Zadruga

by Margaret Pemberton

  A faint flush of colour touched her cheeks and he grinned across at her, marvelling at the power of the emotion he now felt for her.

  ‘But now you’ll spend that time with me,’ he said, and uncaring of who might see his action he took her pale-gloved hand in his.

  Their fingers interlocked tightly. Ahead of them, within sight but out of earshot, Peter was running towards the ruined fortress, a Dalmatian puppy at his heels. The puppy had been a present from Julian and Katerina was heart-achingly aware that it was exactly the kind of present he would have bought for Stephen.

  ‘I wish we could be a proper family!’ she said with sudden passion. ‘I wish we didn’t have to lie and pretend to people! I wish the three of us could live together openly in the little house behind Terazije Square!’

  A couple had turned on to the shrub-shaded pathway some way ahead of them and in mutual anguish they released hands.

  ‘Dear Christ! You think I don’t long for that too?’ he said, his voice so raw with pain she sucked in her breath, appalled at the hurt she had unleashed. ‘If there was any way it was possible I would take it. But there isn’t. You’re my sister-in-law and even if I get a divorce from Natalie, marriage between us is impossible.’

  ‘I know,’ she said contritely, wishing she could take hold of his hand again, wishing she could show him how sorry she was for having spoken her hopeless thoughts out loud. ‘And I know that there is nothing that can be done to change the situation. It was foolish of me to have spoken I did. I didn’t mean to and I won’t do so again.’

  ‘You’ve every right to do so,’ he said thickly. ‘You were born to be a wife and mother, not a mistress.’

  He turned his head towards her, his throat tightening. She was wearing a mauve voile dress and a matching wide-brimmed hat. Her stockings and shoes were ivory and there was a heavy rope of creamy pearls around her neck. She looked timelessly beautiful, exquisitely fragile. At the thought of all she was risking in embarking on an affair with him he was overcome by agonizing doubt. Was he asking too much of her? Was his new-found, selfish need of her going to ruin her life?

  The couple passed them. Ahead of them Peter disappeared from view round the far side of the fortress.

  Once again he reached out for her hand. Standing still he turned her to face him. ‘I love you,’ he said fiercely, wishing to God he could draw her into his arms and physically impress on her how much. ‘I want to live with you for the rest of my life, but it isn’t possible, not legally, and any other way would cause your parents and Peter crucifying hurt. All we can ever hope for are snatched meetings and there will always be the chance that the wrong person will see you entering or leaving the house or will begin to think that, as Peter’s uncle, I spend too much time taking him on outings and that your attendance when I do so is unnecessary and a little suspect.’

  At the expression in his eyes she felt her stomach muscles tighten in a sickening spasm. ‘What are you trying to say, Julian?’ There was a hint of unsteadiness in her voice that, try as she might, she couldn’t control. ‘Are you saying that the risks are too great for you? That exposure would compromise your career?’

  If their affair really were a threat to his career then she would have no option but to relinquish him. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if, for selfish motives, she caused him professional ruin.

  He shook his head, the sun glinting on his hair. ‘I wasn’t thinking of me,’ he said sombrely. ‘I was thinking of you and the risks you are running. They are very great, my love. Perhaps too great. For your sake, and for Peter’s and your parents’sake, it might be better if…’

  ‘No!’ She pressed her gloved fingers against his lips, her pupils wide. ‘Don’t ever say it! Don’t ever even think it! I should never have spoken as I did! What we have now is more than I ever dreamed of having! It’s all I shall ever need!’

  His relief at her reaction was overwhelming. Hardly able to speak he lovingly took her hand away from his mouth and kissed the back of it. ‘I love you,’ he said huskily. ‘Never doubt it.’

  Though her eyes were still brimming with tears her smile was radiant. Their misunderstanding was over. Though they would never be able to live together in the way they both longed to, they would love each other with utter commitment, causing hurt to no-one.

