“What have hospital orderlies got to do with it?” Jennifer asks.
“Taking me to the home,” I say, knowing I’m putting on a poor show, wishing I could do better.
“You’re confused,” Jennifer says. “We’ll take you. In the car.”
“Why do you want to shut me away?” I ask.
Jennifer sighs. “I’d hardly call it shutting you away,” she says. “It’s one of the best private retirement homes in London. A lot of old ladies would think themselves very lucky to get in.”
But not me! My life is out there – on the streets – like it always has been. Once inside a Gulag, even a carpeted one, I’ll go to pieces.
“You certainly can’t continue living here,” Sonia says. “I mean, we’re not actually rich, but what would our friends think if they knew we let one of the family exist in such squalor. You haven’t even got your own bathroom, for goodness sake!”
How easy life would be for them if I were to submit to the Gulag. Then they could brag to their smart friends about their great-grandmother who was a Russian princess, knowing that the embarrassing reality was safely locked up.
“Your friends won’t find out,” I promise. “If you leave me alone, I won’t bother anybody. I’ll live out my last few days quietly here. I won’t go beyond the end of the street if you don’t want me to.”
It’s not enough! The price I’m willing to pay is not enough. But what else do I have to offer them?
Yet on the verge of defeat, I pluck at a fresh straw of hope, just as my husband would have done. I’ve heard all their arguments before, but there’s something new behind them today. A fresh edge. An urgency. Why are they in such a hurry? If I can find that out, I may have something to fight with.
“I could just stay here,” I repeat, but now I am studying their faces, searching for clues.
“If only it were as simple as that,” Sonia says exasperatedly.
“Why shouldn’t it be?”
“Because there are people who still remember what you used to be. Like the man the other day …” Sonia says, then sees Jennifer shooting her a sharp glance, and dries up.
“The man the other day?” I ask.
“It’s nothing to do with you,” Jennifer says hurriedly.
But it is! I know it is!
“We’d like you to go voluntarily,” Jennifer continues. “That would be better all round. But … you remember the doctor, don’t you?”
Oh yes, the doctor. A senior medical officer for the area – and an old chum of Edward’s. “I remember him,” I say.
“He was ready to sign the committal order right away. Only I said we should wait – to give you time to get used to the idea.”
“I’ll fight you every inch of the way.”
How many times have I said that in the past? But then I had something to fight with. Maybe I still do. Maybe …
“Isn’t it better if you go willingly?” Jennifer asks. “I know you’ll love it once you’re there.”
“You seem in a great hurry,” I say. “Is that anything to do with The Man The Other Day?”
That is what he has become – a man in capital letters, a shadowy figure who I sense is my salvation.
“He’s a journalist,” Jennifer says, now that it’s clear I’ve got my teeth locked on the bone and will not let go. “He wanted to do an article on you.”
And they want me behind bars before he has a chance to talk to me! “When’s he supposed to be coming?” I ask.
“He’s not. He wanted your address, but we wouldn’t give it to him.”
In my younger days, I would have leapt up out of my chair. Now, I struggle to my feet, my joints screaming out in protest, and stand over the two of them – a towering shrunkeness. “How dare you?” I demand. “How dare you take that sort of decision for me?”
“We … we thought …” Sonia splutters.
There must be some power left in my cracked old voice – for once, I have got them on the defensive.
“What would have been the point of it?” asks Jennifer, who’s always been the stronger of the two. “Why rake up the past again? It wouldn’t do you any good, and it would only be embarrassment to us. Edward’s standing for Parliament, and Charles certainly doesn’t want it known that anyone in my family was actually on speaking terms with Lenin.”
“I should have thought there was some cachet in that,” I say. “He was a world leader, after all.”
