The Longest Pleasure (20 page)

'It's short for Alexander.'

'Of course. But no one has called me Alex since Mother died.'

‘I
hope I haven't offended you.'

‘I
have missed being called Alex. After you go back
to
London tonight will you be returning
to
Hastings?'

‘I
don't know. Chess isn
't
really my game. Would you like me to come back?'

‘
Very much,'

'Why?'

He smiled. 'At last you are asking questions, Nancy. That relieves my mind. You are more of a woman than a writer, and I was afraid it might be the other way round.'

'Is that important to you?'

'You
are too attractive to be nothing more than a word machine. Even a good word machine. I would like you to return to Hastings because I have a birthday, next week, and I would like you to have a drink with me, on my birthday.'

'Then I'll be here. What date is it?' 'The
4th.'

'What about Mr. Rauser?'

'I would like to have a drink with you.'

'Mmmm.' They could see the lights of the Royal Victoria Hotel now, obliquely opposite the sun lounge where the tournament was being played. 'My nose has gone numb.' She massaged it with her gloved fingers. 'Now my glasses have fugged. What a mess. Do you get any time off after the tournament?'

'I'm supposed to be going on a tour of the country, up to Scotland. My mother's home.'

'Oh, yes, of course. Motherwell. I've never been there. I wondered if by any chance you'd ever have a day all to yourself. What about Sunday? There's no play in the tournament on Sunday. We could take a drive in the country.'

'I would like that very much. I will see if I can arrange

'Do that.' She stopped outside the entrance to the hotel lobby. 'I guess here's where we say goodbye. You can kiss me, if you like.'

'No,' Galitsin said. 'I do not think that would be good. We have only just met.'

'We met eighteen months ago, darling, in Moscow. I do hope that after our very pleasant evening together you are not going to turn out to be one of those ghastly Hollywood cliche communists, an Ivan who believes Heaven ends at Brest Litovsk, and even Purgatory goes no farther west than Prague. I'd prefer you to be an ogre than one of those. But I'll believe the best of you, at least until I'm proved wrong. I'll bet
you forgot that tomorrow is Old
Year's Day'.' She kissed him on the cheek. 'That's on account of
1958.
It's an old Western custom. See you on Sunday.'

He thrust his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat, watched her cross the road. To spend an evening with. Nancy Connaught was rather like going up in a very fast lift Was it possible that she had no ambitions, no duties, no responsibilities, and, even more important, no fears? And yet had the confidence that with her typewriter she could earn sufficient money to enjoy herself whenever she wished? He thought confidence in oneself was the greatest asset a human being could possess. He wondered how one set about acquiring confidence.

He crossed the street, went into the lobby, took off his cap and coat. The porter smiled at him as he handed him his key. Was
that
the fault in the communist system? Communism taught you to have the utmost confidence in the state, in authority, in destiny. It deliberately set out to take away your confidence in yourself, as a human being, and replace it with a confidence in yourself as a cog in a huge, success
f
ul machine, expanding and improving itself with every moment And your improvement and expansion, as a human being, depended on that of the machine.

But Lenin had certainly been confident He was not sure about Stalin. And he was quite sure about Kruschev, the other way. Maybe that is why we are attempting to alter the course of our destiny now, he thought Because Mr. Kruschev lacks the personal confidence of Lenin. But then, what will happen in the next generation, when no one in the country has the confidence of Lenin ?

The lift stopped. He walked along the corridor, turned the key in the lock. The door next to his opened. 'A. P. Galitsin,' Rauser said. 'You have missed dinner.'

‘I
am not hungry.' Galitsin went into the bedroom, threw his cap and coat on a chair, drew the blind and looked down on the icy street There were no cars, now.

‘
You have been with that American all this time?'

‘
Drinking English beer.'

'How nauseating. You knew she was a newspaper reporter?'

‘
You told me that she was, comrade,' Galitsin lay on his bed, kicked off his boots. 'And an American.'

"You said there was nothing peculiar about Americans." 'Which is not to say that they are not our natural enemies. What questions did she ask you?' 'She didn't ask me any questions.'

'In three hours she didn't ask you any questions? What did you do?'

'We talked, comrade. We talked.'

'And you think that was innocent? Comrade Captain, you have a great deal to learn about intelligence work. What did you talk about?'

Galitsin shrugged. 'We talked about the war. About chess. She knows very little about chess. About the Soviet army. About Budapest.'

'Ah ! What did she ask you about Budapest?'

'We talked about Budapest. She knows the city. I do not remember her asking me anything about it. Do not worry, Comrade Commissar. We made a date for a drive in the country next Sunday.'

