In crisp and sunny weather that made the buildings of St Petersburg glitter like so many prettily iced cakes, Victor Valerievich Shalakov strode through the streets of the city, collar turned against the wind, and contemplated the coming meeting with his brother-in-law Bourlov. He disliked intensely the thought of borrowing money from the man that Varya’s sister had so shrewdly married, but the offer was there, and extra finance was essential if the new shop was to be brought to the standards demanded by the wealthy patrons he was determined to attract. He had worked his fingers to the bone over the years preparing for this day; the day when, his miser of a father dead at last, as senior partner he would have control of the business and make it his. Not that he felt any particular excitement or pleasure; Victor was a man to whom by nature disappointment came more easily than contentment. It was characteristic of him that surrounded by the beauty and brilliance of this lovely afternoon he should feel nothing but the bite of the wind. A successful businessman, always he saw only the greater successes of others. A respected family man, yet it could not be denied that privately he felt himself cheated by the Almighty in his brood of girls and his one weakly boy. Blessed with a shrewd brain and a pugnacious obstinacy that had stood him in good stead in his dogged fight to turn what had been a small and reputable family business into an expanding and profitable modern concern, yet always it had seemed to him that his brother’s more artistic skills and talents had been greater appreciated and better thought of by the family and by the world. Since childhood he had been aware, with a practical lack of self pity, that no-one really liked him – a fact that accorded him no particular suffering, since in Victor’s eyes to pursue the easy and worthless admiration of others was the surest sign of a weakness of character bordering on the insane. In consequence, however, any kindly interest, any unsolicited warmth had always been treated with the deepest of suspicion, and neither in childhood nor in adulthood could Victor Valerievich ever have been said to have had a true friend; the significance of this circumstance lying largely in the fact that he himself cared nothing for it, indeed might count it as reason for positive self-congratulation. Victor Valerievich could never be termed a self-indulgent man.
In no area of his life were these facets of his character more apparent than in his relationships with his family; a fact, perhaps, not so very surprising and made even less so since his marriage to Varya Petrovna was rooted in his one rash break with calm and self-centred common sense. Aged thirty, the sober and straight-laced Victor had made the fatal and irrational mistake of falling in love.
It had been Varya’s sister Zhenia, now married to Bourlov, who had first caught his eye. At seventeen, thirteen years younger than Victor, she had been attractive, clever, practical and, with the family fallen into straitened circumstances since the death of a much-loved but irresponsible father, looking for a husband with ambition that matched her own. Victor might well have been that man, had his eye not lighted upon her younger sister. Tiny, helpless, kittenishly beautiful, Varya was the kind of woman that Victor had always abhorred. Spoiled and petted, brought up in surroundings that had always been beyond the family means, she had neither the stamina nor the wit of her sister; yet from the moment he saw her mass of golden hair, her wide, forget-me-not eyes, fell victim to the flirtatiousness that was and always would be second nature to her, Victor had been obsessed by her. And against all odds and despite all effort, was still, twenty years later. The marriage had been, at least outwardly and by the world’s lights, a surprising success; she, child-like, dependent, still pampered, producing the healthy children that any good wife should, he the stern and reliable paterfamilias, a good provider, a strong protector. Only Victor knew the reality of his relationship with his wife; even Varya herself did not suspect the depths of his feelings, nor despite past troubles did she realize the agonies of possessive jealousy that still afflicted him when another man’s eyes lit, casually appreciative, upon his vain, often silly but still beautiful wife.
There had indeed been a time, after Anna was born, when his suspicions of Varya might well have driven him to murder.
A young captain of hussars, handsome and highly-strung, son of a family friend and newly back from service in the south, had taken to haunting the apartment where they lived with Victor’s father, ostensibly visiting his good friend Victor and his family, in fact all too obviously enslaved by Victor’s lovely young wife. Varya, bored with life and perilously flattered, had done nothing to discourage him. On the contrary it had soothed and cheered her after the fearful and depressing shock of childbirth that this young man should press his attentions so sweetly and assiduously. Varya had married Victor, as she had done so many other things, because that had been what the world had apparently expected her to do; she had needed someone to look after her, Victor had been there ready and willing to do so. Both her mother and her sister – who by that time had been in determined pursuit of much bigger game – had each for her own reasons seen the match as desirable. Varya, as always, had taken the line of least resistance. At seventeen, for, in her own eyes, the very good reason that she had needed a relief from the uncertainties of sudden and appalling near-poverty, a home of her own, and something more than the company of women, she had married a man of thirty who scolded and bullied her as he might a pretty, half-witted child. Her feelings for Victor, or the lack of them, had not really entered into the matter at all. A year or so later, the mould of her life cast, the attentions of her handsome captain had been something else again; he had been a dream, a fantasy, a fairy-tale prince, a shimmering curtain of love, attention and above all uncritical admiration that hung between her and the true realities of her life. The joys of the marriage bed had passed Varya by completely. Quite simply and predictably, she had hated it; and married to someone who accepted that as normal and even becoming behaviour for a modest young female, the fumbling couplings with which she had paid for her home and her security had never become anything more than that: a furtive, incomprehensible and humiliating exercise to be endured in darkness and banished from the mind at all other times. The thought of indulging in such disgusting behaviour with her young admirer would no more have occurred to her than she might have thought of sprouting wings and flying. Had Victor been a more sensitive soul he might have seen and understood that, but he was not. He had become obsessed with the thought that his wife was betraying him; which indeed she was but in a manner too subtle for either of them to grasp.
