The Grand Duchess of Nowhere (3 page)

Our little daughter, Elisabeth, was born on 11th March 1895. All the church bells in Darmstadt rang out to greet her and if she had been a boy I’m sure they could not have rung louder. Ernie was in and out of the nursery all day long, lifting her out of her cradle and driving the nurses to distraction. Mother said she’d never seen a man so devoted. She hinted that I was luckier than Missy. That Ernie was considerate, unlike Nando who showed no interest in his children and grew quite resentful when a confinement put Missy
hors de combat
in the bedroom.

‘You see?’ she said to me. ‘It wasn’t so very bad, was it? And things have worked out perfectly well with Ernie, just as I said they would. If only you’d give the child a different name. It’s going to be so confusing.’

Mother’s objection was that she now had two granddaughters named Elisabeth and, as Missy had used the name first, that Ernie and I should be the ones to back down and choose something else.

‘Marie’s a pretty name,’ she suggested. ‘Or Vicky, or Alice.’

We compromised. Our Elisabeth Marie Alice Victoria would be known as Elli, to distinguish her from any other Elisabeths in the family.

Mother said, ‘And you’ll have a boy next. I feel it in my bones.

It’s no bad thing for a boy to have an older sister. I’ve often thought Affie would have done better if he hadn’t been my first.’

My brother, Affie, was a puzzle. Around us girls he was quite the little lord of creation, but in anyone else’s company he’d grow sly and wary, like a dog that had been beaten. I don’t think he had been beaten, certainly no more than any other boy. At one point he was supposed to be engaged to one of the Württemburg girls but nothing ever came of it. Mother believed he suffered from extreme nervous debility of unknown provenance. She thought a spell at Baden-Baden would do him good. Pa said, bugger Baden-Baden. What Affie needed was a kick up the BTM.

Elli was a very pretty baby. She fed well and thrived and her first summer was bliss. I took her to England to show her to Grandma Queen and Missy, who by some miracle wasn’t expecting again, took advantage of the fact and joined us there with her two little ones. Ernie elected to stay at home.

Missy and I rendezvoused in London first and did heaps of shopping. Marshall and Snelgrove, Gamages, Swan and Edgar. Gowns, shoes, hats, unmentionables, all ready-made. It was jolly hard work but much more fun than endless fittings and waiting for dressmakers. We used to pause at three o’clock and go to Lyons for tea and buns which was the greatest adventure, to feel one was out and about with the ordinary people. After tea, we’d do more shopping. Missy could be rather a slave-driver, but I could see it was essential. The poor dear couldn’t get anything in Bucharest. As she said, childbearing had ruined her line so her trousseau was good for nothing and she was dressed practically in flour sacks. Not that Darmstadt was much better. There was so little choice there, unless one settled for cloth that looked like the cover for an old couch.

After London, our next stop was Windsor. We were there in time for Ascot Week which gave us a splendid opportunity to wear
some of our new togs. Missy had a good eye for the difference an extra feather would make, or louder buttons, and we easily outshone the rest of the party. I’m sure that was why certain people took against us. I’m sure that’s why we were accused of ‘unbecoming behaviour’.

It was too silly. All Missy did was nudge Uncle Bertie Wales’s topper off his head with the tip of her parasol. He didn’t mind. He enjoyed the joke. But everyone else put on their lemon lips and said the man in the street didn’t come to Ascot to see the future Queen of Romania and the Grand Duchess of Hesse behaving like children. Which was true, though not as they meant it. It seemed to me the man in the street came to Ascot to have a rare holiday from his work and to see the finest horse flesh in action. I must say Missy and I were quite unrepentant. We were married women, not infants. What were they going to do? Send us to bed without supper?

From Windsor, Missy and I moved on to Osborne House and had the most heavenly time. The whole month of July. Our sister Sandra joined us for a week. Pa had reluctantly agreed to her engagement to Ernst Hohenlohe-Langenberg so she was eager for information about Married Life. There was to be another Ernie in the family.

‘Bit of a non-entity’ was Pa’s opinion of him, but that was because Ernst Hohenlohe was actually something of an intellectual. It was a quality Pa always mistrusted in a man.

