The Red Staircase
The Red Staircase
Gwendoline Butler
Set in St. Petersburg, Russia, this novel won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award (1981) by the Romantic Novelists' Association.St Petersburg, 1912. Rose Gowrie is a Scottish girl with a mysterious gift for healing who is hired into the aristocratic household of Dolly Denisov, supposedly as a companion for the youthful Ariadne Denisov. But Rose gets more than she bargains for when she is called upon to cure the aged Princess who lives at the top of the Red Staircase, and the frail young Tsarevitch…
GWENDOLINE BUTLER
The Red Staircase
Contents
Cover (#ua0a46960-c843-56aa-bf4d-212dfbcd96b6)
Title Page (#ua25f42af-2bd2-557c-86a0-10d69591b51d)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_d71c749e-24a7-5aea-a41a-adc860dd0672)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_89f56840-3c3e-5aa8-8527-a39c2dbbef84)
Chapter 3 (#ulink_d0936315-4b5e-5411-9423-024720b97197)
Chapter 4 (#ulink_9753dc06-9240-5d7d-b03a-4d9bb03417ed)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_19eb8ace-5b18-55bb-9fe9-8e815fa1e87b)
‘Rose?’
As I look back to that time, two statues seem to stand out in my life as marking the twin poles between which my life was to swing. One was the statue of the Prince Imperial which faced the barrack square at Woolwich, and the other was the bronze equestrian statue of Peter the Great in St Petersburg. The house I was to have lived in with my young husband looked over the trees to the Prince Imperial. I never lived near the bird-stained figure of the great Romanov, which is probably just as well, for they say the whole area around is haunted ground and I have too many ghosts in my life as it is – prominent among them the girl that I then was, the young, the innocent, the incredibly naïve Rose Gowrie.
‘Rose?’
It was my sister Grizel speaking on that afternoon which somehow marks the beginning for me. Perhaps for the first time I let some of the worries I most certainly felt in my heart appear obvious to Grizel.
I raised my head from my work. That afternoon I had plodded on as usual at my books. Not as usual, Grizel showed irritation.
‘Do stop and come out. I want to go for a walk. Why do you stick at it? You know it’s not going to lead anywhere. A pure waste of time. Besides,’ she went on, ‘I hate to see you breaking your heart over it. You know now that you are never going to be a doctor. The thing’s impossible.’
‘I got so close … Three years at Edinburgh.’ I found I could talk about it almost without pain that afternoon. I could feel that beneath Grizel’s crossness was a warmth reaching out to me. She hadn’t shown a lot of sympathy for my medical ambitions until then. ‘It was close, you know, Grizel. I jolly near did it.’
‘And then the perennial Gowrie lack of money, and you falling in love with Patrick, dished it.’
‘What an elegant way of putting it,’ I said, laying aside my books of anatomy and morbid pathology. ‘Dished it, indeed. Perhaps I abandoned my studies because I had to, because of circumstances beyond my control – or that was how the Dean of Medicine put it when we said goodbye – but I haven’t given up being interested in it. And the army needs educated wives, so Patrick says. If we go to India, and that could happen, then any medical knowledge I have would be very useful in ever so many ways. Clinics and so on for the wives of the private soldiers and the native women, you know.’
‘You might have babies yourself by then.’
‘Yes,’ I said shortly. I hadn’t thought much about this side of my life yet. It was a long way off, I told myself. But I have an idea that underneath, the thought – half alarming, half exciting – was rumbling away. Patrick and I had met at a ball in Edinburgh and fallen in love so quickly. ‘I suppose soldiers always settle things in a hurry,’ I said from out of the depths of my thoughts.
I’m not quite sure what Grizel took this to mean because she gave a giggle and put her arm around me. ‘I won’t enquire into the meaning of that sentence, Rose dear, even if you know yourself. Sometimes one expresses a truth without meaning to. Only I’m not sure if it’s true of Patrick. I think it was you who swept him off his feet all the same, dear Rose, I know it was for me and young Alec you gave up Edinburgh, and that you minded dreadfully. We’re such a tiresomely expensive brother and sister to have.’
I couldn’t let her get away with that, though. There was a bit of truth in it, but I wasn’t going to lay the burden of it on her young shoulders. ‘What nonsense. It wasn’t like that at all. You had to have your turn, it was only fair. If anything, it was Alec’s fault for needing that extra coaching, the lazy young beggar. I meant to go back when the money got easier, but then I fell in love with Patrick. And as far as you’re concerned, I’m sure no one could be more economical. You make nearly all your own clothes and some of mine as well. And now Alec’s godfather is going to pay for him at Eton, so you see neither of you is so expensive.’
‘I suppose the gods gave you Patrick as a reward,’ said Grizel.
‘You could put it like that.’ Patrick was fairly god-like himself, I thought, but I managed to restrain myself from saying so.
‘Well, I hope you’ll like army life, that’s all.’
‘Oh, of course I will. I’ve made up my mind to like it.’ Patrick Graham was an army officer, a gunner, serving with the Royal Artillery at Woolwich. Hardly the smartest of regiments, but one which suited Patrick, who was interested in machines and engines and not in riding horses. The Grahams – mother, grown-up son and young daughter – had moved to the village near Jordansjoy just before Patrick and I met and fell in love. Indeed, it was because his mother lived near the ancient, crumbling ancestral house of the Gowries that our hostess at the ball introduced us. I don’t think that Mrs Graham had reckoned on Jordansjoy giving her a daughter-in-law before her first Christmas in her new home.
There were three of us at home. I was the eldest left, then Grizel and then young Alec. Robin, my elder brother, our pride, had gone to India with his regiment five years before. He was the bravest and the best of us all. And then he died, killed in a small incident in the border war with Afghanistan, a little encounter that no one ever heard of again. He died of injuries that better and prompter doctoring might have cured. I think it was then that the impulse towards medicine was aroused in me. Or did it have a deeper root? Sometimes I have thought that its beginnings go even further back, beyond conscious memory altogether. There are things I don’t admit even to myself.
Jordansjoy has seen many tragedies in its hundreds of years of history, but Robin’s was one of the sharpest. The neighbours were tactful and left us alone, and we drew in on ourselves, perhaps more than we should have done, Grizel and I and Alec and old Tibby. Tibby must have a word all to herself, because there is no one like her and she has grown out of the soil of Scotland and her period in it. I said something like this to her once, and she said I made her sound like some great monument. She has been nurse, housekeeper and governess all rolled into one since our parents died. When Robin was killed she was our great support, unsentimental and forthright, quite devoid of selfpity, and not allowing us to repine either.
‘Forbye you’re young,’ she said stoutly. ‘With all your lives before you.’
It is then that I had taken myself off to Edinburgh to study medicine at the university there. It was in my heart to persevere, but the money would not run to it in the end. So I stopped. But as with all human actions, there were many reasons for my starting in medicine and many for my giving up. I can see that now.
‘I hope you’ll like the army,’ repeated Grizel, as if I hadn’t already said that I intended to. ‘Tibby says that it will trim the rough corners off you.’
‘Always supposing I want them trimmed.’
‘Oh, she never said it was a good thing. She likes those rough corners and so do I. When you are sharp and speak your mind, and when you stick out for your own way, I like you for it and so does she. She just said it would happen, that’s all.’
‘It sounds a painful process,’ I observed. ‘However, I shall be in the way to find out next week when I visit Patrick in Woolwich to see the house he’s chosen for us to live in. I’m staying with his cousin, and from the sound of her she’s enough to trim anyone’s edges.’
‘A regular dragon? Ach, you’ll get the better of her. Trust you for it, Rose. Here, give me your hand. Let me tell your fortune.’
‘You’ve done it once this week,’ I said, reluctantly offering up my right hand. ‘Surely it can’t have changed.’
Palmistry was Grizel’s new toy. In the crowded attics of Jordansjoy, among the dusty furniture and old travelling trunks (we had been searching for a reasonably smart set of bags for me, as a matter of fact), she had found an ancient book on fortune-telling; ‘The Book of Fate, formerly in the possession of Napoleon, Emperor of France,’ it was called. To the study of this book and the telling of our hands according to the rules laid down therein, Grizel was devoting most of her leisure, as well as a lot of time that should have been spent on other things. Or so Tibby said. Tibby called it necromancy and hinted that it was an abomination according to John Knox. I noticed that she listened with the rest of us, though.
‘You never know. We had a thunderstorm on Tuesday. Perhaps that was a portent of change. We hardly ever get thunderstorms here, so it must mean something.’ And she bent her head over my hand, busily tracing out the lines of head, heart and destiny.
‘I see a double tragedy, but great bravery,’ she announced with some triumph. ‘And a great love.’
‘Oh nonsense.’ I tried to pull my hand away, but she hung on.
‘And happiness,’ she said in tones of slight surprise, as well she might seeing what else she had predicted. Earlier she had foreseen disaster by fire for me. ‘And great possessions. Riches, in fact.’
‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘It is a bit of a staggerer,’ she said, dropping my hand. ‘Perhaps I got it wrong. It was rather hard to read. Your line wobbles a bit just there, owing to a blister you gave yourself with all that sewing on your travelling dress. But I seemed to see something extremely solid. Hard as a cannon-ball.’ She appeared to find satisfaction in this oracular judgement, for she closed my fingers over my palm as if this was the end of her forecasting for the day. ‘There, that’s enough. Aren’t you satisfied?’
Of course, she had no psychic gifts, it was all a game, but some games with some players can deliver hard balls.
In Woolwich the weather turned out to be hot and sultry; I was already tired by the long journey and now I felt, in addition, that my clothes were subtly wrong, too thick and clumsy. Thick silks and twills were out and soft chiffons were in, and no one had told me and I was aware of not looking my best. Perhaps Patrick thought so too, for he was bad-tempered and edgy. I bore this with fortitude, thinking that men are kittle cattle and need understanding. I behaved well, I think, and remained pleasant and good-humoured with him and made myself agreeable to my hostess, who was not a dragon at all but a woman of splintery charm and fly-away hair. And, of course, the owner of some of the prettiest and most fluttery chiffons I had ever seen. She told me they came from ‘Lucille’s’.
I minded the more because Patrick always looked right. He was not elegant or richly dressed, he couldn’t afford to be, but he was natural and happy in his clothes. I don’t suppose he ever wore scent in his life, but there was always an aura of freshness about him. Eyes, hair, skin, were shining. And yet, he was so easy with it. There never was a less stiff fellow than my darling Patrick with his soft, deep voice. At my bitterest times I tried to catalogue these physical attributes, and hate them, but I never could. The truth is I loved him by them and for them and through them.
Whether it was the heat or the fact that my clothes were wrong, I did not seem to be enjoying myself as I had expected. Woolwich was a restless place, with troops of soldiers always clattering through the streets. Patrick was preoccupied with his duties, not always free to be with me, although I felt he was doing his best. I was certainly seeing the workaday side of army life. And every so often the air was rent by the dull thud of artillery, as if we were under siege. I couldn’t always stop myself jumping, even though I knew they were only testing the guns.
The main purpose of my visit to Woolwich was to see the house that Patrick had rented for us, and the morning after our arrival he took me to inspect it – one of an elegant terrace built in the middle of the last century when Woolwich first began to expand because of the demands of the army. I looked out through what was going to be our drawing-room window at the statue erected in memory of the dead Prince Imperial, son to Napoleon III.
‘The furniture is ugly and shabby,’ I said. ‘A family called Dobson with six children had it last, did you say? It looks it.’
‘Is it dirty, then?’ said Patrick, looking around him with surprise.
I had concluded already that Mrs Dobson had not been much of a housekeeper, but with six children probably her mind was on other things. ‘So-so,’ I said. ‘It’ll clean.’ With an idle finger I traced my initials on the dusty windowpane. R. G. They may be there still for all I know.
‘We’ll get you a servant. You’ll need a cook, anyway. Can you cook, Rose? I wish I was a richer man, or would ever be. I’d give you all I could.’ He sounded strained.
‘But I’m quite content.’
‘Content? That’s not much of a word to get married on,’ said Patrick.
I swung round and stared at him. He was looking in my face as if there was some secret he knew and he wished to see if I knew it too. Instinctively I felt this, while I only stared dumbly back. There must have been something in my expression for him to read also, for he put his arm round my waist. He put his mouth on my lips and kissed me; I wanted to kiss him back, but just then I could not. I felt him stiffen. ‘Ah, Rose,’ he said sadly.
The twelve o’clock gun went off then at the Woolwich Arsenal and jerked us apart, and his cousin’s voice calling us from below saw to it that the separation was very nearly permanent. ‘I’m waiting, Patrick,’ she fluted up the stairs in that light, high, English voice of hers. ‘We mustn’t keep Miss Gordon waiting.’ Old Miss Gordon, General Gordon’s sister, lived next door and would be an important neighbour with plenty of influence in Army circles.
Silently Patrick and I went downstairs together. Mrs Lucas, his cousin, looked up at us curiously from under her floppy Leghorn straw hat, but she said nothing.
Patrick saw me off at King’s Cross station on my return journey to Scotland the next evening. ‘There’s some business must bring me to Edinburgh soon,’ he announced abruptly. ‘So I’ll be out to Jordansjoy to see you. I’ll give you advance warning if I can.’
‘Before the wedding?’ We were to be married within the month. Everything was supposed to be in train. I was surprised, but delighted, that Patrick had the time.
‘Before the wedding.’
‘I’ll see you then.’
I was going to say more but he kissed my cheek, gave me a wave and strode away, tall and erect, through the crowd. I watched him go. I remember that a phrase from a poem I had read somewhere flashed through my mind: ‘Too dear for my possessing’.
I went back to Scotland, conscious that some sweetness, some freshness in our relationship had spent itself and would never be replaced.
In those days the night journey from London to Scotland was noisy and tiring, but it had the one advantage that the train stopped at the station for Jordansjoy, where I was glad to see Grizel and Alec waiting for me in a governess cart pulled by the pony from the Manse.
I was always happy to see my home again. Jordansjoy was the shell of a once great house. The castle was in ruins, a romantic and beautiful wreck which had inspired Sir Walter Scott to a well known effusion. The grand mansion, erected by an early Gowrie in 1790 and decorated in the finest neoHellenistic taste of the period, had proved impossible to heat or live in, especially as the family fortunes fell away. For the last generation the Gowries had lived in eight or nine rooms in the stable wing, which was in fact a remarkably beautiful quadrangle of stone buildings, our ancestor having demanded a high standard of living for his horses. We, of course, kept none. Behind the shuttered windows of the mansion lay rooms full of mouldering hangings and worm-eaten furniture, anything of any value having been sold long since.
Tibby took a sharp look at me as I came in. Not much missed her eyes, and I have no doubt she read my mood. ‘Come away in and get your breakfast,’ she said. ‘And after you’ve eaten you can take a rest. Grizel, put a hot-water bottle in your sister’s bed.’
‘I’m not cold,’ I protested, although it was true that my native air did seem fresh and eager after sultry London.
‘Oh, it’s a cosy thing, a bottle,’ said Grizel, dancing away. ‘You can take it out when you get in.’
Tibby poured me tea and took a cup herself. ‘You’ll need to go down and see Mrs Graham when you’ve had your rest,’ she said. ‘She’s been sending up messages for you. Anxious to know the news of Patrick, I suppose.’
‘I’ll go down this afternoon,’ I said wearily. ‘Patrick sent her a letter and a book: a life of Lord Salisbury, I think. She reads a lot of memoirs, you know.’
‘Tired of life, poor thing,’ said Tibby briskly. ‘That’s what she must be, to spend her days reading of what’s done.’
I went to see Mrs Graham next day, and we talked about my visit to London and about Patrick, whom she adored. She was a gentle, delicate woman in increasingly frail health, but she was always good to me. Just as I was leaving, a boy arrived with a telegram for her.
She read it without comment, and then handed it to me. ‘From Patrick.’
I took it and read: ‘Arriving Thursday morning. Staying one night. Do not meet the train.’ I looked up and met Alethea Graham’s eyes.
‘He’ll come to you before he comes home. That’s what the telegram means,’ she said.
I nodded, full of a disquiet I could not explain.
Patrick and I had met at a ball at Holyrood House, to which I had been taken by old Lady Macalister, who had been my grandmother’s friend. She introduced me to Patrick and we had the supper dance together, and then the dance after, and by the end of the evening I, at least, was in love.
We had many meetings in the weeks that followed, while Patrick had leave. Little meetings, I called them in my own mind, because we were never alone, being either in his mother’s company or that of other young people. But we seemed to grow closer at each meeting, and although several people took it upon them to remind me what a bad gambler Colonel Graham had been and how there might be something in heredity, I was not daunted. No doubt Patrick’s friends were telling him the worst they knew of my family, and how the Gowries had always been chancy, impecunious folk. ‘Good looks and bare acres,’ was the phrase around here. But Patrick and I seemed to prosper, and when he asked me to marry him on the last day of his leave, I accepted at once. It was romantic, it was right. I never had a moment’s doubt.
The spot where we became engaged was the Orangery at Lady Macalister’s place near Jordansjoy, and the occasion her annual garden party when she ‘worked off, as we used to say, all the hospitality she owed. The air in the Orangery was sweet and warm, outside in the garden a band was playing a waltz from ‘The Balkan Princess.’ It is a mistake, I’m sure, to think that men don’t succumb to the romance of an occasion as easily as women. I am convinced now that Patrick was powerfully affected by the sweetness of our surroundings, following upon the happy sequence of our meetings, and by a sense of what was somehow appropriate and expected.
Perhaps I underrate myself. I remember saying to Patrick then: ‘But I can’t understand how you came even to notice me.’
‘Can’t you?’ A quizzical look.
‘No. Grizel is the beauty.’
‘Well, there I don’t agree with you. But you need not wonder, Rose. Amongst all those people you really stand out.’
‘I do?’
‘Yes, you’re different. Rose, different from most girls.’
‘I suppose it must be a result of my training in Edinburgh,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘My look, I mean.’
‘It was different to start with.’
‘Yes, in our set it was.’ Which was true.
‘Do you regret not finishing?’
I gave him a radiant smile. ‘Not now, my darling Patrick.’
It wasn’t true, though; I did mind, and perhaps Patrick sensed it.
‘Patrick’s arriving the day after tomorrow,’ I said to Tibby and Grizel, when I got back home. ‘His mother had a telegram while I was there. Arriving in the morning and not to meet the train.’
‘And nothing to you?’ said Grizel indignantly.
‘Oh, I knew anyway. He told me in London’.
‘You never said.’
‘I was going to.’ And I saw Tibby’s eyebrows go up. She knew, and I knew, that I usually came out fast with things I wanted to say.
I knew to the minute the time when the London train arrived at the junction, and knew too how long it would take Patrick to get to me if he took the station fly, and I made up my mind to be waiting for him in the garden so we need not meet in the house. I had an irrational fear of being in a confined space while we talked. I suppose Tibby saw what I was up to, but she helped me by agreeing that the more I weeded that path where the hollyhocks grew, the better.
The time of the train’s arrival came and went, but Patrick did not appear; I waited and waited. ‘This will be the best weeded path in Perthshire,’ I thought in desperation. I was on the point of giving up and retreating to the house when I heard him coming. He was whistling softly to himself as he did sometimes when distracted. I recognised the tune: a poem of Robert Burns’ set to music. ‘My love is like a red, red rose’. I doubt if he knew what he was whistling, and in any case he stopped when he came into view. His shoes and the edge of his trousers were covered with dust. We have very dusty lanes here about Jordansjoy when the weather is dry, and I knew by that dust that Patrick must have been walking and walking around them since the train got in.
‘Hello, Rose,’ he said. ‘You here?’
‘I’ve been waiting for you.’
‘Thought you might be. Sorry if I was a long while coming. I’ve been walking about. Thinking.’
I saw Patrick had someting in his hand: a small packet, neatly done in fresh brown paper. I thought it might be a little present for me. Patrick did sometimes give me presents – a good book or a leather notebook for my accounts, that sort of thing – and now was the time for presents if there ever was one, these weeks before our marriage. I couldn’t expect much after we were married. A brooch with a white river pearl from Perth, perhaps, if I had the good luck to bear him a son.
He did not look in a present-giving mood; he was wearing his dark town suit and carrying lavender gloves. The clothes about which Alec had once been heard to mutter: ‘The mute at the funeral.’ There had never been any love lost between Patrick and Alec since Patrick recommended that Alec, that freedom-lover, be sent away to Eton, for ‘only a top flight public school could whip him into shape’.
‘Let’s go into the house, Rose,’ Patrick now said.
‘Oh, no.’ My reply was spontaneous and instinctive. ‘I’d rather stay outside.’ No good news could come to me inside the house, I knew that, and so I wanted to stay in the garden where there was sunshine and warmth and the memory of happiness.
‘Could I have a glass of water then, Rose? I’m parched.’
Reluctantly I conceded. ‘Come into the parlour.’ And I led the way into its cool darkness. ‘Wait there and I’ll get you a drink.’
I went into the kitchen and drew him a glass of water which was fresh and sweet from our own spring at Jordansjoy. Tibby, who was standing at the table preparing a fruit pie – plum, it smelt like – raised her head and gave me a look.
‘A drink for Patrick,’ I explained.
‘Ah, so he’s come then?’
‘Just the while,’ I said in as non-committal a voice as I could manage.
‘Is water all he wants? We’ve a keg of beer in the pantry.’
‘Water he asked for and water it shall be,’ I announced, carrying the glass out in my hand.
‘Would you have liked beer, Patrick?’ I asked.
‘No, water,’ he said, taking the glass and draining it thirstily. ‘I hate country beer.’
‘We get ours from Edinburgh. McCluskie’s Best Brew.’
‘It’s not good, all the same. You never drink it yourself so you don’t know. I’ve never told you so before.’
‘You’re telling me now.’ I took the glass from him. ‘Of course, we’re not really talking about beer,’ I said coldly.
‘Are we not?’
‘No. Come, Patrick. Perhaps I am a year or two younger than you, but let us meet in this as equals. There’s something on your mind. What’s it all about? You must tell me.’
‘Man to man, eh, Rose?’ He smiled. Patrick never had orthodox good looks, but he smiled with his eyes as well as his mouth and I never knew a soul who could resist that smile, it had such luminous comprehension in it.
For a moment the joke gave me hope. Because he could tease me in this way, surely things could not be wholly bad? ‘Why not?’ I returned boldly.
‘But we aren’t man to man, but man to woman, and that’s the whole of it.’ Looking back, I see that Patrick, who was a brave man, never said a braver thing in his life, but then I hated him for it.
Our parlour at Jordansjoy has one long window which we keep filled with sweet geraniums. Patrick stood with his back to it, so that he was in silhouette and I could hardly see his face. He could see mine, though, and I suppose it looked foolishly young and innocent.
‘Come out into the garden,’ I said. ‘I can breathe there.’
But he interrupted me, saying – his voice a tone higher than usual, and abrupt: ‘Look here, Rose, the wedding will have to be put off. Postponed. I’ve to go to India. I’m transferring.’
I stared; perhaps I said something, I don’t remember; it can have been nothing coherent.
‘It can’t go ahead. You can put about what explanation you like. Blame it all on me. It is my fault. God knows it is.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I stammered.
‘I’m transferring to the part of the regiment that’s going off to India. It’s no place for a woman. It’s a bachelor’s job.’
‘I wouldn’t mind India. I’d like it. I would, I promise.’
‘No, it’s no good, it wouldn’t do, not for me nor for you. It would be a wretched business, Rosie. We should be so poor. God knows, it’s bad enough being poor when you’re married anyway, but in India it would be infinitely worse. I couldn’t bear it for you, Rose.’
‘But we love each other.’
‘Ah, Rose, do we? Really, truly, do we?’
‘I love you.’
‘Do you, Rose?’ He was serious and sad. Hesitantly, he said: ‘I wonder sometimes if you know what love is. Oh yes, in a way, Rose; but a deeper, married love?’
‘We love each other. Together, we shall …’ But he broke in. ‘That’s true in a way, Rose, but is it enough?’ He took my hand. ‘That joke you made about Mrs Dobson and her housekeeping – well, it was true although I didn’t admit it, she is a rotten housekeeper and her house was always untidy and her children run wild. But sometimes I saw a look pass between her and her husband, well, a look that I envied. A look such as you and I could never exchange.’
‘But they have been married for years.’
‘Is that all, Rose? Does it come only with years? No, it was not that sort of look. And if it is not there before marriage, I think it does not come afterwards.’
I was utterly at a loss. There were so many things I wanted to say, but I couldn’t find words for them. So I stood there, just looking at him.
‘I blame myself, not you.’ He sounded weary. ‘I’m older than you, more experienced. I have to protect you. Our marriage would be a mistake.’ He handed me the parcel. ‘Here are your letters, and the book you gave me.’
I threw them on the floor in a fury, and for the first time in the interview felt bitter.
‘Please, Rose,’ he said. ‘I have thought about it very carefully. It is in your interest and mine.’
I sat down; my fury ebbing away had left my legs curiously weak. I suppose he thought I was coming round, because he took a deep breath of relief. As soon as I saw this I felt even more savage. ‘And now I suppose you will go away and explain to yourself that it is my fault. Oh, though I don’t know how it can be. I suppose I’ve failed you somehow, Patrick. Or you choose to think so.’
He quailed before the fury and contempt in my eyes, but he stood his ground – I give him that. When he had made up his mind to do a thing, Patrick did it. ‘No, no, the fault is all mine. I’m not good enough for you.’ He looked at me. ‘Forgive me, Rosie?’
He had given me an antique rose-diamond ring, and I suppose he took it with him, for I never saw it again. I remember nothing of the circumstances of its handing over. Nor of him going; but go he did.
Tibby says she came in and saw me standing staring out of the window, and that I turned to her with tearless eyes and said: ‘He’s gone, Tibby. Gone for good.’ Then I went upstairs and went to my bed. I stayed there, watching the light change on the ceiling as the day reached its peak and then faded into night.
After a while, Grizel and Tibby came to look at me. ‘I’m sick,’ I said, in answer to their anxious questions. And it was, in a way, true; I did feel deadly tired, as if life had seeped out of me. I didn’t look at them, turning my head to stare bleakly at the wall. I could hear Tibby trying to make encouraging, cheerful noises, then I heard her saying something about the doctor, but it was Grizel, my sibling and nearest me in age, who got it right.
‘Leave her alone,’ she said. ‘Let her lie there.’ She drew Tibby out, protesting. ‘No,’ said Grizel firmly. ‘Let her be.’ She pulled my door to and closed it with a decided little bang. It was her message to me, a message of support, and interpreting it correctly I felt a comforting warmth creep into my heart.
I stayed there all night, letting darkness melt in through the window and over the walls, and then recede again into silver light. At no time did I sleep.
Grizel came quietly in when the morning was still early and placed a cup of tea on my bed-table. She did not speak, but adjusted the curtains so that the sun should not shine on my face, and went away. I wondered how much she knew of what had passed between me and Patrick. Almost everything, I supposed, by means of that curious feminine osmosis that sometimes existed between us. I drank the tea, which was very hot and over-sweet, so that I knew Tibby had stirred in the sugar lumps – it had always been her idea that a person in trouble needed something sweet. She might have been right, because the dead weight of fatigue which rested on me began to lift a little.
Presently Grizel came back; I didn’t speak but she lay down on the bed beside me and put her cheek against mine. For a while we lay in silence.
‘There’s a time for keeping quiet and saying nothing, and a time for showing love,’ she said. ‘I think the time has come now for showing love.’ She kissed my cheek.
‘Come on then, Rose.’ Grizel swung off the bed to her feet. ‘I’ll help you dress.’ She opened the big door of the closet where I kept my clothes and, not consulting me, she very deliberately selected a pale pink dress I had never yet worn. Without a word she handed it to me. ‘Wear this.’
‘But it …’I began.
She did not let me finish. ‘Yes. The very prettiest dress from your trousseau. Just the day to wear it.’
I took it and let the pretty soft silk slip through my hands. I remembered the day I had chosen the silk, and I remembered the day Grizel and I had made the dress together. ‘Yes, quite right,’ I said. ‘A pity to waste it.’
Downstairs I went with a flourish. ‘The worst thing about being jilted,’ I said to Grizel as we started down, ‘is that it’s – ’and out it came, the phrase long since picked up in my medical student days, assimilated and made ready to use – ‘such a bloody bore.’
Grizel looked at me, hesitated, and then giggled; and so, laughing, we went forward to meet the day.
Somehow or the other, my life had to be put together again. Twice my circumstances had changed radically. The first crisis, when I had to give up my medical studies in Edinburgh, had seemed to have a happy outcome when I met Patrick and planned our life together. Now this too had collapsed. ‘Third time lucky,’ I thought. It was hard not to be bitter, but it wouldn’t do. I must rebuild my fortunes somehow, and I knew it.
The only thing to do was take life as it came for a bit, and to build it around a succession of small events. Fortunately (from my point of view, although I suppose not from the victims’) it was a busy time in the village with an epidemic of measles with which I was able to help. ‘It’s an ill wind,’ I thought as I cycled down the hill in a rainstorm to a cottage where a child had measles with the complication of bronchitis. ‘At least all this is taking my mind off my own troubles. If the child only lives. A bit hard for the poor little wretch to have to die in order to make me feel better.’
But we saved the child, although we had a bad night of it. ‘He’s turned the corner,’ I said to his mother when I left.
‘I think he has, Miss Rose, praise the Lord,’ she answered.
But as I pushed my bicycle up the hill to breakfast, I knew I had turned a corner in my life too.
‘Have some porridge,’ said Tibby, from the stove where she was stirring a big black pot of it.
‘I’ll just wash my hands.’
When I got back Tibby had laid a place at the kitchen table for me and was pouring herself a cup of tea. ‘How’s the lad?’
‘Better. He’ll do now, I think.’ I began to eat my porridge with relish. ‘Where are the others?’
‘Not up yet. It’s still early. But I knew you’d be home betimes for your breakfast. Either the little lad would come through the night or he’d be gone. Either way the dawn would decide it.’
‘Yes, you’re quite right,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘It’s amazing how the turn of day takes people out or brings them back in. It’s like a tide. But I listened to the birds singing this morning and knew it would be all right. His mother knew, too. We both knew.’
‘It’s the same with life; there comes a turn.’
‘So people say.’ I accepted the truism cautiously.
‘It’ll be that way with you soon.’
‘Can’t be too soon, Tibby,’ I said with a sigh. ‘I’ve got to make my way in the world somehow. It won’t wait on me, you know.’
‘I do know,’ said Tibby.
‘So far I don’t seem to have done anything right. I have to ask myself: What’s the matter with me?’ I looked at her, wondering what she would say.
‘The answer to that’s easy: Nothing,’ she said stoutly.
‘I mean, I can’t retire from life before I’m three-and-twenty,’ I said, continuing with my own stream of thought.
‘Oh, you silly girl.’
‘I haven’t told you much of what was said between me and Patrick. Only the blunt, dead end of it. I’m not sure if I remember it all myself now. What we did and said in the heat of the moment.’ I paused. ‘No, but I am wrong, Patrick wasn’t hot, he was cold, with his mind made up. Wretched, yes, even unhappy, but he was determined to do what he did.’
‘It was an awful thing,’ said Tibby solemnly.
‘Yes, awful. I still don’t understand the rights of it. Or why. But I’m not sure if it hasn’t wrecked me, Tibby.’
‘No, child, no.’ And she got a grip on my hand and held it tight.
‘And you know, Tibby, I think it may be partly because of my interest in medicine. “This health business,” Patrick called it once. I think he didn’t like it. Do you think that, Tibby?’
‘People hereabouts are proud of you.’
‘Are they? I’m not so sure.’ It was true I had a local history of helping with the healing of both people and animals. ‘He may have heard about the child at Moriston Grange, and the dog. People do gossip and say the silliest things.’ Such as the fact that humans sometimes recovered unexpectedly well when I gave them help. ‘Patrick may not have liked it.’ If I had the gift of healing, it was a small gift but a dangerous one.
‘Oh, the wretch,’ said Tibby.
‘Now, that’s not up to your usual standard, Tibby. You should encourage me. Tell me that there is a great future somewhere for Rose Gowrie. But where? Where am I to go? For go somewhere I must and will, Tibby, I tell you that.’ I stood up. ‘A nice breakfast, Tibby. But where am I to go?’
She stood up too, and walked over to the sink with that slow heavy tread she took on sometimes. ‘I’ll have a think.’
‘Make it a lively think then, Tibby.’
We left the matter there for the time being, but from that moment we both knew I was only waiting for life to show me the opportunity.
We glossed over the breaking-off of my engagement when it came to Alec; I don’t think he fully understood what had happened. In any case, he was still young enough for the adult world to be inexplicable to him and its motives something he need not bother to try and comprehend. Since he’d never liked Patrick he was quite glad to see him go.
So that when he came home with the tale he’d heard, the impact was all the harder.
In all innocence he came in from play, sat himself down at the tea table and announced, with satisfaction: ‘Well, he’s away then.’
I was pouring the tea, Tibby was cutting bread. ‘Who?’ I asked, not really attending.
‘That Patrick.’ He took a slice of bread and butter and devoured it rapidly. ‘Him.’
‘Don’t talk with your mouth full, Master Alec.’ He was only Master Alec to Tibby when she was cross. ‘Mind your manners, please. And where has he gone?’
‘I must talk with my mouth full if you ask questions,’ said Alec, continuing his eating. ‘I must answer, that is manners. He’s away to India.’ And his hand reached out for another slice. ‘You never told me that.’ He looked at me accusingly.
I was silent.
‘It was none of your business,’ said Tibby.
‘And he’s not off before time, his sister Jeannie says, for there were bills falling around him like snow. We were playing marbles.’
‘And has he left the bills behind him, then?’ said Grizel in an acid tone.
‘Every penny cleared, Jeannie says.’ Alec turned his attention to the scones and honey. ‘Praise be to God.’
‘Money from Heaven, then, I suppose,’ observed Grizel. ‘For I never knew the Grahams had a rich uncle.’
‘Ach, no, he was paid.’ Alec was all man of the world.
There was a moment of complete silence.
‘Paid?’ It was my voice I heard.
‘Yes, to go away,’ continued Alec through his tea.
‘Well, that’s an odd thing,’ observed Tibby in a temperate voice. ‘And how much did they pay him?’
‘Three thousand pounds, Jeannie says,’ went on Alec, quite oblivious of the effect he was having. ‘Or it might have been more, she’s not quite sure. She couldn’t hear very well.’
‘Why not? How was she hearing them?’
‘Through the crack in the door. You do not suppose they were telling her?’ asked Alec with fine scorn. He looked up, and for the first time he seemed to take in the audience he had. ‘What are you all staring at me like that for?’
‘You may be jumping to the wrong conclusion,’ said Tibby, giving me a straight look over Alec’s head. ‘It may not be at all what it seems.’
‘I’m sure of it. Don’t look at me like that, Tibby, I know I’m right; it was worth three thousand to Patrick to break his engagement to me. So now I know my price. Three thousand pounds, give or take a few more pounds that Jeannie could not precisely hear.’
‘But whoever was it that paid him? And why?’ asked Grizel wonderingly.
Events then followed with a naturalness that made acceptance of them inevitable.
I was wretched at Jordansjoy, an object of interest to all the neighbourhood as the girl who had been jilted. Very nearly on the steps of the altar, too. Former generations of Gowries had been the focus for gossip and hints of scandal, and now I had revived the fire with my shame. For it was shame of a sort. Even those who took my part assumed it was my fault that Patrick Graham had been ‘put off, although he had, of course, ‘behaved disgracefully’. I kept my head high, but it was a bad time.
When the letter came from St Petersburg, it seemed to contain an answer to prayer.
About eighty years or so earlier, a Gowrie had gone to St Petersburg as a merchant and banker, had prospered and settled there. His family stayed on, and the next generation, until by now they were as much Russian as Scottish, except in blood – because they always married among the large Anglo-Scottish community in the capital.
The most eminent among them was Erskine Gowrie, a grandson of the original settler. He was my godfather and had given me a handsome piece of Russian silver as a christening present. He had not attended the christening in person; but I had been told that he did come to Scotland on a visit while I was a child and had taken a great liking to me. I had a vague memory of being bounced on the knee of some gentleman with a beard, and of hearing him pronounce that I had my grandfather’s eyes. Erskine Gowrie had a large factory in the industrial suburbs of St Petersburg where I had been told he manufactured chemicals of some sort. We gathered that Erskine Gowrie had grown old, rich and cantankerous, and by means of this triple and difficult combination had succeeded in quarrelling with all his Russian relatives. Not all of them were rich, and one, Emma Gowrie, whom we called our cousin and who kept us in touch with the St Petersburg Gowries by letter, had been Erskine’s secretary for a time before working for a Countess Dolly Denisov. Through Emma, Countess Denisov had heard of me, and now wrote offering me work in St Petersburg with her and her daughter. Young Russian girls of the nobility are never allowed to go anywhere without a companion, it seemed. But there was more to it than that, because Dolly Denisov had heard from Miss Gowrie that I was interested in medicine, and she wanted me to help train the peasant women on her country estate to look after their own health better. Perhaps I should be able to create a small clinic or hospital at Shereshevo.
‘It’s very tempting to me,’ I said, pushing the letter across to Tibby. ‘Mind you, I don’t like the idea of being a companion.’
‘It’s a good offer,’ said Tibby, raising her eyes from the letter. ‘They don’t ask much from you as a companion except English conversation and friendliness, and they pay well.’
‘Of course, the girl may be a horror.’
‘She sounds nice; seventeen, speaks a bit of English already, likes animals. And what a pretty face!’
I picked up the photograph that had come with the letter. ‘Yes, charming little face, isn’t it? I don’t suppose she’s as innocent as she looks. Oh yes, I’ll go, Tibby. I think I’d go anywhere to get away. And I do like the prospect this offers of advancement. I might get to be a medical pioneer yet.’ I felt a kind of dreamy optimism.
‘You’d be rash to turn it down, I’ll say that.’ She pursed up her lips. ‘The letter says that if you take passage on the John Evelyn, leaving the Surrey Docks on May 2nd, you may have the support of a Major Lacey who is travelling out to see his sister. The Denisovs have Russian friends in London, too, that they name.’ She shook her head. ‘They have planned ahead. You are much wanted to go.’
She gave me the letter back; I remember holding it in my hand. By rights it ought to have burnt my fingers off.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_7d42633b-d13f-5a79-8617-7978cc61653b)
The wind was blowing in my face, a cold wind blowing across the waters of the Baltic to where I stood on the deck of the John Evelyn. It seemed to go right through my clothes. Ahead I could see the docks and quays of St Petersburg. It was May, we were the first ship into the Gulf of Finland since the winter ice had melted. The wind was cold, and my future lay spread before me on the horizon, and suddenly the prospect frightened me. But it was already more than a prospect; it was upon me. Even now the trunks were being piled on deck ready for arrival, and I could see my own box, black leather with my name on it in white: The Honble Rose Gowrie.
Tentatively I looked up at the man standing beside me, Edward Lacey, late of His Majesty’s Scots Guards, and my travelling companion. I had begun by hating his bland sophistication and his cool English voice. I hated all men, anyway – and pour cause, as our dominie used to say. But he proved kind and considerate during the journey, and relations had improved, though I still found him rather opaque. Now he turned to me with that ever courteous smile. ‘Nearly there, Miss Gowrie.’
We had boarded the small cargo ship, the John Evelyn, going out on the evening tide. The captain had bowed as he passed us on the deck. I was a passenger of special quality on the John Evelyn because I had been seen off by no less a person than Prince Michael Melikov. To my surprise he had been waiting at the Surrey Docks when I arrived. I knew who he must be; Edward Lacey – whom I had met for the first time the evening before, at the London hotel where I was booked for a single night – had told me of the Prince’s presence in London, and that he was a long-standing friend of both the Countess Denisov and my cousin Emma Gowrie. He was wearing a deep violet velvet overcoat. I never saw a man wear coloured velvet before, but on him it looked sombre and rich and yet correct.
He had bent his head to me politely and introduced himself in his deep, sweet voice. ‘And so here I am to see you off, Miss Gowrie. I could never excuse myself to that good lady, your cousin, when we next met in St Petersburg, if I did not see you safely aboard.’
Behind his friendly brown eyes was nothing, he had no real feeling for me. I sensed it without knowing why.
‘I’m looking forward to meeting her,’ I said. ‘I never have, you know. I believe she came once to see us at Jordansjoy but it was years ago, when my parents were not long married and I was only a child. She was old then.’ And must be older now by my twenty years. It was 1912. ‘Our Russian cousin, we call her, but she is as Scots as I am in blood, although four generations of Gowries have lived in St Petersburg now.’ I was talking nervously, for there was something about Prince Michael’s empty eyes that alarmed me.
