The Grand Duchess of Nowhere

by Laurie Graham

  I said, ‘Now I’ve embarrassed you.’

  ‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘Anyone asks, I’ll say you twisted your ankle.’

  He took my hand. We were in shadow.

  He said, ‘The thing is, Ducky, there’s really nothing I can do. You have to go home to Darmstadt and I have to report for duty, and who can say when we shall ever see each other again? But I want you to know that I wish things might have worked out differently. Do you understand?’

  How a mood can change in a few seconds. I remember thinking that if Cyril cared for me, even a little, it made everything else bearable.

  I said, ‘I’ve always liked you.’

  ‘And I you,’ he said. ‘How silly that we only just got round to admitting it.’

  I said, ‘Perhaps we can write? I’d like to know where you are.’

  He said I’d find him an erratic correspondent but he’d certainly try. And then the dancing started up again and he partnered me for the mazurka and a waltz. He was a superb dancer. It’s been too long since we danced.

  He said, ‘I long to kiss you, Ducky, darling. I can’t, of course, but I just wanted you to know.’

  That was when I really knew that Things weren’t right with Ernie. He’d never, ever said anything so delicious.

  It was dawn when we drove the short way back to the Governor’s house. The streets were empty and the shops were still shuttered although you could smell that the bakers were already at work. Ernie was tipsy. I was on air. I imagined I could still feel the press of Cyril’s hand on my back.

  Ernie said, ‘Bloody excellent people, the Yusupovs. Bloody fine party. We should give parties like that.’

  There were lamps burning in the library. Ernie made a terrible racket stumbling and crashing up the stairs and Uncle Serge came out and told him off. Aunt Ella had been home for hours and was asleep. Uncle Serge had little prospect of going to bed himself. At Khodynka there were still unburied dead. Emperor Nicky’s gesture was all very well, but it wasn’t so easy for Uncle Serge to find so many pine coffins at short notice.

  ‘Sleep well,’ he said.

  And I did, a very contented sleep till late in the morning, but when I woke I found things didn’t look as rosy as they had the night before. Cyril Vladimirovich was nineteen years old and just starting out on his naval career. He’d see the world, meet beautiful women, and eventually he’d marry. More than likely I’d be expected to attend his wedding. And all the silliness of the night before, all the talk of ‘if only’ and of forbidden kisses, was absolutely meaningless because I was stuck with Ernie and Darmstadt. I was in a hateful mood all day.

  Ernie said, ‘You’re always disagreeable when you’ve been drinking champagne.’

  He went out with the nurses again, when they took the children to the Gardens. He was a child himself, really. That was the day he came home with the idea of building a waterslide, at Wolfsgarten.

  I was called to the telephone. Missy.

  ‘Well?’ she said. ‘I’ve been waiting all morning to hear from you. Can you talk? Just answer yes or no. Did Cyril declare himself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I knew he would! Was it divine dancing with him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you happy?’

  ‘No.’

  Missy felt I had the wrong attitude to men.

  ‘You take it all too seriously,’ she’d say. ‘It’s nothing to do with marriage and babies and all that. Marriage is the sago pudding we’re obliged to eat. Now you need a little jam.’

  Missy enjoyed flirtations. She began them and the very moment they started to pall she looked around for the next one.

  She said, ‘By the by, did Cyril happen to say anything about me? In relation to Boris? I believe I’ve taken his fancy.’

  I said, ‘Missy, you’re here with your husband and your children.’

  ‘So?’ she said. ‘I’m only talking about a little holiday diversion. I do hope Boris will be coming out to Arkhangelskoe.’

  When the Coronation celebrations were finished and the last of the Khodynka dead had been buried, we were all going to the country estates. Ernie and I were to stay with Aunt Ella and Uncle Serge at Ilyinskoe. Missy and Nando would be put up by the Yusupovs at Arkhangelskoe. There was to be no summer in the country for Cyril though. He was leaving to join his ship at Kronstadt.

  I said, ‘I hardly think Boris is the type for a country house party full of marrieds and their children. And anyway, doesn’t he keep a ballerina?’

  Missy said, ‘Of course he keeps a ballerina. What’s that to do with the price of tea in China?’

