Mrs Harris Goes to Moscow (2 page)

While he told his tale in a depressed monotone of clipped sentences practically in synopsis form Mrs Harris tried to follow with her alert mind and ‘see', or rather picture, some of what he was telling, but she had no point of reference beyond the photograph with its background of grim wall and tower. Only in general was she aware that life behind the Iron Curtain was not all that it was cracked up to be. She had also lived long enough to know the truth behind the saying about best laid plans, etc., and from Lockwood's demeanour it was obvious that his had gone plenty agley. The important thing was to keep him going and learn more for at that point Lockwood had ceased to speak and was sitting miserably regarding the photograph.

Mrs Harris said, ‘Oh blimey, what 'appened? They wouldn't let yer get married?'

Lockwood came out of his reverie and answered, ‘Worse than that. I never saw her again.'

This was what was killing him, he confessed, as he picked up the story again which was one of over-confidence and betrayal. During the trip he had managed to interview a dissident writer, exiled from
Moscow having served a term in a Russian labour camp and who in addition had been given the treatment in a lunatic asylum until protest from the West had secured his release. The meeting with this man had been discreet but not sufficiently so and when Lockwood had stepped off the train in Moscow he had been immediately picked up by the Russian Secret Police.

Had not another part of Lockwood's plans worked out it would have gone hard with him. As it was he had kept a duplicate set of notes on the journey. The ones that mattered, the dangerous ones, he had been successful in smuggling out through Turkey during his visit to Sochi on the Black Sea and in the last minute something had made him include the photo of Lisabeta in the packet. So when the KGB pulled him in to one of their underground salons and put him through twenty-four hours of grilling, he was clean. His notes were merely those of a travel writer interested in scenery, customs, costumes and the picturesque. His visit to the dissident he had explained as only an expression of his admiration for the writer's work.

There was nothing on which to hold Lockwood and risk disturbing the fragile
détente
that was being put together, but his interview with the proscribed and dissident writer had made him
persona non grata
. The KGB confiscated his notes and every other scrap of paper found upon him, escorted him from
the interrogation cell to the airport and five hours later Lockwood found himself back in London.

The full implications of Lockwood's dilemma had not yet struck Mrs Harris, but faced with a problem that had been exposed to her by a client her mind was already working and searching for a way out and she was beginning to experience the thrill of participating vicariously in someone else's trouble. She said, ‘But can't you get back some'ow? A lot of people now seem to be taking trips to Russia. A friend of a lidy I work for has just come back and she said it was loverly.'

Lockwood spoke bitterly. ‘The two faces of Russia,' he said. ‘Come to Leningrad and Moscow. See the Golden Carriage in the Kremlin, the mummy of the great god Lenin and the relics of the Czar. Vodka, caviar, coddling, Intourist putting its best foot forward to pull the wool over the eyes of the West; and behind the smiling mask the cruellest and most treacherous people on earth. They'd never give me a visa and especially after this book comes out,' and he tapped a thick pile of manuscript on his desk. ‘If I were to contact the girl they'd have her in one of those cells so fast she wouldn't know what hit her.'

Mrs Harris was beginning to see a little. That cell would be somewhere behind that wall. ‘Ow,' she said ‘you're prop'ly in the cart, ain't you?' which was the strongest expression she knew for a crushing defeat. ‘But she'll understand, won't she?'

The full import of Lockwood's tragedy was then revealed. ‘How can she?' he groaned. ‘Don't you see? There'd be no report about my expulsion. I'd promised to be in touch with her when I got back to Moscow. That was six months ago. What I can't bear besides everything else is her thinking I've run out on her.'

Mrs Harris drew on her fund of experience. ‘If she loves yer, she'd never think that.'

Lockwood cried, ‘What else should she believe? It's classic, isn't it? Madame Butterfly.'

Mrs Harris said, ‘Madame 'oo?'

‘Never mind,' said Lockwood. ‘He promised and didn't come back either. It's one of the oldest ploys in the game.'

Mrs Harris had no knowledge of the treachery of Lieutenant Pinkerton to poor Cio Cio San and so she resorted to advice again. ‘Come on now, luv, you're lettin' this get yer down. Use your nut. Write 'er a letter.'

