White Ice

by Celia Brayfield

  On his return from London, Orlov had found a different house, one where order reigned, the servants were cheerful and sometimes industrious and there was a general thriving air. Most extraordinary of all was the difference in his son. Kolya had grown markedly; his temperament seemed more even, his intelligence more mature.

  Orlov was so estranged from domestic administration that he almost imagined that a household regulated itself. He was astounded that one woman in a few months could make such a difference, particularly because Charlotte was such a retiring figure. Wanting to understand the enigma, he began to engage her in conversation, and discovered at once that all this was done from adoration of her mistress. She was dazzled by Lydia and barely recognized the selfishness which she had remedied so well. ‘Oh dear – if only Madame was here,’ she would say when he recounted his bad news or his latest anxieties. ‘She has such wit, such a bright spirit, one could never despair with her at home. I’m afraid I must be very boring company in comparison.’

  After the first year of the war, when Petrograd’s wave of patriotism had subsided and the food shortages began, he noticed her kindness. Half Lydia’s acquaintance seemed to know that the household was well provided and its mistress had a warm heart. Karsavina’s elderly and simple-minded maid came every morning to collect milk for the dancer’s baby son. Marie Nikonova, with two young children, called frequently. One afternoon Orlov noticed a pasty-faced, hollow-chested youth slipping furtively out of the kitchen door; he carried a basket and a bundle, and around his shoulders flapped a coat with a worn collar of ginger fox fur which had once belonged to Davidov, the Prince’s valet. ‘It is Madame’s young brother,’ the governess explained when he inquired. ‘He came to the door a few weeks ago.’

  ‘I never knew she had family still living.’ He had a clear recollection of Lydia installing a tattered photograph in an enamelled frame and sighing over the death of her devoted parents within weeks of each other in a typhoid epidemic.

  ‘I wasn’t sure, she hardly ever spoke of them and then always as if they were dead. It seems only that they were too poor to keep her, and became estranged.’ Charlotte spoke with a careful lack of emotion. To her, Lydia had maintained with some passion that her mother had thrown her out of their home.

  ‘He might be an impostor, did you think of that?’

  ‘He brought papers to prove the claim, and he seems quite intelligent. A clerk, but with their mother to support, and he coughs all the time, I think he’s consumptive. I gave him left-overs and old clothes – I hope you don’t mind.’

  He began to find beauty in her. She was a neat woman, with even, unremarkable features. The hard climate, instead of draining colour from her face, gave her complexion an even, burnished tone, so that with her dark hair she seemed more Mediterranean than northern in looks. Intelligence gleamed in her eyes, but her face was always placid and her voice seldom raised.

  In time he attributed her reserve to a childhood spent caring for her own mother, a semi-invalid, and her four younger siblings. Her parents were both teachers, and seemed to be liberal thinkers who shared the fascination with Russia that was common among the English intelligentsia.

  In her late twenties, she ought to have been married, and he suspected that it was her enchantment with Lydia that had prevented it. Before the outbreak of war she had travelled home to London every second year; when he learned that there was a fiancé, some kind of artist, he had offered to send her home, but she had declined in alarm, explaining nothing.

  ‘Then his loss must be our gain,’ he agreed at last. ‘But think again in the summer, and come to me at once if you change your mind. The Germans may have overrun the Baltic, but they will never dominate the Arctic Sea.’

  He rose and went to the writing desk, where every item lay in its place. The letter from Lydia joined the others in the drawer reserved for her correspondence. ‘And what did the post bring you, Charlotte? Have you news from home?’

  ‘How kind of you to ask – yes, there were letters for me. My mother is no better. They have no word of my brother, which means he was certainly lost at Verdun. And an arms factory in London blew up with such a terrible noise it was heard far away in the country – as if’ – she pinched the bridge of her short, straight nose in thought – ‘as if an explosion here were heard in Viborg. Seventy people were killed.’

  He nodded. ‘Sabotage, no doubt. They’ll give out that it was an accident, for the sake of morale. And your Walter?’

