The Red Staircase

‘I don’t think nature intended me to be rich,’ I said soberly.

‘No, it might not be a material inheritance that was meant. There are spiritual ones,’ said the Princess, with an intent look. ‘You have the face of a girl who might have a serious spiritual journey to make.’ She was talking, half to herself, hardly at all to me. I heard her murmur: ‘Child, in your prayers be all my sins remembered.’

Of course,’ I whispered, anxious to reassure. ‘But are they so many?’

‘Yes.’ The word ended on a gasp. I saw the vein in her throat grow and become purple like a grape. ‘More than you know. I have been a wicked woman.’

Urgently I said: ‘Where is your medicine? You have some drops to take?’ She couldn’t answer. I turned to the old maid. ‘Anna, you know, I’m sure. Fetch me her medicine.’

At once Anna produced from a capacious pocket a tiny glass phial. I looked at it, assessed its contents as amyl-nitrate, and snapped it between my fingers and held it under the Princess’s nose so that she could inhale the fumes. All the time I could hear Anna’s jealous voice grumbling away.

As the vapours rose and entered her lungs, so the Princess relaxed; it was very quick, in a minute she was breathing easily.

‘Well, that’s better. So that’s the pain, is it?’

‘One of them,’ she managed, and even smiled wryly. ‘I have several devils that torment me.’

Angina, I thought, and the pain coming because her heart muscle is short of oxygen. But I also thought that she had another and more serious ailment, an obstruction of the gut somewhere which caused even more prolonged pain. And yet I doubted if she would die of either just yet. She was tough.

‘You have violet eyes,’ she murmured, staring up into them as I bent over her. ‘Women with violet eyes always have a sad destiny.’ She was an inveterate romantic.

‘Cheer up. In our family violet eyes turn to a dark grey as we grow older, so you see I shall end up happy.’

She even managed to laugh.

‘That’s better. Goodbye now. And don’t let that old maid of yours bully you.’

‘She bully me?’

‘I think she does.’

Anna managed to bang into me as I stood there, giving my hip a thump with the great bunch of keys she carried suspended from her waist. ‘Oh, the wickedness,’ she muttered. ‘She should be beaten. I’d beat her. Take no notice of her, Princess. Old Anna is the one who knows.’

‘Be quiet, you are an illiterate old woman and know nothing about anything,’ commanded her mistress. ‘I think this girl is very wise. From your face I see I can expect a greater pain. Is that what I must look for, then? More pain?’

‘Yes,’ I said steadily.

A faint smile curved the lips of that enigmatic old face. ‘Very well. We shall see. Anna, lift me up on the pillows and light me another cigarette.’

‘The last thing you should be doing,’ I said.

‘Ah, but with you to save me – ’ she said, giving me a flash of the smile which, I suppose, must have enchanted my great-grandfather – ‘I shall be quite safe. I shall hang on to you, Rose Gowrie. I don’t intend to die yet. Tell my nephew and niece that, if you like. Settle their minds for them.’ And she began to laugh again.

I shook my head at her, and departed.

Outside on the staircase the air seemed hot and dead. I found myself swaying; I sank down and closed my eyes. I was spent; she had taken more from me than she knew. Instinctively, I understood it would never do to let her guess how much; while she was ignorant I retained free will. I sat there, leaning against the wall, and waited for the darkness which surrounded me to recede. Two old invalids in one morning was exhausting. I wondered if Erskine Gowrie knew Princess Irene. Probably one of her lovers, I thought dizzily, to be counted among those sins of the flesh she now dubiously repented of.

When I opened my eyes I found Ivan standing there, looking at me with a worried face. I realised he must have been outside all the time, waiting for me. ‘Are you ill, Miss Rose?’

Only Ivan called me by name, the other servants used any gracious term that popped into their mouth at that moment; the fact that I was a Scots girl seemed to free their tongues, they called me Excellency, my lady, Baryna, and sometimes Baryshna, just as it suited them, but it was all done with such good humour that I could not mind.

I stood up. ‘No, no, I’m not ill. Were you waiting for me? Yes, I can see you were. But why?’ Ivan, even if within earshot, was usually invisible. ‘Was it because I was there? Because I’ve been up the Red Staircase?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s a place,’ he said, meaning: Of course, it’s a bad place, or perhaps just a queer place, or even just a place he was unsure of. One always had to read between the lines.

‘She’s only an old lady. What could happen?’

