Marisia saw me through this period of intense unhappiness, until the moment when I told myself, deliberately, that I must go on living, and in order to do that I must shut away in my mind all that related to Patrick.
Within a few days the motor-car arrived from Shereshevo and with it a note from Dolly asking me to come back. ‘Come home,’ she put it, although it was not my home, and enough had happened at Vyksa to make me think it never could be. I would have to say no to Peter.
Marisia and I kissed goodbye with regret on both sides. ‘You’ll keep in touch?’ I urged.
‘Of course.’
When I left Jordansjoy I had close relationships – apart from the bond with Patrick – with only two people in the world, my sister Grizel and Tibby. It was a measure of my growing-up that with Marisia I now had a third, totally different in quality, but deep, and capable of development.
She was as shocked as I was by Patrick’s being gone. He had left without a word to her, and that betrayal hurt. Was she in love with him? I did not know, and she would never tell me, but together we had gone to Vyksa asking for Patrick, going over again all the places I had tried before. Blank faces and a shaking of heads was all we got in return.
‘He may be ill,’ Marisia had said when we got back. ‘Lying helpless somewhere.’
‘In Vyksa? We should have heard.’
We spoke no more about it, even as we stood together to say our goodbyes, but though I tried not to show my feelings to her, she knew how I felt. I shed no tears, but I had the strange fantasy that if I had cried my tears would have been hard and cold like hailstones.
I got into the big car. ‘Goodbye, Marisia. Do come and see me and Ariadne at Shereshevo if you can manage it.’
‘Well, they don’t love me so much there, as you know, but I will do my best.’ And she waved goodbye.
I turned round to take a last look at that slender, gallant figure, but she was already turning back into the house, practical and unsentimental as ever.
I had a lot to think about on the drive back to Shereshevo, and not only Patrick and my own feelings. After what I had seen at Vyksa I could not believe that the Russian world as I knew it could long survive. The different life-styles of rich and poor, with the extreme luxury of the one set against the almost Asiatic poverty of the other, must provoke the revolution they all feared. It seemed inevitable.
In the motor-car Dolly had caused to be placed a cashmere rug, in case I should be cold – I was a little chilly, so I wrapped myself in it – a flask of brandy, in case I should feel faint – I did not – and a French fashion magazine, in case I should be bored. I took up the magazine, and I was again struck by the incredible difference between my ease as I was rushed through the desolate villages on the road from Vyksa, and the poverty I glimpsed as I passed through. Truly, between these two extremes there must be conflict.
Halfway to Shereshevo the chauffeur turned his head to shout cheerfully, ‘Nearly back.’ Another, and comforting side of Russian life, his friendliness, I thought. His words, together with the fashion magazine, predisposed me to look at myself. I felt bound to admit that my stay at Vyksa had not improved my appearance. My hands were red and roughened by constant immersion in disinfectant, my nails were broken and stained, and as for my hair, the less said the better. I looked at my hands and wondered what fortune Grizel would read from them now.
Something hard was sticking into me; I put my hand under the rug and drew out a box of chocolates, Swiss ones at that. I laughed. Dolly had thought of everything. But when I opened the box, there was a note tucked inside in Ariadne’s writing:
‘All fizz and bubble here at Shereshevo. And not pleasant fizz, either – though at least great-aunt Irene (or is it great-great?) has betaken herself back to Piter. But you’ll see, you’ll see.’ She added: ‘But I am well again, as you will gather. Welcome back to us Denisovs, dear Rose.’ The note was unsigned. And how very Russian it was: the sweet, the alarming and the mysterious all wrapped up in one.
Every so often as we travelled, I found myself looking out of the windows to see if I could see Patrick. I knew it was ridiculous, but I couldn’t stop myself scanning villages and roads just in case I should catch a glimpse of him. After all, he had told me himself that he had once been near to me without my knowing of his presence. In the terrible tumult that we had fallen into, I had never found the chance to make him explain that remark. Now I kept thinking about it. What had he meant?
As we got nearer to Shereshevo I began to wonder about the nature of the worse troubles that Ariadne had alluded to, and why I was ‘to see’ about them. It gave me something to think about other than Patrick.
