Katerina's Secret

by Mary Jane Staples

  ‘Madame?’

  Madame’s smile was teasing.

  ‘You are in love with him, perhaps, and dream of looking after him yourself later on?’

  Celeste blushed.

  ‘But he’s old enough to be my father, madame. Well, almost.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Almost. It’s a sensitive emotion, the feeling of being too young.’ Madame’s eyes filled with memories, and she looked like a woman who dwelt in companionship with the past. ‘My own papa was – yes, a Bulgarian count and was appointed to the household of a most high and distinguished family. Naturally, I spent many hours each day with the children. There were five of them, four girls and a boy, and I was just two years younger than the eldest girl. She was the eldest, yes, but also the shyest of all of us – that is, the shyest of the family. I was almost one of them, of course, for we were all very close, though I wasn’t shy myself. We had such fun, such wonderful days, and when the eldest girl fell in love she was desperate to be older than sixteen. I could tell you many stories—’ Madame halted.

  Celeste looked up. At the open French windows of the villa stood a man, tall, bearded, and middle-aged. He was frowning.

  ‘Your husband, madame?’ asked Celeste impulsively, and then, glancing instinctively, saw that Madame wore no wedding ring.

  ‘My doctor.’ Madame’s voice was a little vibrant. ‘Please excuse me a moment.’

  ‘I must go—’

  ‘No. Please wait a moment, child,’ said Madame. She rose to her feet, walked over the terrace and disappeared into the villa with the bearded man.

  ‘This is foolishness of a mad kind, Katerina Pyotrovna.’

  ‘It is not.’ She spoke firmly and defiantly.

  ‘I absent myself for a brief moment, to go to the village, and no sooner is my back turned than there are strangers in the place.’

  ‘There’s a young girl here, that’s all. And she’s hardly a stranger. Her mother owns the hotel. Boris Sergeyovich, am I to wither away? I will if I’m to be denied all communication with people. I might as well be in a convent.’

  Tall, slender and straight-backed, chin high, she was in elected confrontation with the bearded man. And he, for all his severe reproach, was in admiration of her.

  ‘Residence in a convent can be arranged, as you know,’ he said, ‘and indeed was suggested years ago.’

  ‘I do not have the disposition to make a suitable nun.’

  ‘Countess—’

  ‘I’m not a countess, I’m a nobody.’

  ‘You are not,’ said Boris Sergeyovich Kandor.

  ‘I’m a nobody turning into a cabbage. Is there a more dreadful fate?’

  ‘Yes, Countess Katerina, there is,’ he said.

  She winced. Shadows darkened the clarity of her eyes.

  ‘Boris Sergeyovich, see, I beg you – let me make a few friends, discreet friends.’

  ‘You cannot command discretion of curious people. They will go away and talk about you. They will describe you. I’m not sure that you shouldn’t dye your hair.’

  ‘Never! Oh, don’t you see, one can dispel the curiosity of people by mixing with them?’

  ‘Madness,’ said Dr Kandor. ‘Am I to let you cast yourself into revelation and destruction?’

  ‘One friend only, then,’ she begged. ‘The girl. She’s so sweet, she has eyes so like—’

  ‘I know her, I’ve seen her. As you say, her mother owns the hotel.’

  ‘They are our closest neighbours,’ she said, ‘our only neighbours.’

  ‘How did she get in?’

  ‘The wall gate was open. I stepped outside for a moment, to look down at the beach. People are sometimes on the beach, and my eyes are hungry for any kind of people. I’m frequently of the feeling that people have disappeared from the world.’

  ‘You should not show yourself. If you’re recognized, who knows what would follow?’

  ‘Boris Sergeyovich, you speak as if the whole world would recognize me. But who would recognize me here, in the South of France? It’s a place my family never visited.’

  ‘That’s why we thought this villa very suitable,’ said Dr Kandor.

  ‘Boris Sergeyovich?’ She was wheedling, beguiling, and casting her magic over a man who she knew held her in stern but affectionate guardianship, a man who would give his life to protect her. ‘One friend, please? To reject all people will invite curiosity as dangerous as accepting them all. I’ve been here two years and have met no one, no one.’

  Dr Kandor sighed.

