Strange Are the Ways

by Strange Are the Ways (retail) (epub)

  ‘I was wondering?’ Zhenia hesitated. Varya looked at her. ‘Perhaps she might like to spend more time here, with Katya? She’s such a lively child. A positive delight. We could perhaps be of some help –’ she waved a vague hand ‘– introductions, and such?’ She let the words trail to nothing, knowing the unspoken offer would be well understood. Each time Zhenia Petrovna Bourlova looked at her bright-faced niece she remembered the sister she had manipulated into marriage with a safe, stolid, boring man, and conscience, very slightly, gnawed.

  ‘I’m sure she’d love to.’ Varya was positively proud of the calm understatement; of all of her children Margarita was the only one she truly understood. Margarita, she knew, would kill to stay at the Bourlovs’.

  Zhenia linked her arm again into her sister’s. They strolled back along the crowded corridor and into the ballroom. The dancing was about to begin; tables had been moved to the side of the room, a full orchestra had taken their place upon the stage. Guests stood in groups about the floor, laughing and talking. ‘And Anna,’ Zhenia said. ‘Katya received a letter from her the other day. She seems happy?’

  Varya turned surprised eyes upon her. ‘Well, of course she is,’ she said. ‘Her husband has money.’ They walked on into the busy ballroom. ‘I still can’t think how she managed it,’ Varya added, a little vaguely; and wondered why her sister laughed.

  More guests arrived; the party gathered momentum. There was dancing, more food, dancing again and yet another feast. Vodka and champagne flowed, loosening tongues and lifting laughter. Katya flitted still, like a bright and restless butterfly in a field of flowers, and Margarita followed. Followed, that is, until, at last, a pair of particularly bright eyes met hers, eyes set in a young and handsome face above an equally handsome dress uniform. He was slim, slightly built, moderately tall and of more than moderate good looks. The vodka bottle that stood on the table before him was empty. But where others had been loud, he was quiet, where other advances had been harshly confident, his were diffident, almost gentle. She settled beside him, a dove come to rest.

  Her brother Dmitri, eighteen years old, slim, pale, tall now and habitually serious, hovered by Natalia’s side, uneasy in his cheap, ill-fitting evening suit, his whole attention upon his love. Natalia, equally out of place in this gathering, smiled at him, a calm, motherly smile, and held his hand. They did not dance, nor often did they speak. There was no need. Together they sat upon a curved sweetheart chair, in silence, hands clasped, a small, still core of quiet that waited for this silly storm of celebration to pass. Varya, catching sight of them, clicked her tongue and shook her head. ‘Those two,’ she said to Victor, ‘they’re like an old married couple already.’

  Katya whirled from the dance, extracted herself from her partner’s enthusiastic embrace, took another glass of champagne from the tray proffered by a smiling manservant.

  ‘Women in Finland,’ a clear, self-confident voice said, somewhere close by, ‘have been voting since 1906. It doesn’t seem to me that the Duchy has exactly descended into depravity and chaos.’

  Diverted, Katya turned. It was the Finnish girl Elisabet, of course – she had recognized the voice and the accent immediately – who smiled with utter self-possession into a florid face. ‘Women pay taxes, do they not? To refuse them a say in the spending of their own money is surely the height of injustice?’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense, girl!’ The florid face empurpled further. ‘Yuri Alexeievich, you surely don’t agree with this rubbish?’

  Elisabet’s husband smiled, mildly. ‘My wife’s views are her own, Sergei Sergeiivich, she needs no brief from me to hold them.’ His voice was amused.

  Elisabet turned her head and caught Katya’s eyes upon her; then her gaze moved beyond her, and her usually well-schooled face changed slightly. Katya turned. A tall, very fair young man was advancing across the dance floor, talking as he came, a group gathering about him. His pale hair was tousled, the jacket of his formal evening suit unbuttoned, his tie not quite straight. He wore a bright but lamentably wilted flower in his buttonhole. Leaving a buzz of conversation in his wake, he moved with long strides to where his sister and her husband waited; stood before them, bright-eyed and slightly dishevelled. ‘Someone’s tried to assassinate Stolypin,’ he said cheerfully. ‘In Kiev. Word is they’ve probably succeeded.’ He looked around, relieved a servant of the last glass of champagne on his tray, drank thirstily.

