When I got back I told Dolly about my success at the hospital, but about my visit to my godfather’s factory I said nothing.
Old Erskine Gowrie, however, remained much on my mind. I was to pay him a second visit and, if I could manage it, I intended to go on my own, as he had requested. But I was not surprised when a note from Miss Emma announced the hour when I would be expected by him and informed me that she would, of course, be coming with me. I had already noticed that it was really quite difficult to do anything privately in Russia, but whether this was a trouble peculiar to me as a visitor or whether it afflicted everyone, I was too new to the country to know. It tended to make me secretive, as in my visits to the hospital and to the Princess Irene up the Red Staircase.
Life was very pleasant for me. Dolly was charming to me and Peter hung around Ariadne and me, making jokes and offering us treats, like a special visit to the theatre. I could see as plainly as anything that I was a favourite – and I didn’t like it. It didn’t seem the right answer to my worries about Mademoiselle: I felt she deserved more, and I deserved less.
It was a jolly time for Ariadne, riding in the late morning with Edward Lacey on a sprightly black horse, with me jogging along behind on a discreet mare, then walking to tea-parties with her young friends in the afternoons, where they giggled over the teacups while I acted the dowager on the sofa. I seemed to enjoy myself, indeed I did enjoy it all, but, underneath, my questions about Mademoiselle’s death still trickled on, like water over stones.
Emma Gowrie came to collect me for my visit to my godfather and we walked the short distance to the house together, both of us agreeing that on such a fine, sunny day we preferred to walk rather than be driven.
‘I could have gone on my own,’ I said. ‘After all, Godfather did invite me to.’
‘He forgets things,’ Emma said in a practical way, quite unembarrassed. ‘Besides, I like to keep an eye on him. No, it’s better that I go with you.’
But Godfather had not forgotten. He was sitting up in his big chair, in his brocade dressing-gown, with an embroidered cap on his head, looking more than ever like an old mandarin.
‘Ah, there you are. Thought you’d come, Emma.’
‘I usually do,’ she said placidly. ‘Once a week when I can. And when you don’t turn me away.’
‘Now, when do I do that?’
‘Frequently. Not that I take any notice. Someone has to keep an eye on you.’
‘Emma Gowrie, may I remind you that I have lawyers, bankers, doctors, nurses and business assistants all around me ready to spring to my assistance?’ He seemed very alert today, his speech a little blurred but his mind clear.
‘But they’re not family,’ said Emma, settling herself comfortably.
‘All the better for it,’ he said.
‘Ah, you disagreeable old man.’ She was in no wise put out, however, and Erskine Gowrie accepted her remark calmly. They were old antagonists.
Tea was brought in at this point, Russian-style tea, scalding hot as usual. Emma handed a glass of it to Erskine. ‘That’s your good hand, isn’t it?’ she asked – tactlessly I thought.
‘Good hand, bad hand,’ he grumbled. ‘What does it matter?’ But his hand shook and hot tea spilled down on him. Emma rushed forward to deal with it.
‘Go away, Emma, go away,’ he said irritably. ‘Go right away. I can feel you watching me and it makes me nervous.’ Emma made a move to the door and I rose too. ‘Leave the girl, leave the girl,’ he ordered.
Dutifully I stayed as Emma, somewhat flushed, departed. ‘I’ll wait outside, dear,’ she said in a loud whisper.
I sat down, but my godfather remained for so long without speaking that I began to wonder if he might not drop off to sleep without anything more being said. So I made a start myself. ‘I’ve been to see your factory,’ I said. That woke him up.
‘Have you indeed? You’re an adventurous lassie. And what took you there?’ I had thought he might be angry, but he sounded pleased.
‘I happened to pass it one day with Madame Denisov, and when I went that way again I seized my chance to look at it. After all, it is something our family has made.’
‘Oh, is that how you think of it? Well, let me tell you it was my father and then me that made it what it was, what it is.’ He closed his eyes; I felt he must be tired. ‘Such as it is, such as it is,’ he said softly. ‘Am I proud of it or not? Now, at the end of the day, I don’t know.’ He opened his eyes. ‘Does it still look as it did? I don’t get there myself these days.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, surprised at the question. ‘It was going full tilt, anyway, and looked very prosperous.’
