Mrs Harris Goes to Moscow (8 page)

‘Oh, I can't, can't I? I'd bleedin' well like to see you keep me out. That's me friend what I'm travelling wif and I'm lookin' after her.'

Mrs Butterfield was propped up in a chair and one of the policewomen was expertly running her hands over her torso when suddenly she started to smile, and turning to her partner whispered, ‘Oh no! Madge, you won't believe this.'

Madge said, ‘Believe what?'

‘In this day and age.' Then aloud to Mrs Butterfield, ‘Madam, will you please stand up for a moment.'

Mrs Harris said, ‘Look 'ere, what's all this? Leave me friend alone. She ain't got nuffink.'

The policewoman called Madge had begun to smile too and said, ‘It's nothing serious. I just think it's her stays. If Madam would be so good as to let us look.'

‘Stays?' cried Mrs Harris. ‘What's that got to do with that thing making noises like somebody was
cutting its throat. Stays is made of plastic. Vi? What the bleedin' 'ell is it you've got on you?'

Sanity began to return to Mrs Butterfield and with it understanding. She raised her skirts. The three women stared. Mrs Harris said, ‘Cor blimey, Violet, where did you get that?'

‘That' turned out to be one of those long, old-fashioned corsets stiffened with steel ribs, padded and laced.

Violet said, ‘What's wrong wif it? I got it in the Portobello Road. I only wears it when I goes out or dresses up for a trip because it 'olds me up comfortable like. 'Ere, see?' And she revealed the further benefits that her large bosoms derived from the contraption.

The policewoman explained, ‘We're sorry, Madam,' and apologized. ‘Of course, it's the steel. Here, we'll let you and your friend out this way and then you won't be embarrassed.' They permitted them to emerge from a second door while one of the policewomen gave the thumbs-up sign to the inspectors. Violet whispered to Mrs Harris, ‘I thought their bleedin' machines had found the letter. 'Ere, take your handbag back. I want nuffink to do wif it.' The two women proceeded along the ramp to the loading bay.

If the departure from Heathrow was somewhat less than soothing to the two travellers their arrival before the stunningly glittering glass and sleek façade of Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow was chaotic, terrifying and for Mrs Harris and all her plans, dreams and expectations a disaster of the first magnitude.

For here there was not only all of the turmoil of the great airport but it was conducted some fifty decibels louder, not only in a foreign language amongst foreign uniforms but also with every sign in a wholly unintelligible foreign alphabet, the Cyrillic lettering. Different sounds, different smells, a kind of combination of cheap soap and disinfectant and the clothes basket containing last week's wash, different tempo, rude and hard
looking officials, lumpy sheep-like ill-clad crowds, salted here and there by a colourful and exciting Eastern costume or two.

The flight from London to Moscow aboard a highly efficient aircraft had given no warning of this, though Mrs Harris later declared that from the moment she stepped aboard the Ilyushin jet she was subconsciously aware, except the way she phrased it the feeling was centred somewhere in her bones, that she had left behind the safety, comfort and familiarity of everything she knew and loved, Britain – London Town – and although they had not yet left the ground she had entered a foreign country which in no way that she could define had about it a slight feeling of menace.

There had been nothing during the three and a half hour flight to instil this sensation of unease. The plane was clean, its appurtenances neat but not gaudy, and the stewardesses crisp in their fresh, beige, linen uniforms with blue cap and gold badges, efficient and extraordinarily pretty as well as coolly helpful. There were sapphire-eyed blondes and dark-eyed brunettes displaying all the attractions of the colour photographs in the brochures. They were also in some subtle way slightly different and perhaps even more alluring than their British or American counterparts and looking them over Mrs Harris was able to understand how Mr Lockwood could have fallen in love with one of them and if Liz
in the flesh was anything like her picture it was easy to comprehend. These pretty girls gave Mrs Harris an earnest of what she was going to encounter in the unhappy and lovelorn Liz and she took pleasure in contemplating the moment when she would be kindling the light of happiness in the sad and melancholy eyes.