Jennifer shakes her head. “It’s not just Russia, is it?” she asks, and I can tell from the expression on her face that she thinks she’s being very fair and understanding. “I mean, if it was, we could explain it all away as youthful high spirits. But you’ve never stopped, have you? First there were all those hunger marches in the Thirties, then the Spanish Civil War, and finally the CND. After you were arrested at Aldermaston, Daddy didn’t dare show his face at the club for weeks.”
I laugh, in spite of myself. My Konstantin didn’t give a hang what anyone thought, but his grandson-by-adoption rarely considered anything else. And these, his daughters, have inherited the trait.
“You’ve always been so wilful, so unreasonable,” Jennifer says accusingly. “If you could only have brought yourself to behave, it might have been different.”
Behave! As if I were a child. Well, I suppose I’m as helpless as a child. “I will behave in future,” I say meekly, my bubbling anger subsumed by my need to survive.
Jennifer shakes her head. “You can’t. You never could. I suppose that’s how you got mixed up in the Revolution in the first place. I’m sorry, great-grandmother, but we’re just going to have to be firm on this one.”
My anger spills over. “Get out!” I tell them.
“Really, great-grandmother!”
“Get out, you complacent little bitches!”
Sonia lets out a gasp of shock.
“We make a lot of allowances for you – because of your age,” says the more unflappable Jennifer, “but there has to be a limit. I think you owe us an apology.”
As if they had been practising it together, they both fold their arms and jut out their chins determinedly.
“We’re not leaving until you apologize,” Jennifer threatens.
Oh you aren’t, aren’t you? I am old and weak, they are young and strong, but I will not be pushed around any more. I look for a weapon I can use. Not the chair, I’d never lift that. The vase – the vase is not too heavy.
I pick it up and hold it like a club. Pain shoots from my elbow to my shoulder. I advance towards them.
“Be careful with that,” Jennifer warns.
“Out!”
“You don’t want to hurt yourself!”
“Out!”
They rise to their feet and edge their way towards the door. Jennifer glares, but Sonia is not even looking at me. The door is open, they are standing in the corridor. “It seems to me it’s not an old people’s home you need to go to,” Jennifer says angrily, “it’s a lunatic asylum.”
I hurl the vase as hard as I can. It falls two feet from the door and smashes into a hundred pieces.
I have to sit down … have to … catch my breath. I think about The Man The Other Day. A journalist, Jennifer said, wanting to write an article and what good did I think that would do me? What good indeed? And yet, it gave me hope.
What is it you expect, foolish old woman? A piece in the newspapers which attacks your wicked great-granddaughters? A national outcry about the way they treat you? Nobody really cares about the old. Any piece the journalist wrote would merely be for its curiosity value. There is no hope. It’s over. It would be best to end it now.
Knife! Gas! Sleeping Pills! They are all available to me. Why is it that this frail, pain-wracked body of mine is so reluctant to let go? I look up at the ceiling, at the yellow, cracked paint and the battered lamp shade.
“Tell me what to do, Konstantin,” I plead. “Tell me what to do.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was late one afterno
on when Vera arrived at the palace with my sweet little Nicky.
“Why did you leave the estate?” I asked her, when I had finally finished hugging my son. “You were safe enough there, weren’t you?”
Vera shook her head. “The peasants, madam …”
“What about them?”
“They … they went wild. They killed all the chickens, and then they slaughtered the cattle and smashed the greenhouses. After that, they came up to the house. They told us to go. They said as soon as they’d emptied the wine cellar, they were going to burn the house down.”
They could have had eggs and milk all the year round, calves the next spring, tropical vegetables and fruit in the early summer. They could have used the house, perhaps as a school, perhaps as a hospital. Instead they’d indulged in an orgy of mindless destruction and were probably still drunk – while the cattle they had slaughtered for their feast lay rotting in the fields.
The same could happen to the palace, I realized. There were bands of drunken deserters all over Petrograd – how long would it be before one of them had the idea of breaking in. For Nicky’s safety, we would have to move to somewhere less conspicuous. Besides, I was no longer Anna, I was Lyudmila, and perhaps the time had finally come to let my past go.
