The Longest Winter

by Daphne Wright

  They reached the harbour-mouth just before twelve, slipping slowly between the big military carriers and few timber barges that were anchored on the still, almost oily-looking water. There was no one in Petrovitch’s yard, which seemed odd, and Evelyn and Bob looked at each other, puzzled, as they made the boat fast at the jetty and clambered down on to the yard. He shrugged and taking her arm led her out of the yard towards the Troitski Prospekt.

  As they walked nearer the river they were met by milling crowds and a kind of excited clatter of voices speaking in French, English and Russian.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Evelyn, absurdly.

  ‘Look there, down the Dvina, Something’s happening.’

  Together they walked to the edge of the river and looked southwards to see a flotilla of boats and barges steaming towards the main town jetty.

  ‘They must have come from the battle. Come on.’

  As they walked nearer and nearer they could hear shouts of triumph in the excited multilingual jabber. As soon as they reached the edge of the tumultuous crowd, Bob asked a civilian spectator what was happening. The Russian answered in adequate English:

  ‘They’ve thrashed the Bolsheviki at Seltso further down the Dvina – look at the prisoners they’ve taken. A man I was talking to just now said they had nearly three thousand.’

  ‘Thank God they did take prisoners. What about casualties?’

  Evelyn’s pallor and shaking voice must have struck the man for his voice was much gentler when he said:

  ‘Not much more than a hundred of yours, baryshnia; more of the Bolsheviki, I think.’

  Evelyn felt Bob’s hand close comfortingly on her left wrist and he said in a matter-of-fact voice:

  ‘Come along, Eve. We’ll find someone who can tell us about Dick before we go back to the children.’ She smiled gratefully at him and went with him through the thick crowd towards the river.

  Bob saw an officer whom he knew slightly and went off to ask for information, leaving Evelyn to stare in horrified interest at a string of barges that were being pulled towards the jetty. On each one was a kind of cage of wooden poles full of exhausted, dirty-looking men in unfamiliar shabby grey uniforms. Some of them had bloody bandages round their heads or arms; some were slumped against the stout poles of the cages, their arms hanging outside. But the worst thing, a sight Evelyn had never thought to see in Russia, was a group of men, lying against their comrades’ shoulders, coughing and choking as though there was some terrible obstacle in their throats. There were marks that looked like burns around their noses and mouths and many of them had their hands at their throats as they fought for air.

  ‘Gas?’ she whispered. ‘Who has gas here in Archangel?’ She was just about to go to look for Bob when she caught sight of a man lying flat on the bottom of the cage, obviously unconscious, the tell-tale marks of the gas on his face and a filthy, stained bandage round his shoulder. At first she thought she must be mistaken. There was no reason for him to be in Archangel. The last news they had had of him had been when Bob left him in Moscow. Then he was a civilian. Why would Piotr Suvarov have left the centre of things to come and fight up in the Arctic? It could not be possible. She bent down so that she was on a level with the man and could not be in any doubt. It was he.

  The one clear thought in the whole, whirling muddle of emotions that seemed to have taken over her brain was that they must get him out. They could not leave him in Archangel. Once the British had departed, he would be at the mercy of the Whites and however great the justification for some of the stories she had heard of their vengeance, however hot her anger at what the Bolsheviki had done to Russia, it was not in her to leave her cousin to such punishment.

  Walking swiftly forward to stand with her back to the cage as though she could somehow conceal Piotr from the authorities, Evelyn looked wildly round for Bob. She saw him almost at once and, even as she started towards him, she wondered how she could so easily have recognised the back of his head in the middle of that huge, shifting, polyglot crowd. When she reached him and touched his arm he looked down at her with an infinitely reassuring smile and said as he covered her hand with his own:

  ‘Crowe here says that your brother’s fine. He’ll not be back in Archangel for a few days yet, but there’s no danger. And he’s not been wounded.’

  ‘Thank God,’ she said, genuinely relieved but too preoccupied to say any more or thank the officer who had given them the news. ‘Bob, will you come? There’s something … Please come.’