Even Mrs Butterfield, now that she was under way and her tremors with regard to her friend's mission had begun to fade, was beginning to enjoy herself and when the girls in relays began serving up an excellent meal with even a dollop of caviar, she was prepared to announce that at least in the culinary department the Rooshans were a little bit of all right.

A stewardess had come by pushing a trolley and inquired, ‘Will you have vodka, wine, beer or Russian champagne?'

‘Cor blimey,' said Mrs Butterfield, ‘ 'eavens above. Caviar and champagne and all that lot for free.'

Even Mrs Harris who was difficult to impress had been affected by this largesse and said to the stewardess, ‘I'll 'ave a bit of that white stuff,' pointing to the vodka. ‘It looks like gin and maybe a glass of beer to 'elp it go down.' She turned to her friend, ‘Now then, Violet Butterfield, what 'ave you got to say about yer 'oliday trip?'

They had enjoyed the coffee and thereafter peace and somnolence descended upon the two voyagers
as all early misgivings were forgotten. They had even slept part of the time until the changed note of the jets signalled the fact that they were coming in to land.

Touch down at an airport after having been whizzed through the air against seemingly all the laws of nature enclosed in several hundred tons of metal and highly explosive fuel is likely to crowd all other thoughts or emotions with the exception of a large sense of relief from the minds of most passengers, and Mrs Harris and Mrs Butterfield were no different.

And then, during that long trundling ride on the runway and tarmac from the point of impact to the disembarkation line during which the bird has suddenly turned itself into a bus, there is the busying with last minute brushing off of crumbs from lunch, tugging at one's clothes, reaching for hand luggage, discarding unwanted periodicals and generally preparing to become a locomotive biped once more. These trifles also occupied the two friends as the main airport building hove into sight; and then there was the hustle and clatter of the plane being surrounded by tall flights of steps, tankers, luggage transporters, vans, cars, while waiting to come aboard could be seen barrel-chested men in blue with badges or gold stripes, several girls in uniform and some half-dozen plainly dressed women from young to middle-aged.

At last the wheels stopped turning, the jets sighed and whispered to a stop and while those outside the plane prepared to come on board, the chief stewardess at the head of the aisle, microphone in hand, said, ‘Attention, please, will all tours and groups please keep your seats. Your Intourist guides are here and will call for you by your tour number and you may then leave the plane.'

Mrs Harris felt a small, cold chill trickle down her spine and every other thought was driven from her head but the blending of two similar sentences. ‘Your Intourist guides are here,' and the remembered revelation by Mr Lockwood, ‘She is the Intourist guide for your package tour number 6A to Moscow.'

The moment was at hand upon which she had reflected and dreamed many a night ever since the arrival of the tickets to romance. Not her romance to be sure, but none the less exciting because of her participation. In another instant or two she would lay her eyes upon the lost love of Geoffrey Lockwood, Liz in the flesh. Would the girl be as beautiful as hinted at in her photograph?

The door in the hull of the plane slid open, the steps made their contact, the officials and the group of women came stamping up and piling aboard.

‘There,' said Mrs Harris, ‘them must be the guides,' and in her excitement trying to look at all of them at the same time in an effort to spot Liz
immediately. She actually saw none too clearly though there seemed to be a mixture of ages and three were girls who were undeniably pretty. She remembered that in the picture Liz had been wearing a fur hat so that one could not see her hair style.

Three groups were called and marched down the aisle and into Russia, two of them under the aegis of a pair of the girls. Mrs Harris had calmed down now so that she could focus and so she saw and heard quite clearly what happened next.

Visually it was that a woman who must have been in her late fifties who looked as though she had been carved out of grey, weathered wood, stepped to the fore and with a strong no-nonsense gesture snatched or possessed herself of the microphone from the last user. Two small suspicious eyes glared out of the square face unrelieved by flaring nostrils, tending towards the porcine and a bitter, turned-down mouth. Her lumpy grey clothes too were like wood carvings in their stiffness and she wore a nondescript hat perched on the bun of piled up grey hair on the top of her head. She spoke with slightly more of an accent than had the other guides and the words that fell upon Mrs Harris's horrified and unbelieving ears were the following, ‘I am Praxevna Lelechka Bronislava. I am your Intourist guide for Package Tour 6A. All peoples from Package Tour 6A raising their hands.'

