Free Winter Garden by Beryl Bainbridge Page B

persisted Ashburner.
    ‘As well as could be expected after seeing that bloody folk-art,’ shouted Bernard, exasperated.
    ‘I gather they were only tea-towels,’ Ashburner said. ‘Even so, I thought one or two of them were rather pretty.’
    Enid, when she joined them, was wearing a black taffeta dress and carrying a dorothy bag made of threadbare velvet. When she sat down she rustled like falling tissue paper.
    ‘Smashing texture,’ enthused Bernard, and he stroked the surface of her bag as though it were a cat.
    Ashburner, complimenting Enid insincerely on her smart appearance, considered her frock outmoded, to say the least; it was beginning to irritate him the way they all affected to admire anything old and second-hand no matter how appalling its condition. His wife had inherited an evening reticule embroidered with seed pearls from Uncle Robert’s aunt. It was as good as new, strictly for show and insured for one hundred pounds. He was in the middle of telling them about it, describing the silver clasp, the flawlessness of its inner lining of ivory-coloured silk, when Bernard cried out belligerently, ‘I’m warning you both, if the work exhibited this evening is of the same standard as that crap we were subjected to this afternoon, I’m walking out.’
    Ashburner was both bewildered and offended. It was true that his wife sometimes acquired a far-away look in her eyes when he spoke to her for longer than a minute, but that was understandable, and though it would have been an exaggeration to pretend that his professional colleagues hung on his every word they would never had interrupted him in mid-sentence. It was part of his job to assess character and from what he had observed of Bernard over the last forty-eight hours it was difficult, despite his often boorish behaviour, to dismiss him as merely an ignorant fellow. There were depths of sensitivity in Bernard which, if the man had not been an artist, Ashburner would have found disconcerting. There were only two rational explanations for his display of rudeness: either he was overtired from being up or down all night with Enid, or he was more worried than he cared to admit at the continuing absence of Nina.
    Summoned by Olga Fiodorovna they left the restaurant and collected their coats from the cloakroom. Ashburner was astounded to see Bernard donning a Sherlock Holmes affair in expensive check tweed with a sort of cape attached to the shoulders. He couldn’t understand how Bernard had managed to fit such a voluminous garment into a carrier bag. He was so markedly silent during the short drive to the People’s Institute that Olga Fiodorovna linked her arm in his and begged him to cheer up.
    ‘Tomorrow, Mr Douglas,’ she promised, ‘we shall find your suitcase. I give you my word.’
    ‘Lovely,’ he said and watching Bernard, who sat slumped in the front of the car, wondered if there was any significance in the dispirited droop of his head.
    The lecture took place in a large room divided in half by a table and a row of metal chairs. Behind the table stood a dozen screens hung with drawings executed in very thin pencil. The audience faced the table. The English visitors sat self-consciously in front of the screens as though part of the exhibition. Throughout the lecture Olga Fiodorovna translated in an urgent whisper, loud enough to embarrass Ashburner but too low in pitch for him to hear distinctly. The phrase ‘animal-lover’ reached his ears, though he couldn’t be sure of the context. He was on tenterhooks lest Bernard should erupt into anger; apart from having twisted round in his chair so that he now sat with his back to the audience, he appeared to be calmly studying those drawings closest to him. Once there was a commotion in the corridor outside and Ashburner looked up expectantly, heart racing, hoping as the door was flung open to see Nina sailing in, a ship come safe to port. He was acutely disappointed when a powerfully built man, dressed