Sasha Kolashki discovered the flint beneath his young wife’s kitten softness within a very short time of their marriage. The first shock came when he broached the subject of resigning his Commission and retiring to the country to run what little was left of the estate.
They were on the train to Moscow on the first leg of their journey to Drovenskoye, the village some miles north-west of Moscow near the town of Sergiyev Posad, lovely seat of the Russian Orthodox Church, where the Kolashki estate was situated. Since he had not had the heart to disappoint the pretty little thing he had married so precipitately they were travelling in style, despite the cost, in a first-class Pullman sleeper with electric light, comfortable velvet chairs that would become beds when they were made up for the night and a bell to call the attendant. He had bought her chocolates from the Nevsky, silly fancies shaped like mice with bright glass eyes and long silver tails, which were at the moment the rage of young St Petersburg. The box lay, discarded, its contents half-eaten, upon the table. Rita sat idly turning the pages of a magazine, ignoring the drear and endless winter landscape through which they travelled, the lines of telegraph poles that flickered past the window with monotonous and mind-numbing regularity. She looked quite delightful in deep blue fur-trimmed velvet, a matching hat perched upon her fair curls, tiny blue leather boots peeping from beneath the hem of the well-cut skirt. She had bought the outfit, together with two others equally pretty, equally expensive, the week before. She had also purchased an extremely becoming dove-grey mourning dress to wear at Drovenskoye, a house still grieving for its master. He could in no way criticize her for that; but he must, he really must, have a word with her about their expenditure.
He shifted a little in his seat. She looked up, caught his eyes upon her, smiled vaguely and turned back to her magazine. The new higher waistlines really were very flattering, especially to someone as slight and slim as she – and she would truly die if she didn’t acquire a couple of these hobble skirts that seemed to be so much in vogue in Paris and London. St Petersburg, for the normal shopper, could be so very provincial. At Madame Barry’s, where she had bought her new outfits last week, a charming girl with whom she had entered into conversation had been telling her of the shops in Paris. She lifted her head again. Sasha had spoken. ‘I’m sorry?’
He stretched his long, well-shaped legs. ‘I was just saying that I must have a word with Mama about the running of the estate before I can take it over properly. If I resign my Commission it will still –’
‘What?’ The word was sharp. The magazine closed with a snap.
He shrugged, avoiding her eyes. Weak Sasha might be but he was far from stupid. It had not passed him by that Margarita would not be happy about this particular idea. ‘I said – I was thinking I might resign my Commission – take over the estate –’ He had thought of little else since the death of his father. Nevertheless the words were tentative.
Margarita was not. She stared in flat amazement. ‘Resign your Commission? Oh, Sasha, don’t be so utterly silly. Of course you are not to resign your Commission. I wouldn’t hear of it.’
‘But –’
‘But, Sasha, darling, there can be absolutely no question of it. Surely you can see that? Goodness, whatever would people think? The moment your father dies you leave the army to run back to Mummy with your tail between your legs?’ She ignored his half-hearted attempt to interrupt. ‘Oh, certainly not, my dear. You shouldn’t make such jokes.’ She laughed a little, turned to catch her reflection in the window, pushed at a fair, stray curl with her finger. ‘Bury us in the country with nothing but pigs and chickens for company?’
To say nothing of your mother and sister – oh, no! Margarita had plans, and those plans most certainly included the Drovenskoye estate; but not now, not yet. Not until she had her hands firmly upon the reins and had entirely vanquished the opposition she knew she was about to encounter. She was married to an officer of the Preobrajensky Guards, albeit at the moment a very junior one. She lived in St Petersburg, the very centre of the empire’s government. Sasha’s fellow-officers had welcomed the pretty little bride to their midst with quite charming enthusiasm; just the night before they had thrown a party for the newly-weds at which a young Uhlan officer had paid her quite the most extravagant compliments – oh, no. Margarita was not about to give this up to become a dependent daughter-in-law in the country. She would go to Drovenskoye when Drovenskoye was hers, and not before.
‘Absolutely not, my dear. And I’m quite certain that your mother will agree with me – why, surely, your poor father would turn in his grave to think of his son deserting his duty so?’ She smiled her sweetest smile. ‘I’m so very proud of you, my darling, you know that, don’t you? Do you know, that nice Vitaly Petrovich was saying last night that you’re quite the best horseman in the regiment –’
Sasha opened his mouth, shut it again, returned her warm smile. Wondered what it would be like to make love in these narrow beds on a moving train. The matter of the Commission could wait, he supposed; army life wasn’t anywhere near so bad with a wife to come home to, despite the grim warnings of his commanding officer who had taken a terrible amount of persuading to grant his permission for the union.
Margarita opened the magazine again. That was that. She would have no more of such nonsense. The very idea! She reached for a chocolate, with sharp teeth bit the head very neatly off a mouse.
Sasha settled back in his chair and, a little gloomily, surveyed the bleak white landscape beyond the window. In truth he wasn’t at all sure if he could afford to leave the army; the pay wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. The small allowance Victor had been persuaded to give to Margarita barely kept her in shoes and stockings the way she spent it. And he had no real idea of the financial standing of the estate, though he had his darkest doubts. His father had been no farmer, that he did know; they had lived off his pension and what little the home farm produced. The pension now presumably had stopped and he wasn’t sure there was any other source of income. He supposed he’d have to get in touch with that dry old stick Malenkov, the family lawyer.
Margarita shut the magazine, tossed it onto the seat beside her. ‘I’ve had a wonderful idea.’ She smiled, dazzlingly, leaned across between the seats to kiss his cheek, lightly.
‘Oh?’ He could not resist that smile. He trapped her small hand in his. ‘What’s that?’
