Strange Are the Ways

by Strange Are the Ways (retail) (epub)

  The reception was held at the Hotel de l‘Europe, where a suite had been reserved for bride and groom, since they were staying in St Petersburg for the first few days of their married life in order to attend Yelena’s wedding before leaving for Paris. On hearing of that betrothal Anna had at last understood something of what her sister had been suffering over the past months and had attempted to make amends, to break the terrible barrier of anger and hurt that had grown between them. But Lenka had rejected outright every overture. Bitter and sullen, she had withdrawn entirely within herself. She had, as she had threatened, refused to attend upon Anna – a delighted and amused Katya and a radiant Margarita filling that role – and throughout the reception she sat beside her fiancé silent and unsmiling. Nor at any time did she offer good wishes to the newlyweds. But despite her sister’s graceless behaviour, Anna enjoyed the occasion. It would have been difficult for any normal young woman not to. Guy had many friends in the city, both from the considerable English colony and from the Russian business and musical world, and all seemed genuinely delighted that the ‘crusty old bachelor’ as he was described, in laughter, more than once had at last succumbed to the siren call of marriage. Her pleasure was enhanced by the fact that, even set beside her cousin and her sister in their wedding finery – and no-one would have contested that these were the two prettiest girls in the room – she knew she looked coolly, and to her own mind astoundingly, elegant in the dress that, to Varya’s outrage, Guy had insisted on helping her to choose. Pale, simple and of sumptuous silk, it had cost a small fortune, cunningly cut to emphasize her height and her narrow waist, sweeping to a slim, stately train behind her. Even Varya, whose taste had run originally to flounces and heavy, swaying skirts, had to admit to its beauty.

  Katya had insisted upon her coming to the Bourlov apartment to have her hair dressed by the Bourlov women’s personal hairdresser. The result was a soft red-gold cloud folded to the top of her head and threaded with real flowers. She did not need the easy compliments of others to tell her that she looked, if not exactly beautiful, certainly striking and by no stretch of the imagination plain. She sat through the endless courses, the even more endless toasts beside Guy, distinguished and handsome in his formal dress suit. As the party became rowdier the younger elements about the tables began the odd custom – that Anna herself had always thought faintly ridiculous – of complaining, each to his neighbour, of a bitter taste to the food, the wine. The buzz of the repeated word grew into a chant: ‘bitter, bitter, bitter!’ At this point the newlyweds were expected to kiss, to sweeten the day and chase away all signs of ill-omen. Smiling, Guy turned to her, and very gently he kissed her. Tables were thumped, a roar of applause broke out, more toasts were drunk. Anna turned back and found herself looking directly into the drawn face of Andrei some way down the table. For one moment their eyes held, then he lifted his glass to her, unsmiling, and toasted her before turning to his neighbour, apparently absorbed in their conversation. For a single second she allowed herself to watch him; the fluent gestures of his good hand as he spoke, the shock of prematurely silver hair that even for a formal occasion such as this refused to be tamed but sprang in unruly curls across his forehead. Then Guy turned to her. ‘My dear, Ivan Ivanovich here apparently heard you play at the Bourlovs’ earlier in the year – and in front of the great Scriabin –’

  She cast one last look at Andrei and then turned, smiling steadily, back to her husband.

  That night, in the biggest bed she had ever seen let alone slept in, in the most luxurious room she had ever occupied and after more champagne than she had ever drunk in her life, Guy gracefully and with great care made love to her. She did not dislike it, though tired and overwrought as she undoubtedly was, she was happy when it was safely over and she could sleep.

  Guy, beside her, leaned on the huge frilled pillows, lit a cigar and watched her as she dropped into the instantaneous slumber of the young, her face smooth as a child’s. He would have been less than human not to wonder if Andrei had been in her mind as he had made love to her. He reached forward, brushed a lock of hair away from her sleeping face. The irrevocable step was taken; only time now would tell whether his instinct had been right.

  * * *

  By contrast Yelena’s wedding was a dour and charmless affair. The ceremony was held in a small church on Vasilievsky Island and the reception in the Shalakov apartment. Given the bride’s lack of enthusiasm for the whole affair – that she made no effort to disguise – it was not surprising that the celebrations were stilted, the gaiety forced. Donovalov watched his new young wife’s sullen and graceless behaviour with an expression, not entirely lacking in pleasure, that promised a later reckoning. Lenka, seeing it, promptly and perversely behaved worse than ever, glaring her defiance, daring him to stop her.

  Anna’s outstanding and uncomfortable memory of what could only be described as an outstandingly uncomfortable occasion was, almost certainly deliberately she realized later, the only words her sister addressed to her during the whole day. Standing tense and unsmiling, an untouched glass of wine clenched between strong and ill-manicured hands and with a face all but expressionless, Lenka watched her husband as he moved from group to group about the crowded room. Only when she turned to Anna, looked with fierce and unblinking accusation directly into her sister’s face did Anna see the despair in her eyes. The look was like a blow.

  ‘I’ll never forgive you for this, Anna.’ Lenka’s voice was low, perfectly calm. ‘Never. Not for as long as I live. Understand that. Remember it.’ And she left her, rejecting with sharp contempt Anna’s small, pleading gesture, refusing for the rest of the day to speak to her, even to say farewell when she left.

