West of Sunset by Dirk Bogarde

Author:Dirk Bogarde
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Chapter 5

Conversations

Mouse sat upright in her chair, arms folded about her body, motionless apart from her feet which swung nervously a few inches above the worn carpet of her bedroom.

‘I don’t know. I really don’t know,’ she said aloud in English. ‘It is not at all the behaviour of Irma Miratova, it is not at all. Is she ill? Perhaps I should telephone Doctor Frost … such a responsibility! House calls are so expensive in America, and his appearance might alarm her greatly. I’ll wait.’ She nodded her head in agreement. ‘I’ll wait until tea-time. She told me to awaken her then.’

‘Come to me at tea-time, Mousie,’ she had said.

So I shall wait. But it is a great worry.

For Irma Miratova to refuse her food for three days! To be coaxed, pleaded with, finally implored to take a dish of hot soup just to give her a little strength after all the vodka which she had consumed. That was the oddest of things, odder than the silence, for she was, by nature, generally exceedingly greedy. The fact that she spoke hardly at all was not, in itself, alarming. She was frequently silent now. But not to eat!

Of course she was a good Russian, and vodka was something to which she was well accustomed. She could, and often she had, drunk a man under her own table and been none the worse. Merrier even, and proud of it.

But this form of drinking was different. Steady, silent, joyless. All in the few days since her tea with Alexi Andreyev. Something serious must have taken place at that meeting. What could it have been?

Irma Miratova was not in the very least interested in anything which had happened to Mouse that afternoon, not the slightest glimmer of interest did she show, but that was really not unusual. She hardly ever showed interest in what Mouse did, and if bored by detail, yawned. But it was strange that on this occasion, an unexpected journey into town, a taxi, bargains to discuss, she had showed not the very least signs of curiosity or even awareness, but had simply sat silent in the taxi and stared ahead as Mouse recounted, with a degree of suppressed delight, how she had managed to secure six toilet rolls for the price of only four at a discount store. A bargain which she shyly hoped would bring at least a murmur of praise and which she would then be able to cap with the astonishing fact that she had found a liquor store where she had purchased three bottles of vodka, saving thirty cents on each. She had been elated by the great whitewashed letters scrawled across the windows. ‘Slashing Reductions! All Stock Reduced! Save DOLLARS! Must Close!’ Normally such an eye for thrift would have elicited at least a nod of approval from Irma Miratova.

But not that afternoon.

Mouse’s breathless announcement went almost unnoticed. A slow, sliding look from pale grey eyes, hooded now with unaccustomed concern. Nothing verbal at all.

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