Presently I became aware that the chauffeur was turning round at intervals, smiling and nodding, as if to draw my attention to something. We were driving through the main village street at Shereshevo, following its long, dishevelled course. At intervals small groups of women were standing, silently looking on. They stared at me as we drove past and, puzzled, I stared back. I found it difficult to read their expressions. Were they friendly or hostile? Then one woman raised a hand and waved; I waved back. After that, it seemed as though all the women were smiling – to my eyes, anyway. Around the whitewashed hut where I had established my base there was a cluster of women among whom, grinning broadly, I saw the sturdy figure of Madame Mozorov, the village midwife. Presumably she had left her store unattended to welcome me, so I gave her a wave and a smile. My eyes searched the groups in vain for the face of my young friend, the daughter of Katia, whose baby I had failed to save. Nor could I see Katia.
Then the car drew up on the sweep of gravel in front of the Big House, and Dolly and Ariadne were emerging to hug and kiss me.
‘You are a heroine? Did you see the women?’ said Ariadne. ‘Did you notice?’
Dolly drew Ariadne gently back. ‘Now let Rose arrive before you start gabbling at her. Give her a little bit of peace.’
‘No, leave her be. I want to see her too.’ I smoothed the hair gently back from Ariadne’s face. ‘And how are you, my pet? Really and truly better? Quite recovered?’
‘Quite well,’ she returned. ‘Absolutely recovered. Thinner, though, but that I am glad of; now I have the smallest waist in the house.’ And she held her arms up to let me see. ‘Except perhaps for you,’ she said, studying mine.
‘Much, much smaller than me,’ I assured her. ‘Simply no competition from me at all.’ But Ariadne’s face had altered. There comes a time in a girl’s life when she has to decide to grow up, and for Ariadne that time had come with her illness. True, she looked fit and pretty; but when I arrived in Russia her face had been the face of a girl; now, suddenly, she had the look of a young woman. Ariadne had matured.
I wondered what my experiences had done for me; no doubt they could be read in my face by the discerning. I thought that, what with the Princess Irene growing younger and Ariadne and me growing older, this was a strange household. Only Dolly was unchanged. Or was she? Now I had a closer look, she had a tired air.
However, her priorities remained as ever. ‘You must want to get out of that dress, Rose. I suppose you’ve been wearing it day in and day out?’ She gave it a closer look. ‘I should throw it away if I were you. Are all your clothes the same?’
‘More or less. Life at Vyksa was hard on them.’
‘And on you, my dear.’ She gave me a kind look. But how marvellously you have done. We are all so proud of you. To stop an epidemc …’
‘I hardly did,’ I protested. ‘I did my best that’s all. And a pretty poor best it seemed, too.’
‘Like Florence Nightingale,’ went on Dolly, not heeding me.
‘Not like at all.’
All the time this conversation was going on I had been making an unobtrusive survey to detect any traces of the presence of Peter; there were none, so presumably he was not here but in St Petersburg. As was also Edward Lacey, I imagined.
‘Well, up you go,’ said Dolly, moving me towards the stairs. ‘
Everything is waiting for you up in your room. And there are several letters.’
‘From my home? From Scotland?’ And I began to hurry.
‘I believe so.’
‘I’ll read them as I change my dress.’
‘Yes, do. I’ve had a decanter of burgundy sent up, drink some to give yourself strength. And then come down, my dear, will you?’
‘Of course.’ But I was a bit surprised at her request. I meant to come down, naturally, but Dolly was usually too polite to direct my movements. Ariadne, yes, she ordered her about, but not me. Nor was I aware of needing strength. Washing and general grooming, certainly, but I felt fit.
As I ran up the stairs, I wondered if there could possibly be a letter from Patrick. But it was a mad idea, dismissed as soon as conceived. Nothing from my godfather either, although I had somehow expected a communication from that connection. However, I had one letter from Tibby and two from Grizel, which I read as I changed my clothes and drank a glass of the wine that Dolly had ordered for me. They were happy letters from Jordansjoy, and I almost envied Grizel that carefree world. But I also knew I could not now exchange mine for hers. Battered by outside events, shattered by Patrick’s disappearance, I yet had a sense of anticipation, as if a door was going to be opened for me.
