Prodigies

by Francis King

  Eventually, tired and irritable from dealing for days on end with affairs of state, the Tsar arrived from St Petersburg. He was perfunctory with his wife and aunt, reserving any show of pleasure for the younger of his children. He seemed hardly to notice Addy, nodding to her in greeting if they passed each other and then moving on, rarely addressing her on those occasions when she joined the family for a meal, a stroll in the garden or music after dinner, and even from time to time absent-mindedly calling her by the name of the other, older lady-in-waiting. Anna Paulovna confided in Addy that it was clear that he was bored with his wife, whose only interest was in her children and the embroidery that she carried everywhere with her, even on their excursions to the seaside, and that she surmised that this had aggravated his natural moodiness.

  When not busy with her duty of reading to the Queen, Addy passed the time reading by herself. She would go out into the extensive park and seat herself on a bench, with a copy of a novel by Balzac, Stendhal or Dickens. Fluent in both English and French, she had no need of translations. One afternoon, when she was absorbed in a French translation of Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Notebook, she looked up to see, in the far distance, the Tsar striding out – he always seemed to be in a hurry, even when arriving for a meal – with his two Borzoi dogs now scampering ahead and now lagging behind him. She watched him, wondering where he was going. Then he swung round, as though some thought of things to be urgently done had suddenly come to him, and was striding towards her. As he drew nearer, she saw the familiar look of petulance on his grey, heavily lined face. That face would have been handsome if, below the high forehead and dominant nose, the chin, did not slip away so disastrously, as though a rock-face had, near its base, suddenly suffered a landslide.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ It was almost as though he were accusing her of doing something that she ought not to be doing.

  She rose to her feet and held up the book. ‘Reading, sire.’

  ‘Sit, sit!’ He motioned to the bench. ‘There’s no need for formality. Not here.’

  She sat and he sat down beside her.

  ‘So you’re reading, are you? You always seem to be reading. I’ve so little time for it.’ He reached out, took the book from her and examined it, first the title page and then the spine. He stared at her. ‘ How can you read such dangerous nonsense?’

  Boldly she replied: ‘Excuse me, sire, it’s not nonsense. And it’s beautifully written.’

  ‘I favour reform – reasonable reform. But this fool’s ideas could precipitate a revolution.’

  ‘If there isn’t enough reform, then that is far more likely to precipitate a revolution.’

  ‘Are you arguing with me?’ He burst into laughter. It was the first time that she had heard him laugh in all the days of the visit. ‘Well, I like your spirit.’

  For a while they went on talking. He drew out a cigarette, placed it in a long gold holder, and drew deeply on it. The cigarette finished, he jerked it out of the holder, flung it away, and jumped to his feet.

  ‘Why have we never had a conversation before?’

  ‘Because you’ve never started one with me.’

  Again he laughed. Then, without any farewell, he strode off, the dogs in attendance.

  From then on, he repeatedly placed himself beside her. ‘So what revolutionary nonsense are you reading today?’ he would ask her. Twice he invited her to join him and two of the children in a game of croquet. Once he invited her to go for a walk with him and the dogs. If the Tsarina was present when he showed some such attention, she would move with a strange jerkiness or sit with a strange tenseness, her clear blue eyes fearful and wary.

  One evening, having asked her to dance, he held her unusually close, his cheek almost touching hers. Surely someone, perhaps even the Tsarina,’ would notice? Addy tried to distance herself, but each time his hand round her waist tightened and he drew her closer again. Eventually she terrninated the embarrassment by saying: ‘It’s too hot, sire. I feel giddy. May we sit down?’

  The next evening, the Tsar’s private secretary, a dark, daunting young man, already going bald, knocked on her bedroom door at the moment when, having seen to Anna Paulovna’s exigent needs, she was on the point of undressing for bed. His Imperial Highness wished for a word with her.

  ‘With me?’

  He nodded. He almost smirked. Then he held the door open for her to pass out into the corridor.

  ‘Why should he want to see me at this hour?’

  The secretary shrugged and pulled a little face.

