Mrs Harris Goes to Moscow by Paul Gallico

shouldered a path through the waiting throng with the two in tow, gave an order to the operator who immediately closed out the rest of the horde and took them up to the seventh floor or what proved to be the top.
    In the corridor outside the lift they were confronted by a woman seated at a desk, a gross, obese creature who in many ways looked like their guide. Both were decorated veterans of the KGB. The organization was taking no chances with the dangerous pair from Britain but whereas Praxevna Lelechka resembled a wood carving, the other reminded of a large grey bloated spider squatting in a corner of its web ready to pounce. Later on she was to be named and engraved in Ada’s mind as Mrs ’Orrible.
    Mrs ’Orrible’s eyes were as malevolently prismatic and gleaming as an arachnid’s and the shape of her mouth seemed to be especially moulded for stinging. She had no neck, the gross head simply sat upon her corpulency.
    The two women exchanged a few words in Russian, Mrs ’Orrible handed over the key and the guide said, ‘Come, I show you your room. I hopeyou like.’ She led them down towards the end of the corridor, unlocked the door and ushered them inside. Immediately a middle-aged maid in a neat apron and cap appeared and entered likewise and was addressed, again in Russian, by their escort. She looked frightened and Mrs Harris automatically registered this, even though apparently she was merely being questioned as to whether the room was in proper order.
    â€˜So,’ said the guide, ‘see the view. Wonderful. Remain here. Do not leave. I will come and take you to your dinner. Thank you.’ She left but before she closed the door Mrs Harris did see that the maid who had left the room had stationed herself in a corner of the corridor outside.
    But once in their quarters a sanity and common sense returned to Mrs Harris.
    During her career as a daily in London Ada Harris had naturally encountered every kind of dwelling and type of decoration and here she found herself immersed not unpleasantly in neo-Victorian red plush tassels, brass bedsteads, nineteenth-century prints, heavy curtains, fringed bedcovers and on second glance a considerable amount of dirt and dilapidation. The chambermaid obviously wasn’t much of a one.
    It was this assessment of the room’s frowsiness that brought Mrs Harris back to the simple facts of who she was and what she was and that in indulgingher fancies about Mr Lockwood and his lady love she was being a bit of a fool. He had said that this Liz was the Intourist guide for Package Tour 6A and would be greeting them in the airport. Well, she wasn’t and she hadn’t. And in the meantime she was here in strange surroundings on a paid-up holiday on which she had dragooned her best friend against her will to accompany her and what any sensible person would do would be to put Lockwood and Company out of her mind and begin to enjoy herself. Their guide was apparently inclined to be helpful and friendly and couldn’t help her looks any more than could Mrs ’Orrible. This settled, she glanced out of the window and her enjoyment began almost at once for she was gazing upon a scene that was breathtaking.
    She had no idea of their location and thus did not know that this window gave on to an extended part of the formidable Kremlin wall, St Basil’s Cathedral, the tomb of Lenin and Red Square. Night had supplanted dusk, lighting was in full blaze and she found herself looking upon such a wondrous illumination of coloured walls, towers, belfries, church steeples, some shaped like onions, others wearing what appeared to be Oriental turbans, all flung into the night sky staggering to the imagination. Giant red stars gleamed from tower pinnacles, the bulbous tops of the churches were picked out in ultramarine blues and bright yellows. Some were smoothlycurved, others rough like pineapples piled one atop the other. The part of the vast square