Nicky, Vera and I moved into cheap lodgings in the Vyborg District. I had the palace reopened as a hospital during the Civil War – but I never lived there again.
They surrounded Bolshevik headquarters, an army of the walking wounded. One-legged soldiers hobbling on makeshift crutches. Sailors with stumps hanging where strong arms had once been. They should have been a pathetic sight, but they were not – their blazing rage transformed them into the wrath of God.
Some carried placards: ‘Lenin and Company – Back to Germany’. ‘Death to the Enemies of Russia’.
As I eased my way through the mob towards the front door, men spat and cursed at me. If I hadn’t been a woman, I think they’d have attacked me – striking me with their crutches until I was nothing but a bloody pulp on the ground.
And it was not just these poor men who were angry. The sailors who’d been Lenin’s Honour Guard had passed a resolution against him. The Volynsky Regiment – whom I had led out of their barracks – said that if the Government didn’t arrest Lenin, they would.
The Red Guards at the entrance parted to let me pass, and I entered our headquarters. The building was almost empty, and a feeling of black despondency hung in the air. It was hard to believe that only weeks earlier, we – especially Lenin – had been heroes. I made my way upstairs to our leader’s office.
He was sitting at his desk with his head in his hands. When he looked up at me, I saw sheer exhaustion in his eyes.
“Is it true?” I asked.
“You too, Lyudmila? And I thought you were one of the few people in the Party I could rely on to trust me.”
“You must tell me whether it’s true,” I insisted.
Ilyich ran his hand over his bald head. “When the Tsar fell, I was in Switzerland and it was imperative that I return to Russia as soon as possible. The Germans offered me safe conduct. I travelled in a sealed train, I spoke to no one from the German Government.”
“They were using you,” I said. “Don’t you see that?
“Of course they were using me,” he snapped back angrily. “They wanted me to undermine the war effort. But that was what I would have done anyway – so what difference did it make?”
I said nothing.
“I have never been a German spy,” Ilyich told me. “Everything I have ever done has been for the workers and peasants.”
What power that man had to convince. I never met anyone who didn’t leave mesmerized after a conversation with him – even though we all knew he would lie whenever the truth became inconvenient.
“I believe you,” I said.
“They don’t believe me,” Lenin replied, pointing out of the window. “Nor do many of the Party. And even those who accept that I’m not a spy, are losing faith in me as a leader. I’m not gradualist enough for them.”
He began pacing the room slowly, tiredness showing in every step.
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.
“If only I could get it all out of my mind,” Lenin said. “Even for a while. I feel as if my head were bursting.” He stopped talking, and tugged hard at his beard and ran his eyes up and down my body. “Lyudmila,” he continued, and it was the only time I ever heard him sound hesitant, “Lyudmila … could you … could we …?”
“If it will help.”
“There’s a bed in the other room.” He began walking towards the door, then stopped dead in his tracks. “No!” he said miserably. “No! I’ve failed in so much else. If I were to fail in that—”
“You’re thinking of giving up!” I said, horrified.
“What’s the point—”
“Think of the peasants toiling eighteen hours a day,” I said. “Think of the workers slaving away in hell-holes. You’re the only man in Russia who can save them.”
Ilyich banged his fist on the table.
“You’re right,” he agreed. “I must fight on. Leave me now.”
“If you’re sure …”
“As long as I have loyal comrades like you, I’ll never give up.”
But did he mean it? I asked myself as I made my way heavily down the stairs. Could he really hold out against such contempt – such hatred? Those were black days for Lenin. And for me. Days when all hope seemed to have gone. They were as black as the days which face me now.
The fire crackled brightly. Nicky and I knelt in front of it, our hands spread out to get the full benefit of the warmth while the black market logs lasted.
“I watched the bulls and cows on the farm, Mama,” Nicky said shyly.
“And?”
“I know how they get babies.”
