Angels in the Snow

by Derek Lambert

  Mortimer tried to avoid his gaze; drunks had a way of picking on him. He eased his way back through the crowd to Mr. and Mrs. Ansell. They had been joined by a neat bespectacled man in a sports jacket.

  ‘Dick,’ Ansell said, ‘I want you to meet Harry Green. You’ll be seeing a lot of him. Harry this is Dick. Dick Mortimer. He’s just joined us.’

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ Green said. ‘What was the weather like in London?’

  ‘Not bad,’ Mortimer said. ‘Something of an Indian summer really. Are you on business out here?’

  ‘You could call it that,’ Ansell said. ‘Harry’s one of the scavengers they’ve been warning you about. He’s a bloody Pressman.’

  One hour later the bow-tied American had progressed to the colour problem in the States. Alcohol had uncorked vapours of madness and his eyes were wild. ‘The only reason this Goddam country hasn’t got a colour problem is because it hasn’t got any niggers.’ He rounded on a British businessman fortifying a glass of lager with Scotch. ‘Do you know something?’ The Englishman shook his head. ‘I hate niggers. I’m an honest man and I’m telling you I hate niggers. I don’t screw-up the issue with any face-saving horse-shit. I just tell you straight I hate niggers. What do you think of that?’

  The Englishman looked at him vaguely. ‘I’m sure you’re entitled to your opinion,’ he said. ‘But I wonder if you could keep your voice down a bit. I’ve got the most awful headache.’

  The American glowered at him and said: ‘Goddam nigger-lover.’

  On the other side of the bar an African giggled into his beer.

  The barman said: ‘Please keep your voice down or you’ll have to go.’

  ‘Who’s going to make me?’

  The barman shrugged, his eyes looking beyond the drunk.

  Elmer said: ‘What seems to be the trouble?’ He was chewing gum slowly. Even this action gave the impression of latent power.

  The drunk’s voice became quieter. ‘Nothing’s the matter,’ he said. ‘Absolutely nothing.’ He pushed his glass over to the barman. ‘On the rocks,’ he said.

  ‘I reckon you’ve had just about enough,’ Elmer said.

  ‘Just one more,’ the drunk said.

  ‘I reckon you’ve had just about enough.’

  ‘Make it a beer then.’

  The barman looked at Elmer who shook his head.

  ‘I don’t have to take that from you,’ the drunk said.

  ‘You sure do,’ Elmer said, chewing rhythmically.

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ said the drunk. He blundered through the dancers.

  ‘They usually say they know the Ambassador,’ Elmer said.

  Couples were smooching now. A Swedish secretary and an Italian journalist with long sideburns, a Frenchman with his hand on a German blonde’s backside. Chest to chest, hands squeezing, loins testing, feet scarcely moving, lips nuzzling.

  Ansell whose wife had left with a woman who lived in the same block watched the couples wistfully. ‘Plenty of crumpet here, you know. Why don’t you chance your arm?’

  ‘I don’t really fancy any of them,’ Mortimer said.

  ‘You will. It’s like Africa. They get whiter every day. Are you engaged or anything?’

  ‘I’ve got a girl friend back in the UK. We’re not engaged or anything though.’

  Or were they? There had been a certain proprietary manner about Valerie when he left as if the purchase of a ring would be a mere formality. And she and his mother had chosen his winter clothes as if the two of them were already in-laws.

  ‘It’s impossible for me,’ Ansell said. ‘This place is like a village.’

  They were drinking gin and tonics at the bar. Mortimer found he had to pick his words with care. Ansell’s face was flushed.

  ‘You’re lucky to have your wife with you,’ Mortimer said.

  Ansell nodded dismally. ‘I suppose you’re right. Excuse me while I go and have a pee.’

  ‘Two more gin and tonics,’ Mortimer said to the barman. He took a pound note from his wallet.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said the barman. ‘Roubles only.’

  Mortimer felt through his pockets. ‘I haven’t got any roubles,’ he said. He was hot with embarrassment.

  The barman sucked on his unlit cigar stub. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Your friend’s got plenty.’

  Harry Green came up to the bar. ‘Allow me,’ he said; and put a ten-rouble note on the bar.

