by Joan Lingard
‘Yes?’ The man did not get up.
‘I believe you buy jewellery?’ Princess Eva spoke nervously. She had never been involved in such dealings before.
‘What is it you wish to sell?’
She took a velvet bag from her pocket and with trembling fingers withdrew two necklaces. They sparkled in the poor light. The man scooped them up into his gnarled hands. His eyes glistened, like the rubies and emeralds in front of him. He named a price.
‘Is that all?’ cried Princess Eva. ‘But these are valuable necklaces. They are heirlooms belonging to my family. The stones are genuine.’
‘I can offer no more. Jewellery is not easy to sell these days. Who can buy?’
Lena had told them that there were people around who could buy jewellery and other expensive items. They were people who had not had money formerly, but now that they were in power they seemed to have found riches to go with it.
‘I am sorry, Madame, but that is my only offer.’
‘Don’t do it, Mama!’ cried Natasha. ‘We’ll find a way. We’ll sell something else.’
‘I have no choice,’ said her mother, and then to the man, ‘I will take it.’
He gave them the money and they left the shop.
‘I have things I could have sold,’ said Natasha.
‘Such as?’
‘My sewing basket. It has little pearls on it. My amber trinket box, that Papa brought back from Latvia. My music box, the one that came from Paris. My thimble.’ Here, Natasha’s voice faltered.
‘You are never to let that go! If you do bad luck, even worse than we have at present, will follow you for the rest of your life. It was given to you as a lucky charm at birth by your godmother.’
‘The other things then?’ said Natasha. She wouldn’t want to part with any of them, they were dear to her, but if her mother could give up her necklaces she should be able to make sacrifices too.
‘Nobody would give more than a sou for any of them!’
Natasha suspected that her mother was right. When people were suffering so much who would want to play with a musical box? She felt guilty when she did.
The light was failing rapidly and small flakes of snow were beginning to drift down from the darkening sky. They feared the long winter ahead, with so little fuel available. They had already shut up several of the rooms in the palace.
Natasha and her mother walked back down the boulevard and cut through to the river. When they reached the English embankment they saw three men in uniform coming towards them. They wore five-pointed red stars on their helmets and red rosettes on their coats and they carried their rifles slung casually over their shoulders.
‘The Red Guard,’ said Princess Eva in a low voice. ‘Look away from them.’
Natasha did as commanded. The pavement was broad and there would have been plenty of room for them to pass, had the guards allowed it. Instead, they swerved into their path and forced them to stop. The men’s eyes narrowed. Would they realize that they were from an aristocratic family? Lena said you could always pick out people like them, no matter what they dressed in. It was just a look they had.
‘One of them!’ said the guard in the middle and he spat straight into the face of Princess Eva. She winced and brought her arm up to cover her face. Natasha cried out.
‘You can’t do that to my mother!’
‘Can’t I, indeed, young miss?’ The guard seized Natasha’s arm in a grip that made her bite her lip so that she wouldn’t cry out again. ‘I will do whatever I want to do!’
‘Leave her, please,’ begged her mother. ‘She’s only a child.’
The soldier pushed Natasha roughly away so that she staggered and went down on one knee with a sharp crack. ‘Be careful how you speak to us in future!’
The men moved on, laughing. Natasha picked herself up and took her mother’s hand.
‘We can’t help it that we were born in a palace, can we?’ she said.
They walked quickly on, breaking into a run as they neared their door. It was opened immediately by Stepan. There seemed to be a lot of noise going on in the house.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Princess Eva.
‘We have lodgers,’ said Stepan.
‘Lodgers?’
Stepan closed and barred the door behind them. Princess Olga appeared from the salon waving her hands about. They were less plump than they used to be. She, like everyone else, had lost weight.
‘Eva, this is dreadful! The place has been taken over by a rabble! There are some upstairs, some downstairs.’
‘Where is Lena?’
