In the event she was given no choice: by the Princess’s command everyone was to go on the picnic and nothing short of a broken leg would have been accepted as an excuse to stay behind. Probably not even that, Anna told herself wryly, as she climbed with Elena into the straw-filled farm cart. Yet she could not bring herself to regret having the choice taken from her. The day was glorious, the air like wine, the company enormously entertaining. In convoys the two huge carts and the pony and trap set off from the house and wound up the track into the sun-dappled forest. In the first cart the young men rode, and their voices rang through the stilled woodland as they sang, led by one full-blooded bass, all the music of the Russias in the harmonies.
“That’s Mitka,” Elena told Anna. “You’d never guess it, would you? He sings magnificently.” She giggled infectiously, “It’s the only thing he can do, actually!”
They rode for an hour or so at a leisurely pace until they reached the shores of another lake, slightly larger than the one at Lemorsk. Standing out from the shore, its banks lapped by sun-gilded water was a large wooded island upon which movement could already be seen, and the unspoken question that had been in Anna’s mind – how anyone could go on a picnic without apparently taking any food – was answered. Fragrant smoke lifted from charcoal fires, laden tables were spread ready beneath the trees. When the Shuvenskis picnicked they did it in style, the servants were there before them. She smiled to herself, not for the first time, at the Princess’s idea of a simple life.
They were ferried in relays to the island amidst much hilarity in four large rowing boats which were then moored by the small tumbledown jetty on the island. The children, obviously familiar with the place, scattered, calling, into the woods, while the Prince, Princess and their contemporaries settled themselves in the shade with glasses of lemon tea and the young people who fell between those two extremes took themselves off, singly, in pairs or in groups to explore the island, to fish, to laze in the sun, to coquet and to flirt.
Michael bounced up to Anna. “I say – Elena sort of wants to show me the island—” His eyes were upon the group of young people to whom Elena was talking animatedly. He was obviously dying to get away. “Do you mind? Will you be all right on your own?”
Anna was amused. “For heaven’s sake – I’m a grown woman, not a child! Of course I’ll be all right. I’ve brought my sketch pad – I’m going to do some sketches, for a Commonplace Book, like we used when we were children – remember? Off you go. But Michael—” he paused, in the act of turning away and she brandished an admonishing finger “—behave yourself!”
Laughing, he left her.
Anna spread the blanket she carried beneath a tree and settled herself upon it, her back against the gnarled trunk, her pad upon her knee. The dark, decayed wood of the jetty stood stark against the glittering water; engrossed she worked, her pencil busy, long finger rubbing at the swiftly drawn lines, shadowing. A little way away the samovars were steaming. Her sketch completed she watched in fascination as a manservant placed his high Russian boot upon the funnel of the vessel and pumped it vigorously, making the charcoal glow. She drew a man’s face, wrinkled, ageless, good-natured.
Katarina, the eldest of Nicolai’s sisters, approached her. Not far away one of the distant cousins watched, his eyes not leaving the slim figure in its bright peasant’s dress. “Papa is worried that you sit alone,” the girl began shyly.
“Oh, please – no – I’m very happy.” Anna indicated her pad. “There’s so very much to see—”
Katarina clapped her hands in delight, “But – look at Sergei!” She pointed to the sketch of the serving man, “It is his very image! No wonder Nico speaks so highly of your work!”
By the water’s edge a little way away Nicolai and Mitka fished, Mitka hunkered down on his haunches upon the bank, Nicolai leaning indolently against the straight trunk of a pine, his profile sharp against the glittering water.
Katarina fidgeted self-consciously with her apron, her eyes flicking to where her young man stood. “So – would you think it terribly ill-mannered of me if I left you for a while? Pierre and I thought – perhaps a row on the lake—”
Anna brought her attention back to the girl, smiled. “But of course. I promise you – I’m very happy alone.”
She sketched for the rest of the morning. The sun rose high, coaxing from the trees their resinous perfume and the woodland shadows foreshortened. So absorbed was Anna in her work that the ringing gong, struck to bring the wanderers back to eat, startled her.