‘Aye, it will be that,’ he muttered.
‘I saw a tall, burly man walking round, apparently in command. Who would that be?’ I asked, curious.
‘That will be Andrew Grossetête,’ he murmured.
‘Is he French, then?’ I was surprised.
‘No, that is only what I call him: Grossetête. He has rather a large head. Not physically, you know, but he thinks well of himself. Grossetête. There was a bishop called that in English history. I read greatly in English history. Or I did. I did.’ He was rambling a little now. ‘But a good man, one of the best, Andrew.’
‘I think I should go now,’ I said, seeing that his eyes were still closed. ‘I’ve worn you out. I’ll see you again, Godfather, when I come back from the country.’
‘The country in Russia is where no one goes for good,’ he announced sharply. Then his eyes opened. ‘I want to put something to you, my girl. I have an arrangement to make.’
I supposed he meant me to nurse him or some such thing. That was what men like him usually meant by ‘an arrangement’: something to do with their own comfort.
‘Of course,’ I said soothingly. ‘But you’re tired now.’
‘Yes, I am. But I shall write. Expect a letter in that goddamned place of Dolly Denisov’s.’
I did not really think there would be any letters for me, as I had heard from home so recently, but when I arrived back at the Denisov house I found one from Grizel waiting for me. It was a thick letter, thicker than Grizel usually achieved. I was grateful that Ariadne was out with her mother. In the privacy of my room I opened it and read it.
Grizel’s letter was wrapped round an enclosure, another envelope, this time one of dirty yellow as if it had travelled a long way, and been cheap paper to start with. My own name, Rose Gowrie, was scratched out, as if by a broken pen.
I read Grizel’s letter first. ‘I expect you’ll be surprised to get this, Rose. I know I was when Mr Graham came round with it and asked me to send it on to you. In fact, I almost wondered whether I would. The past ought to bury itself, I think. But Tibby says it’s none of my business. So here it is. I may say old mother Graham was pretty cross that the letter had come with one to her and not gone to you direct. But I said perhaps Patrick only had one stamp. From what I gathered, there wasn’t much information in her letter, which made her cross as well. Of course, she’s always been jealous of you.’
There was more to her letter, news about that fox again, about her visit to Glamis – I was right – she had managed to get there – and affectionate messages to me, but I did not read it then. Instead I opened the letter from Patrick. It was very short, and written in pale ink on cheap paper, which made me think Grizel’s joke about the stamp not so wide of the mark.
‘Dearest Rose,’ Patrick had written, ‘now that I know myself to be hopelessly lost and cut off from you for ever, I want you to know that I truly loved you. Even when I broke things off between us and went away, I retained the hope that I might come back. Now I know I never shall. Don’t think of me any more. Forget me. I have put a padlock and chain round my own neck, and thrown away the key. Goodbye for ever, dearest girl. Goodbye.’
My first reaction was anger: anger at the way Patrick indulged his own emotions at the expense of mine. First offering me love, then taking it away, then giving it back to me ag
ain, just as it suited him. I was so angry for a moment that I almost tore the letter up.
Then I saw something bigger in the letter. It was a call for remembrance. ‘Forget me,’ he wrote, but it was not what he meant. No, he wanted to be remembered.
‘When Patrick wrote that,’ I said aloud. ‘He thought he was about to die. Or if not die, to enter some region from which he could never return.’
It was a fantastic thought, but I was convinced it was true. We had been like lovers in a fairy story, going innocently along on our happy way till an evil spell fell upon us and all our lives were changed from thenceforth.
There was hardly any night now in St Petersburg. In the small hours a silvery, ghost-like light settled over everything, but there was no true darkness. In this grey gloom the whole world seemed unreal and insubstantial. Restless and unable to sleep, my mind full of unresolved problems, I would get up, and for long periods stand staring out of the window. My bedroom window looked down on the street. Even in the middle of the night there were always a few people moving about below. The streets of St Petersburg were never empty. It was very hot and airless; I thought I would, after all, be glad to be in the country.