The ensuing fracas he preferred not to remember, though it did occasionally surface in the most disturbing of his dreams.
By a chance that had proved unfortunate for them all the young captain had turned up at the apartment when Varya was alone; an almost unique circumstance in itself. Victor had discovered them, together in the lace-draped boudoir of which Varya was so enormously proud, reading poetry. The strong and stocky Victor, righteous rage upon his side, had hauled his shocked rival by the collar and the seat of his fashionably-cut trousers out of the door and hurled him down a steep flight of stone stairs that might well have broken a back or a neck. Fortunately the young man’s bones remained whole; a fact that did not at the time please Victor, but for which later, prudently, he thanked whichever gods had been presiding over his unnatural loss of control. Death or crippling would have brought scandal, and what might that have done for the respectable name of Shalakov? He had then taken primitive revenge upon his wife – the only time in a lifetime of marriage they were ever to couple in daylight – and the result, unfortunately for the child, had been their second daughter Yelena. That Yelena, of all of them, was in character the most like her father, that physically she resembled no-one, least of all the dashing young captain of the strikingly handsome looks, counted for nothing with Victor. His clever eldest daughter Anna was his pride, though he would have denied that indignantly if taxed. Dmitri was his boy, weakly perhaps and a disappointment in many ways, but nevertheless the one who would carry the Shalakov name into the next generation. Margarita, the pretty, frivolous image of her mother, held a special if sometimes grudging place in his heart. The very sight of Yelena enraged him. From the moment she was born, mute and helpless reminder of an act of anger and violence of which, had he been able to bring himself to honesty he would have admitted he was deeply ashamed, he had detested her. In his worst moments, despite all evidence to the contrary, he could convince himself that she was indeed the fruit of adultery, a cuckoo in his orderly nest, a stranger to his blood. That Yelena had grown up sullen and awkward was not surprising. Bewildered, resentful, a nature already darkened by melancholy and self-doubt had become very difficult indeed. Even her physical appearance angered her father; like her sister Anna she had grown almost as tall as her father but, unlike Anna who to her own private mortification was still skinny as a boy, Yelena’s body had ripened to a sensual womanhood completely at odds with her pale, childish face and lank brown hair. Poor Lenka – even in this she was wrong; her breasts were full and heavy, her waist slender, her hips wide and seductively curved. Victor saw the look in men’s eyes as this awkward daughter of his passed and, against justice, detested her the more for it.
He paused outside the building where the Bourlovs lived, in the fashionable boulevard of mansions and apartment houses that edged the Fontanka Canal, and looked up. The large windows of the expensive first-floor apartment glinted in winter sunshine, a chandelier gleamed behind heavily draped velvet. Not for the first time Victor wondered if he had been wise in agreeing that his daughters should be allowed to spend too much of their time in such surroundings; but then the offer of free education was hard to resist, and the Bourlovs had been very keen to have the companionship of her cousins for their daughter Katya; and at the moment the Bourlovs were to be cultivated. It would be only for a while. The girls were growing apace, husbands must soon be found for them. Perhaps Varya Petrovna was right at least in this; here in Petersburg their chances of an advantageous match might be better than in Moscow. Until then they might as well pick up as much polish and confidence as they could; it could do no harm.
Victor brushed the snow from his shoulders, straightened his hat and ponderously mounted the steps to the huge revolving door that led into the vestibule.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bourlov, black eyes gleaming, eyed his brother-in-law with considerable if hidden amusement. Against all odds – and Victor himself would certainly never have believed it – Mikhail Mikhailovich harboured some rueful glimmering of something like affection for Victor. The man was a bore and sometimes a pompous one at that, but there was no doubting his intelligence, nor yet his strict and fussy sense of honour, at least where business was concerned. Mikhail Mikhailovich, known to friend and enemy alike as Mischa, found Victor’s attitudes to business quaint in the extreme; and was aware that his brother-in-law’s unease about Mischa’s own somewhat piratical practices must disturb a tender conscience considerably. He could not be blamed, he considered, for taking a mild and graceless pleasure in the situation. ‘I insist,’ he said, smiling. ‘The loan is interest-free for the first two years. After that, if repayments haven’t been made, well, we’ll see.’
