The Grand Duchess of Nowhere

by Laurie Graham

  I very much doubted Cyril would be allowed to travel anywhere no matter how humbly I served tea to Minister Kerensky. The thing to do was to go, not wait for permission. I told Cyril so.

  ‘Please, darling,’ he said. ‘Let’s try to do this correctly. If we run and we’re stopped, there’s no telling what they’d do. We don’t want to end up like Nicky and Sunny. Red Guards on the door. No, Kerensky is a reasonable man. He trusts me. Now I want him to see the private side of me. The family man.’

  I said, ‘And my role?’

  ‘Act tired and pregnant.’

  ‘I am tired and pregnant. Am I allowed to speak?’

  ‘Do I usually muzzle you?’

  ‘And the children? I imagine they’re to be in this picture of domesticity?’

  He thought for a minute.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But just briefly. Perhaps a brief glimpse when he first arrives, but they shouldn’t sit with us for tea. There’s no telling what Kira might say.’

  34

  Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky. Cyril put great store by him.

  ‘The coming man,’ he said, although actually Kerensky had already very much arrived, with two hats on his clever head. He held office in the Duma and in the Petrograd Soviet. Cyril predicted he would soon be Minister for War and when that happened there’d be a new offensive, a strong push against Germany before next winter.

  I didn’t know what time to expect them, or even whether Kerensky would come. I got out our last tin of Huntley and Palmers, then thought better of it, but not before the girls had spied them.

  Kira ran about shouting, ‘Hurrah! Biscuits! Granny Miechen’s coming to tea.’

  I said, ‘Not Granny Miechen. An important person Daddy needs to talk to. When they arrive, you may come to the drawing room to say Good Day. Then you must go upstairs and play.’

  ‘What important person?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘Minister Kerensky.’

  ‘Doesn’t he like biscuits?’

  *

  I spent the afternoon running between the water closet and the window that had the best view of the street. You may guess where I was when they arrived.

  Minister Kerensky is quite personable. He was younger than I’d expected, probably not yet forty. A little starchy, considering these new, informal times we’re now supposed to live in, but his manner was pleasant. He has a very fine head of hair.

  Kira and Masha came in and did exactly as I’d instructed them, exactly as Cyril had said.

  I said, ‘Off you run, then.’

  Then Cyril, quite infuriatingly, said, ‘Oh, darling, let them stay. I’m sure Alexander Fyodorovich won’t mind.’

  Masha hesitated. She could see I was flustered. But Kira needed no further encouragement to stay. She stationed herself by Kerensky’s chair and proceeded to quiz him. Did he have any girls?

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I have two boys.’

  ‘What are their names?’

  ‘Gleb and Oleg.’

  ‘Are they older than me?’

  ‘They’re eleven and nine. How old are you?’

  ‘Eight years and one month. Do you like biscuits at all?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘We have a whole lovely tin of Ginger Nuts in our pantry but Mummy said best not to make too much of a splash.’

  So then it was Cyril’s turn to worry what Kira would come out with next. Served him right. He sent them to play.

  There was no business talked. It was an entirely social call. Kerensky took two cups of tea and two half-spoons of raspberry jam. Everything about him was very precise. We discussed the weather. The Gulf of Finland would be cooler, we agreed, for anyone fortunate enough to be able to get out of the city for a while. We talked about jam. Apricot makes a refreshing change. Strawberry can be difficult. It doesn’t always set well. In Tashkent, where he’d lived for some years, the quince jam was very fine. We talked about jam far too much.

  Sometimes, as Kerensky turned his head, the light bounced off his spectacles and I couldn’t see his eyes. Once, when I could see his eyes, I caught him looking at my wide waistline. I was afraid of him. What was he thinking? There’s another pesky Romanov soon to enter the world?

  Cyril thought it had all gone very well.

  I said, ‘How can you possibly judge? He could be playing with you. The man’s a complete sphinx.’

  ‘But he’s a family man,’ he said, ‘I’m sure he remembers how hard Petrograd summers are for a woman when she’s expecting. He’ll see what he can do about a travel permit. He assured me of that, out on the step.’

