The Grand Duchess of Nowhere (5 page)

We took the Nord Express to go home. It was such a depressing journey. Affie parted from us at Berlin, with rather tactless enthusiasm, I thought. He had his man get the bags ready the absolute moment we passed Konigsberg. Mother fretted, as though he were still a tiny child, and Pa growled at her about a boy needing to cut loose once in a while.

Mother said, ‘But Berlin, in the middle of August? What can he possibly hope to do there? No one will be in town.’

Ernie mischievously suggested it would be an ideal time to visit the Altes Museum.

‘No crowds,’ he said. ‘And Affie does so love those decorated Greek vases. He’ll be able to study them in comfort.’

Pa chuckled.

‘Greek vases, eh?’ he said. ‘Saucy, are they?’

‘Athletic,’ Ernie said, and Mother said she’d never heard Affie express the least interest in vases.

Mother and Pa’s personal coupé was uncoupled at Hanover but we stayed on the Pullman as far as Cologne.

Mother whispered, ‘We’ve all had such a lovely summer. Now do try to settle down, Ducky.’

I looked at her.

‘I’m not a complete fool,’ she said.

I opened my mouth to protest.

‘And neither is your husband,’ she whispered. ‘Now do be a good girl. I have quite enough to worry about with Missy.’

There was no reason she should have known what had passed between me and Cyril but then, mothers know a surprising number of things when they choose to.

I was resolved anyway. I didn’t need a lecture from Mother. Cyril and I had a delicious secret and, apart from the bedroom problem, Ernie was good fun, so I was determined to make the best of things. Ernie had plans too. He’d been bowled over by the parties we’d been to in Moscow. Aunt Miechen always gave wonderful dinners, even in a borrowed house, and the Yusupovs were like a lavish travelling circus. No one could ever tell me where their wealth came from so I can only imagine they owned a very large gold mine. Ernie wanted us to be the Yusupovs of Darmstadt, but we didn’t have Yusupov money and Hesse wasn’t Russia. Hessians are careful, sober people. As hard as we tried to be sociable and gay, it was uphill work. We acquired a hot-air balloon and a fleet of bicycles for our guests, and one of the ponds at Wolfsgarten was cleaned and excavated to accommodate Ernie’s longed-for waterslide. He was still bored. He’d look at our guests’ feeble efforts at dressing for a costume party and say, ‘Not exactly Babylon, is it?’

My best friends in Darmstadt in those days were George and Georgie Buchanan. Sir George was the British chargé d’affaires and if he thought Ernie and I were madcap he never showed it. He had the diplomat’s touch and that British easiness. I’ve often been advised, since the war with Germany started and then the other, Russian troubles, to emphasise my Britishness. I found the advice unnecessary. It is my natural plumage. They say scratch the skin of a British Royal and you’ll find a German but my German blood runs very thin. As for Russia, which I thought I loved, I find it has become a stranger.

Ernie and I aimed always to have at least three guests staying with us. It kept us from futile conversations and arguments. He had his projects and I had mine. He built a play house for Elli, complete in every domestic detail, and then he began something far more ambitious: a proper Orthodox chapel in Darmstadt. He proposed the idea to Emperor Nicky who took it up with great enthusiasm. It would be somewhere suitable for Sunny to worship when she visited Darmstadt.

I said, ‘But how often do you think that will be?’

‘I hope very often,’ Ernie said. ‘I miss her dreadfully. You miss your sister so I think I may be allowed to miss mine.’

Sunny’s chapel wasn’t to be simply a church in the Orthodox style. It was to be a little patch of Russia in Sunny’s childhood home. Trainloads of Russian soil and Russian granite began to arrive. Ernie was to oversee the project and design its interior. It kept him very happily occupied. Practically every day he’d disappear with a roll of drawings under his arm.

In his absence, I shopped for horses. I acquired two Lippizaners, a hunter from Kildare – chestnut with white socks and a blaze – and a Welsh pony, ready for Elli to begin her riding lessons. And every day I looked out for letters from Cyril.

