The Grand Duchess of Nowhere

by Laurie Graham

  Uncle Boris tried to reassure me about my new position. He said there was no need to fire off communiqués as frequently as Father had done. Just an annual newsletter would suffice. Also that perhaps, if times should ever change, if I should live to see the day, it might be a nice gesture to take Father’s bones back to Petrograd, to Leningrad as they now call it, though Father never bent his knee to that abomination.

  ‘Back to Mother Russia,’ Uncle Boris said. ‘I imagine it’s what he would have liked. On the other hand, perhaps he wouldn’t want to be separated from Ducky. You could take her too. But then, would she have wanted to end up in Russia? Buggered if I know. I leave it up to you, dear boy. You’re in charge now.’

  Kira said, ‘I don’t think bones have wishes. They’re just bones. And anyway they’ll probably be nothing but dust by the time anything changes in Russia. Why must Uncle Boris complicate everything?’

  So, as the possibility of taking Father’s body home to Russia was as remote then as it is now, we travelled on to Coburg and laid him to rest beside Mummy, in the Edinburgh mausoleum.

  I was eighteen when Mummy passed away, twenty when Father died. A bit too old to be considered an orphan but it did point up the disadvantage of being born to aged parents. Now I have a little daughter of my own, I miss my mother more than ever. Everyone should have the pleasure of two grannies, at least for a few years, and my mother would have been a granny with tales to tell, better than anything in a story book.

  She and Father left Russia not a moment too soon. The tide was on the turn. Another month, another week, who can say what might have happened to them, and for a long time they had no idea of the fate of those they’d left behind. When the war ended, when trains and letters began to move freely again, their world had disappeared.

  *

  VLADIMIR KIRILLOVICH ROMANOV, MADRID, JULY 1954

  The Roll Call of Ducky’s Disappeared World

  Those executed in Siberia in 1918:

  Nicky, Tsar Nicholas II

  Sunny, Empress Alexandra

  Nastinka Hendrikova, Sunny’s lady-in-waiting

  The Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia

  Alyosha, Tsesarevich Alexis

  Dr Genya Botkin

  Misha, Grand Duke Michael

  Seryozha, Grand Duke Uncle

  Grand Duchess Aunt Ella

  Vladimir ‘Vova’ Paley

  Those executed in Petrograd in 1919:

  Grand Duke Uncle Paul

  Uncle Bimbo, Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich

  Uncle Gogi, Grand Duke George Mikhailovich

  And those who survived in exile:

  Grand Duke Great Uncle Nikolasha

  Grand Duke Uncle Sandro and Aunt Xenia

  Dmitri Pavlovich

  Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich

  Dowager Empress Minnie

  Miechen, Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna

  Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich

  Olga Paley

  Countess Brasova

  Felix and Rina Yusupov

  Tanya Botkin and her brother Gleb

  Alexander Kerensky

  Anna Vyrubova

  Isa Buxhoeveden