  ‘Why didn’t he just give you permission? How hard could it be?’

  ‘Darling, Kerensky is a lawyer. He likes to follow procedure.’

  ‘And then what? When you get this permit?’

  ‘We’ll go to Haikko.’

  ‘And just not come back?’

  ‘Leave this to me.’

  ‘What if he says I can take the girls but you can’t go? What if he just says no?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Ducky.’

  That’s always Cyril’s exasperated cry when he doesn’t have an answer to a perfectly sensible question.

  For two weeks we heard nothing.

  I said, ‘Remind him. It might have slipped his mind.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t be appropriate. And anyway, Alexander Fyodorovich doesn’t forget things.’

  That may have been true, but the Russian way isn’t to wait politely and hopefully. The Russian way is to keep asking, even after many refusals, to assume that ‘No’ was just a slip of the tongue that will eventually be corrected to an exhausted ‘Yes’. Cyril can be so terribly English about things. Sometimes you’d never think he was Russian.

  I had good days and bad days. When the air was warm and thick with moisture, I felt I couldn’t stay in Petrograd another moment, that I should just take the girls and run and to hell with Minister Kerensky. How many times I woke and thought, ‘Today,’ but then couldn’t summon the energy. And when a breeze got up from the west and one could actually breathe, my mood became more positive. Cyril was right. It would be better for us to stay together, for us to go with official sanction. If Kerensky said no, then I’d carry out my threat.

  There was little I could do to prepare. The bags I’d first packed back in February were opened and repacked several times but only after the girls were asleep. I couldn’t have borne their questions. And what exactly does one pack? A summer holiday is easy to plan for, and so is a winter jaunt, but for the rest of one’s life?

  I took Bertie Stopford’s advice and unpicked the seams where I’d hidden my jewellery. That too could only be done when the children were asleep. I decided the only thing was to capitalise on my interesting condition, wear an extra pair of bloomers and carry as much as I could between the two layers. Miechen had once remarked that Cyril wasn’t very generous with jewels, but when one is about to take flight a small collection has its advantages.

  Uncle Bimbo called on us. He brought us apricots from the hothouses at Tsarskoe Selo. I found it quite amazing that they were still functioning, that they hadn’t had all their glass panes knocked out.

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘There are some decent sorts out there, keeping things running. Growing things, you know, it always improves a person, I’ve often noted it. Some of them have become quite devoted to their work. They’re not all idiots, those lads. Unlike our Commissar for Posts, Telegraphs and Telephones. I gather your line isn’t working either.’

  One never knew from hour to hour. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, but Cyril discouraged me from using the telephone anyway. It was no great loss. There was really no one left in town for me to call.

  I wanted to say something to Uncle Bimbo, to give him warning that we might leave, but Cyril had said the best thing was to tell no one. Then in the front hall, just as he was about to put on his hat, Uncle Bimbo said, ‘How much longer till your time, Ducky?’

  I cal
culated it was about ten weeks.

  He said, ‘I hope Cyril Vladimirovich is making suitable arrangements. Living in this madhouse, it can’t be good for your nerves.’

  I went to say something but he put a finger to his lips.

  I said, ‘Stay to dinner.’

  ‘Tempted,’ he said. ‘But I’d best get back before the Commissar for Railways prevents the trains from running. What a shower. Take care of yourself, Ducky, and of those dear girls. And the baby, of course. New life. A wonderful thing.’

  Masha asked me why Uncle Bimbo had been so sad.

  I said, ‘He wasn’t.’

  ‘Yes, he was,’ she said. ‘I watched him from the window when he crossed the street. He was wiping his tears. Perhaps he’s lonely.’

  Kira said, ‘He should get a wife. He was pretty keen on Peach, you know. He used to get pink cheeks when he talked to her. Well, I’m jolly glad he didn’t marry her.’

