“Why are you smiling, Lovejoy?”
“Her and Prince Potemkin. Didn’t he amble through her rooms when she was holding court with influential foreign ambassadors?”
“Yes. But of course, she wasn’t Russian. He was.”
“Dynamite, though. Got things done, eh?”
“Stay together!” cried Natasha up in front.
“I never admired him,” Ivy confided, “not as I admire Pushkin. Though all brilliant Russians have flaws. Dostoevsky had epilepsy. Prince Yusupov had been to Oxford.” Ivy smiled mischievously at her quip. I quivered as our lot edged forward en masse. “Keep calm, Lovejoy. They will still be there when we reach Rooms 143 to 146 on the second floor. Nobody could possibly remove them, could they?”
That tone again. Some private grief, from a former visit perhaps? I didn’t quiz her about it.
I’d not done so well with my attempts to sound educated in Lady Vee’s meeting, so I kept off Russian writers.
“I did my dissertation on Pushkin, Lovejoy. Hopeless.”
Natasha shrilled, “On this tour we pass the first floor! It has all manner of prehistorical Russian items, Transcaucasian and Egyptian and Greco-Roman arte-facts. We ignore these! We move to the second floor by staircases.”
“Excuse me,” said an anxious gentleman, who always looked so scholarly in the ship’s library. “I had hoped – ”
“First floor not on our D4 ticket specification! This way!”
We climbed the stairs, the man expostulating to anyone who would listen, “I’ve come all this way to see the Black Sea Greek colonies of the Seventh Century BC. I wish to draw the Siberian jasper Kolyvanskaya Vase.” His voice receded as we draw ahead in the crowd. Ivy had an enviable knack of somehow overtaking people without effort. Left to myself, I’d have been trailing the entire throng within a few paces.
“Another gambler, except he had enormously long yellow fingernails?” That exhausted my knowledge of literature.
“Please don’t criticise Aleksandr Pushkin, Lovejoy,” Ivy told me. We were still climbing, with the scholarly bloke still wittering below. “Here, it’s seen as treachery. A tiny man, given to womanising and fighting duels. His grandad was an Ethiopian slave, they say. Couldn’t keep still.”
Nice to see Ivy smile. Years fell off her as we got to the top of the narrow staircase. I began to feel queasy and thought, here we go.
“I’ve some water, Lovejoy.” She brought out a small plastic bottle and broke the seal. I took a swig, patted my forehead with a glug. “Put your arm through mine. Do I have to watch you for anything?”
“I can totter on my own, ta,” I said, gracious to the last, pulling away and returning her bottle.
“Here!” cried Natasha. “We now pause to see the Malachite Hall!” And led us into a tall green room. That is green green, so intense and swirly I almost recoiled. I closed my eyes and grabbed for Ivy’s arm. She clutched my hand and that’s how I made it out of that place, clinging. The room was so frigging green it was claustrophobic. Malachite’s a green rock, once used in making paint or green sculptures, clock pedestals and the like. It’s gone out of fashion now, thank God. I find green a problem even in emeralds and other green gemstones, and women can never match the damned colour with anything else except tan, so why the hell do we bother? As a little lad I used to be spectacularly sick seeing red and green together, a sensitivity that made me dynamite at Christmas. We edged along.
“We’re out, Lovejoy,” Ivy said quietly, and I let daylight seep back into my brain.
The crowds had thinned but people were still about in numbers. I glimpsed another mob from our ship passing across one of the grand doorways in the distance. I’d never met such space in a building before. It dwarfed anything I’d seen. And gloriously, beautifully restored.
I even recovered enough to ask a question as Natasha passed by. It was about a chandelier, and proved Natasha’s mettle.
“Excuse me, please,” I got out. “Is that papier-mache chandelier made by hand modelling or by – ?”
“No! By the compression process of machine-emulsified material,” she replied briskly. “You require the chemical composition of the glue, or the length of incorporated fibres?”
“Er, no, ta, Natasha.”
“This way, D4!” she shrieked, and we were off like another marathon start.
