The Longest Winter

by Daphne Wright

  When the service was over, they emerged into the blinding sun to walk beside the coffin to the Russian cemetery. There they watched sadly as the small grave was filled in. Natalie suddenly pulled off her black ribbon-band and dropped it into the grave. Evelyn did not ask why, but put one arm round the girl when she stepped back, and hugged her warmly.

  At last the pit was filled and smoothed over. Natalie and Dindin turned away, leaving Evelyn to stand, looking at the sticky earth and trying to come to terms with her desolation. She felt a hand on her arm.

  ‘Bob. Thank you for … everything.’

  ‘No need for thanks, Eve,’ he said, putting an arm comfortably around her shoulders. ‘Come on, this is a miserable place and it has nothing to do with our Sasha.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘I was just trying to remember him as he was before …’

  Bob squeezed her shoulders and then released her. Together they left the grave-side. As soon as they were outside the cemetery gates, Dindin said:

  ‘Are you going straight back to the flat?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Poor Tallie is very tired, aren’t you duschinka?’

  The little girl nodded and pressed close to Evelyn, but Dindin tossed her head and said:

  ‘Well, I’ll see you later. Captain Johnson told Dick he’d look after me, and he invited me to tea today.’

  Not feeling up to the task of dealing with Dindin’s untimely exuberance, and in any case wishing her to have any distraction she could, Evelyn did hot try to stop her. When Dindin had left them, Evelyn murmured:

  ‘Bob?’

  ‘Yes, Eve, I’ll come back with you.’

  It was just as well that he did, for Tallie had to be carried for the last mile and Evelyn could never have managed it alone. But before that, they had to walk past the cemetery that had been set aside for the Allies’military casualties. Evelyn averted her eyes, but Tallie said:

  ‘Uncle Bob, why are they taking coffins out of the ground?’

  ‘Oh, Tallie, they can’t be,’ protested Evelyn. ‘It just looks like that.’

  ‘No, Eve. They are digging them up. Our army is pulling out, as I told you, and it’s an American tradition that we never leave our boys in foreign soil. They always get taken back to the States if it’s possible. Normally, of course, they’d have been taken back at once, but with the sea iced-up, they couldn’t be.’

  It seemed very macabre, and Evelyn did not want to think about it. They walked on in silence until Natalie could walk no further. Then Bob carried her and when they reached Baines’s house, they put her to bed and lit the spirit lamp under the battered old samovar Baines had let them have. When it boiled, Evelyn made tea and, as she handed Bob his cup, she said:

  ‘Bob, you’ve been so good to me.’

  He took the cup from her and smiled, thinking how extraordinary it was that even now, pale and puffy-eyed, she still seemed to him to be more desirable than any woman he had ever known.

  ‘Eve, what I told you last night is true. I won’t change, I won’t disappear – unless you send me away.’

  ‘It seems so dangerous to believe it …’ she began, but he stopped her, his hand to her lips.

  ‘No, Eve, there is no danger, no risk. I’m here, I’ll always be where you need me. I’ll show you, soon, why there’s no need to fear.’

  She was about to say something when the door burst open and they saw Dindin standing there alone, an expression on her face that reminded Evelyn horribly of Sergei Voroshilov.

  ‘What on earth is the matter, Dindin?’ she asked.

  ‘There’s been a dreadful mutiny.’

  Evelyn was surprised to see that there were tears in her cousin’s round, dark eyes, in spite of the cruel anger that twisted her plump lips.

  ‘But, Dindin, there have been hundreds of mutinies this year. Ironside must have had more practice at defusing them than any commander in the history of warfare.’

  ‘Not like this one. It’s much, much worse. It’s Dyer’s Battalion.’

  ‘I suppose that was only to be expected – a battalion of prisoners, who were probably Bolos themselves,’ said Evelyn, trying to reason the sudden dread out of her mind.

  ‘They shot ten of their officers.’

  ‘Dead – or just wounded? Dindin, tell me.’

  ‘I’m glad to see that you care a bit, after all. Three British officers dead, four Russians; the rest wounded. One of them was shot seven times, but he swam the Dvina to raise the alarm. They’re bringing him back to the hospital today.’

