The Red Staircase

by Gwendoline Butler

  ‘And who are you?’ he demanded, kicking his feet into a puddle. I thought that he almost certainly knew who I was; he would have satisfied his curiosity about me days ago.

  ‘There is an epidemic here,’ I said crisply. ‘And I have come to tell you what you can do about it. So far you appear to have done nothing.’

  ‘And why should you be giving the likes of me orders?’ he said in a surly voice.

  ‘Nothing,’ I repeated. ‘You’ve done nothing. And for that you’ll pay.’

  I had never been so thankful that the Russian taught by the dominie at home was very pure, and that since then I had picked up the manner and accent of those among whom I lived, a great aristocrat family. In other words, I spoke now with the unmistakable voice of the ruling class. He heard and recognized it; I could see it in his eyes.

  ‘Yes, you’re in trouble,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve been doing my job. You have no right here, none whatever. Take yourself off. Clear off. I know how you cause trouble, miss.’ He came right up to me so that I got the benefit of his breath.

  ‘Pooh, beer!’ I said, standing my ground. ‘Now don’t threaten me; I have the authority of the Tsar behind me.’

  ‘There you lie,’ he said heavily. ‘Get out. I have authority here, and above me Lazarev, but ‘e don’t count. I am the Tsar here. My writ runs here.’

  ‘Ordinarily, perhaps so. However, you now have a major epidemic here which may spread beyond your walls unless you take steps to see that it does not. And what will the Tsar say then?’ I saw my advantage and took it. ‘I shall see he knows. The Tsarina knows me.’

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘And she gave me this.’ From my pocket I produced the photograph of the Tsarevitch. He saw the Imperial crest on the silver; I saw recognition come into his eyes. I turned the photograph over. ‘And the Tsarevitch put his initial on it. Now do you believe me? Yes, you know that face and that Imperial crest, I see. Good,’ I said coolly. ‘Now I will tell you what to do.’

  ‘A weak man,’ I said afterwards to Patrick, ‘put in a position that was too much for him, but underneath not so bad, as you said. One had to kick him, though.’ He grinned. ‘And you kicked?’

  But after delivering that kick, I felt myself trembling as I returned to Patrick and my work in the hospital. I stopped for a minute, wondering if I had the strength for what lay ahead, then I opened the door and went inside.

  When we emerged, weary and untidy, after what seemed an age of time and was indeed many hours, I felt a sense of achievement. Goodness knows, we had tamed only a little of the chaos of that terrible pest-house, but we had made a start.

  ‘I’ll tell you something about the straw-boss.’ I said to Patrick as we walked away – this time through the main gate, no pretence of hiding. ‘It might come in handy if you want to bully him.’

  ‘He’s afraid of the Tsar,’ said Patrick with a yawn.

  ‘No, not that, although it’s true, they all seem to love him and dread him at the same time. But no. He is afraid of thunder. I swear I saw him cringe in the storm.’ I looked up at the clear, starred sky. ‘That storm has passed. I wonder if we can take it as over? No, I won’t believe in symbols, although Russia does push one towards superstition.’ I was rattling on because I was exhausted. ‘I pray we see it through.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ said Patrick soberly. He took my elbow. ‘Here, steady on, you’re falling about.’

  ‘Sheer fatigue,’ I said.

  A new sort of comradeship had grown up between Patrick and me during these last hours, and I was conscious of it and happy about it, without wanting to investigate it too closely. Let it grow, I thought, if it can.

  ‘Patrick – it strikes me that while there is such confusion here – I mean even more than usual, and the watch on the mine is necessarily relaxed – this might be your chance to take Lowther and escape.’

  He didn’t answer for the moment, and I knew the same idea had already come to him, and I had only pushed it into speech. Then he said: ‘I wouldn’t leave you, Rose.’

  Lights were shining from the Lazarev house, and my old friendly enemy the gate-keeper was standing outside holding a horse. He shook his head as he saw us. ‘She’s only just back,’ he said. ‘And in what a state. Holy Mother, I ask you! Why bother, I say? We shall all die when it’s our turn. I shall stay here and wait like a Christian for God to call me. She’s in there.’ And he nodded his head towards the house. ‘And he’s in there,’ and he nodded to Mr Lazarev’s office, ‘holding his vodka like a man.’ He patted the horse’s shoulder. ‘Come on now, my beauty, let’s leave them to it. You’re my girl, you are.’ He liked horses better than men, and who could blame him?