Missy, Sandra and I were put up in the Albert Cottage at Osborne, so that the noise of the children shouldn’t disturb the peace of Grandma Queen. But she loved to see them every afternoon, for twenty minutes or so, and she remembered their names and the exact dates they were born. Great-grandchildren! What must that feel like? Grandma was so ancient. Seventy-six. And yet she seemed
never to have changed, within our memory at least, unlike Uncle Bertie Wales who had aged hugely. And what must that feel like? To watch your own child grow old? We felt sorry for Uncle Bertie, hanging about like the Twelfth Man all those years of waiting to be king, pads strapped on but not sure of ever being called to the crease.

I didn’t want that month to end. The thought of going back to Darmstadt, to Ernie who dandled Elli all day and then stayed out all night and never, ever came to my bed, was more than I could bear. Missy could have been more sympathetic.

She said, ‘I do miss you, obviously, but I rather like Romania, now I’m accustomed to it. You’ll love it too when you come to visit. And things are a lot better since Mother had a word with Nando. He’s made his own arrangements and, you know, I’ll probably do the same, in a year or two.’

Missy was planning to have affairs. I was so shocked.

‘Well, why not?’ she said. ‘I’ve done my duty. And I might even do it again, if I could be sure of having another boy, so as to give them a spare, you know? But I’m sure I’m entitled to a little adventure now. You too. Well, perhaps you’d better give Ernie a son first. But after that.’

That was when I told her about Ernie. How he seemed positively to dislike doing The Thing and actually had stopped doing it at all since Elli was born. Then it was her turn to be shocked.

‘Gosh,’ she said. ‘And he’s so very handsome. How disappointing. Did you do something to put him off his stride, Ducky? Did you scream in pain or make a terrible fuss?’

I said, ‘Absolutely not. And he says I’m a perfect wife.’

‘Really?’ she said. ‘How very odd. Generally speaking husbands don’t say such things. Do you suppose he’s a pansy? Pa always called him one.’

Pa called a lot of people ‘pansy’.

She said, ‘You’re sure you’ve done everything you can to encourage him?’

I did wonder, obviously, if there were something more I should be doing. Missy said, ‘Remember that gelding we had when we lived at Devonport? All the coaxing we had to do to get him to take the saddle? Rewards. Apples and humbugs. We got there in the end, and once we’d convinced him he became an absolute enthusiast. First into the yard every time, looking for his humbug.’

I didn’t see how the apple and humbug method could be adapted to Ernie’s case. Missy said I could be very obtuse.

She said, ‘Well, he’s your husband. I’d say it’s your job to find out what he wants. It’s not a problem I ever had with Nando. He’d just leap aboard and gallop to the winning post. And now he has his ballerina he hardly troubles me at all. So, you know, sauce for the gander and all that?’

Missy said she had plenty of admirers. She said Romania was full of divinely good-looking men.

I said, ‘But what if you fall pregnant?’

‘I shall be careful not to,’ she said. ‘Mainly, I’ll just allow them to kiss my neck and bring me roses. Now who can we find to bring you roses? Darmstadt’s so tame. We may have to look a little further afield. If you could only come to stay with me. I’d find you a lover in five minutes. What’s your type, would you say?’

I didn’t tell her about Cyril until we were lying in the dark. She got up at once and re-lit the lamp. She said she had to see my face, to know if I could possibly be serious.

‘Cousin Cyril?’ she said. ‘Cyril Vladimirovich? It’s a joke. Tell me it’s a joke. I mean, I know you had a little pash for him when we were younger, but he’s such a stuffed-shirt. Ernie’s much more fun.’

That’s what everyone said. Ernie is such fun.

As soon as I’d told Missy about my feelings for Cyril I regretted it. I swore her to secrecy, especially from Mother.

‘Mother?’ she said. ‘Of course I won’t tell Mother. She’d have a fit. After all the trouble she went to getting you Ernie.’

July ended and Missy and I started our homeward journeys. She came back with me to Darmstadt for a few days.

‘Honestly, Ducky,’ she kept saying. ‘I’m sure Ernie doesn’t mean to neglect you. One has to look at the positives. He’s such a stitch, and he’s so good with Elli. Could it be a case of low vitality? Maybe he needs an iron tonic?’

No one understood, not even my sister. I began to wish she’d stop patronising me and go home, and then when it was time for her to go, I wished she could stay. Any company was better than none. The best Missy and I could hope for was to meet up again in Russia, at Nicky and Sunny’s coronation, but that was nearly a year off.

‘Chin up, darling,’ she said. ‘Ernie may just be a slow starter. I predict he’s going to become much more attentive. And don’t worry about the Cyril thing. My lips are sealed. Absolutely.’

