‘No, she isn’t. She’s not dead. She has been living here for a dozen and more years. Here at Stadleigh Court. Or – how can I put it? – someone who claims to be her has been living here all that time. That’s what I want to find out, you see. Is she really who she says she is?’
It was not a direct question, it seemed, more a vague speculation. He at once appeared to concede as much by rising to his feet and looking blankly out of the window. The prince waited. It crossed his mind for one appalling instant that his host was mad. Then he corrected himself by recognising that he himself might be thought mad if he claimed he had met Anna Karenina on two occasions. All he could rely on was the reasonable certainty that his memory was trustworthy.
Silence gathered round them, consumed by the loud ticking of the clock. The prince was at a loss to know what to say. Giles broke the spell.
‘Oh, of course, you know and I know, we all know the legend. It is arguably a legend, a myth. I mean, of course, the incomparable myth of her death, the way she took that journey to the station, the sense of the worthlessness of her life, her ignoble wish to avenge herself on the man for whose sake she had sacrificed so much, and then the inevitability of her tragedy, symbolised by the inexorable steel rails on which she threw herself and the famous final image of the candle, “…the candle by which she had been reading the book so full of life’s alarms, deceits, wretchedness and evil flared up more brightly than ever, illumined all that had previously been obscure, flickered, started to gutter and was extinguished forever.”’
‘Images of light and dark were what gave a pattern to her life – that and, of course, her vitality, the way she moved through her society world as if she were waltzing away her life to suit its rhythms whereas in reality she was always trying to dance herself out of the ballroom and into a freedom of her own choosing. She never succeeded. She was locked into that futile waltzing by bonds as rigid as the steel rails governing her life from start to finish. That was her tragedy. And her only escape was suicide. We all supposed it, of course. Even I supposed for a time that Anna killed herself like that. What other evidence did we have?’
The prince opened his mouth to speak and Giles anticipated him: ‘Yes, her lover, that guards officer – Count Vronskii – I knew you’d want to mention him…’
Again the prince was about to interrupt and Giles was too quick. He made his points with judicial forcefulness, using his right index finger to slice the air each time: ‘That’s the only real evidence, isn’t it? Didn’t he claim to have identified her? A body covered in blood – that’s all he identified. And he, after all, had driven her to it, hadn’t he? When you think about it, it was only his testimony that pronounced her dead and he, a man with a bad conscience, toothache and God knows what else, probably glad to be rid of her, he couldn’t be sure, could he? – in his state of mind, I mean? – whether it really was her blood-stained corpse laid out there among other corpses at the railway-station? And her legal husband, Karenin, did he see her? No, apparently not. On the authority of one man – one man, mark you! – she was accepted as being dead. That’s the sole evidence. But she wasn’t dead! No, she wasn’t dead at all!’
The prince tried hard to disregard these final emphatic claims, but was provoked by them into an ironic, imitative response: ‘Oh, no, she’s not dead! Slava bogu, ona vsyo yescho v zhivykh! She’s alive! Ona zhivyot, konechno zhivyot zdes! She is living here at Stadleigh Court! Of course, of course! Really, Giles, you mustn’t overstrain either my credulity or my goodwill!’
‘You may mock, Dmitry, my dear chap. I don’t blame you. I’ve had mockery from several quarters, some very close to me, indeed my nearest and dearest. But I ask you to be serious. Please be serious.’
‘I will be serious about one thing,’ the prince said curtly. ‘I know Vronskii is dead. He was killed in the Turkish campaign. As for the claims you’re making about Anna Arkadyevna, I can’t take them seriously at all. Vronskii was absolutely crushed by what happened to her. I don’t believe for a moment he gave false testimony, as you’re suggesting. In any case, how did she get here?’
‘I was coming to that.’ With a flourish Giles seized the two volumes of Anna Karenina and replaced them on the desk. ‘She came here largely because of my daughter-in-law, Hannah. She was Hannah Wilson then. As soon as the girl heard about it, she was in touch with my mother and the upshot was that Anna was secreted away on one of my father’s ships.’
