Adamson’s strong, wind-tanned face was lit by a smile of some sweetness, but his voice was sardonic as he said:
‘Don’t tell me what she feels or I may have to do something about it. You can put your mind at rest, though, I won’t. Apart from the fact that I can’t stand talking to her, it’d be impossible to deal with the consequences in a place like this.’
Nikolai concealed his instinctive anger at the American’s disparagement of Evelyn and was about to speak when they both heard voices outside the window. Then the door opened and in came Natalia Petrovna and her daughter, followed by both Evelyn and Sergei. Her face was brightly alive in a way the two waiting men had rarely seen, and her eyes were alight. She almost danced up to Nikolai as she said breathlessly:
‘Uncle Nikki, have you heard? Oh, I know Sergei shouldn’t be here, but you will forgive me for bringing him, won’t you? I thought you would want to know, and you would have had no reason to believe me. But he will tell you. They were all talking about it tonight. Oh, go on, Sergei Ivanovitch, tell him.’
The outburst convinced Bob that his first suspicion was wrong. His heart stopped thumping in his chest. Like Nikolai, he turned to the Russian officer and waited.
Sergei apologised formally for his presence in the house and then said far more quietly than Evelyn had spoken, but with almost equal triumph:
‘They are here, Nikolai Alexandrovitch. In Archangel. They landed at Murmansk some time ago, but now they have taken Archangel and the Bolsheviki have fled.’
‘Who’, said Nikolai in a voice that sounded as sharp and cold as ice, ‘are they?’
‘Us,’ said Evelyn incoherently but with the happiest of smiles on her beautiful lips. ‘The English. Oh, and some Americans too, Mr Adamson. Under Admiral Kemp and General Poole. Everything is going to be all right now. They’re here. Isn’t it wonderful?’
‘They didn’t do it all themselves, you know, Evie,’ said Sergei in a tone of amused indulgence. ‘Captain Chaplin played his part.’
‘Oh I know, Sergei Ivanovitch,’ she said, the basic generosity of her character displaying itself for once. ‘I know that if the Russian officers had not organised the coup the landing could not have been made so easily, but isn’t it wonderful?’
Robert Adamson did not stop to analyse the anger that caught at his throat as he saw her turn so confidingly – almost lovingly – to the Russian, whom he had always considered to be a self-important, dangerous, melodramatic fool; he just said in a biting voice:
‘“Landing” seems an over-friendly word for what sounds to me like an invasion. How many people did they kill?’
The joy died slowly out of Evelyn’s face, leaving it pale and pinched. Her voice was a little hoarse, too, as she repeated, ‘Kill? Why should they have killed anyone?’
Disregarding Nikolai’s restraining hand on his shoulder, Bob moved right up to her and, looking down into her upturned face, he said:
‘People get killed in invasions, Miss Markham. How did they do it? By shelling the town from the sea?’
She shrank back against Sergei, who immediately put a protective arm around her waist and smiled tauntingly at the American, whom he considered to be dangerously unsound, almost a Bolshevik himself.
‘Really, Adamson. There is no need to be so unpleasant.’
‘Very well, I shan’t interrogate Miss Markham, since she obviously knows nothing, but you tell me: shelling?’
‘A little, I gather, just to silence the batteries of guns at the mouth of the Dvina. There were no casualties.’
Seeing that Bob was about to burst into intemperate speech, Nikolai intervened.
‘Evelyn, will you please take Dindin up to bed? It is very late, and you will all be exhausted with the excitement. I am happy for you that your countrymen are here; you must be feeling very relieved.’
She turned to him in gratitude and moved out of Sergei’s embrace. ‘Thank you, Uncle Nikki,’ was all she said, but she looked no happier as she went upstairs with Natalia Petrovna and Dindin, who had been chatting to one another about the dance, hardly listening to the angry talk that swirled about them.