‘Instead of going straight on to Drovenskoye, why don’t we spend a day or two in Moscow? There are some wonderful shops – and we do so need some new curtains and furniture for that dreary little sitting room of ours, don’t you think? I do so want to make it just perfect for you. And it would be such fun. Sasha darling – do say yes?’
‘I – we promised Mama we’d be at Drovenskoye tomorrow –’
‘Oh, surely she wouldn’t mind?’ Margarita pouted prettily. ‘We could send a telegram, tell her we’ve been held up. Just a day or so, Sasha dear; it is our honeymoon, after all, isn’t it?’ She dropped her voice a little, leaned to him to whisper in his ear, ‘We could stay overnight in an hotel. We could dine by candlelight, and then –’ she blushed a little, dropped her eyes ‘– go to bed.’ She almost laughed at the spasmodic movement of his hand upon hers at that; almost, but not quite. She flickered a glance at him, half-shy, charmingly daring. ‘We could pretend that we aren’t married at all!’ She threw back her head, covering her face with her hands, gurgling with laughter. ‘Oh, how wicked! Do say we can, Sasha. Please?’
They stayed in Moscow. They shopped in the Gostini Dvor, and in Muir et Merilese, the first department store to have opened in Russia. They browsed among the stalls and street traders, they ate at the famous, and outrageously expensive, Slavianski Bazaar. Sasha spent money like water, rewarded amply by his bride’s unassumed delight and happiness, the open affection with which she cajoled and teased him. It was, after all, he kept telling himself, their honeymoon.
Only with Rita sleeping like a tired and contented child beside him after they had made love in the huge bed in the luxurious suite that the hotel manager, to Margarita’s delight, had insisted was the only fit accommodation for the Excellency and his young wife, did he lie looking into darkness, counting the cost of their extravagance, and trying to ignore a small, gnawing anxiety.
The following afternoon the long, wood-burning train pulled slowly to a stop at a ramshackle country station, stood puffing impatiently for just long enough for two passengers and their luggage to disembark, then, shooting sparks into the gathering dusk, chugged and clanked away along the long, curving track towards Sergiyev Posad.
Margarita, who throughout the uncomfortable ride from Moscow had made absolutely no attempt to curb her growing nervy bad temper, tapped her booted foot upon the icy platform and pulled the collar of her fur shuba up about her face. It was bitterly cold. Flurries of fine snow flew in the chill wind. ‘Where the devil is everyone?’ she asked, peevishly. ‘Surely there should be someone to meet us? You did send the telegram, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. Of course I did. You know I did. The train’s very late – perhaps –’
‘That’s a reason to be here, not a reason not to be.’ She turned and marched towards a small wooden hut that stood at the end of the deserted platform, leaving Sasha to pick up the luggage and follow. As she approached the door opened and a wizened man in a battered sheepskin coat peered out, his eyes going past Rita to Sasha, his lined face almost splitting apart in a gap-toothed grin. ‘Master Sasha! Hey, Yuri! It’s them!’
‘Pavel, you old bear!’ Sasha dropped the cases, slapped the man on the shoulder, laughing. ‘And Yuri!’
‘Young master.’ A huge man in moth-eaten fur shuba and a ragged fur cap appeared at the door of the hut, grinning hugely. ‘You’re late.’ To Margarita’s astonishment the man used the familiar ‘thou’ in his speech.
‘The train, Yuri, the train! When did you ever know the Moscow train to arrive on time?’ Sasha stopped. Both men’s eyes were upon Margarita, polite, sharply curious. ‘My wife,’ he said, the words still novel enough to bring simple pleasure in the saying of them. ‘Margarita Victorovna. Rita, this is Pavel, our station master and Yuri Petrovich, an old friend and comrade.’
The big man laughed delightedly at the description. Margarita frowned a little, nodded stiffly. She had never expected such informality – not to say familiarity – in the introduction of servants, which, after all, was all that the man Yuri could be.
Yuri bent, lifted the cases as if they were a featherweight. ‘The sledge is outside, young master. Your mama waits with great impatience.’
Margarita’s frown deepened. Did she detect a trace of reproach in the words? Had the dark eyes that had flickered in her direction shown a shadow of resentment?
Sasha was laughing. ‘Come then, home!’ He threw his head back and breathed deeply of the cold air. ‘Why does the snow always smell so much cleaner in the country? Margarita, tuck yourself into the furs here – I’ll ride up front with Yuri.’
Margarita sulked thoroughly, and to no avail at all, during the long ride. Huddled in furs that smelled none too clean, she allowed her apprehension and self-pity full rein. Sasha was ignoring her. It was thoughtless and unkind of him not to be sitting with her, warming and reassuring her. The first few moments within the sphere of his family and already she had been relegated to a back seat, both literally and metaphorically. Well – her small mouth tightened a little – they’d see about that.
The deserted, seemingly endless road wound through mile upon mile of all but featureless woodland, passed through a few scattered, poor-looking villages, crossed an unimposing frozen river. The rhythmic jingle of bells, the sound of the horses’ hooves upon the snow thrummed monotonously on, constant and unvarying. Margarita seriously considered screaming. Holy Mother! Would they never get to this God-forsaken place? Then at last, two long hours after leaving the station and with full darkness upon them, the horses, harness and bells jingling, swung through a large, open, wrought-iron gate and onto a narrow, winding drive that sloped into a small valley. As it did so two small dogs, barking hysterically, hurled themselves upon the sledge, snapping at the horses’ heels, leaping about the runners. ‘Petya! Melya! Here!’ Sasha bent, held his arms open. The two little dogs leapt like monkeys onto the moving sledge, climbing all over Sasha, licking his face, tails wagging wildly, still yapping in an ear-splitting frenzy of delight. Sasha laughed over his shoulder at Margarita. She smiled thinly back. Her heart was racing, her stomach churning. In the distance she could see faintly glowing lights and what looked, so far as she could tell in the darkness, to be a long, low house, two storeys high and with many chimneys. Drovenskoye. They had arrived.