Edward Lacey arrived at that point, in a cab, and after he had greeted me, stood talking to Prince Michael on the dock. How different they looked: the Prince tall and elegant, but with the withdrawn, inward expression of a man used to books and libraries; and Edward Lacey almost as tall but broader of shoulder, with the look of the open air about him, active and energetic. The one as unmistakably Russian as the other was English.
They were both watching me. The notion struck me and would not be dismissed. I felt as if they were studying me. Politely, of course, but with intent. And not for my looks, either. I knew what that sort of look was like; I knew what it was to be admired. At the memory of some special glances I once treasured, my spirits plummetted. I gritted my teeth, and pushed emotion away. I would not be bitter.
The dock side was very busy, many craft were taking advantage of the high tide to load. A string of lighters and barges was passing down river towards the estuary. Its tug gave a melancholy hoot as it went and another ship answered, part of the perpetual conversation of the river. It was evening, a fine night in early summer. Summer smells mingled with the smells of oil and dust in the Surrey Docks, and with the strong odour of horse. A dray horse, who had brought his load of packing-cases to the side of the John Evelyn to be hauled aboard, was pawing the cobbles. There was a young lad sitting on the dray, ostensibly minding the horse, watching the scene, and calling out jokes and ribaldry to the stevedores and dockers labouring around him. He had a tin whistle stuck in his waist and presently he started to play a tune. A gay little rag-tune; I shall never forget it. I think it was called ‘Irene’, a name which was to mean much to me. Strange, that name coming then; what an uncanny trick life has of striking a note that it means to repeat.
At last we went aboard the John Evelyn. The light was fading fast. I was unsurprised to find that over an hour had passed. I remember Prince Michael’s smile as he finally went away, which accentuated rather than took away the emptiness of his eyes. He smiled, not for me or with me, but because of me; I was quite sure of it.
After I had unpacked, I went on deck again to watch the Thamesside slipping past. The ship had sailed almost immediately on our coming aboard. My cabin was small, but I had it to myself. I had arranged my clothes, put out the silver-backed hairbrushes that had belonged to my mother, and around them placed the photographs of Grizel and young Alec, Tibby and my brother Robin. My pantheon, as naughty Alec called them. Four faces where there had once been five; one god had gone from my pantheon. Again, I tried to repress bitterness, but the taste of it remained in my mouth even as I stood on deck and watched the lights of London and her satellite suburbs, Greenwich and Woolwich, disappear into the dark. The water grew rougher as we felt the pull of the open sea.
I had made myself a hooded cloak of thick plaid, and lined the hood with fur from an old tippet handed down in my family for generations and at last consigned to me. ‘Bring warm clothes,’ my old Russian cousin had written. I pushed back the hood and let the soft fur fall across my shoulders in unaccustomed opulence; and I wondered what the future held in store for me. I suppose every girl wonders this, but I had special cause.
Then Edward Lacey came up behind me. I recognised him by the smell of Turkish tobacco and Harris tweed that I had already identified as peculiarly his own. He moved to my side, he took out his pipe.
‘Do you mind if I light up, Miss Gowrie?’
‘Oh, no, please do. I enjoy the smell.’ I had smoked a cigarette myself once, but I did not tell him; he seemed to find me puzzling enough already.
He struck a Swan Vesta, and the tobacco smouldered fragrantly. He took a puff or two, then the pipe went out. Pipes always do. But he did not re-light it. Instead he stood there looking into the murky river, glancing at me from time to time.
I kept silent. I was aware he was studying my face. I suppose I was studying his in return. We had met only briefly the day before, but now, embarked on our voyage, conscious that we should be much in each other’s company over a long period, it was as if we both knew we were about to move into a new kind of intimacy. As a type he was not new to me; I had seen plenty of his sort come up for shooting parties at the big house. Such men were sophisticated, worldly, and hard to know. Not the sort of person I really felt at home with.
‘So,’ he said, as if recapping what he had already established, ‘you are the strong-minded young lady who likes medicine and healing the sick? I must warn you that you have a sceptic in me.’
‘Why, Major Lacey – ’
‘I mean, as far as women’s education is concerned. I just don’t like to see it overdone. Seems all wrong to me.’
‘You seem to know a lot about me,’ I said shortly.
‘Well, I do in a way. A potted biography, Dolly Denisov gave me. She’s got a knack of putting things in a nutshell.’
‘Accurately, I hope.’ I spoke with a certain asperity.
‘Yes, she’s reliable, is Dolly. And then, of course, I know your cousin and old Erskine Gowrie, too. Not that he’s seen much these days. Not the man he was. No, Dolly told me all about you. The medicine and all that. I thought you’d be a tough, dried, hockey-stick of a girl.’
‘And I’m not?’ I enquiried, thinking that, after all, not everything about me had been relayed to this man through the channels of Emma Gowrie and Dolly Denisov. Not Patrick.
‘Not a bit,’ he said cheerfully. ‘But I ought to warn you – you’ve captivated Dolly’s imagination. And that can be dangerous.’ He was half laughing, but half serious. ‘All Dolly’s swans have to be swans, you see. Ask Mademoiselle Laure about that.’
‘And who is Mademoiselle Laure?’
‘Oh, a sort of French governess they keep there,’ he said vaguely. ‘On the retired list. Except I believe she teaches French to Ariadne still.’ There sounded an ambiguous side to Mademoiselle Laure, I thought.
‘Thank you for the warning. I need this post. The pay is good and I am poor, which is a state, Major Lacey, you probably know nothing of. You have certainly never been a poor, unmarried girl with her way to make.’
‘Touché,’ he conceded.
I needed desperately, too, to get away from my home, but no point in telling him that if Dolly Denisov had not. It was my own private wound, for me to bear and heal.
‘But Russia is a dangerous place to come to make your fortune,’ he said soberly.
‘I shall hardly do that, working in the Denisov home.’
‘No, if that’s all that happens. But one rarely does only one thing in Russia, as I know to my cost. It’s the way things happen there. There’s a sort of persuasiveness to the place.’ He shook his head. ‘Don’t bully yourself too much, Miss Gowrie. Sit easy to the world; it’s the best way to take your fences. Goodnight. I’m off below.’ And he strolled away, calm and friendly as before.
With a start, I realised he knew all there was to know about me, and was giving me what he thought of as good advice. Something in his cool assumption that he knew best got under my skin. With sudden tears of fury blinding me, I hammered the iron deckrails till my hands ached. ‘Beastly, arrogant man!’ I cried. ‘Stupid and obtuse like all of them! I hate him. I hate all men.’
I felt better after the explosion of tears, and from then on I started to enjoy the journey. After all, I had done so little travelling that to be on the move was in itself new and exciting. My spirits improved daily, and I even began to enjoy the company of Edward Lacey.
And now I was almost sad that the journey was ending …
I came back to the present, to the view of St Petersburg, and to Edward Lacey’s voice. ‘Peter the Great built St Petersburg because he wanted a door on the world,’ he was saying.
‘Hadn’t he got one, then?’
‘The western world. Moscow was in many ways an oriental capital. He wanted to change all that. He did, too. But I think Russia has been paying the price for it ever since. What a country.’
We had talked a good deal about Russia during the voyage, and he obviously knew it well. His sister, he had told me, was married to a Russian; she was expecting a child in the autumn. Now he said: ‘I shall hope to introduce you to my sister, Miss Gowrie, when she’s out and about again.’
‘Oh, thank you.’ Perhaps he didn’t disapprove of me as much as I had thought. ‘Yes, I should like that. I shall know so few people apart from my godfather and the Denisovs.’
‘That will soon change,’ he predicted briskly. ‘The Russians are an endlessly sociable people. The Denisovs will take you around. Dolly Denisov lives for the world.’
‘Ariadne is only seventeen,’ I said.
‘Never mind, you won’t be cloistered.’ He had his eyes screwed up, staring at the quay. ‘There’s the Denisov motorcar already waiting for you, I see.’
‘A motor-car?’
‘Yes.’ He sounded amused. ‘Did you expect a sledge? It is summer and there are very few motor-cars in St Petersburg, but of course Dolly Denisov has one.’
Suddenly, my new life seemed all too close. ‘I wonder if I shall be happy in Russia,’ I said urgently.
‘Yes. If you are the sort of girl who can accept it for what it is, a country entirely itself, and not be continually comparing it with what you know at home, then you will be happy. Or on the way to happiness.’
‘I think I can manage that.’
‘And learn the language. The real Russia is hidden, otherwise.’
‘I already know a little Russian,’ I said. ‘Our local schoolmaster taught me to read Chekhov, he had the language from his mother who was a governess in Russia.’
‘Then you will be well away. And keep your eyes open to the state of Russia. I expect you know something already?’ He was summing me up.
‘I have read the news,’ I said. ‘I know of the terrible poverty, of the oppressive rule, and of how they fear revolution.’
‘Yes. There are all shades of political thinking in Russia, from the most reactionary which favours extreme despotic rule by the Tsar, to the moderates who want to make the Tsar a parliamentary monarch on the British model, to the extreme anarchists who want to destroy all government – blow the lot up, is their motto. I should say Dolly Denisov is an old-fashioned liberal who wants the Tsar’s government to relax some rules but otherwise keep things more or less as they are. As for her brother, he sometimes looks as if he despaired of his country and did not give a damn. Yet I swear he does, because Russians always do care, and those who seem indifferent often care the most. For all I know he may be an out-and-out reactionary – there is that element in the Denisov family – or a downright anarchist.’
He was patently instructing me in the intricacies of Russian political life and I acknowledged this. ‘I will look and learn,’ I said.
‘Then you may survive. But mind: I only say may. It’s the goddamned country. One loves it or hates it.’
We disembarked together, and moved along the quay towards the Denisov car. My great adventure was upon me. With a beating heart I prepared to meet the Denisovs. The Denisovs and Russia.
No one had told me about the May nights, how white they were, and how intense, and how they would affect me. I kept thinking of Patrick; I had come to Russia to forget him, and he was all I could think about. These long, sleepless nights were one of the phenomena of my first weeks in St Petersburg. There were others. One was the cold. Heaven knows, Scotland is often cold enough in May, but I was not prepared for the cold wind of Russia that made me huddle in my clothes. But they told me it would be warm enough soon, and then I should see. Everyone in the Denisov household seemed to take a delight in offering me the contradictions of St Petersburg, as if it had all been specially constructed to amuse me. It was my first introduction to one aspect of the Russian character: its capacity to charm. At the beginning, and indeed for a long time after, Dolly Denisov seemed to me charm personified. Partly it was her voice, delicate, light and sweet.
‘You speak such excellent English yourself, Madame,’ I told her, not long after I arrived, ‘that I wonder you need me to speak to your daughter.’
‘Ah, but poor Ariadne, she needs your company. She must be gay, happy. I love her to be happy. Besides, I cannot be with her all the time.’ A slight pout here, as of one sacrificed already too much to maternal duty.
But it was plain from the start that Dolly Denisov had other amusements besides motherhood; her appearance, for one thing. Never had I seen such dresses and such a profusion of jewels. Perhaps she saw my smile. ‘Ah, it’s no joke, Miss Gowrie, being a wife at eighteen and a widow with a daughter at twenty.’
‘And such a daughter,’ said Ariadne, giving her mother a loving pat. ‘Seventeen years and more you have had of it, Mamma.’
‘But luckily the English nation has been specially created to provide us poor Russians with the governesses we need,’ laughed Madame Denisov, ‘and thus to lighten my burden.’
English or Scottish, it was all one to her.
A joke, of course, but partly meant. You got a new slant on the Anglo-Saxon people and the great British Empire in Russia; we were not, as I had supposed, a nation of shop keepers and diplomats and colonisers, but a race of trustworthy governesses.
The Denisov motor-car had duly met us off the John Evelyn, and, close to, gave me an immediate appreciation of the Denisovs’ mettle; it was of surpassing elegance, the bodywork of maroon with a sort of basket-work corset enclosing it, the metalwork like well polished silver and the upholstery of lavender-blue watered silk. Did I forget to say that it was perfumed? As the introductions were concluded and I stepped inside, a sweet waft of rose and iris floated towards me, nicely mixed with the smell of Russian cigarette smoke. I discovered afterwards that Dolly Denisov smoked incessantly, a long, diamond-studded cigarette-holder always between her fingers. Not that Madame Denisov was there herself at the quay, of course. She was out at one of her numerous engagements, and indeed I did not see my employer for the first twenty-four hours after my arrival. But Ariadne, my dear pupil, had come to meet me. A plain girl, I thought at first, but when I took in her friendly brown eyes and her gentle smile, I saw she had her own beauty.
She turned from Edward Lacey and held out her hands in welcome. ‘I am so glad to see you, Miss Gowrie. I have been excitedly looking forward to today.’
I mumbled some pleasantry in reply. There was the sort of small, unhappy silence that seems inevitably to characterize such occasions, and then Edward Lacey was shaking my hand. ‘Goodbye for the time being, Miss Gowrie.’
I watched his tall, erect figure disappear amid the dock-side crowd. I have not found him easy to know, but with his going went my last link with home. Here I was, ensconced in a beautiful motor-car, with my charge. I seemed to have absolutely nothing to say. All I could think was: ‘Already Ariadne speaks excellent English. I shall have little to do on that score.’
At once she seemed to sense my thought, demonstrating that quick intelligence I was to know so well. ‘I speak English all the time with Mamma. Naturally.’
‘Naturally?’
‘Here one speaks either French or English, and Mamma says she likes French clothes and English conversation.’ It was a fair introduction to Dolly Denisov and, in its calm, good-humoured presentation of the facts, of Ariadne also.
While I was talking to her, I was trying to take in all that I could see of St Petersburg as we drove. It was a city of bridges and canals; water was everywhere. I could believe the stories of how the city had risen out of the marshes at the command of Peter the Great. It was early afternoon, and the sun sought out and flashed on gilded domes and spires.
‘That is the dome of St Isaac’s Cathedral,’ said my companion helpfully, observing my intent look. She pointed. ‘And that is the spire of the Fortress Cathedral.’
The streets were wide but crowded with people. Many of the men seemed to be in uniform – uniforms in a tremendous range of styles and colours. I supposed that later I would learn to recognise what each meant, and to appreciate the significance of this green uniform, and that red livery, this astrakhan cap and that peaked one, but at first glimpse the variety was simply picturesque and exciting. Our motor-car wove its way in and out of a great welter of traffic, private conveyances, carts, and oddly-shaped open carriages whose iron wheels rattled across the cobbles. At one junction an electric tram clattered across our track, motor and tram so narrowly missing a collision that I caught my breath. But Ariadne remained calm, as if such near misses were an everyday occurrence. At intervals, a majestic figure wearing a shaggy hat of white sheepskin and a long dark jacket would stride through the traffic, oblivious of all danger, forcing all to give way before him: a Turcoman, living reminder of Oriental Russia.
Now we had turned along a waterfront, passing a great honey-coloured building and then a dark green, verdant stretch of gardens. There was what looked like a row of government buildings of severe grey stone, succeeded by a row of shops and some private houses. Then a few more minutes of driving and we had arrived at the Molka Quay. The motor-car stopped outside a house of beautiful, pale grey stone with a curving flight of steps leading to an elegant front door.
As we drove up, the door opened. I suppose someone had been watching. But this was always the way it was in Russia; it never seemed necessary to ring a bell or ask for a service, every want was unobtrusively satisfied before the need for it was even formulated, the servants were so many and so skilful.
I was taken up to my room by a trio of servants and a laughing Ariadne. With a flourish, the girl showed me round what was to be my domain. Domain it was; I had two lofty rooms with an ante-chamber, and my own servant. I almost said ‘serf’, but of course the serfs had been freed in 1861 by Alexander, the Tsar Liberator. Nevertheless, the servant who bowed low before me was old enough to have been born into servility, and I felt you could see it in his face, where the smile was painted on and guarded by watchful eyes.
‘Ivan will stand at your door, and anything you wish, he will do. You have only to say.’
‘I shall have to brush up my Russian.’
‘Ivan understands a little English, that is why he was chosen. On our estate a few peasants are always taught some English. Also French and German. It is so convenient.’ Ariadne held out her hand and said sweetly: ‘Come down when you are ready. We have English tea at five o’clock.’
Somewhat to my surprise, and in spite of his Russian name, Ivan was a negro.
When Ariadne had gone, leaving only Ivan standing by the outer door, I explored my rooms, which were furnished with a mixture of Russian luxury and western comfort. Carpets, tapestries and furniture were expensive and exotic. Great bowls of flowers stood everywhere. The bed in the bedroom was newly imported from Waring and Gillow of London, by the look of it. I unpacked a few things, stood my photographs of the family at Jordansjoy by my bed where I could see them when I went to sleep, and proceeded to tidy myself to go down to the Denisovs’ ‘Five o’clock’. I washed my hands. I found that the rose-scented soap in the china dish was English.
It may very well be that young Russian noblewomen never go anywhere without a companion, but otherwise it seemed to me that Ariadne Denisov had a good deal of freedom. For that first evening she entertained me on her own, presiding over dinner and then playing the piano to me afterwards. It was pleasant and undemanding, but anticipation and a battery of new experiences had exhausted me, and before long Ariadne realized the condition I was in, and the two of us went up to bed.
On our way upstairs I saw a small, dark-gowned figure moving along the corridor a short distance ahead of us. Not a servant, obviously, from the sharp dignity with which she observed: ‘Good night, Ariadne,’ disappearing round the corner without waiting for an answer.
‘Mademoiselle Laure, the French governess,’ explained Ariadne. ‘The French governess,’ I noticed, not ‘my French governess’. Thus Ariadne dismissed Mademoiselle as a piece of furniture of the house, necessary, no doubt, to its proper equipment, but of no importance. Her attitude contrasted strangely with the welcome given to me.
Sitting up in bed, plaiting my hair, I thought about the scene again. No doubt I had imagined the flash of malevolence from Mademoiselle Laure’s eyes. Yet she had spoken in English when French would have been more natural to her. No, emotion was there, and I would do well to heed it. I recalled Edward Lacey’s suggestion that Mademoiselle Laure had experienced a certain captiousness in Madame Denisov’s attitude to her protegées. Was she, perhaps, envious of me?
I considered where I had landed myself. The business of preparing for bed had revealed that the luxury I had first noticed went hand in hand with a curious primitiveness. There were beautiful carpets and fine pictures everywhere, jasper and lapis lazuli had been used to decorate the walls of the salon; but there was absolutely no sign of piped water. No water-closet seemed to exist, and I had an antique-looking commode in my room. Private and convenient, no doubt, but even Jordansjoy did better. And there was dust under the bed.
But all the same, I liked it here. Magnificence suited me, never mind the dirt. The Denisovs were obviously extremely wealthy. I had been told that only the very rich had their own house, or osobniak, and that even the well-to-do chose to live in flats. But the whole of this great house seemed given over to the Denisovs. And so far I had met only one of them. Besides Madame Denisov there was the ‘Uncle Peter’ Ariadne had spoken of, her father’s younger brother. She had pointed out his photograph to me, showing me the face of a neat-boned, dark-haired young man with a look of Ariadne herself, the features which seemed plain on the girl possessing elegance on him.
I snuggled down into bed at last, tired but curiously confident – sure I could outlast any caprices of Dolly’s favour for as long as it suited me.
The next day, somewhat later than I might have expected, I met Dolly Denisov.
She was sitting curled up on one end of a great sofa, a bright silk bandeau round her head, a pink spot of rouge on each cheek and something dark about her eyes, puffing away at a cigarette and chattering at a great rate to Ariadne in her high-pitched, lilting voice. She leapt to her feet when she saw me and came forward holding out a delicate, jewelled hand.
I don’t remember her opening words, I was too absorbed in her physical impact; I was swimming in a strange sea, excited and exhilarated. Then we were sitting down, side by side on the sofa, talking as if she was really interested in me.
‘And did you sleep? Visitors sometimes find our summer nights trying.’
‘I did find it difficult to sleep.’
‘And you dreamed? We always say that there’s nothing like a St Petersburg summer’s night dream.’
‘Yes, I dreamed.’ I had dreamt of Patrick. She knew all about Patrick, of course. I realized by now that everything of my sad little history had been explained to all parties concerned by Emma Gowrie.
‘Everyone dreams here in the summer. When they can sleep at all. I can never sleep. All the time I am exhausted.’ She didn’t look it, though. Energy crackled from her. ‘But then we go to our estate in the country and there I rest; but you will be at work.’ And she smiled. ‘Foreigners are always interested in our country estates because in them is the heart of Russia. We know what we owe to our peasants, Miss Gowrie, you must never doubt that. Between the landed proprietor and his peasants is a bond that only God can break. Outside Russia, people do not understand this. But I am a liberal-thinking woman. I want the Tsar to rule through a Parliament – the Duma, we call it – as your King does.’
Our conversation was broken into by a procession of servants carrying salvers laden with food and wine, which they proceeded to lay out upon a series of small tables before bowing and retiring. I watched, frankly enjoying the scene; it was as good as being at the play. And no sooner had they departed than a stream of guests began arriving, almost all the men in a uniform of one sort or another, the ladies for the most part as richly decked out as Dolly Denisov, with one or two poorer-looking figures dressed in dingy dark clothes – including one elderly lady who speedily helped herself to a plate of assorted delicacies and retired to a corner to eat them as if she had not seen food as good as this for sometime, and would not soon do so again. Last to arrive was a trio of musicians who came quietly in, settled themselves in a corner and struck up. No one took the slightest notice, although by all accounts the Russians rated themselves very highly as music lovers.
Ariadne skipped around, sometimes bringing guests up to me to be introduced, sometimes leading me to them. Madame Soltikov, Count Gouriev, Professor Klin, Prince Tatischev, the Princess Valmiyera – she was named with especial respect, and was the little old lady eating her plateful of delicacies.
Halfway through the evening a tall, dark-haired young man walked quietly across the room to where I was sitting and introduced himself. ‘I am Peter Alexandrov, Dolly’s brother.’ He was fastidiously and beautifully dressed and I caught the faint scent of verbena as he bowed over my hand. No one could have been more unlike Patrick, but he was the first man who had caught my attention at all since my disaster. ‘I should think he knows how to interest women all right,’ I thought to myself as I talked to him.
Our conversation was light and easy, nothing important was said, but I felt I had made a friend. When he rose to go I saw him catch Dolly’s eye and a look passed between them. A question in hers, and an assent in his. I could not mistake it. He had wanted to meet me, I was sure of it.
Someone had been watching us. I turned quickly. A small dark-clad figure crossed the room diagonally, walking towards the door. I recognised Mademoiselle Laure. So she had been here all the time.
An irrational vexation possessed me. We were two of a kind in this household, Mademoiselle and I, and yet she seemed to avoid me, whereas I had already made tentative explorations to see if I could find her room.
‘There goes Mademoiselle Laure.’ I pointed her out to Ariadne. ‘I didn’t know she was here.’
‘Oh, she came to listen to the music, I suppose,’ said Ariadne. ‘She is very fond of music.’
If she had been listening, then she was the only one. The musicians had played sadly, as if they never expected an audience. Now they had packed up their instruments and were filing out, one after the other like the Three Blind Mice.
‘I suppose she has a room somewhere near mine?’ I asked.
‘Mademoiselle Laure? Oh, I think she is in a room on the next floor,’ said Ariadne vaguely, as if she did not know and did not care. It was all very unlike the treatment of me.
The next day Dolly Denisov clapped her hands and announced that Ariadne would be taking me on a tour of the city. Was I rested? Was I comfortable? Good. To be introduced to St Petersburg was a necessary preliminary to my duties.
‘Duties,’ I thought. There seemed to be no duties, only pleasures.
We duly set off in their large motor-car, with Ariadne pointing out the sights. We had passed this way yesterday. ‘There is the Rouminantiev Garden ― so beautiful. One day we must walk there. Oh, all those buildings are part of the university, but that one over there covered with mosaics is the Academy of Arts. Mamma says it is unsightly, but I rather like it. Oh, and that’s the Stock Exchange – looks as if it was hewn out of solid rock, doesn’t it?’ She spoke through the speaking tube to the footman, who then spoke to the chauffeur. ‘Go on to the Peter and Paul Fortress, then the Cathedral, and then down to the Nevsky Prospect.’ She turned to me. ‘That way we’ll go past the Vladimir Palace and the Winter Palace. You’ll like the Nevsky Prospect, the shops are gorgeous.’ And she giggled. She and her mother had the same sort of delightful, rumbling little laugh.
Ariadne had her orders, I decided, and the tour which looked so artless had been carefully thought out. The city was laid out before me in its great beauty, with everywhere trees and water, and buildings either of rich red brick or stone apricot-coloured in the sunlight. The sombre bulk of the Fortress of St Peter and St Paul, Kazan Cathedral, the Winter Palace itself, I saw them all. And at the centre was the Nevsky Prospect. ‘It is the longest and widest street in the world,’ said Ariadne proudly. ‘Five miles from the Alexander Gardens to the Moscow Gate.’
I was struck by the width of the street, too, the pavements looked as if a dozen people could have marched up them side by side. Very soon Ariadne stopped the car.
‘Now we will walk,’ she said, and took my hand tightly in hers and led me along. ‘This is the glittering world, Miss Rose. Perhaps I shall have to renounce it one day, who knows what may happen? But while it is here, let us enjoy it. Look, here is Alexandre’s.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘Oh, I adore Alexandre’s.’
Together we stared at the window full of expensive and elegant objects – jade boxes, scarves of Persian silk, chains of gold and ivory, a delicate parasol of white lace with a diamond-studded handle. Never had I seen anything like it. By comparison Jenner’s in Prince’s Street did not exist.
‘Do you have anything like this?’
I shook my head. ‘In London, perhaps. Not in Edinburgh.’
Past Alexandre’s was Druce’s, the ‘English Shop’, where were sold English soap and toothpaste and lavender water – which was much used by the men. After that we went into Wolff’s, the great bookshop, where Ariadne lavishly bought me several books about Russia and a copy of the London Times.
‘Across the road,’ she said in a low voice, ‘is Fabergé’s shop. Even I hardly dare look in there, it is so expensive. Old Madame Narishkin spent the whole of her husband’s salary there in one day, just buying two presents for his birthday. Or that’s the story, anyway.’ She gave that giggle, so like her mother’s. ‘The old goose is silly enough for it.’
A golden-voiced clock somewhere chimed the hour, and it reminded Ariadne of something. ‘Let’s go to Yeliseyeff’s,’ she said. ‘I have to order some ryabchik for Mamma – tomorrow she gives a dinner party.’
Yeliseyeff’s, as I was to discover, was a large provision store filled with exotic delicacies from all over the world: great jars of crystallised apricots and plums, drums of mysterious marrons glacés, bowls of strawberries and peaches, sacks of dark brown nuts. Seasons had no place in Yeliseyeff’s calendar, any fruit could be had at any time.
Ariadne ordered the little game birds for her mother from a smiling assistant, added to it the request for a box of praliné almonds for herself, and then led me to the grand treat of the morning. ‘Coffee and ices at Berrin’s,’ she announced.
Berrin’s was the French confiserie in Morskaya Street, just off the great Nevsky Avenue, and thither we were driven in the car which had all this time been following us at a discreet distance. There, at a round mahogany table in the window, we ate tiny sponge cakes and ice-cream served to us by a tall Frenchwoman dressed in brown and black, a colour combination I had never seen before – and it would certainly have looked dowdy enough at Jordansjoy – but which I now realized was of great elegance.
‘If this is to be my life in St Petersburg,’ I thought, ‘I am on Easy Street.’
An indeed, during those first few days in St Petersburg I was beginning to see a little of what lay behind Edward Lacey’s reservations about Russian society; it would be easy to be corrupted, to sink back into a comfortable, idle life. I do not deny that for a little while I indulged myself with daydreams about what it would be like to be a femme du monde like Dolly Denisov, with nothing to do except mind my clothes and my appearance. Delicious fantasies they were, too, but not for long. I delighted in Dolly Denisov, but I did not wish to be her, it was not in my nature to live like that. Besides, even Dolly had a conscience. Had she not asked me to come here to help with the health of her peasants? So before long I asked, rather shyly, if I could be introduced to this side of my duties.
‘Oh, aren’t you happy with Ariadne, then?’ she asked in some surprise.
‘But very. She’s a delightful girl, and I love going about the town with her. But I long to get on with the medical work,’ I said eagerly.
‘Yes of course, I can understand that.’ She gave a severe look at one of her own beautifully manicured hands, as if that hand was anxious to get out and cleanse wounds and tie bandages. ‘But it’s difficult till we go to Shereshevo, which will not be until a little later. It is there you will work, you see. Still, I don’t see why you couldn’t make a start.’ She considered. ‘Would you like to go and see one of the great St Petersburg hospitals?’
‘Oh, I would.’
‘Then I’ll arrange it. Let me see, tomorrow won’t do; I’m fully engaged. Nor the day after ― fittings, you know, for one or two new little dresses. But the day after that.’ She consulted her diary. ‘Yes, the morning of that day will do beautifully. Would you like to see the hospital of St George? I know the doctor, the medical administrator there, and he will arrange it for us.’
It wasn’t quite what I had had in mind; from my Edinburgh experience I knew that hospital inspections by a fashionable party of people, even those blessed by the noblest of motives, were not relished by busy doctors and nurses. Nor much by the sick themselves, I suspected. ‘If it’s all right,’ I said doubtfully.
‘You mean, for the doctors, the patients?’ Dolly’s eyebrows arched in surprise. ‘Oh, but they will love it.’
And when we got there I found to my surprise that this was true, at least of the patients. They really did enjoy being visited; my first intimation – one among many – of the differences between the Russian spirit and what I was used to at home.
We drove out to the hospital in Dolly’s car, travelling for about half an hour, first through the prosperous heart of the city with its great shops and palaces, then into a more working-class district. I looked about me with interest.
‘Well?’ said Dolly, adding with some irony: ‘A charming area, is it not?’
‘It looks poor enough,’ I said bluntly, ‘and it reminds me more of Glasgow than Edinburgh, with its great tenement blocks alternating with factories.’
‘Yes, there is a lot of industry here.’ Dolly put her hand on my arm. ‘Over there is a factory that should interest you.’ We were passing a high brick wall which protected a bleak stone building with few windows and those set high. ‘It belongs to your godfather, Erskine Gowrie.’
I stared at it as we sped past. ‘What do they make there? What kind of factory is it?’
After a moment’s pause, Dolly said: ‘Some sort of engineering factory, I believe.’
‘Engineering, is it? I thought I was told it was a chemical factory.’
‘I may have got it wrong,’ said Dolly easily. ‘It’s the sort of thing I do get wrong.’
‘I wonder if I could see over it.’
‘So you are interested in factories as well as hospitals?’ said Dolly, with a glint of amusement.
‘In that one, anyway, as it belongs to my godfather. He might let me in. Although he seems to have forgotten my existence,’ I added.
‘I believe he sees no one and is quite withdrawn. Senile, you know. With some people old age goes to the legs, and with some the mind.’
As the factory disappeared from my sight I had time to wonder who ran the factory if my godfather was beyond doing so. I was just about to ask Dolly this question when she said: ‘And here is the hospital.’
As far as looks went, there was not much to choose between my godfather’s factory and the hospital, for both were bleak, grey buildings nestling behind high walls; the hospital had more windows, that was all. But in my limited experience all hospitals looked like that outside, more or less; it was the inside that counted and showed its quality.
This hospital was simple enough inside, but well run. Armed with my introduction from Dolly, I was made welcome and taken to the dispensary, where drugs and equipment were laid out for me to see. I made a quick list of what was easily available and what I could order. They seemed to have most of the medicines I would have used at home. But what struck me about the hospital was a looseness of discipline; the staff and patients seemed almost jolly, I actually heard laughter and singing. When I thought about it I could see that happiness must promote healing. I was learning fast about the strange country that was Russia. I could see already that in many ways it was a harsh society, and yet there were always the unexpected things – the gaiety of the people, their charm – that delighted me. And somehow distracted me, too, from focusing on the grimmer realities.
On the way back home we drove by a different route and did not pass my godfather’s factory, which disappointed me. That was all I felt then – curiosity, and disappointment. But perhaps there were already questions forming in my mind: What does this forbidding place produce? What connection to me, exactly, is Erskine Gowrie? Am I to meet him? And if not, why not? Perhaps there was already growing in me a faint unease.
If so, it may well have been sharpened by an incident with Mademoiselle Laure.
I had seen Mademoiselle several times now, and tried to catch her eye, but she always turned away. On purpose, I thought. And I was right. One day I came upon her in the Denisovs’ library. I was determined to talk to her. I went to stand beside her – and inadvertently put my hand on hers, a personal touch I should have avoided. She wrenched it away.
‘I am sorry; your hand is cold,’ she excused herself.
But I refused to be put off. ‘We ought to understand each other, you and I. We take the same place in the household.’
‘Hardly.’
‘I have been here three weeks,’ I said on a note of surprise, ‘and not spoken to you at all.’
‘Three weeks! I have been here three hundred times as long.’ Her vehemence had more than a touch of bitterness in it. ‘I know things you would dread to learn.’
‘Come and sit in my room with me,’ I said. ‘I expect you know it – it is so beautiful.’
‘I know it!’ She gave a short laugh.
A strange and terrible thought struck me. ‘Was it your room once?’
‘My room? I have that room? No, it would be strange if it was. Between the French governess and the English governess there is a gulf fixed.’ There was an unmistakable edge of mockery in her voice.
‘Scottish,’ I corrected automatically. Without anyone telling me, I had already grasped that a hierarchy existed, and that English governesses stood at the top, with French and German ladies well down in social esteem and salary. Russian governesses, if they existed – and I had not yet met with any – were no doubt at the bottom. It was one strange aspect of Russian society. ‘Still,’ I said, ‘we do the same sort of job.’
She laughed, an incredulous, bitter hoot. ‘You think so? You really think so? How innocent. How terrible to be so innocent. And dangerous. Well, Russia will soon teach you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, Russia will teach you. And if it does not, then ask me for a lesson. Now I excuse myself.’ And giving me a stiff little nod, full of suppressed emotion, she departed.
I told myself uneasily that she was nothing but a spiteful, jealous woman; but still, I wondered. What or who had made her jealous? How could it be Rose Gowrie? It did just cross my mind, then, that she might have been in love with Peter.
Inevitably such thoughts remained unresolved. They did not disappear – but to whom could I put questions at once so pointed and so vague? Certainly Dolly Denisov, although apparently approachable, never seemed to say anything I could settle on. But Mademoiselle Laure’s observations stayed with me; and then, once or twice, I caught Dolly herself looking at me with a strange appraising scrutiny.
Meanwhile, Ariadne and I drifted away our days in conversation, visits to other splendid houses, and walks. I had instituted the Scottish ‘afternoon walk’ and Ariadne, although at first doubtful, now enjoyed the habit as much as I did. But we seemed to have no purpose and no direction in our life. I told myself that it was very Russian, and that this was how I must expect it all to be.
I had plenty of time at my own disposal when Ariadne was taking her music lessons, or singing, or learning dancing with the French dancing-master, or taking drawing lessons; she did all of these things, one or two of them brilliantly, none of them regularly. Madame Denisov had waved a vague hand when I asked permission to explore the library and the picture gallery.
The library was a lofty, dark room filled with ancient volumes in Russian, French and German, as well as offering a smaller library of Greek and Latin texts. Of these books no volume seemed later in date than 1840. English literature had a section all its own and was mainly made up of novels. Dolly Denisov had a very representative collection of English light fiction, and I spent quite a lot of my free time there, gratefully reading my way through a number of delightful authors like E. F. Benson and Elizabeth, Gräfin von Arnim, which poverty had hitherto kept from me.
The picture gallery was a long, tunnel-like room filled with dark portraits of fierce-looking soldiers and ladies dressed with an air of fashion and expense that suggested Dolly Denisov was running true to form. They were a dull lot and, except for certain slight differences of dress, could have been found, perfectly at home, at Jordansjoy. But at the end of the gallery were three or four strange pictures that exploded with colour and light. A scene of water-lilies in a pond, a plump woman sitting at her dressing-table brushing her hair – these were two of them. Another was a country scene, but so angular, bold and bright that I had never seen anything like it. Yet another was of a girl dancer resting on a chair, her face in repose plain and spent, and yet she was an object of great beauty.
Just beyond this group of pictures was a door. One day, out of curiosity, I opened it. Behind the door was a small hall, and leading out of it a heavily carpeted staircase going straight up into the wall.
I went to the foot of it and stared up; I could see nothing because the staircase curved sharply. A scented, murky, musky smell hung over the stairwell, as if fresh air never reached it. I wondered where it led, but on that day something unwelcoming, even slightly sinister about the stairs, kept me back.
But the place fascinated me and I kept thinking about it. The next time I was in the gallery I went again into the small foyer that led to the red-carpeted stairs. This time as I stood there, I heard a movement behind me. One of the servants came through the door bearing a heavy silver tray on which were covered dishes.
I was beginning to speak a little more Russian by now, and at any rate I could ask a simple question and generally make out what the answer was.
‘Where does the staircase go?’
The servant – he was old and grey – stared without answering. Then he said: ‘Ah, the sacred staircase,’ and crossed himself as if he meant cursed rather than sacred. Later I came to observe that the servants, like many an oppressed minority, often used a word in the exactly opposite sense to the way they really intended it. In secretiveness they found both protection and defiance.
He said no more, but went on up the stairs and out of sight. On that thick carpet his feet made no sound.
I knew now that someone lived up the staircase.
The silence of the household about this unmentioned inhabitant began to oppress me. The mystery worried me. I thought about it at night, those pale nights, and when I was not dreaming about Patrick I dreamt about the staircase.
One quiet afternoon while Ariadne was at her singing lesson and Dolly Denisov out upon her own concerns, I entered the foyer from the picture gallery and crept quietly up the stairs.
The staircase wound up and up in three curving flights. No wonder no sound had floated down to me at the bottom. Ahead of me was a solid oak door with a polished bronze handle. I opened it.
I was on the threshold of a large, dark room, curtained and lit by lamps although the afternoon was bright. In the middle of the room was a great state bed of gilded wood, heavily decorated with swags and carved fruits and little crowns, and hung with rich tapestries. In the bed, propped up on cushions, was an old lady, before her a bed-table spread with playing cards. She raised her head from her cards at my entrance, and stared. Then a radiant smile spread across her face, and eagerly she held out her hands. She said in English: ‘At last you have come. I always knew you would.’
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_d7fb470a-7a7b-5aea-b0b3-5a7d48d1b566)
I had never been in such a room before. It was so shut-in and artificial that I felt the outside air could never penetrate at all. Over the window were heavy, plush curtains of deep red, and over these were layers of muslin, draped and pleated in elaborate folds. On the floor was an ancient Turkey carpet whose very redness seemed to suck up what air was left in the room after the endlessly burning lamps and the great stove had taken their share.
I stood on the threshold, shaken by my reception, and not understanding it.
The old woman in the bed and I stared at each other. Then she gave a cackle of laughter. ‘Come in, girl, and don’t stand there staring.’
Slowly I advanced into the room, vaguely conscious of great gilt mirrors on the wall uncannily reflecting everything in the room, making every image smaller and clearer than in life: gilt furniture, the old lady in the bed, the lamps, and the girl at the door who was myself, a girl in blue-and-white spotted silk, her face with bright puzzled eyes.
‘Come on, come on.’ The voice was imperious. ‘Come right up close and let me have a look.’
Obediently, as if mesmerised, I came right up to the bed and let her look at me. Her hand came forward – dry and cold it was on mine, glittering with diamonds. Age had shrunk and discoloured it until it looked like a little brown animal’s paw.
Her face was old, older than anyone’s I had ever seen. At Jordansjoy we thought of Tibby as old, but she was not old like this. This woman looked as if she and the last century had grown old together. I saw a thin, lined, wrinkled face, cheeks bright rouged, and neck and forehead powdered white. Diamond earrings sparkled at the ears, and a great pearl necklace dangled from her throat. Out of this painted, ancient face stared a pair of dark, keen eyes. But every so often heavy lids fell over the eyes, turning the eye-sockets into dark pits which made her look dead already. It was a disconcerting trick, due, I suppose, to a weakness of the muscle beyond her control. Yet I came to suspect that she used her weakness to intimidate.
‘Good,’ she said again; her voice was almost a whisper, a ghost of what it must have been. ‘I am pleased with you. You have the right look. Genuine. I knew I should be able to tell. At my age a skin peels from the spirit and one senses things at once. But you kept me waiting. I even began to think you had not come.’