They ate with the ravenous appetite of the outdoors; zakouski – the wonderfully varied open sandwiches Anna had already come to love, fish balls, meat cutlets and patties, followed by the inevitable rich, sweet cakes and fruit. The fragrant lemon tea that washed it all down was strong and refreshing. As the servants set about dismantling the tables and rowing them back to shore, Anna made her excuses, picked up her pad again and declining with a smile several well-meant offers of company set off into the quiet interior of the island. From the shore she had noticed the slope of a small intricately tiled roof; following a narrow but fairly well-trodden path she discovered the little building to which it belonged – a charming rustic summerhouse, decayed but still whole, perched upon a tiny knoll beneath the tall trees. She sketched it swiftly. This too would be a part of her Commonplace Book. She was glad she had remembered those happy, childish books of recollection. She sketched, too, the view from the small shaded porch across the lake. Then she lifted her face to the sun and closed her eyes letting the flickering light make rainbows through the curtain of her lashes. For a few timeless, magically disembodied moments she allowed herself to drift, thoughtless, upon the warm, pine-scented air.
She did not hear Nicolai’s approach. The first she knew of his presence was the shadow that fell across her face and the gentle removal of the sketch pad from her lax fingers. She opened her eyes, but did not move. He stood above her, leafing through the pad. The sun gilded brown hair and skin to bronze. In his white open-necked peasant shirt and loose corduroy trousers he looked a young gypsy.
“Most people ask,” she said, but her voice was gentle.
He smiled a little. “May I?”
She shrugged. Let him see it. Why not? “Of course.”
She knew when he had come to the page. He studied it for a long time. Then he knelt down beside her, laid the open pad on the ground between them. “Do I really look like that?”
On one half of the open page two figures were silhouetted against shimmering water, the one crouched on his heels, the other, tall and graceful, leaning against a tree. From the space beside the picture Nicolai’s own face looked out, handsome, laughing, head tilted in a distinctive and lifelike way. He tilted it so now, watching her.
“Today you do,” she said collectedly.
“May I have it?”
She shook her head. “No.”
The look of surprise that crossed his face verged upon shock, and the thought occurred to Anna that here was a young man who was not too used to hearing that word. She picked up the pad and leafed through it. “I’ll do you another, if you like. As a memento. But this one belongs here, in my book. When I get back to England I plan to make a scrap book – a book of memories—”
“I see.” He picked up the book again, studying it, looked at her slyly, “And this is a memory you want to keep?”
“Yes.” She twitched the pad from his fingers. “It’s part of the day. When I look at it I shall remember this island – the smell of the pines – the sound of children playing—”
He nodded, smiled a little. “And I? May I not have a memento of the day also?”
No man, not even Joss, had ever so affected her simply by his physical presence. He lay, relaxed and smiling, gently teasing, watching her. A small, sudden breath of wind stirred through the trees above them. Anna smoothed the paper and sketched swiftly. Within moments the picture was complete; beneath a stand of pine two figures sat, the one reclined easily upon one elbow, the other sitting as she herself was at this moment sitting, knees drawn up beneath her skirt, pencil in hand. “There.” She tore the page out and handed it to him.
He took it, studied it, lifted his head, smiling. “That’s wonderful. Thank you.” Very carefully he folded the paper and stowed it in the pocket of his shirt. Then he stood, extending a hand to her. “And now – I’m afraid we must go. They sent me to find you.”
She took his hand without thought or hesitation. He pulled her swiftly to her feet. And then he kissed her, very lightly, upon her mouth, a mere brushing of sun-warmed lips as natural as the greeting of a child. Startled, she drew back from him, their hands still linked. He laughed then, a warm, infectious sound that echoed through the woodland like a song. “A small memory, Anna,” he said, “that you cannot bind into your scrapbook.”
She could not help but laugh with him. Then their laughter died and they stood for a moment in absolute silence, looking at each other, shimmering sunlight spinning their hair to gold and glimmering in Anna’s pale eyes as if in water, lining the delicate serious lines of her face in light. He dropped her hand and turned away. “It’s truly time to go.”
