by Gill Paul
Nicole rushed to fling her arms around Bess.
“Hi there, world traveler.” Bill ruffled her hair. “How’s the jet lag?”
“I’m OK,” Nicole told him. “I’ve been telling all my friends how amazing Russia is.”
Bill raised an eyebrow. “I thought it was a boring country for boring old people.”
Val returned to the kitchen, half listening to them from the next room. She was jumpy with nerves. Was he planning to tell her it was over when Nicole went to bed? She would have to keep up her nonchalant act till then.
* * *
Nicole fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, and Val wandered back to the sitting room clutching a couple of beers. She passed one to Bill, then sat down and waited, an empty feeling in the pit of her stomach despite the meal she had just eaten.
“I’ve been thinking about your dad,” he began, “and I feel sorry for the bloke. He probably didn’t have any choice about being part of the execution squad. The Bolsheviks were pretty forceful back in those days. And it clearly haunted him for the rest of his life, which is why he said what he did in the nursing home.”
Val was taken aback. This wasn’t the conversation she’d been expecting, but she replied, “If you had been ordered to shoot five youngsters, you wouldn’t have done it, would you?”
“We live in different times,” he commented. “The Red Army was brutal. My parents lived through some godawful times during the civil war and the years after. They emigrated when Stalin began his purges in 1933, but had seen some pure evil before then.” He took a swig of his beer. “That’s why I can’t understand them going back. They reckon it’s all changed, but look at our experience: we weren’t allowed to wander round freely, our hotel rooms were probably bugged, and we had to employ subterfuge to visit Sverdlovsk. A state that’s fairly run shouldn’t have to resort to such measures.”
Val braced herself to bring up their argument. “I’m sorry I could have compromised your parents’ situation by talking about the Romanovs. I wasn’t thinking.”
Bill waved his beer can. “No worries. It doesn’t seem as though any harm’s been done.”
Val looked at him in astonishment. Was that it?
“Sorry I overreacted,” he continued. “It freaks me out that Mom and Dad chose to go back there. I still don’t understand their decision so I was a bit preoccupied after seeing them.” He shook his head. “Here they had a lovely bungalow with a garden, not far from the beach. There they have a concrete apartment and it’s too cold to go out for four months of the year. It’s crazy they retired to a place like that.”
Suddenly Val saw that Peggy had been right. Bill had been upset about his parents’ situation and not specifically with her. A huge weight lifted from her shoulders. He wasn’t going to break up with her. Their argument had just been a hiccup in an otherwise strong relationship. She realized in a flash that she had been too insecure to cope with it because she had no previous experience of healthy relationships.
“There seems to be something about being Russian that gets into your blood,” she said, composing herself. “Even when they live overseas they continue to celebrate Russian Easter in Russian churches, to drink Russian vodka and read Russian books. Maybe you can’t understand that magnetic pull if you’re not born and bred there.”
“Oh, God, that bloody Orthodox church on Robertson Road! I spent far too much of my childhood there, watching an old bloke in a dress swinging incense around.” Bill grinned. “You got off lightly.”
“My dad went to the Robertson Road church like clockwork. The priest used to come to our house sometimes. What was his name?” She wrinkled her brow.
“Methodius,” Bill said. “Father Methodius.”
“Of course! The last time I saw him was at Dad’s funeral.” She shuddered, thinking back to that bleak day, when Tony stood by her side probably calculating in his head how much of a windfall he’d get from the inheritance.
“He actually came to your house?” Bill questioned. “Your dad must have been close to him. Did you ever think of asking him what he knows about your dad’s early life? Maybe he could shed some light on it. A priest is the one person a man can be honest with.”
Val stared at him, her mouth hanging open. It was so blindingly obvious, she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it before.
Chapter 62
Sydney, September 1976
THE SCHOOL TERM BEGAN AND VAL RETURNED TO HER lectures at the university, so it was the following weekend before she could seek out Father Methodius. Bill offered to take Nicole for a walk with Bess, and Val caught a bus across town to Centennial Park.
The church was set in a nondescript white-walled, red-roofed building with only a cross on top indicating its purpose. Inside was another story: the walls were crammed with gold-framed paintings of saints, while golden chandeliers and gaudy incense burners hung from the ceiling. It smelled chokingly sweet and musky. Val looked around, shivering in the unheated interior. A young man in a white robe approached her.
“I’m looking for Father Methodius,” she said.
“You’ll find him at the residence down the street,” he told her, giving the address.
She walked along with the park on her left, houses on the right, until she found the place and rang the bell. It took several minutes before she heard movement in the hall and the door was opened by the old man she remembered. He wore a black cassock but without the embroidered chasuble he had donned for her father’s funeral service. Although he did not seem overweight, his belly protruded under the loose garment. Straggly gray hair hung loose around his shoulders, and thick black-rimmed spectacles were balanced on his nose.
“Val Scott,” he said straightaway, smiling and extending his hand. “Please come in.”
“What a great memory you have!” she exclaimed. They had only met a couple of times since she was an adult, and she had looked quite different as a child.
