Free Russian Roulette by Bernard Knight Page B

in the centre of Moscow as on the Yuri Dolgorukiy and the beat and twist numbers were watered down to sedate foxtrots and waltzes, but Gilbert, the Intourist girl and Liz and Simon enjoyed themselves well enough. Even the rotund and un-sinister-looking Jules Fragonard took the floor with Elizabeth – the only static ones were the rather overawed reverend and Michael Shaw, who could probably not even stand, let alone dance.
    He sat with a benign, glazed smile on his face, steadily working his way through a bottle of Hungarian Barack Pálinka . He would answer direct questions in monosyllables, but otherwise was a social blank.
    While Liz was away dancing with the little Swiss chap, Simon studied the red-headed Irishman with curious interest. No one knew much about him except that he was ‘arty’ … what this meant, Simon wasn’t sure. He knew that someone had mentioned that he was a writer, but whether of newspaper advertisements or poetry, he knew not. ‘Another Dublin Yeats, perhaps,’ he murmured to himself, then aloud, to the bearded man, ‘This a pure holiday or are you getting atmosphere for a novel?’
    Two red-rimmed eyes swivelled across at him and a crack appeared in the tangled red beard to show a loose-lipped grin. ‘No bloody holiday, son!’ came the enigmatic answer, borne on a blast of liquor fumes.
    â€˜Heard you were a writer,’ persisted Simon; the vicar looked at them benevolently, almost pathetically eager to be ‘one of the boys’.
    Michael Shaw made a revolting, derisive noise in his throat. ‘Writer, my ass! … I make a few bob by prostituting the English language once a week for the Fleet Street slave masters – my real job is drinking.’
    This was a long speech for him and he subsided into his glass almost immediately. Simon gave up, and turned to watch the seductive figure of Liz Treasure swaying back through the crowd towards him. She was another enigma in her own way – he had tried hard to fathom out the ‘Mrs’ angle, but still she evaded telling him whether she was widowed, divorced, or just married. He knew she kept a smart boutique in Chelsea, in partnership with a friend, but that was about as far as his knowledge went … apart from her admitting to being twenty-five. Another odd thing about her was that blasted suitcase. On three separate occasions, he had helped her with her luggage and each time she had become quite annoyed when he had tried to carry her older brown valise – in the airport at Leningrad, when he had accidently tripped over it, she had become almost incoherent with temper. A funny girl , he thought – but, oh, what a shape ! He hissed through his teeth as he watched her, as if letting off the excess pressure that the sight of her engendered in him.
    By ten thirty, the party began to break up. They had all eaten and drunk too much, even the vicar, who left first. He was followed shortly after by Monsieur Fragonard, who made effusive apologies and kissed Liz’s hand with too much relish for Simon’s liking.
    Shaw fell asleep across the table and was still there when Simon managed to prise Liz away at about eleven o’clock. Gilbert and the Russian girl were dancing the last waltz as they left.
    The ‘widow’, as he had hopefully come to think of Liz, was reluctant to leave but was in a slightly giggly state, and could not hold out against Simon’s persuasion for long.
    He had felt distinctly fuzzy himself for some time, but had got a second wind after missing a couple of rounds of vodka and, with an air of grim purpose, piloted her to the lift.
    The old lady in black – presumably a different one from the morning, but they all looked alike – took them up with an impassive, averted face, as he held Liz tightly around the shoulders whilst she put her arms around his waist. Such open amorousness was distinctly uncultured in the Soviet Union and they