Lorimers at War

by Anne Melville

  None of them was over twleve and all of them were shabby and emaciated. Starvation had made some bright-eyed and others dull and apathetic but they all lacked energy and Kate saw few signs of intelligence. Patiently she explained to them several times how she proposed to put them into pairs and give each pair the responsibility for one room of the palace. They must bring her a report on the number of children in their room and say how many were dead, how many were ill, how many were hungry, how many were healthy.

  While they were gone Kate – with Vera’s help – drew a rough plan of the palace on the whitewashed wall of the kitchen, for she had no paper. She wrote in the numbers they brought her, she supervised the removal of those who were dead, she made quick plans for future organization. In the evening she went back to the committee, this time in full session.

  ‘The children will become robbers,’ she said. ‘For three weeks already they’ve eaten only what they could steal. They’ve taken food which the peasants provide for their horses and they’ve burrowed into farm store rooms. Until now they’ve gone out in twos and threes, but they’re becoming desperate, Comrades. If nothing is done you’ll have an army of young bandits on your hands, organized and violent. If the peasants have food, it’s better that they should surrender it to a legal authority.’

  Kate knew well enough that this was already happening. Every town dweller in Russia believed that the countryside was full of hoarded food. Seizure was taken as a matter of course; only distribution was under debate.

  The committee proved sympathetic enough in principle. Its chairman explained that one official orphanage had been established a year earlier in the palace formerly belonging to the Tsar. No one had realized how many children, drawn by the promise of shelter but failing to secure admission to the main orphanage, had established themselves in the neighbouring palaces of the old nobility. It seemed incredible to Kate – whose months in Petrograd had been regularly disturbed by official searches and checks and head-counts, with a continuing survey of papers and permits – that the men responsible for local administration should not have known the extent of the problem, but she accepted that this was the case as she saw them in turn accepting her right to speak for the inhabitants of the old palace.

  In theory, at least, the battle was won. For one more night the children would have to exist on promises, but a supply of cabbage would be sent up the next morning and as soon as Comrade Katya supplied a written list naming all the living children a regular ration would be allotted.

  With success in sight Kate tried to relax and found herself unable to move. She had started the day still weak from childbirth and from the hypothermia which had followed her collapse in the snow, and had committed herself to a timetable which was emotionally and physically exhausting. She was conscious of the blood draining from her face and the strength leaving her muscles as she tried, but failed, to stand.

  The chairman of the committee looked at her curiously.

  ‘You’re not well, Comrade. When did you yourself last eat?’

  Kate was reluctant to mention her stay with the old lodgekeeper’s wife. So many actions these days which were innocent and even kind could cause trouble. Instead she muttered something about the recent birth of her baby.

  ‘Then you will eat at my house before you return,’ he said. ‘My wife too has had a child and she assures me that every meal she takes herself keeps two people alive.’

  For a moment Kate hesitated. Ilsa would be sleeping now, but would she be safe with Vera as the thirteen-year-old grew sleepy herself? And was it right to eat when the orphans were starving? The answers came quickly. Whatever food she was offered could not rob them in any way, and it was certainly true that an undernourished mother would not be able to breastfeed her baby for long. She accepted the invitation with gratitude.

  The soup contained scraps of bacon fat, and there was bread on the table; it was a feast. But Kate dared not relax, for she found herself being interrogated as she ate – about the future as well as the past. It was necessary to come to a quick decision, and what she decided was that she would stay with the orphans. Their need for someone like herself was desperate. Kate knew herself to be capable of organization; and once she had obtained the basic essential of food and warmth, her medical skill would also be needed. It would be worthwhile work – and it would have the inestimable advantage of keeping her in the place which Vladimir had chosen for their reunion, without any of the suspicions which would have been aroused had she continued to visit the lodge without excuse.

  But it was one thing to come to a decision and another thing to obtain permission. Since the first heady days of the Revolution Kate had had plenty of time to realize that a desire to do a particular job was often regarded as the most absolute disqualification. So when she was asked about her plans, she took care to mention her medical qualifications but replied in the properly orthodox manner.

  ‘I shall be expected to return to Petrograd. My leave from the hospital was only granted so that I could travel to relations for my confinement. The baby came early, before I had reached them – and as a result I shall not be expected back for another three weeks. So I can afford to spend a little time here. I see the need to stay longer. But naturally my official duties as a citizen of Petrograd must come first.’

  ‘I shall apply for your transfer,’ he said abruptly. ‘You are more use to us than to them. Your papers, please.’

  Kate knew better than to go anywhere without them and had no doubts about handing them over to be inspected. Every move increased her security by distancing her from the time when she had been identifiable as an English doctor. Her marriage certificate had given her an official Russian name and Sergei’s documentation had ensured that her qualifications and transfer to the appointment in Petrograd were thoroughly authenticated. This man, although brusque, would not be looking for discrepancies but seeking to use her medical skills for the benefit of his community. Even before he nodded and moved the dishes off his end of the table so that he could laboriously copy down details and prepare a letter, Kate recognized that – for the moment – she was safe. And Vladimir’s child would be safe with her.

