The party

As a quick footnote to yesterday's story, here is another.  I was not involved in this one but I have set the scene with the previous post.

As already mentioned, the house which resembled Gormenghast in more ways than one was officially approved for visits by Soviet agents posing as tourists when in the West Country.

I don't know if I stressed this enough in the last story, but the entire family who lived in it were all considered extremely eccentric by outsiders and, in most cases, even by each other.

On one occasion I was woken up by the mother bursting into my girlfriend's bedroom late at night, shouting (in a thick Russian accent), "I will not have my house used as a brothel!" Breakfast the next morning was a tad frosty to say the least.

On another occasion, I was working on a new drainage system for one of the outhouses which flooded every time it rained, when the father arrived to inspect the progress. I asked him what he thought about my plans to improve the situation.

"What do I think?" he began, "What do I think? I THINK I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF PEOPLE SQUANDERING MY MONEY ON THESE... THESE...!"

With that he pushed past me into a room which was in the process of being redecorated and began frantically tearing down wallpaper which had only been put up the day before.

He was a very tall man with wild, unkempt white hair and a pair of piercing, pale blue eyes beneath huge, equally unkempt eyebrows. His wife was somewhere between the largest and the smallest of a set of Russian dolls.

The family drove an old Triumph Vitesse, which was disconcertingly powerful when one of them was behind the wheel. They all had one trait in common which made being a passenger a terrifying experience.

They would be driving along quite calmly when a thought would come into their head. The more they concentrated on this thought, the less they concentrated on the road and the faster they would drive. Once I began shouting at the daughter to slow down, and the result of that was to make her speed up. Scream if you want to go faster seemed to be the rule.

One night a party was arranged for two Soviet men who were staying at the house. It was deep in the countryside, quite a few miles from the house. The Soviets had to call the embassy and tell them the exact location before leaving, then call again on arrival to confirm.

It was a very foggy night and arrangements were made to transport the two men. As there were only two cars, the two-seater Triumph was driven by the daughter with one Soviet as the passenger. This was a colossal mistake. Under no circumstances whatsoever should you split up two Soviet agents.

Halfway through the journey down dark, foggy lanes which seemed to lead nowhere, the daughter suddenly became ill and knew she was about to be violently sick. Speaking no Russian, she could not explain this to her passenger, so she just pulled in to the first gap in the hedge she saw and ran out of the car into the darkness to throw up.

When she got back she saw - in the beam of the headlights - that she had stopped right up against a large metal and razor-wire gate with a huge sign attached reading, MOD PROPERTY. STRICTLY NO ADMITTANCE. DOGS ON PATROL.

Her passenger was sitting in the car, wide-eyed and rigid with fear. He was expecting a bullet.