‘They keep company with the devil up there,’ he murmured, looking at the wall and not at me.

‘Oh, Ivan,’ I said, half laughing. I almost stumbled; I put out a hand and he helped me down the stairs. Together we got to the bottom.

‘But of course, a clever young lady like you doesn’t believe me,’ he grumbled.

It was true that a door had opened in the wall behind the Princess on the day I had first seen her, and I remembered, too, my thought that she had a mirror carefully placed so that she could watch the door. The door had moved, and as soon as it had moved she had got me out of the room. Or so I had thought.

A question occurred to me. ‘How many rooms are there in the tower where Princess Irene lives?’

‘I have never seen. My duties do not take me in them.’

‘But you know?’

‘I have been told; three rooms leading into each other, one very small in which the woman Anna sleeps.’ His tone indicated that she could die there, too, for all he cared. ‘And a staircase leading down to the street, with its own entrance on to Molka Street.’

A back door to the Denisov osobniak, in fact. So Irene Drutsko could entertain whom she wished, with everyone coming and going unnoticed by the rest of the household.

‘St Michael and all his angels could come trooping up the stairs,’ said Ivan, accurately reading my thoughts. ‘Or the Devil and all his.’

‘And just as likely to,’ I said sceptically. ‘You don’t really believe all that rubbish.’

He shrugged. No, he didn’t believe the Devil came visiting, it was just a handy phrase, covering a multitude of suspicions and fears. There it was again, I thought, the secret language of the oppressed. ‘The Devil must be gentleman compared to some I’ve met,’ was all he said.

Downstairs, it was at once apparent that Dolly Denisov an her retinue were in the process of returning. Home two hours at least before anyone expected them – I could tell by the flustered way the servants were running about.

Ariadne came hurrying in first and went straight up the stairs, passing me, where I stood at the door of the great drawing-room, without a look. Dolly Denisov followed, slowly drawing off her gloves and talking over her shoulder to he brother as she did so.

‘I blame you entirely, Peter. I have wasted my morning taking Ariadne to choose clothes and she has chosen nothing. All because of you. How could the child like the silks and lace when you were being so critical? I have never before known you like it, you almost had the poor woman who was showing the dresses in tears. She was doing her best you know, Peter. I shall never be able to show my face ther again.’

‘Oh, come now, Dolly,’ protested Peter. He had followe her through the door, and behind him came Mademoiselle Laure; he looked flushed and she was deadly pale. Ther was a reason for her pallor; it appeared that she had been stricken with a migraine and had had to be brought back This was the real reason for Dolly’s displeasure.

‘Can I help?’ I said. Laure looked very sick. To my suiprise she turned to me with something very like gratitude in her face. ‘It would be a great kindness,’ she said.

I assisted her upstairs and helped her undress. When I had got her lying on her bed she was easier. ‘What do you usually do to relieve the pain?’ I asked.

‘Nothing. There is nothing I can do but lie here and endure. Later, when the sickness goes, I sometimes take a long warm bath.’

I put my hand on her forehead. I could feel an angry pulse throbbing under my fingers. ‘Does it still hurt?’

‘Much less.’

‘Try to sleep.’

‘Yes, I believe I will be able to sleep now. You have been very kind, and I have been shrewish and ill-tempered to you. Unfair as well. But I will make it up to you. I will tell you why you have been brought here. I know. I should have told you before, but I was evil and stupid and wanted to see you in trouble.’

‘Oh, but I know it all.’

‘Do you? You really know? How do you know?’ There was surprise in her voice. ‘Then surely you see the danger.’ She struggled to sit up.

‘I saw Princess Irene, poor old thing.’

‘Princess Irene?’ She seemed genuinely surprised. ‘It’s not only her. No, no, they’ll use you, turn you inside out and then, if it suits them, abandon you. If all goes wrong, you will either be shipped back home – or at worst, who knows what could happen to you? Don’t you see – it is not what you are but what you will be, what you will possess, that matters to them?’

A wave of nausea swept over her and she retched. I pushed her gently back on the pillows, thinking her more than a little mad. ‘You can’t talk now, you must rest. Presumably you think me in no danger today? And I possess nothing, dear Laure, so calm yourself.’

‘No, not today,’ she muttered. ‘Not today. It is not today that matters. Although I quarrelled today with someone on your account.’

‘Very well then. Tomorrow, tomorrow we shall talk.’