“She’s great,” I said. Too good, in fact. I noticed she kept acknowledging the stout ladies who invigilated in every doorway of the numbered rooms, and once I saw her slip a cell phone into her handbag. She also seemed occasionally to mutter into her umbrella’s handle, her eyes everywhere. Nobody would get lost on Natasha’s watch, that was for sure.
We emerged on a wide landing. The air stifled me. I had to go slower, Ivy hanging back to stay with me. I had another swig of water and felt no better.
“We ignore the two Leonardo paintings!” Natasha called over her shoulder, “beyond the Council Staircase. And the Michelangelo statue of Crouching Boy that is in glass-encased but repays intensive study on another visit! Quickly, please!”
No wonder I felt definitely odd. My hands were clammy, my muscle masses aching, my breath rasping. I was drenched with sweat. Ivy got worried.
“Look, Lovejoy. I think we should try to find somewhere to sit a minute.”
“No.” I knew I wouldn’t be better until I was out of the place. Another guide, this time a man in uniform, tagged along in the rear, shepherding us after Natasha. “I’ll keep going, love.” I’d my job to do.
“The Hanging Gardens of the Little Hermitage visible through the windows!” cried our beautiful guide at ramming speed. “Across is Dutch works of art, including many Rembrandts! You can photograph if you have paid for special star on special ticket, $3.60 in American moneys! Using camcorders extra!”
The windows were easy. I couldn’t help noticing how simple they were, like the old Crittal designs. I know lads in East Anglian pubs who wouldn’t even break step as they strolled in through windows like that, any height. And a canal seemed to come off the wide River Neva at exact right-angles and run underneath the Hermitage. Unless they surrounded the entire place with tanks and a battalion or two, an average robber could have the Hermitage’s contents away before dawn, given enough transport. My sense of misgiving got much, much worse, the sicker I felt.
“Is it the antiques, Lovejoy?” Ivy whispered. “You’re sure it isn’t something you ate, or maybe the flu?”
“No, love. It’s always like this.” My chest griped, my shoulders creaking like rusty machinery.
“Across is Hall of St George!” Natasha trilled, her voice a bandsaw through my brain. “Here is Hidden Treasures Revealed exhibition! Enter in order! Fifteen minutes, please!” She added darkly, “I … am … waiting!”
The rooms were frankly badly lit. I tottered in, glad to lean on Ivy. She was only slight, but kept me propped up as vibes shot through me. I could hardly see. The paintings were brilliant.
It’s hard to realise how much our own famous works of art have changed even over so short a time as a century or even less. The paint alters, as the oil vehicle in which the pigments were applied become set over time. They grow less lustrous from pollution, from changing air temperature, barometric pressures, humidity, light. Worst of all, the exhaled breath of thousands upon thousands of visitors, the faint shaking of the human voice, and the microorganisms we carry about, does damage. The average human sheds a teaspoonful of skin scales a day, not to mention threads from our clothes, our hair – we lose sixty-three hairs on average a day, some scientist slogging to earn his money claimed.
These paintings, though, simply glowed. They had remained in unchanging conditions for half a century. Okay, I would have hung them differently, had more control over the light, kept visitors down to a few every hour, but the Russians had done a superb job conserving these. They were just as they left the artists’ hands. Ten out of ten for Russia.
I gaped at the Cézannes. Who’d have thought his M
ont Sainte-Victoire actually shimmered in its original condition? Every other version I’d seen looks flat from a yard away, from deterioration of the surface. Or that Vincent’s Landscape with House and Ploughman was so clamorous to the eye that its colours almost yelled? I reeled from one canvas to another, Ivy apologising to passengers as I blundered through the press.
Minutes later I was propped on the wall by the great staircase looking out at the Neva, shaking. Ivy spoke quietly to a Russian guardian lady, and I was given her chair. Ivy seemed to be explaining that I wasn’t drunk, just unwell. The woman didn’t believe her. I asked for tea, which seems understood in every language. We went downstairs, Ivy grunting and gasping a little unnecessarily I thought, but she got me into a small caff near the computer room. I got served mint tea. I hadn’t known mint tea tasted so good.
