by Susan Lewis
‘Very strictly private,’ Rhiannon confirmed. ‘Galina has specifically requested that I keep it to myself until such time as Max decides to go public with it – which will very probably be after the ceremony.’
‘Well, there you go,’ Lizzy laughed. ‘You’re getting this handed to you on a plate. You get them to let you break the news of their wedding and then you run their interviews. No network in the world is going to turn you down, especially not if you’ve got your wits about you and just happen to be shooting a little home movie of the nuptials as they happen. Crikey, Rhiannon, it might not be worth losing your own husband and programme over, but there again it just might.’
‘What!’
‘Destiny,’ Lizzy reminded her. ‘It could just be that this is meant to put you on the map in a way that Check It Out never could.’
‘Just a minute,’ Rhiannon cried, ‘how come I’ve suddenly acquired Olympean-style ambitions while you, who’re sitting here plotting it all out, are off to the bush? Maybe I just want a quiet life with a few animals about the place too.’
Lizzy grinned. ‘There’s always Doug,’ she said.
Rhiannon cocked an eyebrow, then leaning forward to put her cup on the table she said, ‘Reading between the lines here, I think you’re trying to persuade me to go to the wedding so that you can go to South Africa at the same time. Am I right?’
‘Guilty,’ Lizzy confessed. ‘It only occurred to me a few minutes ago that it could work out that way and I don’t see any reason yet why it shouldn’t. Do you?’
Rhainnon looked at her. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘No, I suppose not.’
They sat in silence for several minutes.
‘What’s she like?’ Lizzy said eventually. ‘Galina, I mean. What’s she like as a person?’
Rhiannon inhaled deeply as she thought. ‘Well, she may have changed by now,’ she said, ‘but the way I remember her . . .’ She smiled with sudden surprise, ‘Actually the way I remember her best is when we were at school. Boy, was she a handful – and weird. She used to frighten the other kids half to death with the stories she told and I have to admit I was afraid of her myself until I got to know her. We had to share a room in one of the school annexes and no one, but no one, wanted to be out there at the far end of the hockey pitch in the dead of night with Galina Casimir for company. Some girls even got their parents to write letters claiming that Galina gave their daughters nightmares, which was true, she did, me included. But my dad wasn’t interested in little girls’ tantrums so no letter got written to the headmistress to save me from a fate worse than death. Which of course it wasn’t, but I remember I hardly slept a wink all that summer holiday I was so dreading going back to school.’
Lizzy was smiling curiously ‘What was so frightening about her?’ she said.
Rhiannon sighed. ‘I don’t suppose it was so much her as her grandmother,’ she answered. ‘I’ve often wondered since if any of what she told us was true. I know some of it was, like her grandmother being a Russian countess who fled the country, I think some time just before or during the Second World War.’ She thought about that for a moment, then sure she was right, she went on, ‘You know, with all the things that have been coming out of Russia these past few years I’d say that most, if not all, of Galina’s stories were probably true. They were told to her by her grandmother, though why on earth anyone would tell a child such terrible things I’ll never know.
‘I met the old lady once. She was very tall and very serene-looking, an unmistakable aristocrat, and nothing like I’d imagined she’d be. I was expecting a witch, of course. A witch who ate little children for breakfast, because that was what Galina told us she did.’ Rhiannon smiled softly, then after a beat continued. ‘I only spoke to her a few times,’ she said. ‘She was always kind, though in a remote, almost other worldly kind of way. I guess it was all that happened to her during the Stalin years that made her the way she was, and, considering some of the things that went on during that time, I imagine she would be considered fortunate to have come out with even a part of her sanity, no matter how damaged it might be.’
‘Do you mean she was mad?’
‘Not mad, no. Just not like anyone else I knew.’
‘Do you have any idea what did happen to her?’ Lizzy asked.
