Dolly kept awake on the journey to St Petersburg, more or less. Eventually she explained her insomnia. She waited till Ariadne, still convalescent, was dozing, before she said quietly: ‘I am really quite worried.’
I looked up in enquiry.
‘I heard yesterday that Peter had been detained by the Third Bureau and then questioned.’
‘Arrested, you mean?’ I said with horror.
‘No, as I say: detained and questioned. They had to let him go, of course. It’s all nonsense, but Aunt Irene’s friends are so extremely conservative and reactionary – I can say as much to you – and they hold meetings in her room. She thinks we don’t know, but naturally we do. And it’s one of these “visitors”’ – Dolly almost snapped the word out in her anger – ‘who has become suspicious of Peter.’ She sighed. ‘He’s always been suspected of having “unsuitable” friends.’
‘I’m glad they let him go.’
‘Yes.’ Dolly took up a fold of her skirt and pleated it between her fingers. She seemed reluctant to meet my eyes. ‘I think it only fair to say the episode may really have been directed at you.’
‘What? What can you mean?’
‘They have underhand, dirty ways of applying pressure, and your having got to know the Heir – and now having come into this magnificent inheritance – may have earned you enemies.’
‘Father Gregory, you mean? Peter warned me against him. But surely the Third Bureau hate him also?’
Warningly, she said: ‘Rose, in this terrible world no one can be sure who is honest and who has a double face. Yes, perhaps Father Gregory is your enemy, but you may well have others too. And it is sometimes difficult to know who pulls which string. I thought I’d warn you.’
‘Could Peter be in danger? Real danger?’ I thought of Vyksa and the men rotting there. Aloud, I said: ‘I thought people like Peter did not go to places like Vyksa.’
‘I had a cousin die there,’ said Dolly simply.
The train rumbled on for a few minutes; the carriage was hot and airless, full of stale luxury. Then Dolly said, half to me, but also to herself: ‘But then Russia is a terrible country. And the revolution, if it ever comes, will be a terrible revolution.’
It was a memorable comment to come from the lips of that spoiled, idle and luxurious woman.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Events sometimes creep, sometimes stumble, and sometimes march boldly forward. For me, from now on, they galloped.
For the moment, I was still living with the Denisov household, but I had suggested to Dolly that I might now arrange to find an apartment of my own which I knew she felt as a sort of threat. Possibly her intimation to me that I might have brought trouble to Peter was her counter-move in the game we were playing. But Dolly was a shrewd observer of the political scene, and she was quite right to greet the news of the detention of her brother both with alarm – for after all, anything could happen in Russia – and, at the same time, with cool scepticism – for he was an aristocrat with good connections at Court.
Peter himself was frankly disdainful. ‘Oh yes, they came and requested me politely to go with them. I almost refused, but thought better of it. In the end they were obliged to apologize and let me go. Such rubbish.’
‘I blame Aunt Irene,’ said his sister vindictively.
‘Yes, it was one of her friends, no doubt, who took exception to me. Probably I didn’t bow to him as humbly as he expected when we last met. They’re a thin-skinned lot.’
‘I shall speak to her.’
‘No, don’t. Leave the old lady in peace.’
‘Peace! Have you seen her since her visit to Shereshevo?’
‘Yes, I saw her flashing past me in her carriage, accompanied by a horseman,’ said Peter drily. ‘And very antique and 1850-ish it looked – which I suppose was her heyday.’
‘Her mind is in the present strongly enough, as I can affirm.’ Dolly clapped her hands together to emphasize her point. ‘The minute I stepped into the house I was summoned to her presence and put through my paces. I believe I managed to keep some things to myself, but not much.’
We were sitting at a late breakfast the day after our return to the house which backed on to Molka Street. Everyone was there, Ariadne, Peter and Edward Lacey, with Dolly sitting by the bubbling tea urn and me managing the coffee pot. The curiously cosy, intimate atmosphere which seemed to spring up so easily in Russia had made us all linger around the table long after we had finished eating and drinking.