  As Peter began to run down the pathway towards them Julian reluctantly released hold of her hand. He, too, was determined that their affair would be life-long and even though marriage was out of the question he wanted to become morally free as soon as possible. With a stab of bitterness he wondered how Natalie would react when she learned of his intention.

  The only correspondence that had passed between them since he had been in Belgrade had been a brief letter from himself asking for frequent news of Stephen and the subsquent notelets she had written, complying with his request. All of them had been frigidly stilted and in none of them had she made even the briefest of references to her own welfare, to the coming baby, or to the hideous situation that now existed between them.

  As Peter seized hold of his hand, asking him if he would take him into the ruined fortress, he decided he would write to his solicitor the instant he returned to his Legation.

  All through the summer the political situation was turbulent. More and more Croatians made their discontent at being ruled from Belgrade, and not Zagreb, obvious and only immediate occupation of Croatia by the army prevented a setting up of a peasant Communist state.

  Julian’s workload was heavy and he spent long hours at the Legation, returning late each night to the white-walled house behind Terazije Square.

  On Monday, Thursday and Friday afternoons he escaped from the Legation on the pretext of meeting with one of the many politicians with whom it was his business to keep in contact and Katerina would hurry to meet him after taking Peter to his music or French lesson.

  Their lovemaking had been a revelation to her. During the brief period of her marriage to Ivan Zlarin she had submitted dutifully in bed, with all the gentle tenderness of her nature, but she had never felt any reciprocating passion. Her body had remained always within her control, curiously inviolate.

  Now, in Julian’s arms, it was inviolate no longer. Skilfully and tenderly he had carried her through an invisible barrier into a country she hadn’t dreamed existed, a country in which she lost all sense of self. As she had experienced the convulsion of true sexual fusion for the first time the depths of her abandoned, primeval response had shocked and almost frightened her. Lovingly, with hands and lips as well as with words, he had reassured her, treating her as if she were a bride and not a widow with a child.

  In August Julian received a brief notelet from Natalie. Her baby had been born. It was a little girl and though she had weighed only five pounds at birth she was healthy. ‘Your parents have assumed she was premature and I haven’t disabused them,’ Natalie had written bluntly. ‘I’ve named her Zorka after my mother’s girlhood friend, Princess Zorka.’

  ‘I suppose I should be grateful my mother can at least assume the child to be mine,’ he said savagely when he had broken the news to Katerina, ‘though God knows how she’ll come to terms with the name. She detests all things foreign and there’s no way it can be pretended Zorka is an English name.’

  He screwed the note with its large emerald-inked handwriting into a tight ball, his knuckles white. ‘I wonder if she has an address for Kechko?’ he demanded, his pain nakedly obvious. ‘I wonder if he’ll appreciate having his daughter named after a Montenegrin?’

  They were questions to which he obviously expected no answer and she remained silent, deeply shocked at the realization that his hurt was still so raw and deep.

  At the end of the month Cissie became engaged to the equerry she had captivated on the night of the ball and a week later Max returned to Belgrade with his small son, but minus his Greek wife.

  ‘He’s widowed,’ Vitza said to her starkly. ‘She had consumption and though Max was making arrangements
to take her to Switzerland in the hope she would recover there, the deprivations of the war years were too much for her. She died a month ago. What Max’s feelings are it’s hard to know. He was always impossible to communicate with and the war has made him even worse.’

  Katerina was sure she knew what Max’s feelings were. He wasn’t a man to have fallen in love lightly and beneath his taciturn exterior he would be suffering great grief, grief he would be unable to express. She wanted, very much, to be able to offer him her sympathy but he made no family visits and she was reluctant to intrude on his self-imposed isolation.

  At the end of September Julian received notification from London that he was to leave Belgrade and report to the British Embassy in Paris. It was a notification he had known would come eventually and he had long ago made up his mind that when it did, rather than be separated from Katerina, he would decline the posting and resign from the diplomatic service. Or he could leave the diplomatic service and, on the recommendation of Alexis, remain in Belgrade as an adviser to the Prince Regent.

