Zoya

by Danielle Steel

  “To Nicholas!” he toasted as he stood alone in the room, and then with a smile,“… to Zoya!”

  CHAPTER

  30

  The next few years flew on angels’ wings, filled with people and excitement and parties. Zoya bobbed her hair, which horrified him, she discovered cigarettes, and then decided they looked foolish. Cecil Beaton wrote about her constantly, and about their famous parties at the house they built for the summers on Long Island.

  They saw Nijinsky's last performance in London, and Zoya grieved when she heard that he had gone mad and been committed to an institution in Vienna. But the ballet was no longer a part of her life, except for performances they occasionally attended with the Vanderbilts or the Astors. They attended polo matches, receptions, balls, and gave a number of their own, and the only time she slowed down at all was in 1924, when she again found out she was pregnant. The Prince of Wales had just been to Long Island to visit them, after attending the polo match there. She felt quite ill this time, and Clayton hoped that meant she was having a girl. At fifty-two, he yearned to have a daughter.

  She was born in the spring of 1925, the same year that Josephine Baker became the rage in Paris.

  And Clayton's heart leapt with joy when he first saw the baby. She had the same fiery red hair as her mother and brother Nicholas, and she made her presence known to her admirers at once. She cried the moment her commands weren't obeyed, and she was the apple of his eye from the moment she was born. Alexandra Marie Andrews was christened in the christening gown that had been in Clayton's family for four generations. It had been made in France during the War of 1812, and she looked like one of the imperial duchesses when she wore it.

  Her hair was the color of her mother's, but her eyes were Clayton's, and her personality was her own. By the time she was two, she was in command of even her brother. Nicky, as he was called, had the gentleness of his father, and the lively humor that Zoya's own brother had had. He was a child everyone admired and loved, most especially his mother.

  But Sasha, by the time she was four, had her father wrapped around the proverbial little finger. And even ancient Sava ran in terror when she was angry. The dog was twelve, and was still with them, ever at Zoya's heels when she was in the house, or with little Nicky, whom she had adopted.

  “Sasha!” Her mother exclaimed in despair, as she came home to find her wearing her best pearls, or an entire bottle of “Lilas,” which she still wore, and which Clayton always brought her. “You mustn't do things like that!” Even the nurse had a difficult time controlling her. She was a young French girl they had brought back with them from Paris, but no amount of rebukes or gentle reproaches ever impressed the tiny countess.

  “She can't help it, Mama,” Nicholas apologized for her from the door. He was eight years old by then, and as handsome as his father. “She's a girl. Girls like to wear pretty things.” His eyes met Zoya's and she smiled. He was so kind, so forgiving, so much like Clayton. She loved them all, but it was Alexandra, Sasha, as she was called, who tried her patience.

  At night, they were going to the Cotton Club, to dance the night away in Harlem. And only months before they had gone to Condo Nast's incredible Park Avenue apartment for a fabulous party. Cole Porter was there, of course, and Elsie de Wolfe, who wanted to do a house for Zoya in Palm Beach, but with her fair skin she had no love for the sun, and was content only to visit there briefly each year, when they went to stay with the Whitneys.

  Zoya was buying her clothes from Lelong that year, and was very fond of his charming wife, Princess Natalie, who was the daughter of Grand Duke Paul, and a Russian like Zoya. And Tallulah Bank-head had scolded Zoya more than once, telling her that she didn't use enough lip rouge.

  Fancy-dress balls were the rage, and Clayton particularly enjoyed them. He was fifty-seven years old, and he was madly in love with his wife, although he teased her mercilessly that year, telling her that she was finally old enough to be married to him, now that she had turned thirty.