Rhiannon inhaled thoughtfully. ‘I believe’, she said, ‘that she was held prisoner by the NKVD – an earlier incarnation of the KGB – for something like ten or maybe even twelve years. Before that, she was hiding her family in a ghetto somewhere in St Petersburg, or Leningrad as it was known then, keeping them starving and filthy and half demented with lice so that they would blend in with the other kids and not come to the attention of the police. But then one of the neighbours was arrested and the next thing they knew the NKVD was swarming all over the tenement and the Countess’s children were taken. Two of them, the younger boy and girl – the girl being Galina’s mother – were sent to a camp, though the Countess didn’t find that out until many years later, and Vladimir, the eldest son, who tried to defend his mother, was never seen or heard of again.’
‘Oh my God,’ Lizzy murmured.
The Countess was taken to the Lubyanka,’ Rhiannon continued, ‘thrown into a cell that stank of sweat and blood and vomit and God only knows what else, with God knows how many other people, half of whom were already dead or dying. There was a collection once a day, apparently, when the bodies were hauled out and burned, or whatever they did to them, and those who were still alive were either taken somewhere to be tortured for information they didn’t have or didn’t even exist. Or if they were already tortured beyond coherence they were left, literally, to rot to death. They were rarely given any food, maybe the leftovers from an officer’s table or the occasional bucket of offal. No one ever knew where the scraps came from and I guess they were so hungry they didn’t stop to ask.
‘From what I recall she was in the Lubyanka, or at least one Soviet prison or another, for ten or more years, before some kind of underground group found her and managed to get her out.’
‘Where was her husband in all this?’ Lizzy asked.
‘As far as I know he was around right up until the time of the arrests,’ Rhiannon answered. ‘But he wasn’t at home when the NKVD came and I imagine he didn’t even know where his family were taken. According to Galina he was killed during the Battle of Stalingrad.’
‘God, there’s no happy ending here, is there?’ Lizzy complained.
‘No one had a happy ending in Soviet Russia,’ Rhiannon responded, ‘you know that.’
Lizzy nodded and lowered her eyes as though shamed by the levity of her comment. ‘So,’ she said, ‘an underground movement got the Countess out. What then?’
‘I don’t know all the details,’ Rhiannon said, stifling a yawn. ‘At least, I can’t remember them now. I just know that she ended up in London and that being who she was she had several well-placed connections who eventually managed to track down her daughter. Her other son had apparently died in Kolyma, a Siberian prison camp, when he was eight.’
‘How old was he when they took him away?’
‘Six or seven, I think. Anyway, they found the-daughter somewhere in Georgia. She was five years old when she was taken from her mother, she was twenty-five when she saw her again. During her time in Kolyma she was repeatedly tortured – even as a child – as well as being sent out in sub-zero temperatures with next to no clothes to help pile wood or shovel snow. The details of those twenty years were always vague in Galina’s mind, mainly because no one ever really got to hear them. Her mother couldn’t speak, you see. The trauma had robbed her of the power of speech. She wrote some things down, but apparently she didn’t like to be reminded of those times and who could blame her? It seems she wasn’t beyond romance though, because a couple of years after being rescued by her mother she met and fell in love with an Englishman whose name, as far as I know, was never divulged, which very probably means he was married. Anyway, there’s little doubt tha
t whoever he was, he was Galina’s father, but after Galina’s mother died of TB when Galina was five the Countess took over Galina’s upbringing and as far as I know the father’s never been heard of again.’
‘And Galina’s never tried to find him?’
‘Not that I know of. She never seemed particularly interested, to be honest.’
‘That’s unusual.’
Rhiannon shrugged. ‘Not if you know Galina,’ she said.
Lizzy mulled that over for a moment, then by way of a prompt for Rhiannon to continue she said, ‘So her grandmother brought her up?’
Rhiannon nodded. ‘I don’t think they ever had any money. Everything was grace and favour. The Countess, right up until she died, continued to work at getting people out of Russia and I think those who went on to make their fortunes, or managed to get their fortunes out too, always made sure that she and Galina were taken care of.’
‘She sounds a remarkable old woman.’
