CHAPTER THREE
I had never been in such a room before. It was so shut-in and artificial that I felt the outside air could never penetrate at all. Over the window were heavy, plush curtains of deep red, and over these were layers of muslin, draped and pleated in elaborate folds. On the floor was an ancient Turkey carpet whose very redness seemed to suck up what air was left in the room after the endlessly burning lamps and the great stove had taken their share.
I stood on the threshold, shaken by my reception, and not understanding it.
The old woman in the bed and I stared at each other. Then she gave a cackle of laughter. ‘Come in, girl, and don’t stand there staring.’
Slowly I advanced into the room, vaguely conscious of great gilt mirrors on the wall uncannily reflecting everything in the room, making every image smaller and clearer than in life: gilt furniture, the old lady in the bed, the lamps, and the girl at the door who was myself, a girl in blue-and-white spotted silk, her face with bright puzzled eyes.
‘Come on, come on.’ The voice was imperious. ‘Come right up close and let me have a look.’
Obediently, as if mesmerised, I came right up to the bed and let her look at me. Her hand came forward – dry and cold it was on mine, glittering with diamonds. Age had shrunk and discoloured it until it looked like a little brown animal’s paw.
Her face was old, older than anyone’s I had ever seen. At Jordansjoy we thought of Tibby as old, but she was not old like this. This woman looked as if she and the last century had grown old together. I saw a thin, lined, wrinkled face, cheeks bright rouged, and neck and forehead powdered white. Diamond earrings sparkled at the ears, and a great pearl necklace dangled from her throat. Out of this painted, ancient face stared a pair of dark, keen eyes. But every so often heavy lids fell over the eyes, turning the eye-sockets into dark pits which made her look dead already. It was a disconcerting trick, due, I suppose, to a weakness of the muscle beyond her control. Yet I came to suspect that she used her weakness to intimidate.
‘Good,’ she said again; her voice was almost a whisper, a ghost of what it must have been. ‘I am pleased with you. You have the right look. Genuine. I knew I should be able to tell. At my age a skin peels from the spirit and one senses things at once. But you kept me waiting. I even began to think you had not come.’
‘I didn’t mean to,’ I said, flummoxed.
‘And how long have you been here?’ There was a hint of imperious displeasure in her voice.
‘I’ve been in Russia a little more than three weeks.’
‘Ah, so long? Well, I cannot rely on being told the truth. I have to allow for that.’ Her eyelids fell, revealing the bruised, violet-coloured eye-pits.
I didn’t know what on earth she was talking about. ‘I am Rose Gowrie,’ I said. She opened her eyes, now their blackness seemed opaque, then light and life gleamed in them.
‘So indeed you are: Rose Gowrie come from Scotland,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘And I am Irene Drutsko.’
The name, as even I knew, was one of the oldest in Russian history. The Drutskos looked down on the Romanovs as parvenus.
‘Yes, I am a Drutsko, by birth as well as marriage. We have a lot of the old Rurik blood in us. They say by the time we are five-and-twenty we are all either saints or mad; I leave you to discover which I am.’ Again the eyelids drooped, but were raised quickly – although with an effort, I thought. ‘No, you need not kiss my hand,’ she went on. ‘Your own birth is noble. Besides, your grandfather was my lover when he was an attaché here. It was a short but most enjoyable relationship.’
‘That must have been my great-grandfather,’ I said. ‘He was here. I’ve seen his portrait in Russian dress – very romantic’
‘So? One confuses the generations at my age. Yes, he was very beautiful. He loved me to distraction. When he was called back to London he said he would se suicider.’
‘He was eighty-two when he died,’ I said. He had also had eight children and two wives, both married and all begotten after his sojourn in St Petersburg. I wondered what he had said to her. He had gone down in our family sagas as a tremendous old liar. A great beauty, though, as she had said. We all got our looks from him.
She ignored my remark as, later, she was to ignore what did not fit in with the picture of her world as she saw it. Instead she said: ‘How strange that the blood of that worldly man should run in your veins. Truly the ways of God are beyond us.’ She took my hand caressingly. ‘Ah, my little miracle, my little treasure from God.’