But Missy’s lips were never entirely sealed. How else did Cyril get wind of my feelings?

My sister Sandra was married to Ernst Hohenlohe in the spring of ’96. Mother seemed a good deal more satisfied with the match than Pa did.

‘Ernst will do very well,’ she said. ‘And so will Sandra. She has such a steady, contented nature.’

That was said for my benefit.

After Sandra’s wedding Mother seemed to relax. With three of us married and a few years before she needed to worry about a husband for Baby Bee, she became quite gay and girlish. She bought new gowns and wraps and slippers for our great excursion to Russia and when Pa complained about the expenditure she just laughed. Mother had Romanov money. She didn’t need to cheese-pare like the Saxe-Coburgs.

Even from a great distance, my sister-in-law’s life cast a shadow over mine. We were absolutely obliged to attend Nicky and Sunny’s coronation but I, who had always loved going to Russia, suddenly dreaded the prospect. I didn’t want to see Cyril – I imagined him dancing with one divinely pretty girl after another – and I certainly didn’t want him to see me, a dull, married woman with a child and a neglectful husband. I longed for another confinement, to excuse me from travelling, but there was no chance at all of that. Ernie had quite forgotten the way to my bedroom.

My brother, Affie, tried to wriggle out of going to Moscow too but Mother was a most efficient whipper-in. We were half-Romanov and even half-Romanovs didn’t shirk their duty. And so we boarded the train for three days of Pa’s grumbling, Affie’s dead-eyed vacancy and lectures from Mother on the correct way to raise my child.

Ernie and I stayed with his older sister, Grand Duchess Ella. Her husband, Grand Duke Uncle Serge, was Governor-General of Moscow and they lived in his official residence, on Tverskaya. I’d worried about bringing the noise and clutter of a baby into Uncle Serge’s immaculate house. He and Aunt Ella had no children of their own. But dear Ella said it was their pleasure to have us there. That Uncle Serge loved to have little ones around. Indeed Grand Duke Uncle Paul would be staying there too, with his poor motherless darlings. His little Marie must have been about six then, and Dmitri a year younger.

‘Plenty of room for nurses and governesses,’ Ella said. ‘We shall be quite a kindergarten. This house is far too big for us anyway.’

Missy and Nando stayed with the Yusupovs who had opened up their Moscow house for the Coronation. Mother and Pa and Baby Bee stayed with Grand Duke Uncle Vladimir and Aunt Miechen, Cyril’s parents. The day after our arrival Aunt Miechen gave a luncheon party. I feigned a headache. I knew I was bound to see Cyril sooner or later but since I’d confided in Missy I felt as though I were walking around with a sign pinned to my gown. SAD CASE. CRUSH ON COUSIN CYRIL.

‘Headache?’ Ernie said. ‘You never get headaches. Poor show, Ducky. They’re your bally relatives after all. And frankly, your Uncle Vladimir turns my bowels to water. I was looking to you to sweeten his opinion of me.’

Aunt Ella told him to go and leave me in peace. I felt terribly
guilty fibbing to her about my head. I don’t believe Ella ever told a lie in her life. Ernie, after all his complaints, came home tipsy and very well lunched.

‘How head?’ he asked.

‘Slightly better. How bowels?’

‘Bowels in good order. Actually your Uncle Vladimir was damned cordial.’

‘Everyone there?’

‘Everyone.’

The entire city was
en fête
for the Coronation and more crowded than I had ever seen it. Pavilions and archways had been set up, everything had been given a fresh coat of paint and every house was decorated with flags and lilac boughs and laurel garlands.

We had no sighting of Nicky and Sunny until five days before their crowning. They were following tradition, staying out of town at the Petrovsky Palace, praying and fasting and contemplating their duties until the time came for them to make a grand entrance. They had Baby Olga and her nurses there with them too. Aunt Ella said they couldn’t bear to be parted from the child for even one night.

The ceremonials got underway at last on the Friday morning. A cannon was fired from the Tainitskaya Tower in the Kremlin and that was the signal that the Emperor was on his way into the city. Then the bells started. There’s no sound on earth like Russian church bells. There’s a scheme to English bells, like the steps of a quadrille, and a German carillon makes a pretty sound. But the intention of Russian bells seems to be to rock the earth off its axis.

