At this point Elizabeth Cuy broke in, a small fair grey-eyed girl whose attractions were perhaps outweighed for Alexander by her direct glance and style. ‘Piss off— how dare you tell your father he’s of the same stamp as someone else!’ she said with annoyance and amusement mixed. ‘Explaining him to himself like that! Accusing him of not being sincere!’
‘I meant no impertinence.’
‘Yes you did. What you said was impertinent and you meant it.’
‘Don’t concern yourself, Elizabeth,’ said Petrovsky with a smile. ‘I took no offence.’
‘Well, you should have done, sir, and expressed it too. How else are the young to learn respect?’
‘I think the young are pretty satisfactory as they are.’
‘Do you really! They appal me, some of them.’ Elizabeth glared at Alexander for a moment before unwillingly laughing. ‘All right, my great politician, let’s hear your scheme for sharing out the land or whatever it is.’
‘It’s perfectly simple. The land should belong to those who work on it and live on it.’
‘I see. So the gardens here should belong to your man Mily and his squad. Who would be quite entitled to keep you and the rest of the family out of them if they felt so inclined.’
‘Well….’
‘Yes, my boy. You say SHOULD. Where does that come from? What right have Mily and the others to those gardens out there?’
‘There is such a thing as justice, isn’t there?’
‘May I answer that, Elizabeth?’ It was Colonel Tabidze. ‘The answer is no. Justice does not exist. All that exists, all that has ever existed, is a series of more or less unjust actions and events and institutions on the one hand, and the idea of justice on the other. In its name all the great injustices are done. So with enslavements and the idea of freedom, barbarities in the name of progress, lies and…. At least that’s how it is and how it’s always been with us. Ideas are the curse of the Russian. You can see it in Tolstoy, in Dostoievsky, in Chekhov: a whole class distracted from their duty, their marriages, their work, their pleasures, even their sense of self-preservation — all by ideas. What is to become of us?’
‘A good question, Nicholas,’ said his large, deep-voiced wife. ‘When a Guards colonel is plunged into deep philosophical gloom by a remark made by one of his junior ensigns, instead of telling the young whippersnapper to go to hell, you have every reason to ask what’s to become of us. There’s only one solution that I can see — Sergei, I’ll trouble you for a little more of that sterling brandy.
There was laughter at that, in which Alexander joined with every sign of spontaneity, Theodore noted. Deputy-Director Korotchenko joined in too after a fashion — a horrible sight, thought Nina. Mrs Korotchenko made no attempt.
3
A little later the party was assembled in the drawing-room, where a still white wine and more tea, together with freshly-cut rye-bread sandwiches, were available. Petrovsky, the Tabidzes and, after some delay, Korotchenko settled down at a card-table for solo whist. Tatiana Petrovsky took out her embroidery, a gros-point chair seat. Her daughter, Elizabeth and Theodore placed themselves near by. Speaking for the first time in his hearing, Mrs Korotchenko said to Alexander,
‘It’s very hot. I should like some fresh air. Would you come with me for a turn in the gardens? I haven’t seen them in the light. I don’t want to fall.’
Her voice was harsh and flat, with an idiosyncratic pronunciation of some vowels. Even now she failed to look him in the eye. He noticed that she was thin-faced and thin-lipped, with large ugly ears injudiciously exposed by her short haircut. ‘Of course not,’ he said. Nina and Elizabeth were watching him. ‘I mean of course you don’t want to fall. Of course — I’d be delighted to accompany you.
His brain was operating at several times its usual speed, with two things attaining some prominence: that it was RATHER hot was the most that could fairly be said, and, as he remembered from the small hours of that morning, when he had stumbled out into the open after Mess Night, the moon was almost at the full. But surely….