They rode back to Lemorsk, singing, in the carts, Mitka’s wonderful bass leading the other voices. The songs Anna did not know, and the words were meaningless to her, yet the sound, the very soul of Russia, brought the sting of tears to her eyes and she thought of the words that Nicolai had used – A small memory, Anna, that you cannot bind into your scrapbook – and in thinking it she felt again that light brushing of his lips against hers, and could feel nothing but happiness at the recollection. Michael sat upon the tailgate of the wagon ahead, legs swinging, face bright with enjoyment as with uplifted arms he conducted the singing, making eyes at Elena who nestled next to Anna in the straw. Catching Anna’s eyes upon him he grinned and raised a hand. She waved back. Behind Michael Nicolai sat, his back propped against the side of the cart, singing at the top of his voice, his eyes unwavering upon Anna’s face. Bracing herself against the jolting of the cart, for a moment Anna returned his look, and in a strange, suspended moment of clarity knew how much she loved him. Not in the way that she loved Joss, but love nevertheless – a sudden, free, lightning-strike of love that sang in her veins with her blood. She loved his bright eyes, the set of his head upon his slim shoulders, the sound of his voice. And, too, she knew that in three days she would leave him and that as time went on memory must fade and he would lose the vivid warmth of reality and become a loved shadow, a face and a figure in her sketchbook. Knowing, however, that she would not be able to hold on to this passion in no way devalued it: on the contrary the bitter-sweetness of that knowledge served to sharpen her senses and her emotions to a degree of almost painful happiness. She did not wonder if he shared her feelings; in a strange way it hardly mattered – his feelings for her were irrelevant to her own emotions. Of Joss she was always asking – does he love me; does he care – for in her relationship with Joss his caring for her was the root need upon which her feelings for him were based. But this, this was different. How could you ask the sunshine, or the mountains, or the forests, if they loved you? They were, and that was all that mattered.
Elena touched her arm. “Have you enjoyed the day?”
“Oh, yes. Truly I have. It’s been wonderful.”
“It’s a pity you can’t stay longer. There’ll be other picnics. But still – there’s tomorrow – perhaps we’ll go walking.”
“That sounds lovely.”
“And then the party – you’ll be here for that—”
“Party?”
Elena looked surprised. “Did Papa not tell you? We have a party every year. Many of our friends holiday round about – it’s wonderful fun to get them all together. Each year we have—” she stopped, a thoughtful frown upon her face “—I’m sorry. I don’t know the word. A party when we dress as – something other—” she faltered to a stop.
“A fancy dress?” Anna supplied.
“Ah. Yes. A fancy dress party—”
“But, Elena – I don’t have anything to wear to a fancy dress party.”
“Oh, this is not a problem.” Elena waved an airy hand, “It’s not like the winter parties, when everyone must be—” she kissed her fingers, laughing “—just so. There’s a trunk in the attic – our parents, grandparents, their parents – all, when something becomes—” she thought for a moment about the word “—outmoded,” she said, triumphantly “—put it in this trunk for the children to play. Every year we choose something from the trunk. There is certainly something left for you – and for Michael too.”
The carts rattled and jolted back to Lemorsk, the sun-flushed faces of the company testament in themselves of a happy day. But the fun was by no means over, for spirits were high and refused to be damped. After dinner Anna found herself sitting with the Princess Maria in the half-darkness of the verandah when Elena dressed in an old and somewhat shabby riding skirt and shirt tumbled through the door and grabbed her hand. “So there you are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere! I wouldn’t let the others start without you! We’re going to play Cossacks and Turks—” she suddenly caught sight of her mother and stopped, flushing. “I’m sorry, Mama. Am I interrupting?”
Her mother raised severely quizzical eyebrows. “What do you think?”
Elena was appealingly contrite. “Yes, of course I am. And I am sorry. But, please – may Anna come and play?”
Her mother could not help but laugh at the childish phrase. “Come and play?” She turned to Anna, “Did you ever hear such a thing? You must think us mad! How it is that my sensible, almost adult offspring become children again in this place I’ll never know! Cossacks and Turks, indeed!”
“But, Mama, it’s such fun!”
“Perhaps Anna doesn’t want to crawl around in the undergrowth being chased from pillar to post by Cossacks. Has that occurred to you? Whatever she must think of us I cannot imagine—”
Anna laughed. “It sounds very much like what we used to call French and English, but rather more exciting. I’d love to join you Elena – but I’m not exactly dressed for it.”
“Oh, that’s all right. I’ll lend you something. Come on,” Elena held out a hand, laughing.
Anna turned, apologetic, to the Princess, who, smiling, made a small shooing motion with her hands. “Off you go. Enjoy yourself.”
The shaded, bright-darkness of the pinewoods was a perfect setting for the game. Most of the young company were ‘Turks’, whose task was to slip from a small hut about half a mile into the forest to a point on the lake shore without being caught by those young men elected ‘Cossacks’, of which one was Nicolai. Anna, knowing the absurdity of the thing, yet still was caught up in the breathless excitement of the game as she slipped through the shadows, crouching to the ground at the slightest movement. A laughing shriek in the night told of a ‘Turk’ captured. She flattened to a wide tree trunk, waiting for the sounds to die down, then moved on into the milky, sky-bright darkness. Behind her something moved. She gathered her skirts and fled. A triumphant call and a reaching hand; Michael’s voice, “Got you!”