  Ethel Peach, who’d bitten the hand that fed her, who’d disappeared from our lives and taken Kuzma with her. She was, I imagined, working her way east, perhaps back to Shanghai where she knew people or just taking any route she could to reach England. But I was wrong. She was still in Petrograd and it was as though, by saying her name, Kira had conjured her up.

  35

  I was awake and about to get up when they came hammering at the street door. Cyril was shaving. The noise so startled him he cut himself. He went to the door with blood on his neck.

  ‘Kto vas oopolnamochil?’ I heard him say. ‘By whose authority?’

  ‘Pyetrogradski Sovyet,’ someone said, very confident.

  Still Cyril kept them on the step and there were more voices, not threatening, but raised and excited. I went and stood beside him at the open door. I thought the sight of a pregnant woman in a rather shabby dressing gown might lower the temperature.

  Cyril said, ‘Everything’s under control, darling. They’ve had a wasted journey, as I’m trying to explain to them. I’ve already agreed in principle to the forfeiture of Crown Properties.’

  This was news to me, as I suppose must have been evident from my face. It was Peach’s laugh I recognised. She was at the rear of the group with two other women. They were all wearing red headscarves tied factory-worker style.

  I said, ‘What do you mean, “forfeiture of Crown Properties”? Miechen bought us this house.’

  ‘I know that,’ he said. ‘It’s the Tsarskoe Selo property they should be assessing, not this house.’

  ‘So, send them away.’

  Cyril said they wished to come in and assess the size of our rooms. He hadn’t recognised Peach.

  I said, ‘Tell them they may not. This is our home.’

  He spoke to me very quietly.

  ‘They have a written order. Darling, you’re making things unnecessarily worse. Do go in and leave this to me.’

  I said, ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, Ethel Peach, disturbing people at this hour of the morning.’

  Cyril tried to hush me but I wasn’t for hushing.

  I said, ‘You hardly need to come in here with a measuring tape, upsetting my children. You know this house as well as I do. You lived in it for long enough, warm and very well fed.’

  I thought she looked a little embarrassed. Just a very little. I believe I might have shamed her into leaving and taking her friends with her but Cyril was all for humouring them.

  ‘It’s a silly mistake,’ he said. ‘The simplest thing is to let them come in and do what they’ve been ordered to do. It won’t take long. The mistake can be straightened out at a more civilised hour.’

  And so my husband allowed a measuring squad of the Petrograd Soviet Housing Allocation Committee to enter my home and run about with yardsticks and stubs of pencil. That was the moment I decided I wouldn’t spend another night in that house. With or without Cyril, I was going to leave and take our daughters with me, and as soon as I’d made that decision I experienced a wonderful feeling of calm.

  I told Peach she must remain in Cyril’s study until the ridiculous exercise was over. I didn’t want the children to see her.

  ‘All the same to me,’ she said.

  ‘Did Kuzma get you into all this?’

  ‘Get me into it?’ she said. ‘I didn’t need “getting into it”. I believe in it.’

  I said, ‘Believe in what? Throwing policemen off church towers?’

  ‘The Revolution,’ she said. ‘The new Russia, Ducky.’

  Ducky! The absolute cheek of her! And there was my husband running around like a footman, opening doors for the other Revolutionary clowns. ‘And this is the dining room.’ Anything to oblige.

  *

  In spite of my efforts Masha and Kira did see Peach. As the Measuring Party were leaving, the girls came running downstairs and Peach turned to look at them. Masha was bashful, but not Kira.

  She said, ‘Why do you have that thing on your head? You look like a village woman. Did you marry Kuzma?’

  ‘Marry?’ Peach said. ‘Nobody gets married any more.’

  Kira said, ‘I’m going to. You can’t come back, you know? We don’t need a governess now. I’m going to the Annenschule and then to the Smolny.’

  Peach laughed.

  ‘Well, Ducky,’ she said, ‘how long till you drop the next little parasite? I’m surprised you didn’t make a run for it while you could.’

  That was the last we saw of her.

  Kira said, ‘What’s a little parasite?’

