The Man from St. Petersburg (34 page)

Thomson left the room.

Charlotte was dismayed to see him go. With a stranger in the room she had just about managed to keep her composure. Alone with Papa she was afraid she would break down.

“I’ll save you if I can,” Papa said sadly.

Charlotte swallowed thickly and looked away. I wish he’d be angry, she thought; I could cope with that.

He looked out of the window. “I’m responsible, you see,” he said painfully. “I chose your mother, I fathered you, and I brought you up. You’re nothing but what I’ve made you. I can’t understand how this has happened. I really can’t.” He looked back at her. “Can you explain it to me, please?”

“Yes, I can,” she said. She was eager to make him understand, and she was sure he would, if she could tell it right. “I don’t want you to succeed in making Russia go to war, because if you do, millions of innocent Russians will be killed or wounded to no purpose.”

He looked surprised. “Is that it?” he said. “Is
that
why you’ve done these awful things? Is that what Feliks is trying to achieve?”

Perhaps he
will
understand, she thought joyfully. “Yes,” she said. She went on enthusiastically: “Feliks also wants a revolution in Russia—even you might think that could be a good thing—and he believes it will begin when the people there find out that Aleks has been trying to drag them into war.”

“Do you think I want a war?” he said incredulously. “Do you think I would like it? Do you think it would do me any good?”

“Of course not—but you’d let it happen, under certain circumstances.”

“Everyone would—even Feliks, who wants a revolution, you tell me. And if there’s to be a war, we must win it. Is that an evil thing to say?” His tone was almost pleading.

She was desperate for him to understand. “I don’t know whether it’s evil, but I do know it’s wrong. The Russian peasants know nothing of European politics, and they care less. But they will be shot to pieces, and have their legs blown off, and all awful things like that because you made an agreement with Aleks!” She fought back tears. “Papa, can’t you see that’s wrong?”

“But think of it from the British point of view—from your own personal point of view. Imagine that Freddie Chalfont and Peter and Jonathan go to war as officers, and their men are Daniel the groom, and Peter the stable lad, and Jimmy the bootboy, and Charles the footman, and Peter Dawkins from the Home Farm—wouldn’t you want them to get some help? Wouldn’t you be
glad
that the whole of the Russian nation was on their side?”

“Of course—especially if the Russian nation had chosen to help them. But they won’t choose, will they, Papa? You and Aleks will choose. You should be working to prevent war, not to win it.”

“If Germany attacks France, we have to help our friends. And it would be a disaster for Britain if Germany conquered Europe.”

“How could there be a bigger disaster than a war?”

“Should we never fight, then?”

“Only if we’re invaded.”

“If we don’t fight the Germans in France, we’ll have to fight them here.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s likely.”

“When it happens, then we should fight.”

“Listen. This country hasn’t been invaded for eight hundred and fifty years. Why? Because we’ve fought other people on their territory, not ours. That is why you, Lady Charlotte Walden, grew up in a peaceful and prosperous country.”

“How many wars were fought to prevent war? If we had not fought on other people’s territory, would they have fought at all?”

“Who knows?” he said wearily. “I wish you had studied more history. I wish you and I had talked more about this sort of thing. With a son, I would have—but Lord! I never dreamed my daughter would be interested in foreign policy! And now I’m paying the price for that mistake. What a price. Charlotte, I promise you that the arithmetic of human suffering is not as straightforward as this Feliks has led you to believe. Could you not believe me when I tell you that? Could you not trust me?”

“No,” she said stubbornly.

“Feliks wants to
kill
your cousin. Does that make no difference?”

“He’s going to kidnap Aleks, not kill him.”

Papa shook his head. “Charlotte, he’s tried twice to kill Aleks and once to kill me. He has killed many people in Russia. He’s not a kidnapper, Charlotte, he’s a murderer.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“But why?” he said plaintively.

“Did you tell me the truth about suffragism? Did you tell me the truth about Annie? Did you tell me that in democratic Britain most people still can’t vote? Did you tell me the truth about sexual intercourse?”