But he spoke too soon. With a small, childish squeal of excitement she dodged the reaching hand and ran, flying through the trees regardless of danger. She heard a crash behind her and a muttered, very English curse as her brother caught his foot and fell. She ran until she was breathless, half laughing, half in earnest. When she stopped all was still. Far in the distance a voice called and then was quiet. She sat upon a fallen tree to regain her breath. And to wait. Below her she could see the lights of the dacha gleaming on the lake. Her legs were trembling with the effort of her flight.
She did not have long to wait.
“Well, my little Turk. Do you surrender without a fight?”
She knew who it was without turning.
“I followed you,” he said simply.
She nodded. She had known it, had seen the glint of his shirt in the trees behind Michael in that instant before she had fled.
He sat beside her upon the log. In silence they watched the fitful gleam of light below them, listened to the hilarious sounds of the game in the distance.
“You leave in three days,” Nicolai said at last. It was almost, but not quite, a question.
“Yes.”
“Three days. Such a little time.”
“Yes.”
He had neither touched her nor looked at her. Now he turned his head, his face a blur in the shadows. “This afternoon – at the summer house on the island—”
She waited.
“I wanted to say—” he stopped, leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and ducked his head into his hands to ruffle his hair distractedly, “I wanted to say – so many things, and I said nothing.”
Her heart was beating very fast. “What kind of things?” she asked softly, her voice commendably steady.
He looked at her. In the strange light his face was troubled as a boy’s. “There is something that I don’t understand,” he said softly. “Since first I saw you – standing on the station – it’s as if somehow you speak to me. Without words. Speak to my heart. How do you do that?”
She shook her head, unable to speak.
“You feel it too?” he asked, after a moment, quietly.
“Yes.”
“It should not happen.”
“No.”
“We are not free. You are a wife, and a mother. I am soon to be married. We don’t know each other.”
She said nothing, knowing now what must happen. Accepting it. Wanting it.
“And yet – you are Anna and I am Nicolai and we know each other as we know ourselves—”
“Yes.”
A laughing shout echoed through the trees. Michael’s voice. “Look out! There she goes!”
“It’s a kind of love,” Anna said. “A different kind of love. Nothing to do with our other loves, our other duties. I thought it this afternoon, watching you. You’re right, we don’t know each other. We don’t have time to know each other. And yet we love each other. For this little time.”
“For this little time,” he repeated, quietly into the silence and held out his hand to her. She it was, then, who moved to him.
They made love on the softly scented carpet of pine needles and to Anna nothing had been more natural nor so full of giving. They came together in loving hunger, simple, direct, a relief of their need for one another. Their loving was gentle and warm as the night itself. And in the act of love with this man – this – Anna found the tender communication that she had always known to be missing with Joss, whom she had loved as long as she could remember. In those few, snatched, dangerous moments they shared something, told each other something, that might have taken a lifetime to put into words.
Afterwards they lay quietly for the precious space of perhaps two dozen breaths. Then, very gently, she disentangled herself from him and began to straighten her disarranged clothing.
He caught her hand. “Anna! Tomorrow!”
She shook her head. “No. Not tomorrow. Not ever.”
“But—”
“No, my love. Don’t you see what that would mean? This evening was right, natural, perfect. Tomorrow it would be planned. It would be deceit. It would be spoiled.”
He drew back. “I’m sorry. You’re right, of course.”
She kissed him, long and tenderly, her love and her sadness in her soft, undemanding mouth.
Sounds of laughter echoed from the lakeside.
“We have to go. It sounds as though they are going home. They’ll miss us.”
“Wait—” He caught her hand, drew her back to him. “One more moment. I know a quicker way back. We’ll get there before them—”
“Separately,” she said.
He hesitated, and she saw the sorrow in his face as he accepted the necessity of the words. “Separately.”
The next day they went walking, a group of them, along the forest tracks. The day was fine but cool with fair weather cloud scudding high across the sun and a chill in the breeze that filtered from the north. Anna enjoyed the day, hard though it was to be close to Nicolai without touching him, without speaking those words of endearment that hovered treacherously upon her tongue, and ironically made harder by Michael’s outrageous flirtation with Elena – open, friendly and of no substance whatsoever. As the evening chilled they made their way back to the dacha. After dinner a group of them retired to the attics to deck Anna and Michael for the party the next day. Michael, characteristically easily suited, made a dashing Cossack, strutting around the dusty attic swishing his genuine and lethally curved blade through the air.