‘I didn’t mean to,’ I said, flummoxed.
‘And how long have you been here?’ There was a hint of imperious displeasure in her voice.
‘I’ve been in Russia a little more than three weeks.’
‘Ah, so long? Well, I cannot rely on being told the truth. I have to allow for that.’ Her eyelids fell, revealing the bruised, violet-coloured eye-pits.
I didn’t know what on earth she was talking about. ‘I am Rose Gowrie,’ I said. She opened her eyes, now their blackness seemed opaque, then light and life gleamed in them.
‘So indeed you are: Rose Gowrie come from Scotland,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘And I am Irene Drutsko.’
The name, as even I knew, was one of the oldest in Russian history. The Drutskos looked down on the Romanovs as parvenus.
‘Yes, I am a Drutsko, by birth as well as marriage. We have a lot of the old Rurik blood in us. They say by the time we are five-and-twenty we are all either saints or mad; I leave you to discover which I am.’ Again the eyelids drooped, but were raised quickly – although with an effort, I thought. ‘No, you need not kiss my hand,’ she went on. ‘Your own birth is noble. Besides, your grandfather was my lover when he was an attaché here. It was a short but most enjoyable relationship.’
‘That must have been my great-grandfather,’ I said. ‘He was here. I’ve seen his portrait in Russian dress – very romantic’
‘So? One confuses the generations at my age. Yes, he was very beautiful. He loved me to distraction. When he was called back to London he said he would se suicider.’
‘He was eighty-two when he died,’ I said. He had also had eight children and two wives, both married and all begotten after his sojourn in St Petersburg. I wondered what he had said to her. He had gone down in our family sagas as a tremendous old liar. A great beauty, though, as she had said. We all got our looks from him.
She ignored my remark as, later, she was to ignore what did not fit in with the picture of her world as she saw it. Instead she said: ‘How strange that the blood of that worldly man should run in your veins. Truly the ways of God are beyond us.’ She took my hand caressingly. ‘Ah, my little miracle, my little treasure from God.’
‘Am I?’ I said doubtfully, withdrawing my hand as gently as I could; dry and cold as her hand was, it seemed to take warmth from mine. All the same, my professional interest was aroused. She was a sick woman. I could feel it in the thin, dry, papery quality of her skin. No healthy hand has such skin. It was hard to get my hand away, for her age she had a firm grip. ‘I’m here to be companion to Ariadne and to talk English to her.’ For some reason I did not mention my more important reason for coming to Russia: the medical work I was going to do at Shereshevo. I think I knew instinctively that such a scheme would find no favour with the Princess Irene.
‘Ah?’ Her eyes lit up with mockery. ‘Is that what you think?’
‘Of course. Madame Denisov – is she your niece – engaged me,’ I said stoutly. It seemed to me that I was obscurely defending myself, although I couldn’t tell why. A little trickle of alarm moved inside me. Of course it had been Madame Denisov who offered me my position. What did the old lady mean?
There was a moment of silence, and during it I became more aware of my surroundings. I was standing by the bed; behind me was the door through which I had come in. Now I noticed that in the wall behind the bed was yet another door. I wondered where it led.
‘You think so?’ Her question seemed to give her satisfaction. She shook her head. ‘No, Ariadne is not so important. You have come to me. Do you think Dolly is the only one with ailments? Not that she has any, whatever she may think, she is as strong as a little horse. She smokes too much, of course, but they all do.’
‘I didn’t know Madame Denisov was ill,’ I said, surprised.
‘Nor is she; I have just been saying so. Don’t you listen, girl? Sick in her mind she may be at times; she certainly ought to be with the way she plays at cards and all the worries this family has.’ She paused, and added ironically: ‘So you are her wonder-worker, who will train her silly peasant women in the ways of good health? So she says.’ She gave a sceptical titter.
‘You do know, then?’
‘Of course I know. I know everything there is to know up here in my tower.’ Still the mocking note in her voice. She would be a devil if she was angry, I thought, but in spite of her great age there was an immense attractiveness welling out of her. She seemed like the Sphinx itself to me, only half human, richly encrusted with memories of worlds long gone, and full of mystery. ‘But I shan’t let you be wasted on a pack of illiterate peasants.’ Her eyes glittered. ‘No, you are too valuable a property to leave in my Dolly’s feckless hands. I can see there will have to be a little war between us.’
‘I don’t think I want to be the subject of a war.’
‘You can’t help it, my dear, you are chosen. Life chose you.’ She gave me an amused look. ‘Shall I tell you what I know? No, after all, I won’t. It will be more amusing for me to see you move to strings pulled by you know not whom. At my age, what is left but to be a voyeur?’
I did not properly understand her, but this only added to her amusement. ‘Although I will admit, my dear, that I have hopes of returning to more active life with your help.’ She gave a little cackle of laughter. ‘You will help me, my dear, but I do not promise to help you. That is the law of my world. Struggle, little moth, in your web.’
‘You’re a wicked old woman,’ I said; but there was so much humour in her, black as it was, that she captivated me still.
Behind her the door opened an inch or two, then halted.
She saw it too, reflected in the mirror; she stopped in mid-sentence. Behind the wrinkles and the rouge and the powder her expression changed, amusement and satisfaction draining away and blankness taking their place.
I looked at the door: it was still open, I hadn’t imagined the first movement. Someone must be standing behind it, waiting to come in.
‘Please go now,’ the Princess said, leaning back on her pillows and closing her eyes. Pretending to close them, I thought, because I could see a glimmer through those painted lashes. ‘After all, I am greatly fatigued. Goodbye, my dear, your arrival is my great joy. Come again soon. I will arrange it.’
‘But Madame Denisov – ’ I began. ‘I mean, I don’t know what she expects …’
She interrupted me. ‘I find it best to make my own dispositions. Goodbye for the moment. I shall soon be greatly in your debt.’
Did the door move a fraction as I went away? In the mirror I thought I saw it did.
I was halfway down the red staircase when it struck me that from where she lay in her bed the old lady could watch both the doors. More, anyone opening either door could see who was in the room, reflected in the mirror, before entering. What a room for conspirators.
I didn’t mention anything of this to Dolly Denisov or Ariadne. I wasn’t proud of either my original inquisitiveness or the secrecy it led to. It was Russia, I see that now; and in particular, the way Russia manifested itself in the Denisov household. Without my knowing it, the atmosphere of the house was affecting me.
But the next day Dolly Denisov raised the subject herself, in her own way, and obliquely. We met over the teacups while Dolly smoked and Ariadne nibbled macaroons.
‘You have settled down so well, Miss Gowrie.’ Dolly smoothed her glossy hair, which today was pinned back with a tortoiseshell and diamond comb, shaped like a fan. ‘I am so happy.’
‘I love it all,’ I said with honesty.
‘And soon letters from home will start arriving, and that sad little look I see at the back of the eyes will have gone.’
‘Yes,’ I said. But none from Patrick. No letters, ever again, from Patrick. I don’t think Dolly Denisov can ever have been truly in love or she would not have said what she did. But perhaps she didn’t believe it. Hard to tell with Dolly.
‘You miss your family, of course you do. We Russians understand about families. That is why we live in such huge houses, so we can all be together.’ She reached out for a cigarette, and the dark silk of her flowing tea-gown slid away from her arm to show half a dozen barbaric-looking gold bracelets. ‘Even in this house we have an old aunt living. She is too old and frail for you to meet, she sees no one,’ said Dolly easily.
I said nothing. Old, Princess Irene certainly was, I thought; frail too, no doubt; but it wasn’t true she saw no one. She had seen me. I was opening my mouth to confess all, when Dolly swept on. ‘One day, perhaps, I will take you up to see her. She is history personified. Do you know, as a girl she danced with Prince Metternich? She was a great flirt. Well, more than that, I’m afraid; one couldn’t say she stopped short at flirting, precisely. So many scandals.’ Dolly laughed indulgently. ‘Never really beautiful, but she knew how to attract. Oh, she was worldly, Tante Irene, and now look what she has come to: a recluse, quite cut off, seeing no one. The sadness!’
I kept quiet. I wondered if it was true about her being quite cut off. I had got the distinct impression the Princess received exactly whom she liked in the tower.
Next day, after walking with Ariadne, there was a budget of letters from home waiting for me. I longed to carry them straight up to my room, but Ariadne said no, there was a special visitor in the drawing-room and I must come in and meet him.
‘Oh, who?’
She screwed her face up in a wry grimace. ‘I suppose you would call him a suitor.’
‘A suitor? For you?’ I was surprised. She seemed so young.
‘Oh, don’t worry, Miss Rose, these things take years and years in Russia.’ She smiled. ‘I’m not supposed to know. But of course I do. Goodness, my nurse told me of the arrangement when I was five. But I pretend I don’t know. My mother understands I know, but she pretends that I don’t, too.’ Then she sighed. ‘I shall have to make up my mind soon or it will be too late.’
‘You can choose, then?’
‘Oh, I expect so,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Mamma would never force me to anything, but why should it be no? He’s rich, gentle, and quite pretty, I think.’
‘We say handsome with a man,’ I said.
‘Handsome, then,’ accepted Ariadne blithely.
In the drawing-room were two men. One was Peter Alex-androvitch and the other – yes, seeing him suddenly through Ariadne’s eyes, he was handsome.
‘My Uncle Peter,’ introduced Ariadne, ‘whom you know. And this …’ no doubt from her voice and manner of amused archness that this was her suitor, and that she was enjoying my astonishment … ‘Edward Lacey.’
I held out my hand. ‘I am very glad to see you, Major Lacey.’ And it was true. I was surprised at how happy I was to see him. How secretive they had been, neither telling me until now of their particular interest in each other. Yet it was a private matter, of course, and not the sort of thing to be discussed with a new acquaintance.
Ariadne and I had interrupted a conversation about a famous Russian writer who had just, inexplicably committed suicide. ‘He killed himself,’ said Peter Alexandrov. ‘Shot himself through the mouth. Oh, there is a sickness in our society, all right, and where can it all end?’
‘It is part of your sickness to have no answer,’ said Edward Lacey.
‘Possibly. Or too many answers.’
‘Oh, politics, politics, they can never touch us.’ Ariadne interrupted their conversation with gaiety. ‘Let us ignore unpleasantness and have a good time.’
‘Wretched little butterfly,’ said Edward, but he seemed to enjoy her prattle. Presently the two of them went over to the piano where he turned the pages and Ariadne played and sang. I suppose it was a courtship in the Russian style.
The music began, and Peter and I were left looking at each other. Then Peter gave a short laugh. ‘Ariadne knows nothing, and yet she knows everything. She is like an animal that senses instinctively how to lead a happy life. But give her time, she will grow up. The women in our family mature late. But Ariadne will still be happy, it is her gift.’
Perhaps that was what Edward Lacey liked, and perhaps it was the gift I lacked. ‘Lucky Ariadne,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘Ah, but you have your own gifts.’
Our eyes met, and I seemed to read understanding in his. ‘I think I know what you mean; my gift of healing. But it’s such a little thing, perhaps nothing at all, mere imagination.’ I found myself telling him about the boy in the village, about a dog I had once helped, even about a bird’s wing that I had healed. ‘And yet, small as it is, my gift may have ruined my life.’ I was thinking of Patrick.
‘Your life is only just beginning,’ said Peter. ‘You do not know what you may become.’
‘In Russia?’ I queried, half smiling.
But Peter said nothing more, and soon the others came back from the piano and suggested that we go out to see the new horse that Edward Lacey had just bought and which was ‘a regular winner’. Then, after looking the beast over, I was able to go back to my room, where I sat down by the window and opened my letters from home.
My sister Grizel’s was the longest and the least well spelt, and Alec’s was the shortest, produced in his best copperplate hand, and containing one brief sentence about seeing a fox. Grizel produced a string of home news, such as the state of her Sunday hat, the sad disappearance of our best laying hen (a fox was suspected) and the fact that she was invited to a house-party at Glamis and had ‘absolutely nothing to wear and no way to get there except by walking’.
I raised my head and smiled. I knew that Grizel would get to her house-party – some hopeful suitor would constrain his mother or his sister or his aunt to drive her over – and she would look delightful in her old clothes.
Tibby’s letter was more down-to-earth; she too mentioned the hen, which was obviously a sore point with the whole family, but blamed the local tinkers and not the fox. She concentrated on health. She told me how the minister was, how his wife was, how the postie’s rheumatism had made him ‘terrible slow’ with his letters lately, and finally she told me how she, Grizel and my brother were. I was delighted to hear that they all seemed in rude health. But as I turned the last page of her letter I saw a frantic postscript which seemed to have been jointly written by her and Grizel.
‘My dear Rose,’ wrote Tibby, ‘we have just heard that a terrible trouble has fallen upon the Grahams. Patrick has disgraced himself in India and must leave his regiment in dishonour. We don’t know the details as yet; I dare say we never shall, but I feel for his poor mother.’
In Grizel’s hand, I read: ‘Rose darling, Patrick is accused of mutiny, who would have believed it of him? And he has fled. No one knows his whereabouts, not even his mother. Well, thank goodness you are not married to him, my love, that’s what I say.’
But I thought: poor Patrick, poor Patrick. And I also thought how little I knew him after all.
That night, instead of dreaming about Patrick I dreamt about myself. Troubled, restless dreams in which my own identity seemed lost, and I wandered like a ghost through an unknown countryside.
I woke in the pale dawn and lay looking as the sunlight began to colour the room. I held my hands up in front of me; ordinary, quite pretty hands, with long fingers and the narrow nails inherited by all the Gowries. Why should my hands be working hands, hands to heal, when the hands of all my forebears – except for the soldiers’ – had been idle ones? And yet I knew my hands must work. I wanted to feel them scrubbed clean and sterile, ready to do what I asked of them. And then at the end of the day I wanted to feel they had achieved what I had asked of them. It wasn’t exactly that I thought of myself as a healer, although I hoped I would be; it was simply that there was a job I seemed born for, head, hands and heart, and I longed to be at it.
Had Patrick sensed this? Was this, as much as any troubles of his own, what lay behind our break-up? Perhaps I should blame myself as much as him. And lying there in that Russian dawn, I did blame myself. Somehow I had frightened Patrick away. The notion that he had been paid to leave me struck me now as ridiculous. Still, he had gone, and now some terrible disaster had struck him in India. I felt as though I didn’t understand about this disaster. As if the story, as presented to me, was false. I did not believe in the mutiny tale.
I thought about that for a little while. ‘But I’ve only heard about it at third hand,’ I thought. ‘What actually happened in India, and the story as told to me, may bear very little relation to each other … What a lot I don’t understand;’
The next day – quite unexpectedly – I got my first taste of the other Russia. So far I had been on the whole cocooned in a world of luxury and security; now I was to see the dark side.
That morning early, before breakfast, I buttoned myself into a cool, white linen shirt – for St Petersburg was beginning to be hot – and went downstairs where Ariadne was waiting for me to go with her to church. Like many Russian girls of her class and generation, Ariadne had strongly developed religious feelings, although of a somewhat dreamy and simplistic sort. Religiosity rather than religion, my old Tibby would have called it. It was a matter of duty that I should go with her, but in fact, I was entranced by the richness and beauty of the Orthodox service and music. We went quite often. Church was not, as in Presbyterian Scotland, a Sunday affair; one could go on any day of the week, at almost any time; sometimes we planned to go, but sometimes, too, we went quite casually, just because Ariadne felt like it.
I had instituted the habit of walking; Ariadne fell in with the idea, to humour me. This morning we were turning into the street which led to the church when we saw a line of police drawn up across the road, and we were stopped. Beyond them we could see a small group of people being questioned by two policemen, and in the distance, right down at the end of the road, was a glimpse of the Nevsky Prospect where a large crowd seemed to be milling about.
‘What’s going on?’
The police officers were eyeing us, and one man stepped forward. ‘You may not go that way, Excellencies,’ he said politely.
‘What is it?’ asked Ariadne.
He bowed. ‘A bomb in the Imperial Library, Excellency.’
‘Oh, the Anarchists again, I suppose. Was anyone hurt?’
‘I believe so.’ He was clearly reluctant to add more.
Ariadne turned back to me. ‘The police must think the criminals are still in the neighbourhood; you can see they have the area cordoned off and are searching.’
I had my eyes on the little group already under investigation; I saw a girl, quite young and neatly dressed in dark clothes, a young man in the characteristic suit and narrow cap of the student, and two older men, both working-class.
‘Perhaps they have them, or think they have,’ I said. Even as I looked, the four were led away by the police.
‘The girl was very young,’ said Ariadne. ‘Younger than me. It frightens me a bit.’
There was much to frighten one in Russia, and I was only just beginning to realise it. All the newspaper reports of violence I had read at home, the cautious speculation on the possibility of widespread unrest, suddenly took a concrete form. I was witnessing the break-up of a society. This was the edge of a volcano.
‘Let’s go home.’ And I took Ariadne’s arm, and we turned our backs on the scene.
‘It’s exciting, though, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘She was so brave, that girl, and must have dared so much.’ She was like a child who had just been given an experience that both shocked and delighted her, so that she wanted to go on re-living it in her imagination. For myself, it made me wonder how I should bear myself in this strange new country full of alarming portents.
In the hall Ariadne excused herself. ‘I’ll have some tea and bread in my room. I won’t come in to breakfast. I think I would like to be alone for a little while. You know, if we had been a bit further on on our walk we might have been near that bomb. The Imperial Library is not so far away from the church. We might have been hurt.’
‘And the girl?’ I said. ‘If she’s guilty, what will happen to her?’
‘The Fortress of St Peter and St Paul first,’ said Ariadne. ‘That’s where they take political prisoners. And then – ’ she shrugged – ‘Siberia, I suppose. It is terrible, isn’t it? However you look at it. Terrible what she did, and terrible what will happen to her. Russia is a terrible country. And today I have to go shopping for clothes with my mamma!’ And she ran away upstairs.
Thoughtfully, I went into the breakfast parlour. So now Ariadne knew that politics could reach out and touch her.
I found Mademoiselle Laure there, for once, coolly drinking tea. Her appearances on occasion were as puzzling as her disappearances. No rule seemed to account for them. But this morning, I learnt, Ariadne was to go to her mother’s French dressmaker, and Mademoiselle Laure was to go along too, presumably to see fair play. I was to be left to my own devices.
Mademoiselle Laure inclined her head to me over the teacup, as if it gave her some satisfaction to pass on this information. She was wearing a tight black dress with a small miniature, set with seed pearls and plaited hair, at her throat; I was in white even to my shoes. We made a strange pair, I all white and Mademoiselle Laure all black. There was something total in that blackness. Almost as if she was in mourning.
She saw me looking at the miniature and laid her hand protectively across it. ‘It is the anniversary of his death, and on that day I always wear his likeness, and dress,’ she indicated with her hand, ‘as you see.’
‘His death?’
‘Georges. Georges Leskov, my betrothed. He died of a fever before we could be married.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I had no idea.’
‘No matter. He loved me, and to the end. I have that consolation.’ And she gave me a meaning look.
I flushed. Bitch, I thought. And then: even she knows! ‘I wouldn’t have let him die,’ I said.
‘I too would have saved him, Miss Gowrie, if I could.’ She looked at me: there were tears in her eyes. ‘I nursed him day and night, did all the unpleasant duties a nurse must do, never flinched at inflicting pain. Could you do that, Miss Gowrie?’ She lowered her eyes. ‘But you would not have had to, one touch of your hand …’
‘What do you mean?’ I said sharply.
‘You know what I refer to, Miss Gowrie. Do you suppose Madame Denisov did not get a nice little character sketch of you before she engaged you?’
I flushed again. ‘I suppose she did. Indeed, I know it.’
‘Oh, you have no need to worry. She finds you magnificent. You are quite the “new woman” to her, all that she wants Ariadne to be. Or so she thinks at the moment. She’s a sceptic, not one of these sensation-hungry, superstitious Russians. Changeable, you know. Fickle. Better be prepared for that. You’re the chosen one now, but you won’t last. I’ve been used myself by someone in this house, to my cost.’
‘Oh, I can’t believe it,’ I said, stretching out my hand to her. To myself I thought she was madly in love with Peter, and that was her trouble.
She didn’t drag her hand away as she had done before, but her face softened a little. ‘Then you are truly unfortunate,’ she remarked.
As this chilling comment was uttered, we both heard the voice of Madame Denisov outside. Quickly Mademoiselle Laure said: ‘Take a word of advice from me, if you are not too proud.’
‘I’m not proud at all.’
She gave me a sweeping look. ‘Oh, you have pride. I can see it in the way you hold your head and in the stare of your eyes. Well, you’ve come to the right place to take a fall.’ She buttered a slice of bread and divided it into four equal segments, one of which she put into her mouth and ate carefully. ‘You have been with the Princess Drutsko.’ I made a quick movement of alarm. ‘Oh, don’t worry; I have said nothing to Madame Denisov.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I saw you come down the staircase. I have taken that walk myself, and know where it leads. Oh, yes, the Princess was my friend before she was yours. Don’t trust to her loyalty, will you? It does not exist. Come to my room when you can, and I will tell you a story.’
There was no mistaking the bitterness in her voice, nor could I fail to understand what lay behind it. ‘You have no need to fear me,’ I said slowly. ‘I am not your rival. Nor will I listen to any tales.’
She gave a short, incredulous laugh. At this moment, Dolly Denisov, accompanied by her brother Peter and followed by Ariadne, swept into the room. Behind, fussing and chattering in various tongues, came the little suite of attendants who seemed needed to get her off on any major expedition: French maid, Russian assistant and German secretary.
‘You will not be going,’ hissed Laure Le Brun in a whisper. ‘You’ll see.’
‘Oh, Rose, you are not to come with us,’ said Ariadne.
‘No, I know. Mademoiselle told me.’
‘We are too frivolous for you today.’
‘I should have enjoyed a peep inside a couture house.’
Dolly dimpled. ‘You shall have one, but on another day. Today, your cousin Emma wishes to meet you, and wants you to see your godfather, Erskine Gowrie. She sent a message round early. It’s one of his good days and she wants you to take advantage of it. She is there herself today.’
Everything had obviously been arranged in detail days before, and without a word to me. I was becoming increasingly annoyed, and puzzled, by the Denisovs’ habit of presenting me with ready-made decisions, careful faits accomplis. Was it a Denisov habit – or was it the way that Russians behaved in general? It made one feel awkward and helpless, particularly if one pretended to any kind of independence …
But I accepted it without protest; I wanted to see my Gowrie relatives. Soon after Dolly and her party had left, one of the Denisov carriages came for me, and after a smart ten-minute trot, drew up outside a large house in another fashionable district of St Petersburg. The footmen took me up to the Gowrie apartment and there was Emma Gowrie herself waiting for me.
Emma Gowrie was short, plump and elderly, with a frizz of grey hair and bright, bird-like eyes. I could just imagine the kindly relish with which she had prepared my little biography for Dolly Denisov. There was no doubt that she would love to have spent an hour with me now in interesting gossip about Jordansjoy, and my life with the Denisovs, but she plainly felt she had a duty to perform, and Erskine Gowrie must not be kept waiting.
Erskine’s apartment was full of dark wood and dark leather, very masculine in tone, with no trace of a feminine influence. His style of furnishing was a mixture of Russia and Europe: heavy oak and well-stuffed tartan cushions side by side – or even in competition with – shiny baroque furniture clearly of local workmanship. There was even something Asiatic about the total effect, and this notion was reinforced by the appearance of Erskine Gowrie himself. My godfather, a tiny shrunken figure propped up on silken cushions in a great chair, with his slippered feet on a stool, and wearing a rich brocade robe, looked like some Chinese Mandarin.
‘Here we are, Erskine, then,’ announced Emma cheerfully. ‘It’s Emma Gowrie.’
‘I can see that,’ said my godfather. ‘I know you. No need to shout.’
‘It’s one of his good days,’ whispered Emma to me. ‘He knows me.’
‘I always know you, Emma Gowrie,’ announced the old man. ‘Only sometimes I prefer not to.’
‘Well, that seems wise,’ said Emma, in no way put out. ‘Only fair, too. There are many days I’d prefer not to know you, Erskine Gowrie, ill-tempered chiel you can be, but I promised your wife.’
So there had been a wife, I thought. ‘Hardly remember her myself,’ said Erskine. ‘So don’t you bother.’
‘Oh, you old wretch, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Why, I’ve seen you weeping over her memory.’
‘Can’t say I remember,’ repeated the old man. ‘I expect you’re making it up. You always were a liar, Emma Gowrie. If you are Emma Gowrie; I’ve only got your word for it.’
Looking at him, I thought he displayed the essential unpredictability of impaired old age, his rudeness, his disparaging remark about what had probably been a loved wife, were part of his sickness. Underneath was a man who did indeed still remember, but who had to struggle against an irrational disturbance of his feelings which he could no more control than we ought to mind. Perhaps Emma understood this as well as I did, because she remained unmoved.
‘I’m Emma Gowrie, all right,’ she said.
‘Of course you are. Know your face, know it anywhere. As I would know you, my dear,’ he said, turning to me and speaking with great tenderness. ‘A perfect amalgam of your grandmother and your grandfather. So lovely to see their sweet faces again.’ He pressed my hand. ‘My perfect Rose.’
I was deeply touched. ‘Oh, sir,’ I said – I may even have blushed a little, without benefit of rouge. ‘But Granny was such a great beauty, and I’m not that.’
He still hung onto my hand. ‘Ah, how do you know? Do you see what I see, then? Let’s have some tea,’ he announced, ringing a little silver bell. ‘Good strong Scotch tea, not this weak Russian stuff.’ His eyes closed.
‘He’ll drop off in a minute,’ said Emma, with irritation. ‘And he hasn’t gone into things nearly enough.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve said quite enough,’ said Erskine Gowrie, opening his eyes. ‘Inside myself, at least.’
‘What’s the good of that to us?’ demanded Emma, her irritation in no way appeased. ‘Here have I brought Rose to you, and you do nothing but go to sleep.’
‘You always were a fool, Emma Gowrie. I have done enough, and Rose has done everything.’
‘Rose Gowrie has done nothing,’ I said.
He patted my hand. ‘Exactly what was required of you, my dear. Just to be.’
‘Oh Godfather.’ To myself I thought: ‘And that is the hardest thing in the world – just to be. Perhaps I should have handled Patrick better if I had had the knack of it.’ I was beginning to blame myself for Patrick, you see. Guilt has to be apportioned for such a tragedy as his, and I had to bear my share.
‘Where’s my tea?’ Erskine Gowrie demanded, dropping my hand and apparently forgetting me.
‘Tea, you live on tea,’ said Emma, pouring him a cup.
But after one long gulp he set the cup down and closed his eyes. It seemed time to leave, and I followed Emma silently to the door. But before I got there he called me back.
‘Rose.’
‘Yes, Godfather?’
‘Come here.’
He had a struggle for breath then, and I had to wait for him to speak. ‘Come back in a week’s time,’ he whispered. ‘And without that old witch if you can. She listens to everything and then talks about it to everyone else.’
‘I will come if I can.’
‘Promise. Because you see, there is something I wish to do, something I must …’ The words were hard for him.
‘Don’t talk any more,’ I said gently. ‘I’ll be back.’
‘Not longer than a week, mind.’ To himself he said: ‘A week will just do it.’
When I returned to Emma she said: ‘What did he want?’
‘He wants me to come back next week.’
‘Without me?’
‘You heard?’ I said.
‘Erskine’s whispers are not exactly inaudible,’ she said drily, but not with any air of displeasure.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Oh don’t be, dear, don’t be. Things work out for the best.’ And she sounded quite pleased.
As she accompanied me down to the street, I said: ‘I wonder if he gets enough to eat.’
‘My dear, he’s a rich man.’ Now she was shocked.
‘No, but you say he lives mainly on tea, and I expect it’s true. I dare say he does live on soft, sweet, mushy things because they are easy to eat. Whereas I have an idea old people ought to get lots of good nourishing food. It could be that a lot of his weakness and loss of brain power is malnutrition. What do you think?’
‘Oh, I don’t think, my dear,’ she said briskly. ‘Not about that.’
‘What does he make in those factories of his?’
‘Armaments,’ she said slowly. ‘Shells, bombs and grenades for war. And the explosives to go with them.’
I was silent, then I said: ‘Yes, you could get rich that way, but I suppose it is a trade to pray for. Death comes as its end, after all. How sad.’ It seemed the antithesis of my life, which I hoped to turn to healing. ‘But Madame Denisov told me it was an engineering works. Does she know?’
Emma laughed. ‘Oh, of course she knows. Erskine Gowrie’s works are famous. But I suppose she didn’t like to say. Russians can be like that. Devious, one might say; but it’s really a form of politeness.’
We parted without much more conversation, although before I was once again tucked into the Denisov carriage Emma gave me a hearty kiss in farewell. Like the kiss you might give to a good child, was my quick comparison.
Because my first visit to my godfather had been so short, I was home long before Dolly and her party could be expected back, so there I was alone, with time to spare and a burden of interesting thoughts. I looked at my watch. An hour until luncheon. I might amuse or bore myself as I chose. Not that one was ever alone in that house, for a servant was always within call. Watching too, I supposed – knew, indeed. They anticipated one’s wants so finely that they must be keeping a very sharp eye on all that went on. One of the little modernisations put in by Madame Denisov’s father had been an arrangement of speaking-tubes, through which it was apparently possible to hiss a request to a servant waiting in a room below. They were never used, for as Dolly Denisov said, you had only to clap your hands here and a servant appeared. ‘I did use one once,’ she had said, with a peal of laughter, ‘and then the silly creature only shouted back.’ She added: ‘My father would have had him flogged for it, but one doesn’t do that sort of thing now, of course.’
There was one of these speaking-tubes just before me now, in the library, its beautifully designed mouthpiece of ivory and bronze protruding from the wall. Dolly Denisov had told me that all the work had been done by one of her father’s servants, an ex-serf who was a skilled craftsman. Much of the furniture in the house had also been built by the carpenters and ciselleurs on their estate. It gave one a new idea of what the serfs had been, not all peasants by any means. Our dominie in the village near Jordansjoy, dear old Dr Rathmpre, had been a fine Greek scholar in his day, with a degree in the Humanities from St Andrews University, and he had instructed us in classical history, so that I saw one might draw a parallel between the slaves of Greece and Rome – where not all the servile had been illiterate labourers, but some had been men of infinite skill – and the serfs of Imperial Russia. One does not like to think that the Parthenon was built by slaves, but it might have been so. It was certainly true that many of the beautiful pieces of furniture and bronzes that I had already seen in some of the great houses in St Petersburg had been made by unfree hands.
I picked up the speaking-tube and blew down it. I heard my whistle go travelling through its length. Then distantly, distantly, a tiny little echo spoke back.
The echo, so remote yet so clear, startled me. I gave a gasp and the exhalation of my breath travelled down the tube and then back to me again. Some trick of the law of physics had produced an echo for me. Experimentally, I tried again. ‘Rose here,’ I called. This time I didn’t get an answer. There was only dead silence. Just as well, really, as it was rather spooky. After waiting a minute more I replaced the plug that stopped the mouth of the tube; I saw that it was decorated with a lion cut in low relief in bronze, and bore the initials of the Alexandrov family.
The shuffle of felt-covered feet, a noise I had come to associate with the arrival of a servant – for in the Denisov household all the servants were obliged to wear a soft, almost silent footwear – made me turn round. My own black Ivan was in the room. His eyes were on the speaking-tube.
‘There is no one at the end, my lady,’ he said politely. ‘The tubes are not used. No one attends to them.’
‘I was only playing a game,’ I said, ashamed at being caught at my trick.
He was silent, pursing his lips.
‘My own voice seemed to call back in echo,’ I explained. (Although why should I explain to Ivan? Yet his very silence seemed to call for an answer.) ‘It amused me.’
Ivan’s answer was to cross himself and say: ‘Those are accursed things, those tubes, and should not be used.’
‘Oh, there’s no harm in them, Ivan, they are useful devices in their way. Perhaps not necessary in a house like this, but in other establishments I should call them very helpful. You have certainly no need to be afraid.’ I spoke cheerfully, a little incredulous that so intelligent a man – and Ivan was that – could be fearful of a harmless contraption like a speaking-tube. But I supposed, underneath, he was a superstitious peasant at heart.
An opaque, blank look settled on his features, an expression I had seen on the faces of the other servants when Dolly or Ariadne spoke sharply to them. It could hardly be called insolence since they were, perforce, always so polite, but I noted a quality of stubborn resistance in it.
‘Yes, I see you don’t believe me, Ivan,’ I said. ‘But I assure you many houses in Scotland and England have them. People shout down to the kitchen for what they want.’
‘No one ever shouts down them in this house,’ he said gloomily. ‘But sometimes the servants down below whistle up them.’
‘Why do they do that?’
‘To raise the devil, I believe,’ said Ivan, even more gloomily.
‘And does he appear?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ said Ivan, crossing himself again.
‘Oh well, I won’t. But what is it you wanted?’
He bowed. ‘I am to conduct you up the Red Staircase to the Princess Irene.’
When I had least expected it, the summons had come. How convenient, I remember thinking innocently, that I should be free and Ariadne out with her mother.
The staircase to what I had begun to call the Red Tower seemed stuffier, the air more scented and dead than ever, and the Princess’s room, when I got there, was full of cigarette smoke. It was over-hot, too, as before, and artificially lit, although it was full daylight outside. I was taking in the details more fully on this second visit. I saw now that not only was the room full of furniture, but that every piece was covered with objects; several low tables bore burdens of silver-framed photographs, flowering plants (there were always so many flowers in Russia), enamelled boxes and porcelain figures. Even at a glance I could see that many of the objects were valuable, for instance an intricately-worked egg of silver and tortoiseshell on a stand of lapis lazuli; but others, like a papier mâché bowl of hideous red and a paper fan with a nasty bead handle, were rubbish. As I looked round I realised that the clutter and muddle reminded me of something. Then I saw what it was: our old nursery at Jordansjoy. This was a playroom for an old child.
Princess Irene was sitting up in her bed, wearing a brocade and fur jacket and a little matching turban, and smoking a small black cigarette. At my appearance she held out a regal hand. ‘Ah, so there you are. Gratified you came so promptly, most gratified.’ She didn’t sound it, more as if she had taken my appearance for granted.
‘Oh, I wanted to,’ I said honestly. ‘And fortunately Ariadne is out with her mother, so I was free.’
‘Naturally, I know where my niece is.’ She had a bed-table in front of her on which she was laying out a pack of cards in some elaborate-looking game. ‘She has gone to her dressmaker and taken her daughter with her. Peter has gone too, and much may he enjoy it. Dolly choosing a dress is a penance I would not wish on any man.’ She turned over a card. ‘Ah, the Queen, a good sign.’ She puffed at her cigarette. ‘Not that I believe the cards can really tell the future, at my age it is a little difficult to take that; but – ’ and here she gave an elegant shrug – ‘a little wink from the Fates is very acceptable.’
She gave a cough, a deep rolling cough that shook her whole body and left her gasping. Another wink from the Fates, I thought, and not such an agreeable one. The cigarette rolled from her fingers; I picked it up and put it on a silver saucer, which was half full of the cigarettes she had smoked already.
‘And have you told my niece that you have visited me here?’ Her dark eyes gave me a sharp look.
‘I think you know the answer to that question,’ I said slowly. ‘You who know everything that goes on in this house. No, I have not.’
‘Good. Good. Of course, she will discover and perhaps be quite cross. She has a temper, you know.’ Another sharp look here.
‘I can imagine.’
‘Not that it matters. I rather like to annoy Dolly.’ She gave a deep chuckle. ‘And it improves her complexion. She’s rather sallow, isn’t she? Don’t you find her sallow?’
Bemused and fascinated, I did not answer. It was true that by comparison with the vivid red mantling of Princess Irene’s cheeks, Dolly was lacking in colour.
‘You don’t answer. Very wise. I like a girl who knows when to keep a still tongue in her head. It’s a sign of good breeding.’
She was a wicked old thing and needed to be taken down a peg or two, I thought. ‘I wouldn’t speak about my employer, in any case,’ I said. ‘It’s good sense as much as good breeding.’
‘Dolly’s not your employer. I am. Aha, that startled you, didn’t it?’ And she leaned back on her pillows in triumph, only to burst out into one of those deep coughs again, so that I had to lean forward and retrieve another cigarette.
So the money that supported this luxurious household was hers? I was surprised, but I could accept it as the truth. ‘Perhaps you pay my salary,’ I began hesitantly. ‘But it is to be with Ariadne that I am here.’ And Shereshevo, I thought.
‘Pay you, do I?’ She gave me an amused look. ‘No, Dolly is rich enough to pay for anything she chooses to indulge herself with. No, but it was on my instructions she sent for you. And not for Ariadne. Nor any dirty peasants, either.’
‘On your instructions?’ I echoed. Yes, I could see her issuing her orders to Dolly Denisov. What I couldn’t see was Dolly accepting them.
‘And Dolly was pleased to oblige me. She likes to forget I am here, but once reminded, she knows better than to be too difficult.’ The diamonds on her fingers flashed as she moved the cards again. ‘I knew all about you. Your old cousin, Miss Gowrie, visits Dolly regularly. She’s full of gossip, which filters through to me. So I told Dolly to get you.’ The diamonds flashed again. ‘She took her time, she likes to tease me a bit, but you came at last. To me. She was pleased to do as I asked in the end. And she had her own motives, also, one does not doubt. And perhaps another voice than mine was added.’ Again came that malicious look. She means Peter, I thought. Peter wanted me.
‘But I came here to be with Ariadne, and to train the peasant women at Madame Denisov’s country estate, to help them look after their own health and that of their children. Madame Denisov invited me. Her letters were quite specific.’ I could be sharp too, when required.
‘So Dolly thinks. Or perhaps just pretends to think.’ The Princess flashed me a smile as bright as her diamonds. ‘But the fact is that you came here for me, whatever Dolly thinks, and I mean to have first claim on you.’
‘I don’t understand.’ But I did. Reluctantly, I did begin to understand a little. I had not forgotten how that dry, cold hand had warmed itself in mine. She wanted help from me. Why me? I was not sure. There must be plenty of nurses in Russia. But perhaps she wanted that little extra I might have. Everyone seemed to be tugging at me in this house.
‘I persuaded Dolly. I told her what a splendid companion you would be for Ariadne. She agreed, she was very willing. Dolly does not need my money, but she would like my emeralds when I die.’ She paused, then said grimly: ‘She will have a long wait. I don’t intend to die.’ Her ancient hand, loaded with jewels whose antique cut made them look older than she was herself, took my own. ‘I do not want to die, and with your help I will not.’
Now that her face was so close, I could see the seams and cracks into which her fine, old skin had crumbled; the rouge and powder accentuated rather than dimmed the damage the years had done. She was wearing a thick, heavy, musky scent that was like the smell of another century.
I withdrew my hand and stepped backwards from the bed. ‘No one can stop death. Not when it’s ready to come. Certainly not I.’
A spark of humour showed in those black eyes. ‘But one can procrastinate. Do you know how old I am? In one month I shall be ninety years old; I have procrastinated thus far, so why should I not postpone death for another ten years and for ten after that?’
‘But why me?’ I was amused, but also amazed at the conviction in her voice. ‘Why should you think I was worth bringing all the way from Scotland on the chance I could do that?’ If you truly did, I thought – because I still believed Dolly Denisov to be very much her own mistress and much more likely to follow her own will than the old Princess’s, emeralds or no.
She looked mysterious. ‘Ah, but you see it was foretold. In the cards. I set great store by the cards and they never let me down. I was told again and again that a girl like you would come from far away, and that through her I would be given great comfort, and that I would not die until she left. So that’s easy: you will not leave.’
I looked at her, half exasperated, half laughing. ‘My sister also foretold my future, although not from the cards. She foretold great happiness, wealth and a tragedy for me, but I don’t happen to believe it.’
Then Princess Irene clapped her hands. ‘Confirmation! The forces which one can only respect – ’ and here she crossed herself – ‘are interested in you. They communicate with each other.’
‘On the other hand, the forces didn’t happen to mention you,’ I pointed out cruelly.
‘But that doesn’t matter, naturally they would only speak of that to me. A great fortune for you, did you say, and yet a tragedy? Hmm. I wonder what that means? One can’t always take these things at their face value.’ She was laughing at me, mocking me, the old devil. ‘There are fortunes and fortunes. Anyway, you won’t go away and leave me to die, will you now? You couldn’t do it. I can see you’re a girl of affections. Sympathy, even.’
‘I won’t go before I have to; I certainly wouldn’t like your death on my head.’
‘Ah now you’re laughing at me!’ She clapped her hands. ‘The little moth flutters in the web. Good. That is what I like to see. Laugh on.’
