There was no bridge here, but from the towpath someone, at some time, had fenced off a piece of the river with wooden stakes. A dilapidated gangway led out from the towpath to a raft, floating on empty kerosene drums. It had a roof of sorts, and people fished there. Frank had often fished from it himself, without a permit, when he was a schoolboy. Up till March, of course, you had to make your own hole in the ice. Although he was in a hurry, the relief from tension made him slow down, and he walked down to the platform to watch the ice for a while. You had to get through the piled snow at the river’s edge and then there was just a two-foot drop on to the sodden platform which oozed and creaked beneath you. He stood there, with the half-frozen wooden slats vibrating beneath him, and the church bells sounding more clearly, a kind of distant hum, as the Redeemer fell silent. Then he walked the length of the gangway. When he stopped he heard another, lighter creaking as Miss Kinsman jumped down behind him.
She came purposefully towards him, not out of breath, her umbrella folded now. Frank reflected that he was caught. The place was a kind of fish-trap anyway, he’d known that since he was ten, and now he was trapped himself and must put the best face on it he could.
‘Have you been trying to catch up with me, Miss Kinsman? I’m afraid I didn’t see you.’
The frosty night air was as keen as a needle. She stood there, and answered him mildly, without a hint of complaint.
‘Yes, I have. I think you did see me.’
They were standing together under the ramshackle roof, and she was settling down like a fowl in a fowl-house, brushing off first one shoulder of her overcoat, then the other, although snow had not been falling.
‘I’m afraid it must have meant coming through some rather rough-looking streets,’ he said.
‘Poor, but I shouldn’t call them rough.’
‘There was the Monopoly.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind the Monopolies. They’re not like English public-houses. They’re not allowed to drink on the premises, you know. They have to take the vodka at least a hundred metres away before they start drinking. And it’s such stuff, have you ever tried it?’
Frank had. ‘It does what it’s always said to do, and what it’s manufactured to do. That’s the trouble, perhaps.’
‘And the woman in there, she was a Tatar woman, that means she’s a Muslim, you know, she’s forbidden to drink by the Prophet. The Prophet, you know,’ she repeated, nodding emphatically.
‘But did you want to speak to me?’ he asked, and added, ‘about anything in particular?’
She looked at him closely and said ‘No.’
‘You’ve nothing to say to me?’
‘Oh, you needn’t have been afraid of that,’ she added. ‘I didn’t want to talk to you, I wanted to talk to Mr Frank Reid.’
‘Who did Mrs Graham say I was?’ Frank asked.
‘I didn’t quite catch. So often one doesn’t quite catch! And then she had to go to Vespers. But, you see, it’s a matter of some urgency. Really, my passage for England is booked for tomorrow, if I can’t find any other employment here, that is. All I need is his address, Mr Reid’s address. That, of course, you must have, as you’re one of the business community here, even though he must be a younger man than yourself.’ She looked at him from the deeper shadow of her hat. ‘I wouldn’t have troubled you, only I should have to speak to him tonight.’
‘What makes you think he’s younger than I am?’ Frank asked.
‘He has young children, I know that. Otherwise I shouldn’t need to speak to him.’
Frank considered for a moment.
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Miss Kinsman, but I’m sure that this wouldn’t be a good moment to speak to Frank Reid.’
‘Is he out of Moscow, then?’
‘Well—’
‘Ultimately, you see, nobody is interested in me but myself. Certainly you, a total stranger, can’t possibly be. But I have to make do with the material I have.’
‘Miss Kinsman. I’m quite sure that if you did see Frank Reid, it wouldn’t lead to anything. I know him quite well enough for that.’
She looked at him searchingly. He offered to see her back to the nearest tram-stop. She shook her head, and trudged off across the gangway and up the slippery ramp, towards the Redeemer. Until she was out of sight all he could do was to stand there like an idiot, pretending to watch the ice.
