The Grand Duchess of Nowhere (24 page)

It was the last day of April. Cyril said I should stay indoors the next day. There were parades planned, for May Day, and things might run out of control.

I said, ‘In that case, don’t let the girls hear the word “parade” or they’ll be pestering all day to go and watch.’

In Germany they used to keep Walpurgis Night. Not us, but the ordinary people. They’d build great bonfires and stay up all night carousing, so the next day had to be a holiday because everyone’s head was thick with drink. But I didn’t remember May Day ever being a particular holiday in Russia.

‘It’s called Labour Day,’ Cyril said. ‘An international celebration of worker struggle and revolutionary victory. Another bloody excuse for disrupting the day’s business.’

It was a glorious, sunny morning. People were gathering at the Marsovo Polye. The Buchanans would have had a ringside seat at the embassy but we, of course, were not invited. From Marsovo Polye it wasn’t clear where the marchers would go next. Down Sadovaya to Nevsky Prospekt? Along the embankment past the Winter Palace? Perhaps both. They could go wherever they pleased and no police would oppose them because they were the new police. The People. They were judge and jury too. Nicky’s old force had been persuaded to disappear. Boris had seen one of them
thrown from the tower of the Lutheran Church. As he said, ‘
Pour encourager les autres
.’

*

By the end of April the Tsarskoe Selo house was locked and shuttered.

‘Forget it,’ Cyril said. ‘It’s the property of The People now. If we ever get a country place again, it’ll be one allocated to us by the government. A wood shed, probably. Shared occupancy.’

I said, ‘Do you think it’s amusing?’

‘I think it’s reality.’

‘Why are we staying on? Why aren’t we getting out while we can?’

‘Because it’s home. And because Russia may be a better place when all this settles down.’

Glinka Street was beginning to feel rather depleted. When we first lived there, we’d had twenty servants. Miechen insisted that we couldn’t manage with fewer than that, though it wasn’t a very large house and we didn’t give many dinners. When the troubles and the strikes had begun, certain faces had disappeared. I have a feeling they just slipped out occasionally, when something was happening on the streets, and then came home to eat and sleep, but one was nervous of enquiring too deeply. No one ever spoke out or left us in the way Kuzma and Peach had done, but the atmosphere in the house was different. Then, little by little, some faces disappeared for good. Cyril joked that he quite expected to run into some of them in the corridors of the Tauride Palace.

He said, ‘But instead of carrying your breakfast tray, darling, they’ll have a ministerial portfolio under their arm.’

So by early May the only servants we still had were two maids, nervous little creatures, not much older than Masha, and two doormen, Mefody and Serafim, which was one too many but
Mefody came with the property and would be there till he died. Anna, our cook, had gone, which would have been calamitous once upon a time but not any more. They say every black cloud has a silver lining do we but look for it, and in that instance it was true, because she had taken her mother with her. I was able to venture down to the kitchen without fear of finding the Groaner on her usual stove-side perch. I learned how to warm through dishes Serafim brought in from the
traktir
. We managed well enough.

Cyril came home on May Day evening in a very good humour.

He said, ‘Did you see any of the parades?’

I said, ‘How could I? You said it would be too dangerous to go out.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘so I did. I didn’t expect you to listen to me though. Well, you missed a treat. Some of the banners were priceless.’

He asked for writing paper.

‘A little Russian test for you,’ he said.

He wrote X
Л
E B B C E M.

I said, ‘Bread for all?’

‘Look again,’ he said. ‘Bread for all is obviously what they intended it to say, but it doesn’t.’

I looked and looked.

Masha said, ‘I know the answer! Bread is X
Л
E
Б
, but they’ve written X
Л
E B. But Daddy, what’s X
Л
E B?’

‘X
Л
E B,’ he said, ‘is a cow stall. Well done, Masha. A cow stall for all! Can you believe these people? And they think they’re ready to govern. We’ll be an international laughing stock. Here’s another one.’

Д
O
Л
O
Й
Ч
E P B
И
!
Doloy chervi
.

Doloy
was ‘down with, away with’. I’d seen that word often enough since the troubles began. But
chervi
meant nothing to me. Even Masha couldn’t fathom it.

‘Well,’ Cyril said, ‘what they’re trying to say is “Down with tipping”. It’s all part of this fair wage campaign. Apparently being left a little gratuity is now considered a patronising insult. Damned if I understand why. So the word they should have used is
Ч
A E B
Ы
E.
Ч
E P B
И
are maggots. Which renders the slogan rather comical, don’t you think? Down with maggots! I’ll drink to that.’

I wasn’t really in a position to laugh, seven years in Russia and still stumbling to say quite simple things. And as Kira observed very solemnly, no one likes maggots so getting rid of them was a jolly sensible idea.

