Aunt Vera was in the drawing room but the lights had not been turned on and the afternoon gloom had silted the room with purple shadows. She did not move when Tanya let herself into the room and settled down beside her. Tanya did not try to touch her.
‘Aunty, I think the world is changing and I wish to change too. I love Paul and I think we can be happy together, but I shall have to manage on a great deal less money.’ She had her notebook with her. ‘I know you only want me to be happy, but I think there are more ways to be happy now for women like us, with an education and some talent, than there were. Don’t you think?’
Her aunt still did not move, but Tanya thought she was listening. ‘Mr Allardyce once told me he thought you were a remarkable woman. I think so too, and I need your help. With Papa, of course, but also with the other things. Life has been easy for me and I shall have to learn how to manage my money.’ Vera was certainly listening now. ‘We shall need to entertain, but only in a modest fashion, and I shall need an apartment with three bedchambers at least. Sasha will need one, and I wish to always have a room for you and Aunty Lila, always there when you wish it. Can you help me a little to work it all out?’
Vera sniffed and put out her hand. Tanya meekly handed over the book and heard her aunt beginning to turn the pages. After a few minutes she said, ‘You’ve forgotten you’ll need to pay to keep the place warm, Tanya. In these Paris winters … Do you wish to have an apartment with an American bath? He will want it, I suppose. Turn that light on so I can see what I am about.’ Tanya leaped up to do so, and her aunt stood and carried the notebook over to her writing-table. She carried on studying Tanya’s notes then looked round, a spark of interest in her faded blue eyes. ‘You think it is likely you will get five hundred for a portrait?’
‘I think so. I have asked a few of your friends and they seem to agree it is a reasonable amount. I think I could complete one like that in a week’s painting. One needs the commissions, of course.’
Her aunt drew a fresh sheet of writing paper from the desk and put it down in front of her. ‘It seems to me you should work to get a portrait in the Salon next year. Something of the style you wish to make a living from.’
Tanya joined her at the writing-table and for a little while as the evening thickened around them they spoke about costs and careers, who they knew who might become a patron, whether Sasha would be willing to learn enough French to become a housekeeper to the young couple.
Vera was writing something down on her growing numbered list when she lifted her head and said: ‘Your father must modernise, Tanya. He is too stuck in the old ways of managing a family, his women. Your mother was a good person, but she never thought of anything other than looking pretty and reading novels. He must realise that we new women have our place too.’
‘Yes, Aunty.’
‘And tell your young man to call on us.’
‘He will be reporting on the flood, Aunty. He might not know when he can come, or have the chance to dress.’
‘We are not some stuffy household that insists on such things. Tell him to come when he can and covered in mud if need be.’
‘Yes, Aunty.’
Tanya excused herself for a few moments and sent a note to Paul’s lodgings, then spent another hour with Vera and the figures. It was a little after six when the footman came in to tell them a young girl named Odette wished to speak to Miss Koltsova.
* * *
Sylvie would not hear of him leaving the apartment. ‘You are still shivering, Christian. I will not let you.’ She did not seem to understand the importance of it – that she was coming and would creep up with the water into the cellar and snake her way around the diamonds and take them back into the river with her. He could not explain it to Sylvie. She would not believe him. She brought him foul-tasting teas and tried to get him to rest, telling him everything was well and that soon they would be sailing away to America, and that dirty lying Paris, which always looked so fine but was full of holes, torn-up pavements and gunfire, would be behind them. They would be in a country where there were no graves and tunnels.
Again he tried to get up, and again she pushed him down onto the pillows. ‘I will go and fetch them, Christian,’ she said at last. ‘In the morning I will go, but only if you promise to stay still and rest now.’ That gave him some measure of peace but when he slept he dreamed he was drowning.
* * *
Paul Allardyce arrived at Tanya’s house just before nine o’clock that evening and was shown at once into the drawing room where Miss Koltsova was waiting for him alone. He was exhausted, having spent the whole day tracking the floods through the streets, gathering figures and trying to talk to officials whose faces were pale with worry. He had crossed the city half-a-dozen times, guessing the size of the sink-holes and attempting to find words for the strange softness of the ground. He tried to remember what he had heard of the catacombs and quarries, the sewers and underground tunnels, then wrote furiously for an hour before going to the telegraph office and sending his full report, at great expense, to New York. Tanya’s message found him at his lodgings where he had gone simply to change his shirt before travelling out once more to watch the river crawling higher and higher.
She was such a beautiful woman, and after the dirt and worry of the day, the poor who had lost everything, the widow of the man who had killed himself rather than leave his home, just looking at her was some sort of relief. She began by saying how glad she was her message had reached him now the petit bleu system had failed and half the telephones were not working, that she had been trying to contact her friends with no success … He lost track for a minute – she was speaking English but rather fast and low. It took him a few moments to realise the topic of conversation had changed. She was telling him that she had rejected the Russian millionaire and was proposing to marry him; that she was sure she would be able to make money painting, and if her estimate of his income was not wildly inaccurate they should be able to live in Paris quite comfortably and even save against future emergency. He must have been looking at her with a slightly foolish expression because after a minute or two her words trailed away. She stared at the ground in front of her and as ever Paul found himself fascinated by the furious darkness of her thick hair. He took a step forward and tried to find his voice.
‘Tanya, I have been awake since dawn. I can hardly think, but are you saying you wish to marry me? Is that what I am to understand?’
She gave a very small nod. ‘If you think, that is … if you would like me as a wife.’ She bent down and picked up a sheaf of papers from the low table in front of her. ‘Aunt Vera has been helping me with the sums and says she will teach me to keep an account book.’ She thrust the papers out towards him, her black eyes very wide as if she wanted him to examine them. He pushed them out of the way and took her in his arms, kissing her hard. For a moment she was still and frightened in his embrace, then she began to return the kiss with a heat that burned him. He had to pull himself away, breathing hard. She looked at him, her face flushed.
‘So you think, Paul, you might love me a little without all the flim-flam?’
He took her hand and thought for a second; his feelings almost choked him. ‘Tanya, your smile is one of the great sights of the world to me. The feeling I have when I see it, it’s like … like seeing a great clipper ship under full sail, or walking through the Alps on a clear day. It stops my heart. I love you very, very much.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Now let me do this properly. I am only ever going to do it once in my life.’ He lowered himself to the ground, supporting himself on the table with his palm until he was on one knee, crumpling some of the sheets of figures in the process, then he reached up for her hand again and with it between both of his own, he began: ‘Tatiana Sergeyevna Koltsova, would you do me the honour…’