‘Mischischa,’ Zhenia had said, glinting at him from beneath the mass of fair hair that was the only attribute she shared with her sister Varya, ‘for me? Stupid Victor’s solid gold, and you know it – he’ll starve himself and everyone else rather than get behind on the repayments. To you it’s such a little sum. The stock must be worth as much. Andrei says they have some very fine instruments. And there’s some talk of a good contract in the offing. You can afford it. It will make Victor Valerievich happy. And if Victor’s happy then Varya will be happy. And if Varya’s happy –’ She had laughed a little, and the attraction she still held for him had stirred, lazily, making them both smile, ‘– she’ll be so very much easier for her poor sister to cope with!’
Victor was hard put not to show his relief. Low interest he had hoped for if not expected, but an interest-free loan would take much of the anxiety from these initial, difficult months. He felt, however, honour bound to protest further. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it, Mikhail Mikhailovich,’ he began, stiffly. ‘The normal terms of business –’
‘Nonsense.’ Mischa was brisk. ‘I’m delighted to be a part of the new venture. Andrei has quite a reputation here in Petersburg, you know. Though it’s generally accepted that his work will never perhaps be as good as it used to be he’s counted still a great craftsman, despite his handicap. And his young apprentice – the young violin maker who has joined him – he too is making a name for himself and for Shalakov and Sons. I heard that the Princess Venskaya held a charity concert last week at which the young von Vecsey played his famous Stradivarius with a Shalakov bow. The Princess is a music lover and a patron of Andrei’s, I believe. Such contacts can only bring great prestige, and in Petersburg prestige and success tend to walk hand in hand. So let’s hear no more of it. You’re satisfied with the premises in the Nevsky?’
‘More than satisfied. The workshop is already in operation, or will be within the next few days. The shop will be open in a very few months I hope.’
‘Good.’ Mischa reached into his pocket and brought out a flat gold cigarette case that gleamed dully in the winter sunlight that slanted through the window. He offered the box to Victor, who refused it with a shake of the head. Mischa leaned back in his chair, extracted a cigarette and tapped it thoughtfully upon the box.
Victor threw caution to the wind. Really, he could not allow it to be thought that Andrei was the only one with influence in this upstart city. ‘I too,’ he said, a little stiffly, ‘have acquired a patron. Of even greater worth, if I may say so, than the Princess Venskaya.’
Mischa had lit his cigarette. He blew a stream of smoke lazily to the ceiling. ‘Oh?’
‘I am as it happens about to sign a contract for the supply and maintenance of all stringed instruments to the Imperial Ballet School, the Music School and the Imperial Theatres both here and in Moscow.’ The words came in a rush. Victor felt unbecoming colour mounting in his cheeks. He had told no-one of this; it was a secret he had nursed, through bribe and negotiation, close in his heart. Almost superstitiously he had refused to mention the possibility to anyone, as if to speak of it would be to break the spell of good fortune. He had not even mentioned the chance that they might get the contract to Andrei. To hear the words actually spoken was both frightening and exhilarating. He leaned back, studiedly casual, crossing his legs, firmly suppressing as he had suppressed all through this affair his own distaste for the established mores of business in the Imperial capital. He had long realized that the choice was between starving self-righteously and accepting, sensibly, that in Rome one must enter the market place in the Roman way. Conscience be damned; at least he could show this buccaneering brother-in-law that he was not the only one in the family who knew how to pull strings to his own advantage. ‘As you know the schools and the theatres are subsidized by His Imperial Highness’s own Privy Purse,’ he said into the sudden, interested silence. ‘A five-year contract is on offer it seems. Not a fortune of course, but a good steady income that should see us through the first difficult times, and a great honour for the Shalakov name.’
Mischa was eyeing him through a cloud of smoke, his expression a mixture of mild if gratifying astonishment and a dawning, knowing amusement. ‘You actually have this contract?’
Victor shifted in his seat, a little uneasily. ‘As good as, yes.’ A slight edge of defensiveness sharpened the words.
‘I see.’ Mischa drew again, unhurriedly, at his cigarette, then added gently, ‘And may I ask how?’
Victor waved a worldly hand. ‘There have been – negotiations – in hand for some time.’
‘Victor Valerievich, who have you been bribing?’ There was open laughter now; laughter with a touch of friendly mockery that set Victor’s teeth on edge.
‘Most –’ He hesitated, delicately, very much upon his dignity, ‘– contact – has been made through a man by the name of Pavel Petrovich Donovalov. He approached me originally in Moscow, when it became known –’ He stopped at Mischa’s sudden movement. ‘You know him?’