On first impression Drovenskoye was, to Margarita’s inexperienced eye, every bit as imposing as she had expected and hoped it would be. The sledge swept in a wide semi-circle and drew up in a three-sided courtyard formed by the long, low housefront and two stable wings, at the foot of a flight of wide, shallow steps leading to a great, ancient-looking wooden front door. That the steps were quite obviously crumbling, the sweep of drive packed with dirty, uncleared snow, the lamps that glimmered on either side of the door rusted and smoking she did not notice. Nor did she see the peeling paint or the unhinged shutters. She saw a childhood dream; a country house, a private house many times larger than any she had ever set foot in~;~ than she had ever dreamed of setting foot in, let alone owning. For a moment, looking up at the crumbling facade, she saw brilliantly-lighted rooms, shining floors, gleaming crystal, heard music and gaily-lifted voices. Saw herself the lovely chatelaine, greeting her guests with kisses and with laughter. No painted set for a toy theatre this. No cardboard cut-out prince either, standing beside her, but a tall and handsome young man who was her husband. For one brief moment she almost loved him; for bringing her here, for owning this. Then she remembered the women who waited beyond this door – the women who belonged here – and the moment died. ‘For heaven’s sake, Sasha, where is everyone? Do you want me to freeze to death?’
Sasha had leapt down from the high front seat of the sledge. Yuri swept the yelping, struggling dogs into his arms, tossed them back into the sledge, where they worried the fur wraps, shaking them like rags. Like a boy Sasha bounded up the shallow steps, pushed open the great door. ‘Hello? Mama? Galina? We’re here!’
More slowly Margarita followed, found herself standing in a large hall, completely empty but for a carved wooden settle and a tall marble torchère upon which guttered a smoking candle lamp. More candles were set in wall sconces, reflected in small, triangular, smoke-darkened mirrors.
Sasha snatched off his hat, shrugged out of his heavy fur coat, tossed them carelessly upon the settle. ‘Mama? Galya?’
‘Sasha!’ A door opened. A light-footed, dark-haired girl dressed in shabby black ran across the hall, hands outstretched. Margarita would have recognized her anywhere. She was the living image of her brother. ‘Sasha!’ she said again, and in a swift movement took him into her arms, kissing him on both cheeks. ‘Oh, how good it is that you’ve come!’
Sasha hugged her, laughing. Margarita stood like stone in the shadows. When brother and sister drew apart at last she stepped forward. Sasha held out a hand. ‘Rita, darling, come and meet my Galina. Galya, this is Margarita, my wife.’
The two girls looked at each other, the smallest comprehensive flick of a glance taking in everything from the crown of fair or dark head to Margarita’s shining boots and Galina’s shabby shoes. Then dark eyes met blue and in that long, cool moment, war was declared. Galina smiled, very brightly, held out a slim, cool hand. ‘Welcome.’
And, ‘Thank you,’ Rita said, equally warmly, equally falsely, and kissed her new sister upon both smooth cheeks.
Sasha, watching, beamed. ‘I know you two are going to be very great friends. Galya, where’s Mama?’
‘In the drawing room. Come. She’s waiting to greet you.’ Galina led the way into a square, cold, lofty room, candlelit, as was the hall. Margarita had a swift impression of heavy old furniture, darkly panelled walls, smoke-stained portraits. Then her attention was held by the tall, slender woman, not young but frailly beautiful in the shadowed light, who stood awaiting them. She was dressed, in honour of the occasion of welcoming the heir of the house and his new wife, in a formal dress of a shining gold stuff so old and so fragile as to be almost transparent, the train spread upon the threadbare carpet behind her. In her hands was a lovely and obviously ancient icon of the Virgin and Child. On the table beside her stood a tray, upon it a round loaf of black bread topped by a small silver salt cellar.
Sasha caught Margarita’s hand in his, led her forward, dropped to his knees in front of his mother. A small stir of rebellion kept Margarita on her feet for a moment longer than good manners demanded before she, too, responding to the pressure of her husband’s hand in hers, knelt. Sasha’s mother made a reverent sign of the Cross with the icon above their bowed heads, then she took the bread and the salt and again blessed them. Rita glanced sideways at her husband. He knelt like a child, head bowed, eyes shut. ‘My children,’ the woman said, gently, ‘welcome.’
For some strange reason Margarita found that her teeth were locked, vice-like, fast together, her jaw rigid. As she rose gracefully to her feet she made a purposeful, physical effort to relax them. She smiled her most beguiling smile. ‘Mother,’ she said, shyly. And saw Galina’s dark, sardonically-lifted brows as she stepped forward to accept the butterfly embrace of her mother-in-law.
