Angels in the Snow

by Derek Lambert

  The girl poured the drinks and laboriously counted out the coupons.

  ‘I’m right about British diplomats, you know,’ Ramsden said. ‘I’ve travelled to all the arseholes of the world selling packaging. And whenever I’ve got into any trouble the British diplomats just haven’t wanted to know. The Queen’s Birthday and the cricket scores is about all they’re interested in. It’s pathetic to see them. Look at this poor bloody seaman who got involved in a punch-up in Leningrad. What did they do for him?’

  ‘It’s quite obvious that you don’t know anything about it,’ Mortimer said. ‘The consul and an assistant travelled several times to Leningrad. They organised his defence and did everything possible for him.’

  ‘And what did he get? Eighteen bloody months, poor bugger. Look what happened when that Yank was sentenced for flogging dollars. The embassy protested. Then a lot of lolly was whipped up in the States and he was released with a whopping great fine. Has anything like that been done for the seaman?’

  ‘If it hadn’t been for our consular section he would probably have been sentenced to three years or more. It’s a very lenient, punishment by Russian standards.’

  ‘Balls,’ Ramsden said. ‘Do you know what I heard one bloke in the embassy saying? Quite high up he was too. He said that if he’d been on the bench he’d have given that poor bloody seaman five years. That’s your British diplomats for you.’ He drank his whisky. ‘Cheers. Nothing personal, you understand.’

  ‘You can hardly blame the whole embassy for the opinions of one man. I think our people did very well in Leningrad.’

  ‘If you think eighteen months in a labour camp is doing very well then God help us all.’

  ‘He’ll get out before that,’ Mortimer said.

  ‘I think they’re all shit-scared of the Russians. Their whole attitude is geared to not upsetting them. If they can come out of the conference room without having annoyed anyone then they’re happy. It’s the same the world over. Negotiate, pander, crawl, turn the other cheek but for God’s sake don’t upset: anyone.’

  ‘It’s incredible how anyone can be so wrong,’ Mortimer said. ‘The Russians respect the Ambassador more than any other diplomat in Moscow. And it’s a well-known fact that Gromyko prefers to negotiate with the British than any other Western power.’

  ‘Because he knows we’re soft.’

  ‘I think you’re just upset because you aren’t getting any orders.’

  The Russian with the flat beer had moved closer to them. Two Africans wearing tapered trousers and short jackets sat down at the bar and chattered in French. An Egyptian walked in, sniffed around and walked out.

  ‘He’s looking for the crumpet,’ Ramsden said. ‘He’s out of luck tonight.’

  ‘Do you normally get many girls here then?’

  ‘The occasional bevy of scrubbers. Nothing very great though. They come in with a crowd and let it be known that they’re available. I wouldn’t touch them with yours.’ He ordered two more whiskies. ‘Do you know I’ve been married for twenty years and never touched another bird?’

  ‘Congratulations,’ Mortimer said. So available girls did come here. He decided to get really drunk. ‘Shall we go somewhere else for a drink?’

  Ramsden brightened. ‘Why, do you know of somewhere else?’

  ‘No, not really. The British Club will be closed by now. In any case it was only Bingo tonight.’

  ‘I happen to like Bingo,’ Ramsden said as if Mortimer had insulted the Church or the Monarchy.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s only the Metropole bar left.’

  ‘That’s a bigger dump than this. I should know—I’m staying there. And you don’t even get any crumpet in the bar.’

  ‘I thought you said you weren’t interested in that sort of thing.’

  ‘I said no such thing. I said I hadn’t touched another woman. There’s no harm in looking at them, is there? Standing on the corner watching all the girls …’ He straightened his tie, tried ineffectually to brush the dandruff from his jacket collar and leaned across to Mortimer confidentially. ‘I do like to see a nice arse on a girl,’ he said. ‘And you’ve got to hand it to these Russian birds—they have got nice arses.’

