White Ice

by Celia Brayfield

  ‘I happen to know she’s very interested in this market at the moment, and jewellery is something she knows a lot about. Let me write down the number for you … but don’t tell her I sent you. She’s my ex-wife, and we’re going through a bad patch right now.’ It galled him to admit to the hostilities, but if he glossed over the situation there were a dozen people who could relate it to Wolfe and he would then become suspicious.

  ‘Seems like you aren’t having much luck in that area right now.’

  ‘And by the way, she also does business with Kolya Kusminsky.’ Lovat considered that he had disclosed enough for one day.

  ‘I get you.’

  Bianca’s secretary could not find a window in her diary for three weeks; she mentioned a board meeting, but Wolfe mentioned Kusminsky’s name and explained that he was due back in New York as soon as possible; apologetically, she suggested 8 a.m. on any weekday. ‘Tomorrow will be fine,’ he told her, eager to appear unimpressed.

  Bianca enjoyed breakfast meetings. The office was quiet, concentration was better, much more could be accomplished. And much needed to be done now. Her father, once so tentative on the subject of loans, had finally taken the bit between his teeth. The loans outstanding to buyers at the end of the financial year totalled almost ten million pounds, more than half of which represented a single borrowing by a Chicago entrepreneur whose affairs at the time were the subject of a government inquiry. The word was that the man would be bankrupt, and that interest rates would be rising in the coming twelve months. With its slender reserves, Berrisford’s faced a cash-flow crisis.

  Hugh had struck the pose of a high-minded gentleman whose financial ineptitude ought to have been foreseen by his colleagues. He intended to resign as managing director. Several of her colleagues had pressed Bianca to accept nomination in his place. They cited the continuity of the family name, her modern profile, her successes in the past years but she, whose eyes saw more clearly the more she accomplished, knew that the men had smelt a change in the commercial climate. They were looking for a fall guy, holding her responsible for her father’s foolishness, reasoning that a woman would not feel failure so badly.

  The stranger who had wanted so urgently to see her was late. When he arrived, she was preoccupied with the figures on which she had been working, and since he said nothing arresting in the first ten minutes she was barely aware of him. He talked in a general way of doing business in Russia, mentioned that he spoke the language and, with his dance company, occasionally toured there or visited on cultural exchanges. When he rolled out his background like a precious carpet and pointed out the highlights she gradually became intrigued.

  He was remarkably easy to talk to. He admired the decor of the building, the charm of her secretary. As if he felt he had talked too much about himself, he drew her out, asking questions that were uncannily well aimed at pains she hardly knew were nagging her. He saw her force immobility into her soft lower lip as it began to quiver when she mentioned her divorce, and her eyes softened as she talked about her children. She was like some noble, wounded bird. He longed to give her back her wholeness. His eyes spontaneously paid tribute to her beauty – the way her hair sprang from her temples, the slant of her nostrils, the pale skin with its fine, almost dusty texture, the delicate shadows of her neck above her loose silk blouse of steel blue.

  In good time he worked the conversation back to Russia; she explained the difficulties of doing business in a country where profit was an unknown principle and bank statements were still handwritten. They discussed the excitement of glasnost, the chaos and uncertainty. Perhaps, he suggested, she needed a consultant?

  Again, he was accurate. She needed at least a courier to take in the cash payments to Russian dealers. Nothing about this man inspired confidence. To Bianca’s hypersensitive faculties he was obviously nervous, intimidated by the whole enterprise, and not particularly honest, but somehow the pressing business of the morning seemed less urgent. It was around 11 a.m. when she identified the long-forgotten feeling simmering in her belly.

  He asked her to lunch, suggesting Harry’s Bar. It was instantly obvious that he was not a member, did not know it was a club, and probably could not afford it, but instead of correcting him she found herself smiling softly and saying that she preferred the nearby Italian trattoria. They looked helplessly at each other over two halves of roast grouse, wondering how the meal would end.