  Hoover had been elected president, defeating Governor Al Smith of New York. Calvin Coolidge had decided not to run again. And the governor of New York was Franklin Roosevelt, an interesting man, with an intelligent wife, although she was not very pretty. But Zoya enjoyed her company, and the conversations they shared, and she was always pleased when the Roosevelts invited them to dinner. They saw the play Caprice with them, and although Clayton was bored, Zoya and Eleanor loved it. They saw Street Scene after that, which won the Pulitzer. But Clayton confessed he had a much better time at the movies. He was crazy about Colleen Moore and Clara Bow. And Zoya was equally fond of Greta Garbo.

  “You just like those foreign types,” he teased, but she didn't seem foreign to anyone anymore. Zoya had become totally integrated in the life of New York after ten years. She adored the theater and the ballet and the opera, and had taken little Nicky to see Rosenkavalier with them in January, but he was shocked to see a woman playing a man's role.

  “But that's a gir/!” he had whispered loudly as the people in the next box smiled. Zoya held his small hand gently in her own, and whispered a suitable explanation, that it had to do with the quality of their voices. “That's disgusting,” he announced and sank into his seat as Clayton smiled, not sure he didn't agree with him.

  Nicholas was far more interested in Lindbergh's flights. And Clayton and Zoya went to Lindbergh's wedding to Ambassador Morrow's daughter Anne, in June, shortly before they moved to Long Island for the summer.

  The children were happy there, and Zoya herself loved to take long walks along the beach, talking to Clayton or their friends, or just being alone sometimes, thinking of the summers of her youth, at Livadia, on the Crimea.

  She still thought about them sometimes, it would have been impossible not to. The figures of the past still lived on in her heart, but the memories were dimmer now, and sometimes she had to grope for their faces. There were framed photographs of Marie, and the other girls, in Fabergo frames on the mantel in their bedroom. The one where they all hung upside down was still the one she loved best, and little Nicholas knew their names and faces too. He loved to hear about what they had been like, what they had said and done, the mischief they'd gotten into as children, and it intrigued him that he and the Tsarevich shared the same birthday. He liked to hear about the “sad parts,” too, as he called them … the parts about Grandfather Nicolai, after whom he was named. She told him about their arguments and their jokes and their disappointments, and she assured him that she and Nicolai had fought almost as much as he and Sasha. At four, he thought she was becoming a terrible nuisance. And there were others in the house who shared his view. She was spoiled by her father, beyond what even Zoya liked, but there was no scolding the child in his presence.

  “She's a baby, darling. Don't upset her.”

  “Clayton, she'll be a monster when she's twelve if we don't discipline her now.”

  “Discipline is for boys,” he told his wife, but he never had the heart to reprimand Nicholas either. He was kindhearted to all of them, and played with them endlessly on the beach that summer.

  King George was healthy again in England by then and it always unnerved Zoya when she saw photographs of him. He looked so much like his first cousin, the Tsar, that it was always a shock to see his face gazing out from a picture. His own little granddaughter, Elizabeth, was only a year younger than Sasha.

  The thing that impressed little Nicholas most that summer was a performance of Yehudi Menuhin's in New York. The child was a prodigy on the violin, and only three years older than Nicholas, who was fascinated by the way he played. He talked about it for weeks, which pleased Zoya.

  Clayton was reading All Quiet on the Western Front on the beach, and he was amusing himself that summer with the stock market. It had been dancing up and down since March, and people were making absolute fortunes. Clayton had bought Zoya two diamond necklaces in the past two months, with just a fraction of his profits. But she was distracted by the sad news that Diaghilev
had died in Venice in August. It seemed to close another chapter of history for her, and she talked about him to Clayton as they walked on the beach after she had heard the news.

  “If it hadn't been for him letting me dance, we would have truly starved. There was nothing else I knew how to do,” she looked up at Clayton sadly, as he took her hand, remembering how hard her life had been then, the awful apartment near the Palais Royal, their almost nonexistent meals during the war, it had been a hard time, but it was long in the distant past, and she looked up at him with a smile. “And then there was you, my love….” She never forgot how he had saved her.

  “Someone else would have come along.”