  Mortimer protested. ‘No, really, Giles Ansell’s got plenty of roubles. I somehow thought they’d want hard currency here. Silly of me.’

  But the barman had changed the ten roubles. ‘Not to worry, Green said. ‘It’s only Mickey Mouse money. You’ll find you don’t mind spending roubles but you resent spending dollars or sterling. It’s ridiculous really because it’s all lovely money whether it’s roubles or yen.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Mortimer said. ‘But you really shouldn’t have bothered.’

  ‘Forget it. I hear you had a bit of trouble at the embassy today.’

  Mortimer sipped at his drink, relieved that the money crisis was over. ‘Quite a drama,’ he said. ‘Some Russian tried to defect.’

  Green nodded casually. ‘I suppose he tried to chat up the Ambassador’s wife or something.’

  Mortimer said: ‘No, it was someone else’s wife. She was in her car.’

  Ansell returned from the toilet. ‘Hallo, Green,’ he said, ‘haven’t you got a home to go to?’

  ‘We were just discussing this incident at the embassy today,’ Green said.

  ‘What incident?’

  ‘Come on. It’s not every day you get a Russian trying to defect on the Ambassador’s doorstep.’

  ‘There was some sort of minor incident I believe. Nothing of any interest to you.’

  ‘Who said it was? And in any case that’s for me to judge.’

  Ansell tried to recall his diplomatic training. ‘Of course I realise you know your business. Have a drink.’

  Green said: ‘I’ll have a Scotch.’

  Mortimer said nothing. The suspicion that he may have been guilty of an indiscretion was chilling into a certainty.

  ‘As a matter of interest who told you about this incident?’ Ansell asked.

  ‘Tut, tut.’ Green waved a finger under Ansell’s nose. ‘You should know that a journalist never discloses the source of his information.’

  ‘I just wondered,’ Ansell said. ‘Out of interest.’

  It occurred to Mortimer that Ansell was not as drunk as he had seemed to be earlier.

  Green clinked the ice in his glass. ‘A lovely sound,’ he said. ‘Reminds me of chandeliers tinkling in the breeze.’ He finished the drink. ‘I got the story the usual way—someone talked.’

  ‘I wonder if I can ask you a special favour,’ Ansell said. ‘After all we’re almost colleagues.’

  ‘I trust you’re not going to ask me to suppress a story. And as for being colleagues it’s hardly the case, is it? We’re not allowed to use the commissariat any more. And the embassy can’t even help a friend of mine to get his child into the Anglo-American school.’

  Ansell’s diplomacy lay in ruins. ‘Surely the interests of your country are more important than some bloody little headline with your name under it.’

  Green didn’t lose his temper. Mortimer suspected that he rarely did. ‘I don’t think,’ he said deliberately, ‘that the interests of my country are well served by attempts to suppress news. And in any case I don’t see how the fact that a Russian tried to defect can possibly have anything to do with the interests of my country.’

  ‘It certainly won’t help Anglo-Russian relations,’ Ansell said. ‘And it will be an acute embarrassment to Mrs. Masterson.’

  ‘That,’ said Green, ‘is more like it. Do you mind if I just make a note of that name? I didn’t know it before.’

  ‘Do what you like you little shit,’ Ansell said.

  ‘I will,’ Green said. ‘I’ll go and phone the story to London.’

&
nbsp; ‘Come on,’ Ansell said to Mortimer. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Good-night, gentlemen,’ Elmer said. ‘Sure hope you enjoyed the film. Don’t forget to fill in that membership form. I wouldn’t like to have to turn you away.’

  A couple of nannies made their way towards the hi-fi and the sofas.

  At the desk downstairs Luke Randall was asking for his coat.

  ‘Hallo,’ Mortimer said. ‘I didn’t see you in there.’

  ‘I was drinking in a quiet dark corner,’ Randall said. ‘I saw you making friends with the Press.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’ Mortimer said.

  Randall shrugged. ‘I didn’t say there was.’

  Elmer helped him into his coat. Randall was one of the few people he seemed to respect.