  1920

  1

  Peace had come to England in drab dress. Even now, in 1920, with the second anniversary of the Armistice approaching, people in the London streets seemed shabby to Frisca’s critical young eye, and the November sky was heavy with damp grey clouds. She stared down from the window of Robert’s study, waiting for him to come home, depressed by what seemed a conspiracy of gloom against her.

  Yet even when her spirits were low, Frisca herself illuminated the unlit room. There was a brightness about her which no temporary depression could subdue. Her golden hair and pale, clear complexion caught the eye, and an exuberance of personality, penetrated even her present sulkiness, uplifted the spirits of anyone who met her.

  Frisca herself was well aware of the impression which she made even on strangers, and as a rule she traded on it shamelessly. But for the moment she was concerned to preserve the resentment she felt against her mother. She turned towards the door as she heard her cousin coming up the stairs, but did not move towards him.

  A year earlier she would have rushed into his arms, demanding to be hugged and kissed. What held her back today was more than the sense of grievance which she was about to pour out. Ever since she was a baby Frisca had made it clear that Robert was her hero. Over and over again she had told him that she loved him. It had only been after her thirteenth birthday that she had begun to suspect that she did love him, in a manner quite different from anything which her earlier extravagance of compliment might suggest. And so – although her mother would have found the fact difficult to believe – Frisca had grown shy in Robert’s presence.

  Robert, it seemed, had not noticed any change. But then Robert himself had changed in the year which he spent as a prisoner of war. Frisca had been at Blaize on the day he returned there. She had found herself staring at someone who
was almost a stranger, looking far older than his twenty-four years, with the skin stretched tightly over the bones of his face and his sunken eyes withdrawn and blackened with tiredness. His hair had only just begun to grow again after the shaving made necessary by a series of operations. Its bright red waves, which she had once loved to ruffle, had been replaced by a prickly stubble, with a small circle of baldness remaining to indicate the entry point of the bullet which had so nearly cost him his life.

  On that day of his return, Frisca had run away to weep. And she had wept again often in the five weeks which followed when, sitting beside the bed in which he drowsed the days away, she realized that he was not exactly sure who she was.

  It was her aunt who comforted her then, in a way which perhaps Margaret herself did not realize.

  ‘He’s had a bad time, Frisca, and he’s very tired. You must be patient. It will take a little while before he sorts out what really happened and what he only dreamed. It’s one of the effects of a wound in the head. Nightmares become more real than reality. He doesn’t even remember very much about Jennifer, you know. I had to tell him she was dead. He told me how much he’d clung on to the thought of the happiness he’d had with her, and yet he wasn’t absolutely sure whether it was something he’d truly enjoyed or whether he’d only dreamed it because he wanted it so much.’

  It was in that moment that Frisca had realized how completely her rival for Robert’s affections had disappeared. Jennifer was more than dead: she had never quite existed.

  By now, of course, Robert had recovered and remembered. He would always be deaf in one ear and Frisca had noticed that he was apt to become dizzy and lose his balance if he lowered his head too far – for example, to tie his bootlaces. He was more serious, as well, than before he went to fight. But he still seemed to regard Frisca only as a little cousin, to be romped with and teased. He greeted her now with a pretence of shock.

  ‘And who is this long-legged creature? My, Frisca, how tall you’re growing! Have you come up to London for Armistice Day?’

  ‘Mother wants to spend the night at Glanville House. It’s more because it’s the anniversary of Poppa’s death, I think.’

  Frisca’s real father had died before she was born. ‘Poppa’ was Lord Glanville, whom she had loved even before he married Alexa and became her stepfather. ‘I came round to find out how your examinations are going.’

  ‘Over,’ said Robert. ‘Last one today.’

  ‘How did it go? Did you know all the answers?’

  ‘Hope so. I’ll be pretty fed up if I have to take any of them again. I can manage any practical job they set me, but all this book work gives me a headache.’

  ‘What’s the point of it, then?’

  ‘Assuming I’ve passed, I’m now a qualified civil engineer. Rather different from being a military engineer. Instead of blowing bridges up or laying temporary railway tracks, I now know how to build them so that they’ll last for ever; and the certificate which proves that I know should get me a job anywhere in the world.’

  ‘But you won’t go anywhere in the world, will you?’ Frisca expected his reassurance and did not receive it. ‘Robert! You’re not going away?’

  Robert’s expression was a curious one, mingling excitement and uneasiness. ‘I can’t tell you anything yet, Frisca,’ he said. ‘I must talk to Mother first.’

  ‘Oh do tell, Robert. I can keep a secret. I promise I won’t say a word. Honour bright.’

  She could see how much he wanted to share his news, and all her shyness disappeared as she took his hand and set herself to charm the secret from him.

  ‘Well, not only must you keep quiet now, but when you hear the news from Mother you mustn’t let on that you already know.’