I took my wine to the window and sipped it as I looked out. To my surprise I saw Madame Mozorov waiting there, as once before I had seen a group of peasant women waiting. Speeding down the stairs, I met Ariadne in the hall. ‘What does Madame Mozorov want?’ I said before she could speak.
‘Oh, is she here?’ Ariadne looked disconcerted. ‘I expect she wants you to congratulate her, you know. But will you come into the library, my mother says she needs you.’
‘Wait a minute, please. Why does she want me to congratulate her?’
‘She did so well, all the women did, just in the way you trained them, when the epidemic reached us – so we had hardly any cases.’
‘I see.’ I was trying to take it all in, and judge whether I had been responsible for bringing the disease into Shereshevo in the first place. ‘Was it the same disease? Are you sure? Were the symptoms the same?’
‘Yes, exactly the same. And after all, I know.’
‘Was this the trouble you mentioned in your letter?’
‘Yes, partly. But won’t you come to the library. My mother wants …’
But I was already moving away. ‘I’ll come directly. I must just talk to Madame Mozorov.’
Slowly Ariadne followed me outside, unwilling to relinquish her grip on me. Madame Mozorov advanced on us both with delight. She held out her hand and gave mine a vigorous shake. ‘You have done well, Miss Gowrie; I salute you.’ And she did too, with a kiss on each cheek. ‘But we have done well here also. Self-help, as you recommended. Each family organizing itself. Under my direction, of course,’ she added importantly. ‘I learn quickly.’
‘How many families suffered?’
She counted on her fingers, making a tally. ‘No more than a dozen. And few deaths. I kept all away from the worst stricken house,’ she said proudly. ‘The dead can nurse themselves, I told them.’
‘And that house was?’ I asked with apprehension, almost knowing what I was going to hear.
‘Katia’s. It started, perhaps, with that baby. You remember the baby?’
I nodded, sick at heart. ‘And how did they do?’
‘They all died,’ she admitted. ‘Katia, her daughter, and her daughter-in-law.’
While she went on talking, I too counted the score. If Ariadne had introduced the infection to that house, then we had wiped out a whole peasant family. Perhaps I said so aloud.
But no, Madame Mozorov said, the husband in the army was safe and sound and would be coming home. As if that helped me.
Dolly Denisov interrupted us. ‘Ah, there you are, Rose. You look better now you’ve changed your dress. So you two have already had a word – ‘ and here she gave a brief, sweet, annihilating smile to Madame Mozorov – ‘but now will you come with me, Rose, to the library?’
I let myself be led away, still thinking of Katia’s little family so easily destroyed – and no trace left, it seemed, in Dolly’s sensibility. I followed Dolly to the library door which she flung open.
A change had come over the house since I had last seen it. I was beginning to take it in. I saw that the bright summer draperies on the chairs and windows had gone, while all the pretty china ornaments which had decorated tables and cabinets had been put away. I knew what it meant. Winter was coming to Shereshevo, and we would soon be gone back to St Petersburg. Only the shell of a house would remain.
Dolly led me across the room to the round table by the window at which a spare, middle-aged man with greying sandy-coloured hair was seated. He stood up as we approached. ‘Rose,’ said Dolly nervously. ‘This is Mr Dundee, he comes from your own country, except that his family have lived here for generations.’ Mr Dundee bowed. ‘He is your godfather’s lawyer. He has been waiting for you for a day and a half.’
The words that were uttered after this had to be repeated to me again and again before I took them in. First Mr Dundee and then Dolly tried, and still I stared.
‘My godfather’s heiress?’ I faltered. ‘All that great concern in St Petersburg left to me?’
‘Totally and absolutely,’ said Dolly, and even in my bemused state I did not fail to notice that she said so with some satisfaction. ‘Your godfather died a week ago, and it is all yours.’
Ariadne came into my room when I was standing by the window, staring on to the lawns below. The golden colours of autumn were consuming it already, getting it ready for the white pall of winter. But I did not see it. Instead I saw the factory in St Petersburg.