  ‘Hold on, Eve. Thank you, Crowe. We’re most grateful. See you later. All right, Eve, what’s the trouble?’ It was so unlike her to be discourteous that he could not understand what she was up to, pulling at his sleeve and urging him back to the edge of the river. But when they got there and she silently pointed at the bottom of the cage, he knew at once. Evelyn watched the blood drain out of his face and for a moment was afraid that he might even faint. Putting a hand on his, she felt its clamminess and said quietly:

  ‘Bend down, Bob. Let the blood back into your head.’

  A poor imitation of a smile stretched his lips.

  ‘I’m not going to faint.’ But as he looked down at the boy’s face the sickening dizziness in his brain did not recede. In his illness and pain, Piotr looked as vulnerable as Sasha had been. As well as the burns of the gas, the recent campaign with inadequate food and not enough sleep had left its marks in his face. Huge, yellowish-grey shadows lay in sinister half moons under his closed eyes, and the lashes lying against them looked almost luxurious in their glossy black contrast. Piotr’s hair was roughened and at first Bob thought it must be filled with dust, but then he saw that its colour had deceived him: there were grey and white streaks among the black.

  Squeezing pity, horror, fury at the British, hopeless unhappiness chased themselves through Bob’s mind as he looked down at his friend. With his hand clenching and unclenching on Evelyn’s, he said through his teeth:

  ‘We have to get him out of here.’

  ‘I know. I’ve been trying to think how.’

  At that he turned away from Piotr and looked at Evelyn, gratitude and love and doubt all fighting in his eyes.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she said very quietly. ‘Of course we have to take him out. But how? Even if we get him away from here, we can’t think of hiding him at Baines’s. Dindin is mad enough and full enough of hate to betray him.’

  ‘Do you think so – I mean if she were actually faced with him in that condition?’ Bob asked.

  ‘God knows, but we can’t risk it. If we can get him out, you’ll have to get him to the boat. I’ll keep Dindin quiet and bring her and Tallie in time for the evening tide. Can we leave so soon?’

  ‘Yes. You’ve got your passports and the Suvarovs’ … Oh, Christ, what do we do about Piotr? Even if we get him out of here, he’ll be arrested at once if we land him in England without permission. And we couldn’t get him to the States – and anyway it’d be just the same there. What …’

  ‘Don’t flap so, Bob,’ interrupted Evelyn, putting a hand gently on one of his. ‘I got papers for Georgii when I got the rest. We can use those. No one will know – once we’ve got that filthy uniform off – which twin he is. Stop looking so tormented, Bob. We’re drawing attention to ourselves. God knows how you’re going to get him away from here, but we must.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. I’ll find a way. In amongst this lot, there’s bound to be some confusion. You go back and see what you can do with Dindin; warn Baines that we’re off tonight; Dindin can tell her various admirers quite innocently and there’ll be no cause for suspicion. They all know we’ve been planning to go as soon as the boat was ready.’

  ‘All right, Bob. See you later. If you need … No, look, I’ll go back to the girls now, but we’ll come to Petrovitch’s tonight with as much food as we can collect. Good luck.’ He took her hand in a brief, hard grip.

  ‘Oh Lord,’ he said suddenly. ‘We’ll have to avoid Murmansk with
him on board and I wanted to call in there for water and more charts. Can’t be helped. Don’t look so worried, Eve. I’ll see to it.’ She was glad to see that the confidence was back in his eyes and the blood in his face as she turned away to push through the dense crowd, whose excited relish at the sight of the prisoners made her feel sick.

  When she had gone. Bob turned once more to look at his friend and flog his mind into working order. It felt as though it was full of sawdust and every time he tried to think, the sawdust seemed to swirl up and block each nerve and brain cell. As he stood there a Russian voice, speaking bitter and broken English, interrupted his thoughts: ‘Come to gloat, have you Tovarisch?’ Bob looked up quickly to see a slight, dark Russian in the uniform of a hospital orderly standing sneering at him. Looking round to see who else was near, he said in quiet Russian:

  ‘Far from it.’

  ‘Your Russian is good, Comrade. Where and why did you learn it?’

