The Man from St. Petersburg (5 page)

The railwayman walked past Feliks’s bench, and Feliks grabbed his sleeve. “Please, sir,” he said, putting on the wide-eyed expression of a naive foreign tourist. “Is that the King of England?”

The railwayman grinned. “No, mate, it’s only the Earl of Walden.” He walked on.

So Josef had been right.

Feliks studied Walden with an assassin’s eye. He was tall, about Feliks’s height, and beefy—easier to shoot than a small man. He was about fifty. Except for a slight limp he seemed fit; he could run away, but not very fast. He wore a highly visible light gray morning coat and a top hat of the same color. His hair under the hat was short and straight, and he had a spade-shaped beard patterned after that of the late King Edward VII. He stood on the platform, leaning on a cane—potential weapon—and favoring his left leg. The coachman, the footman and the stationmaster bustled about him like bees around the queen. His stance was relaxed. He did not look at his watch. He paid no attention to the flunkies around him. He is used to this, Feliks thought; all his life he has been the important man in the crowd.

The train appeared, smoke billowing from the funnel of the engine. I could kill Orlov now, Feliks thought, and he felt momentarily the thrill of the hunter as he closes with his prey; but he had already decided not to do the deed today. He was here to observe, not to act. Most anarchist assassinations were bungled because of haste or spontaneity, in his view. He believed in planning and organization, which were anathema to many anarchists; but they did not realize that a man could plan his own actions—it was when he began to organize the lives of others that he became a tyrant.

The train halted with a great sigh of steam. Feliks stood up and moved a little closer to the platform. Toward the far end of the train was what appeared to be a private car, differentiated from the rest by the colors of its bright new paintwork. It came to a stop precisely opposite Walden’s coach. The stationmaster stepped forward eagerly and opened a door.

Feliks tensed, peering along the platform, watching the shadowed space in which his quarry would appear.

For a moment everyone waited; then Orlov was there. He paused in the doorway for a second, and in that time Feliks’s eye photographed him. He was a small man wearing an expensive-looking heavy Russian coat with a fur collar, and a black top hat. His face was pink and youthful, almost boyish, with a small mustache and no beard. He smiled hesitantly. He looked vulnerable. Feliks thought: So much evil is done by people with innocent faces.

Orlov stepped off the train. He and Walden embraced, Russian fashion, but quickly; then they got into the coach.

That was rather hasty, Feliks thought.

The footman and two porters began to load luggage onto the carriage. It rapidly became clear that they could not get everything on, and Feliks smiled to think of his own cardboard suitcase, half empty.

The coach was turned around. It seemed the footman was being left behind to take care of the rest of the luggage. The porters came to the carriage window, and a gray-sleeved arm emerged and dropped coins into their hands. The coach pulled away. Feliks mounted his bicycle and followed.

In the tumult of the London traffic it was not difficult for him to keep pace. He trailed them through the city, along the Strand and across St. James’s Park. On the far side of the park the coach followed the boundary road for a few yards, then turned abruptly into a walled forecourt.

Feliks jumped off his bicycle and wheeled it along the grass at the edge of the park until he stood across the road from the gateway. He could see the coach drawn up to the imposing entrance to a large house. Over the roof of the coach he saw two top hats, one black and one gray, disappear into the building. Then the door closed, and he could see no more.

Lydia studied her daughter critically. Charlotte stood in front of a large pier glass, trying on the debutante’s gown she would wear to be presented at court. Madame Bourdon, the thin, elegant dressmaker, fussed about her with pins, tucking a flounce here and fastening a ruffle there.

Charlotte looked both beautiful and innocent—just the effect that was called for in a debutante. The dress, of white tulle embroidered with crystals, went down almost to the floor and partly covered the tiny pointed shoes. Its neckline, plunging to waist level, was filled in with a crystal corsage. The train was four yards of cloth-of-silver lined with pale pink chiffon and caught at the end by a huge white-and-silver bow. Charlotte’s dark hair was piled high and fastened with a tiara which had belonged to the previous Lady Walden, Stephen’s mother. In her hair she wore the regulation two white plumes.

My baby has almost grown up, Lydia thought.

She said: “It’s very lovely, Madame Bourdon.”

