The Red Staircase

by Gwendoline Butler

Even at that moment of distress I could manage an inward smile; Dolly Denisov knew as little about solitude as any women living, and as little needed its restorative power; resilience was her hallmark.

  I went to my own room which, except for the quiet presence of Laure Le Brun which always seemed to hang about it, was tranquil. I looked at my row of medical books, so confidently displayed on my work-table. I sat down and looked at them and thought they represented the accumulated wisdom of failure: so much work, so much experiment, amounting in the end to utter helplessness in the face of sickness. Our drugs, our techniques were simply not enough.

  ‘And yet, in the human spirit there are healing powers,’ I murmured obstinately. ‘I must believe that, it is the only way forward.’

  How strange is human nature. Instead of avoiding me, the village women now sought me out. When I went down to my ‘clinic’ the next morning, I found a few of them already waiting for me. And at the end of the morning, after I had cleansed and bound up a few minor wounds, and offered some simple medications for headaches and upset digestive tracts, my despondent mood began to lift. I saw that, modestly, I could make a beginning.

  The next ten days were very quiet, but happy for me. I went everyday to the village, where I was beginning to make friends – among whom were several women whom I was planning to recruit for my self-help schemes. I worked, and sometimes Ariadne and I walked together, not saying much, but companionable. For long stretches I was alone, or about my own business; Ariadne had a trick of absenting herself when she chose. One couldn’t blame her for wanting some solitude, she got little enough of it. I too was glad to be alone to think my own thoughts, which were perplexing. Dolly Denisov was elusive. She was certainly in the house and I occasionally heard her voice, but she was not much seen.

  ‘And what have you two girls been doing while I have been busy?’ was Dolly’s first question when we met. ‘That is, I know what you have been doing, Rose, and “Well done” is what I say. But what about you, Ariadne?’

  ‘Doing nothing, Mamma,’ said Ariadne. ‘But doing it very well.’

  ‘Ah, if only one could be sure that with you nothing really means nothing,’ said Dolly.

  ‘Ask Rose,’ returned Ariadne. ‘We have been together the whole time.’

  I looked at her in some surprise. This was not quite the whole truth: we had been apart for considerable periods. The girl had a knack, not of deliberately lying, but of glossing over the truth.

  ‘Then how do you account for the fact that the stables inform me that you constantly bring back my horses hard-ridden and exhausted?’ asked Dolly with asperity.

  I turned towards Ariadne sharply: she did not meet my eyes. ‘Just touring the countryside,’ she said to her mother. ‘Just exploring.’

  ‘Alone? And the horses? So exhausted? How far had they travelled?’

  ‘Next time I shall take a bicycle,’ said Ariadne smoothly.

  ‘There will not be a next time,’ answered Dolly, turning smartly on her heel and leaving the room.

  When she had closed the door, I said: ‘And where were you? Where is it you went?’

  ‘Oh, over towards Vyksa, where there is a copper mine. One of the daughters of the manager is a particular friend of mine. My mother doesn’t like me to go there. She thinks the girl is not of what she calls “the right class” to be my friend.’

  ‘And where did you meet her?’ I said, puzzled.

  ‘She was at school with me, at the Smolny Institute. Yes, occasionally girls from less than noble family are admitted to the Smolny if they have the right letters of recommendation; and her father is an important official. We left together. Well, we were expelled, really.’ She looked at me from under her eyelashes, aware that she was offering a confidence. ‘Sent away, you know.’

  ‘Oh.’ I considered this revelation. So this was what the old Princess Irene had meant by her sharp comment on Ariadne’s schooling. ‘Why were you expelled?’

  Ariadne shrugged. ‘One never gets a straight answer to that sort of thing. They are so arbitrary. I had done nothing wrong. I expect Marisia was too clever.’

  I looked at her doubtfully. I saw she was going to say nothing more. ‘I’ve heard the Institute has very clever teachers,’ I said.

  ‘You should let my uncle Peter hear that, it would amuse him. He taught there once for a while.’

  ‘Did he?’ I was genuinely surprised, not having seen Peter Alexandrov in a tutelary light.

