White Ice

by Celia Brayfield

  But Diaghilev’s tentacles inexorably squeezed her. Wherever she went another tormentor would sing his praises and question her judgement in resisting him. The last card was Leo. While Lydia appeared now to be an artist with no inner doubts, Leo’s resolution began to falter. He had been eager to step into the creative vacuum left when Fokine joined the new company, but once he had been set upon a pinnacle he seemed to be attacked by vertigo. He clung to Lydia like a talisman, creating only for her and, when he mistrusted his own judgement, allowing her to fly into the cloud which obscured his path and find their way by instinct. In two years he produced four new ballets, each more sensational than the last. Then, to her dismay, he announced that he planned to renegotiate his terms of employment and work with the Ballets Russes the following year.

  ‘I feel I’m suffocating here at the Maryinsky,’ he told her, avoiding her accusing eyes. ‘I want to try new ideas, new music – and I want to travel. My mind is just freezing up here, I need stimulation. But I can’t work without you, Lydia. You know that, you’ve always known it. Won’t you join, just for the summer? Please, I need you.’

  Seeing this exacting and brilliant man plead so humbly for her help gave Lydia a fine sense of power, but she refused him all the same. ‘We like to spend the summer travelling.’ She knew that this intimate manner of alluding to her lover would rub salt in the wound of her refusal. ‘The Prince couldn’t bear to be parted from me for months while I traipsed all over the place with a touring company. And I’m worn to a shadow as it is with my commitments here – I simply couldn’t work any harder. As it is it’s a miracle I haven’t been injured these last couple of years.’

  All the glory and satisfaction which accrued to her proceeded from her body, an instrument of marvellous strength and expressiveness which rose to the challenges imposed upon it by shedding the very last hint of childish roundness, becoming a filigree of muscle and sinew woven around ethereal but seemingly unbreakable bones. She worked like a horse, but joyfully, although she woke in the morning stiff and sore all over. Every day in the mirror Lydia looked less at her face, which she felt was becoming gaunt, and more at the pure beauty of her line. She saw at last the mysterious extension of her limbs’geometry in the air for which she had worked in ignorance for so long.

  When it was not to be displayed at the greatest occasions – and many of the less great ones, since she was most attached to wearing it – the necklace lay in the wall safe in her writing room, concealed by the rich apricot damask which draped the walls in severe pleats. It was usual for such large pieces to be kept in the strongroom at Fabergé when they were not to be worn, but Lydia found so many occasions for which it was simply the ideal thing that Orlov resolved to indulge her and ordered a safe to be installed in her house. It had been in place for more than a year when her maid, a pale Latvian girl who blushed very easily, inquired whether Madame had any linen to be laundered.

  ‘No,’ she answered without reflection, but then remembered some particularly lavish lawn chemises which she had not seen for some time. She had formed the habit, when something exceptional caught her eye, of buying half a dozen versions of it. ‘Why do you ask? Is anything missing?’

  ‘No, Madame, I check everything carefully and the laundress is a good woman, careful and reliable. But she did remark last week … and I had noticed myself …’ Now the girl was as red as a geranium and whispering with embarrassment. ‘Not that we would presume to discuss such a thing, Madame, but it was my impression that you have not given us any napkins for some time.’

  ‘My goodness, I haven’t, have I?’ The girl was referring to the lint and gauze cloths which were used to absorb the blood during her period. Involuntarily Lydia looked down at her abdomen, as if the hideous growth of another pregnancy could swell there in an instant, then recollected herself. ‘Well, that’s none of your business, is it?’ The girl backed towards the door, and Lydia realized that in her ridiculous way she had been moved by concern. ‘Still, I suppose I should be grateful that you’re keeping track of things. Just check that all the napkins are accounted for, and while you’re about it see if you can find my new lace chemise with the eau-de-Nil ribbon. I’ll wear that tonight.’

  Lydia was anxious, although her instinct was that she was not pregnant. The old Finnish witch had given her a new remedy and had sworn it would prevent her conceiving again. Marie and Tatiana also took it and had avoided pregnancy successfully so far. She consulted the herbalist specifically, and was reassured, but also had the physician call.