Mischa had leaned forward, elbows on desk, his eyes sudden, sharp needlepoints of interest. He remained so for a moment, then sank back again into his chair, smiling through smoke. ‘My dear Victor, in Petersburg everyone knows anyone who is bribable. And Pavel Petrovich is probably the most bribable of them all. He’s got his sticky fingers into the Privy Purse now, has he? My, my! When I knew him he was a common or garden junior official in the War Ministry. Put a few contracts my way. For a consideration, of course. A weasel. Pure and simple. One of the nastiest pieces of work it’s been my misfortune to do business with, I’d say. There’s even talk – did you know? – that the death of his wife last year was not – how shall I put it? – not entirely lacking in questionable circumstances. But it was never followed up. The man has contacts in the most unlikely places. As I said: a weasel. Well, you’ve met him; I dare say I don’t need to say more?’
‘Indeed not.’ Victor was abstracted. ‘I wonder – since you apparently know the man?’
‘Yes?’
‘In your opinion –’ Victor hesitated, embarrassed, then pressed on, ‘will he deliver what he promises?’
Mischa shrugged. From the corridor outside a light and musical voice called. Laughter rang like a chime of bells and quick footsteps hurried upon the parquet floor. ‘If it suits him.’ Already he was turned towards the door, smiling. ‘Just go through any contract with a fine-tooth comb and don’t trust him any further than your pretty little Varya Petrovna could throw him. Oh.’ He was already standing, moving towards the door. ‘And keep him away from your girls. He has a reputation that would make a self-respecting dog retch. Katya, my dear. Is this the dress I’ve heard so much about? Well come, let me look at you – let me see the sight for which I’ve beggared myself.’
‘Mischischa, darling!’ The girl who burst into the room was of medium height, fair-haired, brown-eyed, tiny of waist and full of breast; as the dress she was wearing showed to every possible advantage. Of coral silk trimmed with green, it swirled about her in a shimmer of colour. She spun into a few dance steps, ended in a deep and graceful curtsy. ‘There! Isn’t it just lovely? Oh, hello, Uncle Victor. I didn’t know you were here.’
Victor rose, stiffly and well upon his dignity. ‘Yekaterina Mikhailovna.’
Her eyes brightened with laughter at the formality. With an openly mischievous glance at her father, she straightened, folded her hands and proffered a cool, equally formal cheek. She moved in a cloud of perfume, heady and sweet. Victor kissed her awkwardly. Then, the game palling, she spun away from him again, her eyes on her father. ‘What do you think, dear Mischischa? Isn’t it worth it? Isn’t it?’
Her father stood, solemnly eyeing her. ‘We-ell –’ He hesitated, pretending a frown.
Katya laughed, threw her arms about him. ‘You know it is! You know it is! Oh, Mischischa darling, it is quite the loveliest dress I have ever seen in my whole life! Thank you. Thank you so much!’
Victor found himself thinking that no business associate of Mikhail Mikhailovich Bourlov would have recognized the fond smile that softened his face and gleamed in his dark eyes. ‘You look wonderful, my darling. Absolutely wonderful.’
‘Thank you, Sir. Thank you kindly.’ She broke away from him, dipped into another curtsy, openly impudent this time and coquettish. Then she swirled to where Victor still stood. ‘Uncle Victor, when is Anna coming? And Lenka of course? I’m quite dying to see them.’ If the expression and tone of the words were a little less enthusiastic than the words themselves Victor chose to ignore it. The girl was a minx and should have been taken in hand long ago. He was not alone, he knew, in his astonishment that his brother-in-law Bourlov, a man to be respected in most quarters – and more than a little feared in many – could allow himself such indulgence where this all but uncontrollable child of his was concerned. Some man was going to have the devil of a job when he took the girl to wife. If indeed anyone could be found to take on such a task, fortune or no fortune. Again he found himself wondering, was it wise to let Anna and Yelena spend time in this opulent house with this hoyden as companion? Then he remembered the loan, so important until the Privy Purse, always notoriously slow to open, actually started to pay out, and he smiled as best as he could.
‘Whenever you like, my dear. Next week, perhaps? After we are well settled in the apartment? I know they’re as anxious as are you for the reunion.’
‘Next week.’ Katya tossed her fair head, slanted a mischievous glance at her father. ‘Good. Perhaps having Anna and Lenka here will stop Monsieur Drapin nagging me so. I do hope so. In fact I’m quite counting upon it. Anna and Lenka are so very clever.’ The word was dismissively and unrepentantly amused. ‘I’m sure they’ll keep M’sieu happy for me whilst I pursue my own lazy ways. Misch’, darling, Mama asked me to remind you that you’re due at the Kerelovs’ this evening, and there isn’t much time.’
Mischa sketched an elegant, apologetic gesture in the air in the general direction of Victor. Victor blushed furiously. ‘I really must go,’ he said. ‘I’ve already taken up too much of your time.’
‘You’re sure you won’t take tea?’ The offer was polite, but far from pressing.
‘No, no. Varya Petrovna will be waiting. My respects to your wife, Mikhail Mikhailovich. Good day, Katya, my dear.’
After he had gone Mischa turned to his daughter, only half-laughing. ‘Katya, Katya! You really mustn’t do such things, you know!’