  Outside a snow-dusted militiaman watched the cars speed away hoping that one day he would be given authority to arrest foreigners for driving under the influence of drink.

  Ansell drove too fast, skidding to a halt at a red light. ‘I didn’t know you knew Randall,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know him very well,’ Mortimer said. He added: ‘The lights have turned green.’

  Ansell applied his anger to the clutch and accelerator. ‘Was it you who told Green about the business this afternoon?’

  Mortimer said: ‘He seemed to know all about it.’

  ‘Like hell he did. He didn’t even know Mrs. Masterson’s name.’

  Mortimer wanted to say: ‘Not until you told him.’ Instead he said: ‘He knew there had been some trouble at the embassy.’

  ‘And that’s all he bloody well knew. Until you filled in the answers for him.’

  ‘I suppose I was a bit indiscreet. But honestly, Giles, I just didn’t realise. I suppose I’d had a few drinks and I presumed he knew all about it.’

  ‘He’s a cunning little shit.’

  ‘I don’t know, I suppose he’s only doing his job.’

  ‘And what a bloody job it is.’

  Mortimer felt physically sick with the knowledge of failure and dramatic with alcohol. ‘I’m not cut out to be a diplomat,’ he said. ‘I never was. I’m just not the type. I think I’ll pack it up and get some sort of job with an oil company. That’s what all my friends who were no good at anything else did. I always thought I could do better than them. But obviously I can’t. If I can’t keep a secret for more than five minutes then there’s not much point in trying to succeed in diplomacy. I’ll go and see the Ambassador in the morning.’

  ‘Steady on old man,’ Ansell said. ‘Everyone makes mistakes. The thing to do is to learn by them. You’ll feel different in the morning. It was just bad luck that Green got at you. I suppose I was a bit harsh, too. I just get so browned off with the bloody Press learning all our business.’

  He swerved to avoid a cat walking delicately across the road, and swerved back again to avoid an oncoming taxi. Mauve sparks still spilled from the embryonic blocks along Kalinina lighting the falling snow. The streets were deserted and the city was tranquil in sleep. Ansell accelerated along Kutuzovsky and changed down savagely for the U turn. Again they skidded. ‘Bloody road surfaces,’ he said. ‘You’d think they would have done something about it by now. After all it’s not as if it only snows every five years.’

  The militiaman watched them from his grey box, an incurious, disembodied head, theatrically illumined by the light from a naked bulb. A few of the flats were still lit, blurred figures moving behind the curtains.

  ‘See you in the morning, then,’ Ansell said. The snow whitened his hair but he didn’t look distinguished. ‘Don’t worry too much about what’s happened tonight.’

  ‘I don’t feel much like sleep,’ Mortimer said.

  ‘I’d ask you up for a night-cap but I expect Anne will be looking for blood. She’s probably got the rolling-pin out now. In any case I think we’re out of gin.’

  ‘Do you think there’ll be much trouble about Green’s story?’

  ‘Bound to be, I’m afraid. It’ll come zooming back from the FO first thing in the morning. Then there’ll be a bloody great inquest with old Farnworth doing his big security act. You can be sure the buck will be passed firmly down the line.’

  ‘Until it reaches me?’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry about that. Don’t say anything unless you’re asked. I’ll try and cover up for you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Mortimer said. ‘But I think I’d better see the Ambassador or Farnworth in the morning.’

  ‘There’s no need to be a martyr,’ Ansell said. ‘Anyway we’ll have a chat about it in the morning.’ He paused. ‘Funny you getting to know Randall so quickly.’

  ‘What’s so funny about that?’

  ‘Nothing really. He’s a funny bugger though.’

  He walked away looking apprehensively up at the lighted window of his flat.

  The shadows caressed each other on the ceiling, fusing and parting with tremulous movements. They seemed to Mortimer to make a faint noise, the slithering of a snake or the rustle of a petticoat, but it was only the hush of night. In one corner a shadow beat a noiseless tattoo. Mortimer went to the window to find the source of the movement, but all was still outside.

  He couldn’t sleep. When he closed his eyes he recited his confession to the Ambassador, argued defensively with Randall, listened to Green reading his report of the attempted defection, heard the crackle of flames burning furniture.

