Bloody Sunset

by Bloody Sunset (retail) (epub)

  ‘No… But your sister’s name is – Irina, and your fiancée’s Nadia—’

  ‘The Princess Nadia Egorova.’

  ‘Crikey!’

  A smile. It was a relief to see it. Then: ‘She’s beautiful, Bob. As well as charming. Truly, the most beautiful girl you ever saw.’

  * * *

  If one ever got out of this – alive – what a story for one’s children. How we brought one dowager countess, two Grand Duchesses and a princess out of Russia…

  How, indeed.

  Getting towards train time. He didn’t know the exact time, but guessed it must be about ten-thirty. There was no clock in sight, and the Count was asleep – head back, mouth open, cloth cap pulled forward over his eyes – and his watch wasn’t accessible without waking him.

  Bob had dozed for a while too. But they weren’t on the chicken-crates, the sun had moved over so that that area was no longer shaded, and they’d found this bench down at the other end. It was too close to the latrine, which stank, but after a whole night’s walking a bad smell and a few more flies didn’t count for much.

  The platform was crowded now. Soldiers, peasants, Armenian-looking characters in suits, a pretty girl in a red dress and broad-brimmed hat, groups of Kalmucks, Kirghizi, others less easily identifiable… The girl could have come straight off Piccadilly. She happened to turn her head his way when he was looking at her, held his interested gaze for a few seconds before looking away with a smile in her expression. He’d thought, Any other time, my dear… Then abruptly getting his come-uppance for that thought – like a kick in the head, focusing suddenly on a thickset man in a white shirt, dark trousers, a red brassard on his right arm and a pistol worn openly on his belt: what made it chilling was the ticket-clerk was with him, both looking around at the milling crowd – and not idly, clearly looking for someone… Bob looked away quickly, thinking Here’s where it starts… The only reason he didn’t nudge the Count to wake him was that the security man might have spotted them by that time and have caught the Count in an unguarded state as he woke and reacted to the surveillance.

  Must have spotted them. They – or the one with the brassard – would be over here, any minute.

  Comrade, I’m a Persian – did have papers, but—

  So what’s this?

  .45 revolver. British-made, Admiralty-issue, British-made bullets in it…

  Well – stole it, didn’t I. From an Englishman in Askhabad, after those swine took over… He passed a hand around his jaw, the thickening stubble which wasn’t bad for two days’ growth but wasn’t nearly close enough to an established beard yet either, and allowed his glance to drift back towards the source of danger.

  Then wished he hadn’t. The ticket-seller was pointing at him. At them… The little man’s other hand grasping the security man’s arm, and his lips in motion, gabbling. Then the other man nodded, said something curtly and started forward, shouldering his way through the crowd.

  Bob nudged the Count. ‘Trouble, Nick. Security man’s on his way over.’

  A groan: straightening himself up. And if he felt like that… ‘Look, I’ll do the talking.’

  While I – sit and shake?

  I’m a Persian. Speak some Russian but not all that much. Going to Moscow. Own plans – extending the Revolution into Persia, kicking the British out as stage one – and this Vetrov’s ideas arising from the trouble at Askhabad – convince us we have a positive contribution to make to the ultimate triumph of the—

  He saw the man coming, through a brief parting of the throng. Aggressive, swaggering. Lost to sight again now, but leaving one with the impression that he could easily be a brother to the character Nick had been playing. Proletariat, that was the word, triumph of the proletariat… Beside him, Nick was yawning, stretching, checking the time… ‘Train should be in by now.’

  ‘Don’t even know it’s left Astrakhan yet, do we.’

  ‘Oh, God…’

  Small-talk. Like ordinary people, nothing to worry them except the inconvenience of some slight delay. Although one of them, at least, had something more like a trip-hammer than a heartbeat banging in his chest. Yawning – catching that from Nick – and scratching at his stubble…

  ‘Hey – you there!’

