The Beginning of Spring

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  ‘Is that so?’ asked Selwyn, his attention caught. ‘I should have thought the opposite.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got three of them,’ Frank persisted. ‘You’ll see them in a minute. My wife has been called away urgently to England. The youngest one needs looking after sensibly while the others are in school, and I suppose she might be taught a few letters and numbers. When they come back from school, at mid-day, they’ll want to go skating, if the ice is holding anywhere, or a walk in the Prechistnaya.’

  ‘Should you want me to live in this house?’

  ‘Where are you living at the moment?’

  ‘I’m in the female assistants’ dormitory, on the top floor of Muir and Merrilees.’ She added, ‘I should prefer to live in your house.’

  ‘We shan’t need to go for a walk in the Prechistnaya,’ said Ben, coming into the room. ‘Dolly won’t walk unless she’s going somewhere, and there’s only one place I want to go, and that’s the Nobel garage in the Petrovka.’

  ‘Go and fetch Dolly.’

  ‘And Annushka?’

  ‘Yes, and Annushka.’

  Ben disappeared, and Selwyn got to his feet. ‘Your decision is as good as made,’ he said. ‘I’ll be on my way.’ He was going to the Foundling Hospital. Wrong, of course, to feel impatient with him or to criticize him as he hurried, on errands of mercy, to the hidden rooms of the poor, the unlucky, and the bereaved into which he could pass, although a foreigner, with charmed steps. This, to be sure was partly because he was often thought to be touched by the finger of God.

  As the three children came back, Annushka silent under Dolly’s stern control, it struck Frank that they should be showing, so much more than they did, the effect of motherlessness. They ought either to be quieter or more noisy than before, and it was disconcerting that they seemed to be exactly the same. He would have been heartbroken if they had shown the least symptom of unhappiness, but was disturbed because they didn’t. Annushka was, perhaps, wearing too many shawls and too many layers of clothing in the efficiently-heated house, and she had two holy medals round her neck now as well as her gold cross, but she looked pampered rather than neglected, and as if she were enjoying herself.

  ‘This is Dolly,’ he began.

  ‘Dolly is Darya?’ Lisa asked.

  ‘Yes, Darya, Dasha, Dashenka. But I’m English, and I’m Dolly.’

  ‘Dolly, this is Lisa Ivanovna. She’s coming to look after you for, I don’t know how long for, as long as is necessary, perhaps a few weeks, it might be longer than a few weeks.’

  Dolly and Lisa, as was correct, shook hands, and the two self-contained creatures stood for a moment opposite each other, in the green-shaded lamplight, reserving judgement.

  ‘Ben, shake hands with Lisa Ivanovna,’ Frank said.

  ‘Are you going to live in our house?’ asked Ben.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘It would be better if you made up your mind.’

  ‘You don’t know what would be better for me,’ said Lisa equably. ‘You’ve never seen me before.’

  ‘Yes, I have. I’ve seen you at Muirka’s.’

  ‘At the handkerchief counter,’ Dolly added.

  ‘Have you ever noticed us?’ Ben asked. ‘We go there quite often.’

  ‘No, I haven’t. I’m sorry if I’m disappointing you.’

  ‘You’re not disappointing us,’ said Dolly. ‘We want to know whether you’re observant or not.’

  Frank felt that Lisa would find looking after the children easier if she got used to the way their minds worked. Nellie had said to him often that she didn’t know where they got it from and that although she didn’t want them to grow like her own family, she hoped that at least they’d grow less unlike other people’s children. And yet she had left them, she had sent them back on the train from Mozhaisk, like parcels.

  He suggested that Lisa should go and give notice to Muir and Merrilees, and take up her duties in Lipka Street next Monday.

  ‘Yes, I must work my week out.’

  ‘Bring all your things on Monday. You’ll have a room to yourself here.’

  She looked, for the first time, appalled, and he realized that she had never, either in her village or in Moscow, slept in a room by herself before.

  The children had gone off to the kitchens, where he knew they would be demanding bread dipped in tea and joining in a discussion of Lisa Ivanovna. Voices could be heard, louder and softer as the kitchen doors opened and shut to admit more people. Perhaps children were better off without a sense of pity. And then again perhaps Lisa didn’t need pity, and he remembered that Selwyn had been about to tell him, but hadn’t reached the point of telling him, why he had said she was unfortunate, and why she had been in tears behind the counter at Muirka’s.