‘I am here!’ Lena emerged from the kitchen with a train of people behind her, a man and a woman carrying bundles, followed by three, four, five, six children, of varying heights and sizes.
‘Who are these people?’ demanded Princess Eva.
‘They have been living in two rooms, two miserable rooms with a leaking roof and water running down the walls. Can you imagine, Madame, what that would be like? The children have terrible coughs.’
As if to illustrate, several of them began to cough. They had hacking barks which, once started, appeared difficult to control. Princess Olga had placed her hands over her ears and was moaning.
‘We shall never have peace again! Never!’
‘How did they get here, Lena?’ asked Princess Eva. ‘Did they just come in off the street?’
‘The Red Guard brought them.’
That silenced the princess.
‘I am putting them in the Rose suite,’ said Lena.
‘The Rose suite?’ said Princess Olga. ‘Those are our best guest bedrooms. Ambassadors have slept there.’
‘We won’t be having guests any more,’ said her daughter-in-law flatly.
Lena began to climb the stairs. The family of eight went after her, casting awed looks at the large gilt-framed paintings on the walls. Natasha and her mother and grandmother watched them go.
They were to find that the other guest bedrooms had already been filled, as had been the music room and Princess Olga’s private salon. In all, four families had been moved into the house. Lena would now sleep in what had formerly been the nursery, which adjoined Natasha’s room. It was more comfortable than the old servants’ quarters, she said. Her bedroom had been poky and dark.
Lena ran the household, keeping order, quelling arguments and potential fights when they erupted between the tenant families, who vied with one another over fuel and food supplies and the use of the kitchen stove. The kitchen seethed from early morning until midnight. The only room, apart from their bedrooms, that the Denisovs retained for themselves was the salon.
‘Lock the door of your bedroom when you leave it,’ Lena advised Natasha. ‘They are desperate, some of them. They will steal anything you have and I cannot have eyes everywhere.’
‘God knows,’ said Prince Ivan, ‘before this is done we shall all be murdered in our beds!’
TEN
LOOKING FOR NATASHA
‘See if you can find me again,’ Natasha had written.
They were puzzling over the clue when they heard a car pull up outside. Alex went to the window to look. The car wasn’t local.
‘They might be looking for B&B.’
‘We should have taken the sign down,’ said Duncan.
Since Sonya’s accident they had not been able to have boarders. It wasn’t possible without Anna. Already they had turned away two couples and two families.
‘I know, I’ve been meaning to do it. I’d better go and see them.’
Two men were getting out of the car when Alex opened the front door. One of them, the passenger, was carrying a large camera. It looked like the kind of camera that would be used for commercial purposes. Alex frowned.
‘Hello there!’ the driver called out heartily. ‘You the son of the house? Are your parents about?’
‘My father.’
‘Could we see him?’
‘Who shall I say?’
‘Mr Trotter. From
Trotter, Smythe and Pendlebury.’
‘Lawyers?’
‘Estate agents.’
‘Oh.’ Alex’s heart dropped.
‘I’m acting for Mr Malenkov,’ said Mr Trotter. ‘I’ve come to make an evaluation of the property.’
Alex looked at the photographer.
‘This is Ronnie,’ said Mr Trotter. ‘He’s going to take a few photographs. For the brochure. For when the house goes up for sale. Mr Malenkov thought it would save time if he just came with me now.’
So Cousin Boris was taking it for granted that his way was clear to inherit Natasha’s estate! Alex thought of the latest clue: ‘See if you can find me again.’ The ‘me’ hadn’t been underlined on the piece of paper, but it was in Alex’s head.
Mr Trotter had turned to survey the landscape. ‘Nice site. Secluded. Peaceful. Away from it all. Good views over the Atlantic. Facing south and west. Excellent.’ He swivelled back to regard the house. ‘Place could do with a bit of a face-lift, but basically it looks like a good property. Haven’t seen any sign of dry rot, have you, lad?’
