Winter Garden by Beryl Bainbridge Read Free Book Online Page B

over his plate, drawing something on the back of the menu.
    Olga Fiodorovna promised that in the morning they would go sightseeing; maybe there would be time to drive to the famous Ostankino Palace, notable for its botanical gardens and once the suburban estate of one of the wealthiest of Russia’s noble families. It was so beautiful in spring when the bird-cherry bloomed; they must all return in the spring.
    ‘Poor buggers,’ muttered Bernard, thinking how irritated he would be if someone commandeered his semi-detached in Wandsworth.
    Afterwards, continued Olga Fiodorovna, they would lunch at a very extravagant hotel, and in the afternoon they were expected at the studio of a famous artist who worked on the outskirts of Moscow. Between six and eight in the evening it had been planned that they should meet a famous metal worker at his home. The house he lived in, very old and prestigious, had once belonged to Count Nikolai Ergolsky. The following day they were to be guests at a luncheon given in their honour by the Soviet Artists’ Union. Perhaps in the evening they would like to go to the Bolshoi Theatre.
    ‘Mr Douglas,’ she said, speaking to Ashburner. ‘Do not think I have forgotten your suitcase. I shall make enquiries first thing in the morning.’
    ‘I have the utmost confidence in you,’ he assured her, and wondered if he ought to write his name down on a piece of paper for her to take home and learn by heart.
    He took little part in the discussion that followed, dealing as it did with artistic venues. When asked directly for his opinion he said it all sounded marvellous and he would go wherever anyone else wanted to go. He had a headache and it was difficult to hear what the interpreter was saying above the noise of the restaurant, though he gathered that Mr Karlovitch would be accompanying them to both Leningrad and Georgia. Mr Karlovitch, it appeared, was very fond of Tblisi; he liked nothing better than to lie on his back in the sun and make fancy sketches of the monasteries.
    On a rostrum a band was playing. The Chinese lanterns which hung from the invisible ceiling trembled at the blare of the saxophone. For some minutes a young man dressed as a Cossack sang, in English, a selection of ballads made popular by the Beatles. There was a particularly mournful one about a Nowhere Man which Ashburner considered was meant for his ears alone. Doesn’t have a point of view, knows not where he’s going to , crooned the young man, Isn’t he a bit like you . . . and me-e-e? Ashburner tried to tell himself that at home there were places similar to this, but he knew it couldn’t be true. He had been nowhere like it, not even as a young man on a motorbike. It was the people who staggered him, not his surroundings. They filled the cavernous depths of the dining room from end to end, behaving as though they were extras in one of those continental films his wife pretended to love, eating with such abandon, gesturing so exuberantly, rising from the tables to dance with such corybantic fervour that he felt half dead. They had only to look in his direction and he was transfixed, caught like a rabbit in the headlamps of a car, the little sugar cake he was on the point of devouring arrested in mid-air. What an immense advantage they have over me, he thought, being so totally at home.
    Ashburner left the restaurant before the others had finished their coffee. He was yawning so repeatedly from exhaustion and lack of oxygen that he had long expected Nina to make some withering remark. He told Olga Fiodorovna that he was worried about getting up in the morning. ‘I have no timepiece,’ he explained.
    It had been on the tip of his tongue to mention that his wife often woke him with a cup of tea.
    Olga Fiodorovna assured him she would leave a message with the night porter, who would arrange for him to be called at eight o’clock.
    ‘I’m only two doors along,’ Bernard said, helpfully. ‘Give us a knock and I’ll lend