Preparations for our move were well in hand. Princess Irene, it seemed, was something of a problem. Dolly had made it clear to me, without fuss or recrimination – my intrusiveness, apparently, was forgiven – that my meetings with Tante Irene were now, somehow, common knowledge, and so there was no need to maintain a reserve about her existence, and mention of her even appeared in the conversation.
‘It seems impossible either to take her or leave her behind,’ I heard Dolly grumble, and I knew whom she meant.
‘Oh, the journey would be impossible for her,’ said Peter. ‘I believe strong sunlight would cause her to crumble away. In any case, she won’t come.’
‘Oh, she stays, of course,’ said Dolly with irritation.
Although they talked about the old lady and called her mad, I felt that I was the only one who was aware of her true oddity. She was not just mad with old age, but she had created a mad atmosphere, a mad world around her. Other people were in her strange world. This Dolly and Peter seemed not to know, but I was convinced of it. She wasn’t alone in the Red Tower, or not always.
Confirmation of these thoughts came soon to me.
‘We are off to our last St Petersburg gaiety,’ Dolly announced the evening before we were supposed to leave for the country. ‘But I expect you will be glad to have a quiet evening to yourself.’
‘Yes, I will be very glad of an evening on my own,’ I said. ‘I have a lot of last-minute things I want to do.’
‘And did your new frocks arrive from the dressmaker?’ She was straightening her bracelets over her gloves, and a delicious smell of French scent was wafted from her.
‘Oh yes, they came this afternoon. Every one of them is a joy. I don’t know how to thank you enough.’
‘Nonsense, no thanks are necessary. You will need all of them. We live in those plain little dresses at Shereshevo, they are quite the thing.’
Dolly, after a quick look at my scanty wardrobe, had insisted on ordering me some summer dresses from her own dressmaker. She had called them ‘plain little dresses’, and by her standards they were, but to me they were the prettiest dresses I had ever had. I had inspected them carefully, and had already conceived the notion of copying them as a present for Grizel. The short tight skirts – mine barely came to the ankle – and the masculine tailored tops would set off her delicate looks marvellously.
I thought that Grizel would be needing some new clothes. (Distantly I seemed to hear her amused, mocking voice saying: ‘Dearest Rose, you and I are constantly in need of new clothes.’) Well, a particular need, I answered this faraway Grizel. Her letter had contained more than a hint that she might be going to be married. ‘Harry Ettrick brought me back from the Bowes-Lyon dance,’ she wrote. ‘He has a new motor-car: a Daimler, he said it was, but they all look alike to me. He’s really very rich, you know.’ I did know; we had been neighbours of the Ettricks for generations, they had always been rich and getting richer, it was a way of life with them. ‘And he likes me, Rose. He thinks I am a “deucedly pretty little thing”, but it’s more than that, I can tell, he watches what I say, and he went quite white when I accidentally let my cheek touch his as we were dancing.’ Poor Harry Ettrick, I thought, he had delivered himself over, bound and helpless, to my cool-headed sister. ‘And it’s time he was married, for he’s thirty if he’s a day, and you can see he fancies the idea if he could only pluck up the courage.’ Oh, poor Harry, I thought again. A gallant soldier, a rich landowner, the heir to a baronetcy, and after one dance at Glamis my sister had him so twisted round her little finger that she could talk about his needing courage. Grizel had something in common with Ariadne: they both shared an instinctive ability to manage a man that I thought I lacked.
So I was making paper patterns from my new dresses, and if I got time tomorrow before we set out, I would buy some inexpensive cotton in which to make them up. And while Dolly and the others were out being gay, I sat on the floor with my scissors in my hand, surrounded by paper and pins.
I had been working for an hour or so when I was interrupted by a soft tap on the door. Not Ivan, I thought, he doesn’t tap, but raps hard. ‘Come in,’ I called, scrambling to my feet.
The door was opened by the Princess Irene’s squat old maidservant, Anna, who looked no more well disposed to me than she had ever been. ‘Her Excellency desires your presence,’ she said.