  ‘And what was the upshot, Dindin?’ asked Bob. ‘Has the whole battalion mutinied? How did they stop it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Johnson just said that about a hundred men had gone over the line to the enemy and that they’ve caught a few of the ringleaders. I hope they’ll shoot them.’

  ‘Surely not,’ said Evelyn, swinging sickeningly from horrified anger at the mutineers to disgust at the prospect of such barbarity.

  ‘It is the statutory punishment for mutiny in all armies. Bob knows that, and he’ll tell you. And these Bolo swine have killed their officers.’

  ‘But they were Bolsheviki in the beginning. Did they swear allegiance to us, or promise not to go back to their own people?’

  ‘I don’t know, Evie, but why should you care? They’re our enemies. Johnson didn’t say anything about what they’ll do to the mutineers, but he did say that he didn’t think any prisoners would be taken in the next battle – they’re all too angry and they’ll shoot any Bolsheviki they get.’

  ‘But what if Piotr’s one of them?’ came a small, sad voice from behind Dindin. Evelyn got up at once.

  ‘Tallie, we don’t even know that he’s in their army. There’s no reason to think he’s anywhere near Archangel.’ As she spoke, Evelyn remembered a phrase from John’s letter and she cursed the governments who led their people into wars that so brutalised the men that they did such things.

  ‘Why should you care anyway?’ demanded Dindin. ‘He betrayed his family and his country. He put us in this dreadful stae, It’s his fault that Sasha died.’

  ‘Evie?’ came Tallie’s voice.

  ‘Yes, what is it? Don’t you feel well, Tallie?’

  ‘Oh, I’m all right. It’s just … Do you think that when we’ve won the battle, anybody in Shenkursk will getaway?’

  ‘Oh, Tallie, I don’t know,’ said Evelyn, wishing now that she could strangle Dindin for saying such things in the child’s hearing. ‘I wish they would. But they wanted to stay. They could have come when we did, but they wanted to stay so that when everything gets back to normal you and Dindin will be able to go back there.’

  ‘But if they do come, will there be room on Uncle Bob’s boat?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Bob putting decision into his voice as he tried to remove the anxiety from Natalie’s eyes. What neither he nor Evelyn mentioned was the fact that Andrei Alexandrovitch and Natalia Petrovna would have to apply for official permission to go to England. Evelyn had sought it for Dindin, Sasha and Natalie as soon as they reached Archangel and the consul had handed her all the necessary papers nearly two months earlier. She had also got permission for Georgii just in case he should find his way to Archangel, but there had been no news of him since the day he had left Shenkursk with Sergei.

  ‘Do you think we’ll ever see them again – or Piotr?’

  Distressingly reminded of Sasha, Evelyn tried to comfort his favourite sister.

  ‘Oh, little one, of course you will,’ she said, wishing that she could be so sure. ‘When this horrible war is over, they will come to England or you will come back to Russia, and we’ll all be together again. I’m sure of it. Bob, will you take Tallie back to bed? And explain it all to her? He’s very sensible, Tallie.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Goodnight, Evie.’

  As soon as the door had shut behind them, Evelyn tried strenuously to remind herself of all the things that Dindin must be suffering and said in as neutral a tone as possible:

>   ‘Now, Dindin, Bob and I have to take the boat out tonight to try her out and I’m going to have to leave Tallie in your charge. We may not be back until late morning. You will stay here and look after her, won’t you? I mean, no going out with Johnson or any of the others? And see that she stays in bed. She’s very tired.’

  Dindin shrugged.

  ‘I’ll do my best. But I’m hardly trained as a nursemaid.’

  ‘She is your sister, Dindin. And you heard just now, she’s worried about your parents.’

  ‘Do you think I’m not? Why are you always so vile to me? You make me slave here, leave me behind when you and Bob go all over the place. I don’t have any fun. You criticise whatever I say or do. It’s not fair.’ Evelyn took a step backwards, shocked by the sudden outburst.

  ‘Life is not exactly fun for anyone just now,’ came a deep, drawling voice from the door.