He walked slowly down the hall, leaning on a walking stick, and led her into a small lounge. Venetian blinds let in stripes of light, but the corners of the room were in shadow. He lowered himself into an armchair and gestured for Val to sit on a low sofa.
“I’m delighted to see you,” he said. “I’ve often thought about you and hoped your life was going well.”
She made a snap decision not to tell him about her divorce; she didn’t want a lecture on the sacrament of marriage. “It’s not bad. I’m just back from a trip to the Soviet Union, where I did some digging into Dad’s background, but it raised more questions than it answered. I wondered—”
“You wondered if I could help fill in the gaps?” He smiled. “I had a feeling you might come to me one day. Your father led a complicated life and he made many poor decisions, but he was a devout man of great faith. I always welcomed his company.”
“Did he tell you much about his past, before he left Russia?”
Father Methodius pushed the spectacles up his nose and they glinted in a beam of sunlight. “I expect you want to know about the Romanovs, don’t you?”
Val was startled.
“Let me ask my housekeeper for a pot of tea and I’ll tell you all I know.”
* * *
The tea came with a plate of cookies topped with flaked almonds. Val took one and bit into it.
“Mmm. These are good.”
Father Methodius smiled. “They’re lepeshki. It’s a Russian recipe, made with sour cream.” He took one himself and held it inches from his mouth without taking a bite, as if enjoying the anticipation. “Now, what can I tell you about your father? You probably know that he worked as a guard at the last house where the Romanov family were held?”
Val nodded, her mouth full of lepeshki.
“You mustn’t judge him for taking the job.” The priest put his cookie back on the plate, as if he had decided against eating it. “He had a difficult childhood, growing up in a children’s home after his parents died when he was very young. At the age of sixteen,
he was sent to work in a factory, where he boarded with other workers in some rather squalid-sounding lodgings. Then one day a man came asking for volunteers for what he described as a very sensitive job. Your father was interviewed about his political beliefs, and although he was not interested in politics, he told the interviewer what he thought he wanted to hear. It was only after he got the job that he learned he was to guard the Romanovs. Imagine how exciting that was for a young man of nineteen who thought he had no prospects!”
“He discussed all this with you?” Val was astonished. Her father had gone to elaborate lengths to cover up his past even from her mother, yet he had confided in this priest.
Father Methodius nodded. “I took his confession over the years and would never breach any confidences from there; but we were friends too, and I think his daughter should know what he did not have a chance to tell you in life. I hope it will help you to look upon him more charitably.”
Somehow Val doubted that, and her skepticism must have shown on her face.
“Reserve your judgment, please,” the priest continued. His voice was rich, with an accent that seemed neither Australian nor Russian but international. “Let’s go back to that young man arriving in a house where the wealthiest people in the world were being held prisoner. The girls were all beautiful, and one of them, Maria, was friendly toward him. He told me that he fell in love with her on the spot.”
“In love!” Val echoed.
“I always argued that love at first sight was not true love, but he claimed it was, and he vowed she loved him too.”
“Now, that I don’t believe,” Val retorted. Her father had had neither looks nor charm to recommend him. There was no way a Romanov grand duchess would have fallen for him.
“I also found it hard to believe, but your father told me that certain”—Father Methodius hesitated over the word—“intimacies occurred between them. That’s how he knew she felt the same way.”
Val’s mind was whirring. What kind of intimacies? How was it possible in a heavily guarded house, with the family crammed into such a small space?
“So your father was shocked beyond measure when his commandant summoned the guards to his office and told them the Romanovs were to be executed that very night. He could have excused himself from the execution squad, but instead, on the spur of the moment, he decided to try and rescue Maria. Each man was allocated one of the party to shoot, and he volunteered to shoot Maria, planning that he would deliberately miss, then find a way to rescue her in the aftermath.”
The priest stopped to sip his tea, and Val took a moment to absorb this information. Maria must have been the girl her father had pined for in later life, the one he could never get over. No other woman could measure up to a Romanov daughter—certainly not a poor Manchurian girl.
The priest took a deep breath. “The night of the shooting sounds like pure chaos. Your father said nothing went according to plan. When the band of executioners confronted the family in the basement, he tried to signal to Maria with his eyes that he would save her, but he wasn’t sure she understood. Then when the order was given to fire, he discharged his gun into the air and rushed forward to shield her with his body. That was when a bullet grazed his hand.”
Val remembered that funny scar, like a slug, between his thumb and index finger. She rubbed the spot on her own hand.
“It must have been sheer hell in that room, with the smoke and the noise of the guns and the screaming. Your father always broke down when he spoke of it. He said he couldn’t find Maria at first, and when the smoke cleared he saw that she was badly injured and was lying very still, perhaps dead.” He shook his head. “I can still hear his sobs when he told me. There was blood everywhere. He said he was soaked in it.”
His words in the nursing home echoed in Val’s head. “What did he do?”