I knew by her scent and the quick rustle of her skirt that it was Ariadne. ‘You heard all that?’ I said without turning round.
‘Of course.’
‘But you knew already?’
‘Yes, I did.’
I sighed as I turned. ‘All of you always know more than I do.’ Ariadne did not dispute this. ‘I’m still trying to take it all in.’
‘Yes, mother said it would be a shock to you.’
‘So was that the other “trouble” that you talked about, Ariadne? In addition to the deaths in the village?’
Ariadne pursed her lips. ‘Well, it was connected,’ she said with some reluctance.
‘What do you mean?’ I demanded.
‘My mother doesn’t want me to say anything to you. She thought it might upset you, but I think you have a right to be told.’
I was irritated. ‘Oh, come along, Ariadne. Stop hinting and come out with it. You know what they make at this inheritance of mine, don’t you? Explosives, and guns and shells. I am bound to have all sorts of unpleasant thoughts.’
‘Well, it’s this. She thinks you ought to marry my Uncle Peter. It’s what she wants. Then he can help you manage your affairs.’ Doggedly, Ariadne went on: ‘She didn’t want me to say it, but I thought you had a right to know what she was hoping, because what my mother wants usually comes about.’
The mind has mountains in it; I suddenly realized I was on a mountain, at its foot and looking up to an unknown peak. I was breathless and my heart was galloping as if I was indeed climbing. The Rose Gowrie who was the owner of wealth and a great armaments factory was not the same as the Rose who had owned nothing much at all. But I was also the Rose Gowrie who had been through Vyksa with a man she loved, a man she had now lost for the second time. I was toughened by that experience.
‘I shan’t marry anyone I don’t want to,’ I said. ‘I shall do what I choose. And what I choose may be not to own this factory.’
‘Oh I don’t think you can choose about that,’ said Ariadne in alarm.
I shook my head. ‘I have tried so hard to save life; I cannot readily accept that I must be the means of wiping it out. You must see that.’
‘Well, I know what my mother would say: that the work will go on, and if you don�
��t own the factory, someone else will.’
‘At least I shan’t be living richly on the proceeds.’
‘You won’t be allowed to strip yourself of your inheritance, Rose,’ said Ariadne. ‘There are some things I know about the world and you don’t, and that is one of them. You’ll see.’ She smiled. ‘Besides, when it comes to the point, you won’t want to,’ she ended shrewdly. She sounded like her mother.
‘Where’s Mr Dundee?’ I asked.
‘He’s having a meal in the library before departing. I think he would have liked to talk further with you.’
Briefly I said: ‘I didn’t feel like it. He can wait till later.’
‘There you are,’ said Ariadne. ‘That’s what I meant. You would never have been so off-hand with him before. Now you are important, and that’s what is hard to give up.’
I laughed, but was both hurt and annoyed. ‘Oh, go away. Can’t you see that I’m positively boiling with rage? I’ve been handed this terrible and terrifying manufacturing works on a plate. To do what I like with, as far as I can see. I wouldn’t have minded being left some money, that would have been sensible. But the whole thing – no, it’s too much. And then to find out everyone knew all the time. I am angry.’
Dolly came into the room and heard me. ‘Conjectured,’ said Dolly. ‘No more than that.’
‘Knew. Absolutely knew. I’m sure of it.’
She was silent. ‘What will you do?’ she said finally.
‘Go to St Petersburg. Talk to the lawyers, make up my mind.’
‘But you won’t leave us?’
I did not give her a direct answer; I thought that two could play the cat and mouse game, and now it was the mouse’s turn.
But the difficulty for me was that I had grown to love them all.
The very next day everything was packed up and we travelled back to St Petersburg. The interlude at Shereshevo was over. We had seen nothing of Peter Alexandrov or Edward Lacey during the period of Ariadne’s illness. Messages, of course, but no personal appearances. The cowards, I thought. With our departure I said goodbye to the sad ghost of Mademoiselle Laure. I thought I understood now why she had died. In the end, Russia had proved too much for her. As it might well do for me in the end.
The Red Staircase Page 29