Майкл Ридпат - The Diplomat’s Wife

I grinned. Hugh had written to me that he had started learning Scots Gaelic for the fun of it, and I had wanted to surprise him. ‘I got Hatchards to send me MacLaren’s Gaelic Self-Taught . It’s fiendishly difficult, isn’t it?’

‘It is,’ said Hugh. ‘Which makes it more fun, don’t you think?’

Unlike Hugh, I had never been to school. My parents had employed a succession of tutors and governesses. I had learned French and German from them. Hugh had taught me Latin and Greek, or at least got me started, and with Hugh’s help I had had a bash at Italian. We both loved languages and were good at them, but Gaelic was a cut above the rest, even Greek.

Mama came down to greet her son, but Papa remained snoozing in his business room. Jecks took Hugh’s suitcase up to his bedroom, and Hugh glanced at the sky.

‘After that drive, I’d love to get some fresh air before it gets dark. Do you want to come with me, Ems?’

‘Rather!’ I said. Twenty minutes later we were crossing the brook at the bottom of the garden and heading across the fields towards the moor. It was a cloudy damp February day, and the top half of Dartmoor merged into the grey. The going was muddy, especially by the gates where the red South Devon cows had churned up the red south Devon soil. Hugh headed for a gully scored into the flank of the moor, from which a stream tumbled down to join the brook that ran by the Hall. It was a walk we had both done many times.

‘Have you read Down and Out in Paris and London ?’ I asked. ‘George Orwell. I’ve almost finished it. It’s really very good.’

‘I’ve heard good things about it.’

‘Did you know that tramps are called tramps because they have to spend all day tramping from one parish to another? They are not allowed to spend more than one night in a parish. It’s beastly!’

‘I think I did know that,’ said Hugh. ‘And it does sound beastly.’

‘Mind you, Paris is just as bad. The restaurants there are like the Black Hole of Calcutta, at least for the kitchen staff. I’m not sure I could bear to eat a meal there. Do you know this man Orwell?’

‘I haven’t met him,’ Hugh said. ‘I think Orwell isn’t his real name. It’s Blythe or Blair or something. And I believe he went to Eton.’

‘Really? I find that disappointing.’

Our father had attended Eton and loathed it. Which is why he had sent Hugh to a public school in Wiltshire instead. I had imagined George Orwell as a crusading man of the people — certainly not someone who could have touched his relatives for the odd fiver if he was in real trouble.

‘How is the cramming going?’

‘All right, I think.’ Hugh was cramming for the Foreign Office exam, which involved spending most of his days at an establishment near the British Museum, brushing up on his languages and learning economics and history.

‘Are you confident? For the exam?’

‘As confident as I can be,’ said Hugh. ‘But it’s frightfully competitive. Last year they only took the top seven out of eighty-two applicants.’

‘Well, I’m sure you’ll pass,’ I said. And I was. Top seven was easy for Hugh.

‘What are your plans?’ Hugh asked.

‘I have no plans. I’m waiting for a big fat husband to come down the chimney.’

‘Is Mama making you do the season again this summer?’

If a deb failed to snare a husband in her first season, the rule was she could have another go the following year. ‘She’s trying. But not as hard as I would have expected. I think she may have given up.’

‘Good. It really isn’t your thing, is it?’

‘They’re all chumps, Hugh. Every single one of them.’

Hugh laughed.

We crossed a stile into open moorland, and the path pointed steeply uphill, along the edge of the brook. We were both panting. The gully stretched up into the mist.

I felt outrageously happy, being with my brother, alone, up on the moor we both knew so well. I started to sing: ‘ Oh, ’tis my delight on a dirty night, to bomb the bourgeoisie! ’

It was a song Hugh had taught me when I was fifteen. He laughed and joined in as we climbed.

‘I think we should stop here,’ he said at last, panting.

So we paused and turned to look back at Chaddington Hall in its wooded valley, two plumes of smoke twisting up in the still damp air, the parish church squatting a short distance from it.

Hugh took a deep breath. ‘I do miss this. Especially after London.’

I glanced at my brother. ‘I do have a plan. But I’ll need your help.’

‘Oh yes?’ Hugh grinned at me, as if expecting an idea that was a little odd.

He got one.

‘I’d like to visit the Soviet Union.’

‘What! Mama and Papa would never let you.’

‘But you went last year.’ Hugh had gone for three weeks with two old friends from school and Cambridge.

‘Yes. And they didn’t like that much either.’

‘Well, if they let you, why shouldn’t they let me? And don’t say it’s because I am a girl.’

‘Because you are a girl.’

‘I told you not to say that!’

‘I know you did, but it’s true.’

‘It may be true, but it’s wrong.’

‘It may be wrong — it is wrong — but where are you going to get the money from if they don’t give it to you?’

‘I’ve been saving up. And...’

‘Yes?’ Hugh looked at me suspiciously.

‘And maybe you could lend me some? When my fat husband comes down the chimney I can pay you back.’

Hugh didn’t say yes. But then he didn’t say no either. ‘You can’t go by yourself.’

‘Well, that’s the other thing you can help me with. Could you put me in touch with people? Women, preferably. You must know heaps of people who’d like to go.’

Hugh set off down the hillside. ‘I’ll lend you the money — no, I’ll give you the money, as long as you promise not to tell Papa where it came from. Or anyone else for that matter.’

‘Oh, you are a darling!’

‘And I can give you the names of a couple of people to write to. But you must keep my name out of it. You see...’

‘What?’ I asked. I didn’t like the sound of Hugh’s voice. ‘What is it, Hugh?’

‘I know you are not going to like this, Ems, but I’ve changed my mind about a few things. Political things.’

‘Yes?’

‘You see, as I’ve got a bit older, I’ve come to realize that some of my thoughts on politics were a little naive. Fine in theory — admirable in theory — but not practical in the real world.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I’m still a socialist. I believe in helping the poor. It’s just I’m no longer sure that communism is the right way to do it.’

‘But... Hugh! What about all the stuff we’ve talked about for the last couple of years? The books you’ve made me read! I read the whole of Capital , for heaven’s sake! You’re not saying that’s naive?’

‘I suppose I am a bit.’

‘Well, what about Russia? You came back saying the Soviets have really got the answer. Everyone is equal. The farms are modernizing. The Five Year Plan is bringing prosperity. You saw it with your own eyes!’

‘We saw a lot of starving people in Russia. And they lock a lot of people up. Dick came away with a different opinion; I think he may be right.’ Dick was one of the two old school friends who had travelled with Hugh.

‘Those were all kulaks, you said!’

‘Maybe. But, as Dick says, kulaks are people too.’ Kulaks were rich Russian peasants whom Stalin had accused of profiteering off poor Russian peasants. ‘Warnes of Tumphill Farm is a kulak. Why should he starve?’

We trudged down the hill in silence, as I tried to make sense of it. Tumphill Farm was one of the most successful farms on the estate, and Mr Warnes was generally admired for his expertise. I liked Mr Warnes; everyone did.