‘Dry rot?’ Alex was startled, for he was still thinking of Natasha. ‘No.’ Not that he would know it if he saw it. Or wet rot either.
‘Been living here long, have you?’
‘Eight years. Mr Malenkov is going to put us out if he inherits.’
‘Look, son, this is none of my business. That’s between you and Mr Malenkov, right? I can’t afford to let myself get mixed up in family feuds or things of that nature. I’ve got a job to do. I’ve been engaged to come here and survey the property.’
After he’d had a few words with Duncan, the estate agent got to work on the house and outbuildings and then the land. He measured and recorded, measured and recorded, and the photographer followed on behind, clicking his camera.
‘That’s all he sees the place as – a property,’ said Alex. He and his father were in the kitchen eating bread and lentil soup for their lunch. His father had made the soup. ‘He doesn’t seem to realize it’s our home.’
‘You can’t blame him,’ said Duncan. ‘It’s his job.’
The door opened and the man himself put his head round. ‘Ah, there you are.’ He sniffed. ‘Something smells good. Couldn’t make us a cup of tea, could you, lad? Thirsty work this.’
Alex got up unwillingly and filled the kettle. His mother always offered tea or coffee to anyone coming to work in the house.
‘Could we offer you some soup?’ said Duncan.
‘Wouldn’t say no,’ said Mr Trotter. ‘Not much in the way of restaurants around these parts. Couldn’t cope myself with living so far from everything. Enough soup for two, have you?’
‘There should be.’ Duncan rolled himself over to the cooker and turned on the heat under the soup pot.
Mr Trotter went back out into the hall and called, ‘Ronnie, are you there? Fancy a bowl of soup to warm the cockles of your heart?’
‘Not much chance of that,’ muttered Alex.
‘Now we have to be hospitable, Alex,’ said his father. ‘Your mother would want us to be.’
The men came in and seated themselves at the table. Alex served them.
‘This is really good of you,’ said Ronnie.
‘Much appreciated,’ added Mr Trotter.
‘Rough business,’ said Ronnie, ‘getting turfed out of your home.’
‘Perhaps I can help you find another house, Mr McKinnon,’ said Mr Trotter. ‘I have one or two items on my books that might interest you. I could send you particulars.’
‘We’re not in the market, I’m afraid. We don’t have any capital.’
‘That’s what comes of living in someone else’s house.’ Mr Trotter shook his head. ‘It’s usually a mistake. You’ve no security.’
‘We liked living with Natasha,’ said Alex. ‘She was like a grandmother to us and the house was too big for her to manage on her own.’ He went on to tell the men about the will.
‘It might not even exist,’ warned Mr Trotter. He knew of cases where people had said they had made a will when they hadn’t. ‘They say it just to keep in with you while they’re alive.’
‘Natasha wasn’t like that,’ said Alex indignantly.
‘You never know though, do you, what folk are really thinking inside their heads?’
When the men were ready to leave, Alex accompanied them to their car.
‘You keep looking for that will!’ said Ronnie, as he stowed his cameras in the boot.
‘And do the lottery!’ added Mr Trotter.
They had tried that.
Alex waved them off. They hadn’t been so bad. After all, Mr Trotter wasn’t the one who would evict them. As Alex went back inside he heard the phone ringing. He lifted the receiver in the hall.
‘Hello, is that you, Alex?’ It was his mother. ‘How are things there?’
‘Fine,’ he said. He wasn’t going to tell her about the estate agents. That would only give her something else to worry about.
‘How’s Sonya?’ He hated asking, in case the news was bad.
‘Very restless at the moment. It’s as if something is troubling her deep down, wherever she is.’
After he’d rung off, Alex found his father in the library frowning over Natasha’s latest clue. He looked up and asked first about Sonya and was given the usual answer.
‘Pity she’s not here to help us. She could read Natasha’s mind better than any of us. I’ve been trying to think of any other book with a character called Natasha in it. My mind’s a complete blank.’