10
The next morning, as Frank discovered from ringing up the Chaplaincy, Miss Kinsman left very early for the Alexander station. Mrs Graham said ‘Really, I expected to read something about you in the Gazeta-Kopeika. Everyone thought you were going to push her into the river.’
‘Who’s everyone? There was no-one there.’
‘Oh, people on the towpath, you know.’
‘What were they doing?’
‘Watching the ice.’
‘Mrs Graham, I got the impression that Miss Kinsman wanted to have a post with me in Lipka Street, as governess to my children.’
‘Oh, I should never have suggested that myself. After all, I know why she had to leave her other place. The matter of the bath house.’
At lunchtime, at Reidka’s, he tried to put his case – largely to put it to himself – to Selwyn, who said ‘I don’t remember a fishing-place like that near the Redeemer. I thought the banks were supposed to be kept clear.’
‘It’s surprising what the police will overlook if there’s no trouble. It’s been there for twenty-five years at least, I expect they’ve got used to it. But it doesn’t matter about the place. I can show it to you anytime you like. It’s just that I feel I haven’t behaved even reasonably well to this woman, but I don’t know where she’s going when she arrives in England, and if I did I shouldn’t know what to do about it.’
‘You’re thinking of sending her money.’
‘Money isn’t such a bad thing as people make out.’
‘It doesn’t heal the spirit, Frank.’
Frank shifted his ground.
‘I suppose she must be getting on for fifty. It doesn’t seem a good time for disappointment. I suppose, I mean, if you’re younger, there’s more chance of things getting better.’
‘How old are you, Frank?’
‘That’s another thing, she seemed to think I looked older than I am. Perhaps I do, I don’t know.’
It was five o’clock. Selwyn locked the safe and the cupboard where the account books were kept and, although he was always due at some meeting or concert or other, sat down again to give counsel.
‘Your difficulty in making up your mind what to do about Miss Kinsman is a reflection of your difficulty in deciding what to do about Nellie. Am I right in thinking that you don’t know all her motives? And will you let me say that you would reach a conclusion more quickly if you considered yourself less – if you thought, as each solution presented itself – who will be wounded by this? and whose heart will be made lighter?’
‘I’m thinking about my children,’ said Frank. ‘I was thinking about them when Nellie left. I thought about them when this woman tracked me down through the back streets of the Tverskaya. Who else is going to think about them?’
‘Frank, give me your hand.’
Selwyn’s hand was lean and spindle-fingered, the palm hardened by grasping his pilgrim’s staff through hundreds of versts of summer tramping. He sighed, and gently let go again.
‘Frank, not so very long ago I acted in a manner which I had never, up till then, considered excusable. I have known a number of people who acted in the same way, and though I would not have thought it right to condemn them, I would never have approved of what they did, and I would have done all I could to act in a like manner. The strange thing is that, as you know, I’ve been for a number of years now under the influence of Lev Nicolaevich, and have made up my mind, and indeed my whole being, towards a worthier mode of life and one which would be of more use to my fellow creatures. Yet now I was apparently reverting to a former attitude, one that I held when I was a
younger man. I’m speaking of the sexual impulse, Frank, and its gratification.’
‘Well, I thought you must be,’ said Frank.
‘At that time I thought that both men and women benefited from a multiplication of joyous relationships. But I had come to see how wrong that is. My predicament was, then, how to act in order to cause as little pain as possible and, above all, what I should tell the human beings concerned.’
‘I don’t know what you had to tell them,’ said Frank.
‘You would have been as puzzled as I was?’
‘I’m puzzled as it is.’
‘But I haven’t distressed you by what I’ve been saying? You haven’t taken offence?’
‘How could anyone take offence at you, Selwyn? You might as well take offence at a drink of cold water.’
Selwyn gave a melancholy smile. ‘We must go back to the subject later.’ He seemed reluctant to leave, a symptom which Frank recognized at once. At length he said, in a lowered voice, almost reverent voice, ‘How is it going, Frank? Has it been set up?’