Quite soon everyone in the town seemed to know that there had been no casualties up in Archangel and as soon as she came to accept that, Evelyn quickly regained her delight in the arrival of the Allied army. She began to feel that she was dancing away the time until the advance reached Shenkursk. Sergei was sometimes busy on some secret business of his own, but she had become acquainted with enough of the other young men to rely on partners at the endless dances or escorts to picnics. She took up riding again and after she had rushed through her share of the housework and given Tallie and Sasha their lesson, she would often join small parties on forays out into the surrounding countryside, visiting tiny picturesque monasteries or particularly beautiful views.
It was a country of forests interspersed with marshes, lakes and rivers and she became quite accustomed to standing on the edge of some vast, silvery-blue sheet of water at nine or ten at night in full daylight, watching the duck fly past in strict formation, or listening to the sound of the myriad birds that seemed to inhabit the fringes of the great forests.
It was on one such evening that Sergei renewed his serious pursuit of Evelyn. She had almost forgotten his importunate proposals and was entirely relaxed in his company. That evening she was standing peacefully beside him, looking up at the birds flying across the low sun, when he took her arm. She thought he was directing her attention to some special sight, and turned eagerly to find out what he wanted. At the sight of her face, lovelier than he had ever seen it in the soft, white light, he seized her other arm and with a quite frightening intensity said:
‘Evelyn, how long are you going to keep me on a string like this? You know how much I love you, and you let me touch you, be with you, see you every day, and yet you keep me away as though you had a barbed-wire fence around you.’
His choice of words was the most unfortunate he could have produced if he had thought for weeks, and memories of her brother and John, and all the horrors of the war that was still being waged so far away came tumbling back into her conscious mind. The rosy colour faded into a pale greyish pink and deep lines appeared between her nose and chin.
‘How could you, Sergei Ivanovitch? I told you I could never love you and I trusted you. You have been a soldier, too. How could you so betray a man who is risking his life for freedom?’ The words of the last sentence were ones that she had often used to herself as she battled not to care for Sergei, and her voice was full of the accusation she wanted to direct against herself.
His eyes were dangerous and his mouth suddenly looked cruel. For a moment Evelyn was physically frightened of him and in a flash of memory thought of Georgii’s description of his cousin’s temper. But Sergei took visible control of himself and after a pause in which she could hear him breathing through his teeth, he said:
‘I do not forget. But it is far too long for anyone to remain missing. You must know perfectly well that he is dead. But it is convenient, isn’t it? It means that you can flirt to your heart’s content, drive a man to the very brink and then leave him hanging. If I did not love you so deeply, I could play that game with you. I could probably be far nicer to you. But it is eating into me, Evelyn. I can’t wait like this for you to wake up to reality.’
The angry tone of his voice helped Evelyn to hang on to her promise to Johnnie and forget all the things that Sergei made her feel. She understood, as she had not in the last few weeks of dancing and picnicking, how unfair she had been to enjoy his company and his admiration. A tiny part of her mind, of which she was thoroughly ashamed, enjoyed the violence of Sergei’s protestation and thrilled to his suggestion that she was making him mad with desire and love. But most of her was sorry for it, and she stepped a little way away from him to say:
‘Sergei, I never meant to flirt – I didn’t understand. I thought that since you knew everything about my situation and still wanted to take me to dan
ces and riding and picnics, it could not be unfair of me to accept. But I see that it was and I will stop it now. I am sorry.’ He came to her at once and taking her hands in an almost painful grip tried to make his peace:
‘Yes. You did tell me. I just didn’t quite believe it. And’, he added, looking into her face, ‘I’m not certain that I believe it now. No, don’t say anything else. Let’s go back. I’ll just have to try to make you see sense.’
He was turning to untether their horses just then and so he did not see the thinned lips and angry eyes of his love. She had apologised and he ought to have done so too; not suggested that he could break down her constancy to John. She was quite silent on the ride back into Shenkursk, and made herself refuse to see Sergei for at least the next week, until he forced himself to apologise and promise faithfully never to mention marriage again.