  ‘One friend, then. The girl. No more. And remember, you are Bulgarian, you are Countess Katerina Pyotrovna of Varna.’

  ‘That’s what my passport says, yes. I don’t find Katerina unacceptable, though my own name is very dear to me. But I will remember. And I’ve already told Celeste I live quietly because of my weak heart.’

  ‘Yes, that is what I tell people myself when I can’t avoid questions. Looking at you, I wonder, however. A weak heart?’ He took her wrist and felt her pulse. ‘Katerina Pyotrovna, you are an abundance of health.’

  ‘My incurable affliction is loneliness,’ she said.

  ‘The girl may visit every two weeks.’

  ‘Every week,’ she said.

  ‘Every two weeks.’

  ‘Am I to decide nothing for myself?’

  ‘It’s my responsibility to decide what is best for you,’ he said, ‘as other men must decide what is best for the scattered ones. You are precious to us, all of you. It’s the only way, this way, to keep you separated and therefore safe. I must obey orders and so must you, for your own sake and the sake of those you love. Discovery of one will provoke a search for all.’

  ‘It’s safe, Boris Sergeyovich, but it isn’t quite the same as being alive. However, you’ve made a concession and I’m grateful. I’ll tell Celeste she may visit once a week.’

  ‘Katerina Pyotrovna—’

  ‘I’m not Katerina Pyotrovna,’ she said with a flash of imperiousness.

  ‘You are to all who have ears. It’s the only name I must ever call you, whether we are alone or not alone. Your young friend, then, tell her she may visit.’

  ‘Once every two weeks,’ she conceded.

  ‘Yes.’ He smiled. ‘To prevent you turning into a cabbage.’

  She went outside to tell Celeste.

  Celeste, having finished her account of her first meeting with Madame, who had declared herself to be Countess Katerina Pyotrovna of Bulgaria, waited for Edward to comment. She had told him, the previous year, of the mysterious lady who had come to live at the Villa d’Azur, but never appeared, never went to the village and never entertained.

  ‘One thing is certain, my angel,’ said Edward. ‘You’ve described her perfectly. I cherish the aptitude of your tongue. Yes, she does have magnificent auburn hair, beautiful grey eyes and captivating grace.’

  ‘M’sieur?’ said Celeste.

  ‘I too have met her, only half an hour ago,’ said Edward, and told her of the incident.

  ‘A running man who was fired at?’ Celeste was incredulous.

  ‘The shot was aimed over his head, I think. To warn him off, I imagine.’

  ‘And you saw her? She was outside the villa?’

  ‘In the little pine wood that stands between the road and the walls around the villa. But she wasn’t carrying a rifle.’

  ‘I simply can’t think why anyone would use a rifle so dangerously,’ said Celeste. ‘The village gendarme would be very annoyed, and it wouldn’t do the countess’s weak heart much good, would it?’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t,’ said Edward, ‘and there speaks the uncluttered mind of the young. Adults dissemble. Young and innocent angels never do. But it’s mysterious, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m quite fraught with curiosity,’ said Celeste. ‘Do you think her beautiful, m’sieur?’

  ‘I think her quite the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.’

  Celeste smiled. She was most anxious to find a wife for him. She was sure that t
he countess, for all her weak heart, would be a delight to Edward.

  ‘I may tell her that?’ she said. ‘I’m visiting tomorrow. Mama allows me time off every fortnight to spend an afternoon with her. She has told me so many stories of the years she spent with the children of the high and illustrious family her father served.’

  ‘You haven’t said which family this was. The Bulgarian royal family?’

  ‘Oh, for the sake of discretion, she won’t say,’ said Celeste. ‘It might have been a royal family, yes, and one perhaps which is in exile now.’

  ‘In return for the stories she tells you,’ said Edward, ‘you tell her stories about us?’

  ‘Us, m’sieur?’

  ‘Your guests,’ smiled Edward.

  Celeste blushed.

  ‘Oh, never malicious, m’sieur, I assure you,’ she said. ‘But I must tell her about Madame Knight and Colonel Brecht.’

  ‘I know that English lady. She’s been coming here for the last three or four years. But who is Colonel Brecht?’