He meant, Frank knew, the Birch Tree Thoughts. ‘I’m trying to get the loan of some European type, Selwyn, you know that. Sytin’s have some, but they won’t lend it. We may have to try in Petersburg. Tvyordov will set it up for you, he won’t mind what language it’s in, and of course the boy won’t be able to read the proofs, but I can leave that to you. We can hand-print it on the Albion.’
‘The punctuation may give trouble, I know that. It happens that I –’ he took a manuscript notebook out of his breast pocket, opened it – but it seemed to open itself at the required place – and handed it to Frank, who, aware that he hadn’t been grateful enough for Selwyn’s ready sympathy over Miss Kinsman, took it and read aloud:
‘Dost feel the cold, sister birch?’
‘No, Brother Snow,
I feel it not.’ ‘What? not?’ ‘No, not!’
‘Are you sure that’s right, Selwyn?’
‘What would you say is amiss?’
‘I’m not quite sure.’
‘Wasn’t I successful in conveying my meaning?’
‘It seems a bit repetitive.’
Selwyn took back the notebook, as though he did not like to see it in less expert hands, and Frank, saying that he’d lock up, was left alone in the darkened building, to look through the various offers of his paper suppliers. Paper from Finland was the cheapest by far, but the Tsar might decide to legislate against it. There was another offer, too, for the Mammoth, this time from Kuriatin, who thought he had discovered a purchaser in Tokyo, but as he had no licence to export, everything would have to be done through a third party.
This brought Frank’s mind, for a moment, back to the ruined crockery and tablecloths. He had discovered why Kuriatin set so much store by them. Like more important merchants than himself – Tretyakov, Kutzenov, Botkin – he had put aside part of his possessions to give to the People if necessary, thus showing his goodwill towards them.
‘All for them, and the embroideries, and the pictures, and the portrait of my wife by Bogdanov-Belsky. Let the people treasure them, and let them remember Kuriatin!’
But there were other things he had earmarked to take with him if history turned against him and the family had to go into exile – the damask tablecloths, in particular, although there were only twenty-three of them. Before he came from his village in Orel, Kuriatin had never seen such things, not even on the altar at Easter.
11
‘Certainly some woman must come into your house to care for your children,’ said Selwyn, calling round that evening. ‘When a woman leads a little child by the hand she ensures your future, just as when she serves you food and drink she bids you live.’
‘She hasn’t got to do that,’ Frank said, ‘but I want them kept happy, and they won’t be happy running riot. And I want someone who’ll speak good Russian to them. Their life is here in Moscow, for the time being anyway.’
‘The young woman I have in mind speaks very pure Russian, Frank, in spite of everything.’
‘In spite of what?’
‘She has had some education, at one time they wanted to make a teacher of her. I’m sure she’s capable of a responsible position. But she is unfortunate.’
‘I don’t want anyone too unfortunate about the place. What went wrong?’
‘She is young—’
‘How young?’
‘I would say she is nineteen or twenty, and she is poor. There can be no higher claim on any of us, surely, than youth and poverty.’
‘Where does she come from?’
‘Vladimir.’
‘Where they’re mostly carpenters.’
‘Yes, Lisa Ivanova is a joiner’s daughter.’ Selwyn moved his head very slightly from side to side, as though in time to music.
‘Did you meet her in Vladimir?’
‘No, I met her in Muir and Merrilees, at the handkerchief counter. Yes, she is in charge of the gentlemen’s handkerchiefs. I told you that she could manage a responsible position.’
‘You picked her up at Muirka’s.’
‘She was shedding tears. That was enough for me, as it should be for us all, for us all.’
‘You mean she’d been fired?’
‘Not at all, it was simply that she’s not used to living in a great city, and she feels oppressed, like any other child of nature.’
‘Did she tell you that?’
‘No, that is what I sensed.’
‘They pay them quite fairly at Muirka’s,’ said Frank. ‘That’s to say, as wages go here. And they get a discount on staff purchases. But I think I ought to try and find someone older and perhaps a bit more fortunate. She sounds as though she’d need looking after herself.’