  It was the first time that any man had made love to her. So far from being repelled by all the indications – the small paunch, the varicose veins, the wheezing – that the Tsar was long past his youth, she merely felt an additional excitement because of them. On three more consecutive nights she received the same summons.

  On the morning after the last of these summons, she came down to breakfast to find that the Tsar was not at his usual place at the head of the table. When she sat down, she was aware that the Tsarina was eying her, with a faintly sardonic expression, over her raised coffee cup. Addy tried to meet her gaze fearlessly. ‘His Imperial Highness had to leave early this morning for St Petersburg.’ The Tsarina appeared to be announcing the news to the whole company; but Addy felt, chilled and desolated, that the announcement was really for herself.

  The stay protracted itself because the doctor said that Anna Paulovna was too ill to make the arduous journey back to the Netherlands. ‘ You don’t want to leave me, dear, do you?’ Anna Paulovna asked, her once formidable character now pitiful in its dependence. Addy replied that, no, of course she didn’t. Day after day she sat in the stuffy bedroom, reading if the old woman was awake or merely staring into space and dunking of her lover if the old woman was sleeping.

  At first Addy refused to believe that she could possibly be pregnant. She had suffered from dysmenorrhoea ever since the menarche, and her periods were all too often late. But eventually, obliged to rush out of Anna Paulovna’s bedroom, where the two of them were eating breakfast alone together, in order to vomit, she realized, with horror, that there was no doubt whatever.

  Two days later, in the midst of her reading from Notre Dame de Paris, Anna Paulovna raised a hand and rapped out in interruption: ‘What’s the matter? Tell me, tell me.’

  ‘The matter? Have I done something wrong?

  ‘Now, come on, tell me tell me!’

  ‘There’s nothing, madame. Nothing at all. I don’t understand.’

  ‘There’s something on your mind. I know you so well now. Don’t try to pretend to me.’

  In her guilt, Addy thought this to be an accusation. She bowed her head. ‘I – I can’t speak about it.’

  ‘Of course you can! Don’t be foolish. We have to think what to do nest.’

  Anna Paulovna had inherited a hunting lodge in Finland from an aunt. She decided that Addy must go there to have the child, in order to avoid any scandal whether in the Netherlands or in Russia. Harriet must accompany her. Back at The Hague, the old woman told the Admiral all this. He was horrified by the news but also, though he would never have admitted it, secretly proud that Addy should have had such an exalted liaison. Before her departure, he was constantly demanding of her: ‘What’s the matter with you? What made you do such a thing?’ and telling her that she was sick, evil, depraved, mad.

  In Finland the winter had already started. The hunting lodge was situated, far from any town or even village, by an already frozen lake, with silver birches all around it. Later in retrospect it seemed to the two sisters that in the long winter months that followed Addy did nothing but read and Harriet did nothing but practise on the piano. But, when the weak sunlight glinted on the snow, they would trudge arm in arm round the lake. Because of the barrier of language, they could barely communicate with the three servants who looked after them. From time to time, however, they would go into the kitchen and, seated on straight-backed, unpainted wooden chairs, silently watch the prep
aration of a meal. Eventually they would themselves join in the cooking.

  Late one morning, as they sipped coffee beside the smoking fire, they suddenly heard a dripping sound, as of a tap not properly turned off. Together they listened, heads on one side, frowning in bewilderment at each other. Then Harriet jumped up and ran to the window.

  ‘The thaw! The thaw!’

  The water from the thawing ice was dripping from the steep eaves.

  Five days later, the baby was born. The midwife did what she had been instructed to do. Having washed and dried the wrinkled, scarlet boy, she swept him up and hurried out of the room with him cradled in her arms. Addy never saw him again. When she asked what had become of him, she was told that he had been adopted by a farmer and his wife. Were they local people? No one, not even Anna Paulovna, who died a few weeks later, would tell her.

  ‘… So somewhere in Finland a Romanov must be working as a woodcutter or a cowman or a poultry-man,’ Harriet concluded.

  ‘But later – why did Aunt Addy never marry?’

