The Grand Duchess of Nowhere (27 page)

I said, ‘I’m not prepared to say. One never knows who’s listening.’

‘Touché,’ he said.

‘And you? I presume you’re carrying more than you showed them?’

‘Of course,’ he whispered. ‘Very useful having a daughter who can’t travel with fewer than seven dolls.’

*

We began to see clapboard dachas and smell pine trees. Kira moved to sit beside me and make her peace.

I said, ‘I’m sorry I was cross with you. I know the bucket was horrid.’

‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘One must expect horrid things sometimes. There is a war on. I do understand. I am eight and three months practically.’

She put her face close to my belly and bellowed, ‘I am your big sister. You must do exactly as I tell you.’

The sky was starting to burn pink and white to the east.

Masha said, ‘Are we in Finland yet?’

I said, ‘Yes. We’ve left Russia now.’

And Cyril bit his lip and turned his face to the window.

I was born on August 30th 1917 at Borgo in Finland. My parents, Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich and Grand Duchess Victoria Melita, had fled there with my sisters, Masha and Kira, as the Bolsheviks rose to power in Russia. It was hoped to be a temporary arrangement, until Russia enjoyed calmer times. My father thought so, at any rate.

My earliest memories are of Coburg in Bavaria where we settled after the end of the war. The house we lived in had belonged to my maternal grandmother, Granny Edinburgh. I don’t remember her. She and my other grandmother both died when I was still very young, robbed of their health, Mummy always said, by war and revolution. Granny Miechen, my father’s mother, was German by birth but Russian by adoption. She was apparently all sparkle and gaiety until the Bolsheviks did for her. The notion I have of Granny Edinburgh, who was Russian by birth but German by adoption, is that she must have been dark and heavy, like the furniture that cluttered her house.

My earliest impressions of Father are of a person most often seen from the back, on his way out of the house to the golf course or the motor enthusiasts’ club. I’ve heard it said that a housewife doesn’t like to have a man under her feet during the day and Mummy certainly seemed always to be busy. We had very little domestic help.

Mummy looked much older than Father though I believe they were almost exactly the same age. He called her Ducky, she called him Cyril with a soft
c
. The first time I heard a Russian refer to Father as Grand Duke Kirill I thought he’d made a mistake.

I’d say we were a happy family. But when I was about five years old there was a sudden change in our circumstances. Father fell ill, but in a way that was puzzling to a child. He had no visible wounds or rash or fever but he began to look frail and trembled a lot. His golf clubs gathered dust. My sister Masha explained it to me as, ‘Daddy’s nerves are worn out.’ We moved to France, to Brittany, in the hope that the sea air would help him to recover.

St Briac was an idyllic place for a little boy. I was allowed to run about the beach in all weathers and, as hoped, Father began to regain his health, though he became increasingly odd. Instead of filling his days with golf or bridge or motoring jaunts, he commandeered a spare bedroom and spent his time planning to restore the Russian monarchy.

I had no idea what this meant but one day he summoned me to his tiny study, this hub of Romanov operations as he saw it, and tried to explain it to me, carefully drawing everything out on a sheet of shelf paper. He and Mummy were cousins, their shared grandpapa had been Emperor of All the Russias and by rights, Father said, he should now be Emperor. Indeed someday he would be, and in time so would I because I was his only son. At that point I burst into tears, not so much at the prospect of being Emperor, but at the thought that my duties might prevent my playing on the beach.

I remember Father drying my eyes and saying, ‘Don’t worry, dear boy. It won’t be for a few years yet. I’ll make sure you’re properly prepared.’

I also remember my aunt Missy saying, ‘If His Imperial Majesty
wants a cup of coffee, I think he might leave off surveying his Empire for five minutes and make it himself. This isn’t the Ritz.’

Aunt Missy was the Queen of Romania, another concept that escaped me for years because I thought queens wore crowns and Aunt Missy almost always wore curlers or a straw hat. She often visited us in Brittany and she and Mummy would paint walls and plant vegetables and do all kinds of other un-queenly things. Mummy was always particularly gay when Aunt Missy visited, and Father was always particularly glum.

Our blissful life in France seemed about to end when I was seven and we returned to Coburg. Mummy explained that Coburg was a more fitting residence for the Guardian of the Russian Throne than a seaside cottage in France. Also that Father wished us to commence using our rightful titles. So I became Tsesarevich, Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich, Masha became Grand Duchess Marie Kirillovna and Kira became Grand Duchess Kira Kirillovna. Mummy was the Empress Victoria Fyodorovna. Father was always particularly pleased when anyone addressed her correctly.