  Elisabet’s mouth snapped shut. She stared.

  Her brother put the empty glass back on the tray. ‘The news has just come in. It’s all over the city. He’s in a bad way, it’s said – he isn’t expected to survive. Sorry I’m late.’ His eyes rested, belatedly, upon Katya. Unabashed, he came laconically to something approximating attention, took her hand, bowed over it. ‘Yekaterina Mikhailovna – my apologies. My late arrival is, I know, absolutely unforgivable.’ His formal use of her name contrived somehow to sound faintly mocking; he made not the slightest attempt to inject into the words the smallest part of repentance, nor did he seem aware of the disturbance and stir his news had brought to the room. Pyotr Stolypin, the Tsar’s Prime Minister, was as admired by some as he was detested by others. Dubbed ‘Stolypin the Hangman’ for his brutally efficient crushing of the Revolution of 1905, yet few would in honesty doubt his integrity, and his recent attempts to break the growing and sinister hold of the monk Rasputin over the Empress and through her the whole of the Imperial family had met with wholehearted support in many quarters.

  Katya looked coldly down at the bent fair head. ‘Do you make a habit, Jussi Lavola, of arriving at other peoples’ celebrations – as you say yourself – unforgivably late, and looking as if you’ve come from a street fight?’ she asked crisply, and loudly enough for a great many people to hear. The orchestra had stopped playing, dancers stood together on the floor, discussing the news.

  ‘Katya.’ Elisabet was beside her, a hand on her arm, surprisingly conciliatory. The look she shot at her brother was a flash of blue steel. ‘Jussi didn’t mean to –’

  Katya, firmly, shook her arm free. ‘What Jussi meant or didn’t mean to do is immaterial.’ Jussi was watching her, and, infuriatingly, he was smiling, genuinely amused. There was a faint smell of alcohol about him, he rocked gently on the balls of his feet, balancing. ‘He’s drunk,’ Katya said, in her voice an unfeigned and steely anger that anyone who did business with Mischa Bourlov would have recognized.

  Elisabet shook her head. ‘Katya –’

  Her quiet words were drowned by Mischa’s lifted voice from the stage. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please – if I might just give the little news we have? There has apparently been an attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Stolypin this evening in Kiev. He is reported shot, badly injured. That is all we know. Now, sad as the news is, might I suggest that there is little or nothing to be gained in abandoning our small celebration?’ He moved back, nodding to the conductor who stepped once more upon the podium, baton raised. Music lifted, the sweet, lilting strains of a Strauss waltz.

  ‘How is it,’ asked a man’s voice, deep, oddly disembodied, ‘that we Russians can find no way forward, except in violence?’

  ‘Forward?’ Another voice took up the challenge, fiercely. ‘You call it a step forward to murder such a man?’

  The music, thankfully, drowned out any reply. Dancers took again to the floor.

  ‘Yekaterina Mikhailovna.’ Immaculately formal, his expression still gracelessly and unflatteringly full of laughter, his stance still far from stable, Jussi Lavola extended a long and startlingly grubby hand. ‘May I have the pleasure?’

  Katya surveyed him, her swift temper gone, calmly smiling. She knew a winning game when she saw one. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You may not.’ Coolly she nodded to Elisabet and her husband and turned away, hiding the sudden lift of laughter. The idiot had played right into her hands. A smile lit her face as a young Cossack officer bowed over her hand. ‘Good heavens, my dear, is it our dance already?’ No-one, least of all her father,
could now expect her to entertain the thought of accepting this provincial boor – this Finn! – as a husband, title or no title. And it would take time to find another suitable applicant for the post. Meanwhile – she smiled up into the ardent dark eyes of her Cossack officer – she could not, for the moment remember his name – meanwhile, she was free.

  ‘You fool, Jussi.’ Elisabet’s voice was tartly conversational. ‘You damned fool! Will you never stop playing games?’

  Jussi laughed. Despite every effort the sound was not easy.

