Lorimers at War

by Anne Melville

If the prince had known that she intended to go out and explore the city – and unescorted into the bargain – he would certainly have prevented her. There had been a series of strikes on the previous day. No trams or trains had run, and crowds carrying red banners paraded through the streets demanding the resignation of the Cabinet and expulsion of the German Tsarina. The army had been called out and some of the demonstrators were killed. But it was rumoured that many of the soldiers had disobeyed the order to fire.

  Kate was well aware that the streets of the city were becoming unsafe. Being Kate Lorimer, however, she was not prepared to make any concessions to the fact. After almost a week spent in ministerial ante-rooms, she felt the need to treat her frustration with a dose of fresh air and exercise.

  For more than two hours she tramped over the frozen snow in the boots which the army cobbler had made for her. In spite of the blackness of her mood and the heavy greyness of the sky, from which new snow was falling, the beauty of this most un-Russian city took hold of her. Already she had admired the magnificence of the Winter Palace, and she was able to appreciate the classical elegance of the pale yellow buildings which curved round the facing side of the palace square even though they housed the General Staff offices she hated. The elaborate ceremonial arch in the centre of the curve and the picture-book array of noble palaces, like the Aminovs’, which stretched along the river bank, were all part of the same splendid architectural centrepiece with which she had become familiar. But now for the first time she wandered further afield, exploring the network of canals, admiring the decorative bridges which ran so elegantly across them, and the handsomely painted mansions on either side.

  It was as easy here as in Prince Aminov’s marble hall or golden drawing room to forget the other aspects of the city: the slum tenements with their insanitary courtyards, the poverty of the people on the streets, the deep puddles which formed when the sun shone warmly enough for an hour or two to melt the snow. From the first moment of her arrival in Petrograd she had been appalled by the contrast between the luxuries of her temporary home and the world of pain and misery on the battlefront which she had been attempting to describe to the indifferent bureaucrats of the General Staff. Only that morning she had become aware of another contrast, with the world of the political prisoner. And now she realized that the extremes of luxury and sordid discomfort were to be found inside the central living area of the city. How long could such a state of affairs be tolerated, she asked herself. Her step became firmer and even less ladylike than before as her anger rose.

  The sound of singing drew her towards the Cathedral of St Nicholas. Reminding herself that it was Sunday, she went inside. It was a long time since she had last been able to attend a Baptist service, and it was likely to be an equally long time in the future before she had any contact with the faith which her father preached so eloquently in Jamaica. But although the form of the Russian Orthodox service was so different from that of a Nonconformist chapel, the same God presumably listened to prayers in all languages, and Kate was in need of comfort.

  On the ground floor a funeral service was in progress. A crowd of women, fat and dowdy in their winter coats and headscarves, wandered, weeping, in and out. But the singing came from a higher floor. Kate climbed the stairs and found herself in a treasure house. The light of many hundreds of candles was reflected off jewelled icons and golden mosaics. Even here, it seemed, she could not escape from the contrast between great wealth and great poverty. Gorgeously attired in yet more gold, a black-bearded priest was reading from the Bible to his crowded congregation. Almost imperceptibly his reading voice changed to chanting and the chanting to an operatic style of bass singing. All her life Kate had been susceptible to the influence of music, whether soothing or stimulating. She made no attempt now to listen to the words, but allowed her troubled spirit to be comforted by the beauty of the sound.

  The voice of the single singer was joined by a choir in the gallery above. The new sound filled the building, swelling and diminishing, harsh and even discordant at times, its harmonies changing abruptly from major to minor key with that especial Slavonic characteristic which was so difficult to analyse but so easy to recognize. Kate tried to pray but found the atmosphere uncongenial. Her Baptist upbringing had given her a positive attitude to religion and life. She was not prepared – as the Russian Orthodox worshippers were – merely to prostrate herself on the ground and await events. Her father, in his services, was accustomed to converse aloud with God – to put forward problems, and to receive solutions which owed a good deal to the pastor’s own conclusions. Kate knew that prayers were not always answered – but that could be the fault of the petitioner: it remained important to continue the dialogue. But above all it was necessary to take whatever action might be necessary to achieve God’s revealed wishes, to walk firmly down the path illuminated by His will.