  ‘You are very thin,’ he commented. Chivalry was not his style.

  ‘A ballerina cannot be fat,’ she returned with mild irritation.

  ‘Do you have a good appetite?’

  ‘Excellent, but what can I do? I have to dance so much now I’m just melting away.’

  He examined her eyes and tongue, took her pulse and blood pressure, questioned her about all her bodily functions and palpated her flat stomach briefly.

  ‘Certainly there is no sign that you are with child. When a woman is not well nourished she often does not conceive; it is normally a phenomenon of young, sickly girls, and those with neurasthenic complaints, but you appear to be in perfect health. I have remarked lately that several of my patients who have also been called to follow Terpsichore suffer occasional cessation of their female signs. If you wish to add to your family, Madame, I would suggest you take a little more rest and allow your body to recover from the demands you have made of it.’

  ‘When I wish to add to my family, Doctor, I shall certainly take your advice.’ She favoured him with a small pleased smile and rang for tea. Her instinct was to withhold truth from any man and since the doctor was attached to the Orlov household she had no intention of disclosing to him any information that could be distorted before it reached the Prince’s ears.

  ‘And since you plan to travel this summer I would advise proceeding at your leisure. Let all the little delicacies of Europe tempt you. A spell at a spa would be most beneficial. Dax, perhaps, the waters are excellent for all medicinal purposes and particularly orthopaedic complaints – we must consider the future, Madame – and Dax is most convenient for Biarritz.’

  His tone of voice alarmed her. The Prince had not suggested a summer tour; on the contrary, he had wearily announced that his duties would make travelling difficult that year. Strikes were breaking out more and more often. To improve the people’s morale the Tsar had decreed that the tax on vodka would be lifted, but parliament had reacted petulantly; the Prime Minister, a man whom Orlov admired, had resigned, and further disturbances were expected. And yet here was his physician discussing the event as if it were already planned.

  When she was alone, she recognized that she was angry. Worldliness had calloused her heart. The possibility that she was no longer loved was a minor concern. Weeping for the death of her own high emotions was far from her intentions. No longer a girl to pine in obscurity when her affair waned, she was now forced to contemplate public humiliation. Her first move was to consult Alexandrov, who was himself preparing to leave for Paris with Kchessinskaya and the Grand Duke André in a few days’time.

  ‘Oh my dear, it’s true then?’ he asked, taking her hand with a concerned gesture.

  ‘What’s true? What have you heard? All I know is that the wretched doctor assumes I’m travelling, and yet when I asked Nikolai point blank he said he wasn’t. He said he had state duties to take care of. And I was so disappointed, and so sympathetic. But if he’s lied and he’s making a fool of me … come on Mischa, spit it out, what’s been going on behind my back?’

  A pimp in that exalted milieu acquired skills which many a diplomat would have envied. Alexandrov slithered through a tangle of compliments and qualifications to impart the sad news that Prince Orlov had recently been seen paying excessive attention to the wife of one of the aides travelling with the French President on his state visit to St Petersburg.

  Lydia had become the essential ornament of every gr
eat state occasion, a new national treasure to be displayed whenever a member of the vast family of European royalty visited their Russian cousins. Lately the visits of heads of foreign states had been given equal prominence. The French President was honoured by her appearance as the sea goddess Thetis at a pageant which, since the Tsar and the Imperial Family had now withdrawn from Petersburg almost entirely and lived in their summer palaces outside the city, was staged in the gardens at the palace of Pavlovsk. Lydia’s entrance was made across one of the ornamental lakes, posed on a mirror mounted on a raft so that she appeared to be drifting across the water itself.

  The night was so close that the dancers felt torpid; she was thankful to be marooned on the cool water where the spray from the famous fountains refreshed the air. She felt tranquil, suspended at a distance from her troubles. The piece had been choreographed for such events, and was more a series of sumptuous tableaux than one requiring athleticism of its chief protagonists and rousing mazurkas from a large corps de ballet.