  They had settled her wages at four roubles, sixty-seven kopeks a week, the same as she’d been getting at the store, but with no deduction, of course, for board and lodging. Although he did not feel particularly proud of the offer, he could see that she thought it more than fair.

  ‘There’s only one other thing, Lisa Ivanovna. Your hair.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’d rather it wasn’t in plaits.’ He wasn’t compelled to give a reason, and he didn’t give one. She nodded to show that she understood. ‘Is there anything more you want to ask me?’

  ‘Yes, do you have a dacha?’

  ‘Yes, we do have one, at Beryoznyk. The children like it, of course, but I don’t go there much myself. I’d really prefer to get rid of it, it’s so damp, but I don’t have to think about that yet, it’s still winter.’

  ‘It’s nearly spring.’

  He hoped she wasn’t going to start contradicting him, also that she might smile occasionally. What he couldn’t imagine was her shedding tears, in Muirka’s or anywhere else. The outside world didn’t seem to make enough impression on her for that.

  12

  Frank rang up Kuriatin to ask him whether there was any further news of the Japanese offer for the Mammoth. ‘If you can’t get an export certificate I’ll have to look elsewhere. I have to clear the land, then let the site and the workshops together. There’s been an opportunity cost of three thousand roubles a year on that site ever since my father died. I’d rather sell, of course.’

  ‘And the trees, what about the trees?’

  ‘They go with the site, of course, but they’re not much, a few willows and alders.’

  ‘More than a few, Frank Albertovich.’

  Like all merchants, and all peasants, Kuriatin was obsessed with the chance to cut down trees. A dream of buying the site had begun to torment him. As to the Mammoth, Frank had not expected a direct reply quite yet. But neither had he expected Kuriatin to change the subject abruptly, and to say, with a laugh which seemed to blast the fragile telephone system, ‘And so you are suited? No more English governesses, no more old women.’

  ‘I’ve found a girl, yes. She’s not a governess.’

  ‘Let me tell you a story from the district of Orel, from my part of the country,’ shouted Kuriatin. ‘What does it show? Why, simply the necessity of ruling in one’s own house. A peasant took a young woman to wife …’

  Kuriatin frequently told these stories, though, to do him justice, Frank had never heard him tell the same one twice. This might simply be because they weren’t, as he always claimed they were, from the District of Orel, but invented to suit the occasion.

  ‘With a hundred other women to choose from he took a lazy one, a lazy girl who did everything in the house as badly as possible, and made him sell his horse to buy her fine clothes. Meanwhile the bread she made was so heavy that it had to be thrown to the pig, and the pig died in great pain. And the linen she spun was so coarse that when the husband got into bed with his wife the sheets tore off his skin. In the end he said to the woman, “You have caused me to sell the horse, the pig is dead and you have borne no children. So now you can get between the shafts and live on oats and rye, and do a horse’s work.” In this way he showed he w
as master in his own house. Remember that story, because there’s a great deal of benefit to be got from it.’

  ‘There’s no benefit at all,’ Frank replied. ‘I object to it in principle and in detail.’

  ‘You don’t understand it. You have no peasants in England, and therefore no stories.’

  ‘We have plenty of stories,’ said Frank, ‘but the woman always comes off best.’

  ‘All the more reason to remember this one.’

  At the Press the work went forward with a satisfactory lack of incident, making a pattern of its own, from the entries in the order book through to the finished orders, checked, counted and stacked for delivery. There was only one problem, he told Tvyordov, and that was the European type for the hand-printing of Birch Tree Thoughts. Still, there were several places he hadn’t tried yet.

  Tvyordov was distributing, and went on rattling back the type, without looking at the labels, while the difficulty was put to him. Apparently it did not interest him, or rather there was something else which interested him more. Still rattling away, he said, ‘A man lives under the rule of nature. He can’t look after children, and he can’t live alone.’

  ‘Why not?’ Frank asked. ‘Selwyn Osipych lives alone.’

  ‘Perhaps, but he’s a man of God.’

