FICKLE TRAVELLERS

The large assembly of travellers gathered outside the London railway station seemed to be stunned: they had just heard the announcement of a strike at British railways and that they will be taken to Dover coast by bus, to be ferried across the channel and there, at Oostend, their connecting train will be waiting for them.

The whole replacement schedule seemed a bit ad hoc to them and while they are still shocked about the news of the strike, everybody doubted that it will be possible to reach the connecting train on the continent on schedule. The dreary thought sunk into their brain: What if we miss this connecting train on the continent? How will we get across Europe to our distant point of destination?

The mass of desperate people got bigger all the time as new fellow travellers kept arriving.

Despair started to sink-in and spread. People from all parts of the world started to find each other by their mother tongue or the nearest common language they could speak. Together they chatted in highly alarmed voices and exchanged their thoughts about British Railways, England in general and the cheek of having a strike at the travellers’ most inconvenient time.

What if the busses had a strike as well? There is no such transport in sight and it’s already time to depart for the coast. Rumours had it that one such bus was already on the way, that it had left very early with the first batch of tourists. Do they have only one bus working? That would be nowhere enough to solve the travellers’ needs.

The international crowd is still growing with new arriving tourists being informed of the strike whilst their faces dropped.

It was a misery day, there was fog in the morning and it had barely lifted when it started to drizzle. The crowd huddled together under a shelter of a large bus station, muttering to each other and some to themselves. The few railway workers that still had the nerve to show themselves, seem to sense the people’s desperation and tried to cheer them up.

Somebody with a heavy Welsh accent called out: ’Come out in the rain – I will sing for you!’

This attempt at humour failed miserably and something like a dog-like growl emanated from the mass of desperados and words like ‘bloody jokes’ in various accents could be heard.

Now, a new sound emerged: that of travellers who were freezing by now and with their feet scraping the concrete floor of the large bus depot where they huddled together.

Suddenly their mood changed: A bus was arriving and pulling up into the depot. It was very dirty and really looked like having done a long trip in inclement weather. Grime and dirt was thickly around the wheels and the tyres were covered thickly with mud.

Whilst everybody grabbed their luggage in order to storm into this bus – nothing happened. That behemoth of a vehicle stood silent for a seemingly long while. Then it slowly opened and the driver stepped out with some paperwork and disappeared into an office.

All this went on far too slowly for the masses and loud protest could be heard from the irate masses. Especially a women with a heavy German accent – very Prussian, actually – became increasingly vociferous. Probably being unaccustomed to train strikes in her native Berlin, people could only agree with her loud exclamation about the prevailing situation: ‘Zis iss impossiple!’

After a perceived eternity, the office door opened and the bus driver came out, carefully carrying a cup of tea in this hands. Leasurely, he went to his bus and luxuriously eased himself into his drivers seat.

Now, the passengers had their tickets checked – with unnerving calmness - by a mate of the driver – same uniform and detached attitude - and there was a quick storming of the bus. Some lucky ones seated themselves and held expectantly their breath, however, nothing happened as the driver appeared to be oblivious to the necessity of speeding off to the coast.

Slowly, he took his sips of tea, luxuriously enjoying it’s flavour before swallowing.

Enraged cries could now be heard: first the strike and now the bus is not moving! Especially the German woman could not control herself any longer. Rushing through the bus to the driver, she bent towards him and hissed menacingly at him: ’Vat iss dis? First zer iss a strike and ve vere told zat ze busses vill take us to ze coast but zer vas no bus anyvere. Finally you come mit ze bus, but now, you are not moving but go zip zip zip…….’

It was suddenly very quiet in the bus and the prevalent atmosphere was that of complete solidarity with the German woman. They nodded to each other in agreement and their expression seem to say: ’Trust the Germans to put things succinctly. Bless her for speaking up for all of us!’

The bus driver pulled in his neck slightly at hearing his mother tongue spoken in such a fashion. However, he took another ‘zip’ from his cup after which he slowly and placidly addressed her: ’Madam! I have just been to the coast and back, a two-hour-trip each way. Which means that I have been four hours on the road. Now, I have another four hour trip in front of me – I am surely entitled to a cup of tea!’

Whilst this was spoken with a calm conviction, with a Cockney accent and reaffirmed with a nod, it had a devastating effect on the passengers. Suddenly, as the woman made her way back to her seat everybody backed away from her, seemingly not wanting to have anything to do with her. Again, they nodded to each other and their expression seem to betray their thoughts:  ‘Bloddy Germans! Nothing but trouble makers. Let the poor man have his well earned cuppa – he is hard working!

Finally, the bus moved out of the depot and started its long journey through London city and towards the coast. The German woman faced a very isolated trip as nobody wanted to speak with her……..

ME AND THE KGB / NKVD ……..

Dear Visitor,

Today, I have the pleasure of introducing a guest author, my good friend Michael Muschamp, and am confident that you will enjoy his amusing reminiscing as much as I do. PETER FREDERICK

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Yes, I know the heading should be “The NKVD and I”. Whatever, at least it rhymes.

1962 found me in London where I had worked for three years or so as manager of a New Zealand firm’s UK office. Not the world’s biggest office; self plus secretary and the occasional visiting fireman.

For the past three years, I had been sharing an office in the posh environs of Mayfair with another Kiwi, Alex Marks, who was the London end of a large NZ construction company. His boss and mine were good friends and the arrangement worked very well until the summer of ’62 when, for reasons unknown either to me or Alex, the bosses fell out and I was told to find an alternative home. Which I did, just round the corner from the ‘old’ one. Mind you, to get to my small office on the first floor, you had to fight your way past he rubbish bins of the ground floor caff.