‘Am I?’ I said doubtfully, withdrawing my hand as gently as I could; dry and cold as her hand was, it seemed to take warmth from mine. All the same, my professional interest was aroused. She was a sick woman. I could feel it in the thin, dry, papery quality of her skin. No healthy hand has such skin. It was hard to get my hand away, for her age she had a firm grip. ‘I’m here to be companion to Ariadne and to talk English to her.’ For some reason I did not mention my more important reason for coming to Russia: the medical work I was going to do at Shereshevo. I think I knew instinctively that such a scheme would find no favour with the Princess Irene.
‘Ah?’ Her eyes lit up with mockery. ‘Is that what you think?’
‘Of course. Madame Denisov – is she your niece – engaged me,’ I said stoutly. It seemed to me that I was obscurely defending myself, although I couldn’t tell why. A little trickle of alarm moved inside me. Of course it had been Madame Denisov who offered me my position. What did the old lady mean?
There was a moment of silence, and during it I became more aware of my surroundings. I was standing by the bed; behind me was the door through which I had come in. Now I noticed that in the wall behind the bed was yet another door. I wondered where it led.
‘You think so?’ Her question seemed to give her satisfaction. She shook her head. ‘No, Ariadne is not so important. You have come to me. Do you think Dolly is the only one with ailments? Not that she has any, whatever she may think, she is as strong as a little horse. She smokes too much, of course, but they all do.’
‘I didn’t know Madame Denisov was ill,’ I said, surprised.
‘Nor is she; I have just been saying so. Don’t you listen, girl? Sick in her mind she may be at times; she certainly ought to be with the way she plays at cards and all the worries this family has.’ She paused, and added ironically: ‘So you are her wonder-worker, who will train her silly peasant women in the ways of good health? So she says.’ She gave a sceptical titter.
‘You do know, then?’
‘Of course I know. I know everything there is to know up here in my tower.’ Still the mocking note in her voice. She would be a devil if she was angry, I thought, but in spite of her great age there was an immense attractiveness welling out of her. She seemed like the Sphinx itself to me, only half human, richly encrusted with memories of worlds long gone, and full of mystery. ‘But I shan’t let you be wasted on a pack of illiterate peasants.’ Her eyes glittered. ‘No, you are too valuable a property to leave in my Dolly’s feckless hands. I can see there will have to be a little war between us.’
‘I don’t think I want to be the subject of a war.’
‘You can’t help it, my dear, you are chosen. Life chose you.’ She gave me an amused look. ‘Shall I tell you what I know? No, after all, I won’t. It will be more amusing for me to see you move to strings pulled by you know not whom. At my age, what is left but to be a voyeur?’
I did not properly understand her, but this only added to her amusement. ‘Although I will admit, my dear, that I have hopes of returning to more active life with your help.’ She gave a little cackle of laughter. ‘You will help me, my dear, but I do not promise to help you. That is the law of my world. Struggle, little moth, in your web.’
‘You’re a wicked old woman,’ I said; but there was so much humour in her, black as it was, that she captivated me still.
Behind her the door opened an inch or two, then halted.
She saw it too, reflect
ed in the mirror; she stopped in mid-sentence. Behind the wrinkles and the rouge and the powder her expression changed, amusement and satisfaction draining away and blankness taking their place.
I looked at the door: it was still open, I hadn’t imagined the first movement. Someone must be standing behind it, waiting to come in.
‘Please go now,’ the Princess said, leaning back on her pillows and closing her eyes. Pretending to close them, I thought, because I could see a glimmer through those painted lashes. ‘After all, I am greatly fatigued. Goodbye, my dear, your arrival is my great joy. Come again soon. I will arrange it.’
‘But Madame Denisov – ’ I began. ‘I mean, I don’t know what she expects …’
She interrupted me. ‘I find it best to make my own dispositions. Goodbye for the moment. I shall soon be greatly in your debt.’
Did the door move a fraction as I went away? In the mirror I thought I saw it did.
I was halfway down the red staircase when it struck me that from where she lay in her bed the old lady could watch both the doors. More, anyone opening either door could see who was in the room, reflected in the mirror, before entering. What a room for conspirators.