  ‘At the Smolny Institute, Comrade, with friends of mine and I think, perhaps, yours.’ Adamson looked at the orderly, suspicion narrowing his eyes; then he decided to take an immense gamble. ‘Particularly that man there, the gassed one on the floor of the cage.’

  ‘Are you English?’ demanded the orderly, equally suspicious.

  ‘No, American. And you, Comrade, what are you up to in the uniform of the invaders?’

  The man’s contemptuous glare softened slightly.

  ‘There are many things a man can do in the camp of his enemies.’

  ‘Will you help?’

  ‘Depends. What do you want?’

  ‘I have a boat at Petrovitch’s yard. If you can get him away from here, we can look after him there.’

  ‘Why should I risk my position with the invaders to save one man who from the looks of him might die anyway?’

  ‘Because Suvarov is of great value to the Revolution,’ said Bob, although the words threatened to stick in his throat. An increasingly violent dislike of this cautious Bolshevik was growing in him and he did not trust the man one inch, but there was no alternative. A hospital orderly was the only possible hope of getting an unconscious man away from the cages.

  ‘Very well, leave it to me,’ said the orderly. ‘Go to the yard in case there’s trouble with old Petrovitch, but there shouldn’t be: he’s one of us. I’ll get this man Suvarov … Yes, Suvarov, to the boat and then we can talk about what to do with him.’

  No, we damn well won’t, thought Bob. When you deliver him that’s the last you’ll have to do with him, you snake. But he smiled slightly and nodded. Then he turned away, wondering how Evelyn was managing with Dindin.

  When she had first got back she had been faced with a scene that horrified her. Dindin was sitting with her head on the table, sobbing, while Tallie stood white-faced and trembling beside her. Evelyn’s immediate thought was that they had somehow heard the news of Piotr’s capture, but then she saw that that was impossible. Tallie heard her and ran across the room to fling herself at Evelyn’s legs and say:

  ‘Evie, Evie, please help me. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘What is it, Tallie? Calm down. Just tell me,’ she said, her heart wrung by the white distress on the child’s pretty, triangular face.

  ‘Dindin went to the execution of those mutiny men early this morning,’ she said, stumbling a little over the words in her anxiety to get them out, ‘and there were lots of other people there to see what was happening, but it wasn’t as nice as she thought it would be.’

  ‘Nice!’ The disgusted syllable was forced out of Evelyn before she could stop herself. She had always hated the very idea that the mutineers were to be executed; that sightseers should be allowed to watch such a thing seemed barbarous; that her own cousin could have brought herself to do so filled her with horror. Hadn’t she had enough of death and pain and misery? ‘Dindin, how could you?’

  ‘Evie, don’t be angry. It was … awful. I didn’t know; I didn’t understand I … Oh, Evie.’

  Recognising real distress and shock, Evelyn forced herself towards her cousin and even gave her shoulders a small hug.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  ‘Not really,’ she said, sitting up and pushing the wet and draggled hair away from her swollen eyes, but then could not help herself. ‘They were to be shot by other Russians – ordinary soldiers, but they hadn’t given them enough bullets, you see, in case they mutinied too, and so the mutineers weren’t killed at once. They just hung there tied to their posts with wounds, but not dead. In the end the other officers who were there had to go along with their pistols and finish them off. It was terrible. They looked so …’

  ‘Hush, Dindin,’ commanded Evelyn, almost as tormented by the picture Dindin had painted as the girl herself, but determined to help her to find a way out of her misery. ‘Nearly everything that’s happened in this war that isn’t a war has been terrible. This is only part of it. You won’t ever forget it – and you should not – but you must put it away from you now. We’re sailing away tonight on the evening tide, and you must try to think of that and of getting to your new home. Dick is all right – we heard this morning – and he will be back soon, when Ironside evacuates this place. Soon we’ll be in England and we will all learn to start our new life together until you and Tallie can come back and be with your own family again.’

  Dindin snivelled and rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes.

  ‘I’ll try Evie. But I can’t think of anything else.’

  ‘Now, don’t be silly. We’re all going to have to help Bob tonight and you’ll need to be strong. Why not go and pack up your things now. Perhaps you’d do Tallie’s too while I do something about food. I suppose you haven’t eaten anything?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ she whispered and that humble apology told Evelyn just how much the execution had changed her cousin.