They moved out by the east entrance, went down the steps and reached the nearest lawn. This was not at all well mown, but any sort of serious fall was most unlikely in the intense moonlight. He was considering just how soon and just how to grab her when she grabbed him. The speed and violence of her assault took him quite by surprise. Her open mouth shoved itself at his; her body pushed and wriggled against him; she took hold of him after a fashion calculated to extinguish at once any lingering doubt of her wishes. His arms were round her, or his left arm was.
Taking her mouth away, she said warmly, ‘Let me go, struggling now.
‘Let you go? But you— ‘Otherwise how can I take my dress off?’ He stepped back. ‘But you—’
With her voice muffled by folds of material she said something he failed to catch. As she tugged and thrust at her clothes his lively consternation resolved itself into a daze of excitement. In about the time it would have taken him to untie his stock she had taken off everything but her white silk stockings and her garters, which looked black at the moment but probably were not in fact. Her breasts, on view in full so much more precipitately than almost anyone could have foreseen, charged him with wonder.
‘Come on, what are you waiting for?’ the lady asked him in a blurred voice. Again he pounced upon her, but again this proved unsatisfactory. ‘Never mind about that,’ she said, and fumbled with his clothing. A moment later she lay down on the grass. ‘Oh do be quick,’ she said. ‘Hurry up.’ Her body weaved slightly and she made sounds like someone in considerable but not extreme pain. When he lay down beside her he got it wrong a third time —’For the love of God, man, will you DO it!’ — and was hauled on top of her; her strength was frightening, but not very. The first response she made was so marked that he thought she must have attained her objective; her continuing movements, however, quite soon undeceived him. More than having her in his embrace he clung to her or was enfolded by her. He found that by going all out he could just stay in the game, so to speak. Finally, at about the critical moment for him, she redoubled her exertions and uttered a long, wavering, stifled cry, stifled as he found by her own hand pressed against her mouth — and a good thing too, for the unstifled version would beyond doubt have been heard clearly enough in the house. He felt a little troubled; it had presumably been a cry of pleasure, but he had fancied he heard something else in it, some darker feeling.
He kissed her cheek; by way of return she took his hands and held them to her breasts, then, not roughly, indicated that it was time to move. Still breathing deeply, he started putting his clothes to rights and she picked up hers. His disquiet had passed and he felt only joy and gratitude.
‘My darling, that was delightful,’ he said, ‘and you’re very lovely.’
She made no reply.
‘When can I see you again?’
‘You mean you want to do that with me again? After you’ve already done it once? What for?’ Dressing at top speed, she looked doubtfully at him.
‘Well, of course I do. We can take longer next time.’
‘Yes, we can,’ she said, as if this was an unexpected but, on reflection, valid point.
‘When, then’?’
‘Tuesday afternoon. Two-thirty .’ ‘I’m on duty at the base then.’
‘So you won’t be able to come, will you?’
‘Oh, I can rearrange it.’
‘All right.’
She had finished dressing and moved off briskly at his side, brushing with her hand at the back of her head. It occurred to him against his will that perhaps she kept her hair short so that leaves, twigs, etc. should not get stuck in it whenever she committed adultery on a lawn or other outdoor surface.
‘Where shall we meet?’
‘Come to our house. It’s called The Old Parsonage and it’s about two miles out of the centre of Northampton just off the road to Wellingborough. Most of the English know it by now; we have plenty of official
visitors. Ask for the Russian policeman if they don’t understand you. Now when we get indoors I’m going to be rather cool to you. My husband will think you’ve made an approach to me and of course I’ve rebuffed you.
‘My mother isn’t going to like that.’
‘Only my husband will see.’
‘Very well.’ He added, not at all because of what she had just proposed but on general grounds, ‘You’re a sweet girl. You deserve well of me.
When he kissed her she failed to respond, but said in her monotonous harsh voice, ‘That’s extremely kind of you.’