“No, I didn’t.” To her horror, Charlotte saw that his cheeks were wet with tears. “It may be that everything I ever did, as a father, was mistaken. I didn’t know the world would change the way it has. I had no idea of what a woman’s role would be in the world of 1914. It begins to look as if I have been a terrible failure. But I did what I thought best for you, because I loved you, and I still do. It’s not your politics that are making me cry. It’s the betrayal, you see. I mean, I shall fight tooth and nail to keep you out of the courts, even if you do succeed in killing poor Aleks, because you’re my daughter, the most important person in the world to me. For you I will let justice and reputation and England go to Hell. I would do wrong for you, without a moment’s hesitation. For me, you come above all principles, all politics, everything. That’s how it is in families. What hurts me so much is that you will not do the same for me. Will you?”

She wanted desperately to say yes.

“Will you be loyal to me, for all that I may be in the wrong, just because I am your father?”

But you’re not, she thought. She bowed her head; she could not look at him.

They sat in silence for a minute. Then Papa blew his nose. He got up and went to the door. He took the key out of the lock, and went outside. He closed the door behind him. Charlotte heard him turn the key, locking her in.

She burst into tears.

It was the second appalling dinner party Lydia had given in two days. She was the only woman at the table. Sir Arthur was glum because his vast search operation had utterly failed to turn up Feliks. Charlotte and Aleks were locked in their rooms. Basil Thomson and Stephen were being icily polite to each other, for Thomson had found out about Charlotte and Feliks, and had threatened to send Charlotte to jail. Winston Churchill was there. He had brought the treaty with him and he and Aleks had signed it, but there was no rejoicing on that account, for everyone knew that if Aleks were to be assassinated, then the Czar would refuse to ratify the deal. Churchill said that the sooner Aleks was off English soil the better. Thomson said he would devise a secure route and arrange a formidable bodyguard, and Aleks could leave tomorrow. Everyone went to bed early, for there was nothing else to do.

Lydia knew she would not sleep. Everything was unresolved. She had spent the afternoon in an indecisive haze, drugged with laudanum, trying to forget that Feliks was there in her house. Aleks would leave tomorrow: if only he could be kept safe for a few more hours … She wondered whether there might be some way she could make Feliks lie low for another day. Could she go to him and tell him a lie, say that he would have his opportunity of killing Aleks tomorrow night? He would never believe her. The scheme was hopeless. But once she had conceived the idea of going to see Feliks she could not get it out of her mind. She thought: Out of this door, along the passage, up the stairs, along another passage, through the nursery, through the closet, and there …

She closed her eyes tightly and pulled the sheet up over her head. Everything was dangerous. It was best to do nothing at all, to be motionless, paralyzed. Leave Charlotte alone, leave Feliks alone, forget Aleks, forget Churchill.

But she did not know what was going to
happen.
Charlotte might go to Stephen and say: “You’re not my father.” Stephen might kill Feliks. Feliks might kill Aleks. Charlotte might be accused of murder. Feliks might come here, to my room, and kiss me.

Her nerves were bad again and she felt another headache coming on. It was a very warm night. The laudanum had worn off, but she had drunk a lot of wine at dinner and she still felt woozy. For some reason her skin was tender tonight, and every time she moved, the silk of her nightdress seemed to scrape her breasts. She was irritable, both mentally and physically. She half-wished Stephen would come to her; then she thought: No, I couldn’t bear it.

Feliks’s presence in the nursery was like a bright light shining in her eyes, keeping her awake. She threw off the sheet, got up and went to the window. She opened it wider. The breeze was hardly cooler than the air in the room. Leaning out and looking down, she could see the twin lamps burning at the portico, and the policeman walking along the front of the house, his boots crunching distantly on the gravel drive.

What was Feliks doing up there? Was he making a bomb? Loading a gun? Sharpening a knife? Or was he sleeping, content to wait for the right moment? Or wandering around the house, trying to find a way to get past Aleks’s bodyguards?

There’s nothing I can do, she thought, nothing.

She picked up her book. It was Hardy’s
Wessex Poems
. Why did I choose this? she thought. It opened at the page she had looked at that morning. She turned up the night-light, sat down and read the whole poem. It was called “Her Dilemma.”

The two were silent in a sunless church,
Whose mildewed walls, uneven paving-stones,
And wasted carvings passed antique research,
And nothing broke the clock’s full monotones.

