The Red Staircase

by Gwendoline Butler

  He drove on for a while in silence. But that one glimpse into his mind had set me wondering. Where did Peter stand in the political spectrum in Russia and how far towards violence would he go? Had he instructed Marisia in more than science? When I looked at him driving this expensive car with controlled force, when I remembered how he gambled and danced his way through Russian society, it was hard to answer that question in any way that made sense.

  I put my hand gently on his as he drove and let it rest there for a moment. His profile remained expressionless, except that I could see the pulse beating in his throat. Then he turned and smiled at me. For a moment we felt close.

  It had been morning when we set out, it was evening when we arrived. For some time we had been travelling along quiet roads through thick forest, then suddenly there were soldiers on guard, and obvious policemen, even if in plain clothes. Swiftly we were passed through all the checks – we were expected guests, in spite of our early arrival – and were drawing up on the gravelled path before a small stone-built house.

  ‘Oh, I’m stiff,’ complained Dolly, as she crawled out of the car. ‘What a wretched-looking house; I hope we shall be comfortable.’

  I watched as two footmen appeared and removed our luggage from the car.

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Peter. ‘I’m off. My love to the Tsar and all that. Oh, just a joke, Dolly, no need to look shocked.’

  He kissed her hand, then, under Dolly’s interested gaze, he kissed my cheek and went away.

  ‘So, here we are at Spala,’ said Dolly; she put her hand on my arm. Certainly she seemed more nervous than was her wont. She looked at the open door, the darkness inside lightened by one small lamp. ‘We might as well go in.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Madame Titov came hurrying towards us. ‘Oh, I am so pleased to see you. How kind of you to make such good time.’ The smile of welcome faded from her face. ‘But things are very bad here. The boy has been ill. The Heir, I mean. You understand me.’ Her voice trembled. ‘But thank goodness, today things look better.’ She led us into a comfortable sitting-room, where a small fire burned in the hearth; it was cool here, within the purlieus of the great forest. ‘The poor child. If you saw how he suffered and heard his agony, your heart would break. Even I can hardly bear it, and I have trained myself to show nothing. Of course, you won’t repeat this, you know we never talk of it.’ In the dim light her face looked white and drawn. ‘You’d like some supper; I’ll order it.’ And she went to the bell-pull.

  ‘We’re travel-stained,’ said Dolly. ‘I must wash and make myself orderly.’ More eau de cologne, I thought; but possibly the water in her old friend’s house could be trusted.

  ‘Dolly, of course. Stupid of me. I’m so troubled, you see. It drives every other thought straight out of my mind. I’ll take you up myself.’ And she bustled forward. ‘I’ve taken a risk in summoning you,’ she said as we followed. ‘All off my own bat. Took my own line in asking you here. Naturally I am allowed my own guests, and you come here in that guise, but the truth is that anything Scottish has a great appeal for them all; the Grand Duchesses are reading Sir Walter Scott at the moment, and I thought Miss Gowrie would be a great diversion for them. I know they want to see you.’ She was rattling away, incoherent and embarrassed, as if she wanted to explain why we – in particular – had been asked and yet could not manage it. ‘And of course, the Grand Duchess Olga is so interested in nursing and medicine. I think she wants to talk to you, Miss Gowrie. Or anyway see you – sometimes they don’t talk a lot …’ So I’m to be a sort of exhibit, I thought, to amuse them, to be looked at, but not spoken to. I thought I could bear it. ‘… But the boy is in just the state of recovery now when a little visit will entertain him.’

  ‘Is the boy ill often?’ I asked, remembering that slender child in the bookshop with his eager look.

  Madame Titov shook her head sadly. ‘We hope he will grow out of it.’

  I was just about to ask what the name of his illness was when she changed the subject abruptly. ‘Now, up these stairs here and your rooms are on the right. We are very simple here, but comfortable.’

  Briskly she escorted Dolly and me upstairs before returning to her sitting-room with the polite remark that a meal would be served when we were ready. I was not surprised when, on going down again, I heard her and Dolly talking, and realized that they were talking about me. Dolly was in mid-sentence. ‘ – an imaginative girl,’ I heard her say. ‘And so full of enthusiasm!’