The Governor-General’s house was right there, on the processional route. We had the best view ever. Uncle Paul’s children watched with us. Marie had a new party dress for the occasion, with a pink sash, and Dmitri Pavlovich was dressed like a miniature
Pavlovsky grenadier. He held my hand, my right hand. His own right hand, he explained to me solemnly, had to be kept free for saluting.

Ernie put Elli on his shoulders but she fell asleep and didn’t wake even when the cornets and drums passed beneath us playing the Imperial March.

The Cossacks came first, in their scarlet coats and fleece caps, the foot soldiers and then the cavalry on steppe horses, Russian Dons, bays and blacks. Some of the Cossacks had their little sons, or their grandsons, in the saddle with them, so that one day they’d be able to say, ‘I was there.’

The Chevalier Guards came next, and then the lone figure of Tsar Nicholas in a plain green army tunic. Little Nicky. It was hard to think of him as Emperor of All the Russias. They’d put him on a good mount though, a grey, half-Westphalian, a mare but she stood fifteen hands at least.

The Imperial Suite and the Grand Dukes followed a few paces behind him. Uncle Paul glanced up at our window. He told me afterwards he’d had to do it so hastily that he hadn’t really seen Marie and Dmitri, but they certainly saw him and they knew he was thinking of them. Uncle Vladimir’s boys rode directly behind him. Cyril, Boris and Andrei. They were all wearing hussar regimentals, even Cyril who was in the Navy, but I knew him at once by the way he sat his horse. I talked to Aunt Ella about the weather prospects until he’d ridden out of sight.

The gold coaches brought up the rear. Dowager Empress Aunt Minnie was in the first. She looked up at us and waved. It must have been such a bittersweet day for her, proud of Nicky but sad for poor departed Uncle Sasha. Sunny’s coach followed immediately behind. The soon-to-be-crowned Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna.

I will say she did look very like an Empress, perfectly still and
posée
, glittering like a snow queen. So tight-lipped though.

Ernie called out, ‘Come on, Sunny, give us a smile.’

Aunt Ella said, ‘She’s nervous, poor darling. She’s been so afraid she’ll faint.’

The procession crossed Okhotniy and paused for Nicky to dismount and go into the Iversky Chapel to venerate the icon. Then on they went through the Resurrection Gate into Red Square and out of sight again. They stayed closeted in the Kremlin Palace from then until the day of the Coronation. Tuesday.

We had to be seated in the Ouspensky cathedral by nine o’clock though nothing was likely to happen before eleven. It was such a trial, with the heat and the fog of incense and the way they said the same prayers over and over. The crowning and the anointing took forever and then there was still Divine Liturgy to endure. The Orthodox do go on so.

Paki, paki, mirom Gospodu pomolimsya
. Again and again in peace let us pray to the Lord.

Again and again, indeed. I began to understand why Sunny had been so reluctant to convert. I felt sorry for her actually.

Six hours. I thought I’d die.

Ernie said, ‘I warned you not to have that second cup of tea. And think of us poor men. You ladies can at least hide a little potty under your skirts. You did bring a little potty?’

And then we had to join the crush for dinner. Ernie was longing to loosen his collar, my shoes pinched, my gown clung to me. And they served hot turtle soup, and pheasant, in May! I ate nothing. I remember asking Missy if I was flushed.

She said, ‘We’re all flushed, except for the Empress Ice Maiden. Look at her. How does she do it?’

Nicky and Sunny were on a dais, at a table for two, pretending
to peck at their food. Not wishing to stray an inch from tradition, Nicky had kept his crown on until dinner was over. It was too big for him and had slipped down so you couldn’t see his eyebrows.

Ernie said, ‘Observation: when they stand side by side, Sunny is taller than Nicky but when they’re seated they’re the same height. Conclusion: the Emperor of All the Russias has very short legs.’

It was while they were serving dessert. I happened to look up and see Cyril Vladimirovich. He’d been watching me. I could tell because he looked away immediately. That was when I knew Missy had blabbed.

I said, ‘You promised.’

‘Really, Ducky,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. If Cyril turned away I imagine it’s because he has better things to look at than a red-faced, boring old cousin.’

But that was precisely my point. We were family. He should just have acknowledged me, not looked away in haste. I ate two ices and didn’t taste a thing. We went to powder our noses.

Missy said, ‘But do you still like him? Now you’ve seen him again?’