  He was moved when he talked about his grandmother’s death – the imminence of love always made him a little morbid – and she touched his arm in sympathy, feeling the hard, rounded shape of muscle. His loose clothes only accentuated the density of his body.

  Normally, Wolfe would never expect to make love to a woman the same day he met her. He cherished the slow burning of emotions, the tension that would finally erupt in seething, devouring sensuality. But he had no money for courtship, only a return air ticket which he could trade if he was able to stay in London. The widow had taken separate rooms at the hotel. She was lunching in the country, but would be back in the evening. All these considerations churned in the dark confusion of his mind, not quite acknowledged. In the full light of consciousness, all he knew was that he was in love.

  Outside the restaurant he drew her tentatively into his arms, felt the immediate yielding of her body and so kissed her. When they drew apart she was shivering.

  ‘I don’t know what this is, what I’m feeling. You’re not offended, are you?’

  ‘No. Did I feel as if I was offended?’ Her eyes were wide and dark, deep as forest pools.

  ‘No. Oh, no.’ He had no words for the dynamic force he could feel in her body, the vibrating energy in the soft flesh, the arms winding around his neck. ‘You feel …’ He kissed her again and sucked her tongue into his mouth. How strong his lips were, how delicately they moved. Impossible not to imagine them roaming over her body, nuzzling every sensitive part. ‘You feel wonderful,’ he concluded in a weak voice. ‘I must see you – when can I see you?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’m needed in the office …’ The board meeting was tomorrow, and the fall-out from it would tie her up for days. He pulled her hand to his chest. His nipples were violently reactive, but he was too shy to tell her so for fear of seeming strange or effeminate. She felt the intake of his breath against half the length of her body. ‘Now. It has to be now.’

  Being in his hotel room, a gust of fear overcame her. The force of the attraction he aroused was terrifying; she imagined that her whole life would be overturned by it, but she could not turn back. She was tired of self-sacrifice. This was what she wanted, needed, deserved. It would be hers alone. He found some champagne, kissed her hands and licked her fingers while she recovered her courage and grew impatient to go wherever this golden impulse might lead.

  His flesh was straining for hers, to touch, enter, merge with her, to strike the essence of her and pound it until it combined with his, atom linking with atom. At the moment of penetration they were still and quiet, pausing with a single will to feel the act of union as if with each individual nerve.

  Bianca felt her flesh parted for the first time since Lizzie’s birth, now obeying a different instinct, hot and receptive. Then she had given, now she would be given to. She was being reborn, regenerated from inside to out. His body glowed under her hands, the muscles like the hard ripples carved in sand by waves, his movements fluid and free.

  Before he came, Alex made a bargain with God. Give me this woman, but give her, all of her, body, mind and spirit, give me this woman and take the rest of my life. Then his mind melted down, stars burst against his eyelids, he heard himself scream, felt Bianca’s back arch and the divine crushing tension of orgasm. The bargain had been struck before, but it seemed that both parties conspired to forget it.

  The next day when she assumed the leadership of Berrisford’s, Bianca put forward a plan for the coming year which rested on two planks: sweeping retrenchment, and concentration on new markets where stock was cheap to acquire. �
�We need to do real business, and to prune our ambitions. And we need to get away from the most inflated categories fast – I wouldn’t be happy to have another large Impressionist sale in the next year or even two. My aim is for a period of quiet, honest turnover to re-establish our stability.’ They agreed easily, too easily, and afterwards Martin Pownall saw her privately and offered to take early retirement.

  ‘Martin, are you volunteering to be the first rat?’ It sounded almost flirtatious, but her eyes were fierce. He waffled, surprised to have been so thoroughly understood. ‘I can’t keep you if you want out. And if you do, it would be better if you went as soon as possible.’

  ‘Yes, I agree … we’ll work out the details as fast as possible …’

  ‘I mean now, Martin. If there’s anything personal you need we can ask your secretary to bring it over in the morning.’

