Derek Lambert: The Red House

The woman had fashionably pink lips—Zhukov preferred a scarlet cupid mouth—and dyed, straw-coloured hair, its lacquered height collapsing. Zhukov had seen photographs of the Duchess of Kent and this woman reminded him of the Duchess as she would be in a decade or so.

‘And you,’ he said, ‘you are English?’

‘How clever of you.’ She was more drunk than he had supposed. ‘My husband is over there somewhere trying to be an arrogant aristocrat and a sycophant at the same time. It’s very difficult for him, poor darling, because at heart he is a pure sycophant. I thought you should know,’ she confided, ‘that my husband is present because it’s always best that people should be absolutely honest with each other at this stage.’

‘What stage?’ There was no difficulty in making conversation with this one, Zhukov thought.

‘Where is your wife?’ she demanded.

‘At home. She doesn’t like parties very much.’

‘A sensible woman. Is she a sensible woman? A sensible Russian woman?’

Zhukov didn’t want to talk too much about Valentina. She was a sensible woman, and he loved her. He smiled: it was strange that, by chatting with this middle-aged bedworthy flirt, he was carrying out the orders issued him that morning.

Peter Duchin slid into ‘More.’ Kalmykov and the Czech shouted frenziedly above the music. Anticipation gathered joyfully around them.

Zhukov asked curiously, ‘What made you come and talk to me?’ With this woman you could ask anything; you could even confess insecurity or fear because, with all the hypocrisy around, confession would emerge as a strength.

‘You’re not very sure of yourself, are you, comrade?’

He shrugged.

‘I don’t mean in your life, your work. I mean here—among all these performers … I don’t blame you, Mister …?’

‘Zhukov. Vladimir Zhukov.’

‘I don’t blame you, Vladimir. But don’t forget—they’re all just as unsure of themselves as you. In fact they’re pretty scared of you. They don’t know what to make of someone like you. The Russian bear in their midst. They try to kid themselves that you’re boorish because of your blunt manners and your clip-on tie’—she reached out and touched the black propeller—‘but they’re really worried. For one thing you represent Russia—missiles, strength, the Iron Curtain, all that. For another you challenge all their standards.’

Zhukov began to relax. ‘What standards, Mrs …?’

‘Massingham. Mrs Massingham. But you can call me Helen.’

‘What standards, Mrs Massingham?’

She spread her arms. ‘All this talk, all this posturing, all this rehearsed wit. You make a mockery of it, Mr Zhukov, and they know it. Have you ever paused to think how much insecurity a wisecrack covers up? Probably not. And, of course, you even challenge their attitudes, the whole premise of their society, and this they do not like at all.’

He nodded appreciatively. ‘Do you know something, Mrs Massingham?’

‘What’s that, Mr Zhukov?’

‘You are a very competent person. You know how to give a man strength when he most needs it. In that respect you are the complete …’ He searched for the right word.

‘The complete bitch?’

‘Far from it.’ He put down his glass on a passing tray.

‘Vladimir,’ she said, ‘would you like to dance?’

‘I would be charmed,’ said Vladimir Zhukov, soldier, diplomat, agent provocateur, spy, perfect gentleman.

Wallace Walden, accompanied by his patient wife, Sophie, looked around him with contempt. He disliked career diplomats and opportunist politicians because he believed that all their conniving was directed towards personal rather than patriotic ends: this he had long ago decided, was the cardinal difference between himself and the other Washington players.

The dinner jacket made his body look very squat and powerful. He was drinking Scotch-on-the-rocks and smoking a thick cigar—from Tampa not Havana, he explained. He jerked the cigar towards a group of laughing men in their thirties accompanied by healthy shiny-haired girls with Florida tans carefully maintained. ‘Someone important’s made a joke,’ he said. ‘A dirty one, most likely.’ He dismissed them with his cigar. ‘Court sycophants.’

Henry Massingham from the British Embassy said, ‘Don’t be too hard on them, Wallace. After all it is election year.’

‘They make me sick,’ Walden said.

‘I don’t see why. It’s all part of democracy, merely human nature applied to politics. No better, no worse than business or commerce or sport. Out of it all emerges one of the best governmental systems in the world.’

‘Maybe,’ Walden conceded. ‘But that doesn’t mean I have to like them.’ Or you, he thought, squashing out his cigar in the Waterford glass ashtray.

Massingham’s business was political assessment. An elegant and professional eavesdropper. Almost a caricature of the British diplomat because he had discovered that American ridicule of the typical Englishman disguises considerable reverence. At first he had been self-conscious about his deep and decent voice; then he had found that his American companions (and antagonists) were just as self-conscious about their accents in his presence; so he ladled it on with the result that he was often complimented by Washington women on his divine diction. Massingham also worked on the accompaniments to his accent: suits of striped and slightly crumpled elegance, regimental tie askew, wavy hair a little too long. When he overheard a White House aide describe him as ‘that limey pansy’ he managed to interpret the insult as an inverted compliment.

Henry Massingham had also established a reputation for erudition and artistic appreciation and it was rumoured that he wrote poetry. ‘A real culture vulture,’ the Americans said, unaware of his rather mediocre degree at Trinity College, Dublin. Which was one of the reasons that Henry Massingham, in his late forties and beginning to accept that he would never become an ambassador, or even a minister, adored the Washington scene: unlike his own kind they hadn’t unmasked him.

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