He did write, but not often, and of course his letters betrayed nothing of our secret. They were just a rather dull recital of his travels such as a dutiful child might write. He was docked at Reval, which made sense, and at Danzig, but then he wrote that he was in Paris, which seemed a strange destination for a serving naval officer. Then Baby Bee wrote that she and Mother had seen him in Cannes and I was in agonies to know what he was doing there. Did he have a sweetheart? A beautiful, unmarried French sweetheart. I could hardly ask.

I always shared Cyril’s letters with Ernie, to forestall any
suspicions or accusations, but after the first few he stopped reading them.

‘Leave them on my night stand,’ he said. ‘I’ll use them instead of my Sydenham’s Drops when I can’t sleep. Honestly, Ducky, only Cyril Vladimirovich could make Paris sound boring. I wonder why he bothers writing?’

Ernie and I had never had a servant problem. We kept a happy household. But then suddenly people began to give notice, or rather not give notice but simply announce that they were leaving at once, very inconsiderately leaving one in a fix. An under-gardener went, then two footmen in rapid succession and then Seidel, the very best of our grooms, which vexed me enormously. Seidel wouldn’t say where he was going or why he was in such haste.

I said, ‘Won’t you at least wait until after foaling?’

He was especially fond of my mare, Moonbeam. Still he said he could not stay.

I asked Gusenbauer if he knew the reason. Gusenbauer was my coachman. He was the fatherly kind of man a lad like Seidel might have confided in. When I pressed him, he said there might have been a slight altercation. He couldn’t swear to it but His Royal Highness might have spoken to Seidel sharply and Seidel might perhaps have taken it too much to heart.

‘Boys,’ he said. ‘They come and they go. Whoever knows what goes on in their heads? Sometimes they don’t recognise a good position until they’ve given it up.’

Ernie was up at Kranichstein laying out new rose beds so he couldn’t be asked and by the time he came home Seidel had already gone.

‘Load of nonsense,’ Ernie said. ‘I’m sure I never reprimanded anyone. Seidel? Which one was he?’

Then I knew he was fibbing. Everyone knew Seidel.

A new groom was found. Hubert. Ernie made it his personal responsibility to find someone suitable, seeing how upset I was at losing Seidel. Hubert was young but very able and my horses accepted him, though I believe Moonbeam still looked out of her box every day, hoping to see Seidel again. She foaled, a good-looking colt that promised well but never made much progress. I sold him as a yearling.

I was supposed to take Elli up to Schleswig-Holstein, to meet her new cousin. Ernie’s sister Irene had had another baby boy, Sigismund.

I liked Irene well enough. She was a bit dull, but pleasant. Ernie’s sisters are all such homebodies. I’ve often wondered where his great appetite for limelight and drum roll sprang from. Perhaps every family must have its showman. But I confess my chief reason for accepting Irene’s invitation to visit was that I thought she meant for me to stay with her at Schloss Kiel. Her husband, Heinrich, was based at Kiel and it was the kind of port where a ship of the Russian Imperial Fleet might put in with a certain Romanov cousin on board. It was only after I was committed to the visit that Irene explained we’d be staying out in the country, at Hemmelmark.

‘So much better for the little ones,’ she said. ‘There’s no point in being in Kiel. Heinrich will be at sea, on exercises.’

I cancelled. Ernie was furious. He said if I couldn’t be friends with Sunny I should at least make an effort with his other sisters.

I said, ‘I don’t need to make an effort. I get on very well with Irene, and with Aunt Ella.’

‘Everyone gets on with Ella,’ he said. ‘And you know Irene must be going through an anxious time.’

Waldemar, her firstborn, has the bleeding disease, so Irene was watching anxiously over the new baby. He was only six months old, but the signs can appear quite early and it always seems to be
the boys. As things have turned out, Sigismund has escaped it, but others in the family haven’t been so lucky. Ernie’s brother, Frittie, had it. Always the boys.

I said, ‘Irene’s your sister. If you think she needs company,
you
go to Hemmelmark.’

He didn’t, of course. He said he was far too busy. But as he was in such a quarrelsome mood I decided to take a little holiday anyway. I took Elli to Coburg to visit Mother and Pa. It was while I was there that I heard a piece of St Petersburg gossip. It concerned Mother’s brother, Grand Duke Uncle Paul. We’d all guessed that he was courting someone. We just didn’t know who it was. Uncle Paul is a very private person. Little by little the facts were revealed. He was seeing Olga Pistohlkors. Not only was she a commoner, she was a
married
commoner. She was about to leave her lawful husband.