‘But he’s such a bore!’ Katya smoothed the coral silk, smiling as the gleaming, delicate material glinted between her fingers. ‘It’s really difficult to believe that he and the beautiful Andrei are brothers, isn’t it?’
Her father shook his head, theatrically despairing. ‘Katya-’
She kissed him, lightly. ‘Don’t say it, Mischischa. I know. I’m hopeless. A lost cause. I agree. Now, I’ll go and change my beautiful dress and then you and I have time for a game of chess before Mama steals you for the evening.’
‘Lenka, for goodness’ sake – can’t you move your idle self and help?’ Anna stood, hands on hips, eyeing in growing exasperation her sister who lay slumped upon the bed, curled about a book.
Yelena grunted.
‘Don’t you want the room to look nice?’ Anna hauled a heavy armchair close to the window, stood back looking at it critically. ‘Just because three of us have to share it doesn’t mean it has to look like a pigsty all the time! We might as well be comfortable!’ She tossed a cushion onto the chair, plumped it up and looked around again. The large room held a big bed for herself and her sister and a small one, little more than a pallet, for Margarita, who needless to say had made herself very scarce at first mention of work to be done. A large black stove belched heat from one corner. Books were stacked in heaps upon the floor, and clothes were scattered upon the bed. ‘Lenka, do move! You’re lying on my best skirt!’
Yelena, grumbling, moved a fraction.
‘What are you reading?’ Anna peered over her shoulder. ‘Dostoevsky? Again? Lenka, darling, you must know every word the man has written by heart!’
‘Very nearly.’ Yelena afforded her one of her rare smiles. ‘’Noushka, have you spoken to Papa yet?’
‘Er, no.’ Anna began to fold clothes, not looking at her sister. ‘I haven’t got round to it yet.’
‘But Anna, when? When will you?’
‘Just as soon as I can. Just as soon as the opportunity presents itself.’ Anna threw the blouse she had been folding onto the bed and turned, arms wide. ‘Oh, Lenka, you know how difficult Papa can be. If I catch him at the wrong moment –’ She shrugged, pulled an expressive face.
‘I know. I do know.’ Lenka threw herself back onto the bed, her arms behind her head. ‘It’s just so important, so terribly important to me –’
‘Yes.’ Anna stood for a long moment watching the other girl who lay, head averted, looking sightlessly through the window into the light and faintly sunlit winter skies. ‘I do know that, Lenka. Truly I do.’ She sat beside her, touched her cheek gently with the back of her hand. Ever since she could remember she had been fiercely and protectively devoted to this difficult sister of hers. Even as a small child she had sensed Lenka’s need of her; in their growing years the younger child, starved of affection from other quarters, had clung to her, looking to Anna for protection and for sympathy and rarely failing to find both in full measure. It had fallen automatically to Anna to mop her small sister’s tears, soothe her angers, gentle the storms that had so often shaken her; Varya’s motherly instincts barely extended so far to any of her children, and Victor, upon whom for most of the time Anna herself could rely, had been strangely and harshly impatient towards Lenka. And so a bond had grown between them, a bond that might have been irksome to Anna had she not been so deeply aware of her sister’s unhappiness. She knew that it might be said that Lenka, difficult as she could be, was her own worst enemy. Yet Anna was sure that it was their father’s inexplicable attitude to the child that had made her so. ‘I’ll talk to him, Lenka, I promise. Soon. Perhaps he’ll agree – oh, good heavens, is that the time?’ She rubbed at her forehead with a dusty finger. ‘I promised Mama I’d fetch Uncle Andrei up for tea at three and it’s ten past. I’d better go.’ She jumped up, brushing down her skirt, peered into the mirror, decided against any effort at tidying the wiry mass of her hair, scrubbed with a handkerchief at a smudge of dirt on her chin and the other her dirty finger had left on her forehead. ‘What a sight! Oh, do get up and do something, Lenka, please! At least get those books stacked on the shelves. I’ll go down and fetch Uncle Andrei. Tell Mama I’ll be back in five minutes or so.’
‘’Noushka?’
At the door Anna turned.
‘Ask Papa soon? Please?’
‘I will.’
As so often, as she hurried down the stairs, she found herself thinking that if only her sister would smile like that more often the world would perhaps think differently of her.
Andrei lived on the ground floor in two rooms, one of which was his work room. The door as always was on the latch. Anna opened it and peered around it. ‘Uncle Andrei?’
The work room was still and quiet. A large and serviceable black stove occupied one corner and the air was warm. A single lamp burned above a narrow, padded workbench. Andrei’s canvas apron was tossed across the bench, upon which rested a few long, straight batons of wood, neatly piled, and a selection of small planes and other tools. A second workbench, unlit, was clear except for some shavings and a few pieces of discarded wood and a lidless, all but empty varnish pot. From the ceiling hung a rack upon which were hooked several violins in various states of manufacture and repair. Above the bench still in use hung perhaps half a dozen bows, some finished, some not, and four or five hooks from which hung long hanks of horse hair.