  ‘Yes, he taught European history. He was quite a pet of old Princess Elena Lieven, the Directress; Nelly, we called her. But it was only for a few months, until they found a permanent teacher. All the girls loved him.’ She giggled. ‘He’s very attractive, of course.’

  ‘I’d like to see the Smolny Institute,’ I said.

  ‘Speak to him about it. He still visits Princess Lieven. Talk to him yourself.’

  All I said in reply was: ‘Next time you visit your friend at Vyksa, you’d better take me with you.’

  Ariadne gave a small shiver. ‘I don’t think you’d like it. In many ways it is a terrible place.’

  We were interrupted then by a summons to a meal and I never had a chance to ask why Vyksa was so terrible. But that was my introduction to that name and place which everyone knew of and no one, except some administrators of the Tsar, wished to acknowledge.

  Edward Lacey arrived the next week and the atmosphere of the house changed. Life and sociability poured in. Visitors started to arrive, many of them motoring some distance in order to get to us at Shereshevo. There was talk of picnics and tennis parties, and even of a dance. It seemed that people would travel a hundred miles to visit each other in the depths of the Russian countryside.

  I was part of it and yet not part of it. Ariadne was gay and cheerful and introduced me to everyone, as did Dolly. I was included in every invitation, asked to everything; but never had I felt so separated from my hosts. To begin with, I refused to let it take me away from my daily visits to the white-washed hut in the village, where I was slowly building up a list of patients. And then it gradually became apparent that, except for a few idle games of tennis and one afternoon when we all took tea-baskets down to the banks of the river and ate our tea there (which counted as a picnic, I suppose), none of the projected plans would come to anything. Nothing was going to happen. People arrived and they sat around and talked. They certainly did talk – endlessly, imaginatively, wittily and charmingly. But in the end, boringly.

  Not that I found Peter Alexandrov boring. On the contrary, he seemed tirelessly interesting, continually revealing fresh aspects of himself. He took pains over me. ‘Here are your letters,’ he said one morning. ‘I know you look forward to them. I like to bring them to you.’

  ‘Oh, thank you.’ I grasped them eagerly, and took them up to my room to read. A letter from Grizel, one from an old friend in the village, and another in a writing I did not recognize which had been delivered by hand. The dark blue seal on the envelope, though, gave me a clue as to the writer. I opened this letter first.

  Princess Irene wrote in an antique, wavering script which was yet perfectly legible. She had only two things to say and both concerned herself.

  ‘You will be glad to know that I continue in undiminished strength. But I have had a good deal of neuralgia in my arm and I should be obliged if you would turn your attention to it. The right arm, I may say.’

  I stopped in my reading. Her command would have been laughable if the appeal had not been so naked. And the pain was from her heart, I knew that, and not neuralgia of unknown origin.

  Princess Irene went on: ‘Pray remember to keep up your own strength by drinking two glasses of red wine each day. It seems advisable: Oblige me by keeping away from the peasants, they are full of infection.’

  She meant she didn’t wish me to sicken and die. But I supposed at her age it was legitimate to be a monster of selfishness. The letter was signed: I. Mikhailovna Drutsko in letters about half an inch high, a splendid, sprawling,
baroque structure of a signature.

  I put the letter aside with a mixture of reverence and amusement. Then I opened my sister’s letter. Grizel wrote: ‘This is to tell you that Patrick’s mother, Mrs Graham, took a heart attack last Tuesday and died at once. The girls are packing up and leaving the village to live in Edinburgh. I suppose we shall never see them again, nor hear more of Patrick. Strange and terrible, is it not, how quickly they are all removed from our lives?’ She remained my affectionate sister Grizel, and in that capacity – having dropped the role of sober moralist on life – had a postscript of her own to add: ‘Dearest Sis, I have refused Archie this first time, but mean to accept him next time round.’

  Archie? I thought. Who is Archie? Nothing had prepared me for Archie, she had never mentioned him before. But, poor Mrs Graham, was my last thought as I put the two letters safely away in the drawer of my writing desk. Silence was the best answer to both for the time being.

  Yet perhaps my thinking about my letters was more obvious than I conceived. Later that morning Peter said: ‘You’re very quiet these days, Miss Rose.’