  “Not someone I could have loved as I love you.” She spoke gently. He bent to kiss her, and they stood for a long time in the last fiery sunset of the summer. They were moving back to New York the next day. Nicholas had to go to school, and Sasha was going to begin kindergarten. Zoya thought it would do her good to be with other children, although Clayton wasn't as sure. But he always deferred to Zoya on matters of that nature.

  They had dinner with the Roosevelts again almost as soon as they got back. They had also just returned from their summer home in Campobello. And a week later, the Andrews gave a party to celebrate the onset of a new social season. Prince Obolensky came of course, as he always did, and a glittering cast of hundreds.

  The month seemed to fly by with parties, theater, balls, and it was October before they knew it. Clayton was worried that his stocks weren't doing well, and he called John Rockefeller to have lunch with him, but he had gone to Chicago for a few days, so he'd have to wait to see him. And two weeks later, Clayton was too upset to have lunch with anyone. His stocks were plummeting and he didn't want to upset Zoya by telling her, but he had put all their assets into the stock market months before. He had done so well, he was sure that he could triple his family fortune.

  By Thursday the twenty-fourth, everyone was dumping shares, and everyone Clayton knew seemed to be in a panic. But none more than he, as he went to the stock market himself. He came home in terror that afternoon, and things were worse the next day. And Monday was a day of fresh disaster. Over sixteen million shares were dumped, and by nightfall, Clayton knew he was ruined. The stock market closed at one o'clock, in a vain effort to stop the frantic selling of shares, but for Clayton it was too late. The Exchange was to remain closed for the rest of the week, but he had already lost everything they had. All they had left were their homes, and everything in them. The rest was gone. Clayton walked all the way home, and he felt a weight on his chest like a stone. He could barely face Zoya as he walked into their bedroom.

  “Darling? … what is it? …” His face was gray, as she turned to face him. She had been brushing her hair which she had grown long again because he hated the fashionable bobs so much, but he barely seemed to notice her as he walked into the room and stared into the fireplace with bleak eyes, and then slowly he turned to face her. “What's wrong?” Her brush clattered on the floor and she ran to his side. “Clayton … Clayton, what is it?”

  His eyes reached into hers, and she was suddenly reminded of her father when Nicolai had been killed. “We've lost everything, Zoya … everything … I was a fool….” He attempted to explain everything to her as she listened with wide eyes, and she put her arms around him and held him as he cried. “My God … how could I have been so stupid … what will we do now?”

  Her heart almost stopped, it was like the revolution again. But she had survived it before, and this time they had each other. “We'll sell everything … we'll work … we'll survive, Clayton. It doesn't matter.” But he wrenched himself from her arms and paced the room, frantic at the full realization that they were ruined, and his world had come crashing down around him.

  “Are you crazy? I'm fifty-seven years old … what do you think I can do? Drive a taxi like Prince Vladimir? And you'll go back to the ballet? Don't be a fool, Zoya … we're ruined! Ruined! The children will starve….” He was crying as she took his hands in her own, and his were icy.

  “They will not starve. I can work, so can you. If we sell what we have, we can live on it for years.” The diamond necklaces alone would keep them fed and housed for a long time, but he shook his head miserably, he understood the situation far better than she. He had already seen a man he knew leap from his office window. And she knew nothing of the enormous debts he had allowed to accrue, knowing he had the money to pay them whenever he wanted.

  “And who will you sell it all to? All the others who've lost their shirts? It's all worthless, Zoya….”

  “No, it's not,” she said quietly. “We have each other and the children. When I left Russia, we left on a troika with nothing, with rags, with two of Uncle Nicky's horses and what jewelry we could sew into the linings of our clothes, and we survived.” They both thought at the same time of the misery of her Paris apartment, but they had lived through it, and now she had him and the children. “Think of what the others lost … think of Nicky and Aunt Alix … don't cry, Clayton … if they could be brave in the face of that, there is nothing we can't face … is there, my love….” But he only cried in her arms unable to face it.