‘Uncle Andrei? Are you there?’ Anna hesitated for a moment then walked through the work room and pushed open the door to the living room. ‘Uncle Andrei? Mama asked me to bring you upstairs for tea.’
This room too was empty. A lamp burned upon the table and another before the icon that hung in the eastern corner of the room. In another corner a round table stood, covered with a long fringed cloth and upon it a samovar, empty and cold, and a small tray with tea glasses neatly ranged upon it. Upon a sideboard were set several photographs, and the wall behind the bed was lined with shelves that were neatly packed with books. More books were stacked beside a large armchair that stood comfortably beside the enamelled stove. There were several pictures upon the walls, and a rack of bows hung above the sideboard. The whole room was as tidy as the most virtuous housewife could have wished.
Anna had been in the work room before but never in here. On inquisitive impulse she slipped into the room, half-closing the door behind her, and walked to the sideboard. Several large silver frames were arranged upon the shining surface; and all of them but one contained a photograph of the same person, a wide-eyed girl, dark-haired, neatly pretty and in every picture laughing. Andrei’s wife Galina. Courted at eighteen, married at nineteen and tragically dead before her twenty-third birthday. Much loved, never forgotten, never replaced. Anna picked up one of the smaller pictures and held it to the light of the lamp. The girl’s dark eyes smiled into hers from a bright, suspended moment when life and love were all and the future stretched endlessly ahead. This smiling girl had died, Anna remembered, just a couple of weeks before the baby she had been carrying would have come to term. The child had died with her. Anna replaced the photograph very carefully, picked up the only picture that was not of Galina. A tall, elderly, distinguished-looking man in formal dress, cane in hand, looked out upon the world with faint, quizzical amusement. The narrow face was deeply lined, there was a hint of humour about the eyes and the long, narrow mouth that Anna immediately liked. She wondered who he was; obviously he must be someone of whom her uncle was very fond. Replacing the frame she noticed for the first time that lying along the back of the sideboard almost hidden in shadow was a bow, unhaired, the glowing polish of the wood almost lost against the surface upon which it lay. She picked it up; and in the instant her violinist’s hands told her what she held. Even unhaired the thing was a wonder; perfectly balanced, perfectly weighted. Silver mounted and ornamented with mother of pearl, as were all of Andrei’s bows – he dismissed with unusual vehemence the showy extravagances of gold and precious stones – yet everything about it from the smooth, polished curve of the wood to the shining ebony and silver frogs and the delicately opaque beauty of the mother of pearl ornament spoke of the genius of a true craftsman. Yet, oddly, for all its beauty and balance the thing was dead; no – she ran gentle fingers along the curve of the stick – no, not dead; but without the smooth tension of the hair to complete it, it did not yet live. She lifted it, hand delicately bent, as if to draw music from imaginary strings.
The soft closing of the door behind her made her jump so violently that she almost dropped the bow.
‘Anna, I’m sorry – you were looking for me?’ Her uncle stood by the door, smiling.
‘I – yes.’ The fair, freckled skin of her face warmed with embarrassment. ‘Mama sent me to fetch you for tea. You weren’t in the workshop; I came in to see –’ She stopped, swamped in confusion. ‘I’m sorry. I suppose I really shouldn’t have –’
‘Oh, don’t be silly.’ Still smiling, he dropped the bag he carried onto the bed. ‘I’ve been over at the Nevsky, settling young Volodya into the new workshop. You haven’t met him yet, have you?’
Anna shook her head.
‘You should. He’s a very nice young man. He shows enormous promise.’ Her uncle sent her a sly, smiling glance. ‘He’s about your age I think. And you have a lot in common. I’m quite sure you’d like each other.’
The detested blush deepened.
He came to her, touched the bow lightly, without taking it from her. ‘You like it?’
‘Oh, yes! It’s just marvellous! Why haven’t you finished it?’
There was a fleeting moment of silence that drew her eyes to his face. The flash of pain, instantly hidden, was so fierce it was as if she herself had been struck by it. Then, easily and naturally, he reached with his undamaged hand and took the unfinished bow from her, running his fingers with capable competence along the length of it. ‘It’s the bow I was making when Galina died. For obvious reasons I couldn’t at the time finish it. When I could –’ He laid the thing down, carefully, amongst the photographs, shrugged, smiling. ‘I didn’t. That’s all.’
The desire to avoid this difficult subject at all costs warred with a sudden and human desire to know how that girl, so charming, so happy, so much loved, married when she was only a year or so older than herself, had died. Varya would never speak of it, shuddering with theatrical horror if the subject were raised. ‘It must have been terrible,’ she found herself saying. ‘The accident, I mean.’
‘Yes.’