'You must be out of your mind, Captain Galitsin. I absolutely forbid it'

You cannot forbid it, Comrade Commissar. As you say, she is an American newspaper reporter. No doubt at this very moment she is cabling a story back to New York. A nice story, because she finds me a pleasant young man. Perhaps even charming. And she is surprised to find that I am not being nursemaided all the time. Were you to start now, it would undo all the good work I have accomplished. Is that not so?'

Rauser gazed at him. Then he smiled. 'Colonel Dus said that you were not a fool. I will only remind you to be careful. These people are insidious.'

'Oh, yes,' Galitsin sa
id. 'We also talked about cliché
s.'

Rauser, his hand on
the door knob, frowned. 'Cliché
s? I do not understand.'

'Neither did I, Comrade Commissar
. But I do now. You are a cliché
, Mr. Rauser. Shut the door behind you, will you?'

'Do you know that you have the loudest snore of any man I have ever met?' Nancy Connaught threw her leopard-skin coat on a chair, knelt in front of the radiator, slapped her hands together. 'Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.'

Alan Shirley rubbed the back of his head, then his eyes, looked at his watch. He had not undressed, and his tie knot was slipped to the middle of his chest. He suggested a father awaiting the birth of his first child.

'I could hear you honking all the way up the stairs,' Nancy said. 'God knows what Mrs. Brown is going to say. She knew I was out of town.'

'Then she also knew it was perfectly respectable. And you said you'd be back for dinner. I'm ravenous.'

'You mean you didn't eat? However the English gentleman has managed to survive as a species is beyond me.' She kissed his bald spot. 'I'll make some coffee. There's not much point in going to bed, is there? At least, not to sleep. It was nice of you to hang around, though.' She turned on the electric stove, filled the percolater.

"Believe it or not, I was worried for you.'

'You mean, alone with all those dreadful commies?' She went into the bedroom, left the door open. She took off her dress, sniffed the armpits, decided against hanging it in her wardrobe, left it on the chair instead. She sat on the bed to take off her stockings.

'Of those dreadful icy roads, if you must know. Did anyone ever tell you that you have the most watchable legs? Especially from this angle.'

'You may have.' She went into the kitchenette, tapped the percolater. 'Jump, damn you.' She took two cups from the cupboard.

Shirley heaved himself out of the chair, smoothed his hair, tightened his tie knot. 'Did you manage to have a word with Galitsin?'

'I spent three hours with Alexander Petrovich, feeding him beer, feeding myself whisky. That's why it took me five hours to get back. I was afraid to drive faster than twenty miles an hour. The things I do for England.'

'What did you think of him?'

'I liked him.' She poured.

'I liked him, too, a dozen years ago.'

'I found him, well, un-Russian is what I was going to say. But maybe he's not un-Russian at all. We have a composite picture of the Russian, like we do of the French as great lovers, or of you lot as stiff-upper-lip Foreign Office types, as you have of us
, I guess, as gum-chewing smart
operators, and it's always
a
square-jawed, shock-headed, rather grim character, either
in
uniform or
a
drab raincoat and an old-fashioned slouch hat, busily engaged in subvert
ing
everything. The funny thing is that Alex really has
a
square jaw, and a shock head, and is a bit grim, and wears uniform.
And
yet he's not like that at all underneath.'

'Could I have some sugar, sweetheart? Did you
say
Alex?'

'That's his name. Alexander. Remember?'

'I must have forgotten.' Shirley sipped coffee. 'And did you get the impression that he
is
fanatically keen on chess?'

'As a matter of fact, I got the impression that he wasn't terribly interested in the tournament,'

'Now that's a lot more interesting.'

Nancy Connaught put down her coffee cup, went into the bathroom, showered. She returned to the living room, towelling, dripping water on to the rug. 'That feels a bit better. I hate driving for long periods. By myself, anyway. He's just interested. In us. In you English, certainly. But in everything. Not loudly. He sits and listens, but you can see that he's thinking about what you're saying, and remembering it, too. And you can see him watching other people, and remembering things about them. And this makes
him
interesting, if you see what I mean.'

'I wish I didn't.' Shirley threw her a dressing gown. 'You make concentration damned difficult. I was under the
im
pression that you were going to get him talking.'

Nancy refilled their cups. 'He talked. From time to time. He let slip the strangest things. Like the fact that he has never ever in his life set foot on a ship. Isn't that something? And he talked about his sister. He adores his sister. And his nephews. He even likes his brother-in-law. He was a bit reticent about himself. But not to worry. I'm having another bite at the cherry.'

'Are you now.'

‘
We're taking a drive into the country on Sunday.'

'Lyme Regis is a hell of a long way from Hastings, darling.
And
it's January.'