‘Only a very little laugh.’
‘Well, promise me to stay. Promise?’ She was openly wheedling me now.
‘I promise.’ I held out my hand, and she held out hers, and we exchanged handshakes.
‘A bargain,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘Supposing I should live to be a hundred – without pain, of course. Here, give me that hand-mirror and let me look at my face.’ Silently I handed over the small silver object whose back was studded with sapphires. She looked at herself. ‘Yes, I think I shall do it. You’ve done me good already. I can see it in my face.’ And she pinched her cheeks to make the blood run. ‘Look at the colour there.’
‘There was colour in your cheeks before,’ I said.
‘Painted on. You are laughing at me again.’ She lay back on her pillows, determined to teach me a lesson. ‘Oh, that pain. It’s the pain when it comes that will kill me. You can stop the pain.’ Her voice was rising. ‘When it comes, it comes here, over my heart. It’s coming now. Take it away from me.’
Through the door behind her bed appeared the small, squat figure of an elderly woman wearing a long, dark blue dress and white apron. Her hair was braided all over her head in tiny little plaits, and on top of them she wore a white cap like a little scarf.
With a hostile look at me and a ‘Go away, Baryna,’ she hurried over to the bed. ‘Mistress, mistress, speak to your Anna. You will make yourself ill.’
‘I am ill, you fool. Go away, I tell you. Rose, Rose Gowrie, come here.’
I did not move. Not one step would I take.
‘Do what her Excellency says, Baryna,’ ordered Anna sullenly.
‘She’s not ill,’ I said. ‘She’s just pretending.’
The old lady stopped her moans and lay back on the pillows, staring at me.
‘You can’t deceive me,’ I said. ‘I know whether you are in pain or not. And the pain, when it comes, is not in your heart, but deeper down in your guts.’
Anna gave a shocked little cluck at my bluntness. The Princess coughed, her shoulders heaving, but with laughter. I had passed some sort of test. All the same, she was a sick woman and my trained eye detected and interpreted the great pulse banging away in her throat.
‘Calm down,’ I said. ‘And no more tricks, or you will be ill.’ She was running a risk, staging little scenes like this.
‘Anna, bring me a drink.’
‘Water only,’ I said severely.
The Princess pulled a face. ‘Did you think I would ask for vodka? Only peasant women drink vodka.’ She accepted a tall glass from Anna and sipped it serenely. But since the glass was coloured deep blue, I was unable to see if the liquid it contained was water. I doubted it.
‘About that great fortune you are to have.’
‘A solid, heavy fortune, I think my sister called it,’ I said, remembering.
‘Well, you must not expect it from me.’
Indignantly, I said: ‘I never thought of such a thing for a moment. That would be detestable. Stupid, too.’
‘No, as you say. And yet people do think such things. Such a thought comes into the mind without much effort. It is true I am a rich woman, but my fortune must devolve upon my great-niece and nephew. There remain the jewels which my lover gave me, but those too are promised to Dolly. So you see, you can have no hopes from me.’
‘I don’t think nature intended me to be rich,’ I said soberly.
‘No, it might not be a material inheritance that was meant. There are spiritual ones,’ said the Princess, with an intent look. ‘You have the face of a girl who might have a serious spiritual journey to make.’ She was talking, half to herself, hardly at all to me. I heard her murmur: ‘Child, in your prayers be all my sins remembered.’
Of course,’ I whispered, anxious to reassure. ‘But are they so many?’
‘Yes.’ The word ended on a gasp. I saw the vein in her throat grow and become purple like a grape. ‘More than you know. I have been a wicked woman.’
Urgently I said: ‘Where is your medicine? You have some drops to take?’ She couldn’t answer. I turned to the old maid. ‘Anna, you know, I’m sure. Fetch me her medicine.’
At once Anna produced from a capacious pocket a tiny glass phial. I looked at it, assessed its contents as amyl-nitrate, and snapped it between my fingers and held it under the Princess’s nose so that she could inhale the fumes. All the time I could hear Anna’s jealous voice grumbling away.
As the vapours rose and entered her lungs, so the Princess relaxed; it was very quick, in a minute she was breathing easily.
‘Well, that’s better. So that’s the pain, is it?’
‘One of them,’ she managed, and even smiled wryly. ‘I have several devils that torment me.’
Angina, I thought, and the pain coming because her heart muscle is short of oxygen. But I also thought that she had another and more serious ailment, an obstruction of the gut somewhere which caused even more prolonged pain. And yet I doubted if she would die of either just yet. She was tough.
‘You have violet eyes,’ she murmured, staring up into them as I bent over her. ‘Women with violet eyes always have a sad destiny.’ She was an inveterate romantic.
‘Cheer up. In our family violet eyes turn to a dark grey as we grow older, so you see I shall end up happy.’
She even managed to laugh.
‘That’s better. Goodbye now. And don’t let that old maid of yours bully you.’
‘She bully me?’
‘I think she does.’
Anna managed to bang into me as I stood there, giving my hip a thump with the great bunch of keys she carried suspended from her waist. ‘Oh, the wickedness,’ she muttered. ‘She should be beaten. I’d beat her. Take no notice of her, Princess. Old Anna is the one who knows.’
‘Be quiet, you are an illiterate old woman and know nothing about anything,’ commanded her mistress. ‘I think this girl is very wise. From your face I see I can expect a greater pain. Is that what I must look for, then? More pain?’
‘Yes,’ I said steadily.
A faint smile curved the lips of that enigmatic old face. ‘Very well. We shall see. Anna, lift me up on the pillows and light me another cigarette.’
‘The last thing you should be doing,’ I said.
‘Ah, but with you to save me – ’ she said, giving me a flash of the smile which, I suppose, must have enchanted my great-grandfather – ‘I shall be quite safe. I shall hang on to you, Rose Gowrie. I don’t intend to die yet. Tell my nephew and niece that, if you like. Settle their minds for them.’ And she began to laugh again.
I shook my head at her, and departed.
Outside on the staircase the air seemed hot and dead. I found myself swaying; I sank down and closed my eyes. I was spent; she had taken more from me than she knew. Instinctively, I understood it would never do to let her guess how much; while she was ignorant I retained free will. I sat there, leaning against the wall, and waited for the darkness which surrounded me to recede. Two old invalids in one morning was exhausting. I wondered if Erskine Gowrie knew Princess Irene. Probably one of her lovers, I thought dizzily, to be counted among those sins of the flesh she now dubiously repented of.
When I opened my eyes I found Ivan standing there, looking at me with a worried face. I realised he must have been outside all the time, waiting for me. ‘Are you ill, Miss Rose?’
Only Ivan called me by name, the other servants used any gracious term that popped into their mouth at that moment; the fact that I was a Scots girl seemed to free their tongues, they called me Excellency, my lady, Baryna, and sometimes Baryshna, just as it suited them, but it was all done with such good humour that I could not mind.
I stood up. ‘No, no, I’m not ill. Were you waiting for me? Yes, I can see you were. But why?’ Ivan, even if within earshot, was usually invisible. ‘Was it because I was there? Because I’ve been up the Red Staircase?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s a place,’ he said, meaning: Of course, it’s a bad place, or perhaps just a queer place, or even just a place he was unsure of. One always had to read between the lines.
‘She’s only an old lady. What could happen?’
‘They keep company with the devil up there,’ he murmured, looking at the wall and not at me.
‘Oh, Ivan,’ I said, half laughing. I almost stumbled; I put out a hand and he helped me down the stairs. Together we got to the bottom.
‘But of course, a clever young lady like you doesn’t believe me,’ he grumbled.
It was true that a door had opened in the wall behind the Princess on the day I had first seen her, and I remembered, too, my thought that she had a mirror carefully placed so that she could watch the door. The door had moved, and as soon as it had moved she had got me out of the room. Or so I had thought.
A question occurred to me. ‘How many rooms are there in the tower where Princess Irene lives?’
‘I have never seen. My duties do not take me in them.’
‘But you know?’
‘I have been told; three rooms leading into each other, one very small in which the woman Anna sleeps.’ His tone indicated that she could die there, too, for all he cared. ‘And a staircase leading down to the street, with its own entrance on to Molka Street.’
A back door to the Denisov osobniak, in fact. So Irene Drutsko could entertain whom she wished, with everyone coming and going unnoticed by the rest of the household.
‘St Michael and all his angels could come trooping up the stairs,’ said Ivan, accurately reading my thoughts. ‘Or the Devil and all his.’
‘And just as likely to,’ I said sceptically. ‘You don’t really believe all that rubbish.’
He shrugged. No, he didn’t believe the Devil came visiting, it was just a handy phrase, covering a multitude of suspicions and fears. There it was again, I thought, the secret language of the oppressed. ‘The Devil must be gentleman compared to some I’ve met,’ was all he said.
Downstairs, it was at once apparent that Dolly Denisov an her retinue were in the process of returning. Home two hours at least before anyone expected them – I could tell by the flustered way the servants were running about.
Ariadne came hurrying in first and went straight up the stairs, passing me, where I stood at the door of the great drawing-room, without a look. Dolly Denisov followed, slowly drawing off her gloves and talking over her shoulder to he brother as she did so.
‘I blame you entirely, Peter. I have wasted my morning taking Ariadne to choose clothes and she has chosen nothing. All because of you. How could the child like the silks and lace when you were being so critical? I have never before known you like it, you almost had the poor woman who was showing the dresses in tears. She was doing her best you know, Peter. I shall never be able to show my face ther again.’
‘Oh, come now, Dolly,’ protested Peter. He had followe her through the door, and behind him came Mademoiselle Laure; he looked flushed and she was deadly pale. Ther was a reason for her pallor; it appeared that she had been stricken with a migraine and had had to be brought back This was the real reason for Dolly’s displeasure.
‘Can I help?’ I said. Laure looked very sick. To my suiprise she turned to me with something very like gratitude in her face. ‘It would be a great kindness,’ she said.
I assisted her upstairs and helped her undress. When I had got her lying on her bed she was easier. ‘What do you usually do to relieve the pain?’ I asked.
‘Nothing. There is nothing I can do but lie here and endure. Later, when the sickness goes, I sometimes take a long warm bath.’
I put my hand on her forehead. I could feel an angry pulse throbbing under my fingers. ‘Does it still hurt?’
‘Much less.’
‘Try to sleep.’
‘Yes, I believe I will be able to sleep now. You have been very kind, and I have been shrewish and ill-tempered to you. Unfair as well. But I will make it up to you. I will tell you why you have been brought here. I know. I should have told you before, but I was evil and stupid and wanted to see you in trouble.’
‘Oh, but I know it all.’
‘Do you? You really know? How do you know?’ There was surprise in her voice. ‘Then surely you see the danger.’ She struggled to sit up.
‘I saw Princess Irene, poor old thing.’
‘Princess Irene?’ She seemed genuinely surprised. ‘It’s not only her. No, no, they’ll use you, turn you inside out and then, if it suits them, abandon you. If all goes wrong, you will either be shipped back home – or at worst, who knows what could happen to you? Don’t you see – it is not what you are but what you will be, what you will possess, that matters to them?’
A wave of nausea swept over her and she retched. I pushed her gently back on the pillows, thinking her more than a little mad. ‘You can’t talk now, you must rest. Presumably you think me in no danger today? And I possess nothing, dear Laure, so calm yourself.’
‘No, not today,’ she muttered. ‘Not today. It is not today that matters. Although I quarrelled today with someone on your account.’
‘Very well then. Tomorrow, tomorrow we shall talk.’
I waited till her eyelids closed and then walked quietly to the door. When I turned round for a last look, her eyes were open again and she was looking towards me. Yet I don’t think that it was me she saw.
‘At last I believe I am free,’ she said softly. ‘I have tried so often to leave Russia. Once I even got as far as Poland – but I always came back. Now I am free. I’ll start a little school in my own town of Blois. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do.’
Her eyelids closed again and she was asleep.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_8e750b5c-6ec2-57a2-b5f1-89f82f53960b)
When I left Mademoiselle Laure, Peter Alexandrov was waiting for me downstairs.
‘How is she?’
‘More comfortable,’ I replied thoughtfully.
‘I was concerned about her. She is not a happy woman. Did she say much to you?’
‘No.’ Had Laure been in love with him? Perhaps even his mistress? ‘But then, she has had a sad life, losing her lover just before they were to be married.’ Of course, I had lost my lover just before we were to marry, but it came to me suddenly that I did not intend to have a sad life. ‘And perhaps feeling the world has used her badly.’
‘I am sure Dolly means her to have a peaceful, contented life here with her, but Mademoiselle Laure is a woman of a jealous, suspicious temperament.’ His voice was calm and kindly. If there had been anything between them, it had long gone on his part. ‘Now you deal excellently with everyone, Miss Rose.’
‘I don’t think Mademoiselle Laure likes me,’ I said frankly. ‘But she has promised to talk to me.’ I broke off. Ariadne had come into the room.
‘How is Mademoiselle?’
‘Resting and recovering, I hope.’
‘Poor Mademoiselle, she hates us here sometimes, I think.’
‘She’s planning to return home to France and open a girls’ school, so she says.’
‘Goodness! Is she? Poor Mademoiselle.’ Ariadne went over and studied her face in a wall mirror. There was a spot that seemed to trouble her. Peter shook his head at her vanity. ‘I’m afraid she won’t go. She always says that when she’s particularly cross with us. But she never goes.’ She turned away from the mirror. ‘Poor us, Rose. To punish me for my sins this morning, Mamma forbids me to ride with Major Lacey this afternoon, and instead I have a whole great dull list of shopping you and I are to do. You are to come too, if you would like to, Uncle Peter, but first you are summoned to go up to Mamma’s sitting-room now. And wear armour, for she is very fierce. She has old General Rahl with her, and you know how disagreeable that always makes her.’
Peter made a grimace. ‘Who is General Rahl?’ I asked.
Peter said: ‘He’s a friend of an aged relative we have living in the house. A retired soldier. Forcibly retired – he was bad at the job. Oh, he’s not a bad old boy, but he’s a policeman now, of a rather special sort. He is a deputy head of the Third Bureau. You’ve heard of that institution, I suppose? It keeps an eye on us all. Well, I’d better join Dolly, or she’ll be asking him to dinner for want of anything better to say.’
When he had gone I said to Ariadne: ‘So you did not mean it when you said “How could such things touch us?”’
Ariadne hesitated. ‘I did. I meant it with part of my mind. When I see us here so happy and contented, with everything about us so nice, I feel this is one world and all the bad things are in another.’
‘But surely General Rahl does not come here to inspect you?’
‘Oh no; he comes here as a friend. But of course, one is bound to think of what he knows about one’s friends, and even about oneself. I believe that the Third Bureau has dossiers on ever so many people.’
‘But surely not on you, Ariadne?’
‘Oh no, I suppose I am of no significance to them, but my mother and Peter have hosts of friends and go everywhere, and some of those friends would be bound to have “doubtful” opinions. My mother has many close friends high in Court circles, of course, so her own position is irreproachable.’
A little later, I passed General Rahl on the staircase. We were not introduced, but he gave me a long, hard look as he went by, as if my face interested him, and he left me with the impression of being a tough customer.
The shopping list was the usual magnificent screed. An order for English biscuits and English marmalade at Eliseev’s – ‘Tiptree’s, please,’ said Ariadne politely to the black-coated assistant, and smiled at me – then on to Brocard’s to choose and purchase soap. I helped her choose tablets of a pale heliotrope that smelt like a late summer garden concentrated and made powdery. Ariadne bought and presented to me a box of three square tablets of pink soap smelling of roses. ‘For you; your name soap.’ Peter Alexandrov also bought some soap. Somehow I could not imagine Patrick buying scented soap, but this action seemed natural in Peter.
Then we went on to Watkin’s, the English bookshop. I suspected the trip there was entirely to please me because Ariadne took little interest in books herself, but she pretended she had to order some new English novels for her mother. ‘There is a new book by E. M. Hull, whom she likes very much,’ said Ariadne. Peter also pretended an errand.
There were some copies of the Hull novel already on display, so I examined one idly while Ariadne transacted another piece of business about writing-paper. It was not the sort of book that found its way to Jordansjoy, where Tibby exercised something of a censorship. Still, Grizel and I had our own ways of keeping in touch with the world, and there was a copy of one of Elinor Glyn’s works that was about the house for several weeks, masquerading as a novel of Sir Walter Scott’s (an author after Tibby’s own heart) without Tibby being any the wiser. E. M. Hull looked as if she wrote in the same vein as Elinor Glyn – I took it for granted E. M. Hull was a woman.
Raising my eyes from the book, I saw that although Ariadne appeared to be examining two different qualities of paper, she really had her eyes fixed on a distant corner of the shop. I followed her gaze. Peter too was watching; he was also watching me.
I saw a group of four people: an elderly woman, soberly but expensively dressed, a girl of about Ariadne’s age, a small boy and, oddly, a burly man in the uniform of a Russian naval rating. Two shop assistants were hovering around them, and a personage who looked like Mr Watkin himself – if he existed – was also on hand. The boy was choosing a toy. Watkin’s had a whole corner of the shop devoted to English toys of one sort or another, the names of which I recognized from my brother Alec’s conversation: Meccano, Bassett and Hornby – magic names to toy railway enthusiasts. Behind the group a shelf was stacked with jigsaw puzzles and English children’s annuals. The boy was choosing a railway engine. I saw him studying the one he held with close care, running one finger delicately over its outline. He was dressed in sailor’s uniform too; it was fashionable for boys then, and for girls also, for that matter. But I did not fall into any confusion about the relationship between the boy and the man, which was clearly that of master and servant; there was plainly a great social gulf between them.
Ariadne put her hand on my arm as if to make sure my attention was directed to them. ‘It’s the Tsarevitch and one of his sisters,’ she whispered.
I looked with interest. ‘Which Grand Duchess?’
‘I’m not sure. The next to eldest, I think, Tatiana. They all have the family face and look alike.’
‘The boy’s different,’ I said.
‘Yes.’ She hesitated. ‘There’s been a lot of – well – talk. They say there’s something wrong with him, that he’s lame or something.’
‘He looks delicate, but normal enough,’ I said. ‘He’s not a cripple.’
‘Still, he often does not walk, the sailor carries him’
‘He’s walking now.’ And indeed as we watched the boy ran along the display of toys, eagerly pointing something out to his sister.
‘Yes, I think that must be the Grand Duchess Tatiana,’ observed Ariadne appraisingly; the girl was, after all, her contemporary, she was forming a judgement of her. ‘Not pretty, really, in spite of what they say, but has a nice expression. Olga, the eldest, she’s called a beauty, but of course one has to say that of Grand Duchesses. The other two are just little girls.’
The brother and sister were studying a book together, the boy pointing something out in an eager way. To me there was something touching about his lively fragility, as if boyishness and enthusiasm would prevail in a weak body. He had a small dog with him, a liver-and-white King Charles spaniel, and as I watched I saw him lean down and give it an affectionate pat. When the dog leapt up eagerly, banging against his young master, the sister ordered the sailor to pick the animal up and carry it. ‘None of your animals are trained, Alexei,’ I heard.
The little group moved down the shop, with the other customers politely standing aside. There was no great fuss, no curtseys, although those gentlemen closest to the party took off their hats; but the shop was very quiet as if noise would somehow have been lése majesté. They came close enough for me to see that the girl was wearing a little bunch of lily-of-the-valley pinned to her jacket, and to smell their scent. She held her brother’s hand and stared straight ahead, almost too shy to acknowledge the weight of all the attention focused on her. Her brother, on the other hand, smiled cheerfully all around. To him, at that moment, the world was good. But he was very slender and fine-drawn compared with the robust solidity of my Alec.
‘My mother says he is all that stands between us and revolution,’ whispered Ariadne.
I was surprised; political judgements did not seem at all in Dolly’s line. ‘Why does she say that?’
Ariadne thought for a moment. ‘I suppose because one can think about him hopefully. He is still so young that everyone can see him as representing what they desire, and he may become it. Who can tell? I think that must be what my mother means.’
The little party were almost at the door now. ‘The show is over,’ said Peter Alexandrov suddenly from behind us. ‘We can go now.’ There was a note of savage irony in his voice.
‘You look very thoughtful, Miss Rose,’ Peter said breaking into my considerations, as we strolled away from the bookshop. ‘But you often do. There is a certain sort of serious, quiet look you sometimes have. I have noticed it. Is it because you are thinking of home things? Have you perhaps had bad news?’
‘No, not exactly bad news, but unexpected,’ I said, remembering the letter about Patrick’s troubles in India.
‘About your – ?’ He paused delicately, seeking for a suitable word.
‘About the man I was going to marry? Yes.’ So he too knew about Patrick. I suppose I should have guessed it.
‘What was he like, Miss Rose? To look at, and as a person?’
Could I still remember what Patrick looked like? Faces, even beloved ones, fade so fast. ‘He was tall, fair-haired, with blue eyes; not a bit good-looking really.’
‘But you thought he was, all the same,’ Peter said gently.
‘I suppose so.’
The conversation seemed to be taking on the kind of intimacy I didn’t feel ready for. I was quite relieved when Ariadne suddenly suggested: ‘And now what about church?’
‘Very suitable,’ said Peter good-humouredly. ‘To settle your mind after all that shopping.’
‘And Madame Titov will be there.’
‘And Edward Lacey,’ said Peter sardonically.
‘Well, yes, but he is not the point. Won’t Rose like Madame Titov? Or anyway, like to meet her?’
‘If you can meet her,’ said Peter lazily. ‘She is so neutral and cloudlike.’ All the same, I thought he did wish me to meet her. I had already noticed that Ariadne’s apparently spontaneous suggestions had often the appearance of being prompted by either Peter or her mother. ‘She is a nice woman,’ Peter went on. ‘A member of the Imperial household.’
‘Very close to the Tsarina,’ put in Ariadne.
The coincidence of meeting the Heir, a Grand Duchess, and a member of the Household came home to me. I wondered if it was really all by chance – but the point of the design, if there was one, escaped me. We walked along in silence for a time, side by side. The afternoon was now very hot, the sun striking off the stone in a dazzling way. Dolly had intimated that we would be leaving St Petersburg soon for the country.
‘You’re getting that look again,’ said Peter. ‘You are thinking either of your lost lover or poor Mademoiselle.’
‘Both,’ I said. ‘Both.’ And it was true. Ever since Laure had told me about her own broken love affair, there had been a link between them in my mind. Strike a note of pain and disappointment, and at once I saw them both.
‘And there is Major Lacey,’ said Ariadne, suddenly interrupting. She pointed to where he stood outside the Church of St Andrew.
He came forward to meet us, smiling. ‘I called at the house, and Madame Denisov told me where to find you,’ he said. So then I knew this expedition had been well planned.
We were very close to the open church door, and a wave of incense – Russian incense, stronger than anything I ever knew – blew towards us.
‘Are you thinking of being received into the Orthodox Church?’ I asked the Major.
‘No, I come for the singing.’ Impossible to tell if he was serious or not.
As always, the church was crowded with people of all ages and conditions, rich, poor, sick and the fashionable healthy like us. The smell of humanity mixed with incense was overwhelming. It usually took me a few minutes to get used to, although Ariadne seemed not to notice it; but I saw Major Lacey’s nose wrinkle slightly. ‘By Jove,’ I heard him murmur under his breath. ‘Rich.’
Inside the church, the darkness was lightened only by candles. I stood still while my eyes adjusted. Then I slipped into a place beside Ariadne, whose head was bent; she was murmuring reverently. Now that my eyes were used to the gloom I could take in the great splendour of the building. I had been here several times by now, of course, but the almost barbaric magnificence of the place astonished me afresh on each visit. Everywhere that the light of the candles penetrated I could see the glint of gold. It shone from the golden candelabra, from the crosses and from the gold leaf used in the paintings which decorated the walls. The other colour which shone through the darkness was the blue of lapis lazuli which I could see on walls, pillars and roof. Here and there were the deep green of malachite and the yellow of onyx. I felt as though I was inside a great jewelled box – but inside this box I felt stifled, not free and at peace as in the kirk at Jordansjoy. I was pressed down by the weight of too many centuries, and too much emotion expended in too much wealth of decoration.
The choir began to sing, emerging in procession from behind the great carved screen which concealed the tabernacle and the host. With them came the priests in their splendid robes of velvet and stiff silk, embroidered with gold and silver. In colours of mulberry and purple and deep blue they walked, one after another, men with pale faces dominated by their vestments. Incense was being thrown about lavishly in great clouds. The host was carried round and the people pressed close. A woman near me knelt down to kiss the floor; Ariadne crossed herself continually. I sat with my hands folded, feeling a little apart; I was not drawn into the emotion spilling out all round me. I felt sad that I wasn’t more touched; I felt reverence and respect for the ritual of the great tradition unfolding itself before me, but a little hard knot of reserve remained within. I wanted to give way, but I could not. I had been like this with Patrick, when I had wanted to show him some special mark of affection, had longed, really, to let my love overflow towards him. But something held me back, and I remained constrained and stiff. Perhaps it was this, in the end, which separated him from me – I think this shyness would have gone with marriag e but I never got a chance to show him. Poor Patrick. I had been so angry with him at first, so full of injured pride and resentment. Now I only grieved for him. I hadn’t thought of myself as to blame in the breaking-off between Patrick and me, but I saw now that I might have been. To a man under stress I had turned a perfectly composed face, and it hadn’t been enough: he could not confide in me, and perhaps he had thought I did not love him.
So as I stood beside Ariadne, I was really thinking of Patrick.
‘Time to go, Miss Rose,’ whispered Peter. ‘We must move. We are keeping the people behind us waiting.’ He looked at me with interest. ‘You were far, far away. Oh, it was the music, I know, it affects everyone, no one can resist it.’
‘Yes, it was very fine.’
‘Interesting counter-tenor they have in the choir,’ said Edward Lacey.
‘He’s a genuine castrato,’ said Ariadne with enthusiasm.
Peter grinned, and Edward Lacey looked a little disconcerted at Ariadne’s frankness. Possibly he thought that well brought up young girls should not be too familiar with the term ‘castrato’, although anyone who has seriously studied music must know it. ‘I thought he might be,’ he said. ‘Strange noise he makes. Vibrant but odd. One could hardly call it beautiful.’
The crowd was pressing close against us, hemming us in on either side, making it difficult to move. We did slowly edge an inch or so forward. I was struck once again by the variety of people that made up the mass. A richly dressed woman was shoulder to shoulder with an old man in his working clothes, a fragile old creature in tatters and rags stood before a burly man carrying a silk hat. Behind them came a trio of schoolgirls in the charge of a Sister in flowing robes, and behind them the tall figure of a bearded monk. The girls were giggling amongst themselves, and I saw the monk give them a hard stare. I noticed his eyes, for they had a particularly alive and searching glance. He turned his head towards me with a penetrating clear look. I blinked.
Once when I was walking in the woods around Jordansjoy, I came upon a young fox. He appeared on the path above me; the ground sloped, so we met eye to eye, and he stared at me boldly, unafraid. Now, to my surprise, I saw that free, questing animal stare again in this man’s eyes. Strange eyes for a monk, I thought.
‘We can move now, Miss Gowrie,’ prompted Edward Lacey politely.
The crowd was much thinner and it was easy now to make our way to the great door, where groups of people still stood about talking and settling their hats and gloves preparatory to departure. As we went forward, I could see that Ariadne had her eyes on a woman soberly dressed in plain, dark clothes who was drawing on a pair of white kid gloves and opening a parasol.
‘Madame Titov,’ she said. ‘I want you to meet her.’
Peter withdrew from us a little, leaving us apart. Perhaps he did not so much like Madame Titov.
‘Oh yes, I remember you mentioned her.’
‘She is a person it is very good to know,’ Ariadne assured me earnestly. ‘Nice in herself, and important.’
She didn’t look important, rather she looked a shy, quiet woman with a dowdy taste in hats, and yet she had an air of being completely at ease in the world.
‘And she’s very holy,’ went on Ariadne. ‘That is, devoted to the Church, you know.’
‘Pious,’ I said. ‘And what makes her important?’
‘Hush, she’ll hear. It’s the Empress, of course. They are very close. She looks after the Heir. In the schoolroom and so on.’
Ah, I thought, a governess, even if of a very superior sort. A sister to me beneath the skin. ‘So that’s why you want me to meet her? We are two of a kind.’
‘Not exactly,’ Ariadne smiled. ‘She is not a bit like you. Nor are your duties the same. But she wanted to meet you.’
Inwardly I raised my eyebrows: so now it was she who wished to meet me. That hadn’t been the story the first time round.
‘I think the lady knows you are here,’ murmured Edward Lacey under his breath.
It was true, now I took another glance, Madame Titov was unobtrusively studying me as she fiddled with the buttons on her gloves. Clearly, she was waiting for us to come up to her. Nor did we keep her waiting long. Ariadne piloted me towards her deftly, towing Edward Lacey behind us like a small tug guiding a liner. Except that even out of his uniform there was something of the warrior in Edward’s bearing, so perhaps I should have likened him to a man o’ war.
‘This is Miss Cowrie,’ said Ariadne breathlessly. ‘Madame, may I present Miss Gowrie. Rose, this is Madame Titov.’
‘Delighted,’ murmured Madame, extending a soft hand. Her fingers seemed to melt into mine as I took them, and to give no palpable pressure back. Her expression was friendly enough, although I judged she was not a lady who ever allowed strong emotions to show. Perhaps she felt none. She turned to Ariadne. ‘I believe you are going into the country soon?’
‘Quite soon,’ said Ariadne.
‘We shall meet then,’ said Madame Titov decisively. ‘Because I am going to the country too.’ She held out her hand to meet me. This time I noticed a very faint response to my own pressure. ‘Goodbye till we meet again, Miss Rose Gowrie.’
I felt as though I had been inspected and approved. I was annoyed with myself for being pleased, and yet I was pleased. Quiet-mannered as Madame Titov was, I felt I valued her good opinion.
As Madame Titov walked away, she passed close to where the tall monk was still standing. He must have been watching us all the time we talked. He took a step towards her, a broad smile beginning on his face; I thought he meant to speak to her. If so, she gave him no chance. Not for a second did her progress falter. Instead, she seemed to walk faster, and as she hurried on, her skirt gave an angry jerk, as if she had pulled it aside. Ariadne too was flustered. I could see she wanted to draw me away from what she seemed to regard as this man of God’s dangerous vicinity. But he was already approaching.
‘Good afternoon, Father Gregory.’
He raised his hand. ‘Bless you, child.’ He had a peasant’s voice, but it had rich tones. He held out his hand to her, she took it reluctantly, then dropped it almost at once, but never for a moment did Ariadne take her eyes off his face. Then he turned towards me, holding out his hand again and smiling at me with his pale, bright eyes. He stank. ‘He looks like a fox and he smells like a fox,’ I thought; but I took his hand. I found his touch unpleasant, damp with sweat on this hot day, and withdrew my hand, sorry that I had removed my glove.
‘Bless you, my child,’ he said, staring at me. ‘You have the face of a saint.’ Bright and compelling, his eyes held my own, and it was with an effort that I withdrew my gaze. To my surprise, something had passed between us; I couldn’t put a name to what I had seen, but a communication of some sort had occurred. Then I knew what it was. I had recognized a quality in him and he had responded. It was like two metals striking against each other and each giving out the same note.
He knew too, and his eyes burned fiercely. ‘May I see your hands?’
Reluctantly, almost against my will, but certainly unable not to do so, I held them out, fingers extended. Tenderly, he turned the right one over, putting palm uppermost. ‘Yes, there, at the base of the thumb, there is the mark. The mark of the healer.’
‘I see nothing.’ I stared at my hand.
‘It is enough.’
I wanted to turn my hand over, but for the moment I couldn’t do it.
‘Come along, Miss Gowrie,’ said Edward Lacey in a friendly but formidable fashion. ‘Ariadne is anxious to get home. Goodbye, Father.’ He turned to Peter. ‘Hurry up there.’
Why, he’s jealous, I thought, absolutely jealous of Ariadne. He must be the sort of man who showed possessiveness towards any woman in whom he took an interest, even me. It was sad, because I had begun to like him. ‘The charlatan,’ he muttered.
But we are all charlatans,’ said Peter. Aren’t we?’
The next morning, although I looked expectantly for Laure, she was nowhere to be seen. Apparently her promise – or threat – to talk to me and explain her vague warnings of danger had not been important enough to keep her from her favourite habit of disappearing.
I gave Ariadne her English lesson as usual. We were reading The Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. I would have chosen something simpler and livelier, but Dolly had said she wanted Ariadne to understand English poetry. Judging by her yawns, Ariadne was already very bored.
‘You can close the Tennyson now,’ I said. ‘We’ll start on Pride and Prejudice. Sit up, though.’
‘Oh, good. I fear I am not a poetic person.’ Ariadne straightened her back. ‘What is Pride and Prejudice about?’
I hesitated, wondering how to sum up the subtle complexities of the plot. ‘Oh, several families living in a country village: two girls, Jane and Elizabeth, the eldest of a family of girls; a clergyman, a landowner, two love affairs and an elopement.’
‘Sounds like Russia,’ said Ariadne, yawning again. ‘As long as it’s not boring.’
‘It’s a very amusing book.’
‘Delightful. The novels I read with Mademoiselle Laure were so dull. Goodness, they bored me! All about beautiful girls of noble birth thinking virtuous thoughts. Not like any of the girls I knew at school.’ She giggled.
‘Did you go to school?’ I was surprised.
‘Oh, yes. I had one year at the Smolny Institute, that’s the Imperial School for girls from the nobility. But I left,’ said Ariadne. ‘Back to poor Mademoiselle Laure.’
‘She was here then?’
‘She’s been here all the time. I can’t even remember when she came. When I was in the nursery, I think.’ Yawns overcame her again.
‘Have you seen Mademoiselle Laure this morning?’
‘No.’ Ariadne paused in mid-yawn. She sounded surprised I should ask. ‘But then one never does. One never notices her. She does it on purpose, of course. Years and years ago when she was just starting out in the world, some preceptress said to her: “Laure, always stay in the background.” And so she does. But it gives her pleasure. Of a kind.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think it does. And how sad that is, poor Mademoiselle. And you are a very clever girl to have noticed it.’ And I looked at my pupil with some respect for her acuteness.
‘Sad?’ Ariadne laughed. ‘She likes power, does Mademoiselle, I’ve noticed that also.’
At that moment there was a scream, then a short pause, followed by the sound of running feet. Ariadne and I looked at each other. I went to the door.
One of the maidservants was standing outside, sobbing; her face was white and she was wet from her throat to her waist. She clung to the banister, swaying.
‘What is it?’ I hurried to her. Immediately she leant against me, resting her head on my shoulder, murmuring something.
‘Make her speak,’ urged Ariadne.
The girl whispered something to me. I became aware that other servants were hurryng up, but all my attention was concentrated on the girl. I had caught her whisper and thought I knew what she was trying to say. ‘Speak up,’ I said urgently. ‘Repeat what you said about Mademoiselle Laure. You must speak clearly. I can’t hear.’
The girl raised her head from my shoulder and said something that only I could hear, and I only with difficulty.
‘What does she say?’ cried Ariadne.
‘What is it? What’s the girl crying about?’ The elderly woman who was the housekeeper had appeared. Mechanically, I handed the weeping maidservant over to her. I felt sick.
‘She says that Mademoiselle Laure is lying upstairs, dead.’
The girl gave an hysterical wail as if to confirm what I had said. ‘Dear God,’ said the housekeeper, and crossed herself. ‘Be quiet, girl.’
‘She’s mad. It can’t be so,’ declared Ariadne. ‘Mademoiselle can’t be dead.’
‘I’m sure she is,’ I said. I was already mounting the stairs.
‘Come back!’ wailed Ariadne.
‘Get help,’ I said. ‘Order two of the servants to come with me. No – ’ as Ariadne made a move. ‘Don’t come yourself. Go to tell your mother. And then send for a doctor.’ Resolutely I mounted the stairs.
The door to Laure’s room stood open. The curtains were drawn and the blinds were down, but enough light was seeping through to see by. In the middle of the room, surrounded by a nest of towels, was a flat tin bath. In it lay the figure of Laure, her head falling backwards with her dark hair streaming to the floor; I could see her features foreshortened and distorted.
I walked over to one window, wrenched the curtains back and drew up the blind. Then I looked again in the full light.
She was lying in a bath of water, wearing a white shift. The water seemed stained with blood. The shift was unbuttoned and I could see her small breasts. Instinctively, I leant forward and buttoned it.
I knelt by the bath. ‘Oh, Laure, Laure, what have you done?’ I could see that she had cut her wrists to the bone and then let her life-blood drain out in the warm water. I could see the knife on my right as I knelt facing her. She had let it drop on a towel. ‘Why did you do it?’
The strangely posed and artificial death scene gave me an answer of a sort: it said that life had been to her such an ennui that she must end it the best way she could.
I picked up the knife and held it in my hand; it was an ordinary pen-knife, such as any woman might have in her writing-desk, but its blade was wickedly sharp and pointed. When she had wanted it, Laure would have had her weapon ready to hand. On the table by the bed was a dark blue medicine glass. I got up from where I was crouching and looked into it. A little sediment remained; I supposed she might have taken some sedative to see that she became sleepy and died easily. Or perhaps she wanted to make sure she was too tranquil to draw back. I supposed I must have been the last person to speak to her, except for the servants who had brought the bath and water.
There was the end of a dream in this room. I could feel it: Laure’s dream which had kept her, sad and secretive, in Russia. You could sense it in the shut-in and cloistered atmosphere of the room, full of brooding, and the stale scent of clothes and papers; but I couldn’t tell what the dream had been about. ‘I feel free now,’ she had said. I could only suppose that she had woken up to find that freedom meant emptiness. Poor Laure, Russia had been too much for her in the end.
I stood at the door, no longer able to bear looking at Laure, and almost at the same moment Madame Denisov, accompanied by the housekeeper and another maid, came hurrying up.
Dolly took a long look, then closed the door. ‘Go downstairs now, please, Rose, and stay with Ariadne. On no account is she to come up.’
‘But can’t I help?’ I began.
‘No. Go downstairs. Leave me. I shall arrange everything that has to be arranged.’
I went down to the big drawing-room to face Ariadne. She was sitting at a table with an open book before her, which she was making no attempt to read. She turned to look at me as I came into the room. ‘Well?’
‘Yes.’ I sat down facing her. ‘She is dead.’
‘How? What happened?’
I hesitated.
‘Yes, tell us, please, Miss Rose.’ Peter’s long length uncoiled itself from the big chair where he had been sitting. I too am listening.’
‘I didn’t know you were here,’ I said mechanically, my thoughts far away. I glanced again at Ariadne; I was unsure how much to say in front of her. ‘Mademoiselle Laure died in her bath,’ I began. ‘I know – that is, she told me – that she was in the habit of taking a prolonged warm bath after an attack of migraine. I suppose it was soothing and helped recovery. She must have been taking such a bath when she died.’
‘But how did she die?’ asked Ariadne. ‘Come now, Rose, I shall find out, you know.’
‘Yes, you must tell us, Miss Rose,’ said Peter gently.
‘She did not die from her bath, that is certain,’ said Ariadne.
‘In a way she did,’ I said sadly. ‘That is, I think it must have given her the idea. Wasn’t it Marat who was stabbed in a bath?’
Ariadne gave a little hiss of alarm. ‘Stabbed?’
‘Yes. You asked for the truth, and this is it: Mademoiselle Laure severed the arteries in both wrists with her pen-knife and then sat in the warm bath to die.’
My news was received with shocked silence. Then Peter said: ‘The Roman way to die.’
‘Yes, I had the same thought.’
‘It’s terrible,’ said Ariadne. She was very white, her cheerful ebullience dowsed. ‘Much worse than I thought. Poor Mademoiselle.’ She stood up. ‘I grieve for her.’
‘Had you any idea this was likely to happen, Miss Rose?’ asked Peter Alexandrov.
‘No. How could I have? I hardly knew her.’ I was even startled that he should ask me.
‘But you were with her last night.’
‘I didn’t think she was going to kill herself,’ I said sadly. ‘No, I got a totally different idea. She did say that at last she felt free.’
‘Ah,’ said Peter.
‘But I did not interpret freedom as death.’
‘To the sick mind it may seem so.’
‘I suppose it couldn’t be – no,’ I stopped short.
‘What? What couldn’t it be?’ he asked sharply.