  ‘Oh, the poor dear’s foolishness continued. She seemed to be incapable of learning any sense.’

  Less than a year later, Addy had fallen in love with a country boy, two years younger than herself, gawky, reckless and ardent, who was employed in the stables. Inevitably, the other servants had begun to gossip first among themselves and then to the servants of neighbours and friends of the family. A servant of a neighbour or friend must have said something to his or her employer and the employer in turn …

  ‘It was then that the most terrible thing of all happened. It’s something I don’t like to think, much less talk about.’ Harriet paused, palms to cheeks, staring out ahead of her.

  ‘Oh, please!’

  Visibly, Harriet gathered herself. ‘ You never really knew your grandfather. By the time that you were born, everything had softened – his brain, his body, his character. Before that – he could be terrible. He was terrible to Addy.’ She paused and shook her head as though to empty it of an intolerable memory. ‘Having at least realized what was going on, he first sacked the man and then decided that poor Addy was sick, dangerously sick. He had heard of this doctor. In England. He performed this – this operation. He took Addy over to London, he had her – had her … Oh, don’t let’s talk about it, think about it!’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘No, no!’

  ‘Tell me! What was the operation?’

  ‘No, I can’t. I can’t! No one in the civilized world now does that operation. But that’s why – that’s why she is what she is.’

  ‘And what has all this to do with me?’

  ‘Well, don’t, please don’t be stupid like her. Take care! Take care!’

  In the years ahead, Alexine would from time to time again press her mother to speak about the operation. But Harriet’s response was always the same: Too awful. She could not even to think of it, let alone talk of it. No, no. Please, please, please.

  During Adolph’s absence at the wedding, the days dragged bleakly.

  The Thierrys threw an eighteenth birthday ball for Sophie; but, having long ago accepted an invitation, Alexine then had no heart for it and merely sent an extravagant present of a gold necklace set with oval and round rose-cut, foiled garnets. Sophie was not appeased by this generosity. Their friendship briefly faltered.

  Every day, in a vain effort to still her restlessness, Alexine would go for long walks with the ever increasing pack of dogs around her, or for even longer rides. That people continued to comment adversely on her doing these things alone, in no way worried either her or Harriet. Every morning she would awake thinking despairingly, ‘ Yet another day.’ Then she would await the letter that he had promised but that never came. She herself had been writing daily to him, hastily scribbled letters filled with her love and her longing to see him soon, soon, soon.

  One morning, as she, her mother and Addy were finishing their breakfast, old Daan entered carrying a package on a salver. ‘The post, madam.’

  Alexine let out an inarticulate cry of joy, leapt to her feet and rushed over to him. She grabbed the packet, not noticing that it was addressed to Harriet, not to her, and tore it open with clumsily trembling fingers.

  ‘Oh!’ Suddenly she drooped. ‘It’s for you, Mama.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘Yes. From Prussia but for you. Oh, it’s so unfair. What can have happened to him?’ She threw down the packet beside Harriet’s place. Frowning, Harriet picked it up. It contained a pile of photographs, some frayed and dented at the edges and badly foxed, others in pristine condition.

  The letter was from the Baroness. Her husband had died in Sicily – where, she explained, he had taken up residence for the sake of his failing health – and, among his effects there, she had found these photographs in which Philip appeared. Perhaps Madame Thinne would like to have them as a memorial? He and her husband had been such close friends.

  Harriet raised her lorgnette and through it began to examine the photographs one after the other. Alexine bent over her shoulder, examining them with her. Addy went on methodically eating some cheese, totally uninterested even when Harriet explained: ‘That Baron’s widow has sent some photographs of Philip.’

  For both Harriet and Alexine there was something eerie about these representations of the man who would once have been sitting at this table eating his breakfast with them and who was now dead. The art was too new and therefore seemed to them to be too close to sorcery; and there was such a profusion of these images, which showed Philip doing such an extraordinary diversity of everyday things – reading a newspaper, raising a glass of wine, buttoning up his jacket – each action frozen forever.