  When the ballet was concluded Tsar Nicholas himself, his hair now receded entirely from his broad temples and his whole face deeply etched in careworn lines, made presentations to the dancers. His children accompanied him. The four grand duchesses resembled each other closely with their thick hair and round cheeks; in their lace gowns they were like a border of beautiful white flowers. The Tsarevitch, for all the tales of his terrible illness, was a well-built boy with an impish face and intelligence in his narrowed eyes.

  Lydia was engaged in conversation with them for some time, and bidden to show off her gift, a small mahogany chest bound in gold which contained a selection of yellow diamonds. ‘To fashion any jewel La Kusminskaya desires’read a small card enclosed in it. At last she was free to dress and join the reception in the shimmering cavern of the ballroom, wearing a Lanvin gown of dark red taffeta embroidered with gold lilies, with the necklace as her only jewellery, her fears rolled back like thunderclouds.

  Orlov was at first hard to distinguish in the haze of gilt and mirrors but when she made him out he was deep in conversation with a woman who was just as Alexandrov had described her: tall, voluptuous, very dark and elegant in the same striking style that his old lover had achieved. Her turquoise gown was decorated with huge stylized roses of black velvet, a design so boldly modern that all the other dresses in the room, including Lydia’s own, appeared stuffy and timid.

  They were introduced. She was the Comtesse de Chalus-Lupiac, and as pretentious as Lydia had expected. ‘Such a charming pageant,’ she trilled, looking down her long nose. ‘Of course, we have seen the famous Russian Ballet in Paris, but to see it here, as you perform it for your own people, is so interesting. Were you really presented with a chest of diamonds? Is that always the custom?’

  ‘Yes, at special events such as this.’

  ‘Only you, because you are the prima, receive such a gift …’

  ‘Tonight my partner, Leonid Volinsky, received a gold watch set with diamonds, the two dancers who took the roles of the sea nymphs were given enamelled powder cases with gold frames and the corps were presented with little silver vases. It is usual in Russia to show one’s appreciation of an artist with a small gift.’

  ‘You mean the Emperor chooses them himself …’

  ‘For a particular artist, and a particular occasion, perhaps. Usually there is some consultation between the Chamberlain and the Director to discover what one would like to receive, or what would be appropriate.’

  ‘And it is paid for by the Emperor …’

  Lydia was momentarily dumbstruck at the vulgarity of the question, then muttered a vague protestation of ignorance.

  ‘And what do you intend to do with your diamonds – make them into a necklace? But you have a beautiful collier already …’ The Comtesse realized that she had made a faux pas and was paying compliments to soothe the offended company; Lydia saw no reason to be charitable.

  ‘Certainly I do.’ She laid her hand across the diamonds at her throat with a reverent gesture. ‘This is the Orlov collier, the most treasured of all my possessions, Madame. It has been in Nikolai’s family for generations.’ She paused, allowing the implications of her remark to sink in. Orlov’s face was expressionless; he found the encounter awkward; his mistress was determined to be vindictive and the Comtesse, whom he revered but did not much desire, was embarrassingly innocent of protocol at such events.

  ‘Indeed.’ The woman was nonplussed. ‘How lucky you are to have it now.’

  They exchanged a few more frozen remarks and a page arrived to request that Lydia attend the Grand Duchess Xenia, the Tsar’s sister, in an adjoining room. As she followed him away, Lydia understood the basis of the woman’s insulting manner. The French, indeed most foreigners, had difficulty in understanding that in Russia formal manners were a charade adopted only for the benefit of the outside world, and that in fact emotional liaisons carried as much weight as legal ties. Thus a man’s mistress was accorded the same status as his wife – perhaps even greater status if the mistress was a celebrity in her own right. It was not the custom in Petersburg to relegate all artists to the demi-monde.

  To Lydia’s annoyance, Orlov led the Comtesse in to dinner, and danced with her twice, before moving smoothly on to several other partners and finally reclaiming his mistress. ‘I have to convey the Comtesse’s apologies to you. Since part of the business which has brought her husband here is the negotiation of a loan from France, she was confused by the spectacle of wealth displayed this evening. I explained to her that the Imperial purse is separate from the national exchequer, something I suppose a citizen of a republic, even if she is a well-born one, might easily fail to appreciate. I hope you were not upset.’