  A low murmur in response from Madame Titov, and Dolly went on again: ‘Oh, there was a love affair in Scotland, but it passed off. Rather unhappily, poor girl, from what her cousin tells us. But it’s all over now. I expect she’s forgotten him. At that age, one so easily does.’

  You little know, I thought, remembering the episode at Vyksa when I had dreamt, for one mad moment, that Patrick was playing the piano. Ariadne, then, had remained loyal and not diverted Dolly’s ears with the tale. For this I was grateful. But Dolly was going on. ‘And perhaps there will be a closer relationship,’ I heard her say.

  ‘You mean your brother Peter?’ A note of sharp interest in our hostess’s voice. It seemed that Dolly herself was having to field the hard personal questions that she had warned me to expect. ‘And how will you take that?’

  No answer was to be heard from Dolly; I could just imagine her silently shrugging her shoulders. I found myself wondering how much Dolly had slept in the car, and how much she had overheard. It seemed the right moment for me to enter the room, and I did so. Both women turned on me bland, unconcerned faces, as if their conversation had not related to me at all – which goes to show what natural liars really good women can be.

  ‘We shall go over there this evening, after you have dined,’ explained Madame Titov nervously. ‘What is it?’ she asked, as a manservant came into the room. He whispered in her ear. ‘Oh dear.’ She stood up. ‘We are summoned now. Dolly, Miss Gowrie, I am sorry to give you no time to rest, but we are called for. I’m sorry you can’t stay to eat.’

  ‘Oh, food doesn’t matter, does it, Rose?’ said Dolly hastily. ‘I’m not at all hungry, are you?’

  I shook my head. ‘Let’s go,’ I said briefly, beginning to walk towards the door. Unconsciously, I was beginning to take charge.

  ‘We walk across,’ said Madame Titov, almost whispering, she was so nervous. ‘It’s hardly any distance, and it will be more private. Discretion is important.’

  Our wraps were brought down by a servant and silently draped about us. ‘And I’m to come too?’ asked Dolly, her voice low. She seemed almost overcome with nervousness.

  ‘You mustn’t be nervous, Miss Gowrie,’ said Madame Titov as we walked, all three abreast, along a broad gravel path through the trees. ‘Just behave naturally. They are the most charming family. So simple, and so you can be the same.’

  ‘Oh, I will be,’ I answered calmly. ‘I wouldn’t think of behaving in any other way.’

  ‘How ruthless you sound, dear,’ murmured Dolly. ‘I have never heard that note in your voice before.’

  We had come out on to a wider area of gravel, and ahead of us, only dimly lighted, sprawled a substantial stone house. A shrubbery grew all round it, and here and there in the gloom it was possible to see the silent, unobtrusive presence of guards. A policeman in plain clothes was tucked away in a sort of wooden niche beside the front door, his hiding place decently obscured with laurels so that one might not have seen him had not the light from the lamp beside the door shone on his spectacles. No one made a move towards us, so I supposed that we were expected and everything was known about us.

  There were, however, wheels within wheels, as I discovered when Madame Titov whispered: ‘We will follow the path round to the right; there is a side door open for us there. It will be more private.’

  Private? Private meant secret, I thought. So our visit was to be kept secret from some. And yet the men outside unmistakably knew who we were and where we must go. They had been informe
d. But inside the house, close to the heart of it, were those who did not know, who were not meant to know. Perhaps even the Tsar himself did not know. A strange world, where a humble policeman might know more of the whole picture than an Emperor himself. Or perhaps it was not the Tsar from whom I was to be hidden. After all, I had been told that I might be ‘seen’ by him. A part of the Imperial household, then? It looked as though the Tsar had servants close to him that he kept secrets from which lesser servants might know.

  I was thinking all this as I hurried after Madame Titov, but I was not so naïve as to be surprised for long. Courts always have secrets, and back ways in, like the one we were approaching now.

  I suppose we looked like conspirators as we filed through the door. I could hear Dolly breathing behind me in nervous puffs. The door was unlocked, and led into a narrow hall where a silent servitor sat on a great leather chair as if waiting for a summons which had not yet come. He neither promoted nor hindered our progress, but merely bowed us on.

  Madame Titov gave a brisk little nod of her head towards yet another door at the end of the hall. ‘We go through there.’ She held the door open and we filed through.