‘There is certainly gossip in St Petersburg about Spala and the fact that the Heir has been ill,’ admitted Peter. ‘But it remains a bit vague and general, the common herd knows nothing specific.’
‘I expect the tales are the wilder because of it,’ said Dolly.
Peter nodded. ‘But within a small tight circle the truth is known – that he is very ill indeed. The Tsarina clings to the belief that there will be a cure. A sort of miracle. Possible, do you think, Rose?’
‘It may be true. Such things can happen.’ I moved uneasily.
‘And of course, you are the object of much speculation. They know about your inheritance, and there are rumours about the part you played in the epidemic at Vyksa. In some circles that makes you a heroine. In others,’ he added wryly, ‘alas, not.’
‘Madame Denisov – ’
‘Dolly, please,’ interrupted that lady.
‘Dolly thinks I may have endangered you,’ I said bluntly. ‘Do you think so?’
‘No, no I don’t.’ He gave a startled look at Dolly, who was cross that I had spoken and began to mutter something about having ‘suggested it in confidence’. ‘No, it was I who was being attacked, no doubt about it. If there was going to be pressure on you, it would come directly, I’m sure. And you will have enemies at the centre of power. But friends, too.’ And he gave me a sweet smile.
‘I’m glad you think it was nothing to do with me. Because if it had been, I would have gone home at once,’ I said.
‘No,’ Peter said quickly. ‘Never. We wouldn’t have let you go.’
‘You can’t go yet, Rose,’ said Ariadne more reasonably. ‘The ice will be closing in soon and no ships can get through then.’
‘There is the railway,’ I pointed out.
‘But you aren’t going, my dear girl,’ said Madame Denisov. ‘We want you here, and we hope you want us. I am sorry I alarmed you by what I said. It is sometimes hard to know when to speak and when not. I thought I must warn you a little.’
‘This is no time to instruct a visitor in the intricacies of Russian politics,’ said Peter. Hard to tell if he was more amused than cross with his sister, I thought. She looked flustered.
‘Well, an unwary step, you know,’ she began.
‘A British passport is a great protection,’ put in Edward Lacey.
‘There speaks the innocent Englishman,’ said Peter with a laugh. ‘If Rose here was to disappear, or if you were, do you suppose a British passport would be any protection then? Or that the British Ambassador could do anything?’
I thought about Patrick, and about the two Englishmen who had been imprisoned in Vyksa, and I wondered how many other secret prisoners there were. Was it possible that Patrick was now one? The terrible thought came to me suddenly. But then I thought, no, Marisia would have known and told me. Oh, where was Patrick? And why had he gone? I never really forgot him. He was always there in the back of my mind.
‘It is frightening,’ I said to Peter. ‘I wish it had not happened to you.’ If he was an opponent of the rule which had created Vyksa then I was on his side.
‘Oh somewhere, somehow I have brushed against a man or a woman who is active in revolutionary politics. Perhaps I even dined with someone like that, or lent them a book or walked in the park with them. A little would be enough. Anyway, my name got on to a list in the Third Bureau’s offices. It will stay there now.’ He sounded quite cheerful. ‘I dare say it is on more than one list and has been for a long time. But they are a slow-moving, unme
thodical lot.’
I found his thoroughly Russian way of laughing at what he took seriously both irritating and frightening.
When the party broke up, with Edward and Ariadne planning to go riding together, Edward took the opportunity of all the bustle about us to say quietly: ‘If you truly want to go home, I can arrange it for you. My sister is hiring a new English nanny for the new baby, and the old one is returning; you could travel together.’
‘No, I mean to stay.’ My eyes wandered towards where Peter and Dolly stood talking in the window embrasure. ‘I think I have a job still to do in Russia.’
‘Ah.’ Edward gave me a keen look. ‘That inheritance.’
‘I must see the lawyers. I will know more about what I must do then.’
‘When do you see them?’
I hesitated. ‘I made an arrangement to go tomorrow, but I have half an idea I might just hurry round today. Catch them spontaneously, before they have a chance to work out their cautious plans as lawyers do. Anyway, I’d like to see them today, I think. I’m an impatient person, I’m afraid.’