  ‘That must be the Baron,’ Harriet said, pointing to a marmoset of a man, with a bedraggled beard and a hat tipped rakishly over an eye, leaning on a cane, while Philip, standing behind and a little to the left, towered over him, ‘ Someone else must have taken that. I wonder who?’

  ‘Perhaps one of the servants.’

  ‘Possibly.’ But would a servant be capable of working such magic?

  Then Harriet came on a scene of Philip dressed as she had never before seen him, not in a formal, black or dark-grey suit, with fastidiously starched and ironed shirt, and a stiff detachable collar and cravat, but what looked like a pair of baggy fisherman’s trousers, ending several inches above his bare feet, and an open-necked shirt of roughly woven wool. Beside him, staring intently into the lens with what might be terror, was a boy of fourteen and fifteen in a sailor’s cap, his feet also bare.

  Harriet examined that photograph with extreme care, holding it up the light from the window. ‘Who can that be? The Baron’s son?’

  ‘Has he got a son?’

  Harriet shrugged. Again she held the photograph up to the light. Her small eyes narrowed, she bunched her mouth. No, the boy was all too obviously an Italian peasant. His feet were grimy, there was a faint down where a beard was already beginning to grow.

  Eventually, having thumbed through all the photographs, Harriet put them down with a sigh. She felt a vague bewilderment, even alarm, but she could not have said why. ‘Well, it was good of her to send them to us. I must write to thank her. I didn ‘t know that the Baron had died. Well, I never met him. And the odd thing is that your father never spoke about him. They must – they must have been close.’ She sighed. ‘It all seems to be so long ago now.’

  That evening, when Harriet and Addy had gone out on a visit, Alexine, who had refused to accompany them, went into the little room that her mother now used as her study and crossed over to her desk. There was a drawer in which she kept all correspondence that awaited an answer. The Baroness’s letter and the photographs would probably be there. Harriet, unlike Alexine, was obsessively tidy, and already the letter and the photographs had been tied into a neat bundle with the same blue tape with which Philip used once to secure his correspondence.

  Alexine did not bother to reread the letter, written in an erratic
French with many mistakes of spelling. She sat down in her mother’s chair, and began to go through the photographs, staring at each for several seconds on end. Suddenly, as one image after another of her father miraculously flashed up at her from the cardboard rectangles, she realized that she had never really known him. With her and everyone else at The Hague, he had always been so tense, forceful, formidable, correct. But here – here in these photographs, taken over what was clearly a period of years – he was totally relaxed, always smiling, untroubled, untidy, happy. The man depicted might be an identical twin, born with none of his own strength of will and fervour of ambition. Again she thought with a mixture of wonder and regret: She had never known him.

  Photography could do that, she realized. Yes, it was a kind of sorcery, revealing what was hidden, reviving what was dead, interpreting what was foreign. Repeatedly she went back to the photographs, whenever her mother was out, and repeatedly, with infinite slowness and sadness, she would look at each of the photographs in turn, as though there still remained secrets that they had yet to yield up. Perhaps, if she could only be granted a similar number of photographs of Adolph, she would also be able to approach a step or two closer to the heart of the mystery that he, like everyone else, posed for her.

  It was then she made her decision: she would learn how to take such photographs herself.

  Alexine, Harriet and Addy had once visited what its owner, an Englishman called Robert Laycock, called his ‘Daguerrian Gallery’. Having married a Dutch woman, he had first settled in The Hague as a painter of miniatures. But with the advent of photography that trade had dwindled and, reluctantly and sadly, he had at last decided that he would have to abandon it for this new one. His wife was his assistant.

  He worked in a tall, narrow building in which he and his wife – they had no children – also lived. On the ground floor there was an overfurnished, overheated reception area and office, behind which there was a staircase only just wide enough to allow passage for his female clients in their ample skirts. The staircase wound up past the living quarters and finally emerged onto the flat roof of the building, where he had had constructed what was in effect a glasshouse. On a dais stood an upright chair and a table; behind the chair there was tripod supporting a clawlike metal clamp to grip his sitters’ heads.