  We were in a square room, lit by a lamp hanging from the ceiling and furnished with ugly heavy chairs lining three walls. Against the fourth wall was a big writing desk. A tall girl of about my own age stood by the desk, studying a piece of paper. A long white overall covered her from head to foot, buttoned at her throat and falling to her toes.

  She looked up and gave me an appraising stare. Not a pretty face, I thought, but well modelled and fine-skinned. She would be a handsome woman and perhaps a beautiful old lady.

  She stood up as the three of us made a curtsey. She didn’t introduce herself, but she was sufficiently like the girl I had seen shopping in the English bookshop in St Petersburg to let me know that she was one of the Grand Duchesses, and I took her to be Olga.

  ‘Here we are then,’ said Madame Titov. ‘Just as arranged.’

  The Grand Duchess looked at me deliberately, taking in my face and clothes with a calm scrutiny. I returned the gaze. ‘Good,’ she said, as if I had satisfied her. She spoke English with very little accent. Then to me she said in a polished voice: ‘You have come a long way to see us. It is very selfish of us to have you travel all this way.’

  ‘But I was glad to,’ I said, thinking to myself that I was quite as interested to see her as she was to see me. We were both exhibits to each other, the process worked both ways.

  A faint smile moved her lips, but she said nothing. More human than she looks, I thought. I smiled back, and without another word she turned on her heel, motioning us to follow her. We went through a door in one corner of the room, which led to a staircase. She hurried us up this at a trot, so that we almost had to run to keep up with her. We went through a door into an ante-room where a seated servant rose and curtseyed as we passed, and then paused momentarily before a white double door. From behind the door came a child’s voice raised in protest. The door was opened.

  Against one wall was a bed, the curtains which hung about it half-drawn and the bedclothes rumpled. A small dumpy woman sat on a chair by the bed; she wore a voluminous blue and white apron and the head coif of a nurse. Her back was towards me as she leant over her patient, but I could see her feet and they were tiny, plump, elderly feet, and her face when she turned to look at me was old and expressionless, but wrinkled, crumpled, like a dried-out walnut.

  In the bed sat the boy I had seen in the bookshop, and in his arms he was clutching a small dog. ‘You shan’t take Snowball away,’ he was saying in a high exasperated tone. ‘She’s to stay with me here. In fact, if you don’t let her I shall scream.’ He looked capable of it, too, at that moment, his thin face flushed and determined.

  ‘Well, Nicky,’ said his sister from the door. ‘Making a nuisance of yourself as usual?’

  ‘It’s the dog, Highness,’ said the nurse. ‘I’m sure it’s got fleas.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said the boy.

  ‘Yes, I think that’s nonsense,’ said his sister gently to the nurse. ‘I bathed the dog myself only yesterday.’

  ‘It scratches,’ said the nurse obstinately. ‘Anyway, he ought not to have a dog in bed with him.’

  ‘All dogs scratch,’ said the Tsarevitch triumphantly. He knew he’d won his point and that Snowball would stay. I guessed he nearly always won these small battles one way or another, and that all parties enjoyed the fight.

  ‘I’ve brought some visitors for you, Nicky,’ said the Grand Duchess. ‘Aren’t I to be allowed to introduce them?’

  He lay back on his pillows. ‘You may present them to me,’ he said in an important voice. ‘I know Madame Titov,’ he said, and rather spoiled the effect with a grin at her.

  ‘This is Madame Denisov.’ Dolly gave a little bob. ‘And this is Miss Rose Gowrie from Scotland.’

  ‘Ah, now I know why you are allowed to visit me,’ he said. ‘We are having a Scottish mania at the present.’ He had a precise, grown-up way of talking; what Tibby would have called ‘old-fashioned’. He was studying my face, stroking his pet dog as he did so. ‘I suppose you think it’s wrong of me to have my dog in bed with me?’ He ruffled the bedclothes and another small recumbent form could be seen asleep. ‘I’ve got my cat here too. I’ve been ill, you see, and that’s why they spoil me. They call it spoiling,’ he added hastily. ‘It doesn’t seem like that to me. You try drinking all that medicine and see if you feel spoiled.’ He put the dog aside in favour of a closer look at me. ‘I feel as though I’ve seen you before, but I can’t have.’