  The shout – close to them – was brutal in its tone and loudness. Crowd milling round – a lot who’d been sitting and lying on the paving were getting up, gathering bits of luggage – cloth bundles, cardboard boxes tied with string, sacks – getting ready to fight their way into the train, and for a few more moments the man in the red brassard was still not visible. Then he was: people nearby withdrawing, distancing themselves from whatever unpleasantness might be imminent.

  ‘You, tovarischa!’

  He was standing with his boots planted well apart, left hand on his hip and right arm extended, pointing – at the girl in red, the one Bob had been eyeing. She’d been walking away – as others had been – but now she’d stopped. Hesitating: then looking round over her shoulder at the threatening official.

  He crooked a finger, beckoned.

  The Count murmured, ‘Wasn’t us, anyway.’

  Scared for her, now. With the wretchedness of knowing that whatever happened you couldn’t lift a finger. Realizing that she might have been in the line of that pair’s staring and pointing: probably had been, come to think of it now, he’d been looking at her only seconds before he’d seen them looking at him. Then his focus hadn’t been on her or any other peripheries any more, he’d seen only those two and the booking-clerk pointing.

  Unless the girl was only a chance distraction. If he had been coming to this bench…

  She’d walked back to him: he’d flicked his fingers for her papers. No one else near them, no one wanting to risk involvement. It had gone quiet at this end of the platform, there was only the gradually rising sound of the train’s approach, otherwise this was the hush of a crowd’s morbid interest in a fellow human’s predicament.

  ‘Patolicheva. Maria Patolicheva.’ Studying the papers’d she’d handed to him. ‘Artiste, eh?’ He sniggered: glancing round, an invitation to others to share his amusement. ‘Artiste, indeed…’

  ‘I’m a singer.’

  ‘Well, so am I, comrade, so am I! We might try a duet some time – huh?’ She’d put her hand out for the papers but he wasn’t surrendering them to her yet. ‘Who’ve you been singing to in Seitovka, then?’

  ‘Visiting my aunt. She’s sick.’

  Bob heard the train. The Count too: ‘Here it comes. Look, if we move quickly…’

  Because there was still some space around the girl and her interrogator. It meant virtually rubbing shoulders with him, but if there was any threat from him they wouldn’t avoid it by putting a few yards between them anyway. ‘Next time you buy a railway ticket…’

  The Count slid eel-like between some women… ‘Excuse me, comrades…’ Bob circumnavigated them, to join him at the edge of the platform. Hearing the girl say, ‘The comrade didn’t ask me for them. I thought—’

  Shriek of the train’s whistle. The crowd all on the move now. The Count shouting that the odds were they’d get a goods van at this point… Steam gushing loudly as the engine chuffed by: then brakes squealing, a few doors already open with passengers ready to alight.

  ‘We’re in luck – I think…’

  Bob thought that might have been something of an understatement, in the circumstances. Finding the girl close behind him, then; she looked more desperate than relieved – sagging, as if that encounter had used up all her reserves. Other travellers were crowding in ruthlessly as the train stopped with a jerk and the Count reached up to an opening door: sailors began emerging, jumping down. Bob shouted, Anton – help this comrade?’ He’d put an arm behind her, more or less round her shoulders – protectively, saving her from being squeezed out by the encroaching throng of peasants. The Count – he was on the step now – reached down for her hand and hauled her up.

  ‘Tovarischa.’ He’d almost
bowed.

  ‘You’re very kind. Thank you.’ Bob was in by this time: she smiled at him from the corner seat as he flopped down beside the Count, facing her. ‘Thank you very much.’ People crushing in, all seating space already filled. Oven-hot space, at that. Bob leant forward: ‘I thought you were in for some trouble then.’

  She grimaced – a wordless comment. She really was quite pretty: eye-pleasing figure, too, and the dress didn’t hide much of it. Hearing an echo of his own words – that he’d thought she’d been in for some trouble… But it had certainly helped him to forget his own predicament.