“Thank you, my lady.”

Charlotte said: “It’s terribly uncomfortable.”

Lydia sighed. It was just the kind of thing Charlotte
would
say. Lydia said: “I wish you wouldn’t be so frivolous.”

Charlotte knelt down to pick up her train. Lydia said: “You don’t have to kneel. Look, copy me and I’ll show you how it’s done. Turn to the left.” Charlotte did so, and the train draped down her left side. “Gather it with your left arm, then make another quarter turn to the left.” Now the train stretched out along the floor in front of Charlotte. “Walk forward, using your right hand to loop the train over your left arm as you go.”

“It works.” Charlotte smiled. When she smiled, you could feel the glow. She used to be like this all the time, Lydia thought. When she was little, I always knew what was going on in her mind. Growing up is learning to deceive.

Charlotte said: “Who taught
you
all these things, Mama?”

“Your uncle George’s first wife, Belinda’s mother, coached me before I was presented.” She wanted to say: These things are easy to teach, but the hard lessons you must learn on your own.

Charlotte’s governess, Marya, came into the room. She was an efficient, unsentimental woman in an iron-gray dress, the only servant Lydia had brought from St. Petersburg. Her appearance had not changed in nineteen years. Lydia had no idea how old she was: Fifty? Sixty?

Marya said: “Prince Orlov has arrived, my lady. Why, Charlotte, you look magnificent!”

It was almost time for Marya to begin calling her “Lady Charlotte,” Lydia thought. She said, “Come down as soon as you’ve changed, Charlotte.” Charlotte immediately began to unfasten the shoulder straps which held her train. Lydia went out.

She found Stephen in the drawing room, sipping sherry. He touched her bare arm and said: “I love to see you in summer dresses.”

She smiled. “Thank you.” He looked rather fine himself, she thought, in his gray coat and silver tie. There was more gray and silver in his beard.
We might have been so happy, you and I …
Suddenly she wanted to kiss his cheek. She glanced around the room: there was a footman at the sideboard pouring sherry. She had to restrain the impulse. She sat down and accepted a glass from the footman. “How is Aleks?”

“Much the same as always,” Stephen replied. “You’ll see—he’ll be down in a minute. What about Charlotte’s dress?”

“The gown is lovely. It’s her attitude that disturbs me. She’s unwilling to take anything at face value these days. I should hate her to become
cynical
.”

Stephen refused to worry about that. “You wait until some handsome Guards officer starts paying attention to her—she’ll soon change her mind.”

The remark irritated Lydia, implying as it did that all girls were the slaves of their romantic natures. It was the kind of thing Stephen said when he did not want to think about a subject. It made him sound like a hearty, empty-headed country squire, which he was not. But he was convinced that Charlotte was no different from any other eighteen-year-old girl, and he would not hear otherwise. Lydia knew that Charlotte had in her makeup a streak of something wild and un-English which had to be suppressed.

Irrationally, Lydia felt hostile toward Aleks on account of Charlotte. It was not his fault, but he represented the St. Petersburg factor, the danger of the past. She shifted restlessly in her chair, and caught Stephen observing her with a shrewd eye. He said: “You can’t possibly be nervous about meeting little Aleks.”

She shrugged. “Russians are so unpredictable.”

“He’s not very Russian.”

She smiled at her husband, but their moment of intimacy had passed, and now there was just the usual qualified affection in her heart.

The door opened. Be calm, Lydia told herself.

Aleks came in. “Aunt Lydia!” he said, and bowed over her hand.

“How do you do, Aleksey Andreyevich,” she said formally. Then she softened her tone and added: “Why, you still look eighteen.”

“I wish I were,” he said, and his eyes twinkled.

She asked him about his trip. As he replied, she found herself wondering why he was still unmarried. He had a title which on its own was enough to knock many girls—not to mention their mothers—off their feet; and on top of that he was strikingly good-looking and enormously rich. I’m sure he’s broken a few hearts, she thought.

“Your brother and your sister send their love,” Aleks was saying, “and ask for your prayers.” He frowned. “St. Petersburg is very unsettled now—it’s not the town you knew.”

Stephen said: “We’ve heard about this monk.”