  ‘Peach was just being rude. She’s turned into a very unpleasant person.’

  ‘But what is it?’

  ‘She meant the baby I’m having. But “parasite” isn’t a nice word. We don’t use it.’

  ‘Are you really going to have a baby?’

  ‘Why else do you think I’ve grown so fat?’

  ‘I thought it was because you stopped hunting. Can old persons have babies?’

  I followed Cyril to his dressing room.

  He said, ‘I know what you’re going to say.’

  ‘Do you?’ I said. ‘Two of those types were carrying rifles.’

  ‘Just ancient Berdankas,’ he said. ‘They can’t possibly have cartridges for them. We were never in any danger. It was unpleasant, I know, and I’m sorry it happened but it’s over.’

  I said, ‘Yes, Cyril, you’re right for once. It’s over.’

  ‘They’re not entitled to this house.’

  ‘I know that. It belongs to Miechen.’

  ‘They are entitled to the Tsarskoe Selo house. Crown property.’

  ‘They can have it. We don’t need it. We’re leaving. Today.’

  ‘I hear you,’ he said. ‘But do stop shouting. Think of the girls. Those people. They’re measuring everyone’s houses. They weren’t picking on us.’

  ‘With Ethel Peach guiding them to our door? Of course not.’

  ‘It’s just about living space.’

  ‘I understand. And tomorrow they may decide all we’re entitled to is a coffin width. But we won’t be here, Cyril. At least I won’t and nor will our children. Let them shoot us if they must. A pregnant woman and two little girls. That would make them look good on the world stage.’

  He finished dressing in silence. It was only eight o’clock and the heat was already unbearable.

  He said, ‘As soon as I’ve spoken to Kerensky, I’ll telephone you. I’ll say … what shall I say? Please send my short boots for new heel irons. That’s what I’ll say. That will be the signal.’

  I said, ‘Signal? You’re not in some Boy’s Own story. The signal for what? That Kerensky said yes? That Kerensky said no? And then what?’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ he said. ‘And don’t be obtuse, Ducky. The signal will mean that you must be absolutely ready to leave.’

  ‘I’ve been absolutely ready for weeks. And by the way, the telephone isn’t working so your signal hardly matters. Do we have a Commissar yet for Carrier Pigeons?’

  He slammed the door on his way out. His
shaving mishap had bled onto his shirt collar.

  All through the morning I kept picking up the handset to see whether I could get a connection. The line was still dead. I longed to go out, to take the children to the Summer Gardens and perhaps happen to bump into someone, anyone to talk to and break the awful silence, but I was afraid to leave the house in case Cyril found a way to send news.

  Kira spent an hour bouncing on beds to see which mattress gave her the greatest propulsion, then fell into a sweaty sleep. Masha came to me and asked if something horrid was going to happen. She looked so solemn and grown up.

  I said, ‘Don’t worry about this morning. Those people who came here had made a mistake.’

  ‘Oh, I know that,’ she said. ‘Do you know, one of them said a whole family could live in our bedroom? Which is completely impossible. But why were they so hateful?’

  ‘Were they?’

  ‘Yes. They said we’re like a rotten tree. “You lot,” they said. “Dead timber. We’ll be rid of you, root and branch.” What does that mean? And why was Peach with them?’

  I told her Peach seemed to have fallen in with a bad crowd.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that’s what I thought. And, you know, her teeth weren’t terribly clean.’

  I did wonder, I still do, if the Romanov tree is really so rotten, root and branch as they say, why are those people in such a hurry to be rid of us? They have their new government. Why couldn’t we be allowed to retire to a dacha and keep bees? I’m sure Nicky and Sunny would like nothing better. Do they fear us? Are they nervous that some little green Romanov shoot will spring up and take back the throne?

  I told Masha we were going away for a little holiday.

  ‘Tonight,’ I said. ‘But don’t say anything to Kira. She’ll only get over-excited.’

  ‘Hurrah,’ she said. ‘And perhaps by the time we come back Emperor Uncle Nicky will have thrown all those horrid people in prison.’