The Man from St. Petersburg (14 page)

“I didn’t know there was anyone that poor,” Charlotte said. “How dreadful.” She thought of all the rooms in Uncle George’s house, the food that had been laid out to be picked at by eight hundred people, all of whom had had dinner, and the elaborate gowns they wore new each season while people slept under newspapers. She said: “We should do something for them.”

“We?” Papa said. “What should
we
do?”

“Build houses for them.”

“All of them?”

“How many are there?”

Papa shrugged. “Thousands.”

“Thousands! I thought it was just those few.” Charlotte was devastated. “Couldn’t you build small houses?”

“There’s no profit in house property, especially at that end of the market.”

“Perhaps you should do it anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because the strong should take care of the weak. I’ve heard you say that to Mr. Samson.” Samson was the bailiff at Walden Hall, and he was always trying to save money on repairs to tenanted cottages.

“We already take care of rather a lot of people,” Papa said. “All the servants whose wages we pay, all the tenants who farm our land and live in our cottages, all the workers in the companies we invest in, all the government employees who are paid out of our taxes—”

“I don’t think that’s much of an excuse,” Charlotte interrupted. “Those poor people are sleeping on the
street.
What will they do in winter?”

Mama said sharply: “Your papa doesn’t need excuses. He was born an aristocrat and he has managed his estate carefully. He is entitled to his wealth. Those people on the pavement are idlers, criminals, drunkards and ne’er-do-wells.”

“Even the children?”

“Don’t be impertinent. Remember you still have a great deal to learn.”

“I’m just beginning to realize how much,” Charlotte said.

As the carriage turned into the courtyard of their house, Charlotte glimpsed one of the street sleepers beside the gate. She decided she would take a closer look.

The coach stopped beside the front door. Charles handed Mama down, then Charlotte. Charlotte ran across the courtyard. William was closing the gates. “Just a minute,” Charlotte called.

She heard Papa say: “What the devil … ?”

She ran out into the street.

The sleeper was a woman. She lay slumped on the pavement with her shoulders against the courtyard wall. She wore a man’s boots, woolen stockings, a dirty blue coat and a very large, once-fashionable hat with a bunch of grubby artificial flowers in its brim. Her head was slumped sideways and her face was turned toward Charlotte.

There was something familiar about the round face and the wide mouth. The woman was young …

Charlotte cried: “Annie!”

The sleeper opened her eyes.

Charlotte stared at her in horror. Two months ago Annie had been a housemaid at Walden Hall in a crisp clean uniform with a little white hat on her head, a pretty girl with a large bosom and an irrepressible laugh. “Annie, what happened to you?”

Annie scrambled to her feet and bobbed a pathetic curtsy. “Oh, Lady Charlotte, I was hoping I would see you, you was always good to me. I’ve nowhere to turn—”

“But how did you get like this?”

“I was let go, m’lady, without a character, when they found out I was expecting the baby; I know I done wrong—”

“But you’re not married!”

“But I was courting Jimmy, the undergardener …”

Charlotte recalled Belinda’s revelations, and realized that if all that was true it would indeed be possible for girls to have babies without being married. “Where is the baby?”

“I lost it.”

“You
lost
it?”

“I mean, it came too early, m’lady, it was born dead.”

“How horrible,” Charlotte whispered. That was something else she had not known to be possible. “And why isn’t Jimmy with you?”

“He run away to sea. He
did
love me, I know, but he was frightened to wed—he was only seventeen …” Annie began to cry.

Charlotte heard Papa’s voice. “Charlotte, come in this instant.”

She turned to him. He stood at the gate in his evening clothes, with his silk hat in his hand, and suddenly she saw him as a big, smug, cruel old man. She said: “This is one of the servants you care for so well.”

Papa looked at the girl. “Annie! What is the meaning of this?”

Annie said: “Jimmy run away, m’lord, so I couldn’t wed, and I couldn’t get another position because you never gave me a character, and I was ashamed to go home, so I come to London …”

“You came to London to beg,” Papa said harshly.

“Papa!” Charlotte cried.

“You don’t understand, Charlotte—”

“I understand perfectly well—”

Mama appeared and said: “Charlotte, get away from that creature!”

