The Grand Duchess of Nowhere

by Laurie Graham

  ‘Enough,’ he said. ‘Don’t say another word. Why can’t my family stay quietly below the parapet?’

  Pretty priceless, I thought, from a man who’d been so quick to fly the red flag.

  The next time I saw Bertie Stopford he was washed and recognisable. I’d planned anyway to call on him at the Europa, to see what he was up to, but then I saw him crossing Nevsky Prospekt.

  ‘Tea?’ he said. ‘Or something stronger?’

  We went to Demoute’s.

  I said, ‘The strangest thing. I dreamed I saw you in the street, dressed in overalls, you and Boris Vladimirovich. You had soot on your faces and you were on your way to repair Miechen’s boiler.’

  ‘Extraordinary,’ he said. ‘Me in overalls! Dreams do throw up the strangest images.’

  I said, ‘I suppose Miechen asked you to drop by while you’re in town? To pick up a few things she might need?’

  ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘She hadn’t anticipated being away for so long. And her departure was rather hurried. There are always things one forgets. But Her Royal Highness is now thinking of the future.’

  ‘Probably not here?’

  ‘Probably not. Nice has been mentioned. Should the opportunity arise.’

  ‘For which she’d require lighter coats, and parasols.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘I hope you found what you were looking for.’

  ‘We did, thanks to Boris Vladimirovich. He knew precisely where to look. For parasols. His Imperial Highness knows every corridor.’

  ‘And no one challenged you?’

  ‘No one, thanks to our disguise. We make very convincing boilermen. It was rather thrilling now I look back on it, although at the time I was surprised the People’s Militia didn’t notice the sound of my heart pounding. It seemed to me to be loud enough to be heard in Moscow.’

  He and Boris had gone right to Miechen’s suite, opened her safe and emptied it of jewels. Then they’d taken everything to the boiler room, wrapped each piece in newspaper and stowed them in their tool bags. The only item they hadn’t found was her Cartier kokoshnik. Miechen had sent it for cleaning and forgotten to have it collected. Stopford said Boris might try to retrieve it.

  ‘Risky,’ he said. ‘But I quite understand why Boris Vladimirovich is tempted to try. Its sapphire alone would buy a great number of dinners.’

  He wouldn’t tell me what they’d done with Miechen’s treasure.

  ‘What you don’t know,’ he said, ‘you can’t inadvertently repeat. But I will say it hasn’t been easy. The odd earring or two one can hide, necklaces are harder. Be warned, if you’re thinking of transporting anything of value. They’re getting wise to coat seams. We’ve managed to spirit everything away. Whether they’ll be worth anything is another matter, but everyone’s in the same predicament.’

  Miechen was in urgent need of money.

  ‘It’s been rather a shock,’ he said. ‘Everyone’s been accustomed to a year’s credit at least. But the butcher and the baker have now decided they should be paid, monthly. It’ll be cash on delivery next, you’ll see.’

  I asked him about Miechen’s beloved Vladimir tiara.

  ‘Impossible to hide,’ he said, ‘short of breaking it up and there’s no sense doing that just yet. One would need to get to somewhere like Antwerp to sell gems of that quality. But it’s in a place of safety, that’s all I’ll say. I’ve placed it in the most trustworthy hands I could think of.’

  He could only have meant the British Embassy. Perhaps it was already on its way to London in a diplomatic bag. Now of course it seems foolish to have worried about a tiara. When will any of us ever wear such things again? All they’re good for is selling off, diamond by diamond, and somehow they’re never worth anything like as much as one was once led to believe.

  I know nothing about money. Mother said it was a subject discussed only by tradespeople. What does one do when the bank says you have nothing? We used to have money. Where can it all have gone? Cyril doesn’t seem to know. He used to sign pieces of paper and settle accounts once a year, but the details were still dealt with by his father’s people, even all those years after Uncle Vladimir’s death. The steward and the book-keeper. Where are they now that one needs them? Gone south, gone east? Gone to hell, Cyril says. But I do think he might have managed things better. I always thought that was a husband’s job.