  ‘Oh, not at all,’ Lydia assured him with a pretty smile. ‘I simply thought she was jealous. Her own jewels were very poor, after all.’

  The Comtesse had in fact observed, with a cynicism Orlov found totally captivating since it voiced thoughts he himself hardly dared admit, that it was most bizarre to think that the fruit of the famous industry and parsimony of the peasants of France was to be applied to alleviate the misery of the peasants of Russia, when their own rulers could have achieved the same end by a small reduction in their scale of ostentation.

  Two days later he casually announced that he was to be transferred back to the Ministry of the Interior that autumn, and sent to Paris for the summer as part of an exchange of senior military advisers which had been agreed during the French President’s visit. The alliance of Russia, France and England was alarmed to find itself locked in a race to stockpile arms with Germany and the Austrian empire. Every year each country voted more money for weapons and warships, and the alliance had pledged itself to make plans for an arms treaty before the whole business got out of control. It was an important posting, and he had been honoured to accept it. She congratulated him with a warm smile and a cold heart, thinking of the struggle to come.

  Lydia’s next actions were decisive. She demanded that the Director release her for the summer, and then sought out Leo, who had recently been appointed as a ballet master with the company, when his morning class was finished.

  ‘You must forgive me.’ She touched his arm and lowered her eyes, the picture of sympathetic remorse. ‘I must have been mad to quarrel with my destiny. We have had so many triumphs together I felt quite jealous thinking that now you would conquer a new world without me. Of course I’ll join you. Tell Sergei Pavlovich he has at last worn me down.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ he said simply. ‘I knew that nothing could prevent you that would be worth the loss. And I wanted to tell you that … that love might die, but art will endure for ever.’

  She was annoyed to think that he, too, had heard the gossip, and tempted to prick his pomposity once more with a pointed retort, but some perverse instinct guided her to hold both his hands in hers and ask, ‘Is that how things are for you at home? No! Don’t answer, I had no right to ask that. Ignore me, I’m a little stupid today.’ His
eyes seemed to shrink with fear of being wounded, and she realized that she had guessed his secret, and that he was, as ever, too self-obsessed to divine hers.

  A few months later her circular hallway was crammed with trunks and she stood with Charlotte double-checking the lists of her possessions while Kolya persistently mountaineered over the luggage and a nursemaid hovered in attendance. The furniture in the main rooms was already covered with dust sheets, and in the salon the housemaids were on ladders sewing calico covers over the chandelier. More dust sheets draped the statuary. Her carriage, with its three grey ponies of the Orlov breed, waited at the door.

  The Prince had already departed for London on state business and had agreed, with hesitation, to meet her in Paris.

  ‘Davidov! At last, whatever kept you?’ She greeted Orlov’s valet with impatience.

  ‘My apologies, Madame, I called at the station first to confirm that the train was running.’ His barrel chest heaved and perspiration stuck his auburn curls to his forehead, which he mopped rapidly with a handkerchief. ‘The strike may have been settled, but when things have been disrupted the rolling stock can be halfway to Kiev and it takes a few days for things to get back to normal. Is this my package?’ He indicated a small black lizard-skin case bound with brass which Charlotte held possessively in her arms. It contained the most important pieces of Lydia’s jewellery, which the house of Fabergé had undertaken to send by courier to their Paris office. Chief among them were the Tsar’s yellow diamonds, which she had set most extravagantly in a simple collar that rose high at her throat. Their colour made her white skin gleam like mother-of-pearl, and the design emphasized the beauty of her long neck.

  ‘Whatever shall we do with the receipt?’ Charlotte was inclined to panic whenever her careful arrangements had to be changed. ‘You’ll never have time to go to Fabergé and catch up with us now?’

  ‘I shall send a rider with it to meet the train at Pskov. The station master has already been telegraphed. Never fear, Madame.’