Twenty-nine went up. Mrs Harris found herself
unable to lift hers so much as a centimetre out of her lap.

‘… I will show to you Moscow. We will be friends. If you do as I tell you there will be no trouble. Come now, I will take you to Customs and Immigration. If you have obeyed the rules in the little booklet about what you may or may not bring to Russia you need not be afraid. We will go.'

Icy panic had Ada Harris in its freezing grip and it was just as well that the aisle was filled with members of their tour obediently following instructions for she would not have been able to stir. In fact it was a wonder that she did not lapse into one of those strange comas that immobilized her in moments of extreme crisis particularly when brought on through her own actions.

Stunned, she gazed after the square, retreating back of the Intourist guide.
What name? Praxevna Lil something or other and God knows what. Liz! Liz! Where are you? What has happened to you? What am I to do?
For from the moment Mr Lockwood had revealed that his sweetheart was the guide for Package Tour 6A and would be greeting her at the airport Mrs Harris had never for a single instant doubted that she might not, that she might have become ill, died, transferred or even have a week off. Had she known that the Soviet's second government, the Secret Police or KGB, had for this particular tour substituted Praxevna Lelechka Bronislava for Lisabeta Nadeshda
Borovaskaya, otherwise known as Liz, and placated the latter by temporarily moving her ‘upstairs', Mrs Harris might well have entered a state of catalepsy, remained in her seat and thus been wafted back to London on the same plane.

It was Mrs Butterfield who was the first to give vent to an opinion with regard to the situation, remarking innocently enough, ‘Looks like Mr Lockwood's girlfriend is a bit long in the tooth, don't it?'

The observation started Mrs Harris's adrenalin flowing again and she hissed viciously, ‘Shut up, stupid. That ain't 'er. That wasn't Liz.'

‘No?' said Mrs Butterfield. ‘Where is she then?'

The full nature of the calamity now was plain to Ada as she replied, ‘I don't know,' for she was realizing for the first time the fact that not only did she not know but that outside of having been told that the girl was an Intourist guide which no longer seemed to be the case she had no address nor any other means of finding or identifying her beyond her memory of the photograph.

Mrs Butterfield's system of alarm bells became activated again and she turned an anxious glance upon her companion. ‘You don't know! That's a fine one. What about that bleedin' letter?' And then she remembered something and the bells jangled again, even louder. ‘Oh my Gawd, Ada, you 'eard what that old bag said. If we weren't bringing nuffink in there
wouldn't be nuffink to worry about. Couldn't you go to the loo and stuff it down? They're a sure thing to look into your 'andbag.'

‘For the good Lord's sake, stop worrying Vi, I've been to the loo and it ain't in me 'andbag any more.'

By this time almost the whole tour had passed up the aisle and there was nothing for the pair to do but gather up their belongings and follow on, practically the last ones to emerge from the doorway of the giant airliner and into the focus of the telescopic lenses of the KGB.

As the two women appeared at the top of the steps the KGB crew in the concealed room in the upper storey of the airport went into action. The man observing the plane through field glasses gave an exclamation, glanced at two blown-up photographs on the table before him and then using the glasses again said, ‘There they are. The small one in blue is the courier, Mrs Harris, and the other is the one called Mrs Butterfield.' The cameras with their long, zooming lenses began to whirr and click.

They saw the tiny woman in navy address herself to her stout companion. The man with the glasses turned to another at the table who had the sheaf of dossiers on Mrs Harris. He said, ‘You see? The report was correct. They are not disguising the fact that they know one another and are travelling together. The courier woman, Mrs Harris, is either
indoctrinating the one called Butterfield or it is the Butterfield person, whose cover we have not been able to penetrate, who is in charge of this mission and is being assisted by the other and more experienced operative.'

The man at the desk was examining the photostats of Mrs Butterfield's application blank and her photograph. He said, ‘I think the last is more likely – occupation, Ladies' Attendant. No clues here whatsoever. The perfect cover. Of the two she is the more dangerous.'