  That night they went down to dinner, and he barely spoke. She was trying to think, to make plans, to decide what to sell and who to sell it to. They had two houses, all the antiques Elsie de Wolfe, now Lady Mendl, had helped them find, her jewelry, paintings, objects … it was endless. It was like planning an escape, as she made suggestions and tried to reassure him, but he walked upstairs with a heavy step, and as she talked to him from her dressing room while she undressed, she couldn't elicit an answer from him. She was desperately worried about him. It had been a terrible blow, but after surviving everything else that had happened in her life, she refused to be beaten now. She would help him fight, help him survive, she would scrub floors if she had to. She didn't care, and then as she listened, she wondered if he'd left the next room. He hadn't answered her in several minutes.

  “Clayton?” She walked into the room in one of the lace nightgowns he'd bought her the year before in Paris. She gave a gasp as she saw him, slumped on the floor, as though he had fallen, and she ran to his side, and gently rolled him onto his back. But he stared at her with unseeing eyes. “Clayton! Clayton! …” She began to sob as she shouted his name, she slapped his face, she tried to pull him across the floor, as though anything she did might revive him. But he didn't move, he didn't see, and he could no longer hear her. Clayton Andrews had died of a heart attack, the shock of the crash too much, the prospect of losing everything more than he could bear, and as she sank to her knees and cried as she held his head on her lap, she looked down at him in disbelief. The man that she had loved was dead. He had left her. Desolate, and alone, and poor again, the dream that had become her life was suddenly a nightmare.

  CHAPTER

  31

  “Mama, why did Papa die?” Sasha looked up at Zoya with her huge blue eyes, as they rode back from the cemetery in the Hispano-Suiza. Everyone in New York had come, but Zoya had scarcely seen them. She felt as though she were in a daze as she stared down at the child, her heavy black veil concealing her face, her hands in black gloves, with her children sitting in mute anguish beside her.

  Nicholas had stood beside her at the funeral, a tiny man holding her arm, his own eyes filled with tears as the choir sang the agonizingly sweet “Ave Maria.” But there were others like him who had died in the past week, most by their own hand, but a few, like him, felled by the blow they couldn't endure. It wasn't fear, it was grief, but whatever it was, she had lost him.

  “I don't know, sweetheart … I don't know why … he had a terrible shock, and … he went to be in heaven with God.” She choked on the words, as Nicholas watched her.

  “Will he be with Uncle Nicky and Aunt Alix?” Nicholas asked quietly, and she looked at him. She had kept them alive for him, but to what end? What did it matter now? Everyone she had ever loved was gone … except her children. S
he pulled them close to her as she left the car, and hurried into the house ahead of the chauffeur. She had invited no one to the house, she didn't want to see anyone, didn't want to have to explain, to tell them anything. It was going to be bad enough to have to tell the children. She had decided to wait a few days, she had already told most of the servants that they were free to go. She was keeping only one maid and the nurse, she could cook for them herself. And the chauffeur was going to leave as soon as she sold the cars. He had promised to do everything he could to help her. He knew several people who had liked Clayton's Alfa Romeo and the Mercedes she used, and the Hispano-Suiza had been coveted by all. She only wondered if there was anyone left to buy them.

  Old Sava came to her and licked her hand as though she knew, as Zoya sat next to the fire in their bedroom, staring at the spot where he had died only days before. It seemed incredible that he was gone … that Clayton was no more … and now there was so much for her to do. She had called their lawyers the day after he died, and they had promised to explain everything to her.

  When they did, it was grim. It was as bad as Clayton had feared, and perhaps worse. His debts were absolutely enormous and there was no money left at all. The lawyers advised her to try to sell the house on Long Island at any price, with everything in it. She took their advice, and they put it on the market for her. She didn't even go back to get her things. She knew she couldn't have faced it. Everyone was doing much the same thing, the ones who weren't committing suicide, or abandoning their homes in the middle of the night, to avoid bills and mortgage payments.