  Marisia came to meet us at the door. ‘I heard you,’ she said briefly. ‘I rode into Vyksa myself … my father, well, never mind about him, it was better to go by myself. But it’s no good – we shall get no help there, the disease has reached the town. Cases everywhere, so they said, the Mayor himself was ill. I spoke to his deputy, he has no spine, that man,’ she said irritably. ‘I despise them.’

  ‘We shall have to put a bit of spine into him then,’ I said, all my small sense of achievement melting away. Could one ever achieve anything in this intractable country? All the forces of nature and society seemed to join together against it. Even now on Marisia’s face I could see that look of hopelessness with which I was beginning to be thoroughly familiar; even she would do nothing now without a push. ‘The only thing to be done now, Marisia,’ I said firmly, ‘is to tell your father to send an urgent message to the Governor of the district for help with sanitary measures.’

  Marisia groaned. ‘Oh, he will hate to do that. I fear it myself. Too many things I’d rather see kept quiet might be dragged out.’ And she looked at Patrick. I suppose he was one of them. ‘Oh, I fear such a visitation like the wrath of God.’

  ‘Marisia,’ I said sadly. ‘We already have the wrath of God. This is it.’ Suddenly I was aware of something warm and wet on my face, rolling down and dropping into my hand.

  ‘Why, Rose, you’re crying.’

  I put my hand up. ‘Tears?’ I said incredulously. ‘And I can’t stop. What am I crying for, Patrick? I know. I feel as though we are the only people left alive in the world. Just us three; you and me and Marisia. Is that how ordinary people feel when they are caught up in a crisis? I suppose it is. My grandmother was in India at the mutiny. She said she felt cold all the time, although it was so hot. I feel cold.’ And I began to shiver. The shivers went right through me until my whole being was trembling.

  ‘Stop it, Rose,’ said Marisia in alarm. ‘Patrick, stop her.’

  Patrick put a strong arm round me and drew me to him. ‘She’s been through too much,’ he said angrily. ‘Her clothes have been soaked and dried on her, she’s laboured for hours, she stood up to the straw-boss, of course she’s crying. She’s exhausted. Get her into some warm, dry clothes and tell the servants to bring some soup.’

  ‘The servants have all run away,’ said Marisia. ‘But I can manage. Take her upstairs, carry her and I will follow.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ I said, my teeth chattering, but Patrick picked me up and swept me up the stairs, depositing me in the room I had shared with Ariadne. ‘There, I’ve stopped crying now, see. And I can put myself to bed. But I ought not to go to bed, I ought to go to the town and see what I can do.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Rose,’ said Patrick savagely. He grabbed a robe from its hanger. ‘Here, put this on and get into bed.’

  Even in bed I still felt shivery. ‘I can’t stop shaking,’ I said.

  Patrick lay down on the bed beside me and put his arm across me. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Calm down, dearest.’

  Warmth from his body began to seep into me and my nerves steadied. A feeling of great happiness began to grow inside me. We had done well, Patrick and I, working together; I understood now the partnership that there could be between us and that together the two of us could be greater than one.
Patrick released something in me, and I believed now I could do the same for him. A feeling of exuberance arose which began to arouse my body from its langour. I lay there for a minute, taking in what was happening to me. Physical desire, so long suppressed or even ignored, now took possession of me. I delighted in it; I was so glad that I could now offer Patrick something so well worth his taking. I understand now what had been lacking in Woolwich, and his sadness. No wonder, all other things considered, Patrick had broken our engagement. But now I was urgent. And proud to be.

  I raised myself on my elbow, lifting his arm from my body. ‘Patrick,’ I whispered. ‘Patrick? This is me, Rose.’

  He didn’t answer. I looked at his face; his eyes were closed, the lines of tension were relaxed; he was in the sleep of exhaustion.

  I stroked his face gently and lay beside him. I exulted in the passion I had found in myself. But I could wait. Slowly an enormous fatigue dragged me down into sleep.