‘What happened?’ She hesitated. ‘Can you speak of it? I don’t mean to intrude.’
Andrei turned from her, took off the heavy canvas working coat he was wearing and reached for a battered velvet jacket that hung behind the door. For a moment Anna thought that he would not answer, or would brush her curiosity aside, as she supposed it deserved. Then, still carrying the jacket, he came to the sideboard, picked up the small picture she had been looking at earlier. ‘We had been for a trip on the river,’ he said. ‘Galina and I. A pleasure boat – with music, and a bar – you know the kind? It was a wonderful day – early spring, still cold, but the thaw was well under way. The river was turbulent, very high, very fast, full of the melted snows and ice of winter. Full of the new life of spring.’ He stopped for a moment, put down the picture, slipped his arm into his jacket. Anna, in an instinctive movement born of serving her father, moved behind him to help him shrug into it. ‘Galina was heavy with child, clumsy, dressed still in winter clothing against the cold. As she stepped onto the plank to disembark she slipped, and fell between the landing stage and the boat. I reached for her. She caught my hand.’ A moment of quiet fell. Anna, behind him, brushed with sudden busy concentration at the dust upon the shoulders of the shabby jacket. ‘There was nothing anyone could do. I held on – for as long as I could – but she was trapped – and my hand –’ She felt the narrow shoulders beneath her hands hunch very slightly; the right hand, the maimed hand, slipped into the pocket of the jacket. ‘There was nothing anyone could do,’ he repeated.
Anna nibbled her lip; why in the world had she ever brought up the subject? ‘It must have been awful for you,’ she mumbled.
He turned, the untidy silver thatch of his hair shining in the lamp light. ‘Yes it was. Of course it was. But it was a long time ago, Anna. And the world lives on. It would be wrong to mourn for ever.’
‘I suppose so.’ With a suddenly necessary but she hoped unobtrusive sniff she moved past him, looked again at the pictures on the sideboard. ‘Who’s this? The old gentleman?’ Her voice was much too bright, much too obviously intent upon changing the subject. She winced a little. Honestly, little Rita would have handled this better!
Andrei gave a quite genuine snort of laughter. ‘‘The old gentleman”! Oh, I shall tell him that, indeed I shall!’
‘Well? Who is he? I must say he really looks rather nice.’
‘I’ll tell him that too.’ Andrei was grinning like a boy. ‘He’s a very good friend of mine. Guy de Fontenay. He runs a most prestigious business in London, making and selling fine instruments.’
‘Like you and Papa?’
He grinned. ‘A little, yes. But rather better established and rather more splendid. The greatest players in the world go to Guy.’
‘What’s he like?’
The smile lit his face again. ‘Guy’s just about the best friend I ever had. He’s a charming man, believe me – the most civilized man I know – the perfect English gentleman.’
‘English? With a name like that? He surely must be French?’
‘Half of him is. His father’s half. But the important half,’ he grinned again, ‘his mother’s half, is English. Believe me you’ll never meet a more English English gentleman than M’sieu Guy de Fontenay.’
‘How do you know him so well?’
Andrei bent to pick up the books that were stacked beside the armchair, carried them to the shelf and began to slot them neatly into their spaces. ‘We met in Paris, while I was a student – seventeen? – no, eighteen years ago.’ He shook his head, smiling. ‘Half a lifetime!’
‘All of mine,’ Anna said.
He laughed aloud. ‘Why yes, so it is! I was studying violin making, of course – I hadn’t then become interested in bow making – but not, I’m ashamed to say, half as enthusiastically as I was studying the night-life of Paris! When first I met Guy my pockets were emptier than my head. He lent me money, watched whilst I squandered it then offered me more in payment for tuition in the Russian language.’ He came back to the sideboard, with one hand and quick fingers rearranged the photographs, then walked to the table where burned the lamp. ‘So, I taught him Russian and in return he taught me – oh, all manner of things.’ His voice, and his laughter, were warm. ‘That was how it started. As I said, Guy is the best and closest friend I ever had. I respect him more than anyone else I’ve ever known.’ He turned down the lamp, pinched the wick to stop it smoking, stood looking down at it for a thoughtful moment. ‘He’s a very wise man,’ he said, soberly. ‘There aren’t so very many people you can say that about.’
He ushered her out onto the stairs. The cold swept around them. Hunched against it they ran breathlessly up to the door of the Shalakov apartment. Anna rang the bell. Nothing happened. She leaned hard upon it, hearing it sound, shrill and insistent in the apartment. ‘Honestly, Seraphima is so slow!’
The landing was chill. A single gas flare flickered in the gloom. Andrei was watching her. ‘It was a pity,’ he said quietly, and utterly unexpectedly, ‘about the scholarship.’
Anna turned her head from him, pressed the bell again.
He would not allow her to ignore him. ‘I haven’t heard you play,’ he said.
‘No.’
‘I should very much like to. You have an instrument?’