‘Why not go today then? I’ll take you if you like.’
But before I could make any plans I was summoned by an imperious message from Princess Irene.
‘Better go,’ said Dolly. ‘Have you been yet since we got back? No? Well, we all have to make our devoirs to her and you are no exception. Her rule isn’t a light one. Still, I wonder what she wants?’
‘I’ll go and find out.’ And I went to my room to collect the jewelled Fabergé ball containing the portrait.
The Princess was sitting down when I went into her bedroom. A pretty little sofa had been drawn up to face the window, and she was sitting there in the sunshine with the diamonds at her throat and ears glittering. I thought that she wore her jewellery with more conviction than any woman I had ever seen. She had always worn rings and bracelets in profusion, but they had been antique of setting and in need of cleaning. Now diamonds glittered freshly, and rubies and emeralds glowed. ‘You’ve had your jewellery re-set,’ I said spontaneously.
She stood up and held out both hands, for my admiration, not for me to hold. ‘A mark of my new life, is it not?’ She seated herself again and patted the cushion beside her for me to join her. ‘And that’s what I wanted you to see. It’s a miracle I should be so revived. All your doing.’
‘I don’t know that I did anything. Anyway, I don’t want to claim the credit. Let it be your own miracle.’ I produced the box containing the Fabergé ball. ‘Here is your portrait back. I shan’t need it now.’
‘But you used it?’ she asked eagerly.
‘I looked at it occasionally.’
‘Ah.’ She leaned back and drew in a satisfied breath. ‘I knew it. Your young strength supported me. I felt it. That has always been a happy, lucky portrait.’ She opened the box and drew out the ball and touched the spring. Then with a blissful expression, she gazed on her youthful face. ‘I will tell you a secret: for years I have not been able to look at this picture with satisfaction. The pain of seeing what I had been and knowing what I had become was too great. But now – ’ and she raised bright eyes to me – ‘now I can study it with pleasure again. My looks are coming back. Soon I shall look like that again. It’s happening already. I knew it at Shereshevo; now I’m sure. Can’t you see it?’
What could I say? How could I tell the harsh truth to that eager, aged face? ‘You do look much better. But nothing returns quite the same, does it?’ I urged gently.
‘Naturally, I don’t believe I shall go back to what I was as a girl, or a young married woman. I’m not a fool. But I believe I shall recover the looks I had when I was in my prime,’ she said complacently. ‘They depended on my bones, I had beautiful bones, it was always said. Nothing can touch beauty from the bone, you know. Indeed, it was always there, and now that my health and spirits have come back, my looks have come back too.’
‘All right,’ I agreed, laughing. Impossible not to respond to this dogged optimist.
‘And no pain,’ she continued. ‘No more pain. For that I thank you, my dear.’ And now she did take hold of my hands, gripping them tightly so that I could feel her thin old ones, like bits of wood. ‘I’m grateful.’
Gently, I disengaged myself. I hoped the remission from pain would last, but at her age it seemed unlikely. As if she read my thoughts, she said: ‘But I shall live for ever.’
‘You know that’s not possible.’
‘For a very long while yet, then.’ And she emphasized her words with a decided little clap of her hands. She looked at me mischievously, no mean feat in itself at her age, but she achieved it. ‘And after all, if a long while is long enough, it counts as forever.’
‘What would you call a long while?’ I asked.
‘Ten years,’ she said in a practical fashion. ‘Ten years will do me.’
Ten years, ten months, ten weeks, I thought.
‘Oh, at your age ten years is nothing, of course, but to me at mine, it is everything,’ she said.
Then she remembered she had a grievance. ‘So,’ she said. ‘At last you’ve come to me. I have to send orders in this place to get anyone to visit me, and then they don’t come. You took your time.’
‘I came,’ I said.
‘Move into the light and let me look at you.’ I obliged. ‘You’ve grown taller.’
‘Impossible. I’m thinner, I suppose. That may make me look taller.’
