The Red Staircase

by Gwendoline Butler

‘What do you mean? What was that you said about me being frightened of her?’ I said sharply. She was silent. ‘Come, now.’

  ‘She talks about you, calls you names, says you’re a loose woman, not a true woman, driving motor-cars.’

  ‘She’s jealous,’ I said. ‘Jealous and spiteful.’

  ‘Oh, yes. We all know that. She hates the interest the mistress takes in you. But it makes no matter, she has the power of words. You should watch her. But don’t let her know I told you, or I shall be in trouble. The mistress listens to her.’ She rubbed her ear again. ‘No, thank you, miss. I’ll take my medicine and get on with it. That way’ll be better for us both.’

  She was a realist, that girl, and knew her world, as I should have understood. I hated to settle for anything less than the utter defeat of old Sasha, all my instincts were aggressive and urged me to fight it out with her, but I did not do it.

  The next day all of us got a surprise. Peter intended to come with us to Spala; he would drive us by motor-car. ‘I shall be very useful to you on the journey,’ he said. ‘You’re a poor traveller, you know, Dolly. And you’ll be glad of my company, won’t you, Rose?’ His eyes met mine with amusement. ‘We shall speed along at ninety versts an hour, and you’ll get there in half the time.’

  Dolly gave a soft moan. ‘We shall be there before we are expected,’ she protested.

  ‘What could be better?’ He laughed. ‘That’s settled, then. I’m driving you. And Rose – you shall sit beside me and be instructed.’

  I looked at Dolly. I could see in her eyes that she was waiting for me to turn the offer down, thus accepting her advice. But the devil got into me and I said: ‘Yes, I should enjoy to do so.’

  As I followed Dolly up the staircase, Peter came up behind. ‘Yes, I shall take you safely there and then drive away into the night.’ He had caught up with me and was looking into my face. ‘Well, it will be night by the time we get there. And Madame Titov won’t ask me to stay. She has her own house at Spala, you know, and keeps her own rules. She doesn’t like me.’

  I shook my head. ‘No, I didn’t know.’

  ‘I had the misfortune to serve in the Imperial Corps des Pages with a young cousin of hers. Dissipated young devil.’ And Peter scowled. ‘He disliked me on sight – it was mutual I may say – and handed on his dislike to his relative. She’s a sort of sponge, that woman, and soaks up impressions.’

  ‘I liked her,’ I ventured. ‘Or the look of her.’

  ‘Oh, liked, one may like her, but don’t expect any real humanity from her, it has all been sucked out of her by the life she leads. So take note, I am warning you, they will none of them treat you with common humanity. You are there to be of use to them. Everything there is subordinated at the moment to one end.’

  1 looked at him, not really comprehending.

  ‘Oh well, you will understand,’ he said with a sigh.

  On the appointed day we were off in a surprisingly short time, considering how Dolly usually conducted her departures. ‘I was all packed in readiness,’ she confided. ‘And I’m not taking my maid. I shall dress myself.’ She seemed impressed with her own hardihood.

  Peter said with amusement: ‘That will show you how seriously she takes the trip.’

  ‘No, I was told to bring no one. Discretion, secrecy, you know, the fewer eyes the better.’

  Peter gave a little quirk of his eyebrows. ‘Oh, they think they can keep a veil of secrecy over everything there. Don’t they see the dangers of such a way? That people gossip all the more because they aren’t told? The stories I have heard going around and known to be untrue, and not really able to nail them as false because of the constant cry of secrecy and discretion. Openness and frankness would benefit everyone.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Dolly, stepping into the car. ‘There I don’t agree with you.’

  ‘The stories that go around about the monk Gregory …’

  ‘Hush,’ said Dolly.

  ‘I’ve met him,’ I said brightly.

  There was dead silence. ‘Have you, indeed? And where?’ asked Dolly.

  ‘At church, with Ariadne,’ I added hastily. ‘But it wasn’t anything to do with Ariadne. I think he came to see Madame Titov; she was there too.’ And Peter had been there too. I wondered why he said nothing.

  ‘He looked at me. But Madame Titov cut him. Or as good as. I’m sure she didn’t want to see him.’