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Gwendoline Butler
Set in St. Petersburg, Russia, this novel won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award (1981) by the Romantic Novelists' Association.St Petersburg, 1912. Rose Gowrie is a Scottish girl with a mysterious gift for healing who is hired into the aristocratic household of Dolly Denisov, supposedly as a companion for the youthful Ariadne Denisov. But Rose gets more than she bargains for when she is called upon to cure the aged Princess who lives at the top of the Red Staircase, and the frail young Tsarevitch…
GWENDOLINE BUTLER
The Red Staircase
Contents
Cover (#ua0a46960-c843-56aa-bf4d-212dfbcd96b6)
Title Page (#ua25f42af-2bd2-557c-86a0-10d69591b51d)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_d71c749e-24a7-5aea-a41a-adc860dd0672)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_89f56840-3c3e-5aa8-8527-a39c2dbbef84)
Chapter 3 (#ulink_d0936315-4b5e-5411-9423-024720b97197)
Chapter 4 (#ulink_9753dc06-9240-5d7d-b03a-4d9bb03417ed)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
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CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_19eb8ace-5b18-55bb-9fe9-8e815fa1e87b)
‘Rose?’
As I look back to that time, two statues seem to stand out in my life as marking the twin poles between which my life was to swing. One was the statue of the Prince Imperial which faced the barrack square at Woolwich, and the other was the bronze equestrian statue of Peter the Great in St Petersburg. The house I was to have lived in with my young husband looked over the trees to the Prince Imperial. I never lived near the bird-stained figure of the great Romanov, which is probably just as well, for they say the whole area around is haunted ground and I have too many ghosts in my life as it is – prominent among them the girl that I then was, the young, the innocent, the incredibly naïve Rose Gowrie.
‘Rose?’
It was my sister Grizel speaking on that afternoon which somehow marks the beginning for me. Perhaps for the first time I let some of the worries I most certainly felt in my heart appear obvious to Grizel.
I raised my head from my work. That afternoon I had plodded on as usual at my books. Not as usual, Grizel showed irritation.
‘Do stop and come out. I want to go for a walk. Why do you stick at it? You know it’s not going to lead anywhere. A pure waste of time. Besides,’ she went on, ‘I hate to see you breaking your heart over it. You know now that you are never going to be a doctor. The thing’s impossible.’
‘I got so close … Three years at Edinburgh.’ I found I could talk about it almost without pain that afternoon. I could feel that beneath Grizel’s crossness was a warmth reaching out to me. She hadn’t shown a lot of sympathy for my medical ambitions until then. ‘It was close, you know, Grizel. I jolly near did it.’
‘And then the perennial Gowrie lack of money, and you falling in love with Patrick, dished it.’
‘What an elegant way of putting it,’ I said, laying aside my books of anatomy and morbid pathology. ‘Dished it, indeed. Perhaps I abandoned my studies because I had to, because of circumstances beyond my control – or that was how the Dean of Medicine put it when we said goodbye – but I haven’t given up being interested in it. And the army needs educated wives, so Patrick says. If we go to India, and that could happen, then any medical knowledge I have would be very useful in ever so many ways. Clinics and so on for the wives of the private soldiers and the native women, you know.’
‘You might have babies yourself by then.’
‘Yes,’ I said shortly. I hadn’t thought much about this side of my life yet. It was a long way off, I told myself. But I have an idea that underneath, the thought – half alarming, half exciting – was rumbling away. Patrick and I had met at a ball in Edinburgh and fallen in love so quickly. ‘I suppose soldiers always settle things in a hurry,’ I said from out of the depths of my thoughts.
I’m not quite sure what Grizel took this to mean because she gave a giggle and put her arm around me. ‘I won’t enquire into the meaning of that sentence, Rose dear, even if you know yourself. Sometimes one expresses a truth without meaning to. Only I’m not sure if it’s true of Patrick. I think it was you who swept him off his feet all the same, dear Rose, I know it was for me and young Alec you gave up Edinburgh, and that you minded dreadfully. We’re such a tiresomely expensive brother and sister to have.’
I couldn’t let her get away with that, though. There was a bit of truth in it, but I wasn’t going to lay the burden of it on her young shoulders. ‘What nonsense. It wasn’t like that at all. You had to have your turn, it was only fair. If anything, it was Alec’s fault for needing that extra coaching, the lazy young beggar. I meant to go back when the money got easier, but then I fell in love with Patrick. And as far as you’re concerned, I’m sure no one could be more economical. You make nearly all your own clothes and some of mine as well. And now Alec’s godfather is going to pay for him at Eton, so you see neither of you is so expensive.’
‘I suppose the gods gave you Patrick as a reward,’ said Grizel.
‘You could put it like that.’ Patrick was fairly god-like himself, I thought, but I managed to restrain myself from saying so.
‘Well, I hope you’ll like army life, that’s all.’
‘Oh, of course I will. I’ve made up my mind to like it.’ Patrick Graham was an army officer, a gunner, serving with the Royal Artillery at Woolwich. Hardly the smartest of regiments, but one which suited Patrick, who was interested in machines and engines and not in riding horses. The Grahams – mother, grown-up son and young daughter – had moved to the village near Jordansjoy just before Patrick and I met and fell in love. Indeed, it was because his mother lived near the ancient, crumbling ancestral house of the Gowries that our hostess at the ball introduced us. I don’t think that Mrs Graham had reckoned on Jordansjoy giving her a daughter-in-law before her first Christmas in her new home.
There were three of us at home. I was the eldest left, then Grizel and then young Alec. Robin, my elder brother, our pride, had gone to India with his regiment five years before. He was the bravest and the best of us all. And then he died, killed in a small incident in the border war with Afghanistan, a little encounter that no one ever heard of again. He died of injuries that better and prompter doctoring might have cured. I think it was then that the impulse towards medicine was aroused in me. Or did it have a deeper root? Sometimes I have thought that its beginnings go even further back, beyond conscious memory altogether. There are things I don’t admit even to myself.
Jordansjoy has seen many tragedies in its hundreds of years of history, but Robin’s was one of the sharpest. The neighbours were tactful and left us alone, and we drew in on ourselves, perhaps more than we should have done, Grizel and I and Alec and old Tibby. Tibby must have a word all to herself, because there is no one like her and she has grown out of the soil of Scotland and her period in it. I said something like this to her once, and she said I made her sound like some great monument. She has been nurse, housekeeper and governess all rolled into one since our parents died. When Robin was killed she was our great support, unsentimental and forthright, quite devoid of selfpity, and not allowing us to repine either.
‘Forbye you’re young,’ she said stoutly. ‘With all your lives before you.’
It is then that I had taken myself off to Edinburgh to study medicine at the university there. It was in my heart to persevere, but the money would not run to it in the end. So I stopped. But as with all human actions, there were many reasons for my starting in medicine and many for my giving up. I can see that now.
‘I hope you’ll like the army,’ repeated Grizel, as if I hadn’t already said that I intended to. ‘Tibby says that it will trim the rough corners off you.’
‘Always supposing I want them trimmed.’
‘Oh, she never said it was a good thing. She likes those rough corners and so do I. When you are sharp and speak your mind, and when you stick out for your own way, I like you for it and so does she. She just said it would happen, that’s all.’
‘It sounds a painful process,’ I observed. ‘However, I shall be in the way to find out next week when I visit Patrick in Woolwich to see the house he’s chosen for us to live in. I’m staying with his cousin, and from the sound of her she’s enough to trim anyone’s edges.’
‘A regular dragon? Ach, you’ll get the better of her. Trust you for it, Rose. Here, give me your hand. Let me tell your fortune.’
‘You’ve done it once this week,’ I said, reluctantly offering up my right hand. ‘Surely it can’t have changed.’
Palmistry was Grizel’s new toy. In the crowded attics of Jordansjoy, among the dusty furniture and old travelling trunks (we had been searching for a reasonably smart set of bags for me, as a matter of fact), she had found an ancient book on fortune-telling; ‘The Book of Fate, formerly in the possession of Napoleon, Emperor of France,’ it was called. To the study of this book and the telling of our hands according to the rules laid down therein, Grizel was devoting most of her leisure, as well as a lot of time that should have been spent on other things. Or so Tibby said. Tibby called it necromancy and hinted that it was an abomination according to John Knox. I noticed that she listened with the rest of us, though.
‘You never know. We had a thunderstorm on Tuesday. Perhaps that was a portent of change. We hardly ever get thunderstorms here, so it must mean something.’ And she bent her head over my hand, busily tracing out the lines of head, heart and destiny.
‘I see a double tragedy, but great bravery,’ she announced with some triumph. ‘And a great love.’
‘Oh nonsense.’ I tried to pull my hand away, but she hung on.
‘And happiness,’ she said in tones of slight surprise, as well she might seeing what else she had predicted. Earlier she had foreseen disaster by fire for me. ‘And great possessions. Riches, in fact.’
‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘It is a bit of a staggerer,’ she said, dropping my hand. ‘Perhaps I got it wrong. It was rather hard to read. Your line wobbles a bit just there, owing to a blister you gave yourself with all that sewing on your travelling dress. But I seemed to see something extremely solid. Hard as a cannon-ball.’ She appeared to find satisfaction in this oracular judgement, for she closed my fingers over my palm as if this was the end of her forecasting for the day. ‘There, that’s enough. Aren’t you satisfied?’
Of course, she had no psychic gifts, it was all a game, but some games with some players can deliver hard balls.
In Woolwich the weather turned out to be hot and sultry; I was already tired by the long journey and now I felt, in addition, that my clothes were subtly wrong, too thick and clumsy. Thick silks and twills were out and soft chiffons were in, and no one had told me and I was aware of not looking my best. Perhaps Patrick thought so too, for he was bad-tempered and edgy. I bore this with fortitude, thinking that men are kittle cattle and need understanding. I behaved well, I think, and remained pleasant and good-humoured with him and made myself agreeable to my hostess, who was not a dragon at all but a woman of splintery charm and fly-away hair. And, of course, the owner of some of the prettiest and most fluttery chiffons I had ever seen. She told me they came from ‘Lucille’s’.
I minded the more because Patrick always looked right. He was not elegant or richly dressed, he couldn’t afford to be, but he was natural and happy in his clothes. I don’t suppose he ever wore scent in his life, but there was always an aura of freshness about him. Eyes, hair, skin, were shining. And yet, he was so easy with it. There never was a less stiff fellow than my darling Patrick with his soft, deep voice. At my bitterest times I tried to catalogue these physical attributes, and hate them, but I never could. The truth is I loved him by them and for them and through them.
Whether it was the heat or the fact that my clothes were wrong, I did not seem to be enjoying myself as I had expected. Woolwich was a restless place, with troops of soldiers always clattering through the streets. Patrick was preoccupied with his duties, not always free to be with me, although I felt he was doing his best. I was certainly seeing the workaday side of army life. And every so often the air was rent by the dull thud of artillery, as if we were under siege. I couldn’t always stop myself jumping, even though I knew they were only testing the guns.
The main purpose of my visit to Woolwich was to see the house that Patrick had rented for us, and the morning after our arrival he took me to inspect it – one of an elegant terrace built in the middle of the last century when Woolwich first began to expand because of the demands of the army. I looked out through what was going to be our drawing-room window at the statue erected in memory of the dead Prince Imperial, son to Napoleon III.
‘The furniture is ugly and shabby,’ I said. ‘A family called Dobson with six children had it last, did you say? It looks it.’
‘Is it dirty, then?’ said Patrick, looking around him with surprise.
I had concluded already that Mrs Dobson had not been much of a housekeeper, but with six children probably her mind was on other things. ‘So-so,’ I said. ‘It’ll clean.’ With an idle finger I traced my initials on the dusty windowpane. R. G. They may be there still for all I know.
‘We’ll get you a servant. You’ll need a cook, anyway. Can you cook, Rose? I wish I was a richer man, or would ever be. I’d give you all I could.’ He sounded strained.
‘But I’m quite content.’
‘Content? That’s not much of a word to get married on,’ said Patrick.
I swung round and stared at him. He was looking in my face as if there was some secret he knew and he wished to see if I knew it too. Instinctively I felt this, while I only stared dumbly back. There must have been something in my expression for him to read also, for he put his arm round my waist. He put his mouth on my lips and kissed me; I wanted to kiss him back, but just then I could not. I felt him stiffen. ‘Ah, Rose,’ he said sadly.
The twelve o’clock gun went off then at the Woolwich Arsenal and jerked us apart, and his cousin’s voice calling us from below saw to it that the separation was very nearly permanent. ‘I’m waiting, Patrick,’ she fluted up the stairs in that light, high, English voice of hers. ‘We mustn’t keep Miss Gordon waiting.’ Old Miss Gordon, General Gordon’s sister, lived next door and would be an important neighbour with plenty of influence in Army circles.
Silently Patrick and I went downstairs together. Mrs Lucas, his cousin, looked up at us curiously from under her floppy Leghorn straw hat, but she said nothing.
Patrick saw me off at King’s Cross station on my return journey to Scotland the next evening. ‘There’s some business must bring me to Edinburgh soon,’ he announced abruptly. ‘So I’ll be out to Jordansjoy to see you. I’ll give you advance warning if I can.’
‘Before the wedding?’ We were to be married within the month. Everything was supposed to be in train. I was surprised, but delighted, that Patrick had the time.
‘Before the wedding.’
‘I’ll see you then.’
I was going to say more but he kissed my cheek, gave me a wave and strode away, tall and erect, through the crowd. I watched him go. I remember that a phrase from a poem I had read somewhere flashed through my mind: ‘Too dear for my possessing’.
I went back to Scotland, conscious that some sweetness, some freshness in our relationship had spent itself and would never be replaced.
In those days the night journey from London to Scotland was noisy and tiring, but it had the one advantage that the train stopped at the station for Jordansjoy, where I was glad to see Grizel and Alec waiting for me in a governess cart pulled by the pony from the Manse.
I was always happy to see my home again. Jordansjoy was the shell of a once great house. The castle was in ruins, a romantic and beautiful wreck which had inspired Sir Walter Scott to a well known effusion. The grand mansion, erected by an early Gowrie in 1790 and decorated in the finest neoHellenistic taste of the period, had proved impossible to heat or live in, especially as the family fortunes fell away. For the last generation the Gowries had lived in eight or nine rooms in the stable wing, which was in fact a remarkably beautiful quadrangle of stone buildings, our ancestor having demanded a high standard of living for his horses. We, of course, kept none. Behind the shuttered windows of the mansion lay rooms full of mouldering hangings and worm-eaten furniture, anything of any value having been sold long since.
Tibby took a sharp look at me as I came in. Not much missed her eyes, and I have no doubt she read my mood. ‘Come away in and get your breakfast,’ she said. ‘And after you’ve eaten you can take a rest. Grizel, put a hot-water bottle in your sister’s bed.’
‘I’m not cold,’ I protested, although it was true that my native air did seem fresh and eager after sultry London.
‘Oh, it’s a cosy thing, a bottle,’ said Grizel, dancing away. ‘You can take it out when you get in.’
Tibby poured me tea and took a cup herself. ‘You’ll need to go down and see Mrs Graham when you’ve had your rest,’ she said. ‘She’s been sending up messages for you. Anxious to know the news of Patrick, I suppose.’
‘I’ll go down this afternoon,’ I said wearily. ‘Patrick sent her a letter and a book: a life of Lord Salisbury, I think. She reads a lot of memoirs, you know.’
‘Tired of life, poor thing,’ said Tibby briskly. ‘That’s what she must be, to spend her days reading of what’s done.’
I went to see Mrs Graham next day, and we talked about my visit to London and about Patrick, whom she adored. She was a gentle, delicate woman in increasingly frail health, but she was always good to me. Just as I was leaving, a boy arrived with a telegram for her.
She read it without comment, and then handed it to me. ‘From Patrick.’
I took it and read: ‘Arriving Thursday morning. Staying one night. Do not meet the train.’ I looked up and met Alethea Graham’s eyes.
‘He’ll come to you before he comes home. That’s what the telegram means,’ she said.
I nodded, full of a disquiet I could not explain.
Patrick and I had met at a ball at Holyrood House, to which I had been taken by old Lady Macalister, who had been my grandmother’s friend. She introduced me to Patrick and we had the supper dance together, and then the dance after, and by the end of the evening I, at least, was in love.
We had many meetings in the weeks that followed, while Patrick had leave. Little meetings, I called them in my own mind, because we were never alone, being either in his mother’s company or that of other young people. But we seemed to grow closer at each meeting, and although several people took it upon them to remind me what a bad gambler Colonel Graham had been and how there might be something in heredity, I was not daunted. No doubt Patrick’s friends were telling him the worst they knew of my family, and how the Gowries had always been chancy, impecunious folk. ‘Good looks and bare acres,’ was the phrase around here. But Patrick and I seemed to prosper, and when he asked me to marry him on the last day of his leave, I accepted at once. It was romantic, it was right. I never had a moment’s doubt.
The spot where we became engaged was the Orangery at Lady Macalister’s place near Jordansjoy, and the occasion her annual garden party when she ‘worked off, as we used to say, all the hospitality she owed. The air in the Orangery was sweet and warm, outside in the garden a band was playing a waltz from ‘The Balkan Princess.’ It is a mistake, I’m sure, to think that men don’t succumb to the romance of an occasion as easily as women. I am convinced now that Patrick was powerfully affected by the sweetness of our surroundings, following upon the happy sequence of our meetings, and by a sense of what was somehow appropriate and expected.
Perhaps I underrate myself. I remember saying to Patrick then: ‘But I can’t understand how you came even to notice me.’
‘Can’t you?’ A quizzical look.
‘No. Grizel is the beauty.’
‘Well, there I don’t agree with you. But you need not wonder, Rose. Amongst all those people you really stand out.’
‘I do?’
‘Yes, you’re different. Rose, different from most girls.’
‘I suppose it must be a result of my training in Edinburgh,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘My look, I mean.’
‘It was different to start with.’
‘Yes, in our set it was.’ Which was true.
‘Do you regret not finishing?’
I gave him a radiant smile. ‘Not now, my darling Patrick.’
It wasn’t true, though; I did mind, and perhaps Patrick sensed it.
‘Patrick’s arriving the day after tomorrow,’ I said to Tibby and Grizel, when I got back home. ‘His mother had a telegram while I was there. Arriving in the morning and not to meet the train.’
‘And nothing to you?’ said Grizel indignantly.
‘Oh, I knew anyway. He told me in London’.
‘You never said.’
‘I was going to.’ And I saw Tibby’s eyebrows go up. She knew, and I knew, that I usually came out fast with things I wanted to say.
I knew to the minute the time when the London train arrived at the junction, and knew too how long it would take Patrick to get to me if he took the station fly, and I made up my mind to be waiting for him in the garden so we need not meet in the house. I had an irrational fear of being in a confined space while we talked. I suppose Tibby saw what I was up to, but she helped me by agreeing that the more I weeded that path where the hollyhocks grew, the better.
The time of the train’s arrival came and went, but Patrick did not appear; I waited and waited. ‘This will be the best weeded path in Perthshire,’ I thought in desperation. I was on the point of giving up and retreating to the house when I heard him coming. He was whistling softly to himself as he did sometimes when distracted. I recognised the tune: a poem of Robert Burns’ set to music. ‘My love is like a red, red rose’. I doubt if he knew what he was whistling, and in any case he stopped when he came into view. His shoes and the edge of his trousers were covered with dust. We have very dusty lanes here about Jordansjoy when the weather is dry, and I knew by that dust that Patrick must have been walking and walking around them since the train got in.
‘Hello, Rose,’ he said. ‘You here?’
‘I’ve been waiting for you.’
‘Thought you might be. Sorry if I was a long while coming. I’ve been walking about. Thinking.’
I saw Patrick had someting in his hand: a small packet, neatly done in fresh brown paper. I thought it might be a little present for me. Patrick did sometimes give me presents – a good book or a leather notebook for my accounts, that sort of thing – and now was the time for presents if there ever was one, these weeks before our marriage. I couldn’t expect much after we were married. A brooch with a white river pearl from Perth, perhaps, if I had the good luck to bear him a son.
He did not look in a present-giving mood; he was wearing his dark town suit and carrying lavender gloves. The clothes about which Alec had once been heard to mutter: ‘The mute at the funeral.’ There had never been any love lost between Patrick and Alec since Patrick recommended that Alec, that freedom-lover, be sent away to Eton, for ‘only a top flight public school could whip him into shape’.
‘Let’s go into the house, Rose,’ Patrick now said.
‘Oh, no.’ My reply was spontaneous and instinctive. ‘I’d rather stay outside.’ No good news could come to me inside the house, I knew that, and so I wanted to stay in the garden where there was sunshine and warmth and the memory of happiness.
‘Could I have a glass of water then, Rose? I’m parched.’
Reluctantly I conceded. ‘Come into the parlour.’ And I led the way into its cool darkness. ‘Wait there and I’ll get you a drink.’
I went into the kitchen and drew him a glass of water which was fresh and sweet from our own spring at Jordansjoy. Tibby, who was standing at the table preparing a fruit pie – plum, it smelt like – raised her head and gave me a look.
‘A drink for Patrick,’ I explained.
‘Ah, so he’s come then?’
‘Just the while,’ I said in as non-committal a voice as I could manage.
‘Is water all he wants? We’ve a keg of beer in the pantry.’
‘Water he asked for and water it shall be,’ I announced, carrying the glass out in my hand.
‘Would you have liked beer, Patrick?’ I asked.
‘No, water,’ he said, taking the glass and draining it thirstily. ‘I hate country beer.’
‘We get ours from Edinburgh. McCluskie’s Best Brew.’
‘It’s not good, all the same. You never drink it yourself so you don’t know. I’ve never told you so before.’
‘You’re telling me now.’ I took the glass from him. ‘Of course, we’re not really talking about beer,’ I said coldly.
‘Are we not?’
‘No. Come, Patrick. Perhaps I am a year or two younger than you, but let us meet in this as equals. There’s something on your mind. What’s it all about? You must tell me.’
‘Man to man, eh, Rose?’ He smiled. Patrick never had orthodox good looks, but he smiled with his eyes as well as his mouth and I never knew a soul who could resist that smile, it had such luminous comprehension in it.
For a moment the joke gave me hope. Because he could tease me in this way, surely things could not be wholly bad? ‘Why not?’ I returned boldly.
‘But we aren’t man to man, but man to woman, and that’s the whole of it.’ Looking back, I see that Patrick, who was a brave man, never said a braver thing in his life, but then I hated him for it.
Our parlour at Jordansjoy has one long window which we keep filled with sweet geraniums. Patrick stood with his back to it, so that he was in silhouette and I could hardly see his face. He could see mine, though, and I suppose it looked foolishly young and innocent.
‘Come out into the garden,’ I said. ‘I can breathe there.’
But he interrupted me, saying – his voice a tone higher than usual, and abrupt: ‘Look here, Rose, the wedding will have to be put off. Postponed. I’ve to go to India. I’m transferring.’
I stared; perhaps I said something, I don’t remember; it can have been nothing coherent.
‘It can’t go ahead. You can put about what explanation you like. Blame it all on me. It is my fault. God knows it is.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I stammered.
‘I’m transferring to the part of the regiment that’s going off to India. It’s no place for a woman. It’s a bachelor’s job.’
‘I wouldn’t mind India. I’d like it. I would, I promise.’
‘No, it’s no good, it wouldn’t do, not for me nor for you. It would be a wretched business, Rosie. We should be so poor. God knows, it’s bad enough being poor when you’re married anyway, but in India it would be infinitely worse. I couldn’t bear it for you, Rose.’
‘But we love each other.’
‘Ah, Rose, do we? Really, truly, do we?’
‘I love you.’
‘Do you, Rose?’ He was serious and sad. Hesitantly, he said: ‘I wonder sometimes if you know what love is. Oh yes, in a way, Rose; but a deeper, married love?’
‘We love each other. Together, we shall …’ But he broke in. ‘That’s true in a way, Rose, but is it enough?’ He took my hand. ‘That joke you made about Mrs Dobson and her housekeeping – well, it was true although I didn’t admit it, she is a rotten housekeeper and her house was always untidy and her children run wild. But sometimes I saw a look pass between her and her husband, well, a look that I envied. A look such as you and I could never exchange.’
‘But they have been married for years.’
‘Is that all, Rose? Does it come only with years? No, it was not that sort of look. And if it is not there before marriage, I think it does not come afterwards.’
I was utterly at a loss. There were so many things I wanted to say, but I couldn’t find words for them. So I stood there, just looking at him.
‘I blame myself, not you.’ He sounded weary. ‘I’m older than you, more experienced. I have to protect you. Our marriage would be a mistake.’ He handed me the parcel. ‘Here are your letters, and the book you gave me.’
I threw them on the floor in a fury, and for the first time in the interview felt bitter.
‘Please, Rose,’ he said. ‘I have thought about it very carefully. It is in your interest and mine.’
I sat down; my fury ebbing away had left my legs curiously weak. I suppose he thought I was coming round, because he took a deep breath of relief. As soon as I saw this I felt even more savage. ‘And now I suppose you will go away and explain to yourself that it is my fault. Oh, though I don’t know how it can be. I suppose I’ve failed you somehow, Patrick. Or you choose to think so.’
He quailed before the fury and contempt in my eyes, but he stood his ground – I give him that. When he had made up his mind to do a thing, Patrick did it. ‘No, no, the fault is all mine. I’m not good enough for you.’ He looked at me. ‘Forgive me, Rosie?’
He had given me an antique rose-diamond ring, and I suppose he took it with him, for I never saw it again. I remember nothing of the circumstances of its handing over. Nor of him going; but go he did.
Tibby says she came in and saw me standing staring out of the window, and that I turned to her with tearless eyes and said: ‘He’s gone, Tibby. Gone for good.’ Then I went upstairs and went to my bed. I stayed there, watching the light change on the ceiling as the day reached its peak and then faded into night.
After a while, Grizel and Tibby came to look at me. ‘I’m sick,’ I said, in answer to their anxious questions. And it was, in a way, true; I did feel deadly tired, as if life had seeped out of me. I didn’t look at them, turning my head to stare bleakly at the wall. I could hear Tibby trying to make encouraging, cheerful noises, then I heard her saying something about the doctor, but it was Grizel, my sibling and nearest me in age, who got it right.
‘Leave her alone,’ she said. ‘Let her lie there.’ She drew Tibby out, protesting. ‘No,’ said Grizel firmly. ‘Let her be.’ She pulled my door to and closed it with a decided little bang. It was her message to me, a message of support, and interpreting it correctly I felt a comforting warmth creep into my heart.
I stayed there all night, letting darkness melt in through the window and over the walls, and then recede again into silver light. At no time did I sleep.
Grizel came quietly in when the morning was still early and placed a cup of tea on my bed-table. She did not speak, but adjusted the curtains so that the sun should not shine on my face, and went away. I wondered how much she knew of what had passed between me and Patrick. Almost everything, I supposed, by means of that curious feminine osmosis that sometimes existed between us. I drank the tea, which was very hot and over-sweet, so that I knew Tibby had stirred in the sugar lumps – it had always been her idea that a person in trouble needed something sweet. She might have been right, because the dead weight of fatigue which rested on me began to lift a little.
Presently Grizel came back; I didn’t speak but she lay down on the bed beside me and put her cheek against mine. For a while we lay in silence.
‘There’s a time for keeping quiet and saying nothing, and a time for showing love,’ she said. ‘I think the time has come now for showing love.’ She kissed my cheek.
‘Come on then, Rose.’ Grizel swung off the bed to her feet. ‘I’ll help you dress.’ She opened the big door of the closet where I kept my clothes and, not consulting me, she very deliberately selected a pale pink dress I had never yet worn. Without a word she handed it to me. ‘Wear this.’
‘But it …’I began.
She did not let me finish. ‘Yes. The very prettiest dress from your trousseau. Just the day to wear it.’
I took it and let the pretty soft silk slip through my hands. I remembered the day I had chosen the silk, and I remembered the day Grizel and I had made the dress together. ‘Yes, quite right,’ I said. ‘A pity to waste it.’
Downstairs I went with a flourish. ‘The worst thing about being jilted,’ I said to Grizel as we started down, ‘is that it’s – ’and out it came, the phrase long since picked up in my medical student days, assimilated and made ready to use – ‘such a bloody bore.’
Grizel looked at me, hesitated, and then giggled; and so, laughing, we went forward to meet the day.
Somehow or the other, my life had to be put together again. Twice my circumstances had changed radically. The first crisis, when I had to give up my medical studies in Edinburgh, had seemed to have a happy outcome when I met Patrick and planned our life together. Now this too had collapsed. ‘Third time lucky,’ I thought. It was hard not to be bitter, but it wouldn’t do. I must rebuild my fortunes somehow, and I knew it.
The only thing to do was take life as it came for a bit, and to build it around a succession of small events. Fortunately (from my point of view, although I suppose not from the victims’) it was a busy time in the village with an epidemic of measles with which I was able to help. ‘It’s an ill wind,’ I thought as I cycled down the hill in a rainstorm to a cottage where a child had measles with the complication of bronchitis. ‘At least all this is taking my mind off my own troubles. If the child only lives. A bit hard for the poor little wretch to have to die in order to make me feel better.’
But we saved the child, although we had a bad night of it. ‘He’s turned the corner,’ I said to his mother when I left.
‘I think he has, Miss Rose, praise the Lord,’ she answered.
But as I pushed my bicycle up the hill to breakfast, I knew I had turned a corner in my life too.
‘Have some porridge,’ said Tibby, from the stove where she was stirring a big black pot of it.
‘I’ll just wash my hands.’
When I got back Tibby had laid a place at the kitchen table for me and was pouring herself a cup of tea. ‘How’s the lad?’
‘Better. He’ll do now, I think.’ I began to eat my porridge with relish. ‘Where are the others?’
‘Not up yet. It’s still early. But I knew you’d be home betimes for your breakfast. Either the little lad would come through the night or he’d be gone. Either way the dawn would decide it.’
‘Yes, you’re quite right,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘It’s amazing how the turn of day takes people out or brings them back in. It’s like a tide. But I listened to the birds singing this morning and knew it would be all right. His mother knew, too. We both knew.’
‘It’s the same with life; there comes a turn.’
‘So people say.’ I accepted the truism cautiously.
‘It’ll be that way with you soon.’
‘Can’t be too soon, Tibby,’ I said with a sigh. ‘I’ve got to make my way in the world somehow. It won’t wait on me, you know.’
‘I do know,’ said Tibby.
‘So far I don’t seem to have done anything right. I have to ask myself: What’s the matter with me?’ I looked at her, wondering what she would say.
‘The answer to that’s easy: Nothing,’ she said stoutly.
‘I mean, I can’t retire from life before I’m three-and-twenty,’ I said, continuing with my own stream of thought.
‘Oh, you silly girl.’
‘I haven’t told you much of what was said between me and Patrick. Only the blunt, dead end of it. I’m not sure if I remember it all myself now. What we did and said in the heat of the moment.’ I paused. ‘No, but I am wrong, Patrick wasn’t hot, he was cold, with his mind made up. Wretched, yes, even unhappy, but he was determined to do what he did.’
‘It was an awful thing,’ said Tibby solemnly.
‘Yes, awful. I still don’t understand the rights of it. Or why. But I’m not sure if it hasn’t wrecked me, Tibby.’
‘No, child, no.’ And she got a grip on my hand and held it tight.
‘And you know, Tibby, I think it may be partly because of my interest in medicine. “This health business,” Patrick called it once. I think he didn’t like it. Do you think that, Tibby?’
‘People hereabouts are proud of you.’
‘Are they? I’m not so sure.’ It was true I had a local history of helping with the healing of both people and animals. ‘He may have heard about the child at Moriston Grange, and the dog. People do gossip and say the silliest things.’ Such as the fact that humans sometimes recovered unexpectedly well when I gave them help. ‘Patrick may not have liked it.’ If I had the gift of healing, it was a small gift but a dangerous one.
‘Oh, the wretch,’ said Tibby.
‘Now, that’s not up to your usual standard, Tibby. You should encourage me. Tell me that there is a great future somewhere for Rose Gowrie. But where? Where am I to go? For go somewhere I must and will, Tibby, I tell you that.’ I stood up. ‘A nice breakfast, Tibby. But where am I to go?’
She stood up too, and walked over to the sink with that slow heavy tread she took on sometimes. ‘I’ll have a think.’
‘Make it a lively think then, Tibby.’
We left the matter there for the time being, but from that moment we both knew I was only waiting for life to show me the opportunity.
We glossed over the breaking-off of my engagement when it came to Alec; I don’t think he fully understood what had happened. In any case, he was still young enough for the adult world to be inexplicable to him and its motives something he need not bother to try and comprehend. Since he’d never liked Patrick he was quite glad to see him go.
So that when he came home with the tale he’d heard, the impact was all the harder.
In all innocence he came in from play, sat himself down at the tea table and announced, with satisfaction: ‘Well, he’s away then.’
I was pouring the tea, Tibby was cutting bread. ‘Who?’ I asked, not really attending.
‘That Patrick.’ He took a slice of bread and butter and devoured it rapidly. ‘Him.’
‘Don’t talk with your mouth full, Master Alec.’ He was only Master Alec to Tibby when she was cross. ‘Mind your manners, please. And where has he gone?’
‘I must talk with my mouth full if you ask questions,’ said Alec, continuing his eating. ‘I must answer, that is manners. He’s away to India.’ And his hand reached out for another slice. ‘You never told me that.’ He looked at me accusingly.
I was silent.
‘It was none of your business,’ said Tibby.
‘And he’s not off before time, his sister Jeannie says, for there were bills falling around him like snow. We were playing marbles.’
‘And has he left the bills behind him, then?’ said Grizel in an acid tone.
‘Every penny cleared, Jeannie says.’ Alec turned his attention to the scones and honey. ‘Praise be to God.’
‘Money from Heaven, then, I suppose,’ observed Grizel. ‘For I never knew the Grahams had a rich uncle.’
‘Ach, no, he was paid.’ Alec was all man of the world.
There was a moment of complete silence.
‘Paid?’ It was my voice I heard.
‘Yes, to go away,’ continued Alec through his tea.
‘Well, that’s an odd thing,’ observed Tibby in a temperate voice. ‘And how much did they pay him?’
‘Three thousand pounds, Jeannie says,’ went on Alec, quite oblivious of the effect he was having. ‘Or it might have been more, she’s not quite sure. She couldn’t hear very well.’
‘Why not? How was she hearing them?’
‘Through the crack in the door. You do not suppose they were telling her?’ asked Alec with fine scorn. He looked up, and for the first time he seemed to take in the audience he had. ‘What are you all staring at me like that for?’
‘You may be jumping to the wrong conclusion,’ said Tibby, giving me a straight look over Alec’s head. ‘It may not be at all what it seems.’
‘I’m sure of it. Don’t look at me like that, Tibby, I know I’m right; it was worth three thousand to Patrick to break his engagement to me. So now I know my price. Three thousand pounds, give or take a few more pounds that Jeannie could not precisely hear.’
‘But whoever was it that paid him? And why?’ asked Grizel wonderingly.
Events then followed with a naturalness that made acceptance of them inevitable.
I was wretched at Jordansjoy, an object of interest to all the neighbourhood as the girl who had been jilted. Very nearly on the steps of the altar, too. Former generations of Gowries had been the focus for gossip and hints of scandal, and now I had revived the fire with my shame. For it was shame of a sort. Even those who took my part assumed it was my fault that Patrick Graham had been ‘put off, although he had, of course, ‘behaved disgracefully’. I kept my head high, but it was a bad time.
When the letter came from St Petersburg, it seemed to contain an answer to prayer.
About eighty years or so earlier, a Gowrie had gone to St Petersburg as a merchant and banker, had prospered and settled there. His family stayed on, and the next generation, until by now they were as much Russian as Scottish, except in blood – because they always married among the large Anglo-Scottish community in the capital.
The most eminent among them was Erskine Gowrie, a grandson of the original settler. He was my godfather and had given me a handsome piece of Russian silver as a christening present. He had not attended the christening in person; but I had been told that he did come to Scotland on a visit while I was a child and had taken a great liking to me. I had a vague memory of being bounced on the knee of some gentleman with a beard, and of hearing him pronounce that I had my grandfather’s eyes. Erskine Gowrie had a large factory in the industrial suburbs of St Petersburg where I had been told he manufactured chemicals of some sort. We gathered that Erskine Gowrie had grown old, rich and cantankerous, and by means of this triple and difficult combination had succeeded in quarrelling with all his Russian relatives. Not all of them were rich, and one, Emma Gowrie, whom we called our cousin and who kept us in touch with the St Petersburg Gowries by letter, had been Erskine’s secretary for a time before working for a Countess Dolly Denisov. Through Emma, Countess Denisov had heard of me, and now wrote offering me work in St Petersburg with her and her daughter. Young Russian girls of the nobility are never allowed to go anywhere without a companion, it seemed. But there was more to it than that, because Dolly Denisov had heard from Miss Gowrie that I was interested in medicine, and she wanted me to help train the peasant women on her country estate to look after their own health better. Perhaps I should be able to create a small clinic or hospital at Shereshevo.
‘It’s very tempting to me,’ I said, pushing the letter across to Tibby. ‘Mind you, I don’t like the idea of being a companion.’
‘It’s a good offer,’ said Tibby, raising her eyes from the letter. ‘They don’t ask much from you as a companion except English conversation and friendliness, and they pay well.’
‘Of course, the girl may be a horror.’
‘She sounds nice; seventeen, speaks a bit of English already, likes animals. And what a pretty face!’
I picked up the photograph that had come with the letter. ‘Yes, charming little face, isn’t it? I don’t suppose she’s as innocent as she looks. Oh yes, I’ll go, Tibby. I think I’d go anywhere to get away. And I do like the prospect this offers of advancement. I might get to be a medical pioneer yet.’ I felt a kind of dreamy optimism.
‘You’d be rash to turn it down, I’ll say that.’ She pursed up her lips. ‘The letter says that if you take passage on the John Evelyn, leaving the Surrey Docks on May 2nd, you may have the support of a Major Lacey who is travelling out to see his sister. The Denisovs have Russian friends in London, too, that they name.’ She shook her head. ‘They have planned ahead. You are much wanted to go.’
She gave me the letter back; I remember holding it in my hand. By rights it ought to have burnt my fingers off.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_7d42633b-d13f-5a79-8617-7978cc61653b)
The wind was blowing in my face, a cold wind blowing across the waters of the Baltic to where I stood on the deck of the John Evelyn. It seemed to go right through my clothes. Ahead I could see the docks and quays of St Petersburg. It was May, we were the first ship into the Gulf of Finland since the winter ice had melted. The wind was cold, and my future lay spread before me on the horizon, and suddenly the prospect frightened me. But it was already more than a prospect; it was upon me. Even now the trunks were being piled on deck ready for arrival, and I could see my own box, black leather with my name on it in white: The Honble Rose Gowrie.
Tentatively I looked up at the man standing beside me, Edward Lacey, late of His Majesty’s Scots Guards, and my travelling companion. I had begun by hating his bland sophistication and his cool English voice. I hated all men, anyway – and pour cause, as our dominie used to say. But he proved kind and considerate during the journey, and relations had improved, though I still found him rather opaque. Now he turned to me with that ever courteous smile. ‘Nearly there, Miss Gowrie.’
We had boarded the small cargo ship, the John Evelyn, going out on the evening tide. The captain had bowed as he passed us on the deck. I was a passenger of special quality on the John Evelyn because I had been seen off by no less a person than Prince Michael Melikov. To my surprise he had been waiting at the Surrey Docks when I arrived. I knew who he must be; Edward Lacey – whom I had met for the first time the evening before, at the London hotel where I was booked for a single night – had told me of the Prince’s presence in London, and that he was a long-standing friend of both the Countess Denisov and my cousin Emma Gowrie. He was wearing a deep violet velvet overcoat. I never saw a man wear coloured velvet before, but on him it looked sombre and rich and yet correct.
He had bent his head to me politely and introduced himself in his deep, sweet voice. ‘And so here I am to see you off, Miss Gowrie. I could never excuse myself to that good lady, your cousin, when we next met in St Petersburg, if I did not see you safely aboard.’
Behind his friendly brown eyes was nothing, he had no real feeling for me. I sensed it without knowing why.
‘I’m looking forward to meeting her,’ I said. ‘I never have, you know. I believe she came once to see us at Jordansjoy but it was years ago, when my parents were not long married and I was only a child. She was old then.’ And must be older now by my twenty years. It was 1912. ‘Our Russian cousin, we call her, but she is as Scots as I am in blood, although four generations of Gowries have lived in St Petersburg now.’ I was talking nervously, for there was something about Prince Michael’s empty eyes that alarmed me.