I waited till her eyelids closed and then walked quietly to the door. When I turned round for a last look, her eyes were open again and she was looking towards me. Yet I don’t think that it was me she saw.

‘At last I believe I am free,’ she said softly. ‘I have tried so often to leave Russia. Once I even got as far as Poland – but I always came back. Now I am free. I’ll start a little school in my own town of Blois. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do.’

Her eyelids closed again and she was asleep.

CHAPTER FOUR

When I left Mademoiselle Laure, Peter Alexandrov was waiting for me downstairs.

‘How is she?’

‘More comfortable,’ I replied thoughtfully.

‘I was concerned about her. She is not a happy woman. Did she say much to you?’

‘No.’ Had Laure been in love with him? Perhaps even his mistress? ‘But then, she has had a sad life, losing her lover just before they were to be married.’ Of course, I had lost my lover just before we were to marry, but it came to me suddenly that I did not intend to have a sad life. ‘And perhaps feeling the world has used her badly.’

‘I am sure Dolly means her to have a peaceful, contented life here with her, but Mademoiselle Laure is a woman of a jealous, suspicious temperament.’ His voice was calm and kindly. If there had been anything between them, it had long gone on his part. ‘Now you deal excellently with everyone, Miss Rose.’

‘I don’t think Mademoiselle Laure likes me,’ I said frankly. ‘But she has promised to talk to me.’ I broke off. Ariadne had come into the room.

‘How is Mademoiselle?’

‘Resting and recovering, I hope.’

‘Poor Mademoiselle, she hates us here sometimes, I think.’

‘She’s planning to return home to France and open a girls’ school, so she says.’

‘Goodness! Is she? Poor Mademoiselle.’ Ariadne went over and studied her face in a wall mirror. There was a spot that seemed to trouble her. Peter shook his head at her vanity. ‘I’m afraid she won’t go. She always says that when she’s particularly cross with us. But she never goes.’ She turned away from the mirror. ‘Poor us, Rose. To punish me for my sins this morning, Mamma forbids me to ride with Major Lacey this afternoon, and instead I have a whole great dull list of shopping you and I are to do. You are to come too, if you would like to, Uncle Peter, but first you are summoned to go up to Mamma’s sitting-room now. And wear armour, for she is very fierce. She has old General Rahl with her, and you know how disagreeable that always makes her.’

Peter made a grimace. ‘Who is General Rahl?’ I asked.

Peter said: ‘He’s a friend of an aged relative we have living in the house. A retired soldier. Forcibly retired – he was bad at the job. Oh, he’s not a bad old boy, but he’s a policeman now, of a rather special sort. He is a deputy head of the Third Bureau. You’ve heard of that institution, I suppose? It keeps an eye on us all. Well, I’d better join Dolly, or she’ll be asking him to dinner for want of anything better to say.’

When he had gone I said to Ariadne: ‘So you did not mean it when you said “How could such things touch us?”’

Ariadne hesitated. ‘I did. I meant it with part of my mind. When I see us here so happy and contented, with everything about us so nice, I feel this is one world and all the bad things are in another.’

‘But surely General Rahl does not come here to inspect you?’

‘Oh no; he comes here as a friend. But of course, one is bound to think of what he knows about one’s friends, and even about oneself. I believe that the Third Bureau has dossiers on ever so many people.’

‘But surely not on you, Ariadne?’

‘Oh no, I suppose I am of no significance to them, but my mother and Peter have hosts of friends and go everywhere, and some of those friends would be bound to have “doubtful” opinions. My mother has many close friends high in Court circles, of course, so her own position is irreproachable.’

A little later, I passed General Rahl on the staircase. We were not introduced, but he gave me a long, hard look as he went by, as if my face interested him, and he left me with the impression of being a tough customer.

The shopping list was the usual magnificent screed. An order for English biscuits and English marmalade at Eliseev’s – ‘Tiptree’s, please,’ said Ariadne politely to the black-coated assistant, and smiled at me – then on to Brocard’s to choose and purchase soap. I helped her choose tablets of a pale heliotrope that smelt like a late summer garden concentrated and made powdery. Ariadne bought and presented to me a box of three square tablets of pink soap smelling of roses. ‘For you; your name soap.’ Peter Alexandrov also bought some soap. Somehow I could not imagine Patrick buying scented soap, but this action seemed natural in Peter.