The vibes receded slightly once Ivy got me mobile and among the crowds. We seemed to be the only ones buying anything. Ivy was adept at making herself understood. Natasha’s gloomy trailing bloke followed us all the time, which I didn’t mind. He glowered when we failed to offer him some tea, so I beckoned him over and he accepted a glass of the stuff. Ivy ignored him, but he chattered a lot and seemed to be telling me about football. He was called Ilya. He looked a born killer, steady eyes, Slav chin and upturned nose, but hands that had strangled.
“The Golden Rooms, Lovejoy?” Ivy asked. She spoke to the man in Russian and notes changed hands. I tried counting the dollars in case I’d have to owe her, but gave up. Nobody absorbs notes slicker than a security man on the take.
“Ilya will let us in to the Golden Rooms, Lovejoy. Come. Can you stand? We have eleven minutes only.”
I made it, exhorted by Ivy. She proved a tower of strength. Like many women who looked puny, she had disproportionate power.
“Here. By the Secondary Entrance.” She opened her hands like a Palladium showman. “The Hermitage’s famous Special Collection!”
It cost. Ivy had to do the verbals, with Ilya along to lend baritone and subdue the stout female guardians. More dollars? I thought, God Almighty, I’d be paying this free visit off until I was ninety, the way Ivy was spending. She’d already bought me four great tomes, each an arm and a leg. Once inside, over I went and came to myself on a stool being lectured to by a security lady in uniform and three stray ladies who’d come to see the gold – pure ancient gold – artefacts but found a dizzy male stranger much more interesting. Like all females, they delightedly seized the chance of ballocking a man for being ill in the first place, sternly admonishing Ivy in various languages for not living up to her woman’s job of keeping me fit. That gave them all the opportunity of bringing up ailments they themselves had suffered, to great satisfaction, then recovered from. That dealt with, they then argued different remedies. I suppose that’s all it was.
Meanwhile the rooms ramjam packed with gold from the Crimea, Ukraine, and the Caucasus, shimmered and blinded. I apologised, pretended to recover, got no further in than my stool by the door, thanked everybody profusely, and let Ivy lead me out of Special Collection Rooms 41 et seq.
“I’m sorry, Lovejoy,” she said from a great distance. “I thought it would bring you round.”
“Okay.” We went through the security check to escape, and I got a chance of a cool breath of non-antique air at the entrance.
Within minutes Natasha’s bandsaw voice pierced the halls of the Winter Palace and we were on the move. The security man Ilya sheepdogged us to the exit and wistfully waved us off as we disgorged by the Neva. It isn’t often streets look truly glamorous, but Russia manages it. Or maybe it was just that I was relieved to be feeling better? I think it was the glamour.
My muscles stopped aching, my hands dried themselves spontaneously, and my face no longer dripped with sweat. I began to walk fairly upright like a late-order primate, getting as far as, say, Neanderthal.
“Sorry, Ivy,” I said in the cold fresh air of the waterfront. “It was stuffy in there.”
“Real, were they?”
“Well,” I began, then realised.
“I was joking, Lovejoy. Your collapse was too convincing. Is it always like that?”
“Yes. A headache will be along soon. It will be bad.”
“I’ll see to you.”
“Look, love, I’m spoiling your outing. There’s really no need.”
“I’m enjoying myself,” she said, sounding really honest. “Best morning I’ve had in years.”
“Shouldn’t we find your Billy?” I didn’t want to be accused of anything devious, him such a macho bloke.
“Don’t worry. I know exactly where he is.”
We moved to the coach the instant the driver came. A few Russian children pestered us, begging. I reached for some money. Ivy stayed my hand and bustled me away. She was cross.
“That was a bit harsh, love,” I remonstrated. “She was only eleven, and carrying an infant.”
“Lovejoy.” She was so exasperated she said my name like teachers did at school, making two enormous syllables – Love… joy – and rolling her eyes. “Didn’t you notice? Her hair was streaked and tinted. Do you know how much that costs? And she wore designer slacks and handmade London shoes. Have you no sense?”
