The Grand Duchess of Nowhere

by Laurie Graham

  ‘Ernst will do very well,’ she said. ‘And so will Sandra. She has such a steady, contented nature.’

  That was said for my benefit.

  After Sandra’s wedding Mother seemed to relax. With three of us married and a few years before she needed to worry about a husband for Baby Bee, she became quite gay and girlish. She bought new gowns and wraps and slippers for our great excursion to Russia and when Pa complained about the expenditure she just laughed. Mother had Romanov money. She didn’t need to cheese-pare like the Saxe-Coburgs.

  Even from a great distance, my sister-in-law’s life cast a shadow over mine. We were absolutely obliged to attend Nicky and Sunny’s coronation but I, who had always loved going to Russia, suddenly dreaded the prospect. I didn’t want to see Cyril – I imagined him dancing with one divinely pretty girl after another – and I certainly didn’t want him to see me, a dull, married woman with a child and a neglectful husband. I longed for another confinement, to excuse me from travelling, but there was no chance at all of that. Ernie had quite forgotten the way to my bedroom.

  My brother, Affie, tried to wriggle out of going to Moscow too but Mother was a most efficient whipper-in. We were half-Romanov and even half-Romanovs didn’t shirk their duty. And so we boarded the train for three days of Pa’s grumbling, Affie’s dead-eyed vacancy and lectures from Mother on the correct way to raise my child.

  Ernie and I stayed with his older sister, Grand Duchess Ella. Her husband, Grand Duke Uncle Serge, was Governor-General of Moscow and they lived in his official residence, on Tverskaya. I’d worried about bringing the noise and clutter of a baby into Uncle Serge’s immaculate house. He and Aunt Ella had no children of their own. But dear Ella said it was their pleasure to have us there. That Uncle Serge loved to have little ones around. Indeed Grand Duke Uncle Paul would be staying there too, with his poor motherless darlings. His little Marie must have been about six then, and Dmitri a year younger.

  ‘Plenty of room for nurses and governesses,’ Ella said. ‘We shall be quite a kindergarten. This house is far too big for us anyway.’

  Missy and Nando stayed with the Yusupovs who had opened up their Moscow house for the Coronation. Mother and Pa and Baby Bee stayed with Grand Duke Uncle Vladimir and Aunt Miechen, Cyril’s parents. The day after our arrival Aunt Miechen gave a luncheon party. I feigned a headache. I knew I was bound to see Cyril sooner or later but since I’d confided in Missy I felt as though I were walking around with a sign pinned to my gown. SAD CASE. CRUSH ON COUSIN CYRIL.

  ‘Headache?’ Ernie said. ‘You never get headaches. Poor show, Ducky. They’re your bally relatives after all. And frankly, your Uncle Vladimir turns my bowels to water. I was looking to you to sweeten his opinion of me.’

  Aunt Ella told him to go and leave me in peace. I felt terribly guilty fibbing to her about my head. I don’t believe Ella ever told a lie in her life. Ernie, after all his complaints, came home tipsy and very well lunched.

  ‘How head?’ he asked.

  ‘Slightly better. How bowels?’

  ‘Bowels in good order. Actually your Uncle Vladimir was damned cordial.’

  ‘Everyone there?’

  ‘Everyone.’

  The entire city was en fête for the Coronation and more crowded than I had ever seen it. Pavilions and archways had been set up, everything had been given a fresh coat of paint and every house was decorated with flags and lilac boughs and laurel garlands.

  We had no sighting of Nicky and Sunny until five days before their crowning. They were following tradition, staying out of town at the Petrovsky Palace, praying and fasting and contemplating their duties until the time came for them to make a grand entrance. They had Baby Olga and her nurses there with them too. Aunt Ella said they couldn’t bear to be parted from the child for even one night.

  The ceremonials got underway at last on the Friday morning. A cannon was fired from the Tainitskaya Tower in the Kremlin and that was the signal that the Emperor was on his way into the city. Then the bells started. There’s no sound on earth like Russian church bells. There’s a scheme to English bells, like the steps of a quadrille, and a German carillon makes a pretty sound. But the intention of Russian bells seems to be to rock the earth off its axis.