  ‘No, she wouldn’t want to. She’s a sensible creature at heart, and knows he’s dangerous.’ And she motioned me to step into the car. ‘Do get in, dear.’

  ‘Why is he dangerous?’ I asked as I seated myself.

  ‘Oh – I’ll explain later. But that man, he would be at the church when you were there with Madame Titov. He seems to be drawn by instinct to a sensitive spot. Do you think he has second sight?’ she demanded of her brother. ‘They say so.’

  ‘I think he has good spies,’ said Peter, getting into the car and settling his favourite fox-terrier into the seat beside him.

  ‘Must you bring that creature?’ asked his sister.

  Yes.’ A short answer, but decided.

  Dolly was quiet for about thirty seconds, then said: ‘You’re driving too fast.’

  ‘Not fast at all, considering the distance we have to travel. Wind yourself into all those wrappers and the scarf you’ve put on, and go to sleep.’

  ‘I shall never sleep a wink,’ grumbled Dolly, but she relapsed into silence, and when I peeped next her eyes were closed.

  ‘She always sleeps on a journey,’ said Peter. ‘As of course you know.’ He smiled at me. ‘We’re as good as alone.’

  He drove on a little further, then said: ‘Just as well, as I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes, I couldn’t let you set off on this trip alone, unguarded except for Dolly, without anyone to help you.’

  ‘But will I need help?’ I was surprised.

  ‘Yes, you might. You do not understand the situation in that inner circle. To begin with, not all of them want the Tsarevitch to survive at all. Some would like him out of the way, and one of the Tsar’s brothers proclaimed as heir. And then, even among those more fervently praying for the boy’s health are a group who want Father Gregory to be his saviour. Yes, that’s his secret, he too is a healer. A foul-mouthed braggart, but with strange powers.’

  ‘So that’s why he looked at me,’ I said. ‘Fellow practitioners of medicine!’

  Peter drove a space without speaking, then he said: ‘Yes, I dare say he had heard of you, and that’s why he came to have a look; but once he’d seen you, he would get other ideas. You understand what I mean?’

  ‘Oh, but surely …’ I began.

  ‘No, he has friends. God knows what secrets give him power over them, but he has it. Don’t trust him. I don’t say he will be at Spala, but if he is, avoid him. I mean what I say.’

  ‘I’m not afraid,’ I said, having been brought up by Tibby not to show fear even if I felt it. ‘Keeping a stout heart’, she called it.

  ‘You should be. Even the young Grand Duchesses have had to be protected from him.’

  I looked up at him doubtfully, wondering if he could be serious, but apparently he was. Forcibly it was brought home to me that I was moving in a strange world. How little I as yet understood Russia.

  ‘You heard what I said?’ Peter asked sharply.

  ‘Yes, I was thinking about it. I will be prudent, I promise.’

  ‘Stay close to Madame Titov. She’s honest, even if stupid. Although I am coming to think that stupidity is the ultimate vice.’

  Again I looked at him doubtfully. ‘I have a right to be anxious about you. I am taking the right. Dear Rose, you must have noticed how I feel about you.’

  And he moved his hand from the wheel and took my hand firmly in his own. The dog, sitting between us, growled softly.

  ‘She’s jealous. Babette is always jealous of those I love. She bit my last – ’ Here he stopped.

  ‘Your la
st mistress,’ I said calmly. ‘Is that what you were going to say?’

  He took his hand from mine, returning it to the wheel, and drove straight ahead in silence for a few minutes; I saw his lips tighten in a thin line.

  So I had angered him. I felt a moment of excitement, almost pleasure at what I had done, before doubt crept in. He was smiling.

  ‘I believe you led me into that on purpose,’ I said.

  ‘I own I did want to see what you said.’

  ‘And now you are pleased!’

  ‘If you had kept a polite silence, I should have been disappointed,’ he admitted.

  ‘I blundered into it,’ I said.

  ‘No blunder, I wanted you to speak.’ He reached out his hand questioningly again, I took it in mine. ‘I couldn’t let you go to that place without trying to build a bridge between us. Something you could scramble back on to if you felt unsafe, something that could never break.’

  He raised my hand to his lips and kissed it gently. The dog leaned her body against me, staring into my eyes and growling softly.