Alex was about fifteen years my senior, a chap of medium height, greyish hair, bright eyes behind large rimmed glasses. Annually, he attended his good friend, a Jewish tailor, and bought two suits; by the month’s end they looked as if he’d slept in them. He probably had, for his success with the opposite sex was, not to put too fine a point on it, extraordinary. Given that he was usually emitting a good deal of garlic, I could only remain somewhat staggered

An example of his success in this important aspect of heterosexual life occurred in the spring of 1962. We met, by arrangement, in Geneva, both en route to the Hannover Fair, the biggest of its kind in Europe. It was chilly for the end of April but we put up with the temperature and had a coffee in a lakeside café. There was hardly a soul there, save for, a few tables away, an attractive woman in, I guessed, her early thirties.

We left to do our own bits of business, arranging to meet at Alex’s hotel three hours hence, i.e. at 7.30. A stickler for punctuality (a defect which has haunted me ever since my naval days), I knocked on Alex’s door at precisely 1930, local time. The door was opened. But not by Alex but the “lady by the lake”.

She joined us for dinner and left immediately after, explaining that her husband was due home early next morning. She spoke English with a decided Russian accent, but, at the time, I thought no more of that, knowing Alex’s love of his native country and its language.

He had arrived in New Zealand in 1920, the youngest of three children whose parents had undertaken the perilous journey to escape the Bolshevists, via Siberia and Kamkatcha for, as I was to discover a little later, they were , in the words of another émigré, “upper-middle class intellectuals, a bit like the Huxleys”. The language at home in Wellington, where they eventually settled, was Russian. Indeed, his father who was one of the founders of New Zealand’s radio manufacturing business, only spoke a very few words of English to his dying day and, whatever their family name was, it certainly wasn’t Markov or even Marx, the anglicised version of which had become Alex’s patronymic.

A few months later, in early October, it was cold, grey in England and, when it wasn’t raining, looked as if it would do so at any tick of the clock.

The newspapers, the BBC and ITV (thank God, only two channels then) were full of dire warnings. World War Three was just a-round the corner. Or, so they said. The United States and the USSR were playing a deadly game of ‘chicken’. Who was going to crack first as the Russian ships bearing missiles for Mr Castro were approaching Cuba?

My previous employment as a naval officer meant that I was subject to recall to the forces of the Crown whenever a state of emergency was declared or such seemed likely. Thus, I was not completely bewildered when my phone rang and an unmistakably military voice said, “Muschamp?”

“Michael Muschamp,” I replied, hoping, in vain, as it transpired, that the disembodied one might be a little less peremptory.

“You’re on the Emergency List of the RN, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I was transferred from the RNZN when I came to live in England.” I purposely omitted ‘sir’ as I had no idea who was interrogating me. I didn’t have long to wait.

“I’m Colonel Allen, War Office,” quoth the ill-mannered one, “come to my office in Curzon Street tomorrow at eleven.”

Not so much as ‘by your leave’ or ‘hope you haven’t another appointment.’

“I’ll be there, sir.”

“Room 35 on the third floor. Don’t be late.”

Having established that the fellow was three ranks senior to me (maybe only two as Lieutenant-Colonels are usually referred to without the first word), I thought I had better throw in the ‘sir’ in aid of good and friendly British Commonwealth relations. And ‘Curzon Street’ meant ‘MI5’, a fact of which I had become quite aware. for, before she was lucky enough to marry me, my wife had worked there though, of course, her post was a good deal junior to that of the peremptory “Brown Job” (the navy’s epithet for army personnel).

This exchange had left me aghast. I was fully aware that, some seven years since I had ‘been at sea’, I would be about as much use to one of Her Majesty’s Ships as a rope entangled in a propeller (‘screw’ in naval parlance). Nevertheless, I fronted the apparently anonymous Curzon Street building, told the guard who I was and where I was going. He checked, made a phone call to which he contributed,

“He’s in a suit, sir. Quite smart, actually.”

Some compliment.

I took a creaky lift to the third floor, found Room 35 and knocked.

“Come in, damn you.”

So I came in.

To face an angry-looking fifty-ish man, regimental tie, rather creased suit. He motioned me to a chair opposite him.

“Siddown.”

If that’s the way to win friends and influence people, I went to the wrong school, I mused.

I sat.

“This feller Alex Marks, you know him?”

“Yes, sir. We shared an office until about six months ago.”

“Why did you leave?

“Our respective bosses in Auckland had a bit of a falling-out.”

“But you still see Marks?”

“Yes, he’s a very good friend.”

“Funny sort of friend. You know he’s a Russian?” 

“ I know he was born in Moscow about 1916 and fled eastward with his family a bit later.. They finished up in New Zealand after a hair-raising trip. Not that he remembers it, but I’ve met his sister who told me about it.”

“You know he’s been seeing some Russians from their embassy here?”

“Yes, sir. I went with him once to the Moscow Arms where he introduced me to several Russians.” (The pub’s name had nothing to do with matters Russian except for the odd coincidence that it was in Moscow Road. In West Kensington) “But they all wanted to speak Russian so I didn’t go again. Of course he knows plenty of Russians who live here. He enjoys speaking Russian and, as someone once said, ‘You can take the man out of Russia but you can’t take Russia out of the man’”

“Well, I don’t want you to see him any more.”

“Might I enquire, sir, what right you have to tell me this? I may well be on the Emergency List of the Navy, but I am yet to be called up and I was unaware that a State of Emergency had been declared.”

“You are a cheeky young colonial. Get out.” 

So I got out.

I didn’t tell Alex.

(to be continued…..)

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NOTE: 

Would you like to leave a message for  Michael, right below? Many thanks!