  The Governor-General’s house was right there, on the processional route. We had the best view ever. Uncle Paul’s children watched with us. Marie had a new party dress for the occasion, with a pink sash, and Dmitri Pavlovich was dressed like a miniature Pavlovsky grenadier. He held my hand, my right hand. His own right hand, he explained to me solemnly, had to be kept free for saluting.

  Ernie put Elli on his shoulders but she fell asleep and didn’t wake even when the cornets and drums passed beneath us playing the Imperial March.

  The Cossacks came first, in their scarlet coats and fleece caps, the foot soldiers and then the cavalry on steppe horses, Russian Dons, bays and blacks. Some of the Cossacks had their little sons, or their grandsons, in the saddle with them, so that one day they’d be able to say, ‘I was there.’

  The Chevalier Guards came next, and then the lone figure of Tsar Nicholas in a plain green army tunic. Little Nicky. It was hard to think of him as Emperor of All the Russias. They’d put him on a good mount though, a grey, half-Westphalian, a mare but she stood fifteen hands at least.

  The Imperial Suite and the Grand Dukes followed a few paces behind him. Uncle Paul glanced up at our window. He told me afterwards he’d had to do it so hastily that he hadn’t really seen Marie and Dmitri, but they certainly saw him and they knew he was thinking of them. Uncle Vladimir’s boys rode directly behind him. Cyril, Boris and Andrei. They were all wearing hussar regimentals, even Cyril who was in the Navy, but I knew him at once by the way he sat his horse. I talked to Aunt Ella about the weather prospects until he’d ridden out of sight.

  The gold coaches brought up the rear. Dowager Empress Aunt Minnie was in the first. She looked up at us and waved. It must have been such a bittersweet day for her, proud of Nicky but sad for poor departed Uncle Sasha. Sunny’s coach followed immediately behind. The soon-to-be-crowned Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna.

  I will say she did look very like an Empress, perfectly still and posée, glittering like a snow queen. So tight-lipped though.

  Ernie called out, ‘Come on, Sunny, give us a smile.’

  Aunt Ella said, ‘She’s nervous, poor darling. She’s been so afraid she’ll faint.’

  The procession crossed Okhotniy and paused for Nicky to dismount and go into the Iversky Chapel to venerate the icon. Then on they went through the Resurrection Gate into Red Square and out of sight again. They stayed closeted in the Kremlin Palace from then until the day of the Coronation. Tuesday.

  We had to be seated in the Ouspensky cathedral by nine o’clock though nothing was likely to happen before eleven. It was such a trial, with the heat and the fog of incense and the way they said the same prayers over and over. The crowning and the anointing took forever and then there was still Divine Liturgy to endure. The Orthodox do go on so.

  Paki, paki, mirom Gospodu pomolimsya. Again and again in peace let us pray to the Lord.

  Again and again, indeed. I began to understand why Sunny had been so reluctant to convert. I felt sorry for her actually.

  Six hours. I thought I’d die.

  Ernie said, ‘I warned you not to have that second cup of tea. And think of us poor men. You ladies can at least hide a little potty under your skirts. You did bring a little potty?’

  And then we had to join the crush for dinner. Ernie was longing to loosen his collar, my shoes pinched, my gown clung to me. And they served hot turtle soup, and pheasant, in May! I ate nothing. I remember asking Missy if I was flushed.

  She said, ‘We’re all flushed, except for the Empress Ice Maiden. Look at her. How does she do it?’

  Nicky and Sunny were on a dais, at a table for two, pretending to peck at their food. Not wishing to stray an inch from tradition, Nicky had kept his crown on until dinner was over.
It was too big for him and had slipped down so you couldn’t see his eyebrows.

  Ernie said, ‘Observation: when they stand side by side, Sunny is taller than Nicky but when they’re seated they’re the same height. Conclusion: the Emperor of All the Russias has very short legs.’

  It was while they were serving dessert. I happened to look up and see Cyril Vladimirovich. He’d been watching me. I could tell because he looked away immediately. That was when I knew Missy had blabbed.

  I said, ‘You promised.’

  ‘Really, Ducky,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. If Cyril turned away I imagine it’s because he has better things to look at than a red-faced, boring old cousin.’

  But that was precisely my point. We were family. He should just have acknowledged me, not looked away in haste. I ate two ices and didn’t taste a thing. We went to powder our noses.