Leaning against a wormy poppy-head,
So wan and worn that he could scarcely stand,
—For he was soon to die,—he softly said,
“Tell me you love me!”—holding hard her hand.

She would have given a world to breathe “yes” truly,
So much his life seemed hanging on her mind,
And hence she lied, her heart persuaded throughly
‘Twas worth her soul to be a moment kind.

But the sad need thereof, his nearing death,
So mocked humanity that she shamed to prize
A world conditioned thus, or care for breath
Where Nature such dilemmas could devise.

That’s right, she thought; when life is like this, who can do right?

Her headache was so bad she thought her skull would split. She went to the drawer and took a gulp from the bottle of laudanum. Then she took another gulp.

Then she went to the nursery.

FIFTEEN

S
omething had gone wrong. Feliks had not seen Charlotte since midday, when she had brought him a basin, a jug of water, a towel and a cake of soap. There must have been some kind of trouble to keep her away—perhaps she had been forced to leave the house, or perhaps she felt she might be under observation. But she had not given him away, evidently, for here he was.

Anyway, he did not need her anymore.

He knew where Orlov was and he knew where the guns were. He was not able to get into Orlov’s room, for the security seemed too good; so he would have to make Orlov come out. He knew how to do that.

He had not used the soap and water, because the little hideaway was too cramped to allow him to stand up straight and wash himself, and anyway he did not care much about cleanliness; but now he was very hot and sticky, and he wanted to feel fresh before going about his work, so he took the water out into the nursery.

It felt very strange, to be standing in the place where Charlotte had spent so many hours of her childhood. He put the thought out of his mind: this was no time for sentiment. He took off all his clothes and washed himself by the light of a single candle. A familiar, pleasant feeling of anticipation and excitement filled him, and he felt as if his skin were glowing. I shall win tonight, he thought savagely, no matter how many I have to kill. He rubbed himself all over roughly with the towel. His movements were jerky, and there was a tight sensation in the back of his throat which made him want to shout. This must be why warriors yell war cries, he thought. He looked down at his body and saw that he had the beginnings of an erection.

Then he heard Lydia say: “Why, you’ve grown a beard.”

He spun around and stared into the darkness, stupefied.

She came forward into the circle of candlelight. Her blond hair was unpinned and hung around her shoulders. She wore a long, pale nightdress with a fitted bodice and a high waist. Her arms were bare and white. She was smiling.

They stood still, looking at one another. Several times she opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Feliks felt the blood rush to his loins. How long, he thought wildly, how long since I stood naked before a woman?

She moved, but it did not break the spell. She stepped forward and knelt at his feet. She closed her eyes and nuzzled his body. As Feliks looked down on her unseeing face, candlelight glinted off the tears on her cheeks.

Lydia was nineteen again, and her body was young and strong and tireless. The simple wedding was over, and she and her new husband were in the little cottage they had taken in the country. Outside, snow fell quietly in the garden. They made love by candlelight. She kissed him all over, and he said: “I have always loved you, all these years,” although it was only weeks since they had met. His beard brushed her breasts, although she could not remember his growing a beard. She watched his hands, busy all over her body, in all the secret places, and she said: “It’s you, you’re doing this to me, it’s you, Feliks, Feliks,” as if there had ever been anyone else who did these things to her, who gave her this rolling, swelling pleasure. With her long fingernail she scratched his shoulder. She watched as the blood welled up, then leaned forward and licked it greedily. “You’re an animal,” he said. They touched one another busily, all the time; they were like children let loose in a sweet shop, moving restlessly from one thing to another, touching and looking and tasting, unable to believe in their astonishing good fortune. She said: “I’m so glad we ran away together,” and for some reason that made him look sad, so she said: “Stick your finger up me,” and the sad look went and desire masked his face, but she realized that she was crying, and she could not understand why. Suddenly she realized that this was a dream, and she was terrified of waking up, so she said: “Let’s do it now, quickly,” and they came together, and she smiled through her tears and said: “We fit.” They seemed to move like dancers, or courting butterflies, and she said: “This is ever so nice, dear Jesus this is ever so nice,” and then she said: “I thought this would never happen to me again,” and her breath came in sobs. He buried his face in her neck, but she took his head in her hands and pushed it away so that she could see him. Now she knew that this was not a dream. She was awake. There was a taut string stretched between the back of her throat and the base of her spine, and every time it vibrated, her whole body sang a single note of pleasure which got louder and louder. “Look at me!” she said as she lost control, and he said gently: “I’m looking,” and the note got louder. “I’m wicked!” she cried as the climax hit her. “Look at me, I’m wicked!” and her body convulsed, and the string got tighter and tighter and the pleasure more piercing until she felt she was losing her mind, and then the last high note of joy broke the string and she slumped and fainted.