‘Mmm,’ Rhiannon responded. ‘She was. But her scars never healed. Well, scars like that don’t, do they?’
Again they fell into silence until Rhiannon said, ‘It feels strange talking about Galina after all this time. I mean, once, she was so much a part of my life that it was natural to think about her. But now, it feels a bit like rediscovering something precious from your childhood and finding out that actually it’s quite different to the way you remembered it.’ Rhiannon seemed surprised at her reflection. ‘You know, I don’t think I’d ever considered her unhappy before, but she must have been, the way all the other girls tormented and made fun of her.’
‘Why did they make fun of her?’ Lizzy said.
Rhiannon pursed her lips thoughtfully. ‘Retaliation, I suppose. She would frighten us all by telling us what gruesome things her grandmother would do to us if we didn’t leave her alone, so, being kids, we used to dare each other to annoy her.’
Lizzy nodded. ‘So how old were you when you two started sharing a room?’ she asked.
‘Thirteen, going on fourteen. Galina was fourteen the day term started, I remember. She turned up in her chauffeur-driven car, the wicked grandmother nowhere in sight, thank God, walked into the room we were sharing and burst into tears. I always was a soft touch when it came to tears and finding out that it was her birthday and that everyone, including her grandmother, had forgotten, was too much for a thirteen-year-old to bear. I had to make it up to her somehow and looking back I think I went on making up for that forgotten birthday the entire time I knew her.’ Rhiannon sighed and shook her head. ‘She really knew how to exploit a kindness, but at the same time there was no one kinder than her. She’d think nothing of giving you her last chocolate, her last pair of tights, even her last fifty pence. Just God help you if you ever got in her way, because if Galina wanted Galina got and she didn’t care how she went about getting it. She was jealous of everybody and everything, she hated the world; in fact, looking back on it, she was probably one of the most self-centred people I’ve ever met.
‘I’ll never forget the day I got back to our room and found all my underwear cut up into pieces. God, what a mess she’d made. And do you know why? Because my bust was bigger than hers. Crazy, I know, but that’s the way she was. She was sleeping with boys by then, so that kind of thing mattered to her a lot more than it did to me.’ Rhiannon smiled sadly. ‘It’s quite tragic when you look back on it, but at the time we all used to think she was frightfully grown-up and sophisticated the way she used to sneak out at night and go on dates. She always claimed that she had sex with two or even three boys at a time, but whether or not it was true I’ve no idea. I know it didn’t take her long to graduate to men though, because I saw a couple of them coming to pick her up in their cars. They used to cut up a bit rough sometimes too, but that never stopped her going, never even seemed to bother her, actually. I don’t know, she was such a set of paradoxes – as selfish as she was generous; as spiteful as she was loyal; as arrogant as she was shy; and now, with hindsight, probably more screwed-up and lonely than anyone else I’ve ever known. Had she been less beautiful she’d probably never have got away with half the things she got away with, she might even have received the proper care and attention she so obviously needed, but she was so breath-takingly lovely that I don’t think anyone ever really saw beyond it.’
‘Beauty’s impediments,’ Lizzy remarked quietly.
Rhiannon pursed the corners of her mouth. ‘She was the most spoiled child I knew and the most ignored. Her grandmother knew people all over the world, particularly in the States, and each holiday Galina would be shipped off to one or other of them, given everything a teenager could ever dream of and more, then transported back to spend the last few days with Granny before restarting school. She adored her grandmother and hated her. She was terrified of her, but used to cry for her at night and watch the post every day for letters bearing the old lady’s scrawl. When the Countess died Galina went to pieces. She was in her twenties by then, twenty-two or twenty-three, I think. On the day of the funeral I found her shut up in the old lady’s bedroom, all the curtains pulled so it was dark in the room and the old lady’s clothes draped all over the furniture. Galina was hugging them, holding them up to her face so she could smell them, and sobbing into them as though they could give her the comfort she craved. She’d been there for almost a week by the time I found her, so by then she was starving and filthy and half-demented with grief.’