  Such an attitude was out of tune with the mood of this congregation. Already in the hospital Kate had learned to recognize what appeared to be a peculiarly Russian aptitude for suffering – an ability to accept separation, hunger, pain and even death without a murmur of complaint against whatever inexplicable fate had brought all these things to pass. The women in this congregation – for there were few men – seemed to display the same passivity: whatever was God’s will was to be accepted.

  No doubt the obstructive behaviour of Russian officials was encouraged by this attitude. Their procrastinations or outright refusals to take action would all too often be accepted without complaint: or, if that was too much to hope for, the petitioner would continue to wait patiently for something to happen which might change the situation. More than once in the past few days Kate had longed to leap to her feet in some crowded waiting room, allowing her rage to explode. She had persuaded herself that restraint would be wiser, but now she wondered whether she was right or whether the time had come to protest. In this cathedral, too, she would have liked to shout out, interrupting the service to tell these submissive women that life ought to be good, that it was not necessary to be always unhappy and – most of all – that to accept the blows of fate or government without complaint was to invite further tribulation. Oh, for the throbbing vitality of Hope Valley!

  She held her indignation under control now, just as she had controlled it during the search for the right rubber stamp; but the intensity of her feelings, raised to a higher pitch by the melancholy music of the choir, drew her into a state of exaltation – a trance-like ecstasy, illuminated by a visionary flash. There is no God, she thought, and at once everything was explained.

  Her father had preached in the name of God, but it was his own hard work as an administrator which brought happiness to his people, and she suspected that he had always known this himself. For the past two years she had done her best to reconcile the death and suffering she saw with the faith of her childhood, the belief in a loving God who ordered everything for the best. She had failed in the attempt. How could a loving God have wanted Brinsley to die? But if God instead were angry or uncaring, why should He be worshipped? The reconciliation of faith and fact had proved to be impossible. Now she knew that the effort had never been necessary: there was no God.

  So there was no excuse for passivity. The world might be destroying itself, but the destruction was not inevitable. There was no God. Men who were the victims of other men must save themselves by their own exertions and build a new society out of love for their fellow-men, not from hatred or fear. It was all so obvious that she could not understand why she had taken so long to comprehend it. She even remembered that Sergei had tried to convince her of the need for a change in society. Revolution was the word he had used, and she had been alarmed by it, thinking in terms of the French terror. But a spiritual revolution would be as effective as a political one. All that was needed was a change of attitude, a determination to be positive.

  Kate Lorimer’s vision was the opposite of Saul’s, but Petrograd was on her road to Damascus. ‘There is no God,’ she repeated to hersel
f. ‘No God. Only men, who must love one another.’

  Around her the service continued, but it had nothing more to offer. Kate pushed her way out of the crowded cathedral and began to walk back towards the Neva. The day was lighter now: the sky seemed to have lifted. Was it only the excitement of her vision which made her want to run and shout? Was it only her imagination which made her see the people in the streets in a light very different from that of the early morning? They were holding their heads higher, surely – were walking with a more purposeful air. Her excitement increased, as though the change in her faith had imperceptibly attuned her to the mood of the city. Her own anger made her sensitive to the anger around her. The Russian people were ready at last to break through the shell of their old passivity and she, Kate Lorimer, felt herself spiritually to be a Russian.

  Within sight of the river she paused in surprise. It had not all been her imagination, then. Crowds of people were approaching on foot across the bridge. There was nothing threatening about their pace or attitude: only their number made it clear that this was no ordinary Sunday promenade. And if she had had any doubts, a disturbance behind her would have dispelled them. A line of soldiers, their footsteps quietened by the snow, was marching down the Nevsky Prospekt towards the Admiralty building, leaving a few of their number in a group at each street corner. Hardly more than boys, they looked uneasy in their ill-fitting uniforms. But they were armed.