He had by no means settled in his mind that she was a sweet girl; however, she had done as he had wanted, to put it mildly, he had enjoyed himself and, since they had reached the foot of the steps down which they had come an unknown amount of time ago, this must be their private farewell. Ascending, he looked about him at the moonlit gardens, the pond, the faint glimmer of the lake in the distance, and wished with some force that he could have seen the place as it had been in the time of that other Alexander, half a century away. At the top of the steps he looked again, and realised that to anyone standing here what had been going on just now would have been easily visible, and no doubt audible too. Well, time enough to debate the sweetness or otherwise of the girl in question when the next few minutes were safely past.
The re-entry into the drawing-room of the wife of the Deputy-Director and himself came at an unusually lucky moment. The card-players were in a state of some excitement as Mrs Tabidze was about to make good an abundance call; although the stakes were not high (£100 a point) even Korotchenko was too engrossed to do more than glance up briefly. In rather similar fashion, Theodore Markov was entertaining the ladies with a tale about the embezzlements practised by the cashier at his university. Alexander strolled over to the marble-topped table where the wine was, poured himself a glass and nibbled at a chicken sandwich. He would have said that there was no need for him to try to act casually because he felt perfectly casual; it would surely be rather simple-minded to imagine that there had been anything much out of the way in the encounter on the lawn, just a matter of a reasonably personable, normally sexed young buck running into a — well, there must be quite a few women like Mrs Korotchenko round the place and one could hardly expect them to advertise their condition, or rather the downrightness of their nature.
He finished the sandwich, carried his glass of wine across to the card table, where the players were examining their newly-dealt hands, and looked over his father’s shoulder, uncomprehendingly, for he despised the game too much ever to have learned the rules. There was a respectable pile of £100 and £500 coins and £1000 notes in front of Mrs Tabidze. Raising his whiskered face in calculation, Korotchenko gave Alexander a passing look of entire neutrality.
‘I’m afraid you gentlemen are in for another thrashing,’ said Mrs Tabidze with pretended menace. ‘Misère.’
Her husband groaned. ‘Shoulder to shoulder, lads.’
Furtively, Alexander took stock of the rest of the party. His mother, gros-point on lap, was talking in low tones to Mrs Korotchenko, who seemed to be actually responding, or at least paying attention, her display of coolness towards him seemingly ended, if it had ever been. The others had momentarily fallen silent; when his eye reached her Elizabeth was already looking at him and within a second Nina was too. Then they looked at each other. Their expressions were alike, though he could not have said what they expressed. In different circumstances he would have gone over and asked them, but not in these. He decided he would have to stick it out where he was, a policy that achieved its end when Nina leaned over and said, ‘May we go up, mummy?’ — a formula requesting a short leave of absence for the younger guests and members of the household, invariably granted. When the three left, he left with them.
‘Did you have a nice walk, Alexander?’ asked Elizabeth as soon as the drawing-room door was shut after them.
‘Yes, very pleasant, thank you.’
‘She didn’t seem to think so.’
‘Didn’t she?’ he said lightly, then, having thought about it, repeated with more emphasis, ‘Oh, didn’t she?’ So much for only Korotchenko noticing.
‘No, she didn’t. But she should have, eh? — There’s something funny here, Nina. What do you think?’
‘Let’s wait till we’ve got him behind doors upstairs.’
‘I find this atmosphere of inquisition quite intolerable,’ said Alexander, but relief and triumph together saw to it that he spoke with only a poor show of petulance. ‘Theodore, you must protect me.’
‘What can I do? What can two of us do against two of them?’
‘And such a two. One quiet and deadly, the other brassy and violent.’
‘There’s gratitude for you,’ said Nina.
Theodore nodded gravely. ‘You notice they don’t dispute the way you described them.’
‘You notice something else, Lizzie,’ said Nina: ‘the younger one objected to the inquisition, but he didn’t need to ask what it was going to be about.’
‘Highly significant,’ said Elizabeth.