  Mortimer decided that he didn’t like his companion. But he didn’t want to return to the lonely flat with its shadows and hidden ears. And there was no one else to talk to. ‘Let’s try the Metropole,’ he said. ‘If it’s worse than this we can always come back. I’ve got my car outside.’

  It was worse. They agreed upon this but they stayed there at the long cool bar with its efficient, uniformed barmen. But the atmosphere was dead, like a seaside front in the winter. Tonight Mortimer and Ramsden were the only customers. The barman attended to them as if they had come from the Kremlin.

  ‘What’s the matter with this bloody city?’ Ramsden asked. ‘Why don’t people go out and get drunk?’

  ‘They get drunk in their own homes,’ Mortimer said. ‘The Russians haven’t got the hard currency to come to these bars and the beer halls close early. And as we resident foreigners can buy a bottle of whisky for eleven bob there’s not much point in paying bar prices.’

  ‘Why are you out then?’

  ‘I was fed up with my own company.’

  ‘Had a row with your girl?’

  Mortimer nodded. ‘That’s very observant of you. As a matter of fact I have.’

  ‘A Russian girl is she?’

  Mortimer wanted to talk about Nina to someone. He wanted advice which he would only take—if it was the advice he wanted to hear. But despite the whisky there was still some self-control left.

  ‘I wouldn’t be stupid enough to get tangled up with a Russian girl,’ he said. Ramsden’s eyes seemed suddenly shrewd. ‘I don’t blame you,’ he said. ‘Not in your job. Although it would do some of your toffee-nosed mob a power of good if one of you put a Russian bint in the family way.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re so bothered about the diplomats,’ Mortimer said. ‘It’s up to you to sell your packaging not the British Embassy. I think the commercial attaché does a damn good job.’

  Ramsden conceded the point. ‘He’s not so bad,’ he said. It was the nearest he ever got to eulogising.

  Mortimer found that he could not drink any more whisky. He felt sober but faintly sick. ‘Do you want to go back to the National bar?’ he said.

  ‘Might as well.’

  When he came to drive Mortimer found that he was not sober. He swept round bends in exaggerated arcs and when he looked at the speedometer he found he was travelling at kilometres an hour over the speed limit. He was very anxious to get rid of Ramsden.

  ‘Come in and have one for the road,’ said Ramsden.

  ‘No thanks, I must get home. I’ve got to be up early.’

  ‘There might be some talent up there now.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Mortimer said, ‘I’m really not interested.’

  ‘Snotty bloody diplomat,’ Ramsden said.

  Mortimer drove back erratically stopping at a green light and accelerating past a red one.

  The lift in the block was out of order so he walked up the stairs. The door of the apartment was open. He distinctly remembered shutting it. But inside the only movement came from the shadows on the bedroom ceiling.

  Diana was worried about Mortimer and anxious to solve his problems for him. Her curiosity about the nature of his problems was as strong as her solicitude.

  They sat in a spacious new restaurant in Kutuzovsky with a small carafe of brandy between them.

  ‘Honestly, Richard,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to nag or anything but you do seem to have been hitting the bottle a bit lately. It shows, you know, and it won’t do you any good if people start talking at the embassy.’

  Mortimer refilled his glass. ‘For God’s sake,’ he said, ‘anyone would think I was an alcoholic or something. I admit I drank a bit too much last night and I’ve suffered for it today. But I haven’t been drinking much apart from that.’

 
; ‘I worry about you, you know.’

  He managed a smile. ‘I know you do. It’s nice to have someone worrying about me.’

  ‘Can’t you tell me what’s the matter, Richard? I don’t want to pry or anything. But it does help if you share things. It will just be between the two of us.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell. I suppose it’s just the job and everything. I don’t really think I’m doing awfully well.’

  ‘That’s absolute rubbish and you know it.’ She drew a map on the table with some spilt liquor and said hesitantly: ‘It’s not anything to do with that girl, is it?’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘You know what girl I mean, Richard. That girl we met at the ballet, the one who teaches you Russian.’

  He tried to suppress his anger. ‘Of course it isn’t. Why on earth do you want to drag her into it?’

