Russian Hide-and-Seek

‘Or not under interrogation.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well… voluntarily. Willingly. In the course of duty.’

Nina crossed her arms and clasped her shoulders, frowning. ‘But that wouldn’t apply in this case. In Elizabeth’s and my case.’

‘You never know,’ said Theodore, still wearily.

‘You never know? Are you saying you can’t be sure I’m not one of Vanag’s people? That you’ve no way of being sure?’

‘What way could there be? How can anybody be absolutely sure about anybody?’

‘About anybody. Dear God, what a terrible world we’ve made.’

‘I’ll go if you like,’ said Elizabeth with some violence, turning her head to include Alexander specifically in her audience. ‘I was just passing. I didn’t come for anything in particular.’

‘Shut up, Elizabeth,’ said Alexander; ‘life’s hard enough as it is.’

‘You’ll have a hard life, my lad, about the day the King of England gets to sit on his throne.’

‘We are helping to run a revolution, you know.’ Theodore’s tone now was querulous rather than weary. ‘It’s a heavy responsibility.’

‘I can see it must be. Locking up a few policemen. Very responsible work.’

‘There’ll be more to it than that. Certain persons will have to be killed.’

This was accompanied by a glance at Nina that showed awareness of having contradicted the reassuring forecast he had given her a few minutes before. To her, he sounded like someone organising a garden party who complains of a shortage of good servants. Again she was visited with incredulity: had she somehow misunderstood everything, childishly mistaken a sophisticated game for a serious proposal to overthrow the administration by force? She hoped she was not looking as shaken as she felt.

After staring at Theodore in a parody of amazement, Elizabeth said sarcastically, ‘Killed!’ and gave a great snort. ‘But not by you or the gallant soldier here, that’s for certain.’

Alexander went red. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said in a shrill voice.

‘Oh yes I do. You haven’t got the guts, my lad. Not for a killing in cold blood, which calls for a lot.’

He said, this time in a furious, rapid whisper, ‘Perhaps you’ll change your mind when I shoot my father.’

‘Impossible!’ exclaimed Theodore, but after much too long a pause to carry conviction.

‘Are you mad, Alexander?’ Elizabeth turned to Nina. ‘Did. you know about this?’

‘No,’ said Nina, still trying to take it in but experiencing only a sense of monstrous unreality.

‘What did you go and blurt that out for?’ Theodore was quite as angry as Alexander had been.

‘They’d have known soon enough.’

‘Why?’ said Elizabeth with great determination. ‘I want to know why you think you have to… w H Y.’

‘It’ll have great moral effect,’ said Theodore.

‘That’s no justification.’

‘I can assure you it’s necessary.’

‘Necessary for what?’

‘For the revolution.’

‘What will it achieve for the revolution?’

‘Don’t argue with her, Theodore,’ said Alexander. ‘You won’t get anywhere, and the thing has to be done whatever anybody thinks about it.’

Elizabeth looked steadily up at him. ‘To shoot an unarmed man is a terrible thing to do, and for you to shoot that man is revolting.’ She was wise enough to say no more of not believing in his ability to kill in cold blood. ‘You’ll be using your position to get close to him without him suspecting anything, so you won’t be giving him any sort of chance. And what’s he ever done to you or anyone else to justify the least violence against him? He’s always treated you kindly, too kindly for your own good perhaps, but I’d be willing to swear he’s never done you an injury. And this is how you repay him.’ She looked away and paused and then spoke in a new tone. ‘I’ve been in love with you for two years while knowing you’re rather a fraud. Now I think you’re rather evil. But I still love you. I don’t suppose you can be bothered to try to imagine what that’s like, so I’ll tell you – it’s hell.’

Bursting abruptly into tears, Elizabeth turned and ran towards the house. Alexander gave a cheer and clapped his hands, but so quietly that she could not have heard. The other two had moved a little way off and Theodore was talking in gentle, serious, explanatory tones while Nina listened attentively, nodding her head from time to time, by the look of her not far from tears herself.

17

The music recital, which included works by Dowland, Purcell, Sullivan, Elgar, the composer of ‘Ta-ra-ra- boom-de-ay’, Noel Coward, Duke Ellington (taken to have been an English nobleman of some sort), Britten and John Lennon, fell a long way short of the disaster Theodore had feared. The audience remained good-natured throughout and even applauded after several of the items. They disappointed the organisers, however, by talking loudly and continuously from start to finish, or rather for all but the first five minutes, when the strangeness of the experience almost silenced them. Somebody pointed out afterwards that they had not been told of the custom of keeping quiet at such shows; somebody else said this might have been just as well. The performance the following evening of ‘Look Back in Anger’ was an out-and-out success. Only very rarely in the past could the theatre have rung with so much happy, hearty laughter. Afterwards the members of the cast had been chaired round the neighbouring streets by an enthusiastic crowd.

The night after that (Thursday) was to see the production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ that had earlier interested Alexander. He made preparations to attend. These included obtaining through unofficial channels not only a ticket but something called a dinner jacket and a dickey with a small black bow-tie clipped to it, made specially for the occasion like the church clothes. He also got one of the servants to make him up a bouquet of flowers from the garden and arranged for its delivery at the theatre. A couple of days earlier to do as much might have seemed too troublesome, but the recent decline in his passion for Mrs Korotchenko, consequent on her persuasions in the matter of her daughter, had allowed his interest to move in other directions.

He changed in Theodore’s office, had a pint of best bitter and a cheese-and-pickle sandwich at the Marshal Stalin in St John’s Street and strolled round the corner to the theatre. It was a fine September evening, unusually hot and sticky for the time of year. A few people passed in the streets; most had already gone to their homes or to the lodgings that served as their homes in this cut-off island. Two military policemen, noticeable for their blue cross-belts and gaiters, moved slowly by in step, hands clasped behind backs. All was quiet. And yet in seventy-two hours, more like seventy-six hours to be exact, the revolution was to be launched and everything would be changed, set off by his shooting of his father. Was he going to be able to do it? He must; not to would be admitting to himself, and to others, that he was a trifler, a poseur, a booby. No going back now.

The foyer of the theatre was crowded with expectant English, none of whom had attended the play the previous evening (it had been a question of one or the other), but they had obviously heard all about it. Some were reading parts of the programme aloud for the benefit of illiterates among their hearers. A doubt or two was expressed whether a story of the kind summarised there could be very funny, but the doubters cheered up a little on finding that the characters called Mercutio and the Nurse were considered by experts to demonstrate Shakespeare’s powers of comedy at their best.

The appearance of many of the men present would have struck most observers as odd. The dinner jackets they wore were just that; inefficiency and shortages had prevented the matching trousers from being ready in time. There were those like Alexander who had managed to find something not too incongruous among their own (usually very small) stocks of clothes; others had settled for tweed-like patterns or corduroys of various colours. The women looked strange too, though collectively rather than singly. A further set of shortages had caused them all to be wearing the same dress, a garment with a narrow and on-the- short-side skirt (to save material), no sleeves (same reason; hard on the not-so-young) and an unfetching round neck. By a stroke of petty lavishness, at the last minute so to speak total uniformity had been averted; exactly half