‘Poor thing,’ Lizzy said. ‘And there was no other family?’
‘Not that I know of. There were plenty of friends, but Galina barely knew them. There was one old man though, who came over from the States for the funeral. She seemed quite close to him, but she never introduced us and when I asked who he was she just said something about her grandmother having helped him once. No, on the whole, she had no one, no family, no friends, except me of course, though that was the first time I’d seen her in three, maybe four years. She went off to the States when she was eighteen, to Los Angeles I think. I can’t be sure, because she never stayed in touch and she only ever came back that once, when her grandmother died.’
‘And again just before you and Phillip were due to get married,’ Lizzy reminded her.
Rhiannon smiled wryly. ‘That was a long time later,’ she said. ‘She told me that she’d inherited a lot of money since we’d last seen each other, I think she said it was from the old man who’d come to her grandmother’s funeral. Whether or not it was true I have no idea. She told so many lies, you just never knew with Galina.’
Lizzy grimaced and shifted position. ‘Well, whether she inherited a fortune or not, she’s certainly about to marry one, so I don’t suppose she’ll begrudge her tights in the future either.’
Rhiannon smiled. ‘You know, five years doesn’t seem so long, yet in other ways it feels like a lifetime. She could have changed beyond all recognition in that time, or she could be exactly the same.’
‘I’ll put my money on her being the same,’ Lizzy said. ‘Not many of us change that much. Though, on second thoughts, with all that loot coming her way she might be an even bigger nightmare than she already was.’
‘Nightmare?’ Rhiannon frowned.
‘Well she doesn’t exactly strike me as the answer to a good night’s sleep,’ Lizzy responded.
Rhiannon wrinkled up her nose. ‘Maybe she’s not,’ she said. ‘But as difficult as she can be, she’s totally and utterly adorable too.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Lizzy replied. ‘Just let me know if you decide to go over there and I’ll book my ticket to Jo’burg.’
Rhiannon’s mouth dried. The little trip down memory lane was over and here, at the end of it, was the harshness of reality. ‘I honestly think you should call him before you go,’ she said. ‘Apart from anything else, why waste the money?’
Lizzy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ she remarked.
Rhiannon laughed. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just come as a
bit of a shock to find out that you still feel the way you do about him, or that you’d lay yourself on the line like that. It doesn’t seem to make any sense. But then, nothing much does these days. Where are you going?’
‘To get a bin liner,’ Lizzy answered. ‘I’m going to start cleaning up this mess.’
Rhiannon blinked. ‘What did I say?’ she called out as Lizzy disappeared into the kitchen.
‘Nothing. I just think we should start clearing up.’
Getting to her feet, Rhiannon followed her to the kitchen. ‘Are you sure I didn’t offend you?’ she said.
‘Positive,’ Lizzy laughed. ‘Don’t be so sensitive. Now, where are the bin liners?’
‘Under the sink. Do you know who I was thinking of last night?’ she went on after a pause.
‘Who?’
‘Ramon. You know, the guy who turned up out of the blue in Marrakesh.’
‘Oh yes,’ Lizzy said, her interest immediately perking up. ‘Have you heard from him or something?’
‘No. Not a word. I still don’t have a clue who he is.’
Lizzy grinned. ‘You know, you could be Check It Out’s answer to Lois Lane,’ she said. ‘Did he have his underpants on over his trousers?’
‘Very droll,’ Rhiannon commented, refraining from reminding her that she was no longer Check It Out’s answer to anything.
‘But he was a bit of a super hero,’ Lizzy protested. ‘And, from what you say, a bit of a looker too.’
‘He was OK,’ Rhiannon responded. ‘Not really my type though. Too . . . How do I put it? He was too Mediterranean. I find Mediterranean men slightly effeminate, don’t you? All hairy chests and handbags.’
Laughing, Lizzy said, ‘I know what you mean, but there’s obviously more to Ramon than a hirsute bod and a Hermès bag, wouldn’t you say?’