  The von Etters say we’re not to worry at all, that we’re welcome to stay here for as long as we need, but it’s too humiliating for words. I’m afraid Cyril and I quarrel about it, but only in bed. It’s bad enough being impoverished house guests without having embarrassing rows as well. The girls are happy, at least. For them it’s a long holiday and Daddy’s home from the war. They dance about, swinging on his arm, but I’m absolutely furious with him. When a person tells you repeatedly ‘Leave this to me,’ the very least you expect of them is that they’ve made certain provisions.

  Cyril says, ‘I got us out, didn’t I? Don’t be so ungrateful.’

  Ungrateful! If he’d listened to me, we’d be in Crimea now with all our friends and family. At least we’d be warm. We might even be on our way to Cannes. Mother would fix us up with a house. Those beastly Bolsheviks can’t get their hands on her money. She has everything safely lodged in Germany.

  In the course of one of my rages, I’m afraid I accused Cyril of being an incurable ditherer.

  I said, ‘You always were. If you hadn’t dilly-dallied, if you’d had the guts to declare your love for me, I’d never have married Ernie Hesse.’

  And he said, ‘As I recall, Ernie Hesse also dilly-dallied, as you put it. Does it ever occur to you that the world isn’t waiting to fall at your feet? You’re no great beauty, Ducky, never were, and frankly you’re not the easiest person to live with. It’s a pity you didn’t have more brothers, to keep you in your place.’

  He didn’t mean to be cruel, of course. I know I’m no beauty. And I have become rather shrewish, with all the upheaval and the baby and everything. One says things in haste. One can apologise, but one can never really take them back. It’s all right though. We’ll survive.

  33

  It was the last day of April. Cyril said I should stay indoors the next day. There were parades planned, for May Day, and things might run out of control.

  I said, ‘In that case, don’t let the girls hear the word “parade” or they’ll be pestering all day to go and watch.’

  In Germany they used to keep Walpurgis Night. Not us, but the ordinary people. They’d build great bonfires and stay up all night carousing, so the next day had to be a holiday because everyone’s head was thick with drink. But I didn’t remember May Day ever being a particular holiday in Russia.

  ‘It’s called Labour Day,’ Cyril said. ‘An international celebration of worker struggle and revolutionary victory. Another bloody excuse for disrupting the day’s business.’

  It was a glorious, sunny morning. People were gathering at the Marsovo Polye. The Buchanans would have had a ringside seat at the embassy but we, of course, were not invited. From Marsovo Polye it wasn’t clear where the marchers would go next. Down Sadovaya to Nevsky Prospekt? Along the embankment past the Winter Palace? Perhaps both. They could go wherever they pleased and no police would oppose them because they were the new police. The People. They were judge and jury too. Nicky’s old force had been persuaded to disappear. Boris had seen one of them thrown from the tower of the Lutheran Church. As he said, ‘Pour encourager les autres.’

  *

  By the end of April the Tsarskoe Selo house was locked and shuttered.

  ‘Forget it,’ Cyril said. ‘It’s the property of The People now. If we ever get a country place again, it’ll be one allocated to us by the government. A wood shed, probably. Shared occupancy.’

  I said, ‘Do you think it’s amusing?’

  ‘I think it’s reality.’

  ‘Why are we staying on? Why aren’t we getting out while we can?’

  ‘Because
it’s home. And because Russia may be a better place when all this settles down.’

  Glinka Street was beginning to feel rather depleted. When we first lived there, we’d had twenty servants. Miechen insisted that we couldn’t manage with fewer than that, though it wasn’t a very large house and we didn’t give many dinners. When the troubles and the strikes had begun, certain faces had disappeared. I have a feeling they just slipped out occasionally, when something was happening on the streets, and then came home to eat and sleep, but one was nervous of enquiring too deeply. No one ever spoke out or left us in the way Kuzma and Peach had done, but the atmosphere in the house was different. Then, little by little, some faces disappeared for good. Cyril joked that he quite expected to run into some of them in the corridors of the Tauride Palace.

  He said, ‘But instead of carrying your breakfast tray, darling, they’ll have a ministerial portfolio under their arm.’