  ‘Are we really going tonight?’ Natalie’s quiet, patient voice brought Evelyn back to her present responsibilities.

  ‘Yes, Tallie. We’ll be getting out of this horrid place on the tide tonight. Aren’t you pleased?’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered, still very white, ‘but we’re leaving them all behind and … we may not see them again.’

  ‘Oh, Tallie,’ murmured Evelyn, taking the child into her arms and wanting badly to tell her about Piotr. ‘When it’s all over we will be together again. I am sure of it. Now if you go and help Dindin, I’ll pack up my things and Bob’s and we can get off.’

  As soon as she had packed she went in search of Baines to tell him they were all leaving and to thank him for what he had done for them. Speaking even more gruffly than usual, he said:

  ‘I was sorry to hear about the little chap.’ He saw tears in her dark eyes and thought how different she was from the stiff-necked young woman who had come to his house so many months ago. ‘Don’t take on. Shall I ask one of the boys to help get your bags to the dock?’

  ‘That would be very good of you, Mr Baines,’ she said, trying to regain her composure. ‘In fact, if he could escort the girls, then I could go on ahead and pick up some food for the voyage. Would that be all right?’

  ‘Of course. Oh, there’s that Johnson come to see Miss Dindin again.’

  Evelyn only just managed to suppress the exclamation that rose to her lips. He was the very last person she wanted to see at that moment. Nevertheless she gathered herself together and said:

  ‘Captain Johnson, how fortunate! The boat is ready and since we’ve heard about the battle and that Dick is well, there’s really nothing to wait for. We’re off tonight.’

  ‘Ah, excellent. I think Miss Suvarov needs to get away from here. I heard a rumour … I don’t like to say this, but did she go …?’

  ‘Yes, I am afraid that she did. And not surprisingly it has upset her dreadfully.’

  ‘I’d better go up and see her, if that’s all right with you?’

  She could not think of a way of stopping him without arousing his suspicions.

  ‘
Certainly. Would you give her a message from me? Tell her that one of Baines’s men will escort her and Natalie with the bags to the dock, and that I am going on ahead to collect some provisions?’

  ‘Yes, of course I’ll tell her, Miss Markham, but please don’t worry about the Suvarovs. I’ll bring them along myself.’

  At least she would be able to warn Bob in time to get Piotr hidden below decks, thought Evelyn as she smiled at the tiresome, chivalrous Englishman and hurried away.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Evelyn hurried to Petrovitch’s yard and as soon as she got there she saw a cart piled with Bolshevik corpses pulled across the entrance. Beyond it was Bob in conversation with a man in orderly’s uniform. He had his back to her, but Bob saw her at once and came hurrying towards her.

  ‘What have you done?’ she demanded, her voice made harsh by shock and by the fear that gripped her.

  ‘Don’t, Evelyn, don’t,’ he said very quietly, touching her briefly. ‘One of the hospital orderlies, who is a Bolshevik, has brought Piotr here. We’ve got him on board. It was the only way I could think of to get him away without suspicion. There’s no point trying to rescue him if we bungle it at the outset.’

  ‘But can you trust him? You’re sure we won’t find the Military Police arriving before we get away?’ she whispered back.

  ‘It was the only way,’ he was beginning, when the orderly turned. Evelyn said sharply as she saw him:

  ‘Dobrobulyov! You!’

  ‘You know him?’ asked Bob.

  ‘We met at the hospital. He was everywhere.’

  ‘So, it’s Nurse Markham,’ he said in his thickly accented English. ‘Excellent, Suvarov will need nursing: he looks very ill to me.’

  Evelyn moved swiftly towards the small gangplank, but his voice stopped her and she turned back to face him again.

  ‘There is a price for my help, Comrades.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Evelyn trying not to sound sarcastic. It had only just then occurred to her that even if they succeeded in leaving Archangel this man could still ruin them by reporting them once they had gone. A single telegraph message from Archangel’s headquarters would have police alerted at every port in north-east England.