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order to tease him. She gave me a rather condescending glance, and Thomas introduced us. She was very striking. She had sleek, beautifully-dressed dark hair, deep blue eyes under long dark lashes, and pale, aquiline features. She was of medium height, but slender, and the expensively-tailored, close-fitting costume she was wearing made her look taller than she was.
    She sat down and looked lazily across at me. ‘What paper do you write for?’ she asked.
    I told her the Record.
    â€™Really? How can you bear it?’ She had an infuriating drawl.
    Her eyes travelled round the compartment and she gave an exclamation of mild annoyance. ‘You don’t mean to say you’ve got this place all to yourself?’
    I smiled. ‘Naturally. I’m a capitalist pariah.’
    I could see that she was mentally working out possible permutations and combination and not getting anywhere, except back with Mrs Clarke.
    â€˜I suppose,’ she said, ‘you’re going to write a lot of nonsense about Russia?’
    â€˜I don’t know what I’m going to write, yet.’
    â€˜That’s unusual – most correspondents make up their minds before they’ve even seen the place.’
    â€˜I’ve been there before,’ I said. ‘Have you?’
    â€˜This is my fifth visit,’ she said loftily.
    I nodded. ‘Those pre-war conducted tours were such good value, weren’t they?’ Leningrad and Moscow, a few days in the Crimea or the Caucasus, a trip down the Volga… “Will you give me now, please, your sight-seeing coupons!” Delightful!’
    It may surprise you to learn, Mr Verney, that I’ve made quite a study of the country and that I’d like very much to work there.’
    â€˜You’d have to lower your standards a bit,’ I said. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard that sort of thing from a fashionable woman.
    â€˜That simply shows how little you know.
    As a matter of fact, people with creative imagination make an excellent living in Russia. Not that that’s so important – what matters is that they can feel some sense of purpose there, too. It’s the only country in the world where the artist knows exactly where he’s going.’
    â€˜I knew one who went to a forced labour camp.’
    â€˜Nonsense!’ she said, without heat. Her air of conscious superiority was hard to take. Thomas was gazing at her in evident admiration. I could easily have lost my temper, but the luncheon bell saved me. Perdita got up, very gracefully. ‘How tedious all this eating is!’ She gave me a disdainful nod. ‘Coming, Izzle-win?’ He went after her happily, like a puppy called to heel.
    I lingered for a while. I didn’t much fancy having to listen to the eight of them going into an ecstatic huddle over Russia in the dining-car. In the end, however, hunger called – I was too recently out of England to share Perdita’s view that eating was a bore.
    A couple of compartments along, I almost collided with an emerging Mrs Clarke. She was a plump, large-framed woman, with a neck and chin that formed one massif of flesh. Her face was flushed, and she seemed to be having a little difficulty with her breathing.
    Was that the lunch bell, dear?’ she asked, and then she noticed that I was a stranger. ‘Oh, excuse me,’ she said, pushing a fuzz of dark, dyed hair behind her ear, ‘I didn’t know… ‘
    I smiled. ‘Yes, it was the lunch bell.’
    â€˜I don’t think I want any lunch. Something I had for breakfast hasn’t agreed with me. If you’re going in there, I wonder if you’d mind telling some friends of mine that I’m feeling a bit poorly?’
    â€˜You mean Mr Mullett and company? Yes, I’ll tell them.’
    â€˜That’s very kind of you, I’m sure.’ Mrs Clarke looked at me with new interest. ‘Are you joining the