I didn’t mention anything of this to Dolly Denisov or Ariadne. I wasn’t proud of either my original inquisitiveness or the secrecy it led to. It was Russia, I see that now; and in particular, the way Russia manifested itself in the Denisov household. Without my knowing it, the atmosphere of the house was affecting me.
But the next day Dolly Denisov raised the subject herself, in her own way, and obliquely. We met over the teacups while Dolly smoked and Ariadne nibbled macaroons.
‘You have settled down so well, Miss Gowrie.’ Dolly smoothed her glossy hair, which today was pinned back with a tortoiseshell and diamond comb, shaped like a fan. ‘I am so happy.’
‘I love it all,’ I said with honesty.
‘And soon letters from home will start arriving, and that sad little look I see at the back of the eyes will have gone.’
‘Yes,’ I said. But none from Patrick. No letters, ever again, from Patrick. I don’t think Dolly Denisov can ever have been truly in love or she would not have said what she did. But perhaps she didn’t believe it. Hard to tell with Dolly.
‘You miss your family, of course you do. We Russians understand about families. That is why we live in such huge houses, so we can all be together.’ She reached out for a cigarette, and the dark silk of her flowing tea-gown slid away from her arm to show half a dozen barbaric-looking gold bracelets. ‘Even in this house we have an old aunt living. She is too old and frail for you to meet, she sees no one,’ said Dolly easily.
I said nothing. Old, Princess Irene certainly was, I thought; frail too, no doubt; but it wasn’t true she saw no one. She had seen me. I was opening my mouth to confess all, when Dolly swept on. ‘One day, perhaps, I will take you up to see her. She is history personified. Do you know, as a girl she danced with Prince Metternich? She was a great flirt. Well, more than that, I’m afraid; one couldn’t say she stopped short at flirting, precisely. So many scandals.’ Dolly laughed indulgently. ‘Never really beautiful, but she knew how to attract. Oh, she was worldly, Tante Irene, and now look what she has come to: a recluse, quite cut off, seeing no one. The sadness!’
I kept quiet. I wondered if it was true about her being quite cut off. I had got the distinct impression the Princess received exactly whom she liked in the tower.
Next day, after walking with Ariadne, there was a budget of letters from home waiting for me. I longed to carry them straight up to my room, but Ariadne said no, there was a special visitor in the drawing-room and I must come in and meet him.
‘Oh, who?’
She screwed her face up in a wry grimace. ‘I suppose you would call him a suitor.’
‘A suitor? For you?’ I was surprised. She seemed so young.
‘Oh, don’t worry, Miss Rose, these things take years and years in Russia.’ She smiled. ‘I’m not supposed to know. But of course I do. Goodness, my nurse told me of the arrangement when I was five. But I pretend I don’t know. My mother understands I know, but she pretends that I don’t, too.’ Then she sighed. ‘I shall have to make up my mind soon or it will be too late.’
‘You can choose, then?’
‘Oh, I expect so,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Mamma would never force me to anything, but why should it be no? He’s rich, gentle, and quite pretty, I think.’
‘We say handsome with a man,’ I said.
‘Handsome, then,’ accepted Ariadne blithely.
In the drawing-room were two men. One was Peter Alex-androvitch and the other – yes, seeing him suddenly through Ariadne’s eyes, he was handsome.
‘My Uncle Peter,’ introduced Ariadne, ‘whom you know. And this …’ no doubt from her voice and manner of amused archness that this was her suitor, and that she was enjoying my astonishment … ‘Edward Lacey.’
I held out my hand. ‘I am very glad to see you, Major Lacey.’ And it was true. I was surprised at how happy I was to see him. How secretive they had been, neither telling me until now of their particular interest in each other. Yet it was a private matter, of course, and not the sort of thing to be discussed with a new acquaintance.
Ariadne and I had interrupted a conversation about a famous Russian writer who had just, inexplicably committed suicide. ‘He killed himself,’ said Peter Alexandrov. ‘Shot himself through the mouth. Oh, there is a sickness in our society, all right, and where can it all end?’
‘It is part of your sickness to have no answer,’ said Edward Lacey.