  So by early May the only servants we still had were two maids, nervous little creatures, not much older than Masha, and two doormen, Mefody and Serafim, which was one too many but Mefody came with the property and would be there till he died. Anna, our cook, had gone, which would have been calamitous once upon a time but not any more. They say every black cloud has a silver lining do we but look for it, and in that instance it was true, because she had taken her mother with her. I was able to venture down to the kitchen without fear of finding the Groaner on her usual stove-side perch. I learned how to warm through dishes Serafim brought in from the traktir. We managed well enough.

  Cyril came home on May Day evening in a very good humour.

  He said, ‘Did you see any of the parades?’

  I said, ‘How could I? You said it would be too dangerous to go out.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘so I did. I didn’t expect you to listen to me though. Well, you missed a treat. Some of the banners were priceless.’

  He asked for writing paper.

  ‘A little Russian test for you,’ he said.

  He wrote X Л E B B C E M.

  I said, ‘Bread for all?’

  ‘Look again,’ he said. ‘Bread for all is obviously what they intended it to say, but it doesn’t.’

  I looked and looked.

  Masha said, ‘I know the answer! Bread is X Л E Б, but they’ve written X Л E B. But Daddy, what’s X Л E B?’

  ‘X Л E B,’ he said, ‘is a cow stall. Well done, Masha. A cow stall for all! Can you believe these people? And they think they’re ready to govern. We’ll be an international laughing stock. Here’s another one.’

  Д O Л O Й Ч E P B И ! Doloy chervi.

  Doloy was ‘down with, away with’. I’d seen that word often enough since the troubles began. But chervi meant nothing to me. Even Masha couldn’t fathom it.

  ‘Well,’ Cyril said, ‘what they’re trying to say is “Down with tipping”. It’s all part of this fair wage campaign. Apparently being left a little gratuity is now considered a patronising insult. Damned if I understand why. So the word they should have used is Ч A E B Ы E. Ч E P B И are maggots. Which renders the slogan rather comical, don’t you think? Down with maggots! I’ll drink to that.’

  I wasn’t really in a position to laugh, seven years in Russia and still stumbling to say quite simple things. And as Kira observed very solemnly, no one likes maggots so getting rid of them was a jolly sensible idea.

  *

  Summer arrived in a hurry. It seemed the last of the snow had only just gone and suddenly we were too hot. Between them the humidity and the mosquitoes and this restless baby prevented me from sleeping. I don’t remember being so uncomfortable before. One’s forties are not the age for bearing children. If Elli had lived I’d most likely be a grandmother by now. Cyril, on the other hand, who was busier than he’d ever been in his life, slept very well, until the night we were jolted from our beds by hammering at the street door. It wasn’t yet properly light.

  Cyril was awake and on his feet at once. We could hear men’s voices, Mefody, I thought, and Serafim and then others.

  Cyril said, ‘Go to the girls. Lock the door. Don’t come out till I say so.’

  Then he ran downstairs, still pulling on his dressing gown.

  I couldn’t lock the girls’ door, of course. One doesn’t allow a child like Kira the temptation of a key. I pushed a chair against the door and sat on it, trying to hear what was being said down below. I couldn’t catch anything, but the tone seemed conversational. I imagine if one is about to be arrested it’s done without any niceties. But I couldn’t be sure. Everything had changed so quickly. Russians used to be dear people who called me ‘Barina’ or ‘Matushka’ and bowed when I passed them. Now they’re like dogs that have turned and bitten and when a dog has bitten once it can only be a matter of time until it bites again. Cyril’s assurances were all very well but the fact remained, the Emperor of All the Russias wasn’t free even to walk in his own park.

  Kira slept on. Masha had woken but she lay very still. I put my finger to my lips. She slipped out of bed and came to sit on what was left of my lap.

  She whispered, ‘Have they come to shoot us?’

  What a thing for a child to say. She could only have got that idea from Ethel Peach.

  We heard the street door slam, and then silence for what seemed an age. Masha’s fingernails were digging into my neck. I began to think she was right. If you come in the night and take a man from his home in his dressing gown, you must surely intend to shoot him. I was a convinced widow by the time we heard the door again and then Cyril bounding up the stairs.

  He tapped on the door and said, ‘All’s well. You can come out.’

  Kira woke, very cross at first at having missed the excitement. Then she pretended she’d actually been awake through the whole episode. Cyril tried to make light of it. Too much so. I observed that he was trembling, just as he had after the executions at Kronstadt.