  ‘Promise!’

  ‘All right, then. I was offered a job this morning – a job I applied for a few weeks ago. It depends on passing the exams, of course. But if that’s all right, I shall go off to India in January.’

  ‘India!’ Frisca made no attempt to conceal her dismay, but Robert was too excited to notice.

  ‘That’s right. Down in the south. There’s a big project afoot to build a series of dams. The people who live there have a terrible time. Either it rains too much and all the land floods and they get drowned. Or else it doesn’t rain at all and all the crops die and they starve. The dams will help them both ways. They’ll hold back the floods, and then release the water down irrigation canals when it’s needed.’

  ‘But it’s so far away,’ Frisca wailed, making no attempt to conceal her distress.

  ‘I want to do something worth while, Frisca. If that bullet had killed me, I should have died without ever having been of any use to anyone. It wouldn’t have been my fault then: I was too young. But if I die in ten years’ time I want to leave something behind me which will make somebody grateful that Robert Scott was once alive. I spent too long killing people. Now I have the chance to help people live a little longer. Do you understand?’

  ‘Aunt Margaret won’t let you go.’

  ‘I think she will,’ said Robert. ‘She won’t like it. She’ll be unhappy at first. That’s why it’s very important that you mustn’t say anything to her at all. You must leave it to me. But Mother has spent the whole of her life helping other people. She’ll be pleased, in her heart, that I want to do the same, even if it’s in a different way and in a different place.’

  Frisca was not convinced. Although in some respects she was selfish, demanding to get her own way and taking for granted the admiration she excited, she was sensitive to other people’s feelings. She knew, for example, that Alexa, her own mother, had no very deep feeling for her, and she had learned this by recognizing the overwhelming love which her aunt Margaret felt for Robert. Frisca herself had been in a position to see how her aunt had changed in the two months after Robert’s return. Once Margaret had survived the first shock of his appearance, all the strain and tiredness of her work at the hospital had fallen away. She looked ten years younger, and the bustle and energy with which she had organized the return to her London home while still occupied in winding down her responsibilities at Blaize had been those of a woman made happy by the presence of the one person to whom she was devoted. Frisca understood the feeling, because she shared it. Aunt Margaret would be very miserable indeed if Robert were to leave.

  With such an ally, Frisca decided that she need not upset herself too much just yet. And even as she assured herself that Robert would not be allowed to go, she began to wonder whether it would after all be such a disaster if he did. In India, presumably, he would meet only Indian girls, and he would surely not want to marry one of them. He would work hard while he was out there and then at some time – when he was about thirty, perhaps – he would decide that it was time he looked for another wife. He would come home on holiday to find one – and in the meantime Frisca would have had time to grow up. It had been the only tragedy of her life that she was too young for Robert, and when he married Jennifer she had thought that she must have lost him. But now she had another chance, and she was growing older all the time. Four years would be enough, or even three. If Robert went to India in January for three years she would be just seventeen when he came back. She was so intent on her calculations that she did not notice the firmness with which her cousin changed the subject.

  ‘And now suppose you lell me why you were wearing such a face of thunder when I came into the room.’

  ‘Was I?’ Frisca had genuinely forgotten; but not for long. ‘Oh yes. Robert, do you know what Mamma is going to do with me?’

  ‘Tell me. One secret in exchange for another.’

  ‘This isn’t a secret, worse luck. It all started with my ballet teacher. Beastly old Benina. She measured my feet and my fingers and pretended she could tell from that how much I was going to grow. And she says I’m going to be too tall to be a ballet dancer. So I’m to be sent to prison instead.’

  ‘Sounds a rather drastic solution,’ agreed Robert, but he was laughing.
‘I take it you mean you’ve got to go to school at last.’

  ‘Yes. But why does it have to be beastly old boarding school? I agree with Mamma that Mademoiselle is useless and that we’ve both only put up with her because a ballet dancer doesn’t need to be brainy. But there are other kinds of dancing besides ballet, and other kinds of school.’

  ‘Not near Blaize. The village school would hardly be suitable.’

  ‘Well, I could live in London and go somewhere every day instead of being bullied and starved and made to wear a beastly uniform.’

  ‘I expect your mother wants to stay at Blaize, though.’

  ‘Well, that’s exactly it.’ Frisca put on her most conspiratorial voice. ‘She has her reasons for that, and for wanting me out of the way. She can’t confess them, so she has to make up this ridiculous story about me being a giant.’

  ‘I’m sure you’regoing to be an absolutely perfect height for being a beautiful woman, Frisca,’ said Robert firmly. ‘All that Benina means, I take it, is that it’s no good if one cygnet or sugar plum fairy is waving her wrist about several inches above all the others. And you’ll like boarding school. I did, tremendously. Even Grant’s enjoying himself now, although at a boys’ school it’s difficult if you don’t play games. You’ll make hundreds of friends and have lots of fun. Why should Aunt Alexa want you out of the way, anyway?’