  ‘Oh, he’s a German officer, and it’s his first visit here. You’ll be able to see how proud and polite they are with each other, and yet he looks at her when he thinks she’s unaware, and she casts her eyes at him in the same way. It’s so intriguing, oh, yes.’

  ‘I may not see them as you see them, terrible infant,’ said Edward.

  ‘Alas, that’s because you’re a man,’ said Celeste. He laughed, and his thin face took on some reflection of the bright, vigorous handsomeness she was sure it had shown before he inhaled poison gas. And Celeste decided that if he had found no wife by the time she was eighteen, she herself must contrive to marry him. The decision induced warm pleasure. ‘M’sieur, I must return to my work.’

  ‘You must, or I shall have your mother beating me over the head.’

  ‘As if she’d do that. Sometimes, m’sieur, you are very amusing.’

  ‘You’re always delicious,’ said Edward.

  ‘I do my best,’ said Celeste. ‘M’sieur, we are friends, you and I?’

  ‘I like to think we shall always be friends.’

  ‘Then—’ For once Celeste was hesitant. ‘Then when we’re together, may I – do you think I might call you Edward? Not before guests, of course, only when we’re together.’

  ‘Since I’ve always called you Celeste and never mademoiselle, and since we’re such good friends, why not?’

  ‘I am so glad,’ said Celeste, and kissed his cheek with warm impulsiveness. But one must begin to take steps, she thought, if one was thinking about marrying a man. Of course, if he and the countess – Yes, that would be wonderful.

  Katerina Pyotrovna sat at her dressing table. Outside, the night was flooded with silver. A single light only, that from her bedside table lamp, cast its glow over her bedroom. The reflection of her face in the mirror was shadowed. The hairbrush in her hand was still.

  One clung to life, even when life was so empty. Because there were always memories, she was never completely divorced from what life could offer. She thought of those she loved. She thought every day of them. Her mind turned on the man she had seen, the man who appeared so quietly out of nowhere, with his face lean and drawn, and his eyes very intent. He had looked at her and the pine wood had suddenly become a place of breathless silence for long moments. Then he had smiled and spoken of the rifle shot.

  Boris Sergeyovich had fired that shot, to warn off a creeping intruder. Boris, seeing him from a distance, had gone to get his rifle. The intruder, knowing himself discovered a minute later, had run, with Boris in pursuit. Boris had been furious with himself afterwards. It had been the impulse of a fool, he said, to loose off a shot. And he had not been very pleased with her for venturing into the wood.

  The other intruder, the man with brown eyes and a fine, firm mouth, was not a creeper. He came like a brightness into her mind. Such a man would be so interesting to know and to talk to. He had smiled, and his smile had shed the lines from his face. She felt sad. He represented only a moment of time, a moment that had come and gone. Boris had carefully followed him, had seen him climb into a car and drive away, and had concluded he was merely a motorist who, having heard the shot, had stopped to investigate and then retreated from her confined world to return to his limitless one.

  Celeste was coming tomorrow. That was a sweet something. She loved the girl. She would talk to her about the man, and Celeste would weave an imaginative story about him, and they would laugh together.

  But she still felt sad, and very lonely.

  Chapter Four

  He had retired early last night, after meeting the other guests before taking dinner. Tired after his three-day journey, he had slept well. He had done a small amount of writing after breakfast, and this afternoon he had his work on the table by the summer house, his pencil between his fingers. He always wrote his rough drafts in pencil, his finished drafts in ink. For once, the pencil was indeterminate. It idled. He lacked concentration. His mind was not attuned to the first battle of Ypres. His mind was on a woman of singular enchantment. A Bulgarian countess, Celeste had said. He had never met any Bulgarians, but he imagined the women to be broad-faced and Slavonic, not slender, elegant and breathtaking.

  It was warm again today, the French Riviera basking in its sunny autumn, and conditions could not have been better for the completion of a chapter. But her image was a floating disturbance.

  ‘Herr Somers, do I interrupt you?’

  The voice was deep, the accented English slightly guttural. Edward looked up. Colonel Franz Brecht, stalwart and upright, a retired forty-five-year-old officer of the Brandenburg Grenadiers, and still an inveterate user of a monocle, smiled enquiringly down at him. Edward had met him last night and they had exchanged a few civil words, then several friendly ones.