  Was the flat bugged? Was a patient KGB man sitting in a flat somewhere listening to his coughs, the movement of the bedclothes? He curled up in the bed and tried—with a desperation that defeated its object—to sleep. The phone rang with the impact of a gun-shot. He picked up the receiver with a shaking hand.

  A nasal voice said: ‘Hallo, Richard, I hope I didn’t wake you up?’

  ‘Who’s that?’ He tried to speak calmly.

  ‘Harry Green here. I thought I’d give you a ring to apologise for the unpleasantness in the club.’

  ‘You needn’t have bothered. It’s your job. I was a bit gullible, that’s all.’

  ‘I didn’t want you to get too upset by Ansell’s nonsense. I haven’t quoted anyone and in any case the story doesn’t matter a damn.’

  ‘Why did you write it then?’

  ‘It was a good story,’ Green said. ‘That doesn’t mean to say it matters all that much. It won’t get anyone into trouble. Mrs. Masterson tells me she isn’t the slightest bit embarrassed and in any case it will all be forgotten in a couple of days.’

  ‘I see.’ Mortimer searched for words. ‘It’s nice of you to phone. It’s just a pity from my point of view that I had to meet you tonight.’

  ‘Listen,’ Green said, ‘if the embassy had any idea of public relations situations like this would never arise. They condescend to hold a briefing once a fortnight. And the sole purpose of that, as far as I can see, is to find out what we know. Whenever there’s a real story they don’t get in touch with us. Frankly they are as deceitful in their way as the Russians. The only difference is that they’re polite about it. I suppose you’ve been warned about talking to the Press?’

  Mortimer said: ‘I don’t really think I ought to discuss it with you.’

  ‘You’re learning,’ Green said. ‘I suppose Ansell’s been giving you the big lecture.’

  ‘You’re not going to write another story about security at the embassy, are you?’

  ‘What security?’ Green asked.

  ‘I don’t want to make any more blunders. As it is I think I’ll have to apologise to the Ambassador in the morning.’

  Green sighed. ‘Don’t be a fool,’ he said. ‘Do you know why Ansell was so hysterical about the story?’

  Mortimer said: ‘Because he was concerned that it might harm Anglo-Soviet relations, I suppose.’

  ‘Not on your life,’ Green said. ‘He’s already had one bollocking for shooting his mouth off. He’s frightened this one Will be traced back to him. Especially as he was seen talking to me in the club. He’s got a re
putation for being a blabber-mouth. You’ll soon find out about Mr. Ansell. Do you know who in fact leaked the story in the first place?’

  Mortimer shook his head at the telephone. ‘No,’ he said. ‘And I don’t really think you should tell me.’

  ‘For the first time in my life,’ Green said, ‘I will divulge my source of information. It was Mrs. Ansell.’

  Mortimer fell asleep quickly after Green had rung off. His brain was exhausted by the permutations of minor intrigue.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Then one day the snow didn’t melt during the day and winter was finally buttoned down over the city. Sometimes the snow fell in soft Christmas flakes which the wind blew into blizzards, but mostly it fell without hurry, thinly and relentlessly, smoothing the countryside and calming the city.

  Machines cleared the Moscow streets piling the snow in the gutters or spewing it into the river, but the roads were soon covered again with more snow mashed and stained by the traffic. And all the time the women scraped away with their broad shovels, as inexorably as the falling snow. Muscovites untied the ear-flaps on their shapkas, shrank deeper into their overcoats and steamed in the hot shops like racehorses after a gallop.

  In Gorky Park the tenacious old chess players finally resigned and left the open-air boards near the big wheel. Motorists covered their cars with tarpaulins and left them to be awoken in the spring. On the outskirts of the city wooden cottages became igloos and life was arranged around the stove: in the new flats it continued as before around the television.

  Weather prophets studied birds and berries and clouds and prophesied a long hard winter; they prophesied one every year and were never wrong. The cold beckoned death and many people died by its blade; it equated birth with death by dispatching couples early to bed in over-crowded flats and cottages. From the white streets the living rooms of old wooden tenements, jungled with potted plants and creepers, looked as if they were filled with green water.