  ‘Oh you always take her side nowadays, Bob. I can’t think what Piotr would say if he heard you. I mean the things you two used to say about Evie …’

  ‘That’s enough. Stop it.’

  ‘I won’t stop it. She acts as if she owns me and whenever I do anything except wait on her she tells me off. Who does she think she is? She was hired to be my governess and …’

  ‘Dina Andreievna,’ he said and then went on in Russian: ‘What would your brother say to such words? Evelyn has looked after you all, worried for you, worked for you. Your father and Nikolai Alexandrovitch put her in charge of you. Piotr would …’

  ‘I don’t care,’ she said in English, stamping her foot and working herself up into an almost frightening fit of rage. ‘If he’s as horrid now as he was then he’d just laugh at me and be glad that I’ve been reduced to a servant’s life. And that Sasha’s dead. That’s what he and you wanted, wasn’t it? All the decent people of Russia were to be killed or turned into serfs so that pigs like those ones on the train and that brute in the Vyborg could lord it over us. I hate him and I hate you and I hate Evelyn and I don’t want to go to England and I can’t bear to stay in Russia and I …’ She burst into a fit of hysterical weeping, leaving Evelyn to look helplessly at Bob.

  He jerked his head towards the door and, wondering a little at her obedience, Evelyn left him to cope with her cousin as best he could, while she went to see that Natalie was all right.

  Later, after an uncomfortable meal, during which Dindin made her hostility to Evelyn quite plain, Bob looked across the table at her and, with a smile that seemed new, partly diffident, full of affectionate complicity, and infinitely appealing, said:

  ‘Well, Eve? Shall we go?’

  ‘Certainly. Dindin, will you be all right?’

  ‘I suppose so, if you have to go. Captain Johnson promised to come round and tell me what’s going to happen to the mutineers – and that’ll make me feel better.’ Despite all her good resolutions, and her real sympathy for her cousin, Evelyn’s lips tightened as she heard the pettish, vengeful, grudging sound of Dindin’s voice. But she managed to say nothing and turned away to put on the thick, dark-blue jersey that Baines had lent her and change her shoes.

  ‘Don’t be too cross with Dindin, Eve. She’s …’ began Bob as soon as they had left the house. Evelyn turned to him at once and he smiled involuntarily as he saw what was in her face.

  ‘I couldn’t be, Bob. It would be too unfair. I was just like that – I used to think those sort of things and if I didn’t say them I’m surprised.’ She was silent for a minute or two and then went on: ‘But I wish that Dindin didn’t have to go through all that hell to learn what’s what. And I don’t want her to hate herself when she discovers how … how misguided she has been.’

  ‘She’s been through quite a bit already.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And so have you, haven’t you, Eve? But it’s nearly over, and then we can begin properly.’

  ‘Haven’t we already?’ He smiled at that.

  ‘Eve …’ She waited, doubtful and a little worried. Then he went on, his hand very tight on hers. ‘Did you really mean what you said by the river that day?’

  She was at a loss. They had been so often to the river.

  ‘What did I say, Bob? I’ve said so many things I didn’t mean and wish I’d never uttered. What did I say?’

  ‘That you thought I was trying to seduce you because I’d overheard what you said to your brother about … about John’s last leave.’

  ‘That’s what I mean about hating yourself,’ she said immediately, glad to have the chance to explain to him. ‘I meant it then, but now … I am so sorry for all those things I said and did that … Oh, I don’t know. It’s too difficult to say. Why did you ask?’

  ‘I’ll tell you a bit later. We’ve got to concentrate now on getting her out of the harbour. Come on, Eve.’

  It was a beautiful evening. The massed rolling clouds that were so much part of Archangel’s white nights had cleared with the wind and it was a sky like pale greenish-blue crystal that slanted up from the horizon. The deep gold sun was low, and spilled its reflection across the dark sea in a shower of light. To be out of Archangel and sailing towards freedom, even if it were only a temporary escape, felt like bliss itself to Evelyn. As Bob called out to her she smiled at him and shook the heavy plait of dark hair back off her shoulder as she pulled obediently at one of the sheets.