Still she would not meet his eyes. Beyond the door came the sound of shuffling feet. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Papa gave me one of grandfather’s violins. A very beautiful one actually.’ She let a small, cold silence develop. ‘A consolation prize, I think.’
‘But you don’t play it?’
She shook her head.
‘You should,’ he said. ‘A great instrument lives only if it is played.’
She sucked her lip for a moment, turned to meet his eyes. He had, after all, shown no resentment of her questions; the least she could do was to return the compliment. To tell the truth she had desperately missed her music in these past weeks; it had been the stubborn resentment she still nursed against her father that had kept her from it. ‘I know.’
The door opened. Plump Seraphima, breathing heavily, acknowledged their greetings in harassed fashion and scurried back into the apartment.
Andrei shut the door. They could hear voices in the parlour. ‘You have a bow?’ he asked. ‘A good one?’
She shook her head. ‘I have one, yes. But not one worthy of grandfather’s violin.’
‘Then what more appropriate than that I should make you one?’ His voice was light, but his eyes were intent and serious on hers. ‘Would you play then?’
‘I –’ She looked away. ‘I suppose so, yes. Except – the apartment is so very crowded, there’s never any peace.’
‘Come downstairs to me,’ he said, promptly. ‘I’ve room and more than room. The workshop’s always warm, and often empty.’
She had never had a place of her own to practise, away from Margarita’s noise and Lenka’s clinging presence. It was temptation beyond resisting. ‘I shouldn’t want to disturb you –’
‘You won’t disturb me. You’ll come?’
She nodded. It was not, after all, that lovely violin’s fault that her father had refused her the scholarship. Why should the poor thing suffer such silence?
He smiled, detained her as she turned away. ‘Don’t be too hard on your father, Anna. Life plays strange tricks sometimes. Perhaps – who knows? – it will all turn out for the best.’
Anna laughed. ‘Oh, Uncle Andrei, no! You’ve been listening to Nanny Irisha again.’ She lifted mocking eyes to the ceiling. ‘“Strange are the ways of God!”’ She turned to the parlour door.
They walked into the light and warmth of the room. The samovar hissed in the corner. Heavy velvet curtains were drawn against the early evening darkness. Varya, fragile and pretty in velvet and lace, her fair hair piled upon her head, perched straight-backed upon a gracefully fretted wooden chair. ‘Andrei, tea! And cakes of course. Margarita, bring your Uncle Andrei a glass. Anna, where ever have you been? Dima, come away now, let Uncle Andrei feel the warmth of the stove.’
Anna stood back, watching as her uncle was drawn immediately into the small, intimate circle of her mother’s attention, aware that between one second and another she had lost him. It was Varya’s talent to make almost any man who approached her a part of that charming, private world of hers. Anna, for a moment, could not suppress a surge of envy. Only recently, with the burgeoning of womanhood, had she begun to understand her mother. And, in part, to understand herself. This would never be her way, much as she might wish it otherwise. Yet Margarita, laughing and talking beside her mother, looking up teasingly into her uncle’s face, already and effortlessly was a part of this female conspiracy. Uncle Andrei seemed to be enjoying it, as any man would.
Anna accepted her glass of tea from Seraphima with a smile and a suddenly heavy heart. The pleasure of the last half hour had all but fled. The world seemed, all at once, a confusing and oddly lonely place again.
The doorbell rang.
‘Seraphima – for the good Lord’s sake! – don’t just stand there!’
At the sound of Victor’s voice in the hall a small constraint fell upon the gathering. Varya looked up, anxious.
Victor appeared in the doorway, face flushed from the cold, dark moustache gleaming with moisture.
‘Victor, my dear.’ Varya stood.
‘Vasha.’ The endearing private diminutive, so little used, and usually only in the most intimate of circumstances, stopped her in her tracks. Her eyes widened. ‘And Andrei! Well met! I have news for you all.’ Victor beamed about him. Had Anna not known better she might have suspected that he had been drinking. ‘I have news. I have news twice over! The shop will open on schedule the week after Easter –’
Margarita clapped prettily. ‘Bravo.’
For once everyone ignored her. The air of excitement that trembled about Victor was so unprecedented as to be riveting. No-one moved an eye from his face.
‘And –’ Victor paused for further and quite unnecessary effect ‘– I have just been informed that it is virtually certain that Shalakov and Sons have landed a five-year contract for the supply and maintenance of all stringed instruments to the Imperial Ballet School, the Music School and the Imperial Theatres both in St Petersburg and in Moscow.’ He stopped, run out of breath. There was a small silence.
‘Mother of God,’ Andrei said, reverently.
‘How lovely,’ Varya said.
‘The Imperial?’ Anna stopped.
Victor looked at the glass of tea that Seraphima offered him, and shook his head. ‘I think, Seraphima,’ he said, complacently, ‘that in this one instance a glass of something a little stronger is called for?’