Feliks laid her gently on the floor. Her face in the candlelight was peaceful, all the tension gone; she looked like one who had died happy. She was pale, but breathing normally. She had been half asleep, probably drugged, Feliks knew, but he did not care. He felt drained and weak and helpless and grateful, and very much in love. We could start again, he thought: she’s a free woman, she could leave her husband, we could live in Switzerland, Charlotte could join us—

This is not an opium dream, he told himself. He and Lydia had made such plans before, in St. Petersburg, nineteen years ago; and they had been utterly impotent against the wishes of respectable people. It doesn’t happen, not in real life, he thought; they would frustrate us all over again.

They will never let me have her.

But I shall have my revenge.

He got to his feet and quickly put on his clothes. He picked up the candle. He looked at her once more. Her eyes were still closed. He wanted to touch her once more, to kiss her soft mouth. He hardened his heart. Never again, he thought. He turned and went through the door.

He walked softly along the carpeted corridor and down the stairs. His candle made weird moving shadows in the doorways. I may die tonight, but not before I have killed Orlov and Walden, he thought. I have seen my daughter, I have lain with my wife; now I will kill my enemies, and then I can die.

On the second-floor landing he stepped on a hard floor and his boot made a loud noise. He froze and listened. He saw that there was no carpet here, but a marble floor. He waited. There was no noise from the rest of the house. He took off his boots and went on in his bare feet—he had no socks.

The lights were out all over the house. Would anyone be roaming around? Might someone come down to raid the larder, feeling hungry in the middle of the night? Might a butler dream he heard noises and make a tour of the house to check? Might Orlov’s bodyguards need to go to the bathroom? Feliks strained his hearing, ready to snuff out the candle and hide at the slightest noise.

He stopped in the hall and took from his coat pocket the plans of the house Charlotte had drawn for him. He consulted the ground-floor plan briefly, holding the candle close to the paper, then turned to his right and padded along the corridor.

He went through the library into the gun room.

He closed the door softly behind him and looked around. A great hideous head seemed to leap at him from the wall, and he jumped, and grunted with fear. The candle went out. In the darkness he realized he had seen a tiger’s head, stuffed and mounted on the wall. He lit the candle again. There were trophies all around the walls: a lion, a deer, and even a rhinoceros. Walden had done some big-game hunting in his time. There was also a big fish in a glass case.

Feliks put the candle down on the table. The guns were racked along one wall. There were three pairs of double-barreled shotguns, a Winchester rifle and something that Feliks thought must be an elephant gun. He had never seen an elephant gun. He had never seen an elephant. The guns were secured by a chain through their trigger guards. Feliks looked along the chain. It was fastened by a large padlock to a bracket screwed into the wooden end of the rack.

Feliks considered what to do. He had to have a gun. He thought he might be able to snap the padlock, given a tough piece of iron such as a screwdriver to use as a lever; but it seemed to him that it might be easier to unscrew the bracket from the wood of the rack and then pass chain, padlock and bracket through the trigger guards to free the guns.

He looked again at Charlotte’s plan. Next to the gun room was the flower room. He picked up his candle and went through the communicating door. He found himself in a small, cold room with a marble table and a stone sink. He heard a footstep. He doused his candle and crouched down. The sound had come from outside, from the gravel path: it had to be one of the sentries. The light of a flashlight flickered outside. Feliks flattened himself against the door, beside the window. The light grew stronger and the footsteps became louder. They stopped right outside and the flashlight shone in through the window. By its light Feliks could see a rack over the sink and a few tools hanging by hooks: shears, secateurs, a small hoe and a knife. The sentry tried the door against which Feliks stood. It was locked. The footsteps moved away and the light went. Feliks waited a moment. What would the sentry do? Presumably he had seen the glimmer of Feliks’s candle. But he might think it had been the reflection of his own torch. Or someone in the house might have had a perfectly legitimate reason to go into the flower room. Or the sentry might be the ultracautious type, and come and check.