  When I opened my eyes again, I saw Patrick sitting by the window, reading by the light of a single candle. ‘You still here?’ I sat up. ‘Why?’

  ‘If you were going to be ill, I wanted to be the first to know,’ he said with a smile. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Not ill. That is a luxury I cannot afford.’

  He came over to the bed and stood looking at me. Fatigue had sharpened his features and put dark shadows about his eyes.

  ‘Rose, I’d like you to leave here and go back to the Denisovs. I wish you’d leave Russia, but at least leave here. You’ve done enough.’

  ‘No,’ I said, with decision. I shall stay. I love you, Patrick.’ My joy of last night was still with me.

  He sighed. ‘I knew you’d say that. What a fighter you are, Rose. I never really knew you.’

  ‘We didn’t know each other.’

  ‘Do we now?’

  ‘Better, I think.’ I looked at him with love. Yes, I knew him better now. I had seen him patient with frightened, confused men, gentle with the sick, refusing no gruesome task in that hell they called the hospital – and all the time ordered in mind, so that he was always in control. Yes, I knew him better.

  ‘Rose, if we come through this …’ He stopped. ‘Dearest Rose – ‘

  ‘Yes,’ I said quickly.

  ‘No, never mind. Go back to sleep now. I’ll take myself off. Tomorrow will be a big day. We’ll talk later.’ At the door he said: ‘I suppose the Denisov man is very slick and charming?’

  ‘Very rich,’ I said, ‘and certainly very charming.’

  ‘And you like him?’

  ‘I like them all. They’re all delightful to me.’

  And I snuggled back to sleep with a warm glow inside me. In spite of our terrible situation I was female enough still to be amused that Patrick was jealous.

  Two weeks later I sat on the steps of the verandah at Vyksa, writing to my sister Grizel. The sun on my back was warm, but the air had a distinctly autumnal feeling to it.

  ‘After all this,’ I wrote, ‘you will not be surprised to have had no letters. I had no time, and anyway, I think I would have been scared of sending you a germ or two back to Jordansjoy. I have had no letters myself, either, as no one dared come over from Shereshevo once Ariadne was taken home.’

  I raised my head from my letter. I had given Grizel a strictly edited version of what had gone on during the crisis of the epidemic, saying very little about my part. Patrick I had not mentioned at all. Time enough for that, I thought, when I knew what was going to happen. But I was so happy about us now. It was as if our love had been born anew. At least, it was so for me, and I thought for him too.

  There had been no physical love-making between us because all our energies were burned away in the daily toil of saving life, but it was there implicit every time our eyes met and our hands touched across a sick-bed. We had a treasure waiting to be taken.

  I was conscious that I had used myself to the full during this period, tapping energies and powers I never knew I had before. But we had worked side by side, Patrick and I, and much of my strength had come from this partnership. Nor had it been dull, for there had been jokes and laughter as well as sorrows.

  I went back to my letter. ‘I am looking forward to getting back to Shereshevo, and then to St Petersburg. I must say, I do wonder how Madame Denisov is getting on with her old great-aunt. I admit I am a bit surprised that the old Princess hasn’t managed to get out here! She’s game for anything, even at her age. What a pair she and my godfather would make.’ I was cut off from all communications with old Erskine Gowrie too. I resumed my writing. ‘Anyway, I hope to be on the move soon. No new cases of sickness here today, and none yesterday,’ I wrote. But plenty of deaths. The mortality rate had been high, sparing no class. In the mine, the straw-boss himself had gone. Patrick’s protégé, Lowther, had died also, one of the first, but there had been some strange survivors, of whom the old gate-man was one. Apparently his God had not seen fit to call him, because he had come back from the brink of death, no whit changed. During the worst, Mr Lazarev was never seen sober. But I needn’t tell Grizel that fact. ‘So then I shall be free to depart – what a lot I’ve learnt from Russia. And not only about myself, Grizel: we have been very innocent about clothes – skirts are going to be short.’

  ‘Rose?’ It was Marisia calling me. ‘You are wanted. Your presence is required.’

  I stood up quickly. ‘Is it Patrick?’