‘Wasn’t Natasha a princess? Her father was a prince, at any rate.’
‘Yes, she would have been. There must be loads of children’s stories about princesses. The Princess and the Pea.’
‘Sleeping Beauty.’ That made Alex think about Sonya and he felt a pang. ‘She became a princess when the prince married her. Maybe I should have a look in a book of fairy tales?’
He found a number of stories featuring princesses but no slips of paper. His father was still frowning.
‘Isn’t there a novel about a little princess or something of that sort? It probably wasn’t your kind of book!’
‘It might have been when I was very small.’ Alex grinned. His mother and Natasha had read stories about everything under the sun to them. He was racking his brains. ‘I seem to remember something about a girl who was rich and then became poor when her father lost everything. Can’t remember who wrote it though.’
He surveyed the shelves. Then he saw it: A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. He lifted it out.
It was an old copy and it had belonged to his mother. Her name was written on the fly leaf and the date, 1964. She must have been about nine years old then.
Alex remembered the story now. The girl in the novel hadn’t been a real princess, but because she was wealthy she had seemed like one, whereas Natasha had been a proper princess who had lost her status when she was a child. She had always said that was of no importance to her. To have survived and had the chance to make a new life had been the most important thing.
Tucked into the middle of the book was a sheet of thin white paper. Alex drew it out. He read the clue to his father.
‘ “Take the hint. There’s treachery waiting in the wings.” ’
ELEVEN
ST PETERSBURG, NOVEMBER 1917
Early one morning, another group of refugees arrived looking for shelter. Stepan, on opening the door to a knock, found them standing on the step, clutching their bundles like any other homeless family. Count Leo Malenkov, brother of Princess Eva, his wife, Marie, and their small son, Kyril, looked cold and bedraggled. There was no sign of a carriage outside. Stepan concluded that they must have walked from their house half a mile away.
‘Is my sister at home?’ asked Count Leo.
Stepan helped them to come inside with their luggage. They had brought little, considering what they must have owned at one time. He showed them into the salon and went to call Princess Eva.
‘They’ve come to call at this hour? My brother? What can he want?’
‘I fear he has been evicted, Madame.’
Princess Eva rapped on her daughter’s door. ‘Dress quickly. Your Uncle Leo and Aunt Marie are here with your cousin Kyril. Perhaps you can amuse the child.’
Natasha was not fond of amusing that particular child, who cried at the slightest provocation, but she did as she was told and, a few minutes later, followed her mother downstairs. Kyril was whining as she opened the door.
‘Ah, here is your cousin Natasha!’ cried his mother with relief, propelling him in her direction.
Natasha gathered him on to her knee. Her mother said that Marie had no knack with children, or with anything else. Eva was not overly fond of her sister-in-law. If they were going to have to live under the same roof it would not be easy. But then, nothing that was happening was easy. And regardless of differences, the families would stick together. They believed blood to be thicker than water.
‘So, Leo,’ said Eva with a sigh, ‘you’ve been evicted?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Yet I thought you favoured a revolution?’ Leo was a qualified medical doctor and had worked with the poor. But that had obviously not protected him. The fact that he was a count had outweighed his good works. Eva’s father-in-law used to call him a Red lackey. They had not got on.
‘Change had to come,’ said Leo. ‘There was so much corruption and injustice. But not this kind of change. Not this bloodbath.’ He shook his head wearily. ‘I fear it will bring its own forms of corruption. It already has.’
‘I suppose we’re lucky that we’ve been allowed to keep a few rooms for ourselves!’ said Eva.
Stepan went off to the kitchen to see if he could find something for the new arrivals to eat. Lena kept stores locked up in a special cupboard for the family. Anything left in the open was immediately snatched up by whoever came along first. There was so sign of Lena or the key for the cupboard. Stepan managed to find some slices of stale bread and a half-empty pot of thin jam.
He apologized when he brought them back to the salon.