  They sailed on for a good hour and a half before Bob hove-to in the lee of a relatively high cliff, well out of sight of Archangel. He came along the deck. Evelyn, who was obediently coiling up a length of rope so that she could put it away in one of the lockers, looked up.

  ‘Eve, I’ve got to talk to you. I swore to myself that I’d say nothing until we got to England, but it’ll all be even more complicated then and here, at least, we’ve a chance to be on our own for a bit. Come and sit down.’

  She took his outstretched hand and went with him to sit on the cabin roof, looking out towards the slowly sinking sun. He held her long, slim hand in both of his, tracing the veins in it with fingers that quivered slightly. After a while he laid her hand on his knee and looked up, saying with some hesitation:

  ‘Evelyn, I’ve been so clumsy every time I’ve tried to tell you that I love you, that it’s hard …’ Blushing, but determined to make up to him for some of the things she had said, Evelyn put up her free hand and touched his tanned cheek.

  ‘I’m so afraid of losing you now that I don’t know what to do or say and for me that’s strange. I feel like a boy of fifteen.’

  ‘Bob,’ she said with some difficulty, realising that she could no longer expect him alone to make the effort. ‘The last few weeks I have been facing the thought of what it would be like to go back to the old Evelyn Markham and live her life without you, and I know that the only way you’ll lose me is if you tell me that I’ve got to leave.’

  ‘Do you mean that?’ he demanded and reading the answer in her eyes, he flung his arms round her and kissed her. For a moment she was frightened; he seemed almost violent. As she flinched, he drew back a little and gently brushed her eyebrow with his lips.

  ‘I didn’t mean to scare you. Promise you’ll say if I do anything that does that?’ When she said nothing, trying to hide her face against his chest, he lifted her chin between his finger and thumb and said:

  ‘Eve, it’s like making love in a foreign language. You’re the first of your species I’ve ever met. You must tell me.’

  Trying not to think that if he really loved her as he said, he would know what she was thinking and feeling, she nodded. Then he took her down into the cabin.

  At first she could think of nothing but her shyness, but he was so matter of fact, and so gentle, that she slowly learned to relax in his arms. It was then that the fear came. He knew at once that something had happened and stilled his hands.

  ‘Evelyn, tell me.’

  His voice held a note of command to which she tried to respond, but she did not know how to tell him. Looking down at her in the glow of the golden sunset, he tried
to imagine what she was thinking. At last he said:

  ‘What are you afraid of? Not me, surely?’

  Taking a shuddering breath and looking out of the little round porthole, she said with some difficulty:

  ‘Not of you. For you.’

  At that he pulled her close to him and said into her cloud of dark hair:

  ‘Evelyn, I told you I’d risk it. This is not the time to talk of anyone else – all that is over. Let me show you why.’

  She had done so much to hurt him in the past months and she wanted so much to be able to love him that she turned in his arms and let him teach her the secrets of the universe.

  When she could think and see and hear and feel something other than the whirling, thundering seas of sensation within her, she swallowed a little nervously and said with a kind of determined courage that he recognised:

  ‘I love you.’

  He was so moved that she had brought herself to say it that for a while he could not answer.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The next morning, rather late, Bob woke her and was amused to see the confusion with which she acknowledged him and what had happened, but he loved her and so hid his smiles, saying only:

  ‘If we’re to get back this morning, Eve, we’ll have to leave soon. There’s no wind, so we’ll have to use the engine. I must go up on deck and see to things.’

  She waited until he had closed the cabin door behind him and then slid out from under the thin sheet that had covered her and dressed as quickly as she could. She had not forgotten Sasha and the pain of his death would always remain with her, but the nightmares had gone and the two worlds she had inhabited with such difficulty seemed to have become one. Something very like happiness vibrated through her as she followed Bob up on to the deck and as he turned from hauling up the anchor he caught sight of her expression. His own face seemed to mirror it and she walked quickly up and touched his hard cheek.

  If it had not been for her cousins, patiently waiting in Baines’s horrid house, Evelyn would have been tempted to ask Bob not to turn the yacht back to Archangel but to set off there and then into the blazing white horizon. But they were and so she steeled herself for the last days in Archangel.