“He picked her up and carried her to the van outside, all the while trying to detect signs of life and hoping for an opportunity to run off with her. Other guards were milling around and he would not have got far, but he heard them saying the bodies were being taken to a nearby forest. He decided to steal a horse, follow them there, and snatch Maria. If she was dead, he would bury her with all the proper ceremony and create a shrine to her; if she was alive, he would marry her and take care of her.”
Val felt as though she was listening to a story about someone else. This lovestruck teenager bore no resemblance to the father she had known. She looked through the blinds to the street beyond. What a shame he had never told her this himself. Their relationship could have been so different. “I guess his plan didn’t succeed,” she said.
“No, it did not.” Father Methodius put down his cup and crossed his arms across his chest. “When they got to the forest, a guard called Peter Vasnetsov was watching the truck where the bodies lay covered by a tarpaulin. Your father considered overpowering him and snatching Maria, but his shouts would have alerted the other guards, who were eating breakfast. There were loads of people around. Suddenly, as he watched, Peter Vasnetsov grabbed one of the girls from the back of the truck, threw her over his shoulder, and started to run into the forest. Your father hurried after them and saw that it was Maria. He had to think fast—and this is where you should be proud of him . . .” He caught Val’s eye and held it. “Instead of trying to stop Vasnetsov, he yelled to the other guards, “They’ve escaped!” and pointed in the opposite direction, shouting, “They went that way!” The men believed him and rushed off the way he had indicated.”
Val frowned, realization dawning. “So he helped them to escape?”
“Indeed.” The priest nodded. “Your father waited, and as soon as he could without being observed, he followed Maria and Vasnetsov. He was on horseback and Maria was injured so he should have been able to catch them easily, but he could find no sign. They’d vanished into thin air. He told me that for the next month he kept riding round that area, searching for them, but he never saw a trace. His heart was broken in two. He had two gold wedding rings engraved with an M and an A, so that if he ever found her, he could propose on the spot.”
“I’ve got those,” Val interrupted. “He kept them in a Fabergé box.”
“Maria’s box,” the priest said. “I wish you could have seen how hard he sobbed when he showed it to me. Loving Maria was the one good thing in his life, and in my opinion, he never recovered from losing her.”
There was silence in the room and Val suddenly became aware of the ticking of a clock, which she hadn’t noticed before. When combined with the flickering slats of light and the lilt of the priest’s voice, it was hypnotic. If she was to believe his version of events, there was a lot more to her father’s character than she had imagined.
Chapter 63
THAT EVENING, AFTER TUCKING NICOLE UP IN BED, Val snuggled next to Bill on the sofa and told him all she had heard from the priest. He was a good listener. It was one of his sterling qualities. She always felt he was interested in what she had to say, in stark contrast to her ex-husband.
“You could argue that my father romanticized the facts years after the event to portray himself in a good light,” she said. “I’m sure he would have been eager to win the priest’s good opinion. But I believe this story because it fits with all the other facts.” She listed them on her fingers. “He went back to get Maria’s bag from the basement, planning to rescue her and make her his wife, and he kept it all those years hoping to find her. He had wedding rings engraved and kept them in her Fabergé box. And it explains what he said to me in the nursing home before he died.”
“What does ‘intimacies’ mean?” Bill asked. “Do you think the old devil actually had sex with a Romanov girl?”
Val screwed up her nose and shook her head in distaste. “You didn’t meet him. I don’t think Maria would have gone that far. These girls were grand duchesses, after all. There had been talk of matching them with foreign princes, while my dad was penniless and had nothing to recommend him. But it sounds as though Maria liked him. Rem
ember it said in the museum that they kept having to sack guards because they got too close to the family?”
Bill agreed, but suggested, “It could have been a case of Stockholm syndrome. Remember those hostages in a bank raid in 1973 who ended up testifying on behalf of their captors? Psychologists reckon that forming attachments to captors is a common coping mechanism.”
Val thought back to the photos developed from the old camera. “Maria photographed three guards. Maybe she was friendly with them all. But she didn’t photograph my father.”
“One of them was Peter Vasnetsov, wasn’t it? The man who rescued her. And your father’s ledgers mentioned letters received by the Vasnetsov family.” He narrowed his eyes in concentration. “I wonder what became of Peter. Did he help Maria to escape overseas? Did he even go with her? If he had gone back to his family home, the authorities would have found him. Your dad would have found him.”
“You’re right.” Val nodded. She went to find the packets of photos and pulled out the one of Peter Vasnetsov. He had an honest, unassuming face, she thought.
“Let’s have another look,” Bill said, and she handed it over. He shook his head. “An unlikely hero. I guess we’ll never know what became of him. I wonder why your father didn’t process these pictures himself.”
“I suppose he wanted to keep things just as they were for when he found Maria,” Val guessed.
Bill nodded. “Does Father Methodius think he started working for the secret police straightaway?”
Val shook her head. “He didn’t work for them. He stole a uniform and pretended to be a Cheka officer while he spent the next few years of his life looking for Maria and Vasnetsov.”
Bill raised an eyebrow. “One day he’s just a factory worker turned guard, and the next he’s doling out money all over the place to bribe officials? Doesn’t make sense, does it?”