‘How serious were her injuries?’
‘Pretty bad. Both legs were broken, I believe, and she had a terrible blow to her forehead. Severe concussion, you know. For months it was touch and go. Even when she finally got here, she was an invalid for a couple of years. My father had her very carefully looked after. There was always a nurse in attendance.’
‘But didn’t anybody guess who she was?’
‘Here? In the depths of Herefordshire? Of course not! Why should they?’
‘Well, didn’t she want to go back to Russia?’
‘My father assumed she would once she’d fully recovered. But no, she had lost her nerve. “The zest is gone,” she would say – she spoke good English before she came here – and her zest for Russia had quite gone. She virtually became a recluse. Her great pleasure was horse riding. It was the one thing that got her outside and she would ride in all weathers. Until her beloved horse stumbled one day down by the ford and threw her. She injured her face and her hip. That upset her so much she’s hardly been out since.’
‘You mean she’s just lived here by herself?’
‘No, no. She had two personal servants, old Boris and his wife. They came… Oh, I can’t say exactly when. That was until very recently, you see. Then, just over a month ago, her son turned up. Sergius.’
‘Oh, her son! Sergey Alekseevich! That’s who he is!’
‘Sergius is her son, yes.’
‘Her son by Karenin, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘The lockjaw victim?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, well, what a happy outcome!’
‘Happy?’
‘I mean happy for her,’ the prince said. ‘Her greatest regret was that she had had to give up her son. Don’t you remember how she tried to see him on his birthday?’
‘Oh, that, yes.’ Giles sounded slightly at a loss and gave another airy wave of the hand.
‘What about his father? Did he let him come? I would imagine he’d never have allowed it.’
‘Oh, yes, towards the end Karenin relented. He even wanted to make it up with his wife. His son came as a kind of peacemaker, well, something like that… But Anna wouldn’t go back. She said she couldn’t let herself be seen. It all stemmed from her riding accident, I think. Since then her behaviour’s tended to be a bit abnormal, even a bit irrational. You know, things like insisting she wouldn’t speak English any more, an obsession with taking baths – we had to have a bathroom specially made for her next to her bedroom – and fear of certain noises, fear even of going out, fear of visitors… Oh, we’ve had quite a lot of trouble, I can tell you!’
‘I see.’
In fact, what the prince really saw was the likelihood that this strange guest at Stadleigh Court had outstayed her welcome. By several years, it seemed, judging from the irritable tone of the last remark.
‘The young man, who grandly calls himself Sergius for some reason, had been on bad terms with his father before he arrived and has been thoroughly uncooperative ever since. His mother dotes on him and won’t hear a word against him. The trouble is they’re both convinced they’ve got enemies on all sides. But they don’t take proper precautions. The news of Karenin’s death has made them more suspicious than ever and yet earlier this week she insisted on an idiotic escapade.’
‘What?’
‘Oh, she insisted on conducting some sort of obsequies down by the river. They were for her late husband, I think.’
‘In a black boat? In a boat with a canopy draped in black?�
�� the prince asked excitedly. ‘“A gap in nature” as Shakespeare described it! You remember, I told you…’
‘Yes, yes, yes.’ Giles frowned slightly. ‘Of course, of course, you had that accident with your bicycle. Well, that afternoon she was apparently carried back by Sergius. She calls him Seriozha. She’d apparently hurt herself while getting out of that boat. Oh, what a fuss!’
‘But surely he was hurt, wasn’t he?’
‘It was utterly silly of both of them! That’s the real truth!’ Giles disregarded the other’s query and restarted his impatient pacing. He went on in a loud voice, his face now pink with irritation: ‘They behave as if they owed me nothing! Nothing! But my father spent God knows how much on ensuring her contentment here, and I’ve spent thousands every year and it’s about time I got something back! She did try to be less demanding since her accident, I admit – we didn’t have to keep a horse specially for her, special horse shoes, that sort of thing – but since the arrival of her son, she’s been hopelessly unreasonable and irresponsible! They both have!’