  *

  We set off for Ilyinskoe the first week of June. Ernie and me and Elli, Mother and Pa, brother Affie, and Uncle Paul’s children. Uncle Paul liked Marie and Dmitri to enjoy the good air and freedom of Ilyinskoe but it was the place where Aunt Aline died and I imagine he couldn’t bear to take them there himself. Aunt Ella said he had business to attend to anyway, in St Petersburg.

  Missy said, ‘Aunt Ella must think we were born yesterday. There’s only one kind of business men rush off to in the middle of summer. Good old Uncle Paul! Who would have thought it!’

  To reach Ilyinskoe, you go by train as far as Odintsevo and then on by carriage. The drive takes about an hour, first through a pine forest, and then out onto meadowland. You can see the roof of the house long before you reach it. There’s a little wooden bridge that sways alarmingly under the weight of the troika, and then the great gates and an avenue of lime trees. Such a pleasant place. I wonder if we shall ever see it again. I wonder if any of us will ever go back to Russia, even when this war ends? They say it will certainly end this year. But everything has changed.

  We stayed at Ilyinskoe for the rest of June and the whole month of July. All the neighbouring dachas were filled with parties too. The Yusupovs, the Golitsyns, the Scherbatovs. Everyone had deserted Moscow. The sun shone, we ate our meals on the verandah and we swam in the river every day. Elli was in heaven with so many children to entertain her. Most days Missy drove over with her children, and sometimes the Yusupov boys came too. That was when I first remember Felix Yusupov. How old could he have been then? Eight, nine? He never did care very much for climbing trees or building rafts but he was endlessly patient with the little ones, making them fairy tea parties and forgiving them if they ruined his careful work.

  I was so happy at Ilyinskoe. There was plenty of company if I wanted it and when I didn’t, when I wanted to sit alone and think of Cyril, there were plenty of diversions for Ernie. We didn’t quarrel at all. Then one morning a black cloud appeared. Aunt Ella announced that Emperor Nicky and Sunny and Baby Olga would soon be joining us. I suppose I wasn’t very gracious about it.

  Ernie said, ‘You might try not thinking of yourself for a change. Consider poor Sunny, how her life has changed. I’m sure she’s quite desperate to take a holiday from Empressing.’

  The Imperials arrived in time for the great patronal feast on St Elijah’s Day. Aunt Ella and I were near the roadside gathering white currants when we heard the sound of a carriage and a cry went up from some of the villagers, ‘Batyushka idyot!’ Little Father was coming. They all made deep bows. Well, not quite all. There were one or two younger men who made no obeisance, nor even took off their hats. They just watched Nicky and Sunny go rattling past.

  ‘Nyemka!’ one of them said. ‘The German Woman.’ And he spat on the ground to show what he thought of his new German Empress.

  I’d dreaded their coming and was sure Sunny would ruin my holiday, but she was all cordiality. A little dull, but apparently disposed to be my friend. She liked nothing better than to sit in the shade and discuss teething and colic and cradle cap. But Missy’s diagnosis of her pale face and her tired eyes was incorrect. Sunny wasn’t expecting again.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘But very soon, I’m sure. We are trying.’

  And as she said it she cast a shockingly doting eye on Emperor Nicky who was limbering up like a jum
ping-jack, preparing to play tennis with Ernie.

  Behind her, quite out of her line of sight, Missy made a horribly realistic mime of vomiting.

  Then Sunny said, ‘But, Ducky, it’s high time you and Ernie had another one,’ and Missy leaped in at once and said, ‘Ha! Tell that to Ernie.’

  Sunny looked quite puzzled.

  Ernie beat Nicky, two sets to one.

  ‘Observation,’ he said to me, later. ‘If His Imperial Majesty rules All the Russias the way he plays tennis he’ll make a sorry mess of it. He runs around far too much, like a spaniel. An untrained spaniel. And then he dithers and dabs at the ball as though it might bite him. I only allowed him to win a few games so as not to discourage him.’

  In the middle of those lazy, comfortable days we had one moment of high drama. Missy almost drowned. There had been heavy rain in the night so the river was a little swollen. She went down to bathe, perhaps too soon after luncheon, and was swept off her feet by the current. We did hear her call, but then, one was rarely out of range of Missy’s voice, and we were all well fed and dozing. I don’t know how long it was before her cries became insistent enough for us to wake up and realise she was in difficulties. Hours, Missy says.