“She’s not a creature, she’s Annie.”

“Annie!” Mama shrilled. “She’s a fallen woman!”

“That’s enough,” Papa said. “This family does not hold discussions in the street. Let us go in immediately.”

Charlotte put her arm around Annie. “She needs a bath, new clothes and a hot breakfast.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Mama said. The sight of Annie seemed to have made her almost hysterical.

“All right,” Papa said. “Take her into the kitchen. The parlormaids will be up by now. Tell them to take care of her. Then come and see me in the drawing room.”

Mama said: “Stephen, this is insane—”

“Let us go
in
,” said Papa.

They went in.

Charlotte took Annie downstairs to the kitchen. A skivvy was cleaning the range and a kitchenmaid was slicing bacon for breakfast. It was just past five o’clock: Charlotte had not realized they started work so early. They both looked at her in astonishment when she walked in, in her ball gown, with Annie at her side.

Charlotte said: “This is Annie. She used to work at Walden Hall. She’s had some bad luck but she’s a good girl. She must have a bath. Find new clothes for her and burn her old ones. Then give her breakfast.”

For a moment they were both dumbstruck; then the kitchenmaid said: “Very good, m’lady.”

“I’ll see you later, Annie,” Charlotte said.

Annie seized Charlotte’s arm. “Oh, thank you, m’lady.”

Charlotte went out.

Now there will be trouble, she thought as she went upstairs. She did not care as much as she might have. She almost felt that her parents had betrayed her. What had her years of education been for, when in one night she could find out that the most important things had never been taught her? No doubt they talked of protecting young girls, but Charlotte thought deceit might be the appropriate term. When she thought of how ignorant she had been until tonight, she felt so foolish, and that made her angry.

She marched into the drawing room.

Papa stood beside the fireplace holding a glass. Mama sat at the piano, playing double-minor chords with a pained expression on her face. They had drawn back the curtains. The room looked odd in the morning, with yesterday’s cigar butts in the ashtrays and the cold early light on the edges of things. It was an evening room, and wanted lamps and warmth, drinks and footmen, and a crowd of people in formal clothes.

Everything looked different today.

“Now, then, Charlotte,” Papa began. “You don’t understand what kind of woman Annie is. We let her go for a reason, you know. She did something very wrong which I cannot explain to you—”

“I know what she did,” Charlotte said, sitting down. “And I know who she did it with. A gardener called Jimmy.”

Mama gasped.

Papa said: “I don’t believe you have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“And if I haven’t, whose fault is it?” Charlotte burst out. “How did I manage to reach the age of eighteen without learning that some people are so poor they sleep in the street, that maids who are expecting babies get dismissed, and that—that—men are not made the same as women? Don’t stand there telling me I don’t understand these things and I have a lot to learn! I’ve spent all my life learning and now I discover most of it was lies! How dare you! How dare you!” She burst into tears, and hated herself for losing control.

She heard Mama say: “Oh, this is too foolish.”

Papa sat beside her and took her hand. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said. “All young girls are kept in ignorance of certain things. It is done for their own good. We have never lied to you. If we did not tell you just how cruel and coarse the world is, that was only because we wanted you to enjoy your childhood for as long as possible. Perhaps we made a mistake.”

Mama snapped: “We wanted to keep you out of the trouble that Annie got into!”

“I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” Papa said mildly.

Charlotte’s rage evaporated. She felt like a child again. She wanted to put her head on Papa’s shoulder, but her pride would not let her.

“Shall we forgive each other, and be pals again?” Papa said.

An idea which had been quietly budding in Charlotte’s mind now blossomed, and she spoke without thinking. “Would you let me take Annie as my personal maid?”

Papa said: “Well …”

“We won’t even think of it!” Mama said hysterically. “It is quite out of the question! That an eighteen-year-old girl who is the daughter of an earl should have a scarlet woman as a maid! No, absolutely and finally no!”

“Then what will she do?” Charlotte asked calmly.

“She should have thought of that when—She should have thought of that before.”