“Rasputin. The Czarina believes that God speaks through him, and she has great influence over the Czar. But Rasputin is only a symptom. All the time there are strikes, and sometimes riots. The people no longer believe that the Czar is holy.”

“What is to be done?” Stephen asked.

Aleks sighed. “Everything. We need efficient farms, more factories, a proper parliament like England’s, land reform, trade unions, freedom of speech …”

“I shouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to have trade unions, if I were you,” Stephen said.

“Perhaps. Still, somehow Russia must join the twentieth century. Either we, the nobility, must do it, or the people will destroy us and do it themselves.”

Lydia thought he sounded more radical than the Radicals. How things must have changed at home, that a prince could talk like this! Her sister, Tatyana, Aleks’s mother, referred in her letters to “the troubles” but gave no hint that the nobility was in real danger. But then, Aleks was more like his father, the old Prince Orlov, a political animal. If he were alive today he would talk like this.

Stephen said: “There is a third possibility, you know—a way in which the aristocracy and the people might yet be united.”

Aleks smiled, as if he knew what was coming. “And that is?”

“A war.”

Aleks nodded gravely. They think alike, Lydia reflected; Aleks always looked up to Stephen; Stephen was the nearest thing to a father that the boy had, after the old Prince died.

Charlotte came in, and Lydia stared at her in surprise. She was wearing a frock Lydia had never seen, of cream lace lined with chocolate-brown silk. Lydia would never have chosen it—it was rather
striking
—but there was no denying that Charlotte looked ravishing. Where did she buy it? Lydia wondered. When did she start buying clothes without taking me along? Who told her that those colors flatter her dark hair and brown eyes? Does she have a trace of makeup on? And why isn’t she wearing a corset?

Stephen was also staring. Lydia noticed that he had stood up, and she almost laughed. It was a dramatic acknowledgment of his daughter’s grown-up status, and what was funny was that it was clearly involuntary. In a moment he would feel foolish, and he would realize that standing up every time his daughter walked into a room was a courtesy he could hardly sustain in his own house.

The effect on Aleks was even greater. He sprang to his feet, spilled his sherry and blushed crimson. Lydia thought: Why, he’s shy! He transferred his dripping glass from his right hand to his left, so that he was unable to shake with either, and he stood there looking helpless. It was an awkward moment, for he needed to compose himself before he could greet Charlotte, but he was clearly waiting to greet her before he would compose himself. Lydia was about to make some inane remark just to fill the silence when Charlotte took over.

She pulled the silk handkerchief from Aleks’s breast pocket and wiped his right hand with it, saying, “How do you do, Aleksey Andreyevich,” in Russian. She shook his now-dry right hand, took the glass from his left hand, wiped the glass, wiped the left hand, gave him back the glass, stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket and made him sit down. She sat beside him and said: “Now that you’ve finished throwing the sherry around, tell me about Diaghilev. He’s supposed to be a strange man. Have you met him?”

Aleks smiled. “Yes, I’ve met him.”

As Aleks talked, Lydia marveled. Charlotte had dealt with the awkward moment without hesitation, and had gone on to ask a question—one which she had presumably prepared in advance—which succeeded in taking Orlov’s mind off himself and making him feel at ease. And she had done all that as smoothly as if she had had twenty years’ practice. Where had she learned such poise?

Lydia caught her husband’s eye. He too had noted Charlotte’s graciousness, and he was smiling from ear to ear in a glow of fatherly pride.

Feliks paced up and down in St. James’s Park, pondering what he had seen. From time to time he glanced across the road at the graceful white facade of Walden’s house, rising over the high forecourt wall like a noble head above a starched collar. He thought: They believe they are safe in there.

He sat on a bench, in a position from which he could still see the house. Middle-class London swarmed about him, the girls in their outrageous headgear, the clerks and shopkeepers walking homeward in their dark suits and bowler hats. There were gossiping nannies with babies in perambulators or overdressed toddlers; there were top-hatted gentlemen on their way to and from the clubs of St. James’s; there were liveried footmen walking tiny ugly dogs. A fat woman with a big bag of shopping plumped herself down on the bench beside him and said: “Hot enough for you?” He was not sure what would be the appropriate reply, so he smiled and looked away.