The visit could not by any stretch of the imagination have been called a success, which was no more than Margarita had expected; what did surprise her was how little, in the end, it actually mattered. She had known from the start that Sasha’s family, not unnaturally, would view with some disapproval and caution the upstart nobody who had so unceremoniously arrived in their midst as his wife; oddly, what she had underestimated was her own hold on her besotted young husband and the consequent lessening of the influence of his devoted mother and sister. That devotion, too, told against them; they treated him like a favoured child, still. What Sasha wanted must be given. And Sasha undoubtedly wanted Margarita. A lifetime of defending a sensitive younger child against the depredations of an intolerant and overbearing father and brother had ingrained habits that were hard to change. That Galina disliked her intensely Rita knew; she reciprocated in full. It irritated her beyond belief that the other girl, dressed as shabbily as any servant, on cheerful, first-name terms with every ostler and kitchen girl – not that there were many such at Drovenskoye – yet with her clear, clipped voice, her infuriatingly natural, aristocratic bearing achieved a cool self-possession that Margarita positively ached to emulate, and could not. Even in the smart, dove-grey mourning she had been so careful to buy she felt out of place, almost vulgar compared to Galina in her rusty black and Sasha’s mother in her unfashionable, heavy gowns and woollen shawls that might have come from the back of any peasant woman, and in which Varya, Margarita knew, would not have been seen dead. Galling it was too when Sasha and his sister rode out each morning – Galina, to Margarita’s scandalized surprise, dressed in breeches and heavy sheepskin against the cold – on the horses that had been theirs since childhood. Margarita had never learned to ride a horse, was positively afraid of the great, bad-tempered beasts, so it was impossible to accompany them. She was left alone with Sasha’s quiet, gentle mother in whose company she felt as clumsy as the most inept servant girl and as out of place as a pebble in a jewel box.
She spent long hours avoiding everyone by exploring the house, at least half of which had apparently been shut up for years, fascinated by the endless rows of portraits, many of them recognizably Sasha’s ancestors, upon the damp-stained walls, the ancient, heavy furniture, the old fabrics and rugs that looked ready to fall apart at a touch. Well-wrapped against the cold she would wander from room to room, enthralled as a child at this strange new world she had entered. It astonished her that the Kolashkis, an ancient family of what seemed to her wealth and standing, should live in such relatively primitive conditions; the Shalakov apartment on the Venskaya boasted running water, warm and comfortable rooms, and recently-installed electric light. In this decaying house it was a constant struggle to keep warm, curtains and wallcoverings were mildewed, and – most astonishing of all – all water had to be brought by cart or by sledge each day from the nearby river. The toilet facilities were of the most basic kind, the great beds, to which they repaired by candlelight, cold and damp. Margarita developed a chill within hours of arriving. Yet, living in conditions not unlike those that held sway in the Vyborg and other working-class districts of St Petersburg, these people retained an air of superiority, of unquestioned and unquestioning authority, of unshakable self-confidence in themselves and their world that made Margarita feel an outsider, worse, an interloper. That her father in his new-found prosperity probably possessed more disposable income than did the entire Kolashki family, let alone her Uncle Bourlov who could undoubtedly have bought this estate several times over if he had had a mind, made not the slightest difference. The divide was there, and no amount of well-mannered effort could disguise it. And as the days went by, certainly on the part of Galina and of Margarita herself, less effort, well-mannered or otherwise, was made. The two girls had disliked each other on sight and made little beyond the slightest polite attempts to disguise it. Yet in a way, far from harming Margarita, Sasha’s sister’s hostility was a positive advantage. Sasha was no fool; he sensed the undercurrents and knew their cause; knew also that in this alien place his young wife had no champion but him. Margarita, whose chief talent was manipulation, took full advantage of this.
After a series of skirmishes she won a final and significant battle over the speaking of French at the dining table.
As was customary in such families the Kolashkis conversed, fluently and easily, only in French at table. Margarita’s education falling rather short of her protagonist’s – her application, it must be said, falling even shorter – her smattering of the language was in no way good enough for her to keep up with the rapid-fire talk and laughter that Galina, recognizing her advantage, immediately instigated. Sasha, slipping into old ways with ease, at first satisfied himself simply with laughing translations for his smiling, prettily gracious, inwardly fuming wife. A short and fiery interview before bed one evening, however, followed by a cold, inexorably turned back quite decisively restored his sense of husbandly duty. When he and his sister returned from their morning ride the following day Galina’s face was set; in the afternoon Sasha sat with his mother in her small parlour – virtually the only warm room in the house – recalling the past, talking of the future, and making a reasonable to say nothing of well-mannered suggestion.
That night, with no comment made, they spoke Russian at table.
They stayed for a week; a strange week for Margarita. Though disappointed at the degree to which her husband’s inheritance had run to ruin, yet still she could not rid herself of the sense of excitement that the old house with its sense of history, its aristocratic connections aroused in her. Indeed she understood well that had Sasha’s family been as well-off and as well-connected as once they had been her marriage to the son of such a family could never imaginably have taken place, whatever her charms or his weakness. All the childish romance to which she still clung – the very first thing she had done upon moving into their far from large apartment had been, to Sasha’s delighted disbelief, to set up her small toy theatre on the tiny sideboard in the living room – was fed by this house with its empty, echoing rooms, its faded glory, its unkempt and run-down fields and garden. Yet the bourgeois in her was impatient to the point of contempt; how could they have allowed it to happen? For all their airs and their undoubted graces, what good were they, to themselves or to those who depended upon them? More than once she found herself thinking of her Uncle Bourlov – whom above all people she admired – his energy, his shrewd business brain, his single-minded ambition. He would never in a million years sink into the genteel, mostly self-inflicted poverty in which the Kolashkis found themselves. And if by any ill chance he did, he would not sit idly by twiddling aristocratic thumbs and speaking French at the dining table while the world continued to crumble about him. She’d speak to him – ask his advice. If they could marry Galina off – there must be someone who would want her? – and perhaps farm Sasha’s mother out to some distant relation, surely something could be done to restore at least some comfort and prestige to the Kolashki estate? Anna, by all accounts, was living a life of landed luxury in England – the photographs she had sent of her husband’s Sussex house where they now spent most of their time showed a small but exceedingly pretty country house set in lovely gardens and rolling parkland – why should not her youngest sister achieve the same end in Russia?
Thus dreaming Margarita sustained herself through the last few uncomfortable days before they could leave and go back to life in St Petersburg.
On the day before they were due to leave Sasha’s mother, gently but very firmly, suggested that she and her new daughter-in-law spend the morning together.
