Winter Garden by Beryl Bainbridge Read Free Book Online

was having a terrible time with her Mamotchka.
    Ashburner was sitting alone in the near darkness when a waiter approached and apparently demanded to know what was required of him. Improvising, Ashburner mimed drinking a cup of tea and munching a cake. He held up five fingers for the tea order, and three for the cakes. If the interpreter was also feeling unwell, as Nina had indicated, she probably wouldn’t be hungry.
    Enid returned and said that no further progress had been made: the minister for foreign cultural affairs was at his dacha in the country, the mongol hordes were still raiding the booking desk and Olga Fiodorovna was throwing down her documents like a grand slam at Bridge.
    ‘I’ve ordered afternoon tea,’ said Ashburner.
    ‘Good for you,’ said Enid.
    He sat fidgeting in his chair, moving the cruet backwards and forwards across the white tablecloth. He thought the room was having a depressing effect upon him; he had never liked the dark. Worse, he didn’t know what he was doing here, a man in his position. But then, had he been anywhere else he would most likely have wished himself back. A man of substance could not, any more than a beggar, be in two places at once. ‘I feel ridiculously homesick,’ he confessed. ‘Isn’t that foolish?’
    ‘Nina’s been giving you a hard time, has she?’ asked Enid.
    ‘I don’t seem to know I’m here,’ said Ashburner. ‘I mean, I know we’ve flown here and I’m obviously not at home, but I don’t feel I’m here.’
    ‘You are,’ Enid said. ‘I can see you. Just about.’
    Ashburner began in a rambling manner to tell her of his departure that morning, how even at the last moment he would have climbed down, cancelled his plans, if only his wife had shown any interest in him, had boiled him an egg, had bothered to look at his face. He didn’t want to sound disloyal or to make excuses for himself. His wife was a wonderful woman in every way, though it was possible she lacked depth. It hadn’t mattered in the slightest when they were young; the last thing a man wanted to come home to was a woman with depth. But she had never had any flashes of consciousness and in his ignorance – he’d had a very conventional upbringing – he had thought that a good thing. Her attitude to him had changed after her Uncle Robert had left her a considerable sum of money. Always before she’d relied on him for her clothing allowance, little treats, lunch at Harrods with her friend Caroline. Not that he’d ever grudged her a brass farthing. He would like Enid to know he wasn’t a womaniser. In her sort of game, mixing with artists and television personalities, it was all taken for granted and really he wasn’t, cross his heart, against anyone behaving in any way they thought fit. It took all sorts to make a world. His own sons were living in a very liberated fashion and he hadn’t anything against them apart from the fact that he was still forking out for their flats and clapped out cars and so forth. It was just that he was distressed at having turned out to be like everyone else. He was frankly disappointed in himself, and that made him feel negative about one or two things. There was no denying that Nina was a wonderful person. Possibly she was even more wonderful than his wife; but believe it or not, at this particular moment, sitting in this Black Hole of Calcutta, he began to doubt that he felt very much for her – not felt . ‘If my wife had only opened her eyes,’ he concluded. ‘If she hadn’t flipped that damned blue hand of hers as though she was warding off flies—’
    ‘Has she got low blood pressure?’ asked Enid.
    ‘She wears cotton gloves in bed,’ said Ashburner. ‘She’s very proud of her nails.’
    Seeing Bernard and Nina approaching, he jumped guiltily to his feet.
    ‘Things are looking up,’ Bernard told him. ‘Olga’s phoning the Kremlin.’
    When the waiter arrived with their order of afternoon tea it was something of a surprise.