Lockwood shook his head. ‘It won't do,' he said. ‘All foreign mail is intercepted and read. At the slightest indication that she had any connection with me she'd be arrested. They'd see a plot at once. She'd lose her job if not worse and she would be subject to endless persecution.'

The whole picture had now developed for Mrs Harris and some of Mr Lockwood's despair entered her own warm-hearted and sympathetic soul. ‘Cor
blimey,' she said. ‘You poor man. You are for the 'igh jump, ain't you?'

‘Never mind me,' Lockwood cried. ‘It's her I'm thinking of, believing I've run out on her like every other sod who's had what he wanted from a girl. It's driving me out of my mind. She's as innocent as a child.'

Mrs Harris asked, ‘What about your pals in the Foreign Office? Didn't you say that …'

She only succeeded in rekindling the moment of rage in Lockwood and he slammed the desk with his fist and shouted, ‘Goddamn bloody hypocrites! Up to yesterday they said they might do something. That's why I brought out her photo and dared to look at it again. This morning a flat turndown. Change in the political situation. “Sorry, old boy, can't rock the boat right now, you know.”'

The impasse was quite clear now. If he tried to get through to the girl she would be implicated. If he didn't she would go on believing the man she loved had cruelly deserted her and in the meantime two lovers implacably separated were suffering broken hearts.

Mrs Harris, moved to the depth of her being and close to tears, said, ‘Lord, Mr Lockwood, I wish I could 'elp yer.'

Lockwood said gloomily, ‘Nobody can help me.' He picked up the photograph and snapped shut the back flap which assisted it to stand.

Mrs Harris said, ‘Don't put 'er away. Leave 'er there. Yer never know what might 'appen. She'll 'elp yer keep yer tucker up.'

He replaced the photo as Mrs Harris had bidden him and then for a moment they both fell into silence and during that silence Mrs Harris indulged herself in a fantasy, the kind that often came to her when people were in trouble, or she herself fell prey to an ambition. It was in two parts, neither of them connected with anything either sensible or practical. In one she was facing a group of men behind that fortress wall and giving them a piece of her mind about separating two unhappy lovers. In the second she was ringing the doorbell to Mr Lockwood's flat and at her side was Lisabeta something or other, or anyway as he had called her, Liz, and when he opened the door Mrs Harris would cry, ‘ 'Ere she is, Mr Lockwood, I've been to Russia and brought 'er back for you.'

Lockwood now cleared his throat and said, ‘Well,' and made motions of one about to go to work.

Mrs Harris could take a hint and said, ‘I'll be gettin' on,' and proceeded to make her preparations to leave for her next rendezvous with dust and dirt and greasy dishes.

Mrs Harris brooded all the way home that early Saturday evening over Mr Lockwood's tragic dilemma and it was still colouring her mood when she forgathered with her bosom friend, Mrs Violet Butterfield, for their nightly path-crossing cup of tea and gossip.

Bosom was an apt word to apply to Mrs Butterfield, as she was as stout, round and plump as Mrs Harris was thin and spare. Only the features in the full moon face were small, a mouth that formed into a tiny ‘o' above a triple row of chins, a button nose and small, startled eyes. The shape of the mouth was just right for the instant emission of shrieks of fright.

For whereas Ada Harris was the complete optimist and the soul of courage often to the point of
recklessness, Mrs Butterfield was timid, nervous, wholly pessimistic and given to pronouncements of doom and disaster, particularly when her best friend was taking on one of her notions.

At one time Violet had been a member of that gallant band of women who arose daily at 4 a.m. and sallied forth to clean London's offices before the break of the business day but lately she had succeeded in acquiring the job of attendant in the Ladies' Room of the Paradise Night-Club in Mayfair.

It was this that solidified the nightly ritual, for just as Mrs Harris was closing down her day's work, so to speak, Violet Butterfield was starting off on hers, enabling them to spend an hour or so together over the teapot and the evening papers.