  ‘Since I haven’t written a thing yet, no, you’re not interrupting me, Colonel Brecht.’

  ‘Ah, a few moments together, then?’ said Colonel Brecht.

  ‘By all means.’

  The handsome, stiff-haired German took a seat. He viewed the garden with approval and then turned interested eyes on Edward.

  ‘One cannot complain,’ he said.

  ‘One doesn’t, I hope, when one is fortunate enough to be able to spend time here.’

  ‘True,’ said Colonel Brecht. ‘But other people do, poor devils.’

  ‘The unemployed?’ said Edward. Unemployment was rife all over Europe. Britain and France, the victorious nations, were suffering almost as much as Germany, the vanquished.

  ‘They have good reason to complain,’ said the colonel. ‘It’s a damned disgrace, the inability of governments to find work for the men who survived the war. You spoke last night of the work your government has given you. May I ask what you are writing about now?’

  ‘The first battle of Ypres, from 19 October to 22 November 1914,’ said Edward.

  ‘The nineteenth?’ Colonel Brecht screwed in his monocle. ‘You must forgive me, Herr Captain—’

  ‘I’m no longer a captain.’

  ‘Ah, so? But active or retired, your rank applies.’

  ‘It’s not important,’ said Edward.

  ‘It is an honour to know a man, Herr Captain, who was once my opponent.’ The German was distinctly a gentleman of military form. ‘But may I point out, in respect of the first battle of Ypres, that our Fourth Army, commanded by the Duke Albert of Württemberg, had already begun its advance on 18 October, and our Sixth Army, under Crown Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria, was already making its initial feint.’

  ‘Your English is superb, Colonel, your memory faultless,’ smiled Edward. ‘However, I’m writing this strictly from the British angle. All events and movements prior to the nineteenth have been covered by a separate account. My terms of reference compel me to begin with the commencement of the battle which, as far as we were concerned, did not open until the nineteenth. There were no actual engagements on the eighteenth.’

  ‘You don’t consider an advance into a tactical pos
ition part of a battle?’ asked Colonel Brecht.

  ‘Oh, yes. Battle preliminaries can’t be discounted. I am, however, commissioned only to cover the opening of the battle proper, and to continue until it ended on 22 November.’

  ‘You will conclude with conclusions?’

  ‘I’ve not been asked to,’ said Edward. ‘Conclusions will come from a higher plane, but I’d only say this was the battle that led to four years of trench war.’

  ‘The real conclusion, Herr Captain—’

  ‘Look here,’ said Edward amiably, ‘since we’ll see a great deal of each other here, let’s dispense with formality.’

  ‘Quite, quite,’ said Colonel Brecht, and coughed. ‘But let me say that I think the war hammered the heart out of the nations. France, Germany and Britain are shattered, their wealth destroyed and their people in tatters. It was not a war at all, but a suicidal madness, provoked by the warlords of Europe.’

  ‘You sound like a Bolshevik,’ said Edward.

  ‘Himmel, I hope not,’ said Colonel Brecht. ‘However, not everything was destroyed. Look at this beautiful garden. How good it is to still be alive.’

  The colonel watched the gardener at work, filling a wheelbarrow with dead blooms and dry leaves. Something else drew his eyes, the emergence of a woman from the hotel. Her parasol floated above her handsome head. He came to his feet.

  Edward, having seen the lady also, said with a smile, ‘You’re off?’

  ‘Ah – yes – must leave you to your work before I become a bore.’

  Aware of the majestic advance of the lady, Edward said, ‘There’s no need to dash off. Stay and share a pot of tea with me.’

  ‘Good of you, but must be fair to you,’ said Colonel Brecht. ‘Perhaps a game of billiards this evening, after dinner?’

  ‘A pleasure,’ said Edward. The Corniche boasted a billiards room, its ancient table still remarkably playable.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Colonel Brecht and strode briskly away. Unable, however, to avoid crossing the path of the approaching lady, he halted, clicked his heels and gave her a politely stiff bow. She, in a dress of blue with a matching hat, inclined her head in gracious acknowledgement, but without stopping. The colonel disappeared into the hotel through the open French windows of the lounge. The lady approached Edward, who was comfortably clad in a white cricket shirt and grey trousers. He came to his feet.