Read Mrs Harris Goes to Moscow for Free Online

away in looney bins or freezing to death in Siberia. I ain’t goin’ to Roosha and that’s final!’And having said this she fell to trembling again as she waited for her friend’s counter-explosion, for Ada Harris did not have the reputation for taking a slanging from anybody. However, to her surprise it didn’t come.
    Instead Mrs Harris quietly folded up her newspaper, laid it down and said, ‘I understand, Violet, you needn’t say any more.’ For she was hurt not because Mrs Butterfield was frightened of going behind the Iron Curtain but because she had tried to conceal the fact that she was not required in her job for a month or more. She went over to the mantelpiece and removed the two vouchers from the china dish where any papers of importance were kept and one of them she pushed across the table in Violet’s direction saying ‘There you are now. It was you invited me to the party and paid for me ticket to get in so anything I got there we ort to split. That’s yours. You do with it what you like.’ She picked up her own voucher saying, ‘As for me I’m going,’ and she opened her purse, inserted the slip of paper and then closed it with a snap of unmistakable determination, but which to Mrs Butterfield sounded like the clang of a jail door closing for she immediately fell apart, all anger drained from her. She emitted a scream of alarm and then cried, ‘Ada, you’re not finking of going alone all by yourself?’
    Very much on her dignity Mrs Harris replied, ‘Ifme best friend can’t accept an invitation to go wif me all expenses paid which I was going to offer as a treat I suppose I’ll ’ave to.’
    When Mrs Butterfield wept she did not dissolve into tears, she flooded the premises with them. ‘Oh Ada, Ada,’ she wailed, ‘don’t talk like that. You
are
me best friend, the only one I’ve got in the world. I don’t care what ’appens to me, I’ll come wif you. Someone’s got to look arfter you.’
    Her surrender would have melted the proverbial heart of stone. Mrs Harris was made of softer material. She rose with her arms outstretched, tears likewise beginning to furrow her cheeks. She cried, ‘Oh, Vi, I knew you would,’ while Vi said, ‘Ada, I wasn’t meaning to tell a lie about me job. We can use me ’oliday pay for spending money also.’ And the two women melted together in a damp embrace, the tiny Mrs Harris practically vanishing within Mrs Butterfield’s bosom.
    After they had dried off and resumed their places at the table over a fresh pot Ada said brightly, ‘And you know what, Vi? You could get your fur coat.’
    â€˜I could?’
    â€˜Russia. That’s where they come from. Cheap. Look ’ere, in these pitchers. Everybody’s wearing fur ’ats. ’Ere, see, even the poor people. Anybody can buy furs in Russia. You’ll ’ave yer coat yet.’
    New life infused and blew Mrs Butterfield backto her normal proportions as she cried, ‘Would I really?’
    Mrs Harris said, ‘We’ll go tomorrow morning and get our tickets.’

5
    Having been to the Intourist office once before to collect the brochures and found there nothing more menacing or unusual than the normal confusion that appears to obtain in any thriving travel bureau and where apparently all transactions were conducted in understandable English, Mrs Harris took Mrs Butterfield along with her the next day hoping that the normality of it would help to allay her fears.
    The gambit worked since the bureau was situated amongst such comforting British establishments as a tobacconist, a sweetshop, the Regent Street Typewriter Company, Raine’s Bag Emporium and the National Westminster Bank. This location did much to calm Mrs Butterfield.
    Violet was further soothed by the atmospherewithin the office with its huge blown-up colour photographs of Moscow