‘Possibly. Or too many answers.’
‘Oh, politics, politics, they can never touch us.’ Ariadne interrupted their conversation with gaiety. ‘Let us ignore unpleasantness and have a good time.’
‘Wretched little butterfly,’ said Edward, but he seemed to enjoy her prattle. Presently the two of them went over to the piano where he turned the pages and Ariadne played and sang. I suppose it was a courtship in the Russian style.
The music began, and Peter and I were left looking at each other. Then Peter gave a short laugh. ‘Ariadne knows nothing, and yet she knows everything. She is like an animal that senses instinctively how to lead a happy life. But give her time, she will grow up. The women in our family mature late. But Ariadne will still be happy, it is her gift.’
Perhaps that was what Edward Lacey liked, and perhaps it was the gift I lacked. ‘Lucky Ariadne,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘Ah, but you have your own gifts.’
Our eyes met, and I seemed to read understanding in his. ‘I think I know what you mean; my gift of healing. But it’s such a little thing, perhaps nothing at all, mere imagination.’ I found myself telling him about the boy in the village, about a dog I had once helped, even about a bird’s wing that I had healed. ‘And yet, small as it is, my gift may have ruined my life.’ I was thinking of Patrick.
‘Your life is only just beginning,’ said Peter. ‘You do not know what you may become.’
‘In Russia?’ I queried, half smiling.
But Peter said nothing more, and soon the others came back from the piano and suggested that we go out to see the new horse that Edward Lacey had just bought and which was ‘a regular winner’. Then, after looking the beast over, I was able to go back to my room, where I sat down by the window and opened my letters from home.
My sister Grizel’s was the longest and the least well spelt, and Alec’s was the shortest, produced in his best copperplate hand, and containing one brief sentence about seeing a fox. Grizel produced a string of home news, such as the state of her Sunday hat, the sad disappearance of our best laying hen (a fox was suspected) and the fact that she was invited to a house-party at Glamis and had ‘absolutely nothing to wear and no way to get there except by walking’.
I raised my head and smiled. I knew that Grizel would get to her house-party – some hopeful suitor would constrain his mother or his sister or his aunt to drive her over – and
she would look delightful in her old clothes.
Tibby’s letter was more down-to-earth; she too mentioned the hen, which was obviously a sore point with the whole family, but blamed the local tinkers and not the fox. She concentrated on health. She told me how the minister was, how his wife was, how the postie’s rheumatism had made him ‘terrible slow’ with his letters lately, and finally she told me how she, Grizel and my brother were. I was delighted to hear that they all seemed in rude health. But as I turned the last page of her letter I saw a frantic postscript which seemed to have been jointly written by her and Grizel.
‘My dear Rose,’ wrote Tibby, ‘we have just heard that a terrible trouble has fallen upon the Grahams. Patrick has disgraced himself in India and must leave his regiment in dishonour. We don’t know the details as yet; I dare say we never shall, but I feel for his poor mother.’
In Grizel’s hand, I read: ‘Rose darling, Patrick is accused of mutiny, who would have believed it of him? And he has fled. No one knows his whereabouts, not even his mother. Well, thank goodness you are not married to him, my love, that’s what I say.’
But I thought: poor Patrick, poor Patrick. And I also thought how little I knew him after all.
That night, instead of dreaming about Patrick I dreamt about myself. Troubled, restless dreams in which my own identity seemed lost, and I wandered like a ghost through an unknown countryside.
I woke in the pale dawn and lay looking as the sunlight began to colour the room. I held my hands up in front of me; ordinary, quite pretty hands, with long fingers and the narrow nails inherited by all the Gowries. Why should my hands be working hands, hands to heal, when the hands of all my forebears – except for the soldiers’ – had been idle ones? And yet I knew my hands must work. I wanted to feel them scrubbed clean and sterile, ready to do what I asked of them. And then at the end of the day I wanted to feel they had achieved what I had asked of them. It wasn’t exactly that I thought of myself as a healer, although I hoped I would be; it was simply that there was a job I seemed born for, head, hands and heart, and I longed to be at it.
The Red Staircase Page 6