Margarita, who had quite cleverly avoided any such intimacy up until now, could do nothing but agree. She joined her mother-in-law in her parlour, poured water from the bubbling samovar into the tea glasses and prepared for the inquisition.
It did not come.
Olga Mikhailovna Kolashkova was by no means stupid. The marriage was made, nothing could be done about it. It was unlikely, anyway, that anyone of their own station would have looked at poor Sasha with his debts, his dependent female relatives and his millstone of an estate. The problem was not Margarita’s lowly birth, it was her character. Above all Sasha’s mother was concerned for the happiness of her beloved son; nothing she had seen of Margarita had convinced her that this was in safe hands. ‘My dear,’ she said, after the everyday courtesies had been carefully observed, ‘it occurs to me – Sasha has never been happy in the army. He took his Commission only to please his father. Might it not be an idea now for him to leave, to come home? The estate needs a man, someone with a strong hand, to run it, to get it back on its feet.’ She tried hard to make that sound like a positive premise rather than a hope.
Rita, already sitting ramrod straight, stiffened further. She took a long moment to sip her tea, very composedly to replace her glass in its small saucer. Then, ‘Oh, no,’ she said, very sweetly and reasonably, ‘I really don’t think that will be possible. Not for a while, anyway.’ She lowered her eyes, hiding the sharp gleam of anger. ‘Sasha has his way to make in the world, Mother-in-law,’ she added, quietly, her young voice edged. ‘He’s changed. Of course he has. He’s no longer a little boy. He’s a man. He knows what he has to do.’
Olga lifted a narrow, elegant hand. ‘He was never suited to the army,’ she repeated, doggedly. ‘Never.’
Margarita lifted her head, fixed the older woman with a wide, confident, apparently innocent stare. Faded, astonishingly uncertain eyes met hers. There was a long silence. The eyes dropped. Margarita let out a small, satisfied breath that had been pent in her throat. In such a short moment, they both knew who had won.
The silence lengthened. Olga sighed. She had, she supposed, known it would be useless. This vital, exhausting, self-centred child would never think of anyone but herself. Her mother’s heart bled for gentle, incredibly silly Sasha. She remembered her own marriage, not in the beginning the penance it had later become, and flinched from the knowledge that history, inevitably, seemed to repeat itself. ‘You’re leaving tomorrow?’ she asked, conversationally, in her voice not the slightest sign of despair.
‘Yes.’ Margarita was watching her warily.
Olga sat still and graceful upon a straight-backed chair, the thick and softly-curling grey hair that was drawn up upon her head making the slender neck look fragile as the stem of a flower. She turned her head, looking out of the window to where Sasha and his sister, the excited dogs at their heels, rode up the snowy drive, returning from their last morning ride. ‘Tomorrow,’ she repeated. ‘How very fast time flies, does it not?’
Margarita said nothing. The week had seemed an eternity to her.
The following day they left to return to St Petersburg. Sasha did not broach the subject of resigning his Commission again.
Katya was bored. Bored with dancing. Bored with the endless, senseless flirting. Bored with young men who, it seemed to her, all looked and sounded alike, the only noticeable difference between them the colour and cut of their uniforms. She was also aware that her small deceptions were on occasion coming perilously close to discovery; indeed, if it had not been for the fact that her father had been involved in major business negotiations that had involved a great deal of travelling to and around Germany, she doubted she would have got away with her light-hearted prevarication regarding the progress of her relationship with Jussi Lavola for as long as she had. Further, she knew that her father, indulgent or no, was likely to take a terrifyingly dim view of his daughter’s escapades if they came to light. But an odd, unsettled and unsettling dissatisfaction drove her. She was looking for something, she did not know what. She suspected, in her more morbid moments, that it was something that did not exist.
On the evening that she met Major Kostya Illyarovich, an officer of the Volinsky Regiment, in Felicien’s Restaurant, a fashionable eating place reputed to be the most beautifully situated in Europe she was, unusually, actually with Jussi. For each of them it was on occasion politic to appear in public together, though neither took any great notice of the other and the company – all young, all perfectly aware of the ‘arrangement’ – accepted the situation with equanimity.
In the moment of introduction Katya recognized Kostya Illyarovich as quite clearly the most dangerous man she had ever met. Jussi himself introduced them, one eye on a redheaded gypsy girl who was moving from table to table with a basket of flowers, selling her wares to the highest bidder. As the girl reached them he slid a long arm about her waist, his smile angelic, and skilfully steered her away from the next table and into a curtained alcove.
Katya was left facing a pair of coal-black, appraising eyes in a flat, brown face, scarred from jaw to eyebrow on the left side. A heavy black moustache gave the man the air of a bandit, and no fancy uniform could disguise the arrogant power of his stocky body. He was the oldest of the company, in his late thirties, perhaps, or early forties. His features had a mongol cast; he looked a barbarian. She had watched him all evening, and she knew that he knew it. He was not tall, but strong, and his stance was easy; experience showed in every line of his square, all but impassive face. In some odd way, without so much as moving an eyebrow, he had about him an immediate aura of violence that repelled and attracted her in absolutely equal measure. His eyes took mannerless and only slightly interested stock of her face, her jewellery, and then, more slowly, her body.
She should, she knew, walk away now.
‘Good evening, Major,’ she said, and returned a level look with one of her own. Her father was away. When he returned she was certain he would require an accounting; he demanded a son-in-law, and a grandson. He would not wait too much longer. The trap was closing.
The man nodded. Grinned suddenly. Took her hand and carried it to his lips, but instead of the usual formal brushing of lips against the back of the hand he turned it to kiss the palm. His moustache was strong and wiry against the sensitive skin. She opened her fingers, surrendering to the small, outrageous intimacy; shivered a little. ‘Good evening, lady,’ he said. ‘Would the lady care for a drink?’