When my sister Masha married Fritz-Karl in 1925, she became a Princess of Leiningen. Father regarded this as a regrettable step down in the world. He thought a Russian Grand Duchess could have done better for herself. I believe the Leiningens held quite the opposite opinion. I missed Masha terribly when she went away, but before long I was compensated by the news that the rest of us were to move back to Brittany, not just for a holiday but to settle permanently. At the time I imagined, in my childish way, that this had been arranged solely for my happiness. I now understand that Coburg, and Bavaria in general, had begun to regard our presence as an embarrassment. The Communist Party there was a considerable force. If some of them found Father’s posturing as Uncrowned Tsar amusing, most of them didn’t. I think he was asked, politely, to go elsewhere.

So we returned to Brittany, to St Briac, but not to our old rental. Instead a house was bought, a larger property, in need of some renovation, but reckoned to be potentially more fitting for an Emperor. I don’t know how it was all managed. I suspect some family member, better placed than us, took pity and gave us money. I’m sure Aunt Missy helped us when she could. Mummy’s jewellery disappeared too, piece by piece, and she painted a little. There was always someone willing to pay for a watercolour by the Empress of Russia.

Father ruled over his ‘Empire’ from his study next door to the winter kitchen and spent a great deal of the money we didn’t have on postage stamps. Being Emperor seemed mainly to involve writing letters. Somehow we survived and I never wanted for anything, but now I look back I can’t imagine what we lived on.

Occasionally we were visited by Russian relatives. Uncle Boris, who had settled in Nice, Great Uncle Sandro and Great Aunt Xenia, who lived in Paris. As I grew older I gained the impression that they came more out of fondness for Mummy than to present their credentials at Father’s court-in-exile. I think they thought him slightly batty.

There were other relatives spoken of in hushed voices though not, as a rule, if I was known to be within earshot. They needn’t have tried to spare me. My sister Kira, never one to mince her words, had already told me the only reason Father had given me the title Tsesarevich was because my predecessor had been shot by the Bolsheviks. Not only him, according to Kira, but his sisters and his parents and his dog. It was the thought of his dog that did for me. I blubbed and Kira got a roasting. Mummy said there were some people, Great Aunt Dowager Empress Minnie for instance, who still hoped Tsesarevich Alexis might be alive, somewhere in the world, and the rest of his family with him. The Dowager Empress
was a very old lady and we must be sensible of her feelings. If
she
believed all those people were still living, who were we to cast doubt and speak of them as dead?

My parents were married for more than thirty years and as a child I rarely heard a cross word between them. Mummy humoured Father’s Imperial ambitions and ran a comfortable house. Father was affectionate towards her, in his own rather brusque, military way. But when I was in my mid-teens something changed between them. Mummy came home early and unannounced from a visit to Coburg and there was a truly fearful row.

The only words I heard were, ‘In our house! In my home! How bloody well dare you!’

I’d never heard Mummy so passionate before. Kira and I speculated.

I thought Father might have burned a hole in a good rug with one of his endless cigarettes. I was a rather innocent fourteen-year-old.

‘No, you noodle,’ Kira said. ‘It’s something more serious than that. I’ll bet it’s a showgirl. I’ll bet he was caught with his pants down.’

Then furniture was moved and the green guest room became Mummy’s new bedroom.

‘See?’ Kira said. ‘Father has a sweetie. I bet you.’

I don’t know. He never seemed like a ladies’ man but perhaps one’s father never does.

Mummy’s journal quite shocked me when I read it, though in a pleasant way. In it I met a person I hardly recognised, much sharper and funnier than the one I’d known. Her face, in repose, always had a tendency to look sad, particularly after the Father Incident, whatever it was. We rarely saw her smile, even when Masha presented her with a steady stream of grandchildren. After a while Kira grew impatient with Mummy’s long face and so did
Aunt Missy. They felt she should pull herself together and buck up, but I don’t think she was capable. She seemed worn out. Perhaps it was all those years of being staunch and optimistic for Father’s cause. Aunt Missy used to say, ‘Tsar Cyril may keep the Romanov standard flying but Ducky’s the engine under that bonnet.’

When I was eighteen, it was arranged that Father would take me on a jaunt to Paris. The official reason for the visit was for me to get some much needed coaching in the Russian language and history. I suspect there were also some extra-curricular activities on the menu, to introduce me to the ways of the world, a plan I scuppered by developing whooping cough almost as soon as we arrived. I was very ill. Mummy had been on her way to Germany where Masha was about to produce child number five, but she was so worried about me she broke her journey and came to Paris. She wouldn’t leave my side until she was sure I was over the worst.

