The stranger on the train

What a pleasure it was to be reminded in a ‘Life and Letters’ column by Allan Massie (28 July) of Desmond MacCarthy. He was an old friend of my parents’ and, in the immediate postwar years, a fairly frequent visitor to their house in Chantilly, outside Paris. One Friday afternoon — it must I think have been 1950 or 1951 — we were sitting opposite each other as the train rattled through Normandy. I was at that time reading Russian at Oxford and was struggling through War and Peace in the original. Not surprisingly, the book caught Desmond’s eye. ‘Did I ever tell you,’ he murmured in that wonderful velvety voice of his, ‘did I ever tell you that I knew the Tolstoys?’

For a moment I thought I must have misheard him, but he went on: ‘Yes, I had a letter of introduction and I went to stay for a few days at Yasnaya Polyana. I arrived at teatime on a lovely summer day. The Countess, in a long white dress, was in the garden pouring tea: “Oh Mr MacCarthy, how very kind of you to have come all this way to see us. A little tea? Yes, of course. And now do tell me about your journey. I won’t offer to take you up to your room, simply because my husband rather likes to do that himself. He is still working in the fields, but he should be back before very long.”

‘Sure enough, the great man arrived a few minutes later, streaming with sweat and looking exactly like his photographs — shirt buttoned up the side, trousers tucked into boots. He too settled down and had his tea, and after a few minutes’ polite conversation he proposed taking me up to my room. I naturally agreed, and into the house we went.