  ‘She likes you,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said breathlessly, half suffocated by the warm fur and my own emotion; he was still holding my hand to his lips. Anxiously, I looked over my shoulder towards Dolly.

  ‘It’s all right, she won’t wake up. She took one of those tablets of hers. She always does when she travels.’

  True enough, although Dolly stirred and her lips parted, she did not waken.

  ‘Happy dreams,’ said her brother to her. ‘Rose, may I dream? No, I won’t use that word, I don’t want dreams, I want you, Rose, solid, real, provoking as you often are.’

  ‘Provoking?’ I was surprised.

  ‘You do withdraw, you know, just as you are taking your hand away now. I look round and you are gone. In the spirit, if not the flesh. But sometimes that, too. I want you always Rose, and in the flesh, yes! certainly in the flesh.’ I didn’t answer. ‘Rose, you do understand me?’

  ‘I’m not sure if I do.’

  ‘I want you to be my wife. Will you marry me, Rose? Marry a mad Russian.’

  When Patrick had asked me to marry him, he had taken me for a walk in the moonlight and the air had been soft with may blossom. He had kissed me before he asked me, with the sure instinct about my body he always possessed. I had accepted him without delay.

  Now I sat dumb. I was being offered position, wealth beyond anything I had dreamed. When I had imagined anything like such an offer, I had made up my mind to accept it. But the truth was, I had not really expected it. I was no Cinderella. Now it had happened, and I was silent.

  ‘It would not be fair,’ I said slowly. ‘I don’t love you.’

  ‘Rose, I know that. I am not an inexperienced boy who thinks love is a thing of moonbeams and gossamer; I know it’s not. I know what it is made of and what will carry us through. In Russia we say marry first and enjoy love afterwards.’

  ‘You forget; I was engaged to be married once. I do know what love is. After my own fashion. And I’m not sure if I want to love again. I found it painful.’

  ‘Inside marriage, you would be secure. It would happen to you naturally. I promise you.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten Patrick. I suppose I am still in love with him.’ Now I’d said it aloud, I knew it was true. ‘I thought I’d been so hurt that love had turned into hate. Perhaps it has, but hate is too close to love, isn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ he said decisively. ‘No. Anyone who says that has never known true hate.’

  It was my turn to be silent now, and all the time the dog kept up that slow, crooning growl. ‘I don’t understand why you want to marry me,’ I said wistfully; I suppose I wanted to be assured it was for my matchless beauty and supreme attraction.

  I was a little hurt, therefore, when he burst out laughing. ‘What a girl you are, Rose. I adore you. I don’t know why. It just happened. Isn’t that the best way of all?’

  ‘And what about me? What shall I do?’ I said, naïvely stung by his belief that only his emotions mattered. Men were all alike; Patrick had been the same. He had whirled me along in a delicious dance while it suited him, and then the moment it did not, he had dropped me, never mind what I felt. ‘I’m just to come because you call?’

  ‘You do like me, Rose, though. I’m not wrong about that. You haven’t tried to hide it.’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ I admitted. ‘Perhaps I should have. Tibby would say I should show more pride.’

  ‘Oh, that old Tibby. She’s bad for you, Rose. She limits you.’

  ‘She’s a very sensible woman,’ I said with conviction.

  ‘It’s no, then, is it, Rose? When you speak with the voice of Tibby, I know it must be no.’ He sounded sad.

  ‘No.’ I nodded.

  ‘Mind, I don’t give up. I’m not like your Scotsman.’ I thought I caught a note of contempt.

  ‘Ah.’ And I turned on him fiercely. ‘Don’t criticize him. I may do so, you may not.’

  ‘I see you do still love him,’ said Peter. ‘I was wrong. It’s not quite over for you. I’ve been too quick.’

  For a while he concentrated on the road ahead, and we were both silent. Then he said: ‘Forgive me.’

  ‘Nothing to forgive. There is something I must say to you; your offer hasn’t been such a surprise to me as I let you think. I wondered when you started to teach me to drive … I began to ask myself what I would say if you did propose, and I meant to take you. For the position, you know, not for love. But when it came to it, I couldn’t do it. No, I couldn’t.’

  He was very quiet, his expression unreadable.

  ‘Are you angry?’