  ‘You may have noticed my face; I was in the English bookshop in St Petersburg one day when you were choosing a toy.’

  ‘Yes, I remember. I was with Elizabeth that day, not Olga. They take turns, you know, to be in attendance on me.’ He cast a mischievous look at his sister. ‘I’m thought to need a firm hand.’

  non, non, Nicky,’ observed his sister mildly.

  ‘You have a good memory,’ I said, ‘if Your Imperial Highness remembers my face.’

  ‘Not so much a good memory as a seeing eye,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I would like to be an artist. I draw.’ And rummaging among the bedclothes and animals, he produced a sketch-book. ‘Look.’

  I took it from him and turned the pages, which were filled with vivid little pencil sketches of men, women and pets. Clearly he had been well taught, but he had talent too.

  ‘Am I in it?’ I said, flipping over the pages.

  ‘Look and see,’ he said with that smile again. ‘See if you recognize yourself.’

  I riffled through the sketches, eyeing the charming little vignettes, some done in crayon, others in pencil. ‘No, I don’t think I see myself.’

  ‘What?’ He seized the book back. ‘I’m almost sure I put your face in. You had such pink cheeks.’ He was going through the pages rapidly as he spoke. ‘Yes, look, there you are.’

  I looked over his shoulder. ‘I suppose that could be me, but you’ve made my mouth too small. And you’ve put a sort of crown thing on my head.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a Russian headdress for a noblewoman that’s worn at Court. I did that just for fun.’

  ‘A compliment,’ I said, studying my alleged portrait; it could have been me, I was prepared to accept that it was.

  He was taking up a pencil; ‘Now I’ve got you here, I’ll just alter the chin; I didn’t get that quite right. I dare say I shouldn’t have done it, Miss Gowrie, my dear,’ he went on in that dignified way of his, ‘but I heard Madame Titov and Marianna talking about you and Elizabeth said we’d seen you in the shop with someone, some other girl.’ Ariadne, I thought. ‘And so it reminded me of you and I drew you.’

  I must have looked surprised, because his sister smoothly interpreted: ‘We had heard of the sort of project Madame Denisov had designed for you on her estate, and were so interested. It is the sort of work I should like to undertake myself.’

  Dolly looked pleased and flat
tered, and although I gazed at the girl incredulously, I felt she was genuine enough. The whole scene had a slightly unreal feel to it; I decided that this was because the Imperial Family were so far removed from ordinary, everyday life. No doubt it was a compliment to be talked about in the Romanov family circle, but I believe I just felt uncomfortable.

  Perhaps the Tsarevitch saw this, he was a perceptive little creature. ‘I wonder if you would sit for me just a bit, so that I can get this chin just right?’ he said. ‘My leg is beginning to pain me a bit and I believe drawing will take my mind from it.’

  Tact is the politeness of princes, I thought, not punctuality, as is so often said; and what answer was I to give to his request, but Yes? ‘I’d like to,’ I said. ‘Where shall I place myself?’

  A chair was drawn up, and the light adjusted, and the artist got to work. Behind me I was vaguely aware of general conversation between Dolly, Madame Titov and the young Grand Duchess. No one spoke to the nurse, so she spoke to no one.

  ‘Just turn a little to the right, if you please. Thank you, Miss Gowrie.’

  Dutifully, I moved as he wished. Shereshevo to Spala – it seemed a long journey just to have one’s profile traced by a little prince, even a sick one. But I supposed that when you were as grand as they were, the inconvenience of lesser mortals did not come into it. Probably, if they thought about it at all, they asssumed we were delighted to perform for them. And as far as Dolly Denisov was concerned, they were right. From the very notes of her voice behind me, I could tell she was in a flutter of pleasure.

  I was facing a big wall mirror, and in the mirror I could see a door which was just open, giving me a narrow peep into an inner room. A figure was seated by the door, I could see a delicately shod foot in a patent leather shoe, and the edge of a pale mauve skirt. The Empress, I thought. I am watching her in a mirror, and she is watching me.

  ‘Don’t frown, Miss Gowrie,’ said the boy, biting his lip as he drew – from which I guessed he was in some pain. ‘There, I’ve finished.’ He held out the picture. ‘Haven’t I made you look splendid?’