‘I didn’t realise you were in this block. Come in and use the phone by all means.’
She stood in the lounge looking uncertainly around. ‘It’s a very nice flat,’ she said. ‘You have very good taste.’
‘The furniture was here when I arrived. It’s not bad but it isn’t what I would have chosen. I prefer old things.’
‘So do I,’ said the girl.
‘Then you don’t really like it,’ Mortimer said, remembering how Randall had tricked him into admiring modern art.
‘I think it shows very good taste—if you like modern furniture. Like you I prefer something more mellow.’
He watched her while she telephoned. Reddish hair unswept making the back of her neck look vulnerable, innocent somehow. Thin fingers with nails painted pink. Calves of her legs strained as she bent to replace the receiver. He hardly heard what she said on the phone.
‘Thank you so much,’ she said. ‘It was very kind of you.’
‘Would you care for a cup of coffee? Or a drink perhaps?’
She hesitated. ‘No thanks. I haven’t really the time. Someone is coming with the key.’
After she had gone her perfume lingered in the flat.
The American Club was the most cosmopolitan establishment in Moscow. You could meet almost anyone there except a Russian.
It was run by servicemen from the American Embassy with great efficiency, elaborate courtesy and a stolid suspicion of strangers. No one was allowed in without a pass or a passport and girls in slacks were barred.
The vetting was in the hands of Elmer, a muscular, impassive Texan, whose personality was something of an enigma. He was said to be a character and a ‘deep one’. He appeared to have no sense of humour, but the sensitive detected derision in his drawl. Pleas for admittance and petulant threats were atrophied by his imperturbability. ‘Sorry, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Sorry, sir. No can do.’ Rejected visitors had the impression that they were lifted gently by the neck and deposited outside.
Upstairs, servicemen dexterously served drinks behind a long bar while their colleagues made their play for the nannies—Finnish and British mostly—over cans of beer and long, lethal Scotches tinkling with ice. Later they took them down to their den on the ground floor appointed with hi-fi, cushioned sofas, television and a cocktail cabinet.
Twice a week there was a film. Newcomers decided that the first film they saw must be the worst ever made—until they saw their second and third. Thereafter they watched in a numbed coma: it passed a couple of hours, they said. Oriental diplomats, moth-like Vietnamese, silent women in saris, arrived shivering in the gloom and left as the film ended, their entry and exit unnoticed. How the films were chosen was never divulged; but a programme posted on the noticeboard contained the assessments of an enthusiastic critic called Sandy. ‘A breathtaking saga of the West—five stars.’ ‘A rib-tickling comedy, a must for the family—five stars.’ There were those who suspected that Sandy had never seen the pictures; and once when he dismissed a thriller with only four stars the regulars agreed that it was the best movie ever shown at the club.
The reels broke down regularly but there was no whistling or cat-calling; the audience sat mutely as if no one had noticed. And afterwards they scarcely discussed what they had seen. They sat at tables with drinks in front of them which they replenished during the interval. A few Americans and a couple of frustrated British businessmen usually stayed at the bar drinking.
Sometimes there were dances which were occasionally enlivened by fights. But the blows had to be struck quickly before Elmer intervened. And even then they were lugubrious affairs which lumbered from crude insults to clumsy blows and were usually fought over a girl who would have titillated neither combatant had they been sober. The rivals sometimes went to the toilet to settle their differences. A laborious punch, knuckles smashed against the wall, both bodies wallowing on the floor. Then, smelling slightly of urine, back to the dance to find that the girl was dancing with someone else.
The prettiest girls were the Scandinavian and German secretaries. They professed to have fiancés at home but were not inhibited by any such betrothals. The Finnish nannies were very young and their English very bad; the servicemen favoured the English nannies. They were untidy girls with thick legs and heavy bosoms who would be matronly at thirty-five; but word had gone round that they were easy. Not all of them were.
Marines newly arrived were told by their colleagues: ‘You gotta screw an English nanny before you leave. Man, they—like they were frightened it was going out of fashion.’
Love affairs sometimes developed between the servicemen and nannies and they held hands at the movies. Then one day duty called elsewhere and the nannies were stricken with grief and a sense of betrayal until a replacement moved up the line to console them. Then the nannies went home and married young men in their fathers’ firms and blamed bicycle saddles for their loss of virginity.
Elmer inspected Mortimer with care. ‘Sure glad to have you along,’ he said after a while. ‘Make sure you fill in a membership form as soon as possible. I guess Mr. Ansell here knows the ropes.’
‘I sure do,’ Ansell said as they walked up the stairs. ‘And one of the main things is never to have a row with that blighter.’
‘I think all these men are impertinent,’ said his wife. ‘I mean just who do they think they are?’
She was small and blonde with a pekinese face. She enjoyed giving dinner parties and was a student of etiquette.
They sat at a table near the screen. ‘Keep the seats while I get the beers,’ Ansell said.
Mrs. Ansell said: ‘Perhaps Richard would like something else. You never ask anyone, Giles. You just get up and say you’re buying beers. It’s just possible that I don’t want a beer either.’
Ansell smiled but he wasn’t amused. ‘Would you like something else old man? Name your poison.’
‘A beer will be fine,’ Mortimer said.
‘Right, three beers it is.’
‘And a dash of lime in mine, please darling,’ said Mrs. Ansell.
‘You’ve never had lime before.’
‘Tonight I feel like a little dash of lime.’ She waited until her husband had gone to the bar. ‘I’m so afraid Giles will get set in his ways,’ she said. ‘It’s not good for his career to get into a rut.’
She peered behind her in the gloom and waved girlishly at two young men sitting at a table littered with cans of beer. ‘There’s Peter and Geoffrey,’ she said. ‘Such nice boys.’
The two men, who were in the commercial section, acknowledged her without enthusiasm. They were third secretaries whose wives were spending a few days in Helsinki. They reclined elegantly and drank thirstily.
Ansell brought back the beers. ‘Peter and Geoffrey look pretty fed up,’ he said. ‘I expect they’re wondering how much their wives are spending.’
The film was about a