Then she forgave him, and let him dance and ride with her once more as she waited for the arrival of her countrymen, who might, perhaps, bring letters. She still told herself that she believed that one day the letter would come to tell her that John had survived.
Chapter Ten
It was not until halfway through September that any of the invading force actually reached Shenkursk. By then winter had begun to close in once again. The nights were dark, and the days were becoming shorter and shorter. The pretty sleighs that had been put away for the summer were taken out again to be polished up ready for the first snows, when the wheeled carriages would have to be stored under canvas covers in the stables behind Shenkursk’s richer houses. Evelyn and the other ladies unpacked their sables from the protective linen bags in which they had been kept during the hot weather and set about reorganising their wardrobes for the cold.
Andrei Alexandrovitch’s mother’s fancy-dress trunk was raided yet again, but this time for velvets, fur trimmings and heavy silks. Bob watched Evelyn making the clothes in which she went out evening after evening and tried to mock himself out of his resentment. He would remind himself that he disliked talking to her, that her opinions exasperated him, that he did not enjoy her company; but he could not help wishing that she spent more time with him. One evening Sasha came into Bob’s room when he was struggling with an article on the background to the Allies’intervention in North Russia. He looked up at the sound of the door opening, hoping against all expectation that Evelyn might have come to talk, and be sensible and feeling and warm. At the sight of Sasha’s small dark head peeping round the door, he said kindly enough in Russian:
‘Well, Sashenka, what’s the trouble?’
‘I’m so bored, Uncle Bob. It’s horrid now Evie is always out or busy sewing. She never plays with Tallie and me now.’
Adamson smiled and ruffled the boy’s hair.
‘I know, Sashenka, but she always reads to you when she puts you to bed, doesn’t she?’
‘Yes, but it’s not the same. Tallie and me used to help her cook and when she was doing laundry or mending she told us stories and helped us with our drawings – things like that. She never has time now. And she forgot to take my picture to her room. I’d done it specially for her.’
‘I guess you should tell her, Sasha. Maybe she hasn’t noticed how much she’s changed,’ suggested Bob.
By chance he overheard the result of his advice as he passed the children’s bedroom that evening. He caught only the end of Sasha’s protest, but he heard the whole of Evelyn’s answer.
‘Oh Sasha,’ she said, and he thought there was a note of sadness in her voice. ‘I wish I knew what to do.’
‘Well I’ll tell you, Evie: stay here with us and stop going to all those horrid parties,’ came the quick, bright reply. Adamson heard her laugh ruefully.
‘It’s not that easy, Little Dove. You see, Sergei and Georgii are my friends – most of the time – and they think as I do about the English army that is fighting to keep the Bolsheviki from helping the Germans. It helps me to be with them instead of always here with Mr Adamson and even Uncle Nikki, who both think that my people ought not to be in Russia.’ Then, as though she had suddenly remembered that it was a five-year-old child to whom she was talking, she went on: ‘But you must not worry about the soldiers or the Bolsheviki. Promise me, Sasha?’
‘Oh yes, Evie, of course. When do you think they’ll get here?’
‘Who?’
‘Your soldiers, of course. I know they will beat the Bolsheviki and the Germans.’
There was silence and then Evelyn’s voice came through the door muffled as though she were speaking very close to the boy:
‘I hope you’re right, Sasha.’
‘And what will happen then? Will they go on to Petrograd and put everything back like it was before?’
‘I don’t know. Sergei thinks they will. But we mustn’t think about all these kind of things now. It’s much too late at night for that. Which book would you like tonight?’
‘It can’t be very late, because you’re going out, aren’t you?’ For the first time there was a hint of panic in the child’s voice and Adamson waited, a little ashamed of eaves-dropping but badly wanting to know what she would say. There was quite a long pause. Then in a voice of soft, warm kindness that he only dimly recognised, she said:
‘I don’t have to go, Sasha. Not if you want me to stay.’
‘Yes I want you to stay with me, Evie.’