  By the time we were all on our feet she was already some distance downstream. Nando flapped about on the river bank shouting helpful things like, ‘Don’t swallow any water!’ and ‘For heaven’s sake, Missy!’ Ernie began to take off his trousers and Aunt Ella ran for a long birch branch, but brother Affie overtook them all, plunged in, fully clothed, and dragged Missy to safety. None of us had ever seen him move so energetically.

  He was the toast of the house, of course. Whether he enjoyed it, it was difficult to say. He smiled bashfully for the first hour or so of compliments and he saw off two good snorts of Uncle Serge’s best cognac, but then he slipped back into his usual distant, cud-chewing habit and it was as if nothing had happened.

  Nando said, ‘Not quite the thing, is he, your brother?’

  The ingrate!

  I said, ‘If it weren’t for Affie, you’d have been widowed this afternoon.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘Missy was just making an unnecessary fuss, as usual.’

  8

  We took the Nord Express to go home. It was such a depressing journey. Affie parted from us at Berlin, with rather tactless enthusiasm, I thought. He had his man get the bags ready the absolute moment we passed Konigsberg. Mother fretted, as though he were still a tiny child, and Pa growled at her about a boy needing to cut loose once in a while.

  Mother said, ‘But Berlin, in the middle of August? What can he possibly hope to do there? No one will be in town.’

  Ernie mischievously suggested it would be an ideal time to visit the Altes Museum.

  ‘No crowds,’ he said. ‘And Affie does so love those decorated Greek vases. He’ll be able to study them in comfort.’

  Pa chuckled.

  ‘Greek vases, eh?’ he said. ‘Saucy, are they?’

  ‘Athletic,’ Ernie said, and Mother said she’d never heard Affie express the least interest in vases.

  Mother and Pa’s personal coupé was uncoupled at Hanover but we stayed on the Pullman as far as Cologne.

  Mother whispered, ‘We’ve all had such a lovely summer. Now do try to settle down, Ducky.’

  I looked at her.

  ‘I’m not a complete fool,’ she said.

  I opened my mouth to protest.

  ‘And neither is your husband,’ she whispered. ‘Now do be a good girl. I have quite enough to worry about with Missy.’

  There was no reason she should have known what had passed between me and Cyril but then, mothers know a surprising number of things when they choose to.

  I was resolved anyway. I didn’t need a lecture from Mother. Cyril and I had a delicious secret and, apart from the bedroom problem, Ernie was good fun, so I was determined to make the best of things. Ernie had plans too. He’d been bowled over by the parties we’d been to in Moscow. Aunt Miechen always gave wonderful dinners, even in a borrowed house, and the Yusupovs were like a lavish travelling circus. No one could ever tell me where their wealth came from so I can only imagine they owned a very large gold mine. Ernie wanted us to be the Yusupovs of Darmstadt, but we didn’t have Yusupov money and Hesse wasn’t Russia. Hessians are careful, sober people. As hard as we tried to be sociable and gay, it was uphill work. We acquired a hot-air balloon and a fleet of bicycles for our guests, and one of the ponds at Wolfsgarten was cleaned and excavated to accommodate Ernie’s longed-for waterslide. He was still bored. He’d look at our guests’ feeble efforts at dressing for a costume party and say, ‘Not exactly Babylon, is it?’

  My best friends in Darmstadt in those days were George and Georgie Buchanan. Sir George was the British chargé d’affaires and if he thought Ernie and I were madcap he never showed it. He had the diplomat’s touch and that British easiness. I’ve often been advised, since the war with Germany started and then the other, Russian troubles, to emphasise my Britishness. I found the advice unnecessary. It is my natural plumage. They say scratch the skin of a British Royal and you’ll find a German but my German blood runs very thin. As for Russia, which I thought I loved, I find it has become a stranger.

  Ernie and I aimed always to have at least three guests staying with us. It kept us from futile conversations and arguments. He had his projects and I had mine. He built a play house for Elli, complete in every domestic detail, and then he began something far more ambitious: a proper Orthodox chapel in Darmstadt. He proposed the idea to Emperor Nicky who took it up with great enthusiasm. It would be somewhere suitable for Sunny to worship when she visited Darmstadt.