Realising he had said a bit too much, he stopped and stared down at the carpet.
‘Look,’ he began again, with every appearance of having regained his self-control, ‘I must have trustworthy testimony. Do you understand what I mean? I must have someone who can say authoritatively, confidently, clearly that this is Anna Karenina. Now tell me, please, how well did you know her?’
‘I met her twice. The first time very briefly. The second time we had a long talk.’
‘Can you remember what it was about?’
‘It’s a good many years ago, you know, but I think I can.’
‘Good. Then I suggest you try talking about exactly the same things. That’ll give you some standard of comparison. You see I want you to help me prove she is Anna Karenina beyond any reasonable doubt. And then, if you would be good enough to make a sworn statement witnessed by my lawyer, she can be treated as a beneficiary, a genuine claimant.’
‘Claimant?’
‘For the Will, Karenin’s Will.’
‘Ah, that had slipped my mind!’
‘My dear Dmitry, that is what this entire matter is all about! I need the money. She is quite willing to let me have the money if it is legally hers, but it has to be proved that she is who she claims she is. You see my dilemma.’
‘I do, I do.’
‘And you will help, will you?’
‘Of course. What do you want me to do?’
‘Dmitry, my dear chap, I counted on this!’ He leaned down and clasped the other’s right hand between his own two hands. He then released it and stood back and once more stared out of the window. ‘I think we ought to strike while the iron is hot, as it were. I mean we ought to go and see her immediately, if you are willing. She won’t have time to think of excuses and your own impressions will be as fresh as they can be in the circumstances. I’ll introduce you, if I may, as someone she knew in the past.’ He lowered his voice. ‘She has a weakness for younger men. She and my son Gerald – oh, never mind! We are men of the world, aren’t we? I hardly need to spell everything out in detail. Let’s go.’
The prince took several seconds to absorb this revelation. The casual candour of it could seem shocking, yet it tended to validate the claim that she was living here. A vision of the woman he had once known as so attractive and vital, holding court like Catherine the Great in this out-of-the-way place and characteristically taking a lover – well, on reflection it was hardly all that unexpected! He felt a genuine tremor of excitement at the sudden prospect of seeing her again, this time not as the daunted, impressionable adolescent he had been all those years ago, but as a man with a great admiration for women and a taste for their company.
‘Right,’ he said.
***
They went by the route the doctor had taken the previous night, through the locked door, that is, and up the stairway to the landing on what he assumed was the second floor, where the air evidently had little chance of escaping but contained distinct whiffs of cooking smells. He did not remember this from the night-time visit, though it struck him as quite natural that meals should be prepared in this tower occupied exclusively, it seemed, by his compatriots and unvisited even by Lady Isobel. Yet, as he climbed higher, following the cloth of the light-blue cassock tautening along Giles Irmingham’s back, he could not overcome increasing doubts. The fact of Anna Karenina’s presence here seemed beyond belief. This would have remained his firm conviction if he had not suddenly came face to face with the portrait on the top landing, before which there still burned a single feeble candle flame as if before an icon.
In a flash it all came back. He remembered it from St Petersburg. It had hung in the small reception room where she had received him on his second visit. At first sight it reminded him only too keenly of the Repin portrait of his dear Princess Alisa that hung in the drawing room of their house in Portland Place. That portrait never failed to keep her image vividly alive during all her absences.
Seeing the Anna Karenina portrait now, in daylight or as much morning light as filtered from a skylight, it was much more than so much oil pigment artfully brushed on canvas to simulate life. It was Anna Arkadyevna in person, a vital, charming woman with curly black hair, bared shoulders and arms. A thoughtful half-smile parted soft lips covered with a slight down and she gazed at him triumphantly and sensitively out of embarrassingly candid eyes. She wore a dark-blue dress and looked just as if she were about to extend her beautiful bare arms towards him and hold him to her and whisper the seductive name ‘Seriozha’ in mistake for her son, yet ready to embrace him as her lover.
‘Akh, kakaia krasavitsa! My God, Giles, I remember this!’