‘Not only that,’ Baby Bee whispered to me, ‘but she’s expecting a baby. Imagine!’

I’m sure I was never allowed to know about such things at her age.

Mother confirmed the story, and added to it. Empress Sunny was so scandalised she wanted Uncle Paul banished from her Imperial sight.

Mother said, ‘The Empress should mind her own business.’

Uncle Paul was Mother’s youngest brother. Whatever he did she’d defend him.

‘Your uncle has been alone quite long enough,’ she said. ‘Men aren’t suited to widowhood. They need a woman to tell them what to do.’

Pa sucked his teeth.

I’d planned to stay a week at least in Coburg but first Baby Bee and then Mother developed a fever and a fearful headache.

‘Take Elli home,’ Mother said. ‘I’d never forgive myself if our little angel fell ill.’

So I sent word ahead and Elli and I set off for Darmstadt the next morning. Gusenbauer met us at the station with the sociable. He said Ernie wasn’t in town. Up at Wolfsgarten, he thought, seeing the steward.

I said, ‘Then let’s go up there and surprise him,’ and Gusenbauer said was I quite sure I didn’t want to go home first, to wash off the smuts and allow the little one to rest? But Elli wanted to see her Papa more than anything.

I said, ‘No, no. I can wash just as well in the country as in town. Let’s go directly.’

You see, I should have guessed, from the way Gusenbauer dawdled. First he said he didn’t care for the way one of our horses was travelling, that it seemed to be sparing its nearside fore and he feared it was lame. But I knew there was nothing wrong with that horse. It always did bob its head excessively. Then he halted the carriage to show Elli some rabbits sunning themselves on a grass bank. It was all very well, but they were just rabbits. Anything, though, to delay our arrival at Wolfsgarten. Poor Gusenbauer. He knew Ernie had company up there. I suppose everyone knew, except me.

The only blessing was that Elli didn’t see what I saw. I had Gusenbauer to thank for that. He stopped at the front door just long enough for me to get down, then he drove off very smartly to the stable yard. Two of the hounds had had puppies and Gusenbauer lured Elli away with the promise of petting them while I went ahead into the house. The door stood open. It was wonderfully cool inside. I took off my shoes to feel the cold marble through my stockings. The doorman’s chair was empty. I called out and no footmen or maids came running. The house seemed deserted. I thought Ernie must be out, somewhere about the estate. It was
the middle of the afternoon. His bedroom was the very last place I looked. It was the creak of the door that woke him.

‘
Raus!
’ he called. ‘Out! How many times have I told you! Do not come in here unless I ring for you. Now get out and stay out!’

He thought I was a servant. At first he was groggy. Then he was wide awake and furious.

‘Hellfire,’ he kept saying. ‘Hellfire and damnation. Why aren’t you in Coburg?’

As though
I
were the one at fault.

I couldn’t see who was in bed beside him but I knew, sort of.

He said, ‘Where’s Elli?’

I said, ‘Do you want her to see this?’

He groaned and got up, as though it were the most tiresome thing to have to do. Funny, I’d never seen him naked before. He was always a lamps-off-nightshirt-on husband in my bedroom.

He said, ‘I hope you’re not going to make a scene.’

Then he pulled the covers off the bed and said, ‘Up, boy! The party’s over.’

And there lay Hubert.

I don’t know what men do together. I don’t want to know.

Ernie and I took turns to be angry about what I’d seen. He went first, because I’d robbed him of his secret.

He said, ‘What possessed you to drive out here and surprise me? You know I hate surprises.’

Which wasn’t true at all.

Then he said, ‘We were perfectly all right, you and I. Now you’ve gone and upset everything.’

He made it my fault. So then it was my turn to be angry.

I said, ‘We weren’t perfectly all right. You haven’t shared my bed since Elli was born.’

He said a good many wives would be grateful. That I’d always known his heart wasn’t in the marriage business and surely we’d agreed just to be chums. Chums!