  The name of her fiancé also seemed to amuse him. ‘He is still recovering, but can’t think of returning to his regiment yet. He is patient, but I think it’s getting him down.’ She looked intently down at her needle, knowing she was a bad liar. Orlov would be appalled to know the truth, that the man she was to marry was a pacifist, and in prison. She had invented a chest wound for him early in the war, and pretended ever since that he was in a sanatorium.

  ‘Would he not recover more quickly with a good woman’s care?’

  ‘I am sure he has the care of enough good women already.’

  ‘Aren’t you worried that he will fall in love with one of them?’

  ‘You’re teasing me.’

  ‘Forgive me, I forget how serious you are.’ She was seldom ready to laugh – it was her only fault. He changed the subject and they passed the time happily until his driver called at eight. The Countess Witte would not be happy with a donation instead of his presence, but not surprised since he had become a rare figure at the ballet now that his mistress was absent. He did not forget to order the driver to pick out the toughest lad in their stable yard and send him back to see that the maid came to no harm while she waited for their sugar.

  A few days later a party of English, French and Italian statesmen arrived. Although in their eyes the war was almost won, the Russians had lost all belief in victory, but talks about peace terms proceeded. Petrograd society, on the edge of abandoning itself to a mood of impending tragedy, elected to believe that Russia’s fortunes could be restored by the intervention of their allies, and embarked upon a new round of festivity in their honour. The delegates, already tired and overworked, found the pace intolerable and were grateful for a two-day trip to Moscow, scheduled as relaxation.

  Orlov accompanied them. From the train, he noted the signs of famine and looting throughout the countryside. In the city there was outright panic. The British delegation, who outnumbered the other two nationalities even discounting their separate military mission, were invited to a private meeting by the mayor of Moscow and Prince Lvov, the leader of the local government committee. The aristocracy had always played an active part in the district councils; Orlov not only respected Lvov as a social equal, but considered him one of the few men in the country whom he could admire as a politician. He was flattered when his request to be included was agreed.

  Lvov spoke with restraint; his manner was characteristically mild and in addition he was plainly exhausted. Lest his condition should rob his words of their strength, he had also prepared a long report. ‘In essence, gentlemen, what we are saying is this: if the attitude of the Tsar and his government does not change, we believe there will be a revolution in this country within three weeks. Any new government will be under extreme pressure to take this country out of the war.’ He sat back, and the absolute weariness of movement was more eloquent than writing or speech.

  Much of the rest of the visit was wasted on an official banquet which lasted five hours, and while the delegates slept on the journey back to Petrograd, Orlov thought of the future and of his son. If Lvov was correct the country would soon be plunged into a period of terror and confusion beside which the darkest days of the French Revolution would appear a tolerable interlude. By no miracle of national rebirth would Russians become capable of the orderly extermination of their aristocrats; he and his peers would become the people’s enemies and be destroyed the Russian way: savagely, senselessly and probably in secret.

  He was dispassionate on his own behalf. Poli
tically he had committed the fatal error of independent thought, sat on too many fences, made too few friends. He was no Talleyrand, able to sail through storms by trimming his sails to changing winds of opinion. He was simply a misfit, and he knew the fate of such men in history. Already he had suffered accusations of profiteering, and there had been attempts to load the blame for the collapse of the army on to his shoulders. Socially, he was fatally enmeshed in the net of the Imperial Court.

  Nothing would save him. Not for one instant, even in the furthest recess of his mind, did he consider for himself the option of flight.

  For his son, he thought of nothing else. Kolya must be sent to safety immediately, and Charlotte with him, the house emptied and closed down. Terrible visions emerged in his mind, of the child’s corpse, unburied, face down in bloodstained snow, torn by crows and wolves, perhaps even violated by his executioners. He knew that starving men turned to cannibalism, though official reports never admitted it. The fact that the child was not, and never could be, the legitimate heir to the Orlov name made his innocence seem the more tragic. To his patrician mind, he had betrayed his son by conceiving him with a commoner, but could redeem the crime by saving the child from the curse of his noble blood.

