Press Low the Stop-Cock, Plumbers

By ROBERT LUSTY* Mr. Roy Thomson and his cohort of tycoons were following a trail blazed earlier to Moscow by quite a few individual exponents of private enterprise, among them Mr. Lusty, who came as close as any Western publisher to an accommodation with the ideologists who think that royalties are monarchists. The influence of Mr. Salinger on the idiom of this tangential account, so far removed from publisher's mandarin, is quite fortuitous.

TOM GIRIIN it was who came with me on the trip to Moscow. The one who lives in Montpelier Square and has the swell pictures. Ile writes books, too, and appears in the odd film as a smash hit.

We set out, after a poshed-up dinner and t°0 many brandies already, from Cromwell Road in the bus. Only one other geezer on it, apart from the driver, and he wort a deerstalker cap but kept his cars free. So Tom and I whispered, going as we were to Moscow and at that time of night. At London Airport Tom and I sink another brandy, for it isn't at every midnight that we take off by jet to Moscow, Then we get into another bus, still along with the deerstalker bonzo, and drive out into the night to the plane. A whopper it is. As soon as we are aboard and cosy in the bright lights a very shapy dame offers us another brandy. We need it by then and before we know what is What or where it is, we are zipping the sky With a hell of a shoving in our backs and on our way to Moscow are Tom and I. The shapy dame then gives us another dinner hnd offers us a bottle of champagne all fizzy. Tom thinks we'd better have it, and so we do and I agree. We are licking along at -a pace below, chap says over the mike, and Germany is down uelow. I look out into the moonlight and see one great straight ribbon of a road running true as a rule across miles and miles. All lighted up it is and broad and endless. Where, I wonder, and call uP the guy in a white jacket.

'Look at that great road,' 1 tell him, and he looks at it and then at me—a bit of an odd look. 'That,' he says, nice and kind, 'is the edge of our wing,' and I fall into a sleep.

'Moscow,' says the chap on the mike, 'we are getting there,' and very funny Torn and I feel "bout it. We've both read a lot and heard about it all our lives. And here we are over it at half-past five on a Tuesday morning. Only half- Past three it is at home. Funny and strange it was and we didn't like leaving our shapy dime .and the plane and the guy in the white coat. It looked just like Moscow somehow. Great pic- tures of Lenin and red stars all over the shop. No doubt where we are. Chaps seem very civil. Find us on a list and Push us through everything very quick and nice. do we would have had time to say how d'you ..° to a reception lot in London, Tom and I are bowling along in a cab to Moscow. No one about it; flat and muddy-looking it all is

of minute and the next great sudden blocks ur nats. Block after block after block all looking the same.

_. But if you want a guide book to the place lueat's not my intention at all. Tom would be better at that. He walked around with a street ------___ .,,*.nCs hairman and managin is g director of the Hut- '4811 on group of publhing companies.

map and didn't lose hiriaself or me and I didn't lose him. Wanted a Catholic church Tom did before he wanted anything and gets himself to a circus instead. No funny business but sounds the same in the lingo and Tom gets his church all right and does all he has to do the same as at home near Montpelier Square. Our hotel very large and very plush and very heavy. Must have weighed a lot with all the bits. We each have a room with a bath and all. Silly nonsense this no plug business told around. The Russians just like washing their maulers under running water, so their basins just don't have plugs and that's all there is to them bar the holes. They haven't just lost them like some nuts say. They have them in the baths like you and me and they fit too. The hot water comes out of a hot tap and the cold water comes out of a cold tap and a lot of daft nonsense Tom and I had read a week or two back in a paper that ought to have known better by a chap who never did know much, we soon proved to be poppycock.

However, this is a literary piece. What I want to arrive at is the celebration they celebrated for old Dan Defoe. Tom and I knew of old Dan Defoe, but not that he had a celebration on. It was all very kind. We had spent an afternoon drinking tea with the Union of Soviet Writers. A nice lot who talked very civil if they did now and again take a peek over a shoulder. Tom kept his eye on me for I had said a thing or two that made him shiver and he wanted to get back to his pictures and things.