  ‘Patrick? No. I have no idea where he is. No, this is someone else.’ Solemnly she beckoned me. Her face and voice were serious, but behind the facade I caught a hint of laughter. ‘The Deputy Mayor of the town of Vyksa desires to see you. In the dining-room.’

  As we entered the dining-room the Deputy Mayor, a small plump man, bowed to us both. I held out my hand and he kissed it. Over his head my eyes met Marisia’s and we exchanged a glance full of shared knowledge.

  I suppose we were both remembering the man’s initial hostility and lethargy. But once begun, the two of us had forced him into action. Marisia, in particular, had revealed a surprising gift for organization, setting up little committees of people who in turn got up centres for their own districts which they ran themselves. ‘Soviets’, she called them – a joke, I think, because she laughed as she said it. But the idea worked pretty well, and by means of it the infectious sick were segregated and nursed, and the dead were buried district by district. I was inclined to give Marisia most credit, and she was ready to say it was my doing.

  ‘Miss Gowrie,’ said the Deputy Mayor. The Mayor himself had been amongst the dead, so the situation in Vyksa town was the exact opposite to the mine where the straw-boss had gone and Marisia’s father had survived. I rather regretted the straw-boss – there was a man inside there somewhere. The same could not be said of Mr Lazarev. ‘I am commissioned by my fellow townsmen to offer you official thanks for your labours.’ I bowed; he bowed again. ‘And to make you a presentation.’ He produced a box padded with cotton wool, and took from it a round medallion, coloured gold, on a long red ribbon. ‘I hereby present you with a medal of thanks, inscribed with your name, and with the date. You are a heroine, Miss Gowrie.’ He put the medal on its ribbon round my neck, and kissed first one cheek and then the other. Then he made me a proposal of marriage, and was refused.

  I bowed, he bowed, Marisia bowed, and then he departed.

  ‘I must tell Patrick. Where is he, do you know?’

  Marisia shook her head. ‘With one thing and another, we have hardly met lately. You know, I have been doing nothing but sleep when I get home.’

  By now I knew that Patrick shared a garret room with the music master, so I ran up the stairs to find the latter trying to get a little much deserved rest. He still spoke no Russian or English, but I had discovered one could converse in a form of bastard Latin. But when I asked about Patrick, he looked surprised. For a day and a night he had not seen Patrick.

  I was disappointed and puzzled, but confident of seeing him soon. The day wore on, and there was never a s
ign of Patrick.

  Finally, I borrowed Marisia’s cycle and rode into Vyksa to the dismal town-square where we had set up a kind of meeting-place in a room in the inn. As I cycled over the cobbles, I noticed that the market, which had been suspended, was starting up again. I made my way to the room, but when I got there I found it locked, and the inn-keeper told me that no one had used it that day, or the day before, and he was taking it back into his own service.

  With increasing anxiety I went from point to point where we had worked together, handing out medicine, advice and comfort. The sites had been modest, merely huts or stables, places offered to us out of charity, but I had been so comfortable in them, working with Patrick. Empty of him now, they seemed bleak enough. Only a few of the workers recruited by us were still in evidence, the whole apparatus we had set afoot was rolling itself up. But nowhere was there a word of Patrick. No one knew anything.

  He was gone. I took myself back to Vyksa, desperately hoping that I would find him there waiting for me, even imagining to myself the look of surprise I would see on his face when I told him of my search.

  But he was not there, nor did he come.

  I had to face the bitter fact that he was gone. For the second time, I had lost Patrick. And why? Why? It was a desperate question. If hearts can truly break, I think that my heart broke then. I did not cry, I did not collapse, but I looked out on the world with different eyes. I had been hurt once too often.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  My despair was physical in its intensity, and clouded every moment of my life; I seemed to breathe it in and eat it and drink it, so that it settled like a hard knot in my stomach. I had thought that I knew all about unhappiness when Patrick broke our engagement, but I now discovered there were new deserts to be traversed. And through it all, went this terrible question: Why? Why had he gone? Sometimes I thought he was dead, sometimes I thought he was a dirt-cheap traitor whom I should forget, and sometimes I cried because I simply longed for his presence whether he was a hero or a scoundrel.