  He was stunned into stillness, only his fingers twitched in anxiety. ‘But Bianca, we haven’t fallen out, have we? I don’t want to leave on bad terms. We go back a few years now, you and I …’ For the first time, Pownall understood why Lovat Whitburn acted with such suicidal vindictiveness towards his former wife. She was a villain, that was the only fair description.

  ‘Of course we do, and I don’t want this either. But for the sake of the firm, of morale, it is the best way. There’s no bad feeling here, believe me.’ How many times she had heard her father use the same formula to blow up the emotional foundation of an argument.

  When he flung open the door to leave it almost hit Alexander Wolfe in the face. Nevertheless, as soon as they were alone, Alex took Bianca into his arms and said nothing until he had re-established their physical connection. In time, he commented, ‘That man was angry.’

  ‘He’s a traitor and he didn’t like me telling him so, that’s all.’

  The clarity, the strength – admiration dazzled him. ‘What happened today? Did it go as you planned?’

  ‘Yes. And I’ve put the big Russian sale into the diary for next summer. So you’re hired for a buying trip next month. Run all that about your grandmother’s necklace by me over dinner, yes?’

  It was the best decision for Berrisford’s. It was the best decision for him. It seemed to Bianca to be the best decision for her as well, but the symmetry of the affair disturbed her.

  19. Petrograd, 1917

  ‘What shall we call it, that degree of virtuosity when the dancer’s body no longer needs to obey its own laws, where it overcomes itself, becomes transfigured? There’s no expression in Russian, shall we create one in French? … Perhaps we could say that it makes itself a glorious entity – se faire un corps glorieux?’ The French Ambassador, Monsieur Paléologue, appealed to his guests, his starched shirt crackling as his chest swelled with delight at his cleverness.

  ‘Oh, so eloquent! What a sublime imagination you possess, Your Excellency.’ Karsavina, to whom his bouquet of semantic pleasantry was offered, clapped her gloved hands softly while Bruce, the pale young English diplomat whom she had recently married, murmured, ‘Quite so, yes, imagination!’ and added his own applause.

  ‘Well, what can I do? To celebrate midwinter we have delayed our luncheon to embrace the hour of sunset. We have moved our table to the window which, of all those in the most splendid embassy of my career, offers us the best view of your majestic river, but alas! The sun is too modest to lay aside its draperies of cloud and perform for us.’ Three years of war had been a worthy challenge to Monsieur Paléologue’s highly cultivated aptitude for pleasure. While the city, rechristened Petrograd to disclaim its numerous ties to the enemy Germans, was engulfed in a turmoil of rumours, shortages, panic and lawlessness, he strove to keep his large acquaintance in good spirits.

  Each week he entertained on a different theme, turning to account the possibilities of his embassy; for today he had decreed The Sixty-degree Luncheon, with the intention of wringing the utmost enjoyment from the meteorological phenomenon peculiar to that latitude in winter, namely twilight at noon followed by sunset at 3 p. m., accompanied by a subtle, unearthly display of light and colour as the rays surrendered their strength to the frozen and saturated air.

  ‘Oh – but last week, when you opened your ballroom for us so that we might enjoy the tapestries while we dined! That was unforgettable! After that, your friends could ask nothing more of you.’ Tata was smiling, but was perfectly serious nonetheless. She adored the French Ambassador. A few weeks ago he had recounted to her the details of the assassination of Rasputin, adding all the dramatic points which to her mind spelt veracity, the writhing form whom poison could not master nor bullets kill, the body thrown into the river with bound hands but recovered, some days later, with the right hand on the left shoulder, the last position of the sign of the cross. Now the times grew more disjointed each day, she was inclined to believe nothing unless His Excellency said it was so and had a masterly story to prove it.

  ‘You are too kind, but myself I was so looking forward to the spectacle. The enormous shadows growing longer and longer behind the tiniest lump of snow, the seabirds wheeling restlessly across the burnished sky, the last red rays stealing across the ice …’

  ‘Like raspberries and cream?’ The Englishman was clearly delighted with his own imaginative feat.