  Missy said, ‘But do you still like him? Now you’ve seen him again?’

  I said it was all just too stupid. I was a married woman.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but are Things any better with Ernie?’

  Of course they weren’t. We lived as brother and maidenly sister, but I was in no mood to discuss anything so personal with my loose-lipped sister. I returned to the subject of Sunny’s pallor.

  Missy said, ‘She’s probably expecting again. Those dark circles under her eyes. I can always tell. Well, she may as well get on with it. She has to give them a boy, however many times it takes. But don’t change the subject. Has Ernie paid you any attention?’

  I said I wished I’d worn a lighter gown. I was soaked in perspiration.

  ‘I’ll take that as a No,’ she said. ‘Well then, this week is your chance, Ducky. I’m trying to help you here. Cyril’s not attached to anyone so I expect to see you dancing with him every evening. It doesn’t sound as though Ernie will mind and, if he does, so much the better. A little jealousy might give him some pep.’

  I said, ‘How do you know Cyril’s not attached?’

  ‘Baby Bee said. Aunt Miechen told her.’

  ‘Why? Is Cyril interested in Baby Bee?’

  It was something that had never occurred to me. What if he married my little sister? It wasn’t out of the question. She was thirteen. Another three years and she’d be marriageable. I felt quite sick at the thought.

  But Missy said, ‘No, you silly creature. I told Baby Bee to find out.’

  ‘Why don’t you just place a notice in the newspapers and make sure the whole world knows?’

  ‘Ducky,’ she said, ‘one may as well be in possession of the facts. No sense in your hankering after Cyril if he’s already spoken for. But he’s not. And of course, Aunt Miechen adores you. You were always her favourite. She would have loved to have you as a daughter-in-law.’

  ‘So you did say something.’

  ‘Not really. Aunt Miechen quizzed me. After Baby Bee asked about Cyril. But honestly, Ducky, I hardly needed to tell her anything. She wasn’t at all surprised about Ernie. In fact she said she’d always felt in her bones that he wasn’t good marriage material. So you see?’

  I didn’t see. What was there to see? It was too late.

  Missy said, ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, must I spell it out? Cyril’s here, you’re here. Have a little flirtation. Where’s the harm? A six-hour Coronation. I’m sure we’re all entitled to a little pleasure after that ordeal.’

  I hardly slept, but no one slept much in Moscow that night. The Kremlin was lit up with the new electric lights and carts were on the move well before dawn. Some people were starting their long journey home, but many of them were going to Khodynka Meadow for free beer and gingerbread and souvenir Coronation cups.

  I lay awake thinking of Cyril. There was to be one party after another that week. I was bound to be in his company again. I could have borne it, just seeing him. I could have carried it off. But Missy had ruined everything. She meant well, but the trouble with Missy was she was a stranger to embarrassment. She couldn’t begin to imagine how mortified I felt.

  The household was on the move early. Servants’ voices, footsteps, doors slamming, and then I heard a carriage going off at speed. I dozed until nine, then Aunt Ella came in with my breakfast tray. Her hair was down and she’d been crying. There had been a terrible accident, she said. A crush of people out at Khodynka, pushing to be near the front when the beer was given out. Some had died. Uncle Serge had gone there as soon as he heard the news.

  ‘Poor Serge,’ she kept saying. ‘And after everything went off so well yesterday.’

  Aunt Ella was worried that Uncle Serge would be blamed for the accident, and with good reason. When arrangements go perfectly to plan no one asks who should be thanked, but when things go wrong they must have someone to blame. That was what a Governor-General was for. Uncle Serge came back from Khodynka Meadow and shut himself away in his study. All morning the telephone rang and people came and went, grave-faced. The news got worse by the hour. Fifty dead. Two hundred. Five hundred. That was when Uncle Serge went to see Emperor Nicky.

  There was the urgent question of the Coronation celebrations.

  Should everything be cancelled? The French ambassador was meant to be giving a ball that evening. He needed to know what to do. Uncle Serge thought the main thing was for Nicky and Sunny to visit the injured and meet the bereaved, to offer their condolences. After that they should make a brief appearance at the ball. Uncle Paul agreed that the ball should go ahead but he felt that Nicky and his suite should stay away, out of respect for the dead. Uncle Vladimir said it was madness to think of anyone giving or attending a ball when the dead were stacked up like so many log piles. Emperor Nicky didn’t know what he thought. He was discussing it with his wife and his mother.