I said, ‘But you’ve had Hubert, and I suppose you had Seidel and others too. Who do I have?’

He seemed astonished.

He said, ‘You have Elli. And someday we’ll have another child. But no rush, surely?’

I told him it was nothing to do with having another child. I hardly even thought of it. I wanted to be cherished. I wanted a
lover. Then he was even more astonished, as though I were troubling him with something that was none of his concern.

‘A lover?’ he said. ‘Then bloody well take one. When have I ever stopped you doing anything? Why do we need even to talk about this?’

I said we must end the marriage, as soon as possible. We were going to England for Grandma Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. I said we must take that opportunity. We’d explain our incompatibilities to her, as delicately as possible, and ask her blessing for us to part. He laughed.

‘Are you mad?’ he said. ‘I believe you are. Involve GQ? I absolutely forbid it.’

I’d made him nervous. Later, when the heat had gone out of that particular evening’s argument, he was more conciliatory.

He said, ‘Look here, Ducky, one can’t involve grannies in cases of this kind. It simply isn’t appropriate.’

I said, ‘Except that Granny Queen was the person who threw us together in the first place. She does bear some responsibility for our misery.’

‘Misery?’ he said. ‘I’m certainly not miserable and I think you rather overstate the case. If you take this to Granny Queen it will certainly kill her. Are you prepared to have that on your conscience?’

Ernie didn’t at all see why we couldn’t just carry on as before. He would have Hubert, or whomever, I could take a lover and eventually, perhaps in a year or two, we’d try to have another child. He made it sound so easy.

He said, ‘As long as you’re discreet. No dallying in town, that’s all I ask. You can use one of the shooting boxes, or the lodge at Dianaburg. You’re a fine-looking woman, Ducky. Men will fall over themselves. I’m not sure how ladies go about these things but
I imagine Missy will be able to advise you. From what I hear her boudoir door is never still.’

That did it. In my rage a Meissen cherub got broken, a window was cracked and Ernie sustained a small contusion to his right temple. Later, when we were both calmer, he said he’d always been jolly fond of me.

‘Just not
that
way,’ he said. ‘I thought you knew that.’

*

That was 1897. Grandma Queen’s Diamond Jubilee was in June. Clarence House was made available for Mother and Pa and we were to stay with them. Missy couldn’t come because Nando was still recovering from a bout of typhoid and if he was obliged to stay at home so was she. Nicky and Sunny couldn’t attend either because Sunny had just been confined. Another girl, Tatiana. Aunt Ella and Uncle Serge came as Emperor Nicky’s representatives, and Ella brought news that made my heart race.

She said, ‘Cyril Vladimirovich hopes to get here in time for the celebrations. His boat is due to dock at Devonport tomorrow. It’s very sweet of him to make the effort.’

I believe I looked perfectly composed.

Ernie said, ‘Cyril? I feel my eyelids drooping already.’

I said, ‘Well, I think it’s splendid. Cyril’s quite the nicest of my cousins.’

*

Later Ernie said, ‘You can’t really think Cyril’s the nicest. Boris is much more fun. Don’t you find Cyril rather pompous? Don’t you find him a little unbending? That ramrod back.’

I said, ‘All my cousins have good posture. Cyril particularly. You’re the only one who slumps.’

He caught something in my look. You never knew with Ernie.

Sometimes he could be so obtuse, sometimes he’d notice the flicker of an eyelash.

‘Golly, Ducky,’ he said. ‘You don’t have a secret pash for Cyril, do you?’

And then I really lost my head.

I said, ‘More to the point, Cyril has a pash for me.’

‘No!’ he said. ‘Does he really? But how would one ever know? He always has his nose in the air. He always looks as though he’s on the parade ground.’

There was no stopping me.

I said, ‘I know because he told me so.’

‘Gosh,’ Ernie said. ‘The unsuspected rascal! I shall now look at him with different eyes. But, darling, he’s not much use to you. You’re in Darmstadt and he’s God knows where, playing battleships. How can there be any future in that?’

That’s how easy it was to tell him. Ernie didn’t take anything seriously.