Papa said: “Charlotte, we cannot possibly have a woman of bad character live in this house. Even if I would allow it, the servants would be scandalized. Half of them would give notice. We shall hear mutterings even now, just because the girl has been allowed into the kitchen. You see, it is not just Mama and I who shun such people—it is the whole of society.”

“Then I shall buy her a house,” Charlotte said, “and give her an allowance and be her friend.”

“You’ve no money,” Mama said.

“My Russian grandfather left me something.”

Papa said: “But the money is in my care until you reach the age of twenty-one, and I will not allow it to be used for that purpose.”

“Then what is to be done with her?” Charlotte said desperately.

“I’ll make a bargain with you,” Papa said. “I will give her money to get decent lodgings, and I’ll see that she gets a job in a factory.”

“What would be my part of the bargain?”

“You must promise not to try to make contact with her, ever.”

Charlotte felt very tired. Papa had all the answers. She could no longer argue with him, and she did not have the power to insist. She sighed.

“All right,” she said.

“Good girl. Now, then, I suggest you go and find her and tell her the arrangement, then say good-bye.”

“I’m not sure I can look her in the eye.”

Papa patted her hand. “She will be very grateful, you’ll see. When you’ve spoken to her, you go to bed. I’ll see to all the details.”

Charlotte did not know whether she had won or lost, whether Papa was being cruel or kind, whether Annie should feel saved or spurned. “Very well,” she said wearily. She wanted to tell Papa that she loved him, but the words would not come. After a moment she got up and left the room.

On the day after the fiasco, Feliks was awakened at noon by Bridget. He felt very weak. Bridget stood beside his bed with a large cup in her hand. Feliks sat up and took the cup. The drink was wonderful. It seemed to consist of hot milk, sugar, melted butter and lumps of bread. While he drank it Bridget moved around his room, tidying up, singing a sentimental song about boys who gave their lives for Ireland.

She went away and came back again with another Irishwoman of her own age who was a nurse. The woman stitched his hand and put a dressing on the puncture wound in his shoulder. Feliks gathered from the conversation that she was the local abortionist. Bridget told her that Feliks had been in a fight in a pub. The nurse charged a shilling for the visit and said: “You won’t die. If you’d had yourself seen to straightaway you wouldn’t have bled so much. As it is you’ll feel weak for days.”

When she had gone, Bridget talked to him. She was a heavy, good-natured woman in her late fifties. Her husband had got into some kind of trouble in Ireland and they had fled to the anonymity of London, where he died of the booze, she said. She had two sons who were policemen in New York and a daughter who was in service in Belfast. There was a vein of bitterness in her which showed in an occasional sarcastically humorous remark, usually at the expense of the English.

While she was explaining why Ireland should have Home Rule, Feliks went to sleep. She woke him again in the evening to give him hot soup.

On the following day his physical wounds began visibly to heal, and he started to feel the pain of his emotional wounds. All the despair and self-reproach which he had felt in the park as he ran away now came back to him. Running away! How could it happen?

Lydia
.

She was now Lady Walden.

He felt nauseated.

He made himself think clearly and coolly. He had known that she married and went to England. Obviously the Englishman she married was likely to be both an aristocrat and a man with a strong interest in Russia. Equally obviously, the person who negotiated with Orlov had to be a member of the Establishment and an expert on Russian affairs. I couldn’t have guessed it would turn out to be the same man, Feliks thought, but I should have realized the possibility.

The coincidence was not as remarkable as it had seemed, but it was no less shattering. Twice in his life Feliks had been utterly, blindly, deliriously happy. The first time was when, at the age of four—before his mother died—he had been given a red ball. The second was when Lydia fell in love with him. But the red ball had never been taken from him.

He could not imagine a greater happiness than that which he had had with Lydia—nor a disappointment more appalling than the one that followed. There had certainly been no such highs and lows in Feliks’s emotional life since then. After she left he began to tramp the Russian countryside, dressed as a monk, preaching the anarchist gospel. He told the peasants that the land was theirs because they tilled it; that the wood in the forest belonged to anyone who felled a tree; that nobody had a right to govern them except themselves, and because self-government was no government it was called anarchy. He was a wonderful preacher and he made many friends, but he never fell in love again, and he hoped he never would.