The prince’s exclamation was not matched by anything equivalent from Giles. He was preoccupied. He was standing by the open door to the bedroom and waving to someone inside.
‘Hannah, my dear, you remember the prince, Dmitry…’
Hannah Kempson came out of the sickroom carrying a tray. She looked happy, calling over her shoulder in Russian: ‘All right, Boria, I know, I know. The doctor’ll be back after lunch. Ah, Giles!’
‘My daughter-in-law, Hannah.’
The introduction was polite but hardly necessary. She explained she had been busy assisting with a bed-bath. The prince naturally asked after the patient.
‘So much better, it’s scarcely credible. He has accepted a little food and we have managed to get him into a nightshirt at last. But he is still very, very weak. I think we owe you a lot, sir. You suggested the cure, didn’t you?’
She had spoken the last sentence in Russian and the prince replied in the affirmative. The brief exchange clearly pained Giles who was somewhat impatiently about to guide the prince towards another door when a further loud burst of Russian speech filled the space of the landing. Boris, the elderly retainer, approached in a majestic waddle.
‘Your excellency, you are our saviour! Your excellency, how can we possibly repay such loving kindness! Your excellency, the young master is better! He is better! It is a miracle!’
The prince’s hand was seized and received a drenching from the old man’s wet kisses.
‘Your excellency, our lady has expressed the wish… to receive you, sir… to thank you, sir, in person, sir, for saving our dear young master’s life, sir.’ The kissing became frenzied. ‘Oh, your excellency, it is a great privilege and we would be deeply, deeply…’ He drew in a long, quivering breath and then blurted out a stream of words, still firmly gripping the prince’s hand ‘…if you would be gracious enough to accept, your highness, sir, gracious enough, sir, to accept the invitation of our dear mistress, of our lady, of Anna Arkadyevna herself…’
‘Enough!’
The prince drew his hand back. Boris opened his lips several times tasting air, like a baby suddenly deprived of a nipple.
‘Your excellency, sir,’ he murmured reproachfully.
‘Boris, my friend, you are kissing me to death!’
&n
bsp; ‘Oh, your excellency, sir, pardon me, sir, no, sir.’ He swayed forwards and backwards and his face literally burst into an explosion of wrinkles. ‘Sir, you are permitting yourself a ribaldry, I perceive. Gracious sir, how gratifying! This way, this way, be so good…’
A waddle, a shuffle of extremely ancient buckled shoes and the smell of long unwashed underwear, not to mention the frockcoat so stiff with age it fitted the elderly, stooped figure as much like a turtle’s shell as a stone toga, gave notice that there was no option but to accept the inevitable. Boris and his accompanying odour were to be followed, as the prince now followed behind him through another door.
8
He entered a room with curved walls matching the shape of the tower. The first thing he noticed was a heavy, foursquare table covered in a tasselled green cloth, upon which stood a bubbling samovar and glasses. A number of other large pieces of furniture, along with some rickety upright chairs, were scattered randomly on a worn Persian carpet. Everything was characteristically Russian, he felt, including the room’s dusty stuffiness.
‘Dear mistress, dear mistress,’ came Boris’s wailing quaver of a voice, ‘our saviour, his excellency, Prince Rostov, is here.’
Sunlight caught dust motes and made them sparkle so brightly it was hard to see who was there. Then, just as it had been difficult to discern the figure in the boat, the prince took a while to realise that someone was reclining on a high-backed dark leather sofa, dressed in black, with a black veil.
The black shape remained motionless despite Boris’s announcement and his insistence that the prince should approach. He felt overwhelmed by a sense that he was about to confront a corpse. Then a thin white hand suddenly emerged from the black garments and languidly offered itself to be kissed.
The prince did what was expected of him. He bent and kissed it. The fingers were small, beautifully shaped and smelled of rose water. Perhaps he found himself at that instant peering a little too keenly at the veil without being able to discern any features. The hand was then withdrawn and used to beckon the elderly manservant.
The Killing of Anna Karenina Page 8