*

Summer arrived in a hurry. It seemed the last of the snow had only just gone and suddenly we were too hot. Between them the humidity and the mosquitoes and this restless baby prevented me from sleeping. I don’t remember being so uncomfortable before. One’s forties are not the age for bearing children. If Elli had lived I’d most likely be a grandmother by now. Cyril, on the other hand, who was busier than he’d ever been in his life, slept very well, until the night we were jolted from our beds by hammering at the street door. It wasn’t yet properly light.

Cyril was awake and on his feet at once. We could hear men’s voices, Mefody, I thought, and Serafim and then others.

Cyril said, ‘Go to the girls. Lock the door. Don’t come out till I say so.’

Then he ran downstairs, still pulling on his dressing gown.

I couldn’t lock the girls’ door, of course. One doesn’t allow a child like Kira the temptation of a key. I pushed a chair against the door and sat on it, trying to hear what was being said down below. I couldn’t catch anything, but the tone seemed conversational. I imagine if one is about to be arrested it’s done without any niceties. But I couldn’t be sure. Everything had changed so quickly. Russians
used to be dear people who called me ‘
Barina
’ or ‘
Matushka
’ and bowed when I passed them. Now they’re like dogs that have turned and bitten and when a dog has bitten once it can only be a matter of time until it bites again. Cyril’s assurances were all very well but the fact remained, the Emperor of All the Russias wasn’t free even to walk in his own park.

Kira slept on. Masha had woken but she lay very still. I put my finger to my lips. She slipped out of bed and came to sit on what was left of my lap.

She whispered, ‘Have they come to shoot us?’

What a thing for a child to say. She could only have got that idea from Ethel Peach.

We heard the street door slam, and then silence for what seemed an age. Masha’s fingernails were digging into my neck. I began to think she was right. If you come in the night and take a man from his home in his dressing gown, you must surely intend to shoot him. I was a convinced widow by the time we heard the door again and then Cyril bounding up the stairs.

He tapped on the door and said, ‘All’s well. You can come out.’

Kira woke, very cross at first at having missed the excitement. Then she pretended she’d actually been awake through the whole episode. Cyril tried to make light of it. Too much so. I observed that he was trembling, just as he had after the executions at Kronstadt.

‘It was just a few Marine Guards,’ he said. ‘Good lads. They’re due back at Kronstadt first thing and their transport’s run out of fuel. I was the first person they thought of. You see, Ducky? I have their confidence.’

He’d given them one of our precious canisters of petrol. Good old Grand Duke Cyril. Such a good sort.

He went to his dressing room. I followed him.

I said, ‘Masha thought they’d come to shoot us.’

‘Silly girl,’ he said. ‘Where did she get such an idea?’

‘I can’t imagine. In this country where admirals get shot by their men and the Emperor is under house arrest. Perhaps it’s normal now for little girls to think such things.’

‘You’re upset.’

‘I’m not upset. I’m frightened. We should leave. I want to leave.’

He was buttoning his shirt.

‘Well,’ he said, eventually, ‘perhaps we all need a holiday. Let me see what I can do.’

*

Mist hung over the city all day. I went to St Isaac’s, I don’t know why. I saw no particular reason God should grant me any protection, but I felt a great compulsion to stand quietly in a sacred place. It calmed me. A priest asked me if I wanted him to hear my confession. I told him I wasn’t Orthodox.

‘
Anglichanka
,’ I said. ‘
Protestanka
.’

‘Pah!’ he said, and he gave me such a pitying look.

The canal water looked dead and oily. I saw brother-in-law Boris strolling along the Moika.

‘You all right?’ he said. ‘You look all in.’

I told him about our early morning callers.

I said, ‘Cyril seems so sure everything’s going to work out. Do you think so?’

He said, ‘If I had a wife …’ But then he stopped. ‘Frankly,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what to think. One minute we seemed to be plunging over a sheer cliff. Now we seem to have landed on a ledge. Will it hold? Perhaps it will, as long as Nicky’s bundled out of the country to some distant exile. Why do they delay so? All those guards tied up at the Alexander Palace. It makes no sense. As for you, I think you’ve been an absolute brick, staying here while
Cyril’s playing politics. If you went south, took a little break and went to visit Ma, no one would think any the less of you.’

It wasn’t other people’s opinions that bothered me. Quite a number of people I’d counted as friends had deserted me anyway. It was Cyril. Some days I felt he was terrifically brave, some days I thought he was an utter fool. One thing was always true: there was no hurrying him.

‘Like an ox, Cyril Vladimirovich,’ Pa once remarked. ‘He will plod on till he reaches the end of the furrow.’

I said, ‘I was just in St Isaac’s. It was so peaceful. All these extraordinary things going on out here, but step inside the cathedral and nothing’s changed.’