'You will be missing,' they said, 'the celebra- tions in London on the tercentenary of Daniel Defoe?'

`Yes; I said, 'and very sad we are. Especially Tom. London won't half be having a night out.'

'Well,', they said, 'you come along to our do. Right glad we will be to see you,' and so along on the Saturday night we went to a theatre about the size of Drury Lane belonging to this Union of Soviet Writers.

They met us in the hall and took us to seats in the front row, very civil.

'Sorry,' they explained, 'we're not quite full. Saturday night, the telly and all,' and Tom and felt at home all of a sudden. Old Dan would have got a lift. First a smashing dame, very well cut, took on as compere and swell she was. As swell as any dame we saw in Moscow where dames don't seem to be too swell. Tom and I kept in mind those goings-on at Glebe House in Chelsea -- PEN—where the faithful gather around that old tree that grows in the hall.

This dame announced a string quartet and four old gaffers in dinner-suits came on and gave it to us. Seventeenth-century English music —the whole lot. After that, believe it or not, a fine figure of a woman retired from the Bolshoi opera gang, but still in form, came along to sing 'No John No' in Russian. Tom looks at

me and I looks at Tom and, Dan, be looks at both of us from the programme. This big dame she sang and swelled and sank and floated again something impressive and although it was Rus- sian you could tell easily that it was John. After that a big chap with a little flute comes and flutes. Very pretty, but it, looked funny with the bigness of him and the small flute and the stage all empty. But he played away until going out to let on another chap who gave a dramatic reading. Very dramatic it was from Robinson Crusoe. He read on for quite a while and then walked in a real big-sized star from the Bolshoi. Got an ovation from all the Union that was there and he sang 'Annie Laurie' in Scotch. A very big voice he had and very handsome and the applause was something for a Saturday night with the weekend and the telly. He sang it again and I think again.

Well, we got on celebrating Dan's tercentenary for quite a time until the smart girl comes on and announces an interval to it all and that the next part of the programme will be a film about London. And what a film it was, but this is literary and to keep it literary a chap comes suddenly up to me with a mike and says you will now record for Moscow Radio who you arc, what you want here and what you think of these celebrations. Luvaduck, I thought, and Tom just sits and giggles without showing it.

`What,' I say, 'now?'

'Yes,' he says, `now—a recording for the Moscow Radio,' and through my nut runs a thought of all those blokes that might be listen- ing somewheie waiting to pick something up.

`Me?' I ask, playing for time. 'Me on Moscow Radio?' Yes,' he says again, ever so polite, 'you and now—and then some supper? What I put out over that mike I never heard and never know. All about how nice it was to be there, what I was taking a dekko at and how nice it was that we all thought so high of dear Dan. That seemed to satisfy them, although poor Torn was gone a bit pale. So they took us off to supper, past the cold ham and the beer along to the tea and the biscuits in a more swagger room.

We sat with a lot of members talking of writers and that. One of them comes up to me and says, 'I want you to meet our angry young man.' 'Angry young man?' I say as best I could with biscuits in my mouth, and they took me along to see him. A nice young man, very tidy. 'This,' they said, 'is Mr. Yevtushenko,' and we greeted one another as if we were members of the same union. 'And what,' I ask, 'are you angry about?' He looks at me. 'The system,' he says, 'the system,' and I can hardly wait to get back and tell Tom who is still getting into the biscuits.

He goes a bit paler than before and thinks it is time we are off. So we shake hands all round the Union of Soviet Writers and find a car waiting to take us back to our hotel, which is more than I've ever found outside Glebe House (PEN). And that's a bit of what hap- pened on the literary front when Tom and I went to Moscow and we reckon it's a contribu- tion for no other English delegation turned up to celebrate Dan Defoe's tercentenary that night. No sign of George who gets around and the Captain wasn't there either. Just Torn and myself and the Russians.