  ‘It was just a few Marine Guards,’ he said. ‘Good lads. They’re due back at Kronstadt first thing and their transport’s run out of fuel. I was the first person they thought of. You see, Ducky? I have their confidence.’

  He’d given them one of our precious canisters of petrol. Good old Grand Duke Cyril. Such a good sort.

  He went to his dressing room. I followed him.

  I said, ‘Masha thought they’d come to shoot us.’

  ‘Silly girl,’ he said. ‘Where did she get such an idea?’

  ‘I can’t imagine. In this country where admirals get shot by their men and the Emperor is under house arrest. Perhaps it’s normal now for little girls to think such things.’

  ‘You’re upset.’

  ‘I’m not upset. I’m frightened. We should leave. I want to leave.’

  He was buttoning his shirt.

  ‘Well,’ he said, eventually, ‘perhaps we all need a holiday. Let me see what I can do.’

  *

  Mist hung over the city all day. I went to St Isaac’s, I don’t know why. I saw no particular reason God should grant me any protection, but I felt a great compulsion to stand quietly in a sacred place. It calmed me. A priest asked me if I wanted him to hear my confession. I told him I wasn’t Orthodox.

  ‘Anglichanka,’ I said. ‘Protestanka.’

  ‘Pah!’ he said, and he gave me such a pitying look.

  The canal water looked dead and oily. I saw brother-in-law Boris strolling along the Moika.

  ‘You all right?’ he said. ‘You look all in.’

  I told him about our early morning callers.

  I said, ‘Cyril seems so sure everything’s going to work out. Do you think so?’

  He said, ‘If I had a wife …’ But then he stopped. ‘Frankly,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what to think. One minute we seemed to be plunging over a sheer cliff. Now we seem to have landed on a ledge. Will it hold? Perhaps it will, as long as Nicky’s bundled out of the country to some distant exile. Why do they delay so? All those guards tied up at the Alexander Palace. It makes no sense. As for
you, I think you’ve been an absolute brick, staying here while Cyril’s playing politics. If you went south, took a little break and went to visit Ma, no one would think any the less of you.’

  It wasn’t other people’s opinions that bothered me. Quite a number of people I’d counted as friends had deserted me anyway. It was Cyril. Some days I felt he was terrifically brave, some days I thought he was an utter fool. One thing was always true: there was no hurrying him.

  ‘Like an ox, Cyril Vladimirovich,’ Pa once remarked. ‘He will plod on till he reaches the end of the furrow.’

  I said, ‘I was just in St Isaac’s. It was so peaceful. All these extraordinary things going on out here, but step inside the cathedral and nothing’s changed.’

  ‘True,’ Boris said. ‘But for how long? This new crowd love taking things to pieces. The monarchy. The Duma. I imagine they just haven’t got round to the church yet. They probably will.’

  That was the last time I saw Boris, on the Moika, just across from the Yusupovs’ closed-up palace. I find my thoughts often begin that way now. The last time this, the last time that.

  ‘Kisses for les animaux from Uncle Boris,’ he said. ‘Take care of yourself, Ducky.’

  Cyril came home early.

  I said, ‘When do we leave?’

  He held up his hand. ‘Whoa!’

  ‘You promised we’d take a holiday.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And we will. But one doesn’t just disappear. One has certain commitments. Now, I have a plan. I’m hoping to bring Kerensky here tomorrow, to see us en famille. Nothing showy, Ducky. Just tea and jam will do. And serve it yourself. No maid.’

  I said, ‘And the purpose of this humble tableau? I’m sure Kerensky hasn’t forgotten you’re a Grand Duke.’

  ‘The purpose,’ he said, ‘is to show him that we’re reasonable people, living modestly, adjusting to the new regime. The purpose is to get permission to travel, for me to take my poor careworn wife somewhere cooler until her confinement.’

  I said, ‘So, not to Crimea?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not to Crimea. Too many Romanovs down there already, especially Ma and Dowager Minnie. Sooner or later this lot are bound to start worrying that they’re plotting a comeback. But no one else has gone to Finland. Haikko would be perfect. Cooler for you and without any complicated family loyalties.’