  ‘I can’t see why a man shouldn’t live alone, whoever he is, as long as he stays sober.’

  ‘That’s what you say, Frank Albertovich, but your wife left only a few days ago and you’ve taken a woman into your house already.’

  Tvyordov said this in no spirit of reproach. When you looked at it, his opinion was not very different from Kuriatin’s.

  Far more important, as far as Frank’s peace of mind was concerned, was the judgement of the household in Lipka Street. This depended on Toma and the cook, and to some extent on the yard dog, Blashl, a loyal but very foolish animal whose attachments were intense. The yardman had no opinion apart from Blashl’s. Toma, speaking for all, but without explaining how they reached their conclusions, reported to Frank that they would be glad to welcome Lisa Ivanova next Monday.

  ‘Well, did she come?’ Frank asked that evening. The children were waiting round the supper table, which was already laid with several kinds of bread and a dish for cold boiled cabbage dressed, as it was Lent, with sunflower oil instead of butter. Ben was complaining that Annushka wanted, against all precedent, to say grace. ‘Oh Lord Jesus, who with five loaves and two fishes,’ gabbled the stoutly-built little girl.

  ‘She doesn’t understand what she’s talking about,’ said Ben.

  Frank was overcome with the same uneasiness that he had felt when the Chaplain had waved his sermon at him, amiably enough, but without expectations. Lukewarm, but not quite cold, unbelieving, but not quite disbelieving, he had fallen into the habit of not asking himself what he thought.

  ‘It won’t do any harm if she says grace,’ he said.

  ‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ said Dolly, looking up for the first time. ‘My teacher says there is no God.’

  ‘I never heard anything about this before.’

  ‘Oh, Lord Jesus, who with five loaves …’ persisted Annushka.

  ‘I have a different teacher this year,’ said Dolly. ‘Last year, we had Anastasia Sergeevna, this year we have Katya Alexeevna.’

  ‘She’s ugly,’ said Ben, ‘she’s got enough black hair on her arms to stuff a mattress.’

  Dolly ignored him. ‘She’s thought about everything for a long time, and she says there is no God.’

  Lisa came into the room. She turned towards Frank, simply to make sure who was supposed to be keeping order, but the gesture seemed to be enough in itself, and the children, who had really wanted to fall silent, fell silent. So too did Frank, because Lisa had cut off her hair. Perhaps she had got someone else to cut it off for her, because it seemed to have fallen acceptably into shape.

  ‘That’s how my teacher’s hair is cut,’ said Dolly. Frank was not sure whether the resemblance frightened her, or not.

  Quiet had descended, the room was at peace, and everybody sat down to eat. Frank tried to avoid looking at Lisa. Cutting her hair had made a great difference to her appearance. Her great beauty was her eyes, which were not particularly large and quite close together, but a long oval in shape and dark grey in colour, with dark lashes, the lower lid raised a little, as though she was always expecting to look into a bright light. It must be awkward for her at first, with all of them sitting round. When he did take a glance at her, though, it occurred to him how much a person’s face changes at mealtimes. Lisa’s face, so pale, so placid, so undisturbed even by speaking and smiling, was distorted now by the large piece of white bread she had crammed in, and her right cheek jutted out while her fine young jaws moved mechanically to and fro and her white throat dilated in the task of swallowing potato soup. ‘Well, the girl’s got to keep alive,’ he thought. And it might be that she was hungry. Certainly Lisa wasn’t worried by what he might be thinking of her. Perhaps she thought that he ought to be satisfied with her as she was, or more likely she wasn’t thinking of him at all. After all, she had been hired, on a temporary basis and for an agreed weekly wage, to look after the children. And with her beautiful hair gone, she ought to look less interesting. He wished that this was so.

  Toma brought in a platter of the fish from which the soup had been made, and set it on the sideboard. Like the soup tureen, it was one of the set Nellie had brought with her, first to Germany, then to Moscow – Stafford-shire, given to them by Charlie. It had been held up at the customs for goodness knows how long, because the removal people had wrapped it in English newspapers, and they’d had to wait until the Russian censors had read, or said they had read, every line and every word.