  ‘Am I?’ I was surprised. ‘Perhaps it’s because you all talk so much.’

  ‘Yes, we do rather.’ He said it with amusement. ‘It’s the relief of being out of “Piter”.’ In the country even Peter’s vocabulary relaxed and became more casual; ‘Piter’ was St Petersburg. ‘It’s an oppressive town. It’s the geography of it, I dare say, with the constant juxtaposition of water and great buildings. In the country we relax, and we drink too much, and of course that always makes Russians talk too much as well.’

  In the country Peter abandoned the stiff town clothes that were prescribed for St Petersburg, and wore a casual jacket buttoned to the neck, and a soft, round-necked shirt underneath. The influence of peasant dress was unmistakable, but it was practical and cool. (Edward Lacey, of course, stuck to his good English tweeds, and sweltered.)

  ‘Anyway, you will no longer have any cause to reproach me. I am going to do something positive.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, and don’t raise your eyebrows like that, please. It involves you. Aha, now I’ve surprised you, haven’t I?’

  ‘Yes, certainly you have.’

  ‘Don’t you remember what I promised? In St Petersburg? Surely you can’t have forgotten? I flattered myself it meant something to you.’

  ‘Tell me,’ I said, laughing. He was impossible in this mood.

  ‘I’m going to teach you to drive my motor-car.’ He looked at me in triumph.

  ‘Oh, well, as to that, I don’t know,’ I began, thinking I would really have to consult my employer.

  ‘Say you will learn. You must learn to drive. There are immense distances to cover in Russia, and it will be very useful to you.’

  ‘While I am here, perhaps,’ I said sharply. ‘Which, after all, will only be for a limited time.’

  ‘But supposing you could be persuaded to stay?’ And he looked at me again, amused and coaxing.

  What could I say? How could I say that Tibby’s last words to me had been to warn me against men of the Russian aristocracy whom she castigated as ‘unreliable’? And unreliable in her terminology meant only one thing, that they were sexually unreliable, seducers and not husbands. Was Peter ‘unreliable’? I thought it highly probable that he was, for surely he could have no serious interest in me? But I was flattered. And, in spite of myself, attracted to him.

  After all, why not? He had wealth, intellect and good manners. As Ariadne said, he was attractive. Why not try for a great match? Grizel meant to, and when I had engaged myself to marry for love, I had been jilted. Perhaps Peter had other plans for me, but I thought that, when it came down to it, my will and my determination might be as great as his. Quite calmly, I let a little seed of ambition take root inside me. It was a coldly silent decision and I was surprised at how easy it was; Russia was changing me.

  And yet, was it really so much out of character? Tibby, for all the way she talked, did not expect us to marry the local dominie or even a poor farmer. We were expected to marry within our class, and to do the best we could for ourselves. This was the unspoken assumption behind much of our behaviour. I might remain unmarried, but convention demanded that if I did marry, I had better do it well.

  So I laughed at Peter, and agreed that I would let him teach me to drive his motor car, and promised to take the first lesson that afternoon.

  Straight after lunch, then, Peter said: ‘Go and get a dust coat, Rose, and I will take you driving.’

  I looked questioningly at Dolly Denisov. Might she disapprove? But she just shrugged and laughed. ‘You will need goggles as well, my dear, and a chiffon scarf over your hat. Our roads are so powdery and dry that you will be covered with a layer of dust before you have driven out of sight of the house. I wouldn’t do it for anything.’

  ‘I’ll get my coat, then. I have a tussore one that will do.’ I stood up. The men stood up politely also. Over Ariadne’s head, I saw Dolly Denisov and Edward Lacey exchange looks. To my surprise, in Dolly’s expression there was something astonishingly like entreaty, and in his, complicity. I felt a sensation like embarrassment, as if I’d discovered something about them. ‘I’ll hurry,’ I said, and ran up to my room.