She went on and on, how the girl had gold caps to two teeth, the infant wore two valuable jade necklets and the girl three gold bangles and a custom watch.
“Begging is an industry here,” she lectured me quietly on the coach as Natasha started up hope-you-all-enjoyed prattle. “You have to learn.”
From the coach window I watched the little girl, who nonchalantly took out a gold cigarette case. She extracted a cigarette and lit it with a gold lighter, staring insolently up at the coach as we drove off.
“You aren’t really streetwise, are you?” Ivy said.
This narked me, because nobody is more streetwise. I told her so, adding, “No need to keep on, just because you can yap a few words of their lingo.”
“I was born here, Lovejoy.” She affected not to notice as Billy and Kevin looked round at us, said something to each other and roared with laughter. “I really think it’s time I took you in hand, at least for the rest of your visit. What are you doing this afternoon?”
“Having a headache. You?” It was already starting, slamming down my right side and making my vision fizzle. No longer the flu feeling, just the cerebral stunner.
She smiled. “I’ll help, Lovejoy. Close your eyes and I’ll tell you about Russia.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
I slept for an hour in my cabin, crawled upright with a stunning migraine, went for a feeble nosh, then swam even more feebly in one of the ship’s pools. The passengers had mostly gone ashore on trips – all of them sounding exotic, this palace, that monastery. I felt filleted, climbed out of the pool and flopped onto the tiles. My head was splitting.
Ivy leant over from her promenade recliner and handed me a towel. No Billy the Kid.
“Any better?”
“I’m done for.”
“Can you be ready in ten minutes? A banya will cure you.”
“Not thirsty, love, but ta.”
She did the non-smile, making me feel idiotic. “It’s not a drink, darling. It will restore you.”
“What is it?” I asked with suspicion, remembering the women at the Hermitage and their competing remedies. “Something Russian?”
“Oh, yes, Lovejoy.” A real smile lit her features. She was lovely. “Very Russian. Everyone should visit the banya at least once. It never fails.”
“Honest?” I couldn’t go on like this. I’d once had a really bad divvy experience meeting a gold Ancient British torc found in East Anglia near Mildenhall, and fondly imagined my divvy-induced migraines couldn’t come any worse, but this one was ruinous and I had to report to Purser Mangot at six o’clock. I’d be lucky to reach his office in this state. “Okay, then.”
Uneasily, still mistrustful, I disembarked, making sure I didn’t let my thumping head whack me over into the water as I r
eached the quayside. I made sure the Ghurka knew I was leaving, had my plastic cards bleeped on their machines. I chatted determinedly to a few other passengers, telling them I was going to a banya with Mrs Ivy Sands, just so they could tell our consul if I got abducted.
We got into a taxi, the driver voluble in Russian. He tried German, a bit of Swedish I think, then went back to Russian with Ivy, seeming amused. Twice his eyes lit on mine in the rear-view. He shook his head, chuckling, saying, “Banya.”
“I didn’t say so-long or ta to Natasha,” I remembered as the taxi swerved and hooted and accelerated.
“I did. We tip a small amount after each tour.”
The driver’s eyes lit up. He knew the word tip. Still he chuckled. And stopped outside a squarishly dull building. We were about two miles from the ship. He opened our door with a flourish, and even a stranger as raw as me knew this courtesy was an all-time first. He said something to me, grinning.
“In, Lovejoy,” Ivy said, paying him.
“Will you be here when I come out?” Translation: Was this the abduction and assassination I’d darkly imagined, finally here now I’d done my stint divvying the Exhibition?
“I’m coming with you, silly.”
She sounded exasperated, which was good. Exasperation was safe. I let her go first, ever courteous, in case there was a gunman behind the transparent glass doors, and slowly followed, ready to run. We went in to a changing room, after Ivy paid more fees to yet more guardians. Russia, I began to see, was composed of two kinds of people: uniformed security folk, and the rest. They came in more or less equal proportions. You pay one lot whenever they look expectant, and can safely ignore the latter.
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