by Olga Wjotas
The old woman, who had been knitting briskly as she walked, stopped and looked me up and down, although on account of her height, mostly up. I bent in order to shake hands with her, and she then set off again at a brisk pace.
“Thank you on behalf of my little chicken,” she said as Lidia and I tried to keep up. I was about to store this away as a new Russian idiom when I realised that it must be Nanny’s pet name for Lidia.
“Oh, Nanny, please may we sit down now?” pleaded Lidia. “We have been walking and walking and walking.”
“You’re the one who wanted to come out,” said Nanny. “Now that she has entered society, Shona Fergusovna, she has become ungovernable.”
“Not true! If I were ungovernable, we would have sat and rested half an hour ago.”
I was baffled. “Why don’t we have a wee seat and a chat?” I suggested.
“Oh, a seat, a seat, and have every man for miles around attempt to make my chicken’s acquaintance,” said Nanny.
Lidia darted to a nearby bench and sat in the middle. “If you and Shona Fergusovna sit one on either side of me, I shall be quite safe,” she said.
Grumbling, Nanny followed her and turned to me. “Have you ever known anyone as headstrong as my chicken? It will be the death of me, trying to keep her reputation intact.”
Now I understood. Nanny was a totally overprotective chaperone who had been setting a brisk pace to ensure that Lidia was a moving target.
“This is so exciting!” Lidia confided. “I have never been able to promenade before, nor sit on a public bench.”
Nanny, who had been rummaging in her capacious apron, sat up. “And now we must go home. I’ve run out of wool. I meant to bring another ball with me, but you distracted me with all your demands to go out.”
I saw Lidia’s eyes fill with tears, and felt I had to intervene. “Don’t worry about your knitting, Nanny. Just sit and enjoy the view.”
Both Lidia and Nanny stared at me the way everyone would back home if I suggested that a wee salad would be much nicer than a fish supper with salt and sauce.
“Nanny knits,” said Lidia. “It’s what she does.”
“What are you knitting, Nanny?” I asked.
“Knitting,” she said.
I raised my voice and repeated the question so that the old woman could hear me.
“Knitting,” said Nanny more loudly, in a tone suggesting that I was a fool as well as a lunatic.
“Yes, I know it’s knitting, but what is it?” I asked. “A cardigan, a shawl, muffatees?”
“Knitting,” said Nanny firmly, holding up her work for me to inspect. I had to admit the standard of the knitting was superb, with complex, precise stitches, but it wasn’t a cardigan, a shawl, muffatees, or anything else that had a name apart from “a shapeless mass”.
“Lovely,” I said.
“Well, we can’t sit here gossiping all day,” said Nanny. “I’ve got to get on with my knitting. Come along, my little chicken.”
Bravely trying to conceal her reluctance, Lidia stood up.
“How far away is your house?” I asked.
Lidia pointed to a mansion on the other side of the park. Nanny’s protectiveness meant that they had simply walked round and round in a circle within sight of home.
“Nanny, why don’t you go and collect your wool and we’ll wait for you here,” I suggested. “I’ll look after Lidia. I can assure you that I’m well able to ward off unwanted male attention.”
Nanny peered at me and then gave a curt nod, apparently satisfied with my ballbreaking skills. She set off for the mansion at a brisk trot.
“She’s very concerned about you,” I said to Lidia. “I’m surprised she wasn’t at your party last night.”
Lidia blinked. “But nannies do not attend evening functions. That would not be comme il faut.”
“More comme il faux pas,” I said, but Lidia didn’t seem to pick up on my Gallic witticism.
“Nanny stayed in her room,” she went on. “Knitting. But she was close enough to intervene had anything untoward occurred. And she had counselled me thoroughly on correct behaviour beforehand. For weeks.”
A gentleman walking past raised his hat to us. I knew my duty. “On your way,” I said.
Another stopped to pass a comment about the weather. “Yeah, yeah, beautiful,” I said. “Go and enjoy it somewhere else.”