She was playing with fire. She knew it. But that, she told herself, altogether too smartly, was better than not playing at all. ‘Yes. Thank you,’ she said. ‘The lady would very much like a vodka.’
It was the most entertaining evening she had spent in a very long time. Secure in this most crowded of public places, stimulated in equal measure by vodka and an excitement not unmixed with a quite delicious if very real trepidation, she teased and tempted the man in a manner not unlike the child who will poke a stick through the bars of a wild animal’s cage knowing that retribution cannot possibly fall upon it. And exactly like that same animal, he watched and he waited, allowing her her moment, his square, mongol face impassive, an expression flickering occasionally in the hot eyes that sent a shiver of warning through her, and then served simply to provoke her into greater indiscretion. When the restaurant dimmed and the spotlighted gypsy singers and musicians appeared, he was sitting next to her at the table. As if to get a better view she moved her chair a little, closer to him, leaned forward, her elbows on the table. Almost casually, quite openly, he reached a hand to her breast, cradling it in a strong hand, his thumb moving over her nipple. For a moment she allowed it, trembling, sudden fire in her veins. Then abruptly she sat back, folding her arms across her bosom.
She heard his laughter in the darkness, above the music. He turned from her then, his broad, insolent back to her, eyes and attention on the gypsy girl who stepped into the circle of light, arms raised, fingers clicking.
She burned with humiliation. And with something else. Something she recognized as being very dangerous indeed.
In the sledge on the way home Jussi, unusually, attempted a warning. ‘He’s a dangerous man, Katya. He isn’t a child, to be played with. He’s not one of your pretty boys who’ll dance to your tune and thank you for it.’ He was unwontedly serious.
Katya cocked her head provocatively. ‘Oh? You think I can’t manage him?’
‘I know you can’t,’ Jussi said, simply. ‘He’s –’ He stopped.
‘What?’
‘There have been – stories.’
‘What kind of stories?’ She was innocently and deliberately obtuse.
He turned to face her. The runners hissed on a new fall of snow, bells jingled on the harness. ‘You know well what sort of stories. For heaven’s sake, Katya, don’t pretend to be stupid! Just believe me, Kostya Illyarovich does not play this game by the same rules as most of the rest of us. He has no fear, no respect for anything or anyone. He is a law unto himself. He’s a gambler. He’s a born fighter. He cares about nothing and no one but his regiment and his men. And he’s a brute with women.’
She settled back into the furs. ‘How very interesting,’ she murmured.
‘Katya!’
The vodka and the cold air were making her dizzy. She giggled a little.
‘Please. Don’t be any sillier than is absolutely necessary.’ Jussi was more brusque than she had ever heard him. ‘Stay away from Illyarovich.’
‘But, Jussi – you introduced me to him yourself!’
‘A mistake,’ he said, grimly, his pleasant face for once unsmiling.
She let a small silence develop. Then she turned. ‘Jussi, we have an arrangement. You remember?’
He nodded. ‘I remember.’
She pointed a gloved finger an inch from his nose. ‘You look after your sheep,’ she turned the finger to point to herself, ‘and I look after mine. That was it, wasn’t it?’
He held out for a moment longer, then relaxed, laughing more than a little ruefully, into his seat. ‘Yes, Katya. That was the arrangement.’
The sledge glided on through the snow-sculpted countryside of the Islands towards the lights of St Petersburg.
Illyarovich did not contact her, though for those first few days she looked minute by minute for some kind of message, so certain was she that he would. A week went by. Another. She was furious. The more he ignored her the more she thought about him; the more she thought about him the more fascinating he became. She would lie in bed at night and build his image before her; the bull shoulders, the strong, stocky body, the flat, terrifying mongol face. She looked for him at the skating parties, the sledge rides, the concerts and the parties; but he did not come.
Her father arrived home, busy and distracted, left again. Her mother was involved with a new charity, a smarter and more demanding set of friends. Katya danced and skated, laughed and flirted, kept up the pretence of her association with Jussi Lavola, watched constantly for Kostya Illyarovich.
And in the end, of course, the fish played to perfection and begging to be caught, he came.
The occasion was Jussi’s sister’s birthday.
It was late March, still cold, the river and Gulf still ice-locked, and likely to be for a month or more longer, but with the faintest suggestion of change in the air. Snowstorms still swept from the wastes of Siberia, the bitter wind still sliced down the streets of the city, cutting through clothing like a sharp-honed blade, but on occasion in the lengthening days the sun shone, glittering on the iced and frozen world with a tentative springlike suggestion of warmth. Elisabet’s birthday fell upon such a day, and so the sport that Jussi and his friends had arranged in her honour was the more flamboyant, the more enjoyable for the bright beauty in which it was couched.
First there was the inevitable splendid luncheon at the Turnakov mansion, situated in a small square off the Nevsky, early so as to leave as much time as possible for the races and games on the ice that Jussi had arranged for the short afternoon. Jussi had his own small apartment in the west wing of the mansion, a privilege obviously available only on the grounds of his sex – a sister, Katya had often pointed out, tartly, would have been allowed no such freedom – and one that Katya much envied. The luncheon was for the selected few, and Katya was resigned to the fact that necessarily she was seated next to Jussi with Elisabet’s eyes uncomfortably sharp upon them.
She smiled a small, wry smile at him over her crystal glass. ‘How’s your plump little widow?’
He grinned. ‘Plump. And very widowed. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, at least.’
Katya could not prevent a small, spluttering shout of laughter. ‘Poor man!’
Jussi was injured. ‘Not at all. It’s preferable to being dead every day of the week, isn’t it? And, by the Cross!’ He rolled his eyes. ‘That’s what he’d be if I didn’t relieve him of some of his – husbandly responsibilities.’