  There was no confrontation. The crowd filled the heart of the city but did not threaten it. The demeanour of the soldiers made it so clear that they did not wish to use their weapons that their officers, equally uneasy, showed no disposition to test their authority by giving the order to clear the area. Nevertheless, the steady increase in the size of the crowd and the silence which was as sinister as it was surprising, brought Kate down to earth again. In any kind of battle it was important to be recognizably on one side or the other: the man in the middle was too often the target of both. Prudently she made her way by back streets to the Aminov palace.

  5

  The moment of revelation inside the cathedral had changed Kate’s whole attitude to life. She was aware that she would never look at society in the same way again – and yet the knowledge did not affect her actions immediately. She was still the same punctual and efficient woman who kept promises once she had made them. When Prince Aminov had first asked her to go to the Radziwill ball she had felt doubtful. But the possibility that the occasion might prove of practical value had persuaded her to accept, and the mere fact that her doubts about going to a party had deepened did not seem a good enough reason now to disappoint her host. As the maid came into her room that evening with a heavy weight of creamy satin over her arm, Kate’s gasp was not one of rejection but merely of incredulity. She had been promised the choice of a gown and had intended to look for the simplest, but it appeared that the maid had taken the decision out of her hands.

  ‘It’s unlucky to put on clothes which have been worn by someone who is dead,’ the girl explained. ‘But this dress was ordered by the princess to be ready for her after the birth of her baby. She never even saw it.’

  ‘It’s too rich for me!’ Kate exclaimed, for the low-cut sleeveless bodice and the hem of the skirt were both patterned in hundreds of tiny pearls.

  ‘The others will be too tight,’ said the maid. Not for the first time, Kate was amused by the frankness of Russian servants. And this one, no doubt, was telling the truth. Kate’s experiences during the past two years had hardly allowed her to grow fat through overeating; but she was sturdily built and it was unlikely that even the most vigorous attempt at tight lacing would reduce her waist to a fashionable smallness. If for this one gown the dressmaker had guessed at a slight increase in size on the part of a new mother and had allowed her a little looseness even on top of that, the maid’s choice might indeed prove to be the best. Laughing, Kate allowed herself to be taken over. Only when she was ready, with her hair veiled and ornamented, her shoes buckled, her necklace fastened, her long gloves smoothed up to the elbow, was she allowed to look at herself in the glass.

  Her first reaction was one of amusement. The maid had turned her into a princess. Kate was tall enough to give the impression of elegance when, as now, the cut of her clothes imposed it. No doubt she would destroy the illusion as soon as she moved, for she had never been able to subdue an unladylike stride. But as long as she stood still, straight-backed and with her head held high, she recognized that Prince Aminov would not need to be ashamed of his partner at the ball.

  For a moment she felt all the ordinary feminine excitement of a young woman who sees herself to be attractive. Her complexion was freckled instead of fashionably white and her auburn eyebrows were too thick. But her wide-set green eyes were clear and bright and her smooth forehead, strong cheekbones and generous mouth combined to give an impression of freshness and candour. Half ashamed of her moment of conceit, she admitted to herself nevertheless that she was not too bad-looking after all. She lifted her heavy skirt off the ground and walked slowly downstairs.

  Two footmen were waiting to throw open the doors of the drawing room. As Kate paused, just inside the doorway, Prince Aminov rose from a Louis XV sofa to greet her, but it seemed that for a moment he could neither move nor speak. He stared as though he could hardly believe what he saw, and Kate was conscious that she was staring back in very much the same way. The uniform which he was wearing for the evening was too elaborate even to be mess dress. The profusion of gold braid and the jewelled Order on its blue diagonal ribbon must surely have been designed for attendance on the Tsar. Kate, who despised ostentation and was accustomed to judge men by their behaviour and not by their clothes, told herself that she ought to laugh, or at least not to notice. But instead she was overcome by the dignity of his presence. Seeing the prince in his informal day clothes she had already realized that his appearance was attractive, but now she had to admit that he was outstandingly handsome.