  ‘No. No, I was thinking that I admire you, Rose Gowrie. What an honest girl you are.’ There was a note in his voice I had not heard before. ‘So you had to say no?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I think you are halfway to saying yes, Rose.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I shook my head. ‘Perhaps I am tied to Patrick for ever, whether I like it or not.’

  The dog leaned against me, an inscrutable expression in those shining amber eyes. Behind us, Dolly murmured in her sleep. I looked round and saw that a chiffon scarf had blown across her face, disturbing her. I leaned across and removed it.

  ‘How she can sleep,’ muttered her brother.

  ‘Do you think she has heard us?’

  ‘No. Or if she has, then only as in a dream. It will be a dream.’

  ‘I think she knows, anyway,’ I said.

  ‘About me? Yes, I dare say Dolly has her own speculations. She understands me pretty well. Not as thoroughly as she thinks, but well enough. But not you. No one knows you and your feelings, Rose.’

  ‘Am I such an enigma?’

  ‘To such as Dolly. She has her emotions on the surface, whereas you hide yours. And you frighten her, of course. Just a little. But it’s good for Dolly to be frightened. I wish someone could frighten Ariadne.’

  I laughed. ‘What about her friend Marisia.’

  ‘Ah yes, Marisia. The clever one,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘And she frightens Ariadne, does she?’

  ‘Ariadne respects her,’ I said. ‘And I’m not surprised. I was inclined to be frightened of her myself. I should say she rules her family with a rod of iron.’

  ‘She does,’ said Peter absently.

  ‘Oh, you know?’ I was surprised.

  ‘Yes.’ Then he added gently. ‘I taught for a little at the Smolny.’

  ‘So you did. I’d forgotten. Ariadne told me. You were much admired.’

  He laughed. ‘More than I deserved. They were so bored, poor things, shut up for years in the fossilized world. Do you know the girls still wear the same costume with the same white fichus and bare bosoms that the Empress Catherine devised for them? Of course it’s charming, they look delightful, but they are all living in the past.’

  ‘Was that why Ariadne was asked to leave?’

  The road ahead was suddenly full of a flock of ge
ese, being escorted down the road by a barefoot peasant girl. The whole lot of them were covered in a cloud of dust as we sped past.

  ‘She was a difficult pupil,’ said Peter. ‘She can be awkward, and then she was a friend of Marisia’s.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘I suppose Marisia’s political beliefs were a little extreme for the Smolny,’ he said carefully.

  ‘Revolutionary, you mean?’ Yes, I could see Marisia advocating revolution.’

  ‘Almost anything would seem revolutionary to those ultra-conservatives in the Smolny,’ he said. ‘But once it was discovered – ’ he shrugged – ‘out they went. Expelled with ignominy. Dolly was quite frantic. For a little while, anyway. Fortunately, her natural calm soon returned.’ And he glanced backwards to where his sister lay, the picture of happy ease. ‘Of course, Dolly thinks Russia should change, but she thinks it should do it with the least possible trouble to herself and her property. Occasionally she will stretch out a hand to preserve the status quo.’

  ‘No bad idea, perhaps,’ I said.

  I seemed to irritate him; he gripped the wheel of the car and drove forward at an increased speed. ‘Oh, I hate that dry little note in your voice,’ he burst out. ‘One day you will grow out of using it, and grow out of that ferocious honesty, dinned into you by that servant of yours. Oh yes, I recognize the voice of your old Tibby when it speaks through you. It’s the voice of a puritanical old woman. And you are young, Rose, you have passion. One day you will realize that honesty is not enough, nor consistency the only virtue.’

  ‘I did not really mean that the way it sounded,’ I said. ‘I have seen that terrible place Vyksa and I have seen the poverty in the villages. I can understand that people want to change it all. I find that easier to understand than those who can live beside it and do nothing. Dolly is trying, in her way. But what about you?’

  ‘Oh I try, Rose, I try,’ he said savagely. ‘I talk to people bravely and I listen to them bravely and one day I may be even braver still: I may do something.’Just for a moment he had shown me a tormented soul.

  ‘Forgive me,’ I said. ‘I had no right to talk.’

  ‘Ah Rose, forgive you! If that were all. Between you and me is forgiveness the word?’