  The next day Anna, with Guy, boarded the train for Paris with those words echoing still in her ears.

  Interlude: 1909-1911

  Those first months of Anna’s marriage opened to her a world of which until then she had not even been aware. In Paris she was welcomed – as Guy had guessed she would be – as ‘la p’tite Russe’, discovering to her astonishment that simply to be Russian at that moment in that most modish of cities was the very height of chic. That spring the Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev had arrived in Paris and had taken the city by storm. Russian music, Russian opera, Russian ballet was the rage. Russian names were upon every tongue – the genius designer Bakst, the fabulous and adored Nijinski and the young composer Igor Stravinsky were the darlings of the Parisian fashionable world. Guy de Fontenay was already a well-known and popular figure in the salons and dining rooms of this blithe and brilliant place: his unexpected arrival with this very new, very young, charmingly unspoiled – some would go so far as to say incredibly gauche – Russian wife sparked off enough speculation, interest, and gossip – and consequent invitations – to keep them fully occupied, had they desired it, every moment of the day for several months at least.

  Anna, to begin with, was all but paralysed with nerves.

  ‘No need, my dear, no need!’ Guy said, firmly, when first she brought herself to voice her fears. ‘Remember our first evening together? Your first visit to a Ladies’ Room alone? You survived that, did you not?’ And then, enjoying her sudden burst of laughter, ‘Then what in the world has Paris to offer that is so very intimidating? Come – find your hat and gloves. We go to visit M’sieu Paul Poiret. No knight worthy of his spurs would go into battle without armour – a few days of the master’s attentions and you, and your wardrobe, will be ready, I promise, to take on not just this wicked city, but the world!’

  With Guy at her side there was indeed little for her to fear.

  With great enjoyment and infinite patience he coaxed her into his world – and with equal care he kept from her less pleasant aspects of it.

  And, as he had hoped, overlaid by the trepidation, excitement and fascination of this new life, week by week and month by month the painful memories of Andrei began, a little, to fade.

  They visited the Louvre and the Grand Palais, they attended the th
eatre, the opera, the ballet and the music hall. They dined at the most expensive and fashionable restaurants in company with the most expensive and fashionable people. They attended a few small private dinner parties at which, at Guy’s gentle instigation, Anna was prevailed upon to play; it was not long before de Fontenay’s little Russian wife was almost as much in vogue as M’sieu Poiret’s gowns and the exotic designs of art nouveau amongst the discerning and competitive hostesses of the city.

  She made mistakes, and she learned by them. Always she watched Guy. Always he was ready with a smile. And almost always, with those bright, confident eyes upon her, the nerves and the shyness could be overcome. He educated her palate and guided her untutored tastes. He delighted in buying her clothes – elegant and expensive things that made her feel, and therefore in a strange way become, a different, a more poised, a more confident person.

  St Petersburg began to seem a very long way away.

  She wrote to her family religiously once a week, to Katya and to Lenka less frequently but at least once a month. From her father she received short and stilted replies equally regularly. From Katya she would hear nothing for weeks and then receive anything from a scribbled and all but indecipherable two lines to a scrawled and mammoth screed of such diverse and often amusing subjects and so many pages that Guy came to refer to them as ‘Katya’s novelettes’.

  From Lenka she heard not at all.

  Between her father and Katya she kept abreast of affairs in Petersburg: Margarita’s somewhat volatile progress through the Gymnasium, young Dmitri’s utter indifference to any girl but his first, childhood love Natalia, the birth of a child, a girl, to Lenka, and subsequently and far too soon a miscarriage seven months later.

  In the new year they moved on from Paris to Vienna and then in the summer from Vienna to Rome. For those with the funds and freedom to enjoy it the Europe of those years was a gay and opulent playground. Few saw the dark perils that, like quicksand beneath sweet grass, lay just beneath the glittering surface: the ever-growing gap between rich and poor engendered by the industrial revolution and the unrest that such persistent injustices were bound to cause, the growth of nationalism and the consequent struggle for power that was bound to threaten the peace and stability of this confident and all too often thoughtless world. It was a time of great, intriguing and far-reaching technological advance – Louis Bleriot’s flight across the Channel heralded a new age of air travel, telegraph and wireless revolutionized the world of communication, and the first mass-produced motor cars were rolling off industry’s first assembly line in Detroit. That all of these advances had military as well as peacetime application did not fail to register with those who cared about such things; for others it was all simply part of the fun and helped to make a good life even better.

  It was the autumn of 1910 before Guy decided it was time to take his young wife to that place that was closest to his heart; the place he had kept as all the best things should be kept, until last; the place that was, for him, truly home. It was a different Anna, outwardly at least, who stood beside him on the steamer’s deck and watched the gleaming cliffs of Dover loom out of a September mist than had boarded the train at St Petersburg with him just over a year before. He watched her, wondering a little. For all the closeness of their relationship they had never, by mutual consent, spoken of Andrei nor of the odd circumstances of their marriage. He had watched in these past months as she had grown – as he had known she could – from uncertain child to apparently confident and happy woman. He loved her more than ever he would have believed it possible; he was diverted to discover that now it was he who was nervous. Sythings awaited its mistress. What a disaster it would be if Anna could not find it in her heart to love the place as he did.