  It was an artificial effect, of course. Unmarried though she might be, Kate had seen so many men naked that she was able mentally to strip Prince Aminov of all his trappings, and deliberately now she did that, It was the tightness of his high collar, she reminded herself, which made him hold his head so proudly erect, when his shoulders more naturally hunched themselves over the piano keyboard. It was the thickness and embellishment of his jacket which gave the impression of a strong chest, when really his figure was slight and unathletic. It was his tailor who had cut trousers of such elegant slimness, his valet who had polished hand-made shoes of such smartness. She was looking at a production, not a person, but the very fact of recognizing this made her see the man more clearly, and what she saw had an effect which she could not have anticipated. Both as a medical student and as a doctor working amongst soldiers Kate had counted a good many men as her friends, but she had never fallen in love with any of them. To be attacked by first love at the age of twenty-five was so overwhelming an experience that she was silenced by the pain of it.

  She tried to fight against the realization of what had happened, but Prince Aminov did nothing to help her. She could feel his hand trembling as he raised her own to his lips; and although only his eyes told her how much he admired her appearance, they spoke so eloquently that she knew she was not mistaken. Neither of them spoke as, in answer to his pull at the bell, a footman appeared with a full-length sable cape to protect Kate from the bitter cold of the evening.

  Even during the journey to the Radziwill palace – short in distance but lengthened by the need to take their place in the long line of equipages which were bringing the guests to this gala occasion – they made no attempt to converse. Kate could think of nothing but the strong, smooth hand which was holding her own beneath the fur of the cape. Only when at last they stepped inside the reception area, dazzlingly lit by scores of chandeliers, did Prince Aminov laugh in what seemed a deliberate attempt to break the spell and to bring to a glittering social evening only the gaiety it deserved. They were surr
ounded by warmth and light and music and champagne. As soon as Kate had been presented to Princess Radziwill, and curiously but graciously received, the prince led her into the first of a series of reception rooms. A gypsy orchestra was playing, almost drowned by the noise of conversation. Kate accepted a glass of champagne and switched her thoughts into French and her expression into the vivacity required to accept meaningless compliments from the strangers to whom she was bewilderingly introduced.

  The ostentatious display of wealth took her breath away. Kate had often heard Alexa describe how the women of the Russian nobility wore their dresses cut almost indecently low in order to adorn the décolletage with the maximum number of diamonds; but she had been talking about the early years of the century. It had not occurred to Kate that the same fashion would still prevail at a time when Russia had endured two and a half years of war and was on the verge of defeat. She thought of the bewildered Russian peasants who lay wounded in her hospital and found that she could not pretend to smile any longer. Even the champagne seemed less sparkling, although all around her the effervescent chatter continued unabated.

  Prince Aminov was sensitive to her change of mood, although not prepared to indulge it.

  ‘I’ve just seen the Grand Duke Boris disappear into the card room,’ he said. ‘To continue, no doubt, his conspiracy against his cousin Nicholas. My own belief is that it’s safer to do one’s plotting in public. So I am going to present you now to someone whom you must charm. You may think him stupid, as indeed he is, but you must use his stupidity to make him believe that he would have a conquest if only I were not here to guard you.’

  Flirtation was not Kate’s style, and to pretend to flirt was even more degrading. She was about to demand an explanation and was ready to behave coldly if she did not receive one. But Prince Aminov gave her no time to ask questions before introducing a white-haired gentleman of distinguished appearance, conspicuous even in this company by the number of medals he wore. His name caught her attention at once for this was the titular head of the Committee of War Materials which was so stubbornly refusing to hear her case. Kate knew as well as his staff that he rarely went near his office. But she also knew that without his authority no one would ever take action.