‘But you mustn’t think of it as a question of your own convenience.’
‘What else is it?’
‘Try to put aside this consideration of self.’
Soothe him, Frank thought. ‘Well, it wouldn’t be for very long, in any case.’
‘You’ve heard from Nellie, then?’
‘I haven’t heard.’
‘You’re expecting her back, though?’
‘I’m always expecting her.’
‘What am I to say, then, to Lisa Ivanova?’
‘The worst thing about you, Selwyn, is that you make everyone else feel guilty. I feel guilty now. You’d better bring this girl to see me.’
‘And when shall I do that?’
‘Well, when does Muirka’s shut? Half-past six. Bring her to the house, when she gets off work. I don’t want her in the office. We’ll have to see what she thinks of the children.’
‘You have a good heart, Frank. Many men, most men I fancy, would have said, “We’ll have to see what the children think of her,” or even “We’ll have to see what I think of her.”’
‘I don’t want to have to think about her at all,’ said Frank. ‘I’m at the end of my wits.’
He had the impression that they were avoiding an important aspect of the subject, but felt too tired to work out what it was.
When Selwyn brought Lisa into the living room at 22 Lipka Street, Frank thought that she looked less unpromising than he’d expected. How unjust, (or unfair) that was, to ask someone to live up to a promise about which they knew nothing, and yet that was what interviewing usually came down to. It was her hair that surprised him. As a shop assistant, she must have worn it rolled up. Old Merrilees would never permit anything else behind the counters. But her hair now, her thick fair hair, which gleamed in the electric light, pale blonde on one side, palely shadowed on the other, was parted in the middle and fell in two flaxen pigtails like a peasant’s or rather like a peasant in a ballet. He didn’t think he’d be able to put up with this.
She had the pale, broad, patient, dreaming Russian face, and it struck him that it reminded him of another face which he had seen recently, though he couldn’t remember when or where. She wore her black shop assistant’s dress with a lilac-coloured shawl over it,
and plain gold rings in her ears. Selwyn’s description of her had suggested that she might turn up fainting, possibly in rags, but when she took off her shawl she looked like any other employee at Muirka’s.
Selwyn proposed that they should all sit down. Lisa Ivanova looked astonished, then her expression became serene and, once again, calmly receptive. She sat in the armchair nearest to her, which had always been Nellie’s. But Lisa was taller, as well as broader, than Nellie, so that her head came almost to the top of the chair-back. She sat, not at all stiffly, but absolutely still, all, so to speak, in one piece. Nellie had never been much of a sitter-still. She was a jumper-up and walker-about.
When Frank spoke to Lisa directly she turned politely towards him, but her self-possession produced a curious effect, as though, in spite of the politeness, she was listening to something else a little beyond his range.
‘Are you used to looking after children?’ he began, but Selwyn, leaning forward, interrupted rapidly in English. ‘Frank, I work as your accountant, as I did for your father before you, and I do my best in that capacity, but in the present matter you must think of me as an older brother.’
Lisa was not embarrassed by these remarks which she could not understand. Evidently she had the gift of quiet. She waited without any particular expression, but not with the passive air of someone about to be disposed of.
‘All I ask,’ Selwyn went on, ‘is that you should make it clear that the atmosphere is one of hope, and that you have no shadow of doubt that you will soon be reunited with your own wife. I’m speaking to you freely.’
‘I should have thought we could have taken that for granted.’
Selwyn subsided. Now that he saw everything was going well, his mind was turning to his next charitable enterprise. With the terrible aimlessness of the benevolent, he was casting round for a new misfortune.
Frank tried again. ‘Lisa Ivan’na, are you used to looking after children? Have you ever done it before?’
‘Yes, I have younger brothers and sisters.’
‘Did you find it hard work?’
‘It’s hard work looking after one child. It’s quite easy if there are several.’
The Beginning of Spring Page 8