Mrs Harris Goes to Moscow by Paul Gallico Page B

the sights? I ain’t no fool, Mr Lockwood, what do you fink, I’d be carrying the bloomin’ letter in me ’and and ’aving the young lady paged? ’Ere’s a chance if you’ve ever ’ad one.’
    Mr Lockwood succumbed as he had known he would all along. He said, ‘Mrs Harris, if you were to do that for me I would be grateful to you to the end of my days. I’d forgotten that you’d be with a crowd all the time.’
    â€˜Then it’s settled,’ said Mrs Harris happily, ‘and if you let me ’ave the letter I’ll …’
    â€˜I’ll write it immediately,’ said Mr Lockwood. ‘I’ll not only let you have it but I’ll read it to you as well.’
    â€˜Read it to me!’ exclaimed Mrs Harris. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it, pryin’ into a person’s personal affairs.’
    â€˜But in this instance I want you to and you must,’ insisted Mr Lockwood moving towards his typewriter. ‘For you know the story. You see, to make it easier for Liz I shall be writing it in Russian and it would be wrong to ask you to take a letter intoRussia without your being completely conversant with the nature and innocence of its contents.’
    Mrs Harris folded her hands across her overalls and her mischievous eyes were all aglow. She was beginning to be crowned with romance like a halo.
    â€˜By the way,’ said Mrs Harris, ‘ ’ow will I find Miss Liz?’
    Mr Lockwood looked up from the typewriter into which he had slipped a sheet of letter paper. He said, ‘You won’t have any difficulty. Perhaps you noticed my agitation earlier on when you mentioned the number of your tour. She is the Intourist guide for your package tour Number 6A to Moscow.’
    Like so many first-class professional writers Mr Lockwood wrote rotten love letters, his cool literacy and sentence structure deserting him for such phrases as ‘I thought I would go mad when I couldn’t see you again’ and ‘There never has been, there isn’t now, there never will be anyone but you in my thoughts and my life, my darling’, and several more pages of treacle plus explanations of how it all happened and that he was trying to ‘move heaven and earth’ to bring their separation to an end. It took him another page to complete the subject of the high quality and undying nature of his love.
    But Mrs Harris as he translated it for her adored every word of it, felt thrilled and uplifted and borne away upon the wings of the highest sentiment, almost as though the words had been written toherself as the sheets came steaming out of Mr Lockwood’s over-heated mill.
    She sniffed audibly several times and tears gathered in her eyes as she listened to the inspiring declaration of love eternal, inspiring to the point where if her thought about extracting Liz from behind the Iron Curtain had been only a kind of sweet daydream it had now become annealed into a steely determination.
    If Mr Lockwood had had so much as a hint of this, he would of course have put an end to the entire operation immediately, but naturally how could he suspect such a thing of the little char? As it was he had the good sense to take normal precautions both for the protection of Mrs Harris as well as Liz. He took the sheets, folded them, put them in a plain envelope and sealed them without superscripture, signature or address and the manner in which he moistened the gum on the envelope flap was practically a kiss delivered to the lady of his heart. But to Mrs Harris he said, ‘You see I haven’t addressed it or signed it or anything so that if it should fall into the hands of any but the one for whom it is intended, why …’
    â€˜It won’t,’ cried Mrs Harris fiercely, ‘and you can put all your money on that. And not to worry.’
    â€˜I know,’ said Mr Lockwood and repeated a half dozen times how deeply grateful he