  She turned her head to look levelly at him. ‘You’ve been with that woman again.’

  He shrugged. She waited. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  Elisabet took a long, slow breath, containing fury. ‘Jussi. You simply can’t be so irresponsible! We agreed. All of us. What you do with your private life is, I suppose, your own business. But this marriage is essential. The money is essential. Yuri is becoming suspicious.’

  ‘She’s a spoiled brat,’ he said. ‘Indulged. Arrogant. And with as much intelligence as a moth. And apart from anything else it isn’t fair to involve her –’

  ‘Jussi – she’s rich.’

  He looked out across the glittering, shifting sea of dancers. ‘I don’t like her.’

  His sister’s hand clamped upon his arm. ‘You don’t have to like her. You have to marry her.’ Her voice was flat.

  He shook his head, as if to clear it.

  ‘Jussi, listen.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, sharply, and then again, ‘I know.’ But the smile had gone from his face and the expression left in his eyes was rebellious.

  * * *

  Margarita was in a seventh heaven. The young man was dark, and very handsome. He was an officer in the Preobrajensky Guards; the uniform was magnificent. He was the incarnation, the very picture, of her dreams. And he was looking at her as a starving man might look at a banquet. His name was Alexandr Feodorovich Kolashki; he had already begged her to call him Sasha. He had utterly refused to relinquish her hand to the young man who had had the forethought to book the supper dance, but had whirled her himself into a dashing and light-footed mazurka that had attracted satisfying attention from the onlookers about the dance floor before escorting her himself into the supper room. This was the one. She wanted him.

  She smiled, dazzlingly. ‘Alexandr Feodorovich –’ she hesitated, blushing, dipping her head shyly ‘– Sasha, it’s so very warm in here –’

  ‘The balcony,’ he said, drawing her small hand into the crook of his arm. ‘It’s cooler out there. Come.’

  Varya watched from across the room, smiling a little. How lovely Rita looked tonight; the very image of her mother all those years ago. And how very clever she was. Varya slipped her arm into her husband’s, gently manoeuvring him so that his back was to the tall window towards which the handsome young officer was so attentively escorting his youngest daughter. One could never tell with Victor; he could be the most dreadful spoilsport. For a moment she stood, allowing the small blade of envy to cut at her heart. If she had had such opportunity, what might her life have been? If she had married such a one instead of dull, respectable Victor – ‘I’m sorry, my dear?’

  ‘I said,’ Victor repeated, testily, ’that we really should begin to think of leaving. It’s one o’clock in the morning – really far too late for the children to be up.’ He glanced about him. ‘Where are they? Where’s Margarita?’

  ‘I believe she’s resting, in Katya’s room, with the young Lubachova girl. She’s perfectly safe,’ Varya said, smoothly, steering him towards a group that contained a face she had been looking out for all evening. ‘Come now, Victor, the party goes on until two – we really can’t be so ill-mannered as to leave now. Look, the girls are lining up for the cotillion – just see how many ribbons Katya has collected! It is her birthday, of course, the young men are bound to try to please her – why, General – how very nice to see you!’

  * * *

  No fairy waved a wand, no magician arrived to turn back the clock; inevitably the party had to end. At three the last of the revellers left – a group of young men in the midst of whom Katya spotted Jussi Lavola, heading she guessed not for home but for the delights of the shadier side of the night-time city. Jussi had not been near her for the rest of the evening after his unconventional entrance, except formally to take his leave. She stood at the window, watching the young men in the street below, rowdy as schoolboys, pushing and shoving each other, laughing and talking with no regard whatsoever for those more sober citizens abed and trying to sleep. As they passed beneath a lamp the light struck upon the pale, untidy thatch of the young Finn’s hair. He had his arm about the shoulders of another of the young men, though who was supporting whom was impossible to guess. With any luck they’d both fall over. Katya smothered a smile and turned back to the wrecked ballroom. She had a strong and satisfying feeling that she’d seen the last of Jussi Lavola.

  * * *

  She was wrong.