Edward Lacey arrived at that point, in a cab, and after he had greeted me, stood talking to Prince Michael on the dock. How different they looked: the Prince tall and elegant, but with the withdrawn, inward expression of a man used to books and libraries; and Edward Lacey almost as tall but broader of shoulder, with the look of the open air about him, active and energetic. The one as unmistakably Russian as the other was English.
They were both watching me. The notion struck me and would not be dismissed. I felt as if they were studying me. Politely, of course, but with intent. And not for my looks, either. I knew what that sort of look was like; I knew what it was to be admired. At the memory of some special glances I once treasured, my spirits plummetted. I gritted my teeth, and pushed emotion away. I would not be bitter.
The dock side was very busy, many craft were taking advantage of the high tide to load. A string of lighters and barges was passing down river towards the estuary. Its tug gave a melancholy hoot as it went and another ship answered, part of the perpetual conversation of the river. It was evening, a fine night in early summer. Summer smells mingled with the smells of oil and dust in the Surrey Docks, and with the strong odour of horse. A dray horse, who had brought his load of packing-cases to the side of the John Evelyn to be hauled aboard, was pawing the cobbles. There was a young lad sitting on the dray, ostensibly minding the horse, watching the scene, and calling out jokes and ribaldry to the stevedores and dockers labouring around him. He had a tin whistle stuck in his waist and presently he started to play a tune. A gay little rag-tune; I shall never forget it. I think it was called ‘Irene’, a name which was to mean much to me. Strange, that name coming then; what an uncanny trick life has of striking a note that it means to repeat.
At last we went aboard the John Evelyn. The light was fading fast. I was unsurprised to find that over an hour had passed. I remember Prince Michael’s smile as he finally went away, which accentuated rather than took away the emptiness of his eyes. He smiled, not for me or with me, but because of me; I was quite sure of it.
After I had unpacked, I went on deck again to watch the Thamesside slipping past. The ship had sailed almost immediately on our coming aboard. My cabin was small, but I had it to myself. I had arranged my clothes, put out the silver-backed hairbrushes that had belonged to my mother, and around them placed the photographs of Grizel and young Alec, Tibby and my brother Robin. My pantheon, as naughty Alec called them. Four faces where there had once been five; one god had gone from my pantheon. Again, I tried to repress bitterness, but the taste of it remained in my mouth even as I stood on deck and watched the lights of London and her satellite suburbs, Greenwich and Woolwich, disappear into the dark. The water grew rougher as we felt the pull of the open sea.
I had made myself a hooded cloak of thick plaid, and lined the hood with fur from an old tippet handed down in my family for generations and at last consigned to me. ‘Bring warm clothes,’ my old Russian cousin had written. I pushed back the hood and let the soft fur fall across my shoulders in unaccustomed opulence; and I wondered what the future held in store for me. I suppose every girl wonders this, but I had special cause.
Then Edward Lacey came up behind me. I recognised him by the smell of Turkish tobacco and Harris tweed that I had already identified as peculiarly his own. He moved to my side, he took out his pipe.
‘Do you mind if I light up, Miss Gowrie?’
‘Oh, no, please do. I enjoy the smell.’ I had smoked a cigarette myself once, but I did not tell him; he seemed to find me puzzling enough already.
He struck a Swan Vesta, and the tobacco smouldered fragrantly. He took a puff or two, then the pipe went out. Pipes always do. But he did not re-light it. Instead he stood there looking into the murky river, glancing at me from time to time.
I kept silent. I was aware he was studying my face. I suppose I was studying his in return. We had met only briefly the day before, but now, embarked on our voyage, conscious that we should be much in each other’s company over a long period, it was as if we both knew we were about to move into a new kind of intimacy. As a type he was not new to me; I had seen plenty of his sort come up for shooting parties at the big house. Such men were sophisticated, worldly, and hard to know. Not the sort of person I really felt at home with.
‘So,’ he said, as if recapping what he had already established, ‘you are the strong-minded young lady who likes medicine and healing the sick? I must warn you that you have a sceptic in me.’
‘Why, Major Lacey – ’
‘I mean, as far as women’s education is concerned. I just don’t like to see it overdone. Seems all wrong to me.’
‘You seem to know a lot about me,’ I said shortly.
‘Well, I do in a way. A potted biography, Dolly Denisov gave me. She’s got a knack of putting things in a nutshell.’
‘Accurately, I hope.’ I spoke with a certain asperity.
‘Yes, she’s reliable, is Dolly. And then, of course, I know your cousin and old Erskine Gowrie, too. Not that he’s seen much these days. Not the man he was. No, Dolly told me all about you. The medicine and all that. I thought you’d be a tough, dried, hockey-stick of a girl.’
‘And I’m not?’ I enquiried, thinking that, after all, not everything about me had been relayed to this man through the channels of Emma Gowrie and Dolly Denisov. Not Patrick.
‘Not a bit,’ he said cheerfully. ‘But I ought to warn you – you’ve captivated Dolly’s imagination. And that can be dangerous.’ He was half laughing, but half serious. ‘All Dolly’s swans have to be swans, you see. Ask Mademoiselle Laure about that.’
‘And who is Mademoiselle Laure?’
‘Oh, a sort of French governess they keep there,’ he said vaguely. ‘On the retired list. Except I believe she teaches French to Ariadne still.’ There sounded an ambiguous side to Mademoiselle Laure, I thought.
‘Thank you for the warning. I need this post. The pay is good and I am poor, which is a state, Major Lacey, you probably know nothing of. You have certainly never been a poor, unmarried girl with her way to make.’
‘Touché,’ he conceded.
I needed desperately, too, to get away from my home, but no point in telling him that if Dolly Denisov had not. It was my own private wound, for me to bear and heal.
‘But Russia is a dangerous place to come to make your fortune,’ he said soberly.
‘I shall hardly do that, working in the Denisov home.’
‘No, if that’s all that happens. But one rarely does only one thing in Russia, as I know to my cost. It’s the way things happen there. There’s a sort of persuasiveness to the place.’ He shook his head. ‘Don’t bully yourself too much, Miss Gowrie. Sit easy to the world; it’s the best way to take your fences. Goodnight. I’m off below.’ And he strolled away, calm and friendly as before.
With a start, I realised he knew all there was to know about me, and was giving me what he thought of as good advice. Something in his cool assumption that he knew best got under my skin. With sudden tears of fury blinding me, I hammered the iron deckrails till my hands ached. ‘Beastly, arrogant man!’ I cried. ‘Stupid and obtuse like all of them! I hate him. I hate all men.’
I felt better after the explosion of tears, and from then on I started to enjoy the journey. After all, I had done so little travelling that to be on the move was in itself new and exciting. My spirits improved daily, and I even began to enjoy the company of Edward Lacey.
And now I was almost sad that the journey was ending …
I came back to the present, to the view of St Petersburg, and to Edward Lacey’s voice. ‘Peter the Great built St Petersburg because he wanted a door on the world,’ he was saying.
‘Hadn’t he got one, then?’
‘The western world. Moscow was in many ways an oriental capital. He wanted to change all that. He did, too. But I think Russia has been paying the price for it ever since. What a country.’
We had talked a good deal about Russia during the voyage, and he obviously knew it well. His sister, he had told me, was married to a Russian; she was expecting a child in the autumn. Now he said: ‘I shall hope to introduce you to my sister, Miss Gowrie, when she’s out and about again.’
‘Oh, thank you.’ Perhaps he didn’t disapprove of me as much as I had thought. ‘Yes, I should like that. I shall know so few people apart from my godfather and the Denisovs.’
‘That will soon change,’ he predicted briskly. ‘The Russians are an endlessly sociable people. The Denisovs will take you around. Dolly Denisov lives for the world.’
‘Ariadne is only seventeen,’ I said.
‘Never mind, you won’t be cloistered.’ He had his eyes screwed up, staring at the quay. ‘There’s the Denisov motorcar already waiting for you, I see.’
‘A motor-car?’
‘Yes.’ He sounded amused. ‘Did you expect a sledge? It is summer and there are very few motor-cars in St Petersburg, but of course Dolly Denisov has one.’
Suddenly, my new life seemed all too close. ‘I wonder if I shall be happy in Russia,’ I said urgently.
‘Yes. If you are the sort of girl who can accept it for what it is, a country entirely itself, and not be continually comparing it with what you know at home, then you will be happy. Or on the way to happiness.’
‘I think I can manage that.’
‘And learn the language. The real Russia is hidden, otherwise.’
‘I already know a little Russian,’ I said. ‘Our local schoolmaster taught me to read Chekhov, he had the language from his mother who was a governess in Russia.’
‘Then you will be well away. And keep your eyes open to the state of Russia. I expect you know something already?’ He was summing me up.
‘I have read the news,’ I said. ‘I know of the terrible poverty, of the oppressive rule, and of how they fear revolution.’
‘Yes. There are all shades of political thinking in Russia, from the most reactionary which favours extreme despotic rule by the Tsar, to the moderates who want to make the Tsar a parliamentary monarch on the British model, to the extreme anarchists who want to destroy all government – blow the lot up, is their motto. I should say Dolly Denisov is an old-fashioned liberal who wants the Tsar’s government to relax some rules but otherwise keep things more or less as they are. As for her brother, he sometimes looks as if he despaired of his country and did not give a damn. Yet I swear he does, because Russians always do care, and those who seem indifferent often care the most. For all I know he may be an out-and-out reactionary – there is that element in the Denisov family – or a downright anarchist.’
He was patently instructing me in the intricacies of Russian political life and I acknowledged this. ‘I will look and learn,’ I said.
‘Then you may survive. But mind: I only say may. It’s the goddamned country. One loves it or hates it.’
We disembarked together, and moved along the quay towards the Denisov car. My great adventure was upon me. With a beating heart I prepared to meet the Denisovs. The Denisovs and Russia.
No one had told me about the May nights, how white they were, and how intense, and how they would affect me. I kept thinking of Patrick; I had come to Russia to forget him, and he was all I could think about. These long, sleepless nights were one of the phenomena of my first weeks in St Petersburg. There were others. One was the cold. Heaven knows, Scotland is often cold enough in May, but I was not prepared for the cold wind of Russia that made me huddle in my clothes. But they told me it would be warm enough soon, and then I should see. Everyone in the Denisov household seemed to take a delight in offering me the contradictions of St Petersburg, as if it had all been specially constructed to amuse me. It was my first introduction to one aspect of the Russian character: its capacity to charm. At the beginning, and indeed for a long time after, Dolly Denisov seemed to me charm personified. Partly it was her voice, delicate, light and sweet.
‘You speak such excellent English yourself, Madame,’ I told her, not long after I arrived, ‘that I wonder you need me to speak to your daughter.’
‘Ah, but poor Ariadne, she needs your company. She must be gay, happy. I love her to be happy. Besides, I cannot be with her all the time.’ A slight pout here, as of one sacrificed already too much to maternal duty.
But it was plain from the start that Dolly Denisov had other amusements besides motherhood; her appearance, for one thing. Never had I seen such dresses and such a profusion of jewels. Perhaps she saw my smile. ‘Ah, it’s no joke, Miss Gowrie, being a wife at eighteen and a widow with a daughter at twenty.’
‘And such a daughter,’ said Ariadne, giving her mother a loving pat. ‘Seventeen years and more you have had of it, Mamma.’
‘But luckily the English nation has been specially created to provide us poor Russians with the governesses we need,’ laughed Madame Denisov, ‘and thus to lighten my burden.’
English or Scottish, it was all one to her.
A joke, of course, but partly meant. You got a new slant on the Anglo-Saxon people and the great British Empire in Russia; we were not, as I had supposed, a nation of shop keepers and diplomats and colonisers, but a race of trustworthy governesses.
The Denisov motor-car had duly met us off the John Evelyn, and, close to, gave me an immediate appreciation of the Denisovs’ mettle; it was of surpassing elegance, the bodywork of maroon with a sort of basket-work corset enclosing it, the metalwork like well polished silver and the upholstery of lavender-blue watered silk. Did I forget to say that it was perfumed? As the introductions were concluded and I stepped inside, a sweet waft of rose and iris floated towards me, nicely mixed with the smell of Russian cigarette smoke. I discovered afterwards that Dolly Denisov smoked incessantly, a long, diamond-studded cigarette-holder always between her fingers. Not that Madame Denisov was there herself at the quay, of course. She was out at one of her numerous engagements, and indeed I did not see my employer for the first twenty-four hours after my arrival. But Ariadne, my dear pupil, had come to meet me. A plain girl, I thought at first, but when I took in her friendly brown eyes and her gentle smile, I saw she had her own beauty.
She turned from Edward Lacey and held out her hands in welcome. ‘I am so glad to see you, Miss Gowrie. I have been excitedly looking forward to today.’
I mumbled some pleasantry in reply. There was the sort of small, unhappy silence that seems inevitably to characterize such occasions, and then Edward Lacey was shaking my hand. ‘Goodbye for the time being, Miss Gowrie.’
I watched his tall, erect figure disappear amid the dock-side crowd. I have not found him easy to know, but with his going went my last link with home. Here I was, ensconced in a beautiful motor-car, with my charge. I seemed to have absolutely nothing to say. All I could think was: ‘Already Ariadne speaks excellent English. I shall have little to do on that score.’
At once she seemed to sense my thought, demonstrating that quick intelligence I was to know so well. ‘I speak English all the time with Mamma. Naturally.’
‘Naturally?’
‘Here one speaks either French or English, and Mamma says she likes French clothes and English conversation.’ It was a fair introduction to Dolly Denisov and, in its calm, good-humoured presentation of the facts, of Ariadne also.
While I was talking to her, I was trying to take in all that I could see of St Petersburg as we drove. It was a city of bridges and canals; water was everywhere. I could believe the stories of how the city had risen out of the marshes at the command of Peter the Great. It was early afternoon, and the sun sought out and flashed on gilded domes and spires.
‘That is the dome of St Isaac’s Cathedral,’ said my companion helpfully, observing my intent look. She pointed. ‘And that is the spire of the Fortress Cathedral.’
The streets were wide but crowded with people. Many of the men seemed to be in uniform – uniforms in a tremendous range of styles and colours. I supposed that later I would learn to recognise what each meant, and to appreciate the significance of this green uniform, and that red livery, this astrakhan cap and that peaked one, but at first glimpse the variety was simply picturesque and exciting. Our motor-car wove its way in and out of a great welter of traffic, private conveyances, carts, and oddly-shaped open carriages whose iron wheels rattled across the cobbles. At one junction an electric tram clattered across our track, motor and tram so narrowly missing a collision that I caught my breath. But Ariadne remained calm, as if such near misses were an everyday occurrence. At intervals, a majestic figure wearing a shaggy hat of white sheepskin and a long dark jacket would stride through the traffic, oblivious of all danger, forcing all to give way before him: a Turcoman, living reminder of Oriental Russia.
Now we had turned along a waterfront, passing a great honey-coloured building and then a dark green, verdant stretch of gardens. There was what looked like a row of government buildings of severe grey stone, succeeded by a row of shops and some private houses. Then a few more minutes of driving and we had arrived at the Molka Quay. The motor-car stopped outside a house of beautiful, pale grey stone with a curving flight of steps leading to an elegant front door.
As we drove up, the door opened. I suppose someone had been watching. But this was always the way it was in Russia; it never seemed necessary to ring a bell or ask for a service, every want was unobtrusively satisfied before the need for it was even formulated, the servants were so many and so skilful.
I was taken up to my room by a trio of servants and a laughing Ariadne. With a flourish, the girl showed me round what was to be my domain. Domain it was; I had two lofty rooms with an ante-chamber, and my own servant. I almost said ‘serf’, but of course the serfs had been freed in 1861 by Alexander, the Tsar Liberator. Nevertheless, the servant who bowed low before me was old enough to have been born into servility, and I felt you could see it in his face, where the smile was painted on and guarded by watchful eyes.
‘Ivan will stand at your door, and anything you wish, he will do. You have only to say.’
‘I shall have to brush up my Russian.’
‘Ivan understands a little English, that is why he was chosen. On our estate a few peasants are always taught some English. Also French and German. It is so convenient.’ Ariadne held out her hand and said sweetly: ‘Come down when you are ready. We have English tea at five o’clock.’
Somewhat to my surprise, and in spite of his Russian name, Ivan was a negro.
When Ariadne had gone, leaving only Ivan standing by the outer door, I explored my rooms, which were furnished with a mixture of Russian luxury and western comfort. Carpets, tapestries and furniture were expensive and exotic. Great bowls of flowers stood everywhere. The bed in the bedroom was newly imported from Waring and Gillow of London, by the look of it. I unpacked a few things, stood my photographs of the family at Jordansjoy by my bed where I could see them when I went to sleep, and proceeded to tidy myself to go down to the Denisovs’ ‘Five o’clock’. I washed my hands. I found that the rose-scented soap in the china dish was English.
It may very well be that young Russian noblewomen never go anywhere without a companion, but otherwise it seemed to me that Ariadne Denisov had a good deal of freedom. For that first evening she entertained me on her own, presiding over dinner and then playing the piano to me afterwards. It was pleasant and undemanding, but anticipation and a battery of new experiences had exhausted me, and before long Ariadne realized the condition I was in, and the two of us went up to bed.
On our way upstairs I saw a small, dark-gowned figure moving along the corridor a short distance ahead of us. Not a servant, obviously, from the sharp dignity with which she observed: ‘Good night, Ariadne,’ disappearing round the corner without waiting for an answer.
‘Mademoiselle Laure, the French governess,’ explained Ariadne. ‘The French governess,’ I noticed, not ‘my French governess’. Thus Ariadne dismissed Mademoiselle as a piece of furniture of the house, necessary, no doubt, to its proper equipment, but of no importance. Her attitude contrasted strangely with the welcome given to me.
Sitting up in bed, plaiting my hair, I thought about the scene again. No doubt I had imagined the flash of malevolence from Mademoiselle Laure’s eyes. Yet she had spoken in English when French would have been more natural to her. No, emotion was there, and I would do well to heed it. I recalled Edward Lacey’s suggestion that Mademoiselle Laure had experienced a certain captiousness in Madame Denisov’s attitude to her protegées. Was she, perhaps, envious of me?
I considered where I had landed myself. The business of preparing for bed had revealed that the luxury I had first noticed went hand in hand with a curious primitiveness. There were beautiful carpets and fine pictures everywhere, jasper and lapis lazuli had been used to decorate the walls of the salon; but there was absolutely no sign of piped water. No water-closet seemed to exist, and I had an antique-looking commode in my room. Private and convenient, no doubt, but even Jordansjoy did better. And there was dust under the bed.
But all the same, I liked it here. Magnificence suited me, never mind the dirt. The Denisovs were obviously extremely wealthy. I had been told that only the very rich had their own house, or osobniak, and that even the well-to-do chose to live in flats. But the whole of this great house seemed given over to the Denisovs. And so far I had met only one of them. Besides Madame Denisov there was the ‘Uncle Peter’ Ariadne had spoken of, her father’s younger brother. She had pointed out his photograph to me, showing me the face of a neat-boned, dark-haired young man with a look of Ariadne herself, the features which seemed plain on the girl possessing elegance on him.
I snuggled down into bed at last, tired but curiously confident – sure I could outlast any caprices of Dolly’s favour for as long as it suited me.
The next day, somewhat later than I might have expected, I met Dolly Denisov.
She was sitting curled up on one end of a great sofa, a bright silk bandeau round her head, a pink spot of rouge on each cheek and something dark about her eyes, puffing away at a cigarette and chattering at a great rate to Ariadne in her high-pitched, lilting voice. She leapt to her feet when she saw me and came forward holding out a delicate, jewelled hand.
I don’t remember her opening words, I was too absorbed in her physical impact; I was swimming in a strange sea, excited and exhilarated. Then we were sitting down, side by side on the sofa, talking as if she was really interested in me.
‘And did you sleep? Visitors sometimes find our summer nights trying.’
‘I did find it difficult to sleep.’
‘And you dreamed? We always say that there’s nothing like a St Petersburg summer’s night dream.’
‘Yes, I dreamed.’ I had dreamt of Patrick. She knew all about Patrick, of course. I realized by now that everything of my sad little history had been explained to all parties concerned by Emma Gowrie.
‘Everyone dreams here in the summer. When they can sleep at all. I can never sleep. All the time I am exhausted.’ She didn’t look it, though. Energy crackled from her. ‘But then we go to our estate in the country and there I rest; but you will be at work.’ And she smiled. ‘Foreigners are always interested in our country estates because in them is the heart of Russia. We know what we owe to our peasants, Miss Gowrie, you must never doubt that. Between the landed proprietor and his peasants is a bond that only God can break. Outside Russia, people do not understand this. But I am a liberal-thinking woman. I want the Tsar to rule through a Parliament – the Duma, we call it – as your King does.’
Our conversation was broken into by a procession of servants carrying salvers laden with food and wine, which they proceeded to lay out upon a series of small tables before bowing and retiring. I watched, frankly enjoying the scene; it was as good as being at the play. And no sooner had they departed than a stream of guests began arriving, almost all the men in a uniform of one sort or another, the ladies for the most part as richly decked out as Dolly Denisov, with one or two poorer-looking figures dressed in dingy dark clothes – including one elderly lady who speedily helped herself to a plate of assorted delicacies and retired to a corner to eat them as if she had not seen food as good as this for sometime, and would not soon do so again. Last to arrive was a trio of musicians who came quietly in, settled themselves in a corner and struck up. No one took the slightest notice, although by all accounts the Russians rated themselves very highly as music lovers.
Ariadne skipped around, sometimes bringing guests up to me to be introduced, sometimes leading me to them. Madame Soltikov, Count Gouriev, Professor Klin, Prince Tatischev, the Princess Valmiyera – she was named with especial respect, and was the little old lady eating her plateful of delicacies.
Halfway through the evening a tall, dark-haired young man walked quietly across the room to where I was sitting and introduced himself. ‘I am Peter Alexandrov, Dolly’s brother.’ He was fastidiously and beautifully dressed and I caught the faint scent of verbena as he bowed over my hand. No one could have been more unlike Patrick, but he was the first man who had caught my attention at all since my disaster. ‘I should think he knows how to interest women all right,’ I thought to myself as I talked to him.
Our conversation was light and easy, nothing important was said, but I felt I had made a friend. When he rose to go I saw him catch Dolly’s eye and a look passed between them. A question in hers, and an assent in his. I could not mistake it. He had wanted to meet me, I was sure of it.
Someone had been watching us. I turned quickly. A small dark-clad figure crossed the room diagonally, walking towards the door. I recognised Mademoiselle Laure. So she had been here all the time.
An irrational vexation possessed me. We were two of a kind in this household, Mademoiselle and I, and yet she seemed to avoid me, whereas I had already made tentative explorations to see if I could find her room.
‘There goes Mademoiselle Laure.’ I pointed her out to Ariadne. ‘I didn’t know she was here.’
‘Oh, she came to listen to the music, I suppose,’ said Ariadne. ‘She is very fond of music.’
If she had been listening, then she was the only one. The musicians had played sadly, as if they never expected an audience. Now they had packed up their instruments and were filing out, one after the other like the Three Blind Mice.
‘I suppose she has a room somewhere near mine?’ I asked.
‘Mademoiselle Laure? Oh, I think she is in a room on the next floor,’ said Ariadne vaguely, as if she did not know and did not care. It was all very unlike the treatment of me.
The next day Dolly Denisov clapped her hands and announced that Ariadne would be taking me on a tour of the city. Was I rested? Was I comfortable? Good. To be introduced to St Petersburg was a necessary preliminary to my duties.
‘Duties,’ I thought. There seemed to be no duties, only pleasures.
We duly set off in their large motor-car, with Ariadne pointing out the sights. We had passed this way yesterday. ‘There is the Rouminantiev Garden ― so beautiful. One day we must walk there. Oh, all those buildings are part of the university, but that one over there covered with mosaics is the Academy of Arts. Mamma says it is unsightly, but I rather like it. Oh, and that’s the Stock Exchange – looks as if it was hewn out of solid rock, doesn’t it?’ She spoke through the speaking tube to the footman, who then spoke to the chauffeur. ‘Go on to the Peter and Paul Fortress, then the Cathedral, and then down to the Nevsky Prospect.’ She turned to me. ‘That way we’ll go past the Vladimir Palace and the Winter Palace. You’ll like the Nevsky Prospect, the shops are gorgeous.’ And she giggled. She and her mother had the same sort of delightful, rumbling little laugh.
Ariadne had her orders, I decided, and the tour which looked so artless had been carefully thought out. The city was laid out before me in its great beauty, with everywhere trees and water, and buildings either of rich red brick or stone apricot-coloured in the sunlight. The sombre bulk of the Fortress of St Peter and St Paul, Kazan Cathedral, the Winter Palace itself, I saw them all. And at the centre was the Nevsky Prospect. ‘It is the longest and widest street in the world,’ said Ariadne proudly. ‘Five miles from the Alexander Gardens to the Moscow Gate.’
I was struck by the width of the street, too, the pavements looked as if a dozen people could have marched up them side by side. Very soon Ariadne stopped the car.
‘Now we will walk,’ she said, and took my hand tightly in hers and led me along. ‘This is the glittering world, Miss Rose. Perhaps I shall have to renounce it one day, who knows what may happen? But while it is here, let us enjoy it. Look, here is Alexandre’s.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘Oh, I adore Alexandre’s.’
Together we stared at the window full of expensive and elegant objects – jade boxes, scarves of Persian silk, chains of gold and ivory, a delicate parasol of white lace with a diamond-studded handle. Never had I seen anything like it. By comparison Jenner’s in Prince’s Street did not exist.
‘Do you have anything like this?’
I shook my head. ‘In London, perhaps. Not in Edinburgh.’
Past Alexandre’s was Druce’s, the ‘English Shop’, where were sold English soap and toothpaste and lavender water – which was much used by the men. After that we went into Wolff’s, the great bookshop, where Ariadne lavishly bought me several books about Russia and a copy of the London Times.
‘Across the road,’ she said in a low voice, ‘is Fabergé’s shop. Even I hardly dare look in there, it is so expensive. Old Madame Narishkin spent the whole of her husband’s salary there in one day, just buying two presents for his birthday. Or that’s the story, anyway.’ She gave that giggle, so like her mother’s. ‘The old goose is silly enough for it.’
A golden-voiced clock somewhere chimed the hour, and it reminded Ariadne of something. ‘Let’s go to Yeliseyeff’s,’ she said. ‘I have to order some ryabchik for Mamma – tomorrow she gives a dinner party.’
Yeliseyeff’s, as I was to discover, was a large provision store filled with exotic delicacies from all over the world: great jars of crystallised apricots and plums, drums of mysterious marrons glacés, bowls of strawberries and peaches, sacks of dark brown nuts. Seasons had no place in Yeliseyeff’s calendar, any fruit could be had at any time.
Ariadne ordered the little game birds for her mother from a smiling assistant, added to it the request for a box of praliné almonds for herself, and then led me to the grand treat of the morning. ‘Coffee and ices at Berrin’s,’ she announced.
Berrin’s was the French confiserie in Morskaya Street, just off the great Nevsky Avenue, and thither we were driven in the car which had all this time been following us at a discreet distance. There, at a round mahogany table in the window, we ate tiny sponge cakes and ice-cream served to us by a tall Frenchwoman dressed in brown and black, a colour combination I had never seen before – and it would certainly have looked dowdy enough at Jordansjoy – but which I now realized was of great elegance.
‘If this is to be my life in St Petersburg,’ I thought, ‘I am on Easy Street.’
An indeed, during those first few days in St Petersburg I was beginning to see a little of what lay behind Edward Lacey’s reservations about Russian society; it would be easy to be corrupted, to sink back into a comfortable, idle life. I do not deny that for a little while I indulged myself with daydreams about what it would be like to be a femme du monde like Dolly Denisov, with nothing to do except mind my clothes and my appearance. Delicious fantasies they were, too, but not for long. I delighted in Dolly Denisov, but I did not wish to be her, it was not in my nature to live like that. Besides, even Dolly had a conscience. Had she not asked me to come here to help with the health of her peasants? So before long I asked, rather shyly, if I could be introduced to this side of my duties.
‘Oh, aren’t you happy with Ariadne, then?’ she asked in some surprise.
‘But very. She’s a delightful girl, and I love going about the town with her. But I long to get on with the medical work,’ I said eagerly.
‘Yes of course, I can understand that.’ She gave a severe look at one of her own beautifully manicured hands, as if that hand was anxious to get out and cleanse wounds and tie bandages. ‘But it’s difficult till we go to Shereshevo, which will not be until a little later. It is there you will work, you see. Still, I don’t see why you couldn’t make a start.’ She considered. ‘Would you like to go and see one of the great St Petersburg hospitals?’
‘Oh, I would.’
‘Then I’ll arrange it. Let me see, tomorrow won’t do; I’m fully engaged. Nor the day after ― fittings, you know, for one or two new little dresses. But the day after that.’ She consulted her diary. ‘Yes, the morning of that day will do beautifully. Would you like to see the hospital of St George? I know the doctor, the medical administrator there, and he will arrange it for us.’
It wasn’t quite what I had had in mind; from my Edinburgh experience I knew that hospital inspections by a fashionable party of people, even those blessed by the noblest of motives, were not relished by busy doctors and nurses. Nor much by the sick themselves, I suspected. ‘If it’s all right,’ I said doubtfully.
‘You mean, for the doctors, the patients?’ Dolly’s eyebrows arched in surprise. ‘Oh, but they will love it.’
And when we got there I found to my surprise that this was true, at least of the patients. They really did enjoy being visited; my first intimation – one among many – of the differences between the Russian spirit and what I was used to at home.
We drove out to the hospital in Dolly’s car, travelling for about half an hour, first through the prosperous heart of the city with its great shops and palaces, then into a more working-class district. I looked about me with interest.
‘Well?’ said Dolly, adding with some irony: ‘A charming area, is it not?’
‘It looks poor enough,’ I said bluntly, ‘and it reminds me more of Glasgow than Edinburgh, with its great tenement blocks alternating with factories.’
‘Yes, there is a lot of industry here.’ Dolly put her hand on my arm. ‘Over there is a factory that should interest you.’ We were passing a high brick wall which protected a bleak stone building with few windows and those set high. ‘It belongs to your godfather, Erskine Gowrie.’
I stared at it as we sped past. ‘What do they make there? What kind of factory is it?’
After a moment’s pause, Dolly said: ‘Some sort of engineering factory, I believe.’
‘Engineering, is it? I thought I was told it was a chemical factory.’
‘I may have got it wrong,’ said Dolly easily. ‘It’s the sort of thing I do get wrong.’
‘I wonder if I could see over it.’
‘So you are interested in factories as well as hospitals?’ said Dolly, with a glint of amusement.
‘In that one, anyway, as it belongs to my godfather. He might let me in. Although he seems to have forgotten my existence,’ I added.
‘I believe he sees no one and is quite withdrawn. Senile, you know. With some people old age goes to the legs, and with some the mind.’
As the factory disappeared from my sight I had time to wonder who ran the factory if my godfather was beyond doing so. I was just about to ask Dolly this question when she said: ‘And here is the hospital.’
As far as looks went, there was not much to choose between my godfather’s factory and the hospital, for both were bleak, grey buildings nestling behind high walls; the hospital had more windows, that was all. But in my limited experience all hospitals looked like that outside, more or less; it was the inside that counted and showed its quality.
This hospital was simple enough inside, but well run. Armed with my introduction from Dolly, I was made welcome and taken to the dispensary, where drugs and equipment were laid out for me to see. I made a quick list of what was easily available and what I could order. They seemed to have most of the medicines I would have used at home. But what struck me about the hospital was a looseness of discipline; the staff and patients seemed almost jolly, I actually heard laughter and singing. When I thought about it I could see that happiness must promote healing. I was learning fast about the strange country that was Russia. I could see already that in many ways it was a harsh society, and yet there were always the unexpected things – the gaiety of the people, their charm – that delighted me. And somehow distracted me, too, from focusing on the grimmer realities.
On the way back home we drove by a different route and did not pass my godfather’s factory, which disappointed me. That was all I felt then – curiosity, and disappointment. But perhaps there were already questions forming in my mind: What does this forbidding place produce? What connection to me, exactly, is Erskine Gowrie? Am I to meet him? And if not, why not? Perhaps there was already growing in me a faint unease.
If so, it may well have been sharpened by an incident with Mademoiselle Laure.
I had seen Mademoiselle several times now, and tried to catch her eye, but she always turned away. On purpose, I thought. And I was right. One day I came upon her in the Denisovs’ library. I was determined to talk to her. I went to stand beside her – and inadvertently put my hand on hers, a personal touch I should have avoided. She wrenched it away.
‘I am sorry; your hand is cold,’ she excused herself.
But I refused to be put off. ‘We ought to understand each other, you and I. We take the same place in the household.’
‘Hardly.’
‘I have been here three weeks,’ I said on a note of surprise, ‘and not spoken to you at all.’
‘Three weeks! I have been here three hundred times as long.’ Her vehemence had more than a touch of bitterness in it. ‘I know things you would dread to learn.’
‘Come and sit in my room with me,’ I said. ‘I expect you know it – it is so beautiful.’
‘I know it!’ She gave a short laugh.
A strange and terrible thought struck me. ‘Was it your room once?’
‘My room? I have that room? No, it would be strange if it was. Between the French governess and the English governess there is a gulf fixed.’ There was an unmistakable edge of mockery in her voice.
‘Scottish,’ I corrected automatically. Without anyone telling me, I had already grasped that a hierarchy existed, and that English governesses stood at the top, with French and German ladies well down in social esteem and salary. Russian governesses, if they existed – and I had not yet met with any – were no doubt at the bottom. It was one strange aspect of Russian society. ‘Still,’ I said, ‘we do the same sort of job.’
She laughed, an incredulous, bitter hoot. ‘You think so? You really think so? How innocent. How terrible to be so innocent. And dangerous. Well, Russia will soon teach you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, Russia will teach you. And if it does not, then ask me for a lesson. Now I excuse myself.’ And giving me a stiff little nod, full of suppressed emotion, she departed.
I told myself uneasily that she was nothing but a spiteful, jealous woman; but still, I wondered. What or who had made her jealous? How could it be Rose Gowrie? It did just cross my mind, then, that she might have been in love with Peter.
Inevitably such thoughts remained unresolved. They did not disappear – but to whom could I put questions at once so pointed and so vague? Certainly Dolly Denisov, although apparently approachable, never seemed to say anything I could settle on. But Mademoiselle Laure’s observations stayed with me; and then, once or twice, I caught Dolly herself looking at me with a strange appraising scrutiny.
Meanwhile, Ariadne and I drifted away our days in conversation, visits to other splendid houses, and walks. I had instituted the Scottish ‘afternoon walk’ and Ariadne, although at first doubtful, now enjoyed the habit as much as I did. But we seemed to have no purpose and no direction in our life. I told myself that it was very Russian, and that this was how I must expect it all to be.
I had plenty of time at my own disposal when Ariadne was taking her music lessons, or singing, or learning dancing with the French dancing-master, or taking drawing lessons; she did all of these things, one or two of them brilliantly, none of them regularly. Madame Denisov had waved a vague hand when I asked permission to explore the library and the picture gallery.
The library was a lofty, dark room filled with ancient volumes in Russian, French and German, as well as offering a smaller library of Greek and Latin texts. Of these books no volume seemed later in date than 1840. English literature had a section all its own and was mainly made up of novels. Dolly Denisov had a very representative collection of English light fiction, and I spent quite a lot of my free time there, gratefully reading my way through a number of delightful authors like E. F. Benson and Elizabeth, Gräfin von Arnim, which poverty had hitherto kept from me.
The picture gallery was a long, tunnel-like room filled with dark portraits of fierce-looking soldiers and ladies dressed with an air of fashion and expense that suggested Dolly Denisov was running true to form. They were a dull lot and, except for certain slight differences of dress, could have been found, perfectly at home, at Jordansjoy. But at the end of the gallery were three or four strange pictures that exploded with colour and light. A scene of water-lilies in a pond, a plump woman sitting at her dressing-table brushing her hair – these were two of them. Another was a country scene, but so angular, bold and bright that I had never seen anything like it. Yet another was of a girl dancer resting on a chair, her face in repose plain and spent, and yet she was an object of great beauty.
Just beyond this group of pictures was a door. One day, out of curiosity, I opened it. Behind the door was a small hall, and leading out of it a heavily carpeted staircase going straight up into the wall.
I went to the foot of it and stared up; I could see nothing because the staircase curved sharply. A scented, murky, musky smell hung over the stairwell, as if fresh air never reached it. I wondered where it led, but on that day something unwelcoming, even slightly sinister about the stairs, kept me back.
But the place fascinated me and I kept thinking about it. The next time I was in the gallery I went again into the small foyer that led to the red-carpeted stairs. This time as I stood there, I heard a movement behind me. One of the servants came through the door bearing a heavy silver tray on which were covered dishes.
I was beginning to speak a little more Russian by now, and at any rate I could ask a simple question and generally make out what the answer was.
‘Where does the staircase go?’
The servant – he was old and grey – stared without answering. Then he said: ‘Ah, the sacred staircase,’ and crossed himself as if he meant cursed rather than sacred. Later I came to observe that the servants, like many an oppressed minority, often used a word in the exactly opposite sense to the way they really intended it. In secretiveness they found both protection and defiance.
He said no more, but went on up the stairs and out of sight. On that thick carpet his feet made no sound.
I knew now that someone lived up the staircase.
The silence of the household about this unmentioned inhabitant began to oppress me. The mystery worried me. I thought about it at night, those pale nights, and when I was not dreaming about Patrick I dreamt about the staircase.
One quiet afternoon while Ariadne was at her singing lesson and Dolly Denisov out upon her own concerns, I entered the foyer from the picture gallery and crept quietly up the stairs.
The staircase wound up and up in three curving flights. No wonder no sound had floated down to me at the bottom. Ahead of me was a solid oak door with a polished bronze handle. I opened it.
I was on the threshold of a large, dark room, curtained and lit by lamps although the afternoon was bright. In the middle of the room was a great state bed of gilded wood, heavily decorated with swags and carved fruits and little crowns, and hung with rich tapestries. In the bed, propped up on cushions, was an old lady, before her a bed-table spread with playing cards. She raised her head from her cards at my entrance, and stared. Then a radiant smile spread across her face, and eagerly she held out her hands. She said in English: ‘At last you have come. I always knew you would.’
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_d7fb470a-7a7b-5aea-b0b3-5a7d48d1b566)
I had never been in such a room before. It was so shut-in and artificial that I felt the outside air could never penetrate at all. Over the window were heavy, plush curtains of deep red, and over these were layers of muslin, draped and pleated in elaborate folds. On the floor was an ancient Turkey carpet whose very redness seemed to suck up what air was left in the room after the endlessly burning lamps and the great stove had taken their share.
I stood on the threshold, shaken by my reception, and not understanding it.
The old woman in the bed and I stared at each other. Then she gave a cackle of laughter. ‘Come in, girl, and don’t stand there staring.’
Slowly I advanced into the room, vaguely conscious of great gilt mirrors on the wall uncannily reflecting everything in the room, making every image smaller and clearer than in life: gilt furniture, the old lady in the bed, the lamps, and the girl at the door who was myself, a girl in blue-and-white spotted silk, her face with bright puzzled eyes.
‘Come on, come on.’ The voice was imperious. ‘Come right up close and let me have a look.’
Obediently, as if mesmerised, I came right up to the bed and let her look at me. Her hand came forward – dry and cold it was on mine, glittering with diamonds. Age had shrunk and discoloured it until it looked like a little brown animal’s paw.
Her face was old, older than anyone’s I had ever seen. At Jordansjoy we thought of Tibby as old, but she was not old like this. This woman looked as if she and the last century had grown old together. I saw a thin, lined, wrinkled face, cheeks bright rouged, and neck and forehead powdered white. Diamond earrings sparkled at the ears, and a great pearl necklace dangled from her throat. Out of this painted, ancient face stared a pair of dark, keen eyes. But every so often heavy lids fell over the eyes, turning the eye-sockets into dark pits which made her look dead already. It was a disconcerting trick, due, I suppose, to a weakness of the muscle beyond her control. Yet I came to suspect that she used her weakness to intimidate.
‘Good,’ she said again; her voice was almost a whisper, a ghost of what it must have been. ‘I am pleased with you. You have the right look. Genuine. I knew I should be able to tell. At my age a skin peels from the spirit and one senses things at once. But you kept me waiting. I even began to think you had not come.’
‘I didn’t mean to,’ I said, flummoxed.
‘And how long have you been here?’ There was a hint of imperious displeasure in her voice.
‘I’ve been in Russia a little more than three weeks.’
‘Ah, so long? Well, I cannot rely on being told the truth. I have to allow for that.’ Her eyelids fell, revealing the bruised, violet-coloured eye-pits.