  * * *

  Dozing, on and off, as the train clattered northward. With all the windows open and air rushing through, the heat was just about bearable. One had known worse – and at least there were no flies or mosquitoes… He’d asked the girl – out of politeness only, simply not wanting to ignore her – ‘Long trip ahead of you?’ and she’d told him no, only as far as Tsarytsin. You? ‘Not even that far. Sasykolsk.’ Even by that time they’d been getting glares from several large middle-aged women in shroud-like dresses and heavy boots. The girl had smiled at him, rolling her eyes expressively as she turned to look out of the window.

  The Count had already fallen asleep. Cap over his eyes again, and the leather coat rolled on his lap. Bob recalling, in intervals of wakefulness, what the Count had told him about his mother, sister and fiancée, in their conversation on that platform.

  He’d last seen the two girls just after Christmas, having run them to earth in a tiny, almost heatless two-roomed apartment which they’d shared in a requisitioned private house, its rooms allocated to lucky applicants by the local housing committee. He’d come from several hundred versts away, disguised as a Red Guard, from some place where he and others of his old regiment had joined a brigade of the Volunteer Army. This was about to march south to join up with the Cossacks in the Kuban – the western end of the Caucasus, the area around its capital, Ekaterinodar. So this had been his last chance of seeing the girls for God only knew how long.

  ‘Of seeing Nadia, especially. Irina too, of course, but you see I’d heard from my mother that she was shortly going to Petrograd to collect Irina and take her with her to the Crimea. My mother hadn’t mentioned Nadia at all, and I wanted to be sure she’d go too, make her promise she would, and have Irina promise me they’d take her. My mother hadn’t been with the Dowager Empress since the autumn of ’17, she’d been in the country with other friends – and in the meantime Maria Feodorovna had moved down to the Crimea and now wanted my mother to rejoin her and to bring with her any of her family who might wish to come. This meant Irina only, of course. But Nadia is to all intents and purposes family – will be, for certain, as soon as circumstances permit. So that’s why I made the long trip to find them. First time I’d ever travelled as you might say incognito. I was surprised how easy it was, to make oneself believed, accepted… But I couldn’t bear the thought of Nadia being left alone in Petrograd. She could vanish – literally – thousands already have… All right, their life wasn’t what you’d call ideal, to put it mildly, but they were comparatively secure – having this dreadful little hole of an apartment, and both having jobs, hardly any money, but at least they could eat – rations were part of the conditions of employment, that’s the case more or less everywhere, now.’

  ‘What work were they doing?’

  ‘Irina qualified as a nurse in 1915. It began with my mother’s decision to allow Riibachnaya Dacha to be used as a recuperative centre. Irina started by working there, then decided to enrol as an auxiliary – the army nursing service. Quite a lot of girls of her background did this. So, at the time of the October revolution she was nursing in the military hospital in Petrograd. Following the March revolution – well, as you know, the Menshevik government were continuing the war – nothing much changed in that respect, soldiers were still being brought back to be patched together, after a fashion… Then under the Bolshevik regime conditions became worse and worse, but the work was still there to be done, it wasn’t exactly a joyride but it was – you could say, a way to stay alive. For Nadia, too, because through Irina’s introduction she had an office job, patients’ records, and so forth. She’d done clerical work – soldiers’ welfare, actually – in the War Ministry until the Bolsheviks seized power, but in her own name and title of course, so then she had to disappear. Her family’s town house was taken from them – luckily she wasn’t there when it happened – that time at the height of the burning, raping, murdering. Her parents weren’t there either – they were at their country house, expecting her to join them, but in fact her brother came for her and took her to stay with friends – Irina was there too, incidentally – and at the country house her parents were both murdered. So – luck, you see… The brother I’m talking about was of course Boris Nikolai’ich, who—’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Well. That’s when I last saw them. Boris wasn’t there, but it was he who’d told me where I could find them, and I saw him the next day, on my way out of Petrograd. He had false papers and a job in a slaughterhouse, carrying meat carcasses about. I suggested he should come with me, join the Volunteer Army – he’d started as a naval cadet, by the way, just before everything blew up – but he preferred to stay where he could look after his sister – a desire which of course I applauded – and he told me that if both girls left with my mother, and she’d permit it, he’d go with them and come to join us – if he could get to us on the Don or wherever we might be by then after he’d seen them to safety in the Crimea.’ The Count had shrugged. ‘He would have, too. He was a molodyets, young Boris.’