  I said, ‘But how often do you think that will be?’

  ‘I hope very often,’ Ernie said. ‘I miss her dreadfully. You miss your sister so I think I may be allowed to miss mine.’

  Sunny’s chapel wasn’t to be simply a church in the Orthodox style. It was to be a little patch of Russia in Sunny’s childhood home. Trainloads of Russian soil and Russian granite began to arrive. Ernie was to oversee the project and design its interior. It kept him very happily occupied. Practically every day he’d disappear with a roll of drawings under his arm.

  In his absence, I shopped for horses. I acquired two Lippizaners, a hunter from Kildare – chestnut with white socks and a blaze – and a Welsh pony, ready for Elli to begin her riding lessons. And every day I looked out for letters from Cyril.

  He did write, but not often, and of course his letters betrayed nothing of our secret. They were just a rather dull recital of his travels such as a dutiful child might write. He was docked at Reval, which made sense, and at Danzig, but then he wrote that he was in Paris, which seemed a strange destination for a serving naval officer. Then Baby Bee wrote that she and Mother had seen him in Cannes and I was in agonies to know what he was doing there. Did he have a sweetheart? A beautiful, unmarried French sweetheart. I could hardly ask.

  I always shared Cyril’s letters with Ernie, to forestall any suspicions or accusations, but after the first few he stopped reading them.

  ‘Leave them on my night stand,’ he said. ‘I’ll use them instead of my Sydenham’s Drops when I can’t sleep. Honestly, Ducky, only Cyril Vladimirovich could make Paris sound boring. I wonder why he bothers writing?’

  Ernie and I had never had a servant problem. We kept a happy household. But then suddenly people began to give notice, or rather not give notice but simply announce that they were leaving at once, very inconsiderately leaving one in a fix. An under-gardener went, then two footmen in rapid succession and then Seidel, the very best of our grooms, which vexed me enormously. Seidel wouldn’t say where he was going or why he was in such haste.

  I said, ‘Won’t you at least wait until after foaling?’

  He was especially fond of my mare, Moonbeam. Still he said he could not stay.

  I asked Gusenbauer if he knew the reason. Gusenbauer was my coachman. He was the fatherly kind of man a lad like
Seidel might have confided in. When I pressed him, he said there might have been a slight altercation. He couldn’t swear to it but His Royal Highness might have spoken to Seidel sharply and Seidel might perhaps have taken it too much to heart.

  ‘Boys,’ he said. ‘They come and they go. Whoever knows what goes on in their heads? Sometimes they don’t recognise a good position until they’ve given it up.’

  Ernie was up at Kranichstein laying out new rose beds so he couldn’t be asked and by the time he came home Seidel had already gone.

  ‘Load of nonsense,’ Ernie said. ‘I’m sure I never reprimanded anyone. Seidel? Which one was he?’

  Then I knew he was fibbing. Everyone knew Seidel.

  A new groom was found. Hubert. Ernie made it his personal responsibility to find someone suitable, seeing how upset I was at losing Seidel. Hubert was young but very able and my horses accepted him, though I believe Moonbeam still looked out of her box every day, hoping to see Seidel again. She foaled, a good-looking colt that promised well but never made much progress. I sold him as a yearling.

  I was supposed to take Elli up to Schleswig-Holstein, to meet her new cousin. Ernie’s sister Irene had had another baby boy, Sigismund.

  I liked Irene well enough. She was a bit dull, but pleasant. Ernie’s sisters are all such homebodies. I’ve often wondered where his great appetite for limelight and drum roll sprang from. Perhaps every family must have its showman. But I confess my chief reason for accepting Irene’s invitation to visit was that I thought she meant for me to stay with her at Schloss Kiel. Her husband, Heinrich, was based at Kiel and it was the kind of port where a ship of the Russian Imperial Fleet might put in with a certain Romanov cousin on board. It was only after I was committed to the visit that Irene explained we’d be staying out in the country, at Hemmelmark.

  ‘So much better for the little ones,’ she said. ‘There’s no point in being in Kiel. Heinrich will be at sea, on exercises.’