Her laughter was genuine. The one thing, possibly the only thing, she had to admit to liking about Jussi Lavola was his sense of humour. His lean face was the picture of put-upon innocence. She caught her mother’s eye upon her, lifted her glass in salute, breathed a small word of thanks that she could not hear what the two supposed love-birds were talking about, then laughed again at the thought.
‘And you?’ Jussi asked.
Katya shrugged. ‘All right. I suppose.’
He affected surprise. ‘But – didn’t I hear that young Marushki and Ivan What’s-his-name of the Corps de Pages were on the point of a duel over you?’
It was an exaggeration, and more than an exaggeration, as he well knew. She grinned her appreciation. ‘As I said: all right, I suppose.’
The many courses finished, more and yet more food packed into sledges and taken to the banks of the Neva to feed the wider party invited to the afternoon’s celebrations, they repaired to the ice. Braziers were lit. Passers-by hung over the bridges, watching. Wooden benches and seats were provided, with footwarmers, handwarmers and blankets for the knees. There were sledging races and skating races. There was what seemed to Katya to be an excessively silly game involving officers from two rival regiments and the bladder of a pig, which unfortunately ended with at least one broken leg, a near-serious challenge to a duel the following day and – uncounted – several black eyes. The climax of the afternoon, to be followed by fireworks and skating, were the horse races; and if what had gone before, broken leg and all, had been comparatively light-hearted, there was no pretence here at anything but a deadly resolve. The young men, dashingly uniformed, expensively horsed, milled about the starting line, pushing and jostling for position.
Katya, standing by a brazier on the ice, sensed someone behind her, turned to find Jussi, towering above her, his eyes on the riders. ‘Why aren’t you out there?’
He shrugged without looking at her, smiled his disarming smile. ‘I am not an army man.’ He paused for a moment, flashed a quick grin. ‘And I can’t ride. Not in the way that is necessary to keep body and soul together out there, anyway.’ He slanted a laughing glance down at her. ‘My soul is very precious to me. I don’t want to part with it. Not yet.’
She laughed outright. ‘I sometimes forget you aren’t a Russian –’ She stopped.
There he was. On a sturdy Cossack pony that he rode as if he were born into the saddle. A single rein, a light bit. That same careless, arrogant stance; she would have recognized him anywhere. The pony was smaller than most other horses in the race. She saw him speak, remembered the things she had heard about these animals; that they were controlled entirely by the knee and by the voice of the rider. Despite the uniform, the gleaming decorations, the trappings of civilization, here was a rider from the steppes, a Mongol of legend. A disciple – a reincarnation – of Genghis Khan. She watched, suddenly, with bated breath.
He turned the pony with perfect timing, was on his way like an arrow just as the signal shot was sounded. No man saw anything of him but his back.
Two heats he ran, two heats he won, with the rough-coated little horse barely blowing. Katya neither cheered nor waved, as others, newly discovering an outsider, did. She stood like a statue, watching intently. The final race involved half a dozen horses, each the winners of the heats. Two in particular were splendid beasts, aristocrats ridden by men who knew both their own worth and their animals’. Their riders exchanged good wishes, leaning from their saddles before they raced, shaking hands, laughing.
Kostya Illyarovich circled his small beast away from the milling contestants, some of whom it must be admitted had partaken quite copiously of the hospitality on offer. Katya watched. Saw him lean to the little horse’s ear, short, powerful legs lifting him in the saddle. Restless, eager to be off, the animal pawed the ground. Its rider, watching the starter, wheeled to the line.
One of the contenders was down before the race was truly begun. How such an unfortunate accident occurred was impossible to tell. In these icy conditions, anything could happen. Even Katya, who saw the incident from start to finish, since it quite clearly involved the rider upon whom the whole of her attention was focused, could not for her life have sworn to what happened. Certain it was that the little Cossack horse, apparently avoiding the falling animal, leapt clear of the melee and was off in pursuit of the race leader like a hound on scent of the prey.
The onlookers on the bridge suddenly decided to take sides. ‘Come on, the Volinsky!’
The Volinsky, a fascinated Katya saw, came on, and with a vengeance. He streaked up behind the bigger horse, dogged him for long enough to unsettle the beast, then shot past him like a bullet out of a gun to pass the finish line a good two lengths ahead.
‘Well,’ Jussi said behind her, very dry, ‘justice is done again, I see.’
The prizes were presented. The fireworks began, a spectacular show. Katya waited, watching the sparkling, jewel-like colours reflected in the snow. Sure enough a solid, stocky figure detached itself from the crowd and came to stand beside her. Jussi had gone.
‘Congratulations,’ she said.
Kostya shrugged.
She could see her mother, fur-draped, elegant as ever, chatting animatedly to an acquaintance. She stepped back a little, into the shade of an overhanging tree.
‘A prize for the winner?’ he asked.
As she had expected his arms and his body were strong, overwhelmingly so. His kiss took the very breath from her body.
She struggled free. ‘Stop it! For heaven’s sake! Are you mad?’
He laughed, very quietly. Out on the ice flares were being lit against the darkness, a band struck up. He kissed her again, very fiercely, forcing her back against the tree trunk. There was a soft sound behind them. They jumped apart. Jussi stood there, in his hands a pair of skating blades, that without comment he handed to Katya. As she bent to put them on he said, coolly, ‘People are wondering where you are,’ and was gone.
She straightened. Kostya stepped back, a shadow in the shadows. ‘Meet me on Thursday,’ he said, quietly. ‘Two o’clock. By the bandstand in the Summer Gardens.’