‘Well, I don’t know if I can come,’ I began.
‘Come!’ said the old woman in a peremptory voice. Frail as she was, she looked capable of trying to drag me up the Red Staircase if I refused to obey. Her gentle little tap on my door had been from want of strength rather than any weakness of purpose. She must be very nearly as old as her mistress, and would certainly have been just as eccentric if life had allowed her as much licence as Princess Irene. ‘The Princess desires it and you must come.’
‘Is she ill?’ What a question, I thought. She was dying.
‘No,’ she repulsed me with the word. ‘Not for years has she been so strong.’
‘Oh, really?’ That took some thinking about.
‘But you are to come.’ While Dolly was out, I thought, as the old lady up the Red Staircase probably knew very well. ‘Quickly now, don’t keep Her Excellency waiting.’
I allowed her to lead me up the stairs, following meekly behind. Every few yards she stopped and looked round suspiciously to see if I was still there. We reached the heavy door. She opened it. ‘Here she is, Excellency.’ She gave a bobbing curtsey. ‘I have brought her. Your old Anna has brought her to you.’
For the first time the Princess Irene was out of bed, and was sitting in an armchair in the corner of the room by the pot-bellied porcelain stove, which seemed to be alight in spite of the summer heat.
‘Good.’ She clapped her hands. ‘Fetch some tea. See it is very hot, now. She can make tea,’ she confided in me. ‘She is a fool about anything else, but she can serve tea. So you are here.’ She sounded satisfied.
‘You are lucky I could come. I might have been out with Madame Denisov and Ariadne.’
‘Foolish girl. They are at Countess Alice Atabekian’s and she did not ask you. She knew better; she is an old friend of mine.’
‘I wanted to come anyway, to say goodbye,’ I said.
‘Goodbye?’
‘Yes, I am going to the country, to Shereshevo.’
‘Oh, that. But that is nothing, you will hardly be gone long.’
‘The whole summer, so Madame Denisov says.’
‘Oh, Dolly says! It is what I say that happens.’
She pointed to a chair with a gesture fit for an Empress, and as I sat down on it I noticed that there was something unusual about the room today. Always it was cluttered, but now it was untidy, with chairs and table out of position and dented cushions on the sofa. I had seen our ro
om like that at Jordansjoy after it had emptied of a party of Grizel’s and mine. Also I could smell cigarette smoke, and it did not smell like Princess Irene’s either. She smoked a rich perfumed tobacco and this one had a rougher, more masculine tang. I was certain that she had had visitors here, and a good many of them.
‘You see how well I look?’ And it was true, her eyes were bright and her skin clearer, but there was still a paper-thin fragility to her, as if there was nothing left of her now but dry skin and hair. ‘It is all due to you.’
‘No. Perhaps I gave a very little help, but mostly it has come from inside you. I gave you confidence, that is all.’
‘Confidence is life, then.’
‘Yes.’ I paused and thought. ‘Sometimes it is.’
‘But you helped my pain. Took it away.’
‘I may have done. I can never be sure.’
Her bright, gay eyes were fixed on me. What a beauty she must have been in her day. I could see what had attracted all her lovers to her, including my great-grandfather. ‘You drew the pain away as you touched me. It went through your fingers. Did it go into you?’ I shook my head. ‘Or else you transformed it into something else. Pleasure, perhaps. I know I felt pleasure.’
‘There was relief from pain. Nothing more.’
‘It felt like life itself to me.’
I shook my head. ‘I hate such talk.’
Anna came back into the room, bearing the tea on a great silver tray which was almost beyond her power to carry. I hurried forward to help. With a grunt she waved me away.
‘I’m afraid Anna doesn’t like me.’
‘She’s jealous.’ The Princess sounded well pleased. I supposed that after the sort of life she had led, the whiff of jealousy, even if only from an old servant and former serf, was a positive necessity, like incense to a pagan god. ‘Besides, she is frightened. She is an ignorant, superstitious old woman and she thinks you come from the Devil. She wants me to have you whipped and sent into a convent.’
The Red Staircase Page 12