On the Monday afternoon Grandma Queen came into town from Windsor. Cyril’s train was delayed because Her Majesty’s arrival brought everything at Paddington Station to a halt but he arrived just in time to dress for dinner. I wore grey silk and my amethysts, Cyril greeted me in an impeccably cousin-like way and I kept my poise in spite of Ernie’s beastly efforts at unsettling me with his imitations of Cyril’s military bearing.

‘He’s like a heron,’ he said. ‘A heron in a tailcoat. Having recently swallowed a bad fish.’

*

The next day was a public holiday to celebrate the Jubilee. There was a carriage procession to St Paul’s. Pa and Cyril and Ernie were all part of the mounted escort, and brother Affie too, though he didn’t look at all well. ‘Costive,’ Mother said. ‘He needs Syrup of Figs.’

She and I were consigned to one of the rearmost landaus. Mother swore she really couldn’t have cared less.

‘Call that a procession?’ she said. ‘Her Majesty’s Lord Chamberlain should go to Russia to see how a procession should be done.’

Because of Grandma Queen’s great age, the Te Deum was sung outside the cathedral, to save her the effort of climbing all those steps. She was still possessed of a sharp mind but at seventy-eight, which of us wouldn’t be relieved to be able to stay in the comfort of our carriage?

There was a luncheon afterwards, at Buckingham Palace. That was when I first got the chance of a quiet word with Cyril.

I said, ‘Ernie knows.’

‘Knows what?’ he said. ‘There’s nothing for him to know.’

That wasn’t what he was supposed to say.

I said, ‘What I mean is, I told him that you and I have feelings for each other and he doesn’t mind in the least. As long as he can carry on as he pleases he doesn’t care what I do.’

Cyril said, ‘Doesn’t care? The bounder. But I care, Ducky.
Bozhe moy
, another man’s wife! I mean to say, it’s unthinkable. You’d be ruined.’

I said, ‘But I’m already ruined. I’m a laughing stock. Ernie goes with boys and the whole household knows about it.’

‘Even so,’ he said. ‘If word of this were to go any further. Our names linked. It could be damned awkward.’

It was a sickening moment. Cyril thought I was about to faint. He helped me to a chair.

He said, ‘I suppose this is my fault. I shouldn’t have confessed my feelings. It’s unsettled you. But you must see, it’s a futile case. Best to forget we ever spoke. Put it behind us. Not that there ever was anything.’

I said, ‘But what if someday I were free?’

He turned rather pale.

He said, ‘Ducky, much as I adore you, I’m not prepared to fight a duel over you.’

I managed a laugh.

I said, ‘No one fights duels any more, you noodle.’

He said, ‘Then what can you mean by “free”? Is Ernie unwell? He looks perfectly healthy.’

I said, ‘It’s very simple. I’m going to talk to Grandma Queen. I’m going to ask her permission for Ernie and me to divorce.’

Then I thought
he
might faint.

‘No, Ducky,’ he said. ‘Never, never. Our kind of people don’t divorce.’

Our kind of people.

I said, ‘So if I did get a divorce, you wouldn’t marry me?’

He groaned.

‘And if I’m divorced and you marry someone else, I’ll be the kind of woman you won’t allow your wife to meet. So whatever I do I’m doomed to wretchedness. And you don’t care, so long as I don’t create a scandal.’

‘Ducky, Ducky,’ he said. He touched my hair. He began to walk away, then he came back.

‘Please stop and think,’ he said. ‘If you have any regard for Her Majesty, don’t trouble her with this. It will kill her.’

I said, ‘That was Ernie’s excuse for doing nothing too, but I imagine he just doesn’t want her to know about his stable-boys.’

‘And quite right too,’ he said. ‘Ernie may be an invert but he at least understands that a frail old lady shouldn’t be exposed to such an abomination.’

Anyone would have thought it was
his
granny. And anyway, I didn’t believe Grandma Queen was frail.

Aunt Louise was at hand. I consulted her. I knew she wouldn’t have an attack of the vapours.

I said, ‘I have to divorce Ernie. What should I do?’

‘Oh Lord!’ she said. ‘Do you really? But you were quite keen on him. What went wrong?’

I was getting accustomed to telling people about Ernie and his boys. It used to embarrass me, but one can get used to anything.