  He called the next day, to her utter astonishment, asking first for her father. Katya, pale and feeling by no means well in body or in temper after the excesses of the night before, was outraged. She prowled the floor of her room, refusing to come out, forcing her father to send for her which, in due course, he did. On entering his study she was quite spitefully pleased to see that Jussi, standing tall and excessively pale by the window, looked even worse than she felt. She pitched her voice just a little higher than usual as she returned his subdued greeting, smiled very brightly and watched in satisfaction as he winced.

  Her father regarded her repressively, but could not for long keep the amusement from his eyes. ‘Jussi thought you might like to take a stroll in the sunshine with him. Unlike most young men he had the good sense to ask me first.’ The amusement was open now. Katya scowled at him. He sustained her glare with equanimity; nodded towards the door. ‘A breath of air will do you good, child.’

  She opened her mouth. ‘I don’t –’

  ‘You do. Yes, you do, my dear.’ Her father smiled again, with firm purpose.

  Katya subsided. Even she could not best or deflect her father when he was in this mood and she had the sense to know it. With ill grace she fetched cape, hat and gloves, jamming the long hatpin into her mass of hair as if she could think of many better uses to which to put it. With some care Jussi took her elbow and negotiated the stairs without jolting his thumping head too much, flinched as they stepped out into the windy September sunshine.

  ‘What a wonderful idea,’ Katya said, heavily scornful. ‘Thank you so much. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do today than take a stroll in the biting wind. With you.’

  He did not respond, at least not verbally, but his grip on her elbow tightened and his long-legged strides lengthened until she was all but running to keep up with him.

  ‘Let go of me!’

  ‘Oh, do shut up,’ he snapped.

  She wrenched her arm from his, glared at him.

  He stopped, put a hand to a head that felt as if it might split.

  She waited, watching him fiercely. His face was thin and at the moment quite translucently pale; unusually he was clean-shaven, the line of his mouth straight. He could by no means be described as handsome, though she supposed some might find him attractive. For herself she preferred dark men. She thought she might tell him so.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ruefully. ‘I’m not handling this very well, am I?’ He laughed a little, too obviously self-deprecating. ‘I really do feel quite dreadful.’

  Katya raised fair, scornful eyebrows. ‘A self-inflicted injury, I think?’ Wild horses would not have dragged from her a confession as to the state of her own head.

  He grinned suddenly, appreciating the jibe despite himself. ‘Quite the worst kind, don’t you think?’

  They turned, began to walk together along the wide boulevard that ran alongside the canal. ‘I don’t understand,’ Katya said, abruptly. ‘Whatever possessed you to come to the house today? What is th
is – this charade?’

  He slanted a glance down at her, a small appreciative gleam in his eyes, but said nothing.

  They walked on in silence. Beneath trees that tossed in the chill, strengthening wind stood a wrought-iron bench. He stopped, wiped the seat with his handkerchief, settled her upon it. She sat bolt upright, as far from him as she could possibly manage without actually falling off the end of the armless bench, watching him.

  ‘Is it possible for you to stay quiet for two minutes while I explain?’ he asked with a sudden spectacular smile.

  Beyond a tightening of the lips she did not deign to answer.

  He played with the handkerchief, folding and unfolding it. He had long, thin fingers, and good nails. ‘The world,’ he said at last, ‘for its own reasons, seems to be determined upon our marrying – or at least our giving the thought some consideration.’

  ‘Over my dead body,’ she said, venomously pleasant.

  ‘Quite.’ He lifted his head, regarded her steadily and thoughtfully. ‘My sentiments exactly. Except that if my sister gives me one more lecture upon the benefits of marriage and a secure and steady life I fear it might be over her dead body; and since I’m really rather fond of her I’d like to prevent that if I can.’

  She refused to be tempted to laughter.

  ‘So. It occurred to me that –’ He hesitated, shook out the handkerchief again.

  Composedly Katya leaned forward and removed it from the fidgeting fingers. ‘It occurred to you?’ she prompted.

  ‘– that we might come to some –’ he shrugged ‘– some arrangement that could be to our mutual advantage.’

  She eyed him warily. ‘How?’

  ‘If we gave them the impression that we were – how shall I put it – at least trying to accommodate them all, that is, if they thought we were meeting on occasion, spending some time together –’