  In Petrograd, he still did not sleep, but went straight to the Ministry and ordered passes. He called personally on the British Ambassador, saying only that his English governess, a widow, needed urgently to return home with her child. The man understood at once that he was lying, but saw that in his extreme distress the Prince, whom he had always considered an unemotional man, had not even registered his disbelief. Orlov left with an endorsement adding Nicholas, born 1910, to Charlotte’s passport and a letter to the captain of a coal ship due to leave the Arctic port of Murmansk in two weeks’time.

  He savoured the tranquillity of the house in Rimsky-Korsakov Street for as long as it took him to draw breath before calling for Charlotte and ordering its evacuation.

  ‘Everything precious must be sent to a place of safety. I am going to send you and Kolya to London. It may be dangerous if people know who he is, so he is to travel as your son on your passport. You will go north by railway to Murmansk – there is a navy train scheduled for tomorrow night. You will have an escort, I hope I can find an officer who can be trusted. You must begin packing immediately – the house will be closed after you leave. Don’t argue’ – he saw that she was about to protest – ‘what I have heard in Moscow makes me certain that this is necessary now. You have a passage on a ship to London, only a freighter, but it may be the last one for some time, I had no choice. From there, you must arrange to travel on to Monaco as soon as you can. I am transferring money to an account in London for your journey, but take as many valuables as you can hide in your clothing …’

  ‘Surely we won’t need …’

  ‘Believe me, my dear, we cannot be sure of anything at this moment. Now where is my boy?’

  ‘In the kitchen. Cook is giving him lunch – one of the nurserymaids has run off, and Lena too.’

  ‘So, it’s beginning. There will be a general panic soon.’

  She nodded, smoothing down her light blue cashmere dress, thinking of what had to be done. ‘Heavens, why am I just standing here? We’ll never be ready in time.’

  ‘Don’t concern yourself with anything except the boy and your own safety. Don’t worry about the house.’ He was halfway down the service stairs as he spoke.

  A few hours later he came up to the nursery where she was sitting amid piles of clothing making a list. The room was furnished with a narrow bed, where a maid slept at night, a sofa, table and chairs. One comer was the schoolroom, with bookshelves and the desk where Kolya did his lessons. The electricity in that part of the city had long since been cut off, and two oil lamps lit the room.

  In the Prince’s hands were the contents of the safe, wooden boxes and leather pouches of jewellery, trinkets and gold coins. Kolya, eating bread and jam at the table, gave a cry of excitement as the load was spread before him.

  One by one Orlov tipped out the containers and a heap of jewels sparkled in the warm glow of the lamps. Last of all he opened the box containing the diamond necklace.

  ‘I want you to take as much of this as you can.’

  ‘But – we’ll have to hide it all.’ Her eyes were wide with wonder at the treasure. ‘If I’m to travel as myself, and Kolya as my son … how would a governess come to own even the smallest thing here?’ She picked up a small ruby and diamond ring and held it close to her. Beside a modest woman in simple clothes, it appeared dangerously gaudy.

  ‘It’s Kolya’s birthright. Who knows, if the worst happens it may be all I can give him.’ He stood like a man distracted, his hands at his temples.

  One by one she picked out the twelve twigs which Lydia used to decorate place settings at her most lavish dinners. No more than three inches high, they rested in rock-crystal vases carved to seem half full of water, with gold stems and leaves of jade, agate or emerald invisibly hinged so that they trembled realistically at every movement. The first he had given Lydia as an Easter gift, a birch twig with white enamel bark and catkins of spun green gold, and the rest she had commissioned later. ‘She was so proud of these. No one had anything like them. Suppose they break?’

  ‘If they break, they will still be gold.’

  ‘But their beauty will be spoiled. If I am found with things like this I wouldn’t blame anyone who said I’d stolen them. Maybe if I can sew the small things into our coats … unpick the linings and sew things inside. They will be well hidden in the padding.’