  Diana looked tragic. ‘There’s no need to snap at me. I just want to help you, Richard.’

  ‘I don’t need any help.’

  ‘Giles Ansell said you hadn’t been looking yourself lately.’

  ‘Giles Ansell is a stupid, interfering old woman.’

  She shook her head with the deep sorrow of those whose good intentions are repulsed. ‘People are only trying to be kind, Richard. It’s no good taking that attitude with your friends when they want to help you.’

  ‘Giles Ansell was never a friend of mine. I expect he’s just happened to mention to the Ambassador by now that I seem to have been having a lot of late nights recently.’

  ‘I suppose you don’t regard me as your friend anymore.’

  He sighed. ‘Of course I do, Diana. And I’m very grateful for your concern.’

  A waiter whisked the carafe away before they had finished the brandy. Mortimer shouted at him.

  Diana said: ‘There was no need to carry on at him like that. He only made a mistake. You know, Richard, you really have changed lately.’

  ‘I know.’

  The restaurant had recently been attacked in the Soviet Press. One newspaper claimed that the service was the worst in the world and the staff were the rudest. Waitresses were said to count the cutlery before allowing customers to leave. If you claimed a knife or fork was dirty it was obediently wiped—on the black taffeta covering the waitress’s backside. Mortimer saw no reason to dispute the newspaper’s allegations.

  A young drunk wandered up the stairs with tears dribbling down his cheeks.

  Mortimer pointed at him and said: ‘So you think I’m drinking a lot.’

  ‘I didn’t say you were becoming a drunk,’ Diana said. ‘I just think you’ve been drinking a little too much for your capacity.’

  ‘I must say I’ve never in my life been in contact with so much drinking,’ Mortimer said. ‘It’s the national pastime.’

  Diana visibly decided that sex was the only solution to Mortimer’s problem. She rested her bosom on the table and said: ‘Shall we go back to your flat, Richard. It’s getting late.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  He called for the bill and waited twenty minutes while the waitress, outraged at the audacity of such a request, disappeared to the kitchens. When she returned she charged them for a full bottle of brandy.

  ‘I’m not paying it and what’s more I’m leaving now,’ Mortimer said in English.

  The waitress seemed to understand. She examined the brandy glasses to see if they were damaged and adjusted the bill with a bad-tempered flourish. The drunk was sitting on the floor, as much a part of the scene as a potted palm.

  Mortimer and Diana walked out into the warm night.

  ‘I won’t come back to the flat if you don’t want me to,’ Diana said.

  Mortimer thought of the shadows, of another vigil at the window counting the militiaman’s cigarettes. ‘Of course I want you to,’ he said.

  She busied herself around the apartment and he suspected that she was looking for clues. A perfumed handkerchief or a cigarette butt smudged with lipstick.

  He felt very tired. He looked at his watch. His mother would be sitting alone watching television: knitting and perhaps thinking about him. She was very proud of him and he knew that he must not fail her.

  Diana sat opposite him showing lots of thigh above her stockings. She forced a yawn. ‘Do you mind if I stay here tonight?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t mind. But everyone will see you coming out in the morning.’

  ‘Silly old fuddy-duddy,’ she said with a maternal air that was belied by the display of suspenders. ‘I stayed here when you were ill, didn’t I?’

  ‘That was doctor’s orders,’ Mortimer said.

  ‘I think you need some treatment right now,’ she said.

  Before he went to sleep, cushioned like a baby against soft, scented flesh, he reminded himself that when he awoke in the morning there would only be two days until his next Russian lesson.

  He awoke once in the night and Diana administered to him in a way that was far from maternal. ‘You men,’ he heard her whisper before he drifted back into sleep.

  She kissed him half way through the lesson. A dry butterfly of a kiss that took him by surprise so that the tremor of pleasure followed a fraction of a second later.

  He could think of no reason for it. He was trying to translate a poem by Pushkin when she leaned over and brushed her lips against his.

  His translation faltered and stopped. She sat back staring across the room, her face expressionless, her cheeks flushed. He stared at his books and wondered what to say. He tried to speak but a surge of happiness strangled the words.