Then we went on to Watkin’s, the English bookshop. I suspected the trip there was entirely to please me because Ariadne took little interest in books herself, but she pretended she had to order some new English novels for her mother. ‘There is a new book by E. M. Hull, whom she likes very much,’ said Ariadne. Peter also pretended an errand.

There were some copies of the Hull novel already on display, so I examined one idly while Ariadne transacted another piece of business about writing-paper. It was not the sort of book that found its way to Jordansjoy, where Tibby exercised something of a censorship. Still, Grizel and I had our own ways of keeping in touch with the world, and there was a copy of one of Elinor Glyn’s works that was about the house for several weeks, masquerading as a novel of Sir Walter Scott’s (an author after Tibby’s own heart) without Tibby being any the wiser. E. M. Hull looked as if she wrote in the same vein as Elinor Glyn – I took it for granted E. M. Hull was a woman.

Raising my eyes from the book, I saw that although Ariadne appeared to be examining two different qualities of paper, she really had her eyes fixed on a distant corner of the shop. I followed her gaze. Peter too was watching; he was also watching me.

I saw a group of four people: an elderly woman, soberly but expensively dressed, a girl of about Ariadne’s age, a small boy and, oddly, a burly man in the uniform of a Russian naval rating. Two shop assistants were hovering around them, and a personage who looked like Mr Watkin himself – if he existed – was also on hand. The boy was choosing a toy. Watkin’s had a whole corner of the shop devoted to English toys of one sort or another, the names of which I recognized from my brother Alec’s conversation: Meccano, Bassett and Hornby – magic names to toy railway enthusiasts. Behind the group a shelf was stacked with jigsaw puzzles and English children’s annuals. The boy was choosing a railway engine. I saw him studying the one he held with close care, running one finger delicately over its outline. He was dressed in sailor’s uniform too; it was fashionable for boys then, and for girls also, for that matter. But I did not fall into any confusion about the relationship between the boy and the man, which was clearly that of master and servant; there was plainly a great social gulf between them.

Ariadne put her hand on my arm as if to make sure my attention was directed to them. ‘It’s the Tsarevitch and one of his sisters,’ she whispered.

I looked with interest. ‘Which Grand Duchess?’

‘I’m not sure. The next to eldest, I think, Tatiana. They all have the family face and look alike.’

‘The boy’s different,’ I said.

‘Yes.’ She hesitated. ‘There’s been a lot of – well – talk. They say there’s something wrong with him, that he’s lame or something.’

‘He looks delicate, but normal enough,’ I said. ‘He’s not a cripple.’

‘Still, he often does not walk, the sailor carries him’

‘He’s walking now.’ And indeed as we watched the boy ran along the display of toys, eagerly pointing something out to his sister.

‘Yes, I think that must be the Grand Duchess Tatiana,’ observed Ariadne appraisingly; the girl was, after all, her contemporary, she was forming a judgement of her. ‘Not pretty, really, in spite of what they say, but has a nice expression. Olga, the eldest, she’s called a beauty, but of course one has to say that of Grand Duchesses. The other two are just little girls.’

The brother and sister were studying a book together, the boy pointing something out in an eager way. To me there was something touching about his lively fragility, as if boyishness and enthusiasm would prevail in a weak body. He had a small dog with him, a liver-and-white King Charles spaniel, and as I watched I saw him lean down and give it an affectionate pat. When the dog leapt up eagerly, banging against his young master, the sister ordered the sailor to pick the animal up and carry it. ‘None of your animals are trained, Alexei,’ I heard.

The little group moved down the shop, with the other customers politely standing aside. There was no great fuss, no curtseys, although those gentlemen closest to the party took off their hats; but the shop was very quiet as if noise would somehow have been lése majesté. They came close enough for me to see that the girl was wearing a little bunch of lily-of-the-valley pinned to her jacket, and to smell their scent. She held her brother’s hand and stared straight ahead, almost too shy to acknowledge the weight of all the attention focused on her. Her brother, on the other hand, smiled cheerfully all around. To him, at that moment, the world was good. But he was very slender and fine-drawn compared with the robust solidity of my Alec.

‘My mother says he is all that stands between us and revolution,’ whispered Ariadne.

I was surprised; political judgements did not seem at all in Dolly’s line. ‘Why does she say that?’

Ariadne thought for a moment. ‘I suppose because one can think about him hopefully. He is still so young that everyone can see him as representing what they desire, and he may become it. Who can tell? I think that must be what my mother means.’