Within a few minutes, word had got around and we were left undisturbed. Lidia and I beamed at one another. She really was lovely – I couldn’t blame the blokes for wanting to chat her up.
“So this is your first day out?” I said.
“Not at all – I’ve been out before,” Lidia assured me. “Probably to this very park, although I don’t remember it very well. I was brought out in my baby carriage every day, and then once I could walk, I came out either with Nanny or my saintly mother. That was until I was five. Twenty years ago.”
“And what happened then?”
“We had . . . ” Lidia’s voice faded into silence. She swallowed a few times. Then, with an obvious effort, she said, “We had a family tragedy. A terrible loss. It was very distressing. We do not speak of it.”
Her eyes filled with tears yet again, and she retrieved a cambric handkerchief from her reticule. Someone with less insight into human nature might have tried to cajole her into saying more. But I was sensitive enough to know that first, I must gain her confidence.
The best way of doing that was to confide in her myself, to explain who I was, and why I was here. But the time-travelling issue was going to be problematic. H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine didn’t appear until 1895, and I had already established that it wasn’t yet 1861. So there was little chance that Lidia would be able to grasp the concept, however simple I made it. I would have to use terms she could understand, avoiding any mention of Lorentzian traversable wormholes.
“Can you keep a secret?” I asked. “I’m not who you think I am.”
She sat up attentively, her hands clasped in her lap.
Where to start? My surname often causes confusion, and I always have to stress that I have an impeccable east-coast pedigree. The Edinburgh McMonagles are on no account to be confused with anything you might find in Glasgow. Our family approached the Lord Lyon King of Arms himself and it was ascertained that our name dates from the thirteenth-century Auld Alliance between Scotland and France. It is derived from mon aigle, my eagle, and was subsequently Scotticised with the addition of Mc. The family crest is a horizontal blue eagle on a silver background or, as the Lord Lyon himself puts it, “Azure an eagle volant argent”. And underneath is the family motto, in which the Scotticisation has been re-Frenchified into Moque Mon Aigle, Mock My Eagle, an expression indicating the futility of being jealous of us. It was very appropriate that I had found a razor-beaked eagle on my samovar: it would take a brave person to mock it.
I was about to explain all this to Lidia, but I wasn’t sure how conversant she was with Scottish heraldry or the tensions between Scotland’s capital and the conurbation to the west.
“I don’t come from here,” I continued.
“I know,” said Lidia. “You come from Scotland, a faraway country about which I know little.”
“More faraway than you think,” I said. “This may be difficult for you to understand, but I’m not from your world. I’ve been sent here to help you and look after you. Does this make any kind of sense?”
Lidia’s eyes were shining. “You’re an angel,” she gasped.
This was embarrassing. I was, after all, just doing my job, and wasn’t looking for compliments or gratitude.
“Away you go!” I said.
Lidia stood up. “If you bid me go, then of course I obey.”
“It’s just an ex–” I began, overlapping with Lidia saying, “But first–”
She knelt in front of m
e, and grasped the hem of my mauve day dress. I realised to my horror that she was preparing to kiss it. My dress had been trailing in the dirt and could have picked up all sorts of pathogenic bacteria. Whatever year it was, antibiotics were still decades away and tetanus was discovered only in 1884. If Lidia kissed my dress and had any sort of problem with chapped lips, she might be infected with Clostridium tetani and could very well end up dying of lockjaw.
“Let go of that!” I thundered. “You don’t know where it’s been!”
Lidia sprang back. “No – I can only imagine,” she stammered. “Now I see through a glass darkly, and all I know is that it comes from a glorious realm beyond my comprehension. To think I was about to defile it with my lips!”
I suspected there had been a misunderstanding. “Let me put this as simply and clearly as I can,” I said. “I’m no angel. I am Shona McMonagle from Edinburgh, librarian and former pupil of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls. Got that?”
