was over us all. Steve avoided my eye. Presently Denny got up and shambled over to the window—I could well imagine the tumult of his feelings. He stood there quietly for a few moments. Then he turned, and with a hard look on his face he said,“If that trip’s still on, Philip, I’ll come with you, if it’s the last thing I do.”
Chapter Four
Steve naturally said, “What trip?”
I told him that Denny and I had decided to fetch the girls away.
Steve looked a little startled, but only for a moment. He said, “No kidding!” Then the old mischievous grin spread over his face. “You couple of Fascist beasts,” he said. He seemed to accept the idea as quite natural and reasonable. It was a bit of an act, perhaps, for he knew the odds against us just as well as we did. But it was heartening all the same. What had seemed like desperate lunacy when Denny and I had first talked about it could obviously be discussed with Steve as a straightforward problem in logistics.
I gave him a very rough outline of the plan in a few sentences. He was quite neutral about the sea hazards—he didn’t know the first thing about boats and was prepared to assume that if we had the boat it would naturally get us without difficulty to whatever destination we happened to choose. I explained how necessary it was that the rendezvous we picked should be as far west along the Baltic coast as possible so that we shouldn’t have to do much hanging about in Russian waters, and I said that late August seemed about the best time for the attempt.
“Gosh!” he ejaculated suddenly. “I’ve just recollected something. Marya told me about a week ago that she was scheduled to go on tour this summer. It would be just too bad if she was dated up for Omsk in August. Maybe there’s something about it in her letters.”
So far I hadn’t had an opportunity to do more than glance at them, but this was something that had to be cleared up right away. I soon found what I wanted. In the last letter but one Marya wrote at length about the projected tour. She was definitely going, she said, always supposing that she didn’t get her exit visa first, but she was a little vague about details. It was to be a fairly extensive trip, apparently, starting in Kharkov in May, going on to Odessa and Kiev and up through Byelorussia to Minsk and finishing at Leningrad in the late autumn.
“I don’t much like the sound of it,” I said. “She’s practically bound to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it’ll be very difficult to keep in touch with her.”
“She could fall sick and not go,” said Steve.
I shook my head. “I can’t ask her to do that at this stage. It might be different if we had a firm plan.” I could imagine how she would be looking forward to the trip, and how it would help to take her mind off things. I turned the pages of her last letter a little disconsolately. She was still writing about the tour, and how she hoped that in the provinces she might be given an opportunity to dance Aurora in the Sleeping Princess, which she had always wanted to do. As I thumbed over the last page a slip of paper dropped out. I picked it up, and when I saw what it was my heart gave a leap.
It was a little printed bill advertising the tour. There was a list of the ballets which the company would present at the various towns, with the dates. It seemed that Marya would be at Tula from May 20–23, Kharkov for a week in early June, Kiev for a week, Odessa for several days early in July, Minsk from July 12–16, Riga at the end of July, Tallinn from August 12–15, and Leningrad for a fortnight in September. The gaps were presumably for travelling, rehearsals and recreation.
It was our first stroke of luck. If Marya was in Riga for several days in July and in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, for four days in August, she would be accessible from the sea. The others gathered round and we studied the dates.
“July is too early,” I said. “August will be quite soon enough. I was on to the meteorological people yesterday and they say sunset in the southern Baltic in the middle of August is about eight o’ clock, local time. That means we could start operations in the neighbourhood about nine, which is quite late enough if we’re to get clear before morning. I don’t fancy Riga, anyhow. It’s protected by a couple of big islands in a deep gulf. Tallinn is a much better proposition.”
Steve thought so too. He and I had been to Tallinn on a Press trip just after its so-called ‘liberation’ by the Red Army. I had only a faint recollection of the topography of the place, but the people had struck me as being very civilized, and far from friendly to the Soviet authorities.
Denny was still slowly perusing the schedule. “There’s one day at Tallinn,” he said, “when they’re not dancing. Look—Swan Lake on August 12, Sleeping Princess on August 13 and Don Quixote on August 15. Nothing at all on the 14th.”
“That’ll be the Day of Rest,” said Steve, with a grin. We were to remember that later. It nearly proved to be the Night of the Long Knives for us.
Denny said: “Tallinn’s a long way from Moscow. Svetlana could get into a lot of trouble on the journey. And it’s just the sort of place where the N.K. V. D. would be keeping their eyes skinned.”
We thought that over. It certainly wouldn’t be safe for Svetlana to stay there long without proper papers. In fact, if she weren’t on official business she’d have to go in more or less on the same day she was to be taken off. If only she could get to Leningrad for a legitimate stay, it would be a comparatively short journey on to Tallinn. I said, “Steve, do you think you could get her to Leningrad?”
“I don’t figure there should be much difficulty about that,” said Steve. “After all, she’s my secretary. I’m darned sure they wouldn’t let me go to Tallinn—not after what I wrote about it last time—but they’d let me go to Leningrad. I could say I wanted to do a couple of broadcasts on the progress of reconstruction. Naturally I should have her come along. Then all we’d want would be a single ticket and she could travel on alone to Tallinn.”
I suddenly realized that Steve was going to get himself into pretty bad trouble on our account if he wasn’t very careful. “You’ll have to keep out o
f it,” I said. “If Svetlana escapes and they can pin anything on you, they’ll jail you for a certainty.”
“That’s okay,” said Steve. “Believe me, I won’t do anything that’ll get me in trouble. I’m in the dog-house already and I’m not going to make things worse. I’m due to leave for good in October and oh boy, have I got my eye on the date!”
“Well,” I said, “it’ll be Christmas in the Lubianka for you if you’re not careful.”
Steve patted my shoulder. “Now take it easy, tovarisch. What could be more innocent and normal than for me to have my secretary go with me on a business trip to Leningrad? It’s always done. They know my Russian is pretty cock-eyed. And if she likes to clear off without telling me when we get to Leningrad—hell, that’s her affair, not mine.”
I wasn’t convinced, but if Steve thought he could face the N.K. V.D. with that story I wasn’t going to do any more dissuading. I thought he’d probably get away with it so long as he was careful. After all, he was an American of some repute, and they wouldn’t dare to jail him without something fairly substantial in the way of proof. I didn’t raise the subject of what would happen to him if they caught Svetlana actually making the attempt and questioned her. That was one of the things that didn’t bear thinking of by any of us, though no doubt it was in all our minds.
Denny was still a bit worried about the last stage of the journey for Svetlana—how she’d manage about the railway ticket and what she’d do when she got to Tallinn. Then Steve gave an exclamation of disgust. “I’m a dope,” he said. “I know a woman in Tallinn—at least, I used to. Hell, though, I can’t recall her address. Maybe Svetlana knows.”