She hesitated. Prudence, or perhaps fear, unexpectedly won. ‘I – can’t,’ she said. ‘Not Thursday.’ She could not see his face. She wanted, immediately, to deny the words, to tell him she’d meet him anywhere, any time –
‘Katya? Katya – there you are! We’ve been looking for you everywhere!’ A group of laughing youngsters were skating towards them. ‘Come on, do! Come and skate.’
He looked at her for a long, calm moment. ‘You meet me Thursday, or you meet me not at all,’ he said, and turned and left her.
She met him. She told no-one, not even Jussi. He had hired a sledge and a driver; they drove out along the shores of the Gulf, into the winter forests. They talked a little, but only a little; she questioning, he replying with laconic brevity. Yes, he had seen active service, both in Japan and in the Ukraine. No, he had no family. And no, he had no interest in possessions; what above a good horse, a sword and a gun did a soldier need? She resisted neither when he kissed her nor when, beneath the furs, his strong, hard hand slid beneath the bodice of her dress to caress her breasts: nothing in her life had ever excited her so. The sheer brute strength of the man both fascinated and repelled her. As unlike the young men who usually danced attendance upon her as he could possibly be, he drew her like a magnet; yet at the same time if she were honest she had to admit that he truly frightened her. And what frightened her more was that at that moment, absurdly, she knew that had he asked she would have gone anywhere with him, risked anything for him, done anything, absolutely anything that he required of her.
But he did not ask. He delivered her back at the Summer Gardens punctiliously two short hours after they had left, lifted her hand briefly to his lips and left her, watching after him, confused, angry, near to tears. He had not suggested another meeting.
That night, restless, she could not sleep, could not get the image of the man out of her head. Almost for the first time in her life she longed really to talk to someone, to confide in someone who might understand the strange and painful clash of emotions he roused in her.
At midnight, with the house asleep around her, she lit her candle, settled by the stove in her room and wrote a long overdue letter to her cousin Anna.
Anna received the letter as the soft green bloom of spring was turning to the lusher verdancy of early summer in the Sussex countryside. She stood by the open French windows of the music room reading Katya’s impatient scrawl. A cuckoo called distantly from the woodland. The garden, which she had grown to love so dearly, lay tranquil and beautiful in fitful sunshine, a breeze rustled the bright new leaves.
Guy sat behind her in a deep armchair, watching her, waiting for her to finish.
She turned to him, smiling a little. ‘Poor Katya. She’s found her match at last from the sound of it. She’s fallen in love, she says, with a barbarian.’ For all the extravagant extremes of emotion in the letter – so like Katya – she could not help but laugh a little. ‘Poor Katya,’ she said again. ‘It had to happen, I suppose. She’s such a reckless soul.’ She dropped the letter onto a small table, went to stand behind her husband, her hand gentle upon his shoulder, stood looking out into the lovely garden. By the open windows a thrush sang.
He covered the hand with his own, turned his head to look up at her. His bout of ill-health had taken its toll. He looked, she thought suddenly, frail and a little tired. ‘Would you like to go for a stroll in the garden?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘Later, perhaps. I have some work to do. If you seduce me into your lovely leafy domain I’ll never shake myself free. I’ll come in an hour or so, and you can show me all your latest labours.’ He smiled, his still bright eyes warm. ‘A green-thumbed gardener indeed! Anna, my love, you’ve become more English than the English, do you know that?’
She laughed, picked up a wide straw hat that lay upon a chair. ‘An hour. No more. You mustn’t wear yourself out. And I want you to see the bluebells in the woodland garden before they fade.’ As she moved to the window she picked up the letter before she stepped into the sunshine.
She read it again sitting on a stone bench set against a huge clipped hedge of yew. The leaves scented the air in the sunshine, bees buzzed busily in a nearby flowerbed. She lifted her head. As a brief and haphazard postscript to her main letter Katya had appended news of the family; Lenka had had a little boy, but hardly anyone saw her any more since she seemed to have withdrawn entirely from the family. Margarita seemed blissfully happy with what Katya termed ‘her handsome toy soldier’, Dima and Natalia were living ‘like the most ancient of old married couples’, and Natalia was expecting a child. Anna sat quite still, her eyes distant. St Petersburg. The domes and the spires. The great river, locked in winter’s ice, turbulent with the spring thaws. The northern winters. The long, rose-gold days of summer. The white nights. Katya. Her family; suddenly she realized that almost without her noticing it a strange thing had happened. St Petersburg was no longer home. She looked around her. This was her home. When first she had come to England to read such a letter would have brought on a bout of homesickness that she would have had to fight for days; now she felt no such sadness. ‘More English than the English’ Guy had called her; and it was true. England suited her. This life, with its friendships, its music, the utter delight of this garden, suited her. She no longer wanted to go back, not to live. Recently she had been tinkering with the idea of going to visit, and that she thought she would enjoy, though even the vaguest of plans kept being postponed, casualties of a filled and busy life. The point was that she could contemplate it with no fear; the danger was over; she would not, she knew, find it hard to leave that other life to come home. As for Andrei: perhaps sadly, she hardly ever thought of him now. That wild young passion had died. When Varya mentioned him in her letters, which she did, infrequently, there was now no unsettling stirring of emotion. She was happy. She smiled suddenly. That was it; she was happy, here, with Guy, with her music, with her garden.
Strange indeed are the ways of God, she found herself thinking, the words coming to her, unusually, in her own native tongue. She sat for a long quiet moment looking about her, trying to hold the moment, savouring the discovery of her contentment. Then she stood up and strolled back towards the house, to answer Katya’s letter.
Not, she admitted to herself with a sudden, rueful smile, as she bent to tug at a stray weed in the flagstoned path, that she believed for a moment that anything she might say would deflect her cousin in the least from her own flamboyant and wayward path. God alone knew who or what would do that.