Evelyn came self-consciously to the dinner table that night, wearing her ordinary house-clothes. She was grateful to Nikolai for making no comment on her sudden decision to stay away from the evening’s party and when Andrei Alexandrovitch said, ‘Well, I had not expected to see you here this evening, Evelyn,’ she almost snapped at him:
‘You all seem to think that I am addicted to pleasure. I can enjoy a quiet, rational evening sometimes, you know.’
‘Now, now. Please don’t misunderstand me. I meant only that tonight is sure to be a celebration that you would have enjoyed. After all, the first Allied troops arrived here this afternoon.’
Her expression of astonishment told them all that this was the first she had heard of the matter, and Adamson took it on himself to give her the details.
‘Two hundred US troops started by river from Berezhnik yesterday and they “took” the town today. Did you hear nothing?’
‘No,’ she said as though dazed. ‘There were no shots, were there?’
He shook his head.
‘Thank God for that. No, I knew nothing about it. What does it mean?’
His voice was dry as he said:
‘That the attentions of the increasingly efficient Red Army will be directed at this town and there will be a series of pitched battles and people will be killed.’
‘Adamson!’ came a sharp protest from across the table. The American looked up as he said:
‘Andrei Alexandrovitch, you cannot deny that the whole intervention is an act of gross stupidity – and provocation. Such a pitiful number of Allied troops is going to be an irresistible invitation to Trotsky’s army. Your celebration in the town is likely to be cut short.’
At just that moment there was a series of explosions. Evelyn jumped up from the table, her face whitening under their eyes.
‘Oh, God, what is that?’
Nikolai put a large, comforting arm around her shoulders and drew her to the windows. He wiped a patch so that she could see out and pointed to the myriad colours splattering up against the black sky.
‘Fireworks, my dear child, at the party you cut.’
She covered her face with her hands and they could see that her whole body was shaking. Muffled, her voice was hard to hear, but Adamson at least understood:
‘I am sorry. What must you think of me? I am sorry.’
‘Evie, my child, don’t,’ said Nikolai. He gently pulled her hands away from her eyes and was relieved to see that there were no tears. He was about to say something to comfort her when she said:
‘It’s all so difficult. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what’s right any more. I hate it
. I wish to God I was at home.’
The big Russian took her back to the table and made her sit down again. With his hands gently resting on her shoulders she had no option but to sit still. She looked down at the tablecloth and tried to regain her self-command. At last she looked up again, apologised for making a scene and picked up her spoon.
It was not until winter had truly arrived near the middle of November that she found any kind of resolution of her incessant thoughts. In the interval she had attended some parties and allowed Sergei to take her for exhilarating dashing drives in the Avinkovs’luxurious sleigh, which, unlike Nikolai’s workaday version, was drawn by four ponies. Each time she returned from such an expedition, Bob Adamson would notice that her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright and wonder whether it was just the effect of the sharp chill or whether the colour and light had been instilled in her by the Russian officer’s caresses. Once, when she looked particularly happy and almost sleek, he was driven to say:
‘Do you know what that man’s job is here in Shenkursk?’ She looked at him, puzzled.
‘Sergei? Is he doing a job?’
‘Of course he is,’ answered Bob as irritated as he had ever been. ‘How else do you suppose he got here or is supported here? He is conscripting local men for the White Russian forces.’
‘Conscription,’ she repeated, dazed both by the American’s tone and by what he was telling her. He wanted to shake her, but Nikolai’s warnings made him try to be reasonable.
‘Yes, hadn’t you heard? The only reason why they are here in Shenkursk is so that they can net more peasants for this civil war.’ He saw that she had put on her haughty, disbelieving expression that hid her like a mask, and so he said almost viciously: ‘If you don’t believe me, ask him.’
‘I shall. He will be at the dance tomorrow night. I can ask him then.’
But she did not, because by then the most astonishing, wonderful news had come down to Shenkursk by field telephone to the commanding officer of the Allied forces in the city, and from him to all the inhabitants who were interested. The Hun had surrendered. The war was over.
The Longest Winter Page 16