  For the first time in a long while he visited the Vassilovich house to speak to his father-in-law and without any intention of catching a glimpse of Katerina. Then, late that night, after asking Alexis if he would recommend him as an adviser to Prince Regent Alexander, he wrote to Natalie, appraising her of the decision he had made.

  For the next week or so Katerina remained in ignorance of his plans. Then she received a letter from Natalie. In vivid green ink on mauve paper it had obviously been written with intense emotion. On a number of occasions the fountain pen had scored the paper and as well as Natalie’s customary blots there were suspicious marks indicating that she had been crying while writing it.

  Dearest, dearest Trina, I can’t bear this silence between us any longer. I know now how utterly wicked I have been and I don’t blame you in the slightest for not wanting anything else to do with me. I don’t want anything else to do with me but I can’t escape front myself and I do so wish I could. I never knew it was possible to be so miserable and lonely. Diana is engaged now and I hardly ever see her. My father-in-law is sweet but Julian’s mother is hateful. I loathe her as much as I loathe London and I loathe, loathe, LOATHE, London! If it wasn’t for Stephen and the new baby I swear I would kill myself.

  How could I have been so stupid? Even now I don’t understand it. I simply thought of Julian as being my very best friend and because I hadn’t CHOSEN to marry him it never occurred to me that I would have married him of my own accord once I realized how truly wonderful he was. I felt so CHEATED, you see. I’d always expected to fall madly in love with a prince or a count and that I would have a splendid wedding in the cathedral with Uncle Peter and Sandro in attendance and perhaps even Hélène and members of the Russian imperial family there as well (oh God, when I think of what happened to the Romanovs I can’t bear it!) and I felt in some peculiar way that I was OWED something. I thought that something was Nicky and I was so, so wrong. I see now that it was homesickness for everything Slav that I loved, not Nicky himself.

  The person I love for himself is Julian. Will you tell him that for me, Trina? I can’t tell him in a letter. His letters to me are so stiffly formal they terrify me and I’m certain he would put any letter from me that wasn’t about Stephen straight into a waste basket. Will you tell him I do truly love him and that if only he will love me again I’ll never do anything stupid again my whole life long? Tell him that Stephen cries for him at night and that the new baby is the prettiest most placid baby in the whole world and that her existence isn’t her fault and that I know he wouldn’t be able to stop himself caring for her if only he were to see her.

  Tell him I had been waiting for him to be transferred to an embassy where I could visit him and say all this for myself but that now he has decided to leave the diplomatic service and stay in Belgrade I won’t be able to do so. Please, please tell him that I don’t want to be divorced from him and that his solicitor is horrid and speaks to me as if I were a criminal. Tell him I love him and that more than anything in the world I want to be able to tell him so.

  There was a large smudge on the unusually restrained signature.

  Katerina put the letter down on her dressing-table with an unsteady hand. She hadn’t known of Julian’s decision to leave the diplomatic service and to remain in Belgrade. Even more devastatingly, she had never even suspected Natalie’s true feelings for Julian or the anguish she had been suffering ever since he had left her.

  As she looked out of the window, across the lawns and towards the chestnut trees, she felt curiously calm. Her affair with Julian was at an end, of course. She had known that the instant she had read Natalie’s first tear-stained reference to him. She remembered his pain when he had received news of Zorka’s birth and knew that despite the sincerity of his love for herself, he was still bound to Natalie by bonds that only Natalie could break. And Natalie did not wish to break them. She loved him and she wanted a reunion. She wanted them to be a family again.

  Slowly she picked up Natalie’s letter and put it into her purse, then she rose to her feet and, unable to see very clearly, put on a straw hat with a large posy of poppies pinned to the brim.

  Julian had said himself that he was a family man and she knew that he would be as wonderful a stepfather to Zorka as he would have been to Peter. With his generous, compassionate nature it would be impossible for him not to be.