During those sessions, Mrs Butterfield was able to supply tidbits of scandal gleaned from the chitchat of ladies who visited her domain while Mrs Harris narrated tales of the vagaries of her smarter or more eccentric clients. Oddly that night, however, she did not feel inclined to pass on the story Mr Lockwood had told her. The tragic plight of the young lovers seemed to her somehow too sacred to furnish material for tittle-tattle. She preferred to enjoy the sorrow of their plight unshared. Besides which there shortly began a turn of events which temporarily drove it out of her head; the fur coat and the colour television set.

‘You and your fur coat!'

‘You and yer bloomin' telly!'

It was Violet Butterfield who for years had had her eye on a fur coat of musquash, a species of water rat, which each autumn, in the current fashion, would appear in the window of Arding and Hobbs, the department store where they did their shopping. It was a losing game. For while Violet scrimped and saved to approach the price of last year's coat, by the time the new season rolled around, the galloping inflation had added another twenty pounds to the price and whipped it out of reach again.

As for Mrs Harris, her television set was black and white, cantankerous, ancient and out of date and given to collapse during crucial moments of favourite programmes. She yearned for the new, modern, giant screen colour set that would turn her basement flat at No. 5, Willis Gardens, Battersea, into a veritable theatre. The price of such a one was over £400, installed, insured and service guaranteed, as out of reach as her chum's musquash wrapping.

Time was when Ada would have tackled the problem. Once she had girded herself to save up the vast sum of £450 to sally across the Channel to buy herself, of all things, a Dior dress. But she was older now, somewhat more easily tired, more fragile. The amassing of such a sum was just not on, and hence neither was the big set. But that did not stop her
from wishing. And often on her way home she would pass before a shop displaying such and look with longing upon the half dozen machines in the window all projecting the same scene in gorgeous natural colours.

Hot water had been poured into the first dregs of the teapot, ‘sangwidges' had been disposed of. Mrs Butterfield was already aware that her friend was unusually silent and uncommunicative. She found an item in the
Evening News
that she thought would awaken her interest.

‘ 'Ullo, 'ullo,' she said, ‘ 'Ere's somefink about a friend of yours.' And she read aloud a datelined dispatch from Paris which revealed that the Marquis Hypolite de Chassagne was ending his tour of duty as Ambassador of France to the United States, and upon his return to Paris would take up an appointment as Senior Adviser on Foreign Affairs at the Quai d'Orsay. ‘A real pal, wasn't 'e?' She added, ‘When you was getting elected to Parliament.'

Ada examined the paragraph in turn but made no comment and Mrs Butterfield looked at her in surprise, remarking, ‘Maybe 'e'd be coming over to London like 'e used ter and then you could 'ave a visit wif 'im again.'

Mrs Harris, still under the spell of Mr Lockwood, only nodded morosely and maintained her silence.

‘Blimey, luv,' exclaimed Violet, ‘yer pecker's
down, ain't it? One of them as you do for turn narsty on you? Dropped the keys through the door, 'ave you?'

This last referred to the time-honoured means of resignation employed by all London chars at any moment when they felt themselves badly used or insulted by their clients. Upon departure they would deposit the keys to the door of the flat through the letter-box thus closing out the association.

Mrs Harris merely shook her head in denial of this but still remained mute and since it was obvious that her friend was not disposed to conversation Mrs Butterfield said, ‘Well then, why don't we 'ave a look and see what's on the telly.' She went over, switched it on and twiddled the knob for ITV where she got the equivalent of a violent blizzard on the screen and a vicious growl from the speaker system. BBC 1 yielded a picture whipping by which looked as though it had been given the same treatment as a scrambled egg, accompanied by a hissing and crackling of sound. The third button offered a totally blank screen and no sound whatsoever.

Ada Harris suddenly became articulate. ‘Bloody 'ell!' she cried, ‘and I only 'ad it fixed last week. The bleedin' box ain't worth choppin' up for firewood. And me wanting to see “Stars on Sunday” tomorrow and the repair man won't come until Monday. Turn it off, Vi, before I put me foot through it.' Then she added, ‘Maybe I will cut down
on tea and smokes and take on more jobs until I can get me a new set wif colour.'

Her friend's outbursts of temper were rare and when they did happen usually frightened Vi into saying the wrong thing. ‘Oh Ada, you mustn't. You could never do it. It's like me fur coat. They always keep twenty quid ahead of you.'