  She rang for the one remaining nurserymaid, pulled her scissors from her work-basket and set to work. Kolya, already tired, bellowed with rage when she proposed fitting the necklace into his toy lion but soon afterwards, exhausted with emotion, fell so deeply asleep that she was able to pull it out of his arms without disturbing him.

  The lion was made of leather which had once been soft and covered with yellow fur. Now it was stiff and mostly bald. Delicately, she cut open the stitches at the animal’s belly, pulled out some of the cotton stuffing and tried to manoeuvre the stiff band of diamonds inside. After half an hour of slow and careful manipulation, she gave up. ‘All that for nothing. I’ll have to think of something else. Let’s hope I can make the poor thing look as if it had never been touched.’

  ‘Can you get this in?’ He picked up the jewelled birch twig; she measured against the toy, wrapped it in a piece of lint and pushed it into the stuffing.

  He had intended to leave and return in the morning, but the habit of her company was strong. The maid fell asleep over her portion of sewing and was sent to bed. Once she had left them, Charlotte asked, ‘What is to become of the staff?’

  He had not given this subject any thought at all. ‘When you’ve gone, they can leave. They’ll be paid off, of course.’

  ‘But old Mischa … he has no family, you know.’ She cut her thread, laid aside a coat with small brooches in its hem and began to snip at one of the boy’s caps.

  ‘I’ll take care of him. He’s as good as a veterinarian, with his cures and lotions. He can live out his days in our mews.’ As he spoke, he wondered for how long the Orlov mews with its famous greys would continue to exist.

  ‘And the milkmaid? She’s halfwitted, but she was promised to a lad in the village before the war.’

  ‘I’ll send her back – she can travel with the next ambulance.’

  ‘You won’t forget?’ She looked at him as if to will him to remember, then licked the end of a fresh thread. Her lips closed on it gently, the upper folded slightly over the lower.

  ‘For the love of God, they aren’t your concern, why are you bothering about them now?’ He saw that she was scared, and regretted his harshness. ‘Forgive me. Please don’t be worried. No one will be overlooked.’

  ‘And you? What will you do?’

  ‘What I have to. Nothing. I don’t know.’

  She racked her brains for conversation. ‘
Marie Nikonova visited us this morning. A tram driver had stopped to let her cross the road and called out “Come along, Comrade”. She was terribly upset – quite hysterical.’ At this he laughed, and she was encouraged.

  After a while he fetched a map and showed her the railway line and the port, then explained to her all the documents he had prepared, the travel permits, letters and references. Fear made them both short-tempered. She argued, he snapped at her, they apologized, over and over again, intimacy like a sticky web binding them together the more they struggled. All the time she kept up the rhythm of cutting and stitching, and the heap of jewels grew smaller until only the necklace, the little copse of eleven twigs, and a thin, misshapen gold bangle were left. It was midnight when she stood up and stretched her arms towards the ceiling.

  ‘My eyes are too tired, I can’t see well enough. There is time to finish in the morning, isn’t there?’ It would be her last night under that roof.

  He rose also, thinking that their amiable quarrelling was even more like the behaviour of a dreary married couple.

  Neither of them intended what followed. The dreams of death which had possessed Orlov awakened a primitive need which suddenly overpowered him. He reached for her, held her around the waist, pulled her towards him, looked into her luminous eyes and sensed that fear had stirred her blood also. A gasp of shock was forced from her. His hands felt the breath leave her chest, saw the tremor under her dress that was her heartbeat, felt the warmth of her parted lips against his cheek.

  They paused, shivering, knowing what was to come.

  ‘You have been so dear to me,’ he whispered.

  ‘And you to me.’ Her voice was so low he barely heard it. She lifted her head and the last shreds of control parted. They kissed as if to suck the life from each other, and a frenzied desire took light and consumed them. Charlotte remembered the moment for the rest of her life. The force of her own passion terrified her. She had always denied and evaded, damped down her inner fires and starved them of fuel. Now she tore away clothing, both his and her own, opened out her body to him without shame and gave herself to the violence of her instincts.