  Finally he said: ‘What was that for?’ The words were massively inadequate but he could not find any others.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Just you struggling with Pushkin. Knowing the beauty was there somewhere and trying to find it.’

  ‘I’m afraid I didn’t succeed.’

  ‘It didn’t matter. It was there on the page and it was there in your voice.’

  He knew that he should kiss her but he found he was paralysed as well as inarticulate. ‘His poetry is beautiful,’ he said. ‘But it can never really be translated, can it?’

  The colour faded from her cheeks and business efficiency began to assert itself once more. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but it seems to me that you should try.’

  ‘It seems to me,’ he said. ‘Why do you all say that. We don’t use the phrase at all.’

  ‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘But at the moment it seems to me that we are concerned with teaching you Russian.’

  The delicate affectionate mood had fled. She had kissed him and he had failed to respond. He continued reading Pushkin but there was no beauty in his voice.

  ‘You must try to improve your pronunciation,’ she said. ‘It is really terrible. You should speak more Russian in between lessons.’

  ‘There’s no one to speak to,’ he said. ‘Not if you’re a diplomat that is. The very last thing we’re expected to do is to mix with Russians.’

  She pondered on this. ‘Isn’t that very silly? If countries are to find peace with each other then their people must meet.’

  ‘It applies to both sides,’ he said. ‘We’re not exactly welcome in Russian homes.’

  They were silent, aware that the conversation had slyly led them to a barrier in their relationship, previously unmentioned.

  Nina said: ‘I would like to invite you back to my home. But it is impossible. I hope you understand.’

  ‘You mean Mikhail wouldn’t like it.’

  She shook her head. ‘You know better than that, Richard. It has nothing to do with what he thinks. Or if it does he is only thinking the way others far more important than he think.’

  ‘You are really saying that your lives are not your own.’

  ‘Perhaps. But then yours isn’t either, is it, Richard?’

  ‘Because I’m in a foreign land,’ Mortimer said. ‘This is your country.’

  ‘Perhaps you should read a little more Pushkin. It is strange that he wrote such b
eautiful words because he was not a very beautiful man.’

  Mortimer ignored the diversion. ‘You know,’ he said. ‘I have no idea what your home is like. I don’t even know where you live. I would love to meet your parents. I would love to see your room and all your possessions.’

  She gestured helplessly around the room and he remembered the microphones that might or might not be transmitting. At least they could not record a kiss.

  After the lesson they stood hesitantly by the brown door opening on to the landing. ‘Do you remember knocking here that first evening?’ he said. ‘It didn’t occur to me that you were Russian.’

  ‘I remember,’ she said. ‘It was when I was working as an interpreter upstairs. It didn’t occur to me that you didn’t know I was a Russian.’

  ‘If I had known then we might not be together now.’

  ‘I would still have come to teach you Russian.’

  ‘I think I probably fell in love with you that first evening.’

  He kissed her gently and she closed her eyes. Then she was gone, high heels clattering down the stone stairs.

  He picked up the book of Pushkin poems and read one of them. It was, he thought, very beautiful even in Russian. At that moment it would have been beautiful in Arabic.

  At that time of the year the days tried to join each other and exclude the night and there was an hour or so of uncertain darkness squeezed between dusk and dawn. After a late dinner or a party Richard Mortimer sometimes walked home; when he crossed the bridge over the river, as calm as sleep, he saw the two days on either side of him—one dying a lingering death, the other being born in new green light.

  By the time he arrived home in the early hours of the morning the apartment was washed with this new light, weak and fresh and uncertain of itself. The pigeons on the balcony ignored this precocious dawn and buried their heads deeper in their own downy darkness.

  These were Richard Mortimer’s happiest days, and these were his most precious hours. They seemed to be stolen from time. And as he lay in the dewy glow awaiting sleep it seemed that everything might be all right. If two people loved each other then no power, no creed, no ideology, could destroy that love. Or so it seemed in those guileless, stolen hours.