As the Count was just about to put his key in the front door, he turned to see a young man in uniform appear from nowhere and hurry up to the cab, which was still standing by the kerb. The Count couldn’t see his face as he jumped into the back seat, but there seemed to be something familiar about him. The cab drove off and the Count opened his door, crossed the threshold and deposited his hat on the stand and his briefcase on the table in the hall. He stood briefly outside the drawing room door and listened to the clink of glasses and the murmur of polite conversation. He took a breath and pushed the door open. The room was full and the Count was aware of familiar faces intermingled with some unfamiliar ones. His wife had said she was going to invite members of the Polish exile community to meet some of their new neighbours. At the far end of the room, his wife’s beautiful face bobbed in to view. She was smiling happily and evidently hadn’t missed him. He walked up to her and kissed her on the cheek. “I am sorry, my darling, but the cabinet meeting just went on forever.”
Maria Tarkowski was ten years younger than her husband and could have passed for a woman twenty years younger. She wore her jet-black hair in a short bob and had a Mediterranean look about her, although she had been born and bred in Krakow of good Polish stock. “Never mind, Adam. You are here now.” She had been chatting merrily to an elderly lady and, switching from Polish to English, she introduced her husband.
“This is my husband, Miss Davidson. Miss Davidson is one of our neighbours, Adam. She is a romantic novelist. A very good one, so I am told.” His wife glided off to another old lady nearby. Miss Davidson, who wore an ornate black dress, which the Count guessed might have done service at cocktail parties fifty years ago, simpered. “Well, I don’t know about that. Are you much of a reader, Count Tarkowski?”
“Yes. Well, I don’t have much time at present, but back in Poland I have, or perhaps I should say I had, a fine old library. I collected old books amongst other things.”
“You don’t say. Well, as I was just saying to your charming wife…”
Out of the corner of one eye, the Count became aware of someone waving a hand at him from the other side of the room. As his eyes focused, his heart missed a beat. Miss Davidson was telling him something about her latest novel, but he wasn’t taking it in. Why on earth had his wife invited that madman Russian? The maid passed with a tray of drinks and he reached out for a vodka. Miss Davidson’s babble seemed to have stopped and she was now looking enquiringly at him.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.”
“I was just wondering if you read Dickens, Count. I find him…”
At this point he felt a large hand fall heavily on his shoulder. “Na zdrowie, my friend. How goes it?” The Count smiled apologetically at Miss Davidson and turned reluctantly to face a burly, bearded bear of a man. “Voronov. Kak dela? How are you?”
The bear responded by grasping the Count around the shoulders and enveloping him in a great hug. The overpowering aroma of vodka and pickled onions made the Count’s nostrils twitch. “Prekvasno, Adam, Spasibo. I am in fine fettle. It has been a long time.”
*