I said it was all just too stupid. I was a married woman.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but are Things any better with Ernie?’

Of course they weren’t. We lived as brother and maidenly sister, but I was in no mood to discuss anything so personal with my loose-lipped sister. I returned to the subject of Sunny’s pallor.

Missy said, ‘She’s probably expecting again. Those dark circles under her eyes. I can always tell. Well, she may as well get on with it. She has to give them a boy, however many times it takes. But don’t change the subject. Has Ernie paid you any attention?’

I said I wished I’d worn a lighter gown. I was soaked in perspiration.

‘I’ll take that as a No,’ she said. ‘Well then, this week is your
chance, Ducky. I’m trying to help you here. Cyril’s not attached to anyone so I expect to see you dancing with him every evening. It doesn’t sound as though Ernie will mind and, if he does, so much the better. A little jealousy might give him some pep.’

I said, ‘How do you know Cyril’s not attached?’

‘Baby Bee said. Aunt Miechen told her.’

‘Why? Is Cyril interested in Baby Bee?’

It was something that had never occurred to me. What if he married my little sister? It wasn’t out of the question. She was thirteen. Another three years and she’d be marriageable. I felt quite sick at the thought.

But Missy said, ‘No, you silly creature. I told Baby Bee to find out.’

‘Why don’t you just place a notice in the newspapers and make sure the whole world knows?’

‘Ducky,’ she said, ‘one may as well be in possession of the facts. No sense in your hankering after Cyril if he’s already spoken for. But he’s not. And of course, Aunt Miechen adores you. You were always her favourite. She would have loved to have you as a daughter-in-law.’

‘So you did say something.’

‘Not really. Aunt Miechen quizzed me. After Baby Bee asked about Cyril. But honestly, Ducky, I hardly needed to tell her anything. She wasn’t at all surprised about Ernie. In fact she said she’d always felt in her bones that he wasn’t good marriage material. So you see?’

I didn’t see. What was there to see? It was too late.

Missy said, ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, must I spell it out? Cyril’s here, you’re here. Have a little flirtation. Where’s the harm? A six-hour Coronation. I’m sure we’re all entitled to a little pleasure after that ordeal.’

I hardly slept, but no one slept much in Moscow that night. The Kremlin was lit up with the new electric lights and carts were on the move well before dawn. Some people were starting their long journey home, but many of them were going to Khodynka Meadow for free beer and gingerbread and souvenir Coronation cups.

I lay awake thinking of Cyril. There was to be one party after another that week. I was bound to be in his company again. I could have borne it, just seeing him. I could have carried it off. But Missy had ruined everything. She meant well, but the trouble with Missy was she was a stranger to embarrassment. She couldn’t begin to imagine how mortified I felt.

The household was on the move early. Servants’ voices, footsteps, doors slamming, and then I heard a carriage going off at speed. I dozed until nine, then Aunt Ella came in with my breakfast tray. Her hair was down and she’d been crying. There had been a terrible accident, she said. A crush of people out at Khodynka, pushing to be near the front when the beer was given out. Some had died. Uncle Serge had gone there as soon as he heard the news.

‘Poor Serge,’ she kept saying. ‘And after everything went off so well yesterday.’

Aunt Ella was worried that Uncle Serge would be blamed for the accident, and with good reason. When arrangements go perfectly to plan no one asks who should be thanked, but when things go wrong they must have someone to blame. That was what a Governor-General was for. Uncle Serge came back from Khodynka Meadow and shut himself away in his study. All morning the telephone rang and people came and went, grave-faced. The news got worse by the hour. Fifty dead. Two hundred. Five hundred. That was when Uncle Serge went to see Emperor Nicky.

There was the urgent question of the Coronation celebrations.

Should everything be cancelled? The French ambassador was meant to be giving a ball that evening. He needed to know what to do. Uncle Serge thought the main thing was for Nicky and Sunny to visit the injured and meet the bereaved, to offer their condolences. After that they should make a brief appearance at the ball. Uncle Paul agreed that the ball should go ahead but he felt that Nicky and his suite should stay away, out of respect for the dead. Uncle Vladimir said it was madness to think of anyone giving or attending a ball when the dead were stacked up like so many log piles. Emperor Nicky didn’t know what he thought. He was discussing it with his wife and his mother.

Aunt Ella said, ‘If it’s left to Sunny all the festivities will certainly be cancelled. She hates these occasions at the happiest of times.’