By way of the eastern half of the first-floor gallery they had reached Nina’s sitting-room, which lay directly opposite Alexander’s bedroom with her bedroom opening off it. Objects of various sizes were strewn about: photographs of her parents, of Alexander and of her elder brother Basil (at present serving with the army of occupation in Manchuria), a photograph-album bound in some substance resembling red leather, an ash-wood spinning wheel, an ornamental cage containing a siskin (all the way from home), a full-sized stuffed brown bear, a boruldite quick-kettle and a superb three-inch astroscope. The inevitable music-sounder, instrument and reproducer in one, stood under its hood in the corner. There were also chairs, in or on which they seated themselves, though Nina at once jumped up to hand round cigarettes and tiny silver-rimmed glasses of koumissette. All accepted the first, but Theodore, who disliked sweet drinks, asked for and got soda-water instead of the liqueur.
‘Now,’ said Elizabeth, with the manner of one who calls a meeting to order, ‘what happened out there?’
‘In the sense you no doubt mean, very little,’ said Alexander equably.
‘How much is very little?’
‘There was some kind of embrace.’
‘Come on, darling, we haven’t got all night,’ said Nina. ‘We’re all dying to hear. It won’t go any further.’
‘All right. There was a long, fairly passionate embrace with a certain amount of intimate caressing. Oh, enough to establish that the bosom is real, if you must know.’
Elizabeth shook her shapely blonde head. ‘I’m afraid it’s still not enough. Not nearly enough.’
‘Enough for what?’
‘Enough to explain … Let me show you.
She got up, folded her arms and, advancing first one hip, then the other, minced slowly across the room and back, rolling her shoulders and wagging her head to and fro, lips pushed forward, eyebrows raised. Now and then she held up her hands and examined the nails. While she did all this she hummed, whistled, sang wordlessly. Nina huddled herself up in laughter; Theodore smiled in puzzlement.
‘What’s that supposed to be?’ asked Alexander.
‘You when you came in from the garden, of course, acting a word like Unconcern or Casualness in a mime. Nobody of your age and experience puts on a show like that just for a couple of kisses and a feel-up. How far did you really get, Alexander?’
‘Oh, damn it. Look, if I tell you something, will you promise absolutely not to let it out to anyone? Or refer to it again?’
They all nodded seriously.
‘Well, she said she thought I was very handsome. Like … don’t shoot me … like a Greek god. There. It sounds pretty silly and embarrassing when I tell you three, but when she said it I promise you I felt absolutely marvellous. Quite marvellous enough to make me want to strut about with a big grin on my face. That’s what I was guarding against. It seems I overdid it a trifle.’
>
Elizabeth laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. Theodore too seemed quite satisfied. Nina smiled thoughtfully at her brother. After a moment she said,
‘If she thinks you’re so handsome, why was she annoyed with you? It’s harder than ever to see the reason for that.’
‘It is odd, isn’t it? But are you sure it was annoyance and not tiredness, say, or …?’
‘Oh yes, quite sure — eh, Nina?’
‘Well, it was something all right, but I wouldn’t swear it was annoyance. She … she was certainly not pleased about something.’
‘Something to do with me?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Nina, ‘there was no doubt about that at all.’
‘Ah. I suppose it could have been…. No.’
‘Could have been what?’ asked Elizabeth.
‘It sounds so conceited I can hardly say it, but it’s the only explanation that occurs to me. She was disappointed. That I didn’t go the whole hog.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘Well, she seemed so decided when she stopped me, and I haven’t had much to do with females of her age and station. I didn’t want to rush my fences. Fancy me getting it wrong —that way round.’
‘Did you arrange to see her again?’ asked Nina.
‘No. She happened to mention where she lived, and I decided I could always find myself in the neighbourhood and drop in one afternoon when the Deputy-Director is snoring his head off in his office. But I didn’t say anything about that because I wanted to think things over in a more settled frame of mind.’
Nina put out her cigarette with a decisive twist. ‘That was it. She thought that having tried her you came to the conclusion you didn’t want her after all. I’m surprised at you, my love. You’ve probably spoiled your chances there for good.’