Does any of that tourist money stay here? No. It is taken back to Surbiton and Twickenham and Purley; and at night the muggers and the alcoholics re-emerge as if nothing has occurred to interrupt their routines. The tourists return to Brown’s and White’s and the Inn On The Park. Up the West End, that’s the best end. . . Disneyworld last year, Englandworld this. Each country a different theme-park, existing in isolation, cosmetically perfect. And the Westway carries the buses and the sports cars and the trucks over the grime, the unromantic desperate poverty, and nobody need ever know in what human degradation its great pillars are sunk. But it made a profit for Mr Marples and Mr Ridgeway; it made a profit for the speculators of the swinging sixties, the Feinsteins and the Goldblatts and the Greenburgs.
Mrs Cornelius hated the Westway. She said it destroyed the character of the neighbourhood. It attracted outsiders, too, who had no business coming. ‘This woz orlways a friendly district. Everyone knew everyone else. Now ‘arf ther people in ther noo flats ‘re from Tower ‘Amlets an’ Spitalfields. No bleedin’ wonder there’s more crime abart. They know their mums carn’t spot ‘em.’ She firmly believed most thieves were young and did not properly understand the rules: you did not steal from your own. The old family gangs of Notting Dale used to fight amongst themselves. If you were not associated with the gangs you were left alone. The break-up of the family has had consequences even the Church could not anticipate. But we are watching civilisation itself collapse, after all, throughout the Christian world. The Hun swarms again over our ruins and hucksters unpack their stalls in our holy places; travelling players perform lewd charades in our churches while the patrician hides in his villa outside the city, afraid to raise his voice against the very people who bought his birthright. So History repeats and Christ looks down on us and weeps. I thought to save the world from meanness and cruelty; instead I have survived to witness its degeneration. I might even live to see its final destruction.
I did my best. Mrs Cornelius alone appreciated the appalling irony of my life. I was a genius, but I lacked an appreciation of Evil. My Baroness called me ‘charmingly amoral’. By this I think she meant the same thing.
THREE
WE ARE THE shifting pastures on which the microbes graze, our dead skin is their sustenance and we are their universe. Perhaps we move in orbits as predictable to them as planets and that is why mosquitoes always know where to find us. It might only be delusion which makes us believe we travel at random or according to individual volition. Russian soil was to know my feet sooner than I might ever have guessed when I left Odessa. It was probably pre-ordained. I impressed the captain with a suggestion of business in Batoum important to the Government forces, so he willingly gave me leave to spend time ashore. The Baroness, too, would be allowed to go, though he made it clear he would not be responsible for any passengers who failed to board by the time the ship sailed again. ‘We remain under orders to take off as many refugees as we can reasonably accommodate, Mr Pyatnitski. However, we are not a civilian vessel and there’s some urgency about our commission, as I’m sure you understand.’
I gave him my word I would be on deck when the Rio Cruz cast off from Batoum. ‘I hope to contact certain anti-Bolshevik elements while ashore,’ I said. He said my reasons were my own affair. I immediately sought out Leda Nicolayevna who of course was delighted with my news and already planned to leave Kitty and the nanyana on board. Her excuse was that she planned to shop for a day or two. She thought we should stay just one night and return to the ship. If the Rio Cruz was still not ready to sail, we could then spend another night in Batoum, and so on. ‘But how shall we find a hotel?’
‘I will solve the problem easily,’ I told her. ‘I have lived by my wits all my life. I am extremely resourceful.’
Her love-making that afternoon was if anything more joyously zestful than ever and eagerly I began to look forward to our ‘shore-leave’ as she called it.
By breakfast-time next morning the air was much warmer but it had begun to rain with steady persistence. At the table. Captain Monier-Williams announced we should be docking in Batoum within two hours. ‘It will be a relief to put in to a port where some sort of order survives.’ This was his third visit in two months. The British had administered both town and harbour for almost a year. ‘Though God knows what it’s like now. The last time I spoke to Drake, the Captain of the Port, he was at his wit’s end. Huge numbers flooding in from all over Russia.’
‘The British should be flattered,’ I said. ‘It means they’re trusted.’
‘If you don’t mind me saying so, Mr Pyatnitski, it’s a terrible burden. What happens when we leave?’
‘They’ll pack up and move across the border into Turkey.’ Jack Bragg cheerfully attempted to save my feelings. ‘They can’t be worse off.’ Anatolia was only ten miles from Batoum. ‘Perhaps we should go the whole hog and declare the place a British Protectorate?’
‘I’m not sure the Russian Army would be pleased to hear that.’ Captain Monier-Williams offered me a dry little smile. ‘Anyway, at least here we’ll get a fairly clear idea of what our job’s supposed to be. Anyone wishing to go ashore had better get a chit from Mr Larkin.’ The Second Officer was acting as purser and as liaison between the Russian passengers and the British crew. Mrs Cornelius was not yet up and I was grateful. I would have been embarrassed had she been there before I was able to tell her my plans. ‘I’ll warn you,’ the captain went on, ‘that Bolshevik agents are everywhere in town. A fair bit of sabotage and general mayhem, I gather. So be careful who you talk to.’ This was addressed to us all. ‘And we’ll be checking papers and possessions pretty carefully when you come back. We don’t want any bombs slipped into your suitcases.’ He spoke sardonically, but it was evident his attitude towards his job was unchanged. He was as impatient as anyone to reach Constantinople.
As I rose to leave, the seedy Hernikof sidled up to the captain. He was dressed in dreadful tweed and smoking a German cigar. His unsteady eyes and weak mouth seemed to race through a dozen different configurations as if he sought the combination most agreeable to our commander. ‘Sir,’ he said thickly, in English, ‘I would be grateful for a word.’
Monier-Williams, I am sure, liked him no better than I, but he was polite and patient with the Jew, as he was with all of us. Hernikof spoke softly and I could not understand him. I was anxious to withdraw, so made an excuse and went out on deck to join my Baroness forward. She was standing by the rail under her wide umbrella, dressed in dark blue. Kitty was playing nearby with two little wooden dolls, under the shelter of the bridge, while Marusya Veranovna sat stolidly beside her, at attention on a folding stool, eyeing the dolls as if they might be rabid. I lifted my hat to them both as the Baroness turned, smiling at me. We exchanged our usual fairly formal greeting, then I said quietly: ‘In two hours we’ll reach Batoum. But you must see Mr Larkin and obtain a pass. It will look best, I think, if we go separately.’