Lidia nodded vigorously. “You have come among us in human form. Nobody must know that in reality you are a celestial messenger. Just as I have complete faith in you, you may have complete trust in me to keep your secret. Although perhaps I may tell Nanny?”
“Absolutely not,” I said. “You tell nobody anything.”
Lidia looked slightly disappointed. “But she is so devout. She would love to meet an angel.”
I spoke very slowly and distinctly. “There are no angels here. There will be no talk of angels. There will be no talk of angels to anybody, Nanny included.”
I managed to extract a promise from her only seconds before Nanny re-joined us, puffing.
“Lidia Ivanovna!” she said, fixing her little chicken with a soul-searching stare. “I hope you haven’t been talking to any men.”
“Of course not, Nanny,” said Lidia. “Shona Fergusovna frightened them all away.”
Nanny gave me an approving nod.
“We have merely been talking about – about nothing in particular, utterly insignificant chit-chat, which I can now scarcely remember. Shona Fergusovna, would you like to come home with us and we can continue our delightful yet utterly insignificant chit-chat over some tea?”
“Backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards,” grumbled Nanny.
“Just like Scottish country dancing!” cried Lidia as we set off. “Oh, Nanny, it was so beautiful seeing everyone so happy and lively, just like the old days. Do you remember how you would let me peep through the balustrade as the guests arrived in all their finery? And sometimes you would even let me stay up to watch my revered father and saintly mother waltzing together.”
“Ah yes,” sighed Nanny. “He was always the most handsome man and she the most beautiful lady. And then – but we do not speak of it.”
A single delicate tear trickled down Lidia’s cheek.
I definitely had to find out more about the family tragedy. But a breakneck march across the park wasn’t the best place to do it. I would try later.
“Last night’s party was marvellous,” I said. “I heard a number of your guests complimenting you on the champagne. Was it local?”
Lidia looked vague. “Nanny sorts out everything.”
“I ordered it from a French lady,” said Nanny. “The poor thing’s widowed, so I thought I’d put a bit of business her way. I can’t remember what she’s called – these French names are so complicated. Madame something or other.”
“Madame Veuve Clicquot?” I asked, and Nanny nodded. Another clue. The Widow took over the business in 1805 and went to the great vineyard in the sky in 1866.
“It must have been popular,” Nanny said, “because I ordered ten bottles, and there wasn’t a drop left.”
“Only ten bottles?” I asked. They get through more than that at the Morningside heritage association Christmas party.
“They were quite big, I think, weren’t they, Nanny?” said Lidia.
“Yes, they had some fancy name – Nebuchadnezzars.”
Ten Nebuchadnezzars. The guests had got through 150 litres of champagne. Even allowing for a bit of spillage while they had been getting the hang of the dancing, that was straying into Glaswegian levels of drinking.
“How much did you have, Lidia?” I asked.
“Not a drop,” she said. “I have never tasted alcohol. Nanny has forbidden me to drink until I am safely married. She says that at this point, I must keep all my wits about me.”
“There’s no better drink than tea,” said Nanny, and I felt myself bonding with the grumpy old soul. I enjoy a wee Baileys when a celebration is called for, and Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a Snowball, but now that I was on a mission, I wasn’t going to risk any impairment to my sight, hearing and muscle coordination.
“Speaking of widows,” I said, “I’ve been hearing about someone called Madame Potapova who throws the best parties in town.” Little did I know that only a few hours later, I would see the black-clad widow hurtle to her death down her own staircase.
Nanny sniffed. “A dreadful woman. Throws her money around trying to impress people. Foreign muck on golden platters and three footmen to every guest. For those who like that sort of party, that is the sort of party they like.”
I felt myself bonding with her even more.
We went into Lidia’s mansion via the grand entrance, but instead of going to the ballroom, we ascended the broad staircase to a drawing room where a samovar was already bubbling. Footmen noiselessly set out glasses for the tea and arranged three armchairs, then stood at the back of the room, immobile as statues. Lidia and Nanny ignored them as though they actually were statues. I gave them a friendly nod and was a trifle narked when they completely ignored me.