  His anxiety was misplaced. Anna, more than ready to love Sythings for Guy’s sake if for no other reason, took one look at the lovely old house set within its peaceful garden in the veiled green of the Sussex countryside and was enslaved. She ran from room to room like a child, exclaiming and laughing delightedly. ‘Oh, Guy! – Guy! – It’s beautiful!’ She spoke, still, in French, her newly-learned English deserting her in this moment of pleasure and excitement. ‘And look! A music room! A real music room! What a lovely piano! What a wonderful view!’ She flung open the tall french doors that led out onto the terrace and thence to the wide green lawns of the garden. ‘Oh, Guy, my dear –’ she was absurdly close to tears ‘– it’s quite the loveliest house I’ve ever seen!’

  The house became their true home from that moment on, though still they travelled often, and as often used Guy’s small London flat for business or for the pleasure of concerts and the theatre.

  The letters from St Petersburg continued to arrive. Dmitri had served the first months of his obligatory national service in the army of the Tsar before Victor, in the accepted way of such things, had bought him out at what he gave Anna to believe was enormous expense and set him to work in the business. Lenka had miscarried yet again. Katya was mildly and amusedly taken with the growing Margarita: ‘What a child! Are you quite sure your mother didn’t play fast and loose nine months before she was born?’

  Anna wrote once more to Lenka, expressing her sympathy at the loss of this second baby.

  And, once more, Lenka did not reply.

  Book Two

  1911-1913

  Chapter Nine

  ‘My papa,’ Katya said, lightly, but with a faint, wry edge to her voice that belied her laughter, ‘is not pleased with me.’

  Margarita turned, startled. ‘Your father? Good heavens, how in the world have you managed that?’ For Mischa to express real disapproval of his indulged daughter was all but unknown. ‘Have you murdered someone?’

  ‘It’s not so much what I’ve done,’ Katya gave the vase of flowers she had been arranging a last tweak and set it upon a nearby table, ‘as what I haven’t. And what I don’t, if I can possibly help it, intend to. At least for as long as is possible.’ They were in the ballroom of the Bourlov apartment. Around them the frantic activity that necessarily accompanied the preparations for a coming-of-age ball was reaching its climax. A small army of floor polishers skated about the gleaming parquet floor, soft cloths on their feet. A low stage upon which the orchestra would sit was being decorated with swathes of gold and green silk and set with huge potted plants and flower arrangements. In the centre of the floor a ladder was set precariously beneath the chandelier, which was being painstakingly cleaned, its swinging crystals jingling like sleigh bells on a winter’s night.

  Katya led the way out onto one of the balconies. Margarita followed; watched as Katya produced a long cigarette holder and a packet of cigarettes. Katya proffered the packet. Rita, fascinated but reluctant, shook her head. ‘Papa would kill me.’ Katya laughed, lit her cigarette, blew smoke into the clear autumn air. It was September, and there was a chill in the almost imperceptible breeze that was all too familiar. Summer was over. Winter, inexorably, was approaching.

  ‘So. What is it that you haven’t done?’ Margarita, as ever, could not contain her curiosity.

  ‘Can’t you guess?’ Katya waved her empty hand eloquently, as if the whole of St Petersburg must surely know of her misdemeanour. ‘I haven’t married. I haven’t, God help us all, even become engaged. And consequently I haven’t produced, or am not imminently to produce, the Bourlov heir that poor Mischischa so desires. And neither will I if I can help it!’

  Margarita raised fair eyebrows. ‘What’s so wrong with being married?’

  Katya turned on her a look of such pained astonishment that the other girl could not help but laugh. In the three years since Anna had left the city these two, each for her own reasons and despite the difference in their ages, had developed a mutually advantageous relationship that could at a casual glance be taken – mistakenly – for close if light-hearted friendship. Margarita unashamedly and for reasons she made no attempt to hide preferred the Bourlov home to her own and determinedly spent as much time there as was humanly pos
sible. She was sixteen years old, and she had plans; plans whose natural starting point was here, with her wealthy relations and their contacts, not at home on the Venskaya with her mother’s migraines and her father’s sober and grinding respectability. For her part Katya enjoyed having the younger girl around, and would have been less than human not to have enjoyed the open hero-worship that her cousin was all too ready to bestow upon her; though, shrewd as her father, she was perfectly aware that the basis of that apparently artless admiration owed as much if not more to envy than to any warmer emotion. Margarita coveted everything about Katya’s life, from her pretty clothes and her father’s money – that in these past years of industrial boom in Russia had grown to no mean fortune – to the relaxed indulgence with which her parents treated her. Katya did little to discourage or disabuse her; it suited her admirably to have this pretty, malleable youngster in tow – for Margarita, chatterbox that she was, was nevertheless astute enough to know when to keep her mouth shut and could be quite remarkably and cheerfully devious when it came to the small intrigues and adventures of which Katya was so fond.