  Molodyets meant a spunky young man, a go-er.

  ‘The Cheka had arrested him at one time, they’d had him in the prison they call the Gorochavaya. If you’re one of the unfortunate majority you’re transferred from there to the Shpalernaya – that’s the real torture house, where the experts really get down to it. Boris was either lucky or clever, they believed his story, false identity, and let him go. My God, if they knew they’d had their filthy hands on a real live prince they’d be kicking themselves now.’

  ‘I take it the girls were never arrested?’

  ‘No, thank God. Nadia had her employment paper, and residence permit, in the name of Nadia Schegorova. If she’d had bad luck, got into some trouble as Boris did, I suppose they might have rumbled her. Even worse with Irina, she used her real name – Nurse Irina Solovyeva. Luckily Solovyev’s not such an uncommon name. But there were – are – hundreds and thousands like those two. A nurse and a secretary – undernourished, in old patched clothes… But they were lucky – to have work and a place to live. Plenty don’t – most either starve or steal or God knows what.’

  ‘So then your mother joined them in – Petrograd.’

  ‘Must have. But I had no word from them after that, not until Boris Nikolai’ich staggered into our lines. I’d assumed they’d all be in the Crimea by that time – assumed, prayed, made myself believe they had to be, that I hadn’t heard from them only because they didn’t know where I was. In any case communications were all to hell – still are, of course. When Boris arrived my first thought was that he’d have come from the Crimea. It’s a mystery to me how they got to Enotayevsk instead.’

  ‘Mystery that’ll be answered soon enough.’

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘But you and your Dobrovoltsi marched south to the Kuban. Clear across Russia, north to south – and in January, the worst of winter?’

  A nod… ‘It was not – enjoyable.’

  ‘Understatement’s supposed to be a British characteristic.’

  ‘So one has heard… Well, I’ll tell you. We were starving, frozen and under attack at every step. A lot of us didn’t get there. Our commander was Alekseev – as you know – under the overall command of General Kornilov… But you’re right, it made me think about the French in 1812 – similar conditions, and the constant attacks – in our case by Bolshevik partisan bands. The same te
chnique, you might say. And that wasn’t the end of it, by any means. When we arrived in the Kuban we found the Cossacks whom we were going to join had been routed – scattered, leaderless – their leaders had all gone into hiding in the mountains. And Ekaterinodar had fallen to the Reds.’

  ‘Since retaken by Denikin, though.’

  ‘But there were some very hard times in the months between. First Kornilov tried to take it. Disaster – and he was killed himself, in that premature attack. Denikin had begged him to wait until he was stronger, but…’ A shrug. ‘Kornilov paid for his mistake, anyway. He and a lot of others. So then Denikin took over, and first established himself at Novocherkassk – regrouping, training, equipping. Mind you, it was a march of more than a thousand versts to get to Novocherkassk to start with, and there were only a few thousand of us. About five thousand… Now he has thirty thousand, and as you know he’s turned the tables – Ekaterinodar and Novorossisk, God willing there’ll be no stopping him.’

  ‘God willing and the Royal Navy supplying – I hope… But you’ve had your share of the hard going, Nick.’

  ‘Well.’ He’d shrugged, spreading his hands. ‘What else?’

  * * *

  The Count had woken again. Bob asked him quietly, close enough to him to talk under the train’s noise, ‘What’s the programme when we get to Sasykolsk?’

  Glancing round. Seeing the girl with her eyes shut and head nodding, old women with their shawled heads close together and eyes fixed on each other’s faces as they whispered, one soldier asleep and the other gazing at the ceiling while he picked his nose… The Count murmured, ‘There’s a man and his wife who’ve worked for us as long as I can remember, and it seems they’re still at the house. My mother mentioned them in the message: she didn’t say we’re at Riibachnaya Dacha, she said we’re with old Maroussia. Maroussia Kamentseva. Husband’s name is Ivan. We’ll try to get in touch with them from the village.’