I didn’t know what on earth she was talking about. ‘I am Rose Gowrie,’ I said. She opened her eyes, now their blackness seemed opaque, then light and life gleamed in them.
‘So indeed you are: Rose Gowrie come from Scotland,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘And I am Irene Drutsko.’
The name, as even I knew, was one of the oldest in Russian history. The Drutskos looked down on the Romanovs as parvenus.
‘Yes, I am a Drutsko, by birth as well as marriage. We have a lot of the old Rurik blood in us. They say by the time we are five-and-twenty we are all either saints or mad; I leave you to discover which I am.’ Again the eyelids drooped, but were raised quickly – although with an effort, I thought. ‘No, you need not kiss my hand,’ she went on. ‘Your own birth is noble. Besides, your grandfather was my lover when he was an attaché here. It was a short but most enjoyable relationship.’
‘That must have been my great-grandfather,’ I said. ‘He was here. I’ve seen his portrait in Russian dress – very romantic’
‘So? One confuses the generations at my age. Yes, he was very beautiful. He loved me to distraction. When he was called back to London he said he would se suicider.’
‘He was eighty-two when he died,’ I said. He had also had eight children and two wives, both married and all begotten after his sojourn in St Petersburg. I wondered what he had said to her. He had gone down in our family sagas as a tremendous old liar. A great beauty, though, as she had said. We all got our looks from him.
She ignored my remark as, later, she was to ignore what did not fit in with the picture of her world as she saw it. Instead she said: ‘How strange that the blood of that worldly man should run in your veins. Truly the ways of God are beyond us.’ She took my hand caressingly. ‘Ah, my little miracle, my little treasure from God.’
‘Am I?’ I said doubtfully, withdrawing my hand as gently as I could; dry and cold as her hand was, it seemed to take warmth from mine. All the same, my professional interest was aroused. She was a sick woman. I could feel it in the thin, dry, papery quality of her skin. No healthy hand has such skin. It was hard to get my hand away, for her age she had a firm grip. ‘I’m here to be companion to Ariadne and to talk English to her.’ For some reason I did not mention my more important reason for coming to Russia: the medical work I was going to do at Shereshevo. I think I knew instinctively that such a scheme would find no favour with the Princess Irene.
‘Ah?’ Her eyes lit up with mockery. ‘Is that what you think?’
‘Of course. Madame Denisov – is she your niece – engaged me,’ I said stoutly. It seemed to me that I was obscurely defending myself, although I couldn’t tell why. A little trickle of alarm moved inside me. Of course it had been Madame Denisov who offered me my position. What did the old lady mean?
There was a moment of silence, and during it I became more aware of my surroundings. I was standing by the bed; behind me was the door through which I had come in. Now I noticed that in the wall behind the bed was yet another door. I wondered where it led.
‘You think so?’ Her question seemed to give her satisfaction. She shook her head. ‘No, Ariadne is not so important. You have come to me. Do you think Dolly is the only one with ailments? Not that she has any, whatever she may think, she is as strong as a little horse. She smokes too much, of course, but they all do.’
‘I didn’t know Madame Denisov was ill,’ I said, surprised.
‘Nor is she; I have just been saying so. Don’t you listen, girl? Sick in her mind she may be at times; she certainly ought to be with the way she plays at cards and all the worries this family has.’ She paused, and added ironically: ‘So you are her wonder-worker, who will train her silly peasant women in the ways of good health? So she says.’ She gave a sceptical titter.
‘You do know, then?’
‘Of course I know. I know everything there is to know up here in my tower.’ Still the mocking note in her voice. She would be a devil if she was angry, I thought, but in spite of her great age there was an immense attractiveness welling out of her. She seemed like the Sphinx itself to me, only half human, richly encrusted with memories of worlds long gone, and full of mystery. ‘But I shan’t let you be wasted on a pack of illiterate peasants.’ Her eyes glittered. ‘No, you are too valuable a property to leave in my Dolly’s feckless hands. I can see there will have to be a little war between us.’
‘I don’t think I want to be the subject of a war.’
‘You can’t help it, my dear, you are chosen. Life chose you.’ She gave me an amused look. ‘Shall I tell you what I know? No, after all, I won’t. It will be more amusing for me to see you move to strings pulled by you know not whom. At my age, what is left but to be a voyeur?’
I did not properly understand her, but this only added to her amusement. ‘Although I will admit, my dear, that I have hopes of returning to more active life with your help.’ She gave a little cackle of laughter. ‘You will help me, my dear, but I do not promise to help you. That is the law of my world. Struggle, little moth, in your web.’
‘You’re a wicked old woman,’ I said; but there was so much humour in her, black as it was, that she captivated me still.
Behind her the door opened an inch or two, then halted.
She saw it too, reflected in the mirror; she stopped in mid-sentence. Behind the wrinkles and the rouge and the powder her expression changed, amusement and satisfaction draining away and blankness taking their place.
I looked at the door: it was still open, I hadn’t imagined the first movement. Someone must be standing behind it, waiting to come in.
‘Please go now,’ the Princess said, leaning back on her pillows and closing her eyes. Pretending to close them, I thought, because I could see a glimmer through those painted lashes. ‘After all, I am greatly fatigued. Goodbye, my dear, your arrival is my great joy. Come again soon. I will arrange it.’
‘But Madame Denisov – ’ I began. ‘I mean, I don’t know what she expects …’
She interrupted me. ‘I find it best to make my own dispositions. Goodbye for the moment. I shall soon be greatly in your debt.’
Did the door move a fraction as I went away? In the mirror I thought I saw it did.
I was halfway down the red staircase when it struck me that from where she lay in her bed the old lady could watch both the doors. More, anyone opening either door could see who was in the room, reflected in the mirror, before entering. What a room for conspirators.
I didn’t mention anything of this to Dolly Denisov or Ariadne. I wasn’t proud of either my original inquisitiveness or the secrecy it led to. It was Russia, I see that now; and in particular, the way Russia manifested itself in the Denisov household. Without my knowing it, the atmosphere of the house was affecting me.
But the next day Dolly Denisov raised the subject herself, in her own way, and obliquely. We met over the teacups while Dolly smoked and Ariadne nibbled macaroons.
‘You have settled down so well, Miss Gowrie.’ Dolly smoothed her glossy hair, which today was pinned back with a tortoiseshell and diamond comb, shaped like a fan. ‘I am so happy.’
‘I love it all,’ I said with honesty.
‘And soon letters from home will start arriving, and that sad little look I see at the back of the eyes will have gone.’
‘Yes,’ I said. But none from Patrick. No letters, ever again, from Patrick. I don’t think Dolly Denisov can ever have been truly in love or she would not have said what she did. But perhaps she didn’t believe it. Hard to tell with Dolly.
‘You miss your family, of course you do. We Russians understand about families. That is why we live in such huge houses, so we can all be together.’ She reached out for a cigarette, and the dark silk of her flowing tea-gown slid away from her arm to show half a dozen barbaric-looking gold bracelets. ‘Even in this house we have an old aunt living. She is too old and frail for you to meet, she sees no one,’ said Dolly easily.
I said nothing. Old, Princess Irene certainly was, I thought; frail too, no doubt; but it wasn’t true she saw no one. She had seen me. I was opening my mouth to confess all, when Dolly swept on. ‘One day, perhaps, I will take you up to see her. She is history personified. Do you know, as a girl she danced with Prince Metternich? She was a great flirt. Well, more than that, I’m afraid; one couldn’t say she stopped short at flirting, precisely. So many scandals.’ Dolly laughed indulgently. ‘Never really beautiful, but she knew how to attract. Oh, she was worldly, Tante Irene, and now look what she has come to: a recluse, quite cut off, seeing no one. The sadness!’
I kept quiet. I wondered if it was true about her being quite cut off. I had got the distinct impression the Princess received exactly whom she liked in the tower.
Next day, after walking with Ariadne, there was a budget of letters from home waiting for me. I longed to carry them straight up to my room, but Ariadne said no, there was a special visitor in the drawing-room and I must come in and meet him.
‘Oh, who?’
She screwed her face up in a wry grimace. ‘I suppose you would call him a suitor.’
‘A suitor? For you?’ I was surprised. She seemed so young.
‘Oh, don’t worry, Miss Rose, these things take years and years in Russia.’ She smiled. ‘I’m not supposed to know. But of course I do. Goodness, my nurse told me of the arrangement when I was five. But I pretend I don’t know. My mother understands I know, but she pretends that I don’t, too.’ Then she sighed. ‘I shall have to make up my mind soon or it will be too late.’
‘You can choose, then?’
‘Oh, I expect so,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Mamma would never force me to anything, but why should it be no? He’s rich, gentle, and quite pretty, I think.’
‘We say handsome with a man,’ I said.
‘Handsome, then,’ accepted Ariadne blithely.
In the drawing-room were two men. One was Peter Alex-androvitch and the other – yes, seeing him suddenly through Ariadne’s eyes, he was handsome.
‘My Uncle Peter,’ introduced Ariadne, ‘whom you know. And this …’ no doubt from her voice and manner of amused archness that this was her suitor, and that she was enjoying my astonishment … ‘Edward Lacey.’
I held out my hand. ‘I am very glad to see you, Major Lacey.’ And it was true. I was surprised at how happy I was to see him. How secretive they had been, neither telling me until now of their particular interest in each other. Yet it was a private matter, of course, and not the sort of thing to be discussed with a new acquaintance.
Ariadne and I had interrupted a conversation about a famous Russian writer who had just, inexplicably committed suicide. ‘He killed himself,’ said Peter Alexandrov. ‘Shot himself through the mouth. Oh, there is a sickness in our society, all right, and where can it all end?’
‘It is part of your sickness to have no answer,’ said Edward Lacey.
‘Possibly. Or too many answers.’
‘Oh, politics, politics, they can never touch us.’ Ariadne interrupted their conversation with gaiety. ‘Let us ignore unpleasantness and have a good time.’
‘Wretched little butterfly,’ said Edward, but he seemed to enjoy her prattle. Presently the two of them went over to the piano where he turned the pages and Ariadne played and sang. I suppose it was a courtship in the Russian style.
The music began, and Peter and I were left looking at each other. Then Peter gave a short laugh. ‘Ariadne knows nothing, and yet she knows everything. She is like an animal that senses instinctively how to lead a happy life. But give her time, she will grow up. The women in our family mature late. But Ariadne will still be happy, it is her gift.’
Perhaps that was what Edward Lacey liked, and perhaps it was the gift I lacked. ‘Lucky Ariadne,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘Ah, but you have your own gifts.’
Our eyes met, and I seemed to read understanding in his. ‘I think I know what you mean; my gift of healing. But it’s such a little thing, perhaps nothing at all, mere imagination.’ I found myself telling him about the boy in the village, about a dog I had once helped, even about a bird’s wing that I had healed. ‘And yet, small as it is, my gift may have ruined my life.’ I was thinking of Patrick.
‘Your life is only just beginning,’ said Peter. ‘You do not know what you may become.’
‘In Russia?’ I queried, half smiling.
But Peter said nothing more, and soon the others came back from the piano and suggested that we go out to see the new horse that Edward Lacey had just bought and which was ‘a regular winner’. Then, after looking the beast over, I was able to go back to my room, where I sat down by the window and opened my letters from home.
My sister Grizel’s was the longest and the least well spelt, and Alec’s was the shortest, produced in his best copperplate hand, and containing one brief sentence about seeing a fox. Grizel produced a string of home news, such as the state of her Sunday hat, the sad disappearance of our best laying hen (a fox was suspected) and the fact that she was invited to a house-party at Glamis and had ‘absolutely nothing to wear and no way to get there except by walking’.
I raised my head and smiled. I knew that Grizel would get to her house-party – some hopeful suitor would constrain his mother or his sister or his aunt to drive her over – and she would look delightful in her old clothes.
Tibby’s letter was more down-to-earth; she too mentioned the hen, which was obviously a sore point with the whole family, but blamed the local tinkers and not the fox. She concentrated on health. She told me how the minister was, how his wife was, how the postie’s rheumatism had made him ‘terrible slow’ with his letters lately, and finally she told me how she, Grizel and my brother were. I was delighted to hear that they all seemed in rude health. But as I turned the last page of her letter I saw a frantic postscript which seemed to have been jointly written by her and Grizel.
‘My dear Rose,’ wrote Tibby, ‘we have just heard that a terrible trouble has fallen upon the Grahams. Patrick has disgraced himself in India and must leave his regiment in dishonour. We don’t know the details as yet; I dare say we never shall, but I feel for his poor mother.’
In Grizel’s hand, I read: ‘Rose darling, Patrick is accused of mutiny, who would have believed it of him? And he has fled. No one knows his whereabouts, not even his mother. Well, thank goodness you are not married to him, my love, that’s what I say.’
But I thought: poor Patrick, poor Patrick. And I also thought how little I knew him after all.
That night, instead of dreaming about Patrick I dreamt about myself. Troubled, restless dreams in which my own identity seemed lost, and I wandered like a ghost through an unknown countryside.
I woke in the pale dawn and lay looking as the sunlight began to colour the room. I held my hands up in front of me; ordinary, quite pretty hands, with long fingers and the narrow nails inherited by all the Gowries. Why should my hands be working hands, hands to heal, when the hands of all my forebears – except for the soldiers’ – had been idle ones? And yet I knew my hands must work. I wanted to feel them scrubbed clean and sterile, ready to do what I asked of them. And then at the end of the day I wanted to feel they had achieved what I had asked of them. It wasn’t exactly that I thought of myself as a healer, although I hoped I would be; it was simply that there was a job I seemed born for, head, hands and heart, and I longed to be at it.
Had Patrick sensed this? Was this, as much as any troubles of his own, what lay behind our break-up? Perhaps I should blame myself as much as him. And lying there in that Russian dawn, I did blame myself. Somehow I had frightened Patrick away. The notion that he had been paid to leave me struck me now as ridiculous. Still, he had gone, and now some terrible disaster had struck him in India. I felt as though I didn’t understand about this disaster. As if the story, as presented to me, was false. I did not believe in the mutiny tale.
I thought about that for a little while. ‘But I’ve only heard about it at third hand,’ I thought. ‘What actually happened in India, and the story as told to me, may bear very little relation to each other … What a lot I don’t understand;’
The next day – quite unexpectedly – I got my first taste of the other Russia. So far I had been on the whole cocooned in a world of luxury and security; now I was to see the dark side.
That morning early, before breakfast, I buttoned myself into a cool, white linen shirt – for St Petersburg was beginning to be hot – and went downstairs where Ariadne was waiting for me to go with her to church. Like many Russian girls of her class and generation, Ariadne had strongly developed religious feelings, although of a somewhat dreamy and simplistic sort. Religiosity rather than religion, my old Tibby would have called it. It was a matter of duty that I should go with her, but in fact, I was entranced by the richness and beauty of the Orthodox service and music. We went quite often. Church was not, as in Presbyterian Scotland, a Sunday affair; one could go on any day of the week, at almost any time; sometimes we planned to go, but sometimes, too, we went quite casually, just because Ariadne felt like it.
I had instituted the habit of walking; Ariadne fell in with the idea, to humour me. This morning we were turning into the street which led to the church when we saw a line of police drawn up across the road, and we were stopped. Beyond them we could see a small group of people being questioned by two policemen, and in the distance, right down at the end of the road, was a glimpse of the Nevsky Prospect where a large crowd seemed to be milling about.
‘What’s going on?’
The police officers were eyeing us, and one man stepped forward. ‘You may not go that way, Excellencies,’ he said politely.
‘What is it?’ asked Ariadne.
He bowed. ‘A bomb in the Imperial Library, Excellency.’
‘Oh, the Anarchists again, I suppose. Was anyone hurt?’
‘I believe so.’ He was clearly reluctant to add more.
Ariadne turned back to me. ‘The police must think the criminals are still in the neighbourhood; you can see they have the area cordoned off and are searching.’
I had my eyes on the little group already under investigation; I saw a girl, quite young and neatly dressed in dark clothes, a young man in the characteristic suit and narrow cap of the student, and two older men, both working-class.
‘Perhaps they have them, or think they have,’ I said. Even as I looked, the four were led away by the police.
‘The girl was very young,’ said Ariadne. ‘Younger than me. It frightens me a bit.’
There was much to frighten one in Russia, and I was only just beginning to realise it. All the newspaper reports of violence I had read at home, the cautious speculation on the possibility of widespread unrest, suddenly took a concrete form. I was witnessing the break-up of a society. This was the edge of a volcano.
‘Let’s go home.’ And I took Ariadne’s arm, and we turned our backs on the scene.
‘It’s exciting, though, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘She was so brave, that girl, and must have dared so much.’ She was like a child who had just been given an experience that both shocked and delighted her, so that she wanted to go on re-living it in her imagination. For myself, it made me wonder how I should bear myself in this strange new country full of alarming portents.
In the hall Ariadne excused herself. ‘I’ll have some tea and bread in my room. I won’t come in to breakfast. I think I would like to be alone for a little while. You know, if we had been a bit further on on our walk we might have been near that bomb. The Imperial Library is not so far away from the church. We might have been hurt.’
‘And the girl?’ I said. ‘If she’s guilty, what will happen to her?’
‘The Fortress of St Peter and St Paul first,’ said Ariadne. ‘That’s where they take political prisoners. And then – ’ she shrugged – ‘Siberia, I suppose. It is terrible, isn’t it? However you look at it. Terrible what she did, and terrible what will happen to her. Russia is a terrible country. And today I have to go shopping for clothes with my mamma!’ And she ran away upstairs.
Thoughtfully, I went into the breakfast parlour. So now Ariadne knew that politics could reach out and touch her.
I found Mademoiselle Laure there, for once, coolly drinking tea. Her appearances on occasion were as puzzling as her disappearances. No rule seemed to account for them. But this morning, I learnt, Ariadne was to go to her mother’s French dressmaker, and Mademoiselle Laure was to go along too, presumably to see fair play. I was to be left to my own devices.
Mademoiselle Laure inclined her head to me over the teacup, as if it gave her some satisfaction to pass on this information. She was wearing a tight black dress with a small miniature, set with seed pearls and plaited hair, at her throat; I was in white even to my shoes. We made a strange pair, I all white and Mademoiselle Laure all black. There was something total in that blackness. Almost as if she was in mourning.
She saw me looking at the miniature and laid her hand protectively across it. ‘It is the anniversary of his death, and on that day I always wear his likeness, and dress,’ she indicated with her hand, ‘as you see.’
‘His death?’
‘Georges. Georges Leskov, my betrothed. He died of a fever before we could be married.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I had no idea.’
‘No matter. He loved me, and to the end. I have that consolation.’ And she gave me a meaning look.
I flushed. Bitch, I thought. And then: even she knows! ‘I wouldn’t have let him die,’ I said.
‘I too would have saved him, Miss Gowrie, if I could.’ She looked at me: there were tears in her eyes. ‘I nursed him day and night, did all the unpleasant duties a nurse must do, never flinched at inflicting pain. Could you do that, Miss Gowrie?’ She lowered her eyes. ‘But you would not have had to, one touch of your hand …’
‘What do you mean?’ I said sharply.
‘You know what I refer to, Miss Gowrie. Do you suppose Madame Denisov did not get a nice little character sketch of you before she engaged you?’
I flushed again. ‘I suppose she did. Indeed, I know it.’
‘Oh, you have no need to worry. She finds you magnificent. You are quite the “new woman” to her, all that she wants Ariadne to be. Or so she thinks at the moment. She’s a sceptic, not one of these sensation-hungry, superstitious Russians. Changeable, you know. Fickle. Better be prepared for that. You’re the chosen one now, but you won’t last. I’ve been used myself by someone in this house, to my cost.’
‘Oh, I can’t believe it,’ I said, stretching out my hand to her. To myself I thought she was madly in love with Peter, and that was her trouble.
She didn’t drag her hand away as she had done before, but her face softened a little. ‘Then you are truly unfortunate,’ she remarked.
As this chilling comment was uttered, we both heard the voice of Madame Denisov outside. Quickly Mademoiselle Laure said: ‘Take a word of advice from me, if you are not too proud.’
‘I’m not proud at all.’
She gave me a sweeping look. ‘Oh, you have pride. I can see it in the way you hold your head and in the stare of your eyes. Well, you’ve come to the right place to take a fall.’ She buttered a slice of bread and divided it into four equal segments, one of which she put into her mouth and ate carefully. ‘You have been with the Princess Drutsko.’ I made a quick movement of alarm. ‘Oh, don’t worry; I have said nothing to Madame Denisov.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I saw you come down the staircase. I have taken that walk myself, and know where it leads. Oh, yes, the Princess was my friend before she was yours. Don’t trust to her loyalty, will you? It does not exist. Come to my room when you can, and I will tell you a story.’
There was no mistaking the bitterness in her voice, nor could I fail to understand what lay behind it. ‘You have no need to fear me,’ I said slowly. ‘I am not your rival. Nor will I listen to any tales.’
She gave a short, incredulous laugh. At this moment, Dolly Denisov, accompanied by her brother Peter and followed by Ariadne, swept into the room. Behind, fussing and chattering in various tongues, came the little suite of attendants who seemed needed to get her off on any major expedition: French maid, Russian assistant and German secretary.
‘You will not be going,’ hissed Laure Le Brun in a whisper. ‘You’ll see.’
‘Oh, Rose, you are not to come with us,’ said Ariadne.
‘No, I know. Mademoiselle told me.’
‘We are too frivolous for you today.’
‘I should have enjoyed a peep inside a couture house.’
Dolly dimpled. ‘You shall have one, but on another day. Today, your cousin Emma wishes to meet you, and wants you to see your godfather, Erskine Gowrie. She sent a message round early. It’s one of his good days and she wants you to take advantage of it. She is there herself today.’
Everything had obviously been arranged in detail days before, and without a word to me. I was becoming increasingly annoyed, and puzzled, by the Denisovs’ habit of presenting me with ready-made decisions, careful faits accomplis. Was it a Denisov habit – or was it the way that Russians behaved in general? It made one feel awkward and helpless, particularly if one pretended to any kind of independence …
But I accepted it without protest; I wanted to see my Gowrie relatives. Soon after Dolly and her party had left, one of the Denisov carriages came for me, and after a smart ten-minute trot, drew up outside a large house in another fashionable district of St Petersburg. The footmen took me up to the Gowrie apartment and there was Emma Gowrie herself waiting for me.
Emma Gowrie was short, plump and elderly, with a frizz of grey hair and bright, bird-like eyes. I could just imagine the kindly relish with which she had prepared my little biography for Dolly Denisov. There was no doubt that she would love to have spent an hour with me now in interesting gossip about Jordansjoy, and my life with the Denisovs, but she plainly felt she had a duty to perform, and Erskine Gowrie must not be kept waiting.
Erskine’s apartment was full of dark wood and dark leather, very masculine in tone, with no trace of a feminine influence. His style of furnishing was a mixture of Russia and Europe: heavy oak and well-stuffed tartan cushions side by side – or even in competition with – shiny baroque furniture clearly of local workmanship. There was even something Asiatic about the total effect, and this notion was reinforced by the appearance of Erskine Gowrie himself. My godfather, a tiny shrunken figure propped up on silken cushions in a great chair, with his slippered feet on a stool, and wearing a rich brocade robe, looked like some Chinese Mandarin.
‘Here we are, Erskine, then,’ announced Emma cheerfully. ‘It’s Emma Gowrie.’
‘I can see that,’ said my godfather. ‘I know you. No need to shout.’
‘It’s one of his good days,’ whispered Emma to me. ‘He knows me.’
‘I always know you, Emma Gowrie,’ announced the old man. ‘Only sometimes I prefer not to.’
‘Well, that seems wise,’ said Emma, in no way put out. ‘Only fair, too. There are many days I’d prefer not to know you, Erskine Gowrie, ill-tempered chiel you can be, but I promised your wife.’
So there had been a wife, I thought. ‘Hardly remember her myself,’ said Erskine. ‘So don’t you bother.’
‘Oh, you old wretch, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Why, I’ve seen you weeping over her memory.’
‘Can’t say I remember,’ repeated the old man. ‘I expect you’re making it up. You always were a liar, Emma Gowrie. If you are Emma Gowrie; I’ve only got your word for it.’
Looking at him, I thought he displayed the essential unpredictability of impaired old age, his rudeness, his disparaging remark about what had probably been a loved wife, were part of his sickness. Underneath was a man who did indeed still remember, but who had to struggle against an irrational disturbance of his feelings which he could no more control than we ought to mind. Perhaps Emma understood this as well as I did, because she remained unmoved.
‘I’m Emma Gowrie, all right,’ she said.
‘Of course you are. Know your face, know it anywhere. As I would know you, my dear,’ he said, turning to me and speaking with great tenderness. ‘A perfect amalgam of your grandmother and your grandfather. So lovely to see their sweet faces again.’ He pressed my hand. ‘My perfect Rose.’
I was deeply touched. ‘Oh, sir,’ I said – I may even have blushed a little, without benefit of rouge. ‘But Granny was such a great beauty, and I’m not that.’
He still hung onto my hand. ‘Ah, how do you know? Do you see what I see, then? Let’s have some tea,’ he announced, ringing a little silver bell. ‘Good strong Scotch tea, not this weak Russian stuff.’ His eyes closed.
‘He’ll drop off in a minute,’ said Emma, with irritation. ‘And he hasn’t gone into things nearly enough.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve said quite enough,’ said Erskine Gowrie, opening his eyes. ‘Inside myself, at least.’
‘What’s the good of that to us?’ demanded Emma, her irritation in no way appeased. ‘Here have I brought Rose to you, and you do nothing but go to sleep.’
‘You always were a fool, Emma Gowrie. I have done enough, and Rose has done everything.’
‘Rose Gowrie has done nothing,’ I said.
He patted my hand. ‘Exactly what was required of you, my dear. Just to be.’
‘Oh Godfather.’ To myself I thought: ‘And that is the hardest thing in the world – just to be. Perhaps I should have handled Patrick better if I had had the knack of it.’ I was beginning to blame myself for Patrick, you see. Guilt has to be apportioned for such a tragedy as his, and I had to bear my share.
‘Where’s my tea?’ Erskine Gowrie demanded, dropping my hand and apparently forgetting me.
‘Tea, you live on tea,’ said Emma, pouring him a cup.
But after one long gulp he set the cup down and closed his eyes. It seemed time to leave, and I followed Emma silently to the door. But before I got there he called me back.
‘Rose.’
‘Yes, Godfather?’
‘Come here.’
He had a struggle for breath then, and I had to wait for him to speak. ‘Come back in a week’s time,’ he whispered. ‘And without that old witch if you can. She listens to everything and then talks about it to everyone else.’
‘I will come if I can.’
‘Promise. Because you see, there is something I wish to do, something I must …’ The words were hard for him.
‘Don’t talk any more,’ I said gently. ‘I’ll be back.’
‘Not longer than a week, mind.’ To himself he said: ‘A week will just do it.’
When I returned to Emma she said: ‘What did he want?’
‘He wants me to come back next week.’
‘Without me?’
‘You heard?’ I said.
‘Erskine’s whispers are not exactly inaudible,’ she said drily, but not with any air of displeasure.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Oh don’t be, dear, don’t be. Things work out for the best.’ And she sounded quite pleased.
As she accompanied me down to the street, I said: ‘I wonder if he gets enough to eat.’
‘My dear, he’s a rich man.’ Now she was shocked.
‘No, but you say he lives mainly on tea, and I expect it’s true. I dare say he does live on soft, sweet, mushy things because they are easy to eat. Whereas I have an idea old people ought to get lots of good nourishing food. It could be that a lot of his weakness and loss of brain power is malnutrition. What do you think?’
‘Oh, I don’t think, my dear,’ she said briskly. ‘Not about that.’
‘What does he make in those factories of his?’
‘Armaments,’ she said slowly. ‘Shells, bombs and grenades for war. And the explosives to go with them.’
I was silent, then I said: ‘Yes, you could get rich that way, but I suppose it is a trade to pray for. Death comes as its end, after all. How sad.’ It seemed the antithesis of my life, which I hoped to turn to healing. ‘But Madame Denisov told me it was an engineering works. Does she know?’
Emma laughed. ‘Oh, of course she knows. Erskine Gowrie’s works are famous. But I suppose she didn’t like to say. Russians can be like that. Devious, one might say; but it’s really a form of politeness.’
We parted without much more conversation, although before I was once again tucked into the Denisov carriage Emma gave me a hearty kiss in farewell. Like the kiss you might give to a good child, was my quick comparison.
Because my first visit to my godfather had been so short, I was home long before Dolly and her party could be expected back, so there I was alone, with time to spare and a burden of interesting thoughts. I looked at my watch. An hour until luncheon. I might amuse or bore myself as I chose. Not that one was ever alone in that house, for a servant was always within call. Watching too, I supposed – knew, indeed. They anticipated one’s wants so finely that they must be keeping a very sharp eye on all that went on. One of the little modernisations put in by Madame Denisov’s father had been an arrangement of speaking-tubes, through which it was apparently possible to hiss a request to a servant waiting in a room below. They were never used, for as Dolly Denisov said, you had only to clap your hands here and a servant appeared. ‘I did use one once,’ she had said, with a peal of laughter, ‘and then the silly creature only shouted back.’ She added: ‘My father would have had him flogged for it, but one doesn’t do that sort of thing now, of course.’
There was one of these speaking-tubes just before me now, in the library, its beautifully designed mouthpiece of ivory and bronze protruding from the wall. Dolly Denisov had told me that all the work had been done by one of her father’s servants, an ex-serf who was a skilled craftsman. Much of the furniture in the house had also been built by the carpenters and ciselleurs on their estate. It gave one a new idea of what the serfs had been, not all peasants by any means. Our dominie in the village near Jordansjoy, dear old Dr Rathmpre, had been a fine Greek scholar in his day, with a degree in the Humanities from St Andrews University, and he had instructed us in classical history, so that I saw one might draw a parallel between the slaves of Greece and Rome – where not all the servile had been illiterate labourers, but some had been men of infinite skill – and the serfs of Imperial Russia. One does not like to think that the Parthenon was built by slaves, but it might have been so. It was certainly true that many of the beautiful pieces of furniture and bronzes that I had already seen in some of the great houses in St Petersburg had been made by unfree hands.
I picked up the speaking-tube and blew down it. I heard my whistle go travelling through its length. Then distantly, distantly, a tiny little echo spoke back.
The echo, so remote yet so clear, startled me. I gave a gasp and the exhalation of my breath travelled down the tube and then back to me again. Some trick of the law of physics had produced an echo for me. Experimentally, I tried again. ‘Rose here,’ I called. This time I didn’t get an answer. There was only dead silence. Just as well, really, as it was rather spooky. After waiting a minute more I replaced the plug that stopped the mouth of the tube; I saw that it was decorated with a lion cut in low relief in bronze, and bore the initials of the Alexandrov family.
The shuffle of felt-covered feet, a noise I had come to associate with the arrival of a servant – for in the Denisov household all the servants were obliged to wear a soft, almost silent footwear – made me turn round. My own black Ivan was in the room. His eyes were on the speaking-tube.
‘There is no one at the end, my lady,’ he said politely. ‘The tubes are not used. No one attends to them.’
‘I was only playing a game,’ I said, ashamed at being caught at my trick.
He was silent, pursing his lips.
‘My own voice seemed to call back in echo,’ I explained. (Although why should I explain to Ivan? Yet his very silence seemed to call for an answer.) ‘It amused me.’
Ivan’s answer was to cross himself and say: ‘Those are accursed things, those tubes, and should not be used.’
‘Oh, there’s no harm in them, Ivan, they are useful devices in their way. Perhaps not necessary in a house like this, but in other establishments I should call them very helpful. You have certainly no need to be afraid.’ I spoke cheerfully, a little incredulous that so intelligent a man – and Ivan was that – could be fearful of a harmless contraption like a speaking-tube. But I supposed, underneath, he was a superstitious peasant at heart.
An opaque, blank look settled on his features, an expression I had seen on the faces of the other servants when Dolly or Ariadne spoke sharply to them. It could hardly be called insolence since they were, perforce, always so polite, but I noted a quality of stubborn resistance in it.
‘Yes, I see you don’t believe me, Ivan,’ I said. ‘But I assure you many houses in Scotland and England have them. People shout down to the kitchen for what they want.’
‘No one ever shouts down them in this house,’ he said gloomily. ‘But sometimes the servants down below whistle up them.’
‘Why do they do that?’
‘To raise the devil, I believe,’ said Ivan, even more gloomily.
‘And does he appear?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ said Ivan, crossing himself again.
‘Oh well, I won’t. But what is it you wanted?’
He bowed. ‘I am to conduct you up the Red Staircase to the Princess Irene.’
When I had least expected it, the summons had come. How convenient, I remember thinking innocently, that I should be free and Ariadne out with her mother.
The staircase to what I had begun to call the Red Tower seemed stuffier, the air more scented and dead than ever, and the Princess’s room, when I got there, was full of cigarette smoke. It was over-hot, too, as before, and artificially lit, although it was full daylight outside. I was taking in the details more fully on this second visit. I saw now that not only was the room full of furniture, but that every piece was covered with objects; several low tables bore burdens of silver-framed photographs, flowering plants (there were always so many flowers in Russia), enamelled boxes and porcelain figures. Even at a glance I could see that many of the objects were valuable, for instance an intricately-worked egg of silver and tortoiseshell on a stand of lapis lazuli; but others, like a papier mâché bowl of hideous red and a paper fan with a nasty bead handle, were rubbish. As I looked round I realised that the clutter and muddle reminded me of something. Then I saw what it was: our old nursery at Jordansjoy. This was a playroom for an old child.
Princess Irene was sitting up in her bed, wearing a brocade and fur jacket and a little matching turban, and smoking a small black cigarette. At my appearance she held out a regal hand. ‘Ah, so there you are. Gratified you came so promptly, most gratified.’ She didn’t sound it, more as if she had taken my appearance for granted.
‘Oh, I wanted to,’ I said honestly. ‘And fortunately Ariadne is out with her mother, so I was free.’
‘Naturally, I know where my niece is.’ She had a bed-table in front of her on which she was laying out a pack of cards in some elaborate-looking game. ‘She has gone to her dressmaker and taken her daughter with her. Peter has gone too, and much may he enjoy it. Dolly choosing a dress is a penance I would not wish on any man.’ She turned over a card. ‘Ah, the Queen, a good sign.’ She puffed at her cigarette. ‘Not that I believe the cards can really tell the future, at my age it is a little difficult to take that; but – ’ and here she gave an elegant shrug – ‘a little wink from the Fates is very acceptable.’
She gave a cough, a deep rolling cough that shook her whole body and left her gasping. Another wink from the Fates, I thought, and not such an agreeable one. The cigarette rolled from her fingers; I picked it up and put it on a silver saucer, which was half full of the cigarettes she had smoked already.
‘And have you told my niece that you have visited me here?’ Her dark eyes gave me a sharp look.
‘I think you know the answer to that question,’ I said slowly. ‘You who know everything that goes on in this house. No, I have not.’
‘Good. Good. Of course, she will discover and perhaps be quite cross. She has a temper, you know.’ Another sharp look here.
‘I can imagine.’
‘Not that it matters. I rather like to annoy Dolly.’ She gave a deep chuckle. ‘And it improves her complexion. She’s rather sallow, isn’t she? Don’t you find her sallow?’
Bemused and fascinated, I did not answer. It was true that by comparison with the vivid red mantling of Princess Irene’s cheeks, Dolly was lacking in colour.
‘You don’t answer. Very wise. I like a girl who knows when to keep a still tongue in her head. It’s a sign of good breeding.’
She was a wicked old thing and needed to be taken down a peg or two, I thought. ‘I wouldn’t speak about my employer, in any case,’ I said. ‘It’s good sense as much as good breeding.’
‘Dolly’s not your employer. I am. Aha, that startled you, didn’t it?’ And she leaned back on her pillows in triumph, only to burst out into one of those deep coughs again, so that I had to lean forward and retrieve another cigarette.
So the money that supported this luxurious household was hers? I was surprised, but I could accept it as the truth. ‘Perhaps you pay my salary,’ I began hesitantly. ‘But it is to be with Ariadne that I am here.’ And Shereshevo, I thought.
‘Pay you, do I?’ She gave me an amused look. ‘No, Dolly is rich enough to pay for anything she chooses to indulge herself with. No, but it was on my instructions she sent for you. And not for Ariadne. Nor any dirty peasants, either.’
‘On your instructions?’ I echoed. Yes, I could see her issuing her orders to Dolly Denisov. What I couldn’t see was Dolly accepting them.
‘And Dolly was pleased to oblige me. She likes to forget I am here, but once reminded, she knows better than to be too difficult.’ The diamonds on her fingers flashed as she moved the cards again. ‘I knew all about you. Your old cousin, Miss Gowrie, visits Dolly regularly. She’s full of gossip, which filters through to me. So I told Dolly to get you.’ The diamonds flashed again. ‘She took her time, she likes to tease me a bit, but you came at last. To me. She was pleased to do as I asked in the end. And she had her own motives, also, one does not doubt. And perhaps another voice than mine was added.’ Again came that malicious look. She means Peter, I thought. Peter wanted me.
‘But I came here to be with Ariadne, and to train the peasant women at Madame Denisov’s country estate, to help them look after their own health and that of their children. Madame Denisov invited me. Her letters were quite specific.’ I could be sharp too, when required.
‘So Dolly thinks. Or perhaps just pretends to think.’ The Princess flashed me a smile as bright as her diamonds. ‘But the fact is that you came here for me, whatever Dolly thinks, and I mean to have first claim on you.’
‘I don’t understand.’ But I did. Reluctantly, I did begin to understand a little. I had not forgotten how that dry, cold hand had warmed itself in mine. She wanted help from me. Why me? I was not sure. There must be plenty of nurses in Russia. But perhaps she wanted that little extra I might have. Everyone seemed to be tugging at me in this house.
‘I persuaded Dolly. I told her what a splendid companion you would be for Ariadne. She agreed, she was very willing. Dolly does not need my money, but she would like my emeralds when I die.’ She paused, then said grimly: ‘She will have a long wait. I don’t intend to die.’ Her ancient hand, loaded with jewels whose antique cut made them look older than she was herself, took my own. ‘I do not want to die, and with your help I will not.’
Now that her face was so close, I could see the seams and cracks into which her fine, old skin had crumbled; the rouge and powder accentuated rather than dimmed the damage the years had done. She was wearing a thick, heavy, musky scent that was like the smell of another century.
I withdrew my hand and stepped backwards from the bed. ‘No one can stop death. Not when it’s ready to come. Certainly not I.’
A spark of humour showed in those black eyes. ‘But one can procrastinate. Do you know how old I am? In one month I shall be ninety years old; I have procrastinated thus far, so why should I not postpone death for another ten years and for ten after that?’
‘But why me?’ I was amused, but also amazed at the conviction in her voice. ‘Why should you think I was worth bringing all the way from Scotland on the chance I could do that?’ If you truly did, I thought – because I still believed Dolly Denisov to be very much her own mistress and much more likely to follow her own will than the old Princess’s, emeralds or no.
She looked mysterious. ‘Ah, but you see it was foretold. In the cards. I set great store by the cards and they never let me down. I was told again and again that a girl like you would come from far away, and that through her I would be given great comfort, and that I would not die until she left. So that’s easy: you will not leave.’
I looked at her, half exasperated, half laughing. ‘My sister also foretold my future, although not from the cards. She foretold great happiness, wealth and a tragedy for me, but I don’t happen to believe it.’
Then Princess Irene clapped her hands. ‘Confirmation! The forces which one can only respect – ’ and here she crossed herself – ‘are interested in you. They communicate with each other.’
‘On the other hand, the forces didn’t happen to mention you,’ I pointed out cruelly.
‘But that doesn’t matter, naturally they would only speak of that to me. A great fortune for you, did you say, and yet a tragedy? Hmm. I wonder what that means? One can’t always take these things at their face value.’ She was laughing at me, mocking me, the old devil. ‘There are fortunes and fortunes. Anyway, you won’t go away and leave me to die, will you now? You couldn’t do it. I can see you’re a girl of affections. Sympathy, even.’
‘I won’t go before I have to; I certainly wouldn’t like your death on my head.’
‘Ah now you’re laughing at me!’ She clapped her hands. ‘The little moth flutters in the web. Good. That is what I like to see. Laugh on.’
‘Only a very little laugh.’
‘Well, promise me to stay. Promise?’ She was openly wheedling me now.
‘I promise.’ I held out my hand, and she held out hers, and we exchanged handshakes.
