Cayle threw away the stub of his cheroot and was stamping his feet with cold when he saw the girl in white fur coming down the platform towards them, carrying a large battered suitcase. She stopped a few yards away, sat down on the suitcase and lit a cigarette. A few minutes later there was a low moan and a bright red eye crept towards them out of the darkness.
The train’s wide-gauge carriages were dark and solid, with wheels of polished iron, windows drawn with white lace curtains, the roofs glistening with fresh snow. It clanked to a halt, and Cayle now saw why the old man had been counting his steps. The door of the first-class compartment, whose number corresponded with the one on Cayle’s reservation slip, had stopped opposite them both.
Again the old man insisted on lugging his cases aboard, down the varnished corridor to a compartment with four bunks. He checked Cayle’s reservation again, then lifted the lower bunk and was fitting his luggage inside when Cayle saw the girl standing in the corridor outside, holding her suitcase in both hands.
The old man had straightened up and seized Cayle in a brutal handshake, then turned and pushed past the girl and disappeared down the corridor. Cayle stepped forward and said, ‘Please!’ in Russian. She responded with a bright smile as he took hold of her suitcase, and had begun to carry it along the corridor when she directed him back into the compartment, pointing at the lower bunk opposite his own.
‘Thank you, sir,’ she said in English, with an accent so pure that it was almost affected, except for the broad Russian vowels. ‘You are English, yes?’ she added. ‘Or perhaps you are from America?’
‘From Australia,’ he said.
‘Yes, but that is like English, I think, because you have the same Queen?’ She giggled and threw her white fur hat down on the bunk and began unbuttoning her long woollen coat.
Cayle helped her off with it, noticing that she was small and plump, with a fringe of dark-brown hair above wide matching eyes. She sat down on the bunk opposite him, smoothed her dress over her knees and said, ‘I am Galina Valisova. I am pleased to meet you.’ They shook hands across the floor, and Cayle told her his name.
‘Cay-eel? I have not heard such a name before,’ she said, and stared at the teak and mahogany wall, with the brass fittings and little red lampshades over each bunk. ‘Did you perhaps see The Forsyte Saga on your BBC television?’ she said suddenly.
‘I think I saw a couple of episodes,’ Cayle said, slightly confused.
She nodded. ‘I watched all the episodes except the last one when my mother was sick. They were beautiful and most interesting. Do you smoke?’
‘Only these, I’m afraid,’ he said, bringing out his depleted packet of cheroots.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Please do not smoke them in here. They make a bad smell.’
He put them away in his pocket and wondered what the next gambit would be. He decided to take the initiative, and got the bottle of Osoboya vodka out of his case under the bunk. He sat down again and had finished peeling the foil cap off the top of the bottle, when she said, ‘You like vodka?’
‘It’s great for the cold,’ he replied, with an uneasy grin. ‘And this is the best vodka in the world.’
She shook her head, ‘I do not like vodka. It makes people go crazy.’
He looked at her glumly, wishing he’d bought some Georgian champagne instead. ‘The trouble is, I haven’t got a cork for it,’ he said at last. ‘And I can’t just throw it away, can I?’
‘You will drink it all only when I am asleep,’ she said firmly, then unsnapped the catches of the suitcase beside her, and after rummaging under a pile of clothes, pulled out a wad of coarse cotton wool. ‘This is your “quark”!’ she cried gleefully, as she grabbed the bottle out of his hand and screwed a tuft of wool into the neck, then stood up and placed it on the table under the window.
‘You know Swir Valta Squat?’ she added suddenly.
‘You mean Walter Scott?’
‘Yes, Squat.’ She smiled. ‘I do not say it very well?’
Just then the door slid open and a young man with a thin beard came in carrying a rucksack. He stood for a moment in the doorway studying his ticket and the two upper bunks, then mumbled something in Russian and slung his rucksack on to the bunk above the girl’s head. He was wearing a windjammer over a denim tracksuit with the inverted Y-sign of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament printed in white across his chest.
The girl was saying, ‘I like very much this Squat. His books are very historic and interesting.’
The young man said, ‘You both speak English?’
‘Yes we do,’ said the girl.
‘That’s great. I haven’t spoken English for six weeks. I’m American,’ he added: ‘Don Passmore. Glad to meet you both.’
‘I am Galina Valisova,’ the girl said, leaping up and grabbing the American’s limp hand. Cayle just nodded. Galina was now showing Passmore where the step-ladder was, folded under the table.
‘Thanks,’ said Passmore, propping it against his bunk and testing it for strength. He was very thin. ‘I started off from San Francisco to Yokohama two months ago,’ he added, ‘and got sick in Vladivostok. Acute hepatitis. I was in hospital out there for six weeks. I was real sick.’
‘They look after you well in Soviet hospitals,’ said Galina Valisova.
‘Yeah, well.’ He started awkwardly up the ladder.