  It took longer than I had expected to array myself in my loose coat and arrange a soft scarf over my hat. I was wearing a natural-coloured straw boater which I secured to my head with two long hatpins, and when I had tied a pale cream chiffon silk scarf over that and tied it under my chin, I thought it looked rather fetching. So I spent a little time improving the effect by fluffing my hair out round my temples and rubbing some papier poudré over my cheeks. I suppose I ought to have felt ashamed of myself, but I didn’t. Instead, I felt quite gleeful. When I studied my face in the looking-glass, I saw that my eyes were bright, my cheeks pink, and there was just a touch too much powder on my nose. I attended to the powder with a handkerchief.

  At that moment I was prepared to say goodbye for ever to Patrick Graham.

  I ran down the stairs, and when I was halfway down them I heard someone whistling in one of the rooms on the floor below.

  As a whistle, it was not very tuneful. It was true, as Peter had implied, no one in this house was musical. But I recognized the tune. Someone was whistling ‘My love is like a red, red rose.’ I had heard Patrick hum and sing it so often that to me it was irretrievably associated with him.

  What was so strange and surprising was hearing it whistled there in the heart of Russia.

  I ran down the stairs, and paused in the wide upper hall from which all the rooms on that floor opened. The whistling had stopped, and there was no sound now to be heard. All the doors stood open, as almost all doors did at Shereshevo, to promote the flow of cool air. No one was in the library, nor in the smaller room which Ariadne and I used as our work room. I hurried into the large sitting-room which led to the terrace. Surely the whistler must be in here? I longed to know who it was. But the room was empty, except for Ariadne, who was just entering from the terrace.

  ‘Who was that whistling? Did you see?’ I asked her at once.

  She looked surprised. ‘I don’t know. Someone went out of the further window as I came in. At least, I think so, but I really was not looking. And I didn’t hear whistling. I’m so sorry. Does it matter?’

  ‘No, no, of course not. So silly of me, but it was the tune,’ I said, not very coherently. ‘I knew it of old.’

  ‘It reminded you of home, I suppose,’ said Ariadne slowly. I nodded. ‘I wonder who it was, then?’

  ‘It was badly enough whistled to be any one of you,’ I said, with a half-laugh which was almost a sob. The very strength of my reaction to the tune should have alerted me to the state of my feelings still for Patrick.

  ‘If the tune reminded you of your home, then it is most likely to have been Edward,’ said Ariadne reasonably. ‘But I have never heard him whistle. Why not ask?’

  But I was calmer now. ‘Oh, that wou
ld be making too much of it altogether. Besides, where is he?’

  ‘Gone off somewhere with mother,’ admitted Ariadne, and she added sympathetically: ‘But people never remember what they whistle, sometimes it’s as unconscious as breathing.’ Then she added, as she skipped off on her own business: ‘And, after all, perhaps you imagined it and there was no one there at all.’

  ‘I imagined it? Never,’ I thought. But no one there at all? Yes, that was perfectly possible. A strange idea was forming in my mind.

  I stood there for a moment, remembering the exquisite pain of the moment when I had heard the whistled tune: ‘My love is like the melodie, That’s sweetly played in tune.’ Oh, Patrick, Patrick. Then I collected myself and went on down the steps from the terrace to the waiting motor-car and to Peter.

  The driving lesson consisted for the most part of my sitting beside Peter while he talked. I did take the wheel on a long straight stretch of the road, where I managed to control the vehicle more or less steadily. Perhaps I did show a tendency to veer towards the right, but Peter assured me that ladies always did this and it was very natural. The dust rose up from the road in clouds, coating hands and face, and entering nostrils, mouth and eyes. I don’t know how Peter managed conversation without choking, but I could not.

  ‘You’re very quiet,’ he complained, half amused, half serious, I thought. He had wanted me to enjoy this new experience.

  ‘Oh, but it’s the dust. I can’t make light conversation with my mouth full of what feels like sand.’

  ’You were quiet when we set out. I saw your face before you draped that bit of chiffon over it, and very serious you looked too.’

  ‘Perhaps I was frightened at the thought of learning to drive this great car,’ I said as lightly as I could.

  ‘Not you. You handle it as if there was not a nerve in your body.’

  ‘You win; it wasn’t the idea of a drive. No, just before we came out I heard a tune whistled that reminded me of – ’ I hesitated. ‘Of so much that had better be forgotten.’

  ‘You looked as though you’d seen a ghost.’