‘True,’ Boris said. ‘But for how long? This new crowd love taking things to pieces. The monarchy. The Duma. I imagine they just haven’t got round to the church yet. They probably will.’

That was the last time I saw Boris, on the Moika, just across from the Yusupovs’ closed-up palace. I find my thoughts often begin that way now. The last time this, the last time that.

‘Kisses for
les animaux
from Uncle Boris,’ he said. ‘Take care of yourself, Ducky.’

Cyril came home early.

I said, ‘When do we leave?’

He held up his hand. ‘Whoa!’

‘You promised we’d take a holiday.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And we will. But one doesn’t just disappear. One has certain commitments. Now, I have a plan. I’m hoping to bring Kerensky here tomorrow, to see us
en famille
. Nothing showy, Ducky. Just tea and jam will do. And serve it yourself. No maid.’

I said, ‘And the purpose of this humble tableau? I’m sure Kerensky hasn’t forgotten you’re a Grand Duke.’

‘The purpose,’ he said, ‘is to show him that we’re reasonable
people, living modestly, adjusting to the new regime. The purpose is to get permission to travel, for me to take my poor careworn wife somewhere cooler until her confinement.’

I said, ‘So, not to Crimea?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not to Crimea. Too many Romanovs down there already, especially Ma and Dowager Minnie. Sooner or later this lot are bound to start worrying that they’re plotting a comeback. But no one else has gone to Finland. Haikko would be perfect. Cooler for you and without any complicated family loyalties.’

I very much doubted Cyril would be allowed to travel anywhere no matter how humbly I served tea to Minister Kerensky. The thing to do was to go, not wait for permission. I told Cyril so.

‘Please, darling,’ he said. ‘Let’s try to do this correctly. If we run and we’re stopped, there’s no telling what they’d do. We don’t want to end up like Nicky and Sunny. Red Guards on the door. No, Kerensky is a reasonable man. He trusts me. Now I want him to see the private side of me. The family man.’

I said, ‘And my role?’

‘Act tired and pregnant.’

‘I
am
tired and pregnant. Am I allowed to speak?’

‘Do I usually muzzle you?’

‘And the children? I imagine they’re to be in this picture of domesticity?’

He thought for a minute.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But just briefly. Perhaps a brief glimpse when he first arrives, but they shouldn’t sit with us for tea. There’s no telling what Kira might say.’

Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky. Cyril put great store by him.

‘The coming man,’ he said, although actually Kerensky had already very much arrived, with two hats on his clever head. He held office in the Duma and in the Petrograd Soviet. Cyril predicted he would soon be Minister for War and when that happened there’d be a new offensive, a strong push against Germany before next winter.

I didn’t know what time to expect them, or even whether Kerensky would come. I got out our last tin of Huntley and Palmers, then thought better of it, but not before the girls had spied them.

Kira ran about shouting, ‘Hurrah! Biscuits! Granny Miechen’s coming to tea.’

I said, ‘Not Granny Miechen. An important person Daddy needs to talk to. When they arrive, you may come to the drawing room to say Good Day. Then you must go upstairs and play.’

‘What important person?’ she wanted to know.

‘Minister Kerensky.’

‘Doesn’t he like biscuits?’

*

I spent the afternoon running between the water closet and the window that had the best view of the street. You may guess where I was when they arrived.

Minister Kerensky is quite personable. He was younger than I’d expected, probably not yet forty. A little starchy, considering these new, informal times we’re now supposed to live in, but his manner was pleasant. He has a very fine head of hair.

Kira and Masha came in and did exactly as I’d instructed them, exactly as Cyril had said.

I said, ‘Off you run, then.’

Then Cyril, quite infuriatingly, said, ‘Oh, darling, let them stay. I’m sure Alexander Fyodorovich won’t mind.’

Masha hesitated. She could see I was flustered. But Kira needed no further encouragement to stay. She stationed herself by Kerensky’s chair and proceeded to quiz him. Did he have any girls?

‘No,’ he said, ‘I have two boys.’

‘What are their names?’

‘Gleb and Oleg.’

‘Are they older than me?’

‘They’re eleven and nine. How old are you?’

‘Eight years and one month. Do you like biscuits at all?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘We have a whole lovely tin of Ginger Nuts in our pantry but Mummy said best not to make too much of a splash.’

So then it was Cyril’s turn to worry what Kira would come out with next. Served him right. He sent them to play.

There was no business talked. It was an entirely social call. Kerensky took two cups of tea and two half-spoons of raspberry jam. Everything about him was very precise. We discussed the weather. The Gulf of Finland would be cooler, we agreed, for anyone fortunate enough to be able to get out of the city for a while. We talked about jam. Apricot makes a refreshing change. Strawberry can be difficult. It doesn’t always set well. In Tashkent, where he’d lived for some years, the quince jam was very fine. We talked about jam far too much.