The little party were almost at the door now. ‘The show is over,’ said Peter Alexandrov suddenly from behind us. ‘We can go now.’ There was a note of savage irony in his voice.

‘You look very thoughtful, Miss Rose,’ Peter said breaking into my considerations, as we strolled away from the bookshop. ‘But you often do. There is a certain sort of serious, quiet look you sometimes have. I have noticed it. Is it because you are thinking of home things? Have you perhaps had bad news?’

‘No, not exactly bad news, but unexpected,’ I said, remembering the letter about Patrick’s troubles in India.

‘About your – ?’ He paused delicately, seeking for a suitable word.

‘About the man I was going to marry? Yes.’ So he too knew about Patrick. I suppose I should have guessed it.

‘What was he like, Miss Rose? To look at, and as a person?’

Could I still remember what Patrick looked like? Faces, even beloved ones, fade so fast. ‘He was tall, fair-haired, with blue eyes; not a bit good-looking really.’

‘But you thought he was, all the same,’ Peter said gently.

‘I suppose so.’

The conversation seemed to be taking on the kind of intimacy I didn’t feel ready for. I was quite relieved when Ariadne suddenly suggested: ‘And now what about church?’

‘Very suitable,’ said Peter good-humouredly. ‘To settle your mind after all that shopping.’

‘And Madame Titov will be there.’

‘And Edward Lacey,’ said Peter sardonically.

‘Well, yes, but he is not the point. Won’t Rose like Madame Titov? Or anyway, like to meet her?’

‘If you can meet her,’ said Peter lazily. ‘She is so neutral and cloudlike.’ All the same, I thought he did wish me to meet her. I had already noticed that Ariadne’s apparently spontaneous suggestions had often the appearance of being prompted by either Peter or her mother. ‘She is a nice woman,’ Peter went on. ‘A member of the Imperial household.’

‘Very close to the Tsarina,’ put in Ariadne.

The coincidence of meeting the Heir, a Grand Duchess, and a member of the Household came home to me. I wondered if it was really all by chance – but the point of the design, if there was one, escaped me. We walked along in silence for a time, side by side. The afternoon was now very hot, the sun striking off the stone in a dazzling way. Dolly had intimated that we would be leaving St Petersburg soon for the country.

‘You’re getting that look again,’ said Peter. ‘You are thinking either of your lost lover or poor Mademoiselle.’

‘Both,’ I said. ‘Both.’ And it was true. Ever since Laure had told me about her own broken love affair, there had been a link between them in my mind. Strike a note of pain and disappointment, and at once I saw them both.

‘And there is Major Lacey,’ said Ariadne, suddenly interrupting. She pointed to where he stood outside the Church of St Andrew.

He came forward to meet us, smiling. ‘I called at the house, and Madame Denisov told me where to find you,’ he said. So then I knew this expedition had been well planned.

We were very close to the open church door, and a wave of incense – Russian incense, stronger than anything I ever knew – blew towards us.

‘Are you thinking of being received into the Orthodox Church?’ I asked the Major.

‘No, I come for the singing.’ Impossible to tell if he was serious or not.

As always, the church was crowded with people of all ages and conditions, rich, poor, sick and the fashionable healthy like us. The smell of humanity mixed with incense was overwhelming. It usually took me a few minutes to get used to, although Ariadne seemed not to notice it; but I saw Major Lacey’s nose wrinkle slightly. ‘By Jove,’ I heard him murmur under his breath. ‘Rich.’

Inside the church, the darkness was lightened only by candles. I stood still while my eyes adjusted. Then I slipped into a place beside Ariadne, whose head was bent; she was murmuring reverently. Now that my eyes were used to the gloom I could take in the great splendour of the building. I had been here several times by now, of course, but the almost barbaric magnificence of the place astonished me afresh on each visit. Everywhere that the light of the candles penetrated I could see the glint of gold. It shone from the golden candelabra, from the crosses and from the gold leaf used in the paintings which decorated the walls. The other colour which shone through the darkness was the blue of lapis lazuli which I could see on walls, pillars and roof. Here and there were the deep green of malachite and the yellow of onyx. I felt as though I was inside a great jewelled box – but inside this box I felt stifled, not free and at peace as in the kirk at Jordansjoy. I was pressed down by the weight of too many centuries, and too much emotion expended in too much wealth of decoration.