I had been dreading the possibility of this moment, almost as much as I feared telling Peter and Sasha that I was pregnant. My mouth was suddenly dry, and I felt my heart pounding.
“How long does it take to make a baby?” Nicky asked.
I put my hands on my hips in mock-exasperation. “Enough of your foolish questions!” I said.
But Nicky stood his ground. “How long?”
I had never lied to him, not even about Konstantin’s illness, but I was tempted to lie now. I wanted to say a year, or two years, but Nicky would sense I was not telling the truth, and ask someone else. There was no running away – the problem had to be faced now.
“A baby takes about nine months to grow,” I said.
“How long’s that?”
“Our baby will be born in September, so it started growing just after Christmas.” I reached out my arm and pulled his hand towards me, in an effort to distract him. “Rub Mama’s tummy. See if you can feel anything.”
I should have known than to try a trick like that on Nicky. He pulled his hand away again. “Papa was at the Front then,” he said.
“I know.”
A tear trickled down Nicky’s cheek. “That means that the new baby … isn’t Papa’s.”
I stared into the fire as if, in the glowing shapes the splinters of wood formed, I would find an answer to my dilemma. I was terrified that Nicky would hate the baby. Or me.
My child had started to cry. And he had turned his back on me. I reached over to him, put my hands on his shoulders, and twisted him round. His head was bowed, and he was gazing down at the floor.
“Look at me, Nicky,” I said.
He did not move.
“Look at me!”
Slowly, reluctantly, he lifted his head. I felt my arms trembling. I could lose him now, lose him for ever. And if I lost him, I would lose all I had left of Konstantin, too.
That was it!
“Why are you Papa’s boy?” I asked, my voice quavering. Careful, Anna! I told myself. Get it right! Make him understand, because you only have this one chance. “Are you Papa’s boy because you think Papa did to Mama what t
he bull did to the cow?”
Nicky shook his head.
“Why then? What makes you Papa’s boy?”
“Because Papa loved me.”
“And he’d have loved the new baby, too. It would have been his, just as much as you are.”
Nicky frowned. It was an almost adult expression. “But Papa’s dead.”
I wanted to reach across and touch him, but I didn’t dare in case he repulsed me. “Papa lives on in us,” I told him. “You because you’re his son, and me because I am the woman he made me. No baby I ever had could be anything but your father’s. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Nicky wiped a tear from the corner of his eye and squared his shoulders. “Yes,” he said.
I don’t think he did. But he did understand that when I said the baby would be Konstantin’s, I really meant it. And that was good enough for him.
I reached across to him and stroked his silky hair, now grown so long that it was almost touching the collar of his sailor suit. He did not resist.
“You’ll have to be both father and brother to the new baby,” I said. “Do you think you’re brave and strong enough for that?”
Nicky nodded earnestly. “If it’s a boy, we’ll call it Konstantin.”
“And if it’s a girl?”
“If it’s a girl, you can make up a name for it,” my son told me.
“But you’ll love it just as much?” I asked anxiously.
“Yes,” Nicky said. “But if Papa hadn’t died, he’d have wanted you to choose.”
I held out my arms to him. “I love you, Nicky.”
Nicky moved closer to me and put his small arms around my neck. “I love you, Mama.”
And then we cried and cried for what seemed like hours.
A knocking on my door. “Princess! Princess! Are you in there?”
How long have I been sitting here? It was light when I last looked outside, but now darkness has almost fallen. I rise creakily to my feet and hobble across the room, carefully avoiding the pieces of the vase I threw at my great-granddaughters.
I must get that cleaned up later.
I open the door to find Mandy, the woman from the room across the corridor. Her hair is long and straggly and she’s barefoot. She’s dressed, as always, in a kaftan and flowery choker, as if the Sixties had never gone away. Who can blame her? We all hark back to our Golden Age. That’s what I have been doing all day.
The Silent Land Page 25
