Leonid’s Story (cont.)
Arley, North Warwickshire. November, 1923
They never verbally agreed to keep the Red Diamond a secret, but something about the manner in which Leonid had acquired the gem, and the way they felt distrustful of almost everyone around them, meant it seemed natural to keep it hidden. Unused.
The closest they’d come to discussing it was weeks after they’d arrived in England. ‘When the time is right . . .’ Leonid had said, ‘then we can trade it, or display it, or have it cut to be the centrepiece of a fine tiara for you!’
‘Don’t be so cavalier about it,’ Maria had snapped. ‘Don’t forget you have people who rely on you! And using the diamond at this moment . . . letting the world know we have it. It could be the death of us!’
In the intervening years, he had become Leonard, Maria went by Mary and Georgy was known as George. The family’s surname was legally changed to Alexander. They wanted to fit in. Live normal lives. Which, in England, they soon found meant earning very little money and existing in a near perpetual state of misery.
*
Leonard arrived home late. The coal dust from the pits was still lined in the creases around his eyes and across the back of his hands, but he was smiling. Laughing.
Mary, who had fallen asleep in an armchair by the hearth, stood up and said, ‘Where have you been?’
As he approached her, she smelt booze on his breath.
‘Have you been drinking? We can’t afford it! You know we can’t—’
He placed his palms on her waist and lifted her two feet into the air. Whirled her around. ‘We can afford anything, my krasivyy!’
‘You’re drunk!’ He lowered her to the ground and she struck his shoulder. ‘Dzhoker!’
‘Yes, yes, I am drunk,’ he merrily confessed, burying his hands deep in his pockets. ‘I am also’ – he threw two bundles of banknotes into the air – ‘rich!’
Mary grabbed one of the pieces of paper as it wafted downwards. Examined the back of it – a detailed sketch of the Palace of Westminster. She turned it over and read, ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland . . . One pound.’ She looked at her husband. ‘They’re not real!’
‘They are as real as you and I!’
‘How?’
‘I was playing durak with the Vologda boys.’
Despite herself, Mary tutted, ‘The Vologda boys! Layabouts!’
‘Yuri has been a good friend to us. My only true friend in this country. I love that man like a brother.’
‘Go on with your story!’
‘I won a shilling or two.’ Leonard shrugged. ‘Then the officers came over. Sneering at the coins on our table. How would we like to gamble for real money? But no, you can’t, they said. You have no stakes.’
Mary sounded appalled. ‘You risked the diamond? Leonard, you promised we would—’
‘What good is it to us if we simply keep it locked away? Yes! Yes, I was tired of living in another man’s house! Tired of charity!’
‘They’ve been good to us!’
‘And now we can be good to them because . . . we . . . are . . . rich!’
Mary looked from her husband’s face to the confetti-spread of cash on the floor. She started to laugh and weep at the same time.
George appeared in the doorway. Bleary-eyed and confused, he asked, ‘Mama! Papa! What’s happening?’
Leonard knelt beside his son’s side. Took the Red Diamond from his pocket and held it before George’s eyes. ‘Did I not tell you it would bring us luck? And so it has proven to—’
His words were interrupted by a loud, rapid hammering on the door.
‘Mary, take George to his room.’ Leonard pressed the gem into the boy’s hand, swept up the banknotes and stuffed them into his leather satchel. ‘Who is it?’
Mary took George into the next room and hastily closed the door.
‘Lenny, it’s me! Andrei!’
Recognising the voice of one of his acquaintances from Vologda, he opened the door. ‘My God!’
Andrei’s face was torn and bleeding.
‘What happened?’
‘The officers . . . After you left, they became drunk! Angry drunk! They said you were a cheat! That your diamond was mere glass!’
Leonard grasped Andrei’s shoulders. ‘Well, so what? Let them moan like old women!’
‘Yuri defended you. There was a fight . . .’
*
George strained to catch the conversation from behind the door, his mother hovering over him, also intent on not missing a single word. He listened as the wild man told his father, ‘They killed him! They killed Yuri!’
The young boy looked down at the diamond in his palm as he heard his father begin to weep.