The Russian Interpreter

‘It depends how far they walk,’ Manning had explained gloomily. ‘If it’s over about ten kilometres it will be rather less of a rally and rather more of a ramble.’

‘Ten kilometres? They might go as far as that?’

‘Easily. It’ll be freezing cold, too, and I should think at this time of year the woods are a sea of mud.’

Proctor-Gould had fingered his ear dubiously. Manning, anxious to avoid the occasion, had urged another drawback.

‘They’ll sing songs, Gordon.’

Proctor-Gould had at once ceased to finger his ear.

‘They’ll sing songs, will they, Paul?’

‘They’ll probably expect you to sing them something, too.’

Proctor-Gould’s attitude had changed entirely.

‘I rather enjoy a bit of a sing-song, Paul. If the company’s congenial. I used to be rather in demand at parties in college. “My Father was the Keeper of the Eddystone Light” – that kind of thing. Top of the hit parade at John’s, setting all false modesty to one side.’

So Manning found himself on the Mozhaisk train, sitting opposite the girl with fair hair. He was not entirely right about the weather. The air temperature was low, but the woods on either side of the train were filled with the most brilliant spring sunlight. Already, however, people had begun to sing. They sang different songs in different parts of the carriage. Manning could hear Sasha’s clear, sweet tenor cutting through the confusion of sound, and Proctor-Gould, uttering the curious tuneless booming that comes from a man doing his best to join in a song he has never heard before. Manning hoped he would soon be allowed to get back to his home ground on ‘The Eddystone Light’.

The girl with the very fair hair was singing, too. Manning watched her covertly. She had a broad face, with distinct cheekbones and clearly defined eyebrows which were much darker than her hair. She looked as if she might be a postgraduate student or a lecturer, but Manning knew them all, and he had never seen her about the Faculty before. She caught his eyes, and at once stopped singing and lowered her eyelids.

The sight of her disturbed Manning. It threatened him with the necessity for making decisions and taking initiatives. The long and involved processes of human courtship might be about to start. If he made a move … If she responded at all … He hedged himself about with conditions and concessions. Already he could see how stupid the things would be that he would tell her to try and impress her. Already he could feel the terrible uncertainty he would go through about whether to take her hand, whether to put his arm round her and kiss her. As if it was already past history he knew exactly what he would feel on the days when she said she couldn’t see him, and how irritatingly plain she would look as she came towards him along the street. He shifted uneasily in his seat at the thought of it. This really was the worst moment in the whole awful business of courtship, the moment before it started. If indeed it did start.

He caught her eye again. They both quickly looked away. He turned his head slowly from the view out of the left-hand window to the view out of the right-hand one, so that he could let his eyes travel over her face in passing. Almost immediately he had to turn his head back from right to left to take another look at her. Once more their eyes met, and hastily parted again. He stared out of the window at the telegraph poles going by, knowing his face was loaded with a meaningless frown. What a stupid business! Did he really have to go ahead with it? He could have groaned aloud, he felt such a fool. And yet, beneath all the confusion and indecision, the current of sweet excitement ran on. It was like a brook one could hear rippling unseen beneath tangled undergrowth.

They all got off the train at a small country station surrounded by open fields, and in the confusion of identical anoraks Manning lost sight of the girl. On the horizon to the north the fields were bounded by the dark green line of the forest. Straggling like a column of deserters they set off towards it along a muddy farm track, skirting the long puddles of water in the ruts. From a group of farm buildings in the distance came the sound of loudspeakers playing a march, fading and returning in the cool breaths of wind. Gradually the snatches of music grew fainter and ceased. The great stillness of the country settled over them.

In the way that drinkers find themselves, to their surprise, in bars, Manning found himself walking beside the girl with the fair hair.

‘Hallo again,’ he said smoothly.

‘Hallo,’ said the girl, glancing at him, and then dropping her eyes.

They walked along in silence; Manning couldn’t think of anything else to say. People tried to get the singing going again, but it quickly died away. They were all too put out, in spite of themselves, by the change from effortless and tidy locomotion to propelling themselves by their own efforts along the uneven and slippery track.