  Aunt Ella said, ‘If it’s left to Sunny all the festivities will certainly be cancelled. She hates these occasions at the happiest of times.’

  The day wore on. Eight hundred dead, we heard. Ernie went out to the Alexander Gardens with Elli and little Marie Pavlovna and came back with a number of different opinions he’d heard expressed by other families’ governesses and nursery maids.

  The tragedy at Khodynka was the fault of the authorities who had failed to keep order.

  No. It was the fault of the peasants who’d trample their own mother underfoot for a free drink.

  It was an omen. A reign that starts with a tragedy was sure to end badly.

  The Emperor should go to the ball but look solemn and not dance.

  The Emperor should go to a monastery.

  The food for the ball supper should be distributed among the bereaved.

  Bereaved persons have no appetite. They should be given money.

  We never did know for sure how many had died. More than a thousand, anyway. They were to be buried quickly, because of the heat, but not in a mass grave. After a day of doing nothing, Emperor Nicky finally announced that he would pay for coffins, and give a pension to any child who’d been orphaned. Then we went to the French ball.

  It was a grim evening. Dowager Empress Aunt Minnie made clear her disapproval and stayed away. So did Uncle Vladimir and Aunt Miechen and, because they didn’t come, neither did any of their family or friends.

  Missy was very put out. A ball without the Vladimirovichi was like soup without salt. She also had Cyril’s brother Boris in her sights, for a little Coronation Week flirtation. His absence meant a wasted evening. I was relieved though. At least I didn’t have to face Cyril.

  Missy said, ‘You are an oddity. Just when you might have had the opportunity to dance with him. Well, Aunt Miechen won’t miss every event. They’ll certainly be on parade later in the week so I hope you’re not going to be stand-offish with Cyril and make me look like a perfect fool.’

  7

  We were at the Yusupovs’ ball. It was unthinkable to miss it. Zinaida Yusupov’s family own half of Russia. Perhaps I should now say owned. And unlike many wealthy people, the Yusupovs were never slow to spend their money. Their ball
was bound to be splendid. It was four days after the Coronation, three days after the Khodynka tragedy. By eleven o’clock the only dance I’d had was the opening polonaise, and Ernie had disappeared to the card tables. People were going in to supper. My brother, Affie, offered me his arm. We turned into the corridor where the second buffet was set out and suddenly there was Cyril.

  ‘Ducky! Affie!’ he called. ‘I just got here. Big brouhaha at home. Father thinks there should be no dancing at a time of national mourning. Mother thinks life must go on. Mother won. Have you two eaten?’

  I’d been hungry but suddenly I wasn’t.

  Cyril said, ‘A lemonade, then?’

  Affie muttered, ‘Something stronger,’ loosed my arm and was gone. My brother was always looking for escape routes.

  Cyril said, ‘I see a pair of seats. Shall we grab them?’

  Once I’d forced myself to look at him I found my nervousness disappeared. Cyril made it easy. He did all the talking, until I found my tongue. He’d just passed his Navy examinations and was off to the Baltic for the summer, on training exercises. Petty Officer Romanov. He wasn’t the handsomest of my cousins. His brother Boris was certainly better-favoured. But I loved his face. I could have studied it for ever. He asked if my baby was thriving. He asked about my horses. And when he’d skirted around all permissible topics we sat in silence for a while. It became unbearable. I was cursing Missy’s indiscretion. And then I thought it would be better just to have it out, to say it and be done, like poor Tatiana with Onegin. I’d look foolish for five minutes, Cyril would go off to his ship and I’d go back to Darmstadt and that would be that.

  I said, ‘I know Missy has been making mischief.’

  He cut me off.

  He said, ‘I hardly know your husband. Ernie doesn’t seem the vicious type.’

  I agreed.

  He said, ‘Perhaps just not suited to marriage?’

  I did pretty well. I kept my composure, until he asked me if I was dreadfully unhappy, and then I couldn’t stop the tears. He gave me his handkerchief. People were looking. Not many, but it only required a few. Gossip works on the principle of compound interest.