  ‘Something more melancholy – and yet, the sunset is never triste here in the North, don’t you find? The land is so well acquainted with the night, it welcomes the darkness like an old friend. I find the sunsets here in Petrograd are full of hope, more like the dawn in my own country …’

  ‘So here you would disagree with Pompey, that more worship the rising than the setting sun?’ Orlov was a frequent guest at the French Ambassador’s parties, and like the rest of the company cherished the man for his gifts as a host. He was an exquisite product of his own superior civilization, but recently his ability to amuse had grated with the Prince. ‘But what of our dawn here on the Neva – is our dawn full of hope?’

  ‘Your Highness, I am a lover of the future. Whatever convulsions may take place, I have absolute trust in humanity to save itself, to elevate itself, to overcome all sufferings, defeat all enemies in pursuit of its highest good.’ He concluded this flowery evasion with a small, involuntary bow.

  ‘Even Russians? On the basis of my own observations, self-preservation is an instinct which occurs only rarely among Homo sapiens at Latitude Sixty.’

  Paléologue wagged his finger as if at an excessively flirtatious woman. ‘You will not make me call your people beasts, Your Highness. When it comes to humanity, I consider that the Russian can teach the rest of the world the true meaning of the word.’

  ‘I heard they sang the Marseillaise at the opera last night.’ The Englishman was anxious to steer the conversation into more cheerful waters.

  ‘Ah yes! I have never heard it sung so magnificently. Your great bass, Chaliapin, led the whole house. Tears choked everybody. Such deep emotion. Even in France I have never felt it. This morning I sent a cable to Paris: “Chaos everywhere. No information. Chaliapin magnificent. Situation normal.”’ The company laughed and exchanged rueful shrugs.

  ‘We are artists – it’s our privilege to inspire the war-weary people. But I think we ourselves are truly fortunate in these dark days to feel the steady, optimistic pulse of our allies beating in the hearts of our companions. Emotional instability is our curse in Russia, we need to be with rational Western spirits or we will lose our minds.’ Tata turned to Orlov; her eyes were brimming with tears even now. ‘I am doubly blessed, of course, with my dear husband, and you have that sweet English girl under your roof too. And His Excellency, always so well informed, is a beacon to light our darkness.’

  Orlov sighed. He too was well informed. ‘We are sustained, certainly, but patriotism has become rather a luxury. So indeed, have many of the necessities of life for our people. Chocolate is ten roubles a bar now, shoes more than a hundred roubles, factory wages less than thirty-five a month. At those prices I don’t know that an ordinary man would be s
ustained even by company such as we have here tonight.’

  ‘Ah, indeed. Dear Niki, you’re so involved. We are living in an enchanted world, it’s true. The only things in good supply right now are talk and newspapers. So tell me, dearest Niki, I have been invited to dance our new production in Kiev – do you think I should go?’ She balanced her pointed chin on her graceful hand and gave him an interrogatory smile.

  The Englishman leaned protectively over his new wife and added, ‘Tell her not to go, Your Highness. It would be madness, surely?’

  ‘The depths of the country have been stirred and the bottom is rising to the top now. Men are deserting at the front …’

  ‘Just a few, surely.’ Paléologue knew the truth as well, but would not alarm his guests nor offer an unpalatable fact to his host country.

  ‘Thousands. Perhaps – well, quite certainly, hundreds of thousands. Simple men, trusting, illiterate, foolish – our noble peasant in his millions. I can’t blame them, their officers sent them to their deaths rather than deal with their committees. And who can blame the officers? Every one of the men’s grievances is absolutely genuine, anywhere else in the civilized world their conditions would be a scandal. What can the officers do? Nothing. But wash down our doorstep and invite Fritz to come in – ah no. After all there is a war to be fought. So – forward! Victory or death!’

  ‘If you don’t blame the officers’ – the exculpation was heresy to Bruce, schooled as he had been from infancy in the obligations of the officer class – ‘whom do you blame?’