Father and I went home as soon as I was well enough to travel, Russian coaching and any other Parisian activities postponed, and Mummy continued on to Würzburg. She was with Masha when the baby was born, another girl, Mechtilde, and she stayed on for the christening. She seemed in no great hurry to come home. Quite soon after the christening Masha sent a wire. It was addressed to Kira. Mummy had suffered some kind of seizure, but she was conscious and showing signs of a good recovery. There was no need to alarm Father but Masha suggested it would cheer Mummy up no end if Kira visited her. Kira set off at once. I wanted to go with her but she insisted that Father’s need of me was greater than Mummy’s.

‘Your job is to stop him worrying,’ she said. ‘Distract him. Play cards with him. Ask him about Russia. And make sure he doesn’t leave cigarettes burning on the arm of his chair.’

Father and I heard nothing for twenty-four hours, then came Kira’s telegram.
TALK OF RECOVERY TOSH. COME AT ONCE
.

It was a hellish journey. Father wouldn’t eat or drink or close his eyes for a moment of rest, but neither would he give way to the least display of emotion.

‘Only fifty-nine,’ he kept saying. ‘Strong as an oak, your mother. Kira given to melodrama. Always was.’

Mummy lived on for another three weeks though it was clear to all of us that there could be no recovery. My aunts Sandra and Baby Bee came to see her but Mummy barely acknowledged them. Aunt Missy was her favourite sister. She was the one Mummy would have wanted to be there but day after day Aunt Missy failed to arrive. There was some difficulty over permission for her to travel. I remember saying, ‘But she’s the Queen of Romania?! Who’s to stop her?’ and Kira said, ‘
Was
the Queen of Romania, dear. Cousin Carol wears the crown now and he’s as nutty as a Dundee cake.’

By the time Cousin Carol gave his permission and my aunt arrived, Mummy was barely conscious but I’m convinced she knew it was Aunt Missy who was sitting beside her. We were all there when she died. It was very late at night, and the doctor said the end was imminent. They can tell by the way a person breathes. Aunt Missy moved her seat so I could hold Mummy’s hand but when Father appeared in the doorway she gave him such a blistering look that he came no closer. He just hovered, not sure what to do with himself. When it was over Mummy looked twenty years younger and Father looked twenty years older.

‘Terrible business,’ he said. ‘Not like Ducky at all. Never sick, hardly ever, all the years I’ve known her.’

*

The next morning arrangements were begun for burial in the family mausoleum at Glockenburg. But then at luncheon Aunt Missy said, ‘I begin to wonder though if she wouldn’t have wanted to be buried at Darmstadt, at Rosenhohe, with Elli.’

And Father said, ‘Bury her at Darmstadt? So she’ll end up next to Ernie Hesse? Not bloody likely. What a ghastly suggestion.’

I had no idea who those people were. Elli. Ernie Hesse. Kira had to explain to me that Mummy had been married to someone else, long ago. His name was Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse and they’d had a child, Elisabeth, Elli, who had died when she was eight. It was the first I knew of any of it but when I’d digested the information Aunt Missy’s idea seemed quite a good one. Father would have none of it and prowled around muttering, ‘Bloody Ernie Hesse.’

So the funeral went ahead as planned in Coburg where Granny and Grandpa Edinburgh were buried and Mummy’s brother too, Uncle Affie. He was someone else I’d never heard of, someone else who was never talked about.

‘Consumption,’ Father said.

‘Shot himself,’ Aunt Missy said.

What a family we were for secrets.

We took Father home to St Briac. I was supposed to be going to London, to study or, as Father preferred it, ‘to prepare to reign’. Kira had plans too but neither of us felt we should leave him.

‘What rot!’ he said. ‘Perfectly capable. Vast amounts of work to do. I shall hardly notice you’re gone.’

Perhaps our staying with him wouldn’t have made any difference. Without Mummy he was a boat without a rudder. He lasted just over two years. Each time we saw him he was thinner and frailer, his clothes were grubbier, his ashtray always overflowing. But he was as full of Imperial bluster as ever and Kira’s wedding provided him with his last hurrah. She married Lulu Hohenzollern, which in Father’s eyes was a vastly superior match to the one Masha had made.

‘The great dynasties of Prussia and Romanov united!’ he said. ‘What a splendid thing.’

We didn’t have the heart to remind him that the Hohenzollerns were about as washed up as we were.

Father died in 1938, just one day short of his sixty-second birthday. It was assumed by me and my sisters that his body would be taken directly to Coburg for burial but then Uncle Boris intervened and said there must be something done for him in Paris, a memorial service at the very least, so that his loyal subjects might pay their final respects. Uncle Boris was right. Whatever the rest of us thought about Emperor Cyril’s dreams, there were plenty of exiled Russians in Paris who believed in him. A
panikhida
was said for him in the cathedral in Rue Daru and I had the alarming experience of being reverenced by crowds of elderly Russians. They made deep bows signifying that they now regarded me as their new Tsar. It seemed a bit rich. I’ve never set foot in Russia.