  Picking up a pair of lace gloves she left the room and for the last time set out towards the little white-walled house behind Terazije Square.

  ‘A letter? What kind of a letter?’ he asked, his eyes darkening, sensing instantly that some profound change had come over her.

  She handed him the distinctive sheets of thick mauve notepaper. ‘It arrived this morning,’ she said quietly. ‘Natalie wanted me to tell you its contents but I think you should read them.’

  His eyes held hers for a long moment and then, unwillingly, he looked down at the heart-achingly familiar handwriting.

  She turned away from him, not wanting to see the expression on his face as he read. They were in a downstairs room that served as a salon. There were two low divans upholstered in peasant needlework and on the walls were decorative homespun rugs and a framed photograph of the king.

  She remained standing, still wearing her hat and gloves, her cream silk dress cool in the late summer heat.

  After what seemed to be an eternity of time he said thickly, ‘This letter doesn’t change anything. I’ve already made up my mind to resign from the diplomatic service and remain in Belgrade in order that nothing, not even my career, will separate us…’

  She turned to face him. ‘You’re wrong,’ she said quietly, her heart aching with love for him. ‘Natalie’s letter changes everything. Before, I truly believed that no-one was being hurt. Now I know differently and nothing can ever be the same.’

  ‘Do you truly think Natalie would be claiming to be in love with me if Kechko was still around?’ he asked tautly.

  He was wearing a silver-grey three piece suit, a gold fob-watch chain looped across his chest. In the nape of his neck his sun-bronzed hair curled over his high, waxed shirt-collar and he looked as handsome as he had the day she had first realized she was in love with him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said truthfully, her voice very steady. ‘I don’t think that it matters. What matters is that his desertion has made her face reality and you are her reality, just as she and Stephen are your realities.’

  A lock of hair had tumbled low over his brow and he pushed it away, his eyes avoiding hers. ‘And what about the realities of the last few months?’ he asked brusquely. ‘What about the peace and contentment we’ve known?’

  Her throat hurt and it was a moment or two before she could speak. When she could, she said, ‘Neither of us will ever forget it. It will always remain a precious memory.’

  He remained silent and with a hurting heart she knew he was going to protest no further. Sincerely as he loved her he was
not in love with her in the way he was in love with Natalie, and that he was still in love with Natalie she had known ever since she had seen his reaction to the news of Zorka’s birth.

  She said quietly, ‘I didn’t know about your decision to leave the diplomatic service. Did you make it because you had been asked to leave Belgrade and serve somewhere else?’

  He nodded. ‘I’d been asked to transfer to Paris. I haven’t yet replied to the request that I reconsider my letter of resignation and so I assume the offer is still open.’

  Katerina thought of the glamour of Paris and despite all her heartache a shadow of a smile touched the corners of her mouth. Paris was Natalie’s spiritual home. In Paris Natalie would be happy.

  All the time they had been talking they had been several feet apart and now, knowing that if he moved towards her, her precarious self-composure would vanish, knowing that there was nothing more to say, she walked with all the will power she possessed towards the door.

  ‘Will you come with me to the station when I leave?’ he asked, his voice so charged with emotion it was all she could do not to turn and run into his arms.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, not trusting herself to look at him, reaching for the door handle, her eyes blinded by tears. ‘Yes, of course I will.’

  Until the day she did so, she did not meet him again, alone. To have done so would have been to have exposed herself to a hurt too deep to be borne. With an outer composure that betrayed no hint of her grief she explained to Peter that Julian would soon be leaving Belgrade and that they mustn’t be upset, but must remember how happy Stephen would be at being reunited with his papa.

  When the day for goodbyes arrived Julian came to the house. There was no longer any chilliness between himself and Zita. Radiant with happiness at the knowledge that Natalie and Stephen would soon be with him in Paris, she kissed him warmly on the cheek, making him promise to send a photograph of the new baby at the very first opportunity.