‘No, indubitably taller,’ she pronounced. ‘Girls your age can grow. It is a very good sign, very good indeed. I grew an inch myself when I was your age. I grew into a beauty, as it was. And you will do the same.’ Then she glanced at me slyly. ‘A beauty – and a woman of property.’
‘Don’t pretend you did not know it might happen,’ I said sharply.
She shrugged. ‘Take some advice: manage your own affairs without help from my nephew Peter.’
‘I’m taking advice from no one but my lawyers at the moment,’ I said, a bit grandly perhaps. ‘I shall probably visit them today. The office is near here, I find.’
‘Ah well, never mind.’ She seemed amused. ‘I won’t attack you now. I have my own idea about you, and what we shall do for you.’
She always had, as far as I could see. The resilience of both Dolly and the Princess amazed me; they simply ignored any protests from me, and went on with their plans. It was true that both of them, from time to time, had emotional outbursts, but then they recovered, forgot all about it, or so it seemed, and went on as if nothing had happened.
Then I played a game of cards with the Princess and as I won (I was determined to), she was glad to see the back of me. I went down to my room and put on my hat, and buttoned myself into my coat. I was going to see Mr Dundee before anyone stopped me.
It was a perfect early autumn morning, but already the air had a crisp feel to it. I supposed I was now rich enough to buy myself the softest and darkest of sables to wear, but somehow the idea seemed ludicrous: Rose Gowrie in sables did not seem to match with the girl who had ridden out the Vyksa storm. I looked at my hands. They still bore the scars of that period, but they would disappear; the scar to my spirit might be part of it for ever. I had met Patrick there again, I had loved him there again, more deeply than ever before, and at Vyksa I had lost him again.
My lawyers occupied a large set of offices which combined sobriety with respectability to just the right degree. They had no warning of my arrival, but the bustle produced by my coming conveyed to me as nothing else could what an important client I was to them. Mr Dundee himself appeared, to greet me and to take me to his room, where an assistant helped me to a chair. I was perfectly able to sit down unassisted, but he seemed to assume that the rich are frailer and less able to manage for themselves than the poor. Or perhaps it was a simple act of courtesy to a young woman – like the glass of sherry and the wine biscuit produced on a silver salver …
It was an old-fashioned room to which I had been ushered, with a red Turkey carpe
t covering the floor and a red plush tablecloth on the big table by which I sat. Mr Dundee had a roll-top desk almost head-high in papers, so that he seemed to sit in a little cave of his clients’ business documents. A domestic touch was provided by a photograph of Mr Dundee’s wife, flanked by an aspidistra plant in fine leaf.
After a pause, during which he pretended to read a letter on the desk in front of him, Mr Dundee took off his gold-rimmed spectacles and said: ‘I am glad you came in today, Miss Gowrie.’
‘Unexpectedly, I am afraid.’
‘The greater the pleasure, my dear.’ He put his spectacles on again and then he really did read the letter in front of him. ‘I am glad you came, because I have something to give to you.’ He fiddled with the paper-knife from a handsome desk set. ‘You know I will be reading to you the provisions of your godfather’s will tomorrow. And as you may know it takes some months to carry out a will?’ He looked at me enquiringly.
‘Yes, I do know that.’
‘I think I may go so far ahead of things as to say you will be handsomely rich, and that you need not wait till the will is proved – that’s the word we use, my dear; proved, we say – before using some of your money.’
‘I did not come to ask for money,’ I said.
‘I never supposed you did, my dear, but I thought I would just take the opportunity of mentioning it. As I say, I am glad you came to see me because I have a letter to give you.’
‘What?’ I half rose from my chair. Could it possibly be from Patrick?
But he dashed these hopes away. ‘Some weeks ago, I received a letter from your godfather, my late client, which I was not to open until today. When I opened it, I found it contained yet another letter, which I was instructed to give to you to read before our business meeting.’ He handed a letter in a long, ivory-coloured envelope. ‘This letter I now give to you.’ With a bow he handed it over. ‘Take it to that seat by the window my dear, and read.’ With great tact he left the room.
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