Leaving the doors open, Feliks went from the flower room, through the gun room, and into the library, feeling his way in the dark, holding his unlit candle in his hand. He sat on the floor in the library behind a big leather sofa and counted slowly to one thousand. Nobody came. The sentry was not the cautious type.

He went back into the gun room and lit the candle. The windows were heavily curtained here—there had been no curtains in the flower room. He went cautiously into the flower room, took the knife he had seen over the rack, came back into the gun room and bent over the gun rack. He used the blade of the knife to undo the screws that held the bracket to the wood of the rack. The wood was old and hard, but eventually the screws came loose and he was able to unchain the guns.

There were three cupboards in the room. One held bottles of brandy and whiskey, together with glasses. Another held bound copies of a magazine called
Horse and Hound
and a huge leather-bound ledger marked GAME BOOK. The third was locked: that must be where the ammunition was kept.

Feliks broke the lock with the garden knife.

Of the three types of guns available—Winchester, shotgun or elephant gun—he preferred the Winchester. However, as he searched through the boxes of ammunition he realized there were no cartridges here either for the Winchester or for the elephant gun: those weapons must have been kept as souvenirs. He had to be content with a shotgun. All three pairs were twelve-bore, and all the ammunition consisted of cartridges of number-six shot. To be sure of killing his man he would have to fire at close range—no more than twenty yards, to be absolutely certain. And he would have only two shots before reloading.

Still, he thought, I only want to kill two people.

The image of Lydia lying on the nursery floor kept coming back to him. When he thought of how they had made love, he felt exultant. He no longer felt the fatalism which had gripped him immediately afterward. Why should I die? he thought. And when I have killed Walden, who knows what might happen then?

He loaded the gun

And now, Lydia thought, I shall have to kill myself.

She saw no other possibility. She had descended to the depths of depravity for the second time in her life. All her years of self-discipline had come to nothing, just because Feliks had returned. She could not live with the knowledge of what she was. She wanted to die, now.

She considered how it might be done. What could she take that was poisonous? There must be rat poison somewhere on the premises, but of course she did not know where. An overdose of laudanum? She was not sure she had enough. You could kill yourself with gas, she recalled, but Stephen had converted the house to electric light. She wondered whether the top stories were high enough for her to die by jumping from a window. She was afraid she might merely break her back and be paralyzed for years. She did not think she had the courage to slash her wrists; and besides, it would take so long to bleed to death. The quickest way would be to shoot herself. She thought she could probably load a gun and fire it: she had seen it done innumerable times. But, she remembered, the guns were locked up.

Then she thought of the lake. Yes, that was the answer. She would go to her room and put on a robe; then she would leave the house by a side door, so that the policemen should not see her; and she would walk across the west side of the park, beside the rhododendrons, and through the woods until she came to the water’s edge; then she would just keep walking, until the cool water closed over her head; then she would open her mouth, and a minute or so later it would be all over.

She left the nursery and walked along the corridor in the dark. She saw a light under Charlotte’s door, and hesitated. She wanted to see her little girl one last time. The key was in the lock on the outside. She unlocked the door and went in.

Charlotte sat in a chair by the window, fully dressed but asleep. Her face was pale but for the redness around her eyes. She had unpinned her hair. Lydia closed the door and went over to her. Charlotte opened her eyes.

“What’s happened?” she said.

“Nothing,” Lydia said. She sat down.

Charlotte said: “Do you remember when Nannie went away?”

“Yes. You were old enough for a governess, and I didn’t have another baby.”

“I had forgotten all about it for years. I’ve just remembered. You never knew, did you, that I thought Nannie was my mother?”

“I don’t know … did you think so? You always called me Mama, and her Nannie …”

“Yes.” Charlotte spoke slowly, almost desultorily, as if she were lost in the fog of distant memory. “You were Mama, and Nannie was Nannie, but everybody had a mother, you see, and when Nannie said you were my mother, I said don’t be silly, Nannie,
you
are my mother. And Nannie just laughed. Then you sent her away. I was broken-hearted.”