‘A bargain,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘Supposing I should live to be a hundred – without pain, of course. Here, give me that hand-mirror and let me look at my face.’ Silently I handed over the small silver object whose back was studded with sapphires. She looked at herself. ‘Yes, I think I shall do it. You’ve done me good already. I can see it in my face.’ And she pinched her cheeks to make the blood run. ‘Look at the colour there.’
‘There was colour in your cheeks before,’ I said.
‘Painted on. You are laughing at me again.’ She lay back on her pillows, determined to teach me a lesson. ‘Oh, that pain. It’s the pain when it comes that will kill me. You can stop the pain.’ Her voice was rising. ‘When it comes, it comes here, over my heart. It’s coming now. Take it away from me.’
Through the door behind her bed appeared the small, squat figure of an elderly woman wearing a long, dark blue dress and white apron. Her hair was braided all over her head in tiny little plaits, and on top of them she wore a white cap like a little scarf.
With a hostile look at me and a ‘Go away, Baryna,’ she hurried over to the bed. ‘Mistress, mistress, speak to your Anna. You will make yourself ill.’
‘I am ill, you fool. Go away, I tell you. Rose, Rose Gowrie, come here.’
I did not move. Not one step would I take.
‘Do what her Excellency says, Baryna,’ ordered Anna sullenly.
‘She’s not ill,’ I said. ‘She’s just pretending.’
The old lady stopped her moans and lay back on the pillows, staring at me.
‘You can’t deceive me,’ I said. ‘I know whether you are in pain or not. And the pain, when it comes, is not in your heart, but deeper down in your guts.’
Anna gave a shocked little cluck at my bluntness. The Princess coughed, her shoulders heaving, but with laughter. I had passed some sort of test. All the same, she was a sick woman and my trained eye detected and interpreted the great pulse banging away in her throat.
‘Calm down,’ I said. ‘And no more tricks, or you will be ill.’ She was running a risk, staging little scenes like this.
‘Anna, bring me a drink.’
‘Water only,’ I said severely.
The Princess pulled a face. ‘Did you think I would ask for vodka? Only peasant women drink vodka.’ She accepted a tall glass from Anna and sipped it serenely. But since the glass was coloured deep blue, I was unable to see if the liquid it contained was water. I doubted it.
‘About that great fortune you are to have.’
‘A solid, heavy fortune, I think my sister called it,’ I said, remembering.
‘Well, you must not expect it from me.’
Indignantly, I said: ‘I never thought of such a thing for a moment. That would be detestable. Stupid, too.’
‘No, as you say. And yet people do think such things. Such a thought comes into the mind without much effort. It is true I am a rich woman, but my fortune must devolve upon my great-niece and nephew. There remain the jewels which my lover gave me, but those too are promised to Dolly. So you see, you can have no hopes from me.’
‘I don’t think nature intended me to be rich,’ I said soberly.
‘No, it might not be a material inheritance that was meant. There are spiritual ones,’ said the Princess, with an intent look. ‘You have the face of a girl who might have a serious spiritual journey to make.’ She was talking, half to herself, hardly at all to me. I heard her murmur: ‘Child, in your prayers be all my sins remembered.’
Of course,’ I whispered, anxious to reassure. ‘But are they so many?’
‘Yes.’ The word ended on a gasp. I saw the vein in her throat grow and become purple like a grape. ‘More than you know. I have been a wicked woman.’
Urgently I said: ‘Where is your medicine? You have some drops to take?’ She couldn’t answer. I turned to the old maid. ‘Anna, you know, I’m sure. Fetch me her medicine.’
At once Anna produced from a capacious pocket a tiny glass phial. I looked at it, assessed its contents as amyl-nitrate, and snapped it between my fingers and held it under the Princess’s nose so that she could inhale the fumes. All the time I could hear Anna’s jealous voice grumbling away.
As the vapours rose and entered her lungs, so the Princess relaxed; it was very quick, in a minute she was breathing easily.
‘Well, that’s better. So that’s the pain, is it?’
‘One of them,’ she managed, and even smiled wryly. ‘I have several devils that torment me.’
Angina, I thought, and the pain coming because her heart muscle is short of oxygen. But I also thought that she had another and more serious ailment, an obstruction of the gut somewhere which caused even more prolonged pain. And yet I doubted if she would die of either just yet. She was tough.
‘You have violet eyes,’ she murmured, staring up into them as I bent over her. ‘Women with violet eyes always have a sad destiny.’ She was an inveterate romantic.
‘Cheer up. In our family violet eyes turn to a dark grey as we grow older, so you see I shall end up happy.’
She even managed to laugh.
‘That’s better. Goodbye now. And don’t let that old maid of yours bully you.’
‘She bully me?’
‘I think she does.’
Anna managed to bang into me as I stood there, giving my hip a thump with the great bunch of keys she carried suspended from her waist. ‘Oh, the wickedness,’ she muttered. ‘She should be beaten. I’d beat her. Take no notice of her, Princess. Old Anna is the one who knows.’
‘Be quiet, you are an illiterate old woman and know nothing about anything,’ commanded her mistress. ‘I think this girl is very wise. From your face I see I can expect a greater pain. Is that what I must look for, then? More pain?’
‘Yes,’ I said steadily.
A faint smile curved the lips of that enigmatic old face. ‘Very well. We shall see. Anna, lift me up on the pillows and light me another cigarette.’
‘The last thing you should be doing,’ I said.
‘Ah, but with you to save me – ’ she said, giving me a flash of the smile which, I suppose, must have enchanted my great-grandfather – ‘I shall be quite safe. I shall hang on to you, Rose Gowrie. I don’t intend to die yet. Tell my nephew and niece that, if you like. Settle their minds for them.’ And she began to laugh again.
I shook my head at her, and departed.
Outside on the staircase the air seemed hot and dead. I found myself swaying; I sank down and closed my eyes. I was spent; she had taken more from me than she knew. Instinctively, I understood it would never do to let her guess how much; while she was ignorant I retained free will. I sat there, leaning against the wall, and waited for the darkness which surrounded me to recede. Two old invalids in one morning was exhausting. I wondered if Erskine Gowrie knew Princess Irene. Probably one of her lovers, I thought dizzily, to be counted among those sins of the flesh she now dubiously repented of.
When I opened my eyes I found Ivan standing there, looking at me with a worried face. I realised he must have been outside all the time, waiting for me. ‘Are you ill, Miss Rose?’
Only Ivan called me by name, the other servants used any gracious term that popped into their mouth at that moment; the fact that I was a Scots girl seemed to free their tongues, they called me Excellency, my lady, Baryna, and sometimes Baryshna, just as it suited them, but it was all done with such good humour that I could not mind.
I stood up. ‘No, no, I’m not ill. Were you waiting for me? Yes, I can see you were. But why?’ Ivan, even if within earshot, was usually invisible. ‘Was it because I was there? Because I’ve been up the Red Staircase?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s a place,’ he said, meaning: Of course, it’s a bad place, or perhaps just a queer place, or even just a place he was unsure of. One always had to read between the lines.
‘She’s only an old lady. What could happen?’
‘They keep company with the devil up there,’ he murmured, looking at the wall and not at me.
‘Oh, Ivan,’ I said, half laughing. I almost stumbled; I put out a hand and he helped me down the stairs. Together we got to the bottom.
‘But of course, a clever young lady like you doesn’t believe me,’ he grumbled.
It was true that a door had opened in the wall behind the Princess on the day I had first seen her, and I remembered, too, my thought that she had a mirror carefully placed so that she could watch the door. The door had moved, and as soon as it had moved she had got me out of the room. Or so I had thought.
A question occurred to me. ‘How many rooms are there in the tower where Princess Irene lives?’
‘I have never seen. My duties do not take me in them.’
‘But you know?’
‘I have been told; three rooms leading into each other, one very small in which the woman Anna sleeps.’ His tone indicated that she could die there, too, for all he cared. ‘And a staircase leading down to the street, with its own entrance on to Molka Street.’
A back door to the Denisov osobniak, in fact. So Irene Drutsko could entertain whom she wished, with everyone coming and going unnoticed by the rest of the household.
‘St Michael and all his angels could come trooping up the stairs,’ said Ivan, accurately reading my thoughts. ‘Or the Devil and all his.’
‘And just as likely to,’ I said sceptically. ‘You don’t really believe all that rubbish.’
He shrugged. No, he didn’t believe the Devil came visiting, it was just a handy phrase, covering a multitude of suspicions and fears. There it was again, I thought, the secret language of the oppressed. ‘The Devil must be gentleman compared to some I’ve met,’ was all he said.
Downstairs, it was at once apparent that Dolly Denisov an her retinue were in the process of returning. Home two hours at least before anyone expected them – I could tell by the flustered way the servants were running about.
Ariadne came hurrying in first and went straight up the stairs, passing me, where I stood at the door of the great drawing-room, without a look. Dolly Denisov followed, slowly drawing off her gloves and talking over her shoulder to he brother as she did so.
‘I blame you entirely, Peter. I have wasted my morning taking Ariadne to choose clothes and she has chosen nothing. All because of you. How could the child like the silks and lace when you were being so critical? I have never before known you like it, you almost had the poor woman who was showing the dresses in tears. She was doing her best you know, Peter. I shall never be able to show my face ther again.’
‘Oh, come now, Dolly,’ protested Peter. He had followe her through the door, and behind him came Mademoiselle Laure; he looked flushed and she was deadly pale. Ther was a reason for her pallor; it appeared that she had been stricken with a migraine and had had to be brought back This was the real reason for Dolly’s displeasure.
‘Can I help?’ I said. Laure looked very sick. To my suiprise she turned to me with something very like gratitude in her face. ‘It would be a great kindness,’ she said.
I assisted her upstairs and helped her undress. When I had got her lying on her bed she was easier. ‘What do you usually do to relieve the pain?’ I asked.
‘Nothing. There is nothing I can do but lie here and endure. Later, when the sickness goes, I sometimes take a long warm bath.’
I put my hand on her forehead. I could feel an angry pulse throbbing under my fingers. ‘Does it still hurt?’
‘Much less.’
‘Try to sleep.’
‘Yes, I believe I will be able to sleep now. You have been very kind, and I have been shrewish and ill-tempered to you. Unfair as well. But I will make it up to you. I will tell you why you have been brought here. I know. I should have told you before, but I was evil and stupid and wanted to see you in trouble.’
‘Oh, but I know it all.’
‘Do you? You really know? How do you know?’ There was surprise in her voice. ‘Then surely you see the danger.’ She struggled to sit up.
‘I saw Princess Irene, poor old thing.’
‘Princess Irene?’ She seemed genuinely surprised. ‘It’s not only her. No, no, they’ll use you, turn you inside out and then, if it suits them, abandon you. If all goes wrong, you will either be shipped back home – or at worst, who knows what could happen to you? Don’t you see – it is not what you are but what you will be, what you will possess, that matters to them?’
A wave of nausea swept over her and she retched. I pushed her gently back on the pillows, thinking her more than a little mad. ‘You can’t talk now, you must rest. Presumably you think me in no danger today? And I possess nothing, dear Laure, so calm yourself.’
‘No, not today,’ she muttered. ‘Not today. It is not today that matters. Although I quarrelled today with someone on your account.’
‘Very well then. Tomorrow, tomorrow we shall talk.’
I waited till her eyelids closed and then walked quietly to the door. When I turned round for a last look, her eyes were open again and she was looking towards me. Yet I don’t think that it was me she saw.
‘At last I believe I am free,’ she said softly. ‘I have tried so often to leave Russia. Once I even got as far as Poland – but I always came back. Now I am free. I’ll start a little school in my own town of Blois. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do.’
Her eyelids closed again and she was asleep.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_8e750b5c-6ec2-57a2-b5f1-89f82f53960b)
When I left Mademoiselle Laure, Peter Alexandrov was waiting for me downstairs.
‘How is she?’
‘More comfortable,’ I replied thoughtfully.
‘I was concerned about her. She is not a happy woman. Did she say much to you?’
‘No.’ Had Laure been in love with him? Perhaps even his mistress? ‘But then, she has had a sad life, losing her lover just before they were to be married.’ Of course, I had lost my lover just before we were to marry, but it came to me suddenly that I did not intend to have a sad life. ‘And perhaps feeling the world has used her badly.’
‘I am sure Dolly means her to have a peaceful, contented life here with her, but Mademoiselle Laure is a woman of a jealous, suspicious temperament.’ His voice was calm and kindly. If there had been anything between them, it had long gone on his part. ‘Now you deal excellently with everyone, Miss Rose.’
‘I don’t think Mademoiselle Laure likes me,’ I said frankly. ‘But she has promised to talk to me.’ I broke off. Ariadne had come into the room.
‘How is Mademoiselle?’
‘Resting and recovering, I hope.’
‘Poor Mademoiselle, she hates us here sometimes, I think.’
‘She’s planning to return home to France and open a girls’ school, so she says.’
‘Goodness! Is she? Poor Mademoiselle.’ Ariadne went over and studied her face in a wall mirror. There was a spot that seemed to trouble her. Peter shook his head at her vanity. ‘I’m afraid she won’t go. She always says that when she’s particularly cross with us. But she never goes.’ She turned away from the mirror. ‘Poor us, Rose. To punish me for my sins this morning, Mamma forbids me to ride with Major Lacey this afternoon, and instead I have a whole great dull list of shopping you and I are to do. You are to come too, if you would like to, Uncle Peter, but first you are summoned to go up to Mamma’s sitting-room now. And wear armour, for she is very fierce. She has old General Rahl with her, and you know how disagreeable that always makes her.’
Peter made a grimace. ‘Who is General Rahl?’ I asked.
Peter said: ‘He’s a friend of an aged relative we have living in the house. A retired soldier. Forcibly retired – he was bad at the job. Oh, he’s not a bad old boy, but he’s a policeman now, of a rather special sort. He is a deputy head of the Third Bureau. You’ve heard of that institution, I suppose? It keeps an eye on us all. Well, I’d better join Dolly, or she’ll be asking him to dinner for want of anything better to say.’
When he had gone I said to Ariadne: ‘So you did not mean it when you said “How could such things touch us?”’
Ariadne hesitated. ‘I did. I meant it with part of my mind. When I see us here so happy and contented, with everything about us so nice, I feel this is one world and all the bad things are in another.’
‘But surely General Rahl does not come here to inspect you?’
‘Oh no; he comes here as a friend. But of course, one is bound to think of what he knows about one’s friends, and even about oneself. I believe that the Third Bureau has dossiers on ever so many people.’
‘But surely not on you, Ariadne?’
‘Oh no, I suppose I am of no significance to them, but my mother and Peter have hosts of friends and go everywhere, and some of those friends would be bound to have “doubtful” opinions. My mother has many close friends high in Court circles, of course, so her own position is irreproachable.’
A little later, I passed General Rahl on the staircase. We were not introduced, but he gave me a long, hard look as he went by, as if my face interested him, and he left me with the impression of being a tough customer.
The shopping list was the usual magnificent screed. An order for English biscuits and English marmalade at Eliseev’s – ‘Tiptree’s, please,’ said Ariadne politely to the black-coated assistant, and smiled at me – then on to Brocard’s to choose and purchase soap. I helped her choose tablets of a pale heliotrope that smelt like a late summer garden concentrated and made powdery. Ariadne bought and presented to me a box of three square tablets of pink soap smelling of roses. ‘For you; your name soap.’ Peter Alexandrov also bought some soap. Somehow I could not imagine Patrick buying scented soap, but this action seemed natural in Peter.
Then we went on to Watkin’s, the English bookshop. I suspected the trip there was entirely to please me because Ariadne took little interest in books herself, but she pretended she had to order some new English novels for her mother. ‘There is a new book by E. M. Hull, whom she likes very much,’ said Ariadne. Peter also pretended an errand.
There were some copies of the Hull novel already on display, so I examined one idly while Ariadne transacted another piece of business about writing-paper. It was not the sort of book that found its way to Jordansjoy, where Tibby exercised something of a censorship. Still, Grizel and I had our own ways of keeping in touch with the world, and there was a copy of one of Elinor Glyn’s works that was about the house for several weeks, masquerading as a novel of Sir Walter Scott’s (an author after Tibby’s own heart) without Tibby being any the wiser. E. M. Hull looked as if she wrote in the same vein as Elinor Glyn – I took it for granted E. M. Hull was a woman.
Raising my eyes from the book, I saw that although Ariadne appeared to be examining two different qualities of paper, she really had her eyes fixed on a distant corner of the shop. I followed her gaze. Peter too was watching; he was also watching me.
I saw a group of four people: an elderly woman, soberly but expensively dressed, a girl of about Ariadne’s age, a small boy and, oddly, a burly man in the uniform of a Russian naval rating. Two shop assistants were hovering around them, and a personage who looked like Mr Watkin himself – if he existed – was also on hand. The boy was choosing a toy. Watkin’s had a whole corner of the shop devoted to English toys of one sort or another, the names of which I recognized from my brother Alec’s conversation: Meccano, Bassett and Hornby – magic names to toy railway enthusiasts. Behind the group a shelf was stacked with jigsaw puzzles and English children’s annuals. The boy was choosing a railway engine. I saw him studying the one he held with close care, running one finger delicately over its outline. He was dressed in sailor’s uniform too; it was fashionable for boys then, and for girls also, for that matter. But I did not fall into any confusion about the relationship between the boy and the man, which was clearly that of master and servant; there was plainly a great social gulf between them.
Ariadne put her hand on my arm as if to make sure my attention was directed to them. ‘It’s the Tsarevitch and one of his sisters,’ she whispered.
I looked with interest. ‘Which Grand Duchess?’
‘I’m not sure. The next to eldest, I think, Tatiana. They all have the family face and look alike.’
‘The boy’s different,’ I said.
‘Yes.’ She hesitated. ‘There’s been a lot of – well – talk. They say there’s something wrong with him, that he’s lame or something.’
‘He looks delicate, but normal enough,’ I said. ‘He’s not a cripple.’
‘Still, he often does not walk, the sailor carries him’
‘He’s walking now.’ And indeed as we watched the boy ran along the display of toys, eagerly pointing something out to his sister.
‘Yes, I think that must be the Grand Duchess Tatiana,’ observed Ariadne appraisingly; the girl was, after all, her contemporary, she was forming a judgement of her. ‘Not pretty, really, in spite of what they say, but has a nice expression. Olga, the eldest, she’s called a beauty, but of course one has to say that of Grand Duchesses. The other two are just little girls.’
The brother and sister were studying a book together, the boy pointing something out in an eager way. To me there was something touching about his lively fragility, as if boyishness and enthusiasm would prevail in a weak body. He had a small dog with him, a liver-and-white King Charles spaniel, and as I watched I saw him lean down and give it an affectionate pat. When the dog leapt up eagerly, banging against his young master, the sister ordered the sailor to pick the animal up and carry it. ‘None of your animals are trained, Alexei,’ I heard.
The little group moved down the shop, with the other customers politely standing aside. There was no great fuss, no curtseys, although those gentlemen closest to the party took off their hats; but the shop was very quiet as if noise would somehow have been lése majesté. They came close enough for me to see that the girl was wearing a little bunch of lily-of-the-valley pinned to her jacket, and to smell their scent. She held her brother’s hand and stared straight ahead, almost too shy to acknowledge the weight of all the attention focused on her. Her brother, on the other hand, smiled cheerfully all around. To him, at that moment, the world was good. But he was very slender and fine-drawn compared with the robust solidity of my Alec.
‘My mother says he is all that stands between us and revolution,’ whispered Ariadne.
I was surprised; political judgements did not seem at all in Dolly’s line. ‘Why does she say that?’
Ariadne thought for a moment. ‘I suppose because one can think about him hopefully. He is still so young that everyone can see him as representing what they desire, and he may become it. Who can tell? I think that must be what my mother means.’
The little party were almost at the door now. ‘The show is over,’ said Peter Alexandrov suddenly from behind us. ‘We can go now.’ There was a note of savage irony in his voice.
‘You look very thoughtful, Miss Rose,’ Peter said breaking into my considerations, as we strolled away from the bookshop. ‘But you often do. There is a certain sort of serious, quiet look you sometimes have. I have noticed it. Is it because you are thinking of home things? Have you perhaps had bad news?’
‘No, not exactly bad news, but unexpected,’ I said, remembering the letter about Patrick’s troubles in India.
‘About your – ?’ He paused delicately, seeking for a suitable word.
‘About the man I was going to marry? Yes.’ So he too knew about Patrick. I suppose I should have guessed it.
‘What was he like, Miss Rose? To look at, and as a person?’
Could I still remember what Patrick looked like? Faces, even beloved ones, fade so fast. ‘He was tall, fair-haired, with blue eyes; not a bit good-looking really.’
‘But you thought he was, all the same,’ Peter said gently.
‘I suppose so.’
The conversation seemed to be taking on the kind of intimacy I didn’t feel ready for. I was quite relieved when Ariadne suddenly suggested: ‘And now what about church?’
‘Very suitable,’ said Peter good-humouredly. ‘To settle your mind after all that shopping.’
‘And Madame Titov will be there.’
‘And Edward Lacey,’ said Peter sardonically.
‘Well, yes, but he is not the point. Won’t Rose like Madame Titov? Or anyway, like to meet her?’
‘If you can meet her,’ said Peter lazily. ‘She is so neutral and cloudlike.’ All the same, I thought he did wish me to meet her. I had already noticed that Ariadne’s apparently spontaneous suggestions had often the appearance of being prompted by either Peter or her mother. ‘She is a nice woman,’ Peter went on. ‘A member of the Imperial household.’
‘Very close to the Tsarina,’ put in Ariadne.
The coincidence of meeting the Heir, a Grand Duchess, and a member of the Household came home to me. I wondered if it was really all by chance – but the point of the design, if there was one, escaped me. We walked along in silence for a time, side by side. The afternoon was now very hot, the sun striking off the stone in a dazzling way. Dolly had intimated that we would be leaving St Petersburg soon for the country.
‘You’re getting that look again,’ said Peter. ‘You are thinking either of your lost lover or poor Mademoiselle.’
‘Both,’ I said. ‘Both.’ And it was true. Ever since Laure had told me about her own broken love affair, there had been a link between them in my mind. Strike a note of pain and disappointment, and at once I saw them both.
‘And there is Major Lacey,’ said Ariadne, suddenly interrupting. She pointed to where he stood outside the Church of St Andrew.
He came forward to meet us, smiling. ‘I called at the house, and Madame Denisov told me where to find you,’ he said. So then I knew this expedition had been well planned.
We were very close to the open church door, and a wave of incense – Russian incense, stronger than anything I ever knew – blew towards us.
‘Are you thinking of being received into the Orthodox Church?’ I asked the Major.
‘No, I come for the singing.’ Impossible to tell if he was serious or not.
As always, the church was crowded with people of all ages and conditions, rich, poor, sick and the fashionable healthy like us. The smell of humanity mixed with incense was overwhelming. It usually took me a few minutes to get used to, although Ariadne seemed not to notice it; but I saw Major Lacey’s nose wrinkle slightly. ‘By Jove,’ I heard him murmur under his breath. ‘Rich.’
Inside the church, the darkness was lightened only by candles. I stood still while my eyes adjusted. Then I slipped into a place beside Ariadne, whose head was bent; she was murmuring reverently. Now that my eyes were used to the gloom I could take in the great splendour of the building. I had been here several times by now, of course, but the almost barbaric magnificence of the place astonished me afresh on each visit. Everywhere that the light of the candles penetrated I could see the glint of gold. It shone from the golden candelabra, from the crosses and from the gold leaf used in the paintings which decorated the walls. The other colour which shone through the darkness was the blue of lapis lazuli which I could see on walls, pillars and roof. Here and there were the deep green of malachite and the yellow of onyx. I felt as though I was inside a great jewelled box – but inside this box I felt stifled, not free and at peace as in the kirk at Jordansjoy. I was pressed down by the weight of too many centuries, and too much emotion expended in too much wealth of decoration.
The choir began to sing, emerging in procession from behind the great carved screen which concealed the tabernacle and the host. With them came the priests in their splendid robes of velvet and stiff silk, embroidered with gold and silver. In colours of mulberry and purple and deep blue they walked, one after another, men with pale faces dominated by their vestments. Incense was being thrown about lavishly in great clouds. The host was carried round and the people pressed close. A woman near me knelt down to kiss the floor; Ariadne crossed herself continually. I sat with my hands folded, feeling a little apart; I was not drawn into the emotion spilling out all round me. I felt sad that I wasn’t more touched; I felt reverence and respect for the ritual of the great tradition unfolding itself before me, but a little hard knot of reserve remained within. I wanted to give way, but I could not. I had been like this with Patrick, when I had wanted to show him some special mark of affection, had longed, really, to let my love overflow towards him. But something held me back, and I remained constrained and stiff. Perhaps it was this, in the end, which separated him from me – I think this shyness would have gone with marriag e but I never got a chance to show him. Poor Patrick. I had been so angry with him at first, so full of injured pride and resentment. Now I only grieved for him. I hadn’t thought of myself as to blame in the breaking-off between Patrick and me, but I saw now that I might have been. To a man under stress I had turned a perfectly composed face, and it hadn’t been enough: he could not confide in me, and perhaps he had thought I did not love him.
So as I stood beside Ariadne, I was really thinking of Patrick.
‘Time to go, Miss Rose,’ whispered Peter. ‘We must move. We are keeping the people behind us waiting.’ He looked at me with interest. ‘You were far, far away. Oh, it was the music, I know, it affects everyone, no one can resist it.’
‘Yes, it was very fine.’
‘Interesting counter-tenor they have in the choir,’ said Edward Lacey.
‘He’s a genuine castrato,’ said Ariadne with enthusiasm.
Peter grinned, and Edward Lacey looked a little disconcerted at Ariadne’s frankness. Possibly he thought that well brought up young girls should not be too familiar with the term ‘castrato’, although anyone who has seriously studied music must know it. ‘I thought he might be,’ he said. ‘Strange noise he makes. Vibrant but odd. One could hardly call it beautiful.’
The crowd was pressing close against us, hemming us in on either side, making it difficult to move. We did slowly edge an inch or so forward. I was struck once again by the variety of people that made up the mass. A richly dressed woman was shoulder to shoulder with an old man in his working clothes, a fragile old creature in tatters and rags stood before a burly man carrying a silk hat. Behind them came a trio of schoolgirls in the charge of a Sister in flowing robes, and behind them the tall figure of a bearded monk. The girls were giggling amongst themselves, and I saw the monk give them a hard stare. I noticed his eyes, for they had a particularly alive and searching glance. He turned his head towards me with a penetrating clear look. I blinked.
Once when I was walking in the woods around Jordansjoy, I came upon a young fox. He appeared on the path above me; the ground sloped, so we met eye to eye, and he stared at me boldly, unafraid. Now, to my surprise, I saw that free, questing animal stare again in this man’s eyes. Strange eyes for a monk, I thought.
‘We can move now, Miss Gowrie,’ prompted Edward Lacey politely.
The crowd was much thinner and it was easy now to make our way to the great door, where groups of people still stood about talking and settling their hats and gloves preparatory to departure. As we went forward, I could see that Ariadne had her eyes on a woman soberly dressed in plain, dark clothes who was drawing on a pair of white kid gloves and opening a parasol.
‘Madame Titov,’ she said. ‘I want you to meet her.’
Peter withdrew from us a little, leaving us apart. Perhaps he did not so much like Madame Titov.
‘Oh yes, I remember you mentioned her.’
‘She is a person it is very good to know,’ Ariadne assured me earnestly. ‘Nice in herself, and important.’
She didn’t look important, rather she looked a shy, quiet woman with a dowdy taste in hats, and yet she had an air of being completely at ease in the world.
‘And she’s very holy,’ went on Ariadne. ‘That is, devoted to the Church, you know.’
‘Pious,’ I said. ‘And what makes her important?’
‘Hush, she’ll hear. It’s the Empress, of course. They are very close. She looks after the Heir. In the schoolroom and so on.’
Ah, I thought, a governess, even if of a very superior sort. A sister to me beneath the skin. ‘So that’s why you want me to meet her? We are two of a kind.’
‘Not exactly,’ Ariadne smiled. ‘She is not a bit like you. Nor are your duties the same. But she wanted to meet you.’
Inwardly I raised my eyebrows: so now it was she who wished to meet me. That hadn’t been the story the first time round.
‘I think the lady knows you are here,’ murmured Edward Lacey under his breath.
It was true, now I took another glance, Madame Titov was unobtrusively studying me as she fiddled with the buttons on her gloves. Clearly, she was waiting for us to come up to her. Nor did we keep her waiting long. Ariadne piloted me towards her deftly, towing Edward Lacey behind us like a small tug guiding a liner. Except that even out of his uniform there was something of the warrior in Edward’s bearing, so perhaps I should have likened him to a man o’ war.
‘This is Miss Cowrie,’ said Ariadne breathlessly. ‘Madame, may I present Miss Gowrie. Rose, this is Madame Titov.’
‘Delighted,’ murmured Madame, extending a soft hand. Her fingers seemed to melt into mine as I took them, and to give no palpable pressure back. Her expression was friendly enough, although I judged she was not a lady who ever allowed strong emotions to show. Perhaps she felt none. She turned to Ariadne. ‘I believe you are going into the country soon?’
‘Quite soon,’ said Ariadne.
‘We shall meet then,’ said Madame Titov decisively. ‘Because I am going to the country too.’ She held out her hand to meet me. This time I noticed a very faint response to my own pressure. ‘Goodbye till we meet again, Miss Rose Gowrie.’
I felt as though I had been inspected and approved. I was annoyed with myself for being pleased, and yet I was pleased. Quiet-mannered as Madame Titov was, I felt I valued her good opinion.
As Madame Titov walked away, she passed close to where the tall monk was still standing. He must have been watching us all the time we talked. He took a step towards her, a broad smile beginning on his face; I thought he meant to speak to her. If so, she gave him no chance. Not for a second did her progress falter. Instead, she seemed to walk faster, and as she hurried on, her skirt gave an angry jerk, as if she had pulled it aside. Ariadne too was flustered. I could see she wanted to draw me away from what she seemed to regard as this man of God’s dangerous vicinity. But he was already approaching.
‘Good afternoon, Father Gregory.’
He raised his hand. ‘Bless you, child.’ He had a peasant’s voice, but it had rich tones. He held out his hand to her, she took it reluctantly, then dropped it almost at once, but never for a moment did Ariadne take her eyes off his face. Then he turned towards me, holding out his hand again and smiling at me with his pale, bright eyes. He stank. ‘He looks like a fox and he smells like a fox,’ I thought; but I took his hand. I found his touch unpleasant, damp with sweat on this hot day, and withdrew my hand, sorry that I had removed my glove.
‘Bless you, my child,’ he said, staring at me. ‘You have the face of a saint.’ Bright and compelling, his eyes held my own, and it was with an effort that I withdrew my gaze. To my surprise, something had passed between us; I couldn’t put a name to what I had seen, but a communication of some sort had occurred. Then I knew what it was. I had recognized a quality in him and he had responded. It was like two metals striking against each other and each giving out the same note.
He knew too, and his eyes burned fiercely. ‘May I see your hands?’
Reluctantly, almost against my will, but certainly unable not to do so, I held them out, fingers extended. Tenderly, he turned the right one over, putting palm uppermost. ‘Yes, there, at the base of the thumb, there is the mark. The mark of the healer.’
‘I see nothing.’ I stared at my hand.
‘It is enough.’
I wanted to turn my hand over, but for the moment I couldn’t do it.
‘Come along, Miss Gowrie,’ said Edward Lacey in a friendly but formidable fashion. ‘Ariadne is anxious to get home. Goodbye, Father.’ He turned to Peter. ‘Hurry up there.’
Why, he’s jealous, I thought, absolutely jealous of Ariadne. He must be the sort of man who showed possessiveness towards any woman in whom he took an interest, even me. It was sad, because I had begun to like him. ‘The charlatan,’ he muttered.
But we are all charlatans,’ said Peter. Aren’t we?’
The next morning, although I looked expectantly for Laure, she was nowhere to be seen. Apparently her promise – or threat – to talk to me and explain her vague warnings of danger had not been important enough to keep her from her favourite habit of disappearing.
I gave Ariadne her English lesson as usual. We were reading The Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. I would have chosen something simpler and livelier, but Dolly had said she wanted Ariadne to understand English poetry. Judging by her yawns, Ariadne was already very bored.
‘You can close the Tennyson now,’ I said. ‘We’ll start on Pride and Prejudice. Sit up, though.’
‘Oh, good. I fear I am not a poetic person.’ Ariadne straightened her back. ‘What is Pride and Prejudice about?’
I hesitated, wondering how to sum up the subtle complexities of the plot. ‘Oh, several families living in a country village: two girls, Jane and Elizabeth, the eldest of a family of girls; a clergyman, a landowner, two love affairs and an elopement.’
‘Sounds like Russia,’ said Ariadne, yawning again. ‘As long as it’s not boring.’
‘It’s a very amusing book.’
‘Delightful. The novels I read with Mademoiselle Laure were so dull. Goodness, they bored me! All about beautiful girls of noble birth thinking virtuous thoughts. Not like any of the girls I knew at school.’ She giggled.
‘Did you go to school?’ I was surprised.
‘Oh, yes. I had one year at the Smolny Institute, that’s the Imperial School for girls from the nobility. But I left,’ said Ariadne. ‘Back to poor Mademoiselle Laure.’
‘She was here then?’
‘She’s been here all the time. I can’t even remember when she came. When I was in the nursery, I think.’ Yawns overcame her again.
‘Have you seen Mademoiselle Laure this morning?’
‘No.’ Ariadne paused in mid-yawn. She sounded surprised I should ask. ‘But then one never does. One never notices her. She does it on purpose, of course. Years and years ago when she was just starting out in the world, some preceptress said to her: “Laure, always stay in the background.” And so she does. But it gives her pleasure. Of a kind.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think it does. And how sad that is, poor Mademoiselle. And you are a very clever girl to have noticed it.’ And I looked at my pupil with some respect for her acuteness.
‘Sad?’ Ariadne laughed. ‘She likes power, does Mademoiselle, I’ve noticed that also.’
At that moment there was a scream, then a short pause, followed by the sound of running feet. Ariadne and I looked at each other. I went to the door.
One of the maidservants was standing outside, sobbing; her face was white and she was wet from her throat to her waist. She clung to the banister, swaying.
‘What is it?’ I hurried to her. Immediately she leant against me, resting her head on my shoulder, murmuring something.
‘Make her speak,’ urged Ariadne.
The girl whispered something to me. I became aware that other servants were hurryng up, but all my attention was concentrated on the girl. I had caught her whisper and thought I knew what she was trying to say. ‘Speak up,’ I said urgently. ‘Repeat what you said about Mademoiselle Laure. You must speak clearly. I can’t hear.’
The girl raised her head from my shoulder and said something that only I could hear, and I only with difficulty.
‘What does she say?’ cried Ariadne.
‘What is it? What’s the girl crying about?’ The elderly woman who was the housekeeper had appeared. Mechanically, I handed the weeping maidservant over to her. I felt sick.
‘She says that Mademoiselle Laure is lying upstairs, dead.’
The girl gave an hysterical wail as if to confirm what I had said. ‘Dear God,’ said the housekeeper, and crossed herself. ‘Be quiet, girl.’
‘She’s mad. It can’t be so,’ declared Ariadne. ‘Mademoiselle can’t be dead.’
‘I’m sure she is,’ I said. I was already mounting the stairs.
‘Come back!’ wailed Ariadne.
‘Get help,’ I said. ‘Order two of the servants to come with me. No – ’ as Ariadne made a move. ‘Don’t come yourself. Go to tell your mother. And then send for a doctor.’ Resolutely I mounted the stairs.
The door to Laure’s room stood open. The curtains were drawn and the blinds were down, but enough light was seeping through to see by. In the middle of the room, surrounded by a nest of towels, was a flat tin bath. In it lay the figure of Laure, her head falling backwards with her dark hair streaming to the floor; I could see her features foreshortened and distorted.
I walked over to one window, wrenched the curtains back and drew up the blind. Then I looked again in the full light.
She was lying in a bath of water, wearing a white shift. The water seemed stained with blood. The shift was unbuttoned and I could see her small breasts. Instinctively, I leant forward and buttoned it.
I knelt by the bath. ‘Oh, Laure, Laure, what have you done?’ I could see that she had cut her wrists to the bone and then let her life-blood drain out in the warm water. I could see the knife on my right as I knelt facing her. She had let it drop on a towel. ‘Why did you do it?’
The strangely posed and artificial death scene gave me an answer of a sort: it said that life had been to her such an ennui that she must end it the best way she could.
I picked up the knife and held it in my hand; it was an ordinary pen-knife, such as any woman might have in her writing-desk, but its blade was wickedly sharp and pointed. When she had wanted it, Laure would have had her weapon ready to hand. On the table by the bed was a dark blue medicine glass. I got up from where I was crouching and looked into it. A little sediment remained; I supposed she might have taken some sedative to see that she became sleepy and died easily. Or perhaps she wanted to make sure she was too tranquil to draw back. I supposed I must have been the last person to speak to her, except for the servants who had brought the bath and water.
There was the end of a dream in this room. I could feel it: Laure’s dream which had kept her, sad and secretive, in Russia. You could sense it in the shut-in and cloistered atmosphere of the room, full of brooding, and the stale scent of clothes and papers; but I couldn’t tell what the dream had been about. ‘I feel free now,’ she had said. I could only suppose that she had woken up to find that freedom meant emptiness. Poor Laure, Russia had been too much for her in the end.
I stood at the door, no longer able to bear looking at Laure, and almost at the same moment Madame Denisov, accompanied by the housekeeper and another maid, came hurrying up.
Dolly took a long look, then closed the door. ‘Go downstairs now, please, Rose, and stay with Ariadne. On no account is she to come up.’
‘But can’t I help?’ I began.
‘No. Go downstairs. Leave me. I shall arrange everything that has to be arranged.’
I went down to the big drawing-room to face Ariadne. She was sitting at a table with an open book before her, which she was making no attempt to read. She turned to look at me as I came into the room. ‘Well?’
‘Yes.’ I sat down facing her. ‘She is dead.’
‘How? What happened?’
I hesitated.
‘Yes, tell us, please, Miss Rose.’ Peter’s long length uncoiled itself from the big chair where he had been sitting. I too am listening.’
‘I didn’t know you were here,’ I said mechanically, my thoughts far away. I glanced again at Ariadne; I was unsure how much to say in front of her. ‘Mademoiselle Laure died in her bath,’ I began. ‘I know – that is, she told me – that she was in the habit of taking a prolonged warm bath after an attack of migraine. I suppose it was soothing and helped recovery. She must have been taking such a bath when she died.’
‘But how did she die?’ asked Ariadne. ‘Come now, Rose, I shall find out, you know.’
‘Yes, you must tell us, Miss Rose,’ said Peter gently.
‘She did not die from her bath, that is certain,’ said Ariadne.
‘In a way she did,’ I said sadly. ‘That is, I think it must have given her the idea. Wasn’t it Marat who was stabbed in a bath?’
Ariadne gave a little hiss of alarm. ‘Stabbed?’
‘Yes. You asked for the truth, and this is it: Mademoiselle Laure severed the arteries in both wrists with her pen-knife and then sat in the warm bath to die.’
My news was received with shocked silence. Then Peter said: ‘The Roman way to die.’
‘Yes, I had the same thought.’
‘It’s terrible,’ said Ariadne. She was very white, her cheerful ebullience dowsed. ‘Much worse than I thought. Poor Mademoiselle.’ She stood up. ‘I grieve for her.’
‘Had you any idea this was likely to happen, Miss Rose?’ asked Peter Alexandrov.
‘No. How could I have? I hardly knew her.’ I was even startled that he should ask me.
‘But you were with her last night.’
‘I didn’t think she was going to kill herself,’ I said sadly. ‘No, I got a totally different idea. She did say that at last she felt free.’
‘Ah,’ said Peter.
‘But I did not interpret freedom as death.’
‘To the sick mind it may seem so.’
‘I suppose it couldn’t be – no,’ I stopped short.
‘What? What couldn’t it be?’ he asked sharply.
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Gwendoline Butler
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 28.04.2024
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О книге: Set in St. Petersburg, Russia, this novel won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award (1981) by the Romantic Novelists′ Association.St Petersburg, 1912. Rose Gowrie is a Scottish girl with a mysterious gift for healing who is hired into the aristocratic household of Dolly Denisov, supposedly as a companion for the youthful Ariadne Denisov. But Rose gets more than she bargains for when she is called upon to cure the aged Princess who lives at the top of the Red Staircase, and the frail young Tsarevitch…