“But there’ll be so many Cossacks,” Elena demurred.
Katarina laughed. “But how many will be blond and handsome?”
“And how many,” Anna asked a little tartly, “will be in danger of decapitating half of the guests at one stroke?”
For herself she chose a charmingly old-fashioned soft pink ball gown, long outdated with its swaying crinoline skirt and deep, scooped neckline, signs of wear in its stretched seams and worn hem.
“That was Mama’s, years ago.” Katarina said. “I wore it two years ago as Catherine the Great. Not a very authentic Catherine the Great,” she added with a giggle.
“But – who are you to be?” Elena asked of Anna. “The dress suits you beautifully, but you must be someone—”
“Something.” Anna’s head was buried in a trunk. “Ah – there,” she emerged triumphantly waving a leaf-green, slightly tattered shawl. “Perfect.” She held the dress to her, draped the shawl about her shoulders. “An English rose!” she said.
It took a moment or two to sink in. Then Katarina clapped her hands. “How very clever! Of course! We must raid Mama’s garden and find some roses for your hair—”
“And green slippers! I have some green slippers you can borrow—”
Over the heads of the laughing girls Anna’s eyes met Nicolai’s. His no longer smiled. She coaxed him with a little, tender smile of her own and was rewarded by the sudden brightening of his sombre face.
That night she pondered, standing by her open window, on the events of the past few days. Forty-eight hours from now she would be on the train and heading home. Towards Joss. Away from Nicolai. She could feel his presence, close to her, within the house. She looked to where water glimmered and the darkness of the forest began. Easily – oh, so easily – she could have been meeting him there, now. She turned from the window.
No.
She would not have it spoiled.
The next two days passed in a whirl of activity that gave her scarcely time to draw breath, and no matter how she tried to hold the time, it flew on treacherous wings. The party was a kaleidoscope of faces and names that her benumbed brain refused to register, and a number of struggling, well-meaning conversations with people whose words she never came close to understanding and whose polite smiles and bemused eyes indicated the self-same problem in reverse. She danced with a great many young men and noticed only one of them; Nicolai’s brilliant eyes held hers as he swept her around the lawn in a gay polka, the silks and satins of his Eastern costume gleaming in the light of the lamps that were strung from the trees and from the verandah. “Later,” he said, his voice brooking no argument, “I will see you. We must talk.”
But they did not. When they met in the dark shadow of the barn beside the house they clung and they kissed, but they could not find the words. On the lawn in front of the house Mitka was singing now, the deep bell-tone of his voice ringing through the night with no accompaniment but the sighing of the wind in the trees. Anna stood with her face buried in Nicolai’s shoulder, listening, the moment crystallized in her memory like a precious stone. Like the glittering teardrop of the Shuvenski diamond.
“You leave tomorrow?” Nicolai asked.
“Yes.”
“Will you write?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
He put a finger beneath her chin, tilted her face to him. “I’ll never forget you,” he said.
She stood on tiptoe, wound her arms about his neck and drew his face down to hers. “Neither of us,” she said softly, “will ever forget.”
They gathered on the verandah to see them off: all of the family, including the cousins, some of whose names Anna had never actually managed to register in her memory. That odd and slightly discomfiting distance that always develops at the start of a journey between those staying and those leaving was already apparent. Anna shook hands, touched cheeks, made promises – to write, to come again, to entertain them all in London – and wished, simply and fervently that the goodbyes be over and they should be on their way. When she found herself by the pony and trap with Nicolai she could barely look at him. In front of them all they could do nothing, say nothing. The pain in his eyes she knew reflected her own. He took her hand, raised it to his mouth, lightly and courteously. Over his bright, bent, head the sun blurred and she blinked rapidly.
“Goodbye, Anna.”
“Goodbye.”
“I shall be in London again, perhaps, one day. Might I presume to call?”
“Of course. We’d be delighted to see you.” She hated to use that hurtful pronoun, needed now simply to leave. To run away.
He handed her into the trap and stood back. The pony pawed the gravel, the little vehicle turned in a sweep in front of the house, the assembled company waved and called.
Nicolai stood like a statue, his face in shadow, and watched them go.