Sometimes, as Kerensky turned his head, the light bounced off his spectacles and I couldn’t see his eyes. Once, when I could see his eyes, I caught him looking at my wide waistline. I was afraid of him. What was he thinking? There’s another pesky Romanov soon to enter the world?

Cyril thought it had all gone very well.

I said, ‘How can you possibly judge? He could be playing with you. The man’s a complete sphinx.’

‘But he’s a family man,’ he said, ‘I’m sure he remembers how hard Petrograd summers are for a woman when she’s expecting. He’ll see what he can do about a travel permit. He assured me of that, out on the step.’

‘Why didn’t he just give you permission? How hard could it be?’

‘Darling, Kerensky is a lawyer. He likes to follow procedure.’

‘And then what? When you get this permit?’

‘We’ll go to Haikko.’

‘And just not come back?’

‘Leave this to me.’

‘What if he says I can take the girls but you can’t go? What if he just says no?’

‘For heaven’s sake, Ducky.’

That’s always Cyril’s exasperated cry when he doesn’t have an answer to a perfectly sensible question.

For two weeks we heard nothing.

I said, ‘Remind him. It might have slipped his mind.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t be appropriate. And anyway, Alexander Fyodorovich doesn’t forget things.’

That may have been true, but the Russian way isn’t to wait politely and hopefully. The Russian way is to keep asking, even after many refusals, to assume that ‘No’ was just a slip of the tongue that will eventually be corrected to an exhausted ‘Yes’. Cyril can
be so terribly English about things. Sometimes you’d never think he was Russian.

I had good days and bad days. When the air was warm and thick with moisture, I felt I couldn’t stay in Petrograd another moment, that I should just take the girls and run and to hell with Minister Kerensky. How many times I woke and thought, ‘Today,’ but then couldn’t summon the energy. And when a breeze got up from the west and one could actually breathe, my mood became more positive. Cyril was right. It would be better for us to stay together, for us to go with official sanction. If Kerensky said no, then I’d carry out my threat.

There was little I could do to prepare. The bags I’d first packed back in February were opened and repacked several times but only after the girls were asleep. I couldn’t have borne their questions. And what exactly does one pack? A summer holiday is easy to plan for, and so is a winter jaunt, but for the rest of one’s life?

I took Bertie Stopford’s advice and unpicked the seams where I’d hidden my jewellery. That too could only be done when the children were asleep. I decided the only thing was to capitalise on my interesting condition, wear an extra pair of bloomers and carry as much as I could between the two layers. Miechen had once remarked that Cyril wasn’t very generous with jewels, but when one is about to take flight a small collection has its advantages.

Uncle Bimbo called on us. He brought us apricots from the hothouses at Tsarskoe Selo. I found it quite amazing that they were still functioning, that they hadn’t had all their glass panes knocked out.

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘There are some decent sorts out there, keeping things running. Growing things, you know, it always improves a person, I’ve often noted it. Some of them have become quite devoted to their work. They’re not all idiots, those lads. Unlike our Commissar for Posts, Telegraphs and Telephones. I gather your line isn’t working either.’

One never knew from hour to hour. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, but Cyril discouraged me from using the telephone anyway. It was no great loss. There was really no one left in town for me to call.

I wanted to say something to Uncle Bimbo, to give him warning that we might leave, but Cyril had said the best thing was to tell no one. Then in the front hall, just as he was about to put on his hat, Uncle Bimbo said, ‘How much longer till your time, Ducky?’

I calculated it was about ten weeks.

He said, ‘I hope Cyril Vladimirovich is making suitable arrangements. Living in this madhouse, it can’t be good for your nerves.’

I went to say something but he put a finger to his lips.

I said, ‘Stay to dinner.’

‘Tempted,’ he said. ‘But I’d best get back before the Commissar for Railways prevents the trains from running. What a shower. Take care of yourself, Ducky, and of those dear girls. And the baby, of course. New life. A wonderful thing.’

Masha asked me why Uncle Bimbo had been so sad.

I said, ‘He wasn’t.’

‘Yes, he was,’ she said. ‘I watched him from the window when he crossed the street. He was wiping his tears. Perhaps he’s lonely.’

Kira said, ‘He should get a wife. He was pretty keen on Peach, you know. He used to get pink cheeks when he talked to her. Well, I’m jolly glad he didn’t marry her.’

Ethel Peach, who’d bitten the hand that fed her, who’d disappeared from our lives and taken Kuzma with her. She was, I imagined, working her way east, perhaps back to Shanghai where she knew people or just taking any route she could to reach England. But I was wrong. She was still in Petrograd and it was as though, by saying her name, Kira had conjured her up.