  Off came the lid of the tureen with a wild escape of steam, smelling of fish like a wharf at sunset. Each of them had a plateful except Annushka, who had a small saucer, not part of the set. She began to wail.

  ‘You oughtn’t to be here at all,’ Dolly told her. ‘We love you, but you’re superfluous.’

  Annushka cried more loudly, and Lisa got up silently and led her out of the room.

  ‘Keep something hot for Lisa Ivanovna,’ said Frank.

  When they were out of the room he took the opportunity to ask Dolly about her new teacher.

  ‘Doesn’t the priest come round classes?’

  ‘Oh, Batiushka!’ said Dolly. ‘Yes, he comes round, but he’s afraid of women politicals. He’s afraid of my teacher.’

  ‘If she was a political she wouldn’t be working at your school.’ It seemed, however, that this teacher had spent some time the year before in exile, as a suspected person, in a village somewhere on the river Yemtsa. ‘The government allowed her thirteen roubles a month, and a grant for extra winter clothes, but she didn’t buy any.’

  ‘She’s dowdy,’ said Ben.

  ‘You only get eight roubles as an exile if you’re of peasant origin,’ Dolly went on. ‘But then, of course, you can earn money working in the potato fields.’

  ‘Lisa Ivanovna’s of peasant origin,’ said Ben. ‘That’s her status. It’s on her papers.’

  ‘Have you been looking at them?’

  ‘No, we asked her.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Frank.

  ‘It’ll be all right when she comes downstairs again,’ said Dolly. And indeed a curious peace entered the room with Lisa, curious to Frank because he felt it, at the same time, a disturbance. She had put Annushka to bed, and as she began to eat her fish, Frank saw that he was right, and she had been hungry. ‘But there’s no need for that,’ he thought. The assistants had to pay for their meals at Muirka’s, but the staff restaurant was subsidized, like his own canteen at the Press. If she hadn’t had enough to eat there, whose fault was it but hers, and what had she spent her wages on? To keep the conversation going, he said, ‘I see you’ve had your hair cut, Lisa Ivanovna.’

  ‘We all of us wish you hadn’t,’ said Ben.

  ‘Well, if I ma
de a mistake, it will grow again,’ said Lisa.

  She ought to look at him, it seemed to Frank, with some kind of bewilderment or reproach, or at least put her hand up to the back of her head which was what all women did when their hair was mentioned.

  ‘You look like a student,’ said Ben. ‘All you need is my gun.’ He produced a toy revolver, made of wood and tin. ‘It’s a Webley, that’s what all the students have now. I got it at the Japanese shop near the Kuznetsky Bridge.’

  ‘I thought they sold kites there,’ said Frank.

  ‘They do,’ said Ben. ‘I don’t want a kite.’

  ‘Lisa cut off her hair because you didn’t like it the way it was when she first came here,’ said Dolly. ‘You ought to say something about it.’

  ‘I imagine Lisa doesn’t want to sit here and listen to these remarks,’ said Frank. ‘Who would? I certainly shouldn’t.’

  ‘I don’t mind being told that I look like a student,’ said Lisa. ‘I should like to have studied. But I shouldn’t want to look like something that I’m not.’

  – How could you look like something that you aren’t? – Frank wanted, not to cry out, but to observe quite calmly. – What you are, Lisa Ivanovna, is solid flesh inside your clothes, within arm’s length, or nearly, in all the glory of solid flesh, lessened a bit by your idiotically cutting off your hair – you must have known that wasn’t what I meant, so why did you let them take the scissors to you? – lessened a bit perhaps, but solid still. But I can only recognize what’s solid by touching it, which in this particular case, to be honest, would be by no means enough.

  ‘What did you do with it?’ asked Ben. ‘Did you sell it? You have to have it off if you’ve had typhoid, but then it isn’t worth anything.’

  Before he shut up the house for the night Frank took the opportunity to say to Lisa, ‘I’m sorry you never managed to study, if that’s what you wanted to do. If you need help, or if you need anything else, anything at all, please ask me.’ He expected her to reply with the well-tried phrases ‘You’re very good,’ or ‘you’re a good man, Frank Albertovich,’ but instead she said that there were people who needed help more than she did. That’s unquestionably true, he thought, and perhaps I’m one of them. But he felt disconcerted.