Nanny sat down and retrieved her knitting while Lidia prepared to pour out the tea. But my attention was immediately caught by an exquisite wooden model battleship, displayed on an occasional table.
“The Viva Catherine!” I said.
Lidia gave a shy, delighted smile. “You recognise it?”
“How could I fail to, with those innovative fore and aft sails? Not to mention the sixty-six guns. The pride of the Black Sea Fleet – launched in 1783, wasn’t it?”
Lidia nodded.
I circled it, marvelling at the delicacy and detail of the workmanship. “It’s fabulous. Is it a family heirloom?”
“I made it,” said Lidia. “With the leftovers from the floor. I made the table as well.”
“The table as well? The whole thing, including the tulip baluster? That’s a nice in-joke, by the way, making it in tulipwood.”
“I had to order it from China,” said Lidia. “The walnut came from Persia.”
“And a pretty kopeck they cost you!” said Nanny.
“Well worth it,” I said. “You just couldn’t get that quality of veneer with wood from elsewhere.”
Nanny sighed and laid down her knitting. “Please don’t encourage her, Shona Fergusovna. You’ve no idea the mess she makes. I tell her, it’s not an appropriate occupation for a young lady, why don’t you take up a nice tidy hobby, like water-colouring or embroidery, but oh no, it’s woodwork or nothing. Hours she spends on that parquet, hours and hours. You’ll ruin your fingernails, I say, not to mention your eyesight, but does she listen to her nanny?”
I blinked. “The parquet floor in the anteroom?”
Lidia nodded again.
“I was admiring the floor when I was–” I was about to say, “–pinned to the ground by the countess’s backside” but swiftly changed it to “–having my cup of tea in the interval.”
“It does not bear close examination,” murmured Lidia. “Two of the parallelepipeds are not quite exact, and now that I have become more proficient, I see I should have used Karelian birch instead of ash in the quadrates. I’m much happier with the results in the ballroom. The texture is so greatly improved with oak, alder an
d maple, and I’m rather pleased with the way the leaf intarsia turned out.”
“You made the ballroom floor as well? All by yourself?” I asked. The room was the size of a football pitch.
“I had to find something to occupy me during these years of seclusion,” said Lidia apologetically.
“Anteroom floor, ballroom floor,” complained Nanny, starting knitting again. “That’s the least of it. Name me a floor she hasn’t had a go at. You never know what rooms are going to be closed, what corridors are going to be blocked off, because my little chicken’s at work with her chisels and owls.”
“Awls,” said Lidia. She reached into the pocket of her dress and produced a lethal-looking instrument. “This is my favourite,” she said to me. “I always have it with me in case I need to make small repairs.”
Nanny heaved a theatrical sigh. “And yes, Shona Fergusovna, she does it all by herself. Nobody could stand working with her when everything has to be just so, and if it’s not, it all gets ripped up and she starts all over again.”
“I just want it to look nice,” Lidia faltered.
“Give us a bit of peace, I beg her, and then she has the impertinence to say she wouldn’t need to stay indoors doing woodwork if I let her go out. Maybe now she’s out in society we’ll be able to walk around uninterrupted in our own mansion.”
“Lidia, you can’t possibly give up your woodworking,” I said. If we had been in Edinburgh, I would have said, “You’ve got a flair for it.” But I felt the Scotticism would lose something in the translation, so I just said, “You’ve got a real talent.”
“That will depend on her husband,” said Nanny brusquely. “Not many men will put up with living on a building site.”
“Her husband?” I asked.
“That is why I’ve entered society,” Lidia explained. “In order to find a husband. My prospects are poor because I am so old.”
Nanny cackled. “Your prospects are anything but poor because you are so rich. But I won’t let you marry just anybody. It must be the right person.”
My mission would be obvious, Miss Blaine had said. Now all was clear. I had to help Lidia to get married. To the right person. Even if that person wasn’t Nanny’s choice.