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I see. Well, dearest girl, you’re not the first wife this has happened to and you won’t be the last. But you know accommodations can be made, if a wife and husband are compatible in other respects? Lorne and I, for instance, have come to a comfortable arrangement. That’s to say separate arrangements. You understand? As long as one is discreet it can work very well.’

Exactly what Ernie had said.

‘And Ernie has given you that darling child,’ she said. ‘So he has made something of an effort.’

Ernie never wanted for supporters.

I said, ‘But I don’t want a discreet arrangement. I want a proper marriage.’

She sighed.

‘Well, divorce isn’t the way to go about things. Heavens, you’ll never be invited anywhere. If you’re divorced you’ll never meet anyone remotely suitable for a “proper” marriage, as you call it. Just have affairs, darling. Honestly, it’s much easier.’

I said, ‘But I’ve already met someone.’

‘You astonish me,’ she said. ‘What kind of man would encourage you in this folly? No, please don’t tell me his name. Does your mother know about any of this? Of course she doesn’t. Ducky, do take care. I’d hate to see you walled up in a convent. Write to me, visit me, but please, please don’t do anything mad.’

Aunt Louise was right. It was a kind of madness. I so admired her
and I had confided in her, and yet I ignored what she advised. When Grandma Queen went back to Windsor the next day I followed her. I left Elli with Ernie.

He said, ‘I know what you’re up to. Well, I’ll have no part in it. You’re the one who wants a divorce, not me.’

*

Grandma Queen was so pleased I’d gone to visit her. Quite gay, actually. Some old ladies diminish towards the end of their lives but Grandma seemed to grow rounder. I suppose she had long since lost sight of her feet. Her gowns never changed though. Perhaps she just had them made wider and wider. Always black, always bombazine.

‘But where’s your dear little one?’ she asked. ‘You should have brought her with you. I see you all far too rarely.’

She pinched my cheeks and told me I looked tired.

‘Not your usual energetic self at all,’ she said. ‘Am I right in thinking we can soon look forward to another happy event?’

She thought I’d gone to Windsor to tell her I was expecting another baby. Of course she did.

I said, ‘No, Grandma, there won’t be any more babies.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh?’

‘There won’t be any more babies because Ernie never shares my bed.’

I believe I saw her hand start to move towards her bell, but I wasn’t going to be cut off before I’d said my piece.

I said, ‘And the reason is, he prefers boys. He always did.’

She was very pale. Her lips had no colour at all. I did wonder for a moment if she were going to die on me, as Ernie had predicted. But Grandma wasn’t dying. She was mastering her feelings. She said nothing for a while. Then she asked me if I was being an affectionate and encouraging wife.

She said, ‘Ernie has always required strong direction. That’s why I chose you for him.’

Chosen, to give him strong direction! It wasn’t to be borne.

I said, ‘So if Ernie doesn’t do what normal husbands do, it’s my fault? That’s hardly fair. And do you know what he tells me to do? He advises me to take a lover. What do you think of that?’

If the shock killed her, I thought, so be it. She’d had a long life. She was always maundering over Grandpa, her beloved Albert, in Heaven. Dear Albert this, dear Albert that. Let her go to him.

But the shock didn’t kill her. She didn’t even flinch.

‘Boys,’ she said. ‘It’s a phase some men go through and quite to be deplored. The church is very clear on that. No one knows the cause of it. But you know a helpful wife can set a husband back on the correct path. And you already have your little Elisabeth so there’s proof that Ernie is willing to change. You must be patient with him, Ducky.’

I said, ‘I’ve been patient. I’ve tried and tried but I won’t stand for any more of it. I must have a divorce.’

Grandma Queen’s eyes were grey-blue and watery when she spoke of places she loved, or the dear departed, but let someone utter an unmentionable word and they became as hard and beady as boot buttons.

‘Never say that word again,’ she said. ‘We will not hear it. Marriage is sacred. Happiness is irrelevant.’

Then she did ring her little bell and Lady Ampthill came in and tutted at me for overtiring Her Majesty. But Grandma Queen put on her pleasant face again and said, ‘You must all come to Osborne House this summer. So much healthier than Darmstadt for the little one. And I shall talk to Ernie. All will be well, Ducky. You’ll see.’